She’s running. She’s running so fast that her lungs are burning, but she isn’t running fast at all. She’s running through gardens, over hedges and fences, along streets that are lit eerily by street light that penetrates the dull grey of the morning. She can see her feet moving, she can see her chest heaving, she can hear someone behind her, breathing deeply. It feels as though the person is close, as though he (or she, but she knows it’s a he) is breathing down her neck. But at the same time, it feels as though he is lagging far behind her.
She can’t afford to slow her pace. She runs into a display outside a greengrocer’s. For some reason the crates of fruit and vegetables are penned in behind that orange netting you find on building sites. Her feet become tangled in the netting and the crates. The teenage girl who is setting out the crates smiles at her encouragingly, her shalwar kameez rippling in the night breeze.
Is it night, or is it dawn? The sky makes her think that it’s night. She tries to speak to the girl, but her chest is still heaving from having to run, and she can’t get any words out. The girl continues to smile encouragingly. She doesn’t speak either. She merely pushes a crate out of the way and holds back the netting.
Free of the display, she runs on, her breath raw and ragged in her throat, burning and hurting with the coldness of the air she tries to gasp into her lungs.
She hears him drawing closer behind her, but he is still far away. Urgency spurs her on. People appear on the doorsteps of houses, to watch her running along their street. The women stand with arms folded, the men holding steaming mugs of tea. They all look the same.
She longs to stop running, longs to sit down somewhere. She longs for the sun to rise, but time doesn’t seem to be passing, no matter how fast she runs or how far she goes. The sky stays the same, and he is always the same distance behind her.
She wakes up. The room is dark. She feels hot. She puts a hand to her own forehead. It is cold and clammy.
She sits up slightly and takes a drink from the glass of water beside the bed. He stirs in his sleep.
A dream, then. She wonders what it is about. She hasn’t dreamt of being chased in a long time. Her last dream was about choosing beans in a supermarket and having her legs stroked by Niall. She tries not to think about Niall. It isn’t fair to Ray, who sleeps heavily beside her, his dark curls against the pillow, his strong body an arm-stretch away.
She looks at the clock. It’s 3.38 in the morning. She thinks of Niall. It’s inevitable. You tell yourself not to think of something, and it’s all you can think of.
Niall will be up, drinking, trying to write, trying to be the person he is, not knowing fully what that might be. Her laptop is on the floor beside the bed. She could switch it on. Ray sleeps so deeply that, these kinds of nights, when she is Insomnia’s bitch, she can read, she can surf, she can do a fucking dance on top of the wardrobe, and he sleeps through it all.
She loves Niall, but not in a way that anyone else understands. It isn’t a heart-pounding, palm-sweating, voice-trembling love. It isn’t giggles, and coy looks, and birds flying off into sunsets. She loves him, and she hates him.
She pulls the pillows up against the headboard, so that her shoulders are supported, and she thinks about that other dream. She remembers the way it felt, in dreamland, to have him stroke the length of her legs. The way he had smiled his usual smile, his eyes narrowed, and told her that he liked how smooth they were.
She closes her eyes. ‘Just zizzing’ her mother calls it. But suddenly it is morning and she is awoken by the smoke alarm’s shriek.
He is in the kitchen, cooking sausages. The grill pan is a deadly vat of animal fat that smokes and threatens to burn each time he uses it. He never cleans it, and she refuses to wash away his pig grease. The price she pays for this is wafting a towel underneath the smoke alarm, while he cooks on oblivious.
The benefits of being deaf. She knows he feels the vibrations of sound, because when she plays the piano at her parents’ house, he likes to stand with one hand on it, smiling at her. Night & Day is his favourite.
“Go on, mum,” he says with his grin. “Go on.”
Her boy, her man, her eight-year-old hero. Abandoned, along with her, by his dad the instant he realised his son wasn’t perfect. Abandoned to a one bedroomed flat and a shared bed. Soon she’ll have to think about making him a room of his own, sacrificing a share of the living room, perhaps.
They could live with her parents. The invitation is there. His parents feel so guilty about their son’s behaviour that they have offered to pay for a larger place for them. But she wants to be independent. She doesn’t want to be beholden to anyone. Having Ray, knowing Jimmy was unreliable, knowing he would have scarpered anyway eventually, Ray’s deafness just a convenient excuse, was her choice.
She has let the alarm shriek this morning. She doesn’t want to move from the bed.
Ray appears with a fully laden tray. Breakfast. It must be Saturday, then. He grins at her as he comes into the room.
