Other People (23 page)

'Don't listen to him,' Lily told Mary. 'He's impossible when he's drunk.'

'That man hates women,' said Augusta with her eyes closed.

Jo shook her head. 'No, he just needs to get out and do something.'

It was true that no one in the flat did anything. Well, they did things, but they didn't do anything. They didn't do nothing, but they didn't do anything either. Mary soon worked out why: there was no need to. There was no need.

Mary recognized all three girls from the Sunday when she had come to lunch. She wasn't surprised to find them living here. She wasn't surprised to find that someone else was living here too, someone who didn't do anything either: little Carlos.

In a sense, Carlos was what Lily did. Carlos demanded and received almost full-time priming; he needed Lily's time all the time there was, and she gave it to him. Carlos was learning to walk, or waiting to walk. His burly, milk-flossed head bore an ever-changing patchwork of angry red bruises; Carlos got these by falling over a lot, especially in the bathroom, where he fell over most. You could hear him moving about in there, chirruping or gurgling interestedly: then there would be a sudden thump or crash, a shocked silence as Carlos marshalled his grief and outrage, and finally his forceful, hacking wail that sent Lily running in, hoping he hadn't broken anything. Carlos cried about other things too. He always cried to good effect: it always got him what he wanted. When you thought about it, Carlos was really pretty popular, had won quite a few admirers, for somebody who was only one year old. Just think how many friends and followers he would have when he was fifty—or seventy-five!

'What exactly's the schedule on Carlos?' Jamie asked Lily. Jamie spent quite a lot of time playing with Carlos, or just watching him play. 'He thinks you're God until he's three. Then he thinks he wants to climb into the sack with you until he's twelve. Then he thinks you're a scumbag until he's twenty. Then he goes queer or whatever and feels guilty about you until he's sixty and as old and fucked up as you are. That's the schedule, isn't it?'

'Don't talk like that,' said Lily, and gathered Carlos in her arms.

Something in Lily's eyes reminded Mary of the Hostel and its ruined girls. Lily had once been in trouble, but now she was out of it, out of trouble. She had tangled, wispy, weightless fair hair, sad lips, and no challenge in her presence. She also had a man called Bartholomé who worked in the North Sea. Lily thought about Carlos all the time, even when Carlos was asleep or jabbering contentedly in the next room. Lily didn't do anything, but this was all right. Carlos was what she did.

Jo didn't do anything but Jo did lots of things. Mary had never met or heard of anyone who did as many things as Jo did. She had 'money of her own', which perhaps explained it (everyone else there, including Mary, had money of Jamie's). She also had shoulders like the back of a sofa, short bobbing brown hair, and a kind of war-hero's jaw-line, with ferociously good teeth. She was always doing things, tennis, squash, riding, golf, and driving off to remote, virtually unreachable places at the wheel of her fat and powerful car. In the early evening she roared out hymns under the scalding shower, then marched through in chunky sweater and chunky jeans to superintend dinner with Lily. Later she watched television, knitting at the same time, or threading fish-hooks, or re-stringing tennis rackets, or oiling guns. Then at eleven-thirty sharp she stood up, stretched, said 'Well!' and strode off to bed. Occasionally she went out with her man. Very occasionally her man came round there. Her man was unbelievable, like someone on television. It was Jamie's often-expressed belief that Jo was really a man herself.

'She's a fucking
man,
that girl,' he said. 'Don't let her fool you—she's fucked up too. All that scuba-diving and mountaineering and pot-holing and hang-gliding—she just wants to fill the days and not think about anything. Do you think she likes going out with that fucking robot?'

One Sunday night the fuses went. While Mary and Lily held candles, Jamie peered fearfully at the fuse box, which glinted in triumphant recalcitrance from its cave. Jamie kept extending his trembling fingers and snatching them back again at the last moment. Jo marched into the flat with a gun and three dead pheasants swinging from her belt. She shouldered Jamie out of the way and restored light with a single swipe of her hand. Jamie fell over. Lily helped him up. Blinking, and dusting himself down, Jamie said petulantly, 'Christ, you're not a girl at all, are you. You're a bloke! Christ... Why don't you put an
e
on the end of your name and go the whole hog.'

