Boys and Girls (16 page)

I still wasn't tired – I didn't feel anything much because I'd been thinking about all what I had to do at school – the English essay and the history download – and these great new albums I got from Jennifer and what Mum would say if I woke her up when I got in and if she'd checked me out with Tara's mum and yeh, just like anything really except for what I'd done. I mean, I never really thought that when it happened to me it was going to be all like golden and romantic because things aren't ever like you really want them to be. I remember when I was really little and I had this thing about, oh God – animals, and I was going to be a vet and go to where it is that gorillas and stuff live, can't remember, and talk to them and get really close to them and maybe, I don't know, even live with them, because I was really like nuts and thought people were cruel and stupid and animals had these really big eyes and were all furry and stuff, and I used to drive my mum like so just
mad
because I wouldn't eat anything with meat in, even spaghetti bolognese, which was always my favourite. Anyway, I went on and on at Mum and Dad to take me to London Zoo, right, where I'd never been – and the night before we were going to go I just couldn't get to sleep and I got so really excited and I just looked at all these posters I had of wildlife on my walls and still I was in Mum and Dad's bedroom before dawn and going Can we go now can we go now can we go now …?! You know what kids are like – Jesus. It's like Christmas Eve, which I still do go for big-time, actually: still really like it, don't care if it's babyish, because Dad, he always does me this stocking and he writes on a label that it's from Santa and his little elves and I like pretend it's true and everything and there's the crumbs from the shortbread I left out and the Drambuie's all gone. So sweet. Anyway – we go to the Zoo, yeh? And Mum's
going Oh
look
, Amanda – look at the lions, look at the zebra – ooh, look at the horrible old crocodile, look at whatever … and I'm like, yeh:
so
 …? It just didn't do it, you know? All that really looking forward and going like crazy, and when I was there I just thought OK, great – bunch of animals: like I
so
don't care. Didn't want to hug them, like I thought I would (they smelled really bad); didn't want to let them all out of their cages because oh boo-hoo it's just so like unfair to keep them locked up because they hadn't done anything wrong and they were so like innocent and it was mankind that was wicked and all the other like total, you know – crap I'd been going on and on about. I just didn't
care
, right? And I remember – quite funny, really: that night we had spaghetti bolognese and it was, like – the best food I ever tasted? So yeh – I don't expect things now to be as great as you want it … but still I didn't think my, you know – first time, it would be just so totally shitty. Like dirty and it hurt and everything smelled as bad as the fucking Zoo. But when you mature, yeh? You get to learn, that's just how it is.

So look, I was in the hall and the paper hadn't even come and it was all so like really still and quiet and everything – and yeh, that was good because I could get up to my room and no one was going to start asking me like a million questions but at the same time I would quite like to have heard just talking, you know? The silence and no people around, it was all getting to me a bit. And in my room I wanted to play music and really like loud but I knew that was stupid so what I did was I put on all the lights including the pink fluffy bally one I've got by my bed, and that made me feel a lot better – and then I took off all of my clothes (and the tights, I'm going to have to like wrap them up in a carrier bag or something and dump them, shit,
because look – there's blood and other muck as well as holes). So I'm standing under the shower now and I raise my head up to the silver thing, yeh, that the water shoots out of – and I'm like imagining that it's the sun in the desert or something, and I know I saw this in some movie, American probably, don't know what it was called, and the woman who had great boobs, fake yeh sure, but a whole load better than mine which are actually a bit pathetic but apparently they can go like completely nuts when you're about sixteen or something so I'm not too like worried about it (I'd never have a boob job or anything though, oh yuck, because it's just so gross) … and anyway, the woman, this woman – could've been Demi Moore – she then sort of smooths back all of her wet hair and she just lets the foamy water kind of go all over her like it's more than just a shower and it's a symbol, probably, for something like getting all pure again, and so I thought cool and I did all that but I don't think the heating can have been on that long because it soon got pretty tepid and anyway there were no bubbles left in the squirty thing and so I thought oh fuck this and I had to go out on to the landing all like dripping to get a towel from the airing cupboard which I'd forgotten to do and when I got back into my room I was all just like totally freezing again, and I don't think I felt like any purer.

