(Drink more)…Water

I slowly fall out of a groggy sleep, I look at the time. 9.17am. I have missed the school bus, I flop in a thug of fatigue out of my single bed and go into my mother's room to ask her for a lift, so I can at least make the end of morning registration. “Mum…?” Rubbing my eyes I look around the room. It is not my mothers, it's my studio. I am 37 and I have not missed the school bus for over twenty years. Getting these time distortions often occur when I am approaching a deadline.

The bedsit is white and stark. I don’t know anybody else that lives here. It’s a huge rundown house, split up into odd apartments advertised as studio flats. Around 13 people must actually live here full time. All I see of them is their recycling bins when I’m passing through, the low plastic boxes with no tops. I peer in a bin as I leave to get a flat white, after coming to that I wasn’t drowning in the depths of puberty, late for double maths. I see an empty bottle of brandy in 2A’s bin. That would be lovely just to have, surely it's not the same as having a proper drink - it's in puddings and creams. I add brandy to my mental shopping list.

I have a meeting with the curator and gallery manager at the beginning of next week and I only have the name of the exhibition, which I am still unsure of. No pieces, no works in progress, not even a rough plan of sketches or ideas. I’ve been living in this studio for days, trying to cook up some inspiration. Although this place isn’t really a proper studio, more of a studio flat at the very least, a bedsit at the very most - stark and hollow. The only thing that could have been cooked here in the past was probably heroin, and here I am hoping for a career-changing revelation. It will do because I can’t work from home.

My actual flat is a short tube ride to my studio space. I don’t actually call either of these my home because I consider my home wherever my mother is. This is a new complication for me, as in the past 18 months Mum has left the family home and moved in with a man called Greg.

The shower in the studio has a burning piss trickle trying to pass as some kind of water pressure, oddly it still manages to flood the mismatched misshapen floorboards. I worry about whoever lives below. 2a again. Brandy buddy. So I avoid the studio shower, even when I am covered in paint, or I haven’t been home for days. Like today.

Is it a guilt complex, I don’t even know if 2a’s ceiling leaks? The second bottle of Brandy sits on a shelf staring at me. We are in a staring competition and yesterday the first bottle won.

I can’t drink again. But I also can’t pour the second bottle down the sink. Waste to me is the 8th deadly sin, perhaps the almighty sin. I have dozens of mason jars I use to mix paint water. I decide to make brandy custard in my studios' kitchenette. Dozens and dozens of jars of brandy custards.

The phone is ringing, I’m the one calling, the dull hum of the dialling tone filling my ear. I don’t know what time it is, later. Early evening, perhaps…maybe, and then I wonder who I am calling. Martha Martha Martha.

“Polly! Hello!!”

Jules, the curator of the gallery strides towards me, see’s the phone pressed to my cheek and then backs off. They mouth SORRY SORRYYYY, eyes wide dinner plates - too wide for the circumstance. How did I get here? It’s dark outside but I see as I drag the phone down from my hot ear that it's 4.53pm. I think a month has passed since I last had a meeting with the gallery so It must be getting dark earlier now. Who was I on the phone to, all I hear is the dull bleeping tone like somebody has hung up. Bleep hum, bleep hum. Jules and the owner of the gallery Malcolm set me down with a coffee and sparkling water, going through the marketing for the event and the guestlist for the private view. I don’t know what my paintings are about, but they seem to. I hear what they say but it sounds distorted like I am submerged in the bath staring up at them. The meeting goes on and my eyes feel droopy underneath the fluorescent office lights, sore like I have been underwater for too long. “Is there anything you’d like to add Polly?” “Yes umm….” my pause fills the room and I can feel the bath inside of my head overflow, spilling all over the room then rising up, office paraphernalia and prints whirling around and around, the flood filling every nose ear mouth, eye and plug socket. The office strip lights smoke and spark. The pressure from the current hurts my head, it feels like it's going to burst. The only thing I can hear amongst the crashing of water is the dialling tone. Bleep hum, bleep hum, bleep hum. I am drowning. I am drowning. I am drowning. I am drowning. I am drowning.

“yes, umm..I have made you both some brandy custard”. The room is dry and silent. The fluorescent lights and office are intact. I pull two jars from the inside of my jacket pocket. They looked baffled but have to blow smoke up my arse and thank me profusely. I don’t have much of a community around me to bring sweet treats to. AA isn’t appropriate and nobody knows me in the studio flats. This hits me hard and I want to cry. My eyes still sting.

I wake up lying on my studio floor my hand pressing the phone against my ear —

Hello Chicken! Why are you calling at this time! Are you okay?

Mum! Sorry, yes, yes… uur I’m at the studio

This late, oh darling you are a good girl. Listen I am just at a dinner party with Greg, can I give you a ring in the morning?

