Saturday Night

It’s Saturday night and I’m drunk at Alison’s, that party she organised weeks ago, for her birthday. Briony hasn’t turned up yet, although it’s been an hour and half since she was expected with the rest of the guests, with me. I haven’t known her long, but I know her well enough to be like the others, to shrug at the lack of communication on her part, to say ‘typical Briony’ and shake my head fondly. But Alison’s annoyed, man is Alison mad. She asks me to call Bry, but I don’t have Bry’s number. A brick of a Nokia is smashed at my chest. God, Alison is mad. I grapple with the primacy of the Nokia, trying to find a number. The phone is cold against my ear. Then a voice, a response, bleary and incoherent. Briony’s been asleep, apparently she’s too exhausted from a party she went to last night – yes, that party she’d called me from, so I did have her number, of course I did. She called me last night when she was out, told me that she wished she was at home writing her history essay where she belonged, not with all these people smoking and drinking at the Rectory of a small village out in the countryside. I can picture her there now, in a tiny black skirt and high tops, leaning against the hard stone wall of the Abbey in the dark, hugging herself in the cold. I asked her why she bothered going. She didn’t know really, it was just another one of those impromptu, meaningless choices so akin to her character.

Our conversation ended somewhat abruptly last night, I found myself still speaking as she hung up the phone, charming Briony – and our conversation just now is heading the same way. She’s mumbling and stirring slowly, pulling herself out of bed. I assume she’s coming, I reassure Alison that she is. But Alison is too angry to be reassured. She says that she has more pride than to beg Briony to come to her birthday party, she doesn’t want to give Briony that satisfaction. But it’s too late now, because I’ve already called and Briony is coming, or at least I assume she is. I get another beer.

Here, that’s the door – it’s Briony, yes, Briony is here at last. Without my wakeup call she wouldn’t be here at all, I have saved the day and brought Briony back to us. Briony who otherwise would have spun us all a wonderful apologetic story tomorrow morning, involving sickness and dramatic, heart wrenching breakdowns. I at least would let myself be fooled. I trust Briony, I believe that she is more vulnerable than she pretends. I still believe that she can hardly do much damage, because she is a pretty girl in a paisley orange dress. Paisley dresses and damage are mutually exclusive. She flowers into the hallway, the last to arrive, apologising profusely and I welcome her with open arms whilst Alison stands sulkily in a corner.

Diamond girl who can talk for hours, Briony greets her friends with a vacant expression, laughter elevated above the babble of the crowd. I stand at the side lines trying to look busy. Her breath, the words themselves seem to hang in the air as they lazily flick off her tongue, but they’re empty, those words, I can see right through them. Transparent words choking the atmosphere as she talks and talks, opening her mouth without ever reflecting on what she’s said. It doesn’t matter today – it’s all harmless, a polite party where her easy manner of expression is tolerated. She’s laughing and dancing, a recital of ballet exercises, pas de chat, arabesque, attitude. She doesn’t touch a drop of alcohol. And here I am, still standing at the side lines, another bottle of beer, and another. But her life is beautiful. Alcohol would only be a shunt to a darker world, a descent rather than a glorious high.

But she drank last night, why did she drink last night? She’s sitting with me now, across the table, eating hula hoop after hula hoop from the bowl in front of her. She’s talking about last night whilst everyone else is outside with Molly, Molly who is being sick in a drain – she couldn’t get to the toilet in time after her fag and the bottle of vodka she downed is spewing like a waterfall in the street. I stay with Briony. Briony says she paid her dues, taking care of Molly. She sat on the street last time with her, she’s telling me that it wasn’t too bad, the sky was pretty at least. I imagine her, a fallen star, holding back Molly’s hair as Alison and her ex scream at each other in the front room of the house. Briony says it was awful, she’s telling me that Alison can do so much better, don’t I just think Alison is so pretty?

I know someone prettier, I say, and I kick up my fingers to point at Briony, like some hideously cringey guy in an old movie. She leans across and shoves my fingers down, slamming them onto the table. Her dress falls forward and I force my eyes upwards, but god, she’s perfect, and she’s still holding onto my hands, one last squeeze before she releases them and tells me not to be a dickhead. Hello Friend Zone, I say, and I salute my brothers, the fallen race of man in the depths of hell. She goes back to eating the hula hoops, one hula hoop, two hula hoop, red hula hoop, blue hula hoop. I get another beer.

