“I didn’t know you had a knock.”
“The way I knock. I thought you’d . . . Is there anyone in the room?” He nods his head to the half-open door, behind which I am keeping no one. I assume we are caught here, standing, because we have lost the power to move.
“No, no. I’m here by myself.”
“I thought there might be someone else.”
“There could have been.”
“I know.”
“But there isn’t.”
“I asked in the bar.”
“Oh, did you.”
“They thought there wasn’t.”
“They could be wrong.”
“But they’re not?” His mouth is uneasy enough when he says this for me to kiss it. He tastes of airline toothpaste, but the rest is familiar: the gift of his weight, his heat, the lean in before he draws me back to him. He’s brushed his teeth, but hasn’t shaved and this seems fine, the friction of his cheek seems to make him more thoroughly here. There is a flinch in his jaw that I don’t understand. His hands smell of meat.
“I wanted you, Mr. Gardener.”
“I wanted you.”
“You could have phoned.”
“I know . . . but, stuff happened. It was difficult . . . But I know. Could we get out of here? I mean, I’d like to. I want to show you where I work. I want you to see that. I’ve seen your things. We never got round to mine.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“Well . . .”
“Otherwise, there’ll be patients . . . I can’t show you everything when I have patients. Not the way I would like.”
“What happened while you were gone—to the patients, the surgery?” I try, but not overly hard, to sound unsuspicious.
“Locum . . . Not ideal, though: my disappearing. Not what anyone wants. They were very cross. Everyone was very cross. I did call them. But not you—I am sorry—but I knew you’d be . . . very cross.” He closes his meat hands on either side of my face and a hint of pain thrums in his forearms. “I’m glad you were at home. Glad you opened the door.” He lets me go. “I’m on probation now. Lots of probation. With everyone.” And examines my face.
I hadn’t felt like the bar that evening, I’d stayed in with a couple of milkshakes and my unlicensed radio—otherwise, he wouldn’t have found me, I might have been anywhere.
Instead, I’m fixed in my own hall, waiting while he studies me, until he’s searched out whatever he wants, or compared me to a memory, or made sure I’ll become one. I lean close until I can taste him in my breath, but I don’t touch, because I am being reserved now, still adjusting, and because I am saving him for later. Then I get my jacket and lead him out to the company van.
Robert’s voice is small and dry as he directs me and I drive us towards the end of the estuary, to the nice suburbs and then beyond to a little sea town surrounded by caravan parks and stripped grain fields, dark potato rows, almost ready to be torn away.
“This is it.”
It’s dark when I pull up outside a dull gleam of whitewash. Sunk into this are a black door and a black-framed window in which stands an animated model of a dentist waving an oversized toothbrush, up and down, across a set of frighteningly painted teeth. The teeth are large enough to stand level with his chest, crouched like a giant mollusc of some kind, clearly capable of biting him in half. Behind the waving is a background of faded posters about sporting gum shields and prosthetics and the evils of sweetened drinks for the under-fives.
“Good God.”
“Oh, him. That’s Henry—he used to be a cobbler.”
“What?”
“You know—the mechanical cobblers with the wire-rimmed glasses and the white hair and the hammers they batter about near their lasts. They used to be everywhere—like those big, metal boys with the leg braces they’d park outside shops, collecting for something—more paint for metal boys . . . You remember . . .”
“Not really.” I examine the dentist’s glasses and wooden rictus— in combination with the white coat and the blankly painted eyes, they strongly suggest a quite different past involving electrical torture and South American uniforms.
“We put him in a coat, swapped the hammer for a brush, made up some teeth—that’s why his action isn’t really what it should be, he’s still trying to hammer nails into the gums. Come on.”
Robert unlocks the black door and I follow him up a narrow flight of stairs packed with the smell of heated calcium, mouthwash and disinfectant and panicked sweat. Behind me the converted cobbler flails endlessly away, trying to subdue the nightmare dentures and possibly wishing for fresh electrodes and rubber gloves.
