by Sean Thomas
— You see … – Stefan says – If I can put it this way we are all men of the world …
Juson:
— I’m not
Stefan turns his silvery-black head to his junior, and laughs. Then he turns back to Patrick, who is self-consciously napkinning a mustard sniffle from his nose. Tilting his wineglass in Patrick’s direction, Stefan says:
— I’m interested on a professional level, you see
—Yes?
— Yes, it’s my field, these … psychodramas, the psychosexual filigree of relationships
— OK … OK … – Says Patrick, wishing this weird dinner would be over; wishing it would never end – So – He feels for the words – So … yyyyyyyyou want me … to talk about Rebecca …?
— Yes. Because it’s a puzzle – Uncharacteristically, Stefan looks at Juson as if seeking moral support, Juson mentions he might have the bread and butter pudding. Stefan shifts back and says, directly:
— I confess it mystifies me why you and Rebecca split up. After all you appeared to be in love right up until the … alleged incident – Patrick shrugs and says nothing. Juson looks at Stefan. Stefan is going on – So what, if you don’t mind my asking, what was it? Why did you break up?
Pointing to the summer pudding entry on the menu, Patrick hands the menu back to the monochrome waiter and turns back to Stefan and says:
— Well … – Patrick is aware that it might come spilling out if he is not careful; he is also aware he wants to spill it out, to regurgitate – Well I’m … I don’t know … I don’t know even now … – Patrick is staring at Stefan; staring at the deer’s head on the wall behind, the stuffed red grouse on the dusty yellow shelf; then Patrick says – I guess we just got too into sex, too much. We never talked, we just shagged … – Thinking – I remember the last night, before she chucked me out, a month before the … – Patrick sighs. Do they know? – It was a month before the incident … – He shuts his eyes picturing it – Anyway that night we went too far, too stupidly far. In bed. And even though I knew she still loved me, I kind of agreed – Patrick opens his eyes again; gazes at the faces around the table – Perhaps we just had nowhere else to go. Perhaps we’d done it all … Or nearly all …
Patrick falls quiet. Stefan nods, as if he is impressed by, and understanding of, this sadness. Juson says nothing, possibly embarrassed. The mutual silence allows them to finish their puddings, coffees and Sauternes, in short order. After that they pay the bill, get up, and push glass and wood into the mild evening air.
Emancipated into Covent Garden’s warm, gutter-sweet, opulent, old-fashioned streets, Patrick feels a weird dizziness, an urgent headrush, a night-before-the-battle upsurge of life force. He feels a desire to dance, or to do a comedy routine, or to sing. He also feels sick. And he feels full. And he feels like he is in a film. A musical … He feels he is in a musical, that musical, My Fair Lady … and that tomorrow he has to perform, to perform like Pygmalion …
— Patrick? – Gareth is slapping Patch on the back – You alright? Patch?
Shaking his head Patrick says:
— I’m fine
Making some shall-we-get-a-cab gestures at Juson, Stefan says:
— OK we’ll see you tomorrow, Patrick
— OK …
— Try and get a good night’s sleep, if you can
— And remember, keep it brief, mate
— I remember
— Nine o’clock sharp?
— Yes
— Goodbye Patrick
— Bye Patch
— Bye
Standing alone on the corner pavement of Maiden Lane and Tavistock Patrick watches as his saviour manqué, and his saviour manqué’s junior, sit back in their cab, which goes sailing down towards the Strand. Then Patrick continues watching the space where the cab was, which is now filled by a spectacularly pretty girl, high heeling past them. Summer-dressed, firm-calved, neatly ankled, suntanned, the girl is sexy. The girl is pukka. The girl is, in fact, a classic twenty-two-year-old West Fulham damsel in oestrus.
The familiar ache, the helpless desire, roils in Patrick’s groin again. He feels like a black in antebellum Tennessee, looking at some moustache-twirling blue blood. He feels weak and poor, and helplessly envious. What chance did he have, he thinks, what chance do men have. Men are demons, helplessly fallen, cursed by fate, cast into eternal perdition by their love … for the daughters of men …
With a start Patrick notices that he ain’t alone: Jenkins is standing beside him. Jenkins is also, mournfully, watching the coltish Fulham girl, observing her as she finally disappears into the mobs of Covent Garden market. Into the crowds of clubbers, kids, Kiwis, Afrikaaner cricketers.
