Snake in the Grass

by Dominic Luke

  She watched as Richard grabbed the remote, turned the TV down but not off. Even caught off guard in this dishevelled, torpid state, there was a latent energy about him. He was, she thought, like a phoenix rising from the ashes – the ashes being the detritus littering the room. One could imagine him stretching his new wings, smoothing his fiery feathers—

  But this was not useful. She had not come here to indulge in flights of fancy (though she must make a mental note of the idea for future reference: the phoenix and the detritus of daily life; it would make a most interesting subject). She had to keep her wits about her if she wanted to survive this awkward encounter.

  ‘Take a pew.’ Richard grinned. ‘If you can find a space.’

  Lydia bit her tongue. The phrase look at the state of this place was not exactly conducive to a congenial conversation, and anyway it reminded her of her mother.

  ‘Tea? Coffee?’ he said.

  ‘Tea would be nice.’

  He disappeared through a doorway, leaving Lydia to contemplate the sofa and wonder if she dare take her life in her hands by sitting on it. It looked like it might collapse at any moment.

  Richard’s head popped round the corner before she could decide.

  ‘Milk’s sour, sorry.’

  ‘Lemon?’

  ‘Yeah, right, like I’ve got lemons. Beer do you?’

  ‘Yes. Why not?’ Make yourself agreeable, she told herself.

  He soon reappeared, handed her in turn a glass and a can of lager. His own can he put down on the floor before sweeping off some of the flotsam from the sofa.

  ‘There. Now you can sit.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said drily. The sofa squealed, sagged some more, but seemed inclined to hold her weight.

  Richard sat at the opposite end, propped his feet on the football, opened his can with a blunt thumb, took a long swig of lager.

  Lydia inspected her glass. It was surprisingly clean – pristine, even. She could see Anne Robinson’s face through it, distorted by the pattern of dimples. Pouring her drink, she gazed around the room again.

  ‘It’s a bit untidy.’ Richard had obviously noted her perusal.

  ‘A bit?’

  ‘So what? It’s better than going to the other extreme, like my neurotic stepmother.’

  ‘You think Gwen is neurotic?’

  ‘Don’t you? Have you seen her place? She cleans to excess.’

  He had a point, Lydia admitted, but one could not say so. One had to keep solidarity with Gwen.

  She watched as Richard picked a scab on his knee. His hairy knee. He had rather hairy legs, like a satyr’s. One could imagine him frolicking in an Ancient Greek forest—

  She reined herself in. This was not helping. Richard looked nothing remotely like a satyr, or a phoenix – or even St George, for that matter. And if he kept poking at that scab, he would make it bleed.

  ‘You banked one hundred and fifty pounds,’ mumbled Anne Robinson as the pause stretched out between them. ‘That’s pathetic. You need to do much better than that.’

  ‘So …’ Richard turned his attention from his scab to Lydia. ‘Is this a social call, or…?’

  She braced herself. ‘I hadn’t seen you for a while—’

  ‘Missed me?’

  ‘—and I knew you wouldn’t—’

  ‘Wouldn’t what?’

  ‘—make the first move, so—’

  ‘You want to make a move on me?’

  ‘—as it seems I may owe you—’

  ‘Owe me what? Twenty quid for services rendered?’

  ‘—an apology—’

  Richard looked at her sidelong. ‘Oh? Why’s that?’

  ‘Last time we met, I may have—’

  ‘May have?’

  ‘May have,’ she repeated, ‘been a bit hasty—’

  ‘Hasty? Is that what you call it?’

  ‘Will you please stop interrupting! You are not making it any easier.’

  She waited for him to ask what it was he was not making easy, but he said nothing, swigging his lager and looking at her speculatively.

  Her courage deserted her. She was trespassing – in more ways than one. She wished she hadn’t come.

  But now that she was here…. In for a penny, and all that.

  ‘This baby.’ She laid a hand on her stomach, an unconscious movement. ‘I know now … I mean, I realize it’s … I know that you … can’t….’

