by Jo Baker
She was going downhill. Conroys was on the docks, and the docks were by the lough, and that was almost sea, so downhill was the way to go. She passed shut and shuttered shops, bright-lit phone booths, overfull rubbish bins. She smelt the scent of freshly baked bread in the air and water rose in her mouth.
The road was deserted. No passers-by at all. Not a cab, not even the occasional solitary staggering drunk. It was late, she realised suddenly, uneasily. It was very late. She stopped dead. She cast around her. The sky was deep blue, scattered with orange-reflecting clouds. There was a dark, leafy park on the right. She turned round, glanced back up the hill. A clock hung high up on the building behind her. The hands pointed to half-past two. Conroys would be shut. Tired and sore, she would turn the last corner to find the bar in darkness, the shutters padlocked into place. She would stand there, at the bolted doors, frozen by the knowledge that there was nowhere else to go. By half-past two the place would be empty and Gareth would be at home showering, or asleep, Dermot’s head cradled in the crook of his arm. But perhaps the clock didn’t work. Perhaps that was half-past two on a sunny afternoon in nineteen-fifty-three when the clock had seized up, stopped for good, and no one had glanced up there for years to tell the time. Perhaps it was half-past two on an entirely different night, years ago, in winter, when the frost had bitten into its workings and frozen the hands in place. Claire glanced around her, shivered.
She couldn’t go to Conroys. Not now.
A side street opened off to the left. She turned down it.
The street was darker than the main road. It was lined with thick-trunked lime trees. She got a vague impression of red brick, bay windows, hedges. The street ended, and without much consideration, she turned left.
Side streets opened off the new road. She glanced down them vaguely as she passed. A sense of exhaustion came down over her, overwhelming her. The night’s long work, the din and press of the bar. By now it all seemed like weeks ago, because of afterwards. She paused at a junction. Neat little Victorian terraces snaking downhill. Downhill, towards the river. They had crossed the river earlier, in the taxi. She had seen the water rippling underneath the bridge, reflecting back the city lights. Stranmillis, and Grainne’s house, were on the far bank. She had her door key in her pocket. If she got back to Grainne’s house, at least she could take off her shoes, bathe her cut, go to bed. Grainne would not be back till Sunday. Breathing space, at least. She could at least lie down and close her eyes. She turned down the narrower street.
It sloped gently downhill. The houses clung to the pavement, no gardens between her and the front walls, the dark windows. She heard her footsteps echoing down the street. She knew the echo was her own, but the possibility of someone following, or waiting up ahead, crept out of a corner of her mind. She pushed it aside.
The close-set terraces ended abruptly. The houses were now concrete and clapboard and cold. They were silent, no windows lit. Above her, the lamp-posts were linked with bunting, their pennants hanging dead and heavy in the still air. And underneath her feet, the kerbstones were painted three different shades of grey. Marking out territory.
She slowed down, stopped. Sodium streetlamps and the moon bleached out all distinction. She could pick out no images, no letters that would force the faded bunting and paint to blossom into colour. And around her, in batteries of little rooms, tracing the length of unknown streets, she knew that people were sleeping. The flickering translucent eyelids of the elderly, children stacked in bunkbeds, discrete dark heads of couples on paired pillows: a community in sleep. And she was there awake in the middle of them all, washed up on their pavement, alone.
Maybe not alone. The echo had stopped with the terraces, but the idea of being caught there, where she should have known not to be, still lingered. She had to get out onto unpainted, unpennanted streets before she was spotted. She set off again at a shambling, uneven trot, shoulders hunched and arms wrapped around her.
The street ended, butted on three sides by low blocks of flats. A grass forecourt and a stocky flowering cherry tree, a few clusters of blossom hanging half-rotten. Dark alleyways between the buildings. She slowed, stopped. She was lost. She cast around her. She wasn’t sure of the way she had come, couldn’t remember the turns and loops and half-guesses that had ended her up there. The squat blocks loomed up above her. Windowpanes reflected back the night. A clot of cherry blossom broke up into platelets and drifted onto the grass. She breathed in, stepped into the darkness of an alley.
