The Blue Book (21 page)

And it made sense. It did. It seemed a beauty.

Although I was not exactly at my most coherent: lack of sleep – presence of love.

And next I'm stealing my dad's secrets, palming them,
adapting, learning my new lessons on most nights – clean nights.

Leastways, they stayed clean until I was alone. Then less so.

But I could have just had sex with him – it's not as if we couldn't have started if I'd asked. I believe that's the case. But I waited. I didn't try for months. No obstacles then, and nothing wrong with me, not especially – I was only angry, justifiably, furious about things that were appalling. I cared about him, but also about strangers. I wanted to help. I was getting my education so I could help.

And I knew – start love with Arthur and it wouldn't be controlled. I'd get lost in it. We both would.

Ecstasy.

Nobody actually wants that.

So we restricted ourselves to lessons and structure and practice – hands with hands and hands in hands and thinking leaned in against thinking.

And we had the code – the simple one – our first code.

1 – Please listen

2 – Man

3 – Loss

4 – Child

Easy.

When she reaches it, the door to the upper air feels locked, there is such a weight of gale against it. Beth has to lean in, shoulder the glossy wood, manage a final shove when the pressure eases and lets her barrel into a merciless space. For a moment she can't see, can't breathe, is simply held – the shock of weather, its beautiful offence prevents thought – and then this joy comes, this immense, horrific pleasure in every gust that comes at her like a big dog, that flattens her clothes to her body in a knock, that maddens her hair, that can hammock around her in any direction, every direction, and push her, draw her, stumble her where it likes and the sky is above her and swooping to each horizon, a howl of blue: a tall, fierce ache of blue and its clouds in lines, in streamers, banners, dazzles, flares – it is all alive and makes her laugh.

Better.

Best.

In the end, you seek them out – your ecstasies. The ones that you can bear.

The deck dry underfoot and light, shining as if it's been bleached by sheer speed and the shuttering sun.

She stands and rests against it all, turns her neck to let it be touched, closes her eyes.

5 – Help

6 – Betrayal

7 – Love

8 – Accident

The useful words, they had to be numbered to let us work them as we'd wish. Five steps, eight breaths, six seconds of silence after Art steepled his fingers together – we had endless variations. A word could repeat and repeat and repeat and give you loss underneath its own meaning, a stranger's little gift. Whatever we said, thought,
did, the numbers ran through it, illuminated, were additionally generous, complicated.

In the end, I'd wonder how people spoke without them. As if we were normal and everyone else was too small. And both of us in the same beat, in this invisible motion. Can't think of the hours that we spent in his bed-sit counting – silent and marking the time until we were always synchronous.

As if we had one pulse.

But anyone can do it, if they want to be peculiar enough.

9 – Pain

10 – Now

11 – Fear

12 – Work

13 – Sex

And on and on and on and you don't get
Woman
until
20
, up with the reassurances and compliments –
Brave
,
Artistic
,
Honest
,
Forgiven
– the treats.

We did give them treats.

We.

Us.

We were the people who understood:
1
is
Please listen
– and later we made it
Look At Me
– but also it was
the first thing to think of
which is
death
and
a passage of time
– in
time
we all do get our
death
and then
time passes
beyond others'
deaths
–
and fuck me, the pair of us started to operate like this, we had to, hopping about from thought to thought for the punters, from word to work to number to symbol to –
time
is a
watch
– you may be getting the code for
watch
, so you'll imagine it in your hand, coddle it in the mind's fingers – or else announce its status as a messenger to your audience, if required – or picture it pointing to particular numbers, if you'd like: it can mean you'll remember them, group them together, a set of coded details you fit to an enquirer, something to keep you steady through a long sitting, or in case the punter ever comes back – for another sitting, that is: you don't expect to hear from beyond their graves – or else you can allow it to be just a
watch
, the enquirer's own
watch
– so many people have a
watch
– even if they use the clock on their mobile phone, that's like a
watch
– you can tell them about their
watch
– or their phone – or their kitchen clock – or how their years are passing – or their loved one's, lost one's
watch
– as you talk to them, you can feed them anything, change, qualify, redefine – and
watch
is also
Now, can you
. . . slip in ‘Now, can you . . .' – Arthur can tease any sentence apart and make it fit – and he'll mean a
watch
– and
1
is the symbol of
a man standing in a doorway
and, ‘I'm seeing
a man standing in a doorway
. Does that mean anything, can you think?' – an eloquent image to start, adaptable, the punters will interpret it to please them – and my whole head packed with this, streaming with, ‘A dream of rising upwards and a door number which is important and has a 2 in it and a death, a passing that took place on or near to a special occasion, that happened close to something like a birthday or an anniversary . . .' Frowning into the middle distance – the place where observers assume all this shit is stored.

And on

And on

And on

It doesn't go away – my head's still caked inside with the arithmetic of lying.

The deck isn't empty, not completely. There's a woman in a flying raincoat standing behind the funnel, a couple attempting to walk. Everyone, Beth included, is grinning.

Weather junkies. We love it, want the shake, the being so kindly defeated by what could kill us – it doesn't know us, doesn't notice, but it feels like playing, like something big taking an interest in us, paying attention – as if we could influence nature by catching its eye. It makes us comfortably tiny and hugely important, both at once – like being kids again.

