Getting Over It (25 page)

 3.  Put stuff in sack, write date on sack, and burn in steel bin, or if easier burn one bit at time. DON’T use water to put fire out. Has to burn out by itself. (Water stops goods getting passed through.)

 4.  Lay out snacks (e.g., peanuts) if wish. (Eat later.)

I sigh and say, “It’s such a lovely thing, Lizzy.”

Lizzy nods. She looks as if she wants to speak.

“What?” I say.

She frowns and quips, “You’ve got to be careful when you burn it. It’s the major cause of forest fires in Hong Kong!”

I laugh, then look at her suspiciously and say, “Was that what you were going to tell me?”

Lizzy bites her lip. Then she says, “I’m not sure if I should tell you this bit but—” I raise my eyebrows. “Okay,” she says. “Well, people do this mainly to look after the dead person, but it’s also a bit selfish—it’s to gain favor with the spirit. So he’ll look after you and bring you luck. You also burn items to keep evil spirits away, which I suppose could seem like bribery, but obviously not in this case. But I just thought I should tell you, you know, so you’re aware of what you’re doing. I always think it’s best to be aware of what you’re doing.”

I squeeze Lizzy’s hand. I don’t want to reply in case my voice cracks. I pick up the packet of joss sticks and breathe in their rich scent, then jump up to make Lizzy a decaffeinated coffee. And I don’t say this to Lizzy, but I am already aware that if I do burn money from the Bank of Hell to send to my father, it will be a selfish act. It will be selfish because it’s not about my father. He doesn’t care. He’s dead. It’s about me. Not wanting him to be dead. And sending him a paper Rolex because I don’t want to believe that death is the end. I want him to still be conscious, like me. I want him to be excited at getting a present through the post, like me.

Which incidently reminds me—this morning I caught the postman cursing and trying to force a medium-sized parcel through my mother’s small-sized letter box, so I opened the door and said, “You could have rung!” So for my father’s sake, I hope that postmen in the afterlife are a tad more patient. You could do a lot of damage trying to force a Mercedes through a letter box.

When Luke and Lizzy leave, I gather up my death kit and probably for the first time in my life feel a girly burst of gratitude—toward who, I’m not sure—for my friends. I march to the phone and ring Tina. She answers immediately, in a small voice.

“Tina!” I breathe, lowering my pitch to match hers. “How are you!” I am so delighted to speak to her that I forget I’m sulking. “What are you up to tonight?” I say.

“Nothing,” she says.

“I’ll come round!” I cry.

“Oh, no, please don’t,” she says quickly. Something in her tone catches at my heart and I say, “Tina, I’m sorry I said that stuff about Adrian, it was shit of me, and I am like a broken record sometimes—but I’m, hah, in the process of being mended.”

May I interrupt myself here to say this is possibly the noblest lie I’ve ever uttered—but I feel so warmed by the kindness of Lizzy and Luke that I want to be saintly and forgive. Tina says something not a million miles from “Huf!” She adds quickly, “Don’t be sorry, Helen.”

I wait to see if there’s more, but there isn’t, so I say, “How about I bring round some Seinfeld vids and smoky bacon crisps?”

Faster than the speed of sound, Tina is saying no. “Oh, not tonight, no, I don’t think so, another time I—”

But my wish to forgive overrides Tina’s wish that I leave her alone, which I suppose is selfish again, but then, what isn’t? You can’t feel other peoples’ pain, only your own. I gabble, “I’llbearoundinfortyminutesokaybye!” and put the phone down. She rings back immediately, but I ignore her. I leave a note for my mother and speed to the video shop.

Forty-eight minutes later—the traffic is preposterous—I’m ringing Tina’s doorbell. I know she’s there, so I ring and ring and when she doesn’t answer, I sit on the doorstep and wait. After twelve minutes, she slowly opens the door.

“What’s wrong with you, you nut—” I begin the question, but there is no need to end it. What is wrong with Tina is as plain as her cut lip and the ugly purple bruise on her chin. My eyes prickle and even as I deny reality, I know the truth. I say, “God, no. Tell me you had an accident. Why didn’t you tell me? Tina, Tina, oh my poor Tina, I’ll break his neck, the fucker, oh my God.”

The hate wells and I am afraid to touch her, this thin broken shell of my bright glamorous friend. I hold out my arms and she collapses into them and weeps on my shoulder, and I hear myself mew with pity and anger as she wails, “But he really loves me.”

