Composite Creatures Page 22

  That part hadn’t even occurred to me. The idea that people I didn’t know would be pressing their thumbs onto surfaces unseen, leaving foreign smudges which I might never find and that could be there forever caused my insides to squish up. It would seem only fair that Art could do the clean up, as they were his friends. His friends, his mess.

  “Aren’t Eleanor and Rosa coming? Didn’t you invite anyone?” he asked.

  What immediately followed was a rushed round of text messages to both of them, full of autocorrect errors, begging them to come to a party I didn’t want to host. I had trouble reaching Eleanor at first. She wasn’t reading the messages so I tried calling. My first few calls rang on and on, and then the next two went straight to voicemail.

  I cursed under my breath and tackled Rosa. She picked up quickly, and after a few seconds of confusion as to why I was calling, I explained the situation. She seemed reluctant to come along, having arranged to spend the night in with Mike. With a hollow heart I begged her, promising that she could just drop by, she wouldn’t have to stay late, and she could bring Mike. Her replies became increasingly blunt, and in the end she said she’d ask him what he wanted to do. So, I had to wait again.

  I went back to trying Eleanor. This time she picked up, but she sounded strained, as if speaking to a stranger. When I laughed it off and told her it was me, she still didn’t soften and in as few words as possible told me that she was in the airport, heading to Belfast to see her brother.

  “Have I done something, Elle?”

  There was a silence. “No,” her voice was thin. “You’ve done nothing.”

  “OK,” I said, not even trying to hide my frustration by this point. “Rosa’s bringing Mike–”

  Eleanor interrupted me. “Don’t you want to ask me something?”

  I held my breath. I didn’t.

  “Don’t you want to ask me how my tests went?”

  I swallowed. I knew that when I next spoke my voice would sound different, and I didn’t know what to do to normalise it. “Has something happened?”

  “Months ago, Norah. Months ago.”

  “I haven’t heard from you.”

  “I tried contacting you. You weren’t there.”

  The flurry of missed calls soon after the birthday meet-up. I could’ve pretended to not have seen them, I’d had a lot to do. She should know that. She should know the pressure I was under. The demands on me.

  “Norah. There’s nothing they can do. Nothing. Even though these private institutions can grow a new fucking spinal column from scratch, they can’t help me do what I was born to do. Ever.” She spat this last word at me like it was my fault.

  “Surely there’s some sort of treatment or–”

  “Well, that’s the thing, there’s not. A year of dabbling for the NHS to tell me I can’t, and there’s nothing to be done. ‘Not enough research’, ‘not enough funding’. Isn’t it hilarious, Norah? Hilarious.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Something had broken. We both felt it, I know we did.

  “Maybe there’s more to it all than kids,” I whispered. “You can make your mark in other–”

  “Shut up, Norah. I don’t want to hear that shit. Especially from you.”

  I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her everything. That I understood, more than anyone. But I couldn’t. That bridge would never be built.

  Eleanor’s final words were spoken more to herself than to me. They weighed heavy, as if etched in stone. History. Facts from a book.

  “Decades of looking in a mirror. That’s all this is. People who see only themselves. Don’t look left or right. Licking their fucking chops. What a day it’ll be when there are no faces left for mirrors to reflect.” Silence, then, “I’m glad I’ll not be here.”

  She ended the call shortly after that, already distracted, murmuring something about the storms in Belfast. I sat on the bed for a while afterwards on my own, wondering if there was something I should do for her. But anything I thought of seemed too trite, too trivial, and to tread further in would’ve been stamping my boots somewhere I shouldn’t be. Either me or Eleanor was an alien, but I couldn’t tell who’d changed.

  You see, in her eyes I’d picked the wrong side, and maybe a year before this that might have been true. But things were different now. Eleanor couldn’t possibly know how wrong she was to think that I didn’t want to see something grow, nurture a living thing made from me. Someone that loved me.

  But I had nothing to show her to prove it. Not yet. I could say the obvious, the idea that had been burning in me since the summer, but she wouldn’t understand. She’d laugh at me. Tell me I was wrong.

