tangerines

tangerines, Scottish Short Stories

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Scottish Short Stories
Tangerines
by Beatrice Colin
When I was young I used to walk everywhere backwards. Just to make sure I wasn’t missing
anything. I still do sometimes. But now I bang into walls. One day I turned around and looked
in front of me. And I was poor. And I was older and I was here.
Here, washing up in a tiny kitchen in a pink dressing gown, my hair not blonde but sort
of pale yellow, my voice once sweet, now salty, my face not fresh, but dulled. Change used to
be on my side. Success was my middle name. Music was my life. Clichés were my speciality. It
would be funny if it wasn’t all so true. I light a cigarette.
Steph’s been in the bath for over an hour. You know, I can see him in my mind from
here. He’s drinking a bottle of beer and smoking a cigarette. The ash falls on the bath mat.
The mat is still damp from the last bath he had. It still smells of stale socks and boiled cabbage.
Steph spends hours in the bath now. He just lies there like a huge great fat whale,
sloshing about. But he still doesn’t smell clean. The alcohol seeps through his pores.
You see, Steph was my guitar player. He organised me, helped me write the songs,
sometimes picked the hits and tucked me up in bed. But now I cook for him, I iron, wash his
clothes and scrub the ring off the bath. We’ve swapped.
Tonight we have a gig. It’s just a small café which sells overpriced sandwiches to
underage drinkers, nothing special. But I remember the sound of my voice in the big places,
clubs, halls, even the Royal Albert Hall. It seemed to echo like an angel. But that was then.
Now it’s twenty quid and a free sandwich.
Aah, Steph’s pulling himself out of the bath. First the squeak of his flesh against the
plastic and then the crump as he steps heavily on to the bath mat. I put the cigarette out and
open a window. When I turn round, he’s standing here in my kitchen making a puddle on the
lino. His hair is slicked back with water and his belly hangs loose.
‘I’ve had it,’ he says.
‘You’ve had what,’ I reply.
‘We can’t go on like this,’ he says. ‘It’s gone. It’s like the glue’s not there anymore.
‘I know,’ I say quietly.
I stand and look out of the window at the cars racing along the motorway. It’s rush hour and
they line from bonnet to bumper like shiny, gaudy beads. He goes into the bedroom and puts
on that ridiculous bow tie he wears to play the piano. He looks so silly now. Not what he was.
‘Well done,’ he replies. ‘I hung it there.’
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‘Your jacket’s in the cupboard,’ I say.
‘Shall I wear my green or my pink?’
‘But do you think the pink suits me? I’ve never been too sure. Does it make me look
fat?’
He doesn’t reply. I stand there holding up the dresses on the hanger. He ignores me.
‘We should have….’ I say.
‘Why do you bring that up. That’s got nothing to do with it now,’ he says.
‘We were so happy then,’ I whisper.
‘No, we weren’t. We weren’t happy, sad or anything. We were in orbit most of the
time.
‘I knew it was wrong….’
‘SHUT UP…right. Shut up. I can’t stand it when you go on.’
‘How can we be like we were?;
‘We can’t. It’s past history. This is all there is.’
That night we play in the café. Three couples sit having a meal. No one claps at the end of the
songs except the manager. It’s dismal.
We both lie in bed later back to back. He’s awake, I can tell by his breathing. His spine
digs into my kidneys. Drafts whisk under the covers. I feel lonelier than a desert. It’s so unfair.
You see, I can’t forget. I really tried. I tried to push the past away and the more I did,
the more vivid it became. Until it felt so bright, like neon in the dusk, like a roller coaster at
Morecombe beach, that it didn’t seem like me anymore. And I almost could invent another
beginning and another ending where it all turns out fine. But you can’t take things back.
Because although those days were thrilling, wonderful, better than sex, they went past so fast
that I lost my grip. And I was tossed about, from note to note, from night club to night club,
from town to town, from year to year, from man to man. I did things I shouldn’t have. And
now I’ve got a hole, right here. And it’s letting in the wind.
When I wake up, Steph has gone. Today is my birthday. I’m thirty-four. Tears fall on to
the pillow until it’s soaked right through. On both sides. It’s time, I decide. I’ve waited too
long. And so I put on my best dress and shove my hair up in a bun. It makes me look more
respectable and hides the bleach and the roots. And then I go into the bank and withdraw all
my savings. We were going to buy a little flat of our own. What’s the point of having it now, I
say to the woman in the bank. She doesn’t appear to hear me. Next I go and hire a car. The
smallest one they’ve got, for the weekend, is quite cheap. But it’s orange. Tangerine they call it.
I hate that colour, but never mind. I take it and then I drive to the suburbs.
I turn off the main road and steer down a street where gardens hide the houses behind.
