“Mary, what the fuck are you . . . ? What time is it?”
“I don’t bloody know what time it is. Half six. Something like that. What’s the matter with you?”
He sat up gingerly. “Ow. Christ. Nothing is the matter with me beyond what would be the matter with anyone who’d slept half the night on the floor.” Nathan stared up at her, pink-eyed. “This couldn’t have waited, love?”
“I, uh.” She felt—now that it seemed he was all right—embarrassed and clumsy. “Well, no, I didn’t think it could have waited.” She helped him to stand and watched while he limped up and down, rubbed at his knees, sighed. Only then did it occur to her that she might ask. “Why did you sleep on the floor?”
“I wanted to hear the music better.” He clenched his eyes shut and bent his head back, blinked at the ceiling. “And sometimes I don’t feel like sleeping in my bed. Could you . . . do you . . .” He turned to study her, his look softer than usual and a little baffled. “I wouldn’t mind hugging something—since the dog seems unavailable, do you think . . . ?”
“Are you OK?” She walked forward, suddenly self-conscious, and hooped her arms lightly round him.
“Mm hm. Yes, I’m fine.” He leaned into her, a dead weight, arms at his sides and his chin heavy on her shoulder, “That’s fine, thank you,” and then slipped away into the kitchen. When she joined him, the table was clear, the dog’s food and water bowls both full and he was loading up the percolator with ground coffee. “Caffeine. What we need. Caffeine. Why exactly are you here, by the way?”
And she told him that her novel was finished, that her first draft was done and he clattered his teaspoon of coffee down into the sink and punched one hand into the other with a small, hot smile and then trotted over to hug her powerfully, lift her briefly off her feet. “That’s my girl. That’s my grand, wee girl. My Mary.”
“Ow.”
“Sorry.” He set her down at once and stumbled back. “Sorry. Did I squash something?”
“Most things. But I think I’ll live.” Mary tried a giggle to reassure him as he watched her, increasingly crestfallen, but all that emerged was a kind of sob. She caught hold of his hands and then let him tug her in close again as a full, hard spasm of weeping took her.
“God, I’m sorry, love, I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head against his chest.
“Lamb, what’s the matter?”
An ache peeled the length of her spine and she buckled inside the crush of her own breath, tightened her arms round his back until they shivered and lost their strength.
“Tell me what I’ve done?”
“No, nothing. You haven’t done anything. I’m just tired.”
“Just tired.” He breathed a little laugh into her hair. “I haven’t heard that from a woman in years. But I still know what it means. You come back through now and tell me what’s the matter, all right?”
“All right.”
He cupped her face in his hands, solemn, and then, with the crook of one forefinger, very lightly brushed at both her cheeks. This started her crying again.
“Sorry. Sorry, I’ll stop. That was a bad idea. Sorry.” Nathan backed out of her reach and wandered gently through to the living room. “Sorry.”
She followed him, sat in the chair that he’d moved and set tight beside his own. Eckless came back from wherever he’d been, looking slightly less despondent, stared at the pair of them appraisingly and then moved to his usual corner of the living room where he fell asleep in his basket with a sigh. And Mary watched the whole canine performance with more attention than it deserved, buying herself thinking time, but then did finally tell Nathan how long it had taken to finish her book and how hard she’d been working and how worried she had been when she came in and saw him, just lying there on the floor, and that this was not how she’d expected to start telling her mentor her news.
Nathan listened and set his hand over hers. “Anything else? Beyond that you haven’t slept properly in days.”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“Then tell me.”
She stared at the back of his hand, trying to think.
“Mary? You can tell me anything. You do know that, don’t you? Because it’s true.”
“Yes, I ...” Tiredness was making it difficult to focus properly on words now, but she did want to speak to him—it seemed that she would hurt him if she tried to do anything else. “It’s the letters. The ones I used to get from my father. The person who said he was my father.”
His fingers tensed slightly against hers. “Yes?”
“They’ve stopped coming. I mean, they never were very regular . . . but about every few months one would appear. I’ve had nothing since last year.”
“That could be for lots of reasons.”
“Like he’s lost interest again.”
“That wouldn’t be one of them, I’m sure.”
“The last time he wrote, he said he would try and see me.”
“He what?”
“He said we might meet. And I didn’t really think it was a great idea, but then I got used to it and I might have, I might have given it a go. You could have come with me.”
“I—”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“I could have been there.” He folded his hands together in his lap. “Yes.”
“You called me Lamb.”
“What?”
“You called me Lamb. In the kitchen, just now.”
“I didn’t, did I? I didn’t notice. I mean, it’s your name.”
“The way you said it—it felt . . . I think he called me that. I mean, my father—I think that he called me . . . No. I don’t know. I’m being stupid. It’s because I’m tired. I’m sorry.”
“No, no. Not at all.” He folded his arms and leaned forward. “These things are very difficult.” He spoke to the floor. “I always find them very difficult. I think if—you know, I’m really too tired myself to be making much sense—but I think that you’ve, you’ve . . . you’ve got me, you know. There’s a great deal wrong with me, of course, and there are—I have things I need to do, just a few things I need to do and then I’ll be much more here for you and I’ll, um, there’s an order to what has to be done. And I do have to do it—what has to be done—but then—or even now—I’m . . . I’m . . .”
