Dispossession (18 page)

Tried knocking, in case the bell was
hors de combat
: first with knuckles, then with
fists.

Nothing, no response; so that I did after all make my way
back down to the club doors, and through them into the half-dark and the hard
sounds of snooker, the soft voices and clinking, drinking noises of its
players.

I went straight over to the bar, huffing with relief to see
Lee serving, as he had been when Suzie brought me here. No doubt any other
member of her staff would have known me, as he had; but not I them, and I was
sick tired of having strangers claim me as friend, pupil, employee. Husband.

His moment of recognition came just a moment behind mine; I
saw him startle, saw his eyes move sideways in his stiff head, and without
looking around myself I had my chief, my only question answered. But I went on
over to greet him anyway, and while I was saying hullo he was sucking air
through his teeth, shaking his head, glancing that way again and then back to
me.

“Wouldn’t like to be in your shoes, mate,” he said. “If you
can walk and talk, you’re in big,
big
trouble.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

He didn’t answer, or not directly: just jerked his head
expressively and said, “She’s over there.”

I turned at last and saw her, slim shadow moving among
shadows, down the far end of the hall where no players were. She was standing
with her back to us, bending and rising, picking balls out of pockets and
setting them back in place. I made my way slowly towards her, hovering for a
few seconds when that way was blocked by a player crouching low, taking all the
aisle’s width to make his shot.

She was filling a wooden triangle with reds, still hadn’t
looked around to see me; I called out before I reached her, “Suzie?” on a
rising note.

And she stiffened, and had to put a hand down suddenly to
the baize surface of the table to catch herself, to hold herself up, it seemed;
and it took a second or two of no movement from either one of us before she
could turn her head to find me.

Once her eyes had fixed me, once she was focused she
straightened and turned, to face me directly across a couple of metres’
distance. Cold and hostile she looked, holding herself up on her toes with
every muscle tight, ready to jitter backwards if I made any move to come
closer. This I hadn’t expected, and struggled to understand.

“You,” she said, and stopped. And tried again, forcing hard
words through a tight throat, “You bastard, where the filthy fucking hell have
you
been
?”

“I went to Luke,” I said.

“You went to Luke. Brilliant. You didn’t think to
tell
anyone, I suppose, or leave a note, or even
phone, maybe, when you got there?”

“Luke hasn’t got a phone...”

“There are phones,” she said, and her voice was all breath
and hiss now, she must be one of those people who only got quieter as they got
angrier, “even in the bloody Lakes there must be phones. You could’ve made the
effort. But you didn’t want me to know, did you? You lied to the hospital, you
said you’d be staying at Carol’s when you signed out, they showed me the
forms...”

“I did—”

“I even
phoned
Carol,”
she said, with a vicious twist to the word, “and she was horrible, she laughed
when I said that I’d lost you. But she said you weren’t there. So I tried your
mother, I’ve tried and tried,”
all those messages
,
I thought, “but she’s never there and she doesn’t call back. I’ve been right
through your sodding address book, and none of your friends could help; and
yes, I did think of Luke, but no one could help there either, could they? They
don’t know where to find him, they said you’re dead secretive about that, you
keep him to yourself...”

Not so; Luke kept himself to himself, more like. Didn’t want
visitors, didn’t want to make friends or influence people except in the very
limited range of his concerns. He’d taken me into his circle, yes, but always
refused to let me expand it further.

“Suzie,” I said, “I didn’t lie to anyone. I did go to Carol’s,
because that still felt like home; and when she turned me away, Luke was just a
spur-of-the-moment thing, when I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

“You’re not
supposed
to
go anywhere else,” she said, her voice cracking suddenly, “you’re supposed to
come here. This is home. I told you that, I showed you...”

Home is where the hurt is
,
I thought, hearing it in her and seeing it now, underlying that dissolving
anger; but I couldn’t help her there, I couldn’t give her anything but truth.
“Doesn’t work that way,” I said, soft as I could manage. “You must know that.
Home’s not an intellectual concept, it’s a feeling thing; and you can’t have
feelings for a place you can’t remember. I can’t, at any rate.”

