by Stephen May
‘What is it Mark?’ She waits, though I can feel the impatience.
I can think of absolutely nothing to say. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll keep.’
She sighs. ‘I’ve really got to go now. Kids need their tea.’
After she hangs up. I check the time. It’s gone eight. Eight o’clock and the kids haven’t had their tea yet?
As I walk back into the room Lulu asks if everything is okay at home.
‘Yeah, fine. Why wouldn’t it be?’ I say. ‘Shall we get going?’
46
Anne was out on the driveway, no coat, rubbing at her bare arms. She was furious, spitting with frustration.
‘That fucker,’ she said as I reached her. ‘That fucker.’
She was in my arms sobbing, hot tears on my neck. I’d never seen her like this. Frantic, crying, out of control. I stroked her hair, breathed her in. She was rigid with tension. Clenched and shivering with rage. A fair guess that negotiations had not gone well. That the professor wasn’t playing ball.
‘You told me it would be okay. You said he’d be emollient, I think that was your word.’
Calmer now, she stepped back from me, took a breath, wiped the backs of her hands across her face. She told me that he had been utterly unreasonable about the house, about custody, about money, about every fucking thing. He’d reneged on everything.
‘Now he won’t even leave. He’s up there pissed out of his mind, saying he’ll go when he bloody well feels like it.’
‘We’ll see about that.’
‘You going to duff him up for me then, Marko? You going to be my hero? Bravo.’ She sounded sarcastic and I was stung. She saw I was hurt and sighed. ‘Why are men always so bloody sensitive?’
Dr Sheldon was lying full length on one of the sofas. He was spark out, his face gentle in slumber. He stirred as we came into the room and struggled to a sitting position. Squinted up at us.
‘Aha,’ he said. ‘She’s back, and oh, look who she’s brought with her ladies and gentleman. It’s Sid Vicious, the apprentice back scrubber.’
He closed his eyes again, his head lolled.
‘How much has he had?’ I asked.
Anne shrugged. ‘Couple of bottles while he’s been here and he was already half cut when he arrived.’
I moved to the sofa, got my arms around him and attempted to heave him upright. It was hard to get a decent grip on him. He was unresisting but he wasn’t exactly cooperative either, and he was a big man. By the time I got him onto swaying feet I was sweating. I was also unprepared for the sudden shove which sent me sprawling across the coffee table knocking wine glasses and bottles to the floor. There was a loud, discordant glissando of glass breaking.
‘Fucking great.’ Anne turned and hurried out.
Sheldon was delighted. He clapped his hands together, laughed loud and theatrical, gave himself the voice of an excited sports commentator.
‘Oh my word. He’s down! Kid Galahad is down! What a shocker for the fans.’
He really was a nasty piece of work. A fucker right enough. As I got to my feet, Sheldon held his hands up.
‘Okay, okay. I’ll go quietly.’ He looked to the door where Anne was bustling in with a dustpan and brush. ‘Dearest. You all right to give me a lift home?’ He sat down again heavily.
Anne looked at him. Her eyes narrowed and hard. Her face flushed. She bent to the floor sweeping the glass into the pan. ‘Anne?’
She didn’t look towards him as she said, ‘Yes. Yes, all right. God.’
I started to speak, started to tell her it wasn’t a good idea. But she cut me off. ‘Don’t just stand there, Mark. Go and get a cloth. There’s fucking wine everywhere.’
When I came back with kitchen roll, Sheldon was on his feet again, Anne had her arm round him. He was leaning all over her.
‘Come on, Mark. Help me get him into the car.’
Halfway down the tiled hallway Sheldon changed his mind again, became truculent and bullish.
‘My house,’ he said, his voice gluey and indistinct. ‘My bloody house.’ Sheldon tried to fight us as we pushed and pulled him towards the door, but his feet had no grip on the floor, his fingers got no purchase on the walls though he did manage to knock pictures skew-whiff. But it was hard work. Christ, he was heavy. Sheldon lumbering and stumbling and weighing at least two hundred pounds. So hard to keep hold of him as he lurched into explosive spasms every couple of steps, jerking backwards and upright and almost breaking free.
