Tutting for baby-sitters, looking at watches, everyone far later than meant, satisfying for smug hosts. Again, Malcolm had slipped away unnoticed to honour promises to sleeping children, returned for goodbyes lasting even later, reluctant farewells in the blast of wintry cold from the glass door. ‘Ah well, cab for me,’ Malcolm was saying between assuring Belinda how well he had fared. ‘I’ll give you a lift,’ said Sarah. ‘No need, really no need. Think I’ll jog home and come back for breakfast.’ ‘I’ll give you a lift,’ she repeated. ‘My pleasure.’ He found a final joke irresistible. ‘Send out a search party for us,’ he said, ‘after three days . . .’
In the draughty doorway of the house, the place for the last and best intimacies of the evening, Belinda fussily took Sarah aside in a sudden, guilty sympathy. Perhaps she should not have made it so clear that Sarah was a duty guest, invited on the coat-tails of a dead husband.
‘Sarah. Haven’t had the chance, you know how it is, but how are you really? I’m so sorry . . . we’re still devastated, but you know where we are if ever we can help . . . Must be awful being on your own, how do you cope? What on earth do you find to do with yourself these days?’ She was surprised by the sudden sparkle in the blue eyes, the amused appreciation in the ironic smile of all her obvious condescension.
‘I manage, thank you,’ said Sarah.
Hilly Hampstead spun with brittle ice. ‘Tell me the way to Kentish Town,’ she asked, concentrating through misty windows on the road ahead. ‘I’m lost here.’ ‘What? Oh, left at the bottom, then right. I’m lost anywhere.’ Not joking, distracted, the first sign of the evening’s strain. Followed by silence. Malcolm looked at her smooth profile as he had been looking all evening, the slim elegance of her tucked into the seat, her round bosom parted and emphasised by the seat-belt. Then looked away, sick with longing to touch the thick red hair. Half hidden by coat, he could picture the demure dress she had worn, skimming slim knees descending to pretty ankles, soft-flowing stuff over firm, muscular hips. Fit, he supposed. Athletic, calmly authoritative, competent and anathema, like all beautiful young women who were the stuff of dreams erotic and otherwise, never pursued by a man of his dimensions but very lovely all the same. Likeable, attractive on sight, gentler than them all, but like every one of her kind, could not be allowed to see this sickening twist of longing in the clown hunched into her small car. Would never return such a look or volunteer to touch him. No one ever touched him, and he never importuned. Malcolm Cook felt himself a leper with women like this, but it did not stop him wanting.
‘Here?’ The car lurched to a halt and he fumbled with the handle, suddenly clumsy.
‘I’d like some coffee if I may.’ He hadn’t heard right, a humble request in a calm, clear voice. ‘Yes, of course, come on up.’ Hearing his own voice sulky with surprise, then firmer. ‘Yes, of course. I should have offered, but I thought . . .’ An illuminating smile on her face, full of forgiving mischief. ‘. . . You thought I would want to offload you as soon as possible. But I don’t. And I need coffee.’
There were books by the thousand indoors, pictures by the dozen, solid furniture which seemed to correspond with his own weight and size. A man’s womanly touch, clearly distinguishable from a woman’s touch, existed in the kind of austere comfort produced. Small and tidy, the lair of an isolated creature who exerted rigid control over his life, dared not encourage visitors for the contrasts in their departures, and clung to his home for the rock of peace it offered. Perhaps she was mad, perhaps she imagined it all, but from the moment she had watched him lumber into action like a well-trained and baited dancing bear manacled by mysterious grief, she had been drawn to this loneliness and knew she would not leave it untouched.
‘Music?’ he asked. She nodded, watched him fuss awkwardly with unaccustomed hospitality, unwind marginally and heavily on the sofa beside her. It was the only seating in the room, which left him without the alternative he would have half preferred, to sit outside touching distance.
‘May I ask you something?’
‘Of course.’ Only slightly flustered, but flattered. The cold had brought a glow to her pale skin and the eyes were enormous.
‘Why do you let them use you like that? You know exactly what I mean.’
