LEMON MARMALADE
LEMON MARMALADE
Mum was calling again as I stepped from my train. There was a scream and an odd scene at the platform across the tracks where a thin white-haired man strode purposefully towards its edge as a passing train arrived. There was a tug at his raincoat, slowing his progress as the engine clattered through horns blaring, somehow never colliding with the man.
He lay on the ground as the noise dissipated, the emptied contents of a plastic bag spilt by his legs. And a pair of teenage girls stared down at him, asking if he was okay. The enquiries seemed genuine until one began to film him on her phone.
‘If I want to fucking die, that’s my business!’ he yelled, with his head against a pillar.
My pocket vibrated again. ‘Hi, Mum,’ I said, answering – unable to look away.
‘Hi, Bab,’ she chirped. ‘I’m letting you know we’re on the ferry.’
‘Okay. That’s good.’
‘You sound all shaken up.’ The old man screamed at the girls as a third, muscular onlooker stepped in to calm him down. ‘What’s that noise?’
‘Nothing.’ I gripped my guitar case and turned towards the concrete walkway. ‘Do you think that could have been a text?’
‘Oh, well.’ She sighed. ‘You’re in a bad mood.’
‘I’m not,’ I insisted as I descended the staircase. ‘Sorry. I don’t know what to say, Mum. Bon Voyage. Have fun in Spain.’
‘I thought you’d want to know.’
‘I do. I’m just about to meet Frank. I’m busy, and you keep calling.’
There was a bar built into the railway arches, and I knew it well. Frank was sitting among the long crowded tables as I arrived at the concrete beer garden. It was warm, and he was easy to spot with his lank, grey hair. We shook hands and gripped forearms. I told him I couldn’t stay for long, with other plans in the diary for later.
‘It’s a bit of a hipster hang-out,’ he noted, scanning the younger faces around him. ‘Oh, congratulations, by the way. On your tutoring qualification. I saw it on your mum’s Facebook.’
‘Oh, thanks.’ I slotted onto the bench opposite and fumbled to balance my guitar case against it. ‘It’s just a fallback if work continues to slide.’
Frank pushed a bottle of beer my way. ‘It’s good to have options though, right?’
‘Yeah. Sure.’ I shrugged and took a swig of my drink.
‘Well, I’m proud of you, mate.’ Frank smiled and pushed his hair to one side. ‘I might grow it longer. I’ll fit in these sorts of places then. What do you think?’
‘I think that’s an awful idea.’
He cackled with an odd musical noise. ‘So….’ He flexed his fingers. ‘How’d it go with Naomi?’
‘Um. Yeah, I don’t think I can do it.’
Frank frowned like it was a disappointment. ‘Okay. It’s just….’ He smacked his lips. ‘It can be good for streams if a journalist of her quality randomly pops up to do a piece. Her stuff goes viral all the time. People will get interested.’
I shrugged. ‘Ask Amber, then Frank. I’m not sure I’d do it justice.’
‘Well, it would be good if you got involved,’ he said, wiping his manicured beard after a thirsty guzzle. ‘It’s just what with us bumping into each other last week, Luke’s band potentially breaking up. And now this. Maybe the stars are aligning.’
‘Hmm.’ I snickered and polished off my drink. ‘Getting a little carried away.’
Frank finger drummed at the table, and our conversation pivoted to the old days, because of course it would. He said it had been five years since Dorothea split up and then frantically scanned through his phone to check when I told him it had been eight. Time was melting away, he said, as we reminisced fondly on that time, dancing around its unhappier end. And we drank more until the laughter came.
‘Frank, I am in a bad way,’ I said suddenly.
I hadn’t wanted to leave our hastily arranged catch-up on a bitter note, but the news escaped my lips and jolted us both. I had been losing days, I explained, unsure if I should. Perhaps my brain was broken and had stopped imprinting memories – like my entire day before I arrived there.
Frank didn’t say much in response. He gave only a perceptive nod and scratched nervously at the same spot on his forehead between his eyebrows. I forced a carefree chuckle, wanting to turn the clock back ten minutes when we were both smiling.
Frank tapped the bridge of his nose. ‘I’m sure it’ll pass, mate.’
‘Maybe.’ I winced, with a sudden sharp pain in my head – like fingertips gripping into my skull. ‘I think there is something wrong with me.’
‘Look, I’ve got a friend if you want to see someone. Professionally. Have you done that?’
‘No.’ I shook my head and stood, strapping the guitar case to my back. ‘Sorry, mate. I’m running late.’
‘Right.’ He grabbed my forearm as we shook hands again. ‘Just give me a call if it gets bad. I’ll sort it, anything you need. Anything.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
I trudged back to the station platform, where a train home awaited. My head throbbed as I slipped inside the busy carriage and gripped a pole.
