Clear (19 page)

‘I am not.’

‘You
are
.’

‘I am
not
.’

‘Well, you’re the only person
I’ve
ever met,’ he snipes, ‘who conducts formal
burial
services for their worn-out trainers.’

‘So I have an affection for Chuck Taylor,’ I snap. ‘What
of
it?’

Silence
.

‘She actually had a couple of pairs,’ I continue (rather sullenly), ‘from the seventeenth century. French. Absolutely exquisite. Said she only ever wore them inside.’

‘People had smaller feet back then,’ Solomon opines.

‘Yeah. The shoes were minute. All hand stitched. But Aphra has tiny feet. Size four. So they fit.’

‘How tall is she?’

‘Uh…five two? Three?’

‘I have this image in my mind now,’ he mutters, ‘of a girl like a
tent
peg.’

‘The feet aren’t too small,’ I leap to her defence. ‘Not at
all
. They’re fine. In fact they’re…they’re
nice
.’

Solomon merely grunts.

‘They
are
. I saw them. Soft skin. Neat little toes. Finely arched. She actually tried on several pairs for me while I was just sitting there…’

‘Which shoes did you fuck her in?’

(Does this man have no
concept
of foreplay?)

‘On each
tag
,’ I persist, ‘is a brief description of where she bought the shoes, how much she paid, and a detailed analysis of the previous person who owned them.’

‘
Wah
?’

Solomon does a couple of gay blinks.

‘
Yeah
. See?
Now
you’re interested, eh?’

‘Is her nose
that
good?’

I nod.

He leans back in his chair. ‘I’ve actually
heard
about people like that before,’ he says.

‘Bull
shit
you have.’

He shrugs.

‘She had this pair of pale-pink pigskin boots from the nineteen-
fifties
–pearl buttons all up the sides–which stretched halfway to her thighs.’

‘You know what?’ Solomon shakes his head. ‘Not only is that historically improbable, but it’s physically
unappealing
. Is she blonde?’

‘Brunette.’

‘Even so. The insipid pink of the boot, coupled with all those dimpling
acres
of pale, white thigh flesh.’

‘Fantastic,’ I gasp.

‘Repugnant,’ he shudders.

We face a brief impasse.

‘You owe me fifty quid,’ I mutter (piqued for Aphra’s thighs), ‘Jalisa knew about the Putsch.’

‘True,’ Solomon concedes, and pulls his wallet from his pocket. As he opens it up and removes the notes (his gambling credentials are
always
impeccable–he’d rather eviscerate a small poodle than welsh on a bet) I spin his phone around and access his address book.
Good
.

‘So who owned them, then?’ he asks, pushing the notes over.

I glance up, guiltily. ‘A Frenchman. Very small. Had corns. Probably a dancer. Addicted to painkillers.’

‘And did she try them on while you were there?’

‘No.’

(This is a lie.)

‘Did you listen to any music?’

I squirm in my seat slightly.

‘Well?’

‘She
has
no music. She doesn’t listen to music. I only saw an old portable radio / cassette player and two tapes.
The Best of Joan Armatrading
and
The Best of Abba
.’

‘Only the best of
everything
for this filly, eh?’ Solomon chortles. ‘So a big Fuck-Off TV, maybe?’

‘Nothing fancy,’ I mutter, ‘and the TV was bust. Anyway, she claimed she “didn’t have time” for TV.’

‘Books?’

I clear my throat, anxiously. ‘Loads of cook-books. A
Life on Earth
hardback from the TV series…’

‘Which she presumably didn’t actually
see
,’ Solomon murmurs.

‘And a dictionary.
Collins
.’

‘
Man
, she’d better fuck like a hell-hound,’ Solomon observes soberly, ‘because
By Christ
this girl’s an immortal philistine.’

I merely shrug.

‘I mean what did you
talk
about all night?’

I shrug again. ‘Stuff.’

‘
What
stuff?’

‘Her shoes. The weather. I don’t remember.’

Solomon frowns at me.

‘You’re not actually going to spill, are you?’

I blow my nose, poignantly.

