‘Hector,’ whispers Rosa, ‘you should be in bed, baby. Come to bed.’
My God, I wish she hadn’t said that. I was just beginning to hate her and then she goes and says a thing like that. She runs her hands up and down my back and whispers, ‘There, there, it’s all gonna be all right, sweet one.’
No woman has ever called me sweet one. Only Rosa could call me sweet one.
‘Come on, let me put you into bed.’ She hooks her elbows under my armpits and begins to lift me from the hollow of the settee.
‘Hector,’ says Lenny, as I’m dragged across the floor in the direction of the bedroom, ’we’ll talk in the morning, OK?’
‘OK,’ I manage to utter, baffled as to how I might subvert the protraction of this preposterous spectacle. ‘OK, I’ll see you in the morning.’ I even manage a little wave. My feet are seen to cross the threshold, linger for a while, and then disappear out of sight as the door is kicked shut.
We make no mention of what was going on with Lenny just now. We make no mention of anything. She undresses me and then herself. Kirk’s death has had no apparent effect on Rosa’s er . . . ardour. She still pinches my scabby coral nipples between her fingertips, like she’s crushing nits, and bites my inner thighs until they bleed. She still pulls my hair and presses her thumb into my thorax. Still nuts me with each thrust and tries to put out my eyes as she comes.
Anyway, enough of this pornography. Tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow is the seventh: the worst day of my entire life. Apart from the eighth – which was almost as bad as the ninth.
16
Rosa’s white face on Eleni’s favourite pillow. Rosa’s pale lids. Her veins filled with milk, and all the blood rushed to her lips. The smell of her on the slashed mattress. Soft breath and softer swallows. Her feet against my calves. The slightest shift. Her buttocks against my swollen belly. I feel sick, and sorry. Sick in all sorts of ways; sorry in just one.
Eleni is not sleeping. With no idea of where in the world she is at this moment, I only know that she is awake and raw and rent asunder. I’d say that it breaks my heart, were it not for the fact that the idiom has always disappointed. The heart, after all, is a pump, and a broken pump no longer pumps. Alas, this is scarcely the case. If only the heart really did break in moments like this; then the game would be up and we might all take our ease. But no; rather the heart is renewed, made vital, and pumps all the more, heralding not the end, but a new and appalling beginning.
But no matter; such things maybe overlooked.
My desire for Rosa, far from being in abeyance, is now doglike in terms of its gormless devotion. This battered and bloody mattress has become the floor of heaven. Her tongue is in my mouth. Not something I like to think about. But if thought can be suppressed in such moments, and one’s instinct for abandonment brought to the fore, then the benefits are often manifold. Her tongue is eating away at my mouth, counting my teeth with the tip. In the name of playfulness I try to push her out and there follows a peculiar scuffle of lips. The next thing you know it feels so nice that we begin to flail and wheeze like a pair of hysterical, unmedicated mental patients. Such is love.
Lenny’s stripped to the waist with his head inside the settee. I’m barefoot in my dressing gown and make it into the kitchen without him noticing. Rosa fancies an egg and I’m headed for the fridge to see if I’ve got one. I doubt it: I’ve always been disgusted by eggs, so unless Lenny bought some, she’s gonna have to settle for some Marmite on a lump of hard ciabatta.
I open up the fridge. Nothing but beer and old cheese. I must say, if I was on my own, then I might be tempted, but it’s hardly quality fayre when one has a young lady over to stay. I fill the kettle and open the hatch. Lenny’s put on a CD of Mozart’s Requiem (cheery), and he’s got his khaki Maharishi buttocks thrust up into the air, swaying to the er . . . rhythm. Now and then his head appears, shining with sweat, his brow ravaged by stress. The show opens the day after tomorrow and he’s obviously got the Tate barking up his arse to get the thing delivered by tomorrow evening. He climbs inside and closes the door.
