The Full Legacy (3 page)

‘Come on!’ she said, nodding her head towards the night outside.

Unquestioningly, I got out of the car, watched as she central-locked it and followed her over a stile and into a wood. I could hear the rattle of stones under our feet.... the distant, tremulous ‘whoo’ of an owl. A hot green smell oozed from the trees that closed around us, tugging the darkness tighter. She seemed to know where she was going, but I didn’t and I was afraid I might trip and fall on the uneven path, despite the firmness of her hand in mine. I felt like I daren’t speak and break the silence. And we seemed to be walking a long way before she pulled me off the path and into the overgrowth. Brambles tore and snagged at the bottom of my jeans and I feared for her bare legs, but she didn’t seem to care and we hadn’t gone far off the path when she suddenly caught hold of my shoulders and slammed me up against a tree. It was big and rough-barked... an oak maybe... branches rustling high above our heads, leaves whispering in the quiet that fell around us now we weren’t walking anymore. I could smell the bark and the moss, and something garlicky growing near a stream I heard trickling nearby. Up through the black, spreading branches, the moon shone full... waxy... and yellow. I gasped for breath as my eyes met Turner’s. Once, holidaying in the Lake District, the first time on my own after my partner Corinne died, I came upon Wastwater. It was endlessly deep and dark like that; eerie and still like nothing I’d ever seen before, and I’d stood there mesmerised, as I did now, not noticing how cold I was becoming, watching the light dying on the lake, grey fading into deeper grey... fading to deepest, darkest black.....

Turner put the car keys into my pocket, kissed me, slipped off her pants, and dragged her dress up over her head.... all in what seemed to me to be one seamless, flowing movement.

‘I’m going to feel really stupid if you don’t want me now,’ she said.

Not wanting didn’t come into it. I shivered despite the warmth of the night, quite overwhelmed at seeing her standing naked in front of me, breathing quickly and slightly unsteady on her high heels. She was so very beautiful and I was so confused. This kind of thing doesn’t happen to people like me. This place... Turner.... a beautiful woman seducing me. Not here, like this. There was such a dreamlike quality about the whole thing... a sense of unreality, of time and space twisting in on themselves. And yet... when I touched her she was most definitely real – her skin cool and dry, her hair falling into her eyes - the smell of her perfume and the faintest underlacing of sweat and sex.

And still, I hesitated. I was scared of getting it wrong.

All around us, the woods were rustling. Small creatures shrieked in the distance. Our breath came in gasps. She was unbuttoning my shirt.... kissing me... her lips and tongue and hands all over me... taking my hands, guiding me urgently inside. I steadied myself against the oak. She bit her lip, bracing herself against me, gripping my shoulders so hard I knew I would have her fingerprints on me in the morning, her head back in a long, slow, almost soundless moan. I raised my knee for leverage, my foot against the tree, not caring anymore how much of her wetness she rubbed onto my jeans, kissing her throat, her neck, her shoulders, everywhere I could reach as she drove me deeper and deeper, coming suddenly in a reckless tumble, sagging against me and covering my face with kisses.

‘Oh
God!
’ she said, clinging to me, half laughing. I slid back to take her in my arms, suddenly protective of her, wanting to make sure she didn’t get cold. If I’d had a jacket, I would have wrapped it round her.

‘I can’t believe I was such a slut,’ she said when she’d got her breath back.

‘You weren’t – you were beautiful.’ I tilted her face so I could kiss her once more on the lips.

Then suddenly, I heard something, a low whispering in the bushes that seemed to be drawing nearer. My first thought was that someone had been watching us. Fear gripped me and I felt for the car keys in my pocket that were the only thing I had that resembled a weapon out there. Then a cloud passed over the face of the moon and we were plunged into a darker shade of night. Turner must have felt the tension in me. She listened too. ‘Is anything the....?’

‘Ssh.’

I was concentrating so hard my ears were starting to hurt, but now there was just the familiar rustling – the background noise of a faint breath of wind in the trees. Slowly the light returned as the clouds moved on.

‘Sorry,’ I said, feeling only sick now and unnaturally cold. ‘I thought I heard something... I must be imagining things. Come on. Let’s get back to the car before someone nicks it.’

‘But don’t you..?’ She sounded a bit shaky.

‘No, look, I’m sorry...’

‘Okay.’ She shrugged. Maybe she’d decided that was just the way I was.

