Читать книгу Adults - Emma Jane Unsworth - Страница 10

it is crucial to incorporate mindfulness into your daily routine. I like to get on it every few hours, just to be sure. After I’ve written the email, I take a deep breath and count to ten in Hindi. I even have an app to remind me to take time out regularly. It shouts TAKE A BREAK, BABY! in an Austin Powers voice (I chose the voice from six options). It’s a little obnoxious, but it’s good to know something cares.

I check le status of mon croissant. Thirty-five likes. Dear sweet Christ alive. You’ve got to be kidding. The thirties are disastrous numbers, they really are.

As I’m studying the post, I realise that I have automatically tagged WerkHaus and, while I am displeased with the morning’s events, I do not want anyone losing their job on my account. I’ve seen An Inspector Calls – several times – with my mother. I know how much people in the service industry can take things to heart. My life is a perfect war zone of potential consequences.

I go into Edit Post and de-tag the location. Too late! Someone from WerkHaus – Joel from The Little Green Bento Den – has commented:

Was it the hench one with the underbite? She’s a right Orc

Fucking Joel. I consider what to do. I don’t want Suzy Brambles or any other notables thinking I am endorsing this bile. I also don’t want to get into an argument with Joel that could last several hours and get my blood up. I’ve sacrificed entire emotional half-days before now to online altercations. And I’ve got a column to write. Digital is not at odds with the flesh, as some might argue; this all has a very physical effect on me.

I type back at Joel:

Putting the miso in misogynist as ever, I see

There. That, I think, is smart and final. No coming back from that. Now we can all relax.

I stare at my comment.

Oh god. No it’s not smart at all. It’s over-handled and ham-fisted, like all my comments. Do you even get miso in a bento box? Fuck my life.

I delete the comment and Joel’s comment and just as I’m regretting deleting Joel’s comment (it looks cowardly, to delete without comment, and he’s the kind of fucker who’ll notice and comment again) – I put my head in my hands.

‘MORNING, WOKERS!’

I look up. Mia is standing over me. She’s wearing a blindingly white dress with a giant turtleneck obscuring the bottom half of her face. She looks like a Victorian who just got back from space. Mia’s Boston terrier, Simone, is by her feet. Simone once shat my initials perfectly on the office floor. You can call me paranoid, but there was no denying it was a definite ‘J’ and an ‘M’. Another victory for meaning. My point is: you know someone judges you when their dog judges you. No language skills, but what a critic! Etc.

‘How’s my fave ginger whinger?’ says Mia, in a voice that cuts right through my face and straight into my being. She is holding a turmeric-coloured drink and a twisted copy of Vogue.

‘I really hate it when you call me that.’

‘Don’t be a hater, bébé. Buzz on the chans is there’s a new personal drone that doubles as a clutch bag. When you’re out you just fling it in the air and it captures your night from above from all angles.’

I really think I could shoot Mia, possibly in the face, if her opinion of me wasn’t so important to me.

‘I don’t need an aerial reminder of how appalling my night was,’ says Vivienne, the features editor. Vivienne is six foot and wiry, with thick veins ribbing her arm muscles. She looks like the kind of woman who’s spent a lot of time smoking on Spanish beaches. I am certain she has killed. I don’t think I’ve once seen her smile and she isn’t on any social media – which only adds to her menace, and her valour. Vivienne and Mia are friends from fashion college. Anyone can see Mia’s always been the one with money and ambition and Vivienne is the cerebral sponger. Vivienne doesn’t give zero fucks; she gives minus fucks. Every time I am near her I want to whisper: Teach me how to eat an artichoke, Vivienne.

‘Are you completely sectionable, Viv?’ says Mia. ‘That’s the teenage-girl angle. Pictures from above make everyone look like a teenage girl. If you partook in popular culture I wouldn’t have to tell you this.’

‘I do not partake,’ says Vivienne. ‘I am a puppetmaster.’

‘Well, I’ve ordered a sample clutch drone,’ says Mia, ‘which I shall be trying out, in the name of investigative journalism.’

Vivienne says: ‘Speaking of which, I’m going to patronise that new Israeli near Kings Cross at lunch. I may not be back for a few days.’

‘Jenny!’ says Mia, as though she has just remembered my name. ‘How was your weekend?’

‘Busy! A few drinks, a private view, you know.’

‘Yes, I saw your picture.’

