Strange Loyalties jl-3

by William McIlvanney

  Jan and I had argued about that a lot. Once I put the question to Tom Docherty when we were drinking. I didn’t connect it with Jan. I just posed it as a generality. Tom related it to writing, as he does with a lot of things.

  Another of the shorter sayings of Chairman Tom: ‘It’s like literary criticism. It’s nearly all about register. There’s a lot of po-faced crap that gets highly praised because of its tone of voice. “I’m serious, I’m cultured,” it’s telling you all the time. Bollocks. The serious and the cultured don’t even have to mention the fact. It’s coming out their pores already. They just do it, they just create. Often laughing and swearing as they go along. Same with people. “There are things you say, things you don’t say, times to say it, and times not.” Some more bollocks. The idea of register in language is mainly just fences shutting out most of the reality we should all be sharing. There’s only one serious human register and it accommodates everybody: truth, in the most generous form you can find it.’

  That would do me. Maybe that was why I was a policeman who read philosophy. I could understand both Albert Camus and Matt Mason. I had better. They were both telling me important things about the way we live. They were both part of the same world. It was my world, too. It had to be. There was only the one world to choose from.

  What I was realising about Jan, I suppose, was how alien this attitude was to her. There was a time she had been more tolerant of the wind off the streets I had often brought into her life. But lately she seemed to be waiting more and more impatiently for me to close the door on its blowing. That wouldn’t happen. Tonight she seemed to understand that. She listened with a weary silence to the things that were concerning me. So I stopped talking about them.

  I saw that she thought all of those people I had been talking to and all of those strange events others got themselves involved in had really nothing to do with this bright and pleasant room we were sitting in, nothing seriously to do with the life we might have together. I didn’t think that. This place was connected to those places. Any place she and I went to together would be. I could sit here and enjoy a good meal and love looking at her but I couldn’t make the pleasure erase those other things or somehow discount them. All I wanted to do tonight was to be with her. But I cared very deeply what happened in other places tomorrow. I hoped Marty Bleasdale found Melanie McHarg. I hoped Melanie McHarg would help me. I wanted that Dan Scoular’s death should have honour and that Scott’s death should be understood. If they weren’t, any life Jan and I could have together would be the less.

  It seemed to me Jan thought I could live in two stories, the one where these other things happened and the one that she and I would write together. That couldn’t be. I could only live in the one continuous story — different chapters maybe but the one plot, if you had the sense to follow it.

  But while our minds were behaving like strangers, our bodies were arranging an assignation. It was happening in spite of ourselves. She touched my leg instinctively below the table in contradiction of what she was saying. I lost the thread of my objections and was left simply enjoying her eyes. As our predetermined sense of ourselves proceeded rather pompously through the evening, together but apart, the desire to make love to each other followed furtively, like a down-and-out who had nothing to commend him but his need. I think we both knew he was bound to confront us.

  Perhaps that’s why, after the restaurant, we went into a pub for a drink. We were allowing time for the unadmitted truth of what we felt to catch up. We both became slightly drunk and finished, by no route that I can explain, making our way into the restaurant to get to her flat.

  The restaurant was in an alleyway in the West End. Jan’s flat was above it and had a metal work balcony which I liked. The flat had an outside door that you reached by means of a stairway. It could also be entered through a back staircase in the restaurant. Why Jan should decide that we had to go in through the restaurant I do not know. There may have been a logic at the time, now lost forever.

  Inside the restaurant, all was pleasantly dim. Light came in from the streetlamps outside, as if filtered through gauze. Each empty table, draped simply in pink cloth, floated like a lotus in a pool. I moved with effortless grace among the tables and barked my shin very painfully on metal. I thought I was going to scream. After a brief, soundless dance, I looked down. I saw an object I had always hated.

