“No. I mean, I need boxes to put things in. Old boxes that you’d be throwing away. I’m moving.” He’d tried to make the last sentence neutral, but it shuffled out, laden with suggestions of bereavement, or an otherwise tragic failure of supporting walls.
“Oh.” Linda—that was the name on her badge—looked at him with sympathy. “Oh, you would have to talk to Brian at the back.” Sympathy would be dangerous now, it could make him turn unstable. “Or I could ask him for you.” He didn’t fancy bursting into tears, not in a supermarket.
“That would be very kind. Linda.”
She flinched at the sound of her name: as if it meant that he’d declared himself her stalker.
“It’s on your badge.”
Her face had tightened, she swallowed lumpily.
“Your name. On your badge.” This was good, she was annoying him now, which gave him a little more energy, less chance of being glum. “How would I contact this Brian?”
Her voice settled, but was still quieter than it had been, and her kind eyes were averted. “At the Customer Service desk.” She struggled both arms back into the soapy shelf, avoiding him.
“Thanks. Good of you. Thanks.”
As he moved to select the strongest-looking disinfectant, she called after him, “I’ll speak to Brian for you first.” Because he’d been right, she was the forgiving type.
“Thanks.” It would take very little to ease everybody’s way in the world: courtesy, gentleness, tiny bits of redemption, perhaps once a month. But there was so much negativity around, these days, and a staggering percentage of it aimed solely at him.
He halted to consider the frozen seafood: one complete freezer was wedged to the brim with identical briquettes of some nondescript grey fish, or fish substitute. You’d never keep cheery, eating that.
And this was when his mind produced, as he’d known it eventually would, the spectre of That Day: his earliest experience of breaking up. Resurrected, yet again, were his grubby overalls, his boots, the patch of mud he stared at while he talked to her, to Melissa, and the sound of her saying, “What do you mean? I don’t know what you mean.”
He’d been fifteen—young by anyone’s reckoning—and working in a stables, not because he liked horses or particularly wanted to ride, but because he’d been anxious to make himself sturdy, imposingly muscular, and couldn’t think of any better way. He detested sport. So he’d shifted hay bales and lifted saddles and shovelled manure and piss-soaked straw and had developed nothing more than twine burns and calluses across both hands. He’d kept on, because he was earning money and because—he’d been an idiot not to guess—the stables were almost perpetually haunted by girls: beautifully terrifying women and breathless, well-exercised girls. Occasionally boys would turn up, baggy-jodhpured and hunched, but they were a threat to no one, not even him.
Not that he made his predatory intentions public—he’d liked to be oblique, even back then. Mostly, when the girls were about, Tom would do no more than take the stiffest brush and loudly, manfully, sweep down the cobbles: raising, in the process, a fine mist of shitty water and urine for everyone near to inhale—him first. Or he would lurk in amongst the ponies, solemnly labouring with a curry comb: professional and unapproachable but, each Tuesday, taking his chance to nod curtly at Melissa.
She’d had that soft look, the one that lets bygones be bygones in later life, he’d recognised it instinctively. For months he watched her, learned her: the way she was well turned out, but never prissy, her firm understanding of her mount—Buster, usually—and the shifting, eloquent muscle in her thighs, clearly, harrowingly visible a field away.
He had wanted to kiss her legs. And her mouth. Beyond that, he’d hoped she would understand how to proceed. Thus far, he’d only fumbled round someone at a party, two cans of cider making him bold but imprecise. That hadn’t been a success—and he’d felt he was being unfaithful to Melissa, to all he’d have liked to keep for her, lying in wait.
His deepest, most articulate hope had been that perhaps Melissa would let him wank while she was there. That would have made an efficient compromise: something with which he was very familiar, combined with something completely beyond his imagination—and he had tried to imagine it, he really had.
And then, “Do you … wouldyoumaybe … because I …” He had felt his brain dropping away from behind his eyes, failing and starting to rot, “because I really …” there was hardly any time, surely, before he’d collapse in a dirty heap like a cast-off set of overalls. “I … Melissa.”
