Fragile Lies (11 page)

T
erence sings from his belly
… The Bog Down in the Valley O … sing Killian sing … and in that bog there is a tree … clap, Killian, clap! What a lovely day. Look at the trees, mountains, rivers. Say thank you to daddy. Say it! Thank you Daddy. Terence is daddy … daddy is Michael … Terence is daddy …

Cinema circus concerts McDonald’s playground bookshop museum … wasn’t it a great day, Killian … wasn’t it great to be together again … what did you do this week … tell me everything … stop with those stupid Knock Knock jokes … you’re doing my head in … sorry for being so cross, son … sorry for spoiling our day …

L
ondon

L
orraine is
adrift in a cacophony of sounds, spice smells, greasy-spoon cafes, dreadlocks, girls in saris with cockney accents, boot boys, ageing beatniks, Rastafarians and men in turbans who stare haughtily through her. Everyone hurries at a faster pace and snaps, “Excuse me, let me pass,” if she dallies too long on the Underground escalators. She enters a crowded pub where young men with tight white faces move in an uncontrollable fury to the music of Sulphuric Acid.

“It’s not quite O’Callaghan’s, but you’ll get used to it.” Virginia laughs at her expression and leads her into the seething mass of bodies. Two years have passed since the cousins met and Lorraine is spending her first summer abroad. Her dread of being introduced to a man called Razor Blade – who spits and hisses when making love – has not lessened with time. His appearance does little to ease her apprehension. On stage he writhes his skinny body and contorts his face. His songs, bitter vitriolic lyrics which he writes himself, electrify his fans. His restlessness, so similar to the nervous energy Virginia projects, dominates the stage. Lorraine will share a flat with them for the summer.

Uncle Des has married his red-heeled Sonya.

“No sense crying over sour milk, young lady,” said her aunt when Lorraine rang to sympathise. “Eyes to the front. Best foot forward.” She now belongs to a ten-pin bowling club where she bowls with such ferocity that she has became the club’s top scorer. She attributes her success to the belief that the ball she is rolling towards a strike is Des Cheevers’ deceitful, cheating head.

One night, listening painfully to Sulphuric Acid in a basement club with no ventilation to release the sweating angst of its occupants, Lorraine is pulled backwards and held firmly against a lean masculine body.

“Virginia told me you’d be here tonight.” A familiar voice growls in her ear.

“Oh my God!” She presses her hand across her mouth and turns into the laughing face of Adrian Strong. “I
don’t
believe it.”

He is dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt, his arms muscular and tanned the same reddish bronze she remembers from Trabawn. He is different from the crowd, both in the way he dresses and the ease with which he listens to the music. She wonders if they will beat him up for standing apart from them, relaxed and amused, his very posture suggesting contempt for their collective fury.

“I’m working in London for the summer.” She has to lean closer to hear him. His Irish accent is music to her home-sick ears. His eyes rest on a Celtic cross glinting against her throat. She tilts her head back, allows her hair to sweep down her back. In college, an art student painted her neck and entitled his painting
Swan-song
. Ever since, she has been prone to showing off her neck and Adrian Strong seems to appreciate her efforts. He fingers the cross, drawing her closer with an almost imperceptible pull, then stops before they touch. He could swallow her in his gaze, shake her heart until it loses all sense of rhythm. She turns her back on him, pretending to stare towards the band. He needs punishing for never writing to her. She recalls the anguish of waiting for the postman, hoping to hear his voice every time the phone rang. The pain does not seem important any more. He tightens his hands on her hips, presses her more insistently against him then turns her around, his mouth hot against her lips. She had forgotten the desire he could arouse in her and cannot imagine how it will end, who will be the first to break away, not her, impossible.

“What say we escape from this harbour to hell and find somewhere quieter to talk?” he suggests.

“Don’t you like their music?” She teases him.

“It’s pure, unadulterated
shite
.” She can see him laughing but the sound is lost in the frenzied clash of drums. Music blasts around them as Sulphuric Acid vent their hate and Razor Blade jerks the microphone in a grotesque sexual parody. They leave the packed snarling fans, fists raised, heads banging, and Virginia, like a flame, jumping higher than any of them.

