Nocturne

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘I’m in therapy.’

  ‘You are?’

  He nodded gravely, telling me about a woman he visited in Hampstead, how perceptive she was, how much she’d begun to help him, but then the waiter arrived and I seized the menu, glad of the interruption. With the greatest reluctance, Brendan turned his attention to the blackboard on the wall. I ordered a plate of sausage and mash and a side salad. While Brendan was still hunting for something to eat, I looked up at the waiter, asking whether he was on every evening. He nodded.

  ‘What did you think of the guy with the flute?’ I asked him. ‘The one who was playing the other night?’

  The waiter looked confused a moment, then shook his head.

  ‘We’ve had no guy with a flute,’ he said. ‘The guv’nor prefers to stick with the CDs.’

  The meal over, we took a mini-cab back to Napier Road. After three hours at the confessional, Brendan still had a lot to get off his chest and it was obvious that he wanted me to invite him in. I tried to make it equally obvious that it was time to say goodnight and he’d been pleading with me for a couple of minutes before the driver brought things to a head.

  ‘You’re up for ten quid,’ he muttered. ‘Do you want to go somewhere else, or not?’

  Brendan was out of the car in seconds, fumbling with his wallet. I’d noticed before how well he responded to deadlines. As he turned towards the house, I took his place on the pavement. The driver was pocketing Brendan’s tip.

  ‘Come back in an hour,’ I told him pointedly. ‘That’ll save the cost of the phone call.’

  In the kitchen, I busied myself with coffee. Brendan, who’d eaten barely anything in the restaurant, had disappeared into the bath- room. I could hear him being over-emphatic with the loo-flush and the handbasin the way you do when you’re trying to cover something up. When he came back into the kitchen, he was grinning, shiny- eyed.

  ‘I apologise,’ he said at once. ‘I’ve been fucking silly.’

  ‘Apologise for what?’

  ‘Giving you all that bullshit in the restaurant. Christ knows what you must think. I’m your boss, for God’s sake, and probably double your age.’

  He took the coffee from my hand. His nose had started to run. I tore off a sheet of kitchen roll and passed it to him, and he eyed me for a moment or two, sniffing.

  ‘You want some? I’ve got plenty.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Never use it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ever tried it?’

  ‘No.’ .

  ‘Don’t think you might be missing out?’

  I steered him towards a kitchen chair, sitting myself down at the other end of the table. Whatever else cocaine did for him, it certainly cheered him up. The maudlin depressive I’d just shared a meal with seemed to have disappeared. In his place, there was someone infinitely more self-confident.

  On the shelf behind his head was the alarm clock I normally took to bed. It would be fifty minutes before the mini-cab returned so I decided to treat what remained of the evening like a research interview. Most men adore talking about themselves.

  ‘Why Doubleact in the first place?’ I asked him. ‘How come you got involved?’

  Brendan misinterpreted the question, although it took me several seconds to realise he was talking about his marriage. It had been a challenge, he said. He’d done it on impulse, one of those things that feel right at the time, and to be fair the first couple of years had been pretty good.

  ‘ So what went wrong ?’

  ‘Sex.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sex. She lost the taste for it, didn’t want it, too busy, too fucking preoccupied, and you know what happens then? You get a bit lonely, and maybe a bit reckless, a bit fuck-you-too, and you know what happens then?’

  I shook my head, regretting I’d ever started the conversation. We should have stuck to his mid-life crisis and what his therapist thought about it all.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘What happens then?’

  Brendan had produced a little silver compact. He opened it. On one side was a mirror. On the other, nestling amongst the tiny polythene twists of coke, I counted three condoms. It was a pathetic piece of late-night theatre, at once crude and offensive, and I told him so. He looked at me in genuine bewilderment.

  ‘I didn’t mean it that way,’ he said. ‘Jesus, don’t get me wrong.’

  ‘What do you mean, then ?’

  I mean that this is what happens. You go off the rails, you flail around. Sex, drugs…’ he shrugged, ‘… crap quiz shows, it’s all part of the same gig.’

