Walking Wounded

by William McIlvanney

  ‘I did it,’ he was saying. ‘And what’s so special about me?’

  His audience smiled and said, ‘Excuse me. I’ve just seen someone I know. Do you mind? Won’t be a minute.’

  He rose and walked towards her table. He saw her glance towards him and back to her companion. He enjoyed the stages of her recognition. The first look had simply been acknowledging someone moving in the restaurant. When she looked back, it was because she had belatedly registered that he was looking at her. She stared, wondering why he should be coming towards her table. The need to understand focused her attention and he saw her eyes widen in surprise as he walked out of strangeness into familiarity. Being recognised for who he had been stimulated his own sense of the past and he remembered her name just in time. She half-stood up in confusion.

  ‘Eddie Cameron,’ she said.

  ‘Marion. You haven’t changed a bit. I recognised you right away.’

  He kissed her on the cheek and, as soon as he had done it, knew the action was a moment of inspiration, for the kiss was a cipher of past intimacy. It made them a conspiracy of two in the crowded room.

  ‘I was amazed,’ he said. ‘There’s Marion, I thought. I was going to come over earlier but you both seemed so engrossed.’

  ‘Oh, this is Jane Thomas. Jane, Eddie Cameron.’

  As he shook hands, he noticed that the woman, whose back had been towards him, was as plain as a loaf and he wondered again if pretty women sometimes chose their friends like accessories to highlight themselves. Marion had sat back down.

  ‘It’s Jane’s birthday,’ she said. ‘We work in the same office. We’re out celebrating.’

  ‘If celebrating’s the word,’ Jane said.

  ‘Anyway, congratulations or condolences, Jane. Choose your pick. You look good on it, anyway.’

  ‘The wine,’ Jane confided.

  ‘You should keep taking the medicine then.’

  ‘Thank you, doctor.’

  He was glad that their brief coquetry caused Marion to butt in like someone at an excuse-me dance.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she said.

  ‘Business. It’s been a long time since I was in this town. It’s changed so much.’

  ‘Not for the better,’ Jane said.

  ‘I’m lost in it now,’ he said. ‘What about you, Marion?’ He glanced at her rings. ‘Happily married with ten of a family?’

  ‘I’m a widow.’

  She didn’t say it casually. Her voice went into mourning and he wondered how recently it had happened.

  ‘God, I’m sorry, Marion,’ he said and felt a quickening of interest. ‘Obviously, I didn’t know. That was clumsy.’

  ‘You weren’t to know. It’s been seven years now.’

  The information made the tone in which she had declared her widowhood seem a bit extravagant. He was reminded of a woman he knew who was inclined to intone every so often, ‘Father would have been ninety-five by now.’ Or ninety-six. Or, the following year unsurprisingly, ninety-seven. It had led to a joke with his wife. ‘Father would have been a hundred and forty-two by now. Pity he died at nineteen.’

  ‘Any children?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Two,’ Marion said soulfully, as if the shadow of dark wings had fallen across the cheese-board. Inexplicably, he felt the prospect of the evening brighten.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Best invention in the world, children.’

  He sensed Jane’s face opening towards him like a flower. ‘I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘They can be a trial. But they’re what it’s all about as far as I’m concerned. Mine are taking me out tonight. I’d better sober up before then. They’re choosing the restaurant. Wait till you see. John, he’s the oldest. He’s been taking charge of all arrangements. Won’t let Michael – that’s my husband – even know where we’re going. And Darren, the youngest, he’s been threatened within an inch of his life if he reveals the dreaded secret. He’s been bursting to tell me all week.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ Eddie said, hoping to forestall the taking of snapshots from her handbag. ‘I’ll probably go and read the cemetery. Catch up on news of old friends.’ The gaffe of being flippant about death so soon after Marion’s mention of her dead husband made him move on quickly. ‘And what about you, Marion? What wild plans have you got for tonight?’

  Marion’s close-lipped smile was wan as a fading rose in memory of her husband.

