by Mark Timlin
‘You’re not listening,’ she said. ‘Am I beginning to bore you already?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘I was wondering, if I left my car on the yellow line outside your place and got a cab home, would it still be there in the morning, or towed away or clamped or what?’
‘A bit pissed, are we?’
‘I have been soberer. More sober,’ I said.
She grinned a wicked grin. ‘You are too, aren’t you? So do I send you home or do I not?’
‘You tell me,’ I said. I’d already realised that if she was in the mood to tease, nothing I could say or do, short of gagging her, would stop her.
‘Do you want to go on somewhere?’ she asked. ‘Or do you want to come back to my place for a nightcap?’
‘I don’t care,’ I said.
‘We could go dancing,’ she said. ‘But maybe another time. Perhaps we should talk.’
‘Perhaps we should,’ I said. ‘I’ll get the bill.’
I caught the eye of one of our waiters and he brought a little leather folder with the bill tucked securely inside. I looked at it. Not bad. Not bad compared to the price of a new BMW. But for a meal for two, possibly a little steep. I paid for it on Access, and to hell with it.
The waiter brought Juanita’s coat and helped her on with it. We wished our waiting team good night and left. It was getting chilly outside, and she slid her arm into mine and we walked back to her place, our bodies touching.
I stood in the entry as she fumbled her keys into the locks. I looked at the back of her hair, almost white in the darkness of the doorway as it flowed over the collar of her white coat. She looked like a ghost in front of me. I touched her shoulder just to make sure she was real.
‘What?’ she said.
‘Nothing,’ I said back. ‘Just making sure you were there.’
‘You’re strange, Nick. You know that?’
She pushed the door open, and went into the hall and switched on the light. I went in after her, and pushed the door closed behind me and followed her to the sitting room. She switched on the spots and spun the dimmer until they were just a pink glow in the ceiling. She went to the CD player and punched it on. She selected a disc and slipped it into the jaws of the machine and adjusted the volume. I knew the album well. Ray Charles and Milt Jackson, Soul Meeting. A piano and vibes instrumental duet. I didn’t even know it had been released on compact disc. The music was sweet and mellow, and filled the room like cool water.
‘Want a drink?’ she asked.
‘Sure.’
‘Brandy?’
‘Sounds good.’
‘I’ll be just a minute,’ she said, and left the room. She shrugged off her coat as she went. I sat on the sofa and let the music wash me clean. I didn’t know why I was there. I was cheating on Fiona. I hadn’t cheated on anyone for years. I knew that we were finished, but still it made me feel sad. I wondered what I was starting in its place. Maybe nothing. Maybe something. I fumbled a cigarette out of its packet and lit it.
Juanita came back with two balloon glasses and a bottle of brandy that was older than both of us put together. She poured a slug into each glass. I took mine from her and warmed it between my palms. The smoke from the cigarette between my fingers rippled as I moved my hands.
‘What am I doing here?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Nor do I.’
‘But I’m glad you are.’
‘My daughter is coming to visit tomorrow,’ I said.
‘Do you see her often?’
‘Not as often as I’d like to. My wife – my ex-wife,’ I corrected myself, ‘doesn’t really approve of me.’
‘I wonder why that is?’ said Juanita. And we looked at each other and laughed.
‘If your daughter’s coming tomorrow, do you want to go?’ she asked.
I lifted the brandy glass and looked at her through it. I shook my head. ‘She’s not coming until after school. That’s a lifetime away.’
‘What do you want to do then?’ she said. If she expected me to say ‘fuck’, she was wrong.
‘Talk,’ I said. ‘Let’s talk, like we said we’d do. We’ve got good booze. Good music. The place is warm. Let’s talk for a while.’
‘What about?’
‘You,’ I said. ‘You know about me from Wanda. Let’s talk about you.’
So we talked, or rather she did. She told me that her parents were dead. That the house belonged to her, and she collected the rent for the other two flats in the building. She told me her mother and father had left her enough money so that she didn’t have to work, but that she enjoyed the publishing game. She told me she was twenty-five, but it was hard to believe. She said she’d just come out of a long affair with a man she thought she’d marry, but he’d had other ideas. She told me that she was feeling very vulnerable when she’d met me at Wanda’s funeral.