Of course she hadn’t understood him, nobody could. “What do you mean? I don’t know what you mean.” His emptying head had seemed to lunge up through the thick, sticky air of its own accord and had then discovered it was dreadfully able to watch Melissa’s expression move from one of mystification, tinged with fear, towards dawning amusement and then disgust. Everything had stopped once she’d reached disgust.
She hadn’t laughed at him, that was a kind of mercy. But she’d told most of the other girls about him and they had. By the end of the day, he’d been shivering and twitching with angry misery. Mr. Barker, whose steely wife ran the business, had ambled out into the hollow evening with the pay and, for the first time Tom could remember, had become animated.
“No, no. Don’t tell me. I can imagine. Little cats, all of them. You come to the house now, come on.”
Tom had never been near the house, let alone inside it. Mrs. Barker made it clearly out of bounds. But Mr. Barker’s broad, hard arm had landed across his shoulders and gripped, beginning to steer him irresistibly up the bedraggled driveway.
“So, young mister. Know what you need, don’t you? For troubles of the heart.”
Trapped in the brown, dog-smelling living room, Tom shook his head, momentarily troubled by the answers Barker might anticipate. He’d then brightened greatly as Barker had reached down behind the bookcase and lifted up, like a tame rabbit, an almost full bottle of whisky. Mrs. Barker, clearly, was not at home.
They had drunk like men together until it was dark, Barker becoming mildly more relaxed and Tom beautifully intoxicated. It was his introduction to spirits. Before, he’d been afraid of them, but now he discovered that whisky, at least, was a lovable, gentle thing. Barker, a generally thirsty person himself, had been fatherly, limiting Tom’s consumption, pacing him and easing him to a place where he was perfectly able to walk the six miles home and yet entirely unable ever to recall the journey. He’d woken in bed, still wearing his socks, but otherwise correctly undressed. And the row he’d got at breakfast was untarnished, miraculously, by any kind of hangover: they were another peril of middle age, recriminations burrowing in through a nauseous headache, they didn’t do that when you were a child.
Tom’s trolley had silted up with a despondent mound of toiletries and cleaning cloths, frozen prawns, chicken legs and pizzas, a loaf of bread. Half of this would go off, it was too much for one person. One person, currently all he could manage to be.
The fabled Brian—most surprisingly—was waiting at the Customer Service desk when Tom trudged up with his pointlessly straining carrier bags. Linda had kept her promise, so God bless Linda. But there were just five boxes, no more, and all of them flat.
“They’ll work fine, though. You have to fold them back up and put a bit of tape …”
Tom was nodding bitterly, “Flattened, they take up less space.”
Brian seemed about to begin a demonstration of exactly how handy containers for everything on earth that you still have left could be fashioned from such an unpromising stack of cardboard. Tom could feel his bags tugging him down, stooping him, as if years were passing while he stood. “No.”
Brian darted a step away from the would-be boxes, said nothing more.
“No. I understand. You’re giving me what I deserve, that’s fine.” What Tom really wanted was another painkiller, but it would be awkward to take one now. In the car—he could hang on until then. “I’ll take my bags out to the car
and then I’ll come back. Or I could take a trolley.”
Either because he didn’t especially want Tom to come back, or feared that he might abscond in an act of dastardly trolley theft, Brian volunteered to carry the boxes back to Tom’s car.
“Are you a drinking man, Brian?”
This was a stupid thing to ask: Brian gave every indication of being twelve and afflicted by some variety of blight: a decent drink would cripple him—more than he already was. “Hm? A drinking man?” Even so, Tom was trying to put the boy at ease, start a spot of casual banter, it didn’t remotely matter what they might banter about.
Still, Brian appeared deeply taxed by the simple query—A drinking man?—and Tom wondered if he should have said person, child, midget—if he should have specified what he meant by drinking—if he’d intended the verb should pertain to liquids of any kind, or be restricted to those of the intoxicating type. Perhaps Brian absorbed his moisture in some less straightforward, less oral, way. Tom would not have put it past him.