But Jo just laughed and tramped off to her room. Soon after that she went out again. She had other things to do.

Augusta didn't do anything either, anything at all, but her life remained a throbbing epic of victories, reverses, strategies, set-backs, affronts, betrayals, campaigns and conspiracies. A social life was the kind of life Augusta had. And a sex life too. She had spiky black hair but her face was dramatically pale, paler even than her teeth, which were themselves very white. Mary saw her naked quite a lot, since she often sat with Augusta in her opulent brothel of a bedroom. Augusta was the same height and weight as Mary; yet she was not only slimmer than Mary but fuller too. Her body had an extraordinary jouncy, gymnastic look, with the narrow muscular back and voluptuous behind, and those conical breasts riding high on the frail ribcage. Augusta also had lots of men.

She rose late, later even than Jamie. By her bed she always had an enormous mug of water with a picture of the Queen of England on its webbed enamel surface. Before doing anything else Augusta drained her mug in one go. Then she got up and made herself coffee, quietly, with forbidding calm. She was always quiet and forbidding then, haughty too, almost regal—despite her startling pallor and her quivering hands. She looked especially quiet and forbidding if a man had stayed the night with her, and even more especially if the man hadn't stayed the night with her before. Augusta's men ... Mary heard her clattering in late with them, and often saw them sneaking out in the morning—or sprinting out half-dressed, with Augusta appearing naked to shout them on their way. On such days she looked especially high-minded and dignified. She looked as if she were reassembling the bits of her that the previous day had dispersed—that disappointing and unworthy day, which just hadn't been good enough for Augusta.
Bad
day
,
to fall so short like that.

Jamie had similar theories about Augusta. 'She's a fucking
man,
that girl—when it comes to men, anyway. I know she's a tremendous sack-artist and everything. She says it's good for her figure. But look at her eyes. She's got... fucked-outeyes.'

After drinks and lunch, Augusta reliably started growing in beauty, and she didn't stop growing all day.

'You amaze me,'Jamie would say to her conversationally. 'You get up in the morning, you look like fucking shit. By the middle of the afternoon, you could be a virgin again.'

These were not riskless things to say to Augusta, who was justly famed for her touchiness and tantrums. Mary used to wonder how Augusta could be bothered to get as bothered as she frequently did. But it was no bother to Augusta, as Mary soon saw: her anger was part of something limitless inside her. There was plenty of Amy in Augusta all right. Oh, plenty, plenty. But by the time she started getting dressed for the evening, Augusta looked blindingly, unchallengeably good. She always went out, unless something had gone wrong. A car or a taxi or a man came, and Augusta walked off to present herself to the expectantly waiting night. And when something had gone wrong and she stayed in, she looked more dignified and forbidding than ever.

On such evenings Augusta would get drunk, talk a lot and laugh fiercely at her own jokes. Jamie jeered at her then, if he thought it was safe.

'Boffed and betrayed again, eh Augusta? Dorked and dumped. I bet someone's going to get it in the neck tomorrow. Whew! She's a terror.'

And Augusta would laugh at that too. But Jamie never said anything in the mornings, when Augusta looked so high-minded. For instance, he never said anything that day when Augusta had a black eye and could be heard vomiting noisily in the bathroom. No one said anything, she looked so high-minded about it.

Mary would lie in bed at night in her small room at the end of the corridor, fielding the unwelcome thoughts that always came to her then. Jamie was right in a way: Augusta and Jo
were
like men. They had the power, the power of imposing, of imposing fear—they had formidability. Formidability!... How shameful, really, that when women tried to be free of men and strong in themselves, they just watched the way men were strong and copied that. Was there no second way to be strong, no female way? Mary was sure there must be. But perhaps not, or not any more, or not yet. Perhaps women would never be both strong and female. Perhaps women would never have the strength for that.

Where was pallid Alan now? He never had any, any formidability. Where was he, in heaven or in hell? If he was in heaven, he would perhaps be diving into a nebulous swimming-pool—but diving perfectly this time, with his legs taut and straight; or maybe he just lolled on a cloud all day, teasing his thick good hair. If it was hell that had him, then it would be a pale and humble one with fake flames like those on the Bothams' golden fire, and all very quiet with not much going on. Most probably, though, Alan had simply stopped, stopped dead. His life had been subtracted, cancelled out. That was the most likely thing, Mary was afraid. She didn't believe in life after death. She just believed in death.

