Other People (15 page)

Just then Russ came jogging up the basement steps. When he saw Mary he jerked to a halt, as if he'd never encountered her before. Reaching out an experimental forefinger, he lifted her chin. He kissed her, urging his mouth right into hers so that his lips tickled her teeth. Mary thought that if Russ wanted to do this, it was really quite a pleasant and reassuring thing to do; so she opened her mouth wider and put an arm round the back of his head to steady herself. This went on for a long time. Then Russ withdrew his lips with a sudden pop, eyed her judiciously for several seconds, shook his head with pitying sternness, and moved past her up the steps. Alan wrenched a handful of hair from his crown with a faint whimper and got to his feet. Then he raced off down the road, so fast that even the whirling boys hesitated and stood back catching their breath to watch his speed.

• • •

Boy. Have you ever had it as bad as Alan had it the next day? Do you know that kind of pain? It's a really bad kind, isn't it, right up there in the top two or three? That kind of pain isn't very popular these days and some people pretend not to feel it. But don't fall for that one. The trouble with pain is that it hurts.
Ow.
Ow! ow! ow! Pain hurts! It
hurts.
If love is the most you can feel, then this is the worst. But pain is what can happen when you fall in love with other people.

Boy, Alan has it bad today. Boy, Alan is hurting bad today. When you're in love and trying to make someone love you back, you can hear the texture of your own footfalls, the whistling passage of your breath. Invisible eyes monitor you constantly: even at night something presides over the shape of your sleep. Every thought carries a tick or a cross.

But then failure falls and you feel its weight. You see the stark facts of your loathsomeness. This is what pallid Alan is going through now, in the hunched hell of his cubicle. He is locked in punishment park. Each flicker of his hands, each muffled cough, each falling hair is radiant with his hideousness—and he
is
hideous, he is, because love renders you hideous when the weight of failure falls.

Now his ears have started joining in the terrible fun: they are having hallucinations. Alan doesn't need this. Things were quite bad enough already. And he daren't turn round to see if what he hears is true. A gentle plop of water in the sink is a kiss exchanged by Russ and Mary; a ruffle of the dishcloth is the slide of his hand along her dress; each silence is their joyful shared peace, together among those sentinels of light and all their secrets. With Russ, or with somebody else—it doesn't matter. The whole world is feasting on her, and she
loves
it. Alan's thoughts are riding shotgun, his body is a rodeo, a riot. Each breath is fire. Boy, is he suffering. Boy, is he having a bad time. Boy, does pain hurt in love when the weight of failure falls.

• • •

Mary felt the crackle of Alan's radioactivity, his wrecked force field, like the sky at night after the death of kings, all lightning-flashes and hysterias of blazing meteorites. But she couldn't understand it, she couldn't understand its inordinateness. Her instinct was straightforward enough: to help, to be kind. But every word or gesture she offered him was instantly mangled by this new power of hers. What was this power? It was the power to make feel bad. Mary's smiles weren't smiles any more, not to Alan.

Perhaps there just wasn't any way to make other people feel better at such times. Would talking about it help? Russ talked about it.

'What the fuck's the matter with you today?' he asked Alan disgustedly as the three of them ate their quick meal during the afternoon lull. 'Look at his hands! Look at them!' Russ leaned back and put his arm round Mary's shoulders. 'You know what he's got, don't you, darlin. Wanker's lurgy!
Eur.
Look at him. Creeping wanker's lurgy is what he's got. You'll have to cut down, my son— onna andjobs. Look, fuck off, Al, and deal with it, will you? Who needs you here looking like that.'

That didn't help. That didn't help one bit.

At seven o'clock they trooped through the empty cafe. Russ ducked off to the lavatory—and for the first time that day Mary and Alan were alone. Losing no time, Mary took Alan's hand and squeezed it. He turned to her with his eyes closed in pain. I've done the wrong thing, she thought, but I'll do the next thing anyway. She leaned towards him and said, as meaningly as she could,

'Yes.

