Cathexis (15 page)

Chapter 4

Another of Santa's soirees, this time in the Marquess Estate, standing with my back against the hubbub, peeling off a callus with my teeth. It had to be done and so I'd faced the wall, in the way you would hide a yawn with your hand. The only reason I let myself be led, like a bull with a ring through its nose to these affairs, was to put water under the bridge. Although logical, the plan was flawed because I seemed unable to perceive time and events in a linear fashion. If say, I were on a train, entering a tunnel, I couldn't accept I would be at the entrance and then in the middle, followed by an eventual emergence into the sunlight. I'd be at all or any of these points simultaneously, never entirely in any of them. Never in the moment.

Nor could I stack events behind me chronologically. They were arranged by significance and association The day I achieved my degree for example (a first at Chelsea College of Art), is filed next to the day my mother knocked out the last of my milk teeth because I'd spilt paint on the table cloth, although
these events took place seventeen years apart. Each memory bound with a million others, threading through the warp and the weft, the material of my life.

Not knowing anyone, I scanned the room for Santa. She was engrossed in a blonde, boyish woman. This begat a floor-sliding autofocus moment, because for a second, it seemed Santa was talking to me
...me, but altered. Perhaps I was in the future. Now they were heading my way and so, sweeping my shyness under the rug, I turned on my smile.

“Min, I'd like you to meet my friend, Tove. Toves, this is Mins”.

“Hello” we said synchronously, shaking hands with an equal degree of pressure.

“Minnie, you'll love Toves, she's arty like you”.

Santa mouthed 'Hi' over my shoulder and squeezed away, pinching my arm secretly.

Tove and I checked each other out with interest. Clearly of the same tribe, in fact, we could have been sisters, her the better looking. The same short, chopped hair, at the same point of blonde, her blue eyes lighter than mine. She was a fraction shorter and my shoulders were broader. Her features finer, but we shared dimples when we smiled and the same groove in our chins.

“So, how do you know Santa?” I said.

“Actually, I used to go out with her a long time ago and now we're friends” she shrugged.

She had a great accent. “So, how do you know her?”

“I nearly knocked her off her bike when she was cycling like an arse”.

“Sounds an interesting story”.

“Not really” I said, training my smile on her to show I wasn't being dismissive.

“Tell you what” she said, “if you can actually guess my age, I'll get you a beer”.

Stroking my chin appraisingly (this was some kind of Nordic trick no doubt), I drew my eyes up and down her pleasing frame.

“Thirty four”.

“You got it right, I can't believe it. Most people think I'm younger, actually”.

“Nah” I said “you're the same as me”.

I followed her to the kitchen where she jacked open two bottles and nudged one into my hand.

“Cheers” we clinked.

“Tell me” she said, taking a swig, “do you have any actual Danish in you?”

“Not yet” I replied.

She paused, wide eyed then laughed beer out of her nose which made me laugh beer out of mine.

We traded profiles: she was a photographer with a passion for industrial landscapes and dark forests
,
but she worked for local authorities and newspapers to make ends meet.

It had to be in my genes ...a dormant troll awoke and sniffed the air. We discussed music and I suddenly remembered how much I enjoyed Kraftwerk, but we both agreed Bowie was king. And so we tacked around each other, testing the water and throwing ropes across until we were broadside. Tove Winther was to become my next girlfriend.

“Sorry to interject, ladies” Santa bustled in, snaking an arm around us both. “A group of us are heading for the G-spot, just down the road. I think it's old skool 80s night”.

Tove linked her arm through mine and we strode forth like gay Nazis. “Bloody hell!” Santa said, “Talk about the Aryan race!”

Santa had made an unfortunate error; instead of old skool 80s, it was more like, well, school. We stared at the chalkboard in horror,

'Tonite – Brace Face. An evening dedicated to our younger clientele'.

“Oh well, we're here now” she said, steering us in. The back of my hand was stamped with a tiny, smiling set of teeth.

“Oh my God” Tove said “they are actual children”. We peered around incredulously before sidling through the juveniles to the bar. I pointed out that technically we were old enough to be a mother to most of them.

“I don't fancy younger women” Tove said.

“Me neither” I replied. “Oh God” I added “one of them is eye-balling us”. She was sitting at the bar, sucking a blue drink through a straw.

“Shit, I feel like Humbert Humbert”.             

“But you don't actually fancy her, do you?” Tove said logically.

“I know, but just being here makes me feel like a paedo”.

Santa had no such hang-ups, bopping with the youngsters. “Incorrigible” I said, assuming the persona of Miss Jean Brodie. Blue drink teenager, loved up on something, unfurled a ritualistic, provocative mating dance before us.

“Jesus” I said, “I am actually Edwardian”.

Butterflying her bottom against each of us in turn, she spun round expectantly. We clapped obligingly. “Bless” I said.

“Min, I need the loo” Tove said. “Come with me, I'm worried they're going to eat me”.

As I waited outside by the telephone, blue drink butterfly, who had followed us, was lolling, Lolita-esque, sucking a lolly pop. Tove emerged rubbing her hands along her flanks.

