Читать книгу Hold: An Observer New Face of Fiction 2018 - Michael Donkor - Страница 18

Even though Amma found the idea of a ‘black Eve’ trite, and even though she didn’t want to be looked at, Amma had agreed to pose that Wednesday afternoon because it was Helena who had asked. Same old, same old: when they were at Prep School and Helena didn’t want to stand next to that girl in assembly or be the nurse again at playtime, there was a lilt in the enunciation of her requests or elegance in the fiddling of her fine, yellow hair that invariably won. So in Helena’s Dulwich conservatory, amongst arrayed yuccas, a coerced Amma found herself holding a Granny Smith at eye level, all for the sake of Helena’s Art coursework. Amma had never ‘sat’ for a portrait before, and the hot awkwardness as she suppressed fidgety itches was something she had no desire to experience ever again. Opposite, as if in response to Amma’s internalised disdain, Helena squinted. Amma watched her baroquely flourish the brush and dab the painting with finality.

‘And now for that promised hashy hash,’ Helena stopped to change the CD from De La Soul to Bob Dylan, wiped her hands on her faded T-shirt with Babar on it, then reached for the wooden pipe to her left and tapped ash from its bowl. She wrestled with her pockets. ‘The dark cloud hasn’t, like, lifted then, ma petite sœur?’ Helena said, peering into the retrieved baggie.

‘What?’

‘Obviously I’m talking about how you’ve been Lily Long-Face all afternoon.’

‘You told me I should “do pensive”, so I’m doing –’

‘– And what about how dry you were at Max’s? Mmm? I needed you there, man.’

‘I was there.’

‘Come on, Am. Support was required. Lavender needed controlling. She’s becoming a real joke. It’s like she’s forgotten that she’s actually, er, supposed to be a feminist?’

Amma rotated her neck until it clicked, then popped the apple on the nearest bookcase.

‘Yeah. You’re probably right. Definitely. Yeah.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Let’s not talk about Max’s. Please.’

‘Fine. That’s totally fine.’ Helena flicked her lighter, took a gulp and let out a luxuriant horn of white. ‘I don’t want you to do or say anything you’d be … uncomfortable with.’

Amma rolled her eyes.

‘Am, I’m trying to be nice. You’re acting like you need someone to be nice to you. Like you want that? So I’m doing my best. OK?’

Helena wiped her tiny mouth with a splattered sleeve and passed the pipe over. Amma inhaled a deeper lungful, then replied through strained exhalation.

‘Really. Let’s chat about something else. As uncharacteristic as it seems, the urge for the ordinary is pressing on me hard, dearest.’

‘That sounds really odd, and … disgusting.’

‘But I didn’t mean it like that.’

The two girls sat in silence, the milky sunlight playing with the air’s bluish haze. Amma rested the pipe by the apple. She wanted to leave, but that would be terrible. She closed her eyes and told herself she could start again. When she opened them, Helena was back at the easel, frowning.

‘What? What’s wrong?’ Amma asked.

‘You’ve really fucked the mood of this painting.’

‘How short-lived kindness and concern are with –’

‘Seriously. You’ve … like, infected it with some sort of weird Daria gloom and shit.’

‘What’s the one about a workman and his tools?’ Amma hopped up, lighter in the head, and walked over to Helena, muttering, ‘Workwoman. Her tools.’

Amma saw wildness on the canvas. Dragged, dripping bars of dirty brown and licks of red. Darker waves near the top. Scratched bits, etched with the pointed end of the brush perhaps. Mum would stand right up close to the thing and complain she couldn’t see what was supposed to be the fruit, what was supposed to be a leg, what was supposed to be an eye. To Amma, the swirl of wet colour in front of her, its indistinctness, the frightening sense that it might morph or become something more, was entirely familiar. She chuckled.

‘What’s funny?’

‘I was thinking to myself. Sorry. Nothing.’

‘Why don’t you think to me as well? It’s only right and proper.’

Helena’s eyebrows and forehead were working so much that the glittery bindi she had decided to wear slipped off. Amma picked it up, passed it over. She watched Helena press the dot back onto herself primly. Helena checked herself in one of the conservatory’s windows and Amma saw how pleased she seemed; how easily that pleasure arose.

‘When have you been most scared?’ Amma asked her.

‘Funny question.’

‘Try. Go on.’

‘What do you need to know for?’

‘Why so reluctant, ma chérie?’

Helena’s pinking eyes flashed. ‘When I thought I might drown. But you know about that. So you’re probably after something –’

‘Doesn’t matter. Keep going.’

‘So, OK, I was about eight or something. Mum was going out with that creepy cellist then.’

‘Eugh, yeah. With the teeth and the fingernails.’

‘The three of us were in Cornwall. He’d never been and Mum was, like, too happs about showing him everything and blah blah. Some afternoon we were on the beach and I swam in the sea. And I hadn’t swum out like crazily far or anything because I’m a good girl and know the rules –’

‘Indeed, indeed.’

‘And I, I had a cramp, like, winding round my leg, like squeezing it? I had no clue what was happening. Fucking terrible, man. Swallowing water. Yelling. It felt like I was doing that for hours, but that’s what happens in those, like, crisis moments, isn’t it? Time stretches? I bet it was probably only fifteen seconds or something before the cellist came and got me. So I suppose he was good for something.’ Helena laughed lightly, reached for a different brush.

Amma didn’t like what she was doing: forcing her friend to perform to prove a point to herself, a point she already understood and whose recognition would bring about no change. But the truth was unavoidable, as Amma watched the excitement with which Helena spoke as she recalled details. Fear was easy for Helena, maybe because it could be talked out, later. Amma could not breezily say what she wanted to; could not play it for laughs.

Amma coughed and shook her head when Helena offered the pipe. She returned to the raffia armchair and picked up the apple. ‘OK, let’s keep going then. Was it like this?’ Amma tried to replicate how her body had been. ‘Or this?’

‘What, now? We’re back on? I can’t keep up.’

‘More like this? H? More like this?’

Gravely, Helena cleaned her brush in murky water, sniffed and sighed, but Amma only half-heard, because she was looking at the apple’s buffed skin, wondering how Helena would react if she pressed in the three soft brown bruises on its surface: three tiny dips of disgusting tenderness.