Boys and Girls (20 page)

‘No thank you, Susie. I seem to be all right on the noodle front, actually.'

And that's another thing: Chinese takeaway. I mean – Jesus. Granted, the wine has been good and plentiful (only reason I'm still just about coping, tell you the truth), but you show me the bod who can match a wine with a limp and tepid prawn and sesame toast, and I shall show you a better man than I am, Gunga Din. Whoever the fuck he was. Being a bookman, I ought to know. And once, no doubt, I did. And I
know
it's a takeaway because Susie, Christ, she hasn't stopped
telling
me, as if, I don't know – it's a
good
thing, or something. First thing she said as I walked through the door – shoved these flowers at her (God, she made a spectacularly big deal of them: it was quite as if she'd never seen any flowers before, maybe didn't know what they even were) and Jesus, I was pleased to be shot of them, tell you the truth. I'd bought them in Liberty's, happened to be round there, remembered that someone had told me that they sold them, flowers you know, and so I went in one of the side doors and, well – you know Liberty's, bloody great maze of a place: go up a staircase or two and you end up on a floor that's lower down than the one you started out on. It's a bit like a magic trick. The shop seems largely to comprise a great big bloody hole, and from wherever you look down into it to check where in Christ's name you've got yourself to this time, all you ever see is an ocean of scarves, and then of course your head starts to swim: mine does, anyway. So I wasn't having all of that so I got into a lift because I could have sworn that the person I'd asked to direct me to the flowers had said Third Floor, sir, which yes, on reflection, and with a handful of hindsight, might and should have struck me as a wee bit odd, but at the time it
struck me neither one way nor the other – no, not at all – and so I got into the bloody lift. And I couldn't get it to start. And then it started. And then it stopped on the first floor and some disgusting little lout was sloping in (never used to have them in the old days, louts, not in Liberty's at least) and he of course had this spastic little music toy jammed into his scabby ears, the lout, the bloody
lout
 – and all these ludicrous lyrics were fizzing out of the sides of it and I'll remember them for the rest of my days on earth because damn me if the sodding little lift didn't go and stop again and I stabbed at a button and jabbed at another one – and the lout, he didn't seem to have noticed that we had stopped (he seemed unaware, in truth, that he was even alive and on this planet. And just look, will you, at his bloody hair: all the hair in the world this lout's got – and it looks as if someone while he was asleep had covered it in a slick of Evo-Stik and twisted up all these little thickets of it – like a slimy otter or a well-used bog brush, the lout …) and of course the lift just wouldn't
move
and so I just had to stand there wincing at these bloody stupid words: Bay Bye Wan Chew, Hernia Knee Jew … over and over, well I ask you. Made me yearn to pluck out my hearing thing, but then I knew I'd never get it working again and I couldn't face the prospect of a whole damn evening shouting
What? What?
Into everyone's faces, so I just stood there going mauve and slamming at all the buttons with the flat of my hand. Bay Bye Wan Chew … Hernia Knee Jew … dear God Almighty, it is a wonder, truly, I am not as we speak under lock and key for having torn the bloody lout's head from his body, the lout, the bloody lout. And then the lift started up again in its juddering way, and as I burst out of the doors on the third bloody floor – and the lout, so serene, had a look on his vacuous and pockmarked face
that suggested he might now be strolling through a bluebell glade at twilight – he just stood there, didn't move, and still the same bloody song was boring its way into his cranium, as might an insidious maggot to a forgotten potato. And so I burst out of the doors on the third floor, all right? And I knew I must have filled the space around me like a sturdy and determined one-man commotion (small, I am small yes, but by now I was in unchained bison mode) and some little squirt, when I shouted at him ‘
Flowers!
', he more or less laughed in my face as if I had said something beyond fantastic, and then he's going ‘Flowers? Oh no sir. Ground floor, flowers.' Well why then, I roared at him, did some septic lunatic tell me they were on the bloody
third
?! That, he said, he couldn't say – so I wasn't chancing the lift again, was I? So I settled for the new and fresh hell of charging up and down a succession of Tudor staircases, squinting over the odd could be Jacobean minstrel gallery, wondering whether I was doomed to die here among all this treacly woodwork even older than I – and then, oh mercy! Oh joy! The ground floor was mine. I accosted some woman fooling with a scarf and demanded to know the location of the flowers and she looked at me the way that some women will and she told me that she didn't work there. I shouted back at her that I didn't give a tinker's
thing
where on God's earth she
worked
, and just to tell me, Christ's sake, where the bloody
flowers
are! Well she rushed off, probably to fetch the police, and then some flunkey or other, he oils up to me – maybe attempting to avert a riot – and says that flowers are outside, just outside – through these doors here sir, and outside on the pavement. Well I thought he was having a laugh – turned out it was true: needn't have gone into the shop in the first bloody place. Jesus. And the woman there,
amid the flowers, she asked me if I'd like a pre-tied bouquet, and I said to her As Opposed To Tied
When
Exactly? She gave me the look, I gave her the money, I got in a taxi, flowers made me sick and they brought on my hives. So in the hall of Susie's house … yes, I more or less threw them at her, fucking things.

