08 . Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want

It was when I got inside I caught a yeasty smell and realised I’d been sweating. My back was soaked all the way down to the waistband of my cords and my arms felt like they’d bonded with the sleeves of my hooded top. I lowered the painting carefully onto the sofa and eased my trainers off. My feet thanked me for their freedom so I stripped my socks off too. My feet were blue from the dye off the trainers and the socks and the rigours of the night before, and under the dye the skin was damp and white, drained of blood, the toes moulded to each other with sweat and motion to make one mass. They felt stone cold. I went upstairs to the bathroom and turned on the hot tap, felt the stream with my hand as the water gradually warmed and covered the bottom of the bath and sat on the side, rolled my trouser cuffs up and swung my toes into the heat. I couldn’t feel it at first, could have been ice cold or hot but gradually the blood agreed to absorb some of the warmth from the water. I wiggled my toes in joy, rubbing at the stained skin with my fingertips so a thin layer detached itself in and broke up into soft threads.

I was surprised by the doorbell, flowed by a rattling at the letterbox but quickly remembered it would be Jane. The towels on the floor were still damp so I left a trail of wet footprints behind me when I ran down the stairs to open up. Jane had collected Em on the way and they smelled of sunshine and washing powder. My feet felt cold again, and my hands too. Jane ran past me up to the loo and Em followed me into the front room. The parcel was still there, leaning up against the back of the sofa but Em didn’t notice. She carried on into the kitchen while I stayed put. I heard her open and shut the fridge, rattle cups around, call out.

“Alright if I make a brew? There isn’t anything else in here.”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

I knew she expected me to follow her into the kitchen, it’s what I would have normally done but the tiles on the kitchen floor would have been cold on my bare toes and I wanted the parcel on the sofa was real. I heard Jane thud down the stairs and hoped the nost neighbours were out. She burst in, full of energy.

“I told Em we’d got a surprise for her, I hope you haven’t spoilt it she’ll go mad when she sees it this is so cool. Em, where are you, you daft cow!”

She darted through to the kitchen and I could hear her continue, the occasional syllable from Em punctuating her monologue. I sat down and tried to rub some life into my toes, wriggling them like pasty maggots against the pile of the carpet. Mum had been away for a week and you could tell by the stack of dirty bowls on the coffee table, torn bits of Rizla and strands of tobacco working their way down the sides of the cushion on the armchair in the bay window, the one guests always sat in.
The other two came through with the tea, Em carrying a cup for me that she put down next to my foot.

“The milk’s off so I made it black, but I put some sugar in yours and made it weak so you could drink it.”

She slurped hers noisily once she’d sat cross-legged opposite me and smiled.

“Oh that good. So what’s this surprise you two’ve cooked up for me then?”

I kind of realised then she wouldn’t be that bothered and I didn’t want to show her. She’s a really down to earth sort of person, which makes her nice to be with, but she’s not into art and literature like Jane and I. She likes reading books that everyone else has read, and she prefers a magazine really. As Jane reverently unwrapped the dirty old curtain she looked puzzled and then just blank when Jane stepped aside to let us see what had been inside. It was her that broke the silence.
“Er, yeah .. did you find it in a charity shop? I didn’t know there was one round here,” she sipped her drink, playing for time. “It’s a bit knackered isn’t it? Not as good as those blue lady pictures,” she perked up, “maybe we can swop it in Café Pop for a blue lady picture?”

“God Em!” Jane’s face was scornful, “you haven’t got a bloody clue have you? We just got this from Platt Hall. It’s like, the most soulful thing I’ve ever seen and you want to swop it for a bit of 1960s tat! I don’t believe you sometimes.”

You could tell they’d been together for a long time by how much venom Jane allowed herself. I felt invisible. Em hunched backwards.

“Well I know I don’t do art like you two but there’s no need to get a cob on at me.” She looked hurt, “anyway you can look at your stupid picture all you like cos I’ve gotta be going home,” she stood up as she spoke and I remembered she was going to her gran’s early the next morning for a week, wouldn’t be back until my mum was home again.

