Sweet Fruit, Sour Land

by Rebecca Ley

  A strange kind of hope, but I waited for its permanence like the roads we have walked on for centuries, holed and re-filled, and gone back to, won over by plant-life and conquered back.

  I imagined returning to the earth. In a thick, large, impenetrable box made with all the arrogance of man. I imagined, years after the end of my own consciousness, that shrubbery would grow, and take root. I imagined blackberries growing over my grave; I imagined their triumph, grasping back.

  That was my only hope then, that the blackberries should outlive me, and us – and him. I imagined he’d help with that, I imagined he’d help the blackberries crawl over us, in the end.

  I might even have said the word blackberry to him that night. Maybe that imagining was my secret too, why I clung the papers to me at all times, without asking him directly.

  The lights burst brightly from the walls, and I realised that they were not flickering candles but flickering bulbs, above our heads. They were fitted to look old and dimmed and I thought this a strange fashion, to make something look less expensive than it was. I noticed them just as I’d looked at his lightbulbs before. They burned into my eyes and seemed to burn every object in the room for hours, well beyond what most people had. I worried after always dressing in the dark that this lighting would render me stark and childlike. I hid my face by his side. Being next to him was a kind of invisibility, as I had nothing to offer, nothing that anyone cared for.

  There was one small gap of time that evening that was my own. We were interrupted by Frank, Gloria’s husband, who had a kind face and thick-rimmed glasses. I expected him to ignore me just as the others did, but he had the same welcoming air as Gloria. He took my hand and shook it. ‘Jolly good,’ he said, when I told him my name. ‘French, what a treat. I read some Baudrillard once, did you? Don’t let anyone tell you it’s a bore. It’s magic.’

  I didn’t want to admit my ignorance. I adored the way he assumed I’d have read the things he’d read.

  ‘I have a copy,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes, they have it all, here,’ George said, mockingly.

  ‘Georgey doesn’t like the philosophers. But that’s no matter, it must be in your blood, with a name like that?’ Frank smiled at me.

  ‘Something’s in there,’ I said.

  He nodded at me affectionately, before leading George away, wanting to discuss something with him. George turned from me with a pat of the hand and a gesture to the buffet table.

  Alone, I approached it. I marvelled at all the pieces of untouched fruit. Even, the most elusive of all: the banana. I picked one up and held it in both hands. I hadn’t tasted one for years.

  ‘Fascinating, isn’t it?’ a voice beside me said. I dropped the banana, grasped out of my reverie. Jaminder caught it and handed it back. I looked up to a kind face with combed hair and small features. She was wearing a floor-length dress, which would have been out of place anywhere else in the world but in this room.

  I thought her wonderfully handsome; her kind sloping nose and curious eyes and generous words an assault on the gross arrogance of luxury we had laid out in front of us. It was in these moments that I broke that imaginary barrier, between knowing her and not. She played a song on the piano and that was it. There was me before, and me after.

  Jaminder looked at the piece of fruit I dropped with the same curiosity with which I looked at it. I noticed it. It warmed me.

  I put the banana back on the table. ‘The fruit is fascinating?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ she said, ‘Don’t you think so?’

  I smiled, a kind of relief. ‘Yes, yes I do.’

  ‘Have you had a banana before?’

  I said, ‘Of course,’ not to lie, because I didn’t believe it was a lie, but I couldn’t remember, not exactly, the taste and texture of such a thing, so it might as well have been. ‘Have you?’ I said, as though asking the obvious, but she looked at me with such kindness I thought we might be in the same situation.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, surprised. She placed the fruit I had dropped back in the overflowing bowl. I might have taken a step towards her, to hear her better. To elicit intimacy, maybe. Or maybe I had an idea that I could do it without thinking, to try and make it seem natural. Just one step and we’re close confidants. One step and I’m happy, I thought. I’m glad she’s still there.

