Twelve

In the days when Oliver only weighed five pounds and we would sometimes babysit, Josh used to lean over his cot and murmur ‘Olivia! You’re so pretty!’ I doubt we’ll ever know the outcome of that experiment. The perfume was another of his ideas but the joke was lost, to the great gain of all parties, because Oliver has never gone home smelling of roses and must never have mentioned to his mother how he’s spent his afternoon. His secrecy is one of the qualities that has forced me to like him.

Today, Josh comes in just as we are decanting our brown musk into jam jars. He’s carrying a bag of clothes from the local charity shops. He’s got a red hat for me and a miniature skiing jacket for Oliver. They seem ridiculous in the heat of the summer and we laugh as we put them on. Oliver says, ‘Can we jump now?’ and we take an arm each and hurl him up into the air. We are custodians of his dizziness. We look at each other when we play this game and recognise our mutual jealousy. We wish we too could have two big people to make us feel weightless. We bought Oliver his baby-bouncer because we remembered what a sad day it was when we had to get out of ours. And the man who invented bungee jumping knows how we feel.

When Oliver leaves, I’ll pour the results of our day on the garden. It would be more cyclical perhaps to feed them to the roots of the rosebush, but they’re on the other side where I can’t get to them. Plants eat their dead ancestors. I think this as I tip our perfume away. Plants are cannibals. More than this, they eat bits of their dead selves. Horrid.

Tonight, Josh and I have been invited to a party by a sort-of-friend of ours called Garry. The theme is Army Camp and everyone is to dress up in combat gear. We are goodtime girls, me and Josh, but we’re not getting into fancy dress for anybody. I’ve persuaded him that we are totally within our rights to go in mufti.

Maybe ‘goodtime girl’ is a bit too optimistic. In a few hours’ time I’ll be persuading him not to go at all. I’m never sure whether I’m trying to talk him out of it or making him talk me into it. We always do go. We’re always glad we’ve gone. It’s like this, I’ve a friend who prefers women although she told me once she sometimes needs to sleep with men. In the morning she smiles and says to herself ‘thank god I’m gay’. Parties and clubs and bars, they’re always incredibly exciting in advance, and such a good idea afterwards. But while you’re actually there? Somehow they make coming home such a relief.

As far as we can work out, at this one we’ll know nobody there. Not as good as knowing everyone, but better than knowing a few people not very well and dreading they’ll leave your side. Desperately trying to entertain them. Judging when you’ll see their interest waning. Thinking on your toes of what to hit them with next.

Josh says this party won’t be much of a talking one anyway, more a dancing. In that case it will depend entirely on the music. I wonder if we’ve steadily raised the volume over the past forty years to blot out our dwindling interest in chat. We used to clothe ourselves with words but now our armour is drugs and drums. It’s easier behind these, requiring less, providing an excuse. What people say, what they do are no longer criteria by which to judge them. In the chaos of a rave, their behaviour, our reaction, cannot be trusted. We rely instead on being perspicacious. We get a ‘good vibe’ from this dancer here and ‘the fear’ from that other over there.

Still, it’s fun isn’t it? And it’s not only the charity shops that Josh has been to. He pulls from his pocket his other purchases of this afternoon. Two microdots. I wink at him. Speed is scummy, coke is self-obsessed, E – I have spent evenings in my youth on E putting ice-cubes in the mouths of kissing couples, thinking they’d love it, maybe they did – I don’t know, it’s that enforced tribalism thing. I’d rather do it with people I really love, who I really think are beautiful. Acid is my favourite and he knows it.

It’s not a great idea to take it before we’ve got ready before we’ve called a cab, but we’re deciding to anyway. That way we’ll have burnt our boats, that way we’ll have to dress and go. Quickly and without thinking about it. And when we realise what we’ve done, we’ll be there.

In the cab I know we’re both checking the other for signs. I can see it in the way I’m looking at Josh, in the smile that’s playing round his lips, we’re both nearly giggling and I’m very aware of my cheeks. It’s so exciting this waiting. It’s a high in itself. What am I going to get? For once I know I’m going to get something. I’m definitely going to get something and I’m going to like it, but I don’t know what it is yet. It’s Christmas in heaven. All presents and no disappointments.

