The island, p.11
The Island, page 11
“They’re both herbs meant to open you up spiritually, give you a bit of a high,” Ari said, taking a seat beside us on the floor cushions.
“Of course you’d know that,” Carla said, rolling her eyes. “I bet you had a witch phase when you were a teenager – I can see you sticking pins in pictures of girls you didn’t like and waving incense around.”
“Who says I don’t still do that?” Ari said, a wicked smile on her face as she wiggled her fingers as if casting a spell.
“Is that why you’re so private about your room? Is there a little altar in there with our hair and toenails on it?” Carla asked. “Actually the one time I used your laundry detergent I did twist my ankle on the way home from the laundrette.”
I snorted a laugh and immediately felt embarrassed, but Carla only grinned at me.
“You got me – I curse all my household essentials, don’t touch my almond milk or you’ll go blind,” Ari said as she picked up one of the pipes. “Do they have sanitizer or anything?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, looking around. How many people had used these hookahs since the festival started yesterday? Just thinking about it made me feel like I needed to brush my teeth and gargle. I hadn’t even touched the thing yet and my tongue felt furry.
“Oh come on, don’t be such a princess.” Carla wiped her pipe off with the hem of her lavender t-shirt. She took a puff on it and wiggled her eyebrows at us as she held it in, then slowly let the blue-grey smoke flow from her mouth, wrinkling her nose thoughtfully.
“It’s rank, isn’t it?” Ari said, unimpressed.
“Surprisingly no. It’s OK actually.” Carla watched the smoke drift upwards. “No worse than the shit weed we used to buy at uni.”
Ari looked at me, then shrugged, wiped off her own pipe and tried it.
“See, it’s fine. Besides, smoke’s like…cleansing, right?” Carla said, waving at me. “They’re self-cleaning.”
I didn’t believe that for a moment, but I also didn’t want to sit there and be a buzz kill. I gave the pipe a quick clean on my shirt and sucked in a lungful of smoke. The urge to cough was immediate but thankfully it didn’t last long. I’d never thought of smoking as being anything like riding a bike before but apparently once you knew how you didn’t lose the knack.
It wasn’t too bad actually. I’d never liked the taste of cigarettes – even though the smell of them, unlit, was so rich and lovely. I had no memories of my maternal granddad, who’d died when I was two, but I’d always been reminded of him when I opened a new pack and released that scent. This smoke tasted floral, medicinal almost. It reminded me of the health-food shop I’d worked in whilst I did my undergraduate degree; that same mix of aniseed and dried green things.
“Nice,” Ari said, after a while. “Did you know, mugwort’s used for lucid dreaming? And telling the future. I wonder if it’ll still be in our systems when we go to bed tonight?”
“I hope not,” I said, without really thinking about it. “I don’t want to think about the future.”
I jumped a little when Ari put her arm around my shoulders. “Only good dreams for you. I’m a witch, I can do that. Besides, mugwort’s also used for protection and warding off evil. So you’ll be safer than ever after a few puffs. Trust me.”
I managed a small smile and distracted myself with another puff. I didn’t believe in magic, but perhaps one of the herbs in the blend was some kind of natural sedative because I was starting to relax a little. Even if it wasn’t real and just the result of Ari’s reassurance, or placebo effect, I wasn’t going to turn down a little bit of peace.
Unfortunately the buzzing of my mobile broke the fragile sense of calm I’d been fostering. Not many people had my number and none of the options were good – Nick, using a number I hadn’t yet blocked, someone from the university or my mother. Still, I took it out and looked at the screen. Mum calling. Great, it was as if she knew what I was up to and wanted to register her disapproval.
“Shit,” I said, mostly to myself.
“Who’s…Oh,” Carla glanced at my phone. “Do you need to get it? Or can you decline and we’ll just pretend she never called?”
