Kansas in August

by Patrick Gale

  Her memories of her mother were more sensuous than historic; a deep, amused voice, still warm empty sheets, arms hard from squash, a hesitant piano rendition of ‘Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man’ and rose geranium bath oil. Hilary had inherited her permanently tousled, dirty blonde hair along with most of her features, so that the mere sight of him could set unshed tears burning in her stomach. Thanks to the censorship of a merciful mind, she could remember no grieving. Her father claimed that she had not spoken for a week.

  ‘Right you are, Dr Metcalfe.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The gatekeeper swung up the barrier and Henry drove out of the hospital compound in her battered yellow Spitfire. In the lane leading to the motorway she had to mount the pavement in order to outmanoeuvre a broad brown puddle on which floated balls of rotting paper, dead leaves and the remains of a sizable animal. The services strike had lasted two months now. Apparently the transport people had returned to work, for she had seen buses around Hammersmith, and there were fewer hitch-hikers than before. Incinerator skips were still stationed, smoking, at regular intervals. Luckily the hospital had a series of cess-pits as well as a furnace, so nurses’ fears about the installation of chemical lavatories were groundless. It began to rain; it was that stage in the Winter when it becomes impossible to remember the last day when it did not.

  She never realized how short her youth had been until she was sufficiently advanced in years to admit to having had one at all. By comparison with her acquaintances she had had no adolescence whatsoever; no bad temper, no puppy love, no cider-fired groping. Having been reared in Kuala Lumpur, it struck her that the fashionable obsession among her fellow students with matters Eastern was both irrelevant and fool-hardy. She was a virgin until her twentieth year. This had never seemed odd at the time; she remembered her teenage self as having other, more important things on her mind. Then a young barrister proposed to her and took her to bed. In that order. He was still at bar school, in fact, and while uncommonly wealthy, far less intelligent than she. After seven months of awkward dinners en famille and tentative plans for their coupled future – all with a detached but nonetheless educative underlay of bed – her father was relieved to see her break off the engagement. The year after this he remarried: one Marie-Claude Beaumont. Young, pretty and Parisian, M – C was wholly welcome in Henry’s view, if only because her dedication to things ‘feminine’ provided a convenient smokescreen for her own more adventurous impulses. The two women fell into instant accord, while regarding each other’s territory with affectionate dismay. Possibly because her stepmother was two years her junior, Henry bore her a sisterly love quite unlike that sense of maternal responsibility engendered by her young brother. Soon after the honeymoon her father had secured a lucrative, pre-retirement post in Paris and set up home there with his young bride. After so many years in Kuala Lumpur, all his once-important English roots had withered.

  Her education had been so protracted that, in her mid-thirties, this was Henry’s first non-trainee post. Over the last seven years she had moved steadily away from the sight of blood and produced a doctoral thesis on the social rehabilitation of the mentally disturbed. This was a professionally sound topic, given recent health service economies. Death and a block on admissions had already reduced the occupancy of Princess Marina’s to 250, but the hospital was to be axed in two years and someone had to lure, drive and settle the remaining patients into discreet corners of the community by then. Possibly thanks to her sheer innocence at the time of her interview, Henry had landed the job.

  After the happy death of her engagement, Henry’s only non-professional encounters with men tended towards the brief, the erratic and the uninvolved. A psychiatric don with whom she had sustained one of her more prolonged liaisons had diagnosed her apparent inability to do more than drop those men whom she bothered to pick up, as a profound amorous mistrust stemming from the abandonment by – e.g. death of – her mother during her formative years. Henry had abandoned rather than killed him on an Isle of Wight ferry the next day and returned with renewed vigour to her work. She regarded her work with unfeigned enthusiasm; the male animal so rarely matched it for intellectual or emotional stimulus that he had never presented it with a serious rival for her time. She saw no reason to allow her female acquaintances (or Hilary) a glimpse of a sexual history that she regarded as irrelevant, and was amused and only occasionally hurt by the easy decline in their curiosity. She worked a hard six-day/occasional night week, saw Hilary once a week, telephoned her father twice weekly. She went on holiday once a year, dieted every January, got by on Scotch, adventure and chocolate biscuits. She rarely smoked and she never gave lifts.

