Arrival by Laetitia Erskine

We had peaches in the lunch hall today when Matron fell down the stairs and broke her hip. They had to take her away with a shot in the arm. She’s not really the Matron, but that’s what we call her. ‘Not broken!’ she kept shouting, as women in white coats held her down. Jessie – she’s my friend here – is on a manic streak and kept laughing and hugging me as if it were good news for all of us.

That might be why I started with those peaches, the first sweet food I’d eaten since my Dad put me here. A shock reaction. I dared myself to pick one up, peeled it, cut it into small pieces, ate them one by one. Then I took another, ate it whole in big bites through to the stone. My stomach churned, but I was thinking of you and that house, the sun on the terrace, the cool in the shade, the sea a wide blue line you could see from the roof terrace. You were there every summer from the beginning. We never said hello, just dropped into our games and our imaginary world. And I remember you waving from the gates as we drove away, the end of the summer bitter in the air, all the grown ups glad to see the back of each other, us waving all the way down the drive, until Mum and I hit the long road running beside the sea.

After the peach, my stomach feels like a rock. I squeeze it in my hands, lay my head on the dining table. The diners have pushed back their chairs, left them to be cleaned and straightened by Yvette. She is moving her mop around the table legs. ‘Minty, you want to leave the dining room now. Good girl,’ she says looking at my plate with the stones in a pool of pink juice. Jessie strokes my hair and tries to give me a kiss, but I’m not much fun for her. I breathe the bile back down my throat like they taught me. I already practiced the technique from od’ing.

Do you remember in the kitchen, on the deep windowsill, there were always those trays of peaches? You bought them from the market, carried them into grandma’s car, sat next to her in the passenger seat like a regular couple. They were gone in the space of a day, exposing empty spheres of paper. I wish my head were one of those peaches and I could lie down in that soft paper lining and sleep. Stroking my stomach with my fingertips, ignoring the acid inside, I can feel the smoothness of it like my own skin. We used to peel it off slowly in one piece, and fold it into shapes. Purple, a sheen on it like origami paper, but I didn’t know that then. I don’t think you did either. But now – as soon as I saw you in Cannes, before I came here, with the cameras flashing and the red carpet rolled on the Croisette and all the chosen people, it came to me clear as that band of blue sea on the horizon, that you know everything there is to know.

The sound of the TV floats in from the day room, but I can’t lift my head from the table. I’m thinking of the flowers we made out of that shiny paper, birds, dinosaurs, dragons if we could, in the hours between your preparations for lunch and dinner. It didn’t matter if it tore, as it often did, as our second game was to roll the paper into bullets and shoot them from the window using a rolled up magazine. Hit the tree, and you get 10 points, hit the hose you get 5 points, fall to the ground no points, and can’t see where it went, minus a point.

‘Sri, Sri.’ The way my grandmother called for you felt like the cut of a blunt knife. ‘Where is he when I need him?’ Our spell broke and you went back to work, peeling, chopping, wiping. Everyone said you were brilliant at Maths. The adults said it with a glow, delighted at the rightness of the world because their kitchen hand was so talented. They said you could estimate the number of matches in a box just by looking, knew how long a beef joint needed in the oven by handling it once on the flat of your palms, could put gas into farenheit and centigrade, cups into grams, litres into pints. One time, we had a box of matches and we were laughing, playing catch with the box, and I emptied it out, tossing the lot on the counter, demanded you say how many matches there were. I can feel the sting of it now. Who was I to test you like that, a six-year-old girl without a sum in my head? I took my shame and misery outside to burn it off under the sun as you disappeared back to your skills and your duties. Then when I scraped my shin on the garden wall, you passed me the plasters through the kitchen window, and I knew you didn’t hate me. I roll my head on the table, hold my belly still, but I think the danger of vomiting is passed. I’m just drifting now on a sugar haze.

When I wake in the mornings here, I can hear this old-fashioned mower going up and down the grass, and the doves in the trees. Before I open my eyes, I feel like I’m back in that house. Not in shouting distance of the muddy old Thames where I grew up, but by the glittering Riviera, still living the 60s dream. Outside, you were raking the gravel, and I knew you had left a platter of fruit on the table shaded by the pepper tree. When you went out shopping, ahead of the heat of the day, I slipped into your room. I stood in the doorway, listening at the bare space. A bed, a chair, a bedside chest with a lamp, a multi-coloured rag-rug on the cold tiled floor. So neat and tidy, but I could smell your smell, a mixture of soap, sweat and the curry you cooked for yourself in the evenings. I stood in the grip of your atmosphere, waiting for the anchor of you. It look me a lot of times doing this, before I opened your cupboard doors, put my hand on your t-shirts, sat on your bed, opened your bedside chest where you kept your little statues from home, four-armed deities, twisted lotus legs, a mark between the eyebrows. They had bare chests, and I ran my fingers on them, felt the bump of the beads carved around the neck of one, the smooth, round, hard breasts of another, feeling them back and forth with my fingers, back and forth. That was the first time I felt that way. Sometimes I wake here, the last sighs of dreams leaching from my mouth, the feel of those carved deities in my hand, my whole body primed, fleetingly ecstatic, chasing the smell of your soap and your sweat and your cooking with all my senses.

