The Josephs and Other Stories. Polly Tuckett
really have a personality. She was just a being, filtering experience through a consciousness that had been shaped in this way or that to interpret the world. But this was avoidance. Thinking about his failed love for her in no way mitigated the impact of the loss of him. Remembering his bad temper in the mornings, his refusal to ever wash his work trousers, his love of avocados and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, his dry sense of humour, she was reminded that these were just examples of who she understood him to be, outer manifestations or accidents of fortune, preferences and modes of expression, not him in any essential way – their specificity seemingly revealing a uniqueness and irreplaceability which was really only ‘original’ in its one-off constellation of repeatable particularities – and so, like her, there was no essential him – he was a hollow soul, a flame of being, and they had been twin flames for a time.
As Edith and her mum walked back from the lake the evening sun stained the snows crimson. Deciduous trees with their dark bark were silhouetted like lungs against the sky, lacy forms, indecipherable as symbols in a dream. Beauty hurt her; perceiving it, she experienced vicious little stabs of sorrow and self-pitying bitterness.
Back at the hostel, the kids were making a racket and the adults were being grotesquely jovial around the trestle tables. She couldn’t manage a single mouthful and excused herself as soon as she could to wander the streets of the little town. A huge Christmas tree stood on an island in the middle of the street. Presents hung from the branches and Edith smiled, remembering her disappointment as a child on discovering these were fake when she stole one from the school tree and opened it in the toilets. Stuffing the empty cardboard box and wrapping paper into the bin, she had covered her crime with paper towels.
It was snowing, little polka dots on the night. Someone once told her there was no such thing as bad weather, only inadequate clothing. She shivered pulling her collar up. The cobbled streets were narrow and the shop fronts mesmerising, their goods displayed with tantalizing negligence. A watch shop had a Christmassy diorama with a toy train driven by a waistcoated rabbit, the wagons filled with tiny clock parts and exorbitantly priced watches draped here and there over the glittering fibreglass snow banked high around the tracks, as if you could just reach in and pluck one out.
She looked up and noticed a man walking away from her down the street. From the back he looked just like Paolo. Yes, he was walking exactly like him, purposefully and with a slight stoop. The coat could be his, the hair, everything. It could be him! This whole nightmare might be some sick joke, God or Disney’s way of teaching her a lesson. Perhaps he was not really leaving her. Maybe his death was a malicious rumour. She followed him, her brisk walk breaking into a jog. Her ribcage constricted like a claw; she could hardly breathe. He turned down a side street. Now he was entering a café bar. She followed him in, wanting and not wanting to get a good look at him. He went to the toilets in the back. She ordered a liqueur coffee. But when he came out his face was all wrong. She took her coffee to a table in the corner and sat facing the window with her back to the clientele. She was so stupid. Furious, her shoulders shook and tears ran down her cheeks. The impostor left the café and passed in front of the window. Now, not even his gait seemed familiar as he ambled off down the street. She’d been tricked, life had played on her another vile trick.
She took out a compact mirror and dabbed at her eyes with a manky old tissue. She paid and walked, dazed, out into the street. All the shops were so expensive, so cruel and smug a contrast, all the wealth in such harsh conditions. What if you were homeless? – and what was the answer to that? – aren’t we the lucky ones? She looked at a pair of leather boots in one window, at a deep-pile rug in another and then stopped, spellbound, in front of a jeweller’s window. There was an exquisite ring, a diamond solitaire. It didn’t have a price tag.
A bell rang as Edith entered the shop. She asked to see the ring and as the shopkeeper went to fetch it from the window she felt slightly giddy and found herself clutching the glass counter. To go into debt would be a kind of relief, it would give her something else to worry about, something more tangible. She took off her glove and tried the ring on her wedding finger. It was a perfect fit. She asked the price. It was a staggering sum and would take her to the limit of her overdraft. She paid by cheque.
There was a woman who married herself, maybe a friend of a friend, or else an urban myth. It seemed stupid to her, exhibitionist, futile. Edith was alone too, but engaged to a ghost, the man who left her first then died, as if to make his point. No one else would bear witness. She could pretend though, a fake wedding with a real ring. The snow was falling fast. She held up her hand. The diamond winked, complicit with the snowflakes. She remembered him coming up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her neck. ‘Cutchin my love, I’ll never leave you.’ ‘Cutchin’ was the name of his cat, he couldn’t even be bothered to invent a personal nickname for her.
The dizziness would pass. She hadn’t eaten all day. Her skin felt tight on her face. She was young, the cold reminded her of this fact, usually something to revel in but now she experienced a sense of bitter pointlessness. Life stretched ahead, a too-bright tunnel. She would never again find love like this, a forcefield around her chest. That she could carry on, put one foot in front of the other, seemed impossible, sickmaking.
She returned to the hostel. She borrowed a floaty white nightie from her mum, put it on and sat writing at the cramped little desk.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.