The Blue Book (30 page)

‘Why don't you care about me?' Clean, small words. ‘Beth?'

‘Wh—?'

And she didn't expect this and hasn't stopped herself from facing him, studying, so that now his pain jumps up at her and sinks clear in.

‘Why don't you care about me.' Soft – as if he is tired, tired, tired and would just like to know.

‘I . . . Derek . . . I don't want to hurt you . . .'

Which is not a lie.

‘Oh, Christ.' And he buckles and she puts her arm around him, as if he is once more sick and she walks him to some chairs by a little window full of nowhere, ‘Oh, Christ. I . . .' The wave tops are closer to this deck, the blurs of disturbance flickering and plunging.

‘I'm sorry.'
And I am.
‘I'm so sorry.'
Please be angry, instead of like this.
‘
I didn't mean . . .'

Derek is sitting with his hands slumped in his lap and he starts weeping, ‘Christ.' Making no effort to hide himself, nose wet, tears dripping off his chin.

As if he's five and needs his mum to get him through it.

Christ.

Little knocks of breath shaking him and then a halt and then another wave of losses tearing in him and she can't touch him any more, because that would be unfair.

When every part of this is unfair.

‘Derek, you're a good person.'

Beth watching the cliché hit him, set him further adrift in this new place which is unbearable, but where he's still managing to plan and hope that if he breaks, genuinely breaks, shows it, he will be rescued and by her. And she can't let him think this. ‘You are, though . . . good. And I'm not. I'm a bad person and a bad person found me and you need a good person and a good person will find you . . . and this is shit . . . this is such shit. I'm ruining you . . .' And he holds her hand – wet fingers, hot fingers, chaos all over them – and he clings while she tells him, ‘The last thing you need is me.'

Derek surfacing, gulping, ‘But . . . I do . . . But . . . Is there someone? Is there someone? Is it him?'

Impossible to guess if saying she's leaving him for another man will be worse than saying she's going to be with no one.
All done by kindness –
‘A long time ago . . .' –
Once upon a time.
– ‘Me and this guy, we were the same . . . I'm not explaining this well. But don't blame . . . It's not Francis. Please don't speak to him. Or talk to Bunny. Neither of them ought to be upset.'

WOMAN IN FRACAS FINDS HERSELF
PATHETIC AND DISTURBING
.

‘
I know if you were yourself, you wouldn't want to upset them.' There's an acid curl of a smile from him – disgust – and he abandons her hand and she lets him start to be alone. ‘I know, I know, who on earth ought to be upset, or would want to be upset . . . I am sorry' –
And tell the good lie, at least do that –
‘I wish it could have worked.'

‘I was going to . . . I was going to . . .' A sort of horror in him and he can't bargain himself free of it, but even so – ‘I bought a ring . . .' It should be an influential confession.

‘Derek, this is terrible, but – as well – you're really tired and run-down and . . . it'll seem worse . . . not that it's . . . Derek, nobody's died.'

And his focus snaps in, boils, ‘I wish you fucking had.'

Which is fine. It's good to hear.

‘Yes. And you're right to and . . . I'll leave you alone. I'll leave . . .'
He has my luggage and I can't go back.
‘I'll be out of your way.'
I'm worrying about my fucking luggage – I am a cunt.

‘Fuck you, Beth.
Fuck
you.'

Stand up and walk. He won't harm himself and he'll recover. Without me, he can be happy. Without me, I could be happy.

But he takes her wrist, pulls, harsh grip, kisses her knuckles –
every time, like punching him slowly in the mouth
–
while her fists curl to keep their privacy and he scrabbles, clutches, and she has to tug loose and this is unwieldy and will make him hate himself as much as her.

But later he'll only hate me.

I hope. In the end he should do that and then he should forget, but not forgive because I'm unforgivable.

WOMAN FINDS HERSELF A COWARD, KNOWS SHE WILL BE AGAIN
.

