Then Alice
Then
Alice
Jake shows me a different way to live. He cares about nothing and wants to try everything; to say that he has opened my eyes sexually in the space of a few short days is a dramatic understatement. But it’s more than that. His whole life is dedicated to small acts of pleasure, from the ritualistic Italian cappuccino to a night spent watching shooting stars in Hyde Park (we broke in by climbing over the locked gates, and spent hours on a bench wrapped up in blankets, and I think it might be the most romantic thing I will ever do).
It’s his idea to spend a whole weekend in bed, forty-eight hours of decadent living during which we get dressed only once, to visit the little shop across the road for provisions.
Amir, the owner, laughs when he sees what we have lined up on the counter.
A bottle of cava, another of white wine, milk, a jar of Nescafé’s Blend 37, a loaf of Mother’s Pride, a packet of ginger nuts.
‘All the essentials, yeah?’ he says.
‘Think we’ve got it covered,’ Jake says, wrapping an arm around my shoulders.
In the kitchen, we unpack the shopping together like any married couple: milk in the fridge, tea and biscuits in the cupboard, champagne into the fridge. I am boiling the kettle for tea, my back turned to Jake, when he surprises me with his hands inside my shirt, the sharp cold of two ice cubes against my nipples.
I cry out, but then I feel the warmth of his mouth against my neck and it turns into a gasp of pleasure instead.
I try to turn around to kiss him, but he whispers, ‘No,’ and I am used to this game of taking turns. I love it. I live for it.
‘We’re going to need a lot of time, a lot of weekends,’ he says afterwards, as we lie on the brown sofa, and our future of committed eroticism stretches out in front of us, a whole infinity of lovemaking.
Jake carries the television into his bedroom and we watch one show after another: Doctor Who , The Goodies , Parkinson . There’s an Omnibus on Andy Warhol, and the two of us watch entranced. Like everyone else, we’re fascinated with Warhol. So much has been written about him, but it’s rare to see him on TV, the man famed for his fiercely guarded privacy.
‘Rick is going to be as big as Warhol, if not bigger,’ I tell Jake. ‘I overheard Gordon saying so the other day.’
Jake picks up my hand and kisses it without taking his eyes away from the screen.
‘I live in hope that one day, Alice Garland, you might actually believe in yourself. You’re just as talented as him.’
We drink the champagne at two o’clock in the morning out of cheap tumblers bought with Green Shield stamps; I recognise them because we have the same ones at home. My father often makes my mother a gin and tonic in one of these glasses, his own evening whisky in fine crystal inherited from his parents; small, everyday acts of pettiness intended to grind her down.
‘Why do you put up with him?’
‘Because we’re frightened of him. His temper. The rages that can blow up from nowhere. He’s tolerable most of the time, but when he drinks, it’s a nightmare.’
‘Alcoholic?’
‘I don’t really know. It doesn’t seem to take much to make him turn. Three glasses of wine and he’ll fly off the handle. It’s like he’s just waiting for me or my mother to say the wrong thing so he can start yelling at us. You get inured to it after a while. My mother just drifts off into her dreamworld and I suppose I closed down a bit more each time. I felt like I was marking out the time until I could leave.’
‘Poor baby,’ Jake says, kissing me. ‘I hope he never hurt you. Physically, I mean.’
‘No. Sometimes I thought he might. But he always pulled himself back at the last minute.’
Jake is quiet for a moment.
‘My grandfather was violent. All the time. But I never let him break me.’
‘You really hate him, don’t you?’
He shrugs. ‘He’s dead, so … I guess I just need to let it all go.’
In the morning, we are in the bathroom together, Jake shaving in front of the mirror, me about to have a shower, when I open up the cabinet to look for soap. And there inside are two boxes of medication I am instantly drawn to. I take them out and look at their names. Phenelzine and Largactil. They look nothing like the antibiotics I was prescribed throughout most of my childhood for recurring tonsillitis.
‘Phen-el-zine.’ I sound out the word like a child learning the alphabet. ‘These look heavy-duty. What are they?’
Jake puts down his razor and turns to me, his half-shaved chin segmented by white foam.
‘Antidepressants and antipsychotics. I’ve been on them for years. Ever since I was sixteen.’
‘Psychotics?’
‘That doesn’t make me a psycho, if that’s what you’re thinking. Just a depressive. But not any more. I stopped taking them a while ago. I hate the way they fur up my brain. I can’t write properly when my mind is all blurry, it slows me down.’
He takes the first packet of pills from me and starts popping them out, one by one, into the lavatory.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Moving on. Like I should have done a long time ago.’
This is all happening too fast. I want to stop him, to snatch the pills out of his hands and put them back in the cupboard. Just in case. I am just getting used to the information that Jake has spent the past ten years on heavy medication, and now, in a heartbeat, he is throwing it away. What if his symptoms come back? I feel in this moment completely out of my depth.
‘Jake! Stop. Shouldn’t you talk to the doctor first?’
‘Do I seem depressed to you? Or euphorically happy?’
‘Well, happy right now, but …’
I watch, helplessly, as he picks up the next packet and empties out the contents.
‘Come here,’ he says.
He closes the loo seat and sits down, pulling me onto his lap.
‘I promise there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘Depression?’
I nod, too full of the moment for words, too fearful of what I’m about to find out.
‘It’s like being underwater while the rest of the world rushes by. You’d like to come up for air, only you have no energy, none at all; you might as well be paralysed. So instead you exist in a curled-up ball of bleakness.’
I press my cheek against his, eyes squeezed shut. My tears are a weakness when he’s been through so much.
‘Alice, look at me.’
I open my eyes, and he kisses me.
‘There’s no need to be sad. You have to believe me when I tell you that it’s over. I’ve felt good for a long time, even before the cataclysmic, life-changing arrival of you. Do you believe me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. In that case, only two rules for the rest of the weekend,’ he says. ‘No clothes to be worn at any time. And no more questions.’
I was in love, you see. And I wanted more than anything to believe him.