The Bird Room (8 page)

In bed we listen to one of Alice's CDs. Some sort of electronica. She's leafing through a fashion magazine which is about 80 per cent adverts. I'm watching the pages turn from the corner of my eye.

‘Hold on,' I say, laying my palm flat across the magazine.

‘What?' she says.

I lean over, pretending to take a closer look at a redheaded model in a photo shoot.

‘What?' she says. ‘What is it?'

‘Nothing,' I say, letting go of the magazine. ‘Just looked a bit like someone I knew.'

I wait.

The silence swells around us.

‘Like who?' she says eventually.

‘Oh, just some girl I used to go out with.'

‘Right,' says Alice and turns the page. She starts to read an article on celebrity collagen injections.

Is that it? ‘Right', as if she didn't believe me? Why shouldn't I have an ex somewhere who looks a bit like the girl in her magazine?

I had a whole relationship planned, ready to tell her; a girl I met at an old job – Carol – who ended up moving to London. We lived together for almost a year and then things finished amicably. It was her job, not me, that made her unhappy and caused the move. We tried things long-distance for a bit, but it didn't work out. We're still friends but have kind of lost touch.

‘Carol,' I say, out loud.

‘What?' she says, looking up from the article.

‘Carol. That was the girl's name. The one I went out with.'

‘Great,' she says.

I leave a dramatic pause.

‘We used to live together for a bit.'

‘Fantastic.'

‘And then she had to move to London.'

‘Wonderful.'

‘I'm still in touch with her.' Alice has closed the magazine. ‘But not like that. Just as friends.'

She flips off the covers and gets out of bed.

She walks out of the room. I think she's going to the toilet, but then I hear the sound of her walking down the
stairs and across the hall and into the kitchen. I wait for a running tap or the clink of a plate on the countertop.

Nothing.

I wait a long time.

Still nothing.

Alice is down there in the kitchen, probably sat at the table with her head in her hands, hating Carol, seeing images of me and her in bed together, at the park, laughing, kissing, sharing an ice-cream …

Carol, fucking Carol, Alice is thinking, biting her lip and wringing her hands and wanting to smash Carol's knees and stick hot pins in her eyes.

I am something worth getting jealous over, I think.

I've won.

Alice is definitely in love with me.

Will calls round unexpectedly. Three in the afternoon. Alice is at work. I'm upstairs in the empty second bedroom, using the computer. The screen is full of pop-up windows. [Teen Sex Fiesta] [Housewife Pool Party] When I try to close them, more appear in their place. I'm peering down from a crack in the curtains. Will rings the doorbell a second time. I wait for him to go away. But Will is persistent. He steps back. He looks up at the window. He spots me and waves.

I turn off the monitor and walk down the stairs, feeling shifty and sore-eyed.

‘Just wanted to see how your new life was going,' he says when I open the door.

I lead him through to the living room.

He sits down on the sofa and starts rolling a fag.

‘Well?' he says.

‘Fine,' I say. ‘It's going fine.' [Abigail's Fuck Playground] ‘Drink?'

‘Can't stop,' he says. ‘Meeting some bloke in town in a minute. Might have another exhibition lined up.'

‘How's Katrina?' I say. [Hardcore Ass Fest]

‘Who?' he says.

‘The girl you introduced me to the other week.'

‘Oh, Kat
ri
na,' he says, pronouncing it differently. ‘Don't ask.'

So I don't.

Will lights his roll-up and looks around for an ashtray. He spots something of Alice's, a CD on the coffee table.

‘Since when did you start liking Erasure?' he says.

‘They're alright,' I lie.

He picks up a half-empty mug of tea and taps his ash into it. He puts it down by his foot.

‘It smells different in here,' he says, raising an eyebrow and looking around the room.

‘How do you mean?'

‘And it's tidier, too.'

Then he notices a pair of Alice's trainers under the coffee table.

‘Bloody hell,' he says. ‘Are you
seeing
someone?'

‘Why do you make it sound so unbelievable?' I say. [Horny Midwives, Now Online!]

‘Because in the however-many years I've known you, you've
never
seen anyone.'

‘Well, now I am.'

‘Bloody hell,' he says again, smiling and shaking his head.

He drops his fag end into the mug.

‘You'll have to introduce us sometime,' he says, standing.

I walk him out to the [One Hundred Free Snatch Movies] door.

‘Will,' I say. ‘If you
do
ever meet her, don't mention that I'm unemployed, okay? I kind of told her I work from home.'

‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,' he says, not really listening. ‘Before I forget … The other reason I came round … Is there any chance you could water my plants one day next week? I'm off to Paris for a bit, you see. Some exhibition thing. The old bint from next door was lined up to do it, but she died last night.'

He hands me a key.

‘Cheers, mate,' he says and walks off down the path.

