Afterwards (3 page)

Alice had been seeing Joseph a month or two when she told him about her gran. They were both up early: it was a midweek morning and she had to go to work, Joseph was meeting Stan. He left the flat with her, carried her bike down the stairs while she locked up, and then they walked together as far as his bus stop. Long morning shadows and the streets were peaceful, they turned the corner by the station in sleepy silence. Alice hadn’t seen Joseph over the weekend. He’d been away, on a job in Brighton for a friend of his dad’s: Clive was renovating a house down there for his retirement, weekends usually, whenever he had time, and Joseph went every few months to plaster the rooms as they got done. He’d phoned Saturday lunchtime to see if she wanted to come down, said his dad’s friend had a tent they could borrow. He had Sunday off, and did she want to spend the day together, at the coast maybe. Alice had already arranged to see her grandad and Joseph didn’t make anything of it when she said she couldn’t come: she saw her grandfather every couple of weeks, he knew that by now. But he did sound disappointed and, after she’d hung up, Alice didn’t think she’d given him enough of an explanation: saying her gran had died recently just didn’t seem to cover it. So she tried again, while they were walking to work.

– I always used to go and see them together. I’ve been every other Sunday, just about, since I left college.

Alice wheeled her bike while she talked to him, tried to describe why the visits were important, for her as well as her grandad.

– For months there was always something to do, you know? While Gran was ill. It’s not been easy to get used to, since she died. Like I’m out of practice.

Days off came with nowhere to drive, nothing to fetch, no one to sit with or bathe. Or sheets to change, or nails to cut, or cream to rub into old hands to keep them soft. Alice had known her grandmother was dying, so it was hard, but she’d loved it too.

– All of that to be missing now, as well as the person.

Joseph didn’t know what to say, Alice could see that, and she felt uneasy, hadn’t wanted to make him uncomfortable. But then he slowed down as they got nearer his stop, as though he wanted to give her more time, and he kissed her goodbye when his bus came. They hadn’t done that before and, in the minutes after he’d gone, it was tempting to see it as some kind of affirmation. The idea brought a strange, lurching feeling with it, and Alice wasn’t sure if this was pleasure or pressure. She had to smile at herself again, cycling to work: she looked for the significance in every gesture these days, and she’d forgotten that about these early stages. When you don’t know yet, whether you are in love. If you want to be, if he does. Perhaps she’d told him a bit too much, but it had felt like a good moment, and she didn’t want to question that now.
You can pick things to pieces if you’re not careful
.

Joseph hadn’t said a great deal about his family yet. When he did, a few evenings later, Alice felt as though he were
returning a compliment. He’d been at his sister’s, and she lived not far from Alice, so he came round on his way home. Alice was in the bath when she heard the buzzer go under the noise of the taps. Martha was on her way out, and called down the hall that she would get it. Alice turned the water off and listened to the exchange in the hallway.

– Is she busy?

That was Joseph. Another first: an unannounced visit.

– I’ll be out in a second.

Alice’s voice was loud against the tiles. The talking continued in the hallway, and she looked around her for a towel, but didn’t move to get it yet. She’d been out late two nights in a row, catching up with friends she’d not seen while gran was ill. Both were good nights, and they’d filled her up with wine and smoke and conversation. It wasn’t long after nine, but bath and bed had been her only evening plans. She listened again, still lying in the warm water. Could hear Martha in and out of the living room, her bedroom, looking for her keys or her bag. Alice couldn’t hear Joseph, thought he must be in the kitchen or on the sofa, and she thought how much she’d like to spend the rest of the evening lying down there with him, but then he put his head round the door.

– Just here on the off-chance. I can get lost again.

Alice hadn’t realised it was ajar. She looked up at him: half in, half out of the room.

– Don’t be silly.

– Don’t get out then.

Alice heard Martha call goodbye and the front door closing, and then Joseph sat down. On the floor, his back against the radiator, forearms resting on his knees. Left alone, they smiled at each other across the rim of the bath.

