The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me (18 page)

I ran down Bedford Avenue through McCarren Park, breaking into a furious march and then a furious amble as I got more out of breath. I was dimly aware of bars and eateries crammed with hipsters as I got closer to the centre of Williamsburg, and decided it was too bloody happy there. Idiotic trendies were dancing to some silly musician off to my right and a pair of girls howled with laughter beside a Mexican food cart. Why had I run here, of all places? Without stopping to think, I marched straight down into the subway and jumped on the L train, which had just arrived at the platform. I sank into a hard plastic seat, jammed the heels of my hands into my eyes and cried.

When I reached the end of the line twenty minutes later, I got up and stood, breathing hard, on the platform. I didn’t know where to go or what to do. It was intolerably hot now that I was off the train, and my hair stuck to my face. My dress, which I’d bought especially, was lank with sweat.

‘Where next?’ someone asked me. Probably some drunk. I ignored him. I stood and tried to breathe, to recalibrate my life back from hopeful to crap.

The man tried to touch my arm but before he had a
chance I stormed off towards the stairs to the interchange for the A train.

‘Sally, please.’

The man took my arm again. It was Julian.

We stared at each other for a few seconds and, in spite of what had just happened, I felt last night’s magic spark up.

‘Why?’ I said simply. I couldn’t stand it. Julian Bell was just beautiful. Standing on a sweaty platform with a swirling vortex of emotions around us, his hair already a bit fluffy from the heat, he was perfect.

And I knew, looking at him, that he had not been taking drugs. As with last night I could see – with amazing clarity – what was coming out of him. It was not cocaine and it was not booze. It was fear and it was concern and it was kindness.

‘I wasn’t taking coke,’ he confirmed. ‘I was just hanging out with Fiona because she was in a funk.’

‘Nobody uses words like “funk”,’ I said. ‘Not even half-Americans.’ Then I smiled sadly. This was how last night had started. Arguing linguistics.

‘Well, I do.’ Julian watched me warily. ‘And she was in a funk. The Royal Ballet’s website had a new picture of her or something, and she thought she looked really fat in it. She went totally mad – it was intense. Then the coke came out. I was quite stunned by the whole thing, to be honest. But she needed a friend. So I hung about.’

‘I’m her friend!’ I said defensively.

He nodded. ‘I can see that.’

I slumped, immobilized by heavy sadness and indecision.

‘I was worried about you,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ve got quite a sprint on you, girl.’

‘Muh.’ I didn’t know what else to say. But I did quite appreciate the idea of him sprinting down Bedford Avenue after me. That had to count for something.

There was a long pause. There was so much I wanted to say to him, and I knew there was so much he wanted to say to me. Yet unseen obstacles hung down between us, stifling spontaneity.

‘Come with me,’ Julian said, offering me his hand. I took it but didn’t move. I believed that he wasn’t on drugs but everything else in my world felt impossible. ‘Come with me,’ he repeated. ‘Let me take you on a second date.’

I watched him guardedly.

‘Sally, the party’ll be fine. Fiona’ll be fine. For today. I’m mad about you. I want to hang out. Just you and me.’

Still I hesitated. Julian got closer and looked me in the eye. ‘I was not taking coke,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t take drugs. Not now, not ever. Jesus, I can’t even remember where I keep my socks. How do you think I’d conceal a drug habit?’

I smiled briefly.

‘Do you believe me?’

I nodded, because I did.

He smiled again, that lovely, mad, cheeky smile, and I allowed myself to be led up the stairs towards the A train.

Changing at Columbus Circle, we took the 1 Train up into Harlem, which was like walking straight into
Sesame Street
. Beautiful old brownstone houses trailed steps down into streets from 1930s films, and Sugar Hill towered above us like a stately cruise liner. I was disappointed not to see Oscar sticking his head out of a trash can, really, but forgot all about him when Julian walked me into a tiny soul-food restaurant next to a neon-lit church and ordered me fried chicken with macaroni cheese and green stuff with bacon in it. Or ‘mac-n-cheese and collards’. It was bloody amazing. ‘My GOD,’ I kept exclaiming.

‘Mah GOAD,’ Julian imitated, until I pelted him square in the face with a piece of chicken.

We didn’t talk about Fiona or the party. We were back in last night’s bubble. In fact, I don’t know what we actually
did
talk about, but I didn’t once find myself scrabbling for something to say. I believed that he was not taking drugs. I believed that he hadn’t been sitting too close to Fi and all the other things my head was telling me. I knew he was really into me.