  And that’s when I started to clean. Wipe and scrape and score.

  Nut padded after me, stretching up to watch the sponge sweep across the kitchen counters, playfully tugging at the microfibre cloth as it squeaked over the window. When I came back in from taking out the recycling I found her sitting with an old shammy between her teeth, flailing her head backwards and forwards in front of the kitchen cupboards. Aghast, I took it from her and threw it in the sink. Who knows where that old thing had been, how many toxic substances it’d soaked in?

  It was late and I was exhausted, but eradicating smudges and smears gave me a buzz. With every surface cleaned, a room in my head cleared too.

  I checked my phone every few minutes until Rosa replied a few hours later, agreeing to bring Mike for a couple of hours but that they’d leave before the gongs. Fine. I suggested they come around for 7pm, and I called up to Art that Rosa would need to leave early, so maybe we could just put out snacks rather than prepare a sit-down meal. A muffled “OK” decided that.

  I’d already started taking down some of the disintegrating Christmas decorations, but on New Year’s Eve I revived our earlier merry-making with pursed lips. I re-hung whatever was in a fit state to be hung, stapling together broken paper chains and sellotaping some of Art’s better origami stars, reindeer, and snowmen to surfaces in case the movement of guests sent them falling. I pieced myself back together temporarily much in the same way, with make-up, fine gold chains, and a wrap-around dress, finished with a tight black belt.

  I was sitting in the bedroom gripping a glass of red when the doorbell rang at 7.12pm. I remember the time because my alarm clock screen was flashing, the batteries almost dead. Nut lay curled at the foot of the bed, her pale face scrunched deep into the shag-rug, her ears covered by her hands.

  I heard the door open and the bellow of a man’s voice, “Helloooooo”, followed by Art’s drawling “Hey”, and then hurried gushing and squeals. I’d have to go downstairs, but for now there was a fly skirting the surface of my Merlot, and I needed to get it out.

  Art called up the stairs, and I surprised myself by calling back immediately. My voice sounded real, full-bodied, joyful. I gave Nut a little scratch on her forehead and floated down the stairs, almost giddy. I followed the voices into the living room, where a man and woman were sitting at either end of the grey sofa as if balancing the ends of a seesaw. Both were leaning heavily on the high cushioned arms and holding up a glass of wine in their opposite hand, a mirror image of each other. Together they focussed all their attention at Art, as if nothing else in the room mattered. As if Art was food.

  Walking in was like interrupting a mating ritual. The man was wearing a red and white striped shirt that reminded me of those poles outside a barber’s shop. He gave off the air of someone young yet his brow was pitted with deep furrows that sucked in the light. The woman looked me up and down in the fraction of a second when I walked in and raised her glass. Her white dress glowed, a luminescent moon sinking into a rain-cloud.

  “Norah, honey.”

  She stood up and it was dawn, and I just stopped myself before I shielded my eyes. She looked flawless. “It’s lovely to finally meet you.”

  She wrapped her arms around me, all elbows and shoulders protruding in a crude frame, like a coat-hanger. I didn’t feel a thing. A drop of red streaked down
my collarbone.

  “Oh sweetie, I’m sorry, kitchen roll? Kitchen roll anyone?”

  I dabbed away the wine with a finger. “I’ll get some, it’s fine.”

  As the woman sat down there was some movement by her ankles. Hair. Fists. Four socked feet. The woman bent down behind the arm of the chair, “Jasper. Georgie. Come and say hello.” Two beautiful clean faces craned forwards, just as luminous as their mother. Both of them smiled and sucked their lips, then the boy sat back, politeness over. He must have been around ten, maybe. The little girl, much younger than her brother, looked up at her mother for reassurance.

  I looked to Art, lost as to what to do. He reached across for my hand. “Norah, this is Adam and Margo. Their babysitter was a no-show, so the kids are here for the ride too.”

  I nodded stiffly. What would kids do in this house? I had nothing for them. Should I bring down some of Nut’s toys, those safely stashed up in the loft? Would they like that? I was stocked in the style of a Greek Goddess, all I had was wine and sugar and fat. A whisper to Art, “Should we get them some juice or something?”

