The Late Hector Kipling

by David Thewlis

  ‘Oh yeah, nearby.’

  She asks me where I live and I give her the address. She says that she’ll be over in an hour and I see no way of contesting such an announcement and say’ Fine’ and ‘Great’ and put down the phone. She’ll be over in an hour.

  ‘Fine. Great!’ I say to the ceiling, ‘Over in an hour.’

  ‘Fine,’ says the ceiling.

  ‘Great,’ says the door.

  I light a cigarette, and smoke it as fast as any cigarette has ever been smoked. I light another one and try to get the time down. I dunno, it’s close, you’d need a stopwatch. I pace up and down the room, and then around the room hugging the corners, a mad rabble of possibilities all barking out their bids as my brain turns into the floor of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

  There’s nothing in the room to imply the presence of Eleni. I mean there are a hundred things, but nothing overtly feminine that might give the game away to a stranger. We were never one of those couples who populate their home with photos of themselves. That’s one of the things I loved about her. I mean love about her. I only mean loved, in the past tense, meaning when I first met her. One of the things I loved about her when I first met her. And still do. I still do love her, really love her, for not wanting to populate our home with photos of ourselves. There’s her piano, of course, but that could be mine. There’s her coat on the back of the front door but I can put that into the bedroom.

  Christ, the bedroom! The bedroom’s full of Eleni. Her clothes, her shoes, her hats and bangles. Her books are all in Greek. Her collection of owls and cows all lined up on the purple shelves. There’s a photo of Yiorgos and Sofia on the wall by the window, and on the wall above the bed there’s a charcoal sketch, naked and alive, her eyes wide and rich with trust. I drew it two hours after our first kiss. I pace around the room, bouncing off the walls like a lost bluebottle. Fucking hell, Hector lad, what are you doing? Don’t do it. Don’t bring Rosa into this bedroom. Don’t fuck Rosa Flood. Do not bring Rosa Flood into this room and fuck her.

  ‘Fuck her in the kitchen,’ says the ceiling.

  ‘Fuck her on top of the piano,’ says the door.

  In the bathroom I pile all Eleni’s soaps and creams into an old rucksack. There’s no way I’ll be able to keep Rosa out of the bathroom. I can lock the bedroom and say it’s a dump room, tell her that the settee’s a sofa bed, but how the fuck am I gonna keep her out of the bathroom? Combs, tweezers, ducks, sponges, perfumes, tampons, lipsticks, toothbrush. All of them into the bag. It’s a disgraceful obliteration.

  I can’t do this. When she rings on the bell I’ll go down to meet her. I’ll say I’ve got the builders in, I’ll say there’s been a small fire and maybe we should just go for a coffee. I just can’t do this to Eleni. I mean I’ve already done it, but that was a one off. A lapse of will. Think about it, Hector. Just fucking think about it, you piece of dried-out old crap. Eleni’s mother is dying. Really, really dying. Not dying like people die in films or in books. Dying in real life. Proper dying. Eleni’s watching her fade. Eleni’s holding Sofia’s cooling blue hand and I’m fucking some whacked-out American child poet. No, no, no. There is no way that this can continue. There is no way on God’s earth that I will allow this treason to continue.

  ‘And forty Camel Lights,’ I say, placing the basket on the counter. I’ve got three bottles of Rioja in there as well. ‘In fact, make that sixty.’

  ‘I only have them in tens,’ says Sergio, the old, silver-haired Italian rake.

  ‘Whatever, give me six. It all goes down the same hole – as my father used to say.’

  ‘Same hole,’ he repeats as he raises one grubby grey eyebrow, making it sound rather ribald.

  Used to say? What am I talking about? He still says it. He’s not dead. ‘All goes down the same hole,’ he says, has always said, will always say. He’s probably saying it right now as some nurse spoons Angel Delight and gravy down his lovely freckled neck.

  I’m having difficulty standing in one spot. My thigh is fizzing again and my legs seem hell-bent on walking. They haven’t discussed this with me, but they seem to have made their own decision. Fair enough. Who am I to dictate the will of my lower half? I pace over to the bread display and look at the bread for a long time. I’m not sure what I’m looking at? What is bread? And what are these? What are these things in jars? Herrings, it says on the label, but what, or who, are herrings? And why?

  ‘Is that all?’

