Stronger Than Skin

by Stephen May

  ‘You’ll live,’ she said, and turned away. Then turned back. ‘But your poor bike’s probably had it. Give me your address and I’ll send you a cheque. I’d do it now, only not sure where my cheque book is and I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘We noticed.’ Katy again.

  ‘Katy.’ Danny sounded exasperated. Danny and Katy had been going out for less than a term and already they sounded married.

  I mumbled my address and Anne produced a pen from somewhere and a scrap of paper from somewhere else, or maybe someone else produced them, Danny maybe, or someone among the diminishing group of onlookers. Much of the little crowd had by now drifted over to look at the car. It really was a beautiful thing.

  Katy picked up on my haziness, how I wasn’t following everything, how I was distracted.

  ‘He’s probably concussed,’ she said. ‘He could have a bleed on the brain.’

  I don’t think Katy really believed this was a possibility. I think she was trying, one last time, to make this woman understand what she’d done, or what she’d almost done. The hurt she might have caused.

  Anne put the paper in the back pocket of her jeans. She squeezed my shoulder. She gave Katy a solemn, sympathetic look. Katy looked away. Anne moved past the group standing around her car, a vintage sports model I didn’t recognise. Sleek. The shimmer of imperial colour. Even stationary that car was an event. It was unmarked by our collision as far as I could see.

  We were silent until she’d gone. A snarl of bluish fumes. Going too fast.

  ‘Nice car,’ said Danny. Katy shot him a look.

  ‘I hate people like that.’

  ‘People like what?’ He was frowning.

  ‘People who think they can do what they bloody like.’

  6

  There were so many flowers I didn’t know what to do with them. Fortunately, Mrs Boyd did. Mrs Boyd was the cleaner. My bedder, to give her official title. A large, boisterously cheerful lady who treated all the students as if they were neglected toddlers. She was affectionate, tolerant and very physical. Always ready to offer a hug. Coming from a family that never hugged, she scared me a bit.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ she said now. She was gone more than a minute, but not all that much more and when she came back she was clutching a box full of vases of all shapes, sizes and colours. ‘Amazing what you can find in the porters’ lodge. Who’s the admirer anyway?’

  ‘The porters gave you all these?’

  The porters didn’t even speak to me; I was lucky if I got a nod. They had their favourites and I was not one of them, though I was always scrupulously friendly and respectful.

  I made tea for us both and as I did so I tried to tell the story of the collision. Mrs Boyd was impressed.

  ‘Anne Sheldon? She’s a one, isn’t she? Well, she can afford it I suppose.’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘Oh everyone knows Lady Anne, don’t they? Married to Dr Philip Sheldon. A big medical science bod. They say he’s brilliant. She’s a sparky wee thing.’

  ‘Why do you call her Lady Anne?’

  Mrs Boyd shrugged happily. ‘Everyone calls her that. She’s just got that manner, hasn’t she? Haughty like. Aristocratic. Extravagant too, clearly. Beautiful flowers though. Really brighten the place up.’

  They did. It was a sign that I was getting better that I could acknowledge it. There was a time not too long before when I thought I’d never want to see a bouquet of flowers again. But these were not funeral parlour flowers. These were spring flowers. Light flowers. Life flowers. The flowers filled that small room with their rich ambrosiac scent. I felt light-headed.

  ‘Look,’ said Mrs Boyd, ‘there’s an envelope too.’

  So there was. In the final bouquet was a stiff pale blue envelope, thick expensive stationery, my name across the front in a hurried, untidy hand. Inside there was creamy paper as soft as the envelope was stiff. ‘Come on, then. Spill.’ Mrs Boyd was looking at me with merry eyes.

  ‘It’s an invitation to a drinks party tonight. Just a few friends, it says. She thinks I might find it amusing.’ I adopted a mocking tone for this last sentence, as if I were a disdainful aristocrat myself. As if I were a cartoon Queen Victoria.

  ‘Well, I hope you’re going,’ said Mrs Boyd. ‘Dr Sheldon’s parties are legendary.’

  ‘I don’t know. I feel a bit weird.’