‘I can see it in your face. You’re feeling
guilty
. You’re already developing some kind of pointless
crush
on this aspirant, star-fucking shoe-fiend. In fact you’re planning a fantasy mixed-music cassette tape for her, probably
themed
, even as I speak…’

My eyes widen, in shock (and
hurt
), as he snatches up his phone and marches off to his meeting.

Then I grab a stray pencil and chew ferociously on its tip.

Okay.
Right
. Track Three…

Something
really
mellow.

Roy Ayers, ‘Everybody Loves The Sunshine’.

Bingo
.

Then something jazzy–to show my emotional depth and range–but nothing too scary…

Ray Charles, ‘Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying’.

Followed by something
really
poppy (
What
? Adair Graham MacKenny taking himself
too
seriously? Not on your bloody
nelly
). ‘Who Loves The Sun’. Velvet Underground.

And I’ll call it
Aphra’s Autumnal Groové
cassette.

(‘Twenty-four songs about the sun.’)

No. On second thoughts, skip the bit in parentheses.

Can’t be
too
obvious.

She prepares me a cup of White Tea in her tiny kitchen. I stand in the open doorway with a thumping headache and my sinuses prickling.

‘Made from the newest leaves on the plant,’ she whispers, ‘which the Chinese reserve for their most
sacred
tea ceremonies…’

She inhales the aroma, ecstatically, her eyes tight shut, then opens them and registers my jaded expression. ‘Pearls before swine,’ she mutters, passing it over (This girl is the last
word
in hospitality,
eh
?) before hunting around in a wall unit and producing a bottle of 10-year-old single malt (from one of the more brutish of the Scottish islands), unscrewing the lid and drinking a nip from the cap.

(By the way that she winces I deduce that it has a kick to it like a bad gear-change on a Kawasaki 500.)

Perhaps it’s my blocked-up nose, but the tea is
incredibly
bland (
Sacred
? My arse). And (can this be
just
a coincidence?) she hasn’t poured herself a cup.

We tip-toe through to the living room. She shows me her shoes laid out on the dining-room table. There are dozens of others, too, packed neatly into a large, cardboard box. I pull out the pink, pigskin boots and inspect them.

‘Never worn the things,’ she whispers so quietly that I have to move closer to hear her. ‘Never worn them,’ she repeats and I feel the warmth of her whisky-breath on my ear.

She steps back, yanking off her left pixie atrocity and pulling the boot on to her foot (simply leaving the pigskin to flap). ‘They were handmade in the nineteen fifties,’ she explains, ‘owned by a Frenchman, a showman. Maybe an actor. He was addicted to painkillers. Smell that…’

She offers me the second boot to sniff.

I point to my nose. ‘Blocked.’

‘Ah.’

She lounges against the arm of the sofa, holding her pigskinned foot out mournfully in front of her. ‘There must be over two hundred tiny pearl buttons.’

‘Gotta see them done up,’ I say, crouching down and taking a hold of her foot. She promptly collapses–with a gurgle–backwards over the arm (almost kicking me in the face) so all that’s now visible from my low angle is her shin and her knee and the boot.

‘
Loads
of people bringing along their American flags this weekend,’ she murmurs up towards the ceiling, yawning, ‘but on Friday he’d scrawled this message on to the back of the box.’

I glance up from the boot. ‘How’d he do that?’

(Second button, third.)

‘I’m not sure. Maybe just in the condensation. I heard someone saying he must’ve used his lip salve, but I’m not sure he did…’

‘And what did it say?’

(Fourth–a little
tight
.)

‘I can’t remember exactly, but something about how he didn’t consider himself to be a member of any particular nation or creed, and that what he was doing was meant to be a demonstration of the strength of the human spirit and how he hoped it would give courage to others.’

(Fifth button–my eyes are watering–I sneeze,
hugely
–sixth, seventh.)

‘
Bless
you.’

Another yawn.

‘But he was really proud of it. Kept retouching it all day, standing on his knees. It gave him something positive to focus on.’

‘Really?’

‘Yup.’

She burps.

‘Sorry. And there was a really noisy woman wrapped up in this
huge
American flag at one point. She was marching around the compound, waving her arms about, offering support. But he just kept turning and pointing at the message he’d written. I think he was touched by her enthusiasm, but irritated by her patriotism.’

(Twelfth button. Thirteenth is missing.)

