Other People

by Martin Amis

  ‘Where’d you get this one?’ said Trev, his breath playing on Mary’s cheek. His voice had a special upward lilt, not unpleasant in itself.

  ‘On the site,’ said Sharon.

  ‘Where she from?’ he pursued.

  ‘Yeah, where you from, Mary!’ said Sharon.

  Mary felt heat scatter across her face. She wished she knew whether it was safer to reveal her fear or to keep it hidden.

  ‘See?’ said Sharon. ‘She doesn’t bloody know! You’re simple, aren’t you love?’

  Mary looked up. Sharon’s face was expanding with new men and new drink. This was her victory. Mary knew she would get no help from her now.

  ‘Look at her,’ said Trev seriously. He paused. ‘Look at her. She’s like a fucking film star.’

  ‘See?’ said Sharon. ‘She’s worth a tenner of anybody’s money. Go on, Trev. I’ve cleaned her up and everything for you. You said you would last time. With Janice you said you would.’

  ‘Don’t start talking to me about no tenners, Shar,’ said Trev. ‘Don’t talk to me about no tenners.’

  ‘Janice was a right slag,’ said Jock in his gurgly voice.

  ‘That’s what I mean!’ said Sharon. ‘Mary, now she’s something special. Say something, Mary. Go on, say something for the boys.’

  ‘Does she fuck?’ said Jock.

  Sharon’s head jerked round towards him. (Do I fuck? thought Mary. Well, do I?) ‘Of course she does!’ said Sharon indignantly. Mary was quite pleased that Sharon was still sticking up for her. But then Sharon leaned forward and said to Trev, ‘She’s simple. She won’t mind. You can do what you like with her.’

  Mary felt Jock’s breath veer closer again—ripe moist breath almost condensing on her cheek, its questions forming like sticky droplets.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Mary.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Young.’

  ‘Where you living?’

  ‘There.’

  ‘Oh you’re living there, are you. And what day of the week is it?’

  Mary smiled.

  ‘What’s two and two?’

  Mary smiled.

  ‘And you got no man to look after you?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘You fucking beautiful, you know that? Hey Jock,’ he said, without redirecting his voice or his eyes, ‘I said she fucking beautiful, Sharon you can pick them I tell you that. Listen Mary now. We have some whisky and they shut here and we go to Jock’s and I fuck you to kingdom come. What a that?’

  Mary shrugged and said yes. Behind her, in paroxysms of authentic disgust, a machine hawked money into its metal trough. ‘Time,’ shouted an old man wearily, gathering glasses as he moved among them. ‘Time. Time.’

  * * *

  Trev and Jock are criminals, I’m afraid. They make their living by doing things so risky and depressing that hardly anyone else can bear to do them. It’s all about money, of course, like so much else. Mary doesn’t really know about money yet.

  Jock, for instance, had worked out as a lad that the best way of getting money was to attack weak people who already had some. Which weak people? He divided them into four categories: weak young men, weak young girls, weak old men and weak old ladies. After a few outings he satisfied himself that old ladies were the weakest and therefore the best people to attack. (They seemed to mind less too, probably because they hardly ever had any money.) His police record soon became a sorrily monotonous rollcall of decked grannies. Jock would run up to these people, hit them as hard as he could, and try to run away again with their money. The trouble was that even the oldest of them seemed determined not to part with their handbags; Jock hated the way he had to fidget through the leathery crevices with their sparkling dead make-up while the old ladies shrieked at him in that self-satisfied way they had. Sometimes he just hit them as hard as he dared and, breathing very sharply, hung around until he felt it was all right to run away—which he did with great skill, running really very fast. He was good at that bit. When times were low and Jock was recalling his few successes in life, his eyes would often fill with tears of pride at the thought of his swiftness at such moments.

  Trev is different, his twin passions being drink and fighting. He doesn’t know why he keeps doing all the terrible things he keeps doing. Sometimes heattributes it to the coruscating hatred he feels for everyone he doesn’t know. But he hates everyone he does know too, so it can’t just be that. Like all true heroes Trev has a tragic flaw: he isn’t especially good at fighting, whereas he affirms and in fact believes that the opposite is the case. Accordingly, he keeps starting fights, fights that other people keep finishing. But he wins the fights he has with women, and he has quite a few of those.