  A burly six foot. Jawline. Short black hair. She never gave lifts. She pulled over and wound down the window.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Shepherds Bush? That’s very kind.’

  Jeans. Funny old suit jacket. Five o’clock shadow.

  ‘Well, you’ll get soaked if you wait there. Get in. Throw those things in the back.’ The raison d’être of little yellow tart cars was that one never had room for hitch-hikers. Or was it that one only had room for one?

  ‘How long have you been going?’

  ‘I’ve only just started,’ he said. ‘I’d … er … I’d finished work back there and couldn’t get a train home.’

  ‘There’s a tube near there, though.’

  ‘Yes, but apparently they’re still on strike.’

  ‘Hopeless,’ she said, knowing as she spoke that he was lying, that the transport strike was over. She slipped up into overdrive and they pulled past a convoy of police lorries. The rain was streaming across the glass, almost too fast for the wipers now. Work? Back there? Apart from Princess Marina’s and a few piddling factories there was only the MOD place. She glanced once more at his shaved neck. Stupendous build. He looked awfully young for the SAS.

  ‘Do you work near here too?’ he asked, glancing across. He had grey eyes.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said as nonchalantly as she could. ‘I’m a physiotherapist. Just spent a day at Princess Marina’s.’

  ‘Oh, right. The looney bin.’

  She pulled back into the middle lane. That ‘yeah’ was not convincing. Drop it.

  ‘That’s the one,’ she said. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Oh … er … I’m afraid I’m not allowed to say.’

  SAS. Beyond question SAS.

  ‘Sorry. How exciting.’

  An understatement. This was bloody marvellous. Why had she never taken role therapy seriously?

  ‘Cigarette?’

  ‘No thanks, but you go ahead,’ she said, pushing in the lighter button. The rain had blackened the shoulders of his jacket. Damp wool reached her nostrils and, she was prepared to swear, Old Spice. She swallowed. Her father had worn Old Spice before he met Marie-Claude. ‘You’re soaked,’ she added. They were reaching White City, mounting the Westway.

  ‘Yes, I am rather. Forgot my coat. Snow forecast for this evening.’

  ‘I can believe that; it was freezing last night.’ His cigarette smoke stung her eyes. She swung off the flyover, flew through an amber light and headed, accelerating the while, for the Holland Park roundabout. ‘My brother lives near here,’ she said.

  ‘Really. Yes. I know someone up near White City.’

  He shifted his position so that his knees – long legs – were now bent close to the gearstick. Oh dear. We would seem to have missed Shepherds Bush. He blew out another slow cloud of smoke and tapped out some ash. Long, thin fingers.

  ‘Where d’you live?’ he demanded.

  What right have you?

  ‘Hammersmith,’ she said. ‘Right on the river.’

  ‘Show me.’

  She should stop the car right now and tell him to get out. She should stab his hand with the cigarette lighter. There was an old can of anti-mugger spray somewhere. She had gin. Were there any limes?

  ‘Two more minutes,’ she said and bit her lip.

  From
Olympia to Holyport Road he sat, she drove without a word. The rain thickened, flattening pedestrians into doorways, mashing the accumulated dog shit on the pavements, buoying up armadas of garbage between the lines of slowmoving cars. He smoked another cigarette. She became aware of the regularity of her breathing.

  She wanted to impress him with the remote control door to the car park, but there was evidently a power failure. She glanced up. Even in the downpour any lights would show. The building was blacked-out. The one unsmashed street-lamp was wired to an emergency generator. Its jaundiced glow reached the car’s interior.

  ‘We’ll have to park here and make a dash for it.’ She had to shout against the drumming on the roof. ‘No umbrella, I’m afraid. You take that coat from the back; I’ll need my hands for unlocking the door. Yup, press that button to lock up.’