“Do people like that? It doesn’t put them off?”
“Everyone’s scared of dentists—after him, I seem quite friendly. And I tell the very little nippers that if they don’t behave, then the clockwork dentist will come and get them in the night. Never fails to impress— although he actually runs off the mains . . . So. Here we are.” He gently dunts his fist beside an unwilling Yale and then we slip in past the brass plate that proclaims Robert Gardener to be a BDS and an MSc. This seems oddly unlikely, although I’m sure it’s true.
The surgery is small and very bright. A glass partition defends the receptionist’s desk and alcove, with its predictable picture postcards, bad seaside calendar and merrily orthodontic cartoons. Branching off a central hallway are four doors marked WAITING ROOM, TOILET, X-RAY and MR. GARDENER, respectively. The other, intriguingly blank, doors conceal, as Robert shows me, a cramped tea-making nest equipped with a cracked sink and a wooden chair, bearing an unemptied ashtray and many, rather dull shelves of supplies.
“Back in a moment.” He briefly squeezes my arm and then pads away while I consider this last cupboard. If Robert is the man I take him for and if I have gained any benefit from suffering Sniffer Bobby’s stories, then it may be that somewhere here, in appropriately devious seclusion, there is at least one alcoholic bottle, tucked up and asleep. I feel, with Bobby’s example, that I should be capable of sniffing it out and pouring it awake.
I begin the search.
lignocaine hydrochloride, dexamethasone
I know a man whose work is in these words: in chemicals and how the body lets them touch it.
potassium nitrate, articaine hydrochloride, epinephrine
I love a man whose work is in
No.
That’s not what I wanted to say, that’s the word I never think of, in case I’m listening.
polyhexanide, propylene glycol
A slip of the mind, that’s what it was. I’m just overreacting because I’ve missed him and now he’s here again. No need for words that I’ll regret.
And it’s his booze we’re after, remember?
As if anyone could forget.
Unruly stacks of boxes full of other, smaller boxes. No drinker’s logic in any arrangement that I can see: no trace of subterfuge and hidden tracks, only jars and tiny, svelte containers of strictly dental purpose, everything honest and above board.
zirconium oxide, zinc oxide, epinephrine bitartrate, formaldehyde
But there will be a lie here somewhere: a flagon of disinfectant that isn’t, gloves that are not gloves, needles that are not needles, wadding that gives up a chuckle, a cluck of frightened liquid when you shake it.
Yes.
A package of absurdly heavy cotton wadding and, under the top layer, a sheen of glass, the virgin seal around a cap with the scrawly, red signature—Paddy. I should have known: it’s the lovable-ugly orphan of Irish whiskies, the one with the big ears that scuffles in the dust at play-times over by the fence. It’s 40 per cent proof, though: who needs a mother and father when you’re that.
“I see. You’ve found me out.” Robert, as quiet as his breath, sets himself behind me, catches my elbows before I can turn, and then rests his chin on the crown of my head. “But that’s for later. This first.”
And gently he explains his substances, rocking until I rock
with him, his voice low in his chest, flaring in with his heat to my spine. “These are the anaesthetics, so I don’t hurt anyone. This is a kind you put into the bone—it’s very good for awkward cases, for people who can’t help feeling too much pain. And this covers wounds and helps to heal them. And this makes everything clean. And this is for preparation, so that I can build a bond. And these are what I build with, how I put things right. I have anything I might want for anything. I can be good at what I do, you know? I have been good. Once I’ve done you can eat and speak and bite and drink and kiss as if you’d never had a problem. People have thanked me. I used to get letters.”
“That’s great.”
“It was great. It was really great.”
Then Robert lets me move, step out of his reach and round to find him, face him.
“Oh.”
At first it is almost hard to understand that he is naked. Tension putting a fast, shallow rise in his chest and smoothing the skin against his ribs, a fresh bruise large on his hip, the older grazes on both knees, bare feet: I have to take him in piecemeal, because he is so much. Shadows and splinters, that’s all I could remember, but here he is whole, the full, pale ache of him. A tick of nerves in one wrist and so he raises his hand to smoothe across his forehead and I follow the motion up until I’m halted by his eyes. He swallows and his blush begins, rimming his ears. Silly, blushing now.
