Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

The soft search of mouth on mouth gave way to a scramble for clothes. She watched Bryn snatch up his jeans and writhe them up his legs. The duvet, churned by their lovemaking, was now hurled up like a breaking wave as his fingers rooted for Manon’s pants.

   The front door clicked shut and her sister was intuited as removing her coat and scarf, with the ursine deliberation that characterised all Carys’s movements, her mind being vaguely elsewhere. She would be standing before the large mirror in the hall, humming, pinning up strands of hair, turning her head this way and that.

   Meanwhile the bedroom was speechless mayhem. Bryn was someone else now. She thought he would have hefted her out of the window if he could. The one half of his face didn’t add up with the other. There were two of him, palsied in relation to one another, as he stabbed a glance at Manon, taking in nothing but the extent of her undress.

   With splayed fingers he opened the neck of her T-shirt and rammed it over her head. He unrolled her socks with caggy fingers. Thrust them on the bed beside her. Pointed to them, glaring. Manon choked on a giggle. Furious, he put his hand over her mouth and it killed her laughter, for he’d done that before, with an opposite meaning; stopped her mouth to muffle the rasping in her throat.

   Downstairs, moccasined footsteps shuffled into the sitting room, paused, came out again, padded into the kitchen. Bryn stood, fully dressed, hair on end, with his ear to the bedroom door, hand on the knob. Manon pulled her socks on.

   ‘She’ll make herself a cup of tea,’ he whispered. ‘Always does. I’m out the window. Give me two minutes on the flat roof. Then go down the stairs - make a kerfuffle - bang about - I’ll bugger off. Be back in a couple of hours. Just pray to God Mrs Stasi Parry isn’t on the watch.’

   Giggles griped in Manon’s throat again, painful mirthless spasms. If he were caught up there? If Mrs Parry were looking down with dull eyes from her bedroom? If Carys, happening to peer out, should view her husband teetering across the kitchen roof?

                                         *

Carys was sitting at the kitchen table with a pot of tea, a plate of custard creams and a letter in which she was deeply absorbed, as she sucked tea out of a biscuit. She looked up as her sister clattered down the stairs and Manon glimpsed the perplexity of her face frozen in the gap between jamb and open door as if in a camera-still. And why, dressed in such a sloppy way in baggy green pullover and loose trousers, with her hair piled up anyhow on her head, Carys could be so arresting, stymied Manon.

   ‘Hey! Is there tea?’

   ‘Hi. Where did you spring from?’

   ‘Bryn let me in. Then he cleared off. Said to tell you he’d be in for tea. Thought I’d have a lie-down and just nodded off.’

   Of course, she thought, Carys knows when I’m lying, because she knows everything about me, but she doesn’t necessarily know why I’m lying. She doesn’t know what I’ve been doing. Doesn’t know where his fingers have been, or his tongue, or how I exulted, You’re mine! But the moment she remembered thinking mine! (taking a custard cream to dunk it in her tea, as they had as kids, perched on the end of their parents’ bed) the tense excitement waned, its flame sank low, for she thought, He’s yours - far more.

   ‘Help yourself,’ said Carys drily as Manon wolfed biscuits. ‘Why don’t you? God, you’re a greedy cow, Manon.’ But her attention was not really on her sister: it was clearly on the letter she’d shoved in her trouser pocket.

   ‘Who’s the letter from?’

   ‘Nosy. Do you remember fighting over the strawberries?’

   ‘I was sick.’

   ‘Yes. You won.’

   She tossed Manon a hazy, mildly scathing look. Manon was appalled at the beauty of her sister’s eyes, the fulness of her lips, her breasts. There was no competing with that. That womanliness. Manon had been short, slight, like a boy, from the beginning. No flesh on her, nothing to her. The contrast showed in all the family photos. Ah, cariad, you’re a little fawn, aren’t you? mam had said. Gamin is what you are. They’d named Manon for beauty and Carys for love: but the elder sister had somehow monopolised both. Manon had stood in Carys’s lee like an urchin who’d somehow tagged along. And adored Carys with a helpless, envious passion. Manon had made sure she’d got the strawberries, stuffing her cheeks with fruit, gorging them, juice running down her chin.

