The Facts of Life (51 page)

‘You shouldn’t be taking drugs at all.’

‘Hark at mother.’ He nudged her playfully but she scowled. ‘I know, I know,’ he admitted. ‘I could have died.’

‘I’m envious as hell,’ she laughed as she dropped the responsible pose. ‘What was it like?’

‘Fab at first. Then it started teaching me things about myself I didn’t want to know. I mean, I never thought I was especially well adjusted but I did think I had the paranoia under control … I’m not sure it’s stopped yet.’ He peered around him and shivered. ‘I’m still a bit wall-climby. And it feels weird being
here
. Sam got in a fight. All I could do was watch,’ he went on. ‘Heini saved our lives. They could have pressed charges. Imagine Miriam’s face!’

‘He’s … He’s never hit you, has he?’

‘Sam? Don’t be silly.’ He threw her a mocking look as he walked on. ‘His emotions are so boxed away most of the time. I think he lashes out because he can’t cry.’

‘I wonder if his parents beat him as a boy.’

‘Hmm. God. Listen to the bleeding-heart liberals!’

They walked down to the stream together. Instinctively she led him into the cool chamber formed by the canopy of willow branches; a childhood refuge from grown-up curiosity. He stepped forward and gave her a tight but curiously formal hug, then backed off.

‘There’s no easy way to tell you this,’ he said, and then he told her. He told her just the way she had always imagined he would, baldly and swiftly.

‘How long have you known?’ she asked.

‘Since I lost my job.’

‘I thought you left.’

‘Godfreys sacked me,’ he said quietly, watching for her reaction.

‘But he can’t do that!’ she shouted.

‘He did.’ Jamie shrugged. ‘He could always think of a reason if I bothered to press him.’

‘But you could appeal through a tribunal.’

‘Let’s not talk about all that.’

‘And how did he find out?’ she pursued, dismayed at his apathy. ‘The doctor must have told him. You could sue
him
for breach of confidence – at least get him struck off.’

‘Alison, I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘And you went to his
party
!’ she began indignantly. ‘Sorry,’ she added, more softly. She began to lean against the willow trunk then sank to the grass instead.

All her counselling training abandoned her, and she reacted in precisely the unhelpful way she always advised callers against. She cried. She responded as though he were already dying, weeping as much because she was losing him as because he was going. She cried for herself because in him she saw her own mortality – the casual ease with which she too might be snuffed out. He did not try to comfort her, just stood a few feet away, plaiting willow strands and waiting for her to recover. She was grateful for this. If he had hugged her again, however formally, it would have opened whole new pits of grief.

‘Sorry,’ she managed at last.

‘That’s all right.’

She was beginning to feel damp from the ground, so she stood and walked over to look at where the tips of trailing branches flickered in the stream’s dark currents. She felt a sudden anger at his exclusion of her.

‘Why did you take so long to tell me?’ she asked. ‘If you hadn’t ended up here last night, how much longer would you have waited? Hmm? Sorry. Fuck. Forget I said any of that. How can I be so crass? Sorry.’

‘You have to understand,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve been finding well people difficult to be around. Old people too. Poor Sam’s been getting the –’

‘But you’re not
sick
,’ she cut in, thinking.
Oh my God if you are you’d better tell me quickly
.

‘Spare me the psychobabble,’ he rounded on her. ‘It’s all right. I’m not being a victim. I’m not being negative. But I am being realistic’ He snorted, his tone softening. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of maths recently, you know? I’ve been trying to work out when I last had unprotected sex and adding fifteen years to that to see how long I have. But then that’s a best possible case scenario. The worst possible is more like eight or six years’ incubation period, or less. This thing’s been around all my sexual life! Then there are all the times I got a little carried away, or the condom broke, or I had mouth ulcers or a cut on my hand.’

‘Oh Jamie.’

‘Then Hilary was saying how they’re now finding people who could only have caught it through oral sex – years after they told us oral sex was perfectly safe.’

