Valentina Read online

  “Crowds, you know. It’s quieter there, more exclusive.”

  “I like a big pool,” I said. “I like crowds.”

  Their food arrived, thank God. To my relief, Mikey bid them a bon appetit and we ceased our conversation. Our own lunches came soon after: mine, roast chicken dinner, Mikey, roast beef with all the trimmings. Starving after our walk, we tucked in. When the couple left, the guy slipped his card onto our table on the way past and gave me a wink. His wife gave a begrudging smile and walked out ahead of him.

  “The oil industry’s a village,” I said, nodding after them.

  “Certainly seems like it.”

  “That’s got to be a good thing, surely?”

  He drained his pint, replaced the glass on the table with a gasp. “Don’t call me Shirley.”

  In the clean light, we made our way back across the countryside. Cheek to Mikey’s chest, Isla dozed off in her sling. Our faces pinked, our hair ruffled. As we walked, I imitated the couple in the pub, to make Mikey laugh.

  “I’m the big fat fascist boss, for my sins,” I said, putting my hand to my chest and blinking over and over, then, “and you can take your rich children to our exclusive pool. That way, they don’t have to swim with any of the commoners.” I kept my mouth as tight as a purse, rolling my hand as she had done. “Then they can eat their caviar in the café-ey-ey without having their appetite ruined by the sight of paupers, don’t you know.” I returned to myself. “I should take her to where I grew up,” I said. “There were no yoga classes there, I can tell you.”

  “Don’t be so harsh.”

  “Oh, come on. These people assume that money and exclusivity’s what everyone wants, don’t they? They assume it’s everyone’s dream.”

  “These people. Listen to yourself, Shona. You don’t even know anyone rich.” He rolled his eyes. “Honestly, you don’t half come out with some inverted snobbery bullshit sometimes.”

  Thinking about that conversation now, it sounds like we were arguing, but we weren’t. It was no more than craic – at least, that was what I thought it was.

  It was late afternoon by the time we got back. Mikey announced he was going to Isla’s room to put up the shelves I’d bought for her bits and pieces. Two minutes later, headphones clamped to his head and pocket radio in his hand, he gave me a kiss and sailed upstairs. I knew he’d be ages – he always listened to the sport when he had a chore to do and somehow the chores always took the same length of time as whatever game happened to be on.

  Left to myself, I decided to make oil lamps. I’d been meaning to make them since the fuse tripped but hadn’t got around to it. Maybe with Mikey back, the cottage felt more like a home and maybe for this reason I found myself wanting to do something a real homemaker would do – something responsible and protective, something from my own childhood I wanted to bring to Isla’s. We’d always made oil lamps when I was a kid. Me and my three brothers and my mum and my dad used to sit round their dancing flames in our sleeping bags, telling stories, jokes, sharing gossip. Looking back, I suppose that was to save on bills but I never felt that – it was something we did for fun. My dad taught us how to make them. He made the wicks from strips of old cloth. The bodies we made from empty jam jars.

  I set out everything I needed on the little table, including Isla in her car seat, her archway mobile over the top. Fists in wee bunches, she stared at the mirrors and coloured pendants, placid enough for now.

  “Now see, I used to do this with my brothers,” I told her. “That’s your uncle Gus, your uncle Craigie and wee Davie.” I screwed the lid tightly onto one of the empty jars I’d kept back from the jam then cast about for something to make the holes. Ah. Mikey had my drill. I dashed upstairs. Mikey’s voice reached me before I got to him. Not the words but the tone: the accelerating rhythm and volume of irritation, as if he were arguing. I crossed the landing, stood outside the bedroom door.

  “You knew the deal when we moved here,” he was saying, his voice tense. “It’s a bit late to start moaning about it now.”

  Any longer and I would be eavesdropping. I coughed and pushed the door a little way open.

  “Wait,” he said, placing his hand over the mouthpiece. His eyes were black – whoever it was had got under his skin, all right. I grabbed the drill and held it up.

  He nodded: yes, take it, but he was still grim of face. “Mum,” he mouthed and rolled his eyes, pointed to the receiver and made to push the door closed.

