by Mark Lawson
A flashing red light. His phone, on the floor. Reminder your car is 8.30. JP booked with you. Cheers and ciao. Dom. 08.10 by the throbbing bright red of the radio alarm.
Finding himself somehow upright is as miraculous as levitation. Folding the coverlet over the sick patch. Hiding it from whom? Himself.
The unpeeling of the contact lenses another Elastoplast rip. Imagine the bathroom mirror as a camera. Although she didn’t know this, Jane Wenham was already as good as dead. To be called a witch was to be christened a corpse.
Speaking feels as if a fist is lodged in his gullet. Watching himself back in edits, there is sometimes a whiny, sinusy note produced by tiredness or strain and today that is the only voice he has. Sounding like this, he would have to pick up the PTCs on AVR later, which never sounds or looks right, and, anyway, the lines he’s just rehearsed are the only bits of any links that he can remember.
Without the contacts, his vision is soft focus but he can see that his eyes look puffy, unwell, terrified. Splashed cold water stings and narrows them, worsening the red-rimmed squint. He will look more presentable (no fucking pun intended) after a shower and shave but even the American morning telly shinyeye stuff that Corinne keeps in her kit (sourced online after a sales ban caused by reports of users being blinded) would do nothing to fix this drunk, hungover haze of a gaze.
He steps away from the unforgiving mirror to undress. Sick drips onto the bathroom floor from his shirt which he shrugs off and, dragging his foot across it, uses as a mop. The dropped boxers spread like a white water lily, speckled with shit, sperm, vomit, wine. He showers and shaves with a scouring intensity that feels less like washing than cosmetic surgery. He breathes in the hot steam to soothe his throat.
As he tackles a stubborn snag of beard, the blade shears deep into his skin. Blood pours across the floating foam in the sink, raspberry sauce on ice-cream. The cut fools him for a moment that it won’t hurt, then does. He has washed off the drink, spunk and shit but now there is more bleeding. Bodies have so many ways of betraying us.
Nothing he tries – pressing with a towel, building a dam of Savlon, attaching a pad of folded tissue – will staunch the flow. Eventually, he puts his screen clothes in a suit bag, goes down to the car holding a towel across the wound like a boxer in the moments just before his seconds concede the bout.
Amazingly only ten minutes late, he apologizes to the driver who says: ‘Another one anyway, innit?’ He waits until 8.50 for Jess, then texts Ogg. His eyes not feeling ready yet even for soft dailies, he peers blearily at the reply, scanning in a panic for the words suspension or police. But the message is: Crossed wires. She here. Ready to shoot when we see ya. D x Has she forgiven, forgotten or is waiting her moment?
It is rush hour and the drive to Hertford Castle is slow. After fifteen minutes or so, he dares to pull at the towel, which sticks encouragingly, reducing his fears of haemorrhage or haemophilia. But, even in the smeary reflection in the car window, the cut looks big and is tenderly wet to the touch. If he manages to remember any of the words, he will have to deliver them in profile, like some Richard III.
Static in a tailback, he chastises himself silently, a combination of his mother and father at their most disappointed. You’re fifty-one. This has to stop. The drinking, the thinking that every woman wants to. You’re not actually an -ic or an -ist. But this has to be a new beginning.
A fresh splash of blood on the towel. He presses it to his chin again.
Dear John
Afterwards, he says, ‘That was extremely satisfactory,’ in the flatvoiced impersonation of John Major that everyone is copying from Spitting Image.
‘Ditto,’ she replies, smoothing down his chest hair, her hand sliding in the sweat, their sweat.
In the first paper she worked for, there had been a man and a woman who, on certain days, would both turn up with a packed roll-bag or hold-all, although neither of them had a business trip planned. At lunchtime, they would leave, five minutes apart, with their luggage, returning unencumbered, with the same time delay, at around 4pm, then making a staggered entrance next morning with their bags again. A colleague who had been abroad on assignment met them one morning on the tube from Heathrow and worked out that they were using an airport hotel, for a mid-day shag and then a night together, the packing an alibi against partners and suspicious staff. She and Ned don’t bring cover luggage to the Marlow Motor Inn, although he always books the room for the whole night, which makes it less squalid. She wonders how many of the rooms are being used for this purpose this afternoon.
