Crowd Control

I wanted to tell you all about it. But then it was Monday again. The week got on top of me. 

Part One: Wednesday

We were sitting opposite each other on the floor cross-legged. There was a low wooden coffee table between us and two glasses of water. We were looking at each other. I reached over towards my glass and knocked it accidentally. The water spilled onto the table and the carpet. It felt exactly like the real thing. As if the dream was made up of photographs. As if the dream was made up of someone flipping very quickly through those photographs. I could see how the wood underneath appeared in clear globs through the water. We pressed kitchen roll over it until it darkened into ragged paste. Nothing much else happened. It was such an ordinary dream. 

On the train, the man opposite me was sitting with his hands in his lap. His neck was stiff and his eyes were closed. His fingers were interlaced. The storage facilities that marked the edge of town flickered past his ear. September light streamed in through the window. It scored the outline of his thumb and ran down the side of his wrist. It slanted off his knee and down onto the floor. The whole carriage was flurried with that fresh autumn light. It was like bird wings. But then, people are always so tired on the train.

There was a woman sitting beside him whose features spread outwards towards her ears. It was as if she was melting. It was as if she would go on forever. She could tell I was looking at her but she didn’t look up. She was reading a magazine. I tried to read the story on the back but I couldn’t make out the headline, only a picture of two stocky men with their arms around each other's shoulders. It was a paparazzi photo, I think, but I didn’t recognise them. It looked like it had been taken at a stadium. The tattoos on the men's arms were smudged, like the ink had bled. But maybe it was only that the image was pixelated. They had big grins on their faces and were looking out to some common point above the photographer's head. One of the men, the shorter one, had his mouth open as if he was about to shout to someone just out of shot. It seemed as if there might be lots of people there, where they were, though I couldn’t tell from the image. I fingered the discarded broadsheet left in the seat next to me. 

The woman reshuffled in her seat and turned the page. The men disappeared under her fingers. I had seen something though. The soft underbelly of it. Something that had only been at the corner of things before. Like the jammy light on his fingers. Scoring the outline. The kind of thing not worth mentioning. There, on the third page of her newspaper. And the photo was glossy.

I didn’t want it at first. But I kept thinking about it in the shower. The taps were very stiff. I couldn’t get the water temperature right. It was always too hot or freezing. I chose hot. It scalded me under my armpits and down my neck when I bent forwards to wash my hair. I had to keep moving my feet to stop them from burning. In my old house, the shower was better. I could tip my head backwards and close my eyes. The water would wash over the top of my head and down my back and smoothe me all out. It melded the knot at the base of my neck, and made me slippery and new.

The new shower burnt my scalp. I stood a little away from it and bent over at the hip so that only my hair went in the water. Bending over like this and wringing my hair out, I thought about it. I thought about it again when I rubbed the bar of soap between my hands so I could wash my feet. And again when I pushed my fingers between my toes. Small parts of the soap broke off and lodged themselves underneath my fingernails in little white pieces. I used my thumbs to stretch and press the soles of my feet.

It was a small thing. Like this woman who I always saw on a Saturday. She wore a hijab and a long black dress. I could never see what shoes she was wearing. She came by the canal in the morning, to the place where I sat and watched. She came with two large plastic bags full of bread crusts and other waste. She emptied them out onto the curb and clapped her hands together. Then suddenly there would be so much noise. Sheets of birds falling this way and that way over my head. The way they moved one way, and then the other. Too much together. Like video tape. Curving through a slant. More like a machine than anything I had seen in nature before. And then, falling away. As if they were flying backwards. Though I’m not really sure if they did. Fly backwards, I mean. And then all the gulls were gone and the woman was gone too. And I was left by myself, sitting on the wet park bench.

