A Cupboard Full of Coats (22 page)

‘I am nothing like that man!’

‘Talking down, talking hard, using love like some kinda dirty word…’

‘He was a monster! I am not a monster.’

‘Like something nasty stuck to you shoe…’

‘You take it back!’

‘Like you never loved her too.’

It was my turn to be dumbfounded. Then I laughed. Aloud. In disbelief that anyone could be so stupid. But it wasn’t funny and almost immediately I stopped.

‘Lemon, you’ve been good company. Thanks very much for the food. You’ve outstayed your welcome. I want you to go.’

‘You gonna sit here in front of me and say you never loved you mother?’

‘I need you to go
now
!’

‘Say it. Say, “I never loved her.” Then I’ll go.’

‘I told you I didn’t want to do this...’

As I sprung up from the bed, the tray on my lap and its contents spilled to the floor. He didn’t glance at them, just reached out and grabbed my arms preventing me from moving any further away. It was the first time since his arrival that I had felt his strength. His hands closed tightly around my wrists and, though I struggled to free them, I was held fast.

‘Go on. Say it. You don’t have no problem opening you mouth to broke a person down, so open it now and tell me you never loved her.’

As I struggled harder, his hands tightened around my wrists.

‘Let me go!’

‘Say it first!’

‘Fucking let me go!’

‘Say it!’

I screamed the words: ‘I hated her!’ He let me go. ‘I hated her! I hated her! I hated her!’ I sank to my knees on the carpeted floor in front of him, the strength in my legs vaporized, the rage spilled, exhausted. I didn’t look at him. I knew what I would see. Contempt. He wouldn’t understand. No one could. It was impossible for anyone to understand the impossible.

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘What you mum ever do to you?’

‘Nothing. She did nothing.’ When she should have said
Stop
, she was silent. When she should have fought, she ran. I felt his hands, slipping under my armpits, pulling me up, into his arms, enfolding me into his body. He laid his head on the top of mine. I repeated, ‘She did nothing.’

‘She loved you,’ he said.

‘She loved him more.’

‘Differently!’

‘
Instead
. Even Berris knew. It was him who told me.’

‘He was wrong.’

‘For telling the truth?’

‘He said it from spite. Spite is a wicked thing. I don’t just say so because I think it, I know because I been there. I sunk to the depths where you do a certain thing you know is well out of order, but you tell youself at the time you was within you rights to do it, how it was exactly what the other person deserve.

‘S’where my head was the night he told me ’bout the baby. All I was doing was rocking and listening to me music. For years after, I told myself I wouldn’t of said nothing if he did only stop there, that it was his fault, his fault for laughing and going too far. But it wasn’t true. I shouldda kept me mouth shut but I let spite open it.’

Suddenly, I felt sick. I pulled away from him and stood up. ‘What did you say to him?’

‘I went too far.’

I put my hands on either side of my head, squeezing them tight, locking the train of thought inside it. ‘You told him!’

I almost thought he had not heard me but then he looked up and I saw in his eyes that I was right. He wore a child’s expression:
No matter how badly you think of me, it’s nothing compared to how badly I think of myself
. ‘Oh my God, it’s true. You really did.’

‘I never told him everything…’

‘What did you say?’

‘That you came on to me. That you asked for it…’

‘Did you tell him what you did?’

‘I told him I said
no
.’

Then I did laugh. Now that really
was
funny. Genuinely funny. I laughed my bloody head off and he watched me in silence till I had calmed down enough to say, ‘So you came out of it stinking of roses. That was good. You were good.’

‘That was the second time I went too far.’

‘So let me just get this straight: you went too far the night of the engagement party, and too far when you slept with me…’

‘No! I
shoulda
said no but my head was so full already, there wasn’t a drop of space left to think. Any full-blooded man woulda had a hard time saying no to what you was offering on a plate, and having you was like getting back at Berris and having some of you mum at the same time. Then afterwards, separate, was the rest of the feelings that might’ve come first and natural to any other man in the same spot. What I said to Berris after was where I went too far. Not before.’