  She was soaked before she had even shut the driver’s door. The lift was lifeless. In the darkness on the stairs she felt his hand up her skirt and heard herself laugh.

  She lived in a warehouse converted into ten or so flats. Hers was on the top; a large studio made by building an extra floor beneath the tall, metal-beamed apex of the roof. She mistrusted colour and found patterns intrusive, so the walls, floor and ceilings were white. She had no need of blinds or curtains, since no one could see in. She hated clutter, so besides the bed, an overstuffed chaise-longue, a desk and a chair there was no furniture. The only frivolity was a four-foot stuffed crocodile given her – after clamorous demands – by her parents on her ninth birthday. This had a small ring through the underside of its tail by which it dangled, trophy-like, on an expanse of white wall. The high wooden doors which once swung out to a sturdy pulley and a five-storey drop to a waiting barge had been replaced by tall windowed ones and a balcony. A basket of frost-blackened ivy swung from the old pulley beam. When there was no power cut one could look from the bed out across the Thames to house lights rippling, elongated in the reservoirs at Barnes.

  Something stopped. She opened her eyes and saw that it was the rain. Through a gash in the clouds she could see the moon, barely incomplete. What time? His arm lay across her breasts, his fingertips on her open armpit. She didn’t move; he mustn’t wake yet. The ticking of the alarm clock was distinct to her left. She tried moving her head oh so slightly and turned her eyes so far north-east that they hurt. Still she couldn’t see. The corner of her mouth itched where his saliva was drying. Gingerly she slipped her left hand from under her head and brought it round to scratch. She had not taken off her watch. She twisted her wrist to catch the moonlight. Five past twelve. Happy birthday, dear Hilary, happy birthday to you! She let her arm fall to her side and the movement, the pressure on his fingertips, stirred him. He made a faint humming sound, rolled from his stomach on to his side and nestled his face into her shoulder. His breathing slowed once more. His hand now cupped her left breast and with each intake of breath she could feel the slight, resisting pressure of its weight. He breathed now through his nose, now through his mouth; the remains of a cold perhaps. His breath was hot on her collarbone. She wished she were not so thin; her bones lacked padding, felt cold. She was sure that they could not be comfortable to sleep with.

  His name was Andrew. He thought she was called Sandy – Sandy Marsh – and that she was sub-renting the flat of a ‘really brainy’ medical friend of hers who had gone to Paris for a year. She made no attempt to analyse this compulsive lie, any more than she did her stopping the car some hours ago. The earth hadn’t moved. She was still Dr Henrietta Metcalfe, thirty-five, albeit with a perhaps twenty-eight-year-old stranger called Andrew who might or might not be with the SAS, with his hand on her left titty. She did enjoy, however, the faint scent of hot body and dead cigarette, and the sharp sensation that the carbines of her life had ground momentarily to this overheated standstill.

  Was there a chance that he might, stroke, did she want him to stay, question mark.

  She shivered. The boiler switched itself off at midnight. She touched the skin of her thigh and found gooseflesh. Glancing across at the window, she saw it was snowing … as he had said it would.

  Carefully she slid her shoulder from under Andrew’s cheek and, sitting up, reached for the duvet that had slipped away below their feet. She pulled it over the two of them and nestled back in to her pillows, staring at his sleeping face inches from her own. His head and neck were all muscle and bone; almost too firm. Even now when he was sleeping, the neck seemed tensed, braced for a blow.

  He made that humming noise again and reached out a warm arm. She smiled as he groped about her thigh and ribs, trying to work out her position. She leaned over and brushed his nose with her lips.

  ‘Hello.’

  Her voice was loud against the silence and he opened his eyes too smoothly. He had been lying awake with them shut so as to fool her into admiring his sleeping form. Vain, oh vain.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Ten past twelve.’

  ‘Shit!’

  He jumped out of bed, almost throwing the bedding off her as well.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Sorry. There was someone I was meant to meet. Can I use your ‘phone?’

