Author: Peter Coles

We had to go out, head toward the water and then maybe over to Leith, because the angel was back, fighting Dad in front of the flat, just really kicking the shit out of him. Something inherited, Dad says. So Libby and I made our way downhill through the weekend crowd. I held tight to her even when she tried to squirm her little hand out of mine and made that whiny noise that’s just an impression of crying.

We stopped at The Star, and round the back, next to Mr. Munro’s Škoda Fabia, there was a football lying on the ground. I let go of Libby and practiced shots against the brick wall and after a while some regulars came out to watch. Watch and smoke. Pam from the Scotmid even bought us chips, but Libby ate all of them in ten seconds, like a hog.

When we got to the pier I remembered what Dad always says about smiling at the new waitress at Scampi Globe, the one who came over from the most, most, most eastern part of Africa, because it wasn’t safe for her there, but when we looked inside we couldn’t find her. We hung about anyway. I hoped Libby would put her sweetest face on, so some visitors from across the bridge would buy us goujons, but no such luck. 

Libby said she had to piss and there was a queue for the toilets, so we went down to the water, watching our feet carefully as they moved over the rocks, so we wouldn’t slip on algae. The firth stretched out flat and endless, and from where I stood squinting, the rock formations seemed like a rope net floating on the water, letting the light hit. I’ve seen pictures of electric grids before. It was like that. I know that in the gaps between that rock there are little ecosystems that mostly get mashed up when the posh families from Trinity go wading out, but I think there are probably some un-mashed worlds, too, safe and busy and invisible, growing and growing, ancient, so ancient maybe it has something to do with what Dad inherited, what I guess I might inherit someday.

I told Libby to get in the water, even if it’s cold, go waist deep and go; piss. Some women started shouting from way far away, saying it was dangerous, what was I thinking, that the little girl needed to get out of there, but by the time they reached us Libby’d already finished. She got all the piss out. And she was taking my hand.

There was an old lighthouse behind us, about halfway to Leith. It’s still painted red and white and even though it doesn’t light up anymore, doesn’t do anything at all, and people take photos of it like it’s worth remembering long after they’ve gone back to wherever they came from. And I don’t know why, but walking off toward home just then I started to feel like it shouldn’t be there anymore. I had this sudden feeling in my gut that we don’t need to cling onto every old useless thing, even if those things are dead tall or were once very helpful, once served a purpose. I don’t want to say that I felt it watching our backs – it wasn’t anything as stupid as that – but I felt like it might have been watching something.

It was a funny feeling to have while the sun was all golden and lovely and everyone was staring off across the water. I should have just given into feeling nice. And why should anyone listen to me? I’m not much older than Libby, who was a baby not even all that long ago. Everyone must feel that way from time to time: that something big and old and admired might be planning something. It’s nothing to worry about at all.

On the way back to ours we saw the waitress at a bus stop. She was hunched over something that was playing music, and she was smoking. She’d untied her pink apron. It was on her lap, and it had collected some ash. I told her I was going to smile at her because my dad told me to, and that made her laugh. She asked what my name was. I told her , and I think she remembered something, because then she asked what name my dad went by now, and I told her I wasn’t sure. It’d probably be different by the end of today, unless he won the fight, that is. But that had never happened. The waitress said that my little sister was shaking pretty badly, and she was right, but Libby wasn’t whining or anything, so we took our time.

The angel was gone when we got home. The door was unlocked. Dad was drinking a Tennent’s and pressing something against a wound on his hip. He was making noises at it, but didn’t seem to be paying attention to the other marks on his body, which glowed hot, and also he had a new name. He asked where we’d gone and I told him. He asked about the waitress. I thought maybe Libby would want to say something, but when I looked, she was having a nap on the couch. A hog nap.

“You go into the water?” he said.

I nodded. 

He nodded back. In a minute, he was asleep, too.

The name-changing thing is only a problem for everybody else. Libby and I never call our dad by his name. So joke’s on the angel, really.

 

Arianna Reiche is a British-American writer who moved from California to Scotland as a teenager. Her fiction has appeared in Ambit Magazine, Berlin’s SAND Journal, Fugitives + Futurists, Popshot, Joyland, and Glimmer Train, who awarded her first prize in their 2017 Fiction Open. She was nominated for the 2020 Bridport Prize and the PANK Magazine Book Contest. In March 2021 she won the Tupelo Quarterly 23 Prose Prize. She currently lives in east London.

Francine chased her cereal with the spoon, while in the other room Cornice received another hiding. The milk had overwhelmed the wheat flakes and they were soggy and broken down. Hiding was the word Dale always used, as in I’m going to give you a good… but it was often visible and always audible.

Personally, Francine felt Dale needed to learn his own lessons about the art of concealment; she herself had been stashing cigarettes and coins in odd places around the house for years, and not for any other reason but that she could. Even now, Cornice might empty a cupboard and a penny would roll out; or discover that the mousehole in the baseboard was not abandoned, but discreetly blocked with a decomposing Morley. Francine drew circles in the milk and assessed the severity of the lesson being taught on the basis of Cornice’s feedback.

Dale was a supply teacher and he was going above and beyond his duty, he said, to provide home schooling to Cornice. It wasn’t clear to Francine exactly what this particular lesson was about, because the ceiling fan’s troubled rotor masked much of the content. Dale was forever saying he’d fix it, but maybe there was a reason why he didn’t.

Francine grew tired of the pretense of eating. She dumped the mushed cereal in the bin, along with the spoon; another emerging habit. Cornice was always despairing at the perpetual disappearances of things like cutlery or clothing. After a moment’s consideration Francine tossed the bowl in too, covering it up with some newspaper. Once, she’d thrown Dale’s good lighter away, but regretted doing so when he’d subsequently educated Cornice on the importance of looking after his personal property.

Dale came into the kitchen and sat down to finish his breakfast. Cornice could be heard slow-ascending the stairs. Francine filled the sink and washed the pans on tip-toe. She could feel Dale’s eyes on her, then thought it was funny how she could feel anything that was so intangible. She wondered if she was wrong, that maybe Dale wasn’t looking anywhere at all – and she’d begun to doubt her instincts – but when she turned around, there he was, one hand held out, frozen in a gesture, as though he’d made an important point that she’d missed.

 ‘People need to learn,’ was all he’d say. And it was true, thought Francine. They did.

She announced her intention to go to school, as if this was an unexpected development, then put on her camo jacket and squeezed through the back door, sidling through the rainbow strips that always felt like they might, at any moment, become descending spiders. Francine waited outside for a few moments, to see what the house was like without her. It seemed less weighty, but still uneased. She calculated alternative habitation combinations: Francine + Cornice, Cornice + Dale, Francine + Dale, and knew which one was preferable, but what she couldn’t calculate was the formula by which it could be achieved.

 

From the bus stop across the road, Francine looked at the upper windows of the house. Through a gap in the curtains, she thought she could see Cornice, but the morning glare made it hard to be certain. The bus arrived and departed without Francine. Without thinking too much, she walked in the opposite direction to school, towards the industrial estate, where most of the town ended up working.

She saw enough people she recognized, but no one noticed she wasn’t going the right way. Possibly she just looked like someone who belonged there, a consideration that opened up new possibilities in terms of blending in, a skill she’d been honing since a young age. 

