by Ned Williams
Back in her room, I stayed with Lorna for about an hour until she insisted that I return to Mickey. I am ashamed to say that, once I was in our flat, her problems completely slipped away from my thoughts and concerns.
Unlike Roger, who, with some help, finally managed to come to terms with his loss, Lorna couldn’t cope with hers at all and totally fell to pieces. She expected all her friends to show help and understanding but few did.
As gently as I could, I reminded Lorna of the cold attitude she had shown to Roger during his love crisis. Surely, I continued, she now must have some idea of how he had felt. She thought for a moment then claimed that “This is different.” To me, it wasn’t. Over the next three days she sank even deeper into depression. Even Mickey expressed concern over her mental state.
At work, on the fourth day, I felt ill so I asked and was granted permission to leave early. Before I went up to our flat I knocked on Lorna’s door to tell her I was home and to check up on her. There was no answer. I knocked again. This time I heard a faint but distinctive moan. Fortunately, Lorna never locked her door so I was able to gain easy access. She was lying on the floor with an empty tub of pills was beside her. I tried to read the label on the container but the information was altogether incomprehensible to me. I gently shook her and attempted to find out what she had taken. I could get no sense. I phoned for an ambulance and returned to her side to try, with great difficulty, to keep her conscious. Although they were probably very quick, to me, the ambulance took an eternity to arrive. As soon as the emergency attendants began to manhandle her into a portable chair, Lorna revived a little. “Sorry,” managed to escape from her lips. Because I wasn’t a relative, I was not allowed to accompany her. The ambulance workers told me where they would take her and that I was not to worry.
I don’t think this attempt to take her own life was a cry for help, I think she actually did intend to end it all. She knew that the house would be empty and my arrival was simply fortuitous. I came to the conclusion that it was unhealthy for Lorna to live alone. Her solitude allowed her too much time to brood and to let any problem fester.
As I was feeling too rough to go immediately to the hospital to make sure she was comfortable, it wasn’t until the following day that I went to visit her.
I approached her bed and saw that, although looking extremely tired, she was sitting up. A visitor was already in attendance. I drew nearer to the bed and Lorna smiled and gave a half hearted wave. The other visitor rose and turned towards me. To my utter amazement, I found myself face to face with Zenda.
I never found out how they knew one another. Lorna was depressed. She tried to explain why she’d done it. I didn’t understand. Suddenly, in the middle of our attempts at cheering her up she turned her head to Zenda and said, “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
She gently touched the wrist on Zenda’s left arm. “Are they fully healed?” Zenda nodded. “Come on, show me.” He threw me an uncertain glance and drew back both his cuffs and revealed nasty scarring on both wrists. I stared at the scars in utter disbelief. Why had I never noticed them before?
I found it hard to believe that Zenda, of all people would try to end his own life. From what I knew of him, he was far too level headed for such an action.
When the visiting hour was over, at Zenda’s request, we stopped off for a coffee in a local café. We found a quiet corner and, with little prompting, I became his confessor.
He told me that a couple of years ago he had fallen for a married copper who wouldn’t leave his wife. This policeman had a sadistic streak – both mentally as well as physically. He enjoyed the anguish which he deliberately caused the lad. When Zenda was told that he was going to be deserted by his unpredictable lover, he pleaded and begged for them to stay together. This seemed to rile the copper and he hit Zenda repeatedly, then left the panic–stricken youth to his own devices. Zenda, with hardly a second thought, used the copper’s cut–throat razor, which he kept for when he stayed with Zenda to have humiliating sex, to hack away at his wrists.
“Don’t tell me the man is Pavel.” I asked.
“No, no! Pavel was my saviour.”
Luckily he was found by Andy who, true to form, sorted everything out and not only saved Zenda’s life but gave him the strength to end his destructive relationship. It was Andy who introduced Zenda to Pavel and the matching couldn’t have been better. The policeman tried to re-establish his relationship with Zenda but, somehow, nothing came of it. Pavel, rather disturbingly, assured Zenda that he would never have to be bothered by his molester ever again – and he wasn’t. Zenda ended his story by emitting a shuddering sigh.
“Right,” he said, “that’s the end of my misery. Let’s talk of happier things.” And we did.
After this revelation, I viewed Zenda with even greater respect than before.
As soon as I could, I asked Andy about Zenda’s suicide attempt. He asked how I knew about it. “Zenda told me himself.”
“It’s all in the past. Let it rest.”
“But you...”
“Carl, let it rest. Zenda is going forward with his life so let’s leave the sleeping dogs alone, eh?”
Riding the Whirlwind
Mickey and I were settling ever more comfortably into our new flat and quickly developed a pleasing and contented routine both at home and in our respective work places. My feelings for this gentle soul were getting ever deeper. I often caught him staring at me. When I questioned him about this he smiled and mumbled something about his life being perfect and he must keep looking at me to check that it wasn’t all a dream.
Our efforts at cooking were steadily improving but there were still some happy disasters in the kitchen like the time when we went out forgetting that there were some potatoes boiling away on the gas ring. They boiled dry, burned and adding the final insult to the mess, the saucepan decided to allow its base to melt and weld itself onto the ring. Even the metal working Mickey couldn’t repair this particular damage.
