She came back with the tea and a careful look on her face. I accepted the proffered mug and met her eyes very steadily, blank-faced.
“Ah,” she said after a moment. “Fair enough.” She settled into her chair, legs swinging over one of the arms, sipped at her tea, made a face, put it down. Not much of a taste for hot liquids, Mel. She smiled lazily again, while looking into the convenient middle distance of the wall behind the TV.
“Dja know what you’re wearing tonight, then?”
“Eh?”
“Well, don’t want to clash, do I?”
“Is this an art student thing?”
“Apparently proper girls talk about colours and clothes and stuff.”
“Ooh. Okay, well, I’m wearing a yellow shirt and...”
She raised her eyebrows and stared.
“Yellow.”
“Yeah.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“P.”
“Ah.” Mel isn’t close to P, but knows enough, or has enough indirect knowledge of the P reputation, to realise what that meant.
“You ought to set a dare yourself one of these times.”
“You definitely have a point, sister.”
“You ain’t no sister to be calling no sister a sister.”
I sigh-groaned. “Did we really sit up and watch Sister Act 2 last week?”
“Yes.”
I rolled my eyes. “Kinell. I’ll do some hellishly daft stuff rather than go to bed.”
“Yyyyup.”
We sipped. We both stared at the wall behind the TV. We sipped.
Anyway, next? What can I tell you? I drank the tea. I then actually heaved myself out of the armchair, looked out my toolbox and the bits to make the coathooks (the latter nestled dustily in its home heap in the corner of the landing from which it was due to be raised, Lazarean. This particularly soothingly practical task (there’s something incredibly satisfying about using a spirit level and drill properly) all too quickly, however, left me staring at a nice row of coathooks, an empty corner of the landing and four hours to kill.
I refused to put the computer on. No, I know you’ll find that hard to believe, but really I did. So I puttered aimlessly, picking up books and putting them down again, then sitting on my bed and looking moodily at the wall for a bit, then wondering how many tasks I had that I’d been putting in a mental ‘to do when I’ve got nothing better to do’ pile and where they were so I could do them, and how many of them involved leaving the house and what were they anyway? None of this makes particularly interesting telling.
I made a couple of lists. I laid my clothes out for that night (stop sniggering), I added a couple of things to the lists, nearly gave up and went to bother Mel but was prevented in time by the rhythmical slapping of wet earth and her muttering and cursing to Mephistopheles. I had a image of her trying to fire the stuff in our oven, and remembered the time when her car had died and we had to carry the stuff on boards covered in wet cloths all the way to the Institute’s Art Department. We’d congratulated ourselves on our upper-body strength that afternoon and Mel had used Pootle the next morning to join the AA. Never say he’s a luxury...
I did some sit-ups and push-ups, wondered again about the worthwhileness of getting a pull-up bar for the bedroom doorway, had a glass of water then finally gave up and curled up in bed, mobile phone alarm set for an hour’s time.
My dreams were snatches of vague, surreal images and conversations, but who can say with whom? Dreams I don’t remember, often until later that day when something reminds me of them. I accepted this years ago.
I joined Mel in the kitchen for our ritual dance around the fixtures and under the inconveniently-sloping bits until we’d both got a meal out of it. I looked slightly less dopey by the time I was plonked in my chair with food on my lap, but Mel still had that intent look that warrants trouble for someone – she gives off the impression of motion just stilled; of boundless energy waiting for an outlet.
The results of this have been multifarious in the past, ranging from roadtrips to all-night parties to barely-revealed but still-infamous romps with people I’d never heard of and frequently hoped I’d never have to look in the eye. Ever. And then there was the time where I woke up to every flat surface in the flat containing miniature, still-drying figurines of – as far as either of us could tell – everyone she knows. Mel has a “history of recreational drug use.” This is nothing, as far as I can tell, compared with Mel straight but on a creative juices binge.
I was unsurprised to hear that we would be walking to the party tonight. Both of us needed the benefits of the physical activity, and luckily both of us like walking.
My favourite jacket smelled of smoke and unfamiliarity. I struggled with the decision whether to wear it or not, but in the end indolence persuaded me to wear it. Transferring the stuff from the pockets would have been more of a chore.
It’s amazing the vehicles we’ll hitch a ride on to rationalise the oddest forms of self-harm we indulge in. For me the frisson of guilt from the scent of the jacket was to be like the masochistic thrill of wearing a hair shirt for several hours. It’s the invisible knives that are the most dangerous, and the hardest to ditch.
Humans are weird.