Eyes straining to define the edges and content of the deeper dark: no movement. Above her, the sky a narrow strip, starless. Beneath her feet, flat paving stones. She ran her fingers along the roughcast wall. Vague light-edged forms, as she approached, gradually resolved themselves into council dustbins; large, metal, plastic-lidded, hollow-sounding kettledrums when her fingers knocked them, shifting on their wheels.
As she stepped out from between them, there was grass under her feet. The sky above her was open, orange-stained. There were bushes in front of her. Beyond them she could see a road, a row of streetlamps, trees and then rippling dark water. The far bank climbing steeply up into streets and houses, the sweep of parkland over to the right. She felt an unexpected surge of relief. She suddenly knew exactly where she was, and where to go. Across the river, up the hill, and she was almost there. Soon, she would be sinking down on cool sheets, pulling a duvet over her. She did not let herself think what would follow when she woke.
She passed through the bushes, began picking her way slowly down the steep grass bank.
The looseweave curtains let in the light. It seeped through her eyelids, stained them scarlet. Her back ached. Through the thin mattress her hip, ribcage and shoulder pressed against the wooden slatted frame.
She was awake.
Tiny, distorted and pale, she saw her reflection in the mirrored bulb of the spotlight on the ceiling.
She heaved herself up, padded barefoot down the stairs.
The kitchen lino was sticky underfoot. She boiled the kettle, burnt her wrist on the steam, and made a pot of tea. She glanced up at the kitchen clock: half-past seven. The whole long day ahead of her, no chance now of further sleep. Her eyes felt gritty. She rinsed out yesterday’s mug, sat down at the dining-room table. Her knee started to bounce up and down underneath the table. She uncrossed her legs. The fingers of her left hand tapped out a rhythm on the tabletop, getting quicker and quicker and quicker. She lifted the hand to her mouth and began to chew on a cuticle. She tugged at the skin. A strip came off between her incisors, and her finger began to bleed. Claire sucked on the finger, tasted the blood, looked around her, at the piles of magazines and the dirty carpet and the clutch of empty bottles in the corner. Grainne would be back at five. Five or six. On Sunday. Land in with a carful of groceries and a heap of exercise books and she would dump them all down in the hallway and come thumping up the stairs and slump down on Claire’s bed and talk to her. Just wanted to catch up, she would say, before you head off to work. Just wanted to see how you were doing. And Claire would potter around as usual, smiling as necessary, painting on her lipstick, tugging on her shoes. She would have to listen to whatever Grainne had to say, and she would have to smile. And that smile just wouldn’t work. She knew it wouldn’t. It would start badly, become shaky, then grind itself to a premature halt. She scraped back her chair and stood up.
She tugged a handful of carrier bags out of the kitchen drawer. She stuffed back the others which had rustled out with them, pushed the drawer shut. She bagged up the empty bottles for recycling. She emptied the kitchen bin, scrubbed it with disinfectant. She washed up, she cleaned the sink and draining board.
Five to eight.
The hoover was tangled in the under-the-stairs cupboard, its flex knotted round the ironing board, its hose twisted through wire clothes hangers and a folded chair. She fished out the dustpan and brush. She climbed three flights of dusty, gritty, hair-matted stairs, knelt down at the top and swept each step as she d
escended backwards on her knees. By the time she had finished she had filled a Tesco’s bag with fluff.
She cleaned the bathroom, scrubbing at the film on the bath, at the mould between the tiles. She watered the plants, dusted the shelves, plumped up the sofa cushions. Her fingers were pink and desiccated and cold. They smelt of bleach and polish. She sat down on the sofa and cried. She cried noisily, convulsively, till her stomach ached and she was left gasping. She wiped her face with her hands.
In the bathroom she blew her nose on toilet roll. The snot was black with dust. She turned the hot tap on, washed her hands, then ran a basinful of steaming water. Leaning over, she scooped the water up, held it to her face, splashed it over her skin. Her fingers felt rough against her face. Squinting, she felt around for her tube of cleanser. She flicked the cap open, squirted a slug of cream into her hand. She rubbed it between her palms, over her face, then rinsed her skin again. She got soap in her eyes. She scrubbed her face with the hand towel, looked at herself.
