by Clay, Josie
“Minette, I was very sorry to hear about Dale”. She met my eyes.
“See, this is why I don't go out”. Smiling bitterly, then looking to the floor because I'd been unfair.
She stirred her coffee. “Please may I have a glass of water?”
“Sure” she said, going to the sink. Fumbling two hug pills into my palm, looking at a box of Cheerios on the open plan shelving system. “How's Sasha?”
“Oh, she's fine thank you. We're communicating well now, she's very focused on her work”. I detected an indecent after taste, which she washed down with coffee.
“She's very talented” I said, eyeing the stairs.
“It's OK, they're with their father this weekend”.
Trembling too violently to sip from it I set the cup back in the saucer. She came and covered my hands in hers while I stared at the wisteria. “You know Minette …if you ever want to talk”.
“Please don't” I said.
“Don't what?”
“Don't be kind”. But it was too late, my face crumpled.
“It must be hard” she said.
“You're doing it again”. I smiled and smeared at my tears. “Listen, I've got to go, thanks for the pills, I'll pay you back”.
She tutted. “Let me run you home”.
Envisaging the epic trudge ahead. “No, it's OK” I said, “the walk will do me good”.
“If you're sure”, surveying my stick legs dubiously.
“Nancy, how did you hear about Dale?”
“Sasha saw it in the paper. She was terribly upset”.
At the front door she pecked me hastily.
“Take care” she said, folding her arms against the cold. After a few steps when the door still hadn't closed, I looked back and her etched face quickly regrouped into a broad smile. Arms still crossed, she wiggled her finger in the backwards beckon. Marching on, I wiggled mine back over my shoulder. A chair is still a chair.
That evening I added mixed herbs and Worcestershire sauce to my baked beans and drank wine instead of whisky.
Chapter 4
A Christmas card from Rosamund Hartley – blah, blah, blah about you, I could take as much time as I needed, but she would advertise my post.
'That's fine' I replied. 'I won't be coming back'. More cards with sympathy; everyone loved you.
I spent Christmas Day with M8 and Eve. Eve guiding my hand to her tummy where a baby girl was taking shape who they would call Stevie. My girl inside me all the while.
In January, Dale's mail kept coming, a tax disc for the Hilux. a thick, frozen quiff on the cab's roof, windscreen striped by the fingers of ammunition gatherers.
After she'd gone, a series of firsts and lasts: the first time I set out one plate for dinner, the first time I cleaned the toilet knowing she would never use it, teasing our combined hair from the plughole and flushing it away for the last time, washing her from the bedclothes. Her dusty leather jacket still hanging next to mine on a peg in the hall, our boots still buddies beneath it. Dale, I miss you every second, every first, every last. I can exist without you it seems. Whether I want to is a different matter. I’d thought for years it was worse if someone dumped you than if they had died. I was wrong.
I kicked the old beast's passenger side. A shudder of snow dislodged onto my boot, but the door remained ice-stuck, the antifreeze in the glove compartment like a conundrum. The AA man got in, popped the bonnet and connecting the battery to his power, instructed me to turn the key. A rusty whinny, like your laugh and it caught the spark. Something in my chest mended and broke again. I hunched instinctively against a deluge, but it was only the opening bars of 'Riders on the Storm' coming from the radio. I sat suspended for twenty minutes like he'd told me, gunning the engine, going nowhere. You've been gone six months now.
Thigh muscles kinking knots so I swapped legs, exhausted. Inflating the tyres with the double barrelled foot pump, self-conscious at my bobbing motion in the street. Jumping on the bracket with both feet nevertheless. I was being watched. Stooping to rest, I brushed the ice from the wing mirror, reflecting the street beyond my shoulder and saw a curly haired person turning on her heel and marching away. Dale? The pavement empty. It must be the pills making me nuts so I resolved to stop them. They no longer helped obscure the fundamental fact anyway. I saw my brain, a cartoon cheese, in which a fat mouse squirmed, gnawing my thoughts, rendering me dull and demented. You came to me last night. Your smell and warmth were on me when I woke up. Dale, I'm lonely.
In February, I felt up to going to Sandy Randall's birthday. People giving me moist, implicit looks and asking me how I was. I had to remember to answer them inaccurately; it was a party after all so I let them off the hook by appearing buoyant and tried not to hear the music. By March, I'd stopped taking the tablets. I'm now exactly a year older than you.
Laying on the sofa, eyes closed. A satellite beaming the late news straight to my ears. Conflict, cuts, cruel and biblical catastrophes unfold, analysed and consigned to the past. It won't be long, I thought, until newborns are fitted with a chip in their brains so they can interface directly with all this babble in the ether. I wonder where you reside ...you're close. Dale, I'm going to dream of you in a good way tonight, able to will it now; lucid dreaming I think it's called. I'll arrange the pillows along your side and climb on top. 'Anchor me'.
There's a presence, but it's not you. Opening my eyes a crack, curtains undrawn. A face at the window, a ghost with curly hair which recedes into the darkness. My walnut heart musters some extra knocks, but quickly calms because I'm not really bothered.
