Romeo's Tune (1990)

by Timlin, Mark

‘Why?’

  ‘Because they get down,’ she said drily.

  She poured the wine and we drank. It was cold and delicious. The TV was playing a rock video with the sound turned all the way down. I recognised Peter Gabriel and I was glad it was silent running.

  We sat down on the sofa, one by each arm, like book-ends and I asked her how she was settling down in London.

  ‘Just fine,’ she said, ‘sitting in on some classes, getting started on research for a paper.’

  ‘How long are you over here for?’

  ‘A year.’

  ‘Where did you go to college in the States?’

  ‘New York.’

  ‘And why here now?’ I asked.

  She seemed reticent. ‘It’s a long story. I’ll tell you some time.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ I said, and changed the subject. I asked her what she wanted to do that evening and she opted for dinner. She wanted Indian food so I took her to a place I know in Gypsy Hill that does a mean tandoori duck.

  At first we just chatted, swapping information. But somehow for the last half of the meal and the coffee and the drive back to her place and more coffee in her living-room, listening to her new tapes, we talked about me.

  I told her a lot, but not everything. I didn’t think she was ready for everything, and nor was I, so I glossed over a lot. She didn’t pry and I didn’t mind talking. But by two a.m. I was about talked out and I told her so.

  ‘You must be bored,’ I said.

  ‘Not in the least,’ she replied. ‘I’ve really enjoyed myself tonight. I haven’t been anywhere since I got here.’

  ‘No handsome students asked you out?’

  ‘Don’t be coy, Nick,’ she teased.

  ‘Shall we do it again?’ I asked.

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘I’ll call you,’ I said.

  ‘That reminds me,’ she said, ‘How did you get my number in the first place?’

  ‘Copper’s trick.’ I explained. ‘I just memorized it off the dial. It’s a good idea to remove the number or cover it up, or else anyone who comes in can get your number and use it.’

  She pulled a face in my direction. ‘I’ll remember that.’

  ‘Are you mad at me?’ I asked, putting on my most innocent look.

  ‘No,’ she said, then bounced up and kissed me briefly on the cheek. I went out into the frosty night air and on the way back home I smiled that dopey smile again.

  11

  When I checked into the office the next morning Cat was a proud mother. I could hardly believe it. I’d got her to the vet’s in the nick of time.

  She sat in her nest of paper with a bunch of little bodies sucking busily at her nipples. I didn’t know quite what to expect from my old sparring partner, but when I hunkered down by her basket for a closer look she raised her head for me to stroke her torn ear.

  ‘Good girl,’ I said aloud, then went and sat in my chair and looked at my new family. As the kittens staggered blindly around her body I counted four in all. Three had their mother’s black and white colouring and one was bright ginger. At last I had a clue as to who the daddy was.

  When the feed was over and the babies collapsed into a sated heap I did exactly what I’d read I had to do from the small booklet I’d picked up from the pet shop when I bought the cat basket. I gently lifted the animals on to a blanket I fetched from the car and then disposed of the messy paper into a garbage sack and carried the blanket, litter and all, back to the basket.

  Cat looked on all the while with a proprietary air, then settled back with her kittens. She’d had a perfect, clean birth, and as far as I could tell by looking everything was AOK. I put down some food and lots of fresh milk and water and left her to it. When I’d disposed of the rubbish and washed my hands I called Josephine on the phone.

  ‘You just caught me,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’m off to school and I’m running late thanks to you being here ‘til all hours.’

  ‘Don’t beat me up,’ I said. ‘Congratulate me, I’m a father again.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My cat had her kittens.’

  ‘Fantastic.’ There was a trace of irony in her voice.

  ‘Don’t knock it,’ I said. ‘Nature’s wonderful.’

  ‘Nick,’ she protested, ‘I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘Will you celebrate with me tonight?’

  ‘You are crazy.’

  ‘Not at all.’ I paused. ‘Well, will you?’

  ‘OK, but just let me go now or I’ll never get there.’

