by Jo Baker
“When I get round to decorating the bathroom,” Grainne said, “I’m going to paint it these colours.”
“The water’s beautiful. We should have brought our swimming stuff,” Claire said.
Grainne crouched to pick up a pebble. She skimmed it out across the water. It sliced into the surface, sank.
“It wouldn’t feel beautiful,” she said. “You’d be foundered. It’s very deep. And not very clean.”
“It doesn’t look polluted.”
“No, right enough, it looks fairly clean.” She scuffed her toe around, looking for further skimmers. “Sometimes you see the odd seal. So I s’pose it can’t be that bad.”
Claire strained her eyes after cormorants, ducks, buoys, as they bobbed and turned just nearly out of sight, hoping that what she could barely see was the blunt-nosed turning head of a seal. But it never was. A cormorant flapped its wings, a duck took off, a buoy bobbed too long in the one place.
On the far side of the lough, there were smokestacks, low industrial buildings, a lighthouse. White-sailed yachts scudded out towards the sea; bits and scraps of rainbows opened out like fans, folded away again. And, slowly, like a scenechange, the Stena HSS slid by, vast, incongruous, much too close.
“This place is incredible. You can’t quite believe it,” Claire said.
“It’s nice this time of year. Nice and quiet.”
“So many rainbows,” Claire said. “I’ve never seen so many rainbows.”
Grainne smiled.
“You get this much rain, you’re bound to get the odd rainbow.”
Which didn’t solve anything, Claire thought, stabbing at the pedestrian-crossing button with a forefinger. Which did not, in fact, help at all. The temple-square Customs House was behind her; she crossed the road towards McHughes’s. She would, she realised, be passing within whispering distance of Conroys. She felt herself bunch up inside, like a finger-touched snail. She wouldn’t be calling in. She couldn’t, yet.
A pink folded towel on the end of a neatly made bed, a warm dim room, pale curtains drawn against the streetlamps.
“I’m just glad the room’s ready. I’m only after decorating.”
“Right.”
“D’you like it? What do you think of the colours?”
Claire looked round at the pale walls, up at the dark reddish ceiling. “Yes. It’s nice.”
“Only, if you don’t like it, we can always change it—”
“No, no, it’s fine. It’s lovely. Cosy, you know.” Claire dropped her bag down on the floor. She smiled round at the curtains, the wardrobe, the chest of drawers. She felt again that sudden sad suspicion that she and Grainne would never quite be friends.
Which didn’t help either. Which only, in fact, made things worse. The sun was warm, almost directly overhead. St. George’s Market was scaffolded and rigged up with tarpaulins. The sheets snapped in the wind. A grey car passed, then a white van. She stood waiting unnecessarily on the kerb, looking out across the slate-blue tarmac. The lights changed and she crossed the empty road. The urgent bleep of the crossing insinuated itself into her stride, making her walk faster. No rush, no rush, she told herself, and dragged her feet back to slow. Get there soon enough. Get there far too soon. She stuffed her hands in her pockets, tugged her jacket tight around her. Not even her jacket, really, she thought, remembering Grainne chucking it at her as she had hesitated at the front door one evening. It had been raining, and she was coatless. Hang on to it, Grainne had said, for as long as you need it. I’ve got plenty. Claire watched as the breeze rolled decaying cigarette filters around in the gutter. Tiny whorls and plumes of dust were lifted, settled, lifted again.
Ormeau Avenue opened out to the right. Halfway down, concrete pillars and steel girders rose out of the ground, nursed by two tall mechanical cranes. It had been a carpark, not so long ago, Claire remembered. There had been cars pulled up snugly beside each other, an automatic barrier and a man who sat in a yellow fibreglass box and took money and handed over tickets. A fleece zipped up to his chin. It must have got so cold in the winter. Just him in his little pod and a hand stretched through the slot, chapped by the wind, soaked when it rained, always colder than the rest of him. Now there was a hoarding, a picture in elegant muted shades. A substantial, confident structure in red brick and glass. Claire peered at the lettering. A hotel and leisure complex. The artist had even sketched in the clientele and passers-by. Elegant, slim, busy people who nonetheless had the time to pause and chat to one another after work, on their way to drinks in the hotel bar or callisthenics class in the hotel gym. They didn’t seem real, these people. They must exist, or why build the hotel, but Claire couldn’t quite believe in them, or in their lives.
