Striking a Balance

by Curtis, Norma

‘David Lawrence.’

  ‘Occupation?’

  Larry’s gaze drifted to the walls in the room. They were blank, not even the smallest hole or indentation to show where a picture hook had ever been. They were blank so as to offer no distractions.

  And so, undistracted, he returned his gaze to the officer.

  ‘Occupation, sir?’

  ‘Househusband.’

  The officer gave a sigh. ‘Do you have an employer?’

  ‘My wife. Ha ha.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re amused, sir. Unemployed.’ The officer wrote it down.

  Larry laid his palms on the plastic table. The surface was cool and nobbly under his fingers and felt pleasant, very soothing. For some reason it seemed important that he let his hands feel relaxed on the table — to show that he, David Lawrence, househusband, had nothing whatsoever to fear.

  The police officer was still writing on the sheet of paper. He looked up quickly, instinctively aware of Larry’s gaze, and for a brief moment their eyes met with wry humour, like opponents in a card game who each knew the other was cheating. Then the officer looked at Larry’s hands which were still resting heavily on the table.

  He seemed fascinated by them. Larry was fascinated, too.

  His hands were so relaxed that he could look at them there on the table and believe they weren’t his. In a film the camera would zoom in on such hands and the viewer would stiffen in his comfy chair and feel the hairs bristle on the nape of his neck, knowing that those hands resting as benignly as warm tarantulas were killer hands.

  Larry snatched them from the table and repossessed them again as though he had fleetingly slipped inside the policeman’s brain. He, David Lawrence, had unconsciously used a gesture that he had seen in every two-bit cops and robbers film since time began.

  He put his alien hands inside his pockets and looked at the form, trying to read it upside-down. ‘Hold on,’ he said suddenly, ‘If I was a woman I’d be described as a housewife, right?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Well, I’m a househusband. During the day I have sole charge of our son. I am not in any way unemployed.’

  There was a silence. The policeman’s wry humour had been replaced by the weariness reserved for the know-it-all.

  ‘Are you in receipt of benefits, sir?’

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m not entitled to benefits yet. Wages in lieu. My wife keeps me.’ Larry tried to quell the triumph in his voice even as he knew that it was not a fair fight, that the best man didn’t win, that police officers were around to enforce the law — note that word ENFORCE — nothing gentle about that! And that to enforce the law they had to outnumber the baddies because there could be no doubt about the outcome. So that winning the appropriate answer to the question of employment didn’t at all increase the odds of the police officer letting him out. In fact, it could make things worse. It could antagonise him.

  The police officer was staring at him as though he had read the whole string of thoughts running through Larry’s mind and was now digesting it.

  ‘And where is your son now, sir?’ he asked in a voice so lacking in curiosity that it was as if he already knew the answer.

  Larry responded immediately, as though the lurch of his heart had kick-started him. ‘Well he’s with — I assume he’s with — he was with a friend of mine.’

  ‘You assume he’s with a friend of yours but you don’t know for sure.’ The officer looked at him again, with those all seeing, all purpose, non-prying eyes. ‘Was he with you at the town hall?’

  ‘He was with me, yes.’

  The officer scratched the side of his nose slowly with the bottom of his ball-point pen. He was grinning now in a way that said he was quite prepared to join in with the joke as long as it was explained to him one more time.

  ‘You’re a househusband with sole charge of your son who you take to demonstrations? Have I got it right?’

  Larry folded his arms. It was for comfort, but even as he did it he thought — defiance! It’s seeping out of me as if I can’t help it! And he unfolded them again and put his hands back in his pockets where their absence might appear insolent but where the hands themselves couldn’t incriminate him in any way. ‘Perhaps I could ring my wife,’ he said.

  ‘Certainly, sir. Perhaps you should also make a check on the whereabouts of your child.’

  No mistaking the message there. This was serious business. This was serious business, there was no doubt about that and there was no longer any space in the officer’s mind for joking or humour of any kind.

  He passed a phone over to Larry.

  Larry took a deep breath.

  He didn’t know how to get in touch with Helen. So he called Megan, who, he was told, had just left.

