Apply Liberally When Necessary

It was in the afternoon, peering through the daggers of the October light. Jim didn’t see it so much as smell it, that rubber strawberry tinge coming from the stuff that she was wiping on her lips. It really took him back.

“You’re always putting that stuff on. It stinks,” he said. He was shaken. It didn’t take much these days, the past affected him, made him think too much.

“It’s for the cold. My lips don’t like it when it gets like this, they get all crusty.” Becky held up the little yellow tube of balm in her hand, the domed red lid pointing up towards the sky, and she read the instructions. “Apply liberally and evenly as often as necessary. See?” She smeared more on her mouth with her long tanned finger, staring toward the sun in the distance as she did.

Jim grunted disapprovingly, barely audible above the throbbing siren of the police car that flashed past them. “It still stinks,” he muttered.

They were in the little park. It was sparse and placed too close to the main road, dropped there almost as an afterthought to compensate for the squat grey buildings, shabby shops and lumpen roads of black that made up that sullen London area. Clapton wasn’t exactly what you’d call a home town, Jim rented a flat there. It was a roof and it was four walls and it wasn’t much money. It was nothing else, nothing more. But that was what he’d wanted.

The park wasn’t large. It was fenced off with black iron and dominated by a pond that sat in the middle. There was a thick patch of bullrushes in the bottom corner of the pond and a bridge to the far left that connected the tarmac paths on either side of the water. The bridge was a Chinese style design, a Willow Pattern knock off, painted in peeling green and made out of wood.

Although she’d never told him, Jim was by far Becky’s favourite. They met there every other day, sometimes talking and sometimes not, but always looking to the middle of the water where the large fountain was. The fountain had something that seemed to appease them both, a reverential ambience that the sun lent it at certain times of the day. Its stone base was like an upstretched palm and it had many fingers of water that left it, straining up into the air and catching the light so they shone.

Stamping his feet and hunching his shoulders Jim’s eyes were drawn to the shape of the ripples that formed in the pond. He followed the trails and splashes of the water fingers as they fired up in the air and fell down into the darkness of the pond’s surface, making dimples that circulated and spread outward, markers of nothing in particular. He shivered and sank his chin beneath the zip of his collar, feeling rather uncomfortably summed up by the way the marks in the water disappeared,unnoticed by anybody except him.

“I’m cold. It’s chillier all of a sudden don’t you think? What happened to the summer? Where the hell did it go? It was barely even here in the first place.”

“You’re such a grump man, you know that?”

Jim’s hands were entrenched in his pockets stand-offishly, but Becky, in a moment of tenderness that surprised her, reached out and pinched his elbow with her forefinger and thumb.

“Poor old Jimmy,”

“I’m just saying,”

“It’s not so bad, I like it. You appreciate Autumn, you notice it. You don’t notice Summer unless it’s hot, and Winter’s something else. Here, look I’ll warm you up.”

Emboldened, Becky pushed her hand through the crook at his elbow and linked arms with him, huddling closer, the bright red of her bubble jacket brushing close to the black of his anorak, the colours contrasting nicely. For a moment, in spite of himself, Jim moved closer and almost fully relaxed into her. But that would have been too easy. He realised what he was doing and almost without thought retracted into self awareness, his consciousness scrambling back to maintain its distance, wary and tentative, needing the contact but unable to let go and just accept it.

“I like the pond too,” she said, “I don’t know why but I just do.”

Jim said nothing. He was unable to speak. With Becky’s utterance he’d caught a whiff of that lip balm again, the glossy fruit sheen drifting from her mouth, those two red sleeping bags. Strawberry memories flooded back to him; three of them, and they floated, vying for precedence.

The first memory was years back. He was riding his bike; a red BMX, white wheeled and without gears. He recalled two little fists gripping the ridged handles, and two reckless feet pushing on the pedals. It was a hot July and he was ten, riding along the gravel street behind the terraced houses near his dads old house. The washing lines that were always there in the summer were full, stretched from hooks on the brick walls of the back yards to posts that were planted opposite; blankets and clothes hanging from them like captured ghosts. He used to ride with his friends, as fast as they could, hurtling along beneath the lines and letting the easy hanging fabric touch their faces. The soft coolness of the clean linen and the fruity smell of the sheets would drape across their skin and slide crisply over their heads as they rode blindly, never thinking about what was beyond them or what might be coming because it was irrelevant.

The second. A pillow on his bed and the sweet traces her hair had left, the smell of her still on it where she’d lain, and him rolling over to touch his face to the cloth; reminding himself all over again, and heaving then, returning over onto his back, thinking he wouldn’t see her for another two months, not knowing that that was actually the last time. He recalled sitting up from the pillow and burying his face in the small of her naked back as she sat up to begin the process of leaving. He recalled the messages he sent her for months after. He recalled the thud to the stomach when he knew she’d gone back on everything she ever said. He recalled trying to forget her, consoling himself with the distracting things she’d say in bed, her naivety that had been cute but grew tiresome, her maddening sense of propriety, her drunken vigilance for perceived slights:“What did you say Jim? What did you mean by that? So what I’m not allowed an opinion now?” But it was no good, the smell she left on that pillow was what made the real mark, the thought of her when it was good was what he missed the most.