Eyes smarting and misted by tears and facewash, she saw only a pink smear. She blinked, and it clarified. Her eyes were thick-lidded and pink, underhung with heavy mink-brown shadows, cheeks flushed and hot-looking. She tugged out the plug, rinsed away the dirt and soap scum, ran another bowlful of water. Heron-like, she lifted her foot and immersed it in the hot water, peeling off the gummy blue plaster. Underneath, the cut was pink, wet, rubbed raw.
The bike was cool and damp after a night in the back yard. She wheeled it, ticking like a grasshopper, through the house and out the front door, bumped it down the steps. She pushed her right foot into the toeclip, swung into the saddle. Shuffling the other foot into its clip, she tacked slowly up the hill. The gears clicked into place with the certainty of a problem solved.
On Stranmillis Road the pavements were littered with last night’s grease-stained papers, chip trays and polystyrene cartons. On the zebra crossing an abandoned kebab spilled out shredded lettuce and grey scraps of meat. All the shops were shut except for the tiny all-night newsagent’s, its purple Cadbury’s logo glowing. As Claire passed she glimpsed a yellow-lit perspective of shelves and lino, and a young woman, dark haired, who turned a page, smoothed her newspaper flat across the counter, did not look up.
The road swept her down Stranmillis Hill in a single smooth bend. Squinting into the rushing air, she flew past stolid terraces, leafy villas and a splinter of parkland. She saw just one car, a red Micra, grinding up the hill. The roundabout was clear. She coasted round it without touching her brakes. On the flat beside the river, she caught the rhythm of the pedals again. Blue-and-white, a rowing team hoisted a boat onto their shoulders. Passing the pub she caught the scent of old beer and tarpaulins. She stopped at the towpath gate and slid out of the saddle. She pushed the bike through. Kissing gates they called them at home. At home there were kissing gates, grannies’ teeth and fat man’s agonies.
The Lagan was high, dimpling through the sluicegate. The towpath curled out of sight ahead of her, shadowing the river. She slid back onto the saddle, pushed off, then stood up on the pedals. Starting in a high gear, she clicked her way further up as she gained speed, heaving the bike along until she was flying, hair blown, eyes streaming, sweat gathering under her arms and on her back. There was something necessary about this, something essential. Claire, aware only of the press, release, of her muscles, of the air that abraded her nostrils and swelled her lungs, of the sweat cooling her skin, the wind wetting her eyes, could lose, just briefly, all other sense of herself. She unbuttoned her jacket and it flapped loosely around her.
The path lost the river, clung to the hedge. On the left, the ground swept away into parkland, hazy, pooled with the shade of massive oak trees. A herd of cream-and-coffee-coloured cattle stood motionless, knee-deep in the long grass. The river swept back towards the towpath. The parkland shrank, disappeared. The river was running just beneath her. Above, the bank was knotted with rhododendrons, dry earth showing through the low tangle of branches. She rounded a bend and the far bank loomed up steep and close. Trees dappled the path with shadow.
Round the next bend, a tight right-hander onto a steep wooden bridge. Keeping up as much speed as possible for the climb, Claire slewed round the corner, slid quickly down the gears.
There was a bench, usually empty, just before the bridge. That morning, someone was sitting on it. She was past almost before she saw him. For a second she thought he was just a jogger catching his breath, but in the same moment knew that he couldn’t be. Too dark, too crushed. She pushed her way up the bridge’s smooth arc, stopped at its apex, leaned one foot on a low rung of the wooden rail. She turned in the saddle to look back.
Zipped up to the chin in his parka, shoulders hunched against some imaginary or pathological chill. A sparse beard, tucked, with his chin, into the nylon fur of his collar, staring down towards the stone-troubled water, or perhaps just at his feet. Battered, blackened trainers. Claire, havering on the bridge’s curve, was just turning away, just resettling herself on the saddle, when he looked up, and she almost caught his eye and the start of a smile. But she was already turning, already pressing down on a pedal, the bike already rolling forward, caught by the slope’s pull. It was too late to smile back, because smiling back would now mean wrenching on the brakes and heaving herself round in the saddle to look at him. Claire ducked beneath the overhanging willows, flinched inwardly.
