‘For God’s sake, Aldous. You’re talking like an old man.’
‘It has nothing to do with age, my boy. It has to do with experience.’
‘And what kind of experience would that be?’
But Macy was back with Robert, their hands filled with dripping cones.
‘Little Mo’s won Wimbledon again,’ she reported excitedly. ‘We just heard it on the radio at the kiosk.’
‘Little Mo?’ Aldous grumbled as he tried to receive his cone from Robert without dripping ice cream on to his suit. ‘Who or what is this Little Mow? A miniature lawnmower?’
‘Maureen Connolly,’ Macy informed him. ‘An American tennis player. She’s only seventeen.’
‘See?’ Aldous snorted. ‘The triumphs of the young.’
‘What are you so grumpy about?’ Robert asked. He had stripped off his shirt since going off with Macy. The braces of his trousers looped loosely around his skinny, white torso, already glowing red in patches.
‘Ah, Robbie,’ Aldous sighed. ‘If only you knew.’
In a departure from her usual casual mode, Macy wore a dress. Summery. A simple floral pattern, the light cotton fluttering slightly in the breeze. Bare legs. Edward gazed at those treasonous limbs flaunting their nakedness, exposing to the public what was usually reserved solely for him. She came to kneel beside him, draped an arm over his leg. He let his fingers play over the warmth of her neck as he watched her tongue sworl around her cone.
‘I’m hungry,’ Robert said.
‘You’ve just had an ice cream,’ Aldous said. ‘I thought we might promenade on the esplanade.’
‘That was just a starter,’ Robert continued. ‘I would like some fish and chips. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do, down at the seaside? Have fish and chips. With vinegar and sea salt. Don’t you want to eat something?’
‘I suggest a walk first to build up an appetite,’ Aldous insisted.
‘I’m hungry now.’
Aldous sat up in his deckchair, drew his sunglasses down to the tip of his nose with an index finger. ‘What’s the consensus?’ His blue eyes flashed in the sunlight.
‘Walk,’ Macy said.
‘Edward?’
‘Me, too.’
Aldous looked at Robert who scowled back at him. Aldous sighed then sank back in his chair. ‘Then I am afraid Robbie and I must leave you. We are going to stay overnight in Brighton. I will take this undeserving youth for his fish and chips. Then we will need to look for a guest house. We will allow you young lovers a few hours alone before your train.’
The sun was dipping in the sky but the evening was still warm. The crowds on the beach had eased to leave scattered islands of young couples huddled close in the wait for the sunset. A few bored parents watched their tireless children rushing in and out of chases with the tide. Macy had taken off her sandals to walk across the pebbles, letting the waves wash across her bare feet. Edward observed her from behind – her sunburnt shoulders, the way her dress clung to her back, curved tightly over her buttocks, then flowed out to let her legs run free. He could imagine the sea-worn stones rounding into the soles of her feet, massaging pressure points, forcing her toes apart.
She stooped to pick up a shell resting like a jewel within a bed of seaweed, held it to her ear, turned to beckon him towards her. He took her hand and her fingers fell into an easy clasp around his own. Moments like these pleased him so much they hurt.
‘Would you like to stay?’ he suggested, unable to disguise the fearful inflection in his voice. This was what she had done to him, brought him to that point where he felt insecure in anything he wanted from her. He could almost imagine the scared animal look in his eyes as he asked the question. But he didn’t mind. The rewards were too great.
She examined the shell, plucked out a frond, shook it out for loose stones, reapplied it to her ear.
‘I don’t hear anything,’ she complained. ‘Just the sound of my own heartbeat.’
‘Macy?’
She let go his hand, skipped ahead of him, her dress rising above her knees in her crunching dance over the pebbles.
‘Yes,’ she sang. ‘Yes. Let’s do it.’
‘We’ll need to find a guest house.’
‘A seedy, sleazy hotel. Just like Robbie and Aldous.’
‘Yes. Just like them.’
She had moved back to him now, grasped his arm, her body hot from the day. ‘Robbie’s not his nephew,’ she said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
They eventually found a guest house in a Regency square just opposite the West Pier. Two previous establishments had refused them for the lack of a ring on Macy’s finger. The manager of the third might have thrown them out too had it not been for a cancellation just before they turned up.
‘No luggage then?’ the manager asked as Edward signed the register under the name of Mr and Mrs Pollock.
‘No luggage,’ he replied, thinking that given the tremor in his voice he might as well have just said, ‘Not married.’
