One Moment, One Morning (36 page)

‘I’ll go,’ Steve offers again.

‘Thanks. That would be great.’

But he stands there for a moment before adding, bluntly, ‘I’ll need some money.’

‘Of course, sorry.’

Anna cringes. Cash is not at the front of Karen’s mind today, nor should it be. This is one reason she resents Steve for not earning much and for spending what money he does have on himself. It means he never treats anyone to anything, even a recent widow to a few bottles of wine. ‘I’ll sort this,’ she declares. ‘Let me get my bag.’

‘No, that’s fine. I should get it.’ Karen is evidently uncomfortable with Anna’s generosity.

‘We’ll work it out another time,’ she says, hoping Karen will not remember at a future date.

‘Sure.’ Karen smiles, and heads on up the stairs.

Anna goes into the kitchen, locates her purse and hands over two twenty pound notes.

‘Why don’t you just give me your card?’ suggests Steve.

Anna doesn’t trust him with her card, not after several drinks. He is quite capable of sneaking in a bottle of something stronger for himself.

‘Nope,’ she says. ‘This’ll be enough. I think you ought to take someone else with you. Help carry it.’ If he’s not on his own, then, with luck, he’ll be too self-conscious to buy himself anything.

‘Why don’t you come?’

But Anna does not want to go to the off-licence. She doesn’t want more alcohol, it’s nearly ten minutes’ walk in the cold, and actually, she doesn’t want to be alone with Steve. ‘Why don’t you ask a bloke to go with you? The bags will be heavy.’

‘I’ll go,’ offers Alan, and the two of them set off.

Half an hour later, Alan and Steve return, with six carrier bags between them.

‘Thank you,’ says Anna, greeting them as they put down their load. But her appreciation is really directed at Alan, and she kisses him on the cheek.

‘What, no kiss for me?’ asks Steve, but she ignores him. She has gone a couple of paces down the hall when Steve grabs her shoulder and spins her to face him. ‘You didn’t say thank you to me.’

‘Pardon me,’ she says sarcastically.

‘What’s up with you?’ he asks. He is almost shouting; he has lost the ability to gauge his own volume.

A few guests peer into the hall to see what’s going on.

Anna lowers her voice in the hope it will encourage Steve to drop his. ‘Nothing’s up. I’m fine.’

But – ‘Don’t lie to me!’ – he’s louder still. A couple who have been chatting in the kitchen doorway break off their conversation and glance at them, wary.

‘Just leave it, will you?’ Anna hisses.

‘I WILL NOT LEAVE IT!’ Steve bellows, and everyone in the vicinity falls silent. ‘Why did you kiss Alan and not me?’

Drinking always brings out jealousy in Steve. The sober Steve is confident, sexually; it was one of the first things that attracted Anna to him. But yet again the drunkard is a different beast: the archetypal green-eyed monster.

‘I didn’t mean anything by it,’ Anna says, conscious of the disturbance they are causing and wanting to ease the situation, fast.

‘Yes, you did.’ His lips are taut, eyes full of malice.

She shakes her head. ‘I was just saying thank you.’

‘Hey, mate,’ Alan interrupts, gently easing Steve’s shoulder away from Anna: he is towering over her. ‘Take it easy, eh? She didn’t mean anything by it.’

But his intrusion only exacerbates matters. ‘GET OFF ME!’ And with force Steve elbows Alan sharply away.

‘Whoa.’ Alan steps back, palms raised to indicate he wants no violence. ‘There’s no need for that.’

‘You would say that, wouldn’t you?’ Steve rounds on him. It is all happening at such speed that Anna is powerless to prevent it.

Karen appears at the top of the stairs to see what the fuss is about.

Steve looks up, sees her, realizes he has an audience.

‘Why don’t you just say it?’ he jeers.

‘Say what?’ Alan is mystified.

‘You’d rather it had been me!’

‘Sorry?’

Steve takes in the couple in the kitchen, watching; people in the living room open-mouthed, horrified.

‘You’d rather it had been me!’

Karen speaks from halfway down the stairs: – ‘I think you need to quieten down, Steve,’ but to no avail.

