Gerry arrived back at the table. He handed her the cocktail and sat down with his pint.
‘‘You know we were going to go and see a film?’’
Laurie nodded.
‘‘Do you mind if we just sit and drink instead? Have some food here?’’
‘‘No. Not at all.’’ The films in the Art Centre were all foreign. She couldn’t be bothered to read subtitles. Not that you could admit that to anyone without sounding like a moron. They were always pretty heavy too and she couldn’t be bothered with any dead children or wars or grinding poverty either.
‘‘What’s on anyway?’’
‘‘Either a French film about child abuse or a Dutch one about Bosnia.’’
‘‘Bosnia?’’ she studied his face. He was giving nothing away. He just nodded.
‘‘Gerry? Were you in Bosnia?’’ She tried to look interested, but not intensely so.
‘‘Was that the sort of thing you wanted to know?’’
‘‘Yes. I mean, you don’t have to go into it or anything. I would just like to know a wee bit about you. You know, some biographical details.’’ She smiled.
Gerry considered for a moment.
‘‘I was in Bosnia and other places: Kuwait, Afghanistan. It was heavy and then I left the army.’’ ‘‘Okay.’’ She took a drink. ‘‘Can I ask you any questions?’’
He thought about it. ‘‘I’d rather you didn’t.’’
‘‘Fair enough.’’ She took another drink. ‘‘Were you injured?’’
‘‘That’s a question Laurie.’’ He took a drink. ‘‘No I wasn’t injured.’’
Something about the way he said injured stopped her from pressing him further.
‘‘Okay,’’ she said and reached out and put her hand on his.
‘‘Okay,’’ he said and turned his hand over and squeezed her hand.
***
The walk home was fun. They played a game where one person sang the first little bit of a song and the other one had to guess what song it was. Despite the fact that Gerry was quite a nice singer Laurie wasn’t able to guess any of the songs.
‘‘What do you mean you don’t know it?’’ laughed Gerry as he tried repeatedly to get the key into the lock of his close door.
‘‘Here,’’ she nudged him out of the way. ‘‘Let me do that.’’
She scrabbled the key about for a minute before getting it in the lock.
‘‘I’ve never heard of it.’’ She turned back to him and he leaned forward and pressed her up against the door.
He whispered into her ear, ‘‘You’ve never heard of ‘‘Slave to Love’’?’’ he leaned against her and Laurie caught her breath.
‘‘No,’’ she pushed her pelvis into him. ‘‘I haven’t.’’
He pulled her towards him with one hand while he quickly turned the key in the lock and held the door open with his other. Then he half lifted her, half dragged her into the hallway, shut the door behind them and nudged her up against the tiled wall. They stood like that kissing and breathing into each other for what seemed like ages before Gerry stopped and pointed in the direction of the stairs.
‘‘Listen,’’ he whispered.
Laurie could hear nothing but, dimly at first and then becoming clearer until she felt like the other person was right next to her and Gerry, she became aware of someone else breathing. The breathing was jerky and laboured. The other person sounded as if they’d been running or crying.
It must be the lunatic neighbour. Gerry and Laurie stood listening. Laurie expected the woman to go back in, but there was no sign that that would happen. She looked to Gerry for guidance but he seemed at a loss too. They’d have to walk past her, but Laurie’s drunkenness, which had been keeping her warm, or at least keeping her from feeling the cold, had worn off and she needed to get indoors.
‘‘Come on,’’ she whispered to Gerry and pulled his arm towards the stairs. Gerry resisted briefly, then followed. As they turned the corner on the stairs, they found Gerry’s neighbour sitting on the top step at her landing. She was wearing a Chinese dressing gown and her hair was big on one side and flattened on the other as if she’d just got out of bed.
‘‘Hi Theresa,’’ said Gerry. Laurie was surprised by the tenderness in his voice. She looked up at him gloomily, but made no effort to move out of their way. She half smiled at Gerry and ignored Laurie altogether.
‘‘Are you okay Theresa?’’
Laurie groaned. If you asked this sort of person that sort of question, you could be listening to hard luck stories for hours.
Theresa shook her head.
Laurie squeezed Gerry’s hand in an effort to get him moving. He squeezed her hand back but leaned towards Theresa.
