Boys and Girls (9 page)

Quite early in the evening, and already it's practically dark. I used, thought Alan, to hate that, the season's change, when one seemed to be robbed of the value of the day, the bright goodness wrung out of the thing. But I suppose that really it could hardly matter less: I am inured to making my own sunshine now. Tara though, Amanda has just now informed him, her house was more towards the Fulham end of things, and fortunately he knew of a short-cut. And when he took it, he very much wished he hadn't. The narrow back road was barely lit at all, and the feeling of nauseous unease was thumped within him the moment he first caught sight of them – sort of just hanging around, like that. And as he and Amanda walked on, the glutinous mass of it expanded inside him and became just harder, much more set, throbbing like a heartburn.

‘Maybe we shouldn't have come this way, Amanda. We might go back …'

‘Why? What's wrong? Is it the wrong way? Seems right.'

‘Well yeh but um. Let's cross the road, then.'

‘Why? What's wrong?'

Christ. Why does she keep on
saying
that? Is she blind, or
simply stupid? Why can't she
see
what's wrong? Staring her in the … Jesus, we're nearly right up to the pack of them, now – and that one, that one there … because there are four, I thought at first it was three, but no, I was wrong, because it's four, as I now can see so clearly – and one of them, that one, that one there, tall he is, big hands – he's detached the leg he had bent and cocked behind him, the flat of his trainer against the wall, and now he has turned about to face us and he's looking so intently: black, deep liquid and somehow imploring, his eyes are, in a blacker and shrouded face, and yet they seem as white as a searchlight to me now, no longer so huge, but narrow as a laser.

‘Oh God Jesus don't worry about
them
, Dad. Just ignore them.'

Right. OK. I'll do that. Yes yes – I'll do that, then. Ignore them. Just ignore them. She's quite right, Amanda. Of course she's right, course she is. Because it's what you learn to do, isn't it? In London. Ignore. Very early on. Should be second nature. A staring into the yonder – never the overt or sudden aversion of the head, no no, never that – that could so easily be construed as distaste or aloofness, could so very quickly strike the tinder of offence; don't look down or behind you – this is not just a manifest humbling, this, it betrays white fear, pure and at its simplest, heady aphrodisia to a thug or a lout (a footpad or a brigand) – and positively not one scintilla of eye contact, oh God Christ Jesus no, and every Londoner who walks the streets or rides the Underground, they should know this and feel it in their blood and water – a fixed and non-committal gazing into a blurred and unspecific distance, here is the only way. Ignore. Just ignore, and sail on through. Bland and unseeing, radiating the certainty that you are in fact currently in quite
another borough (projecting like a streamer a sure sense of elsewhere).

‘All right?'

At the shock of the sound, Alan flicked up his eyes to the man as their paths now merged in the shadows – contact there, oh Christ, oh damn, for only the merest split millisecond, oh yes that's true, but the steady bore and dullness at the back of the man's pupils just flickered with a spark, I'd swear it unto God.

‘Fine, thank you.'

Oh Christ oh Jesus oh shit shit shit – what did I have to go and open my mouth for? Now he thinks I'm a right posh bastard – worse, he could now think I'm a right posh
rich
bastard, oh Christ oh Jesus oh shit shit shit …! And the other three, now, they've gathered around and they're looking – glancing over to Amanda, but looking, quite evidently, straight at me. And I would – I would just sail through, sail on past them, but collectively they do not appear to have left me the space to: the leeway, as it were (the simple means to get around this thing).

Tall. Did I say he was tall? Said that, have I? Well he is – he's tall, very – much, oh Christ yes, much much taller than I am: you only have to compare us. Seems bigger than the wall behind him, and a sight more looming. He doesn't smile, no no, but nor is the dart of challenge sharp and alive in him, not so far as I can … Amanda now, she just said something, pretty damn sure she did anyway. Can't quite seem to, um … shaking a bit, you see. ‘Come on', think is what I heard. And I will. I'll do that. I'll come on now – sail right through. Have a bit of gumption and ignore them.

‘Light, yeh?'

Blinking quite hard, is what I seem to be up to now. Fair bit of swallowing I'm also rather aware of.

‘What …?'

‘Come on, Dad. We'll be late. Come on.'

‘Light. You got one, yeh?'

‘What …?'

