Authors: Josie Clay
“Delivery for Bracewell”.
A huge bouquet, all the ones I liked. A little envelope
.
I tugged out the card.
'Minky'. Not in Dale's hand; a stranger had written my name in conscientious but dimbo script.
'Try not to burn the house down, N.O.R.W.I.C.H. x'.
Picturing Dale patiently relaying the message over the ‘phone made me smile. I showed the flowers to Prudence who eyed them warily.
Dale got home after dark and stood on the deck while I batted the dust out of her like an old rug, particularly enthusiastic around her hind quarters. After she'd bathed and eaten, she went to bed, plum-tuckered. I had to forgo the eye contact part of my secret ritual and hope the hair stroking would suffice. Her rough hand in mine.
At weekends I taught classes, but she worked Saturdays anyway, cruelly hacking our time together into unsatisfactory pieces. Still my beautiful girl, but tired and miserable.
“It's harsh” she said.
“But why are you doing it?”
“Because” she said, “...it's what I do”.
Six weeks into this regime, our anniversary. We'd agreed no presents, she'd simply come home early, a quiet dinner, time for us ...perhaps an early night.
I did the shopping and felt lonely, returned home frustrated, unpacked the dishwasher angry, peeled the potatoes, abandoned. Old insecurities gaining a foothold, my girl unlocatable and I was losing my way. Oh, I knew myself and that I could turn any house into one of cards. So, cross-legged once more, I dealt. Dale was jack, Dale was queen, Dale was ace, but like a child raised by wolves and schooled at Roedean, she had her blind spots.
As the sea travels backwards betraying rocks and wrecks, recalled to muster a tsunami, a shallow breath gathered a vacuum, pushing out the fuss and tarnish, the groundswell of a mental shout I would send her, gathering, gathering, detonating at critical mass, a sonic boom. 'ME!'. I waited in the mushroom cloud.
My ‘phone beeped 'Missing you badly x'.
Good at detecting nuance, there was discomfort and conciliation in this simple message – she would be late, allowing me time to consider how I would foment a coup.
I pictured her Lilliputian amid slabs of granite, sandstone, marble, chiselling pointless; essentially between a rock and a hard place.
Solace and altruism no good now, they would only serve her pride, her persistence. Complaining would martyr her. Pointing out her folly politely would entrench her and polarise us. Sulking would galvanise her. I had gelignite that would either blow us apart or provide an escape route. I will fight dirty to save you Dale and if I succeed, you'll forgive my sharp practice.
Fortified with wine I awaited our first argument, throwing a tea towel over the reproachful eye of the dead salmon on the butcher's block. Enjoying the detail of the bath I'd drawn for her, now cold, the sort of thing my old self would have done in love and hope, crying as I pulled the plug. I played Brickbreaker on the Blackberry.
One hour passed, then two, then three. At last, a key in the door. I arranged my ingredients, among them, petulance, jealousy and cruelty and set my features in smacked arse of the highest dudgeon.
“Sorry sorry sorry, Minky, I couldn't get away”. Noticing my clenching jaw. “I had to wait for a delivery”. Noticing my balled fists.
“You said you'd be home at five” I hissed, “it's now eight”.
“I know, I'm sorry, it was important”.
Grabbing petulance. “More important than me?”
“Oh give me a break” she said, pouring some wine.
“I give you lots of breaks”, raising the volume.
She sighed. “Well give me another one then”.
And there I was, swirling my red cape.
“I don't even know why you're doing this fucking job!”
“I've told you why”, patiently, “I love it”.
“My arse!” I roared and she blinked, stunned. “You're just a fucking rich girl, trying to justify your existence by doing something really hard and horrible, and don't tell me it isn't, I know you're not easily defeated but just look at you, you're fucked. Just so you can prove to Pappa, what? That you're not a spoilt brat?”
There was even angry spittle. Her eyes saucered and then her brow fused in a dangerous way, horns glinting.
“You have no fucking idea what you're talking about!” She glowered at the pedal bin.
“You're being fucking selfish!” Banging my fists on the table for drama. “Off on some pointless crusade”, my voice a cruel singsong, “wrecking yourself, wrecking us, why? Because you love it. Do you love it, Dale?”
Her eyes incandescent
.
“Yes, I fucking do. I have a life you know”, now in full voice, “and I don't need you...” she floundered, “I don't need you telling me what I can and can't do! Back off, Mink!”, stamping the floor.
“No you back off, stand down, walk away. You're so used to winning aren't you? But some arenas you should just not enter. Dale, what you're doing is destructive, for both of us, you're so fucking stubborn”.
She spun round challenging. “Thanks for your input but some of us need a little more reality”. I opened my mouth, but she raised her hand. “And don't say we make our own reality” she growled. “Look”, fingers on temples, “I don't fucking need this”.
“Aha! Yes you do”, triumphant. “Tell me you love spending fourteen hours a day in a freezing vault, hammering your tits off, surrounded by hairy-arsed men who would love to fuck the dyke out of you. Do you really love that Dale? Do you?”
A shock twinge of arousal.
Her head dropped and my snorting bull, no longer enraged, staggered to her knees under my artful spears and spilled her tears. My work discharged in a few short minutes, not quite the taming exercise I'd anticipated, more like a sheep shearing. But my girl was weeping at my hand, wretched and fatigued. I knew what that was like. And so despite, because, down before her. Kissing her salt and dust, our mouths soon eating each other, suffocating, tensile thrusts. Now in our position, legs astride, cocos together, breast to breast, an urgent congress, rising, communing. All of us joining here, the gristle and bone, the friction and soft, thick ribbed and weak, all here with only one place to go, that one colossal, sacred, murderous, majestic, ominous thrill. Bumping in it for a while, such pride in her, such an honour.
