The Twisted Heart

by Rebecca Gowers

  ‘Anyway, it wasn’t a date, it was just a question, and I didn’t say yes.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ replied Michaela, ‘I don’t even want to hear. It’s a date and I’m on your case.’ She stood there looking grumpy until the roiling milk almost flooded across the rim of the saucepan, whereupon she swiped it expertly from the gas, placing one overfull cocoa mug on the table by Kit’s plate of fridge food, and taking the other with her away out of the kitchen.

  ‘Up yours,’ Kit murmured.

  After she’d eaten, Kit ran herself a bath, got in, and lay submerged, apart from her face, in the near-scalding water. She breathed in the steam. It swirled as she drew on it, blew into it, drew on it, blew into it. Her ears were under. She could hear her heart thumping, and the slow, pulsed flair of her blood as it whirred in her veins. From an early age she had suffered bouts of faintness when getting up too fast, standing still for too long, dancing, shuffling round under-ventilated museums. Sometimes she grew faint simply from lying prostrate in a scalding—

  Kit pushed herself up fast, curved up and round, water sloshing everywhere, up into a sitting position, bent her body forwards and over, clutched her legs, rested her head—her eye sockets—on her knees, and forced herself to breathe heavily and slowly through her nose, afraid she might vomit in the water.

  When this disorderly spell had subsided, which swiftly it did, and she was able to sit up straight again, she found herself mesmerised by two black arcs of eyeliner on her knee caps. A shiver of mental connections caused her to wonder whether she would ever succeed in making Orson stare at her, as Detective Murray might have done, with a gaze like that of an ox in whose throat the butcher’s knife has been buried.

  Kit had been unable to resist putting Hayward’s erotic novels on Orson’s reading list, not that she wanted to confuse him. He was supposed to be mugging up on the undercover woman police detective in Victorian literature, and Hayward, in addition to being a prominent member of a porn-writing syndicate, had been the first English author of any note to include such a figure in his work. Given that detectives in this period were widely thought of as virtual criminals themselves, and thus a disgraceful reflection on any government that employed them; and given that no women were officially acknowledged on the British police payroll until 1919, Kit wanted Orson to consider whether there hadn’t, in the 1860s, been something so titillating about the notion of a secret woman detective, that it made sense for a pornographer to have been the first to enshrine one in print.

  Though hinting at this possibility in ‘Questions to Bear in Mind’, Kit had decided to leave the word ‘transgressive’ to Orson. She bet herself he wouldn’t be able to resist, the bet being that if Orson dropped ‘transgressive’ into his essay, she would buy herself a fancy new pair of knickers.

  The butcher’s knife—her thoughts returned to her notebook; to Detective Murray’s memoir. She visualised her own crabbed scribbles. She herself had been pissed on, well, metaphorically, who could say how many times? Metaphorically, being pissed on was an integral part of human existence. Metaphorically, the mass of human beings was drenched in urine. Literally, though, she had been pissed on once, aged about fifteen. It hadn’t been an act of affection, and she had been forced to try to sort herself out afterwards in the miniature sink of a converted, peach-décor, suburban boxroom toilet, an event so at odds with her own sense of herself, whatever that was, that she had since banished it pretty well completely from her mind. Once in a while though, the memory would leap back out at her. She recalled it now for the first time in two or three years.

  *

  Kit’s brief phases of nausea, speckled vision and panicky light-headedness she assumed to be a by-product of her blood having to get itself round a long-distance circulatory system. As she sat in the bath—still too hot under the water, but from the waist upwards chilling—her thoughts went into muddled orbit. Who is this bastard, anyway—Joe? Joe who? Why the smile? What does he want with me? She took her flannel to the eyeliner on her knees, then attempted to clean the black smears off her flannel, before washing her face and hoisting herself out of the bath.

  The attic flat had been divided up in a curious fashion, with the kitchen smaller than the bathroom; while the bathroom had the top floor’s most generous window, but neither curtains nor a blind. Except in high summer, however, the panes would quickly steam up when hot water was running, enough to satisfy the most bashful individual, before the condensation would fuse into drops and fall in runnels down the glass. Some of the hot water that you ran for your bath floated off to sheet the uncurtained window, a ridiculously improbable arrangement; but convenient, Kit always thought.

