Read Online Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth - Free Book Online
Authors: Emma Jane Unsworth
Tags: Contemporary
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finger on. Inner space stretching, and despite the unease, my heart perversely rejoicing.
A new feeling! A new feeling at thirty-two! This is something!
I looked back to the town. Was there a pub nearby? We should really get a – Oh.
Jim took my hand. ‘Is that okay?’
I shrugged, the polite words coming on instinct. ‘Well, of course it’s okay. It’s your choice, you know.’
It was a steely sky, a steely sea, and I had that hollow feeling I always got in my gut whenever I saw the horizon or the night sky.
‘I’ve never been as good at it as you, Laur,’ he went on. ‘So I might not be your man for adventures. But I can be your rugged base.’
I kissed his hand hard and fast, it was cold as a stone and my lips burned on it. ‘You’re not rugged, I’m rugged. I’m rugged enough for two! Anyway, what makes you think that I think that all adventures have to involve drinking? Do you think I’m that shallow, that ridiculous?’
We bought bags of chips on the way back to the B&B. I’ve never been able to finish a full bag of chips so I gave most of mine to the gulls.
HOME NOT HOME
Psssshhhhhht.
I ducked as a jet of fine mist shot towards my face from the automatic air freshener on the medicine cabinet. I shook the remaining water off my hands and stepped to the other side of the bathroom.
Pssssssshhhhhht!
Another shot fired from a second air freshener on top of the toilet cistern.
‘Fuck!’
I crouched and shielded my eyes, peered up through the gaps between my fingers. Above me a nimbostratus of ‘Cashmere Woods’ began to precipitate.
‘All right in there?’ My dad’s voice on the landing beyond the door.
I unlocked the door, opened it. There he was in his green plaid shirt, grinning, hunched, visibly thrilled he’d heard me swear.
‘Sorry, Dad. It’s like an FBI training zone in here.’
He backed up against the wall and made his hands into a gun shape. ‘Come on, Clarice. I’ve got your back.’ The effects of the chemo were showing. His hair was thinner and ashier, the skin mottled on his cheeks, dark umbra eclipsing his eye sockets. He darted his eyes back and forth and jerked his head.
I walked ahead of him down the stairs. His downward pace was fast for a man of his age in his condition, and I wondered whether he was trying too hard, which made me think of something my mum said sometimes – partly to embarrass him and partly to endear him to us.
He follows you and Melanie round the house, you know, whenever you come home.
Home. It was and it wasn’t, any more. (Hovis Presley helped:
Wherever I Lay My Hat, That’s My Hat
.) My old bedroom had been redecorated and besides I’d only spent a few years in Middleton before moving away to Edinburgh and university. Most of my childhood memories were from the house before, where I’d lived from the age of eight to sixteen – in fact, my child-self was attached to the terrace in Crumpsall so tenaciously that a few times on my way home from the doctor’s in my mid-twenties, fever-dazed and comfort-hungry, I’d given the taxi driver directions to Crumpsall only to get halfway there and realise that I lived in the other direction entirely, as a grown-up.
Down in the hall, which reeked faintly, perennially, of mice, Jim was helping my mum put on her coat. I rotated Jim and Tyler as my date for family meals – it seemed only fair. I’d taken Tyler before I met Jim and it felt wrong for him to suddenly usurp her, and besides her mum had moved to London to help Jean so Tyler didn’t get many dinners out. I didn’t like to admit it but the meals with Jim were easier. He was golden amongst the Joyces; they hung on his every word, saw him as a bona fide exotic mystery. It was a different relationship to the one I had with his family, which had been sullied from the start. That memory! How it burrrrrrrned.
We were on the M6 on the way to his folks’ place in Birmingham when I’d felt a sudden painful and irrepressible need.
Darling
,
A new feeling! A new feeling at thirty-two! This is something!
I looked back to the town. Was there a pub nearby? We should really get a – Oh.
Jim took my hand. ‘Is that okay?’
I shrugged, the polite words coming on instinct. ‘Well, of course it’s okay. It’s your choice, you know.’
It was a steely sky, a steely sea, and I had that hollow feeling I always got in my gut whenever I saw the horizon or the night sky.
‘I’ve never been as good at it as you, Laur,’ he went on. ‘So I might not be your man for adventures. But I can be your rugged base.’
I kissed his hand hard and fast, it was cold as a stone and my lips burned on it. ‘You’re not rugged, I’m rugged. I’m rugged enough for two! Anyway, what makes you think that I think that all adventures have to involve drinking? Do you think I’m that shallow, that ridiculous?’
We bought bags of chips on the way back to the B&B. I’ve never been able to finish a full bag of chips so I gave most of mine to the gulls.
HOME NOT HOME
Psssshhhhhht.
I ducked as a jet of fine mist shot towards my face from the automatic air freshener on the medicine cabinet. I shook the remaining water off my hands and stepped to the other side of the bathroom.
Pssssssshhhhhht!
Another shot fired from a second air freshener on top of the toilet cistern.
‘Fuck!’
I crouched and shielded my eyes, peered up through the gaps between my fingers. Above me a nimbostratus of ‘Cashmere Woods’ began to precipitate.
‘All right in there?’ My dad’s voice on the landing beyond the door.
I unlocked the door, opened it. There he was in his green plaid shirt, grinning, hunched, visibly thrilled he’d heard me swear.
‘Sorry, Dad. It’s like an FBI training zone in here.’
He backed up against the wall and made his hands into a gun shape. ‘Come on, Clarice. I’ve got your back.’ The effects of the chemo were showing. His hair was thinner and ashier, the skin mottled on his cheeks, dark umbra eclipsing his eye sockets. He darted his eyes back and forth and jerked his head.
I walked ahead of him down the stairs. His downward pace was fast for a man of his age in his condition, and I wondered whether he was trying too hard, which made me think of something my mum said sometimes – partly to embarrass him and partly to endear him to us.
He follows you and Melanie round the house, you know, whenever you come home.
Home. It was and it wasn’t, any more. (Hovis Presley helped:
Wherever I Lay My Hat, That’s My Hat
.) My old bedroom had been redecorated and besides I’d only spent a few years in Middleton before moving away to Edinburgh and university. Most of my childhood memories were from the house before, where I’d lived from the age of eight to sixteen – in fact, my child-self was attached to the terrace in Crumpsall so tenaciously that a few times on my way home from the doctor’s in my mid-twenties, fever-dazed and comfort-hungry, I’d given the taxi driver directions to Crumpsall only to get halfway there and realise that I lived in the other direction entirely, as a grown-up.
Down in the hall, which reeked faintly, perennially, of mice, Jim was helping my mum put on her coat. I rotated Jim and Tyler as my date for family meals – it seemed only fair. I’d taken Tyler before I met Jim and it felt wrong for him to suddenly usurp her, and besides her mum had moved to London to help Jean so Tyler didn’t get many dinners out. I didn’t like to admit it but the meals with Jim were easier. He was golden amongst the Joyces; they hung on his every word, saw him as a bona fide exotic mystery. It was a different relationship to the one I had with his family, which had been sullied from the start. That memory! How it burrrrrrrned.
We were on the M6 on the way to his folks’ place in Birmingham when I’d felt a sudden painful and irrepressible need.
Darling
,
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