by Sarah Rayne
Xavier, I have terrible skin. I don’t just mean a few spots. This is the real thing. I’m like a cactus or something.
I have a very strong crush on my aunt. I know it probably sounds like a joke. I’ve been trying to decide what to do ever since I realized, which was four years ago. She came down to breakfast after a family get-together, just in her nightie, and I was alarmed to find that I felt . . . I mean, I’m twenty-nine and she is forty-eight. I know I can never do anything about it. I just have to tell someone. I feel like the only person in the world who is in love with their aunt!
Frightened of death. I keep waking up in the middle of the night and I can’t think of anything else. Just the idea that all this will disappear and there is nothing beyond it. It’s silly because all I’m doing is working in a café. But the thought of not existing! I know it shouldn’t matter because I won’t know anything about it. But that’s why it’s so frightening. Like anaesthetic.
Xavier – Clive here. We’ve spoken a number of times on your show, which I enjoy very much. I’m the one whose three wives . . .
These are the most difficult ones, the ones that tempt him to break the one-reply rule. Xavier imagines Clive refreshing the web page in the hope of a reply, and thinks of the filing cabinet of photos and letters and cards, the creaking mental storehouse of dashed hopes, the sense of defeat which makes up Clive’s whole relationship with his past. Eventually Xavier feels he has no choice but to stop thinking about Clive altogether. He returns to the other emails. He tells the acne sufferer that there are many good treatments and sends a link to a website. He assures the amorous nephew that crushes on family members – especially outside the immediate family – are remarkably common. He agrees that death is frightening, but points out that, as we get older, our bodies and minds develop a familiarity with the idea, even a welcoming readiness for it. Whether this is true, or a comforting myth, Xavier isn’t sure, but he likes to think the former, and it has tended to go down well.
Downstairs, Jamie stirs in his sleep and gives a sort of monosyllabic half-cry like a tenor warming up his voice, but then seems to fall asleep again. It is on this day in twenty-three years’ time that he’ll submit a Ph.D. proposal leading to the work which achieves a small breakthrough against two types of cancer. The twenty-four-hour news continues its relentless pursuit of the just-past, the slogans haring along the bottom of the screen (MORE JOBS AXED ON WALL STREET, EARTHQUAKE LEAVES HUNDREDS HOMELESS) like text messages from an excitable, omniscient source.
On Friday night, after going to see a middling biopic of an American artist which he’ll review tomorrow, Xavier finds himself cleaning the flat in preparation for Pippa’s visit. He is well aware that this is the stuff of middle-aged jokes, although the cleaning he does is superficial, especially compared with the severity of Pippa’s operations. He goes through the cupboards to make sure everything is in date; runs the shower to clear the bath of small fugitive hairs; goes to the corner shop to buy new flowers, replacing the now flagging ones Pippa bought last week. I’m like a student cramming for an exam, thinks Xavier with a half-grin to himself.
As he goes to bed that night Xavier can hear Tamara upstairs arguing with her boyfriend. He briefly remembers the online speed-bump petition and mutters to himself for forgetting to sign it. He lies awake for a while listening to rain on the corrugated-iron roofs of the garages at the bottom of Mel’s garden, a sound which reminds him of his mother typewriting letters to old friends in England. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. He thinks – again, briefly – about the lonely Clive and the man with the terror of death and then tries to decide whether he is looking forward to Pippa’s visit tomorrow.
When it gets to a quarter past twelve the next day with still no sign of her, he has a queasy sensation that something might be wrong. Unreliability doesn’t seem to be in her character, but then anyone can have an off-day. The flat seems to be holding its breath. Another ten minutes pass. Xavier picks up his phone to text her, but straight away the doorbell rings. He jumps, either in spite of, or maybe because of, the fact that he has been awaiting this sound.
