Thunder in the Blood

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘And?’

  He glanced up, crumpling the empty can, aiming for the bin and missing. He stooped to pick it up, carefully wiping the line of drips with a rag from a bucket under the sink. Then he opened a cupboard and took out another four cans of Guinness.

  ‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ he said. ‘I’ve got lots more of these.’

  We talked for the rest of the evening, back in the living room, the empty cans of Guinness forming a neat line beside Wesley’s chair. He told me everything I’d reasonably need to know about his medical condition, plus a great deal more. He went into the smallest print of half a dozen sexual encounters, some here, some in the States, partly to test me, to probe my shock threshold, and partly because I think he genuinely enjoyed talking about it. He described each episode the way a man on a desert island might remember a particular meal, what it looked like, the way it presented itself, the sense of anticipation, of excitement, that subtle contract between curiosity and sheer lust that had, in the end, taken him to a selection of the glitzier New York bathhouses.

  One particular place, his favourite, he described with enormous relish: the clever lighting, the different kinds of pine, the bodies ghosting about amongst the steam. The cubicles where you got changed had smelled of amyl nitrate and expensive leather and everywhere you looked, he said, there were guys fucking each other. They were doing it at the side of the swirl pool. They were doing it under water. They were even doing it through specially cut holes in the cubicle partitions, crutch height, a real gas, no face, no name, no conversation, just the goods. The whole thing had been wonderland, pure anarchy, buckets and buckets of raw sex laced with drugs and laughter.

  Sprawled in the armchair, Wesley closed his eyes, grinning at the memories. He’d loved it, he said, in New York. He loved the energy of the place, America on speed, the pace of life on the street, the way that no one dared look at you, the risks you could run, the rules you could break, the relationships you could nurture and trash in the same crazy twenty-four hours.

  ‘Brilliant,’ he said, ‘daft and brilliant.’

  ‘No regrets?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘And now?’

  He shrugged. ‘Now’s different. When you’re at it, you don’t think about now. Do you? All this?’ he gestured limply with one hand, the roll-up in his fingers still unlit.

  ‘All what?’

  ‘This. All this. Me, Scourge…’ He paused. ‘Nice ladies like you, popping round to help.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head, reaching for a match, lighting the roll-up. ‘A lot of it’s in your head, you know that?’

  ‘A lot of what?’

  ‘This. All this. AIDS. You. Me. All that stuff.’

  ‘You mean getting it?’

  ‘No. Fuck, no. I’ve just told you. That was a rage, getting it.’ He shook his head again, expelling a long plume of blue smoke. ‘No, having it, having it.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You must do. You meet guys, guys like me, my kind of state, OK, so maybe quieter …’ He paused, frowning, looking for another word. ‘Deader? That make sense?’

  I looked at him, storing the phrase away, surprised at how exact it was.

  ‘Deader,’ I agreed, ‘less vital.’

  ‘Sure. So you’ll meet these guys. And most of them, most of us, are in the same fucking room in our heads. We’re all frightened. We’re all completely lost. Anyone tells you different’s lying. But it just matters how you deal with it, that’s all.’ He glanced across at me. ‘We agree?’

  ‘Yes,’ I nodded, ‘I think we do.’

  ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘Yes. Perfectly.’

  ‘Good … you know something about AIDS?’

  I shook my head, not wanting to break the flow, already mesmerized by this extraordinary man. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It’s amazingly dull. That’s the real problem. Dull.’ He stopped, inhaling another deep lungful of roll-up, seeming to expect some reaction or other. I obliged with a smile.

  ‘Dull?’ I queried. ‘Dull as in boring? Or dull stupid?’

