by Sam Lock
VII
The latest thing regarding Mark is something that happened only last night, after we’d been to see a film together and had strolled back to my flat, where we’d had supper. For as we came in, he suddenly caught hold of me and asked me if I loved him.
‘Well, do you or don’t you?’ he said rather aggressively, when I gave no instant reply. ‘It’s one or the other, Edwin; either you do or you don’t. I want to know.’
I was absolutely caught out by this. We’ve been getting along so well. It’s all seemed so easy – so very natural: sharing our tastes, our likes and dislikes; discussing this, discussing that – exploring each other’s bodies when we’re in bed. But now, this suddenly seemed an invasion of all that, and I didn’t know how to cope with it.
‘Do you need to ask that, Mark?’ was what I came out with eventually. ‘Do you need me to answer that question?’
‘Yes,’ he said – again very aggressively, ‘I do.’
‘Mark – look,’ I said, ‘you want me to be truthful, don’t you? You don’t want me to tell lies; to say something I don’t feel, just to please you – just to make you feel comfortable.’
‘’Course I fucking don’t,’ he said gruffly.
‘Then, if that’s the case, I can’t honestly answer your question. I can’t, Mark. I’m sorry, but I just can’t.’
Mark looked crestfallen.
‘You see, I don’t think I really know what love is,’ I said, filling the silence that had fallen between us. ‘If it’s enjoying each other, as we’ve been doing now for some weeks, then – well, the answer is yes. If it’s something else – something more mysterious – then it’s not something that I know about … Perhaps it’s because I had so little love when I was small,’ I said. ‘I know I’m not very passionate – I’m aware of that. But I can’t make myself be so, can I? I’m doing my best, Mark.’
It was my saying this that seemed to prevent things from going really wrong, because he suddenly looked up at me and smiled, and stared deeply into my eyes, as if he was needing to find me there at some new level.
‘Doing your best, Eddie?’ he said. ‘I know you are,’ and he pulled me swiftly towards him and gave me a hug.
‘Supper, then?’ I said, once the hug had changed to kisses and the emotion between us had subsided a little.
‘Yes, supper,’ he said, ‘and then …’
‘Then bed?’ I replied, teasingly. ‘Is that what you’re thinking?’
‘Of course it is,’ he answered, cuffing one of my ears. ‘What else, for fuck’s sake?’
Today’s been such an awful day for me – really bad. Everything seemed to go wrong, even the weather, which began bright and cheerful enough, but then turned suddenly dark and savage, with such heavy rain in the afternoon, and so cold for the end of March, which it is about to be tomorrow. Going out like a lion, I suppose. That’s what they say – isn’t it? And it certainly came in gently enough, with soft, balmy, early spring days, and the parks and gardens bright with cheerful flowers. Well, I suppose it has to happen. I suppose life can’t maintain a forward movement for long, much as we might want it to. The past is always with us, it seems, and there’s no escaping it. Yesterday, for instance, there I was full of hope for once, and daring to look forward; and thinking to myself that at least there’s nothing really troubling me. I’m going down to the West Country this weekend, and I’ve that to look forward to. Mark is all smiles again and is wanting to come with me, which I’d like him to do, so that he can meet my uncle and aunt, and see my background too – what there is left of it. I’ve even told him that I’ll take him to the woods where I first learned about sex – meaning with Tom. Mark loved it when I told him about that. ‘So romantic,’ he said; which, in a way, it was. And I’ve no money worries either, and might even have a few pounds extra in the bank, once my father’s estate has been finally settled – which it almost is, with all the debts having been cleared, and with my aunt having insisted upon my accepting the money raised by all the sales of things in the house that neither of us has wanted: most of the furniture being too large for me and not needed by her; and the silver, too – all of it rather ornate and rather cumbersome. Also (and this is what pleases me most) I’ve managed to speak to Mark about my thieving.
