Fear of falling, p.4
Fear of Falling, page 4
We kissed too. A lot. But went no further.
Bel and a bloke I didn’t know disappeared into her bedroom, and I fetched my sleeping bag and rucksack from the cupboard in the hall.
‘You can sleep here, if you like,’ I said.
‘No. I’d best get back. I’ll ring you?’
‘Yes. I’m on days at the moment. Usually home by half six.’ I gave him my work number too.
‘Do they allow personal calls?’
‘If they’re short.’
He nodded. We kissed again.
And again on the doorstep.
The sky was just getting light; everything smelt fresh and cool.
Once he’d gone I brushed my teeth and got myself a glass of water, hoping it might help with the hangover to come. I was retrieving a cushion from behind the sofa to use as a pillow when there was a knock at the front door.
‘Hey?’ He had his head cocked to one side, studying me. ‘Would you say that sleeping bag will do for the two of us, now?’
Chapter Seven
After months of sharing our time between his place and mine, Mac and I rented a ground-floor flat together in a large terraced house in Woodhouse, not far north of Leeds city centre where we both worked.
While I was settling down, enjoying the warmth of a full-time relationship, hopelessly in love with Mac, Bel got itchy feet and went travelling. She’d be gone for months at a time until she ran out of money, then would come home for just long enough to save up for another trip.
Occasional postcards came from India, Afghanistan or Tibet. She never said much, a line or two about her adventures. I’d pin each one to the noticeboard until the next arrived and kept them in a shoebox along with the Eiffel Tower card and tickets from the concerts I’d been to, like Culture Club and Adam and the Ants.
One day I found myself asking Mac whether we could afford a washing-machine. ‘Am I turning into a Stepford wife?’ I said. The most mundane activities, repainting our rooms, buying a decent set of pans, sharing a roast-chicken dinner, made me happy.
‘Is that a marriage proposal?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘You’re turning me down?’ He faked being hurt, his dark eyes wide.
‘We don’t need all that,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Stuff, vows, bridesmaids.’
‘We could cut straight to the honeymoon now,’ he said. ‘C’mere.’ He kissed me. Then again. Raised a hand to touch one of my nipples. ‘What about eating a bit later today?’
‘Maybe. What about the washing-machine? There are places that do reconditioned ones.’
‘God, woman, you’re so sexy when you talk kitchen appliances. Drives me wild.’ He bit my neck and we continued the fun in the bedroom.
Mac had not told his family we were cohabiting: he said they’d ‘have conniptions’, especially his mother, if it was to be known that not only was he living in sin but with an unbeliever to boot.
He was the seventh child and the baby of the family.
‘It’s 1992,’ I had said.
‘Not in Ireland. There’s a hole in the space-time continuum. Covers the whole place, so it does. Keeps us permanently in 1955. Before Elvis.’
We were caught out the following autumn when his father and one of his brothers made a surprise visit on their way from the ferry up to Whitby where they were working on a building project.
Mac had a late appointment at the shop and I’d got in from work ahead of him. I was up a stepladder in the lounge, hanging new curtains I’d made, when there was knocking at the door.
The family resemblance was striking. Like looking at two variations on Mac, the same tangled black hair, the same deep blue eyes, small differences in the shape of the chin or nose but no more than that. I was fascinated. Steven and I aren’t alike at all.
‘Mac’s at work,’ I explained, furious that my face was aflame. ‘He won’t be much longer. Please come in and have a cup of tea.’
‘You’re Lydia?’ the brother, Niall, said.
‘That’s right.’ I couldn’t think of any story to account for my presence and they only had to glance round the place, or visit the bathroom, to see I was resident.
To seal the deal Mac came in, half an hour later, calling out, ‘Honey, I’m home.’
There was a lot of backslapping, laughter and joking between the three of them. Mac went for fish and chips – the pie I was cooking wouldn’t stretch to four – and I thought it all seemed amiable enough, but once they’d driven off, Mac closed the door, leaned back against it and said, ‘I am so fucked.’