It seems that if I touch him we will cry. “Robert Gardener. That’s you, Robert Gardener.”
We are both very near to sober—he may even be completely sober. And being without clothes is one thing—is a fine thing—but being without clothes and without drinking and about to do what we have to be about to do—that’s completely another thing and one that we’ve never attempted. Like this, I don’t know if I can stand how beautiful he is—the rush of that and need and hormones and nothing to smooth it out, nothing to keep me held so I can focus.
I don’t want to fall over and I think I might.
Then he gives me that little glance, that small, specific glance you both recognise: the mix of shame and pride and resignation: the way men always have of saying they know you’re going to look at their prick next, give it some time.
We’ve met before, of course—Robert’s prick and I—but not like this. We’ve never been formally introduced.
And there’s no room in this for saying anything—not to tell him that he’s lovely, that all of him is lovely and couldn’t be anything else and not to tell him that I disapprove absolutely of circumcision, but love that he is circumcised, because it lets me be selfish, lets me like to have him always so deeply, clearly stripped for my benefit. Even when he isn’t hard he looks closer to it, more ready.
But now he is hard, quite ready enough.
“Robert Gardener.”
He stays as quiet as I do and walks out of the storeroom, waits for me in the hall.
“No. Don’t do that. Not at the moment.” Robert gathers my hands together in his before I can reach him. Then, concentrating on his fingers, frowning down, he methodically removes my jacket, my blouse, my bra.
He doesn’t pause. “What we do at the moment is this. And this.”
I hold his head as he bows it and then kisses, suckles the way a son would, then teases, bites, because he is a man and, either way, draws out my heart from me like a thorn. I’m hauled out beyond myself, beneath myself, outside myself, inside his mouth.
I love his tongue. No other word will do it. I love his tongue.
And the sweet scalp underneath his hair and the drive of his breath, the fierce push of his cheek and the howl, our howl, the one we make out of our skin.
Which is all very well, but it isn’t filth.
What I was after was filth.
You’d think I could summon something up.
But no.
Not fucking on the padded bench in his waiting room, or on the hallway floor—that’s a blood-coloured haze, I can’t bring it into focus. I can’t even grab at thumping each other down and into the cold vinyl grip of his chair—quite naturally his chair—you’re going out with a dentist, you’ll have to want to fuck him in his chair, at least talk about doing it—first place you would think of. Although we didn’t go there first.
No, we started in the hall, began with unbearable gentleness, with his mouth finding my breasts.
I talked the whole time, babbled, couldn’t help it. “My wee man, my good man, my good lamb, that’s . . . that’s my man . . . that’s shhh, you’re my man, it’s fine, it’s all fine, you’re my man, it’s fine.”
Which also isn’t filth—it’s the way you nail yourself to someone else without even thinking: forever and ever, amen.
“O holy child of Bethlehem
Descend to us we pray
Cast out our sin and enter in
Be born in us today.”
I scramble for the final line and thump into my seat. Both the woman and my brother stare at me, but I am facing straight ahead and concentrating
I used to roar that out when I was ten or twelve—the last verse would just rake through me and I’d imagine it boiling me clean as it went. I had hopes of moral improvement then and possibly an office job, or something in education, because teachers have the longest holidays.
Two more pages of hymns and a prayer to get through and I’m certain I won’t last. I can’t govern my breath and I’m sweating. If I don’t get some cold, unsanctified air very soon, I will throw up. My leaving early won’t please Simon, but my projectile vomiting over co-worshippers would annoy him a lot more.
“Stepping outside.”
He frowns at me, as if I’m a stupid child. “What?”
I murmur again, “Stepping outside. Need air.”
“Hannah . . .”
