Out of the Woods - 12. After the Party

I left the party in a daze; I wandered to my car and locked myself in, mindlessly reeling in the sudden drop of the wind. I put on my seatbelt and sat and did nothing, my hands clinging, limp, to the wheel.

A light still shone through one window when I arrived home. I had that moment of stumbling panic, like falling, before I realised it came not from my parents’ window but Victoria’s. I slipped inside and climbed the stairs silently; I crept into her room and slid into her bed.

She looked up from her place at the desk and surveyed me dispassionately with a look our mother occasionally used. On Victoria it translated differently somehow: I imagined her using it on her own children, older than our mother was now; she’d glance up from her paperwork and give them that look, a mixture of amusement and stoic attachment and calm, as if her children were not children but lesser creatures she’d taken in against her will but had slowly grown almost fond of. She’d shake her head at them, tell them to take their feet off the sofa, and go back to whatever it was she was doing.

She stood, and removed the pillow from under my head. ‘You smell like grass,’ she said. ‘I don’t want grass on my pillow.’

‘But you’ll happily slather it with hair products?’

‘Happily.’

She had already been through her hair-washing routine; it clung to her pyjamas, darkly dripping and slick like grease; she didn’t seem to care but the sight of it made me feel vaguely ill. She glanced at her watch and turned to the mirror, where she considered her reflection. ‘It’s almost three o’clock.’

‘You look tired.’

‘There’s not much I can do about that while you’re in my bed. Where are all your clothes?’

I had left several items of clothing at the party; I hadn’t gone back in. Mark had fetched what he could, but my top and one sock had disappeared. I shrugged. ‘They’re in Chapelhill. I can’t remember the house number.’

‘Chapelhill?’

‘Yes. There was a party in Chapelhill.’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘From your school?’

‘Sort of.’

She turned back to the mirror; stopped for a moment; turned back to me. Her lips parted, a frown flittering across her forehead, horribly tentative, like a fish amongst anemones; her mouth closed and the look was gone. She shrugged.

I knew that look. She wore it occasionally when she saw me leave the house not wearing uniform; she was too collected to ask where I was going but whenever she felt insecure that look would be there, lingering for the briefest of moments before she smothered it. Once she had slipped up and asked me where I was going.

She didn’t ask if she could come with me. But the next day I had taken her for ice cream, and it became our routine to go out for ice cream once a week or so. Whenever the trip came around she’d give me an ironic smile, as if she was the one condescending to go and not I the one condescending to take her; she’d moan about the calories in ice cream and I’d tell her to get frozen yoghurt, and she would snort, and remind me that frozen yoghurt doesn’t have the same smoothness of texture.

Most of the time she went for frozen yoghurt.

‘Did you have fun?’ she asked eventually.

The question caught me off guard; for a moment it was too vast for contemplation. Did I have fun? Was fun even a part of the equation? Or was it as alien to that night as blue is to the sound of trumpets, like asking a sour taste to describe the feel of sandpaper?

‘I think so.’

She began to talk about Hannah Brown, the girl who gave Harry Stanley a blow-job in the field changing rooms. I tried not to listen. The thought of school caused a slick curl of unease in my stomach; I pushed it away by counting the flowers stitched onto her duvet. If Victoria knew of my outing that afternoon, she tactfully chose not to say anything.

‘Do you ever think of relationships?’

She blinked. ‘Relationships?’

‘Yes. I mean, do you want one?’

She began to blush, and looked away. ‘I haven’t thought about it.’

It was a lie. She had thought about it—she probably thought about it constantly, and if she wasn’t already too cynical to keep a diary she’d have written about it in one; she’d have hypothesised on the perfect date, and the physiognomy of her future-husband, and she might even have perused bridal magazines and torn out the patterns and venues that took her fancy. If she wasn’t so jaded she’d probably have made an educated guess on the cost—as it were, she hated that she thought about it, hated that it preoccupied her mind, hated that despite her best efforts she had come to view her future husband as her escape route from the reality of her current life, and her safety blanket—and I knew from the way she refused to meet my eye that she hated her inability to hide it from me.

