Frances and Morgan
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Chapter Three
Chapter 3
Monday mornings were never easy. No matter what kind of weekend had passed there was always a reluctance that ran bone-deep on the part of the café staff to get dug in to the various trials of a new week. When Morgan arrived at the café she found the sign claiming the place to be closed, and had to hammer on the glass until Kaye appeared from the kitchen. She was looking tired and vengeful and was smoking a joint. As she reached the door she took the joint out of her mouth and handed it to Morgan, who took the dying hit. Kaye coughed for a moment then said, “Victoria’s sick. She says, and I quote, kindly lady of the fucking manor that she is, that she’ll try to make it in later in the week. I know what that means: she’ll be in by Friday at best and not to hold our fucking breath. Breaths. Whatever the fuck. So I’m on the fucking till and table shit and you’re cooking, chuck. Lucky fucking you. Lucky fucking us.” Morgan sighed. It wouldn’t be hard: she’d covered for Victoria before on her off days, and she knew how to make most things - if she didn’t, all she needed to do was to look up - versions of all Victoria’s recipes were stuck to the kitchen wall above the work counter. But she had hoped for a day on auto-pilot, and this alteration to the working week would mean that that was impossible. She swore, briefly and quietly. Kaye nodded.
“You get started on the scones and shit,” she said, “and I’ll rev up the engines.” A few minutes later Morgan heard the juggernaut roar of the espresso machine. She opened up the industrial fridge and stared inside it for inspiration. None was forthcoming. She spun around too fast and for a moment the world continued to revolve. For one horrible moment she thought she was going to faint, but she looked down and took deep breaths and slowly the sensation faded. Then Kaye appeared with a double espresso for her. She added sugar and downed the cup in one. An instant later she felt the caffeine rush kick in, and she began to work
By the end of that Monday neither of them had much to say. The part-time staff had come in - thankfully - and the day hadn’t been a disaster. But it had been hectic - the weather had turned nice and everyone seemed to be out on the streets - and they both ended the day on the auto-pilot Morgan had aspired to. By the time she’d finished the preparations for the following day she felt disoriented and flat. Kaye suggested a quick meal out but Morgan’s stomach twisted and threatened to rebel at the thought of food. “I just can’t face the thought,” she said. “Sorry.” Kaye wasn’t about to pressure her. Instead, she jammed one hand into a pocket and came out with a couple of joints and a smattering of little blue tablets. She handed Morgan one of the joints and half a dozen of the tablets. “Speed,” she said, simply. “You’ll find it helps. Don’t take it tonight. Tonight just smoke the joint and enjoy. Get stoned tonight, and tomorrow, it’s piller time.” She grinned evilly.
And so it was. That night she smoked the joint. She’d made herself a pot of tea and was working on her second cup when she lit up. It was an odd night, warm as the day had been and as the day had been, made for socialising: the streets were busy with people.
She was sitting on what passed for an armchair, which she had dragged over to the window. She couldn’t see the street from there, but she could see the top of some roofs and a patch of sky. It was a long way from the neatly-appointed, rather clinical bedroom she’d had at home. It seemed odd and almost dysfunctional to call home, home. It had been the location of her growing up, of her comparatively uneventful childhood, young adulthood, all that crap. She was in many ways happier than she had ever been, but what was more to the point, she was as close to being free as she could get. She was still trapped - who wasn’t? - by the necessity of working for a living, but she’d never anticipated anything else. But she and Katie had never discussed the working world. By the time they’d reached the fifth year everything was set up for mandatory examination success followed - hopefully - by two more years of school and at least three of college. Morgan had never thought along other tracks - what alternative had there been? Rebecca’s plans for both her daughters had been etched in stone. Then Cathy decided that she wanted out, and that changed most things: then Katie had died, and that changed almost everything.
