Other People (26 page)

Often she made Jamie come too by feeling bad at him until he said yes. But he wheeled around between the sloping stalls or stood outside shops theatrically tapping his foot, in an agony of hate and boredom. He purchased clanking bagfuls of drink and snarled in the wet wind. How dare he, thought Mary.

'They're all fucking mad out there,' he said sorrowfully when they returned. But Mary wasn't listening. Mary was wondering about the flat. How small it had become. And it used to be so large.

The compact kitchen was her new world. Her face shone in the steel rings of heat. She put a murdered chicken in the oven and watched its wizened skin until it went as brown as the chicken Lily made. She took it out. It was warm enough to eat. Jamie sat slumped over the table as she served it up. Jamie stared at the chicken for a long time.

'It's like Keats's last cough,' he murmured.

'What?
said Mary.

'I mean, chicken isn't usually like this. Is it. I mean, is it. I don't know what the exact difference is, but it's not usually like this. It doesn't usually have all these ... red guys in it, now does it. Does it... It's no use you looking at me like that,' he said.

But it was. It was quite a lot of use. He ate nearly all of it. Mary watched him with satisfaction and pride as she munched mechanically on. Pretty purple juice ran down her chin.

Together they endeavoured to abolish the idea of diurnal time, time as a way of keeping life distinct, time as a device to stop night and day happening at the same time. Noon would find Jamie and Mary, refreshed by several hours of hard drinking, about to settle down to their midday meal. When Jamie had eaten as much as he could, which wasn't very much any more, Mary would urge him into the shadows of the dark and helpless bedroom, over the tundra of paper tissues from all the crying she needed to do, and in between the sheets, where she fondly prepared him for the performance of his daily duty. Then they slept, deeply, often for as much as six or seven hours, a whole night's rest filtered through the hours of the dangling afternoon. At evening they rose like ghosts, like weary vampires, to begin the long night's work. The nights were long, but not too long for Mary and Jamie. They were always up to them. They were always still there when dawn arrived, heavy, slow, but still there, ready for the morning haul. During their first few nights, Mary waited until Jamie was fuddled by drink and drugs and then talked to him for hours about why he had never done anything with his life and about the fact that he was secretly queer and mad. But they didn't talk much any more. They didn't need to. They were so close.

At midnight Mary worked in the chaotic kitchen. The tiny room had a hot yellow glare like the blaze of ripe butter. She cooked in colours. One meal consisted of haddock, chicken-skin (astutely preserved by Mary from the previous day), and swede darkened with the blood of beetroots; another of liver, grapes, kidney-beans and the outer leaves of artichokes. She cooked everything until it was the right colour. She cooked with her bare hands, hands stained with juice and blood and the liquid-like patches of burn-scars as multi-wrinkled as Chinese cabbage. She thought it amazing how competent she was in here, how firm in all her decisions, considering how little practice she had had and how cramped the kitchen and the flat had suddenly become.

She stopped washing things. She stopped washing dishes, surfaces, clothes, even those cusped parts of herself that seemed to need washing more often than the other parts did. She took grim pleasure from the salty exhalations, the damp-dry textures of her body. She smelled wholesomely of the food she cooked; she could identify the smell of several different meals issuing from her all at once. She would never run out of clothes because Augusta, Jo and Lily had left lots of theirs behind in case she needed them. She made Jamie wear a dress of Augusta's. He didn't want to at first—but the dress was quite comfortable, he had to admit. She turned up the heat, and made sure all the windows stayed closed. Jamie sometimes hovered hopefully by the balcony; but Mary shook her head with a firm but gentle smile, and he shrugged and moved away. One night she was sitting by the fire eating an apple. She noticed a squirt of blood on the ridgy white pulp. She went over to where Jamie was lying slackly on the sofa. She kissed him on the lips. He resisted at first, but he didn't have enough strength to struggle for long. She worked her mouth into his, knowing that this would bring them even closer together than before. And of course she prized the malty, creaturely tang that issued from between her legs. That was him too, after all, his tissue, his sacrament, his fault. And when the lunar blood came she let it flow.

