by jwilde
'It's our cross to bear,' she said vaguely.
Guy bent his throbbing neck and kissed her mouth, which was half-open and half-awake and tasted of dreams and fever. He lay there vigilantly, hoping and not hoping. The weak delirium of dawn, when the body is childishly tired and tender, with surprising tangs and hurts and tastes: it had happened, during shared insomnias, after summer balls, and, much longer ago, at the end of nights of soldierly study. Is Troilus and Cressida an anti-comedy? Explore the formation of the Special Relationship . . . He was in fact grotesquely erect: the skin down there was tugged tight as a drum. His auxiliary heart, refusing to become disused, or taken lightly. Just by pressing into the linen here one could perhaps quite easily . . .
'I'll do it,' murmured Hope, sliding from the bed in quiet animal obedience - for Marmaduke's great cries were by now of the volume and timbre that no mother could sleep through. It was morning. Today was another day.
He turned on to his back. He had this toy of Nicola in his head, oval, blue-backed, like a Victorian miniature. Symbol of the real thing. The real thing. Three brutal jolts would certainly finish it. But all kinds of considerations — including squeamishness, another kind of amour propre, and the thought of all the mess it would leave - combined, as always, to stay his hand.
You wouldn't want to play with it like that.
Two days later Guy did something ordinary. And then something strange happened.
He helped a blind man cross the street. And then something strange happened.
On Rifle Lane a very old blind man was standing at the zebra crossing. Rangy, propulsive, briskly strolling, Guy paused when he saw him. It was perhaps not such a common sight, not any more. One doesn't often see the blind in the streets now. One doesn't often see the very old. They stay inside. They don't come out much, not any more. Not this year.
Tall, thin, the blind man stood with blind erectness, backward-tending, as road and pavement users crisscrossed past. Something wavery in his stance suggested that he had been there for some time, though he showed no distress. In fact he was smiling. Guy strode forward. He took the blind man's blind arm. 'Would you like a hand, sir?' he asked. 'Here we are,' he said, guiding, urging. On the far kerb Guy cheerfully offered to take the blind man further — home, anywhere. Sightless eyes stared at his voice in astonishment. Guy shrugged: offer the simplest courtesy these days and people looked at you as if you were out of your mind. And then astonishment became general, for the blind man tapped his way to the nearest wall, and dipped his head, and used his eyes for something they were still good at. Tears came from them readily enough.
Guy reapproached the blind man with embarrassment and some panic.
'Leave him,' said an onlooker.
'Leave him alone, for fuck's sake,' advised another.
Guy wandered off into the rain. Hours later, at home, when his confusion and his heartbeat had started to steady, he thought of something he had read somewhere . . . about the traveller and the starving tribe. How did it go? The sun-helmeted anthropologist revisits a tribe which he had once celebrated for its gentleness. But now the tribe was starving; such food as there was went to the strong; and the strong laughed at the weak, the flailing, fading weak; and the weak laughed too. The weak laughed too, sharing in the hilarity of vanished feeling. One time, an old woman stumbled on the edge of a drop. A passing strongman - a food expert, a swaggering food champ — helped her over the edge with a kick in the rump. As she lay there, laughing, the traveller hurried forward to give comfort. And the comfort was intolerable to her. Two strokes of the hair, soft words, a helping hand: this was what made the woman cry. The present seemed perfectly bearable - indeed, hilarious - until you felt again what it was like when people were kind. Then the present was bearable no longer. So the old woman wept. So the blind man wept, They can take it, so long as no one is kind.
Guy was kind, or kind that day. It was all right for him. He had Nicola's postcard in his pocket. The suit of armour: the brave words. Any other time he might have walked right past. Love is blind; but it makes you see the blind man, teetering on the roadside; it makes you seek him out with eyes of love.
'Darling? Come and sit on my lap.'
'. . . Go way.'
'Come on. And read a book. Come and sit on Daddy's lap. There's a good boy.'
'Zap.'
'Lap. Very good! Good boy. Look. Food. You like food. What's that?'
'Bam.'
'Bam?. . . Spam. Sssspam. Very good. What's that?'
'Agh.'
'Egg, yes. Egg. What's that? . . . What's that? . . . We're in the garden now. What's that? What's that, darling?'