Chapter 34

A
FEW YEARS AGO
I was marching around the Heath Extension with Lizzy—who has a nasty habit of forcing people out on walks—and we saw a woman trotting along with three whippets. One of the dogs spied us across the field, ran the entire length of it toward us, and cringed against my legs. Flattered by this inexplicable show of trust, I bent and stroked it.

Lizzy was enthralled. “It’s as if he knew you would protect him!” she cried. Even though I vastly prefer cats, my ego was swayed by the bittersweet romance of the moment. I became convinced that animals had an instinct for goodish people.

Then I bought Fatboy, whose blatant aversion to anyone nice turned my quaint assumption on its dumb head. But I was fond of my theory and loath to let it go. I remained fixed on the magnetic whippet incident as a sign. Preferably, a sign that I was special. Maybe I had a raw sensuality that animals could relate to? (“I’ve got it! You smell!” exclaimed Marcus.) I chanced upon an idea that suited me. What if I was spiritually attuned to vulnerable souls and the whippet sensed this? After all, I realized that my mother was needier than anyone else on the planet at the age of six. That was it! I was blessed with a unique insight! I really was.

I sporadically indulged this twaddle until the day I faced Tina and saw that her pink and white cherub of a boyfriend—who I’d blithely assumed was delightful because he looked good and had a posh job—was bashing her to a pulp. That wiped the smile off my face, I can tell you. The ludicrous words, “But Adrian’s not the type,” leapt and danced and chased around my head in circles.

“I want you to swear you won’t tell anyone,” begged Tina. Only when I’d sworn on “Your mother’s—no, Fatboy’s life” would she speak.

She sat stiff on the edge of her yellow sofa and her eyes flicked about. She reminded me of a lizard trapped in a jar. I listened in silence. I found it hard enough to reconcile my glowing impression of Adrian with the man she described. And I found it almost impossible to reconcile my sassy, successful friend with this piteous wreck of a woman hunched in front of me. She spoke in a whisper and directed her words to the floor and I had to strain to hear what she was saying.

“I don’t know if this counts, because it was just a row. Everyone has rows. And he was so sorry, he cried. And I’m a right harpy when I get going. You can’t blame him. It was the car. I should have had it serviced, but I was penny-pinching. Trying to save money. We’d been to Adrian’s boss for dinner and I’d eaten a, a braised pea off my plate. With my fingers, before everyone was served. It was embarrassing for Adrian. Like he was going out with someone common.

“Anyway, we got outside and he was distant. And cold. I didn’t know what I’d done. It might’ve been okay, except the car wouldn’t start. I thought the battery was flat. And we hadn’t brought our mobiles. Adrian didn’t want to go and ring on his boss’s door to call a cab. I’d ruined everything. He started screaming at me and kicking the car. I shouted back and so he pulled my hair to calm me down. I know he didn’t mean to, but it hurt—a big clump came out—and my eyes watered. He says it was just a joky tug.

“He was so sorry, though, he cried, too. He only did it because he hated to see me make a fool of myself in public. He was really, really upset. He punched the dashboard and then the engine started and so he forgave me. The next day he bought me flowers and breakfast in bed. He’s a doll like that. He really cares! He was sad that we argued, so I tried to comfort him and make him feel better about it. He hardly ever hits me. It’s not continuous. Certainly not more than once every, hm, six weeks. Most of the time it’s great, you know—he’s funny. He cracks me up. And so clever.

“I’ve never met anyone like him. He’s under a lot of stress at work. It’s tough for him. It’s crucial he makes the right impression and I’d jeopardized that. So you can understand. We were fine after that. Fine. Until, until I did this stupid thing. I should have realized. We’d gone to the Dog and Duck up the road from me. We came back pissed and I forgot where I’d put the door key. Adrian was knackered. He had this meeting with a client the next day, and it was imperative he got to sleep on time. I’d fucked up. He called me an ugly bitch and kicked me and banged my head into the door. I fainted and I woke up in bed. He’d found the key in his pocket. He was so sorry. He was so kind. Nursing me and put ice and tissue on the cut. And saying it didn’t need stitches, it was just a scratch. And getting a headache pill and more tissue from the late-night chemist. And missing out on sleep for me. He bought me flowers and chocolates right through week. He spent a fortune. He repaired the door. He’s so generous.