He stares at Karen; Anna sees the venom in his eyes – the venom she normally sees directed at her. ‘
YOU’D
RATHER IT HAD BEEN ME, TOO.’

Then he rotates, directing his fury a full 360 degrees.
‘YOU’D ALL RATHER IT HAD BEEN ME WHO DIED THAN SIMON.’

There is an appalled silence.

Then Karen says, her voice calm: ‘Do you know what, Steve? I don’t know about everyone else, I can’t speak for them. But actually, as far as I am concerned, you are right. I
would
rather it had been you than Simon. Now, I want you to leave my house, this minute. You’ve caused enough trouble. Go home, and sleep it off.’

Steve is so shocked that she actually said this that for several moments he says nothing.

‘Just sort him out,’ Karen mutters to Anna over the banisters as she returns upstairs. Anna can see she is shaking; beneath her composure is fury.

‘I’ll take him home,’ she nods. She’s vaguely aware that around her people have started talking again; the dialogue is a combination of forced brightness as if nothing has happened, and muted discussion of how awful Steve has been.

By now he is leaning against the wall, barely standing.

‘Will you be all right?’ Alan asks her. ‘I can see to him, if you want. At least let me come with you.’

‘Please, no.’ Alan has done – and put up with – enough already. ‘I’ll be fine.’ Frankly, if she were in his place, she would have socked Steve one. But Alan, like his brother, is essentially gentle; it’s not in his temperament to be physically aggressive anywhere other than on the football pitch, and he is caught up in grief, too. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says to him now.

‘It’s not your fault,’ replies Alan.

But Anna feels it is.

Steve has enraged Anna countless times before, but nothing compares to this. How
dare
he? It is utterly beyond her ken, but that doesn’t make her any less upset. When she gets him home she doesn’t care how drunk he is, she is going to give him a piece of her mind; but first she has to get him there.

‘Come on,’ she says, through gritted teeth, and tugs his jumper towards the door.

‘Wherearewegoing?’ slurs Steve.

‘Home. You’re not welcome.’ She takes his arm, even though contact with him at this moment revolts her, and leads him outside.

‘Bye,’ she says to Alan, over her shoulder.

Steve can barely keep upright; he lurches against the porch, then staggers down the path.

‘Why don’t you put him to bed and come back?’ Alan suggests, from the doorway.

‘I might just do that,’ Anna nods, although she suspects it is unlikely.

She steers Steve through the gate and to the left. It seems to take an age to get him to the end of the street. He trips several times, giggling and saying ‘oops’ with each stumble. Anna doesn’t find it remotely funny; it tries her patience still more.

‘Why are you so cross?’ he asks as they veer across the main road dangerously slowly.

‘I can’t believe you have to ask.’ But of course he has to: in this state, he has lost virtually all memory, and certainly reason.

‘I only had a few glasses of wine.’

‘Yeah, right,’ she snorts. ‘I’ll get you home and then I’ll tell you what you’ve done wrong.’ She doesn’t want to yell at him in the street.

‘Ooh, dear, Anna’s cwoss with me,’ he says, pulling a naughty-little-boy face. Perhaps if he was sober she might find it engaging: now it’s simply pathetic.

Eventually, she gets him to Charminster Street. He falls up the garden path and stops at the door, expectant. She reaches in her bag for her key and opens it with one hand, keeping him upright with the other. Then she shoves him over the threshold.

‘You pushed me!’ he protests as he pitches forward onto the stairs. He braces his arms, just catches himself.

‘Yup,’ she snarls. ‘I did.’

‘Why?’

‘To make sure you got inside.’ She kicks the front door shut behind her. ‘But if you weren’t so slaughtered you wouldn’t have fallen over. Don’t make such a big deal of it.’

‘But you hurt me,’ he whines, precariously returning to standing.

‘I did not hurt you. But anyway, if we’re talking about hurt, what do you think you do to me?’

‘Huh?’

He won’t keep up, and she knows it is a waste of time, but she has to vent regardless. She is too enraged to contain it. ‘Your behaviour today was very hurtful. To me, and lots of others. In fact, I have never seen, or known, anything like it.’

