When I finish shopping it’s only four, and I don’t want to go back to the hotel. Still five hours before we can go to bed. Five hours of using the bed as a sofa and a table and a playroom and a kitchen. We could sit on the floor to eat supper, but then the cockroaches will think we’re their supper. All the hotel children are covered in red sores, but not the mums ’cause they’re too tough.
Just the other side of the park is my real house where Daddy and Johnny must be living all alone missing me. Daddy must want to know what’s happened to us. Johnny used to howl even if I went out for just a few hours. Daddy always has money. It grows in his pockets, and his black leather wallet is full of cards you can buy anything with. I’m going to tell him how awful it is at Sandringham House and about Mum going blind and Finn and Eileen and the cockroaches. In my pocket I find my last ten pence and go to the phone box on the corner and dial our old number. My heart thumps. I imagine Daddy walking over the polished floor to answer it and Johnny’s ears twitching with hope. But there’s the wrong sound: not beep-beep but a long bleak note. Unobtainable, unhome, unfather, undog.
Let Daddy and Johnny be alive and I don’t care if I’ve murdered Finn. I’ll go to prison. But Finn isn’t dead. When I ring the bell he opens the front door and stands well away from me. I push past him and run upstairs.
We eat our bread and cheese on the bed as usual. Like children playing at mothers and fathers, Mum says with a silly laugh.
‘’Cept there aren’t any fathers,’ I say. ‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I phoned our old house just now, and there’s nobody.’
‘He might be away. He usually is.’
‘No, the phone’s been cut off. Beeeeep.’
‘How strange.’
‘I’m going over there to have a look.’
‘I’m sure he misses you.’
‘We shouldn’t of left. Why did we? Why can’t you tell me?’
‘We had to go. I honestly believed it was the best thing for you.’
‘But it’s horrible here. I hate it! Ever since we came here you’ve been old and ill and blind. How can you of got so old in just a few hours? Eileen doesn’t believe you’re my mum. She says you’re my granny and she’s going to put you in a home.’
Then Mum drifts away inside her head, like she’s slammed a door and locked it in my face. Her eyes are shut, but she isn’t asleep. I think she’s going nuts as well as blind. She has this sort of conversation with herself:
‘Well, if it isn’t the eternal beauty.’
‘It was your idea. You made me do it.’
‘You look old enough to make up your own mind. Almost too old to have a mind.’
‘You don’t know how it feels. The terror of falling or being run over or looking stupid. Is that blur a person or a tree or a lamppost? As soon as I go outside this room I depend on my daughter. I can’t expect her to be my guide dog.’
‘“To be blind is not miserable; not to be able to bear blindness, that is miserable.” Milton.’
‘He had adoring women to look after him. Men always do.’
‘He knew how to ask for help.’
‘Can’t do that. Can’t stand it when people feel sorry for me.’
‘Mum? What’s Milton?’ I ask. So then she stops talking and that’s even worser. I hate the silence. Then I hear whispering, giggling, running in the corridor outside, and I jump up. I’m going out, I say. She doesn’t say anything. I kiss Mum’s shrivelled papery forehead. She smells like old seaweed.
I open the door just in time to join the children. I know they’re all like me, running away from sad mums in ugly rooms, and I want to run away with them. We almost knock Finn over on the stairs, and then we laugh and run past Eileen and out of the door before she has time to tell us off.
We run to the park in a wild, screaming, laughing gang. There’s about ten of us. Rosa’s in charge. She’s the oldest, and she carries the youngest, a baby, a bit like a cat with a kitten in its mouth. Rosa’s really pretty. She’s got spiky red hair and a thin white face and blue eyes.
She says, ‘Right, let’s see what ugly mugs are out there today. Shelley and Jason, you go for the tourists. Stick together, and if you meet any pervy old guys kick ’em in the balls and run. Karen, you washed your hair, you useless gimbot. Told you not to wear your new dress. Let’s see if we can give you a black eye wiv a bit of dirt.’ Rosa pushes them all off then looks at me. ‘You’re new, aren’t you? How old are you?’
