I looked away. ‘Yeah, well. I can’t help it if I remind you.’
‘No, of course not, and of course I wasn’t always scared – I loved him too. And there were times…well…he wasn’t always psychotic.’
I thought of Danny. One of my earliest memories was of Mam lifting me up and handing me to him. He held me awkwardly, like he wasn’t used to holding little kids. I remember he smelt of old clothes that had been stored somewhere damp, and that his skin had this grey pallor. He needed a shave – I felt the bristles when Mam insisted I kiss him – and there was this deadness in his eyes like the prison guards had cut his heart out. I was petrified of him. I thought I’d be sent to prison just because he was my father.
Ben cleared his throat. He said, ‘How’s Jade?’
‘Fine.’
‘I was thinking that she might like to come and play at our house – meet Nathan. Little girls love babies, don’t they? And they’re cousins, it’s right they should meet, that I should meet her…’
‘That would be nice. Thanks.’
‘And you should meet Kitty, my wife.’
‘Yes, I’d like that.’
‘You don’t have to come on your own – bring a friend.’
‘A partner, you mean? I don’t have one.’
‘Fine. Just you then.’
‘He died.’
‘Oh? I’m sorry….’
‘His name was Carl. I’m gay. I don’t know – you probably guessed…’
‘No. I hadn’t.’ He avoided my eye, embarrassed. ‘Look, it’s fine – you don’t have to explain yourself to me.’
‘I just thought you should know.’
He nodded. ‘Well, thank you for telling me.’
‘Am I still easy to like?’
He frowned at me. ‘Your sexual preferences don’t matter to me. They’re none of my business.’
I concentrated on watching the starlings hop about the grass. I don’t know why I’d told him. Sometimes I just have this longing to talk about Carl to anyone who’ll listen, and there aren’t many that will. Mam won’t have his name spoken. I swallowed a mouthful of water, hating myself for being embarrassed, hating him for saying sexual preferences.
Gently he said, ‘Steven?’
I turned to look at him. ‘Carl died last year.’
‘I’m terribly sorry.’
‘Aye, well.’ I swigged more water because suddenly my mouth was dry. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’
‘I don’t know, really. You, I suppose, Danny…how things were…’
‘I hardly knew him. He was in and out of prison.’ I looked at him and couldn’t stop the bitterness creeping in to my voice. ‘He was a loser, a waste of space. When I was a kid I wished he’d go away for good, but he kept coming back – Mam would always have him back. She made it obvious that the sex was too good to give up. Disgusting, eh? Are you disgusted?’
‘No.’
‘I am. I don’t know how she could stand him to touch her.’
‘She must have loved him.’
‘Nah. I don’t think so.’
An ambulance siren sounded. We both looked towards the road and saw its lights flashing through the hedge. As the noise died away he said, ‘My mother – Annette – loved him. I was jealous of the way she looked at him because I knew he would always be more important to her than I was.’ He laughed sadly as though remembering. ‘She was very beautiful, you know? I had very handsome parents – Mark is so obviously theirs.’
I thought of Mark. I’d thought of him a lot. I’d looked for his novels in the library – there were two – the others had all been borrowed, the librarian told me. ‘He’s very popular,’ she said as she stamped the date inside the books. ‘There’s a waiting list for his latest. I could put your name on it, if you like.’ I’d wanted to tell her that he was my brother, but I didn’t think she’d believe me; she might have thought I was some kind of nutter.
I said, ‘I had supper with Mark.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘And how was that?’
‘All right.’
‘I know he’s not the easiest of men to get along with.’
‘Isn’t he?’ I raised my eyebrows, too. ‘He showed me your Dad’s study; he told me about the cat you skinned.’
He laughed. ‘I’d forgotten about that. What a gruesome child I was.’
‘I suppose it was educational.’
‘What was – me skinning a cat or you being shown my father’s study?’
‘Both.’ Cautiously I asked, ‘Has Mark ever been married?’
He looked surprised. ‘Mark’s not interested in women. I thought you of all people would have guessed.’
