Victoria park, p.17
Victoria Park, page 17
Not being able to get away was the worst thing. Malik had sensed her increased distance from him and became petty when he could no longer raise his fists. He snooped through her bureau and stole her favourite socks. He’d offer to make toast for them and then burn hers. Once he drew a lipstick penis on her face while she slept. She retaliated by becoming more and more engrossed in her own body. She doubled the hours spent at yoga, purchased expensive exfoliating scrubs, sloughing away dead skin cells, watching the grey mush clog up the drain. She took long baths, cloudy with Epsom salts. Lavished her skin with oils – rosehip, marula, squalane – and ran the excess along the ends of her hair. She’d never looked better. She would hold him, feeling grateful they’d never had a child, and stroke his smooth head until he leaned into the crook of her neck and his breath trembled across her skin. It was the sounds – the sounds she hated the most. The mucus and the wheezing and the rattling. She kept busy with the housekeeping, with cooking soup. Staring into pots of boiled vegetables, the hand blender devastating the soft chunks.
She walked past the park’s east gate. It had always been her sanctuary, the reason Malik bought the house in the first place, but after the acid attack last year something ugly had lingered there. It shook her that the attacker still hadn’t been caught. The police had recently released another photograph of the victim’s face to encourage new information. She’d looked at the image for a long time, his delicate young neck and torso all white blisters, corroded skin. There was a rawness to his expression. Six months in a coma. All that waiting.
But the park was the backbone of her new routine. She’d had to find a way to keep loving her home, to resist feeling like it anchored her to a life that wasn’t hers. So, each morning she soaked for twenty minutes in the bath, sipped a decaf coffee, ate a slice of rye toast with two soft-boiled eggs. Then she went to the park and meditated for forty minutes beneath what she considered to be her tree, an ash with sturdy boughs, a great cloud of green leaves, and a gap in the foliage where a branch had fallen.
There was comfort to be found in how well the trees coexisted, in the silent way they communicated with one another, sharing water and nutrients, sending warning signals about droughts and disease. It was a complicated web of kinship, a system without prejudice. The trees were a more reliable community than any she’d participated in herself. So she inserted her body between their strong trunks and beneath the shelter of their canopies: this was how she was putting herself back together.
Inside the house, she dropped her bag on the floor and retrieved her yoga mat from the umbrella bucket in the hallway. The quickest way to get to her tree was through the back garden but this meant walking past Malik’s vegetable patch, gardening a hobby he’d taken up when he became too sick to sell art. His green fingers surprised her. She’d come home to crowds of peas, courgettes, potatoes, sometimes even creamy parsnips laid out on their kitchen table like a pirate’s haul, waiting for a compliment.
She averted her eyes from the decomposing fruits and vegetables. The smell was earthy, reassuringly rotten. Things pass, go back into the ground, become new again.
The park’s wide paths, designed for horse and carriage, were full of speeding bicycles. She passed kissing couples on iron benches, mothers pushing strollers, runners sweating, kids chasing footballs around the grass. Their energy was grotesque. Most of the leaves were still bleached from the summer but a few were darkening, hinting at the auburn to come. The sun blazed. She found a shady spot beneath her ash, unfurled her mat and tucked her legs into a full lotus.
Closing her eyes, she tried to switch off the sound of ringing phones and bicycle bells. She listened to the slight breeze coming over the trees then dropping through the hedges. She willed herself to become interested in her breath, visualizing it first as a silver mist, then as a transparent liquid drawn in through her nostrils and down to her throat, where it rushed into her belly and flowed out again through her nose. In and out. In and out. But then she remembered the absent-minded way Malik used to kiss the outside of her ear. She heard his ragged breath, laboured and wet as if a plastic bag were taped around his head. She felt heavy and hot and tired. She adjusted her posture.
She tried to imagine dropping down into a cool lake, sinking into deep pools of electric calm. But when she reached the bottom Malik was waiting and she was cross. Please, she imagined saying to her husband, you had it coming, all of it. The image of him smiled back at her. He looked as he did when they first met: so solid, so firm. Stood at his full height he was six foot two. Shoulders broad. So disarming. She could smell his herby green cologne.
Then a blink of a childhood memory. She was paper marbling during an art class at school. A shallow tray filled with water and colourful paints dripped on to its surface. Crisp white paper carefully laid on top, then lifted up, water rolling off until an imprint of the surface was all that was left.
But her mind betrayed her and her focus drifted back to Malik, the memory she tried hardest to avoid and the one which came to her most often. Each time it returned, she saw the whole scene through his eyes, not her own. She’d been wearing her white terrycloth robe that final morning, which she’d later had to bin because of the bloodstains. Her hair halfway from ashy blonde to grey, the robe pulled tightly round her waist, a strip of cotton nightie showing. Bare feet. Her mug had shattered against the bedside table and the milky tea spooled across the surface and seeped into the unmade bed. She bent to fix the sheets – then thought better of it. But she stayed leaning over the mess, not moving for what felt like a very long time. Through Malik’s eyes, it was a terrible sight, Alice hunched over like that. The cut-glass ashtray had gashed a hole in the wall and there was a small mound of dust and plasterboard on the polished oak floors.
