The Pretence

by Linus Peters

  She started to rummage drunkenly through her bag. “Ohhh, shit!” she cursed. “Shit, shit, shit!” Finally throwing it, and all its contents, down on the pavement.

  “Juliana!” I groaned, Frances and I squatting down to pick everything up.

  “I’m going to tell those bastards,” she mumbled, turning back towards the station.

  “No!” I said, jumping up and pulling her back.

  Thank God, we found enough loose change at the bottom of her bag to pay for all three of us on the Underground. Not that it was something I relished. The thought of having to more or less carry her to the station, the ordeal of braving boisterous late-night passengers, was almost more than I could bear.

  We started to make our way along Saville Row in the direction of Piccadilly Underground Station, bearing the burden of Juliana between us as if it was our disgrace to be paraded, desperately trying to ignore the looks, the occasional jeers and jokes, of passers-by. Nor did matters improve when, as we were making our way down Regent Street, she suddenly turned and lurched into a shop doorway, violently and repeatedly throwing up .

  “Oh, Jesus!” I groaned.

  I turned to Frances - for reassurance, for anything - but I don’t think her eyes had met mine more than a couple of occasions since we’d got into the police car outside the flat. I just couldn’t believe how abruptly things had changed. This was the woman that only an hour ago, I swear, had been about to make me happier than anyone has a right to be, that I’d been rehearsing in my head how I would announce to everyone I was going to marry. Now here we were, in some darkened shop doorway, overseeing a puking ex-girlfriend, and God knows if I’d ever get an answer to my question.

  “Great end to my birthday,” I muttered. But again Frances didn’t respond, and my mood grew even more despondent.

  Juliana straightened up, wiping away a trail of vomit hanging from her chin, turning to stumble on, now refusing to let us take hold of her.

  “Leave me alone!” she said, when Frances approached, her words unusually heavily accented.

  “Juliana!”

  “Leave me alone!” she screamed, in that irrational way that drunks sometimes flare up.

  “Fine. Fine,” Frances said, backing away, all too aware of passers-by stopping to stare.

  I guess she made about thirty or so stuttering and meandering strides before slipping off the edge of the kerb, lurching into a parked car, breaking off the wing-mirror, and ending up slumped in the gutter. Both Frances and I grabbed hold of her, pulling her to her feet, her knee now grazed and bleeding, and just as a moment ago she had irrationally lost her temper, now she went the other way.

  “Simon!” she whined, putting her arm around my neck, openly fumbling at the zip of my trousers, pushing me towards an alleyway. “Fuck me, will you.”

  I jerked her hand away, dragging her on, scared as hell what she was going to say or do next.

  “Don’t you want me? ‘My wonderful body? My tanned and sexy perfection’?” she teased, making a lunge to kiss me, her wayward tongue leaving a smear of vomit-smelling saliva on my cheek that I instantly wiped away.

  Filled with the fear of her unpredictability, I didn’t dare reply. I also couldn’t bear to look at Frances. After what she’d read in those emails, the knowledge of what must be going through her head now was just too painful.

  “I love you, Simon,” Juliana told me.

  “Shut up,” I said, as dismissive of that as everything else she was saying.

  “I do! ... I told you, I’m never going to give up. Never!”

  We walked on in agonising silence apart from Juliana making occasional meaningless drunken declarations of love. I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone in my life as much as I hated her in that moment. I would’ve gladly thrown her in the gutter and left her there. With every slurred word, every promise that she would love me forever, it seemed as if Frances and I were sustaining more and more damage, that on this of all nights, we were slowly and painfully being ripped apart.

  It was almost quarter-past twelve by the time we reached Piccadilly Underground Station. We had just enough time to catch the Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square, then change for the last Northern Line train. Slowly we descended the steps from the street to the circular mezzanine, Juliana now seemingly in a daze, using every bit of her remaining strength, of her enduring concentration, on just putting one foot in front of the other.

  “Hold her for a second,” I said to Frances, going to get the tickets.

  As I was returning, I noticed a gaggle of girls openly laughing at Juliana. Vindictively, with obvious relish, as if, even in her present state, they could see how beautiful she was, what power she might normally possess. Yet here she was, dishevelled, dirty, barely able to stand, her knee bleeding, and they couldn’t conceal their delight.