‘Oh, did you? Great, thanks,’ I gush.

‘Are you not going to ask me what I got up to?’

‘What did you get up to?’

She scrutinises my face. ‘I went … for a meal … which I know you know, because you liked other pictures around the same time mine went up, so why didn’t you like mine?’

Vivienne adjusts her neck. She knows the score. She keeps the score.

‘I must have … missed it? You know how sometimes it randomly reorders things.’

‘Hmm.’

The truth is, I like every fifth or sixth thing Mia posts – not always because I like them, but to sort of say hi and remind her of my existence. I don’t want to look rabid. I thought I was managing my affection well. Evidently not.

‘And how is Art?’ Mia asks.

‘He’s fine! Busy.’

She clasps her hands. This again.

Suffice to say that Art has a lot of hangers-on. A lot of women of a certain age. I know that’s unfeminist to say, but it’s a phenomenon that brings out the worst in me. At exhibitions, launches, shows … He’s the sexy, shaven-headed photographer. The hot thug. I can see it in their eyes: he’s a welcome, regular escape from their non-pussy-licking husbands.

‘Can he make drinks on Friday?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Not even one?’

‘One drink?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll ask.’

‘Do that.’

‘I will.’

‘Appreciated.’

‘So,’ Mia continues. ‘What’s the column this week?’

‘Co-habitation with women versus co-habitation with men. A nostalgia piece, in part, about my uni days.’

‘Juicy anecdotes, searing insight, rounded off with everywoman wisdom?’

‘Check, check, check!’

She hesitates.

‘Just, keep it on the hi-fi, rather than the low-fi.’

‘Spice it up,’ says Vivienne. ‘S’boring. You’re like someone in a Sunday supplement moaning about their shoes.’

Mia says: ‘Now, now. But yes, Jenny, it’s true. We’re all bored stiff with your vulnerability. Save it for your therapist. We need bold voices, not weak cries for help. We want ferocity. Strength. A roar from the lady jungle, not a whimper. This is the frontline of feminism. We have work to do. Remember the name of your column: INTENSE MODERN WOMAN.’

‘I mean, it’s an oxymoron though, isn’t it, having a column in a feminist magazine.’

Mia stares at me. ‘Do you mean a column as in an erection? Are we still doing phallus chat? COME ON. Brand too strong for some punk-ass bear to stop this wave. Make it gain traction.’

I swallow. ‘I understand, Mia.’

I do not.

She starts to walk away and turns back to say: ‘The headline of this conversation is: don’t hold back. Explode everything about what living with other women is really like. Put a grenade up the arse of that female utopia.’

‘Got it.’

Simone follows Mia, giving me a hefty side-eye.

Vivienne walks to the kitchenette zone and starts wrenching at the coffee machine. ‘Why are you chewing your fingers?’ she asks me. ‘Anxiety?’

‘No, it’s because I think I’m fucking delicious.’

I check my likes once more (forty-two, I should really kill myself) and start to write.

I stop typing every two minutes or so and let my thumb and thoughts zip round in a fast, looping flight. This, this, this, this. Back to work for a few sentences. Back round again. This, this, this. My head teems.

This is how I think:

I am doing what I should be doing: writing. Oh that’s quite good. I can do a good sentence when I put my mind to it – no wait, it’s terrible, why am I so terrible? Am I so terrible because of that time I kissed my male friend even though I was in a relationship because I have no way of separating platonic heterosexual friendship from groundwork for a sexual encounter? Oh, there’s something about politics! I should know more about politics. I will like it so that people think I know about politics. Or am I so terrible because I once tweeted a line of my own poetry after I’d been up all night and someone replied: Pull your head out your ass once in a while, and it was the brother of someone I once dated. No I am terrible because someone once commented on a column – apropos of nothing – YOU HAVE NO INTEGRITY. I am obsessed with whoever wrote that. How dare they be so right about me. It was the top comment, too, so it lives forever as the first thing you see beneath the piece – I can’t believe it can’t be removed on legal grounds. Ugh, this woman with the self-care haikus is awful. Her podcast is no. 2 in the charts. I should do a podcast. But what would my podcast be about? Maybe politics. Maybe politics for people who know nothing about politics. Like me. I am A WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE. I just need to find the time. I don’t know how people find the time to do podcasts. I can’t even find the time to finish this senten—

My phone pings with a message. I pounce on it.