She pulls herself up enough to sign to him, “You set the smoke alarm off, Ray.”
“Sorry,” he says. Beautiful sound when he speaks. She is so proud of him that he can do that. Form the words with his mouth and make his voice work to fill the shapes with sound. She knows it makes other people uncomfortable, so that they laugh or they look away, but she thinks his voice is the most beautiful sound on the planet.
He puts the tray onto the bed, and she sits up properly. He gives her the cup of tea he has made for her, and the plate of toast with silver shred marmalade. They smile at each other. He sits on the edge of the bed, eating his sausage butty, drinking his glass of milk, looking at her and grinning every now and then.
Sure that he is looking at her properly, she says, “Come here.”
He grins and shakes his head. He knows what mum is up to. He wants to finish his breakfast and get ready. In half an hour, Paul and his son will ring the doorbell, and she’ll nod to Ray. Off he’ll go for a morning of playing football, leaving the house to her. Perhaps this morning she’ll clean out that filthy grill pan. Even though he claims that it makes the sausages and the bacon taste better, having all that molten fat spitting up at it from beneath.
She says again, "Come here.”
He grins again; shakes his head again. He doesn’t want to be hugged or have his curly mop untangled by her fingers. He doesn’t want to be groomed like he’s a monkey.
She gives in and drinks her tea.
“Mum,” he says.
“What?” she answers.
“This afternoon. Is it okay if I stay out and go back to Jaden’s after football?”
“Yeah,” she says. “What new playstation game has he got now?”
Ray grins, and names the latest game. It means nothing to her. He explains its rules and the tricks for bypassing them to her in intricate detail, half speaking, half signing when he can’t get the words out. She loves her boy, her man.
She looks at the clock. He needs to be getting ready to go.
“Are you ready?” she asks him.
He isn’t looking, so she hits the flat of her hand against the bed. The breakfast tray jumps slightly. He looks at her.
“Ready? It’s time to get ready,” she says.
He wolfs the last of his sandwich and drinks up his milk, then goes into the bathroom. She listens to him wash his face, clean his teeth. She wishes he would let her untangle his hair.
He reappears in the bedroom doorway. The doorbell rings, and she nods in its direction.
“Go on,” she says. “Have a good day. Tell Jaden’s dad to ring me if he wants me to pick you up.”
“See you, mum,” he says, and is off.
She closes her eyes again and waits for the flat door to open and bang closed again. She thinks about ringing Niall. She has the day to herself, after all. But
She wishes that Ray liked Niall. She doesn’t think to wonder why he doesn’t. She doesn’t want to know why he doesn’t. Acknowledging his dislike will mean acknowledging why Niall isn’t right for her. It will mean telling herself why she hates him as much as loves him.
Ray has only met Niall once.
“He’s a prick, mum,” was what he’d said. She hadn’t even thought to ask him where he learned the word prick.
Ray likes Paul. He talks about him all the time. How cool he is. How he gets Jaden all the stuff he wants. How he treats Ray to stuff as well. Nothing major, nothing for her to break Ray’s heart over by giving it back. Just enough for her to feel grateful that there is some man in the world who cares for her son.
She thinks about Niall, and she picks up the phone. She rings his number. The answering service clicks in. She leaves him a message.
“Hi, it’s me. Ring me when you get up. I’ve got the day to myself.”
He would know what that meant. She knows that he probably won’t call back, that he will tell her later that he’d been too busy. But she has remembered the dream now, and she wants to feel his hand against her skin.
She’s asleep when the phone does ring. In her dream she hears the ringtone as a tune on the radio; something played in the distance. It takes her brain a moment to register that the sound is coming from outside her dream world; that it’s coming from reality.
Opening her eyes just a crack, just enough to see where it is, she picks up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hi. It’s Niall.”
She sits up and tries to wake up.
“Hi,” she says.
“Were you asleep? Did I wake you up?” Niall asks.
“Yes,” she says, “but I’m glad.”
“I’m afraid I can’t see you today.” Even though she knew that this was going to be what he said, she still feels disappointed. She stays silent and waits for more. Nothing more comes.
“Never mind,” she says. “It was just a thought.”
“It was a nice thought, but unfortunately, in this game, I can’t just drop things. I can’t always guarantee I’ll get a weekend at all. You know that.”
She yawns. “I suppose,” she says, mouth full of the conflict of air trying to reach her lungs and breath trying to give life to the words her mouth is forming.
“Are you pissed off with me?”