‘Your thirteenth button is missing.’

‘I know. There’s this
beautiful
blonde woman who comes to see him most nights before he goes to sleep…’

‘That’ll be Manon. His girlfriend. She’s German. She’s apparently staying in one of the caravans in the car park.’

‘She’s stunning.’

‘A model.’

‘Yeah. Well whatever she is, she must be incredibly patient.’

‘You’re not wrong there.’

‘I mean how could you
do
that to yourself? If you loved someone?’

‘Live in a car park?’

‘Starve yourself. Hurt yourself, and expect them to watch on.’

‘His mother died when he was twenty-one,’ I mutter, ‘after a terrible illness, and his father–so far as I’m aware–died when he was young. Perhaps it’s vengeance. Or perhaps that’s precisely how he understands love. Perhaps–for him–the
journey
of love is in suffering.’

(Twenty-fifth.)

She pokes out her head, to peer at me round the arm, ‘That’s
deep
.’

She grins.

‘The question is,’ I muse, ‘how long
any
woman could retain her sense of self-worth in the face of these self-destructive acts. You won’t’ve seen the film they made when he packed himself in ice…’

‘Nope.’

‘Incredibly disturbing.’

She pokes her head out again. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah. The stunt’s underway. He’s trapped inside this massive ice-block. There are hundreds of people standing there watching. He’s unbelievably cold. He’s maybe fifty-odd hours in, and he starts to hallucinate. He’s basically going into shock.’

I feel her leg stiffen.

‘Doesn’t anyone try and
help
him?’

‘They can’t. He has some kind of release sign–or release word–and he hasn’t used it yet.’

‘
Shit
.’

‘Yeah. Anyway, things are all getting a little strange when suddenly his girlfriend arrives. She’s come to see him.’

‘A different girlfriend?’

‘That’s exactly my point…’

(Thirty-fourth–I suck on my thumb for a minute.)

‘…
Man
, these things are
pesky
. They’re tight
and
sharp.’

‘So what happens?’

When I finish sucking my thumb I readjust the boots on her legs, then can’t stop myself from stretching out my hand and slipping it along the soft skin inside her knee. In automatic response, her knee jerks straight and she kicks me, squarely, on the chin.

So that taught
me
, then.

‘
Ow
.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Anyhow…’ The buttoning recommences. ‘The girlfriend is this famous actress. Can’t remember her name. Tall, brunette, very beautiful–but she looks absolutely fucking
desperate
. I mean maybe I read too much into it at the time, but my feeling was definitely that she didn’t like the idea of this stunt, that she was pissed off, that she utterly
resented
being made to parade in front of the public like that, having her fear, her grief, made a part of the drama…’

‘Tough call.’

‘
Exactly
. Anyway, she walks up to the front of the ice-block and glances in at him. Her expression is not compassionate, but more–kind of–blank. Then she walks off.’

‘And what’s
he
doing?’

(She’s trying to sit up, but I have her leg held too tight.)

‘That’s the tragic part. When he sees her walking away he goes absolutely bloody ape-shit.
Frantic
. Becomes unbelievably distressed. Is crying, hitting the ice…It’s
incredibly
claustrophobic to watch.’

‘My
God
.’

‘I know. And his team fly into a panic. They can see that he’s losing it. So they suddenly start trying to cut him out.’

‘How long does it take?’

‘Too long. A good while. They have to hack into this huge ice-block with an axe or a chain-saw (I can’t remember which) and Blaine, meanwhile, has almost come back to himself, and he’s shouting at them–gesticulating wildly–but it’s impossible to tell if it’s because he does or he doesn’t want to leave the block…’

‘Which was it?’

‘I don’t know…’

(Fifty-eighth.)

I clamber up on to my knees and adjust her leg so that now it’s lying across my shoulder. I can see her below me, stretched out on the sofa.

‘Hope my knickers are clean,’ she muses.

‘You’re not wearing any.’

‘Ah.’

She yawns, ‘I’m a little claustrophobic.’

Hmmn.
Okay
.

I’m buttoning, now, above the knee. The skin is very soft here, and I have to pull the boot tight to contain its fleshiness.

‘
Ouch
,’ she mutters.

