Corpsing

by Toby Litt

  She’d phoned me from her mobile. She’d probably been doing something up in town. Something to do with the new play. No time to go home and get a less special dress.

  So who was it she had been intending to meet? Who had cancelled?

  The main suspect was Cyril. He was always sniffing around. If Lily had been looking for something instant, he’d probably have been it. Then there was the possibility of someone new – someone I’d never heard of. If that were the case, then it was most likely someone from the new play she was about to start rehearsing: the producer, the director, or even the writer.

  I would have to think some more about that.

  The hitman had known who Lily was – probably having seen her on television. The fact that he shot her first suggested that she was the main target – the emotional focus of the crime. But the fact that I had been shot as well suggested that someone was jealous of whoever it was Lily would have been with, even if it hadn’t been me.

  There was another line of thought to pursue as well – less comfortably.

  Lily and I had not been one of those couples who, when they are falling apart, stop having sex. In fact, we seemed – during those final months – to be having sex a lot more, and a lot more spontaneously, in odder places: lifts, alleys, toilets, cupboards. We had gone al fresco for the first time (on Hampstead Heath) only a month before the end. The last time we had sex before we split was conventional enough – at home, in bed, with candlelight and cocaine. That was ten days before she dumped me.

  Lily was on the pill, but was often forgetful about taking it. We had agreed that, if one of us were to have unprotected sex with someone else, we would confess to it – and use condoms until we’d both had AIDS tests. During the split-up conversation (sofa, tears, bad pop songs), I asked Lily if she’d been sleeping with someone else. Her reply was devastating: ‘That isn’t the point.’

  It was for me. If she had that kind of flippant attitude about it, I wasn’t going to stick around.

  And so, while it was quite possible that I was the baby’s father, it was also quite possible that it was someone else.

  As far as I could work out, Lily had decided to have the abortion about five weeks after we split up. The last time we had sex (ten days before we split) had been just after her period. If I were the father, she would have skipped about three weeks after we broke up. But it wasn’t like Lily to be bothered with pregnancy tests. She’d have waited to see if she skipped another month – and only then started to worry.

  So, the father was almost certainly me or someone she had been fucking whilst still going out with me. There simply hadn’t been time for her to get pregnant and then get worried about being pregnant in the six weeks after we split.

  Clearly, I had to find out some more about the baby.

  24

  When I got home, there was a message on my answerphone from Anne-Marie. She was suggesting we meet up for coffee. She’d left all her numbers, work, home and mobile.

  I wanted distracting. I didn’t want to be alone. Anne-Marie, or so I thought, was the right kind of person for that moment.

  With Anne-Marie, I’d always got the feeling that we were standing on the foredecks of parallel-coursed ships, trying to send signals with brightly coloured flags, neither of us having any knowledge of semaphore. So there we’d always stood, making desperate jerking motions – motions which conveyed, if nothing else, a certain desperation to communicate.

  I remembered one particular incident, which hardly counted as an incident proper at all.

  We had been to see a film (I can’t remember what) and then to have a meal (I can’t remember where). We were sitting four-in-a-row in a Tube carriage: Lily, me, Anne-Marie, Anne-Marie’s long-term boyfriend. Lily and the boyfriend were slouching, their feet braced against the floor. Anne-Marie and I were sitting up straight with our legs crossed in the same direction, right over left. We were relaxed. We were a bit drunk. We were talking. And I noticed, as the carriage jolted round tunnel bends and bumped over joints in the track, that our feet – Anne-Marie’s and mine – were moving with perfect synchrony. It reminded me of when, as a child, I’d discovered that, if I strapped two pencils together with a rubber band, I could draw parallel lines – and so I had started drawing parallel lines everywhere. Watching our feet dip-lift-dip together was like watching some inhumanly perfect choreography – as if nothing else we could ever physically do would be as minute and exact and intimate. As soon as I noticed this, I became very embarrassed. I felt as if in some obscure way I’d been unfaithful to Lily by even noticing. Quickly, I uncrossed my legs – and crossed them the other way. But I didn’t realize that Anne-Marie had been looking where I’d been looking – and had noticed what I had noticed. She uncrossed-recrossed her legs, too.