  She had forgotten to leave her towel on the rubber-mesh bath mat, and made a jolty dash to the little stool against the far wall where she’d dumped it with her clothes and pyjamas. Late September, the days were still reasonably warm, but not so the nights. She swerved to avoid a daddy-long-legs, tangled up in a ball of dust and hair, that was berserkly whirligigging round the floor, but her attempt to free it led to her pulling off a wing. When she then executed it, folded in a square of loo paper, the body audibly popped. Kit was now cold to her bones, and slightly distressed. She dried herself fast and put her jumper back on over her night gear.

  She returned to her room, and this time didn’t dance, hoppishly or otherwise, but sat on her bed, defeated. When she had gone back inside the church hall after her stint at Pams Cafe, she had unthinkingly checked for any men taller than herself. There had been none. But if there had been lots, or just a couple, then what? Then—nothing in particular.

  All the same, the fact was that from that point on she had only inattentively observed any of the people around her, and only a few of them; and those only because they’d been hopeless at dancing, or extra good, or had looked unlikely for one reason or another. Men, women, she had fleetingly watched the odd person, but with little interest.

  Joe, Kit hadn’t noticed. She was flattered, in a way, that he had noticed her; but not that flattered.

  She tried to think how old he had been, and came up with a decade-long span from early thirties to early forties. Either he was rising forty, she thought, but had a boyishness to him that made him appear younger, or he was younger, but he’d been through it a bit and life had weathered him. His hair he’d had cut very short. His clothes and name told her nothing. Many kinds of men might wear such clothes and bear his name.

  She began to debate with herself quite how negligible the height difference between them had been, and when this got tedious, tried to remember his voice—low, straightforward, from somewhere in the middle of things. It hadn’t been local to East Oxford, though he had seemed hard enough. She thought about it. Really, he had looked, if thin, as though, should he wish to, he could beat a person to a pulp. But why should he wish to, and anyway, so what? Perhaps he—

  Kit chided herself for thinking about any of this at all. What did it matter? Jessie Keith, I cut her across this way and then down this way, and I threw away the parts of her I—

  She sat on her bed, defeated. What do I care? she asked herself. He had had a certain air, something about him. She didn’t know what, some sort of watchfulness.

  By the time she’d got properly into bed, under the covers, Kit couldn’t remember how tall he had been, how old, what he had looked like, what impression he had given her: nothing. If required, for unimaginable reasons, to pick him out in a crowd, would she actually be capable of recognising him now? She didn’t feel at all sure she would. Then again, she wasn’t going back, so what the hell?

  It took next to no time lying in bed for her to become consciously unhappy. In a book, she thought, her decision not to go back to the dance club would be the hilarious prelude to her going back to the dance club. But not even in her worst nightmares did she behave like a girl from a hilarious book.

  CHAPTER 2

  A couple of days after the dance club, at the weekend, Sunday, Kit saw an elderly lady on Bro
ad Street who appeared to be texting someone. Until, as Kit drew closer, she realised that the old bird was fumbling with her glasses case.

  Kit was haunted by this error. She had been working hard, sleeping badly, getting up weary in the mornings. On the Tuesday she had lost her debit card and had had to cancel it and order a new one: maddening. In fact, all week, for long stretches of daytime hours, she had felt muddled and despondent, not to mention at night. At least on the Thursday, Orson had turned in a reasonable essay. That was good. Michaela had been being her usual self.

  Early on the Friday, while Kit was still in bed, eyes closed, up in her little room, she heard through her open window the throaty honking calls of migrant geese. She pictured them, the entire flock-load, as a single great, low-slung wing only just skimming the city’s crowded rooftops, though somehow their crying made the air above sound empty and endless.

  It was a damp day. Michaela shuffled into the kitchen in her dressing gown, stood in the doorway and said, ‘I’m not being rude, but I can lend you just the best skirt, and I mean you do know haemorrhoid cream’s an anti-inflammatory so it would totally get rid of the bags under your eyes. Yes,’ she said, seemingly to forestall dissent, ‘the usual way of doing it mostly is cucumber slices. But I mean, cucumber slices.’ The thought of cucumber slices rendered her temporarily speechless.