  I gave him the thumbs up and backed out of the room. I’d never seen him so angry with his mother. If anything, his mother could do no wrong. But then, I hadn’t seen much of his folks. Even though Mikey and I had a house and a child together, we’d been together such a short time. From what I’d overheard, it sounded like the argument had something to do with us moving here. She was upset, most probably, that we had settled so far away. Liverpool was a good six-hour drive away from here. And if they were flying in from Malaga, where they had their villa, they’d now have to get a connecting flight. Aberdeen was a long way from her Bonnie Prince Michael right enough.

  I returned to the kitchen and, while Isla looked on, I made a dent in the jar lid with the bradawl then drilled a hole in the centre for the wick.

  “Now,” I said to Isla. “Thing about kerosene lamps is you have to vent them properly.” I rummaged in the cutlery drawer and found the cantilevered bottle opener, which worked a dream. I held up the jar so Isla could see the air holes, let her touch the ends of her fingers to the jar. “If you don’t make these wee holes, the pressure builds, see? If the hot air can’t get out, it has to force itself through here.” I pointed to the central hole I’d made for the wick. “So what happens then is, the flame gets longer and longer and ...” I took the jar from her and held it up, mimed an explosion with my hands. “Boom!”

  After Isla went to bed, around ten, we toasted teacakes – we’d been too full for supper – and ate them with butter. I lit the oil lamps and put them on the mantelpiece, turned off the overhead light and went to lie on the sofa with my feet in Mikey’s lap.

  “So – what did your mum have to say?”

  He took my foot in his hands and ran his thumb firmly up the middle of the sole. “She’ll be fine.” He twiddled my toes in his fingers one by one.

  “They can come and stay whenever.”

  He shrugged, clearly not in the mood to talk about it.

  “We all love you too much, you see,” I said after a moment. “We all want a piece of you.”

  He continued to rub my feet, staring into the fire. We were so comfortable together, I thought. We could speak or not speak, it was the same. I watched him in silence. In his eyes, the flames danced about, small and distant as a gas flare in the cold North Sea.

  Monday morning Isla woke at six. I dragged myself out of bed and took her downstairs so as not to wake Mikey. I changed her, fed her, lay on the sofa with her on my stomach and tried to close my stinging eyes for a few minutes longer.

  At seven thirty, I heard him on the stairs. I forced myself up and went with Isla on my hip to find him in the hallway dressed in his shirt and tie.

  “Where’re you going all poshed up?” I asked him. “I was going to give you a long lie.”

  He stuck out his bottom lip, frowned – a bemused expression. “I’m going to work.”

  “What?”

  He crossed over to the kettle, shook it. “I’m going into the office.”

  There was no sign of mischief, no giveaway upturn at the corner of his mouth. I shifted Isla around to my other hip. “But this is your two weeks off.”

  “Off the rig, yes.” He plopped a teabag into his favourite mug, the big black one with the words But You May Call Me Lord written in white on the outside. Into it, he poured the boiling water. “But I’ve still got to go into the office haven’t I?”

  I stood and gaped, one step short of saying “but ... but” over and over like they do on the television. He was still going about the kitchen, grabbing cereal
, sitting himself down, getting on with his breakfast. He looked up, raised his eyebrows. “Aren’t you having breakfast?”

  “I haven’t had the chance.”

  He shovelled a spoonful of wheat flakes into his mouth. I heard the workings of his teeth and tongue, the crushing of the flakes against the roof of his mouth: crunch crunch crunch.

  “You were off before you went,” I said. “You were here.”

  “Yes. I booked the time off. I’ve started the rotation now. That’s it.”

  “I thought when you said you’d be off, you’d be off as in off work,” I said, my voice getting louder despite my attempts to stay calm. “As in – with me. I assumed ... I’ve been looking forward to it for two weeks. Us being together is all that’s kept me going. It’s all that’s kept me sane. How did we not talk about this?”