  ‘It’s funny the way they do that, isn’t it?’ she said.

  Lily would never have perceived such a thing. Lily didn’t operate on such a scale.

  So, when the long-term boyfriend (Will, I think he was called) asked, ‘What do what?’ and Anne-Marie told him, Lily was a bit perplexed – until we demonstrated, and they both joined in.

  (Anne-Marie obviously had a far less guilty mind than mine. I would have died rather than give such a secret away.)

  For the rest of the journey, we sat there, four-in-a-row, Lily, me, Anne-Marie, Will, watching our feet jog-jog-jogging.

  And I felt terrible: First, by creating this intimacy, I’d been unfaithful with Anne-Marie; then, she’d been happy to betray our intimacy to others; and then, finally, we’d both joined in with a crude parody of that intimacy – a parody which destroyed it.

  I called Anne-Marie on her work number.

  Delight greeted my voice and acceptance my suggestion. ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Um,’ she said. ‘Wow! Quick. Yes.’

  When I told her I found getting into town a bit much, Anne-Marie said she was more than happy to go out locally for a curry.

  ‘See ya,’ she said.

  My first date, post-Lily. Six months plus.

  I wondered how long I would have waited before seeing someone else had Lily still been alive. Much longer, I suspected – what with me not being able to watch TV for fear of her humph.

  The breakfast cereal company had – I heard – shown the final Brandy and Cyril ad once, with a black border, out of respect for Lily – but after that the entire campaign had been shelved. Lily’s death had had no discernible effect on the sales of the bran-heavy cereal.

  Anne-Marie arrived just after seven.

  She stepped forwards to give me a kiss, but when she spotted my wheelchair – just where I’d placed it to be seen – she changed the kiss to a long and protective hug.

  ‘Are you sure you’re alright?’

  Wanting to get that kind of question out of the way before we went to the restaurant, I invited Anne-Marie in.

  For a while we sat on the sofa – me telling my body’s story for the last few months.

  From what Anne-Marie said, a few urban myths seemed to have ex-nihiloed up around my name. Various different parts of my anatomy had allegedly been shot at or shot off. It was rumoured that I would never walk/fuck again. That I needed constant nursing from my mother. That I’d gone mental and been sectioned after attacking a doctor.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Go back and tell everyone the rumours are true – or that their own particular rumour is true.’

  ‘Why? People are worried about you. I had no idea what I was going to find when I got here.’

  ‘Is my phone voice that bad?’

  ‘You seem very cheerful.’

  ‘Don’t be fooled. Others have.’

  We walked along to the Taste of Raj, all you would expect and want it to be: formula curries served in faux opulent surroundings to the accompaniment of a crunchy community-radio sitar.

  I seated myself so that I was facing the door. For a moment the rigidity of irrational fear began to creep into me. Perhaps Lily had been killed by the mere fact of si
tting opposite me in a restaurant. Perhaps the whole thing was about to happen again – to Anne-Marie, to me.

  We both asked for pints of Kingfisher. We shared poppadams, dipping them into the three different chutneys. We ordered: I had the brinjal bhajee, prawn dhansak and vegetable korma. Anne-Marie had chicken tikka masala and nan bread. We decided to halve a portion of basmati rice.

  Then we got to the interesting bit.

  ‘Actually, I split up with Will soon after you were –’

  ‘– shot. You can say it. It sounds nicer coming from you than anyone else. You make it sound like I’m going to be on the cover of Vogue in three months’ time.’

  Yes,’ she said, cracking a poppadam. ‘I think it was pardy that – the shooting, not me – which broke us up. Will seemed to think that in some obscure way Lily was asking for it.’ She paused. ‘No, we really shouldn’t talk about this. It’s far too… much.’

  ‘Anne-Marie,’ I said. ‘There’s no-one I would prefer to talk about it with – and it’s good that you feel that we can.’

  The boyfriend was off the scene, that’s what was good.