The phone is ringing in the hall. The phone hardly ever rings now. I'm in the living room, watching telly. Alice is in the kitchen. It's her turn to cook.

The phone is nearer to the kitchen than it is to the living room.

It might just be cold-calling, but it might be someone from my old job.

It might be my boss.

I pick up on the third ring.

‘Hello, William.'

It's my parents.

‘We've put you on speakerphone.'

‘Hi,' I say, speaking as quietly as I can, pressing the receiver against my mouth.

Alice comes to the doorway, holding a wooden
spoon. She watches me for a second, then goes back into the kitchen.

‘How's things?' says my mum.

‘Alright.'

‘How's work?' says my dad.

‘Not bad.'

I've not told them about leaving my job or about Alice.

If I tell them about the job, I'll become a disappointment; immature and irresponsible, a child still.

If I tell them about Alice, they'll ask about her every time they call. They'll want to meet her. And if Alice leaves – if I scare her away somehow – it will be like all the other girls I've mentioned to them; the ones I
did
scare off, the ones I had to pretend I was still seeing for months afterwards.

So I answer their questions in monosyllables, telling them pretty much nothing, just that I'm tired, that work is ‘quite demanding' at the moment and that I really have very little to report. I keep my voice low, hoping it doesn't carry through to the kitchen.

When I hang up, Alice reappears in the doorway.

‘Who was that?' she says.

‘My friend, Will,' I say.

‘Two Wills, eh?' she says. ‘I thought you didn't have any friends.'

We had a not-exactly-argument the other night, about how we never go out or do anything or meet any
one new. I told her that the way my job worked, I hardly met anyone at all. I told her I'd lost touch with all my old friends. I said I was quite happy to do something with
her
friends if she wanted; have them over to dinner, maybe. She said all the people at the optician's were twats.

‘He's been out of the country for a while,' I say.

‘What does he do?'

‘He's an artist.'

Will's still out of the country. He gets back later this week. (I've not watered his plants yet.) I imagine them meeting. Will laying on the charm. Alice disliking him. The bus ride home afterwards. ‘That friend of yours was a bit of a smarmy prick, wasn't he?' I'll introduce them.

By meeting Will, I think, Alice might love me even more.

Will's house smells of roll-ups and aftershave. I water his plants from a chipped tea-stained
Ghostbusters 2
mug. The only plants I can find downstairs are a wilting rubber plant in the living room and a tall spindly thing in the kitchen which looks dead already. It has fairy lights wrapped around its branches. I pour extra water into the pot, imagining Will getting electrocuted the next time he turns it on.

Bird paintings are hanging in the living room.

In the hall, a series of female nudes.

I look closely at the face of one of them, at the crude black lines of her cheeks and neck, the rough swirls and dots of her eyes. Even reduced to a few brush-strokes, she looks familiar; most likely one of the hundred girls Will's introduced me to in the past. I guess I still find it
hard to take him seriously as an artist – I can remember us getting pissed on cheap cider in the car park behind his house, sixteen years old. Back then, Will wanted to be a singer. He wanted to be Nick Cave. He had this ridiculous messed-up haircut, and he used to talk incessantly about how, if he started a band, he'd be ‘swimming in pussy'. Then he did alright at college, went off to Glasgow and came back an artist.

I go upstairs. I've never been upstairs in this house before.

No plants in the bedroom. Just a bed, a dresser, a full-length mirror and clothes all over the floor. A tiger-print bedspread. On the bedside table, a full ashtray, an empty bottle of wine and a dog-eared copy of
Mr Nice
by Howard Marks.

No plants in the bathroom, either.

I go into the final room. Will's studio. Canvases and bits of wood rest against the walls. The floor is covered with a paint-flecked old sheet which is taped to the carpet. An empty easel stands in the middle of the room. By the window is a desk with a laptop and a cheap stereo on it.

I sit down.

I turn on Will's computer.

He has a photograph of Anna Karina as his desktop.

I go to ‘My Computer'.

I double-click.

I open ‘My Documents'.

I open ‘My Pictures'.

I don't know what I'm expecting to find.

The window fills with folders. They're not named, just dated. I open the first one: ‘09/01/07'.

A photo of Will, stood in front of the full-length mirror in his bedroom. He holds a digital camera in one hand. His shirt is unbuttoned a bit, so you can see wisps of his scraggly chest hair. He looks into the lens, his head tilted and one eyebrow raised.

I click ‘Next'.

Will, again, now with his shirt completely unbuttoned. His non-camera hand rests, posed, on his hip. His mouth is curled into a snarl, showing off his yellowed wonky teeth. It looks like he's swept his hair back with his hand between photos.

‘Next'.

