by Geoff Ryman
Bottles leaned back, and looked up into his face, and it was firm. 'I meant what I said about swots.'
Why did everybody always have something perfectly justified to say about him?
'Go ahead,' he said, 'let me have it.' He wished he were dressed. His stomach was hairy and his dick shrivelled.
'You're so concerned about yourself that you're asking the wrong question.'
'So what question should I be asking?'
She told him.
'Oh God,' he said, and covered his eyes with shame. She was right and all. Right on methodological grounds. Right about the self-concern. He chuckled at himself.
'Can I go now?' she asked. 'The more I know about this, the weirder it gets and the sadder.'
'How come?'
'Because I'm dead. There hasn't been anyone called Bottles in years.'
'Can I see you again?' he asked.
'Yeah sure,' she said, in voice that meant no. 'Is it up to me?' There was no point pretending that it was.
'See you around,' said Michael, and she was gone.
Can I cure Angels who are sick?
That was the question to ask. If Michael could call up Angels and cure them, then he could make love to them after they were rid of the virus.
So, after making certain arrangements, Michael ended up in a clinic after hours. Margaret or Maggie was doing him a favour.
'It's not for me,' he had told her on the phone. 'It's a friend of mine. He won't come in for a test if I don't come with him and he doesn't get the answer right away. And… he's also paranoid about false results, so he wants to take the test two times in a row. Yes, I know, it's weird, but I'm really concerned.'
Margaret's voice sounded just the same as Bottles, as if it were the sixteen-year-old on the phone. Except that she didn't call him Babe and was content to stay with her all-purpose native London accent. Her voice was calm, and soft and business-like all at the same time.
'A lot of people are very frightened by the test, so it's good that you want to come in with him. Does he have any problems with confidentiality?'
'Um, in what way?'
'If he's paranoid about one thing he may be paranoid about other things. Like being seen by anyone.'
'Could we come in after hours?'
'It's an imposition,' she told him directly. 'But if it will make the difference between him coming in or not, then I'll do it. But it can only be this Wednesday night.'
Her clinic turned out to be attached to a hospital in the East End. The door was locked, but he rang and she herself opened it.
Margaret's hair was the colour of carrots, like his mother's used to be. Michael had the feeling that the hair and her long loose Chinese jacket were all carefully calculated to strike the right balance of flamboyance and reliability. She was like a civil servant with a past. I used to be quite interesting, but now I'm reliable. It was a balance inclined to create trust on both sides: the ill and the official health establishment. Her voice was motherly, concerned, and extremely cautious. Every word was carefully rehearsed; not so much chosen as identified over thousands of ticklish interviews as being the most appropriate thing to say.
Yup. Bottles was dead.
'Hello,' she said to Michael's companion, and held out her hand. 'My name's Margaret, I'm an old friend of Michael's.' She was searching his face with concern.
'So am I. My name's Mark.'
Mark was tall, broad-shouldered with wavy red hair streaked with grey. He had died five years before from Aids.
Michael had met Mark at Sussex University. Mark was in the Army, studying under some kind of Army grant, and he was big and muscular and freckled and slightly overripe. He wore cravats and played polo, and wore a green carnation in honour of Oscar Wilde.
Mark was one of Michael's more spectacular missed opportunities. They met in drama club and were doing an experimental piece that involved a lot of stretching, yoga and jumping about. It was easier than being talented. At one point they all had to lie on the floor on their tummies and put their heads on someone else's bum.
The entire time Michael's heavy head rested on Mark's bottom, he flexed his cheek muscles, up and down. Michael's head wiggled. Mark turned back and grinned naughtily. He had a general's face, lumpy and attractive rather than pretty, and he had a soldier's lumpy body. Jolie-laide, they might call it in France. Butch, Michael called it. He was unable to believe that someone so masculine and so military whom he fancied so very much could actually be gay. Instead, just to stop Mark's flexing, he bit the bum very hard.