   Carys had watched, eating daintily, dreamily, with pensive and benign wonderment that a small creature could nourish such farfetched greed.

   Why had she reminded her about the strawberries, Manon wondered. And had Bryn got away? Was that juddering noise Bryn jumping down from the roof or just nextdoor’s mog scrambling over the fence? (He didn’t come but I did, ha! Pays him back for that nasty look he gave me in those concussed minutes, as if to ask, What am I doing here with you? what do I want with you?)

   Of course, be fair, she thought, he probably thought nothing of the sort, that’s just your insecurity putting an interpretation on his justifiable panic. Wouldn’t there be an odour in the room? stains on her nice stuff? Oh dear. But the thought aroused her. A corrupt frisson, followed by a pang of contrition. She watched Carys at the window quietly standing with folded arms looking out at the blustery afternoon, and thought, with a qualm, Oh Carys you’re getting old. Her sister was putting on weight. She could have been described as stout.

   That was awful. Stout? Carys? But look at her back view. What did people - strangers - think when they passed Carys or sat opposite her on the train? Did they still catch their breath and swerve, gaze again?

   Carys said, ‘God, doesn’t it get dark early, Manon? Gives me the
collywobbles, this time of year.’

   Manon at her elbow put up a stray strand of Carys’s hair. Her hand lingered at the nape of her sister’s neck, and she stroked the tender, vulnerable place with light fingers. Yet even as she was feeling the intimate tenderness that wished for Carys to be delivered from all conceivable wrongs and sadness, electricity still discharged itself along her veins. The current glowed blue in the forked veins of wrists, of breasts, and she shivered with the sensation of carrying her brother-in-law’s touch all over her body. She felt deliciously unclean, and how on earth could Carys not tell?

   She was slow, Carys. That was it. Manon could always dart ahead, for she was fleet of mind and Carys was, well, not quite dense, no, because she was intelligent and perceptive, but abstracted. Her mind was not on one thing, or not centrally: it ran tangentially and drew offbeat conclusions.

   ‘Where did Bryn say he was going?’

   ‘He didn’t. At least, I don’t think he did. Seemed in a big hurry
though.’

   ‘What was he wearing? His work suit?’

   ‘I don’t think so.’

   ‘Not being funny, Manon, but what did you come over for?’

   ‘Oh, just a goss. I miss you, Carys. Don’t you know I miss you?’ A treacherous blush began to spread like a rash across her forehead and cheeks.

   ‘Not really.’ Carys stared. ‘Do you really?’

   ‘Well, yes.’

   ‘That’s nice then. Why don’t we catch up with supper in front of the box, Manon? Really pig out. I’ve got loads of gorgeous scoff in the fridge.’

   There were party things like dips and sausage rolls. Raspberries and strawberries: a huge bowl of red fruit, enough, Manon thought, for a dinner party, in a beautiful glass dish. Chocolate fudge cake. A feast of sweet stuff. Carys was comfort-eating? Was that it?

   ‘Is this why you were on about the strawberries?’ Manon carried the bowl to the kitchen table. Under the swinging lamp, the blood colour of the fruits shone out, their plump succulence suggesting that they were just on the verge of over-ripeness. Thick cream in another bowl. A shaker of sugar.

   ‘But who’s it all for?’

   Carys picked up a strawberry between thumb and finger, dabbed it in sugar, dipped it in cream and popped it in her sister’s mouth. Something in the canny sensuality of the gesture made Manon recoil. She thought, I don’t know you. After all, you’re a stranger. It was a version of an ancient doubt, which had its roots in the dawn of the realisation that Carys had been in the world nearly five years before Manon had entered it. Carys had got there first, installed herself as possessor of their home and parents. The younger sister toddled in her wake with an anxious absence of bearings and definition. Carys had never been cruel. No, she had been lovely. Serenely caring. But Manon had seen, and could never forget, Carys whispering in a huddle of friends, or (worse) in conspiracy with mam, and not been let in on the secret.