In the dead of night Mary's face glowed above the red circles of heat. It was their last meal and she was determined that his food should be the right colour. She cooked him brains and tripe, and veal heated just a little so as not to spoil its light tan. She was
determined
that his food should be the right colour. She bore the tray into the sitting-room. Jamie got up from the floor and sat down facing her on the armchair. The flat was so small now that they were forced to eat like this, with their plates on their laps and their knees touching. It didn't matter: they were so close. Mary ate quickly, unstoppably. As she chewed she told him her story—everything, about her death, her new life, her murderer, and her redeemer who would be coming to get her one day soon. When she had finished Jamie lowered himself to the floor again. And he hadn't touched his food! Mary stood over him for a long time. She could not control her face or the extraordinary sounds that came from her mouth. These sounds would have frightened her very much if it hadn't been Mary who was making them. It was lucky Mary was making them. She wouldn't want to have to deal with anyone who could make sounds like these. Some time later she was in the bathroom, standing before the mirror in thick darkness, listening to laughter. The instant she threw the switch a face reared out of the glass, in exultation, in relief, in terror. She had done it. She had torn through the glass and come back from the other side. She had found her again. She was herself at last.

• • •

Part Three

21

• • •

Without Fear

Finally the weather started to turn again.

For several days now a tunnel of piercing blue had been visible here and there in the lumpy grey canopy of the sky. It changed its position from time to time, widened invitingly and then narrowed out, went away entirely for a whole afternoon, until one morning it replaced the sky itself with a spotless dome of pure ringing distance. You thought: So it's been like that up there all the time. It's just the clouds that get in the way. Now only aeroplanes lanced the spicy sky, beaming out of the cold sun-haze in the morning and, at dusk, trailing salt as they headed without fear into the mild hell-flames of the west.

Amy Hide stood in the square garden. She wore Wellingtons, jeans and a man's blue sweater. She was watching rubbish burn. She folded her arms and glanced down the walled path towards the road. The kitchen door creaked; she turned to see David, the neighbours' cat, sliding nonchalantly into the house. She looked up at the sky. She began to hum vaguely as the fire crackled out its leaning tower of smoke.

'It won't last, Amy,' said a voice. 'It won't hold.'

Amy turned, smiling and shielding her eyes.

'You mark my words.'

'But Mrs Smythe. You always say that. How do you know it won't last?'

Mrs Smythe was leaning heavily on the scalloped fence that separated the two gardens. Only her large formless face was visible, and her two dangling, suppliant hands.

'They said,' said Mrs Smythe. 'On the TV. There's a cold front coming.'

'Why do you believe them now? You didn't believe them when they said there was a warm front coming.'

'Well you just mark my words, young Amy. Take a bit of advice from someone older and wiser than yourself.'

'Well, we'll see. How's Mr Smythe?'

'Oh, mustn't complain. He has his good days and his bad days, let's put it like that.'

'God, what's the time?' said Amy. 'I'd better hurry or they'll be shut. Is there anything I can get you, Mrs Smythe?'

'You are good, Amy. But I've been down myself today ... He's very punctual, isn't he?'

'Yes,' said Amy, 'he is.'

'You must worry about him sometimes though.'

'Yes,'said Amy,'I do.'

An hour later Amy surveyed the ordinary sitting-room. Reflexively she started tidying up, not that there was much to be kept tidy. She put the daily newspaper into the wooden wallet of the magazine rack, and bent down to remove a squiggle of thread from the grey hair-cord carpet. She made herself comfortable on the sofa, tucking her legs up in the way she had come to like. Every now and then she glanced up from her book, and out across the quiet road at the toytown houses opposite. When she heard the car she looked away and went on reading. She didn't want him to think that she spent the whole day waiting for his return. Nor did she ever.

