I wasn’t appalled, I was interested by Rowan Brown
I wasn’t appalled, I was interested. That’s it. Stick to it. Remember the lines, remember the beats. Appalled comes first, interested second. Say that, nod, smile, pay the bill, wish her well. That’s it. Don’t over explain, don’t dig it all up again. I wanted to see you because I wanted to say, I wasn’t appalled, I was interested.
Maybe I should note it down, but she might notice. She might notice if I check a script. She might ask what it says. I scrawl a tiny acronym on my wrist instead. I W A I W I. Surely, she wouldn’t be able to discern that. But if she asks? Say it says Kiwi. Say you need Kiwis but don’t know how to spell it.
K I W A I W I.
Better? Better. It’s 7.30.
I put on top and green trousers. I pad downstairs, make a coffee, stir it, momentary peace. The pink flower is wearing off the china and it only has half a stem.
I tap the spoon on the edge; it makes a sharp ringing sound, a sudden school-bell inside my head. I take a jacket, a bag and slip my feet into shoes with stars round the rim. Then I march out. Still breathing? Yes, in and out and in again and wondering why everything feels so taut, so strung out and heavy, like washing out in rain. I buy a ticket, wait, then I’m on the train rolling towards a destination; minutes hopscotch into thoughts which wind and unravel with each plunge into tunnelled darkness. I rest my eyes. I snap them open, off the train, through the bustle, slip out of the carriage like a purse from a pocket, a lost possession, and set off to the place of meeting.
My heart is ticking. My star-studded feet are moving slower than my mind. Keep up, I say. Keep up. We have to learn to think and live simultaneously or we’ll drown. I keep walking, one hand in a pocket, the other twisting and turning as if conducting a tiny orchestra nestled in the pavement, and I see the glimmering beams of mid-morning illuminate the place far off down the road. I know it well. There’s a figure outside. I can’t see her face; I can barely make out the colour of her coat. But it’s something about the slope of the arm. She’s waiting there early, of course. Why does she always have to assert her territory? She’s probably nervous and shaking but nevertheless, standing there waiting to be seen, and I breathe. In and out and in again.
I walk on, suddenly aware of the clickety-clack my little heels make against grey stone. I open my purse, check myself in the tiny round mirror with geese on the edges. I stare, shake my head, sigh, carry on. The figure’s growing closer and she’s reading a book. She probably isn’t, just pretending, waiting for me, wanting something to do other than just stand there. My walking has slowed, waiting for her to look. Why this had to be done I’ve forgotten, it simply had.
She hears the clickety-clack, looks up, eyes widen — a moment of thought, a worry, a wobble and then a smile. The approach is tentative, nervous. She’s clenching the book too hard and it’s suffering.
‘Hello,’ I say.
‘Hello,’ she says.
Nervous laugh and hands in green trousers. Then out again.
‘I like your coat,’ I say. I gesture. I appease. I’ve figured out the colour now. It’s blue. It’s got embroidered sleeves.
And your smile is like a decoration on a can of soda: it’s intricate and spiralling and carefully designed. And I want to examine it more closely because somehow it seems too elegant for you. It’s too elegant for you. That coat is too elegant for you.
There’s something metallic and factory-constructed in the roundness of your eyes, something sordid and suspicious in the way you breathe hello, like it’s not a word but an intention, an examination, an attempt to understand why I am there. There’s laughter in your eyes, like a suppressed giggle behind a hand. Do I amuse you?
Hands back in green trousers so I can dig my nails into my thumb while she says thank you very much for the compliment and something meandering about how she bought it in Milan. This is code, I think, while I say I’ve never been to Milan. All of this is code.
She’s aged, I decide, while she tells me about statues in Florence. I suppose we’ve got to the stage where we start to age. I heard skin only gets thinner in your twenties. She’s got little creases in her forehead where makeup is getting stuck and there are beads of black in her eyelashes. Her medium-pink lipstick suits her: it’s probably called something like soft sunrise but she hasn’t quite applied it correctly and every time she smiles the pale underlip is exposed, like the dank bottom of a ship, or the dry patch on tarmac a car leaves behind after rain.
‘Shall we go in?’ I say. This is bold, I think, as I lead the way, make the exchange with the waiter. He guides, I follow, she’s behind, she’s following like a lapdog.
‘You’ve lost weight.’ She says, from behind me.
I have to crane my neck to respond and stumble slightly.
‘I haven’t, it’s just I used to wear baggier clothes.’
‘No, you can tell because your hair is thinner. It’s breaking at the ends. It’s not worth it, you know. Don’t get obsessive.’
A lapdog without a muzzle.
Suddenly I’m a flea bite, a broken comb - something pointless, something damaged.
Not much has changed inside this place. The lights still hang perilously low from the ceiling, imploring you to whack your head, and the little round tables are covered in white cloths. One of them has already been shot, hit by a bullet, bleeding red wine.
We settle like flies on a lamp. She says she’s starving and asks me what I’m getting to eat. I say I’m hungry too and decide on risotto and chips. She says she only needs a croissant because it’s barely midday.
