by Anne Billson
Duncan, meanwhile, had switched from second to third person. 'She's been away for a long time. A long long time. And now she's back and it's all going to happen again.'
I shushed him. It wasn't prudent to bring up such things in public. 'It's finished. Over.'
'No, no, no,' he said, shaking his head. 'No, no, no. Not over. Because you know what? She's not like us. She's different. Very, very different.' He shook his head some more, in case I hadn't seen him shaking it the first time.
I said, 'We're each of us different in our own little ways.' The conversation had taken a dispiriting twist. The alcohol had loosened his inhibitions, but not in the way I'd anticipated. It was the same old story: all that effort, and all of it swept aside so easily.
'It's beginning again,' he was saying. 'And you know what? You know what? I want it to begin again. Oh yes I do.'
'Oh no you don't,' I said. 'That's the last thing you want. It wouldn't be a good idea, not at all.' He persisted, so I tried talking sense. 'Let us suppose that - contrary to all laws of medical science and Middle European mythology - let us suppose you are right and it really is beginning again. Do you really think she'd want to shake you by the hand? Remember what you did? Remember how you left her without a hand to shake? She'd be fairly pissed off at you, don't you think?'
'Don't care.'
'Oh for Heaven's sake, use your head.' I could have wept. I was in that sort of state, but Duncan's drunkenness was way ahead of mine; it had passed through the maudlin stage and had now entered the rowdy.
'Want to know the quickest way to a woman's heart?' he asked loudly. 'Through the thorax with a Kitchen Devil!' Heads swivelled in our direction. He started to laugh uproariously. I shushed him again, and he lowered his voice so only about half the people in the pub could hear. 'It was the next best thing to fucking my mother, you know?'
'No, I don't know. Nobody wants to hear about your Oedipus Complex.'
'Not Oedipus,' he complained. 'You've got it upside-down.'
'I don't care who was on top. Just keep your voice down.'
'I've done nothing to be ashamed of. That's what you kept telling me, wasn't it? That I've done nothing to be ashamed of.'
'Not much,' I muttered.
'Don't you think I did the right thing?'
'Yes,' I said, in what I hoped was an authoritative voice. 'Imagine if you'd let her get away with it. Imagine what would have happened then. Think of it as being like a contagious disease. If you hadn't put a stop to it, it would have spread like wildfire. Of course you did the right thing.'
Duncan started to laugh again. 'Like AIDS, you mean?' His voice had acquired an eerie penetrative quality and sliced through the smoke and noise. At mention of the word AIDS, there was a pause in the hubbub, and a few more heads swivelled in our direction. 'No, Dora, you've got it wrong again. It was a great and glorious gift, and she wanted me to have it.'
This was way out of order. I tried to calm him down. 'Don't talk rot. You can't even stand the sight of blood.'
'That's what I mean,' he said. 'That's what she did.'
I told him not to be so silly. He was fine. His course of treatment had been interrupted. I hadn't noticed him turning down shooting assignments in sunny Tenerife. He was still eating garlic, wasn't he?
'Takes time,' he said.
'What? Thirteen years?'
'No, no, no,' he said, rather crossly. 'You don't understand at all, Dora. It's not like a one-night stand. It's a mona... moga...' He paused and took a hop, step, and jump at the word. 'A mono-ga-mous situation, that's what it is.'
We continued in this vein for a while, repeating ourselves and going round in circles and generally not making a great deal of sense, until even the eavesdroppers grew bored and went back to their own conversations. Closing-time came and went, and no one seemed in a hurry to turf us out. Eventually Duncan excused himself and staggered off to find a toilet. Twenty minutes later I was wondering whether he'd left without me when a complete stranger announced that my companion had passed out in the Ladies. Duncan had evidently reached the third and last stage of the stages of drunkenness: unconsciousness. I went off to find him.
He was wedged beneath the washbasin, groaning. I splashed cold water on his face and roused him sufficiently to steer him out of the pub. He wobbled down the road, patting the pockets of his jacket. 'Keys...' he muttered. 'Car keys...'