She sits in silence for a moment. Anything she says will come out sounding as though she is. She says no for form’s sake. It is the truth, she isn’t pissed off, but he won’t believe that.
“I am sorry,” he tells her, the regret he tries to infuse his voice with almost sounding real. “I’ve got loads to do. It’s impossible.”
She imagines what that 'loads' entails. Reading the papers. Playing on his computer, trying to look as though he’s working. Drinking in the middle of the day.
She wanted to feel his hand against her skin. That was all.
“I’ll ring you,” Niall says. “When I’ve got all of this out of the way, I’ll ring you. We’ll go out.”
She decides not to hold her breath. This is what she hates most about him; the way everything is on his terms; the way that he expects her to drop everything to be with him, including Ray, but he never does anything to fit in with her.
“Okay,” she says. It’s a half-whisper of disappointment.
“Ah, now you’re making me feel bad,” he says. “Don’t make me feel bad. This is how things are for me. You understand that. I know you understand that.”
She stays silent.
“You are sulking,” Niall says, and suddenly she wants to scream.
“I’ll let you go,” she says, biting down on the words she wants to say; that she isn’t sulking; that she just wants a bit of respect; a bit of consideration. “You should get back to what you’re doing.”
“Are you okay?” he asks, solicitous as far as he needs to be. “I’ve upset you. You’re disappointed. I don’t like it when you’re disappointed.”
“Well,” she says. “I wanted to see you. But it’s okay. I know. You’re busy.”
She doesn’t want to talk to him like this. She resents being forced into the role of importunate woman, pleading through the application of emotional blackmail. It isn’t what she means. She means the words factually, but she knows that he will hear them whichever way suits him; whichever way will turn the tables and make her feel as though she is the unreasonable one in wanting to see him.
“Well, yes, but… You know I’d rather see you. There’s nothing more I’d like than to spend the day with you. I just can’t.”
“Okay,” she says again.
“Okay,” he replies. “Well, I’m going now. But I will ring you.”
“Okay. Fine.”
“Okay. You’re okay?”
“I’m fine. Go.”
He puts the phone down and she tries to snuggle back down into her pillows, under the duvet, but the spell of going back to sleep on a Saturday morning in an empty house has worn off.
She throws back the duvet and sits up, sliding her feet into her slippers. She pulls her dressing gown from the back of the door and walks through the flat to the bathroom. She piles her hair up, pinning it loosely, and looks at herself in the mirror. She looks disappointed. She forces herself to smile, but her eyes are dead with weariness.
“You’re right, Ray,” she says to her absent son. “The guy’s a prick.”
She showers and, wrapped again in her dressing gown, she makes herself tea in the tiny kitchen that sits in between the bedroom and the bathroom. There’s just enough room to fit in a small table and two folding chairs. She unfolds one of the chairs now and sits at the table, nursing the mug of tea between her hands.
She wishes that she didn’t love him, that the few good things about him didn’t outweigh the disproportionate number of bad things. She is a sucker for intelligence and creativity. It pulls her in every time.
She smiles as she thinks about the night times. Long hours spent talking. Long stretches of silence while music plays and he holds her hand, stroking the back of it with his thumb. The slow urgency of his touch as they make love on the couch in his living room. Always the same pattern. Always at night. Always without sleep.
And then she steals away in the early morning in a cab he pays for, as night gives way to day.
“Oh, but it isn’t worth it,” she tells herself, getting up from the table and taking her empty mug over to the sink.
It’s not what she needs; either for her self, or for Ray. As good as those nights are, as intense in their passion, they are no substitute for reliability and commitment. She has to be practical.
“Love has nothing to do with practical, Susan,” she says as she fills the washing up bowl and begins to clean the dishes.
She looks at the grill pan, abandoned by Ray on top of the hob. She decides that it’s too much to face. She has the day to herself; she isn’t about to waste it trying to clean days’ worth of grease from a grill pan.
She looks at the kitchen clock. It’s already
Her phone rings again. Drying her hands of the suds from the washing up, she goes into the bedroom and picks it up. Niall’s number shows on the display.
This time she lets it ring out.
She decides to catch the bus into town and see a film. Sitting alone in a room as dark as night in the middle of the afternoon has a charm all its own. She dresses and picks up her coat and bag. She takes her mp3 player from the living room table and leaves the house.
She puts her headphones in her ears, selects shuffle and presses play.
Ella begins to sing.
Her stride matches to the rhythm of the tom-tom and suddenly she knows that everything will be fine.
© J R Hargreaves May 2006/January 2007
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