Home Truths

[Pat Stewart]

HOME TRUTHS

Kirsty

Her ankle went over and she staggered, the glass slipping, but she continued to thread her way unsteadily through the moving mass of dancers. ‘Cattle’ she thought, ‘They’re cattle’ and a moment later, ‘and I’m a proper cow.’ At that thought she paused, swaying slightly on the spot, to tip her head back and drink, a lazy dribble running over her chin and working its way down across her chest. Aware now of eyes upon her, she pushed through until she was out in the cool dark.

She watched her hand place the glass on the step beside her, the liquid forming elliptical patterns as one edge of the base found the concrete too fast and juddered. She focused. Lowered the other edge. Released it.

For some time she sat, drinking listlessly, undisturbed by the voices and passing feet. The drink did not seem to be helping and she thought of that line from a poem by
Pope, ‘drinking largely sobers us again.’ Was that it? She had the vague feeling that it wasn’t really about drinking – something about knowledge – having enough knowledge or was it about not having enough?

On that thought, unbidden, the knowledge of what she must do arrived in her head fully formed. She would do it. She would tell her mother that she was going, that she could not stay. She would do it tonight when she got back and, seized with the understanding of how it would be, she pushed herself up.

Something caught her hard across her shoulder pushing her roughly sideways and forcing her onto her knees. Flinging her arms out, she caught her body weight on the heel of her left hand, feeling the jar stab all the way up her arm to her shoulder. Her right hand connected with the glass and sent it spinning off the step to splinter on the pavement.

Breathing in sharply, her stomach clenched around a sudden insistent pain. Hands hauled her up just as her stomach contracted again and she vomited. ‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’ a rough male voice yelled and she was released to slump back onto her heels which snapped a stiletto and tipped her sideways onto the scattered shards of glass. A strange keening came from her throat, drowned by the babble of voices above her. ‘Blah blah,’ she thought. ‘Always blah blah’.

Words floated up out of her loneliness and she whispered them to the filthy ground beneath her bloody knees, the taste of them bitter in her mouth. ‘Alas, I am a women, friendless, hopeless.’ But Shakespeare was of no use to her now.

Other hands lifted her, a voice murmuring softly, fatally, drew her away. She clutched at the arm that held her but her heart and her voice had failed her before the car door closed.




Mark

The noise cut off abruptly as the door swung behind him. He wandered away from the huddled smokers and noisy groups of what surely must be school kids - across ground littered with fag ends, rubbish and small stones leaking from the car park.

Strange that he was back in the old places, staying at home, still penniless, listening to his old mates’ talk of wage packets, cars, Christ, even a child. Strange not to have revision to do, or papers to write. Those had brought him to the edge of a hard won future and he was up for it, couldn’t wait.

And now it was cold. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked around. Behind him, a poorly lit alley ran down to the road. It smelt of urine with matted weeds forming gangrenous patches between cracked concrete. But at the end of it, were yellow street lamps, traffic, taxis - and he hesitated, fighting the impulse to just leave, go home to bed.

Announced by blasts of sound, more people were coming out now, in twos and groups, noisier, seeking privacy or an audience. He tracked a good pair of legs down the stairs and was caught by a girl with a long fall of black hair shivered with reflected neon, huddled on the bottom step. He felt a tugging sense of recognition. He waited for her to turn, to look his way, but she didn’t.

Someone called his name from the doorway and in that same moment the girl stood up, right in Dave’s way. She went down immediately, hidden from him by a group of lads making for the door. But as she had risen, looking up at last, he had recognised her, even though her face was pulled into older, harder edged planes. God – Kirsty, he hadn’t seen her for years.

He started forwards just as Dave gave a yell of disgust. The lads continued to push past in front of him, catcalling, the air full of mocking laughter. He surprised himself with the sudden urgent need to get to her, to talk to her, have her remember him but then Dave was in front of him, complaining bitterly, spattered with vomit, stinking. ‘That bitch, that slapper bitch – look at me – Christ!’

He was shocked at how small she was, crouched on the concrete. She had always been small but seemed even smaller than he remembered. He must have been moving upwards and away from her all through their teenage years and he had not noticed.

Suddenly confused, he was torn between the visceral need to reach down to her, to touch her, and the growing realisation of what that act, that decision, might mean for the future unfolding inside his head. He took a step back, looking again at the wasteland around him.

He should help. But he knew, even as he thought it, that he would not. And turning, he followed Dave back towards the stair



Kathy

The cottage was too small, over furnished with good pieces bought years before for the other house when Alec had been alive. As she picked her way across the bedroom floor, she thought that the only thing he would not have recognised was across the entire wall in front of her where small pigeon holes contained shoes of every colour and shape - all rummaged and sought out in charity shops and fayres. A shoe for every occasion. But today, as always, Kathy slipped her feet into nondescript and faded carpet slippers. Occasions being rather sparse of late

These days, her face had a twist to it that spoke of being denied, thwarted. The wind will change and your face will stay that way her mother used to say. Who could have known that her mother, of all people, would be proved to be right. Kathy had added nothing to her mother’s life, the last daughter before the longed for son was born. But she had made sure that Kirsty understood how precious she was. Her girl. Her clever, clever girl.

She made her way down the narrow stairs, sweeping the dog off each wooden step in front of her, irritated by its stare. Opening the kitchen door just enough to let it out, she thought that Kirsty could let him in and feed him when she woke, and so as not to hear the whining and scratching, moved into the half light of the living room, shutting the door behind her. Most days, she kept the curtains closed. The daylight seemed like an accusation she could not answer. It was better in the dark, carried through the days on her threadbare lounger, suspended between the pools of light cast by the blue neon wash of the television and the lamp which lit her books.

Settling into her chair, she allowed herself to drift in and out of sleep wrapped in what she had seen. Not one person. Not one person had come to help Kirsty. There had been no-one there to challenge her right to take Kirsty home, no one with whom Kirsty could have gone except herself and with that knowledge rising within her, she felt what surely must be joy.

Pat Stewart