Connor put down his mug and lay back on the bed. He stared up at the ceiling. She’s so bloody secretive, he thought. Saves secrets like sweets. Eats them in private.
Sam moved to the end of the bed and pulled off his boots. He looked around the room again from his new vantage point and then held out his arms to her. ‘Let’s get this over with before your mother comes back in with lemonade and biscuits.’
Brera knocked on Sylvia’s door and waited for her to answer. After a minute or so and a certain amount of scuffling and fluttering, Sylvia opened the door several inches and peered out.
‘What?’
Brera offered her a mug of tea and a plate of sandwiches. Sylvia slid her hand through the crack and took the tea. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You should eat. I haven’t even seen you since yesterday night when you went out. Where did you go?’
‘Nowhere.’
Brera resisted the temptation to shove her foot into the crack in the door. Instead she said quickly, ‘Sam’s got her new friend around. Did you hear them come in?’
‘No.’
‘He’s in a band too. They’ve been on television. He’s called Connor. Sounds a bit American.’
Sylvia’s face disappeared for a moment and then returned. ‘I’ll have a sandwich. Only one, though. Thanks.’
Her hand darted out and took a sandwich. Brera smiled. Sylvia nodded and then closed the door. Brera swallowed down her irritation. She went into the living-room, picked up her guitar and started to sing ‘A Pair of Brown Eyes’, strumming along in time.
Connor was mid-way through removing his trousers when he heard the conversation commence between Brera and Sylvia. He thought, I can’t sustain an erection with those two chatting away like they’re in the same room.
He pulled his trousers back on and did up the buttons. Sam groaned, exasperated, from her position on the bed and grabbed hold of her T-shirt. ‘Why don’t we go back to your flat? It was you who wanted to come here in the first place.’
Connor had half an ear on the conversation in the hallway. He turned down the music on the tape recorder and said, ‘I didn’t mean for us to come here for sex. I just wanted to meet everybody.’
He listened to their voices again. ‘Your sister’s voice is so hoarse. She sounds like Rod Stewart. Does she sing?’
Sam laughed. ‘What do you think? She writes a weird kind of music. Like jazz but less tuneful. That’s her contribution to things. She likes doing it. It’s kind of methodical. She’s hardly even got a speaking voice, though, let alone a singing one.’
As she spoke, Sam put on her T-shirt and picked up a book from her bedside table.
Connor moved a few steps closer to the door. He heard Brera mention his name.
Sam said tiredly, ‘It’s her allergy. If she tries to sing or shout her voice disappears altogether.’
‘It sounds amazing, though, really distinctive.’
Sam looked up at him. ‘The only reason she talks that way is because she’s gradually choking herself. It’s a slow process of strangulation.’
Connor felt foolish for being so enthusiastic. He turned towards her and changed the subject. ‘What’s that you’re reading?’
She turned the page. ‘Something about Hélène Cixous. She’s this brilliant French intellectual. I’ve read all her stuff, but it’s difficult. She’s very controversial. She won’t even call herself a feminist because feminism’s too bourgeois.’
Connor looked down at the plate on the floor. ‘What sort of cheese did your mother say this was?’
Sylvia sat on the end of her bed and drank her tea. The weather was turning. The day had started off warm and sticky. Now the sky was clouding over, was grey, heavy, lowering. The birds - at least a hundred or so - had flown inside as a consequence, in anticipation of the storm to come. They lined the walls of Sylvia’s room, chattering and bickering. Several bounced to and fro across the carpet, scratching, preening and flapping their wings.
Sylvia thought, Above the bird noise I can hear Sam talking with that man. What are they discussing? What are they doing?
Sometimes she imagined what it would be like to have a male companion, but she couldn’t really conceive of herself doing the things that normal women did. She couldn’t imagine herself wanting the things that normal women wanted. She tried to feel pride in her abnormality, but she often felt as though her abnormality had become the only normal thing about her, the only relevant thing.