I'd forgotten the car. 'Oh no,' I said. 'No way are you driving.' I pulled him towards the tube entrance, but it was later than I'd thought - the stairs were barred by a crisscross metal grille. An entire evening had slipped away and we hadn't eaten so much as a pretzel. No wonder we were both legless.
On the Strand I attempted to hail a cab, but they were all heading east with their lights off. Duncan clutched my arm in a determined fashion. 'S'all right, I'm perfectly sober.' This was patently untrue, but I allowed him to lead me back to the car. I couldn't think what else to do.
It was a wild drive. Haves and Have Nots were out in force. Crowds milled on pavements outside clubs, queueing to pass the dress code inspection and spilling into the road. Along Shaftesbury Avenue I was rather pleased to see two shaven-haired thugs heaving a paving stone through the window of a shoe shop. We pulled up at some lights and I shouted, 'Yo!' They waved back, then, grinning like escaped mental patients, started walking across the road towards us.
'Jesus!' I said, but just then the traffic started rolling again. I craned my neck, looking back. The thugs were wading through the cars like a couple of teenage Godzillas, heading back up the road to Cambridge Circus.
The streets were swarming with drunken drivers pretending to be sober, all pointing their hood ornaments in what they hoped was the right direction and praying like mad they wouldn't get stopped. Duncan would have failed a breathalyser at fifty paces, and there was a nerve-racking encounter with a night bus in the vicinity of Marble Arch, but we managed to get as far as Queensway without knocking down any little old ladies. Then, south of Westbourne Grove, just as I was starting to relax, he gave a little sigh and drove into a wall.
We were taking a corner at the time. As I saw his hands lift ever so slightly off the wheel, it flashed through my head that he had judged it an excellent way of committing suicide. Fortunately, our speed was too low to inflict anything other than minor damage to the front bumper and one of the headlamps. We ground to a halt with the engine still running. The wall came off without a scratch.
My head was instantly clear. I tipped Duncan on to the pavement and took his place behind the wheel. I'd given up learning to drive a long time ago, but now I remembered enough to trundle around the corner in first gear and park the car so it didn't stick out at too crazy an angle. One of the wheels ended up on the kerb, but it wasn't bad for an inebriated amateur. I yanked the handbrake up and switched off the engine.
When I got back to Duncan, he was sitting on the wall, kicking it with the backs of his heels. 'That's quite enough driving,' I told him, burying the car keys in his pocket. Behind me, there was the sound of someone clearing his throat. I turned. Just across the road, standing beneath a lamppost, was a man in black.
'It's all right,' I called. 'He's not hurt.'
But the man didn't react. There was something about his stillness which made me uncomfortable. A window opened somewhere over his head and he tilted his face so the light fell on it, and I saw he was having a heavy nosebleed. It made me wonder if he too had been involved in a minor accident, but I didn't want to hang around to find out. I hauled Duncan to his feet and marched him along the street, risking a single backward glance before we reached the corner. The man hadn't budged; he was staring after us with a fixed look on his face as blood gushed steadily from his nostrils. I was relieved when we rounded the corner and he couldn't see us any more.
'You'd better come back with me,' I told Duncan. My flat was only a few blocks away, a five-minute stagger as opposed to the fifteen-minute trek required to reach his place. Quite honestly, he didn't seem
up to it. He could walk, but he had no willpower; I was having to propel him.
Lulu had left several anxious messages on my answering machine. 'Dora? Are you there? Is Duncan there?' and 'Dora, please call.' It was too late to ring back; I figured she would have gone to bed early on the eve of her big day.
By the time I'd gulped down a couple of glasses of water, Duncan had passed out fully clothed on top of the bedclothes. I undressed and slid beneath the quilt next to him. Once or twice I dozed off, but mostly I lay propped on one elbow, examining his face at close quarters. I hadn't had him so close for ages. I stared into his face and puzzled over it. He wasn't so good-looking. His hair needed cutting; it flopped all over the place. I'd known men who were more talented, funnier, cleverer. So what was it about this one? As far as I could see, he had failed to enhance the quality of my life in any way whatsoever. All he had done was bring me grief. So why did I stick with him? The only way I could make sense of it was by thinking of him as a type of addiction. He was a drug.
