by Tor Udall
26 April 2004
A normal Monday morning, sitting at the table, watching Jonah eat toast. He stood at the counter, scanning the sports page, while I thought of the dream I had woken from – of Harry and I making love.
An orange scarf was draped around us. It trailed across the white linen, the room overexposed with sunlight. It blurred our skin, bleaching out my freckles, evaporating even the feeling of pleasure, until there was nothing but white. Brightness.
As I passed Joe the milk, I couldn’t believe I once thought his burgundy polo neck was charmingly retro. Everything he did annoyed me: him swilling his coffee as if it were mouthwash, or humming ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’ – I’ve heard it one too many times.
It’s unfair to make him wrong, but I’m not used to being the villain. When Joe was touring, I was paranoid about him having affairs but now I am the one doing the betraying. I have inherited my parents’ genes – and now I know that each day holds more than one possibility. I can choose to be, or not to be, vicious, malcontent, or even happy.
While Jonah swallowed a large piece of toast, I glanced at the door. Could I walk through it?
I said I had to go. When he asked what I was up to, I told him the truth. I was going to the Gardens. I blathered on about having an hour before I needed to be in Baker Street. He looked up expectantly for his morning kiss. I picked up my coat and pecked him on the cheek.
This was the thrill of the heart, the rush, my guilty footsteps clanging against the pavement. When I reached the Ruined Arch, there were three choices. I took the right tunnel and entered darkness.
Harry’s voice was welcoming. He told me about the architect who had built the arch to remind people of the passing of time. But I wasn’t in the mood for visitor information. I asked if we could talk.
He held out the crook of his arm and led me into the sunlight. I knew my love for him was indefendable but still I stood there, trying to find the words.
‘If we can’t talk about it to each other, then who can we talk to?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Then you’re a liar.’
He looked so beautiful then; a man surprised by an insult. His arm reached out then hung in the air like a question. The blue sky of his eyes, the light – I tried to get my bearings. I focused on the stone slab behind Harry. A woman with wings, a bearded man . . .
‘There is so much I have to tell you, Audrey.’
But I stopped him talking and brought my mouth to his. In one gesture everything changed. We kissed.
The garden seemed to shapeshift. The atmosphere thinned, the texture of the air so shallow I couldn’t breathe. My world was being sucked away.
I stepped back, uncertain. Harry stood limp, his mouth forming a shocked ‘O’. His eyes were still closed.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Audrey, let me explain.’
‘Please don’t.’
He tasted of smoke, but I had felt no heat or pressure. It was like kissing someone who didn’t exist. I smiled through my tears and joked, ‘The wind is making my eyes weep.’
Each part of his lips had been kissed. Harry had inhaled her breath until he could have called it his. But then he’d felt the weight of her soul in his arms, the sensation of falling. When she stepped back, they were both still standing together. Surprised.
He wanted to sink to his knees and pray for forgiveness. How stupid he’d been to believe that she was some kind of gift. He should have trusted his first instinct. If they crossed the physical boundary between them, she wouldn’t live.
Audrey was smiling and crying, but he could still feel the warmth of her body, the faint taste of her caffeine-coated saliva on his tongue. They were trapped inside an awful joke. As her face grew paler, he wanted to reassure her in that ruined place, to whisper, ‘Au, you have taught me so much – how to risk, how to hope.’ But she said she was late for a meeting. She walked away looking uncomfortably breezy, as if she had just won a dare that hadn’t gone to plan. He loved her for that. He heard the swish of her coat, her footsteps ringing out against the concrete path; then she disappeared around the corner, leaving behind the quiet.
Staring up at the sky, Harry measured the light and his absurdity. He made his decision, a soundless vow. The morning became god-stung, leaving a bittersweet taste in his mouth.