She made a vague, hopeless gesture at that, and tried to
come back strong again too late, having given herself too much away. “Okay, you
didn’t have to come to me. But you didn’t have to run away from me, either.”

“It wasn’t you,” I said, trying to reassure. “It was just
everything; and that bloody truck the worst of it, watching someone die, I
couldn’t hack it.”

“You should’ve—”
You should’ve
come to me
, I think she was going to say in defiance of what she’d said
last, but she bit it back, remembering; and tried to change dance in mid-step,
“You still could’ve phoned, you must’ve known I’d worry, I’ve been
frantic...
”

Yes; and I’d been not thinking about her at all. Fleeing the
city, I’d fled all that the city implied, until the need to know had drawn me
back tonight.

“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing it inadequate, only hoping she
never found out just how disproportionate we’d been these last few days, she
and I. “Luke has a way of taking things over, so you can’t see much outside of
him; and it’s all been such a muddle in my head, I don’t think I could have
talked to you anyway. Couldn’t have talked to anyone, really.”

“You talked to Luke,” she complained; and I hid a grin,
thinking that this much at least I could manage. Simple jealousy of Luke had
always been a common factor, uniting all my girlfriends.

“Not really. You don’t talk to Luke, not that way. There’s
no point, he wouldn’t be interested.”

She grunted, not entirely believing me, I thought, only
letting it go; and then, coming round onto a different tack so hard that I
wanted to duck for fear of some metaphorical boom cracking into my skull, she
said, “So what are you doing now, then, why are you here? What did you come back
for?”

Not for me
, she was
saying, facing the truth with a fierce honesty,
not
if you could go away so easily, with never a second thought or a look behind
.

And she was right, of course, and I couldn’t deny it, she
deserved as good as she gave me; so I said, “Don’t worry, I won’t get under
your feet. I’ve got a room in a hotel. It’s only that I really need my
computer. I didn’t like to let myself in without telling you, but...”

And then she hit me.

o0o

It was a sweet clunking forehand slap, delivered with power
and genuine feeling, if no great precision. She caught me half on the cheekbone
and half on the ear, and the shock as much as the force of it sent me reeling
back against the table behind me, clutching at its rim for support as my legs
failed momentarily.

After the shock, the stinging pain; I shook my head hard
against that and a ringing dizziness, and the first thing I heard as my hearing
came back online was the sound of applause from the other end of the hall.

First thing I saw as my vision cleared was Suzie, seeming
more than a little awestruck at what she’d achieved. Looking past her I saw a
static picture, every player in the place standing stock-still, staring; only
beyond them, behind the bar was there any movement, and that was Lee still
clapping slowly, with a broad grin on his face.

“You just don’t get it, do you?” Suzie whispered, fighting
it seemed to stay angry, to hold on to that amid a turmoil of other emotions;
and there at least I could agree with her wholeheartedly. No, I didn’t get it
at all. The clarity of anger would have been a boon right then for me as well
as her, only that I couldn’t manage it. I ought to, I thought, being made a
public target; but it wasn’t there, I didn’t have it in me.

“You vanish for days,” she went on, “for all I knew you
could’ve lost your memory again, you could’ve been really ill if the doctors
had missed something, you could’ve been dying with a brain haemorrhage in some
hospital the other end of the country, and them not having a clue who you were;
and then you turn up out of the blue and you want to just pick up your computer
and
go
again? Stay in a
hotel
, and not get under my
feet
...?”

Her fingers twitched at her sides, like she wanted to hit me
again; but I lifted a hand to rub vaguely at my tingling ear, and her face
changed as she came a rapid step closer.

“Oh God, you’re okay, aren’t you? I haven’t...?”

Despite everything, my mouth twitched into a smile, on the
side that wasn’t sore. “No, you haven’t given me a brain haemorrhage, I’m not
going to drop down and die.”

She snorted. “Too bad, you deserve to. And I was just
beginning to fancy widowhood, all that insurance money, I could have had a
party.”