Driving home, with the smell of her on my hands, I was shocked and embarrassed at how reckless we’d been, and I couldn’t get away from the sense of having been watched.

‘I’d like to see you again,’ said Turner, dropping me outside my gate.

I hesitated, still shivering. She was married after all. I didn’t want to lose my self respect again for a woman who couldn’t or wouldn’t commit herself to me.

‘What’s bothering you most?’ she asked, seeming partly, to read my mind. ‘My husband, or the way I just behaved?’ Her fingers curled around the steering wheel. She looked as if she was holding onto it for moral support.

‘Please believe me,’ I said. ‘You were wonderful back there... I’ll be honest though, it
does
bother me that you’re married. I don’t want anybody to get hurt.’

Turner laughed bitterly. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘My husband doesn’t give a damn about me if that’s all you’re worried about. Look, here’s my phone number at work. Give me a ring when you’ve had time to think about it, eh?’

I wasn’t sure that I would, but I took the card she offered me anyway.

‘Thanks for the lift,’ I said.

‘Thanks for catching me.’

Then she was gone.

Upstairs, I sank down onto my bed, flinching a little as the bruised bits of me touched the mattress. I stared at the card.

Petrovski, Shaw and Cox - Chartered Accountants - Registered Auditors

I already had the number of course, from when I’d needed to phone Suzanne at work.

That night I was tortured by nightmares. There were people whose faces grew sinister in an instant; Turner falling towards me – my hands out, missing her; clouds racing across the face of the moon... And a shadow moving closer, ever closer, touching me in the darkness

Kay

I woke up exhausted to the sound of Kay caterwauling loudly in the shower. Everything about me ached, especially my head. And the bathroom was right next door to my bedroom.

‘A-all that she wants – a chunk a chunk – baby.... A-all that she wants a ho-oh...’

‘For fuck’s sake!’
I yelled, hammering on the wall.

‘Sorry!’

I’d heard her come crashing into the house in the early hours, so any normal person would have needed a bit of a sleep-in. Not Kay. As usual she was up with the larks and twice as noisy.

She’d even been out jogging and brought back a copy of The Observer. It was folded, unread, on the kitchen table when I shuffled downstairs, clutching my dressing gown around me and yawning so hard I could hear my jaw crack.

 It was another lovely day, weather-wise. The sun was shining in through the window, bouncing off the white tiles of the kitchen and hurting my eyes. Painfully, I made fresh filter coffee, put croissants in the oven to warm, knocked back a couple of paracetamol tablets from the First Aid box next to the sink, and flopped down at the table with the paper.

 I seemed to have a choice of reading – The broadsheet, with a bombing raid on Baghdad on the front page, or Judy Nelson’s life without Martina Navratilova in the colour supplement. I scanned through enough of the leader to decide that it wouldn’t make great reading in my current frame of mind, and opted for the supplement as a slightly less depressing Sunday morning breakfast accompaniment.

‘Has your lady friend gone already then?’ asked Kay, appearing in the doorway at the smell of breakfast. She was rubbing her short blonde hair briskly with a towel and I could tell from her sulky tone that she was peeved about me leaving the party without her. I can’t say I blamed her. I’d have been upset if she’d done that to me. Her bare feet padded across the Cushionfloor as she sniffed the coffee and went to help herself to a cup.

‘She never was here in the first place,’ I said.

I shook the buttery smelling croissants from their baking tray onto a couple of small plates and wondered if I was actually going to be able to stomach mine.

‘Oh, sure...’ said Kay, reaching for the Flora. ‘I get it!’ She tapped the side of her nose, indicating that she was prepared to protect my lady friend’s honour if I really wanted her to.

‘No,’ I said, firmly, ‘She
really
never was here in the first place.’

Kay looked taken aback, as if she wasn’t sure whether to believe me or not.

‘But.... I could have sworn I heard somebody else in your room,’ she said. ‘What about all that groaning and yelling and heavy breathing then?’

‘That was me. I had a bad night. One nightmare after another.’

‘You mean I’ve been tiptoeing around for nothing?’

‘Hardly tiptoeing Kay – waking me up with your cat’s chorus.’

‘Huh! It’s hard to know how loud you’re singing when you’ve got shower gel in your ears... So, you didn’t get laid then?’

‘Nope.’

‘Got a dose of heterosexual panic did she?’

‘Not exactly...’ I hesitated. ‘Look Kay, what do you think of her? Honestly?’