Homing Pigeon
This was life in his hands, the heat of a woman, and yet. Harry threw it away. On the twenty-eighth of April 2004, Audrey and he sat on Mademoiselle J’Attendrai’s bench by the pagoda. She had bought a plastic cup of coffee and was warming her hands around it. There was a fine mist that day, as if the sun was still sleepy.
It had been two days since the kiss. Both were expectantly awkward, their greetings full of exclamation marks. But when she smoothed down her skirt, he saw it clearly. While he had been seduced by the reality of her, she was flirting with something diaphanous.
He took a deep breath. ‘Do you think that I might be becoming – a distraction?’
She pulled out a cigarette. ‘From what?’
‘Your husband.’
‘I thought you liked spending time with me?’ Behind the haze of smoke, her face was self-conscious, twitchy.
‘I do. But . . . how would Jonah feel?’
She tapped some ash, straining for composure. ‘Don’t you see, Hal? You’re something that’s just mine.’
‘This can’t amount to anything. It’s not . . . sustainable.’ Then he finally said it. ‘I don’t trust why you’re here.’
‘In this garden?’ She stopped to breathe it all in, as if she could smell what wonderful smelt like. ‘At first I was trying to find something to believe in. Then I found you.’
As Audrey stared up at the white sky, her eyes were veil-less, open. Only then did he realise how much she’d been appreciating the sun on her skin, the light shining on a fence, the drenching wonder of a rainstorm. She was facing each day with the vivid intensity of someone dying. Perhaps it was her yearning for her children that had brought them together; her kiss a death wish. Or maybe she had confused this luminosity for something else. Either way, she had become too close. Harry was baffled. How had he and death become so synonymous? He’d always preferred to grow things.
‘I’m not who you think,’ was all he managed to say.
‘You are.’ And there it was, her smile.
The sun was getting warmer. What right did it have to shine that day and what right did she have to look so good? The trees were wallflowers in comparison. He doubted whether she had been rejected before. The disenchantment suited her. It was as if the shell of her had cracked, and inside was the yolk, the real essence of her.
‘I could leave Jonah.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve been thinking for a while that I should let him go. He could still become a father.’ She went on to explain that he had come home late the night before and she had fantasised about him sleeping with the English teacher. ‘She’s young, idealistic. Legs up to here.’
‘You’re being paranoid, Au.’
‘I just want to see him happy. She’s—’
‘Not what he wants.’
Audrey scooped up her glorious hair and tied it back in a bun. Her face looked younger without this halo, as if she had just taken off her make-up.
‘We could always go back to how it was before,’ she said. ‘Before – the arch . . .’
‘I’m sorry, Au. I don’t think we should see each other.’
‘You’re kidding.’
When he didn’t answer, she started to gather her belongings, as if she didn’t leave now she would start crying. How could he shame her? There was an ache in the pit of his stomach – not now, just a few minutes longer – shall I tell you that I love you?
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Let’s have one more smoke.’
She hesitated from snapping the clasp of her bag. Inside was a book covered in yellow fabric. Her fingers hovered over its spine then she reached
for her Silk Cut and lit a fag.
As he wondered how to say goodbye, they were shy of each other, fidgeting. Maybe he should wait until this day had lengthened into tomorrow, or until the next day’s tomorrow had passed into the past, but it didn’t matter. They lived in a bruising. More than anything he wanted to say, ‘I’ll stay with you. Let us trick time . . . trip up the hours.’
They sipped the silence of the morning, Audrey drinking her breath from the now empty cup.
‘Well, if we’re not going to see each other, can you tell me the best way to propagate my primroses? They’ve been so lovely on my windowsills . . .’ She laughed.
‘Early summer.’
He felt foolish that she knew about his clandestine planting, but as he continued his gardening tips, the energy between them still sparked and rubbed. They held on to their words a little too long: nonsense about the seeds drying out. Audrey smoked her cigarette down to the stub.
‘Sometimes I think we have to do the thing we’re most frightened of to get what we want.’