‘What can she do?’ I said. I remembered Bel, They’ll crucify me. Like literally.
‘Guilt trip me for the rest of eternity,’ Mac said.
‘Doesn’t that only work if you let it?’
‘Conditioned response,’ he said. ‘Pavlov’s dogs. Hard to shake. Ah, sod them. Let’s eat.’
‘After all those chips?’
‘That was just to put me on till later.’ Another thing we shared, large appetites and a love of food.
Over the next couple of years Mac bore the censure of his mother and the extended family. There’d be periodic phone calls when he’d be grilled by one aunt or another about why he was choosing to disgrace the family and why he couldn’t just do the right thing. If he respected me, surely he’d want to marry me.
When he did go home to visit, he went on his own. ‘It’s just easier,’ he said.
‘If we have kids,’ I said to him, one balmy night on holiday in Lisbon, after we’d polished off a delicious seafood platter and a large carafe of dry white wine, ‘do you think your mother would come round? If she was going to be a grandma?’
‘Out of wedlock?’ he gasped. ‘I have no idea. And she already has seven grandchildren. Hey – are you trying to tell me something? Because bringing my mother into it sort of kills the romance, you know.’
‘I don’t want kids just yet but I am thinking about it more. I want to have a baby eventually.’
‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Dozens.’
‘One or two would be plenty,’ I said.
We thought it would be so easy.
Chapter Eight
By 1995 Bel was working in Berlin. She’d met a German bloke in Tibet and gone back there with him, got a bar job.
When I went over to visit she’d split up with the traveller, moved into a squat in a warehouse where a lot of artists and musicians lived, and found work in a nightclub, one that showcased new bands, mainly electro and techno stuff.
I was so looking forward to time together, eager to catch up with her news, and to share what was happening to me and Mac – that we were hoping to buy a house together, were talking about starting a family. With my training at work complete and exams done in the different competencies, I’d been promoted to biomedical scientist, which meant a higher pay grade. Also I’d be able to take six months maternity leave.
But Bel and I were never alone. She let me have her room – she was sleeping on the floor above with an artist called Bruno, who was doing huge screen-prints: blocks of colour with photocopied news headlines stuck over them. She took me to see bands, to walk along the Berlin Wall, to Bierkellers, but we were always in a group. Wasn’t she interested in me any more?
She was thinner, edgy. People were taking a lot of cocaine. It wasn’t something I was into. Her friends were welcoming, chatting to me about the UK, asking about the nightlife and the music scene. When they heard I’d studied in Manchester they wanted to know all about the Hacienda. I’d only been twice so couldn’t really say much. Most of them were fluent in English while I couldn’t speak any German. It struck me there was optimism among them. I guessed it came from the unification of the country a few years before, from the sense of new freedoms and liberation that tearing down the Wall had brought.
On my last night, Bel and I were going out to buy cigarettes and beer before eating at the house. She was working later. I was feeling fed up, in two minds whether to tag along to the club or stay in and get a decent sleep before my coach home the next morning.
Halfway to the shop she suddenly grabbed my arm and swung me round. ‘This way.’
‘What?’ Why were we retracing our steps?
Then she pulled me into a small alleyway. ‘Wait.’
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
‘Martin.’
‘Who?’
‘The guy I met in Tibet.’
‘So?’
She had her hands stuffed into the back pockets of her jeans, her leather jacket open, the zips glinting in the streetlight.
‘He thinks I owe him some money.’
‘Do you?’
She rolled her eyes, looked off to the side. ‘He paid my fare back. Covered the bills.’
‘That was months ago. Is it a lot?’
‘About eight hundred sterling,’ she said.
‘Blimey. Can’t you pay him a bit at a time?’
She glanced at me. ‘He can afford it,’ she said eventually.
‘Bel—’
‘Oh, don’t act all holy,’ she snapped. ‘He’ll give up eventually.’
I felt sick.