Mary rubbed at his back, “I know,” thinking, once again, that she didn’t really know him. She quite often understood him, but that wasn’t the same thing at all. Whole areas of his identity were no more open than when they’d first met, although, sometimes, traces of his larger, untidier self would show as numbed intervals, inarticulate spaces in the image of the man that he intended to present.
She let her hand rest near the back of his neck. “I know you’re here.” Which seemed an absurdly insubstantial kind of endorsement, but then he hardly ever gave her the space to say anything more. Not that she didn’t occasionally—in spite of his very obvious discomfort—try. “And if anyone’s like a . . . I mean, for me, you’re as good as . . . well, you understand.”
She wasn’t sure why the comparison failed her. It wasn’t so terribly inappropriate, after all, he was like a father to her. And she couldn’t mistake that he quite often wanted to be.
Mary thought of the lost child he never talked about, and then found that she had to lean in and kiss Nathan’s cheek. He didn’t move, only kept peering ahead of himself, looking wearily puzzled and, she thought, bleak.
He covered his eyes with one hand. “This conversation—we should have it again soon. Right now is not the best time, but soon . . .”
“Yes, OK. You’re probably right.” And she heard herself saying, “I’ll go,” although she wanted to stay with Nathan: to keep him, and herself, tucked up in the cottage together for a while, safe from any threat of feral loneliness.
“Well, if you must, that’s maybe,” Nat
han coughed, “for the best.” He looked up at her when she stood as if he were newly woken into a strange day. “Still, I . . . I wouldn’t really mind company—there’s this piece I have to write and I don’t really want to—not at all—it’s one of those bits of work that I’d really be very much happier putting off. You know the way ...” Taking her hand, his thumb rubbing at her wrist.
“Oh, I know the way.” She tried to make him smile. “Usually it happens with the things you’ve made me write.”
He gave a little grimace of embarrassment. “Doesn’t surprise me.”
She pressed at his back, smoothing his shirt, “Joke,” and waited until he looked a touch convinced. “I can stay if you like. I would like.”
“That’s nice of you to say. Better not, though. If I don’t write this bloody thing now, it’ll just lie in wait for me—I should get it done.”
“OK, then. Walk me to the door.”
Nathan nodded and they slowly escorted each other into the kitchen, only halting at the final doorway where they hovered, talking harmless nonsense, remembering little points they had to clarify, delaying their parting.
“I’ll have another look at the manuscript, Nate, and then, if you don’t mind, I’ll pass it on to you.”
“I’d mind if you did anything else. Are you OK? To go home?” He peered past her at the weather, which was gloomy but docile.
“It’s not exactly far.” She backed out over the step and on to the grass, leaving. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Um, why not. Why not. You take care of yourself.” He scrambled a rushed hug in around her, kissed the top of her head and then withdrew just as quickly, nodded to her and, in a bolt of nervous motion, closed his door. Mary stared for a moment at its uncommunicative wood and then set off home to the Nissen hut.
The distance between their two houses seemed uneasy as she crossed it.
Nathan didn’t stand in his kitchen window and watch her go, instead he walked through to the living room and woke up his dog and sat next to him on the floor, held him round the neck. Eckless grumbled and sneezed as a token complaint and then rested against his master, patient. Nathan had a headache: one of the panicky, blurry kind, flywheeling behind the sockets of his eyes.
Which means I shouldn’t do this now—it means I won’t be able to.
Even so, he rubbed at his dog’s ears, got up and left him, went to work.
This is insane. Just fucking insane.
He picked out a pen from the jar on the window ledge, found a fresh pad of paper—he didn’t want to take one he’d used before.
I can’t. And if I believe I can’t, then that’s all it takes to stop me.
But he came and sat at his table, as if he’d been ordered to, and he set down the unimpressive small tools of his trade.
I can’t.
He cupped his hands to his face—they still had a touch of Mary’s scent.
I can’t.
No. You can. You can and you will do this.
If this is all you fucking have, if this is all you’ll ever be allowed to have, if this is all you will fucking allow yourself, then this is what you fucking do, you cunt, this is what you fucking do until it’s done. This is what you are for. This is all that you were ever fucking for, so write.
Paradise
I’m taking the Underground for luck. I’m liking the jig and nudge and wriggle of communal motion as we consent to be barrelled along, each one of us readied for Friday night. Not too many people yet, but already the carriage air is endearingly thick with aftershave and breath mints, adrenaline, Dutch courage doubles, Immac and sweat.
I do love it—I’d forgotten, but I do—I adore that weird, nude thrum that stays with your skin when you’ve showered and shaved and dressed again straight away—fresh clothes that little bit rigorous against flesh that you’ve made so warmed now, so stripped—and then you step out in the evening and find that you fit it, nicely tight.
Oh, fuck.
I manage—barely—to not miss my stop and change trains for the Piccadilly Line. Going into town.Ten, or fifteen minutes, I’ll be there.
