by Baker, John
You go to your first AA meeting. You stop drinking. There are no more parties. Just you and Lady Day.
Diana goes to Czechoslovakia to fight for democracy. You watch the demonstrations on the television. She does not return when she said she would. One hundred and seventeen Czech policemen have been injured. She is not among those arrested. You wait for three and a half black weeks before she writes to Billy from Prague. ‘Having fun. Tell Dora not to worry.’ Alexander Dubcek has become chairman of the Federal Assembly. Vaclav Havel is President.
23
J.D. had been playing poker last night. Might be playing still. Marie had slept fitfully. Alone. She thought she would never get used to having a man in her bed again, but it had only taken a couple of nights. Now, when he wasn’t there, she found it hard to adjust. She dragged herself to the bathroom and stood under the shower. J.D. must have altered the settings because it was hotter than usual and the water velocity swifter, drumming her flesh.
Gus, her late husband, had installed the shower. From time to time Marie thought of leaving this house, moving somewhere else, somewhere new, where Gus hadn’t fitted the shower, or painted the ceiling, where he hadn’t built a corner unit. Somewhere he hadn’t left a print.
But she didn’t move, because it would be pointless. The man had left his mark on her. There was never a gap of more than a few days when she didn’t think about him. After the initial shock of his death, a kind of dazed withdrawal, she had pulled herself together for the funeral. Everyone had gathered around, Sam and Geordie, and especially Celia, and walked her through it. Literally. Held her up by the elbows.
That had been the easy part.
Later she had gone on a quest for Gus, a tense period of restless behaviour, a kind of madness. She would see him in the street. She would see someone, some thing in the street, which wasn’t Gus, which could not possibly have been Gus, but which, in her madness, she thought was him. There was a day when she followed a man she believed was her dead husband. She saw him in Parliament Street and tracked him through Marks and Spencer and along the Stonebow, and caught hold of him outside Sainsbury’s, touched his shoulder, and sucked in her breath as he turned towards her face which belonged to a stranger.
In her desire for a miracle she would hallucinate him. Reading a book at the small table in the living room, lost in the plot or the syrupy lives of the characters, unaware of real life, real events, she’d look up and watch Gus materialize opposite her. It was as if he were real. As if she could reach out and touch him. He’d be wearing the green sweater, the one that had lost a thread near the collar, and she’d want to reach out and take it from him, mend it before it got worse.
And at night, in deep sleep, he’d lead her through a dreamscape of fantasy and contradiction. She dreamed that he had died in her dream, that in reality he was still alive. She simply had to wake up and everything would be all right. Morning after morning she’d awake with incomprehension, total disbelief, that he wasn’t there beside her. In those moments before waking she could feel him next to her, hear his breathing. She’d say, ‘Gus.’ And then a little louder, trying it out, hoping to hear him reply from the bathroom or the stairs.
But he couldn’t.
She’d explode then, tell him to get himself back here. And the anger would consume her, because who the hell did he think he was getting himself shot like that? How could he, how dare he take that kind of risk with her life, her future. She was abandoned. A woman deserted. He’d gone out and got himself killed rather than face up to his responsibilities. He’d died rather than love her. He couldn’t love, not really. Because love doesn’t die, not ever. Love goes on and on for ever. And he’d died, and taken all the love away, and it wasn’t bloody fair.
Guilt.
Guilt because of the anger. Gus hadn’t wanted to die, hadn’t committed suicide. He was killed by a psychopath Without warning. He hadn’t wanted that. No one volunteers to be shot in the face.
Only...
Sitting alone in that house it felt as though she’d been deserted.
Ambivalence, then. Give guilt another name.
Because that’s what it is. The thought was always fleeting. She didn’t see it coming, but suddenly it’d got her. It was a feeling of triumph. Triumph because she’d survived, and he was dead.
She didn’t want that thought. That feeling. But it kept coming back. She didn’t want to be the survivor.
Whichever way she turned there was guilt.
Or there used to be. That didn’t happen any longer. Marie grinned in the shower, threw up her head and laughed. What had happened in the end was that she had identified herself with Gus. She’d become a PI herself. Taken his place. Contracted the disease that had killed him.
She hadn’t idealized or denied him. What she’d done was something in between. When they’d lived together she’d allowed Gus to take over parts of her personality. And when he’d died she’d lost those parts of herself. To have lost Gus would have been a disaster difficult to cope with, but to have lost him and at the same time be unable to recognize her own self, that was unbearable.
But through grieving, through mourning she’d learnt something. The fundamental crisis of that whole period, that whole episode in her life had not been the loss of her husband, the loss of Gus. No matter how much she missed him, and sometimes still she did miss him terribly, the fundamental crisis for Marie had been the loss of self, and in identifying with Gus now, she had regained that self.
‘Why revisit all that?’ she asked herself as she switched on her hair dryer. But she knew why. Meeting J.D. was one of the reasons, having him in her bed invited all those images back. And then Geordie and Janet getting married was bound to remind her of her own marriage.
But thoughts of Gus would always return. Not obsession-ally, not now, and not particularly often. They would return from time to time, and she would live with them, because her time with him had been a formative time, and something she thought would last for ever.
