Love Your Enemies (12 page)

The toilets were empty. She chose one of the two cubicles and locked herself in. She was glad that she had opted to wear a skirt and sheer stockings for easier access.

Inserting the Dual Balls gave her a feeling of youthful mischievousness, as though she were one of the children in school doing something secretive and wrong like puffing on a cigarette.

The Dual Balls felt cold, bulky and stupid. She pulled the string that switched them on. In her hyper-sensitive state the buzzing of the Balls seemed like the violent crashing of cymbals. Although the toilets were empty apart from herself, she coughed loudly with embarrassment to try and hide the initial shock of the sound.

After a few moments of acclimatization Selina rearranged her clothing and stepped out of the cubicle. The balls felt like an inordinately large blue-bottle whizzing around, lost inside her knickers. She took a few experimental steps around by the sinks – where she fastidiously washed her hands – and the Dual Balls stayed firmly in place. She breathed a sigh of relief, then steeled her resolve and nerve as she headed for the door.

Once out in the corridor, surrounded by screaming, sweaty, excitable, break-enjoying children, Selina was able to relax.
She felt less furtive and guilty out in the public sphere. She reached her classroom without misadventure; though her variation on a John Wayne swagger may easily have aroused interest in any but a child’s mind. She pushed open her classroom door and went in.

Her heart sank. Sitting in the front row of desks, dead centre, was Felicity Barrow.

Smiling broadly, Felicity said, ‘Oh good, Selina. I was just about to give up my search and return to the staff room.’

Selina’s entire body felt stiff and immobile; only the Dual Balls continued on moving naturally inside her. She tried to negotiate the walk to her desk as freely and casually as possible. To distract Felicity’s attention she said, ‘Lovely day isn’t it?’, and pointed towards the window. Felicity turned towards the window and stared out through it at the blue sky. ‘Yes, it is lovely.’

She was pleased that Selina was trying to be friendly. Selina took these few seconds’ leeway to trot over to her desk and plop herself down on to her hard wooden chair. She noisily cleared her throat so that Felicity’s silent contemplation of the day’s glory wouldn’t emphasize the jubilant buzzing of the Dual Balls. Felicity’s gaze returned to Selina’s face. ‘You’re looking very well, Selina, if I may say so, very bright.’ Selina smiled. ‘I think I’m actually just a bit warm. Perhaps I should take my blazer off.’

She performed this simple action with as much ‘involved noise’ as possible, concluding with the scraping up of her chair closer to the table. Her hands were shaking slightly, so she took hold of a pencil and tapped out a tiny, slight rhythm with it on the table top.

Felicity watched these adjustments very closely, then said, ‘You seem unusually tense today, Selina, any particular reason?’

Selina shrugged. Inside she was boiling with embarrassment and unease but she endeavoured not to let this show.
‘I don’t know, Felicity. I feel all right really, just a bit, I don’t know, a bit frustrated, rudderless …’

She didn’t really know what she was saying, but after she had said it she felt as though she was talking about sex, as though she was an actress in a dirty blue film. She pinched herself and blinked her eyes, then looked over at Felicity.

Felicity was still smiling at her. ‘Maybe you’re upset about all that ridiculous gossip that was circulating this weekend?’

Selina was still recovering from the tingling pain of her self-inflicted pinch. The pain seemed rather arousing, and the discomfort too. She asked automatically, ‘What gossip?’

Felicity’s cheeks reddened slightly. She had hoped that Selina would have been willing to make this conversation easy and unembarrassing. She cleared her throat and to hide her discomfort adjusted the position of her hearing aid in her ear. ‘Apparently someone has been spreading a rumour about … about your purported use of sexual stimulants during school time.’

Selina’s face flushed violently and her jaw went slack, ‘I … I don’t know what to say Felicity. What can I say?’

At that moment in time she felt as though her head was clouding over, clouding up, as though she were in a plane that was going through turbulent clouds. She felt quite willing to admit to everything.

Whatever doubts had clouded Felicity’s mind evaporated immediately when she saw the strength of Selina’s reaction. She had expected Selina to keep her cool and to utter a cold, cynical, stinging reply. Instead her reply was so unguarded and natural, so loose and out of character, almost intimate, that Felicity could not stop herself from smiling warmly at her. ‘Of course I knew it was untrue. I just thought you should be aware of the kind of things that a couple of nasty people are saying.’

