Dead Romantic (5 page)

‘That's not true!' Paul protested, swamped by blushes. ‘No. No, of course it isn't.' But Tony Ashton's expression belied his words. He looked insolently into Paul's eyes until his victim turned away. Then he seemed to lose interest in the baiting. ‘Here, Bob, did you bring that other video, one you talked about?'

‘Sure.' Bob reached into a plastic carrier bag and pulled out an unmarked cassette-box. ‘Bloke in the shop said it was pretty strong stuff. Been banned in a good few countries.'

‘Oh yeah. Let's have a butcher's then. Wind back the porno, Clegg.'

‘Look,' Paul began to protest feebly, ‘I really don't think you should start watching another one. I think you ought to be going. I –'

‘Shut it, Grigson,' Tony Ashton hissed.

The old cassette was taken out and the new one loaded. The screen crackled with snow for a few moments, then, without any of the copyright claims and injunctions that would have shown it to be a legal tape, a picture suddenly appeared and simultaneously a woman's scream burst from the television's speaker.

The scene appeared to be a school, but it was night-time and one could not be sure. The girl who had screamed was wearing a kind of school uniform, but the blouse was ripped, showing the shadow of young breasts. Tears ran down her cheeks and a gout of blood welled from her broken lip as she backed hysterically away from the camera. Through her screams two other sounds could be heard, the regular pant of masculine breathing and the juddering whine of a two-stroke petrol-engine.

As the girl backed away against a wall, a blurred line rose from the bottom of the screen. It was only when the shot widened to reveal the orange machine held in black gloved hands that this line could be identified as a whirring blade of a circular saw. It drew closer to the girl, and closer.

Then it made a sudden lunge towards the cowering figure. The girl screamed and threw herself sideways. With a shriek of metal on plaster, the blade jarred against the wall. The camera showed the long scar in the paintwork, and, alongside, a spray of glistening blood-drops.

It swung away from the wall to the corner where the girl now slumped, clutching at her shoulder with fingers through which blood spurted. The snarling line of the saw-blade moved inexorably towards her. Now she had no resistance to offer but screams, and these grew in pitch and mixed to gurgles as the blade scythed again and again across her young flesh.

The watchers knew it was trickery. They knew there had been editing and cross-cutting between fantasy and reality, between the human actress and the flesh and entrails of some animal, but the splattering blood and splintering bone still held them transfixed in silence.

Paul gaped like the others. The sense of pollution was again with him, but nothing could have induced him to shift his eyes from the screen.

And, though he was too preoccupied to worry about it at that moment, he was subsequently to undergo a great deal of anxiety about the fact that his erection had returned, stronger than ever.

It was half-past two before Paul could get rid of his uninvited guests and their unsettling cargo of videos. He tidied the sitting-room the moment they had gone, sweeping up the crisp crumbs with a brush and dustpan, and burying the empty beer-cans under the rest of the contents of the dustbin. He worked with fierce concentration, trying to home his mind back on to the vision of purity with Madeleine which had been so clear when he arrived at the house, but he knew he was failing and knew that it was only a matter of time before he went into the lavatory or his bedroom to summon up his new stock of fantasies and achieve brief, inadequate relief.

He was just about to go upstairs when he saw the outline of a figure through the frosted glass of the front door. He heard the key in the lock and his mother entered.

He felt a shock of guilt. God, if she had come in twenty minutes earlier. . . But why had she come, anyway? She worked full-time as a secretary at the university and was not usually home till six at the earliest. She looked tired and pale.

‘You all right, Mum?'

‘Not too hot. That's why I came home early.'

With frightening speed, his mind filled with images of her being terminally ill, of her just having had cancer diagnosed, of her only having three months to live. By the time he spoke again, he had just been to her cremation.

‘Is it something serious?' he asked anxiously.

She gave a weary shake of her head. ‘No, Paul. Nothing serious. Just off-colour. You know, ordinary things. . .'

He did not probe further. He had a feeling that she was talking about the appalling mystery of menstruation; he did not wish to be drawn into explanations and consequent embarrassment. His mother was in her late forties and there were things going on with her that he did not fully understand or wish to have defined.

