The Facts of Life (60 page)

Christ!
she thought.
Doesn’t this harpy
ever
draw breath
?

The trouble with straight men, she was remembering, was that unless they were lecherous bastards, they lacked small talk and, even the lecherous ones lacked finesse. Bald Billy, Sugary Sean, Nice Nick, even poor Guy, were never lost for an answer or a quip. Jamie didn’t even allow the painful taking of a blood sample to stem conversational flow.

What the hell
, she thought.
We’re both adults. We know what we want
.

‘So this Abby, is she your fiancée, your mother or what?’ she demanded.

He displayed that phased slowness she found appealing in some Americans, a kind of daddish social clumsiness in the face of anything too witty or too blunt.

‘Er …’ He chuckled slowly, finally catching up with her. ‘Er. He was my old college roomie. His real name’s Peter. Peter Abrams.’

‘Oh.
Oh!
Well isn’t that nice.’

‘He’s a lawyer. I’m staying at his place. I only got here this morning and we still haven’t met up. He left a note for me about meeting at the party. He’s off to Japan tomorrow early so I guess we won’t meet after all.’

‘Are you sure you got the right party? I don’t think Sandy knows the kind of people who can afford to go to Japan.’

‘I’ve got his note.’ He dug in the pocket of his big check shirt. ‘Here.’

It was the wrong address.

‘He’ll be waiting for you over the road,’ she said.

‘Oh well.’ He shrugged, grinned, topped up her wine. ‘It sounded kinda quiet and tasteful over there, didn’t you think?’

‘I really didn’t notice.’

‘It was quiet.’ He assured her. ‘You won’t tell Sandy?’

‘Promise. But what do you care?’ She smiled and he smiled and suddenly his pretty face seemed several inches closer than it had been.

‘You have the most amazing eyes,’ he told her.

‘Oh phooey.’

‘You do. Sorry. You don’t like compliments.’ He looked down at his glass, drank some more. His lips were wine-darkened, eminently kissable. He grinned. ‘But you do, you know. Amazing ones.’

When did he start chatting her up? No-one had chatted her up in years. Not even the editorial assistant, and
he
had nursed an ulterior motive. It felt delightful. English men just stopped talking and pounced, however confusing and violent a subject change the pouncing constituted. The approach was one of stealthy surprise-taking; talk to her about politics, your rent rebate, motorway toll systems, then, just when her eyes are glazing over, pounce.

‘Sorry,’ he was saying. ‘Does this sort of thing make you mad?’

‘Not at all.’

‘If I feel something I just come right out and say it. It saves time. I’m not very good at English reserve.’

‘It’s all a con.’

‘What is?’

‘English reserve,’ she told him. ‘We fuck like ferrets given the chance.’

‘Really?’ He rounded his big eyes and leaned fractionally towards her. ‘You’ll have to forgive me,’ he said. ‘I’m kinda jet-lagged. I’m still out on Planet TWA.’

‘You look fine from down here,’ she said, feeling his breath on her cheek.

‘How about closer to?’ he asked.

‘Well …’ She felt her heart race like a schoolgirl’s. This was wildly irresponsible. She should go downstairs and mingle with the grown-ups. ‘You’ve got wine stains on your lip,’ she told him.’

‘Where?’

‘Just … there.’ She touched his upper lip with her forefinger, exposing expensive teeth and a big, stirring tongue. He kissed her finger then the palm of her hand then, so slowly she felt steam should be hissing from her ears, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her on the mouth. Comprehensively.

Pouring them both the remains of the nasty wine, he hummed along to the song booming out of the living room below them, perkily confident, now he knew that she wanted what he wanted. A queue had begun to form outside the bathroom and Alison felt the landing sofa was fast losing its appeal.

‘Do you like dancing?’ she asked. ‘I love this song too.’

‘I can think of other things I’d rather do,’ he said slowly.

‘Oh?’ She smiled. He was hers for the taking.

‘We could go back to Abby’s place,’ he said. ‘But he’ll be there later and I don’t know about you but
I
like to make a lot of noise when I come.’

‘Oh lord,’ she said. ‘Well I live way out in Bow. I’d hate you to go off the boil before we got there.’

