The A to Z of You and Me

Q

Quim

THERE’S NOWHERE ELSE to go. What’s Q?

I wish there was something else to say. What is there?

There’s only one thing.

Becca, on her big birthday weekend up in Mal’s northern stomping ground, her arms flung out, ten-to-two, standing in her bra and nothing else. No pants. Specifically, particularly, explicitly no pants.

‘I’m Queen Quim!’

I look at her, and I look away. I look again and I can’t even quite get what it is I’m looking at. It doesn’t register.

There it is, all things considered. The most mind-blowing thing I’ve ever seen.

I look at Mal, who’s looking at us with this expression of fixed amusement. Laura’s screaming and laughing, standing there in her black catsuit and cats’ ears.

Sometimes, you know, when you see the worst of everything lined up before you, you’ve just got to go for it. See how badly you can crash it.

Push your body to the limit. Sometimes, sometimes.

So I stand here shivering in the stairwell of a nightclub somewhere — I’ve no fucking idea where, or how to get back to the hotel — in some strange northern town. And I’m tripping. Tripping it out. Tripping you, tripping my health, tripping my future out of my system. Give up, give up. And it’s been nice and easy to surrender responsibility to Mal and Laura and Becca. If I shouldn’t be doing this, it’s up to them to tell me.

And anyway, one trip’s not going to kill me. It’s the general pattern that has to improve. And that can start tomorrow. If I want it to.

Becca strikes the pose just long enough to register for an eternity, her beaming white teeth in a Hollywood smile.

‘My knickers didn’t match my bra,’ she proclaims, ‘and it’s my best bra.’

I can’t look at it. It’s like the sun. A dark sun. Much hair, note. I don’t want to have seen it. I want to be a gentleman. And now she’s away, her buttocks revolving through the curtain and into the club beyond, followed by Laura.

What the fuck? I say to Mal.

‘It’s a fetish night,’ he says to me, and I’m focusing on his mouth by my eye. ‘They didn’t want to let us in, because it’s fetish gear only. So I struck a deal with them. We can go in if we wear one item of clothing only.’

Tonight’s been weird, I say.

‘You heard Becca,’ he says. ‘We’ve come here to find action, so let’s dive in.’

Ah yes, that’s why I’m here. Becca. You wouldn’t want to disappoint a girl on her birthday, would you? I haven’t seen any action for months, so let’s have some fun!

Becca the persuader.

Persuasive enough that me and Mal are now in a small side room with a wall of coathooks, and he’s throwing triangles as he wrenches his legs out of his trousers. He’s hopping, and talking.

‘Come on, man, it’s down to one item of clothing or less.’ He looks closely at me. ‘Are you with me, fella?’

Mm? Myeah.

‘We’re the lucky ones,’ he’s saying, pointing at my over-skinny legs. ‘One item of clothing, so we can go in there in our pants. Not like Becca, eh? Hats off to Becca, man.’

Pants off to Queen Quim.

‘Ha! Yeah. Pants off.’

The cool air shifts around me and tingles, my skin unused to expanse and exposure. I mean, it feels kind of — good. Feels a little bit magical. We descend the short flight of stairs into the colour-flushed club. A comfortable enshrouding darkness is flushed with primary colour lights in sequence, slow and simple. Sub-bass hip-hop throbs through, mellow, just nice. But, Jesus, what is this place? My eyes skip from one zone to the next, not wanting to rest, wanting to take in the general effect, follow the light pulse, illuminating now this group of people, now that group, now this. There are clusters upon clusters of squashy bodies, one or two completely nude, great folds of flesh, ruched up on the vertical from bumcrack to cranium, pleats of flab hanging down and out.

‘Make yourself at home, fella,’ says Mal, disappearing off. ‘I’m going to see a few people.’

He has that look. He’s on dealer duty tonight. That must be why they let us in. Got to keep the clients happy.

I wander around, my brain sloshing in my head. I take in the scene of merry carnage in front of me, pasty arses juddering as they rearrange themselves. The baldness, the red pates, now green pates, and the veins in their temples wriggling and throbbing, unembarrassed. I’ve got to steer myself away from this grimness, Britishness. Ugh. I don’t want to be here.

Eyes on alert to seek a familiar face, a family face, Laura: Laura’s there. There in her catsuit and cat ears. Almost familiar, switching deep red now green, her shiny stretched skin.

How did you know to wear a catsuit? I say.

She tips a wink at me. ‘I may have had a tip-off,’ she says. ‘Isn’t it brilliant? Look at everyone! It’s amazing.’

And I’m looking around, and when I look back at her she’s still talking and — how long have we been talking? And her lipstick lips are all in my face, and she’s talking and talking hard, her voice riding in and out of the bass beat.

