This Party's Got to Stop

by Rupert Thomson

  We have to, I said.

  The house lost its temper. You don’t, it shouted. You don’t have to. I don’t want you to.

  I had goose-bumps now. Nothing I could say would make the slightest difference. The house began to scream, its voice malevolent and guttural. I covered my ears.

  YOU CAN’T LEAVE.

  I WON’T LET YOU.

  DON’T.

  FUCKING.

  GO.

  I still had my hands over my ears, but I was kneeling on the hall floor, my forehead pressed into the carpet. The house was swearing at me. Calling me names. The worst things it could think of.

  I look out over the garden, which is surfacing at last like the deck of a sunk ship raised from the deep. The thought of the future. I can’t even control the present.

  It was the radiogram that started it.

  For months now, we have known that we need to empty the house, but there are still tables and chairs in every room. We have contacted all the antiques dealers in town, and all the charity and junk shops. We must have had half a dozen garage sales. We have talked to friends, to neighbours – to complete strangers. None of them has any use for second-hand furniture. We can’t even give it away.

  One Saturday, after Vivian has taken Greta up to bed, we sit in the kitchen, drinking. We have decided to go through Dad’s collection of LPs to see if he has anything worth keeping. We begin with a fifties’ musical called Gigi, which stars Maurice Chevalier. The songs are famous – ‘Thank Heaven for Little Girls’, ‘I Remember It Well’ – but one side is enough. Next we put on Françoise Hardy Sings about Love. Ralph has stayed downstairs, and his presence, which is rare these days, seems to have created an air of expectancy.

  As Robin turns the Françoise Hardy record over, he leans on the radiogram, and one of the front legs gives slightly. He looks at us across his shoulder. We’re all having the same thought. Ralph tugs at the leg, which comes away quite easily, and the radiogram sinks to its knees like a buffalo that has just been shot. Wrenching the turntable free of its wooden casing, Robin carries it out to the pile of scrap metal by the garage. There’s a silence, then a decisive crash. He reappears in the kitchen doorway, dusting his hands off on his trousers.

  Our eyes sweep round the room. We’re not in any doubt about what needs doing. We make for the scullery, where Dad keeps all his tools. The cupboard is dark and cool, and smells of turpentine. Robin selects a short-handled axe and then steps back. Ralph lifts a saw down off the wall. I reach for the claw hammer. We return to the kitchen. Before we begin, Robin rigs up his stereo and puts on another of Dad’s LPs, Grand Prix, which is a recording of Formula One racing cars in action, with live commentaries by John Bolster and Nevil Lloyd. We set to work dismembering the furniture. The chopping and hacking is so loud that we have to turn the volume up. It’s Spa, in Belgium, 1958. One by one, the cars snarl by. Lotus, Vanwall. BRM. Though Bolster never loses his composure, his voice has a steely edge, I notice, a kind of whine, as if it, too, is the result of precision engineering. Every now and then, we stop for a glass of cider or a smoke. This is hard work, but in the morning we’ll be glad we did it.

  When we have finished with the radiogram, the kitchen table and the chairs, we fetch furniture from the study and the sitting-room. John Bolster is about as excited as he will ever get. Here come the cars … all going magnificently … Swinging with a little too much vigour, Robin misses a table leg, and his axe bites hungrily into the floor. When he frees the axe, which takes all his strength, it leaves a deep indent in the parquet. Looks like a cunt, Ralph says. We know what he means. Worried about how the new owners of the property might react, we decide to pretend that the cunt was there all along. Oh yes, we say, practising. For years. Ever since we were tiny. The air smells of sawdust and cigarettes, and in the brief silence between tracks I can hear a steady buzz, as if we’re standing under an electric pylon.

  It’s midnight when I next look up. The rubble’s a foot deep, and there’s red stuff on the fridge. I wonder if it’s blood. My breath rasps in and out. Overhead, a naked bulb sways on its flex, and all the shadows lurch.

  Ralph sprawls face down, his head wedged behind the scullery door. He has passed out on a heap of splintered wood.

  I bend over him. ‘Ralph? Are you all right?’

  His lips move, but I can’t understand what he is saying. Still, at least he isn’t dead.

  Where’s Robin, though?