Kay took a slurp of her coffee. ‘Apart from thinking she’s a bitch for persuading you to leave me stranded on my own in the middle of Chingford on a Saturday night...?’

I’d figured
that
was going to have to come out at some point. Better sooner than later, probably.

‘Look, I’m really sorry,’ I said. ‘I think I was a bit drunk. But I kind of assumed that you might like the excuse to stay at Ros’s.... You two seemed to be getting quite cosy in the kitchen when I left.’

‘Well,’ she said. ‘She
did
offer for me to stay... But,
really....
I mean, come on Gill! Me and Ros!’ She shook her head scornfully. ‘You’re having a laugh!’

‘So how did
you get home in the end?’

‘Georgie gave me a lift.... turns out she lives in Enfield.’

‘That was lucky.’

‘You’re not kidding.... Though
she
was a bit pissed off with you for buggering off and abandoning her too.... Turns out she’d been subjected to an hour’s lecture on the tragic demise of lesbian separatism as a potent political force.’

‘Blimey!’ I could see she’d wandered off topic. I gently brought her back. ‘We were talking about Turner.... You were going to tell me what you think of her.’

‘Oh, yeah...’ she scowled. ‘I think you should be careful,’ she said. ‘I think she’s too flashy by half... I think she’s straight.... And I think she’s shagging Su.’

‘Aren’t the last two mutually exclusive?’

She shook her head despairingly. ‘Baby, you are
so
naive!’

And that seemed to be all she had to say on the subject.

‘How’s Judy bearing up then?’ she asked after she’d ripped her croissant to shreds and transferred a liberal dose of Flora and croissant crumbs into the marmalade.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘She’s living with Rita Mae Brown.’

‘No kidding?! Their own personal support group – Navratilova’s Anonymous...’

‘And she’s written a book.’

‘Hell hath no fury, eh...?’

That was an interesting one – bearing in mind the history between me and Kay. I chose to ignore it, as I had been doing for years.

‘Yes, makes me glad I’m never likely to do anything interesting enough for anybody to want to write a book about me.’

‘You said it baby!’

I laughed, then found myself yawning again. ‘What time did the party finish last night?’

‘Dunno.... Me and Georgie left around one. The hard core party girls looked stuck in for a marathon.’

‘They’re probably still there now,’ I grinned.

‘Yeah, crashed out all over the sitting room with Ros frantically trying to vacuum round them.’ Kay took a slurp of her coffee. ‘Aren’t you going to eat that croissant?’ she asked.

‘No... would you like it?’

‘Well, yeah, of course, if you’re sure you don’t want it!’

She transferred more crumbs and Flora into the marmalade.

‘What started the nightmares?’ she asked suddenly.

‘I don’t know - too much to drink maybe.’

‘It wasn’t about Corinne then?’ Her eyes clouded briefly.

‘No.’

‘Oh well – that’s okay then, eh?’

‘Sure!’ I took her hand, warmed by her clumsy kindness.  I knew I was forgiven already for abandoning her.

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Truly I am.’

But, of course, Corinne never was far from my thoughts. Even that year, 5
^th
February, the eighth anniversary of the night she died, I’d found myself talking to her in my head, telling her how much I missed her, more really, rather than less, as I grew older and I realised all the ways I could have done things differently. It hadn’t been perfect, by any means, our relationship – nine years, on and off. Me wanting to settle down and have the kind of normal steady life I’d never had in my childhood – Corinne constantly wanting to rebel against all that. Buying this house, applying for the mortgage together, choosing the furniture. Then the backlash as she felt suffocated and started seeing other women – always coming back though – dying because of that in the end – our car concertina’d into a wall by a drunken driver, just off the North Circular - on her way home to me again. I remembered sitting by her bedside in the hospital while she packed up internally and still looked so ordinary on the outside. I had this strange persistent feeling that this time she’d been coming home to say ‘goodbye’ and that was why she’d been distracted... hadn’t seen the other car careering towards her, out of control. When I was allowed to take our things out of the car, trying not to look at the blood stains on the steering wheel and driver’s seat, I found a mix-tape of love songs in the car cassette player. They weren’t our songs. The tape had stopped midway through ‘The Air that I Breathe’. I played it when I got home, shuddering with grief, and I knew that it must have been the last thing she heard before they reached through the window and turned off the engine to cut her out of the wreckage.