  ‘You’re telling me it’s your wife’s fault? She doesn’t understand you? Is that it?’

  ‘That’s part of it.’

  ‘What else, then?’

  ‘I dunno. Truly, Jules, I don’t. All that stuff I was telling you, about you, about what I feel for you, want for you. I meant it, every little bit of it, mean it, present tense. But it’s a symptom, isn’t it? It means I’m half crazy.’ He paused. ‘You want me to go? Just say.’

  I poured myself another coffee. There were bits of Brendan that were undeniably attractive. Not the bits that he’d be proudest of - the fame, the profile, the money - but his occasional gaucheness, and odd glimpses of a kind of innocence that lay behind it. When he talked about his early career in documentaries - he’d started as a researcher on World in Action - I thought I detected a genuine wistfulness that those early days were over. He’d stayed with Granada for most of the Seventies, ending up as a Factuals Producer. He seemed to have been good at it. And he seemed to have really cared.

  I settled at the table again, reaching for the sugar bowl. Brendan was telling me about Members Only. Apparently the BBC apparatchiks loved it.

  ‘We’ll get recommissioned,’ he sniffed again. ‘Definitely.’

  ‘When do they make the decision?’

  ‘It’s made.’

  I must have looked surprised. I was clueless when it came to the politics of television but the vibe in the Members Only production office wasn’t that wonderful. The ratings had only recently begun to climb and one of the kinder early reviews had described the series as ‘stillborn’. The opening programmes had lacked bite. There was no genuine venom. We’d been too polite, too deferential, a raft of half- funny parlour games lashed together with nods and winks about the week’s goings-on at Westminster. Brendan, with his proud talk of the ever-lengthening queue of politicians eager to clamber aboard, seemed to me to be confirming this.

  ‘So how come the Beeb want us back so soon?’ I asked.

  ‘Because we’re safe. Because we square the circle.’

  ‘What circle?’

  ‘The one they can never crack. They’ve got a problem with politicians and it’s getting worse. Everyone hates them, everyone knows they’re at it all the time, fingers in the till, backhanders wherever they can get them, mistresses in love nests, all that. Problem is, what do they do about it in programme terms?’

  ‘Expose it,’ I said at once. ‘Use Panorama. Or Newsnight.’

  ‘Of course,’ he nodded. ‘And that happens. But it’s risky. Politicians have long memories. They don’t take prisoners, either side. And when they hold the purse strings, licence-wise, it suddenly isn’t simple any more.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ I insisted. ‘You expose it.’

  Brendan was looking at me the way he’d done in the restaurant, a great fondness in his eyes. I think he’d accepted by now that a fuck was out of the question but that still left him a number of other options. He could play at being my mentor, my guardian, my friend. The facts of life, after all, was a big, big phrase.

  ‘You need to know how these things work,’ he said gently. ‘It’s not as black and white as you might think.’

  ‘Yes it is. Half the MPs we get on the show are corrupt. Small tim
e, big time, it makes no difference. If we know it, if we can prove it, we should say it.’

  ‘Ridicule’s just as effective. They hate being laughed at.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘So what’s the problem? There are dozens of ways of skinning the cat. Just because we don’t happen to go for heavy documentary, does that—?’

  ‘No, of course it doesn’t. But that’s just the point. We don’t ridicule them. We invite them along and let them party. It’s all so fucking good natured, so matey. They come across like actors, only richer.’

  ‘That’s because they are actors.’

  ‘No, they’re not. They’re politicians. They represent us. We trust them with our votes. Democracy? Parliament? The voice of the people? Remember all that?’

  I broke off, embarrassed at my own passion, at the way it had tumbled out. We’d had exactly this argument in the office and a couple of us had concluded that there was precious little difference between Luvvies and Members Only. Both had been risk-free, another twenty-six minutes of late-night wallpaper that no one would ever remember. With actors, that didn’t matter. With politicians, it most certainly did.

