by Paul Charles
But Morris surprised both Kennedy and Irvine by simply smiling and continuing his story. ‘I know, man, but you know it’s as though she died ages ago. She’d just given up. She didn’t give a shit.
‘I couldn’t believe that she was interested in me. It was a bit like, “What, me?” But she was fun-loving and game for a laugh. If only I’d noticed that she had already checked out, or was in the process of checking out, even in those days, perhaps I could have done something to help her.
‘But I was so up on being in her company – I was real proud, you know? I’d never been out with anyone so beautiful, or even dreamed that I would. She was five years older than me.’
This time Irvine kept his disbelief in check and allowed Morris, now happily lost in his memories, to carry on uninterrupted.
‘The first night we met she asked me to move in with her. I knew that she was drunk, but she asked me again the following morning. Here I am, I’ve just met the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life and the first night I get, well, I get to share her bed. And then I get asked to move in with her.
‘Yeah, I can see you thinking: it must have been a great first night. It wasn’t actually. That was the most surprising thing in a way. I was stunned that this sex creature…well, she wasn’t really interested in sex. It was always like another, not unpleasant, chore she had to do. Don’t get me wrong, we did it a lot in the early days but even when it was great it was more about what’s in your mind – as in that beautiful body – than what was actually happening. It was like she was loaning you her body for thirty minutes or so for you to take your own pleasure.
‘To start with, I put it down to the fact that she was drunk most of the time. Then I realised, as the years passed, that Marianne didn’t really care whether we made love or not. In the end, about two years ago we just stopped doing it altogether.
‘She told me it was nothing to worry about, that it wasn’t my fault.’ Morris looked like he was about to drift off into his thoughts, he seemed content to regret what could have been but, in reality, never would have been. ‘She said that it had been the same with all her boyfriends, and girlfriends, and that she’d never really got off on the sex end of it. She liked the companionship and the warmth of a body in bed beside her.
‘When I realised that she was using sex to pay for companionship I kind of went off it.’ Morris paused again, thinking of Marianne. Kennedy thought of ann rea and DS Irvine thought of Staff Nurse Rose Butler.
Irvine imagined saying to Rose, ‘Could I borrow your body for thirty minutes?’ She would probably reply, ‘What do you want to do with it, have sex fifteen times?’
Dispelling these collective thoughts of lost love, fun love and trying to make love work, Ray Morris cleared his throat and continued. ‘I’d decided to try and put my life in order. I, well, we’d tried so hard to get our lives together. She’d be fine for a day or two, sometimes even for as long as a week, but then I’d come back to the flat and she’d be plastered.
‘It was so pathetic I couldn’t even bare to be with her. So I’d try to crash at a friend’s flat. She’d find out where I was, come round and make a scene. I was running out of places to stay.’ Morris sighed and scratched the itchy growth on his chin.
Kennedy sat, barely moving – his eyes had scarcely left Morris’ face. He still felt that at any point Morris was quite likely to say something like, ‘…and I just couldn’t take it any longer so I killed her’. If only he could find the key to unlock the whole affair. Now that Morris was verbally uninhibited, the right nudge, the correct prod, could set him off on a full confession. But Kennedy hadn’t yet found the right key, so instead he continued to sit in silence, his blue suit jacket measuring the angle of tilt of the back of his chair.
‘I wanted to leave,’ Morris went on. ‘I knew that it was my last chance to make the change and if I didn’t leave then, I never would. I’d end up just like Marianne. A lush. A total fucking lush. No matter how much I pitied her, I knew that I had to leave, and I hoped that if I left – when I left, actually – she’d bottom out and ask for help. They say nothing can be done for drunks until we reach out and ask someone – anyone – for help, don’t they? Marianne had me so mad at her last night, I forgot pitying her and I forgot how pathetic she was. I just started to think of myself in a selfish way.’
