His eyes rested on her mouth. ‘Madame, are you making me a proposition?’
Suddenly she took in a gust of sweat, and smelt Jonas, definitely Jonas, arriving behind her with another boxed delivery.
Catching her half-brother at the corner of her eye, she tipped forward and away. ‘Let’s go.’
A Thursday that December. Charing Cross Road, the rumble of traffic, the tramping of crowds. The moon once more hung over the city, on the wane. Martine had just met Gerry Taylor. Good-looking and intelligent, Small feet, she’d noticed, but scorned the thing about shoe size, so they were moving on from a pub, letting the door go on the shouted conversations, cigarette smoke cooked with beer. She was laughing, her face flushing, knowing that it was.
The lanky Jonas suddenly materialised, across from them on a corner by the green man. When he saw them he tipped off the pavement, and a cab nearly hit him. He’d obviously been loitering on purpose.
Gerry stopped by a theatre, lighting a cigarette. Her eyes jumped over him: preppy; nipples hard as tackheads through that sweater. As they chatted, he nodded vaguely at her gloved hands like beaks, opening and shutting: as usual she saw her ridiculousness, but felt fine.
Gerry moved off at last. She steered them into a shopping street and spoke to him without turning, bowling along ahead of him, trusting he was there. Along the shopfronts, swags of coloured Christmas lights painted out the grime around each windowframe, a rolling purified filmstrip of her beloved London. Then she saw Jonas, still walking the pavement opposite.
‘We could find a…’ she started.
Gerry interrupted, ‘Everywhere’s busy near Christmas.’
Martine saw that Jonas had been diverted by a jogger with a false white beard, a Christmas pudding in his hand. She guided Gerry into an alley with a bar. Jonas stumbled past, oblivious. It didn’t help: minutes later, Gerry made excuses and left.
Jonas had been a draftsman before he’d lost his job in Chicago. His mind worked in lines, making intersections, and Martine guessed that it had occurred to him that from her college and its nearest Underground station, Russell Square, the Piccadilly line ran her direct to Leicester Square. That there it was crossed by the Northern line, where she could change trains to hurry home. Covent Garden was too close to work for dating, but she could emerge at Leicester Square: the network of streets between the Square and Cambridge Circus was perfect dating middle ground.
Smart guesswork, she admitted. She imagined Jonas systematically scoping the bars and pubs. Her thoughts circled Gerry Taylor, the preppy journalist who’d got away. She suspected Jonas’s stalking had transferred itself to pressure on her, indirectly putting Gerry off. She wrote a personal ad for her escapee in Time Out, and he rang up.
On a night in January 1983, Martine kept Gerry Taylor waiting. Her umbrella blocked the rain-etched moon. When she got to À Bordeaux, he bought them lagers at the bar.
‘“Reported missing in action.”’ He smirked at her ad, which he’d marked with a circle, one hand cupping her elbow. “More coverage wanted.”’
She shook her head, rueful. ‘Crude come-on.’
While Gerry was at the cigarette machine, the Aussie bar boy said, ‘Dunno if I should mention. A bloke left these.’ He pushed two book jackets towards her. ‘Said, ring him if I saw you.’ They were the covers of her books, Research Methods in Education: A Student Guide and Training: Structure v. Process. He grinned. ‘That’s you.’
She felt the blood rushing to her face, reclaimed her author mugshots and stuffed them in her bag.
In her mind’s eye she saw Jonas and Mum’s life together. Flying lessons from Mum so they could talk about horizon lines (Jonas had wanted a pilot’s licence when he’d lived in Chicago). Companionship, Jonas’s gift to Mum. Martine was glad they had each other; but still cursed, I’m being besieged again.
She had to get Gerry home. As she held a cab door open, he paused to tread a cigarette into the pavement. She visualised Jonas somewhere across the rainy street, reflective jacket jazzing from the theatre billings round him. He might have harassed her into this, but surely he’d want the best for her and hope that things went well.
2 The object
Friday 1 February 2013
While Martine skirts her decision for Jocelyn Teague, the object of it is currently using an iPad. Skyping could alert the warders, as they’re nicknamed, so the silence of Facebooking is safest – once the warders have gone to bed themselves. The object’s woodsmoke fingers tap, messaging in the shadows on the lower bunk bed. The object’s neon wristband glows, keys and feathers hanging from it. The bed occupant overhead jerks and rolls about to iPod beats as heavily as a mammoth in a sack.