‘I had to pay for an abortion,’ she said. ‘That set me back.’
‘Oh.’ Reactions, questions stumbling through my head. ‘Maybe if you explained—’
‘No way,’ she said. ‘He’ll have gone now. Let’s go.’
My irritation bloomed, prickly as a rash. ‘Why did you even invite me?’ I said.
‘Lydia—’
‘You’ve just ignored me, like . . .’ How to explain? ‘I thought we’d . . .’
She exhaled, scuffed her foot on the ground, swinging it to and fro, like a child being reprimanded. ‘I’m working,’ she said. ‘I can’t drop everything. You knew that.’
‘I’m not going out tonight,’ I said.
‘Don’t sulk, for fuck’s sake.’
I walked away, trying not to cry, headed straight back to the house. I couldn’t face the others so I went up to Bel’s room and packed my bag.
Why were we even friends any more? She didn’t care about me. She used people, I thought. A feeling of disloyalty made me squirm. Like Martin – she’d used him for his money. And she didn’t look after herself. The abortion – hadn’t she bothered with protection?
She woke me in the night, climbing into bed beside me. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Don’t go tomorrow, stay another day. We’ll go to the Botanical Gardens. Or the Tiergarten. Just the two of us.’
‘I can’t. I’ve got to get back for work.’ And I was homesick, for Mac and my own space. I wanted to be back in control of things again.
There was a pause. I waited for one of her comments, pull a sickie or it’s only a job, but she was quiet. ‘I’m a stupid cow,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty crazy over here.’
But she liked crazy, I realised. That was the difference between us. The risks, the recklessness that had been exhilarating when I was sixteen no longer appealed now I was twenty-five.
I felt the brush of her fingers against mine but I turned over onto my side.
When my travel alarm clock rang she was gone.
Mac got an edited version of my trip: Bel had been busy, a bit wild; I’d not enjoyed it much, though Berlin was amazing. I didn’t go into detail about the tension in our relationship – it felt too personal. Even though it seemed to be at an end and there was little prospect she’d keep in touch, I didn’t want to lay it out so baldly. Somehow what Bel and I shared, the friendship, our history, the way she captivated me, was private. Even from the man I wanted to spend my life with.
A couple of weeks later she turned up out of the blue, a rucksack on her back, a bottle of schnapps in a cardboard tube in one hand.
‘I come in peace,’ she announced, waggling the bottle. ‘You got somewhere I can kip for a bit?’
Chapter Nine
I couldn’t resist her. A lifting of my heart, a rush of warmth before I remembered how she had hurt me and felt the burn of resentment.
I let her in.
And she was on her best behaviour, funny, entertaining, excited for Mac and me.
She apologised to me for the Berlin business that evening when Mac left us in the living room with the last of the schnapps. We were playing mix tapes that Colin had made.
Bel was on the floor, leaning back against an armchair. ‘I never meant to muck you about, you know. It was all a bit crazy. But you coming – and then going like that – made me realise . . .’ Then she grew quiet. She drummed her palm against her knee. ‘He died – Bruno.’
The artist. ‘No! What happened?’
‘Heart attack. He was doing a lot of speed, working all-nighters in his studio.’
‘And they think that caused it?’ I said.
‘Yeah. I came in from work and he was just lying there.’ She shook her head hard, as if to dislodge the memory. Then she reached to refill our drinks. ‘To Bruno,’ she said, chinking her glass on mine. Tears stood in her eyes. I’d never seen Bel cry and she didn’t then. She blinked them away and talked about how surreal it had been, having to call an ambulance from the phone box outside and waking everyone in the squat, warning them to hide their drugs in case the police came too.
‘Did you love him?’ I asked her.
She looked at me for a long moment. ‘He was a nice guy,’ she said, ‘but I don’t know how long we’d have lasted.’