He kisses her, their most intimate tastes combined in each mouth.
‘Can I ask you something personal?’ she says.
‘That’s a strange question when I’ve just had my face in your …’
‘Yes, all right,’ she cuts him off before he can make her blush. ‘It’s about your daughters.’
‘Yes?’
Wariness in his voice, the acknowledgement of the other life always a fraught calculation between secret lovers.
‘Their names? Are they okay about them?’
‘Oh, that. Bit of a strop when they were learning to write. We called them Cordy and Philly at home but their teacher made them write it out in full. So the length was a bit of an issue, the envy of those Janes and so on. But, look, I wasn’t a nutter about it. I wouldn’t have called them Othello or Autolycus. On the other hand, with Henry or John, people wouldn’t even know you’d done it. I once met an American guy called Lear, but he might have been named after an aeroplane, or it was his mother’s maiden name. If I ever had a boy …’
A pang of panic. ‘Oh, are you and Jenny … ?’
‘Hypothetically. Other lives, other times. If there ever was one, I’d like to call him Toby, which just sounds middle-class. The thing about Shakespeare is that the girls’ names have lasted better than the boys’ ones. Lots of Juliets, Helenas, Rosalinds. Hermione, I guess, is the one you almost never hear these days. Jenny took a bit of persuading over our two but, in the end, there are lots of diminutives they can use.’
They are facing each other. He pulls her closer. ‘Would you like the other half of that, Mrs Pimm?’
She slaps his shoulder. ‘I told you not to call me that. No, I’m expected at work. I’m “meeting a potential writer”.’
‘Well, maybe you are.’
‘I can’t see you having a column in Perfect Kitchen, Professor.’
‘I could see myself having a column in you.’
He presses himself against her, ready to go again. She closes her legs tight.
‘No. Quick cuddle and then you have first shower. You’re slower than me.’
She gives him a hug that he tries to turn into more, until he is pushing against the slippery edges.
‘No.’
She pushes him away.
‘Was it not satisfactory for you?’ he asks, impersonating the prime minister again.
‘Of course it was.’ Laughing, she adds: ‘Well, I think we can be pretty sure that Major has never said that after an afternoon with his …’ – mistress was a word she didn’t like – ‘his lover.’
‘I am considerably certain that he has not,’ Ned drone-tones.
Finished in the bathroom, she looks with the usual regret at the complimentary shampoos and lotions she can’t filch because they would be evidence.
Ned is sitting on the corner of the bed, dressing. The peculiar allure of an unbuttoned shirt.
‘Next week is a bit useless, I’m afraid,’ she says. ‘Tom’s mum is staying and I get the full Torquemada about what I’ve done that day. I’m fine as long as I don’t actually have to lie.’
‘Helen,’ he says. ‘There’s something you should know.’
If weeing – even, with effort, sneezing – can be controlled, then why not tears? Turning her head, she tries to blink away the instinctive response. That stuff about if he ever had a son. His wife is pregnant. This will have to stop.
She feels vulnerable, u
neasy about removing the bath towel to put on her clothes.
‘Look, Jenny and I are … splitting up.’
The horror that they are finished replaced at once by the terror that he wants them to be together permanently.
‘What? Oh. And does she … does she … ?’
‘Know about us? No. No. But … I think this should stop.’
She tries to make the buckling of her knees look like a decision to sit down. As if with a child or a stranger, she adjusts the towel for decency.
‘Why? Can’t we just see how …’
‘Look, this worked because it was double jeopardy. Neither of us was going to leave. But now I am and you won’t leave Tom.’
‘Are you asking me to?’
