Living Olivia

Living Olivia

James was twenty-eight when he met Olivia. Today he is twenty-nine and
walking away from her funeral. He is walking through the dregs of
another scorching mid summer's day- during that time of evening when it
is too warm to leave his jacket on, but just cool enough to get tiny
goose pimples on his arms if he removes it. James hates that- not
feeling specifically one thing or another. Sitting at the front pew in
the service, he was thirsty whilst also needing the toilet. It was a
light relief when tears began to roll down into his vacant mouth. This
is what my grief tastes like, he thought. And then, what do her
mother's tears taste like- would a mother's tears taste bitter,
hotter?

He is walking to their home. A familiar route except that it does not
usually feel this long. They never drove, they never had a license,
they cared for the environment. James walks past their bus stop, but he
cannot help stopping. He walks back to the shelter deciding to sit in
it for a moment, trying to remember the last time he was here with her
waiting for a bus. The memory will not come. He knows there must have
been a time they were together here in the last two weeks, but his
memory falters.
Their stop is after the church, next to the primary school, where they
would watch the young children play, waiting for the two-four-three bus
to carry their tired bodies into work.

James has seen the church twice a day five days out of seven for the
past eight months. Until now he hadn't paid it much attention. Though
if one day the church wasn't there he would know it, like pictures
rearranged on walls. Life, or how James lived life, had to be constant-
he could not handle sudden changes or living on the edge. It made him
nervous. People only want to change things if they don't work. If they
want change. If she wants, wanted change it had to be because of
him.

He had stood alone in the corner during the wake. Sick with hunger,
sick with the thought of food. The idea that his body would carry on
all its bodily functions when his life and heart had been torn apart
made him want to have some near fatal accident so that his emotional
pain could also be physical. Match his grief.
He could feel the thoughts and hushed mutterings of her friends and
family, whom he had never met before now. He had found her. He had
called the ambulance. Was he to blame? A note. Tear stained and ripped
from a pad. 'I'm sorry.'
He had to escape his unwanted audience snatching glimpses of him-this
spectacle. He had to leave his own monstrous exhibition.

James had decided to get out of the stifling air. He wanted to see life
carrying on, not decaying all around him. Even the flowers beside her
grave would wilt with time. but everything was too alive, too colourful
and smelt too strong- he felt suffocated by the excessive floral
swelling. Olivia had always hated flowers. James once bought Olivia a
red rose in a clear plastic tube from a charity worker with a blooming
steel bucket. Olivia said that he'd already pulled her, fucked her
even, so there was no need for romance now. She went on that flowers
were a dirty phallic gesture given by men to seduce or with something
to hide. And then she scorned the woman for being sad and old with no
social life and asked what it was like to be an accomplice to guilty
males. James had recoiled into the corner during this, humiliated by
his desire to express his affections. He wanted to be a romantic man
but any romantic gesture she chided, even when he told her he loved her
she turned it into ''men only say that when they have secrets or bad
intentions.'' Olivia never gave any reason for her sceptism of the male
species. James had started to get paranoid once that she was really a
lesbian in denial; such was her hate of stereotypical males. One day he
would arrive back from work and find a note saying she had left him for
his next door neighbour.

As James walks on from the bus stop, he remembers the woman who had
walked round the world. There was a lot of publicity about it as she
neared the end, her final stroll back home from Scotland. And then
within months the revelation that she had lied- she had taken lifts.
Not technically walked all round the world. When James walks this
journey he feels he could walk on forever. He could do it; he wouldn't
even be tempted to lie, to take lifts.

James arrives back at their rented one bedroom flat. The smell is
stale, the air is heavy. James keeps the windows shut, not wanting the
earthy smell of neatly trimmed gardens to infuse the remnants of her
scent.
He throws his keys down on a coffee table, littered with empty glasses,
fag butts that have strayed from the ashtray and mugs with caffeine
stain rings. He has not touched the flat since she died. The Indian
take out remains from their last proper night together are still on the
side in the kitchen, slowly transforming into tentacled green fur. The
bed sheets are unchanged, still holding the last of her sleepy sweat.
Even the bath is not rinsed.
James sits slumped in a chair; his eyes dry and stinging like ankles in
blunt straw. He can cry no more today his head tells him. His swollen
temples cushion his head till he thinks it will burst with the
pressure. James pulls a packet of cigarettes out of his suit pocket.
Looking into space he lights one, drawing the smoke deep down into his
lungs. The smoke trails slowly across the room, swaying when caught in
a shard of light from the curtained windows.