I said that the queue formed on the right. That sometimes I felt so vulnerable that it was like I had an army of ants under the skin on my shoulders. She said she knew the feeling.
We made love on the sofa, and drank neat brandy from the bottle as we did it. At one point she started to cry, and I felt her tears falling on my chest like rain drops. I pulled her down close to me and her hair covered my face like a sweet-smelling curtain. I cried too and she dried my eyes with her hair. She lay on top of me and our tears mixed, and I didn’t know who the hell I was crying for.
She fell asleep on the sofa amongst the muddle of our discarded clothes. I gently moved her, and found my T-shirt and boxer shorts. I opened the French windows and stood in the pre-dawn coolness and felt the goose bumps come up on my arms, and smoked the last cigarette in the packet, and finished the bottle. I found her bedroom and came back and picked her up and put her to bed. Then I got dressed and went home. I’d drunk myself sober by then, although I doubt that the breathalyser would have agreed. But I hardly saw a car on the roads and there was no law at all about. I was home in fifteen minutes, in bed in twenty, but couldn’t sleep. That was nothing unusual. I could smell her all over me and my crotch was still sticky from our lovemaking.
I wondered if we’d ever meet again.
Eventually I dropped off and didn’t wake until noon.
23
Judith moved in that afternoon. I was nervous as a cat with kittens.
I’d laid on all the kit I thought an almost eleven-year-old would get behind. Crisps, cake, Coke, a New Kids On The Block video, colouring books and bundle of comics. Don’t laugh. I’m out of practice.
I’d cleaned the flat, changed the sheets on my bed and made up the sofa bed for her then folded it away. Everything was as neat as a pin. I’d hidden the photographs that Robber had given me of the scene of the Kellerman murders. I certainly didn’t want Judith finding them like Fiona had.
Laura delivered her just after five. My ex wouldn’t come upstairs but hopped awkwardly from foot to foot on the doorstep. Judith stood next to her with a supercilious look on her face, holding her suitcase. Eventually Laura told me she had to finish packing and left. I didn’t know which of the three of us was most relieved. Cat made an appearance from under my car and all three of us trooped upstairs. I carried Judith’s case. It was heavy enough for her to have brought the kitchen sink from home as a souvenir. On the way up she informed me that Laura had finished packing two days previously. It didn’t surprise me. Since we’d separated, Laura would rather do or say anything than spend time in the same room as me.
‘Never mind, Daddy,’ said Judith. ‘Don’t take it personally.’ Unfortunately I didn’t know any other way to take it. I put the case on the bed and sat her down at the veneered plank that the estate agent had called a breakfast bar, which separates the kitchen from the rest of the studio flat. Oh, let’s be brutally honest, room.
‘What do you want?’ I asked, rubbing my hands together like a demented barman on Dexedrine.
She shrugged. ‘A Coke.’
‘Coming up. What do you want for supper?’
‘I don’t care. Whatever you’ve got.’
‘Don’t spoil my fun,’ I said. ‘I don’t often have guests.’
‘That’s not what Mummy says.’
‘She probably thinks it’s a non-stop orgy up here.’
‘I think she does.’
‘I’m not that happy that you know what I mean.’
‘Oh, Daddy, I read things.’
‘Well, that’s something.’
She looked over at my bookcase. ‘Do you read much?’
‘When I get the time.’
‘What?’
‘I’m reading James Crumley at the moment.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘A crime writer. One of the best. But I don’t think you’re quite ready for him yet. In a few years maybe.’
‘My English teacher says that my tastes are very sophisticated.’
‘Does she?’
‘He, actually.’
‘Does he? Like what?’
‘Lots. They’re all in the case. Watership Down. A book about The Beatles in the sixties. They’re positively ancient, you must remember them.’ Kids, I thought. Who’d have them? ‘Clive James and Animal Farm. Oh, and an old Mrs Tiggywinkle. But I don’t talk about that much.’