She challenged him directly, her hand on his thigh, and there was nothing more he wanted than to kiss her. He would love her, devour her, until there was nothing left.
‘You will be OK, Au, I promise.’
She had the expression of someone witnessing an accident – looking on, helpless.
‘But I’m only OK when I’m with you, Hal.’
She looked across to the pagoda, her face slashed with light.
‘I’m being childish. Sorry.’
‘I should be saying that.’
He still wanted to kiss her. As they stood, unsure of their final gesture, they were fully dressed yet this was the nudity of being. He was doing all this to keep her alive; but between his reticence and her pride, the conversation ended. Neither of them knew, as they awkwardly clasped hands, and he felt the warmth of her fingers for the last time, that in less than a month she would be dead.
If this were our last week together, what would I say?
I would want to make sure there was no inch of you unkissed,
the country of you left untraced.
If I could learn to love like this,
You would be the place where I discover
Limitlessness.
Beside a bowl of untouched cereal, the red box is open on the kitchen counter. Jonah is warily holding the pigeon in his palm, as if it were an extraordinary, unknown creature. Mesmerised by its translucent angles, he turns the three-dimensional poem this way and that, admiring the tip of the beak, the curve of the tail. Tiny writing runs along one of the edges. He remembers that Audrey had a magnifying glass, so he walks to her office, carrying the bird with him. Rummaging through drawers, he finds what he is looking for and holds it up to the wing.
Sometimes I realise that forever is now
You, beside me, unblinking.
And what I learn is this:
Hope is a rhythm.
His stomach flips. It takes him back to singing onstage, then being a child in the wings: his first school play. He peeked beyond the drapes, catching glimpses of velour costumes, the wobbling spotlight; then, stretching out his neck further, it hit him: the darkness, the many-headed beast. He listened to the communal breathing, a cough, the rustle of sweets, and more than anything he wanted to impress. But as he tried to remember his lines, he became hot and sticky. He was going to fluff it.
As he looks down now, the paper bird feels too fragile, his hands apish. How can he not crush it? By stating her position, Chloe has allowed him no movement of his own; at least, nothing that’s worthy. How can he match it? He had been travelling towards her at his own steady pace, taking his time . . . shit! He’s late.
Shoving the red box into his satchel, he rushes out of the house to the tube. The bird sits in his bag while he teaches the beginnings of rock ’n’ roll. At lunchtime he eats a dry tuna sandwich in the canteen and fumbles with his phone. ‘What a surprise!’ he texts. ‘What a thoughtful gift! Thank you!’ He removes the exclamation marks then deletes the message.
In the afternoon Jonah teaches the musical terms for repeated patterns of notes. He plays some examples, comparing the ostinato of Carmina Burana to the guitar riff on ‘Le Freak’.
‘You see? It’s the same technique.’
Chloe has arranged to meet him after school. He takes some paracetamol for his headache, collects a pile of essays, and for once walks away wishing he could stay at work. If he were a braver man, he would write Chloe a song. The least he could do is take her to an expensive restaurant, buy her flowers or a necklace, but what would they talk about . . . their future?
Chloe sees him sitting in a café off Carnaby Street. From this distance, Jonah looks uncomfortable, as if he is waiting for a blind date. As she enters, he stands up, but his hand doesn’t feel like his hand, his eyes don’t see her, and there is a nervous pushing towards her as they greet.
‘Did you have a good day?’ he asks.
She puts her bag on the table. ‘Another office, another boss . . .’
‘Thank you for the present. It was lovely.’
She sits down and busies herself, tidying the pepper and salt. ‘Great.’
He is already studying the menu. ‘Do you want cake?’
They tell the waiter their choices. Once they are alone, their unspoken words pull taut between them like a tripwire. He doesn’t seem to understand how much she has risked. Through the cacophony of the coffee machine, the customers who ‘needed-to-be-somewhere-five-minutes-ago’, there is the bark of a small dog. Jonah is describing a terrible essay on the evolution of music, but it’s hard to hear. His mouth dries up.