‘No danger of that,’ he said, running a teasing finger under a shoulder strap on her dress and across her collar bone. ‘Do you have anything planned for tomorrow?’

‘I thought perhaps a day in bed.’

‘Oh. Well
good
.’

They retrieved their coats from the pile and headed for the street. They kissed so heavily in the back of the taxi home that she found herself letting Bruce pay for it while she loitered on the pavement, shifty and exposed in the lamplight and the cab-driver’s gaze. As she was fumbling on the doorstep for her key and Bruce was fumbling for her, the Vicar and his lodger got out of their battered Saab.

‘Good evening to you, Miss Pepper,’ he called out, mockingly, as she dropped her keys in the dark and Bruce stooped to her ankles to retrieve them.

‘Rot in hell,’ she called amiably back and took the couple’s laughter as a benediction.

Bruce kissed her again once they were inside the hall. The new bony coldness of him excited her and she led him urgently to the bedroom – no dishonest footling around with cafetières or whisky. They fell to lovemaking with the self-conscious athleticism of film actors performing a sex scene, neither daring, by a momentary gesture or out of place smile, to deny the vital reality of what was taking place. They tugged one another’s clothes off with stern concentration. She pushed his face back on to the mattress by his hair and bit at his neck. He rolled her off him and pinned her hands at her side to work gravely at her nipples with mouth, nose, stubbled cheek. She slid down beneath him to rub her face in the mustiness of his heavy balls. Manhandling her like a dead thing, he swung her up on to her knees and, clasping her from behind with an arm across her neck, slid his other hand between the cheeks of her arse and down between her legs to cup the lips of her aching vagina in a hot, slightly trembling palm. He was firm and smooth and she liked the weightiness of him about her, wanted it to crush her into untroubled silence.

When he reached for the light, she grasped his hand back, pulled his mouth on to hers before he could protest.

‘Rubbers,’ he managed to hiss in her ear at last. ‘Do you have any?’

‘What?’

‘Condoms.’

‘Oh yes. I think so. In the drawer.’

Again he fumbled. Something fell over.

‘It’s no good. I can’t do it in the dark,’ he said.

Blinking in the sudden light, she watched him tug open the little drawer and find a foil packet. Something chilled her in the way he paused to check the thing’s use-by date. Something chilled her too in the way he worked his cock with his fist while she opened the packet for him. Protected now, he turned out the light, kissed her again and entered her. Now, however, she found she could only lie there beneath him, inert. He continued to thrust away at her for several minutes, maintaining the sex scene script single-handed as best he could, but it took two to sustain the passionate illusion and he slid to a halt, still throbbing inside her.

‘What’s up?’ he asked, stroking her cheek. ‘Did I say something wrong? Was it the light? Listen. I can’t see you now. You can’t see me. I could be anybody. Get that? I could be
anybody
fucking you here.’ She had to hand him marks for effort.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s not you. It’s me.’

‘Hey,’ he breathed. ‘Ssh. It’s okay. When you’re ready, okay?’

He slipped out of her, held her close, stroked her breasts, her abdomen, her thighs. Breathing heavily, his hair brushing her stomach, he did his best to excite her, instead, with his fingers. His relentless massage of her clitoris, however, was somehow too educated, evoking all too vividly the impatient instructions of other women, and after a while she could not help but brush his hand aside. Undeterred, only concerned, he pulled the duvet up around them and held her in his arms.

‘Is there someone else?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said, furious at herself for the way her mind filled with images of Sam and Jamie. ‘In a way. Yes. Sorry. It’s this guy I know. He –’

‘Yes?’

‘He’s got sick.’

‘Hey, I’m sorry.’

‘Hey,’ she echoed spitefully. ‘It’s AIDS.’

She couldn’t resist it. Now it was his turn to freeze up; she knew he would assume that the ‘guy’ in question was an ex of hers.

‘Wow,’ he said and she fancied she heard the little rustle as his dick shrivelled into retreat, sloughing off its condom like an old skin. ‘It’s weird, you know,’ he went on after a shocked interval. ‘Because I’m from the Bay Area, right, where there are one fuck of a lot of cases, and still I don’t know anybody who’s got it.’

