Friday's Reading

Deb's photos lead Lucy to a strange encounter which begs more questions than it answers.

10 November 1980

When I dragged my ass out of bed the next day (afternoon really) I pulled out the album to study it again. There was something about the recent photos that gave me the creeps and at the same time made me think they held a clue or a key if I could only work it out. The more I looked at the very last one of you all in Trafalgar Square the more I was convinced that old Johnson’s Wax knew something about you. I kept seeing him give you a big smackeroonie on the lips when you won the competition, and I remember how you kept frantically rubbing your lips with your tissue and how you couldn’t wait to light up afterwards. We were able to laugh then about you getting moustache rash. 

I phoned him at his new school. At first he hadn’t a clue who I was but when I mentioned you he agreed in a rush to meet me for coffee at the shopping centre. He hasn’t changed. But then why would he? He kept calling me Lucinda which annoyed the shit out of me I don’t know why except that no has called me that since the day I was baptised. The way he talked it was like he had trouble getting words past the droopy moustache. Or maybe he was having trouble telling the truth because he kept trying to change the subject and ask me about people in school, including Mirror. I gave short answers and went on asking about you until in the end he told me about Rose.

  How come you never mentioned her to me? A year you were going to her studio. And not a word about it to me or anyone else – as far as I know. When Johnson said you’d been modelling for a friend of his I saw red, thinking he was talking about himself. I couldn’t stand the thoughts of you spread naked in front of him. Or under him. So it was a bit of a relief when he gave me Rose’s name.

I was in for another surprise when I saw her. On the phone she sounded like a pantomime fairy, all tinkly and light. She must have seen the confusion in my face when she opened the door. You have to admit she is kind of unusual, with her squat shape and little crocheted Juliet cap that seems to be glued to her shaved head. Kind of a young Hilda Ogden offof Coronation Street.  And then her flat – it looks so like a doctor’s surgery I was nearly going to tell her all about my period pains.

  Instead I told her about you and asked whether you had talked to her about your plans or dreams. She let on not to know anything only saying that because you had ‘worked together’ for about a year she thought she’d got to know you pretty well but that didn’t mean she knew where you were.

  I don’t believe you, I said, choking at the end of my tether.

  That’s not fair, she said.

  Not fair? Not fair to who? I’m her sister. I’ve a right to know where she is. And so do my Mam and Dad. Ooooops sounded like I was about to go to pieces all over Rose’s spotless room.

  She looked down for a few minutes. As if she was praying. Who knows? Maybe she was. It came to me then that she might even be a nun. Or one who had jumped the wall. I looked around for some holy statues or a sanctuary lamp or a holy water font. Nothing but a big piece of canvas on one wall with a bent pink line on it. Could have been lipstick for all I could see.

  When she stopped praying or whatever it was she was doing she leaned across and touched me arm and said I understand.

  Do you? I snapped. Do you really know what it’s like to miss someone and not know whether they’re alive or dead or where they are or whether they’ll ever be back or did they hate you all so much that they walked away without so much as goodbye?

  Must be like losing a limb, she nodded.

  No, I said. It’s not like losing a limb. It’s like being half-dead yourself. Stumbling around in the shadows without anything solid to hold on to.

  All right, she sighed. Look, you have to believe me that I do not know where Deb is now. Maybe you should see the film we made. Maybe that would help you or you might see something there that I missed.

  A movie? I asked. Now we’re getting somewhere. Debbie goes to Hollywood after all.

  Not that kind of movie, she laughed. It’s a portrait. That’s the way I work. I don’t like the old-fashioned paintings of people sitting or standing and staring into space. I want them moving and talking. Here. She handed me a large neon pink invitation card. Come to the opening of my exhibition, The Wimmin’s Way.

Photo by Ferran Fusalba Roselló on Unsplash

The invitation said ‘Admit Two’ but I went alone. Not really Daire’s thing and I couldn’t tell the girlos that I’d met Johnson’s Wax. In the end I wished I’d brought a fecking interpreter. What is that stuff? Some of it just looked like people had just upended their bins on the floor and more of it was like kids’ scrawls. Everybody there was very earnest but their drawling and droning was Double Dutch to me. I couldn’t see Rose in the crowd and after trailing around the room (well, shed really) I was about to leave when she popped up at my elbow.

  There you are, she said. I was looking for you. Come on, this way. She took my hand and burrowed her way through the crowd all standing around with their glasses of wine and cocktail sausages.

  We stopped in front of a booth – like the photo machines in shops – only the name above it was Confessional.

  Go on in, she said, pulling back the curtain.

  So I did. Good job there was a seat inside because the minute I got in there my head felt funny, the way it does in those rooms with mirrors that change your shape. It was pitch black. I put my hands out to feel around the space, wondering how to get out. Next thing I was surrounded by you. Now that really made my head feel weird. You filled the space, three of you. And you were talking but saying different things on each side. After a few minutes I realised that it was a movie clip played at different times, so you were overlapping yourself. I seemed to be looking straight into your mouth. Every so often you took a pull of a fag and I saw your fingers come to your lips, the forefinger with the scar where you cut it on glass years ago. I tried to concentrate on what you were saying. That’s when the whole thing got really weird. I mean it was definitely you, your face and hand and voice but the words. Did Rose script that stuff for you?  

  You went on and on about silences in our family. So many silences, you said, all around, like a great hole.

  Hang on there, Sis. The one thing there never was in our house was silence, what with Mam going from Calamity Jane to Dolly to Mame and Bloody Mary in Bali Ha’I, and Dad’s soccer and motor racing on the telly. And no one ever accused me of being silent.

  I don’t know anything anymore, you said. I don’t trust the world. Don’t know who I am, what I am. What to be. Where to be.

  Where did you get all this stuff? Did Rose slip you something to make you talk nonsense?

  I burst out of the booth and almost tripped over Rose who was smiling up at me. It was only then I noticed that the fuzz on her head glowed bright pink, like candy floss.

  Well, what did you think? She asked.

  I shook my head. I don’t know, was all I could say. Rose looked so like a child waiting for praise that I couldn’t say what I really thought. It’s confusing was the best I could manage.

  She nodded sympathetically. You really need to see it three times. I don’t like conventional portraits. I want to give a rounded view of the person, in their own words.

  Well there was no way I was going back in there once let alone twice. I said, Yeah, maybe. But I can’t hang around right now.

  Have a drink at least.

  No thanks, I said. Unusual for me you have to admit. I think I was afraid of what might be in the glass.

  The whole business was a bit creepy if you ask me. And I wasn’t any closer to knowing where you might have got to. Further in fact. I saw a part of you, if you really did mean all those psycho things, that I never saw before. You were like a stranger. Who is Rose and what’s the deal with her? That’s what I want to know.

  Did you tell Deb to say those things? I asked her. I mean like a script for a film? Or was she stoned or what?

  No, of course not. That’s authentically her. She spoke from her heart.

  Too weird, I said. I have to go.

  You can come back some day during the week if you like, and see it again, when it’s not so crowded.

  I’ll think about it, thanks. I said and made for the door.

  I was never so glad to step out onto a dark rainy street in my life. I ran all the way to the quays and I could have hugged the bus conductor when he came for my ticket. Just for the relief of seeing someone normal.

  Now I wonder what you were up to with Rose. I’m not sure I’ll go back to her confessional but I think she knows more than she’s letting on.

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