'Walls are there to be got over. They got over the Berlin Wall. They pulled it down.'
'You're asking me to build something out of rubble. It can't be done.'
'It can be done.'
'You just get another crazy wall.'
'Maybe you get something better.'
'I doubt that.' Her voice was starting to crack. I wanted to put my arms around her and say sorry. 'I have to go,' she said quietly and put the phone down.
I sat on the stairs for a minute, holding the receiver. I thought about driving up to see her, regardless. I would be irresistible in the flesh. I replaced the receiver. My head was aching, my hair felt sore, my throat was sore. I drank from the tap in the kitchen, then went back to bed. I would go and see her when the hangover had gone.
I was just drifting off to sleep when the phone went again. I rushed downstairs. 'Patricia?'
'Uh ... no. It's me. Margaret. I've been trying to get in touch with you for ages.'
Margaret. I had a vision of her naked. 'I've been out a lot.'
'You weren't avoiding me?'
'Of course not.'
She gave a little chuckle. Nervous. Cute, but nervous. 'I think you'd better come and see me.'
'I...' I wouldn't. I shouldn't. I can't. I can. Pregnant? No. Too soon. An interesting sexual disease? No. I'd be itchy. She's in love. Not beyond the realms of possibility. More sex? Jesus. I was sweating.
'She's caused a lot of trouble.'
'What? Who has?'
'Your wife. She didn't tell you?'
'What do you mean? Tell me what? She's not here. She's left home. She's in Portstewart. Tell me what?'
'Come and see me, Dan. It wouldn't do it justice telling you over the phone.'
'I . . .'
'Please...'
She put the receiver down before I could reply. I thought of Patricia and my Sex Pistols single. What could she possibly have done to Margaret? I sat with my head in my hands. My first instinct as ever, in time of crisis, was to run away.
* * *
I put on Dr Feelgood live. Turned it up loud. I needed the fast urgent blues beat of the Feelgoods. Pick-me-up music. I went upstairs and put on some cleanish underwear and a pair of black jeans. I selected a faded Tintin sweatshirt from the wardrobe. Pointy Head and Snowy were on the front with 60 Ans d'Aventure emblazoned across the belly-button line, which was like the Plimsoll line save that it had seasonal fluctuations. Tintin's cheatin' heart, the adventure Herge never wrote.
I went back downstairs and phoned for a taxi. A gruff voice at the other end said: 'Yes?'
'Uh, I'd like to book a cab.'
'Where to?'
'North Belfast. Lancaster Avenue.'
'What's your telephone number?'
'Sorry?'
'Your number. We need your number.'
'What on earth for?'
'Security.'
'I can't go giving my number out to complete strangers.'
'Okay.'
He put the phone down. I rang back. 'What do you mean, security?'
'I mean, too many of our drivers have been shot up there. We have to check out our passengers.'
'Fuck, times are getting bad.'
'Fuckin' more dangerous being a cabbie than a peeler these days. What's your number?'
'Of course by revealing my number, it could end up with anyone.'
'It could. It won't.'
I gave it to him. He phoned me back and I ordered. It arrived within five minutes. A middle-aged woman was driving, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth.
'Starkey?' She asked, her voice an angry rasp.
I nodded. 'That's me.' I climbed in. The back seat was thick with dog hairs.
'That's some fuckin' crap you write in the paper.'
'Thanks.'
'Mind you, the husband loves it.'
'Good.'
'But then he's a stupid fucker.'
‘I see.'
'But not stupid enough to drive a fuckin' taxi, that's for sure.'
'No.'
'Not that stupid to know he's onto a winner by gettin' me to drive the fucker 'cause he's scared of getting topped.'
'No.'
As we turned onto Great Victoria Street she wound down her window and spat. Not so much a question of Finishing School as never having finished school. She was maybe forty. Gnarled-looking. She wore a creamy-white cap-sleeved T-shirt that revealed a blotchy tattoo: the letters UVF, only her arm was so thin that the F was lost round the horizon and all you could really see was UV, like she was advertising a sunbed. Her hair was wild and greasy, tinged red. Or maybe it was the world's first nicotine-stained hair.