'Dick.'
'Stick. Very good. Sssstick. Now here's a flower. Say "flower" . . . Those are the petals. And this bit down here is -'
'Dork.'
'Very good, darling. Excellent. Now what do you call this? Where the tree used to be. Like in our garden. Where they've chopped it down.'
'Dump.'
'Marmaduke, you're a genius. What's that? ... A tree. What's that? . . . Grass. Don't do that, darling. Ow. Wait, look! Animals. Animals. What's that?'
'Jeep.'
'Yes, sheep. Very good. What's that?'
'Zion.'
'Lion. Lllion. Lllion. Very good. And what's this squidgy thing here?'
'Nail.'
'Snail. Excellent! Aha. Here's your favourite. Here's the best animal of them all. No wait, darling. Hey! One more. You like this one. What is it? What is it?'
' . . . Gunk!'
'Yes! And what does it do? What does it do that no other animal can? What does it do?’
'. . . Dink!'
'Very good. You know, sometimes you can be the most adorable man-cub.'
As Guy bent forward to give a farewell kiss to the increasingly restless child — Marmaduke caught him with the reverse headbutt. It was probably at least semi-accidental, though Marmaduke did do a lot of laughing and pointing. In any event the combined movement resulted in a fairly serious impact. Anyone who has ever marched into a lamp-post, or into a fellow pedestrian, knows that 3 m.p.h. is quite dangerous enough for human beings, never mind 186,000 miles per second. He was still spitting doubtfully into a paper tissue when, about fifteen minutes later, there was a knock and the door opened.
'Doris,' said Guy.
'Guy,' said Doris.
Guy flinched a little at the familiarity - or one of his genes did. A recent recruit, Doris was a portly blonde of thirty or forty, with mutinous legs. She was already a martyr to the Clinches' stairs.
'There's someone at the door for you.'
'Oh? Who is it?'
'Don't know. Says it's urgent. It's a man.'
Guy wondered what to do. Hope was playing at the Vanderbilt with Dink Heckler and wouldn't be back till just after seven. There was something of a nanny famine at present; even Terry had succumbed to the pressure, gratefully accepting some post at a prison gymnasium. And he couldn't ask Doris, who would in any case certainly refuse. Alone with Doris, within range of Doris, Marmaduke spent every moment trying to kick her swollen shins or jeeringly punching her breasts.
'Bring him up. Sorry, Doris. Show him up. Thank you.'
In due course Keith sailed into the room- in his sailor trousers with their spinnaker flares. His hair was flattened by the rain, and the soaked tabloid hung from his armpit, like an extra limb of little utility. He gave a confidential nod and said,
'Audi.'
Guy thought for a moment and said, 'Howdy.'
'Saab Turbo,' Keith went on. 'Fuel injection. Listen, mate . . .' Keith glanced over his shoulder and then at Marmaduke, who peered up with interest from the remains of his toy castle. 'Listen. I popped round there with some stuff and - Nicola. Between you and me, pal, it don't look too shrewd.’
Guy stared at him with earnest incomprehension.
'I mean, you seen them marks on her wrist.'
'No?'
'The left wrist. Little white scars. You know. Tried it once. Mi
ght try it again.'
'Christ.'
'Says to me: "Don't fix that. Don't fix this. No point. What's the point. Why bother. What's the point. No point." All this. Face like a -she's really down. Emotionally withdrawn. Showing suicidal tendencies innit. I'm just worried she's gone do itself an injury.'
'You really think?'
With a craven expression on his face Keith said, 'Go round and see her, mate. She's been very good to me, she has. You know: a really nice lady. And if she ... I'd never . . .'
'Yes of course.' Guy's pupils moved around in thought and then he said, 'Keith, I couldn't possibly ask you to watch the child for twenty minutes, could I?'
'Course you can. Glad to. Oh uh . . .'And again he peered up at Guy needfully. 'Use your phone?'
'Yes of course. Down one floor and the second door on your left.'
'Kath might be preparing my evening meal.'
When Keith returned - after a long and taxing interval - Guy himself went and burst into the master bedroom to pick up his keys and his money. Driving a hand through his hair, he noticed the heavy indentation of Keith's buttocks on his wife's side of the bed. He felt something had to be done about that. Hurriedly he pummelled the duvet with his fists.