I couldn’t talk about things like that at work. Maybe it was only that it was inappropriate to talk about it in front of the students. When I came in that day I was still reeling from the picture in the magazine. I walked to the school from the train station and came in through the back door by the car park. Most people live local so there weren't many cars there. Just the head teacher’s Land Rover and a bashed up little red thing with a domed roof. The back door was open. No one was there yet except the kitchen staff. I let myself in behind the counter and put on one of the aprons from the box underneath the sink. One of the other women was already there. She had pushed up her hair underneath a hair net and put on a disposable mask. She was spraying down the surfaces with vinegar. We worked together without speaking whilst the others filtered in, still yawning. It was silent except for a ticking sound and the hum of the fridge. 

Lunch started at twelve pm. Everyone raced to find their place in the queue. The students also understood when to stop talking. They went silent when they got to the front of the line. Silent, until I said “chips or mash?” And they said chips. And I said “veggie or meat?” And they said meat. And then sidled past me to where the cakes were sitting in the metal tray. Half cake, half icing, and sprinkles. All of them took a slice. And ran to catch up with one another and trail about each other's ankles. Laughing themselves into stitches over every little thing. Folding themselves in half to clutch their sides, with their plaits and school ties swinging. Just over little things. Over every small thing. 

Still though, even when they were all gone. Even when it was just us, just us working in the kitchen. Even when it was just us women, no one talked much. We talked less in the mornings than we used to. I wondered if it was something to do with me, or whether it was something to do with everything else. Sometimes I imagined that everyone stopped talking as soon as I came in the door. There was a new girl who had seemed so full of energy when she started. Now every day she stood there, with her shoulders slung so low, scraping the large metal spoon round and round the large metal bowl. 

Since I had moved, it took me so much longer to get to work. It didn’t make sense to stay in the job really. There were other schools much closer. But I had been there so long. I had seen the students trudge through each year and grow into tall gangly things. I knew the weekly menu off by heart, and the difference between wedges and chips and herby dice. I knew how to smooth out the cake batter in the metal tray. And which teachers pushed in the queue. I knew which of the girls were anorexic and who was slicing up their arms in the toilets. The job was the only thing in my life that hadn’t changed. And even now it was changing. Slowly, it was changing. 

On the way home, I looked at my phone. The train pulled slowly out of the station. It would be a long while now until I saw my own front door. There was a family in the same carriage as me, all dressed very smart. I think I had seen them before. The little one was maybe only a couple of years old. His hair was soft and twisted in tight black coils. His dad was helping him to hang off the handrail. Scooping him up under his bottom and holding him there, up high. He waited until he reached to grip onto the handles. Such little hands. And then the boy just hung there, looking out with his wide eyes.

 It wasn’t easy to tell whether he was happy or not. He hadn’t lost that glazed over look that new-borns have. He looked straight ahead with his lips parted while his dad waited with his hands ready underneath to catch him. Eventually the little boy’s grip around the bar would weaken and he fell. His dad caught him and raised him up to grip the rail again. They played this game over and over in the hour it took me to get home. And all the while his mother, his wife watched slyly on. I felt the weight of her there beside me. Her steady tired breathing, her warm thighs spilling over in the seat. 

I walked back along the canal. In the evening, the light changed and everyone began to hold themselves differently. People walked slowly. I watched them hang their bodies off the grassy slopes. There was so much rubbish in the canal. Beer cans floated on the surface so that the water seemed solid, as if it had iced over. It wasn’t so pretty really. It was just the way the light fell. The high rises stooped over in the big sky and cast large shadows on the grass. I touched the bark of a tree. Like a starched shirt collar it was. The grainy bark of that tree. 

I stopped into the shops on the way back and when I got out it had become night suddenly. It was cooler now. The wind was combing through the grass like fingers in hair. I walked home with the plastic bags cutting rims into my wrists and forearms. The paint on the front door chipped into the dusk as I fumbled to put my key in the lock. I placed the bags on the counter and took everything out. I separated the tins from the vegetables. And the vegetables from the things to go in the freezer. I put everything away. There was no one else in the house.

