Seahorses Are Real (22 page)

Thirteen

She was waiting for him though when he came through the door in the light of early morning. Nobody in their right mind could possibly be up still except the night owls, the barn owls, insomniacs and Felix the next-door and very conceited cat who prinked for pilchards in the dew. Even Jason had gone to bed, wrapped up in his golden fleece no doubt and dreaming of landscapes and picture hooks. It was foolish, she knew, to stand barefoot on top of the stairs like a little old vengeful Victorian ghost in a white cotton nightdress when he was suited and thick booted, drunken, drawling, brawling and crawling his way back home... but she had risen – oh yes, she'd risen alright – like a christ from the tomb, like the vapours from a malodorous old sacrificial swamp where they might once have thrown victims, horse-shoes, pork pies and gimleted goblets to appease the heathen gods. What gods? What gods? They'd let her down once too often those gods. Let 'em play their little games of trivial pursuit with suns and moons, earths and archangels, heavens and hells. She had her own little weapon right here behind her back, not to use but to threaten, to protect herself for when he saw his guitar. His guitar! She felt a faint stab of fear when she thought of what he would do when he saw his guitar. She should never have broken it, though he deserved it – music was real: it screamed, laughed, made love, went on picnics.... (As a child she'd thought she was trapped behind the bars of a musical score like some sort of Alcatraz; and one fine day they might bend like elastic and she would escape.) She should never have broken his guitar. She felt as though she were gliding on ice again as he came relentlessly up the stairs,
:|| :||
a faraway look in his hazelnut eyes.

‘I got your guitar to fit in the end,' she remarked almost rationally as he pushed his way past her, stinking of alcohol and cigarette smoke. ‘It fits perfectly now, you'll see, so you can go now, can't you.' She followed him into the kitchen, hands clutching the knife behind her back, and watched him blundering about the place, pouring himself a glass of water, peeling a banana. There was a look of sullen resentment in his eyes and she felt a dim fury rising up in her. Who the hell did he think he was, coming back here right as rain, nice as pie, without so much as a hint of an apology, stuffing down his glass of water, guzzling his banana in such a nonchalant manner. My god, he deserved worse than a broken guitar.

‘So you can go now, can't you,' she carried on in a whine, knowing she was talking gibberish, ‘now that I've got your guitar to
fit
.'

The word ‘holocaust' spun through her head (in an effort to defuse the intensity of their small pathetic domestic crisis) but she dismissed it with a shudder. It had no business here. It didn't belong. Nothing belonged here. Everything in the flat proclaimed that nothing belonged... which was why the mould drew manholes and hollyhocks, sunflowers, giraffes, penises, little weasels on the ceiling, like some young scamp of a poltergeist practising his artwork... which was why the rats ran riot in the kitchen, under the skirting board, abseiled down from the cornices no doubt in an effort to get at the cookie jar (He's a bachelor rat at the moment, David had laughed in the beginning, but soon he'll find Mrs Right Rat and then we'll be in trouble!)... which was why the blue magnetic butterfly sat upside down on the heater, its wings heading for earth. She stared at his raisin and hazelnut eyes, half closed as he gulped his banana and a little voice inside whispered: please just hold me, hold me and say it doesn't matter, nothing matters, the broken guitar, the sadness, evil and rottenness.... Say we can get our plane ticket out of here bareback into the waves, run away from this little grey wounded street. Please take my hand and say we can fly away if we dare to, fly away if we dare….

‘You bitch!' He'd seen it. He'd seen it across the hall­way, sticking out of the rucksack like the jagged stem of the old oak tree that had fallen in a bad November storm. He put down his glass and raced through to the sitting room, she following at his heels like a little old familiar, muttering inanely as she went. ‘That's what'll happen if you keep running away from things.'

His eyes were full of agony, of anguish and he crouched down, almost cradling the guitar in his arms, his finger tips touching the flayed strings, bashed-up wood, fingers that had teased her hair, cupped her face. ‘Fuck it all,' he mumbled under his breath, rocking back and forth a little unsteadily. ‘Fuck it all, fuck it all...'

