I
know nothing stays the same
but
if you’re willing to play the game
it
will be coming around again
Carly Simon - ‘Coming Around Again’
Something is rotten in the bin in
the kitchen. I smelt it yesterday, when I pressed my slipper down onto the
pedal too hard and the lid swung back further than I used to let it. I can smell
it now, even though I’m in my bedroom, on the other side of the flat, and all
the doors are closed. I press my nose into my pillow. The sweet, putrid odour mingles with another; one I have, until now, been only half conscious of in the gathering weeks. It is intimate and bodily. It has been lurking in my bedclothes, subtle
yet malevolent, since R’s departure.
I know exactly what it
is. The thing that’s rotting in the bin, I mean. It’s the tuna tin that I cut
my finger on last week. I’d dared myself to do the dishes, just to see what
would happen. When I did the dishes with R, we always put the radio on. He was
baffled when I knew all the words to the old songs.
‘You know all the
songs. How do you know all the songs?’
He said it every week, the same words, in
exactly the same way. It always made me laugh, how impressed he was. I felt
proud, as though I’d written the songs myself. Without R, without the radio, the tuna lid sliced
right through the skin, and into my nail, too. I looked down in surprise. It seemed
strange that pain could be so physical; so sudden and sharp. I was surprised, too, at the
brightness of my blood. I watched as it swilled in with the remains of the
tuna. I watched for five minutes, maybe twenty. Maybe forty! Until a noise like
a gunshot made me jump in the air. A forgotten carton of orange juice, swollen
with gas, fizzed quietly at the end of the kitchen table. It smelt like Bucks
Fizz. I dropped the bloody tin into the bin, without pressing the lid down,
like you’re supposed to. It was still full of tuna, and me.
Project for today: take the rubbish
out. Not because of the smell. Just as an experiment. Do things as I might have
once done them, even though it’s all absurd now, living properly. I smile to
myself, nursing the thought of my little excursion, and only admitting defeat
when it crosses my mind that if my tears become any thicker, I could choke to
death.
* * * * *
‘Ow, you fohcking COHNT!’
R and I used to laugh a lot when
the men came to collect the bins. We both had Thursdays off. One of the men is
Geordie, and always swore because Mrs. Munro fills her bags too full, and they
would always split. Mrs. Munro is in her seventies, and unwell. Nothing about the
situation was very funny, but R did a good Geordie, and we were smug about
being able to sleep in. Sleep together. ‘Nice cohnt,’ said R afterwards.
One
week, R got up early, went down into the garden with a binbag, and divided up
Mrs. Munro’s rubbish for the bin-men. It was discovered that the Geordie’s name
was Mark. He was from Gateshead. His twin brother had been a mountaineer. When
Mrs. Munro got wind of the bin-bag conspiracy, she came down to our door,
prodded R with a bony finger and told him not to be such a ‘fucking sap.’
It must be Thursday
today. It is ridiculous to me that Mark is down there now, doing his swearing. I
think of John Hannah in ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’. ee cummings. Or was it
Auden? Stop the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the Geordie bin-man from
swearing when I’m here on my own. He was my North, my South, my East, my West.
He was the only one who could make me come with his tongue. He was twenty-nine. I’m only twenty-two. He was going to show me how to be an adult. I’m
not old enough to be in so much pain.
Outside in the garden,
Mark’s cries of anguish have not dissipated into the morning air, as they
usually do. They are growing louder, and more urgent.
‘JESUS FOCHKING COHNT.
SHE’S SLICED ME FOHCKING HAND OFF.’
My heart gives a
strange little flutter as I remember. Yesterday, maybe the day before, Mrs.
Munro knocked on my door. She didn’t say a word when I finally let her in, just
waddled into the kitchen and began to wrestle with the rotting rubbish. I
hunched against the wall and watched as the potion of tuna, fermented orange
juice and blood dribbled onto her dress. The smell, now that the bag was
released from its metal container, was truly horrendous. I felt no
embarrassment; I didn’t apologise, or move forwards to help her, or take the
burden off her frail hands. Eventually, she was forced to wrap both of her arms
around the heavy plastic sack. When she got to the door, she looked back at me.
‘Get the radio on
again,’ she said.
‘THAT FOHCKING SILLY
OLD BINT’S NOT DONE HER TIN UP; IT’S SEVERED MY FOHCKING HAND,’ bellows Mark
presently.
I creep to the bedroom
window and fix my eye to the crack in my shutters. Mark’s hand shines with
bold, bright blood.
‘Fuck mate. That is vivid,’ says the other bin-man.
Mark looks up at him,
clearly furious at the lack of gravity his colleague has attributed to his
condition. Then, his face splits open into a grin; he throws his head back and
laughs. It’s the loudest laugh I’ve ever heard.
‘Vivid! Yeah, it is
that, mate! Vivid! It is that, mate, aye.’
* * * * *
The air in the garden
is heavy with July. Vegetation and rain. It thunders down and soaks me. My bare feet slither over my flip-flops and
touch the gravel on the path up to the dustbins. When I left the flat, the
easy-listening DJ with her smooth Galaxy chocolate voice had just put on an old
Carly Simon song. I set myself a challenge: sing the song under your breath
while you take the bin bags out, and if you’re in sync with Carly when you get
back into the flat, tomorrow will be a good day. I hurl the bag into the bin,
and run back onto the grass to avoid the putrid puff of air when the lid falls.
I don’t want to go back into the flat yet, so I lie down on the soaked grass
and close my eyes. There are sounds on the air. They float to me from my open
kitchen window, two floors up. It’s Carly, and she’s singing along in time with
me.