  ‘I’ll come round with champagne at seven.’

  ‘I should be working.’

  ‘Work is a four-letter word,’ I said.

  ‘All right, all right, you’ve convinced me. I’ll see you at seven, and I have to go now.’ With that she hung up.

  I spent the rest of the morning telling my neighbours about Cat and the happy event. I know it was stupid, but what the hell.

  Chan and the lady from the hairdressers peeped in and it made me feel good. Cat revelled in the attention and so did I. Around noon, Pete the radical car cleaner skateboarded by. He wasn’t interested in cats but he was interested in giving the Jag a valet inside and out. I left him wired into his walkman whilst I went to the bank in the Golf.

  I deposited McBain’s two thousand which had been burning a hole in the pocket of my Paul Smith’s. Whilst I was there I checked my balance which was reassuringly healthy. I celebrated by investing some cash in a baggy, dusty pink shirt from Brixton Arcade, a magnum of champagne, and a pint of fresh peeled prawns from Bob White’s for the new mother. When I got back to the office the Jaguar was pristine. I tipped Pete with a fiver and he hip-hopped off to pick up the new Fat Boys’ album at Our Price.

  At seven that evening I was once again ringing on Jo’s door bell. That night she was dressed in the shortest, tightest, blackest little black dress I’d ever seen over fishnet tights. I think she was teasing me.

  She admired my new shirt and I admired her thighs. We went out to dinner again. I took her down to the Chinese in Norbury where the ladies fussed over us and I blew fifty nicker on the best meal I’d tasted for years. Perhaps it was the company. We slaughtered the menu from fried won-ton through frogs’ legs in chilli to sautéed winter mushrooms and bamboo shoots. The girl ate like a pig and I had to go some to keep up. She dripped grease down her chin and I wiped it off with a pink napkin. Sickening? I agree, but I might tell you that every minute I spent with her, I loved her more. Or I might not. It depends.

  We finished the dinner by drinking far too many Irish coffees, and I drove back to her flat with a buzz on like a beehive on amphetamine honey.

  That night I kissed her properly for the first time and held her body. She tasted like rose petals in garlic sauce and was as delicate as the kittens I’d held earlier but hotter and harder.

  I was a lost cause by the time she shooed me home as the clock struck five.

  I saw her every night that week and spent my ill-gottens like water. Don’t get me wrong – she wanted to pay her share but I wouldn’t let her. We sampled the world’s cuisines over the next few days and at the end of the week we sampled each other.

  12

  It was Saturday night and we were on another of our culinary whiz-bangs. Satay and Wine, it was, just off Charing Cross Road. That’s what the restaurant was called and that’s what we ate. Sticks of chicken and pork satay in peanut sauce and lots of wine. I was jumping about like a demented twelve-year-old on his first date but I still couldn’t resist snatching glances at the waitress who was serving us. Snatch was right.

  Josephine caught on early and didn’t fumble the catch.

  ‘Seems to me we have a slight problem here, soldier,’ she said.

  ‘How so?’ I asked.

  ‘You seem to be more interested in the hired help than in me.’

  ‘Josephine, that’s a wicked thing to say.’

  ‘You appear to be obsessed with her ass.’

 
; I laughed and spluttered some Piesporter onto the table-cloth. ‘An ass is a donkey, for Christ’s sake,’ I said.

  ‘And a donkey is what that bitch looks like she needs.’

  ‘I don’t know whether that’s an insult or a compliment,’ I said.

  ‘Listen buddy,’ she said, ‘if you’re out with me, be with me. If you keep looking at that little chinky bitch I’ll scratch her eyes out.’

  ‘It’s not her fault,’ I protested. ‘They’re my eyes that are looking.’

  ‘Her eyes for starters, Buster. Then I’ll get on to the main event.’

  ‘I apologize,’ I said. ‘Eyes front and a truce called.’

  ‘Just keep them there.’

  I found I was looking straight into her baby blues and I felt the sort of feeling that I thought I’d never have again looking at a woman.