  I hope Mary will be all right. It’s a great shame, to say the least, that she had to get taken up by such people at this early stage. She just isn’t equipped to deal with them yet. Furthermore, show me criminals, and I’ll show you policemen, not far behind. And the last thing we want is to have Mary tangle with them.

  * * *

  With Jock squiring Sharon, and with Trev at Mary’s side, they walked up a steep passage, so narrow that the buildings on either side seemed to be brushing foreheads to keep each other up. Mary was surprised by the way they had paired off. She thought they would be paired in colours. Sharon and Trev were the same ginger, after all, and Mary was as dark as Jock. But they had been paired by size, and Trev was small and firm, like herself. Sharon and Jock were brushing foreheads too; they explored the deep shadows together while, a little way back, Mary walked with ginger Trev’s ginger arm pressed tight over her dark shoulders. He was making sure she wouldn’t get away. At one point Jock and Sharon twirled off further into the night (raising their voices together in a weird wail so that the others could keep track) and Trev slammed Mary up against a wall and tried to cover her mouth with his. Mouths again, you see. His was as private as hers; it contained much wetness and bad air. Her mouth, all on its own, made several attempts to slide out from under his, causing Trev’s arms to tighten round the back of her neck. And his mouth, which was alive, kept sliding after hers. Mary was getting the idea now; but she still wasn’t sure about the kind of harm Trev intended to do to her.

  ‘Don’t say I don’t look after you,’ said Sharon haughtily, glancing back as she descended some crackly stone steps.

  Mary—who, incidentally, was going to say no such thing—stood and blinked at the sunken building. Abruptly she saw herself, behind a hurriedly shut door, crying naked on her knees. She felt Trev’s urging pressure on her shoulders. He almost had her where he wanted her now.

  ‘Come on, Mary,’ he said. ‘This is it.’

  Mary bent her head and continued down the steps.

  Later, when she tried to reassemble the parts of that stretched night, she found that it came back to her in hot thudding pockets of image and heartbeat . . . A dark and rancid room with a square veil of milky light on the wall. Heavy brown bottles swilled from hand to hand and white nuts that the others swallowed. Sharon standing up, falling over, hopping on one foot, pulling clothes over her head with an electric crackle, subsiding again in careless laughter with Jock behind a screen. Then Trev’s slow attack. She couldn’t tell what he wanted, she couldn’t work out what he wanted. ‘Loosen up. I said loosen up,’ he said. He was testing, testing, probing her skin in search of its openings. If she had known what he wanted she might have struggled less. He hit her twice across the mouth early on. She thought that was part of it. She heard the methodical grunting from behind the screen. She tried to drain her body of all its powers of resistance. She started to understand. His two wet red points wanted to get as close as they could to her, to get inside. His two tongues wanted her two mouths. I can bear this, she thought; but there was more. He spread her a different way, on her side with her legs splayed. He started preparing something very complicated in the nexus of her body. She bit her hand to put the pain off centre. This was new all right, this was mor
e. It reminded her of something, even then: squatting on the garage floor, a bottle still creaking on its axis, Impy looking on and Sharon saying that everybody did it. Trev laughed and said, ‘You dirty bitch, you’ve done this before, ooh you’ve done this before.’ Mary couldn’t believe she had done this before: she knew she never wanted to do it again. Suddenly his body snapped tight and she felt a foul snarl over her shoulder. Then he sank down sideways, out and away from her. ‘Wake me in an hour,’ he said. ‘With your tongue.’

  Mary didn’t stir for some time. I’m dead, she thought. He’s killed me. Why? How did he dare? And soon he’s going to kill me again. So when she heard Trev start to cough himself awake, the idea came to her as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. She thought, no, not me: him, kill him. Quickly she groped among the plentiful rubble on the floor. She found a wedge-shaped brick; it was sharp and heavy. She hit him twice and there was a double-crack each time. She hit him in the mouth, of course. Where else?

  She was ready when the others woke up. She had slept a little too—and the past had come and mangled her again while she was inert and helpless. She sat hugging her knees against the wall. In the far corner, buckled and wheezing on the floor, lay ginger Trev. Mary had inspected his face coldly—bottom half in red tatters—and turned it away so that it nestled against the stone corner of the disused fireplace. She waited. At length, Sharon and Jock came alive again on the floor, creaking apart from each other, letting out muffled moans of painful reproach.

