The Bird Room Read online

  I am dyeing my hair black, Helen tells herself. I am dyeing my hair black because I feel like a change. I am dyeing my hair black to look like the winter.

  She’s sitting on a kitchen chair, wrapped in a towel, eating a cold slice of that pizza from the fridge, a plastic bag over her head.

  I could go on holiday.

  I could spend the money on a car and drive it into a rainforest.

  I could live in the back of it and eat small flowers and drink out of ponds.

  Corrine is out again at the casino.

  Corrine has never asked Helen a question. Not really. When Corrine says, ‘How are you?’ or ‘How was your day?’ it’s not a real question. It’s just a sound; a kind of protection against silence and awkwardness. A statement: ‘I am not going to be awkward around you. You make me feel awkward and uncomfortable. Fuck you.’

  By the morning Helen still hasn’t decided anything. When she gets on the bus it just happens to be going in the direction of his house. Plus, she needs the money. The rent is due next Monday.

  She’s taken out her contact lenses.

  She presses her forehead against the window and feels the buzz of the wheels in her cheeks and smells the grit of old burnt plastic in her nose. She imagines herself sitting on that sofa of his in the living room and not smoking and him in silence, looking at her. He gets her to tell the Darren story again. He moves towards her and puts his cold empty hand on her cheek and whispers something beautiful and unexpected in her ear.

  She does not imagine anything dangerous happening to her, as out of the bus window she sees nothing and nothing and nothing much zip past again and again and again.

  Helen is wearing black heels, black tights, a black skirt, top and jacket. She has moistened her lips with her tongue and pressed the doorbell, and the door is swinging open and he is stood there in the gloom of the hall, looking older than he did last week, a lot older than seven days. His skin is grey and his eyes are sunken and his cheeks are hollowed. But maybe it’s just that he’s standing in the shadows and if he takes a step out onto the path he’ll look clean and young and how she’s kind of made him in her head since the first afternoon.

  ‘Come in,’ he says.

  She walks past him into the hall and he closes the door behind her. She was expecting something else, she doesn’t know what. Something more. Something kinder? It’s very cold in here. Cold and impersonal, like coins in a till.

  ‘This way,’ he says.

  She follows him up the stairs and into the bedroom. He’s walking strangely, slightly hunched over. He wears jeans and a T-shirt. The hair on the nape of his neck is curly. Helen imagines taking all the clothes off him and laying him out on a patio in blazing sunshine and letting him cook. He’s very white. He’d sizzle like bacon.

  Like the other rooms, the bedroom is bare. Just a bed. The bed linen looks new, still scored with sharp creases from the packet. A cheap-looking hand-held video camera lies on top. There are a few clothes, too, folded neatly into squares and stacked in a pile.

  ‘Right then,’ she says, smiling awkwardly and looking at him, not knowing what else to say.

  ‘Put these on,’ he says, handing her the pile of clothes. ‘Do it in the bathroom.’

  Helen takes the pile of clothes. She goes into the bathroom. She locks the door, feeling silly but doing it anyway. She takes off her own clothes, folds them and puts them on top of the toilet.

  The clothes he’s given her are not things Helen would normally wear; a pair of blue jeans, a black vest top, a cardigan. There’s even a pair of little black knickers and a pair of grey socks and a bra. Helen feels odd at first, putting them on, but the clothes themselves don’t feel weird. They’re the same size, exactly. They feel like her clothes, maybe, but from the future.

  She wishes there was a mirror in here. She’d like one final look at herself before she goes back into the bedroom. She still isn’t nervous. She imagines what she must look like; the black hair, Clair’s eyes, the clothes of someone else.

  Helen is an actress. She acts slight fear, making her heart beat a bit faster, making her breathing shallow. She unlocks the door and goes back into the bedroom.

  William or Will is sitting on the bed. He looks up. Something changes in his face, like a drop of lemon juice has been dropped on it.

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Good.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ she says.

