Just between us, p.6
Just Between Us, page 6
‘I feel more but remember less. What a crap combination.’
For a moment or two there is no sound in the room other than Ronnie’s claws scratching on the floor. The silence screams. ‘Hey, Stacie. Are you making coffee?’ Dad prompts.
‘I am.’
‘Is there enough for two?’
‘Of course.’ I make a big pot of coffee every day. There’s always enough for two, more than enough. I allow myself to be distracted, because Dad needs to think he can distract me. Dad isn’t someone you’d rush to describe as in touch with his feelings, but he reaches for them when he knows it’s important to me, and that’s pretty amazing. He’s undoubtedly a good guy. The best. Maybe that’s why I’m not married. I’ve struggled with meeting the right man because my dad set the bar too high. I don’t know. I really don’t.
I grind the beans, glad of the noise that fills the kitchen, making conversation redundant. I throw yesterday’s granules and filter bag into the recycling bin. Swirl the glass pot under the tap. I take another sniff of the fresh granules and will the man I can’t quite remember, can’t quite forget, to crawl into my head again. The sense of him settles in my consciousness. It’s where he belongs. I recall his eyes meeting mine. I think I do. It feels real. And the way he looked at me. Wow. I was his world, his entire world, and yet simultaneously, it’s as though he was indifferent. As though he was playing with me or experimenting with me, or simply confused by me.
What is that about? I don’t know. I don’t understand him, but it excites me.
I have to find that man.
8
Stacie
I spend the day sunbathing and reading. The heat is the sort that means even doing nothing becomes exhausting. I feel the sweat pool between my thighs and at the base of my back. I watch the sun slowly shunt across the sky. Our cove is deserted once again; I consider seeking out the relief of the cool sea, but lethargy overwhelms me and I stay put, it’s too much effort to reapply suncream after a dousing.
When the tide is out, a few more people stroll along the shore. There is a wooden plank walkway that stretches along the coast but stops abruptly about forty metres from where our garden meets the beach. I spot a familiar figure at that point. A woman in a wheelchair. I’ve seen her in the same place a few times before. She obviously follows the walkway as far as she can, then usually she turns back towards the village. Today I notice that her chair isn’t facing out to sea, as you might expect, it’s turned towards me. I glance behind me to see what it is she might be staring at. There isn’t really anything; just our house, a run-down 1930s pebbledash cottage. Dad isn’t in the garden – he’s probably still napping in his room – so there’s no one other than me who can be attracting her attention. I suddenly feel exposed in my bikini, judged; I reach for my sarong. I consider waving to her, and raise my hand, but squinting in her direction there is something about her expression that makes my arm freeze at my side. It’s as though the sun has scuttled behind a cloud. I shiver. She’s too far away for me to clearly see her face, but somehow I feel she radiates hostility. I pull myself up for having this thought. Most likely her posture has more to do with her own situation in life, nothing to do with me. She is perhaps physically uncomfortable; not scowling but grimacing. I look away from her. Train my eyes on to my book. The next time I look, she has gone. And I feel relieved.
I allow the crash of the waves to lull me. Send me into an almost hypnotic state. Something close to sleep that makes the words on the page start to slip and slide. It’s hard to concentrate. I shut my eyes and feel the sun on my lids, and that’s when I see it. Actually see it, not just sense it. It arrives a glorious, perfect memory.
I’m in an enormous copper bathtub. My arm is hanging over the edge, covered in soap suds and bubbles. I’m laughing. I can’t see my face, which suggests this is real, not imagined, but I can see my belly quivering with joy. I must be in a hotel, because the bathroom is so beautiful. Sensual, classy. The mosaic tiles shimmer. The room smells of something woody and dark. Ginger or citrus. Nothing like a bathroom in a normal home. He climbs into the tub too; I watch his long, strong, tanned legs. Water sloshes over the side and we laugh. Careless of the mess on the floorboards. There’s a sense that there is no responsibility between us. We’re playful.
