“Did you tell Joe?”
“Could hardly avoid it, could I? He does always have to know.” Lynda turned her head muzzily as Mary came to the door and peered out, but then continued with a remarkably loud whisper, “Actually, I wanted to tell him. Before, I’ve resented the intrusion—him crashing in on it all like a fucking vulture—but everything about this step has been so much happier . . . insane word to use, but has been much more contented, more something to share around. Mad old bastard—he’s got me sounding like him.”
“You’ve tried how many . . . ?”
“Four. Same as you.”
“It’s a good number.”
“The best so far.” Lynda stroked Ruth’s arm ruminatively and then appeared to remember that Mary was there. “How’re you doing?” She did seem more relaxed, contented, than Mary had known her.
“Fine. If anyone thumping dough about in a heatwave can be fine.”
Ruth giggled. “I am sorry. It’s my job, of course, but I just couldn’t face it today. You are a dear to have done it.” She giggled again. “Actually, I’m not that sorry. It’s a bitch of a job in this heat.”
“Yes, indeed it is. Thanks for pointing that out.” Mary shook her head at them, parentally. They made a strange pair: Lynda deepening her, no doubt, all-over Californian tan, while Ruth turned a scalded crimson. “If you two don’t mind, I’m going to sit round the side in the shade for a bit. Sorry for interrupting you—know how you like to obsess about death.”
Lynda answered quietly, “I don’t think we’re obsessing.”
Ruth agreed, “And we’re talking about living, not dying.”
“Oh, dying.” Lynda’s tone suggested it was something on a par with putting up shelves—a humdrum, survivable, practical chore. “Yes, that’s hardly the issue.” She patted Ruth lightly on a patch of not-too-inflamed skin. “I think we’d better go inside before you combust.”
Mary made herself as comfortable as she could on the shaded turf at the cottage’s side. She lay on her stomach across browned grass, the earth roasted to an ungiving surface beneath it. Resting her cheek against her folded arms, she finally let her thinking creep forward and unlock.
He’s coming here.
Why would he want to? For me? For him?
While her mind tumbled through doubtful combinations, her body nudged and softly shifted into a muscular understanding: Jonathan was coming to Ancw. Her Jonathan.
He’d be working with a local firm, starting things up from scratch, advising on their choice of computers, their software, setting things up.
Starting things up from scratch.
He never mentioned how long he’d stay here, how long it would take. He only asked if I had objections.
“Objections? Even if I did—” and she’d been going to say—it would be none of my business, but that had seemed, perhaps thuggish, perhaps inaccurate. “Why would I have objections?”
“I thought that you might. Do you not?”
Her breathing had picked this point to change with the shock of hearing his voice. Her inhalations had become flimsy and unhelpful. “I have,” words lumbered and stuck, “I have no objections. No. But why are yo—”
“Good. I’ll put you back to Bryn, then—his phone, isn’t it? Don’t want to run up the bill. Bye.”
“But I called him—it isn’t his bill . . . Jonathan? Jonno?”
But Jonathan had already gone—receding into the small shapes of ambient noise, the ticks, the perfect pitch of footfalls to let her know that she was listening to Gofeg, to Charter Street, number eighteen.
“There you are, then, girl. I told you I’d got a surprise.” He could be a sly one, Bryn: sly and romantic with it.
“You could have told me it was him.” She could hear herself sounding breathless, absurd. “And what are you up to, anyway? Is he still there?”
“That’s right.” His voice had the hearty informality of one who was being overheard.
“So even if you were ever going to tell me what your cunning plan was—you wouldn’t do it now.”
“That’s right.”
Mary didn’t want to be fully angry with him, there would be no point and Bryn was already sounding wary, if not hurt. She calmed her air supply and eased out, “Do you think this is a good idea?” wishing he could tell her, that either of them could really know.
“It could be. Taken gently. Up to you.”
“Oh, listen, if you’re going to have to talk in code, maybe I should call you back later, eh? When he’s gone?”
