Easy Peasy (24 page)

‘I didn't know until today …' I say in a rush. Too fast, he leans towards me to catch my words. ‘I didn't know until today that…' the words have turned to pebbles in my mouth. ‘That your Mum … that Wanda was a …' I cannot say it.

‘Prostitute?' His eyebrows are raised.

I try to breathe in but the pebbles are banked up in my chest and throat. Where I was empty now I am full of hard, heavy words, so heavy I can hardly move.

‘You didn't know?' He watches my eyes as if to catch a lie. He doesn't believe me. ‘What did you think she did then?'

‘I don't know. I didn't think. She was just your mother.'

‘Money has to come from somewhere.'

‘I didn't think.'

‘No.' I don't like the way he emphasises this negative, the sour little shake of his head.

A gulp of whisky goes down the wrong way. I choke and splutter. He doesn't pat my back like Foxy would. He sits and watches, coolly he waits. I struggle to regain control, feeling, oh feeling such a fool. ‘And that my dad …'

‘Sorry?' He leans towards me.

‘My dad,' I repeat.

He nods, then: ‘I thought that was why you hated me.'

‘Why?'

‘Because my mother was a whore … and because of her and Ralph.'

I sort of laugh. ‘I didn't know what a whore was!' Too late I realise that I should have said I didn't hate him. I can't say it now, a beat too late. And was it even true? I can't remember. The little spook looks down at me from his frame on the mantelpiece. Yellow, cheesy wedge of a face.

I wonder what Foxy is doing? If I rang she might not answer and that would mean that either she is out or that she has unplugged the phone. If I rang and there was no answer I would feel worse.

‘I loved him,' Vassily says. ‘And so did Mum.'

‘Yes.' Can I say the same?

He leans back, stretches his legs, then bends forward and unties his shoe-laces. I curl up on the sofa, my feet, that are still cold, tucked underneath me. Superficially, he looks relaxed but his hands are clenched and there is a little tic in the muscle above his jaw.

‘I used to …' I begin. I'm not quite drunk enough to break through this. Vassily pours more whisky. As he does so he catches my eye as if he understands and will force me through. I am almost scared. Amazing that words that are nothing but air and vibration can be so hard. Words evaporate once they are spoken but their meanings can scorch very deep into your tender soul.
Sticks and stones might break my bones but words will never hurt me
. What a lie.

‘Go on.' It is unnerving, the intensity with which he waits and watches. I take another swallow of the whisky. It is like a game of dares. Elaine and I used to play dares sometimes with some wild girls I wasn't supposed to play with. I dare you to cross the railway track. I dare you to steal a packet of Love-hearts from the shop. I dare you to kiss Puddle-duck. No one ever said that – but they might have done.

‘I used to be very jealous of you.' I wait for his surprise.

‘Go on,' is all that he says.

‘How Daddy seemed … almost to prefer you.' He watches me closely but I cannot read his expression. I wind my hair round my finger. ‘How he cared about your feelings and not ours, mine and Hazel's. How he hardly even
noticed
Huw.'

The light is too bright in my eyes. The single central light-bulb under its pleated shade casts a bleak uniform light. Keeping my face tilted so he can see my mouth dazzles me. I feel a little lurch inside that warns me I should drink no more. Vassily keeps his eyes on my face. He communicates so well I keep forgetting that he needs to watch my lips.

‘The pond …' I want to rid myself of the pebbles that shift and grind in my chest. What ever can it matter now? I am thinking of the ants. He must forgive me.

‘The pond and how … it was your pond and his pond and …' I am starting to sound childish. I laugh a bit, a brittle laugh that snaps off halfway through. Daddy's hand over his little hand patting the beautiful white sand flat. He doesn't laugh. Inscrutable, that's what he is. ‘Even when Hazel and I went to get the pond-weed it didn't work … and you helped him make it.' Christ, I am
not
going to cry. I gulp more whisky, blushing and squirming under his cool gaze as if I'm on the end of a pin, or pinioned underneath his foot. The more I say the stupider I sound. And the less honest. Although I am trying to be honest.

‘I feel as if …' But I am stuck. His green eyes are clear and cold.

‘As if …' he prompts.

Something occurs to me. ‘Tell me … after we moved away did you see him again, my father?'

‘Of course.' He looks surprised.