Sorry yes mum, it just have you heard from Martha?

Oh chicken, no, look I can’t talk about this right now, not with Greg and everyone here. You know how it is. Okay, I have to go my darling. I LOVE you chicky dee, give me a call tomorrow maybe and do come and see us soon, Miss youuu!.

She puts the phone down.

I miss my mum so much, the way she was when I was little. Now we go for posh girly lunches and she comes to all of my art shows and we talk about sex and our friends and other peoples marriages and current affairs. Grown-up stuff. But it's not the same. It’s not sitting in the back seat of her car whilst we sing along to the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album, eating prawn cocktail crisps. It’s not her washing my hair. It's not her falling asleep in my bed after reading a bedtime story and smelling her perfume mixed with red wine and garlic on her breath. Maybe it's not my mum at all, I think what I’m learning is that I miss being a child. “Thank you, Polly” I hear chime across the church hall in reply to my little I miss my mummy who I speak to all the time speech. I gulp and sit down. The old Irish lady sitting next to me pats me on the hand and I nod to say thank you. The old Irish addresses the room “Hello there, Irene, Alcoholic” then proceeds to talk about why she hates her daughter in law and how she wants to wring her neck and how being the alcoholic in the family is so isolating. I don’t share this feeling, as in my family we are all alcoholics.

It's a dark windy night, the church hall is drafty, the only heating being the bodies of the many anonymous. It’s an open meeting and the room is packed. Hopefully, no one will notice that I am hungover. Someone will. I only really go to AA when I am hungover, and feeling lost. This doesn’t work. I don’t even know if I believe in the programme, but as they say, the programme only works when you work the programme. God grant me the serenity to have not made a tit of myself, revealing that I have picked up. And up. And up. And up. What did Elton John say? It’ll take you a couple of vodka and tonics to get you on your feet again… I look around and the ball drops… there are plenty like me to be found. I know why I’m here, Martha suggested I go with her years ago, I did and it helped. She isn’t here tonight and that hasn’t helped. I go home to my own bed and write all over everything, the mirrors, cigarette packets, post its, my hands, the fridge, unopened bills and amazon packages - STOP stop Stop sTop stoP. I don’t want to stop. But I know I need to stop.

Please stop, Polly. Please give me some time.

That’s what she said in a text. Martha. But I can’t tell the time to give her any, at the moment. I don’t want to stop. But I know I need to stop.

Martha Martha Martha. I am drunk stumbling to the studio and the road is icy. The season has changed. I need to be careful I know. Why did I drink, why am I picking up? Picked and now I am pickled. I cackle into the dark street. It doesn’t echo back, it just hangs flatly in the air and I have never felt more alone. I can’t even recall who I’d been with or where I have come from. Or the time. I have left my phone at home, I didn’t want to know the time or find myself at the end of another voicemail, as I so frequently find myself. Maybe I need a sponsor, someone to call. Call. Call Martha. I can’t, she said in her last message again to please give her some time and try to stay calm and this isn’t about me. What do they say? Blood is thicker than water, but that doesn’t mean I need the water any less than the blood. How do I live without water? How do I live without Martha? Martha was the one who suggested I try going to AA. Martha was the one with calm rational advice after every breakup, every bad review in the newspaper, every moment of discomfort I would catastrophes in my head. When my period started at swimming practice. The art critic that wrote in the Evening Standard that I was a hack, after my first solo show. When I was rejected by the polyamorous couple I had been with for 2 months when I was 29; I sobbed hard in her car, clutching a carrier bag of spare knickers and a hairbrush. “Maybe I am just not cut out for polyamory”, “No Polly”, Martha replied, “It sounds like they weren’t cut out for polyamory”. Always Polly, never a million pet names like Mum.

She has stopped replying completely now.

It must be nearly a year? Since it all happened. I am still struggling to tell the time. I want to ask her. I will try and ring one more time. I drunkenly slam into a phone box and dial her number, reversing the charge for lack of change. What comes next is a blur. The drowning dialling tone comes again and an automated voice telling me to hang up the receiver. I fall asleep slumped on the floor in this phone box. I wake up I have no idea how long later, damp and reeking of urine. I somehow pick myself up and rush to the studio to check the gusset of my knickers to see if it was my own piss and not that of a stranger. Alcoholic logic, I remember pissing a lot in phone boxes when I was drinking underage. I thank god that it is mine and not a passerby’s. I get in the horrible shower with my dress and coat on. I’m freezing. I still don’t know the time and if I managed to get hold of Martha.

Martha has decided to distance herself from the family - including me. Mum broke her heart and now she can’t look at my face or listen to my voice because they are too similar to my mothers. Even though she has been in my life since I was 9.