  As I try and piece things together, a howl comes from another part of the house. I can’t be sure, but I don’t think it’s the baby. Crossing the hall, I enter the sitting-room. In the glasshouse Robin is standing, legs apart, in front of a squat upholstered chair, the short-handled axe raised high above his head. I pause in the doorway.

  ‘I’ve always hated this chair,’ he says.

  He brings the axe down on one of the arms. Woodchips dart through the air. The arm holds firm.

  ‘Fuck.’ He drains his glass of cider.

  With its low centre of gravity and its short, almost toad-like legs, the chair has a decidedly stubborn look.

  Robin lifts the axe again. ‘Die!’ he yells. The curved blade descends, the black sky ripping open to reveal silver. The chair’s arm splits, but doesn’t yield.

  As Robin prepares to deliver yet another savage blow, a movement distracts me. I look beyond him, to where the light spilling from the house is swallowed by the darkness of the garden. Someone is standing on the lawn, over by the garage. I move closer to Robin and rest a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Robin,’ I say, ‘we’re not alone.’

  As Robin turns, his axe still raised, a figure steps forward into the light. He’s wearing a dark uniform with shiny buttons.

  ‘This party’s got to stop,’ he says.

  I stifle a laugh. ‘This isn’t a party,’ I tell him. ‘It’s just the family. We live here.’

  ‘There have been complaints…’

  ‘Complaints?’

  ‘We’ve had a number of phone calls,’ the policeman says, ‘about the noise.’ His face is pale and narrow, with a pinched mouth, and I wonder, fleetingly, if he was ever bullied at school.

  He glances towards the kitchen. A loud tsk-tsk-tsk is coming from the open window. The needle must have reached the end of the record and failed to reject.

  ‘We’ll be quiet now,’ I say.

  ‘You do that.’ The policeman backs away and disappears through the garden gate.

  ‘He was young for a policeman,’ Robin says.

  ‘Yes, he was.’

  ‘He seemed nervous.’

  I look at Robin. ‘Can you blame him?’

  Robin lowers his axe.

  A few days later, a man with steel-rimmed glasses knocks on our front door. He tells me that he’s from the council. When I ask him if he has come about the rubbish, he blinks, then hands me a sheet of paper. ‘I’m serving you with a writ,’ he says, ‘for noise pollution.’

  Noise pollution. Now there’s an interesting combination of words. I remember Robin’s howl as he laid into the toad-like chair. It’s a wonder we still have all our fingers.

  But the man from the council is turning away.

  I follow him as far as the gate. ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’ I call out, waving the writ.

  He doesn’t answer, or even glance over his shoulder. The tails of his grey suit jacket flutter anxiously around his buttocks as he hurries off up the road.

  *

  One night, when Ralph and Vivian are asleep, I slide the drawer out of the trolley that stands next to Dad’s bed. Putting Dad’s washable Lion Brand condom to one side – a family heirloom, this – I empty every plastic bottle, metallic tube and blister pack that I can find. Throughout our childhood – throughout our lives – Dad would eat his meals quickly, often leaving the table before we had finished. I’ve got to take my pills, he would say. Curious as to what they do, Robin and I have decided to sample a few of Dad’s pills ourselves.

  We star
t with some capsules that are half-red, half-black. Rounded at both ends, they look like miniature warheads. We swallow one each. Lying back on the bed, I wonder idly whose job it is to decide what colour pills are going to be. Are there special people?

  Dad’s TV is on. We watch part of a comedy programme, but the canned laughter gets on our nerves, and we switch channels.

  We wait about ten minutes, then take a couple of grey-green pills – Euhypnos 40 – which we follow with a vicious-looking red-and-white capsule that makes me think of toadstools. As I rest my head against a stack of Dad’s pillows, I notice they no longer smell of him.

  ‘The news is soon,’ Robin says. ‘You want to watch the news?’

  I haven’t seen the news in months.

  ‘How do you feel?’ I ask him.

  ‘All right. A bit floaty.’ He points. ‘What are those round ones?’

  ‘These?’ I hold up a glowing, light brown pill that seems to be filled with liquid. ‘Fish-oil, I think. They’re supposed to be good for you.’

  ‘Don’t need those, then.’

