Perfect Lives

by Polly Samson

  ‘And I bet he’s taken Elizabeth to Kinlochie!’

  Ah yes, there he was in Kinlochie, happily cruising down the mountain path, whizzing really, taking the corners like Lance Armstrong, feeling good, he’d been working out at Elizabeth’s gym, he could see the pleasing bulges of his thighs, a machine powering into the corners; Elizabeth quietly behind him, keeping up, just the whirr of the gears, not asking anything of him, her strong brown legs ending in bright white plimsolls over the pedals, pennants of hair flying, the super-brightness of her teeth, the almost uncontainably satiny thought that he’d be having sex with her later. He’d seen the Agent Provocateur bag in her luggage, heard the rustle of the tissue paper.

  Probably it was a patch of gravel he hit. It could’ve been anything, there was always a lot of dry dung on the roads at that time of year, it was right out of the corner, maybe a stone, maybe a rut. He wasn’t practised; hadn’t really been mountain-biking much since the children grew up. Perhaps it was simply a niggled ridge of karma that sent his front wheel spinning.

  Airlifted off the mountainside, no longer unconscious but still yabbering rubbish, taken by the throbbing helicopter along with his sobbing girlfriend to the mainland hospital where, even after his scans and a long sleep, the bang on his head was so severe that he could no longer remember who the hell this Elizabeth was.

  Her tears puzzled him. He flinched from her hand like a child from its abductor. Wishing she’d hurry up. They kept asking him questions he couldn’t answer, needing to know the name of his GP, his medical records. He couldn’t remember a thing. ‘When Morganna gets here, she’ll tell you,’ he said.

  It was his private medical insurance that was covering it. A whole room to himself with adjoining bathroom. It was done up in minty green with oil paintings of unchallenging fields of corn on the walls. A television folded out from a bracket, the menu was bound in tooled leather.

  He was propped up in bed, foolish and massively bruised with a bandage wrapped around his head like a turban. Elizabeth was sitting on a chair at his bedside, his obedient handmaiden, fingers knotted together in her lap. She stood up when Morganna was brought in. Morganna could see that Elizabeth’s hands were shaking, she watched as she opened her mouth to speak but Mike’s cries of, ‘Morganna, my love. Thank God you’re here,’ silenced her. Elizabeth was shivering all over like a whippet. The nurse who had shown such kindness when she’d told Morganna where to go placed her hands around Elizabeth’s thin cashmere wrists, looked into her eyes. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘This sometimes happens.’ And Morganna felt like muttering, ‘Turncoat.’

  Elizabeth’s voice was shaky when she found it. The caliph groaned and reached out his arms to Morganna, who found herself being pulled by him on to the bed, even treading on Elizabeth’s toe as she was being swept up. She found herself in his arms, with her head on his chest, and she couldn’t resist catching her breath there for a while, like coming home after being carried by a wave of nostalgia so powerful that it almost made her cry out. Elizabeth’s words were lost to them both in the maelstrom but there was the sound of her voice shouting from the shore and then the slap of her shoes as she flounced from the room and along the corridor to the nurses’ station.

  ‘Looking for reinforcements,’ said Morganna wickedly.

  Morganna ran Mike a bath, testing it with her elbow in the way she’d tested it for their children. She promised to be gentle as she helped him from the bed.

  He looked uncomfortable in the bath, a bit wary all hunched up like that, and stained by a great map of a bruise running from his ear through his shoulder and across his ribs. It wasn’t a hot bath but beads of perspiration started breaking out all over his face beneath the bandage.

  A second wave broke over her with even more force than the first. It came rushing up, taking her by surprise, dashing nostalgia on the rocks. Here he was, luxuriating in a bath because he’d banged his head. Their daughter was susceptible to lung problems; it came from being born twelve weeks too early. All his fault. She was twisting the flannel in her hands as she thought about the night that Lola emerged from between her legs mewling and helpless as a creature that had been freshly skinned. Mike seemed barely awake in the bath. The only person he ever paid for was Elizabeth, everyone else had been dropped.

  ‘Will you give my back a scrub?’ he murmured.

  From what she’d found out, he was currently subsidising a vanity project, a record Elizabeth hoped to make, just herself with synthesizers and oboe.