I don’t know if he meant to make me feel so thick and so perverted in the same breath. I don’t think he noticed how angry I was because he said evenly, ‘I think he swings both ways, but I get the impression he hates women. Although they like him…more than like. They turn to look at him – they do these comic double-takes.’ He frowned at me questioningly. ‘So, you had supper with him, eh? I’m surprised after the way he carried on in the pub the other night.’
‘That was just shock.’
‘Yeah. Shock.’ He snorted, as though he didn’t really believe in such a thing. ‘He’s highly strung. Listen, Steve, I don’t want you getting your hopes up. Mark’s…well, I don’t think he’s what you want him to be.’
‘What do you think I want?’ I felt like punching him, the smug bastard. ‘What?’
‘A friend? A brother? Steven, Mark doesn’t do friendship. As for being a brother, well take it from one who knows –’
‘I just think you don’t like him.’
He laughed painfully. ‘You can’t choose your family, can you? Can’t pick them out of a catalogue.’
‘Isn’t that just what your Dad did? Simon? He chose you.’
He looked away. ‘The hospital should do something with this place. It’s a shame that it’s left to run wild.’ After a bit he said flatly, ‘He didn’t choose us.’ He clambered to his feet. Looking down at me he said, ‘Listen, we’ll get together sometime, eh? You and your little girl – Jade? I’ll call you.’
I watched him walk away. He has this cock-of-the-walk air about him, but he’s a flimsy man, I think, underneath it. He can’t bring himself to ask what he really wants to know. I felt like shouting after him, ‘Yes, Danny raped me – any other questions?’ I stared after him. Quietly I said, ‘He chose me, and Mark. I don’t know why he didn’t choose you.’ Although I did, of course. Stand Danny’s five sons in a row: it’s obvious.
I went back to work. I tried not to think about Mark or Ben. There’s only one person to think about, anyway. Carl. I miss him. Missing him feels like getting over flu, only you know you’re going to feel like that for the rest of your life.
I met Carl in a gay bar. I’d been working myself up to going there for weeks, even getting as far as the door one evening. There were bouncers on the street outside; they looked me up and down and then held the door wide open for me without a word. I couldn’t bring myself to go in after that, not that night at least. I couldn’t stand how they just took it for granted I was queer when I wasn’t totally sure myself. Besides, I didn’t know what to expect. Somehow I imagined I’d get jumped on. Carl laughed when I told him that. ‘You should be so lucky!’
It was only a gay bar on Tuesdays. Tuesdays the DJ played seventies disco music: I Will Survive and I Feel Love and stuff like that. Stuff Mam danced to in the kitchen. When I finally, finally plucked up my courage and got past the smirking bouncers I stood at the bar drinking Bacardi Breezers from the bottle and watching the men dance together on the jam-packed floor. There was this one man; he wore tight jeans and a tee shirt that showed off his six-pack. I just stared at him, stared and stared until this sweet voice behind me said, ‘He’s taken. Don’t look any more, it will only make you heart-sick.’
I turned round, ready to say I wasn’t looking, ready, if I’m honest, to tell whoever
it was to fuck off. But this lovely man held up his hands as if he thought I was about to punch him. He laughed. ‘All right – I’m just teasing. Look, if you want to, everybody else does.’
He bought me a drink. I bought him a drink. He told me he was an architect. I lied and told him I was a student because I didn’t think he’d look twice at a hospital porter. He didn’t ask me what I was studying – I think he guessed I was lying. Later he told me that he recognised me from the hospital, that he’d seen me once or twice when he was there having his usual check-ups and that he’d thought how sexy I was. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I thought you had a beautiful face. Angelic. Not my type…’ He grinned at me. ‘Which is really my way of saying that I thought you were out of my league.’
I said, ‘I’m nothing much,’ and he laughed like I’d said the most endearing thing ever.
‘You’re something,’ he said. ‘Quite something.’
He lived in a big old house a few streets from the bar, all wooden floorboards and plain walls. Not a swirly carpet or a stripey wallpaper in sight, just a load of good taste so it felt cold, as though he didn’t really live there. He had the biggest bed I’ve ever seen. He’d had it made, he said, especially. I said, ‘Especially for what? Orgies?’