As he heads down the stairs he can hear Mel saying to Jamie, ‘No, darling, we don’t have to go, it’s not for us.’ He opens the door and takes a step back in surprise. There stands Pippa, with her blue-and-yellow laundry bag, covered in splotches of mud that beat a roughly diagonal path from her boots all the way across her raincoat, like toppings on a pizza. There are smears of mud on her face and mucky dots all over the bag.
‘God! What . . .?’
‘Well, am I coming in, or what?’
Before they are up the stairs she’s given him most of the story.
‘A fucking – excuse my language – a bloody lorry—’
‘Fucking is fine,’ says Xavier.
‘A fucking lorry,’ she resumes, ‘a big fuckin’ thing, comes past me at the bus stop, and literally, he could see me standing there, I swear to God, right, he literally decides to drive right into the puddle and splash me. He literally decided to do it. I could see him laughing as he drove away.’ The words are wrapped in her accent like bundles held together with black sticky tape. ‘I tell you what, the things I shouted after him would have made a miner blush.’
‘I bet they would,’ Xavier agrees.
She stops decisively on the threshold of his flat.
‘So just to let you know what I think we should do. What I’ve got in this bag, luckily, as well as all my cleaning stuff, is, in another bag, I’ve got my running kit because I was going to go for a run after this, you might not think it, but I’m quite a runner actually. So if you’ll allow me to use your shower I’ll have a shower and then change into my kit, which will look a bit funny but never mind, and then I’ll clean as normal and clean the bathroom extra well, what do you think about that?’
‘Sounds fine,’ says Xavier. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? Afterwards, I mean. I mean, after your shower.’
‘That would be lovely, pet.’
Pippa sits on the floor with her legs stretched in front of her, peeling off her mud-splattered boots with a rueful sigh. Xavier goes into the bathroom and cranks the shower into life. The decision to pay attention to the state of the place before her visit suddenly seems an inspired one.
As he busies himself in the kitchen, Xavier is irresistibly drawn to the thought of Pippa peeling off her clothes, tossing them unceremoniously on the floor; it’s a while since his bathroom floor had a bra to contend with. He pictures just for a second her large breasts set free, and her powerful thighs, and her bare feet on the base of the tub. He’s surprised at how intimate a feeling it is to have someone naked elsewhere in the flat. When the shower stops, he realizes he never offered her a towel, but undoubtedly she has helped herself to one on the way. This is odd, too: being aware that she knows where everything is, everything he owns, even though they’ve barely met. He isn’t sure if he likes the thought or not.
They sit in the lounge with their tea.
‘You’ve kept the place nice since last week,’ says Pippa. She is now wearing a white T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, and her wet hair is tied back.
‘I’ve done my best.’
‘I could be out of a job soon!’
‘No, I . . . I wouldn’t expect so.’
It’s quiet for a moment. Jamie yells downstairs. Despite the steady drizzle, a gang of kids skateboards defiantly down Bayham Road, the smallest boy struggling to keep up. Xavier isn’t sure if this is a companionable silence or an awkward one.
‘So you go running?’
‘Three times a week. That’s as much as my knees can do now. If I didn’t do it I’d get fat as a house before you knew it. My body was so used to exercise and then, when you stop, you just become a balloon. I used to run every day.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, yes, I mean, I had to, did you know I used to be one of the top young athletes in the country?’
How could I possibly know that? Xavier thinks, in amusement.
‘I was a discus thrower. You know the discus?’ Still holding a mug in one hand, she makes a sweeping arc with her right arm, tossing an invisible object over her shoulder.
‘Yes, but – well, I’ve never met anyone who—’
‘That was all I wanted to do. I represented Newcastle upon Tyne Schools. I was in the British under-eighteens. I was being talked about for the Olympics a few years down the line.’ She counts off these distinctions on her strong fingers, as if they were all counter-arguments to something Xavier said. ‘My personal best was sixty-one metres. The British record for a woman is sixty-seven. And nearly all the records for things like discus were broken in the eighties and now they’re suspect because everyone knows the athletes were all doped up to the tits.’
She pauses at last for breath.
