‘His mother is Yugoslavian.’
‘Ah, that explains the cheekbones.’
‘Aren’t they heaven?’
‘Steady on!’ She was alerted to something.
‘I wish they were mine.’ True, but not perhaps in the way Nicky chose to interpret it. Her brief flare of suspicion went out; not for one moment did she think I would poach someone else’s man. That was the thing. No one would ever have believed it of me. Least of all myself.
I tried to stay away from him. Goodness knows I tried. But meeting him had shifted my centre of gravity and any element of choice had been removed. Until then my life had felt as if it had been idling. Suddenly it had picked up speed, as if it was swooping down into a tunnel and I was doing my best to hang on.
We endured almost six weeks, forty anguished days, saying goodbye to each other, opting for loneliness and honour instead of the guilt of togetherness. Sincerely, I meant every farewell but sooner or later the constant craving forced me to pick up the phone and whisper to him to come over.
It seemed like I never slept during that dreadful time. We talked late into many nights, batting the pros and cons back and forth. Anton was much more pragmatic than I was. ‘I don’t love Gemma.’
‘But I do.’
I had had other boyfriends; from the age of seventeen I had been a textbook serial monogamist. Four and a half men over thirteen years. (The half had been Aiden ‘Macker’ McMahon who had two-timed me for all of our nine-month run.) I had genuinely loved those other men and did all the usual things when each relationship ended – cried in public, drank too much, lost weight and insisted that I would never meet anyone else – but Anton was different.
The first time I slept with him it was almost beyond description. I could feel the emotion flooding from me to him and from him to me, slowing my breathing down, like we were underwater, becoming part of each other. It felt like a lot more than sex, it was almost like a mystic experience.
On three occasions we decided to brazen it out and go to Dublin to tell Gemma and twice I chickened out.
It was impossible. I was prepared to live without Anton rather than destroy Gemma.
‘It doesn’t matter what you do,’ Anton said sadly. ‘I’ll still never love Gemma.’
‘I don’t care! Go away.’
But after a few hours of Anton’s absence my resolve fell apart and the day eventually came when we got on the plane.
I cannot think about what followed. Not even now. But I will never forget the last thing Gemma said to me. ‘What goes around comes around and remember how you met him because that’s how you’ll lose him.’
37
Back in the present the phone rang. It was a man from the Daily Echo’s picture desk, following up on Martha Hope Jones’s interview. He wanted to send a courier to collect the photographs of my injuries after I had been left for dead’.
‘I wasn’t left for dead.’
‘Dead, injured, whatever. So what about the photos?’
‘No. I’m sorry.’
Not long after, the phone rang again. This time it was Martha. ‘Lily, we need those pics.’
‘But I don’t have any.’
‘Why not?’
‘I just… haven’t.’
‘That puts us in rather a pickle.’ Her voice was high and accusatory, then she hung up on me.
Rather shakily, I stared gormlessly at the phone, then exclaimed at Anton, ‘What type of saddo takes photos of themselves after they’ve been mugged?’
Though the area I lived in was less than salubrious, I had never expected to be mugged. Being somewhat of a bleeding-heart liberal, I had sympathy with muggers and insisted that they were driven by desperation. I was certain they would intuit that I was on their side.
However, if I had thought about it, I was perfect muggers’ prey. To best deter muggers one must walk tall, exuding confidence and a hint of Tae Kwan Do lessons. Handbags ought to be clamped with rigor mortis immobility between elbow and ribcage and pace must be broken for no obstacle.
By contrast I am more of an ambler. I once overheard my old boss in Dublin describe me as Very hello trees, hello flowers’. It was intended as an insult and it fulfilled its brief; I was insulted. I had little interest in greeting trees and flowers but nor did I treat life as a treadmill, on which it was vital to keep fleeing forward in order to avoid being sucked off the back and out of the game.