Katie’s death had come out of the blue for almost everyone. But not for Morgan. She hadn’t agreed with Katie’s point of view - she often didn’t - but she had always accepted that there was something present in Katie that would be hard to live with if you were Katie. At school she’d seen that Katie was smart, was attractive enough in an embryonic fashion, and was wrong. Not to her; to Morgan the very essence of Katie was rightness. But wrong in a whole range of ways to a whole range of people. Had the school discipline not been so very rigid and far-reaching, Katie’s life might have been made a complete misery. As it was, the little opportunities for bullying crept out of the cracks when they could, inflicting little injuries that failed to heal.
No-one had bullied Morgan. Well, no-one at school bullied Morgan. Home was another issue, especially when Cathy was away. Rebecca. Morgan could not even visualise that clean-cut, unforgiving face. Why would she want to? Inhaling deeply she contained the smoke for as long as she could. Possibly for too long a period: when she exhaled her head and stomach swung. Neither had anything to do with her, they were just bricks that made her up. Sweat broke out across her forehead and her vision blurred. For a moment she was frightened. Then she lurched up out of the chair and staggered to the sink, convinced she was about to be horribly sick. She turned the cold tap on to full, forcing her head beneath the icy torrent. She stayed there, fingers white from gripping, letting the cold water blast down upon her until the waves of dizziness and nausea subsided.
When her heart was beating less erratically and the perspiration had stopped, she towelled herself off, changed her tee-shirt and put a shirt over that, and let herself out. The steps down to the door creaked loudly. She went out into the street.
The evening was still warm, and the predictable and ridiculous response to such an oddity was evident all over. People sitting outside where they could, chairs on the pavement, jackets ripped off and left hanging. At every street café and pub she passed there were people sitting outside at tables, talking, laughing, arguing, drinking cold beer, chilled wine and cocktails. The sun was fast disappearing in the west. Aimless but restive, she walked to the tube station and stood waiting impatiently for the tube, and shutting her eyes to the rush of hot air that preceded it. She went back to the city centre, back, if she had thought about it, to the area where she’d first met Frances. Their meeting at the NFT had been a one-off; she would never see Frances there again. The last thing she had done was to grab her personal stereo so she had a soundtrack to set against the happenings of the night. She set it to run on constant.
She walked for miles. It seemed to her that the sky never got any less bright, although it must have done. The warmth of the day had been held in pockets between the buildings. She walked for miles and miles, and then she walked home, getting back and locking the door and leaning against it, then slid down onto the floor, her back to the wood. She closed her eyes and dreamed.
There were times - this was one - when she began to wonder if perhaps she had dreamed up Frances. Perhaps without her invention Frances would never have existed at all. But the wonderful apartment, and the views out over the park? She had been incapable of imagining them. When she brought to mind the image of Frances she heard Frances’ voice as well, the tones that seduced, demanded, and dismissed. Morgan scrambled to her feet, stripped, washed and collapsed into bed, exhausted and confused. And she knew it would be hours until she slept. Her legs jumped and ached from the demands of the day, and her brain, oh, her brain was just spinning. The joint had not mellowed her, it had simply increased the speed at which her beleaguered brain spun.
The thing about her time with Frances that stuck with Morgan most closely was not just - as she might have supposed - the whole physical thing. The whole physical thing was a huge part of it, but that was not the most significant issue. Morgan had never had sex with anyone else before, although Frances clearly had. Frances, she reasoned, had probably had sex with dozens of people. Hundreds. No: what stuck with Morgan was the confidence in Frances’ voice, and the ease with which she told Morgan what she wanted, what she herself was going to do, or what Morgan was going to do for her. Morgan had simply never met anyone even remotely like Frances. She had never met anyone who behaved with such certainty. Cathy had been - was; just because she was probably still in Rome didn’t erase her - confident in a fashion that Morgan could almost understand. Cathy had Rebecca’s confidence, but in Cathy it was turned out, and became a bright, talkative beam of energy to which people were drawn. Cathy was attractive - which of course helped - but the most significant thing about her was herself. Everything about Cathy, good and bad, was there in the moment of meeting. Katie had been the only person Morgan had ever known who simply didn’t want things, unless, of course, to be free of them. Morgan had guessed that Katie’s dream life had been at least as significant as the others she had been forced to lead. Rebecca didn’t want much, except for gin with or without tonic and order in all walks of life. Order she didn’t get, Morgan reflected, in any directions. Cathy had headed off for Italy, and Morgan wasn’t sure she’d ever come back. And Morgan had just… headed off. She doubted that Rebecca missed either of her daughters very much, although she had seemed to quite like Cathy. Morgan doubted very much that Rebecca missed her.
