Playing for the Ashes (17 page)

“Gordon, we have nothing to discuss with her when she’s in this condition.”

“Me?” I asked. “Condition?” I asked. I moved closer and rotated my hips against my father. “Okay. Let’s change the question, then. D’you want to fuck me? Barry and Clark do. They’d do it here in the street if they could. Would you? If I said yes? Cause I might, you know.”

“All
right
.” Clark moved behind me again so that the three of us made an undulating sexual sandwich on the pavement.

Barry began laughing. He said, “Do it,” and I made a sing-song of “Daddy wants to do it, to do it, to do it.”

The crowd on the pavement gave us a wide berth.

I felt like one of those coloured scraps at the end of a kaleidoscope. I was part of a swirling mass that shifted when I tossed my head. I was alone. Then I was in the centre of the action. I was dominatrix. Then I was slave.

From another planet, Mother’s voice said, “Gordon, for the love of God…”

Someone said, “Do it.”

Someone shouted, “Whooooahhhh.”

Someone called out, “Ride her.”

And then hot irons went round my wrists.

I hadn’t realised Dad was so strong. When he took my arms, unlocked them from round him, and thrust me away, I felt the pain of it right through my shoulders.

I said, “Hey!”

He stepped back. He took out a handkerchief and pressed it to his mouth. Someone said, “Do you need help here, sir?” and I saw a flash of silver in the corner of my eye. A bobby’s helmet.

I snickered. “Saved by the local constab. Lucky you, Dad.”

Mother said to the constable, “Thank you. These three…”

Dad said, “It’s nothing.”

“Gordon.” Mother’s voice was all admonition. Here was their chance to teach their little hell-spawn a proper lesson.

“A misunderstanding,” Dad said. “Thank you, Officer. We’ll be on our way.” He placed his hand beneath my mother’s elbow. He said, “Miriam,” and his meaning was clear.

Mother was trembling. I could tell by the way her pearls shuddered in the light. She said to me, “You’re a monster.”

I said, “What about him?” And as they walked off, I shouted, “Because we know, Dad, don’t we? But don’t you worry. It’ll be our secret. I’ll never tell.”

I’d aroused him, you see. He’d gone hard as a fire iron. And I loved the joke of it, the beautiful power of it. The thought of him walking through the lights of that station with all the world to see the bulge in his trousers— with Miriam to see the bulge in his trousers— made me weak with amusement. To have got a reaction from taciturn, passionless Gordon Whitelaw. If I could do that, here in public, in front of God only knows how many witnesses, I could do anything. I was omnipotence personified.

The copper said to us, “Move off, you lot,” and “Nothing more to see here,” to what remained of the spectators.

Barry, Clark, and I never found the party in Brixton. We never actually tried. Instead, we made our own party in the flat in Shepherd’s Bush. We did two threesomes, one twosome, and ended up with three onesomes with each of us egging the other on. We had enough dope to last the night, at the end of which Clark and Barry decided they liked the action well enough to move in as my
fla
tmates, which was fine with me. I shared their dope. They shared me. It was an arrangement that promised to benefit all of us.

At the end of our first week together, we prepared to celebrate our seventh-day anniversary. We were happily spread out on the floor, with three grams of coke and a half litre of eucalyptus body oil, when the telegram arrived. Somehow she’d managed to have it delivered, rather than phoned. She no doubt wanted the effect to be an unforgettable one.

I didn’t read it at first. I was watching Barry whip a razor blade through the coke, and all my attention was fixed on two words:
how soon
.

Clark answered the door. He brought the telegram into the sitting room. He said, “For you, Liv,” and dropped it into my lap. He put on music and he uncapped the body oil. I pulled off my jersey, then my jeans. He said, “Aren’t you going to read it?”

I said, “Later.” He poured the oil and started. I closed my eyes and felt the ripples of pleasure take my shoulders and arms first, then my breasts and my thighs. I smiled and listened to the
chick chick chick
of Barry’s razor blade making the magic powder. When it was ready, he giggled and said, “Let the games begin.”

I forgot about the telegram until the next morning when I woke in a fog with the taste of melted aspirin in my throat. Always the quickest of us to recover, Clark was shaving, getting ready to head into the City for another day of financial wizardry. Barry was still out cold where we’d left him, sprawled half on and half off the sofa. He was lying on his stomach with his little arse looking like two pink muffins and his fingers jerking spasmodically as if he was trying to grab something in his dream.

I plodded into the sitting room and slapped his bum. He didn’t wake up. Clark said, “He’s not going to make it today. Can you wake him enough so he can phone in?”

I prodded Barry with my foot. He groaned. I prodded again. He turned his head into the sofa. “No,” I told Clark.

“Can you be his sister? On the phone, I mean.”

“Why? Does he say he lives with his sister?”

“He has been until now. And it would be easier if you—”

“Shit. All right.” I made the call. Flu, I told them. Barry spent the night with his head in the toilet. He’s just gone off to sleep. “Done,” I said when I rang off.

Clark nodded. He adjusted his tie. He seemed to hesitate and he watched me too carefully. “Liv,” he said, “about last night.” He’d slicked his hair back in a way I didn’t like. I reached up to mess it about. He tilted his head away. He said again, “About last night.”

“What about it? Didn’t get enough? Want more? Now?”

“I’d prefer you didn’t let Barry know. All right?”

I frowned. “What?”

“Don’t say anything to him. We’ll talk later.” He glanced at his watch. It was a Rolex, a present from his proud mummy when he left the London School of Economics. “I must go. I’ve a meeting at half past nine.”

