Another Life

by Jodie Chapman

  I nodded as if I’d understood all along. ‘Yeah, they’re part of the furniture now.’

  She waited.

  ‘My Aunty Stella planted them the first summer after Mum went.’ My voice caught on the final word. I rushed on. ‘She said we needed something to greet us when we arrived home from school, something bright. It was either flowers or painting the front door bright yellow, and I don’t think our dad would have taken to that.’

  ‘They’re beautiful,’ said Anna, looking from me to them and back again. ‘Do they work?’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘Do you smile when you see them?’

  I stared at the backs of the flowers. They were strong this year. Already fully blooming, their stalks staunch and proud, their leaves almost touched each other. It was the first time this summer I’d noticed them.

  ‘I guess. Stella replants them each year. It’s a tradition she always keeps.’ I moved next to Anna and touched the dark centre of one. ‘See the middle? When the plant dies at the end of the season, these all dry out and turn to seed. Stella saves a few to go into the ground in spring.’

  ‘So these growing now are descended from the first she ever planted.’

  I thought about this. ‘There must be good light in this spot.’

  ‘I’ve never been sure about sunflowers,’ said Anna, reaching out to stroke the petals. ‘I’ve only seen them in a vase, or a supermarket, surrounded by plastic. There was something freakish about them. But they look different here. They look right.’

  ‘Only three tend to grow, somehow.’

  ‘Only three?’

  ‘She always plants four, but one never makes it. We used to take bets on which it would be.’

  I sensed Anna glance up at me.

  ‘I like the sound of your Aunty Stella,’ she said, and pushed me gently towards the house.

  ‘How about you?’ I said. ‘How many have been in your bed?’

  It was after the first night. I woke mid-morning when the outside world was heading to desks and climbed over her sleeping body to go down and make a bacon sandwich. When I returned with a plate and a cup of tea, I opened the door and saw her lying there, a bare leg entwined around my duvet. She was awake, her black hair splayed out across my pillow, her eyes studying my room. All these years later, I remember the feel of that bedroom so clearly, and it’s because of this picture of her in my head.

  Anna didn’t answer straight away, but handed me the empty plate and took a sip of murky tea. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched her propped up on an elbow, still wrapped in my sheets.

  ‘You know there’s never been any in my actual bed,’ she said, licking a spot of ketchup from her wrist. ‘You know my situation.’

  I nodded. I pretended I knew it all.

  ‘And I don’t want to talk about the broken hearts.’ She picked at the hem of my Tupac top. She’d casually slipped it on before we finally went to sleep, as I watched the outline of her shadow on my bedroom wall. ‘Can we focus on the now?’

  ‘Let me ask you a question.’

  She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘What would happen if you were caught in my bed?’

  She looked at her hands. ‘It wouldn’t be an option.’

  ‘Even though nothing happened?’

  Anna sat up. ‘To you, nothing happened. In my world, this,’ she nodded at the crumpled sheets, ‘is a shit storm.’

  I wish my twenty-two-year-old self had understood what those words meant. That the risk she was running was a declaration of feeling in itself. If I could go back and make him listen, perhaps none of those years would be wasted. They say actions speak louder than words, but don’t they also say that youth is wasted on the young? These stupid mottos have all come from someone’s regret.

  Early Nineties

  The three occasions I went to the Arsenal as a boy are etched deep into my mind. I know it was only because someone had dropped out and it was too late to sell the ticket, and it was always someone rubbish like Norwich or Sheffield Wednesday, but when we’d get close to the stadium and the crowds began to thicken, Dad would take my hand and pull me through.

  He’d buy the Gooner fanzine from the bloke on the corner, and when he disappeared at half-time with the men for a pint at the bar, I’d sit in my seat and read it from cover to cover. On the walk back, we’d share a portion of chips and I’d throw out lines like Wright’s on a losing streak or Campbell’s useless, just another one of Graham’s blue-eyed boys. Things like that. I don’t know whether they were on the money or not, but sometimes Dad would give me a shrug or a sort of smile.

