Fifty-Minute Hour

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘Want a drink?’ he asks.

  ‘What?’ My laugh breaks off, sounds frightened now and forced.

  ‘D’you say “what” to everything?’

  ‘Er-no, I …’

  ‘I said “Do you want a drink”?’

  ‘Yeah. Okay. Why not?’ I try to make it casual. My soggy skirt is clinging round my thighs. At least a drink would mean a roof.

  ‘How much time’ve you got?’

  It seems a funny question, but I calculate the minutes until two-ten the next day, feel a sudden terror at the thought of John-Paul creased and limp still. Will Tuesday have restored him? Will I dare go at all? ‘Time’s no problem,’ I say rashly. What’s another lie?

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s go to my place. If we stop off at a pub or something, I’ll only run into the traffic and never get back home. It’s a hell of a trek anyway, even out of rush hour.’

  ‘Where d’you live?’ I’m feeling really nervous now, especially when he doesn’t answer, just zips around the corner to a side street. Are we about to drive to Brighton – or to Bradford? And why’s he parked his car so far away? We must have walked a good half-mile, in dousing spoilsport rain.

  It’s not a car, but a battered Transit van, with no seats in the back, just a scrum of clutter – paint, rope, empty cans, an oil-stained duffel coat, two sleeping bags, some fishing rods, and a cardboard box marked ‘JOHN WEST PILCHARDS. THIS WAY UP’. I fight a weird image of him fishing for canned pilchards as I climb into the front. His clothes and van and duffel coat don’t match his voice and face, both of which are haughty and exclusive; sort of public school fused with Polish aristocrat. I’m also surprised by his driving, which isn’t fast and slapdash (as somehow I’d imagined), but courteous and careful, even cautious. He’s apparently quite willing to pulverise John-Paul, yet he stops for two old ladies trying to cross the road, and waves on other drivers, even when it’s not their right of way.

  We’re heading east, pass quite close to my place, though I decline to mention that; don’t want to give too much away until I know who this guy is. The conversation isn’t exactly flowing. I suspect we’re both haunted by John-Paul. My own thoughts keep fretting back to him, and surely Seton must be brooding on those two violent confrontations, feeling guilty or resentful, or planning further onslaughts. John-Paul’s a third person in the van, squeezed between the two of us, invisible but huge, silent but accusing. We’re all three cold and wary, shivering in damp clothes. We carry on in silence to Deptford, Greenwich, dreary Woolwich, past used car lots and video shops, ‘The Treasure Inn’ (a sleazy Chinese restaurant), ‘Hair Affair’ (‘Free blow-dry with restyling’), and rows of other small and squalid shops, some boarded up, some vandalised. At last, he turns towards me. ‘D’you smoke?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  He fumbles for his cigarettes, offers me a Capstan Full Strength, which must be higher in both tar and nicotine than any other brand I know. I grab it like a starving woman, seize the lighter from him, i-n-h-a-l-e. Christ! It’s strong, or maybe six months’ abstinence has just made me overreact. I’m coughing like a schoolgirl being seduced by her first fag, feel terribly embarrassed, especially when my eyes stream, but Seton barely notices – just one brief glance, then eyes back to the road, his own cigarette clamped between his teeth. Once I’ve recovered from the coughing, I inhale a second time, fight an instant wave of dizziness, a sudden queasy feeling. I’m amazed that just two puffs should affect me quite so strongly, yet, even so, I know it’s right to start again. Mentally, I’m more relaxed already and my hands now have a function, whereas the last few months they’ve been totally superfluous, just dangling dead appurtenances with no real role in life. Who cares what I die of, when John-Paul won’t be there? I don’t even want him there – all weak and wet and bleating at his first sight of a tumour.

  ‘So how d’you know John-Paul?’ I ask, taking another slow deep drag to give me courage.

  ‘I’m a friend of his ex-wife.’

  ‘Ex-wife?’ I’m riveted.

  ‘Yeah. They split two years ago. Though it was a good three days before he even noticed she was gone. He’s so involved with his own life – if you can call it a life.’

  ‘Did he … ever …’ (I plug my mouth with my cigarette, need another fix before I dare complete the sentence) ‘… marry again?’

  ‘Who’d have him, for fuck’s sake? He lives with these two huge wolfhounds, though it beats me how he finds the time to exercise them. Midnight walks, I suppose.’