‘Jamie please!’

‘Don’t cry again. It doesn’t help.
Don’t
.’

‘Sorry.’

He tugged fiercely at a willow branch, stripping it of leaves.

‘I’ve been reading up on the subject,’ he went on. ‘Sam goes to the site and I go to the public library, finding out about what causes the virus to go into action. Wake up. Whatever they call it. And start fucking up the immune system. Alcohol’s one thing. Well I drink plenty. Not to excess but I go out to pubs and I drink. Then there’s protein. Apparently cum is full of protein and there are some researchers saying that while promiscuity
per se
doesn’t do any harm – except of course putting you more often in the firing line – that multiple contacts with numerous different kinds of cum proteins might activate the virus. The only thing I haven’t been doing wrong is becoming a vegan.’ He chuckled. ‘There’s always someone worse off than yourself, eh? Vegans seem to be doomed. Apparently people in my condition
need
animal fat. Sod looking after my heart or worrying about cancer! I tell you,’ he laughed now, ‘I’ve been eating butter and cream with
everything
since I read that.’

‘You know the test isn’t a hundred per cent accurate,’ she said.

‘Thank you, Miss Helpline. I know. So I went for a second one. A proper one at a clinic with strict but motherly doctors and nice gay nurses in ACT UP badges.’

‘And?’

‘Bingo a second time. The health worker wanted to know if I could give her a list of my sexual partners. I nearly died laughing. I have to hand it to her, so did she. In fact, I think she only asked to break the ice, you know? Stir up a little nostalgia for syphilis. Sam went in too. Jesus he was calm! Either he’s very brave or incredibly stupid. He went along as if it was a routine tetanus jab or a dental check-up.’

‘Oh God.’

‘Which reminds me. I’ve got to change my dentist because they checked up on their little blacklist and apparently mine is way up there with Mengele for political bloody incorrectness.’

‘But what about Sam?’

‘It’s okay. He was negative. Twice now. We’ve both been very careful. I’m just amazed that he still wants to stick around.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve been treating him like shit.’

She shrugged.

‘He loves you, Jamie.’

‘Yeah, but –’

‘But what?’

‘Nothing.’

He turned aside, pushing out through the willow canopy and back along the stream towards the studio to sit on an arm of the bench there. Alison went to sit beside him, astounded that he was still so unable to accept the fact of Sam’s love. Suddenly time was shrinking around them, a fragile sand bar in an encroaching tide. She felt and knew better than to voice, that her time with him was now infinitely precious to her. Once again she thought about throwing in her job to be with him but all she said was, ‘Now you’ve told me, you know you can pick up the phone and talk about it any time at all, don’t you? Even at work.’

He avoided her eyes, staring down to pick at some moss on the bench wood.

‘I know,’ he said.

‘What about Grandpa? Oh God and what about
her
?’

Jamie shook his head.

‘Not until I’m strong enough to deal with it myself, and maybe not even then.’

‘Don’t they have a right to know?’

‘Don’t I have a right to
privacy
? No. I don’t think they have any rights here.’

‘But they’ll find out sooner or later.’

‘Yes,’ he said firmly. ‘But I’ll face that when I come to it, okay? I don’t even know if I can look the old man in the eye.’

‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of.’

‘It’s not shame,’ he insisted, eyes tight with a momentary fury. ‘It’s so fucking
unfair
. That old bastard gets to survive the holocaust, marry a saint, live in this place, earn a fortune, write symphonies people actually listen to, even have an affair with a sex goddess. What do
I
get?’

‘You get
him
.’ Alison raised a hand to greet Sam, who had appeared at the side of the house and was sauntering down the garden towards them.

‘Yes,’ said Jamie drily. ‘I’ve got him.’

Sam reached them, threw himself on to the bench between them and began enthusing about The Roundel.