I put on my sunglasses and park the car beside number 34. There is a plaque on the gate. It
says ‘Fairydell.’ I check the address and yes, it’s the right number. The only sound is a distant
lawn mower. It’s so quiet. So calm.
And then I hear a scream which gasps into laughter. And it’s like an echo of my laugh.
Mine when I was young. I look in the rear-view mirror to find out who the laugh is coming
from. And I see her. She has red curly hair and a turned up little nose. I watch her for a while
as she talks with her friends at the gate. And then she swings her satchel over her shoulder and
starts to walk up the drive-way. My eyes follow her until she disappears around a bend.
Suddenly the road is empty. Suddenly there’s silence. Then I get out of the car and walk fast
after her. My heels keep getting stuck in the mud and I snag my tights on a bush.
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‘I don’t care. Whatever.’
‘Joise Brown?’ I ask. I’m out of breath. Too much smoke, I suppose.
She turns round and stares at me, really hard. Her eyes aren’t blue anymore but green.
I stop in my tracks.
‘This is private property,’ she says. And her voice is all crisp and correct.
‘I know that,’ I say. ‘Listen you don’t know me but….My name,’ I say quietly, ‘is Kathy. I
knew you when you were a little baby.’
I am surprised, shocked even. They said they would keep the name. Keep the name,
for me.
She looks at me side on. And then she shrugs.
‘Well, what do you want me to do about that?’
I sigh. I take a deep breath but I’m shaking.
‘You see,’ My mouth opens and shuts like a goldfish. And then it spills out. Just comes
out on it’s own like a secret streamer of words.
‘I’m your mother,’ I say.
She stares at me really hard and I swallow, too visibly for my liking. But her little face
lights up. She take two steps towards me. In the fading light, she looks almost angelic, like a
vision or a sepia photograph.
‘Fan-tastic. I always knew I was adopted. I hate my parents. Have you come to take
me away from all this?’
‘Well, I just…..’
‘Let me get my things,’ she says. ‘Do you have a car?’
I nod.
‘Wait there and I’ll be back in five minutes.’
She starts to run and then she stops and runs back to me.
‘Will I meet my real father as well?’ she asks.
‘Eh…perhaps,’ I reply and her face breaks into a huge smile and I can see metal braces
on her molars.
‘Fabby brilliant,’ she says.
My heels have stuck fast into the driveway. I pull them out one by one and then walk
back to the car. I feel dizzy. I feel very dizzy. The birds sing in the trees and the leaves rustle
softly. I see the house through the trees. It’s a large pink Georgian mansion with landscaped
gardens. I suddenly feel a deep sense of dread. But it passes like a cloud on a sunny day.
There isn’t a radio in the hired car, so I start to hum. And then I catch sight of myself in
the rear-view mirror and stop. I look ancient and childlike at the same time. I grip the steering
wheel. My nail varnish is all chipped and so I start to bit it off, spitting the bits out into the
ashtray.
I hear Tarquinia before I see her. Her footsteps echo as she runs and a large dog barks.
It is a golden Labrador. Tarquinia has changed. She wears a black mini skirt, over the knee
socks and a green cropped nylon jacket. She carries a bag over her shoulder. She turns to the
dog. ‘Sit,’ she shouts. ‘Stay.’ The dog obeys, whining slightly.
And then she’s in the car, slamming the door and throwing her bag in the back before I
know it.
My parents, I mean my adoptee parents come back around now,’ she says. ‘I think we’d
better step on it.’
I pause, my hand on the ignition key, and the dog starts to bark.
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‘And my name isn’t Josie, it’s Tarquinia.’
‘Come on,’ she thrusts her chin at me and I see she’s wearing lipstick. Pink lipstick. I
push the car into first gear, it shudders, and I drive back into town.
We don’t say much on the way. My mind is split between negotiating the traffic and
terror at what I have done.
I take her to my favourite restaurant. It used to be a lively place with burgers and steaks,
but not it’s called Seafood Deluxe. We sit at the back at a table for two surrounded by the
green glow of the fish tanks. She orders lobster. I order soup and a roll. And Tarquinia talks.
‘They stopped my pocket money once,’ she says. ‘Just because I borrowed five pounds.
Five measly pounds. I should have taken fifty. I really needed it for my taxi fare. I mean, do they
want me to get mugged coming home from a club? My dad beats me. He does. He beats me
when I don’t tidy my room. And my mother forces me to wear things. She ties me to a chair
until I put on disgusting dresses. With
flowers
and
frills
. You can’t let me go back. I’ll commit
suicide if you do. Like Kurt Cobain.’
Tarquinia doesn’t like the lobster – too many creepy bits – so I order a selection of
puddings instead. She eats them all. The bill is huge. I pay and then take her home to our
house. I can’t think of anything else.