  I don’t say a word – I can’t. I’m trying to work out whether I’m more (or less) jealous of two wolfhounds than one wife. And why wolfhounds, in the first place, and not spaniels or Welsh corgis? Power again, presumably. Wolfhounds stand nearly fifty inches high. I know. A client had one once, talked about him constantly, even when we were both still horizontal.

  I’m so bemused by dogs and wives, I hardly notice where we’re going, until suddenly we’re jolting down a rough and pitted track with what looks like country wilderness stretching to both sides. Last time I checked the road, it was belching factories, hatching dreary council flats; now it’s breeding cows and sheep, a flock of cackling geese – yes, honestly – just twelve miles from the City and we’re passing a real farm; straggling barns and outhouses with two mongrels nosing round; combed brown fields studded with white stones (which transform to wheeling gulls at our approach). The gulls keep soaring, soaring, seem to melt into the sky, which looks huge and sort of billowy, as if it’s been shaken out and spread to dry, instead of crumpled up to nothing, as in London. London’s disappeared. Noise and traffic, dirt and smoke, have simply been erased. Even the rain has stopped, at last; faint rays of wary sunlight flickering through grasses or rainbowing the puddles. There’s a sudden stir of wings again, powerful ragged flapping wings, slate-grey against the curdled milk of cloud.

  ‘Oh, look!’ I shout. ‘A heron.’

  Seton shrugs. ‘They’re two a penny here.’

  ‘Where’s “here”?’

  ‘Dartford marshes.’

  I daren’t say ‘what’ again, though I must admit I’ve never heard of them. Dartford to me is just a boring tunnel, a nothing sort of town. I hadn’t realised there were marshes, least of all such lonely ones, no more farms or buildings, no sign of man at all.

  I’m wrong. ‘DANGER, PYROTECHNICS!’ says a notice, and Seton stops a moment, points towards the high wood fence, emblazoned with barbed wire.

  ‘See the fireworks factory? It’s ancient, that old place, looks more like a relic, though it’s still producing fireworks. In fact, it’s buried in the wilds here because it also happens to make TNT for the Ministry of Defence.’

  I peer up at a second notice, headed ‘Explosives Act, 1875’, feel a shudder of unease. We’ve already passed the Woolwich Royal Arsenal. Too much dynamite.

  I’m relieved when he jolts on again, and we reach a sort of no-man’s-land, overgrown with bushes, dead and tangled grass, and intercut with weed-embroidered creeks. The light is really beautiful – the last glints and shimmers gleaming on the rain-washed land, gilding the grey water. As I watch, it seems to slowly fade; sky and water melding, colours smudging, blurred. Greys and greens and browns and rusts all creep towards each other and embrace. The birds are dwindling too, now, larks skittering less wildly, piebald peewits flocking home to roost, one lonely kestrel hovering almost motionless. I can feel poems exploding out of me – winged and feathered poems, soaring high, migrating south, guided by the sun and constellations. I’ve always loved the country, feel calmer in it, grounded, as if I need a landscape to frame me, shelter me; need cleaner purer air to blast away the grit and fret of London. Yet this is London – unbelievably.

  ‘There’s the Thames,’ says Seton, pointing not to water, but to the tops of distant boats – a mast, a sail, a chimney-stack – no hulls. ‘See how low we are here – way below the river. And the land’s still sinki
ng, actually, subsiding just a fraction every day. That’s why it’s preserved, I suppose. No one dares to build on it. A solid house could land up in the bog.’

  ‘So how about your house?’

  ‘Who said I had a house?’

  I recall his offer of a drink, see us gulping water from a creek, roosting with the birds. I don’t mind at all. It seems simpler that way, safer. Possessions are so complicated, and walls make prisons, don’t they?

  Suddenly he stops, turns the engine off. I can hear the silence now; smell the marshes, a faint tang of mud and slime, overlaid with brine, as if they’ve been salted to prevent them putrefying. We both get out, walk towards the river, which means a lurch and pant uphill before we’re standing by the wide grey brooding Thames – not the City river with its busy shipping, swarming wharfs, but a river almost empty, reflecting on itself as it ripples in towards us, weeds and bushes fringing it, instead of refineries and factories. It’s cold, it’s bitter cold; a savage wind blowing off the water and clawing at our faces. It’s hard to light our cigarettes, so we turn back to the marsh again, following a winding creek which is edged with thick black mud. It’s such perfect mud I long to take my clothes off and sink down down in it; feel it pressing close against my skin – rich, dark, oozy, slimy mud, soft and probably warm.

