Stir-Fry (16 page)

And where was her own hot potato tonight, this term, this lifetime? Maria edged down the bed until her head was submerged
in rough blankets and the air grew musty. She had had enough of loitering on the outside, playing the chilly virgin, everybody’s helpful agony aunt. She wanted to feel something, anything, so overpowering that it would fill the space between her ribs with radiance. Not that she required happiness, at least not straightaway—just something hot enough to burn her hand.

“No, honestly.”

“Schmonestly.”

“Can’t handle another, I’ll pass out.” Maria’s belly hurt from laughter. She nudged the pint away.

Damien shoved it back across the table; the creamy head bobbed and almost slopped over. “You have to drink it now I’ve carried it through the madding crowd of elbows.”

She rested her lips on the rim of the glass and let the cream seep between them.

“Here, let me draw a face on the head, and if it stays all the way down, it’s a good pint.”

“Get those mucky fingers out of my head,” she roared. The law students at the next table raised their eyebrows. “I can do it myself.” She finished the cartoon face, then added a cross underneath.

He peered over her elbow. “What’s that, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament symbol?”

“No, it’s the wimminy thing.”

“Spare me!” Damien grabbed the pint and drank, wide-mouthed, till the imprint had disappeared. “No feminism allowed after eleven o’clock or you’ll turn into a pumpkin. Come on with you now, let’s be having a wee dance.” He pulled her into the circle of bodies.

“Would you be imitating anyone’s accent there?” she shouted in his ear.

“Divil a bit!”

Maria gave a wrench to his beard. “Beast. Listen, I’m not sure if I can stand.”

“Here comes a slow set now, all you have to do is sway. How come I’m still in control of my limbs if I’ve had three more than you?”

“Boys have bigger bladders. Or maybe it all goes into the plait.”

She leaned against his bulk and let her eyelids slide shut. The music pivoted them, limp as hibernating bears. It was one of those songs that envelops you in its saxophone intro, and you think you remember and love it, and by halfway through it has become one of those sloppy ballads they play every Christmas. What was the name of the damn thing, something about a year or a heart. Weren’t they all? She put her head back to ask Damien and found his mouth on hers. It seemed impolite to twitch away. He tasted of smoke, oddly savoury. She opened her eyes but found his overhanging nose alarming, so she shut them again.

People are looking, thought Maria. The right people or the wrong people or the don’t-give-a-shit people?

His tongue in her mouth was harmless, thick; that came of talking too much, she decided. The dark curls of his beard were warm against her chin. She turned her mind off and dug deeper into the kiss.

Her name. Damien had disengaged and was shaking her shoulder.

“What did I do?”

“It’s past closing time; they’re kicking us all out.”

She shook herself awake. They were alone on the neon-outlined dance floor. The crowd was trickling out the swing doors; she saw a hand wave and recognized Galway’s wry smile. She waved back, shamefaced, but he had disappeared. The lethargic bar staff were upturning orange chairs on wet tables. “Oh, good lord, my bus.”

“I’ve got rooms,” he commented as they opened the swing doors and the cold air slapped them.

“I’d better not,” Maria told him, softening the words.

“You mean you’d rather not.”

“I mean … I don’t know what I mean,” she said, coughing in amusement. “Night, so.” She patted him on the shoulder, an awkwardly intimate gesture.

Damien pulled his plait inside his collar, turned up against the wind. He nodded and headed off toward the buildings.

“See you tomorrow,” she called, but he was out of earshot.

All the way home in the bus she kept her eyes shut, and her disbelief switched off, holding on to the warmth.

Tuesday, Wednesday, seven and a half hours of Thursday and still no sign of him. Not even the usual hallucinations. Maria killed some twenty minutes at the modern languages notice boards, wandered down a corridor dusty with light, and her eye caught sight of that French tutor she’d seen in The Pit. She spoke before her nerve could decide not to answer the summons.

“
Excusez-moi
, sorry.”

His face was long and tapered like a Brazil nut.

“I’m a friend of Damien’s. Just wondering had you seen him round at all today?”

Philippe’s shoulders would have liked to shrug. “I presume he’s still in London,” he told her with the faintest of accents. “He did say it was only for the weekend, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he stayed all week.”

“Of course,” Maria answered brightly.