She’d definitely thought about it.

She thought I was fishing for something. It made her nervous; she clammed up, her back growing stiff, her gaze determinedly lowered to follow the grain of her wooden desk. It hadn’t occurred to her that I might not be talking about her. And I wasn’t, I had hardly the capacity to observe her at all—inwardly I was raw and in turmoil, because something had happened under that tree in the darkened field, and I felt like a stone had rolled away.

‘I—I think I want one,’ I said.

She blinked. ‘You do?’

‘Yes.’

‘You do know that, technically, you’re already in a relationship?’

‘Oh! Yes, I suppose I am. But I mean a real one. I’d like a real relationship, I think.’

She snorted. ‘What’s the difference? You’d lie to Tom just as much as you lie to Sophie.’

‘I wouldn’t.’

‘You would. You lie to me.’ She shrugged and clambered into bed with me, placing the pillow below head dripping head. ‘I don’t see why Tom is any different.’

I watched as a wet patch formed underneath her head, spreading slowly outwards, creeping towards me gradually like a fan of tiny grasping hands. I moved away.

‘Why do you do that?’

‘Do what?’

‘That stupid night-time hair routine. You’re just wetting the pillow.’

She glanced at the pillow, her face utterly without horror—utterly without expression at all but for a look of mild surprise at the dark patch she found there. ‘I hate frizz,’ she said, as if that was sufficient to explain it.

I fell into my own bed. As I lay there I found my mind wandering beyond the windows; at the back of the house the wind could be heard, furiously crashing against the glass like stormy waves against the cliff. It was stronger now than it had been even on the field; I wondered vaguely whether there was a storm coming. Perhaps it had already arrived.

And at first I shivered, and was glad of the warmth; but before long the thrashing of the shadows on the ceiling began to tug at me insistently, and I knew I would have to leave the bed and draw the curtains. They were long and clawed, the shadows of branches like twisted knives; they invaded the stillness of the bedroom and I found that I couldn’t ignore them—and I couldn’t ignore them, I knew, because in their writhing turmoil they didn’t seem so much an external phenomenon at all but a manifestation of the geography of my mind; and I hated it that they were so twisted and so tumultuous, and so I threw off my covers and went to the window, shivering in the sudden cold. I grasped the curtains and made to close them.

—And if the shadows clawed and itched they were nothing compared to the originals beyond the glass, that positively throbbed with vicious, violent life. The bedroom fell away, or seemed to, until I could almost have been beyond the fence; I could almost feel the sting as the wind slapped my face, and the sting as the grass whipped my thighs—I could almost feel, if I closed my eyes, the boughs of the trees groaning above me, the furious rustle of dead leaves blowing around me, the snap of small twigs, invisible in the dark. Nature beyond the window had never seemed more alive than it did then, vicious and teeming with a million microscopic movements; by contrast my duvet was dead and limp, a stale, prone thing; the pillow was flaccid and swollen and still like a corpse—and what was the use of such stillness? Who could compare the two? It no longer bothered me that the lively shadows on the ceiling seemed to me to mirror my thoughts too precisely, because it no longer bothered me that my thoughts were so lively after all. When Nature was so alive, so tumbling and tumultuous with life, how could a tumultuous mind be anything but healthy?

I didn’t close the curtains.

***

The next morning I met Tom at the school gates; a blinding winter sun made him squint, and I ached to kiss the wrinkles that formed between his eyes.

‘Hey Gayboy,’ he said cheerfully. He slapped me on my arse, sending me sprawling, and told me excitedly about how Ashley Smythson had threatened a younger boy with a knife yesterday after school and how, because it had taken place on school property, the school had no choice but to investigate with a possible view to expulsion, and in the meantime Ashley had been suspended and the police had been called.

‘In our school!’ he said. He shook his head, his eyes bright. ‘Our school! Crazy, huh?’

I texted Sophie, and we agreed to meet up in town. Tom was the only one who remembered my outing at all.