It would be impossible to feel all of this chemistry with a human being if it wasn’t mutual.

Wouldn’t it?

Somewhere around midnight we walked into the sort of bar I’d always dreamed of but would never have had the nerve to go to. Paris Blues was a total dive, a sweaty, beautiful, wild, noisy place, crammed with people and literally shaking to the sounds of thumping jazz. Not Jamie Cullum, or plinky-plonky piano, but proper, driving, infectious blues, rock ’n’ roll sort of jazz. An old man with a saxophone was in the middle of a rip-roaring solo, a real pork pie hat on his head. The notes fell over themselves to get out of his sax into the hot, packed bar. A large woman with a creamy blonde Afro – dazzling against her rich dark skin – stood behind a microphone watching and clapping. ‘Don’t tease me, baby,’ she roared, as he pulled back. ‘Don’t tease me!’

A double bass, piano and drum set completed the act, although there was an anyone’s-welcome air about the place. It was mental and it was wonderful. Had I had any lingering thoughts about Fiona, they were wiped out.

Julian was laughing at my goggling face. He pointed to a beam on my left that I was to lean on, then went to the bar and came back with two terrible-looking bright blue drinks soon after. ‘Sorry,’ he shouted, grinning. ‘It’s someone’s birthday. He insisted. And I’m shit at saying no.’

‘Me too!’ I shouted back. ‘Awful!’ A big man wearing a suit waved at me, and I toasted him a happy birthday. His wife, a short woman with a huge Hollywood smile and a foxy black crop, yelled that she was going to fetch us some cake right now.

As we settled into our tiny spot by the beam she thrust two enormous slices of multicoloured birthday cake into our hands, on napkins, and shouted that we were most welcome. She was wearing a sequined blue dress. The cake tasted of strawberry-flavoured chemicals. The saxophone freestyle finished and the crowd went wild; the music roared on. I was in heaven.

‘This place is really crap,’ I yelled in Julian’s ear.

He smiled down at me. ‘I know. If I’d had more warning I’d have got us some tickets for Céline Dion. You’d have liked that, wouldn’t you? I certainly would.’

‘Oh, dear God, yes. That would have been so much better.’

I started singing the dreadful, whingeing ‘Think Twice’ in Julian’s ear. ‘Do you like that?’ I shouted. ‘Did you enjoy Céline’s melodies there?’ For a second I stood back and watched myself doing this free, easy banter thing and marvelled. It didn’t feel forced or silly. I was basically a bit brilliant with Julian.
Perhaps I’m just a bit brilliant anyway
, I wondered briefly.

I laughed at myself, coming back to Julian. ‘Well? Did you like my tunes, Julian? My Dion flavas?’

Julian scratched his nose. ‘To be honest, I thought you were quite average. I can sing that lady much better than you, Sally Howlett. Listen up, kiddo.’ He cleared his throat and sang the chorus into my ear – a fairly remarkable impression, in fact – until I pummelled him with my fists to stop.

‘You have no understanding of music,’ he said gravely. Then he wailed about how this was getting SHEREEOUSH, and was I thinking about you or us?

I laughed harder and Julian enjoyed it. ‘I sing Céline Dion to Fat Pam,’ he told me. ‘She’s crazy – she sort of sing-howls back. I
LOVE
THAT DOG.’

I am completely in love with you
, I thought dizzily.
I love that you sing Céline Dion to a dog called Pam
. I smiled at him, and couldn’t stop smiling.

‘Shut up and let me listen to the jazz,’ I ordered. The bar shimmered happily around me.

‘Shut up yourself.’ He shoved some hair out of his eyes and it fell straight back. ‘I really do need to get a haircut.’ He sighed. ‘My hair is like a natural disaster.’

I giggled. ‘No! It’s …
special
, your hair. I like it.’

‘But if I sorted it out I could look at you properly.’ He gazed straight at me. ‘You are just … just lovely.’

After a while he turned back to watch the music and, in a most un-Sally Howlett move, I kissed the side of his neck, which was next to my face, and said, ‘Thank you,’ in his ear. He smiled and put his arm round me, turning his attention back to the music, and it seemed as if we’d been like that for ever, fitting perfectly into each other’s sides in rowdy bars crammed with mad bric-a-brac and peeling posters in Harlem.

