Success (27 page)

As for Ursula, well, that’s clearing itself up too. There was no autopsy or anything, thank God … The judge lowers his spectacles: ‘Now, Mr Service, “gentleman of the road”, as you are described here. Quantities of
plebeian semen were found …’ No, with her long history of disturbance, previous suicide bids and so on, everything was formal and brisk. She got cremated with
no
sweat. Neither of her parents could get down for it, so Greg and I went as her guardians. It was sad. We both cried. We didn’t guard her very well, did we?

Of course, I’ve decided not to blame myself at all. That chat I gave her, after the absurd scene in my bedroom, couldn’t have been more indulgent and conciliatory. I merely pointed out, gently but firmly, that there was no sense in which I could assume responsibility for her, that you cannot ‘take people on’ any longer while still trying to function successfully in your own life, that she was on her own now, the same as me, the same as Greg, the same as everybody else. I never said I wouldn’t stick by her. I never said I wouldn’t give her help if she needed it.

Gregory, however,
has
decided to blame himself. Patently, and rather hurtfully also, his rift with her that night was more decisive than mine ever could have been. The first few days were rough — the three of us sharing that ambulance, Gregory staying on for forty-eight hours’ sedation, the curiously unresponsive messages from Rivers Hall, Greg back up in his room, a creature of the middle-air with his pallor and his tears and his odd lightness of presence. I sort of hate to see him now. His grief is an unmanly and demeaning thing. He looks so pathetically at-a-loss, staring out of windows all day long, as if the rooftops might suddenly realign and make themselves new for him again.

He has been out of hospital for — let’s see — about two-and-a-half weeks now. On the first Monday after his discharge he went back to the gallery. When I returned from the office, at about six-thirty, I found him sitting at my desk, staring dully at the sky. He hadn’t switched on the lights; the sallow sodium from the streets played upwards on his unhealthy face.

‘Hello, kid,’ I said. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’ve packed in my job,’ he said.

‘Christ
. Do you want a drink?’

‘Yes. Yes, please. I packed it in.’

‘
Why
? Jesus, what’ll you do?’

‘I just told them. I told them they could keep it.’

‘What did they say? Will they give it
back
?’

‘I couldn’t bear it any more. I couldn’t bear them, it.’

‘What did they say?’

‘They said they understood. It wasn’t a very good job, anyway.’

‘What will you do?’

He held the glass of whisky with both hands, cupped on his chest, lowering his mouth to sip. He said,

‘Don’t know yet. There are lots of things I can do. I’ll do them in the new year. I’ll talk to Papa. When we’ve been home for Christmas. You are coming home for Christmas, aren’t you?’

‘There’s nowhere else to go.’

‘Terry, how did you feel … Do you mind me asking this? How did you feel when your sister …?’

‘Sad and frightened,’ I said.

‘Me too,’ he said.

‘But more frightened, in a way. Frightened about me, what would happen to me.’

‘Mm, that’s how I feel. I’m glad you felt that too.’

‘And now, in a way, I’ve lost two sisters,’ I said, rather daringly.

‘Yes, you have in a way.’ He looked up. ‘Things must have been very hard for you, Terry,’ he said.

‘Not that hard.’

One night towards the end of the month — I had just completed the course at the City College and we’d had a little celebration — I came lurching and burping down Queensway, enjoying the cold air on my numbed cheeks. Hanging a left on Moscow, I followed a wayward instinct to cut across the car park behind The Intrepid Fox. Ten yards into the darkness I saw the lumpy mass of rubbish
bags under the light of the rear door. I walked over. I knew he’d be there and he was, a bundle of misery and filth, a compact compost-heap, surrounded by spent cider bottles and patches of reddish vomit. I came nearer. I thought I had nothing more ambitious in mind than one of our pseudo-Socratic little dialogues, but there was something different about me that night.

‘Well
hi
,’ I said. ‘Hi, it’s me, the little shit.’

A car passed down the street, throwing a stripe of light across the fucked-up hippie’s face. He was awake and his eyes were open. He had been watching me. ‘The big shit,’ he said.

‘Things still rosy? Life still treating you right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Some guys get all the breaks … Hey, you’ve done something to your place, haven’t you? Looks different. Had it done up or something? Been shelling out the cash again?’

‘You’re not funny.’

