by Jo Baker
“Course,” Claire said, with no real sense of what this meant. They stopped at the office door. Gareth rifled through his keys.
“If she changed the locks,” he said, “you’ll be needing somewhere to stay.”
A glass-and-brick church on the corner. On its gable wall, a clock, ten to three, and, in bold white script, Time is short. The car slowed. Gareth shifted down a gear.
“Paisley’s place—go check out the windows sometime. Himself at the stations of the cross, almost.”
They turned the corner. A broad street, front lawns, three-storey shabby-grand redbrick semis. Gareth stopped the car.
“This is us.”
He got out, slammed the door behind him. Claire shuffled her bag out of the seat well, fumbled for the doorhandle. Outside, on the pavement, Gareth pulled the door open for her and held it as she struggled out. He shut it neatly behind her.
“This is yours?” Claire asked.
“This is mine,” Gareth said. He turned to go up the path, tossed his keys up in the air, caught them. “Well, I share it with Dermie, and the building society owns most of it. But it’s home.”
The hallway was dim and cool. Claire stood blinking. A hall table with a telephone. A silky wooden floor. Darkly carpeted stairs, soft light from the landing window silvering each tread. Gareth pushed open a panelled white door.
“Front room,” he said, then stepped aside to let her peer in. The curtains were drawn: she got an impression of quiet uncluttered space. “Dining room.” She turned back into the hall, towards Gareth. “And there’s a loo under the stairs. Come on up.”
He set off up the stairs, two treads at a time. Claire followed.
“Bathroom—” She glanced in, and he was off again, up a brief flight towards the front of the house. “That one’s my room—I’m using this one as an office at the moment but I can clear it out no bother if you’d like it. Or further up—”
He turned and set off again, thumping up the narrowing staircase. He paused on the half-landing. A skylight looked out into clear blue.
“You okay? You’ll soon get used to it.”
Breathless, she followed him to the top.
“The back room’s probably quieter, but the front one’s bigger.”
He pushed the door open and they stepped inside. The room was empty. Bare boards, white walls, the whole room full of diffuse, moving light. The window looked out into the green stirring branches of a tree. Claire breathed.
“Thought you might like it. We’ll bring you up a bed later on. Or a mattress. That’d be less hassle on the stairs. You’d be okay with just a mattress, wouldn’t you?”
“That’d be great.”
“Me and Dermie are just below, so you’ll have to behave yourself.”
“I will. How much—?”
“Ah, don’t be worrying about that, now. We’ll worry about that as and when.”
“I’m not sure I can afford—”
“Och, wise up, will you. That’s what I’m telling you. Nothing. No rent. Gratis. Free. On the house. See if you like it, see how we get on, see how it goes. Then we’ll see about rent.”
“No. Are you sure? No, really. I can’t.”
“Now don’t try changing my mind. It won’t work.”
She grinned at him, let the bag slide off her shoulder, down her arm. It hit the floor with a sigh.
“Thank you.”
“No bother. But I’d best be off now. If they notice they can run the place without me, I’m done for.” He tossed his keys into the air. “There should be hot water if you fancy a bath. And help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. I’ll see you later. It’s half-seven you’re due in, did we say? Can you find your way back from here?”
“I think so. Thank you.”
“No bother.” He turned to go.
“Gareth.”
“Yep.” He looked back at her, hand on the banister.
“I was going to sleep in the park.”
He snorted. “Yeah, right,” he said. “And you’re supposed to be the clever one.”
She unlocked the back door, pushed it open. A shaft of light slipped into the dark indoors. She saw a strip of algaed concrete, an overgrown, grass-tangled lawn, and beyond it a fence, and the back of another house.
As she filled the kettle at the tap, she could see her face, stretched out and liquid, in the rounded metal surface. She glanced into cupboards, found teabags, mugs, pyrex dishes, an empty biscuit barrel, tins of tomatoes, corn and beans, a jar of peanut butter and a half-finished loaf of Ormo bread, its wrapper twisted tight. She made toast, spread it thick with peanut butter. She licked her finger and picked up crumbs from the counter.