‘Oh my
God
Black – how divine! How just totally
divine
. Oh they're simply
lovely
, Black – thank you so so
much
. Let me take your coat. We're having a Chinese takeaway – very superior, though. It'll be a hoot. I'll get a vase. Go on in and have a drink. I'll make introductions, yes? And then we'll have a perfectly lovely evening. I'll just get a vase. They're gorgeous, Black: divine.'

Had to go to the lavatory, of course: took some time. And despite what Susie had told me, I had brought a gift, little something for the child, Annette is it. Would have seemed rude not to. Phoned one of the women in the office, Sandra I think: what do girls of nearly fifteen like, Sandra? Christ I don't know, she said: boys, I expect … money? Christ I don't know. Mm, I thought: start as they mean to go on, then. So Sandra was no use to me, so I thought I'd ring Samantha, who has always struck me as being of a more thoughtful disposition. Well, she said – what about a really beautiful book? What about one of those limited editions of Grimm we did? With all the lovely illustrations? And this sounded really quite reasonable to me, in the light of the assumption that I wasn't going to bring the child a gift-wrapped boy or a wad of cash. So I put a bit of paper around the thing, bow sort of affair, and that's what I've got with me. Here we go, then. Put on a smile, attempt to cast the thought of a Chinese takeaway far from my mind, and do my level best to not fall off my shoes. Quite nice room: spacious. And there's a forty-five-year-old man at its centre,
look. Could be younger or older. Seems a bit wild. Good head of hair on him, bastard. No young girl around. Odd.

Alan came forward clutching a glass, a jammy and slapstick grin draped across his face like a gaudy curtain (rigged up in no time).

‘Expect you could do with a drink, couldn't you? I've had several. More than enough. Have another in a minute. Alan, by the way. Ah – you shouldn't have.'

Black glanced down at the ribboned package as he awkwardly fingered it.

‘Ah yes. No no. This is for, um – Angela, I think.'

‘Mm. You must mean Amanda. Don't worry – I'm appalling with names myself. Perfectly useless. So – drink, then? Scotch? Wine? Got some good wine. Something else? Do sit, won't you. Susan won't be a minute, I shouldn't imagine.'

Black laid Amanda's present to the corner of a console table and sank with relief into an ample sofa and on the whole felt really pretty good about the fact that there wasn't a teenage girl in the room, but a bloke instead – a bloke, moreover, who was offering him drink, and now had placed an ashtray by his side.

‘Black, they call me. If you can stand it. Yes – a Scotch would be excellent, not too much trouble.' He hesitantly floated a packet of Rothmans while waggling his eyebrows. ‘So you don't mind if I …?'

‘Not a bit. Where else can you, these days? Merest touch of water? Not sure about the Black thing, frankly. No doubt I'll get used to it. Fullness of time. Well. This is odd. Wouldn't you say? Here you are: one disgustingly large Scotch whisky – enough water, I hope. Susan said not to say anything of that sort – about it being odd, I mean. But there – I have now. But it
is, isn't it? Wouldn't you say Black? Odd. This? Not your fault, of course. But Susan, well – don't have to tell you, do I? You know Susan. I expect. Once she gets a bee in her, um … well. No stopping her.'

Black was very uncertain about just every little part of this. He drank deep into the whisky, and that was good; the desperate drag on the Rothman, that was even better. But still, though – what
is
all this? What's all this ‘odd' business? Hey? I mean you're all keyed up to blether like a halfwit to some young kid about Jesus knows what, and instead it's all this ‘odd' lark with a middle-aged bloke. I've half a mind to voice my confusion … do you know, I might easily have done that, asked what's going on, but now Susie is in the room (and oh Jesus, I don't have to
stand
, do I? Can't think I'm up to it. No no – it's quite all right: I did the squirm for form's sake, and she's batted me back with a wave of her hand. Good. Oh bugger – time to take a pill).