Across the street, someone’s kitchen light was on. There was no one inside. The curtain was drawn, but the breeze made it float in and out of the open window, so that I could still see in. The house across the street had fresh parsley and coriander stuffed into tall glasses. They had a plastic gingham tablecloth and one of those ginormous wooden pepper pots. Their news played on their radio and the sound of it travelled into my kitchen as I cooked dinner. It floated in, past my drawn curtain, that also moved in the breeze. I listened to their news while the pasta water boiled. There was a new strike amongst the pharmacy dispensers in all the shops and hospitals. There were mass resignations in the civil service. And there, between the lines of static, there it was again. The soft part of something. The inner part, where the skin broke and turned to pus. The flesh of it, huddled in between the words. Over and over and over again. 

The curtain moved in and out of the open window. There was no one in the kitchen. I slept and dreamt and woke up at five am. I went to work again.

Part Two: Thursday 

I realised, that morning, that I had forgotten some bits at the shop, so I stopped in again on my way to the train station. There wasn't any other customers at that time. They were still putting items out on the shelves. I linked a basket round the crook of my arm and walked down the empty aisles. The milk was still in cardboard boxes in a trolley by the fridges. I edged past it. 

 I bought a coffee from the machine inside the shop and took it up to the till with the rest of my items. The cashier had good posture. Her face was sharp. When I started putting my shopping on the counter, she pointed at my coffee cup. Her nails were trimmed short. “No,” she said gesturing to her left, “you pay on that machine.” I walked back and looked at it but I couldn't figure it out. She watched me while I pressed the different buttons on the screen. “Look” she said, letting herself out from behind the counter and walking towards me. I could hear the irritation in her voice. Her shoes made a clipping sound against the tiles. “You press your card against this bit that's sticking out. You'll have to buy the same thing again now because your old order has disappeared.”  I looked back over at the till. There was nobody waiting. The plastic office chair she had been sitting on was turning slightly. The cashier smoothed down her skirt with her hands. She tapped her foot. I liked the way her ponytail was fastened tightly and perfectly. She pushed her tongue against the back of her teeth so that I’d know she was losing her patience. “But won't more coffee come out?” I said doubtfully, looking at the blank screen. So aware of how close her shoulder was to mine. The hairs on my arms were standing up. I could feel the hairs on her arm standing up. The air between us was fizzy. She shrugged and took a few steps back. “Well, either way you have to pay," she said and walked back to the counter. She did not turn back to look at me as she walked. Just brushed her hands against her skirt again, as if there were crumbs. I pressed the button for a latte and the coffee ran straight into the grate. I watched it fill and drain for a second then went back to the till and paid for everything else which, including the coffee, was twelve pounds. I fumbled to put my wallet back in my bag, then walked out of the shop with her gaze heating the back of my neck. 

That was the last time for me. The last time I had sex. The sand was so wet from the long day. It had compacted. It held all our weight and the weight of the sea. It got in all the parts of me where sand shouldn’t go. It got in my eyes. In my mouth. It got in my arsehole. It got between the folds of my labia. In my ear drum. My ear canal. In between my toes. My love put their fingers in my mouth and there was sand on their fingers. They fucked me slowly and there was sand where they fucked me. So slowly, they fucked me and still I bled from it. From all those little stones. We walked back to our tent naked and aching. The tide came in and washed us away.

I moved in summer, when all the insects are born. When I finish work, I go home and the house is empty. Or it is full of people eating. Or it is empty.

No, I think I went to work instead. I wore my hair up in a hair net and saw that my hair was turning grey. I said chips or mash. Or chips or mash. Or chips or mash. Or chips or mash. And watched the new girl stir the icing, round and round the large metal bowl.

Part Three: Friday

When I could, I got the bus home rather than the train. As the months went on, it felt like working so far away was getting more and more difficult. When I woke up, I was tired. And I was always in that moment when I woke up. Or, I was about to go to sleep again. The bus was much longer than the train, but half the price. When I took the bus, it took me over two hours to get home. Sometimes, I snuck out of work around the same time as the students. The other women knew that I lived far away and so they never complained. They nodded to me as I untied my apron and walked out of the kitchen quickly with my head down. I kept my head down in between the classrooms too, but the students didn’t care. When the bell rang they shunted through the corridors towards the open gates, not seeming to notice I was there at all.

