First Love Read online

  ‘How did you manage?’

  ‘Well, Tesco do deliver, luckily. But of course I still had to trek out across these gardens to meet them at the foyer, because it’s such a labyrinth. But after two weeks of that they gave me another cast with a sort of Velcro sandal on the bottom, so, yes, I was able to get out and about a bit more then, go to openings and things, but, yes…That came off a month ago now, but I still have all these exercises I’m supposed to do…’

  ‘Have you thought any more about getting therapy?’

  ‘Oh. No. Not yet, I mean…’

  I’d pursued this line with her before, though I’m not sure why. It was a perverse idea, really.

  ‘If you want to live a more fulfilled life, it can be helpful,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean? I do lead a fulfilled life! I lead a very fulfilled life!’

  ‘I mean, if you feel disappointed, or stuck. Not able to connect with people. Lots of people have therapy. It doesn’t mean you’re mad.’

  ‘You were mad,’ she said, after a moment, quickly, and with a sort of—There!

  ‘OK. Look. You said yourself it was hysteria, your not being able to stay in. And you just said you don’t have friends. All this darting about…’

  ‘Darting about? I am not darting about. I am not. I’m starting a new life in Manchester!’

  ‘But you aren’t making friends. Therapy might help you relate to people.’

  ‘I know how to relate to people. I know more than you. Don’t you dare say that. I…’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like it.’

  ‘I think we’d better end this conversation now, Neve, before I get annoyed.’

  ‘Fine. But you come across as very needy. Just so you know. If you want to be friends with Eric, or anybody, then you can’t just keep putting yourself in their way and expecting them to pick you up.’

  ‘What do you mean, pick me up? What’s that, “Pick me up”? Needy? Oh, no, I’m not needy. I’m too far the other way, if anything. I’m completely the other way. That’s probably what’s put him off.’

  —

  The day stretched before us. It was barely midday. We went to the Kelvingrove Gallery next and looked at the Glasgow Style exhibition. This was my mother’s idea, although she’d seen it several times before, she told me, indignantly. We went around together; stood together before a green glass door panel, a dimpled copper kettle; we walked around a walnut screen, took in a light fitting that looked like a pagoda. Finally, we wandered through a reconstructed lunchroom, read the old menus.

  Afterwards, in the tea shop, my mother’s subject, somehow, was the little boat her father had bought and refurbished when she was a teenager.

  ‘Well…’ she said, spreading some jam on a scone:

  ‘He saw an advert in the Wirral Globe, you see. An old ship’s lifeboat for sale in Birkenhead. So he phoned up and said he’d like to have a look at it, and I went with him that Saturday, only he didn’t dare ring the doorbell at first! We’d parked around the corner, and he was so shy, we just walked past the house a few times while he worked himself up to it. Only then, you see, I saw this group of men coming the other way, walking up from the station! A big gang of them: long hair, flares, and I just knew, I just knew, they were there to look at the boat and I said, “Dad, Dad, come on!” So we did go and knock on the door then, and had a look at this upside-down boat in the garden, and luckily the couple who owned it were very friendly and although my dad didn’t want to say yes, then, they did say they’d give him first refusal, which was lucky because I was right, and just then the doorbell rang and it was those men I’d seen, and they were all students from the University of Liverpool, you see, and they wanted this boat to do up for their Sailing Society. And they were dead keen. Well. My dad agonized but Mum and I just begged him to get it, so he did phone up again and said, Yes, please, I’ll take it, so then we drove over there with the trailer and brought it home. And that was their project for the summer then, my mum and dad. He gutted the whole thing and put a cabin in, and a little kitchen. He was so ingenious. So resourceful, using bits from around the house, or the garage. He was an extraordinary man. It’s such a shame he died so young.

  ‘And then your grandma took over and she put Fablon on everything, on the tabletop and the cupboards, and she had three mugs and she put Fablon on them, too, and she sewed these long foam cushions for the benches, in matching colours.