When I open my eyes, all that vanishes, and the largeness of my room here returns and all its emptiness. The windows are tall but set with bars in the stonework, no point holding on to them. It’s as if this whole turreted mansion hatched in a single unbreakable piece out of one vast egg. Its fancy eaves are carved and decorated like a wedding cake, beautiful in a twisted way that makes me think of gossamer dresses floating across lawns, and wailing mothers trapped in the upper rooms, and bodies crushed under the weight of empire. Sometimes I have these thoughts. They creep their way into our summer world.

It should be easy to handle it here, since Mum worked in Social Services all those years, still does. Grandma used to mention it, remember, as if it had anything to do with your getting your identity papers in France. Mum has a term for everything, a bit like they do here. I was a ‘latch key kid’, to her eternal sufferance. My best friend Timo was a ‘hoodie’. My friend Yasmin’s boyfriend was a ‘yob’. ‘When you were little, we used to say ‘half caste’, but now we say ‘mixed race’’, she’d say, with this hint of pride I had no idea what to do with. I exhausted every label she had. ‘You’re sabotaging your future,’ she’d say. ‘You’re medicating through the best years of your life.’ ‘Body dismorphia is a serious condition,’ she’d say. ‘You’ve got to learn to accept who you are.’ I looked at her and the extra inches building a wall around her waist, and the unchangeable hair, and the phone-in ex-husband, and our flat in a boxy block between the A4 and the banks of the Thames, and wondered about this.

The rooms here are nice though. A lot of cute phrases go about, like ‘treating the whole person’ and ‘finding your centre.’ On Tuesdays, I get a session where they count the beats in my eyeballs. I don’t really understand it, but I’m happy someone’s getting a grip on how my brain works. All my disorders are only at a moderate level, nothing Chronic, nothing that makes me stand out among the other addicts and nutjobs and trustfund losers here. It’s ironic really. Dad wouldn’t buy me a bike when I told him mine disappeared, but he sent me here, as if he can’t stop himself paying the fees he always complained about.

I left my bike outside the station before I left London. Heading south, I didn’t realise I was trying to get back to you. We drove in a party of oldster men and me and this other lost-it girl, to a Normandy mansion and then to Biarritz to the casino, and then to a port in the south, where we boarded the yacht for Cannes. Everyone got mixed up in more partying and swapping partners and thinking it was less seedy because the labels on the wine were vintage. One night I woke up, sat bolt upright, gasping for air, and shouted, ‘My bike! WHERE’S MY BIKE?’ This couple next to me woke up, grabbed their clothes from the floor and ran. Then I remembered, my last night in London, I’d locked up my bike before I got the tube to a friend’s engagement party, not really a friend but someone I used to keep in with, and then couldn’t think if I left it outside the tube or the overland. Then I wondered whether I took my bike out at all that night, and got it mixed up with the time when I couldn’t lock it in the bike racks. I developed a phobia for that shelter with the flickering light, and the lingering vibe from when a man in a suit groped me. Instead I started locking my bike to a drainpipe out the front of the building. A pretty stupid thing to do, as all you needed to slide the bike off whole and ride it away was a spanner. I was sad for my bike, and all these memories mixed up with it in a confusing way.

Often I end up saying that to the groups here. ‘It’s really confusing,’ I say. And, ‘It’s just confusing, I suppose.’ The people in the circle nod. Some of them are young like me, long hair and velour clothing and terrible skin. Some of them are old but look like lost animals caught in headlights, still stunned at how their corporate career, and their second or third wife and kids all disappeared. That’s to get a bit depressive about it, when actually it’s quite funny the way they keep nodding at me going, ‘It’s confusing, really confusing,’ as if I said something profound and we had all struck up a meaningful connection.

You know it wasn’t a decision when I stopped coming to the house. I turned sixteen. My parents’ divorce was official. I assumed I wasn’t a child anymore, and my grandparents’ bounty had run out. You should have seen me, working my job at Kew Gardens, waiting tables all summer, barely even thinking about you and the house with its tall grey-blue shutters and cool stone floor and the feeling it was not my home but you and me belonged there in some parallel universe. I went to work in this giant glasshouse with white tablecloths, balancing hot plates of salmon and eggs and heavy coffee pots, for cash in hand at the end of each day, spent the money every night on parties, and occasionally clothes. As long as my hair was tied back – in a ponytail, not a bun, as the boss, she said a bun was ugly – then I looked the part and barely said anything all day as I worked.

