by Anna Raverat
Johnny’s best friend Juan would have been able to tell me how fog felt because he was a climatologist involved in milking clouds to obtain drinking water. The technology was basic: nets. I remember him talking about special atmospheric conditions that occur along the Pacific coast of Chile and southern Peru, where clouds settling on the Andean slopes produce dense camanchacas – perfect for milking. In the foggy season it is possible to collect enough water every day for a really big family. Juan was passionate about desert fog. His eyes lit up every time he mentioned the mists of Iquique in northern Chile, where he now lives, I believe, possibly with a really big family of his own, trekking through the Andes with a giant net, catching clouds.
The photograph was at the very bottom of the box, as I remembered, inside a plain brown envelope, which I don’t remember. Finding it didn’t solve or satisfy anything. I couldn’t write afterwards. It has been an effort to write again today. There is something in the back of my mind, just out of sight, troubling me, something – like the photograph – I have kept but can’t look at.
Five
The week after I told Carl it had been a mistake, he asked me to go to lunch with him. I had misgivings, but since we started out as friends and had agreed to continue that way, I went. He was quiet, almost shy, on this occasion. I still knew very little about him and I think he was aware of that and was being careful to show himself in the best light he could. He apologized for what had happened that night in the bar and this pleased me because it meant I didn’t have to take any responsibility. He had bought me a bottle of expensive perfume and offered it to me tentatively, perhaps thinking I wouldn’t accept it. The gift made me anxious straight away: there was Carl’s gesture, there was Johnny’s ignorance of the whole matter, there was my surprise at being given this perfume. I have since become much better at saying no, but back then I found it hard because I imagined I was disappointing people. I got myself into awkward situations where I said yes to an arrangement for the same time with more than one person and then had to try and combine the plans or back out of one. Since I was more confident letting down the people I knew well, I got into trouble with members of my family and old friends for messing them about. Until they got angry with me I didn’t see what I was doing and then, although I knew they were right, I resented being told.
I accepted the perfume from Carl, even though it was not the wholesome thing to do. I guessed that Johnny wouldn’t notice its appearance on the bathroom shelf, and that even if he did he would assume I had bought it for myself. Just as it didn’t seem possible to refuse the gift, it never occurred to me that I could have taken the perfume and kept it at work, or given it to someone else, or thrown it away. I am not saying that these would have been good things to do, just that they were options that I didn’t see at the time. Although I may have felt bad for Johnny’s sake about taking the perfume home, I didn’t examine the guilt and I didn’t see how Carl was now in my house, on my skin, or how I had put Carl’s feelings above Johnny.
Carl looked at me as if I were an international femme fatale. He didn’t care who else noticed, in fact there was something defiant in him, something daring others to try and interrupt him.
One day, I arrived at work to find Carl’s three teammates around his desk discussing something in whispers. Carl himself was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t want to seem too interested so I ignored the fuss and started work. A few minutes later the chief executive came up to our floor with a visiting dignitary. Carl’s friends immediately formed a row along the front of Carl’s desk. The chief executive and her guest stopped to talk to them and they remained standing in a row as if for some kind of military parade. Afterwards, Carl’s friends were jubilant. They called us all over to have a look: Carl was curled up fast asleep under his desk and they had been hiding him with their legs. His friends loved these small acts of rebellion. And so did I. We worked in a charity dedicated to young people and we travelled around the country raising money, setting up events to instil leadership, determination, team-work, things like that. Many of these young people had had a tough time, seen and done things way beyond my experience – one told me that before stealing a really expensive car, he would steal a suit first, so that the police would be less likely to stop him as he drove around. I was impressed by his creativity. I got used to confiscating knives but was shocked once when I was cooking with a group and a girl asked, What’s that fucking green thing? It was a courgette.
Although Carl liked the young people at least as much as I did, and had more in common with them, his job seemed to be of no importance to him. He started to care when I managed, after several attempts, to break up with him. By then he had lost me, long since lost Katie, was about to lose his flat, and so his job was all he had left. But he was so angry with me for leaving him that he couldn’t help using work as a way of punishing me and he behaved so badly so often that he also lost his job.
Today, when I sat down to write, I noticed scaffolding on the flat opposite. Now that I work from home I look at it every day. It is in a late stage of disintegration. The grey metal framework looks like it is propping up the building, but maybe it is too far gone and they are here to demolish it.
There were three visits to the seaside with Carl. On the first, we walked along the promenade with a giant cloud of candyfloss. I remember soft pink wraiths coming away from the ball, turning granular in my mouth, feeling thirsty afterwards.
In the arcade he exchanged banknotes for heavy bags of coins that we used quickly. He won and was pleased. I lost every time. While we were eating chips from grease-spotted bags a seagull swooped low and crapped on my head. I yelled out in surprise – the worst thing about it was the warmth! I had a mouthful of hot vinegary chip, which I spat onto the promenade. Carl laughed, but then he went to the van where we had bought our chips and got a big pile of rough blue paper towels and pulled the shit out of my hair as best he could and picked up the greasy bag and spilled chips from the ground, even the one I spat out, and put them all in the bin and offered to buy me more. I didn’t want any more. I noticed the two fat ladies in the chip van laughing into their hands and did then see the slapstick side of it. One of the ladies came out of the van and gave me a polystyrene cup of hot, bitter tea. She told me it was lucky to have a bird shit on your head and on the train back to the city when I was picking out dried stiff bits Carl reminded me of this and I objected: You won a tenner, I got shat on – how does that make me lucky?
