Mandarin Peel

It’s four forty-seven and Harry’s thinking of his backyard, to the mandarin tree. He’s sitting in his car, waiting for Lou while a heavy summer sun hangs low in his windscreen making him feel like he’s actually baking. There’s no air-con in his old Saab, so he has all the windows rolled down and unable to remain comfortable on the sticky vinyl seats, he reaches for his cigarettes and leaves the car. Thinking of excuses for why he’s not cutting back, he shoves the door closed. It sounds like a rusty gate.

‘Piece of shit.’

He puts his hands to his mouth and squints as he sparks up. Drawing deeply, he savours the calm flooding through him and leans back on the car, feeling the hot metal on his buttocks. Uniformed teenagers file out of the train station nearby. He watches a group of boys, all with identical hairstyles, loping by after a group of girls. The girls, tittering to themselves, keep turning to the boys. He smirks.

The car horn beeps and Harry swears, dropping his cigarette. Lou is leaning through the passenger window, grinning. She withdraws from the car and winks at him.

‘Fuck, Lou.’

She laughs, throwing her head back, her curly hair bouncing in the sunshine. It reminds him of when they met, at The Iron Duke. Autumn winds pushed handfuls of toffee-coloured leaves through the entrance with her, then slammed the the heavy door behind her, announcing her arrival into his life. She wore her hair short then; shaggy and cut roughly below her ears. He guessed that she cut it herself. She was wearing brown corduroy pants and a knitted navy jumper with palm-sized polka dots which looked op-shoppy. She sat with a friend against a window, sunlight piling onto her shoulders and laughed deeply when Harry handed her his number on an old train ticket.

She puts up a hand to block out the sun.

‘Bloody hot out here,’ she says. A thin plume of smoke drifts from the cigarette at Harry’s feet. She dumps her handbag on the front seat and walks around the car. His pulse quickens as she emerges, heels tapping lightly on the bitumen. She throws her arms over his shoulders and leans up to him, breathing into his ear, ‘Hi, Smokey.’

He pulls her close and kisses her, ignoring her light reprieve. She smells soft and sweet, like jasmine, and he tries to discern which bra she’s wearing by the feel of it under her dress. Aqua.

Leaning back in his arms, she picks at a piece of invisible fluff on his chest. She is silhouetted by the sun, her face in shadows as she stares at his chest.

‘Harry,’ she says, ‘I went to the doctor.’

A train rolls into the station. Meanwhile, the two groups of teenagers merge and are carrying awkward conversation. His gaze falls to the ground, vaguely searching for his half-finished cigarette. He thinks of their spare bedroom, his studio, to a series he’s working on; a still life. A mandarin, the fruit extracted in one perfect motion, the shell mostly intact. The shadow of it, as it folds over on itself. An echo of past delight. He draws his eyes up to her. She’s biting the inside of her lip.

‘How far along?’

‘About six weeks,’ she says.

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah, shit.’

Harry wakes on the couch in his studio and sits upright, cold and disoriented. The room has not yet been touched by the morning sun. Most afternoons, it is alive; beaming and exhaling plasticky fumes. He avoided painting the walls, never saw the point, and today, decades of roughly layered paint catch the shadows and make the room seem rough and abrasive; unsettling.

The floorboards reflect cold earth beneath them, biting at his soles. He stands and begins to apathetically organise the room, shuffling ice-cream bucket lids cum makeshift palettes, but stops and looks around the room. He turns and is faced by his still life, untouched for days. It looks flat, a soggy caricature of beauty. Within it, his canny observation is lost, and instead, only withered intention remains. He wonders whether it ever could have been great.

Collapsing onto his high stool, he withdraws his hair from it’s stubby pony tail and takes his face in his hands. He exhales deeply. When they moved in, they’d taken time to find a house with an additional, north-facing bedroom which they could repurpose for Harry’s studio. Together they’d peeled back the carpet and carefully varnished the stripped floorboards. When they were done, and stood admiring the results, they said it was as though they’d revealed history itself.

Kicking at a nearby stack of unsold paintings, he misses and knocks over an empty bottle of whiskey. A jarring sound rattles around the studio as it hits the floor. He waits for the room to become silent again before he stands, pulls his hair back and walks through the house to find Lou.

She’s standing in their bedroom, in her underwear, observing herself in the mirror. Thin muslin curtains frame her in a rectangle of soft light.

Six weeks. He knows when it happened. He can remember the exact time, the exact place, even the exact position: The disabled toilet at Revolver, a Wednesday night vodka launch party. They were standing up. Tomas, one of Lou’s clients, extended the invitation to them and stood talking at Harry, who was into his fourth mandarin flavoured martini as Lou moved through the room, engaging in effortless conversation.

Harry rarely witnessed this professional side of her and was immediately turned on. Shortly after they’d finished, the genesis for the still life series bubbled into the back of his mind.

Harry stands at the threshold and watches as her gaze moves from the mirrored version of herself to her hand as it rests on her stomach. He realises that she has made her decision, inaction is action itself.

‘Jesus, Harry. You scared me. You look like a creep just standing there.’ She’s addressing him through the mirror. ‘Come here,’ she says, smiling.

He hesitates. His feet are cold from the studio and the room feels claustrophobic. He stands there like an outsider, wavering in place, remotely observing his own life. Does he actually live here? Whose life is this?

A puzzled look flashes across Lou’s face and she turns. She walks to him and pulls her hair into a bun, high on her head.

‘Come back to me, Harry,’ she says. ‘I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.’ There is no hyperbole in her voice. Avoiding scrutiny, Harry’s eyes are fixed on the ground. Lou steps into his eye line, her pale pink toenails, her flat stomach. He looks away, unable to entertain the thought. The only other certainty, except for death, is the persistence of life itself. He scratches his beard and forces himself to look up. There are new lines around her eyes; they betray her enduring composure. Inaction is action itself.

He begins speaking but the words catch in his throat. He is fighting back tears. He wonders why he is withholding emotion from Lou. He clears his throat.

‘Harry,’ she says, reaching up and brushing a loose strand of hair behind his ears. Was it pity or concern? She reaches up, over his shoulders and pulls him into the room and down into an embrace. From where he stands, their mandarin tree is visible. The curtains cloak it grey. Lou releases him and holds his gaze, searching his face. A tear rolls into his beard and Lou reaches to embrace him again. He moves down, closer to her and presses his body against hers.

‘I have to keep this baby, Harry.’