“I’ll wait. Outside. I’ll wait.” By which point I’ve already forced the pious soprano to one side and popped a couple of pensioners up out of their seats, disturbing their view of the designated reader, currently intoning something about sheep. I chose to wear the baseball boots this morning, they’re comfy for long drives, so each of my footfalls combines an echoing slap with a sharp squeak.
I am a disgrace. I know this. But it’s been true for years, there is no reason for it to hurt any more than usual today.
The door growls after me as I try to ease its closing, slowing it with my back.
I sit on the church steps and chug the other 100 millilitres of syrup. This is foolish, because I don’t have any more, but it firms me up, lets me enjoy the prickle of frost in my lungs and the fresh, blue day above. Under my skull, I’m as warm as burning toast and close to happy.
This would have been better if Robert had been here, except he didn’t want to come.
Although happy retreats as I think of it, suddenly shy and insubstantial.
No. He isn’t here, because he didn’t know he could be, because I didn’t tell him. But I didn’t tell him, because I knew he wouldn’t want to come. If it hadn’t been for Simon, I wouldn’t have come.
The cold of the step is soaking through into my legs and there is an oily film of loneliness blurring my teeth.
I’d have lasted the whole of the service with Robert: we’d have kept ourselves straight.
I have never shown Simon any of my partners: even the ones who haven’t been a source of shame. Robert, I could take anywhere, he has dignity. But I’m still superstitious: it doesn’t do to declare yourself, to identify the joys you’d hate to lose.
Leaching through the stained glass comes the choir, with something complicatedly tuneless and in Latin. They sound, nonetheless, contented and in a while they will patter out, shining, their duty done and the priest will stand somewhere near here and shake parishioners’ and strangers’ hands and the steam of breath and festivity will be thickened with bursts of fellow feeling and respect, little recollections of childhood, cocoa, early to bed on a Sunday before school.
My own recollections refuse to retreat any further back than Robert’s surgery an
d our final, emptied tiredness. We were cupped close to each other, lying on our sides in the narrow chair, cooling where we didn’t touch. I kissed Robert’s neck and then eased myself away, went out to the hall, picked up my blouse. I slipped it on while I went and fetched the Paddy’s, weaselled it out of its cotton-wool cradle and brought it back to him.
“Here.” I poured out two friendly measures in a pair of his mouthwash cups. “You awake, love?”
He stirred and rolled on to his back, flickered open his eyes and registered the drink I held towards him with a frown. “What’s this?” Although he knew without asking, sat up and reached out for his measure, examined it, inhaling close above its lip.
“Paddy’s.”
“Thought so.”
“You all right?”
“I’m back.” This with his eyes fixed on the whisky, swinging it slightly in his hand, the tiny swell of the meniscus showing through the thin, white plastic like a shadow between his fingers. “I’m back.” He opened his mouth and tipped his head, let the Paddy’s fall into him.
I sipped mine rather more slowly, but it disappeared just the same in a jolt of heat and I stepped over to be beside him and open a kiss while we were both still burning.
“I’m back.” And he dropped the cup, crossed his arms over his chest, fought in a breath. His eyes closed.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
I stroked the skin that I knew now, the touch I’d keep with me, drunk and sober, asleep and awake. “You can say.” I kissed his eyelids and the start of salt. “My wee man, you can say.”
“I wasn’t going to.” The hard climb of a sob. “I haven’t for three weeks, longer than three weeks.”
The thought that I might have hurt him chilled in. “What weren’t you going to do?”
A cough beat through a sob. “Drink.”
“What.”
“I was staying off.”
“But that’s okay.”
“I was being good.”
“Of course you’re good.”
“I was staying off.” And he was still, but crying, the tears rolling back into his hair.
“You only had one. That’s nothing—one. Look, we won’t have any more. We don’t need to. I’ll put it away and we’ll tidy up and . . . It was just the one . . . Robert, it doesn’t matter, there’s no harm done. We’ll both cut down together, that’ll be good—we don’t need it. We’ll do it together. Okay, love? Okay?”
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