Four New Words for Love (25 page)

The sob is like a detonation, so sudden he thinks the pan has caught fire. He has been craning from the sofa, unsure of what’s expected of him, but thinking that this tirade might merit
eye contact. Unsure of what to do he stands. Ruth’s beaten him to it. They hug in the kitchen. The outburst stops as quickly as it starts. He is startled. Is that all it took, an instant of
human contact to diffuse that much grief? Ruth comes back. He hears the rasp of a match and Lolly is smoking a cigarette over his bubbling dinner. She deftly picks some loose tobacco from her
bottom lip, and something else from the fry-up. The whole lot is shovelled onto a plate and presented with another cup of tea. The dog is gnawing a stale samosa.

She plies him with questions while he eats, and, inexplicably, turns on a gigantic and disproportionate television at the same time. He finds the background flicker and drone a distraction, but
it seems this is another form of human contact she somehow craves. There is something so compulsively tactile about her that he wants to reach across and stroke her, but thinks this might be
misinterpreted. She picks up the dog, samosa and all, and sits so suddenly on the sofa that his meal is nearly catapulted. He answers between slow mouthfuls. She can’t conceal her impatience,
or disappointment, at the inadequacy of his answers.

‘Yes – but what’s she
like
?’

‘In comparison with what?’

‘Was she happy?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Was she sad?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Well that’s no fucking good!’

Ruth moderates her with a touch. He wonders if this is a safety valve against more tears. What cost his antiseptic life, practically hermetic since his mother’s death, punctuated by
loveless pokes at Marjory?

‘If you don’t mind me saying so, you look as if you’ve had more fun than me.’ He doesn’t know where this non-sequitur comes from: thinking aloud, tiredness, age. It
silences her for a moment only.

‘If you don’t mind
me
saying so, the Count of Monte Cristo on the telly last week looks as if he’s had more fun than you.’

But the break in her flow has allowed him to ask questions and he perseveres, doggedly, in the face of their halting replies. What was she like? Happy? Sad? Because these questions weren’t
nonsensical the first time round and he does have something to compare it with. He has the woman in the photographs, the woman fixed to the back of the nursery door who gazes out on that small
mausoleum. Because of course the child, Millie, whose name causes them the same difficulty as entering the room does, is dead. And that one deadening fact explains everything: the clotted points of
her hair on the approach to the bridge; the vacancy, remoteness, sense of reproach at enjoying anything; the discrepancy, between then and now, of depth in the eyes whose cherished object has been
rubbed out of the foreground. It explains everything except where she has gone.

‘By the way, your wee dog’s lovely but a bit rancid.’ She pushes him onto the carpet, causing Christopher’s tea to spill.

‘Perhaps the samosas?’ he suggests.

‘We’ll find him something more suitable tomorrow.’ Ruth says, on her way for a cloth.

* * *

Despite protestations he is given Ruth’s bed. Lolly offers her spare and again he is made complicit in another wary exchange, this time from Ruth. There is abundant green
around the flat to walk the dog, and abundant blowing crisp bags to pick up shit with. Their chimed insistence that he stay longer sways him, particularly Ruth’s appeal. He somehow feels
Gina’s proxy, that they feel nearer to her when he is here than when he isn’t.

‘But I haven’t enough underwear.’

‘Buy more.’

So the next day he is taken by bus to the city centre, and trundled round Marks and Spencers to buy more of whatever else he needs to postpone his departure. They buy proper food for the dog
because he is, as Lolly says, a bit rancid. He is surprised at the Victorian splendour of the buildings. Unknowingly he has lived with the perspective that nothing really exists beyond the capital,
except dormitory areas that feed it. If nothing else, the sudden dip in temperature would have told him this is a different country. The atmosphere he encountered, getting off the train, seems to
prevail even at midday, a growing boisterousness anticipating Hogmanay. The lacklustre hawker, selling cheap cigarette lighters and cheaper sports socks, sports a halo of glitter.

They take him out one night to meet some other young women of their age, a local place of latent menace he feels thankfully insulated from. These other women go into hysterics at every second
thing he says, as if he’s contrived an accent and manner of speech for impromptu performance. Lolly has, it seems, memorised some choicer quotations and trots them out with a passable
impersonation.

