The Bottle of Tears Read online

  As she tastes the soup – tomato, Heinz, lukewarm – she thinks back to that weekend in Bournemouth. It had been a raffle prize – a weekend in a hotel. It had been the first prize, supposedly.

  Even now, she struggles to understand why they went. Something to do with not ‘wasting’ the prize, no doubt. That and some misplaced idea that it would be – could be – ‘fun’.

  The hotel had been horrible, ‘shit brown’ walls, as Sander always describes them, and questionable levels of cleanliness, too. It had rained all weekend (they’d gone out and got soaked only once) and their room – which looked out not at the sea, as advertised, but on to a graffitied red-brick wall – had been depressing and, when contrasted with the sea views of their own draughty windows back home, slightly worse than disappointing.

  The meals – not included – had been poor and overpriced and, to top it all, Sander had picked up a stomach bug and had spent the entire drive home asking her to pull into service stations so that he could throw up. Seeing as they had eaten the same meals, they had never been able to blame that one squarely on the hotel’s restaurant, but they had their suspicions all the same.

  Her sister’s weekend in Venice will be nothing like that, of course. Penny imagines them now, in evening dress in a candle-lit restaurant eating lobster. She grimaces. No, it won’t be like Bournemouth at all.

  ‘So, Christmas,’ Sander is saying between sips of tinned soup. ‘I thought you just alternated, in which case it’s their turn, isn’t it? What’s to think about?’

  ‘Max says it’s boring at their place,’ Penny says. ‘He wants us to do it here.’

  Sander sighs. ‘He’s not wrong,’ he says. ‘But you know how much it cost last year. We were paying for it till March.’

  ‘I know,’ Penny agrees. ‘But last year was silly. If we do it here again, we’ll just have to ask them to chip in or something. We can do that, can’t we?’

  ‘Hmm,’ Sander says, remembering the pre-arrival cleaning regime and the post-departure economy drive of the previous year.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘I was just thinking,’ Sander says. ‘I mean, seeing as you always argue anyway, you could perhaps – shock horror – even consider Christmas apart for once?’

  ‘Christmas apart?’

  ‘Yeah. What do you think?’

  Penny smiles sadly at her husband. ‘You know that’s not an option,’ she says.

  Sander shrugs. ‘Just, you know, throwing it out there for discussion.’

  ‘You know how difficult Christmas is for us, Sander. For both of us. And for Mum.’

  ‘Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard if you weren’t together,’ Sander offers doubtfully. ‘Maybe you’d think about it less if you weren’t there to remind each other—’

  ‘Sander,’ Penny pleads.

  ‘This was, what, thirty years ago?’

  ‘Forty,’ Penny says. ‘Your point being?’

  ‘You’re a shrink. Isn’t your speciality helping people get over shit like that?’

  Penny looks at him disdainfully, then bows her head and studies her soup, driving the spoon through the thick redness of it. ‘I’m a psychologist, Sander, not a shrink,’ she says quietly. ‘And to my knowledge, nobody ever gets over . . .’ She clears her throat. She swallows. She’s suddenly angry. It’s bubbling up in her like a rush of boiling water from a geyser. She raises two fingers to form the quotes around the final three words. ‘Nobody ever gets over “shit like that”,’ she says.

  ‘I didn’t mean anything,’ Sander offers softly after a moment’s pause.

  Penny blinks at him slowly. ‘I know,’ she replies.

  For a few minutes, they eat their soup in silence. Sander thinks about Victoria in Venice and the fact that he mentioned the cost of Christmas, and wrestles with his sense of guilt. For they both know that he hasn’t contributed financially for years.

  Yes, he still sells the occasional painting, but he hasn’t made any serious money from his work since the noughties.

  He would love to make more money, of course. He would love, once again, to surf the buzz of success that he (briefly) experienced in 2000 and 2001. He would love to be able to whisk Penny off to Venice for a weekend break. The views might even inspire him to do some more work, some new work, some different work . . . But he can’t take Penny to Venice, can he? They’re overdrawn on every account.