   ‘For you, if you want them?’

   ‘What?’

   ‘Wake up. You asked who the scoff was for.’

   ‘But you can’t have meant to eat them all yourself? Or even ourselves?’ Her voice came lunging out so fiercely that she seemed to be accusing Carys of something clandestine.

   ‘What if I did?’

   ‘Oh - nothing.’

   ‘God, what a Puritan you are, Manon. It’s only delicious if it’s verboten with you, isn’t it?’

   So she knew. She must know. And didn’t seem angry.

   No, she couldn’t know. White and faint, Manon dumped cream on berries and began to spoon them in. ‘To die for,’ she said with her mouth full. She tongued the red pulp of the fruit, the particles of sugar-sweetness, the comforting ooze of cream, as if they’d just been invented. ‘Oh God, I can’t stop,’ she said. ‘Have you got any wine to go with?’

   ‘Hang on. Here we are. Not for me.’

                                         *

‘Stuffing your faces, I see. All right for some.’

   Bryn made a palaver of carrying in several cardboard crates. The new computer and printer, he said; he’d decided to collect them himself. Would set it up in the study. Manon melted at the sight of him; she looked him over thoroughly, her tongue out, licking cream off the back of the spoon. Actually she was beginning to feel a bit green round the gills, as you did at binges, but there was still room for the chocolate cake. She took a swig of red wine, rolling it round her tongue. Carys was getting old and fat. Now was her time, Manon’s. Your time did come. If you waited. Sad, she was sad for Carys. There was a delicious, rich relish of guilt in relation to her. Manon looked at Carys and smiled with phoney complicity. Said to Bryn, ‘Pity you’re never around when there’s grub, Bryn.’

   ‘Oh, I’m used to leftovers,’ he said through the open study door.

   ‘Charming,’ said Carys.

   ‘No offence meant.’

   ‘Ah, you poor dab, are you all left out?’

   The brittleness of their voices made Manon’s ears prick up. Generally they were so comfortable with one another, Manon’s idea of a happy couple; and she recalled how often she’d slunk round here in the midst of some man-crisis and warmed her hands on them, basking on the hearth rug while Bryn teased her and Carys stroked her hair.

   They never seemed to use that room now.

   Those two, they had been so at one, with oodles of affection to spare, that even when taking comfort from their partnership, Manon had itched to smash a hole through it. Their hearth had reminded her that a loving and enduring marriage was possible; at the same time, it had witnessed against her own volatility, her serial drift from one fruitless liaison to the next.

   But now it alarmed her, to see Carys’s sly, inward look, her forefinger inserting itself unconsciously into the pocket where the letter was.

   ‘I hope you know how we’re going to pay for all that computer-stuff, Bryn,’ she said sharply.

   ‘What is it?’ Manon hissed to her sister, leaning forward.

   ‘What’s what?’

   ‘What’s up? Had a row?’

   ‘Ever heard us row?’ Carys cut twin wedges out of the chocolate fudge cake. ‘Pass your plate across, guts. Here you are.’ The thick gooey cake looked to Manon’s nauseated eye like a slab of saturated peat.

   ‘God,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I can.’

   ‘You feeling umpty?’

   ‘A bit.’

   ‘You feel sick! What do you think I feel?’

   There was a confused silence. In its void Manon looked over at her sister forking in the cake, and all she wanted, all she had ever wanted, it burst upon her, was Carys’s attentive love. But Carys just went on serenely eating, as if, now that the rich cake was on the table, in full view, she obeyed an imperative to store it away inside herself. ‘Aren’t you going to help me out?’ she asked sweetly.

   ‘I’d better go,’ said Manon in a raw voice and scraped her chair back. She could hear the pattering of computer keys through the door, synthetic noises from the speakers, and had a sense of Bryn’s devious truancy. ‘You don’t want me here. Obviously.’

   ‘Whyever not? It’s not your problem.’

