We sat together on the train back to Ashford. The carriage was almost empty and the windows were black, surrounding us with an image of our own reflection.
When we were almost home, she turned and said, ‘You know I’ve left my religion?’
I looked at the lack of a ring on her finger when she said this. I opened my mouth, but words didn’t come.
‘Do you know the story of Lot’s wife?’
I shook my head.
‘Lot was a prophet,’ she said, ‘told by God to leave his city before it was destroyed. He was commanded to flee to the mountains and not look back. So he ran with his family while the city burned behind them, but Lot’s wife looked back and so she became a pillar of salt.’
‘Salt?’
‘Harsh, right? I’ve known this story all my life. But when I read it recently, I was struck by how absurd it is. Surely it’s only by looking back that we can see how far we’ve come. How much further we have to go.’ She looked through the window at the darkness. ‘I feel like I understand her. Stuck in that limbo between your past and your future. Not sure how to let go.’
I watched her chew her lip in that funny way she did.
‘You know the worst thing? The poor woman doesn’t get a name. She’s held up as some kind of example to the world and she doesn’t even get a name.’ She shook her head. ‘I’d always had doubts, but when that twigged, I was done.’
My knee brushed against hers and I glanced down as she said, ‘Sometimes it takes something small to see something big.’
‘What about your family?’ I finally found my voice.
She folded her arms. ‘Joe is my family now.’
I could see there was hurt all over her body, wounds she was trying to hide. This is what we do when we try to get through the impossible: we don a suit of armour and go out to war.
‘It’s only now I see it,’ she said, her eyes on my knee, on the part of our bodies that touched.
‘What do you see?’
Anna looked up. ‘Nothing lasts forever.’
The train began to pull into the station and we stood to leave. As we waited for it to stop, I leant into her a little too close. There were no crowds pressing in or people pushing past. I did it because I wanted to.
‘Walk me home?’ she said when we’d passed through the barrier and into the cold. I must have looked confused because she smiled and nodded down the road. ‘I live in town now.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Sure.’
It felt like hours since a cigarette, and I rooted around in my pocket for my lighter. ‘Shit. I think I left my lighter in the pub.’
Anna softly punched my arm. ‘So here’s your chance to quit.’
‘Never say never, but I’ve bumped into you today and I don’t think my heart could take it if I threw in another curveball.’
‘Wait, here you go.’ Again, she touched my arm. ‘I took some matches from the restaurant where I had my meeting.’ She pulled a tiny book of matches from her pocket and smiled as I lit up and offered it back to her.
‘Keep it,’ she said, and closed my hand into a fist. ‘You never know when you might need them.’
‘Much obliged,’ I said, turning away slightly to exhale, and there was a brief silence as our eyes met.
‘It’s meant to be twenty degrees tomorrow,’ she said, slipping on her gloves as we started to walk. ‘What is going on with the planet?’
‘We act all responsible and say we fear global warming, but we’re secretly glad of it too. The heat on our skin.’
We played the game of Do you remember? Of corners in car parks, of lifts home from work, of songs playing at the time of a particular kiss. She talked of Sal and of times she remembered. I loved him through her eyes.
‘Look, the Mems,’ she said as we crossed the road and went through the park gates. The gardens were dark and empty, and the shadow of the war memorial loomed large over the grass. ‘It’s funny. Count up all those summer days we spent together and it probably wouldn’t exceed a month. Right? One month of us hanging out. And yet there are places in this town where I have lived most of my life that I cannot pass without thinking of you.’
I was glad of the darkness, that she couldn’t see my face. ‘You are and always will be more than a month.’
One afternoon she described in perfect detail – what we did, the clothes we wore, what was said – and however much I tried, I could not recall a single moment of that day. It didn’t happen, I said, and she insisted it did. It didn’t happen, I said again, because if it had happened like you tell it, I would never have forgotten. Not that. I would never have forgotten that. She smiled. But I remember, she said. I remember the parts you don’t.
She lived in the little street that curves around the church in the centre of town. It’s the only part of central Ashford that feels like a village, with the higgledy-piggledy period frontage along a cobbled path. In the churchyard, tombstones huddle and lean together, their laps bare and forgotten.
‘This is me,’ she said, coming to a stop outside a tiny terraced house in the corner. There was a light on upstairs, and I wondered if someone was waiting for her on the other side of the wall.
Opposite her front door was the face of a gravestone, and in the glow of lamplight I could make out the fading letters: Here lies Mary Stephens. Died aged 48. Loving wife and mother. The rest were covered in lichen.
‘What a welcoming entrance,’ I said.
Anna followed my eyes. ‘I love it. A useful reminder of where we end up.’
‘That’s one way of looking at it.’
‘I’m too intense for you,’ she said.
‘True.’
‘I’m too intense for most people, but then most people are wimps.’
‘Some people don’t want intense but it doesn’t make them wimps. You shouldn’t be so hard on people.’