The flat looks much worse in the daylight. Damp stains the concrete on the outside and
the yellow glass of the patio door looks like old lemon curd. I park outside. There are plenty of
spaces as no one round here has a car. Tarquinia sits in the front seat clutching her bag. Her
face is blank but her mouth turns down at the corners ever so slightly.
‘Do you live here?’ she says in a very little voice.
I look at the flat and suddenly it looks like a slum. I never realised. I didn’t notice it before.
Because it was temporary, just a place to stay until we got ourselves back on track. We’ve been
living there for seven years in June.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Just come to pick something up. This is a friend’s house. Ours is being
renovated at the moment.’
‘Thank God,’ she says. ‘There’s no way I’m living there.
I look at her out of the corner of my eyes. I see her face in the rear-view mirror. And she’s
smirking.
‘Stay here,’ I tell her. ‘Won’t be a moment.’
Steph still isn’t home. I thought he would be. I left a sandwich out for him and it’s curled at the
edges. I pull a piece of paper from the pile of newspapers on one of the kitchen chairs. It’s a
bill, but only a blue one. I turn it over and write him a note.
‘Steph, you’ll have to toast it – don’t forget to switch the grill off – remember last time.
Something’s come up. Don’t worry about me. Goodbye. Love Kathy.’
And then I stop in my tracks. I start to panic inside. I grab a cigarette and light it,
wondering if I’ve gone mad and haven’t noticed. But I can’t go back now. I grab some clothes,
shove them into a Tesco bag and put out the cigarette.
I leave my flat with the big bath and yellow glass behind and decide, quite calmly, that
I’m never going back. I slam the door and put the key under the mat. The car sits like an
orange omen. Inside Tarquinia is smoking an Embassy Regal. We start to drive to Fife.
‘To the seaside,’ I say and smile like a toothpaste advert.
‘Oh,’ she says.
‘So, Tarquinia,’ I say. ‘Don’t you have a nickname or something?’
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‘Where are we going now?’ she asks.
‘God no,’ she says. ‘At least not Tarquie, or anything gross like that. Some people call
me The Snog.’
‘Oh, that’s unusual,’ I reply.
She turns and looks at me again out of those pea-green eyes. And she smirks. Again.
We zoom along motorways and down country lanes. Everything is green and calm and slightly
damp. It is only March but it’s flat and so vivid. I remember the taste of salt and ice cream. My
face in the sun, lying belly down next to the great big earth, feeling the warmth of my own self.
When I was whole and new and full of promise. Did I break my own promise? I did. And then
I jolt back to the present.
‘So, em Tarquinia, em, tell me about yourself. I’m sure there’s so much we need to say.’
‘What exactly, do you want to know,’ she replies.
‘Well….’
And I don’t know what to say. How can you cram an entire lifetime into a conversation. How
can I tell her anything. How can I explain me.
‘Doesn’t this car have a tape deck?’ she asks. ‘I’ve brought some tapes.’
‘I, er, don’t think so,’
‘Don’t you know?’ she asks. ‘It’s only your car. It’s only your stereo.’
‘Well, you know how it is,’ I reply, blushing. ‘Burglars.’
‘My dad has an alarm. My dad has a CD player in his boot. My dad.’ And she suddenly
stops. ‘Where exactly are we going?’ she demands.
‘Tarquinia, I know you must think I’m a silly old woman. I know you must be wondering
why I gave you away and I’ll tell you….soon. It’s crazy, I suppose, but I thought it would be nice
to go to the sea alone together. Just for a couple of days. I used to go there when I was your
age. And I loved it. I used to find all sorts of things on the beach. Bits of glass, blue and green
and sort of turquoise.’
‘Oh,’ she says.
‘I can’t help thinking of the beach as the edge that shifts. It isn’t one hard line, but a
moving, fluid thing. And it gives me hope, sort of. Makes me feel better.’
‘You’re a hippie aren’t you. Oh God, I thought at least you might be a punk. At least
they have a bit of street cred. But a hippie.’
‘I’m not anything,’ I say. ‘I just want you to see it.’
‘I’ve seen the sea before,’ she says. ‘What do you think I am? Deprived? We go to
Majorca every year. We even have an apartment. With three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a
pool….’
I pull into a lay-by. I stop the car. I turn to her. And I feel really angry. But I keep my temper.
She looks up at me and she looks a little bit scared.
‘Do you want to come to the sea with me?’
She frowns and her forehead creases up in the middle. Her lipstick isn’t put on straight and a
little bit of pink is blurred onto her cheek.
‘Yes,’ she says in the little voice.
‘Right,’ I say and pull off again. I don’t see the lorry and it blasts it’s horn at me. She
mouths something I can’t quite make out.
We arrive in Anstruther at about five and the sea stretches out as flat as a sheet of aluminium.
They’ve pulled down the public toilets and given the whole place a clean but it hasn’t changed
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‘Usually boys,’ she says, as she blows smoke up towards the sunshade.
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