In a pub where pin-ball machines ping and music plays too loudly, they talk about home, discovering mutual acquaintances from college, and when she says, “Isn’t Ireland
such
a village,” they moan with the contented satisfaction of those who have escaped its homogenous clutches. They discuss music and books, art, themselves, the past and the future. He has completed his marketing degree and intends to travel. To earn money he is working on a building site, his second summer in London with the same construction crew. She pictures him standing high above the city, bare-chested, running along thin strips of scaffolding, striding confidently along ceiling joists, stepping onto window ledges without hesitation.

Later, the band party in the old Victorian house where Virginia and Razor live. She holds Adrian tightly as they circle the crowded room. His voice whispers in her hair. His hand slides between them, touching her intimately, secretly and the lurching pleasure she feels remains with her long after he leaves.

L
ondon is
an oven of grey cement, the sun bouncing off high grey walls. Lorraine seeks the shade of trees and overhanging balconies, shop awnings and the dark side of the street, dreading the long hours in the hotel where she works as a chambermaid. She can tell much about the anonymous occupants of the bedrooms she cleans: the signs of sex in the tangle of sheets and discarded condoms thrown carelessly under the bed, empty pill bottles, books by Jean-Paul Sartre and Barbara Cartland, pornographic magazines, the bible with the crushed rose as a book mark, a mountain boot in the bath, a lacy bra wound around a curtain rail. But the tide of life that flows around her only has relevance when she is with Adrian Strong. Mind domination. Lover takes all. And he is taking all, not just the time they spend together but also time spent without him, which she flings aside as heedlessly as debris.

“He comes and goes,” says Virginia. “He’ll be back. Just don’t hold your breath.”

The titian dye is fading from her hair. Dark roots show between the spikes but even they are losing their aggression and have a wilted look. She is working in public relations and a more chic image is being cultivated.

“Punk is dying,” she informs Lorraine. “It’s time Razor moved on to something more meaningful.”

Lorraine does not want to move on anywhere unless Adrian Strong is beside her. His pattern of coming and going has no order and she is unable to organise her shifts around him. When he does turn up, always unexpectedly and days later than promised, he is as unapologetic as ever. The desire she experienced on the night they met has not been repeated. His kisses, although wonderful, are just ordinarily wonderful and, sometimes, in his arms she feels as if she has no identity. He talks about New York, San Francisco, California – he wants to experience the States and plans to leave London in September. All he has to do is beckon and she will go with him. She closes her eyes, imagines them sipping coffee in Greenwich Village and returning to their loft bedroom to lie entwined in each other’s arms.

Despite his obvious contempt for Sulphuric Acid, he attends many of their gigs. Occasionally, the four of them drink in the local pub, The Pewter Tankard. When they stay in for an evening they watch films on television, slumped comfortably together on the long sofa. Razor dons a butcher’s apron and cooks. Lorraine is surprised to discover that he is an excellent chef. He uses only fresh vegetables and introduces her to unknown seasonings and spices. Jamaican dishes are his speciality and even Marley, the Jamaican man from the flat next door, says his food has the authentic taste of home cooking. He also makes home-made beer. Bottles line the kitchen shelves and their corks pop with the velocity of gunfire.

Marley’s real name is Earl Bradley but he is a dedicated Bob Marley fan, playing the singer’s records constantly, even in the mornings before breakfast and late into the night. He calls to the flat one evening and presents a bottle of Jamaican rum to Virginia as an apology for keeping them awake.

“Believe what I say, sister. This is the fastest route to heaven.”

“We must enjoy and suffer collectively,” says Virginia, after he leaves. She places four glasses on the table. Later, when the bottle is empty, Razor opens his home-made beer. It seems like a good idea to drink as many bottles as possible.

The following morning Lorraine awakens, her tongue thick and furry, her brow pounding. She has no idea how she reached her bed. Under the bedclothes she is naked. Her clothes are heaped on the floor, her bra folded neatly on top. Did she remove it in front of the others or in the privacy of her room? A flush runs from the tips of her fingers and along her spine as she begins to gather fragments of the night around her. They played strip poker. She has no idea who suggested the game and can only remember sitting cross-legged on the floor in her knickers and bra, voices encouraging her to take off one or the other. She remembers Virginia walking across the room, tall and slight as a young boy except for the dark triangle of hair between her thighs and the curve of her small breasts. She swayed past the three of them, deftly swinging her hip away when Razor reached up to touch her. Adrian’s eyes followed her, his mouth open and frozen on a silent moan. The air had been heavy, dense with a violent need that frightened Lorraine but Virginia settled back into the deep cushions of the sofa, a glass in her hand, cards fanned in the other, enjoying the vibrating tension her nakedness created.

