Cathexis (13 page)

The rain now torrential, I dashed into the shed and peered out from under my dripping peak. Mrs Ivankova at the living room window looking out at the weather as if remembering something sad.

The sky stuttered blinding white and I counted to 15 before a gathering rumble swelled and broke in distant demolition. Might as well carry on, the old bag clearly wasn't going to make me a cup of tea.

Ending up with only three small offcuts. “You're good” I nodded. Sheet lightning x-rayed me again and this time I counted to five before the arrival of her bellicose brother. I couldn't entertain the idea of me, mud-caked and sopping, in the pristine kitchen and neither, probably, could Mrs  Ivankova
. Plus I'd forgotten to put down the dust sheets. Removing my hat, I looked up at the metallic sky, the rain pelting my smudgy cheeks and drumming up my colour.

Mrs Ivankova, regarding me now with a neutral expectancy I recognised in Nancy. I was steaming, my hands smoking as if they possessed special powers. Laying on the deck, arms and tools by my sides like a dead knight, I closed my eyes. The rain crackled around me and thrummed the planks, I could have slept if it weren't for the unpleasant ingress that wormed its way around my neck and crotch. The lightning flicked again, bearing witness to a network of black capillaries on an orange ground, leaving them in negative for me to study at my leisure.

Simultaneously, a sonic juggernaut shed its load, boxing my ears and resonating in my ribcage as if it were my own menace. In answer, a crash of chords and a sweeping arpeggio soared from the house with a volume and challenge that caused the thunder to slope off grumbling; Mrs Ivankova demonstrating her power. The word ‘Khachaturian’ came to mind. I lay spellbound in her drama.

Desperate to see Nancy’s fingers on the keys, I’d asked her a number of times to play. “I’m not good enough” she’d said. Technically brilliant, but her mother had insisted she didn’t have the passion, the blood, the understanding. So, overshadowed and subject to disabling influences, she’d closed the lid and walked away.                                                                  

Purged of mud, I picked up my tools and crept through the house in my socks, dripping only clean water. Retrieving my boots and a rubble sack, I loitered on the doormat.

“All done, Mrs Ivankova” I shouted up the stairs. “Bye”.

Not until I got home and stripped did I discover the locket was gone. It must be under the turf. Not exactly lost, I knew where it was ...more or less.

The next day was Saturday, I texted Nancy 'Job done, met your mum, when can I pick up payment?'

'Come before midday'.

On my way, I collected a wisteria from the garden centre, at this time of year just a series of budding, coiled sticks. Placing it in the basement, I jaunted up the steps to the front door. When she opened it and bid me come in, my heart galumphed about my chest like a puppy. Now there was no edge. She was nervous, comedic and carefully sexy ...my Nancy.

“No mum today?” I tried not to put any inference on the words – mothers can be a sensitive subject.

“No, she's gone to the park with the children. She says you are a crazy person”.

We arrived in the kitchen and Nancy headed for the coffee. “She said she saw you sleeping in the rain”, turning to me, her expression child-like. The big eyes and pouty lips she always did when about to say something funny, aware that it turned me on. “I reminded her that you are English”. Her eyes sparkled so enticingly, I zapped out a wave of telepathy, urging her to kiss me. Checking out the rise and fall of her chest, I smiled affectionately.

“Just a second” I said, boots squeaking along the corridor. I returned with the wisteria.

“Oh, you got it!” She clapped her hands and kissed me on the cheek. She really was excitable today. She laid her head on my shoulder and clutched my arm, admiring the underwhelming twigs.

As we sat at the breakfast bar, I gave her advice on lawn care and wisteria pruning, while she rotated the saucer with her thumbs, as if operating some kind of rudimentary recording device. Her mind elsewhere, she sprang up and retrieved a wad of twenties from a drawer.

“Three hundred” she said, holding the money towards me, keen to complete another transaction.

“Thank you” I said and peeled off ten notes and handed them back. For a second confused, but then she remembered.

“How much do I owe you for the plant?”, coming round to stand by me. I tutted and picked out a lock in my fingers and pulled it straight before releasing it to its stubborn squiggle.