She passed the entrance to the old gasworks, glanced up at the high spiked railings, the chained and padlocked gates. Through the fence she could see sculptures: stone obelisks and bronze astrolabes on smooth, new-laid lawns. New offices and apartment blocks rising out of the old brown earth. Traffic lights, not yet hooked-up, not yet synchronised into the city’s choreography, stood blind, waiting for the gates to open, waiting for the streams of cars and vans and lorries and slim-legged boys on bikes with dispatch-bags over their shoulders. The buildings were unfinished, unfurnished, and, the billboard said, already sold. Who on earth bought these things, Claire wondered. Who purchased hectares of earth and metres of air and storeys of brick and glass and steel? Who earned enough to buy a place? Whoever it was, Claire thought, they wouldn’t be stopping to chat outside the new hotel-leisure-complex. They would be far too busy. They would be rushed off their feet.
She crossed the Ormeau Road slowly and inattentively, at an angle. She turned the corner into University Street. The breeze tugged at her hair, blew grit into her eyes, made her jacket billow and bulge. Ahead, visible between the bosomy Victorian terraces, was the dark gothic spire of Fitzroy Presbyterian Church. A corner of a flying buttress, a sliver of algaed tiles. Opposite the end of Wolseley Street. She would be passing right by. She wavered in mid-stride. Alan still lived there. He could be on his way back from the newsagent or from lunch at Maggie May’s or dragging the washing back from the laundrette. There were any number of reasons he would be walking down the street towards her now, just around the corner, just a step away. And her bags were still there. Her stuff still heaped up in the corner of the bedroom. Clothes that she couldn’t quite remember anymore. Odds and ends of winter-coloured make-up. A book or two. Her old ink pen. Unless he had thrown it all away.
Which he might have. She wouldn’t blame him if he had. He wouldn’t want her stuff lying in the corner of his bedroom, first thing he saw when he woke, last thing he saw when he went to bed. All this time. Claire could almost see him, the evening that she left, lugging her bags down the street, his breath misty in the lamplight. He would have heaved them off his shoulder, into a waiting skip. He would have turned away and rubbed his hands together as he walked back towards the flat. He would, perhaps, have smiled to himself.
She kept her eyes unfocused, looking vaguely down at the paving-slabs. If he was there, if he was nearby, if he was walking right at her shoulder, she wouldn’t see him; she was determined she wouldn’t see him. Because if she saw him, he would catch her eye and open his lips, and speak, and she would have to stop and stand there watching the spit sticking to his lips, or look down at his hands, flat against his thighs, and the words would loop around her again, drawing her back in, describing her, delineating her, marking her out.
The lights changed; she crossed.
She chewed the cuticle on her thumb, pressing her fingers down onto her cheekbone as she counted out the months. March April May June and now into July. Four and a bit. Four and a bit months. She should have taken a taxi and fetched her bags that first night. She should have got Grainne to drive her round that weekend. It could’ve been dealt with at that stage, if she’d only dealt with it at that stage. Because now it was too late, it had swelled and grown and been ignored, like a headache
you keep telling yourself is just a headache, but doesn’t go away.
She passed through the park gates. A custard-coloured cat sat in a patch of sun. The tarmac path wandered between lawns and shrubbery, meandering up towards the far gates. Grainne’s house. Just out of those gates and round the corner. A cramp in her ribcage made her flinch, curl up on herself. There should be a blade to draw across her arm. Lightly, sinking in a little like an inkpen into thick paper, and the skin beading with blood and the blood curling round the curve of her arm and dripping down to her wrist and trickling through her fingers to the ground, and the pain gathering itself together so she would clap her hand down over the cut and hold it there as it stung and smarted with the salt from her palm. It had all seemed to simple at home, when she was drinking tea with her mother in the half-light of the kitchen. She knew she had to get back and sort things out. She had to, somehow, deal with it. Quite how she would do this she had not considered, but she had nonetheless felt a kind of vague confidence that she would know, when the time came. But the time had come, and she did not know.
