Boys and Girls (37 page)

‘The bull by the horns, Alan. The bull by the horns.'

I blinked, I think. Waited. All I could do.

‘By which I mean, dear boy – tackling right now the subject with you. Thought about not. You know – pretending that last night was, well – just another night. And you – you're a good fellow, Alan. You would not make any allusion, not even jocular, let alone crude. Prurience, I am sure, is by no means a hallmark of your make-up. Mixed, um – thing, that. Pretty sure. Never mind. And then, you see, there would forever be between us a, Lord – what's it called? Big bugger. In the room, you see. Something impossible for either of us to ever ignore. Metaphor, mixed metaphor – that's not the big bugger, I don't mean – that's the thing before.'

‘Elephant. In the room.'

‘That's the chap, quite so. Yes. And so look, Alan – for right or wrong, I'm going to charge ahead with it, you see. Rather like an elephant, I suppose. Bull by the horns. Mixed thing. Never mind. And then we'll be clear. All right with you? Uncharted territory, isn't it? Can't go on precedent. Husband
telling husband. Queer one. Anyway – got to be got through, far as I can see. All right with you? Well – got to be really, I'm afraid. Have to do it. Bull by the horns. And then we'll be clear. Going to light a fag now.'

‘Drink?'

‘Bit early, isn't it? Had a load last night. Partly to blame. Well – not really. But you've got to, haven't you? Have something to blame. If only partly. Make it a large one, would you? But what about you, Alan? Sort of lost track of you, as the evening wore on. Missed you, you want the truth. Sounds ridiculous. What did you get up to?'

‘Watched a bit of television. Read. Did a crossword.'

‘Really?'

‘No, not really. None of those. Drank. Went to bed. Got up. Drank. Went to bed. Stayed there.'

‘Yes. I see. Well quite. Only course open to you. Do see that. Ah – lovely, Alan: the golden nectar. And just that drop of water. Perfect. Most people – well, everyone but you, in my experience – you say a touch of water, just the merest touch, and they make as if they're mixing you up a batch of Ribena, or something. Mm. It's good. Hitting the spot. Looks like being quite a nice day …'

‘Bull by the horns …?'

‘Mm. Yes yes. Quite right. Well you see the first thing that threw me was all the bloody candles. In the bathroom. Must have been hundreds of the buggers. Big ones, tiny ones – all over the place, even on the floor. Telling you, if you'd been wearing a nightshirt you would've gone up like the fifth of November. Stench was perfectly overpowering. Me, I was in a headlong dash to get to the lavatory, as per bloody usual – put out two of the bastards without even trying. Bit of a sizzle.

But women, they've got a thing, haven't they? About candles. Seem to. I mean to say, I've nothing against the candle per se. Useful if the fuses have blown. Perfectly fine on the dinner table – not the stinky ones, obviously. But I ask you: covering a bathroom with the fuckers to the degree that it looks like a shrine to, I don't know – St Francis of Assisi and smells like an inflammable brothel, well really. They worried me, quite frankly. A relic of my timid past. Parents, largely – very cautious, you see. But they didn't have to tell me not to play with matches, Lord no. Wouldn't even touch the box for fear it might explode in my face. I was no hero. Always remembered that a plastic bag is not a toy. Never had anything that could be construed as even approaching a choking hazard – and nor a single thing unsuitable for a child of less than thirty-six months, not until I was at least about, ooh – fourteen or so, anyway. And so as for leaving all these candles unattended, well … heart was in my mouth. Because Susan, you see, she wasn't, um – actually in the bathroom itself. No no. Bath full of bubbles, so obviously it was a part of the eventual plan, but for now she seemed content to be next door, sprawling on the bed. And well – you know that bed, don't you Alan? You remember the nightmare when we had it delivered. Had to take the window out in the end. Remember? Yes. Course you do. Nightmare. Size of the very first digs I had when I came down from Oxford, that bed is. Well I had a glass in my hand, goes without saying – fag on the go. And at the sight of her, all in pearly silk, hair sort of fanned out and away from her, framing her face, sort of style … and I don't have to tell you of all people, do I Alan? About that face. Stop anyone in their tracks. And what I felt was … peckish. Yes – decidedly in need of a snack of some sort. Nothing fancy, you understand.
A Ryvita and Philadelphia would have done for me perfectly – maybe a few of those leftover sausages. What did you say …?'