There's a man in a doorway. He is leaning at the brink of a bedroom in an unfamiliar flat and it's dark but he hasn't turned the lights on. He has a name, but he doesn't like it, so he's leaving it be.

Outside is Pimlico and it's a Friday evening but quiet because the rain is hammering, punishing down, keeping the weak and the prudent indoors. The man is staring at the pelted window and the mix of lights worming and shattering on it, caught in the loose water: the colours of the shop signs across the street:
24
-hour mini-market, Fish and Chick Inn, newsagent, off-licence: open late.

The man is thirsty and cold, maybe hungry, but not taking an interest. What condition his condition is in does not concern him. He may have been leaning for a while, perhaps since this afternoon.

It gets dark quickly – November – uncivilised month.

A siren peaks and slews somewhere to his right – injury, emergency, crime – and then diminishes, disappears while a woman's voice yells. The same voice has been yelling, on and off, for a number of hours. The man has assumed that she is mentally unable not to yell.

Funny area, Pimlico – seems like it's on the way up: calm and cream-coloured Regency perspectives and high-design shops and Dolphin Square – naturally Dolphin Square, the nest of scrimping aristos,
MP
s and spies and shaggers, singles and nutters and incognitos – could almost be Chelsea, those bits – and then there's the iffy hotels and launderettes – did you ever see a cheery launderette – and sections of street like this one, it's got a grudge this one, off-kilter, an atmosphere of brokenness and bad stuff being done.

Not where you'd pick for your mum to live.

Not that his mother is living any more – she died last Wednesday and is gone now, passed on, called up yonder and out of the way.

She dwells forever in the Happy Summerland.

The man had not seen his mother since – he isn't absolutely certain – but probably
1984
. Still, he is her only son – her only child – and so, naturally, he was located and called to identify her body. He wishes she'd had someone else to do it – not to save him the trouble, but to let him feel her life was populated, contained an affection she understood and could accept. But this was what she'd ended up with: his absence and then too late arrival to view a small body, grey body, lesions on the skin. And her poor hair – it had been pretty when he first knew her, she was proud of it – crowning glory, brushed it each night – the tamp of the brush and the dry, long sound of each stroke, he recalls that clearly – her poor hair had thinned and coarsened and become sad.

Terrible to know her at once when she ought to have been unrecognisable. That would have broken her heart.

You're not seeing me at my best.

Medication.

Mental health issues.

And difficulties.

Her flat has the sweet, heavy stink of anxious drinking and is brown, everywhere brown, and there are cigarette
leavings, saved newspapers with the crosswords completed
neatly and less neatly and very wrongly and tinned salmon in the kitchen cupboards and microwave popcorn – that would have been festive – no guests, no sign of guests – but popcorn, nevertheless, and in the little freezer compartment hunched at the top of the fridge there are
ready meals for two. So manifestations of hope. Or hunger.

Still a double bed.

He can't touch it.

Earlier, he packed up her clothes – no resonance in them, nothing to connect with except the sense of colour, a remnant of her style in certain items. It all went to a charity shop where there was conversation – you do have to explain when you bring in so much – about the sad demise.

He found that he couldn't say
mother
– couldn't use the term in public – was convinced it would be thought unseemly that he was so unsuitably far away from her – that her clothes smelled unpalatable – that she wouldn't like it known. So he told the assistants his aunt had died and here was everything.

Held in two bin bags and a cheap suitcase.

Everything.

Once he'd folded and packed her things ready – her effects – he'd made a sandwich. Had to clean the kitchen worktop before he started and then used the hard bread that she'd left, that she'd opened with the same knife he was holding and then left.

You get a proper loaf and you cut it with a bread knife – she never liked the ready-sliced, said it tasted clammy.

Stale bread and home-made jam with a scrawly label that read
blackberry and apple
and a sticker marked
50
p.

Christ knows where she got it.

And it doesn't taste like anything except of purple-red and sweetness.

Mildly spoiled butter – it was out on the counter in a dish, had been for days. Cold in the kitchen, though – so it wasn't as ruined as he'd thought.