Esther was staring into the wooden mirror perched on top of the tall chest of drawers in the corner when I told her about my migraine, holding my forehead for effect. She didn’t say anything at first and had a brush poised at her freckled face as the walls of our tiny bedroom shrank inwards. The timing of my announcement was awful. We were minutes before we were due to head out with friends, who were her friends, really.
‘You’ve had too much to drink,’ she suggested.
‘Yeah. Sorry. Maybe it is that.’
Esther had been upbeat about catching up with her old friends too much to let her down. She liked the new green dress she had purchased that morning – a smock, she called it. ‘This isn’t about Manchester, is it?’ she asked.
I sighed, dreading a revival of the previous evening’s argument – how she was feeling homesick and wanted to be nearer old friends and her family. ‘No.’
‘I only suggested it because the tenancy is coming up. And Liz’s rent went up by twenty per cent. And we could buy up there. You know.’
‘Yes, you said.’ I played with my hands. ‘I don’t want to think about that. Not now.’
‘Okay...’ Esther returned to the mirror and dabbed at her lips again. ‘It’ll look bad if I cancel now.’
‘Of course. Yeah, go and have a good time,’ I insisted. ‘I might go to bed early. I’m still not getting enough sleep.’
I wanted to poke the dimple in Esther’s chin, a weird thing of ours which always seemed to lighten the mood. But I hadn’t done that in a while, and it wouldn’t have been right under the circumstances. Instead, I retreated to the beige dog-eared sofa in our narrow living room. I scrolled through my phone, dimming its screen in the darkness with my feet planted on the coffee table.
There was another message from Naomi.
So when would be good to speak? I was such a fan of Dorothea! xx
‘Oh!’ Esther leaned against the living room door where she was poking her chubby hooped earrings in. ‘Did your mum and Bill get away okay?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah. Mum called.’
‘That’s good.’ She chewed her nail. ‘I was talking to her about your thirtieth next year. Perhaps we could go to Spain and see them after the party.’
‘Maybe.’ I tossed my phone to one side and groaned.
‘What’s up?’
‘It’s such a fucking big number, isn’t it?’
‘Sorry.’ Esther wandered inside and nudged my cheek. ‘I’m just trying to organise something nice for it.’
‘No, I’m sorry.’ We looked at each other and smiled, all mouths, no eyes. ‘You look nice.’
‘Thanks.’ She stepped back to check her outfit from all angles in the mirror above my head. It was unusual for her to like anything she had on. ‘It looks okay, doesn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I think green might be my colour, you know.’ Esther perched herself on the sofa arm and rested her head on my shoulder. She pulled at the neck of my jumper to sniff at it. ‘That lemon smell is everywhere. It’s never going to leave us, is it?’
‘Maybe in a few months.’
‘Maybe.’ Her laughter petered quickly. ‘Are you okay?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah.’
Her phone vibrated. ‘Oh God, the cab’s here.’ She crept across the room and peered between the vertical blind at the window. ‘I hate getting them on my own.’
‘I’m sorry...’ I squeezed her hand. It was too late to change my mind now. ‘Shall I wait up?’
‘See how you feel.’ She kissed my head and moved into the hallway a few steps away to slip her shoes on. ‘Babe. What set me off to make lemon marmalade?’
I smiled. ‘I don’t know.’
‘So funny.’ Esther snickered and reached for her going-out jacket. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking.’
I snickered too. ‘It’s funny.’
‘Yeah.’ She grabbed the door and opened it. ‘Take some painkillers.’
‘I will.’ I smiled. ‘Have a nice time.’
My head growled as the front door clunked shut, fingers pushing and gripping. I held my wrists into my eye sockets to dull the pain and then skulked into the kitchen, where the citrus tang hung most. Packets of painkillers and sleeping tablets came tumbling onto the worktop as I reached into the narrowest corner cupboard. Lacking the want to file them away again, I scooped up what I could and headed back to the living room, plucking a bottle of dark rum and a glass from the side on my way.
The old broken-in sofa was ready to absorb me as I plonked back onto it and poured a drink. I swallowed an assortment of pills to defeat the pounding for a night – a blotting out which couldn’t come soon enough. And fuck Manchester and Naomi, and fuck Frank and Dorothea.
I squeezed my head with both hands as it pounded and wouldn’t stop. Perhaps it was impatience, but I popped more blister packets and sunk their contents. My throat charred as I washed them down, so many and then again. It was strange not to flinch, to sit quietly instead and kick at the sheepskin rug fibres beneath my feet. Perhaps I knew what I was doing and was okay with it. Perhaps I was miserable and seduced by the sudden possibility of that going away.
My phone buzzed from between the gaps in the back cushions. There was a message from Esther.
It’s fun here. I think it would have cheered you up! xx
It was a slap of reality, and I panicked, full of pills – wishing I wasn’t. And my breathing had lost its depth and rhythm. I stood up and immediately reached for the sofa arm, unable to suck in enough air. What if I passed out and choked? Esther would have come home, still on a high from her night out and in love with her dress and the French fringe her hairdresser had talked her into that morning. She would have seen my limp body wherever it had landed – all of that optimism for nothing. The utter selfishness of it.