'You must be hungry,' said Mark. He spoke rather like Noel Coward. 'Why don't you come back to my flat and have another bite to eat.'
Michael managed to pretend to himself that this was an invitation to supper.
So he showed up with a bottle of wine, and talked in a prolonged way about the director, a woman called Rosie. Mark began to look wistful. Rosie fancied Mark, and had asked Michael to find out if he was gay. Even this was not enough to trigger the conscious thought in Michael that the man he fancied might fancy him.
So Michael pumped Mark for information about his reaction to Rosie, which confused the issue more.
'I'm afraid I'm a bit inexperienced with women. I imagine you're not,' said Mark.
'Tuh. Not that much experienced. But I get along with them.'
'Well, perhaps you can show me how to as well.'
'I'd be really surprised if I had anything to teach you about women.'
When someone wants you, they admire you. You seem larger to them than you actually are, which is why it's difficult to believe they can or do love you, and not some image they've made up. It was hard for Michael to imagine that this strapping, athletic, outgoing, happy man admired him, respected him. It was simply unthinkable that he actually desired him.
So. Nothing happened.
There was a florid would-be Englishman at Sussex. He was in fact South African, and tried to live up to an image of England that had more to do with Bloomsbury than the new era of Margaret Thatcher. He kept talking about Virginia Woolf and Quentin Bell, and 'real universities' like Oxford. He ran the literary society and wore white suits and once, even a straw boater. Michael detested him.
About six months after his dinner, Michael saw Mark with this man together in Sainsbury's, plainly doing domestic shopping together, having a slightly acid conversation over the right choice of coffee.
Michael said hello, and Mark's chest swelled with pride as he introduced John, who said coolly, 'We know each other. Michael acts, doesn't he?' Mark seemed to display their married condition like another green carnation, and Michael ended the conversation, blinded by an inexplicable headache.
Mark and he stayed friends. The straw boater had married Mark in an attempt to marry old England. Mark realized this, as the bickering got worse. 'He's a bit of a fraud, actually,' Mark said lightly to Michael in the student bar. 'He's moved out. I'm doing some reassessing. I'm beginning to understand that, as much as I love it, the Army and I aren't meant for each other either.'
It would be illegal, in fact.
Mark became someone who added up. This made him less surprising. He dropped his science course, and took art history. He saved money to pay back the Army for their grants. He went on to run an art gallery. Somewhere in all those changes, he and Michael managed to become best friends, especially after Michael had met Philip.
Philip worshipped Mark. My ex-Army gallery owner who also plays rugby, Philip enthused, and took him to parties without Michael. Mark could more than hold his own at arty gatherings at which he doggedly wore blazers and cravats.
Mark never introduced his boyfriends. Mark's boyfriends evidently were not quite fit to be introduced. It was the first time that Michael noted a tendency in Mark towards secrecy. He kept aspects of his life in separate compartments.
Mark had developed a taste for leather and rough trade. He moved in with a rich banker, but they weren't lovers. They shared servants, and a games room, and gave parti
es in which people wore leather crotchless knickers. They called their joint townhouse the Cock Exchange. Michael never really felt comfortable with the grandees he met there, or the way in which the banker, especially, treated the people who worked for him.
Mark's face and manner remained disconcertingly fresh-faced. His eyebrows went prematurely shaggy, like an old general's, but there was something in his expression that reminded Michael of a child. He looked like a little boy who could play innocent.
Mark began to be away a lot on business or make excuses when invited to dinner, and to drive an old banger which he saw no point in replacing. He was ill and didn't want Michael to worry.
What do you say to someone who has died and who was one of the few people you could really talk to?