  ‘So that was what we did every holiday then. We went all over, but I did wonder, I mean, operating those locks, it was so stressful, every time! And there always seemed to be people waiting or people who’d just stare from the towpath and he’d get terribly anxious, you know, sweating and clenching his jaw. I don’t know why he put himself through it. Oh, but the worst was when we took it to Wales. He was determined to go out to sea but we got stuck in the bay! In Colwyn Bay. And of course all of these locals lined up along the harbour wall to watch us, all these hairy Welsh villagers, shaking their heads at this family on their gaff-rigged dinghy. But he wouldn’t turn back! Mum and I were just pleading with him, just begging him to turn back. She wrote one of her poems about that for the Reader’s Digest. You know she was mad for entering their competitions? Well, she was. She didn’t win but she was always placed. They were great competitions because they gave you a different rhyme scheme each time, and how many syllables, and this one you had to repeat certain lines. Let me remember.’

  She sat up straighter. She lifted her hands off the table, spread her fingers.

  ‘One more starboard tack should do it!

  Out of the harbour and into the sea.

  Taken aback! We’ll never get through it!

  One more starboard tack should do it.

  One more starboard tack should do it!

  Though wind and waves de da de dum

  The local dum de dum, “They’ll rue it!”

  One more starboard tack should do it.

  One more starboard tack should do it!’

  ‘OK, OK. No more starboard tacks, please. Jesus.’

  ‘Well, I can’t remember anymore! But it went on, you get the idea…Let me remember another one.’

  ‘Please don’t. I don’t like it. I’m serious.’

  Again she sat up, preened a little.

  ‘Now,’ she said, and she lifted her hands and framed her face with her thumbs and index fingers.

  ‘ “It’s raining again,” said my mother

  Flinging the curtains wide

  “The police have come for your brother

  And the last of the roses have died.” ’

  ‘Horrible,’ I said. ‘I told you to stop.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said, happily.

  4

  God help me. Days after she left, that voice was still tripping around my mind. When I lay down to sleep I heard her yapping and thought I really would go mad. What to do? Deep breaths? I stroked Kit-Kat’s little paws, when she’d let me, until she stretched out a paw to stop me, and I walked in to the shop and back every day at a sort of dazzled double-speed.

  The mornings were dreary, the wind warm and low. Sometimes in the evenings came an almost-rain, scratching at the air.

  I worked when I got home. I let things drift with Stevie.

  —

  Finally, in late June, a phone call I was pleased to receive: the brisk, purling voice of one Maureen at Scottish Arts. I’d won a fellowship, seven weeks in France, starting—now, more or less. ‘Oh, yes, you had best get packing!’ she said.

  I pulled my holdall from under the bed while she filled in the details.

  5

  A cheque. That felt nice. I could hold myself differently. The Kings Cross Inn took the first tranche of that stipend: a double room, on the seventh floor, with a long view of the Euston Road.

  I fell asleep with the curtains open, after an evening of doing sit-ups, drinking water, then soaking in the deep, old bath.

  When I woke up, the sun was panelling the walls, the bed. There
was the hollow tok-tok of construction work on the other side of the street and some slightly scrambled-sounding disco coming from the workmen’s radio. I opened the window, as far as I could, set the bath running again, filled up the kettle.

  The light felt forgiving, and just to prove this was so, I decided to write to Michael Whelan. I lay poking at my Blackberry, saying that I’d just woken up and was sorry about everything. I hope you don’t mind my writing, I wrote (adopting, it occurs to me, something of his off-key politesse: that was weird, but then I was in a weird mood, clearly. A mad mood.)

  —

  In the stone-clad breakfast room I had a black coffee and a cup of dry muesli. I think my fellow guests were all bound for the Eurostar, too. Here were anxious, scrubbed couples, an American family in their easeful travelling clothes. The table next to mine was empty, its raspberry-coloured cloth covered in cup rings and pastry scraps. They had left a paper, though. I took that and tried to find a weather forecast.