I had to adjust my grip on him several times. Had to pull him tighter into my body. Nostrils full of the smell of him. Cologne. Whisky. Arrogance. Privilege. Easy to focus on how much I hated this man. I gave him a dig in the kidneys with my balled fist. And another. Sheldon gave a satisfying gasp.
Anne was ahead of us, moving tables, umbrellas, coats, shoes, anything we might stumble over, or that Sheldon might anchor himself to.
‘Come on,’ she breathed. ‘Quick.’
‘My house. My bloody house.’
Then the door was open and we staggered into the cold wet air. ‘My house!’ Sheldon’s voice, still slurred but more forceful now. I put my hand over his fat sausagey mouth, felt him slobber against my palm. Almost stopped. Almost let him go. Almost.
Around the corner, the frantic percussion of our boots on the gravel. From somewhere I could hear music. Thirties dance music. Clarinets. Who listened to that stuff these days? Of course it was like we were dancing to it, Sheldon and me. Like we were doing some kind of crazy waltz. One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three. Anne had the side door to the garage open and then she had the back door of the Masterson’s old Volvo open. Quick now. Get the bloody man inside. Get him in the back of the car.
Sheldon seemed to surrender. To decide to give up fighting, to just accept things. About fucking time. He allowed himself to be pushed into the back seat where he did a little pantomime of making himself comfortable. It was with relief that I slammed the door shut on him.
Anne and I stood in that garage, both of us panting.
‘I don’t think you should drive him back.’
‘What do you think I should do then clever-clogs?’
I shrugged. ‘Get him a cab?’
‘I don’t think a taxi driver will take him, not the state he’s in.’
A thought struck me. ‘Hey, are you over the limit?’
Anne laughed. ‘Hey, you know what? I just might be.’
‘You can’t drive then. You’re in enough trouble.’
‘I think I’ll decide how much trouble is enough, thank you very much.’
She told me that Sheldon only lived a mile away, that she’d be careful, that if I could just go and finish clearing up the mess in the living room she’d be grateful and oh could I check on Dorcas. She’s normally a heavy sleeper but, well, we’ve been making something of a racket, haven’t we?
We stood staring at one another. Should I forcibly take the keys off her? Anne’s dark eyes flashed. I dare you, they seemed to be saying. Just try it. I fucking dare you.
‘Go on, dear. Please.’ She smiled at me and my heart twitched.
47
I knew exactly what to do about the wine. Dab tonic water on the stains, be liberal with it and then add a lot of salt, really a lot, wait a couple of moments and then scoop the soggy mixture up with kitchen roll and bin it. Do it quick, don’t skimp on the salt and use good quality kitchen roll and you’ll find the stain will have vanished in minutes. A little miracle, an everyday kind of magic. Something to do with the chemical interaction between the main elements. You don’t grow up in a pub without learning a few cleaning shortcuts.
Working in a pub you find a vital part of the job is clearing up the messes made by various fluids. Beer and wine, yes, gravy, yes, but also blood and piss. Faeces of many different constituencies. Spunk too, because there’s not a pub toilet in the country, no matter how rank, that people haven’t tried to have sex in. Growing up in a pub is like growing up on a farm – the basic facts of life
, the truths about humanity’s primal urges, well, they’re pretty inescapable.
The important thing is to try and get to the stains, whatever they are, while they’re still fresh if you can, otherwise you’ll just have to apply a lot more of the other important ingredient besides the quinine and the salt – elbow grease.
The wine came up easily enough but there was so much of it and in such hard-to-get-at places. It really had gone everywhere. It was amazing, there were only dregs in the glasses but still flecks and drops of wine had managed to get on all four walls, on both sofas, even on the sodding ceiling.
It was while I was bringing a chair from the kitchen into the living room – something to stand on to try and reach the ceiling – that I heard a noise behind me. A breath. A world-weary sigh.
Dorcas standing in the doorway and watching me with serious eyes. She was holding a large, battered, old fashioned teddy bear by the ear.
‘What are you doing?’ she said. I got down off the chair.
