Nicola Barker - Love Your Enemies

On Wednesday morning Steve arrived slightly late at the shop. Melissa had already opened up by this time and was sat at the till organizing a float for the day. They still weren’t speaking. All morning her chest had felt tight but empty at the same time. She knew that her body was making her suffer for the argument of the previous day. She knew inside that she had been self-indulgent and stupid, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. This reticence was vindicated, however, when she turned as he entered the shop, a half-empty bag of coins still in her hand, and saw that he had a silver jacket slung casually over his shoulder. She tried to bite her tongue, but still said, ‘I’d have thought that there would be easier ways of acquiring one of those jackets than that, Steve. Your little drink after work must’ve been quite successful — those things cost well over a hundred quid.’

Steve refused to be ruffled. He slung the jacket over the back of the swivel chair and said in a funny Oscar Wilde voice, ‘Oh, I’m just borrowing it, darling. Everything has to be so tawdry and absolute in that little mind of yours. As it happens, he simply forgot his carrier bag in the pub last night and it seemed rather churlish of me to refuse to take possession of the coat until I see him again. I’m sure he’ll be in later. Satisfied?’

She was satisfied but she didn’t say anything. She felt bad. Steve made himself a cup of tea in silence and then slouched by the till and read his book. Melissa realized that he was punishing her, but this only made her feel more angry and defensive. She flicked through Vogue and said, ‘Thanks for the tea.’

Steve looked at her for an instant. ‘Grow up.’

He carried on reading. Melissa was determined to humiliate him, to turn the tables. She said, ‘How about a game of Guess or Gush? At least if I win I’ll get some tea. The next person we don’t know who comes in, all right?’

Steve smiled to himself and said, ‘Go ahead.’

Melissa smiled daggers back at him.

John’s living-room floor was now awash with pieces of paper covered in complex sketches and plans, tools and electrical equipment, an unconstructed woodwork table which was at least seven feet long and four feet wide, and, up against one wall, four very large chunks of wood, beautiful pieces of half-tree with bits of shaggy bark still coating the outside, the inside glossy and luminous.

Accumulating his carpentry material had made John feel like a squirrel, a beaver, a humble creature compelled by the dictates of nature, by mortality, to build himself a secure nest, to build himself a coffin, to do-it-himself, to leave a mark, something self-created, something unique, individual and personal.

Instead of turning him away from death, his new involvement, his brand-new preoccupation had made him face death, had made him dive into the idea of death and swim around in it. Eventually he knew that it would drown him, but it didn’t matter any more. He felt so vital.

It had been a wrench on Wednesday morning to drag himself away from his wood and his new tools and his schemes. Nevertheless, he had left for work at the usual time and had spent the morning at his desk phoning, making deals, securing sales. During his lunch-break he went out and bought a sandwich, then strolled around looking in shop windows.

Although everything felt very secure and normal to him again — his illness had been pushed away into a tiny crevice of his mind — he felt strangely light, as though illuminated from within, powerful but weightless like a born-again Christian. His compulsion to buy, which had always been his guiding motivation, had, he felt, almost disappeared. He was fully aware of a deep irony in this situation, given that the previous day he had virtually emptied his savings account, but he now perceived those expenses as the beginning of something, and at the very same time as the end of something. He was cheerful in his hypocrisy and folly, like Don Quixote sitting backwards on his donkey, beguiled, foolish, happy.

He wandered into Soho, past the peepshows and then past some of the smarter and more expensive shops in the area. One shop window was based on an Aztec theme, full of gold and azure and orange. Everything was chunky and angular and sharp. The colours shouted out at him and he tried to picture in his mind an Aztec coffin made like a glorious offering to the sun god. He smiled to himself and resolved to get hold of some books on the subject as inspiration. The next shop window was based on a white theme. It was very clean and crisp, but ultimately uninspiring. John wanted to keep an open mind, however, so visualized a white-theme funeral with a white coffin lined in white satin with himself laid out inside in a Liberace suit of white and gold spangles. He liked the underlying implication of contradicting the blackness of death by offering himself in a clean white marriage to eternity, to eternal wedlock with nothingness, to space, to an infinite white silence.

Looking at his watch, John realized that it was almost the end of his lunch hour. He was just about to turn around when he caught sight of a young shorn-headed man standing in the doorway of the next shop along with a jacket slung over his arm. It was a silver jacket which was beautifully beaded on its back with some sort of colourful illustration. It looked silver and yet it wasn’t a plastic or a leather jacket that had been spray-painted silver, it was a sort of soft, flickering silver velvet which shone and glistened like something organic. The young man was talking to someone who appeared to be a friend. He passed him the jacket and then gave him a peck on the cheek. His friend smiled, waved and then walked away. John waited a few seconds and then approached the young man before he’d had time to turn round and re-enter the shop. He smiled and said, ‘Excuse me, would you tell me where you got the jacket that you were just holding?’

Steve smiled back at John, who seemed rather too middle-aged and tedious in his business suit to constitute a serious customer, ‘That jacket comes from this shop. It’s an original design so we only have a couple of them. Would you like to come in and see?’

John looked at his watch again and then thought, ‘What the hell.’

He followed Steve into the shop. As he entered he noticed his helper giving a significant look to a girl who was standing leaning against the changing-room rail with a cigarette in her left hand and a copy of Vogue in her right. She looked up aggressively and then — somewhat surprisingly — immediately broke into a smile. John smiled back, but he kept his lips closed and his mouth formal. The young man said, ‘I’m Steve, by the way. Hi.’ He then sat down on a stool by the till and added, ‘Melissa will serve you.’

Surprised at Steve’s reticence to serve him John turned to the girl and said, ‘I’m looking for a silver jacket like the one your friend …’ He tipped his head in Steve’s direction, but Steve was apparently already engrossed in what appeared to be The Age of Reason , ‘… the one like your friend just had over his arm outside the shop.’

Melissa’s expression took on the trace of a slight sneer at the mention of the jacket. Vaguely uneasy, John added, ‘If that’s all right.’ Then she smiled again. ‘Sure, that’s fine.’

She turned away and pulled a couple of hangers back to locate the item in question, then passed it to him. She said, ‘Here you go. It’s the last one we have, well, we only had two anyway. Nice fabric, isn’t it?’ John took hold of the jacket and ran his hand over the material, which was as soft as a peach. Melissa watched him for a moment and then said, ‘Were you thinking of buying this for yourself?’

John realized that this must seem like a rather ridiculous proposition. He shook his head slowly. She said, ‘I’m not surprised. It is rather, well, rather gaudy, isn’t it?’