by Lulu Allison
Hard, hard to find among the words, too, the reminder of how I was before the greyness and restriction of ugly love. The me who was not a rag in his pocket. The remembering of my very own shape. This blackness that invaded me, it was the second shifting, the second creeping – in and pulling – apart. The first intrusion was him with his fool’s gold. When I first met him, I shone too, with purpose and clarity, passion. Somewhere in the words, somewhere is the me from before, the me my family made. More than all, I want to find myself in this telling.
I had some power then, I think I must have. Because he did all he could to love me. All he could. He would follow me when I moved. To London. I was going to become an engineer, and he was going to be the man who told the world its stories. From the television screen – he was going to become the bold interviewer, the wise man of important stories on the television. He would come with me to London, finding his feet somehow in the world of political journalism. The broadcast part could come later; he wasn’t in a rush. Me studying engineering. Yes, I still had my shape then, I was elevated. He elevated me well.
Our two shapes seemed so whole and pure. We lay on his bed in the small flat. Intimate caress and private shared dreams.
It is a jolt, ugly for me now, to recognise that the intimacy of those days, the most open and unbound time of my life, is tainted by what followed. I stick, find myself unwilling to relate the character of it, the soft drift from lovemaking to waiting only for his return. I am horrified by my remembered willingness. My abandonment of self. It seems to presage that more malignant abandonment that followed. You do not need my words; young love evolves in the dreamlike expression of passion and the thrilling undressing of self. Not a naked body only, but one divested of all armoury and artifice. The vulnerability was not felt then, in my nakedness, my lack of self-protection. But I felt it later, and feel it now. You do not need me to spell it out. If you do, I cannot help; I am already turning away from the picture. To find it is enough. I gave him everything of myself, for in love we don’t hold ourselves in safety behind barriers. And so love caused the perfect conditions for the pathogen of Ryan’s harm. If I did not love him he would have been a thug, in my reckoning and in his deeds, and I would have walked away the very first time. We both betrayed me. Did we? I felt it was us both. Did I?
*
Anna stretches her back, relieved to have made a commitment to absence. She pours a glass of wine, calls Tony and Simon, speaks to Simon and tells him she is going away, thanks them for the kindness of their rejected invitation to spend Christmas with them. He asks if she is sure she wants to be alone. She says yes, emphatic and reassuring. She thinks she detects a little relief. Simon has always been the less sociable of the two; one of the reasons he and Anna get on so well is their slightly spiky resistance to the gossipy, collective glee of Tony and his enormous circle of friends. She calls Sophie, tells her the same. Sophie asks anxiously if she is sure she wants to be on her own. Offers the most elaborate all-areas access to their own celebration, does not detect Anna’s own relief when she declines, citing that happy old fool, that unruly sun, no lover to wake, just her. She secretly triumphs that she will not be twitching with suppressed boredom whilst Brian extols his exquisite choice of wine and boasts about how clever he was to get it from x place at y time, loudhailered subtext demonstrating his own savvy taste and gourmet kudos. She will not be feigning absorption in one of her (inevitable) Christmas-gift books whilst Tony and Simon cheerily and a little drunkenly cavort on Skype with Simon’s pyjamaed nephews and niece in America, for what usually seems to be hours at a time. She will not see Ryan; she will escape the gritted joviality of Christmas. Spared. All of it escaped.
The kitchen table is a steady ship, a friend, covered in gifts and bright paper. Anna has as usual been selecting gifts for her small circle of friends for some weeks. As though compensating for her lacklustre engagement with the season to be jolly, she expresses her love in generous and carefully chosen Christmas gifts. A small spill of red wine soaks into a remnant square of yellow tissue. She hums along to cheerful radio, delves into bags, feeling the pleasure of buying presents and rediscovering them a few weeks later on retrieval from posh paper bags, stiff and shapely, a drape-of-ribbon handle. A brief and furtive sourness, as she remembers the abandoned scarf for Sophie, is soaked up like the wine, with a reminder that she must get a replacement very soon. She removes elegantly printed price tags, held by ribbon or silken twine. New tape, a whole spool of ribbon and, miraculously, a pair of scissors unearthed in the kitchen drawer. Eventually a sculpted, shining pile of shapes, tagged and ribboned ready to deliver. The radio cheeps away gamely in the background; the bottle empties a further small degree. Anna is buoyed by precious drops of optimism, glad she has a plan and a reprieve.