My feet are cramped underneath me. I uncurl. ‘I … I had no idea.'

He shrugs. ‘That's how it was.'

A swelling sensation, the germ of what I knew expanding in my chest, a wait while it does so. ‘When?'

‘What?'

‘Did you see him?'

He looks at me as if at an idiot. ‘Evenings, weekends. Summer holidays.' My nails are in my palms. I close my eyes, think.
Yes
, he was often away: work, golf trips. We didn't miss him. The rhythms of the house so much easier, the atmosphere lighter in his absence. I never thought about where he was. I feel betrayed. Betrayed?
Me
? Why? Did it hurt me? The swelling in my rib-cage and throat has grown so great I'm almost choked. I gasp in a big breath. The electric-fire is baking the stale air. ‘Mind if I open the window?'

I've got pins and needles in my foot. I get up and stamp it on the floor, wincing against the excruciating fizz. Behind the curtains is a blur of wet orange light, glittering drops on the glass, the movement of a dark tree. I didn't know it had been raining.

‘Won't open,' Vassily says. ‘Painted solid.'

‘But I can't breathe.'

He shrugs his shoulders.

‘I'll go in the kitchen.' Walking about makes me realise how much too much I've drunk. I'm clumsy as if wearing giant boots and boxing gloves. I go upstairs to the bathroom, moving quietly as I can so as not to disturb Wanda. The bathroom is cool at least, the shelves crammed with medicine bottles, pills, essential oils; the turquoise plastic bath smeary. A thick blue candle is stuck to the side of the bath in a solidified cascade of drips. No possibility of opening this window either, sealed up with a sheet of polythene taped to the frame, inside a scatter of dead flies, the skeleton of a lace-wing. I will suffocate.

Downstairs, I reach for my coat. ‘I'm going to get some fresh air.'

‘It's pouring with rain.'

‘Just five minutes.'

He looks as if he couldn't care less, which, probably, he couldn't. I go out into the icy streaming night. As usual, I'm wearing stupid shoes for walking, low-heeled – but they pinch my toes. Sleet smashes from the sky and jumps halfway up my legs. I've no umbrella and no hood. Cold needles prickle my skull, my hair will be ruined. In my hurry to escape I've turned the wrong way, I have to walk along the muddy edge of the dual carriageway before turning into quieter streets. The juggernauts thunder through the wet orange and black and send sheets of freezing oily water, waves of it, sloshing up from the gutter, soaking me to the waist. It's only fifty yards or so to the corner – but I turn back. Too vain to ruin my hair? Too cold and wet to think? You cannot breathe in such rain.

5

Vassily smirks when I burst back in. He regards my soaking skirt and the gritty wetness of my stockings. ‘I'll get something of Mum's.'

He runs upstairs and brings down a pair of tie-dyed leggings and a sweat-shirt.

‘I'll change upstairs.'

‘Stay by the fire. I'll do the washing up.' He takes the plates out into the kitchen. My fingers feel huge and they are trembling as I fumble with the buttons of my dress, undo my stockings, laddered, the thin nylon stuck to me, the sensation like peeling off the top layer of skin. My legs are red and blotchy as salami. Wanda's clothes smell of a sickly fabric conditioner, not my sort of clothes at all, but soft and dry. The mirror shows me that my curls have gone, the wetness frizzing my hair into its old bushiness. My nipples are screwed up tightly with the cold, they hurt as if someone is pinching them between their fingers and thumbs, not a loving squeeze, spiteful. Dog-belly's nipples in my mind now. Does he still have them? Of course, he must. Dog-belly. What did I used to say running along to school …
Dog-belly, Puddle-duck, Puddle-belly, Dog's muck
.

Oh but it was only a game. My stomach lurching like the lurch of the tree-house. I was only a child. I didn't mean it. He doesn't walk like that any more with his feet splayed out, slap, slap, slap. He doesn't walk like a duck.

I'm not sure that he is Puddle-duck at all.

Except that he knows what I am.

He comes back into the sitting-room, drying his hands on a tea-towel.

‘Better?'

‘Yes, thanks.'

He sits down and pours more whisky. ‘Not for me,' I say, but he doesn't hear me. ‘Vassily, I'd rather have a cup of coffee.'