‘Nothing. I didn't say anything. Just sitting here and listening to you, Blackie.'

‘Oh. Thought you … oh. Could've sworn. Well anyway. It all sort of became rather like a film from that moment on. A film I was watching, yes, but also had a part in – if not, very signally, the starring role. Dreamlike, I suppose you'd call it. In a nightmarish sort of a way.'

Damn right, Black thought then: exactly how it was – I can see and hear the spools clicking and streamingly unfurling through a rackety projector, dancing dust caught in its beam, the images just so clear and very rowdy.

‘Black – be near to me, darling. Sit by my side.'

‘Right-o, Susie. Coming right over.'

‘And bring the champagne.'

‘Champagne. Check. Got you. Jolly good. Gosh – big bugger. Magnum. Pink as well. Clicquot – excellent. The widow at the wedding. Get it? Bit of a joke.'

‘Not a funny one, though.'

‘No no, granted. Not funny, not at all. Here you are then, Susie: glass of bubbles. Did you know – the pressure in a bottle of champagne is equal to six atmospheres?'

‘No Black, I didn't. What does that mean, in fact?'

‘Not the least idea. And in a magnum, who knows? Could be
twelve
atmospheres. Quite a thought. Anyway – cheers, yes?'

Susan sat up and leant upon an arm. She held out her flute to him.

‘What do you propose, Black, my new husband …?'

‘Mm? Well – hell of a day, hasn't it been really? Good night's sleep is what I propose.'

‘I meant … toast.'

‘Oh God yes – toast would be lovely. I could really do with a nice bit of – oh: right. Take your – well quite. Well now, Susie – here's to my beautiful bride. I am humbled. I do not deserve you. But I'm glad I've got you. Lord yes. And so here's a toast to, well –
us
, and all the happy years that await us in both of our golden futures.'

‘That was beautiful, Black …'

‘Mm. Read it in a book, pretty sure.'

‘Come to bed, my darling man. Don't you want to … touch me?'

Well I do, I do, of course I bloody do. Those accursed breasts of yours, ripe and pulsating like so many apples – been yearning to get to grips with them since the moment I thought of Ryvita, which I grant you is odd. Not that apples are known to pulsate – but Jesus, who cares about a thing like that at a time like this? And the narrow waist, you know – and then such a swell. The mouth, painted and shiny. Yes – the hips and the lips, oh dear me. But you see … what I
don't
want to do is anything more. Can't, very probably. But also don't want to be – involved. To such a depth, as it were. Just really want to pick and choose, squeeze and maybe lick a bit, have a fag, throw together some sort of a sandwich and get a bit of kip. But mostly what I don't want to do – can't even think of it – is to even hint at the beginning of my numbing deconstruction. To let her see, by way of her probing and my increasingly horrific disclosure, how I quite literally just come apart – to let her see the inexorable diminishing of the man I was, to let her see – cast aside and about the floor –
the vile and sterile lumps of apparatus that go into keeping me vertical and if not standing tall, then at least preventing me from altogether vanishing. But if I approach, God curse it, if I touch her – then she will, won't she? Touch me back. It's the nature of the thing. And while my fingers are thrilling to the abandonment of the plump and creviced warmness of her, she can but rummage through hardware and a torpid sort of swaddling, the impersonal buttresses of my outer being – which, when unbuckled, unbuttoned, unstrapped and unzipped, leave bare and foolish and so ashamed an alternately stringy and distended, white and lifeless, stripped and cringing clammy little thing, criminally old and yet just puerile, so very truly hideous in its every single aspect that even I myself can frequently recoil in disgust from just the inkling, and not even sight of it.