  His spoon lolled in his hand. “Shona, if I was a roughneck, yes, I’d be at home now. But I’m not, am I?” He took another spoon of flakes and held it below his clean-shaven chin. “It’s not the same for people like me, Shone.” In went the flakes: crunch crunch crunch.

  “People like you?” I felt my eyes fill. “Why, are you special in some way?”

  “I mean, people who have a career rather than a – you know, job job.”

  “A job job? Can’t say I’m familiar with that term.”

  Isla started to fret. I bounced her about, swayed from side to side.

  “Don’t be like that, Shone,” he said.

  “I’m not being like anything. I was going to take you to the beach today. I thought we could maybe go to Ballater or somewhere another day – for a picnic or something. Or Balmedie Beach again, go rolling down the dunes. I was going to take you to the woods where Valentina took me, or anywhere, to do anything, I don’t care what we do. But we’re not going to do any of that, are we? I’m going to be on my own.” I started to cry. “All day. Again. And again and again and again. Because what you’re telling me is, this is my life.”

  He lifted his bowl, drained the milk into his mouth.

  “Don’t drink the milk from the bowl,” I shouted. “It’s disgusting.”

  Frightened by my shouting, Isla began to cry.

  Mikey was putting on his coat. “Listen, I know you’re upset but I can’t talk about it now. Things will calm down, I promise, but I have to show the right attitude. Look, I really do have to go to work. We’ll talk later, OK?” He made to pull me and Isla towards him. “Come on,” he said. “My girls.”

  I shrugged him off, pushed him away. “No. You don’t get to say that.”

  “Shona, I’m going to work now.” His voice was firm, entirely without emotion. “I’m going to go into the office to earn money for us to live on. I have to do that, it’s my job. I’ll be back later and we’ll talk about it then, OK?” He turned and began to make his way out of the cottage.

  “No, it’s not OK,” I said, following him. “It’s pretty far from OK, actually.”

  He opened the front door, stepped through and shut it behind him before I got there. I stood, Isla in my arms, the closed door in my face like a slap. A minute later I heard the car start up, drive off.

  I couldn’t scream or shout. I didn’t want to frighten the baby any more than I had done already. I couldn’t do anything at all except stand there facing my own closed front door, the taste of salt from my own pathetic tears leaking into my mouth. I had no idea what had just happened, only that in the space of one conversation my life had become one I had not chosen.

  I went back through the house and sat on the sofa.

  “It’s OK, Isla,” I said, trying to make the words come out in a sing-song. “Mummy’s a bit upset. Mummies get upset sometimes and when they do they have a little cry and it doesn’t mean anything.”

  Isla stopped crying. She had no idea what she’d been crying about. I put her on the floor under her mirror mobile and scrolled through my phone until I found Jeanie’s number. My thumb hovered over the top. Oh, Jeanie, it’s all been a mistake, I imagined myself saying. What the hell have I done?

  My phone told me it was 8:15am. I couldn’t call anyone. Not now. I would have to wait until a socially acceptable time and then – what? What the hell would I say?

  I figured it was unfair to call Jeanie and dump on her – she was all the way in Glasgow, not a lot she could do about it. And the truth is, I felt stupid. What kind of journalist doesn’t get the facts straight before she commits to the story? What kind of dumb hack doesn’t even know for sure which platform her husband works on? One so sleep-deprived, one so wrapped up in babies and breastfeeding and all that goo that she can no longer function as an intelligent human being – that kind. Oh God, oh God, what had happened to me?

  I was still sitting in a daze when Valentina called. It was half past eight. “Hey babe, this is your early morning wake up call. What’re we up to later?”

  I couldn’t believe she’d called me when I needed her to, as if she’d picked up on my hurt through some psychic connection.

  “Oh, Val,” I said. “You’ll never guess what’s happened ...”

  I sobbed down the phone at her like I’d known her for years.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t realise that’s what he meant,” I managed to say, blowing my nose on a piece of kitchen roll. “It’s like my brain has turned to mince. I don’t take things in you know? And I thought the big advantage of this two on, two off deal was that he’d have all that extra time with us, doing family stuff. To make up for it. I would never have moved here for this.”

