Hands, p.4
Hands, page 4
I have no memory of taking the bird to the tree, who came, whether we said anything, how we dug the hole or how deep. I just know in my bones that that’s where we put him, in our special place. Our place of infinite possibility.
I remember him with all the intensity of a child’s experience, the desperate young love, guilt, the laughter and shouting, dismay and dirt, soggy tissue, brick and mortar. And a sinking feeling that, no matter how much I want to, I’ll never be able to dig up the earth to find him.
2
Ketchup
All caravan sites are unique. To the untrained eye, sure, white and off-white static homes are most often regimentally lined up on promontories overlooking grey British beaches you’ll never end up visiting because of the rain. You’ll probably be able to hear the faint sound of a baby crying somewhere. There’ll be a lukewarm swimming pool. An ‘activity centre’ of sorts, with a parched wooden dance floor on which grubby toddlers in nappies and tops will bob up and down, while Redcoats sing ‘Star Trekkin’ ’. There’s probably a square of ceiling either mysteriously stained or dislodged, and the place smells of ale-soaked coasters and HP Roasted Peanuts. The lights of a one-armed bandit flash in the corner. Whenever I see one, I’m ruefully transported back to the time Liv and I, thrillingly unsupervised in some garish games room some way off from our caravan, grew so frustrated at the gambling machine we couldn’t really reach that we shook it so hard the alarm started blaring. We legged it out of the musty old room, up the concrete bank and back to our caravan.
The familiarity of the experience was part of its draw, no doubt. After an hour or two the excitement of the journey turned into car-sickness relieved into a Wotsits packet, and incessant whining wanting to know if we were nearly there yet. Flipping through the CD case for what to listen to next was a powerful sensation. For one particular drive to a Scarborough-way resort, just Liv, Mam, Ashleigh and me, we’d burned our own CD using LimeWire. It was crudely done with some songs repeating and others not being quite what their title had promised. Not knowing quite what might accidentally sound through the car as the digital display switched from Track 5 to Track 6 added a dose of edgy excitement. We felt so grown up, puffing on candy cigarettes like 60-a-day broads beleaguered by life, and popping Parma Violets like pills.
We listened to Gigi D’Agostino’s club banger L’Amour Toujours with the volume so loud the Golf’s speakers buzzed with it. You’d think we were off our nuts high on a road trip through America rather than navigating the winding roads towards a grey seaside town. The childlike ring of the auto-tuned-to-death-robot-singer punched with a throbbing baseline conducive to throwing wild elbow-to-forearm shapes, like a film-set ‘action’ board snapping down and open again – a hungry Pac-Man spinning around, chomping its chops. We were hooked on the syrup river of the song, carried away on it, turning up the dial to its maximum to drown out Mam. And when for whatever unholy reason we were unable to replay the song (Mam’s tanned hand obstructing the dial), what was this? Aly and AJ’s ‘Potential Breakup Song’? Oh yes bloody please. We’d listen to that a few hundred times. It was the perfect tune for Bratz-obsessed, drama-craving preteens. Instead of flailing in zigzags, we’d perform, miming the words in what was probably an overly sexual way for people so small. But we overflowed with sass! It was uncontainable. ‘You’re not living ’til you’re living, living for me.’ I still know all the words. After that was Green Day, Evanescence, and ‘Untouched’ by The Veronicas. Not a care in the world, apart from whether or not we were there yet. I don’t think we stopped to think whether we actually wanted to get there, in that moment.
Families who’d met at the caravan site years ago would keep in touch, maybe arrange to return at the same time next year, perhaps even get caravans next to each other so the kids could play together. The adults could drink cheap wine while squeezed into the U-shaped couch at the far end of the caravan, rounded by net curtains and warmed by an old electric heater, listening to the tinny sound of rain on the roof. A damp dog lying at the faded doormat by the front door would howl to go out before sinking its head with a defeated whine onto its still-muddy front paws. There’s always tomorrow.