And when she cycled back that way, half an hour later, the young man had gone.
The phone was ringing. She could hear it from the front door. Faint, insistent. Her stomach twisted into a knot. She dumped the bike in the hall, grazing the wallpaper, and pushed through the door into the dining room, crossing it in three paces. She reached the phone, stopped dead, her hand hovering over the receiver. The ansaphone had clicked into gear. Grainne’s recorded voice, solemn and precise.
Sorry, there’s no one here to take your call right now …
Claire felt her stomach twist again, curling up like a salted slug.
… so leave your name and number after the tone, and we’ll get back to you.
An electronic beep. A pause. Claire imagined him on the other end of the line, receiver held to lips, ear; caught, hesitating, just like her. Except that he had picked up the phone, dialled the number.
The line went dead. The ansaphone clicked itself automatically off.
Claire’s hand still hovered over the phone. Slowly, as if afraid of breaking whatever thread still connected it with Paul, she lifted the receiver. Slowly she dialled 1-4-7-1. An artificial English voice, in distant emptiness. The caller had withheld his number.
She stepped into the bath. She had run it hot, filling the bathroom with steam, clouding the mirror and the window. The water was scalding; at first her nerves misfired, and she was puzzled by the brief sensation that she was climbing into cold water. She slid down and the heat soaked through, bringing her skin out watermelon pink, beading her nose and upper lip with sweat. Her cut stung and pulsed, she could feel the blood pushing through her. Her hair stuck to her face, damp with steam and sweat. She closed her eyes. She ducked her head under.
Guilt so bad it made her curl up small and wrap her arms around herself in the water. Memories of last night buckling and twisting with images of Grainne in Paul’s arms, her pale naked skin slipping in, displacing Claire’s yellowish flesh. Which is how it should be, how it was. Grainne’s smooth slim arms round his neck, Paul pressing his face into her hair. Claire in bed, in the spare bedroom, awake, aware. Which was jealousy, not guilt, Claire realised, pressing her eyes shut tighter, feeling sick. His touch still haunted her breast; she could almost taste him still. At least, she thought, surfacing, sucking in air, I didn’t say anything.
On the corner of the bath, by Claire’s red and wrinkled left big toe, was Grainne’s soapbox. Neat, pale green, Clinique embossed on the top. She had forgotten it. She would be annoyed, and anxious, Claire knew. Her skin was sensitive, prone to break out in rashes of tiny pale
unobtrusive spots. She hated going into work with spots, however unnoticeable. Claire smiled at the memory of Grainne’s morning gloom over a slight bump on her chin. Spots undermined the pupil-teacher relationship, she had announced, and Claire had done her best not to crack up.
“What, what?” Grainne had asked, and Claire had been unable to explain why she was laughing.
“What?”
Grainne. She could almost see the unlocked door swing open and Grainne come in, as she often did, unbuttoning her trousers.
“If you didn’t take so long in the bath …”
Claire, her back towards the toilet, almost thought she heard the slap of naked thigh against plastic, the hiss and splash of Grainne’s piss. Claire splashed her hands in the foamy bathwater.
“Listen, Grainne,” she muttered.
The toilet roll would rattle on its holder.
“I have to tell you something.”
Soft scuffling noises.
“I fucked your boyfriend.”
Trousers being pulled up, buttoned. “Ah, right.”
A pause, then the rush and gurgle of the toilet flush.
“So what did you think? He’s good isn’t he?”
“He was fucking great.”
Claire closed her eyes, breathed out sharply, wiped her face with her hands. She didn’t know his phone number, or even his address. She had no fucking clue how to get in touch, and even if she had, she realised, lifting her bent knee to inspect the pulsing cut on her ankle, there was no way she would have the balls to phone. But, when he had reached out for her last night, his face cut and hurt, he had looked at her, and had seemed to see someone he recognised. Someone he knew, and wanted. Claire, suddenly caught up by the dizzying knowledge that she was there, had been unable to speak. But what she had wanted to know more than anything else, and had wished that she could ask him, and was now glad that she hadn’t, was what he’d seen.