***

That afternoon saw Sophie, Anna and I in House of Fraser, shopping.

‘It’s too big,’ Sophie cried. She turned round, craning her neck at the mirror, lifting her cascade of blonde hair out of the way so as to allow her to see better. ‘It’s too big, Anna. Isn’t it?’

‘I don’t think it’s too big. It’s a puffer jacket, Soph. They’re not generally fitted.’

‘It’s too big, I’m sure it’s too big.’ She stopped for a moment and began inspecting her ass anxiously, as if bigness was something that spread with proximity. ‘What do you think, Elli?’

It fit just fine. It fit just fine, and I was dying to ask her if we could cut short our shopping trip and go somewhere else, just the two of us, even though it would be bad manners to do so and Anna might be offended. I wasn’t even sure how Anna had come to join us in the first place but she had appeared, chai latte in hand, her expression of barely suppressed irritation at Sophie’s retail-induced-paranoia irritating me in turn because it was too much like my own expression, that I was barely myself suppressing; and I shouldn’t be feeling like that, I knew—not towards my own girlfriend.

‘It’s too big.’

Anna rolled her eyes, while Sophie smiled triumphantly.

‘See, Anna? It is too big. It’s too big, and that’s that.’

‘It’s not too big.’

‘It is. Elijah just said so.’

‘Elijah wasn’t even looking.’

I wanted to make it work, somehow. Sophie was perfect for me, and I was in a relationship. I had been in a relationship for weeks. I wanted to look at her fondly as she turned to me in search of a rebuttal and the assurance that I had, in fact, been looking, and I did, in fact, care about her puffer jacket—and yet the sight of her irritated me. The fact that I couldn’t force myself not to be irritated, despite my powers of self-persuasion, irritated me.

Sophie frowned. ‘Elijah?’

‘Hmm?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think it makes you look like a pumpkin.’

‘Thank you! Anna, I’m putting it back.’

For the briefest of moments, I hated myself. She flounced off, flicking her golden hair in childish abandon; Anna observed me from her place on the opposite seat with her usual knowing smile.

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘What?’

‘What’s wrong? You’ve been miserable all afternoon.’

I frowned. ‘Nothing’s wrong.’

Her smile grew, spreading over her face like a crack in a dry facade; the sight of it made my stomach roil because Anna was clever, perhaps as clever as me, and it would have taken very little effort on my part to dissect my own behaviour.

If she didn’t know already she’d have figured it out by the time we left.

She leaned forward, brushing her hair out of her eyes, her smile now everywhere, wicked and gleeful.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘That’s your prerogative. Got to say, though, your opinion means very little to me right now.’

‘Then something must be wrong. Because my opinion always means something to you.’

‘Nothing is wrong.’

‘It’s Sophie, isn’t it?’

‘It’s got nothing to do with Sophie.’

‘You’re breaking up with her.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

Sophie returned, still high on her win. She took my hand and the three of us made our way out of the shop.

Harvey Nichols was on the next street. I placed a wager: if she walked by, I’d tell her I loved her. I’d take her to my house. I’d show her the posters in my bedroom, that describe me as clearly words on a page. I’d pick up the black and white photograph that, at the moment, stood on my desk, and I’d give it to her, and I’d point to my grandmother and say, That’s my grandmother. Isn’t she beautiful? Isn’t she the most beautiful person you ever saw?—and I’d point to my grandfather and I’d say, That’s my grandfather. Isn’t he handsome? They’re the reason my mother’s crazy, and the reason Victoria compulsively cleans—they’re the reason I’m scared of everything. If she walked past Harvey Nichols I’d jump into a relationship, a real one this time; I’d give her everything.

If she took me to Harvey Nichols, I’d break up with her.

It was a rigged wager, of course. Sophie would never be able to simply walk right by. I’d known it all along, and it was a truth that became clearer with each step, in the inevitable shift in the focus of her glance and the way in which her feet twitched minutely, a series of tiny adjustments, of their own scarcely even noticeable, until we walked an invisible yet horribly recognisable path, taking me with her and, by extension, Anna. ‘Oh!’ she said suddenly, and I unhooked my arm from hers, disgusted by both of us.