  I smile.

  We watch more television – a programme about fast cars. Some time later, I ask Robin if we have tried the yellow pills.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he says.

  It occurs to me that one of us ought to have been keeping track of what we’ve taken.

  I pass him a yellow pill and swallow one myself, then I lie back again. My eyes drift from the TV to the psychedelic curtains. Though they’re blue – Dad’s favourite colour – I can’t imagine that he chose them. They must have been Sonya’s idea. I seem to catch a glimpse of her, no clothes on, her breasts a startled white.

  Quickly, I turn back to Robin. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘You already asked me that,’ he says.

  ‘That was ages ago.’

  ‘Really?’ He reaches for his glass of water. ‘I don’t feel too bad, actually. Mouth’s a bit dry.’

  ‘They don’t seem to be doing much.’

  ‘Maybe they’re stale.’

  ‘Is there a date on them?’

  Robin studies the label on the bottle nearest to him. ‘This one says 1982.’

  Changing channels again, he finds a programme about the miners’ strike. Industrial action has been going on for most of the year, but it hasn’t affected us too much down south. While in London, though, we saw men with plastic buckets in the entrances to tube stations, collecting money for the miners’ families, and in Stanley people talked of nothing else.

  We watch footage of the picket lines. Men with clenched fists. Home-made banners. Mounted police. The horses seem enormous, eyes flaring behind their blinkers.

  ‘How many have we had, do you think?’ Robin says.

  ‘What, altogether?’

  He nods.

  ‘I don’t know. Fifteen?’

  ‘What if one of us passes out?’

  I think for a moment. ‘I suppose the other one will have to call an ambulance.’

  ‘What if we both pass out?’

  ‘They’ll find us in the morning. It’ll be like one of those suicide pacts.’

  ‘No note, though.’

  ‘You think we should write something,’ I say, ‘just in case?’

  Robin appears to consider this.

  ‘I can’t be bothered,’ he says at last.

  ‘Nor can I,’ I say.

  Arthur Scargill is haranguing a crowd from the back of a lorry. We approve of Scargill, with his bluntness and his passion and his hair that looks like a rusty Brillo pad. We approve of anyone who stands up to Maggie Thatcher.

  I reach for an empty pill box. Dad’s name is written on the label in blue biro. ‘Do you miss him?’ I say.

  ‘Who, Dad?’

  I nod.

  ‘Yes,’ Robin says. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘I got so used to him being here. I sort of thought he would be here for ever.’

  Robin watches me sidelong.

  ‘He used to say, If something happens to me,’ I go on, ‘and for years nothing did.’

  A map of the British Isles appears on TV. The weatherman moves his hand in smooth, repeated arcs, as if polishing the windscreen of a car.

  ‘He’d always say, If something happens to me. He never said, If I die …’

  Midway through the forecast, the weatherman is replaced by Dad. At the beginning of the school holidays, Dad would usually sit me down and ask if I would like to hear one or two of his longer poems. It was a joke, a routine, and I would groan or roll my eyes, but I knew that, under all the clowning, he was desperate to read to me. He has the same expression now: self-deprecating, hopeful. He is wearing faded maroon trousers, a striped shirt and a dark blue zip-up cardigan, and though his feet are out of shot, I know he has his slippers on, the ones with bits of carpet glued to the soles. When Dad predicts a gale-force wind, he grins self-consciously. In our family, the word ‘wind’ was often used instead of ‘fart’, and Dad has just made the connection. Don’t, I can almost hear him saying. Don’t make me laugh.

  ‘I’m sorry he died all alone, with none of us there,’ I say. ‘I think about that.’

  I stare out across the room, towards the fireplace. The air seems to have swollen; it looks elongated, somehow, and slightly grey. I have a sense of having to peer through it, like a mist, to see the wall.

  ‘I can’t cry about him yet,’ I say, ‘not properly. I don’t know why. I just can’t.’

  ‘I haven’t cried yet either,’ Robin says.

  ‘You were sick, though.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  I haven’t even begun to grieve. It’s the same as twenty years ago. Like water through limestone, this new sorrow is following the path formed by the old one, both sorrows hidden, buried, unexpressed.