On her first day of elementary school, for example, when she’d stuffed herself into the cupboard beneath the sink in Mrs Johnson’s homeroom, and it’s taken the janitor and a pry bar to get her out. Or years later, when she’d infiltrated Miss Garbarino’s English group, in order to avoid attention in Mr. Naden’s much smaller class, whose forensic focus was unwelcome. That she’d been able to convincingly forge a letter from the principal sanctioning the transfer was a matter for the board, but it was also something Dale had taken in hand, given that he’d uncovered the deception during a rare appearance at her school.

 

But when Francine got to the estate, she kept walking, because there was no job yet for her to go to. She cut through empty lots, squeezed through fences and struggled over neglected areas whose prior purpose it was hard to figure. The further she walked, the more desolate and overgrown everything became, until she came to a place where the natural world asserted itself. She entered a copse that was dark and deep green; the air undiminished. Francine thought she might stay for a while. An hour or two. Forever.

The copse thickened and became woodland or a forest. Francine was unclear about distinctions between gradations of vegetated areas, but she was aware that beyond the estate was an expanse of land that was constantly being fought over between developers and conservationists; the sort of place that in later years she might be expected to frequent with her peers in the name of teenage transgression, had she been anyone other than herself. 

Slender trees broadened into mighty oaks. The forest – she had decided – became looming and dark. But at one point, over a thickerousness of felled or fallen trees, a glade opened up, in the center of which lay a body. Francine cleared a stump of leaves and took a seat to consider the matter.

 

The body was clearly a body, although it didn’t look like a person; a formerly-alive thing. It was supine, in the pose of a fallen asleep: one arm over the face as though post-faint, the other splayed out all a-drama. Francine thought about poking it with a stick to verify life was extinct, but something – an abstract and unclear idea – told her all she needed to know.

She wondered if a person stopped being a person when not alive, or if there was some other reason she was reluctant to apply a term more intimate than ‘it’. But she didn’t fret about this; Francine was familiar with such notions as separation and distancing with regard to coping and survival.

The body was dirty, but clothed. It was unclear as to how it might have gotten there, or what had happened post-arrival; there were no tracks, although there was trash, which included a packet of supermarket-brand potato chips.

Francine looked up and around. There were nests in the tree branches and hollows in the trunks. There might be any number of witnesses, if you counted animals, which – she imagined – no one did. Some of the clothes were torn and one of the legs was twisted the wrong way. Or else the other was; it was hard to tell. Regardless: things were out of place.

Francine had seen a body once before, but it was presentable, not like this. Outside of movies and TV, she wondered how many times the average person might reasonably be expected to be faced with death in any such way. Cornice had found one of her colleagues on the floor of the toilets that time, and Dale claimed to have discovered the chemistry teacher he was subbing for in the fume closet.

She walked around to the other side to see the face, but it was hidden by the arm, which pointed at Francine, offering up the ring on its finger. Not wanting to touch it, she put on her gloves. It made the operation tricky, but eventually the ring came off – a bright and heavy silver – and she placed it on her own finger, over the glove, where it just about fit. Nothing about this felt odd or surreal to Francine; much of what came to her in the world, she accepted. She placed a pebble at the head of the body and left.

 

Francine walked back the way she came, never certain if she was retracing her steps, or if the path she was taking was new, but certain signs gave her confidence: a brook looked familiar; so too a run of neglected fencing. Soon enough, the metal-stink of the estate filtered through to her, along with the echoing Doppler’s traffic. She was dry-mouthed and tired; an absence of appetite didn’t mean her body ceased to require food. Francine’s return to urbanicity felt like crossing over from an area of low pressure to high, with the corresponding pop in her ears.

She emerged into the oversprawl of the estate, not far from where she’d entered. The return leg coincided with the end of the day shift. Francine joined the rest of the workers walking home. She felt at ease among her people. There were many different jobs on the estate. Cornice had worked several times. Francine would be suited to at least one or two of them, but was indifferent as to what they might be.

Back home, Cornice was unseen, but her presence could be felt. Francine had never been able to explain it; it was as though she vibrated the air. Dale, on the other hand, seemed to exist constantly, even when not around. On this occasion, however, he was demonstrably present and might not have even moved had it not been for his shaved face and change of clothes; a gesture, in the event of a work summons, although he hadn’t been called up for weeks that seemed like months.

The table was set for dinner, but all three plates were empty and there was no aroma of the pending meal. Dale rose as Francine entered. She guessed that the school had informed him of her absence and wondered if a make-up lesson was about to be scheduled. It might have been, but Dale saw the ring on Francine’s finger and pulled at it, taking her glove off too.

No words were spoken and she was sanguine about the matter. Dale sat back at the table, appraising the item. Francine made a sandwich for herself and took it upstairs. Through a door ajar, she could see Cornice on her bed. Francine knocked softly, twice, and received the same in return. Satisfied, she went to her own room, then took up a pen and wrote quickly.

 

Nothing was said about her absence from school, but a few weeks later, Dale was arrested. Neither Cornice nor Francine attended the trial. Instead, they read about it online. Dale denied the charges and there wasn’t enough evidence to find him guilty, but he’d tried to sell the ring, which hadn’t looked good.

The police interviewed Francine, of course, because Dale had told them where he’d gotten it from, but she claimed to have no knowledge of anything. That alone had probably damned her somewhere further down the line, but it was a matter for future Francine to worry about. We do some fucked up things, she thought, but: no. It was more that sometimes the world oriented people in the direction of fucked-upness and they chose to walk towards it. Dale had been unable to account for his whereabouts during certain and particular dates, so he ended up being charged with the lesser offense of obstruction of justice and given a year in Gilmore.

Cornice told Francine she wouldn’t be taking him back when he was released. Even so, the announcement hardly seemed newsworthy. She might have said they were switching to skim milk, or that it was going to rain later. It was possible, Francine supposed, that Dale was innocent and that a person who bore responsibility for a thing was out there somewhere, escaping justice and amazed at their good fortune. But even then, she reasoned, if only for a short time, there was one less bad man in the world.

JL Bogenschneider has had work published in a number of print and online journals, including The Stinging Fly, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Interpreter’s House, Necessary Fiction, PANK and Ambit.

If he met her, I know he’d find her charming. Doesn’t everyone? But I won’t taunt myself with doomsday prophecies. I won’t let her gate-crash my dirty weekend.

As we gobble up tarmac on the motorway, I pinch myself. I’ve waited eight weeks and eighty lonely summers to be swept off my feet.

“I’d like to take you away somewhere,” he said. “My treat.” 

My heart was booming, but I maintained an outward calm. As if I picked up propositions at Tesco’s deli counter, with my fifty grams of Cheshire and my slice of boiled ham. “Thank you, Tommy. I’d love that.” I didn’t mention it would be my first time.

I could have told him. He’s a sympathetic sort. He’d know of girls schooled to save ourselves for marriage, virtue banked for sunny days. Our mothers didn’t tell us what to do with unclaimed capital. They assumed their darling daughters would be wives like them.

Our mothers swore by courtship economics: a lady cloaks her real self with a comelier veneer. Never show your face without make-up. Never reveal the natural colour of your hair. Never express an opinion. Never admit your age. 

