She closed her eyes, continuing to strum and play. Now she could only imagine everyone watching her, but imagining was bad enough. She knew that simply not caring was a solution, but she did care. She did care and she couldn’t stop caring.
Life is a terrible violation
.
One song.
Life
.
Another song.
Terrible
.
The last song.
Violation
.
She opened her eyes and turned to Brera. ‘That’s it. Let’s go.’
Brera scowled. ‘Not even an encore?’
‘Let’s go.’
She jumped down from the stage, into the crowd, using her guitar to keep people distanced, stumbled through the club, beyond the bar, out of the exit and on to the street.
She breathed in the night air, looking up at the sky but seeing only clouds.
Brera was behind her.
‘Stage fright,’ she said, sagely.
Sam wanted to disappear, but couldn’t.
When Ruby came to it was dark. The room was empty. The birds had flown. She stared up at the ceiling, trying to establish her whereabouts. Something was bothering her, upsetting her, but she didn’t know what. The doorbell rang. She sat bolt upright. ‘That’s it. The doorbell.’
She jumped up and ran to answer it, hoping it would be Sylvia. Instead it was Vincent, holding a cake.
She pulled the door wide open. ‘I was asleep.’
He offered her the cake. She took it and used her free hand to switch on the light. Everything sprang into clear relief. The cake was ineffectively covered in a scrappy piece of clingfilm. She pulled it off, careful not to damage the icing. It smelled of fruit and spice.
‘Weird cake,’ she said, sniffing it. He pushed past her and
went into the living-room, turning on the light and sitting down on the sofa.
She followed him. ‘What’s this for?’
He shrugged, smiling. She watched his smile. Could she forgive him? This was his way of saying sorry. What for, though? Which particular thing was he apologizing for? For not fancying her? For nearly losing her her job? For not giving a shit about anybody else?
‘I fucked Sarah.’
‘Sarah?’ she said. ‘Isn’t she Sam’s friend?’
He nodded. ‘I fucked her.’
‘Thursday night,’ she said, feeling sick.
Why had he told her? She stood up, holding on to the cake with both hands. She felt like throwing it at him but thought, No, that’d be too easy.
She walked over to him. ‘Take the cake.’
‘What?’
‘Take the bloody cake!’
He took the cake. He was still smiling at her. He was setting her free.
She walked from the room, down the hallway and into the kitchen. The dog was still there. She looked at her and said, ‘I’d forgotten about you.’
She picked up her lead from the table and attached it to her collar.
‘Guess what?’ she said. ‘You’re going home.’
She pulled her along the corridor and towards the front door. Vincent emerged from the living-room.
‘What’re you doing?’
She stopped and turned. ‘What does it look like? I’m taking the dog out.’
‘Where?’
‘Back.’
‘Back where?’
Before she could reply he said, ‘Don’t do that. Don’t take her back.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well …’
He thought for a moment and then said, ‘She’s interesting. She makes you interesting.’
‘You’re a dishonest bastard. A dirty lying bastard.’
She meant it. She yanked open the door and pulled the dog behind her.
He stared after her, smiling. She was free. He had set her free.
He listened to the noise of her shoes on the tiles in the hall, on the stairs. The tapping of the dog’s toe-nails.
When she had gone, Vincent rang for a cab. He was still holding the cake. He considered what she’d said.
There are two worlds, he decided, one in which being honest means something mundane, another in which it means being true to yourself, to real things.
He stared at the cake and debated which world it was that Ruby inhabited until a car horn sounded outside.
I’ll take the fucking cake, he thought, getting to his feet; I’ll take it.
Sam borrowed Steven’s mobile phone in the car on their way back to the hotel. Initially she rang Jubilee Road, but no one answered. Next she tried Sarah.
As she dialled Brera turned and asked, ‘Who’re you phoning?’
Sam put up a hand to silence her, evading any explanations.
What did she want from Sarah? She couldn’t decide. Affirmation? Confirmation? Justification? Sex?
Sarah answered, ‘Hello?’ Her voice seemed troubled.
‘It’s Sam.’
‘Sam!’ She sounded delighted. Sam’s heart lifted, but before she could say anything Sarah said, ‘She’s still in the bathroom. She’s driving me insane.’
‘Who is?’ Sam asked this automatically, not even thinking.
‘Your sister. Your mad bloody sister. She’s made such a mess. I don’t know what Connor was playing at, bringing her here.’