She tugged at a cuticle with her teeth, tore off a strip of skin. The flesh stung, but did not bleed. She turned the scrap of skin around with her tongue, bit through it again. Her shoes were wearing out. She could feel the sharp grit through her soles.
A tennis ball was thrown across the balding grass, bounced. A dog ran, low and fast, caught it on the rebound. A collie. Liver and white. It hared back towards its owner, a young woman in a green summer dress. The dog bounced up at her, ball between its teeth. The woman took it gingerly, grimacing, and Claire remembered the warm softness of a dog-spittled tennis ball, the rainbow in the shower of spit as Dad whacked the ball for six, and Moss speeding off up the village street after it. The young woman threw again. They had the park to themselves, today. They had the run of the place.
Claire climbed the sloping path out of the park, through the narrow arched gateway, onto Colenso Parade.
Everything would be blown sky-high. Everything would shatter. She would have to pick up all the sharp little bits and try and piece them back together again. She would have to find a new place to live. She would have to find a new job. Gareth would sack her. Of course he would sack her. If she told Grainne, that was it. It would be public knowledge. She would be on her own.
She turned the corner.
If she told Grainne it would hurt her, that was obvious. It would hurt Grainne and it would solve nothing except for the aching muddle in Claire’s mind. And it wasn’t worth it. When it came down to it, she could live with the ache. It would be better, it would be more responsible, really, to live with it: confession would only pass the pain along, increase it.
She climbed the concrete steps to the front door, rummaged in her pocket for her key. She hesitated.
What day was it? Monday? Grainne would be at work. If it wasn’t July. The school holidays must have started. Claire stood, hand in pocket, listening. Nothing. No TV, no radio, no music playing. Maybe she was round at Paul’s. Maybe she was out shopping. Maybe she was curled up on the sofa with her Elle Decoration and a cup of tea. From where she stood, Claire couldn’t see past the dusty slats of the venetian blinds, but she wouldn’t move any closer to the window. Grainne might be in there, looking out. Claire glanced down at the tiny front garden. At her feet the silver-grey sage bush was wilting, the leaves curling up, going powdery. Unwatered. So perhaps she was away. Perhaps she had gone on holiday. Perhaps she had gone off travelling for a month or two. Or perhaps she had just forgotten to water it. She did sometimes.
It was never meant to be a permanent thing, her living at Grainne’s house. It was only supposed to be until she got herself sorted out, until she got herself settled. So the obvious thing was to sort herself out. If she got a new job, if she started looking for a room, it wouldn’t be long before she could move. Simple as that. No big deal, no questions asked. Just gone.
And if she bumped into Grainne in the street afterwards, they would be all hi and hugs and how are you, and Claire would apologise for not calling, and they’d talk for a while, and agree they should go out for a drink sometime, and Claire would promise to phone. But she would, somehow, never get round to it. It would slip her mind: she would lose the number, or always manage to phone while Grainne was out. And after a while, it wouldn’t take too long, Grainne would stop telling herself she must get in touch, stop expecting to hear from Claire altogether, stop thinking about her entirely. No big deal. That kind of thing happened all the time. People lost touch. They drifted apart.
Claire exhaled, felt her shoulders loosen. It was the best thing to do, she was sure of it. It was the best thing for everybody. After a while, no one would really notice she was gone. It wouldn’t be fun, but it would be okay. It would be better than anything else she could think of.
She reached up, slipped her key into the lock, prepared a smile. It would be okay. It would be okay. It would take a couple of weeks to get things sorted out, then she would be out of there. For good. She could handle that. Just a couple of weeks. No need for explanations, no need for arguments, no more harm done. It was for the best. Eventually, it would all work out right. She turned the key.
It didn’t move.