‘Some commune,’ he teased them slowly, after praising its fanciful shape, its cunning brickwork, its pantiled roof. ‘The way you go on about it, I’d pictured you two growing up in a sort of squat with no hot water and plastic sheets for windows. Your granddad’s great, by the way.’

‘You met him,’ Jamie said levelly.

‘Yeah. Heinrich just introduced us. But this
place
! You could open it to the public’

‘It’s not that special,’ Alison said.

‘Let them be the judge of that,’ he told her. ‘Listen.
That
is not your average holiday cottage. What are you both doing living in London? You should live here. We could
all
live here.’

‘I dunno,’ Jamie began, suddenly harsh. ‘It’s hardly practical. We’d get bored in no time.’

As they walked back to the house to see Heini off in his taxi, Sam diverted the conversation to less emotive subjects, but his suggestion had lit a slow-burning fuse and Alison found herself picturing the three of them – four including her grandfather – forming a brief, golden ménage.

They waved Heini off from the top of the drive and Alison assumed for a moment that her grandfather would clap a hand on Jamie’s shoulder and suggest he take them all to the pub for lunch. Then she realised that the very accident that had brought Jamie to The Roundel, and Sam to a forced introduction with her grandfather, now left the three men stranded in an impasse of unreadiness. Far from her expectations, relief at the departure of his guest left her grandfather icily angry; it was as though tactful Heini had taken all diplomacy with him.

‘That was profoundly embarrassing,’ he hissed. ‘Heinrich is one of my oldest friends. He handled the situation with charm, of course, but it can only have been painful for him. I hope you are thoroughly ashamed of last night’s
disgusting
display.’

Neither said anything. Jamie froze, his jaw set rebelliously. Sam was plainly too surprised to speak.

‘Now I have a great deal of work to do,’ her grandfather went on. ‘I don’t want to be disturbed.’ And so saying, he stalked off to his studio.

‘Yeah, well fuck you too,’ Sam jeered after him.

‘Shut up,’ Jamie snapped coldly.

‘Why? He said –’

‘Just shut up. Come on. Let’s get our stuff.’

Alison watched wretchedly as, Sam in confusion, Jamie in a quiet fury, they made a hasty departure. She began to intercede, suggest lunch at least, but was silenced by a glare from Jamie.

‘Let’s speak soon, okay?’ she asked him.

‘Sure,’ he said brusquely. ‘I’ll ring you. Come on, Sam.’

Sam drove them away and Alison was left in turmoil. She was appalled that a member of her family should have reacted so badly just when Jamie was so vulnerable. She was also unsettled at her sympathy with her grandfather’s indignation and embarrassment. Her grief at her failure to make peace rested uneasily alongside her irritation that her brother’s departure marked her out as a member of the reactionary faction. She had already assumed that, after taking her into his confidence, Jamie would feel the need to withdraw from her a little, but she feared lest this ugly little scene provide grounds for a longer, deeper rift.

When she felt calm enough, she ignored her grandfather’s request for peace. A BBC photographer was coming to take pictures of him ‘at work’ to publicise a forthcoming concert broadcast and she knew he would need help tidying the studio. He accepted her offer with a nod and she set about organising the chaos of CDs, concert programmes and unanswered correspondence that littered the place, among which she found piano concerti sent in for his magisterial advice, string quartets, and a piece for massed bassoons.

‘Have they left?’ was all he said.

‘Yes,’ she replied as neutrally as she could. ‘They left right away.’

His ignorance of her grim new knowledge lent him a spurious youthful innocence beside her, even more than hearing him chatter in German. Thanks to AIDS, she had been to more funerals over the last two years than he had. This thought stoked up her anger at him afresh. He relied on his show of temper silencing her, but she was determined not to be cowed.

‘Now that they’ve gone,’ she asked casually as she stood above him on the ladder returning scores to the shelves, ‘what did you think of Sam?’

‘Do you want me to say something nice?’