  ‘She doesn’t go out nearly enough,’ Jane said. ‘I’ve been telling her that.’

  ‘So you should,’ Eddie prompted.

  ‘An attractive woman like her.’

  ‘A very attractive woman like her.’

  Their pincer movement was neatly trapping Marion in their sense of her. She seemed to be enjoying the mild embarrassment.

  ‘It’s such a waste,’ Jane said.

  ‘You get out of the way of going out.’ Marion was on the defensive. ‘Mixing with people.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Eddie said.

  ‘It’s no excuse,’ Jane said.

  ‘Here!’ Eddie said, as if it was something that had only just come into his mind. ‘What about dinner with me tonight, Marion? You’d be doing me a favour. It’s either that or counting the perforations in the tea-bag in my hotel room.’

  ‘Eddie!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why not, Marion?’ Jane said.

  ‘For old times’ sake,’ Eddie said. ‘An innocent meal between old friends. A good way for you to break the ice again. No complications.’

  ‘I don’t think I could take another bite after this,’ Marion said.

  ‘Then we’ll eat the ambience. What you say?’

  ‘She says yes.’

  ‘Jane!’

  ‘Well, you do.’

  ‘I don’t know. What about Michael and Lucy?’

  ‘Look. You two going back to your office now?’

  Jane nodded.

  ‘Okay. You think about it, Marion. If you give me the office number, I’ll phone you there this afternoon. It’s all right. If it’s no, I promise not to take an overdose.’ Jane had already taken a pen from her handbag and she wrote the number on the flap of an envelope, tore it off and handed it to Eddie.

  ‘Sweet lady,’ he said. ‘A birthday beverage for you. What’s it to be?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve had enough. I’ll be singing at the switchboard.’

  ‘Please. Let me make the gesture. People should sing on their birthday. Maybe a sad song. But they should sing. A liqueur. What’s your favourite liqueur?’

  ‘She likes Tia Maria,’ Marion said.

  ‘What about you, Marion?’

  Marion was hesitant, as if saying yes once might develop into a habit.

  ‘I don’t know that I should.’

  ‘I’m not drinking on my own,’ Jane said.

  ‘Green Chartreuse then.’

  Even egregious sycophancy has its uses. The proprietor’s overeagerness meant that Eddie’s gesture was interpreted as it happened. He was grateful, for he could remember other occasions when he had thought he would have to let off a flare to get a waiter. This time the moment came clean out of the films of his boyhood. The small ceremony complete, he asked the proprietor to add the drinks to his bill.

  ‘Happy birthday, Jane,’ he said. ‘Nice to have met you. Marion. You’ll hear me calling you.’

  They were laughing as he left. The client wasn’t. His conversation was a lecture. He didn’t like it when the audience walked out. Eddie offered more coffee like paying a fine and put on his listening expression while his thoughts went off on their own.

  The piece of paper in his pocket interested him: the first number in the combination to a safe. What would be inside? He looked back at Marion and she sketched a toasting gesture with her glass. She smiled and he smiled back, exchanging sealed communications – billets doux or blank paper? It occurred to him that neither knew what the other meant. It occurred to him that they didn’t know yet what they meant themselves.<
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  The room pleased him now. It had lost its predetermined crassness, sanctified for him by his renewal of the sense of mystery. Its garish brightness had become luminous and, hearing the faint clash of cutlery and the voices baffled into an indecipherable human murmur by his mood, he felt the happy strangeness of being there.

  He watched Marion and her friend rise and begin those female preparations for leaving that he loved, the retrieving of scarves and umbrellas, the finding of handbags, the gathering of coats – not so much a leaving as a flitting. It was as if they briefly set up house wherever they went. As they were walking out, they waved. He waved to Jane. Towards Marion he pointed his right hand like a gun, winked along his forefinger and clicked down his thumb.

  ‘How do you know her?’ the client asked.