Small mercies.

And he ate the jam sandwich standing up, making crumbs.

Almost inedible.

Then washed his hands.

Came and leaned in the doorway.

On the 12th of November 1997, my mother died.

Birthday on the 9th of June.

Never knew where to send a card.

And she might not have liked it.

Medication.

Mental health issues.

And difficulties.

When somebody dies, you're not always sorry, you don't always want to talk.

His voice seems scoured, cleaned back to the bones where it's only pedantic and wary, where it's made of darts and shadows. ‘My turn, is it?' Arthur stands in his suite's living room watching his windows and their sparks and flickers of uneasy rain. He's arranged that one lamp is shining, angled down, which means the furnishings and special touches guaranteed to make his suite a home away from home are dimmed to irrelevance. ‘Is it? Me now? Me again?
Lucky me
. . . ?'

Beth called him from the Purser's desk, but that was a while ago – she's been walking, the mind of the ship turning beneath her, and she has kept as empty-headed as she can, getting ready for this.

Ssssshhh.

To please him. Mainly to please him.

To let him be pleased.

Keeping herself a secret from herself so that she can manage, be as she must.

Nothing in me for him to read but what he wants to find.

Once she's arrived, it's clear he's been getting ready, too. He's made sure that she's the one held in a doorway this time, framed and feeling herself ugly while the nicely detailed woodwork of the door nudges her arm and then retreats.

He is difficult to see, slightly hunched, head tucked and he keeps beyond the lamplight even when he turns – in a dullish shirt and probably jeans, and barefoot: pale shapes, ill-defined as his moving hands, his face. ‘I thought I'd leave it open for you, so you could
just walk in
. . . You needn't shut it – not if you can't be bothered. I have to assume that you'll
just walk out
at some point. It'll be convenient for you if it stays like that.'

‘Arthur—'

‘I know you always enjoy your symbols – so what does it mean?
Woman in a doorway
. What do you mean?'

Beth stays outside in the passage, the dark space beyond the lintel is tensed against her, thick with him, and it seems that stepping forward would be like walking into water.

‘Are you going to come in? Which is to say, what do you want?'

‘I . . .'

Ssssshhh.

‘Please make up your mind about something, Beth.'

So she breaks the surface and then shuts it round them with a dull snap of the lock. ‘I left him.' Three little noises, meanings, they blur and drop in the blinded space while her eyes adjust.

She can hear him rubbing at his hair.

‘No. You went to him. I'm the one you left. As usual.'

And she can pick out that he's looking towards her and so she tells him the first truth, ‘I said I'd be back.' He should have all of her truths; it will be difficult, but he should. ‘I said.'
Tell them properly and they won't hurt him, won't want to hurt him, will not be intended to injure anyone.

‘You've been hours. It's past midnight.'

‘I didn't know that . . . I didn't know.'

‘You called me at
ten
.' Little threads of panic in this, which is going to mean that both of them are frightened and their fear will be dangerous – her fear more than his.

Ssssshhh.

So it isn't manipulative or deceptive if she stands and doesn't snap at him and pretends that she's not frightened, is no more than bemused. And inside she plays the trick on herself which means she imagines her pulse as languid, as a tranquil circulation of content and this will fool her and spread to him, because comfort is just as contagious as despair. He would rather be comfortable, comforted – anyone would – so she will be first. There's nothing wrong about this. It isn't the same as with Derek. It matters.

He sits, seems to press in on himself and his shape darkens. ‘Are you going to say what you were doing? Or am I not worth keeping up to date – no bulletins on your movements? Or is this another punishment?' He sounds brittle and as if she should touch him, but she can't – not yet – he wouldn't like it. ‘Because, I . . . maybe, maybe that would be – if that's what you want. If punishment is what you want . . . We could . . . You and I, we . . . if we're together and this is what you want to do to me, maybe . . . Maybe if I'm allowed to know what's coming then I can agree to it and you can punish me and I deserve it, so that's what we'll do. Is that what you want? If you want to punish me, then you have to be around to do that and I would be sure you were going to be around. That would be a
fact
. . .'

