“Yes, I do.”
“Well, then …” He wanted to forget himself. “That’s good.”
The memory of it, of seeing her like that, made a touch of blood head south, plumbing his depths. Although it hadn’t been something he’d enjoyed, so much as something he couldn’t help wanting to do again. There was a great deal he couldn’t help wanting to do again.
He turned the radio back on and retuned until he found some music, turned it up loud. A few miles further and Greg came to a section of road that was heavy with standing water. Careless for his engine, he drove at each pool directly and made plume after plume cape across his windscreen, each liquid impact scrabbling under his bodywork. He felt more peaceful afterwards and was calmed even more by the flat of the glen floor around him, the slow spin of mountains, parting and meeting before and behind.
Because there was a minute chance that it might be his last, he pulled off the road to watch what starts and licks of light the sunset could force through the cloud. He left the car and walked through the coarse, drizzly grass and into the whip and bounce of heather. He lay down as the valley dimmed to shadow and the rain fell on his face and he set himself aside from Amanda and Karen, from the misery of excitements, the bitter comforts, the whole thing. A curlew called and then there was a great peace. He fell into an utterly painless sleep.
What woke him was the cold. Greg was shivering before he was fully conscious. The ground around still smelt of summer, but the slight breeze was stern and he was soaked—all but the middle of his back. He got to his feet in a confusion of stiffness and chill and was immediately terrified by the total dark, couldn’t see his watch, couldn’t tell if he’d moved past midnight, if this was it. Then he tripped on a high sprawl of roots and fell where he could see his headlamps, still mercifully there and bright in a way which implied he hadn’t fucked the battery by leaving them to burn.
I didn’t want this to be over, not everything. I hate it, but I didn’t want it to have gone away. Or maybe I didn’t want it to leave me behind.
Safely in the car, he started up the engine without a hitch, changed his shirt and was forced to put on the pink sweater, just to get warm. Its sleeves were long enough to act as mittens, which was a mercy.
I didn’t want it to leave me behind.
Gently, he circled and jolted down into the road, got under way again, his watch showing just past two in the morning, which meant he hadn’t paid attention as well as he might. This could be the big day, could be coiled right down around the start of the big moment. Any second now. Already, The End could have taken him unawares. He could have missed it and never known.
But I’m wrong. Nothing’s going to happen. Nothing’s going to leave me and I really ought to be certain of that. I’ve got no proper cause for doubt.
I’m wrong and by midnight tomorrow, I’ll know that I’m wrong.
That should make me happy.
By midnight tomorrow, that’s how I should be.
Happy.
That’s how I should be.
Awaiting an Adverse Reaction
It’s unmistakable, organic, the flavour of something live.
“Oh, that’s dreadful.”
She shifts in her chair while the doctor pads across and to his fridge.
“Dreadful?”
“The taste. I don’t get a sweetie for after?”
“No.” He turns back with a blur of smile. “No sugar lump to go with it and no sweetie for afterwards.” Quietly teasing between the slim and softly shining shelves, “Sugar is bad for you and here we don’t ever dispense what is bad for you.”
“A small piece of fruit, then?”
“This is a surgery, not a restaurant.” He coughs out a small laugh and decides to risk, “And that’s a Scottish medicine—if it tastes bad, it must be working,” before glancing to check if she takes him in good part.
She grimaces back, not entirely unhappily, and swims the flavour round her tongue, hoping it will weaken. Under the tickle of spreading salt, the cold initial weight of the vaccine, there is something familiar about the taste. She knows that if she concentrates, identification will come.
Her doctor advances, hands benevolently folded round a stack of suitably chilled inoculations: the start of any truly happy holiday.
“I’ll need the use of both your arms.” Laying out his packages and snapping the first needle free: “Tetanus and hepatitis this side …” he grins curatively; “diphtheria and typhoid that.”