In the morning, I left before dawn and waited for the bus in the dark. The rain was freezing and damning. There was something fun about the meanness of it and the way that everyone was angry. The bus came and it seemed so merry lit up from the inside. All reds and oranges. Like looking into people’s windows at dinner time. When I stood next to people on the bus, I watched them. I wanted to touch them. I watched their hands hold the bar and I wanted to touch their hands. I wanted to do something more than touch their hands.

A man got on in his work scrubs. He was covered in dried white paint. There were no seats left. I sat and watched him with my head resting against the metal pole. He leaned forwards with his wrists hung in the plastic handles that dangled from the yellow bar. There was something wrong, I could tell from the way he was breathing. The moment the bus pulled away he started to breathe so deeply. He repositioned himself. He put his hands on his stomach with his elbow linked around the metal pole that I was leaning against. I sat up and looked away from him, back towards the woman in front of me and her long straight hair. Still, I could hear the way he was breathing. When we turned onto the main road he started breathing harder. I could tell he was going to be sick. Then he was sick. He threw up coffee onto the floor by my feet. He hadn’t digested it. It still smelled like coffee, but sour. It had the same consistency as coffee. Just liquid and no chunks. I lifted my feet up onto the chair and tried not to look at him. I thought it might embarrass him if I looked at him. The bus drove on, and nobody spoke. We sat in silence and held our bags closer to our chests. I glanced over to the man who had vomited. He had taken out his phone and was looking at it. He shuffled his weight from one foot to the other. I wanted to put my hand on his back but I couldn't. His sick moved one way when the bus was moving and the other way each time it stopped. He got off at the next stop. I so wanted to put my hand on his back. 

There wasn’t anyone I had to comfort. I didn’t have children. There was no reason to now at my age. It wouldn’t make sense. Love had all gone wrong somewhere. I saw parts of it broken and propped up against the recycling bins. It was written on the long sloping bodies of the people walking by the canal. I came into work early that day I saw him churn up his coffee. I tied my apron tight around my waist. I peeled potatoes and pushed the sharp edge of the knife right down into my thumb. I searched on the high shelf for blue plasters. I sucked the blood out between my teeth. The morning passed numbly and in silence. 

At eleven, I took a tray of sponge cake out of the oven and placed it on the counter. This was the last tray. All the other cakes sat waiting on the counter like sheep in pens. When they cooled I would ice them and cover them in sprinkles. Then, I would cut them into equal rectangles and slot the trays into the serving table out the front. At twelve the students would line up, one by one, and jostle each other for the last dry slice. 

The cakes looked so naked without their icing. The new girl stood next to me stirring it, thick and white, in the large metal bow. I watched her for a while out of the corner of my eye. I opened my mouth to say something and then I stopped. Something stopped me. I squeezed tighter around the side of the metal tray until the skin under my fingernails changed colour.  Then I turned to her again. 

The side of her face was so closed and contained. I couldn’t believe her skin wasn’t made of something harder or more durable. I looked at her until she turned to face me. We looked at each other with our mouths closed. Then I said “have you heard?” and found I couldn’t finish my sentence. I tried again and said “have you seen?” but I couldn’t remember what it was that was propped up by the rubbish bins. Or exactly what I had seen in the newspaper. I looked at her with my tongue hanging loose in my open mouth. She looked at me and her eyes got wide. She wrinkled her nose and rubbed it with her hand. Her hand was underneath a blue glove. The glove wrinkled also. She looked at me. She said, “I wanted to tell you about this dream I had.” 

