Thin-Ice Skater

by David Storey

  The traffic intensifies around the perimeter of the square, the shadows lightening on one side, disappearing on the other, the embassy a bulwark traversing the two.

  Sometime later I try the door in Grosvenor Street again: suites of offices in what may have been built as an apartment block, conceivably a house, Gerry’s on the first floor: suitcase in hand, dishevelled, a parody of the occupant of the office – dressed in his overcoat – I present myself at the reception desk: Susan (or Samantha), of whom I have heard much (but too little): blonde, pleasantly-featured (my brother picks them well, dropouts from Cheltenham Ladies or Roedean – disillusioned if they aren’t quickly ‘cast’): her startled (horrified) expression, embarrassment and consternation unevenly mixed. I wonder, for a moment, if she recalls my name (she has been to the house on several occasions), but moments later she exclaims, ‘Richard!’ followed by a glance at the door leading to the corridor behind her back – rising, formalising the occasion, coming round the desk, shaking my hand, my suitcase by now on the floor beside me. ‘Gerry’ll be so pleased. He’s been up half the night.’

  ‘Is he in?’

  ‘Not yet.’ She adds, ‘Gavin is. He’s on the phone. Second door on the left,’ indicating the passage before concluding, ‘Leave your suitcase. I’ll look after it. Here, I’ll show you,’ and is knocking on the door before I’ve scarcely had time to follow, Gavin seated behind my brother’s desk, beyond him two tall windows which look out to the now busy street below: a pugnacious, dark-eyed, bald-headed, bearded, comparatively tiny figure (two ears conspicuously projecting from a rock-like head): he stands, the phone to his ear, the flow of his conversation uninterrupted, his eyes trumphantly, eerily, fixed on me: ‘Here,’ he says, and adds, ‘Your fucking brother. He’s just walked in the fucking door.’

  Framed posters of my brother’s ‘triumphs’ in uniform ranks on every wall: some of these he’s had at home – before removing them on grounds of ‘ostentation’: not so here (American and British releases announcing an area of variable achievement (occasional embarrassment) which only a lunatic would disown): the logo ‘A Gerry Audlin Production’ dominates all. Maybe I’m too sensitive to it.

  ‘Richard. He’s standing in front of me.’

  He hands the phone across the desk: a figure disproportionate to the dynamism it allegedly contains.

  ‘Speak,’ he tells me. ‘He’s been up all night,’ laughing – uneven teeth – as I announce, ‘Hi, how are you?’

  I don’t hear the initial remark, only the calmer, ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘Which home?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Eric was at the station.’

  ‘I missed him.’

  ‘Why not ring?’

  ‘I wanted time to think.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Why the house was empty.’

  ‘I intended telling you, if you’d just done as I’d planned.’

  ‘Why I wasn’t told there was a plan.’

  ‘You were told that Eric would meet you at the station. Can you imagine how he’s been? He feels he fucked up and it was all his fault.’

  ‘You sound more concerned about him than you do about me.’

  Silence at the other end.

  Silence at this end, too, I decide.

  I glance at Gavin – who takes a shine to sitting behind Gerry’s desk – he back in the chair, the busy street beyond: picking his teeth, pleased with the scene he’s created (another scenario): under a pseudonym, he’s written several of Gerry’s early films, dated ‘thrillers’, this, evidently, a new one.

  He nods: ‘give him shit’, his look suggests, ‘like he gives me. Only you can do it!’

  ‘The house,’ my brother finally says, ‘is sold.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘That fast?’

  ‘No faster than it was bought.’

  ‘It seems fated to fast purchases,’ I tell him, he no thin-ice merchant for nothing.

  ‘We have a flat.’

  He doesn’t use ‘apartment’, which he knows I hate: I’ve seen too many of them.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Down the road.’

  ‘Which road?’

  ‘This road.’

  ‘Where are you speaking from?’ a sudden (alarming) impression he’s in the next room.

  ‘Grosvenor Street.’

  ‘I don’t like living in town,’ I tell him, wondering if he might not come through the door.

  ‘It’s temporary,’ he says.

  ‘What isn’t?’