Then a response gargled out, “No, no, ah, not really. Don’t drink. Much.”
“Not really? Well, good. It can cause many, many problems.” Drinking actually did no such thing—but this was probably the proper line to take with someone like Brian: a wheezy, imbecilic dwarf. Christ, what would that be like if it ever got pissed?
“Here we are then—my car.” The dent in the passenger door was more than usually obvious in this light. Brian appeared to be hypnotised by its severity. “Splendid, then, young Brian.” Tom beamed, rather paternally, he thought, but Brian now regarded him as if he were, at least, a convicted hit-and-runner. “You have been so helpful. May I give you a tip.” Brian retreated as though the pound coin Tom extended was, in some way, venomous. “Ah, well, then. Cheers.”
Predictably enough, though, a doughy, clammy hand did dart in and snatch the pound just before Tom could pocket it again. Some people had no principles. Brian retreated without a backward glance. He walked, when you studied him, as if he had one leg shorter than the other, or one foot thinner than the other, Tom wasn’t sure how you would tell.
Tom unlocked the boot and then halted, gridlocked by a choice of packing strategies. He could put the flattened boxes in first and the carrier bags on top, which probably made more geometrical sense and implied that he would arrive home, unpack the shopping, engage in a tricky but not insoluble conversation with Kate and then never have to come out and fetch the boxes, let them moulder. Or he could put the shopping in first and then the boxes, which was the less stable solution and suggested that he would arrive, pack up his things, perhaps in a savagely empty house, and then leave for Tony’s flat, driving towards the type of sharp, unfamiliar horizon that would put any man of intelligence in mind of an oncoming blade.
He hoisted up the carriers—why call them that? What kind of bags didn’t carry? It was a wholly unnecessary adverb—no, adjective, something like that. And then his thinking clogged, jolted, and his arms began to shake and he was sobbing, weeping, blind with it.
Wouldn’t do, wouldn’t do at all. A man crying into his car. No one to care about it. That was too sad.
He remembered Mr. Barker taking his glass that one evening to refill it. His hand had briefly ringed Tom’s wrist, and, full to his face and whisky-breathed, he’d crooned, “You know us? People like us? We’re like the horses. Yes, we are. We’re touch positive. You press against us, even hit us, and we lean in to feel more. We like touching. We’re not ourselves without it.” Tom hadn’t quite understood what Barker meant, but he’d learned since. And it was true, he was touch positive. He was not himself without it.
He snatched up the boxes, threw them in, everything smeared and stinging when he blinked, shut the boot and brailed his way to the car door, slid into the driver’s seat.
Glove compartment.
No.
Under the passenger seat, then.
No.
Shit. He couldn’t have lost it. It couldn’t have walked away.
Inside that stupid pannier thing in his door—that was it, that was it.
Yes. Mercy, yes.
A half-full quarter bottle of Gordon’s. That was to say, an eighth bottle.
Silly.
Silly thing to think.
Unscrewing the cap, Tom already felt softly calmer and then, after a moderate sip, that first little race, he began to inhale and exhale like a human being. If he’d thought of this sooner, the day would have fitted him better. Never mind, though, this was all right.
He felt, felt, well, he felt at home—his genuine home, if not fully arrived, then on the way. But gin could make you depressed if you didn’t take measures, so he sucked in another half-painkiller—keep things perky—caffeine and codeine—grand.
Tom hadn’t noticed before this, but right down the length of the street there were chestnut trees: those heavy, lobed leaves shifting, calm and so full of green, roaring with it. There were birds, too, somewhere, letting out small, good-natured songs that no one could have heard without being lifted. This really was an ideal day; he had been hurrying too much to notice. Lucky that he’d taken time out, adjusted his attitude, that was the sort of thing to keep you young in many of the ways that really mattered.