  Still, the house is paid for, he reminds himself. And these days that single achievement makes them millionaires, on paper at least. Yes, he, Sander, with an inheritance from his estranged Danish parents and one big sell-out show in Cork Street, had paid for this house, cash. Perhaps they need to sell the house and move somewhere cheaper. If they moved inland or, even better, up north, the equity in the house would leave them well off for years, perhaps even until retirement. But he’s loath to lose this house. They have sea views from almost every window. He can hear the sea, even now, in the kitchen. And the pride he felt at being able to buy the place – a house! – in part with the proceeds from his paintings, is the biggest buzz he has ever felt, topping, in pride terms, even the births of Max and Chloe. Of course, Max and Chloe are more important to him than the house, but he never felt that he’d done that much to make them happen. That always felt like Penny’s miracle more than it was his.

  So the house, no, he can’t bear to think of leaving it. ‘I’d get a job if I thought there was anything else I could do,’ he says finally, those thoughts leading to this one.

  And because they’ve been married for almost sixteen years, and in love, on and off, for at least fifteen of those, Penny effortlessly deduces Sander’s entire train of thought.

  ‘I don’t want to go to Venice,’ she says. ‘I really don’t. And I hate all those posh restaurants they go to. All that crumb-brushing and putting the wine out of reach so you can only get a refill when the snooty waiter deigns to fill your glass. Yuck.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sander says, ‘but—’

  ‘And I’m glad you’re a painter, not a lawyer, really I am.’

  Sander nods.

  ‘Plus, we’re not doing so badly,’ Penny continues, glancing around the room, as if to encompass the house, the furniture, the car outside and the soup on the table.

  No, she thinks. We’re not being bombed and we’re not hungry or homeless, and we’re not worried about our son, who was picked up by government security forces a few months ago and never heard from again. Three quarters of the world would consider Penny and Sander obscenely rich just for owning a working tap out of which gushes safe drinking water. She knows this and she tries to remind herself of it often.

  She glances at the clock again and then starts to spoon her soup at double speed. ‘I have to be in Ashford by three,’ she says.

  ‘New arrivals?’

  Penny nods. ‘Two kids. More Syrians, I think.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yep. Unaccompanied minors.’

  ‘Related?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘The poor wee fuckers,’ Sander says.

  ‘Yes,’ Penny agrees. ‘Yes, they’re the hardest ones.’ The unaccompanied minors’ backstories are always by far the most heartbreaking. ‘And you, are you staying in?’

  ‘I might try to paint,’ Sander says.

  ‘Good. Well, check the washing machine in half an hour, would you? I’ll put it on, but just check it’s not leaking again.’

  ‘I fixed it.’

  ‘I know. But just do me a favour and check it, OK?’

  Sander shrugs. ‘Sure,’ he says.

  Sander watches from his studio window as Penny drives away, then turns and stares out to sea. It’s such a beautiful view from this room, an ever-changing vista of blues and greens and greys. Today, the sky is a light, almost cerulean blue. Beneath it, the sea blurs from a grimy cobalt green at the horizon down to deep green-blue, perhaps indigo mixed with chromite, where it meets the shore. A touch of charcoal grey, too, Sander thinks, imagining himself trying to
mix that exact colour.

  Perhaps he’ll paint another seascape. He sighs. He has an entire shelf of seascapes painted from this very spot. He enjoys the challenge of mixing the colours, of attempting to reproduce the myriad shades that light and nature and the laws of physics throw up every day but, in commercial terms, it’s worse than pointless – the materials cost money, after all. And in personal terms, it’s little more than laziness; the easiest route he has found to avoid doing nothing at all.

  His big idea in the noughties, the one idea that paid for the house, in fact, had been a series of Hopperesque interiors, all emerald greens and cadmium reds, all geometric shadows and visible rectangles of leaking light. His twist, his one great idea, had been to replace the figures in his paintings with depictions of blow-up dolls, their mouths rounded and plump, their busts pointy and over-inflated.

  It had been this juxtaposition of artistry – for these had been painterly paintings – with the plastic, disposable artifice of the modern world, that had got everyone so excited. Hopper’s skill mixed with Warhol’s barefaced cheek, The Times had said of him. The Times! That’s how big he had been.