Accepting the perfume was a mistake. It was allowing him in. It made the second time we kissed possible. If I had said no to the perfume, then maybe the first time would have been the only time and I could have cut it off and set it adrift.
On another holiday with Johnny we followed a path along a river one day. I remember luxurious heat, baked earth and a warm, sweet scent that I think was fig trees. I walked behind Johnny because the path was narrow. There was a quietness between us. I could see sweat breaking out on his back. His hips bulged slightly at the waistband of his shorts and the white flesh beneath the line of his suntan kept peeking out. I remember this picture of him because it was one of those moments when I was aware of loving him.
There were plenty of other people around, tourists and locals, sitting in the sun and in the shade, reading, talking, eating, and swimming in pools in the river. At one pool, a waterfall dropped about twenty-five feet into the water. A group of lanky boys were climbing up the rock to the right of the waterfall, jumping in, climbing up again. Johnny joined them. I watched him climb up and move out to the jumping ledge. Before he jumped, he retied the cord of his trunks, caught my eye and grinned, and then he dropped into the deep green water, and resurfaced within seconds, seemingly with the same smile. After watching him a few more times, I wanted a go. Johnny climbed up the rock behind me, coaching me on handholds and footholds, but there was only room for one on the jumping ledge. You go first, I said, thinking it would be easier to jump if he weren’t just over my shoulder. Sure? OK, see you down
there, and he made his way to the ledge and jumped off again, easy as anything. The younger, browner, thinner boys hung back, waiting for me to make my jump. I followed the route Johnny had taken to the ledge. The ledge was tiny, there wasn’t even room to stand properly; you had to have both feet facing in the same direction, towards the waterfall, and lean into the cliff for support. The rock below swelled out like a belly: I would have to jump out quite far to miss it. Johnny was treading water in the pool, smiling up encouragement. He looked a lot further away than I expected.
No way was I going to jump. Cautiously, I made my way back from the ledge to where the queue was, scared and embarrassed. Johnny scrambled up to meet me.
What happened? Are you all right? It must have been harder to get back from that ledge than it would have been to jump!
Maybe, I said. But you can’t jump slowly.
A few months before my sister’s accident, Johnny and I started arguing more and the arguments didn’t die down as quickly as they used to. I went shopping with Delilah and bought a pair of designer shoes made of silver grey satin. They were beautiful, like frosted glass. The shoes had high heels and I knew they looked good because they made me feel fantastic. I had never worn shoes with high heels before because I was already tall, at school it was undesirable to be any taller, at university I spent all my time in trainers, so by the time I was in my early twenties I had no idea how to walk in heels and somehow thought I wasn’t allowed to wear them. Delilah encouraged me to buy the shoes and I was grateful to her for opening that door. Johnny objected to the price I had paid and I resented this because it was my money. I wanted him to be bowled over by the new me in my glassy satin shoes and he wasn’t, which robbed me of the elation I had come home with.
It bothered me that I wasn’t brave enough to make that jump from the waterfall. I told Johnny I wanted to go back. The next morning the pool was in shade and the water looked as black and solid as tarmac. All I had to do was jump. But I couldn’t make myself do it. I tried several times to gather up my courage into a jump but I simply couldn’t do it. Something inside me had already made the choice to stay put and I couldn’t override it.
Just let yourself fall, shouted Johnny.
Don’t be stupid, I said, but he was right because once you are whistling through the air falling and jumping are the same thing.
It was easy for Johnny; he knew he could do it. His self-belief was so strong it was almost an aura. Now I see how he used it as padding between him and the world, but back then I thought he was wonderfully secure. Even when he danced badly to his African music, he did it with such conviction that it seemed fitting. Twice while we were driving on a motorway, Johnny thought he recognized people in other cars: There’s my old maths teacher! he shouted, and waved at a car as it overtook, and, another time, I went to school with her! The first time I was impressed by the coincidence and tried to get a glimpse of his old maths teacher as the other car sped past, but the second time we quarrelled because I laughed. He insisted he was right and sulked until I conceded it was possible that he had again correctly identified an old school mate in high-speed traffic.
On a beach holiday with Delilah I brought one bikini and she brought four.
Four bikinis! We’re only here for a week! I said. She laughed.
I thought you were only allowed one, I said, quietly dismayed as I realized I wasn’t joking and that this was, in fact, what I believed.
No, said Delilah, kindly – you are allowed as many as you like. We went shopping and I bought two more, and a new pair of sandals, and I know it was only bikinis and shoes, but I really did feel the world had opened up a little.
But Johnny disapproved of Delilah, he thought her frivolous because she cared about clothes and liked parties and occasionally took drugs and, perhaps feeling this, Delilah was not impressed by Johnny, finding him judgemental. Johnny’s bluster may have been covering unease, but he really did seem to think he had the right to disapprove and to have the last word, and I let him.