‘What?’

‘I have to pick up a dress I ordered for Katherine’s party. I completely forgot about it!’

Besides me, Anna rolled her eyes.

I wondered mildly whether it mattered to my wager that she’d ordered clothing in advance. It should, I supposed; and yet I couldn’t bring myself to account for it. My hand hung limp by my side, cold and spent. Sophie took it purposefully, but I hadn’t the energy to give acknowledgement. ‘Are you coming in?’

I took too long to reply. She grew concerned.

But the decision was all-consuming, taking up the entirety of my cognitive function to the extent that I could barely follow their wordless exchange of glances—everything was taken up by that one choice, that one, horrible choice, my Scylla and Charybdis—did I want to go in with Sophie, my girlfriend, where it was warm, and where I had to nod in the appropriate places to her torrential chatter; or would I rather wait outside, where it was cold, where I was alone, and where the silence of my mind was reflected by the solitude of having nobody about I knew?

‘Elijah?’

With difficulty, I shifted my gaze outwards again.

‘Huh?’

She took my hand, gesturing for Anna to go on without us. She brought a hand up to my face and gently touched it.

‘Elijah, what’s wrong?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, what’s going on with you? Were you even listening?’

‘Of course I was listening. I’m always listening to you.’

She got the insult this time; she flinched, and for a moment I felt bad. If she’d just apologised then, turned meekly to the ground and apologised for dragging me around like a rag-doll, maybe shown some girlish distress at my dissatisfaction, tried to take my hand or silently begged me with her eyes the way she knew how to do so well—I might have forgiven her. For now at least. But instead she rallied, stood straighter, and in a moment of bravery, put on an irritated tone.

‘Are you even interested in this?’

The way she gestured suggested that ‘this’ could simply be Harvey Nichols, its elegant facade looming above us, pristine and shining and effortlessly condescending—and it was, for the brief moment that the words fell from her lips. There was a moment’s pause, and then another, until a discordant silence formed, in which she began to grow alarmed; she grew alarmed and began to study my face more intently, aware suddenly of how the ‘this’ in her question took on a whole new meaning in that silence—it no longer meant Harvey Nichols, the precipitous backdrop to our lovers’ quarrel, as cold and as aloof as a mountain; suddenly it could as easily mean ‘me’, or ‘us’.

God, I just couldn’t be bothered. I just couldn’t bring myself to address it, to look at her like I would usually look at her, to take her face in my hands and say, of course I’m interested. You could take me to all the Harvey Nichols in the world, and I’d still be interested in zipping up your dresses for you. It was a lie, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. But I couldn’t bring myself to allow her to pretend, after all that silence, that we were only ever talking about Harvey Nichols.

I regarded her in quietly, knowing that she hated every minute of it; I wondered, briefly, whether she would ever understand that I hated zipping up her dresses for her. ‘Have I ever given you the impression I’m not interested in you?’

‘No, never—at least, not like,’—she blushed—‘I mean, no, never. But sometimes… Sometimes I feel like you aren’t listening.’

‘That I’m not listening?’

‘Yes.’

What did I feel for her? At first I felt nothing, but it was only for a numb moment. I was surprised, when I looked at her, at just how much I did feel—because I so rarely felt anything at all. I was utterly irritated, horribly, horribly irritated by it all, the sight of her shopping bags made me want to rip them from her and trample them, spit on them, just so she’d see and maybe so she’d cry; but when I saw her soft hair, blowing in the cold afternoon wind, and the way her nose was slightly red, and her eyes very wide, and her fingers so small in their gloves, so small that even I could take them in mine and feel large; and when I saw the way she was biting her bottom lip nervously, and the way she couldn’t look at me, not for long, and so she’d glance at my face for only a moment before turning away and studying the people as they passed by behind me, utterly oblivious to our situation, to her despair, to my turmoil—

When I saw all that, I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to kiss her soft face over and over, bury my tongue in her ear, and whisper that I was sorry, and that it would all be fine, and that I loved her, honestly loved her, and that it would sort itself out and that I could, if she wanted, be with her in ten years’ time, twenty maybe, perhaps the rest of my life.

