Vanessa Jones - Twelve

The underground’s a strange setting for a love scene and not one that I would have chosen. Tonight I’m on it to go to meet Edward. It’s so hot that I’ve not bothered to fight for a seat but am standing by the window to the carriage next door. It’s open for ventilation but it always makes me laugh, the thought of ventilation down here. If I stand the right way round my hair is in my eyes and up my nose, so I’m standing the wrong way round with it blowing off my face and I’m looking into the neighbouring car. Another set of possibilities in there. Perhaps it would have made all the difference if I’d been on that side and looking in here – if I’d been just five feet further down that day, Colin would never have seen me – so do things happen because they’re supposed to? or just because they can? Chances are, it’s possible.

Edward and I are going for a walk after work in the park. In the winter these are reserved for Sunday afternoons, when he doesn’t seem to notice that it’s raining and freezing cold. On the way back we get stuck in the week-again traffic. He says, ‘C’mon c’mon c’mon; c’mon c’mon c’mon; c’mon c’mon c’mon ’ over and over under his breath like a mantra. At his flat we sit in front of his lookalike fire and drink tea (if I can be bothered to make it). He cleans his shoes on the Sunday magazines and makes me read to him from their papers. He lends me a dry pair of socks (which I never return) and I catch the train home. Sometimes he walks me to the station.

The park is a long way by underground, until it becomes overground and almost until the end of the line. Tonight though I suppose I’m enjoying it. It’s quite nice, this breeze on my face and those people to watch and this film in my head where I’ve spent the next six months in love with Colin. And it’s so bizarre down here. It’s science fiction. Shunting through tunnels under the earth and in the dark (it’s always dark in science fiction). It reminds me of those pictures for children where the earth’s sliced through: here are the people walking the streets and here are the people travelling beneath . So many people, like bunnies in burrows, like patients on their way to some spooky experiment in a secret laboratory. And not one of them taking any notice of me. If I made such an impression on Colin why not so on them?

I’m making a mental note not to talk to Edward about Colin – he is a purist when it comes to conversations. The problem with mine, according to him, is their tendency to be experience-led. He doesn’t like to know what I’ve ‘been up to’, he’s not the least bit interested in plot – if I try to tell him he’ll say, ‘This isn’t a conversation, Lily, it’s a soliloquy.’ So to get his views on the subject I’ll have to couch it in altogether different terms. I’ll have to conceptualise. Colin will have to become a debate about – I don’t know quite what yet. I’ve got three more stops to work it out.

Edward and I have been coming to this park ever since we met. It’s a pastime which belongs to him though and not to me. I’m sure he brings other people on similar trips while I’d never dream of coming with other than him. It’s his place. He’s never said so, though. It’s his possession and he has no need to point it out. When we first became friends we’d fill our pockets with bottles of beer and walk up the hill to see the sun set. We’d sit and watch it getting drunk on its glory, mostly in silence but pointing out the occasional flash of colour till it had ended. Then, humbled, Edward would give his views on how he’d have improved it.

There he is waiting for me in the front of his car. He’s in his usual position, feet on the steering wheel, bum in midair, swapping his suit for something more suited to walking. No attempt at discretion. I can tell by the way he’s yanking on his jeans that he’s not in good temper. Well, he never is for the first five minutes, like he finds it hard to make the change from his own good company to someone else. He glares at my feet as I get in beside him, I say, ‘I’ve got my trainers in my bag.’

‘We’re going for a stomp, Lily, do you know what that means? It means working your lazy blood around your lazy body, working up a sweat, moving fast and covering a lot of distance and if there’s even the smallest chance that you’re going to make me cut it short because your feet hurt, then you’d better get out now.’

‘You always lay this on me, and I’ve never complained my feet hurt.’

‘Well, you must have done once, or else I wouldn’t say it. So what’s it to be?’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Good,’ he says, and he speeds off.

Edward has always driven like a maniac. He says he does it to calm himself down. I remember the first time he took me to his parents’ house he swerved down the tiny country lanes as though he were the only person likely to be using them. He turned to me at ninety miles-an-hour and said, ‘At least if we die we’ll die together,’ which I didn’t find exactly relaxing. But then, I’m not friends with Edward that I might relax. I’m friends with him for lots of other reasons which I’ve suddenly completely forgotten. I’m not in the mood to deal with his mood, I’m fighting one of my own. Beyond this light summer evening, beyond this lovely walk, beyond this beautiful park and the friend that I love, it’s August, and winter ahead.

I surrender. Edward always does this and I always put up with it; I’ve stood on a sweating train for an hour to get here and at least he could be slightly pleased to see me; if I did to him what he constantly does to me our friendship would be over in five minutes; and whereabouts along the line did we agree that he was allowed to be a crotchety old git and I patient till he’d got over it? I feel like making a big gesture, I feel like telling him to stop the car and getting out without explanation, I feel like going home and never seeing him again. But I can’t, I won’t, I don’t, and this makes me crosser. My throat starts to throb and tears fill the backs of my eyes. I sometimes think it’s this pain in my neck and not the pain from anything else which makes me start crying – it’s unbearable and tears the only way to clear it. I can’t cry though, I can’t cry with Edward here in the front with me – nothing’s happened. Nothing unusual. This is the way he always is for the first five minutes, and nothing’s happened today to warrant this bad temper. Nothing unusual. But it’s like this mood is always lurking, like it’s easy to give into, like once I’ve crossed the line it’s such a job to send away.

We park the car in our usual place with the hill out in front of us. It’s seven o’clock and the summer light has brought out the punters. They play with their dogs, they play with their children, they even play with balls (I’ve never understood the attraction), they lie on their backs and they look at the sky with their fingers knotted in the hair of the one they love. Little boys fly kites and float model boats on the water. Why is this fun? I’d rather be the kite, I’d rather be the boat. ‘My God,’ I say ‘there’s even someone doing Yoga.’

‘There’s a hint of scorn in your voice.’

‘No there isn’t.’

‘There is – scorn and envy.’

‘I’m not envious.’

‘Are you in sparring mode this evening?’ he says, joking, but I take it badly, ‘Because if you are I don’t need to remind you who always wins.’

I hate Edward. I hate him tonight. He’s smug and we always do what he wants to do. We’ll begin our walk as usual in the Louisa Plantation and then he’ll make me march up that hill – which is agony but I never complain – and we won’t be allowed to stop at the top to look at the view but we’ll have to run down the other side, and then continue for another half an hour at least before returning to his car, where he’ll put my life in danger all the way back to his flat, where he’ll neglect to offer me tea.