  ‘Both.’ He grinned. ‘Actually, there’s a period early on that’s truly weird. Worse than weird. Surreal. That’s when they’ve told you what’s wrong and you’ve drawn the obvious conclusions, and you still need a new car because the old one’s completely clapped out, and you’re listening to the guy at the local garage trying to sell you a three-year warranty on some fucking banger and you’re thinking three years? Or the vehicle licence thing comes through the door, the renewal thing, and you start wondering seriously about six months or a year, whether to risk the money or not, whether to waste the hundred quid or whatever it is for the whole year when you might be in the box.’ He smiled, watching me. ‘Then there’s that whole world of old, of being old, people like my mum. She’s old, seriously old. She’s sixty fucking six, for God’s sake, and there she is, banging on about the pension and the Darby and Joan club, and you’re standing there shaking your head thinking sixty-six… Jesus … she should be so lucky.’ He shook his head, looking away. ‘Yeah, surreal…’

  There was a long silence. Scourge had departed. I could hear him in the hall, scratching away at the front door. I thought for a moment about letting him out, but didn’t.

  ‘D’you talk like this to everyone?’ I asked. ‘Chapter and verse?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just wondered.’ I paused. ‘Only with most people it’s the other way round. They sit and fidget and don’t say very much. Blood out of a stone.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I nodded, tipping the can to my lips. ‘Cheers.’

  Wesley lifted a limp hand in response and sank a little deeper into the cushions. Behind the wild gusts of dialogue and the extravagant gestures, he was watching me very carefully indeed.

  ‘Dull,’ I prompted, ‘tell me more about dull.’

  ‘Dunno.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s because the thing’s so unpredictable. You never know. Not from week to week, day to day, hour to fucking hour. You know the bastard’s knocking off the T-cells and you know you’re not in great shape, but you can never be quite sure which bit’s gonna pack up next, and that becomes very knackering because you’re always on patrol, up and down, trying to work out what’s going on.’ He paused, shifting in the chair. ‘They tell you all this stuff about visualization, giving the bastard a name, the virus, trying to work out what it looks like, what it eats, whether it likes tomato sauce or not, and you do that for a while, but no one tells you how fucking exhausting it is, permanently out there, up and down, all weathers.’ He glanced across at me. ‘Bastard never sleeps, you know. Never. Not once in its bastard life. Just keeps hammering away, day and night, turning a buck, keeping busy, real eighties stuff.’ He shook his head, disgusted. ‘I know how the bastard votes, anyway.’

  ‘But dull?’ I said for the third time.

  ‘Yeah.’ He nodded, emphatic. ‘Dull, because once you get sick, it’s basically all the same. Bits packing up. One after the other.’

  ‘You’re sick now?’

  ‘Off and on.’ He frowned. ‘Sometimes I’m really sick, laid out. Other times, like now, it’s not too bad. But even now, I’m not right. Not well. Not the way I remember being well. It’s like living with a permanent hangover.’ He gazed down at the row of empty cans. ‘That’s one of the reasons I use these. Bastard never drinks. Hates it. No imagination. No sense of fun. I do it to spite him. When I’ve got the energy.’

  He looked at me for a long time, then shook his head, unfolding slowly from the armchair, one limb at a time, an old man in his mid-thirties, upright now and catching his breath. Watching him, I thought briefly of Stollmann and his chauffeur chum from Curzon House, sitting in some pub down the road, killing time. Wesley was looking down at me, swaying slightly, and for the first time I realized that he was drunk.

  ‘Don’t th
ink dull means I’ve given up,’ he said, ‘because I haven’t. Giving up means missing out.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Dunno.’ He shrugged. ‘Whatever. No,’ he shook his head, emphatic again, ‘I’m into rationing, that’s all. The important things. Time and energy. What’s left. In between the bits when the bastard goes ape. That’s as close as we get to a plan round here. Listen—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come with me. Real treat.’

  He was already heading for the door. I followed him. At the end of the hall was a red velvet curtain. So far, I’d assumed it covered a window of some sort, but when Wesley pulled it back there was a map of the world underneath. He looked at it for a moment, speculative. There were holes in the map, all over, the kind you make with a drawing pin. He glanced over his shoulder at me, a sudden grin on his face, one hand reaching into an alcove beside the kitchen door.

  ‘Treat,’ he said again. ‘Guest of honour.’