This time, the last time, hadn’t been so bad really, certainly not the worst. But the ferocity with which he threw the ashtray, despite his sickness, had settled it. She couldn’t wait till he died. So when she finally stood up straight again she arranged her face to be expressionless, eyes unblinking. No emotion at all. That’s when he knew and started bawling. Bawling like a little child. She’d got him out of the house and into a hospice and that was that.
‘What’re you doing?’ a young voice asked.
When Alice opened her eyes, a little girl was crouching inches from her nose. She’d seen the girl in the playground with her mum sometimes, and had admired how they had honey-coloured hair. Up close, Alice reckoned the girl was nine or ten years old, with wide blue eyes, and a cleft chin that gave her a defiant look. Her hair had been twisted into a topknot. The girl tilted her head to the side and repeated the question.
‘I was meditating,’ Alice said. ‘Do you know what that is?’
‘Oh.’ She swung a pink plastic umbrella. ‘You’re doing it wrong. Meditating’s like this.’
She wriggled free of a panda-shaped backpack which almost eclipsed her and plunged to the ground, folding one skinny leg over the other. She squeezed the pads of her thumb and forefinger together and let out a throaty om, frowning in concentration before dropping the sound.
‘Wonderful! Where did you learn that?’ Alice asked.
‘My mum’s a nurse. She took me to meditation classes at her hospital.’
‘You have a lovely posture. In the meditation I do, we don’t say om when we’re meditating. We try to stay completely silent.’
‘That sounds boring.’
‘It often is,’ Alice laughed.
‘Why do it?’
‘I suppose it makes me feel calm, like I’m part of nature. And I get to know myself a bit better.’
The girl nodded at her the way adults nod when someone has said something stupid.
‘I already know who I am,’ she said, and leaned in and fingered the wooden beads snug around Alice’s neck. ‘They look like pebbles. So pretty.’
‘Thank you. You live across the park, don’t you? What’s your name? I’m Alice.’
‘Lydia. Watch me do a handstand.’
She sank her hands in the grass, flipped her body and turned her plimsolls to the sky. Her white vest flapped over her head to reveal a marshmallow belly peeking out from her shorts. Alice resisted tickling her. The rest of her body was all angles and joints. Freckled legs wavered in the air for a moment before she flumped back down on to her feet. Alice thought the girl belonged in wild, bright colours. She would never dress her in white.
‘Bravo!’ she said, clapping.
Lydia sprang up, stretched and performed a hesitant curtsey. ‘Was it good?’
‘Perfect. Are your parents nearby?’
She leaned in. ‘Can you keep secrets?’
Alice was silent. She was an excellent secret-keeper.
The girl gave her a serious look and then seemed to decide she could be trusted. ‘I’m running away from home.’
‘Oh no. Why’s that?’
‘Rupert’s dead and it’s my dad’s fault!’
‘Goodness. Who is Rupert?’
‘My dog. Yesterday he was sick on the floor but Dad made me go to art club anyway, and when I came home Rupert was gone.’
‘That’s terrible. I bet your dad is really sad too.’
‘Dad’s been sad for ages. My brother thinks the dog was his but really he was mine. I walked him. I fed him. Dad told me that Rupert just woke up dead. I hate him. I hate him!’ She broke into tears and clutched Alice’s knee.
She put her arm around Lydia. The girl felt warm and familiar. Alice smoothed away the sticky stray hairs from her forehead and slipped them back into her bun. It occurred to her that this might not be appropriate. She ignored the desire to pull her on to her lap. She made little shushing sounds.
‘I don’t normally cry,’ Lydia said. ‘I normally hold all the water in my eyes, and even when I’m really, really sad I don’t let it drop out.’
‘Oh, let it drop. A good cry always makes me feel better.’
She didn’t cry when Malik actually died, though she’d thought she would. Instead, she was flooded with relief. She felt hopelessly unsentimental. Vibrant and undeniably alive. It was mortifying to realize that she’d had this stone heart inside her the whole time.
Lydia wiped her nose on her arm. ‘I’m scared I’m going to forget Rupert,’ she said.
Alice looked at the smear of snot on the girl’s skin. ‘I don’t think we forget about the things we love.’
‘But what if I do?’ Lydia said, scrambling out of Alice’s grasp. ‘What if everything turns into a big smoosh in my head and then I forget all about him?’
She wrapped her arms around her knees and Alice noticed that they were pink, toasted from the sun.
‘Well we do forget a lot of things, but I think it’s OK to do that.’ Alice played with the small hole at the edge of her yoga mat. ‘It can be very peaceful to forget.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘The big stuff stays in there.’
It was true – Alice had memories that were stuck inside her like a barbed fish.
‘You know what I love most about Rupert? His paws. Not the furry bit, the pink bit. It looks like something that should be on the inside of your body but it’s on the outside. Did you have a dog when you were little?’
‘No, my dad didn’t like dogs.’
‘You have to be really weird to not like dogs. Did you have any other pets? I used to have a stick insect but Rupert ate it.’