“Aw stay for a bit Em,” I wheedled. “You don’t have to go yet.”

“I don’t know why you think I’d want to stay here with you two idiots anyway, whizzing your tits off talking shit to each other really fast like you’re so great and so cool.”

She flushed, except one cheek and half her nose was really sunburnt so one half was redder than the other. I giggled up at her, which was totally the wrong thing to do. She brought her leg back and aimed right at my knee.

“Ow you bitch!” she’d got me good, so I just managed to roll over onto my hands and knees before I heard the front door thud behind her. I started laughing for real then, a crazy deep laugh that came out of everything we’d done since the day before, a laugh that sounded almost like a cry.

“I can’t believe she did that,” I gasped. Jane started laughing too.

“She did look funny though, boring cow. She’s gonna get a right shock when she looks in a mirror.

I imagined Em’s face when she got home, how she’d have to explain to her gran why she looked like one of those Drama masks, with half her face one way and half the other. Maybe it would have gone down by then though. I sat back down and looked at our treasure. She looked different in the light coming through our net curtains, you could see more detail but the feel was the same.

“she’s called Edith.”

Jane sat on the carpet right next to the sofa, getting in close.

“What?”

I was distracted by the colours, being pulled in.

“She’s called Edith, It’s a painting by Wyndham Lewis. I remembered on the way here. Pete must have told us that but I’d forgotten. Funny name, came to me all together just like that.”

“Edith.”

I savoured the feel of the name in my mouth. It suited her, old fashioned and sedate, but not too much.

“He told me the surname too but I can’t remember. We can look it up in the library tomorrow.”

“Its Sunday tomorrow Jane, the library’s shut.”

“Well Monday then, who cares. Anyway it might come back to me before then. Are you hungry?”

“No,” my stomach felt like it was ziplocked shut at the top.

“Me neither, shall we have a spliff?”

We took Edith outside and propped her up against the back wall where we could see her while we made the most of the fading sun and the dwindling bag of grass. I’d put my ‘Little Old Man’ pyjamas on that I got from Stockport market, with the trousers rolled up to my knees and a pair of Mum’s hiking socks. Jane had swooped on a sexy nightie hung up behind the bedroom door while I was looking for the socks. It was probably the first time it had left the hanger in years.

When it started getting chilly out there we raided the freezer and heated up ready meals that we picked at and left to go cold while we drank the bottle of Lambrusco that someone had brought round once. It wasn’t that bad, quite watery and sweet, and it made my speeding heart beat a little slower. I can’t remember what was on TV but we had it on quiet while we talked with the lights off and the light from it flickered on Jane’s lean face and on Edith’s too, as if we were back in that room with her. From where I was sitting I could see the odd person on the way out for a Saturday night pass in the street, and that felt far away, and it was cosy inside, like in here it was really Sunday evening in spite of the girls in Lycra dresses and boys in Ralph Lauren walking down our street.

“I’m going to go to art school,” Jane announced, “in London, or Brighton, or anywhere far away really. And I’m never gonna come back, and I’ll end up living in New York and being a famous artist and going to lots of parties.” She tipped her head back to catch the last drops of wine from her glass, stretched her legs out straight in front of her. “I feel fantastic,” she smiled at me. “What are you going to be?”

She made me feel I could be whatever I wanted to be.

“I’m going to be a writer and live in a big house in the country and have a study just like her,” I pointed at Edith, “ and you can come visit, when you’re in the country of course.” I laughed and raised my glass in a toast to our futures as Jane crawled over on all fours and kissed me hard on the mouth. She tasted sweet, of wine and tobacco and her lips weren’t as soft as Em’s but nicer somehow, more exciting. I kissed her back. It felt right, and she brought her body up to mine and sat next to me and kissed me harder and that felt right too.