The first Facebook message to be sent is for Luna. Luna is Sailor Moon’s talking cat, Sailor Moon being the best anime in the whole galaxy of Japanese anime, so Luna is natural code for best friend.
‘Been too long. Whatcha doin out there. While I’m stuck here.
‘There’s no wifi in this building and they’ve confiscated our mobiles and they ban the internet. But yesterday they took us out and you know me I got a bit lost and suddenly a phone shop. Bought a dongle (the same word, weird in English innit). So the others envy me and hate me. Think I’ll call them the Dead Moon Circus, like in Sailor Moon.
‘I’m swallowing the nothing English food and trying to be nice by laughing at the DMC’s lame jokes. I know, I know, nothing makes me see funny.
‘Write soon.’
The message gets posted, sent.
The object’s dark eyes find an email from the family. ‘Are you still not getting these, precious? Make sure you make the most of this experience.’ Reading, the feathered head ducks, as if fending off a blow. ‘What’s been sorted for the 15th ? Have they found you someone? Reassure us.’
The object intones a silent mantra, useful for anxiety. Marche, liement, en garde. Croisé, coupé, doublé. Sixte, quarte, octave, septime. The fingers handle the doorkeys on the wristband, chinking them like a rosary, one by one.
Put on a brave face.
Fingerpads slide and tap again. ‘There’s plenty of time. Stop stressing. It’s OK.’
* * *
Martine
1983
Back in her maisonette, Martine was conscious of Gerry Taylor’s hand round the coffee mug. Smoker’s fingers, manicured. His arm trailed along the back of the Sottsass sofa.
‘So.’ He laid one casually bent leg over the other.
Martine’s pulse skittered. She sipped her coffee.
A flukeish find, she considered. Catalogue handsome: lathed features, ice blue eyes, a promising physique.
‘Tell me what you’ve been doing since I saw you.’
For some reason she told him about her latest paper, her big-thumbed hands chopping air, trying to stifle the internal giggle, Ali would probably say I look as though I’m already raring to remake the bed.
Abruptly there was quiet, Gerry looking amused and baffled.
Martine flirted, ‘Any dream dates – apart from ours?’
‘Tell me about academe,’ the journalist in him said smoothly. ‘Why teach teachers when you could teach kids?’
Martine said, ‘Done that. But once you’ve got the knack, don’t you find you want to move on? And I still do it, kind of. Teach children by proxy.’
‘The refuge behind the lens,’ Gerry murmured.
‘Anyway, teachers are just big kids, like us.’
‘But who teaches you?’ wondered Gerry.
Martine launched into a jittery tale. ‘The other day, a lovely man was telling me his lesson plan. Another teacher piped up and accused him of stealing hers. And before I could call time out, they were more or less playground fighting. I had to comfort him.’
‘But who looks out for us, if we’re such saviours of humanity?’ asked Gerry, which disorientated Martine. ‘Or what if we’re not?’ he carried on. ‘Who saves us from ourselves?’ He was leaning forward, watching her. ‘You seem different this
time. More human. Nervous. Nicer.’ She was startled. He plonked his mug on the low table. ‘Would you comfort me if I seemed in distress?’ She laughed, a thick sound she hadn’t heard before. ‘It’s hard on these assignments,’ he said, his smile fading. ‘When I was in the north last week, I cried.’ She couldn’t see where this was going. ‘I was moved by the bombings. Not at the victims’ plight, I’m ashamed to say, but…I was just…terrified, frankly.’ Now Gerry was grinning, blinking down at the carpet.
Martine scooched to her seat edge.
‘I don’t think I can go back there,’ he said.
Martine felt something unexpected.
She said, ‘Are you all right?’
‘I don’t think I can go back there,’ he repeated.
Martine put her hand out. ‘Come with me.’ What she meant was, ‘Let me help you.’
Gerry rose woodenly. She started the usual route march down the corridor. Trembling, her hands turned on the lights: half-spheres of milky glass, imitations of the moon, and more as they tramped downstairs.