Selina couldn’t meet Felicity’s gaze. She looked down at
her desk and tried to call on an inner reserve of strength. Unfortunately this moment of introspection only re-emphasized in her mind the furtive activities of the Dual Balls. She was so tense that her body had become extremely dynamic and excitable. The hard wooden chair wasn’t helping matters either. She shuddered, and suddenly her brain felt like sherbet.

The strength of Selina’s reaction made Felicity’s heart twist in sympathy. She bit her lip for a moment and said nervously, ‘Selina, I’m sorry. I didn’t think that this would affect you so badly.’

Selina felt as though she was on a roller-coaster ride. She said, ‘I feel as though I’m on a roller-coaster ride, Felicity. I don’t know what to say.’

She was all gaspy and uncontrolled, her insides churning with a sort of ecastatic violence. In the silence of the room she heard herself breathing heavily. Felicity sat quietly, saying nothing.

After a minute or so Selina began to gasp. She was totally out of control. She threw her head down on the table and shuddered until the shudders turned into enormous, violent, gasping, wracking howls.

Felicity froze. She had never seen such a forthright display of uninhibited emotion before and from, of all people, Selina Mitchell. She felt a terrible sense of guilt that she should have provoked such a display, but also a sense of pride that Selina should have chosen to share this wild moment of release and abandon with her, Felicity. She stood up and went over to Selina’s side and placed a gentle hand on her back which she moved up and down, up and down, as though comforting a small child or burping a baby.

Selina felt Felicity’s hand massaging her back but felt too far gone to respond coherently. She just said, ‘Oh God, oh no, oh my!’

Felicity moved her hand from Selina’s back and grasped hold of one of her hands. She said, ‘Selina, listen to me. This
isn’t as bad as it seems to you. It doesn’t affect the respect and regard that I have for your teaching abilities. You are one of my best members of staff, in fact you are my very best member of staff.’

Selina heard Felicity’s words but their sounds washed over her and made very little sense. She was at the edge of a precipice and in the next moment she was falling, flailing, floating. Her ears tingled as the wind rushed by. She steeled herself for a crash landing, but instead her landing was cushioned by a million feather eiderdowns, each as soft as a poodle’s belly. Everything solidified again.

Felicity was pleased to note that after a minute or so her piece of encouragement had appeared to get through to Selina. She was calming down. After a while her breathing returned to normal and she raised her head slightly from the desk. Several seconds later she said quietly, ‘Felicity, I feel terrible about this, but it was just out of my control. I feel so embarrassed.’

Felicity clucked her tongue and shook her head, ‘Don’t be silly, Selina. I know how these things build up. I’m just glad that you were able to let go of all that anguish and to share it with me.’

Selina felt as though she was floating in the Red Sea, lifted above the water by the sodium chloride, the sea like a big marshmallow. She blinked several times and sat up straight. She noticed that Felicity was still holding her hand. She smiled at Felicity and said, ‘Things have been building up inside me for a long time. I feel so much better now, so buoyant.’

Felicity gave Selina’s hand one final squeeze and then let go. She said, ‘I know that you are a very controlled person, Selina. I’ve known you for most of your life and you’ve never let your emotions rule your head. I think you very much deserved this opportunity to vent your feelings.’

Selina was now fully recovered. She felt stupid but also surprisingly smug. She said, ‘I hope you don’t think that this
silly outburst will have any bearing on my discipline and dignity before my classes.’ Felicity shook her head. ‘I know that I can always rely on you, Selina. I’m certainly quite positive that you are an indispensable asset to this school.’

Inside Felicity’s head an idea was turning. It was as though a light had been switched on or the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle snapped into place. She said, ‘Trust me, Selina, you have a great future ahead of you at this school. I’m going to see to that.’

Selina began to smile. She said, ‘Felicity, you’ve been very kind and very understanding. Thank you.’

Felicity shrugged, ‘It was nothing. Now clear up your face. Here’s a tissue. A bit of spit and polish should do the job.’