You came last night, thank you. Now I feel able to comply with your suggestion, 'swim'.
Shaking as I threaded my legs through the 'Tatsio' costume and pushed the door to the giant chamber full of water. Only managing twelve lengths before my calves and toes were seized by a wicked cramp. The next day I did thirty, the next sixty. I'll go every day, I'll do anything you say. In April, I phoned your dad because I knew you wanted me to.
M8 and Eve held a dinner party for my birthday, their heads half-cocked to the baby monitor which broadcast new little coughs and sighs and the inevitable rising siren. Eve brought her down and placing her in my arms, Stevie seemed to read me. 'It's OK' she inferred with her milky eyes, her tiny hand gripping my finger. Dale, I'm forty five, fourteen months older than you.
Paul cut my hair short. “Are you sure, babe?” he said, but as he plonked wax through the top, artfully tousling, he had to agree he'd sheared years off me. I noticed two new vertical lines above the bridge of my nose, my upper lip hash tagged and white temples. I thought not just about what I'd lost, but what I'd never have; my shelf life expiring, body the other side of apogee. Downhill from here ...it doesn't really matter.
In June, I rented a workspace in Church Street opposite the park, casting solitary spells over myself, but within touching distance of sculptors, painters and photographers. I lavished greens and blues onto huge canvases, soaring tracts of sombre forest; competent, saleable ...but I didn't fall in love with them. That ship had sailed. Passing the time, going through the motions, making space so a superior seed would germinate. It didn't take long. I began chatting with my fellow artisans so I might glean chances. At lunchtime, I'd go to the cafe in the park to chew over my concepts. Dale, I'm so lonely.
The negatives I'd begged from Nils arrived. Spreading them on the light box, tiny yous and mes, reversed out like memories. Felix, a young photographer, peppered with piercings and tatts, earnest bleak eyes and nostalgic, asymmetric hair with a shaved side and floppy fringe, much like students in my day. He was on my side.
Selecting a portrait taken of you on our snow walk. You were smiling like a sexy cutthroat, eyes florins, hair flecked with snow, indiscernible from the winter branches and storm petrel dots behind you.
Clamping you into the enlarger, I tuned you in, unsure if my intention was possible. Nils had used a long exposure in the twilight because as I rocked you in the developing flui
d, you slowly blinked.
“Oh my God” said Felix, “did you see that?”
Gently, I slid you into the stop bath, where we left you under water and eventually you turned black but we experimented with chemicals until your silver was sustained, unfixed.
I sealed you safe and dry into a lightproof lead box I'd commissioned from Duncan, a metalsmith with a gold tooth and steel grey ponytail. And I took you home.
After a week, unscrewing the brass lugs on each side, I lifted the lid. There you were perfectly preserved, but as the daylight touched your skin, you began to bloom thunder clouds like charring paper, until you were just eyes and teeth, then gone altogether, lost in a black lake.
“Yes” I said, “get in”, and phoned Simon Sweet.
'In the Light of Death' opened at White Frame on the eve of your birth/death day. Twenty five lead caskets, heavy in every sense, gunpowder grey like solidified ashes, an ephemeral entity entombed. About the size of a wine crate, they were arranged on the parquet in darkened corners, doused in dust, side-lit solemnly. Shadows stretched and people drifted, undead, sipping champagne. The show a piece in itself.
Each box contained that photo of you Dale, but if the lid was opened and the light let in, the picture would fade to black, rendering the piece meaningless, or meaningful, depending on your point of view.
The image of a dead woman intact; viable, but only if never examined.
“Fiffig” you said and somehow I knew that meant ingenious and you were proud of me.
Simon took a calculated risk; the asking price for each box determined by the Fibonacci sequence: the first given away, the next two selling for a pound, the fourth three, five, eight, thirteen and so on. As he'd predicted, the concept went viral. Five days later the twenty third sold for £17,711, two hours after that the last one went for £46,368. What a laugh, baby. Simon wanted more, but didn't press when I said I was done. Redressing some sort of balance, I donated my winnings to Potarto.
People saw things in my concept I hadn't.
“A deeply personal and profoundly moving exhibition, forcing the visitor on an emotional journey which offers no solutions and provides little comfort. The development of the photograph is arrested, reflecting the circular nature of grief, while the box is at once a repository of life and an attestation to death. Moreover, Bracewell shows us that if we attempt to shine a light on our own existence, we discover nothing more than our own mortality. In the light of death, there is only memory - the true connective fixative”.
Zoe Gluck , Creative Bent Magazine.
Finally free to use my intuition and let others run with it, just like Dale did with me. I needed a counterpart, affirmation, so I could understand the whole picture. My brain compromised, lobotomised ...some things I simply couldn't see any more.
Baby, wait for this. They had me on breakfast telly. Apparently, I was charming and erudite. I can't really remember what I said. Aware I was a guest in the Bennett’s, Crabtree’s and Gupta’s front rooms, I fought the compulsion to say 'cunt', let alone ‘bloody’ or ‘arse’..