We’d developed a relationship with a family like this before Mam and Dad divorced and moved a field’s-length away from each other. There was an older blond lad called Lee, who looked a bit like a sexy Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender. If you know, you know. He was equally angsty, I recall. You know, a teenager. And as teenagers do, he acted like a teenager on top of being an actual teenager, emphasising his moody adolescence when around children younger than him.
It hadn’t been at a caravan park, like, but some resort abroad, booked in the town-centre travel agents. Stepping inside that travel agent was stepping out of the real, grey-paved, pigeon-shit-stained world and into a paradise filled with the thick scent of artificial coconut. When you left, the smell was replaced by the pastries baking in the Cooplands next door. Anyway, there was also a younger boy called Lewis, who must’ve only been two. He had the cheekiest chubby face and huge brown eyes and was a living doll for Liv and I to fawn over. We’d sit on their sunbeds and play Lee’s chunky purple Game Boy, our white necks protected by flaps on the back of our caps, little white legs visible under the oversized T-shirts we’d wear into the pool, too, running across the hot floor back to the sunbeds when we were done, swaddled in colourful towels.
We only visited them once, or maybe it was twice, that I can remember – all the way in Chester. We must’ve only been five or six, Liv and I, and the drive seemed interminable. I was disappointed when we got there and it was just a drab suburban house not dissimilar to those at home, if a bit bigger than ours. I remained completely in love with Lee, who obviously saw me as the child that I was. It was the kind of desperate love confused with exciting new surroundings. Even going on holiday in Freshers’ with my new university friends to Berlin made my friend Callum, who I’ve only ever loved as a Best Best Friend, seem like a solid prospect. It’s hard to love a city.There’s nothing physical, really, to latch onto. It’s the feeling, the vibe, that grabs you and in your new-experience goggles you project that onto the unlucky person who happens to be with you.
It happened before that Freshers’ trip, too, when I was 18 and on my first girls’ holiday to Ibiza. I became utterly obsessed with a blond (theme?) Scouser with a receding hairline who was one of our reps. I could barely focus on my copy of Catch-22, in case he at any moment came over to our sunbeds to ask if we were up for the boat party, which, I guess, yeah – hair curled behind my ear subtly, throat cleared – I guess that sounds cool. He made it clear when we flirted that he wasn’t allowed to get with clients, but after throwing eyes at him across the all-inclusive hotel buffet of rubbery calamari and unexplained pasta dishes and chips, I threw myself at him at a glow-stick party when I was off my face on sugary alcopops and suspect cocktails. Someone else from Billingham turned out to be in that very bar for that very party, which kind of dampened the mood and we had to leave early so one of us could go vomit, but ah, those summer nights! Elsewhere on the strip we walked past a bar throbbing with the chant ‘T-T-Teessiders’. You can take the girl out of Teesside, but the region’s influence is, apparently, global – as the saying goes.
At a Radio 1 DJ set on our last night, our hands brushed. He squeezed my hand in his and it was warm and clammy and forbidden and the music was thumping like the blood in my ears. I was in ecstasy. Continuing the stalking, I added him on Facebook and we exchanged a few cringey messages. He said he was going to come and visit me, but I thought we’d both seem different if we weren’t in the sun. With him back at his mam’s in Liverpool and me back at my mam’s in Billingham, the initial lustre disappeared like Klingande’s ‘Jubel’ from the charts that year. A saxophone’s music fading into the distance. It didn’t help that he used the winky-face so often I got the ick.
But Lee was before social media, and our exchanges were over Swingball in their modest Chester back garden. Other than the fact I lost my first milk tooth on that trip, and that I woke up with five pound coins (five! Mam!) under my pillow, I don’t really remember anything else about it. Well, other than crying all the way home because I didn’t want to leave my uninterested, inappropriately aged paramour.