  Soapsuds gathered like scum around sparse tufts of hairs that sprouted randomly across his shoulders: she’d never noticed how hairy his back had become; she couldn’t understand why Elizabeth wouldn’t find him repulsive.

  She had a sudden urge to sink her nails as hard as she could into that wet, sparsely forested skin. Lola brought on by the shock of some photographs she’d found nineteen years ago; so long ago now she’d almost managed to forget the name of the girl. Anyway, there had been others since to forget. Once she found a poem and a tube of KY jelly in his washbag and felt so tired that she didn’t even mention it, only squeezed the jelly all over the poem, his toothbrush, his razor and the rest.

  Mike had to keep his bandaged knees and arms bent above the line of the water; his arms rested along the rim of the bath and his deflated pectorals hung pale, reminding her of chicken fillets in their loose skin. She wrung the water from the flannel, trying to avoid thinking of it as his neck, and slapped it three times across her wrist, enough to sting. Mike didn’t appear to notice, he was practically asleep, the weight of his head and the bandages making his chin sink to his chest.

  A child couldn’t escape a gestation cut short by twelve weeks without some sort of damage. Morganna’s stomach turned at the sight of the hair in his armpits spread along the white rim of the hospital bath like the beards of mussels. Below, his scrotum bobbed slightly in the shallow water like giant figs. She imagined that this was how it would be to look at him through the eyes of Lucian Freud; the truth stripped bare: she could see the many blues and the purples of his skin, the places it was grey, all the varied shades of the abattoir. There was a tripe-pallor to it in the soft places too; she could see how his naked body would look when he died. There were parts of him she could see even further than that. Beneath the skin: the scar tissue bubbling up around his frozen shoulder, the stringy bits of contorted muscle beneath his navel where his hernia had been badly mended, the gathering fat closing in on itself in his arteries, like an oyster making a pearl but not beautiful.

  It was as instant as falling in love, she said. She couldn’t stop smiling. Flocks of birds were taking off from inside her head. She remembered a trip they took years before to California, the vibrating beds in the hotels. How good it felt when they turned themselves off. The pleasure and peace as the thrumming stopped. She assisted him from the bath, left him helplessly dripping on the mat; there had been a little blood seepage from the bandage at his head, she noticed. A small red star had spread on one side like a jewel.

  She took a peach-coloured towel from the rail and wrapped it around him; an act of charity.

  Elizabeth was at the door: ‘Oh for God’s sake, Morganna, stop …’

  Elizabeth the one with the puffy eyes this time.

  Morganna carried on patting her husband dry; his ban-daged head was against her, his face pressed into her stomach like a child to its mother. Elizabeth hissed at her:

  ‘You’re sick.’

  ‘Shshsh,’ said Morganna cradling his head and looking at Elizabeth over the top of it.

  Elizabeth disappeared from the doorway. Morganna could hear the slight complaint of springs as she flung herself on to the hospital bed. It appeared the nurses were staying out of it after all. She could hear Elizabeth’s sobbing, a childlike mewl that caused a drop of pity to fall onto the parched earth of her soul. She helped Mike into the gown that had been thoughtfully provided by the hospital and sat him on the softly chintzed chair that the Healthcare Trus
t had so kindly installed in the room.

  ‘Christ, Morganna, my head is pounding,’ he said. ‘Do you think you could get that girl to stop crying?’

  ‘I’ve got psittacosis! I’ve got psittacosis!’ We could hear the parrot, the boys at its cage. Angus prompting: ‘Say bugger! Say bugger!’ Ivan’s roaring laughter. Morganna stopped talking for a moment to lick her cigarette paper, to fold it down, to light it.

  ‘Go on,’ I said, ignoring my boys. Morganna looked to the door for a moment, exhaling in a way that always made me want to take up smoking.

  ‘Oh Lord, he’s not upstairs now, is he?’ I said. ‘You haven’t taken him back, have you?’

  Morganna threw back her head and laughed, her bracelets jingled as she wiped her eyes. We could hear Ivan and Angus pounding her piano again. The parrot still screeching. Morganna reached down and stroked her cat as it wound itself around her legs: the cat looked as keen to hear what happened next as I was myself. I glanced at my watch. It really was bad of me to still be here. Simon would be home already and I was going to make the boys late for bed. ‘What happened?’ I said.