The night of the mugging I was on my way home from the bus stop. I had been at a meeting with a supermarket chain who were planning a spinach promotion and my job was to write the text of the accompanying giveaway leaflet. You might know the sort of thing: a description of the vitamins and properties of spinach. (‘Did you know that spinach has more iron than a pound of raw liver?’) A list of famous spinach lovers. (Popeye, of course, and… er…) And finally, new and exotic ways to prepare it. (Spinach ice cream, anyone?)
Somebody has to write these leaflets and though it was not work I was proud of, it was less shameful than the position I had held in Dublin.
It was cold and dark and I was keen to get home. Not just to see Anton, who had moved into my hovel six months previously, the day we had returned from the unspeakable visit to Gemma, but because I was three months pregnant and desperate for the loo. Like everything else about Anton and me, the pregnancy had not been planned. We were horribly poor, I was making a small amount of money but as yet Anton was making none, and we had no idea how we would afford a baby. But it did not seem to matter. I had never been so happy. Or so ashamed.
My need for the loo became more urgent so I speeded up, then, to my surprise, my shoulder was wrenched backwards; someone had caught the strap of my bag and had given it a violent tug. Idiotically, as I turned around, I had a smile prepared because I thought it would be someone I knew, who was being a little rougher than appropriate.
But I did not recognize the young man at my shoulder. He was tubby, with a pasty, sweating face.
Simultaneously I registered two things: I was being mugged; by a man who looked as though he had been fashioned from a large vat of raw bread dough.
It was all wrong. He didn’t look thin and desperate as muggers ought. (I’m somewhat of a purist.) Nor did he have a knife, or a syringe.
Instead he had a dog. A bandy-legged pitbull, packed tight with menace. The chain was wrapped around Doughboy’s pillowy hand and the dog began to strain towards me, growling softly. If the chain was loosed only one or two turns, I would be mauled.
My eyes were locked onto Doughboy’s curranty ones and without a word being uttered, I was giving him my bag.
He took it, stuffed it inside his jacket, then – with the air of a grand finale – shoved me to the ground.
That, I thought, would be that, but the worst was to come. As I lay on the damp pavement, the dog walked over me, right across my three-month pregnant stomach. Its dense weight dug deep into me and his horrid, meaty breath warmed my face.
It was over in two or three seconds, but even now when I think about it, I am convulsed with revulsion.
One man and his dog waddled away and, feeling dazed and foolish, I clambered to my feet. As I did so I met Irina marching towards me, the metal of her high heels ringing in the night air: a mugger’s worst nightmare. She was my upstairs neighbour and although we sometimes nodded in the hall, we had never really spoken. All I knew about her was that she was tall, good-looking and Russian. She wore so much make-up that Anton and I had spent many happy hours wondering about her. I thought she might be a prostitute but Anton said, ‘My money says she’s a transvestite.’
She stopped and looked at me inquiringly, as I swayed about the pavement.
‘I’ve just been mugged.’
‘Mugged?’
‘By a man with a dog.’
‘Men vit a dug?’
‘He went that way.’ But Doughboy had disappeared.
‘Vos there money?’
‘A few quid. Two or three.’
‘So
little? Thanks Gud.’
She was not exactly tea and sympathy, but she delivered me safely to Anton. However, nothing he said or did could comfort me. I knew what was about to happen: I was going to miscarry. This was divine retribution. Punishment for my wickedness in stealing Anton from Gemma.
Anton insisted on calling the doctor, who did his best to assure me that the chances of me miscarrying my baby were tiny.
‘But I’m a bad person.’
‘It doesn’t work like that.’
‘I deserve to lose this baby.’
‘But you’re highly unlikely to.’
As the doctor was leaving, another person arrived at our door: Irina, with a handful of make-up samples, to replace my stolen stuff. ‘They are latest colours. I vurk on Clinique counter.’
In stereo, Anton and I exclaimed, ‘Ah, you work on a make-up counter.’
Irina studied us with cool intelligence. ‘You thought I vos prostitute?’
‘Yes!’ Then we mumbled to an appalled halt. Honesty is not always the best policy, but Irina didn’t give a damn.