  It was a large metal flowerpot. It contained a lot of money, mainly coins but with quite a number of notes. It was supposed to be a unique tradition of the restaurant. The idea was that, since everybody who worked here was well enough paid, any tips were put into the flowerpot. Once the amount of money became impressive, it would be given to charity. I didn’t mind the thought so much. But I despised the public, patronising style of it. It was enough to make me worry about Jan. I was exhausted trying to connect with her anyway. The flowerpot palpitated, along with my leg, into a symbol. It blocked my way. This route I may go no further. Jan was still talking, oblivious to my pain.

  ‘But we’ll have an alcove. Leading through to where the coffee-room is. It’ll be like a room inside a room. Privacy inside privacy. More whispery than the main place.’

  ‘Hey, Lady of the Manor!’ I called.

  She turned towards me. Having thrown her coat off, her body was the only sheer presence in the vagueness of the room. She was looking at me quizzically.

  ‘I’ve had this,’ I said. ‘For God’s sake, take your pants off and put them round your mouth.’

  I was as shocked as she was. But her shock became assurance more quickly. We looked at each other without the mediation of accidental circumstances or deliberate mannerisms and accepted the challenge. It was as if some kind of smoked glass were no longer between us — say, the window of a Daimler had come soundlessly down. She was face to face with the scuffler in the street. She smiled and waited to speak. When she spoke, it was just the one word. The word was a name. She said the word gloatingly, as if she were a spider that had found a species of fly it particularly enjoyed dismembering.

  ‘Sexist!’ she said softly.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Take your pants off and put them round my mouth. Even better. I love the taste of you any way it comes. But let’s just meet.’

  She stared at me.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘If you’re that desperate. You know where they are.’

  If I hadn’t known, I would have found out. She was standing, still as a startled animal, as if she had caught the sudden whiff of our own nature and knew we were its quarry. I came towards her. I did not touch her. I stood close to her and took her scent. That woman smell, may it always fuse every light in my head and teach me to wait again till my senses glow in the dark.

  I reached down very gently. My fingers did not touch her. With both hands, I found the hem of her dress at the outside of each leg. I eased her dress up, very slowly. There being no attack, there was no resistance. As the cloth came above her thighs, it struggled and, in that feeling, the sensuality of her hips seized me more potently than if I had looked or touched. When the dress was crumpled round her waist, I released it and it stayed there.

  In the half-dark, the whiteness of her thighs shone above the stocking-tops. Her legs were strong and beautiful. To my awed reverence they might as well have been the pillars to some temple. The white brocaded pants concealed her darkness. I knelt down and softly began to lick the insides of her thighs. I became engrossed, as if I had found my life’s work. She began to moan faintly. The sound grew, part pleasure, part complaint, like an animal that wanted to leave its lair but was afraid to. All the words of the evening had translated into this — a licking tongue, inarticulate noises, the sounds of need. Her legs were trembling and they did not so much part as they thawed open.

  I reached up with both hands and pulled her pants down. The pants were pretty but they were an ugliness compared with what they were hiding. As I eased them over her ankles and she stepped out, her legs buckled and she closed on me like a trap
I wanted to be caught in.

  On the floor we stripped each other with an urgency that precluded the need for technique. It happened that we became naked. The rest took place beyond much that we could do about it. Such lust doesn’t submit suggestions to a committee to be ratified. It descends like a visiting divinity out of the machine and says, ‘You’ll do this and this and this. And then you’ll do that.’ We did. We ended with Jan sprawled naked across one of the tables, her hands grasping its edges, her buttocks hoisted in the air, and me serving her manically from the back. The idea of making love on the table in La Bona Sospira had, unintentionally, managed to fulfil itself. We had found a way past our pretences to ourselves. Pleased to meet us. The smart detective was a gasping, obedient servant of his phallus. The suave business-woman was an abandonment of beautiful, welcoming flesh. Oh, the lies we tell in the daylight about what we are in the dark. We came finally together with a terrible shuddering I thought I might not survive. The force of the moment shook me like a rat. I felt the strength of her loins would pull me outside in.

