Sensitive Skin 2

‘Hello,’ said Alice. She decided to stay put on the sofa, working hard on her relaxed air. Steven stood in the hall, by the stairwell, but this was Steven the stranger, the one half of the couple with the wound in his side gaping, open to her gaze. She tried not to stare at it. ‘I was just reading one of your books.’

‘Hello,’ he said, ‘that’s fine, that’s fine. Which one?’

She held up the pale blue mountainous cover in his direction.

‘It’s a good one. A bit slow to begin with. Have you been here long?’

‘A couple of hours. I unpacked a little bit, had a shower, made a start on dinner. Hope that’s okay.’

‘Thank you, you really didn’t have to.’

‘No, I really did,’ she said, pulling at her mince-splattered tee shirt. The kitchen had been claimed. It had put up a good fight, but she’d put a flag in it. Even the wayward oven had been brought to heel.

‘I’ll get out of this suit,’ said Steven. ‘Have I got time for that?’

‘Please. Whatever you want to do. Look, I’m – whatever, yeah?’

He looked up the stairs, but didn’t move. ‘Do you find it’s like you’ve suddenly been upgraded to the most interesting person in the room?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Bereavement. Everyone in the office looks at me as if they’re expecting me to recite WH Auden or have a breakdown. I can see the excitement in their eyes. Something happened. Somebody actually died. Ta daaaa! Happy to enliven your year with my tragedy, workmates.’ He stretched out his arms and waved his hands, Al Jolson-style, his mouth a wide clean grimace that fell slowly back into the comfortable folds of his normal placid expression.
Alice laughed. In the peal of her voice she heard an echo of Libby, Libby saying

Well I don’t think that’s funny

and she resisted the urge to turn around and check behind her for the owner of that familiar expression. Instead she said, ‘We could work up a double act. You cry tears of real emotional pain and I’ll catch them in a little silver cup as I tap dance. It’ll bring the house down.’

He smiled along with her, then put his free hand over his mouth. He was still holding his briefcase, she noticed. So it wasn’t just her having problems putting things down. Since the funeral she’d found herself clutching keys, books, pens, spatulas, anything. At that moment she couldn’t have worked the paperback from her grip for a thousand pounds. Her hands just felt better closed.

‘Yeah, go get changed,’ she said, when she realised he couldn’t think of what to say, ‘It’s fine. I’ll make the salad.’ She got up and hurried to the kitchen, feeling his eyes on the skin on the back of her neck, exposed by her pony tail. She chopped a green pepper and a red onion, thinking all the while of how his gaze had changed. Had he ever really looked at her before, in that assessing way? It was as if he suddenly had to make his own judgement about her; before, Libby’s opinion of her had always been enough for both of them.

By the time he came back down the salad was also casually dressed, with a splash of lemon juice and olive oil, nothing showy; it sat in the centre of the rough oak table in a blue glass bowl, assuming an air of importance. Slices of lasagne had already been manoeuvred on to plates and the white wine poured. Alice waited for Steven to sit, then served herself from the salad bowl in order to circumvent any embarrassment he might feel about whether she should serve him first. She took an enormous mouthful of the acidic wine that she swallowed with difficulty, although the taste didn’t dent her resolution to do it again.

‘Lovely,’ said Steven, without any obvious enthusiasm. She tried not to feel hurt. He had changed into a pale green open-necked shirt and chinos, in which he looked very far from relaxed. It was the kind of outfit one usually wore to a social dinner when you didn’t know the host very well and had no idea what everyone else would be wearing.

Alice tasted her food, found it passable, and decided to get stuck in properly. She’d always liked the taste of her own cooking, and food relaxed her. She watched Steven push his helping around the plate, without any salad to keep it company; he teased apart layers of pasta to spear the odd mushroom he found lurking in the mince.

‘Don’t you like Italian food?’ she said, knowing full well she’d seen him devour an entire Melanzane Parmigiana at Pizza Express at his impromptu engagement party.

‘It’s not that, it’s really lovely and I’m grateful, but I just –'

‘It’s okay.’

‘I haven’t been eating too well.’ He set down his knife and fork. ‘I can’t escape the feeling that there’s something I should be saying. But I’m not. And I don’t know what it is.’

She carried on eating; somebody had to. ‘To the world in general? An outward expression of grief type thing? Or something to say to me?’

‘You, I suppose, since you’re here.’ He touched his chest with his closed fist. ‘It’s like a weight.’

‘It could be heartburn from the three slices of mushroom you just ate.’

‘I’m not really the heartburn type,’ he said, very seriously.

‘Ever had heartburn?’

‘No.’

‘Then how do you know it’s not?’ She took a triumphant swallow of wine, and he followed suit.

‘Yuck,’ he said.

‘Yeah. Your neighbour brought it round. Dan.’