Sitting in the sunlit doorway, half indoors, half out, she tugged up her trouserlegs and sleeves to let the sun warm her skin. Claggy peanut butter stuck to the roof of her mouth; she teased it off with her tongue. Crumbs rolled down her shirt, down her chest, lodged in her bra. The hot tea seemed to go solid in her mouth. She swallowed it in lumps.
The concrete gave off a tangy, green smell, like the river. She felt her cheeks burn. She felt the grit pressing into the heels of her hands, felt the lino gently give under her weight. She felt the arch of her shoulders, the locked joints of her elbows. She flexed her toes, spread them out like a fan, watched them as they moved. She laid her feet flat on the concrete. It felt warm and damp, like river rocks, like the reservoir overflow when the water’s low. She stood up and walked, feeling the soft growth of the algae, the sharp stipple underneath. She stepped off the concrete onto the grass. Her feet found the dark places between the growth. She felt the soft damp earth, the tangled grass like hair knotting round her toes, the flick and shiver of tiny life.
Claire slept that night, and did not dream. Her muscles grew heavy and soft, her mind dark and smooth as cat fur. Pressed down onto the mattress, tugged in tight towards the centre of the earth, her legs and arms flung wide, her head thrown back, as if to stop herself from sinking. A blanket lay across her body, smoothing over escarpments, hollows, scars. Her lips had fallen open. The rise and fall of her breath barely, slightly, folded and refolded the blanket’s shadows.
A pint glass of water, two-thirds full, smeared with fingerprints, stood beside the mattress. Her bag slouched, crumpled on the floor. Shoes, dark and empty, worn to the shape of her naked, vulnerable feet, lay askew, laces trailing, underneath the window. The windowpane refracted sodium-orange light. Pocked and wrinkled, soft; like water. And outside the window, in the streetlamp’s glow, the leaves rippled and stirred, they whispered.
Beneath, in thickly curtained darkness, Gareth and Dermot lay sleeping, Dermot’s hand resting lightly on Gareth’s hip. A thick duvet covered them, making them a little too hot, making them dream. Discarded clothes, reeking of cigarette smoke, lay in two heaps on the bare wooden floor.
In the bathroom, a droplet gathered on the faucet, fell. Shadows sliced, dipped down the smooth stairs. The living room was full of orange glow and silence. Green lights flickered on the video recorder, indicating the decibels of unheard speech and music. In the kitchen, the fridge clicked into gear, it hummed.
Lined up along the street, underneath the moving, rustling trees, were beetle-sheened cars, cool to the touch. Somebody’s black-and-white cat was folded into an under-car shadow. A car skimmed past the end of the street, a blur. Going fast to catch the early-morning ferry. The driver, tired and headachy, considered for a moment the way the sky was growing pale towards the east, the way the profile of the hills was cut against the sky, and remembered the flatness of the landlocked town that he was heading for, its emptiness. His headlights slid across the park, raked through the arched cave of a rhododendron’s branches, where a young man shivered in his sleep, curled himself up tighter, smaller, amongst the leathery fallen leaves. He muttered words from his dream. A truck passed, a snarling dog in the dark inside his mind, a bread van, the back stacked with fluffy, plastic-wrapped loaves, driven by Rosie, whose back was killing her
, and whose period would, she hoped, be starting soon. Indicator ticking quietly, the van filtered onto the motorway, slipped in to join the increasing, thickening flow of traffic, heading south.
Above, a seagull drifted across the paling sky. The streetlamps dimmed, blinked out.
TWELVE
The traffic lights changed. Gareth released the handbrake, revved high against the pull of the hill. He swung the car right, across two lanes, into a wide suburban street.
“When I first got the car, three–four years ago, I brought Dermie up here,” he said.
They passed pebble-dashed semis, parked cars, garden walls. The car slowed, climbing, engine labouring.
