by Lulu Allison
It is evening. She looks across the tawny beach. She imagines the people standing on the sand in the smoke-blue evening air, dragged out of their own lives by a deadly articulation of someone else’s certainty and rage, dragged here by her counting of them. Who knows what transformations they have undergone on the journey? She sees the elderly gentleman; he has his back to her. He looks along the bay, as if searching the gauzy sky above the distant mountains for an explanation of his current circumstance. The fat young man sits on the sand, staring at his hands, turning them over, staring. All these dear and varied hearts. All these thrown-away souls. She wishes them goodbye. She says how sorry she is to call them into this terrible fate. She tells them that she cares about their death, that it pains her. Then she turns back to her room, returns to the present need for food, some movement in her legs, some faces that will smile at her.
She heads for the same small bar, grateful for a sense of connection that may only come from her own routine but still accords a welcome sense of being part of something, belonging somewhere. She has been here often enough to smile and raise a hand in greeting to the young man behind the bar and a waiter or two. In a small way, it is her place, but she has a new book in her bag as the company she keeps is most likely to be her own. She orders food and beer, pulls the new book from her bag and puts it on the table. She will visit her new waifs again. Not now, but soon.
She eats, orders a second beer. She reads some more, then turns to her writing book, open to today’s passengers, her alternative ferry across the Styx. As she reads, she feels sadness expand into her chest and seep down her arms. She feels trapped by the absurdity of mourning the loss of people who don’t exist, mourning a proxy, a stand-in. She knows that if she could learn who the real people were, their loss would be as tangible and terrible. But she is confounded by her sadness at mourning the death of a person she has invented.
She is snapped from this strange private enigma by the unexpected and cheery arrival of Estela and Karl. They sit themselves down comfortably, then rather unnecessarily ask her if it is okay, do you mind if…? She can be a prickly woman, but she smiles inwardly at the notion that she would say no by this stage of the proceedings. She shuts her book hurriedly, brushes past Estela’s curiosity, her charming way, on seeing the handwriting, of asking if she writes a book. Karl is using his clunky-sounding Spanish on the waiter, ordering for them both, asking whether Anna would like another beer, to which she might as well say yes. Luckily, they are both willing to speak English and do so with easy competence and attractive variation. They talk about their day. She tells them she watched them surf, how impressed she was. They of course pretend to think she should try, that she would love it, that no, of course she is not too old. She fears that anything more than a moderate gust would be likely to pull her arms clean out of the sockets, so soft, so weak does she feel compared to them. Compared to a younger self, glowing sun-browned limbs backdropped by faded cyan, a polaroid memory of a young woman who revelled in the strength of her body, who crashed through waves, flung herself headlong across asphalt after tennis balls, who laughing, jumped off rocks into swirling river pools, confident of avoiding the treachery of boulders hidden just below the racing, cold, peat-brown water. Whose arms learned a powerful strength carrying a restless and frightened child for night-hours at a time, her hot wet cheek only cooling when laid against her mother’s collarbone. She flicks that memory away, closes the lid, turns to her young companions.
Estela tells her about how she learned to surf, why she loves it. Anna is touched by her enthusiasm. There are light freckles on the younger woman’s cheeks called out by the sun, tentative as the speckling of blackbirds’ eggs. Her eyes too have a blue that belongs to the same family as those delicate eggs. A slightly brown aquatic-blue, a striking lightness against her brown and gold skin and bleach-streaked dark-brown hair. She has a wide, crooked smile and wonky teeth. Karl watches her as she speaks, smiling, his strong, long back straight. He leans forward towards Estela, folded brown arms resting on the table before him. He is a tall man, quite good-looking and, Anna presumes from his rapt and slightly gormless look, very much in love. They are both charming company, and she starts to squeeze up inside to make room for them.
Karl leans forwards even more, to emphasise his words. ‘You see, Anna, we did not make the world like it is. We don’t want it like it is, but there’s nothing we can make, so we don’t be lazy, we just try to be outside of it. Not all of us can be the fighters.’