  Brendan was miming applause. I ignored him. One minute he’s itching to save the world, I thought bitterly. The next he’s counting the money in the bank. One of these was the real Brendan Quayle and it didn’t take too many light years to work out which.

  ‘Who can blame you?’ I said at last. ‘You’ve got it cracked, you’ve made it, you can even kid yourself you’ve tried to make a difference, and still be rich. Nice work .. .’ I offered him a cold smile,’… if you can get it.’

  Brendan, chastened, was looking at the open compact and for a second or two I sensed how important it was for him to have someone forceful around. He liked to slip the leash, test the limits, but he liked discipline too. No wonder he’d ended up with someone like Sandra.

  I got to my feet, newly businesslike, checking my watch.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I’m not being rude but we ought to get one or two things straight.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like quite where we go from here.’ I tried to soften my voice a little. ‘You’re my boss. I work for you. But we’ve got a problem, haven’t we?’

  Brendan shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a problem. But I’ve talked about it and you were nice enough to listen. For which, many thanks.’

  ‘You mean that’s it?’ I was staring at him. ‘You’re better? You’re cured?’

  ‘Of course not, but it’s not hole-in-the-wall any more. I’m not creeping around trying to hide it, disguise it, pretend it never happened.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said dryly. ‘But is that enough?’

  ‘For now, yes.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means I love you, and it means you’re guest researcher on the show. I suggest we give it a month, see how it goes. Christ, you might be terrible. Who knows?’

  I studied him while he got to his feet, saying nothing. Then I reached down for the compact. It closed with a snap.

  ‘No chance,’ I smiled at him. ‘Terrible is the last thing I’ll be.’

  After Brendan had gone, I did a little dance around the kitchen and then demolished the last of the gin. Against the odds, a tacky evening had turned out OK. I’d resisted most of the obvious traps and might even have turned an obsession into the beginnings of a friendship. Best of all, I’d hung on to my new job on terms that were moderately honourable, and as long as I didn’t trip over the small print, I saw no reason why I shouldn’t go from strength to strength. Beyond guest researcher lay the jobs that really interested me - directing and producing - and I was still fantasizing about the series that would take me to the BAFTA awards when I took one last gulp of Gordons, reached for the bedside light switch and drifted off to sleep.

  I awoke to a noise. It was pitch black. I lay still, scarcely daring to breathe. I had a pounding headache and the moment I moved it got worse. After a second or two I could make out the shape of the door. The door was open. When I’d come to bed, and turned off the light, I thought the door had been closed. The noise again, the creak of a floorboard, someone moving, someone very close. Was I imagining this? Was it a nightmare? Too much Gordons?

  My mouth was dry. I tried to swallow but nothing happened. By now, just, I could make out another shape, something solid, standing absolutely still. I closed my eyes, trying to will the shape away. Definitely a dream, I told myself, making a mental note to go easy on the booze. I opened my eyes again. The shape was still there, anything but spectral. Very slowly, my hand found the light switch. I had no choice. I couldn’t just lie there. I had to find out.

  The light flicked on and I screamed. Gilbert was standing at the foot of the bed. He had a plaid blanket around his shoulders and a pair of pyjama bottoms on underneath. He stared down at me, motionless. ‘Are you all right?’, he said. I nodded, terrified. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘He’s gone?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your friend?’

  ‘Yes.’ I swallowed hard. I wanted to throw up. ‘Yes, he went hours ago.’

  ‘And he didn’t hurt you?’

  ‘Hurt me? I stared up at Gilbert, lost for words.

  A smile ghosted across his face. Then he nodded twice and began to shuffle backwards towards the door, disappearing into the little hall outside. I heard my front door open and close. Half a minute later there were footsteps overhead, then the lilt of the flute, a reedy jig, celebratory, and the footsteps again, much louder this time, thudding in time to the music, round and round the room, directly over my bed. Gilbert dancing, I thought numbly, crawling out of bed and making it to the bathroom in time to vomit.