‘So what, er, what happened?’
‘Six years ago I was twenty-two. I know I look closer to forty but that’s what cleaning toilets does for you. So anyway. There I was on the verge of an athletics career and my knees packed up. Arthritis. I remember sitting in the doctor’s surgery. He said you’ve got arthritis. I said be honest with me, is there any way I can keep competing? He took my hands and said Pippa, if you do, you’ll get to thirty and you’ll be in a wheelchair. We sat there and I started to cry. That was the only time I’ve cried with someone I didn’t really know.’
Unsure of what to say, Xavier glances down at her knees.
‘So you just had to stop and . . . start from scratch?’
Pippa smiles.
‘Aye. I had hardly any qualifications. I’d put everything into athletics. I’d earned fuck-all money, excuse my language, actually, don’t, we’ve covered that, haven’t we? Athletics pays fuck-all till you get to a very high level, especially the less glamorous events. What money I had, I’d lent to me sister, who’d been left high and dry by this man, I’d cut his bollocks off today if I saw him, and she could never pay me back. I had nothing. I started doing cleaning jobs. Me and my sister were going to move back up to Newcastle, then I got a few contracts in London, you can charge more here, so we live together here, and we’ve not got a pot to piss in but I said to myself if all I can do is be a cleaner, I’ll be one hell of a cleaner.’
She breaks into coughs as if the supply of words had finally overwhelmed her vocal cords.
‘You are one hell of a cleaner,’ says Xavier.
‘Thank you,’ she says, and blushes a little, momentarily thrown by the compliment. She puts her empty mug down briskly and stands up. ‘Well, that was a lovely cup of tea for an Australian.’
‘I was born in England,’ says Xavier. ‘Next time, I’ll have the kettle on when you get here.’
‘I’ll bring biscuits,’ Pippa says. ‘Now, let’s get on with it. You’re not paying me to sit on my arse as it gets bigger and bigger.’
She heads for the door.
‘To this day, when I see little plates, I get this urge to chuck them forty metres or so.’
Xavier laughs and allows her to lead him out of the room. He glances at her muscular backside and imagines her for a moment in a singlet and shorts, on some bitterly exposed field in the North-east, on a nasty afternoon much like this one, taking the discus in her hands with an expression of concentrated fury, crouching and rotating in an intricate little circuit of steps, and then, with a shout, hurling the thing into the distance. A smattering of spectators applaud as it lands and a man marks the point with a pin and notes the distance, and another competitor gets ready to do the same.
Pippa leaves at three o’clock with an envelope into which Xavier considered trying to put a tip, but decided against it on the grounds that it might be patronizing. She buys vegetables and rice from the corner shop – the Indian proprietor beams at her, a new customer – and takes them home on the bus. At half past six, with fatigue beginning to grasp at her joints, she begins cooking a risotto for herself and her sister, who is on a cleaning job at a hotel in Holborn.
Shortly after Pippa puts the rice on, Julius Brown leaves home, his heart beating furiously, and heads through the rain for the dark, ill-maintained National Rail station half a mile from his home, rather than the restaurant as on thirty-four consecutive Saturday nights before this one. He has a kitchen knife in his pocket. His hands are trembling and his stomach feels as if it could fall out of him, whole, onto the pavement, at any step.
Over the past few days Julius has tried every avenue which might have led from his current circumstances to quick money, and found them bricked up. He didn’t even like to ask his mother; indeed, he backed out of the conversation almost as soon as it began.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes, Julius?’
‘If I asked you if you had any money I can borrow, you wouldn’t have any, would you?’
‘How much money?’
‘About sixty-seven pounds.’
‘Sixty-seven pounds! What for?’
‘For the gym.’
Simone looked sadly at Julius.
‘You know, darling, I honestly can’t afford at the moment to—’
‘I know. It’s fine.’
‘I can give you maybe thirty?’
‘No, no. It’s fine.’
He tried his brother as well, but Luke, as usual, was evasive.
