It occurs to me now that if V hadn’t got her job we might have gone to America together. We might still be there. But I don’t like to think this way; it leads you down too many dangerous paths, into worlds of temptation which can never be yours. And I indulged too much in that sort of thinking as a child: that woman kissing her child in the park could be your mother, your key could let you into the house down the road with roses round the door, the smell of frying onions could be someone preparing your dinner.
And anyway, that is what happened. I got the job in America and she got the job in London. We were both riding the crest of a wave, me offered a salary so high I couldn’t take it seriously and V the youngest person ever to have been taken on as a director at the Calthorpe Centre, only six years out of university.
‘How clever of them to make it sound so innocent, like a medical foundation or something,’ she said after she took the call.
I wrapped her in my arms and whispered my congratulations. ‘But I’m going to New York in three months,’ I said.
She pulled away from me and her face tightened round her words. ‘I can’t turn this down, Mikey.’
Something rose through me which I thought might tip me off balance. ‘I won’t go then. I can get another job here.’
‘No. You’ve got to go. It’s an amazing opportunity for you. You can do a couple of years and earn lots of money and then we can start our proper life when you get back.’
‘You make it sound so easy.’
‘That’s because it is. We’ll talk every day and it’s not that far. We can fly over for weekends. It will be romantic.’ She laughed. ‘You’ll be even more like my eagle, flying across the Atlantic in your silver bullet.’
But that thought jolted me. I reached out and took her by the shoulders. ‘You have to promise that you won’t ever Crave without me, V.’
She shook herself free and rubbed where my hands had held her. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
Her tone cut at me and I turned away, trying to hide my hurt. But she followed me, twisting her body round mine. ‘Mike, I would never do that, you must know that.’
She stood on tiptoes so that her mouth was against my ear. ‘I love seeing how scared they are of you,’ she whispered. I held myself still, until she said, ‘Let’s Crave.’
I think we both knew it would be our last time. We went to a bar just off Leicester Square. We’d been there before, but not for at least six months. It was always filled with foreign students and tourists and gangs of boys up from the provinces. And the odd prostitute or escort. No one there looked as if they were having a good time and the music was a hard, steady thump which reverberated through your body and felt like you were giving yourself CPR. The lights strobed, making everyone’s skin take on a sickly, alien pallor. And something fluorescent in the air made the whites of everyone’s eyes glint and lint show up on everyone’s clothes.
V was wearing a grey silk dress which revealed the milky whiteness of her shoulders and her long, thin neck which curled into the base of her skull. She had piled her dark hair on top of her head, but tendrils had escaped to caress her neck, in a promise of what your lips could do. Black liner flicked over her eyes, stretching and elongating them, and she licked at her full lips which had never needed any lipstick. There was a blush high on her cheekbones, but I didn’t know if it was real or false. She smiled as the barman handed her a tall, brown drink and I saw her nails were painted black.
My own drink was too sweet and it coated my throat so it felt tight and sore. My head was filled with the knowledge of the time we were going to have to spend apart, which was causing an ache to build in my temples. A drunk man swayed into me, his girlfriend giggling on his arm. We were right next to the bar and it would have been very easy to take his head in my hands and bash it against the hard wood. The blood would have come quickly, his head contorted and broken, before anyone could have stopped me.
I looked back at V and she was still alone, still leaning against the bar, her drink making frequent trips to her mouth. It was possible she looked too perfect for this place and I thought about telling her we should leave. It was like putting an exotic butterfly in a roomful of flies, all buzzing round their own shit. I pushed myself off the bar to go to her, but as I did so a man approached her. He wasn’t much taller than she was; stocky, his large muscles bulging like Popeye’s from a pristine white T-shirt. His skin was swarthy and even from where I stood I could see it was covered in a film of sweat. A heavy silver chain with some sort of round coin encircled his neck and his black hair was slicked off his face. He wasn’t ugly, but something about him was grotesque, almost as though his features were too large for his face.
I stopped myself from moving, my eyes locked on to the encounter. I imagined, as I always did at this moment, what it was like to be that close to V, to feel the heat from her body and to imagine your hands at work there; to look at her lips as she spoke, to catch glimpses of her tongue as she laughed and wonder what that mouth was capable of. He leant forward as he spoke, craning close to her ear, his hand poised in the air just by her arm, as if summoning up the courage to touch her. She laughed. He dropped his hand to her hip, where it finally connected with her body through the silk. She was still leaning against the bar, but she tilted her hips forwards slightly so he could slide his hand behind her, against her buttocks. He closed the gap between them, extinguishing all the air, his groin pushing against her hips, no doubt already advertising whatever it was he had. I kept my eyes on V’s hands, but they stayed on her drink and the eagle hung uselessly round her neck.
My breathing had deepened and my body felt weak and useless. A mist was drawing down and I worried that soon I wouldn’t be able to see at all. Soon I would miss V’s sign and she would be swallowed by the night and the man. I turned my head and saw the neon exit sign above the door. I imagined walking towards it and into the open, returning alone to our flat, getting into bed and waiting for her to come home. I imagined letting go and not caring, the idea like tiny pins in my brain.