‘Wow, look at that,’ she said, rooting around in her bag. ‘I touched a nerve.’
‘Not my nerve. I’m just working on seeing the world from all perspectives.’
Anna put her key in the door and the latch clicked. ‘Still condescending, I see. Bye then. Thanks for walking me home.’
She flinched as I took her arm.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Let’s not do this. Sorry if I said something wrong. I’ve not been in the best place lately and my head’s pretty tired.’
She softened under my grip. ‘Of course.’ She smiled in the dark. ‘Are we too young for a nightcap?’
I knew I should go.
She pushed open the door and I followed her inside.
Can we dine at the banquet of all we should have done / by Anna
I want your hands to cup my face like I’m your final cigarette
Strike a flame and light me up
Watch me burn
Put me to your lips because you cannot help yourself
Savour me
I want you weak
No more apologies
I want a confession
My body as your rosary
Repeat my name
As you trace the biography of my skin
That finger on your left hand
The one that smudged the pen
And moved to the front of class
I choose that one
To be the first in years not to feel like an examination
Can we dine at the banquet of all we should have done in your bed
Can we fill glass goblets with red wine and smash them against the wardrobe
Can we shoot and bleed and hardly cook so that it’s almost still living
We are rare
I have never eaten game but I have played plenty with you
Wrap the bird in pastry if you like
Or gnaw hunks of meat from the bone
It all ends up the same in our stomachs
The glorious juice on our chins
Too much? I am too much for you. I will go on talking like this of how you could never handle me and how this would never h
ave worked until you
stop my mouth with your tongue
I don’t want to tell you I’m sorry
But I want to be on my knees in front of you
I want your ink spread over me
To know if the salt I swallow will season my core
I am desirous of a banquet
I am greedy and yet you are all that
I want / I want
the obvious things:
The weight of you on me
Your eyes on mine
To watch you blush like sunsets
The sight of your bedroom ceiling
The way light spills in through the door
I want to know how you fuck
I want to know how I fuck you
How you look there beneath me
Watching as I put on a show
(Don’t let me put on a show)
Reach up and touch me
Speak the words you never said
And after,
When we are tired and sore
I want to know whether you like to be held
Or if you like to do the holding
Can we dine at the banquet of all we should have done
When we had years
That night in your bed
Let us make a toast to what’s to come
The door led straight into a tiny front room. I looked around as she switched on some lamps. There were beams I had to duck under, and enough space for a small sofa and an armchair. The furniture looked second-hand and the curtains had clearly come with the house, but there were patterned woven rugs layered over the painted floorboards and lush green houseplants adorning every surface and I knew these were hers. She’d tacked prints of famous paintings to the walls, and around the sofa and on the floor were leaning towers of books. It had a simple, lived-in feel. Loved, even.
‘So what’s your poison?’ Anna said, standing in the middle and turning to me.
I slipped off my shoes and coat. ‘Let’s go with coffee.’
‘I’ll give you a tour in a mo,’ she called over her shoulder as she went into the tiny kitchen. ‘It’ll take all of thirty seconds.’
Under the stairs were rows of canvases and pots of brushes and tubes of paint. An easel stood near the kitchen door, a paint-splattered artist’s smock draped over a canvas in progress.
I looked over the collection of items on the mantelpiece. There was a small vase of white flowers, a box of matches, a twisted metal sculpture with a hammered pattern, a child’s watercolour painting of an alien. I was gleaning precious details of her life by looking at the possessions she chose to display, a knowledge she might not otherwise reveal. I looked closer at a framed picture of her with her son and recognised it from online. He had her face, all cheeks and lips, and the pale-golden hair of his dad. His hand was in hers and they were eating ice creams and laughing.
A large mirror hung on the wall. I could just make out a gloomy outline of myself in the foxed glass.
‘Ready?’
I turned and saw her at the foot of the stairs, her hand on the banister. She had her head cocked to one side, as if she’d been studying me while I studied her.
As she walked upstairs, I looked at her leather skirt and imagined running my hands up her legs like I once did. A brief time when I had permission.
She went into the room at the front, the one from where light had shone. A sign saying ‘Joe’s room’ in childish scrawl was taped to the door. The faint scent of fresh paint lingered in the air. The room was simply decorated with a small bed, a chest of drawers and a wall of low shelving crammed with toys. Above the bed was a large poster of a figure in mid-air, diving from a mountain into a lake.
‘I like the picture,’ I said.
Anna reached out and touched the edge of the print. ‘Isn’t it funny how we put pictures like these on kids’ walls, then when they grow up, we expect them to stay exactly where they are?’ She smiled, her mind far away.
‘Where is he? Joe.’
‘His dad’s,’ she said, looking down. ‘We have joint custody. I hate it. I stayed longer than I should have, because I couldn’t bear the thought of letting him go.’