Come on now, you’re ready to tell us, thought Kennedy. Get it off your chest, tell us what you did. All the time, the angle of his chair was becoming more precarious.
‘She’d been sitting on the sofa, sipping her bottles of Guinness and smoking, and she just dozed off. Just dozed off, leaving the ciggy alight. It burnt her fingers and she didn’t wake up. I suppose she’d burnt them so many times before that she couldn’t feel the pain any more.
‘I was in the kitchen – you know, trying to clean it up a bit – and I went in and smelt the burning skin. I knocked her over to wake her up and I started having a go at her and we started yelling and screaming at each other.’ Morris’s breathing was growing heavier now.
‘Yes!’ said Kennedy under his breath, nearly sending the chair all the way backwards. ‘Here it comes!’
‘So I yelled at her, something like, “Do you know what would have happened to you if I hadn’t been here? The whole fucking place would have gone up in smoke. Burnt to the ground with you in it.” And she replied, “Better fucking job. Better for me if it had. It’s only a matter of time till you go, asshole!” And so on – I’m sure you get the picture.
‘She quietened down for a time while I tended to the burns on her fingers. Then, instead of feeling sorry for her, I just felt this compelling need to get out while I still could. I had this overwhelming thought that if I didn’t get out at that moment then I never would.
‘I told her I was going. Another screaming match started and I left her to it. When I left she was still screaming at me. I’m sure the Peeping Tom upstairs heard her slam the door after me. In fact I’m sure the whole fucking street heard her. She nearly took it off the hinges.
‘But she was alive when I left her. That is, if you could call what she had for a life being alive. I wandered around all night and I could feel that I had broken away; that the hold was gone. But I thought, if only for the sake of decency and the years we had been together, I should go and see her one last time and try to convince her that she needed help.
‘When I got there you people were there and Marianne was dead. And you know what, I couldn’t feel sad. It’s kinda like that was the release she was after.’
‘But it wasn’t a release, was it?’ DS Irvine interrupted. ‘Marianne MacIntyre was murdered and you were the last person to see her alive.’ Irvine felt as if he’d sat through a movie, only to be cheated by the ending.
‘That means nothing. Nothing at all! She was alive when I left her. She was alive!’ Morris seemed to be trying to convince himself as much as the two detectives.
CHAPTER SIX
Do you like what you’re doing?
Would you do it some more?
- Nick Drake
‘Why do you think someone would fall so low?’ Kennedy quizzed ann rea. It was later the same evening and they were sitting in The Queens pub on the corner of Regent’s Park Road and Primrose Hill Road, having a quiet drink (he a white wine and she a shandy).
‘Oh, come on, Kennedy,’ ann rea began, wanting to avoid a doom and gloom evening. ‘You know several of the answers to that question, all of them equally valid.’
‘And they are?’
‘Her father abused her.
‘Her only true love left her.
‘She left her only true love.
‘She figured out early on the reason for life: there isn’t one. It doesn’t matter how much money you make, how brilliant a genius you are, how important a job you have, how powerful a person you are; one day you are going to die and your body will return to dust and all this shit we have been through will have been in vain.
‘She loved the oblivion o
f the bottle! Take your pick.’
‘Oh, come on, ann rea,’ Kennedy offered, trying to put the brakes on the direction the conversation was taking.
‘I’m not saying that I think like that. I’m giving you reasons why she let go of herself. She was an alcoholic.’ ann rea smiled as she realised she had picked that exact moment to drain the remainder of her shandy.
‘Do you think she was an alcoholic because of one of those reasons, or that another possible reason is that she was simply an alcoholic?’
‘Oh Kennedy, I don’t know, I really don’t. Can we just go to your place, close the door, leave all this shit behind us and have some fun? Get a life, as the septics say?’
‘Septics?’
‘You know: septic tanks – yanks.’