‘Hey, Christopher, what was that thing you said the other night?’

‘I’m sorry but you’re going to have to be more specific.’

A round of titters.

‘What was it you called that politician guy on that party political broadcast? The one that came on instead of
Emmerdale
?’

‘Unctuous.’

More laughter like party poppers. What she doesn’t say is that he didn’t volunteer anything but gave opinions to her questions, posed, it now seems, to supply humour. He isn’t
offended but feels like some prop from an Ealing comedy, wheeled out for archaic laughs. Emboldened by three spritzers Ruth rubs the back of his hand. They are all nice to him. They call him
‘sweetie’, and ‘darlin’’, and ply him with drinks to prompt more nuggets of received pronunciation. The smuggled dog, beneath the table, contemplates a ring of garish
footwear. They say their goodnights and on the way home the three of them suddenly become four, as a taciturn young man appears, perhaps from the shrubbery, and wordlessly accompanies Lolly as she
gestures to him. He says nothing the whole lift journey and follows her out a floor early.

The next day, during an unintended afternoon nap when he has slouched into one of the sofa’s depressions, he is roused by the bell. Ruth is working. Lolly has her own key. He feels it
takes an age to escape the upholstery. He opens the door with an apology. He hasn’t seen a face this lined since he was eight, a photograph of a Red Indian in the
Children’s
Britannica
, features as rugged as his environment, sunk in a creased moccasin. He had an excuse. This man has an indoor complexion. He brushes past, seemingly unsurprised at a visitor, and
pats alternate walls as he sways along the corridor to the nursery door, pushes it open and stands on the threshold, oscillating with grief, or drink, or both, till he turns back and leaves the way
he came in, closing the door behind him.

She had to leave. He can see that now, the enveloping hopelessness. And so must he. He breaks it to them that night over an Asda curry. Thankfully he isn’t expected to eat from his lap,
poised on the carnivorous sofa. They sit at a Formica table Ruth has produced from somewhere.

‘But she might come back,’ Ruth says, ‘and you’ll miss her.’ He holds back the obvious remark that if she was going to return she would probably have done so before
now, and here is precisely what she ran away from.

‘Too many memories,’ Lolly says, nodding in the direction of the nursery. Tears well in her eyes.

‘If she comes back here you can tell me. If I’m at home and she comes back there then we have two options covered.’

The logic is compelling. Lolly dries her eyes on some kitchen roll and focuses her attention on the poppadoms. Ruth prevails on him to stay one more night for the bells.

The following night sees all the girls in the local pub, and later the same crew, with yet another mute male satellite of Lolly’s, crowded on Ruth’s frosty balcony, counting down the
seconds. He is worried the structure will give: some of the girls are almost as well upholstered as Lolly. She is already drunk. On the stroke of midnight they burst open plumes of cheap Cava as
the fireworks from Glasgow Green burst on the still air. Between explosions, outrollings of the tolling bells pass them in waves. Fizzy wine is sloshed into their meagre selection of glasses. He
has a chipped teacup. The dog barks in recognition of the electricity. Lolly calls for silence and shouts over the cacophonous backdrop.

‘Gina.’

‘Gina.’ A collection of clunks as the glasses and cups collide. Lolly hands hers to the mute boy and puts her arms round Christopher’s neck. She is big anyway, and her heels
make her of a height with him. The pressure of her forearms force his face into her bare neck. He can feel the heat and vitality rising from her breasts. She holds him at arm’s length, the
collision with his back pushing the boy behind indoors, takes both his cheeks in her hot hands, stares into his eyes, pulls him forward and kisses him fully on the mouth. Her lips are cushioned. He
closes his eyes instinctively before impact. Now he opens them and finds the boy has insinuated himself back on to the balcony and is observing the exchange sadly. She lets Christopher go,
retrieves the glass and takes another swig of Cava. He wanders away, into the living room, not wanting a repetition of the embarrassment caused by Vanessa. He totters slightly. She is potent even
at this remove. He feels as if he has been given a glimpse of a carnal vista he should have wandered down as a younger man. He drinks thirstily. Ruth, seeming to understand, refills his teacup.