The next morning Anton took me to the local police station (or Pig Pen as we’d called it up until then) to make a report.
We took a seat in the waiting area and watched officers passing in and out. We were hoping to hear them calling each other ‘Guv’.
‘We’ve got twenty-four hours to solve this case…’ Anton murmured.
‘… we’ve got the DA’s office on our back…’
‘… we must drive at high speed through a street full of empty cardboard boxes…’
Then quietly we ‘Ne neh!’ed the Starsky and Hutch theme music to each other until my name was called. My little crime was so not important, but I was assigned a young officer who valiantly went through the motions. I gave a description of Doughboy and a list of all the things in my handbag which I could remember. As well as my purse, house keys and mobile phone, my bag had contained the usual detritus. Tissues (used), pens (leaking), blusher (crumbling), hairspray (to thicken my hair and obscure my pink scalp) and four, or possibly five, Starbursts.
‘Starbursts?’ the officer inquired eagerly, thinking – I’m sure of it – DRUGS!
‘Ex-Opal Fruits,’ Anton explained.
‘Ah.’ Disappointed. He lay down his pen. ‘Why do they keep doing that?’
‘What?’
‘What was wrong with Marathon? Why did they change it to Snickers? And why has Jif become Cif ?’
‘Globalism,’ Anton said politely.
‘Is that what globalism means?’ He sighed and picked up his pen again. ‘No wonder they’re rioting. OK, you’ve got to call your bank and cancel your credit card.’
Anton and I remained silent (after all, we had a right to). At that stage we were so skint, there was no need to cancel the card. The issuing bank had already taken the precaution of so doing. Along with my cashpoint card.
Shortly afterwards Irina had a day off and invited me upstairs. Within minutes she was chain-smoking and contentedly telling me how ‘unheppy’ her life in Moscow had been. ‘I hed a men, I did not luff him. I vos unheppy. I meet another men, he did not luff me, I vos unheppy. Mens!’
She now had an English boyfriend who also made her ‘unheppy’. Apparently he was ‘wery chealous’.
‘Why do you bother if he makes you unhappy?’
‘Because he is good at making the sex.’ Then she shrugged, ‘Love is always unheppy.’
Reading between the lines, the real love of her life were the cosmetics she sold. She was truly passionate about them and her face was her showcase. She was excellent at her job (so she said) and earned more commission than any other sales girl. ‘I trust you, I show you.’
She left the room and returned carrying a tartan-patterned shortbread tin. She flipped off the lid to reveal that it was stuffed with cash. Notes. Fifties and twenties and tens – but mostly fifties.
‘Commission. I count every night. I kennot sleep without.’
I was alarmed. It was unsafe to have so much cash just lying about. ‘You ought to put it in a bank.’
‘Benks!’ She didn’t trust them. ‘Look.’ She took a book from a shelf and opened it to display twenties stashed between the leaves. ‘Gogol. Dostoyevsky.’ More money. ‘Tolstoy.’ And more.
‘Have you actually read these books?’ I had stopped feeling sick about the money and instead felt intimidated by the calibre of literature. ‘Or are they just piggybanks?’
‘I hev read all. Do you luff Russian literature?’ she asked slyly.
‘Um, yes.’ I knew so little, but I wanted to be polite.
She smiled. ‘You Eenglish, you see the movie of Lolita and think you know about Russian literature. Now you must go. It’s time for EastEnders.’
‘You like EastEnders?’
‘I luff. They are so unheppy, so like life. Come again to me. Enytime. If I do not want to see, I vill say.’
If I hadn’t known better I would have thought she was being kind.
The doctor was right and I did not miscarry but a few days after the mugging, I began a slide into a terrible place. Little by little my vision darkened until all I saw was the bloodiness of human beings and our woeful flaws. We ruin everything we touch.
Why did I fall in love with Anton? Why did Gemma fall in love with him? Why can’t we love the right people? What is so wrong with us that we rush into situations to which we are manifestly unsuited, which will hurt us and others? Why are we given emotions which we cannot control and which move in exact contradiction to what we really want? We are walking conflicts, internal battles on legs and if human beings were cars, we would return them for being faulty.