‘Ten,’ I say.
‘No you’re not; you’re only eight and you haven’t eaten since yesterday and your mum’s on the game and this is your little brother what you have to look after all the time.’ Rosa throws the baby at me. ‘And don’t talk too posh. I’m like your agent, see? Every pound you get, I get forty pence. S’only fair, innit?’ Rosa gives me a shove. The baby feels warm and soft and lovely. It reaches out for my hair and sucks it. I’ve never carried a baby before. I smile at the fat little brown face, then try to look sad as I walk up to two old ladies sitting on a bench.
‘Tell ’em you’ve been on the at-risk register eleven times,’ Rosa whispers from the trees behind me.
I stand in front of the old ladies. They’re wearing suits and straw hats like Molly. She isn’t my grandma really, but she said I could borrow her.
‘Is that your little brother, dear? You’re a good little girl to look after him like that.’ She sounds like Molly. My tears drip down on to the head of the baby. It cries, and the old ladies press pound coins into my hand and I run back to Rosa.
‘Two quid? Wicked! You carry on like that, gel, and you’ll be a star. I’ll take one of them coins, give you the change later. Now, off you go and bovver that old geezer over there. See if you can turn your taps on again. We’ll keep you for the granny market.’
Leo and David
Who shall I be now? I must say I never expected to run out of identities. I’m so tired. Drug barons and mafiosi and dictators are allowed to retire, usually into discreet luxury. War criminals evade arrest and die in their sleep. I could claim, as so many Nazis did at Nuremberg, that I was only obeying orders from above – or rather below – fulfilling my destiny as a do-badder. Nowadays reformed murderers are admired; instead of hanging you they form a support group around you, buy your film rights and pay you to write your story. There’s a fashion for confessions, and mine would certainly be worth reading.
Abbie’s dog, Johnny, sits at my feet, staring up with stupid, faithful eyes. I’ve always hated pets and the fuss people make over them, yet here I am, stuck with the ingratiating beast. He and a cupboard full of their possessions are the only evidence that the woman and the child weren’t figments of my imagination. If only I could unimagine them.
These pains I get, I think they must be feelings. And dreams: my dreams have always been beautifully impersonal calculations and accurate prophesies. There’s actually no magic involved in foretelling the future, you just appeal to people’s basest instincts and expect the worst. But now I wake at four each morning, shivering with longing for her, my arms stiff as if she has just slipped out of them. I feel her presence in my room so powerfully that I look around for her, sometimes call her name. I thought it would be easier once I moved here. I deliberately got rid of our bed and most of our furniture to exorcize her. But even my new single bed is full of her. In the morning I lie here listening to the children playing. I have a tape of Abbie aged about two, which I listen to constantly. Her confident, breathless little voice tells Jenny the story of Cinderella. And in the background I’m whistling ‘Oh, Oh, Antonio’ from our music-hall period.
‘And then she did go to the party.’
‘And were her sisters pleased?’
‘No. Nasty sisters. And she had boofil dress. And strawberries.’ The ‘aw’ of the strawberries expands to four syllables as the little voice staggers. Eight years ago. All I can remember now about that year is these ten minutes preserved on plastic.
Intimations of normality. My small, dull, modern flat is above a newsagents near Fulham Broadway. I get up late, shave, have a bath, feed the dog and let him take me out for a long circuitous walk: Parsons Green, the North End Road market, the gentrifying Fulham Road. The longer the walk, the better I shall sleep tonight. I have breakfast in a café where passing women and children worship the dog and ignore me. Then I go to a bookshop in the Fulham Road and browse: poetry, theology, science fiction. I am the science fiction of the past, thousands of years of mythology embodied in an unemployed, solitary man who looks about thirty. Books are my only luxury now; they encrust my walls and make my rooms a little less empty.
All I have ever been is a projection of people’s ideas and fears, a whipping boy for their guilt, a horror film that lasted for centuries. Now they no longer project anything on to me. My screen is blank.