She’d done this before, talked up a storm in self-defence. I
ignored it. What was harder to ignore was the cool touch of her hand displacing
mine, stroking the stubble on my temple and the smoothness of my cheek, trying
to take away now what pain or shame she’d put there.

Not meaning to, only reacting and not thinking at all, I
reached up and gripped her wrist, to take her hand away. For a moment she went
entirely rigid, and her eyes were blank; then she smiled tightly and turned her
hand inside my loosening grasp, so that her fingers linked with mine. A quick
tug and she was away up the aisle between the tables, and I could go with her
hand in hand or I could stand and fight, pull free; but everyone was watching
still, grinning or still giggling most of them, and I wouldn’t feed their greed
for entertainment. Save it for when we were private...

So I let her tow me all the way through the club and out of
the double doors, with no more than a wave of her hand at Lee in passing,
keep an eye on things, I’m taking this errant man
upstairs
. Which she did, and there at least I could slip my hand free of
hers, because it’s both difficult and foolish to hold hands on a flight of
stairs too narrow to climb two abreast; and at the top she was busy with keys
and didn’t have a hand free to recapture mine even if she’d wanted to.

I followed her in at the beckoning jerk of her head, and she
led me silently all through the flat to the big empty bedroom; and turned to
confront me there, gestured at the futon, rolled out now and made up ready for
the night. “You can go where you like, you can do what you like; but as long as
you’re in this city, Jonathan Marks, this is where you sleep, right? This is
yours, you bought it, you can sodding well sleep on it...”

And there were tears leaking down her face suddenly, though
she dashed at them with an angry hand, and I didn’t know what to do.

Fell back on the helpless male thing, a half-hearted pace
forward and an open-handed gesture she wouldn’t see because she’d turned her
back now, a muttered meaningless phrase, “Look, Suzie, it’ll be okay...”

And then she turned again, all the way around as if she’d
only meant to do a three-sixty in the first place, and her cheeks might be wet
still but her eyes not, they were glaring.

“And what’s with this ‘Suzie’ stuff, all of a sudden? Sue to
you, I said, I always have been.”

“That’s why,” I said, with an inward sigh,
here we go again
. “If it was only me called you
Sue before, if it was something special between us, then it’s better for both
of us if I don’t do it now. It’d be like me taking over someone else’s name for
you, it’s invested with too much that I don’t share any more.”

“I do,” she said.

“I know. But I can’t pretend, love. I can’t be the Jonty you
married when I don’t remember the first thing about him.”

“Then don’t call me ‘love’,” she said. “Bastard.”

But she said it entirely without heat, with a neutral gaze;
I tried to meet that with one of my own.

“Suzie, then?”

“Suzie.” She nodded, and we could have shaken hands on it,
we were that formal for a moment. Until she scowled, and said, “But you’re
still a bastard, and I hate you for it. Come on, I’ll show you where your
toothbrush is, and where we keep the towels. I suppose you don’t remember?”

Of course I didn’t remember; and she didn’t actually mean
that anyway, she didn’t make the first hint of a movement. Just stood there
looking at me, daring me to defy her; and all I could do was prevaricate. “I’ve
booked a room already, at the Palace. It’s too late to cancel that, they’ll
charge me anyway.”

“So pay anyway. Or charge it to Deverill, that’s better.
That’s what you usually do.”

“Is it?”

Even I could hear how my voice sharpened at that. She gazed
at me thoughtfully, then nodded. “Yeah. Every time you buy me dinner. You’re
dead tight, you.”

I twitched a smile at her. “Well, maybe. But I don’t want to
do that tonight. Or at all, until I know why he’s prepared to pay my bills for
me.” And then, going on quickly as her face clamped, “But all right, I won’t go
back to the hotel tonight. I’ll sleep on the sofa, or something.”

“You’ll sleep here,” she said, her finger stabbing down once
more at the futon. And reading my face at least as easily as I was reading
hers—she’d had more practice, after all, weeks and weeks of it, unless I was
benefiting from experience I couldn’t consciously remember—she added, “There’s
a spare bed in the other room. I’ll use that.”