just_writing | Day Five (Chapter Four - A Friend In Need Is A Friend Indeed

Mistletoe

"Au gui l’An neuf" they cry. "Mistletoe for the new year!"

A shaft of hardened wood slices through cold air, burying itself in the heart of the Beloved. The others laugh and chatter, as he puts one hand to his chest and stares across the clearing at his brother (who cannot see his face, of course), bringing his fingers away covered in steaming blood. The laughter and the chatter falters for a moment, as he slips to one knee, and then pitches forward onto his face, lying in the snow, lying still in the snow, and as the growing horror begins to ripple out like the death of hope, his brother calls "What is happening? Why is it suddenly so quiet?"

If a couple in love exchanges a kiss under the mistletoe, it is interpreted as a promise to marry, as well as a prediction of happiness and long life.

"Why, Mr Darcy!" said Miss S., smiling prettily. "Lah, we are underneath the mistletoe, and it is Christmas. Perhaps the company would permit us a single chaste kiss? Or would your notoriously misogynist sentiments not allow you to participate in such a humbug, even in this happy season?"
Her eyes were laughing as she said it, for all they were downcast. Her curved lips curved again, in a smile. Her Aunt looked disapproving, but the rest of the gentlemen and ladies enjoyed the humour of my situation. They approved of her games.
I leant in close. Closer. She turned her soft, lightly blushing face towards me, the blood spreading over her cheeks and pale, swan-like neck as she did so. I pursed my lips and leant forward that final inch and just before they touched hers I whispered "I want to come in your mouth."

Some mistletoes are poisonous to humans, especially some of the true or leafy mistletoes of hardwood trees, but it typically takes ingestion of numerous leaves or shoots of a mistletoe plant to affect an adult. Children and pets on the other hand, are much smaller and are affected by a lot less of a plant.

The mistletoe is green, wrapped like a strangling hand around the neck of the black tree. The Holly bush produces small red berries, but the fruit of the mistletoe is white, the tears of the goddess for her murdered son. The mistletoe shakes as the tree is struck. Once, twice. Heavy blows. Drumming heels against wood. Gasping noise. Struggle. Desperation in the dark, surrounded by snow and red berries with the mistletoe above, wrapped tight around the host. A scrabbling, a high-pitched scraping of wool on nylon, a faint thud of a small boot one last time against the tree. The gasping, the wheezing noise, falters and is drowned by a guttural sound. Leaves of mistletoe shiver and when a spring falls, it is caught before it hits the ground in a leather-gloved hand, dusted with the red threads of a scarf.

* * *

I felt warm. I came to awareness without any transition - one moment dreaming of trees, the next awake and staring at an unfamiliar wall. I was alive. I closed my eyes again, listening to the sound of rhythmic breathing next to me, and realised that my arm was asleep, trapped underneath the pillow, and that even though my nose was less than six inched from the wall there was a three-inch gap between the side of the bed and the wall that yawned unsettlingly. I felt movement, and someone else's spine scraped across mine. No hangover. I started to piece things together, eyes still closed.

I had not reached work on Thursday. On the way to the bus-stop, someone had knocked into me while talking on their personal phone, and I had gone flying. I grabbed the wall just in time, but with my damaged hand. I think the person who knocked me over was taken aback by the stream of invective that spewed out of my mouth as I tore open the partially-healing wound on my hand and it started to piss blood again. He hurried off, still talking on the telephone. I started to cry, half-kneeling, supporting myself on the wall, as a crowd brushed past, observing a four-foot exclusion zone around the madman leaning on one knee.

I managed to pull myself together and could see thick blood soaking into the bandage, more of it that there was any right being. The pain was bad. I made it to a taxi, and got to the Casualty, and sat there cradling my hand for a tedious hour. I was lucky in that it was the middle of the day, but there were a few others in there as well; a woman with a small red-headed child who insisted on running around pretending to be a formula-one driver (the child, not the woman) who apparently had a frozen chip wedged up his nose. It wasn't slowing him down. A couple, older than me, sat close together, he holding her hands close in his, nose to nose practically, talking quietly to one another. Both pale and quiet. An older man in a jumper with what looked like a steak - I kid you not - pressed against a wound on the side of his face being fussed over by a younger woman, probably his daughter. My interaction with the NHS was perfunctory, businesslike. Doctor and nurse examined the wound and revealed that it was infected and would need a course of antibiotics. They stared down at me like I was retarded for not having come in straight away. I kept my mouth shut and nodded a lot. The nurse who sewed the wound up was okay - he made a few jokes about punching walls, fighting while drunk, that sort of thing. He also gave me an injection that numbed the entire back of the hand, and explained a little about the antibiotics. Just doing his job, I guess.

By the time I'd sorted out my prescription it was late, too late to bother telephoning work, so I went home and went to bed and slept the sleep of the exhausted without incident.

The fact was that I was naked, apart from a single sock on my left foot. I ached all over, but in a sort of good way. I also smelled quite badly. My bed-partner was not complaining, being still asleep, so I assumed she wanted me there. I tried to roll over a little, but was stopped by an unhappy muttering from whomever she was. I was wedged into a tight space in an unfamiliar room, with a woman I couldn't get a good look at. I had obviously been drinking, but was not especially hung over. It was early morning, and I reckoned it was probably Saturday.

Friday I went in to work, feeling rested and awake for the first time in a week. I caught the bus without incident, and spent the entire journey watching a trio of young ladies laughing over a quiz in a magazine. They sat very close together, two of them on one seat and a third sat behind them but leaning right over so she could join in whatever humour was taking place. They spoke in whispers that carried only their tone, not their words. They were being naughty, and enjoying each others' company. They were still on the bus when I got off, and I smiled at them as I went past and received a "What the fuck are you looking at?" from one of them. I hurried past, dismounted, and headed into the building.