She assumed that Rebecca had at least noticed that she was gone. Little clues, like the absence of cash in the house, ditto Valium, not to mention the absence of Morgan herself, must have exhibited themselves. It had been very clear that Morgan had left of her own free will. She obviously hadn’t been kidnapped.
She got up and went to the window and looked out at the sky. Back at home - if it was as fine there, and it probably was - she might well have been gazing out over a blue and pink sky, what clouds there were to the south reflecting back the glory of the sunset. Over toward the west would be the curving, undulating mystery of the Downs, where less than a hundred years ago feral goats had wandered over the short-cropped grass that smelled of warm honey, or bruised heather. If she looked toward the east she would see the outlying areas of the town, the old soap factory, the jutting line of the hills that pointed toward the sea. There the evening air would smell sweet and fragrant. The night-scented stock that flowered in the garden would be scenting the air, and the erratic, tumbling reach of the evening primroses, straggling and seeking to devour the entire neighbourhood, would open up pale yellow faces to show to the moon. Sometimes in summer the moon would rise so full and fat that it seemed close enough to touch, and in the winter she and Katie had competitions for who could name the most stars. In the city there were no stars.
With the vivid pink of the clouds uppermost in her mind, she went back to the bed, climbed into it and fell asleep. As she had turned back the quilt she’d seen from her watch that the daydreaming had lasted far too long: another six hours and she had to be back at work.
And so the week continued: days of physical demand that she was only just capable of achieving, evenings spent walking, or just sitting, or out with Kaye and Shane and some of her friends in the pub not far from the café. As each day passed and took her closer to the weekend she became more focussed and more exhausted. On the Friday she nearly lost the plot entirely: found herself stood in the kitchen - Victoria would be back on Monday, so the oracle said - staring into the sink and wondering what the fuck she was doing there. It was not until Katie came in and shook her gently, whilst asking, in her cheerful Tourette’s fashion, just what the bleeding fuck she thought she was doing? Didn’t she know that there were fucking fuckwits outside waiting to be fed? And then Morgan had come to, and started cooking. But there seemed to be an immense gap between herself and what she was doing: when she glanced down, her busy hands, working on cracking eggs and sifting flour, seemed to be a million miles distant.
The week finally came to an end. Morgan was sticky with sweat, exhausted and almost too tired to be irritable. Waking that morning it had taken an almost Herculean effort just to get upright, and the face that was reflected back at her from the small square mirror that hung on the wall showed her someone she didn’t even know. But Katie kept the espressos going, and Morgan kept knocking them back (she couldn’t bear the thought of actually eating anything), and somehow, miraculously, the working day was done.
She stripped off that day’s apron and threw it in the direction of the bin. Someone else could salvage that, if they wanted to. Victoria would be back on Monday - they’d both been promised that - and on Monday she could go back to her old shift, doing a little cooking, waiting on tables, going home beat but not exhausted. “If she doesn’t come back on Monday,” said Morgan, waiting as Kaye locked the door behind them, “I quit.”
Kaye looked at her in some surprise. Then she considered, and nodded. “We’ll both fucking quit,” she said. “Now, let’s go get a drink.”
And they did. It seemed extraordinary that the world could enclose two such separate worlds only half a street apart, but suddenly they were sitting at a table in the open air, two drinks before them each, and the sound of the city receding. The stereo system in the pub was blaring, but it was far enough away that they could hear one another well enough to talk, even if at first neither of them had very much to say. Eventually Kaye said, “I don’t think it was the fucking flu.”