‘Can I help you, Black? Why are you twisting around like that? Alan – take his glass from him, can you? Take the cigarette out of your mouth, Black – you'll blind yourself. What is it you're trying to …?'

‘Sorry. Pills in waistcoat. Bit tight. Big sofa. Be all right …'

‘Which pocket? Shall I rummage?'

‘Left, pretty sure …'

‘Are these them? Is it these, Black?'

‘Are they blue?'

‘Blueish, I suppose …'

‘Let's have a look … ah no. These are more azure, you see. Greenish, I call those ones. Maybe the right pocket, then. They're as blue as blue, the ones I'm after.'

‘There's nothing in the right-hand pocket, Black. Are you sure you've brought them with you?'

‘Ooh God yes – never leave home without them. Maybe my jacket, then. Hang on – let me just …'

‘Wouldn't it be easier if you stood up, Black?'

‘God no – shouldn't have said so. Job in itself. Ah – here we are. These are the boys. Jolly good. Bugger. Bloody cap, now … Meant to be childproof. Completely does for
me
, anyway …'

‘Here, Black – let me. Do you want water? Water, Alan.'

‘No no. Scotch is fine. Think they're for my liver anyway, so they'll both be going in the same direction. There. There we are. Splendid. Sorry about all that. Sorry, um … Alan, is it? Sorry Susie.'

Alan raised a finger. ‘A good liver,' he pronounced, ‘is generally possessed of a bad one.'

‘
Silly
, Alan,' tutted Susan.

‘I thought that was very good,' said Black, in frank admiration.

‘A little thing,' Alan smirked, ‘and yet mine own. Top you up?'

‘I'm sure I've heard that before …' Susan was sniffing. ‘Read it somewhere. Was that the doorbell?'

‘Well it
could
have been the doorbell, Susan,' Alan allowed, with all the unctuous charm and expansiveness he could pile into the thing. ‘It emanated from the hall, did it not? And was not the sound distinctly similar to that which the doorbell is prone to habitually make?'

‘Yes – all right, Alan.'

‘Not to say identical? The very thing, in fact.'

‘Well shut up and
answer
it, then. Hungry, Black? That'll be the takeaway.'

‘Ah,' said Black. ‘Yum yum.'

‘We're going to have a perfectly
lovely
evening. Well go
on
, Alan –
answer
it, God's sake. Here, Black – let me help you up. Dining room now, yes? I've ordered plenty of everything. Do you like ribs?'

Mm, thought Black – it's them I'm worried about: strapped up fit to bust, and that whole charade on the sofa hadn't helped in any way at all (sure I heard something go). Oh well – sod it all. Good whisky that, though. Nice chap, Alan, whoever he is. No doubt find out more. Wouldn't have minded the time for another Rothman, if I'm honest. Later. Right, then: let's go forward. Let us embark upon a perfectly
lovely
evening …

He noticed nothing about the dining room – low lighting, thick linen, clusters of candles, squat glass cubes jammed with anemones – no no, didn't see any of that; was only aware that the table had been set for three, you see, just three, and that he had been directed to its head – or conceivably its foot, who's to say? A carver at one of the ends of it, anyway, and opposite was sitting this Alan fellow (good of me to have remembered his name) with Susie, then, right between the two of us. At the moment she was fooling around at a sort of trolley affair alongside, busily transferring heaps of steaming whatnot from a seemingly limitless series of cardboard cartons into equally numerous porcelain bowls of strikingly similar shape and form. Whatever else there might be the length of the table, Black did see that it was liberally sprinkled with what looked like more than fairly decent bottles, far as could be made out (going only by the blurred and gauzy impressions of reliably French-looking labels, proper sort of thing, familiar you know – no hope whatever of actually being able to
read
the things, of course, not from this distance) and that already this Alan
character was up on his feet and pouring away. This could be a Chablis, if I'm any judge … oh I don't know, though – it's unusually lingering, once you get it down you, almost as fat as a red in the mouth … might even be Meursault, mm, and if this is the case I can only further lament the acute disappointment that it is to be accompanied by nothing more than a succession of claggy and soy-doused dollopings of monosodium-whatever-they-call-the-fucking-stuff, and not instead maybe a tranche of wild Scottish salmon (a Dover sole, a nice leg of lamb, a fillet of beef, a well-roasted chicken – the sorts of things you actually want to
eat
, God's sake).