‘I think I'll go up and have a lie-down,' said his mother. ‘How did your lesson go this morning?'

‘Oh, fine, I think. We did Keats.'

‘You seem to keep doing Keats.'

‘The Romantics are very important.'

Mrs Grigson snorted. ‘Well, I just hope it's doing you some good. God knows they charge enough at that place.' She could never let him forget how much his comparative failure in his A-levels had cost her, both in disappointment and in hard cash. Paul often wished she would just give up the idea of his ever getting to university. Very few of his friends from the comprehensive had even gone on to Sixth Form College, and the people there who'd failed their exams had accepted the world's assessment of them with dignity, not pressed on in the face of the evidence, trying to change their fates. God knows, he thought, if I'm not good enough to qualify on A-levels, what chance have I got in the Oxford exams? The colleges there are supposed to be looking for exceptional minds; when they find those, then maybe they're prepared to forget about A-levels. But mine's not an exceptional mind. I know it isn't.

He wished his father was still alive. Then it would have been all right. The old man had never had a lot of time for education. But his death had released in Mrs Grigson a latent intellectual snobbery, which had been exacerbated when she started working at the university. Most of the lecturers she worked for there assumed that everyone went on to further education, and she quickly became determined that, like it or not, her son was going to have the benefits (on the precise nature of which she was a little vague) of university. And when Mrs Grigson was determined about something, Paul, like his father before him, offered about as much resistance as a daisy in the path of a tank.

‘No, I think I am learning a lot,' he protested. ‘Sort of seeing different ways of seeing things, getting a different approach. . .'

Another snort from his mother. ‘So long as it's an approach that gets you through the exams. You've still got the same tutor for English?'

‘Yes.'

‘With the strange name.'

‘Miss Severn.'

‘That's right. Where on earth do you get a name like that?'

Paul replied with awe, ‘She says she thinks the family's descended from Joseph Severn, who was with Keats when he died.'

‘Oh yes?' Mrs Grigson was unimpressed by this possible link with literary history. ‘I hope to God she's teaching you something. Only time I met her, she seemed too airy-fairy for words.'

Before Paul could even contemplate leaping to the defence of his idol, his mother went on. ‘Still, at least it's the same tutor. Let's hope the continuity helps. I have my reservations about that Garrettway place. Think I should have shopped around a bit first. No one at the university seems to have heard of it.'

‘I'm sure it's fine.'

‘Should be at those prices.' Once again the guilt-trigger of money. In fact, ever since he could remember, everything his mother had said or done had triggered guilt in Paul. Her version of swamping, martyred love had made him feel guilty for existing, certainly guilty for being male, in some obscure way even guilty for the fact that his father had died, guilty for the suffering that reorganising her life on her own had caused his mother. At that moment he felt guilty for her feeling off-colour, as if he were responsible for the incomprehensible operations of her body.

Mrs Grigson stopped halfway up the stairs. ‘You haven't forgotten you've got a driving lesson at five?'

He had, but he denied it. The events of the day had put the lesson from his mind, and he felt a little inward sag at the recollection. He knew that being able to drive was necessary, and that in time he would feel the benefit, but he hated the lessons, hated the sarcastic wit of his instructor, hated his own ineptitude, hated being taught yet again, hated being pushed.

‘And what do you want for supper tonight?' She stretched her neck round to ease some muscular pain. ‘I dare say I'll be well enough to cook something.'

‘I don't want anything. I'll just grab a sandwich when I get back from the lesson.'

‘Oh?' Mrs Grigson could put volumes of interrogation into that single syllable.

‘I'm going out.'

‘Ah.'

‘Meeting someone. I'm sure I told you.'

‘I don't remember your doing so.'

‘I'm sure I did.'

‘Well, I don't remember your telling me who it is you are meeting.' His mother's eyes transfixed him.

‘Sharon,' he mumbled.

‘Sharon. Oh, Sharon Wilkinson. The publican's daughter. Star of the Boots check-out counter.' Since she had been working at the university, Mrs Grigson had no time for people who had left school without any O-levels. ‘That should be a stimulating evening, shouldn't it, Paul?'