I said what, yes, but of course I'd heard him. Heard Amanda too. Just couldn't seem to say or do anything at all, is the essence of it. That would appear to be the heart of the matter.

‘No – he hasn't got a light, have you Dad? Come on.'

Mouth open. Mine is. And now she's tugging at me, pulling at my sleeve – and she's grinning, look at her, the silly little girl, for all the world as if she's really very
happy
. And then suddenly somehow we're around and beyond them, back into the bliss of a wide and open pavement, just the rumble of a muted sort of chuckling momentarily afloat from somewhere in the hell behind us (the slapping of could-be victorious palms).

‘It's down here we go now, isn't it Dad?'

And I nod automatically, twisting my face, as I glance at her askance. It truly does seem as if nothing now has happened. Or no – it truly does seem as if she's merely unaware. So young, then, and so very enviably untender. And I no longer seem to be padding along (in that old, accustomed manner of mine) – shambling then, that would be, according to Susan – but strutting quite sharply, as if once frozen, but now wound up tight and sent on my way. And I tell you something else: never mind ‘light', never mind anything about wanting a bloody ‘light' – he didn't even have a fag out. That big black bloke back there. Didn't even have a fag out. Well now look: this is what I'm thinking now, striding with a set determination down Lord knows which street it is we're in now because I've frankly lost every shred of sense to it … alongside a blanked-out and carefree Amanda … what I'm thinking now, as the shadows
all around sidle up to me for maybe just a kiss, but still they go on getting just darker and darker … what I'm thinking is simply this: what, in fact, am I to make of this? What am I to make of it all …?

It's just so like
rubbish
, having a dad like mine. I mean, yeh, OK – most dads seem to be not that great, is what all my friends say, except for Arianna's, obviously, because he's just like so totally rich … but Dad, my dad, Christ – it's like it's sometimes
he's
the kid and I'm like, don't know, some kind of
nanny
, or something. I mean like right now, we finally got to Tara's – not actually
really
at Tara's, cos I got him to leave me at the corner – and it was like I ought to be walking him back home again, or something. Like – holding his
hand
? He gets really freaked, see, when there's anything around he doesn't
know
about – so he's freaked like a lot, yeh? Anyway, he got a taxi. I know. It's only, what? Ten-minute walk? Anyway, he got a taxi. Reckon he would've spent the night on the pavement rather than walk past those black guys again. They were OK – having a laugh. I think they're pretty cool, actually, black guys, some of them. I've never known one properly or anything. Harry, my Harry the poet, he couldn't be whiter. His skin, his face – it's sometimes like transparent, he's just so white and pale. People think he's ill all the time, but he isn't. It's not that. It's because he's like – sensitive? Anyway – I just can't wait to see him. His parents, yeh? They're like gone for the weekend so we got the whole house, and I'm meeting him in a minute. Got other clothes in my bag, quite sexy. Because I was going to see Tara and like watch her dad make a right bloody prat of himself with all of the
freaks
 …? Yeh right. No – that was just to get out of the house. It's Harry I'm going to see. Harry the
poet. Can't wait. Can't wait. He's just so totally cool. And. I love him.

Embarrassing, really. Having no money for the taxi. Well all of it – the whole thing was rather embarrassing, I suppose, because when I hailed him and told him (and I was breathlessly eager) where I wanted to go … he was one of the old ones, the ones with not much ochre hair and in a muffler, the ones that never retire and tell you how long they've been doing it and whose cabs are always squeaking and the doors, they yawn and then clang shut … and I told him where I wanted to go (my face was red with the need to be there) and he said Just round the corner, mate – and made then, I think, to just flick me away, but I frantically laid hands upon his tugged-down window and implored him never to leave me. Did Amanda see? Witness to any of this? Hard to say: wasn't aware. Matter if she had? Do me any damage, would it? Hard to say: how could I be diminished further? In those censorious eyes of hers. So he gave me a look, could have been pitying, more likely openly scornful (fuckin' 'ell – people in this area, people what live round 'ere – more money than bleedin' sense, the lot of them) – more likely still, white indifference just tainted by loathing – and so I clambered in and clanged shut the door and he spun the cab round in a sweet little circle, my heart going out to its innards – nearly shrieking and from really deep within (the machine and me) and before I could even sit well back for both comfort and safety, there we were, back to the chill of hearth and home. And so it was embarrassing, really, having no money for the taxi – so I said to him Look, you just hang on here for a minute, will you? Shan't be a jiffy, be back in a mo. Christ knows this time what crawled all over his face: sometimes you just
can't
know, can
you? Can't bear to think, because (Christ Jesus) it could break you. Anyway: no money in the delftware bowl, where there usually is (and God alone knows where it ever comes from: not from me, that's for bleeding sure). Bugger all in my wallet because I remembered now – I'd spent the whole lot in a funny little shop in Putney I'd never come across before: bought a couple of rather nice starfish and a good length of fishing net … anyway, that's not the point, how could it be. And Susan's money was wherever she keeps it: on her, shouldn't wonder, day and night and even in the bath. So there was a jumble of coins on Amanda's little pink dressing table, the one she wants to paint black (and Christ, by now I was panting like a bloody animal, heaving up and down the stairs, horsing in and out of every room in need of lucre) – and we're five pence short, it transpires: the taxi driver, though – he said he'd let it ride. Yep, let it ride: that's exactly what he said. And this time I didn't – couldn't, really – look him in the face (well Jesus, there's got to be a limit).