She sits with curtains drawn, the television on for comfort. She tucks up her feet, pulling a blanket over herself, and drifts off, thoughts escaping the tedium of a television drama she doesn’t really follow. She drifts dreamily to imagining the woman, still sitting in her garden. Still Anna is not talking, but watching, thinking about what she would say. Thinking too about all this woman has lost and all that has been lost with her. Anna’s imagination is populated by all the people she has invented. She remembers most of them, adds details as her time with them grows. She sees them in snippets and collage, in the lives they left behind. She sees them standing sentinel-still amongst the straight beech trunks. Like a beautiful, slow and mysterious living installation. They blink in ultraslow-motion, confused and stilled by their new location – the half-life of invention, the half-life of the newly dead. What is it like to be dead? Do you feel it? The woman looks up at her and says, come down, come and sit down and I will tell you. Anna is floating in sky, hot sun on her shoulders, the heat on her head. She can smell her own hair. She can hear her own breath in the eerie stillness of sky. The sun is so hot it burns. Anna is held floating by her reluctance to talk to a ghost, an eidolon, a figment of her own need. The woman is impatient with her now. Suit yourself, she seems to say. Her gaze returns to private reverie, sweeps across the roofline, the top of the wall, the jumble of aerials, anchors thrown upside down into an invisible sea. Anna feels she is drifting away, unable yet to catch hold, to sink into that inviting, scruffy, shaded place.
The sofa is comfortable; her feet, unusually, are warm. The television burbles meaninglessly and soothingly. She pulls the rug up to her chin and closes her eyes. She feels sadness for the lost souls amongst the trees. But that sadness is not a locust swarm, stripping all nourishment before it. It is a reminder, a caution. It is a puzzle too. What does she do with it, this feeling? Throw a party for ghosts, invite them in, at least to warm themselves in her home? After all, they are here because of her. Come, come. Do you drink wine? Or sorry, is that stupid? Tea? I know, it is so very cold. Warm yourselves while you decide what to do for all eternity. Come and sit with me, tell me about your lives, tell me how you lived.
She wakes to reruns of old detective shows. A sure sign of the late hour. Her neck is stiff from sleeping on the sofa, but her feet are still warm. She switches off the television and lights, thoughtful and still in the dark room, a pause in the quiet, then goes to bed.
*
We pass each other sometimes. Others. I feel them gliding by me, through me. Hold me! we seem to cry out to each other; our longing thrums on a subtle, burning frequency. But they, like me, are soon gone. And all around is chaotic blackness.
Chapter 6
Michael has called seven times and left increasingly terse messages. Anna has gained fortitude from her escape plan. The confirmation emails sit in a folder on her desktop, visible signs of intention, like vitamin pills on a windowsill. You have taken steps, I am here to mark your resolve, they seem to say. She is ready, finally, to respond to Michael, and, though he no longer lives in the area, she wants to warn him that Ryan has returned. She steels herself in preparation.
As Michael is willing, pushing even, to drive the h
our or more over to meet her, she agrees to meet the next day for a lunchtime drink in a pub, the opposite direction from where she might expect to see Ryan. They sit in the warmth, turned towards each other on a velour bench seat with brass studded edges in a low, black-framed window. Black beams stand sturdy between the lurid patterned carpet and the once-white textured ceiling, now coated in warm nicotine-brown, the traces of decades of convivial beer and cigarette breath. The Elizabethan vernacular architecture somehow contrives to be less faded, less time-worn, than the 1970s decor. Their glasses stand empty, on a sturdy dark table shining with polish and a pool of spilled beer soaking the edge of a cardboard brewery beer mat.