  When we turned the corner into Arundel Grove, Sal’s face would be there at the net curtains, pushed against the glass. He’d be gone by the time we reached the house, and I’d walk in, laughing with the men. I’d ruffle his hair, he’d mutter piss off, and I’d launch into a minute-by-minute recap of the past three hours. It was like living it all over again.

  Sal never let on how desperate he was to go. And Dad didn’t once offer him a ticket.

  Summer 2003

  We were very different. I don’t really know what it was that drew us together. She hated my music, and I wasn’t hugely into the underground guitar scene that she liked. Greasy bands that wore beat-up Converse and shoelaces tied round their wrists. We clearly had different taste in films too, and working at a cinema, there was a lot of that.

  I took a part-time post in Projection sometime during that summer, lacing up the reels and starting the films. Not many people wanted to be up there – it was noisy and dark, and many of the staff were teenagers who saw work as another social fix. There was no messing about like you could do behind the concession stand or when cleaning screens. There was an exactness to the job, a skill, and you needed good attention to detail.

  ‘I went up there for a while,’ said Anna when I told her I was considering it. ‘I spliced together The Importance of Being Earnest in the wrong order, and it played for almost a week before anyone noticed. “That’s not how it should be,” someone said afterwards. “Either they’ve bastardised Wilde or you’ve messed up.”’ She laughed. ‘They kicked me out after that. I didn’t care. I felt like a vampire, spending eight hours in darkness.’

  I loved the dark. The little flickers of light coming from the windows into the screens, where I would watch the backs of people’s heads as they munched popcorn and zoned out. They gave no conscious thought to my existence, but their enjoyment depended hugely on me. There is power in invisibility.

  Before it could be shown to the public, every film had to be watched in its entirety; a box ticked on a clipboard when a cigarette burn appeared to show the switch to the next spliced reel. These previews took place late at night, after other films had finished playing and, with teenagers being fairly nocturnal, the screen would be filled with off-shift members of staff.

  Anna would often watch them too. If it was a big event movie, there would be loads in there, but the more art-house films weren’t much of a draw. Then it was just us.

  There was one, Far From Heaven, a film set in fifties suburban America about a housewife and her closeted-gay husband. Suppressed emotion, forbidden love. It was too melodramatic for my tastes, and when the lights came up, I made a pfft noise and said, ‘Well, that’s two hours I’ll never get back.’ Anna had turned to me with a pained expression. ‘What are you talking about?’ she said. ‘It was wonderful.’

  Like I said, we were different. We bickered a lot of the time, like an old married couple. She had a teasing side and we would spar, parry, back and forth, until our fingers poked the other’s skin and our lips found each other. I liked that we didn’t share many interests. It felt more instinctive, our attraction, like it couldn’t be explained on paper or matched up by an algorithm. It was something in the air, a feeling, a knowledge. A blue moon.

  One week, there was a special Classic Wednesday screening of Cinema Paradiso. Anna switched her shift so she could preview it with me on the Tuesday, and, as
expected, we were the only ones there.

  In the film, an old projectionist works in an Italian cinema and is helped by a small boy from the village. The Catholic priest insists that all scenes featuring nudity and even kissing are cut from the reels before the films are shown to the public. Often they don’t then make sense. At the end, after the projectionist has died, the small boy – now a man – returns to the village and is given a reel left for him by the projectionist. He watches it and cries. It is all the censored love scenes spliced together. A memento from another life.

  During this scene, Anna reached across the seat between us and took my hand. I looked at her, and in the flickering light, saw her wet cheeks.

  It was a beautiful film. The boy’s name was Salvatore. I loved it.

  The day after Cinema Paradiso had played to the public, I took the reels apart and packed them up into their canisters. Before I did, I placed the love scene in the splicer and cut a couple of frames from the print. I wanted one from every kiss, but knowing this could draw attention, I contented myself with two. I cut them carefully, taping the film back together, and slipped the stolen kisses into my pocket.