One more visit to the nursery: Keith was down on his haunches, his hands raised, snorting and sniffing-softly sparring with Marmaduke, who looked well pleased with his new friend.
'You are good, Keith,' said Guy.
'Yeah cheers,' said Keith.
Intense but more or less disinterested concern prevailed until he rang her doorbell: after he heard the sound of her voice (its soft moan of assent or surrender or defeat), he felt nothing more than the simple tug of beauty. '6: six', said the oblong sticker next to her button. Such prodigal symmetry. Even her telephone number was somehow minutely glamorous, with the curves of its eights and zeros, like an erotic cipher. With mighty bounds he scaled the stairs.
Guy expected — or wouldn't have been surprised — to find her on a creaking stool with a noose round her neck, or lying on the sofa with a mother-of-pearl derringer in her ear... In reality he found her standing over her desk, and leaning on it capably with her small fists, and for some reason staying that way for a couple of beats after he had chased his chariot heart into the low sitting-room. (The sitting-room meant nothing to him: it was just the place where certain things could happen.) Then she turned.
'You shouldn't have come,' she said warmly. 'But I must admit I'm terribly pleased to see you.'
Guy knew that he would never forget the varieties of light in her face, the prismy clarity of the eyes, the smile with all its revelatory whiteness of tooth - and those teartracks, their solid shine, like solder, on her cheekbones. When women cry (what was that line in Pygmalion?), the hayfever russet is part of the pathos and the whole snotty helplessness, but with her, with her -
'Just an hour ago,' she said, and smiled down at her desk, 'I got the most wonderful news.'
'That's wonderful,' he said, quite unable to keep the disappointment out of his voice. Don't tell me she's crying for joy. How woodenly, now, those wonderfuls echoed in the low room.
An envelope was held up towards him. Airmail: the striped red-and-blue trim.
Nicola said, They're alive. Enola is alive. And - and Little Boy. They're still in transit somewhere between Sisophon and Chantha-buri. But everything is clear now. Completely clear.'
Guy shrugged one shoulder and said, 'Fantastic.'
She came forward and bent over the table for her cigarette lighter. With mournful disquiet Guy saw her breasts through the open neck of black bodice. He looked away, and felt relief when she straightened up and the material tautened. So brown! So close together!
'I fly to Seoul tonight.'
It was fatherly, the whole thing was fatherly— even the way he took her wrist like that was fatherly, fatherly. She was unwilling but after a while consented to sit beside him and hear what he had to say. He said that in his view she wasn't allowing herself to face the truth of what was really happening — in Cambodia. He was gentle, yet firm. There was, he felt confident, nothing lingering in the way he smoothed and patted her hand: a reflex of protective suasion. Guy took stern pleasure in the doubts he saw gathering in her open face. Nicola was nodding, and biting her lip, and leaning forwards at a penitent angle. The neck of her bodice was so disposed that he might have availed himself of her inattention; but he became absorbed, rather, in the solicitous caresses with which he now favoured her hair, her neck, her throat. So brown. So close together. After a silence she said,
Then I'll have to do the other thing.'
He said quickly, 'The underground railway?'
She looked up at him with no expression on her face.'. . . Yes.'
'It's unreliable. A real gamble.'
'Oh. I know.'
'And a lot of money.'
'How much, do you think?' He named a sum and then Nicola added grimly, 'Yes, that's more or less the figure I've heard mentioned. By my contact in . . .Tunisia.'She opened her eyes to their full extent, saying, 'Well it's perfectly simple. I'll sell my flat. The lease isn't all that long but it will probably realize almost that amount. I'll find a room somewhere. And then there's one's jewellery and clothes and so on. That fridge is nearly brand-new.'
'Surely there's no need for all that. Surely.'
'You're right. It won't be enough. Still. There are things a woman . . .'She paused, and said with slow intentness,' A woman can do certain things.'
'Surely. I won't hear of it.'
Nicola smiled at him wisely. 'Oh no. I see your scheme. Guy, that would be completely out of the question.' She placed a consoling hand on his thigh and turned to look towards the window. 'I'm sorry, my dear one. No no. I couldn't possibly let you lend me so much money.'