The Belle of Belfast City dropped me at the corner of the estate. 'I'm not going into that fuckin' Fenian hole,' she said.
I thanked her and walked down towards Margaret's. Even from the end of her street I could see that every window in her house had been smashed.
Jesus, Patricia.
7
She had tears in her eyes. She threw her arms around me and hugged me tight and before I knew what I was doing I was hugging her tightly back, like we were long-term lovers not the remnants of a one-night stand. We had hardly exchanged more than a few words in sobriety. But it felt right. Margaret kissed me lightly and I could taste the salt on her lips. She took me by the hand and led me into the lounge. Her portrait stared down at me and if I hadn't known better I'd have sworn that those oily eyes followed me across the room to where she sat me down in an armchair beside the record player. It was like being in an episode of Scooby Do. I could hear Patch growling from the kitchen.
Margaret said: 'I'm sorry.'
'What on earth have you got to be sorry for?'
‘I should have left you alone.'
'Rubbish - I'm as responsible as anyone.' She sat on the floor, her legs folded under her and looked up to me, her black eyeliner smudged, tear stains on her cheeks like a dried-up river bed. My hand rested on her shoulder, I raised it to her cheek, held it lightly, then bent towards her and kissed her. Lingering.
'Tell me about it,' I said when we had finished.
She was wearing a short black skirt over black tights and a black sweater; her hair was tied back, not as spiky as on our first meeting. Her pale face looked fragile. She took a tissue from her sleeve and blew delicately into it.
'There was a knock at the door on Sunday morning and she was just standing there. I didn't know what to say. I just stared at her. I was in shock. She said, "It's taken me a while to find you," but it wasn't angry, really cool, really calm. She had this bag with her, like a shopping bag. She opened it up and took this potato out.'
'A potato?'
'A potato. She held it up to me and said: "This is a Comber potato. If you're going to sleep with him you can bloody well cook for him as well," and she heaved it through the front window. I just stood there. I didn't know what to do. Then she took another one out and fired it through the top bedroom window. She did every window in the house.'
'Jesus.'
I just stood there the whole time, frozen. All the neighbours were out but they didn't go near her, just stood around watching. When she finished the potatoes she turned and went to her car - then she turned and said: "He likes turnip as well. I'll be back tomorrow." I just went in and bawled my eyes out.
'I cleared the glass up later and some friends of my dad helped me board the place up. I wouldn't let them put glass in. I didn't want her coming back and doing it all over again. But she didn't come back. Not yet.'
'Did you call the police?'
'No.'
'Why not?'
'I couldn't have your wife arrested. I couldn't. Dad told me not to. He said it would be too embarrassing for him if it got into the local papers.'
'God love him.'
'No, it would, he's having some sort of trouble at work, he wouldn't say, but I could tell he needed me in bother like a hole in the head.'
'I don't care about his troubles, I care about you.'
<
br /> I was looking at Margaret, but I could see Patricia. Stonyfaced, a cool white anger masked by steady determination. Outside the house, bag of potatoes in hand. A novel revenge, calculated to cause the maximum of embarrassment and expense. She would have guessed that Margaret wouldn't go to the police. She'd discovered my lie, fumed in Portstewart, then calmed down sufficiently to work up a meaningful revenge. Indeed, she would have shopped around for the cheapest potatoes. Carried out the attack and driven back up to the coast. And no hint of it when next I spoke to her. I took Margaret's hands and said softly: 'I'm sorry, I'm really sorry. I should have handled things better.'
'What could you have done? She had a right to be angry.'
'She had no right to do that. She should have punished me.'
'Maybe she did. Maybe she thinks that if you care about me, the best way to hurt you is to attack me.'
'I assured her I didn't care about you.' Her fingers tightened in mine.
I let her hands go. 'What do you want me to say?' It came out sharper than I meant. I sat back. Confused. What was I supposed to say? 'I've only known you a few hours.' And I knew then it was long enough, but I couldn't say it. I couldn't say anything.
