Presumably the whole deal had been to do with making the sea doors secure or some kind of stuff like that. They should warn passengers about these eventualities, because any nervous types could drop down dead, or go into a seizure about wartime experiences or torpedoes they’d seen in films. It was better to be safe than sorry with any kind of crowd, she knew that.
None of which made any difference now, because what she had to concentrate on were her legs which were about to turn unreliable. You could never be absolutely sure about when that would happen and the only way to be certain was to walk. Of course, by then it was too late. If you stepped out and the legs weren’t with you, everyone knew all about it and everyone always loved to stare. That was television, for you, its influence, nobody scared to look at anything, any time – the whole of your surroundings, just entertainment.
Normally being out in the open calmed her, steadied things up, but this was too open and too far out. Here were all of these fathers skipping aloft with the little sons perched on their backs, acting the ancient mariner and spouting shit about wind directions as if this was suddenly first and second nature. But she had taken her time and checked out the sky. That sky was not natural, not normal at all. It was a kind of Armageddon blue.
She wasn’t easily frightened, she knew that. Living for three years with Robert, that meant you possibly couldn’t be frightened ever again. Only there was something raw down along that horizon which would have blown Robert cleanly away and never mind her. The light was all wrong – too high and too sharp and too much. You keep your eyes on that for more than a couple of minutes and you will automatically feel the whole ship being drawn towards that edge of something and then off. You’re going to slide over the edge just as smoothly as a coffin going backstage at the crematorium. And she’d seen that twice in her family, so she knew what she was talking about.
Robert knew nothing, except how to sound good. Still, he would know something new today – that when she said good-bye, she meant it. He could do what he wanted now with anyone he liked and it would be entirely no concern of hers. He would also be doing it without his pills, because she had them. Before she got on to the boat she’d taken one blue, two brown and four red and yellow. The two brown were for motion sickness, but the rest were his and doing a very good job against Robert sickness. It would mean that she had to go a bit carefully with the drink, but that was easily done. Anyway, they gave out these rules and recommendations for people with lousy constitutions who couldn’t mix and match, but she had an excellent constitution.
Without Robert she was an excellent person. Everyone had been right, he was a manipulator and her departure was long overdue. This was a man who called her names, but admitted to shooting cats. He said it would alter his karma and mean he had to be reincarnated as a cat which he would prefer over anything else. One huge lie, of course. He didn’t like cats and he was a psycho, that was all.
Celibacy was the only way and was very fashionable now. If she had been celibate all the while she wouldn’t have met up with Billy who got depressed, or Ian who had the snakes, or Mark who was so like her father it made her feel sick, even to imagine the shape of his head from the back, and none of that shit would have happened. She must qualify for an award on the strength of Mark alone, never mind all three.
She would be celibate until really the correct person for her made himself obvious and then start out properly. They would have nice children and no reptiles or guns, not even little ones.
Until then, she would have a holiday. In Europe for a little while she would get brown skin and blonde hair on her arms. She was going to learn how to bicycle and relax. There would be wine and happiness, clean dust in the streets and it was only a matter of time before she discovered something she was very good at and became a magnificent success.
BRACING UP
HE SHOULDN’T SLEEP on his back, you know, really he shouldn’t. Only caused trouble. He didn’t know why he had tonight – that was last night now, because this was the morning. He hadn’t even dozed on his back in years, not since he woke up choking one time, dreaming that he was drowning and finding out almost too late that he was right. You forgot these previous incidents and then there was trouble, guaranteed.
Not to mention all that nonsense the Victorians worried about; sewing corks at the back of the nightshirt, preventative ropes knotted round the pyjamas, night-time boxing gloves. Must have been generations of boys who grew up masturbating on their sides – little Sons Of Empire rounding their shoulders for life.
God, that was it, you see, thinking rubbish like that. Sleep on your back and your head silts up.
And if there were any fairness in the world, this morning he should really be clear-headed, even pleased. Before she left, he remembered, he asked her to do three things, the three things he’d always wanted someone else to do so that he could go back to sleep again after and wake up to find them still there. Done. In many ways that was better than waking to find her still there, Much more convenient.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Oh, just three things, if you could do them for me. Nothing odd. I promise.’
‘Well, I suppose that’s a relief.’
She’d laughed then, uncomfortably, because he was making her uncomfortable – not on purpose, he just was uneasy to be with sometimes, he knew that.
‘You are going to get up and show me out, though, aren’t you? I don’t even think I remember the way I came in. And I’d rather not –’
‘Meet anybody. No, you wouldn’t want to meet them. They’re all arseholes, as it happens, but you wouldn’t want to meet them anyway.’
‘They did very well, last night, though. It was a good show. I’ve always liked “Lear”. What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. But we needn’t talk about that, need we. You have to leave. Before they all wake up. And there were those three things, before you go, if you didn’t mind.’