You were so much part of me, I didn’t need to think of you, or couldn’t. When one of the customers started paying me attention, I went along with his advances, slick and subtle, and didn’t realise until too late how far I’d drifted. I thought it was just a summer thing, the waitress job, the affair or whatever it was. I knew he’d go back to his wife when his kids went back to school, and then something better would happen to me. But when I found out I was pregnant, then lost the baby by the time he and his family went skiing for half term, I didn’t see any point in working, or seeing what I could do with my exam results. Instead I sat in the window of our flat, feeling the river invisible at my back, moving on, where I couldn’t see it. I sat there above the square of grass and tarmac, until Mum’s low heels scraped on the step in that way she has. I sat there pulling the split ends of my hair to see how far they would divide before coming apart in two fine fragments I blew away. Hair is strong and thicker than it looks. Sometimes I could split it in three strands, which gave me a peculiar satisfaction.

In here, everyone speaks in these soft voices all day long. It’s too much on the nerves sometimes, all this talk of things being ‘safely managed’ and the ‘programmes’ being so ‘discreet’ as though we’re part of a sci fi experiment and should all feel simultaneously lucky we can benefit from the ‘facilities’ yet so ashamed of ourselves we can’t admit it. It’s hard to get anyone’s story. There’s a lot of rumour, and talk of the same places, show-off places like clinics in Las Vegas and hidden party villas in the South of France. A flash in someone’s face makes it all seem familiar for a second, but everyone’s on their own separate ride.

The opening night of the festival, there were ten of us under a yacht-sail roof on the Croisette. Weird thing about those parties, everyone looked bored. So bored, it was like they only happened to be there by coincidence, and given the chance they’d run into the arms of actual friends. Automatons with a permanently low battery life, always in need a recharge from the favours of someone better than them. But for a time I loved it as much as anyone. I was back on the Riviera, my wide-eyed frozen face the face of a woman now. I’d been waiting tables so long and waiting for my break. I oiled my way into that scene on the Med like I was clearing another table for the next round of customers.

‘Party out on the pier,’ one said. ‘After the screening.’

‘I heard it was on the Russian yacht, the Sirène.’

‘Will you stay for the discussion?’

‘Ya, I love this guy’s work. Immersive filmmaking, like one of the best I’ve seen.’

‘Ya, maybe I’ll stay too.’

‘The party won’t get started til midnight.’

They went on like this, and I listened closely, reminded of what this whole scene was here for, and how I loved the cinema, the times I went, and wanted that immersive feeling too, and wanted to use a word like that.

I got good at working the fringes. Switching on an easy charisma, making myself invisible when needed. There’s a room at the back of one of the big Cannes cinemas, overlooking the sea, lined with rails of dresses and long mirrors. I’d watched the lady who works there, moving all nimble in a black suit and a lanyard, watched her for a while before I realised she was watching me. When I followed her into her workroom, she let me. ‘Bonjour, Mademoiselle,’ she said, fingering her tape measure. ‘Le rouge ou le noir, aujourd’hui?’ she asked, like some weird private joke. A silent deal. I think it was some secret revenge she was having. She was only another employee, probably not so well paid, given she was just guarding a wardrobe room, handing out frocks. And maybe she fancied me. One time she kissed me. I let her. I think she wanted more but it was a stupid idea. From then on we had an arrangement. She let me carry a dress out, one of the plainer ones so no-one would miss it, placing it delicately on my arms as though I was on an important mission to one of the star’s hotel rooms. ‘Chè bella, mademoiselle,’ she said once, stroking my cheek. She undid the electronic tag with her little machine, and whispered in my ear to be sure to bring it back.

‘Merci, Madame,’ I’d say, because she was older than me. I put ‘Madame’ in as many phrases I could for her. By the time I passed through the canvas screens of festival logos, rigged up on wheelie systems between lighting booths and roped-off areas, I’d retrieved the bag I’d placed behind a potted palm and dropped in the dress, a pool of liquid silk, light as mercury.

I’m not proud of myself for it, but as a woman you have to look the part. It’s easy when you’re young, practically a passport to anything. Harmless, another decorative assistant, I could sail through doors unseen. Whereas you made your way through merit alone, through what you have to say. When I saw you in the lobby of that hotel, my heart practically stopped. You were being interviewed, standing in a half circle of suits. Your skin was burnished, your hair a thick wave, sculpted beard, embroidered jacket. The sting came back from the way my grandparents’ friends looked at you, or didn’t, took you for a spare part, an underling, your dark skin fitting you for the shadows. I saw you now celebrated for who you are. Afraid I would ruin it, spinning inside, I slipped out again through the revolving door, walked away in my heels like I knew what I was doing.