‘Our neighbour,’ Steven said, as if stating a principle. He picked up his fork and started to eat, big mouthfuls. He drank more wine, not reacting any more to the taste.

‘He seems nice,’ said Alice.

Steven hummed.

‘What?’ she said.

‘No, it’s just that… you know those people who you meet when you first go someplace new, like when you start a new job or go on holiday, and you really like them at first, but by the end of the week if you see them coming you’re hiding behind the pot plant in the lobby?’

She helped herself to more salad. ‘Well, I think he’s fun.’

‘Yeah, so did Libby at first.’

Her name, the taboo word, came free of his lips so easily; Alice felt quite exhilarated by it. It meant they were proper grown-ups, unfazed by death. They could discuss, Libby, or penises, or God over this dinner table and there was no need to feel any shame about it. She felt unchained; lighter.

‘So he was Libby’s friend, then? He said he’d never been in the house before.’

Steven chewed and swallowed. ‘The weekend we first moved in here he was having a party with his girlfriend at the time. He put a note through the door inviting us over, so we went along, and he was in full swing, being charming. He plied Libby with a vast amount to drink and she got quite silly with him, making up limericks and singing old pop tunes, that kind of thing.’

Alice wanted to say

Libby had a lot to drink?

Or

Libby knew the lyrics to old pop tunes?

both of which seemed utterly incongruous with the sister she grew up with, but she settled for, ‘So what happened?’

‘I don’t think anything happened as such,’ Steven said, his eyes wandering over in the direction of the clock on the far wall. ‘She just realised he wasn’t the type to get friendly with.’

Now that sounded more like Libby: cautious and guarded, even under the influence of Kylie and half a dozen tequilas. ‘She didn’t do loud,’ said Alice. ‘Or gossipy.’

‘Or flippant,’ said Steven.

‘Or anything greasy to eat. Or reality television. Or television at all, really.’

‘But she did do House. You know, with Hugh Laurie.’

‘Oh yes, House.’

He nodded with the first hint of enthusiasm Alice had seen. ‘She couldn’t possibly miss an episode of House. Or Gray’s Anatomy. I think secretly she wanted to be a doctor. Or a musician. Something skilled.’

‘Did she still play her clarinet?’ There had been long walks to lessons, both of them dragged by the arms by their mother who had been determined to give them some sort of childhood accomplishment to look back on; in Libby’s case, she had succeeded, but Alice had never managed anything but a pained squeak from her viola.

‘She said she didn’t, but I caught her once, when I had an early finish from a meeting. She hid it down the back of the sofa and pretended she hadn’t been doing anything.’ He leaned forward, like a conspirator. ‘She’d even put an Acker Bilk CD on.’

Playing along to Stranger on the Shore with her rusty skills, making sounds that she deemed not fit for another human’s ears. That drive to be perfect, but since that wasn’t possible, to be seen to be perfect, summed up Libby so well.

Maybe she’d kept practicing for years, trying to get to the point where she could hold a concert party, and suddenly say to her distinguished guests

I play a little music myself

and whip out the clarinet from under the bed and amaze them all, like in some sensitive women’s film about the lost dreams of middle-aged women.

Get serious about your life, Alice. What is it that you really want?

‘I really want her to know,’ Alice said, ‘ - I mean, to be sure that she really understood – that I saw how I pushed her into being the responsible one. Because when one of a pair of sisters pierces her nose, develops a taste for Strongbow and insists on taking Metalwork at GCSE, the other one has to do English Literature and do subtle shades of lipstick. I do see that. And it could have gone either way. I just grabbed the role I wanted first. But she was really never that uptight when we were little. In fact, she was the crazy one.’ It was suddenly all so important, this stuff, this ancient history of who made who into what. ‘Libby was the one who flushed her knickers down the toilet as an experiment and told Mum they’d gone to Mars. Libby shaved an X on the back of our hamster to make him into a walking treasure map, and then let him go free in the back garden.’

‘She told me you did that!’ Steven had flushed cheeks, and life in his eyes. He ate her words in the way she’d hoped he’d eat the lasagne.

‘It was her. It was all her.’ She looked around the room, at the cabinet of wine glasses and the burgundy wallpaper on just one wall to complement the cream paint, and the strong rough table and floor, unpolished; the discreet spotlights set into the plain ceiling, and the floor length silver curtains held back with rope. She thought

I don’t belong

She snatched her empty glass from the table and made for the kitchen. Behind the open door of the fridge, her head practically inside the vegetable drawer, keeping the carrots and peppers company, she squeezed her eyes together so hard that nothing could escape them.

‘Can I have a top up too?’

She picked up the bottle of wine from next to the milk and stood up. Steven was standing in the doorway, his own glass in hand. She gave him her best smile, usually reserved for special occasions.