He was shocked at first – really upset; he just couldn’t believe that I was a thief. ‘You mean, you really take things?’ he asked. ‘Nick things – that don’t belong to you?’ And I told him how I had always done it. ‘How often?’ he asked, almost as if he himself had been a victim of what I had done to others. ‘Not that often,’ I had answered. ‘Less now.’
‘Less now than what?’ Mark had almost snapped back at me. ‘Less than once a year? Less than once a month, a week, or what?’
‘A month, I suppose,’ I answered. ‘Now, just five or six times a year, I guess.’ (Which wasn’t entirely true, since, during the past twelve months, it has certainly been more frequent than that.) ‘I don’t know why I do it, Mark. I just don’t. My father used to beat me for it when I was small. That’s why I left home. Savage it was, the way he used to lay into me.’
‘What do you steal?’ Mark then asked.
‘Oh, anything. It can be anything. A book; a purse – a wallet. Just anything. Once or twice a watch. Nothing really big. Usually in public places, where things are left lying around. And I can’t stop it, Mark, much as I try to.’
‘But what if you’re bloody well caught, Eddie?’ Mark asked, with a look of such deep puzzlement in his eyes.
‘What if I’m caught? Well, I was once – no, twice. Each time by the owners of the things I’d stolen, or was about to steal. But each time I got away with it. Said I hadn’t been intending to steal them; simply thought they’d been left lying around and were lost – which in neither case seemed at all a likely story; but they accepted it, together with the apologies I gave – half mumbled; showing, I suppose, that I was something of a case. Not nuts, exactly, but a little strange at the least, which, in this respect, I suppose I am … And they looked at me, not in a fearful manner, but more objectively than you’d expect, as if they wanted to distance themselves from me; and by doing this they allowed me to slink away.
‘But those are the only times I’ve been caught,’ I continued. ‘Just once, I was almost nabbed in a store – that wasn’t long ago – and – well – the store detective had no proof, because I had managed to slip whatever I had taken back on to its shelf in time.’
‘Who else knows about this?’ Mark asked, his voice still dark in tone and slightly censorious.
‘Who else? Well – no one,’ I replied.
‘What about Len and Thelma?’
‘No,’ I answered. ‘I almost told Thelma a while ago, when she saw that I was upset and not myself. But for some reason I suppressed it.’
‘But you’ve told me.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why? Why is that?’ I was surprised by the urgency in Mark’s voice.
‘Because … well, because I trust you, Mark – that’s why; and because I don’t trust anyone else.’
‘Not even Len?’ he asked. ‘Not even Thelma?’
‘Not even them,’ I replied.
So all that has been good. I’ve shared my secret at last; robbed it of some of its shade, and it’s been a help. But today – oh, today! – a different kind of robbing has taken place; as if some old time-warrior had suddenly stepped up out of the past and given me a right old clobbering. It’s been awful. I dreamed last night that I was in an ancient castle close to the sea, its inner walls festooned with mementoes of various kinds: a frayed, decaying handkerchief, one corner of which was knotted (whatever that might mean); one or two hats, some faded and made of straw, with half-dead roses at their brim; some charred-edged letters – things like that. Some babies’ shoes, one pair of which was dotted with rhinestones, causing them to gleam and glitter in the narrow rays of light that were bouncing in off the sea through the castle’s slatted windows. And this ha
s stayed with me all through the day. The castle’s owner following me, menacing me in my mind, no matter what I do.
A girl at work asked if I was well – meaning, in fact, the opposite. ‘I’m fine,’ I answered, but she looked at me, knowing that I had lied.
‘I think you should go home,’ she said. ‘You’re sick or something.’ But I stuck it out – went on with my work, which fortunately isn’t too difficult, and so struggled on through the day.
What does he want of me? I sometimes ask myself – this tall, bald-headed warrior-figure, whom I have known for so many years. Is he perhaps waiting for some moment when he can triumph – can show me that he has won? God knows. I only know that he’s a bother in my life; that he’s a stalker of my mind – one of its dark night-watchmen. And what I dread most is the thought that one day I might see into his eyes: that one day he’ll stare directly at me, and that that will then be that.
