142
A text from Jaime: ‘I might be 10 mins late. I’ve hailed a carriage but my horse is belligerent.’
I grin and text back: ‘I’m about to hail a hackney cab. See u soon.’
On the tram into Manchester, I recall a fragment of last night’s dream: I was in a lift with my mother, ascending floor after floor, up into the clouds. I flick through another free paper. The stories remain puzzling. In Gwent’s 2014, there are no tragic tales of disabled people suffering the bedroom tax, or the poor walking miles for food banks, there are no students rioting on the streets. The line between the rich and the poor, so defined in a depression, is still blurry here. The rich are not yet creating a world within our world where they fly private jets, buy up property in London and push everyone else into its Saturnian rings. Instead, I’m just met with photographs of celebrity weddings: the things we read when life is OK and we have to blow up gossip several sizes in order to make some news.
143I hear the singing of church bells as I step down from the tram. Without thinking, I follow their thread, weaving through streets until I find the source: St Mary’s. In the modern world, graveyards are oases of Old England, time slowed down. Inside the church, I’m shocked by the thin smattering of people. I have grown used to this being a place where everyone presents themselves to the world, their piety a spectacle for all to see. Here, the priest is jolly and jokey, mentioning Buddhism, meditation, even making self-consciously hip references to The Simpsons. I want to laugh at him for wanting to be one of us, rather than wanting to rule over us. Closing my eyes, I listen, for Fate’s narration has always been loudest in church. But Gwent remains silent. God sleeps.
I arrive to find that Jaime is waiting for me. We hug each other and begin to stroll up Market Street, where buskers line the pavement, dancing or feigning superpowers. I notice Jaime’s stubble, his dark quiff, the blue of his eyes. His body language is already more relaxed; after three days, he is starting to seem more at home in this world. He says that he’s been searching online for books that mention the Storyteller, and I change the subject. As we drift through the high street, we notice shops that went extinct a long time ago: a Jessops, an HMV, a Books etc. Jaime snaps pictures of everything on his iPhone.
‘Gwent got kidnapped by Fate at the end of 2007,’ says Jaime. ‘That’s where the present day stopped for him.’
‘So I guess we’re in a 2007-style 2014, where forty per cent of the world’s wealth hasn’t been wiped out.’ I feel brightened by the idea. 144
‘I guess the whole boom was a fiction anyway, everyone just materialising money out of nothing,’ Jaime muses, but his unease seems pervasive.
As we walk through Woolworths, we revel in sweet nostalgia. Jaime misses Nerds, those fizzy particles of rainbow, while I want Quality Street to bring back their Peanut Cracknell. We muse on retro sweets that amuse us: Road Kill gummies, which were in hilariously bad taste and deserved their ban; candy cigarettes, which died out with the glamour of smoking. Jaime suggests going on a tour of all the extinct shops, as though we’re in the retail equivalent of the Natural History Museum.
‘I feel like neither of us is taking this seriously,’ I complain.
Jaime’s laugh is anxious. Then his tone bitters: ‘If we’re going to be stuck in this book for another week, we may as well have a laugh. I mean, I think we need to. Last night I woke up in a night sweat, freaked out. I just kept staring at my bed and thinking, It’s not real.’
‘I had a panic attack last night as well,’ I lie. ‘We are going to get home, and while we’re here, well … this is home.’
He frowns. ‘I admire your stoicism.’
‘It’s just that … while we’re here,’ I say, the ‘while’ designed to placate him, ‘we should just try to enjoy it. I mean – this is a really good 2014, where we don’t need to suffer or worry about money. But if we mooch around being really ironic and postmodern about everything – well, it’s no way to live. We should embrace it.’
Jaime looks doubtful but he shoves his hands in his pockets and nods.
145We decide to go to the Cornerhouse cinema, where Jaime insists on buying both tickets even though I offer to pay half. He gives me a sheepish grin as he passes the ticket over. Neither of us comments on the choice, The Aviator, and the fact we have seen it many times before. Afterwards, we go to Home Sweet Home, a cafe in the Northern Quarter. One wall is covered in paintings by local artists. There’s a little sticker by them saying they are going for £50 apiece. I’m upset that nobody is looking at them; everyone is too busy chatting and munching on paninis.
