Chapter 46 Memories
Christmas lights make driving much less aggravating.
There are none in this flat, however, and even the bright red poinsettia I brought as a gift looks sparse and lonely.
It doesn’t help that I’m staring at a pistol with a heavy wood-effect grip and angular green barrel, and I’m not entirely sure why.
My main preoccupation as I sit here in Hollis’s flat, is that I lack the additional two hundred thousand for the estate agent, although, fortunately, none of the four families that viewed it have made an offer.
It’s partly because I spent Saturday sitting outside the house as they looked around and left information on each of their windscreens pretending to be from a neighbour, explaining the undeclared moth infestation that has led to the owner’s swift departure.
Stephen, meanwhile, is no help to anyone.
His mother didn’t even have a stroke. It was merely a sudden drop in blood pressure.
Her heart did stop for a minute or two, but once they put her in a coma it started right up again, and yet she’s acting like she’s had triple bypass surgery and is playing him like a violin.
‘A gun,’ I say, a little concerned as this was a man I shoved off a cliff face.
‘I’m a competitive shooter now,’ he says, turning it reverentially.
‘It’s a lovely colour.’ It’s clearly not the response he’s after.
He puts the gun down and picks up a photograph of a dog.
‘This is Malory,’ he says.
‘Yes, I know.’
Hollis stares at me. ‘You remember Malory?’
I’m flummoxed. An early mistake. ‘I do, but I don’t, if you know what I mean?’
‘Not really.’ He shakes his head.
‘It’s odd,’ I say, covering the obvious tyre tracks. ‘It’s as if I have memories, but they’re not connected to anything. If I’d seen you in the street I would’ve known your face, but I couldn’t have told you why or where.’
‘Huh,’ he says. ‘Isn’t the mind an amazing thing? It’s like your brain knew there was a problem when you fell and did a quick back-up, but you can’t access the memory because you’ve got no RAM.’
‘Absolutely like that.’ I have no idea what he’s talking about but he’s pleased with himself so I smile. I remember how proud he used to be if he’d managed to defecate in a public bathroom. Well done, Hollis, I used to say.
He approaches me with two cups held in indentations on a plastic tray that fits to the front of his wheelchair. He stops by my side, and my drink alights (I think that’s the right word) at my table.
‘It was a nightmare before I got this tray. You know, the little things can really stump you, if you’re new to it all.’ He looks up at me, a dreamy look in his eyes. ‘You never realize what you’ve got until it’s gone.’
I don’t share his sentiment. I knew exactly what he was long before he was gone.
‘Which was the worst thing to lose, Hollis, your legs or your wife?’ I say, partly because I’m faintly interested in his answer.
‘Come on – you can’t ask me that! You know the answer. It’s you, every single time, even if I had four legs.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, glancing at my watch as surreptitiously as I can, as I do find him curiously boring. It’s not his fault, it’s just that he’s got no relevance to my future.
‘Now, on to the main event,’ he chimes, and wheels himself to a glossy white IKEA bookcase. He flicks through various notebooks and pulls one out. ‘The beginning!’
‘Whoopee,’ I say. I do remember how we met, where we met, what his hands did, what mine did, and the rest. It sits undigested in my mind, emotionless, as all memories do. Hollis, being a control freak, recorded everything as if we were some fairytale couple.
‘Listen to this! “I met a strange girl today. Looked like she’d dressed in a charity shop. A ripped tweed jacket, bright pink tights, a tiny leather skirt, big old army boots with not much in the way of laces, a T-shirt that said ‘RELAX’ and a red beret.”’
‘You were quite observant,’ I say.
‘I know,’ he says. ‘“She was actually begging at the time. Or I thought so because she held her hat out as I passed. I put a quid in there and she said the funniest thing.”’
‘What did I say?’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘I genuinely do not remember,’ I say. He still doesn’t realize that it wasn’t a good time for me and I didn’t have what he would recognize as choice.
‘You said, “That’ll only buy you a quick feel, mate.” And I said, “How much for a slow feel?” and you said, “If you so much as touch me, I’ll break your nose.” I laughed my head off.’
‘Nothing coming back, Hollis.’
‘Oh, you must remember this, you said, “Do you live near here?” I said I did, and you said, “Make me a cheese sandwich and I’ll get you off.” And that’s what we did. Never met anyone like you before. Unreal.’
‘So I’m the girl you took to bed for a cheese sandwich? That’s romantic, Hollis,’ I say calmly, but I don’t like this version of myself. It belongs in a ravine, hidden under snow.
‘Yes, it was just banter.’
I want to tell him that he’s wrong. It was a negotiation. I was hungry, so I had sex with him for a cheese sandwich. I had no feelings for him, or anything for that matter, and he thought it was just modern dating.
