Boys and Girls (25 page)

‘Bloody cold out there …'

Alan nodded abstractedly to that as he eased shut the door. The main lock simply fell off (lay there dead), the other just hanging back in sorrow – but the bolts at top and bottom would surely do the business for the remainder of the night. And then tomorrow we can launch ourselves with a new and palpable vigour into the doomed and forlorn challenge of attempting to prevent the locksmith and the garage from jointly bleeding us white (though no more, really, than token resistance) while squaring up for the usual blank and po-faced stonewalling and commensurate wranglings with the disparate insurance companies which both will make a point of cleaving staunchly to their PR-concocted variations on the promise to not ever conjure a drama out of the merest crisis by the simple tried and tested means of refusing to recognise the merit of the incident, and sweetly declining liability. Excellent: more joys to come.

And now that Black was settled back into his customary chair, malt in hand and drawing heavily on the very last of his cigarettes, Alan just had to admire the man's composure, the very tranquillity of his airy disposition.

‘So,
Blackie
 …!' Yes – he really had to shout: that gizmo he had stuck in his ear, well – it was clearly on the point of expiry. ‘You don't feel inclined to ask
questions
—?! Nothing you'd like me to fill you
in
on—?! Car in the
hall
, for instance …?!'

Black was craning forward and was pleased to know that he had fielded at least the guts of all that.

‘Didn't think it was any of my business … Susie gone to bed then, has she?'

‘Mm. Well. After a fashion. But what, then – you didn't hear anything at all? God – you were only a couple of feet away …'

‘What? Sorry …'

‘I say you didn't
hear
anything, then—?!
No
? You heard
nothing
 …?!'