He thought of her leaving, of what she would see. She would remember him standing in the big, wooden doorway, bare feet out on the stone of the landing, numbed. She would see him pale, skin almost as white as his crumpled boxer shorts, his bagging T-shirt and the stairwell still dim, but all of him very obviously yellowed over by the dirty skylight. Bullet head, barrel chest, arms too close to some kind of breaking-point. And his legs were awful. He would look along his legs in the bath, right down to the deathly blueness of his feet and there could be a tag there, tied to one of his toes with a name and address, cause of death. Wouldn’t seem out of place. Dead legs and desperate arms – he looked like the boxer you knew would lose the fight.
Before he got out of bed and disgusted her completely, he should have her do those things.
‘I do promise I’ll see you out. All I’m doing is keeping warm. You can understand that.’
‘Warm? This is Paris out there, remember? You don’t need to keep warm.’
‘I’ve been here for a while and now it’s autumn. I’m feeling the cold.’
He pressed his fingertips up to his forehead, as if he might be thinking. He couldn’t feel a sweat, so she wouldn’t see one. Besides, it wasn’t hot yet, only warm, he would be able to feign coldness fairly convincingly.
‘Could you draw back the curtains?’
‘Is that one of your things?’
‘Yes it is. It’s the first.’
‘Fine. That OK?’
‘Lovely.’
He winced while light something like a sheet of milky blue water fell over the bed clothes and his head. Barely past dawn, then. Her hair was more red than he’d thought. When the light shone through it like that, it became extremely red.
‘Lovely. I enjoy watching the mornings here. They’re such a lazy colour of blue. Precise and extravagant but very lazy. Do you know what I mean?’
‘I don’t John, but then I’m quite tired. I think I have a hangover, don’t you?’
‘Me? Not really.’
But then he hadn’t drunk as much as her. That was the
whole point; you should seem to be drinking and very loud and easy and they really did drink and then eventually they would do what you suggested – accompany you home. Sometimes. He hadn’t thought it would work here – too unsophisticated. You might imagine that in Paris you would have to be sophisticated. Then again, she was English and not sophisticated at all.
‘I don’t often get hangovers. Open the window, please.’
‘You are a funny man, John. It was John, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
He had to say that quickly or the atmosphere would go. He didn’t want the whole scene turning cheap on him, not now.
‘Won’t the draught make you cold?’
‘No. It will make me relaxed. It feels blue when you breathe it inside, calming, the morning air, hadn’t you noticed? With you being a new arrival, I thought . . .’
He was losing this, he could tell by her eyes, although actually, she was still a little smashed. Either that or just clumsy, but he hadn’t noticed her being clumsy before. He cleared his throat before the complicated bit.
‘And now, do you have anything . . . that is . . . Yes, there’s a little tin of sweets in my jacket pocket.’
‘I know, I bought one too.’
‘Mm. But you opened yours and I didn’t open mine and so we should swap.’
‘What?’
‘Swap. There are different cats on the tins, too, did you notice? I buy them a lot and I think there are five types of cat. The one I have would suit you better. And you’d get a full tin.’
Don’t push it.
‘They’re strawberry. Very nice.’
‘I know, I opened my tin, remember?’
‘Fraise de Bois – I know you know – the woman in the shop, not the one you saw, her mother, she used to pick them where she lived. In the woods – near the woods – wild strawberries. That must have been nice, she always smiles when she talks about it. She says there were sangtiers, too – wild boars – which I don’t believe for a moment.’
Shut up. Shut up. She is very clearly beginning to be alarmed.
‘Can we swap, then? Please.’
‘Is that it, John?’
‘Mm?’
‘Number three?’
‘Oh, yes. Yes it is.’
She walked to his jacket with her tin. Did she hesitate before reaching into his pocket? Did she seem a touch disgusted by contact with it? Wrong side. It was the right-hand side she wanted. Yes – his cat out and her cat in. He could make a joke about that but he wouldn’t because there would be no point. You could hear the small rattle of the sweets and watch her dip down her hands, as if they were going into water. The woman had very smooth hands.
‘Thank you.’
‘For what? Now I’ve got more than you.’
‘Doesn’t matter, I can buy more if I want to. Turn your back.’
‘What for?’
‘Because I’m getting out of bed.’
‘No. Don’t be ridiculous.’
So she would see him now – all of him – and that would be that.
Lost it. Lost it. Lost it.
And she had such a nice cunt.
He’d gone back to bed once she’d left, the soles of his feet still burning against the sheets after the chill of the stone. And yes, now he remembered, he’d lain on his back to look at the sky through the window, must have dozed back off without ever moving.
The sun was strong in his eyes now and the street smell drifting in was hot, dust in it and a little bit of something cooking. There was Middle Eastern dance music from across the road again and down by the river one of those tinny, bloody engines was passing – sounded more like a sewing-machine than a car. Or it could be a scooter. Either way, it was an ugly sound to be out in such a lovely sky.
The place must have been much quieter during the war when they had the taxi bicycles and bugger all else. Only then there would have been sirens and Vichy cars full of Nazi petrol, the odd bit of gunfire, screaming resistants.