I put on a dressing gown – the towelling one, not the baby one that I keep telling Mum I've grown out of and I wish she'd just give away or like dump or set fire to or whatever (little bunnies all over it? I don't think so) and I lay on my bed and tried to work it all out, what I was going to do next. And I suddenly had this thought and I jumped up and went to the drawer I keep really like old stuff in. And yeh – here it is: two tubs of ancient Play-Doh from about a hundred years ago
when I used to make all armchairs for my Sylvanian Families and even teeny ones for Polly in My Pocket and then I did like all this fruit and cakes for them to eat? Still probably got them somewhere. And what I'm doing, right, is I'm making a model of the fucking shit whose name I don't actually want to say any more – he's blue and podgy, and I make a hole in him right in the middle like where his legs stick out, and I fill that with a lump of yellow and then I pick him up and fix back one of the arms which just dropped off and then I put him in this box with Marilyn Monroe on the lid which used to have thank-you cards in and then I get the needles out of the sewing kit that I kept from the hotel room in the Lake District which we went to whenever and I stick them all like straight into the yellow bit and I do quite laugh at the thought of him rolling about in real like agony in that stinky old house of his, shouting out one of his so crap poems and clutching his balls, the bastard. That would be really really funny, I think.

And then suddenly I just like freaked. You know? Lost it. Cried and cried and cried.

My ears. Giving them a well-earned rest for the whole of today. Saturday, after all – don't
have
to listen to anyone, do I? Because all last evening – throughout that perfectly extraordinary dinner with Susan, I had the thing I sometimes, er – you know: put in, hearing thing, tiny little bugger it is – had the damned thing right up to the maximum it'd go. Eerie sensations, I can tell you that. Um – that's rather comical, isn't it? Eerie? No? Well maybe not. So anyway, yes, right up to the maximum it was. I mean, granted, I could hear everything she was saying, no complaints on that score, clear as a bell – but when that wine chappie, what's his name, not Smales, no, not
him, the other one – well whatever his blasted name is, when he took the cork out of the claret with his little waiter's friend … well bloody hell, is all I can say. Sounded like the boom of a depth charge detonated in the Underworld. Someone dropped a spoon, some point – felt like my head had been strapped around the business end of Big bloody Ben, I am not joking. And all of this morning, my ears, they've been zinging, you know – bit of a hiss, and then all this zinging, only word for it. How can an honest attempt to not be as deaf as a thing so bloody thoroughly destroy one's hearing? Can't be right, can it really? Post. Deaf as a … And I suppose I'll have to have the little sod plugged into me again tonight, won't I? At this cosy little dinner of hers. Couldn't believe it when she phoned me this morning. Was only aware of the thing ringing when I happened to pass it – thought I detected the merest tinkle.

‘Christ Black, at long bloody last. Where've you
been
 …?'

‘You're very faint. Who is this, please?'

‘It's
me
, Black – Susan. Am I really not at the forefront of your mind? I simply can't believe it. I would have hoped that after last night, your brain would've been in a fevered tangle, a swirl of delight, concerning only me. Your heart no more than a Susan-shaped and smouldering hole.'

‘… what?'

‘Never mind. Listen. That dinner I talked about, yes? Well we're having it tonight. I woke up this morning and I just thought well why not? You will come, won't you? You've got my address and everything.'

‘… what?'

‘Black. Why do you keep on saying that? Is it a bad connection? I can hear you perfectly well. Shall I hang up and ring you right back?'

Black just stared at the phone and then idly glanced about him in childish wonder.

‘… what?'