His eyes opened. But then they both saw the black car pull up, and Prince sliding out; he rested his shoulder against the door, smiling calmly with his head at an angle.

They moved uncertainly towards the door, and now Russ came trotting after them. Once in the street, Mary hesitated briefly, but of course she knew she had no choice.

'Who's
this
dude?' said Russ as Mary walked away.

'Come on, Russ,' said Alan.

Russ lingered and stared for a few seconds, then hurried on beside his friend.

13

• • •

Live Action

'Look,' said Prince as Mary approached him. He turned. He pointed with a finger, and flattened his forearms on the roof of the car, glancing sleepily at his watch. Mary came up beside him and looked.

Through a half-open doorway across the street a man lurched clattering out onto the pavement. He tensed to start forward headlong but before he could straighten out along the line of his speed a half-clad woman came after him and with a leap, an inhuman or animal leap, was on his back, seeming to ride him to the ground. As he wrenched himself clear his jacket tore audibly in her hands. They were both shouting, the woman continuously and on a higher plane of sound. The man bundled her back towards the doorway, where a second woman appeared, and reaching out in assistance or betrayal held her shoulders until the man had slapped himself free. He jogged off, glancing back twice. The women now embraced, though one still wailed. It was a greedy, tethered sound, growing louder on itself; they heard it even after the women had gone back inside and the door slammed shut behind them.

'Strange things,' said Prince lightly. 'This place is full of strange things if you know where to look. Weird things. Come on.'

He opened the door and watched Mary climb into the car—she did it awkwardly, feet first.

'Mind your hands,' he said.

The door closed with a thud of air and Prince's shadow moved round outside behind her head. He slipped in beside her and twisted the key in its lock. Mary looked out of her window; the café dropped back, averting its dark face. The machine put its head down and started lapping up distance. They climbed quickly on to the concrete beams that meshed the city, the car plunging forward with all its might, trying to get to the head of the herd.

'Of course. You've never been in a car before, have you.' 'Oh I think I must have been some time,' said Mary to the windowpane. She turned sharply.

Prince was smiling at the ravelling road. 'I've got lots of time for you, Mary,' he said. 'I told you that before. Lots of time.'

Life nearly overloaded Mary that night. She had never guessed at the city's abysmal divides and atrocious energies, its furniture, hardware, power and glut. And there could be no doubting Prince any more. He knew about her. He knew about everything.

'Look,' he said in the baron the forty-fourth floor. Mary turned to see a red-haired girl in a pink dress, laughing on the arm of a fat man with one dead eye. The pink of the girl's dress was childish but her hair was as red as meat. 'He paid an agency fifty pounds to bring her here tonight. She will keep five, perhaps less. Five pounds, for going out with fat guys. Later they will make a deal. He will give her a hundred pounds, maybe a hundred and fifty. She will spend four or five hours of her time in his hotel, then go home to her children and her husband, who doesn't mind, who can't afford to mind.

'Look,' he said in the dungeon beneath the streets. He had pulled up under a bridge and opened a door in the ground with his keys. He had dozens of keys on his ring, keys for all things, perhaps, or just jailer's keys. 'This is where the lines of the city's power run. These are the copper veins that keep things working—water, electricity, gas.

'Look,' he said in the chaotic dormitory of a guarded compound near the airport, where the black hulks of planes screamed plangently overhead, their lights wired to the dark air. Mary turned to see an ochre-faced woman walking from bed to bed with a bundle of sticks and a shrieking baby in her arms. 'The sweeper-woman pinches the boy to make him cry louder for money. But she pinches him also to punish him for his sins in previous lives. He must have been a very bad boy to be born the son of a sweeper-woman. That's assuming there's life after death—natch.