Much later, the crowd thinned a little and the jazz became more reflective. Bill, whose birthday it was, had offered us a table next to a giant vat of goat curry that he’d brought for his guests. ‘Eat that. Talk about love.’ He grinned, shaking Julian’s hand.

We sat opposite each other and suddenly it felt like a date again. My stomach knotted happily, and when Julian reached over and pulled my hand into his, drumming the rhythm of the band softly into my palm, I felt explosions of zigzagging warmth right across my body.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked me.

I beamed and nodded. I was truly OK.

‘Just to be clear,’ he said softly. ‘I was talking to her. She was all cut up about that photo and she needed a friend.’

I sighed. I didn’t really want to talk about Fiona while we sat in a secret place somewhere in
Sesame Street
, but there were some questions I probably still had to ask. ‘I believe you. But, um, I just wanted to know … Were the drugs Fiona’s?’

Julian looked uncomfortable. ‘I think so.’

‘I see. And where did she get them from?’

‘I honestly have no idea.’ He looked down at the table, then up at me. ‘Although it won’t have been Raúl, if that’s what you’re thinking. He doesn’t go anywhere near anyone who takes that shit.’

‘Then who?’ I drummed my fingers on the table. ‘I need to get whoever it is to stop supplying her.’

‘Good luck with that.’ Julian stroked my hand with his thumb. ‘Drug dealers don’t care, Sally. The only person who’s going to stop Fiona is Fiona. And I’m not sure she can.’

‘But she did, Julian. She hasn’t taken anything in
months
. Well, at least three months.’ Julian held my hand as I told him about the transformation in Fiona since she’d met Raúl on the plane in June. I told him about all the times when I’d expected her to get drunk, or starve herself to the point of exhaustion, or cause a scene or treat me like rubbish, and how she hadn’t done any of those things. Well, not much.

‘She sorted herself out somehow,’ I said uncertainly. A young guy was playing a trumpet now, a rich, high line of sound drifting out over the bar like delicately unfurling smoke.

Julian frowned. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked eventually. ‘Because it seems to me that she’s got a pretty regular coke habit. She needs to take it a
lot
, Sally. Have you not noticed anything?’

‘No!’ I snapped defensively. Then: ‘Sorry. But I don’t think … Although actually …’

Julian waited for me to go on.

‘She has been a bit, I don’t know. Odd. Highly strung,
although in a slightly different way from normal. Talking a lot of shit.’

Julian nodded. ‘Has she been worse at getting started in the morning?’

My heart began to feel heavy. ‘I suppose so. Yes. And … she disappears quite a lot, often when she’s being mental. And comes back OK.’

‘And how is she generally? Quite manageable? Turning up for work and stuff?’

‘Well, she’s not due back for a little while,’ I stammered. ‘But she’s … Well, as unreliable as ever. Forgets to do the shopping, leaves her clothes at the laundrette, gets into arguments with strangers, keeps needing to borrow money … But that’s Freckle! She’s always been rubbish!’

Julian smiled sympathetically.

‘Oh, God,’ I muttered fearfully. ‘Do you think she’s really …?’

‘I don’t know. Possibly.’

The fear tightened. ‘Oh, God,’ I repeated. ‘And you’re sure this has nothing to do with Raúl? Because she wasn’t doing drugs before. I mean I caught her once, but –’

‘Trust me,’ Julian cut across me. ‘This has
nothing
to do with Raúl. His only involvement in it is that he’s worried. He’s begun to notice it too. He said she’d been getting difficult and paranoid about him over the last few weeks. He was shocked by what a nightmare she was last night, back on the booze.’

I stared at Julian’s face for further clues. ‘And?’

He sat back, scratching his head. ‘I’m not sure he’ll
stick around if she’s out of control,’ he said gently. ‘He – well, he has his reasons.’

Shit
.

‘But they’ve been so happy!’ I pleaded. ‘They’ve been great together! He can’t just stop liking her!’

Julian leaned sideways to dig something out of his pocket and produced a buzzing phone. ‘Oh!’ I said, momentarily forgetting our conversation. ‘You got a new one!’

‘No.’ He frowned at it and then put it back in his pocket. ‘Turns out I’d left it in Raúl’s apartment last night. It never even made it out to the poetry slam.’

I smiled wanly.