Black nodded. Mm, yes, more or less. About sums it up. It had, after all, been something of a vintage trip to the lavatory, quite a classic – all the usual sorts of things to think on and cope with. I do believe it's true to say that I was sort of very vaguely aware at some point of a kind of skirmishing, some type of distant shenanigans being enacted somewhere, and not too far distant, but nothing that might have alerted me to the fact that Susie and Alan's hall had become the scene of a traffic accident: this I did not surmise. Did a lot of thinking in there, though … well, fell asleep at one juncture, truth be told, but before that, after I'd twisted and wrenched my purple and boiling body from out of the worst of the tyranny of my straps and padding, the bones and braces, I sat there smoking and encouraging the raw backside of me to, Christ –
defecate
, God damn you, now that I've been to all the sweat and trouble of bloody well dragging you in here, you thoroughly useless arse, you … yes yes, I sat there puffing away at a good succession of delicious little columns of Rothman, and – with no assistance at all from a stomach still brimful of rebellious whisky – began to think it through, winnow my way through the maze of it all, try to come close to seeing the structure, and what I could make of it. Because it's strange, you know, but when people say to you: you will
think
about it, won't you …? You find yourself just nodding at them absently, rather as if they had told you to be sure to take care, to mind how you went, to put your hand on your heart and swear to them that it is fully your intention to have a nice fucking day. Yes yes, you are mindlessly assuring them – oh all right then, I'll put all my best efforts into
ensuring that I do every one of those things, while knowing full well, of course, that your vacuous wellwisher – possibly an Australasian waitress in some or other newly trendy Antipodean hellhole bent on forcing down you a nice little cut of griddled wallaby because it's low on fat and high on protein (whereas I am low on fads and high on Béarnaise …) or could be maybe a spellbound Bangladeshi, imprisoned in the cage of a call centre, reading tunelessly from a printed card … not someone, is what I'm driving at, who could honestly be portrayed as having one's very best interests at heart: people, in short, who would neither know nor care if you were struck by a truck. But when she said it to me, Susie – when she said to me, you will
think
about it, won't you Black? Well initially I'd just done what I do, nodded away, nodded away … but it lingers, you know, the trace and odour of it. The shadow of the instruction, it continues to lurk among shadows of its own. Because Susie, whatever she is, whatever she might be – and I have been awed, thrilled and appalled by the rather more of her I have been privy to witness during the meandering course of this ever wilder evening – I think we can all safely agree upon the fact that she certainly isn't stupid. No no. And so this scheme of hers, her plan, her ploy, the rickety device or artifice … surely, I thought, it deserves a glance? Some little consideration? Why I came here this evening, I suppose – although I confess to having been very thrown indeed by the presence of Alan. I was expecting a moody teenage girl, and what I got was Alan. Well well. So is all we have here a simple case of the seven-year itch? I severely doubt it, if only for the fact that they've been married now, Alan and Susie, haven't they, for twice as long as that, at the very least: a thought in itself. Could be that this is the second attack …
? Well who knows. But the fact remains … if all she wants is merely something else, well then why me? You see? Why me? That's what I have to come to terms with. But already I do understand, rather bizarrely, why she wants it to be as well and not instead of. That part isn't a problem at all, very oddly. Because she's rather sweetly old-fashioned in many ways, you know – wouldn't care to be seen to be a bolter – and I can see why she wants him around, old Alan. But what am I? What do I represent? Money? Just money? Well that's a lot of it – but there are younger, richer and better-looking men than me around (and don't think I would hesitate to give the order to have the lot of them exterminated, and preferably lingeringly, the bastards). But then they wouldn't entertain it, would they? All the young and handsome high-flyers, they'd laugh in her face. Because although she's a beauty, Susie, oh Lord she is (and don't think I've forgotten it) – these chaps, the Masters of the Universe (that what they call them?), they never ever have to compromise, do they? And me, maybe I do. Because what, quite frankly, can my future hold? And how much of it is there still to be? Big questions. At my age. Because I've been very conscious lately, you know, of – mortality. My mortality, naturally – don't much care about anyone else's. Which is maybe half the trouble. I am aware of having become something of a rock, amid an increasingly turbulent sea: solid, yes, but so very alone. Why I have made so many large decisions lately – conscious decisions, I'm sure, that will force me to at least appear to begin again. Changes in my fundamental circumstance, as a rather easy and shaming disguise for the same old me, loitering beneath. Because I had this … well,
vision
is far too strong a way of putting it: I am not the mystic. But I did sort of see it square on, as it were:
my presiding over my small but rather prestigious publishing house until the dropping off me of yet more bits would force me to retire under yammering and pitiable protest, by which time I no doubt will have tarnished if not riven asunder the reputation of the house as a result of a string of autocratic, outdated, wrong-headed and pipingly peevish decisions (or, much more likely, a yawning apathy and the cancer of neglect) … and then what? Hey? What then, I ask you? To do. And where, indeed, to go? So I'm getting out while I'm more or less able – while I can still just about manage to lie down on my back to tie up the laces on my pantomime shoes, while still I can colour my scalp, smoke and drink and eat and bloody do up the straps of my own fucking corset.

And even to the old family house: I am selling that too – complete next Tuesday. Already bought a new one, point of fact – huge, far too big, ridiculous really, early Georgian, Richmond, and a complete and utter wreck, but it does have quite the most amazing garden – a thing I've always coveted, and now, I sense, might need. That is either clear or it isn't: hardly matters. And how much of all this, I have to ask, did Susie simply sense and divine? Or is this just serendipity, at its purest? That undesignable thing, flighty, and far too wily for trapping. It would be lovely to think so – to think so, at least, that alone would be lovely. But I'm at the age now where even the idiot mask of self-delusion need be no bad thing. If it's real, well then excellent; if it's a damn close simulacrum, something that could pass muster when it's dusky and the lights are low, while one's eyes are glassy and one's need is soaring … well then that will do very well too. I have seen men, proud, reject with contempt anything that was even remotely sullied or less than complete – but me, I am aware that anything available
to me now will and must by definition be partial – gnawed at before by teeth that are sharper than mine, whole layers of contents spilled out or devoured. But I am grateful to even be considered as the suitable and deserving recipient of at least the potential of any good parts that are left me. And this chance, I think – this one, here and now – is more than I might have expected. When you reach a state of resignation, when you have built up as if they are walls the solid boasts of your own self-dependence – not just the lack of desire for another but the supremacy of the solitary state – then the likelihood of encountering a person with whom you could seriously not just contentedly pass away the remaining time, but maybe actually attempt to generate something other, and even vigorous … such an idle and withering hope, it diminishes with the passing of each and every moment. And yet here now, at twilight, I have within reach a person I can now truly understand, be easy with, be
me
with – someone who will listen, and from whom I might even learn of the things that have always eluded me. It happens rarely, if it happens at all, and I cannot be the fool who lets it slip away. Soulmate, well – it's an overused expression, a term that is little understood … but even the hint of its possibility, the whiff of its aroma, these should always be heeded and inhaled. Because Alan, you know, is that very rare thing.