At some point during the night, he regained consciousness long enough to remove his clothes and clamber on top of me, though I'd not sure he realized who I was. After a bit of unresolved fumbling, he rolled over and went back to sleep. He may well have been a drug, but he certainly wasn't a hard one.
But if it hadn't been the grand physical reunion I'd had in mind all those years, what the hell - it was better than nothing.
Feeling quite pleased about it, I fell asleep.
Chapter 7
The next day started off badly and got steadily worse. First of all, Duncan went home without even stopping for breakfast. It was one of those mornings when breakfast wasn't exactly on my agenda either. We'd been wrenched awake at about half-past ten by the sound of the Krankzeits hurling furniture at each other. My first attempts at getting vertical convinced me that while I had been sleeping someone had levered my brain out of my head, pulped it repeatedly against a rock, and stuffed it back into my skull the wrong way round. It was a fair bet Duncan would be feeling even ropier, but that was no excuse for bad manners. While I was groaning at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, he snuck out of the flat without even stopping to thank me for having him.
In between heavy doses of Alka-Seltzer and fruit juice, I had to deal with a series of bothersome phone calls. The first was from the editor of a women's magazine called Flirt, wanting to know if I'd finished compiling their readership profile. I said I hadn't and she made tutting noises and told me she needed it for a meeting in the morning. There was no way out. I sighed and promised it would be on her desk first thing.
The second call was from Jack, wanting to know what had happened to the research I owed him. I told him it was ready, which was sort of true, though I still had to type it out. I agreed to drop it round that evening.
The third call was from Ruth Weinstein, inviting me to a party she would be holding the following Saturday. I said I didn't think I'd be able to make it, but I'd try, and she remarked that, when it came to parties, I was always noncommittal, but everyone always knew I'd turn up anyway. That pissed me off; I didn't like being thought of as predictable. 'OK,' I said crossly, 'I'll come.' I had no intention of doing any such thing - all I wanted was for the conversation to end - but Ruth chattered on about work, and Charlie, and the gallery, and asked after Duncan like she always did, because we'd all been to the same art school and she'd never stopped being curious about him and me, though I had never told her a thing.
All I told her now was that I had a humungous hangover in the hope she would take the hint and shut up. Instead she said, 'Oh, what were you up to last night, then?' I ignored the question, which was impertinent, and said I'd call. She reminded me that I always said that, but never did - she always ended up having to call me. This was true enough. Ruth refused to let our long-standing acquaintanceship follow its natural course and shrivel up.
The fourth call was from Duncan. I was pleased to hear him until I realized he wasn't calling to apologize for his bad manners after all. He wanted a sympathetic ear, and he didn't care who it belonged to. 'I missed her,' he said. 'I didn't get back in time, and she'd already left. She didn't even leave a note.'
'What did you expect?' I asked, and tried to jog his memory. 'You spent the night with another woman.'
He moaned. 'Don't I know it. Dora, I feel dreadful. Where did we go? Where's the car?'
Thanks, I thought. Thanks a lot. 'Our happy hour turned into a lost weekend. You drove the car into a wall.'
There was a shocked pause before he said, 'Jeez, I was wondering about the bruises. We didn't kill anyone, did we? How's the car?'
'The car's just fine,' I said, 'just a few small dents.' I told him where I'd parked it. Nice of him to ask after me. I could hear him smothering a sigh. He knew I was being terse, but couldn't work out why, unless maybe I was having my period. Whenever members of the opposite sex failed to respond to Duncan's boyish charm, he always concluded it was their time of the month. But it wasn't mine, not yet.
'I didn't get breathalysed or anything?'
'No.'
'Thanks, Dora.' There was an awkward pause. 'I guess I'd better go and rescue the car. Before it gets clamped.'