‘As I said, I’m a moron who loses and forgets everything. Now, where were we?’

‘Raúl. You were implying that he might be about to dump Fi.’

‘I don’t know, I’m only guessing, so please try not to worry. The fact is, Raúl’s mad about her. But she’s changed quite quickly and … he has a lot to lose. You’ll have to trust me on that. He’s not a user himself, and he’s not a bad man, but he can’t be around that shit.’

I felt stirrings of panic. Julian, sensing this, leaned over and tucked my hair behind my ear, which I found calming. ‘Let go, Sally,’ he said. ‘You aren’t responsible for her.’

‘I am, though. She’s my cousin, practically my sister.’

‘I know. But that still doesn’t make you responsible for her.’

‘No, you don’t understand. She –’ I stopped myself, uncertain as to whether to continue.

One of the bar staff came and cleared away a vast pile of glasses that had built up. ‘Here, let me help you,’ Julian
said. He picked up a few and walked them over to the bar, talking to the girl. She thanked him, and he came back.

‘You’re so nice,’ I told him. ‘To everyone. You notice everyone who holds a door open for you, everyone who serves you a drink.’

He smiled, as if surprised, then thought about what I’d said. Watching his eyes my stomach shifted and swayed; a cornfield in a summer breeze. Julian was like the sun.

Oh, will you get a bloody grip!
I told myself.

I ignored myself. He
was
like the sun.

‘I grew up on a farm,’ he said eventually. ‘There were two guys who worked there when it was really busy and Dad sort of … It was as if he saw them as machines. He wasn’t
rude
to them but he sure as hell wasn’t interested in their lives.’ He shrugged. ‘It was odd to me. They were as human and real as he was. They had as many difficulties as he did, more, probably, but he never saw it.’ He thought for a bit. ‘I’ve never really gotten over that. You sit in a restaurant and it’s like the staff aren’t meant to be humans. Having a shit day. Having an amazing day. They’re just smiley food-bringing machines. Everybody’s somebody, aren’t they?’

I nodded. It was a fair point.

Julian rested his chin on his hands. ‘And don’t be mad at me, but I wonder if maybe you’re so busy being Fiona’s mom that you forget you’re somebody too?’

He had caught me off guard. ‘Oh! Um, I … Well, I don’t know about that …’

‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be inappropriate.’

‘You’re not. It’s just … As I said, I don’t think you really understand.’

He poked the back of my hand gently with his and then traced along one of my veins. ‘I could try?’

‘I – No. It’s family stuff. It’s horrible.’

I felt myself freeze as he watched me expectantly. I couldn’t tell him my family history. He’d run a mile!

As if listening to my thoughts, Julian cocked his head to one side, and as he did so, his unironed shirt collar stuck up in an adorable mongrel-dog’s-ear sort of way. I looked at his face, which was the same lovely twinkly face I’d been drunk on for a little over twenty-four hours, and thought,
He is the nicest man I’ve ever met
.

I wanted to explain this to him.

So I did. I certainly hadn’t planned to, but I told him everything. About how Aunty Mandy, my mum’s sister, had always been a problem for the family because she drank too much and entertained notions of being an actress, even though my grandparents had always been ferociously conservative and private. About how she’d quite literally run away with the circus when she was thirteen, having fallen in love with one of the acrobats, but had come back a week later when his wife had turned up. Flunking school, she’d got work with a temping company that hired catering staff to work across the Midlands. Not long after her eighteenth birthday she’d got a short gig at the Birmingham Hippodrome, fallen in love with a man in the panto chorus and run off with him. Only this time she came back pregnant. In our small, somewhat nosy community where everyone knew everyone else’s business, the news had spread like wildfire.

Mum’s father had been a fearsome man. I’d been healthily afraid of him. Apparently he gave Mandy a stiff
beating and threw her out of the family home, telling her she could find somewhere else to whore herself out. Mum had to sneak around behind Grandpa’s back to maintain any sort of relationship with her sister. She also gave a generous amount of her wages to Mandy so that Mandy could rent a room in a house on our council estate belonging to some second cousin or something.

As a young girl I heard Mum bring this up repeatedly with Mandy when they fought. ‘You have no idea what I risk for you,’ she hissed. ‘And what you cost me. Can’t you even
try
to sort your life out? Stand on your own two feet?’

It seemed that she could not, and Mum must have known this because she never abandoned her sister. Quiet, reliable Mum loved her noisy, unreliable sister as if she were her own child.