He looked at the clear intelligence of the face, haloed by the red hair, began to bluster and decided not. His large head shook, puzzled and confused by the question he had often asked himself.
‘I exist to be jester,’ he said slowly. ‘What else can I do?’
Abruptly he rose, poured a brandy from a decanter and handed her a glass without invitation. She took it and sipped, waiting. He was hesitant, wanting by now to explain it all, believing her sympathy, ashamed of himself for beginning to talk.
‘. . . I suppose . . . I suppose . . . Why on earth do you want to know?’
‘Just accept that I do want to know. Go on.’
‘I’ll have to simplify it then.’
‘As simple as you like.’
‘Not easy all the same. I’m fat, you see. Enormous. Ugly.’
‘Not ugly. Who told you that?’
‘The mirror tells me that. My mother told me that. Other women’s eyes tell me that. I have always been gross: glandular baby, fatty child, ungainly student, fat man. So I immerse myself in criminal law, my work, which makes it worse. But being fat is my trademark, has its uses I suppose, and I don’t know how to change it. I must make something semi-dignified from it. So, I make people laugh; relieves the monotony of existence, gives me a measure of acceptance. And if you say, lose the fat, I will say there will always be a fat man in me whatever I do. I daren’t try in case it makes no difference.’
‘Who comes close to you? Who do you tell?’
‘Don’t be silly. No one till now. The way I am? My world is far too competitive to confide in men, and I can’t trouble women although I prefer their company . . .’
‘Why not?’
He looked at her. ‘Why not? Oh, come now, I’d always want more than friendship, although the women to date have never offered it. Since you’re so keen on the pursuit of my humiliation, you may as well know why no woman would ever want me. She’d get lost in all this flesh, and I would have to watch her shrink away, with me dying of shame but still joking. I couldn’t bear it, so bloody unfair to ask. Am I making this sound self-pitying enough?’
‘No, but there is a hint of it. I never heard anything so silly. What do you do, shove the whole world to one side because of an extra bit of flesh? What would you do if you didn’t have legs?’
‘Beg, on my elbows, to be taken seriously sometimes. Or just to be taken.’
She laughed, close to him, innocently close as she stroked his wide eyebrows, tracing the arches with a finger. ‘Fine eyes, good skin, thick head of hair. You’ve a lovely head, you know.’
‘Don’t.’ Part embarrassment, some particle of gratitude made him hug her, conscious of the bulk of himself, if only to make her stop.
‘I’m not being foolish, you are. Forever seeing yourself as you think other people see you, imperfect first, as if there was nothing there which couldn’t be weighed in kilos. What an idiot, always asking yourself the same question, “Speaking as an outsider, boy, what do you think of the human race?” Not a lot.’
‘Enough,’ he said quietly. ‘Don’t confuse self-pity with honesty. Look at me. I’m disgusting. I’m the object of revulsion in half the human race, and I can’t even blame them. I think that explains it all.’
‘I’m looking,’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking all the time.’ And I like outsiders like me, she added to herself. They make me feel at home.
Malcolm Cook, clown extraordinaire, stopped the tears inside his own eyes, swallowed the last of his brandy. Intent on the effort of self-control he failed to notice the swift movement which brought her closer. ‘You idiot,’ she said. ‘You silly, silly idiot.’ So softly said, he scarcely heard with her hand caressing the back of his neck, relaxing his whole spine, then touc
hing his face, her fingers through his hair smoothing and soothing. He had begun his small protest before she began her kiss. ‘Sshh, sshh, my lovely, stay still, don’t send me away, not now.’ Her mouth on his own with a sweet brandy smell, gentle, his tongue exploring the taste, his hand on her breast where she had placed it, moving, wondering, feeling the fluid flesh beneath the cloth and her nipple beneath his fingers. ‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘No pity please.’ Her thumb stroked the crease between his eyes, her lips brushed his forehead. ‘No pity at all,’ she replied. ‘No judgement either. Stop thinking of yourself as a freak. You’re nothing of the kind. I do this because it pleases me to do so.’ Malcolm did not speak, looked at the calm grey eyes and believed. Slowly she unbuttoned the modest dress, kneeling beside him, touched with his tongue, he pulled her towards him as her hands pulled away his clothes. ‘Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.’ He had known her name but never said it, spoke it now like a litany, lifted her to the floor and himself alongside her. Miraculously naked, flesh upon flesh, tingling and weightless, aware and ashamed, stunned into agonising life, he wanted her to stop, but never to stop, helpless with wanting, conscious of warmth, enveloping affection, rhythmic movement of her hips against his own until the dim light of the room faded, everything faded in the mounting wave of sensation. Hold me, Sarah, hold me, please, I can’t help it. Don’t stop.