There is a dress on the floor, hastily discarded, and I believe that my clothes always are hastily discarded when he is around. Tugged off me with joy and enthusiasm. A flattering impatience. I remember the dress clearly. Not just the colour, the fabric and the texture. Although I do remember those things – it is burnt red, almost orange, ribbed wool. But I remember more than that about the dress. I remember how it made me feel to wear it. I remember buying it. I know I chose it because he would find it – me – sexy. He’d like to see me in it. See me out of it. I remember being in a plush changing room and having that exact thought: he’ll want to strip me bare.
It was expensive. And I bought it without a second thought. I slid the credit card across the smart glass counter. Casually, not in the slightest bit concerned whether there were funds in my account. I knew there were. It’s strange to realise that I once had the sort of wealth that meant I didn’t care if soapy water slopped over the bathtub and splashed onto my expensive dress. Where is that money now? My memory stays with his thighs in the water, wet and attractive. It annoys me that I remember all this detail but I don’t remember his name or his face in its entirety. Just his eyes and the feel of his wet hands on me, soaping my breasts. Who is he? Was he something meaningful, or a brief holiday romance? Either thing is possible. If we were in a current relationship, why hasn’t he been in touch? I suppose he must be someone from long ago. Our thing, whatever it was, could have been long over before I got ill.
Or maybe he doesn’t belong to me.
Married?
The thought lands like a slap. My skin prickles. Am I that sort of woman? The bit on the side? The mistress? God, I hope not. I believe mistresses are chorus girls; I’d like to think I was this man’s leading lady. I just don’t know.
I sit up, reach for my water. The ice cubes have long since melted and the glass glints with condensation. My memory is leaning further back, to the start of this relationship. It’s steeped in something besides desire. It’s a complicated play, a game of cat and mouse. A step forward and backward. I want him, but I shouldn’t. I remember thinking it would weaken and disturb me if he undressed me, but it would kill me if he didn’t. A rock and a hard place. And I know that even when we became lovers, I was not quite his. Why not? Why didn’t I give in to him? Why couldn’t he take me completely?
I’m thirty-seven; these are crucial years for me in terms of fertility. Fact, I’m already past my prime for all that. Honestly, I feel older. I’ve been through so much. What have I been doing with myself? Was I bothered about the fertility countdown before I got cancer? Did I ever want to make a baby with the intense man with the eyes that bored into me? Did he ever want that too? Did we try?
I look about me and see nothing other than the sea meeting the shore, the sun slipping behind the horizon. Another day closing down. I try not to think life is passing me by. Other beaches may be teeming by now; near resort towns there will be plenty of local people wanting to make the most of the unexpected heatwave. Our remote corner of the world remains empty. The emptiness does not feel peaceful; it feels like a void. I know that a woman my age ought to be out there meeting people, having relationships, scrambling up a career ladder, buying a property, seeing friends, planning minibreaks, at least attending a damned book club. That’s what I should be doing, all things being even. Which, clearly, they are not.
Of course I have had boyfriends. Dad has shown me photos of Giles Hughes, a man I was in a relationship with for four and a half years; for eighteen months of those we were engaged. Apparently I called off the relationship a fortnight before the wedding, citing a nebulous ‘need to do more first’ as my reason to break his heart. This story was recounted to me by Dad with a notable dollop of regret. Secretly I feel a flutter of pride at that decision that past-me made. It’s a brave thing to call off a wedding at such a late stage and I can’t imagine it was easy to do, but far easier than living in a marriage full of regrets. I guess I was quite gutsy once upon a time. I need to find that again. Channel that. The photos show Giles to be ruddy and earnest. An open, hopeful face. I don’t remember him at all, but I can’t believe he is the man who clambered into the brass tub with me; whose glance excited then dismissed me. I don’t get the sense that Giles ever played cat and mouse with any woman.
Apparently, after I called off the wedding, I moved to Paris. My best guess is the man I almost remember is a Parisian. He’s out there somewhere. He made my pulse gallop as though I was a heroine in a tacky paperback, he made me swell with lust, low at the pit of my body, a feeling that rushed through me and left me happily agitated.