  He can still paint just as well, of course. He has lost none of his skills at mixing colour, depicting perspective or applying texture. It’s just the idea that’s missing, it’s just that twist. But without a fresh flash of humour, he knows that he’ll never be hip again. The art world changed in the sixties, and it’s no longer enough to be a good craftsman. You have to be clever, witty and hip as well.

  He turns back to face the room and looks at the racks of paintings on the left-hand wall. Hundreds of paintings, and, including those upstairs, perhaps thousands. He needs to have a clear-out. He needs to make fresh space for new work, otherwise he won’t even have anywhere to put it. He needs to have a bonfire, perhaps this fifth of November? But how to admit the necessity of destroying unsold work to make space without admitting the futility of ever painting anything again?

  He looks to the right, to the steel shelves containing his materials. He keeps them ready, organised and clean, just in case. He stares at them and waits, yet again, for an idea.

  His eye drifts to the wooden box in the corner. Perhaps if he doesn’t smoke today, that will help. Perhaps if he picks up his brushes and squeezes out pigments and leaves the box alone just this once . . . But then the doll idea had come to him when he was stoned, hadn’t it? Or is that just a story he has told himself? He can’t really remember any more, if the truth be told.

  He strokes his beard with his left hand, then exhales slowly and crosses the room to the box. He picks it up, caresses the lid and feels a tugging sensation deep in his gut. ‘Maybe just one,’ he mutters, already lifting the lid and breathing in the rich odour of the blue dream buds within.

  He rolls the joint then sits in his threadbare spoon-back armchair and stares back out at the horizon. He flicks open the lid of his beloved Zippo lighter – a whiff of lighter fluid reaches his nostrils. Clouds are forming to the east, casting deep violet shadows on to the surface of the sea. Violet, ultramarine and a tiny touch of indigo, perhaps, he thinks, blowing smoke towards the ceiling.

  Seascapes with blow-up dolls, he thinks. Greek life rafts with blow-up dolls. Dead blow-up dolls on a beach. Clothes-store dummies. Robots. Actually, robots could be funny. Expensive robots on life rafts. No one would ever let those sink to the bottom of the sea – they’d have hundreds of boats out in a jiffy – but no, it would be seen as political comment, not art – too literal.

  He stares into the middle distance and feels the dope wash over him, feels it spread out, warming and soothing and relaxing his muscles. And when the first joint is finished, he rolls another one. After that, he promises himself that he’ll work.

  Or perhaps he should accept that it’s over, the dope seems to tell him. Perhaps that’s where true peace lies. He had his Warholian fifteen minutes of fame in 2001 so maybe he just needs to accept the nature of his own mediocrity from here on in. Perhaps accepting that it’s over is where happiness lies.

  At some point he sees Chloe come home, her face so buried in her Samsung that she doesn’t even notice him looking down at her. And then, perhaps half an hour later, Max on his pushbike, his torch projecting a wobbling, yellow Hockneyesque triangle in the mist.

  It’s only when he sees car headlights come around the corner, only when he hears the Ford’s clattering diesel engine, that he realises how late it is.

  Shit, he thinks. The washing machine.

  And at that precise moment he hears Max calling up the stairs. ‘Dad? Dad?’ he says. ‘Are you in? Only, the basement’s all flooded again! DAAAD?!’

  Victoria peers into the oven and then straightens and looks around the kitchen. The dinner – a tray of Delia’s oven-cooked ratatouille and an organic chicken – should be ready right on time, she reckons.

  She crosses to the kitchen sink and pulls the squirty bleach out of the cupboard. She particularly likes oven-based meals because once the food’s cooking she can tidy the kitchen entirely and then eat without her eyes straying to the pots and pans waiting to be dealt with. There’s something reassuring, she finds, about the cold surfaces of a clean kitchen. She squirts bleach on to the sponge and begins to wipe the worktop.

  The strange fluttering in her chest has returned and, if she can just distract herself for ten minutes, it might pass of its own accord. Sometimes she can avoid taking that second Valium.