I closed my eyes. There was nothing sacred, nothing decent, nothing pure and good and innocent left. Not even the giving of my virginity to the man I loved. He had taken what I had offered and while he did, he’d been thinking of her.

‘And the third thing? What was that?’

‘Her last night. That was the third and the last time I went too far.’ He was quiet for a moment. ‘Told myself for years all was Berris’ fault; everything I did was ’cos of him, the way he stay, but it wasn’t true, I accept that now. When I say spite is a wicked thing, believe me, I know what I’m talking ’bout.’

The words came out of my throat sounding crushed. ‘I thought he saw something in me. That I was marked. That somehow, somewhere, there was a sign on me that other people could see. Do you know what he did? What
you
did? With those words?’

Now his eyes were filled again and I was glad. I felt my anger returning and it was like having back a misplaced comfort blanket. I had long ago vowed never again to be wrongfooted by the cruellest of all hoaxes – grown men’s tears.

‘He hurt me.’

He was ashamed but he did not look away. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

And I could see he was, could see it with my own eyes, but what difference did it make? He had said what he’d said and Berris had changed me, changed me into a person I could no longer recognize, except in my similarity to him.

11

She was in the living room when I entered, sitting on the settee next to Berris, eyes downcast hard. That was the first sign that should have alerted me to the fact that things were not normal, but I missed it completely.

For the whole day my head had been filled with Sam and Lemon. In my mind I’d travelled with Sam: into the car with her and her cases, tagged along on the airport run, watched as she checked in her luggage for good, as she boarded the plane and carefully belted herself into the seat that would take her away and out of my life for ever. And in the moments I hadn’t been thinking of her, I was thinking of him, what we’d done, and what the difference was between being a lover and being in love, whether those two things were as jumbled in his head as they were in mine, whether he was thinking of me, and if so,
what
he was thinking.

It had been impossible to concentrate at school, and after lunch I hadn’t bothered going back. I went to the library again. Somehow, being surrounded by books made me feel more secure, like there were a thousand stories with a thousand alternative endings, any one of which might be the truth. There I’d spread my textbooks on the table in front of me, trying to make it look like I was justified in being there, giving the impression I was someone with their head cleared enough to be able to study, to focus on the future, though there was so much going on inside my head it was a wonder I could think at all. After, I left and walked around Pembury Estate, then round and over Hackney Downs, and even over to Nightingale, as if everything might have been some huge mistake and I’d see her there, chucking down her bag, laughing and flirting like she owned the place, hooking on to my arm as naturally as if it were some part of her own self, glancing at a single thing, then me, and both of us cracking up without a word being said, because we two shared the same mind.

Emotionally, I was everywhere but in the present. Even so, I still clocked it as weird when I said, ‘Sorry I’m late,’ and she didn’t answer.

‘Sorry, is it?’ Berris asked.

He was looking at me, genuinely looking, meeting my eyes and holding the contact. As usual, he looked like he knew something no one else did, and kind of smug, like he did when he’d hurt my mum and was challenging me to say something. But there was something else there as well that was out of place and unnerved me, an expression I couldn’t put my finger on then and there. Even before I had a chance to try to work it out he spoke again and the steadiness of his gaze and the tone of his voice chilled me through from the outside in.

‘Where you coming from this time of night?’

My fear was like an enormous stress. I’d seen his work, what he was capable of doing to her, and I was smaller than my mum. How much easier would it be for him to do that to me? But below the fear, constant and expanding inside my chest, was anger. Just who did he think he was? He was already living free of charge in my father’s house, pounding my mum and treating her like dirt. If she wanted to accept that it was up to her, but he had no right to ask me anything or to expect me to explain myself to him. He wasn’t my father. If anyone should be asking me anything it was her – and she wasn’t. She wouldn’t even look at me.