The waitress brings us our toasties and milkshakes, and Jaime gives her a warm ‘thank you’. I’m noticing how polite and sweet he is with everyone. He always flips coins at buskers and never leaves a cafe without leaving a tip.
‘That suicide forum, where we first started chatting. I wonder if it’s still online.’
He looks up at me and it’s too early in our friendship for me to be able to decipher his gaze.
‘We were both fraudsters,’ I say. ‘You researching your MA, me researching my exhibition.’
‘So you’re an artist in the real world too?’
‘Yeah, I had a few exhibitions. The big breakout one was called Metamorphoses.’
‘But I remember that.’ Jaime screws up his face. ‘I read a rave review about it. You’re famous.’
‘Not everyone reacts to my work like that,’ I say, because I feel so pleased that I’m embarrassed.
‘But you’re the Rachel Levy! I never clicked in the suicide forum … You were just “Rachel” to me back there.’
‘Now you’re being over the top. Nobody would ever put a the before my name …’ 146
‘Why did you keep it quiet all this time? Didn’t David Bowie pay your work a visit?’
‘Uh huh. That was the high point of my career,’ I say sadly. ‘It was all downhill from there.’ I glance up again at the paintings on the wall and an ache fills me.
‘I guess Fate fucked everything up for you,’ he says angrily, and I nod, knowing that I fucked up everything long before Fate ever did. ‘Even more reason to get back home. You should be painting! And to think that chauvinist had you corseted up as some governess …’
I smile, liking Jaime’s feminist spirit.
As we continue to chatter, a waitress lights the candles on the tables. The room becomes soft with their flames, romanticised by the darkening, streaky sky outside. I watch Jaime’s lips as he talks, the way he smooths his hair back from his forehead. I’m still trying to pin labels on him: he is left-wing and believes in Marx; he was once a God-botherer, before becoming an atheist; he used to sing in a band; he seems to love birds – or ducks, at least. He lived with a bubbly flatmate and was studying with a Professor Millhauser who was proud to be supervising his MA. He seems very together in his real life, as though he knows how to handle the world – as though he is heading somewhere. No wonder he wants to go back.
The town clock is chiming midnight as we head down the long stretch of Oxford Road that eventually becomes the Curry Mile. Neon signs firework their colours. Customers sit outside cafes, laughing and eating barfi and smoking hookahs. Our conversation skates along the surface. We are both 147preoccupied with what remains unspoken: when our eyes meet, there’s a tenderness in our gaze, a retinal caress. Our elbows knock from time to time; our bodies lean in closer; our breaths interlace. In my jacket pocket, my fingers play with an old chocolate bar wrapper. I am trembling with the thrill of hoping that we’re on the same page, that we want this story to go in the same direction.
My intellect is starting to kick in and spoil the party. It warns me: a one-night stand is all very well, but Jaime is your only ally here. The sex might be awful. Or: the sex might be great, but the next chapter might be a problem. He might want more than I can give.
A trio of beautiful girls passes by. I notice Jaime’s gaze slip over them and then, with a faint trace of guilt, flick back to me. We reach the turning that leads to my road. I look up at the skyline: the spike of a church spire silvered in the moonlight.
‘Do you remember that day in the graveyard, when you were Thomas?’ I ask. ‘You asked me to be your wife and you made a list, like Darwin.’
‘I was only a boy,’ Jaime says.
‘It was kind of sweet,’ I reply, and then wonder what the hell I’m saying. Am I mentioning marriage in order to project some kind of feminine stereotype, to lure him in before he finds out who I really am?
Jaime is looking at the stars.
‘Did you know that up there is a cloud called Sagittarius B2?’ I ask casually.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s this cloud that floats in the Milky Way. It’s full of dust and gas and it contains ten billion billion billion litres of alcohol.’ 148
‘We should party up there.’
‘That’d be cool.’ I laugh slightly too loudly.
‘We could go tonight,’ Jaime says, wincing at the cliché, and we finally look at each other, and I chew my lip.