Once, abroad in Greece – don’t worry, we’ll be back in Skegness soon – Liv and I were both smitten by a pair of fellas in their early twenties who played with us in the pool and kept an eye on us when Mam was asleep on the sunbed. Before we left, they presented us each with a plastic brown and cream beaded necklace we interpreted as a clear sign they loved us too. When we went home, we sat on Mam’s double bed and cried and cried for them, necklaces crutched like rosaries in our fists. Their short-sleeved oversized shirts, their hairy tanned legs, hair spiked up with thick, wet gel, eyes framed by the kind of mirrored faux-sporting sunglasses you find on a spinning rack at a service station. Losing them felt like the end of summer.
It had all been very innocent stuff. But it changed when we were 12 or 13 and Liv, Mam, Ashleigh (our pseudo-adopted daughter) and I went to a hotel in Turkey. The smattering of white, flat-topped buildings was punctuated by palm trees. Mam drank and we plunged into the freezing cold pool every day, laughing and shivering as we broke the surface and wriggle-swam to keep warm. A curly-haired dreamboat of a man – though now I think he must’ve been seventeen or maybe eighteen – started lingering around the pool trying to play with us. But after the initial intrigue it wasn’t really fun and we felt awkward. Liv and I were always blessed with a pool companion in each other, though we did make friends with other kids in the pool for games that required more than two, or because their beach ball had accidentally floated over to us and one thing led to another. Here, though, not only did we have each other as per usual, we had our Ash, and we were getting to the age where kids are more self-aware and thus less likely to declare themselves unselfconsciously as a stranger’s fast friend. But that wasn’t why we felt awkward.
This man didn’t really speak much English (probably couldn’t) and we couldn’t speak Turkish – a fair enough state of affairs but one that, compounded by his weird behaviour, made his muteness eerie. What weird behaviour, you ask? Well, he pushed us in the pool a little too forcefully, held our heads under the water for a second longer than was strictly comfortable, and splashed us with his strong forearm in large sweeping motions. I started feeling wary, turning around to see if he was about, just out of the corner of my peripheral vision, I don’t know if out of excitement or anticipation or what. He’d burst our bubble and it was thrilling, but … we no longer had a bubble. If I turned around and he wasn’t there, I’d feel a jolt of relief-mingled disappointment.
One warm evening as we were walking around the pool (into which a stray kitten fell one day, which we dutifully fished out before it drowned), he handed me a small note as we approached the bar. He leaned against a tall circular table. Waiting. Looking. When we got back to our own table with our drinks, I unfolded it and it was a phone number. At least I assumed it was. It wasn’t the usual 07 or +44 I was used to, and I immediately panicked that maybe it would cost a fortune to send even a short message to it. I already knew I was going to text it, I suppose, compulsively. I had to look, even if I wasn’t supposed to. Especially because I wasn’t supposed to.
I felt weird, at once exhilarated and fearful, baffled by the number and the complicated logistics it seemed to present. It was like some kind of animal instinct kicked in. He was looking over. I can’t remember ever seeing him with anyone else there. Maybe he wasn’t, on reflection, even holidaying at the hotel, but had just opted to be my shadow. I turned my back to him and enjoyed the rest of our night, filled to the brim with all the stars in the sky. Mam teased and elbow nudged ‘Ee, Tilly,’ (she’s always called me Tilly, meaning for whatever unknown reason someone full of mischief) ‘you’ve got an admirer!’ I felt so seen: naked, appreciated, spotlighted. His eyes bore into the back of my head, and when I turned around he was gone.
The next day, full of nauseating trepidation, I texted him off Mam’s phone. We didn’t yet have our own, were too young. He replied fast. I felt uncomfortable, vaguely afraid, but I couldn’t help myself. Also, what would happen if I didn’t message the number he’d so surreptitiously passed me before disappearing into the night? The speed of his response indicated he’d been waiting for me to text. That, or he was addicted to his phone, but back then it didn’t have a suite of addictive social media, or probably even a camera, just Snake. In any case, I was plagued by a looming sense of danger. He thought I was pretty, etcetera. It felt innocuous and sweet, every text momentarily dispelling some anxiety before the inevitable pause before another one flashed onto the screen. When we left he said he was sorry to see me go, and would I add him on MSN? When I got back to the UK I did – out of curiosity-mixed compulsion as much as anything. The holiday had worn off, I was a safe and manageable distance away from him, and we chatted a bit.