I blocked his way. I didn’t like the persona that was Clark when he was straight—all pishposh language rolling delicately off the tongue—and I liked it even less this morning. “Not till you tell me what you mean. Don’t tell Barry what? And why?”

He sighed. “That it was just the two of us. Last night. Liv, you know what I’m talking about.”

“Who cares? He was out of it. He couldn’t have if he’d even wanted to.”

“I’m aware of that fact, but it’s not quite the point.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “Just don’t say anything to him. We had a bargain, he and I. I don’t want to mess it up.”

“What kind of bargain?”

“It’s not important. I can’t explain it now anyway.”

I was still in his path. “You’d better explain it. If you want to make your meeting, that is.”

He sighed and said
hell
under his breath.

“What deal, Clark? About last night.”

“Very well. Before we moved in with you we agreed we’d never—” he cleared his throat, “we agreed that without the other one we’d never…” He ran his hand through his hair and messed it up himself. “We’d both always be there, all right? With you. That was the bargain.”

“I see. You’d shag me together, you mean. The threesome would only do a twosome if we had a onesome for an audience.”

“If you feel it’s necessary to put it that way.”

“Is there another way to put it?”

“I suppose not.”

“Fine. Just as long as we know what we’re talking about.”

He licked his lips. “Good,” he said. “See you tonight.”

“Right.” I stepped to one side and watched him walk to the door. “Oh Clark?” He turned. “In case you can’t feel it, you’ve got snot dripping out of your nose. I’d hate you to look bad for your meeting.”

I wiggled my fingers at him in farewell and when the door closed on him, I went to Barry. We would see what we would see about who had Liv and when.

I smacked his bum. He groaned. I tickled his bollocks. He smiled. I said, “Come on, you hunk of meat. We’ve got business to attend to,” and I squatted down to turn him over. That’s when I saw the telegram again, lying on the floor with Barry’s sleeping fingers mincing across it.

I kicked it to one side at first and sank onto the floor to work on Barry. But when I saw that nothing was going to bring him out of the stupor, let alone make it possible for him to perform, I said, “Hell,” and reached for the telegram.

I was clumsy, so when I ripped the envelope open, I ripped the message in half. I read
crematorium
and
Tuesday
, and I thought initially that I was holding a grisly advert for how to prepare for the afterlife. But then I saw
father
at the top. And near it the word
underground
. I put the two halves together and squinted at the message.

She’d told me as little as possible. He had died on the underground between Knights-bridge and South Kensington stations, going home from the opera on the night of our encounter. He’d been cremated three days later. On the fourth day, the memorial service had been held.

Later—much later when things were different between us—I learned the rest from her. That he’d been standing with her in the God-awful pack that always smash into the square of space right near the carriage doors, that he’d not even fallen at
fir
st but instead leaned with a tremendous sigh into a young woman who thought he was coming on to her and shoved him away, that he’d sunk to his knees and then toppled to his side when the carriage doors opened and the bodies shifted at South Kensington Station.

To do his fellow passengers credit, they did help Mother get him out onto the platform, and someone ran for help. But it was more than twenty minutes before he arrived at the nearest hospital, and if anything had been able to save him, that time had long since passed.

The doctors said that his death had been swift. Heart failure, they said. Quite possibly he was dead before he hit the
flo
or.

But, as I’ve said, I learned all that later. At the moment I only had the meagre but explicit information contained in the telegram and the abundant but implicit information contained between the telegram’s lines.

I remember thinking, Why, you sodding little bitch! You miserable cow! I felt tight and hot. I felt a burning band sinking into my head. I had to act. I had to act now. I balled up the telegram and crammed it hard between Barry’s cheeks. I filled my hand with his hair and yanked his head back.

I laughed and shouted, “Wake up, you twit. Wake up. Wake up. Goddamn you. Wake up.” He moaned. I shoved his head into the sofa. I strode to the kitchen. I filled a pot with water. It sloshed onto my feet as I carried it back to the sofa, all the time shouting, “Up, up, up!” I jerked Barry’s arm and his body came after it, right where I wanted, onto the
flo
or. I
fli
pped him over and doused him with water. His eyes fluttered open. He said, “Hey. Wha’?” and that was enough.

I fell upon him. I hit him. I scratched and punched. His arms flailed like windmills. He said, “Wha’ the hell!” and tried to pin me but he was still too far gone to have much strength.

I laughed then screamed, “You bloody bastards!”

He said, “Hey! Liv!” and writhed away on his stomach.

I went after him. I rode him, smacking him, biting his shoulder, shrieking, “The two of you! Bastards! You want it! You want it?”

“What is this?” he said. “What the fu—”

I grabbed the bottle of what remained of the eucalyptus oil that lay on the
flo
or along with the plates from our dinner. I smashed him on the head with it. It didn’t break. I hit him on the neck, then the shoulders. All the time I screamed. And laughed and laughed. He managed to rise to his knees. I got one more good blow in before he threw me backwards. I landed near the fireplace. I grabbed the poker. I began to swing it. “Hate you! No! The two of you! Scum! Worms!” And with every word I swung the poker again.

Barry shouted, “Holy shit!” and headed for the bedroom. He slammed the door. I beat against it with the poker. I felt the splinters flying out from the wood. When my shoulders were sore and my arms couldn’t lift the poker again, I threw it the length of the passage and slid down the wall to the
flo
or.

Which is where I finally began to weep, saying, “You’re gonna, Barry. To me. Right. Now.”

The door cracked open after a minute or two. My head was on my knees and I didn’t look up. I heard Barry mutter, “Crazy bitch,” as he eased past me. Then he was speaking to voices raised in the corridor outside our
fla
t. I heard
disagreement
and
temper
and
female thing
and
misunderstanding
in that BBC voice of his.