Perhaps you look at his face, suddenly returned to you, and consider saying all the things you never had a chance to say. You consider saying: you were a hero to me. You were so many things; it wasn't just the Army or the sport. There was your political work for the Labour Party, though everything about you signalled Tory. There was the way you knew the market value of every piece that came your way, including things you hated like the Pre-Raphaelites. There was the way you could explain to me how Picasso was a genius, so that I've seen Picasso differently ever since. There was the way you fixed your car, and the way you spent all Saturday afternoon playing rugby and two hours every Sunday morning tending your stocks and shares. There was the way you could give me advice on how to apply for research grants, advice that worked, or who at the Poly knew they had support in high places. You were astute and kind and sensible and strong.
All Michael said was, 'Hello old thing. Good to see you.'
They were in the car on the way to the clinic. Mark replied, cool and distant, 'Thank you.' Then he asked, askance, 'Why have you done this?'
Michael explained it to him, the miracle and what he thought it was for and why he needed Mark. It sounded so stark and self-interested that Michael apologized.
'Quite all right. I'm glad to be of use,' Mark replied. His attention seemed be distracted. His eye kept catching on shop signs or Evening Standard headlines talking about the Labour government.
'Can we stop?' he asked. 'There's just a few things I'd like.'
Of course, of course, Michael said, and pulled over. Mark bought an orange and a newspaper. He left both in the white paper bag.
Introductions over with.
Once inside the clinic and sitting down, Margaret explained to Mark what the test was for and how it worked. 'We're going to take some blood and analyse it here. I'll be back in about forty-five minutes with the result. I understand you want two tests?'
'Ask Michael,' said Mark, detached.
Margaret's head jerked a bit too quickly towards Michael. There was something fathomless in Mark's response that she couldn't read.
'Two tests. Yes, please,' said Michael.
Sometimes shy or worried people rely on others to speak for them. Was this such a case? Margaret gave them the benefit of any doubt. 'No trouble. It will be a bit of a wait for you though. There's television and coffee. You could come back tomorrow
Mark cut her off. 'No,' he said. 'Thank you. I only have this evening.'
So he and Michael sat in the waiting area, a circle of comfortable chairs, and watched the seven o'clock news on Channel Four. On the clinic walls were A4, hand-lettered notices for social groups, aromatherapy, or stress management. Mark sat absolutely still, hypnotized by the telly. Sports results. Michael realized: he wants to find out how rugby union is going.
'Is this hard for you?' Michael asked.
'Up to a point,' Mark replied and fell silent. The silence persisted all through the sports news.
'We all miss you. Terribly. Liz, Tom, Martin, we still get together and have pub crawls along the river. The Mark Memorial Pub Crawl. We have one in summer, one in winter.'
'That's comforting.'
'Liz can't stop talking about you whenever we have one. I think she was a bit in love with you.'
'I proposed marriage.'
'Oh.'
'I thought she needed to be able to stay in the country.' Mark's smile was knife-thin and hard to read.
There had been other news since Mark's departure. 'Do you know about Rodger?' Rodger was the banker.
Mark's eyes were still fixed on football. 'No, but I imagine he died too. I imagine there's not much left of the old Exchange.'
The Angel of Death had passed over some doors as if lintels were marked. 'Harry's still with us, though.' Harry was Rodger's boyfriend who used to be tied up and left to the mercies of men who had since died. Harry was negative.
Laugh? Mark almost smiled.
The conversation was a knot. Michael suddenly thought honesty might cut it. 'Is dying very hard?' he asked.
'It's tough,' Mark said in an even voice. 'Unbearable, in fact. It's the worst thing you can know. So you seem to view it from far away. And then you don't know anything at all.'
'Is it true what everyone tells you? You float outside your body, and there's a tunnel of light?'
Mark seemed to chew over his response as if it were a plug of tobacco. On television, the news had moved on to Camilla Parker Bowles showing up in public with Charles. Mark turned to look at Michael, and there was something broken and rugged about his face, like one of those cliff faces that look human in profile. The face like a tumble of rocks seemed to ask: You really want to know?
'That happens, yes. But it's just an illusion. You are psychologically distancing yourself from what is happening. The tunnel of light is just the optic nerve closing down.'