Something about his casual enumeration of plagues is strangely enjoyable, a comfort to her. She is being made safe; a part of her bloodstream is welcoming something foreign, so that none of her will go wrong when she takes all her body abroad.
She swallows and briefly considers the matter of Gordon. Gordon will not be made safe, because he will not go with her, because he does not like abroad. He does like her, but not abroad. She does like abroad. The thought of abroad is something she likes very much.
“I won’t hurt.” The doctor draws a careful epidemic up inside his syringe.
“I know you won’t. I will.”
She rolls up her sleeves, hoping that she can offer him flesh high enough on her arms. She would rather not take off her blouse. In the past, her doctor’s acts of examination have been both medical and polite; a nurse discreetly attending, should any especially intimate explorations be required. Even so, undressing always seems more awkward than being undressed—having to stumble her clothes off while the doctor slips outside and the nurse presses breaths through the disinfected silence and shifts tinily on white crêpe soles, observing. Nothing to enjoy. But that won’t happen today.
He nods, “Good,” then pushes a pinching kind of pain inside her skin; holds it, dabs around it, withdraws and dabs again. “Terribly bad?”
“No. Not bad at all.”
“Mm. I am actually quite good at giving injections. I still practise, you see. Others I could mention do not. How’s the polio doing?”
“I can still taste it. In fact, I think it’s getting worse. It reminds me of … I don’t know what.” He slips in another needle, while she thinks. That wasn’t fair.
“Some people would rather not know what’s going on.”
“It’s my arm, I like to keep tabs on it.”
“I quite understand. Other side and then we’re done. We just ask you to wait for a few minutes more, in case there’s an adverse reaction.”
As soon as he says this, she feels a rush in her circulation, a burst of strangeness, but nothing she would call adverse. Her flesh is being fortified like wine, science defending her against nature more deeply with every prick.
“You’re getting tense—this will be painful if you don’t relax.”
“Sorry.”
“Not to worry. You’ve been a very patient patient. And. Last one. There. Will you be going away for long?”
“A month.” A month away from Gordon, during which time she will try to phone him and will certainly write him postcards and may nevertheless experience increasingly serious bouts of what she might well call relief. She can feel her symptoms building, even now.
“Terrific. A month.”
One whole month of perhaps incurable relief.
They probably will fire her when she gets back home. Already, she has calculated the likelihood of summary dismissal. She finds that it doesn’t scare her—not in the way that disease might, or a month staying here with Gordon and his list of things they shouldn’t talk about.
“Yes, I’ve saved up my holiday time”; pausing, recalling the polio taste and where she met it once before, knowing it, making a smile, “And I’m taking four days off sick.”
“Really?” He pauses to look quintessentially medical: phial held high, a glimmer at his needle and naturally chill, but very steady hands. “What will be wrong, in your professional opinion?” His voice relaxes into a type of wink—his eyes being unable to do the same, for reasons of professional distance and confidence.
&n
bsp; “Wrong? Oh, probably flu. Probably not typhoid, or hepatitis, or—”
“Or tetanus, or diphtheria, or polio. Yes, I think that flu would probably be best. In my professional opinion.”
Or polio. She licked against her teeth and smiled again. On their second anniversary, last spring, when Gordon had asked her to do it and she’d finally agreed, when he’d got his way—this is how he’d tasted. The gagging nudge in her throat, repeating, and then warmed polio vaccine. It’s just like him.
“As you’re away so long …” The doctor ponders, above her notes, “I could write out your next prescription for TriNovum.”
“For?”
“Your contraceptive.”
Her passport for Gordon to travel, pregnancy free.
“Oh yes, thank you.”
“No problems, periods normal?”
“No problems at all.” She can say this because it will be true soon and might as well be now: her hopes proving unexpectedly resistant to all antidotes.
She waits as he checks the pressure of her altering blood, not minding the hard fit of the cuff, and taking—for the sake of politeness—the prescription for an oral contraceptive she may never use, at least not with Gordon.
