by James Meek
They got used to the patterns of daylight, darkness and lamplight furnishing the rooms in a way their scatterings of things didn’t. They put the bed they’d brought from Bec’s house into the big first-floor room Harry had used as a sitting room and spent a great part of their weekends in it. They felt as if they were squatting in the house of a rich family who might at any moment return. Lying in bed on Saturday mornings they imagined who would burst in on them. A tanned white-haired man smelling of musk, said Bec. In a black suit, black tie and sunglasses, said Alex. Wearing driving gloves and carrying a shooting stick. He would open the stick, sit down on it, peel off his gloves carefully.
‘Watching us all the time,’ said Bec.
‘Of course. Then he’d take out a gold cigarette case, remove a cigarette, light it with a gold lighter, inhale, and rest his hands on his knee.’
‘Would his legs be crossed?’
‘I think so. Big gold ring on his smoking hand. And then he’d say, with an Italian accent …’
‘Fuck, per favore!’
‘No, no,’ said Alex. ‘He’d say, “Please, would you mind waiting for my wife, she loves to watch intruders fucking. She’s just parking the car.”’
But they weren’t intruders, and they weren’t poor. Between the two of them they were bringing in more than a hundred and fifty thousand a year. The actual family they were waiting for, Bec knew, was a lanky man in his early forties and a red-cheeked woman about seven years younger, a little overweight, with a baby in her arms.
What Bec did feel the house lacked, as long as they hadn’t started filling it up with their own children, was people. They were talking about giving a room to a deserving post-grad when Alex got a text from Dougie asking if he could stay with them while he looked for a job in London. The way Alex put it to Bec made her think that he expected her to say no, but she was glad. ‘We’ll put him in Matthew’s old room,’ she said. ‘We can get another bed.’
May and June were warm, the air still and the sky clear in the long dawns when the plane and chestnut trees in the streets, squares and parks unclenched their leaves. To the ears of people sleeping in the grass on hot afternoons, the aircraft and the traffic came like ocean surf beating on a reef, far from shore. Cafés and pubs spilled their tables and drinkers outside and the fractal branching of brick terraces smelled of hot tar, firelighters and grilling meat. Boys rocked bare-chested to the park with cans and footballs and slyly watched girls unclip their bras to tan their backs. The sighs of cricket and tennis crowds eddied from open car windows and Asian boys’ sound systems in tiny tricked-out cars shook the city like thumbs plucking at slackly strung strings. As it was the change of season memories of a hundred years of summer songs, on every continent, came to the surface in the heads of the old people of London. Flags hung limp and the city’s towers and spires and battlements, its wheel and clock, grew legendary in grainy haze. Strange, beautiful faces appeared that were only ever seen outside when the sun shone.
One Sunday afternoon Alex and Bec borrowed a bike for Dougie and the three of them cycled along the canal to London Fields to meet a couple of Bec’s schoolfriends. They took wine and food and sat around their picnic with the bikes laid on the grass beside them forming an outer circle of wheels. Across the expanse of grass were scores of other circles of picnickers and bicycle wheels. Some had brought barbecues in tinfoil boxes and the half-dozen columns of smoke gave the park the appearance of the courtyard of a caravanserai. They talked until the shadows lengthened. Everyone around them was conversing as if the reporting to each other of their lives, their moods, their memories and their dreams was the qualifying condition of their existence. Where did all these conversations go when they died, Bec wondered? Were people learning and growing when they sat and chatted for hours on these summer days? Were they drawing conclusions? Some of the groups in the park – perhaps her own – were only talking in the way humming a tune is making music, while the real exchanges were between eyes, light and bodies. Her friends stretched and tossed their hair in their summer dresses, and Alex answered them with his own smiles and frowns and leanings forward and hand gestures, without ever interrupting the flow of possession that passed between her and him. But Dougie didn’t flirt with Bec’s single girlfriends as she’d expected, or try to impress them with his extreme self-deprecation. He had an unexpected talent for shyness around strangers and Bec wondered how it was that he’d been so confident with her.