‘Of course.’ He came over, and she topped him up to the brim, then did her own. They took long swallows together. She closed the fridge door, left the bottle out on the counter. The kitchen was her territory now; she could relax into it, not feel the residue of Libby’s hands on the teak stained cabinets and the Belfast sink. ‘She put a lot of effort into this house, didn’t she?’
Steven leaned against the fridge. ‘I think she compensated for disappointments that way. Things weren’t the best at work.’

‘She never said.’

‘The other lecturers were snobbish. And the students could be difficult, she said. Academic life turned out to be more demanding than she imagined, even on a part time basis. She complained that it was never very restful.’

‘Was that what she wanted? Rest?’

‘I think peace might be a better word.’

‘I thought she had that,’ said Alice. How strange, that Libby should have searched for peace amongst fabrics and furniture. ‘I don’t feel like, I mean… That doesn’t sound like her.
The way I know her.’

‘She was…’ He turned his wrist and spread his fingers, like a flower opening, a delicate state. ‘There were layers.’

‘Layers.’ So Libby was going to remain inscrutable. ‘Layers, like everyone. Like lasagne.’ They had moved away from the truth, and the conversation had become meaningless. Alice felt a twinge in her temple; she could have sworn she wasn’t drunk but already had the beginnings of a hangover, and she didn’t want to wake up tomorrow in a terrible state without even having enjoyed herself first. ‘Got any spirits?’

‘Um…’ Steven frowned, and pointed to the cabinet next to the cooker. She opened it and saw the usual suspects lined up: gin, whiskey, port. She pushed her hand past the front row and retrieved a long-forgotten bottle of Calvados.

‘This’ll do.’

‘Are you sure? It’s pretty rough. Libby used it for a duck recipe once.’

She’d gone past her allocated slot of sadness. She shrugged, pried out the stopper, and took a long swig. It didn’t taste as she had expected. It was sweet and musty, hot on her tongue and throat. ‘You’re sure this is Calvados?’ she said, when she could talk again.

‘We bought it in Lille. In a hypermarket,’ he said, as if that proved everything.

‘Yeah, well, I have to tell you, I’m going to drink most of it.’ She forced back another swallow. ‘And I know that alcohol isn’t the answer and I know I should face it head on, go down through it and come up on the other side, and it’s a journey, but God! I’m so sick of thinking about it. And being told about it. By friends, by acquaintances, who suddenly think they know me because this one thing happened. Dad’s the worst, with his let it out speech while he squeezes his fists so tight just in case some emotion shows through. I mean – see a therapist? What kind of advice is that from a man who’s yet to admit to the world that he has feelings like the rest of us? These things happen, you know, they just happen, but I mean – I did have a point with all this. I’ve forgotten it now. Anyway.’

She put down the Calvados and pressed the heels of both hands to her forehead. When Steven spoke, the brittle quality of his voice reminded her that she couldn’t rely on him to feel the same way as she did, just because they had lost the same person.

‘Shall I put the Calvados away?’

‘If you like.’ She stepped away from the cupboard, found herself walking out of the kitchen, through the dining room to the hall, up the stairs, second door on the left, and the welcome shock of her own possessions: the biography of Stanislavski, the retro tulip bulb lamp from Camden, the second-hand tee shirt from a Cure gig that she used to sleep in. She owned nothing in the way that Libby had owned things: for the way they fit together, made a pattern, interlocked to make armour. And she was glad that her sorry little collection was for her eyes only, not for what the world would think about her if they saw them.

She washed her face in the en-suite sink and got undressed quickly, tugging her tee shirt into place before slipping off her knickers, listening to Steven downstairs, walking around, maybe straightening cushions or turning out lights. It hadn’t turned out the way she’d expected. The relationship they’d had, in which neither really paid that much attention to each other, was gone. She’d always thought of him as an ally against Libby’s worst tendencies to order and subjugate. Sometimes he’d catch her eye and she’d know they were both putting up with Libby’s speech on the subject of careers or life insurance or the organisation of birthday events because they loved her and wanted her to be happy. Now there was no making Libby happy. There was nothing she and Steven had in common any more.

She sat on the broad cream window-sill and put her head between the curtains. Outside, the crescent was waiting for something. Not even the leaves on the trees were moving; it gave the impression it was holding its breath. The houses were as pillars: tall, straight, distant from each other yet connected. Around them grew climbers, such as ivy and wisteria, so that in the darkness their sides looked black and furred, like old, decaying teeth. At the end of the curve, the last house had a different, less elegiac personality. It leaned a little, Alice thought, to the right, nodding to the collection of small trees and bushes beside it that clustered around the iron fence of the park. On the other side, the green spread of the park was calming. There were empty swings and a roundabout, even a fountain: lost toys on a blanket.

