Everything You Need

by A. L. Kennedy

  “I just wanted to ask.”

  There it went—a manly, fatherly little thump.

  “Have you seen her?”

  And one brief dab of fingertips at the yellowing bruise on his neck— just to say they both knew what it meant.

  “Yes.”

  “How did it go?”

  “I’ve seen her twice.”

  “Was it all right?”

  Nathan swallowed and closed his eyes, weakness singing up the muscles in his throat. Against his will, he reached his hand out, blind, and caught at Joe’s wrist. He let himself cling, only for a reasonable moment, only for a while.

  Joe let him slip with a flutter of tenderness over his palm. “You don’t make things easy, do you?”

  “No.”

  And fuck you and fuck you and fuck you. And thanks. Thanks for letting her come here. To me. And fuck you.

  Joe left him to finish his bath and then Nathan, cleaned down to an ache, shaved and then dressed himself properly. The suit and shirt and tie and all the proper accoutrements were folded in his rucksack, ready. His father’s cufflinks, even.

  As if there is any point. She isn’t here. She’s already arrived.

  But it’s the thought that counts.

  Sympathetic magic. Acting out your good dreams. The ones you never write.

  Crap.

  And he clacked downstairs in his best shoes and a haze of aftershave to find the lamp lit and the phone ready for him, but no sign of Joe. So he sat, skin still thrumming with cleanliness and the thought of Mary, of her having walked into this room, the turn of her body, the speed of her smile. He thought of how he might have welcomed her correctly, dressed the part and smiling at her, fatherly.

  Nathan, you are a fucking failure, fucking nutter. Cunt.

  He wanted to tell somebody, to explain. He wanted to say it all until it went away.

  “Hello?” J.D.’s home number had yielded no reply, so Nathan called his mobile. “Hello?”

  “Hello, hello.” The liquid enunciation, the night-time Jack—pacy and, in several ways, high.

  “Jack?”

  “Yes, it is—and who’s this? Or do I have to guess?”

  “It’s Nathan.”

  “Oh, my good best friend Nathan. How are you? So wonderful to speak to you. And I’m fine, I’m very well. I’m so well it scares me. You know how I find good health alarming. What time is it?”

  “I . . . about midnight, maybe later.”

  “Well, well, well, well. So. Do you suppose I’m working late, or working early?”

  Jack really was rolling, hardly breaking between syllables for breath. Nathan wondered for a savage moment if he should hang up and forget it, or scream something obscene, or just wait for Jack’s chemical energy to drop.

  “Working? You mean you’re in the office, Jack?”

  “I am in the office, yes. I do have to be, now and then—expected for earners of salaries. I told her, the secretary, I told her—I can’t come in until later, I said, because I’m sick.

  “ ‘Sick?’ she said.

  “ ‘Sick,’ I said.”

  He pantomimed across the night, voice tacking rapidly from a lisping, secretarial squeal to a wheezy growl.

  “ ‘How do you mean—sick?’

  “ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve just killed my sister and then fucked her while she was still warm—wouldn’t you say that was sick?’

  “Hee hee.” Nathan could hear something—possibly a desk top—being slapped. “Shit, that hurt. Never mind—it’s still a laugh. I love a laugh, laughter’s a lovely thing: verb: thing. The leavening in the soggy bread of life. Did you know, by the way, this whole building was designed to form a swastika, when viewed from above. That’s why it’s always so hard to get your bearings—because of those curly, swirly arms. I wish you were here, Nathan. You could be doing this with me. I have such a lot to do. I have this stuff and that stuff and that really, really bad stuff and possibly one snuff more of the stuff I had, just before you called. Did I say you were my friend? You are. God, you are. I wouldn’t . . . where would I be without . . . I mean, where would I be. Hm?”

  Nathan bided his time, while Grace ebbed. “You are my friend? Nate? No one here is, not any more. That young sod, Benedict Kemmler— him, the fucker—he’s doing everything I used to and I’m sitting here— tragically unable to recall how I fucking did anything I used to. I—”

  Nathan winced against a painful impact as Jack dropped the receiver. J.D.’s voice grumbled, dodged closer, took up residence again. “Tell me . . . you tell me . . .” But seemed to suggest he might be slumping towards blackout.

