A Good Year for the Roses (1988)

by Timlin, Mark

  ‘Nick, so soon,’ she said as a greeting.

  ‘Yeah, bad penny time. Can I come in?’

  ‘Of course, it's liberty hall at my place, or had you forgotten?’

  She fiddled with the chain and pulled the door open. I didn't answer, just slid through the doorway and pushed it gently closed behind me. I turned and refastened the chain. We stood and looked at each other in the hallway. ‘What's up?’ she asked.

  ‘The usual,’ I said.

  ‘Are you armed?’

  ‘No, I'm just pleased to see you.’

  ‘Funny,’ she said, without cracking the least sign of a smile.

  ‘Yes, I'm armed.’

  ‘Well I don't want to see it.’

  ‘Good enough.’

  She led me through the flat, into the living room where a portable colour TV was buzzing quietly in the corner. I didn't see what was on, the faces on the screen were blurred as if covered with a fine gauze.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.

  ‘Could be, what have you got?’

  ‘Eggs, bacon.’

  ‘And a fried plantain?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I love your fried plantain.’

  ‘There's a joke in there somewhere.’ For the first time she touched me. She rested her hand on my arm. Her nails were long and scarlet.

  ‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘But get rid of the gun.’ I walked over to a chest of drawers, opened the top drawer and laid the Cobra gently on a pile of papers inside, then followed her into the kitchen. It was large and white and looked into an overgrown back garden. All the windows were open to allow some air in from the sultry night.

  Somewhere far away, across the river, I guessed, there was a brief flash of sheet lightning that lit up the leaves on the trees and turned them electric green for a second. Teresa shivered in the heat.

  ‘I hate storms,’ she said.

  ‘I love them,’ I replied.

  ‘I remember.’

  She went over and opened the fridge and pulled out eggs and a packet of bacon. She loaded the meat onto the mesh of the pan under the grill and turned on the gas. She took a big plantain out of the wicker basket on the dresser, peeled it and sliced it lengthwise. All of a sudden, the heat and the scent of the fruit took me back to another flat in another part of town during another forgotten summer.

  Teresa and I had just started seeing each other seriously. My wife was on another planet, and with the help of certain illegal substances, so was I.

  One weekend I stayed up with Teresa. I gave Laura a cock-and-bull story about a seminar at Bramshill. I don't know if she believed me and cared less. She was probably glad to see the back of me for forty eight hours.

  Tess and I stayed in for the whole weekend. We ate take-outs when we ate at all and fucked each others’ brains out. The weather was tropical. The sky was cloudless for weeks and the city boiled like a cheap kettle. We wore the minimum of clothing for the two days which didn't help, and I watched the drops of sweat roll down Teresa's back from, her hairline until they soaked into the band of her panties. I'd cleared the glass topped table in her living room and it was streaked and smeared with coke dust. We smoked dope, snorted coke, screwed, sucked up strong, cold mixtures of vodka and juice, picked at pizzas and Chinese and screwed again. She'd bought in a hand of bananas and put them on a window sill in a glass bowl. When she'd bought them they'd been green, but I could almost see them ripen in the sunlight that poured through the window. The room filled with the perfume of the yellowing fruit and the Thai stick we were rolling and smoking and the smell of stale sex and stale bodies. In the late evening when the sun finally dropped down to the horizon and the tower blocks turned black and golden we'd sit on the bed by the window, dazed and wiped out from the sex and booze and drugs and listen to the trains rattling across town until it grew full dark and we fell asleep in each others’ arms.

  ‘A penny from them,’ said Teresa and I was back with her.

  ‘Thinking about that place of yours in Battersea, remember?’

  She smiled. ‘Yes, good days.’

  ‘Good enough for me,’ I said.

  She drained the bacon and scooped two eggs and the fried banana onto a plate. ‘Ketchup?’ she asked.

  ‘Just a bit.’

  ‘You always say that.’

  ‘Not much alters, does it?’ I asked.

  ‘Doesn't it?’

  I shrugged. ‘I dunno,’ I said through a mouthful of egg.