‘‘Ahm lonely Gerry.’’ She reached a hand up and stroked his cheek. ‘‘Lonely.’’
The woman was very drunk. She’d probably been drinking on her own all day, waiting for Gerry to come back. Pathetic. Laurie felt no sympathy for people like Theresa. As if Gerry would have any interest in her. But then … She glanced at Gerry’s sympathetic face. Had he, in a moment of kindness, slept with this woman and that was why she was so obsessed with him? She narrowed her eyes at the woman and she knew, immediately, without any doubt, that he had, in fact, shagged this woman. This hideous, older, drunken woman. She shuddered. Gerry turned to look at her, making a pleading face as if to say, just one minute, just one minute to sort this out. But how could he sort it out? He’d led this woman on and given her hope and now there was no way out of it for him unless he moved away.
‘‘Gerry?’’
He turned to her pleadingly.
Theresa looked up at her too with hate in her small, pouchy eyes.
‘‘It’s late,’’ Laurie went up a step. ‘‘Come on.’’
Gerry pulled back from Theresa’s hand and rubbed at his forehead.
‘‘Is yer mammy expecting you?’’ the old bag laughed at her.
‘‘Shut it you,’’ Laurie said, narrowing her eyes at the woman and nudging Gerry to get moving.
Gerry nodded. ‘‘See you around Theresa.’’
‘‘Aye,’’ said the woman, ‘‘that you will.’’ She stepped back into her doorway to let them past but remained there watching them turn the corner of the stairs.
Gerry opened the door to his flat and directed Laurie into the hallway.
‘‘Here we are,’’ he said, not looking at her. ‘‘Here. Let me take that.’’ He took her coat, shook it out and hung it neatly on a coat hanger in the hall closet.
She followed him into the living room. What now? The atmosphere had gone, Theresa’s slovenly appearance had seen to that quick smart.
She hung about by the door of the living room feeling like the last unwanted guest at a party. The guest with nowhere to go, no one to be with.
Gerry stood at the window, his hands in the pockets of his coat. He was making no move to get things started again and Laurie couldn’t think of anything to say to get them back on track.
Gerry turned to her. ‘‘Laurie,’’ he took a few seconds, ‘‘maybe you’d better leave.’’
‘‘What?’’ She wasn’t exactly surprised but she still felt a kind of shock moving through her.
‘‘I think it would be better if you left.’’ He spoke calmly. His face was patient and grown up. She knew he was trying to move her along gently which in some way made her feel even more upset.
‘‘Why?’’ She hated the whine in her voice. She was showing him too much. She should be storming out of here.
‘‘I just think it would be better if we slowed things down a bit.’’ He sighed and held his hands out. ‘‘Everything’s going too fast. We don’t know each other at all.’’
‘‘Is that it?’’ She stared at him. ‘‘Will we see each other again?’’
‘‘Do you actually want to?’’ He frowned.
‘‘Yes.’’ She hated herself. She wished she could just walk out of here and not give it another moment’s th
ought, but it appeared she did have some feelings for him.
‘‘Are you sure?’’ He looked unconvinced.
‘‘Yes.’’ She felt her shoulders drop and shook her head. ‘‘Yes I am.’’ He moved over to her and squeezed her shoulder. ‘‘Let’s just see what happens, eh?’’
It was a parents’ ‘‘let’s see,’’ meaning, ‘‘not a hope’’.
She took a step backwards so his hand fell from her and walked out of the room into the hall way.
‘‘My coat.’’ She scowled back over her shoulder. ‘‘I need my coat.’’ She stood in the dark of the hall waiting for Gerry to come out.
She felt like going into his room and lying down on his bed. Whether to fall asleep or at a last ditch, pathetic attempt at seduction she didn’t really know. But then Gerry was there, holding her coat out to her, his face kind and still and maddeningly patient.
She took her coat and he helped her into it and laid his hands on her collar bones. She felt the touch of his fingers, the weight of his hands. The heat from him radiated out across her shoulders.
They stood like that for a moment and then Laurie left the flat.
She didn’t look back at him as she made her way down the stairs but she knew, firmly, definitively, that if he’d called after her, she’d have run back up there as fast as she could.