  ‘Scrambled eggs, that’s what you need.’ Mrs Boyd proceeded to make some. She was right too. I felt a whole lot better after those eggs. I was just finishing them off when Katy called round.

  There was the usual good-natured to and fro about whether Mrs Boyd should make more eggs. She was convinced Katy was in imminent danger of anorexia so was always trying to get her to eat. Katy laughed her off, protesting that she’d just had a pain au chocolat in Benet’s. Mrs Boyd sniffed. She told her that wasn’t proper food and she’d make herself ill if she wasn’t careful and not to come running to her when she did.

  Mrs Boyd mothered everyone but she mothered Katy more than most. She’d confided to me once that she was worried about her. Told me that Katy wasn’t anywhere near as tough as she liked to think.

  Finally, she accepted that she wouldn’t win this time. ‘You’re sure I can’t tempt you? Well, look, I’d best crack on. Have fun at the party. Make notes so you can tell me all about it.’ Mrs Boyd bustled off with the porters’ empty cardboard box in her hand.

  Katy took a different view of the invite than Mrs Boyd. ‘You’re not going, are you?’

  ‘I thought I might actually.’

  She frowned. ‘Really?’

  I tried to explain, tried to say how this last year I’d been finding most things sort of pointless but that I was vaguely excited by the idea of this party. How I had the sense that this might lead to that other Cambridge. The one they’d been hiding from me.

  Katy got up to go. She had an essay to plan. She was just popping in to see how I was and she could see that I was fine. She collected her things. She told me Danny was waiting for her back at her room. I closed my eyes. Not her fault, but I felt physical hurt when she said things like this. It wasn’t that I fancied her. I absolutely didn’t. Not then. Good-looking as she was, smart as she was, thoughtful as she was, Katy was too much like the girls I’d known at sixth form college – but it must be nice to have someone waiting for you back at your room. Someone a bit special.

  Katy and I had met during Freshers’ Week. Literally bumped into each other on the stairs on the second day. We had failed to find the English literature reception together, had ended up wandering the corridors of the college, guided by a distant murmur of soft laughter that we never quite got to. I remember I was impressed by the fact that, uniquely among the new under-grads I had met so far, she didn’t want to discuss her A-level results. Instead she was psyched about the Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine, an album that we had both bought only that morning in Andy’s Records in Mill Road. We were impressed by the coincidence.

  ‘Of course I also bought Kate’s album.’ She gave me a funny sidelong look.

  ‘The Sensual World? I didn’t know it was out yet.’

  ‘Just today. You don’t like Kate Bush.’

  ‘Yeah I do.’

  ‘Blokes hate Kate Bush.’

  ‘This bloke doesn’t.’ An audition passed and the first of a million discussions about what men and women like or don’t like. Think or don’t think. Do or don’t do.

  We saw each other every day, more or less, during those first few weeks. Coffee in Millie’s, pints of dark beer in The Eagle. I taught her how to play pool, she introduced me to great women poets. We played ferociously competitive games of scrabble. We made each other mixtapes. Eve had been the only other girl I’d known that had made mixtapes; it was a pretty exclusively male hobby otherwise.

  Over time we became best mates, so people were used to seeing us together. They often assumed we were an item, though we were conscientious about denying it.

  Then, out of nowhere, she g
ot together with Danny.

  ‘What’s so special about him?’ We were in The Eagle, deep into the third pint.

  ‘He’s clever, he’s a second year, he’s a half-blue in boxing. He’s hung like a donkey. What do you want me to say, Mark?’

  I didn’t know, but probably not that.

  ‘Look, Mark, clever and good at boxing doesn’t matter. Even size doesn’t matter all that much,’ she laughed, and then grew solemn. She took my hand. ‘The thing about Danny is that he desires me. Properly wants me. He doesn’t just think I’m okay-looking or a good laugh. He doesn’t care about my taste in music. He wants to fuck my brains out every time I see him. I see it in his eyes. He’s obsessed and that’s sort of exciting. I’ve never had that before. Do you get it, Mark?’ She held my gaze.

  Yeah, yeah. I got it. ‘Do you want to play some pool?’ I said.

  Now, in my room, she paused as something occurred to her.