I looked back and even though the man’s face was against V’s neck, I could see her hand on the bird. The woman in front of me yelped as I pushed her out of the way. ‘Watch out,’ she called after me, pointlessly. Even in the moments it took for me to reach her, I saw V’s expression change. She wasn’t laughing any more and was pushing slightly against the man’s chest as he lowered his face towards hers. I took him by the shoulder, yanking him backwards so his drink made a stain down the front of his T-shirt.
‘What the fuck are you doing to my girlfriend?’ I asked, feeling the people around us melting into the background.
‘What the fuck?’ he said, straightening up. We stared at each other for a minute, but I had height and muscle on him and he had felt my strength when I pulled him back. He waved his hands in the air. ‘Nice fucking girlfriend,’ he said to me. Then he looked at V. ‘Cocktease,’ he said, turning away.
I felt V’s hand on my arm as it tensed and drew back, ready to lay waste to his stupid, oversized face. She turned me towards her and pulled me closer and I leant down and kissed her, putting my hands where his had been, laying back my claim. Her tongue was quick and fast and I wanted her so much I thought I would sweep the drinks off the bar and lay her in the spilt liquor. But she pulled me away, past the round tables and chairs, past the writhing bodies on the dance floor, past the booming speakers, past the merging couples, to a dark corner. She backed herself into it, pulling me towards her. She opened my flies and pulled me out, wrapping her legs around me. The silk of her dress slithered upwards too easily and she wasn’t wearing underwear, so I was inside her quickly and she was biting the side of my neck and moaning and it was like all the other people had gone and we were the only ones there, the only ones who mattered.
Afterwards, in the cold night air, with drunken people bustling along their sad, forlorn ways to terrible encounters, V said, ‘For a second I thought you’d abandoned me.’
I took her ha
nd. ‘How can you say that?’
‘Because I touched the bird and it took you a while to come.’
I realised I must have spent longer looking at the exit sign than I’d meant to. ‘I’d never abandon you,’ I said.
‘Promise?’ she said and I looked over and saw she wasn’t giggling any more. She looked smaller, the black lines smudged now around her eyes.
I stopped, even though the streets were so full people immediately walked into us. I lifted the delicate silver bird which lived on the chain round her neck and she stepped towards me. ‘I’m your eagle,’ I said. ‘You know that.’
I didn’t give V the necklace. In fact, she told me she bought it for herself with her first ever pay packet from a waitressing job when she was sixteen. She told me she’d been walking past a shop and it had glinted at her from a window and she’d felt a deep desire to possess it. I had always presumed it to be a dainty bird, like a swift or even a clichéd lovebird, and I was surprised when she first told me it was an eagle. But when I looked properly I saw the length of the wings and the curved beak.
‘Eagles are magnificent,’ V had said. ‘They are the only birds which get excited by a storm, then they fly straight into it, so they can look down on all the chaos. But also,’ she said, putting her hands over mine, ‘they are very loyal. They mate for life.’
I’d leant down and kissed her mouth. ‘I’m your eagle,’ I’d said.
I thought it expedient to make friends in my new City job, even though the same plan hadn’t gone that well in New York. I would be fine if it was just V and me forever, but I’ve learnt that people find you strange if you’re happy like that. So, I’ve learnt their ways. I understand now that people do not always mean what they say. That they enjoy hours of meaningless chat in crowded bars without a reason like the Crave for being there. That they are happy to share their bodies with others and then act as if they barely know them.
If someone says something like, ‘I could fucking kill him,’ or, ‘I’m feeling so depressed,’ or, ‘My legs are literally about to drop off,’ they don’t actually mean any of those things. They don’t even mean anything close to those things. When a woman puts her hand on your leg she does not expect you to reciprocate. When a man calls you mate, it doesn’t mean he likes you. When someone says, ‘We must get together soon,’ you shouldn’t ask them when or text them the next day.
When I was in primary school I pushed another boy in my class, Billy Sheffield, and he fell and grazed his knee. My teacher, whose name I forget, told me I had to say sorry, but I refused because I wasn’t. He had called me some name, again I forget what but it would have been something along the lines of Two-Stripe or Fleabag, in reference to my market-stall trainers and unwashed clothes. Either way, I wasn’t sorry. So they took me to the little office where rumour had it they sent the crazy kids. A rosy-cheeked woman smiled at me and told me to sit in a comfy chair whilst she offered me sweets. It made me wonder if being crazy was all that bad after all.
‘Why aren’t you sorry?’ she finally asked me, after I’d stuffed myself with Smarties.
‘Because I’m not,’ I said.
‘But when you saw the blood on Billy’s knee, didn’t you feel bad that you’d done it?’ she said.
I thought back to the moment, standing over Billy and looking down at his raw knee, the skin scraped back and drops of blood popping on to the skin. I knew how it would sting and burn, how a bit of gravel might get trapped inside and how the nurse would right now probably be spreading foul-smelling iodine across the graze, wrapping it in a white bandage which he would wear like a medal of honour. ‘I thought he deserved it,’ I said.
‘No one ever deserves to be hurt,’ she said, still smiling.
‘He called me a bad name.’