Oh dear, though – I so dislike it when I’m like this. But it’s such a part of me, I am afraid – this being dragged back into the past and being psychologically maimed by it. I’d like to speak to Mark about it; but while he can just about cope, I think, with the problem of my thieving, I fear that something like this would be too much for him; so I’ve decided to say nothing. Just that I’m a little unwell, perhaps, and that I get into a bad mood at times – if he notices it, that is, which he might not. Or just say that there are moments when I need to be quiet and on my own.
However, we’ve not come to that as yet. Today, for instance, we’ve not arranged to meet – so I’ll get past this one; and my writing about it has helped. It’s such a wonderful thing, I’ve discovered, setting things down: committing to paper one’s most secret thoughts. It helps you to know yourself better – and what’s more wonderful than that? Helps you to cope more easily with that great lump of unknown flesh that we all carry around inside us, it seems. Being so aware of it, as I always have been (partly, I expect, because I spent so much of my time alone when I was a boy), I find I can always recognise it in others. Thelma, for example – she’s carrying a great big blubber of the stuff around with her; but the marvellous thing about Thelma is that, unlike me, she seems not to be burdened or hampered by it at all. She seems able to handle it, carry it with her, sling it around – quickly relieve it with some temper, or a hearty burst of laughter. And Len, too, in quite another way. I know that he knows about this in the way that Thelma does not, because he’s interested in things to do with the mind, and knows about the fact that we are all only partially self-aware, and that we all carry about with us this clumsy burden of not-knowing. But he copes with it by being patient: by never challenging his self-ignorance and by always accepting it. He won’t even let Thelma use it as she would like to do at times, when she wants to upset him for some reason, which she quite often does. Like some hermit-crab, he will back away and withdraw into his shell – and she gives up.
‘Coward!’ she’ll say to him sometimes, when she can’t get at him; at which he just laughs, as if to say he’d rather fight another day. Because he’ll never let her corner him, I am sure of that.
Anyway, I’m at home now, writing this, and the day is almost done. I’ve nipped out and bought some fish and chips for supper, and am about to have a bath and go to bed. Once Mark has rung, that is, which he is going to do from the wine-bar where he works. At about ten, he said, and I am quite certain that he will. For that’s what I like about Mark; that he always does what he says he will do. In that he’s like Len, whereas Thelma will make me promises, such as ‘I’ll pop in and see you tomorrow, Eddie – after work’ (meaning after my work, not hers, for she only does part-time work in the mornings) – which she’ll often say to me on a Sunday, and then simply not show up. And she won’t apologise for it either. ‘We didn’t say definitely – did we, sweetheart?’ she’ll tell me the next time we meet: to which the answer always has to be that we didn’t, because she has a way of not defining anything too much; and for which reason I always seem to forgive her.
Mark is good at taking decisions – much better than I am, and at the beginning of last week he had made up his mind that for our weekend in the country he was going to hire a car and drive us there in comfort. And this, I might add, in spite of my having said to him that I liked going to Taunton by train, as I had done for my father’s funeral, then going on from there by bus – and also that it was quite a long journey. However, that is what we did – what we have done – leaving London last Friday lunchtime, and returning yesterday, Monday, with both of us having arranged to take the Friday and Monday off from work.
We had a lovely time; something quite special, it was. I didn’t think I could be that happy. And I shall always recall the moment when we left Taunton, and saw before us in the far distance the great lines of the Exmoor hills, with the sun sinking behind them, encircled by rings of purple and gold.
Neither of us spoke. The sight before us was so beautiful – so intoxicating. And with his not having been to that part of the country before, I could see how impressed by it Mark was. As we sped along, I turned to look at Mark and smile – just to show how much I was enjoying our journey – when it suddenly struck me, which it had not done before – I can’t think why – that there was something about Mark that reminded me of Patrick: the Irishman who used to live in the flat above me.