  “What, Jack?”

  Jack sniffed, rallied into a briefly firm awareness. “Jesus, it’s late. Why are you calling me? Something wrong?”

  “Nothing. To talk. Nothing.” Nathan hesitated, unsure of what would be more sad—confiding in a man who was barely maintaining his own autonomic functions, or saying goodbye and then being alone. “That is . . . She’s here, Jack. She came. She’s here.”

  “She’s . . . ?” Nathan could almost hear Jack’s thinking slither past a random slew of recollections, then, “Oh. She. She—”

  “Mary.”

  “Mary, that’s right. Mary.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your daughter.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it . . . ?”

  “Awful. It’s awful. I—Jack?” Nathan had gripped one arm across his chest in a try for comfort, consolation, touch. “You listening?”

  A moist cough, a scratch through stubble. “I am. Go gently, but I am. You know I try. I do try, but I’m . . . off duty now.”

  “I know, I just . . . Jack, she thinks I’m dead. Maura told her I was . . . How do I get any furth— Fuck.” Nathan caught his breath.

  Jesus Christ, he doesn’t care. Why should he. Tomorrow, the poor fuck won’t even remember what I said. But I just want somebody to hear. Any fucking body. Shit.

  I could tell her.

  Mary.

  Yeah, like fuck I could tell her. She thinks I’m dead. Bitch.

  “Bitch.”

  “What?”

  “I said bitch. Maura—she’s a fucking bitch. She sent me a photograph, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “Years ago.”

  “Mm hm.”

  “No warning, no note. She just sent me the picture, an old photograph—Mary on the beach, sitting on a rock with her knees up, all of her facing to the side, sun on her, breeze just lifting her hair, little summer dress I’d never seen. And I couldn’t, I couldn’t remember if it was taken somewhere that we’d been together, all of us, before, I just couldn’t be sure. And I thought . . . I suppose, I thought it was a gesture, a reconciliation type of thing. I thought that I would see her then, see them both, maybe, that this was the first step and soon we’d be in touch. But it was funny, because, in the picture, she was so young—only a little bit older than when I’d seen her last—but, by the time I got it, she would have been ten.

  “And now I keep wondering . . . maybe, in the picture, she already thinks I’m dead. And she looks . . . happy.”

  “Nathan, I’m sure, I uh—”

  “Now she’s just . . . she looks . . . I don’t . . .”

  “Take it slow now. Come on, Nate.”

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “Mm hm.”

  “I mean, she’s like . . .”

  “Like Maura?”

  Nathan gave a start. “Yes. No, better. No, the same.” He stalled against the tension of competing loves. “Maybe better. I mean, just wonderful, Jack. Absolutely. The best-looking nineteen-year-old I’ve ever seen.”

  “Sssh.”

  “Except maybe for one.”

  “Sssh.”

  “Maura.”

  Nathan locked his jaw, set his lips against the back of his hand and still it came for him: despair hooping out from every bone and shattering under his skin, breath filling and shaking him, but making
no sound. He could feel himself, penned in behind his skull, behind his ribs. An old pain opened again, opening him.

  “Nathan. Nathan? . . . Well, it’s all right, though. She’s, she’s there.” Jack struggled to construct a reassurance. “Mary . . . That’s a good thing. You’ll be fine. I’m . . . not good at this, but I know it’ll turn out, even if I don’t sound convinced.

  “Nathan? . . .

  “I could tell you a joke, I just can’t think of anything suitable. There’s the one about the little girl out in the woods, but it’s . . . no, it’s not the thing for now. Still, don’t be sad. Please. We can’t both be sad old bastards.

  “Nathan?”

  1991

  “So. There’s this little girl out in the woods . . .” J.D. was ready with their mutual ritual number four, the welcoming joke.

  “Is this something I shouldn’t be hearing before lunch?” Nathan, out of breath after the stairs, allowed his hand to be clamped between two very smooth, dry palms. Jack tugged him gently forward, and into the office. Nathan sat. He could still feel himself reverberating with X-rays, they always made him seem light-headed, light-bodied, lit. “Something disgusting?”