She looked so innocent and naive, like Victoria.

‘That’s not fair, Soph,’ I said, and she grew puzzled.

I watched as she grew unsure.

‘I don’t understand…’

‘All I ever do is follow you around, Soph, like a homeless dog. It’s all I ever do. I feel like I’m only actually with you so I can tie up the tops that fasten at the back.’

I thrummed with life, or something similar; my body quivered with anticipation.

‘What?’

My god, she was stupid. I delighted in it, and I hated her for it. For a moment I almost felt she deserved it, standing as she was, so blank and uncertain, as if the pavement had fallen away below her and the only thing preventing the inevitable plunge was the fact that it hadn’t occurred to her she should be falling yet.

‘And I’m just really tired of it, okay? I mean, I’ve had a bad day, sure, but when was the last time you actually called me? When was the last time we actually went anywhere other than shopping—when was the last time we went anywhere other than Harvey-bloody-Nichols? I’m so sick of chatting to the doormen every other day, Soph.’

‘Wait, but—’

I turned away. ‘Look I’m sorry, I really am, but I’m not being selfish. I’m not being harsh. It just seems like everything’s on your terms here—I mean, I went to your house yesterday. I went to your house last week. But when was the last time you ever came to mine?’

She opened her mouth to deny it—it stayed there, on the cusp, her eyes widening with realisation. No, I heard her think, no that’s not true, that’s not…

And then she stopped—because she had never been to my house. She didn’t even know where I lived. I had arranged it to be that way: I had never wanted her there. But the fact of it didn’t change the way it looked in the slightest.

She began to frown, minutely at first, and then deeper. I watched it, suddenly fascinated by its formation, by the way it seemed to spread, contorting her features, overwhelming everything else; it seemed to swell and absorb her eyes and her nose and the lines of her mouth, even though it was a physical impossibility that it should do so—even though I knew, physically, that it was only confined to her forehead. And yet it was all I could see. She opened her mouth to say something and closed it again; she looked this way and that for anything, for someone to explain to her how I could be wrong; in an agony of helplessness, she fidgeted with the buttons on her coat and the scarf around her neck. I watched as she reached certain conclusions, though they couldn’t have been further from the truth.

I couldn’t let her reach the point where she apologised, because if I refused her apology I would, in effect, have made a choice, and to be truly innocent I needed to be utterly without choices. I had to have no control. I looked away, as if it was too painful to look at her directly, and I shook my head.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m gonna go, okay?’

‘Elijah—’

It was a dance of sorts. It was a series of routines, one after the other, countless colourful combinations: I knew each of them perfectly. The crocodile tears, the catch of the breath; the fraction of a turn, the eyes lowered, the tiny flittering frowns; the brave grimace, the pained glance—I tried for a smile and didn’t quite make it.

‘I—I think I need a break. But I’ll text you sometime, okay?’

Textbook. Utterly textbook, horribly thrilling. It wasn’t funny. I left her there, bottom lip trembling, a tiny figure swamped with shopping bags, stationary in a stream of oblivious pedestrians.

It wasn’t funny, but on the way home I had the urge to laugh. I had the urge to park up somewhere and laugh, hysterically, for a hundred different reasons but none of them because it was funny—because it wasn’t funny, it wasn’t funny at all. There was nothing funny about it. It was mercy, I told myself—strange mercy, because I was crazy and she was better off without me. And I didn’t feel bad for manipulating her, and I didn’t feel bad for using her. I felt relieved.

Relieved and hysterical and, somewhere deeply hidden, desperately sad; and at the same time strangely triumphant—because I set a task for myself, and I had succeeded.

I had fooled her, and I was single.