  As the wine wore off during the afternoon, Jane grew doubtful about her part in getting Eddie to phone the office. She had a determinedly married woman’s superstition about the things that might threaten the comfortable stability of her marriage. It was a kind of psychological housewifery: leave crumbs and you get mice. What irritated her late in the afternoon was that she had left crumbs.

  Her attitudes were usually well dusted and neatly in place. The overall structure that housed them was simple but substantial: marriage is too important to play around with. Inside that monumental certainty all her responses fitted comfortably. Whatever situation cropped up, she knew where it went. If a man tried to chat you up, you didn’t allow it. You didn’t involve yourself with married friends who were interested in other men. If you got out of work early, you did shopping or came home.

  Coming back from the restaurant in the taxi they had to take because they were late, Marion had said, ‘But he’s married!’

  ‘How do you know? He doesn’t wear a ring.’

  ‘He must be married. And he mentioned children.’

  ‘Maybe he’s divorced.’

  ‘He would have said.’

  ‘We didn’t ask him. Or maybe he’ll get divorced after tonight.’

  The glibness of the remark turned acid in her conscience. How could she have said that? She felt she had betrayed some unknown woman. She felt she had betrayed Michael and the children. She believed that to be dismissive about other people’s marriages was somehow to tempt providence in relation to your own. She shouldn’t have taken so much wine, she thought. When she was relieved at the switchboard to get her coffee, she was still troubled.

  ‘That Eddie Cameron,’ she said to Marion. ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘We used to know each other years ago. When we were still in our teens.’

  ‘First love,’ Jane’s love of categories suggested.

  ‘First something.’

  ‘And you haven’t seen him since?’

  ‘More than twenty years. I don’t know how he recognised me.’

  ‘You made up your mind yet?’

  ‘I thought I might leave that to you. You seem to have decided everything else for me.’

  ‘No complications, he said.’

  Jane said it to herself as much as to Marion and she took the thought away with her like a plea for the defence. She had acted in all innocence, she told herself. But she couldn’t avoid the thought that she wouldn’t like Michael to behave like Eddie Cameron. She couldn’t believe that he would, for very practical reasons. Their marriage was a highly efficient radar system by which each could plot the exact position of the other at any given time of day or night. There wouldn’t have been room for another woman in Michael’s life unless he was secretly making one out of hardboard in his work-room or growing her from a seed in the greenhouse.

  Hearing Eddie Cameron’s voice on the phone and putting him through to Marion, Jane felt herself an accomplice in a crime. At the end of the day, as they both collected their coats, Jane asked Marion a question with her eyes and Marion nodded.

  ‘Michael and Lucy are going to my sister’s,’ she said.

  Jane hurried home to hold on to her domesticity like a talisman.

  During dinner they tried to find out who each other was. Her married name was Bland and when she mentioned ‘Harry’ (which she did often enough for the word to be a conjunction, about as essential to her expression of herself as ‘and’), Eddie suspected that he had known her late husband. He didn’t mention the fact. If he was right, his sense of Harry Bland hardly squared with Marion’s hushed reverence. Entering the sanctum with hob-nailed boots was no part of seduction.

  ‘He was a salesman, too, you know,’ Marion said.

  ‘Hm,’ Eddie said.

  She mentioned Jane Thomas’s worries about what Marion might be getting herself into and waited. He dutifully explained about his separation and divorce, and how often he saw his daughters. He told her about the time he had worked in the bookshop and noticed her soften slightly, confronted with a man of some sensitivity, who had concerns beyond the material.

  As the evening progressed, he noted a certain morbid tendency in her to refer to death. He forestalled it with levity. It was as if Harry’s death had given her a Ph.D. in the subject. Once she mentioned the beatific expression on Harry’s face as he stared towards the ceiling before he died. ‘He was probably thinking he’d never have to paint another cornice,’ Eddie said to himself but not to her.

  ‘Have you ever watched anyone dying, Eddie?’ she said.

  ‘I suppose I have.’