Mark had looked healthy up until the very end. A few days before he died, his hair went snowy white, and he finally told friends the truth. This was his second bout of pneumonia, and it was by now what they had all suspected.
Michael had to go away to a conference in America. All he could do was phone. 'I want you to know how much I've always respected you,' he said.
He didn't say: I loved you, once.
He didn't say: You see, Mark, I don't ask for things. I drift into things and let them hold me, instead of me taking a grip of them. Mark, something terrible happened to me that left me completely screwed up, which is why we were never lovers. And it makes me so angry that we never were, and now never will be. Would you have lived, if we had been lovers, Mark?
It was Phil not Michael who was with Mark when he died.
Now, in the waiting room, booming music announced the end of the news.
Mark said simply: 'The world moves on.'
He reached into his bag and pulled out the newspaper, and read it carefully, the paper crinkling like tin foil when he turned the pages.
Then he said, 'You miss everything.' Something terrible happened to his voice. It sounded like tape gone slurry from dirty tapeheads. 'You miss voices. You miss air. You try to breathe and there's no air. There's no taste, you're not hungry, you don't want to eat. You miss food. And colour. There's no colour. You miss having a life. You get so bored being yourself. A self just keeps asking: What do I think about next? What do I do next? And the answer always comes back: Nothing.'
They heard a door open. Margaret, Maggie came back. Michael could tell from her face: it was kept smooth and bland, but the smile was just a little fixed, and the eyes seemed to be saying no, not again, no not again, and they looked at Mark with sadness. Mark had tested positive. She would have done a T-cell count as well and would know: this is a dying man.
All she said was: 'All right, Mark, we're going to take the second sample now. Are you sure you want to go ahead?'
'I believe that is what Michael asked.'
Margaret glanced at Michael. 'Michael only wants to help you. Do you still want a second sample?'
'It's why I'm here,' replied Mark, detached.
You, commanded Michael to the Angel. You Mark are free from disease. You virus, commanded Michael, you the virus just seethe out of his blood.
I cast you out
.
Maggie took Mark's arm as she led him to the cubicle, and her face was silently looking into his. Still everyone's mother, eh Bottles?
The telly battered on, booming about oven-ready chips. Jeez, thought Michael, all I want to do is sleep. What a leaden stupid unhelpful thought: life is strange.
Mark came back, and moved his chair away from Michael and the cushions made a squishy sound like a sigh. Mark reached into the plastic bag and pulled out an orange.
Mark's mouth lunged forward as he bit into the orange. Almost clear juice, with a bit of pulp, poured down his chin. Mark's eyes closed with pleasure.
Then he reached into a bag and pulled out a photograph. There hadn't been a photograph in the bag before.
It was an ordinary snap of a solid-looking middle-aged man with white hair.
'This is Robert,' Mark said. 'I never told you about him.' His thumb moved over the face. 'He was rather discreet. He was married, and a bit old-fashioned. RAF. When I got too ill, I told him I was fed up being his mistress.'
'Did he know you were HIV?'
There was a long pause. 'Yes.'
Michael looked at the face in the photo more closely. It was kindly, dignified, direct. That added up too.
Mark reached into the plastic bag and pulled out one of the very first Sony Walkmans, clunky and black, with the usual tangle of wires and earphones. Mark said nothing, but punched buttons.
From the distanced high singing, Michael knew. Mark's favourite opera: Der Rosenkavalier. Mark closed his eyes and ruminated on another section of orange.
Time passed. The cassette finished with a click.
Mark asked, 'Do I have to stay for the second result?'
Michael was surprised and slightly hurt that Mark didn't want to know. 'I'm afraid so. If you go, the samples will disappear.'
Mark rolled his eyes. 'Oh, God! That means she'll come out all worried and want to counsel me. And if the result is different then she'll want to take a third sample.' He put his head in his hands. 'I don't suppose it occurred to you that I've been through all this once before and that I never, ever wanted to go through it again?'