‘I don't expect you to declare undying love, Dan. But I know what I feel.' And her eyes were wide and beautiful and magnetic.
'Margaret... I don't mean I don't feel for you .. . but, Jesus, we've only known each other a few hours
'What difference does that make? You know from the start. As soon as you meet someone you know whether they're the right one. What's the point in taking five years to get to know someone you know you're not going to end up with?'
I got up and walked to the window. The hardboard across it gave the room an odd feeling, like we were in a children's fort, playing at being adults. Maybe we were, with all the petty jealousies and fights of pre-pubescence. And at the end of the day we'd all be friends. I'll say. 'What'd you tell your dad?'
'I wasn't going to tell him anything. He just arrived round. He nearly had a heart attack.'
'I'm sure he did. What'd you say, re-decorating?'
'A jealous boyfriend. He chewed me out, like, but he's paying for it. He couldn't be too nasty about it, the only reason he came round was to give me my birthday present.'
'Happy birthday.'
'Thanks, but it's not for another two weeks. He brought it round because he didn't think he'd be here for it. Said he was going abroad on business.'
'Ah, well, it's the thought that counts.'
'Thought nothing.' Margaret leant over to the record player and removed a cassette tape from a shelf just above it. She tossed it to me. It was one of those cheap compilation tapes made up of classical music that had been used in popular television commercials. 'I'd rather listen to static. Keep it.'
I shrugged and slipped it into my pocket. 'If you insist.'
'That's how well he knows me, a shoddy bloody tape like that.'
'I gather you're not too close then.'
'Close isn't the word for it.'
'Maybe your mum will get you something nice.'
Margaret smiled. 'Optimist.' She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, making the make-up worse in the process, but it was a small sign of recovery at least.
I walked back over to her, knelt down, put my hand on her shoulder.
'I love my wife, you know?'
'She's a hard bitch.'
'She can be. She doesn't believe in hiding her feelings. But I do love her.'
A thin smile played on her lips, those eyes bored into me again.
'What are you saying?'
'I'm not saying anything. I'm just telling you. You should know. Whatever happens between us, I love my wife.'
'Are you saying you can't love me?'
'No. I don't know. Maybe I will. Maybe it's in the future. All I'm saying is that no matter what I've done to my wife, no matter what she's done to me, or to you, I love her.'
'Maybe you can love two people.'
I nodded slowly. 'Maybe.'
She took my hand in hers, stood up and led me upstairs to her bedroom. I was a sucker for subtle seduction.
Later, she persuaded me to go out and get us something to eat and drink. There wasn't a lot of arm twisting involved. She fancied chips, so I trotted up to a row of shops a couple of hundred yards away to a place called Victor's she had raved about, but it was closed. A sign written in the thick black marker strokes of a child or educationally sub-normal said CLOSED DUE TO VARICOSE VEINS which under normal circumstances would have been enough to put me off food, but I was physically drained and needed the calories. Another hundred yards up there was a pizzeria. They took a note of my order and told me to come back in twenty minutes.
I crossed the road to a phone box and was pleasantly surprised to find it in working order. I phoned Patricia. Her dad answered. He said she wasn't in and after some persuasion he told me she'd said she was going down to Belfast to collect some things but not to tell me if I phoned.
The pizzeria's twenty minutes turned out to be forty-five and even then they didn't look particularly concerned. Hey, sometimes you've got to wait for quality,' a spotty guy behind the counter said when I complained. When I was going out the door I heard him say quietly, 'And sometimes you've got to wait for shite too,' but I was too hungry to punch his lights out. And too small.
On the corner of Margaret's street a small, thick-set man with a thick moustache and short black beard stopped me and asked for a light.
'Sorry, I don't smoke.'
'Never worry, mate,' he said, moving past me with a curly, annoying grin on his face, 'stunts your growth anyway.'