Puzzled, she twisted it the other way. It still wouldn’t budge. She pulled it out, stood looking at it. Chrome-plated, copied from Grainne’s original. It couldn’t be the wrong key. It was, in fact, the only key she possessed. And it was smooth, straight, undamaged.
She glanced back up at the door. Number 12 in dull brass italic numerals, blue paint, stained glass. A brass handle and a Yale lock. It was the right door. But, she realised, it was the wrong lock. The keyplate was bright, undulled by weather. Grainne had changed the lock.
She knew.
And she might, at any moment, come back from wherever she’d been. Her car might pull round the corner, slide up to the door, and she would slip out, come slinking up towards her—or she still might be sitting quietly inside, waiting, waiting for the sound of the wrong key in the lock, waiting to—
—to what?
Claire was halfway across the park, still going fast, when the thought occurred to her. Exactly what did she expect Grainne to do?
Hit her? Kill her?
There were girls at school who, when they got their shoes dirty or tore their skirts, would say, my mum’ll kill me, but they were always back at school the next day, alive and well, with freshly shined shoes and sewn-up tears.
She slowed down, dug her nails into her arm. She had come back to sort it all out, and there she was, running away again. And running out of places to run to.
Glossy leaves reflected back the sun. Bushes heavy with blossom. A solitary magpie stalking across the grass. The park was silent, deserted. The woman and her dog had gone. Claire rubbed a hand through her hair, walked slowly on. If Grainne knew, who else knew? Desperately, Claire tried to trace the pattern of infection, to work out who might still be ignorant.
The cat was still sitting in the sun, paws tucked up, eyes squeezed shut. Claire walked out through the wrought-iron gates, past the graffiti-scribbled walls, back down Botanic Avenue. Her bag bumped against her back, dragging on her shoulder as she walked, the rhythm of its movement beginning to subdue her skitterish thoughts. Toothbrush, pyjamas, make-up, clothes. Toothbrush, pyjamas, make-up, clothes. Things. Her things. Her things in her backpack. All that she had got left, thumping against her as she walked. Toothbrush, pyjamas, make-up, clothes. She’d abandoned everything else, leaving it behind her, deposited in different places. Little pockets of possessions. Pinned to her old bedroom wall. Pushed into the corner of Alan’s bedroom. Piled around the edges of Grainne’s spare room. Books and clothes and just the one photograph. Mum and Dad on the doorstep, she pregnant and miniskirted, Dad with a cheroot clamped between his teeth, reaching out to grab the dog, to turn its attention to the camera. Faded to a pinky-orange now, the glass dusty and fingerprinted. On the dresser in Grainne’s spare room. And no
w, now that probably everybody knew, there wasn’t anywhere left in the city, there wasn’t anywhere to go. Just the loops and tangles of streets, endless, knotted, twisting back on themselves.
They locked the park gates at night, but she could climb them. There would be darkness underneath the rhododendrons. She could crawl under the branches, lie down on the damp earth, on the dead leaves, her eyes open in the dark. Distant voices getting closer, a movement that might be the cat, a sigh that might be a breeze or might be breath. City dark was not like dark at home. City dark was inhabited.
But it was still day, and the city seemed strangely empty. She saw one car, a little red car, briskly turn the corner onto Botanic Avenue, and accelerate away. Rushing home. She realised she had seen hardly anyone since she left the Seacat terminal. Just that woman in the park with her dog, and that was it. Where were they all, the passers-by, the danderers? Worse than the crowded city dark, this empty daylit city. Unnatural. She looked around her, unsure of what she was looking for, unsure of where she should be going.
She was past the door before she noticed that Vincent’s was open. Windows gaped onto the dark and smoky interior. A handful of customers lingered in the dim room. People, at last. She found herself melting with relief. She turned on her heel and went back. She pushed in through the door. She found herself smiling. She would sit for a while. She would drink a cup of coffee. She would let the cigarette smoke and coffee fumes and voices wash over her. Human scents, human sounds. She would let herself be enveloped. Just for a while. Then, later, she would work out what to do.
There was an empty table near the counter. As she walked over towards it, Claire picked through a handful of change, counting. One pound fifty. Should be enough for a coffee. She sat down.