Some rules are eternal. Time turns others on their heads. My once-prized virginity is shameful now I’m eighty-three. So I’ve added another step to my bedtime routine. When I’ve put away the dental floss and cold cream, I’ve practised with a dildo and a tube of KY jelly. If my mother knew, it would disgust her. The thought sustained me through a rigmarole as peachy as a cervical smear.

Of course, I dreamt of pleasing Tommy. He’d hate to hurt me, but a man has needs. Although we’ve touched no more than hands and lips, I know he’ll want more.

Giddy with my daring, I reach across the gear stick to stroke his thigh. He flashes me a smile and reroutes his gaze to the road. Mirror-shoulder-signal before overtaking, and cruise control at a steady sixty-nine, he’s a careful driver. I’m in safe hands.

I was a bag of nerves this morning, hovering in the hallway with my pink trolley-case, as time ticked on. I couldn’t mistake the date, it being Mum’s birthday. Was the whole escapade a joke? A decade younger than me, Tommy could have his pick of widows, bachelorettes and divorcees. Why select a dusty spinster from a long-forgotten shelf?

Such a magical beginning, in the books, discs and knickknacks section of the Oxfam where I volunteer once a week. Tommy brought a box of 78s in vinyl and shellac and we bonded over Glenn Miller. After our chat, he decided to keep them. For helping him realise how precious they were, he offered to buy me lunch. I assumed we’d nip into the Angler’s – they do a pensioner’s special on weekdays – but Tommy fancied Chinese. We wrangled with the chopsticks, splattered sauce on the tablecloth, noodles missing our mouths. But I wasn’t embarrassed. It was part of the fun.

Now the traffic slows, the display boards on the gantry flashing 40 above all lanes. Tommy sighs. “Seems the stars are aligned against me.”

I repeat what I said this morning when he finally arrived to collect me, blaming poorly-flagged diversions down one-way streets. “Don’t worry. We’ve got all day to get there.”

He jiggles the gearstick. The car slinks to a crawl. “Not really. I’ve reserved a table for afternoon tea.”

“Let me ring up and cancel. There’s no point getting frazzled. Besides, if we stop for lunch I won’t have room for tea.” He doesn’t answer. Have I offended him with my indifference to cucumber sandwiches and clotted cream? “Tommy? Do you want to give me your phone?”

“Let’s hang on, shall we? See how it goes.”

“Whatever you think best.” I force a smile. “Still keeping our destination a secret?” All I can deduce from the road signs is we’re heading north.

“All in good time, my dear.”

My dear! As if I’m precious. My dear! As if I’m his. I ought to be thankful I’m claimed, but it weighs on me like itchy blankets from the dark age before quilts. 

I slip off my shoes, stretch out my legs, not bothering if it looks ungainly. I feel as spent as a child on Christmas evening. Is this thanks to guilt about Mum, or qualms about Tommy taking charge?

When he proposed this weekend getaway, I took it for granted we’d compare diaries for a convenient date. So I bristled when he announced he’d booked it. I kept my counsel, but he read the frustration on my face. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I should’ve run it past you. But the suite looks perfect on the website and this was the only available slot.”

I’ve never stayed in a suite. Always a single room in a B&B. “Don’t break the bank for me.”

“For us, my dear. For us. But I’ll cancel if you’re unhappy. I’ll lose the deposit, of course.”

I didn’t want Tommy losing money. And I so wanted to be an us. But it was Mum’s birthday. Unable to explain why that made a difference, I pretended Betty had tickets for Gilbert and Sullivan. Tommy still looked miffed. “I suppose she can pass mine on to someone else.” To be fair, I’d said in the Chinese restaurant I stayed in most weekends.

Whereas Tommy hasn’t a spare moment, jetting here, there and everywhere, visiting his children and grandchildren, and managing his rentals in France and Spain. Churlish to insist a man with a business and a family synchronise his schedule with the whims of a woman with only a weekly commitment at Oxfam and lawn bowls in the summer months. No friends apart from Betty. No relatives apart from Mum.

I mustn’t get uppity and sour our weekend. Not after denying Betty my company at a fictional performance of The Pirates of Penzance. Not after squandering my pension on a vibrator and lacy lingerie. I stifle a giggle as the traffic speeds up again. Maybe I can enjoy a man deciding for me. Maybe I will manage afternoon tea.

It took two strong coffees to summon the courage to walk into Ann Summers. Coffee that comes crowned with foam and backboned by a tot of whisky. I expected to feel like a vegetarian in a steakhouse, but it was closer to browsing in John Lewis. Half the doodahs there are a mystery.

When an assistant approached, I thought she’d redirect me to the local library. Yet if she was surprised to encounter an octogenarian on the premises, she didn’t show it. She was politeness personified, the way I imagine Tommy’s children and grandchildren to be.

He let me see their pictures on Facebook, proud as a peacock. And why not? It must be wonderful to create a living, breathing human being. Playing God. But if they were damaged, would you be the devil? Just as well marriage and children passed me by. 

I hope to earn a stake in Tommy’s offspring eventually. He’s hinted he plans to introduce us, but they live so far away. If this weekend works out, I’ll apply for a passport. Be primed if Tommy needs a partner for a family wedding or big birthday. I’ve even considered potential outfits for winter and summer; soothing thoughts as I thrust that replica penis up my fanny. 

“How hungry are you?” he asks me now.

Did he hear my tummy rumbling? Breakfast was hours ago: a digestive biscuit and a pot of PG tips. “I am a little peckish.” We might find a country pub near the next junction. With exposed beams and a log fire. Instead, Tommy eases the car onto the service-station slip-road. “If we grab a sandwich and get off sharp, we’ll make that booking. If that’s all right with you?” What can I say? He can’t do a U-turn.

As he helps me from the car, I stumble, but Tommy catches me. “Damn hip,” I say. I wobble to the concourse, trying not to drag on his arm.

Inside, franchises clamour for attention. Dazzling lights suck moisture from my eyes. Tommy steers me towards a smell like pollock and chips at the Angler’s, and parks me at an empty table. “Sorry it’s so basic. I promise you’ll have every luxury at the hotel.”

“I’m not fussed about luxury, Tommy.” The luxury is being with you. “According to my mother, a service station is where a holiday begins. When it opened, we took a coach trip to Watford Gap.”

He looks at me as if I’m an idiot. A senile fool. As if I’m a generation older, not ten years. Swapping his frown for a smile, he asks what sandwich I fancy. I don’t mention I’m cutting back on bread.

Watching him weave between the tables to the counter, I imagine he’s as fatigued as I am. When we reach the hotel, I could give him a massage. Unpick the tension knotted in his neck.

I slide my fingers under my collar to ease the strain in my own shoulders. Why did I mention my mother? Like unlocking a wildcat’s cage. Surely Tommy won’t ask where she lives or how she is. He’ll assume I’m an orphan, like most OAPs.

The mere thought of her unsettles me, however, puts a dampener on our weekend. Was I rash to come away on her birthday? 

It’s more than the date that’s put me in a stew: we’re encroaching on Mum’s stomping ground. I don’t drive, but I can read road signs and Leeds is less than an hour away. Yorkshire born, Mum hankered to settle there. For thirty years, I’ve kept my distance, in case she has.