She sat on the end of her bed and drained the cup of its last few drops of tea. As she swallowed her tea, the incident in the park popped into her mind. The tea turned into dirty water in her mouth. She tried to swallow in air as the tea went down but she could not. She gagged on the liquid and it choked her. She imagined herself in the lake, with the mud and the slime and the tin cans. She imagined that she was the young girl and that she could not swim. She did not feel remorse, just fear. She wished that she could tie a tourniquet around her imagination, a piece of strong rope or cloth that could effectively cut off all dangerous ideas and fanciful notions, stop the flow of her thoughts from streaming, frothing, flooding and overwhelming her.
She could hear Brera singing in the living-room with her guitar. She tried to concentrate on this sound and to block out everything else. Then she heard Sam’s voice. Sam had been laughing and talking before, but now she too had started to sing. Her voice toned in with Brera’s perfectly. Brera sang in a higher register with a Celtic twang. Sam sounded very low and clear, like a soft, brown thrush - intense and lyrical.
She heard Sam emerge from her room and walk towards Brera’s voice, still singing herself. She rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. They infuriated her. She found them unbearably smug and confident, like nuns or traffic wardens - self-assured and immensely self-motivated. Pure.
She inspected the eczema on her hands and wrists. The skin here was bumpy and itchy, some of it moist and shiny. She pulled off a scab which covered the tender flesh that linked the space between her finger and thumb. Her eyes watered. She enjoyed this strum of pain, lost herself in it and savoured its tone.
Suddenly she saw the little girl’s face in the chafed and pinky pattern of her flesh, imagined for a second how the cold water would have felt entering her nose and throat, covering her eyes.
The sound of Connor’s hesitant tread in the hallway distracted her. She stopped breathing for a moment and listened out for the slight noises he made, her head to one side, eyes closed. He had a light tread. Must be thin, she thought. His step seemed tentative, well-meaning, self-conscious. She heard him enter the living-room and began breathing again. The air she drew into her lungs felt dry and coarse. It rattled in her throat. She coughed for a short while then swallowed down a mouthful of phlegm.
Connor was singing now too. He was doing a comic version of Dolly Parton’s ‘Love is like a Butterfly’, in a low, brash voice. She could hear the two women laughing. She put her hands over her ears, imagined that her hands were like shells, and the noise of the blood, the compressed air in her ears, the wail in her head, was really the sea. She stood on a bone-pale beach. It was an airless place.
* * *
TEN
Ruby awoke to the sound of the telephone ringing. She opened her eyes and tried to pull herself up straight. She’d been slumped over sideways on to her bedside table. Her face felt strange, like warm wax that had set overnight into a distorted, lopsided shape. Her neck ached, even her tongue ached and her body felt, in its entirety, distinctly askew.
Vincent was there. Ugh! She looked at him. A horrible face. Dirty. Phlegm, mucus, special smells. Blood, dried. Everything inside spilling out.
His face was a solid bruise. He was a car accident, still jumbled. She had no clear impression of him. Not mentally, not visually. It was bright in her room, a yellow-white brightness, reflecting unkindly off him.
She sprang out of bed to answer the ringing. She was still wearing her cardigan, which she pulled close around her, and her T-
shirt, which she noticed had coffee stains down the front.
The telephone - it had a long extension cord - was situated in the centre of the draining-board next to the sink. She picked up the receiver. ‘Yeah? Ruby here.’
She licked a finger and applied it, somewhat hopelessly, to the stain.
‘You sound rough.’
She didn’t recognize the voice. ‘Hold on.’
She put down the receiver, turned on the cold tap and stuck her head under it, inhaling sharply as the water gushed over her hair, into her ears and down her neck. She turned it off and shook her head, like a dog after a dip, then picked up the receiver again. ‘Hi.’
She felt the water dripping down her back and her face. Eventually a voice said, ‘Hello, Ruby?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Donald Sheldon. Is it too early?’
‘I’ve been up ages,’ she lied. He’d never phoned her before.
He said, ‘Actually, I’d like to see you. This afternoon if it’s possible.’
‘Oh. OK.’