Hollis offered a way out, and although I had nothing at the time, I realized later that I’d priced myself well below market value. But on that afternoon, as I was devouring that Cheddar, white bread and margarine sandwich in a reasonably warm flat, I felt like I was the one who’d bagged a bargain.
I learned two important lessons based on my experiences on the street. The first is that without bricks and mortar, every day is a losing battle. The second is that in terms of a pleasure versus pain ratio, you can do a lot worse than establish yourself as an upper-middle-class banker’s wife.
‘And then you just stayed. And I made you a cheese sandwich every day, and we got to know each other.’ He winks at me.
‘“Her name, she tells me, having slept with her three times (unusual order, but she said she can’t tell me intimate things like her name until we get all the pleasantries of fellatio, cunnilingus and sodomy out of the way) is Lola. She’s so funny, my stomach aches. ”’
He used to laugh every time I was just being honest. If I said I wanted to break into a shop at 2 a.m. because I wanted Marmite, he’d laugh, and then when I did that exact thing, he was in absolute awe.
‘I won’t read the next bit,’ he says.
Which is, I hazard a guess, the bit when he asked if I wanted to meet his family, and I told him if he ever asked that again, I’d kill his dog.
He realized I might be telling the truth and stopped.
I wouldn’t have hurt his dog, mind you. I have enormous respect for a dog’s ability to manipulate its owner and live a life of luxury with minimum contribution.
I sip weak coffee as Hollis regales me with our exciting and dramatic life together. In truth I can see how it felt dangerous and adventurous for him, but that’s men for you, they only see the world in terms of their own pleasure centres. I laughed as much as he did, but I was just about surviving.
‘Hollis,’ I say, stopping him. ‘It all sounds so sordid and tawdry.’
‘But it was real. Our little flat was the whole world and when I was at work, I just wanted to get back to you and our bed. You were like nothing I’d ever known.’
‘That’s just sex talking, Hollis.’
‘No, it’s much more than that. You lit up my world.’
‘Really?’ I say, as that certainly wasn’t what happened to me. Perhaps I’m just better in bed than I imagined. I should’ve charged more on the street.
‘You were an anarchist, a narcissist, a nymphomaniac, a thief, a rebel, and you were so unkind to me, it blew my mind. And the sex . . .’ Hollis stops and looks at me with some kind of expectation.
‘No, Hollis,’ I say.
‘Too early?’
‘Too late, actually,’ I say, and reach into my tote bag.
I consider our relationship with hindsight.
I hadn’t been fully conscious of it at the time, but I didn’t like the generous things Hollis did for me.
I felt his gifts, his romance, the endless love were all a way to own and control me.
And that’s how it was in the end. In the beginning, I confessed my world to him, and in the end, he used it all against me.
‘You look so sorted now, I can’t get used to it,’ he says, looking at me with a longing expression.
‘I suppose I am, yes.’
‘I don’t know, I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m just thinking that maybe the knock on your head when you fell put something right,’ he says, and I notice that his chair is creeping closer to me.
‘No, you’re clearly not a psychiatrist.’
He smiles, and with the mere flick of a finger his chair rolls to my side and he takes my hand. I pull it away from him.
‘I want you back, Lola. I want to start again.’ He snatches my hand back.
‘Sadly, Hollis, it doesn’t work like that.’ I smile at him fondly, then get up. I move behind him and slip my hand into my bag. I grip the handle of the hammer. It’s now or never.
‘I know I’ll have to win your heart all over again, but I’m going to try,’ he says, as I put one hand on his shoulder. ‘You were worth more than life to me.’
‘I was never worth that much, Hollis. No one is.’ I move my hand to his temple. It probably feels like affection to him, but I’m adjusting his head so that I can get a good connection and do what Mont Blanc should’ve done all those years ago.
‘I never stopped loving you,’ he says, reaching up and putting his hand on mine.
‘I know, and, in my own little way, maybe I never stopped loving you too,’ I say. ‘But I’m married to someone else now, Hollis. I don’t want to go backwards.’
‘He doesn’t love you like I love you.’ His voice is plaintive now.
I slide the hammer into my palm and feel a rush of desire. I step back slightly and widen my stance. He has no idea as his hand strokes my free hand affectionately.
‘Why did you search for me for so long when I treated you so badly?’
‘If you love a tiger,’ he says, ‘you know that one day it’ll bite your head off, but you don’t love it any less, because you’ve always known it’s a tiger. You were my tiger.’
I look down at him. I feel a piercing beat in my head, the pitch rising and rising. I need this. I need this now. I need to stop the past recurring. I need Hollis dead. To secure my future, I need to kill my past. It’s completely rational.
I try. But my arm won’t move.