It’s one of my lodgers. Sid.

Hey have you seen the half avocado that was in the fridge? x

She sends me daily micro-aggressions like this.

I reply:

Yes I ate it for breakfast, thought it would be okay as you ate half my sourdough last week x

That wasn’t me, that was Jonah, as you know I am gluten free x

He was staying in your room for the night tho x

He is his own person, why am I accountable for his actions? x

Fine, I’ll buy you another avocado. A whole one x

Not much good to me right now is it? Not to worry! Thank you, I do appreciate you replacing it x

I keep telling myself this lodger situation is only for a while, but I don’t know how I’ll ever afford to live in that house on my own. I just probably need to work harder, somehow. I should be a slashy. Journalist/podcaster/politician. How hard can it be to be a politician anyway? They’re all floundering and resigning these days. I can flounder and resign! Especially for cash. I’ll give it some thought when I get some time. I have three lodgers at the moment: Sid, Frances and Moon. They’re all in their early twenties, which makes me feel great. Usually, when I get in, they’re colonising the lounge. The other day when I got in they’d been at an all-day festival at Victoria Park. Swathed across the sofa, bleached and feathered, they looked like a gang of crooked fairies. The evil fairies that kill babies. Those kind of fairies.

Mia comes over. She has a print-out of my column in her hand.

‘Well it’s not going to start the revolution,’ she says. ‘But it might light a few torches in some under-educated backwaters. Now, do you have any candid photos of these days?’

‘I’m sure I can root something out,’ I say.

‘Excellent. Keep it halal.’

I look at my nearest desk-neighbour, confused. My desk-neighbour whispers: ‘She’s trying to make it a thing. Like kosher.’

I nod at Mia. She gives me an empty fist bump and walks away.

I pull out my laptop and start to go through my scanned old photos, but I end up looking at photos of me and Art. I stall over a photo of my mother and Art in a bar. They have their arms around each other. I recall how my mother burst in that night – in stilettos – and shouted (she always shouts, to be fair – no no: she projects): ‘Get me a seat, would you? MY BALLS ARE KILLING ME.’ Everyone in the bar looked – which was what she wanted, of course. Art thought she was the most. Showboats, both of ’em.

‘Your wit’s hers,’ Art said, more than once.

However, one likes to think the apple fell a little further from the wit tree, rolled a good way across the field of wit, coming to rest at the foot of Wit Mountain.

Anyway – she was so nice to him that night. Too nice. She’d never been nice to anyone I’d introduced her to before. But she was all over Art from the get-go. When he went to the Gents, I said: ‘You seem … very eager to please him. Not like you.’

After all, she’d said it countless times: Darling, who needs a man when you have a detached house, a personal trainer and a Teasmade?

‘What do you mean, it’s not like me?’ She did innocent eyes.

I did cynical ones. ‘You’ve always been rude to my boyfriends.’

‘I like his energy. It complements yours. And mine.’

I sat back. ‘Are you making a play for him? Because if you are, this situation is veering horribly close to cliché.’

‘Pahaha! Making a play – what a notion.’

‘Because you actually described yourself earlier as a “gymslip mum”. You actually used those words.’

‘It’s as simple as this: I think he’s good for you.’

‘I’m good as I am. I don’t need anyone to make me better.’

‘I know that. But I also know—’

‘What?’

‘How it gets, sometimes.’

In my head I thought she might mean ‘lonely’, but I didn’t want to push it, and anyway Art was coming back. And how could she be lonely, this woman who professed to be constantly harangued and harassed by the voices of spirits, which invaded her thoughts like rampant toddlers, or so she said. I once asked her: How do you switch off? She winked and raised her gin glass to me.

She put her hand on my arm. ‘But you must comb through his teenage years with him. Don’t let him be evasive. Don’t let his own … toxic experiences stop him … experiencing things with you.’

‘Thanks, but I don’t need relationship advice from someone who hasn’t had a relationship since the nineties.’

‘Well what do you call this?’

‘What?’ I said, confused.

She batted her hand back and forth between us.

‘Me and you? Hah! I mean a proper relationship. A romantic relationship.’

‘Romantic. God help you.’

But she did have a few relationships, years ago – relationships in which she invested enough to be jealous. Are you sitting comfortably? I’ll begin anyway.