She towered above him, half guilty, half gloating to see him hurting, hurting as bad as she had done. ‘It was rubbish anyway,' she muttered defiantly, leaning over him, hands behind her back.

‘Fuck you!' He suddenly grabbed the guitar, making her jump, lifted it and bashed it against the side of the table; it croaked and groaned like the old oak tree must have done when the lightning struck it. He bashed it again. And again and again, almost dementedly.

‘Leave it alone,' Marly ordered, furiously upset to see him continuing where she left off. It was all very well for her to hurt the guitar, but for him to come drunken drawling brawling crawling his way up the stairs and start bashing the guitar to bits, disturbing the street and Jason asleep in his fleece, enraged her almost beyond belief. You didn't shout and carry on like that where she came from. You didn't wash your dirty linen in the middle of the night for all to see; you brushed it under the carpet for the rats, shoved it deep deep down inside, put on the mask with little eyelets for the eyes (which was why she knew that the stone cold faces are the ones that are feeling).

‘Leave it alone,' she hissed again, enraged at this violence out of her control. She made a grab for the guitar and the knife slipped from her fingers, clattering over the table and onto the floor with a dull soft thud… … David stared at it in astonishment then picked it up… and the look in his fruit and nut chocolate eyes was unrecognisable.

Marly backed towards the door, like a little old vengeful ghost, barefoot in a white Victorian nightdress. ‘Use your mouth not your fists,' she taunted him. Even when he had the upper hand she still taunted him sometimes because her tongue was the only weapon she had left. ‘Coward, bully… I know you're incapable of it but try and use your mouth not your fists.'

She was gliding on ice again when he pushed her against the wall and stabbed around her head, digging up the grubby little flowers in the wallpaper. (Lightning-quick yet oh so slow.) It was a bit like one of those circus tricks where they throw knives around a woman, leaving her outline there for all to see or cut her in half into separate boxes then put her back together again. Everybody claps and cheers. It's a nice day out for the kids apparently. Doves come out of hats. Cards disappear down somebody's ear. Everybody fooled by the illusion, the magic; the conjured epiphany. How easy it was to be fooled by the illusion, thought Marly, the illusion of peace, of love, of contentment... those moments, those moments that had stuck like stars in her memory, those beautiful, soft, shining moments, they were the illusion. This was reality. This, this, this was the reality: this pain, this hatred, this fury. This was the forever-now eternity.

‘You're fucked,' he shouted then in her ear right next to the flowers. (
Picking flowers she'd been taken. He'd swooped right out of the blue.
) ‘You're fucked and you want to fuck everyone else up as well. It's always about you... what
you're
thinking, what
you're
feeling, never mind anyone else. Oh but then, I forgot, it's always more of a struggle for you isn't it… it's always that bit more of a struggle for you.'

She stood, dumbfounded, at these words pouring out of him, these words pouring out of him in the light of early morning, in the dim religious light of an early December morning (she was quite safe here in that dim religious light. Wasn't she, wasn't she? Fuck the gods, fuck the gods... just two simple humans battling it out in spit and blood, much larger than gods, much louder than gods.)

‘You treat me like shit and then you want me to talk! Jesus H Christ, you expect me to talk after that... talk talk talk,' he almost screamed it. His voice was almost a scream. (
Sometimes music sounds like screaming. Have you ever heard Bluebeard's Judith screaming? Have you ever heard a man or a leveret screaming?
) ‘You're poison, d'you know that. You turn everything to poison.'

Oh yes, she knew that. She knew about the poison. It dripped out of her like rain drips from a dirty gutter. She could fill a vast array of colourful, haunting, glass-blown bottles with her little drops of poison. Poison to eat me with, drink me with, sleep me with, fuck me with... she sank down, out of his grasp, onto the carpet, muttering a little acidly, for she hadn't quite given in yet, ‘Oh don't be so melodramatic. For goodness sake, David, don't be so melodramatic!'