Chapter 5
The sun brought out squadrons of yummies, tai chi show-offs and women like me, alone eating a panini. The cafe packed, but I found a table under the awning. An empty chair opposite, always an empty chair. Stretching my legs into the sun, I wondered at what point freckles were reclassified as liver spots. Hard-wired into me, a particular motion, a lifting and snaking, specific swatches of chestnut and black, always primed for your signs. A brief suspension of heartbeat and a catch of breath before my brain relearns it's not you and never will be. That circuit must be faulty. It's only Nancy in the distance, the breeze worrying her curls, Sebastian at her heels, her careful walk, head down and coming my way.
“Hey Nancy!” She looked up and posted a hand above her sunglasses. Waving, she broke into a lady nip, surprising Sebastian who capered eagerly along side. Revealing her eyes, she nestled the arms of her shades into her purpose built hair.
“Hi Minette”. Bending to kiss each cheek in that natural way foreigners can, but British people can't quite pull off. “You look fabulous” she said. “May I join you?” Already lowering her bottom. The sort of person waiting staff noticed, one obediently shuffled over. “A diet Coke please and do you have Hula Hoops?” The waitress took an inordinate amount of time to write this, affording me the opportunity to scrutinise Nancy for wear and tear, forty six soon. She looked up at the girl in puzzled amusement, the diligent i-dotting and t-crossing. Crow's feet scored deeper, dimples bracketed with the faintest of lines, a jowl, ever so slight. A subtle decline which moved me in the same way as wood smoke paid out in pink twilight and chevrons of rusty hinged geese heading south. Hair sizzled with shots of silver fuse wire. Still beautiful, perhaps more so, being subject to the same laws of entropy as the rest of us.
The waitress slopped off, adjusting and underscoring.
“How are you feeling?” She attached Sebastian's lead and adopted an 'I'm listening' expression.
“Devastated” I said, tired of pulling punches.
“I'm sorry”, spreading her hands on the table. “But you certainly look much improved since the last time I saw you”. Her eyes met mine. “I was quite concerned”.
Hard to equate this Nancy with the one who used to enjoy sticking her tongue up my sphincter. But it did happen. I remember because I took one of my mind photos that last forever.
Deciding to play a game, I held her gaze, saying nothing. She subtly changed, sort of melted , but realising I wasn't going to let up, she formed her face into a mirror. They say that if two people stare into each other ’ s eyes long enough, they'll fall in love. I raised my eyebrows, she raised hers. I made my eyes smile, so did she. I frowned, she did the same. A can of Coke suspended our peculiar game.
“Oh” said the waitress, “I forgot the crisps”, ambling away. We maintained our duel and I noted that throughout this silent exchange my heart kept its slow, even beat. Nancy however had developed a red penny flush on each cheek and I decided to concede.
“Stubborn bitch” I said.
“Takes one to know one” she replied, cracking the can. “What's that like?” Nodding towards the leftover half of my sandwich. “I'm starving”.
“It's nice” I said. “Here, have it”.
“Are you sure?”
Making certain I had her eyes, I did my best intimate smile. “Eat it” I said.
The red flush enlarged from decimal to big, old pennies. Sebastian whimpered and I ruffled his coat while she ate. He smelt like a freshly baked fruit pie and not at all doggy.
“Sorry for the wait”. The girl returned with the Hula Hoops. “Anything else?”
“Just the bill please” I said as a scream of parakeets buzzed the diners.
Having polished off the sandwich, she ripped open the crisps, offering the bag to me. I took some amiably. She however, plunged her fingers in, wriggling them, withdrawing her hand, each fingertip crowned with a potato ring. Despite all her lady trappings, she was a big kid like me. I watched with interest as she examined each one, going first for the thumb. Taking the ring in her teeth, she crunched thoughtfully, inspecting her little finger whose turn it was next. Sensing a game, I identified the act that would determine the winner. Engrossed in her options, I concentrated, coaxing. She sucked off her ring finger, keeping her eyes down all the while. After some deliberation, she plumped for the index finger, wiggling the salty tip. One hoop remained, here it comes. Enclosing her pout around her middle finger, she lingered, savouring.
'Do it', a mental order which she obeyed. Her eyes met mine, her full lips engulfing the tip of her finger, lowering her long lashes then flashing me once more with that verdant gaze, slowly sucking off the last one.
Bingo, I win.
I handed a twenty pound note to the waitress, astonished when I told her to keep the change.
“See you around, Nancy”.
“Take care, Minette”.
Cycling to
the pool, I told you it was just a game.
Chapter 6
Driving up Heather Road on my way home, the car necessary to deliver my latest idea to White Frame; a small, white rowing boat, lacking oars, filled with thousands of playing cards but only the queens, four different flavours of women. The piece entitled 'Patience', which I'd painted on the boat's nameplate. Not entirely sure what I was getting at, I expected others would be happy to explain it to me. Simon clapped with delight. “Don't tell me” he said, “it represents all the women you've had”.
“Not quite, Simon”.
“No” he said, “you'd need the Queen Mary for that”.