• • •

She'll get over it.

... Well, Mary seems to have fallen on her feet again, and without breaking. Of course, women love men who have lots of money, don't they? Oh, come on. They do. If I were a woman I'd love them too. Why do you think men fritter their lives away trying to earn the stuff? Men used to vie for women with fists and clubs and teeth. Now they use money. That sounds like an improvement to me.

Mind you, Jamie didn't earn his money. He had it all along. It was always there, waiting to be his. The rich have special terrors, inhabiting the land where there is no need. Here things swim too slowly, and the rich have special terrors. It serves them right, but they do. Mary will have to watch herself here. Disaster will sneak up the other way.

Have you ever stayed in a place where you wanted someone who didn't want you? Well don't—never do. Get out. Don't stay in a place where you want someone who doesn't want you. Get out as quickly as you can and don't come back. That's all I can say. That's all you can do.

• • •

One morning as she lay in bed Mary remembered how as someone young she had sat down and wept on the grey concrete of a school playground, had wept inconsolably, and with no one to console her.

She had been excluded from something—they wouldn't let her join in, they wouldn't let her join in and play. Everyone expected her to stop crying when playtime was over. She expected this too. But she didn't stop. The tearing, the rending, it wouldn't go away, ow, ow, it hurt, it hurt. She sat at her desk in class with her head in her hands and her shoulders shaking. The mistress was not unkind. She led her to the corner and stood her on a chair, opening a window to help her breathe. This didn't stop the rending either. She stared out at the booming afternoon and listened to herself for a long time, as surprised as anyone by the depth and harshness of her sobs.

... Mary sat naked on the edge of her bed. She was crying again. No more of this, she thought. She couldn't go on being alone. It wasn't just
Jamie
—she knew what was wrong with
Jamie.
But only he could stop the rawness and the rending, the needing, the tearing eagerness. And everyone needed someone to make them feel halfway whole.

19

• • •

Opposite Number

Jamie didn't do anything. Jamie didn't do anything either. Anything. Of course, he used to do jobs, like the one he did for Michael Shane, but—

'But I'm just fucking fuckin out,' he said in his rocky voice. 'I just don't fuckin need it, man. Who needs it? I don't.'

Jamie just read all day. Mary would sometimes pick up the books that he had finished or abandoned. They tended to be American, and about poor kids making good. Mary soon discovered that many of the things Jamie said— phrases, entire paragraphs, stoutly held view-points—and many of his mannerisms and stylish quirks of appearance were in fact stolen from the books he read. Was it all right to steal things from books and not give them back? Mary supposed it was, in this place anyway. Books didn't seem to mind and, besides, everything was all right in this place.

Mary read too, but books were no help. She found herself reading for clues and not for anything else. 'Nothing is so cheerless as the company of a woman who is not desired,' she read somewhere. She tried not to be cheerless. But was she not desired? How did you tell? She read somewhere else: 'A woman's solitary thoughts are almost exclusively romantic' ... but men weren't like that. But
women
weren't like that, not any longer. She found a few cuboid paperbacks with pictures of women like Augusta on their covers and the word
Love
in their titles. Mary read them all. In these books the women who wanted men simply took all their clothes off and said things like 'Make me' or 'Take me' or, in one extraordinary case, 'Fill me with your children'. Mary didn't see herself saying that to Jamie, somehow. 'Jamie? Fill me with your children.' No, Mary didn't see herself saying that. The women also dressed up in special ways: there was a lacy, minimal black outfit that had had the desired effect, had told the right lies, to a man who had been behaving much as Jamie was behaving now; and sometimes the girls just turned up naked except for a fur coat. Then the men fucked the women, usually giving them a slap or two in the face on top of everything else. That wasn't what Mary wanted. She had to admit, however, that the men and women seemed to have quite a good time when they did it, in their embarrassing and vaguely hateful way. But the men were all racing-drivers or business moguls or gangsters or film stars. And Jamie wasn't like that. What was Jamie like? Was Jamie queer, perhaps, like Gavin? Mary didn't think so.