“Yes, you could do that. Although, now I think about it . . . No, you can’t.”
“Going out on the town, are you? Off with those two from the knicker shop.”
“No, no. I forgot to say. I’m paying a visit. For two nights, or three.”
“What do you mean paying a visit?”
“Never you mind.” Bryn was beginning to puff, here and there, with anxiety, or rather—she supposed—embarrassment. “I’ll be down in Cardiff. And I’ll call you when I get back. I don’t know how long I’ll be there, it depends how we get on.”
“Are you going to tell me what you’re up to?”
This is all right, this is good. He should do things. Make another life.
“I’m passing the time, love—you know the way things are—anything I can do to pass the time . . .” Almost as soon as his mood had dipped, he brightened himself. “But you can pity me going to Cardiff. Cardiff: it’s not even—”
“Bloody Wales.” She finished his second favourite joke. “I’m going to come and see you soon.”
“Yes, all right, love. You just think about that other thing, now.”
“What—Jonathan?”
“You think about that.”
But she didn’t have to think about him, she could feel him, the threads of connection still there, winding and tugging through the heat.
Nathan had finished his first swim in six days. Sophie had been visiting again and his nerve always failed him when he considered letting her anywhere near the sea. So washing away the interminable glare of everything on the island in a bit of tepid swell had been impossible. Until today.
Now he and Eckless lay, painted across the sand, with barely the energy to grunt, proud of their exertions and subsequent healthy sufferings.
He did well today—was a good old dog. Came out as far as me and seemed to like it. We do both still rush a bit, though, when we’re on our way home.
“But it’s normal to panic when you’re on your way home, isn’t it, pal?” He pressed at the dog with his knee and got a sighing groan in reply. “Suit yourself.”
Nathan reached into his bag for his water bottle, took a few judicious sips and made an effort at swilling his hands clean of the usual post-dip mineral friction. Next, he rooted round for the towel and his shoes and shorts.
Sand removal from in between bollocks and toes, followed by the imposition of decency.
He was settling nicely into the work, shorts and left shoe on, when his mobile phone chirruped from where he’d forgotten it in his bag. Eckless’s ears flagged a slight interest. “Somebody loves us, then, boy. But I can’t think who.”
“You took your bloody time.” Jack delivered a familiar polished growl and then a burst of tense, snuffing laughter.
“If I’d known it was you I’d just have let it ring.” He whispered an aside to his dog, “As you were, nobody loves us—it’s only Jack.”
“What? Are you in company? Is this a bad time?”
“When has that ever stopped you. And what have I done to deserve this. Which guardian angel brought me to your thoughts?”
“None, I hope. I’m working from home—dreadful migraine this morning, couldn’t go in—and I thought I’d have a break and a chat. Over my tea and Bath Olivers. You don’t object?”
“No. I’m just sitting on the beach. The way you do.”
“The way I don’t, dear boy. Do you know when I last had a holiday?”
“No.�
��
“Neither do I.” Another few dabs of breath came at the receiver, perhaps indicating amusement. Silence leached in.
“Jack, are you all right?”
“As I’ll ever be. Beast of a fucking headache at the moment, but this too shall pass, as they say in the good old AA.”
“You’re calling to tell me you’ve joined Alcoholics Anonymous? Surely some mistake.”
“Do I sound like an arse? Of course not. Although I did get corralled into one of their prayer meetings at the clinic—you remember when I went to the clinic? The whole thing was a blurry pantomime, of course— the nice little circle of doped-up patients—an occasion filled with the most astonishingly puerile sloganeering I’ve ever encountered. And I’ve been going to marketing meetings for decades. What was I saying? Oh yes, this too shall pass—the most irritating AA motto of them all. What the hell won’t pass and why should I care, in any case?
“Anyway, I wanted to chivvy you about the book. The one you haven’t written yet.”
“I’ve got lots of those. Which book I haven’t written yet do you mean?”