Sometimes she felt like throttling herself.
8pm
Dark and Unsettled
Marie poured Laurie a cup of tea and offered her a Hob Nob, hovering for a second over her. Laurie said thank you and pretended to be looking over Marie’s shoulder at the notice board, scrutinising the adverts about hygiene. The other two women were talking about their teenage children in exasperated tones. They were complaining about the mess they made and their complete inability to put empty milk cartons into the bin but it was obvious to Laurie that they loved their kids’ uselessness and dreaded the point where they became superfluous.
Had her mother ever had this kind of conversations with her friends? She couldn’t see it. She couldn’t really see her mother sitting with a group of friends and just chatting. Her mum had been a great one for committees and organisations. Any group chat would have been minuted and worthy; Palestinian aid efforts, woodland trails, community dental visits.
She remembered her mother sitting at the kitchen table stuffing envelope after envelope for some important cause. She must have been eleven or twelve at the time, but she could have been any age – envelope stuffing was an ongoing activity for her mother. She could remember the growl of hunger and the sound of Newsround on the TV behind her as she stood next to the kitchen table waiting for a break in her mother’s concentration. She stood for long minutes but her mother didn’t notice her, she was so intent on her task. Eventually, probably because Laurie was blocking her light, she’d looked up at her daughter and blinked. Laurie smiled at her and she reached a hand out and put it on Laurie’s elbow, squeezed and gently nudged her.
‘‘Go on, Laurie, amuse yourself, you’re a big girl now.’’
She hadn’t said it unkindly, but Laurie had left the room. It was such a nothing experience, a non-event, that Laurie couldn’t fathom why she kept thinking of it. She could just see her mother’s head bent over her work, licking envelopes and firmly running her nails over the flap to seal them. She could feel the pressure on her elbow and the small push as her mother sent her on her way. She was just trying to remember what her mother was wearing when she became aware that someone was asking her a question.
‘‘Earth to Laurie? Come in Laurie?’’
It was Margaret, gazing open-mouthed at Laurie while the other two looked on.
‘‘Sorry,’’ Laurie said, shaking her head. ‘‘I was miles away.’’
Pat smiled at her kindly. ‘‘Penny for them?’’
‘‘Is it man trouble?’’ asked Marie.
Laurie sighed. ‘‘Yes. I suppose it is.’’ Laurie held her hands out in front of her, palms up. ‘‘It’s my sort of boyfriend.’’ She tried to smile. ‘‘We’ve sort of split up.’’ She shrugged.
‘‘Sort of boyfriend? Sort of split up? What?’’ asked Pat.
‘‘I haven’t split up with my real boyfriend.’’ She shook her head, but she couldn’t even work up to feeling angry. ‘‘I just don’t know what I’m doing.’’ She felt like leaning her head against the coffee table but the angle wouldn’t work and they’d all think she was a complete nut job so she resisted the urge.
‘‘Does your real boyfriend know about this other one?’’ Pat looked confused.
‘‘He hasn’t said he does, but I think he might.’’ She stared into her tea cup. ‘‘He went to stay at his mum’s for a couple of days,’’ she swirled her tea, ‘‘but he came back again.’’
‘‘Oh,’’ said Margaret. ‘‘And the sort-of boyfriend, does he know about the real one?’’
‘‘Yeah. But I haven’t gone into any details.’’ She drank her tea. ‘‘I don’t think that’s the problem. I think he thinks I’m too young.’’
‘‘Oh God Laurie, how old is he?’’ Pat was horrified.
‘‘Oh, he isn’t a lot older. He’s in his thirties, early thirties.’’
‘‘And how old are you again, Laurie?’’ Marie’s face was puckered with concern.
‘‘Well, I’m in my early twenties.’’
Pat laughed. ‘‘You’re a bit young to be being vague. How old are you?’’
‘‘I’m twenty four.’’ Laurie felt like a hopeless case. She didn’t even know these women, but she had no one else to tell.
‘‘Well,’’ Pat sat back, considering. ‘‘That’s not a massive age difference, is it?’’ Although she didn’t seem convinced. ‘‘Do you really think it’s that?’’