I go to another café to read the newspaper with its usual catalogue of disasters, heartache, violence, torture, suicide, drugs and betrayal. I couldn’t have arranged it better myself. Things are no worse than they were when I thought I mattered – which is quite bad enough. I tend to eat in the same cafés and restaurants. Routine is a kind of sanity. Today, as I eat my lunchtime bacon sandwich, feeding bits of bacon to Johnny, who is tied to my chair, a woman’s voice breaks in on me. ‘Leo!’
Outside on the pavement, waving at me coyly through the glass, is Oliver Cromwell, or Dr Olive Weller as she calls herself now. She bounces in and invites herself to join me. ‘I’d never have expected to see you in such a shabby place,’ she says loudly as the Greek waitress brings her coffee. ‘And what on earth are you wearing? You are still called Leo, aren’t you?’ She pushes her cleavage across the table at me. Like so many ex-men she overdoes the femininity. Despite the cold, she’s wearing a tight, low-cut black dress and a lot of gold jewellery that glitters in the drab café.
‘Until I can think of a better name.’
‘Where’s that pretty girlfriend of yours?’
‘I wish I knew.’
‘Oh dear!’ she laughs. ‘Run off and left you with the dog?’ She bends down and studies Johnny, who growls.
‘He only likes one-lifers.’
‘Must give you a hard time then.’
‘He’s used to me now.’
‘So you mean he isn’t …’
‘Nope. Absolutely natural. Born of a cocker spaniel bitch four years ago in West Kensington.’
‘Fascinating. Just what I was looking for. It must be an awful bore for you, having to look after a dog. How much would you like for him?’
‘He’s not for sale.’
‘Oh, come on, Leo, I’ll give him back in a couple of weeks.’
‘And what will you have done to him in the meantime? A fifth leg? Wings? Green fur?’
‘Nothing ugly or visible, I promise. Actually it’s his brain I’m interested in. Animals don’t have to be dumb any more. Wouldn’t you enjoy his company more if he could talk to you?’
‘No.’
‘Where did you say you’re living?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Well, wherever it is, let’s go back and talk about this more comfortably.’ I glance down at her beautifully pickled breasts. It might be relaxing to spend the afternoon with her. But who would I be in bed with? A gentleman squire, a revolutionary, a tyrant, a vamp or a distinguished scientist? ‘Come on, Leo. I don’t like being messed about. Bring the dog and we’ll get a taxi back to my place.’ The tyrant shows through the charm, makeup and three hundred years.
‘No, sorry, Oliver … Olive.’
‘But why not?’
‘I’m gay. I’ve got my period. I’m a virgin.’ She stares at me, white with rage. I remember, too late, that in this age lack of sexual interest is the one unforgivable sin. Better to confess to a million perversions.
After she walks out of the café I take my unmodified dog home and stare out of the window. Between three thirty and four the schoolchildren come past. Every day I look out for Abbie. I wish I’d been with her for her birthday and given her the present I’d bought: a bicycle. I still have it here, wrapped up in paper with teddy bears all over it. She is every child I see, and it’s no comfort to remind myself that she couldn’t really be my daughter. After Zeus populated Greece with unhappy hybrids, immortals were, of course, sterilized, which, long before anaesthetics, was a painful business. I still have the scars.
When she was little I watched for signs that Abbie might, after all, be my child, that she might have inherited some sixth or seventh sense that set her mysteriously apart from other children. Just once, as we flew above New York, I remember a curious tussle in mid-air. I wanted to return to the hotel and felt her will struggle against mine, surprisingly powerful for an ordinary child. Strange how lovable the ordinary can be.
I take the curly golden-brown idiot for another walk, feed him and have supper in an Italian restaurant. Food in England has improved. I remember the rubbery meat and tortured vegetables in cheap East End restaurants a century ago, when I used to lure people into opium dens and gin palaces. I love food. it’s one of the chief pleasures of having a body, although I’ve never learnt to cook.