“Now, Nate, this is actually quite important to me. A personally professional, professionally personal type of thing. I think it’s time to step away from the, the . . .”
“The pulpy horror shite.”
“No. It’s not pulpy—pulping, perhaps—not pulpy. It’s very good. But we always said that, one day, you’d go back to something . . . perhaps less immediately commercial, perhaps not . . . Something with your heart in it. You know.”
“Why now?”
“It’s time. I really am quite sure that it’s time.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a literary editor, fuck it. I know.” It wasn’t like him to be so unmistakably committed, to let belief loose in his voice. “Because I’m quite good at my job, because I have functioning instincts, because if you don’t do it now there won’t be any literary fiction in publishing—ten years’ time it’ll all be dead. Virtually is now.”
“Jack, I . . .” Nathan wished he weren’t lounging under an incandescent sky, wished he couldn’t hear good water and birds—he wasn’t in any condition to be this serious. “I respect you professionally. You know that.” And on the phone it was so hard to tell what a person meant, or to be adequately comforting. “But I don’t know if things are as bleak as you feel . . . Even if they are, you of all people know, you can’t hurry that type of writing. And you can’t hurry me. I don’t respond well to it.”
“But will you write this book for me.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, I’m writing it. OK? A little bit here and there. But it’s slow—slow work. I’m trying to get it right.”
In London, a sigh pressed at the receiver. “You’ve really started work? None of that making a few notes crap? Actual work?” Jack’s delivery calmed, almost purred.
“I’m making more than a few notes.”
“But not anything else?” The purr stopped.
“There are some short sections finished, but I’m not sure about them. They might belong somewhere else. What I could probably do without is pressure on this. Explain to me why there’s a hurry—are they threatening to fire you again?”
“No. No, I’m quite the flavour of the month now. That girl I was hand-feeding for a while—she’s coughed up a wonderful novel, Doctor Dee’s Table, did I send you it? No, I forgot. Well, I will. It’ll come out in September, but everyone loves it already. So all is well. And next time it’ll be you. Tell me.”
“If it makes you happy—next time it’ll be me. And while we’re playing question and answer, you tell me what you’ve been doing with your teeth.”
The pause for thought was slight, but clear. “Only the usual. Mastication and all that.”
“Jack, you’re not a good liar, remember? Hence divorces one, two and three. What are you up to?”
“No good. What am I ever up to apart from that?” There was a fumble of movement, a sniff, an exasperated breath. “I was going to tell you. But not now—it’s all experimental now. I . . . Nate, this is embarrassing. Really.”
Nathan tried to think of any horrendous activity that J.D. hadn’t already confessed to with complete equanimity, if not quiet pride. “No need to be shy, Jack. This is just us.”
“Well, I should hope so. I’m simply anxious that you shouldn’t misunderstand my position. This will sound far more peculiar than it is . . . I’ll be talking about a hobby here, that’s all. Understood?”
“Fine. Do go on. Please.” A brief sea breeze ruffled over him, cool enough to feel clean.
“All right, all right. I’ve been having a problem. I like to relax—you know I like to relax. I like to sleep, to relax, to have fun, unwind. For all of those things—like many other reasonable people—I find I need a drink, just to get things rolling. Recently, that’s been getting rather difficult. I think age is catching up with me. And I may have an ulcer, or something, I don’t know . . . What it all comes down to is that I don’t get quite properly drunk any more, or that the speed is wrong, my speed. After the first few glasses, I’m very nicely adrift—rather more than I would have expected to be—and then . . . and then I just seem to stall. I don’t seem to get anywhere. I don’t progress in drunkenness, I simply feel more trapped. And I’m throwing up too much, these days. I hate that. I have never, ever liked being sick. And I’m being sick all the time.
“And needless to say, my condition was becoming a bit of a drag. But then I met Oscar. Then I was introduced to Oscar. And things have been much better ever since.”
Eckless, recovered from his swim, sat up and leant against Nathan sandily. Nathan shifted the phone to his other hand. “This would be Oscar the dentist.”