It would be rude to truncate the conversation with that, as if she had no interest in the man except as a source of information. As was the case, she reminded herself, and felt doubly guilty. Her smile bared a few teeth. “You must be missing your games!”

He stared.

“Your games. Pool. I’ve seen you play, you’re brill.” Maria told him her name and how nice it was talk to him and that she would no doubt bump into him again sometime. Then she put her fingers over her mouth and cleared her throat, to halt the flow of words, and walked away—the wrong way down the corridor, so she had to lurk in the staff toilet until she could be sure Philippe was gone. Brill, she repeated into the mirror with an extra-wide grimace, to mortify herself. How seventeen.

She was paddling up gradually from sleep when her alarm piped. An irritating little sound, like a squirrel being strangled. Ten o’clock; once again she had forgotten to set it to half eight for weekdays. The lecturer would be straightening his grey tie outside the lecture theatre by now, ready to deliver his commentary on the salient points of rococo ceilings. Maria was aching in all her own salient points, after a crippling evening washing every window in an insurance company office.

There was no one who would notice if Maria went in today or not. Yvonne and she had exchanged only a few hellos since that disastrous weekend at home. As for Damien, he had been back for over a week, she calculated, and it was as if that blurred incident in the bar had never happened. He was reliably friendly; every time she stage-managed an encounter with him on the corridors, he stopped for a chat, impervious to the crowd swirling past them. They even had a short game of pool together, and one threesome with Philippe. But none of it added up to anything.

Maria wrenched back the duvet and reached for her long Johns. She would not come home early again today; warm evenings in the flat were a luxury to be rationed. She mustn’t keep leaning on Ruth and Jael, tagging along. Surely they
would get bored of her if she had no life of her own to joke about. Besides, they could do with some privacy. Though it was not her fault, last night; it didn’t count as eavesdropping if the voices carried right through the wall. Words like
self-respect
and
typical
and
self-indulgence
and
cliché
came ripping through the cloud of murmurs. Every few lines, one voice reproved the other with a piercing “Shh!” Maria had lain there, troubled for them, sometimes trying not to listen, sometimes straining for the words.

Now she sat on the edge of the bed again and took off one runner, shaking it to loosen a tiny pebble, which hit the carpet and leapt under the bed. Maria rested the shoe on her lap and shut her eyes. If she was lonely, it was her own damn fault. If she was bored, why didn’t she do something about it?

By the time the bus got her onto the campus, lectures were over for the day. Maria made a draughty pilgrimage round the notice boards and, steeling herself to it, signed herself up for backstage work on the Dramattic’s Christmas Panto.

That evening she wandered down to the basement before the fourth rehearsal of
Snow White and the Seven Bishops
. A minimal welcome was offered, over plastic cups of coffee. The rehearsal was protracted and irritating, with the lead bishop fluffing his lines at nine crucial points. Afterward the crew all sat around listing the production’s faults. Maria liked the look of one girl, a scene painter with coal-black hair who claimed to be named Suzette. Hearing Maria’s name, Suzette turned to her, her huge ponytail swinging. “You live with Jael, don’t you?”

Maria couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t hurl her through a trapdoor of implication. She nodded uncertainly.

“I know her from way back,” the girl explained. “Has she learned to play that guitar yet?”

“She thinks she has.”

Suzette turned away to get some instructions from the tetchy director. Maria was just pulling on her gloves to go when Suzette glanced back. “Aren’t you coming to the bar for a nightcap?”

“Sorry, got to dash,” mumbled Maria, and made for the stairs.

Another adolescent panic attack; out at the foggy bus stop she cursed herself systematically under her breath. One, she had turned down a rare and valuable social overture. Two, being an old acquaintance of Jael’s did not automatically make Suzette a lesbian. Three, even if she was, she was only being friendly, and was hardly intending to molest Maria in the college bar.

She got home at midnight, bone tired and sick of herself. Letting herself in quietly in case Ruth and Jael were asleep, she was surprised to hear only one voice in the living room. Maria glanced wearily through the beads; it was Jael, huddled up in her flame-coloured kimono, the phone cord spiralling round her knees.

“Mmm. Whiling the hours away all on my lonesome. No, the youngster must be at college still. So what have you and Mumsie been up to?”

