The Biggerers

by Amy Lilwall

  It was her. It was definitely her.

  What a waste of time.

  Perhaps he would be back by one – or at the very latest two. Which would mean that he would have left in the morning. ‘I’ll be coming back in the morning,’ he’d said. Yes, that’s to say he would be in the act of returning, which didn’t mean that he would have returned.

  12:13. Argh. Waiting, waiting. Waiting to be ignored… Disappointed.

  Oh stop it. Just stop it.

  She leapfrogged from the sofa arm and went to the kitchen.

  Surely she had something fun to do. This was all such a waste of… Wait… What was that? Breadcrumbs. Gosh, how many were there? Were they everywhere or just in front of the worktop? Hmmm… She could have easily spread them about over the course of the morning; right through the house…

  Right. Vacuum bot.

  Ah! The chilly-billies. Better warn them first.

  She looked around the kitchen. ‘Bonbon? Jinx?’

  Nope. Maybe in the living room. ‘Bonbon? Jinx?’

  Not in there. Kitchen again? ‘Bonbon? Jinx? There you are.’

  One face appeared at the hatch of the toilet box. The other was on the floor, right next to her socked foot. Oh dear. They’d been fighting. ‘Have you been mean to Jinx again? Have you?’ She bent towards Bonbon. ‘Now you know that you have to be nicer to poor Jinx, she’s very sensitive.’

  Bonbon licked the bit between her nose and her top lip.

  What was that bit called?

  Jinx climbed out of the toilet box.

  ‘I’m going to put this on.’ She showed them the bot. Their eyes swelled and they ran to the plant and climbed into its pot. ‘No, don’t do that!’ That plant was an original; three thousand pounds worth. Almost half a month’s rent. The bot couldn’t get into it, that’s why they liked it. But there was something else; she was sure that they believed it protected them. As the bot approached, they would look up to the waxy leaves that bowed over them like scooped hands, sort of imploringly. She was sure of it. Otherwise why didn’t they just hop into their basket or the toilet box? Ha! That would amuse Hamish. He liked their funny ways; she would tell him that they’d done it again, that they’d jumped into the pot. ‘The bot pot’ he had nicknamed it.

  Yes, she would definitely tell him about this…

  Cupid’s bow. That’s what it was called; the top lip bit. She looked towards Bonbon. ‘Alright, you can stay in there. But don’t kick at the earth.’ With one hand each on the plant’s trunk, they eyed the vacuum bot as it weaved through the alleys in the kitchen furniture. It must have had a crystal from the toilet box jammed in its motor because it sounded particularly aggressive.

  Actually, the proper name was philtrum, wasn’t it? No. Philtrum was the indentation between the nose and the top lip. Surely a Cupid’s bow was the outline of the top lip; that was more bow-shaped… Oh well. Who cares? Who cared about things like that when you had to pack up your things and start a new life somewhere else?

  She turned and looked at the clock. Time: 12:30. He probably wouldn’t notice if the floor was clean, but he didn’t like the buzzing noise that the bot made while he was trying to read. ‘Can’t you do that later?’ he’d say; sometimes. It was best to do it now.

  Was that acceptable? Was it? Did he think that all she had to do in the world was wait until she had the house to herself just so she could bloody vacuum it?

  She opened the fridge and bit her lip at its insides. ‘What are you doing?’ he would ask. Jumpers would be the obvious things to pack first, because it was October and she would need them. She closed the fridge. There was food; if he was hungry, there was food. Also, jumpers were big and so taking them would make a visible void in her wardrobe… I’m leaving you, she would say. The more stuff she took, the more difficult it would be to come back. The easier it would be to leave. Picture frames were easily packable; they just slotted one behind the other… And furniture, shit! What about her real chipboard chest of drawers? It was sooo heavy. She would hire a removal person for the big stuff. That’s what she would do.

  Time: 12:42. Oh he had to be back soon. She could make gingerbread! That would make the house smell good and he liked it… She took a bowl from the cupboard.