Marie got a window table in Betty’s and told the waitress she didn’t want to order yet. She’d arranged to meet Janet there, and after coffee she’d help her choose a dress for the wedding tomorrow. The investigation of Edward Blake had been shunted into the background for the duration. Real life had taken over.
Janet arrived looking as cool and collected as always. She had let her hair grow over the last months and had it worked up in a girlish style from the fifties. Marie thought she looked like Catherine Deneuve in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. Geordie was getting a real peach of a woman. And then some, because Janet wasn’t just a pretty face.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said, placing several packages down by her chair. ‘We were buying the ring. Geordie wanted me to get white gold, and it took me ages to talk him out of it.’ She sat down and looked round for the waitress. ‘I hate that kind of thing, don’t you? Then, when I’d convinced him it wouldn’t suit me, he wanted me to get something studded with little stones. He said conventional wedding rings looked like curtain rings, and I said, “Yes, that’s what I want. I don’t want something that’s gonna stand out. Look at my fingers, they’re really long and thin, I don’t want to draw attention to them.” ’
‘They look like pretty good fingers to me,’ Marie said. Janet made a face. ‘That’s what Geordie said. But I’ve got to wear this ring, with a bit of luck for the rest of my life, and I want to be happy with it.’
‘So what did you get?’
‘Looks like a curtain ring,’ Janet said. ‘A thin band. Geordie said all his friends will think he’s a cheapskate. He’s gone to buy a suit with Sam. Wants something with wide lapels and a metallic fleck in it. I told him if he finds anything like that I won’t marry him. But you know what he’s like, he’ll spend a teenage fortune. By the time the wedding’s over we’ll be broke.’
Marie sipped her coffee. ‘What about the dress? What kind of thing are we looking for?’
‘If there was time I’d have had it made. Th
e idea I’ve got in my head is something in silk, dark blue, not too dark, full skirt, gathered at the waist. I saw one once, ages ago, in French Connection, I think. And I called in there on the way here, but they haven’t got anything like it.’
‘Sounds easy enough,’ said Marie, ironically. ‘How far are you willing to compromise?’
‘We’ve got about three hours. If I haven’t found anything by then I’ll call the wedding off.’
‘What happens in three hours?’
‘I meet my mother. She arrived last night. She thinks Geordie’s the pits. She thought he was scum before she set eyes on him, and as far as she’s concerned he’s already lived up to her expectations.’ Her lips quivered and a tear darted down her cheek, but she brushed it aside.
Marie reached out and covered her hand. ‘Oh, Jesus, Janet. That’s not fair.’
‘She doesn’t give him a chance. For hours before she arrived he was cleaning the house. He bought flowers to put in her room, made the bed up himself. I told him not to bother, that she was an ungrateful woman, and that she didn’t really like anybody in the world. But he wouldn’t listen. “This is gonna be my mother-in-law you’re talking about,” he said. “And I don’t wanna get off on the wrong foot with her.” He probably expected somebody like Celia, you know, someone who was interested in people. Or at least somebody who was interested in something outside of herself. But my mother’s never been like that. She’s interested in herself and her own thoughts, and she doesn’t have many thoughts. Not nice ones anyway. Basically she thinks everyone in the world is out to screw her, and she sets out to immobilize them before they can get near her.
‘Geordie went out an hour before she arrived and bought magazines at Smiths, Cosmopolitan and Vanity Fair. He went to Fenwick’s and got a new eiderdown for her bed because he thought the old one looked as though it had been washed. White, with little yellow flowers on. And he bought a picture, reproduction of some Matisse flowers, and hung it on the wall. We met her at the station, and when I introduced them she wouldn’t even shake hands with him. She wanted to rest, so I showed her the room, and five minutes later she was back downstairs with the magazines and the flowers, saying she didn’t read magazines, and flowers gave her a wheezy chest.
‘That was just the beginning. When we were eating last night Geordie tried again, thinking he’d just got off to a bad start. He turned up at the table with a collar and tie, and he’d been polishing his shoes for, well, must’ve been more than an hour. They were shining like they had batteries inside. My mother just pushed the food around on her plate. Geordie asked her what it was like back home, if she’d had a good trip on the train, what she thought about the royal family, if she’d read any good books lately. I could see he’d really thought about it. He’d lined up a whole gamut of topics to try out on her. If one of them didn’t work, he’d have another one ready to tempt her with. But she wasn’t having any of it. Whatever he said she’d grunt and look at her plate or out the window.
‘Finally she said, “The only thing I’m interested in is Janet’s welfare, and as she’s already pregnant before she’s even married, I can’t see very much future for her, can you? In my experience the kind of man who gets a girl pregnant before the marriage is not the kind of man who is going to be able to provide for a family, and will most likely desert the ship as soon as something goes wrong.”
‘ “I wouldn’t do that,” Geordie said. “Janet’s the most important person in the world. I’d never desert her, no matter what happened. And the baby’s gonna be a blessing. It’s gonna have everything in the world.”