“This would be Oscar whose profession I do not know. What matters is that, in his spare time, he’s a Top. That is to say, the dominant partner in arrangements of a sado-masochistic nature. Homosexual arrangements.”
“And does he wear leather and have a handlebar moustache?”
“Ah, the good Scots’ homophobia will out. No, he is clean-shaven and, with me, he wears a suit. I met him through an attenuated series of acquaintances.”
“You always did know the best people.”
“Quite. And Oscar, in this instance, is the very best person I could know—because he’s . . . well, as one might expect, he has an extensive experience of many physical procedures and is—among other things— more than happy to administer colonic irrigation.”
“Irrigation? He must be quite a guy—the most I could manage would be . . . say, half a gill.”
“If you’re not going to take this seriously, I won’t continue. You know perfectly well what I mean.”
“That he gives leisure-interest enemas to people who find that their kind of thing. OK. What does this have to do with teeth?”
“I’m trying to tell you. Usually, Oscar meets men of compatible interests, takes them home, goes through the usual tying up and thumping stuff and gives them enemas. He’s very responsible and careful about it—it’s in his best interests to keep his partners safe.
“And he’s very strong on hygiene . . . And . . . and, the point is,” Jack began to rush his words, “there were only two ways of taking alcohol I hadn’t tried. I could have injected it, but doing that is almost always fatal, so it didn’t recommend itself. The other way was to dilute it to the proper degree and then absorb it directly through the lining of the gut. This is also dangerous—even with a mild dose, it makes you terrifically drunk almost immediately—and you can’t do it yourself—you need someone on hand. I pay Oscar to take care of things, to be on hand. He keeps me safe.”
“This is a joke, right? Jack?”
“This is a problem I have solved.”
“But you don’t need—”
“Yes, I do need. You have no idea how much I do need. You are not in my position. Oscar does nothing to me—I mean, nothing beyond what I want—I bring my own enema bag and my own Bardex tubing
that no one else uses and I get the job done. It’s like having a massage, Nate, it’s a therapy. I undress, I lie on his table, curl up on my left-hand side—that way we get the benefit of gravity, because the gut curves round first to the left—oh, the things you learn when you’re having fun—then he sets things up, inserts the tube, and I get the sweetest, deepest blackout I’ve ever known. When I come to, he’s cleared up and I’m human again—I can go and get on with things. Even the hangovers are nicer, you wouldn’t believe . . .” His sentence trailed off, wistful.
“The only downside is the payment. There’s no sexual transaction and he won’t take money—judging by his house, he has quite a lot of that. All he asks is that I allow him to do the one thing he’s always wanted and that no one else has let him try. So each time I go, while I’m under, he pulls out one of my teeth.”
It wasn’t that Nathan hadn’t guessed what might be coming. It wasn’t that he was squeamish by nature. What was making it so difficult to think was simply, perhaps, the confirmation in reality, in that voice, from that damaged mouth: his friend’s voice, uncomplaining, soft.
“Nathan?”
Nathan’s own mouth slicked with nauseous saliva.
“Nathan, don’t over-react about this. You’re over-reacting, I can tell. Speak to me. It’s temporary. I mean, it has to be, for heaven’s sake. I’m hardly going to stand for someone pulling all my teeth. He’s just clearing out the molars—the ones nobody sees. I’ll find another solution later— something better. Nathan? Speak to me.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Jesus, you’ve imagined far worse things—written them down.”
“But I haven’t known far worse. I don’t understand how you can be so . . . vicious with yourself.”
“I’m no crueller to me than you are to you. In fact, I’m kinder—I only hurt my body and my body is just a body, it takes its medicine and goes on—I don’t damage anything important—I’m still intact in heart and mind. And, now and again, I get to relax, to really, genuinely relax.” He halted, eased his tone. “Look, we shouldn’t argue, especially not about this. You work on the book and look after Mary and everything will be fine. I promise you.”
Everything You Need Page 41