  It wasn’t because he was a pig – even though he really, really, acted like one – it was even more infuriating than that. If she was right about his character, he simply believed that she wasn’t there to serve him, she was there to serve herself, and she would only do the vacuuming because it pleased her to vacuum. Therefore, he could tell her not to do it while he was there because it pleased him to have a quiet house. She took flour, sugar, honey and spices from the baking drawer. Do whatever you do because it makes you happy; that’s the way it always should be. Butter and an egg from the fridge. You should live for yourself and not seek validation through approval from others. She winced at the honey, urgh, made in some lab by those poor freak-bees… Don’t expect anything from anyone; just accept people for who they are. One ounce of flour is about one heaped tablespoon. Be yourself, be yourself, be yourself, be yourself… One ounce of sugar is about one flat tablespoon; ounces were so vintage.

  ‘By the way, the house has been vacuumed,’ she would say.

  He would look up from his book and over his glasses. ‘Sorry… Do you want some kind of award for this?’

  Bastard… He was a bastard because she sort of did want an award.

  She squidged butter, flour, honey and dark brown sugar through the gaps that her fingers made; mostly ‘M’s, now ‘E’s, never ‘W’s. And the little finger, well, that was just the, sort of, tail that you get in whirly joined-up writing. Shit. The oven. She always forgot to pre-heat the oven.

  A key turned in the door. She held her breath. He entered and made taking-off-shoe noises without saying hello. What to do? Stand here squidging?

  No.

  Better at least meet him at the kitchen doorway. But she would keep the gingerbread mixture on her hands. She didn’t sit around waiting for him. She did things when he wasn’t around.

  ‘Hi!’

  Her voice dropped over him like a floaty veil. He kept his head bowed and fought with a finger that was stuck in the back of his shoe. Damn. He didn’t actually need to take his shoe off because he still had to unload the car. He opened his mouth to say ‘I don’t need to take the shoe off because I have, will, still to unload… car’, then realized that the other shoe was standing on the bottom step.

  ‘Hello,’ he said instead.

  When had he taken that other shoe off?

  Never mind.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Mmm-hmm.’

  Mmm-hmm. She hated mmm-hmm.

  She nodded and smiled. Her two gingerbready hands held out like diseased claws. She waited. What the hell was she waiting for? She was not about to dig through all the mmms and the hmms to find out what the hell was wrong with him. A kiss! She was waiting for a kiss! Oh yuk, surely not? But she was still waiting. He hadn’t even looked at her. Fine, don’t look at me; don’t even think about looking at me, you’re just making it easier for me to leave you. But he really wasn’t looking at her. After one whole week! She turned and went back into the kitchen. God. But she was lovely; she was so bubbly and lovely. He. Had. No. Idea.

  He looked up to grin at her. But she had gone.

  Right, so… On with the other shoe. And out to the car. What would he do with the boxes? He could put them in the understairs cupboard but… ‘Open boot,’ he said. No! ‘Open trunk!’ The car boot clicked open; yep, there were too many to put into the under stairs cupboard. He hugged one of the boxes out of the car. They would have to be stacked up for now and he would go through them all later. Susan would like that; stirring up a few old memories. He pushed the door with his elbow and put the box on the floor.

  Two little people stared up at him from the living-room doorway. He fluttered his eyelashes at them.

  Jinx danced about and waved her arms.
>
  Bonbon screwed up her face.

  Susan listened to the hall noises. He’d brought in another load of boxes. For goodness’ sake. He’d been to the storage unit again. ‘If we get it emptied by the end of the month, that’ll be one less bill to pay.’ So why not empty it into the tip? Or the second-hand shop? She pressed down another dough-ball. They’d not looked at most of this stuff since they’d moved here, four years ago. More boxes; didn’t he know how bad it was to clog up his life with things that lurked in boxes?

  And some of it was hers – how was she supposed to leave if she had even more stuff to take?

  Maybe she should have washed her hands before going into the hall… Maybe put on some heels and had her eyebrows re-tattooed rather than making bloody gingerbread.

  She took a chunk of the dough and rolled it into a ball.

  Someone once revealed the secret to a good relationship: ‘Never wonder if they are making you happy; always ask yourself: am I making them happy?’