  ‘You’ll make me cherry up,’ I said.

  ‘What the hell’s that?’

  ‘Blush, but blushing is not something you admit to at my age.’

  ‘Blush away,’ she said with a grin round a mouthful of bean sprouts.

  I leant over and touched her hand. She held my fingers tightly. Remember what I said about a first date.

  And that’s how the evening progressed. She wanted to go to a sleazy club and we did, and we managed to keep bumping each other all the time. Touching and enjoying it.

  The club was well weird. It was in a cellar in Dean Street and packed to the doors. Trannies, rubber queens, out-of-time punks and fashion victims all jostled each other for space. You could hear the clank of chains and creaking of leather two streets away.

  The disc jockey was playing R&B and soul from the sixties when we arrived and Josephine started bopping and kept going right through the goth band and the human beat box who followed. My foot started to give me some shit so I found a table, a bottle of Grolsch and a friend in the shape of a gay skateboarder for Jesus to keep me company. Josephine went through half London’s demimonde as partners during the evening, but kept winking and throwing kisses and suggestive looks at me as I strained to hear the gospel according to the Chemical Cathedral through the din.

  She pulled in for a pit stop around midnight. She was hot and smelled like steam as she pushed up next to me on the bench seat.

  ‘Aren’t you going to dance with me? ‘ she pouted.

  ‘You seem to be doing all right on your own. Besides, my foot’s playing me up.’

  ‘Do you want to go?’ she asked.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Why not? There’s no one here that turns me on.’

  ‘No one?’ I queried.

  ‘Well, maybe one,’ she said, ‘but the poor old guy’s got a gimpy leg.’

  ‘You say the sweetest things,’ I commented.

  ‘You are so right. Well, come on old guy, see me home.’

  ‘OK sweetheart,’ I said, ‘let’s split.’

  We said au revoir to our new pals and I collected a telephone number from my skateboarding acquaintance who wouldn’t let me go until I promised to go and hear him preach at the Commonwealth Institute.

  Josephine and I squeezed out into the freezing night air and made a run for the car under street lamps haloed with a frigid mist.

  I drove back to her place with the Jazz Messengers on the stereo and her head on my shoulder. I can highly recommend the feeling. She invited me in for coffee. I think I’d have bitten her leg if she hadn’t.

  She turned up the central heating with a flick of a switch and me with a flick of her backside as I followed her through to the kitchen.

  She bumped me as she put on the kettle, she bumped me as she got the cups down from the cupboard, and she bumped me as she got the milk out of the fridge. I could have avoided being bumped I suppose. I could have left the country but I wasn’t going to.

  We drank our coffee in a heated rush. I almost burnt my mouth getting the liquid down. When we dumped our cups she came into my arms like they were made to measure for her. We held each other as close as Siamese twins and I stroked her back through the thin material of her dress. I felt her bra strap and ran my fingers along the length of it until I held her breast.

  She looked up at me and smiled.

  ‘I can take you to the sun,’ she said, ‘but perhaps the sun’s too hot and you don’t want to go.’

  I picked her up in my arms and limped us both off to her bedroom.

  And the best part of the whole thing was that we both cared.

  13

  When I woke up I didn’t know where the hell I was. You ever had that? I hate it. When I was a kid I used to get down under the bedclothes and push the sheets and blankets right up over my head and turn round and round until I didn’t know which way was up. Complete disorientation until I nearly suffocated. Take away all points of reference and the mind does weird things. That was how it was that morning or night or whatever it was. I didn’t have a clue. I woke up suddenly and sweatily in the wreck of a bed and for maybe thirty seconds, maybe longer, I couldn’t remember who it belonged to. It was dark and I couldn’t see the colour of the sheets or the wallpaper. All I knew was that I was alone in a strange room.