She tells him she is going away, pretends she will have a think about whether she wants to contribute anything to the anniversary event. Secretly she seethes at his enthusiastic presumption of collaboration. She has told him she does not want to be involved, rejected his suggestion, first made many months ago, that it would be good for her. But habit has made her an avoider of conflict, a mollifier. And this in turn has brewed a secret anger. Michael is solipsistic enough to miss what might be read between the lines, so he doggedly pursues his goal, believing that a shared purpose is the most desirable outcome and is within reach.
She resents his neediness and his desire for her to share his aims. She resents his seeming to need both her participation and her approval. She sees in his demanding desire for collaboration a sense of entitlement to having his world-view reflected back at him. Most of all, she resents the way he seems to wrap it all up as something he is doing for her, as if her well-being hinges on running in harmony with him. As if the long-gone unity of their newly-wed state is still the thing she wants most. He has of course changed as much as her, but he still seems to expect her to want to fall in with him. I didn’t resent it when I was young, she thinks. Perhaps she should have done, then she might be free of it now. Rather than argue, she pretends unenthusiastic assent; for now it is enough to make him stop trying to convert her to his plan. In part as a way to move on, she tells him that she has seen Ryan.
‘What did you do, Anna?’
‘I don’t know, I just froze. I sat down. It was a horrible shock. I’m sorry, I just wanted to disappear, so I haven’t been very responsive these last couple of weeks.’
‘How bloody awful. How awful.’ There is a longish pause, then: ‘Do you feel okay? I mean, you don’t feel too screwed up by this? Though what else could you feel? I mean, God knows I feel it too. To think, he’s… well. I just hope it hasn’t hit you too hard?’ It hits her too hard every day. Every day.
‘I’m okay. I felt like I was going to collapse, but I’m okay now. I’m going on holiday. I’m glad to be getting away. It’s time for a change, and it will do me good to be away, so at least that’s good timing. I wanted to warn you, just in case. I suppose we both knew it was possible, but I just didn’t think he would come back here. I’m glad I won’t be here for a while. When I come back I’ll have to think again. Because I can’t stand the idea of seeing him every time I go to the bloody shops, or ever, actually. I’d… I dread to think what I would do. God, Michael, I really… All these bloody years avoiding, not knowing if they’d moved away. Why they hadn’t got the decency to leave. I don’t think I could stay here, if… I don’t think I can.’
‘I understand. But, Anna, you don’t have to make a decision or do anything quickly. Though, for me, it was the best thing, moving away. It really helped, you know, to… well, whatever. Though, of course it was different, I… well, see how you feel when you get back.’ She notes his confusion. A dull feeling, a fossilised, ancient pain; it no longer hurts but remains in the way, to be negotiated, a lifeless remnant, a bulky, pointless, unfeeling shape. Michael means that when he moved away it was different because he moved into a nest that was already built. All he needed was a suitcase and a key cut. He got a whole package. She didn’t want him. She didn’t want him near or around her. She didn’t want him to stay, rent and howling, with her, in the wreckage of their home. But she despised him vehemently for his ability, his willingness, to make a new one.
He tells her he is glad she is going away if that’s what she wants, though she senses his anxiety. She tells him she will be happier on her own, not more lost. He nods, regretfully, gets them both another drink. He tells her about his plans for Christmas, cheerfully fills her in on his busy schedule, catches himself, falters, asks if she would like to come over for one or other of their gatherings. She tells him again. She is not more lost on her own; she is happier. She tells him again, insistently, that he has no responsibility for her, that she does not wish him to have any responsibility for her. She teeters and pulls back on the brink of anger at his presumption. She is here to be friends with Michael, to help him with what he wants. If it is important for his plans that she is there, she will endeavour to be there; he should not expect more from her than that. And he understands finally that this will have to be enough.
A second drink is finished amicably enough. Michael has what he wants as, now he lets her be, does she. They part with a pedestrian kiss on the cheek. He wishes her a good holiday and tells her if she changes her mind, if she has any ideas, just email – he would love to hear from her as this is for everyone. She grits her teeth. She wishes him a happy Christmas and leaves for the car.