‘Well sort of,’ Alice said. ‘When I was about your age, I lived in Scotland and my brothers used to go down to the river to catch salmon. I would tag along, watching them, and I used to think of the fish as my pets.’
Lydia frowned. ‘Uncle Wolfie has salmon in his shed. They’re nothing like Rupert.’
‘It was my job to get the roe from them and scoop it into little glass jars that we’d sell in the market.’
‘What’s roe?’
‘The fishes’ eggs.’
‘What? You’d take them out?’
‘Yes, I’d sit with my legs crossed just like you are now, and lie the salmon across my knees and rub the belly from top to bottom. A little bit like petting a dog but pushing down as you go.’
‘But fish are scaly!’
‘It feels smooth, not slimy like you’d think. And it’s so satisfying when the roe slides out.’
‘What does it look like?’
‘Tiny pink-orange marbles. You can pop them in your mouth and they’re delicious. Salty.’
‘You eat their babies?’ Lydia said, wide-eyed.
Alice smiled. ‘Well, I suppose in a way, yes. But also no. It’s hard to explain.’
‘Why don’t you get a dog now you’re a grown-up?’
‘I don’t know. I think it would remind me of my dad always saying no.’
‘What about your mum?’
‘She died when I was very little.’
Lydia sucked on a strand of her hair. ‘My mum’s gone away but I think she’ll be back soon. Can you push me on the swings?’
Lydia held out a hand. Her slim fingers slotted into Alice’s and the sweat of their palms mingled. They walked to the playground and she wondered what kind of image the two of them struck. Could she pass as her mother? A young grandmother? The sun was higher now, casting its slanted rays over the park. Lydia ran to the swings, her bun unravelling in the wind and flying out in greasy streaks behind her. Why had no one told her to wash her hair? What was her father doing?
Each time Alice pushed the rubber tyre, Lydia squealed and coiled her hands around the chains. ‘Higher, higher,’ she commanded. Alice pushed harder and Lydia’s legs kicked in the air in an effort to gain speed. She whooped with pleasure. Back and forth. Back and forth. Alice felt longing spilling out of her. She wanted to spend the whole afternoon with this little girl. Make her shriek with laughter, wait for her at the bottom of the slide, dust dirt from her hands. She knew it was wrong, that she should return the child, but a sudden sense of anarchy took hold. The girl could come to her house. She could feed her. Read her stories. She wouldn’t let her out of her sight. Not even for a minute. Why had no one come looking for her?
Lydia jumped down. ‘I’m pretty good at the swings.’
‘Have you had breakfast?’
‘Two slices of toast.’
‘That’s not enough. Let’s get something to eat.’
The house was silent, and that embarrassed her. It was far too big for one person to live in, she saw this clearly now. Lydia ran ahead of her and into the kitchen. Her light footsteps echoed on the polished concrete floor that Malik had chosen and Alice had always found unpleasant, utilitarian.
‘There are fat statues everywhere!’ Lydia cried out.
Alice found her cross-legged on the floor stroking the head of a Buddha.
‘You can have that one if you want. It’s from Nepal.’ She opened the fridge. It was almost empty. She poured two glasses of orange juice.
‘It’s so clean here.’
Alice looked around. The kitchen exhibited no signs of life. No buttered knife left on the side of the sink, no crumbs, no half-drunk mug of coffee, no cookbook left open on the last page it was used. The room was photograph-ready for no reason at all. She went to the cupboard and pulled out a glass jar of macadamia and coconut balls.
‘Do you have a nut allergy or anything?’
‘Mum says I have a tank for a belly.’
She offered the jar. Lydia stood, took two energy balls and chewed. She continued to pet the head of the Buddha but looked perplexed. Desiccated coconut covered her top lip.
‘No good?’ Alice asked.
‘Where is everyone?’
Alice sagged. ‘Who?’
‘Your family.’ Lydia grimaced. ‘I need to pee.’
Alice directed her to the bathroom. In the quiet, she stood at the window to the garden and remembered the morning of the last time Malik had been in the house. She’d rolled over in bed to find his side cold again. He was in the kitchen, banging his fists on the glass. Damn squirrels are eating the birdfeed again.
‘There’s no one upstairs either,’ Lydia said. ‘Are they all out?’
Alice turned, startled. Lydia looked so small in her kitchen, so out of place. ‘Yes,’ she said. They were silent for a while, watching the squirrels on the birdfeeder.
‘Have you ever seen a baby dragonfly?’ Lydia asked.
‘No, how do they look?’
‘Like aliens! They’re born in water and live there till they become dragonflies and then they can zoom into the air like this.’ She ran on the spot and furiously flapped her arms.
‘That’s pretty cool. How they get to live underwater and fly.’
‘I know.’ Lydia’s expression was solemn. ‘They’re special. They must have been very, very good in their past life.’ A small scar on her wrist had turned silver next to her tan and she stroked it.
‘What counts as good?’
‘Being nice to people, including not lying. So if you’re like, really good then you’ve done life well and you don’t need another chance at it so you die and then that’s it. But if you’re bad you come back again to get another chance to be good.’