'Look,' said Prince. Mary looked through the windscreen but she still couldn't believe it. A man standing in the middle of the dark street, peeled raw naked, weeping—and burning money. He had a lighter, and a handful of notes. Other people had gathered to watch. 'Now he looks really well-adjusted. But then, what is there to be adjusted to? Oh
man ...
what brought you to this? What made
this
seem like the next thing to do? That's it—run! Go on. Run, pal!'

They ate in a cavernous restaurant spanning a city block of festering Chinatown. Thousands of Chinese ate with them. Until then Mary had thought it no more remarkable that people were from Sweden or Sri Lanka than if they had long legs or short hair or were in luck or were out of it. Now she saw that it mattered where you came from, not just to you but to the greater balance. Other peoples ... dish-faced sprites with their numb glow ... Prince used his knitting needles skilfully on the sweet food. Mary was too full to eat, though she had eaten little that day. Not only food fills you up. Sometimes the present is more than enough; sometimes the present is more than you can keep down. She drank the tea and tried to prepare herself.

'Shall we begin?' he said.

Mary nodded.

'How much do you know about Amy Hide?'

'Enough. The photograph was enough.'

'Well we know a little. We know the sort of things she did, the sort of people she was with. One night she went too far. Something happened. We're not sure what. You know what murder is, don't you?'

'I think so, yes.'

'Usually we find a body and have to look for a murderer. With Amy Hide we find a murderer and have to look for a body. We don't find it. We've got a confession, a guy in a cell saying what he did and why. But we haven't got a body. Where is Amy Hide? Then you come along. Show me your teeth.'

Mary made a rictus of her mouth. It felt like someone else doing it for her.

'Mm, pretty teeth. No help though. It seems that Amy never had any trouble that way—anyhow we can't find any records. Ditto with the doc. So it's a hell of a fix.'

'Is it a crime to be murdered?' Mary asked.

'What?' Mary thought that nothing could startle Prince; but this startled him. 'Why did you say that?'

'I just wanted to know.
Is
it a crime? Can you be punished for it?'

'Well it's a strange way to break the law. You see, the thing ... ' He hesitated and wiped his forehead with his palm. 'No. You needn't know that yet. That'll come later.'

'What will?'

'You'll see.' He was calmer again now, and amusement reappeared in the line of his lips.

Mary said, 'What do you get if you break the law?'

'Time,' he said.

'What do you get if you murder someone?'

'Life.'

'What's life like?'

'Murder.'

'Is it?'

'Hell,' he said and laughed. 'Don't ever try it. Hey, Mary.'

'What?'

'Are you good or are you bad?'

'...
I'm good. I am.'

'... Are you?'

She made her eyes contest him with all their light. She said,' Have you ever done a terrible thing in a dream, and then woken up still believing it was true?'

'Yeah,' he said.

'I feel like that all the time. All the time.' 'Poor Mary,' he said, 'poor ghost. Come on. I'm afraid there's one more thing you must see tonight.'

They drove in silence. Prince was no longer disposed to talk and made some show of intentness at the controls. Mary watched the way they came with care. The river again, writhing and orderless in the lunar night, the plumed snout of a still-rumbling factory, warehouses that marched past slowly on either side and seemed to glance back over their shoulders at the car, a stretch of black grass in which an elliptical pond glinted and winked. Then the streetlights snuffed out, and she could see only the smoky beams thrust forward by the black car.

They got out and walked. Mary felt the massed volume of nearby water. Was this another river, or had the river that she and Sharon crossed subtly curled round to head them off again? There was a smell of vegetable dampness and a feeling of liquid in the air. Water dripped and trickled musically. She noticed that dark faces with white eyes watched like masks from misty doorways. Feeble, threadbare dogs—more like recently promoted rats—stared up from a split bagful of rubbish they were eating and barked weakly. The dogs looked bashful about their sudden elevation within the chain of being—as if they wished they hadn't excelled quite so brilliantly in the rodent kingdom and could quietly go back to being rats again. One limped up to sniff at Mary's feet, then tiptoed off again.