Twisted and Bittersweet

There had been snow that week, and this morning the sky seemed heavy with the same. The swollen grays and whites above did little to redeem the surrounding concrete tenement blocks, which rose stolidly upwards from crumbling 5-a-side football pitches and bare, withdrawing forecourts.

‘Looks even uglier in the winter, Dean’s Court.’ Said Laura, looking up at the apartments.

Mal, her friend, a middle aged woman with short, badly cut hair and a lanky frame, was rummaging through a couple of plastic shopping bags.

‘Why don’t you move then, you silly cow?’ She said, ‘Come move in nearer me.’

‘Dave don’t wanna move.’ Laura replied.

Mal fished out a small bottle of store brand whisky and breathed some heat onto on her hands, before opening it without ceremony. Sipping it, she handed it to Laura and crossed her arms in close to her chest.

‘He has mates at the Lion, I suppose…’ Mal burped, ‘And in the warehouse. But if you’re so bloody miserable, you know, what ‘ave you got in this bit of London? Come live in East Ham, near me.’

‘Me and you, next door to each other? Do me a favor, Mal.’ Laura scoffed bitterly to herself and watched the steam from her breath rise up to join the many belches of the city’s roaring, metallic sub-terrain. Behind them, the noises of Croydon’s early morning commute were stirring. Soon the street would be roused, frenzied into productivity by the familiar urban cacophonies of London: bus doors, car horns, distant train announcements.

‘What are you sayin’?’ Mal said, turning to her friend: ‘What’s so fuckin’ ridiculous about that? I’m a fucking joke to you, am I?’

‘No, you ain’t a fuckin’ joke,’ Laura replied, ‘I don’t want a fuckin’ argument, Mal.’

‘You said that like I was fuckin' bad for ya!’

Laura was silent. As she looked up, an airplane soared across the skies.

‘Who d’you reckon’s on that plane up there?’ She asked, after a time. Mal had been staring at her, her brown teeth rounding off a grimace with macabre flourish. She tutted, and shook her head slightly without looking up.

‘Italy.’ She said, waving a hand dismissively, ‘Whoever they is, they’re goin’ to Italy. Off to Genoa airport.’ She fidgeted, fingering in her pocket, before revealing a creased packet of cigarettes: ‘Wanna fag?’

Laura took one and kept her eyes on the plane.

‘You always say bloody Italy.’

‘I told ya. I tell ya every week. Me and Gianni. That summer, in the-’

‘The Cinque Terre! I fuckin know, alright? Pick a new one. Let’s have a new one today. Somewhere you wanna go, not somewhere you been.’ Laura breathed out some smoke and watched the besuited commuters leave their apartments for work that day. She scowled.

‘Well I’m fuckin sorry if I like to remember it,’ Mal continued, ‘’specially surrounded by all this concrete and bullshite. He had a body like Peter Andre, Gianni. We did it everywhere, you know….’

‘I fuckin know, Mal, you’re always bloody…’

‘The beach, the forests, the moped! We did it in the park once, broad daylight, nobody batted an eyelid. We weren’t obvious though, you know, I had a skirt on. He told me to wear no knickers and that, undid his fly. He was summin’, that lad.’

A silence emerged.

‘He cheated on me like they all do, fucking Italians. I tell you mate, I reckon none of ‘em are faithful. They’re all shaggin each other’s wives over there.’

‘Did you care about the cheatin'?’ Laura said, with an air of nonchalance. She had heard about Mal’s time with men before. In Ireland, Italy, East London. She was tiring of the repetition.

‘Did I…you what?’ Mal replied.

‘Don’t pretend you’re shocked Mal for fuck’s sake. It were what, thirty odd years ago?’

Mal stared at Laura with a characteristic look of outrage, before the faux-fury of her expression cracked into a smile. She laughed, taking a sip of whisky: ‘You know what Laurs, I reckon deep down I didn’t! Christ, I pretended I was so bloody hurt, Laurs!’ She laughed again, before coughing: ‘We couldn’t even bloody talk to each other properly!’

She took another sip of whisky: ‘...and oh God the bloody fight we ‘ad! We screamed and I threw plates, he held me arms…’ Mal held her hands up in front of her face, acting out a scene of domestic struggle with her arms stiff, and her fists clenched, ‘I hit him a few times, not hard. Just…well, it was like a fuckin scene from a play. Took us about an hour. Then…’

‘Then you shagged.’ Laura said, grinning. Mal nodded.