It was like a red rag to a bull and she watched with an almost bitter satisfaction as he charged off round the room, slashing anything in sight: his shirt, the curtains, a cushion, the armchair. Half of her watched with bitter satisfaction as he blundered drunkenly round the room while the other half sat (in a separate box) still, tiny and quiet as a mouse whispering ‘What have I done to him? What have I done to him?'

After a long, long time of waiting and of silence, interrupted only by his spasms of dry sobbing, she looked up. Dawn must have been breaking for little flecks of light poked horribly through the curtains, illuminating the bare, torn remnants of the room. Her eye travelled slowly over the slashed and broken objects and every time she saw something special that was ruined she felt a sudden burst of anger bubble up then subside. She was still a strange mix of fury and sadness, each emotion chasing the other like dogs their tails, but she was at least free from physical pain. The knife hadn't touched her: it had caught her hair, pulled at her clothes but she had come out of it all unscathed, like one of those magic tricks, like the women who left behind their outline in knives. At last, with great difficulty, she brought her eyes up to David.

He sat, his shirt in tatters, at the end of the sofa, still shaking and clinging to a cushion. His stomach was streaked in blood where the knife had cut into him and a new patch of psoriasis had spread from his upper chest. (It hadn't been like that a few weeks ago. Surely it hadn't been like that a few weeks ago?) His fingers twisted an end of the cushion into a sharp point which every now and again he scraped against his left palm; his hair stood up away from his head in receding wintry curls. (It hadn't been like that a few months ago. Surely it hadn't been like that a few months ago?) Marly felt a faint fluttering of terror in her heart and she rubbed her bare feet in alarm as if to inject some energy into them, then jumped up suddenly and started pacing up and down in front of him, clapping her hands together for warmth.

‘Brr, it's nippy,' she remarked jovially in an effort to bring some sort of normality back to the room or at the very least break the terrifying silence. ‘My goodness it's cold!'

She was full of pity and compassion now for the man who sat in front of her, shaking and clutching a cushion. It came to her suddenly that it was her friend who sat with his stomach daubed in blood and psoriasis. Her friend! Her friend who loved her, protected her; did almost everything for her except go along with her dreams. Her beautiful, beautiful, brave best friend.(To my brave best friend, someone had written on a bouquet for her mother, though she never found out who.) What on earth had she done to her friend?

‘Cor blimey, it's nipsome!' she grinned, wriggled, pulled faces for him. ‘It's enough to nip your toes off, aint it?'

He managed to muster a flickering smile in response, a ghost of a smile, a faint hieroglyph of a smile; and her heart was suddenly her own again. She raced over to him, wrapped her arms about him, buried her face in the winter grey curls. ‘I love you... I'm so sorry... I love you, you know.'

After a few moments' hesitation – which she noted and deep down was troubled by – he hugged her back. ‘I'm sorry too. I love you too.'

‘It doesn't matter about going away... we can stay here, we'll be alright here.' She was all concessions now. Now that she had broken him, brought him to his knees, her love for him was overwhelming. She rained little kisses down on his head, hard and fast as pebbles. ‘We'll be alright, won't we...?'

He pressed her close, rocked her back and forth as they crouched awkwardly together on the end of the sofa. Deep shudders still racked his body and she shushed him gently as if he were a child, patting down the stand-up curls for they frightened her a little. ‘There now, there now, it's alright now….'

‘I'm not helping you, am I?' he suddenly burst out, clasping her tighter than ever. ‘I'm just hurting you. I'm not helping you am I.'

‘Course you are!' She pushed at him roughly to show him how wrong he was. ‘You're brilliant, you're fabulous, you're the best!' She rained a few more kisses down on his head for emphasis, though it flitted through her mind that every time she broke him down he took a little longer to rebuild.

‘I'll end up killing you,' he muttered darkly, holding her quite still, ‘or going doolally.'

She laughed outright then. It was ridiculous to think of him doing either of those things, killing her or going doolally, as he put it. He wasn't the type. He was her cross-legged beaming buddha, all crinkly eyes, cheesy grins and pork pie chins. ‘Don't be so silly,' she squealed, planting a stern kiss on his forehead. ‘Of course you won't!'