It was seven o'clock when Guy got back to the house of cards, where love sent him bounding up the stairs again.
Unbelievably, Marmaduke was sitting motionless on Keith's lap, his stocky form partly obscured by the upraised tabloid — and by a hip-high shelf of cigarette smoke. Guy hoped it didn't seem too pointed or censorious, the way he strode in there and hurled both windows open to the rain. Claiming that Marmaduke had been as good as gold, Keith left promptly, and with a willing anonymity, a few minutes before Hope returned with Dink. This gave Guy time to air the room (he waved a towel about while Marmaduke gnawed at his calves) and to rootle out the six or seven dog-ends which Keith had crushed in to an aperture of some mangled toy. Then the house of cards reshuffled.
Hope came up and Guy went down, taking Marmaduke, at Hope's impatient request. Lizzyboo was in the kitchen. And so was Dink Heckler. The South African number seven sat at the table in his fuming tenniswear; as usual, he was passing the time in calm inspection of various portions of his arms and legs; perhaps (Guy speculated) it was their incredible hairiness that held his attention. As he warmed the yelling Marmaduke's half-hourly bottle Guy could hear more yelling upstairs, a reckless exchange of voices that rose to the abrupt climax of the slammed front door. Then Hope skipped down the stairs, resplendent from her tennis, and from her latest domestic achievement: sacking Doris.
'She stole my earrings. They were right there on the dresser,' said Hope.
'Gumbag,' said Marmaduke.
'Can I get a shower?' said Dink.
'Which ones?' said Guy.
They're worthless. Or I'd have strip-searched her,' said Hope.
'Gumbag,' said Marmaduke.
'You hear that? That's Doris. She's been teaching him new swearwords,' said Hope.
'Auntie wants a hug. Ow,' said Lizzyboo.
'Could I get that shower?' said Dink.
'Isn't it amazing, the way he always gets you bang on the nipple? I mean, what's the point of anyone if they're so fat they can't even walk,' said Hope.
'Guzzball,' said Marmaduke.
'Listen to him. I mean his chest! I knew it: Doris has been smoking in the nursery. He'll have to be nebulized,' said Hope.
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'Intal or Ventolín?" said Guy.
'I'll help hold him down,' said Lizzyboo.
'No way,' said Marmaduke.
'Can I get that shower?' said Dink.
There was a big mirror in the kitchen, and a big kitchen in the mirror, and Guy kept glancing secretively at himself, a singular figure in this busy world of glass. Figures swept to and fro on its surface; Dink Heckler, with his one hopelessly repeated question, was the room's only pocket of rest. Guy explored his lips with a slow tongue: he now barely noticed the swelling where Marmaduke had butted him. That night, he decided, he would forbear to clean his teeth. The meeting of mouths (I'm in it now), the way their faces seemed to stall and then lock into the same force field. Some people think that just because one works in the City there are these huge chunks of money lying around. He had felt no reading on his personal tiltmeter and yet their mouths were definitely homing. Of course, she's completely innocent, completely green, about money, as about everything else. Her eyes were closing with the slightest of tremors. Bonds would be best: might take a day or three. And there was a flicker too in the lips somewhere. Talk to Richard in the morning. When it happened he could sense the tongue behind the teeth, stirring or cowering like a wounded bird.
Hope said suddenly, 'Look at the anorexic.'
Guy laughed. He found he was piling food into his mouth: a lump of cheese, a slice of ham, a halved tomato. 'I know. I've only just realized,' he said, and laughed again, bending his knees to lick the gob of mayo dangling from his little finger, 'that I'm absolutely starving.'
'Could I get that shower?' said Dink.
'It's blood,' said Lizzyboo.
'There's blood on his hair. Guy! There's blood on his hair!' said Hope.
'Don't worry,' said Guy. 'It's only mine.'
Outside, the rain stopped falling. Over the gardens and the mansion-block rooftops, over the window boxes and TV aerials, over Nicola's skylight and Keith's dark tower (looming like a calipered leg dropped from heaven), the air gave an exhausted and chastened sigh. For a few seconds every protuberance of sill and eave steadily shed water like drooling teeth. There followed a chemical murmur from both street and soil as the ground added up the final millimetres of what it was being asked to absorb. Then a sodden hum of silence.
