My Best Friend Has Issues (5 page)

I remembered the first time I found out the truth about sex. I would have been about nine or ten at the time. My brothers had rented a DVD and were watching it in Isabelle’s house. Isabelle was our next-door neighbour and Mum’s best friend. She didn’t have any kids of her own. Dad was away on the rigs, Mum worked full-time at the bakery and Isabelle childminded us after school until Mum came home.

Me and my brothers and Isabelle would watch
The Simpsons
every day. The boys only ever wanted to watch TV but Isabelle and I did loads of things together. We talked about everything: school, my teacher, class projects, Mum and Dad, her husband Graham, visits to my Nan. Every day she brushed my hair, one hundred strokes to bring out the shine. Sometimes we went out to the shops or the spiritualist church. Occasionally Isabelle let me bake cakes so long as we ate them up before Mum got home. If mum brought cakes home that night from the bakery, Isabelle told us we weren’t to say anything. She didn’t want Mum’s feelings hurt. Isabelle was considerate, a warm loving person in my life. She was a wee fat woman, always tickling me and hugging me tight and she was always honest and open. I could ask her anything.

‘Go on,’ she’d say, ‘ask me anything.’

One day I asked her about sex. My brothers were watching a DVD and laughing.

‘Isabelle,’ I asked, ‘why are the boys laughing at that film?’

I already knew why they were laughing, it was because I’d said that the man in the film was doing press-ups on top of the lady, but I couldn’t understand what was so funny about that.

Isabelle made the boys turn it off and whisked me into the kitchen and gave me a Caramel Log.

‘He isn’t doing press-ups, Ally love, the lady and the man are having sex.’

Isabelle assured me that this was nothing to worry about.

‘Sex is when a man and a lady who love each other very much have a special cuddle,’ she said.

I thought about this while I scraped the coconut off my Caramel Log with my teeth.

‘Did you have a special cuddle with Graham?’

‘Oooh! Many’s a time and often,’ Isabelle said laughing.

Isabelle’s husband Graham was dead but we often discussed him. She loved to talk about how Graham died. I knew the story well but I always enjoyed it. A lady was crossing the road and she had a wee baby in a pram and the bus driver lost control of the bus and drove straight at the lady and the baby but Graham ran on to the road and pushed the lady and the baby away and the bus ran over him and he passed.

‘He died a hero, you can’t ask any more of a man than that,’ Isabelle would say.

During the school holidays, if there was a visiting medium, we sometimes went to the spiritualist church for the afternoon sessions. Isabelle often got messages from Graham, usually telling her he was well and not to worry, but one day he sent a message for me.

The medium was a small beak-nosed lady. Her method was to move around the hall trying to pick up messages as though she was trying to pick up a radio signal.

‘I have a message for someone in this row, someone in green, no, that’s it, green eyes. The little girl on the end there. I have a message from, I think it’s Gordon, or is it Graham? Yes, Graham. Graham sees an illustrious future for this child; she will travel far and know riches beyond her wildest dreams.’

Delighted, Isabelle dug me in the ribs.

‘What’s that, Graham?’ said the medium. ‘Yes, thank you. Graham sends a warning: but first she will be deceived, she must
face many trials and betrayals but she will triumph! She shall be entered into glorious halls and receive bounteous riches!’

I wanted more but the medium collapsed and had to be brought a glass of water. Isabelle said we should go.

‘I think we’ll give the spiritualist church a miss for a wee while, eh Ally?’ Isabelle said as we walked home. ‘Some of those mediums talk a lot of nonsense. Don’t say anything to your mum, eh pet?’

Isabelle never took me with her again to the spiritualist church but she continued to go alone in the evenings and she always told me whenever she got a message from the other side.

That day after she had explained what the man and lady in the DVD were doing and she was brushing my hair, I asked Isabelle another question.

‘Isabelle, when you pass to the other side?’

‘Yes?’

‘Will you be able to have special cuddles with Graham on the other side?’

‘I certainly hope so,’ said Isabelle, and then seemed a bit
uncomfortable,
‘if Graham still wants to. Now come on, finish your biscuit.
The Simpsons
will be on in a minute.’