  Then Jock was standing in the centre of the room, stripped raw and panting faintly. ‘My God. Trev took a knock then,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Mary, who was about to explain what she had done and why.

  ‘Is not your fault.’ He went closer. ‘Fucking madman in his drink, Trev.’ He knelt. ‘Bloody hell, he broke his mouth,’ he said, turning to Mary with slow bafflement.

  ‘Go on, Mary,’ said Sharon from the floor. Sharon looked at Mary palely. Sharon was gone. Sharon was on the other side.

  Mary hurried up into the air. The light was still squeezing her eyes when a hard hand clamped down on her shoulder and she was being rushed out into the street, with someone’s chest pressing flat against her back. Mary thought—naturally enough—that she was going to get fucked again.

  ‘Just routine, my love,’ said an indifferent male voice. ‘Just relax and there’ll be no grief. We’ll have you sorted out in no time at all.’

  Under a slackening grip he led her towards a black bus on whose haunches two men in silver-studded blue suits nonchalantly lounged. The bus opened up to let her in.

  ‘She was on her way out, sir. Come on, my angel, up you get.’

  Mary did as she was told. The doors closed again. She sat down on the narrow ledge and scratched her hair. A bank of sun beamed in at her through the caged windows. It was a few dizzy seconds before Mary realized she was not alone. She felt his breath before she saw him, a square figure hunched on the facing ledge. She had to hold a hand over her eyes before she could see his—greenly glinting in the negative shadow.

  ‘Name,’ he said.

  ‘—Name what?’

  ‘You. What’s your name?’

  ‘Mary.’

  He sighed. ‘What’s your other name, Mary.’

  ‘Mary Lamb.’ Mary Lamb: sounds good, thought Mary.

  ‘Sounds good,’ he said. ‘Sounds innocent anyway. I’ve seen you before, haven’t I. I know you.’

  ‘I haven’t seen you before,’ said Mary. There was a long silence. Mary’s blood was beginning to climb down again.

  ‘What brings you along this way, young Mary Lamb? These people aren’t your kind, are they?’

  ‘No, I don’t think they can be.’

  ‘Stay with your own kind then. Listen. If I see you again there’ll be trouble. Lots of it. Okay? Off you go then.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He kicked open the door. ‘Let her go, Dave,’ he said. ‘She’s not one of them.’

  Mary walked erectly down the street, a fire of eyes prickling on her back. Once she had turned the second corner, she leaned against a wall and pressed a hand to her forehead. The strangest thing about him was his breath. Its smell chimed with her earliest memory—two days ago, waking in that white room. She remembered now. Someone had been with her when she woke up; someone had asked if she was all right and told her to be good . . . Well, I’ll try my best, she thought, and started to walk again.

  There was something else about his breath. Everyone else’s breath was alive. His wasn’t. His breath was dead.

  Part Two

  5 Gaining Ground

  ‘More tea, love?’

  ‘Yes please,’ said Mary.

  ‘How you getting on then?’

  ‘Fine, fine. I feel better all the time.’

  ‘Coming back to you, is it dear?’

  ‘Well—a little,’ Mary lied.

  ‘It’s just a matter of time,’ said Mrs Botham thoughtfully, ‘—purely a matter of time.’

  Watched and smiled at by Mary, Mrs Botham limped back to her seat—her inviolable armchair, wedged into the corner by the fire with toy flames. Limp hardly did justice (Mary coolly reflected) to the spectacular unevenness of Mrs Botham’s gait: she walked like a clockwork hurdler. Mary attributed this to the fact that one of Mrs Botham’s legs was roughly twice the length of the other. The standard limb sported its special extension, like a black brick; but that scarcely made up the disparity; and her longer leg seemed embarrassed by its own profligacy, bending outwards in a sympathetic arc. Mr Botham—and Gavin, too, naturally—spoke of something going wrong with Mrs Botham’s leg a long time ago in her life. Something with a dark name had come and stretched it for her. No one said how or why.

  ‘I knew a lady from the clinic,’ said Mrs Botham, her head angled solicitously, ‘she took a knock on the head one night, said that she couldn’t remember, you know, hardly anything.’

