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by Robin Marsden
When Susie first announced that she wanted to have a party, I worried that I knew why.
For the last three weeks, I’d been desperately revising for my end of term exams, and I’
d hardly seen her. By the way that she stumbled around when she came home in the
early hours of the morning, stopping on the stairs to suppress giggling fit before she
flopped into bed next to me, I judged that she wasn’t missing me too much. Although
she still gave me a warm kiss when my alarm clock went off and I left her in bed, I was
convinced that she was more interested in other people’s company. When she barged
into the library on a Thursday afternoon and reeled off a list of who she’d invited, my
fears seemed to be confirmed.
“…and Graham of course, and Tim Wiseman… and that friend of his. Danny!” As
always, she immediately brightened up the room, and I noticed the librarian looking her
up and down as I led her out into daylight.
“And Ian!” she continued loudly, “and that tall chap. Robby is it? Or Rob. Anyway…”
Each name reached me on a wave of spirit fumes, and when she lost her balance and
suddenly found herself sitting on the lawn, she let out a squeal of glee. I thought that
maybe now would be as good a time as any to say what I’d been planning about her
drinking. But then she looked up at me and flung her arms open, and I felt as lucky as I
had when she’d asked me to the high school dance.
“Oh and Johnnie! ” she shrieked when I knelt down to hold her, “I forgot the best thing
of all! It’s fancy dress!”
Over the next two days, I tried my best to persuade her that this was a bad idea. She
told to me that the theme would be ‘The End of an Era,’ to fit in with the end of our first
year at university and the close of the decade that had given us the Vietnam war and the
Kennedy assassination. I wanted to ask her to come inside and let me help her with her
costume, but I knew that she wouldn’t reveal what she was making until it was perfect,
and so I left her in the garden, alone.
Three hours into the party, and I still felt ridiculous in the outfit she’d made me. I fought
a path to the bathroom several times, to stare with revulsion at the hair that seemed to
surge out of my underpants, on which she had stuck a fig leaf made from green card.
Susie, of course, looked terrific as Eve, and each time that I came back into the garden
with a fresh beer, a different crowd of men were standing in a circle around her. Every
so often, I heard a “Ta-daaa!” and looked round to see her twirling in front of some
Roman soldiers, silent movie stars or Aborigines clutching their didgeridoos. I couldn’
t hear them above the noise, but by the way that they were pointing at her and nodding
to each other, I could tell that they were all impressed. She had judged the costume
perfectly, so that the carefully-cut leaves only just obscured her white bra and knickers.
It was impossible to look at her without imagining the warm skin beneath those leaves,
and as she bounced around the garden welcoming newcomers, I was sure that this was
what most of them were doing. I was probably the only one who noticed how much
more thinner and more fragile she was now than she had been at the beginning of the
year, her sharp bones visible underneath the pale skin.
Suddenly, I felt a pain in my side, and it took a second to register that someone was
poking me.
“Who’d have thought you could make that out of one of your ribs, eh?” he drawled
loudly, gesturing towards Susie. He was standing uncomfortably close to me, wearing a
plain black suit, white shirt and black tie. Aside from a small birthmark near his right
temple, he was enviably handsome. He cast his charming smile around the room,
lingered for a while on Susie who was encouraging the people around her to form a
can-can line, and then turned back to me.
“You know, she’s just about perfect mate,” he confided. “If I were you, I’d be the
happiest man in the world. How’s about another drink?” With his empty glass, he
motioned for me to lead in to the kitchen, and I turned sideways to make my way
through the shouting guests.
When we got to the table, sticky already with spilled drinks, he found two used plastic
cups and poured us both a vodka. I usually stopped after one or two so that I could look
after Susie, but for some reason that I didn’t know yet, I’d been on edge all evening,
and so I squashed plastic my cup against his and drank.
“I’ve never been round this neck of the woods,” he confided loudly, “but I bumped into
Suze in the Carpenter’s and she said I should come along.” He began to fill our glasses
with another shot, and I pictured her, working her way around the gloom of the
afternoon pub, tempting complete strangers to our tiny house. I raised my glass again,
gulped the vodka down, and leaned back against the wall. I was sure that she was
happy, whatever she was doing, and it struck me that perhaps this was the most
important thing. Whatever she wanted, if it wasn’t me, then who was I to stand in her
way? I was just beginning to feel sick at this thought, when the guy in the suit slapped
his hand down on my shoulder and beamed at me earnestly, trying to project his smile
onto my face.
“Listen, mate,” he said gravely. “Great party.” With this, he poured me a third shot of
vodka and raised his cup to me. “Funny really,” he added, pausing to down his drink,
“you’d have thought that shooters would be the last thing I’d want to see!” With that, he
put down his cup and turned to go back outside. Only then did I see the ketchup that was
clogging the back of his hair and realise that he was supposed to be Kennedy. I don’t
remember much about the party after that.
When I woke up to go to the bathroom during the night, the house was strangely quiet:
filled with the smell of stale drinks and the chattering silence that a party leaves
behind. It was me that found her on the bathroom floor, with the empty pill jar and a
bottle of the same vodka by her side. She had folded up her costume carefully and laid
it on the corner of the bath, and it struck me how peaceful she looked, like a child who
had just got ready for bed. Seconds later I was calling an ambulance, and while they
were pumping her stomach in the hospital, I called her parents to tell them what was
happening. With surprising calm, her father noted down my road directions.
At the end of that week, two days after he had driven her back to their family home, it
was him who called to tell me that she wouldn’t be coming back next term. His manner
was warm, but something in his tone implied that the game was up, as if we’d all
known that she couldn’t make it through university and now it was time to stop
pretending. He told me that she’d done this type of thing before while she was at
school, and reassured me that no-one would ever have known then either. He advised
me to wait for her to make contact, but the summer and then the second year passed
without a single letter or call.
A week after the party, I packed all of my clothes into a suitcase and moved out of our
room. There were only a few things that I didn’t put in; some large scented candles,
some rainbow-coloured rolling papers, and our fancy dress costumes, which I left in
the bottom drawer of the wardrobe. At the start of the following term, I smiled to think
of the new arrival sliding it open to find them there, like relics from a time long gone.