Margaret's front door was slightly open. I pushed it and walked into the darkened hall. I shouted: 'The pizza man's here!' Up the stairs and headed for the kitchen. There was no reply. I turned the light on in the lounge and stopped dead in my tracks. It had been turned upside down. Seats ripped, drawers emptied, records out of their sleeves strewn across the floor. Margaret's portrait had been slashed and hung in tatters from the wall. I dropped the pizzas and ran up the stairs in the dark to Margaret's room.
It was lit by the dull orange glow of her heavily shaded bedside lamp. Margaret was in bed, the thin cotton sheet pulled up around her neck, just as I'd left her. Her eyes were focused on the far wall, on nothing.
I said: 'What the fuck's going on?'
Her eyes shifted to mine, her lips parted slightly and she made the nearest sound possible to a human whimper.
I ran to the bed. As I touched the side of it her face contorted in pain.
'Jesus, Margaret, what's ... ?'
I pulled the sheet back. She was naked underneath. Her upper body was soaked in blood. It oozed from three or four black-tinged holes. I felt her whole body vibrate. I tried to pull her to me, hold her safe, but it was like trying to pick up a spider's web intact, blood fell everywhere and she let out a little helpless cry. I let her back softly onto the pillow, her eyes wide now, pleading hopelessly. She raised her arm slightly, touched me, pulled me lightly towards her. She kissed my cheek. Lips hard, cold. Her head moved sideways to my ear and I could barely hear her whisper above the tom-tom thump of my own heart. 'Dan
Barely a voice at all.
'Dan ... div ...'
Another tremor shook her.
'Margaret ... shhhh ... let me get...'
'Dan ... no ... no...' And her words were slurred. 'Dan ... divorce ... Jack ... divorce ... Jack...'
And then her head fell back and she was silent. She took a couple of shallow breaths. And then she was dead.
I stared at her for I don't know how long. I pulled the sheet back up over her, tucking it in under her chin so that only her calm, white face showed. Her eyes were closed and she looked like she was only asleep.
Suddenly my whole body was shaking uncontrollably, great rolling waves of shock that rocked the whole bed. I gripped the side of it till they stopped, my blood-soaked hands putting eerie prints on the sheet.
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I stood up but my legs buckled under me and I crashed to the floor unconscious.
I thought people only fainted in films. And then it was only women.
I don't know how long I was out. I didn't dream. I was still on the floor beside Margaret's bed. For a brief moment I hoped it had been a dream, but then I saw Margaret's face again and the tears began to roll down my cheeks. I scurried away across the floor and into the bathroom.
I was sick in the washbasin, retched until there was nothing left to come up, then washed my face. I sat down on the toilet seat to stop myself shaking. Margaret was dead in the other room. Dead in the other room. Dead. Dead. And then I heard it.
A soft, stealthy creaking from the stairs; soft, but not soft, like a dormouse in jackboots. In my rush to be sick I hadn't turned the bathroom light on and the hall was still in darkness. The bathroom door was three quarters closed. The only light came faintly from Margaret's room. I could barely make out a small shadowy figure making its way cautiously up the stairs.
I tried desperately to control the vibrations that were racking my body, my leg was tapping against the cool ceramic of the toilet bowl like some kind of spastic Morse code, shouting out, HEY, I'M IN HERE. My breath only came in rasping flurries, welcomed on each occasion by a manic waving of my arms like a mime artist on acid.
The figure drew nearer. Margaret was dead. Margaret was dead and I knew in every inch of my shuddering body that I was next, this dumb spinning top of a body was going to die on a toilet seat in his lover's house.
And then I was up from the seat, possessed of a madness born of desperation, determined to go out fighting, a last gasp at life that was about to be taken from me for a reason I would never know. I felt the hot blood course in my veins, all that vibrating shock distilled now into a surge of vengeful violence. I flung the door open and with arms flailing like Chinese table tennis bats plunged into the darkness.
We collided at the top of the stairs, he with a high-pitched wail of shock, me screaming a death scream, and we tumbled together, his taut body cushioning me down to the bottom steps where I bounced off him and thumped against the door.
Divorcing Jack Page 6