Alice had opened the window earlier; it was the first warm evening of the year, and a few doors down someone had done the same, pushed their speakers round to face the street. Joseph had spent the afternoon with his family, she’d heard him telling Martha, and Alice was curious about them, so she asked him who’d been there.

– Mum and Dad, Eve and Arthur, my sister and brother-in-law. Well, they’re not married, but you know.

– They’ve got a little boy, haven’t they?

– Ben, yeah. He just turned three. We blew out some candles for him today.

He was pulling tobacco and papers out of his jacket, and Alice thought about standing up, the towel, getting out, but then Joseph said:

– Any room in there for me?

The water was loud as Alice sat up. Cooled on her back in the silence while Joseph undressed. Made her aware of the damp hair at the back of her neck and her temples. Her pale breasts, hidden now by her knees, and the sweat on the skin beneath them. It was strange to feel so shy, and Alice tried to remember the last thing Joseph had said, a thread to pick up. Felt the warm bath rise around her thighs as he climbed in to sit behind her, legs on either side of hers. The overflow slopped, and outside there were summer noises: thudding bass and people talking. It was her turn in the conversation, Alice was
certain. Seconds passed and then she felt a palmful of water, poured between her shoulder blades, sliding down to her hips, joined by another, then another, and then his fingertips. It was gentle, and she stayed where she was, not wanting it to stop, until Joseph’s fingers came to rest, and he rubbed his unshaven chin against her neck.

– What do you want to know then?

He was smiling. About her curiosity, maybe: how obvious it was. Or about how shy she was being.

– I don’t know.

Alice leant back a little, against his chest.

– You could tell me a bit about your mum and dad. Are they still working?

Joseph folded his arms around her.

– My mum’s a hairdresser. My dad’s retired, he took redundancy a few years back.

He let her settle between his legs, told her that his parents still lived in the house he grew up in, bought it from the council with his dad’s severance pay. Joseph carried a photo in his wallet. Alice had caught sight of it before, when he was paying for drinks or cabs, and she’d wondered about it, who it was of. His jeans were on the mat, in easy reach, and he folded his wallet open with wet hands to show her: a family of four, out in front of a red-brick box.

– That was thirty years ago or something. Will be soon.

Alice shook her fingers free of drops before she took it from him. The grass on the picture was yellow, dusty, and they were all wearing summer clothes, pink cheeks and squinting. Joseph’s chest was bare and skinny, and you could see where the tan line stopped at his neck, his upper arms, where his T-shirt would normally have been.

– It was that hot summer.

– I remember. My Gran used to make me have a sleep after lunch. Because she wanted one, probably. Seventy-seven, wasn’t it?

– Seventy-six. Southampton won the Cup.

– You remember that? How old were you, four?

– They were underdogs, you know. My Dad was a fan. Just one of those stupid things that stick in your mind.

– Yours, maybe.

Alice looked at his family, all standing by their car. It was new second-hand, Joseph said, and they’d never had one before.

– My Dad just bought it, so we had to get a photo.

– What’s your sister’s name again?

– Eve. Evelyn, after my Nana. My Dad’s mum. She says people always expect her to be an old woman.

– You look alike.

– I know. Everyone says that. Take after our Mum.

Eve was in her pushchair in the photo, with Joseph behind, holding onto it with his big brother’s hands. They had the same sandy hair, and there was something cheeky, quick about both their faces. It looked to Alice like there was only about a year between them. Joseph was grinning, standing on the low brick wall that marked out their patch
of dry grass from the neighbours’. Alice thought the camera had caught him talking, head tilted towards his mum in the foreground, who looked so young. Ten years younger than Alice was now, probably. With two kids and an uncertain expression: arms folded, face somewhere between a smile and a show of defiance.

– She looks proud of you all.

– My Mum?

Alice held up the photo so Joseph could see for himself. He took it from her and she sat up, shifting round in the water a little, so she could watch him looking at his mother’s face. Joseph shrugged, but not like he disagreed: maybe he just didn’t need her to tell him. He said his mum always worked hard for them and he passed the picture back to her. Alice took it, but stayed where she was, sitting between his knees, facing him while he spoke. He told her his mum used to clean a pub when he was small, an hour or two every morning, and if his nana was busy she had to take him and Eve with her. The publican used to sit them up on a bar stool together, in front of the fruit machine, let them bash the buttons.