I don't really feel I can go to the seaside. Not right now, no not really. It's a shame, it's a pity, but my light and secret stupendous oasis – it cannot, maybe by the very jauntiness of its nature (cocking a snook) always come through for me. Sometimes – most times, thank Jesus – when I'm frazzled, I am sucking down the ozone even as the key so very reassuringly clunks open the door; already I am heady with the blousy charge to come. By the time I am slung into the deckchair, my mind's eye crimson against the sun, dizzily tracing the wheel and swooping of a single seagull … then the deadweight of care – or jagged angst, or flashing terror, or the plunging of misery, or bilious self-disgust or merely the stark blank wall of boredom (for there are shock-few gamuts that can be so
ingloriously extensive) – that care, that stone, has plummeted from me like a rusted anchor on the heft of its thundering chain, fathoming down to the bed of the sea where it rests in peace, and then I can too. But on other occasions – and wouldn't this just have to be a white and luminous example of just such a terrible thing – I feel too salty to mingle with the brine of my imagination, too gritty inside to be coping with a warm swathe of sand, cosseting my toes. I never dare go in at times like these, for fear that then I shall associate this fragile harbour wholly and solely with its innocent failure just that one earlier time to jolt and then restore me. If I went in now (and I cannot tell you how very strong the yearning) I would only mooch – joylessly finger a casual barnacle, allow my sullen cornet to glossily slump: observe through hot and barely sucked back tears the warm and sticky rivulets coursing on down and over my panicked and bright-taut knuckles. Even the thought of the potential for sadness – in there, in my little maritime hideaway – it makes me so brimful of the sort of despair from which (I cringe at my knowing) there can be no exit. Yes. So no. Alcohol, then … and maybe just a touch of something else: a hit of the aroma, the memory of then, when times were finer.

There is a chest, always locked, that reeks of the essence of Susan's femininity. I would never have come across the key had I not, during the course of a routine and periodic rummage, found this other key to a particularly pretty little limewood and ebony jewellery box, which could easily be French and art nouveau (or, of course, from some other age and nation altogether). And so now I sit here, on the sheeny slide of her rose and satin deep-quilted counterpane, hot and dirty tang of whisky on my breath, as the pads of my fingertips are gliding
just touchingly over the planes and yielding layers of chiffon and of silk. The scent, as ever, is Guerlain, though naturally I could hardly be expected to recall quite which of them. She has three (three, she has often declared, is the perfect number) – there they are on her dressing table, the bottles and phials, large and handsome, comforting in their seeming oldness, their unchanging stability, proud and quite effortlessly dominant amid the much less than salubrious wash and clutter, the clatter and gumminess of all of the rest of it. I cannot from here read the labels, and I'm damned now if I'll be making the walk, giving up my seat in the very front row of this so very rich and glittering revival (if just for one night only) of the way it used to be, with Susan and me. Chiffon, satin, silk – and here now comes the bulbous crunch of something lacy, and I feel its contour in the cup of my hand. It is not all just black and white (it never is, or rarely); there is turquoise too, and coral – a deep champagne and powder pink. The whisky bites because I need it to, now: the burn down the throat is pleasingly painful. She still must wear such stockings, then (gloss and gossamer, and all the gear is here), though I could never remember when last I was aware of it.