  After my shift, she drove me home and we spent a while curled up on the back seat. When I went to leave, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the frames. She put out her hand when asked and as I gave them to her, I took a mental snapshot of her face and walked quickly past the sunflowers to my door.

  I took her to meet the lads a couple of weeks in. It was the typical Sunday afternoon at the usual pub with the regular crowd, and the heat had pushed everyone out to the beer garden.

  Part of me had been dreading this moment. I’d thought about it happening, how the conversation might go, the looks exchanged, how the boys would take her, how she’d view them, and in turn, how she’d view me. Perhaps it won’t happen, I told myself. Perhaps I can somehow get to the end of my life without this ever happening.

  But one night when she dropped me home after a shared shift, when I was getting out of her car after twenty minutes of kissing her, she looked up from the driver’s seat and said, ‘I want to meet your friends. Make it happen.’ And then she sped off.

  So two days later, I did.

  We walked into the pub in our usual way. Her first, then me ten seconds later. There may be someone passing by, she’d say. Give me time to scan the room, just in case. She’d give me a nod through the window and I’d know it was safe to walk in and stand beside her.

  We collected our drinks and she followed me through the double doors to the beer garden. Everyone was there, laughing and smoking, their faces a middling shade of heatwave pink. As we stepped out, a few lads raised their pints in hello.

  ‘Everyone, this is Anna,’ I said, taking a seat at the end of a long run of picnic tables. ‘Anna, this is everyone.’

  She gave a shy smile and sat next to me, tucking her legs in neatly next to mine.

  ‘So this is the famous Anna,’ said a voice from behind, and then a hand came between us. ‘Delighted to make your acquaintance. Daz.’

  Anna took it with an eyebrow raised. ‘Oh, I’ve heard all about you. Pleasure.’ She caught sight of the tattoo on his hand: IBIZA spelt out, a letter on each knuckle. ‘I’m guessing that was quite a trip.’

  ‘Hope so,’ he said. ‘It’s not ’til November.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘You’ve not been but you’ve had the tattoo? What if it’s shit?’

  He shrugged. ‘We won’t let that happen, will we, lads?’ He held up his beer and they all gave a cheer.

  I filled her in. ‘Daz got hammered on New Year’s Eve, and in a moment of drunken self-reflection, thought tattooing an upcoming trip on to his hand would mean he entered the millennium in the right spirit. You know, carpe diem.’

  ‘Classic,’ said Anna, chinking his glass with her own.

  ‘Except Daz broke his leg a week before the trip and everyone had to go without him.’ I winked at Daz. ‘They’re all going again this year, just so the tattoo can mean something.’

  Anna laughed then looked at him, embarrassed. ‘Sorry. Am I not meant to find it funny?’

  ‘You’re fine,’ I said, lighting a cigarette. ‘We all took the mick, but don’t worry, Daz. I have faith you’ll make it a good trip.’

  ‘You not going?’ said Anna to me.

  Daz put down his drink and squeezed my shoulders. I could tell he was trying to bruise the skin. ‘Poor Nick’s a nervous flyer, aren’t you, son? Rather piss himself than go on a plane.’

  Then she did something I’ve never forgotten. Above the table, she reached out and held my hand. We had kissed in the private space of her car, or hidden in dark car parks or shadowy corners. But this was the first time she’d ever touched me in public, and that’s how it felt. Public. For everyone to see.

  ‘Careful, Nicolai,’ said Daz, waving his cigarette at us. ‘Slippery slope.’

  ‘I take it you’ve not got a girlfriend?’

  Something about her use of the word ‘girlfriend’ made my hand tighten on hers.

  ‘Me?’ Daz snorted. ‘Men are like bees. Why stick with one flower when there’s an entire garden? The goal is to make the honey. You won’t make honey if you stick to one flower.’

  ‘I think mosquitoes are a more fitting analogy,’ said Anna.

  ‘Eh?’ said Daz.

  Anna clapped her hands mid-air and wiped a dead insect against the side of the table.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Go on.’