And now I’m talking too, and all the words I’m saying are about you. I can feel myself talking fast, pouring out my problems, but the weight of them isn’t getting any less. Laura now, and Mal now, they’re hearing the sounds that I’m making, but my words aren’t conjuring the shapes on their faces. Maybe they’re not coming out right. Maybe I’m here just speaking in tongues.

‘She’s led you on,’ says Laura, ‘I know women like that, they try to control you. Make you into something you’re not. They’re all over you, they want to take over your life.’

No, no, it’s not like that at all.

Laura’s head nods rhythmically before me, butting in her version of the truth, like I don’t know what I’m talking about. But it’s not true, it’s not true.

‘You want to watch women like that,’ says Mal. ‘They shit you up, and then they nail you down.’

And here’s Becca, chilled Becca, swimming up in the dark.

An arm slips easily around my waist. It’s her arm.

‘Are you good?’

Yeah, yeah.

She looks deeply into me and her smile grows calmer, her eyes kinder. I can feel the dizziness rising.

‘Come here,’ she says, ‘come and give the birthday girl a dance.’ And she backs away and takes up my hands again, and we slowly dance, there, at arm’s length in the middle of the room, as the bass pulses around us, through the air, through the floor, through everyone in this place.

‘You miss her,’ she says.

Yeah.

And my throat is closed. And the tears — there are tears.

Becca places her forearm casually high up on my shoulder, and rests her fingertips against my neck and ear, and we dance, close.

That was the thing, the Becca thing: I’m Queen Quim!

I’m aware, I’m so aware of what’s going on down below in the blue light. I have it about me now to stand discreetly clear. Wish not to scrunch up against the Queen’s quim. But the Queen’s not ashamed. She holds me close, gently close, unabashed.

‘Close your eyes,’ she says. I obey, and I feel her fingertips work lazily around my neck and earlobe and hair. ‘No need to see. Just feel. You need to feel better.’

I feel her hand work down from my neck, slowly, and take my right wrist, and move it slowly in space. She lands it delicately on her shoulder, my fingertips touching her neck.

‘It is so lovely to be held,’ she murmurs, turning, still constant in her movement, her naked bottom pressing into me. ‘The contact is everything, the contact is good. It’s good to feel good, and that’s just how it is.’

Switch off, switch off. I don’t want to think — I don’t want to think about you. You must never know this. Nothing of this would make sense. All of this time, I’m thinking of you. If I want you to know anything, I want you to know that. I’m thinking of you.

We move, we move, and I feel Becca’s fluid motion as my own, follow the shift and shimmy away across the room, my sealed eyes pulsing in the gloom.

‘Hey,’ she whispers playfully in my ear. ‘Let me take you away from all the people. Come through here.’

I open my eyes just as she disappears behind a heavy curtain hung from a scaffolding bar bolted to the black brickwork. I remain, swamped in deep green, switched now to harsh white. I lift back the curtain and step through into deep gloom and through a velvet drape into absolute black.

Rich black. Black like oily black. My eyes try to acclimatize by sending out blobs of colour and swirls of disturbance and imperfection. I’m seeing the imperfection in my eyes.

Floating, I’m standing still, and I can feel the liquids, the movement in my brain, slowly, slowly clockwise, resolving slowly, slowly anticlockwise.

And with the all-encompassing black, the acoustics are dead. My attention is thrown on the small foreground sounds. People. More than Becca. There is breathing down to my left. Slight shuffle far right. Slurping. The ticks and sibilants of licks or sucks. Simple innocent kisses, maybe.

Maybe.

Where is—?

I hear Becca giggle, for maybe a quarter of a second, but I can tell it’s her — her timbre. Her teeth. She’s standing, over the other side of the room, straight ahead.

She takes my wrist, draws me forward, and down, and we sit, and she lets go of my wrists, shifts her hand down across my body, and she strokes me tenderly, her fingernails giving precision to every flex of her fingers.

This feels like the wrong thing to be doing. My thoughts flit to you, to my commitments to you — but they are redundant thoughts, leaking out into the dark, no home to go to. Any loyalty to you is only a habit now. You don’t need it any more.

‘Poor boy,’ says Becca, plosives on my earlobe, ‘no need to think, just feel.’

And from out there, from the pitch black, the rich black, unfamiliar lips press themselves passionately to mine. They open, and my lips open, open together, drive deeper, a tongue pushes between my lips.

This is supposed to be all right.

When I picked up the phone it was still light outside. And still deep in the comedown from last night at the fetish club, I was so pleased to hear your voice. Like coming home. I can shut this down, I can shut it all down and bask in the comfort of your voice.

