“Oh, Jesus.”
And, naturally, the front door opened and there was Mary as, “Fuck,” his hands flailed out for balance and gripped at Lynda’s head with apparent passion, apparent lust, and his naked eyes (exactly as stupefied as they would have been if this was in any way real) met his daughter’s face and he could only gape and whimper, his throat furred up with shame, before she turned and started leaving and he managed to call, “Mary,” when everything was too late.
Shit.
Lynda sat back on her heels, left him alone.
Shit.
The front door slammed behind his daughter. He heard her footsteps rush away.
Shit.
It was all the way it had to be.
Shit.
A total fuck-up.
Shit.
Just the way it had to be.
The cottage ached with sudden quiet. Slowly, Lynda stood, put on her dressing gown and moved her chair. Nathan folded both hands tight at the back of his neck. “Thank you.”
“Mm hm. Do yourself up.”
He frowned at her, groggy, then realised his condition and, ludicrously, turned his back to fasten his flies. “That’s it, then.” He faced her again. “All over.”
“Nathan, you’re crying.”
“I know.”
It’s his life. Which is good. I wouldn’t want it.
First Mary had walked up to Lynda’s.
It’s his life.
Which is nothing to do with me.
And now she was walking back home.
Just up to Lynda’s and then back.
Lynda’s.
He was with Lynda.
It was all oddly simple, if she didn’t think of why she was coming back.
With Lynda.
Fuck.
Not fuck—fucking. The right word is fucking.
Her brain felt clammy, grubby, jolted somewhere behind her eyes.
Fucking Lynda.
She could still see perfectly clearly, but nothing she looked at seemed able to mean anything.
Nathan. Fucking.
The half-clear picture of that made her
Embarrassed. Ashamed for myself. More ashamed for him. The way he looked—so
So
It was a nice evening. She was aware of that. It was clear, so you could see the stars, which was good, even if it meant you might be slightly cold. And the sky was that particular deep and glowing, stained-glass blue that came right before true night. This was Mary’s favourite time—had been Mary’s favourite time of the day.
So
So scared. He looked so scared and so silly and so old.
He looked so old.
Once she reached the Nissen hut, there seemed to be no harm in not going inside, in just sitting down on the step, in smelling the spring pushing forward to summer, the insistence of green.
I wasn’t sure . . . I wasn’t . . . I had wondered, I had tried to imagine the way that he would be . . . touching . . . with someone.
A blackbird off behind the hut hammered narrow metal notes up into nowhere.
With someone. Not with Lynda. Just with someone.
Someone else. Other than Lynda.
I’d thought he’d look better than that.
It occurred to her that she was tired. She was tired, most especially of missing people, of missing Morgan and missing Bryn, of missing Jonathan, of missing the ghost of her mother, of missing a father who was less than that. And now she was missing Nathan—missing the man she’d supposed him to be. The loss of him seeped round her, thick in the dark like a night blossom’s scent.
I could manage without him. I’ve done that before.
The scent clawed gently in her throat.
He was sad when he saw me, seeing him. That made him sad.
I could manage without him.
I could.
I just don’t want to, that’s all.
I don’t want to.
When she was almost ready to go indoors, the quiet air brought her first the sound of Eckless trotting and then Nathan’s slower walk. The pair were going home. If she peered to her left, she could make out the blur of their moving forms in the weak moonlight.
He isn’t happy—not if he’s shuffling like that.
The idea of his face, snapping round to her—that single, startled look—made her feel slightly sick.
But I would rather have him with me than not.
For the work.
Just for the work.
“Nathan!” Her shout seemed enormously loud after so much silence— she even surprised herself. Immediately, one of the figures stumbled while the other bounced and barked, steered towards her.
“Mary?” Nathan’s voice seemed in some way weakened, bared.
“Yes.”
Sod, now I don’t know what to say. Did you have a nice time?
Something of anger and something of sadness grated in her, faded, and left her simply feeling stupid and too much alone.
“Mary?” Nathan sounded as if he were lost.
“Yes.” Eckless barrelled into her in the dark, winding himself, but springing back: all earthy paws and curiosity, tongue flannelling her hand. She tried to hold him still. “God, boy, get off. Settle.”
“Mary?” Or perhaps, she now thought, Nathan sounded more as if he were scared she was lost.
“Yes! Yes, I’m here.” She realised that she hoped he would stay where he was—wouldn’t come any closer to her now. “I just wanted to say goodnight. So. Goodnight.”
A soft jumble of noise came to her, unintelligible.
“What? Nathan? I couldn’t hear that.”
“Will I come over? Over there?”
“No.” She hadn’t meant to say that so firmly.
“Oh. I . . .” There was a space of silence and she wondered if she was, again, missing what he said, until, “I quite understand.”
“But I did want to say goodnight.”
“Thank you.” Again a weakness, a break in the tone.
“Goodnight, Nathan.”
She stood, nudged Eckless away, but found that he wouldn’t leave her.
“What?” Nathan sounded slightly closer, but she couldn’t quite tell.
“I was trying to . . . Could you call Eckless? He won’t leave me.”