Will, with his top off, leaning back on the bed. His flies are unzipped, his belt unbuckled, black hair curling in a line over his beer gut. He's thrust his legs wide apart and he's stroking his chest with his free hand like he thinks he's in a Prince video or something. His chest looks like it's been oiled. I squint at the picture and make out a bottle of baby lotion lying on the tiger-print bedspread behind him. His mouth is open, his tongue flopping out ‘seductively'.

Christ.

I turn off the computer and stand up, feeling like he could walk in at any moment.

On my way out, I leave a note on the kitchen table:

The bathroom is bare. A stark cold white. There is nothing in this bathroom – absolutely piss-all – that gives the impression a man uses it, ever, has even used it the once. There's no towel, for instance.

So how does he dry himself?

Helen imagines he must get out of the shower and just sort of stand there. Or he doesn't dry himself at all and just puts his clothes on still wet. This leads Helen to imagine his naked body. Slight and pale, she imagines. All ribs and goosebumps. A long thin cock with wiry black hair.

There is no mirror.

She pulls up her skirt and sits down. Her eyes drift around the room.

There is no toothbrush or toothpaste by the sink, just the remains of a moth, its wings stuck to the porcelain.

If his teeth had been bad, Helen would've noticed. So what does he clean them with, then? His finger?

There is no soap.

Helen can't remember him smelling bad or smelling of anything at all. She lifts her sleeve and sniffs it; lemons, clouds and fabric softener. This is a bad habit of hers. She's sniffed sleeves ever since first school.

Helen decides on a fag. She's going to need one if she's to get through another half an hour of that looking. She digs the packet out of her handbag and lights one, tapping the first speckles of ash into the sink. What about the story he wanted her to tell? Darren and the casino and the taxi. So far he's said hardly anything. The wisp and smell of the fag ghosts round the bathroom like a cat of smoke, rubbing itself against the pipes and tiles. It purrs its way down the back of her throat.

This sparseness, bareness, or whatever you want to call it, is not confined to the bathroom either. It hangs over the whole house (what Helen's seen of it). To get to the bathroom you have to walk along a very bare corridor and up a very bare staircase. The carpets are gone. There is nothing on the windowsills except layers of thick grey dust and a couple of dead flies. The only furniture is stained and battered and old-fashioned, like it's been rescued out of skips. There are empty cans and food containers everywhere, but they don't count.

She thinks she hears something; a soft foot on a floorboard. So she turns on the tap and runs her fag
under it. With her other hand she shoos away the smoke cat. She wonders if William or Will or whoever he is is pressed up against the door, listening to the glassy tinkle of her piss.

She's been here now a good half an hour and he still hasn't said anything much. He's spent most of the time just looking at her.

First of all, after she came in, after she sat down in the armchair, he asked whether she'd like a cup of tea.

‘Yes,' she'd said. ‘A cup of tea would be nice.'

William disappeared into the kitchen.

And once he was gone, Helen noticed something. She noticed that there felt more of him when he was out of the room than when he was in it. As if – by leaving – he'd moved up the sofa towards her.

Helen rooted around in her handbag for her fags and lighter. There was no ashtray she could see and no smell of cigarettes in the house, but she was sure he wouldn't mind. The men didn't usually mind. She planned to tap the ash into her cupped palm, like something she'd seen in an old film. By the time the fag was stuck between her lips and the lit lighter inches away from it, William had finished making the tea. He was on his way back to the living room.

Helen lit the fag.

William opened the door.

She breathed in.

He stepped into the room.

She breathed out.

The feeling of him shuffled away one place down the sofa.

‘Don't smoke,' he said.

He put a mug of tea on the wobbly tea-ringed old table in front of her and sat down. He sat down in the same place the feeling of him had moved to.

Helen let her cigarette burn for a few more seconds, looking around for something to stub her fag in. She would've liked one more drag but she didn't dare.

‘Put it in this,' said William, holding out an old empty mug.

Helen ground out her fag. She took a sip of tea. It wasn't sweet enough. She needed it so sweet all you could taste was sugar. William didn't touch his.

Then they sat there for ages, not speaking. Helen drawing out her tea – slowly, slowly, slowly – and even once it was cold, lifting and sipping it, because once that was gone there'd be nothing. What about the story? What about Darren and the casino?

He'd watched her close enough to make her feel like she was in a science video of someone drinking a cup of tea. And now she is utterly convinced that he's listening to her piss from behind the bathroom door.

It's when Helen stands to flush that she sees it. A single black pube stuck to the inside rim of the toilet. It's not one of hers. It's long and black and crooked.

She bends down. It makes her feel better. The pube. The bit of him. It looks sad.

She smiles at it. The pube doesn't smile back. A milky droplet of water dangles from it, at one end.

Helen straightens up. She washes her hands (without soap), then dries them on her skirt. When she opens the door, she's ready to say ‘Hi' or something if she finds him standing in the doorway.

Instead she finds nothing, just the empty hall.