  Telephones ring behind me: everything – but everything – everything with my half-brother’s on the move.

  Gavin, the demon associate, smiles – or, if not smiles, laughs – his mouth, his large, irregularly-toothed mouth open: expectancy, elation.

  ‘I’ll go up to James’s. And Clare’s.’

  ‘No need.’

  ‘Have you cancelled Dover’s?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I’d like to stay.’

  ‘I’d prefer you to leave.’

  ‘What about the community?’

  ‘Fuck the community.’

  ‘What about the Hodges?’

  ‘Fuck the Hodges. They’ve been screwing money out of the housekeeping behind my back.’

  So money, I conclude, is now our problem.

  ‘It’s the deceit,’ he adds. ‘The lack of trust.’

  ‘I must have come across that somewhere. It slips my mind at present. Trust …’

  ‘Stay where you are. I’m coming over. Where have you been all night?’ he asks.

  ‘Gainsborough Gardens.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘Alone.’

  Gavin, thrust back in Gerry’s chair, listens with calming interest.

  ‘Whose house?’

  ‘On a bench.’

  ‘Whose bench?’

  ‘In the Gardens.’

  ‘In the gardens?’

  He finds this difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend.

  ‘On a bench, in the Gardens. I borrowed a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread.’

  Maybe he’s stopped listening: all I hear is his breathing: he’s excited: if he’s screwed me, I can screw him.

  Or maybe he was in the midst of giving Gavin a bollocking – hence Gavin’s look of unrelieved pleasure, not least at being interrupted, not least at hearing Gerry being pissed around by me.

  ‘Ask Gavin to send out for some breakfast. Don’t move. Hand him back.’

  After Gavin’s put the phone down, picking up another and saying, ‘No calls,’ he indicates a chair by the desk, or, alternatively, a facsimile of one of the couches we had at Leighcroft Gardens: there are two of them, one on either side of the office.

  I sit by the desk.

  ‘You pissed up on purpose’ less question (Gavin’s) than pleasured statement.

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘He’s been pissing himself in ways I’ve never seen.’

  ‘Such as?’

  I dislike Gavin the more I see of him: the process continues unabated: ‘One of the family,’ Gerry has told me. ‘Not my family,’ I told him.

  He folds his hands behind his head, relishing every second. ‘If he ever has occasion to call the police to his house – or flat – you can be pretty fucking sure they’ll refuse to come. He’s had a squad car down practically every fucking street throughout the fucking night. He had you down as kidnapped.’

  ‘Why’s he sold the house?’

  ‘He didn’t tell you?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘He was about to exchange when he left for New York. He got an offer he couldn’t refuse.’

  ‘And didn’t tell me.’

  ‘You know Gerry. Doesn’t like decisions being questioned. Pisses on you, otherwise, for fucking hours.’

  ‘Don’t you get on with him any longer?’

  ‘Sure.’

 
; Releasing one hand, he gestures round: the other cradles the rear of his head.

  ‘I do his pissing for him,’ he says.

  ‘Indispensable.’

  ‘I am.’

  Hands lowered, leaning forward, fists beneath his chin. He adds, ‘Something to eat? I’ll ask Sam.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Something stronger?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Gerry and I go back a long way.’

  ‘So do he and I.’

  ‘We go back even longer.’

  ‘I’m his brother.’

  ‘Half.’

  Why fight over him? I wonder: ‘the precocious shit,’ his eyes give out, his mind prospecting something else.

  ‘He really cares about you,’ he adds.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Really. These cunts round here …’ he shakes his head. ‘He doesn’t give a fuck. That’s why he’s successful. Give a fuck in this game you’re finished. He will never be finished. It’s been a privilege to watch him. Know what he is? Elegant. The reason he’s elegant is because he can afford it. The reason he can afford it is because he doesn’t care. What the philosophers call a phenomenologist. Only one like him. He has all the other fuckers scratching their heads. They care. Can’t make him out. The point for him is there is no point. You can’t get a sharper view than that. Not cleaner. Not neater. He never deviates for a second. Unadulterated pointlessness.’