“Thing was, I hadn’t driven in years.”
He changed down a gear. They passed the last of the houses. The road narrowed, growing steeper. Claire watched the blur of thick hawthorn, saw foxgloves and a clump of dog daisies. Long grass and gauzy cow-parsley brushed the side of the car.
“But I’d promised Dermie I’d take him up to the Rocky Road. So we drove up here and the car was getting slower and slower and slower as the hill got steeper. And instead of changing down like any sensible person would, I kept on changing up. The engine was revving to high heaven and the car was slowing down and all I could do was shout the car’s broken, the car’s broken, like a total eejit. Had my foot to the floor and still it kept slowing down until we got to about here,” he said, changing down again, “when we started rolling backwards.”
Claire turned, smiled at his profile.
“What happened?”
“I remembered the handbrake. Thanks be to God.”
The road levelled out ahead of them. They passed a fieldgate. Claire glimpsed a stretch of grass, a stationary head-bent cow.
“Can’t believe you’ve never been up here, you know.”
“Bit much on the bike.”
They turned right onto a two-lane road, passed a solitary villa, then turned right again, indicator ticking. And by association, as the indicator ticked, Claire found herself imagining a line dot dot dotting itself out across a map, her route from here to there and back again. And intersecting this, and paralleling it, and diverging, other lines. Her mother’s. The people in those fading photographs. Alan, Gareth, Margaret. Each line intricately connected. It was not, it could never be, fixed and finished.
“Sometimes I forget you’re not from here,” Gareth said.
She hugged her legs up towards her, tucked her feet onto the seat and felt the sun on her bare shins.
“Just a little bit further,” he said, “then you’ll see.”
They rumbled over rippled, pale concrete, towards empty sky.
“There.”
Gareth stopped the car, hitched up the handbrake. They had come to a halt on the cusp of the hill, high above the city. Nothing but air between them and the far hills. Below, buildings encrusted the valley like salt in a drying rockpool. The lough was brilliant blue, the sky was clear. Claire watched a seagull dip, lift, turn on an updraft.
“What a great place,” Claire said, “to build a city.”
They sat in silence, looking.
“What’s that?” Gareth said.
“What?” Claire watched the tiny cars moving through the city streets. Pushing and jostling like corpuscles.
“That.”
She glanced back at him, face soft with a smile. He was staring down at her exposed leg, his face compressed.
“What have you done,” he said.
Her chest cramped. She glanced at her naked ankle, the still obvious marks of her cutting. She reached down to tug at the hem of her trousers.
“Shit,” she said.
He took her hand, held it.
“What have you done to yourself?”
She straightened her legs quickly, lowering her feet down into the seat well.
“It’s nothing,” she said, gently tugging Gareth’s hand, smiling uneasily, but he would not let go.
“Jesus Christ, Claire,” he said.
The tone of his voice was unsettling. Claire drew her lips in against her teeth, shrugged slightly, couldn’t think what to say.
“Jesus, Claire, what made you go and do that?”
She felt a slow blush creep across her face.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why sorry? It’s not a question of sorry,” he said. He sounded angry, but when he leant over and took hold of her lower leg, brought her foot back up to rest on the seat, he was gentle. She watched as he drew up her trouserleg, ran his fingertips cautiously over the scars.
“Why on under God would you go and do a thing like that?” he said. He looked up at her, continued looking steadily at her face. He was waiting for an answer. She still couldn’t think what to say.
“I—” Claire hesitated. “I haven’t done it for a while now.”
Cautiously, she met his eyes. They were, she noticed, grey. He shook his head slowly.
“Why would you go and be so completely cruel to yourself?”
He waited a moment, but she couldn’t answer. “You wouldn’t even for a moment consider being anything like that cruel to someone else … In fact, don’t think I’ve even ever heard a harsh word out of you.”
“I’m full of harsh words,” she said.
“I don’t believe you.”
“You should hear me when I get going.”
He shook his head again.
“You mustn’t do that again. You have to promise me you won’t.”