  She took another chunk.

  He was always so miserable…

  He came into the kitchen with boxes that he stacked up on the work surface before turning around to get more. She knew he had gone to get more because the front door was still open. Why are you keeping me? She rolled another chunk into a ball and tried not to look at him. With the palm of her hand she pressed one ball into a round.

  Miniature Susan-Fairy whispered without moving her lips: ‘Come on! You know that he can only think about getting the boxes in from the porch. After that he’ll pat down his pockets and stare at the door for a second. Only then can he sit down and love you. We know that’s what he’s doing. We know it.’

  The real Susan blinked. Then shook her head.

  Not good enough, Susan-Fairy. If it was as easy as that then she wouldn’t feel so sad. She was only asking for a proper ‘hello’. Just one sodding ‘hello’…

  ‘Ha! And if you got your “hello” you’d be wanting a kiss. And when you got your kiss you’d be wanting flowers; when would it stop, Susan? Some people just aren’t meant to be happy.’

  The real Susan put a marble-sized dollop of dough into her mouth. Susan-Fairy was right. She was always right.

  There were probably loads of useful things knocking around in those boxes that he’d completely forgotten about, he thought as he went back outside. He hugged out another one and scoffed at the neighbours’ garden. They had a conveyor belt thing that led from a hole in their house to about halfway down the drive where a car boot would sometimes be waiting. Not today, though, he noted; there was no car there today. He elbowed the door again and felt bad for scoffing. They were quite elderly, the people from next door. He put the box down and went back outside, looking at the belt from this different from-the-house-and-up-the-drive angle. The man must have been about one hundred and eleven now… Was he? The lady was slightly younger, he was sure about that… One Hundred and Thirty flashed up in his mind – the maximum age. Supposedly. He picked up another box and the bottom of it opened up. Shit. He’d put it in upside down. He turned it the right way around and started to place the stuff back inside. Wow; one, two, three, four. Four mobile phones… They must’ve been about twenty years old! Some pastry cutters – Susan’s – she wouldn’t need them now she had her fancy shape-lasering oven. A bagful of bottle tops. Bottle tops? Fair enough. Candles, ooo! Highly illegal and, what was this? A museum programme? ‘Pop-Up Books,’ read the title, with dots in the double ‘o’ to make them look like eyes. He recognized the little picture of a spotty monster at the bottom and remembered an occasion where he’d stared at that same monster so hard just to stop his lips from quivering. Five whole years, he thought, dropping it back into the box.

  Right. He hugged out two boxes at the same time, ‘Close trunk,’ then elbowed his way into the kitchen, placed the boxes on the worktop, went into the hall, shut the front door, dragged off his shoes with the toes of the opposite foot, strode back into the kitchen and brushed down his coat.

  She pressed another dough-ball, and another, and another, then had to scrape them up with a spatula because she’d pressed too bloody hard. She slid the rounds onto a silicone tray and popped them into the oven. They’d be ready in a few minutes and he would be able to eat a warm one with a cup of coffee. He’d like that, she thought, wiping the oven handle. Her face ached, oh God I’m so lovely. She gathered up all of the dirty utensils and put them in the sink.

  She heard chair feet scraping against the tiles and the ‘pfff’ sound of a bottom compressing a cushion.

  He was sitting behind her but she knew he was there. He knew that she knew.

  ‘Well, hello then, stranger,’ he said to the back of a woolly hoody.

  Her skin puckered up thousands of tiny pairs of lips. ‘Hello,’ she said to the tap.

  Another veil floated down over him and his skin felt happy to be in this coat, on this chair under this veil.

  ‘How was your trip?’

  ‘Fine.’ He was being nice. He always did this. Well, it was too late for nice. She was leaving. ‘I bought you a present,’ she said to the tap.

  ‘Ho-ho, lucky me.’

  She dried her hands and turned to face him. He still had his coat on and his eyebrows horned upwards at the far ends. He smiled up at his Susan, and saw her eyes twitching from his to where his present was located and back again. ‘It’s in the gift bag on the table,’ she said to the gift bag.