‘Anyway, so he’s finally cut free and he’s in terrible shock. Shivering uncontrollably, then every so often screaming out, in agony, like someone’s just stabbed him.’

‘That’s the
cold
,’ she says, with a shudder.

‘Frostbite. They take him to hospital in an ambulance, and the cameras go along with him. His girlfriend is there. I think she’s crying. He’s in and out of consciousness. It’s
really
grim.’

‘But he’s okay,’ she says, ‘isn’t he?’

‘So far as I can remember, I think his foot’s pretty fucked. He’s in bed for a month or so afterwards…Although that might’ve just been PR. But that’s not actually the important part. The important part is what happened when he was
in
the block. When he saw his girlfriend approach him and then walk away again.’

‘That feels very tight,’ she says, shunting herself up on to her elbows, inspecting her leg, which is stiff now, as if it’s been set into a pink pigskin cast.

‘It’s fine,’ I say, stroking the leather. ‘It’s beautiful. It’s
meant
to cling like that.’

She frowns and tips her head, quizzically.

‘The point
is
,’ I continue, ‘Blaine says afterwards that when his girlfriend approached the block, he saw her, and he called out to her, but it was as if she hadn’t seen him. And he suddenly thought he was dead. He suddenly
believed
that he was dead. That he was a ghost. That she
couldn’t
see him. And
that’s
why he panicked.’

On ‘panicked’, Aphra suddenly says, ‘You
have
to take it off.’

‘Pardon?’

She slides the leg down from my shoulder, over the side of the chair and on to the floor.

‘Oh
God
,’ she says, scrabbling at the pigskin. ‘You must get it
off
. It’s frightening me.’

I stand up, confused. ‘Don’t be silly. It’s just a boot.’

‘I don’t
care
. I don’t
like
it. It’s scaring me. I can’t breathe.’

She puts her hands to her neck, gasping.

I fall on to my knees and start unbuttoning.

She’s actually crying now, hiccuping. ‘I just don’t…
hick
…like it…
hick
…I can’t stand the…
hick
…feeling…’

As I struggle to unbutton, she’s pulling at the pigskin, frantically, which isn’t helping.

‘I
must
bend my knee,’ she says, and starts desperately trying to stand up.

‘Sit
down
,’ I say (loudly).

‘
Shhh
!’

She puts her hands over my mouth, looking over towards the door, anxiously, then clasps her own throat, wheezing, horribly. She seems to be having some kind of panic attack.

‘Just calm down,’ I say, ‘and we’ll get it off.’

But she simply stares at me, wheezing, her cheeks draining, her eyes glazing.

So I slap her. She gasps, her eyes fly wide, she yells, ‘You
fucker
!’ then she slaps me back.

(Ah.
Just
what I needed to sort out my sinuses.)

It’s at
this
point I hear some kind of call from a bedroom. A quiet voice. A man’s voice. Aphra gives no sign of having heard anything. She collapses back on the sofa, covering her face with her hands, sobbing.

I grit my teeth, and continue unbuttoning. She stops crying fairly rapidly and then just sits there, breathing heavily, holding her cheek, watching me, ruefully.

It takes five minutes to get the bastard off. I finally pull it free and throw it back into the box. My thumb and index fingers are almost raw. I inspect them, scowling.

‘Sorry,’ she says, peering up at me through her fringe, ‘I just
really
hate to feel constrained.’ We’re both silent for a minute, then, ‘Sometimes
I
feel like a ghost,’ she says, and holds out her two arms (like a pretty ghoul) and inspects them.

‘Ghost arms,’ I murmur softly.

(They’re certainly pale enough.)

She nods. She half-smiles. Then she grabs a hold of my hand (Good
God
that’s some grip) and pulls me down on top of her.

Two minutes pass in a chaos of zips and elbows, then suddenly she freezes. ‘Are you
crying
?’

(
Crying
? Me?)

‘Nope.’

(Gasping a little, maybe.)

She pushes me aside, sits bolt upright, puts her hand to her neck and says, ‘But you
are
…’ Then before I can respond she jumps up. ‘
Fuck
…it’s
snot
!’ she exclaims. ‘On my lovely
neck
.’

(‘Lovely neck?’ Get
her
!)

Oh dear. Oh
dear
. My nose has been dripping.