  Richard choked, eyes bulging as he stared at her, coughing and spluttering. He jumped to his feet, lashed out at the football, sending it hurtling across the room. It narrowly missed Anne Robinson’s glowering face, smacked into the wall behind the TV, rebounded, went bouncing behind the sofa.

  ‘Fucking hell! Fuck’s sake!’ He was pacing up and down, oblivious to the detritus on the floor, treading and trampling, knuckles slowly whitening as he crushed the can in his hand. Lager was forced out, ran across his fist, dribbled onto the carpet. He almost lost his footing on a copy of Zoo, then turned to face her, his cheeks flushed.

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Your … er … Gwen….’

  ‘Gwen!’

  ‘She … er … let it slip.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake!’

  ‘I warned you.’ Lydia heard a disembodied voice in her ear. ‘Don’t say I didn’t. But would you listen? You had to go your own sweet way, just as you always do, and now look—’

  ‘Oh, shut up!’

  Richard stopped his pacing, turned to look down at her, frowning, puzzled. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing. I—’

  ‘He thinks you’re talking to yourself!’ the ghost jeered.

  With the ghost in one ear and Richard staring at her as if she was mad, it was desperation that made her bark out, ‘Sit down!’

  To her amazement, Richard obeyed. He looked more shell-shocked than angry now. In the sudden silence, the muted TV sounded very loud. ‘You are the weakest link – goodbye!’

  Lydia took a deep breath. She needed to conduct proceedings on her terms. The final parting must be effected gracefully.

  ‘You could have told me yourself,’ she said, business-like. ‘It would have saved a lot of bother and misunderstanding.’

  ‘It has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Maybe not, but if it’s any consolation, I do understand what it’s—’

  ‘Had cancer lately, have you?’

  ‘Prize had cancer. That’s why he was put to sleep.’

  ‘Are you suggesting I should be put to sleep too? Are you comparing me to a fucking dog?’

  ‘You should be so lucky.’ She bit her lip, avoiding his eye. He would think she was being flippant. It would hardly be tactful to tell him she wasn’t.

  Staring at the floor, she became aware of spots of blood in a trail across the carpet. He must have cut himself when he was rampaging around the room.

  ‘Your foot is bleeding,’ she said helpfully, plastering over her gaffe.

  ‘What? Oh. Yeah.’ He hauled his foot up, resting his ankle on his knee, probed the wound, frowning, distracted, wiping his fingers on his already grubby T-shirt. The sole of his foot was brown with dirt, Lydia noted. The toenails needed clipping.

  But those were details, unimportant. She needed to get this parley over with, to draw a line under Richard. That was her only aim.

  ‘Am I right in thinking you are fighting fit now, that the cancer has gone?’ she said conversationally.

  ‘Yes, it’s gone. And so’s one of my bollocks.’

  ‘Ah.’ (Whoops.)

  He appeared to be absorbed with his foot. ‘They told me I could have a fake one if I wanted – a sort of giant marble, I suppose you’d call it. Their name for it was a pro … a pros….’

  ‘A prosthesis.’

  ‘That’s the word.’ He sniffed. ‘I told them to get stuffed.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I see?’ He gave her a black look. ‘What does that mean, I see? Why say it in such a parsimonious tone of voice?’


  ‘I think you mean sanctimonious rather than parsimonious.’

  ‘How do you know what I mean? You haven’t got a fucking clue about me!’

  ‘Then explain.’

  ‘Easy for you to say. Easy for you to sit there and go explain, explain, explain. I can’t explain, that’s just the point.’

  ‘But wouldn’t it have been better to….’ She faltered, but there was no going back now. It was like walking out onto thin ice: you had to keep going until you’d reached the safety of the other side. ‘Wouldn’t it have been better to have the prosthesis? Wasn’t that the sensible option?’

  ‘Maybe I didn’t want to be sensible. Maybe I wasn’t in the mood for it. How would you have felt, being poked and prodded and pumped full of drugs, being hacked apart by a bunch of quacks?’ He returned to his foot, squeezing the wound, making it bleed, watching with a closed-up expression as the blood dripped. ‘I was losing something that was a part of me,’ he muttered. ‘Some poxy marble couldn’t make up for that.’ He squeezed harder, grimaced, said through clenched teeth, ‘I’ll tell you what it was like. I’ll tell you how I felt. Pissed off, is how. Cheated. It was like I was being punished for something I hadn’t done. It was like I was being singled out. The last thing I needed was to have to decide whether or not to have a giant marble sewn into my scrotum.’