Selina took the proffered tissue and applied it to her running mascara. Felicity walked towards the door. ‘This has been an invaluable chat, Selina.’

Selina nodded and pushed her hair behind her ears, ‘It has, Felicity, and thanks again.’

Felicity smiled and opened the door. Before she closed it behind her, however, she turned and said somewhat distractedly, ‘I’m sorry to rush off like this, Selina, but my hearing aid is playing me up. I think it’s dust or the batteries. It’s been driving me mad with its buzzing for the last fifteen minutes or so.’

Selina smiled. ‘That’s all right.’

As the door closed, she stuffed Felicity’s tissue into her mouth and bit down hard.

A story for Manuel

This story is about two people who talk to each other. One of them is dying. The dying man is called John. The girl is Melissa. Melissa works in a clothes shop. They become friends.

John cradled his head in his hands and said, almost to himself, ‘I can’t believe I’m dying. I’m only thirty-four. I feel so fucking helpless.’

The doctor stood behind him and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. The hand felt like a vice, like the vice of death, closing in on him, tightening. He left the hospital and went shopping.

Shopping was his excuse. It was his way of expressing how he felt. Throughout his thirty-four years he had knowingly frittered away his wages – earned through selling advertising space in newspapers – at shops in the centre of London. Oxford Street was his Mecca, Regent Street his Lourdes. He simply adored Liberty’s but felt ashamed of this adoration. It seemed dangerously effeminate to enjoy looking at bottles of preserves, bits of jewellery, pyjamas and ties, crockery and glass, so, so much.

At home he had five tea sets and three complete dinner services, although he rarely entertained. He was too busy shopping to make friends, too busy feeling ashamed about expressing himself solely through this act of exchange.

He was bright. At school he had been encouraged in both the arts and the sciences. Yet his favourite lesson had always been woodwork. When he was fourteen he had built a bookshelf entirely under his own steam and had received top marks for his initiative and effort. When he was fourteen. Now he
was thirty-four and sold advertising space for a living and was dying and had a small rented house in Mile End and had no one to love him.

He owned lots of things. He had many suits, records, books, bits of sculpture and ornamentation dotted liberally around on the tables and shelves in his front room at home. A beautiful three-piece suite. He even had a dishwasher.

As he walked along Charing Cross Road, thinking about buying some books as a distraction, placing his hand in his pocket to feel the money, various coins and notes pressed next to his thigh, the thought popped into his head that he had done nothing with his life. The things he had bought would stay in the house when he died. They would either be sold or left. Who would want them? All the things he had bought, all those hours spent searching and queuing and working and earning and buying. All for nothing.

He veered a sharp left into Boots and picked up some shaving cream – made with coconut and honey – and stood by the counter with a five-pound-note in his hand. The girl behind the till had a badge on her lapel which read,

She took the shaving cream, put it into a bag and said, ‘That’s three pounds twenty please.’

She looked into the man’s eyes. He was young, early thirties, with brown hair and a thin face. High cheekbones. His hand was shaking. She put out her hand to receive his money and he said, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this. I have so many kinds of shaving cream at home. I’ve just been told that I’m dying, and my immediate reaction is to go out and buy shaving cream.’

He put his hand to his chin which was well shaven. Sandra watched him as his eyes filled with tears. She pulled her hand
back and said, ‘Don’t buy this then. Go home and rest. You’re probably still in a state of shock.’

The man wiped his eyes and smiled shakily. He offered her the money and said, ‘I can’t change the habits of a lifetime.’

She gave him his change and he thanked her.

When John got home he thought about telephoning his mother, who lived in Blackpool, to tell her his news. But each time he reached for the telephone his mouth went dry and he began to shake and sweat. It wasn’t so much the idea of actually physically telling her that was so upsetting as the idea of how the news might affect her. He didn’t want to interrupt whatever she was doing with the sharp ring of the phone and then to stutter some words at her about him, her son, dying. He couldn’t do it. After some thought he resolved to write her a letter instead. There was something very complete and formal in the act of writing and receiving a letter. He also decided to write to his ex-girlfriend who had emigrated to Australia three years before. They were the only two people that he could think of to inform. The letters took an age to compose, but eventually it was done and he sat in front of the television and fell asleep with the remote control still in his hand.