My stepmother, if we had to fill out a form even though we never really referred to her like that. She had never formally adopted me. She played a huge role in my upbringing, a lovely but dysfunctional one. She was our anchor, in our beautiful vibrant wretched storm. Mum and I are the Edie Sedgwicks, the Holly Golightly's, the 27 club members that succumb the 27 club. The screwball blondes who were always great at a party. Now Mum’s left for Greg, the family home is sold and life feels more dispersed than ever. I’m an empty bottle swirling around the sea, without anything to hold onto. Martha can’t see me because I speak almost identically to Mum and it hurts her too much to hear it. It makes her angry, cold and irrational. She is the most logic-driven, sensible person I know and there is no logic in her abandonment of me.

I haven’t abandoned you, Polly. You are an adult and I just need some space from the family right now. Please grant me that.

I climb out of the shower, my silk dress and now matted fur coat to wrap myself in a stiff old towel, the dotted blots of dried paint scratching my skin.

What was I thinking earlier - about what is it they say? Blood is thicker than water, so at least I’ve still got Mum. But just because blood is thicker than water, doesn’t mean you need water any less. I write all over the space and hands as I did at my flat - Drink More Water.

I remember the phone call. From the phone box,

Martha - Hello?

Polly - What's the time?

Martha - Ask Greg what the time is, Penelope and maybe check in with your daughter, she is clearly not in a good way! DO NOT CONTACT ME.

Then the phone went dead. My memory is interrupted by a loud knocking on the door of the studio come bedsit. It is a young-looking woman in a short nightshirt, dripping in sweat and what looks like a piece of grease paper stuck to the side of her thigh. Around her neck, there are headphones tinnily playing Fleetwood Mac. It’s still dark outside.

“I’m 2a - your shower must be leaking, its dripping onto my bed, it woke me up”

She is stammering, her voice croaky from having just woken up.

“You’re what, who?”

“I’m 2A! I live below you!” She snaps back angrily.

“Right, Oh god I’m really sorry, I will speak to the landlord, I’m really really sorry oh god oh god oh god”

I start to cry and she doesn’t really react, she just changes her tune completely.

“Thank you so much, doll that would be really helpful. I don’t mind it's been leaking for ages, it's just late at night you know? You can come and use my bathroom until it's fixed, anytime! Anyway, sleep tight!”

“Wait!”

I run to the fridge and grab her a jar of brandy custard. I have perfected this batch and none of my paintings.

“Its homemade brandy custard”

“Thank you, I love brandy. Sleep tight 3c” she kisses me, leaving my cheek damp with her sweat. I swirl it with my tears with my finger across my cheekbone and pour myself a glass of water, then start to paint. I have the sudden idea to switch from my usual acrylic to watercolours.

***

Somehow, it's the private show. The event is dry and the silk dress from the phone box night has been dry cleaned. I sip san Pellegrino and try to forget about pissing myself in it months before. Push it to the back of my mind as I glance around the room, which is mostly journalists and contemporaries and my strange collection of friends; some from university some work arty peers some from AA, some from the pub, even 2a has popped in briefly. We never did exchange names, but she has bought her own little bottle of brandy in her coat pocket. She holds it up to cheers me from across the room. There’s Mum, she’s bought Greg. I have calmed down but still haven’t seen Martha, it actually has been a year now. I stopped harassing her. She’s still on the list of family members to be invited to the show, so I assume the gallery sent her a save the date in the post. Jules and Malcolm deliver the speeches, I pose for photos with the right people, Mum kisses me and the room congratulates me. Greg awkwardly shakes my hand. The show is a triumph, I am told. I personally feel my watercolours being compared to Monet was a bit of an overreaction but I will take it. I go home alone, clutching a leftover bottle of San Pellegrino.

Over the next couple of weeks, I have another meeting at the gallery. We do social media bits, videos of me wandering around the space, put together word copy to plug more tickets, sift through the good and okayish reviews from the PV. When Jules and Malcolm go to lunch, I sit on a centre bench with a flat white staring up at my paintings. I breathe steadily and deeply, grateful for the work and grateful that the hard bits are finished. I glance up and see a tall outline of a woman I recognise in a tan suede coat, looking up at the same piece. She turns, catches my brimming eyes and smiles warmly. It’s Martha.

We go for another coffee in the gallery’s outdoor restaurant. We talk and I light a cigarette. She doesn’t tell me to stop smoking like she always used to tell me and Mum and then I know that things will never be the same, but I am reassured that things are just going to be different.

She asks for the time and I tell her it’s ten past two.

Image Nighthawks by Ed Hopper, 1942