Four New Words for Love (3 page)

I didn’t deserve that. I think she’d been bottling something up too, although God knows it wasn’t sexual frustration. She wasn’t right about everything but she was right
about a lot of it. She knows me better than anyone. She’s not bright, but she’s got the sharpest instinct I’ve ever come across. After that tsunami her big orange chest was
heaving up and down. I could see the half inch roots of her parting, and it suddenly occurred to me that if she’d only stop barbecuing herself on sun beds, and saturating her head with
chemicals, she’d be the pale, pleasantly-plump grown up evolving from school photos, not this tangerine caricature in shag-me shoes. And somehow, looking at her just then, I saw all the
increments she’d grown out of, like an insect shedding skins, each stage captured by the countless photos we’d taken together: the skinny kid, the pale pubescent, the top-heavy
teenager, the chip shop sex bomb, and now this. I’d fallen into her fatal habit of nostalgia. But I’d seen all of her stages and I loved them all.

‘I love you,’ I said, and burst into tears. My hormones were all over the place.

‘I love you too.’ Her sobs are volcanic. When I’m with her I understand what the phrase to fall into someone’s arms means.

‘It’s a pity we’re not lesbos. It would make life a lot simpler.’

‘I like cock too much,’ she said. We both burst out laughing, uncontrollably, till it was near hysteria. I looked down. The bump was visible. It might have been the tears but I swear
my ankles looked swollen. I faced a vista of support tights drying over radiators on loveless nights.

‘I’ll never find anyone now,’ I said and burst into tears again. That set her off. We were just two heads, four arms, four breasts and two bodies convulsing. Looking over her
shoulder I could see the whippet-thin specimen that she hadn’t yet kicked out, standing in the hall. He was swaying from foot to foot, looking frightened. His instinct was to run, but I think
he still thought it worth hanging around in case another go on the swings was still on the cards. His eyes were on stalks at the mention of lesbians. I think he thought all his Christmases might
have come at once. He coughed to let her know that he was still there. She made an irritated flick behind her back, without turning round, waving him to bugger off. He looked punctured and closed
the door behind him. I stopped crying. So did she.

‘Why do you always go for them?’

‘Why do you think?’

‘No I mean
them
, the under-nourished specimens.’

‘I don’t know. Staying power? I didn’t think there was a type.’

But there was, and I don’t think their selection had anything to do with stamina. They were all the colour of sticking plaster gone through the wash. They all looked like illegal
immigrants. There was something of the panting fugitive in every one. I thought of them as bowling pins, knocked over by her orgasmic onslaught, once seen easily forgotten, interchangeable,
dispensable. She did too. I’ve a theory their selection was unconscious, a genetic thing she doesn’t understand, Lolly’s slob fat genes screaming out for slob skinny genes to make
a normal slob, and those deluxe ovaries of hers destined to be thwarted by the barrage of precautions she took.

The truth was that I was jealous and not just for the company. My libido see-sawed wildly with my mood swings, and I needed something to stop my plunging self-confidence. I felt I couldn’t
be less attractive and I made the mistake of telling her. She moved towards the door.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Calling him back.’

‘
Even
if I did find him attractive, I draw the line at your cast-offs.’

‘Please yourself. Get changed and then we’ll go out and get two more.’

But I don’t get changed, the way Lolly does, have a shower and put some slap on and leave your whole history behind you with the pubes in the plug hole. I’m not going to trawl myself
round town pouring drink down my neck and stunt my baby just to forget why I got here. I don’t undergo Friday night transformations. I’m the sum of my past, the way Lolly
isn’t.

She took the hint, not just about that night but about my situation. She only ever brought men back when she’d run out of all other possibilities, and she was as quiet as someone with no
interior life, and the bedroom manners of the Hulk with a hard-on can be. I spent a lot of nights in. Sometimes, if it was late and I was already in bed, I would hear the key scrape in the lock and
then she’d be in my kitchen, by the sound of it banging together the only two pots I owned, although God alone knows why because she can’t cook a thing. And if I suddenly felt more
lonely, more unattractive than I normally felt, that uncanny instinct of hers would smell it, the clattering would stop and I’d hear her have a quick pee and a quicker brush of her teeth, and
then she’d climb in beside me and say ‘budge up’, while the weight of her bulk had already pushed me onto the cold bit, and she’d put her arms around me and I’d say
something like: ‘I hope his intentions were honourable. And by the way, can you at least bring your own fucking toothbrush next time.’ And she’d say something like: ‘If you
ever hear me sounding as old as you, feel free to kill me in my sleep. Please.’

At that time I’d a part-time job in town working as a window dresser, cash in hand to avoid the Social. Thinking back, it shows the kind of blunt stupidity I’d normally credit Lolly
with. Who’s more likely to be seen by a benefit spy than someone who spends part of their time on display? I wasn’t a natural. All my artistic flair was taken up by the flat. I use an
upturned crate as a coffee table. I have my own style – fucking skint urban rustic. It’s a minimalist approach that has to do with minimal money and the need to hide everything at short
notice from the police. I did what I was told in the shop. One afternoon I was half-way up a ladder when suddenly I knew that something wasn’t right.

I walked home, which was stupid. I called Lolly, which wasn’t any cleverer. Her medical expertise is all used up by remembering to take the pill. She called the doctor. Even before she
arrived I’d started to bleed. She called an ambulance. Lolly came with me. All of a sudden I wasn’t pregnant any more.

They kept me in for three days. They were very nice. They told me it wasn’t as uncommon as I might think. I didn’t think – the frequency of miscarriages hadn’t occurred
to me at all. They told me that as far as they could tell ‘It wouldn’t compromise your chances of conceiving again’. When you’re single and twenty and broke, that
isn’t really the consolation it’s meant to be. They said that none of the complications that can result had occurred. ‘Everything,’ they said, ‘had come away
cleanly’. ‘Everything.’ None of this was said unkindly. I thought: a discharge without complications then. I didn’t feel anything, except a sense of dread that the vacuum
was about to be filled by something worse than a sense of emptiness. There were four of us in the room, Lolly’s hand welded to mine, and I didn’t want to give way in front of strangers.
One day you’re pregnant and the next day you’re not. A discharge without complications. All the complications have been removed. So they discharged me.

‘Everything’ hadn’t come away. ‘Everything’ was the half of it. I started crying on the landing before I got to the door. Lolly fumbled the keys because she
couldn’t see the lock. She bundled me in as if trying to barricade all the accumulated grief on the outside. Everything made me cry. Everything. I don’t mean kid’s stuff because
at least I’d had the common sense not to buy anything till nearer the time, when I would have been surer of the outcome. The things a dead child leaves behind must be the saddest furniture in
the world. Imagine moving a sofa and finding a dusty bear, haemorrhaging stuffing. It would kill you stone-fucking dead on the spot. Or even worse – it wouldn’t.

I didn’t have that to put up with. I didn’t need it. The excuse for tears was all around: the spatula stuck in the cold fat of the frying pan that I’d intended cleaning after
work; the balled-up tights thrown in the direction of the washing basket; the toothpaste Lolly had squeezed from the middle although I always tell her not to; the discarded cap with the hard crust.
These were all mementos of a past life three days ago when I had a baby inside. The fridge magnets made me cry. The Hoover made me cry. Lolly had actually gone out and bought food of some
description. She hasn’t a penny. The generosity of all that ready-made tat, stacked like bricks in the fridge, made me cry. I wasn’t crying for the life that wouldn’t be, the
Disney scenarios that Dad dreamed up. I wasn’t crying at being thwarted because I thought I’d some vocation as a mum. It was some kind of purge. When I wasn’t crying out loud I
was crying silently. Lolly said I cried in my sleep. When I got out the bath it was deeper. Dad came round and stared at the crap carpet, being all silent and strong. He’s got a face like a
roadmap anyway but the lines had formed themselves into a mask of complete misery. He didn’t say a single thing until he felt himself about to cave in, so he got up and left. Except that he
turned round at the front door and said, ‘Was it a boy?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘That’s what I had hoped for, a boy. I wanted you to call him Kevin.’ Which wasn’t deliberate but was just about the worst possible thing to say to me just then.
He’s not selfish but I’ve never met an alcoholic who isn’t the centre of their own needy world.

After that I cried all through afternoon telly. Lolly joined in. The sofa became a blancmange. I fell asleep at
Countdown
and woke up during the late news. We were sitting on an atoll
ringed with paper hankies, an ankle-deep reef of tears and crisping snotters. I’d been crying for a week. I took stock.

‘Enough’s enough,’ I said.

‘Do you want to get changed and go out then?’

‘You got over that quick enough!’

‘I think you’ll find half of those fucking hankies are mine!’

But I didn’t want to go out just then, or the day after that, or the day after that, or the number of days it took me to reach some kind of balance. So Lolly went out to get some fish
suppers because the pre-prepared crap in the fridge didn’t appeal, and I bagged the hankies and, among the debris, found the remote that had somehow got lost during that lost week. I ate at
her nagging and flicked the channels. I didn’t have the attention for anything. Her patience lasted a whole minute.

‘For fuck’s sake let’s watch something! I don’t care if it’s
Gardeners’ World
but let’s watch something!’

‘Lolly.’

‘What?’

‘Thanks.’

‘Any time. Give us the remote.’

So she stayed, again and again. And I did go out in a series of excursions, to the corner shop, the cinema, the radius widening with each trip. And although Lolly’s dope smoke makes
impartial thought almost impossible I do think, standing here by the window, that I’ve reached some kind of balance. Unless I’m here the minute will pass with no one to appreciate it
and all that beauty will go to waste.

She’s fussing with the camera’s self timer, balancing it on the crate, and there’s a lot of breathing and swearing. She insists I sit on the sofa. The flash goes off as she
turns towards me. Her arse has filled the foreground and that’s all she’s succeeded in taking a picture of. She turns back. There’s more fussing and swearing. She touches the
button and throws herself on the sofa. It lets out a groan as I’m levered off the cushion. There must be two clear inches of daylight between my arse and the fabric when the flash goes and
captures me levitated, Lolly’s arm halfway round my neck.

‘Try and remember the maths next time. Fat girl jumps on sofa equals skinny girl airborne.’ But she’s not listening. She’ll spend ages setting up a photo and lose
interest the instant it’s taken. I go to the window and step out onto the balcony. The minute has arrived. The smell of warm tar and cut grass rises up from the street below with the sound of
kids playing football. The high-rise across the way has turned crimson, the windows flashing like sequins. The bend of the river is a molten curve. The whole landscape looks as if it’s been
dipped in honey, hiding, for the length of the illusion, the litter, the syringes, the half-submerged trolleys. ‘Come and look,’ I say, but when I glance across at her she has this
underwater look, as the last sucked-down lungful hits. I turn back for the last heartbreaking thirty seconds, standing on this platform in the saffron air. The ball below hits a car, setting off
the alarm. An adult shouts. The kids scatter. The spell breaks. The colours fade.

‘It’s the only free show in town.’ I say, to no one.

* * *

I’d never been in the flat before without being pregnant. I wasn’t sure if my subsidy depended on it, but I decided not to tell the Social anyway. Lolly said I was
very wise. I still spent too much time watching day-time telly. I’m sure there’s a link between that and mental deterioration. I took stock. I reasoned that it doesn’t have to be
like this. I’ve said before to Lolly that I’m the brains of the gang, but that’s being damned by faint praise. Miss Proctor, who wrote that ‘Lorraine suffers from a chronic
inability to understand, or to want to understand, anything that does not interest her’ was the same woman who sent me home with a letter to my parents telling them I was squandering my
gifts. I used to forge Lolly’s mum’s signature on her report card. Because she couldn’t do joined-up writing Lolly wasn’t able to return the favour. Dad couldn’t do
joined-up writing either but for other reasons. I used to stick the report card in front of him and he’d sign, without reading, in a series of spastic jerks that looked as if he’d done
it on top of a spin dryer. Other parents might have taken the hint at the mention of squandered gifts. I didn’t expect my homework to become a family enterprise but, looking back, it
wouldn’t have been unreasonable to expect the telly to have gone off for half an hour.

It’s too easy blaming someone else. At some point the statute of limitations runs out on your childhood. No doubt I’d have made more of a go of school if either Mum or Dad had shown
an atom of interest, but the truth is I didn’t want to make more of a go of it. I knew how crap my education was, but I went on sitting in front of day-time telly getting stupider. I had to
break the cycle.