‘Who does your hair?’ she asked. ‘A nun?’

‘Geeze!’ he nudged her. ‘Honestly!’ He was genuinely shocked at her irreverence – not for the Church or liberal etiquette but for mortality. She felt him grope between his legs for the derelict condom and drop it over the side of the bed. ‘Hey,’ he asked. ‘I brought Abby over some dope-best Californian sensamilla – and it’s still stuffed in the heel of my shoe. Would you like a joint?’

‘You mean this is the alternative?’

‘You never give up, do you?’

‘Believe me,’ she promised him, ‘I’ve given up. Yes. A joint would be most satisfactory. Let’s go the whole hog and light a candle while we’re at it.’

She lit a candle while he rolled two joints. She observed him in the softer light and realised he was really very sexy.

‘One
each
?’ she gasped.

‘Why not? I’m not going to get around to seeing Abby anyway.’

Coming on top of the cheap wine and interrupted coitus, the dope took swift and powerful effect. She laughed uncontrollably, as did he, as the bed seemed to float off the floor. Munching handfuls of Natural Crunch with freeze dried strawberry hunks straight from the box, they soon had one another convulsed over recitals of Bad Sex They Had Known, each seeking to outdo the other with stories which, in truth, were sadder than they were funny. Then she reached the point where she was so stoned she couldn’t speak and he went upstairs to put on some music. He made the big mistake of putting on the Barber violin concerto, thus enabling her to round off a perfectly horrible evening by crying all over him. She cried about Jamie, and about all the men she had known who had died already and about all the men and, all too probably, women she was sure would die before she reached forty. One by one she cremated the party guests until only Belgian Agnes was keeping her sad company shovelling all the ash.

Whether he stayed the night, whether he slept even, after such a ghastly lullaby, she had no idea. He was gone when she woke on Sunday morning. There was a note on the kitchen table.

‘Remember,’ it said, ‘There is nothing so bad that Positive Thinking cannot heal. Be cool. Stay well. Bruce.’

She had no address, no telephone number, no surname, not even an inkling of what he did while managing to live in San Francisco and remain untouched by the epidemic around him. Jamie would be proud of her.

In bringing his grandson back to recuperate in his care at The Roundel, Edward had acted with a rare impulsiveness that surprised him. During their drive from the airport, Alison had mentioned pneumonia, so he knew in part what to expect. The boy’s painful shortness of breath, his evident weakness, was like a TB sufferer’s. His obstinate graveyard humour and the effort laughter caused him, reminded Edward of long-stay unfortunates in the isolation hospital for whom there had been no hope of recovery. But nothing had prepared him for the emaciation. The shock of seeing Jamie hunched up against his pillows, distorted by weight loss, recalled the horrors of his first glimpse at pictures of liberated concentration camps. Only this was in colour and he could not look away and wait for it to pass.

On leaving the hospital, he had exchanged quiet words with the duty nurse, explaining his plans for Jamie, and confessing his ignorance of the disease’s nature. The leaflets she had given him contained more disturbing parallels; along with the bloody sputum he had begun to cough up, night sweats and a dramatic loss of energy had been the symptoms which had finally drawn the attention of the internment camp doctors to his pulmonary TB all those years ago.

Back in the late ’fifties, his self-disgust following the end of his affair with Myra had pitched him headlong towards a second breakdown, only this time the tools of self-negation were alcohol, overwork and compulsive womanising. What began in a swaggering, I’ll-show-her spirit swiftly achieved its own dangerous momentum. It had been Heini, of all people, then scarcely old enough to know much of suffering himself, who had intervened and diverted Edward towards the calm Kensington consulting room of Sonia Keppel. Over two long years, during which he had seen no-one and written nothing of worth, this small, enigmatic woman with her softly insistent voice and calculatedly self-effacing manner, had brought him to see how much misplaced guilt he had suppressed. With her guidance, he had come to a mature grieving and acceptance of the loss of his childhood as well as his family. She had led him, not to happiness exactly, but to an equilibrium based on self-knowledge rather than drugs or self-deluding denial.