His silence and blankness make her think of a politician on television asked the killer question.
‘No,’ he says. ‘No, I’m not.’
The clarity of shock. ‘There’s someone else, isn’t there? I mean, another someone else.’
Another pause. ‘I don’t think you should think that.’
‘Christ! It’s amazing you get any fucking work done.’
‘Oh, Helen, please don’t cry. Hells, this has been fantastic but I don’t think either of us ever thought it had a future, did we?’
Preposition / Proposition
Even though he says, ‘It’ll just be Mummy,’ she knows at once that the phone call is another woman, probably calling to see if he is free and she can drop round. In a moment of devilment brought on by too much wine – she always thinks it proper to bring a bottle and there was already one open when she arrived – she briefly considers announcing that it is about time she is introduced to his mother and going down to take the call.
Through the thin door of the cheap conversion – the thought of the other tenants hearing them doing it – they listen to the tinny rattle of the receiver shaking the cradle. Then it stops. She is wondering whether she is too blotto to brave the Northern Line and make it to her own comfy bed, rather than his Scandinavian pallet thing, when there are footsteps and an angry sort-of-Argentinian woman banging on the door. He is probably bonking her as well.
When he puts his hand across her mouth to shush her, she can smell the onion he chopped for the spag bol. A chap who cooks for you is showing willing, even if it could have done with a few herbs.
Once the Hispanic messenger has gone, he rests his head on her boob and nuzzles her cheek. She shifts so their mouths touch, the meaty, winey taste as their tongues brush. Far more than Unspeakable Peter (let’s see if this is a woman who isn’t comfortable with her body), Ned knows how to use his tongue, funnelling into her here and there.
When he puts his hand on and then in her pants, she knows she will be missing the last Tube. Ned is obviously a player but he doesn’t seem to agree with Unspeak Pete’s view of her prowess in bed and, unlike some people she could mention, he has obviously read The Joy of Sex, sometimes spending so long down there that she has to pull him up like a diver, worried he will suffocate. And, after the blood clot scare, he hadn’t made a song and dance about it being up to him, always wearing a thingy or pulling out if she told him. This time, there is no need to check he has his kit. She has decided that she is going to, as it were, bite the bullet and get it over with. She is getting sick of him wagging it hopefully in front of her face.
As he pulls her towards the door-on-the-floor, she tells him she needs to clean her teeth. Call her a poor little rich girl, but she isn’t big on bedsits. The bathroom bit is next to the bedroom bit, separated only by a sort of shower curtain, so, if one of you gets up to do a wee or worse, the other has to hear it all. If St Valentine had lived here, Feb 14 would just be a normal day.
She hopes that he might take the hint and have a go with the Colgate as well but he doesn’t. When she comes back into the main room, shucking off the dress over her head, a move that always puts her in the mood, he is naked, standing sideways, with that always slightly terrifying right-angle. There is a fortune waiting for whoever can invent socks that didn’t leave a tartan garter on men’s calves. She tells him to turn off the light – she will need a total eclipse to have a go at what Izzy calls a Cornetto – and gets into bed. The bottom sheet – yuk – feels crinkled and stiff.
They do the business, his mouth busy above and below. She worries that her bucking will snap off his tongue.
‘What are we … ?’ he asks.
Having a sudden fear that he might think she has got sorted out at the GP, she warns: ‘I’m not on the pill.’
But she feels his telltale swelling. Her cue to. She tries to push him off.
‘No! No!’ she tells him.
But he thrusts harder. There was only one way out now. ‘Come on me,’ she urges him.
With dismay, she feels him tighten than slacken, the brief streak of heat inside her immediately followed by a sudden clammy coldness on her scalp.
When he speaks, he sounds, unbelievably, pleased. ‘That was the best ever!’
She desperately tries to visualize her pocket diary, counting the days since the X. Too many but not enough. How has this happened?
