Untouchable Things (6 page)

“Ye-es.”

“Well, I added you to the mailing list and asked Anna to drop your card as she was going that way this morning. She grabbed all the cards and I forgot I needed to put a covering note in with yours.”

She struggled to make sense of it. “So – that was an invitation to this group?”

“Yes.” He took out the silver box that she’d seen last night and removed a cigarette. “Can you make it?”

She laughed, bewildered. “Exactly what sort of group are we talking about here?”

He smiled and took a long first drag of the cigarette. As he exhaled from the corner of his mouth she looked at the cigarette box, tarnished and slightly dented. Probably an antique. He slipped it back into his pocket and smiled. “Ah – the drawing? Don’t take any notice of that – I just use whatever stimulus is in my mind at the time to theme the invitations. On Monday I was thinking about
Hamlet
, and you, and thought I’d do something a little provocative.”

“Oh, I see.” She had no idea what to say.

“
Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Such a great line – classic bawdy Shakespeare. I think it could spark some great things.” He was grinning at her mischievously. “Seriously. It’s a cool group of people, you’ll love them. And, more to the point, they will love you.”

A petite, dark-haired waitress comes over to take their drinks order. Seth scans the menu. “White okay?”

She opens her mouth to say no she shouldn’t, but words of assent spill out instead.
Go on. Just a drop
.

“I was thinking it might be a rather nice come-down after
Hamlet
. You’ll have just finished, won’t you?”

She is flattered that he knows her schedule, has even arranged this group around her. “That’s true.”

“But?”

“It all sounds a bit – strange.”

“Is that such a bad thing? Don’t you ever want to try something different?” His eyes challenge hers, tug her into their strange green. She opens her mouth to answer, realises the trap and breaks into a smile.

“Great, that’s settled then. As a first-timer you can just sit and observe.” He holds her gaze. “What is it?”

She takes a risk. “Your eyes. I’ve never seen a colour like them. What would you call them – sage?”

“Whatever you would like to call them.” They stare at each other.

He taps his cigarette and to her relief looks away. “When I was in India I found people with the same colour eyes. Dark skin, much darker than mine, but with these eyes.” He laughs. “My parents always denied the existence of any
exotic
genes in our family. So that leaves the possibility that I’m a gypsy, a changeling. A Heathcliff.”

She laughs too. “Heathcliff in an Armani blazer. I can’t see it.”

“Jean Paul Gaultier, for the record. What you forget, my dear Ophelia, sorry,
Rebecca
, is that Heathcliff reinvented himself as the archetypal English gentleman. Externally, that is. Except for when he was hanging puppies.”

“I see. So underneath this suave exterior lurks…”

“A wolf.” He grabs her hand and makes her jump. “Come on, let’s order. Or I might indeed turn into a wolf and swallow you whole.”

Long lunch, was it?

You could say. Three courses and two bottles of wine. And I was working the next day.

Can you remember what you talked about?

Oh – food, music, theatre, poetry. That sort of stuff. Mornington Crescent, how I don’t listen to enough Radio 4. And… other recreational activities.

“So how do you spend your weekends now? Getting high or getting laid?”

“Neither?” Another small betrayal of Jason. “Sorry – I didn’t mean that. Jason lives in Milton Keynes at the moment so we sort of shuttle back and forth on the train. In a way it should be ideal – someone in your life without being suffocated – but the pressure to have a perfect weekend can make everything fuck up.” Is that what she thought? It wasn’t a conversation she’d had with anyone before.

“Tell me to butt out, but it sounds like you’re suffocating anyway. Do you love him?”

She sighed. “I… don’t know. He’s a lovely guy, takes care of me. But…”

“You want more.”

Her averted eyes blinked agreement. “Maybe. Sometimes I think there must be more, sometimes I think I’ve watched too many soppy films.” She looked up. “What about you?”

He took a slow drag on his cigarette “Oh, I know there’s more. For people like us, people who know how to feel, people who wring every last drop from life instead of running away from it.” He chuckled. “I’ll be breaking into
To His Coy Mistress
in a second.”

She laughed, wanting to show she got the reference. He watched her. “Recite it to me.”

“God, I can’t, I’ve forgotten half of it.”

“I’ll prompt you.”

Greedy, glittering eyes pinned hers in the fading afternoon light and her outer vision darkened, as though she was going blind. She breathed, trying to focus.

“
Had we but world enough, and time

This coyness, lady, were no crime.
”

He held her eyes, mouthing words when she faltered, as she took the part of the poet attempting to seduce his muse.

“
But at my back I always hear

Time’s winged chariot hurrying near
…”

She knew it from here, the shift of gears so that hedonism became something profound, triumphal, death-defying.

“
Let us roll all our strength, and all

Our sweetness up into one ball;

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Through the iron gates of life.

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run
.”

Her eyes swam: her tears or his? Her breathing stopped and started in shudders as they regarded each other. She had never known such desire. Not just for him, maybe not even for him, but for his words and his gaze and the possibilities that simmered between them.

And then?

Then…

Are you okay, Miss Laurence?

She went home reeling, metallic, jangling inside. Thank God she had the house to herself. She flung herself on her bed, dropping her keys to the floor, pushing down her jeans, stroking and groaning to a shivery orgasm. Afterwards she lay curled up on her side clutching the pillow, wondering what on earth she had met.

Scene 8

I believe Michael Stanley is an old friend of yours, Miss Jarret?

Michael? Yes, since university.

And how does he get on with the rest of the group?

Um – well, on the whole. He’s honest and principled, people respect him.

Honest and principled. Could you describe his relationship with Mr Gardner?