  ‘So this Anne Sheldon sent flowers, which is all very lovely, all very Brideshead of her.’ She gave it full sarcastic emphasis and paused again. It was theatrical in a lawyerly kind of a way. ‘But was there, by any remote chance, a cheque with her note? Money for a new bike maybe?’

  I smiled. I couldn’t help it. ‘Now you come to mention it, no, there wasn’t.’

  ‘Typical. Bloody typical. It’s not funny, Mark.’

  ‘I expect she just forgot.’

  ‘Well, you can ask her about it at the goddamn party, can’t you?’

  I could. But I didn’t think I would.

  7

  6.30 p.m. prompt and I was at the Sheldon’s front door carrying a £4.99 merlot. It was from Bulgaria or Romania or one of those places, and at least a quid more expensive than the wine I usually bought.

  Dr and Mrs Sheldon lived in the heart of leafy North Cambridge. A substantial Victorian townhouse in Selwyn Gardens, backing right onto Wolfson College. The door was a rich pillar-box red, and at the moment I pushed the old-fashioned doorbell, I was convinced that I shouldn’t be there. Talk about a fish out of water. I very nearly bottled it. Very nearly turned tail and went. Lots of better places I could be. I could go round to Katy’s – hang out with her and Danny.

  If I went round to Katy’s we could listen to records. We could savour the extra-quidness of this wine. We could agree with each other about what selfish bloody wankers the likes of the Sheldons were. If people divide into drains and radiators then Katy has always been the best of radiators, great at making the people around her feel good about themselves. Once she’d picked you for her team, you never got dropped. My friends right or wrong, that’s always been her thing.

  But it was too late. The door opened. Anne Sheldon was in the hallway, face perfectly smooth, mask-like, wearing a shiny, almost metallic-looking blue cocktail dress, smiling in that subtle, distracted way. Eyes the colour of smoke. Now I saw it. Now I began to be beguiled. Bewitched by something more than beauty. There I was, face-to-face with someone whose eyes seemed to have seen everything there is and found that none of it mattered much.

  ‘Well, look at you,’ she said. ‘Look at jolly old you. You got the flowers then?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘yes, I got the flowers.’

  ‘Don’t you scrub up well? I knew you would.’

  I’d made an effort with my clothes. Clean black Levi’s and a proper jacket. A good one in dark grey with the faintest of hunting pink stripes running through it. Saville Row via the Mill Road Oxfam shop. That was one thing about Cambridge, crammed with poshos like it was, the thrift shops were full of good quality threads. Under the jacket I was wearing a Dinosaur Jr t-shirt. I looked okay.

  Turned out I was way early. Of course I was. Schoolboy error to take the time on the invitation as meaning the proper start time. But then, I was nineteen. I pretty much was a schoolboy. But it was all right. Anne found it sweet and, taking pity on me, immediately found me a job to do – she had me helping in the kitchen.

  ‘Philip’s upstairs working on his presentation for the conference in Stockholm. I expect he’s just going to appear when things are in full swing. Make a big ta-dah about it. Here, you can make the punch.’

  She handed me an old book, battered and watermarked. THE RUDIMENTS OF ENTERTAINING: THE YOUNG HOUSEWIVES’ GUIDE TO THE ART OF MODERN MANNERS.

  ‘The work of a Mrs Lamprey,’ she said. ‘Published in 1836 by Carey and Lea, Philadelphia and never bettered. Certainly a lot better than Mrs Beeton. Try the recipe on page 112. Never fails. Providing a good punch was part of modern manners back then. You should be good with alcohol. It must have been such fun growing up in a pub.’

  These days everyone knows everything about everyone. Meet a new person in the day and you google them that evening. No one minds, it’s expected. It’s actually a bit weird not to, looks like you’re not interested in them if you don’t. In fact, many people don’t even wait till the evening, they do all this casual stalking on their phone the next time they go to the toilet. Sometimes they look you up while you’re stood next to them. There’s no shame in it.

  Not the case then. To find stuff out about people in 1990 took time and it took effort. In 1990 you waited for personal histories to be unveiled to you over weeks and months. To do any digging around on your own was considered sinister and weird.