  She sat and watched me as I ate. She fiddled with her hair and a seam on the skirt of her dress. The food was good. She fetched me a bottle of Bud from the cooler and I swallowed a mouthful from the neck. It tasted cool and rich as it washed the last of the food down my throat. At last she asked the inevitable question. ‘Why did you come?’

  ‘I'm on the run,’ I said only half jokingly.

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘I don't know for sure, but I think so. Anyway don't worry, I haven't brought any little friends along.’

  ‘Do you want to stay the night?’

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘Of course. You wouldn't have come if you'd thought differently would you?’

  I ignored the question. ‘Not going out?’ I asked instead.

  ‘Not tonight, I'm sort of on holiday.’

  ‘Costa Del Stockwell?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  I sat and finished the beer. ‘You're sure no-one's followed you?’ she asked when I'd put the bottle in the garbage pail.

  ‘Not a chance.’

  She relaxed a little and lit a Marlboro from the red and white pack on the sideboard. She didn't inhale the first drag, just allowed the smoke to drift between her lips in a grey-white, bite-sized swirl. I looked at it greedily and she spat it towards me. ‘Want one?’ she asked. I nodded but stopped her as she pushed the packet towards me.

  ‘But I won't,’ I said.

  ‘Please yourself, you always do.’

  ‘Am I doing something wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘Just the usual.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Using people, using me!

  ‘Tess, I'm not, I swear.’

  ‘I knew you'd come when I could be of some use.’

  ‘I'll go then.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘God knows,’ I said. ‘I'll walk the streets.’

  ‘You fucking drama queen. “I'll walk the streets.” ’ she mimicked pretty well too. ‘You know I wouldn't kick you out.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘There, you see.’

  ‘Jesus Tess,’ I said. ‘What's got into you?’

  ‘I'm sorry, I've had a rough week.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It's no good any more.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What I do.’

  ‘I didn't think goodness ever came into it,’ I replied, rather tactlessly.

  She flashed me a dirty look. ‘Don't get funny, Nick,’ she said. ‘It's a living. What the fuck do you do that's so special?’ There was really no answer to that one. ‘I hate being pawed around by those dirty bastards.’

  ‘So quit.’

  ‘And do what?’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Well tell me Nick, you're so smart. What should I do? What little career do you suggest I should get into?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘There you see, no bright ideas. Well I did quit for a while, and what do you think I did?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Well I wasn't on the check-out at Sainsbury's. I worked in a peep show, what do you think of that?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘A sleazy little peep show in Wardour Stret. Do you know what that means?’ I shook my head, it beat saying nothing, but I didn't quite get her point. Did she mean morally or philosophically? Or did she mean the nuts and bolts of the thing? I soon found out. ‘It means I showed off my pussy to a bunch of scumbags for half a quid a throw. Do you know how that feels?’ She was
full of questions that night. I shook my head again. I was beginning to feel like a metronome.

  ‘Of course you don't,’ her voice rose, full of tightly suppressed fury. ‘I had to open my cunt to someone I didn't know, someone I couldn't see, someone I hadn't even been introduced to. Do you know what that does to a person?’

  My head shook again.

  She came up so close I could feel her spit on my face. ‘It's disgusting!’ she shouted. ‘Fucking disgusting. You wouldn't show your precious cock off for a few quid would you?’

  I was still shaking my head.

  ‘It makes you less of a human being.’ She was close to tears. ‘And once a month you have to take unpaid sick leave. It brings the profit margins down. It's not fair. Not many punters get off on a bit of string sticking out of your crack. ‘Cos that's all it is, a half nicker crack, a fifty pence gash and a bit of cunt hair.’ She stopped then, I was glad. My head was shaking so fast by then that I thought my brains would start trickling out of my ears. ‘So I went back on the game.’

  ‘I'm sorry,’ I said weakly.

  ‘What the fuck do you know? Nothing as usual, right.’

  ‘What can I say Tess, you're not interested. You won't listen. I know it's tough out there, especially for a woman on her own.’