We find the street, we find the house. And I kind of don’t want to go in because the something I’m going to get is not dependent on the party. I’d have a great time just tripping with Josh and far less frightening. I mean, what is this party going to achieve? Have I ever been to a party and made a new friend? I don’t think so. No. Is this odd? Has anybody? The door is open but in front is a metal lattice which is locked and through which a girl is leaning. She has lost the plot, she’s saying ‘the philosophy is sound’, I think. But she can’t quite make her mouth move in conjunction with her voice so the effect is of some cheaply-dubbed film. From what I can make out behind her, she seems a valid example of the scene at large. Josh says, ‘Will you get someone to let us in?’ as though this is likely to happen. Please don’t let it happen. From nowhere though Garry appears. He has an iron key on a chain. I look at Josh to tell him I’m still sober, I don’t want to go in, hello! welcome to hell, but he smiles his in-for-a-penny smile and gives Garry a kiss. Garry locks the door behind us.

I can’t get over the fact that Garry has locked the door. I mean, what if there’s a fire? I want to point this out to Josh but somehow he’s been swallowed by a mass of faces in the hall and Garry’s leading me by the hand upstairs. I can’t believe it. I’m going to lose Josh. It’s my biggest fear and I’m having to confront it at the beginning of the evening. Without him, how will I get home? That whole taxi trauma, finding a number, making yourself heard, sitting off your head in the back and hoping they’re normal – it’s an ocean between me and my bed and Josh is the bridge. What happens if I don’t find him again? I will find him – I’d ask Garry only, how ridiculous. I’m in a house. You can’t lose a person in a house. Upstairs downstairs.

Upstairs seems a terribly long way. It must be like this for Oliver. Always. Imagine having more stairs than numbers at your disposal. Like walking into the infinite. Like walking up a hill that apparently never ends. This is a hill. Too many people, like so many bushes and trees and boulders, blocking my view of the top. I can’t see down, I can’t see up, I squeeze Garry’s hand to tell him to stop.

There’s a sort of corner with a wider stair and room to rest. He’s saying, ‘Okay, sweetheart? Okay?’ and rubbing my hand with his thumb. It feels delicious. Like the first time I’ve been touched. I’m nodding I think, I’m trying to smile. But that’s just it: I’ve no idea if what’s on the inside is getting through to the outside. He’s saying ‘Meet…’ and then a sea of faces where our safe stair was. I can’t meet, my mouth’s all tremble. ‘Meet Mary.’ Mary. Mary. It sounds funny, Mary. I don’t like her I think. Bad vibe. Oh definitely. She’s pointing to something in her cleavage, she’s saying ‘Should I lose the Action Man?’ She’s only wearing a bra, a bra and a doll. Should it go, yes or no? She’s demanding a decision. Don’t stop rubbing my hand, Garry. My neck is too weak for my head. Baby me.

Up up up, we’ve got there, but where are we going? I say, ‘Where are we going, Garry?’ and he says, ‘Yes’. Hopeless. More keys into a room, bed, cupboard, desk. Diet coke that he’s giving me. I’m breathing. He’s saying, ‘Just relax. Just relax and go with it.’ He smooths my eyebrows with his thumbs, he says, ‘That’s it. There’s no one else in here.’

Will you kiss me, Garry. I know you don’t, but will you? Would it be too horrid for you? A smile, and then a kiss and oh! it’s dreamy. I feel like I’m sucking the life out of him, feel like he’s feeding me. This is just what I wanted to earth me, now I’m slowing down.

Garry grins. He kisses my nose. He takes my hand and sits me on the bed. He takes off his top. I’ve never noticed before but he’s got a beautiful body. Club culture. The gym. What would Henry VIII make of the gym? Lifting things that don’t need to be moved. Running when nobody’s chasing you. He’s taken off his trousers, little cotton pants he’s wearing, and now he’s dressing in new clothes. Exactly the same but clean. He says, ‘Ready?’ and I say, ‘Yes.’