Number three was clearest, the last time he ever saw Uncle Tony. It was the old folk’s home at Christmas and the room was suffused with the smells of cheap canteen turkey and people who’d plain given up. Tony’s face, like a bone that was once broken and never quite healed, was pale and confused and his crinkled eyes were almost lost in skin. He was eating from a plastic plate and his food had already been cut up for him like he was a baby. “I haven’t seen you in years,” the old man had said to Jim, when his nephew sat down and gave him the hello pat, the gentle smile. Jim had told Tony that in reality it had been just a week previous, and that Jim had brought him those DVD’s and didn’t he remember? Tony had listened, sighed and then in a moment of implied coherence had held Jim's wrist with his shrapnel digits and hissed in a horrified voice whilst staring down into his crotch, “hold onto it boy; for as long as you can! I mean it. They take it from you in the end, you lose everything! There’ll be nothing left of you!” Jim had yanked his hand away like it had been burned and Tony had returned merrily to his food.
Across from them there’d been another old man in an armchair, his head lolling back toward the ceiling and the ever spinning air con fan. Jim remembered sipping on his water and looking at him. He could not reproduce the face of that old man but his strange posture was still familiar, bent up and forced like a fossil trapped in stone. The mans body had looked flattened and twisted as if he’d been glued to his seat in any old way, as if it didn’t matter whether he was comfortable or not because soon he’d be dead. Jim had looked at that other man and at the winking Christmas tree, he'd heard the tinned carols coming through the speakers in the corners of the conservatory, and he'd sworn he’d never come to a place like this ever again. Then he’d turned back to old Tony, the man who’d taught him chess as a boy, mercilessly beating him every time they ever played, the man who'd slapped him in the face when he caught him stealing, the man who always smelled of the outdoors, of wet leaves and the wind; Tony, in that brown chair at Christmas in the old folks home. And his uncle had looked back at Jim with his walnut eyes, and a moment had seemed as if it was about to come, some semblance of clarity, of pathos, something memorable for all the right reasons. Jim had opened his mouth to speak, to say something nice maybe, or to let loose some truth about himself, something they could both share, but the old man had shushed him with a impatient flap of a hand, put down his knife and fork and leaned backward so his chair was hovering on its back two legs alone, the front two up in the air. And Tony had just said, “boy the one thing I can’t stand in here is the smell. It smells like fucking strawberries!”

The traffic hadn’t stopped and nor had the light or the passing of the day. Jim steered the two of them towards the bench which they sat down on. Becky had to remove her arm from his.

“Here, I’ve got your money,” he said, handing over the twenty to her. That was how much it cost. “Might as well pay you now, there's only five minutes left.”

“Oh, thanks,” said Becky, taking it and stuffing it hurriedly in her coat, before, and not without careful consideration, hesitantly offering a little more of herself. “Jim, you know if you wanted maybe next time we could go somewhere. You know, inside to the room. No talking, not if you didn't want. I could show you what I show the-"

“Don’t you get tired of doing that all day?” he spat.

"I dunno, I hadn't thought about it. Sorry I-"

“If I wanted that from you I’d ask.”

“Suppose you would.”

“That's not what this is now.”

“Alright. Sorry, I didn’t mean to-” she actually felt embarrassed, which was strange for her, she’d thought she was passed the embarrassment phase, that she’d gone beyond it. That blanching feeling curdling in her stomach felt new all over again, it was almost as if she'd just downed a shot of a toxic drink that had made her sick years ago and that she swore she'd never touch again. The sensation was familiar but just as alien and unpleasant as it had ever been.

“Forget it, it’s fine."

"Yeah, it is fine." She was suddenly defensive, straining to salvage something, even if it was a negative upper hand. "I mean fuck me, what are you surprised? What do you think this is? Don't get all superior with me alright that's not fucking fair, you're the one who asks for me OK, you're the one who-"

"I know I do. Look I said don’t worry about it. So don't. Forget it, it never even happened.”

He was like a shock absorber. He was made that way.

"Look I'm going." Becky said, and stood, unsure, her hands sagging by her hips that felt overly exposed all of a sudden.

“Don't get upset. It’s not worth it.”

“I'm not upset."

"Well that's good then.”

"Yeah it is, isn't it. I'm not ashamed you know. Not about any of it."

"I know you're not."

"Good."

"Will I see you again?"

"Maybe," she said. She was half right.

“Ok then.”

Becky applied more of the lip balm and frowned at a distant point somewhere above Jims head.

“I'll see you Becky,”

“Bye Jimmy,”

Becky about turned, with next to no aplomb, and left. Jim watched her as she went, crossing the road in her large heels that weren’t quite in keeping with the suburban afternoon. He pushed his hands back into his pockets and turned, squinting in the sun, watched her figure disappear from view, missing her already. The smell of her lip balm was there, faintly, fleeting, in his mind as much as his memories.

Jim turned back to the water and the shadows of the trees that were reflected on the surface of it, and breathed again. There, finished for the day; Becky's dark hair, her white teeth and so too the fruit smell, all gone, and with them everything else. That was that. That was all that was needed.