  Suddenly it all came back to me. I blew out a breath of relief and flopped back down onto the damp sheets. There was a thin strip of light under the bedroom door and someone was moving about in the kitchen. For a moment more I was still the little boy under the blanket and I hoped it was Jo. Of course it was. I shook the sleep and the little boy out of my head, got out of bed, pulled on my shirt and trousers that were draped over the back of a chair and went to find her.

  She was standing in the kitchen with her back to the door dressed only in a pair of brief knickers. I stood and looked at her for a long moment. Barefoot as I was she hadn’t heard me come down the hall. She was waiting for the kettle to boil. The radio on the dresser was softly playing an old Motown tune and as her body moved with the rhythm I could see the muscles in her back moving under her smooth skin.

  I walked up behind her and held her gently round the waist. She half turned and looked up at me.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘How are you today?’

  She said nothing in reply and I could tell she’d been crying.

  ‘I got lonely in there on my own,’ I said.

  She just kept on looking and I felt dumb and inadequate.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘I didn’t come here for this,’ she said at last.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For meeting someone, and getting involved. I came here to study and to be on my own.’

  ‘I’d like to say I’m sorry it happened,’ I said, ‘but I’m not.’

  ‘Nor am I in a way,’ she replied. ‘But in a way I am.’

  ‘That’s a tough one. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll make some tea?’

  ‘I hate tea.’

  ‘Then I’ll make some coffee.’

  ‘English people make lousy coffee.’

  ‘American people make lousy tea, but I’ve been drinking yours all week.’

  ‘So make some lousy coffee,’ she said.

  ‘Are you warm enough?’ I asked. ‘I’ll get you a robe or something if you like.’

  ‘That would be nice,’ she said. ‘It is kind of chilly in here.’ I went back into the bedroom and found her dressing-gown hanging behind the door and carried it back through to the kitchen. I put it on her like I would do for my own little girl.

  ‘I find it hard to think of you as a father,’ she said as if reading my mind.

  ‘I was a good father.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘Was, is, who knows? I don’t get much chance to practise these days, except with those cats.’

  ‘Oh God, Nick, I wish it hadn’t happened.’

  ‘What, the cats?’ I asked, although I knew fully well she didn’t mean them.

  ‘No, us.’

  ‘You keep saying that.’

  ‘I keep feeling it.’

  ‘Is there
someone back in the States?’ I asked. ‘You never said.’

  ‘Yes, no . . . sort of.’

  ‘You don’t sound very sure.’

  ‘Can’t you tell that I’m not? I’m not sure about anything.’

  ‘I’m sure about one thing,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to let you go.’

  ‘You may have to.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘That’s a long time, Nick, a long, long time.’ She paused. ‘I think I’d better tell you everything.’

  I looked at her and she looked away. I didn’t know what was coming but I knew it was going to be difficult for her, so I turned round to make the coffee as she started.

  ‘First of all,’ she said to my back, ‘my real name isn’t Josephine Cass.’

  I put down the spoon I was holding and turned back.

  ‘It almost is but not quite. I’m not on the run, don’t worry.’

  ‘What is it then?’ I asked as I carried the cups over to the table and sat opposite her.

  ‘Josephina Cassini. A real guinea name, huh?’

  ‘If you say so,’ I replied.

  ‘I changed it when I went to college.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You wouldn’t know of course, but the Cassini are big men in the Mob.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Mob, Cosa Nostra, the Mafia, whatever you like to call it, though they’ll deny it. Businessmen they call themselves.’

  ‘Are you kidding me?’

  ‘Do I look like I am?’ And she didn’t. She sat there hunched up in her robe holding onto the cup of coffee like dear life itself.

  ‘No, sweetheart,’ I said, ‘you don’t.’ And I touched her shoulder across the table.

  ‘I can’t handle it you see. Never could since I first found out what “The Business” meant. I love my family but I left them the first chance I got. I went to New York, then California, now here.’

  ‘And on the way you dumped your name?’

  ‘I know it sounds strange Nick, but I just can’t bear to be part of all that. I have some money of my own that my mother left me, money her mother left her. It’s clean money.’

  ‘What does your father think of all this?’