“That’s where your brother and I first met, last New Year’s Eve.”
“Really? Are you serious?”
“Oh yeah. Didn’t he tell you?”
“I can’t remember,” I confessed. “I didn’t think I’d ever meet you, so I didn’t pay attention.”
He smiled. “It’s funny that we have met, come to think of it.”
We sat down on the bench.
“I’d be dead by now, I’m sure of it, if I hadn’t run across your brother,” Paul said. He seemed sad, but almost amused at the same time. “Sometimes I come back here, sit on this bench, think of how I was that night. I was shivering. My teeth were chattering. I hadn’t had a fix for three days. I was trying to kick, but you can’t do it on the street. Blokes, mates of mine, would come up to me all the time. If you stop using they mark you out. Try to get you on it again. It’s as if they don’t want you to stop.”
I listened closely, not wanting to interrupt his flow. As quiet people often do when they start talking, he seemed transfixed by his own story flowing out of him.
“But Stevie did,” he continued, his voice deepening and hoarsening. “Your brother—well, the minute I explained to him what was going on he said, look, I have a place. And he seemed on the level. But I didn’t believe it. I said, what for? ’Cos I was sure he wanted something and I didn’t really have anything left to offer, you know. But the fact that he was Irish sort of made up my mind. I thought, oh well, can’t be worse than sitting here and freezing to death.”
He chuckled. I smiled, but the thought of him suffering so much bothered me. I was beginning to get an idea of his life, but so much was still unclear, disturbingly vague and amorphous.
“Where did you grow up?” I asked.
“Me? Tottenham.” He looked tense.
“Where’s that?’
“You wouldn’t know it. It’s North London, miles from here.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know a lot about London, only what I’ve picked up from books. I’ve always admired it, but it’s not...” I gazed at the crowds of people walking back and forth around us, the noise, the soot, the grime. “... It’s not my city. I don’t think I’ll ever feel at home here.”
Paul looked at me. “I’ve about had it with London, if you know what I mean.”
“Well, that’s what I feel about Dublin,” I said. Stevie tapped me on the head. They were behind us, looking bored. “Come on, we’re off.”
We ended up doing the record shops on Oxford Street. Paul and I browsed thoroughly while Stevie and Ron flitted about, impatient to go, to move on.
* * *
That night Stevie and Ron began arguing about what film to go see. Paul and I stayed out of it. He was quiet, avoiding eye contact with me. Perhaps he’d regretted what he’d told me, I thought. I felt nervous around him too, ever since our conversation.
“Did you ever see The Hotel New Hampshire?” Stevie asked me.
“No,” I said. “Isn’t that a few years old?”
“I remember you reading the book!” he said. We both smiled. It had been one of my favorites.
“I read it too,” Ron broke in. “Isn’t that the one where the brother and sister bonk each other?”
Stevie laughed. “God, Ron, you’re on top of everything.”
“Well, perhaps not everything,” I said, looking from Ron to Stevie. I hardly knew I was saying it. Only a second later did the meaning sink in. I bit my lip.
“Fuck you!” Ron hissed at me. He left the room dramatically, slamming the door.
Stevie scratched his head. “Well, your wit has improved,” he said. He didn’t seem angry. I grinned. I looked at Paul and he was smiling too.
“Below the belt,” he said to me after Stevie had left the room. “If I’d said it he would’ve knocked my block off. I envy you women. You can get away with that kind of thing.”
“Well, he’s been horrible to you,” I said indignantly. “And to me. I’m damned if I’m going to give him a break.”
Paul shrugged. “I’m just trying to lie low.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have to.” My blood was boiling now. “Don’t let him make you feel like an outsider here. You’re not.”
“Thanks, Cathy,” he said.
* * *
Continuing our pattern, Paul and I walked down Baker Street after the film some paces behind Stevie and Ron. The fact that we were on this street, haunt of Sherlock Holmes, thrilled me, but the houses, as often in London, looked imposing and impenetrable in the dark, giving off nothing to strangers.
“There’s something odd about the houses here,” I mused, almost to myself. “They seem closed off. Cold. They really are unfriendly. There’s a harshness about London, isn’t there? New York must be similar. Too many people. Everyone’s a stranger.”
He shrugged. “I dunno. It’s just nice to be around Irish people. You don’t take it all for granted. There’s something decent about the Irish.”
“Most English don’t seem to think so.”
“Most English are fools. Look at Thatcher.”
“What’s that about Mrs. Thatcher?” Ron said, wheeling around.
I groaned. “Oh come on, you can’t support her.”
“I think she’s great. She’s an individualist, that’s why a lot of English people can’t stand her. They’re sheep. They’re used to their dole and their trade unions. Thatcher’s trying to lead the nation to prosperity. She’s fearless.”
“You just like her ’cos you think you’ll make money here,” I told him.
We were all standing in the street now. Stevie looked as if he was going to say something calming, but Ron broke in ahead of him.
“What’s wrong with making money? God, you’re pathetic. You’re even worse than your friend there. At least he supported himself, even if he did it on his back. You’re not going to get a job, are you? You’re going to live off Stevie and me for as long as you can.”