‘Arthur—' Easing forward to him in the way she might towards an animal, a fugitive thing. ‘We . . . what are you . . . I couldn't do that, you couldn't—'

‘Then tell me what I
can
do!' His voice with a tear in it, a boy's voice, something too lost to be borne. ‘What can we do?'

As she reaches him there's a confusion, her being clumsy, catching his shoulder, his chair in the way, their arms colliding as he twists to avoid her. ‘Don't start that again. Please.' But – accurate, quick – he reaches and traps both her hands in his and turns them sweet side up, kisses each at its heart with a wary mouth, an intelligent mouth, an asking mouth. He gives her the small, sharp presses of his breathing and the sense that he is thinking, puzzling through until he can risk, ‘So
you saw him and he made some kind of fuss and then you
left him. Or you saw him and then you left him and he made some kind of fuss. I would prefer the second . . . And you're happy if I do this . . .' She stands and waits in front of him, her hands lighting, and he restates for clarity, ‘My doing this is permissible and not unpleasant for you.'

The sound of touched skin. Lips. Tiny noises. Beautiful. No more to consider than this.

Ssssshhh.

All done by kindness.

Undone by kindness.

‘It's not unpleasant for me, no. It's . . . very pleasant. And I'm happy, Arthur. Yes.'

Almost true. Soon could be true.

He keeps on, ‘And you're happy if this feels like love? Which is important. Because it is.' Syllables tiptoeing out between the dab and cling of his mouth near her thumb, her wrist, where her fingers part. ‘And you made what you did – what we did – the last time you were here, you were making that feel like love to me. And it made me happy when you did that.' He tenses at each point of contact and the small shocks of this travel in her arms. ‘When you were here, Beth. When you were here today. With me. Yesterday, now, I suppose . . . When you were with me. I did believe it.' He lifts his head. ‘Was I right to believe it? I am right to believe you.'

And the next truth, ‘Yes.' Chill on her skin.

A twitch in his grip, ‘You're sure?'

‘Yes.'

Ssssshhh.

And the breath leaves him, rushes him empty, and Arthur raises her palms to his face and then lets her go, lets her smooth his hair back from his forehead, from his temples, stroke over the crown of his head, while he weathers something that jolts his spine, some internal decision, and drinks in what she knows will seem new and clean air for him, the scent of possible optimism.

He angles and turns his head and she holds it as he does – cradles the weight of what he's had to teach himself and who he's learned to be and where he lives and he leans to press his forehead against her stomach, to rest. She kneads the back of his neck, the tight wire in it, the signs of the fight to keep him steady and operational. And when he breaks off and sits forward she touches his smile, his proper smile.

‘Beth? Do you want a seat?'

‘No.'

‘Do you want to lie down?' All the words shiny with smiling.

‘Yes. Yes, I do.'

‘Do you want to lie down in my bed?' And the shine thins to a mutter, creeping out, almost beside itself with want – and then the closing rush, ‘And you can be naked now and I'll be naked too and we can feel like love, we can do that.'

The ridiculous, naked, ridiculous things we say. Because we feel like love. Which is a terrible word and a terrible thing.

Ssssshhh.

‘Yes. We should do that. Let's lie down.'

And they keep his bedroom blank: no lights – edges and furniture offering mild assaults and the darkness tilting and counter-tilting and they are unbuttoning, unfastening – they are apart and then together – her stomach meeting the warmth of his: warm and not afraid, but nervous – as if they are younger, as if they have never – and they fix in a simple hug so they'll know they're both there and both safe before they start again – fingers unbiddable – too numb, too electric – and stumbling out of jeans and then clear of everything.

Everything.

‘Come here.' What you always end up saying before you know you have. ‘Come here.'

And opening the bed for each other, peeling it back and clambering, kneeling, lying on how smooth it is, letting it sleek them together and into a slow embrace, an exploring embrace – live skins and astonishments and edges – both of them middle-aged, halfway, more than that, the downward slope and not what they were, but more than they were and they taste of each other and of amazement.