And then the line went dead, he rather thought – faint murmur had gone away, anyway. Supposed that he really ought to ring her back then, should he (fairly sure it was Susie, you know – something in the tone), and that the bloody sodding hearing aid would have to go back in, then – because obviously we were getting nowhere at all without it … and so he found it more or less where it had been hurled with impatience and he jammed it into his ear just as the phone rang again – and to Black it sounded as if twelve old fire engines were in a state of high emergency and rammed into his drawing room … and he fiddled quite frantically with the bloody control while consciously willing this seizure to subside, or at least his heart to cease its beating like a set of bongos approaching the spurtingly gory climax to a voodoo sacrifice … long enough anyway for him to at least just snatch up the receiver with the one hand while the other chucked into his mouth a fairly small gathering of the biggish speckled capsules that he rather suspected might be for the subduing or anyway postponement of the onset of any sort of debilitating stress.

‘Can you hear me now? Yes?'

‘Perfectly, dear Susie. It must have been a bad connection. The only sensible thing to do in such circumstances is, well – just hang up and ring right back. Jolly good. So how are we, my dear? Sleep well?'

‘Oh for goodness sake. I'll have to start all over again, it seems. You remember last night when I said … you do
remember
last night, don't you Black? Restaurant? With me? Who is called Susan?'

‘Droll, my dear. Very droll. You were saying?'

‘The dinner I mentioned. My house, yes? Well I thought it would be lovely to do it tonight. You see – I can't be parted from you! Every minute seems an eternity. You getting all this, are you …?'

‘Mm. Yes. Tonight. Well actually, tonight is just a bit, um …'

‘Why? Are you already doing something?'

‘Um – not
doing
something exactly, no. No, not really. No. Not.'

‘Well …? Are you ill? You haven't got a hangover, have you?'

‘Hangover? No no. Well at least I don't
think
so, anyway – really a bit early to tell. Teatime, normally, is when they tend to come over me. Descend, as it were.'

‘So you'll come, then.'

‘Well …
tonight
, you say? Yes … it's just that tonight is rather, er …'

‘Black. We've done all this. What is wrong with tonight? Tell me.'

‘Well there's nothing exactly
wrong
with it … it's just that it's, well – it's
tonight
, isn't it? Short, um – notice, as it were. Not very good at impromptu, you know. Like things planned in advance.'

‘Well this
is
in advance: it's tonight. So you'll come, then.'

‘Um. Right-o. Suppose so.'

‘And you have been thinking? You will
think
, won't you Black? About my … well yes, I suppose it
was
a proposal really, wasn't it?'

‘Sounded like it to me.'

‘So you'll come. And you'll think.'

‘Right-o. Got it. Come. Think. Will do.'

‘Seven-thirty all right? You'll get a taxi, I expect?'

‘Expect so, yes yes. Seven-thirty. Right-o. Oh and er, Susie – what do you think she'd like? Little present, you know.'

‘Who? What on earth are you talking about?'

‘Um – Alison. Thought I'd take along a little, you know – gift of some sort.'

‘Who in God's name is Alison?'

‘Ah. Sorry. Mix-up. Angela, I meant. Yes – Angela, of course.'

‘
Angela
 …?'

‘Mm. Apparently not. Well your little
girl
, for God's sake. Annette, is it? I mean –
you
must know her bloody name.'

‘Oh
Amanda
 …'

‘That's the chap.'

‘Oh no, Black. Please don't trouble. It's very sweet of you, but honestly, really, no.'

‘No? Oh. Quite sure? Oh. I just thought, I don't know … maybe – doll, or something.'

‘Black. She's nearly fifteen.'

‘Oh right. Yes – take your point. Well what do people of nearly fifteen like these days, then?
Weapon
of some sort …?'

‘Oh Black – you really are so very lovably silly. Just come. Don't bring anything.'

‘Oh. Sure? Really? OK then. Seven-thirty. Come. Think. Don't bring anything. Got it.'

Good, thought Susan as she snapped shut her mobile – it's conversations like that that should maybe make me wonder what it is I'm taking on. Still – means to an end, yes? Never lose sight of the goal, that's the golden rule (though how this many clichés could possibly proliferate in a situation so very singular as this one is something of an intrigue in itself; one to be pondered, if and when I get a moment to myself).