My enormous ego also probably had something to do with it. In primary school I was completely obsessed with being fancied. Ob. Sessed. Maturing earlier than most of my peers, lumpy little tit mounds coming in far earlier than anyone would choose, I became aware early on that I was, that I could be, an object of adoration and attraction. As someone who craves undying affection, it was a marvellous revelation, and I, like a modern-day working-class Cleopatra, went to great lengths to expand my influence as far and wide as possible. I’d go around all the boys in my year group, which wasn’t many, and ask them outright whether they fancied me. The cheek! But it worked. Well, it seemed like it worked. Eventually I managed to get a full score – all of the boys said they fancied me – but on reflection it may very well have been that they were terrified by the intense look in my eyes as I approached them, again, at playtime. I’d tell Liv and whoever would listen that all the boys fancied me, that they’d told me themselves. I didn’t intend to do anything with the information, mind, other than cruelly ensure everyone was helplessly in love with me.
It was just such an ego that blinded me to the fact I was accidentally but almost definitely speaking to a pervert on MSN once, using Mam’s bulky computer in the dining room. A celebrity had invited me to connect, for God’s sake! MC Smally, of ‘Guna go by the flow, guna play the game’ fame. MC Smally – who, like DJ Boonie, was part of the collective playlist of our adolescence – wanted to talk to me. In Years 7 to 8 we’d all go to the Billingham Forum dressed up to the nines, get on our chunky navy-and-red-laced Forum-issue ice skates, and skate in circles to songs like Special D’s ‘Come With Me’. I’d spend less time on the ice and more time, tightly booted up, in the corner with my young beau, who kissed like a horny washing machine. I loved it. I kissed like a horny washing machine back. Maybe I’d eventually get to kiss DJ Smally in a similar manner if I played this right. It started when someone with the username DJ Smally had followed me on MSN and said he was a friend of a friend and did I like his music? I do! I’m a huge fan! (I wasn’t, really – only joke-liked the song because knowing all the words was fun). I excitedly told Liv I was instant messaging MC effing Smally. Could she believe? Turns out, she could not, and told me it was most likely a random nonce and that I should block them immediately. So, begrudgingly, I did, but was it really so damn hard to believe I could be the object of a celebrity’s attraction?
I was, after all, destined for great things myself. As a kid with an empty space where confidence should’ve been, and who genuinely couldn’t imagine her life past 22 (the ancient, adult age my mam’s brother had been when he took his own life), in the burgeoning awareness of my complex consciousness I thought I spied exceptionalism. I had thoughts of my own, ideas about the world around me; surely that meant I was special? I had to be special. I was desperate to be special. It didn’t occur to me that I was just going through the various stages of childhood and adolescent development, was learning things about myself and the world around me like every fucker else. No, I was the first person to achieve object permanence. Invented it. I had a whole world bubbling in me always; surely that had to count for something? Liv, on the other hand, has always exuded a quiet, self-assured confidence that is her brilliant bedrock. She didn’t and still doesn’t need to be gobby, to peacock around telling everyone how many boys fancy her.
Her direct, annoying contrast, I had to be adored, set apart. I think this was, paradoxically, a symptom less of confidence and rather of a lack thereof. I needed validating at all times, I was a crumbling scaffold of a thing; Liv was a building. No matter how confidently I postured, it was clear who would fall if an earthquake hit. Even small tremors threatened my very foundations, but she’s Vesuvius-proof.
Being fanciable was, I think, a way of trying to control my surroundings, of being sure about things. No maybes, no I think sos tacked onto the end of sentences, no mounting anticipation of when I’d inevitably spill my drink at tea and get in trouble. I sensed even then that in womanhood there was a power, and for someone who felt so completely helpless all the time it was scintillating.