“Thank you”. She nuzzled her face into my neck and brushed her lips against the line of my jaw. My stomach imploded with the prospect of her kiss. Bringing my arm around her shoulders, drawing her into me, feeling her weakness, breathing me rather than kissing, she pressed her face to my neck and hair before finally letting her lips rest on mine. Her green met my blue and we kissed, our tongues moving around each other in that familiar way. I was home again. We kissed deeper and harder until her hands moved over my breasts and stayed flat, pressing the muscles above them, shaking her head.

“No” she said, trying to push me but repelling herself, “this won't do”, curls shaking. “Minette, you can't come here anymore, I can't be near you”.

Her eyes met mine, tragic and slightly unhinged, “Look” she said, raising her arms. “Look what you do to me”. A substantial sweat patch blotting each armpit. “You make me crazy, you must never come here again. If we meet in the street, I
will say hi, I won't be rude.” She probed a finger in the corner of her eye, pulling it oriental. “I'll never forget you Minette” she said, tilting her head to the ceiling.

Again, old Tom, when Jerry Mouse deftly slams a baseball bat into his face, sending his eyeballs into the crowd. My own sprang hot, wounded tears, which I rubbed away, sick of the sensation.

“You're angry” she said.

“No, I'm not”, jaw clenching.

“Minette, you must get angry with me”. She slammed her palms down on the breakfast bar. “Be angry with me”.

“I can't” I said. “I love you”.

Rolling her eyes, she sighed patiently.

“That is precisely why you should be angry”.

I shrugged.

“Now you are making me angry”, her voice a cave. “Go” she said.

I studied her beautiful, flushed face and turned to leave.

“And don't slam the door!” she shouted.

“You're confusing me with someone who's angry” I said, closing the door with a gentle click.

Part Two

Chapter  1

Twelve pairs of eyes shifting from mine to the seed packets, which I shuffled like a street scammer.

“Pick a card, any card”, offering the fan to a girl. She eyed them keenly, grasping the game.

“What's your name, sweetie?”

“Noor” she replied, plucking a packet of radish seeds. Twelve pairs of shoulders hunched in to witness her winnings. “What's radish?” she said.

“You'll find out in a few weeks, won't you”.

“Miss, have you got any pak choi? My granddad wants some”.

“What's your name, son?” I said, staying in character.

“Chen”.

I'd anticipated having favourites, forever reflecting my penchants in any given circumstance. Chinese children moved me in a way I couldn't explain, particularly Chinese babies. M8 shared this whim and urged me to go to Chinatown and nick us one. Two hours later, I texted, 'What now?'

A small, carrot-haired boy, so delighted at his pumpkin seeds or 'plumpkins' as he called them, was tearing around, jumper over his head.

“Erm, calm down please, you might hurt yourself ...what's his name?”

“Christopher” the children chorused sanctimoniously.

Although familiar with the concept of seeds and plants, most of them weren't convinced. They’d only recently discovered there was no Father Christmas, no Tooth Fairy, and probably, no such thing as magic
...only tricks. They were rightly sceptical; after all, it was a little far fetched that in a few short weeks, something the size of a mouse's paw could grow to something the size of an elephant's foot. However, they humoured me and tenderly cupped earth over lines of potential produce, anointing them with magic water from cumbersome cans.

“What's your name?” I asked a dogged, curly boy.

“Jack” he replied.

“Then you should have these” I said, pushing five beans into his hand.

A magpie alighted on Nancy's satellite dish, but unable to gain purchase, flew off, perching on the obsolete aerial. Perched in Fritz, some doors down, mobile at my ear in case people thought me weird just sitting there. The Saab swished by and stopped parallel with a Peugeot, reverse lights showed, then hazards, as she power steered into the space directly outside number 12. Checking her beauty in the rear view mirror, she relocated a stray lock (a gesture so familiar it hurt), and swung open the car door. Reverted to lady clothes, black, wedged sandals and stockinged legs emerged in an ungainly fashion which made me smile. Resembling a busy goddess, she nipped up the steps, black mac billowing.

Perhaps this was a pit-stop as the hazards still blinked. Adding a further 'pay and display' ticket to the yellowing collection on Fritz's windscreen, I headed off to
Highbury Barn for a diet coke and a flirt with Candy.