Lorraine’s hands shake as she sits on the edge of the bed and tries to recall what happened afterwards. Outside in the kitchen she hears Virginia’s throaty laughter, Razor’s deep voice, the clink of a frying pan. Her stomach heaves then settles queasily again as she moves towards the bathroom. Later, showered, her tongue and teeth scrubbed, she enters the kitchen where they greet her casually. She lost the poker hand and ran to the safety of her room, explains Virginia, when Lorraine insists on knowing. A game of Monopoly would be discussed with the same air of ennui. Razor does not bother joining in the conversation. He knows how Lorraine feels about him and is not willing to waste time changing her mind.

“You can take the girl out of the convent but you can’t take the convent out of the girl,” says Virginia which sounds like something her mother would say. Lorraine is angry rather than amused. Last night is a hole in her head and all Virginia can do is make patronising remarks. For minutes, or perhaps hours, she walked and talked and breathed in some unconscious sphere that was neither sleep nor wakefulness. Even dreams leave a residue but this – this was oblivion in the deepest sense.

Alone in her room she begins to draw on a sketch pad, using sticks of charcoal. Her hand moves freely over the pages. Sinewy, snake-like figures emerge. The shapes weave in a convoluted circle, sometimes hidden behind clouds or coiling around a bridge that hangs suspended in mid-air. Soon the shapes are obscured by a face, a lush expression, smouldering eyes, a half-open, pouting mouth. When Virginia bangs on the door and announces that Adrian has arrived, she guiltily shoves the sketches under the mattress. Dream analysis or doodling, she wonders, spraying perfume on her wrists and combing her hair. She looks tousled and childish, unawakened. The only exhibitionist tendencies she ever displays are on canvas. Perhaps if she was more daring – she frowns and her lips, which she is outlining, suddenly quiver. She sits down, her fingers gripping the edge of the mattress. Something flicks, a thought, a vision. She has no idea why she should visualise Adrian and Virginia entwined like snakes, their sleek, smooth limbs writhing silently in the deep cushions of the sofa where they often huddle, the four of them together, watching television.

She is crazy to think such thoughts. Razor and Virginia belong together. The sounds they make at night, such thudding force, as if their bed is unable to take the strain of their desire, and sometimes they make love against the wall, uncaring whether or not she hears. And she does hear. Even with the pillow over her head the sounds are audible. The moaning, urging sounds that hint at sexual violence and a passion she can only imagine.

T
wo months
later the summer is almost over and Sulphuric Acid are touring the Midlands. Lorraine looks forward to spending time alone with Virginia before she returns home but her cousin has disappeared from the flat. She leaves nothing, not even a note to explain her whereabouts. Out of the corner of her eye, Lorraine imagines her flitting by but when she turns, the room is empty. Yet there is evidence that she calls into the flat when Lorraine is at work. Her underwear dries on a line in the bathroom, make-up is scattered across the window ledge, sunglasses lie on the mantelpiece. On the draining board two mugs have been rinsed and left to drain. Lorraine notices spilled granules of coffee on the counter. Virginia’s bedroom door is open, carelessly tossed shoes are on the floor, rumpled bedclothes.

She takes the tube to Angel where Adrian lives. The front door bell remains unanswered. She stares upwards at the windows but no silhouettes or shadows suggest movement beyond the dusty Venetian blinds.

Marley is playing his reggae music when Lorraine arrives unexpectedly back to the flat on the fourth day. Her stomach is cramped with spasmodic period pains and the hotel housekeeper, taking pity on her, has given her the rest of the day off. She fills a hot-water bottle and lies on the sofa. From next door the beat of a calypso drum thumps heavy as a hammer against her head. To love Adrian Strong and not to be loved in return – that is all she has gained from a summer in London. Swamped in misery she goes to the bathroom in search of tablets.

The door is closed. Inside, someone is sobbing, the sound audible now that Lorraine has moved away from the reggae beat. She opens the door and stares at Virginia’s huddled figure weeping against the side of the bath. The bath is old-fashioned with claw legs and a chipped surface that was never cleaned until Lorraine moved in. Virginia’s hair is no longer spiky, just greasy and defeated, and her eyes, when she looks upwards in shock, are ringed with streaked mascara.