‘I gave them up years ago.’
Carl turned nineteen in 1983 and ran away to London. He told me it was a wild time and that nothing was taboo except celibacy. I tried to imagine those wild times, the clamour and crush of bodies, all that heat and smell, the frantic pace of it, like sex was an assault course that had to be got over with as much show and bravado as possible. Carl said, ‘There was a lot of sex, a lot of drugs, a lot of me thinking that this was liberation. I could fuck two or three or ten men in one night and often it was fantastic but sometimes…’ He looked down at the wedding ring he wore, twisting it round and round, the ring was lose, easily slipped off. After a while he said, ‘There’s a certain kind of grey light in London, in the early morning. It shows you up and casts you down and you think Christ…’ He laughed as though he was embarrassed. ‘Just that: Christ. I don’t have any words for it – I wasn’t ashamed or guilty. I love sex. I love that feeling you get when a stranger’s hands start tearing at your clothes like nothing else matters in the world to him but your body. It was just, well…that certain light.’
He thought I understood.
He told me he had HIV. He told me as we were watching TV in his bare front room, some awful panel game where the guests think they’re dead clever, dead funny, but they’re not. He squeezed my hand and said, ‘Do you know how much I love you?’
‘Yep.’ I remember smiling at him. ‘But you can tell me again, if you like.’
‘Steve –’ And for a while he was lost for words and we sat there holding hands until I began to worry that he was going to end it. He cried and it was the first time, he said, the first time he’d cried since the day the doctor told him the test was positive. I said everything would be all right and that it didn’t matter to me. I said all the stupid things people say when it’s best to keep your mouth shut. Secretly I worried that he’d given the disease to me, of course I did.
He hadn’t. He was always so careful, like he said he would be that first time. After he’d confessed I moved in with him and I saw how many pills he had to take. It became normal that he should have a cupboard kept especially for his medicine, normal to talk about viral loads and cell counts and how best to kill the time spent waiting in hospital corridors. Worry was kept on a short leash like a badly trained pit-bull, or at least I thought it was. Sometimes in the middle of the night I’d come down and find him staring into space. I’d make him a cup of tea. I’d think about the light, that greyness in the sky that could take him away from me so easily.
I wonder what Carl would have thought of Mark. They were about the same age, same build, same height – same class. I doubt they would have got on. Mark’s strangeness would have got to Carl. He liked people to be straightforward, easy. I think he would have thought Mark was a creep.
The grey light Carl talked about – I understand it now.
Chapter 22
Annette knelt by the bed and watched Mark sleeping. Danny had tied pyjama cord around Mark’s wrist and fastened it to the headboard and she had imagined untying it and lifting him into her arms. But she didn’t want to wake him. He would cry. He would be hungry. Her hand hovered over his head; she was afraid to touch him. Best if he slept on. Sleeping meant that he was all right. She would leave him sleeping, peaceful in the land of dreams. Her hand hovered over his head, afraid to touch him, as she would be afraid of touching a wounded animal, in case she hurt him even more. Danny had tied pyjama cord around his wrist and fastened it to the headboard. She had imagined untying it, imagined the feel of him in her arms, and couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Annette got up. She went to the window and looked out on to the street. No one was about, everyone at work, at school. Danny was at work, emptying bins. Danny would lift the bins onto his shoulder, although he looked too frail for such a weight, and tip the stinking rubbish into the dustcart. He would think about Mark. He would think about what he could do next to Mark. He would whistle, as he did when he was happy.
Danny had said, ‘It’s only what my father did to me.’
The room smelt of Danny – that dirty man stink that came after sex and clung to the sheets and made the air thick. She pushed the window open and breathed in the clean outside. Looking down, she saw that there was dog muck on the pavement and saw herself sweeping it away into the gutter. She looked up at the cloud-streaked sky and saw herself flying towards the shrouded sun. Danny would clutch at her ankles but she would kick free. She would carry Mark in her arms and he would be her solid little boy again and not the broken animal on the bed.
Mark stirred and cried out. Kneeling by the bed she hush-hushed him, her hand hovering over his head. She couldn’t bring herself to touch him but she put a smile in her voice and willed him into sleep again.