He didn't reply.

His mother let out a brisk sigh. ‘Well, maybe I won't see you in your brief sandwich-break at six. I may not bother to get up just for that pleasure. But do remember I worry if you're not back by half-past eleven.' She moved up a couple more stairs. ‘And do be sensible with dear little Sharon, won't you?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘It's not my place to pry into what you get up to with your girl-friends, Paul, but it's obvious you can't be going out with this one for her conversation. All I'm saying is – I just don't think I could cope with your having to get married to someone with the intellectual abilities of Sharon Wilkinson.'

With her fingers to her temple as a reminder that she was not feeling at all well, Mrs Grigson went upstairs to bed. Leaving her son with more threads of guilt and misery to knit into the tangled circuitry of his mind.

As he walked towards Sharon's house, Paul felt sick with tension. It would all be a disaster, he knew. He would throw up over her as soon as she opened the door.

God, why did he get so uptight about everything? Sharon was nothing, nothing to get in this state over. Just a girl, moderately pretty, no more, and moderately thick. If there was any reason for seeing her, it was just because she was a girl, because boys were meant to go out with girls. Or for sex. He swallowed, tasting the sourness of vomit.

If only he could keep her in proportion. If only he could keep anything in proportion. When he was with her, he knew she was just a rather ordinary girl, but when he was on his own, she, like everything else in his life, took on grotesque forms, became extreme, too important, not important enough, too keen on him, not keen enough on him, too attractive, too ugly. He could never bridge the gulf between her reality and his fantasies of her.

Sex was the answer. It must be. He should just have her, callously have her, and that would get her in proportion. Then he'd be able to be objective about her. He needed sex. He had a right to it. Everyone else seemed to just grab it without agonising. Why shouldn't he?

And women did want it. All the books said they did. Incongruous though it might seem, through all the demureness and all those strange guilt-inspiring things their bodies did, they must want it. Perhaps Sharon even panted for his image in her bed at night as he did for hers (or at least for an image which was hard to fix specifically, but to which she certainly contributed).

Scenes from the day's first video sprang into his mind, registering instantly on the antenna between his legs. That woman had wanted it. She'd been bloody desperate for it. All women were probably just like that underneath. Sharon, too.

It was nearly half-past six. Her parents would be out down at the pub. She'd be on her own when he arrived. Panting for it. Yes, that's what he should do – go in, close the door behind him, push her into the sitting-room, back on to the sofa, and have her. Never mind if she protested, he should do it, it was his right. Anyway, Tony Ashton had told him that girls always meant yes when they said no. They just got a charge out of teasing. Yes, he would have her, and then she'd have some respect for him.

He walked up her garden path and rang the doorbell. Then he dropped his hands to shield the front of his trousers.

The door opened, and Sharon stood there, wearing a coat and holding a handbag. She looked very ordinary. On her chin the flake of a spot was inadequately covered with make-up.

‘Hello, Paul. Knew you'd be on time, so I got my coat on.'

‘Oh.'

‘Shall we go then?'

‘Yes. Fine.'

They walked in single file back down the garden path.

Paul and Sharon took a bus down into the town. They had been out together some half-dozen times and, though the relationship did not seem to have progressed much since the first date, a sort of pattern had emerged. Both would have eaten at home; they did not have enough money to think of going out for meals. Paul was, after all, still a student and dependent on pocket money and subs from his mother. Sharon was earning, but was by nature parsimonious and, when she had paid her parents for her accommodation, put most of the rest of her wage-packet into a building society account. She thought ahead (although Paul did not realise it) to mortgages and fitted kitchens and matching bathroom suites. No individual was as yet involved in these projections of her future, but she assessed Paul, as she did every boy she went out with, for husband potential. She approved of the lack of flamboyance in his entertainment of her, which she put down to shrewd money management rather than poverty. She approved less of the idea of his still being a student and contemplating university. She was eighteen and reckoned she should be married before she hit twenty. And whomever she married must have a nice secure job. Three years at university could only be three years off a company promotion ladder, and the old argument that people with higher qualifications got better jobs no longer, according to her father's assessment of the economic situation, held water.