What the Eye Doesn't See

by Alice Jolly

  Tyger opened her eyes wide, ‘Ooooh, you never did …’

  ‘No, no. Well …’

  ‘In other words – yes,’ Tyger said.

  ‘So what’s he like – this other bloke?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Awful. He’s slimey and Spanish and he wears his slippers outside …’

  Tyger and Sam started to laugh and Dougie spluttered.

  ‘Sounds right up your street,’ Tyger said.

  ‘Well, don’t forget, if all else fails,’ Sam said, ‘you can always come back to Moulding Mansions.’

  When it was all over, except for a few committed whisky drinkers who we couldn’t get out of the hall, Tyger said they’d take me back to London. I sat in the back with my head on Sam’s knee. Biggles was in a cardboard box next to us because Dougie wouldn’t come without him. Tyger drove at a hundred down the motorway although the rain was still thrashing down, and the windows were steamed up, and the air was thick with Dougie’s dope. I smoked some of Dougie’s joint and started crying, and then slept without dreaming, holding Sam’s hand.

  Back in Brussels. This morning I went to work, but this afternoon they told me I should go home. So I walk back to the flat feeling like it’s me that’s dead. The worst thing that could possibly happen has already happened and I’m still here. The end of fear. Above me the sky is hollow. The space seems immense. There’s a reckless purity to the day. I am weightless and shapeless with nothing inside me. The simple fact of being alive seems miraculous. People in the street are transparent. I can see their black hearts pumping, counting out life. They watch me as I pass, agog with indifference.

  I pass a corner shop and stop to buy supper for Adam and me. He’ll be here tonight, arriving on a late train. Under a blue neon sign, I read the headlines of English newspapers. Interest Rate Cuts Hit Industry. Blue-Blooded Bank In Bonking Row. Werewolf Seized In Southend.

  At the flat everything is a mess. Still my water heater doesn’t work. I should tidy up, but I’m so cold I go to bed instead. I leave my front door ajar for when Javier comes. I know he’ll come and I’m disgusted that I can think of him when Nanda is dead. I go back to bed, sleep, and wake to find him standing by my bed.

  ‘Magdalena. Where are you gone?’

  I blink awake and wipe my eyes on the duvet.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Five o’clock?’

  Javier is grinning until I turn my face to him. ‘Oh Mag-da-lena.’ He stretches my name out into a long moan. ‘Who is dead?’

  ‘My grandmother.’

  He’s standing with his hands stretched out, and a frown on his face. ‘But she was dead still.’

  ‘No, my mother is dead already. My grandmother.’

  Except in my case it’s actually the same thing.

  Javier lets out a long breath and the whole of him sags. ‘But this is terrible.’ There are tears running down his face. ‘Oh no. Terrible.’ He raises a hand to stop the monsoon.

  ‘Oh Javier, don’t cry for goodness’ sake.’ I clutch at the sleeve of his jumper, and the smell of him makes me remember his bed, and the feel of him. He sits down beside me, and kisses my forehead, then holds me in his arms. I can feel his tears on my face.

  ‘You are cold,’ he says. ‘Wait. I will go and get you a drink.’

  I assume he means tea, but he comes back a minute later with a bottle of wine and a corkscrew, and puts them down on my packing crate bedside table.

  ‘You went for the …’ He makes a digging motion, pressing his foot down onto an invisible spade and shovelling over his shoulder. Despite myself, I want to laugh.

  ‘Yes, the funeral.’

  Javier opens the bottle of wine and pours me a glass. Then he takes a handkerchief from his pocket and blows his nose. I haven’t eaten for days and the wine makes my stomach churn. ‘Javier, I’m all right now, don’t worry. You go.’ But instead he waters my wilted plants, rings the landlady and abuses her in rapid-fire French about my water heater and goes downstairs to make me some toast. I eat some of it while he pours me more wine and offers to lend me his dirty handkerchief.

  ‘You wait a moment,’ he says. He’s back a minute later with a pile of photographs resting in his hand. They’re curled up with pinholes in the top of them. He sits down beside me and points at a tubular-legged signorina with a black scarf round her head. ‘My grandmother. She is dead also.’