‘Played me like a fuckin fiddle, didn't he? But did I care? Na.’

Laura shook her head and breathed more smoke up and into the fathomless sky. It disappeared quickly, and she sighed.

‘D’you know what, too?’ Mal continued, sitting up, and more animated now, ‘I never told nobody this…’ She stubbed her cigarette out on the wintry concrete and crossed her arms. Behind her a traffic light beeped loudly and sharp, and she winced and turned, appealing with her arms:

‘Fuck you, you fuckin’ nuisances! I hear that every fuckin’ morning, you know that!?’ She turned to Laura, her hands a blur of aggravated gesticulations: ‘Every fuckin’ day at half six some twat presses the button outside my place! As if there’s traffic at half six in the fuckin’ mornin! Just cross the fuckin road! Honestly mate, some people! I reckon they’d jump off a fuckin cliff if the fuckin government told ‘em too!’

Laura laughed and turned to her friend, who softened as the abrasive alarms from the traffic lights ceased, and the comparatively smooth onrush of traffic took its place. Mal shivered slightly and closed her eyes:

'Someone’s walking’ over my grave this mornin’', She said.

‘You were about to tell us summin,’ Laura said to her: ‘Summin you ain’t told nobody before.’

Mal’s opened one eye and looked at Laura, before she smiled.

‘So I was! Bloody hell, right. Right so yeah, Gianni and me. So…so yeah, anyways I finished me rep work out there in the cities. I stopped seeing him after a while. He was shaggin’ everythin’ that moved, Laurs.’

‘Bloody Italians, eh?'

‘Bloody Italians, too right mate.’ Laura took another sip of whisky. ‘So anyways one evenin’ I see him down the club. We ‘ad a barney, he had his hands all over us. I told him I was leavin’ Italy and that was the end of that. He asked us how long and I said two days.’

Laura nodded.

‘He asks us to come back to ‘is place that night, and puts his hands on me to try and drag us there. So I turn around, in front of all his mates, and slap him. Bloody hard at that.’

Mal lit another cigarette and took a pause, before breathing the smoke out, up and high, into the brisk morning air.

‘And so I leave. Next day I get my shit together, pack and that, when all of a sudden, my doorbell rings. It’s a courier with a box downstairs, a flat, square box, right? So I bring it in. There’s a note. Summin’ in Italian. I open it up, and inside is a slice of chocolate cake, a bottle of Guinness, and a corkscrew.’

‘What?’ Laura prompted, ‘From Gianni?’

‘Well I presumed as much, yeah. So anyway I’m sitting there lookin at it, and my Italian mate is helpin’ us get packed and she sees me stooped over it on the floor of me flat. She comes over.

‘'What’s that?’ She says, and I say it’s from an Italian lad here in Genoa. Then she reads the card and smiles and says ‘I take it you two are not happy now, yes?’’ Mal smiled herself, taking a drink of whisky and smacking her lips.

‘So what did the card say?’ Laura asked.

‘It said this, right...’ Mal turned to her with a grin on her face and put her hands up, as if putting the words up in lights: ‘It said: ‘I want you to pour the Guinness on the cake, and eat it with the corkscrew. Because though you may seem sweet, you are actually bitter and twisted.’’

Laura burst out laughing, and Mal joined in.

‘What an arse!’ Laura spluttered.

‘The bloody plonker!’ Mal concurred, laughing, ‘Oh god!’ she said, holding her forehead in teary-eyed hysterics: ‘I’d almost forgotten that bloody twat and that cake! Thank God!’

They laughed again, for a few minutes, before the laughter died down into the contented sighs that follow such intimate levities, and stories like the one Mal had told, of old, forsaken lovers and youthful, misdirected passions. ‘Thank God for stuff like that, eh?’ Mal said, slouching back into the bench they sat on.

‘What do you mean?’ Laura asked.

Mal looked up at the sky and saw another plane silently gliding off and away. She shivered, and looked at Laura, who was staring back at her.

‘I dunno. It just makes me heart sing a bit, even now, sitting here in this shit hole with you, thinkin' about that.’

They looked down for a little while, until Mal eased her body across to Laura and nudged her playfully. Looking up and checking their whisky bottle, the two women stared up at the obdurate tenement block, in a sort of muted reverie. Schoolchildren in winter coats were skidding by precariously on the icy pavements, and above them, the sky, which had teased more snow all morning, finally obliged.