Emma Unsworth - Animals

‘You were telling us about your ill-fated trip to Oxford,’ Marty said when he saw me.

I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t meet his eye. ‘They gave us salmon en croute and put fish scales on the pastry, that’s my most enduring memory — that and the smell of the history. That smell. You don’t get it when you grow up in a terrace. Books, leather, dust, whatever it is, we had none of it.’

‘An Irish Catholic family,’ Tyler said. ‘Ten of them, living in just one shoe.’

I looked at her. Black eye or no black eye. My hands were round her neck and she was spluttering. ‘GET OFF ME! GET OFF!’ She started to wrestle back. I swung for her good eye and missed. She swung for me and didn’t. My jaw cracked and I held it even though I couldn’t feel it. We both sat back down.

‘It’s fine,’ I heard Marty say to the other people in the room — who were they? I could taste metal in my mouth. Tyler was clutching her throat.

‘Fuck you,’ I said, looking around for my things, how to get them together. ‘No, really. Fuck you.’ I was all but ready to leave.

Tyler gasped. ‘I’m—’

‘No, you’re not. And my dad worked until the blood burst into his face, and you know it.’

She looked down. Yes , I thought. You stay there a minute .

I looked over to the window, the open window. The Night was there, tapping on the glass. If you should need me … The Universe was microwaving popcorn for the show. God was… God was at the bar, if he had any sense. I looked around for a drink. Marty handed me something. I drank it. ‘I wasn’t immune to the kudos,’ I said. Marty nodded. Tyler sipped her drink. Her throat was reddening. My jaw was starting to ache. ‘Far from it. I wanted in. Badly. But then… well, I convinced myself I wasn’t academic enough, I was too creative yadayada, I wouldn’t have time to write blahblah, but really I knew why I didn’t apply. I’d bottled it. Reached my limit with all the trials and tests. Fear of failure — is there a word for that?’

‘Normal,’ Tyler said.

Oh, Tyler, see, you can be so nice when you try…

I said: ‘I bet there’s a proper word for it.’

She got out her phone. Tapped on it. Scrolled. Tapped. Scrolled. Squinted.

‘Atychiphobia.’

‘There you go,’ I said. ‘Also known as the fuse-box.’

‘Also known as the ego,’ said Marty.

I looked at him.

He followed me to the bathroom. Locked the door. Got hold of me. I pressed my hands over his kidneys. Our faces were centimetres apart. Eyes to eyes, nose to nose, mouth to mouth, there we were, matching up. A feeling like falling asleep and jerking alert, the rush of the plunge, the clit-to-jaw synapse…

‘Take your knickers off and bend over.’

‘What?’

He started unbuckling his belt. ‘You heard.’

He pulled me to him and smacked my arse. Hard. He did it again. I pushed him away and slapped his face. ‘Come at me again and I’ll knee you into oblivion.’

SHE’D TOLD HIM.

SHE’D FUCKING TOLD HIM.

Oh, she’s totally game and besides she needs it, you should think of it as a noble act, we’ve got to get her away from that douchebag so anything you can do really, she’s a bit Othello about the whole infidelity thing so it should do it — or you could get her a book deal? I dunno, whatever’s easier. The infidelity? Okay. Sure. Yeah, a bit of garden-variety S&M, nothing too rad, there’s a weird childhood spanking thing involving her sister that you could work with, that’s probably as deep as her perversions go …

He was between me and the door. Fast mathematics, physics, logistics, spatial awareness, was he stronger than me, more fucked? I could draw on a lot cornered and reminded myself but still: orthodox terror, the avian curve of his mouth, arms that could break my arms. Without further assessment I shoved him to one side and unlocked the door, ran.

Tyler was standing on the bed holding court. She looked at me and raised her eyebrows. I retched. She got down off the bed and came and put her arm around my shoulder. ‘You need some water.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘No, listen, Lo, I put a rock in your drink.’

I retched again. ‘What?’

‘I put a rock in your drink, thought you could use it, so you need to loosen up and have some water or you’re gonna flip out.’

I put my thumbs on my temples, pounding, struggling. She was in my ear, her voice loud and hot and horrible.

‘Oh, Lo, have you forgotten the intense joy of getting fucked with someone when you know that later you’re going to fuck them? It’s the best feeling. I know you know that.’

Marty came out of the bathroom zipping up his flies.

All I needed was my bag.

As I slammed the hotel room door I heard her shout ‘You bailed first, Lo! Remember that! YOU BAILED FIRST.’

They’ve found it, Laura.’

A voicemail from my dad. I listened to it on the train, squashed into a window seat, hot and thirsty and heavy in the middle. My stomach went when I heard his voice. There was only one ‘it’ where my dad was concerned. I realised that the cancer coming back, a negative check-up, rogue cells gathering into a shadow on an x-ray, was still what I was expecting to hear whenever he or my mum called.

I called back and he answered before it even rang. ‘Laura — did you get my message?’

‘Yes. When—?’

‘Can you believe it?’

‘Uh—’

‘They’re being cautious, saying it’s just Higgs-like , but that’s scientists for you—’

I shook my head to clear it. ‘Dad, what are you talking about?’

A pause. ‘The Higgs boson.’

I burst out laughing. Then I remembered myself and stopped. ‘No way.’

‘Way, love. Way.’

‘Look, Dad, can I call you back in a bit?’

I got up— Excuse me, sorry, sorry, sorry —and walked down the carriage and then through the next carriage and the next carriage until I reached the shop. I picked up a paper and bottle of water. My jeans pockets were heavy with coins, pirate’s pockets: the result of spending notes and forgetting when you got change. As I stood in the queue I read the front page of the paper. Sure enough, there it was, albeit with a caveat (the restraint of scientists struck me as a more glorious thing than usual that morning): the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva had reported ‘a new boson with Higgs-like properties’.

I went back to my seat— Excuse me again, sorry— and devoured the story, thankful for the distraction. The text and the thrill of the news evaporated and I was left with guilt again, heightened by the thought of bodies — mine and my dad’s, of care and lack of care. I closed my eyes as the train flew through a tunnel. Always, always the fantasy of collision, of points not moved, of screeching, sparks, warped metal and fire-illuminated brickwork.

I hadn’t slept back at the B&B. I’d sat in bed listening to the street, waiting for the telltale splutter of a cab engine or the clatter of boot soles hitting stone. She hadn’t come back. I had a series of fast-dismissed sordid visions of what she might be up to with Marty in his hotel room. Bottles and furniture featured heavily. I tried to force a dream upon myself, backwards, one I’d had a few weeks ago, the strangest of my life so far. The only way I can describe it is that it felt like travelling through sedimentary rock. In the dream I’d murdered someone; had all the guilty horror of such a nightmare, the kind that normally stays with you all day, like a hangover. I came out of the dream through what felt like layers. First, the relief of innocence, but bodiless, a spirit; then the sensation of a body but not my body, a kind of physical peace; then up and up, through several more layers, each one a little more individually sentient, a fraction more sentiently filled until, finally, me, complete, Laura Joyce, in my bed in my bedroom, innocent (of murder at least). I was in bed with Jim and I’d rolled over and woken him.