The Psychology of Prosecution
Academics rarely match their photographs. The smooth-skinned, dark-haired hopeful smiling shyly beside a lecture title in the symposium brochure frequently stands at the lectern with chin tripled and fringe silvered or gone. There is a professor in Cambridge whose appearance so contradicts the jpeg image still sent to conference organizers that he is known as ‘Dorian Gray’.
Yet, even by such standards of vanity, the Director of History challenges photographic accuracy. The mug-shot featured in the management tree on the UME website – the only image of Neades that web-stalking exposed – shows a lean, tanned figure who could be the grandson of the gross, pallid man who, as she knock-pushes the glass door of his office, glances up as if irritated by her arrival.
‘Oh, Dr Traill,’ he says. ‘Will you come in?’
Although it cannot be regarded as serious racism, she feels her usual guilt at finding the Ulster accent ugly; she has a similar difficulty with South Africans.
‘It’s good of you to help us with this,’ Neades goes on, though on a note more of remonstration than gratitude. ‘You received the terms of reference?’
‘I did. What strikes me is that conduct and culture are quite broad concepts?’
‘Those are the words used to describe the process to staff, Dr Traill. But, in practice, you are seeking to establish breaches of the codes relating to B & H and Insubordination.’
‘Is this known to be a problem in the department?’
‘Sir Richard has made it a red-flag issue across the business.’
‘But I think, to some extent, in this kind of thing, it’s about where you draw the line? I think most of us know these days what sexual harassment might entail – where someone might put their hands, what they might put in their e-mails. But bullying and insubordination – isn’t there an issue of definition?’
‘There may be a range of views – yes.’
‘But do I judge people against all of them or one of them?’
‘Say more about that?’
‘What to one person is hurtful sarcasm is to another robust argument. Belittling / Rigorous, Aggressive / Forensic, Humiliating / Educative, Insubordination / Debate. Can these ever be objective oppositions?’
‘As I say, there is a range of views.’
‘So you keep saying. But what is your view?’
His long stolid stare is momentarily broken by a glimmer of irritation at being challenged. He seems to be waiting for her to speak again but she wills him to fill the silence.
Eventually, Neades says: ‘My view is that those are academic distinctions.’
‘Occupational hazard!’ she jokes.
No reaction from the Director. There is another war of pauses, which, this time, she loses. ‘Surely I need to be clear what I am investigating people for?’
‘I’m not running
this process. It’s your investigation,’ Neades says, raising his arms in an acting-out of neutrality that exposes matching oval sweat patches. ‘But, I’d say, for me, the line is drawn where it becomes personal.’
‘Well, okay. But there’s no scientific instrument for measuring that. Who decides if it’s personal?’
The Director sighed. ‘A person does. A person who was hurt. I suspect there’s a risk in over-thinking this sort of thing. Let us proceed on the basis that you will report the cases to me and then we will decide the next steps, going forward.’
The building they are in trains minds to identify flaws in argument, although it is unlikely that Neades would welcome a demonstration of the method. ‘When you say the cases, you mean any cases?’
His expression suggests that his own interpretation of Insubordination might be any disagreement at all. ‘For the integrity of the process, it must be seen to have been thorough. It must not matter who a staff-member is, or how long he has been here.’
‘He or she?’
His glimmer of a glower may reflect a defence of sexist grammar, or something else unspoken. Teaching, she thinks, is about clarity of meaning; management the opposite.
‘Dr Traill, there is a risk that further discussion between us might compromise the independence of the process.’
Although he has used a full-stop end-of-monologue intonation, her mind is wired for dialogue. ‘A trial that ends in acquittal can still be a proper application of the law, can’t it?’
‘No one is pretending that this is a court of law.’ A pause that seems to freeze his whole body. ‘Dr Traill, I should mention that there may be some tension.’ The accidental rhyme makes him falter momentarily. ‘It is known that we are looking to close posts across the business. As a separate matter, of course. But these efficiency savings may be playing on the minds of those participating in the process.’
