by Adam Thorpe
‘God, sounds like the missus,’ whispered Edward, tackling a melting marshmallow on his fork.
Jack had just bitten through the heat-crisped exterior of his, finding the sweet goo of the melting insides as provocatively delicious as when he was a kid in Scout camp. He was stuck to it by his mouth, and he engulfed the rest to get rid of it. It burnt his tongue.
‘She’s back,’ he managed to say, more or less, swallowing.
‘Seems like it. Yoo-hoo!’Edward called, too sozzled to think about asking permission first. ‘He’s over with me!’
‘With you?’
‘We’re having fun!’ Edward went on. ‘Can’t blame us!’
‘Not true!’ shouted Jack. ‘I’m bloody miserable!’
He really had drunk so much more than he was used to that everything did seem to have its comic, devil-may-care side. Life was not a hospital after all. It was a place where quite ridiculous and extremely funny stuff could happen, if only you had the wit to see it. He found his own observation – that he was miserable – brilliantly funny, for instance. Now Edward was putting his hand on his – Jack’s – knee. That was funny, too. As was – in fact, this was the funniest thing of the lot – the sight of a second marshmallow very slowly losing its form to gravity on Edward’s upheld fork, like something gelatinous out of a horror film, and threatening to fall into Edward’s lap.
‘Ooo, your husband’s knee is gore-djuss!’ Edward roared, in the Welsh gay’s voice from Little Britain.
There was no reply from Milly.
‘Where’s she gone?’ asked Edward, just as the cooked marsh-mallow – or the ectoplasmic blob it had become – gave up and dropped smack onto Edward’s groin.
The way Edward looked down at the result, genuinely taken aback in a sozzled way, was the funniest thing Jack had ever witnessed in his life. It made the best of TV comedy look wan. He was seized up with hilarity, rising from inside him in a great and unstoppable wave. He was shaking with it, or it was shaking him. And Edward had been infected by it, too, which made things worse. Jack’s stomach hurt, his muscles, his jaw. The laughter was almost silent, just little squeaky noises right up in the palate, it felt like, before it roared out of his and Edward’s bodies simultaneously in a great and stupendous release – tears pouring down their faces, the white blob on Edward’s groin acting like the ON button, asphyxiating them with mirth. They all but rolled on the lawn, crouched down almost to the grass, their chairs on two legs, moaning, wanting it to stop, weak but mutually triggering it with each glance.
And it was at that point that Milly appeared. Of course, she had the key to Edward’s house. Lilian had given it to her, in case of emergencies. In case the house caught fire and the children were inside when Lilian was shopping or at the pool.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ Jack managed, tears and nasal mucus wiped away unsuccessfully. ‘It was … the … marshmallow. I’m really sorry. It…’
There was a strange suspension when nothing much happened for a few moments; his body was rippling of its own volition with the after-tremors of his laughquake, and Milly was watching him.
Then it went, just like that. The mirth left his body as devils leave bodies they’ve possessed. Something had exorcised it. He clutched his belly, which was sore, feeling very weak and shaken. Edward was raising a glass, similarly recovered, his eyes as red as if he’d been grieving.
‘Milly, my love, sit with us and praise marshmallows.’
Milly was a few yards off, on the lawn, ablaze in the halogens. Her arms were crossed. She didn’t generally find things funny. In fact, Milly’s problem was that life was almost always a serious matter. Very serious. All about catastrophe, in fact. Jack struggled to remember what this meant. Composting dry toilets. Grey water. No more polar bears.
‘Mill, come and sit down. I love you to bits.’
‘Have some Bollinger, darling,’ offered Edward, holding up the bottle. The white blob of marshmallow was still on his groin. ‘If you wanna kid, babe, you have to do it at least three times a week.’
‘Roger’s dead,’ said Milly.
‘How do you know?’ asked Jack.