‘Come on, Black. Come on.
Touch
me …'

Well there you are – caught, wasn't I? No way out. And most of me, of course, wasn't at all wanting it – way out, I mean. Way in, that's what a good deal of me was tangibly yearning for, Lord yes. But well look – I've said it all, haven't I? The fear was there, plain as day. And then (Jesus, I amazed myself) I just
did
it – tried to black out the light of thought, every sort of vision, even any sensibility. Got about a pint of Clicquot down me, and threw off my jacket. Hauled away the tie. As I prised out each of the waistcoat buttons from their safe little crannies, the thread throughout could almost be heard to sigh and then shriek at their blessed release from such arduous duty, and the stays beneath began to stir with a maybe quite giddy anticipation of their own. And while I did this, I stood there deliberately, four-square and before her. I did not approach, and nor did I cower. I wanted this to be a quite thorough admission of all of
my guilt. An appalling show. The devil's own striptease. When I shrugged off the shirt, I awaited her gasp – could not dream of looking at her, naturally enough: my ears were my sole source of detection, the gauge to her reaction, the extent of her revulsion (and the battery, I could tell, was on its very last legs). It was quiet, though, as I began upon the corset, the very core of this terrible installation. Could be she was struck mute by the blossoming horror before her wide and disbelieving eyes. My stomach began to surge forward as its cruel constraints were one by one and purposefully released – I could feel the progressive collapse of rolls and pouches of defeated flesh where once had been muscle and tone and the tingle of pride. As the whole of the buckled contraption clattered down on to the floor, the avalanche soon was complete: my belly fell over into one quite vast and molten fold, hanging right down to where once I was sure were a grown man's genitals, strong and sensate. And still there was no choke of puking that came to my ear, no hit and then splatter of spew. So now it was time for the grand finale to this most repulsive burlesque: I leant, with difficulty – stooped right down and undid first one of my clumped and lunatic shoes, and then unfastened the other. When I rose, I could take shelter only in the belief that I would barely now be visible above the satin counterpane (across which Susan was still maybe sprawling? Or was her face now clutched and distorted, protected by a rampart of pillows?). It was only now I dared to look. She gazed at me. I bowed my head – in honour and penitence, yes, but also in order to make quite plain to her the nonsensical battlefield that my scalp had become – a stained and riven landscape, with only tufts and desolation. I watched her closely, then – was astonished, after the first hot tear, that I still remembered how to cry.

‘And well … do you know, Alan? She was smiling. Not, no no, in any sort of a jeering way. Not even in embarrassment, far as I could tell. Just … smiling. You know? Fond, I think is the word. Think it'll do.'

‘Mm …' murmured Alan. ‘I know that smile, Used to.'

‘And so I … went to her. Yes I did. Touched. Lovely. Was a boy. Excitedly feeling. And the figure … hourglass, really. Would you say? Reminded me of the very first girl I had ever cupped and handled. She had a name, fairly sure. Damned if I know it. We were both in our teens. Little thing, she was. Tiny, really – but so well developed a figure, and she can't have been five feet tall, you know. Not so much an hourglass, then – more of an egg-timer, really. She looked up to me. Half the point. And we touched one another. Fumbled around in a scramble of cloth. Loved it. Susie – she came over as just a girl too. All she is. Underneath. She just goes to the dressing-up box, time to time – that's all it is. As, I suppose, we all of us do. And you have to remember, Alan – yes, you might want to know this, hard to tell. But I still had my trousers on.
All
I had on, granted, but a fairly key garment, I think you'll agree. Susie … I think she understood the game we were playing. The hurried thrill and the blurring of fingers. The delighted surprise of a squirming satisfaction. Boys and girls, you see? Boys and girls. There's no more really, and nor can it ever be better. Alan … you're quiet, suddenly. You've receded. I do so hope I haven't … I mean to say, the last thing in the world, old man …'

‘No no, Blackie. Rest easy. I'm all right. I didn't know how I'd be. But I seem to feel … all right. I admit, yes – when you started in on the thing, I thought that maybe for form's sake I should stop you. Halt you in your tracks. Seemliness, and all that sort of thing …'

‘Why I very nearly didn't go ahead with it …'

‘But then I began to appreciate the honesty. Would “coming clean” be quite the term here?'

‘It was the need for honesty that made me plough on. Could have been a world-class error. Had to risk it. You see, in one sense there is something between us. Well of course there is: Susie, obviously. But I didn't want there to be anything … malignant. As silence sometimes can be. I didn't want to plant the germ, incubate the fever of a taxed imagination. Nor can I abide the dreaded shilly-shally. Out in the open, that's the best way. Because we've always been, haven't we Alan? Open with one another? I hope so. Straight down the line, and no bloody nonsense. That's why there's a, that's why we have a, well – bond, if you like.'