— Classy – Jenkins says. Then he turns – Good man, Robert Stefan Patrick shakes his head, shrugs a yes:
— Yeah, good bloke
— Bit stiff, at first tho
— Yes …
— Not so sure about Charlie Juson
— Aii. He’s OK – Says Patch. The two men, the client and his brief, have turned and are walking down towards the night buses and the Tube, towards the Thames – I know his type – Says Patrick, quietly – We used to get ’em in the club, young lawyers on the make – Patrick does a soft smile, remembering better times – They’re often like that, posh but laddish … Good fun in their own way …
— Nmm, look you
Says Jenkins, aping his own Welshness. Patrick chuckles. Then in silence the two of them walk on, turning right and left and right, past the Savoy, past the road to Savoy Chapel, past the site of old Northumberland House, down to where the great old river slides silent and bronze between the sombre grey office blocks.
24
Stepping out of the blue-painted door into the humid slightly dank air of Linden Street Rebecca looks up and down at the cars waiting for a cab; as she does her mobile goes. Lifting the phone out of her Sloane Street handbag Rebecca puts the phone to her ear and the mobile says:
— Hey. It’s me. Where are you?
— Murphy?
— Yes. Derr. Why aren’t you at home?
— I’m just getting in a cab hold on yes please the British Museum please
— The British Museum? What?
Settling herself in the taxi back seat and absent-mindedly looking at the adverts on the backs of the flipdown seats in front, Rebecca puts her head to the phone again, and explains:
— I’m going to the new Aztec gallery
— Yeah?
— I’m … meeting … him
The taxi swerves along Wigmore Street. The stucco cherubs playing flutes on the side of upmarket pharmacies give on to the Robert Adam splendour of half-ruined Portland Place, which in turn segues into the cardboard-boxy bustle of the garment district.
Rebecca listens to Murphy saying:
— Why the fuck are you doing that?
— Because …
— You throw him out for being a drunken idiot and now you’re seeing him??
— I … miss him
— Oh you miss him right sure course – Murphy is spitting the words – Like you miss having black eyes and constant rows and his hairdresser round the flat lifting up your skirt
— He only hit me … when I asked him – She pauses – Generally
A silence. Great Portland Street; Great Titchfield Street; the old ITN headquarters.
Murphy shouts:
—You stupid stupid stupid … bird
— I miss the fun, he made me laugh – Says Rebecca, looking at her own knees. Looking at her own bare knees makes Rebecca wonder whether Murphy has a boyfriendless shagless … Patrickless agenda of her own; trying to dismiss this train of thought Rebecca says to Murphy:
— Murphy has any of this to do with the fact that you haven’t had a boyfriend in two years?
The next silence lasts the length of Foley Street. Then.
— Ow
Rebecca says nothing; Murphy says again:
—Ow!! That hurt!
— OK I’m sorry
— OhFuckyouRebeccaJessel
The mobile has gone dead. Regretful, angered by herself, Rebecca puts the phone back in her bag, as the taxi crosses over into Tottenham Court Road, as Rebecca gazes out the window. The disconsolating summer drizzle is coming down again, making tourists in shorts run under the newsagents’ awnings where they turn to stare uncomprehendingly out at the English summer. Touching her own face for some reason, Rebecca keeps looking: she stares through the taxi window at the unspoken colonnade of Gower Street; the untouched yet somehow sterile Georgian-ness of Bedford Square. Then the cab swings viciously left and deposits Rebecca at the place where the man sells hot sweet chestnuts in the winter.
The cab driver paid Rebecca checks the weepy sky for a moment, then she skips in her trainers across the retouched rain-blacked plaza that fronts the Museum, to the crowded-cause-it’s-raining portico. Pressganged by French kids, American kids, by Japanese kids and Nordic kids all shouting together Rebecca forces her way through the hubbub into the open but glass-covered square in the middle of the renewed Museum. The harle-quined glass arches over the covered square; it is an undulating carapace of grey lozenges. Patch is in front of her.