I shouldn’t have drunk so much coffee. The caffeine’s just making me rattled—filthy stuff’s practically lifting my hair. What there is of my hair. Next thing, I’ll need to piss. Although actually, now that I think of it, I already need to piss.
Shit, what a sorry specimen—dodgy bladder and wild but inadequate hair. Like a refugee from a sodding old folk’s home.
But drinking drink, instead of coffee, would have been bound to turn out worse.That kind of thing could easily lead to her getting the wrong impression.
Oh, fuck.
I’ve done it—what I really shouldn’t have—I’ve thought of her.Waiting on the platform and having to lean back against the wall while anticipation milks me out: a little squeeze of pain, then one of panic, one of sex, and all because I’ve thought of her. When the train comes I’ll be emptied enough to simply blow away.
Christ, it wasn’t even hard to find her number—she was in the fucking book: Maura Lamb, simple as that.
“Hello, Maura?”
The name of her springing in me, and then the whole sound of her voice being just exactly, exactly, exactly the same.
“Yes? Who is this?”
I couldn’t answer.
“Who is this? Is it ... ? It’s not ... Nathan? Is that you?”
And everything started to work then—the conversation, the outcome, even my one little try at a joke—worked exactly as I’d imagined: effortless and lovely and better than my best hope. And part of me, quite a large part of me, wanted to fucking scream WHY IS THIS ALL SO EASY NOW WHEN FOR PRACTICALLY TWO FUCKING DECADES IT HAS BEEN NOTHING BUT FUCKING HARD?
And then I wondered when I first could have called her and found her gentle, kind. Five years ago? Fifteen? Only ten? I could feel myself starting to smother in wasted time.
But that doesn’t matter, cannot matter, now, because I’ve passed through Piccadilly Circus and I’m already standing and anxious for Leicester Square.
I should maybe have caught a cab, though.The idea of having been here with her, of all of those other times—that afternoon when both her hands were up above her head, holding on, momentum teasing through her beautifully—me watching the stretch and give of her and saying that I was about to run amok and take perverse advantage of her hands being occupied. Maura was standing and looking right at me and then she smiled.
I wish, not for the first time, that I’d brought along my personal stereo— something to stop the head from incautious racing. It would also be great, I feel, to be able to batter up the station steps and into the outside air, held round with music, kept safe inside of that.
R.E.M. would be nice. Or, no ... No, I do believe that I’d prefer the Kinks.
And, at once, one of their lyrics gets me, scythes and clatters in the mind, insensitively.
Well, once we had an easy ride and always felt the same.
Time was on my side and I had everything to gain.
Which rather guarantees that the Kinks would have been a bad choice after all. I attempt to think of something else entirely.
Up and out in the fading day, it’s chilly but not too bad: garish skeins of tourists maunder simple-mindedly over the square, an open invitation to pickpockets and recreational snipers.
And, as the last of the natural light is pared away, the cinemas begin to shine.
Going to the pictures. It’s the sensible thing to do—a way of spending time together without too much responsibility.
Not that we’re meeting to spend time together at all. We’re meeting to talk about Mary.That’s why we’re meeting. No other reason. None.
The wailing of nerves in my stomach proves how very large and unaccepted a truth this is.
Minimum pressure, no expectations: I’ll just buy us coffees somewhere, we can have a little chat, then go on in and watch a film.
I realise I haven’t the slightest idea of what she
’ll want to see.
There’s one from a Hardy novel—all sad romance and bad weather. But I couldn’t watch a romance, not with her. Not with anyone.
Or there’s a film about Flipper the friendly fucking dolphin. Nearly as bad as that one about the talking pig. Jesus, the things they think of. Didn’t see that, either—a flying pig and I’d be interested—my clan crest should show one rampant, or the space where my forebears had hoped that a pig might eventually fly—not that I actually even have a clan ... Anyway—
Striptease—badly simulated fucking and horny dancing, I presume—I would go mad ...
Oh, Jesus, I can’t do this. I just can’t.
And my tongue’s turned to cartridge paper and my heart has apparently stopped, or is screaming so fast in my torso that I can’t even feel it any more and I am sweating too much sweat.
Altogether too much sweat, soaking into the good, new shirt—black: even I look good in black and it makes me feel at home—and the nice pair of jeans because a suit would be trying too hard, but, equally, I don’t want to look as if I couldn’t give a fuck.
If you see what I mean.
If she sees what I mean.
And the flying jacket sort of sheepskin that I found in the flat—which surprised me because I did think that I’d thrown it away—I’m only wearing that because it’s quite like one I had when she still knew me.
When we were married.
Properly married, rather than being technically not divorced.
Let it be like yesterday.
Please let me have happy days.
I wore it all through our last winter.
Which probably makes it a dreadful idea for tonight.
But still, it’s something she might recognise, unlike me. I am so ridiculously older. Back then, I wasn’t even balding and my hair was black and I had a bit of a belly starting which wasn’t attractive, but at least I also had a softer face—I wasn’t so drawn that I couldn’t seem to be anything other than intense.
Won’t you tell me, where have all the good times gone, where have all the good times gone?
I decide I would give quite a lot to stop thinking my way through that fucking song. Not that the alternative mental din isn’t worse.
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