Cathexis (9 page)

Congratulating myself on having all my ducks in a line by 6pm, I poured a large glass of red wine. All the tests I'd completed indicated a very positive outcome. I pressed play on M8's compilation tape 'A little bit me, a little bit you'.

I'd nothing to occupy my eyes so I went into my mind to visualise the evening ahead. It may begin with a torrid sex scene - unlikely, given her recent mood, but her capricious nature didn't preclude it. Cut to us talking and laughing, the candlelight describing her nodding curls and kindling her eyes as she scanned the room in approval. The mattress, dressed in a pristine white duvet cover and soft, downy pillows, would be on the floor next to us like a bride on her wedding night, anticipating a long awaited undressing.

Snapped from my reverie by the sound of tyres crackling across gravel ...6.20, she's early I smiled and sped into the kitchen to look out of the third of the bay window allotted to me. It wasn't the Saab, but a little Nissan, from which my neighbour Howard Nelmes was unfolding his frame, his shirt untucked at the back. He offered up his briefcase by way of greeting as if he were the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I giggled and raised my glass in acknowledgement.

I lingered at the sink a few minutes longer, pouring myself another glass, willing the Saab's nose to nudge into sight. I went back to the bed/living room and opened my Nancy tin. Printed on the lid, a photo of a blonde, curly haired little girl in a red cape, her hands on the wheel of a toy speed boat. There was a whippet on her lap which appeared to be at the end of its tether – the beginnings of a snarl playing around its muzzle. I wondered what had happened after the shutter click.

Fishing out the locket and passing it over my head, I chose to look at the Nancy photos rather than the images inside. There were other tokens: a heavy silver necklace, not a chain, more like a very long worm, a leather plated bracelet intertwined with a gold chain, from which three orange amber ovals were suspended. Precious things in themselves, but I couldn't identify with such riches – their value lay in the gifter. I picked the red velvet bag and shook out a circle of dark hair, which puzzled me. Why would I need it when I had a whole head of hair in which to bury my face and coil around my fingers? Cut from underneath by her neck, it was silky and intimate. With it a small square of vellum. 'For my boy with the beautiful breasts, always Nancy x'.

I pushed the Russian wedding ring with difficulty over a work-swollen digit. The gravel hissed again, prompting me to dart to the kitchen where I busied myself wringing out a tea towel, even though the washing up had been dried and put away hours ago.

After some minutes, I picked up my keys, went out the flat and pushed open the big, half glazed communal front door ...no Saab. It was now 6.52 so pouring myself another glass of wine, I sat cross legged on the floor in the bed/living room. The tape clicked to a stop, making me jump. I laid red queen on black king, black seven on red eight. When it was clear I wasn't going to win,  I cunningly formed an eighth line with the melancholy jack of diamonds, allowing me a neat, but unsatisfying conclusion. I played again to rectify the situation.

By 7.22, I'd finished the red and started on the white. Looking into myself to see if I could send my astral eye to Palladian Road, where I imagined Nancy dashing down the steps, one arm in her coat, the belt of it fluttering over the road because in her haste she'd shut it in the car door. I saw myself, cross legged on the scrubbed, bare floorboards, cards in disarray before me. Or rather something was watching me, watching myself. A dark shape somewhere up on the picture rail, licking its liverish lips in preparation. I had to know what it was going to say before it could say it. Wincing, I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“She's not coming” it rasped in comic candour.

Returning to the kitchen, I poked a wooden spoon about in the coq au vin – the chicken had all but disappeared, just a few residual strands remained. Coq au vanish I said to myself wryly. 8.09. I cracked open a Guinness, which thanks to a small explosive device, frothed exuberantly. Clamping my mouth over the hole, I grimace at the metallic taste. Pacing back and forth between the kitchen and the balcony doors 20 times, touching each door handle as I went in order to retrieve the situation.

I was filling up with something, not anger, no. It was the same feeling I'd experienced as a child – a terror, followed by intense loneliness. I cried and rocked until I was able to harness the next stage
...resignation.

I had to call her to make sure she hadn't crashed or anything. After my hitching breath had righted itself, I picked up the phone. Just when I thought I was going to get the insult to injury answer machine, “Hello”.

“Are you OK? You didn't come”.

A pause. “Minette” (with that breathed ‘e’). Now is not a good time”.

“Why, what's wrong?”

“The cleaner couldn’t come today, I have to mop.”.

“Well, I can see how a crisis of that magnitude could prevent you from phoning me.”

“Minette, don't” she hissed
.
“Look, I'm sorry OK?”.

I needed compensation. “Can I see you tomorrow?”

A sigh. “OK but text first. Goodbye Minette”.

Two cans of Guinness later, I threw up in the Dudley Diplomat and passed out on the world's last three quarters sized mattress.

Chapter 16

Waves of nausea coming thick and fast as Quincy and I stacked the last slab of the 40 square metres of sandstone we'd heaved through the house. My head pulsed in a napalm death strike as I slid down the wall in a blinding blizzard, squatting on my heels, drawing the golden chill to my lungs, rising to the flailing trees to join the crows and their remorseful autumn noises.

“Are you OK Min?” Quincy standing before me, still wearing cut down je
ans despite the scything November wind. I focused on his powerful, hairless calves like African clubs.

“Yeah, I just had too much to drink last night”.