“I still get headaches, but it was a one-off. It wasn’t like I didn’t deserve it. He only does it because I provoke him. The rest of the time, he’s so gentle. It’s hard to understand if you don’t know him. I can’t explain it. I know it will get better. It will be okay so long as I cut back on my drinking. And learn a bit more about how to behave in public. So I’m sorry if I haven’t seen you and Liz that much. It’s that I’m trying to make it work with Adrian, I’m trying, and I know I’ve been snappy. I want it to get better. So you mustn’t tell anyone. It’s my business, it isn’t a big problem. I frustrate him and it whirls out of control. It’s him I feel sorry for, poor bloke. Stuck with me, trying to make a shit out of a shite… .”

She said other stuff, but you get the drift. This month’s injuries were caused when Adrian cracked her round the face with the telephone. She’d put milk in his jasmine tea (he threw the cup at her but missed). She must have done a very bad thing, indeed, because normally he wouldn’t dream of touching her on the face. Sweet of him, I think, because it really is so vulgar for one’s girlfriend to walk around with a broken nose for everyone to see and gossip at—so much more refined to keep all bloody beatings to arms and legs and torso where the telltale weals can be covered up with a smart cashmere top and elegant wool trousers.

I look at Tina’s determinedly blank face and gently suggest that Adrian is an evil, violent bully who should be banged up, and she hasn’t done anything wrong and furthermore there isn’t anything she could do that warrants being hit. Ever. There is no excuse for it. None. Sorry and flowers don’t make it better. And it won’t get better. If she tolerates it, he’ll keep doing it. Can’t she see that? I say this in a quiet, casual way because I’m terrified she will block her ears and order me out. Tina is a prisoner to the cult of Adrian and my words are blasphemy. She feels guilty for talking to me, she says. Disloyal. She jerkily folds her arms and mutters that she can’t think anymore, she’s confused, she doesn’t know what she feels. She keeps repeating “It will get better” like a chant.

When I try to state the facts in a clear and lucid manner so she cannot deny them, she denies them. It’s like she doesn’t understand English. With a shock, I realize she is delusional. It is as if she sees the world through his eyes. Her reality is an altered state. I can hardly believe I’m talking to Tina. She’s like a lost soul in animation. I feel bereaved.

The woman who spent three months trekking alone through Africa, who bullied a Hell’s Angel into vacating his train seat for an elderly woman, who chased a mugger up an alleyway and forced him to return her purse, who led a thirty-strong group of American tourists around Rome having never set foot in the city herself (she read three guidebooks the previous week), believes she is worthless. But then, considering she believes that a man can hold his girlfriend’s head under water in the bath for two full minutes while she splashes and struggles for air “as a joke,” I suppose her belief system is out of whack.

And she won’t let me help her. I ask her, doesn’t she feel angry with Adrian for what he’s done, and she hesitates and says maybe, once, but now she just feels angry with herself. My pulse throbs and I say sharply, does Adrian know she has three brothers, and more to the point, do her three brothers know about Adrian? Then I feel terrible because she is so scared, she whimpers and the sound of it chills me and she tells me I have to promise again not to say a word because, because… She trails off and my gut clenches and I don’t get how she can be like this, but I hear her.

Tina tells me she’s off work until the New Year now, but I’m not to call her. She’s fine, really she is, she’s a bit run down, she wants to rest and be quiet. When her face is better, she’s going to go home to her parents. Adrian is skiing in Val d’Isere with friends. He did ask Tina, but kept warning her that it wasn’t her scene, so she declined the invitation. My diplomacy bubble pops and I exclaim, “Tina! Just listen to yourself! I can’t believe you’re letting him abuse you like this!”

I regret my outburst instantly, not least because Tina snaps, “Excuse me? Jasper? Marcus? Hel-lo! I don’t think you’re in a position to preach, Helen, do you?” I can’t imagine what she means, but I drive home fast at 3
A.M.
, thinking,
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I am stunned. It is as if Adrian was my boyfriend hitting me. I go straight to my mother’s computer, log on to the Internet, and scroll through a long list of books on abuse, which includes the corker,
Domestic Violence for Beginners.

I order four titles. Tina won’t like this, but I’ve just bought her Christmas present. My heart is racing as I announce to the dark silence, “Tina. You don’t know it yet, but you are going to leave that vicious bastard if it’s the last thing I do.”