  “Blimey, I don’t look that bad when I’ve been raped,” one of them commented, and they all laughed and clattered away on their high heels, up the steps to the street, and, by the look of them, to one of the nearby clubs.

  There was something about the three of us travelling down that long escalator that made me think of descending into darkness. Deeper and deeper, with Juliana, like some curse, a parasite, on our relationship. A couple of young kids barged past us, almost pushing her over, and I had to keep a firm grip to stop her toppling forward. At the bottom of the escalator, a busker was singing: ‘Help! I need somebody. Help! Not just anybody!’ People going about their normal lives. Chatting. Joking. I mean, a drunken young woman and her two long-suffering friends on the underground late on Saturday night. Not exactly a unique phenomenon. But I can’t tell you what an outcast I felt.

  When we reached the platform, I struck out towards the empty space at the far end, pushing through those waiting, ignoring any protests, wanting to hide our disgrace as far away as possible.

  Halfway along, we had to thread our way through this group of ex-military looking older men - on some kind of reunion by the look of it. One of them turned and gave me a knowing smile as we passed.

  “Should’ve taken more water with it,” he said, but I just carried on without comment.

  We stepped over two latter-day hippies with their dog, sprawled out on the cold painted concrete, Juliana inadvertently stumbling over one of their legs, then arrived at the end of the platform, near the open mouth to the tunnel. The three of us standing there, refusing to look at each other, united only by shame.

  Thank God, the board told us that we only had to wait a couple of minutes for the train. All we had to do now was get her on, hopefully, as it wasn’t too busy, find a seat, then sit in silence all the way and extract her at the other end. Get her back to her bed-and-breakfast, and that would be it. Never, never, never would I have anything more to do with her.

  “Simon.”

  I was so deep in thought, it took me a while to register Juliana had spoken. I turned to see her standing there, swaying slightly, trying to hold my gaze, seemingly intent on communicating with me, but actually, I think, more on just holding onto the ragged edges of her consciousness.

  “What?”

  She paused for a moment, then broke into a smile, somehow wringing it out of her damaged beauty, yet producing a result that bordered on the repulsive.

  “Please!” she begged.

  There were no words I could say. Nothing that had been left unsaid. I merely shook my head and turned away, and she made this kind of angry little grunting sound, moving a few steps further up the platform.

  I sighed long and low, hating every second of this, daring to glance out of the corner of my eye at Frances, but she was as stone, staring intently at the billboard in front of her, her eyes never leaving it for one second.

  Much to my relief, a few moments later I heard the track beginning to vibrate, then felt the commotion in the air, the distant mechanical bustle, of the approaching train.

  I turned and glanced towards Juliana, checking she was all right. However, what I saw damn near stopped
my heart. She was seemingly on the point of passing out, her eye-lids drooping, beginning to sway back and forth, threatening to pitch forward onto the tracks.

  I leapt forward, grabbing hold of her, shouting her name as if to wake her. She opened her eyes, stared at me for a moment as if she no longer knew me, and then ..... and then ..... I’ll never know what happened.

  She suddenly erupted in my arms, spinning round, screaming something into my face, over and over, then grabbed hold of me and started to pull me towards the platform edge. It took me a moment to realise what she was doing, that she was actually trying to kill us both. I dug my heels in, trying to ‘brake’ us somehow, but she was filled with all the strength I’d once seen her demonstrate in the gym, her arm locked about me as if it was welded to my body.

  Frances leapt forward, grabbed hold of me, tried to pull me free, but Juliana was so strong, it wasn’t the decisive move you might’ve anticipated. And suddenly she had hold of Frances as well, and it was the three of us struggling with each other.

  I twisted this way and that, trying to tear myself free, screaming at Juliana to stop, aware of the rapidly rising roar of the approaching train. Yet she pulled us with all her might, dragging us forward into the path of that violently onrushing mass of metal.

  I could see Frances’s face only inches from mine, paled by fear, as the dark drop down to the rails loomed ever closer. Juliana managed to jolt her forward a couple of steps, concentrating on her now, trying to get her over the edge first. It made me struggle all the more. I writhed and kicked, this way and that, till finally I managed to tug my inside arm free. I pulled it back and drove my elbow into Juliana’s ribs as hard as I could, simultaneously twisting my body and breaking away, probably because she wasn’t strong enough to hold onto both of us.