  A wedge of ash fell from Daz’s fag into his beer, but he was too busy staring at Anna to notice. His mouth hung open like a dumb dog’s and she looked up with a smile.

  ‘Rather you than me, lad,’ said Daz, patting my back, and headed inside to the fruit machine.

  I could tell the lads didn’t get her. She could match them in a swear jar, but she had a shyness in certain company that could come across as snobbish. On some days, she’d hold forth in conversation, steering the topic and talking with expert social ease. On others, she sat in silence, listening and offering only a smile. I don’t think she knew this about herself, these two conflicting sides she offered the world, or perhaps she did and didn’t care. Anyway, who’s to say my perception of her was any truer than her own.

  But when you watch someone in the company of others, you see them in a whole new way. She could be the girl dancing on tables one night, and the next she’d be hiding in the shadows. Just when I thought I understood her, she would melt away and become a completely new person, and I’d have to start all over again.

  That’s how it was with Anna.

  I’ve relied on Stella to fill in the gaps over the years.

  After it happened, she continued Mum’s tradition of taking us for a Happy Meal on our birthdays. We’d outgrown it by then, of course, but Stella insisted. Sal and I would sit in a pink-and-beige booth and wait for her to bring over the tray brimming with Coke and fries, and we’d munch our way through as she told the stories.

  One I especially loved was when Mum was turned away from an over-21s night at a bar in the East End. She’d made plans with Dad to meet there a week after that first night, and she and Stella had turned up, all of their nineteen years, only to be turned away by the bouncer. At first, Stella attempted to charm her way past the velvet rope, but when that failed, she turned the air a raging blue. Mum dragged her away round the corner, and when Stella had recovered her poise, Mum calmly pointed to a hole in the chain fence that surrounded the beer garden. Stella refused to enter via any means other than the front door, but Mum picked up her skirt and burrowed her way through the hole. After that, Stella said, there was no stopping her.

  I loved this idea of her finding a way. Happy to risk the breaking of rules to get what she wanted. I wish I had some of that.

  Summer 2003

  ‘Your friend Daz is quite something.’

  We were on my bed. We’d got back from the pub and were watching an old episode of Only Fools and Horses. She had her head on my lap as I
leant against the wall, and I was acting like it was the most normal thing in the world.

  ‘He doesn’t mean it like that.’

  ‘No, that’s the kicker,’ she said. ‘None of you set out to be arseholes. It just comes naturally.’

  ‘Play nicely.’

  ‘What if I don’t?’ She stroked the hairs on my leg.

  ‘I know it doesn’t seem like it, but he’s a good bloke. It’s just when he’s around a girl that he goes into funny dick mode.’

  She laughed. ‘Maybe it’s because all that goes into his mouth are pasties and lager. The guy looks like he’s never consumed a vegetable.’

  I thought about it. ‘You know, I’m not sure he has, unless pasta sauce counts as a vegetable. See, this is why he needs a woman.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘To look after him and sort him out.’

  She sat up. ‘Because that’s what a woman’s for? To take care of someone who can’t take care of himself?’

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’ I could feel things moving in the wrong direction and I didn’t want to go there. ‘He just needs the love of a good woman.’ Now I sounded like Motown.

  ‘What you mean is he needs a mother.’ She flicked her hair over her shoulder.

  ‘No, I don’t mean that either.’

  ‘“Male, twenty-two”,’ she began, mimicking the voice of a Wanted ad. ‘“Eats shit, drinks shit, talks shit, looking for a hot woman to service all his needs, whether it’s good home cooking or daily blow jobs.” Sign me up, baby.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Maybe women don’t want to spend their lives looking after men,’ she went on. ‘Perhaps they’d like to meet someone who has their shit together. Is that too much to ask? Someone who isn’t walking around with a sign that says, “Fix me. I’m a twat. It’s because I don’t have a woman that I’m a twat. Nothing to do with the fact that the reason I don’t have a woman is because I’m a twat.”’

  ‘That’s a pretty long sign. You might convey the message better if you edit it down.’