Mandy had loved little Fiona desperately but had struggled to be a parent. She was erratic and whimsical, often drunk, and now suffering severe depression. Several times she had forgotten to collect Fiona from school and was visited by social services when a five-year-old Fiona told one of the teachers that she always cooked for herself.

But none of us had expected the police to arrive at our door that day. None of us had expected that they would tell Mum the body in the canal near Wolverhampton was Mandy’s. None of us had expected to find out that little Fiona had been alone in the house for five days, waiting for her mum to come home.

Mandy left Mum a tear-stained note saying she couldn’t do the mothering thing and if Mum couldn’t find Fiona’s father, the actor, then please could Mum bring up Fiona
herself. She instructed Mum to keep sending Fiona to ballet classes, and then ballet school, if money permitted. Fiona was already showing exceptional promise at the local dance school and Mandy liked the idea of her following in her father’s theatrical footsteps.

She signed off,
Please tell her I did love her, so very much. My beautiful Freckle
.

I would never forget Mum’s face the day she told us what had happened. She was lost. Stunned, devastated, disbelieving, yet frozen in all of these emotions; almost wordless.

Fiona had moved in with us that night and a search for her father had begun. It was very half-hearted: Mum and Dad had no intention of handing over their little niece to some promiscuous stranger, but I suspected Mum had to try for Mandy’s sake. Of course, the media got wind of the search, which caught the nation’s imagination quickly. Soon it was all over the news that the ‘canal orphan’ needed to ‘find her daddy!’

No daddy came forward, and she stayed with us. Already close, we lived in each other’s pockets from that moment on. But although I got to live with my bestest friend, there was nothing golden about those years.

Fiona, already naughty and noisy, got worse. After years of Grandpa banging on about Aunty Mandy having brought shame on the family it must have caused Mum real agony to be hauled in to Far Hill Primary (at least once a month) to defend the conduct of her niece. She punished Fiona vigorously but it made little difference; Fiona just became more defiant. With hindsight, it was obvious to me that this was her response to her
devastating loss, but Mum seemed empty of compassion. She told Fiona that she had had no trouble with Dennis and me, so why must Fiona insist on being so different?

Apart from the ballet lessons Mandy had asked for, Mum didn’t let Fiona join any clubs or let her go out to play with the other kids. She would cause too much trouble, apparently. Fiona was trapped in our house a lot of the time, an imprisonment that caused an already nervy child to gain dangerous momentum. She was an unexploded bomb. A pale, lonely little meteor.

Telling Julian the story, I felt the old hurt stirring. What was
wrong
with Mum? Why couldn’t she have loved her? And why was Dad so spineless? He just did what Mum did.

‘Well, I see why you’re so protective of her,’ Julian said, subdued. We were drinking beer and I’d lost track of time. ‘Sounds pretty rough.’

I was picking angrily at the label on my bottle. ‘I find it hard not to hate Mum when I think about how she was. I mean, I was Fiona’s only friend. In the
world
.’

‘Grief makes us do crazy things,’ Julian muttered. ‘I should know.’

‘That’s not the way to express grief! Keeping your sister’s baby under house arrest when she should be out playing!’

Julian leaned over and forced me to look at him. ‘Hey.
I
know that,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t trying to excuse your mom. All I meant was, maybe she went a bit mad for a while. A bit controlling. Who knows what she was thinking?’

‘I’ll tell you what she was thinking,’ I replied hotly. ‘She was thinking,
When can I get rid of Fiona?
Julian, she sent Fi off to the Royal Ballet when she was
eleven
. She said it
would be best for both of us. How? How was it good for Fi to be sent away from the only family she had? How was it good for me to lose my best friend?’

Hot tears sawed at my vision. Julian passed me one of the cake napkins. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to sound like I’m on her side. I can hear how awful it was for you. I just meant, maybe your mom didn’t know what else to do with Fiona. And I suggested it because I know from first-hand experience that nobody has any idea how to deal with bereaved people.’

I watched him warily.

‘My mom forced me to move in with her when I lost my wife,’ he explained. ‘She wouldn’t let me out of her sight. For weeks I couldn’t go anywhere without her following, making sure I wasn’t going to end up somewhere I could get into trouble, get upset, you know.’ He smiled sadly; a bittersweet memory. ‘Oh, Mom.’