A couple are eating asparagus on the opposite table and I imagine picking up one spindly green stem, dripping in oil, and rubbing it all over her baby blue coat.
Over the top of the menu, I watch her removing her gloves, finger by finger, as if it’s a sport. It’s going to have to come soon; we can’t dance around like privileged pixies over risotto and croissants in a dark London restaurant with plush sofa’s instead of chairs forever. They’re bulky and luxurious and inconvenient, and the asparagus eating couple keep slipping away from the table. They need fishing lines to reach their food.
‘So’, she says, with an inflection on the end like it’s a performance, like we’re in a film. Why does she have to raise her eyebrows like that? Nobody does that in real life. It’s unsettling. It makes me feel like there are cameras chiseled into the walls. ‘You wanted to talk?
‘Yes.’ I say. ‘Yes, I wanted to talk.’
Her croissant arrives. She starts picking it apart with her fingers and getting flakes of pastry stuck in her Blushing Rose lipstick.
‘I hate butter.’ She announces, pronounces, exclaims. ‘Don’t you? I don’t understand people who have butter with croissants. They’re made of butter! It’s like having toast on toast!’
‘Yes.’ I laugh, as if I’m amused, infatuated. ‘Ha-Ha.’ What a stupid laugh.
She finishes the croissant and dusts off her hands. My risotto arrives, then the chips. They take up the entire table with their bulk. I want to be sick.
‘Mm.’ she says. ‘That looks lovely.’ Her eyebrows must contain helium, the heights they are able to reach. It’s probably how she got all those lines. I then feel sick at myself. I am disgusted at my criticism, my shallow, dog-eared violation. I give myself a spoonful of risotto dutifully, like a child taking medicine, and burn my tongue. The pain is wonderful. Such a relief.
I put down my spoon.
‘How is he?’ I ask. The question tastes like risotto, hot and slightly nauseating, but I have to push through. I have to set the tone.
That’s stunned her, but she recovers quickly. ‘I wasn’t going to bring him up.’
‘Why do you think I wanted to meet?’ I ask, prodding a pea with my fork.
‘Well, we were friends.’
‘Yes?’
‘I thought maybe you wanted to offer an olive branch, say nothing’s changed. I didn’t realise I was going to get told off.’
‘Nobody’s telling anyone off.’
‘Darling.’ She simpers. I hate the way she calls me darling. It’s an age thing; she’s trying to create a distance between us. ‘Last time we spoke you said you were appalled. You practically bawled.’
‘I wasn’t appalled. I was interested.’
I keep my composure; I try not to fly. I’ve said it. It’s done.
‘Interested? What do you mean?’
I freeze. What do I mean? Oh God, what do I mean? I haven’t thought of this bit. And God, I hate her. I hate the way she’s looking at me across the table, with some kind of water-cress pity, pointless and tasteless, grown in a jar on a windowsill for self-satisfaction. It’s pity with a name-label and a measurement to note down, and I don’t want it. I don’t want it.
I’m interested that you thought it was acceptable to allow someone I loved into your life. I’m interested that you treat my memories as casually as frogspawn for sale. I’m interested in you because you’re beautiful and dazzling, and you wear shoes with a buckle and long skirts, but you are so carefully constructed, my dear. You are so carefully curated. You are a pathetic reconstruction of what I used to be.
And you can never compete with the day that we found a field of dead sunflowers, blasted by the heat and we ran through them, like live-wires, like electricity, like humming bees, an antithesis to death. We were an antithesis to death, he and I. We were something strange and un-negotiable. We were a puzzle, a trip-hazard, a high-jump and sharp rocks. But we lived for the expectation of the plunge and you cannot give him that. You don’t know what it’s like to fall. You wouldn’t be able to see the mystery in cranes, watching red-eyed over London like urban giraffes, or water-towers in empty fields. You are a perfected shell, but I will not let you contain him and I will not let you restrain him like a spider with its fly.
‘That’s going to go cold.’ She tuts.
I look up from my risotto, which I’ve been staring at for several minutes.
‘You can be honest.’ She smiles. ‘I won’t be upset. I understand how difficult it must have been for you.’
I think about this for a moment, then decide to speak.
‘When I heard you’d started going round a few months after I moved out, I wasn’t appalled, I was disgusted.’
‘Anna.’ She says, looking around in case people are watching.
‘You are an unkind person. And a fake. And I don’t want him back. But I want better for him than you.’ I eat a couple of chips. I feel like dancing or suicide.
There are beads of sweat breaking on her badly powdered brow.
‘Can we try and be mature about this?’ She says in her pristine, steel voice. Her voice is like venison, a performative meat, a succulent bite. A dead deer. It’s a hollow, cruel act to murder a deer. It’s a hollow cruel act, to ask me to be mature when I’ve spent four years of my life loving with the kind of fervour your hoofed heart could never contain. You are a scientist; you treat lovers like experiments.
‘I don’t think this conversation is going anywhere.’ She sighs, looking around for the waiter.
I pick up the risotto with both hands and pour it over her head.
For a moment, through the slop, she looks almost human. Then I pay the bill, and wish her well.