  He gets up off the bed, takes off his T-shirt, unbuckles his belt and steps out of his jeans. His penis springs out of his trousers. It looks very hard and red. She thinks she can hear a buzzing sound. Maybe it’s coming from the camera he’s holding now and pointing at her. She hears the beep. She sees the red light come on.

  ‘Take off your clothes,’ he says.

  He walks around her, behind her, so she can see him in the dresser mirror. He films her from behind as she begins to unbutton the cardigan, unclip the bra, shuffle out of the jeans.

  In the mirror, she stares into the gaping glass eye of the lens.

  Inside she’s shivering.

  She steps out of the knickers, then feels his cold hand on her shoulder. He turns her to face him.

  Helen and Clair feel very beautiful.

  I hereby give the bearer of this note written permission to do whatever the hell he likes to me …

  Will has the note now. He must do. I’ve looked everywhere. It’s gone. He took it. Maybe Alice slipped it to him under the table. I can see us walking off down the street; Will waving goodbye, leant against a streetlamp.

  Once we’ve turned the corner, he takes the little square of paper out of his pocket and unfolds it.

  He reads it.

  He licks his lips.

  He reads it a second time.

  … and I promise I won’t mind. In fact, I’ll probably like it quite a lot.

  His mouth curls into a lewd budgie-eating grin.

  I still have his spare key.

  It’s hard to tell if Will’s home. The curtains are drawn. I knock on the door and wait.

  I knock again.

  Nothing.

  I slide the key into the lock and turn it slowly. The door clicks open. I stick my head into the hall. The roll-up and aftershave smell. Darkness. Silence. I let myself in and close the door softly behind me, treading on a pile of bills and circulars, leaving wet footprints on them. Fuck it.

  I start in the living room, going through the drawers and the mess of paper and things on the coffee table. A cut-out from a newspaper supplement. ‘Cheep tricks’ the caption reads. A puff piece. A photo of the exhibition and another of Will, leering at the camera, his arms folded. Unopened gas bills and telephone bills with shopping lists written on the back (BREAD, MARGE, LIGHTBULBS, CONDOMS?). But no note.

  In the bedroom I try to remember what colour jeans he was wearing the night we met. I go through the pockets of the pairs strewn around the floor and hanging off the end of the bed. Just receipts, bits of fluff, loose change and about eight ten-pound notes. I pocket three.

  Under the bed, an old leather suitcase, brown and scuffed. I pull it out. A combination lock. I shuffle the numbers, randomly. Click, click, click. I imagine the note in there, lying innocently next to a bottle of baby lotion, a whip and a huge purple dildo. I try more combinations. Click, click, click.

  I can see Alice, lying back on his tiger-print bedspread, pulling off her knickers, her legs in the air. Will is taking photos. His camera flashes. Alice. The note. Will doing whatever the hell he likes to her and Alice not minding, probably liking it quite a lot.

  I hear a key in the lock downstairs and my heart lurches. The front door opens then slams. I push the suitcase under the bed, stand up and look round frantically. If this were a film there’d be a big empty wardrobe to hide in. But all Will uses is an old waist-high dresser and the floor.

  ‘Hello?’ Will’s voice.

  If he comes up the stairs, I’ll hide behind the door. I’ll use that radio alarm clock thing next to the bed
to smash him over the head.

  He walks down the hall and turns on the light.

  I could break down in tears. Confess. Tell him about the note and how everything’s been going wrong with me and Alice lately, and how (‘So stupid of me, really … ridiculous …’) I’ve suspected something’s going on between them.

  He’s put the kettle on. I hear more walking sounds, the telly going on in the living room, Will whistling to himself.

  Then a foot on the stairs.

  I hold my breath.

  He’s coming this way.

  Oh, Christ.

  He’s coming up the stairs.

  I move behind the door and try to pick up the radio alarm clock, but it’s plugged in at the wall. The cord pulls tight.

  He’s on the landing now. A door opens, then closes with a click. The bathroom. Thank fuck. He’s in the bathroom. I hear the jingle of his belt, the zip of his flies and the heavy manly sloosh of his piss.