Oh, it’s preposterous at my age. At her age, too. One hundred and eight and confined to a care home. How can she harm me now? 

Demoralised by silly anxieties, I’ve lost sight of Tommy at the sandwich bar. I study each grey-haired man in the queue and at the counter, each person crossing the room with a tray. He’s left me. He can’t have. He’s taken me at my word – or my mother’s – that the service station’s part of the appeal. I’ll be like that man trapped at an airport in a film I saw with Betty, rinsing my smalls in the Ladies’ sink. Already in debt after paying for the negligee and lurid pink suitcase, I’ll be destitute by morning. Tommy promised to pay for everything.

When he plonks a tray on the table, I almost beg him to take me home. Instead, I unload plastic-wrapped sandwiches and lidded polystyrene cups. “They’d run out of beef,” says Tommy. “Chicken okay?”

I could be in my quiet kitchenette spreading cottage cheese on oatcakes. Filleting a lettuce, imagining meat. “Where are you taking me, Tommy? We’ve been travelling for hours. Aren’t there any nice hotels closer to home?”

At the adjacent table, a woman with a nose-ring sniggers. Tommy walks past her to sit beside me on the bench. He takes my hand, brings it to his lips. “You’re right, I should’ve chosen somewhere nearer. I’ve upset you, when I meant to treat you like a queen.”

Already, I’m ashamed. “I’ll be fine and dandy when I’ve eaten.” My hands shake as I tear through a packet labelled coronation chicken. “It’s harder for you behind the wheel.”

“I don’t mind. It’s you that matters. Listen, I reckon it’s an hour and a half to the hotel. Can you last until then?”

Will ninety minutes get us through Yorkshire? 

“Or we can jack it in altogether,” he says, “Spend the weekend at the Travelodge.”

I laugh, hoping to restore both our spirits. As Betty says, you can always act cheerful, regardless how you’re suffering under the skin.

Back in the car, Tommy reclines the passenger seat so I can snooze. I let him, but I daren’t doze off in case I snore. Besides, my mind’s too busy: in Mother’s Own Country, and on her birthday, my thoughts belong to her.

I’ve been reckless. Got carried away like a girl. Tortured myself with that damned vibrator, as if virginity were the issue. I should’ve spent today as I’ve spent all Mum’s birthdays: under the duvet with a book. 

You’ll have to come in two years’ time, she cackles. It’s a biggie. 

I won’t. I’ll see her, as I do every year, in the papers or on TV.

There’s nowhere to hide, so don’t think it. Them reporters have ways of winkling you out.

Some bright spark will try to stage a mother-child reunion if the oldest woman in England lives to a hundred and ten. But Tommy will protect me. Take me far beyond the media’s reach. Two years from now, I’ll feel robust enough to confess.

Will our relationship prosper, if it’s founded in deceit? My mother advised building marriage on artifice, but wasn’t that a lie? 

How to explain without appearing callous? Or inferring my head’s as dodgy as my hip? It’s unnatural being scared of my mother. Obscene rejecting the woman I owe my life. My advanced age lowers the likelihood of being outed. Hers intensifies the disgrace if I am. Will Tommy ditch me if I disclose that my mother’s alive, but I don’t see her? Except as a national treasure on TV. 

 

The tick of the indicator and crunch of tyres on gravel jolt me awake before I’m aware I’ve nodded off. “We’re here,” says Tommy. “Are you ready for afternoon tea?”

He stops the car. Through the windscreen, wisteria drapes a sandstone wall. “We made it in time?” 

As Tommy unbuckles his seat belt, I prepare my stomach for gluten, my mouth for tooth-tingling jam. Is this what having a partner means: fasting when you’re hungry and feasting when you’re not? Yet our appetites tallied at that Chinese meal.

I’m wriggling out of the car when Tommy takes my arm. “You needn’t be so independent,” he scolds. 

Now, I understand: men find strength in women’s weakness. Living alone, with no-one else to rely on, I’d blocked the principal lesson of my girlhood.  Tommy would love to shield me from my mother. I only have to ask.

With his assistance, I haul myself out onto the forecourt. Rub my hip until I’m confident it won’t collapse. “Tommy, there’s something I should’ve told you.” It’s a gamble, but silence is worse: if I’m tetchy, Tommy should know it’s not his fault.

“No problemo. You can tell me over tea.” 

Inside, my heels sink into the carpet. The staircase could’ve come from Downton Abbey; the coat-of-arms above the reception desk too. Tommy inclines his head towards a door. “Have a seat in the lounge while I get checked in.”

“I ought to freshen up first.” 

“There isn’t time to go upstairs.” Is he indifferent to my appearance, or simply ravenous? Nevertheless, I have my standards. The receptionist directs me to the loos.

Pastel tissues, cotton-wool balls, single-use terry towels, perfumed soap and hand-cream: as sumptuous as the Ladies’ in my beloved John Lewis. Cloned by legions of mirrors, my face is more lived-in than jaded. As I embellish the exterior, I remind my reflection of the scars underneath. 

Not every mother is the wellspring of loving. Mine thought loving the job of her child. And I was a dutiful daughter. Before I could talk, I’d slain my own desires.

Brushing mascara through my eyelashes, I conjure Tommy across a tiered cake stand.

Friends were unwelcome. Boyfriends taboo. I stayed at home, doing her bidding, growing stale. When I realised I wanted her dead so I could live, I cut the cord.

Having touched up my lipstick, I clamp cherry kisses on a tissue and toss it in a basket. One for every ten Tommy will give me when he hears my confession and absolves me from my sin.

Even after thirty years’ estrangement, I quake at the thought of bumping into her. Like a Venus flytrap, she’d lure me in. I’d melt into her. Be reabsorbed. 

Tommy won’t let her. I exit the Ladies’ Room keen to embark on the next stage of our affair. 

My hero rises from the shadows of the entrance hall. “Come on, everyone’s waiting.”

Everyone? As we shuffle along, arms linked, Tommy seems tense. Am I to meet his family? I’m glad I powdered my nose.

Opening a rosewood door, Tommy steps aside to usher me through. The chatter halts as people swivel in their seats. As I try to match them to Tommy’s Facebook photos, I hope I look agreeable. 

Blinded by a camera flash, I stagger. Why didn’t I bring my stick? But now Tommy, dear Tommy, is beside me, guiding me towards a wizened woman enthroned on a high-backed chair. A glittery banner on the wall behind her: CONGRATULATIONS 110 TODAY! Didn’t he say his mother was dead?

As he leads me through a funnel of beaming faces, it dawns on me they’re not Tommy’s relatives. My mouth dries, my palms swim with sweat, but I’ll be all right, won’t I? You have to flout your fears to be free. 

I can tolerate Tommy discovering I’ve held things back from him. I can tolerate Mum deceiving her own daughter about her age. I can tolerate missing my chance to tell my side of the story, as long as I can have my dirty weekend.

As I’m pushed towards my mother, a man brandishing a notebook blocks our path. A reporter to snatch a quote, I presume, yet he ignores me to pump Tommy’s hand. “Thanks, Baz, I owe you.”