They mounted their bikes and rode to Broadway Market, where they sat on the edge of the pavement and drank pints, then went to a club in Shoreditch. It was early for the club, the queue hadn’t built up outside, and they sat at the edge of the empty dancefloor. After half an hour the music started, the lights began to twist and track spots of colour across the floor and the room filled up. Alex and Dougie stood a little to one side. Bec saw that Dougie was asking Alex for something and Alex was refusing. Dougie seemed to find the rejection funny. He said something more; it looked like a joke, or perhaps Dougie asked again, because Alex shook his head and looked down into his drink as if he were ashamed. A song began that Bec liked and she tried to pull Alex onto the dancefloor. He laughed and refused.
‘If you could only rock me in your arms,’ he said. He stayed talking to one of Bec’s friends while Dougie, Bec and the other friend merged into the dancers. Dougie couldn’t merge, he stood out, and made a virtue of his standing out. He wore a short-sleeved shirt he’d picked up at Oxfam, white with a pattern of bluebirds, three buttons open, and danced with his arms held away from his body, moving his hips as if he were about to begin bending into the limbo position, throwing his long blond hair from side to side with sharp twists of his head. His thumbs and fingers made snapping motions without actually snapping. There was something of the ruined hero about him, as if in his head he was dancing with a long-lost love. Bec leaned in close to Dougie’s ear to make herself heard over the music and asked if he’d like a drink. He smelled of sweat and soap.
‘It’s my shout,’ said Dougie. ‘But I’m skint.’
‘Were you trying to get a loan from Alex just now?’ asked Bec.
‘Aye,’ said Dougie. ‘It’s OK. I’m a wee bit behind on paying him back for an old loan, as a matter of fact.’
Bec put twenty pounds into Dougie’s hand and he told her he’d pay her back as soon as he found a job.
The three of them cycled home drunk at one a.m., when the streets teemed with clubbers. Bec was ahead. She cycled past a group of skinny men in tight trousers and pork pie hats. They turned their heads, stopped and watched after her. The hem of her dress was billowing up over her bare legs and one of the men yelled something in her wake, bending backwards and gesturing at his crotch. Coming up behind him Alex reached out and grabbed the hat off his head and accelerated away. Bec heard the commotion and looked round to see Alex pedalling frantically towards her wearing a pork pie hat and shouting ‘Go! Go!’ A man was sprinting after him until Dougie, bringing up the rear, stuck out his foot and upended the pursuer into a heap of arms and legs. They cycled off up City Road to Angel and rode round and round Citron Square before going into the house. Alex and Bec rode side by side, holding hands, Bec with the stolen hat on her head, while Dougie cycled behind them with his hands off the handlebars, clapping and chanting: ‘Science’s golden cou-ple, science’s golden cou-ple, da rah rah rah, da rah rah rah.’
They went inside and sat slumped around the kitchen table. Dougie poured them all a shot of spirits, which none of them drank.
‘Chess set’s laid out,’ said Dougie. ‘The dust gathers.’
‘The one in your room? It used to be Matthew’s. It was the only thing he left behind.’
‘Pool’s more my game,’ said Dougie.
‘You used to play chess,’ said Alex. ‘You used to beat me.’
‘I don’t remember,’ said Dougie. ‘You used to beat me every time.’
‘It was Matty boy.’
‘It was you. I always wondered what was
going on between the queen and the pawns,’ said Alex. ‘Are they her soldiers, her servants or her children?’
‘Her kids,’ said Dougie. He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘A big line of kids. It’s a big family.’
‘And loyal,’ said Alex. ‘Ready to lay down their lives for their parents.’
‘If the pawns are children,’ said Bec, ‘the king isn’t the father. He’s so feeble. He must be ill, or very old. He makes these little tottering steps, one at a time. I think the queen is much younger, and very good-looking, and she’s always going off and leaving the king. She tells the king it’s for his own protection, and maybe that’s what she tells herself, but I think it’s so she can spend more time with her lovers.’
‘Her lovers?’ said Alex. ‘You mean the knights?’