  —

  My train arrived late at Bourron Marlotte and I walked quickly through the cool brick passage to the car park, half-afraid that there’d be no one there to meet me. My phone was dead, I didn’t know what I’d do in that case. Were there phone boxes in France? In the middle of France, or wherever I was? But my host was there, unbothered, standing by her hatchback and smoking. She was all in white: white tunic, capri pants. Her hair was grey-brown and cut in a chin-length bob. Smiling hello, dropping her cigarette, she shook my hand, said, ‘I am Laurine,’ then pointed at the back seat for my bag. It was just a short drive to where I’d be staying and Laurine drove fast. Her little feet on the pedals were sun-toasted, crinkly, with a pearly polish on the nails. I opened the window and felt the warm wind on my face.

  —

  ‘Now,’ said Laurine, nodding to the front door of the villa.

  She held up a set of keys and shook them, jingle-jingle, like a cat’s bell.

  ‘This one. And. Patient, patient, patient…’

  We walked through a long, shadowy sitting room. Here were faded kilims, empty fruit bowls. Outside a team of gardeners were seeing to the lawn, and through patio doors came the tomatoey smell of cut grass, and the scorched smell of hot machinery. Silver-blue stripes trailed down to a riverbank.

  ‘Y a-t-il d’autres personnes ici?’ I said.

  ‘Ah oui, bien sûr. Des peintres suédois. De Göteborg, je crois. Ils sont ici depuis le débout d’été. Ils se trouvent dans le studio tous les jours si vous voulez y aller les voir, ou…Il y a deux hommes, une femme. Ils partent dans une semaine, et après cela, il n’y aura que vous dans la maison.’

  ‘Des artistes-peintres? Bien.’

  I never did meet them. They looked so young. I saw them out on the lawn one day, cutting loose with a beanbag.

  I worked in the library. The sun reached my chair at two, and then my words blazed and my eyes winked. I spent the afternoons reading in my room, testing my French on the classics I’d found:

  La petite ville de Verrières peut passer pour l’une des plus jolies de la Franche-Comté. OK. Ses maisons blanches avec leur toits pointus…

  The wood-pigeons gathered on my windowsill, and theirs were the only sounds I heard. Their hoo-hoo. Their fussy wing-slaps, like rifled cards.

  I walked for an hour or so each day, after I’d finished my work. The streets were empty then. Here was: weathered stone. A ruined keep. At the edge of the village the lamp posts had been fitted out with sandwich boards, advertising the circus.

  Michael’s reply, when it came, wasn’t unfriendly. It was toneless. It was like it was done with mirrors, I remember thinking, or realizing, during one of those walks, offering no advance on an image of my own angst, sort of trapped there. ‘Sounds like things are going pretty great with you!!’ he’d written. I shrank at that. Still, being abroad, at least, being out of it somehow, I found it was possible to feel less implicated. Less accounted for. And finally, climbing the stairs one evening, hanging my bag on a chair: unaccounted for.

  III

  1

  Considering one’s life requires a horribly delicate determination, doesn’t it? To get to the truth, to the heart of the trouble. You wake and your dreams disband, in a mid-brain void. At the sink, in the street, other shadows crowd in: dim thugs (they are everywhere) who’d like you never to work anything out.

  —

  About six months after I moved in: it was cold out, raining. The candle was lit, flying its pale flag, and in the row of houses opposite, all the windows were dark. All of our little theatres.

  ‘It’s quite lonely round here in the evenings, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘No one’s ever in over there. And that must be fifteen flats.’

  Edwyn swallowed his mouthful, smiled at me, briefly. He had his blue cardigan on over a grey T-shirt, with the sleeves pushed up, as usual, giving a bunched-up, blouson effect. His hair was still wet from his shower, so it looked darker, sleeker. His face was flushed.

  ‘Well, no, it’s not like inner-city Manchester,’ he said.

  ‘I wasn’t comparing it to that.’

  ‘I mean, if that’s what you’re used to, or if that’s what you like, or if that’s what you’re comfortable with, I can see why you would hate it here. Of course.’

  ‘I didn’t say I hated it.’

  ‘It’s a quiet street. I moved here because it was quiet.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I moved here because I was sick of parties. I’d done nothing but go to parties for twenty fucking years. I didn’t want that anymore. If that’s what you want, then you are in the wrong place, I’m afraid, honey.’