“Thank you.”
“We aim to please.” He opens the door so that she can start to go away. “Do have a nice holiday.”
“I will.”
She is aware that, when she speaks, her breath is vaguely coloured with the taste of something not unlike seminal fluid. She is aware of something not unlike the cloy and tang of spunk. She is aware that her husband has the flavour of a tentatively sweetened disease. But, finally, it seems she has developed a complete immunity.
An Immaculate Man
“Yes.” Hot little word, slightly angry, very solid, very meant. “Yes.”
All she said.
How old was she? He couldn’t tell by looking. The paperwork gave her birth date and it wasn’t exactly beyond him to work out that she was ten, but he would have guessed twelve, or older, because she seemed so tired and so deeply still. This meant he must, somewhere, associate exhaustion and immobility with age. Certainly, they were associated with his age.
Ten. Jesus God, what in hell has happened to her yet? What can she possibly know? And here she is landed with this.
Clothes like her mother’s: good and clean, but distressed, unhappily mismatched. The pair of them were dressing on the run; out of suitcases and despair, he would imagine. The mother wore the wrong shoes for this weather and she knew it and didn’t care. Sometimes separation would take people that way, making them want to act biblically, to seem on the brink of rending garments and putting ashes in their hair. He’d seen it before.
The daughter was staring again, focusing herself at one meaningless point on the top of his desk and giving him her forehead instead of her face. She was trying some type of self-hypnosis to keep his best efforts away from her mind when he’d already made it quite clear that he was on her side completely and only had to ask unpleasant questions to determine what she genuinely wished. The comprehensive and accurate fulfilment of all her desires was almost undoubtedly well within his gift. She could and would get what she wanted to get. This was something which rarely, if ever, happened throughout the course of anybody’s life and he was offering it to her now, as her perfect right. He was her friend.
“I’m your friend, you do know that, don’t you?”
She leaned further forward, her elbows resting on her knees and he somehow doubted she could hear him, although a brief shudder showed in her back when he spoke. Was she permanently round-shouldered, or simply wincing herself temporarily away from things? She wouldn’t be so pale in the summer, he was sure, and she would know how to smile. Of course she would.
The mother shifted her weight, looking, as was customary, close to tears. She never did cry, though. Considerate. Still, no need to test her endurance beyond its strength. He’d already got the answers he required.
“Fine. Well, thank you. You’ve been really very clear. If you want to stay with your mother and not g—” The child’s attention leaped at him, made him swallow half his word “—go to your father. Sorry. Not go to your father.” He felt the air unclench. “Then we’ll try to ensure that happens. Fine. I’ll fix it. That’s what I do: I get things fixed.” He raised his head to the mother, cooled his voice, gave it the proper, professional pace. “If you don’t mind … Excuse me for one moment.”
The girl didn’t stir as he passed her, although his jacket must have tapped her arm, at least. Prudence suggested he should pause by the mother, bend vaguely at his waist and accept her brief, ferocious smile which fought to suggest that her daughter loved her and that she was, therefore, still essentially lovable.
He nodded and pursed his lips to imply his agreement and support, or at least an understanding reached, or simply to let her know that he was deserting her now with good reason. His absence would allow them to talk and let their feelings calm. They could then be appropriately loving with each other and settle down before he came back to join them in the ghastly little interview room with its overheating and underlighting and dying rubber plant. Jesus, it was appalling—the pastel motel carpet and the stolidly tasteful furniture intended to imply reliability and a courteous use of clients’ fees, unblemished by unreasonable charging and other extravagance. He really did have to go—the human mind could only bear so much terracotta ragging.
His offer of tea was refused. “Something for the girl, then. Milk? Lemonade? Actually, we have none.”
“No, really, Mr. Howie. We’re all right.”
Rather than pat the mother’s shoulder, which he felt she wouldn’t like, Howie straightened and nodded again, confidingly.