Returning to my flat, I listen at the door in case they’ve come home while I was out and check the answerphone to see if they’ve left a message, knowing full well that they haven’t got my address or phone number any more than I have theirs. How humiliating to be so irrational.
Of course, it’s never easy, the period of transition between one incarnation and another. It’s a kind of death. But whereas death is a release from decisions my present state demands a million choices I haven’t the energy to make. I’m stuck in an anteroom with a mirror, alone, staring at my reflection. I’ve only had a reflection for a few years, and I was happier without it. Looking at yourself in the mirror can only lead to vanity or self-disgust or an uncomfortable mixture of the two. In the past I picked new identities like a child in a sweetshop, becoming a magician or a pilot or a drug dealer, anything I thought would be fun and wouldn’t attract too much attention. Women like flamboyant characters and I liked women, so I did my best to entertain them and myself. Now, for the first time in many centuries, my sexuality seems to be on hold.
In the mirror in my small white bathroom I stare at my face: long, pale, serious, the jaw line marked by a dark track of stubble where I can’t be bothered to shave. My eyes gaze into themselves with suspicion, as well they might. Jenny used to make me wear denim to match their colour, but I’ve got rid of all my fashionable clothes, took them to the Oxfam shop in Kensington High Street and exchanged them for this wardrobe of a broken-down schoolmaster: baggy cords, V-necked sweaters and tweed jackets. I look older. I’m considering a trip to that man in San Francisco to have a few more wrinkles and bags inserted. I wonder if it would suit me to go bald? I want to be taken seriously for a change; I need gravitas and, like everything else, it can be bought. I could become an academic. I already have an encyclopaedic knowledge of theology and philosophy and could write remarkably vivid history. A few fake qualifications and references – no, I can’t be bothered.
The friends Jenny and I had together, Katrina and Toby and Charles: all bubbles and illusions. I should have known it wasn’t worth investing any emotion in one-lifers. I remember good old David, the only person who might know where Jenny is.
I’ve never met David, but the thought of him fills me with rage, as if he has stolen something from me. Jealousy? How banal. Over the years I’ve gathered information about him. Without asking Jenny direct questions about him I’ve hoarded every crumb that has dropped from her mawkish feast. So I make an appointment to see him and cycle over to Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
I never could understand what Jenny saw in David, a
nd when I finally meet him I’m more baffled than ever: a stocky middle-aged man with a red face. In his clear blue eyes and light-brown hair there is a resemblance to Abbie on steroids, and this chokes me with anger so that I can hardly speak.
He greets me with bland professional manners. ‘Delighted to meet you. I hope you didn’t have too much trouble parking.’
‘I’m on a bike.’
‘How very green of you!’ But I can see he’s perplexed by my shabbiness. He’s used to clients who wear Armani suits and drive BMWs. ‘Now, Mr Bishop, how can I help you?’
‘I’m looking for Jenny.’
His face splits open and I see real feeling. Once I would have arranged for a thunderbolt or disembowelled him on the carpet, but now I don’t. Or can’t.
‘You’re that Bishop!’ he gasps. ‘Leo?’
‘That’s me.’
‘But you seem in rather reduced circumstances. Has she … ? I do hope Jenny hasn’t made rapacious demands?’ Thank God I didn’t marry her, he means, of course.
‘I’ve enough money to pay your fee, if that’s what you’re worried about. She hasn’t made any demands. She just disappeared with my, her, our daughter a month ago. Do you know where they are?’
Silently he takes an envelope from his pocket. Jenny has scrawled on a sheet torn from a child’s sketchbook:
Dearest David
You’re the only one I can write to, because what happened between us binds us for ever. It’s nearly midnight, and in a few minutes I may be dead, or unrecognizable. If I die, you must look after Abbie, take her away from this awful place and bring her up with your children. After all, she could be your daughter. I hope she is. Leo’s much worse than I realized. I made a terrible mistake. You must never let him anywhere near your life. Now I can’t …
Loving Mephistopeles Page 24