Also, the kitchen had a nasty habit of seriously flooding. It sometimes spread through into the bedroom. I think it was a leaking pipe but our dear landlord would do nothing about it. Mickey told me that he knew how to fix it but he was damned if he was going to sort it out. It wasn’t his job. We managed to get hold of some short planks of wood and constructed a makeshift duckboard. It was strange to walk around the flat in the nude, except for a pair of wellies. In my other life, we could have made an interesting joint booking.
Something bothered me a little. All our visitors were either friends of mine or ones we had developed together. I asked Mickey about people he knew from his past and why they never socialised with us. I assured him that they would be most welcome to pop around at any time.
“Don’t have any. Not int’rested,” he dismissed. “Yours is better.”
There was another change I began to notice, this time, about myself. Because of Mickey’s taciturn demeanour, I was forced into starting and continuing conversations. I was beginning to find my own voice and speak out for myself more and more. Because of my mother’s influence, I tended to be the listener and only commented when I felt the need or desire.
With Mickey’s active encouragement, I continued going to Art School. He was so enthusiastic about my work that it became embarrassing. He would love to sit watching me as I scratched away with a pencil or smeared and daubed with a paint brush. He went through all my previous work with a hunger that was highly complementary.
My visits to the racks had almost come to a complete standstill. Now, every time I went down there, my jocular friends took great delight in taking me for a trick.
“Watch this one. He’s kinky and the fucker always tries to get away without paying.” Some of the newer rents, who didn’t know me, thought that my friends were serious and avoided me.
Ian and Jacko were particularly keen on exploiting the situation whereas Andy merely commented, “Hi, stranger,” and we carried on a
s if I had never been away. Paolo became ever more distant as he took my absenteeism personally and believed that I was somehow betraying my calling.
I also managed to keep the other strands of my life wound together with priority given to Marti and especially Dave. My mother’s allocation of my time continued as before with ever more resentment building on her part. Over the months, Lorna had cut herself off from us. I suspect that she knew that Mickey was not exactly enamoured of her so she stayed out of our way. Larry’s relationship with his rich boyfriend continued to grow and they were hardly apart. I wondered why Larry still maintained his room as he was hardly ever there.
All this continued for another couple of months, then there began yet another chain of events which would utterly tear apart the simple aspirations I had begun to expect for my life.
Sheba, quite out of the blue, came clunking and thumping back into my life. She phoned me up. Apparently, she was up from London on an infrequent flying visit to see her parents. She insisted that it was imperative – a matter of life and death – she sees both Mickey and I. As I had anticipated, since Sheba had removed herself to the big smoke and had become involved in her new life, we had indeed lost all contact. On her brief return, she soon found out, with a mutual friend’s assistance that Mickey and I still lived at our old address. From her telephone voice, she sounded in bouncingly good health.
“So, you’re still living above Lorna, are you?” There was a slight judder in her enthusiasm.
“Yes.”
“Is she in at the moment?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “D’you want me to go and see?”
“No!” Her response was so violent; I had to hold the receiver away from my ear. “I’ll risk it and come over to see you. I won’t have time to see her.”
“Would you rather meet elsewhere?”
“Not really. Is Mickey in?”
“He’s sat beside me. Why?”
“I need to talk to you both.”
“About what?”
She hesitated slightly, “I can’t tell you over the phone. It must be face to face.”
“Can’t you give even the smallest hint?” I persisted.
“No. Sorry, love. See you in about half an hour,” and before I could get her to give anything away, down went her receiver. To put it mildly, Mickey was a little unhappy about her visit but, for my sake, went along with it. He was torn between joy for me and muted apprehension for himself. For some reason, there was something about Sheba he still didn’t like. Was it the fact that we were once involved? There was no point in asking him as I knew he would simply clam up and give me one of his enigmatic gazes.
Naturally, I was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing her after, what seemed to me, so long a break.
When she arrived, Sheba didn’t just ring the front door bell but decided to drain the national grid. If she wanted to avoid seeing Lorna, she wasn’t going about it the right way. Sheba was in a whirlwind of enthusiasm.
Even before we’d exchange hugs and sat down, she was raving about London. To her, it was the most wonderful place on Earth – not that she’d ever travelled anywhere else. Indeed, her life changing move to the Big Smoke had been her first excursion away from our city.
Looking at her, I recognised the signs only too well. I knew precisely what was coming. The ‘matter of life and death’ wasn’t quite going to match the apparent urgency of her phone call.
“Carl, you’d be in your element up there. There’s everything you could ever want – and in spades!” she raved.