I mix up a coffee and stroll through. I detest this piece of music. It’s twats like Mozart who turned death into something to worry about. Death is not so grand as this. Death is a short, shifty-looking fella, hobbling down the street in a cheap green jacket. He should never be set to music. At least not this kind of music. Something on a piccolo perhaps. Or a kazoo and ukulele.
Lenny emerges from his piece and jumps to find me there, sitting in the blue chair, cross-eyed with confusion, sweaty with terror, damp with arrogance.
‘Oh! Morning,’ he says.
‘Morning,’ I say right back at him, ‘though it’s technically afternoon.’
He looks at his watch. ‘Shit! I’ve got them coming round tomorrow night to haul this off.’
I look at it, this thing that they’re coming to haul off. I don’t know. I really don’t know. Why don’t they just lug it down to the canal?
‘Got a fag?’ says Lenny.
‘Yeah,’ I say and light one for him.
‘So,’ he says, leaning back.
‘So,’ I reply, slinging my legs over the arm of the chair.
‘Is she sleeping?’
‘Yeah.’
Silence.
‘Where did you get that dressing gown?’
I look down at myself. I’m wearing a rather ornate robe with peacocks and humming birds gliding up the arms and back. The hem is trimmed with gold silk and there’s a fancy HK monogram right over the heart.
‘Eleni bought it for me in Spitalfields,’ I say. ‘“Classic Robes”.’
There’s a brief hiatus of coughs and sniffs at the mention of Eleni. Lenny pulls on his fag and decides to pursue things.
‘Why’s it got a hood?’
‘You know what, Len,’ I say, rent by these platitudes, ‘I can’t answer that question. But I’ll say this: I’m happy that it does cos I think it has the effect of making my head look smaller, or my neck more slender. Either way, these are things that bother me when I’m kitted out in hoodless attire. OK?’
‘Are you all right?’ says Lenny.
‘I’m fucking fantastic, Len,’ I say and hold my cigarette above my shoulder like Lauren Bacall in a Classic Robe.
To think we used to be friends. To think that there was a time when we were never at a loss for words, when conversation would flow like a glittering Niagara. To think that we once excited each other. And look at us now, caught up in a scrum of mumbled chestnuts.
We sit here, wallowing in the polarity of our circumstances and blow out smoke instead of words.
Silence. Oh my tiny little God; such a silence.
‘So when’s Kirk’s funeral?’
‘Don’t know yet.’
‘Where’s it gonna be?’
‘Cardiff, I expect.’
More silence. Not much of one, but enough to mention that there is one.
I’m sat on the window ledge moving my hand around my face, squeezing at the eyes, the bridge of the nose, fingering the lips, all that kind of thing. A little show. The expected display.
‘So,’ I begin, ‘how are you feeling?’
Lenny stretches out on the floor and stares at the ceiling for years, mortified that his answer might be trivial. At last he manages to line up a few words, cunningly disguised as sentiment: I suppose that something like this gives rise to the conception of a faith of some sort.’
Huh? What the fuck does that mean?
‘What do you mean?’ I say, all polite, though I really want to knock out his teeth with a chisel.
‘Well, it’s like when my father died . . .’
Oh shit, here we go; boo fucking hoo.
‘When you’re young – I mean when you’re little – there’s this idea that’s seeded in your imagination; this idea of death. But for a long time it’s only hypothetical. It’s like saying that you, or someone you know, might be struck by lightning. It’s unlikely, they say, but it must a
lways be borne in mind as a possibility . . .’
I yawn.
‘And then, one day, that lightning does strike. And once it’s struck you find yourself living in fear of the weather. Do you know what I’m saying?’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I enthuse, following up my yawn with another.
‘What I’m saying is that when someone intimate dies, then you have no choice but to assemble a list of possibilities as to what that means. I mean . . .’ he says, and takes his earned pause, ‘I mean it feels unacceptable, idle, to settle for the initial and instinctual response—’
‘What’s your point?’ I say.
‘What?’
‘I said, what’s your point?’