Alice wondered which house belonged to Dan, and what he was doing at that moment. His relationship was ending, and she knew from experience that could go one of two ways: kicking and screaming, or with the quiet serenity of a martyr to the scaffold. She thought of her last serious boyfriend, Evan, for a moment, even though he wasn’t worth thinking about at all. Watching her cope with her sister’s death had frightened him, he’d told her at the end. When he’d found out she was moving to Buckinghamshire he’d been quite obviously relieved, and so she had let the thought of him go easily. He said he’d take over her share of the rent in the London flat, and that had been a relief too.

Everything was different.

Only after she got into bed did she remember that the light switch was by the door, so she decided to take two paracetamol and wash it down with water from the tap in an attempt to feel like a responsible adult once more. Back under the duvet, in darkness this time, Alice let the thumping of her head rule everything. She breathed with it, willing herself to relax, but sleep was not going to come on command. When Steven came up the stairs she was still awake, and watchful.

The sound of his steps made her anxious. She flinched with each footfall. He passed by her door – of course – and she strained to catch the sound of his own door opening and closing, so quiet, so controlled.

Time passed.

From the attic came a long moan.

Alice stayed very still. The moan came again, pained and empty. She realised it wasn’t a human noise, and relaxed, curled her fingers around the edge of the duvet, and thought of the lack of breeze outside, the leaves unmoved; if it wasn’t the wind, could it be the plumbing? In the night, sounds like these assumed an importance beyond their meaning. Old houses shifted at night, and were silent in the light of the morning. She decided to ask Steven about it in the morning, and then remembered that she had gone to bed without saying goodnight. Perhaps he would be offended and monosyllabic over breakfast, and she would have to apologise to him before she could begin to ask her questions.

Her headache had gone.

The house moaned some more, and she began to find comfort in it, losing the last dregs of her concentration. Then the door opened, and Steven was standing there, in his boxer shorts, his neck stretched upwards, chest pale and curved, like a swan’s.

‘Alice?’

‘Yes?’ she whispered.

‘I wanted to check you’re not scared. Because of the noises.’

‘Oh.’

He stepped into the room and closed the door, leaving his hand on the handle. ‘It’s just the house. I had a builder out to check, and there’s nothing wrong. It’s just the roof, apparently.’

‘Old houses.’

‘So you’re not scared?’

He looked white and cold; in fact, he looked terrified. She threw back the duvet and he crept across the room and got in beside her. She felt unbothered by his thin body, the pale down of his clipped hair, and the fine lines of his nose, his lips, his fingers. She threw the duvet back over him, found his hand, held it.

The house moaned. Alice imagined them as two little Edwardian children, snuggled up tight together, sexless, guiltless. She thought that maybe Libby would have approved of this comforting act, but then it occurred to her that Libby might also have had something to say about how the tiniest acts, meant in one way, could turn out to be the worst forms of betrayal. Her sister had always been good at analysis.

‘Have you ever been so lonely?’ she whispered.

‘No.’

‘It’s such a big house.’

‘It’s not the house.’

‘No,’ she said, but she didn’t quite believe it. The moaning was the voice of a bereft body – how could anyone listen to it every night and not feel part of its pain? But, she told herself, it’s ridiculous to think that the house might miss Libby too.

‘Everything in the world misses her without knowing it,’ said Steven, as if she had spoken aloud. ‘All the order has gone. When the flowers come up in a few weeks, they’ll just appear anywhere, and the insects will fall upon them, and it’ll be a mess, a great big mess all over.’

‘No it won’t. I’ll take care of the flowers.’

She rolled on top of Steven, felt his flesh give under her. She was bigger than him in every way; the breath gushed out of him. She took his nipple, the right one, into her mouth and he closed his eyes and put his hands on her stomach, under her tee shirt, palpating the roll of flesh there. She discovered she wanted to take care of him with her fat, her softness. She rested her big breasts against his chest and her thighs wobbled as she reached for his boxer shorts.
As soon as she put him inside her she realised they were using no protection. She was utterly open to him, and removed from him at the same time. As he wriggled underneath her, she saw them as a couple in a foreign film, and the subtitle said

SHE COULD NOT STOP IT

in great big factual letters as the sperm was placed deep inside her and the house moaned on a new note. And as Alice looked at Steven’s face and recognised the moment when his orgasm left him cold and he decided to keep his eyes shut because it was easier than looking at her, she realised she was very probably about to get pregnant.

She got up and went into the bathroom. With the door locked, she peed, squeezing hard to get as much out as she could, and cleaned herself out with tissue. Then she washed herself with very cold water from the sink. When she came back to bed, Steven was gone. But so was her loneliness. Instead there was, despite her best efforts, a germ of an idea of a baby, waiting to grow. She could feel it.

The house moaned on through the night. It sounded smug.

***