And he's holding her breasts, supporting her breasts, as he licks and mouths, tests them with his teeth.

Takes care.

And he suckles until the ache of it draws in her spine, until it's yelling.

Ssssshhh.

Have to take care. Always. Of every mortal thing.

Everything.

She uses fingertips, only fingertips, to chart his back: shoulder blades and the insistent frame, the bone, the sweet purpose in his fabric, moving, and she has met this before, these pieces of Arthur's information, but not known them. They simply became familiar – they weren't known.

The room filling with who they might turn out to be if they'll risk so much newness, nearness, faith, and what they need, might find and the movement of sheets and half-words and mumbles and strengthening breaths and how they shift and roll, lie face to face and halt on their brink, get stung by their forward momentum as it rolls back through them, complains while it eases and slows, but they don't indulge it – little rubs and reminders, but no more, not yet.

Arthur swallows, worries his cheek on the pillow, settles. ‘Why wasn't it like this? Before. It was . . . even at the beginning when . . . When we were together, I thought we were so together – I wouldn't have said that anyone could have been more . . . It wasn't like this, though. And,
I mean, thank you, but . . . When did you start hating what
I did? Was that it ? When did you start hating me? It must have been the whole time, almost the whole time . . .'

‘I didn't hate you.'
True. But not enough true. He ought to have all of the true.
‘Eventually I did. But not really . . . And I didn't hate what you did. I was doing it, too . . . I loved it – the first year, maybe longer – it was . . . there was that one part of it that was always so . . . being
in
other people,
being
other people, feeling into who they are and how they are – and being with you and that close to you and . . . but . . . No, I couldn't stand what
it meant – if I thought about it – I couldn't stand what
it
was. So I didn't think about it. I would tell myself
Ssssshhh
and I would concentrate on what I expected would happen which was that I genuinely thought eventually someone would stand up at some evening, some service, some gig, and say – “This is ludicrous, this is obviously, obviously fake, nobody sane could take this seriously or trust it, and you are a fraud – you are both frauds and you can go away now and stop.”'

Beth brushes his shoulder, his arm, because he is too still, as if he is going away in himself. She needs his company or she can't continue. ‘I assumed it would be stopped. From the outside. Kind of. I avoided doing anything about it myself by hoping we'd be prevented. But no one said a word. Nobody didn't believe. So many people, so hurt – they're not sane, not in the places we get into – they're not going to unmask us, kick away their sole support – that would be making them eat what's left of themselves alive. And we weren't big enough to get the sceptics turning up and throwing their weight around – they couldn't be bothered: not enough profile in it for them. No one was going to intervene and you were . . . committed. The enquirers, they had nothing else, nothing but us and we were less than nothing, we were giving them less than nothing. And then the money was getting serious. We were earning a living out of it, turning big. I couldn't deal with that.'

True.

She eases her knee a touch between his, because this should remind him he's beautiful – it's not to keep him from paying attention, not to obscure what she means, ‘I didn't hate you, but when we were together and like this, you felt as if you were working and I was work – like when you'd take off those fucking gloves and then you'd undress . . . like you were going swimming or something – just
fast
– just business – not that you weren't excited, but . . . not about me. Even after you'd finished with wearing the gloves. It didn't seem to be about me. Not that you'd have to be about me, but . . . And not that I didn't still . . . We'd start and the whole of you would be listening, but not like this – it would be like a gig. You were – I'm not saying this is true – but I thought you were turned on by practising – by reading in so close – and I was another gig. Like I was a rehearsal.' Her arm tight over his waist and paying attention. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘No.' His voice fragile again, young. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘I'm not a good person. I didn't give it up and leave because I was trying to be a good person . . . I was lonely, Art. That's what it was.' And she pulls her arm in tighter, so she won't lose him. ‘But I could have done . . . something. I wasn't sure. We got so fucked-up . . .'