  He gets into bed beside me and we spread the duvet flat so we can lay his photographs along its white edge. He holds the photographs in his hands like delicate china and I rest my head on his shoulder.

  ‘And the brother of my grandmother. Also dead.’ He flattens the photograph out, folding back a crumpled corner. A toothless man, in black and white, grins in the harsh sunlight outside a flat-roofed house. In the background there’s an orange tree like the ones in Seville. His life there, his family – how would it have been, after he was gone? My mother, dead before I even knew her, and her parents, buried somewhere in Seville. Javier is talking, but I don’t hear him. The weight of all the dead presses down on me. My blood has stopped still. I’ll spend my life doing this or that, and then I’ll die like Nanda, and it’ll be as though I was never here.

  ‘And my cousin,’ Javier says. ‘You know, he is dead because of his own lorry.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘Yes, he did not use the …’ Javier jerks his hand up beside him.

  ‘The handbrake?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I try not to laugh but the wine gets the better of me.

  Javier shrugs and laughs. ‘He was always very stupid, so it is normal that he is dead in a stupid manner.’ When I feel Javier’s hand on my skirt, I push him away, but his hand continues to stroke my leg, and I like the gentle slow movement of his fingers. I push my head against him, so that everything around me is shut out. I can hear our breathing, and I remember Nanda’s breath, rasping all night.

  When Javier’s hand rises higher on my leg, I move it away. ‘No. Javier. I don’t want to.’ But his hand keeps touching the inside of my leg.

  ‘Javier, you’ve got to understand – I’ve got a boyfriend. So I can’t do this.’

  ‘Si, si. I understand.’

  Still he moves his hand on my leg, and it’s better than being alone, and when I look at his face it’s still wet with the tears he cried for her. He pulls at my skirt. ‘No. I don’t want that.’ I push him so hard that he nearly falls out of bed.

  He sits up and stares at me, his face angry.

  ‘Javier, I don’t want that now. Can’t you understand that?’

  He takes hold of me by the hair and pulls me towards him. ‘You think that because she is dead then you should be dead as well? Is that what you think?’ He picks up one of the photographs scattered on the duvet and his eyes are thick with anger. ‘All of these people are dead. You … insult them. What can you do now? You live now …’ He reaches forward and his shaking hands start to unbutton my shirt. I pull at his hands, but see nothing because of my tears. He pulls off his jacket and his shirt and throws them on the floor. He’s so angry that I wonder if he’s going to jump on them. He’s pointing a finger at me, and spluttering and spitting as though the words taste bad. ‘You waste yourself. You have become … an English … an English …’

  I put out my hand to him, and he pushes it away, then suddenly his anger goes, and he kisses me, and laughs. It won’t matter if I do this just once more. He gets back into bed beside me, and undresses me slowly, and I watch as though I’m somewhere else. Then he stands by the bed and pulls off the rest of his clothes, struggling on one leg, pulling off his socks. As he gets into bed beside me, the photographs fall from the duvet and rustle down to the floor.

  In the sitting room the telephone rings. I hear Adam’s voice. ‘Maggie. Are you all right? I called you at work, but they said you’d gone home. Listen, don’t worry, because I’ll be with you in only a few hours, and it’ll be all right …’

  Javier sucks at my breasts like a hungr
y baby and I stroke the back of his neck.

  Adam’s muffled voice discusses travel arrangements. ‘I’ve thought about it, and decided that it would be better if I got the seven thirty-six train, rather than the five seventeen …’

  I used to wonder how Dad could lead double, triple, quadruple lives. Now I realise that all of us are doing that, all of the time. Lives are not all of one piece. I feel Javier’s hand between my legs. I am lulled by the rhythm – it’s like the rocking of the train as I went home, like Nanda’s rasping breath, like the hymns in church. Except something is pricking my back. I reach underneath myself, trying to find what it is, then Javier rolls me over and unsticks one of his photographs from my back. We look at it in his hand and laugh. Then Javier drops it over the side of the bed.

  Afterwards Javier says that he’s going to teach me Spanish. I admit that I already know a bit. He starts to say words and I repeat them. He makes simple sentences. I try to do the same – and I can do it. My tongue is athletic because the words are already inside me. They come out from behind iron grilles and filigree screens. I talk and talk, making no sense – all that was mute is suddenly shouting.