Kennedy smiled at the cockney rhyming slang and thought about ann rea and about how sometimes she seemed so far away from him, and he was silently frustrated about not being able to get any closer to her. He thought back to the first time they had met. Well, he wasn’t actually sure when they had first met.
Things, people, plots, incidents; they all seem to venture into view before you acknowledge and accept they are there. For instance, the case in point: his first sighting of ann rea. The location was Heathrow Airport, but, by the time Kennedy eventually talked to ann rea, he was unaware of having already seen her twice. Once in the bookshop in Departures. The vision of her short sharp black hair burned its way into his subconscious. The second time was in the coffee shop when he heard her quietish, soft, smiling but confident voice order a cappuccino. The length – or lack of length – of her black business-suit skirt and the friendliness of her voice registered somewhere in the depths of his mind.
So, by the time he found himself accidentally seated beside her (on the return Aer Lingus Dublin to London flight, the following morning) he didn’t feel a stranger and a conversation started up naturally. Sitting up close he realised her head-turning looks were not created by expertly-applied make-up, for ann rea wore no such camouflage. Her eyes were slightly almond-shaped, with eyelids blending straight into the side of her face. The shortness of her hair placed emphasis on her dark eyebrows and pale clean skin. Kennedy could not help but stare at her.
During their chat, he discovered ann rea was a journalist working on his very own local newspaper, the Camden New Journal. Kennedy had immediately recognised the name from her distinctive all lowercase by-line, which was an idea ann rea explained she had nicked from kd lang (who in turn had borrowed from ee cummings) to receive attention as a writer. She had certainly grabbed Kennedy’s attention and it was only a matter of time before they had bumped into each other a few more times around Camden Town and he was inviting her out – or, had it been ann rea who had invited Kennedy out? The entire adventure had been so natural, neither remembered nor cared who had first made the invitation.
The more he got to know her, the more convinced Kennedy was that she was ‘the one’. He had never felt that sure before. ann rea buzzed him in every possible way. He never tired of her company.
They never made love with anything less than a hundred per cent passion. Now he pictured them making love, silent apart from the occasional involuntary animal grunts, dripping in sweat from their endeavours to pleasure each other and their own bodies. He thought that making love could sometimes be somewhat industrial, and awkward, trying to fit all the body parts together at the precise time and in the correct location. Nothing was so annoying as when you were doing the business thinking how great it was and how great you were, only to find out your partner’s moans were not moans of ecstasy, but groans of pain because she was getting cramp in her leg. But not so with ann rea. It worked, they worked well together.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ he smiled. ‘Let’s leave all this shit behind.’
Two hours and twenty-three minutes later Kennedy left ann rea in bed with the promise to return from the kitchen with her dinner.
As he prepared the meal – a speciality of his: a bowl of Alpen covered with milk – he thought back to the time, eight months before, when he was still trying to get it together with ann rea and was frightened that he never would. He was certain at the time that failure would have been the biggest disappointment of his life. What would suffering the biggest disappointment of his life have done to him? Had Marianne MacIntyre suffered something similar?
Even now, now that he and ann rea had got it together, he felt it was something that he should protect. Perhaps letting this chance go could destroy him in the same way something had destroyed Marianne.
‘I’d better not keep her waiting on her food,’ he said aloud to the kitchen as he placed two brightly-painted earthenware bowls on a Shaker wooden tray and returned to the warmth of the bedroom on the second floor.
‘Kennedy, you’re all heart,’ she laughed, as he put the tray on the bed. ‘I don’t believe you, I really don’t. You buy a girl a half-pint of shandy. You bring her back to your place and jump her bones. And jump her bones, and jump her bones. And then you feed her with a measly bowl of grain or corn or something.’
‘Don’t forget the sultanas – don’t you think they’re delicious?’ her host laughed, spooning a single dried fruit through her full red lips.
‘You’d better get your act together before I move in,’ ann rea said self-consciously.