‘Connor?’
‘Hang on.’
Sam listened. In the background she could hear squawking and
splashing: sounds like a gang of children might make in a public pool. She also heard Sarah shouting, saying, ‘Do you know how much that costs? A whole bottleful? Do you have any idea?’
After a further pause and more splashing, Sarah returned to the phone. She said, ‘I slapped her earlier and she asked me to do it again. She
enjoyed
it.’
‘You slapped Sylvia?’
Brera turned in her seat. ‘What about Sylvia?’
Sam ignored her. ‘You slapped Sylvia?’
Sarah sounded unrepentant: ‘Yes. I slapped her and she
enjoyed
it. She asked me to do it again.’
Sam laughed. Like me, she thought. If she slapped me, I’d probably enjoy it too. What a fool. A complete fool.
‘You said Connor invited her?’
‘He must’ve. He’s out now, though. At a gig or something.’
‘Is she OK?’
‘Orgasmic.’
Sam smiled. That’d be right, she thought. We are sisters, after all. Something else popped into her head, inexplicably:
It wasn’t fear I felt before, only ecstasy
. She knew instantly that this wasn’t coherent, but feelings, she decided, like ideas, didn’t have to be, weren’t
obliged
to be. She said briskly, ‘And where’s Ruby?’
‘Ruby?’
‘The blonde woman who’s looking after her.’
‘Oh.’ Sarah paused for a second. ‘I don’t know where she is.’
Sam endeavoured to take stock of the situation, ignoring Brera’s desperate gestures from the front seat.
‘OK. Well, thanks for putting up with her. I’ll see you.’
‘What do you mean? Is that it?’
‘I think so.’
She used the cut-off mechanism on the phone and handed it to Brera. ‘It’s all yours.’
Brera was in a state of intense agitation. ‘Who was that? Who slapped Sylvia?’
Sam laughed. ‘Someone who should know better,’ she said.
Shortly after Sarah had hung up, Vincent arrived, demanding money for a cab, clutching, somewhat incongruously, a large iced cake which smelled of apples and cinnamon.
Sarah said, ‘Hi,’ and made as if to give him a hug, but he put out a restraining hand.
‘Hold on. This is precious.’
‘Who’s it for?’
‘Nobody.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Would you pay the cab? He’s waiting outside.’
Sarah went to get her purse. Vincent walked into the living-room and was about to switch on the television when an assortment of peculiar noises captured his attention. They were radiating from the bathroom. He walked in and found Sylvia.
She was in the bath, up to her neck in water. The bathroom smelled like a perfume counter. Sylvia was naked but seemed unembarrassed.
‘Hello,’ she said, recognizing him from their previous encounter. She sloshed around lazily in the water, grinning, watching as waves of liquid spilled over the rim of the bath and on to the floor.
Vincent tried not to fall over on the tiles; which were now wet and slippery. He held his cake aloft. Sylvia spotted it as she peered over the edge of the bath. She sat up. ‘What’s that? Is it for me?’
He shrugged. ‘I suppose it could be.’
She stretched out an arm towards him. He saw that her hand was covered in eczema.
‘You shouldn’t stay in there for too long.’
‘Sod it. Give me the cake.’
Her face shone out wetly at him: a round, yellow, exuberant moon.
There was something in her that he found suddenly irresistible. What was it? A carelessness? He said, ‘No cake until you get out of that bath.’
She scowled. ‘Yeah? Is it really worth it?’
He showed it to her. ‘Smell it. It’s delicious. It’s all natural.’
He saw her nostrils twitch and her eyes ignite. She tried to
snatch at it and water spilled from the bath in even greater quantities.
‘Out,’ he said authoritatively, ‘out or no cake.’
She turned her back on him. ‘I’m not a bloody kid, or a dog.’
He enjoyed this little display. He liked her unreasonableness. He put down the lid on the toilet and sat on it. ‘Fine.’
He then said, ‘Ruby must be worried about you.’
‘Ruby?’
Sylvia considered this for a moment. He smiled at her expression, which was so expressive, suddenly so serious. Eventually she said, ‘From now on I’m living only for pleasure.’
He put a finger into the icing on his cake, scooped some off and ate it. Sylvia watched jealously, her mouth watering. She stood up, stepped out of the bath and grabbed a large fistful of it, shoving it into her mouth. It was delectable.