‘What else can we do?’ says Estela. ‘Nothing makes it different, nothing makes better, is better just to enjoy, to be happy, to be good in the world, to make other people happy. I was at school, I learned all these things, all what is needed, only I find it is not needed, it is not help for me. I just must join this big machinery that I don’t want to join. It is not a life I love. So Karl and me, we make money, a little bit, then we surf and live cheap a little bit.’
‘Will you always be able to live this way though?’ says Anna. She looks at the couple and envies them their carefree certainty, regrets her anticipation of it inevitably ending.
‘Sure, what will make difference? We don’t need a massive TV, a sport car. We just need here, what we have.’
‘But you are both so young. There are so many choices ahead. Perhaps one day you will need other things.’
‘Yes, so my father says!’ replies Karl. They laugh good-naturedly. Anna suspects she is not far from being old enough to talk to Karl’s father as if he were a wayward child too.
‘So, what about you, Anna? What do you write about in your book?’
Of course, Anna won’t speak about it. Not now. Maybe another time. So she says, oh, this and that, a journal, odd thoughts. She wonders briefly why they talk to her at all, wonder if they are curious because she is alone. Perhaps her Aunt-Laura-in-waiting status is apparent and already conferring value; perhaps she is becoming a character. She pictures herself in Vivienne Westwood tartan and a jaunty bobble hat, clutching a bin bag of possessions and shouting at the letterbox in the village. She could live with that.
Anna notices that her hand is resting protectively on the cover of her book; she feels the suede-like nap under her fingers. She flatters herself if she thinks that their curiosity is enough to make them snatch and pry. They are too nice to pursue her reluctant explanation, and the conversation moves on. The three of them chat easily and inconsequentially, enjoy the warm atmosphere, cheerfully enlivened by the mellow yet vibrant acoustic guitar being played over the small speakers, happily not too loud.
The man Anna had seen previously, with the faded shirt and one hand missing, walks into the bar. He smiles in their direction then comes and chats with Karl and Estela in Spanish. They introduce her, switching briefly to English. His name is Stefan. He greets her with friendliness and a light, unplaceable accent. He perches on the corner of the table and resumes chatting in Spanish. She understands enough to hear the friendliness of their talk, sit content in the warm eddies of their chat. Karl turns and says they are talking about a plan he and Estela have to rent an apartment from Stefan, some things they need to work out, that they could speak in English, but she is happy to be on the outside. She manages to convey that convincingly enough for this polite young man to continue with his Spanish conversation.
She leans back, relaxing in the quiet suburbs of their busy social city. Over in the far corner is a table with a well-dressed couple, around her age. He is still and formal, she glamorous, tanned. Anna guesses she would smell perfume if she sat next to her. She wears a jersey wrap dress, the only ripples caused by the fabric. She is either too spare or too toned or too undergarmented to show the small undulations that age brings to all and clingy jersey ruthlessly displays. With age, Anna thinks, even if we do not gain weight, we seem to gain surface area; bumps and furrows appear fractally across the geography of our skin as we lose the oneness, the wholeness of youth. But the woman across the bar has kept this growing disintegration, this
complication, at bay. She is handsome, dark-skinned, hair a rich brown, if dyed, done well enough to look natural. Anna thinks of one of the women in her book, from a few days ago, the woman whose acts of generosity embarrassed her, straining at the meeting of compassion and selfishness, perhaps believing that to be selfish is a powerful expression of self-belief, that compassion is a weakness.