  He put his foot back on the floor, picked up his half-squashed can. She watched as he gulped lager, saw his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed, was aware of his eyes swivelling towards her. His frown had been smoothed away. The streetwise jack-the-lad expression was back. ‘I don’t suppose,’ he said speculatively, ‘you fancy a quick shag, for old times’ sake?’

  She had been on the verge of feeling sorry for him. She had seemed to glimpse beneath the surface a different Richard, lost, alone, afraid. She had almost been able to smell that clinical hospital smell. She had imagined a bearded doctor wielding a sinister hypodermic. ‘It’s only a testicle, Mr Collier.’ The lacerating banality of professionalism, ripping one’s world apart. It was like I was being punished for something I hadn’t done. But he must have been, at his age, almost as innocent as Prize, who’d never harmed anyone, who’d never even barked at the postman, let alone bitten him.

  But Richard had to spoil it. He had to revert to type. The facile suggestion of sex wiped away her incipient compassion.

  He seemed to read the anger in her face, said hurriedly, ‘I’ll put a clean sheet on the bed and everything.’

  ‘And you’ll keep your clothes on and tell me not to touch you,’ she sneered. She was taken aback by the vitriol in her voice, but what was even worse were the sudden doubts in her mind, wondering what Prize might have said if he could have talked (there had been times when she had thought he was about to). Would Prize too in his fear have made cheap jokes and facile remarks about sex, spoiling the dignity of his dumbness? The thought made her lash out. ‘Just because you’ve had cancer!’ she seethed. ‘You think you can use that to get a woman into bed!’

  ‘Can’t blame a bloke for—’

  ‘You think you can snap your fingers and—’

  ‘Jesus Christ, I only asked, there’s no need to bite my—’

  ‘As if you’re such a catch, as if you’re anything to write home about! An oik, a slob, someone who lives in a tip, who works in a warehouse, who drives a rust bucket, who deals in drugs—’

  ‘Hang on a minute!’ said Richard, growing heated. ‘Who said anything about drugs? I like the odd smoke now and again but that doesn’t make me—’

  ‘You use people. You use women. Sandra—’

  ‘Oh, right. I wondered when we’d get round to—’

  ‘Sandra!’

  ‘I explained about that, I told you I was—’

  ‘Sandra!’

  ‘Just because you’re fucking jealous!’

  With a shock of surprise, Lydia realized they were both on their feet facing each other – yelling at each other. Richard was looming over her but she refused to give ground. She had an overwhelming urge to harangue, lambast, wound. She could barely see him through the red mist. He might have been anyone, any man; he might have been shorter, stockier, with the build of a rugby player.

  ‘Women are just playthings to you.’

  ‘That’s crap, that’s so—’

  ‘You don’t give a damn about anybody’s feelings.’

  ‘Who the hell do you—’

  ‘You don’t care how much you hurt people. You have no compunction.’

  ‘No compunction? I don’t even know what the fuck that means!’

  ‘You have no respect.’

  ‘Respect! You talk about respect!’

  He took a step towards her and suddenly she felt fear. It was like being doused in ice water. Her anger was extinguished. She backed away, felt the wall behind her, pressed herself against it, watching Richard warily through narrowed eyes. (Richard, this was Richard, she had nothing to fear from Richard.)

  ‘You don’t know me, you haven’t a clue!’ he said, animated. ‘Of course I respect women. I love women. I love everything about them. I love their legs, their tits, their eyes, their hair, the curve of their neck, the dimple at the base of their back—’

  ‘Objects,’ Lydia whispered, thinking of her stumpy neck, too-long legs, saggy breasts. ‘You see women as objects.’