  I absent-mindedly felt for the papers in my jacket and felt them crinkle. I wanted to ask her about the bees. ‘I know why I find the fruit fascinating, with all of London on ration.’ I picked up the banana I’d dropped, and held it in front of me as though I’d mastered it and knew it well. It was nothing. ’But why do you?’

  ‘We live in the same city don’t we?’ She snorted. ‘I’m as much of an alien here as you are.’

  Did that border have any meaning for her? People seemed to be fascinated by it, but to me it was arbitrary; a veil thin as that between life and death; of my mother living and then not; of being one thing or another.

  ‘Do you speak French?’ she asked me.

  ‘No, but I listen to it sometimes.’

  ‘That’s more than most French people could say.’ She gave herself a congratulatory smile.

  ‘And who are the French people?’ I mumbled it, caught in my throat. ‘Who do you think the French people are?’ These old distinctions hurt me, they weren’t relevant any more. Everyone was everywhere, and no one was anywhere, and I don’t have too much pride to say that I missed the distinctions as greatly as I missed my mother. She was the whole of France, and she was gone.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.’ She frowned. ‘I only meant to make you feel at ease. You looked uncomfortable.’

  I bristled at that, hoping that I had been able to hide some of it well. ‘As do you.’

  She straightened up. She opened her mouth to say something and I looked at the O of it, forming a word, and my shoulders hitched up, waiting for what was next. What could that O be, O-range? O-rdinary? O-lives?

  ‘George – being around him is like peeling back a terrifying onion, layer after layer, don’t you think?’ She laughed, heartily. ‘No,’ she said, gesturing to the banana in the bowl. ‘I suppose I won’t eat it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She smiled. ‘Guilt.’ I didn’t ask, guilt for what. ‘I think my time at these parties is almost done, I’m not sure I’ll come back again.’ She stood, contemplating the food on the table.

  ‘Oh, but you must,’ I said, more desperately than I would have liked. ‘The champagne is exquisite.’

  She narrowed her eyes at me in curiosity. I didn’t blink, I fixed my smile. I looked around the room at the sea of ministers and their wives, dressed so artificially and with such self-consciousness. And for what, each other? I felt the claustrophobia of this world push on me. Not just because I felt I was out of place, but because I felt they were. What did they know of the true world outside of this house, outside of this village? What did they know about what it meant to struggle? And if they didn’t know, what could they be doing about it? Except of course, eating food most people couldn’t dream of, and drinking drinks erased from the world’s consciousness.

  ‘We’re just an island. It won’t take long,’ Jaminder said.

  ‘What won’t?’ I said, and felt a fool.

  ‘If I were you,’ she said, ‘I’d run.’

  I frowned at her, I wanted to ask her. I reached out a hand (For what? To touch her?), and just as it lingered I heard Gloria from across the room, next to George and Frank. ‘Where is she?’ she was saying, loudly, having come out of her corner, standing close to George, facing him. ‘You haven’t, have you?’ She pulled at his lapel, pulling his face close to hers. ‘I know you know something. Tell me where she is.’

  George shrugged, unmoved by her closeness. ‘Neverland?’

  She reeled backwards, and without a pause swiftly slammed her hand across his face. He didn’t flinch as Frank grabbed her and held her back.

  ‘Careful now, Gloria,’ George said, movi
ng a hand to his glowing face, embarrassed, looking about the room.

  ‘Gloria,’ Frank said, desperately. ‘Come on, now.’

  She shrugged Frank off without force and stormed away from them. She headed straight towards us with a look of fierce intention.

  ‘Lord, Jams, what bores they all are,’ she said to Jaminder, trying to smile, but her mouth juddered around her teeth.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Jaminder said, holding out a hand to Gloria’s shoulder.

  ‘Don’t let’s talk about it now,’ Gloria said. ‘I can’t get hold of Wendy, is all, and she promised me she’d be here.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s just holed up with someone for a few days,’ Jaminder said, trying to laugh, trying to coax Gloria out of her distress.