The room had a salty dampness about it that clung to the quilt, the curtains, the carpet. Macy flung open the windows and he followed her as she stepped over the sill on to a small balcony littered with pots of red hydrangea. Starlings swooped over the pier as dusk began to creep in. The town seemed to be sighing as the heat finally gave out and the crowds began to trip home. He ran his finger down the bareness of her back and she shivered. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so happy.
They went back inside, stretched out side by side on the bed. Her body was hot and sticky, he could taste the salt on her skin. The air, the sun, the feeling of youthful power all contributed to the vigour pumping in his blood, ready to burst. He moved into her. And his world became liquid. A sea of saliva, sweat, semen and her own sexual juices. It was over too quickly.
He turned over on to his back. The silk of the quilt clung to his skin. Voices in the street below the open window. Gulls squawking. Seaside tang. His heavy breathing subsiding.
‘There’s something I want to tell you,’ he said dreamily.
‘Yeah?’
‘I love you.’
She broke away from his side, raised herself on an elbow. Her breasts hung white under the reddened yoke of her skin, freckled from the exposure to the sun. ‘No, you don’t.’ She laughed, and he felt that part of himself momentarily opened, cruelly close down.
‘I said, “I love you”.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘You can’t tell me how I feel.’
‘Oh, yes I can. This is not love, Eddie. This is just lustful play. Just be clear of that. You just want this.’ Her hand strayed from her breasts to between her legs where her pubic hair was matted by their lovemaking. ‘And it’s only because I won’t let you have me when you want me that’s driving you mad with desire. Or with what you sweetly misinterpret as love.’
‘That’s just not true. It’s more than that. Much more than that.’
‘Well, what do you really know about me, about what’s inside here?’ She tapped the hollow between her breasts with her fist. ‘This you don’t know. So how can you love me?’
‘I’ve seen your paintings.’
She calmed for an instant. ‘Those are just one part of me,’ she conceded.
‘I only know that I love you. Why can’t you believe that?’
‘Then we have a different idea of love.’ She twisted away from him, reached over for a cigarette pack on the bedside table. ‘Damn.’ She crumpled the empty packet, let it drop onto the carpet.
‘Forget about the bloody cigarettes,’ he snapped. ‘What are your feelings for me?’
She smiled. ‘Of course, I care about you,’ she said, patting his thigh. ‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. I just don’t have any illusions about my feelings. I know why I’m involved in this affair.’
‘Is that all this is then? A dirty weekend down in Brighton?’
‘Poor Eddie,’ she teased. ‘So very British, aren’t you?’ She sat up on her side o
f the bed, bent over in a search for her discarded clothes. The ridge of her spine noduled the pale skin of her back. He wanted to pull her back down beside him, penetrate her again, lose his anger inside her. Instead, he swung his feet off the bed, stood up, walked over to the small sink and ran the rusty tap. In the mirror, he saw his cheeks red – whether from the sun, his anger or the after-flush of sex he did not know. He leaned over the bowl, splashed cold water on to his face.
‘So British?’ he said to his reflection. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Oh, you know. So constricted. So serious. So serious about love. No wonder you like the Japanese. They’re just the same.’ She had slipped on her sundress and was moving towards him. ‘Now, button me up,’ she said. ‘I need to go out for some cigarettes.’
He had only meant it to be a slap. Even that would have been a surprise to him. Surely it wasn’t a clenched fist? More like a playful punch. But his knuckles had definitely come into contact with her face, just above her cheekbone, he could feel that now as he bit down on to his fingers, not quite believing what he had done. Her head had spun sideways from the blow, and she had staggered backwards until she could sit back down on the sheet-crumpled bed, her skirt drawn way up her thighs. He half-expected her to scream, but she just sat there, rubbing her face with the back of her hand, glowering at him, the bruise already beginning to swell on her cheek.
‘God, I’m sorry,’ he stammered. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry.’
She reached down for her handbag, picked it up off the floor, then raised herself off the bed. ‘You bastard,’ she said as she strode past him.
He grabbed her by her bare shoulder, turned her round to face him. ‘Don’t leave.’
‘Go on, go on,’ she goaded. ‘Hit me again. Yes, yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ She tried to wriggle herself away from his grip. ‘You’re hurting me.’
He raised his other arm but then let it drop, released his clutch of her shoulder. He saw the blood-red marks left by his fingernails. And she was gone.