Mary patted the dog goodbye and listened to Nathan, more like himself, coaxing the dog home, and then calling once again, “Mary?”
“Yes.”
“Goodnight.”
She pushed open her door and he shouted again.
“Mary?”
“Yes. I said, yes.”
“Thank you.”
She could think of no answer to give him back.
“Mary? Are you—”
“What?”
“Are you all right.”
“No.”
“I . . .”
“But I will be.”
“You will be? Will you?”
“Goodnight, Nathan. Goodnight.”
J. D. Grace, Jack Grace, Mr. Jack Dowd Grace stood at his office window and pondered the patterns of the night, its glimmers, flares and shades. Stacked above and below him and chaining out to either side there were other office windows, all empty now. And directly ahead of him, caught in his window’s glass, a further office shone, its image stammered and repeated by the double glazing. Reflections blurred across reflections of almost the office he called his own. He scanned the phantom bookshelves he’d never rifle, the ghost of a paper-littered desk and the insubstantial image of a tired man whom he did not wish to know: a paunchy, seedy figure, smirred eyes glistening shiftily.
Jack gently touched his forehead to the smooth cool of the glass. The tired man did the same.
Of course, he’d had another dreadful day. Panic had slithered on panic and then everyone came in to scream for a slice of his head. But that was all finished now, the work finally done, his body filled with the cottony, grainy calm of complete exhaustion. Jack turned back away from the view, stret
ched, tried to think of the last occasion when he’d really worked as he wanted to. He found that he couldn’t remember and also couldn’t particularly care.
In search of consolations, he slipped in behind his desk and half-filled his coffee mug from the bottle of tequila he’d left sleeping in his drawer. He’d been sober all week, stone-cold sober. Which is how it felt—like being cold stone.
A simple sip or two would just unfreeze him, just let him be human for a while, just let him have a rest before he had to head for Islington, for a minor attempt at sleep. His sleeping wasn’t so great, right now: not too reliable. In fact, this was the only good bit any more, sitting here and sipping and feeling the atoms start up dancing in his throat, his corpuscles’ ruby shine. In and of himself, with only a little, little drink, he could be his own fireside, his own home away from nowhere in particular that he felt he could call a home.
To his right (he knew and did not really want to look) there were his bookshelves and on them the alphabetically ordered and comprehensive collection of his books, safe in their fold and all the way back to the first he’d ever edited, a thousand years ago. His books. He’d looked after every one of them, brought them to light. At one time they had been able to make him proud.
This wouldn’t do. He was getting maudlin and tonight he hadn’t the energy for that. He decided to make himself happy with a recitation of one of his lists. He had any number of lists, all cheering: the names of all the people he’d kill slowly one fine day, the types of unnatural death he’d prepare for them, the types of unnatural act he had performed and in what places, the types of unnatural act he still wanted to perform and with whom he would like to perform them. All good, all good.
But what he needed now was his Shorter Catalogue of Hate.
Jack tipped back his chair and swung up his heels to rest them on his desk. Then he began.
He hated each and every particle of this building with a deep and righteous hate.
He hated the air conditioning—its constant, fucking drone, the black, infectious dust that crept out around its grilles, the carcinogenic vapours it circulated, unzipping his DNA with every breath.
He hated the motley furniture, the cheap motel chipboard doors, the ghastly bloody carpet in excremental brown and all the shabby fucking stains thereon.
He hated the papery people, their malign and perverse observations, their slipping and sniffing about, their constant peculiar thirst for ruin and slander.
He hated the empty ache of computer screens, the photocopier’s sour breath, the trashy, bitter reek of new paper and too much print.
He hated every fucking bastard agent in every fucking bastard agency. Sly and greedy cunts, cunts, cunts.
He hated every fucking bastard critic in every fucking bastard magazine and paper. Sly and witless cunts, cunts, cunts.
He hated every fucking bastard arse-mouthed no-balled fucker of a lousy writer. Stupid, stupid, time-wasting, greedy, witless, arrogant, self-obsessed cunts, cunts, cunts.
He hated the lunge and fumble of bad writing in his brain—all the time in his brain—the mutter and jump of manuscripts as they jerked off their watery efforts inside his mind, as they wasted his intelligence, as they dry-fucked his privacy, as they made him disappointed beyond bearing.
And he hated himself for not wanting to care any more. He hated the fact that he’d rather not fight for the voices, the proper voices, the new words that still found the old joy and made it articulate. He hated that he longed only to stop. He hated that all he was good for now was hate.
Jack Dowd Grace hated the man that he was and did not wish to be.
And that was enough.
That was more than enough.
Time to go.
As he eased on his coat and scooped up his briefcase, Jack thought of Nathan, of how he was. Nathan his friend, his very oldest friend. The thought of him made Jack happy, which was all that he had ever wished to be.
1995
Party time again.
Outside the club’s opened windows, the dark of Soho was slippery with heat: roads and pavements locked into one damp, elbowing, ill-tempered crawl. Inside, as far as Jack could judge, things were pretty much the same. Not that he minded, dear me, no—like this, it was so much more cosy and humane. What better recreation for a gentleman of publishing than to slither and sweat with others of his merry kind while surrounded by emporia of altogether less stimulating perversities.