‘Yes and that was very mean. He’ll be punished for that. But you still have to say sorry for hurting him.’ I must have looked blank, because she went on. ‘Sometimes, Michael, it’s worth saying sorry even if you don’t completely mean it. Just to keep the peace and make the other person feel better.’
I still sometimes wish I’d asked her if that applies to all emotion, or only contrition.
But I have learnt enough lessons over the years to better understand what is and is not expected in life. I knew, for example, that when George, who worked in the next office to mine, asked if I’d like to come out for a drink soon after I started in the City, I should arrange my face into a smile and say yes.
I had by then established a successful routine, and that made me feel confident about being able to adapt to a social situation. I rose every day at 5 a.m., ran for forty minutes along the same route, which was an acceptable 9K, came home, showered and dressed and left the house at 6.10 a.m., in order to be at my desk by 6.45 a.m. The office had its own gym, as all those offices do, and so I also worked out during my lunch hour on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I would have done it every day, but I knew there would soon be client lunches to attend and times when it was necessary to look as if I was so busy I was working through lunch. This set-up meant I had a bit of flexibility and could switch my days around if need be. I also bought a bench press and weights for home. For now they were in the bare library, but I knew V would never agree to this arrangement so I had already looked into the costs and feasibility of excavating the basement to make way for a gym. V always loved the heat, so I thought a sauna would work down there as well.
There were eleven of us out that evening, although only two are worth mentioning: George and Kaitlyn. George was loud and good-looking, but he drank too much and wasn’t very bright. His godfather ran the firm or something and his father was a lord, so he never had to worry about things like performance. You’d be amazed how many people there are like that in the City. How hard the rest of us have to work to carry them. And you could hate them, but what’s the point? The world, as I learnt at a young age, is hardly fair and there’s nothing anyone can do about that.
Kaitlyn worked in another office along my corridor, so we’d waved and said hello before. She was thin and tall and always dressed in some sort of dark-coloured suit, with amazingly high heels. I would watch her stride past my windows and wonder how on earth she didn’t trip and break her ankle. And yet she moved so effortlessly in them I concluded that she must have been wearing them for so long they had become an extension of her leg. Kaitlyn was very pale, with the lankest, blondest hair I’d ever seen. She was so blonde the shade extended to her eyelashes and eyebrows, which gave her an otherworldly quality. And her eyes were very blue, almost like looking at ice. I thought she’d be stern and severe, but in fact she was the exact opposite.
‘So, how are you finding us all?’ she asked when we found ourselves at the bar together, her accent a beautiful, soft Irish.
‘So far, so good.’
‘I hear you made a killing at Schwarz. I’d love to work there one day. My dream is to live in an apartment overlooking Central Park.’
‘My apartment overlooked Central Park.’ I glanced back at the rest of our table as I spoke, wondering when I could leave. We had been there for two hours and they were all already sweaty and red-faced, with a few of them making frequent trips to the toilets.
‘Oh wow,’ she said. ‘Why did you come back?’
‘I did my two years. London’s my home. The plan was never to go for more than two years.’
‘Yes, but New York. And Schwarz.’
Neither of us seemed to want to go back to our table, so I sipped at my drink at the bar. ‘My girlfriend has a job here she couldn’t leave.’
‘Oh, right. It must be impressive if it tops Schwarz.’
‘She’s not a banker. She works in Artificial Intelligence.’
Kaitlyn whistled through her teeth, an odd sound, not unlike one you’d use to call a dog. ‘Wow, what a power couple.’
‘Not really.’ I noticed that Kaitlyn wasn’t drinking her wine and the glass was tilting over the bar. ‘Careful, you might spill that.’
Sh
e looked down and laughed, taking a small sip. ‘So, where do you live now?’
‘Clapham.’
‘Oh, near me then. Are you by the common?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, Verity was very particular about being near the common. She’s a runner.’
‘I’m a walker,’ Kaitlyn said. ‘I’ve got a little dog and I walk him there every weekend. It’s the closest I get to home.’
‘Where’s home?’
‘A tiny village in the south of Ireland. You won’t have heard of it.’
‘Is your family still there?’
She nodded and I was struck suddenly by the thought of her flying across the sea to this harsh London life, away from the coast and the hills.
‘What brought you here?’
She shrugged. ‘Oh, you know, life. Ireland’s beautiful but it’s not the easiest place.’ For a terrible moment I thought she was going to cry, but she laughed instead. ‘I bet you have one of those gorgeous double-fronted houses on Windsor Terrace.’
‘How on earth did you know that?’ I asked too quickly, wondering if she’d been looking through my personnel file or something.
But she laughed again. ‘Because that road is just one long line of bankers, that’s why!’
I tried to picture some of my neighbours, but realised I couldn’t. I hoped she was exaggerating. Because if there is one thing V hates it’s unoriginality. And what could be more unoriginal than working in the City and living on a road of bankers? I could feel Kaitlyn looking at me but I refused to return her stare, feeling my cheeks colour under her scrutiny. I hated her at that moment, with a deep, horrible passion. Because how dare she come along and piss on my bonfire? My beautifully laid, perfectly proportioned bonfire.
Our Kind of Cruelty Page 2
