Animals (15 page)

‘Wellll …’ said Tom.

I hoped the dynamics didn’t intensify or I was going to have to make a break for the bathroom. I looked out of the window. A pug was playing in the small, neat garden. The garden was green and brown, strong solid colours in definite shapes like someone had painted it by numbers. It made me think of a nuclear testing site. The pug picked up a partially deflated ball and trotted across the garden, neck arched proudly, like a miniature show horse.

Shirley was sitting on Tom’s knee, sucking her cuff. ‘She’s beautiful,’ I said. It was what you said about babies.

‘Remember what Dad said about me when I was born?’ said Tyler. The room stiffened. ‘He said I looked like a tortoise without a shell.’

Ro handed me a glass of wine. ‘I remember you having a liking for Chenin Blanc,’ she said. I shrugged, smiled and took the wine. Ro had a constantly delighted face. Plump little jowls hanging lower than Tyler’s, falling round into the solid bowl of her chin. A vision of gravity’s better effects. Whenever I saw her looking slightly older, always the case due to our sporadic meetings, I got a rush of few-times-removed tenderness, like when I saw a favourite actor in a new film.

My phone rang in my pocket. I pulled it out. Jim.

‘Back door’s unlocked,’ Jean said.

I lit up a fag and then answered the phone as the door closed behind me. A trellis was nailed to the wall. On the trellis a clematis plant was starting to bud.

‘Where are you?’

‘Hong Kong.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘I’ve only really seen hotel rooms.’

Diddums.
I stopped myself saying it. Roaring silence. Background radiation and white noise. I inhaled. Exhaled.

‘Did you book the DJ?’ he said.

That sound again.

‘Laura?’

‘No. Sorry.’

‘It’s okay – that’s why I’m asking: my parents know someone. DJ Pete from Halifax.’

‘DJ Pete from Halifax?’

‘They just want to help. Be a part of it. I’m an only one so it’s a big deal for them.’

I thought about it. Did I
really
care about the DJ? No I did not. ‘Sure.’ I said. ‘Fuckit.’

He laughed. ‘Well, yeah. Speaking of which, I’ve been enjoying what we’ve been doing or rather not been doing.’

I liked the abstract riskiness of it more than anything. What if I
was
pregnant? Unlikely, but what if? I had no idea where I was up to. I shut the thoughts down and right then it was easy. ‘You know,’ Jim said, ‘something for us to think about in the future is the fact that you have more chance of conceiving if you … never mind. Enjoy tomorrow!’

I finished my cigarette before I went back in, trying not to blow smoke on the foliage. There was nothing in cigarettes for plants.

Later, in bed, after Tyler had fallen asleep, I took out my laptop and Googled the fuck out of Marty Grane. Googled him hard, all night.

The next morning I woke early to see Tyler already up and sitting at the dressing table in the corner of Jean’s guest room.

‘’Eyyyyyyyyyyyy,’ she said, holding a comb by the side of her head. She was dressed and fully made-up – liner, shadow, lippy, rouge. The chocolate-y mole on her left cheek was more prominent that usual, highlighted by foundation and a liberal twist of kohl.

I raised myself onto my elbows. ‘How long have you been posing with that comb?’

She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. ‘Twenty-eight minutes.’

I stuck my tongue out wide and exhaled fruitily. Parched. I was so parched. ‘I feel terrible,’ I said. ‘It’s all your mother’s fault.’

‘That old chestnut. Hey, want to go for a walk? London can be picturesque in the morning if you choose your route wisely.’

‘Is your brain on already?’

‘
Bam bas bat bamus batis bant.
Seems so.’

‘Why is it that the memory cells are the hardest ones to kill?’

‘Come on now, get your legs moving. Your blood will renew! Your liver will rejoice!’

‘Maybe you could just push me round a park in a bath chair, like Heidi with Clara.’

But we didn’t have time for a walk in the end. We had to be at the church for midday. I’d forgotten to hang up the dress I’d brought, so it was creased all over and the thin grey fabric hung off me like the skin of an octogenarian elephant. I’d taken three Nurofen Express and felt altitudinous. Tyler was wearing her fish-scale top and one of Jean’s trouser suits. We stood out on the street smoking, waiting for the cars, jacking up our morale by blowing smoke rings and headbutting them. Soon a minibus and a beautiful big white car turned the corner. I whistled. The car soared along, like a plane.