“The dream was like this: You and me, we were in this ginormous crowd. Everyone was squirming about. There were people drumming at the edges. They held the drums round their necks with big black straps and used their hands to beat them. It felt like the rhythm was coming from the centre of our heads. There were these people singing in the middle. Right by us. They were singing all together. And we knew the songs too. Though, I can’t remember the words now. And we were inside the capital. Though, no, I can’t remember the words. We couldn’t see over the tops of everyone’s heads. I was on tiptoes. And, you were holding my hand. You were, you know. You were holding my hand. And every single window was broken. Yes there wasn’t a window that wasn’t. Not one, you know. Not one. And you were with me. Do you remember it? I thought I saw you there.”

I looked at her and looked at her. She looked back at me. There was no getting past the closedness of her face. She reached to touch me and I forgot where we were. “Don’t you wish?” She said, “Don’t you wish that it wasn’t a dream?” My breath caught when she touched me on the back of my hand. I could feel the icing on her fingers. I could feel the warmth of her under her blue plastic glove. I looked at her. I looked at her and I knew she had seen it. I didn’t know how to ask her any questions. I looked at her. I felt her. The warmth of her through her blue plastic glove. I couldn’t ask her. I looked around for someone to help me but everyone was busy moving trays from one counter to another. I couldn’t meet her eyes. I turned away. And when I turned from her she snatched her hand away so violently. She slammed down the bowl so harshly onto the metal countertop that the icing flew up and landed on the floor, the countertop, my face. All the women in the kitchen stopped talking at once and looked at us. It felt like a very long time until anyone started talking again. I thought about the man on the bus. I decided I wouldn’t try and speak about things at work again.

But it had been such a long time. I watched the heels of people's feet when they walked in front of me. I watched the thinness of their eyelids when they fell asleep on the bus. I liked seeing people sleeping in public places. When people fall asleep in public they make a forcefield. In the airport because their flight has been delayed, in the park in summer, outside the pub leaning against their friend. When I watch them, something moves inside me. As if maybe I am lonely after all and it isn’t just a trick of the light.

A woman took the spot next to me on the bus and I could hear the music buzz through her headphones. Our legs spread out over the seats and the seats were blue. I looked out the window and got used to the comfortable silence between strangers who are happy ignoring each other. Then, at the next stop, some people got off and she moved. It stung that she moved the moment there was space to sit alone. I don’t know if that’s silly. The weekend goes so fast when you live alone. 

Part Three: Saturday 

It was hot that Saturday and everyone had their doors open. People walked in and out of their front gardens. It was so bright outside that my eyes needed to adjust when I came back inside –  into the cool dark hallway.  

In the evening, everyone’s doors were closed again. I trimmed my dirty nails off into the sink. The light was dingy and red. Music played from the tinny speaker on my phone. When I cut my nails too close to the skin it hurt a little. I swilled the clippings down the drain, and sat on the bathroom tile. I felt tired then, and lay back on the laminate floor. I pushed my legs up onto the wall to look at my bare feet above me. My feet were long and clean. They smelled clean, but then, the soles were so hard and covered in calluses. It made me sad and I didn’t want to look at them anymore. I curled up onto the floor and lay there for a while with my hair spread out all over the bathroom. I rested my forehead against my knees and burrowed my face into the hot cave of my lap. My vagina smelled like boiled fish. The music sounded very far away. The bathroom mirrors were polished. The filler in the wall was barely noticeable.

I took a shower and padded downstairs in my towel. I turned off the heater and the pipes clicked and hummed as they contracted. I could hear my neighbour's radio. Being wet brought me a new numb kind of tiredness. I lay on the floor of my kitchen and looked up at the ceiling. Mould was making the plaster ripple. I stayed lying there and looking up for so long that the ceiling started to ripple also. It eased into itself. And then, once alive, it started becoming other things. It looked, at first, like condensation. Like the water that drips down bathroom mirrors and the glass door of the shower. Dripping down, so that my face was millimetres from it. The ceiling moved closer. Or maybe it was that I floated upwards, my arms hanging down, to meet my ceiling that was no longer my ceiling. It shifted again. Now it looked like a bog, like a gurgling swamp, like an anthill. And then like my white legs. Goose-pimpled and covered in spots. All shivering from coming out of the shower into the cold room. I looked at the ceiling. I felt it against my cheek. My legs rippled.