James' eyes are closed. His memory back-peddles. He wants to go back to
a time when life was normal, when he wasn't acting out this scenario.
This role-play that proves he can cope with a death situation. Time
jams at Olivia was lying in the bath, her head visible from the open
door. Radiohead 'knives out' on repeat- blaring.
James had been out all day playing football. Olivia was spending her
day in the garden: weeding, cutting. He'd arrived back around seven
with a bag of ingredients to make spaghetti bolognaise. The sauce is
still in the pan. His team had won three-nil, he hadn't scored any of
the goals but he got 'man of the match' for setting up two of them.
He'd been at The Fox celebrating, had drunk maybe seven, maybe eight
pints, he couldn't remember. He didn't phone because he wanted to
surprise Olivia with his news in person and make her her favourite
meal.
James went to their bedroom and stripped down to his underwear, he
would join Olivia in the bath after he had made the sauce. He then went
to the kitchen and took out the ingredients from the bag, got a
chopping board and a knife and began slicing a courgette. He began
telling her about the goals, the visually impaired referee who had
given out free kicks to the other team 'as if they were sweets for
their grazes.' James drunkenly rambled on past the frying of onion and
garlic, the adding of soya mince then a tin of chopped tomatoes. He
rested the wooden spoon on the side of the pan, smiling as he recalled
Olivia repeatedly telling him that he's not cooking wood. By then James
had heard enough of Radiohead. He walked into the sitting room to
change the cd to something a little more uplifting. A James Brown best
of came first to hand. James sang along to 'It's s man's man's man's
world', prancing around the room gyrating his hips and singing into a
hairbrush. His eyes caught the bathroom. It was empty. He hadn't heard
Olivia leave the bath, but then the music had been on quite loud.
'Something wrong with my singing?' James said as he entered the
bathroom. Olivia did not reply. She could not. Sometime during James'
cooking she had sunk down into the bath that was a deep red with her
blood. It took an untimeable moment for James to register the scene and
its reality. Olivia was looking straight up at him through the tainted
rectangle of water, accessorised with a small innocent looking razor
blade. It was as if a select part of James' vision was looking through
a red balloon and thus, his mind wanted to reject this surreal image.
His heart was breaking and she was shrouded in the colour of that pain.
He dropped his makeshift microphone and fell to his knees, pulling his
love up out of the bath, unsettling the crimson stained limescale scum
that rimmed the bath. Whether she was really dead he couldn't tell as
his hands were shaking so much that he thought he could feel a pulse on
her neck. He shouted to her, to come back from wherever she was. But
she did not stir. He breathed air into her empty lungs, but still
nothing happened. James got his phone and called for an ambulance.
While waiting, he crouched by her side, crying bewildered acid tears.
Her naked body was like a slippery eel, patented with a sticky gloss.
James felt the mixture of blood and water contract into his face,
absorbing Olivia deep down under his skin. Maybe that should have been
nice- some fucked up sensation sent from the grave to stir him into
believing he had now something of her within- but it made James feel
invaded at every angle of his sensory being and sick down to the very
pit of his stomach.

He got a towel and attempted to dry her naked body and hair, leaving
lipstick like streaks on the clean white towels. Time then seemed to
hang. This was their last intimate moment before the rush of
ambulances. Then the paramedics. The shaking of heads. The apologies.
The carting away of Olivia shrouded in a white sheet. Then the police.
The questions. The speculation about why he was wearing just pants as
his girlfriend was lying there dead by his side. Disturbed sexual
fantasies? Then the note. The closing of notebooks. Then phone calls.
Tears. Questions. Over and over again.

James opens his eyes. He has to read the note one more time. It is a
single piece of paper ripped from a note pad that usually sits next to
the phone. James found the pad afterwards in their bedroom. He can
match the note exactly to the remaining half. The note is written in
wiry blue biro, not smudged by tears but you could see where they have
fallen by the circular crinkles dotted on the paper and the grey lines
that have faded and bent. 'I'm sorry' that was all she had to say. No
explanation. Nothing.

The local priest came to see James a few days after Olivia died, asking
about favourite songs and joyful memories he might like to share. They
had never had the inclination to go to church, so talking about Olivia
felt like giving a character reference too late. Apart from the priest
the only other person who came to see James was Olivia's mother. They
sat together drinking whisky in the half-light of the sitting room. It
hurt to say that they were drowning their sorrows together because of
the circumstances of Olivia's discovery. Olivia's father wasn't there
because he had left when she was a teenager. Neither Olivia nor her
mother ever mentioned him. James only knew that much from pressing
Olivia for information about her childhood. That was all she gave. Her
history was not something she ever seemed willing to give.

James has to know. Now it is his right. Without changing he leaves the
house to walk to her mother's. When he gets there it is mid evening.
She stands uncomfortably in the sitting room wearing a nighty and
flannel dressing gown.
'I'm sorry James, I'm all out of whisky, but I can get some if you
like? I can change.'
'No. Thank you. I didn't come to drink. I came because I need to know
about Olivia.'
'What's there to tell? You lived together; you must have known each
other?'
'I knew her at twenty-seven. Nothing before that. Nothing. I need to
know everything now so maybe I can understand. Don't you understand? I
need answers. Surely, surely you feel the same way?'
'Look. I understand, really I do. But it's too soon for me to start
evaluating her life like this. I buried my daughter today. I still have
pictures in my camera to be developed of her. I'm just not
ready.'
'But what about me? Maybe you can sleep, but I can't. All this- it's
tearing me to pieces.'
'I just need a few more days- a week maybe. We can go through it all
then. But for the meantime I can give you this.'
'What is it?'
'It's a photo album. I've always liked to keep one. All the pictures
are annotated so maybe it'll do for the moment. You have to remember
James that everyone deals with death in different ways. You have to
respect my wishes just as I respect yours. Maybe I can sleep, but it
doesn't mean I don't care or that I don't dream about her each
night.'