  I fell across her. We lay. I lipped her back, like someone trying to convince himself he is still alive. ‘Oh, darling, oh,’ Jan said. She didn’t move. She lay spread-eagled, as if she had been fused to the table. It was a while before either of us said anything else. We had to wait for the intensity of what had happened to leave. Somehow, it didn’t seem right to speak in its presence. It was Jan who spoke again, reintroducing us to practicality.

  ‘We’re beside a window,’ she said. ‘I suppose we’d better move.’

  I pinned her to the table.

  ‘No chance,’ I said. ‘I’m going to keep you here for good. Make us own up to what we’re really like.’

  ‘Could be awkward at the party.’

  ‘Don’t care. And they can decorate around us. Could make the place’s name. How’s this for trendy decor?’

  ‘Some people might object.’

  ‘More likely to follow suit. Or follow suitless. We could start the revolution right here. Own up. Strip off. Make love.’

  ‘Or we could just get the jail.’

  ‘No problem. I’m a policeman.’

  ‘Oh, I know.’

  I had said the wrong thing. It was a cold shower after love, diminishing our intimacy. Our difficulties were gathering again in the room around us. I tried to disperse them.

  ‘I’m glad you bought strong tables for this place.’

  ‘I better remember to change the table-cover,’ she said, ‘before the hygiene-inspector comes.’

  But the levity didn’t quite work. We eased ourselves apart and gathered our clothes together. The table reverted to a place where business-deals would be made over lunches and people would act out their fictions of success and self-sufficiency. At least we had blessed it with a kind of human truth.

  We took on our problems with our clothes. As we made our way upstairs naked to the flat, we carried our social identities in our arms, our separate commitments, our mutually exclusive purposes, the continuity of our differences. We couldn’t stay naked for each other. We hadn’t resolved our dilemma, just rendered it irrelevant for a time. We were content with that for now.

  Upstairs we lay in bed and held each other in the darkness. We shared skins. We touched hair. We said soft things we hoped came true. Before I slept, I realised that this was the closest thing to home I had, this fragile tent of feeling I could share with Jan.

  The phone ripped through it.

  SIX

  33

  Dawn can be a nuisance. It keeps turning up whether you want to see it or not, making noise, repeating a lot of things you know already, breaking your concentration by demanding your attention. Why can’t the world leave lovers alone?

  I watched Jan struggle with the phone as if it were a new invention she hadn’t yet got used to. When she had finally worked out which end went where, it didn’t seem to help much.

  She said ‘Sorry?’ and ‘What?’ and ‘Who?’ Her voice was hoarse. It made several false starts, tuning up in preparation for another day. As she listened, her eyes wandered blindly round the room, feeling for a familiar object that would remind her of where she was. They came to rest on the Jim Dine print of different-coloured hearts.

  ‘Who is this again?’ she said and waited. ‘Who?’

  She turned round to look at the time on the alarm clock. It was half past eight.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘He’s here.’

  She turned towards me and gave the phone across like a piece of evidence that incriminated me. Her eyes were passing bitter judgment.

  ‘Hullo,’ I said.

  ‘Jack? Marty Bleasdale.’ The Newcastle accent wore a trace of Scots like a tartan scarf. ‘Sorry about this. Ah don’t seem to be exactly a welcome caller.’

  I was aware of Jan lying beside me, communing with the ceiling in disbelief.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said neutrally, hoping Jan might think I was talking about my health.

  ‘The reason Ah’m phonin’ so early. Melanie gets her flight today. Early evenin’. She wants to talk to you. Ah thought from your point of view, the earlier the better.’

  ‘That’s right, Marty,’ I said.

  I had to meet her. It was a chance I couldn’t pass up. It was the surest way I had to come closer to Matt Mason. But at the moment it was also a way to move further from Jan. I felt the assessing stillness of her presence.

  ‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘Can you and Melanie come to the Grosvenor about ten? That’ll give me time to get there. Shave and stuff. We can talk.’

  Jan turned away from me on the bed. I gave him the room number.

  ‘We’ll be there.’

  ‘Thanks, Marty. Cheers.’

  I put the receiver down but the connection was still there in the room. We had been estranged by the presence of others. I looked at the back of Jan’s head. It was rejecting me as she felt I had rejected her. I was aggrieved that she was aggrieved. But as I leaned across her and replaced the phone on the bedside table, I caught the smell of her hair and touched the gentle warmth of her skin. I started to kiss her neck and stroke her. I was aware of her body relaxing sensuously. But the voice came out cold and precise, a computer in a boudoir.

  ‘You sure you’ve got time?’

  ‘Come on, Jan,’ I said, mouthing her arm. ‘I don’t take an hour and a half to wash and shave. That was all part of the subtle plan, give us some time.’

  ‘You don’t fit me in between appointments.’

  ‘Jan. Don’t say that. I’ve got to talk to these people. And this is my only chance. I’ve spent a week trying to crack this. I think today maybe I can do it. Just give me this space. I’ll see you tonight.’

  ‘Which one of you will be coming?’

  ‘Oh, Jan.’

  She didn’t speak. I began to feel the outline of her body under the covers. She went soft and then stiffened. She pushed my hand away with her arm. I lay with my emotions all dressed up and nowhere to go. I tried to touch her again.

  ‘No way,’ she said.

  I looked at the ceiling.

  ‘Not even position 42?’ I said.

  ‘Piss off.’

  I kissed her hair and got out of bed. As I was putting on my clothes, it started — one of those quarrels that grow out of a triviality, a hairline crack that causes a subsidence.

  ‘Who was that person?’ she said without looking at me.

  ‘That person?’

  ‘That person. The one who makes Cheetah sound cultured.’

  I stood with one leg in my trousers. It was not the best posture from which to project righteous indignation. But I’m a natural improviser.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘That’s Marty Bleasdale. As you would know, if you’d paid the politeness of listening to him. He may not have as many plastic cards as Barry Murdoch. But he would make five of him as a person.’

  ‘Where did Barry come from?’

  ‘I didn’t know he had left.’

 
; In the pause I managed to get my other leg into my trousers.

  ‘How did he get this number?’

  ‘Jan. You know I gave it to him. How the hell else would he get it?’

  ‘You gave it to him? You gave it to him? So you knew you were going to spend the night here. I didn’t have a choice? I seem to be the last to know. Maybe I should check my engagement diary out with Marty bloody Bleasdale.’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ I said. ‘You know it. I just hoped I would be here. It’s happened before, you know. In case you’ve forgotten. I gave him the number in case. He obviously phoned the hotel first. Then tried here.’

  ‘How many other people have you given my number to?’

  ‘Nobody else. I don’t have to. You’re good enough at doing that without my help.’

  That was a mistake, one of jealousy’s blind swipes that connects with nothing and just leaves you vulnerable to the counter-punch. I tried to duck it by buttoning my shirt and looking for my tie.

  ‘I’ve had enough,’ she said.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I — ’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not that. It’s everything. This isn’t a house to you. It’s an office with a bed in it. And it always will be. There always will be strangers in it. You bring them with you. I don’t want to know about their lives. I’ve got my own to live. I think I better learn to live it without you.’

  I had found my tie. Making a knot in it became a very slow process, almost ceremonial. I sensed that perhaps I was dressing for a final departure. This conversation was our relationship in miniature, compressed but exactly detailed. The central motif was the conflict between Jan’s need to live towards ourselves, what was in here, and mine to live towards what was out there. I didn’t see how the conflict could be resolved. The fault was mine. I almost garrotted myself with my tie. The anger was not against Jan. It was against myself and also against something I hadn’t yet located. Perhaps today I would. Then she said a strange thing.