  An hour later, I was still sitting in the front room, shrouded in the duvet, staring at the phone. I’d double bolted my front door, and wedged the sofa against the door that led to the hall, but no matter what I did the image of Gilbert hung before me. What had brought him downstairs like that? What right had he got to watch over my private life? To make assumptions about the people I chose to come home with? And what, most important of all, might he do next?

  The more I thought about it, the more alarming it became. This lunatic, with his recorded messages about approaching doom, had become my self-appointed keeper. He was standing guard over me. He was watching the street outside. Christ, he might even be keeping a record of my movements, counting me in, logging me out. There was still no sign of violence, no definite physical threat, but he plainly had no qualms about trespass, about letting himself into my flat in the middle of the night and scaring me witless in the process.

  I tried to calm myself, to tell myself that I was unharmed, un- touched, just a bit shaken up, but the truth was that Gilbert had slipped a noose around my life and each time he stepped out of line and did something like this, the noose tightened. Where all this might lead terrified me, but trying to work out what steps to take was far from easy.

  Changing the locks was an obvious move and tomorrow I vowed to do just that. Phoning the police was another option, but the harder I thought about it, the less certain I became. Would they arrest him? Cart him off somewhere and lock him in a cell? Was that what I really wanted? I closed my eyes, trying to stop myself shivering, trying to imagine the inevitable scene, me trying to explain to some hard-faced cop that Gilbert was harmless really, just a bit odd, a bit funny. Where would that conversation take us? Would they really listen if I suggested they just had a little chat with my nocturnal visitor? Told him to behave himself? Told him to act normal?

  I shook my head, knowing it was useless even attempting to explain. The one person who would have listened and would have understood was Nikki, but just now she was on the other side of the world, which left me pretty much on my own. I had other friends, of course - mates from university days, people
from work, numbers I could phone - but inviting them into my claustrophobic little world, the on-off saga of me and Gilbert, wasn’t a prospect I relished. They’d want to get involved. They’d batter me with advice and good intentions. And just now, all I wanted to do was stop thinking about it. If Gilbert was a headache, please God for a bottle of Nurofen.

  Full-length on the sofa, huddled under the duvet, I drifted off to sleep. Dawn brought the cough of a car starting in the street outside. Upstairs, I could hear nothing and, after the car had gone, I shifted the sofa and began to creep around the flat, moving very stealthily, the way you might behave if you found yourself locked up with a wild animal. The image was all too apt and I thought about it while I waited for the kettle to boil. It wasn’t Gilbert exactly, not the Gilbert I knew and trusted. It was someone else in there, someone I’d never met, wholly unpredictable, wholly strange, and wholly capable - as I now knew - of terrifying me. Who was this man who’d broken into my flat, and into my bedroom? Who was this man who’d stood by my bed knowing, yes knowing, the effect it would have on me? What was his name? And - more to the point - what on earth would he do next?

  I went to work. Brendan, sweet irony, was practically invisible. No surprise meetings outside the cubby hole that served as a kitchen. No chance collisions on the staircase or in the corridor. Not a single phone call about something I might - just by chance - have forgotten to do. By midday, dizzy with exhaustion, I went up to his office. He was sitting behind his desk, Sandra at his shoulder. They were going through some budget or other. I stood in the open doorway, staring at them. I hadn’t even bothered to confect an excuse for my visit.

  Sandra was frowning.

  ‘Yes?’

  I muttered something about one of next week’s Members Only guests, turned and fled. I had to get on top of this. I knew I had. No one else would help me. No one could. It was down to me. My problem.

  I took a cab home. In the hall, fumbling with the key, I looked up to see the message scrawled on my door. The message had been daubed in purple crayon. It read ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry. Please change the locks.’ I stared at it a moment, relieved and angry at the same time. This wasn’t crazy at all. This made sense. I ran up the stairs to Gilbert’s flat. After knocking for the fourth time and calling his name, I gave up. Whether he was in there or not no longer bothered me. I knew exactly what I wanted to say and sooner or later I’d find the time and the place to say it.