Over in the day room, the TV blares. I get this hungry feeling, not for food but for some kind of reality. I’ve been here nearly a year. It’s May again, season of love and festivals. I slide into an armchair near the giant TV, a roll call of famous glitterati posing along the Riviera. Everybody here loves watching events like this, the clothes, the dazzle, plush red steps outside grand hotels. We fawn over it, buzzed up by the possibility one of them might trip, or switch on their smile too late for the camera.

‘Yer, I dated him after Kate’s birthday party on Mustique,’ a girl at my shoulder is saying. ‘We were together six weeks, like nonstop.’

I feel so heavy, but my armpits prickle with anticipation, yearning at the memory of seeing you there. Reporters are standing around chatting tedious banter, as if they know what it’s like to listen behind the screens, sneak into the dressing rooms, dance on the yachts, like I did before I saw you all dressed up, grown up. Arrived.

‘Sri, Sri, ohmygod it’s you, there you are.’ In front of the cinema steps, there you are, commentating, in a black suit and shiny shoes, your hair a gleaming wave.

‘Hey, stop talking Minty, we can’t hear what they’re saying.’

‘It’s him, he’s still there,’ I wasn’t sure if I said it out loud or if I was chewing on thoughts again. ‘I know him.’ I tried again, out loud to everyone.

‘Stop shouting, Mintbomb.’

‘Yeah, shut up! I love this, this film’s been five years in the making.’

I wasn’t shouting, but I sit back in my seat anyway. Someone always thinks they know it all.

‘The director had a breakdown in the middle of it.’

‘That’s why it’s so good, his madness made it.’

‘Not as mad as us.’

‘Hey, shut up yourselves,’ I say. ‘It’s him! Sri. Sri. I saw him there, on the Croisette. He’s my friend.’

‘You’re nuts.’

‘He does the panel show. Look, he says what he thinks of all the big films. Ah, ah, I saw him, and he’s still there.’

I was cramping up, my body coiling and uncoiling itself.

‘Stop it,’

‘Ah, I can’t believe it. I’m so happy for him.’

‘You’re crazy, Minty. But shut up anyway.’

‘Yeah, we want to listen.’

‘Stop laughing.’

‘I’m not laughing,’ I say.

‘You’re hysterical.’

I put my hands up to my face. They are flapping and useless, my limbs kicking like a baby, and my cheeks are wet from tears and laughter. You are still there, saying all that stuff for audiences to hear, what you think of the cinematography, and the decision to cast the lead so young, and the heroine an actor of colour, how she brings the role to life as never before. And I feel so ashamed of myself, how I crept up on you after one of the big films and gave you a fright. Close up, your face was jowly, but when you lifted your chin, the bones of your face made the world suddenly clear to me. Shock, and love, I thought, and a kind of fear passed through your face. But you kept it together and didn’t let it show. I’d been calling ‘Sri, Sri,’ and now I know you chose to block me out. I was in the right dress, but painted and sleep-deprived, I was all wrong. This Festival circuit was work for you. I was the overgrown child, acting as if the world owed me the time of day. You did not let your guard slip, but it hurt so much that you put up a wall so my shambles did not touch you.

‘Yeah, you’re crazy, Minty,’ one of the girls says, but she does it in a nice way when she sees I’m crying. It’s one of the jokes we have here. We tell each other we’re crazy. We point out one of us must be insane, or out of their minds. Like it only just occurred to us, and nobody had ever told us that before, and this expert diagnosis explained everything.

One thing about me, I love to dance. Most of the time, those parties on the Med played the worst music. Hardly anybody danced, and not just because the music was bad, though that didn’t help. Boring beats that went on and on in a faulty chemical wave, like an orgasm you couldn’t have. But sometimes the sounds shifted, percussives starting up and rolling vocals underneath. I love that and I didn’t care I was the only one dancing, real dancing, eyes closed to a slit, lights whooshing, movements in waves and staccatos like a complicated sentence I had to express.

The last thing I remember before coming here was the night after I saw you and you acted like you didn’t know me. I was on the arm of a much older man. He’d been watching me for days. I had worn the dress twice now, neglected to return it, sweated into the armholes, sorry that I failed Madame in the end. I must have cut the label out, as I remember the feel of the silk billowing around my bare legs, the way the empty smooth space where it used to rub made me shiver. I had no idea what I intended to fill that empty space with, but holding onto that man’s arm, walking out of the hotel where I disgraced myself before you, that’s the last I can remember before I came here.

………………..

Laetitia Erskine is a writer and collector of literature degrees, currently completing a Masters in Creative Writing. She lives in London with her husband, two children, a cat and a pond full of frogs.

Twitter: @LaetititiaErskine