“Jack, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Lynda smiled in that wonderful I really don’t like you, but I just might fuck you kind of way. “Not a bloody clue.”
“Ignore me, then. I’m being happy.”
“That’s not like you.”
“It’s not like you to even be here. You haven’t cruised this particular circle of hell in years. In fact . . .” He frowned contentedly, enjoying his mind’s random skid and plummet through loose information. “First you were over with Nathan and that mob and then . . . I thought you’d emigrated. Australia?”
“America.” For the fourth or fifth time, she glanced beyond his shoulder and smiled a greeting. “But now I’m back. In the flesh.”
“Yes, quite.” He gave her a meaningful look and got one back. This was all starting to seem quite promising. “But do stop that.”
“What, Jack dear?”
“Dividing your attention. It makes me feel unloved.”
“I was just nodding hello to Benedict.”
“Benedict Kemmler? That shit.” His conviviality briefly threatened to evaporate.
“Now, now. He’s no worse than you.” She moved in to clamp one arm around Jack’s waist. “His heart’s in the right place.”
“No. It’s still beating in his chest.” He turned to deliver his best breathy whisper close to her ear. “If it was in the right place, it would be in my refrigerator.” She shivered against him gratifyingly and he tried to recall unto whom she had given the clap and at what point. He knew it had been a long time ago, back when even he was young and when the clap and the pox were the worst you could possibly catch. Oh, and crabs, of course. Happy days. Although, from wife number two, he’d always suspected a low-grade but persistent rabies risk . . .
Lynda dabbed a kiss at his cheek—magnificently insincere. “Now I’m the one who’s feeling unloved. You’re not thinking about me, are you? And I don’t like that—people’s minds wandering. If I wanted to be forgotten about, I could just go home to Richard, couldn’t I?”
“A thousand apologies. Why don’t we . . .” He pondered fleetingly the likelihood of his being already too drunk to get it significantly up. He decided to introduce a small, transitional step along the way to what he hoped might be a pleasantly meaningless experience. “Why don’t we cut a dash through the soggy mass to that suspiciously darkened corner over there? Then you can tell me all about it.”
“About what?”
She was already moving with him, warm, grinding and nudging aside the usual smug little cliques. Tonight he didn’t mind them. “About?” Good movement in her hips. Impressive. “Oh, whatever ...” This was good. This was another good thing when he actually already had a few. He was, in fact, on the up and up all round: genuinely back in business. “Tell me about America. Land of the free.” A couple of truly cracking books lined up for the autumn, a smear of respect here and there about the office and now this—tonight’s arguably overheated bonus, the company of a splendidly sluttish, mediocre women’s-novel novelist. “Exactly how free did America mean you could be?”
“You really want to know?”
They were lodged now, Lynda safely in the crook of the silent baby grand and Jack’s back to the wall—his favourite position. “Is it all very sordid?”
“Yes.”
“Then of course I want to know.”
“Really, Jack, has anyone suggested that you’re turning into a caricature of yourself?”
“No, no, no—I’ve always been larger than life.” Jack gave her his most convinc
ingly well-endowed smile, “Now. Speak to me,” and waited for the grubby press of observation to start on his skin. He was going to be a player again soon—worth gossiping about—so this little scene could get as theatrical as it liked. Onlookers could look on.
“Oh, all right.” Lynda pulled her arm back from hugging his tender kidneys and then reapplied it, having first darted it into the humid space between his jacket and his shirt. “I went to California, because I needed some sun and some optimism and just some fucking youth. And where the hell would I get that in this country?”
“My dear lady, I could not agree more. So you flew off and fucked surfers, hm?”
Lynda eyed him severely. This was the point where they either hit you, or threw wine, applied a swift knee to the testes, or possibly walked off yelling, or else—as she was doing, bless her—simply decided to ditch their dignity and go on. “You are a prick, Jack, aren’t you?”
Speaking of throwing wine, “Not quite the verb I’d have chosen. I do have one . . .” he’d run out. No more wine. “Do go on.” Which made for an awfully poor show. Lynda, he’d noticed, was still fussing with almost a full measure of the dismal red the bar was doling out. “But first, let’s have our hands unencumbered.” He took her glass, drained it with unfeigned passion and set it aside on the opened piano’s strings. It raised a tiny dissonance. “Mm. Well. That’s better, isn’t it.”
Almost directly beneath Jack’s feet, Nathan was cornered in another broiling room. He had, quite recently, noticed that he was softly treading through any number of abandoned canapés.
Fuck. So this is where they’ve all got shot of them. I had to sodding eat mine.
The conversations around him jarred along with a clinical cheerfulness which led him to believe he’d fallen amongst a whinny of PR persons.
Whinny is the correct collective noun, I’m sure. Or possibly a fawning. Although it should be a lie, naturally.
He shifted oozily over dead sushi and puff-pastry fragments and considered just butting his head against one of the walls.
Or all of them. One at a time. But then the PR persons would rush up and be forced by naked instinct to congratulate me on my butting technique, or tell me how much better my face looked once my forehead was the size and consistency of a rancid cantaloupe. Whatever shite they’ll think I want to hear.
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