‘Always wanted to drive a Rolls,’ said Tyler, twisting her heel on the end of her fag.

‘No,’ said Jean firmly, taking her by the arm and leading us towards the minibus.

Stepping inside a church felt, as always, like an ornate form of excavation. The statues, the dust and the wood; alien archaeology, with signs and symbols to be sought and interpreted. I walked down to the front and sat and waited while Tyler and her family stood greeting people at the door. I sang the hymns gutsily, not sure who or what I wanted to notice me. After the ceremony I snuck outside and went round to the side of the church, disappearing behind a tree. I sparked up and wondered what to do with my dimp when the time came.

‘Are you a friend of the family?’

I turned to see the vicar standing by a small door. A dog collar under a black turtleneck. Creature on creature on creature.

‘Yes,’ I said, looking guiltily at my fag.

‘Don’t worry about that. I often nip out here for a joint after funerals.’

I looked at the floor. It was littered with jack-knifed joint-ends. I said: ‘That was a lovely service.’

‘That’s what they all say.’

She looked young. Mid-twenties. Fresh out of vicar college. She had long dark hair and the big silver cross round her neck looked like she’d kept it from when she was a goth teenager. I felt suddenly close to her, as though she could help me.

‘You were looking round the church a lot,’ she said. ‘Are you a Christian?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘My dad was raised Catholic but I also know I’m happier outside once I’ve got in.’

‘I like that feeling, too. But then I never feel truly alone. I suppose that’s what brought me to God, that sense of solidarity.’

‘I never feel alone either. Sometimes I can’t eat a
banana
, know what I mean?’ She did but she didn’t say. ‘So do you go in for the whole omnipresent schtick?’ I realised as I said it that subtext had always been masturbation. ‘I write,’ I explained, ‘I’m just thinking about how I always feel the need for that audience – and I’m not sure whether that makes me a better writer or just a narcissist.’

‘I don’t think you should worry so much.’

Ha. ‘Without the worry I wouldn’t write at all.’

‘Then try trusting the audience you most want to impress.’

‘And make sure they’re as drunk as you.’

‘Do you know the Serenity Prayer?’

The first time I’d read it, I’d thought it was a joke. I rattled it off before she could. ‘
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
’

Her eyes blared as she smirked. I cursed myself. Church was school and I was damned like always. I thought of my dad, who saved everything; conversations included. ‘Here’s one for you,’ I said. ‘Higgs boson walks into a church. Priest says,
Thank God you’re here, we can’t have Mass without you
!’

The vicar laughed. She had lovely teeth.

Back at Jean’s I sat on the end of the sofa near the door so I could get in and out without disturbing anyone. The house was full, with a queue halfway down the stairs for the bathroom, and smalltalksmalltalk everywhere. I looked from face to face, trying to spot couples, looking for matches in expressions and mood, like I was playing a kiddies’ card game. Jean was standing by the wall talking and holding Shirley. The baby’s long white dress trailed to the floor while the black plastic aerial of the stereo system was positioned on a shelf just behind Jean’s head in a squarish halo. I remembered wanting to see Jean when she was pregnant, to map the changes on her; the mystery of life going on inside. I wanted to see whether any of that mystery showed on her face.

Tyler came over with a glass of Cava. My own glass was empty. She tipped half of her drink in. ‘Thanks.’

‘Eh,
mi Cava es su Cava!
’

‘Fancy a fag?’

‘Boy, do I. I just made the mistake of reading the christening cards.’

I sipped my drink. My hangover was receding. The hair of dog theory held, depressingly. We walked outside and stood on the street. I shook two cigarettes out of my pack.

‘
Welcome to the club
,’ Tyler said, taking a cigarette. ‘That’s what they all say. Welcome to the club!’ She exhaled. ‘You know what the “Baby Club” is? The Baby Club is one of those godawful discos in Leicester Square: starkly lit, tacky and full of tourists. The décor is dated and you can’t get a decent drink, and every time someone new walks through the door everyone who’s in there smiles manically with this huge relief because they’re just so glad someone else walked into their shitty club after they paid twenty quid and can’t leave.’ She went on: ‘But I’d never say that to them, you know,
Stick your shitty fucking club – I’ve got better places to be
.’