*
She stayed for a month, quickly picking up old friendships, making new ones and getting a job front-of-house at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. She found a room to rent in a house in Hyde Park about a twenty-minute walk from us. We hired a van and helped move her stuff from storage at her parents’ house to the new place. The other tenants were post-grad students at the university. A Ghanaian, two Indian women and a Spanish bloke.
Our house-hunting led Mac and me to a two-bed-and-boxroom terrace in need of major refurbishment on the edge of Headingley. It had no central heating or double glazing, and the wallpaper dated back fifty years. Large maple leaves busy on a deep red background, then bouquets of roses and swags of ribbons set against lemon stripes, faded, apart from squares here and there where pictures or mirrors had hung.
When we got back from viewing it, in June 1996, I was full of excitement, imagining all we could do with it, hoping we’d be able to get a mortgage. I began to mix pastry to make a chicken and leek pie. Was Mac as keen on the house as I was? Did he need any persuading? My hands still covered with rags of dough, I sought him out. He was in the living room, standing in front of the television.
‘You do really like it, don’t you? Mac – what is it?’
‘Manchester.’ He stepped to one side and I saw pictures of the city centre, a pall of smoke. ‘There’s been a bomb in the Arndale Centre.’
‘Oh, Jesus. IRA?’
‘Yep. They’re saying no one’s died. Lots of people injured. Town was busy,’ Mac said. ‘The Russia–Germany match is on there tomorrow.’
‘And it’s Father’s Day then too.’ I’d posted my dad’s card on the Friday. I watched the images, the crowds on screen evacuated from the area. All the lives that must have been changed for ever.
Everything else, the sunshine, the new house, the pie seemed suddenly both trivial and really precious. ‘You never know, do you?’ I said to Mac. ‘You never know what’s round the corner.’
*
We moved in the autumn and lived in a building site for eight months. With a few hundred pounds saved on top of our deposit we hired professionals to do the skilled renovations and dealt with everything else ourselves.
Mac taught me how to sand a floor and strip wallpaper, repair plaster and burn the paint off skirting boards. How to install a work surface and lay tiles.
My evenings and weekends were swallowed up with it all. Mac had to open the shop on Saturdays, it was his busiest day, so he left me to it then. I’d put my music on loud or listen to the radio and get stuck in. My hands became chapped red and rough from the work, and it was physically exhausting, but I loved the sense of achievement in the transformation of each room.
Bel despaired of us. DIY was definitely not her thing. She was happy enough choosing colour schemes or fabrics, looking in catalogues at bedsteads or lighting, but the actual graft she thought was beyond tedious. She managed to drag us out every so often, insisting we needed to ‘get a life’.
Colin had moved into her house and the two of them went clubbing to Speed Queen or the Warehouse every week.
One night they called round to eat with us before we all went to see Blur in concert.
‘I’ve come out to my folks,’ Colin announced. ‘I was terrified, expecting to be banished. I told my mum first. Said, “There’s something you need to know. I’m gay.” Honestly, Lydia, I nearly threw up just saying it. And she goes, “Oh, is that all? I thought you were ill or something.” Then she says, “You are being careful?” And I just wanted to die. “Of course,” I said. And she said, “Do you want me to tell your dad?” So she did and he was OK with it. Well, sort of. “I spoke to your mum.” That’s what he said. And he gave me this nod and that was it. I can’t ever imagine taking anyone to meet them.’
‘Is there anyone?’ I said.
Colin beamed at me, his crooked smile. ‘There is, as it happens.’
‘Our Spanish PhD guy, Javier,’ Bel shouted through from the kitchen – she was fetching more beer. ‘They can’t keep their hands off each other. No one’s getting any sleep.’
Colin flushed and laughed.
Bel was dating one of the actors in the visiting production of Don Juan. She had decided that show business was perfect for her love life. ‘Lots of gorgeous blokes and they have to move on when the run finishes so it never gets stale.’
‘She’s a stage groupie,’ Colin said.
‘A luvvie lover,’ Mac chipped in.
‘We can’t all be like you two,’ Bel countered. ‘Soulmates.’
I smiled at Mac.