“Victoria?” Morgan hadn’t given it much thought after the initial telling.
“Who the fuck else?” Kaye finished her first drink and made serious inroads into her second.
“What else…” Morgan didn’t even care very much.
Kaye stood up. “I’ll get the next round.” She was away before Morgan could say that she hadn’t even finished half her first drink. It was clearly going to be that kind of an evening. Moments later Katie came back with a jug of Margueritas and a broad grin. Morgan wasn’t sure she could stomach the tequila, but the salt tasted good, and the tartness of the lime juice woke her up. She wanted to ask Kaye more about Victoria’s absence but she suddenly found herself just too tired to care. It was easier to drink, and let the evening take care of itself.
Afterwards Morgan tried to recollect clear memories of that evening and failed. She drank even though she didn’t really want to, because the gaiety of the drinks made Kaye cheerful, extravert, engaging, and it was nice to be entertained after a week with no relief.
But it was hard to watch Kaye drink and keep drinking, even if she didn’t show the effects. Rebecca had had the same ability: up to and including the moment she lost the plot with Morgan she didn’t show the effects. She never slurred the slightest syllable. Enough. Morgan shook her head. Enough shit about Rebecca. She did try to be sociable, but when some of Kaye’s friends showed up she grabbed the opportunity to cut and run. She was cheerful, grateful and sociable, right up to the moment she was outside and alone again, and the faked smile that had been making her jaws ache could be dropped.
It was autumn. What trees there were in the city were shedding their leaves, and the temperature was dropping. But it wasn’t dropping much, and she didn’t need more than a jacket to keep her warm, all the time that she was walking. She had learned to walk in a certain fashion, attaining a kind of confident anonymity that kept her free of most outcries. She distributed some coins she couldn’t honestly afford to give up as she went past the kids in the cardboard boxes that lined the main pathway past St Martin’s, but she could never shake the knowledge of how little space divided her from them. She got on the tube and set off toward her room.
She lay back in bed that night thinking about Frances. This was a deliberate act; she found that if she thought hard enough and vividly enough about Frances before she fell asleep, ten to one she’d dream about her, too.
“It’s all coming back to me now.”
Sometimes she wondered if she’d just imagined the whole thing. After all, how likely was it that she had somehow - somehow? - picked up a complete stranger, brought them back, fucked them, paid them and sent them off? Frances was sitting at her dressing table, brushing her hair. It had been a long, difficult week; she was glad that it was over. And at dinner that night, an engagement she would have happily cancelled, it was not the conversation - such as it was - or the long, useful week just over that she was thinking of. She was stupidly thinking about Morgan.
She believed that that was the girl’s real name. She’d responded promptly and convincingly to that sound. Oh, and she’d responded promptly and convincingly to all sorts of other things, too. Frances left her robe on the chair, got into bed, tried to read, realised that she wasn’t taking in a single word and tossed the book to the other side of the bed. A nice bed, a comfortable, broad bed. She stretched out, turned out the light, shifted over into the centre of the mattress. She was tired; too tired even to think, but here she was, still thinking.
That morning she’d nearly made a complete fool of herself. There they were, discussing gallery matters, talking about good things, sensible things, necessary issues that normally interested and challenged her, and what came back to mind? Hell, her own words. “Lie down on the bed.” That was what she’d said. “On your back.” And at the memory she’d felt herself go wet. Jesus. She’d had to excuse herself, and it was evident that no-one was surprised at her sudden exit; the face she saw reflected in the gallery mirror was pale to the point of fainting. She’d enclosed herself in one of the cubicles, sat down, tried thinking of dull and ordinary things. Tried not to think about it had felt to know that she had paid to do whatever she wanted to do. The reflection didn’t in any way shame her; it had been - after all - a business agreement, a cash transaction followed by other… transactions. Jesus, she thought. If she came through the gallery door right now, I swear I’d drag her off and ravish her on the floor of my office. She stepped out, rinsed her hands in cool water and pressed her wrists to her forehead. Pale as death she might be, but her pulse was beating strongly, wildly. She could not remember ever feeling so… vivid.