“Perhaps if I might telephone tomorrow, we could discuss the aliment. And I do feel Mr. Simpson’s comments over custody won’t come to much: pursuing it could only represent a pointless expense.” Her eyes wailed at him suddenly. “Back in one moment, Mrs. Simpson. Excuse me. Fine.”
Out in the passageway, Howie felt cleaner immediately. He detested the fug and the panic, the terrible malleability of words—all of the paraphernalia that straggled around clients and the law. His working life had started to have a particular, dragging smell, like the after-prison-visit tang he’d never been able to clean from his suits in his bad, old criminal days.
He paused, pushed back his shoulders till his backbone let out a series of grinding snaps. How best to pass the time … He could either make a phone call, or take a leak. The leak won.
He washed his hands and face before he started, trying to get the misery out from under his fingernails and cool his skin.
Then Salter came in. Howie knew it was him without looking. Salter had a way of half whistling and half exhaling between his teeth while he walked about. Some people found this annoying, of course, but Howie took it as a kind of reassurance. The sound was almost melodious, mildly contented and instantly recognisable. Salter’s sound was a part of what made him; like the quiet shoes, usually suede, and the little gap in his lower teeth that he worried between with his tongue while he was thinking. If you imagined him at any time while he wasn’t there, these were things that might very easily spring to mind. But above all, the whistling.
Howie stood, breathing inaudibly, moved his thumb a touch along his prick and then moved it back again, feeling foolish and observed. Salter. A good man, Salter. He looked as if he might be confided in with safety. If one ever had anything suitable to confide. The base of Howie’s neck felt strange, it tickled a bit.
Before a pressure dunted hard in at his chest and he looked down, half expecting to find blood, or something awful and ridiculous like that. A tightness rippled implacably round his ribs.
Fuck. Oh, shit. Oh, fuck.
A man’s arms were fixing him, hands buckled together above his breast bone. And he could see where his own hands were locked clumsily in place, one of them holding his prick while he still pissed, because he could
n’t help it, because once you’ve started pissing and passed the point, you really can’t stop and you just have to keep on pissing until you’re emptied out. This was unfair.
It’s a joke. It must be. Please.
He shook his head without meaning to and felt a high, inappropriate noise burst in his throat.
This is a fight. But this is Salter. This is Salter’s hands. I can’t fight Salter. He’ll win.
A definite exhalation nudged past him and then Salter’s chin dropped, solid on Howie’s shoulder. Howie shut his eyes and felt his thinking rock and swim. Salter’s body steamed in close, one of its legs bending warmly to fit the soft curl behind Howie’s knee. Another squeezed in to the side, thigh to thigh. Howie’s breath fought back against the swell of another man’s lungs while his scalp greased over with an unwanted sweat.
When you’re drowning, it must be like this.
He couldn’t shift his hand. Even though he’d stopped now, was done, he couldn’t move. He couldn’t put himself away.
“Howie.”
The voice loped in like a blow while Howie felt the shape of his own name working soft, fierce changes in another man’s mouth, set at his cheek. He felt himself waver in a grasp of precarious flight.
Please. You mustn’t do this. You don’t mean what I want you to mean.
But he leaned back in any case and let himself rest on a body he couldn’t trust. He twitched his neck to turn, to speak, but Salter bore up against him like a good, new faith, like the fulfilment of a promise putting itself within his reach.
“Sssh.”
The rush of that tobogganed down Howie’s ear to fracture him completely, bits and pieces of thinking span off, crumpled, were entirely misplaced, with all the time Salter’s arms there and deciding to tense harder, to constrict.
Howie coughed up a burst of nonsense, shrill as his brain. “I can’t … I can’t … when you’re holding …” Nerves lit up in his spine, “Is this … Did I do? …” caught the thin, round pressure from one of Salter’s hips, “Please,” the rising line of his prick. “Please.”
Indelible Acts Page 3