Anna wonders, presuming on their intimacy, how the man sitting across the table from her would cope with a life in which she had been killed by a bomb. Where would he be now if she had not returned from a trip to buy a bunch of fresh coriander and some king prawns for an easy evening meal? The white wine cooling in the fridge, the shallots sitting unchopped on the wooden board, her cookery book open on the kitchen table, next to some rings and a large bracelet made of heavy amber resin, a deep-space swirl of clouded light. Would he remember having seen it on her slim wrist? Would he notice, perhaps for the first conscious time, her habit of removing jewellery before she cooks? But then she sees the woman, elbows resting on the table, one hand gesturing gently as she tells her smiling companion something, and she feels terrible, guilty that, momentarily, she made her dead. She wants to rush over and gush her apology, I’m sorry, please don’t die. If she saw that through, she wouldn’t have to wait until she could shout at the village letterbox to earn her crazy stripes. Instead of apologising to a woman she has never spoken to, for a fault she will never know, Anna compares her in greater detail to the woman in her book. She thinks she has the same kind of polished glamour, a buffed combination of time and money more influential than any style element. Anna’s ghost had a more sculpted face, a more crudely hewn and handsome bone structure. She can’t remember exactly without looking in her book, but she thinks that the woman in the bar is taller, more willowy. The woman in her book, she thinks, would be wearing a headscarf if she were here, and she would not have a glass of wine before her. Or she doesn’t think so. That woman was at home when Anna saw her, sitting in an armchair, thinking about something that baffled her, unwinding the puzzle of complicating events brought about by others.
Stefan interrupts her remembering. ‘Would you like another beer, uh, Anna?’ He looks questioningly to see if he has her name right. She says yes, then wonders with slight agitation whether she should go to the bar to help him carry the drinks or not. But she is sitting with her back to the wall, chairs and people to disrupt if she were to get up. She dithers in a confusion of politeness and embarrassment. Meanwhile Stefan has placed his orders and returned to the table, this time pulling up a chair from another table and sitting opposite her, and there is no dilemma – the waiter brings the drinks over on a round tray.
With the drinks, her table companions switch back to English. Stefan has a place here, so is indeed a resident, though he tells her that he too is German, but he and Karl speak Spanish when they are with Estela. She asks if Karl and Stefan know each other from Germany, but they met when Karl and Estela were here last year. He has been staying here to be near a daughter and her two children. He says that he has found such joy in being the grandfather of these two that he no longer wants to leave the island. She wonders about the daughter and how she came to be here, if the story contains a husband, a local man, a departed lover, an unexpectedly extended holiday romance. The four spend an enjoyable evening together, and Anna is gratified to be asked if she would like to meet them there the next evening, when there will be live music in the bar.
Chapter 12
Out of the spin and tumble, I have found enough of what I need to tell, how it happened. Not willingly, but with determination. It has to be. I have to find myself in the story.
There was a period of ordinary decline in the mood of love, and then it changed for good.After a row one evening – me talking to one of his friends in the pub, so small a thing – we spent the evening in tight silence pretending to engage with other things: he on his computer; I reading. But the tension hummed like tinnitus in the room. We went to bed separately; he, when he joined me, lay angrily with his back turned. I curved softly towards him, showing only that I wished to erase the pain he was feeling, the pain I must have caused. A geography of night – time I already understood, an uncomfortable yet familiar place. I did feel anger and resentment somewhere, but I ignored it. I felt I had not done anything to deserve blame. But I understood only that this was not apparent, that I had misrepresented myself in a way he perceived as harmful. If only I could learn to express myself better, I thought. I can remember the slow, long ache of those night – times. Often repeated, they merged over the weeks into a familiar feeling that even now is clear in memory.
So many mornings too, after these baffling nights, played out in a predictable way; terse, uncommunicative, cold. Too many occasions like this to tell them apart. But this one morning has details that I find all too easily. Daytime came and both of us prepared to go to work. I resolved, as I usually did, to make amends, putting myself aside in the hope of finally showing that he had no cause to doubt me. I was careful and pacifying, in a way I had learned well. I was not yet completely abject but, having put myself to one side, was ready to become so. Look, Ryan, I don’t even need myself at the moment, does that not show you that my love is a thing to trust? Though I was quiet and serious by nature, this meekness was new. I tailored it for myself over the months we had been living together. It had quickly become so engrained that I no longer noticed.