‘Eh?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Steve! People were grieving, you bloody idiot. It was a funeral. A man had died. A man had suddenly, out of the blue, with no warning, DIED. A relatively young man. A man we all loved very much. A man who left a wife, children, and countless friends and relatives, in mourning. And you were abusive first to his brother, of all people, then Karen, his wife, then pretty much everyone who was there!’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t bother with sorry. It’s too late for sorry. I’m sick of it. You even managed to make the whole thing about you. But frankly, Karen was right. Simon is worth ten of you.’

‘What did you say?’ He steps towards her, shoulders braced.

Anna edges back towards the front door. She’s seen it before – this ability to switch not just emotionally but physically too – from a clumsy, embarrassing drunk to someone cruel and threatening. Nonetheless, even though she knows it will lead to trouble, she reiterates: ‘I said that Simon is – or I suppose I should say was – worth ten of you.’ She is so filled with rage that she doesn’t care what happens next.

‘Bitch.’

The insult barely touches her. She lifts her chin, defiant. ‘I am
not
a bitch. I am simply telling you the truth. Today you turned a circumstance that was going to be tough enough for everyone anyway, into a disaster. We were at a funeral, Steve, remember?
My friend’s funeral
. Yet you were aggressive. Rude and utterly, one hundred per cent insensitive. Why? Because you got drunk, that’s why.’ Steve may not be articulate at the moment, but boy, Anna is. Rage has sharpened her tongue, wised up her mind.

‘I am NOT drunk!’

‘Do me a favour. You were – are – absolutely shit-faced.
You
are the one with the problem – if that’s what you meant by “bitch” – because your behaviour took absolutely no account of anyone other than yourself. You are completely incapable of putting yourself in anyone else’s shoes, Steve. And’ – she reaches what, for their relationship, is the crux of it – ‘that means
my
shoes, too.’

‘Eh?’

‘Try to keep up. I have just lost a friend, a very, very dear friend. I am deeply, deeply upset. But ever since Simon died, which is now – what? Five days ago – you have done nothing, yes,
NOTHING
to support me.’

‘Yes, I have—’

‘What, you made me spaghetti Bolognese? Oops, sorry. I forgot.’ She gives a mock gasp of apology. ‘Oh, of course, you made all that food yesterday too. That was good of you, I grant you. And actually, you enjoyed it. But it also gave you the perfect excuse not to come to the funeral. Whereas I wanted you,
needed
you, there. Though that didn’t even seem to cross your stupid, narcissistic little mind.’ He jerks his head up; the insult seems to have penetrated. ‘You think of yourself first and foremost, and you don’t like funerals. Well, get this.
No one likes them!

‘I think –
hope
– you also thought of Karen. But I’m your girlfriend, and you didn’t think – not
once
– to check it out with me.’

She stops, looks at him. He seems to be sobering up a little, keeping abreast of her tirade, just. Then she says, ‘You know what I want right now?’

‘What?’ They are standing, like two boxers squaring up to each other, a couple of feet apart.

‘I want you to go to hell.’

Then she leans in close, and spits in his face, literally, a horrible stringy lump of gob. It lands on his cheek and slides down, gradually.

Watching it is immensely gratifying.

There’s a pause – he is slower because of the alcohol – then he reacts. He lunges towards her and shoves her, viciously, with considerable strength, so she flies backwards.

She bangs her head on the front door, slips to the floor.

But although she is winded and shocked, in a split second she is galvanized. Now she is in full fight mode, adrenaline coursing. Part of her is aware Steve is bigger than she is, more powerful, but she doesn’t care. He has threatened her once too often. Reason about her lesser strength plays no role in this. She wants him to feel – physically – the force of her fury. So, like a wild animal, she pushes herself up onto her haunches. Before he has a chance to move, she kicks out with all her might. Her legs are long; she reaches high. Her boots – those evil, high-heeled, pointy-toed, dark-green leather boots – are effective weapons. And as she kicks she catches him right between the thighs. Right,
right
where it hurts.