Why do we have such a finite capacity for pleasure but an infinite one for pain?
We’re a cosmic joke, I decided. A cosmic experiment which had gone wrong.
I loathed being alive. The prospect of death was the only thing that made my life worth living. But I was carrying a child so I had to keep going.
It was the trauma of being mugged which had triggered such hopelessness, Anton said; I needed to see the doctor again. I disagreed: it was merely my own wickedness which had reduced me to this wretched state. Anton so did not want to know. He kept repeating, ‘You are not wicked. I didn’t love Gemma, I love you.’
That was my very point. Why could he not have loved Gemma? Why must it be so complicated?
Anton could not agree with me: if he did so, he would be signing our death warrant.
I managed to complete work on the spinach info-leaflet but when the agency set me up with more meetings, I did not attend.
I had almost no one to talk to. Since Anton and I had taken the hideous step of going to Dublin and telling Gemma about us, all the Irish girls I knew in London – Gemma’s and my mutual friends, the Mick Chicks – had severed contact abruptly. The only friend I had who pre-dated Gemma was my old schoolfriend Nicky. But Nicky had her own worries, trying to get pregnant by Simon who, in addition to being a short-arse, appeared to be firing blanks.
Anton was out at work all day with Mikey: taking TV executives to lunch and hustling for cash, taking literary agents to lunch and hustling for cheap scripts, and taking theatrical agents to lunch and hustling for actors to play the parts in the cheap scripts which he had not yet acquired and which he had no financing for. I got a stomach ache whenever I thought about the duplicity involved – swearing to the script writer that the actress was on board, promising the actress the financing was in place, lying to the TV company that the script and director were secured – but Anton said it was necessary.
‘No one wants to be the first to commit. If someone else has, they think it’s got to be good.’
Despite Anton and Mikey’s spinning it was taking time for even one of their projects to go into production.
‘It’ll all come together soon,’ Anton promised, when he returned home each evening. ‘We’ll get the right script, the right star, and the financing will fall into our laps. And afte
r that, they’ll be queuing up to work with Eye-Kon.’
Meanwhile I spent hour after hour on my own and one day, when the loneliness became too much, I went up the stairs to Irina. She opened the door and over her shoulder I saw a pile of notes on the table. She was counting her money.
‘Payday,’ she said. ‘Come and see.’
‘Thanks.’ I slid in.
After I’d admired her crisp new notes, I spilled my guts on my hellish state of mind.
Irina listened with interest and when I meandered to a conclusion, she murmured, ‘You are wery unheppy,’ and looked at me with a new respect.
It was only when I had exhausted all other distractions that I turned on my computer, looking for solace in my book. For almost five years I had been working on a novel which drew on my experiences working in eco-PR in Ireland. Tentatively entitled Crystal Clear, it went as follows: chemical company is poisoning the air of a small community, PR girl (a prettier, feistier, thick-haired version of me, of course) sticks her neck out, blows the whistle, tips off the townsfolk and does all the courageous stuff I wish I had actually done in real life.
Over the preceding four years, on the urging of enthusiastic friends, I had sent it to several literary agents, three of whom had read it and suggested changes. But even after I had rewritten and redrafted it to their requirements, they still said that it was ‘not right for them at this time’.
Notwithstanding, I had retained a nugget of hope that Crystal Clear was not utter dross and continued to tinker with it from time to time. But this particular day I simply could not write about babies born with fingers missing and young, clean-living family men succumbing to lung cancer. However, I did not switch my computer off immediately. I loitered, still desperately seeking something. I typed ‘Lily Wright’, then ‘Anton Carolan’ and ‘Baby Carolan’, then the legend, ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’
Those words infused me with such unexpected well-being that I typed them again. After I had done it for the fifth time I straightened up my chair, sat four-square to the desk and held my splayed fingers above the keyboard like a virtuoso pianist about to play the ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ and give the performance of her life.