His face hardens into brick. ‘What the fuck are you saying that for? What the fuck are you talking about? I’m making my point. I’m right in the middle of making my point!’
‘OK, carry on.’
He paces around the room. ‘I can’t believe you just interrupted me like that.’
‘Sorry, sorry, carry on.’
He clears his throat. ‘For fuck’s sake, Hector!’
‘I’m really sorry, Lenny,’ I lie, ‘please, please carry on. You were just saying that it feels unacceptable, idle, to settle for the initial and instinctual response. So what response is that, then?’
He glares at me.
‘No, no, really, that’s a real question: what’s the initial and instinctual response?’
Silence.
Lenny sits back down and caresses his scalp. ‘The initial response,’ he says, ‘the conditioned response is to abandon hope.’
‘Abandon hope,’ I mutter, in affirmation. I maybe even nod my head.
‘But there’s so much time and space in which to question this; you find yourself lying in bed, constructing all manner of outlandish scenarios.’
‘Do you?’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ says Lenny.
‘What sort of scenarios?’
‘Well, it starts with a negation of that initial instinct; that banishing of hope. So then you begin to stimulate hope . . .’
I yawn again. I don’t mean to. I really don’t mean to this time, but it’s stuffy in here and I’m still in my gorgeous dressing gown.
‘You undergo a sudden onset of illumination and rationality. It comes down to this: if your instinct – the instinct of futility – is wrong, then the alternatives are imbued with some sort of optimism.’
‘Optimism?’
‘Yeah, optimism. And that’s sort of what this piece is about, yeah?’ he says and nods at the big settee. ‘I mean, for example, what if all these reports of the supernatural are valid? Or what if it’s only language that defines an end, when the truth is that there’s no such thing as an end. You know what I’m talking about.’
Do I, Lenny? Do I really? I don’t fucking think so, mate.
‘I’m talking about the transformation of energy. I’m talking about materialism versus spiritualism. Just because we have insufficient mental resources to comprehend some kind of soulful continuity, it doesn’t necessarily imply that such a scenario is implausible.’
Silence.
‘For example,’ he adds.
Silence.
‘So,’ I say at last, asking the only question that – in my opinion – needs to be asked, ‘where’s Kirk now?’
Lenny stares at the floor, basking in the conferred privilege of owning the answer to such a question. ‘Here,’ he says.
‘Here?’ I say.
‘Right here.’
‘Right,’ I say, ‘and so, like . . . I dunno . . . can he like, hear us and stuff?’
‘He doesn’t need to hear us. He hears everything. Knows everything. Hearing us – this conversation right now – is small fry to the likes of Kirk. The dead – dead Kirk – see beyond this moment. The dead see the consequences, as well as the history, of this moment. And actually, “see” is the wrong word. I’d say that “know” is the word, but that’s not really the word either. In fact, of course, there isn’t a word.’
‘OK,’ I say and light another fag.
‘He’s with us right now. He really is.’
‘OK,’ I say, ‘really, I’m not arguing with you.’
Silence. A distant drill and the odd seagull over the canal.
‘You’re smoking a lot,’ says Lenny.
‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘I know,’ and take a long drag.
Silence.
Silence. Mozart. The small noise of my thumbnail against the filter and the ash landing on the dirty blue saucer.
‘So what’s going on with you and Rosa?’ says Lenny.
I see. So it’s come to this. Well, I suppose it was inevitable. Dear me. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. That it has come to this.
I laugh. I actually throw my head back in laughter. ‘What do you think’s going on?’
‘What about Eleni?’
‘Lenny, do you really expect some kind of informed answer to that?’
He shrugs his shoulders. I dunno. I mean—’
‘Come on, Lenny, it’s not exactly complicated is it? Eleni’s away and I’m fucking someone else. What is it that you need to know? Which part don’t you understand? I think it’s called an affair. It’s a common phenomenon. Read books, watch films. Take a look at the Daily Mirror now and again.’
He looks at me, disgusted. Appalled, I presume, by the chilly pragmatism of my response.