Back downstairs – and there is Josh on the dining room dancefloor. He’s surrounded by soldiers, giving it some where the table should be. He winks, he laughs, he takes my elbows and moves me to dance. I know how to do this. Find some space and start off small. Keep moving. Now feet, now arms, now hips perhaps. It’s the call of the drums this music, pom pom pom. Pom pom pom and your body jerks to it – Don’t look at anyone else yet cos they’ll put you off your rhythm before you’ve found it and suck you into theirs. You might not be able to dance to theirs. Little jerks getting bigger until the music encapsulates you, and your body learns the beat. Then your mind can wander, then when the rhythm changes and the tune comes in it’s like you’re flying, endorphins rushing, your body a freeway of racing blood, you go like billyo and you’re dancing, properly dancing, forgetting you’re physical, forgetting you’re dancing at all.

If we could float a little off the ground, would there be any need for this? I see why whirling dervishes. I see why baby-bouncers. Roller coasters, swings, fast cars and dances. The end is this: after that rush to float, after that speed to take off.

There’s Hideous Mary. Sans Ken. I don’t like her trainers – perhaps that’s why I don’t like her. I turn round to ask Josh what he thinks but he’s no longer there. Oh my god. No, he’ll come back. Even if he doesn’t I’ll get home eventually. I won’t be here this time tomorrow and that’s what I must keep thinking. Thinking, thinking. It’s so solitary, this. It’s not socialising at all. And now I’ve remembered that I’m dancing. And now I’m going to have to start all over again. Looking like I’m having a good time. Until I am having a good time.

We’ve been here for four hours. Four hours ago I was snogging Garry in his bedroom. I can’t believe I snogged Garry. Well yes, I can believe that – I can’t believe Garry snogged me. Did Garry snog me? I was very high then, very high and now I’m not so – so in four hours’ time I’ll be pretty much back to normal. Hooray for normality. Hooray for coming home. When Josh comes back I’ll brave going to the loo. It’s a terrifying prospect I know, but think this: you’re in a house. If it were daylight you wouldn’t give it a second thought. There’ll be people and you might trip up, but that’s the very worst. And Josh must be there now so Josh can tell you where it is and maybe, if he’s feeling kind, Josh will come with you.

Fingers and buttons, they’re the tricky bit – it makes Josh laugh that it takes me so long. I say, ‘Cut me some slack,’ which makes him laugh more because it sounds so peculiar. I laugh too. Hysteria on the bathroom floor. No, no, I’ve got to stop this, I’ve got to go to the loo. Concentrate. Buttons push through buttonholes. These things I’ve learnt go first. Zips and trousers under my fingers, the space from me to the lavatory, but my instincts are intact. Inside, my body carries on without me. I am a machine, a clockwork toy, and I’ll go until the last turn of the key.

Josh tells me that he’s found the chill-out room, and this is where we’re headed. Inside, a mound of cushions, a sofa and an armchair. Hideous Mary is collapsed on the cushions, Josh has colonised the armchair, leaving me with space for one buttock beside three men on the sofa. They look like triplets. Shaved heads, combat trousers and tight white tee shirts. They’re having a conversation about some girl. In front, two dancers moving like the wind. One’s saying ‘This is my favourite bit coming up.’

‘The elephant bit?’

‘Elephant?’

‘Yes, listen,’ and he’s making a childish trunk and doing an impression. There are elephants in this world, it suddenly occurs to me. Right now, there are elephants. Doing their own thing.

One of the clones beside me has had enough. He says definitively, ‘Look, she won’t age well.’

‘What are you on? Those cheekbones!’ I turn to look at them and hear, ‘See what I mean?’ and realise with some horror that they’re talking about me. It’s one against two in praise of my longevity. I can’t handle this now. I’m not at my best. My face feels like one of Picasso’s. I close my eyes and hope they’ll go away. They don’t. I deal with it. I congratulate myself for not freaking out. I open my eyes and Josh says, ‘You are such a wreck,’ and laughs. This is not great for a girl’s confidence. Thank god it’s getting light and we could conceivably go home. I say ‘Shall we go home?’ and astoundingly, he says ‘Yes’.