  I turn around. ‘What?’

  ‘The wine and sixty Camel Lights? Is that all?’

  ‘Er . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And some of those,’ I mumble, pointing at the condoms behind him.

  His face breaks open in a broad bright smile, all gold teeth and basil. ‘Avanti!’ he yells.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It is the name of the condom.’

  ‘Yes, that one.’

  ‘Andare avanti! Andare avanti!’ he shouts as he tosses them into my bag with great gusto. ‘It means for you in English, I think, how you say – go for it, my old son!’ and he winks at me like an old pantomime pirate.

  ‘Ah yes,’ I say, for I seem to remember Eddie Waring yelling such a thing when they held the grand final of It’s An International Knockout in Blackpool, when I was a kid.

  I pay in a hurry and beat a retreat to the door. ‘Go for it!’ he screams after me as I run out onto the street, appalled. ‘Go for it, my old son!!’

  As I reach the corner of Box Street I see a dirty red truck pulling up outside my door. Two men jump out, open up the back, and begin to manoeuvre a huge beige battered and ugly settee onto the pavement. It’s difficult not to think of childbirth. I’m Hector Kipling and I have this voice in my head screaming, ‘Push! Push! Push!’

  ‘What’s going on?’ says Rosa, who is suddenly behind me.

  ‘Oh!’ I squeak. ‘Oh my God, you made me jump.’

  ‘Hello, soldier,’ she says and kisses me on the cheek, giggling. She smells wonderful.

  ‘Hello, er . . .’ She’s wearing a tan leather flight jacket, a Russian hat, black tights with a tartan skirt and heavy, unlaced combat boots. ‘Hello, er . . . Scottish . . . Cossack, pilot, punk.’

  She giggles again and takes my hand in hers which is speckled with green paint, presumably from painting her new frog skull. What a girl.

  The two men from the truck are gasping for breath and ringing on my doorbell.

  ‘So what’s going on?’ she asks me again.

  ‘Oh, it’s a long, long story.’

  ‘It’s a long, long fucking couch.’

  ‘Settee,’ I say.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It’s not a couch. It’s a settee. In Blackpool we call it a settee.’

  She frowns, intrigued. ‘Blackpool?’

  ‘That’s where I’m from. A small town in the north-west of England. It’s called Blackpool.’

  She stops in her tracks and lets go of my hand. ‘Wow,’ says Rosa, almost bouncing, ‘Black-pool. I love that. Black Pool. That sounds like such a sacred site.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I say, as one of the men at my door is overcome with a fit of coughs. ‘Oh yeah, it’s a real sight.’

  ‘Cool,’ she says, and regains my hand.

  This is not pleasurable. How could this ever be pleasurable? This is the opposite of fucking pleasurable. This is . . . How could anyone find having burning hot candle wax dripped onto the flesh of their belly pleasurable? It’s fucking agony, and I wish it would stop. But I don’t want to tell her to stop cos the last time I told her to stop I got belted in the mouth. She wears an average of three rings on each finger, so another belt in the mouth is not something I can afford to provoke. God, Mum was right, this lousy settee does stink. No wonder Dad’s in hospital. I might well be joining him by the end of the night.

  I stare at her navel, and then at the crow on her shoulder, and then at her breasts. I think I’m still inside her but, quite honestly, it’s difficult to tell with so many other n
erve endings crackling and spitting.

  Avanti!

  ‘You fucker!’ she drawls, and brings the flame up close to my left nipple. ‘You pathetic little fucker,’ and tries to light it like a wick.

  ‘Ooowwww!’

  ‘You like that?’ she says, bouncing in my lap. ‘You fucking like that, man?’

  This is worse than the other night. I don’t want this. I’m not sure that I’m up for all this. Oh shit, my nipple’s on fire. She’s poured lighter fluid onto my chest and my tit’s gone up in flames like some dessert in a posh restaurant.

  ‘Fuck, Rosa! Aggghhhh! For fuck’s sake! Blow it out! Blow it out!’

  ‘OK, baby,’ she whispers, suddenly gentle, ‘OK, my angel,’ and with this she reaches down and pours half a can of Stella over my scorched chest. I’m beginning to regret that I ever invited her in. ‘How’s that?’ she says, lowering her head and lapping up the ale. ‘That nice? That nice, baby?’