   Manon stared. She felt as if her eyes were bulging, and hectic impatience gathered to have it out in the open once and for all. Nothing could be worse than this power-game of Carys’s, which she did not understand, playing cat and mouse with her husband and sister. Bait was on the table; a great soft paw raised to strike.

   ‘Look, Carys, if you want to talk - .’

   ‘Shut the door then.’

                                         *

‘Ifor Harris? So all this - all this - has nothing to do with me at all?’ Manon’s voice came out peevish, petulant, as if she’d been left out of some treat cooked up by her elders. She had made no difference to Carys and Bryn, or scarcely any. Carys sat at the window, arms cradling her belly, quiet, dignified and far-away-eyed, like a Madonna. But surely, Manon’s thoughts raced, she should be relieved. She’d been let off the hook. She could have everything she’d greedily and enviously wanted - this house, that husband - if Carys was seriously intending to leave Bryn and go off to ‘be a family’ with Ifor. (What could she see in Ifor Harris for God’s sake? a more crashing bore it would be hard to find but hidden depths was how Carys’s contralto voice described him, wobbling with emotion). But where would they live? How long would it last? They were so obviously unsuited, it was just a joke. A menopausal aberration.

   ‘How could it have anything to do with you?’

   Manon shrank into herself. She felt sick to her stomach.

   ‘I thought ....’

   ‘What?’

   ‘You were jealous,’ Manon mumbled.

   ‘Of?’

   ‘Well - of the fact that Bryn has a bit of a thing for me.’

   ‘Really?’

   ‘But you ought to know, it means nothing, truly, truly.’

   ‘No, cariad. Sorry. It’s nothing to do with that. I’m happy for you
both.’

   ‘But Ifor!’

   ‘Okay, he’s not your type.’ She was evidently offended. Where Manon saw a balding head, a tall, dull guy with eye-magnifying specs, Carys saw enchantment; she endowed him with a glow, so that his ordinariness was transformed, like leaves in low sunlight.

   ‘But what about Bryn?’

   ‘Oh, that’s all over. Been over for years.’

   ‘For years?’

   ‘Goodness, Manon, don’t pretend you didn’t know. We’ve just been coasting along, putting up with each other. The marriage is dead.’

   ‘But does he know?’

   ‘About Ifor? Aye, he knows. He knows all right. You are his revenge, bach, I suppose. Pathetic, isn’t it? I know you always fancied him rotten, so I didn’t make a fuss. Of course he’s so anal, such a narcissist, he hasn’t twigged that I realise - at least I don’t think he has - thinks it’ll even things out. Thing is,’ she paused, pensive, ‘the thing is, I can’t think what I ever saw in him. Does that shock you, Manon? After all these years. What do you see in him? Actually? Remind me.’ She gazed into her sister’s craven, cringing eyes as if she genuinely sought enlightenment.

   Bryn appeared in the doorway. He lounged there, all six foot two of him. Manon glanced, then turned away. She gripped the wine-bottle with both hands and blew an annoying one-note tune across the mouth. Bryn could lounge all he liked. Bryn was anal, his wife should know. There wasn’t a part of him she hadn’t madly licked, fingered, brushed and pressed her body against. But Manon was unsurprised to find that she had no further use for him. Had already disposed of him. She needed a shower.

   He brushed past her and reached into the fridge for a beer, which he took into his study, closing the door, to Manon’s relief.

   ‘He’s a nice guy, Ifor,’ she told Carys, who swivelled in her chair, one arm crooked on its back, to peer out into the twilit garden. Thinking about this new lover, Manon really could begin to intuit the qualities Ifor might have. Shyness and - what would you call it? - his courtesy, which was the real thing - an interest in what you had to say. Sincerity held an attraction way beyond handsomeness. And part of her had always known that this was the kind of guy she needed.

   She put her hand out to her sister. ‘He’s a lovely man, Carys. I’m
happy for you. What are you thinking, cariad?’

   ‘Elderly primagravida,’ said Carys. ‘That’s what I’m down as. In the notes. I’ve not been sick once.’