Once again, he felt a bubble of laughter rise from his belly. A bit of the tickly devil had remained. The way Milly stood there, arms folded, glaring at him and telling him that Roger Grove-Carey, his dearly beloved old tutor, was dead … it was just so extremely offbeat. He thought of Auschwitz and Hiroshima and Rwanda. He thought of never seeing Jaan again. It made no difference. His belly shook from each burst of suppressed laughter, as if it was being hit by a fist, the reverberations going right up to his throat. The mechanics of it. Even they were funny. Global warming. Polar bears dropping off the melted ice. Plop plop plop. Milly was telling him that she’d heard from Claudia, that Roger had died yesterday, that she had something to tell Jack, in private, but that he was clearly too pissed out of his tiny little head to listen.
‘I’m not pissed, Milly. I’m really really, miserable. This is compensation.’
‘Constipation?’ said Edward.
‘Com-pen-sation.’
‘I’m pissed, but he’s not,’ Edward pointed out. ‘He’s really miserable.’
Jack stuffed a fist against his mouth. Edward was hilarious. He was a natural. They both were. They were Laurel and Hardy, Eric and Ern. Fry and whatsit. Whoever. Roger was dead, but the laughter wouldn’t stop pumping up from Jack’s belly, throttled only by the fist at his mouth, like a tie on a fat balloon.
‘I’d like to hit you very hard on the head,’ said Milly.
‘They’ve gone,’ explained Jack, puffing his breath out as if he’d swum a few lengths. ‘I phoned to tell you. They’ve gone out of my life for ever. Poof.’
‘What’s that you called me?’ said Edward, blinking. Brilliantly funny.
‘It’s too late,’ said Milly.
‘Never too late,’ Edward echoed, holding up his hand as if he was hailing a taxi. The white blob on his groin had slid off the shorts, down his inner thigh, onto the chair, leaving a gooey trail like a snail’s. He had the fattest, ugliest knees Jack had ever seen in his life. ‘Except for me,’ Edward added, a bit of pink marshmallow stuck on his nose; Jack hadn’t noticed it before. It moved with his nose, wherever it went. Edward was a clown, a comic genius. Because he didn’t know it.
‘You’re really killing,’ said Jack, jabbing a finger at him, ‘because you think you’re funny, when you’re not.’
Milly was coming up to him and was hitting the glass out of his hand and was picking up the bottle of barbecue lighter fluid and Edward was saying, ‘Zen, Zen, Zen,’ like a fat monk, and then she was squirting the lighter fluid onto her skimpy top, her nice red skirt, as if it was insect repellent, and Jack found himself on his feet, staying steady with the help of the back of the chair, and he was saying, ‘Mill, whassup? What’re you doing? That’s toxic. Highly inflammable. Really unecological. It’s to light the barbie with. Mill, what’re you doing?’
Then she threw the bottle away and picked up the cigarette lighter on the table and lit it. Its little flame steepled, then sank a bit, but it was still a flame. She held it in front of her chest, which was dark and wet from the lighter fluid.
‘That’s really dangerous, Mill,’ said Jack.
‘Put that down,’ said Edward, in an authoritative voice betrayed only by his inability to stand up steadily.
‘How nice to have your attention at last,’ said Milly, her eyes gleaming with tears in the light of the tiny flame. ‘I’d come back to have a sensible chat, that’s all.’
‘I want a sensible chat,’ said Jack, his whole body burning inside with terror.
‘I want, I want.’
‘Mill…’
Edward said: ‘Don’t do it, Milly.’
‘Don’t,’ said Jack.
‘Men do it to their wives all the time.’
‘Not in civilised, Christian countries,’ said Edward.
‘You wanna bet?’
‘Mill…’
‘Shuddup. Don’t tell me what to do.’
‘I’m not.’
‘I’m not a dog. You’re never going to see her again, are you?’
‘She’s gone. I told you. Back to Estonia. One-way ticket.’
‘This is silly,’ said Edward, with an exaggerated military bearing in his unsteadiness.
‘I’m the planet,’ said Milly, moving the tiny flame even nearer to her chest. ‘You men are the flame. This is how close we are. You make war and poisons. I hate you all. This is how close we are, and you’re doing nothing. In fact, you’re holding the flame.’
‘But I’m totally on your side, politically,’ said Jack, who no longer found anything at all funny.
‘I normally put my bottles in the bottle bank,’ said Edward.
‘You’re holding the flame against Mother Earth’s body,’ said Milly. ‘You’re all destroyers. I hate you all.’