I typed a reply, and it was clumsy and awful. But I wanted to die far less than I wanted Esther to find my body.
I think I’m going to the A & E. Don’t worry xx
A pair of kindly paramedics observed me first at the flat after my call. We talked about what I had taken and joked about the smell. But then it went dark, and suddenly I was being coaxed out of the building and into the rear of their ambulance waiting outside. One stayed with me in the back. She was an older woman, a recent trainee, she said, after a career in finance. And she squeezed my hand and said they were worried I was losing consciousness.
‘Do you want me to call your dad?’ she asked, the vehicle rumbling. ‘You’re talking about him.’
‘No,’ I told her, cognizant and embarrassed. ‘He’s dead.’
That foggy humiliation intensified as I arrived at the hospital and was ushered inside a curtained cubicle. I was wasting their time when bombarded with questions I couldn’t form sensible responses to. I was sorry, I kept saying. Perhaps it was the distraction of the machines beeping nearby or the other patients screaming beyond the fabric walls.
I drank a black liquid the doctor handed to me. It would help prevent my body from absorbing the tablets, she said. A seasickness knitted the floor and ceiling when she left again. And my phone was buzzing relentlessly in my pocket, perhaps filling with frantic messages and missed calls from Esther. I managed to free it just as the latest note landed.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN?? BRIAN!! WHERE??
My head pounded again, filling up, unable to contain the pressure. My skull was surely fracturing or about to pop open like a lid. And I had to reply to Esther in case I died there. It seemed possible when a young nurse slipped inside the curtain, flustered, and daunted. She was softly spoken, and it was difficult to absorb what she was saying beyond the thumping and the outside.
‘Which hospital is this?’ I asked, interrupting her.
‘Guy’s.’
I’m at Guys Hospital. I’m so sorry Es. I’ve ruined everyone’s night xx
The nurse asked me to put my phone away. She fumbled with the back of my hand, and a jet of blood sprung as she tried to attach a tube into a vein. ‘Shit.’ She whispered that like it wasn’t supposed to happen. She held her mouth, pinned down the gushing with cotton wool and taped it there before rushing from the cubicle again.
I leaned forward and vomited, thick and black, some landing inside the cardboard bowl resting on my stomach. The nurse returned, this time with a colleague. ‘He’s been sick,’ she said.
‘That’s okay,’ replied her coworker, like he had seen it a million times. ‘Just ignore that for a second.’
‘Oh, God. I’m having such a bad day,’ the young nurse whispered.
I must have started to pass out then, a shutdown rapidly looming. Somebody called for a doctor, and a tube scraped across my throat sometime later. The scuffing against my gums was the last moment I was vaguely aware of anything.
Esther was slumped in a pink chair beside my bed in the morning, still wearing her dress. And I yelped and clutched at my ribs after trying to sit up, an unbearable bitter agony yelling from there.
A nurse paused by my bed. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked. I nodded and grimaced, unable to summon a helpful verbal response. ‘I need to check what we can give you for the pain.’
We sat in silence on that ward of sad souls between the requests for blood and the bag changes for my drip. Eventually, the doctor arrived with news. She said I was lucky there were no apparent signs of organ damage and handed me a form for my GP. I could go home once I had received a psychiatric assessment.
We returned to our tiny bedroom that night, and the walls closed in, touching the sides of our bed. Perhaps I had died as Esther turned away, shifting suddenly when our feet glanced.
‘What are you thinking?’ I asked.
‘Um. I’m just trying to make sense of it.’ There was the sharpest pain in her voice, slicing me in two.
‘You know it was an accident.’ I hovered my hand over her arm and let it rest on her waist.
‘Hmm.’ Esther wriggled until I moved it away again. ‘I just need to sleep.’
The days after were long and quiet, and the smell of lemon ebbed away. Eventually, over dinner, Esther said she saw my version of events differently, or at least there was an alternative explanation she couldn’t get out of her mind. She worried I had intended to kill myself and planned to do it when she was out but couldn’t follow through. And if that was true, she didn’t know how to deal with feeling upset that I hadn’t left a note, that I thought so little of her it didn’t occur to me.
We had been propelled so far from the long lazy mornings we would spend coiled around each other, and I was contented only there. And in the years together, we had slowly emptied our eggs into the same basket until there was no obvious way out. Perhaps we weren’t in a healthy relationship and were codependent – welded together and afraid to separate for the damage it would cause the other. Perhaps what I had done was seismic enough to wake us up.
After days of awful silence, I decided to leave. Perhaps the execution of my quick departure was as clumsy and impulsive as my overdose. At least it solved more problems than it created. Or so I reckoned. At the very least, I couldn’t torture Esther with the prospect of more attempts now I that had set such an ugly precedent. So I called Frank; it was a ludicrous phone call to have made.