  ‘Spare me that shit will you, next you'll say especially a black woman. Well don't. That would really piss me off.’

  ‘Even more than you are now?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, if you must know,’ she replied.

  I looked at her.

  ‘Don't you look at me like that, Nick,’ she said coldly. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are anyway? You fucking liberal white bastard. If you talk to a nigger, you think you're a real open hearted guy. If you fuck a nigger, you think you're something special. Mister superstud. Then you probably go and brag about it to your friends. If you've got any of course, which I doubt. Bollocks, Nick. Don't patronise every black you see. If you see a black tie his own shoelace you make a fuss. You jump up and down and clap your hands, like it's a big deal. Why don't you just leave us all the hell alone?’

  I was confused. She was as changeable as the weather. ‘I must be missing something here,’ I said. ‘Just tell me exactly what's brought this on.’

  ‘Don't you know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It's because I thought I was long over you, and then I heard you were back and I just had to see, and of course I wasn't.’ I must have looked as amazed as I felt. ‘It's because I love you, you stupid bastard,’ she said, and literally collapsed into my arms.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  She dropped like a stone and I had to catch her or she'd have hit the deck. I almost slipped a disc as her weight fell onto me. I held her close and kissed her mouth and whispered that I loved her too, and you know what? I really did. ‘You are pleased to see me,’ she said, when we came up for air. ‘I thought you couldn't get it up.’

  ‘I told you I was armed,’ I said into her neck.

  ‘Then you must have two guns.’

  ‘Perhaps I have.’

  ‘Well this one I do want to see.’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  She went straight down on me, sliding down my body, then was battling with my belt and Mister Levi's silver buttons, when I lost it.

  The TV was still yapping away to itself in the corner. I was looking straight at the screen. Some kind of late night local news was on, and there, all of a sudden, replacing the smug face of the presenter was a picture of Terry, taken years ago when he still had hair. Then a photo of the girl I'd seen in his flat appeared. I couldn't hear what was being said, and the next thing on was coverage of cricket at the Oval. The brief glimpse was enough. It all came back like a movie running ten or twenty times too fast. And the movie went back, back from Tess's flat to Terry's flat, back to the squat, then to the hospital and the hospital before that, and being shot and everything until mercifully the film broke and left me with nothing, not even a hard-on. That was when I lost it.

  The worst thing was that I couldn't tell Teresa. She would really have freaked out. She thought it was her fault and I didn't say anything to the contrary. I could tell she was furious. She looked up at me. ‘Fucking typical!’ she spat. ‘Some nights you can't even give it away.’

  ‘No Tess,’ I said, but it wasn't any good. She pushed herself to her feet and tugged the simple black dress she was wearing over her head. Underneath she was dressed only in brief white panties. ‘You fucking wimp,’ she said in disgust, and went and threw herself onto the long white sofa in front of the TV. ‘Well if you can't do it, I'll do it myself.’ She pushed her fingers into her crotch and began to play with herself. ‘What's the matter Nick?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘Can't you handle a real woman any more? Or is it that I do it for money? Is that what you really can't handle? Don't you trust me sweetheart? Is it because I'm unfaithful every night?’ She changed her tack. ‘Why don't you punish me then? Go on Nick, show you're a man for Christ's sake.’ She was sweating and breathing hard. I was really pissed off and getting horny again at the sight of her, and angry at her and the world.

  ‘Come on Nick,’ she went on. ‘Punish me, you fucking nonce.’ I walked over and looked down at her. ‘Come on Nick.’ She was nearly screaming by then. I could feel my finger nails cutting the palms of my hands, my fists were clenched so tightly.

  ‘Wanker,’ she said and came.