  ‘No!’ I scream.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, Rosa, no that is not fucking nice! It bloody kills!’

  She cracks me across the face with the back of her hand, grips my throat, spits in my eye and scrapes her nails across my scalded flesh. And that’s when I come. Oh yes. That’s when the core of my soul spasms and snaps, spilling out its filthy pips.

  Well, there you go.

  Funny old business.

  It’s getting dark and she’s asleep in my arms, eyes closed and tucked away behind her damp black fringe. She smells of Eden. Everything about her is forbidden and my heart is swollen with ache. The dust, confused. The ashtray, full of us. Empty glasses, empty cans. Underwear and bottles on the sticky wooden floor. The cartoon bomb on the bulb of her ankle bone. The blisters on my nipple. The silence of a grave dug in space. What the fuck was Mum thinking of when she bought this settee? This obese beige settee, now drifting out to sea.

  I suppose it was reckless of me to fall asleep. Lenny had said that he wouldn’t be back till eight and it was about six when me and Rosa were done with our organs of increase. I thought that I might be able to close my eyes for a quarter of an hour, keeping it lucid, just to take the edge off my fatigue; after all I would need my wits about me to manoeuvre Rosa out of the flat without it looking like her departure was imperative. I could tell her that I have to speak to my mum and needed privacy. But no, that would be flawed and might well lead her into the bedroom and burden me with the farce of a fictitious phone call. I could, of course, just tell her the truth, that Lenny was due back. But then that’s no good either. She might be suspicious about why we couldn’t just be open with Lenny and announce our coupling with pride and glee. I could tell her that I had to be somewhere and leave with her. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do; I have to be at a private dinner, and if she wants a lift home, then that would be a pleasure. Perfect.

  Except of course that it isn’t perfect. It would have been perfect, but it’s not, cos I didn’t sleep for a quarter of an hour, I slept for two hours. I might have slept for three hours had I not been awoken by the key in the door and the clunk and thud of Lenny’s Docs crossing the floor.

  Clunk, thud. Clunk, thud. And then silence. I can feel him behind us. I can hear his breath and his stomach. It sounds like he’s carrying some shopping cos I can hear the faint rustle of polythene as it rests against his leg. I might even be able to hear his heart. Or is that mine? I keep my eyes closed and my mouth open. I breathe through my nose. My torso stinks of Stella and petrol. No one moves. Rosa’s still asleep. About a minute goes by. I think it’s a minute, it’s hard to tell when it’s the worst minute of your life. It’s the worst minute of my life, and yet, I want it to last forever, cos I have very little desire to embark upon the next minute. The next minute is only seconds away. The next minute -the next twenty, thirty – will be about as awful as minutes can get. Who’s gonna break it? Who’s gonna cross the line? What is there to say? There’s nothing to say. It’s all there. There’s no use in Lenny asking us what’s going on. There’s no use in me explaining, justifying, denying the circumstances. It’s all there in three dimensions. I might as well sleep. Maybe he’ll go away.

  Silence.

  How long’s he gonna just stand there? What’s going through his big bald head? Perhaps he’s assessing the settee, weighing up its possibilities. Well, maybe me and Rosa should never wake up. Then he can just lug the whole thing down to the Tate: me and Rosa, naked, on a monstrous beige settee. That’d be fine by me. I’d be quite happy to sleep till mid-November. I’d be quite happy if Saatchi bought us and put us on permanent display on the South Bank. Happy to sleep for ever. After all, before Lenny walked through the door it was a perfect moment. Why alter one detail? The mark of a great artist is knowing when to stop. The same might be said of life. We should all be allowed to choose when to stop. The problem is that when the moment is perfect we never do choose to stop, just in case things get more perfect. We only ever choose to stop when things are far from perfect, and stopping then is easy. But that sort of stopping leaves a bad taste in the heart. Whatever. I have the option to wake up from this sham, to untangle myself from Rosa’s embrace, and throw open the loading doors. I have the option not to acknowledge one more thing, not to utter one more word. To implement the courage to summon up my cowardice. To sway on the ledge and swallow, before plummeting four floors to the hard and bloody cobbles of Box Street. I wonder how that might feel?

  Silence.