  Releasing his head from his fisted hands, smiling – his large, uneven teeth carnivorously on display – he says, ‘You can’t get a purer existence than that.’

  A telephone – one of several on the desk – rings, despite his instructions it shouldn’t.

  ‘Put him on,’ he says, having picked it up, covering the phone to add, ‘We’ve been waiting for this all week.’

  ‘Wonderful!’ he continues, uncovering it. ‘Why not? We had an agreement. Who gives a fuck? Cut his balls off. Stuff them down his fucking throat. Because … because … because,’ eyes flashing, smilingly, at me, ‘because, if you’ll fucking listen, he’ll never need them in this life again. Because Gerry, I can tell you … Gerry, I can tell you … because, you cunt, it’s what you said. Your word isn’t worth a piece of shit. Anybody’s shit. You can tell that to that arsehole, too. He knows. You know. I know. Gerry knows … Go fuck yourself, you prick!’

  Putting the phone down he gives a howl of laughter.

  ‘They’ll fry that cunt,’ he says. ‘This is normal day-to-day business, Rick. See what I say about Gerry and care? We’ve pissed over that guy from several thousand feet. He doesn’t like it one fucking second. Gerry – Gerry – will be pleased.’

  We sit on either side of the desk, silent for a while, I prospecting him, he prospecting something else.

  ‘I mean …’

  Nothing for a while emerges while he considers what to say.

  ‘The one thing – the two things – Gerry cares about are you and Martha. Oh, and this shit-arsed brother you’ve been to see. All this …’ he waves his arm. ‘You heard that call.’

  ‘He’d sell us all,’ I tell him, ‘for a film.’

  ‘No way!’

  Offence, for the first time, registers on his gnomic face.

  ‘There are sides – a side – of Gerry you’ve never seen. And nothing to do with here at all.’

  His hands are spread-eagled – small, short-fingered – as if to frame my face.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like he would have to tell you. Not me.’

  ‘Why’s he never come clean?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with cleanliness,’ he says. ‘There’s no word for it. Take it from me. You and Martha are the most precious things he has. How is she, by the way?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her. Recently,’ I say, and wonder if I shouldn’t have gone to Market Whelling first. No doubt Gerry’s rung there to see if I have.

  ‘She lays great store by you, as well.’

  ‘She doesn’t know me.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it.’

  ‘Have you seen her?’

  ‘Gerry’s convinced she takes everything in.’

  ‘I see no sign of it,’ I tell him.

  ‘Maybe you’re not looking,’ he says.

  ‘No one could look harder,’ I tell him.

  Putting up his hands to fend me off, he says, ‘Give me someone who’s more attached to Martha than you are. You are examplary, Richard.’

  The door has opened behind me: an affectionate embrace before I rise or turn, Gerry’s cheek beside my own: a distinct smell of his deodorant.

  ‘Half the fucking night I’ve been driving round with Eric.’

  ‘With the Rolls?’

  ‘With the Rolls.’

  ‘Did you go to Leighcroft Gardens?’

  ‘We went there first.’

  ‘We must have missed one another.’

  ‘It’s not the only place we went.’

  He’s hauled me to my feet. ‘Fuck knows what I’ve been thinking half the fucking night.’

  He has recently showered, the smell of soap and scent particularly strong: the hair – homely, upright, thickly-textured: the suit, the tie, the shirt: his face, if grave, suggests no dark night of introspection so much as a couple of hours on the telephone (feet up).

  He cares. He cares, he cares. As Gavin says. For someone who cares about nothing he cares a lot.

  ‘You’ve gone out of your way,’ I tell him, ‘to fuck me up,’ so rare an occurrence – the tears – he glances (for blame) at Gavin.

  ‘What’s Gavin been saying to you?’ he says – Gavin having already cleared the chair for Gerry’s occupation.

  ‘How much you care,’ I tell him.

  ‘Would I be pissing round thinking you’d been kidnapped,’ he says, ‘if I didn’t?’

  ‘Kidnapped?’

  ‘Someone in my position. Or fallen off a train. How would we know if you didn’t ring? I’ve called every fucking hospital. Every taxi rank. Eric’s aged ten years in the past ten hours.’

