Nicola Barker - Wide Open

Lily was all the more affronted. She glowered. She’d momentarily lost her pip. Ronny scratched his beard. “I thought maybe you were cleaning off.”

“Cleaning off? You bastard! Who the fuck are you?”

“Ronny.”

Lily didn’t listen. Dirty. How dare he! She touched her neck again.

“It’s a fucking tan,” she said angrily, “I tan dirty.”

Ronny shrugged.

“You don’t believe me?!”

Lily was raging. Tears brimmed on her lower lids like two iridescent souffles. She took several deep breaths. Ronny eventually apprehended her distress, but not quickly enough, she felt.

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? A total fucking stranger tells me I’m dirty and then asks me what’s wrong?”

Ronny yanked at his beard. “Did I say you were dirty? If I remember rightly it was Jim who said you were dirty and then the fish man, Luke, who agreed with him. I don’t think I said you were dirty. But if I did then it was rude of me and I’m sorry.”

“Jim who? I don’t know any Jim.”

“Wow!” Ronny smiled.

“Wow what? ”

“It’s just…” Ronny shook his head, “I’m surprised that you think being dirty is such a bad thing. I mean it’s no bad thing. There are certainly worse things.”

Lily slit her eyes. “My parents breed pigs,” she said, “I know all about dirt .”

“I’ve heard that pigs are very clean animals,” Ronny said, all sincere contrariness.

“Well, I wouldn’t know about you,” Lily spat, “but I don’t call making a habit out of eating your own shit clean.”

“Some people drink their own urine,” Ronny contributed, unfazed, “because they think it’s good for the skin.”

“Sod off,” Lily bawled, and attempted to ride away in a razzle of sand and gravel. Her wheel lost its grip though, and she didn’t move quite as quickly as she’d anticipated.

“Nice bike,” Ronny said. “I like it. Very smart.”

She heard his compliments as she struggled in the sand.

They struck like darts. She was completely bullseyed. He was the most interesting man she’d ever met. And ridiculously handsome. Oh fuck fuck fuck how she hated him.

♦

Luke had Jim cornered.

“I need a fag,” he said, “just one. Just a little puff.”

“Why?”

Jim resented him even asking. He didn’t care . Even so, he had a loose obligation. “Has it ever happened to you?” Luke patted at his wide stomach while he spoke because it kept on aching. Was it wind? Was it excitement?

“Has what ever happened to me?”

“That real kick in the guts kind of feeling? That love thing?”

Jim shook his head. “Never.”

“It’s really never happened to you? Wham-bam in the belly?”

“I don’t think so.”

Luke was obviously disappointed. “Why not?”

“Uh…” Jim had been preparing a flask of tea and an egg sandwich for Ronny. Luke eyed it covetously. Jim was holding a kitchen knife. He wanted to cut the sandwich in two but Luke clearly demanded his whole attention. “I don’t respond to other people in that immediate way,” he said softly, “not on the whole.”

“Like a real smack in the balls,” Luke said, relishing it. Jim shrugged and cleared his throat, bemused and slightly embarrassed.

Luke had wandered over to Jim’s, not just to beg a cigarette, but also for a spate of mannish confirmation, for some friendly reassurance. Jim’s reticence was making him feel oafish. Too butch. Too ballsy.

“I’m very pleased for you, anyway,” Jim said eventually, blushing slightly. Agonized.

“I mean there was the physical attraction,” Luke said, withdrawing a little, “but it was the intellectual thing mainly. She just looked at that picture and then she said, ‘Why is she wearing her sandals in that way?’ It was so strange.”

Jim nodded. He’d already heard this part. He didn’t understand what it was that he was supposed to contribute, if anything. Luke was actually becoming something of an encumbrance. Jim did not want to be his friend. He didn’t make friends. If he’d ever troubled to have a life gameplan then friendship would never have been a part of it.

Luke was waiting, though, his face puckered with anticipation.

“Well yes, it does seem strange,” Jim managed finally, fumbling, stumbling, feeling around in the dark.

“Because no one had ever said that before,” Luke continued, warming up again, “but when I initially conceived the image for that photo and when I actually took it I was thinking shoes . I don’t know why. I was thinking sandals . And then I got Beverly — my ex-wife, she’s the model — to unfasten the sandals. And so whenever I see that picture I think sandals , but whenever anyone else sees the picture they think breasts . High breasts.”

Jim nodded.

“You thought that too?”

“Yes.”

“But Sara thought sandals . It was…kinetic. Is that a word?”

Jim touched his chin which was soft as chamois leather. “I think so. Perhaps you both have a similar way of looking at things.”

“That’s precisely what I thought.” Luke was beaming. “You’ve hit the nail on the head there.”

Jim was pleased he’d hit something but now he wished Luke would go. Luke sensed as much. “I shouldn’t have intruded. It’s just that I was so…”

“Understandably.”

“Yes. Excited. And you’re right. I don’t need a puff. This is all natural energy. It’s positive energy. It’s just that…” he frowned, “as a photographer, how you see the world is the most fundamental thing. And you yearn for other people to see things in the same way you do.”

Jim was nodding dumbly at this when Lily burst in, unannounced, a random firecracker. “OK,” she said, panting, her hair, hands, everything all atangle, “so who’s Jim?”

“She never knocks,” Luke said, turning to Jim, his face suddenly creasing with displeasure, “and I only came to this godforsaken hole in the first place to escape that kind of thing.”

Jim said nothing. He didn’t want Lily in his home. He didn’t want any kind of interaction with her. Even his acquaintance with Luke had been stretching it, though Luke’s car had proven invaluable.

“The fact of the matter is this,” Lily announced, genuinely undaunted by her lack of a response, “you are a fat dick who stinks of fish,” she pointed at Luke. “And you,” she pointed at Jim, “you are a skinny baldie runt of a man. And I don’t care if you’ve got some kind of fatal disease. I don’t care. Fuck off!”

She stormed out.

“Would you believe it?”

Luke shook his head in amazement. Jim was still holding his breadknife.

“No.”

He turned and cut into the sandwich. The yolk had gone cold, and the blade was much sharper than he’d anticipated.

Remember Big Ron?

He didn’t want to remember, he didn’t want to.

Remember Big Ron?

Who came home from his long trip away when Nathan was only eight years old.

Remember?

Hell wasn’t black after all. It was an endless, hollow, grey colour and it felt slippery. Nathan could find no fingerholds. Even though his hands were still small. He was eight years old and there was nothing to cling on to.

Just Big Ron.

Remember him?

Then Little Ronny was born.

What a relief .

♦

Big Ron and all his friends. Feel of brickwork. Half smile. Smell of camphor. Wet sheet.

♦

It’s a mould, the letter said, a mould. You wipe it off the wall but it comes back because there’s damp in the wall. It comes back. You bleach the wall, you scrub it, but the mould comes back. And the mould’s in you. You cunt. You fucking evil cunt. And your brother. Do you know what you’ve done? Do you know?