  ‘That’s not true. It’s just not true. Try to understand. It needn’t have anything to do with looks, with her body. It might be the way she talks, or the way she walks, or the clothes she wears. It might be the fact that she’s confident and knows what she wants; or maybe she’s shy and you have to coax the words out. I love it all. I love the way a girl gets into your head. She might be nobody, a complete stranger, someone you see in the street, but you wonder who she is and where she’s going and what she does all day. And if she stops and talks to you, then it’s the way she looks at you, as if everything is possible, or nothing. She might invite you in; she might slam the door in your face; she might string you along: it doesn’t matter, it’s all brilliant, it makes you feel alive, even when she blanks you, when she looks at you like dirt; when she’s way out of your league and you don’t stand a chance: it just gives you a buzz knowing that she’s out there, that a girl like that really exists. And what gets me – what really gets me – is that half the time they don’t even know how wonderful they are. Like you—’

  He swung round to face her and she felt herself sliding down the wall, pressed her palms hard against it, propping herself up.

  ‘—you, with your charity shop clothes and avant-garde ways. Sometimes I think you don’t even realize how fantastic you are, so droll and original and sexy. I love the way you spar with me, I love the way you have me in stitches, I love the way you do my head in. I didn’t think I’d ever stand a chance, a bloke like me. I thought you’d laugh in my face, and … and … And why haven’t you told me to shut up? You usually tell me to shut up. You don’t usually let me get away with anything.’

  He peered at her uncertainly. As he did so, he seemed to be hearing his own words – the flood of words – echoing in his head. She watched him colour up, watched him turn away abruptly, watched as he grabbed the remote, pressing the buttons convulsively, frowning as if it required all his concentration to change channels.

  She stayed where she was, frozen in position. His words were echoing in her head, too: droll, fantastic, sexy. He didn’t know what he was talking about. He must be off his rocker. The cancer must have eaten his brain.

  The TV suddenly boomed out, making her jump. Adverts were on: biscuits, washing powder, shampoo. Not just any old biscuits, the finest biscuits, biscuits that tasted better than anything else in the universe, one bite made you melt inside (or so you’d think judging by the way the actress on screen was romping on a bed). And the washing powder, making clothes whiter than white, fresh as a summer meadow, softer than feathers – and all with fifty per cent less impact on the environment! Shampoo, also, which
transformed your hair, made it shine like burnished metal, made it toss and tumble as (for some reason) you jerked your head about like a demented chicken in glorious slow motion.

  People advertised themselves too, thought Lydia as she peeled herself away from the wall now that Richard had thrown away the remote and gone to stand in the window, wrenching open the curtains, staring out into the dusk. People advertised themselves, represented themselves as talented, gorgeous, the world’s experts in everything under the sun, CVs as long as your arm.

  I do it as well, she admitted. But I don’t convince anyone, let alone myself. I am not a coolly competent teacher; I am not a well-balanced, independent woman; still less am I a femme fatale. I am in fact rather plain-looking, nearly forty, damaged (beyond repair?), the world expert in nothing, with no talents to speak of except a penchant for painting pictures no one ever wants to look at.

  And as for Richard—

  She looked at him standing in the window with the twilight sky behind, the glow from a street lamp giving him a sort of angelic radiance. But he wasn’t an angel. He wasn’t talented, gorgeous or the world’s expert. He didn’t shine like burnished metal, wasn’t new or improved or fifty per cent better. She pictured him instead – the pictures rising unbidden in her mind – waiting forlornly in a hospital corridor or lying in a hospital bed with tubes attached. She thought of him as scarred and damaged too, a boy whose boasting and bluster couldn’t quite paper over the cracks.

  She could not have said what prompted her to cross the room, to put her arms round him. It was instinctive, a reflex action, with nothing of the femme fatale in it. He gave a start of surprise, turned towards her; but he did not pull away.

  He said after a pause, ‘Er, why are you hugging me – or shouldn’t I ask?’

  ‘Pity, of course,’ she said. Pity for him? Or for herself? Or was it more like desperation, clinging on to something, anything, as she tried to weather the storm?

  ‘About Sandra—’ he began.

  ‘I don’t need to know about Sandra. It’s none of my business.’