‘Cleaning,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ she said. She seemed to think this was a reasonable enough answer. She didn’t express any further curiosity, didn’t ask why I needed to be cleaning the ceiling. The two of us looked at each other. God, she looked exactly like her dad. It was weird. Dr Sheldon’s face reconfigured in the form of a rather sad little girl. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Finally, Dorcas said, ‘Where’s Mummy?’
‘I’m here poppet.’ Anne appeared in the doorway behind her and folded her into an embrace. ‘You should be in bed. What are you doing up?’
‘Something woke me up. Were you and Daddy fighting again?’
The voice was precise, clipped, accusing, the voice of a future minister, a future judge, a future ambassador to the UN.
‘No, sweetheart we weren’t.’
‘Where’s Daddy now?’
‘Let’s get you back to bed, shall we?’ Anne scooped the kid up and vanished.
I took the chair back to the kitchen. On the way back to the living room I took a few moments to straighten the pictures. The posters for exhibitions and theatre shows they had seen: Kazimir Malevich at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Theatre De Complicite at the ICA, the Leipzig biennial.
I arrived back in the living room just moments before Anne reappeared.
‘Didn’t take long.’
‘She’s wiped out poor thing. She went off in seconds.’
‘No, I meant it didn’t take long to get your husband back to his new home and then get back here.’
Anne sat down heavily on the sofa. She got up again, she rubbed both her arms as though she was cold. She moved around the room, touching the sculptures, picking up books. It was as if she hadn’t seen it before. As if she had woken from a sleepwalking dream to find herself in a stranger’s room. I didn’t like it. She hadn’t been away anything like long enough to get Sheldon to his house, get him inside and then get back.
‘Anne?’
She looked at me. I saw how fierce her eyes were. The stare of a hungry cat. A desperate wildcat with nowhere left to run to.
‘I didn’t take him home.’
‘What?’
‘What? What?’ she mimicked me cruelly, capturing perfectly my flat Essex voice, my baffled tone. ‘That’s your bloody catchphrase.’
We held each other’s gaze for long seconds before I made a move towards the door. She sprang towards me, clutched at me. ‘No, Mark. No. Please. Stay here.’ But both her voice and her hold on me were weak, uncertain.
I shook her off and hurried down the hall, fumbled at the catch on the heavy front door. Anne followed as I crunched across the gravel in a few short strides to the side door of the garage, noticing as I did so that the main door was closed and that the room stank of petrol. I gagged. Stopped. Behind me Anne said softly, ‘Don’t look. Please, Mark don’t look.’
But I had to look, of course I did.
Professor Sheldon was lying across the back seat, hands beneath his head, long legs folded. For a moment I was confused. He looked almost exactly as he had looked when I had left the garage to return to the house to start cleaning up. He looked like a man sleeping. A man with no worries and a clear conscience.
Then I wasn’t confused. Then I knew.
In seconds I had that old car door open and was pulling at Sheldon’s legs, heaving him out onto the concrete of the garage floor where he lay cherry-cheeked and absurdly healthy-looking. Eyes open but unseeing. That’s when I felt my blood surge in my veins. A sudden wonder.
I looked at Anne.
‘Fuck,’ I breathed. ‘Fuck.’
Now that the truth was out, now that I knew the worst, Anne seemed to have composed herself.
‘Indeed,’ she said.
‘What happened?’
‘Don’t be dense, Mark. You know what happened.’
I did. It was astonishing. It was unbelievable. But it was also very simple. There was the professor nodding off in the back seat, and Anne – about to lose her child, her husband, her home – had decided that no, actually she wasn’t going to drive this man back to his new place, back to lovely Mish. Why the hell should she have to do that?
This bastard man, this man who had broken all the rules, who had torn up the contract between them. He’d forfeited any rights to any help at all.
So instead she was going to attach a hosepipe from the exhaust of Masterson’s old Volvo, feed it through a tiny gap in the back window and then she was going to turn on the engine before getting out of the car and waiting the ten minutes or so it would take for Sheldon to move from drunken nap to endless sleep. At the moment she was doing it, it seemed right. It made sense. It seemed like justice.