I was speechless with fury. Paul was tensing beside me. Stevie cleared his throat a few times. Ron looked at him.
“This isn’t on, you know,” Stevie said coolly. “This squabbling is going to drive me up the bloody wall. It’s beneath you. If this goes on, some of you will have to go.”
He saw that we expected more.
“You’d better apologize to Cathy and Paul,” he said to Ron.
“Sorry,” Ron muttered. He didn’t look at us.
“OK. Now, I’m going for a drink. Who wants to join me?”
Ron put his hand up. Paul and I stayed silent.
“Right,” Stevie said, expelling his breath. “We’ll see you lot later. You’ll be all right with Paul, won’t you, Cathy?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said.
They walked off briskly, not talking to each other, it seemed.
I leaned on the railings of a house and looked down into the basement.
“They won’t last long,” I said. “My advice is to wait it out.”
Paul said nothing for a long while. Then he said, “I don’t have the time.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“Let’s go for a drink and I’ll tell you.”
* * *
“Sorry for the drama,” Paul said as he brought me a pint of cider. He had ordered the same thing himself, I saw. “I’m not into theatrics.”
“Explain, explain,” I ordered. I really wanted to know the worst, if it was a question of that.
His face always looked pale. Now, as he spoke, it took on a grayish tinge.
“Well, I told you I would be dead now if it wasn’t for your brother. But he’s not God, he can’t work miracles, can he? For the last few months he’s been on at me to get an AIDS test. I didn’t want to. He said even if I didn’t want to know, he did. I got the results yesterday morning.”
“Oh Christ, only yesterday?”
“That’s right.”
“And so...” My voice trailed off.
“Yeah,” he said flatly.
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We didn’t speak for a few minutes. Why tell me, I thought. I was half-glad he had, flattered too, but also terribly depressed. Ron’s hatefulness seemed even crueler now, even more off the mark.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Paul. What can I say? I hardly know you, but I feel like I know you well. It wasn’t something I expected. I don’t know why.”
“It’s all right, I did,” Paul said with a half-smile. “Nobody could have done what I have and not got it. I knew the risks well enough. It’s more likely I got it through sharing needles than through sex. But I can’t claim to have always protected myself. When I thought about it I did.”
“You must feel so bitter.”
“No, I don’t,” he said earnestly. “Honestly, why should I? I went into it eyes open. I’ve only myself to blame. It wasn’t meant to be like this, but I wasn’t strong enough to stop it, to get out.”
“But you did get clean.”
“Yeah, but not by myself exactly. Still, it’s OK. The only thing now is not to stay in London. I don’t want to die here.”
I wished I were drunker. This was making me feel awful. In his lack of self-pity I saw a great strength. But I also felt that he was mapping out for himself what he wanted the rest of his life to be like. This awed me.
“Have you told Stevie?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, I haven’t had a chance. He knows, though, I think. He’s avoided asking me. I think he’ll feel he failed when I tell him. But I’ve probably had it for two years, you know.”
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Eighteen,” Paul said.
We drank in silence for a while.
“I trust you, see?” he said suddenly. “I didn’t want to keep it from you. Don’t tell Stevie. I’ll find a time.”
“I’m not that close to Stevie anymore.”
“You seem tight to me,” Paul said. “Course I wouldn’t know. My brother and me were always at odds. I was frightened of him. Still am.”
He had finished his cider.
“Better not have another. I’ll start telling the story of me life.”
“I wish you would,” I said. “I’d like to hear.”
“Some other time,” he said after a moment. “We’ll smoke some weed sometime and I’ll tell you the whole thing.”
* * *
I sat in the kitchen, sipping a cup of herb tea. Paul had gone to bed. Stevie and Ron seemed to be in bed too. The glare and hum of the kitchen light comforted me a little. I felt very much alone.
Stevie wandered in, clad only his pajamas, rubbing his eyes.
“Christ, Cathy, you still up?”
He sounded drunk.
“Yeah,” I said hopelessly. “What about you?”
“Oh, I needed a glass of water. Wards off a hangover.”
He went over to the sink and filled himself a glass.
“I gave Ron a talking-to,” he said quietly. “He said he was nervous about his interview on Monday so he was taking it out on you a bit. But I told him that you were welcome here for as long as you wanted, and any campaign to drive you out would backfire on him.”
“What about Paul?” I asked.
“Paul knows he can’t stay here forever. He’s looking around at the moment. I’m not worried for him. Not as worried as you seem to be.”
I shook my head. “You don’t know.”
“Maybe I don’t,” he said, “but it’s his life. Don’t take it on. Don’t burden yourself with it. You can’t. He’ll sort it out in his own way.”
“It must be nice to think like you,” I said bitterly. “You feel that about everybody, don’t you?”
Stevie sighed in response.
I continued sipping my tea. Stevie, looking rather hurt, left the room. He seemed more sensitive these days, more unsure, but still exasperatingly himself.
I decided that Paul’s idea of smoking some dope was a good one. I hoped we would do it soon.