His smile is like a shrug. When he glances up at the ceiling, she wonders if he’s thinking about Audrey. He always looks beautiful when he considers her, his gaze glistening.
She stands up, irritated. ‘It’s getting late. Shall we?’
‘But we’ve just—’
‘Screw the tea. Let’s go home and drink gin.’
His chair scrapes back. ‘Your gift . . . I really want to say thank you.’
He kisses her, one wary peck on the cheek. It is an insult.
Back in the flat she explains how she created the bird, giving him the sacred opportunity to be more than he was at the start of the evening. But neither of them sleeps happily. He grinds his teeth while she twitches like a child hurt. Eventually she sits up and stares out of the window. It is a sullied night. A blackbird flies away from the dirty street into the serenity of the Gardens.
This is Audrey’s bench, and here is a bucketful of questions. Here is the moon looking down on Milly, and in the dark, all she has to hug are her knees. What did Harry mean? But the sky is too vast to answer her silly questions. It just watches her.
Why are you pretending to be earthbound?
Harry’s words; she can’t get rid of them. She should ask why no one notices her, or why she sleeps in the Redwood Grove, but she isn’t sure if she wants to know. She can’t even decide if this glinting moon is magical or sinister.
Some people see her: the lady who reads the newspaper, that mum with the fake-fur coat. Then there’s the photographer who waved, his shirtsleeves rolled up. Once, an old lady had pinched Milly’s cheek, as if she could snatch her childhood between her fingers and thumb, through that little shake of her wrist. Her breath stank of sickness and boiled sweets.
Milly has no watch, but soon, she hopes, the sky will brighten. Perhaps tomorrow is the day that Jonah will see her. But she’s been waiting for weeks. The moon is rising, and look, there’s the shadow of the bushes, the bench. She twists around as if someone has tweaked her T-shirt. Peering from different angles, she searches for the silhouette of her uncombed hair, her scrawny shoulders. But there’s only a shadowless girl, and a lake under moonlight. The throbbing begins, the usual drumming under her temple.
Her disbelief flutters. It’s like a moth bashing against a light bulb, and in that glowing, electrical sphere she sees a yellow dress. Mi
lly leans into the soft cushion of this woman’s belly. But she is jolted away from the warmth, and now there’s a fridge magnet of an elephant, smeared with fingerprints and something white, like dried yoghurt. But the stain becomes the milky moon and Milly is back on the cold bench, hugging her shoulders. Her mouth opens, silently at first, until the sound is shaped into a scream. It rebounds off the stars, her ‘no’ getting lost in the immensity of the night.
A Game of Conkers
The trees are still clothed, but Chloe notices the lack of light in the evenings, the summer felled. With Jonah, there have been no arguments, no truth-telling; just a catastrophic, mild harmony that prevents her from leaving.
On one October evening, they sit in a seductively lit pub, full of nearly fashionable people. Kate asks Chloe if she wants children.
‘Christ, no! I love my freedom.’
Jonah shifts forward on the leather banquette. ‘You never told me that.’
The silence curdles.
‘But who would want that responsibility?’ she begins. ‘All those accidents, waiting to happen . . .’
Chloe stops. Her scarlet polo neck feels too tight around her neck. But Kate is unaware and tipsy, intoxicated by a rare night out.
She flirtatiously picks a stray thread from Jonah’s arm. ‘Well, we all know you’d make a good dad. Do you still want that?’
‘Well, yes. One day, sure – with the right person.’
When the group turns towards Chloe, she flashes her brightest smile. She feels the urge to flee, to fly, but imagines falling instead, the cold pavement smashing against her face, her wrists futilely flapping. She claps her hands, hoping to herald a new conversation. Kate’s husband is so embarrassed he offers to buy the next round. Chloe cuddles up to Jonah, pretending they are a couple that know each other, that everything is ‘just fine’.