‘Don’t fucking look at me like that,’ I snap. ‘What was going on last night?’
‘Nothing was going on last night.’
‘What was she doing coming back here with you?’
‘Ask her.’
‘I’m asking you.’
‘And I’m saying ask her.’
‘Why? Are there different answers?’
‘No, there’s only one answer. The answer is: nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ I bleat, bringing my hands to my head.
‘Nothing,’ he says again.
‘Nothing?’ I repeat.
‘Nothing at all.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘Nothing? Nothing at all? Really? Nothing at all?’
‘Hector!’ he bawls.
‘Lenny!!’ I bawl back.
Silence.
From the bedroom comes a little cough.
‘I’m going for a piss,’ announces Lenny, and strides off across the room.
‘Good,’ I call after him, ‘that’ll do you the world of good.’
I fucking hate him. I used to fucking love him, and now I fucking hate him. And I fucking hate her. Now that she’s squeezed every last atom of spunk out of me, I fucking hate her as well. I may even hate everybody. Everything. What was going on last night? Why those silences? Only mouths stoppered up with kissing are capable of such protracted silences. Lenny and Rosa kissing. I can’t get the image out of my mind. And yet, maybe I’ve got it all wrong. There remains the possibility that I’ve just jumped to – nay, leapt upon and devoured – conclusions. I feel sick the length and breadth of my colon. I am no longer in a position of control. I have fled the cockpit. I am hanging from the wing, naked and frozen, buffeted by the wind. And I’ll tell you another thing: here comes a loop-the-loop.
Here comes Rosa in Eleni’s favourite T-shirt, scratching at her fanny. Hair like an electrocuted puppy, eyes all puffy, and all the more beautiful for looking so perfectly adrift. Here comes Rosa, and there goes the cistern, the sound of Lenny’s zip, footsteps, footsteps. The feet of my loved ones, headed this way.
‘What happened to my eggs?’ says Rosa.
‘There are no eggs. Do you fancy a beer?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘Good, I’ll go get us all a beer.’
‘Thanks.’
As I trot across the room, thrilled that things are progressing, Lenny emerges from the toilet, seeing to his buckle.
‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m getting us all a beer. You want one?’
Lenny frowns. ‘A beer? No. I bought some cranberry juice the other day. I’ll have a cranberry juice.’
Fucking geek.
The sun’s pouring in through the windows, flooding the walls and floor with a horrible yellow glue.
Silence.
The clink of glasses on the wooden floor and then me: ‘So,’ I say, ‘here we all are.’
They smile. Lenny’s slumped in the blue chair and Rosa’s squatting by the fireplace. Impossible to ignore the shadow at the top of her thighs.
‘Fag, anyone?’ I say, trying to keep things cordial.
‘No,’ says Lenny.
‘Yeah,’ says Rosa and reaches over (I’m leaning back on the Naked Settee).
‘Cheers,’ says Rosa.
‘Cheers,’ I say back.
I take a swig of my beer. Rosa takes a swig of hers. Drag on my fag. Drag on hers.
Lenny sips his cranberry and stares at his piece.
‘So,’ I say, and allow it to echo against the walls.
Silence. Sick of all this silence.
‘So what?’ says Rosa.
My brain scans an octillion different replies and, after a little consideration, comes up with: ‘So, Kirk’s dead, and here we are; all in our own little chapels of rest.’
‘What?’ says Lenny.
‘Chapels of rest,’ I repeat.
‘What?’ says Rosa, swigging and dragging.
I take a big swig of my own. ‘Well, let’s face it,’ I say, ‘none of us really give a fuck, do we?’
Silence.
The question hangs in the air like a starved vulture.
Silence.
Lenny reaches over and lifts a cigarette from my packet. Rosa watches him do it. So do I.
‘Do we?’ I say. ‘I mean, if we’re honest, deep down, right down there in the shafts.’
Rosa looks at Lenny. Lenny looks at Rosa. Both of them look at me.
The Late Hector Kipling Page 29