There is a shop in west Soho patronized by the fashion-conscious, a glossy, gaudy bauble of a shop full of bright one-off designs, flamboyant jewellery and T-shirts with slogans on them that cost half a week’s wages each. Melissa worked in this shop, and she loved it. Two of them worked there; Melissa and Steve. Steve was gay, funny, sharp and always wore imported Nike tracksuits. Melissa wore whatever she could afford with red lipstick and her short hair greased back, slicked back like a seal.

Melissa had studied fashion at college for a couple of years and Steve had been at art school. They were great friends. As with all high-fashion establishments, a certain amount of ironic exchange between the staff members concerning various
customers was the order of the day. Melissa and Steve were about as bitchy and intimidating a team as it was possible to be. Much of their day was consumed by tasks like tea- and coffee-making, selecting and changing music tapes and trying on any of the new clothes that came into the shop before hanging them up in the designated way.

Steve would often be seen lolling on the till reading
The Age of Reason, Nausea
, or anything else by Sartre that took his fancy. Melissa read
Vogue
and
Elle
.

When they were especially bored they played games. One of the games was called ‘Power Sell’. Steve had invented this game. The rules were that you had to sell a previously selected item – usually whatever was either the most expensive or the most gaudy and outrageous item in the shop – to the very next person that walked in after a selected time. No matter how small, large, fat, thin, tall, the person was, it had to be a particular item in a particular size. If after Power Selling an item they managed to secure a deal, then the other person bought lunch that day.

Another game they played that Melissa had invented was called ‘Guess or Gush’. This game involved one of them agreeing to attempt to guess the profession of the next customer that came into the shop. After speaking to the person for a few seconds – ‘May I help you? We have these in yellow and brown’ – they would then walk to the till and write their ideas down on a scrap of paper. Next, the person who wasn’t guessing would read the slip and approach the customer saying something like, ‘Excuse me for being nosy, but don’t you work (for example) in a hardware shop?’ If the answer was affirmative then the person who had made the correct choice didn’t have to make any tea or coffee for the next few days. If they were wrong, however, a penalty had to be paid, a kind of forfeit, and they were obliged to be degradingly obsequious to the customer, to gush and flatter. This forfeit was perceived as being highly humiliating by both of them.
Steve always became extremely camp and hilarious under this sort of obligatory social pressure. Melissa would blush and rub the end of her nose self-consciously; a habit she had developed in her early teens.

In many ways this vulnerability made her much more endearing than she otherwise might be. She idealized some of the other hard-faced women that she knew who worked (in whatever capacity) in the fashion industry. At heart however she was just a big softy. Steve would often say this to her and would make it sound just about as complimentary as if she’d had bad breath. He’d put on a false Northern accent and say, ‘Oooh! Our Lisa, you’re a right big softy, you are,’ and chuck her on the chin ever so gently.

At the heart of Melissa’s character was a fundamental conflict, a paradox. Although she loved her life and what she had hitherto made of it – going to clubs with friends, knowing people who wrote for
The Face
, dropping names, spending money on clothes and, as Steve put it, ‘Having a laff’ – she felt as though at the centre of her life something very important was missing. There was a void, a space where her heart worked, a feeling of emptiness that she felt incapable of changing. She could be happy but never replete. The happiness came and went. It always depended on so much, and so much was random. She regularly wondered whether unhappiness – perhaps that is too strong a word for it – indifference, was simply a part of the human condition, the human make-up.

When she was fourteen she had tried to become a Catholic, wearing a crucifix and going to Mass. Eventually though, her fervour had faded and she’d laughed at herself and had felt foolish for wanting to belong. It was as though God, in his Catholic incarnation, had momentarily been an excuse, an alternative to sincerity or self awareness. God had not been Love, he had been a make-believe figure synonymous with passion and yet not passion. A cypher.

Whenever she concentrated too hard or too long on these
dissatisfied thoughts – her inner sense of frustration and bewilderment – and became overwhelmingly maudlin as a consequence, Steve would take her out for a special lunch and have what he called ‘One of Our Serious Chats’.