  I could have killed her then. She sat up and grinned at me and I slapped her so hard that she bounced off the sofa and onto the floor. She caught her balance and without missing a beat came up with a right hook that loosened one of my wisdom teeth. God she was strong. The blow took me totally by surprise and knocked me onto the back of the sofa which toppled over and deposited me on the floor up against the skirting board. She was on me like a demon. She dived over the sofa, slashing at my face with the nails on her right hand, which I just managed to catch and keep the skin on my cheek in one piece. I held her tightly, but she was so strong and slippery that I almost lost her. Suddenly she relaxed. I saw the drops of saliva on her chin. We looked into each other's eyes and I put my fingers up and gently wiped the drops off. I was waiting for her to attack me again when her eyes filled with tears like winter lakes and she went totally limp in my arms. ‘Some punch you got there babe,’ I said through a fat mouth.

  ‘Better than yours, Nicky boy. You punch like a girl.’

  And there was me thinking I was tough. What a put down.

  If I felt that I could have killed her before, the feeling was stronger then, but in a different way. So I rolled her onto her back and performed a little murder on her body right there on the Axminster, whilst she committed a ritual suicide underneath me. Then she took over the dominant role and I died under her ministrations. At last we dragged ourselves into the bedroom and collapsed onto the bed. We were slithering all over the sheets, kissing and nipping at each other like a pair of puppies. She went down on me again, spearing me with her tongue and hardening me up again. Finally we joined together for the last time and made tired and mellow love. Mouth to mouth, chest to chest and groin to groin. She was soaking. So wet that I thought I was going to be squeezed out of her cunt like an oversized orange pip. ‘No way baby,’ she whispered. ‘You don't get away that easy.’ She crossed her legs over my back and linked them together at the ankles and pulled me tighter into her. We came together in a heated rush, then rolled apart and lay exhausted and panting in the sticky night air. We held hands and turned over and smiled at each other. ‘I do love you,’ she said.

  ‘Me too, you,’ I said back.

  ‘Don't fuck me up Nicky,’ she said through a yawn.

  ‘I'll try not to,’ I replied as I reached for her. That was about as much as I could promise anyone. To try not to fuck them up. Some commitment.

  We lay snuggled up in each others arms for a bit, not saying much. Finally she fell asleep. I lay back and relaxed, looking at the ceiling in the soft yellow light of the bedside la
mp.

  That was when they came through the door and the bedroom window. Three of them, no-one I recognised, dressed in khaki and navy and camouflage gear, all armed with semi-automatic weapons and handguns. I pulled myself up to a sitting position as they stood in a menacing triangle with their ugly weapons trained on the bed. Three thoughts went helter-skelter through my mind. I'd been followed, however clever I'd tried to be. They'd been watching Tess and me all evening, and my fucking pistol was in a drawer in the other room.

  The smallest of the three covered me with an AK47 whilst the biggest walked over to the bed, carefully staying out of the line of fire. He looked down at me. ‘Nice show, soldier,’ he said. ‘We thought the scwarze was going to swallow your dick.’ Then he popped me on the side of the head with the gun he held in his right hand. That time I definitely lost the wisdom tooth.

  I woke up at the sound of my own scream. My heart was beating like a drum machine on self destruct. I was tangled up in a single sheet that was slick with sweat. Just a dream. I went and rescued my gun anyhow. I put it down by the side of the bed where Tess wouldn't see it if she woke up, then gathered her into my arms and went back to sleep.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  I woke around six. Tess was lying next to me snoring gently. Not grossly, but just a soft inhalation. I poked her in the ribs and she rolled over. ‘Don't snore,’ I said.

  ‘I don't,’ she replied, and went back to sleep. After a moment I heard the faint snoring again. I grinned and got out of bed.

  I pulled on yesterday's clothes and rinsed my face in Teresa's bathroom. I tried to shave with a stupid little disposable razor. I guessed she used it to shave underneath her arms. It felt like she used the blade to sharpen pencils as I dragged it across my face and winced at my reflection in the mirror set at least six inches too low for me.

  I used her toothbrush too, then went and made some coffee. She only had instant and it tasted like hot iron filings. I took Tess a cup. She didn't want to wake up so I left it on her bedside table. She surfaced just enough to say goodbye. I kissed her briefly and she held my arm tight and asked me to stay.

  ‘I can't,’ I said. ‘I'd like to, but I can't.’