‘They wish!’ said Bec. ‘They’re too much in love with themselves and all their fancy sidestepping for her to be interested in them. And not the bishops, either. The bishops are only interested in sex.’
‘Because they look like little penises?’ said Alex.
‘I think the queen loves the rooks,’ said Bec. ‘She likes them because they’re strong, straightforward and patient. They’re reliable, but they’re still mysterious, because they’re not easy to get to, and they’re conflicted, because they’re loyal to the king.’
‘There are two of them,’ said Alex. ‘How does she choose?’
‘Maybe she doesn’t have to,’ said Bec. After a moment’s silence, all three of them laughed.
Bec took off the hat and gave it to Alex. He turned it over in his hands and smiled. ‘Eminent scientist steals hat,’ he said. ‘I’m interviewing post-docs all day tomorrow.’ He went to bed. Bec told him she’d come soon. They heard him singing softly as he walked upstairs.
A Mars a day
Helps you work, rest and play
‘How come you’re so chilled for a brainy chick?’ said Dougie. ‘See if it was me, just the thought of having to make choices for other people, and give them a hard time if they didn’t jump to it? I couldn’t handle it. And when there’s life and death at the end of it all. I can hardly run myself, like, and you bring other people into the mix: no way.’
‘It’s the same for your brother.’
‘Aye,’ said Dougie. ‘But he’s no one for shaking his booty on the dancefloor. Everything with Alex comes from talking.’
‘He got the hat for me tonight.’ Bec wondered how to tell Dougie that his eyes, seeking her own, made her uncomfortable, without using the word ‘uncomfortable’.
‘Hey, I’m no saying he’s no a superior human being to me. Of course he’s a better man.’
‘You don’t know all there is to know about him.’
Dougie got up, came round the table, put his hand on Bec’s shoulder and when she looked up to see what he was doing he tried to kiss her on the mouth. Bec turned her face away, stood up and took a step back.
‘No,’ she said.
‘Sorry,’ said Dougie. He looked beaten and scared. He sat down and hung his head so that his hair covered his face.
‘Don’t hide your face,’ said Bec. ‘Why did you just do that? You’re not so drunk. You know I’m in love with your brother.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Dougie. He looked up. ‘I’m such a fucking arsehole. Everybody knows it. The folks must’ve told you. Alex must’ve told you. It’s always the same. When anybody decent tries to give me a hand up I end up trying to take what I’m not entitled to. I’m just a fucking loser, Bec. I shouldn’t have come. I’ll pack my stuff.’
‘Don’t feel sorry for yourself,’ said Bec. ‘You’re not going to get out of this by telling me that you know you’re a loser, or by running away. You know I’m in love with your brother, don’t you?’
‘Aye.’
‘And you know he’s in love with me.’
‘Aye.’
‘Do you know we’re trying to have a baby?’
‘No, I didn’t, but that’s fantastic, Bec, fantastic, I’m really happy for you.’
‘So why did you try to kiss me?’
‘Cause I’m an arsehole.’
‘That’s not an answer.’
Dougie lifted his head and a trace of pride narrowed his eyes. ‘Why? Because if I kissed you and I died in the night my life would’ve been worth something.’
‘You’re a real prick.’
‘I know.’
‘It’s such an insult to me to think I’d –’
‘Aye but Bec, that’s the thing. I don’t think. That’s always been my problem. Forget about me, I’ll pack my things.’
‘So you’re going to run away?’
‘I can’t stay here if my brother knows I tried to get off with his – with you.’
‘Do you want to leave?’
Dougie shook his head.
‘I like having you in the house. But you’ve got to behave. You don’t think I gave you any encouragement, do you?’
‘No.’
‘You’re funny, you’re not bad-looking, and you’re not as stupid or obnoxious as you pretend you are. This town is full of single women.’
‘I know the score. You’re a good, generous lassie. You’ll give me any woman in the world except yourself.’
‘If you talk like that, you’ll have to leave.’
‘Aye,’ said Dougie, and lowered his head into his folded arms.
‘Head up,’ said Bec. Dougie obeyed. ‘If you promise never, ever to think about trying to touch me in that way again, you can stay, and I won’t tell Alex. Can you promise me that?’