I’ve since slithered down to sitting on the stone kitchen floor with the big old phone cradle on my outstretched legs, and I’m clutching the receiver firmly by the mouthpiece like a cricket ball. My ear’s getting hot, but I won’t swap. Not yet. I press the earpiece against my ear until the plastic creaks in protest.

This silence has been going on surreally long. More silent than silence, because you can hear the electrostatic crackle poised and ready to catch any sound. I draw in a great breath, exhale through my nose, and the digital noise fills my head. And yours too, no doubt.

‘This is nice,’ I murmur. ‘Spending time with you. Even when you’re two hundred miles away.’

‘Yeah,’ you say. ‘It is.’

I run my finger in between the numbers on the keypad of the phone cradle.

‘I really miss spending time with you,’ you say. ‘Even more than I thought I would.’

Silence. I can feel my brow furrowing. Are you trying to say something?

‘So — I’m wondering if—’

You sigh, the bits and bytes flowing into my head, into my brain, making me close my eyes to tolerate it.

‘Ohh — what are you saying?’ I groan.

‘I don’t know what I’m saying. What am I saying? I’m saying I look at us, and I ask, why can’t they sort it out? And the only person I want to ask is you. I want to step back from it and talk with you about how you think it’s going to turn out for them.’

Short crackle. I risk a switch of ears with the receiver.

‘You’re not like the rest of them,’ you say. ‘But I have to be careful, Ivo. With a background like mine, you’ve got to understand, I have to be careful.’

‘I want you to be careful,’ I say. ‘I really, really want you to be careful. I mean, to the point that, if I’m going to bring you trouble, then — then I don’t want it to be me.’

Doot!

‘What was that?’

‘Oh, sorry,’ I say. ‘I had my finger on the “5” and I accidentally pressed it.’

There’s an added crackle on the line, and I know exactly the breathy chuckle you’ve just made.

The heat rises from my relieved lobe. Imagine it now, glowing in the gloom.

Doot!

‘What was that?’ I say.

‘That was a “1” out of ten for not saying anything positive. Say something positive.’

‘It feels lovely to laugh with you again.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t laugh anywhere near as much with anyone else.’

‘No, nor me.’

Pause there.

That feels right.

That feels like what I mean.

You sigh, and another flood of static washes through my brain.

‘What are we going to do?’ you say.

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Nor me.’

Long, long pause.

‘I can’t be rushed,’ you say, finally. ‘I can only take it one day at a time. One hour at a time.’

‘Yeah. Yeah.’

‘And I suppose we have to trust that it’s going to take us somewhere — somewhere better than this.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Let’s work towards what makes sense.’

There’s another great long pause, and I have an ocean of relief dammed up and waiting to cascade all over me, but I don’t want to let it. No, no. Let it drip.

‘How do you think it turns out for them?’ you say.

‘I don’t know. I really, really want it to turn out well.’

‘Me too.’

‘I love a happy ending.’

‘Me too.’

‘I’d better go,’ I say. ‘My mum’s car just pulled into the driveway.’

I start to climb to my feet to sound busy. No car. I just want to stop this now. Quit while we’re ahead.

‘I’ll call again tomorrow, is that OK?’

‘OK. Yeah.’

‘I’d better go.’

‘Yeah.’

You pause once more, and we both must realize this at the same time.

‘I want to say I love you,’ you say. ‘That’s what I used to say at this point.’

‘Mm.’

‘Bluh blah bloo.’

‘Yeah. Bluh blah bloo too.’

Shocked awake now, think — I’m fucking drowning.

Push the button push, push — I–

‘Are you all right?’

Sheila in, with urgency.

‘Drowning — I’m—’

‘OK, OK, now—’

Mask pressed to my nose and mouth. Pressed firmly.

I don’t know where.

Ask questions, ask–

What’s the day—? It’s—?

I have no idea. I don’t even know where to start to find something like that out.

What was the day yesterday?

I—?

Sheila spiders out her hands and threads the elastic of the mask back over my head. It snaps tight above my ears.

‘OK, lovey. Now breathing, yes? You know the drill.’

‘Breathing, breathing.’

‘And it looks like it’s time for a little more of the morphine solution, OK?’

‘OK, yeah.’

Yeah, yeah.

She starts to move around in the now familiar morphine routine. Methodically get the bottle. Strange, formal little movements. She doesn’t want to get anything wrong. Top responsibility, the drugs.

‘Down the hatch.’

‘Here we are, at last,’ I say, arriving finally on the crest of the hill.