  Mike was sitting in the chair, not looking quite so dazed. She handed him a clipboard from her bag, and a pen. The steam had cleared from the room, everything had come into sharp focus: the sound of Elizabeth weeping, the buzz of the fan, the big red emergency cord that she could still see through the doorway hanging by the bath, her heart ticking like a clock.

  On the clipboard, ready for him, was a policy for their daughter’s health insurance; and that, she realised as he signed, was all she needed from him. Elizabeth was in the foetal position, she may even have been asleep. Morganna stopped for an instant, reached out a hand to the girl’s cheek, was horrified when Elizabeth flinched. ‘Everything will be all right,’ she said.

  Mike was leaning back a bit in the chair, his brow furrowed beneath the bandage as though with the effort of trying to catch more than glimpses of things that shimmered tantalisingly, minnowing in and out of his head.

  ‘I’d better run if I’m to catch the post office in time with this,’ said Morganna, tucking the policy safely into its envelope. Then she helped him up from the chair, and with Elizabeth’s assistance, delivered him like an unwanted gift, or something she’d bought by mistake in the wrong size, back to his bed.

  AT ARKA PANA

  It was really a little soon for a whole weekend away but when he called, Claudine found herself agreeing to go. His mother was ill: ‘I’d like her to meet you.’ So ill: ‘It has to be now.’ When they got to Krakow, he said, they would eat pierogi, delicious apparently, and he would take her to a church of river stones that was shaped like the Ark.

  Claudine hadn’t a clue what she should wear to meet this mother. She hoped the poor woman wouldn’t die from shock when he announced their news. From what he’d told her so far she was a bit of a termagant, with a habit of throwing shoes when cross. Probably best to cover her tattoo. The butterfly at her ankle flapped its wings as she flexed her foot. She folded a couple of T-shirts, pants, socks, jeans, everyday things, put them on top of her trainers in the bag, rummaging through the wardrobe, through all the carefree clothes jammed on the hangers.

  He wants her to meet his mother. Only a week ago the touch of his arm tucked through hers had still felt quite forward: lunch in London, a walk through Hyde Park, he was formal, careful not to rush things, even stopping to admire the bright new leaves uncurling from their buds. But impossible to deny that there was something there. Phone calls followed, very long ones, and a night last week when they’d got sozzled and sentimental at a restaurant in Marine Parade. He’d told her of his childhood in Krakow; she’d told him of hers by the sea.

  That night they stayed out late and discovered a shared passion for chocolate cherry brandies, walking in the rain and Pablo Neruda’s sea poems. By the time they got back to her house, they were soaked through and she felt like she’d known him for ever. They both preferred long baths to short showers, coffee to tea and always remembered their dreams. He could quote great chunks of her favourite poetry. They chatted for over an hour just standing at the front gate, despite the rain which showed no sign of stopping, splashing on the stones of the front path, dripping from their hair.

  ‘You know,’ she said. ‘You can stay.’ She was sure her mum wouldn’t mind; at least she hoped she wouldn’t.

  He’d held her at arm’s length the better to look her full in the face: lucky, he said, that he had a driver booked from the station because it was tempting, given the hour, but he really didn’t think he was ready to come face to face with her mother. It had been a lovely sort of rain, an April shower, just falling neatly, making halos of every street light, no wind or bluster but his hair was plastered to his forehead, his lashes spiked. He’d been holding his coat like a shelter over both of their heads, but hers mainly. It was almost unnerving how handsome he seemed to her at that moment.

  ‘Mum!’ Pale yellow sunshine streamed in through her thin bedroom curtains. She shouted to Aurelia through her open bedroom door.

  ‘Do you have my passport?’ The whole landing reeked of Aurelia’s most expensive bath foam.

  Claudine stumbled about, gathering things from the drawers of her dressing table. Rifling for the second time through her wardrobe made her stamp her foot and she held out two dresses on hangers before her, neither of them perfect.

  ‘Do you really think I’ll need something smart?’ she shouted again through the door but still there wasn’t an answer, just another bout of rumbling from the hot water pipes.