Sleep was never going to come at this rate. She reached out over the cool surface of the sheets, felt how nice it was to be able to move as she wanted to, unrestricted by the contours of another body, no matter how desirable that body might be. She thought about waking next to Morgan, the scent of sex still in the room. She had never belonged to the party that ran away from sex in search of showers, and she’d been pleased to see that Morgan too had side-stepped that tendency.
Oh, it didn’t matter if she didn’t sleep. Tomorrow she could rise whenever she felt like, do whatever she felt like doing. Oh, for fuck’s sake, - as Kaye might have said - Morgan is what I feel like doing. And I don’t know where she lives, and I don’t have much of an idea of where she works. I don’t know her surname, I have no number for her. Oh, hell, she thought. So what? Better by far that I leave things as they are. Madness to try and look for her. Better to rely on my own fingers and memories. It was a crazy thing, and that it happened twice was simply… very good luck. Better that I don’t know. Better that I just forget about her. Better that it ended where it did. I don’t even want to see her again. It wouldn’t work. Things are better this way.
As she drifted into sleep a last thought came to her, soft and insinuating: liar.
“The summer’s out of reach.”
Saturday was not an easy day. Morgan woke early: the demands of her weekly timetable refused to be modified, and she’d woken promptly at half past five. After a half hour of lying rigidly awake she got up, made herself tea, and took it to the window. The city was grey and a little subdued in the early light, but she could hear the roar of distant trains, and all about her, the sounds of the world waking up.
She decided to go to the Market. It was a long walk but it might clear her head and once there she could go into the corner diner for breakfast. If she could face the idea of food. Her jeans were getting loose: she still couldn’t face food once she’d spent the whole day preparing it. She plugged the sink and turned the taps and began to wash.
She’d arranged to meet Kaye that afternoon. That was useful; it gave form to a day that would otherwise have simply petered out into nothingness, with Morgan napping in her armchair, or just sitting, dreaming. Sometimes she went to the cinema, but the NFT had been forever tainted with the hope of seeing Frances. Days off made Morgan feel guilty, but if she’d had a purpose or a timetable she was happier. And it was when she reached that conclusion that she heard Katie’s voice in her head, the words clear as sunlight and negating the actual music to which she was listening.
“She’s made you almost incapable of freedom,” Katie said. “All those months, hell, all those years when she had your time mapped out for you, are you really surprised now that you simply can’t do time off?” She gave the words a funny emphasis. Morgan turned up the volume to her headphones but Katie’s voice could always cut through that sound. “Anyone else would think: hell, it’s been a killer of a week, it’s not strange that I’m tired, and simply take the time off. But you can’t do that. You know what I mean?”
Morgan, leaning back against the dubious support of the armchair, found herself nodding.
Of course she did, of course she knew that. “You’re like some weird kind of slave that’s been freed but who believes herself to be still in chains. You’d work yourself to death if the café never closed. And for what? What motivates you now, Mogs? What’s your reason for getting out of bed in the morning? For the first time in your life it wouldn’t matter to anyone if you simply slept the day away. No-one would come to turf you out of bed. Eventually they’d evict you for non-payment of rent but for a while you’d be alright. It’s the saddest thing: your mother may be out of your life but she’s still directing it.”
No, said Morgan, that’s not true. Of course it’s not true. I’m just getting used to a specific pattern and I don’t want -
“You don’t want to admit to yourself that you’re not quite balanced, do you, Mogs?”
Of course I’m fucking balanced. Look at me: I have a room. I’m holding down a job.
“Helped by the speed and the joints, and your friend with potential Tourette’s. Oh, and your two nights of paid sex. But I’m glad you think you’re sane. I thought that living with that woman would eventually even break you.”
Well, she didn’t break me. Look at me: I’m still here.