Carla and Ari didn’t know a lot about my mum. I hadn’t shared much with them when we were at uni or since moving back in with them. Both of them however had apparently picked up on something, probably when I took phone calls around them. A few weeks ago I’d been talking to Mum on my mobile in the kitchen. When I was done and hung up, Carla had whistled and Ari had said, slightly more diplomatically, ‘she asks a lot of questions, doesn’t she?’. To them it must have sounded like an interrogation. My end of the conversation was mostly weak justifications, ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘I will, I promise’.
My phone stopped vibrating and I had nearly breathed a sigh of relief when it started going again. Mum must have hit redial right away. She wasn’t one to take no for an answer. Or even no answer, for an answer. The sigh still came but it was more aggravated than I’d intended.
“I should probably answer. She’ll just keep calling until I do. Or she’ll start sending a million voicemails asking if I’m OK because she’s so worried.” I winced at the venom in my own voice. I felt as if the smoke had loosened my tongue. I didn’t normally talk much and I never volunteered information about things back home. It was too embarrassing having to admit just how much control Mum had over my life and how lonely my world had been before university.
“I’ll just be outside,” I said and got hurriedly to my feet. I answered the phone as I was picking my way out of the dome and nearly tripped over a girl’s knee as I did so.
“Hey, watch it!” she snapped, brushing dust off of her denim shorts and glaring up at me whilst her friends gave me side eye.
“Shit, sorry,” I muttered.
“Language, Joan,” Mum said, sounding scandalised. “I taught you better than that.”
I winced. She was the only person who used my real name – my Christian name, as she insisted on calling it – I’d tried going by ‘Jo’ at school and she’d squashed that with the help of my teachers. She’d been so against it that the name was permanently ruined for me, even once I got another chance to use it. Jody was meant to be a more modern version of ‘Joan’ – according to the net – and I’d started using it when I left home to go to university the first time.
“Sorry, Mum. I tripped. Everything OK at home?” I said, keeping my voice down in case anyone overheard me. What kind of woman got interrogated by her mother over the phone at a festival for God’s sake? Just me apparently.
“Oh, fine. Good. As to be expected,” she said, with so much forced casualness that I felt my entire spine tense. “It’s been quiet here and you hadn’t rung me in a while, so I was worried about you.”
I’d phoned her two days before leaving for the festival. It hadn’t even been a week yet. Though to be fair back during my first time at uni I’d rung every other day, sometimes every day. I hadn’t really had anyone else to talk to, even with Ari and Carla I’d felt like I was putting on a front. Pretending to like what they liked so they wouldn’t get sick of me. As much as Mum piled on the pressure to ‘make friends and join in’ she at least knew me for who I was – she just didn’t think who I was, was enough.
I’d gotten down to a phone call every two to three days whilst I was with Nick but that was mostly because I was caught between the two of them, trying to keep him and my mother happy was like trying to balance plates. Plates that were adept at loading on the guilt and shouting at you.
“I’m actually away at the moment, sorry,” I said, trying to pick my way through the truth without giving her too much ammunition. “Signal’s a bit rubbish so I might have to go in a second if it drops entirely…”
“Away where?” She was on it like a crow ripping into roadkill.
Why had I said anything? She just made me nervous and I’d given myself away. “Just away with some friends for a few days. Quick break to celebrate the end of term. I thought you’d be pleased I was being sociable.”
She sounded more disapproving than pleased. I could imagine her in one of her pink or mauve fleeces, with her arms folded across her chest, leaning against the kitchen wall with the landline cord twisted around her finger. “What about Nick? You’ve just left him to fend for himself? I’m surprised at you.”
Fend for himself, like he was a pet I needed to feed and take care of. Mum had a lot of ideas like that. When I was choosing my GCSE subjects she’d insisted on Food Technology so I could ‘make a proper meal for my family in the future’. It was the same reason she’d taught me to sew on buttons, polish shoes and clean an oven. All part of the plan to secure me a future free from loneliness; if I could make a perfect shepherd’s pie I’d surely always be surrounded by my husband, children and friends aplenty. Even at the time I’d wondered why I couldn’t just learn these things so I could do them for myself. Apparently it was only worth the effort when it was to win other people over and keep them happy so they’d stay.