— Hi
He says, diffident, unshaven, not obviously drunk.
— Hi
She says. Also diffident. Their being separated by three yards and a month, she looks at him, appraisingly. She still fancies him but she wonders if she fancies him as much. Then he smiles and says something funny, and she knows she fancies him even more; then she thinks she catches the smell of beer on him and she knows she is glad she is trying to end the relationship. But then she looks one more time, just one more time, and she sees some tiredness in his pale, sad blue eyes and she feels an enormous pity and empathy for him: for losing his father, his money, his club, her, for being so obviously in need of her body which she can see he is looking up and down remembering.
— Nice skirt – Patrick says, adding – Short
Rebecca smiles at this; feels resentful. She takes his hand and squeezes it and says:
— Shall we go in?
— Why did you dump me, Rebecca?
— It’s just over here
— You aren’t going to have my kids then?
— What do you think of the reading room the way they’ve done it it’s quite nice with the café and
— I’m a fucking mess without you Bex – He moves nearer – I’m sleeping in … bus stations
She turns:
— No you’re not
He admits:
— No I’m not
— So shut up then
— But I am … emotionally, I am living in a … Victoria Coach Station. Of loneliness. Without you – His hand is now tight on her hand – Jesus you’re still cute you know – She smiles; he responds to her smile – Fuck Bex come here please I need you
He tries to squeeze near, to kiss her soft and wet on the cheek. Rebecca wants him to do this; she dreads his touch; she wants him to still desire her; she is afraid of that desire. As they walk through the new Africa Galleries and turn right towards the just-restored American Galleries Rebecca shrugs her shoulder as if exercising a painful twinge. By doing this she manages to prevent him kissing her; but as she succeeds, as she repels him, he looks so hangdog she is obliged to squeeze his hand even harder; and then to lean and kiss him on the stubble.
At once he brightens. Says:
— So you haven’t seen these galleries before?
— No
— I thought you’d seen just about everything to do with the Aztecs
— Not this gallery. It’s new
Together they push the double swing doors and go into the slightly darkened room, where sculptures and artefacts are looking glamorous and evil in the atmospheric half-light. For a moment they stand there beholding a screaming baby being hastily carried out of the doors by a harassed-looking father. Then Patrick says, his hands in the pockets of his desirably old leather jacket.
— Bit small?
— Small but … perfectly formed. It’s one of the very best collections in Europe
— OK. You’re the expert
They start. They start by bending their heads, and looking at Olmec axes, Maya glyphs, Toltec knives, and little ankle chains of conch shells from the Isle of Sacrifices. Next comes a picture of a big wooden cudgel with a serrated row of large black obsidian razor blades stuck in it the same way broken glass is cemented on top of a high wall.
— That’s a macuahuitl, a sort of Aztec sword
Says Rebecca. Patrick nods, looking more interested than he ever used to when she used to witter on about Mesoamerica. Or Crusader history. Or sixteenth-century witchfinding. Or their relationship. Rebecca warms to this unexpected responsiveness, and hence starts explaining what it, the sword, was used for, how it was used in battles, how it was used in the ritualised gladiatorial battles of Xipe Totec, the Feast of the Flaying of Men, when in front of the assembled nobles and dignitaries and feather-headdressed royalty of Tenochtitlan a captured young half-starved nobleman from an enemy tribe would be ankle-tied to a huge round circular stone and after being gorged on psychedelic drugs would be forced to fight the chief jaguar warriors of the Aztec city, forced to fight even though he would always without fail lose the battle as the skilful Aztec warriors slowly sliced him to death by chopping his hamstrings and slicing his tendons and stripping the sweating skin from his back until it hung in ribbons down his bleeding torso.