‘Good God!’ I said, looking at the comics and the colouring books. ‘Your teacher is right. An eclectic mix, but Clive James?’
‘I like him, he’s funny.’
‘Nobody’s perfect,’ I said. ‘So supper?’
‘I don’t mind. Can we go out?’
‘Sure. That’s a great idea.’
‘But no pubs.’
I looked at the ceiling. I’d have to have a word with Laura about this. Ex-wives can be a pisser. ‘No pubs,’ I said.
‘But I don’t mind wine bars.’ And she giggled. So did I. I’m not used to giggling.
So after she unpacked, and put her clothes neatly into the drawers I’d emptied for them, and lined up her book collection on the bookshelf, we went to the local wine bar.
We both had hamburgers. She drank more Coke, and I had coffee to show what a sober dad I was. The staff and the few regulars that were in and knew me thought that was most amusing. I kept my dignity by having a large brandy with my third coffee. Judith demanded a taste and pulled a face.
I had to introduce her to everyone. She went around solemnly shaking hands. I think they liked her. What was not to like? Afterwards we went for a walk around Norwood. It ain’t Disneyland, but what can you do?
We got back to the flat around eight, and we watched TV all evening. Judith fell asleep in front of a film; she looked so great sitting there with Cat asleep on her lap that I hated to wake her. But eventually I had to. She went off to the bathroom and cleaned her teeth and got ready for bed. Then she said her prayers and got into the sofa bed and was asleep again before I’d finished tucking her in. Cat snuggled up next to her. I got into my own bed and lay awake listening to her breathe.
Lying there in the dark, watching the reflections of the car lights from outside that leaked through the cracks where the curtains weren’t drawn properly, and spun across the walls and turned the inside of the room into a kaleidoscope, I thought about what John Rice had said about staying single. Judith was the only reason I was glad I hadn’t.
24
That Saturday I’d planned to take Judith for a look around town. I’d arranged that we’d meet Fiona at four o’clock at Selfridge’s coffee bar. I really felt shitty about the way I was using her, but I needed time to work on the Kellerman case, and she said she was happy to look after Judith for a couple of days during the following week, and take her clothes shopping. I felt pretty shitty about Judith too. But I justified it by telling myself she’d rather choose something to wear with a young woman than with me.
Judith and I took the bus up to town. Fiona was going to bring her car and we didn’t need two. She’d bought a new one. She was really getting her act together. It made me realise that mine was slipping through my fingers. She’d bumped in her Spitfire convertible with no hood and the disgusting paint job for a brand new Volkswagen Passat. Christ, I wasn’t even sure what a Passat looked like.
As Judith and I left the house, I patted my ancient E-Type on the bonnet. Fiona had been right. It was starting to fall to pieces. A clapped-out old gas guzzler. I knew the feeling. But I still loved it, and wouldn’t swap it for some state of the art, catalytic-converted, anonymous nineties model that you could never find in a supermarket car park.
We caught a 68 to the Aldwych and walked up to Covent Garden. It gets less and less like London every time I go there, and more and more like some bastardized mix of Venice and Greenwich Village, New York.
I hate buskers and fucking street theatre, always have done. I think my mum must have been frightened by a mime artist when she was pregnant.
Judith, of course, loves it. But then she loves MTV, so what do you expect?
I was glad I’d left the car at home. If I was going to get through the day I was going to need a drink or three. But no pubs. I’d got that message.
Luckily Covent Garden is full of cafés that serve alcohol. By eleven-fifteen we were sitting on uncomfortable white plastic chairs outside one. Judith was drinking orange juice and chewing on a pastry. I was on my second glass of white wine and watching the world go by.
Judith had already conned me out of ten quids’ worth of violently coloured writing paper and envelopes and a fistful of felt tip pens. ‘I have to write to my friends at school,’ she informed me darkly. ‘Sometimes they don’t believe that Louis isn’t my real daddy.’
I pondered that one as I sipped my wine. Was it a good or a bad thing?