  ‘Well, how about our drink?’ says Seton, head bent against the wind.

  I look at him, astonished. Is he about to conjure up a cocktail-bar from a waste of weed and water, pump draught Guinness from a creek? No. He strides on down the tangled path, turns a corner, stops beside a boat – well, half a boat – pulled up out of the water, so it seems to float on scummy grass, a flotsam of old debris lapping at its sides: gaping shoes without their soles, stained and tattered newspapers, a purple Crimplene dress looking solid like a corpse as it huddles on itself, even a rusty broken pram. The hull is battered, peeling, the deck stained with oil and paint, the brass around the portholes green with verdigris. Seton swarms up a rope-ladder until he’s standing on the deck, motions me to follow. The rope is wet and treacherous, so I’m terrified of slipping. I reach the top (with difficulty), stare down at the amputated stern. It’s hacked right through like those ladies in old travelling fairs who were sawn brutally in half. The surgery looks amateur, the severed edge encrusted now with scar tissue – weeds sprouting from the wound.

  ‘Why half a boat?’ I ask.

  Seton doesn’t answer, is already clambering down a second ladder into the main cabin below, which is strangely neat and tidy, as if the boat’s inside and its outside are owned by different people. The two narrow bunks are spread with tartan rugs, the tiny kitchen clean and almost bare, though with a detritus of smells – Calor gas and paraffin, damp timber, cooking-oil. Seton has to stoop, is too tall for the cabin and especially for the kitchen which has a lower panelled roof. He’s finding glasses, pouring drinks; doesn’t ask me what I want, just hands me half a tumblerful of Kentucky bourbon – neat.

  ‘Cheers!’ I say, as we squat down on the bunks. Again, he doesn’t speak, just gulps his whisky swiftly, as if it were mere water, then gets up to light the lamp. It’s some ancient sort of gas lamp which makes a sullen hissing sound, as if resenting my intrusion. I begin to feel uncomfortable. Perhaps Seton doesn’t want me there, is already regretting his rash offer of a drink. I glance uneasily around me, my gaze stopping at two pictures I vaguely recognise – wild explosive abstracts in savage blacks and browns. I get up to view them closer, touch the thick encrusted texture of the paint.

  ‘They’re a bit like John-Paul’s pictures – you know, the ones all round his room.’

  Seton nods. ‘They are John-Paul’s. I bought a couple from him. I suppose you know he paints?’

  ‘Er . . no, I didn’t, actually.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s quite a passion. He’s got hundreds more, just like these. He can’t seem to move on. A lot of artists change their style, or at least the colours of their palette, but John-Paul still seems happiest smearing his own shit around.’

  I take a swig of bourbon, feel really threatened now. ‘But I … I thought he was a doctor, not an artist.’

  ‘He’s neither.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, he never went to art school, or studied art at all, though he does have shows occasionally. God knows why the galleries should bother with his stuff, except I guess he’s pretty good at pulling strings. As for medicine, forget it. I’m more a medical man than he is, and that’s not saying much. He never even trained as a lay analyst, or analytic therapist, or whatever he likes to call himself. The situation’s crazy in this country. Anyone can set up as a psychotherapist or analyst, without even one day’s training. The profession’s always bleating for some sort of national register, with laws to make it bite, but nothing’s come of it so far, so …’ He shrugs. ‘You get phoneys like John-Paul.’

  ‘But surely … ?’ I’m too staggered to go on. I’ve always taken it for granted that John-Paul was not just trained, but so utterly professional he had every last word worked out for its significance, its pith; timed even every silence with hair’s-breadth skill, precision. I slam back on the bunk. How dare he grab our money, tamper with our psyches, when he’s nothing but a quack. Or waste time painting shitscapes when he’s meant to put his patients first; always gives the impression that nothing else exists. I accept another cigarette, try to calm my churning mind while I inhale the smoke deep down. ‘But he is a doctor, Seton. I’ve seen his name written out, several times, in fact – you know, Dr …’

  ‘Yeah, Doctor of Philosophy, and from a second-rate foreign university, which probably means it’s worthless. Oh, I grant you he’s quite bright, probably knows Winnicott from Guntrip, or Wittgenstein from Heidegger, but he’s still a con-man, pure and simple. And a jumped-up one, at that. His family are dirt.’