  Gloria shook her head, fumbling in her pocket for a cigarette. ‘I’m afraid this is a rum do. Something’s not right.’

  ‘It’ll be okay,’ I said, my voice the sound of a child. ‘I’m sure she’s fine.’

  Gloria clicked her lighter on and looked at me disparagingly over her cigarette.

  ‘I have to go play,’ Jaminder said, looking towards the piano. She reached into her pocket and handed me a scrap of paper, which she’d written her telephone number on. ‘Just in case.’ She looked between me and Gloria. I put it firmly in my jacket.

  Gloria eyed the card that passed between us. ‘We look out for each other, don’t we?’ Jaminder nodded her head, and went back to the piano.

  I was left with Gloria, looking at me curiously, her fingers shaking around her cigarette. ‘Please, Mathilde, let me take your coat.’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

  ‘Well, have something to eat at least.’

  ‘I’m not very hungry.’

  ‘How bourgeois of you.’ She laughed without humour, and her perfect hair moved with her head as she did so. ‘Everyone’s hungry.’

  Gloria never meant to make anyone feel a certain way, but she did slide around like she knew the answers to certain burning questions. It was a great risk, but I knew if I didn’t do it now, I never would.

  ‘Gloria?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, kid?’ She continued to look around the room, and took a forceful drag from her cigarette, wobbling between her pale lips.

  ‘If I ask you a question would you give me a straight answer?’

  ‘I can but try.’ She picked up a glass of champagne from the table and raised it up to me. ‘Ask away.’

  ‘What else do you know about the bees?’

  Her face grew even paler, her glass lowered.

  ‘Where did he get them? How does he get everything?’

  ‘He told you then?’ she said, lowering her champagne glass from her mouth, sickeningly. ‘Or, Jaminder didn’t, did she?’

  ‘No, I mean, I just want to know about the honey,’ I said, to reassure her. ‘I’ve seen something, I found some papers. I’ve got them, I can show you. A list of food. I don’t want to ask him. I thought you would know, maybe Frank has told you something. I thought you might know.’

  She whispered, ‘I don’t know anything more than you.’ Her eyes scanned the room. ‘You think I have any say in what goes on here? You think I have any power?’ I felt for once a real viciousness in her demeanour.

  ‘No, I just…I don’t know.’ I raised a palm to my chest. I tapped it. I searched her face for lucidity. ‘I only wanted to know about the bees and how it might help. Help the planet, do you see?’

  I mistook her anger and severity for too much champagne and confusion, and worry for her friend, who would no doubt be here, drink in hand, tomorrow.

  She snorted, as though the word planet were a great joke. ‘Whatever you think you know, un-know it. We don’t ask questions.’

  A chill went through me, not from her words but from the look on her face. I sensed she was trying to convince herself, and she seemed heavy under the weight of it. I had no concept of what I was asking.

  ‘You must return those papers, quickly.’ She let her empty glass fall gently on the table and it landed with a discarded thud. She stubbed out her cigarette on the table cloth and looked back to me. ‘You’ve taken a great risk. You have to put them back.’ She held my hand, tightly, crippling my fingers. ‘Now.’

  I looked at her, afraid. ‘Should I not eat the honey?’ I said, missing entirely the point.

  Gloria laughed, her head back. She lifted her champagne up high again, as though she was toasting me. ‘We’re all just bodies in the end,’ she said, smiling. ‘That’s all.’ She said it with a cheerful smile on her face. No one heard her against the din of the room, full of people. She turned from me and made her way through them.

  That’s when I looked past the table of fruit and to the piano, searching for some reassurance, just to look at her face, and feel things might be all right. I hadn’t noticed Jaminder had never started playing, and the record was still spinning around, filling the room with music. She was sitting at the stool, but the keys were untouched. And George had placed his glass on its polished black top, leaning forwards towards her. One of her hands was placed at the edge of the keyboard, and she was picking at the wood, looking down. But the rest of her body was leaning away, in quiet submission. I moved closer towards them, to hear what they were saying. George was smiling, fiddling with an olive in his glass.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be off polishing the silver cutlery or something, helping out in the kitchen?’