I made us both coffee, brought toast over to him sitting still and sullen at the small table in the bay window. I moved back quietly to the sink, cleaned the little kitchen, trying to think of how I could put the sweet balance back, re-establish the love that had been my moving-in gift, my precious dower, surely rich enough to assuage these difficulties. Not a word passed between us. He ate toast, I washed and wiped a little, then, resolving to try once more, I walked over to stand before him, yearning for him to realise I loved him, to reject the mistaken belief that I was rejecting him. I thought that to appeal to his memory of a time when we planned our future together might show how little I needed other people, that our plans were enough for me.
‘I know things have been difficult, but it needn’t stay like this. We could still do what we planned. Do you remember how we thought we would be able to manage it? Going to London together, it would be so great, and you could maybe start doing more exciting work. I know it wouldn’t be easy for you, but I don’t know if I can miss another year. I would lose my place. It might be difficult to start with, but I know we could make it work, just the two of us.’
He looked up at me, chewing the last of his toast.
‘Ryan, I know it would be a big move when you have everything set up here, but maybe it would be better for both of us if we had more exciting things to do, rather than being stuck in work we don’t like. I want so much for us to be happy together, and we were so excited about it, weren’t we?’
He looked at me, still, silent, a stillness that turned imperceptibly to contempt. In one movement, he stood and punched upwards, hitting me on the underside of the jaw. Then, picking up his bag, he left for work.
I stood still for some minutes, short breaths and shallow heartbeats dancing a jerky quickstep in my chest. After a while, I stopped fearing his return, and the chemistry of panic subsided. I sank to the ground, still clutching the edge of the small table. I cried until I ached, until my knees hurt from my position on the ground. Over and over I asked myself one question. How could he? In those three words lay subtle designs, patterns of trust, value and worth. These threads, so complexly interwoven, combine into a utilitarian, vital fabric; a material, often beautiful, sometimes threadbare, on which we build our lives.
Before this, there had been arguments during which he gripped my shoulders and shouted, inches from my face, shouted into me, violence smothering me as a wave, without the percussion of a blow. But they were arguments, not assaults. They were arguments that people have, weren’t they? New arguments with myself flew around me in harpy fury, a cacophonous
confusion. He loved me, didn’t he? He said he did. But does love allow such things? Was it a mistake? What was I supposed to do? Should I go home? What would I say? I lay in our bed, surrounded by a Sleeping Beauty thicket of thorns. Unreachable. Exhausted and overwhelmed. My hand went up often to the tender underside of my jaw, gently soothing the remnant pain. Trying to make sense of it. I became hollowed by the shock.
I feel myself now, mixing in with the dark misery of that time; it seems part of the blackness, or part of me. It engorges, floods me where my blood once ran. Yes, it is part of me. I have brought it with me to this place. The journey to here started there. A little prying, loosening away from gravity’s hold, a little opening of the way that joined me up with this dark medium.
The text message read ‘So so sorry. Love you so much. Don’t know why I snapped xxx’. Did it help that he was sorry? I couldn’t tell. But slowly, the explanation that he, by his own calculation, had snapped began to clear a way through. A direct route that was broad enough for both of us. He had snapped. It was inexplicable, appalling, but perhaps it was not unforgivable. Anyone can make a mistake once.
I battered myself with this idea of a resolution. It seemed a long time but must have been only a few hours. My phone beeped again. This time the message said ‘Please please forgive me, Cait. Couldn’t live without you. Will bring curry and wine? Please forgive me xxxxxx’.
I awaited his return with anxiety, unresolved but looking for a way out. When he came back, after a brief and fervent flurry of tenderness and shame, Ryan operated as though to forget was the best medicine. He was implacable, evasive, robust with good humour. He barged back into our shared life with brassy cheer. He reacted to my first clumsy attempts to talk about the morning as if I were recklessly exhibiting a will to sabotage the harmony he had gifted me.