Was it the whiteness of his skin, which was so heightened by the rich, dark colouring of his hair? Or was it the size of his ears, which were a little over-large? Or was it the general leanness of his physique, which made him look thinner than he actually was?
‘What are you looking at?’ Mark asked, keeping his eyes on the road ahead.
‘You,’ I said.
‘There are better things to look at than that,’ he answered. ‘Right now, at least.’ Then he chuckled and said no more. And in the way that it can, there suddenly came back to me, from a long way in the past, the memory of a night when I was about to be seventeen. It was the eve of my birthday, as I recall, and Patrick, my neighbour, had taken me out on the town – part of my education, he had called it. We had gone to a bar off Piccadilly; the one where, so many years later, I was to meet Mark.
‘How do you like it in here then, Eddie?’ Patrick had asked, after we had had a couple of beers. ‘You’ll get to learn a lot about life in here … Look over there,’ he said, ‘at those two fellas at the bar – to the right. Do you know what they are?’
‘No. What?’ I asked.
‘They’re rent,’ he said, ‘that’s what.’
‘They’re what?’ I asked, having forgotten our previous conversation about the subject.
‘Rent. They’re rent-boys,’ he said. ‘You can take them home with you, if you like. If you’ve got the money … They’ll do anything.’
I looked at the two men – you could hardly call them boys – and thought how unsavoury they both looked; almost dangerous, like dark figures at the edge of some ugly, sinister painting.
‘You don’t fancy them – eh?’ asked Patrick, making a joke of it.
At the same time, a group of stocky, middle-aged women marched up to the bar and ordered beers.
‘You’d better not fancy that lot either,’ Patrick said. ‘They’re lesbians.’
I remember how struck I was by the speed with which Patrick was able to name the sexual tastes of the bar’s various customers. ‘And that glamorous puss in the corner,’ he added, ‘the one with her legs crossed and who’s puffin’ away at a cigarette – she’s no lady at all, Eddie. She’s a man!’
That impressed me even more; for although I more or less stared at the woman in order to study her looks more closely, for me her deception was complete. I could see nothing about her to indicate that she was not a woman.
‘You sure, Patrick?’ I asked.
‘Of course I am. I’m positive,’ he said. ‘Come on, Innocent, drink up – we’ll have another.’
Patrick was the most wonderful company; and by then we’d been seeing each other
quite a lot – usually on Sunday nights, after I’d had lunch with Len and Thelma – and I felt grateful towards him for his having taken me out so much, and for his having introduced me to city life, and to so many things that were new to me. And I can recall as well how that evening seemed suddenly to reach a climax after we had left the bar to go home, and had boarded a bus at Piccadilly and had climbed the stairs to the upper deck; only to find it full of chubby young women – girls, really; and none of them much older than myself; and all singing, at the top of their high-pitched voices, ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a lesbian, that I love London town.’
‘Jesus!’ said Patrick, ‘look what we’ve landed ourselves with – more of them!’
‘Don’t you like them?’ I asked, thinking how very cheerful they all seemed.
‘Oh, it’s not that,’ he said, as he slipped an arm around my shoulders. ‘It’s not that I don’t like them, Eddie. I don’t give a damn what people do. It’s just that I was thinking the upper deck would be empty, as it often is at this time of night, and that we could chat; which we can’t do against this din, can we?’ And it was as Patrick said this that I suddenly seemed to know how our evening was going to end, and I felt glad of it.
‘I thought you liked girls,’ I said to him, teasingly.
‘I like anything,’ he answered, squeezing my shoulder. ‘Anything. I like you, Eddie – do you know that? I like you a lot.’
When we got home, Patrick insisted that I went with him to his flat, and as we came in, I noticed how warm the room was and I guessed that he had left some form of heating on. There was a lamp switched on in a corner, making the room seem friendly and welcoming.
‘Take your coat off,’ Patrick said – a little sharply, I thought. ‘I’ll go to the john,’ and off he went. ‘Help yourself to a drink, Eddie,’ he called out. ‘You’d better not have whisky, though, or you’ll be sozzled.’