  ‘I’m a pianist, George, why on earth would I do that?’ But she didn’t look up at him in her usual levelling way, and kept picking at the piano.

  ‘Well, you’re the help aren’t you? What else do we pay you for?’ He laughed, and I tried to decipher if his tone was jovial. It could have been construed that way, if only I didn’t look at her face.

  ‘To play music,’ she said, quietly. She stopped picking the piano then, and looked up at him. She smiled a grim smile and placed her hands on the keys. They jumped, solidly, into position, and she slammed against them into a cheery, loud tune. Everyone cheered and someone slid the needle off the record, drowned out against the piano.

  He stepped back, surprised, took his hands off the lid. His glass shook and he caught it. She carried on, cheerfully, wobbling her head with the tune, until he left her vicinity. She carried on playing, but her shoulders slackened. Neither of them saw me, but I saw what her eyes followed. They never left his direction as she watched him go.

  2

  I went home with George, my mouth thick with worry. I glanced across at him on the rattling tube home and he put a hand on mine. Even if he had been able to hear me over the noise of the train car, I wouldn’t have known what to say. I was beginning to feel a great unease in his company. But I couldn’t squeeze everything I’d heard and seen and thought back into my old life of sewing at the shop and sitting with my grandmother. I told myself I wanted to stay to find out the truth, but in reality I knew it had nothing to do with all of that. I was only curious, and I never thought about what I would do if I found something out. I never thought, not once, of the responsibility of knowing something.

  We walked from the station in silence. I didn’t need to telephone my grandmother to tell her I wouldn’t be coming home. When I was at home she spoke to me less and less and watched the fireplace more and more. When we were in the shop together she focused only on her work. She handed material back to me, wordlessly, having unpicked my stitches, to make me work harder and neater.

  We entered his home and went to the kitchen to get some water. George flicked on a light switch and smiled at me. ‘Better?’ He fussed around the cupboards of glasses and pulled two out to fill with water from the running tap. I turned on his radio automatically, as I did whenever I stayed there. I left it on as long as I could, and stayed in the kitchen listening to it for as long as I thought the sound wouldn’t disturb him.

  I stared intently at the drawer where I found the plans that were in my jacket. I tried to work out if it had been touched since I had opened it. I
couldn’t tell, and tried to move my eyes away.

  ‘Do you want anything else before we go up?’ he said.

  I stepped forward, I opened up a cupboard, hoping to find some illicit food. Only ration boxes and tins.

  ‘You won’t find anything too good in there,’ he said. ‘But I could get you something, if you like.’

  ‘Where do you keep your honey?’ I said, trying not to look at the drawer. Trying not to look anywhere.

  He laughed. ‘My, my, you are getting quite the sweet tooth, aren’t you?’ He stepped towards me and put his hands around my waist, a sign of delight. He pulled me towards him. ‘All that sugar isn’t good for you, you know. You have to be careful. I should make you an appointment with my dentist. Have you ever seen one?’

  ‘Once or twice, maybe.’ I said. The thought scared me.

  ‘I’ll send you to Dr Yang,’ he grinned. ‘He’ll know what to do with you.’

  ‘No, no, I’m fine, I’ve barely eaten anything.’ More men in white coats. More hands on me, more prodding.

  He squeezed my waist with a giggle. ‘I beg to differ,’ he said, ‘Anyone would think I’m fattening you up.’

  It was true, and what once would have delighted me, now only made me ashamed. He searched in my face for a similar delight, and there was none.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m only doing what’s best.’

  I put my hands in my coat pockets. I felt Jaminder’s scrap of paper there. ‘I’m not sure we should see each other anymore.’

  ‘What?’ he said, releasing me.

  I looked at the floor, I shrugged. ‘I’m just not sure what the point is.’