  Margo sat back down in her chair with a heavy sigh, “Oh no don’t worry about that. They’ve brought their stuff. They’re fine here.”

  I looked down at them and, as if on cue, they’d both dispatched themselves mentally from the room. Jasper’s index fingers were already tapping wildly on a tablet, while Georgie was scribbling in a book with a thick red crayon clutched in her fist. They knew the drill, so why didn’t I?

  I ushered myself off to the kitchen with the pretence of cleaning myself up, and tucked myself into the utility room, closing the door behind me.

  It was cold. Dark. Quiet.

  They weren’t like I thought they’d be. Art had told me about Adam. Adam was another writer with the same publisher. They’d met when Art had only been in the country a month, and though they didn’t see each other apart from at launches or meetings, I could tell that Art thought of him as a shadow-self, an alternative “Arthur” he could score himself against. It was perverse, really. He spoke about Adam as if he was a friend, but there was always a tight snap to his tone when he talked about how well Adam was doing, and a lush swoop if Adam was in a quiet phase. Art heard all Adam’s news second-hand through his agent, and fleshed out all the detail with punishing imagination. I’d assumed that Adam would look just like Art, or at least give off the same vibes. But sitting there, his knees stood high above the sofa cushions, and his palm and fingers curled on the arm like wax dripping from a candle. He was spidery, cracked and crumpled, a crepe paper man in danger of tearing. He hadn’t said a word while I’d stood there, just sipped his wine and watched Art over his little round glasses.

  And he had a family. A real one.

  Art hadn’t told me anything about Margo. Art had winked at her conspiratorially across the living room just when I walked in. What was that?

  In the dark, I licked my finger and stroked it along my collarbone. The solidity of it brought me back to the room, the blankness of it, lit only with flickers of grey from my eyes adjusting.

  The bell rang again, and I followed its siren call.

  I opened the front door before even checking the peephole. In that split second after turning the handle I had a momentary panic – what if it was the bald man – and I had to decide whether to keep opening it or close it. I considered just standing there until confusion drove them off. Maybe I was having a breakdown, maybe they’d be frightened. But propriety won, and hands that didn’t belong to me guided the door wide in its unhurried arc.

  Rosa stepped out of the night, her face obscured by her furry orange shawl. Behind her stood a behemoth, Mike it must be, a head like a planet, shoulders, and chest above Rosa. He wore a long leather jacket down to his knees and his scalp-skin shone under the streetlights.

  I kept my eyes on him as Rosa gave me a curt hug. Rosa’s boyfriends were normally stand-offish, but Mike reached out his hand straight away, his pink face softened by a disordered smile. His boots were dirty, the heel flapping, but his eyes were sparkling, his teeth straight and glacier-white. As I looked up from his feet something in my head tipped, and I gripped the bannister, jesting that I’d already drank too much and could he take his shoes off please.

  Once I’d issued them with beer, the three of us returned to the living room, Rosa sitting on the floor between Mike’s knees as he balanced himself on a kitchen stool. We didn’t own enough chairs to entertain. Art and Adam were deep in conversation, and so he didn’t notice that I’d left myself nowhere to sit. I leaned against the wall, trying to look as nonchalant as I could while standing in the middle of a room full of sitting people huddled in scrums.

  “So what’s happened then, you lanky streak of piss?” Adam laughed at his own joke. “Norah’s blooming, but cohabiting looks like it’s doing you in.”

  “Just a virus. Been a bit of bad timing,” Art shrugged. “Give me a month, I’ll be fine.”

  “Better be. Time stands still for no man. Not even you.”

  Georgie had laid her book on the carpet, and started scrawling the crayon backwards and forwards with her whole arm swinging like a metronome. Her eyes were on the blank TV in the corner. At the edges of the page, red hit carpet.

  “You forget, love, this is exclusive real estate,” Margo nodded at Art. “Time stands quite still for these two.”

  “Nothing stops time. It might be slower for them, but some of us don’t need the cheat code,” Adam kissed Margo on the nose, “We’re cool.”