On Sunday morning, I call the police and ask what they can do if a woman is being hit by her partner. The cold reply is that if the victim herself doesn’t make an allegation, nothing. I call Tina on Sunday and Monday and Tuesday because I am determined that she see sense and dump Adrian this week, but she doesn’t answer and I don’t want to leave a message and then it’s Christmas.

On the morning of December 24th, my mother and I receive a last-minute invitation to Christmas Day lunch from Vivienne. I reject it because I don’t feel like being around a complete family. I’d feel like a spare part. Which—now I’m fatherless—maybe I am. My mother also rejects it, then changes her mind because otherwise she’ll “just sit at home getting miserable.” This is an understatement, considering that even the Grinch would walk in our door and start craving fairy lights. My mother is making a point to God. She hasn’t even displayed the cards she’s been sent—they lie in a scrappy pile on the kitchen table. I arrange the cards in a neat row before I go to work and suggest we light Chanukah candles, sod it,
any
candles—frankly I’d set myself alight if I thought it would make the house less gloomy—but she’s having none of it. She finds the beauty voucher I bought her hidden in the napkin drawer and sulks and says I’ve only bought it to make her feel bad. At this point my patience twangs and I reply sharply that the only person making Cecelia feel bad is Cecelia. And I’m right. She’s vetoed joy. So yesterday I purchased a small turkey, a bag of potatoes, and a jar of cranberry sauce (I was about to pick a bag of frozen peas when a wave of apathy swept over me and I thought,
Stuff the peas)
and dumped them in the fridge in defiance.

At 2
P.M.
on Christmas Eve, I watch my colleagues twirl round the office in a haze of tinsel and mulled wine and good will and feel detached. I wonder what Tom’s doing now and if I’ll ever see him again. I think of us together and it feels like I imagined it. I knew it wouldn’t last. I am staring into space when something whooshes through the air and makes a loud thud. I jump and see that Mr. Grouch the doorman has dumped a fat bouquet of roses on my desk. Flowers! I never get flowers! I am a flower-free zone.

“For Laetitia?” I bleat in disbelief.

Mr. Grouch scowls, says, “You’re Helen, incha?” and stumbles off.

The blood fizzes in my head and I think,
Tom? Tom!
Flowers from Tom to say he likes me again! I take a sidelong glance at the fire escape just in case he’s climbed up the building à lá Richard Gere and is loitering with the intent of whisking me away. He hasn’t. But roses—the symbol of romantic love! He’s sorry for bellowing! He’s contrite and I’m right! I fumble for the card and rip open the envelope. My hands are clammy and shaking as I read the message:

Darling Helen. It’s been too long. Love Jasper, xox.

My hopes shrivel and I feel like James of the Giant Peach fame when he drops the magic bag of life-enhancing grubs and they wriggle and disappear into the soil. Marvelous things could have happened to me, but I messed up and now I have nothing. I stare at the note and wonder what Jasper wants. I expel an angry little puff of air through my nose. He’s got a nerve. Still. Nice flowers. I smile reluctantly. Cheeky sod. I suppose he isn’t that bad. He is nothing like Adrian. He’s just a rogue. At least he doesn’t hassle me about my living arrangements. I sniff the roses. I don’t suppose it’d do much harm to meet for a drink. I touch the soft pink petal of a rose. Pink roses. Does this mean I’m gay?

I am breathing in the scent of my pink roses like other people breathe in oxygen when my mother rings to tell me in a grumpy voice that she’s sorry for being grumpy and if I don’t want her to go to Vivienne’s tomorrow, she won’t go. She doesn’t want me to spend Christmas in an empty house, she knows for a fact that Morrie wouldn’t like it. (For a non-believer, he was surprisingly fond of Christmas.) When she says this, I feel like most normal mothers feel when their child takes its first step.

“Mum,” I say softly, “that’s very considerate of you, but I’d feel awful if I stopped you going to Vivienne’s. I want you to go.”

To which she replies, “Oh good!” and puts the phone down.

I am wondering if it’s possible to pinch oneself and awake in another dimension when Lizzy bounces up and asks if I want to help her and Brian decorate her tree tonight. The plan is to eat wholemeal mince pies, arrange baubles, and attend Midnight Mass. Although I’d love to, I feel she’s asked out of compassion and I don’t want compassion, so I pretend I’m busy.

“But I’ll come with you to the soup kitchen tomorrow!” I burst out, before I can stop myself.