  ‘I’ll try her at home,’ he said.

  He put the receiver back on the hook slowly and passed the phone over.

  He glanced at his watch. The coach would be there and they would be filing back on it, the children, the women...He could imagine the coach, with its heater on, perhaps, as the day was becoming cool; and the children would be getting drowsy on the women’s knees and the low thrill of a voice singing solo at the back — the courage of it, loud and clearly heard above the murmuring voices and the varying growl of the bus. Show me the way to go home. ‘What would you have done?’ he asked suddenly, wanting to know.

  The police officer looked at him. For a moment Larry thought that he wouldn’t respond but the wry humour was back again.

  ‘I went on a march once,’ he said. ‘SPUC, you know what that is? Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child. I went with a Catholic girlfriend. At the end of it her friend said that I’d only gone because of her, not because I’d agreed with it, which was true. And she finished with me. What’s your excuse?’

  ‘The women need that playgroup.’

  The officer looked at his wrist.

  ‘And the other thing is…’

  The officer looked up again. Bingo! It was like getting a question right in a quiz! Larry could see the beauty of confession — the lure of having someone hang onto every word, the approval! The initial approval, that is. Afterwards there was the very public disapproval, but at the time — hey, it was good! Like coming out with some juicy piece of gossip that you knew shouldn’t be told, that you knew would have its comeback, but at the time of telling, people hanging onto every word, the thrill of knowledge...

  ‘Women only like men in the right place,’ Larry said as an opener. He would see how it went down, first.

  The officer nodded.

  ‘That’s true. Ever seen women together on a night out?’ He shook his head, to show his disbelief at the memory of his experience. And he looked at Larry again.

  ‘This househusband business.’ Larry frowned. ‘There’s nowhere for a man to go with a child; and at the playgroup — the one the council wants to close down — the women want to do women’s talk. Diets, men. Secrets. Nothing big, just the usual subjects that belong to the women’s club, the stuff they don’t talk about —’

  ‘Would have thought you’d be the first one to have the place closed down,’ the officer said, eyebrows raised, waiting to be persuaded otherwise.

  ‘That’s when they found I had my uses,’ Larry said. ‘You know; letters to MPs, pictures in the Journal, petitions...’

  ‘And the march.’

  ‘And the march. Yes. It changed everything. Shouldn’t have, of course, I didn’t do anything they couldn’t have done them-selves, but it gave them somewhere to slot me.’ He looked up suddenly from the nobbly table. ‘What’s going to happen to me?’

  ‘You’ll be cautioned. It means you have to keep out of trouble, but I guess you will anyway. You’ve got enough on your plate. Do you want to try your wife again?’

  Larry nodded and picked up the phone. She wasn’t at home. He tried to be sorry but he was glad, he was very glad. ‘How’s your wife going to take this?’

  ‘We haven’t been getting along too well lately.
You know, the old home-making skills…’

  The officer nodded. ‘I’m divorced, myself,’ he said. ‘I’ve got used to it. Went through a stage of living in a dump and came out the other side. Now it’s passable. You don’t want to look too closely.’ He sniffed thoughtfully. ‘I’m letting you off with a caution. Keep the heroics for the playing fields, will you? You don’t want to set your son a bad example. Want to try your wife again?’

  ‘No, she won’t be home yet.’ I may not tell her, Larry thought, rubbing his cheek.

  I don’t want to bother her.

  Ignorance was bliss.

  40

  He came out of the interview room and walked along the corridor rubbing his temple. He didn’t know where Helen lived. And Helen didn’t know where he lived.

  An officer opened the door for him and he walked through to the waiting area, where he saw Helen sitting patiently, with Bill asleep on her knee and Lily swinging her legs next to her.

  He took a deep breath of relief and crouched down to talk. ‘They haven’t charged me,’ he said. ‘Helen, thank you for looking after him.’

  Bill woke up at the sound of his voice. He screwed up his face in the light, looked at his father and turned his face away immediately to bury it in Helen’s hair.