  ‘Dirt?’

  ‘Well, his father was a plumber. Whom I suppose we’re meant to worship as the new aristocracy, judging by the cash they earn. But as far as breeding is concerned, or culture, or refinement …’ Seton shrugs, refills his empty tumbler. ‘More for you?’ he asks.

  I don’t reply, just spring at him, start lashing out with fists and feet. How dare he decimate John-Paul, slander him, destroy him? It’s obviously all lies. He’s just a rotten snob, and with a grudge against John-Paul – I’ve seen that for myself. He grabs my wrists, holds them in a vice. I try to bite his hands, but he’s far too strong for me, tips me on his bunk, then lies full length across me. I thresh and squirm with fury, but I’m basically quite powerless.

  ‘So you want to bite?’ he asks, his face very close to mine, so I can see the pricks of stubble, the dark hairs in his nose.

  ‘No!’ My shout’s aborted. His mouth is already clamped on mine and he’s biting, kissing, hurting – biting lips and tongue. I can taste blood in my mouth, swallow it and struggle; realise I can’t fight him, so I bite him back, instead – the most violent savage kiss I’ve ever given or received. I never kiss my clients or let them use their mouths; limit any contact to below the waist; remove my mind, my spirit, salvage what I can; outlaw words like intimacy or union. But the whole of me is rallied now, the whole of me involved, as teeth grind teeth, mouths lacerate. Oh yes, this kiss is intimate all right. I can taste his blood and my blood, taste his bourbon breath; feel the shape and pressure of his teeth, the rough, furred, cat-like darting of his tongue. I’m smoking his last cigarette, sucking out the relics of his lunch, the scraps of last night’s dinner; I’m chewing on his past, his personality; scrunching up his cruelty, his rage.

  My own mouth feels sore, misshapen, so I’m almost glad when he starts dragging off my blouse, turning his attention to my breasts. He doesn’t know what buttonholes are for, but he does know how to bite. I’m not wearing a bra – often leave it off the days I see John-Paul – so his teeth have found my nipples, can calculate exactly that fine red line between excitement and real pain. He oversteps the line, hears me draw my breath in
, gasp with pain – bites harder. I’m almost powerless still, can only gnaw his shoulder through the tough wool of his sweater, claw my nails up and down his back. Everything feels rough and somehow angry – his stubble on my face, the prickly rug we’re lying on, his coarse and curly hair, the texture of his hands – a labourer’s hands, despite that haughty face. He removes his mouth, but only for a moment while he fumbles with my skirt. It’s wet still from the rain, tight and too confining, I fight him every inch, fight him harder still as he starts pulling down my tights. There isn’t room to fight – the cabin’s far too cramped. I’ve already knocked my head, banged my knees and elbows on the wall, yet there’s some strange exhilaration in wrestling with this man, even knowing that I’ll lose.

  I’m naked. He looks at me, eyes tracking very slowly down my body. I don’t know what he thinks – he doesn’t say. He’s still got all his clothes on, wet thick hurting clothes. The sweater smells of petrol; the jeans feel stiff and calloused beneath my naked legs. I’ve hardly seen his body, just glimpses of it, tastes of it – his bony wrists, his navel, the whorl of springy body-hair which plunges down his neck, the sourish gamy flavour of his skin. He won’t let me touch his jeans, removes my hand, yanks down the zip himself. The jeans are cruelly tight and his prick springs out, impatient and inflamed, as if mad at being caged so long. It’s tall and thin, like he is, with the same coarse and over-long black hair, and engorged blue veins running to the tip, which is moist and red and swollen like a plum. He isn’t circumcised, and the foreskin is well back, looking slack and almost shrivelled against the taut vigour of the piston.

  He forces in. I don’t object, just use my teeth again. If he wants to fuck me, fine, but I shan’t make it very pleasant for him. No submissive passive Nial slumped there like a dummy while her clients grunt and sweat, feeling nothing, doing less; refusing to yield so much as one small bead of sweat, or one stray pubic hair. I’ll shed my blood for Seton, lose my life, if necessary, just so long as he experiences my anger, my contempt.