  ‘The lines are still down here – they’re mending them some time this week. The nearest box is at the other end of the road, by the pub.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  He pulled on his jeans, then sat on the bed to tie his laces. She would not ask if he were coming back. She would not.

  ‘It’s snowing,’ she said. ‘Take that old coat.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Would she see it again? Don’t talk to strangers. Never give lifts or you’ll lose your favourite garments. He walked over to the door and coughed.

  ‘Sorry about this. It’s my … er … wife. Will you let me back in?’

  ‘Yes. Sure.’ She smiled. ‘Sure.’

  He was gone. But he was coming back. She threw off the duvet and groped for her dressing-gown. The candle on the table had burnt down hours ago, but there were some more in the drawer. She felt for them among the papers and safety-pins. Suddenly the fluorescent tube over the bathroom sink blinked into life. Across the river the reservoir filled with strips of guttering gold. She shut the drawer and went for a glass of water.

  One arm felt sore near the top. She peered in the mirror and frowned to see a finger-shaped bruise. In the medicine cupboard there was a tube of something her father called dentifrice des nègres. Reaching for the cupboard door she caught her reflection: flushed, slept-in. He was coming back. Definitely. She squeezed some of the black cream on to the hurt and rubbed it in, staining the skin a brownish yellow. Then she started to wash her hands.

  Did he say wife?

  Chapter five

  The window of a kerb-crawling Cortina wound down across the midnight street. A long arm came out with a bicycle horn on the end, which honked.

  ‘Oy! Birthday boy!’ the honker called out in a drama school Yiddish accent.

  ‘Richard?’

  ‘He pretends not to recognize his own mother!’ The accent was dropped. ‘Get in, Snotface, we’re going for a birthday treat.’

  Hilary wavered, shouting through the crossfire of a smallish blizzard. ‘Oh Rich. I’d love to, but I’m expecting …’

  ‘Let the joybells ring.’

  ‘Very droll,’ said Hilary, coming closer. ‘I’m waiting for Rufus.’

  ‘Whatever became of pride?’

  ‘You win.’

  As the Cortina revved, he fell into the front seat and, Ballo in Maschera blaring, they roared onto the Westway.

  During Hilary’s first college supper at Durham, he had been bullied into attending a Christian Union meeting. Richard, who had been sitting within earshot, had followed him thither, charged with a missionary spirit rather less than spiritual. They had fled to Richard’s room after disgracing themselves during a three-minute silent prayer. There Hilary was introduced to the several delights of good shortbread dunked in poor sherry. He woke the n
ext morning to find that everything suggested in Johannesburg Cream’s advertising was true, and more.

  Bad sherry turned to better port and still less affordable champagne. Richard’s room became a rented cottage, an Austin Cambridge and a cat. Two years were mapped out by ten or so drama society productions veering from the portentous amateur to the frivolous near-professional, by two Christmases, several holiday jobs, one Grecian idyll and an emetic spell on the Edinburgh fringe. Then Hilary woke up to find that Bed, which had once loomed so large, had dwindled to amiable insignificance, leaving them the meals of the day and two second-hand suits to share. Finals revision arrived, the cat was electrocuted behind the fridge and Hilary moved back into a college room. Several years on, Richard remained a mildly jealous best friend. They shared too much knowledge for any rekindling of a love built on guile, but there was Chianti and a spontaneous bedding-down from time to reassuring time. Richard was now an actor.

  They left the car in the railway executives’ car park at St Pancras and walked to one of the windswept lanes to its rear. The Dazzling Leopard was housed in a tall, thin building between a disused filling station and a late Georgian house. The latter had been smartly converted by a firm of Islington solicitors who, it was rumoured, owned the neighbouring club as well.

  Richard pulled out a Yale key on a synthetic furry tag and let them in. By giving each member a key and charging all drinks on a computerized credit system, the legal entrepreneurs managed to sidestep the new, stricter licensing laws. Richard remained uncertain as to how he was to pay the bill for his first year’s membership. Unless another mattress commercial proved forthcoming, he would be forced to sign up for an extensive tour of East Lothian and points North.