Baz? Baz! There’s nothing wrong with my hearing, but Tommy doesn’t flinch. In the press, they’ll show Mum’s triumph, and my grimace, airbrushed into old-fogey versions of joy. But the internet will favour the unadulterated version. With sound effects. My plaintive howl at Tommy doing the dirty on me. Over and over, on an infinite loop.

 

Anne Goodwin writes entertaining fiction about identity, mental health and social justice. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize. Her new novel, Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home, is inspired by her previous incarnation as a clinical psychologist in a long-stay psychiatric hospital. She has published almost 100 short stories including “With a Small Bomb in Her Chest” published in August 2018 by MIRonline. Website: annegoodwin.weebly.com

It’s three in the afternoon, and the flight from Hong Kong has not been kind. The highway flows freely and the sky is a periwinkle blue Dana loves to come home to, but neither the welcoming horizon, nor the prospect of recognisable beer and home dope, nor the thought of cruising the Castro, where the crew will likely jolly and hop until they bleed tonight, interest Dana at all. On his ride downtown, he can only think of the years that have elapsed since he joined Meridian, a big blur of code and aeroplanes and meetings in dimmed rooms with presentation screens. Dana is tired of pitching. Tired of development sprints and late nights. Tired of three AM messages and value propositions. The buyouts and partnerships. The endless chorus of middle-aged men trying to understand and keep up, eating from plates of carved fruit, hoping sugar will break their desperation. Sandwich trays and security checkpoints, cocktails with tiny red straws. Today, the Bay Area. Next week, China again. Then Wisconsin, New York, Rotterdam. Eighty-nine cents a share on his options, still thirteen per cent to vest on the long trail to freedom. He has been on this highway, coming back from the airport, perhaps hundreds of times. The long curve around South San Francisco’s bald hill feels too familiar, adding to Dana’s ongoing deja vu patterns, his unhinged rivulets of time, a continuing storm of comings and goings, endless capitulations and hollow regrets, his circadian rhythms cycling through seventy-two-hour diffusions that keep him locked into an everpresent present. After seven years working at Meridian, Dana can no longer remember who he was before he joined. It is hard to imagine a future outside of it. Hard to fathom any kind of future at all.

Traffic’s not bad, says the driver.

It’s not bad for a Friday, says Dana, looking at the gulp of swallows settling on the power lines by Brisbane Lagoon. He wonders what cliff they’ve nested in and how long their flight back to their proper South American homes will be, wanting to follow them, wanting to disappear in their murmurations, one of many, no-one at all.

You going out tonight? The driver asks.

Dana wants to tell him that there will be massive parties, huge gatherings, debauchery on a world-beating scale.

Nah imma stay home probably. Too tired.

Dana showers and watches tv in bed. Eating a pickle from a jar, he pours some vodka into a Nutella glass and takes several large gulps, flicking through streaming sites, scrolling through rows of movies that won’t do, like so many vulgar and insidious offerings.

He opens his laptop and drops the gym pants he ambitiously put on when he came in. He needs oblivion. On cam sites, he can be someone else entirely. Another self, without a face. Only a body doing whatever it is instructed, abandoning all semblance of control, all vestiges of identity. A meat robot following orders.

A few random men click through. He takes his t-shirt off, pulling his underpants down. The vodka bottle rests on his hip, obscuring his crotch, a demure mechanism to invite its removal on command. A large, hairy belly and thick, uncircumcised cock fill the screen.

Can you hear me, son? says the belly, implying a dominant protocol with which Dana is familiar, a nominative paternalism that he is happy to accept. Gruff voice, mid-sixties maybe. The hand holding the cock is wrinkled and foxed with sunspots. A thick, well-worn wedding ring presses urgently on his fat ring finger. He’s perfect.

Yes I can, he says, his voice changing already, going up in pitch, evolving into a persona his body reacts to with immediacy, grateful to be released from its suited form, arching his hips backwards, accentuating his effeminate, slender frame.

How old are you? asks the belly.

Twenty-one, Sir, Adam lies, adopting the submissive parlance he knows dom daddies expect.

Are you sure you’re not younger than that? You look young.

He does, though he is much older than his lie, which is why he never shows face. His body looks like he’s still a teen, courtesy of his Hispanic heritage. Men on cam sites often want him to be much younger than he is, and often, though he feels keenly the horror of their intention, he obliges them so they’ll give him the oblivion he wants.

Maybe, he says, afraid he’ll lose him if he doesn’t play the part. He doesn’t want to go back to random rolling. He needs to get out of himself now.

That’s ok. I don’t care if you are. Better that way, actually. You ok with that? I’m fifty-three.

Yes Sir.

What are you, Asian?

Hispanic.

Are you a good boy? says the thick cock, his wedding ring flashing dully in the screen’s light.

Yes Sir, Dana says, losing his breath a little, trembling. He can feel the man’s commitment now, his first order on the tip of his tongue, and he anticipates it with a longing he cannot explain, a hunger that soaks him through, its passion and surrender an obligation Dana feels as devotional, as an inevitable servitude. 

Grab that bottle, boy. I want you to take a really big swig of it and then put it down, ok?

Yes Sir, he says, doing what the man wants, swallowing several times, the ethanol burning his throat. He stills an urge to gag and puts the bottle down. He is already hard, and he can feel the man has noticed, his breath accelerating. The jerking motion of his arm makes his face shake. His beard rubs on the microphone, producing small rasping noises Dana feels as electrostatic tingles across his scalp, running the line of his spine downwards towards his buttocks and inner thighs.

Good boy. Slap that cock for me, boy.

He complies.

Harder, you little faggot.

He slaps himself again, ignoring the word, familiar with the way doms use it, unrelenting in their marital regret and dire need to dispense hurt. The pain travels through him, taking with it his memory and his name, his past and his future. Only his flesh remains.

Slap your balls, boy. And do it hard, so it hurts.

He does as he is told. Much deeper this time, the referred pain travels through his gut and stomach, the shared nerves and tissues between scrotum and abdomen recoiling in sympathy, tensing his whole body, locking him in. Nothing remains of him. His mind evaporates and only the pain is available, all other perceptive markers out of reach. His mouth issues a small lament, a half whimper, and he throws his head back, eyes rolling up. A comfortable and familiar blanket of nothingness engulfs him.

That’s right boy, moan for me. Now. Tuck your junk in, let me see what you look like as a girl.

This is the bit he most looks forward to, the bit he wishes all camdaddies would ask him to perform, though not all want it. It is the only time he gets to experience, even if briefly, the blissful state in which he feels like a real girl, when he sees the reflection of his ephemeral and temporary female form on their penile excitement, the acceleration in their hand as they jerk, the fat of their hairy bellies and sagging mantits shaking in febrile delight. It is the only time his too-feminine hips and hairless body make perfect sense. He basks in it for a few seconds, camdaddy moaning to himself, lost to his girlnotgirl fantasy, becoming a dump for the man’s most demeaning thoughts, his perfectly unmarital rage, his unseemly want, his morally decrepit fantasy, the screen a perfect prophylactic layer between the man and his desire to wreak havoc, his ultimate compulsion to breed and destroy. The sheer impossibility of it moves Dana, its sublime and terrible fate, and he feels for the man tenderly, open to his disaster, drinking his stupidity until he finishes, the screen going on to the next punter.