The door opened and Prince strolled into the room. He dropped his briefcase on the armchair and quickly unbuttoned his overcoat.

'Hi,' he said. 'How was your day?'

'Hi. Very nice. How was yours?'

'Oh, usual stuff. City Hall. But there was some good human interest in the afternoon.'

'Do you want a drink? What happened?'

'You bet. The way people ...' He stretched, yawning vigorously. 'The ways people can think up of behaving badly. They're like bloody artists, some of them. How was your day?'

'Nice. Very nice. The weather...'

'Tell me about it in incredible detail.'

So she told him about it, in detail. She did this every evening. She used to wonder how the routine rhythms and quotidian readjustments of her new life could hold any interest for Prince—Prince, who came home hot and tousled from the hard human action. But she enjoyed telling him about it all and he seemed to enjoy hearing it too. He never let her leave anything out.

'How are you feeling these days?' he then asked her.

She blushed, but her voice was steady. 'I'm very grateful. I can't stay for ever though, can I. You'll tell me when it's time for me to go.'

'No, stay!' he said. He stood up and turned his back on her. 'Stick around,' he said more quietly, running his eyes along the banked shelf of records. 'It's nice to have a woman in the house, as they say. Now who would we like to hear from?'

Amy said, 'I thought I'd make an omelette or something later on.'

'Good thinking,' said Prince.

At eleven o'clock Amy said good night and went upstairs. She stood before the mirror in the sane bathroom. With cleansing lotion and cotton wool she removed the light arrangements of rouge and mascara from her face. She looked good: she looked both older and younger than before, more substantial. Now she gazed into her own eyes without fear; she knew who she was, and didn't mind much more than other people minded. Her right temple and the soft chin still bore the tenacious discolorations of bruising. Amy didn't blame Jo for them. Amy didn't blame Jo for the skilful and virile beating she had given her—in the flat, on New Year's Day. It was an intelligible thing to have done. Jamie was going to be all right. He was in an expensive clinic called The Hermitage. She wanted to see him but no one thought this was a good idea. No one thought this was good thinking. Amy knew she would see him one day, and would tell him she was sorry without giving fear. She brushed her teeth, then went across the landing to her room.

Amy's room contained a bed, a table, a chair, and not much else. Prince of course had a bigger and more complicated room, next door to hers. In many ways Amy's room resembled her attic at the squat, and she liked it very much. But she liked it in an appropriate way. She knew that it was in no sense hers. The window neatly framed the black sky and its hunter's moon. Looking out, she could hear the faint creaking of the young trees and the discreet surge of an occasional car in the neighbouring streets. That was all. But she saw and heard all that she longed to see and hear. She took off her clothes and put on her white nightdress. She wrote in her diary for a few minutes, then said her prayers—yes she did, down on her knees at the side of the bed.

22

• • •

Old Flame

She lived in a remote arcadia, a pleasant, fallen world. Dogs and cats moved among the people on terms of perfect equality; the slow cars veered for them in the right-angled streets. The place was called a dormitory town. It had baubelled hedges, and grass was shared out scrupulously, often in patches no bigger than paving-stones. This was where the earners of London came back exhaustedly to sleep in lines, while on the far side of the planet other people rose like a crew to man the workings of the world. Prince had shown her round the thought-out precincts, the considered mezzanines. There was one of everything. You wouldn't ever need to go further than this—though of course they sometimes did, like other people everywhere.

He gave her a certain amount of money each week, for housekeeping, and Amy had always liked testing money against the buyable world. Money, of course, was still in everyone's bad books; in shops and coffee-bars people talked bitterly about money and its misdeeds. But Amy had a lot of time for money and thought that people seriously undervalued it. Money was more versatile than people let on. Money could spend and money could buy. Also you could save money while you spent it. Finally, it was nice spending money and it was nice not spending it—and of how many things could you say that? Money seemed to work out much better here than it did before, when she had had so little and when she had had so much.