James does not accept a kiss as he leaves the house. He faces the still
evening only temporarily satisfied. With the album under one arm James
begins the walk home, anxious about what these catalogued pictures
might expose. He picks up speed till eventually without realising he is
running as fast as he can across roads, paths and alleys in new black
shoes. He reaches the house in an uncomfortable sweat, barely able to
hold his hand still to unlock the front door. He flicks on the light in
the living room and sits in a chair. With one sweeping arm movement he
clears the coffee table of all its debris and sets down the album.
James decides to catch his breath before opening the first page as his
body still heaves with exhaustion. He wipes the beads from his forehead
onto the sleeve of his jacket, then with a deep breath turns the page.
The book squeaks as the pages unpeel and realign themselves.
Page one. Olivia's mother swollen with child. Neatly trimmed so it is
just her, but a hand rests on her left shoulder. The caption reads 'and
Marjory, Summer 1974'. There was another name before Marjory's but it
has been scribbled out. James thinks that it must be Olivia's father-
erased in a moment of fury after he left. Marjory's hair is parted from
the side and goes just past her bony shoulders. She wears a shapeless
summer dress. She smiles a wide tooth-paste smile.
James dissects the picture, recognizing the features that Olivia shared
with her mother; he wonders whether Olivia would have grown to look
like the mother he saw today. He always found it hard to believe that
her bright face would transform into something pasty and
withered.
Page one, picture two. A baby in a hospital cot. 'Olivia Jane- five
pounds two ounces August 18th 1974'. James can see it is Olivia- her
eyes, though small and delicate are clearly hers. He knows the sparkle
too well.
James breaks a smile. The first in what seems like years. He is
breathing easier now and flicks rapidly through the pages. He sees
Olivia grow from a baby into a child, then a teenager like a piece of
flip book animation. Each photo with a short scribbled description of
date and location.

James shuts the album, not wanting to rush the journey of Olivia's
life. He closes his eyes and considers what he might learn from these
pictures. Did Olivia suffer the same infliction of home hair cuts? Did
she wear fluorescent leg warmers and rah-rah skirts while he was
wearing drainpipe stonewash jeans? What did she look like when she
first wore make up? Did she ever suffer acne like he did?
With these thoughts, James falls asleep for the first time in a
week.

Post being pushed through the box wakes James the next morning. He
looks around him, looks at his watch. 10.40. Then remembers. Although
the grief is as strong as ever, he feels better for having slept. He
goes to the door and picks up the post which has piled up during the
last week. The usual: bills, junk mail, bank statements and a sympathy
card. James hadn't received any sympathy cards. His friends had sent
text messages or rang him- clearly finding the act of buying a card and
stamp too old fashioned or too much effort.
The handwriting wasn't any he recognized, but when he thought about it,
James didn't think he would be able to discern any of his friends
scrawl anyway.
The card is like any other sympathy card James has ever seen, which so
far is: white with a bird (doves generally), white with a church window
(a toned down version of stained-glass), or white with a flower (lilies
generally). This card has a silver dove flying through a window into a
garden. Eden, James assumes. Nice.
Inside the card there is the usual printed message 'In deepest
sympathy.' Below that it says 'I'm so sorry James, I never expected
this to happen. George Farnaby'
Who the fuck is George Farnaby? And what does he mean he never expected
this to happen? James questions furiously whether this mystery man
knows more than he does.
He finds Olivia's address book out of a drawer under the telephone. F?
Falk. Foster. Fielding. Maybe Olivia and George were on first name
terms. G? Graham. Goode. Greene. Gratton. No George. James decides to
phone her work. Maybe he is a work collegue? James could live with
that. He wasn't so jealous he wanted the names of everyone she worked
with. But maybe they were having an affair?
'Get me Gemma. Now'
'? Hello, Gemma speaking. How can I help you?'
'Does anyone work there called George Farnaby?'
'I'm sorry, whose speaking?'
'It's James.. Wells'
'Oh. Hello James, how are you?'
'I'm fine fucking dandy. Now tell me does a George Farnaby work
there?'
'No. I'm afraid not.'
'Well did Olivia ever mention that name?
'No, I don't think so.'
'Are you sure?'
'Er yes. Look James what's goin?.'
James slams down the phone. Who else? Marjory.

'No James, no. That name means nothing to me.'

James sits back down in his chair with the album lying before him on
the table like an open invitation. He opens it to a random page.
'Olivia. 'O' Level results,1980'. Again there is a hand round a
shoulder, cut from view. James shuts the album. He pushes his hand
forcefully through his hair. He thinks. Frantically, then in laborious
effort to be rational.
If he wants to know- which he does, he has to deduce it all from the
beginning. On his own.
James plucks a cigarette out a stray packet, lights it and reopens the
album. 'and Marjory, Summer 1974'

v