  ‘She was probably pissed,’ said Gavin, who sat nearby on the couch, gazing, as was his habit, at a magazine full of glaring, near-naked men. They had all built their own bodies, and had all made a terrible mess of it.

  Mrs Botham’s head twisted round towards her son. ‘She was not pissed, Gavin! I mean drunk,’ she added, returning to Mary with her smile. ‘She had amnesia. Her mind was a complete blank! In the morning she couldn’t recognize a soul, not even her own husband who was cradling her in his arms or even her own little children, Melanie and Sue.’

  ‘That’s not amnesia, Ma,’ said Gavin.

  Mrs Botham’s features, which until that moment seemed poised for resigned and melancholy sleep, hardened watchfully. ‘. . . What is it then?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s called a hangover,’ said Gavin, without looking up.

  ‘Why do you behave in this way to your own mother, Gavin? Why? Please tell me why, Gavin.’

  Gavin turned another page of his magazine, and another tiny head beamed out from its fortress. ‘Because you’re an alcoholic, Ma,’ he said.

  ‘No she’s not,’ said Mr Botham, who as usual had been sitting in cheerful silence at the table. ‘She’s an ex-alcoholic.’

  ‘Ah, no, my dear,’ said Mrs Botham, her face all abrim again, ‘now that is where you are wrong. There is no such thing as an ex-alcoholic . . .’

  ‘Only an alcoholic.’

  ‘Only an alcoholic.’

  ‘Only an alcoholic,’ they all said at once.

  ‘And she was an amnesiac!’ Mrs Botham told her son. ‘. . . And you’re just a queer anyway.’

  ‘That’s right, Ma,’ said Gavin, and turned a page.

  ‘You see, Mary,’ said Mrs Botham: ‘once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Oh, if I could’ve just got Sharon to come to Al Anon! But she’d never come. She was too drunk all the time. Do you know, Mary, that the true alcoholic’—and here she closed her eyes—‘they fear nothing. Nothing. Oh, I’ve had the lot, I admit it, Mary. Methylated spirits. Turpentine. After-shave. The lot. Si
lver-polish. Weed-killer. Paint-remover. Washing-up liquid. Everything. Disinfectant. 4711. Cough-mixture. Nasal decongestant. Windowlene. Optrex. I’ve had them all. You see, Mary, that was before I came to value my sobriety above all things. I treasure my sobriety. Have you ever looked up sobriety in the dictionary, Mary? Have you? You see, it doesn’t only mean not being drunk. It means honesty, quietude, moderation, tranquillity, sanity, dignity, temperance, modesty, honesty . . .’

  Mary settled herself more comfortably. Mrs Botham had already explained to Mary about sobriety, half an hour ago; but Mrs Botham was so drunk by now that she either couldn’t remember or perhaps didn’t care anyway. Mary wasn’t about to mind. She fixed her eyes on Mrs Botham’s lost numb face, seeing Sharon everywhere, and employed a skill she had learnt to perfect over the past few days. When Mrs Botham was talking to you, you just looked her way without really listening. Mrs Botham wasn’t about to mind. As far as she was concerned, talking was the main thing. It wasn’t really to do with you: it was to do with her. Mrs Botham acknowledged as much, quite frequently. She kept saying how nice Mary was to talk to. She said that was what she really liked—someone to talk to.

  Mary even glanced around the room from time to time, or she sent her restless senses out on their patrol. There on the table was the empty blue plate, the teapot and its family. At nine o’clock every night Mrs Botham would lollop into the kitchen and shut the door behind her. She said she hated the Nine o’Clock News. Mary didn’t blame her. Mary feared the television too. It was a window with everything happening on the other side—it was too much and Mary tried to keep it all out. At half-past nine Mrs Botham would emerge in processional triumph, bearing the small metropolis on her tray: the twin stacks of toast woozy with butter, the boiling pink tea so powerful that it made the mouth cry, the fanned brown biscuits like the sleeping dogs on the tin from which they came. According to Gavin, Mrs Botham always got drunk again while she was in the kitchen alone. Mary believed him. Mrs Botham was certainly very anxious to talk about sobriety on her return. But Mary didn’t mind. She was very grateful to Mrs Botham for everything she had done in making her so welcome here.