  ‘Who mentioned parties? I was just saying…’

  He smacked his hand onto the table then, hard.

  ‘Why bring it up, then, hm? You’re very fond of “just saying,” aren’t you? And then you expect me not to react.’

  He stared at me for a couple of seconds, then picked up his cutlery, hunched over his plate. Outside, behind him, the wind carried the rain, the lamp posts quivered. I found myself thinking of certain people I knew—people not that far away—how surprised they’d be (wouldn’t they?) to see me sitting there with that bright, bland expression on my face, trying to fence with this nonsense. Or had I been very naïve? Was this what life was like, really, and everyone knew it but me?

  ‘You need to go back to Manchester, really, don’t you?’ Edwyn said, sympathetically.

  I turned to him. He was smiling again. I joined him in that. I smiled.

  ‘Well. No. And if you remember, I didn’t come from Manchester. I was in Glasgow. Do you remember?’

  ‘You need to go back to your friends in Manchester. This isn’t for you, down here.’

  ‘Where has this come from, Edwyn? Why are you being like this?’

  ‘Being like what, honey?’

  Not able to speak, I lifted my shoulders.

  ‘Being like what?’ he said. He was warmly interested now, leaning towards me.

  ‘Just an, um…With an ugly tone?’

  ‘A what, sorry?’

  ‘An ugly tone. Telling me to go away. And I didn’t say anything wrong. I didn’t.’

  ‘My tone is ugly? Hm. OK. Well. My tone is ugly, honey. Were you in the dark about that? Are you saying I deceived you about that? Are you saying I—what?—misled you in some way? I can assure you that I didn’t. My tone is ugly. That’s how I am. Because how I am, now, is I’m an arsehole and a fucking cunt. OK? I didn’t used to be an arsehole and a fucking cunt but it’s how I’ve ended up, OK?’

  He stood up, took his plate, then put it down again, flexed his fingers.

  ‘And isn’t it just too fucking sad,’ he said.

  I didn’t turn around, as he walked behind me, into the kitchen. I kept looking out at the street. I heard Edwyn open the bin, tip in what was left of his meal. Twice he tried to close the lid—slamming it, which didn’t work.

  He came back, sat down, looked through me as he talked.

  ‘You shoul
d know that I am sick,’ he said. ‘Just so long as you know that. There’s nothing nice about me. I don’t have a nice bone in my body. I know I can seem quite comme il faut, but that’s not me. OK?’

  —

  I don’t think I had expected him not to react, as it goes. The expectation lagged a little, that’s all. I was casting around for something to say, and then as soon as I’d said it—‘lonely’—I knew what was coming.

  —

  Finding out what you already know. Repeatingly. That’s not sane, is it? And while he might have said that this was how he was, for me it continued to be frightening, panic-making, to hear the low, pleading sounds I’d started making, whenever he was sharp with me. This wasn’t how I spoke. (Except it was.) This wasn’t me, this crawling, cautious creature. (Except it was.) I defaulted to it very easily. And he let me. Why? I wonder now how much he even noticed, hopped up as he was. No, I don’t believe he did notice. That was the lesson, I think. That none of this was personal.

  —

  For table conversation back then, I’d got used to asking Edwyn questions, either about himself or about poets or painters or composers. He seemed to like that, I’d found, searching his memory, his mind, with narrowed eyes, a twitching mouth; scrunching and pleating his discerning bottom lip. I hadn’t lived with anyone before. Never before had I sat down to eat with somebody every night. It was frightening. Daunting. Talking in triplicate, as Edwyn did, one question could last us all through a meal. He hedged everything with, ‘As I’m sure you’ll know,’ which I didn’t. I wanted to. That was nice of him, though, I thought, and I thought, He must be used to being the cleverest person in the room, which must be—again—lonely. Worse than lonely. I think he felt under siege. (Witness, for example, the little cache of weaponry in the hallway, in the dark wooden tub with the umbrellas: a hunting stick, an air rifle, a knobkerrie.)