She tells me about the party last night, she talks about how at first she felt so out of place because she wasn’t with James, but then she calmed down a little, she had a few drinks, spoke to some new people. Someone tried to kiss her apparently, she says it laughingly and I just look at her coldly, but she doesn’t notice, because she’s not looking at me, she’s just eating the hula hoops, one after another, her mouth full of them, grinding them into a pulp with her pearly white teeth. Obviously she didn’t kiss him back, the nameless guy, because she’s with James, she tells me, and I say, yes, I know you’re with James, Briony, I knew it before I met you, I knew you’d be with a  guy like him and I slam my fist on the table and reach for another beer.

Her breath catches in her throat as her eyes dart to the fist on the table. I imagine the same look on her face, I see the blood curdle across the tendons of a knuckle. The bruise on her cheek has faded, but there’s a mark on her hand, I see it now. She’ll tell me it’s just a burn from her curlers, god knows she’s a careless girl, but I won’t believe her, I refuse to. I will hate James Wolfe, even without proof or evidence, I will believe the worst of him. She curls her hand into a fist and puts it under the table, shaking her head. I know what you’re thinking, she says, but she doesn’t. ‘If he did that to you, I will fucking kill him,’ I say, and in my head it sounds so menacing and assertive, but the words die like fish out of water once they quit my throat. She keeps shaking her head at me and I slam my fist against the table once more, before standing up and walking over to her, knocking over one of the empty beer bottles. It smashes on the stone floor.

I touch her face and she recoils from me, and I hear the shriek of her chair like nails on a black board as she stands up abruptly. She looks as if she might spit in my face at any moment. Briony – I say. Don’t Briony. She stalks past me and scoops one of Alison’s cats into her arms. Another photograph of Briony, standing in Alison’s conservatory in a vintage paisley tea dress, a black cat burrowing into her neck. Four eyes lock on me unblinkingly, reproachful. ‘Why are you with him?’ I say, and I feel my anger break into pleading, please Briony, why on earth are you with this guy?

She takes her to time to answer, and I see annoyance, fear and regret flash across her heart shaped face as she considers her response. Then the face settles, the eyes deaden. She’s bored. Bored Briony. And she says nothing.

‘No, seriously Briony, tell me what you see in him, you could have any guy in the world, and you’re with him, he doesn’t treat you right, I know he doesn’t, he gets so angry, you said it yourself, and even if he loves you, I know you don’t feel the same, you don’t feel anything for him. You’re always bored, you only like the car and the cooking, the attention and the arms. I can tell he’s crazy about you, but why isn’t he here? Why didn’t you invite him here? Why wasn’t it him you called up last night, why me? You don’t feel that way about him, he’s just another guy, he’s only with you because he tried really really hard and then you finally submitted.’

She still stands there with the cat in her arms, torn between disgust at my words and concern for their root. She lets out an exasperated gasp of frustration and lets the cat leap from her arms, and I jump, the sudden movement startles me. But she catches her composure by the tips of her fingers, and the face deadens again, like a slap in my face. I want some kind of reaction. But she just stands there, and she says:

‘Do you really think I would stay, if this was James?’ and she points to her face. ‘Do you really think I would stay if this was James?’ and she points to the back of her hand. ‘Do you really think I’m the kind of girl who would stand and put up with that at seventeen, do you think I wouldn’t know that I’m worth more than that? And about my feelings for James? Don’t try to tell me how I feel. I’m only a girl you met in Oxford. You don’t know me at all. Just because I don’t flaunt my feelings about James, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. He’s at work tonight. That’s why he’s not here. He was at work last night. That’s why I didn’t call him.’

It’s the kind of speech which deserves some kind of bow at the end, I imagine her giving one like Katniss Everdeen’s to the Game Makers in the second book of the Hunger Games, even though that film won’t come out for another two years. But I only know that in hindsight, and I also know in hindsight that Briony was wrong about her feelings for James. Maybe they existed, but they weren’t strong enough to necessitate such a speech defending them, in fact, they were so feeble they could hardly stand, like me, blundering towards her as she tries to open the conservatory door, looking angrily about for her bag. I ask if she’d like me to walk her home and she looks at me like I’m mad. I trip over one of the cats and she’s gone. I sink into a chair and weakly go to punch the table again. The last couple of hula hoops jostle together in the bowl.

© Cecelia Turing and ceceliatee, 2014.