Ewan took me to a noisy café.

‘This okay here?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, sure.’

The place was busy but it was nothing to look at. The tables and chairs were old dark wood and the only planned decor seemed to be the ornate blue and yellow ceramic floor tiles. Along one wall were stacked dark wooden wine casks with silver taps and names and prices chalked on them. Wine dripped from the taps and a dark, reddish-brown stain built up on the floor. I couldn’t look at it and had to turn away.

I’d have gone crazy if I’d had to stay alone in the flat. Mum ranting down the phone at me about check-ups and Dr Collins hadn’t helped; she was going on as if I was about to drop down dead. With Chloe away Ewan was the only person I knew in Barcelona. He was also the only man, so far, ever to have asked me out.

No doubt this would turn out to be, like my relationship with Lisa and Lauren, a friendship of convenience, but I wasn’t in a position to be fussy. Ewan was from home, if we ran out of things to say we could talk about Cumbernauld.

Ewan ordered two glasses of wine from the most expensive cask.

‘Thank you. Mmm, lovely wine,’ I nodded.

Ewan nodded back. He smiled at me and I smiled back. We both spent a few minutes nervously looking at everything all around the bar, then we smiled at each other again.

‘How are things in Raval?’ I shouted into his ear.

‘Smelly backpackers coming and going.’ He shrugged, ‘It never changes.’

‘Yeah, but in Raval, anything interesting happened lately?’

‘Not as far as I know. Are you okay, Alison?’

‘I’m fine.’

We looked around the bar again.

‘We could reminisce about the Nauld,’ I said.

Ewan looked confused.

‘The Nauld, you know, the old country, Cumbernauld.’

‘Cumbernauld!’

Ewan laughed. He laughed hard and for ages, which relaxed me. Somebody in Barcelona got my jokes.

‘I haven’t heard that for years. The Nauld.’ He shook his head appreciatively. ‘What would I know about the Nauld? I haven’t been back for years. You know more than me, you tell me.’

So I did. I told him about the sad gits he remembered from school. They were all still living in council flats, still working in the same shops and call centres. They were still meeting the same grey faces every weekend in the local pubs, breeding a new generation of sad-git, grey-faced Naulders. Ewan laughed his head off.

The wine had gone straight to my legs. I wanted a seat but the place was packed, three or four deep at the bar. All the tables were taken. At each small table people were huddled together over shared dishes, stabbing at communal plates with toothpicks. Even on the bar, space was mostly taken up with food, which was displayed in a long glass case.

The air was clammy with fried fish and cigarette smoke. Plates
clattered,
Spanish was called from table to bar to kitchen and back again.

‘This shouting-the-orders-in system they’ve got,’ I said, ‘it’s very atmospheric.’

‘That gets on my tits,’ said Ewan. ‘It’s noisy enough in here with everything else that’s going on. But that bawling for the food makes you feel like you’re in court when the judge is calling the witnesses.’

I laughed.

‘Call Patatas Bravas!’ he shouted above the other noise.

People around us stared but Ewan didn’t give a toss.

He was right, there was a lot happening in the crowded bar. Not everyone standing around was waiting to be served. Some were
waiters, moving amongst the tables, stopping to chat and joke, aware of waiting customers but apparently immune to pressure.

Some were strolling musicians, three of them with guitars and accordions, servicing the tables playing old international hits that everyone could join in with. While one table sang ‘
quizas, quizas, quizas
’ the next sang, ‘perhaps, perhaps, perhaps’.

Some were beggars, gypsy women in long skirts and trainers, always with a baby on their hip. The women made hungry
gestures
: thumb and fingers pushed towards mouth. Some tourists mistook this as a plea for food, offering a share of their meal, but it was money the women wanted. Waiters were quick to eject them.

Some were vendors, Asian boys, selling flowers; formally wrapped individual red roses or haphazard bunches of flowers. The boys spoke in wheedling voices, appealing to men to buy a rose for their lady friend and making disappointed disapproving faces when the men refused. One of them approached us.

‘Buy a flower for the lady?’ said the guy, grinning at Ewan.