Vincent watched her, offered her the plate to hold. ‘Hedonism,’ he said. ‘You’ve become a hedonist.’
She ignored this. She didn’t understand what he meant. She said, ‘Where’s this from? I want more of it. Different kinds, different types. I want to build a world out of tastes like this. A life. Something so beautiful, so delicious, completely full of touching and tasting and smelling and seeing.’
Vincent passed her a towel.
‘I made it,’ he said calmly. ‘And I can make more. I can show you how.’
‘Right.’
Sylvia was pleased by this notion. ‘I’ll get my clothes. Let’s go.’
Vincent watched her as she padded from the room. His gut tightened. Ruby was cheap, he thought.
He was cheap too. He had to spread himself very thinly.
So much happens here on a Saturday night, Ruby thought, as she walked from street to street through Hackney - from Pembury Road to Amhurst Road to Mare Street, then along this main thoroughfare for a long, long time.
Eventually, outside the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, she ground to a halt. The dog had been behaving perfectly
pulling on her lead only where appropriate, for the most part trotting amiably at Ruby’s side, obliging and obedient.
‘Good girl,’ she said, squatting down next to her. She stared up at the bright lettering on the front of the museum and thought, Hackney Wick and Bethnal Green. How far between the two?
She decided to take a bus.
After several false starts she established herself comfortably upstairs on a number 6. The dog clambered on to the seat next to her. It was empty up here, apart from the two of them. She stared out of the front window. The scene before her, lit by orange lights, dark but not yet properly dark - The city, she thought, is never really dark - seemed inexplicably grand. The dog sat beside her, also watching, but her eyes saw things differently, saw everything in monochrome, like fragments of an old film, every detail rendered stark and formal.
The dog sat next to Ruby like another person, upright on the seat, her legs tucked under her, her back ramrod straight. But with every unexpected jerk she fell forward, sometimes only a couple of inches, but other times almost crashing into the window, on to the floor. On these occasions Ruby tightened a possessive arm around the dog to save her from falling, from injury. The dog was too big, too bulky and unsuitable. Like so bloody many of the things in my life, she thought, and then instantly dismissed this idea. Instead she decided, My life is too
small
, that’s the problem. Maybe I’m too small.
She tried to map out in her mind the basic constituents of her immediate future. I’ll take the dog back, I’ll leave her there. I’ll return to Soho. I won’t see Vincent again.
These were all things she could imagine happening. Also, though - and this was the wonderful part, the amazing part - she could imagine, just as easily, these same things not happening.
Sometimes, she thought, you can get on to a bus and the bus driver forgets to stop, or he loses his way, or he has to change his route because something unexpected happens - roadworks, or a traffic jam, or a flood - and then everything is changed; because of that, everything is different.
She relaxed and smiled to herself. In life, she decided, there’s
an outside and an inside. Things happen outside and things happen inside your body, inside your mind … ideas, decisions, feelings. Happiness is just a question of balancing the two.
The bus stopped abruptly and the dog fell forward. She caught hold of the dog, falling forward too.
In that split second - as she moved through the air, hearing the bus’s horn and the squeal of brakes, feeling the dog’s ribs, her fur, her breath - in that tiny dart of time her mind became a microscope. It took in everything, and every detail was significant.
This could be the beginning of something immaculate, she thought.
Other people’s letters are always a guilty pleasure. But for PC Roger Topping - contemplating 27 undelivered missives, dumped in an alley in Skipton - they’re also a job of work.
From complaints about dog shit to passive aggressive fanmail, via Biblical amateur dramatics and a disastrous Auction of Promises, Topping’s investigation leads him into the curtain-twitching lives of Jeremy Baverstock, the Jonty Weiss-Quinns, Mrs Tirza Parry (widow) and a host of other eccentrics who inhabit the moorside village of Burley Cross.
Irresistibly readable and brilliantly unconventional, Burley Cross is a Cranford for today, albeit with a dose of Tamiflu, some dodgy sex-therapy, and a whiff of cheap-smelling vodka.
‘A funny, heartbreaking book. From love letters to suicide notes, her language vaults, somersaults and cartwheels across the page’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Nothing short of dazzling … this is the work of a writer in love with language’
Observer
‘A mix of modern-day Cranford with The League of Gentleman’s Royston Vasey … Barker’s best writing is also her funniest’
Evening Standard