Horrifying maybe, but easy to grasp at least.
I allowed myself to be taken by the hand to the house where Anne gave me whisky, made me swallow it. I coughed as it seared my throat.
‘You have to help me, Mark. If you tell me there’s no other option, that I have to call the police and that I have to tell them everything, then I’ll do that. But there must be something else we can do. There must be.’
Her small hands twisting round each other, her face flushed, her eyes glittering.
Of course, yes, actually there was something we could do. She saw it, saw that I’d glimpsed a solution, a possible way out. She saw it in my face almost the very second it came to me.
‘What is it, Mark? You have to tell me.’
Christ. I sat down and took another swallow of the whisky. I didn’t cough this time, instead I could appreciate the satisfying fire of it. I looked up at her. She came close to me, put her hands on my shoulders. Kissed my head. Then went back to twisting her hands in front of her, agitated and scared-looking, and beautiful too with that flushed skin, those flashing eyes.
I knew I shouldn’t do this. Knew it was a bad idea. But then, with shocking clarity, I saw my sister lying in pink-tinged water a year ago and remembered who put her there.
People die all the time. People are killed all the time. How many poets died in Nagasaki? How many potential philosophers were burned to death as children in Dresden? Every wartime bombing raid killed teachers, nurses, doctors. Murdered binmen and milkmen. Shop assistants and salesmen. Window cleaners and chimney sweeps. Babies. All of them killed by young men who were welcomed home as heroes. Men who were given medals by a grateful nation. Had sculptures to their sacred memory unveiled by the Queen.
‘It might not work. Probably won’t… but… But have you still got his old note, the one from before, from when he… ?’
I tailed off, but I’d said enough. She got it.
‘His cry for help you mean? Yes, yes, I have.’ She hurried out of the room, while I sat and sipped whisky and tried to think about nothing.
She was back in minutes, a page of A4 notepaper in her hand. Sheldon’s scrawl all over it. She was secretary-brisk.
‘We haven’t got long, Mark. We need to work out between us exactly what happened. We need to get the s
tory right and then you need to go.’
She was right. I needed to get out of there anyway.
‘We’ll be okay, Mark. A couple of weeks and we can see each other again. This is the best thing. It is. Doesn’t help anyone to tell the truth. Doesn’t help anyone for Dorcas to lose both parents.’
I needed her to stop talking. I couldn’t concentrate. My head ached. My stomach fizzed and cramped. I needed to get to a toilet.
‘In a little while we’ll be able to see each other again. We can do things properly. Go and see those bands. Go out to dinner and to the pictures. We can do all of that. I’ll be all yours, Marko.’
48
I was standing on the driveway again. It was a clear, cold night. The music had stopped. No more clarinets, no more pulsing swing beat double bass. There was a harmless breeze. There were cars coming at regular intervals down the road. I looked at the sky, there were a million dead stars up there sending out light from aeons ago. Light from back when humanity was still a clump of unlikely cells in the first ooze. Nothing had changed. Not really.
A movement at an upstairs window caught my eye. I looked up. A solemn face staring down. A child’s face. Dorcas. She lifted her hand. Then she was gone.
There was something at my feet now. I looked down. A cat rubbing up against my leg. Ophelia. Or Portia.
‘I thought you’d been got rid of,’ I told her.
I stood on that driveway and listened to the night. Traffic. The air in the trees. A distant fox. Something squealing in terror. Nature feeding itself.
I looked back up at the window. No one there now. No newly fatherless child waving all unknowing. I was walking away briskly, out of the driveway, dimly taking in the presence of another cat watching me impassively from the wall. Portia. Or Ophelia. I was thinking what this might mean.
I’ll be watching you. I’ll be that black cat that comes out of nowhere to cross your path but my head was really hurting now.
Then I was heading into town, walking a mile down Trumpington Road. Our plan meant I had to spend these hours just walking. Walking meant thinking, there was no avoiding that. It would be easier when it got light. There would be a cafe - Benet’s maybe or Carrington’s – eggs, toast, noise. All of Cambridge’s most pointlessly lovely faces laughing at nothing. All of that might help me not to think.