Mel had been there before, so she led the way to the party. I was to meet P there. We hadn’t arranged a particular time as, well, P isn’t exactly known for any ability to be on time for parties. This is blamed on P’s Irish ancestry, which always makes Kath and Lucy roll their eyes and raise their eyebrows. We’d aimed for about 10, and we’d probably make it too. Mel has a good sense of direction and walks nearly as fast as I do. We passed her place of gainful employment.
“Back to the grindstone on Tuesday, then, yeah?”
She grinned briefly. “Not til the evening. Tuesday is pretty much full of lectures, but Dave’s really excited about this evening surgery thing anyway, so it works pretty well.”
“It’s not every evening, though, is it?”
“He doesn’t like pain that much. Not receiving it, anyway.”
I don’t know if you know but Mel is, of all things, a qualified dentist. Studied hard at University of Wales College of Medicine, passed solidly, did her registration year at a good Swansea dentist’s practise. Then realised that she would actually spend the rest of her life chewing her soul if she’d never given her creative dreams a shot and had enrolled, much to her father’s disgust, on the degree in Ceramics at UWIC. It’s just a hobby, for God’s sake! There are other ways to do it – why do a whole degree? You could earn a lot more as a dentist... Etcetera. Mel just smiled in that lazy way, told him she’d need no money from him to do the course, that she wanted to do it properly, and that she knew she needed to find out before she hit forty which was the best thing for her to do with her life.
“After that,” she’d said, “it was comparatively easy telling him that Jo for the last two years had been short for Joanna and it was unlikely I’d ever make him a grandfather.” Jo was now a name of the past, but her determination to never regret not having tried her hand (pun intended) at pottery in a serious way still stood. Or, to put it another way, as she’d once pronounced after a night of Barcardi and sensi – Jo hadn’t withstood the fire, but her pots had.
In the meantime, Dave has a qualified dentist who’s registered and will work at nights and weekends as long as she doesn’t have an exam the next day. I once met him and subsequently asked Mel if he jigged like that all the time, even when drilling teeth. Mel just rolled her eyes and said don’t ask. I’m still with my old dentist...
Me? I’m not sure she needed to do a whole degree in it either, but so far she’s making it work, and I have major doubts that I could. The most important part of making it work is, of course, that fire – dentistry pays the bills and pumps up parents, but it doesn’t have any fire.
Dan likes saying: “Man make fire.” I suspect a lot of educated men like saying that. I don’t know if that’s true, but I know that once you’ve lit a fire in a woman, be wary – you’ll not put it out again in a hurry, and she’ll defend it, once she’s claimed it for hers, with everything she possesses.
Sociobiology? Or my over-tactile imagination again?
Mel was walking fast, and when she started talking again it was fast and furious. Who did I think was going to be there? Had I ever been there? She wasn’t going to spoil it for me then, but wow, when I got there... She only knew about half of Kiri’s crowd, but really wanted to get in with the local creative lot. Felt she could show them something, be part of something. Was her hair all right? Was it okay? Damn, she was full of energy tonight, no doubt. She wondered if Sally would be there. Did I think Sally would be there?
“Sally?”
“Oh, surely you know Sally!”
“Hold on...” clack-shuffle “the one with the salamander on her arm?”
“Yes! Don’t you think she’s great? I think she’s great.”
“Mel...?”
“Yes?”
“Have you had any of that guarana stuff this evening?”
“Poss... ibly...”
“Hmm.”
“Oh, bollocks, I’m talking too much, aren’t I? I can feel it, I’m too jittery. Shit, look at me, I’m jittery, I’m talking too much. Bollocks!”
And she might have carried on in this fashion for a good while if we hadn’t been passing a certain alleyway. “Hold on,” I said, “have you tried this shortcut before?”
“What? No, wait, I...”
I ducked down it and she was forced to follow.
“How is this a shortcut? A shortcut to where?”
I jinked right, turned, and held my hand up to the wall. “Here.”
She blinked, turned, and her mouth fell open. “Oh.”
Not all art is in frames and on canvas. Some of the best art in Cardiff, probably in the UK, is on walls and in the margins of notebooks, and we were lucky enough to be near one of the most stunning.
“Shit,” she said, after a while.
“Yep.”
“Shit.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I didn’t know he had another one up round here.”
“I love this one. Surprised I haven’t shown it to you before.”
“Well.”
“Yeah.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.”
It is. It’s very fucking cool. I just hope I get round to photographing it before some idiot paints over it.
“Shall we go?”
“Hmm? Oh, yeah.”
“Lay on, then.”
“Cool.”