‘‘Has he just come out of a bad relationship?’’ asked Marie.
‘‘No.’’ She thought for a second. ‘‘At least I don’t think so. He has just come out of the army quite recently.’’
‘‘Has he got that Post Stress Trauma thing?’’ asked Marie, looking knowledgeable.
The other women stared at Marie.
‘‘What?’’ she said, annoyed. ‘‘I saw it on This Morning. Dr Chris was saying that it happens more than we think.’’ She nodded sagely at the others. ‘‘He said there are a lot of guys coming back from Afghanistan experiencing trauma.’’ She said trauma as if it was in quotations.
Pat and Margaret looked expectantly at Laurie.
‘‘I don’t know,’’ she considered then shrugged. ‘‘He won’t talk about it.’’
Marie nodded again. ‘‘That’s one of the signs. They don’t like to talk about it because it brings it all back.’’
‘‘Oh yeah,’’ Margaret nodded. ‘‘My granddad was like that. He wouldn’t talk about the war and he went very quiet sometimes.’’ She looked off into the distance. ‘‘My Gran made us go out and play when that happened. I was only wee when he died, of course.’’
‘‘But, I mean, that was different, wasn’t it? That was, like, a world war. It’s not the same now, is it?’’ Laurie couldn’t see how the two things could compare.
‘‘I dunno Laurie,’’ said Pat. ‘‘War’s war, isn’t it? I saw some pretty hellish stuff on the news, and I bet that was only the half of it.’’
‘‘God,’’ said Laurie, putting her cup down and her head in her hands. ‘‘I hadn’t thought of that.’’
‘‘Well Marie,’’ said Margaret, turning to Marie. ‘‘What should Laurie do? What did Dr Chris suggest?’’
‘‘Oh. I don’t know. I went and made a cup of tea and when I came back he’d moved on to Irritable Bowel Syndrome.’’
The other two women shook their heads in dismay.
‘‘Laurie, is this the hospital radio fella?’’ asked Pat.
‘‘Yeah,’’ said Laurie without moving her head from her hands.
‘‘And you say he’s mid-thirties?’’
Laurie nodded.
‘‘Is he qui
te a big lad, quite nice looking?’’
Laurie looked up at Pat and nodded again.
‘‘Do you know him Pat?’’ Marie was agog.
‘‘If it’s who I’m thinking of.’’ Pat considered a moment. ‘‘I think he’s Douglas Callander’s son.’’
‘‘Dr Callander?’’ asked Margaret.
Pat nodded.
Laurie racked her brain for Gerry’s surname, but he’d never told her. She tried to remember what the sign on his flat door said, but nothing came to her. Was that what the woman had said in the Art Centre?
‘‘How would you know his dad?’’ asked Laurie.
‘‘I used to work in his dad’s surgery on the reception. A long time ago. I remember when he went off to the army.’’ She looked at Margaret.
Margaret nodded. ‘‘I remember that too. There was quite a hoo hah.’’
‘‘What do you mean? Anyway, it can’t be Gerry.’’
‘‘Well,’’ said Pat. ‘‘Let’s see, Gerry would be about thirty four or five, because he’s the same age as our Irene’s oldest because they went to the same nursery. And Dr Callander’s boy went off to the army the year he left school, didn’t he?’’ She looked meaningfully at Margaret.
Laurie caught her look.
‘‘Hang on a minute! What’s going on here? You’re not saying something!’’
Pat and Margaret looked at each other, considering what, if anything to say.
‘‘What?’’ asked Marie, sitting on the edge of her seat. ‘‘What?’’
Pat sighed. ‘‘If you were my daughter, I’d want you to know.’’
Laurie wished she was Pat’s daughter. She looked at her pleadingly.
‘‘Well.’’ She took a deep breath. ‘‘If it is him, he left for the army in a bit of a hurry.’’
‘‘What do you mean? In a hurry?’’
‘‘He was seeing this girl, Jenny. Nice girl, lived near me. I don’t think it was anything serious, they were both supposed to be going off to uni. Both going to be doctors, I think.’’
Laurie had a quick image of Gerry in a white coat, holding a stethoscope. It seemed daft.
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