A long pause; Jael shifted on the sofa, tucking her feet under her. Go to bed, Maria told herself, yawning silently. She couldn’t decide whether she wanted a cup of tea.

“Me too.” A low, throaty laugh. “Wouldn’t say no. Why do you have to stay with her tonight? Possessive cow.” Jael listened, then broke in. “I’m not insulting her, I’m just lusting after her daughter. I won’t be able to sleep, you know. I’m just going to have to parade starkers on the roof till someone takes pity on me.”

Maria decided against the tea. A hot bath before bed, maybe? Her shoulders slumped in indecision.

“It is not ovulation, you’re a week out. I’m always horny on
Friday nights. And no wonder, after your shameless conduct in the shower this morning. You didn’t learn that in the Department of Pensions. I bet you’re still wet.” The voice slid down. “Come on, tell me. No, your mother won’t hear through the wall. Aren’t you even the slightest bit wet for me?”

Maria leaned against the smooth wallpaper; she could feel her face heat up in the dark.

The words were almost inaudible. “Where are you, the hall? All right. Imagine I’m sitting on the stair just below you. Concentrate now, stop sniggering. Imagine my hand sliding up between your knees. Are you wearing those stockings with the—” A roar. “I am not kinky. OK, piss off, go get your beauty sleep. See you in the morning. How about breakfast in bed?”

Maria slouched in. “Evening, all.”

Jael was staring at the receiver in her lap. She looked up, pulling the kimono around her neck. “Kettle’s still warm if you want a cuppa. I was just talking to Ruth, she’s on filial duty tonight.”

“I’m sure she’s glad to get a break from us, have her dinner made for her once in a while.”

“You haven’t met Mrs. Johnson,” warned Jael, dropping the phone on the matted hearth rug. Then, watching Maria’s limp arm lift the kettle, she asked, “How’s the poppet?”

All her walls of independence crumbled; she felt like burying her tired face in Jael’s lap. Instead, she took a gulp of steaming tea. “Hunky-dory.”

“That bad?” Jael raised one eyebrow.

“I’ve signed up for the Dramattic’s Panto, and I think I’m going to hate it.”

“Drop out.”

“No, I can’t do that now.”

Jael let out a huge sigh that turned into a yawn. “I’ll never understand you honourable types. Ruth’s just as bad. Tell
you what, we were planning a picnic in the hills this weekend; why don’t you forget about those thespy shites and come with us?”

“Shouldn’t you check with your other half? I don’t want to be in the way.”

“Rubbish,” said Jael, positioning another brocade cushion behind her head. “What do you think we’d be getting up to on a mountaintop?”

“The mind boggles,” said Maria, and carried her scalding mug down the corridor.

“Besides,” came a shout, “some things are even more fun with three.”

The bus wheezed slowly into the mountains; Ruth’s chocolate supply (“for blood sugar”) had dwindled to nothing by the time they reached the terminus. They set off up a random muddy path, held up at intervals by Jael stopping to photograph interesting patches of tree bark. “God, I’d love a ciggie,” she remarked wistfully.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” said Maria.

“Oh, I don’t anymore, not since I shacked up with your woman.”

“‘Shacked up with’ sounds like cattle,” Ruth complained; “couldn’t you use ‘met’ or even something nice like ‘fell for’?” She turned to Maria. “After the first fortnight, I dared her to give up smoking.” Lowering her voice to a whisper, she added, “She stank.”

“I heard that,” called Jael from the hedge where she was poking around for late blackberries, “but I’m mature enough to ignore it. Speaking of stink, hadn’t that infant on the bus a bit of an aroma?”

“It couldn’t help itself,” commented Ruth. “Just imagine having no control over your anal sphincter. I thought it was fairly likeable, as babies go.”

“Would you ever mind not having kids?” asked Maria.

“No way,” said Jael comfortably. “Call me selfish, but they’d cramp my style.”

Ruth paused in deliberation, scanning the panorama of purple heather and black turf. “Well, having children can be part of heterosexist oppression … Ah, no, to be honest, I’m just more into women than men and babies put together. The theory came later.”

“There’s always squirting,” suggested Jael.

Maria’s eyes bulged.

“She means self-insemination,” Ruth explained with animation. “This couple we know in England, Wendy and Deirdre, they’ve been together for twelve years, and they’ve just had a baby boy that way.”