  The newer of the two dresses was black crochet, halter-necked, tight across the hips, possibly a bit too body-skimming to be comfortable. The one she usually wore for smart occasions was still her favourite: vintage from eBay, yellow with a full skirt and a belt of embroidered daisies. She shook the hangers and wondered about ironing. Would the daisies look a bit childish if she was meeting his friends? ‘We’ll probably all get drunk and moan about the communist times,’ he’d said. ‘You make it sound irresistible,’ she’d replied, laughing.

  She looked from the black dress to the pastel flounces. She wouldn’t be able to fit them both in if she was to pack her Doc Martens. He’d specified hand luggage when he called.

  ‘Mum,’ she tried again, attempting to keep the whininess from her voice.

  Aurelia emerged from her steamy chamber smelling of unguents, wrapped in a towel, hair in a turban. She was a scalded pink, as though she’d had a good old scrub at herself with the loofah. Claudine raised an eyebrow and sniffed ostentatiously at the air.

  ‘I ought to look my best, don’t you think?’ Aurelia said with only a slight smile.

  In her room Aurelia buttoned a grey cashmere cardigan over her black bra with its acres of black lace and Claudine regretted that she hadn’t inherited breasts like her mother’s. She wandered over and put her hand to Aurelia’s shoulder and Aurelia reached up and ruffled Claudine’s hair. ‘Are you going to be OK?’ she said.

  ‘It feels peculiar,’ Claudine replied. ‘Going all that way to meet his mother, I mean …’

  Aurelia pulled the top of the cardigan together and pinned her moonstone brooch in place.

  ‘… I wish you were coming.’ Claudine cringed at herself. She sounded about six years old.

  Aurelia flicked at her damp hair and the hairdryer drowned out anything else that Claudine might have wanted to say. Aurelia’s hair always took an age to dry: wavy and dark and very thick. Claudine raked her hands through her own mop, making it stand up like Bart Simpson’s, watching herself in the mirror above Aurelia’s head and tilting her chin. She had her mother’s mouth: big lips and ever so slightly crooked teeth; she looked from Aurelia to herself. But she had her father’s curls, his eyes, his double lashes, no doubt about that. The buzz of the hairdryer became intolerable and she wandered back to her packing. There’d be time for talking later. She almost couldn’t bear the wait for him to arrive.

  It seemed just as b
ad for Aurelia too. Claudine had never known her mother so distracted. It had gone on all day yesterday: a fuss about a coffee pot; a bustle about the flowers, yellow tulips now artfully arranged in crystal bowls down-stairs; some sort of hassle with the Hoover. Even the piano had been tuned. Its black case had been polished to an obsidian shine, and it presided over the room with a certain cold majesty that gave Claudine nightmares. She had a vision of Aurelia launching herself at its keys and playing the Hallelujah chorus when he arrived.

  Claudine couldn’t remember a time when her mother hadn’t been hammering at the piano for hours every day; even worse were her students. She used to think of other people’s houses as sanctuaries, as piano-free havens where reading and thinking were occasionally accompanied only by the gentle buzz of a television. Here, the gleaming piano took up half the living room and most of the oxygen. A carnivorous old thing, it had teeth rather than keys and a lid just right for trapping little fingers.

  The check-in time for Krakow was very early so it was brief when it happened. He was exactly on time: the clock had just finished chiming. Spring sunshine flashed through the front door. Aurelia’s shoulders stiffened, Claudine saw her take a deep breath as she opened it wider. Leszek was wearing a hat, a black felt one, which he lifted, making his greeting over-formal, his hair flattened on top.

  Aurelia stood aside to let him in and he bent to kiss her cheek.

  The hall seemed crowded by the three of them and Claudine was minutely aware of the ticking of the clock through the wall. He reached an arm to her, through air that was thick with unknown things. ‘Beautiful girl,’ he said, kissing her forehead, the briefest of hugs: he’d been smoking; she could smell it in the wool of his jacket. Then back to kiss Aurelia’s cheek again, or maybe even to hug her too, but she was stiff as a bottle and all at once it occurred to Claudine that this meeting might not be quite the euphoric thing she wished it to be. Leszek handed her a bottle of champagne that was cold but needed to be chilled.