I tried to think about where Paul might go, if he left London, but I couldn’t. Finally, I went over to the cabinet and began poking around, looking for a stray packet of Stevie’s cigarettes. I found one, pulled out a fag, lit it, and began puffing away, taking deep drags. It calmed me gradually. I sat on the kitchen chair and wondered what was going to happen to me. Ron’s comment about gay women came back to me and I began to obsess over it. I don’t want a girlfriend, really I don’t, I thought. Why should I ever let myself be vulnerable again? The person I love most at the moment is Paul. And I hardly know him. But I don’t want to touch him, I decided. I don’t need to. Thank God for that. And he likes me, trusts me. How strange.
I lit another cigarette.
* * *
And so a strange new period began in our lives. Ron stifled his negativity and his more aggressive comments as much as he could. He was coldly polite to both Paul and myself, though he talked more to me; Paul he spoke to only when necessary. As for his job, he announced to us all at the dinner table the following Monday that he had “got it.” Stevie looked happy for him. The next few days he came home late, bubbling with excitement and anxiety. Gradually he calmed. We all, in fact, simmered down, but I could sense an unease in Paul, a restlessness, which mirrored my own. I would go out with him in the morning to the tube station, walk with him to his bookshop in Tottenham Court Road, which I found to my interest was a gay store, then wander around the city browsing for books and records, seeing museums, passing through neighborhoods that I had read about in novels.
They were not exactly picturesque and often I felt scared. There was a wariness to my simple exchanges with Londoners that made me suspect that I couldn’t trust anyone: even asking for directions, which I had to do often, was a leap of faith. When people caught my Irish accent they looked at me strangely. They couldn’t place me, couldn’t classify me, and yet they knew I had the potential to be unfriendly in view of the situation in the North. Some of them volunteered that they knew nothing about Ireland or the troubles: this was meant to disarm me, perhaps. But they all hated the I.R.A., and to be Irish at all put me in a suspect category, though because I was a girl I had the advantage over Irish men my age.
I often wondered why Paul and I felt so comfortable around each other. He took to smoking a joint and playing music the minute he got home from work every day; he had picked up a turntable at a local market and was amassing old albums at a frightening rate. Sometimes he would just lie on his scruffy green sofa reading. The sitting-room had become his room, essentially, so the kitchen was where we socialized with the others. But less of that was happening. We still ate meals together, but I felt sure that if Paul hadn’t cooked Stevie and Ron would have relied on take-away Chinese meals or curries. Paul persevered in making dinner every evening and I willingly washed up afterwards. It didn’t seem like a bore, it seemed right that someone should help.
One thing I liked was that we always drank wine with dinner. Often Stevie would walk to the local off-license to pick up more wine, and I would go with him. We didn’t talk much, though, and I noticed how moody he usually was. Perhaps it’s just me, I thought, he’s angry at me for being a bitch about Ron and not working yet and always questioning his judgment. But now and then he would turn to me and say something pleasant or kind. This brought back memories of how it used to be between us, though it was hard now to remember the time when things had been easy and effortless.
“You smoke dope with Paul, don’t you?” he asked one chilly evening on our way to the off-license. The day itself had been overcast and heavy with a rain that had never fallen. There was a hostile tone to his question and I paused before answering.
“I notice you drink a lot these days,” I said after a time.
He turned and slammed his hand into a bus stop. “What the fuck has that got to do with it?”
“Would you rather I drank?” I asked coldly.
“So do you enjoy getting high?”
He still sounded furious.
“Yeah.”
He snorted. �
�I’d rather you didn’t pick up that particular habit. I feel responsible for you and you just seem to have slipped into it without my noticing...”
“How did you catch on?”
He said nothing. We continued walking.
“Well, since Paul likes having me around when he does it, I won’t stop until he says so,” I declared.
A group of sharply dressed young black guys passed us shooting cold stares in our direction. This was the norm in London and was one of the things that unnerved me most. Stevie and I instinctively moved closer.
“Fine,” he said in resigned tones as we entered the off-license. “Just for God’s sake don’t go on to harder things.”
“Fuck off,” I said lightly. “I can’t afford it anyway.”
* * *
I couldn’t tell Stevie why those dreamy afternoons were so enchanting to me. Perhaps even more than the relaxation and relief from anxiety that the joint brought, the passing backwards and forwards of it from Paul to me triggered something, the satisfaction of some need that I had always suppressed. I had felt it working in the fields with Jeanette the year before: that silent, potent communication between two people that very often never gets verbalized.
I knew that with Paul it wasn’t likely to be. He had said enough in the first few days after I met him to assure me that he liked me. That was all I needed to know. I grew to love his musical tastes, though they were different from my own: he loved the Doors, the Velvet Underground, Eric Clapton, and blues. One of his favorite songs was “Nobody knows you when you’re down and out.” He had it in many versions, starting with Bessie Smith, and sometimes when he was stoned he would play them all one by one, singing along under his breath.
Often we laughed, and it was great to laugh freely together. I would lie on the dusty, faded carpet staring up at the high ceiling with its incongruously ornate chandelier. He might read to me from one of the books that he had borrowed from the shop. Once as we were smoking together I noticed a book with Zen in the title lying by his sofa. It made me curious.
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