‘I think you should drink with me.' I am chilled by his tone. No smile in his eyes. I sit down. There is a smell of detergent now and his hands are very pink. My stockings and suspenders are sprawled on the arm of the sofa, I inch them towards me, tuck them down the side of the sofa cushion.

‘I knew you were jealous,' he says. ‘I liked it.'

‘Oh.' Since I'm probably going to be ill anyway, I swallow more whisky. He liked it. Not such an innocent then. Nothing quite makes sense. ‘I don't … didn't …
don't
understand. Why he seemed to prefer
you.'

He presses his lips together, then runs his tongue round his front teeth. ‘I didn't – at the time.' He is sitting so close to me I can feel his breath. ‘Maybe not a matter of
prefer,'
he muses. Or maybe it's my imagination, not his breath. A trickle from my hair runs down my neck. He does not like me – no reason why he should and ample reason why he shouldn't. So why am I suddenly so aware of him? What is this sudden tension? To make love to Vassily … Puddle-duck … Dog-belly … Dog's muck. ‘No!'

‘What?'

‘Oh!' I was not aware that I had spoken aloud, the edge between inside my head and outside blurring. I cannot think straight. I shake my head to try and dislodge the thought but that only makes the room spin, makes it worse. Someone makes love to him, someone takes off his shirt and presses her breasts against his dog's-belly. Caroline does, they have a child to prove it. Does she kiss them every one, lower and lower, does she kiss each one of those nipples in turn?

Oh Foxy, Foxy, save me from myself. She is on my side, Foxy is, whatever she says, whatever she does, she is on my side.

‘What?' he says again.

‘Just … nothing.' I must stop drinking.

‘Do you remember…?' His voice is very quiet. Goose-pimples on my arms although I am hot again now. I grasp the wet bushiness of my hair to keep awake, keep sensible, hold on. Remember what? Did I say it or not? I remember the jam smeared on his body, ants at the corners of his eyes, feeding at his lips, falling in his mouth when he opened it to scream.

I don't know what he wants of me. What is his intention? I cannot read his face which has grown indistinct.

‘I didn't understand, then, why Ralph, sort of … took me on.' His own speech is becoming hard to follow. Is it me or is it him? I swallow whisky in a hot gulp. He lifts the bottle, I try to put my hand over my glass but miss and he pours more in. Does he want to ravish me? I smother a giggle. He ignores me, perhaps he doesn't hear. ‘But now I do.'

‘Because of Wanda.' That much is obvious to me. Wanda with her luscious body under the filmy nylon. A sudden flash of Daddy on the landing at night, wild-haired, the squashy purple acorn glimpse, a shudder, the whisky rising in my throat. And she was a whore, God suddenly I love that word. When I was little I used to love the words hoar-frost, raspy cat's tongue harsh, made me shiver with an unidentified longing. Associated with hips and haws and sticky rose-hip syrup, sticky, sweetie syrup. Whore. And Daddy so prudish that he left the room or hid behind his newspaper when animals mated on television. Now I'm being naive again. It's not as simple as that. It never bloody is. I pull hard at the hair at the back of my skull with both hands, pull to keep myself present.

Another question, like what? Some neutral thing. Oh. ‘Does Caroline drink?'

A funny look. ‘A bit.'

‘How long have you been together?' He doesn't even bother to answer. ‘Happy?'

He puts one elbow on his knee, leans his chin on his hand. ‘We have our moments.' Then reconsiders. ‘Very happy, very happy, yes. She's wonderful.' I feel put in my place. His voice is louder now that he is drunk, the careful edges of his words dissolved, he looks more intently at my face as I speak. The way he looks up at me, his chin cupped in his palm, makes him seem more vulnerable. I feel better, not better, I feel dreadful … but what? Less threatened. It's nice to be wearing the leggings, to have the freedom to sprawl, put my legs anyhow. I had these winceyette pyjamas, inceywinceyette, little ducks on them and a frill round the neck. Mummy said they were a bugger to iron and that is the only time I have ever heard her swear. My usual clothes, calculated, circumscribe my movements, why do I do it? Dress like that? Christ knows.

‘Explain then,' I say.

‘What?'

My hand goes to his knee. The fine wool fabric of his trousers is both soft and rough, cat's tongue again, hoar, whore. He straightens up. What am I doing, touching him? I can't pull my hand away, don't know how to move it now. We're so close together on the sofa. What does it signify? Only a touch.

‘Explain what?'