  ‘You’re a little softie,’ she said in his ear. ‘You take him, Larry. I would have taken him home, but as you don’t know my address it seemed easier to wait here.’ Bill moved towards him and rested his hand on Larry’s knee.

  Larry wanted to hold him, wanted to apologise, but he let him be and moved his hand to rub his eyes. ‘They just told me to keep out of trouble.’

  ‘You’re a hero,’ Helen said, and she began to laugh. ‘I don’t think Emma and Jean even rate a man unless he’s been locked up.’

  ‘I felt like a hero,’ Larry said, and smiled, and the moment flared up again in his memory: noise, adrenaline and pride. He shut his eyes.

  ‘You look happy,’ she said, and touched the creases near his eye.

  ‘I am.’ Her attention was soothing. It made him want to lie down. He could still feel the cool line she’d traced, it felt like a kiss drying on the skin.

  Someone was standing by him, taking up his space. He tried to stand up and didn’t know if he could find the energy. ‘Larry?’

  Megan’s voice, with a question mark in it, and he sure found the energy then. He got to his feet and the suddenness made him sway.

  ‘Meg.’

  ‘Have you been charged?’

  ‘Cautioned.’

  She breathed out slowly in relief. He could smell the alcohol on her breath and see a fever in her eyes. She looked from him to Bill, who had sunk back into sleep on Helen’s knee. ‘Shall I take him?’ she asked Helen, her voice neutral.

  Bill opened his eyes again and closed them and reached his arms out to her. She picked him up and he wrapped his arms and legs around her and rested his head on her shoulder.

  Helen stood up, and Lily did, too.

  ‘I’m Helen,’ she said, ‘and this is my daughter, Lily.’ There was no trace of awkwardness about her, and holding onto Bill with one hand, Megan extended the other.

  ‘Megan. Thanks for looking after Bill.’

  Larry was relieved to hear that her voice was warmer now. ‘How did you know I was here?’ he asked her as she stood next to a poster for Operation Bumblebee.

  ‘You were on London Tonight,’ she said ruefully. ‘“Triton’s new broadcast director in brawl”.’

  It took its time to sink in, the way she said it.

  ‘Triton’s new broadcast director,’ he repeated, and it felt right. It felt very right.

  ‘Congratulations,’ Helen said.

  Megan was smiling, now, the excitement back. ‘We had to celebrate without you, Larry. Do you feel like catching up?’

  ‘I do, and I’m ready now,’ he said.

  They stood outside the station and saw Helen into a taxi. They got one themselves and went home and put Bill to bed.

  The initial effervescent excitement had blown off and what was left was a deep thrill of anticipation.

  They got out the Scotch and cuddled up on the sofa, switched on the television, and looked at each other.

  Larry switched it off again.

  They awkwardly undressed, lethargic with alcohol and the aftermath of tension. What was wanted was release, and warmth and love; the feeling of skin sliding smooth against skin.

  Kissing with breath warm and pungent with Scotch, they created that old, familiar, unknowable tension, chasing its release along separate paths, silent except for their rhythmic accelerated breathing and the sweat slurping noisily between their bodies.

  The curl of the carpet pressing their skin.

  And all thought gone.

  Sex, the great escape, the closest, the closest they could be...and the farthest they could go.

  Holding each other tightly afterwards, sweat hot, but chilling on their backs where their skin didn’t touch.

  Cuddling into him, the smell of his armpits, the best smell in the world... ‘I could live there,’ Megan said lazily, smiling. ‘My hero.’ Thinking of Triton, and looking at him with darkening eyes.

  Larry, thinking of the march, hooking his leg around hers, felt once more that strange, unlooked-for flare of pride, almost forgotten. It was the pride of belonging, of leading. He’d belonged to a gang, once. What he remembered was the sound of running feet, he in the lead, flying past a bus stop and knocking into a woman as he ran and not saying sorry — not even thinking to say sorry, because he had been invincible.

  He soared as he ran; their feet had sounded like war drums on the pavement and the faster they ran, the faster they had to run because their footsteps pursued them. And he ran with the feel of a woman’s soft body giving way as he pushed her, and with her cry in his ears.