Our director organized a team-building day for the whole department. We all sat round in a circle in the briefing room on the top floor while a woman of mid-height with mid-brown hair made us introduce ourselves to each other as if we’d never met before. She lost half of us right there. When it came to her turn she said, I’m a lucky lady. I have a wonderful husband and twin girls, aged three, they’re beautiful but a bit of a handful! We all laughed obligingly except Carl. She went on to describe the prize-winning village where she lived, her pets, and how she did team-building work because she loved helping people. Carl took the piss out of Lucky Lady all day long and although I felt sorry for her as she struggled to stay on top of his heckling mainly I was glad because her dreariness was choking.
That night I took Johnny to the pub. I wanted to tell him about Lucky Lady and I needed him to get it. I told him about the life she’d described and he thought it sounded attractive so I tried to explain the way she didn’t understand that not everyone would want her kind of life: neat and tucked in, and how she put all her energy into shoring up her pocket of reality. But that’s what everyone does, said Johnny, and I see now that he was right, but because the conversation wasn’t going the way I wanted, and because of the mood I was in, I bummed a cigarette off someone and smoked it in front of him, and so we ended up arguing about that.
I suggested to Carl that we play Russian Roulette, with eggs. I hard-boiled eleven of the dozen, wiped off the water sediment and placed them back in the carton. I let Carl move the eggs around without me looking, but I made him do it quickly so he couldn’t weigh or examine them. We played it with cards; when you lost a hand, you selected an egg and smashed it on your head. Carl got the raw egg, which evened out the seagull incident, though he took it better than I had.
I see how easily I recall moments when things were taut and full of promise, and forget much of what happened in between. For example, the perfume Carl gave me: I can still see the sparkly new bottle filled with clear amber and I remember placing it among the other bottles and tubes on the bathroom shelf, feeling a pang because Johnny had made that shelf and here I was polluting our home with scent from another man. But when half the perfume had gone and the bottle had gathered dust on its little glass shoulders, what then? Even if I had worn it every day I couldn’t have finished it by the end of the affair because the affair didn’t last that long. I know I didn’t keep it, because I made a point of dumping everything Carl had given me, but I also don’t remember throwing it away.
What am I supposed to save? What am I supposed to remember? What am I supposed to tell? Am I supposed to hold anything back?
The scaffolding has been up for days. I think the building will be coming down soon. I find myself wishing they would restore it, I am not sure why – I have no special attachment to this flat, I just happen to live opposite.
Six
Johnny and I were invited to a party in a new bar in Soho. I planned to wear the glass-satin shoes we’d argued about. Johnny didn’t want to go to the party; I persuaded him by asking Juan to come too. The club was small with steps leading down to the dance floor where people were standing to talk. It was like an empty swimming pool. Soon the steps were jammed and everyone was dancing. I picked Juan because he was Johnny’s best friend, and I thought his presence would help Johnny enjoy himself or at least give him someone to talk to other than me, but Johnny hated it. Juan danced very well. We danced. Johnny stood at the bar, looking down on everyone. After an hour or so, he wanted to leave. They’re all posers, talking crap, he said. I looked around the room: They’re just people having a good time. But Johnny was already in gear. He wanted us to go back with him to a pub near our flat and looked crestfallen when first I said I was staying, and then Juan said he would stay too. Johnny made his way to the door. I watched until I could no longer see his yellow curls bobbing above the sea of other heads.
Even though I was sad to see Johnny go, I enjoyed the party more without him. That same wee
kend we had a row about fashion, although I can’t remember whether this was caused by me staying at the party or something else. Johnny took the moral high ground: the shallowness, the sweatshops; I defended the right to care about how one looked and pointed out to him that he too followed fashion in his own small way, otherwise why didn’t he dress entirely from charity shops? We ended up in the only two separate rooms in the flat. While I sat and pretended to work in the bedroom, I thought of a way to laugh it off whilst at the same time making a point. I unearthed some tatty old clothes, kept for the spring cleaning or gardening I never did, and dressed up in them. I tucked the top into the trousers and pulled them right up above my waist, like Tweedledum or Tweedledee. When I showed myself to him we did laugh and he took a photo of me.
Another time, we were walking in the countryside talking about some friends of Johnny’s: this couple looked exactly like each other, same height, same build, same square face, same wide eyes, same fair straight hair. I thought this went beyond average levels of narcissism. But Johnny defended them: I think it’s good when couples are alike, I think it helps them stay together.
Differences are good too, I said.
Yes, when they complement each other.
Well, then they’re not really differences, are they?
Carl took some of us from work to the climbing wall he used. It was in a large echoey hall that had the same feel as a school gym. The wall was dark red with half-moons and other shapes screwed on in no discernible pattern and climbing at various heights were young men in black leggings with chalky hands and rubber slippers. Their bodies were lean and well proportioned, like Carl’s, and they gave off a certain relaxed confidence, also like Carl. It was the first time I’d seen Carl as part of a group; he looked like them, he moved fluidly like them – he was in his element.