Twenty hours later he approaches his front door. The reduced service vindictively called at every hamlet on its way south. He was surrounded by crapulous Glaswegians making the same commute and,
for the first time in his life, felt a sense of camaraderie. Again the harlequins of light are thrown onto his lawn. He posted keys and a cryptic note through Oscar’s door on his impulsive
departure. They were out, thankfully. He imagines Deborah will have collected the post, and lit the place to deter burglars. He sees the blurred shadow of a figure flit past, and recede towards the
top of the glass as it climbs the stairs. The dog has sensed it and barks in recognition. The figure stops. So does his heart. He reaches the handle as the outline grows. His key grates in the lock
and is pulled from his hand as the door opens. They stand on either side looking at one another. She is wearing his dressing gown. His first reaction is mechanical.

‘How did you get in?’

She points to the planter. He remembers the key beneath.

‘I’d say that shows a chronic lack of imagination. Something out of Cluedo.’ She stands aside. ‘Come in.’

The invitation to his own house sounds strained to both of them. From the speed of his movements she sees he is exhausted, helps him with his things and sits him at the table while she busies
herself preparing something.

‘Please, no more fry-ups.’

She looks bemused. He abandons the hard chair for the sofa, luxuriating in sprung upholstery. There is a period of accounting but it can wait till tomorrow.

‘Lorraine says hello.’ It slips out. He realises he has been rehearsing this on the train, envisaging all the permutations of this encounter in the desperate hope that she would be
here. She puts down the whisk. ‘And so does Ruth.’ She turns round, gripping the surface behind her for purchase, and takes stock.

‘You... you went through my things?’

He is back in the Glasgow flat imagining the broadside this would elicit from Lolly: ‘Who the hell do you think... worried fucking sick... cried for two months solid... and now
you’ve the fucking nerve...’

‘It went against the grain, I’ll admit.’

‘But you forced yourself.’

‘No. You forced me. You lost the right to privacy when you left with no forewarning.’

She returns to beating the eggs, the strokes marking time in the brittle silence. He tries to read her back. She won’t face him even when there’s no need to supervise the toaster.
Assembling the things she finally turns and presents him with a tray.

‘If it makes you feel any better then I’ll apologise.’

He considers this while he tests the eggs.

‘That’s the kind of offer that puts the onus on the other person, and it’s not really an apology at all. I’m not looking for contrition. I imagine that might be
considered weakness where you come from. I’m not. Lorraine is.’

‘I can’t stay forever.’

‘Forever is terrifying.’

‘I never said I would.’

‘No. You didn’t.’

‘I didn’t break a promise.’ Her voice is rising. He has seen her despondent but never agitated.

‘You didn’t do that either but you did offend common decency. And not just to me.’

‘I don’t owe!’

‘But of course you do. We all do. You can’t sever everything. We’re all implicated in ties. It’s what it means to be human.’

His words collide. She stands stock still, like some charging animal stopped by a shot before it slumps, and sits opposite him. He starts to eat.

‘Where did you go?’

‘Newcastle.’

‘Why?’

‘Mum.’

He has a childish image of passing her on the way up, waving from the carriage to a lighted window framing a Christmas tree, the woman an older version of Gina.

‘You never mentioned your mother. You never mentioned anyone.’

‘Neither did you.’

‘I’m not complaining. I’m not the one who left. I’m just trying to understand what compelled you to go.’

‘You did. Your talk. Christmas. Families. She left us. That’s why Dad is the way he is, or one of the reasons. I never forgave her. I had a brother, Kevin, and he died... He died you
see. And she left. And I thought it couldn’t have come at a worse time. I thought she deserted a sinking ship. I never realised what it does to you. Not until Millie.’

‘Was she any help?’

‘No.’ She turns suddenly bitter. ‘You’d think being mother and daughter was enough. It was with me and Millie. But not her. And even if blood wasn’t enough in
common, we’ve got the same loss. But she’s a drunk and she’s trapped inside her own hurt. Nothing exists outside. No one else is allowed to be sad. It’s like a tragic film
she just keeps playing over and over in her head, cranking up the pathos till she batters it down with drink. She needs it now because it’s her only story. It defines her. She doesn’t
ever think she needs an excuse. Any other sad story is just a distraction she doesn’t need, even if it’s me.’