In her bedroom Martine baulked, oddly wary of his reaction to the crimson alcove with its gilded, built-in bookshelves arching over the mound of the velvet-covered bed. It had often raised a laugh, but he slipped in past her without sound and began undressing. Her body fluttered. She fumbled with her dress and tights and couldn’t think where to leave things. When she pulled out of her bra, he was already naked.
He was almost hairless, a lovely phantom female quality, she thought. The penis was uncircumcised and tall. He tipped her onto the bed. If she was to help him, he couldn’t take charge. They lay touching at the knees. She stroked him. She tried to slide an arm under him, but found no gap. She licked his jaw, tasting his aftershave in a draught of cigarette breath, then slid down, lips pinching each bone of the ribcage, and moved onto his pelvis, sucking in the leather-musk of soap.
He shrugged away. A manicured hand passed the pimples of her breasts, her fleshy hips and pelvis, her chunky, waxed calves, then just as her mouth went to his face again, he suddenly knelt up. He pastry-rolled her onto her side, slipping between her legs.
She wanted to ask again, ‘Are you OK?’
He wouldn’t let her hold him.
His penis riffled her labia and broke into her cunt. He glided in. They rowed together. Sometimes his eyes went to her groin to check she was keeping up.
Without warning he said ‘Now!’, and she mouthed, ‘Oh, please!’, and he spasmed, then slithered out. Her vagina throbbed, too late.
He hopped out of bed, fishing a pack of Camels from his jeans, his arse unbothered by her stare. Lighting up, he lay against the pillows. She felt held open. Sex was her unscientific outlet, a nearness to manhood so intense that it couldn’t be dangerous. It was her far side – not her dark side: some friends could see that, under certain conditions. This was her portion that stayed unseen.
Gerry blew smoke at the ceiling. ‘Feel better after. Thanks for that.’
She snorted silently, Sex isn’t a kind of medical treatment.
‘Basically, I’d like to do nothing but this.’
She teased, ‘Have a lot of sex, do you?’
‘Not sure how much is a lot.’ His face was humourless, eyes squinting against the smoke. ‘There’s a neighbour, a nurse, who helps me out.’
She blinked. ‘But you’re trying to find someone supportive, to be with for a while.’
‘Oh I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Don’t want reforming, that’s for sure.’ He yawned. ‘Had a girlfriend once who tried that.’ His arm slipped under her shoulders. ‘D’you mind if we go to sleep?’
And then they nestled, his lap cupping her body, his balls rolling gently under her, and it was a novelty, because men usually went home. His form melted into relaxation, expelling noisy gases, and she stifled chuckles. Maybe, despite the countersigns, all this with her was what he sought.
When she dressed in the morning, his confession of weakness lingered with her, still massaging her need to offer help. She agreed he could leave later, latching the door on his way out.
In the kitchen, she left a note. ‘I’m sure you will go back. Good luck in Sri Lanka. Help yourself to breakfast…Is it me, or did we make a connection? …Won’t bother you again – unless you want to be bothered. If so,’ and gave her number.
That evening the note had vanished.
She found it late the next night, in the bin she was emptying out.
In a reflex she rang her mother, then realised it was gone midnight. ‘You were up because the phone went.’
‘Ho-hum. Spoilt my punchline as usual.’
Her mother didn’t need to ask how she was. She talked about a new neighbour, her day’s shopping trip and Jonas, all with a ringing cheeriness.
While her mother’s voice murmured, Martine drew back the sleeve of her kimono and pulled at the links on her armlet. She’d hoped she could take it off, maybe give blind dating a break. She felt the stitch-like pain that meant her return to egg production. Through the window behind her the moon was in its fullness yet again, still a teaching aid, no more. Meanwhile her mother droned like honeybees in summer.
Abruptly she heard her say, ‘What about Jonas? Tum-tum. D’you think he’ll ever get the work he wants? I’m not even sure he’s looking.’
‘I could try to pull a few strings,’ said Martine. The balled-up note for Gerry was scratchy in her fist. ‘I know people – if Jonas wants to work in London.’
‘That’d be great, love. He might let you.’
‘D’you talk to him about Dad?’ Martine urged.
Her mother hurdled this with ‘Of course not,’ and reverted to Jonas. ‘Speak to him. I’m sure he’s still up somewhere.’
Martine declined. He’d only refuse and pass a message: that was all he ever did.