‘I don’t like you keeping a secret from Alex on my account,’ said Dougie.
‘I don’t like it either. Maybe having it on your conscience will make you better behaved. What do you say? Do you promise?’
‘Aye,’ said Dougie.
Bec went upstairs, got undressed and climbed into bed next to Alex. When she pressed herself against him he stirred and said ‘Hello.’ Bec ran her fingers over his chest, down over his stomach and on lower, as if straying arbitrarily. His cock was already hard when she touched it; it gave a tiny kick.
‘Let’s not get drunk again for a while,’ she said.
52
Alex couldn’t find a good reason for his unease about Dougie living in the house. Anything that had a conclusion couldn’t be obvious. Things that stood to reason didn’t. If it was considered natural to feel uneasy about his brother, whose behaviour was so careless and who owed him a huge debt he’d never be able to repay, living under the same roof, Alex suspected it wasn’t natural at all; that once it had been natural to hang thieves, beat wives, kill atheists, smother children born crippled and abominate homosexuals. He’d come to think of Dougie as someone whose particular genius was to be forgiven, over and over again. Giving part of the house over to a man he didn’t want to be there made Alex feel he’d atoned for getting the property in the first place, and he remembered how much time Harry had spent in Brechin when he was growing up.
In the dealings Matthew had had with Alex as he emptied the house of his father’s possessions he’d been cool and serene. Alex told him that he was sorry, that Harry had been wrong.
‘Dad did what he wanted. He followed his desires,’ said Matthew.
Alex told himself that he and Bec were only looking after the place for a season or two. The fact that there was a third resident made it seem more provisional. Alex didn’t want to fill the house with new possessions. The city outside the walls of the house seemed cluttered and when he came home he felt he was coming to a clearing in a tangled wood, a place that was open, light and safe. After a few days each of the almost bare rooms acquired its own qualities, which had less to do with their size and shape than with the moments of his being with Bec that remained when others didn’t.
The unpredictable resilience of certain moments puzzled him. The wonder was not in the remembering, but in the way forgotten things tumbled away into oblivion and sacrificed themselves to give remembered things their s
hape.
Bec’s optimism that she and Alex would succeed in conceiving where he and Maria had fallen short was so firm and unthought-through that it hardly seemed like optimism. Without speaking of it they conspired to push their doubts out of reach.
There was a phone booth-sized lock-up at garden level at the back of the house, accessed from an outside door, where Harry had kept the bric-a-brac of the reluctant suburban gardener – clipping shears, a strimmer, various bottles of chemicals. Matthew had, Alex assumed, cleared it out, then locked it. As spring came on and weeds began to appear in the garden Alex found the fat old key and went to see if there were tools inside. The shelves and hooks were bare. On the floor were a pair of gumboots and four pairs of men’s shoes. Alex recognised some two-tone brogues that Harry had worn in his last months. A feeling of dread came over him as he looked at the shoes. Their openings seemed to gape and squeal at him like the maws of a brood of little blind creatures who would never understand that the man whose feet they were expecting to fill them up would never come again. They had been waiting in the darkness all this time, screaming for Harry.
Alex wondered why Matthew had left them there, and remembered that there were things of his still at Maria’s; or rather things that in a sense were their joint property but for which she had no use. A box full of all the papers generated by the bureaucratic-medical process of trying to get pregnant when it wouldn’t come naturally. A box on the bottom shelf of an upstairs cupboard, if he wasn’t mistaken, on one side of which Maria had written, without intending to be sentimental, without imagining it would ever be anything other than the most sensible label to identify the box, BABY.
Dougie had told Alex once that people like him and Maria, middle-class people who wanted children and didn’t have any, romanticised parenthood out of all proportion. That was how Alex remembered it, unconsciously translating. What Dougie had actually said was, ‘You shouldn’t get too up your own arse about being a dad. You get a wee man or a wee lassie to play with for a bit and the next thing you know there’s this superfluous person knocking about who doesn’t seem to know much about you, but it’s all your fault.’