Sometimes I pitied Mum. She’d spent years with my dad and me, doing what she was raised to do – being a good wife and mother. Then he’d died and she’d been left with nothing much to show for it. No friends, no career, just a little girl to take care of and bills to pay. Any friends she’d had were pre-marriage and she hadn’t kept in touch. Maybe she’d thought she didn’t need them anymore. Maybe they’d been too busy with their own husbands and children and just drifted away.
Maybe that was why I said it then. That old mix of pity and irritation at the back of my mind pushed me into it. Or perhaps that was a cop-out and I wanted to say it, to prick her back the way she was always pricking me, drawing tiny amounts of blood every time she opened her mouth.
“We broke up, actually,” I heard myself say. “Nick and I are no longer together.”
The phone line hummed into the silence. I could sense her shuffling her deck of reactions, choosing carefully, making sure it was just the right thing to send me spiralling.
“Oh…Joanie.”
A classic. The disappointed tone caught me right between the ribs like a physical blow. Those two words said a lot of different things:
I knew you’d ruin it
I knew it wouldn’t last
I told you so
You should have listened to me, you know I’m always right.
And the classic – don’t you think it’s time for you to come home?
“Do you need any help with the rent?” Mum asked, with a sigh. “I might be able to pick up a few extra days and I can always cancel my coach trip to Cornwall…”
“It’s fine, I moved out of the flat and I’m not paying that much in rent now,” I said. “Because I left him, so he’s still there. Sorry, I meant to give you my new address but, it’s fine for the moment I’m having everything forwarded.”
“Oh, well…are you sure moving was wise? What about your degree? Where are you staying – are you in campus housing again? What if something had happened? I wouldn’t have known where you were!” Mum was on a roll now and it didn’t seem as if she planned on stopping.
I shut my eyes and dug the nails on my free hand into my palm. The barrage of questions buzzed around me, swarming through my head. Each one was accompanied by several more unspoken, pointed, queries – why didn’t you tell me this? Why did you leave him? Why didn’t you try harder to keep him? Why haven’t you come home? Why why why?
My mouth tasted like burned flowers and my head was swimming. I wasn’t in the right state of mind for this. Whatever ‘properties’ those herbs had, making it easier to talk to your mother wasn’t one of them. Maybe Ari could mix up a spell to give me a spine. Or just get me a cocktail so I could forget this whole conversation ever happened.
“I’m fine, Mum,” I said blinking back tears of frustration which felt as sharp as glass. “I moved into a house share with the girls I lived with in first year. I’m actually saving money. It’s all going fine. I’ll text you the address later, when I’m back home.”
“This is your home, Joanie – here, with me,” Mum said, managing to sound both sad and aggrieved. “It’ll always be here, waiting for you.”
Didn’t I know it? Waiting for me like a mousetrap, luring me in to never let me go again.
“I know,” I said. “I’ve actually got to go now, Mum, sorry. Love you.”
I hung up whilst she was saying goodbye and turned my phone off. I wouldn’t need it again unless Carla, Ari and I split up, and after last night and this morning’s awful experiences, I wasn’t letting that happen again any time soon.
Chapter 12
“Hey, you were gone a while, thought I’d come out and check…oh, Jody,” Ari said, when I immediately burst into tears upon hearing her voice. She wrapped an arm around me and shepherded me around the side of the dome so that we were between it and the next one along. There was nothing there except a load of electrical cords and bare dirt. At least we were mostly out of view of the crowds. Not that anyone seemed to be paying us any attention. We were only on the second day and apparently crying girls were already just part of the scenery. Like rubbish and drunk people passed out on the ground.
“Is everything OK with your mum?” Ari asked. “Has something happened? D’you need to go home?”
I shook my head, wiping my face with my hands. Ari smelled of herbal smoke and sun cream, it was weirdly comforting. “It’s nothing like that. She’s fine.”