Although he was fond of Melissa he firmly believed that she was misguidedly intense. To him she seemed like a person caught in some sort of moral breakdown; as if there had been a kind of mental short circuit between her desires and her will. It was a complex idea but he endeavoured to explain it to her. He’d say, ‘Think of it this way, Melissa. It’s as though you are guided by a very strict and orthodox moral scheme, well, not so much guided because you don’t act on it. I mean, it’s as if your personality has been formed in a very precise way – you have a clear, lucid idea of right and wrong – yet nothing in your behaviour exhibits this belief. You are sincere, but your life isn’t.’

Invariably Melissa would pick at her side salad and look confused. Eventually Steve would talk himself into circles and by the end of the meal he’d be saying, ‘God, my life’s such a mess. I’m so frivolous, just a bundle of pretentions and intentions. Ignore everything I’ve said. Have fun!’

At the mention of fun Melissa’s heart would sink and she’d wonder if she could ever be happy. Steve would pay the bill and wonder whether he’d end up joining the Moonies.

The morning after his appointment at the hospital was a Tuesday. John resolved to phone in sick and take the day off work to sort himself out. He panicked at the idea of leaving work altogether though, because the days and weeks ahead of him were like an empty beach and his tide was coming in ever so surely but ever so slowly.

After telephoning he put on a jacket and picked up his letters. He wanted to post them straight away. He’d decided over breakfast that it must be easier to die if a selected number of people knew about it in advance. He hated the idea of
keeping the knowledge of his illness inside him like an internal bruise, invisible but painful. He wanted a talking cure, or at least a talking cessation.

Because the weather was relatively fine he decided to walk a longer route to the post office. On his way he passed a school and two churches. As he passed by them he thought, ‘I’ll never be able to have children of my own. I’ll not know God before I die. I won’t come to terms with my life. I won’t grow older and wiser and resigned.’

By the time he’d reached the Post Office he had listed fifty-seven things that he would never be able to do. He stood in the queue and touched the partition rope with the tips of his fingers, deep in thought. In front of him were several old women and a couple of old men. It was pension day. He thought, ‘I’ll never collect my pension.’

He tried to cheer himself up by thinking, ‘Maybe everyone has lists of things they’ll never do with their lives. In my case I just have a shorter time to compile my list. Some people have long, empty lives and all they ever do is to think about what it is that they haven’t done.’

Even so, his eyes felt wet. The line was gradually getting shorter. In front of him most people were watching the larger television advertising screen at the front of the queue which spouted out adverts for life insurance and special stamp collecting deals. John watched the screen and tried not to think.

After a few minutes the screen went blank and the words
DEATH WITH DIGNITY
appeared in bold, square, white letters. The image of a sad old woman emerged out of the blackness; she stared out at the queue with a desperate expression. She had dying eyes. John thought, ‘I wonder if my eyes look like that now.’

A disembodied voice came out of the television. It said, ‘Do you want to be a burden on your friends, family and loved ones when you die? No? Well then, why not prepare in advance?’ Again
DEATH WITH DIGNITY
emerged over the image of the
old woman. The letters sucked all colour from the screen and shrouded themselves in a funeral black backdrop.

John said the words to himself and they sounded so corny when he said them, like some silly, rhyming cliché coined to encapsulate the situation he now faced. They made him feel cheap and stupid.

The words faded again and the old woman’s face reappeared. As her face came into focus this time, however, it broke into a smile. The camera moved to concentrate on her hand. In it she held a document. At the top of the document were the words
DEATH WITH DIGNITY
. Again the disembodied voice said, ‘Why not prepare in advance? Pay for your funeral now, make your own choices, and we will deal with it in the future. Pick up a leaflet at the counter.’

A shutter came down inside John’s head. He felt a sense of enormous negative power, an annihilating vigour. The next thing he knew he was out in the sunshine again and the letters were in his pocket, unstamped, unposted.

He stood still awhile, his head tilted towards the watery sun which shone on to his face and felt almost as though it had ironed out all the creases in his expression, all the lines and tiny crinkles. His first comprehensible thoughts were, ‘It’s not going to be like that for me. I’m not going to invest in my death as though it were simply another item, another purchase to be mulled over and paid for. It has to mean more than that.’