‘Mother turned on him. “And how’re you going to provide for them? That’s what I’d like to know. You don’t have a proper job. You’ve got no education. As far as I can see you don’t have any ambition.”
‘Geordie got up from the table and went to our room. I gave her what for, but she knew she’d drawn blood with him, and it didn’t matter what I said, she was happy because she’d made him miserable. I don’t see how she can say she’s interested in my welfare. She’s never been interested in anything I’ve done. We only invited her because I thought the silence had gone on long enough. She’s old and lonely now, and I thought she would’ve responded to us including her in the wedding, and with the baby coming.’
Marie squeezed her hand over the table. ‘That sounds terrible,’ she said. ‘How can you stand it?’
‘I know her. I spent my childhood with her. I can phase her out, forget about her, even when she’s in front of me. But it’s harder for Geordie. At breakfast this morning he was trying to be polite.’
Marie shook her head. ‘Geordie won’t put up with it for long, though. Specially if he talks it over with Sam. Sam’ll tell him to poke her in the eye, and he’s liable to do it.’
‘I know,’ said Janet. ‘He was burning Vanity Fair this morning, a page at a time.’ She laughed. ‘What gets me is the hypocrisy of it. All that nonsense about Geordie’s prospects. Mother doesn’t give a damn about that. She hates him because I’m in love with him. Anybody I liked she’d find fault with. When I was at home she hated anything I liked. Music, films, books, clothes. You name it, if I liked it she’d think it was the work of the Devil.’ Janet stopped talking. She shook her head from side to side for a moment, then she said: ‘But I don’t want to think about all that. What about you? How’re you getting on with J.D.?’
Marie turned up her nose. ‘So-so,’ she said. ‘Oh, I like his company well enough, when he’s there. It’s good to have a man around for a change, though I can’t help comparing him to Gus. But I find myself getting irritated with him. He’d changed the shower settings this morning. I know it’s trivial, but if I’d done that in somebody else’s house I’d have changed them back again when I’d finished.’
Janet smiled.
‘And he gambles,’ Marie continued. ‘Gambles everything he’s got. Comes away from the table without a bean. Needs to borrow money to get a sandwich or buy a newspaper.’
‘What about the sex?’
Marie eyed her. ‘First indications seem promising. But it’s so long since I did it, I’m not the best judge.’
‘So what you’re saying,’ said Janet. ‘There’s a guy in your life, you’ve invited him in and asked him to take his coat off, but for the time being he shouldn’t remove his shoes.’
‘Yeah,’ said Marie. ‘And there’s something else beginning to put me off. You know those tight little balls of fluff you get on a jumper when it’s been washed too many times?’ Janet nodded.
Marie shook her head. ‘All his jumpers are like that.’
The waitress arrived and asked if they wanted more coffee. Janet glanced at her watch. ‘We’d better get going. There’s not just the dress. I need shoes, tights, order some flowers. Oh, and don’t let me forget make-up. I need pink eye-shadow, blusher, some white highlighter, and a black pencil. Going for the Bo-peep look.’
When she got to the office the door was locked. Inside there Was a note from Celia saying she’d be back in half an hour. Marie sat quietly at her desk, glad of the break after the lunch-hour shopping.
She was beginning to unwind when she heard the footfall on the stairs. It wasn’t a sound she recognized. Sam took two steps at a time when he arrived. Geordie scurried up the stairs, something like a hungry mouse after discovering a grain-store. Celia placed her feet crisply on each tread advertising the organizational flair and precision which enabled her to run the office.
But the steps on the stair now were none of these. Whoever was coming up was having some difficulty with the climb. Probably someone for one of the other offices. Except the sound was ominous, creepy, setting an echo in the stairwell, and, finally, in the passage leading to the office.
The figure that presented itself on the other side of the frosted glass was much smaller than Marie had expected. There was a quick tap on the door, which was immediately pushed open to reveal a woman who Marie felt she should know, but didn’t quite recognize.
She’d obviously been beaten. Her right eye was at the centre of an angry bruise, the flesh around it ranging in hue from yellow to black. Her nose had stopped bleeding, but it was swollen and there were tell-tale traces of dried blood around her nostrils. She stumbled forward with a limp and each step creased her face with pain.
‘Geordie Black,’ she said. ‘Is he here?’
Marie swivelled her chair around to face the woman. She shook her head. ‘No, I’m sorry, he isn’t in at the moment. Can I help?’ She saw that the woman behind the bruises was only a girl. Blond hair with dark roots, tight jeans cut off just below the knee and black plastic high-heeled sandals.
She was Edward Blake’s girlfriend, Joni Prine, the one Marie had seen at the house in Portland Street. She’d had a black eye when Marie had first seen her, maybe walked into a door that time, but the way she looked now, the door had come back and walked all over her.
Marie helped her to a chair, but Joni wasn’t looking to make herself comfortable. ‘Give him this,’ she said, taking a brown envelope from the pocket of her jacket. ‘It’s all there, fifty quid. I told him lies about Eddy, everything I said I made it up.’ Her lips trembled as she watched Marie take the envelope from her hand. ‘I don’t know any Eddy, never even heard of him.’
She turned her back on Marie and limped towards the door.