Her cheek on mine, sticky and good.
“You're right” she sobbed. “I've made a mistake”.
She could fathom no way out of the contract she'd signed. Performance indicators, financial default, not a problem, but the professional discredit she could not live with. Dragging her up, she creaked into a rush chair, keeping my hand.
“What if you were to break your arm?”
“Extreme” she said, brain dead.
Tearing up the stairs, flailing in the box room, I returned victorious, placing my old companion on her lap, arm shaped, arduous and authentic.
“Happy Anniversary, baby!”
“You fucking beauty” she sniffed.
Next morning, delivering her in the Hilux, the cast discretely gaffered, the grubby hand tip-exed. She emerged from the church minutes later, thumb cocked like an optimistic hitchhiker or the Fonz.
Momentarily fearful of our investment, we had each of us made a stand in our own way. But now it was done and dusted, a new era prevailed, one of complete conjunction. No longer necessary to pursue counter-intuitive sidetracks, we trod the same path tillsammans, hand in hand, the sun on our backs.
Dale summoned our Swedish home on the laptop, which we explored in cyberspace; a grown-up version of the boathouse. Red, wooden, squatting between sea and forest, with a workshop where we could evolve further, setting our insights in pigment and stone, Dale's dust tempering my colours. We would go in August and when the holiday makers had vacated in September, we would most probably buy it. I printed out the picture and stuck it to the fridge door with magnetic words.
Chapter 20
The weather worryingly hot for April as I cycled along Heather Road. Some of the Hasids in shirt sleeves, but most still wrapped in heavy dark coats and always the hat. The women from neck to wrist in conservative blouses, the modest skirt and white tights of an off-duty nun and wigs that must have been hellish in the heat.
The head of a Hasid child bobbed between parked cars. She edged out, a baby on her hip, her little brother's hand in hers, all cautiously craning the wrong way. Their approach to crossing the road similar to that of a cat; dart out at speed and hope for the best. I'd learnt to anticipate this and as she went for it, my squealing brake pads stopped her in surprise and the baby's head whipped round alarmed.
“You must look when you cross the road” I implored, but she scuttled into the path of an oncoming cyclist whose brake pads produced a repeat performance. We exchanged the tight lipped smile of road users and
I accidentally bestowed it on a girl sitting in the bus shelter. She smiled back and wiggled her index finger. A full three rotations of the pedals before I braked hard again, recalling the backwards beckon. She straightened her arms and locked her fingers as if preparing to dive and, lifting her chin, she offered a grin, broad and reminiscent.
“Sasha?”
She nodded, pulling her sleeves over her hands. A circumspect “Hi”.
“Oh my God, look at you”, attempting to identify vestiges of the little girl. “How are you?”
“Fine, I'm fine, and you?”
“Yeah, yes”, gawping at the transformation. “You're, well, all grown-up”. Her features were accommodated more honestly now, the faces of children a cute but effective primal trick. She smiled in that way teenagers do, as if they're already recounting it to their friends.
“You look just the same” she said.
“I'm sure I don't, but bless you for saying it”.
She giggled, the child fleetingly re-emerging. “So how old are you now?”
“Seventeen”. A reflective nod.
“Like the dancing queen” I said for my own entertainment, thinking she wouldn't get it but she did.
“Yeah” she smiled. “I'm having the time of my life”.
I studied the strobing, digital timetable, giving her a break from my scrutiny.
“You must be doing your A'levels”.
“Philosophy, Art and Critical Thinking” she said, her intonation like a question.
“Critical Thinking, wow, that sounds very left brain” I said as if she were an adult.
“It's basically thinking about thinking”. That same inflection.
A bus chuff drew a line and she stood, taller than Nancy and sturdier, like her father.
“Well, you take care Sasha”.
“And you Minette”. Her walk economical, like her mother's. “Bye”. She beeped her Oyster card and became a silhouette.
The episode coming back to me as I swam that evening; something about her, a calm resolve, quite unlike the girls I taught and a far cry from that excitable little pickle - my abiding memory of her. But thinking on, she had a quality as a child, a focus, a knowing. The uninvited thought of her mother surfaced and I purged it with Dale, quickening my stroke.
Dale's key in the door. Despite a busy day, this was where it really began for me.
This morning she'd driven away, a triangle of toast clamped in her teeth, a vortex of clarity and vibrance. We'd got a little carried away last night, drinking whisky while we virtually toured the Swedish house for the umpteenth time. I didn't share her constitution and after she'd gone, I sat queasy, coco glowing smugly, staring at the 'please wait' start-up on the computer. Li
ghting a cigarette without being conscious of rolling it, and similarly opening an email in my Potarto inbox without registering who it was from.
Subject: Left Brain
‘Dear Minette
‘It was great to see you. I remember you fondly and believe me, you do look just the same. As you know, I'm studying art. In fact I submitted a piece to your 'Sense of Place' competition but you rejected me, probably not you I know. I'm eager to learn all I can about the 'art world'. My interests lie in conceptual art, incorporating mixed media. I have visited various exhibitions at Potarto and appreciate their diversity and quality.
‘I wondered if there were any summer job opportunities or failing that I would be willing to volunteer for the experience. I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely
Sasha (Ilarian)
‘PS I hope I use my left and right brain in equal measure’.
I wracked my brain to recall what her piece could have been - most likely one of those conceptual things that didn't present well at selection - like the woman who had stripped before us, maintaining she would set her hair on fire.