  Kit remained silent. She had been dividing the last of a jar of cherry jam between two pieces of toast, but paused, knife aloft—they both paused—as the boys a floor down started to whoop at each other, ‘—your dirty brain data you dumbfuck runtwank’—sneering, insults, of a jokey kind, maybe, ‘fuckwad’.

  Michaela lost interest. ‘Honestly, it’s true.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said Kit, starting to eat her toast, ‘but you must be crazy if you think I’m putting—yuk—haemorrhoid cream anywhere near my face, Michaela? I don’t mind if my eyes look tired. They look tired because I’m tired. No big deal. I’m wearing a perfectly good skirt already, and I never said I was going anyway. I specifically said I’m not going, assuming you’re on about the dance club here? I’m not going. Please can I have my breakfast without you getting at me.’

  Michaela bent down to glance under the table. ‘You’re not wearing the one you’re wearing now?’

  ‘Listen, I’m not going anywhere. And what’s wrong with it, anyway? And by the way, this is what I wore last time, as it happens, so you know.’

  Michaela turned away to refill the kettle. ‘What’s wrong with it, seriously, is that it’s too long and it’s too, just, black.’

  ‘Yes, and?’ said Kit. ‘What difference is it to you?’

  Michaela flipped the kettle’s on-switch, then left the room, calling, ‘Wait right there.’

  Kit liked her skirt. The cloth was fine Italian wool. She had recently bought it in a charity shop. Only after getting home had she noticed the moth holes near the hem, which perhaps explained the fate of a garment that must have cost its original owner one or two hundred pounds. Well, the holes meant nothing to Kit. She was above moth holes. Who judged a girl by moth holes, in this day and age? What was lovely about the skirt was the lazy, opulent ripple to the way it moved.

  Michaela returned holding out, not a skirt, but a dress.

  ‘What?’ said Kit.

  ‘Try it on.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll try it later.’

  ‘Try it on now. I want to see what—oh, Kit, you caught the message downstairs about the washing machine?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Surprise surprise.’

  ‘I know, “as soon as possible”. Right.’

  ‘I know, ha ha. The nearest laundrette is, where? Jericho, Summertown? I wasn’t sure.’

  Kit, on reflection, taking in how bizarre Michaela’s dress was, found that she, too, quite fancied seeing how she looked in it. It was sleeveless, tightly cinched at the waist, had a full skirt to the knee, and was made from pale blue, possibly waxed cotton. To this extent it was almost prim; but not only was the fabric decorated all over with photographically detailed, life-sized renderings of fruit—peaches, pineapples, pawpaws, figs—these fruits looked as though they had been attacked by a maniac with a machete, giving a wonderful effect of colour, while imparting no less powerfully the impression of carnage.

  ‘What is this, some kind of po-mo joke kind of thing?’ Kit began to shuffle out of her clothes.

  ‘Hey, at least your knickers are cute,’ said Michaela. ‘I like the little lacy bit over your hm-hm.’ As the kettle began to boil, she busied herself putting together a bowl of cereal with added bran, and a cup of green tea.

  Kit shoved her skirt, jumper and tee shirt onto her chair, from where they immediately slid in a heap to the floor. Then she zipped up the dress’s side zip.

  Michaela looked round and sighed. ‘That’s so depressing to think you fit that when you’re about a foot taller than me. Look at you. You look amazing. I mean, honestly, if I looked that good.’

  Despite herself, Kit gave a quick twirl.

  ‘About tonight,’ Michaela shifted her breakfast to the table and sat down at last, and Kit sat down too, dressed for cocktails, picking up her own clothes from the floor and stuffing them onto her lap. ‘I mean, sure,’ said Michaela, ‘sure, you feel shy and everything, I assume. But, just for a second, Kit, tell me this. If you went, what’s the best thing you could imagine getting out of it?’

  ‘Like what?’ said Kit warily. ‘Meaning, he turns out to be—?’