People invent patterns. Martine began to spot Wyn Davies wherever she was in college: the library, the cafeteria queue, on the stairs, always wearing something bright, like a handwave. The teacher she’d mentioned to Gerry. In the staff lounge, where he shouldn’t even have been, she sought a seat, and the red-shirted Wyn was the first person out of a chair.
‘Crossword?’ he sighed.
He flung her The Times, and a page spilt out, and a boy’s face came towards her, a dark face, captioned ‘Sponsored child, Peru’.
The sell line read, ‘Would you like to get to know him – and help him at the same time?’
The charity offered a geographical menu: Africa, Indonesia, El Salvador, Sri Lanka. She hooked onto the last place on the list.
It offered her a way to spin the night with Gerry Taylor: to flip what she’d hoped to give him into real help. It would also be payback for the way he’d slithered off: a link, through the country of his assignment, that he’d never even know of. At the weekend, she sent off the coupon, thinking, I’ve made a pattern for myself.
3 Martine
Monday 4 February 2013
In her cramped flat, Martine’s been cooking. If her relationships are to be real, to have meaning for her, food must be there.
In the 1980s she went for earthy, complex flavours. Duck with olives, almonds and honey. Beef, pickled walnuts and prunes under puff pastry. Terrine of cauliflower, tomato and broccoli with a sorrel sauce. These days she produces simple fare as well, calling it spontaneity. Pears on a board with cheeses. A plate of smoky antipasti. Fresh seafood on moist seaweed. Each dish she thinks about with care, slogging to express something. This time, it’s to work out a dilemma.
Today she’s turned over and over what Jocelyn Teague is asking, all while avoiding the spare room. She’s cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom, sorted out papers in the sitting room, tried to push back the tide of clutter. She’s mummified a ball of shortcrust pastry in clingfilm, laid it in the fridge to rest. This embryo of some meal reminds her of parenting, of her mother yet again. She doesn’t know what she’ll make out of the pastry. This is unlike her. Sancho draws attention to himself, raising a claw, leaving
it suspended as if to scratch his head. Martine thinks and thinks. She thinks, I’ll check for the decorator’s number, just in case.
The Für Elise phone ringtone startles her, although she half-expected it.
‘Look, we can’t really wait much longer,’ says Jocelyn Teague. Her voice isn’t as shrill as last time. ‘There’s a family involved as well, waiting to know.’
‘And you say it has to be this one,’ says Martine. ‘It’s only that, ideally…’
‘We’ve been through this before,’ says Jocelyn Teague.
‘I can’t tell you just yet.’ Martine puts down the phone.
Sancho scratches, and another limp joke comes back to her. A chameleon’s motto? A change is as good as a rest. As a scientist, she knows that chameleons don’t actually colour with their environment. Their chromatophores change constantly, according to their mood. She thinks, With me, it’s environment and mood: my decision-making powers seem to fluctuate with both.
Tonight, the slip of moon is at the window again. And again, she tries to blank the illusion that it looks angled at her. She rings back Jocelyn Teague.
‘I’ll tell you by tomorrow,’ she says.
* * *
1983–1984
In response to her Times coupon, from Sri Lanka InterRelate gave Martine a boy. She’d asked for one without a second thought. With the letter of introduction came a policy document and a leaflet.
His name was Liyanage Mohan, or Mohan Liyanage. He suddenly seemed a bit of an imposition. At college she’d just committed to more research; she was covering for a colleague, who was sick; then there was a conference in Stirling to prepare for. Most evenings she had her round of socialising. These were the movements of her life, frictionless and regular, as if it were a machine with its own beauty.
She put off explaining the boy to her mother, one of those parent-child mysteries that she shrugged off. She even turned to her address book for advisors on the ethics of cold feet. Sheila, Tony, Dawn and their undergrad entomology project came back to her: after the four of them had urged each other on through five long nights surveying nocturnal insects pricked out in glowworm light, they’d celebrated by jumping into a freezing summer river. None of the other three was now a scientist but even today, they shared a house. Sheila, survivor of a near-fatal car crash and ardent cat lover, worked for a charity, which could be vaguely relevant; Tony, his love of Dawn still undeclared, was a counsellor, which might help.
On the Far Side, There's a Boy Page 2