  ‘The platform,’ I say, ‘was crowded.’

  ‘He says it wasn’t.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘I missed him.’

  ‘Half the office have been ringing round. Your friends. Who are your friends? I should have their numbers. Sam was here until midnight. Gavin. I forced them to go home.’

  He is dressed with some care, for going out: lunch, certainly: someone entertaining, after. Phones ring, feet pass to and fro: energy, initiative: thrift.

  ‘Iverson rang,’ Gavin announces.

  ‘Fuck him.’

  ‘So we did.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘Richard.’

  ‘We’ll have him running the office yet.’

  ‘Give him time.’

  ‘Give him time.’ Gerry beams: seeing me here is part of his victory: house sold, no ransom paid. The kid precisely where he wants him.

  ‘Where are we living?’ I ask.

  ‘We’re booked in at Claridges, for fuck’s sake. Where do you think?’

  That, too, a part of our Gerry and Martha past.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I tell him. Tears, drying, are inexplicably replenished.

  ‘Maybe I should leave you two to talk,’ Gavin says.

  ‘We are talking,’ Gerry says. ‘Maybe you can tell him. All I want for him is the best.’

  ‘Had you sold the house when you came up to Jimmy’s?’ I’m surprised, myself, that James is in the diminutive.

  ‘I had an offer. I confirmed it from New York.’

  ‘The night you rang up, after I’d arrived.’

  ‘The night I rang up.’

  ‘And never said.’

  ‘What was the point? You’d only have worried.’

  ‘Like I am now.’

  ‘There
is no need to worry. We have,’ he tells me, ‘a place to live. Gavin likes it. Somewhere,’ he adds, ‘where we can start again. I don’t like – I never liked – the exclusiveness of Hampstead. I don’t like,’ he concludes, ‘living in a suburb.’

  ‘Hampstead is a village. A community,’ I tell him.

  ‘All those fucking trees?’ He looks to Gavin for confirmation (Gavin, with his four kids and three previous wives somewhere down the line, lives in Putney – where we tried to live for a while ourselves – selling the house, God help us, to Gavin. No doubt for a killing: Gavin has a great deal to be ungrateful for: the inverted world we live in). ‘All that grass. All those fucking flowers? Down here we’re in the middle of things.’

  ‘Your things.’

  ‘Our things. This is where they happen.’ He looks to Gavin again, who merely shakes his head. ‘This, Gav, after being up half the fucking night.’

  He examines me as he might a creature flown in from another planet. ‘Gavin told me all night,’ I tell him.

  ‘Half the fucking night is night,’ he says. ‘The other half is day. All I’m trying to do,’ he adds, spreading out his arms (so that’s where Gavin gets the mannerism from), a fresh exudation of scent and deodorant flooding the room, ‘is what is best for you. I’m trying,’ he goes on, ‘to keep you on the ball.’

  ‘What ball?’

  ‘This fucking ball. The ball where fucking things happen.’

  He turns to the door.

  ‘Leave your suitcase. One of the girls can bring it across.’

  ‘Girls?’

  ‘Anyone can bring it over. Someone will bring it over.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I’ve shown you the place I’ve found. The fucking paradise I’ve discovered.’

  Exhaustion, defeat: despair: I have a choice as we take the lift to the floor below (another addictive habit of his: I might have known: he dislikes stairs: something to do with his time in the navy?), orders flung out on either side, over his back, across his shoulder. In the street, having taken my arm to leave the building, he releases me. ‘Don’t you like it?’ He signals the street itself as if that, too, he’s hired. ‘Handel lived round here.’

  ‘Like Freud in Hampstead.’

  ‘He hardly lived there a fucking year.’

  He’s taken my arm again: we enter a door between two shops, mount stairs from a darkened hallway: the building exudes wealth of an anonymous nature: this, everything tells me, is not for me: is, more startlingly, not for us. Is Gerry, I’m suddenly obliged to consider, cracking up, precipitated into actions without consulting anyone involved? Am I in the company of a suitable companion to his crazy wife?