I am pleased to be rid of the house. Should have done it long ago. All the happier memories of when the children were growing, they have long been overladen by the darkness of all that was to come. And if the establishment of another household is the order of the day … well then you do not want to cling on to, to inhabit, to bring along not just a man but a brand-new
wife
to the place where once you recently just found yourself … murdering the old one.

‘Well, Alan. It's been a while. My secretary tells me that it's … um, let me see … two appointments you've cancelled now. That right? Two. Alan?'

‘Mm – yes, Doctor Atherby. It's true. But I'm here now. Dry your tears, you sentimental old sausage.'

Yeh – two appointments I've broken. Felt marvellous. The first time, well – it was just such a lovely sunny day, I simply can't tell you. Picture-perfect. First of the blossom, dazzle of pinkness, a zing of freshness all around. Bit of bird-song – saw them there, flitting about. I felt like something ugly, a misshapen thing – crude and colourless – fallen like a meteor down into the middle of a Disney animation. And so I thought, well while I'm here I'll breathe it in, suck it all down, before I am rumbled and come to hit the cutting-room floor. And then it struck me – it was then I laughed, yes out loud (a mighty good feeling all on its own). I had been smacked by the reminder of where I was headed: Doctor bloody Atherby. Even the thud of his name, it depressed me so badly – and then I mentally projected myself forward – beyond the sour and curdled receptionist, on into the glumness, the slump of
his presence, the still of the room, the smell and shift of the leather on the couch as I fold away the essence of me, resign myself to slipping on the costume of the disturbed, the tick of the clock, the very sight of the man tip-tapping away at his gut-wrenching moustache with the heavy shiny end of his fucking expensive pen … and I just didn't, that's all. Went to Hyde Park instead. Delightful. Did me a power. Instead of feeding ourselves into the relentless chomping maw of things like Doctor Atherby, why don't we all just go to the park? Something we have forgotten to do. Bought an ice cream. Yum yum. Closed my eyes against the sun. Felt no longer the brutal invader. It was nearly as good as my own private beach (though I did miss the sand and the seagulls). So yes – that was one appointment blown. The other – quite funny, I suppose. The other time, the next appointment – well, just the opposite, really: pissing down, you know, and I just tweaked aside the curtain, took one look out of the glycerine window and I thought well sod it, actually. Played a game of draughts with Blackie instead; he won, of course, as he usually does, but still – better than traipsing through a monsoon to be confronted by a wall of grey: Doctor Atherby from beneath his shroud, asking me how I feel, urging me to regress, generally wasting a good man's time. I'm here now though, yes I am – on this occasion I have made it, but just you wait to hear what I'm now going to say to the man: let's just watch his face, shall we? When I hit him with this:

‘Actually, Doctor Atherby, it's quite odd, you know – that I am here, I mean. Because the reason I am here is to tell you I won't be.'

‘Uh-huh …'

Had to smile – a smile was twisted from me, I admit. The
tone, the way he had said it, that uh-huh: as if I had uttered not just something logical and coherent, but even a telling profundity. His stock reaction to all I say – and not just what
I
say, I am convinced, but whatever quite pitiable nonsense either falls or is propelled from the mouths of all those other poor and fragile bastards desperate enough to come here. I long ago ceased asking myself whether or not he listened – but it was doubtful now if he even heard. Maybe he had a gizmo like Blackie's stuck deep in his ear – could be he was learning colloquial Cantonese, or maybe just tapping his pen in time to the greatest hits of the Spice Girls. But certainly it wasn't me he was hearing; if it hadn't been clear before, then now it was stark – as plain as the very horrid nose, slammed like dough and roughly in the centre of his big and phoney face.