Rebecca stops, takes a breather. Patrick is looking at her with fascination and surprise, with nodding curiosity, and understandable-over-keen-ness-because-he’s-trying-to-be-nice. But Rebecca doesn’t feel any pride at her own eloquent display of knowledge, she feels a reflux of self disgust and revulsion welling up in her throat. She feels sick. Even the names make her feel sick. Cinteotl. Huitzilopochtli. She of the Serpent Skirt. Rebecca feels dizzy: thinking of the humid summer air; of Patrick’s unshaven face between her legs. Getting hold of herself Rebecca bends and looks at a Toltec pot with the inscribed glyphs for extruded human hearts. But this merely makes her wonder why she has this unhealthy fascination with pre-Columbian civilisation. With its flayed skins, its human bones, its cannibalism and collections of fingernails and its platoons of priests with their long black never-cut hair matted with human offal.
Why? Of course why. Rebecca at once sees what all this reminds her of: of serial sex-murderers, rapist killers, Hannibal Lecter, Fred and Rosie West, Denis Nilsen. For isn’t this what sexual psychopaths do? Make grisly collections of human remains? Just like the Aztecs? Little stamp collections of innards and eyelids and dried penises and the like? Little collections of things that look like dried sealife so that when the police crash in the door in the night and flash their torches in the fetid black corners of rented rooms in provincial towns they will see …
— Go on – Says Patrick – More. Please. I’m interested
—No …
Rebecca waves her hand. She waves her hand so as to wave some air in her face. She is trying not to be sick; trying not to feel sick; she can’t help thinking of the cold fridgy handcuffs around her wrist; and the bruises on her thighs; and the blood on his fingers. Her blood. That he wipes on her cheek and kisses away …
Where were they going with this? What did it mean once?
— You OK?
— Yes … – She sighs – yyyyesss
They walk on. Around the corner. As a couple they lean to the stone lintels, lintels Rebecca remembers reading about in one of her books; they are stopped short when an electronic beeping shrills out across the room and several Chinese-looking youths stare over. Patrick:
— Oops?
Rebecca points at the side of the wall at a small black hole. Says:
— Electric light beam
Thus warned and chastised they both lean more gingerly, to scrutinise the first stone square with its stylised picture of a lady with a nose ring in her nose
kneeling in front of a man with a lip plug in his lip. The lintel is decorated with lots of wavy lines. And lots of stone symbols of human hearts. Rebecca knows what all this means. Patrick presumably doesn’t. He leans to the little cardboard panel on the side of the lintel and starts reciting: — ‘Lord Shield Jaguar and his wife Lady … – He pauses, gazes at the next words, then says – ‘Lady Xoc’? – He is looking over at Rebecca for approval, she nods at his pronunciation; so he smiles and goes on – ‘They engage in a bloodletting rite …’ – Patrick stops, again, and half smiles and Rebecca looks at his still handsome face and wishes he wouldn’t smile, as he goes on reciting – ‘The king stands on the left brandishing a flaming torch to illuminate the drama that is about to unfold. Kneeling in front of the king wearing an exquisitely woven huil … pil … Lady Xoc pulls a thorn-lined rope through her tongue. This rope falls into a woven basket holding bloodstained strips of paper cloth …’
Patrick stops and hmms. He puts his hands on hips; turns to Rebecca. And then he winks. He winks!
Rebecca stands back. He winked! She feels like slapping him for the wink, for what it meant, for winking after reciting that card; but because she does not know what to do other than slap him, she reaches out and holds Patch’s hand, the hand that has done … so much to her … Blithe and unaware, Patch points:
— This sculpture? Isn’t it in one of your … books?
— Yes
— You know I remember you telling me about this bloodletting thing months ago so anyway why did you chuck me Rebecca?
— Please. Don’t
— I still fucking love you
— Don’t
Letting his hand drop, Rebecca turns and quickly leans to the next lintel. Intent, she looks at the image, the image of the Aztec emperor piercing his royal penis with cactus thorns, while he contemplates the image of the God Yat Balam. Rebecca feels sick. She feels that waviness inside her, again, that swallowing smoke feeling, that inner nausea. This is not helped when her ex bends his stubble to the museum wall and recites from another panel in his beginning-to-annoy-her way: