About a Girl Page 11

  Further up the beach, we discovered a kind of hut that someone had built, tucked into the edge of a dune. It had a low, domed roof made of palm fronds and casuarina branches, and the front was open to the sea. Flynn crawled in and said, ‘We don’t even need to pitch a tent. We can sleep here.’

  I crawled in beside her. The roof had a few holes where some of the branches had come away, but it was shady, a contrast to the glare of the beach. Outside, the sun glinted off the sea. I lay back on the cool sand, and closed my eyes.

  We spent the greater part of the afternoon patching up the roof of the shelter. With that done, we wandered along the beach under the casual eyes of the fishermen, picking up shells and stones and putting them down again. Flynn could spend ages simply standing ankle-deep in water staring out to sea. She was so absorbed by her surroundings that I felt she didn’t need me at all. I craved her touch, and her conversation, but she was as aloof as one of the seagulls that patrolled the shoreline.

  Later, she collected sticks to make a campfire up behind the dunes; I could smell it as I stood at the edge of the water idly watching the last of the fishermen pack up and leave the beach. The sky had turned the deep blue that comes before the black of night. Turning around, I saw a few secret wisps of smoke.

  ‘I bet you used to play cowboys and Indians,’ I said, when I went up and saw Flynn fanning the flames and putting on some heavier wood. ‘Let me guess. You were always the Indian.’

  Flynn only smiled at me vaguely.

  We put our bedding into the shelter while there was still enough light to see, and then Flynn remembered her fire, and raced back up to tend it.

  Camping was new to me, but she had organised everything. There was plenty of food – vegetables and rice and tinned fish, with mangoes for dessert. We ate pretty much in silence, and I wondered why Flynn had invited me here.

  When the fire died down, she threw her mango seed, sucked clean, into the coals, took a notebook from her bag and said, ‘I’m going to sit on the dunes.’ I followed her. Staring out to sea, she scribbled in the dark.

  ‘What are you writing?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m writing down what the sea says.’ She sounded passionate and energetic, a little off-kilter. I felt lost and irrelevant.

  I sat with her and listened to the sea for a while, though I couldn’t have put what it said into words. After a while I got up and walked along the beach, thinking that I should not have come. I wanted to walk along the beach with her, to talk, simply to be with her. I stayed away for a long time, feeling unwanted, hurt, unloved.

  But when I got back she said, ‘Where were you? I was starting to get worried.’ And she drew me to her and kissed me.

  All my worries melted away. I held her close, listening to the roar of the waves, and it seemed that we were all in the world that existed, just the two of us.

  ‘Come to bed,’ she said. So we crawled into the hut, got comfortable under the blankets, and lay looking out at the light on the water. Flynn took my hand.

  And all the time there was the throb and roar of the water and the scent of damp sand, so that I was enveloped by sensation.

  In the middle of the night I got cold, and hunted in the dark for some warmer clothes. When I came back to bed Flynn’s arms folded me in, and I lay listening to her breathing. After a while, she rolled over and away from me, and I rested the side of my head on the back of her neck. I became aware that her breathing had changed, and knew she was crying.

  But I didn’t ask why, and we fell asleep eventually, rocked by the rhythm of the waves, which sounded so close that we might be engulfed at any moment.

  Chapter Seven

  IN THE MORNING, while Flynn collected sticks to start a fire, I stole a look in her notebook to see what she had written the night before. I still had the urge to know more about her than she ever told me, and after all, she had left it open.

  I read:

  a roar a roar arah aroo, gloom, boom, garoom

  Shoo

  Sham

  shirsh

  Plowsh

  Shhh

  Plosh

  Ah boom

  tears

  sorrow

  regret

  despair

  heartache

  loss

  We made toast on the campfire, and ate it sitting at the top of the dunes, squinting our eyes against the glare. With the sun not far above the horizon, it felt new, like the first sun, the original sun, the only sun that had risen over the earth. When Flynn stripped off and ran down to the waves, I followed her, and met the icy water with a shudder. She went out so far for so long that I thought she’d floated away. Aware of people already walking along the beach, I put my clothes back on and waited under the canopy of our little hut. The day was already hot. From the shade, the light striking the sand was incandescent.

  She came in as though washed clean of anything that had ever troubled her, and we stayed at the beach till it was almost night. We walked along the sand together, ate a lunch of tinned beans, bread and chocolate biscuits, slept it off in the shelter, and then went into the water again. Wind and water and sunlight swept over me, and I gave myself over to it all. I abandoned words, and allowed whatever I was experiencing to fill my head. I forgot to brood, worry, analyse – I forgot to think. I lived for the moment and in the moment. I was happy.

  On the way home I looked across at Flynn. How I loved her! Her smooth brown skin and black hair caught up roughly in a ponytail, the intent way she kept her eyes on the road, glancing every so often into the rear-view mirror. She must have sensed me looking, because she glanced across at me and smiled. I thought about the words she’d scribbled last night in the dark and imagined the last ones, like a shopping list for grief, tattooed on my skin.

  After we got back from camping at the beach, she became obsessed with writing songs. I knew that it was a private thing for her, and never asked to see what she’d written. But I remember her saying fervently, bending her head to her instrument, ‘I want to do this as much as I can. Because one day I’ll be dead, and I won’t be able to do it anymore.’

  She took great pains, and it irritated and tortured her, this getting a song right. In the end, no one might be aware of the time she had taken in creating it, but she would know – and she would know if she was pleased with what she had made. And perhaps this was the most important thing I got from Flynn, this knowledge that a song, or anything, is not a small thing for the person making it.

  It was Sunday, a week after we’d camped at the beach, and I was lounging on Flynn’s bed, headphones on. Flynn was on the roof, writing, strumming, then she appeared at the window. ‘It’s my mother. I’ll have to go and let her in.’

  ‘How do you know?’ I pulled the headphones off.

  ‘She came to the lane and called. She knows I’m often out on the roof when no one answers the door.’

  Flynn leaned her guitar in a corner, pushed her hair behind her ears, and checked her face in the mirror, looking troubled. I straightened our tangled night-time bed of glee and bliss, straightened myself, and by the time Flynn came back with her mother I was perched on the windowsill, legs dangling, like someone popped round for a casual chat.

  ‘Mum, this is Anna. Anna – my mother, Patricia.’

  ‘Hello, Anna,’ Patricia said, shaking my hand. Hers was very soft, quite friendly. She had a kind, rather plump and pretty face, but there were deep lines at the corners of her mouth, and shadows under her eyes that make-up didn’t entirely conceal.

  She looked at Flynn and smiled regretfully. ‘I called round last weekend but you weren’t here.’

  ‘You should ring first.’

  ‘Your phone’s hardly ever switched on.’

  ‘Hello? Message bank?’ said Flynn. She picked up her guitar from where she’
d hastily left it and put it carefully on its stand. ‘We should go out for a coffee or something.’

  ‘Or breakfast,’ said Patricia. ‘Have you eaten?’ She turned to include me in her question.

  We decided to head over to North Lismore to one of the few cafés that would be open on a Sunday morning. Flynn led the way and her mother and I walked along behind.

  ‘Are you a student, Anna?’ Patricia asked, as we crossed the bridge in blazing sunlight. The glare from the water made me squint my eyes.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I work in a bookshop.’

  ‘Is that interesting? I always thought I’d like to run a bookshop, but probably all passionate readers fantasise about that at some time.’

  We talked on. Flynn’s mother was the sort of woman used to making people feel at ease. Asking someone about themselves came naturally to her. And yet I was aware all the time of a weight inside her. Her face was deeply sorrowful, and though she responded to my answers as though she was listening, a part of her was absent. She seemed like someone to whom something dreadful had happened.

  At the café, we sat out the back. Looking at the menu, I realised that I couldn’t eat a thing, but I ordered a muffin anyway, for appearances’ sake. Flynn asked for a muffin as well, without even bothering to look at the menu.

  ‘Just a muffin?’ said her mother. ‘Two big girls like you? My treat. Look – free-range organic eggs on sourdough, any way you like.’

  But we shook our heads, and she herself only ordered a flat white with skim milk.

  Our order arrived. I sipped and nibbled, pulling the muffin apart and putting it reluctantly into my mouth. I couldn’t help feeling that I shouldn’t be there. I was just tagging along. Her mother had come to see Flynn, and I was somewhat in the way, though nothing she did or said implied that in the least.

  I hadn’t expected that Flynn would have come out to her mother, and told her that she had a girlfriend, but all the time there was an awful undertone of something kept hidden. I was just a friend, though I always wondered whether people could tell what was between us. That day I was very careful not to touch Flynn, or even look at her for too long, in case I betrayed something.

  And I can’t even remember much of what we said – it was all just chat – except that at one stage her mother turned to Flynn and said, ‘When’s Rocco coming home?’

  And Flynn just brushed it aside. She shrugged and said quickly, ‘I don’t know,’ and turned the conversation to something else.

  All the way back to Flynn’s place I wondered, Who’s Rocco? He might have been some casual acquaintance. Or was he the boy in the photo?

  When we got back to the flat, we stopped at the foot of the stairs and Patricia said she must get home. ‘It was lovely to meet you, Anna. Get Flynn to bring you out to our place some time.’ She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.

  Flynn gave me the key, and I went up to the flat so she could see her mother off. She took some time, and I had to fight the impulse to have another look at the picture of the boy in Flynn’s drawer. Impatiently, I looked around me. Seeing the guitar sitting there on its stand, I picked it up.

  It had never occurred to me to even touch Louise. My brother played guitar, but they were a mystery to me. I stood there and hefted the guitar’s weight, felt the sheer mass of the solid body. It had a slight curve, like a human figure, but it did not easily fit with my own body. It felt awkward. And the strings: how did musicians coax a voice from these things? And yet I loved the music they made – it could be sublime.

  ‘I don’t know, Louise,’ I said. ‘I give up. How do you do it?’

  Louise remained inscrutable. In some ways I felt that that guitar was my rival, vying for Flynn’s attention, whose ear was very often bent to listen with grave attention to what Louise said, rather than to what I was feeling.

  Ridiculous to be jealous of a guitar! I put it back on its stand, switched on the CD player and plugged in the headphones. When Flynn finally got back I was apparently engrossed in music.

  Chapter Eight

  ONE NIGHT I found myself with Flynn and Caleb, driving down a dark country road to an old wooden hall on the ridge of a hill. On the way, the headlights cut a swathe through the tall nodding grass that lined the road. Caleb drove, and Flynn sat in the seat next to him and bit into her lips with anxiety.

  ‘So,’ said Caleb. ‘You’re playing the new song?’

  Flynn nodded. I hunched forward in the back, listening to their conversation, which seemed coded: musicians’ talk.

  The hall thronged with people, many of them clutching instruments. Each would play two songs, so it was clear that the session could go on all night. I sat in the dark beside Flynn while she waited her turn, watching the other performers. When I placed my hand on her arm, I felt how her skin burned before she shook me away. I could see that she was preoccupied. When I perform, I like to play each time as if it’s my last, she’d told me. It’s almost your sacred obligation to the people who’ve come to see you, put their trust in you.

  The various doors and windows were flung open, and a moon sailed in the sky. Inside, the squash of bodies created their own heat; I sat cocooned in it; I had a moustache of sweat on my lip. I was glad of the dim lighting; the darkness made it at least appear cooler.