‘Neither are you. You’re not anything. I wouldn’t swap you for a dog-turd.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Fuck me? Fuck
me
? You’d better watch what you say, tramp.’ I knelt, and added in a whisper, ‘I could do what I liked to you, you dumb hippie. Who would protect you? Who would care what happened to you? No one would notice or mind.’

‘Go and shit yourself, shit.’

I straightened up. A curled hand protruded from the bulk of his overcoat. I stood on it with my left boot, quite hard, and asked: ‘What did you say?’

‘I said go and shit yourself, you
shit
.’

I kicked him clumsily on the side of the head. I’d tried to keep my left foot on his hand — for extra tension — and half lost my balance in the process. This made me much angrier. With a two-step approach, like someone chipping a rugger ball, I caught him a good one right under the jaw. There was a gummy crunch as his mouth
clamped shut, then the thud of the second impact as his head hit the concrete. He rolled over with a gurgle. The vented overcoat had ridden up and a part of his bare back was exposed; the thin chain of his spine tapered into his waistband. Should I kick that too, with my heavy boot, that fragile tube containing so many vital odds and ends? It
would
be nice. He rolled over again. No. Why bother? He’s taken care of. I flicked a tenner from my wallet and pressed it into his stomped-on hand. A fair deal, probably. Fair for him and fair for me. As I lurched and burped away, I heard the muffled scurry of approaching feet. For a moment I felt the squeeze of fear — but when I turned I saw it was only a couple of his wrecked hippie mates, running up to help their friend and to share his money.

£1,750? They’re
kidding
.

I was in the office, the next morning, dozily glancing through my newspaper — the more powerful you are here, it seems, the less there is to do. Momentarily my eyes had strayed from the crossword to the classified ads, where I noticed the following entry:

No wonder he went out of his mind. Why didn’t they pay him in buttons? I swivelled in my chair for a few minutes. Of course, I thought: of
course
. I dialled the number. I spoke to a harsh-voiced woman. I made an appointment for lunchtime the following day. ‘Yes: Veale,’ I said. ‘Stanley Veale.’ I would wear my new black corduroy suit, that yellow shirt of mine, and a tie. I would clean my fingernails and brush my hair flat. I would be on time.

‘Good morning.’

‘Mr Veale, is it? Good morning.’

‘Yes. How do you do?’

‘Shall we go through into the office?’ asked a large, menopausal hillock of a woman — ‘My husband’s in there.’

I trailed her through the gallery, her thighs swishing and her shoes clicking on the cork floor. The place had something of the quality of a film set, over-bright and exemplary, as if staged for our historic progress across its floors.

‘Here we are,’ she said, as we entered the deeper shadows of the office. ‘This is … Stanley Veale. This is my husband Jason Styles.’

‘How do you do?’ I said to the horribly fit little unit of a man who stood alertly by a grey filing-cabinet.

‘Please sit down, Stanley,’ he said.

As I lyingly reconstructed my
curriculum vitae
— read Fine Arts at Kent, completed some external studies at the Courtauld — I sensed a growing restlessness from my interviewers: they were politely willing to hear me out, it appeared, but anxious that this formal interlude should come to an end. And I sensed too, as I lied on, the peculiar feel of the place — the murky damp of the sofa on which I sat, the bloodlessness of the air, the close breath of the room.

‘I see,’ said Mr Styles, glancing at his wife. ‘Let me ask you … what is your, your ambition. How would the gallery here fit in with it?’

‘Well, my ambition is to make some kind of contribution, however small, to the art world in general. I’ve visited this gallery before, of course, just as a casual viewer. And I find I’ve come back many times. I like the work you show here — it’s good work, and I would like to be a part of the whole thing.’

Perfect, identikit stuff, I thought; but again they seemed disappointed, apologetic, almost embarrassed.

‘Mm. You see,’ said Styles, ‘there isn’t really a great deal to do here from your point of view. The gallery more or less runs itself. We just sit and hope, really. The
trouble with our previous assistants has always been’ — and he laughed a little — ‘that they’ve had too
much
ambition, too many interests. We really want someone with no interests
at all
, really.’

Really?

‘It’s a quiet job,’ said Mrs Styles. ‘It would suit a quiet young man.’

‘Ah, I see,’ I said quietly. ‘Was that — is that why the job is open now?’