I wanted to ask more. I wanted to know all about this side of her, this new limb that she had grown while we were apart, that was everything to her and utterly foreign to me. But she kept it hidden, like a private part of herself. It’s only later that I discover that she was scared to talk of him, scared it would send me running, as if I couldn’t handle the idea of her changing from the woman – or girl – I thought she was. I was another little boy that needed looking after, a small pat on the head.
‘Come,’ she said, leading me out.
A bathroom opened off the poky landing. She held out the door and I glanced inside at a white suite with dated tiles. There were no signs of a man on the shelves or around the sink. No razor in a glass, no newspaper by the loo. Just pots and potions and thirsty-looking plants.
At the back was a room painted a warm, orangey red. Her room. A double bed took up most of the space. There was a wooden stool for a makeshift bedside table, and a narrow wardrobe in the corner alcove. On the windowsill was a clear vase of water in which stood a tree branch with leaves the most vivid shade of red. The room was dark but for the moon and a puddle of light from the landing.
Anna leant against the door frame, her hands behind her back. ‘So did you mean it?’ she said.
I looked at her, confused.
‘What you said, about me being hard on people.’ A strand of hair fell in front of her eyes as she looked down at her feet. ‘See, I only joke when I call myself intense. You think I am, though.’
I put my hands in my pockets. ‘You have a fire and conviction. It’s intense, but a good thing.’
She kept her eyes on the floor. ‘Why do I get the impression you think that’s anything but a good thing?’
I took a step towards her. There were no chairs, and it felt wrong to sit on her bed. The space was tight, and the red walls and ceiling made it feel like the room was closing in. I leant against the open door.
She looked up. ‘You need to say something good about me right now.’
‘You are one of the most intense and inspiring people I know. Nothing but love from me, honest.’
‘This should be a game,’ said Anna. ‘Saying good things about the other. It would make a change.’
I reached out and tucked the strand behind her ear. ‘We aren’t here to do anything but help each other. It isn’t you versus me.’
‘Do you want something good?’
‘I’m okay, you don’t need to do that.’
‘I never said I had to. I want to.’
I closed my fingers around the book of matches in my pocket.
‘You make me feel safe,’ she said. ‘Do you know what I mean? It’s rare in a man.’
‘If it means something to you, then it’s important. That’s all I need to know.’
She pulled at a splinter of wood on the door frame. ‘You make me feel like everything is okay when I’m around you. I have this weird, knotted feeling in the pit of my stomach, but it’s okay. This probably won’t make sense, but you feel like home. It’s not something I’ve felt before.’
I looked down at my knuckles. ‘That’s a lovely thing.’
‘But it’s not just that. You have always been dangerous for me. Forbidden. I feel both safe and terrified around you, and I can’t decide if that makes you completely wrong, or exactly right.’
Her words fucked with my senses. To listen to her was to look in a mirror.
‘Do you know what I really loved?’ she said. ‘When you leant over me on the train. I loved that.’
The inside of my mouth ran dry and I had an urge for cold water, to soothe my throat and clear the way for the words I knew I should speak.
‘I’ll tell you what I want,’ said Anna, her face in the shadows. ‘I want your hands in my hair and your mouth on my neck and I want you to make slow love to me
like you care and then I want you to pick me up and fuck me hard against the wall and make me know exactly how you feel.’ She tore the splinter of wood from the door with her fingertip. ‘Is that Nick a figment of my imagination?’
‘The one who wants to fuck you against the wall?’
‘The one who would do it.’
I couldn’t stand it any longer. I stepped forward and put my hands on her waist and she pushed against me in reply. And then my mouth was by her mouth. Her breath was on my breath. The force from her tongue renewed every part of my body.
I kissed the darkness round her shoulders where her hair hung loose. I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her close, lifting her top and feeling her skin.
‘Wait,’ said Anna. She was holding my head against her waist and I looked up at her. ‘Are you sure?’
I thought of the man I should be and the behaviour expected of him. How my mind should be racked with shame at the thought of touching another woman. But she was not another woman. She was me, and I her, and it was everyone else that was shameful.
I closed my eyes and nodded.
She must have taken my silence for doubt, because ‘No,’ she said, kissing the top of my head. ‘Not like this.’
We were still for a moment.
‘Would it be okay if I stayed the night?’ I said. ‘Call it friends or whatever you like.’
Anna stroked my hair and tilted my face up towards her. ‘Friends?’ she said, smiling. ‘So is that what we are?’
We awoke at dawn to the sound of church bells. Sunshine streamed on to the bed in harsh stripes, warming the duvet above our half-naked bodies. We were apart but our feet were touching.
I turned on my side to face her. Her face was the barest I’d seen it.
‘You’re like a little boy when you sleep.’
‘You were watching me?’
She pushed my leg with her toe. ‘I’ve often wondered how it would feel to have you in my bed.’
‘To be fair, you already knew.’
Anna smiled. ‘Some things you forget. You don’t know at the time the memories that will stick around. And this is my bed, remember. It’s new to you.’
Another Life Page 24