I wondered whether to tell her that Jim and I hadn’t been –

‘Are you worried you’re getting too old to have a baby, Tyler?’

‘I’M TWENTY-NINE!’

‘Thirty in two weeks.’

‘Still. Fifteen years at least before I need to freak. I know you think I’m pissed because I didn’t get my invite to the baby party yet. But I’ll tell you something, my friend, I’ll tell you something. If I do decide to do it then it’ll be something I just do and not something I try and sell as an exclusive event when in fact it’s anything but. I have my definitions, my developing theories, and I will never live without a lonely hungry longing in my soul, never.’

We smoked in silence.

‘Listen to that,’ Tyler said.

I strained my ears, my neck.

‘Hear it?’

‘You mean the distant rumble of Time’s winged chariot with its massive fuck-off spike on the front?’

‘Just behind that.’

I listened again. ‘Mm, not sure.’

‘Precisely. Nothing. The sound of the suburbs. They sell it as peace but it’s actually death, closing in.’

Irreversibly attached.
Irreversibly.

After the party Ro went up to bed. Shirley lay asleep in her Moses basket in the corner with one hand above her head, index finger extended, like a little despot who had fallen asleep in the middle of giving an order. The chairs had all been brought in from the garden. I stroked the dog under the table and felt the bones along its back.

‘This is the first time I’ve been properly drunk since having her,’ Jean said suddenly. ‘I’m so much happier not being drunk very often. So much clearer on everything.’

Tom nodded in approval and gave Jean’s shoulder a squeeze. I felt Tyler bulging and popping.

‘You treasure your flesh when you’re pregnant,’ Jean went on. ‘You consider every cell. The time things take to grow.’

On top of the enamel bread-bin was a pestle and mortar I recognised from one of Jean’s previous abodes – a night when we crushed pills in it and snorted them. Then she forgot to clean it and made a tagine. That tagine had gone down well. Best. Cumin. Ever.

I was still stroking the dog’s head but I must have stroked too hard because it moved away. I thought,
Jean’s drunk and she’s trying to sound all wise and in control for Tom.
I didn’t care if she used me for that. I thought,
Zen is possibly the way to go here.
‘There are many roads to happiness,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you found yours, Jean. Today was –’

‘There are many roads to hell, too,’ Jean said. ‘I worry about you two.’

The mood of the room changed. A fall in atmospheric pressure. I looked at Tyler. She was growing purplish.

‘She’s always been more wilful than me,’ Jean said, to Tyler, via me.

Bathroom, bathroom, how could I get to the bath –

‘You know you can cut down, if you want to. I know some places –’

‘I don’t need your
places
,’ Tyler said.

‘You might need to grow up a bit then,’ Jean said. ‘Sorry, Lola, no disrespect, but –’

Tyler snatched for the warm wine bottle in the middle of the table and poured. When she got to Tom he held his hand over his glass and she poured wine over his hand until he moved it away. ‘I’ve warned you, Jean,’ she said.

‘It’s a case of mind over matter, I find,’ Tom said, wiping his hand on his trouser leg.

‘Last time I checked my mind was attached to my matter,’ said Tyler. ‘Furthermore. I like what my mind and matter do to each other. And I can stop. And as long as that’s the case, I’m not changing a fucking stroke. Just because your mind and matter fell out, Jeannie …’

Tom raised his palm and looked upwards, like a saint. I remembered something Tyler had told me, something she shouldn’t have, late one night. Tom had confessed to seeing a prostitute not long after he and Jean started dating. Jean was aghast.
If you ever see another prostitute I will cut off your balls with a butter knife
… Tyler, in the wreckheaded re-telling, was not aghast – or rather, she was more aghast at the fact Jean was morally outraged rather than jealous.
There’s no sense of the other woman in this situation
, Tyler said.
Let’s think about that.

‘So you’re just going to wait until you collapse in the street or get cancer?’ Jean said. Her voice was louder. Higher. I flinched at the word and I could tell Jean was sorry for saying it.

‘You bet your fucking bottle of shitty Chardonnay in the boiler closet I am,’ said Tyler.

A boiler closet. That sounded like a nice place to be. It would be dark and warm and quiet. I put my hand over my mouth and supported my head that way.

Tyler said: ‘The world is over-populated. Way I see it, I’m saving the fucking planet.’