  Is he just stood there behind the settee gawping at Rosa’s mad, damp body? I’ll fucking kill him. Is that what he’s doing? Taking it all in, whilst he’s got the chance? Get your fucking eyes off her you cheap bald opportunistic, thief! Give us some fucking privacy! He might even have his cock out, for all I know. Jesus, what a hideous thought. For all I know he might even be gawping at my body, with his cock out. I wouldn’t put it past him. Why doesn’t he move or speak? If this goes on for much longer he’ll be hearing from my solicitor.

  Silence.

  Suddenly Lenny’s phone rings. I hear him bend at the waist as he puts down the bags.

  ‘Hello?’

  In my arms, Rosa is stirring.

  ‘Huh?’ she says, her eyes half open, her hand on my inner thigh.

  ‘Eleni?’ says Lenny.

  I open my eyes and turn my head. Lenny is towering over the back of the settee with the phone to his ear. Behind the blue lenses his eyes are fixed on my eyes. His ear, however is in Crete.

  ‘How are you?’

  Nothing but eyes.

  ‘What?’ says Rosa.

  ‘Shhh,’ I say, and she looks up at Lenny. Now he’s staring at both of us, shifting his contempt from one to the other.

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘no, sweetheart, I still haven’t heard from him, I’m afraid. I told you, I haven’t seen him since the show.’

  Rosa reaches down for her T-shirt and drapes it across our hips.

  ‘Eleni?’ says Lenny. ‘Eleni?’ He takes the phone from his ear and looks at it. He frowns and presses a button. ‘Eleni?’ He looks at it again, presses another button and slips it back into his pocket. His eyes return. Beneath the T-shirt Rosa moves her hand up my thigh. I don’t know why, and I wish she wouldn’t.

  Lenny lifts his eyebrows towards what used to be his hairline and puckers up his lips. Oh well. Here we go.

  ‘Hi, Lenny,’ says Rosa.

  ‘Hi, Rosa,’ says Lenny.

  ‘How did it go?’ I say.

  ‘How did what go?’ says Lenny.

  ‘How did it go down at the Tate?’

  Lenny’s mouth changes shape. It’s not a smile, but it belongs to the same family. It would be a smile, were it not for his eyes.

  ‘Fine,’ he says, ‘it went fine, Hec,’ and he returns his gaze to Rosa. Rosa’s got her hand around my balls and she’s squeezing. I have no fucking understanding of why she’s doing that. ‘That was Eleni,’ says Lenny.

  ‘So I gathered.’

  ‘Who’s Eleni?’ says Rosa, spreading her fingers.
‘Isn’t that your sister, the dentist?’

  Lenny looks ashamed of me. I really wish that he wouldn’t. But then again, I’d have no respect for him if he didn’t.

  He turns and walks away. He unpacks his shopping, squatting in front of the open fridge, filling up the shelves with dried tomatoes, greasy olives, free-range eggs and banana cheesecake. He tosses two packets of wheat-free fettuccini onto the draining board and spills a bag of Clementines into the fruit bowl.

  I can’t think of anything to say. What can I say? What can anybody say? Lenny looks set on milking the silence, and Rosa is simply bewildered, her fist around my balls, trying to get the hang of things.

  Lenny kneels by the phone and unpacks a new answering machine. He mucks about with the wires and plugs as Rosa shifts her hand up and down, up and down.

  ‘You bought a new answering machine?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Lenny.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  ‘Well, we’ll be needing one,’ he says. ‘If I’m gonna be staying here, I’m gonna need an answering machine.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘yeah.’

  Lenny fiddles with a few buttons and then leans in close to the microphone. ‘Hello, this is Hector, Lenny and El . . . Lector and Henny, shit!’ and he presses a few more buttons and starts again. ‘Hello, this is Lenny Snook and Hector Kipling, neither of us can take your call right now, so if you leave a message after the tone, we’ll get back to you. Bye.’ There’s a click and then a bleep. The machine repeats it back to him and he straightens up. ‘You never know who’s gonna call,’ says Lenny, smiling at us both. ‘You never know a lot of things.’

  ‘We never know anything,’ says Rosa. ‘We know nothing. Nothing at all.’

  Well, I’ll go along with that. I make a grunt of assent.

  I’ll tell you what, though, I can no longer conceal this erection. And yet I must. And yet it seems impossible. What the fuck is she doing with those fingers? Where are they going now? My God! Is that legal?