  ‘Have you really?’

  ‘You sound surprised.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have guessed somehow.’

  ‘What it is,’ he said, ‘I’m not wearing my death-watcher’s badge tonight.’

  Shared moments from the past made up much of the talk. They sat like lepidopterists comparing specimens. It was encouraging how well their memories matched. It was only occasionally that he had a Red Admiral and she had a moth. By the second bottle of wine, those fragile butterflies seemed to be shaking themselves free of their pins and fluttering in the room around them, there to be caught all over again. The air seemed full of possibilities.

  ‘Eddie,’ she said. ‘You know that I can’t take you home with me. It’s been too long. I just can’t.’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘I understand.’

  At her place they drank coffee. While their mouths discussed how soon he would have to leave, the physical sensations they had generated in each other circled their conversation like patient muggers, waiting for their moment. He precipitated the moment by getting up to leave. He crossed to the door.

  ‘Eddie,’ she said. ‘Put out the light.’

  He didn’t question her. He put out the light. He stood in the darkness, listening to the sounds of her undressing beside the couch where he had left her. As if hypnotised by those sweet, furtive whisperings of cloth, he began to do the same. He started to feel his way towards her.

  ‘Please don’t be rough, Eddie,’ she said.

  ‘Darlin’, I may never find you,’ he said.

  But he did and, by the unromantic light of an electric fire, her with one of her suspenders flapping loose, him with his socks still on, they made that mysterious and awesome transition from having sex to making love. Their bodies led them out past attitudes to wander looking for each other in an authentic darkness lust had made. His clever mouth went infant. Seduction was a second language he had never effectively learned and he reverted to honest, desperate babbling and ate her as the uttermost expression of his meaning. In the heat Harry was incinerated. The past was cast like clothes and she became sheer, voracious present. They forged their bodies into weird shapes and cooled into strangers, not to each other, to themselves.

  It was strange to sit holding each other and, watching the fire, wonder who you were.

  Bed seemed a kind of solution. They talked gentle irrelevancies to each other and kissed and tried to sleep. But they couldn’t sleep. How do you sleep when you’re lying in a stranger’s body? They got out of bed and tried to find roles to play.

  Marion made more coffee. Eddi
e suggested fixing a screw to the handle of the door but Marion didn’t know where there was a screwdriver. The jokes this led to between them were a relief. Finding themselves laughing, they both began to use jokes as a discreet conspiracy, dead leaves with which to smother the awkwardly living thing they had made between them.

  Marion found an old photograph of them with Eddie striking a rather dramatic pose. They remembered the wincing pretentiousness of his teens. Marion went in search of a phrase he had been fond of using that would illustrate exactly how pretentious he had been. Eddie was trying to help her.

  ‘I’ve got it, I’ve got it,’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ Eddie said unconvincingly.

  ‘You said,’ she said. ‘You said – wait for this. You were going to live life . . . It wasn’t to the hilt. That’s not what you said. Curmudgeon or something. Dudgeon. That was it. You were going to live life to the dudgeon. You said that. Whatever the hell it means.’

  ‘It means the same as hilt,’ Eddie said. ‘I think I was trying to show I’d read Macbeth at school. “And on the blade and dudgeon gouts of blood.” Jesus, that’s embarrassing.’

  ‘Live life to the dudgeon. How about that? That’s what you should call your memoirs. “How High Was My Dudgeon”!’

  Eddie thought she was going to wet herself. He laughed loudly and waited. As they talked on, trying to exorcise the hours of darkness until normalcy could resume, both sensed how frenetic the conversation was becoming and how much closer to cruelty it was moving. But perhaps because of the guilt of what they were deliberately, if discreetly, doing or perhaps because daylight was coming near and there were still disturbing signs of life under the dead leaves, they made no attempt to stop themselves. They orchestrated a quarrel. It was as if they had tacitly agreed, ‘If the bloody thing won’t lie still, let’s use shovels.’