  She rubs at a stain on the worktop and then reaches for the nail brush and starts rubbing at the grouting between the tiles. Whatever possessed her to have a tiled worktop fitted? she wonders. She had thought it would be cleaner and more hygienic than the old wooden one. But she hadn’t counted on these gaps between the tiles, these little once-white spaces that just suck everything up like a sponge.

  She forces herself to breathe deeply and the chlorine smell of the bleach calms her a little. She scans her body, senses the dryness of her lips (a new thing), the fluttering in her chest (an old one) and the aching knees and vague headache (today’s specials).

  She snorts at the thought that if women ruled the world rather than men, then people would be allowed to talk about the menopause, and women like her would be better prepared.

  As it is, other than an occasional snide joke about hot flushes (if only that’s all it was!), she was entirely unprepared for the enormity of the coming change. Not a hot flush in sight, but instead, a buggering-up of almost every bodily process, a sensation that she’s drying out like those fish they sell in the markets in Asia, yes, freeze-dried and out of order in every way that counts, getting ready, it seems in her more pessimistic moments, for nothing other than death. She certainly wasn’t expecting anything like this at forty-eight.

  She crosses to the bookshelf and, glancing at the hallway to check she’s truly alone, she reaches to the rear of the top shelf and pulls the blister pack into view. She breaks out a pill, snaps it in half and returns the remainder to the pack, and the pack to the rear of the shelf.

  She crosses to the sink and, thinking, Thank God for chemistry, thank God for bleach and Valium, she downs it with a glass of water.

  Victoria’s relationship with Valium pre-dated the first hints of menopause by at least ten years, but it had been under control until last year, hadn’t it? A single doctor had been enough to keep her in Valium back then, so at least she hadn’t had to lie or cheat to get supplies.

  But the fluttering, the anxiety, has got so much worse this year – another perimenopausal bonus. She sits at the kitchen table and attempts to concentrate on her breath – meditation style – as she waits for the Valium to work its magic. And when finally, ten minutes later, her breathing has returned to normal, she stands, checks the oven once again and walks through to the lounge.

  Her mother, Marge, over for a visit, is seated on the new white sofa in front of a too-loud television game show. Her head has fallen backwards and she’s snoring loudly. She snoozes a lot since her stroke last s
ummer.

  Victoria takes the remote from the coffee table and lowers the sound, which inexplicably wakes her mother instantly. ‘I’m watching that,’ Marge says through a yawn.

  ‘I’m only turning it down a bit,’ Victoria says. ‘And you were snoring, actually.’

  ‘I don’t snore,’ Marge tells her. ‘I’ve never snored in my life. When did you ever hear me snore?’

  ‘OK,’ Victoria says with a laugh. ‘Well, you were asleep, at any rate.’

  ‘I just closed my eyes for a second. That’s not a crime, is it?’

  ‘No, Mum. That’s not a crime.’

  ‘Is it dinnertime yet?’

  ‘In about half an hour,’ Victoria says, glancing at the time on the Freeview box. ‘When Martin gets home.’

  ‘And Bertie?’

  ‘He’s in his room, doing his homework.’

  ‘That’s what he tells you,’ Marge says. ‘I expect he’s on that computer again. He’s always on that computer.’

  ‘Well, he does his homework on that computer,’ Victoria says, ‘so you’re probably right.’

  She has changed her mind about sitting in the lounge after all. She hands her mother the remote and turns and walks back to the kitchen. She’s only just starting to float – she’s not ready to be dragged back to earth by her mother.

  It’s seven thirty by the time Martin gets home and, by eight, when he has removed his tie and swapped his pin-stripe trousers for jeans, the dinner is, Victoria fears, slightly past its best.

  But by then, her Valium bubble, augmented with a hefty glass of Prosecco, is fully formed and gorgeously impregnable. She feels as if she’s wearing some kind of inflatable Michelin Man costume. Nothing can reach her now.

  She serves up the ratatouille and watches as Martin massacres the bird with a carving knife. Amazingly, he thinks he can do it better than she can. It’s a man thing.

  ‘Breast or thigh?’ he asks.

  Victoria sits and stares at him for a few seconds before she realises that he was talking to her. ‘Oh, yes, sorry,’ she says. ‘Breast, if there’s enough.’