I do remember Paris. Countless fountains, rows of elegant lampposts and grand cream buildings, wide avenues, delicious food and wine consumed at small round tables in the bustling streets. There were charming stone bridges, smartly dressed couples who regularly stopped on the pavements to passionately kiss.
I can barely speak French.
What the hell?
I can remember verb tables and that sort of stuff that you learn by rote. Je suis, tu es, il/elle est, but I can’t string a sentence together. I can’t imagine holding a conversation. Was I the idiot who lived in Paris for a decade and didn’t bother learning the language? If so, I hate myself. Or did I learn to parler français but that is another part of my brain that has been eaten by the cancer? If so, I hate myself. Or at least, I hate my body, which has betrayed me, let me down so badly.
Dad tells me that I was a teacher in Paris. I taught English as a foreign language. I think I taught at an all-boys school, because I frequently get flashes of dark-haired, dark-eyed boys running about, or looking frustrated or bored as they pick up a pen, then proud and joyful as they finish an exercise. I must have taught a range of ages, because I get these faster-than-a-blink impressions of boys of various sizes. No girls. Teaching English as a foreign language requires total immersion as the teaching method. This means I would have only spoken English in my classroom. Maybe that’s why I didn’t bother learning the language. That, and the haughty Parisians mocking my attempts. Still, even if that is the case, I can’t help being disappointed with my past self. No language-learning and a married lover? I feel so uncomfortable with this version of me. Ignorant and deceitful, lazy and disruptive? It’s difficult to wash myself in glory, and don’t we all want to be the heroine of our own lives? Did I waste my time in France? That’s unforgivable.
When I got my diagnosis, I moved straight back here to England, to this small coastal hamlet that I grew up in. Even though I’d been away for years, from what I can gather not even visiting my dad that often, it was the place I bolted to. The place where I could depend on someone. It makes sense. Cancerous mistresses aren’t a thing really, are they? Married lovers presumably call it quits at that point. Dad has told me about the call I made from my apartment in Paris. He urged me to just get on a train and come home. He sorted out everything: having my things packed up and shipped back here, dealing with my landlord and employers over there. ‘None of that mattered,’ he’s told me. ‘All that mattered was getting you home.’ My kind, reliable father. I’m grateful that he sees me in a better light than I perhaps deserve. I think I can add ‘daddy’s girl’ to my scant character profile.
I don’t remember the treatment. It will come back to me, apparently. Or maybe not. As Dad points out, ‘There are better memories that you might want back first.’
Count your blessings. Isn’t that the mantra we’re all supposed to live by? I have a feeling it is. I can’t quite pinpoint where I am on the scale of optimist or pessimist. Glass half full or half empty? I think maybe I’m the sort who believes my glass is just not quite big enough. So what does that make me? Greedy?
I’m lucky, I know I am. I’m lucky that I am here. I’m lucky they detected the cancer early and that it hadn’t spread to any of my vital organs. I’m lucky that they cut out all the tumours. I’m lucky that we found a consultant who dared to try this more radical, only-chance experimental treatment and that I had the operations, chemo and everything before COVID-19 created a bottleneck in hospital admissions. I’m lucky. So damned lucky.
But sometimes it doesn’t feel like that. Sometimes it feels like I’m very unlucky indeed. I’m scared. My past is bleached to nothing, so my reality is terrifying, unbalanced. Liquid rather than solid, and I’m drowning. I have nightmares about drowning all the time. Water gushes into my open mouth, up my nose, drums around my ears. Everything is blurred and blunted. My clothes get heavy, bloated, and I kick hard, but the harder I kick, the deeper I seem to be dragged under the waves. I’m drowning in an absence.
A darker mood engulfs me. The sun feels as if it is scorching rather than warming or comforting. I pick up my book, slip my flip-flops back on and head indoors. Feet dragging, heart aching, and my head? My head is simply letting me down.