  “Of course, of course. Some are disgusting by habit or mistake, some are born disgusting, I am disgusting by design. Sit down. Well? Are you?”

  “I think so. The hospital’s prodded at me all morning and they’ll let me know. I feel well. I think. It doesn’t do to dwell on it.”

  “No indeed.” Jack leaned on the edge of his desk, grinning, waiting to be perused. “And?”

  Nathan tried his best to concentrate, to shake off the quiet shock of having been—once again—systematically stripped and gowned and tabled up and photographed down to his bones. He’d spent the last months forgetting the scrabble of powerlessness in his throat at the thought of disease, the sweet ooze of abandonment as machinery ground and clicked about him and he slid and jarred in silence on his slab.

  “Nathan, you’re not with me. I hope you’re, that is, it’s very unlikely . . .” J.D. yanked at his moustache. “Don’t be worried, old man, you’ve been cleared before. Every time, it must be more and more of a formality.” The corner of his mouth ticked with minor embarrassment. “Not that it will feel that way. But any road up . . .” He smiled more cautiously. “Look at me. What do you think? Of my overall effect?”

  “I think lemon bow ties should be illegal, ditto for corduroy suits, especially if they’re algal green.”

  “Moss green, actually.” J.D. brushed his lapels protectively.

  “No, actually, that’s the green of cow shite. And I still say the moustache is a dreadful mistake. Glad the sideburns went, though.”

  “Thanks for your support. Jealousy—I would just point out—is an especially ugly emotion.”

  “All right, all right, let me summarise. You’re on the wagon and you’re chasing a new skirt.”

  Jack’s grin widened by a sly degree. “Good guess. Although I have caught the skirt. And will be lifting it again this afternoon. I feel twenty years younger.”

  “And how many years younger does she feel?”

  “Eighteen.” Jack thumbed his moustache flat, all innocence. “Wonderful woman, a real influence for good.”

  “I don’t know how you do it.”

  “I make them want to save me and then they come and try. And—to be serious—the professional grip and performance were being lost in a rather too noticeable way. Time to clean up the act—radically reduce my available number of altered states. Because the minor evil conglomerate of which this merry house is part could well be swallowed by one of two major evil conglomerates any day now. And I have to be an asset when that happens—not a liability. I’m too old for retraining and I have an expensive life. So. Fresh start all round, Nathan. I even have a new author—a girlie. That cow up the corridor wants her, but she’s mine, all mine. Not much cop now, but I think she’ll be good. I am going to nourish her.”

  “That wouldn’t, by any chance, involve bodily fluids?”

  “Not at all. I don’t want anything to distract her, not even me. And then, if we’re really counting assets . . .” his mouth ticked again, “I always have you.”

  “Why, Mr. Grace, you surprise me. But perhaps I could come to love you, given time.”

  “You know what I mean, Nate. They can’t argue with your sales figures and they can’t cut me loose without offending you. Can they?”

  “You get very paranoid when you’re dry, you know that?”

  Nathan’s hand was clasped again. “You’re my lifeboat, Nate. This isn’t the world it used to be—they don’t want characters in publishing any more, they don’t want mistakes . . . fuck it, they don’t even especially want grammatical sentences—they want cash and if you prove you can make it, then they want you to make more. I’d be screwed if we didn’t have our little contract, our clause.” Jack blinked down at Nathan, trying not to search too hard for a guarantee.

  “Jack, how long have I known you?”

  “Twenty years, perhaps twenty-two.”

  “We’re friends. We’ll be OK and I’ll keep producing what I have to.”

  “Blood, fear and fucking for the thinking lady. Your very own niche.”

  “Yeah. But I’ve started to write a proper book, too.” Nathan hadn’t known he would say that.

  “Fuck. Really?”

  An ounce or two of panic hooked in, twisted Nathan’s breath ridiculously. “Well, yes, why not? I’ve done it before . . .” He heard himself whine defensively, saw J.D. hear it, too.

  “So did I, for that matter, a thousand years ago.” Jack checked himself, cleared his throat and found a more diplomatic tack. “But, but naturally, you can do what you like. It would be interesting. I mean, more than that—great. Really great. Is this, is this because of . . .” Jack lapsed tactfully into silence.