'Why don't you do that,' I said, and hung up.
Duncan's call left me in a rotten mood. For about the billionth time I made up my mind never to talk to him again. Let him worry about Lulu all he liked. See if I cared.
I spent the rest of the day trying to work. I typed out some lists and vox pop quotations for Jack, and concocted some readership survey results for Flirt. I looked upon these things as conceptual art. They may have been made up, but they seemed no less accurate than any other form of market research. I prided myself on my knowledge of human nature, and my attitude was that I was the market. I told everyone my readership profiles were composite portraits, compiled from data gleaned from hundreds upon hundreds of telephone interviews - interviews which were constantly having to be updated in order to reflect the minutest fluctuations in the state of the economy. No one ever queried an invoice; they just coughed up.
At about eight o'clock, as I was making last-minute corrections to Jack's research, Duncan called again. In my frail condition I found myself talking to him before remembering, too late, I'd decided not to.
'She's still not back.'
'So? The night is young.'
'She hasn't even called.'
'She won't have had time. You know what it's like.'
'I'm really worried.'
'Duncan, I've got to rush, I'm going out. I'll call you in the morning.' Feeling deliciously hard-hearted, I hung up on him and set off for the tree-lined crescent where Jack and Alicia lived.
'How's Roxy these days?' I asked.
Jack glared at me. 'Fine.'
Alicia was knitting an unidentifiable garment on large wooden needles, somehow managing not to stab Abigail, who was gurgling and wriggling on her lap. The needles ceased clicking as she looked up. 'I didn't know you knew Roxy.'
'We went to the same school,' I lied. 'She was a real bully. She used to beat the crap out of me.'
Alicia returned to her knitting. 'Ooh, what a cow,' she said, rather absent-mindedly. I didn't pursue the matter. My initial question had been a test, to find out if she knew her husband was being unfaithful. From her reaction I concluded not, but I held my tongue. I enjoyed making Jack feel uncomfortable, but I wasn't about to ruin his marriage.
'Let's have a look at these papers,' he said pointedly. 'Want a drink?' I asked for a gin and tonic, and he stayed where he was, sifting through the typed sheets. After a few seconds, Alicia dutifully gathered up her knitting, hefted the baby on to one arm and struggled to her feet.
'I'll have one too,' Jack said without looking up.
I couldn't bear it. 'Stay where you are,' I said to Alicia. 'I'll do it, save you getting up.' She beamed and sat down again in a tangle of baby and wool.
Jack and Alicia kept their liquor in an Art Deco cocktail cabinet. I w
ondered how much cocaine had been chopped up on the mirrored shelf over the years. Not a lot recently; apart from the occasional joint, Alicia was now completely illegal-substance-free, and was trying to make Jack follow suit, though I suspected he and Roxy sometimes depleted the office Biro collection after hours.
I thought about how much Alicia annoyed me, all the more so because she was settling for less than she deserved. Once upon a time she had earned herself a first-class degree, had written articles for a couple of heavyweight literary reviews, had seemed poised for some sort of brilliant career.
According to Duncan, she had always been surrounded by so many admirers he'd considered himself favoured when she finally agreed to go out with him.
Then she married Jack, and everything changed. He had taken her on a Grand Tour - France, Italy, Greece, Spain - before bringing her home to install her as a baby-maker. Things hadn't gone quite as planned - Jack, of course, blamed Alicia for the delay - but now they were back on course. He was saying they wanted a two-year gap between babies.
They weren't short of money, but had never got round to hiring a nanny, so Alicia was left holding the baby while Jack went out on the town; it was an arrangement which suited him down to the ground. Alicia's reward was a gold American Express and frequent weekends in a remote part of Dorset, where they'd just bought a cottage. I was angling for an invite, though wary of ending up stuck in the middle of nowhere having to listen to Jack's monologues.
I handed Alicia her gin and tonic. She adjusted Abigail's position so the baby's head wasn't lolling, and turned her concerned maternal gaze on to me. 'Is everything all right between Lulu and Duncan?'