And I moved. Then I was back on the floor again. I felt it, cold and solid, beneath me. I put my hands on my belly and made my breath breathe there. I scrunched my toes. I looked up at the bubbling ceiling and the inching black spores around the edges. Mould had grown and then they must have painted over the mould. Mould had grown and made the plaster ripple. Mould was creeping through the damp wood frame of the house. Now the plaster was wet and full of air. Mould was growing beneath the plaster as I sat and watched it. The plaster rippled. The ceiling changed. Watching the ceiling change like this, I knew my world would also have to change. 

Part Four: Sunday

I hand washed some of mum’s old jumpers.  I carried the laundry basket down the stairs to the kitchen on my hip. I used my hand to scoop out the green beans stuck in the drain and turned on the tap to clear out the scum. Then I filled the sink with water again and put my hand flat under the water to make small circles until the sink was full of bubbles. The socks went in first, and then her large woollen jumpers that were black and navy and full of holes. I pushed them all down under the cold water and watched them change. Now that the clothes were wet they stopped being clothes and started being fabric. When I pushed and squeezed them between my fingers I was afraid they would come apart. The patterns on them seemed silly and sad now they were so fragile. I left them to soak and went upstairs to rest. 

When I came back down the water was dirty. I put my hand under all the wet cloth to find the plug hole. I drained the sink. While the water cleared I wrung out the socks and the jumpers and placed them back in the laundry basket. Then I filled up the sink again. 

I had saved her cashmere scarf for last. It was the lightest green I could imagine. So light that it seemed that the sun was always shining on it. Even when the sun was not shining anywhere at all. I had never seen her wear it. I just found it at the bottom of the bag she had given me. When I asked her about it she shrugged and I didn’t ask again. I saved it for last because it was beautiful. I wanted to see it alone under the cool water. I held my breath when I put it in. It was so precious that it felt as if it might suddenly come apart as soon as it touched the water. Of course, it didn’t. It just turned wet like all the others. And floated there, filling up the whole kitchen with light. I watched it while it soaked. The water became clearer and clearer.  My hands under the water became clearer too. Until my fingers down to the first knuckle were completely transparent. The scarf did not change at all. Just sat and soaked up the water in the sink. 

At the back of the house, there was a stone courtyard with a washing line. I walked out with my washing basket. I clipped up each wet sock and jumper with plastic pegs and stroked them where they hung. I had washed her clothes with shampoo so as not to make them shrink. It had made the clothes so soft. Licks of hair rose up from her jumpers and went golden in the sun. It was a perfect washing day. I remember. Wind was rushing through the garden. It made currents in the light. The sun shone directly onto the stone so that I had to squint. It was so bright that everything looked crisp and surreal. Like a memory. An urgent memory.  As if I had been dropped right into the centre of something I was in the process of forgetting. The wind was gathering round the moment. The bright crisp moment. It was tearing it away. Dandelions grew up between the cracks in the stone.

I put my hand over my eyes to block out the sun. I looked up, over the fence. There, in the light, was everyone’s washing lines. There were jumpers slung across balconies and over the top of fences. The sleeves were waving in the wind. Over the tops of the fat green bushes, someone had stretched out their bedsheets. The wind pushed up beneath them. They looked like jellyfish, floating up towards the sun. In all the little stone gardens, people had dragged out their drying racks. Plastic awkward things. They had hung their children's uniforms there so neatly.  Smoothing out the shoulders of those tiny white shirts. And the stripey ties tied tight around the fence posts. And the tea towels falling off the line and into plant plots. And the dressing gowns flapping in the wind. If I close my eyes, I can still see them there. The sun was so bright, it made red ghosts of them. 

So many washing lines. Victorious washing lines. With rows of pants and socks all dancing in the wind. I can't remember what I needed to tell you. But there is something between us. We are not living here alone.