  The moment this became clear, I’d forgotten everything of the reality of my own situation. I didn’t care if Anne-Marie came to bed laughing or crying, as long as she came. This, I remembered, was how I always used to be when out on dates. Concentrating on one simple objective: sex. Everything else blocked out.

  ‘Will thought Lily was asking for it by being beautiful, by being female, by being famous. He saw the whole thing as some sick kind of fashion statement – granting her a status she hadn’t really earned.’

  ‘I wonder what he said about me?’

  ‘I can tell you. He said, “Hang around her type long enough and you’re bound to get caught in the crossfire eventually.” ‘

  Anger like you wouldn’t believe came over me.

  ‘Please tell Will, if you see him again (which I sincerely hope you won’t) that I had three bullets, all my very own, aimed and fired directly at me. Crossfire had nothing to do with it. Still, if it broke you up with a tosser like that, maybe it was worth taking the odd slug.’

  Anne-Marie ignored the compliment.

  ‘He was almost misogynistic about it. As if a real woman hadn’t really died. As if he were just coming out of a cinema and saying that the violence wasn’t realistic enough.’

  ‘Believe me,’ I said, ‘the young man doesn’t want to see realistic violence.’

  ‘But that’s the thing – I think he does. What really broke us up was that he became almost enthusiastic about the killing – taping the news – collecting cuttings –’

  ‘My mother did too. Do you think I should disown her? It might be a good excuse.’

  ‘And finally I asked him, “You wish you’d been there to see it, don’t you?” And he knew I meant he would’ve liked to see Lily get shot, not you.’

  She trailed off, omitting the punch-line.

  ‘What did he say?’

  Anne-Marie took a gulp of Kingfisher.

  ‘Well, he lied – he denied it. But I could tell I’d caught him out. I’ve been pretty disgusted with men ever since. I can’t imagine having that kind of blood-lust, that cruel voyeurism. That’s why I wanted to see you.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Only that?’

  ‘Oh, of course not, Conrad. I wanted to make sure you were alright. But, I mean, you went through it. If any man has lost that brutality, it must be you. Like you said, he really wouldn’t want to have seen what you saw.’

  ‘I never liked him,’ I said.

  ‘That wasn’t hard to tell.’

  ‘He made me very jealous.’

  ‘Please, tell me you didn’t enjoy it. Tell me all men aren’t like that.’

  For my own selfish reasons, and in necessary defence of my gender, I decided to lie. Nobody should have to see what I saw. But there had been a part of me that had enjoyed it – and not a small part. What is one meant to feel if, half-way through an argument with the person who dumped you, fucked up your life and looks really fabulous on it, that person is shot? Of course there’s going to be a certain amount of pleasure. It’s undeniable that the thing, in a way, couldn’t have been better timed. We all have revenge fantasies, born of impotence. She had kicked me out. I didn’t feel all that good about it. And I wouldn’t have felt all that bad about it if she’d been made to suffer a little. That didn’t mean I’d have put in a specific request to see her brain spattered all over the wall, the mirror, the tabletop, the floor. But things just aren’t that simple. Not as far as men in general are concerned. Of course, if something is known to happen – to be possible – to be visible – then men will want to see it. All men.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘All men aren’t like that at all.’

  Anne-Marie smiled beatifically. Her world had lightened. There was now one good man in it.

  The second half of her beer went down twice as fast as the first. She ordered a second. We ate, talked, laughed, flirted. We avoided the subject. She had another half. We two-spooned a mango kulfi. I paid. We strolled home. I invited her in.

  She hesitated for a moment before saying yes, she’d love to.

  25

  A sofa-scenario was in danger of developing.