  The effort of it exhausts me. I lie back in Javier’s arms. ‘In Spanish the verb to expect doesn’t really exist, does it?’ I ask. ‘There’s a verb to hope but no different verb to expect.’

  Javier thinks about this for a while and then agrees. I look up at the ceiling. Language is culture. Spain – a country where nobody expects anything, where all is random. I begin to fall in love with my homeland.

  ‘You know, for an English person the fact that there are two verbs to be is terribly confusing,’ I say.

  ‘But Spanish is right in this, and the other languages are wrong. If you say – I am in Brussels. Then you say – I am tall. This is not the same verb.’

  ‘But surely it should be …’

  ‘No, no. The English are stupid. It is quite separate. Of course, of course. The place you are in is only the place you are in. It is not the person you are.’

  Later I wake and Javier is playing the piano downstairs.

  I’m worried about the sheets. Adam is arriving and I’ve got to do something about the sheets. I strip them off the bed and hold them up. Light from the window shines through them showing stains like stars, cream against white. I stuff them into a plastic bag and tell Javier I’m going to the Coin-Op laundrette.

  I sit on a plastic chair. The machines rumble and breathe hot air. Opposite me a couple are necking and a man is asleep with his personal stereo on too loud. In the street outside a dog pees against a rubbish bin. Two small boys roll dice across the floor, trying to throw sixes. I watch the dice roll. One lands by my foot and balances on its edge for what seems like an hour then falls on four.

  I watch the faces of the machines, turning round and round, and when I look away the street outside is turning as well. The white of the sheets, the foam in the machines, the clouds at Thwaite Cottages, always so close. Without Nanda I’m disconnected. She had the strings of the kite. The world is turning fast and my head spins. What will I say to Adam? Another decision. Of course, I must go back to London with him and I must tell Javier that. It’s time to reclaim my rational mind.

  When the sheets are dry I lift them out and feel their static cleanness against my hands. I push them into the plastic bag and set off home. The air is cool, with the first edge of autumn, and it’s getting dark as I wander back through the cobbled streets. The lift is broken so I walk up the stairs, tugging the plastic bag after me. Pedro leans over the stair rail and waves a spatula at me. The first notes of ‘Girl with the Flaxen Hair’ trickle down the stairs. In Javier’s flat the purple lamps throw their shadows over the usual mess.

  Javier stops playing and turns to me, drinking beer from a can. I breathe deeply, wriggle my toes, clench my teeth. ‘Javier. Listen, I want to talk to you …’

  ‘Maggie, Maggie,’ Pedro says. ‘Let me help you.’ He pulls the sheets and duvet cover out of the plastic bag and shakes them out across the floor.

  ‘No. Don’t. Stop it.’ The floor of their flat is filthy. Javier jumps up from the piano and catches hold of the end of the sheet. They try to fold the sheet between them, moving together in a heel-clicking flamenco dance. Then they toss the duvet cover up in the air. The duvet cover lands across Pedro’s head and Javier wraps it around him so they’re both lost in whiteness and all I can hear is their laughter.

  ‘Don’t. Stop it.’ I try to pull the sheet off them but instead they push my head inside it. Everything is white, the light is like snow in the morning and despite myself I start to laugh. I wave my arms but Pedro won’t take the duvet cover off my head, it’s tight around my face and brushes against the inside of my eyes. I’m being pulled towards the bedroom.

  ‘We put them here,’ Javier says. I fumble my head out and see Javier and Pedro pulling the sheets off their bed.

  ‘No.’ I pull at my sheet but Javier stretches it across the bed and lies down on it, then pulls the duvet cover on top of him. He reaches out his hand to pull me down beside him but I push him away. ‘Javier, I’ve got to explain to you.’ I tug at the sheet again but he won’t move. He lies on the bed, his dusty slippers making marks across the white material. Pedro passes him his can of beer.

  I start gathering up the pillowcases which are scattered on the floor. ‘Javier, you know what I’m saying, don’t you?’ I’m careful not to look at him.

  Javier looks at me and nods. ‘Si, si. Your boyfriend. The man which I have seen here. He is very nice, I think.’ Javier nods his head, then he turns to Pedro, and the two of them shrug and nod. Clearly Javier is completely unhinged. Why have I only just noticed this?