‘Sanj!’ said Ewan, ‘
hola chaval
.’

‘
Hola
Juan,’ said the flower seller, ‘
Que tal
?’

They made a show of their friendship with a long elaborate boys-in-the-hood type handshake. They spoke in Spanish while I stood with a formal grin on my face. It was Sanj who spotted my isolation and switched to limited English.

‘Please with meet you,’ he said, smiling.

He was a good looking lad, about my age, maybe younger, with shiny black hair falling over dark eyes. He had really long lashes and a big innocent smile, like a bhangra dancer in a Bollywood movie. He was small, only slightly taller than me and thin, a featherweight. Being a flower seller suited him. He wasn’t begging. I’d watched him move around the tables calmly, a chilled-out hippy.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said.

‘Sanj, this is my friend Alison,’ said Ewan, enunciating slowly and carefully. ‘She is from Scotland. Like me.’

With the introductions over Ewan returned to speaking
Spanish.
Rather than stand there smiling I took the opportunity to go to the toilet. When I came back Sanj had moved off to work the
rest of the tables and Ewan handed me a fresh glass of wine and a bunch of flowers.

‘Thought these might straighten your face,’ he said gruffly.

No one had ever bought me flowers before. No, that wasn’t true. My brothers had brought armloads when I was dying in hospital but that was different. When I was dying in hospital I couldn’t understand how these beautiful dead things, cut off in their prime, were supposed to make me feel better. Death was ugly and
frightening
, I’d come to Barcelona to get away from it. But perhaps Ewan had only bought them to help out his friend. I’d watched the
previous
vendors work hard even to sell a one-euro rose. I couldn’t see how there was any money in it. But even so, I was grateful to Ewan for the gesture.

‘Cheers,’ I mumbled.

‘Have you eaten?’ asked Ewan.

‘Not yet.’

‘Well, we can’t let you go hungry. Your big brother would kill me.’

Dear Lisa and Lauren, Having dinner in a café with my date. He has just bought me flowers. On my second glass of wine. Mum and Dr Collins can go fuck themselves. Wine here is poured from the casks, nice and fresh although I know your palate is more suited to boxes of Morrison’s own-brand Chardonnay.

While Ewan organised us a table he asked me to choose
something
from the food piled in the glass case on the bar. This system was different from the Spanish restaurant I’d been to in
Cumbernauld
. In Cumbernauld miniscule portions of sausage or prawns, bobbing in pools of green oil, were ordered from a menu.

Apart from sardines, which I didn’t like anyway, I didn’t
recognise
anything. Ewan pointed towards something he described as ‘
chiperones
’ and I nodded, only because the batter it was coated in was familiar looking. When it came it had eyeballs, two of them I was careful to note. And tentacles, loads of them. It was whole baby squid, Ewan explained. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon, I couldn’t face food but I knew I should soak up the alcohol.
Suddenly
my mouth flooded with saliva.

‘Wolf in,’ said Ewan.

I closed my eyes and crammed a baby squid into my mouth.

‘How is it?’

‘Mmm, crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside. Reassuringly greasy and salty. Like my mum’s cooking but absolutely nothing like it at all.’

Something else arrived at the table: small, fried and salted green peppers.

‘
Pimientos de Padrón
,’ said Ewan.

An amused smile played around his lips as he watched me eat, closing my eyes to scoff the
chiperones
and tearing out the pepper stalks with my fingers and teeth.

‘
Pimientos de Padrón, algunos pican, otros no
,’ he said as though reciting a nursery rhyme.

By my expression he could see that I didn’t get it.

‘Some are hot, some not,’ he explained, ‘just be careful, you’ll know all about it if you get a hot one.’

It wasn’t until my tongue exploded in a firestorm that I got it. The heat in my mouth became apparent on my face. Ewan found this hilarious. He’d obviously been waiting for this, playing Russian roulette at my expense, watching to see which innocent-looking pepper would turn out to be edible dynamite.