The phone buzzes.

Where are you? We’re out and we wanna play with you.

Dana sighs and taps a response.

Home. Just landed. Need sleep.

What are you, a hundred years old?

You know some people actually sleep right?

People do. You’re not people. You’re my genderfluid pansexual femboy Queen.

Yeah, ok.

You’re a split-tongue queer slut with occasional bloodplay tendencies and I want to indulge you.

Uh-huh.

I love you.

Sure you do.

And you need to leave that awful apartment and come join me.

No.

I will make your jetlag disappear.

Yes, and my health, and my dignity.

I will restore you and clean you.

Fuck off.

Come drink with me.

You’re so exhausting.

There’s someone I want you to meet.

Dana goes through a few more rows of desperately bad movies and realises that staying here will have consequences. The loneliness and absurdity of watching the obscure French movies he will eventually land on whilst getting drunk on his own. Waking up in the morning and wondering where this bed is, what city, what country, like a kidnap victim, until the slow realisation of San Franciscan gloom—leaden light licking window panes—creeps up through the apartment. An iced coffee and some diazepam later, the bus to the Valley will take Dana back to the 101, back to a desk and back to the penumbral misery of meetings and slide decks.

Ok. Where.

Where else.

Outside, breathing becomes easier. Dana’s lungs take in the smells of The Mission, mercurial and gamey, the pong and reek of piss and skunk, and he decides to walk to where his friend is waiting. The Help is a club hole with unusual and surprising dark rooms, peculiar drinks, and preternaturally queer punters. Inside, he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath through his nostrils. Sweat and alcohol. Musk and hate and cruel little twink secrets. Voodoo-like curses and plaintive suspirations, born of carefully metered and gleefully accepted pain. Dana misses this smell more than one should admit, is homesick for it all the time, even though it represents a sort of sexual fluency as remote and unavailable to him as well-intoned Mandarin. He has never been able to engage and keep up a semblance of their protocols for long enough for the game to tip in his favour.

At the end of the club, by the darkly lit booths where the crew are sitting and holding court, there is someone he doesn’t recognise, talking to them. Tall and sombre, louring over the booth and the small clutch of Dana’s friends huddled together in what looks like admiration, he points at a couple of them, finishing some sort of anecdote Dana cannot begin to fathom but which is obviously effective, as the whole booth shakes with laughter.

Dana!

You’re such a harpie. I was about to go to sleep.

Tosh. Meet Gabriel, his friend says, intoning the name as though he might be the actual archangel instead of a portly middle-aged man who looks like drunk Santa.

Hi, he says, now smiling through his beard, remnant chuckles shaking his ample belly, still laughing at his own joke. Dana spots a Montblanc on his jacket’s ticket pocket, the girth of a fat thumb. On his wrist, as he offers his substantial hand, the familiar contours and shine of a Swiss watch Dana has seen before in corporate alpha dom daddies, its lugs and crown protuberant in the dense white hair of his wrist.

Hello, says Dana, his size kink rearing its ugly head.

After a few hours of drinking and sharing bits of various powders, Dana cannot help the temptation to find out, to elevate his ever-evolving cam fantasy, his daddy eidolon, to a physical reality. When he invites him, he relents, disarmed by his candor, by his own lack of protocol or contract, by his smile. The elevator to the man’s apartment glides effortlessly, for long enough to evidence a high floor, somewhere above the fog. Dana cups Santa’s bulge softly, wanting the quivers in his mouth to never stop. His bed is a gargantuan spread of white sheets and large cushions, and as he stuffs one underneath the soft pleats of Dana’s hips, a little sound comes out of his mouth, an unintended moan when Santa enters him, the searing pain giving over to waves of a kind of corporeal rapture Dana has never before known. The man’s ears are large and hairy, their long helixes giving over to fat dangling lobes. Dana grabs both of them in his hands, pinching his lobules first, then grabbing the lugs entirely, his fingers behind their flesh, his thumbs digging into their cavernous triangular fossa, pulling on them to bring his whole face to his. His body rests then, his whole substantial weight, on Dana’s, as he manages to pull him close enough to feel his breath. The weight takes his own breath away, and he whispers harder into his mouth in short airless grunts until he feels wet hot tears running down the sides of his face, unaware of anything else than the distention inside him, the breaking dam of his consciousness only able to hold on to the pain, a pain he has never had before, odorous and tactile and benign, the injury and its anaesthetic delivered in the same effort, as though someone has rammed their hole arm through him and grabbed and stopped his heart. He stops breathing and closes his eyes. The man notices the tears and makes to stop, pushing himself up with his arms. Unavailed of his weight and warmth, Dana opens his eyes, grabs his whole head and pushes him down again, letting him kiss the tears away at the corners of his eyes, imagining the salty taste in the man’s mouth and hearing himself breathe come come come near the man’s ear again and again until he growls, the sound of it preciously analogue and close, the needful and joyous mirror of so many camdaddy barks and snarling incantations. Dana feels him stop and become still and marvels at his rigid, quiet ecstasy, looking into his eyes, big as plates, blue as shimmering steel. He feels broken and elevated, used and reborn, refashioned out of the littered strands of his fractured mind and forged into a vital form, a vast and cacophonous sea of feeling that he is unable to contain. The man puts a hand over Dana’s mouth to contain the scream, and Dana puts his own hand over it, pushing the man’s fingers into his mouth and biting them to stop himself from screaming again. The man smiles and topples over, grimacing as he takes Dana with him. On top of him now, his head on his chest, he looks out the window at the towers of the financial district and the twinkling sea of domestic lights beyond, lying like a frog on a boulder on the man’s large hairy belly. The city looks like a shimmering blanket of fireflies as he falls asleep on him, his large hand tugging Dana’s hair softly.

In the morning, Dana shakes the kidnapped fug off and quickly realises this place is not home. High above the din and hustle of lower terrarian creatures below, this bed sits somewhere near the top of what must be, Dana realises, Millenium Tower or some such outlandish edifice, towering over downtown, surrounded by Salesforce buildings. Dana runs his fingers through the folds in the sheets looking for a warm body, for corporeal evidence. None appears, but from beyond the two-storied glass walls, kitchen noises can be heard, the comforting sound of vapour being pressed through grains, plates being slid out of their cupboards. The man comes into the bedroom holding a tray, and Dana remembers him from the bar.

You’re awake.

Dana coughs in assent.

I thought you might be hungry. And possibly hungover.

Dana lifts the sheets, half-heartedly confirming nakedness, and looks for scattered clothes.

I put your clothes on the chair.

Dark Santa is wearing a white robe, his belly partly showing through the middle. He sits down on the side of the bed and places the tray down on its own little legs. He smiles and puts his hand on the small of Dana’s back, pushing down with gentle force. Dana’s whole body responds, flashes of the night before coming through now in cinematic force. A pulse runs through Dana’s body, an electric eel of phantom innervation and rapture, and every bone relaxes and distends, hips giving way, ribs softening.

Dana looks at the tray, sitting up.