‘Milly, please. Let’s have a sensible chat. Please.’
‘You’re pissed.’
‘I’m not pissed, honest.’
He was, but was fighting it off, albeit drunkenly with flailing fists.
‘I’ll never see her again,’ he added. ‘I promise. In the whole of my life.’
Milly looked at him steadily and then, instead of whooshing in a blaze, blew out the flame. Her eyes seemed to disappear, her hair shadowing her face from the artificial light.
‘You can do whatever you like,’ she said. ‘You’re a free man, now.’
The next day she said exactly the same thing.
Jack sat opposite her at the limewood table in the garden room. It was raining softly outside. The leaves were just about all fallen and it was cooler. Summer was giving up at last, way beyond time. Jack had spent the night at Edward’s on one of the absent kids’ beds, his feet going over the end, the sheets covered in characters from The Lion King, the pillowcase stained where the mouth usually went.
It wasn’t just that he and Edward had felt it was safer, given Milly’s state. After threatening to turn herself into a human torch, she had instructed Jack to come over for lunch, when he was sober, for a proper discussion. At that moment Jack knew that he had lost the house, the game, his wife. Then she had left them to themselves.
‘Purcell’s wife locked him out after he’d had a drop too many one evening, and he died of a chill at thirty-seven,’ said Jack. ‘I hope I die, too.’
‘Not on my carpet,’ said Edward.
Edward Cochrane then revealed – in a low, insistent voice – what he would do if he was President of Britain for life. It was oddly close to the caliphate promulgated by the kind of people who’d bombed London’s transport system. Women had a very lowly part in his ideal state, at any rate, and homosexuals would be gassed along with the mentally handicapped, illegal immigrants, lager louts who attacked old ladies, the shrieking ‘Guardianista’ class and poor old Trevor Norris, because Trevor Norris was a local pain in the arse who’d once opposed a Heath development Edward Cochrane had had an interest in. Jack half listened, dazed by drink and events. They’d moved from champagne to brandy. Women would be dealt with, at any rate. Kept to their proper functions. Veiled, even. Edward was no longer funny, even when he tried to be.
‘You’re a fascist, then,’ Jack said, eventually.
‘A realist,’ said Edward. He had what appeared to be slime on his lip. ‘I’m a man of the world. Listen to me, son. I’ve had a much more fucking interesting life than you. Three years in Dubai, for a start.’
Jack, some twelve hours later, felt terrible. Poisoned. And Milly said again, very much unveiled: ‘You’re a free man, now.’
‘I’m sorry, Mill. I really am sorry.’
There was the dim sound of squealing tyres from the street. He wouldn’t mention Max’s ashes.
‘Right. Here it is,’ said Milly.
She’d gone out and bought a Marks & Sparks vegetarian lasagne and a couple of Louis’s custard millefeuilles that would simultaneously spurt and disintegrate however you approached them. Jack fumbled with the lasagne’s hard, vellum layers, his gorge rising at the cheesiness. Milly looked older, but not in a bad way. Someone had redone her hair to look somehow Russian, early twentieth century – he couldn’t pinpoint why or whether he was right in thinking this. It was an impression.
‘You can’t go whiter than you already are,’ she went on, ‘so that’s OK. Claudia and myself, we’re going to sell up and buy in Italy. Maybe France. Grow vegetables. Sorry, but there it is.’
‘Claudia?’
‘Claudia, widow of Roger Grove-Carey.’
‘Is he really dead?’
‘At long last,’ said Milly. ‘He died last week. His funeral’s tomorrow.’
‘No one told me,’ Jack complained, forgetting he’d made himself technologically unavailable.
‘I just have. And I told you yesterday. But you were too pissed.’
Jack put his fork down and tucked his hands between his thighs.
‘Vegetables.’
‘Yup. Claudia and I are going to bring up her son together. Far away from here. In a big farmhouse. As a couple. Lots of vegetables. We could even start a little veggie restaurant, for a lark. You could come and play jazz on the piano now and again, as long as it was tuneful. I’ve not been listening to my inner self, until now.’
Jack bit the inside of his lip, which prevented his face betraying him with a spasm.
‘Um, I require a bit of guidance on this,’ he said, eventually. Because it was not the way he usually put things, it had a shadow of mockery in it.