– No money or anything, you know, just flashing lights. We thought it was great, but I remember my Mum saying she didn’t want to see us playing them when we got older.

– Do you? Or were you properly corrupted?

– I’ve got it under control.

He smiled and Alice looked down at the photo again, his parents. Joseph said his mum learned to cut hair later: after Eve started school and she had more time, could earn them a bit more money. It had got darker while
they were talking, harder for Alice to see the faces in the photo with just the street lamps and the light coming in from the hallway. Joseph’s father had one arm around his wife, the other hand resting on the new car bonnet. Joseph said he worked nights at the car plant back then, came home before they left for school so they had to be quiet about breakfast and dressing. Alice couldn’t tell if his dad was smiling, what he was thinking, she leaned in closer to the photo.

– Looks like a miserable sod, but he’s not.

Joseph was smiling at her and she handed the wallet back.

– Our school was just down the road. I used to go home at lunchtime some days, because my Dad got out of bed then. I stirred the sugars into his tea, two of them: that was my job. Then I went back to school again.

He looked at the photo once more before he put it on the edge of the sink. Said his dad was a fat man, you could always hear him breathing, especially when he’d just got up, and he’d liked that noise when he was a kid: it was reassuring. Alice liked the way Joseph laughed after he said it, as though he was embarrassed to be telling her, but didn’t mind if she knew it. They smiled at one another then, their wet faces, awkward limbs pressed against each other, held by the high sides of the bath. Water cooling off, but neither of them moving to get out. Funny how it was easy to talk once they were both undressed. And then easy to get into bed with him too, before they were dry. Hadn’t told each other much yet, but it was starting. Joseph was unexpected, but he was welcome.

Alice invited Joseph to have a proper dinner, or rather Martha did. It was Martha’s flat, and she rented out the spare room because her lecturer’s salary didn’t cover the mortgage. Alice moved in three years ago, not long after she’d started at the hospital. It was affordable, handy for work, and she thought it would just be until she got a place of her own. Whenever she talked about leaving now, Martha told her to stop.

– You can’t, no one else would put up with us.

Martha had been with her boyfriend for years, on and off, and Keith lived there too, while things were on between them. Alice kept clear when they argued, but they weren’t hard to live with. They were always good to her, even when they couldn’t be good to each other, had been especially so during her grandmother’s illness. She was pleased when Martha suggested inviting Joseph, because he’d been staying over quite a bit, and she had started to worry about it. He always brought something with him, a few cans or bottles, and he went out to the shop in the mornings sometimes too, got bread and milk so no one would be short for breakfast. But still, it was a small flat for four of them to be sharing, even on a part-time basis, and Alice didn’t want Martha getting annoyed. She liked living here, and having Joseph over. Didn’t want either of those things to end in a hurry.

They started cooking late, and were only halfway through when Joseph arrived. Keith had bumped into him at the off-licence and they’d come up the street together. Between them, they’d bought far too much to drink. The first few minutes in the kitchen together were mainly spent getting in each other’s way. Joseph stood by the door, smiling at Alice and rubbing his face after she gestured to him to sit down. He put a few beers in the freezer and then as many as he could in the fridge, and after that Martha said he could slice some tomatoes too, if he wanted to feel useful. He smiled, kissed Alice first and then picked up the chopping board.

The phone went just after they sat down, and Martha waved a hand, said the answerphone could get it. Alice was spooning rice onto plates when she heard her grandfather’s voice, the tinny speaker emphasising his proper vowels. He hated talking to machines, she knew that, so she felt embarrassed for him, stopping and starting again with everyone listening from the kitchen.

– This is David Bell. Would Alice Bell call me, please? It’s concerning tomorrow. I’d like to know if she’ll be coming as usual. I’ll need to go shopping for lunch in the morning.