What Becomes (6 page)

He cleaved with unnecessary force.

He wrapped the first four slices in plastic.

He took another swede and cracked it, released that vaguely rancid scent.

He realised once again that the act of slicing was always less helpful than he hoped.

I never can split open the right thing.

His shoulders were starting to rise and clench – you had to watch that or you'd get these atrocious headaches.

I wasn't entirely stupid.

The boys, Tim in particular, had made more of matters than they should. Whenever Amanda arrived they would scurry off like schoolgirls. Or if Peter was stuck in the basement, they'd trot and fetch him and no pretence left that she was here for apples, for any kind of shopping.

Not that Pete was often downstairs, because she'd eased into the new habit of arriving at something past five and this became something he watched for, maybe once or twice a week, his vertebrae crouching in him until she appeared and he could leave with her and go to the coffee shop – the one with the filthy coffee, but at least it stayed open late – and they'd talk about books.

Nothing else.

She gave him books.

The same words that were in her mind, now in yours, still warm.

Books that seemed to indicate she knew him and what he would like.

Started off neutral: DeLillo, Jim Thompson: then Flann O'Brien, so you'd get a laugh. Then the James M. Cain: desperadoes and speed and sex. And sex.

He'd wanted to reciprocate. She'd never done the Russians, so he gave her
Anna Karenina
– all that love and honour and theories about The Land – and he'd gone out and bought lots of Chekhov so that she could have it. Chekhov who married late.

Older men and younger women. Very nineteenth century.

He celebrated with delighted complaints. ‘You give me too much.' And this was true – she did.

‘I have too many books.' She was looking at him.

‘Got me reading again.'

‘You've got me eating more fruit.' She was looking at him in a way that changed his face, made him different.

‘So you'll live longer, which is good.'

‘You'll live a long time, too. I insist.' She was looking at him and making him loved – which is every difference in the world.

And she gave him R. Crumb – big book of his cartoons: bits of philosophy and Catholic schoolgirls with monster tits and fucking: people fucking guiltily, people fucking freely, people fucking anything.

Looking at drawings of cocks that she must have looked at.

Looking at a scrawny, naked man, caught in a box, twisting and struggling in this tiny box, his soft, little dick lolling down, defeated.

You never know what someone means to send you.

And she lent him a fat hardback, an anthology of poems – poetry not quite his thing – but he took it home and waited until bedtime, had a shower and cocoa to get comfy and then slipped down snug into bed and opened up.

It was all right. Not fantastic. But all right.

Stuff about buildings, deer, a broken window, dead relatives, love.

And then he was parting page 26 from page 27 and there was a hair.

Hers.

Goldenish with little kinks in it and curved across the paper.

He touched it.

Long enough to stretch from the tip of his middle finger to the tenderest place in his wrist.

It touched him back.

He felt goldenish and afraid.

Because it's always better to be contented than in love. But when you've had nothing for so long, you get greedy and confused. You want to be more than contented, you want to be burned up alive and made again. You want always to have a loved face.

Why wouldn't you want that?

He didn't think he'd altered in the way he was with her after that. It had only made more sense that he should start taking the train to Edinburgh at weekends, going to see her – and sharing new coffee shops, new books: the cold, malty air and the drizzle letting her soak into him, his clothes. They went to the big new cinema and held hands and giggled, but still kept holding. They took their pictures in the photo booth at the railway station.

In my wallet: her hair just cut and we wanted to immortalise it – this haircut – and her lips are quite thin but they have this delicacy and it seems she's about to speak or smile, and she was looking at me, letting me have the way that she looked at me.

In my wallet.

With me.

Need a new wallet now.

‘You all right, chief?' Tim peered down the stairs, still seeming concerned, attentive, which was an irritation.

‘Yes.'

‘You, ah . . .' He crept a few steps lower. ‘You're . . .' He pointed, apparently embarrassed by something that Peter had done, or else something he was.

And Pete glanced down, realised his thumb was bleeding, a chip cut into it, not too deep, but messy. ‘Bollocks.' He'd have to sterilise the cutting surface, throw out the swedes.

‘I can clean up, if you want.' Tim saying this, as if he's facing an invalid. ‘You could just . . . you know. Wash your hand.'

Peter paused, blood dripping.

I
am
an invalid. Tim, Fintan, everybody: they saw me be well, be with her. They saw me burning
.

Now all we do is remember what I'm not.

I should sack them.

His thumb only started hurting when he noticed it, once he understood what had gone wrong.

‘I'll . . . Yes.' Peter finally moved to the muddy sink and the first-aid kit. ‘If you could clean up. Yes.'

He ran the cold tap over his thumb, washed and washed, the water staying slightly pink, no matter what.

Party.

She'd been going to a party – somebody's birthday in a pub – and we'd never done something like that, been together in front of her friends.

Saturday evening in Edinburgh and you bring her flowers on the train, mind them for the whole of the journey so they're still nice.

Handing them over and she's on her doorstep and wearing make-up – night-out kind of make-up and this thin dress, silky, because it's summer, and she's still in stocking feet. Maybe tights – you don't know yet – but that's not how you say it – you say stocking feet, that's the accepted phrase. Her flat is behind her and you do not know it well, because you never can quite get a grip of it, because of watching her and gladly suffering the way the kitchen tabletop hurts a little under your hands, being covered in her using it and having breakfast and sitting at it to maybe read a book.