"Call Me Debbie" was ecstatic to see me, which should have warned me what was coming.

The quilt was peach-coloured, as was the wall-paper in front of my nose. I had the overwhelming urge to scratch myself in a variety of places, but I was painfully aware that I was not alone. Through careful dint of stretching I had managed to work out the worst of the aches and cramps I was suffering from. For a moment I considered the possibility that I had been involved in extremely studly sexual acrobatics as an explanation for the aches, but a more reasonable part of my brain pointed out that I was sleeping in an unfamilliar single-bed with someone else, and that was all the explanation needed for the cramps.

I stood at the bus stop and I was horrified to find I was near tears. I hated "Call Me Debbie" and I hated work, and I hated myself for being so fucking stupid. They'd fired me, of course. I might have neglected to mention that I'd been on a final warning for about a month following the last time I felt like taking a week off. I'd gone to visit friends in Cardiff, spent a riotous week living it up, and come back to a final warning. I'd used up all my holiday allocation in Spring, of course, as usual. Work were being fascists and demanding that I worked five days a week and things like that. I was better off without them. I wiped my nose and my eyes on my sleeve, clutching a plastic bag with the gonks, pens and a few novels that were the detritus of a year of work. As I got onto the bus, I looked back and could see "Call Me Debbie" in the upper office window. She was smiling, happy. She waved. I gave her the finger. She waved again, and was obviously laughing, making some comment to someone else in the office. I turned my back, feeling stupid and embarassed, and got onto the bus.

I telephoned Gavin as soon as I got back to town, from a freeing telephone box. He commisserated with me, but it was obvious from his tone that he wasn't surprised. I asked if he wanted to go for a few drinks to celebrate my freedom. He replied that he'd love to but he was at work. I suggested he might chuck a sicky to be with his best mate in this hour of his need. Gavin went a bit quiet on the line, said something to soemone else I didn't catch, and said he'd meet me at our local on Saturday evening, but he had to go. I might have argued, but something told me not to, and we hung up.

I went straight to the bank and washed some antibiotics down with an orange-juice and a cooked breakfast at a restaurant near the bus station.

(Later)

I could feel a sort of insistent ache in my bladder region. I shifted uncomfortably again, this time managing to get myself into a position where i could prop myself up on an arm. My partner made a few sleepy noises and rolled over. She pressed closer, draping an arm across me. I was overcome, just for a moment, with a feeling of total revulsion. My skin crawled, as she traced her fingers under my arm, onto my chest and down onto my gut. I wanted to throw up. But only for a moment, a very brief moment, and then I wasn't thinking about anything much. I made "good morning" noises and she made "mmm" noises, and then we made some different noises and it was only when I rolled over properly to get some access that I realised who I was in bed with, and how much fucking trouble I was in.

I'd telephoned a few friends, but nobody seemed to want to be free that Friday. So I went and did some retail therapy, resolutely refusing to worry about my bank balance. I transfered a few hundred out of my saving account. I'd promised that I wouldn't; the money was part of a bequest. But what the fuck. I'd just been fired and deserved some nice stuff. I bought a t-shirt and listened to a few CDs, and then went home and had a shower. If was afternoon and I had the house to myself, more or less. There were some bills waiting for me, and I filed them away to look at later - say in 2004.

I dressed up smart, had some more anti-biotics, tried to get a peak under the bandage, and went out to have a few drinks. I didn't consciously intend what happened, but part of me was planning it from the get-go. I was going to have a few quiet drinks, maybe go to the pictures. I didn't need anyone else around to celebrate being unemployed, and I certainly didn't need to drink myself into unconsciousness to sleep. I didn't get to the pictures. I didn't stay in the one pub, either. I won some money on a quiz machine, and decided to go clubbing and that's wehre my memory started to get a bit hazy. I bumped into some people I knew - I normally pride myself on my ability to hold my beer, but tonight I seemed all over the place.

I could recall little snap-shots, like brightly coloured snowflakes, in a blizzard of half-recollection and missed meaning. I went to the cash point again, and I remember having a bit of hassle with the bouncer because I was feeling really drunk and belligerent and he knew it. I remember leaning against the bar trying to work out what my acquaintance was telling me, and just nodding enthusiastically, but when I cam back from the toilet the next time they'd gone, and I think they'd told me which club they were going to, but I started to wonder if they'd dumped me because I was too drunk, and I had a few cokes to sober up (which would have worked better without the whiskey in them).

There was a Christmas Do in - lads and lasses all having fun at the tops of their lungs with red hats and reindeer horns and light-up noses and white beards, and I sort of drifted onto the periphery of it all, and I bought this lass a drink, but she wasn't interested and then I realised whose works-do it was (not mine,thank Christ) and, to cut a long story short, I ended up in bed with Jacqui.

And by "ended up in bed" I do not mean "caught with nowhere to sleep she let me stay at hers."

It'd started because she was drunk, and I was whatever I was, and I was in the middle of telling a funny story and just half-turned and there she was, staring at me with a blue drink in her hand and I just went dry. I looked at her and then recognised, belatedly, some of the other people. She wanted to buy me a drink, and I couldn't resist a drink at that time of night, in that place, in that mood. She wanted to know why I hated her, and so on and so forth and I had to tell her I didn't hate her but she wouldn't stop it and so I told her my reasons for having a problem with her; the way she treated my best friend, the way she used their kid as a weapon whenever she wanted something, the way she carried on, the histrionics, the fact she was making his life a misery.

We had a shouting match, she poured a drink on me. It was pathetic. Real soap-opera business. We shared a taxi and in the taxi we started touching, then kissing, then she invited me in but I could have said no, but I didn't.

And that's how I ended up fucking Gavin's girlfriend. At least the kid was staying with her mother.