“60 please, babe ...how's work?” she said, extending a latex hand which I stared at momentarily.

“Up to my elbows”.

To my surprise, a distinct blush fussed her cheeks as she winked and turned to the till.

Nancy's hazards still blinking some ten minutes later. Although the Saab's battery could probably cope with this all night, I felt it my duty as a good citizen to inform her, just in case she found herself tomorrow in a dead car.

'Hazards on' I texted.

An immediate response, 'What does that mean?'

'On your car, hazard lights'.

As anticipated, she came to the living room window and shortly after, skipped down the steps, deactivating the central locking with a 'prip prip'. Only a few seconds to devour her. After killing the lights, she sat in the car, looking at something in her hand.

My phone beeped, 'Thanks'.

Getting out, she blinked myopically in my direction and I slumped in my seat. She raised her chin as if picking up my scent and scurried indoors.

From time to time, we would find ourselves driving towards each other, our respective cars distinctive amid the shades of grey and indigo. I'd cock my index finger from the steering wheel and wiggle it in a sort of backwards beckon and just before the Doppler shift, she'd do the same back, smiling into the middle distance. These passing encounters sent my heart into a vigorous polka.

Chapter 2

M8 had persuaded me to the pub, predicting the onset of a premature and lonely old age if I didn't comply; it was my birthday, I was 34. My stalwart friend had rustled up three of my good allies and a number of acquaintances and complete strangers, giving me and everyone else the impression I was far more popular than was true. Managing to occupy three long picnic tables in the garden of a pub in Camden. Wasn't it mild for the time of year? We convinced each other, shivering into turned up collars, Pimms before us, sitting on our hands.

My friend, Santa holding court. I'd met her six years ago when I'd remonstrated with her for
making a reckless and unsignalled lane change on her bicycle. The Ducati would have taken her out, if not for my vigilance and lightning reflexes. Bizarrely, that same evening, I'd spotted her in Bo Peeps, where I bought her a drink and we chatted all evening, detecting a kindred mischief and nihilism. Never to be lovers (that wasn’t on the cards) we relaxed into a goading, affectionate banter ...some people just make you funny.

She was explaining about the tattoo she'd acquired in Thailand. Fearful of the pain, she'd got drunk and passed out on the tattooist's couch. When she woke next morning she discovered the word 'Roof', indelibly rendered on her buttock in extravagant italics, instead of her girlfriend’s name, Ruth. Everyone hooted with laughter and demanded a viewing, trailing off to the toilets in twos and threes and returning with incontrovertible proof. I'd already seen it.

A woman I didn't know had been coyly offering her eyes for an hour now. 'Ah, what the heck' I thought. So, mollified by Pimms, I held her gaze and turned on my smile.

Frances Harriet Hooley was to become my next girlfriend. Five foot three, making me a colossal seven inches taller (she named me Minnow, in order to de-scale me, she said). Despite being six years my junior, an old soul, with a disposition maternal and generous. Plus she made me laugh like a drain.

She'd been rash in setting her cap at me as a first foray into women because she soon discovered that I was considered an über lesbian, a mother superior. Although excited by the prospect, she was fearful and reeled in her cast glances. After two months, we'd still not had sex. I was untroubled and didn't press her, but my very presence sent her into paroxysms of want and squeamishness.

Curled up like kittens on a z-bed mattress on the floor, the evening spent drinking and playing Pictionary with M8 and Eve. The game a hilarious farce as within a few rudimentary marks, M8 and I would correctly guess each other's drawing, leaving Frances and Eve shaking their heads in disbelief amid accusations of cheating.

“How can we be cheating?” M8 reasoned.

Adjusting my sore body to the foam, schnuzzling my face into Frances' neck regardless of the implication, craving the skin of another. In lieu of her, I had Frances Harriet Hooley.

God bothering bells of an almighty church stirred us from sleep, damning me no doubt, but perhaps attempting to redeem Frances. “Christ, give me a break” I mumbled and padded to the window to observe the devout. Something was amiss. Cupping my eyes, peering into the Sunday sunlight. A flock of evangelicals gathered around my car, shaking their heads and genuflecting.

Fritz was altered somehow.

“For fuck's sake!” I headed to the front door in my socks.