Silver-cuffed cups with steaming black coffee. Little frozen shot glasses filled to the brim with vodka. Slices of lemon. Several oysters, and little porcelain dishes of red and black caviar. Thick curled butter shavings and dark black bread slices. Little croissants, two pots of orange marmalade, unlabelled jams.

I make the marmalade myself, at my farm.

Dana takes one of the shot glasses, downs it, and then, without speaking but looking at Santa’s eyes, which appear now to have shed their sombre shadings, shining with a clear, kind and tender watchfulness, takes a sip of coffee. It tastes earthy, as though the beans have been buried in wet ground. Dana can smell mushrooms, dark promises, quiet seas and low earth, and groans with pleasure, giving in.

Santa smiles.

Sumatra Mandheling. The beans are partly dried on the ground. Wonderful acidic balance, don’t you think?

What’s your name again?

Gabriel, says Santa, on a Saturday morning when leaden skies have been replaced by iridescent blue and gloriously distant elemental clouds in the shores beyond the bridge, on a morning when Dana can no longer contain the multitudes that usually inhabit this malformed husk, this multifarious vessel that can no more explain itself than it can usually host pleasure or interest any more, perhaps until right now, perhaps until this moment when Dana looks up at Gabriel’s kind face and launches for his lips, grabbing his polar bear cheeks with both hands, kissing him deeply, thinking I can be your untamed thing, your horny pet mutt, your genderweird femboy maidwife if you want. I’ll feed you boysmell-scented poppers until you choke, embarrassed by your want. I will give you everything. I will let you rain orbital bombardment-level twink obliteration on me.

Back in Shenzhen through Hong Kong, Dana sits in his caged tower and ponders the greyness of tech cities listening to a Berlin House playlist. The long Weekend club mixes he has lovingly curated over many Meridian years to make travel bearable. A sniff of white powder from the little snuff box, crushed Ritalin from pills he knows are safe to travel. A little swig from a vodka bottle, a few CBD gummy bears (also travel-friendly as they look like Haribo). Gabriel’s message streams through.

You’re far away.

So are you.

Where today?

Shenzhen.

Fixing the world?

Undoing previous fixes. Didn’t take.

You ever wonder whether it’s worth it.

Every twenty minutes or so.

Why not try something different?

You got any bright ideas?

Come work for me. My foundation.

Cannot work for you, and you know why. And I’m not done vesting Meridian.

I don’t want you to work for me personally. I want you to run the foundation.

No boss is bossless. You’d be on the board.

Complete freedom of operations.

No such thing, Santa.

Ok, anyway. San Francisco Opera are doing Les Indes Galantes.

?

Rameau.

?

French Baroque. Gayest Opera ever. There’s a homo wedding in it kinda. You’d like it, I promise. I know the director.

Oh.

Are you back on Friday?

Yes.

Come with? We can go to my farm after. You haven’t seen it yet.

 

Dana thinks about this and realises that for all of Gabriel’s soft and profound kindness, nothing will ever balance out. The pain of countless value proposition redesigns. The sprints and objectives and key results, the performance reviews, the endless emails and messages. One could surrender. One could spearhead something. One could get off the call and refuse to leverage the leveraged buyout, refuse the next martini, become untethered, burn out and drop off, like beef falling off a bone.

On the flight back, Dana benzos his drinks sitting at the bar, the upgrade fortuitous and welcome. The ride back is strange, the 101 spitting and sputtering like something has gone wrong farther down.

I don’t know what’s going on here, says the driver.

Something’s wrong, says Dana, looking at the water, the ripples at once normal and strangely unsettled.

The apartment is also wrong somehow. Unmoored, something worrying the block’s foundations. Dana drops the luggage and comes out again, finding an app rental car and moving through downtown, driving out of the city, wanting to focus on something menial, trying to shake the energy that is quickly engulfing everything.

Clear of downtown, Dana gets on to the Oakland bridge and looks at the sign for the Treasure Island exit with some bemusement, marvelling at the colour of the sky between Treasure Island in front and Angel Island on the left, Alcatraz just visible through the side of North Beach. A long line of thin Cirrus clouds point straight to Angel and towards Tiburon and Sausalito, and the Muir Woods beyond that. A perfect cornflower blue sky, deepening to dodger blue at the top of the skyline. If one went out to sea right now, the horizon’s offing would be a thick gradient line of Alice blue, Dana thinks. The fog flows bay-ward. The smell of brine and eucalyptus mixes with the car fumes and thick truck exhaust.

Dana feels like every cell in this body, this angular and pseudofeminine traitor, is singing and humming with the world, vibrating in sync with the coiled zing of the bridge suspension cables. Howling in resonance with the sea lions below. Atomised and dispersed into the fog, caressing the hills, on its way to the deep recesses of the bay. Dana feels like the Santa Ana winds. Mysterious and dangerous. Unhinged, perhaps, but not sad. Not sad. Sick with longing, but not unhappy. There is a raft of messages piling up on the phone perching on the dashboard, coming in and out of vision as they pop up on top of the maps app, which Dana has put on for no particular reason, not knowing where to go. The car drives through Richmond and into San Quentin, merging into the 101 at San Rafael, and there’s a sense of relief, the four lanes mostly empty now.

The Redwoods to the left, the car windows down, the faintest but still perceivable smell of eucalyptus and pine. By the time signs for Olompali State Park appear in the distance, the car and Dana are in a groove, affixed to the long, sinuous curves of the 101. Hands at the bottom of the wheel, seat reclined, head on its rest, he follows the long folds and crevices of the road. Car dealerships and fast food signs are slowly replaced by small rolling hills, shadows in the dark, interspersed with the occasional town. Peta Larentia. Santa Rosa. The 101 running just above the treeline, house lights and the odd mall underneath. He is a flying suburban condor, surveying the endless spread of ticky-tacky houses. The Old Redwood Highway spreads before him in a straight line, through Windsow and Healdsburg, through Asti and Cloverdale, the asphalt grooves softly bumping him, cradling him into a waking slumber. Vineyards and eighteen-wheelers, signs with pseudo-Italianate names. 

A sudden patch of newly-paved highway swarms the car into silence, throwing Dana into a vacuum. Something stirs within him. A new framework of despair, a looser, wider, more encompassing paradigm. A flash of a night with Gabriel brings back the feeling of something snapping into place in his body. Trying to recall it, the image of a Hippocratic board comes to mind, atlas and axis vertebrae distending and straightening, like someone fixing a spine. It is a feeling of utter relief, Dana suddenly realises with a jolt, twitching and swerving, the car losing its lane for a moment.

He gets off the 101 and takes the turn for the 128, driving for a bit with high beams on, the light changing with gloaming. Pulling over right after Alderglen Springs, leaving the car at a hairpin bend, Dana walks fast up the hill in the dark, the moonlight lighting the way as he follows the lee of the hill, finding a gap towards its shoulder and reaching its brow, where it is lighter.

The climb is exhausting. Dana stands and looks down the other side towards the brae, falling down to another vineyard, and then looks up. A cloud of bats above the crag swoop in spiralling streams, a patchwork quilt of flapping high pitch sound, granular synthesis in flight.