I said nothing and, because I knew the anger would be blazing in my eyes, I looked down at the floor. He walked over to where I stood and stopped in front of me, too close. His feet were planted wide apart. He was wearing maroon leather brogues, with cream socks to match his jumper. Though I couldn’t see the sides of them, I knew those ones had large maroon diamonds up the sides. His shoes were immaculately polished.

‘You hear me ask you a question?’

I nodded. His shoes moved a fraction closer and I stepped back.

‘School done three hours ago. You out looking for man?’

‘No!’ I said.

He was close enough to slap me and that’s what I was expecting. I was tensed hard, expecting to feel the blow any moment, but it didn’t come.

‘Look at you, with you short skirt…’ – his hand skimmed it lightly – ‘…you blouse open up, everything hanging out.’ He flicked my blouse, above my breasts, and I flinched. The top two buttons were undone, nothing big, not like you could see anything unless you came and stood right next to me and looked down it. ‘You been out with you man-friend?’

I blushed and shook my head. If he’d said
boyfriend
it might have been okay, but
man-friend
made me think of Lemon. Suddenly it became clear to me and I was terrified. The signs I’d sought in the mirror, signs I’d changed, that I’d become a woman, though I hadn’t seen them, Berris could. Maybe not just him but others as well. How could I have expected to change so much on the inside and for there to be no outward sign of any difference? I looked at my own feet and was horrified to discover my toes were pointing outwards. I shifted quickly, turning them in. I wanted to look up to see if he’d noticed, but I didn’t dare.

‘Liar!’ He stretched out the fingers of one hand so they were splayed wide, then examined them. Using the fingers of the other hand he rubbed the skin between his fingers. The rest of his hand looked fine, but the skin there was chapped and in want of creaming. It looked better when he’d finished, but only a little. He rubbed a particularly dry spot one last time. He was like a man out strolling, in no hurry at all. He flexed his fingers then finally spoke. His voice was as gentle as I’d ever heard it. ‘Go upstairs to your room.’

*

I began to cry as soon as he walked into my bedroom and closed the door behind him. He held a maroon leather belt in his hands, one that he’d probably picked out especially that morning to match his shoes, and it did. Perfectly. It was doubled over in his right hand, and his left played with its length, running up and down, touching and caressing, as though the feeling it gave him was nice. He said if I told the truth he might not have to use it, but I knew he was lying. I couldn’t have put into words how I knew but it was to do with his eyes and the thing I’d seen in them downstairs; the aliveness in them, the thrill, like the look Lemon might have seen in my eyes when he stood still inside me and pressed me against him. If he’d looked into my eyes then, he would’ve seen what I saw in Berris’s eyes as he stood in front of me fingering his belt.

Passion.

No matter what I said, he was going to use it on me and that’s why, even before he’d started, the tears had already begun to fall. More than anything, it was the inevitability that really got me.

To
who you been seeing
I answered
no one
and he let fly the first lick. Same question, same answer, the second. The third time he asked, I panicked. I’d never been beaten before in my whole life, ever. Never with a belt. Never felt a crack across my back explode through my body like a lightning bolt of pain. I lunged at him, caught the belt mid-swing like a length of fire against my bare hands and held on, trying to wrestle it from his grip. My mistake was painted across his face in the darkest colours of rage. He fought me for it and won. And that’s when the beating really began.

There may be people so brave they would have struggled and done their best to show how tough they were, who would not have given him the satisfaction of hearing them yell at the top of their lungs, who might have been mortified for the whole street to know they were getting a roasting.

I was not one of those people.

I screamed my head off as loud as I could. I called for help, for my mother, for him to stop. I made so much noise, I fully expected to see any moment my mother bursting into the room fighting him off me, that the neighbours would pound the door, then race up the stairs to see what was going on, that someone would call the police and they would kick the doors down and charge up the stairs to arrest the bastard. By the time he’d finally finished with me, out of breath and panting, covered in a light sheen of sweat from his exertions, my throat was as raw as if he’d beaten that part of me as well.

But no one came.