He was inadequate.
‘I think it’ll do you good to face the world on your own two feet again. Fend for yourself a bit.’
He pushed his lasagne to one side, then put his hand back between his thighs again. He could bicycle round the world, he thought. Keep on bicycling round the world until he withered away in somewhere like the Gobi Desert.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘OK. So, er … you’re leaving the job?’
‘I’m easy. If they want me to do consultancy work … You can work anywhere, these days. Open up in Italy or France. Extend.’
Jack nodded. Milly could do anything: behind a laptop against a crumbling wall of pale stone, lozenges of warm sun playing on her hands, the scent of oleander and wild thyme … no problem.
‘I guess you should do what you feel is right,’ said Jack, in a small, hoarse voice, his hands still tucked between his thighs, his head bowed as if awaiting the blade.
‘All I wanted was quiet days making rice pudding with the children,’ Milly said, dreamily.
There was a buzz at the door before Jack could reply. To his surprise, Milly almost leapt up to answer it. She seemed to have a surplus of energy, a flush in her cheeks, a bounce in her hair. He rose and followed her, dimly worried it might be Edward, but his legs were weak. He looked up the hallway where a man was standing, holding a bright red dog’s collar.
‘Is this yours?’ the man said, out of breath. ‘I’m afraid I’ve just had an accident on the road with a Labrador.’
‘Jack?’
Milly turned to him. The man was very tall and dressed in black. A white patch instead of a tie. White to go with the red. A vicar. A faint scent of burnt rubber. Jack thought: I’ve lost my wife, for good. The vicar would never know, seeing only a contented couple in their glossy Hampstead hallway with signed landscape photographs by Art Sinsabaugh on the safe wall, the wall you couldn’t see from the street when the door was open to the thieving, ravenous world outside.
‘We don’t have a dog,’ said Jack, his voice rising more than he’d meant it to. ‘My wife and I, we’ve never had a dog or a cat or even a goldfish called Cliff in our whole time together. Just a little teeny tub of ashes. And even that’s gone.’
‘I’m not your wife,’ hissed Milly.
‘There’s always a first time,’ the vicar called out, waving the dog’s collar as he backed away, so that its tiny bell rang and rang over the dimly massed cho
rds of London.
Jack slept alone in the house that night; Milly was comforting Claudia, looking after the baby. He sat up late in his study with the headphones on, sandblasting his mind with bands like Five Section Crass or Saxon and polishing off Richard’s present to him from four Christmases ago: a twenty-five-year-old bottle of Highland Park. Now twenty-nine years old. Not even whisky stood still.
The next morning, which was suitably thunderous, several of Roger Grove-Carey’s pieces were played in the gloomy redbrick crematorium, including the cacophonic and over-saxed ‘Memoriae Without Permission’ as the coffin slid into the unseen furnace: for all but the atonal diehards present, it was terrifying, hellish. The baby cried all the way through, its squeals bouncing off the brick and all but drowning Roger’s voice in Jack’s head.
You were so good once, you bastard!
Milly sat next to Claudia, helping out. Roger’s first generation of children were further along the pew, looking like bent lawyers, with their bedraggled-looking blob of a mother. Claudia seemed as if she was on a high, oddly. Jack sat in his own loneliness and headache the other side of the room; the whole thing was as close to psychological torture as he’d ever got. There were loads of people he knew, which made it worse – from old, clapped-out atonals with hip problems to punky young students brimming with tears. He couldn’t work out how Roger had done it: he must have shagged half the women here – and some of the men, too, probably. Jack had been convinced that the funeral would be embarrassing in its dearth of mourners. Instead, if the building had blown up, most of Britain’s contemporary music scene would have gone with it – including the friendly, silver-haired controller of Radio 3, who admired Jack’s work and had once asked him why he didn’t do more. The speeches made Roger sound like someone of biblical proportions; a wise, good man who had changed the face of humanity. It was depressing.
And it made Jack feel cross with himself, rather than guilty, for not visiting Roger in hospital. Everyone else, it appeared, had visited. They all kept saying how he’d looked like Lenin, lying in state. A waxwork, but alive enough to growl. A great man. An original.