‘…and in spades’? What sort of remark was that? We soon found out. The Cod–Americanisms came thick and fast – and stemmed from the fact that she worked in an American style fast food pizza café in West London run by a couple “who hailed one fall from way down Texas way! You’d just love them to bits.” I half expected her to add – “Yee–ha, ye’awll” and fire off a baccy flavoured globule into a brass spittoon. As with everything she embraced, she threw herself into the American idiom with alacrity. She was being more American than most Americans I have ever met either before or since. She was developing the accent and the attitudes. Her description of London sounded too attractive to be true. She painted a picture of heaven. Knowing my love of the arts, she wasted no time in extolling the virtues of the galleries, concert halls and opera houses which, according to her, littered every street and square in the capital. Why was she telling me all this? As if I didn’t know. Very soon my suspicions proved correct. “Both of you must move to London,” she flourished. “The whole place could have been built for the pair of you.” And there we had it. I should have known that she’d egg me on into throwing away my slowly settling life and embark on the gamble of an uncertain future.
“It all sounds a bit too good to be true,” I almost whispered. “Do I want to give up what I have and move to a strange city?”
“But you know it. You’ve been there.”
“Only on a stop–over on my trip.”
“That’s enough, surely.” She always managed to make the illogical completely logical. I felt badgered and confused. Sheba was pressing all the right buttons but my natural reticence made a nasty smudge on the rosy picture she painted.
“It certainly sounds tempting,” I mused. “The only thing is...”
She must have heard the doubt in my voice for she coiled and struck again. Sheba told me that she was sharing, with her long lost sister, a vast flat in West London. It was, she boasted, within easy access to an Underground Station that would whisk me speedily and smoothly away into Central London any time I felt the need to have cultural satisfaction. To add further spice into the inviting mixture, she told us that she had already spoken to Sally to see if Mickey and I could stay with them for a while until we found our feet and a place of our own. There was no problem, of course.
“Are you sure?”
“You bet hon.”
‘Hun?’ I thought. Mickey started to chortle. He’d not said a word since Sheba had launched into her public relations bombardment. The fact that this lecture was aimed wholly in my direction didn’t exactly help him to make any contribution to the debate.
I was getting half – well, three quarters – all right, ninety nine per cent tempted.
Like a bloodhound on full alert she sank in her teeth by adding that we should throw everything in and accompany her back to London.
Knowing that Sheba had a tendency to act without bothering with all those little irritating things called ‘details’, I was worried. Was she, in truth, simply offering us a place to stay and then, only after we agreed, actually sort it out with her sister later?
If she saw any doubt in my face, she chose to ignore it. “So, when are you coming up?” She stared, questioningly, at me – waiting for my immediate answer.
I looked over to Mickey. His eyes were luminous. “Mickey and I will have to talk it over.” His eyes shone even more and he nodded.
“You must let me know as soon as you can.”
To get her obsessed mind onto something else, I asked if she’d had second thoughts about going down to visit Lorna.
“I’d really rather not.” Although there was a finality in her delivery, I was determined not to let the subject drop and I got her to got her to tell all. Mickey, realising the conversation had taken a new route which totally disinterested him, excused himself and went off into the bedroom to leave Sheba and I the space to talk things over.
After a long, internal dialogue with herself, Sheba finally admitted that, just after she had met Lorna, they had indulged in a brief affair. Sheba was certain that she didn’t have any lesbian feelings but, because she was fascinated by the male gay world in which she was now getting involved, she wanted to make certain. Sheba had found the whole experience interesting but hardly fulfilling and it managed to leave her feeling curiously guilty. To confuse matters even further Lorna assumed that Sheba had discovered her true feelings and foresaw a rosy future for both of them. Faced with such e
motional pressure, Sheba backed away and found excuses not to visit Lorna. It was at this point when it hit me that, during my stay in Lorna’s room, Sheba had never visited. Life in Lorna’s had been so full and chaotic, I hadn’t registered this absence. When Sheba left for London, she couldn’t even bring herself to say ‘Good bye’ to her once closest of friends.
As the evening wore on, Sheba appeared reluctant to leave. To my utter consternation, Mickey proposed that she stay the night.
“Is that all right with you two? I don’t want to intrude.”
Sheba was certainly getting very broad minded because, that night all three of us ‘slept’ together in the same double bed. Thinking back on the event, I am surprised that none of us considered it strange that the sleeping arrangements could be so easily accepted and acted upon.
Much to my amusement, to get on the better side of Mickey, Sheba tried to use all her wiles to seduce the poor chap. As she started to get to work on him, Mickey and I exchanged a look. I have never seen anyone present such an expression as Mickey wore. It was a combination of panic, shock and glinting amusement. He appeared both repulsed and beguiled by what was happening to him.
As what was being attempted by Sheba didn’t bother me, I mouthed, ‘Good luck’ to Mickey and turned away to leave them to it and tried to get some sleep. Although he could have easily performed, his slight distaste for Sheba, though somewhat mollified, could not be diluted so, eventually, Sheba was forced to give up on him and to start on me. As this new development got underway, Mickey was determined not to be left out so, much to my glee; I had the two of them servicing all my needs and desires. It felt great as they were almost going into competition with one another as to who was the most skilled at satisfying me.
The following morning I, once again, tried to repair the tear in the relationship between Sheba and Lorna. I offered to go down and let Lorna know Sheba was there so that they could, at least, acknowledge that the other existed. Still Sheba wouldn’t hear of it. I had to admit defeat and let the whole subject drop.