*
Back at home, Anna sits in the quiet kitchen. Memory time, memorial time. She strayed too close and finds herself trapped on a narrow shore, looking across a lake of memory, looking at the surface reflection of sky-blue happiness. There she is, her younger self, still a girl, an adult girl. Her legs are strong, her hair long and nut brown. Michael is beautiful; his hands hold her shoulders, his face rapt, angelic with fulfilment. She knows he is full of her and that she is loved.
She loved Michael, did indeed feel that his happiness was entirely bound up with her own. Or the other way around. Indistinguishable happiness. Their courtship, the first joining of their lives, is a magical and happy memory even now. She remembers the room, the warmly dim light, the happy, tired mood. She remembers her keen interest in the man across the room. After a night out, they sat with mugs of sweet tea, a slow-fried collection of friends enjoying the embers of the party heat. He, still a stranger to her, sat on the arm of a chair, Lilla’s chair. Lilla with her porcelain bones, her elegance and broken front tooth, her careless charm, her careless self draped languidly at his side. Anna looked many times at the black-haired handsome man, but without expectation. People drifted off, into rooms and into sleep, Lilla too. Curled gently, folded quietly in the chair like an expensive coat, tan and beige. Anna and the handsome man left talking across the smoke-filled room, Lilla faintly snoring from the seaweed-green armchair. She can still feel the predatory excitement that filled her as that good night eased back the curtains for morning. Though she had loved others, she cannot recall ever having shared with them that rapacious, thrilling sense of elation. From that night, the night they met, they talked, they loved, they became Anna and Michael. The story unfolded; there is not much to add. It meant much; it was commonplace. They were happy, and sometimes they were sad. They learned how to be in harmony. They were happy. Blue skies and blossom drifts.
The glassy surface of the lake, the glass for scrying the shape-shift of a carefree she, beloved of the still-childish but loving he. These shadows trick-turn, perform a grotesque dance, a sickly parody of happy love, the cloying niceties of cinematographic advertising bliss. She even sees herself twirling a silk ribbon, him skipping around her as they laugh and caress and smile. She returns to herself on the shore, picks up a large stone and throws it into the water, satisfied to break that smooth, deceitful surface.
Yes, that love, in the face of a bigger test, proved to be a frail construction, one that could not last as they had promised, to the death. Another death pulled it apart. Years of ordinary trouble, ordinary boredom, ordinary difficulty, were endured. Their relationship, however stretched, had always returned to the s
hape of generous love and harmony, giving them both the illusion that theirs was a marriage that had weathered, had proved its mettle and would last. But in the sustained battering of a greater trial, curiously rapidly, it became confetti and matchsticks. Small leaves and tiny twigs floating aimlessly across the surface. And still she was stuck with a set of behaviours and rules that were inculcated to serve it.
The split between her and Michael was emphatic. But before the breakage was irreversible, they did try to mend. They found themselves on either side of a chasm running wild with dangerous water. Wretched as they were, they tried to build bridges towards each other, a way over the turbulence that separated them. It was much to ask. And how we find, in our massed human stories, that the times when most is asked of us is often the very time when most has been taken away. They built slowly and badly, with such impoverished materials as they could find, but they did not meet in the middle. Their bridges missed each other; their feeble stick-and-string structures were built in directions that could never join. Impossible to connect. Michael saw this, and somehow he kept building. He made a bridge strong enough to bear him across, onto a different path that carried him forwards. Anna fell into the deep middle of the river, too far from the cold comfort of the banks, and was swept away and drowned. For years she drowned. Eventually she was spilled out into a vast sea, where she has remained becalmed for many years. There are some storms; there are some sunny days. But in all these many floating years she has not found her way back home.
And yet, there is Michael now, surely in the light and warmth. He is, unfathomably, a happy man. She is all the colder for it. Not at his hand, but in the forensic light of a comparison that is always available. The end of their marriage had not meant the end of their relationship. They were tied together forever by their shared experience. So often Anna had wished to be free of that connection, but she never was. Yet she does not begrudge him his happiness. Even in her frequent rages with him, she knows Michael would bring her to that same place if it were in his power to do so; his foolishness is to believe that it is.