  I wake up wearing all my clothes. Robin is asleep beside me. The lights are still on. So is the TV, its blank screen hissing. I turn the TV off, then put my ear close to Robin’s mouth. His breath smells of plastic, but his breathing sounds regular enough.

  We haven’t written our suicide note. Oh well.

  It’s all I can do to remove my shirt and trousers, switch off the light and climb under the covers.

  I’m asleep again in seconds.

  Moonlight Represents My Heart

  I set off for Shanghai on a Saturday in December 2007. The Piccadilly Line was crowded with men in blue football shirts – Chelsea had played at home that afternoon – and somewhere after Hammersmith a woman standing near me crumpled and slid down the door. Her black cloche hat toppled off her head, and the lacquered red leather purse she was holding slipped out of her hands and landed on the floor at my feet. The man travelling with her laid his suitcase flat, lowered her on to it, and then stooped over her, carefully brushing her tawny hair back off her forehead. They were German; I had heard them talking earlier, as I stepped on to the train.

  When the woman came round, she murmured that she needed air. A fellow passenger opened the narrow window at our end of the carriage. The woman’s head lifted. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much.’ On her left hand were several ornate gold rings. She glanced up, her eyes finding mine, and gave me one of the most radiant smiles I had ever seen. Though she was probably in her late fifties, she looked, for a moment, like a young girl, and I wondered if the radiance was linked to her momentary loss of consciousness, or if, like her tawny hair, it was part of who she was. I asked her whether she felt better, and she nodded and waved a hand in front of her face. I passed her the hat, which she placed on her head, then I handed her the purse. She smiled at me again, her eyes wide and preternaturally bright. ‘Thank you. You’re very kind.’ I told her that when she stood up she should do it slowly. The blood needed time to reach the brain. ‘I know about it,’ I said. ‘I used to faint a lot when I was young.’ The man leaned towards her. ‘He is paying you a compliment,’ he said. Now all three of us were smiling.

  I landed in Paris half an hour behind schedule and had to ru
n through Charles de Gaulle to catch my connecting flight. Once airborne for the second time, I asked for wine and watched the new film by Chabrol. Every now and then, I thought of the German couple. I had seen them in Departures at Heathrow, sitting side by side on plastic chairs. To live close to that smile – within its range, as it were – would be like living in a kind of sunlight. You’d feel blessed. Just before I slept, I peered out of the window: a wide, thin shelf of cloud, and the lights of St Petersburg beyond …

  It was dark again by the time we landed in Pudong. When my suitcase failed to appear on the carousel, an official directed me to Baggage Claim, where an Englishman in a crumpled linen suit was complaining about his own lost luggage. His outrage seemed to be having some effect, and I moved closer to him, hoping to be carried along in the slipstream.

  Later, we shared a taxi, and it emerged, in conversation, that he was the father of a friend of mine, and that I had met him before, eighteen years ago, at her wedding. He had also read my latest book, which she had given him for his last birthday. Though happy to see him, and entertained by these elaborate layers of coincidence, I kept my eyes on the window, keen to soak up every detail of our drive into Shanghai. The swooping concrete flyovers, the burnt, brown light collecting round the street lamps; the clinging, almost sticky mist. My stomach tightened. I wasn’t just arriving in a new city. Tomorrow I would be having lunch with Ralph, who I hadn’t seen for twenty-three years.

  That night, in my hotel in the French Concession, I drifted off to sleep at about one-thirty, only to wake again at six. The incident on the tube kept repeating behind my closed eyelids, and in an increasingly lurid and distorted form. The German woman was smiling at me from the floor of the train – You’re kind, so kind – but her hair stuck to her forehead in sweat-darkened spikes, and her purse, which was the colour of a wound, lay at a queasy angle to my shoe. In my anxious, jet-lagged state, her eyes seemed like the eyes of someone suffering from malnutrition, and her smile was no longer a blessing but an admission of weakness, a bright flash of fear. At the same time, I was tormented by the fact of my missing luggage. I wouldn’t be able to give Ralph the presents I had bought for him, and I would have to meet him wearing dirty clothes. I would be empty-handed, unclean. Disreputable. Only half awake, I shifted in the bed, seeking respite from this torrent of unwanted images and thoughts.