  He pulled the bag towards him and looked inside. ‘No, it can’t be,’ he said. It must have been a fake…

  She beamed. ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘Foie gras,’ he whispered. ‘But it’s… you know.’ He turned his mouth upside down and winked one eye at her.

  She laughed. Oh he could be lovely! ‘Well, you’d better keep it a secret then,’ she whispered. And now he’d won her back. With one wink, he had her. She’d gone to the very, very limit of a wet walk through the run-down housing estate and she had just managed to put one leg over the peripheral wall into the enchanted pink-flower land, when he’d grabbed her ankle, pulled her down, put up an umbrella and now was holding her hand to take her home. Bastard.

  Just what was the point of the wet walk?

  How rebellious. He liked that! Yes! Not many people would dare to smuggle foie gras… He certainly wouldn’t. ‘How did you manage to get it into the country?’ He held the dead-flesh-coloured jar up towards the light, illuminating pools of yellow fat.

  ‘It’s not so exciting, I’m afraid.’

  He looked at the chunk of peachy liver. It really was foie gras. Really, absolutely, the real thing.

  ‘There are a few farmers who are still protected by heritage laws…’

  He remembered The Bookman telling him about the time he had asked for foie gras at Shepherd’s and the manager had been called. ‘I must make this perfectly clear to you, Sir: we do not sell this product because that would be against the law. As a valued customer, we understand that blah blah blah, and we would thank you not to associate our name with this product.’ Then he had made him sign something. Sign something!

  ‘… and it’s perfectly legal to buy from them and bring the product back into the country.’

  Hamish swivelled his head back towards Susan.

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Right.’ Ha! This was absolutely impossible. It was highly illegal. She’d obviously been spun a yarn by some struggling goose farmer and smuggled it in without even realizing. That was her to a T. ‘No,’ he said.

  She straightened. ‘What “no”?’ She saw herself, on the wet pavement, stepping away from the umbrella.

  ‘No, I think you’ll find it’s definitely illegal.’ The Shepherd’s thing had happened to The Bookman earlier in the year… It was only October; laws didn’t change that quickly. Definitely illegal. Definitely smuggled.

  Fuck, why did he do this? ‘Well, no, it’s not and there’s your proof.’ She flicked an open hand towards the jar.

  ‘Did you declare it?’ />
  ‘What?’

  He knew she’d heard him, she just hadn’t declared it. ‘Did you declare it at customs?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, there you go then.’

  ‘Hamish, the average traveller and her suitcase is X-rayed four times before she can even put one toe into the departure lounge.’

  She had a point… But no! He would not back down here. He even remembered telling her about The Bookman thing. He shrugged. ‘It could have been jam.’

  ‘Jam? Fucking jam? Do you know how much an X-ray costs? Do you really think that airport security would pay out for four X-rays for one suitcase in order to confuse foie gras with bloody JAM?’ She could feel herself turning and striding away, back through the puddly streets.

  He put the jar back on the table, steepled his hands widely in front of him and looked at her over his glasses. ‘Why are you getting cross?’ He wanted to say ‘Suzie’ at the end but hadn’t thought of it in time.

  ‘You think you’re right even when you’re not and, and, moreover, there isn’t even the slightest possibility that I could ever be right, even though I’m the one who’s had primary experiences with the actual thing, and because you just heard someone talk about someone who might have known something about it, you think you know everything.’ She was running now. Back to the wall, back to the pink flowers. Grabbing at jumpers and picture frames and bubble wrap and stuffing them into boxes…

  Ah. She hadn’t forgotten the story.

  But he had double-checked this information. She didn’t know that he’d double-checked it, but she should know by now that he would only push his point if he was absolutely sure. ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘You don’t know where I got the information from,’ he said, brushing one hand across the table as if to underline that last sentence, his eyes fixed on the imaginary line.

  This was not fair! Her face went hot and achy again. She had the right to be right about stuff, but, but she was never allowed to be right and she would get all cross and shouty while he… he looked over his glasses at her. ‘But why am I not a good enough source?’