  Hero.

  41

  The following morning, just after ten, the telephone rang. ‘Give that here,’ Larry said, reaching for the receiver, but Bill had it pressed to his ear. ‘It’s not your mother, is it?’

  Bill shook his head and handed the receiver over. ‘It’s a funny man.’ He frowned.

  ‘Give it to me.’ Larry took the phone. ‘Hello?’

  A hoarse voice creaked in his ear. Larry found himself wincing. ‘What was that?’ And inspiration struck. ‘James, is that you? Hello, mate,’ waiting for the joke, waiting for the laugh.

  There followed a stringy sentence of half-finished words which Larry couldn’t catch, but it was no joke, that was what was dawning on him fairly rapidly. James sounded as though he was talking with something stuffed in his mouth. Larry thought he could make out the name Karin. ‘James, are they there with you?’

  There was a choking, which tailed off into sobbing. Larry’s instinct was to slam the phone down to cut the noise off. He felt himself grow cold. He steadied himself and waited for a lull. But as the sobbing continued he tried to speak over it. ‘I’m coming round,’ he said. ‘Don’t move.’

  He put the phone down and looked at Bill.

  ‘Who was that?’

  Larry loosened his belt to a slacker notch. He felt as though he couldn’t breathe. ‘James, yes, it was James.’

  ‘Are we going to see him?’

  Larry pushed his fingers through his hair. What was he to do with Bill? ‘Listen, I’ll drop you off with Mummy at her office and I’ll go and check to see that he’s all right.’ He could feel his body rushing while he stood still, working everything out slowly like some old drunk. ‘We’ll get a taxi.’

  He grabbed his keys and they went out into the street.

  A string of traffic pulled past, and then he saw the orange glow of a vacant cab and they stopped it and piled in.

  At Colgin’s, they took the lift up to the third floor.

  The receptionist looked surprised at a candidate turning up with his son and ushered him into an interview room. A couple of seconds later Megan came in, her face pale with alarm. ‘What’
s the matter?’ she asked, holding out her hand to Bill like a reflex.

  ‘Meg, look, I need you to look after Bill,’ he said. ‘Something’s happened to James and I’ve got to go round there.’ Megan frowned. ‘What’s happened to him? Is he all right?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. He could just be drunk,’ he said hopefully.

  Meg’s expression didn’t alter. His words didn’t reassure her either. ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘go now. Take the car. I’ll get you the keys — stay here a minute, Bill.’

  He looked up as Lisa walked in. ‘Oh, Meg, Robert Baker rang…’

  Megan turned. ‘Larry’s leaving Bill here for a while. A friend of ours — oh, Larry will tell you.’

  And Larry did, briefly.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Lisa said immediately. ‘I’ve done a St John ambulance course. And if his daughters are there, they might prefer to see a woman.’ She smiled at Meg, who tossed Larry the keys. ‘Back soon.’

  ‘Come on, Bill,’ Meg said. ‘Come and see where I spend my day when I’m not with you.’

  Larry drove in silence, and Lisa, he was relieved to see, didn’t attempt to keep the atmosphere light. He tried not to anticipate anything. James had sounded in a bad way, but on a good day he could sound in a bad way, it didn’t mean anything. Karin and Jen, that was what worried him. Karin and Jen.

  Every time he thought of them, there seemed to be a dark shadow over them. He thought of the flies in the car and felt ill.

  When he finally pulled up, he jumped out and told Lisa to stay where she was. ‘Wait here,’ he said.

  Lisa pulled a face and took a packet of cigarettes out of her bag.

  Larry rang the bell, then tried the door; he didn’t know why he bothered but amazingly it opened. ‘James?’ he called as he stepped inside. His voice rang back, as sounds did in an empty house. There was no one in the living room and he glanced into the kitchen and went upstairs. At first he didn’t see James in the dark, he only noticed the smell; it was like a zoo.

  ‘Uh.’

  The sound wasn’t a question or a groan. Larry went to the bed and looked between the bed and the wall. James was lying sideways in the gap. His head was back, and a white froth was around his mouth.