Even he'd now cottoned on to Nancy and I, treating the situation respectfully. No wide eyes, no fishing for the whys and wherefores. “A handsome couple” his only comment.

“How's the flat?” he said, scratching a greying, lamby mutton chop.

“It's fine”, trying to swallow down a rising tide. He patted my shoulder with his heavy paw, bent forward and kissed the top of my head. He was sentimental – a good man.

“Some tea I think is required!” he announced, striding towards the kitchen, singing 'You've lost that loving feeling”, somehow setting my thoughts to music. Around five o'clock, I texted 'Is it safe?'

An hour later, 'Come at 7'.

The bath had sapped the last of my strength. An orange warning light appeared on Fritz's petrol gauge, running on fumes; him and me both. As I descended the mild gradient of Hazel Road, the light blinked out. Fritz, you're a weird car.

Lifting the heavy knocker, I let it thud once, prompting a whooping stampede. Too tired for children. The door opened a crack, anticipatory silence.

“Who is there?” Nancy growled, staged and vulpine. First,
Sasha's bubbly tresses, then Nikolai's earnest eyes.

“Nette! It's Nette!” they squealed, spinning in celebratory circles and shrieking like Apaches as I crossed the threshold. Standing passively, looking at Nancy as they patted me down for Pokémon cards. She appeared normal enough, perhaps a little darker around the eyes. Her face moved into an unreadable grin and she kissed me on the cheek. My skin smarted as if she had struck a match there.

“Nette! I got Zard!”. I looked at Nikolai in baffled amusement.

“He means Charizard” said Sasha with a superior smile. “He's such a baby”. I was none the wiser. They dragged me towards the stairs like a couple of Shetland ponies and when I'd mounted the first step, Sasha, still on hall level, flung her arms around my thighs and nestled her face in my crotch.

“You smell like cucumbers” she announced, rubbing her cheek against my groin. I looked helplessly at Nancy and shrugged. She revealed her teeth in a smile impression.

“Please would you do me a favour and take the children upstairs? I need to make a phone call”.

“Sure” I said.

Squatting on the floor while Nikolai turned the pages of his Pokémon collection (I could see their appeal, much like Trump cards), explaining their powers and values in his gruff, stilted toddler voice. He spoke largely in gestures, illustrating ferocity with growls and clawed hands, but every so often he came out with a word that surprised me such as 'conquered' or 'competition'. Sasha draped against my back, her arms around my neck, loudly translating in my ear.

Nancy materialised and placed a stack of small clothes in the chest of drawers. She met my eyes, smiling.

“I can't do this anymore” she said. At first, I thought she meant the washing. Standing too quickly, my head swarmed on the brink of a faint. Sasha looked at us in turn, comprehension dawning in her serious blackcurrant eyes. Understanding before me, she swanned from the room like an ice-skater.

“Forgive me” Nancy continued, “I didn't know I was going to say it”, almost laughing, confounding my comprehension of what I'd known inevitable, she'd let me have it with both barrels. I stood gut-shot, gaping at the wound in disbelief. In my mind, a Tom and Jerry cartoon, funny when Tom, smiling cheesily, gets his teeth knocked out by the hammer wielding mouse. The teeth shatter, the jagged remnants detaching and tinkling one by one, leaving a black smile-shaped space. This, of course, was my heart.

“So it's out of your system”.

“Yes”. She lowered her eyes and left the room as if she had something more pressing to do, perhaps reload. Pinned and paralysed, the only dynamic my frantic, pistol-whipped heart and the large, salty distress that brimmed, pattering the front of my leather jacket. I hadn't done anything wrong; it was just me, not right. My wrongness. Interesting at first, then repellent.

Nikolai regarded me with consternation.

“Why are you crying, Nette?”. I stroked his hair to comfort myself and reassure him. “Don't cry”, wrapping his arms around my leg. “Don't cry, Nette!”. It became a demand as he began to blub.

Nancy returned, surveying the pain she'd wrought.

“Nikolai, go!” she barked.

“But why is Nette crying?” he keened.

“Nette is upset. Mummy will hug her”. This seemed to placate him and he detached himself to allow her to follow through.

“It's OK, Nikolai. Go”, she said firmly. Reluctantly, he went the way of his sister.

Her arms around me, rubbing her large flat hand between my shoulder blades. This provoked a torrent of consummate grief.

“Why, why now?” I sounded sleepy.

“I can't do it to Todor, I love him” she murmured, emptying the clip into my heart. Cuffing my nose, I cried salt and snot into her hair (which would vex her later, knotting her curls), but she suffered it, remaining tearless, her vivisection experiment complete, the subject dispatched.

“Come” she said, taking my hand to expedite the new way. On the landing she handed me toilet paper to blow my nose. When I'd done she led me downstairs, keen no doubt, to be rid of me. I hung wretched in the kitchen while she opened a drawer and produced a cheque book. Sitting at the breakfast bar, she asked me the date.

“Sixteenth” I said.

She wrote in her careful, small way and I saw the slight tremor in her hand, probably more in trepidation of me not going cleanly, rather than personal turmoil. She ripped out the cheque. Business like, clinical, she pushed it towards me. I folded it into the inner pocket of my jacket, head down, too choked for words.

“Minette, now I have to ask you for something”. Her eyes met mine like a kind scalpel. “I need the ring back. It wasn't mine to give”. Fishing about in the cheque pocket, I placed it on the counter.

“Thank you” she said.