‘There’s a café near Seven Sisters tube.’ He described its precise location. ‘We could meet twelve-ish.’
Twelve was too early.
‘Yeah, that’s fine. Seven Sisters. Twelve-ish.’
‘See you then.’
She put down the receiver and walked into the bathroom to look for a towel. She found one slung over the edge of the bath and wrapped up her dripping hair in it before putting the plug in the bath and turning on the taps.
Back in her bedroom, she rooted out a pair of jeans, a black vest and some clean underwear. Vincent lay across the bed, his legs spread, his feet dangling off the end. His arms, she noticed, now held a pillow over his face. She said, ‘I wouldn’t do that. Someone might be tempted to press down on it.’
He said nothing.
She returned to the bathroom. While she undressed, she debated how soon it would be acceptable to ask him to leave. She tested the water with her hand, climbed in, then lay back and relaxed, staring abstractly beyond her breasts, her knees, her toes, at the taps and the steam from the water.
Vincent felt like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly. That inbetween stage. A pupa. His skin, hard, semi-impervious; himself, inside, withered and formless.
He was not himself. His head bumped and pumped. The light, the morning, scorched him.
During the night he had awoken, he didn’t know what time, and had found a girl, a stranger, next to him. Her hip near his chin. Wool, scratching; cold skin. He had pressed his forehead against her thigh. It had cooled him.
And now it was morning. He needed something. Had to stretch his body - that crumpled thing - his mind, his tongue.
Ruby picked up a bar of soap and started to build up a lather. What does Sheldon want? she wondered. What does he want from me? Her toes curled at the prospect. She stared at them and thought, Why am I doing that with my feet?
Vincent stood on the other side of the bathroom door with his hand on the handle. He shouted, ‘You could’ve told me you were having a bath.’
Ruby dropped the soap and covered her breasts. ‘Don’t you dare come in.’
‘I have no intention of coming in,’ he said scathingly. After a pause he added, ‘Why the hell did you bring me here? I’ve had the worst time.’
She gasped at this, her expression a picture, and shouted, ‘I didn’t bring you here.’
‘Well, I didn’t get here on my own.’
His voice sounded muffled, further away now. ‘Do you always live like this?’
She stood up, indignant, and stepped out of the bath. ‘Like what?’
Silence, then, ‘Forget it.’
‘Like what?’
She grabbed a towel, wrapped it around her and pulled open the door. ‘Live like what?’
He was standing in the kitchen, looking inside one of her cupboards. He glanced at her, in the towel. ‘For a minute there,’ he said, grinning, ‘I thought you were a natural blonde. But it’s only foam.’
She yanked the towel straight. With his cut, his pale, white face, the bruises, the suggestion of a black eye, he looked like Frankenstein’s monster. But he didn’t frighten her. She said calmly, ‘Get out of my flat.’
He grimaced. ‘Some hospitality. I have a migraine and all you can do is shout.’
‘Yeah?’ She smiled. ‘Well, I think you should go.’
She returned to the bathroom, closed the door, dropped her towel.
He said, ‘I have a blotch. I’m going blind. You expect me to go when I can’t even see straight?’
She stared at the bath. ‘Well, whose fault is that?’
She picked up her towel and started to dry herself. She heard the cupboard close.
‘Yours. You shouldn’t have paid my bail.’
She rubbed herself vigorously.
‘And lunch. I only get migraines from gherkins.’
‘What?’
‘An allergy.’
She laughed. She was glad that he had an allergy.
He listened to her laughing. Smiled at it. He liked her flat. It was central. He sat down on the sofa, picked up one of the empty vodka bottles, sniffed the neck of it and winced.
Eventually she emerged, fully dressed, made up, her teeth brushed and her hair gelled.
‘I made you some tea.’ He held out a mug to her.
She took it from him. ‘Aren’t you having any?’
He shook his head. ‘Couldn’t keep it down.’
‘Did you try?’
‘I had some water.’
She sipped the tea. It was lukewarm. ‘How are you feeling?’
He shrugged.
‘What are you going to do?’