‘Ah no,’ said Mr Styles. They both relaxed. ‘The last one was rather different. We were both very fond of him, but he was an extremely unhappy and unstable boy. Talented in some ways, but a bit — you know. Not suited to the …’

‘And then he had this personal tragedy …’

‘All a bit too much for him …’

‘We had to let him go, I’m afraid.’

‘I see,’ I said.
Christ
: he got aimed from
here
? ‘How sad.’

‘Well, the salary’s not much, as you know,’ pursued Mr Styles. ‘To be frank, we wouldn’t have replaced the previous young man if we could have helped it, things being as tight as they are. But then if one of us is ill, and then one of us has to go out to the post …’ Their eyes had been in conference. ‘We might as well say that the job is yours if you want it. You needn’t think of it as particularly long-term. Why don’t you think about it and give us a ring?’

Why don’t I think about it and give you a ring? Why don’t
I
think about
that
and give
you
a
ring
?

Poor Gregory. That sad bastard. Things are certainly changing fast for him now. Faster than yet he knows.

There has been more news from Rivers Hall. I’ve been talking to Greg’s mother at pricey length on the telephone. Greg’s mother is not worried about Ursula any more. ‘How can you worry about the dead?’ she asked me. Ursula is dead and gone; I agreed: that’s true — and so, in a way, is my past with her, with them, with him.
Greg’s mother says there are other things to worry about now. Other things. She knew Greg was going under; she knew, even before Ursula went. That’s why she doesn’t want him to hear about these new things yet. She has told me. I am not to tell him. I am just supposed to get him up there, and she’ll tell him. I will tell you:

Greg’s father has gone broke. Broke scares her; broke scares him. Broke broke his heart. His heart attacked him again. And they think it’s going to win this time.

That’s it. That’s it. All the bits that were me have been reshuffled yet again. Where are they? I’ll never find them now.

I’ve packed in my job. I just packed it in, is all. Odette and Jason were sitting in their office — I sauntered through and said, with classic insouciance, that I was no longer prepared, thank you, to squander my days on …

No. They aimed me. They aimed me. They called me into their office and said I was no longer ‘up’ to the job. (Up to that?
Up
to
that
?) They gave me £80 in cash. They said they were sorry. They probably were sorry.

Perhaps you think they aimed me because I wouldn’t fuck them? Well, I don’t think it can be that, because I have fucked them, more or less. Remember that afternoon, when she dropped the coffee on my trousers and then tried to fuck me? Well, I dropped the coffee and I tried to fuck her — tried very hard and without much success (she
did
let me feel her horrible tits and so forth, but she wasn’t keen. She said she never wanted to do anything like that with me again. Why? Who’s changed?). Jason has blown me. Once. I’ve blown him. Twice. I did it because I thought they might aim me if I didn’t. I did, and they aimed me anyway. Oh God. I suppose I can’t
blame them, really, what with me so silent and
tonto
the whole time.

It happened at mid-morning. I walked home with £80 in my pocket (it was lucky no one knew). I sat downstairs in Terry’s room, next to Ursula’s. I worry about Ursula all the time, far more than I ever did when she was alive. Something could always be done then. How close to nausea grief is. I want to be sick all the time. I would be sick all the time, if I felt up to it.

It was no one’s fault. It was inevitable, just as what’s happening to me is inevitable. I only wish I hadn’t spoken to her like that. God damn me for speaking to her like that. How did I
dare
. I’d never been mean to her before. Does Terry know I did? I hope he doesn’t tell anyone.

We talked when he came in. It was all right — he is much more relaxed now. We talked about home. Mama and Papa are believers. They don’t believe in worrying about the dead. I hope they still believe that. We’ll see. We’re going home early for Christmas.

I feel incredibly strange out of doors now. I’m not working (no point in looking for new jobs yet, so near the holidays). I feel like an impostor, a ghost, just putting in the odd appearance as I do. Everyone is so compact and energetic. They breathe heavily and sweat in the cold. The meanest of them watch me with curious and unfriendly eyes. (They don’t like me. Who does, I wonder? Even the random babblings of the foreigners — and they speak in languages I’ve never heard of — come to my ears in cadences of obscenity, imprecation and threat.) I used to like their stares. I don’t any longer. I wish I looked a bit more like Terry. Unpleasant though his appearance certainly is, he does, in some important sense in which I do not, look like a
person
, one put together with this life in view. I don’t — I know it. I used to like the way I looked, and I liked the way they looked at me. But now it’s all wrong and I wish I looked like everybody else.