“OK…what’s got you so upset then, eh?” she asked. “Did she um…give you a hard time, like before? About the festival or…Nick?”
I sniffed, upset and humiliated and wishing I’d never answered the phone at all. “She wanted to know where I was and I ended up telling her about Nick. That I left. Not that he…not everything else.”
Ari seemed to digest this for a moment, still lightly patting my shoulder.
“Do you feel like you can’t tell her, about everything else?” she said, finally.
I nodded, struck dumb by a fresh wave of tears. I couldn’t really put into words what it was I wanted. Part of me was crying out for my mum, but not my actual mother. I think what I really wanted was the idea of a mother, and just then Ari was the closest thing to a nurturing presence. At least she wasn’t judging me, blaming me. I just wanted someone to hold me and tell me I was going to be OK. Was that so much to ask?
“Oh, hon, it’s OK. You don’t have to tell her everything right now. Or at all, even,” Ari said, holding on to me and swaying slightly, calming me. “You can keep it between us three if you really want to. I’m sorry we started talking about the police and stuff this morning. It felt like the right thing to say but…I thought afterwards, actually we don’t know how hard this is for you and it should be about what you want. Not what I think is the right thing to say.”
I gulped air, trying to steady myself. “Thank you. It was…it helped, a bit. It was good to know you guys were there for me. I just…I don’t know how to tell her.” I shook my head, frustrated. “It’s not that…it’s more like…” I gestured helplessly.
After a few beats of silence Ari said, “Is it more like you don’t know how she’ll react?”
I shook my head and swallowed down the lump that had risen into my throat. “It’s not that. It’s that I do know how she’ll react and I don’t think I can stand it. I want to be wrong about it but…I don’t think I am. Every time I turn to her for support I feel stupid when she doesn’t say or do the right thing. Because I should know by now that she’s not…who I need her to be. She never has been.”
Ari sucked air in through her teeth, glanced around as if for help. I couldn’t blame her, that was a lot to dump on her and I felt awful for having done so. I bit my tongue and resolved to keep my emotions more firmly under control. I didn’t want to scare Ari or Carla away.
“Do you want to get a drink and talk about it?” Ari asked eventually.
“No, no I don’t. I don’t want to ruin any more of the festival…can we just talk about it when we’re back home? For the next couple of days can we just pretend everything’s fine?”
“Not sure you can do that, or that you should,” Ari said. “It’s OK to be upset, Jody. It’s not ruining anything for you to just feel your feelings, you know? Maybe if you get it all out you’ll start to feel better.”
I knew she was probably right but I didn’t want to take the chance that it would just make things harder to deal with. Ari and Carla could reassure me all they wanted but that only made me feel worse. Paradoxically the more they tried to tell me I wasn’t ruining their trip the more I felt like a burden.
“Should we get Carla and check out whoever’s playing at the moment?” I said, to change the subject. “I’ve never heard of any of the people on the posters.”
Ari looked at me for a moment, clearly not fooled one bit by my sudden change of topic. Still, she let it go, apparently deciding she’d pushed me enough. “Yeah…me neither – I think they’re probably fairly indie, regional. Last night was pretty good though. I liked some of the covers they did.”
“I didn’t realise they were covers,” I admitted. I wasn’t much into music. What I liked I’d liked for a long time – songs I’d heard on holiday in my teens and albums I’d bought at fifteen with my pocket money. Mum’s musical tastes were just as sparse as mine but I’d taken possession of her collection of Now That’s What I Call Music albums in my teens. Consequently most of my favourite songs were at least twenty years old.
“Yeah, it’s a bit weird now I think about it. Small bands I’ve never heard of, but they’re covering some really recent songs,” Ari shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe the organisers are hoping to get away with not licencing anything. I don’t know how that stuff works.”
“Hey,” Carla appeared at the end of the passage between the domes. “There you are – I thought you’d ditched me. Are you OK, Jody?”