9
Stacie
Our lockdown days have settled into a regular pattern. Dad and I take our separate walks; when I return, I prep and cook lunch. This involves lengths of time studying recipes cut from newspapers. I try to tell myself that it’s quite fun discovering what I like to eat, that I’m getting a chance to rediscover myself in a way no one else does. Turns out I’m not fond of butternut squash or sweet potato, but other than that, I seem pretty broad in my tastes. Dad is grateful for whatever I put in front of him. From what I can gather, until I returned home he lived on oven chips and frozen chicken bites. The sort of food you might occasionally (and guiltily) feed your children if you are in a hurry.
I try to serve up nourishing and tasty dishes for us both. I think I must have been quite a good cook before. I certainly find the process of chopping, slicing, grating and peeling simple and therapeutic. I’m fully aware what the differences are between blanching, browning, grilling, boiling, stewing, etc. How strange my memory is. So infuriatingly selective. We eat lunch, read the papers or a book; sometimes Dad snoozes in his chair. If the weather is good, I might sunbathe, but if I’m not in the mood, I amuse myself for an hour or so around the house.
There is always something that needs to be done in the cottage. When I first was well enough to start exploring the house again, I was struck by the extent of the neglect. Outside, weeds spring up through cracks in the cemented areas that connect the various outhouses: a shed, a greenhouse, a dilapidated Anderson air raid shelter and even an ancient outdoor loo. Not somewhere I’ve investigated. There is a lean-to bolted onto the outside of the house, a dubious home improvement that is most likely a legacy of the 1970s; the roof is made of corrugated plastic and has yellowed with age. Dad keeps boxes of things to be recycled in there: newspapers, card, cans, batteries, textiles. He keeps promising to take them to the appropriate centres, but lockdown has hampered that. The stack of boxes grows ever higher, precariously balanced, always threatening to topple. There is a cracked plastic sledge propped up against the back wall, I guess it must have been mine and there for about three decades.
Inside the house, there is dated woodchip wallpaper in some rooms; others boast floral patterned papers that in places swell, have gone baggy like an old person’s skin. I itch to scrape the paper off and paint the walls in solid dark blues and greys, which instinctually I know are popular and fashionable. The magnolia paintwork of the skirting boards and doors is chipped and darkened with dirt: fingerprints and lingering smoke from the open fire. The carpets are worn; dust and grime are ingrained into every surface and ornament. The air in the rooms is always stale. No matter if I leave the windows open all day, decades of sweat and smoke have penetrated the furniture.
For all his strengths, no one could suggest that Dad is a contender for any house-proud prizes, but I find it therapeutic to lose an hour or so to scrubbing floorboards until the grain and sheen of the wood re-emerges. It’s satisfying to paint a shelf or window frame, and it can be interesting to sort through a cupboard or drawer. Ploughing through boxes and storage always offers the chance of my remembering something, so the process often has the feel of a treasure hunt. Doing chores is familiar. I have balled socks, deep-cleaned ovens, hung pictures and kept a home in the past. I sense as much. Although, I have no idea if I always lived alone or flat-shared. I was a poor communicator about such details with Dad, as he’s equally clueless. If I shared my life with a significant other, it wasn’t someone I thought was significant enough to introduce to my father. This thought makes me feel a little uneasy, a little shady, as it feeds into my theory that I had a married lover. Or am I being dramatic? Maybe there was nothing to hide; maybe there just wasn’t anyone to share.
We eat again around 5.30, a light tea – neither of us has a big appetite, despite all the fresh air and walking – then we take Ronnie on an evening walk together. Generally we try to do a couple of miles, heading east all the way along the coastal path until we reach the most picturesque beach cove. It takes a bit of getting to; sometimes we scramble down the hillside, practically sitting on our backsides for the last few metres. Sturdy and stronger than a man twenty years younger, Dad is undaunted by his age or the lack of dignity in this, and we both always have a bit of a giggle when doing it. As we walk, he likes to recall other times we’ve spent there, banging on buckets with plastic spades, searching for shells, getting damp with spray. He’s always hoping to jog my memory. We rarely linger. Our walks, so often repeated since my illness and lockdown, have developed an air of efficiency. There and back again. By 8 p.m. latest, we’re usually back in our kitchen, enjoying a stiff G&T or cracking open a bottle of red.