Simon brought Joy home. Showing her around the house, he found himself smiling too much, making his voice too bright, laughing rather too loudly over nothing very much, all the time making excuses for their new home as he tried to fathom Joy’s expression, the way she held herself. She looked pale and thin and tired. As he led her from room to room she kept her coat on as though she was very cold. At least she looked around with interest. She lingered at windows to gaze out over the garden. In the room that had been his father’s surgery she rubbed at the condensation blurring her view. He stood beside her and shyly took her hand.
‘Joy, is it all right?’
She turned to him, only to look out over the garden again. ‘It’s all right, Simon. It’s fine.’
‘It’s a big house. Too big, perhaps. We could sell it, buy something cosier…’
‘No. We’ll stay. The house is fitting, I think.’
‘Fitting?’
‘For your position.’
He thought of all the empty rooms they couldn’t fill and knew that she was thinking of them, too. He squeezed her hand tightly.
Through the spy hole in the condensation, he saw Annette open the gate and walk up the path that led to the back door. He let go of Joy’s hand and heard the idiotic brightness in his voice again. ‘Here’s Annette, the girl I told you about. Right on time, as usual!’
Joy seemed to stand up taller and straighter. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Time to get busy, I think.’
The first time she set eyes on Doctor Simon Walker, Joy had thought that here was a frivolous man: a silly, light-weight man with a roving, restless eye and an opinion of women that was at once too high and too careless. She had watched as he chatted to Clare, her fellow secretary, at a Christmas party. Although he seemed to listen intently to what Clare was saying, although he laughed in all the right places and was attentive and charming, Joy knew he was thinking only of the best way to get the girl into bed. He had that air about him: predatory, ruthless; he was the fox
in The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck, a story she read to her brother’s children on weekend visits. She found herself smiling as the doctor touched Clare’s arm: so empathic, so caring! He seemed genuinely interested in whatever it was the girl was telling him. Joy had noticed earlier how he had moved away from the group of fellow surgeons gathered at the bar as soon as he politely could. Doctor Simon Walker was a ladies’ man, a womaniser if the rumours were to be believed. Joy chose not to believe quite yet, but to bide her time until she could trust the evidence of her own observations.
She observed how handsome he was, of course: tall, blond, muscular as a butcher – which he was, in his way – just as used as a butcher to sawing off limbs, which took strength and, she imagined, unflinching determination and boldness. These traits were to be admired in a man, and she did admire them. And she thought about Simon Walker as she lay alone in bed, when the street outside her window had settled for the night and her empty flat beyond her bedroom door was dark and silent as a tomb. She lay on her back and allowed her hand to stray between her legs and sometimes her fingers were idle and sometimes not. Always her thoughts strayed to Peter, whose photograph she kept by her bed. Peter would not have taken to Simon Walker. Peter was a different breed.
Peter had been shy and it had been her idea that they should go to bed and cement their relationship in a way that seemed most real and satisfactory to her. Remembering, she wished he hadn’t been so awe-struck and that they hadn’t lost their virginity to each other but to the kind of people who took the business of sex less seriously – the kind of people who could laugh when they were naked. Her instinct was that sex didn’t have to be so deadly earnest and it would be better if it wasn’t. She knew that a more sophisticated man than Peter would smile more in bed. It was his smiling, his casual sexiness, that drew her to Simon. She was sure that Simon treated sex with a light heart.
Simon smiled when he first asked her out on a date, his eyes twinkling as though he was including her in an ironic joke. In an Italian restaurant over minestrone soup and lasagne, he gossiped with breath-taking indiscretion about his fellow surgeons, the nurses and hospital managers. She felt her eyes widen; she had to remember to close her mouth on her astonishment. Leaning across the table he drew her into his confidences and secrets and it was an expert lesson in seduction, if she’d been aware enough to think of it as such. But she only found herself gazing at him. Between them the candle in its Chianti bottle flickered and gave off too much heat and too little light, and she imagined him in her bed as she had for so many nights before: smiling, easy, experienced. She needed his experience. She had become a virgin again, healed over with scars.
Say You Love Me Page 24