She couldn’t answer.
“If you ever feel like you have to, just you come and be nasty to me instead.”
He tapped her shin gently, almost playfully. “No knives now, no razors, you understand. I’m a big wuss really, under this tough exterior …” She found herself beginning to smile. His tone shifted, becoming grave again. “But any harsh words, you come to me. I don’t want to find you’ve been up to this again.”
“Okay,” she said, slowly.
“Just remember, for harsh words, I’m your man. Just you get them off your chest.”
She looked down at his hand, and at the contours of her skin and bone and muscle. The most recent cuts were already old; they were pink, puckered, healing. And the earlier ones, fading, had become a fine tracery of lines and loops and spirals, had begun to have the intricate allusiveness of a map. They were, she realised, beginning to be beautiful.
Claire eased the lever forward, angled the glass under the flow. She watched the liquid stream into the glass. Straighten gradually. Fill only two-thirds full. Concentrating, eyes half shut, she straightened the pint glass, set it down on the drip tray. She turned to Gareth, raised her eyebrows. He half nodded, half smiled, encouraging.
“That’ll be two pounds please,” she said.
Tommy counted out the coins from a dry, creased palm. He placed them in her hand. His fingernails were ridged and hard and yellow. She turned to the till, slowly, listening to the list in her head. Guinness, total, cash. Guinness total cash. Press the keys in that order and the till’ll do the rest. And receipt. Hand over the receipt. However drunk they are, they can’t argue with a receipt. Not that Tommy was drunk. It was only his second pint. She scanned the touch-pad, pressed the keys in turn. The cash drawer sprang open: Claire jumped. She glanced round at Gareth. He was creasing up, grinning.
“I’ll never get used to it,” she said.
“You’re doing grand. You’ve only just started.”
Claire turned back to the bar, lifted the glass, pulled on the lever again. She watched the liquid swirl and boil. It looked like floodwater. Peaty floodwater straight off the moors. She placed the full glass down in front of Tommy. Carefully, dead-centre of the barmat. They watched his pint settle. The foam gathered, rose, did not overflow. She smiled. He reached out a papery hand, lifted the glass. He held it to his lips, drank.
“Not bad,” he said. He sucked the foam from his upper lip. “Not a bad pint.”
She grinned.
“Thanks.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ve been away,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“But you’re back now.” His eyes were watery, blue. The pink bits at the corners looked sore.
“Yes.”
“And everything’s all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I think so.”
“Good.” He settled back on his barstool, settled down to his pint.
The door opened. She glanced up. Paul walked in. He wouldn’t have seen her yet. That change from daylight to bar-light blinded everyone for a moment. She watched him walk towards her, pressed her palms down on the counter, hoisted herself onto her toes. Smiled.
He saw her. She saw the moment that he saw her. She saw him register her, hesitate, then decide to carry on. Just the slightest flicker in his stride. She watched him come towards her, scanning the bar, head turning, looking everywhere but at her, as if he was expecting to see someone he knew, even though it was perfectly obvious that the place was dead. Making out he hadn’t seen her, that as far as he was concerned, she wasn’t even there. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out his cigarettes. He came to a halt at the counter, flicked the packet open.
“Hi,” she said.
He tucked a cigarette between his lips, glanced up at her.
“Oh hi,” he said. “I didn’t see you there.”
He pulled a matchbox from a trouser pocket, shook it, pushed it open.
“You back then?” he said.
He watched himself pick out a matchstick, pinching it between his flat thumbnail and his index finger.
“Yes,” she said.
He struck the match, lit his cigarette.
“Right.”
He dropped the match into a clean ashtray.
“You on the bar now?” he said.
“Yes.”
He nodded slowly, slid a hand into his trouser pocket.
“I’ll have a pint of Stella then,” he said.
She reached down a glass, flicked the tap. She watched the beer flow into the glass, watched him without looking up. He stared out across the bar, towards the wrought-iron rails and the stone-clad wall.