  ‘He turns out to be—’ Michaela lifted her hands up all a-tremble, and cast a look heavenwards, her face a picture of lunatic reverence.

  Kit started to bite through her now-floppy, second slice of toast and cherry jam. ‘I suppose the best, best-case outcome would be—if I clicked with him, you mean?—not being by myself quite so much. Just not quite so much of the time, you know?’

  ‘And why?’ asked Michaela. ‘I mean, cool. But, really why, as far as you’re concerned, besides sex and it’s all right you don’t have to tell me.’

  Kit baulked at this question, unsure what Michaela was after, then slowed to consider it properly. She finished her toast. ‘I guess it would be quite nice when I’m angry to have someone there.’

  Michaela frowned. ‘Angry about what? What do you get angry about?’

  ‘What’s it to you? I get angry about the fact that I’m by myself.’

  ‘But what are you saying? If you had someone there?’

  ‘Fine. Well, if I had someone there, that I cared about, I suppose I’d have other reasons to be angry.’

  ‘Like what? You aren’t making sense.’

  ‘Listen,’ Kit growled, ‘my life makes me angry.’

  Shit this! she thought, and tried to discipline herself by summoning up the moment—what, an hour back?—in bed, the calling of the geese, the first migrants of autumn, their anxious crying in the air.

  Michaela barked out a laugh. ‘By the way, Kit, if you’re going to wear that dress you need to pay heed to your armpits.’

  Armpits? Kit was growing cold. She stared across the table. ‘Have you noticed,’ she said, ‘depilation, how basically in this day and age a girl is faced with presenting herself as either an infant or an animal? I mean, is there anything in between, as it’s interpreted in the here and now? Because, in the abstract I’d certainly opt to be an animal, but in practice I find myself keeping on trying to be like a child.’

  ‘I get; but sincerely, don’t let it worry you,’ said Michaela. ‘Honestly, there’s better things to worry about. If you’re going to start worrying on that level, I’m not sure I can help.’

  ‘Well, fuck off then,’ said Kit with a lighter heart, ‘because I don’t want any help.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll fuck off,’ said Michaela. And she did.

  Kit, super-efficient, emailed Orson his new reading list—it had hitherto been the last thing she did on a Friday, not the first—then wrote all morning, still dressed in the fruit-besplattered frock, but with her jumper on ov
er the top. At noon, though, she took the whole lot off and put on warmer clothes, a pair of black trousers, a tee shirt and a thicker jumper, and went to the cinema, the Phoenix, to see Nil By Mouth in a lunchtime series, ‘Best of British’ retrospective. When the film was over, she strode back to her little room greatly enlivened by the experience—to no end whatsoever—slept for a while, awoke confused, saw fine rain out of the window and remembered that she had a journal on reserve at the Bodleian—needed to go and read a particular article. Besides, she wanted to get back out in the open again even if it was raining. If the piece she planned to consult left her bored witless, she thought, if it left her really bored—really terribly bored—it would remain a technical possibility that she could run back down the Bodleian staircase, jump on a bus on the High Street, and make it in time for the dance club, Friday, though she was hardly dressed for it now, in trousers and so on.

  Well anyway, she thought, at least she had done Orson’s reading list for the week, a condensed history of British policing in the nineteenth century ‘= get the background straight’; articles by Dickens’s contemporaries deriding his interest in detectives; Dickens’s own 1850s articles for his journal, Household Words, in which he interviewed and wrote about London’s new detectives ‘= pay special attention to Detective Charles Field (portrayed as Inspector Bucket in Bleak House)’, plus, ‘Questions to Bear in Mind = how sophisticated as literary narratives are the genuine case accounts?’ etc., etc.—plenty for dear Orson to get his teeth into.

  As for herself, she was now going to go and read this article, whose title she had stumbled on while preparing the list for Orson, an article too detailed for his studies, and probably of no direct value to hers, but who could say? It purported to give the facts behind various of the real detective cases that Dickens had dished up, in distorted form, in Household Words: seemed worth a punt. No doubt his detective informants had exaggerated their own cleverness to him. Yes well, okay. So her fate, Kit reflected, come time for the dance class, would depend upon how telling these discrepancies were.