  Only, in this case, it was exciting somehow. I got a sudden kick inside, like someone had poked my heart with a stick.

  Anne just laughed. ‘I’m a researcher by profession. I know how to find things out. Now you do the booze while I do food. Don’t stint with the spirits. With punch, as with love, you should always err on the side of recklessness.’

  It occurred to me then that she probably knew about my sister, but I was glad she hadn’t mentioned it. I was sick of people being sorry about it, sick of the way they self-consciously adopted a solemn, sympathetic face when they talked about Eve. It wasn’t really their fault – what else could they do? – but it still made me want to slap them.

  I was left pouring, mixing and tasting. Chopping fruit, getting the punch to the colour and consistency of deep-vein blood. Two regal looking cats came in and stared at me with baleful eyes. Anne introduced them as her spoilt babies. Ophelia and Portia.

  It was a good half an hour before there was another knock on the door. Anne was next to me at the time. She turned to me, dark eyes glittering in her pale, immaculate face.

  ‘Now. I knew you’d be first here,’ she said. ‘But I wonder who’ll be second. It’ll either be the new muse or it’ll be Bim.’

  It was Bim.

  ‘Bim. This is Mark. Mark this is Bim. My only friend. My rock.’

  He was tall, as tall as me, and bigger built. A wrestler’s shape. Bullet headed with the hair close cropped. Thick neck, bullish shoulders. Powerful arms, massive hands, legs like tree trunks. He looked like he could be a blue in several of the rougher sports. In his dark suit he looked like a gangland enforcer.

  There were quite a few blokes who looked a bit like Bim at the university. Steak-fed men from minor public schools studying land economy and such like. Men who spent most of their time getting muddy on the sports field, flicking towels at one another in the showers and harassing girls in bars. Bim’s looks were very deceiving. He had made no tackles, flicked no towels. He never harassed girls. He had spent the last six years tinkering with a thesis on the Vorticists.

  ‘Bim?’ I said, as he took my proffered hand in both of his.

  ‘A schoolboy thing. A whim of my chums at Marlborough, the entomology of which is lost in those mists where none of us shall ever travel again.’

  ‘You mean etymology, surely?’ Anne. Smiling.

  ‘Do I, dear thing? Do I really? If you knew anything about boys’ public schools you’d know they are absolute termites’ nests. It’s an insect life and no mistake.’

  Bim’s voice seemed to belong to another man altogether. A voice as milky and slight as his body was meaty and slab-like. Both chirpy and sibilant with a carefully cultivate
d lisp, his voice was like an inexpertly played flute, a thing that would fill all the gaps with its breathy music if you let it.

  He paused now, my hand still in his, looked me up and down.

  ‘Extraordinary,’ he said.

  I felt myself blushing, my face growing hot. I blushed easily then, it had been a curse in school where the smallest criticism – or compliment – could make me turn pink. Bim withdrew his hands from mine, clapped them together, laughed good-naturedly. The doorbell made its sorrowful clang.

  ‘The new muse?’ said Anne. Bim made a face.

  ‘Bon courage,’ he said. ‘Come, my bright boy, lead me to booze immediately. Talk me through this beautiful punch. Our Mrs Lamprey’s fabulous recipe perchance?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Anne. To me she said, ‘It was Bim that got me Mrs Lamprey’s shockingly neglected hostessing bible.’

  ‘Yes, what a find that was. All the best bargains can be had at the Kings College Library damaged stock sale. Best £1.75 I ever spent.’ Bim linked arms with me and walked me down the hall to the kitchen, while Anne went to the door. ‘We don’t want to be around when the muse makes her entrance,’ he said.

  But it wasn’t the muse. Instead it was the first of the men in corduroy. There were a lot of these. A few were accompanied by wives with anxious eyes and too-stiff hair, but most were on their own. After a while there were also a couple of female academics. A chunky, frizzy-haired sociologist defiantly dressed down, jeans flapping around her ankles like the sixties had never ended. A thin historian, glamorous in a little black dress with her hair in a long grey plait. Mostly, though, it was just bespectacled men in brown clothes.

  ‘Did we fight the punk rock wars for this?’ said Bim.