  I tread quietly onto the landing and down the stairs.

  The toilet flushes.

  I run the rest of the way, fumbling with the latch at the front door, finally getting it open, letting it close softly behind me. I breathe in the cold wet air outside. Spots of rain land on my cheeks, feeling like pieces of hot glass.

  I’m halfway down the path.

  I turn back.

  I knock on the door.

  Will opens it, still buckling his belt. He squints at me. He looks like he was expecting someone else.

  ‘Alright,’ he says. There’s something shifty in the way he says it, something suspicious.

  ‘I still have your spare key,’ I say, and hand it to him.

  ‘Cheers,’ he says. ‘Want to come in for a drink?’ He doesn’t look me in the eye. He looks at the floor.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I say. ‘Listen, Will. You didn’t find anything the other week, when we went for dinner, did you?’

  ‘How d’you mean?’ he says. He puts his hand in his pocket. The left one. He shuffles his weight from one foot to the other. He looks at me funny. I bet he’s got it on him.

  ‘Just that when I emptied out my wallet at the restaurant, I think I lost something.’

  ‘What?’ he says. ‘Like a cash card?’

  ‘Yeah. Something like that.’

  ‘Nah, didn’t notice anything.’

  ‘Alright. Never mind.’

  ‘Hey,’ he calls, as I’m turning into the street. ‘You’re still coming round for dinner sometime, right?’

  I pretend I haven’t heard.

  We get in a bit drunk and heat up some leftovers.

  ‘It’s not going too well, is it?’ Alice says.

  The ‘it’ she’s referring to is us.

  ‘What isn’t?’ I ask.

  She drops her fork on her plate, stands up and starts scraping stuff into the bin. I hear the hiss of fuck’s sake under her breath. She rinses her plate. She turns and looks at me. She leans against the kitchen counter. She’s wearing the long black jumper, the one that covers her neck and hangs down past her knuckles.

  ‘What do you think?’ she says.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say.

  (I know exactly what she’s talking about.)

  ‘Christ,’ she says and storms out of the kitchen.

  I wait for the sound of things being thrown into boxes, things being lugged down stairs, things being smashed against a wall. If she leaves, I can’t afford to live here any more, not without getting a job. If she leaves, I don’t know what I’ll do. I hear the TV being turned on in the living room and the closing music of some programme. I go through. She’s on the sofa.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ I ask.

  ‘A cup of tea isn’t going to solve anything,’ she says. She puts her hand on top of her head. ‘William, in case you didn’t notice, we just sat in that bloody pub for about two hours and said pretty much nothing to each other. We’ve become one of those sad old couples you see. It’s awful. I want to talk to you.’

  Alice paid for all the drinks.

  I don’t know what to say. I feel frozen. I feel like a display model of a human being. Things have gone so far past okay, I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to talk about it. I want to pretend everything’s fine. I want to somehow not be here any more; to not be the cause of the problem. I want Alice to carry on happily in the house without me, until I somehow sort myself out. If I had money, I’d book a holiday. France. The moon. Give her space. And then, after a while, I’ll come back, and she’ll put her arms around me and kiss me on the head and tell me how much she’s missed me.

  Or I could get a job.

  (I won’t get a job.)

  I go into the kitchen and fill the kettle. I wait for it to boil. I look through the window at where the back yard should be and there’s just blackness. I can imagine Alice looking at me sometimes, too, and where I should be there’s nothing.

  I make two cups of tea. I carry them through. I put one next to her foot. I wait for her to touch it. There’s a gardening programme on. She reaches down to her ankle and I think she’s going to pick it up. I get excited. I wait for her to pick up the mug. If she picks up the mug, I think, then she is still in love with me and everything’s going to be okay. But she just scratches her leg and folds her hands back in her lap.

  It’s two days later, or three, or four. The evenings have become as cold and small as marbles. We aren’t talking. Alice turns off the TV halfway through a programme. She looks at me instead of the TV. Her eyes are wet. She’s about to cry.