  Margo sipped at her wine and turned to me, “He hopes we are, anyway. We’re very careful – we do the organic thing, less time in the city, a top of the range purifier. But we’re saving for these two to join a Grove one day. It’s the least we can do, you know? Give them a head start.”

  Adam peered at Mike and Rosa over his glasses, “Are you both members, too?”

  Rosa shook her head and grasped Mike’s knee before he had a chance to reply. “It’s not for everyone. I’m not sure I’d want that.”

  Adam leant his head to one side, a nosy crow. “Why? Why wouldn’t you want it?”

  I watched Rosa from above. I could see her hair was parted neatly at the side to hide the patches where it was already thinning. Or was it her mousey roots, growing in the same shade as her skin? No, she wasn’t a member herself, but it was only because of money, I’m sure. I expect what she said next, she said because she didn’t want them to know how little she had. We’re so proud, aren’t we? We go out of our way to look like we’re one thing, when really we’re something else. But when we’re taken at our word – the difference between the out and the in doesn’t matter.

  Rosa gave me a quick look before answering. “I don’t think it’s always ethical.”

  Adam leaned forwards, sniffing the air for blood. “Ohhh, do go on.”

  “Adam, stop.” Margo’s voice was a purr.

  “No, let her speak. Free speech here. I want to know her problem.”

  Rosa’s face was pale, her mouth a pursed navel. “It’s everyone’s problem. It’s symptomatic of a worldwide fucking problem. It’s a division of classes, all over again.”

  “Ah, you’re a socialist.”

  Rosa glanced at Mike before glaring back at Adam. “I’m bloody not. Why should money mean more life, more opportunity? More more more. I have no problem with Norah or Arthur doing this,” her wide eyes flicked over at me. “They’re just people. People looking out for themselves. It’s the world that’s wrong. There shouldn’t even be systems that divide people like this.”

  Adam’s smile was of a puppeteer. “You mean every time I comb my hair, shave my beard, I’m making fun of those with alopecia?”

  “Oh for God’s sake Adam, it’s New Year’s,” Margo interrupted. “Happy New Year everyone.” She took a heavy swig from her wine glass and punched the empty into the air, eyes closed. “Happy fucking New Year.”

  Adam shifted and crossed his legs, still wearing his painted mas
k. While everyone still fed on what’d just happened, I saw the scene like a fresco. Mike kissing the top of Rosa’s head and whispering cooling words. Margo swilling her glass to join the last droplets. Jasper leaning back on Nut’s cushion, flicking his eyes from stranger to stranger, his jaw jutting. The cushion was squashed out of shape. He didn’t know that was Nut’s cushion. How could he?

  No one was looking at me, so I excused myself to the kitchen and started to pour packets of nuts, crisps, and olives into bowls. I held a clutch of grapes under the cold tap until my fingers throbbed. Would the kids eat this? Would they say out loud if there was nothing for them here, and that I didn’t know how to look after them?

  In a single second it seemed that I’d prepared everything I possibly could and it was time to go back. I heard Margo’s hushed voice from the living room, “Don’t touch anything, don’t go into any other room, and don’t hurt your sister.”

  I carried the bowls into the living room on a tray shaped like a fish. As I placed the bowls on the table I asked, “Where are the kids?”

  Adam waved his hand in the air. “Jasper’s taken Georgie to the toilet. It’s just at the top of the stairs, right?”

  Something twisted, tight and deep.

  Art was biting his lips, fighting soundlessly, his face white. I couldn’t hear anything upstairs, the house was hushed. Even the music had stopped playing. Could I hear their muffled voices? Or was it thunder?

  “Arthur, you were going to tell us about your piece de resistance?” Margo asked. “Should we expect something that’ll change the world?”

  His eyes were as white as snowballs. How would he be able to speak, with his mouth pinned closed between his teeth?

  “Sure we should,” Adam bellowed. “The Grove must believe he can do it. Did they make you do an IQ test or something?”

  “You have to pass proficiencies. To prove you can make the most of a longer life.” Mike’s head was down by Rosa’s neck. She turned her head towards him, nuzzling his cheek.