  “Struth,” she said. “I can’t believe he wasn’t clear about that with you.” Usually jokey and bright, she sounded sober – with shock – and I was gratified by that.

  “And he’s taken the car. How am I supposed to get around? I’m stuck, Valentina. All I can see is fields and trees and I’ve got no one to talk to and no way of getting out!”

  “Do you think he deceived you intentionally?”

  I hadn’t thought about that – but now I did. “I don’t know. Do you think he would do that?”

  I heard her sigh, as if she was blowing out smoke from a cigarette. “I think men are capable of anything, Shona. They fix on what they want and they do it and to hell with anyone else.”

  “It’s such a ... such a fait accompli. It’s so ... I feel so ... helpless, you know? It’s not like I can just move back to Glasgow now, is it?”

  “You can do what you want, Shona. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Why not try sending him to Coventry? Men hate that.”

  “Everyone hates that and it’s – it’s childish.” I couldn’t shake the thought of Mikey deliberately hiding the facts from me, hoodwinking me into living the life he wanted for no better reason than him wanting it. But his speciality was his power of persuasion, I thought, not his ability to lie.

  “You could go back to your folks’,” Valentina said. “Pack up and go stay with them for a few days. You should let him know you won’t let him walk all over you.”

  I sniffed. The shaking sobs died down, my tears were drying, sticky. “I’ve never done anything like that. I usually stand my ground, have a good fight, you know? I don’t run away.”

  “True that.” She laughed. “But this isn’t running away, is it? This is a protest, it’s much more powerful. And I tell you what, if Red tips his reefer butts in the plant pot one more time I’ll be coming with you.”

  I laughed. After a moment, I said, “He wouldn’t know what’d hit him, would he?”

  “Think about it. Really. Take action. If you act like a carpet, they will walk all over you. And they won’t bother taking off their shoes. A girl needs bollocks in this life.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I’m calling it the way I see it,” she said. “Tell me to sling my hook if you want but I’m only being honest.”

  “No,” I said. “No, I appreciate it.”

  That heavy exhalation again. I wanted to ask if she was smoking. But she couldn’t be. She was a yoga t
eacher.

  “Listen,” she said. “I’m off today so I could come pick you up and take you to the station.”

  “You’d do that? For me?”

  “Of course. No question.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “You’re a real pal.”

  TEN

  Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting on the bed with my holdall on my lap. I had been so definite but now I was no longer sure. A horrid, stale feeling had lodged itself inside me, a feeling with its own sour taste, like a hangover. All this fury would make me ill, I knew. I didn’t want it, I didn’t want any of it – it was a poison I had to expel. But no matter how I looked at it, the only conclusion I could come up with was that Mikey had brought me here under false pretences. And now he expected me to live alone, a shadow in the darkness while he went about in the light. A housekeeper. A maid. For him, nothing had changed. For me, nothing was the same.

  I went downstairs and began to clear away the plates and cups from breakfast. Other things, little things that had irritated me over the time we’d been together, surfaced. I remembered the first time I met him: he’d told me to have whisky when what I’d wanted was wine. When I moved in with him, he had already bought the flat he wanted – his parents had paid but he had chosen. I had moved into his choice. Once when he’d left his underwear on the bathroom floor I’d asked him, nicely, to put it in the wash basket.

  “Don’t,” he’d said, so kindly, so softly. “Let’s not become that. Not us.”

  And I had not known how to respond. He’d made me feel like something prosaic and sad. I had understood, had thought I understood that for me to ask him to do this was to reduce our relationship to something mediocre, something no better than everyone else had.

  “OK,” I’d said, still doped up on love, on sex. “I’m sorry.”

  And later, I’d picked up his dirty underwear and put it in the wash basket – since that was the only way to make our relationship special.

  Outside, a car horn toot-tooted. Valentina. I ran to the living room window. The roof of her beaten up Toyota was drawn back and her red hair shone in the rare Aberdeen sun. She was wearing white-rimmed fifties style sunglasses, a cream mack and a bright blue silk scarf. My kookie, hippy friend.