This was something neither of them had spoken about. Kennedy did not speak of it because he did not want to rush her and risk scaring her off; ann rea did not because she had been there, and done that, been fucked-over and had promised herself that she’d never let it happen again.
As he munched on his Alpen, Kennedy was worried that if he didn’t say something, ann rea may think he had no interest in such an eventuality. But if he revealed his true desire – to drive her over to her house this minute to help her pack her stuff – he might be pushing her too quickly.
‘Well I’d better write off to Alpen for some new recipes, just in case I ever need them,’ he said as nonchalantly as possible under the circumstances.
ann rea smiled at his reply. Kennedy smiled at her smile.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Yes if you come when it’s late at night
And everyone is out of sight
We’ll give you a performance you’ll never forget
- Clifford T Ward
Kennedy was just about dozing off when he felt the weight of ann rea disappear from the bed. He heard her flick on the reading light on her side of the bed. It was now officially her side of the bed. Kennedy had felt some kind of commitment was being made when she started to leave some of her books and a wire-spined reporter’s notebook on her side of the bed.
Sometimes, as they lay in bed, he imagined her reaching for her reporter’s notebook and interrogating him on his most recent case for the Camden New Journal. He knew it was a stupid idea; a totally stupid idea. Nonetheless it was one he kept going back to.
It was eleven forty and ann rea was dressing to leave him to go back to her apartment. Sometimes she would stay over and they would play house, but more often than not she would go home. As Kennedy watched her pull on her white pants and then her bra (it wasn’t the bra but the contents which deserved the word wonder), he thought idly that, all ladies’ underwear must be designed by men. Without exception they were uncomfortable, barely functional, but always a splendid sight for the male eye. Singular in this case since Kennedy risked opening only one (slightly) for fear of being caught spying and missing this unexpected late-night delight.
He felt guilty (a little) about watching her without her knowledge or approval but the excitement the vision created submerged and drowned the guilt in a sea of pure lust. ann rea wriggled temptingly to try to find the one comfortable position for the underwear and then sat on the side of the bed to put on her white ankle socks. She was so close he could have put his hand out to trace the sensual curves of her snow-white skin, he loved the way the shape of her legs blended in tight curves and arcs and became her back, no hum
an alive could have sculptured a form so simply exquisite.
He realised at once why Moore’s ugly shapes were displayed in Hyde Park; should the passing motorists experience the magnificent form of ann rea in this position, the traffic jams would extend back up to the M1. She was beautiful; so fucking beautiful it took his breath away.
From the tip of the toe she had tucked in the sock to the exquisite Beatle-bob haircut, she was flawless in Kennedy’s eyes, even though ann rea had her own list of her flaws and frequently reeled them off to Kennedy when a little wine was making him a pain.
As she stood up straight again, he nearly shouted out loud at the sight of her rear secured in white briefs; sweet as a strawberry milkshake. Her beautiful bum disappeared as she wriggled into a skin-tight pair of black jeans. The last of her body flesh evanesced under a loose jumper in racing green.
Finally ann rea put on her cute black pumps.
‘That’s it, Kennedy, I’m off. I hope you enjoyed the show,’ she declared.
‘What?’ he exclaimed, so surprised he forgot to even fake sleepiness. ‘How did you know?’
‘Well,’ ann rea began eyeing the curve of the bedclothes. ‘It’s pretty obvious you enjoyed the show!’
She came and sat down on his side of the bed, looked deep into his eyes and ran her fingers through his copper hair. She continued the stroking for several long moments. They both just looked at each other. She found his centre parting and pushed his hair to either side. ann rea liked his hair not too long, not too short, just long enough to lose your fingers in. They both just looked at each other. Neither spoke. It was magic, pure magic. Neither was looking for anything from the other, other than what they had.
‘Look, Kennedy,’ she began, breaking the spell. ‘I’d love to stay and lower the tent but I’ve got to go home. I’ve got an interview to do tomorrow morning at Camden Town Records.’