Sitting down, Dana’s eyes adjust to the darkness. Rolling hills lay in the distance, slumbering giants with small vineyards at their feet. A lucid, piercing clarity invades him. The air is balmy, the soft breeze from the hills rolling over the brow. Laying down softly on the heather and log grasses, Dana feels the trembling deep within the hill, the rumbling increasing, the fault slip giving way, the stress at its edge overcoming the friction, the first of the waves travelling through him, unstitching him, his heart a wingbeat, a skiff on the shoaling tide, surrendering.

 

David works in biometrics software. Writing is his form of resistance. He is based in London and is currently attending the MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck College. You can contact David here

I

She called as I was turning the corner of Churn Lane. I put up my hood, put my back to the wind, to save her from asking me to repeat myself. What are you up to? she asked. Blackberry-picking, I told her. Bit late for that, surely. No, no, I said, the summer came late this year. Oh, yeah, she said, trying to recall her June and July. I found the fruit bushes, by smell as much as by sight, because they grew in front of a strew of Himalayan balsam. When I was six or seven, Dad showed me to wait for August, when it would take only a touch or a slight shake to burst the balsam seed pods. The smell would stick to us more than the seeds themselves and crept towards me now from this childhood time. How’s your dad? I asked. Oh, you know, she said, getting on. Silence told me the rest. I stopped on the hill, pulled some Tupperware from my little canvas bag, and began to pick. Reach and pick, reach and pick, while she told me about her new kitchen, the baby, her brother’s new job. As she spoke, the box became crowded with berries, like her voice was doing the picking, and I was only there to watch. I can’t believe about Mr Davies, she said. What about Mr Davies? I asked. Oh… She paused. He overdosed, she said. I snagged my hand on a thorn, and drops that could have been blackberry juice puckered my palm. Didn’t you know? No, I told her, no, I didn’t. Reach and pick, reach and pick. She told me about his daughter’s post on Facebook. Then she remembered the time he caught her smoking weed at the bus stop and let her off because she’d come first in the music competition. I sat down on the dry-stone wall while she spoke, looking down at the leaves and crisp packets by my feet. When did you last see him? she asked. I dropped a berry into the box. Cleared my throat. I think it was when he came to my gig, I said. When I was still in The Kohl. He asked for tickets for Nottingham and brought along his husband. I smiled. They definitely didn’t like our music. She laughed at that: You were a bit– alternative, weren’t you? He bought merch, though, I said. And five copies of the EP. I picked a couple more berries. Yeah, well, he was a great guy, she said. Yeah, he was, I said. The best teacher we had. I turned to rest the box on the wall, rummaged around in my bag for the lid, clamped it shut. Well, I’d better go, I said. No problem, she said. Callum should wake up from his nap any minute. I paused. Okay, speak to you soon. We said goodbye, and I lowered the box back into my bag, holding it in my hands as I walked down the hill to the dusty streets below. 

II

 

Jesus Christ, she said. It’s too cold for walking today. You’re making me shiver just thinking about it. Well… I like it, I said, shrugging at the hornbeam in front of me. The snow’s almost gone now. I reached the muddle of brambles and peered over the dry-stone wall. The bushes are all waterlogged, I said. I hope they don’t die. She said, I think we have other things to worry about. Mm. You’re right. I stayed a few more seconds with the brambles, barren in the winter’s cold arms. Then I walked on. She told me more about Callum: his new teeth, how his hair had turned blonde from almost black, his sweet giggling. You must be loving it, I said. She laughed. I’m exhausted. I don’t sleep. I love him, she said, but it’s awful. Oh, I said. I’m sorry about that. Marching up the hill, I became breathless, so I let her speak, and I tried to listen, but the rain got into my phone’s speaker and made her smooth voice crackle. What did you say? Sorry– it went funny for a second. Oh, she said. Where are you? Just up Warley, I said. By the churchyard. What were you saying? She paused. Um… Just that Callum’s difficult, that’s all. She sighed, but I heard only a whisper of it, as if she’d turned her head. How’s your music stuff going, anyway? she asked. Well, I said. Did I tell you about that funding we got? A cyclist rustled past, slowly, his misted breath reaching out to me. She said: No, I don’t think so. Oh, well, we got some money to put towards the album. Ooh, she said. What are you spending it on? Studio costs, better instruments, promotion– that kind of thing. Buy us a laptop, will you, she said. Then she laughed in a too-high pitch. But… yeah, it’s going well, I said. Thanks for asking. I held the phone away from my ear and listened as the rainwater in its hurry became a language-less voice on the lane. Then her voice again. What was that? I saw Sammy Davies in Tesco the other week, she said. He’s dyed his hair bright yellow. I stopped. Mr Davies’ son? Yep, she said. Can you believe that? Yeah– I mean, I remember you saying that last time. Oh, she said. I bit my lip. I’m heading back to London next week, I told her. You won’t be back for ages, she said. Yeah, probably. I’ll miss it. No, you won’t, she said. You don’t miss us at all. 

 

III

 

Take care of yourself, I told her. Yep, you too. Okay then. Okay then. Bye. Bye, she said. I turned off my phone. It was July, and for months I’d been stuck in the city with the walls, the windows. The sky had thawed and whipped white to grey to blue; a wonderful alchemy. I walked to the city library and returned with books about English plants and natural woodland. They told me the rubus fruticosus – the bramble – would be in flower this month. Its arms, wicked with thorns and serrated leaves, were prising colour from soil to flaunt at the summer. I drew them, copying photos from the Internet. I wrote a song about them. For them. Crumpled, it went in the bin. I called her. She didn’t answer. I got a text the following day saying she was busy with Callum, but we’d speak soon. The ladies downstairs were both working from home, and we’d agreed I could only practice the drums at the weekends. So, my hands itched. Really, really itched. I tore at them till they blistered and bled, and I had to fashion bandages from kitchen roll and masking tape, mending them every few hours. In the morning, the sun rolled in and blinked, with me, at my red-spotted pillowcase. From the foot of the bed I could watch the toddlers on the street being led to the nursery. Obediently hidden, I was a shade behind dusty glass. All I could think about were the blackberries. They’d be falling, covering the hill and the lane. I wished to go back home and take them, the berries trodden, blemishing my hands in that sweet nestle between ripe and decay, rotting even as I held them. I’d have dropped them on park benches. Tucked them into the collars of eager dogs. Left them at the canal, and on towards the churchyard, and on the path, and at the knotted oak tree, and the dear clean stone behind it. His names and dates chiselled there, made of absence. The berries would have fallen on his place, quiet and warm in the earth, pattering like the musical beats he taught me. I blinked. My berries fell away, and I looked again at my walls, at my window, the street below. I opened the window: put up my hood, put my back to the wind. I repeated myself. What are you up to? someone shouted to me from the street. Nothing, I said– but my voice was hoarse. I budged back inside. Bandaged my hands. And began to paint brambles on the walls.

 

Georgie Evans is a writer of poetry, life writing, and short fiction from Halifax, West Yorkshire. She has a BA from the University of Warwick and her current MA at Goldsmiths is funded by the Isaac Arthur Green scholarship. She was the winner of the Telegraph Cassandra Jardine Memorial Prize in 2019, the Walter Swan Poetry Prize in 2020, and has an upcoming publication in The Pomegranate magazine. Her current work-in-progress is a narrative non-fiction about deafness and dementia.