When the pastry and the juice were gone and she’d talked me out of another glass of wine, we got down to the serious business of the day. I won’t list the shops we went to. They were too many and various for that. All I knew was that by one o’clock I’d done a great deal of hard cash in cold blood, and was loaded down with all sorts of carrier bags and parcels. I was also beginning to realise that Judith was growing up fast and getting more sophisticated in her tastes. Once again I didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing.
McDonald’s was out. Instead she chose Ed’s Diner for lunch. It was the ‘in’ place, she told me. I wasn’t about to argue. At least Ed’s was licensed and served good burgers too. We demolished four with cheese between us, and pie and ice-cream for dessert. Judith plumped for a chocolate milk shake and I drank pale American beer and looked down Old Compton Street at the mess they’d made of Soho. Most of the strip joints and mysterious drinking clubs I’d known when I was on the force had vanished, to be replaced by T-shirt shops and expensive restaurants. Christ, some days you do realise that you’re getting old.
After lunch we caught the 2.15 showing of the latest teenage hit movie in a cinema in Leicester Square where I felt like the only male in the place old enough to shave, and after we cabbed over to Selfridge’s to meet Fiona, and got there by quarter past four.
She was sitting at a table in the coffee bar and Judith went charging over to sit with her while I queued up for some more food. That’s another thing you forget about kids. No matter what time of day or night it is, they always seem to be hungry.
I sat and drank coffee whilst Judith ate two coffee cream eclairs and scarfed up Orangina, and she and Fiona rattled on about the shops they were going to visit the next week. Fiona looked stunning, and I felt guilty again about Juanita O’Caine, and horny for both of them, and got depressed. Neither of my companions noticed.
We sat there until the shop shut whilst the pair of them chewed the fat. I was redundant, but they were so animated and enthusiastic about life that I soon cheered up again. When it came near to closing time they decided they wanted to go window shopping. I pretended I didn’t, but let them talk me round. We dumped Judith’s parcels in the back of Fiona’s new car. It was just what I’d expected: red, shiny, teardrop-shaped, loaded with extras, and about as individua
l as a toilet seat. She seemed to like it though, and whipped it out of the car park and found a parking space near Bond Street in her usual fashion.
The three of us walked down to Piccadilly and back up Regent Street. It was like having a family again. I held both their hands and we dawdled along looking in the shop windows and spending money we didn’t have.
About eight we went to a Chinese restaurant in Maddox Street, full of American tourists with prices to match. What the hell? Access could bear it, even if I couldn’t.
Fiona drove us home and dropped us off. Judith was asleep in the back of the car and I carried her upstairs. She came to long enough to wash her face, clean her teeth and put on her nightie. She was so tired she even refused a biscuit and a glass of milk. She went straight to bed with Cat and I watched the late movie with the volume down so as not to disturb her.
25
Sunday was peaceful. Judith was up early, and out of the bathroom and dressed by nine. I lay in bed and watched her as she fed Cat. He gave me the kind of look that said he could get used to that sort of service. I gave him the kind of look back which said he shouldn’t bother.
Judith brought me tea in bed. Now I knew how Cat felt. She turned on the TV, and He-Man got me up and into the bathroom. Once dressed I went and got the papers while she cooked me a full English breakfast. I was a bit worried, but it was exactly how I liked it. Something her mother had never managed in all the years we were married.
Judith just had cereal and, as I attacked my bacon and eggs, dwelt relentlessly and ghoulishly on the dangers of cholesterol on a man of my age. I told you she was growing up.
We read as we ate, and she lapped up the News of the Screws, which her mother wouldn’t let in the house. We made a pact to tell no tales about what we did whilst she was staying with me. After breakfast we stacked the dishes in the sink, and it was time for the crosswords. Whilst I was wrestling with three across in the Everyman, Judith got on the dog and bone, as she insisted on calling it, and spoke to Fiona. She did Telecom a favour and talked until I was on fourteen down. I wasn’t really listening, but heard talk of a return to Bond Street. I shook my head sadly.