My face was purple with embarrassment and smothered
coughing,
but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me choke. I pulled my stomach muscles tight and swallowed the fiery pepper. I reached for my wine glass, drained it and walked out. Outside in the street, out of sight and earshot of Ewan, with my eyes and nose streaming, I allowed myself a good cough. This was a sustained and productive cough, so productive I nearly vomited, but instead of clearing my lungs, my windpipe became narrower and I found it increasingly difficult to breathe.

I wasn’t surprised by this fit, it had happened before. It had begun happening after I got out of hospital, some kind of stress reaction. I’d managed to hide it from Mum and the boys but I’d noticed the coughing fits were becoming more frequent and more intense. There was no doubt that this one had been induced by the Bashed Head Boy incident but there had been loads of other times
when it had come on for no apparent reason. One of these days my throat would close completely and that would be the end of me. Death would finally catch me, I’d wilt and die like a cut flower.

Ewan came out after me with a glass of water. He wasn’t
laughing
now.

‘You okay? Here, drink this.’

I had my back to him. I leaned into the wall, resting my head on my forearm, coughing hard. He held out the water but I shook my head, my only means of communicating. I leaned forward, resting my hands on my thighs, blocking him out of my line of sight. He kept his distance and I was grateful.

Sanj came out and was surprised to find us there. Ewan grabbed him, whispering instructions. Sanj went back into the café and came out with half a baguette. As he approached he was already burrowing into the bread with his bare hands. He scooped out a lump of dough and kneaded it before passing it to Ewan. Ewan approached me slowly and put a hand on my back.

‘Here, chew this and swallow it slowly,’ he said gently.

I shook my head slowly. There was no way I was going to
swallow
a lump of dough that had been mangled in the hands of these two. And besides, I’d tried bread before, and water, neither of them worked, nothing worked. I just had to hack my guts up until the fit passed. I just had to hope that this wouldn’t be the time I’d keel over and die.

When it became clear that they could do nothing for me, Ewan had quietly dismissed Sanj. Ewan continued to stand guard at a discreet distance but it was ten minutes of gagging, heaving and choking before I could afford to take even shallow breaths. I knew I was over the worst when the tears started. Ewan passed me a napkin. I kept my back to him and tried to disguise my fear, relief and mortal embarrassment by blowing my nose and wiping my face.

‘C’mon back inside,’ he said softly, putting his arm around my shoulder. He ordered me a large brandy.

‘Drink it slow, it’ll relax you,’ he said.

He was right. It did relax me. I laughed.

‘What’s funny?’ said Ewan, with an unsure smile.

It wasn’t funny, it was tragic. My first ever date and I’d made a huge fool of myself. It was so tragic there was nothing else to do but laugh.

‘Your friend Sanj called you Juan.’

‘Aye,’ he sighed, ‘people here can’t say Ewan. It’s hard for them to pronounce. No matter how many times I tell them, they always end up calling me Juan.’

To Ewan’s surprise and mine, I snaked my arms around him. It could have been the brandy that made me do it, on top of the wine. Or maybe it was the flowers he bought me or the lack of stair lighting in Chloe’s building, but it was none of these things.

It was death; death made me do it.

In hospital, when I was close to being measured for a shroud, I was scared. Scared and horny. That was probably why my recovery was so rapid. Dr Collins told my family I had a good attitude, a strong life force. But I just wanted sex. I spent every waking hour in my narrow hospital bed fantasising about what the buck-toothed hospital orderly, Frank, would do to me. I could have picked any one of the handsome young doctors, including Dr Collins, but it was always dirtier to dream of Frank. I was terrified of death but I was even more scared to die a virgin.

On the staircase with the dead boy I’d felt fear, but also lust. Not for him, I felt pity for him, and a kind of fellow feeling. He was the corpse I should have been, on more than one occasion. I might fancy ugly guys but I didn’t fancy dead ones. I wasn’t a complete pervert. Seeing the dead boy had reawakened what I’d wanted when I was in hospital: a warm breathing body next to mine.

I could feel Ewan’s hesitation. I was Charlie’s wee sister after all, but I also felt the warmth of his skin and the tensile strength under it.

So,’ he said with a nervous laugh, ‘what d’you want to do now?’

I smiled and pressed my stomach and my breasts against him and my face close to his.

‘Want me to show you some puppies?’