We decide to walk for twenty minutes and then catch the first train. Our ears are ringing still with the sounds of our night – techno track on auto-reverse, early-morning birdsong mixed in with the beat. Josh looks flushed, his skin thin, I think I see his blood vessels moving behind it. But he is normal compared to the weirdos on the train. Whenever I’ve travelled at this time there have only been strangers. And I’ve never been certain if it’s me or it’s them. I keep my eyes on Josh. Safe. I hold his hand on the escalator. Behind I am faintly aware of someone running, then someone tapping me, me? then someone putting a bit of paper in my hand and catching the stairs back down. Josh and I are in shock. He says, ‘What does it say?’

‘“Colin” and a phone number.’ It’s not just me, is it? It is an odd thing to do.

Josh shrugs – later – and threads my hand through his arm. Later we’ll pick through the events of the evening, later decide we’ve had a brilliant time. But sleep first. Sleep. The sun is rising. Herald of a beautiful day we’re going to miss.

And Shirley and Oliver are just waking up.

three (#ulink_89dc15e0-3172-54bb-8a03-7b3b62bf179e)

August is the room of a party an hour before dawn. What was last night sparkly and exciting has now begun to fall apart and stink a little. It’s unpleasant and you want to leave but you can’t quite. Because on the other side of it, there’s only Today.

Is hot air thinner than cold air? And if so, what’s missing? I could find out the answers to both these questions but (it’s a freedom I take so much for granted that) I won’t bother to. I do imagine though, living before anyone knew and no one could tell. The air is very thin this August and it’s confusing me. It’s as if the last few months of evaporating bodies, steaming dogshits, hot-baked rubbish and car exhausts are having their effect now. Strangely though, the air seems thinner. There’s nothing in it to breathe. I hate August. And beyond it, only winter.

Nothing to take my mind off it but Colin. The most unlikely stories are the sweetest ones. We haven’t got over it yet, we keep saying, ‘Wow’ and ‘I can’t believe I’ve found you’ and ‘Just say I hadn’t felt brave’. We have been lovers for six months now and have slipped into an easy intimacy. It amazes me (but only in retrospect) how reality shifts and is just accepted. I no longer hesitate before I say the words ‘my boyfriend’. Now when I go to Edward’s house, I don’t sleep in Lily’s Room, but with Colin – in the best pink spare on the second floor.

Of course, I took my life in my own hands when I went off to meet him – it’s something we fondly laugh about now. When I rang him he said ‘I didn’t think you’d call,’ and I said, ‘Neither did I.’ Surely though, such a spontaneous gesture deserved a return. More than this I was flattered and it had to go somewhere. It wouldn’t be much of a story would it? if ‘And what happened then?’ was followed by ‘Nothing’. Memories are things you have to earn. Besides, I wasn’t playing that high-risk a strategy, rapists and murderers are not the majority. I met him in a public place on a Saturday afternoon. What did we talk about? I can’t remember now – everything. No. Nothing I’d ever talked about before. And Josh likes him.

The underground’s a strange setting for a love scene and not one that I would have chosen. Tonight I’m on it to go to meet Edward. It’s so hot that I’ve not bothered to fight for a seat but am standing by the window to the carriage next door. It’s open for ventilation but it always makes me laugh, the thought of ventilation down here. If I stand the right way round my hair is in my eyes and up my nose, so I’m standing the wrong way round with it blowing off my face and I’m looking into the neighbouring car. Another set of possibilities in there. Perhaps it would have made all the difference if I’d been on that side and looking in here – if I’d been just five feet further down that day, Colin would never have seen me – so do things happen because they’re supposed to? or just because they can? Chances are, it’s possible.

Edward and I are going for a walk after work in the park. In the winter these are reserved for Sunday afternoons, when he doesn’t seem to notice that it’s raining and freezing cold. On the way back we get stuck in the week-again traffic. He says, ‘C’mon c’mon c’mon; c’mon c’mon c’mon; c’mon c’mon c’mon’ over and over under his breath like a mantra. At his flat we sit in front of his lookalike fire and drink tea (if I can be bothered to make it). He cleans his shoes on the Sunday magazines and makes me read to him from their papers. He lends me a dry pair of socks (which I never return) and I catch the train home. Sometimes he walks me to the station.