‘I got a few things to take care of at the moment. How about if you ask me in a few weeks, yeah?’
From time to time Luke seems to be moved by sudden fraternal urges towards Julius; he turns up and takes Julius for a drive in his throaty-engined sports car, or he sneaks him into a corporate event in some dark bar, and introduces him almost aggressively to people – ‘This is my brother.’ But in between these high points, there are lengthy hiatuses during which Luke doesn’t come round, doesn’t reply to text messages or return calls, continues with whatever ‘things’ he is always ‘taking care of’. Julius isn’t sure where he works, somewhere in Kent, something to do with cars. He wears gold chains and suede jackets with jeans.
Julius tried a few places for another job, trudging up and down the high street after school, wary of being spotted by classmates. He tried seven shops, the last a pet shop, smelling of hay and rabbit’s piss, where a macaw screamed at him as soon as he set foot inside.
On Thursday, Julius’s name was read out in assembly, as one of five people picked to represent the school at the London Schools’ Maths Olympiad, Mathdown, in Kensington. When the Head read his name, a whisper of amusement crept around the room and his ears reddened like glowing coals. Teachers, including Clive Donald, glanced across at the giggling students in half-hearted rebuke; most of them feel that for kids this age, compulsory assembly is a waste of time. Julius picked out Amy’s self-confident undertone among the sniggerers and he felt as if some chemical change had taken place in him, some decision had just been made.
Even so, when he woke up this morning, he didn’t think he would go through with it. He lay with the covers over his head while Simone scanned vegetables in the supermarket and Pippa got splashed by the lorry and London went about its business. He stood for a long time in the shower, watching his globular belly disappearing slowly behind the steam patches on the mirror. He drifted through the afternoon. It was almost as if carrying out instructions that he took the kitchen knife and left the house, and began the walk which ends now, in quickening rain, at the station.
Julius’s bass-drum heart keeps a manic time. He tries to stop himself breaking wind, out of some sense of pride in the face of his absent tormentors. His stomach feels like a cage with an animal thrashing around inside. A train will arrive in seven minutes. He heads to the back of the station, to the exit which only a few people use.
Xavier sits in front of the TV, a newly plumped cushion behind his back. In one of her final flourishes Pippa lined the three remote controllers up in length-order on the coffee table. Muriel’s Wedding, starring Toni Collette, is on one channel; Xavier watches for a couple of minutes, remembering the hype that
had eventually persuaded the gang of four to see it at the Zodiac fifteen years ago. They were in their early twenties, full of fashionable cynicism, and secretly hoping to sneer at the film, but in the end it made Matilda cry, which made Chris want to kiss her even more than he normally did.
He flicks through another few channels and settles on a rugby match. The action stops as a player receives treatment for an injury and Xavier looks out of the sparkling window – he hadn’t realized how dirty it had been – at the rain on Bayham Road. He thinks about Pippa and wonders whether he should have tipped her, after all.
One of the £10 notes Xavier gave Pippa has, at various moments in its three-year life, been in the possession of a dozen people in London. Xavier received it in his change from the Indian shopkeeper earlier this week. The Indian shopkeeper took it, as payment for a packet of cigarettes, from a loss adjuster who got it at Boots in Chelsea, where it was brought by a student, and the chain of London owners goes all the way back to an estate agent, Ollie Harper, who brought the banknote to the capital last summer, having come by it in Edinburgh where he was attending the Festival.
Ollie is now on a train about to pull into a station about a mile from 11 Bayham Road. He’s had a long day at work, but it was worth it. He did eight viewings and, although three or four were hopeless – you can tell immediately from the over-polite things they say – two were promising. In one case, he convinced the potential buyers that the flat was already as good as sold, but ‘there might be a chance’ if they were to put in a bid on Monday. This is a common tactic but he could see that the young couple fell for it; they’re getting married soon and love the idea of moving into their first home as soon as they come back from honeymoon. Ollie remembers feeling like that with Nicola.