Seth? It’s… they’re sparring partners, I suppose. Seth used to tease Michael and Michael would put him in his place… it was all good humoured. Mostly.

You see, that’s not exactly what I’ve been hearing, Miss Jarret. It would seem that there’s a certain amount of antipathy towards Michael from some quarters. Would that be fair to say?

Look, Michael’s stressed right now, we all are. Sometimes he goes too far.

Too far?

I mean, he says what he thinks. But what you’ve got to remember is, unlike some people, he doesn’t gossip. He’s straight up. I’d trust him completely and he’s a brilliant friend. He drove me up to see my parents last year because he knew I was anxious about it…

The summons. Her mother was having a clear-out and now that Catherine was in a place of her own, surely she could take some of her stuff away, which they’d kindly been storing for her but was now rather cluttering the place up. She knew she would leave a little less of a person, some of her newly expanded horizon cordoned off. So Michael had come for moral support. And Seth had so kindly lent his car.

…I believe Mr Gardner lent you his car that weekend, Mr Stanley?

Not me, he lent it to Catherine. She was nervous of pranging it so I drove.

Nice car, was it?

A Jaguar: what else would Seth drive? Pale blue, an extension of the April sky, shimmering in front of Catherine’s front door like a mirage.

If you like that sort of thing.

And you don’t, of course, Mr Stanley.

So just because I’m a man I’m some sort of petrolhead? You lot are all the same. I’ve never owned a car, nor do I want to.

But it didn’t take him long to start enjoying it. The give of the leather around his thighs, the purr of the motor, the responsiveness of the wheel. He felt Seth all around them, the cool, woody scent of his aftershave still hanging in the air, the driver’s seat still weighted and warm. And his laughter, as Michael put his foot down in the fast lane and felt the engine kick…

So you drove out of the goodness of your heart to help an old friend. You and Catherine Jarret were at university together?

Yes. Nottingham.

He found her in the practice rooms one day playing the Schubert B flat sonata. A skittish little Maths stowaway, scared of being chucked back into a sea of algebra. Not like his fellow music students, pissheads with a sense of entitlement inversely proportional to their talent.

And your friendship remained… platonic?

Yes. Believe it or not, a man and a woman can have a friendship without… sex coming into it. Catherine and I, we look out for each other.

I see. Was there anything noteworthy about the weekend? Perhaps something connected to Mr Gardner and the loan of the car?

All that springs to mind, quite frankly, is Catherine’s mother, making sure the neighbours got a good look at the Jag.

Pouring out cups of tea for him and put-downs for her daughter. ‘Don’t you ever want to wear colour, darling? You’ll never stand out from the crowd in neutrals.’

We packed up Catherine’s stuff and left the next day.

It was an insight into her home life, though. He was even privy to a family argument, when Catherine discovered they’d sold her old piano. A proper middle-class argument, where nobody swore and people clenched their jaws instead of their fists. Wine was produced over tea, dinner as they called it, whereupon Sylvia Jarret’s merciless hospitality became open flirtation. Catherine stared at her strawberry gateau, her face reflecting its colour, while her dad tried in vain to cork the wine. Poor chap. He’d been a musician, first violin for the CBSO, until Mrs Jarret had put her foot down and insisted he did something more ambitious. Apparently the subject was off-limits now.

Later, all tucked up in Catherine’s sister’s old room, staring at posters of black-clad rock bands and, bizzarely, Boris Becker, Michael thought about meals in his own family home. Meat, potatoes and two veg, delivered onto a scrubbed table at five on the dot or else there was trouble. No conversation he could recall, unless the meat was overcooked. Then
I wouldn’t feed this to the fuckin’ dog
, a meal shoved in the bin, a slammed door and his mother’s face pulled taut like the skin of a drum.
I don’t know what you’re staring at. Finish your carrots, else there’s no pudding.

There was no love that he could remember. He and his brother and sister were fed and clothed in a cramped but pristine home environment. There was no connection between them all. They rolled around each other like different-sized marbles on a tray. Thank God for his Walkman, drowning out the arguments between his parents when his dad had stayed too late at the pub. No jaw-clenching restraint there.

And thank God for… but it’s hard to say his name, even in his head, even after all this time. The person who’d saved him, put something inside him that he would always have, something of beauty that lay apart from the shittiness of the world. The person who’d done too much, gone too far and ruined everything.

Mr Stanley?

I had a bad night. It happens to me sometimes.

He’d had flashbacks before, but this was different. This wasn’t moments, this was the whole scene on playback, his own childhood made viscerally real again by stepping back into Catherine’s.

The top sheet of the single bed becomes the brush of velvet on his bare forearms. He’s back there, fifteen years old, concealed behind the curtains of the practice room where his music teacher, Mr Fleming, lets him stay after school. He can’t have a piano at home so this is the next best thing. Mr Fleming teaches him in his lunch hour and he practises here after school. But he’s just heard footsteps and instinct has told him to hide. Through a frayed hole in the fabric he sees Mr Johnson and Mr Crane enter the room.

“No one in here today. Thought I might find that fifth year, what’s his name? Stevens… Stanley, Michael Stanley. Fleming seems to let him practise piano after school. All a bit non-regulation.”

“Oh yes, the boy he’s mentoring. I must say he’s blossoming with it.”

“Yes, apparently he has real talent.”

“Not the boy – I mean old Fleming! You must have noticed. He used to walk around all hunched up…” Mr Crane stoops and pulls a face and both teachers snigger. Michael finds he has a handful of velvet tight in his fist. “Kids giving him a hard time, I think. But now he’s swaggering around with a twinkle in his eye, if you know what I mean. Given him a reason to keep going, poor bugger.”

What sort of bad night?