The park is a long way by underground, until it becomes overground and almost until the end of the line. Tonight though I suppose I’m enjoying it. It’s quite nice, this breeze on my face and those people to watch and this film in my head where I’ve spent the next six months in love with Colin. And it’s so bizarre down here. It’s science fiction. Shunting through tunnels under the earth and in the dark (it’s always dark in science fiction). It reminds me of those pictures for children where the earth’s sliced through: here are the people walking the streets and here are the people travelling beneath. So many people, like bunnies in burrows, like patients on their way to some spooky experiment in a secret laboratory. And not one of them taking any notice of me. If I made such an impression on Colin why not so on them?

I’m making a mental note not to talk to Edward about Colin – he is a purist when it comes to conversations. The problem with mine, according to him, is their tendency to be experience-led. He doesn’t like to know what I’ve ‘been up to’, he’s not the least bit interested in plot – if I try to tell him he’ll say, ‘This isn’t a conversation, Lily, it’s a soliloquy.’ So to get his views on the subject I’ll have to couch it in altogether different terms. I’ll have to conceptualise. Colin will have to become a debate about – I don’t know quite what yet. I’ve got three more stops to work it out.

Edward and I have been coming to this park ever since we met. It’s a pastime which belongs to him though and not to me. I’m sure he brings other people on similar trips while I’d never dream of coming with other than him. It’s his place. He’s never said so, though. It’s his possession and he has no need to point it out. When we first became friends we’d fill our pockets with bottles of beer and walk up the hill to see the sun set. We’d sit and watch it getting drunk on its glory, mostly in silence but pointing out the occasional flash of colour till it had ended. Then, humbled, Edward would give his views on how he’d have improved it.

There he is waiting for me in the front of his car. He’s in his usual position, feet on the steering wheel, bum in midair, swapping his suit for something more suited to walking. No attempt at discretion. I can tell by the way he’s yanking on his jeans that he’s not in good temper. Well, he never is for the first five minutes, like he finds it hard to make the change from his own good company to someone else. He glares at my feet as I get in beside him, I say, ‘I’ve got my trainers in my bag.’

‘We’re going for a stomp, Lily, do you know what that means? It means working your lazy blood around your lazy body, working up a sweat, moving fast and covering a lot of distance and if there’s even the smallest chance that you’re going to make me cut it short because your feet hurt, then you’d better get out now.’

‘You always lay this on me, and I’ve never complained my feet hurt.’

‘Well, you must have done once, or else I wouldn’t say it. So what’s it to be?’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Good,’ he says, and he speeds off.

Edward has always driven like a maniac. He says he does it to calm himself down. I remember the first time he took me to his parents’ house he swerved down the tiny country lanes as though he were the only person likely to be using them. He turned to me at ninety miles-an-hour and said, ‘At least if we die we’ll die together,’ which I didn’t find exactly relaxing. But then, I’m not friends with Edward that I might relax. I’m friends with him for lots of other reasons which I’ve suddenly completely forgotten. I’m not in the mood to deal with his mood, I’m fighting one of my own. Beyond this light summer evening, beyond this lovely walk, beyond this beautiful park and the friend that I love, it’s August, and winter ahead.

I surrender. Edward always does this and I always put up with it; I’ve stood on a sweating train for an hour to get here and at least he could be slightly pleased to see me; if I did to him what he constantly does to me our friendship would be over in five minutes; and whereabouts along the line did we agree that he was allowed to be a crotchety old git and I patient till he’d got over it? I feel like making a big gesture, I feel like telling him to stop the car and getting out without explanation, I feel like going home and never seeing him again. But I can’t, I won’t, I don’t, and this makes me crosser. My throat starts to throb and tears fill the backs of my eyes. I sometimes think it’s this pain in my neck and not the pain from anything else which makes me start crying – it’s unbearable and tears the only way to clear it. I can’t cry though, I can’t cry with Edward here in the front with me – nothing’s happened. Nothing unusual. This is the way he always is for the first five minutes, and nothing’s happened today to warrant this bad temper. Nothing unusual. But it’s like this mood is always lurking, like it’s easy to give into, like once I’ve crossed the line it’s such a job to send away.