  ‘He produced three darts and gave them to me. ‘Home rules?’

  I nodded, none the wiser. ‘OK,’ I said.

  ‘You stand there.’ He pointed to a small rush mat at the other end of the hall. I did what he asked. ‘Now shut your eyes.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Throw the first dart.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At the map.’

  ‘I might miss.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  I threw the dart. I heard it hit the wall and clatter to the floor.

  ‘Terrible. Try the next one.’

  I did so. The same thing happened again. My eyes were still closed. I felt Wesley beside me.

  ‘OK. One more. Last one. This time, be gentle. Otherwise, I’m buggered.’

  I threw the dart. I heard it hitting the map. It stuck there. I opened my eyes. Wesley was already at the other end of the hall, peering at the dart. When he turned round, he was grinning.

  ‘Nice one,’ he said. ‘Definite improvement.’

  ‘Why? Where’s the dart?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Where’s here?’

  ‘Morocco.’ He paused, checking again. ‘Just south of Tangiers. Very promising.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means I’ll die there. It’s a game. I play it when I’m happy. It takes the wondering out of waiting.’ He turned back to the map. ‘Last week it was here.’ He indicated a hole off the bottom of South America, an inch or so from the Falklands. ‘Can you imagine anything worse? All those fucking penguins?’

  Back in the living room, we started on the remains of a bottle of Bells. It was way past eleven. Stollmann would be out in the cold by now, sitting in the car, waiting for me. I looked across at Wesley. The cat was back on his lap, a deep throaty purr, staring down at the fire.

  ‘Are you frightened?’ I said.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Death.’

  ‘No. Not at all. I’m pissed off about one or two other things. But not death.’

  ‘What, then?’

  He glanced up at me. ‘Is that a serious question?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded, saying nothing for a moment, the madness and the laughter quite gone. ‘Pain,’ he said. ‘I’m not crazy about pain. And blindness I can do without. That’s in the script, too, towards the end. A lot of guys go blind.’

  ‘I know.’ I paused. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What?’ I glanced up.

  ‘Toxo,’ he said quietly. ‘No bullshit. I’m terrified of toxo.’

  Toxo is AIDS shorthand for toxoplasmosis. It’s an infection which affects the brain and nervous system. Two of the consequences are seizures and partial paralysis. Another is dementia, medical code for early senility. Your memory goes. You forget how to speak. You lose all physical control. You dribble your way to the grave.

  ‘Horrible,’ I agreed. ‘Ghastly.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he muttered, ‘but it might happen.’

  I looked round for the bottle of whisky, sensing the cue for another shot of Bells. Wesley was on his feet again, bending over a small table beside his hi-fi stack.

  ‘Scotch?’ I asked, holding out the bottle.

  Wesley didn’t say anything. He appeared not to have heard me. He turned round, an audio cassette in his hand.

  ‘How old are you?’ he said.

  I blinked. ‘Twenty-nine.’

  ‘That’s young, isn’t it?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Your line of work.’

  I began to answer him, some nonsense about voluntary agencies recruiting lots of young graduates, but he ignored what I was saying, slotting the cassette into the hi-fi stack and turning up the sound. He set the counter and pressed the fast forward button, watching the numbers spool by. After a while, he stopped the tape.

  ‘Another game,’ he said, ‘different rules.’

  He pressed the play button and wound up the volume still more. I heard a key turning in a lock. Then the creak of a door opening. After a while, there were footsteps on bare lino. Then, very distinct, the sound of a woman’s voice. My voice.

  ‘Scourge,’ it said, ‘Scourge.’

  I felt the blood rising to my scalp. I lay back in the chair. I closed my eyes. Wesley stopped the tape. There was absolute silence. After a long time, I heard him stirring. He obviously put the tape machine on record when he went out. Or maybe it was wired to the front-door catch. Either way, I should have checked.

  ‘Who gave you the key?’

  ‘Aldridge.’

  ‘When did you meet him?’

  ‘Today. Lunchtime.’