  ‘Javier, I want to explain to you …’ Javier gets up and starts spreading the sheet flat around him. I wrestle with Pedro for the duvet cover. Then I stop and move around to the other side of the bed so that I’m in front of Javier. ‘Listen to me. That means I can’t have a relationship with you.’ He doesn’t look at me but he nods his head. He hasn’t understood. Perhaps I need to explain more simply. ‘Javier, I’m not going to get married to you.’

  Javier collapses onto the bed as though he’s been shot, and lies there laughing, looking up at the ceiling. Then he turns onto his front and his head is tipped up towards me. ‘This is good, in fact. Because I’m having a wife and three children in Spain.’

  I hold the duvet cover in my hands. Above the bed the crucifix is black against the white wall. Pedro was in the process of putting a pillowcase on but now he stops and swears under his breath.

  ‘What?’ I tug at the sheet which Javier is lying on, pulling again and again, as my shoes slip on the floor. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Javier takes hold of my hands and tries to unwrap them from the sheets. ‘But you are not wanting to marry me.’

  I fetch the plastic bag, push a pillowcase into it and disentangle one sheet, which is dusty and probably beer-smelling. Of course I don’t want to marry Javier. He’s a creep. I wouldn’t touch him with a cattle prod. And he’s completely stupid. ‘Get off my sheet. Get off it now.’

  Javier, still lying on the bed, pulls my sheet out from underneath him, and rolls up the duvet cover so I can take that as well. I pick up the other pillowcase from the floor. My head spins as I bend down. The pillowcases appear doubled, tripled in my blinking eyes. I push everything into the plastic bag.

  ‘Javier, why don’t you care?’

  He raises a hand from the bed and catches hold of the hem of my skirt. ‘Because you will come back again.’ I unpick his fingers, one by one, and then I turn and walk out. I slam the door behind me and stand on the landing with my hand pressed flat on the top of my head.

  Max

  I stand in the churchyard. Only two weeks ago now. Seems longer.

  Fiona has sent me to do some shopping for supper. The infrastructure of life has got to be maintained, come what may. So I came here to Burrington. As good as anywhere for shopping.
<
br />   I park the Jag, head for the supermarket. Then decide I might go to Mother’s grave. I sit down on a bench beside the church wall. The falling sun is on my face. The hills rise all around. The cut in the earth has not yet healed. Bouquets of flowers wilt beside the granite headstone. Modern death is a poor show. In Victorian times you’d have had a hearse pulled by six black horses with nodding plumes of feathers. Or there’s those Middle Eastern women on the television, ripping at their clothes, scratching their faces, wailing. Appalling, but better than this.

  Life is suddenly very short. Of course, it was worse with Lucía. She was buried in some anonymous London graveyard. A place she’d have absolutely hated. Partly it was spite, I think. I was so angry with her. It all had to be her fault, otherwise it would have been mine. Stupid. Stupid.

  I get up from the bench, walk away from the grave, don’t look back. I pass the school, remember how Mother waited for me there, every day. We’d always walk back home together, all the way to Frampton Edge. No matter what the weather. An old sheepskin coat, she had. I liked the greasy feel of it. Her Wellingtons flapped as we walked. I imagined her hair like an electric shock as we walked under the pylons.

  The best day was when she had a migraine. She had to sit down on the verge. I went down the field to fetch some water from the stream. I wiped her head with my handkerchief. She held on to my hand. I was sad when finally she could get up and walk on.

  But that was when I was tiny, before I understood. Before I went to houses where faces above my head would exchange knowing nods. This is Miranda Priestley’s son. I would be given an extra chocolate biscuit, a distant smile. Ah yes, Miranda Priestley’s son. You know, of course. Tight-lipped nods. Eyes turned away. Yes, of course. I wiped chocolate biscuit on their curtains, pushed their children in the nettles.

  Now, in my hands, I can still feel Mother’s flesh. The dry thinness of it. No different from the cotton of the pillowcase. Down, down. The life going from her. Dreadful, dreadful. Yet the power of it. The sense of right. Joy, something close to joy. Appalling, but true. The one that didn’t slip through my hands.