You wanted to sit a while, too, but she was smiling at the flowers and hurrying them into a sink full of water because she couldn't find a vase and then she's searching for her shoes without you and you're looking at her bookshelves and you mainly would like to just stay here and not go out and maybe your jeans aren't right and your shirt is silly, too young, but she takes your arm and kisses your cheek and that's the taxi sounding its horn in the street.

The pub is in a basement, lots of woodwork, bare stone and leather sofas: the heat in it already a bit much. Out at the back, there's a kind of garden and you fix yourself up there with drinks for both of you and she goes about and says hello to her pals and the birthday girl. That doesn't take long.

You meet three or four of her friends – four of them – and they seem pleasant and not surprised by you and she pats your arm while one of them is watching.

Peter dabbed his hand dry, fumbled out some antiseptic ointment and a plaster. Tricky to do a proper job with his hands unsteady.

It hadn't been a bad evening. A bit dull when they talked about places you hadn't been to, a past you didn't know. But then they mentioned Amanda's school, what she'd been like as a girl and that made her blush and unfurled the sum of you, rocked you.

And you missed the third-last train and the second-last and then you have to let out the five words boiling in your chest, ‘I won't be going home.' You were quiet, but she heard you.

‘No, Peter. You will be going home.' And her grin came a breath too late to stop me shivering.

Blood made a small stain through the dressing, as soon as he set it on straight. Small – nothing bad.

And you said, you truly said, you let yourself say, ‘Well, I could get the bus. There's a later bus that goes to Glasgow, isn't there?'

But then you saw her, all over again saw her, like a new first time.

‘No. You're going home to mine.'

In a whisper.

Like she's slapped you.

Whisper that runs down your neck and you're puzzled, you're knocked, you're split – there's this wonder yelling in you and all the outside of your face can do is frown, stare while she moves off into the room.

‘No. You're going home to mine.'

She told me that and went away.

Saying goodbye.

She did a lot of hugging. I saw. And eventually she came and got me.

Leaving together. Thick and friendly and curious air around us, we pair.

There's more hugging just as we go – strangers also hugging me, because I am with her – and then we walk – Amanda in heels, but she wants the air she says, she can make it as far as we need to. Just that far.

A little bit drunk. Both of us.

And we go.

We take me home.

We go home.

Only a few bright windows as we pass: high, grey, empty streets.

And I can't remember, but I do, and I won't remember, but I do. Her hands on my back, as if she was listening to me, reading.

Holding each other so much we could hardly undress.

Her eyes closed.

Stockings, not tights.

Flat stomach.

Goldenish cunt.

Sweet word and it fits.

He squeezed the place where the bloodstain was, did it again, started climbing the stairs. A part of him hoped that he might faint soon.

Fits the line and shape and promise of all my life.

All my fucking life.

Up in the shop it was quiet, almost closing time – the final half-hour when the ceiling would slowly grind down towards Peter and his skull would throb.

You slept for a while, but then woke without knowing why.

Amanda sitting on the edge of the bed and her skin cold, shuddering, makes you flinch when you move to touch her. So you wrap her up tight with you there in the sheet.

Wanting to fuck her again, reaching round to her breast, but it's sleeping, the nipple stays dull and her back is hard against you, unhappy.

She'd begun with, ‘I'm sorry.' Which is not a good beginning, but he'd tried to welcome it.

‘That's all right. I don't mind.' He'd been holding her hand, kissing it. ‘But what's –'

She'd shaken her head and worked away from him and this took the rest of his sentence.

‘I'm sorry.' Although she didn't sound it – was more bitter, perhaps, angry, his thinking panicked across possibilities.

‘There's no need to be sorry.'

‘I do care about you. I think about you all the time.'

Already the silt in your blood, the closing down.

‘There was somebody at the party that I knew. That we used to . . . And I hugged him goodbye.'

Trying not to understand her. Trying hard.

‘I . . . when we came back, I could still . . . I'm sorry . . . I could smell him on my clothes, on me – and then while we . . . it was like it was him.'

I think about you all the time.

‘I do care about you.' And she'd brushed his back.

And I do love you.

‘I just . . . this is a, this is a mess. I'm not what you . . . I don't want to hurt you.'

But you did.

‘I don't think we can.'

But you fucking did.

‘Could we just leave it for now.'

You fucking did.

Dressing himself had been difficult, because of his numbed hands. ‘I'll call you. To see how you are.' Death starting with the hands.

His fingers delicate as ash.

A woman came into the shop: social worker type and wanting to talk when it's time to close, when it's time to give up and go away. She had leaflets.

‘It works on the principles that all life is connected and this energy, it goes between us, there's a flow.' Knitted hat, shoes made from recycled tyres – the usual.

‘We're not all connected.'

Pale enough to be a vegan and a funny shine on her skin, greasy. ‘Once you become accustomed to the idea you begin to feel it, you begin to be able to work with the energy.'

‘We're not all connected.'

‘It chimes in with quantum physics very nicely, but of course the philosophy is very ancient.'

‘We are not all connected. We are bags of skin. We are all separate bags of thinking skin.'

Her mouth gave a tiny jerk. ‘I'll just leave the leaflet.'

‘You give me a way to stop thinking – I'll paper the whole bloody place with your leaflets. How about that. I'll give you the shop.'

She didn't look at him and didn't set down her leaflet.

‘I meant it. You just let me know.' Shouting this at her back as she scurried to the door, escaped.

‘You let me know.'

Then he sat at the till and rubbed his forehead.

He did that for a long while.

He wanted to go to Edinburgh.

SATURDAY TEATIME

So.

My head will keep on racing throughout this, I have no doubt.