He shrugged again.
‘Will you go home? Are you up to it?’
He cleared his throat. ‘May I use your bathroom?’
‘Of course you can.’
Once he’d closed the door she shouted, ‘I’m going out in a minute. Should I trust you here alone?’
‘I wouldn’t.’
She put down her mug of tea. ‘Only a trustworthy person would’ve said that.’
‘Think what you like.’
‘I will.’
She picked up her keys. She was insured. She needed a new stereo, anyway.
Donald Sheldon - self-appointed king of Hackney Wick - was a short, squat man with thick, wavy hair and skin the colour of roasted peanuts. He was drinking a foamy coffee and wore an expensive business suit. Ruby was nervous, had thought too much about meeting him.
‘Am I late?’
He shrugged. ‘Ten minutes. Coffee?’
She nodded. ‘Thanks.’
He manoeuvred himself out from behind the table and strolled over to the counter. Ruby watched him. She regularly saw him down at the track. He trained mainly at Hackney, but she was well informed that he ran his dogs wherever he could. She’d often seen him interviewed on SIS, the racing channel.
He returned to the table, carrying her coffee, holding on to its saucer. She looked down at his hands and saw that he wore rings on most fingers but none that seemed like a wedding ring. He sat down again. ‘I’ve seen you at Hackney a lot. You obviously enjoy the sport.’
She nodded.
‘How old do you think I am?’
This question surprised her. She stared at his face, his thick hair, his good tan. She wanted to flatter him: ‘Forty, forty-two.’
He smiled. ‘Forty-eight. I’ve been racing dogs since I was fourteen.’
‘Thirty-four years.’
‘I first went to Hackney when I was five, with my dad. You might get to meet him later.’
She stared at him, bemused, wondering where his dad fitted into the equation.
He smiled fondly, but more to himself than at her. ‘My dad got me my first dog. He helped pay for it by putting his every last penny on Pigalle Wonder in the 1958 London Cup. A great champion: big, but well balanced. Really handsome.’
Ruby put her teaspoon in her coffee a
nd stirred away some of the foam. She felt obliged to say something but couldn’t think what, so she just said, ‘Betting on the dogs is a bit of a lottery.’
Don looked irritated. ‘I tell you, the only important thing you need to do to win at the dogs, Ruby, is to rely on honest thinking.’
She liked the way he’d used her name. She looked into his face. Did he want to employ her or to fuck her? Either way, she was flattered. He was saying, ‘Racing isn’t just about speed.’
He paused. ‘Do you know what it is that makes a good dog?’
Ruby focused on her coffee and tried to think. Eventually she said, ‘Speed and intelligence, mainly.’
He shook his head. ‘Racing is all about negotiating bends. To negotiate a bend you need balance, coordination and muscular control. But it’s more than that. A dog must have the will to win. It has to have that primitive urge. Some dogs will always be chasers or chuckers. A dog must know how to place itself. It’s got to be crafty.’
She looked at his hands as he spoke. Brown, clean hands. What did he want? What was he doing?
He said, ‘I didn’t know anything when I got my first dog.’
An image shot into her mind of how Donald Sheldon would look naked. She visualized him with an all-over tan and pinky-brown genitals. Not too much body hair. His stomach, slightly saggy, and his breasts.
He said, ‘All this is leading somewhere.’
‘Is it?’
Of course. He looked at her, grinned, then said, ‘And I think I have a good idea where you want it to lead.’
His voice sounded suggestive, arrogant, even sensual. He was old. Not that old. She inhaled deeply and stared straight into his eyes. He picked up a fork and shook it for emphasis, ‘I’m willing to sell you that dog.’
‘Dog?’
‘The one we discussed.’
‘Discussed?’ Ruby wanted to rewind this conversation in order to try to make sense of it.
He dropped the fork, laced his fingers together and leaned forward. ‘She’s trained. She’s in good form. I mean, she’s out of season now and she’s in good nick. She’s registered. She has a race or two lined up at Hackney, but after that it’d be your business.’
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