A long time ago, back in the days when love was still analogue, my mother knew a man named Roger. Roger the Theatre Producer, to give him his full title. And you really must, with men like that, or there’s simply no point to them. Like most of my mother’s men, Roger was married and lived in London, but he travelled a lot. The first night he stayed I came downstairs feigning a headache, a thirst, I was feverish (with curiosity). I was thirteen.

She was in the kitchen fixing something long and cool. He was short and hot.

He started at the sight of me, white-gowned in the doorway. Oh, hello! You must be Jenny.

I nodded and went to sit at the end of the sofa, beside the coiled cobra lamp that was my mother’s most beloved possession. I smiled at Roger expectantly. I had things to learn. I liked the way his arms looked in his short-sleeved shirt. I was at an age when I still trusted muscles.

How old are you? I asked.

Forty.

Wow. So vastly, impossibly ancient. He looked smart and rich and like he’d been around all the blocks. I hadn’t even been around our block. I tucked my feet up and sat, knees making a rhombus – greeting him, and all exciting men, everywhere!

I heard the glasses she was holding tinkle. I didn’t turn. I sat there, eyes on Roger’s eyes, waiting, counting. Two seconds, three. What time is it, Mrs Wolf? Her hands clamped onto my shoulders. She hauled me out to the hall.

You’re too old to sit like that.

She wanted me to cry. I wanted to cheer. I suppose because I felt like we were finally on the edge of something real. She wasn’t protecting me with her anger – not like when I ran near the road or went missing in shops. There was fear in her eyes along with the anger, I could see that, but there was also a third emotion – one she wasn’t comfortable with, but one she couldn’t suppress. Aha! Ahaha! Oh, the pitiless epiphanies of the child confronting the threshold guardian. She was my end-of-level boss, the obstacle between me and some higher plane; some outside; and I would defeat her eventually, and she knew it. Those spurts of golden growth – they come like sailors, giving everything, taking everything.

And then one day, Roger stopped coming.

‘What happened?’ I said.

‘It ran its course,’ my mother said. ‘As all relationships with men should.’

I looked in her eyes for the lie. She stared back, like she always did, with her eyes folded. I’d looked into her eyes so many times, in real life and in photographs, trying to do a sort of past-life regression on myself. And what of my mother’s childhood?

The McLaine Sisters were four redheaded sisters, my mother being the eldest by three years. Even my grandparents saw their children as a novelty – they made them sing together in competitions on holiday in Rhyll, Blackpool, and other such seaside towns. My mother said they lined up in a row on stage, like the von Trapps. They wore black jodhpurs and white blouses and grey waistcoats, like four little horsewomen. (‘Not my first rodeo,’ my mother says, every time she’s about to go on stage.) They usually won, but when they didn’t it rather ruined the holiday. My mother still throws out a tune when she has a drink in her. She’s what you might call a loose karaoke cannon.

What does your mother do? the kids asked at school.

She’s an actress, I said.

She did still her vocal exercises every night. She rewatched her appearances in obscure soaps (Under the Doctor) and low-rent biopics (Shelly’s Shame). She had a bedroom that was more of a boudoir. When my friends came round she tried to correct their pronunciation and gave them instructions on voice projection and vocal preparation – Breathe deeply from your lower lungs, imagine a rubber ring around your waist and try to push the ring outwards as you breathe in. Shoulders down, breathe in through your nose, out through your nose and mouth. Bend your knees – not THAT much, you look like you’re on the toilet … Relax! RELAX!

We had hot holidays. A 20-inch TV. I swanned around school in my Clarks Magic Steps with the hidden key in the heel. I used to drive with her on the ring road, to and from the satellite towns where she performed: Sale, Altrincham, Eccles, Weaste. Me, riding shotgun, solemn as a priestess. I used to saunter into those clubs and pubs, those half-done places that smelled of stale beer and freshly sawn wood. I saw the staff and punters nudging each other. There, look, it’s her. The Daughter. The One.

And so that night at the restaurant, I watched her carefully with Art. The way she straightened his napkin for him, pleased on a helpless level, and it was like seeing her smooth the tie of someone who’d never existed. She was relieved. She didn’t have to worry I was going to be left stranded. I’d met a man, a socially mobile, upward man, and she, for all her old feminist foot-bones, could relax on account of the fact I had safely – finally (that shelf was getting dusty!) – entered some version of adulthood.