The Drifters
COME ON OVER TO MY PLACE
Like every person who has ever reluctantly confessed to something ever, I found every excuse there was not to see Sheila in the days after the funeral.
We’d make plans and then I’d be exhausted, or a friend would need help, or my leg would have fallen off.
There were no limits to my elaborate excuses, the last of which was that I had to take Lucy to the vets.
I felt so guilty for having inflicted a fictional ailment on my cat that I actually spent the evening feeding her Dreamies one at a time and stroking her fur, which did nothing to ease her Egyptian princess complex, I’m sure, but at least it assuaged my guilt.
After a week of avoidance, I decided the only way I would be able to go through with the plan to tell Sheila about David was if I didn’t give myself the opportunity to back out.
So when I closed the shop on Friday afternoon, I put on my big girl trousers and marched the distance to Sheila’s front door.
When I arrived, there was a period of shifting from one foot to the other while I stood on the pavement opposite her house, which went on for such a long time that I thought it might look suspicious to any curtain-twitchers.
Then it occurred to me that it might, in fact, look suspicious to Sheila, too, if she happened to peer through one of her front windows and find me leering back at her from a short distance, like a character stripped straight from Fatal Attraction.
So I drew in what I hoped would be a deep and cleansing breath, held it while I hurried across the road, and then exhaled just as deeply on the climb up the few steps leading to the front door.
It was the first time I noticed that Sheila had a knocker and a doorbell.
In my heightened state, I used both, as though to convey the urgency of matters.
The door swung open seconds later. But in place of Sheila there was another woman there to greet me.
She was easily five years my senior and easily five points higher than me on the scale of what makes a woman attractive.
Her hair was a brilliant white-grey and wrapped up in an elaborate bun contraption that looked as though it might have taken her entire life to master.
Her make-up pristine, with red lips and a neat cupid’s bow that again suggested some kind of mastery in the art of being a beautiful woman.
And she wore a long, black flowing… thing.
It may have been a dress, it may have been a jumpsuit; whatever it was, she looked gorgeous in it.
I suddenly wished that I’d taken the time to go home and change out of my ragged jeans and oversized linen shirt.
There’d been a delivery to the shop that afternoon, and it had hardly seemed worth dressing up for.
Of course, had I known my competition here would be so stiff…
‘You don’t look like a food delivery person,’ the woman said with narrowed eyes.
The comment caught me so off-guard that I laughed, despite my nerves. ‘You don’t look like Sheila. Is she…’ I looked behind the woman along the hallway and, as though summoned, Sheila soon came rushing out from the direction of the living room.
‘Patti!’
‘Oh my word, the Patti?’ the woman chimed, and I liked that addition of “the” even though I didn’t know what it implied.
It seemed like the sort of thing that belonged in front of David’s name rather than my own.
‘Don’t stand on ceremony, come in, come in.
’ She hurried me along and Sheila seemed to approve of the suggestion, as she schoolgirl giggled and stepped out of the way to make space for me in the hall.
‘This is Blanche,’ Sheila said when I was safely inside.
‘A pleasure.’ The woman held out her hand, which I took. ‘I’ve heard so much.’
‘It can’t all possibly be true,’ I joked, and she squeezed my shoulder and winked.
‘I sincerely hope it is.’
‘Blanche.’ Sheila seemed to caution her friend. ‘Why don’t you go and tell the others that we’ll need another place setting for dinner?’ She turned to me. ‘You’ll stay for food?’
‘Of course she will!’ Blanche said as she disappeared down the hall and out of view.
Sheila ran a hand through her hair. Somehow, the gesture reminded me of having sex with her and I found I had to blink hard to clear the memory.
‘I promise, not all of my friends act like they’re performing on a low-budget stage,’ she joked.
‘Blanche truly believes she was named after the Williams character, which means she… Hey, are you all right?’ She moved closer to me and reached for my hand.
‘You look a little peaky.’ Her other hand came up to my forehead, the back of it resting against the skin there.
‘I should have called, I didn’t realise you’d–’
‘My love,’ she interrupted me, ‘you are always welcome here, it’s an open house for you.’
My mouth bobbed open and closed at least twice and I felt genuinely worried for a second that I might cry, which wouldn’t have set the right tone for a confession at all. But then, neither does a dinner party with friends, so…
‘Look, I’ll go, we’ll see each other another time.’
I was turning for the door when Patti encouraged me back in. ‘I’d love for you to meet them,’ she said and I thought I caught something questioning in her tone.