“Watch this” I said. Picking up the ‘phone, pretending to talk for a while, scanning the room with an expression of concern, before singling out blue drink butterfly and beckoning her over. Raising her eyebrows, she sashayed hither. Gosh, she was surely no more than 16.

Putting my mouth to her ear
.
“It's your mum” I said, passing her the ‘phone. We walked off, laughing as the young girl stuck a finger in her ear. “Mum?” she shouted.

“Come on Sister George” I said, “let's get out of here”.

The night sky sentinels that skirted the Woodberry Down Estate seemed to shift between the Victorian dwellings of Hazel Road as we began our ascent, the tower blocks a beacon to home.

The Charedi
moved around us like monochrome ghosts; we were invisible to them. Sundown after Sabbath made them gregarious and though gone midnight, the streets of Stamford Hill resounded with the shrieks of children and the hubbub of elders, sauntering rather than scurrying for once, the schtreimels on their heads, resembling  furry hat boxes rather than hats.

“Wow, this is actually incredible” Tove said, smiling at the 'chosen ones', who didn't return her pleasantry.

“They don't see us” I explained.

Religion repelled me, especially the hide-bound Hasidic flavour. But we weren't so different, adhering to a complex, ritualistic and exclusive law, perpetuated through fear and habit, which would protect us from harm and deliver salvation. We even had a dress code. They rocked in faith and neuroses ...just like me ...aside from the babies and the hats.

A little boy, curling one of his peyot ringlets around his finger smiled at me timidly – the children still had their own eyes.

My bed, now aloft, elevated on four left over fence posts, cleaved to the wall on one side and formed a modest mezzanine over the sofa, accessible via half an antique ladder which I'd hauled from the tip and lovingly restored, resting it on hooks at the foot of the bed. My room was now partially clad in wood, like a boat or a cabin. The ladder creaked cosily as I made my way up and thought of Nancy and her phobia. Tove passed me up mugs of tea and followed. On the walk home, we'd confessed that were in love with someone else and were still trammeled by longing.

“Would you go back to your Sophie if you could?”

“Yes” she said “What about your Nancy?”

“In an eye blink” I replied.

In bed, as if next to myself, I encircled her in my arms and she nudged her bottom into my lap. Her t-shirt smelt of washing powder and the back of her head looked like mine, her ozone aura reminding me of Nancy's hair.

“Sweet dreams” I said and sunk into an oceanic sleep. We were both somewhat taken aback when, in the morning, we awoke to find ourselves having sex. The impetus of our dreams powerful, as if our respective beloveds had lounged above us with the gods, contriving an entertaining and guilt free solution. Although unseismic (more akin to sisters practising on each other), the sex was tender and sound.

Chapter 5

“Mind your back!” I shouted down to Quincy, unclenching my fist to allow a dead, waterlogged rose bush to plummet three storeys, landing with a cadaverous thump on the lawn. “Bombs away!” Dispatching another; this one I carefully aimed so it missed his busying body by inches.

“Oi!” he grinned up at me.

Reclining on the cushionless balcony sun lounger, I rolled a cigarette and texted Tove. 'How is K
üsse today?'

I always like to establish the word for cunt in the mother tongue of my foreign lovers
...it had been too crude a question to ask Nancy.

'Küsse is feeling very nice, see you tonight? x'.

Tove lived on the Bemerton, a labyrinthine estate off the Caledonian Road. The atmosphere minatory as I nudged the bitch-mobile around the warren of cul-de-sacs and allocated parking. Thinking better of it, I parked on the Cally, fearing Fritz's paint job would attract unwanted attention.

I wandered into a courtyard of bald grass, hopelessly lost.

“Hey! Mini-me!”. A voice echoed from above. Glancing up, I briefly saw myself waving from a walkway. The vision dissolved and Tove’s features asserted themselves. Keeping an eye on her, I made my way up some piss-smelling stairs, crunching over broken glass and giving the prosthetic leg that languished across the penultimate step a wide berth.

Tove's flat was warm, the décor simple and utilitarian – brushed metal filing cabinets and scaffold board shelves clamped with spotlights. An entire wall in the living room given over to a photographic mural of a silver birch forest in the snow. Björk modulated the air like melodious icicles.

Tove in a grey polo neck, her fingers and thumbs glinting with chunky silver. She resembled a more resolved version of me – eugenically enhanced.

As we hugged, her white musk clung to me and we kissed awkwardly because we'd both looked away at the same time.

“I hope you actually eat meat” she said. “I forgot to ask”.

A dark stew bubbling on the stove with onions, garlic, dumplings and red cabbage. Over dinner
,
we discussed terms and conditions; she came with a codicil. Although she found me attractive and insisted on monogamy, she wasn't ready for a relationship and thought we should just have some fun and hang out. I put it to her this sounded to me like a relationship, a cooling off period could be decided upon. We ended up with consensus; we would do with each other for now ...if you can't love the one you love, etc.

The arrangement suited us well. We cooked and entertained friends (M8 said that Tove was me, having gone through some kind of distorting machine). We watched films in bed about dystopian futures. We picked around markets and went to the cinema.