Calm. A quiet popping sound from the fire above the noise of his own breath, her head resting against his chest with one large hand still pressing her into himself, the other stroking her hair. Agony of relief, gratitude, apology, Sarah, Sarah. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘Not much fun for you.’ The head raised above his own was flushed, tousled, alive with an impish grin. ‘That,’ she said, rubbing his nose with the tip of her own, kissing his eyes, ‘was the beginning. Or are you going to send me home now?’
‘No,’ said Malcolm. ‘I’m not.’
Talking towards dawn, he had never known how easy it was to talk when touching, how peaceful to speak of unmentionable things to one who listened by instinct, could even understand how he had arrived, by various routes, to stand on the outside of the world as a constant and lonely observer. In turn he absorbed the untold history of Sarah, the lost child, the emptiness. Two outsiders, finding truth in nakedness: absolute trust. He could scarcely believe how simple it was. Then, when they made love for the second time, he believed before he slept he had conquered the world, had heard her cry out in a kind of joy. He had done that, made her body leap and rear before she had cried out, convulsed around him. He had caused that pleasure, he and that great big body. Idiot, she had said again, the affection turning insult into compliment. Idiot to doubt yourself, now you know better, and he was proud, slept with his arm tucked beneath her. Hug me, she said, my lovely lover, and huge ungainly Malcolm Cook hugged after hours of talking, no longer afraid, and, no longer a freak, slept the sleep of a child. Then opened his eyes to find himself alone.
Bow Street on Monday morning, prosecutor Court One, Mr Cook. ‘Thirty on the list, sir.’ Street traders, hot-dog stalls, touts and drunks, easy. Three for soliciting prostitution, fighting the evidence. ‘Them three’s contesting, sir, but we can’t find the papers. Better ask for an adjournment, sir.’ Malcolm looked at the bold and tired faces of the three at the back, one of them bulky, pointing at him and laughing, one thin, one blank and black. He remembered the note left on his kitchen table in Sarah’s clear hand. ‘Being fat isn’t the point. Being you is the point and, I’m telling you, nothing is lacking. You’re a marvellous man, better than anyone else. You don’t need me, you only need you. Please don’t try and find me; you must change yourself, or it will not count for anything. Besides, you’re on the way up, and I’m definitely on the way down. Just love yourself as much as I did. I shan’t ever forget you.’ Malcolm remembered the searing of grief, and the image of himself in the mirror, fat and stricken, half-naked. He made himself a promise: he would find her when he was a different man, a thinner, more dignified man, worth the loving of a woman of such peculiar and glorious qualities, but before then he would change simply because she had made him feel alive, was the first who had made him want to change. Clichéd thought, he made himself smile at it: this is only the first day of life.
In the meantime remember fairness, his hallmark along with his size.
‘If we have no papers,’ he said to the gaoler, ‘put the ladies up first. I’ll be offering no evidence. Then we can let them go. Who the hell are we to judge?’
There it was. Compassion always far more important than duty, living better than dying. Time to alter. Love did that, and he would always love her, for what she was and what she had done. He would find her when he had completed the revolution she had started; find her and love her although all he knew was her name. Then, looking up briefly at the ladies of the night, freed from the dock with squawks of relief, he wondered what Sarah had meant by saying she was on the way down, thought of the words with a flash of anxious intuition quickly dismissed as he lumbered to his feet for the next cue.