  “My daughter? Ahm, I have to say, yes. Yes, it is. I am that stupid, or that sad. I would like to write something she’s proud of.”

  “When she finds out who you are. When you tell her.”

  The hook flicked back and yanked at him again. “Well, that might not . . . I don’t know . . . really, it wouldn’t . . . Anyway, I’m doing it. Which doesn’t make me a bad person. Or a good one, either, obviously.”

  The two men winced at each other briefly, wanting to be compassionate and confiding, wanting themselves to know that they probably could be in another time, another place, perhaps when they’d both been drinking and it was late.

  “Well, that’s, that’s fine. Absolutely fine.” Jack tilted himself forward to stand, his suit hanging loose.

  “Christ, Jack, you’ve lost weight. You must have been off the sauce for a while.”

  “Um . . . three weeks. And four and a half days. Look, I hate to rush you, but I do—as I’ve said—have somewhere to go after lunch.”

  Nathan patted his arm at Jack’s back, felt the gesture returned. They walked out of the office, gently dunting away at each other, providing a small and temporary cure for their separate anxieties. Nathan delivered a fondly heavy blow. “I’d forgotten, you actually have dry hands when you’re sober.”

  “Hm. But they won’t be dry for long this afternoon.” Jack gave Nathan his very best lucky dog look, with just the correct degree of delighted shame. “A man has to have some vices, after all.”

  “You have all of your own and some of mine.”

  “But I pay the price—oh, a horrible price. I am by now, for example, completely morally fibreless—utterly invertebrate and decayed. Which reminds me,” he locked into his best, most breathless, story-telling voice, “this girl’s in the woods and it’s night-time.”

  “I don’t want to hear this.”

  “Sssh. Indulge me. Little girl and she’s there with a pervert and she says to the pervert, It’s very dark in here, I’m really scared— ”

  “And the pervert says, You’re scared?—I’ve got to walk home alone.”

  Jack paused, anticipat
ing, and then sputtered with disappointment. “I’d already told you?”

  “I already knew.”

  “Well, all I can say in that case, Nate, is that you are really fucking sick.”

  Mary was trying hard not to like Nathan’s dog. She wasn’t managing. This was the fifth day she’d been left in charge of Eckless and they were getting on dreadfully well. They’d met before—often—but never without his master being there. She would trudge up to Nathan’s house to be shouted at, or wheedled, or badgered and then sent away again to not write and Eckless would mainly lie in his basket, perhaps lifting an eyelid or an ear. Once or twice he had snuffed and whimpered in his sleep, always producing a moment of softness in Nathan: a hot, little, tender smile that Mary found surprising. She couldn’t entirely believe that Nathan had any of the more humane emotions.

  But she couldn’t deny he’d left a deep impression on his dog—without him, the beast was distraught. Every time they went out for a walk, he tugged and begged to visit Nathan’s place: to clatter in and scurry through the rooms, persistently hopeful that Nathan would be there. She hated to see him disappointed, but, of course, he always was.

  “Three more days. Then you’ll be fine. I promise. He’ll be back. So one of us will be happy.” Within hours of Eckless’s arrival, she had lapsed into the small stupidity of talking to a dog and then expecting it to understand. Rapidly, their one-way conversations had become entirely comfortable.

  “Why you want him back, I don’t bloody know. He might be good at dogs, but he’s not good at people.” Eckless trotted accurately beside her, offering no opinion, making an effort to enjoy the day. It was a good one: the sea morsing sunlight across the length and depth of the shockingly blue horizon, a water-cooled breeze to make the heat more bearable.

  Mary clambered down to the sand of Nathan’s bay—the dog had brought her and she liked it, the way it cupped round her, its privacy. But she tried not to get too fond of it here. She guessed that, once Nathan was back, this privacy would be made his alone again.

  She settled into throwing pebbles and sticks and kelp stems to keep Eckless racing and flirting with the tide until his tongue flagged out and he started wheezing. He finally collapsed, as usual, in the shade of her body. Mary sat and tried to write her letters, while he sighed in the more than human way that only dogs can.