You follow on behind, pushing down with your hands on your knee to lever yourself up the final incline. You fall in breathlessly beside me and slip your hands around my middle, as I drop my arm across your shoulders and squeeze you tight: the anxious clinch of a couple once lost to one another, now reunited. It feels so good to be holding each other after everything we’ve come through.

A day at a time, then a week, and all’s well.

All’s well.

‘My favourite place in the world,’ I say.

Up here we’re more in touch with this deep, deep sky than the valley down below. Huge grey-white clouds bloom epically in the blue.

Beneath us, the land drops away and sweeps off down the valley. A tiny cyclist lends perspective, cranking herself east along the dirt track towards town. She’s further away than seems possible.

‘This is where my dad’s ashes are scattered,’ I say. ‘I remember me and Mum and Laura coming out here and doing that.’

‘It’s a beautiful spot. Perfect.’

‘I think my mum left it a couple of years before we scattered him. She wanted us to be old enough to remember.’

We carefully lay out the blanket on a clean patch of ground — the blanket now happily being used for what you intended — and you sit. I sit down behind you and thread my arms around your middle, rest my chin on your shoulder.

‘Whoever first used the word “rolling” about hills knew exactly what they were talking about,’ you say. ‘These hills really roll.’

‘They’re exactly the right size and roundness.’

‘And millions of colours. Really like a picturebook green, and then if you look at it long enough you start to see all the yellows and browns coming through. Purple skirting the bottoms.’

‘Could you make a blanket out of those colours?’

‘Nature’s got that one covered,’ you say.

You pull out an apple and bite into it. I lift my head from your shoulder and you let me take a bite too.

‘So,’ I say, ‘I’ve been invited to join the garden design course.’

‘Ah really? Well done! I think you’ll be great at it,’ you say. Then: ‘You’re going to be sick through nerves again, aren’t you?’

‘Can’t wait.’

‘No, I think you’re going to get in there, and you’re totally going to blossom.’

You back into me for a tight cuddle, and draw my arms tighter around you.

‘This feels so good,’ you say.

‘Yeah.’

‘It doesn’t feel like living day by day any more. Not to me. Does it to you?’

‘No — no, it feels — just right.’

You draw in a deep breath and exhale languorously.

‘Do you think, when you die–

‘OK — nice—’

‘—that the ash when you get cremated is the same ash people use on their gardens?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Aren’t you supposed to know things like that if you’re going to do a garden design course?’

‘I don’t know. Probably.’

I laugh.

‘What?’

‘Why do you always take us to the darkest places?’

‘Do I? I think nursing might have broken my darkness filter.’

‘So, when you’re a nurse, do you get immune to people dying?’

You chew thoughtfully for a moment.

‘No,’ you say, ‘not immune. If you know you’ve done the best in your power to help this person, then — well, the alternative is that you weren’t there and you didn’t help.’

‘I suppose.’

‘You have a job to do, to help them, and you just have to do your best. Sometimes I almost think it’s quite a selfish thing to do — the better job you do, the more self-respect you can have. I tried explaining that to one of the women on my course, and she looked at me like I was gone out.’

You examine the apple to select the next best bite.

‘I get that.’

‘I always think it’s worse when you see the family. You can’t do a lot for them. There’s no time. And you can’t really prescribe to take away people’s grief.’

‘Not properly, no.’

‘And you see little kids, like the doctors and nurses might have looked at you when your dad died, and you think — there’s a lot of loving that person needs, right there.’

You fling the apple core down the valley; watch it catch now and nestle in the bracken.

Crickle crackle.

‘Well that’s one way of deciding where you want to place your apple tree,’ I say.

You grin at me, and give me an appley kiss, smack on the lips, and we lie down on the blanket, huddle in close.

‘If I was ash,’ you say, your voice washed out as you talk into the air, ‘I’d like to be sprinkled under a fruit tree. Or if it’s the wrong kind of ash, I’d like to be buried under a fruit tree. Worm food.’

‘Yeah?’ My voice bassy and loud in my ears.

‘Because then the nutrients from me would go to swelling the fruit. And then maybe the birds would peck at the fruit and get the energy to fly — so the same energy that is making me say these words now would be used to help the bird fly. I’d literally be flying.’

‘Yeah — yeah.’

‘And that to me is truly comforting. Seeing myself, launching off from this hill, and diving down there into the sky, down there in the valley. Deep down, and up around. Everywhere.’

You hold your hands up to the sky, cross them, palms downward, pressing your thumbs together to make a bird. A fluttering bird.

I take my right hand, press it to your left, thumb to thumb.

A bird. A fluttering bird.

Hold our hands against the sky.

Fluttering, fluttering in the blue.

At that moment, I hear the signature squiggles of birdsong in the distance, and a brief flutter of wings, and a look of childlike delight crosses your face.