“Still here? Oh, hell, Morgan, bits of you are still here. And if she didn’t actually break you, don’t you think that she came close enough? She hurt you and bruised you and would… I think one day might have actually killed you, Morgan. She wouldn’t have planned it, but it would have happened, all the same. She’d be drunk and you’d say something - or nothing - and she’d lash out and you’d fall and crack your head on something and then, bye-bye Mogs, and a big hallo to Rebecca from the locked ward at the local mental health facility, or the women’s prison in Bedford. If either of us were still around we could have applied for visiting rights.”
No. That was the only thing she was wholly sure of: Rebecca was entirely sane when she did the things she did. If anyone was a bit off-centre it could only be -
“When did I ever think you as anything but nuts, Morgan? She used to say it often enough. Have her words finally taken root? Has she won after all?”
Morgan shook her head to clear it of the sound of Katie’s voice, and turned up the volume until the volume vibrated through her jaw and made her feel sick and dizzy. She slammed the off button and dropped the stereo onto the bed. She’d be better off without it on the busy streets. Safer. Katie had gone quiet again; it was time to go. But at the door she hesitated: the headphones and the music they carried gave her a strange kind of confidence on the populated streets.
She had an hour to kill and in that hour, as she walked, she could not shake off Katie’s voice. For that she would need more than a jug of Margaritas, a few little blue pills or a handful of joints. For that she really would need a lobotomy. And in a way she didn’t mind; in a way it was company.
Kaye was bright and energetic, much more than Morgan would have believed possible after a week like the one they’d just shared. Just how much of Kaye’s brightness was the result of illegal medication Morgan could not guess. But the afternoon was cheerful enough, and it might have ended quietly and unremarkably enough had Morgan not gotten stoned.
She’d never had much resistance to medication. The strongest pain-killers she’d ever used had been given her after a particularly nasty stumble and crash in the hall - she had slipped on the last stair and gone flying into the hall table, hurrying to answer the phone. Those tablets had served to knock her almost flat, and the blur they’d bestowed upon all her thoughts had allowed her to believe the lie of the slip, and of the stair. Rebecca had left those tablets in the medicine cabinet, and Morgan had gone back to them over time, just when it was strictly necessary. She’d gone through her entire academic career without smoking a single joint, and she never would be exactly keen on alcohol. But now with Kaye doing the supplying, access to a blurred world seemed rather a fine thing to Morgan. They’d spent a couple of happy hours in the little square that hid in the depths of Soho. The square was warm in the afternoon sun, and quiet, and no-one came to interrupt them. It was not until Kaye noticed the time, and announced that she was late and just fucking had to go, that Morgan first thought about standing up. She managed the feat, and then sat straight back down again. Kaye, giggling like a loon, had taken her arm, and helped her back out onto the pavement, but then she’d had to go, leaving Morgan alone, calm and slightly dizzy from the joints and the autumnal slant of the sun that fell across the little square, sitting on a bench, looking toward Piccadilly and the crowds that circled.
She leaned back against the bench, and shut her eyes. Sunlight dyed the world red. Her heart was behaving oddly, racing like an engine and then seeming to slow almost to stopping point. She’d taken with enthusiasm the little yellow tablets that Kaye had offered her just before she’d had to leave, knocking them back with a swig of coke. Her heart beat wildly and erratically but that oddness seemed alright; Katie’s voice was back in her head and saying something clean and sensible, but Morgan could not hear her. Morgan could not hear anyone. If she opened her eyes, faces welled and swelled before her, and if she closed her eyes the thud of her heartbeat threatened to finish her. Feeling herself to be slipping she reached out her hands and took hold of the edges of the seat. Now she would not simply slide off and onto the pavement and straight down into the gutter and the drains. On the other hand, with her eyes shut tightly enough she seemed already to be slipping. Katie’s tone was becoming intrusive, despite the lack of music, and her voice was becoming strident. Morgan opened her eyes wide, took in the details of Frances’ face, and passed out cold for the second time in their relationship.