  At last it was Flynn’s turn. She went and fetched Louise from the car. I watched her wait in the wings, guitar case hugged to her chest, looking so small and anxious and vulnerable. I loved her so much!

  She walked onto the stage and clicked open the case. Plugging Louise into the communal amp, she tested the sound briefly, then sat down on a chair someone had placed for her.

  Was it my imagination, or did she seek out my face to smile wanly at me before she started? The lights on the stage washed out her features.

  The only other time I’d seen her perform, she had not introduced her songs, merely launched into them. But that night, looking out into the crowd, she said with that rueful pull to her mouth, ‘This is Louise, my best friend and bosom buddy. Only she knows how difficult it is to write a song.’ She tapped the guitar. ‘So this one is called, “Come on, Louise”.’

  And there followed a song about her guitar, with Flynn talking to it and egging it on. It was sweet and funny and endearing. Everyone laughed at all the right places, and afterwards they whistled and stamped their feet.

  Then Flynn said quickly, without even waiting for the applause to die down, ‘This next one is a very new song, and I’m not sure if I’ve got it quite right. I wrote it on the anniversary of my brother’s death – a lot of you will remember Simon?’

  The hall became absolutely silent, and filled with an intense feeling of anticipation.

  And I think I forgot to breathe. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. A brother who’d died?

  ‘Well, he was the one who taught me to play. He even went with me when I bought Louise – “That one,” he said, “is a little beauty.”’

  A look of confusion and shyness came over her face, and she lowered her eyes and spoke to her lap, and if everyone had not been so still you might not have heard her. ‘Um … on the anniversary of the day he died, I went to the beach and listened to what the sea was telling me, and wrote it down. So this song is about him – it’s for him. It’s called “What the sea said”.’

  The song was about going to the place where her brother had died, hoping to speak to him, wanting to ask questions about how to live her life after such a loss. And even though her brother had not answered, the sea had, and one day, if she could ever understand the sea, she would know what the answer was.

  And all I could think was, so that was what was going on that day. And she never told me.

  I sat with my mind reeling. Then the song was suddenly over. ‘Thank you,’ she said, adding automatically, ‘I’m called Every Little Thing.’
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br />   A moment’s silence followed. And then everyone started clapping. As Flynn left the stage, people came up to embrace her, and rub her back tenderly, or kiss her shyly on the cheek. She looked at no one, and used the cased guitar as a kind of buffer. She headed outside.

  I’d thought that Flynn had privileged me with intimacy, but it had been an illusion. Did she really trust me so little?

  The next item was a group playing a 1950S dance tune, and people got to their feet, almost in relief, and spilled out of the hall onto the grass, where they danced under the stars in the hot, still night.

  There was so much I wanted to say to Flynn, so many questions. I had thought that she’d disappeared, but, having put away her guitar, she squeezed back through the press of people and took my hand. She took me outside where the others danced, and we jived to the rock and roll music, taking it in turns to swing each other round. When she swung into my arms, and pressed against me, I felt how warm she was still, how feverishly hot.

  I did not have the heart, or the opportunity, to ask Flynn about her brother, or why she had kept him a secret from me.

  We danced for ages under the moonlight – music floating from inside the building – doors flung wide – the moon and stars – candles lighting the shrubbery. Everything magic.

  Flynn went to the tank at the side of the hall and drank direct from the tap, and doused her head with water, as others were doing. She drank and drank, as if she could not get enough. And then she said she felt ill. So Caleb drove us home, down the winding mountain road, stopping so Flynn could be sick in the grass. He drove us both to my place, carrying her guitar in after us. I put her to bed and crawled in with her.

  Chapter Nine

  FLYNN BURNED IN my arms all night.

  She sweated with fever, and I got up to fetch tablets and water. I applied a cold towel to her forehead. I wanted to be close to her, despite the heat of her sick body. Every so often, she’d push me away. Finally she slept, and I found myself at dawn out on the wall watching the sunrise.