  I toppled back onto my side, hitting the platform just as the train burst out of the tunnel, fearing, even in that split-second, that by freeing myself, I’d inadvertently condemned Frances.

  Don’t ask me how I did it, but in that moment, I somehow twisted and leant back, grabbing at the space behind me. I guess I was trying to save them both, but if I’m really honest about it, Frances was my real priority. Somehow I got her by the leg, heaving with all my might, at that very moment the train exploding past us.

  It was so close, it actually caught Frances’s foot, spinning her round so she ended up flat on her face on the platform. But Juliana ... Oh, Christ, Juliana. It will live with me forever. Just as the expression on that poor driver’s face, when he saw he was going to hit her, that there was nothing he could do, will also remain.

  There was the most awful sound you can imagine. The impact of speeding metal upon splitting flesh and breaking bones. I saw her body get thrown sideways, squashed up between the wall and the train, a spurt of blood, then she was gone. People started to scream. The train screeched and bumped and ground to a halt. Juliana broken and torn and smeared all along the track.

  Oh God ..... Oh God!

  Dear Frances,

  I never thought I’d ever write to you again.

  To be honest, after what happened, I don’t think I

  deserve to. But I have to take this opportunity.

  Otherwise I’d regret it forever.

  Firstly, let me bring you up to date. Charlie

  and Isobel have gone on a world trip. He knows

  the cancer could come back at any time and is

  determined to enjoy his life with her until it does.

  I tell you, sometimes when I see them, the way they

  are with each other, they make me feel almost ashamed

  It’s all I can do to look them in the eye.

  Luca’s broken up with Lorna and gone back to Italy.

  He started doing these calculations: how old she’d be

  when he was fifty. Sixty. Seventy, even. It worried him

  so much that he decided it was best to finish it. Or

  that’s what he said. Actually, I’m not so sure he didn’t

  revert to type. That his old hunting instinct didn’t entice

  him on with the promise of new pastures.

  I miss him so much. Luca’s one of those people who

  makes you feel better about life just by being there. He

  did ask me if I fancied sharing a flat in Milan, but, well,

  you know me, I’m not exactly adventurous, and I had

  this fear of being just another stiff-assed, anally

  -retentive Englishman abroad, spending most of

  my time complaining about things not being the way

  they are ‘back home’.

  I bumped into Lorna a couple of weeks ago. She’s still

  really upset. Can’t concentrate on her studies, can’t eat,

  can’t sleep, can’t do anything. When I think back to

  how disinterested she was when they first met, the hard

  time she gave him, it’s almost beyond belief.

  Do you know something, it might seem like an odd thing

  to say, but I really hate love now. Or love as I‘ve come

  to know it. We do such terrible things to each other,

  to ourselves, in its name. It isn’t a licence to behave

  in any way we wish. A suspension of all other

  responsibilities. What other myth is so endlessly

  perpetuated? What other madness so extravagantly

  indulged?

  I don’t know if you realise, but that’s what Juliana shouted

  as she grabbed hold of me, as she went to pull me under

  the train - that she loved me and always would. That was

  her reason for doing it, that made it all right. I mean, how

  can we pervert this thing so?

  You were right to run this time, Frances. For the

  same reason that I was right not to follow. Not that it’s

  made it any easier. Not that I haven’t missed you each

  and every day. The irony is, all I have left now is the

  letters. The means by which this situation was

  brought about, and the means by which it was

  destroyed. Yes, it’s true, I’m writing again. But I don’t

  send them anymore. I just write them, look at them

  for a couple of days, then put them away in a drawer.

  No one gets to see what I write anymore. I wouldn’t

  dare risk it. Well, not until now.

  You see, this letter isn’t meant for you. It’s actually meant

  for everyone else. People on the train, the plane, in

  the park, the coffee shop, even on the beach. Anyone

  who might look up from this book and see you there.

  And maybe, just maybe, after reading this, after learning

  the whole story, they might go across and speak to you

  on my behalf. Tell you about the letters, how sorry I

  am about what happened, and most of all, how much

  I’m still in love with you.

  Yours, wherever you are

  Simon

  Kick ... Kick ... Kick.