‘You’re sure?’
What on the earth are you doing, Patti?
‘Of course! I’ll warn you, we’ve been drinking on and off all afternoon and we were hoping the knock at the door would actually be a nice man bringing us an offensive amount of Chinese food to soak it all up with.
But if you don’t mind tackling my slightly tipsy friends, then I’d be, well, I’d be overjoyed, truth be told. ’
I smiled. ‘I’d be overjoyed, too.’
What are you doing, Patti?
‘Come, come…’
For Christ’s sake, Patti, turn around and leave!
‘This is Estelle… Iris… That’s Mamie hanging out of my front window to smoke…’
Sheila introduced them all in turn, and they flashed me wide and knowing smiles that made me wonder how much of our story she’d shared with them.
I soon discovered that Mamie and Iris were a couple – ‘We’ve been desperate for another lesbian pair to have over for dinner,’ Iris informed me in a tone that sounded like genuine relief – while Estelle and Blanche were both married, to Tom and Harry respectively.
Sheila hosted these girls’ afternoons once a month, it turned out, where all of them would get together and gossip – ‘And drink!’ Mamie shouted from the window, a standpoint she seemed reluctant to move from – and otherwise enjoy their merriment before going back to being “dull grown-ups” – Blanche’s words – the following day.
‘Usually with a raging hangover apiece,’ Mamie added.
‘Much to Tom’s dismay,’ Estelle said.
Their conversation rolled out so quickly that it felt like a tense and disorderly tennis match to keep up with them.
No sooner had one woman spoken and another fired out a response; my head shot across the room to catch sight of the speaker and bam, another player would enter the game with a rushed answer.
While it was difficult to keep up with, there was also something I recognised in their signs of long-standing friendship: finishing each other’s sentences; insider jokes that I imagined must stretch back years.
It was all a greater comfort than I expected it to be, as well as being eye-opening in the best of ways to see Sheila in this habitat, where she giggled like a teenager, drank neat berry gin as though she might die of thirst, and stole drags from Mamie’s never-ending stream of lit cigarettes when she thought I wasn’t looking; I was touched that she went to the trouble of hiding it, as though I’d even care about such a thing.
I thought of telling her I didn’t, but there was something endearing about watching this tipsy version of her being teenager sneaky with the behaviour.
The longer I stayed in their company, the easier it became to trick myself into believing that Sheila might understand the situation I had with David: the old friend; the companionship.
Though Sheila doesn’t appear to be married to anyone here…
I sighed and tried to force out a smile and keep up with their chatter about–
‘He’s here!’ Sheila announced and then she took off, fleeing the room before any of her guests could.
‘That’ll be the delivery man,’ Iris explained.
‘Ah,’ I answered. ‘I can see why that warrants a brisk jog.’
‘He’s been bloody ages,’ Mamie said as she finally moved from the window. ‘I hope there are extra crackers in those bags.’
‘Never mind all that,’ Blanche said as she landed clumsily on the sofa next to me.
‘Let’s talk about you for a quick minute while Sheila isn’t here to mind us, shall we?
’ She squeezed my knee and bunched her shoulders, and even though she was smiling, there was something intimidating about this sudden shift in the set-up.
I should have perhaps expected it, though; after all, isn’t this what friends do?
‘She’s going to ask what your intentions are with Sheila,’ Mamie warned me.
‘I think we all know what her intentions are…’ Iris said in a voice that had clearly emerged louder than intended. ‘Shit, sorry, that should have been an inside comment.’
‘You’re right’ – Mamie squeezed her shoulder – ‘it should have been.’
‘I just want to know,’ Blanche picked up again, nudging closer to me, ‘are you going to treat her right? Are you going to… Well, what I mean to say is… I think I’m trying to ask–’
‘Do you love Sheila?’
My head snapped around the find the source: Estelle.
‘You don’t have to answer that,’ she added. ‘But that’s what Blanche is angling at.’
‘Christ, Estelle, you’ve the force of an elephant sometimes.
Patti’ – Blanche softened her tone again when she spoke to me – ‘you don’t have to answer.
But as her friend, as a cluster of her friends actually,’ she said as though to rope the rest of them in, ‘above anything else we just want Sheila to be cared for and loved. I’m sure you understand that? ’
I opened my mouth to answer but Iris beat me to the punch.
‘Besides which’ – she was standing in the doorway as she spoke – ‘it would be a crying shame if you didn’t love her, given how much she loves you.’
And miraculously in the seconds after that, none of us had anything at all to say.