Nina Simone
FEELING GOOD
Sheila offered to collect me from the flat and I promptly shit myself and asked her to meet me outside the shop instead.
‘You don’t want her to meet me?’ David answered. He was leaning against the kitchen work surface in a pair of silk boxers while he shovelled Cheerios into his mouth.
‘My husband? No.’
He laughed and spoke around a mouthful of hoops. ‘Welcome to my world.’
I was wearing one of the new skirts I’d picked out during my shopping splurge with Janet earlier in the week.
It was pleated and admittedly quite comfortable, though it felt a bit too flash for my usual everyday style.
But Janet had told me that my backside looked good in it, and that it was worth showing off my legs, too, because they were, apparently, a good asset.
Of course, I’d all but flung my credit card at the cashier as soon as Janet had said that.
I’d paired the black skirt with a pale pink blouse, and I felt every bit over-dressed for the flea market that Sheila and I were planning to spend the day at.
Somehow, though, every occasion with Sheila was starting to feel worth every bit overdressing for.
I was painfully aware of the spring in my step as I walked from home to shopfront, stopping partway at Dock of the Bay to get two teas – one breakfast, one herbal, so Sheila could choose.
‘You look different today, Patti,’ Bill said as he handed me a cupholder for the drinks.
‘Good different?’
‘Very good different.’
I laughed. ‘In which case, thank you, Bill.’
‘You have a good day now, Miss Patti.’
‘And you,’ I shouted back.
‘Give my best to your husband.’
I pretended not to hear.
When I was with Sheila, it was only too easy to place glaring blinkers over my vision and forget that I was, in fact, married – by law, if not by…
Well, everything else, I thought. But when I wasn’t with her, I was becoming more and more aware of this twist somewhere in me.
The same sort of twist that had happened when I didn’t do as well on my O levels as my mother had hoped I would; when I told her I was studying English at university; when I handed in my notice at one university to leave and teach at another and then, eventually, to leave teaching altogether.
The twist, I knew, was actually a nagging, period pain of a worry: I will disappoint; I could be better; I am being disloyal.
‘Ah, you stopped to get tea!’
My head snapped up at the sound of Sheila’s voice.
I’d been so lost in the beginnings of worry that I hadn’t even realised I was nearing the shop.
Sheila was parked, a trailer on the back of her car in preparedness for whatever she might buy at the market, and she was leaning against the back bumper holding her own cup holder with two drinks.
‘What did you get?’ she asked.
‘Herbal and breakfast.’
She laughed. ‘Snap. Come on, we’ve definitely got enough to keep us hydrated for the twenty-minute drive that’s ahead.’ Sheila was climbing back into the driver’s side but she looked over the top of the car to add, ‘By the way, Pat…’
‘Hm?’
‘Love the skirt.’
I made a mental note to text Janet when I was home and thank her.
* * *
That day I did another thing that I hadn’t done for a long time: I walked hand in hand with a woman.
It had been so long, I realised, that the world had changed into largely not caring, too.
Of course, there were one or two people who glanced in our direction and I spotted them clearly enough, even if Sheila claimed not to have done.
But others only smiled or, more often than not, ignored us entirely as they went about their own shopping.
Though the real bonus to our hand-holding was the way in which it acted as a marker for everyone who Sheila introduced me to – every other stallholder it seemed, at one point.
‘You know most of the people here,’ I joked with her.
‘I do this a lot, wander around flea markets. Sometimes I don’t even need to come; sometimes they call me, as though they’re personal dealers.
’ She paused to make eyes at an old chest of drawers before moving us along.
‘It must be the same with the shop, surely? How about the man with the… Well, you know, the day we met,’ she said through a slow-forming giggle.
‘The man with the dildo,’ I blurted out. ‘You may as well say it.’
‘Well, yes, him.’
‘He’s a good friend now, and a supplier. One of many, I suppose, like you said.’
‘Far cry from being a lecturer, I suspect.’
‘Mm, it is. I don’t know that I’d swap it, though.’
‘You didn’t enjoy teaching?’
‘Oh, I loved teaching. But it’s a job that catches up with you after a while. Everyone else getting younger while you’re forever–’
‘Patti.’ She laughed. ‘You’re always so worried about age.’
‘I’m not that worried about it.’
She pulled me to a stop and span me around to face her. ‘But you are, and you shouldn’t be.’ Sheila kissed the corner of my mouth and I imagined everything becoming slow-blurred around us. ‘You’re only as young as you feel.’
By my reckoning, I must have been about sixteen in that moment.
‘Come on, I want you to choose something today,’ she said as she encouraged me back into a gentle walk. ‘Bookshelf, cabinet, chair. Lady’s choice.’
‘You need a new project?’
‘I want a new project.’
‘And how long do your projects usually take?’
‘It depends on the projects.’ She thumbed at the corners of sample fabrics displayed at the front of an especially colourful stall. ‘And how much time I have to give to them. Some of my work is commissioned and that has to take priority. But I’m in the market for something personal today.’
We went back to our quiet browsing after that, neither of us ever straying further than an arm’s reach from the other.
That is, until I spotted the thing I’d been looking for.
‘I’ll be back in a second,’ I said to Sheila as I eased my hand out from the lock of hers, and I wandered to a nearby stall that was made up entirely of old, dark wood items. There was a tall rocking chair right at the front of the space, and as soon as I laid my palm flat against it, I was catapulted back to Sunday afternoons as a child.
My mother would drag me to church with her every week and I would sit still and wear a bow and do all of the right meek little girl things – that so often involved ignoring other little girls, lest I give them the wrong kind of stare.
In return for that compliance, every week my mother and I would tuck into her old rocking chair – until I outgrew it and took to curling up next to her feet under a blanket instead – and she would read to me.
In among a precarious and sometimes challenging bond, as I recalled it, these moments were some of the gemstones that marked my mother–daughter relationship as really being one worth having.
I was yanked back into the moment when I felt Sheila’s hand against my back – no, not my back, my skin.
She must have slipped her hand under the fabric of my blouse and I wondered whether it was an accident.
She didn’t correct the placement, though, and instead rubbed softly at the skin there until I found I was leaning into her, closing any gap between us.
‘What did you find?’
‘A memory,’ I answered.
‘Can we take this, please?’ Sheila caught the attention of the stallholder. ‘Any chance you can arrange delivery? I’ve got a trailer but I don’t like my odds.’
He laughed along with her. ‘Sure thing, let me grab a pen and the card machine.’
Sheila was fumbling with her phone and I put my hand over its screen. ‘Let me? You’re the one who’s going to be working on it.’
She smiled and kissed my cheek. ‘My treat.’
I pressed my hip a little harder against her and thought how lovely it all was. This woman has just bought me a memory.