  When I mentioned the four-in-a-row jog-jog-jogging feet incident, Anne-Marie remembered immediately. She confessed how badly she’d felt for blabbing our micro-secret to the others. (We were us; they were the others: that was good.) Something intimate and almost non-existent in its dancing delicacy had been debased into a vulgar chorus line. She apologized – and said she’d only spoken up because she felt guilty: guilty because it was obvious that she and I were operating on the same scale, were – in a word – compatible. Or would be, if only we had a chance to get it together. She’d wanted to minimize that chance – by showing fidelity to her boyfriend (though it was impossible he’d notice this – being too great a giant to receive hints on our sub-scale) and by showing a certain callousness to me (which she knew I would feel – being a creature of minutiae like herself). She apologized and apologized for what she’d done – and I began to gain kisses from it, one for every apology.

  We moved through into the bedroom.

  Once we started to have sex, I felt unable to go through with things (kisses, caresses, etc.) because they seemed to be so obvious. But when Anne-Marie took hold of my cock, she seemed to be saying, ‘It’s okay. We can be obvious. That’s what sex is about. It’s not about the variety, it’s about the sameness. Let’s do now with each other what we’ve done before with others. Flesh is flesh, touch is touch, kiss is kiss. Isn’t that enough for you?’

  And I touched her cunt so as to say, ‘More than enough.’ And for a while it was.

  But sex is never that simple. Even though she was dead and could not be hurt by this, I still felt as though I were betraying Lily. Merely to touch another woman’s body, to allow that (for me) other women’s bodies existed, was betrayal. And although it was highly likely that Lily had been unfaithful to me, I got little satisfaction out of this posthumous revenge. I felt sad that the sex was so haunted for me by Lily’s presence. But then I remembered how rarely it had been that, during sex with her, even my few previous experiences with other women had been totally obliterated.

  One thing I did manage – not to be thinking of Lily at the exact moment I ejaculated. At that instant (to block out Lily’s imminent image) I pictured this: anonymous anal rape and the woman screaming for it to stop and the man not stopping. It was better that way, I thought.

  And then, afterwards, there were moments, lying there, when it was all I could do to touch her spine with my fingertips. To have stroked her with my palm or brushed her with the side of my arm would have been too much.

  I was so grateful. I wanted to cry and for her to catch me crying. I wanted to be allowed to pity her. I wanted to offer her certain varieties of care. It was a terrible thing not to be able to tell her I loved her just because I didn’t, yet. But I knew t
hat if I were able to say it, I would. It would be created by the mere utterance of it.

  We fell asleep.

  I woke up again around four and lay there in the half-dark, curtains badly-hurriedly drawn, looking at the perfection of her back. It was, I thought, absolutely without blemish – smooth, white, soft. Like Lily’s. But as the light of morning intruded, I began to see moles. It was like someone had spilled coffee grounds on her. Then freckles emerged. And discolourations. And hairs. But her failure to be flawless in anything other than half-dark only made her the more poignant to me.

  I remembered how, when I was living with Lily, I used to wake up in the night and go into the bathroom and find dark bruises on my upper arms and all down my legs. I couldn’t believe it – out of love, I’d learnt to sleep through being beaten up. Just as Lily hit me, unconsciously, so I unconscious received her blows. She even, one night, broke one of my front teeth.

  I fell asleep again.

  I felt happier than I had, since.

  26

  When I woke up, I found a note on the bedside table – simple, affectionate. Soon afterwards, a call came through from Anne-Marie. She had gone in to work – muzzy, smiling, and wearing the exact same outfit as the clay before. In a rampantly gossipy modelling agency office – crammed with style-conscious young women and ultra-camp gay men – this couldn’t fail to be noticed. Our voices on the phone maintained, as far as possible, the timbre of the pillow talk. But Anne-Marie kept breaking off to try and shh the catty backchat.

  Over coffee, I decided I was now strong enough to go back to Lily’s flat. I needed somehow to repossess it, take it back from Josephine.

  The air in the hall as I walked in was cold and dead. The carpet still smelt rankly of Snafu and Glitch’s shit and piss. There was a pile of mail on the hall table. I flicked through it distractedly. Of the earlier-dated mail, I saw that all the letters (including those addressed to me) had been opened: bank statements, phone bills, airmails, even junk mail. It hurt me to think that Josephine knew the exact magnitude of my overdraft. I stuffed all of it into my rucksack – deal with it later.