CHAPTER TWO
Within the next two years, Malcolm dreamed of many things, including his stepfather’s office, but he never visited it, and knew better than to make inquiries about the progress of that empire, since any question sparked a row. Not many solicitors’ premises, even bigger city types, were quite as sumptuous as these, and none bore a sign as ostentatiously discreet, ‘Matthewson, Carman and Company, Solicitors’, very small lettering on an enormous brass plaque. Nothing flashy, please, Matthewson had said, confronting the interior designer lady. Normally it was the sort of thing Ernest Matthewson left to his wife. His house was a mass of birds and flowers, curtains and chairs full of them. He could not see why the office décor mattered. Clients like Charles Tysall would not notice the colour of the walls, it would only make them suspicious about what was being done with their fees. Whenever Ernest, Malcolm’s stepfather, thought of Charles Tysall, he felt sick and pointless, and nothing as banal as his surroundings was going to help.
Matthewson had built his practice on common sense, pats on shoulders, a large handkerchief, tea, sympathy and stiff drinks, and above all the ability to keep a secret, but success had exacted its peculiar punishment. Sofas like squashed elephants, forty-five solicitors and only one of them he liked. Whatever had happened to the place where he started three ulcers and one heart attack ago, God knew; he didn’t. He was lonely and he missed his stepson more than ever, not daily, but hourly. There were only a few minutes a day, faced with the ghastly luxury of the reception, when he knew why Malcolm preferred his darker regions.
‘It’s not the same,’ he would mutter to Penelope. ‘Not the same at all.’ Mrs Matthewson, known as Pen to her friends, would try to forestall the depression by planning an extra course on the evening’s menu, food being the only panacea she knew. Moules marinières, perhaps. No, not in this mood. A sweetener the other end: mousse au chocolat, delivered to him without pointing out he had no real choice. For the firm, she meant, hadn’t had any choice in a long time.
‘That woman in Commercial is awful,’ he would say. ‘As bad as the bloody decor. How can anyone as frightful earn so much?’ Pen would bring him a drink and suggest that cash was not always acquired by the same means as his own charm and common sense. ‘Not like you,’ she would say. ‘Not your flair.’ Fondling the back of his neck in the same way she fondled the space behind the ears of their cat, preferring Ernest’s soft and bristly stubble, the creased warmth of it. ‘Not like you. They can’t all be so lucky. Her work needs brains. I mean, law does these days.’ He did not take offence, knowing flattery was meant. ‘At least they’re all respectable,’ Penelope added, by way of comfort. ‘I wish they bloody well weren’t,’ he shouted. ‘Stuffed shirts, every one. Thirty-going-on-ninety.’ She soothed him. ‘Not like Sarah Fortune,’ he would say. ‘No, dear, not like Sarah,’ she would reply, stiffening her back, pretending to Ernest she resented such eulogies of praise which might follow for the widow Fortune. Then she
would stride towards her kitchen in the direction of the good smells, walking across twenty-five feet of carpet with her plump tread, smiling to herself. Let him fantasise about Sarah Fortune. It did him good to think she might resent his praising Sarah Fortune. Penelope knew better and it did not do to let Ernest know he had been so thoroughly discussed. She also knew that the most romantic assignation Ernest ever had with this lady was to play cards with her in the basement of the office when no one but the caretaker was looking. Penelope and Sarah had found one another at the first Christmas party Sarah had attended in the new office. Between them, discreetly, they had got tiddly Ernest home. Penelope had squared up to Sarah. ‘My husband is always talking about you,’ she had begun.
‘Is he really? I’m flattered. I’m very fond of him. And he’s safe with me.’ Then in a lowered voice, with a disarming smile of conspiracy, ‘You see, Mrs Matthewson, he and I share something. We’re the only lawyers here who don’t know any law . . . we make it up as we go along . . . sometimes we have to confess, as well as hide. Then we have a drink.’ Pen wished she had a daughter like Sarah Fortune, instead of the son. No, not instead of the son, as well as him. Penelope knew what Sarah did in Ernest’s office, inspired guesswork and a few other things. They had discussed it, taking their turn with Ernest’s whisky long after Ernest had fallen asleep that Christmas. Penelope knew when a girl could be trusted and when not. She had never told as much to anyone, or felt as safe.
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