He stole another minor tot from the bottle before stowing it again, dried his face and started the engine: it caught at once, full of pep. This was a good sign and implied—absolutely did imply, because all things in the universe were connected—that it was possible, realistically possible, that he’d go and see Kate next, determined and perfectly able to talk her round. It did strongly suggest that. He would apologise, of course, and, because she loved him—had said so—he would persuade her that their relationship could be altered in useful and constructive ways and—this was the main point—persevered with and saved. Why give up now?
God, it was a lovely afternoon.
Shame to waste it.
What he ought to do was go into the Captain’s Rest: Tony might be there by this time, or someone, or it didn’t matter, Tom could be sociable with absolutely anyone, he was easygoing, always had been—especially friendly to one and all. He could dash in there, just have a whisky, gather his thoughts, prepare and be on his way. He could drink one for old Barker: for horse-hearted men. Of course, God bless them.
And, after that, he would go home to his girlfriend—Kate was still his girlfriend, these things didn’t change, not fundamentally—and he’d tell her that he was sorry and that they would be OK and she would believe him, because he was nothing but truth this afternoon, it was aching all through him like a lovely bruise.
By the end of this afternoon—the start of this evening—that was better yet—once he was composed and warmed thoroughly—such processes took time—he would go and see her. Absolutely. There would be a moment today and he would reach it and he would catch it and understand that he would be ready to see her then, he would be ready perfectly.
Indelible Acts
It wasn’t difficult.
“That’s nice. Very nice.”
Anyone could have done it—absolutely anyone.
“Just the way I like you. Great.”
He’d been applying the usual friction, first and second fingertips. “Mm. Now the right,” the circular rub and flicker, insisting against cloth, until both nipples caught at his attention, perked and ached. The way they would.
“Good.” His lips slackened, moist, while his interest hid in the dumb black of his glasses. “Very good.” Laurie paused next, smiling, satisfied, happy my needs were symmetrically prominent. “Nice.”
But anybody with hands could have done as much. Not even hands, necessarily: hand would have been enough; or a half-way decent prosthetic: even a properly placed domestic pet. Laurie wasn’t working miracles—he was not involved with raising up the dead—only a little prickle or two of extremely erectile flesh. Brush or fluster them, breathe at them, kiss, and they’ll button up tight, they’ll crest. Within their particular limits, the more you
choose to find them, then the more there’ll be to find—that’s how they work, their inclinations are naturally salient. I can’t do a thing to change them and neither can he—not fundamentally. A simple chill can prick them, as can that certain monthly tenderness, and then I’ll be edged near precisely the same old slip of wet intentions he rubbed me to.
Traffic coughed and worried in the road beside us, pedestrians passed, among them a higher than average number of priests—or just men in cassocks, I’m not an expert, I can’t say—and I wanted, very simply, to pummel Laurie on to his back and in some way secure him, then cut him out naked at the waist and suck him until both his balls were small as raisins, until he cried.
Because such impulses are irresistibly instinctive, they can’t be helped. Primed past the point of caring, by no matter what or whom, I will react entirely predictably. Like the leopard with the zebra, like the lobster with the pot, I am part of nature’s usual arithmetic. I do often try to remember this in order to build perspective, an independently distant view.
Four nuns pattered by, soundless, their faces a little unlikely, surprised to be marooned in wimples. My breath barked against my sternum, abrasively needy, while social convention and mental discipline struggled to keep me from arrest. I said nothing, did nothing, only seethed, as might have been expected, queasy with lust.
Laurie grinned, knowingly unscathed. “You like it just as much as I do, don’t you. Hm?”
“But not now.” The day basted the avenue pleasantly: foreign monuments roiling under a classical sun and the Colosseum dark at Laurie’s shoulder, a monstrous hoop of decay.
“Why not now?”
“Because people are looking, people will see.”
“Then you shouldn’t have worn that blouse—that’s why they’re looking, so of course they’ll see. Don’t you like men staring at your tits? I do. Because they can’t have you. Because you’re mine.”
Because you’re mine. It’s a standard wording, fits any mouth. I would have liked to turn it back on him, set my voice kicking in his chest, arcing that customary charge of hopefulness between the stomach and the throat. I would have liked to make it clear that
Indelible Acts Page 9