It was so hard to imagine all this being occupied. Christ knew, there were plaques all over the walls to remind you of this or that hero Tombé Pour La Patrie. It made you wonder who it was remembered all of that falling so accurately until after the war. And then forgot they shouldn’t like fascists. But of course, Europe was like that – terribly forgetful. Why else would it be so good at wars?
Impossible, when you thought about it, to believe anything had ever happened here – the war, the Nazis, he found it all beyond him. The sky was too relaxing and the statues were too golden, up in the blue, and probably he was just too far from home to care, no recent invasions of his own to compare theirs with.
The sweets would be there in his jacket pocket. That was good, something from someone else’s handbag and someone else’s hands inside his own pocket, right in there. He could stare through the curtains that someone else had opened and think about that.
The others would wake up soon, so he would have to take his bath and get out of the way. He could do with being really clean, down to the skin, that kind of clean. For instance, he could feel the stubble coming on his arms.
She’d asked about that, hadn’t she? Not shy – drunk, really, but she wouldn’t be shy sober, you could tell that.
‘You’ve got no hair.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Turn on the light, you’ve got no hair.’
She would laugh at him. This would be the place where she would laugh at him, wouldn’t it?
He took one of her hands by the wrist, rather firmly and pressed it against his cheek.
‘I have hair.’
‘Alright, OK, OK. I can feel it, I saw, but you don’t, I mean there should be –’
‘Listen!’
That was too loud. He felt her jump against him, knew the others might have heard. He should let go of her wrist and pat the back of her hand, let his fingers slide to her shoulder as if this was all very natural for him.
‘Listen. Sorry. Sorry, but I do know what I’m talking about, you see? I do know me rather better than you do and we are talking about me and I have hair on my head and my face like bristles on a bloody pig, but I don’t have any hair anywhere else. Anywhere else. No need to look – that’s how I am.’
‘Hey, I’m . . . it doesn’t worry me. It’s alright.’
‘Why should you worry about it? I don’t worry about it.’
‘But were you born like that? Did something happen?’
Jesus Christ, he wanted to punch her. He just wanted to punch her and she didn’t even know, she wouldn’t be in the least expecting it if he did. Stupid, stupid woman. The joke was on him, of course, she wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t stupid.
‘No, I wasn’t born like this. But I am like this now. OK? Satisfied?’
‘I am. Please forget about it. It’s only unusual, that’s all.’
‘Well, so am I.’
Which made her laugh in he thought a nice way. Surprising, that.
Trouble was, he’d forgotten, which was not unlikely, quite to be expected, really. He’d forgotten that most people don’t do that. They don’t take off their hair and get that really clean feeling as if their skin was thinner and everything was that tiny bit closer; the touch of cloth so fresh. Other people didn’t slip into bed and feel so incredibly near the sheets. Or if they did, they hadn’t told him, which was another problem in itself. Fucking generally unfriendly people round here – all dark glasses and yappy little dogs. Even in the rain, even at night, for Christ’s sake, there were leashes and rat-headed dogs and those blacked-out eyes, looking straight at you but not letting on. He’d bought some shades himself – look local and all that.
He would get himself ready now, clean out the bath and be away before he had to speak to any of them: Annie and Pat, practically bloody children he was working with here, and that prick Robbins: cocky bastard. And nothing to be cocky about – seen fish with a better grasp of rhythm. Spoke the verse as if he was coughing up blood, but he was sly,
you could see he was sly and that would get him forward.
‘Thank you for that, Mr Hughes. I’m learning a lot.’
Blood sucking little prick. Go on stage and you could feel him, licking up every move, every pause for breath, and stowing it away. Vampire. And why be so fucking polite? He’d had the proper training, the accredited drama school and the nice grant, he’d make it, there was no question. He was a pretty boy and he would make it. Why not just say it, right out – here I am, half your age, playing your part, the one you’ll never get and I don’t even have the fucking grace to care.
But he wouldn’t say anything like that because, as you knew, he was bloody sly.
‘Mr Hughes?’
‘John.’
‘Thank you, I don’t feel too comfortable with first names. I can be shy. I noticed, John, you made a change there, tonight.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘In the prophecy, you put in, well, I don’t know what I would call it. You didn’t change the sense, but you put in a syncopation, didn’t you. It made all the difference.’
‘I didn’t notice, I just open my mouth and the words come out. No training, you see, so no tricks.’
Not that I’m telling you, anyway, boy. Not that I’m telling you. ‘Made all the difference’. Implication being, it was bloody awful before. I know you Jim Robbins, inside and out. Been there.
Yes, better to get up and out and save all the good morning smiles and ‘Can we get you a lovely fresh croissant while we’re out; such a nice bakery and only across the street, that’s Paris for you. And Annie has more of her wonderful jam.’ Poor cow, she looked like a sack of cement already and still going heavy on the jam. She’d spend the rest of her life doing bits as comedy feminists and dykes which was a shame because, fair play, she was good. Apart from her size.
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