We're up here, leaning against nothing we can see and willing it into more than physics: inventing a story – a scene where we rough and tumble with an attentive and jovial reality. We're people, and people do that: we live in stories.

I have the story of my family, my mum, my dad, my health, my shameful and redeeming and unforgivable acts – the story of who I am and wanted to be and could be and never will and never tried and failed to be.

I have the story of my good, clean, honourable country where I live – not perfect, but what's perfect? – not perfect, but not the purgatory in newspaper horror stories – not perfect, but not the shallow paradise in television wealthporn stories – not perfect, but not the comforting, smothering, jealous and noble stories of the fucked-up past – not perfect, but not the threatening, beautiful, beckoning, stupid, pain- and death-free stories of the fucked-up future that anyone will tell you if they
want you to do something for them: to buy, to vote, to die, to kill, to believe, to torment beyond believing – not perfect at all.

I have the story of my present: the
here
and the
is
: me on a patch of somewhere arbitrary and the hugeness of each unprotected moment under its racing sky. A beautiful and terrifying story.

All fucking stories: what makes us nice, what makes us talk, what lets us recognise ourselves, touch others, be touched ourselves, trust loves – the fucking stories.

And they're what works the magic: the hard-core, bone-deep, fingers in your pages and wearing your skin and fucking you magic – that magic. Inside and out.

What he gave me – the power to be in other people's stories.

Something I took to as hard as he did.

He didn't make me, lead me astray. I adored it as much as he did and as much as him.

And the raw air screams, sings, cries, rocks her in place, keeps her looking at the furrowing ocean, the ways it breaks and mends and breaks and mends itself. Stare long enough, you see things: heads, rocks, wreckage, darknesses, fins.

First time out and doing a platform gig I wasn't scared. It was a way to be us – I could be him and he could be me – and, just before we started, Art turned as he stood up from the table and he faced me – back to the audience and shielding me, and he let us look, have that serious look –
here we are and working, nobody like us when we're working, when we're hot as fuck
–
and he almost smiles, parts and might begin to lick his lips, but doesn't quite because this is about different satisfactions.

Christ, he was really something.

And so was I.

This woman – Sally – looked bored, chilly, a bad choice, but still I'd picked her and that seemed not incorrect, not entirely unwise, and I'm throwing her names and getting no hits and the minutes are winding by and the room apparently sagging and my voice getting quiet, dry and smaller and I'm vamping with stuff about her being off-colour and maybe not taking care – hardly a wild leap to say so: she was puffy, self-punishingly fat, cheap haircut, unloved skin – engagement ring, wedding ring, probably early forties but seemed older – and she's giving me no signs, has been taught by domestic circumstance, by close experience, that you shouldn't give signs – I want to tell her ‘Your husband is a bastard. He is almost undoubtedly a bastard and everyone dead and here with me would like to say so' but other than that – which is impractical – I'm close to having nothing left, to giving up.

Inexperience.

Arthur behind me, but I know, I am aware, that he's unconcerned, so I lean in harder, insist – she can't have come here
for no reason
.

Which is when she gets angry – wonderfully, silently furious – she's close to shouting that she thinks I'm crap – I can see it – and it's because she's scared – these frightened eyes – so fucking scared. No one who isn't terrified needs anything like as much bitterness, as much rage, as that.

She's hiding inside it.

I pace – and I know that Arthur's sitting with his arms crossed – softly, gently – both hands visible, the fingers, but I can't break contact with Sally and really check – I think he's showing three fingers and four – that's his opinion and I agree – didn't tell me beforehand, so it may be a guess or a detail he forgot – except that he never forgets – three and four and that's Sally, her story – she lost a child.

I'm sure because of one glance – one tic of the head down and to the side and when she faces me again, raises her eyes, she's younger – for a flinch of time she's younger and just at the start of that fresh tenderness, mother tenderness, and already it is purposeless – stolen away – the woman that she had intended to be is disappearing.

A day when the world jumps up and tears out everything, but lets you live, makes you live, leaves you here to stay without the everything you needed.

They didn't take care in those days, the hospitals – not much better now – so you edge what you describe into some sense of difficulty about seeing, you say that she was in hospital and wanted to see someone.

And then you watch her break, a whole woman harrowed down to sobs. They didn't let her see the baby – and no grave – speed and corridors and numbness and never knowing – fuckers – she never knew – fuckers – she never knew her child, or started or finished or had any help – they abandoned her to this.

‘Little clothes, talking to your mum about pink or blue . . .' Pink gets a hit, a sign of laceration, her shoulders tense – so a girl then, a dead girl. ‘Your girl knows you had a name for her and she hears you say her name.' It's a risk, but the
mouth is such a soft place, so used to speaking that it's an easy bet: if I set her thinking, then I'll set her speaking in herself – and she does, she starts to say it in herself – she permits it – the unnameable name. ‘Pa- pa . . .' I decipher her lips – doesn't have to be precise. ‘I'm getting . . . It starts with a P.' And the mother speaking it out loud then, like a love, a pride, ‘Pam.' She can't manage any more, has to grip the hand of someone to her right – she doesn't know them, just holds on for fear of falling, being drawn into the place that's always there and always hunting for anything good, that takes it away.