  ‘We need to have a talk,’ she says. Her voice is low and quiet.

  I’m scared of what’s coming next. I look at the TV instead of her.

  ‘What is it you do all day again?’ she says.

  Here it comes. The end. She’s found me out.

  ‘I went on your computer,’ she says.

  I want to pull my T-shirt over my head. I want to hide in it until she’s finished.

  ‘And there weren’t any of those bloody spreadsheets you always go on about, as far as I could see. All I could see was a load of porn saved on the hard drive.’

  I look at the floor, at the TV, at my hand, at anything but her. I look at a flake of Rich Tea biscuit on the carpet.

  ‘Right. So you’re not even speaking to me now, is that it?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ I say.

  She stands up.

  She sits down again.

  She touches her hair, wrapping a piece of it round her neck.

  ‘Look, I don’t mind if you want to look at porn all day. That’s your business. It just seems … I don’t know. Why didn’t you tell me the truth? I feel like I don’t even know you sometimes. It scares me. Do you know what I mean?’

  I could get angry here. I could say, ‘Well, why didn’t you feel you could tell me the truth about your parents?’

  ‘Why did you have to lie to me?’ she says. ‘That’s what I don’t understand. I wouldn’t have been mad if you didn’t have a job. That’s not why I liked you …’

  Liked, I think. Past tense.

  I could say, I am looking for that film of you. I want to find it and destroy it. I think about it all day every day.

  I could say, Why did you do it? Why did you make it? Did it turn you on? Did you hate yourself afterwards? Did you do it because you hated yourself?

  I could say, What about Will? What’s going on there? You want to fuck him, don’t you?

  Or, Why do you even stay with me? I don’t understand it. I do nothing. I don’t even talk. It must be like living with a ghost.

  I could say, Do you even love me any more?

  But I say nothing.

  ‘How about you?’ she says. ‘Anything you want to ask me?’

  She stands up again. She waits for me to speak. I don’t speak.

  ‘Fuck it. We can’t go on like this. It’s ridiculous. I’m sure if we talked about things we could try and sort it out, but it looks like we can’t even do that any more.’

&nbs
p; She’s in the doorway. The phone’s ringing. I don’t care if it’s my parents. Pick it up, Alice. Introduce yourself. Explain that you’re my girlfriend (soon to be ex-) and ask them how they are. Talk about the weather.

  She sniffs. She rubs her face with her palm. I want to be her palm. I want to rub her face and make her feel better. I can’t move. She walks into the hall. She picks up the phone.

  ‘Hello?’

  Pause.

  I hear her laugh.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ she’s saying.

  She laughs again.

  I don’t believe it.

  I turn the telly back on.

  Only one person could make her laugh like that and I know exactly what he’s saying. There’s nothing I can do to stop him.

  A few minutes later she reappears in the doorway.

  ‘In case you were wondering,’ she says, ‘that was Will. He’s invited us round to his for dinner, a week on Friday, and I’ve accepted.’

  Great.

  ‘Come if you want,’ she says. ‘But I’m going, anyway.’

  I’ve put some of my things on eBay; about one hundred CDs, two thirds of my books, a lamp, my guitar. I have an old watch, too, that belonged to my granddad.

  I want to put myself on eBay.

  I want to sell myself to the highest bidder.

  I will give Alice all the money I make from selling myself on eBay. I will put it in an envelope with just the word SORRY written on it. I will leave it on the kitchen table, then post myself.

  ‘You currently have no bidders.’

  I’ve done nothing today, not even turned on the computer or opened the curtains.

  When Alice gets home from work, she finds me lying on the sofa. I’ve been drinking red wine. My teeth are grey. She leans over and kisses me lightly on the forehead. Her hair brushes my face.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ she says.

  I move myself into a sitting position.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  She kneels down in front of me. She puts her hands on my knees.

  She moves one of the hands up and down my thigh.

  Her eyes are sad-looking.

  I want to say, ‘I’m sorry.’