  ‘Have you met him before?’

  ‘Never.’

  There was another silence.

  ‘How did you get here tonight?’

  ‘By car.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Up the road.’

  ‘Who else is with you?’

  I opened my eyes. Wesley was standing beside the hi-fi. The cat was winding itself around his ankles. He repeated the question. I ignored it.

  ‘You knew,’ I said. ‘You knew it all. From the moment I walked in. Tonight.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Is that why…’ I looked at him, gesturing round at the empty cans of Guinness, the overflowing ashtray. ‘All this? Everything we’ve talked about?’

  He said nothing for a moment. Then he reached for my glass. There was an inch of Scotch left in the bottle. He gave me all of it.

  ‘Who do you work for?’ he said.

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Special Branch?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘MI5?’

  ‘I said no comment.’

  ‘I heard you.’

  ‘Then you’ll understand.’

  Wesley nodded, the empty bottle still upturned over my glass. ‘How much freedom do they give you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Whoever it is. Those bosses of yours. The big guys upstairs?’

  Despite everything, I began to laugh. The situation had gone beyond embarrassment to something close to farce.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very clever and very amusing, and if it matters at all I’ve liked all this a lot, but you can’t expect me—’

  ‘All what?’ he said.

  ‘All this. Tonight. Talking to you. Being here.’

  ‘That matter? Any of that?’

  ‘Of course. But—’

  ‘You do know about AIDS?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re telling me there’s some kind of other problem? Some kind of career thing? Loyalty thing? Moves you don’t want to make? Something you don’t want to put on the line?’ He paused. ‘You think any of that shit matters? You think I care about any of that? You think you should?’

  I put the glass down, uncertain now, hazy with drink, unsure whether this was more playacting or the real thing. Wesley had baited the trap, skewered me beautifully and spent
most of the evening watching me make a fool of myself. Now, it seemed, the games were over.

  ‘Listen,’ I said quietly, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry? What does that fucking mean?’

  ‘I didn’t want to …’I shrugged. ‘You weren’t supposed to …’

  ‘Yeah. But I did. So what happens now? Have you searched the place? Taken stuff away?’

  ‘No…’ I hesitated.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I didn’t have time.’

  ‘Pathetic.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Pleasure. Here,’ he picked up the glass of whisky, ‘drink it, shit.’

  He turned away, shaking his head, bending to the cat, lifting it up. When he turned round again, his eyes were moist.

  ‘You know what’s really hard?’ he said.

  I shook my head. ‘No.’

  ‘Tonight. I really enjoyed it. Liked your company. Doesn’t happen too often. You know that? God’s truth.’

  I looked at him for a long time. Then I lifted my glass. ‘Cheers,’ I said softly. ‘Your health.’

  13

  Next morning, Stollmann rang at half past seven. I answered the phone, still wet from the shower. Six hours earlier, driving back from Guildford, I’d told him very little. Keogh, I’d said, was probably close to full-blown AIDS. The man was difficult and wild and probably brilliant, just the way the brief had phrased it, but he had no special affection for people like me, and – as yet – the disease hadn’t left him helpless. He’d indicated no great urge to meet me again and as far as I could see our brief relationship was over. Of the evening’s final conversation – the tape, the anger, the hint of tears – I’d made no mention.

  In the Rover, coming back, Stollmann had said virtually nothing. Now, he asked me whether I was dressed.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m sitting in a car outside your flat. I thought I might come up.’ He paused. ‘I’ve bought a couple of rolls. Cheese…’ he paused again, ‘and pickle.’

  I went to the window and peered round the curtain. Stollmann was gazing up at me through the windscreen of a blue Metro. A brief flutter of his right hand was the closest he got to a wave.

  ‘Give me five minutes,’ I said. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

  By the time Stollmann appeared, I had the coffee brewed and ready. He stood in the hall holding a small white paper bag. He looked tired and a little hesitant. When I offered to hang up his coat, he shook his head. Out of his element, away from the office, he was incredibly shy.