He didn’t stay at the hotel. Instead, he took the last train back to London. The carriage was full of cosy, snuggled-up couples, their whispered intimacy only aggravating his own plight even more. He watched the lights of the south coast disappear as the train steamed comfortably into the darkness of the Sussex countryside. He stared at his own reflection in the window, this cruel stranger capable of an anger and a violence he never knew he possessed. ‘Is this what she has turned me into?’ he thought. ‘Or is this who I really am?’ Then he remembered what Aldous had told him only a few hours previously. That happiness was such a fleeting thing.
He moved his desk sideways to the open window, so he could turn easily from his books to observe the Bloomsbury streets below. He lit a cigarette, blew the smoke out into the world. These past few evenings had been beautiful, hot, late-light stretches of time. But the heat rising from the street stifled him. The sky was cloudless, a brilliant blue, but for him all of the colour had been sucked out of it, out of the leaves on the trees, the flowers in the window-boxes. Drained of vibrant, bursting summer hues.
From his perch, he could view the tops of the heads of the shirt-sleeved patrons on the pavement outside the White Lion. But the chatter from the drinkers only made him feel worse. Such tinkling, clinking, mindless conversation. Imbecilic laughter. Especially the women with their casual shrieks about nothing. More than a week had passed since the trip to Brighton and he had not seen or spoken to Macy.
He then did what she had always forbidden him to do. He went down to the White Lion, pushed his way through the merry crowd and telephoned her. That damned housekeeper with the cool, haughty tones answered.
‘Miss Collingwood is no longer with us,’ he was told.
‘What do you mean?’
‘She has returned to the United States.’
The way the housekeeper said the name of that country made it sound like a fortress against him. His knees buckled at the news and he had to lean against a table edge. Beer slops soaked into the seat of his trousers.
‘That is not possible.’
‘I can assure you it is very possible, Mr Strathairn. She left by ocean liner yesterday.’
‘But she didn’t tell me.’
‘It was a last-minute decision. I was surprised myself. I was not allowed the time I would normally need to arrange the packing. All that washing, ironing and folding. Those duties require proper planning. Mr Collingwood was sympathetic, of course.’
‘Was there a message? A note? A letter?’
‘Not one word,’ she said. The tone was triumphant.
He bought six bottles of porter from the bar, returned to his flat. Lined them up along his desk like dark brown sentries guarding his heart, getting ready to move off duty one by one. This was what people did in the films, he thought. Or at least someone like Humphrey Bogart or Ray Milland, with their feelings buried deep beneath crusty exteriors. Turn to the booze. Such an appropriate word – ‘booze’ – starting hard before softening into its slushy sound. Booze. Rhyming with ‘lose’.
Each consumed bottle changed his mood, as if it were an emotion he was drinking and not beer. First there was anger. Then the hurt of rejection. The third bottle brought him a sense of loss. The fourth bottle introduced him to guilt, a feeling that lingered long as it chastised him over and over again until an overwhelming feeling of loneliness took him well into unit number five. Utter despair was what he felt last before stumbling over to the bed and drifting into drunken sleep.
He awoke late into the morning. His head felt as if it was filled with concrete, cracked in places to let only the slightest of thoughts emerge. There was an instant when he didn’t know what day or time it was – just like those moments of childhood innocence before he had been taught to understand the minutes and hours of the day, the days of the week. Those moments when the structures of the outside world had not yet imposed. And then he remembered Macy. Mid-Atlantic. Sailing further and further away from him.
He managed to heave himself out of his bed, drag on his dressing gown, stand over the toilet bowl. He watched with a certain detached awe the powerful stream of urine that seemed to go on forever. He made himself a pot of tea, drifted over to his desk, sat by the open window, lit a cigarette. The morning was hot but the sky was full of clouds. A clammy haze draped the city. The smell of stale beer hung over his room.
He stood up, moved over to the side of the bed, knelt down on the floor. He felt he was suffocating. His breathing came heavily, in deep uncontrollable gulps, trying to shift the painful knot of emotion tight in his abdomen. And heat. So much heat. Sweat pouring out of him. His lungs finally pushed out a huge cry of release as he pummelled the mattress in a frenzy of self-hatred.
His landlady asked him politely to move out the following day.
Like the slow clunk of a grandfather clock, its pendulum grind somehow heavier in the moist heat, the hot summer dragged on for Edward in post-Coronation London, minute by lonely minute. Aldous had gone off to a rented cottage in Cornwall with Robert, leaving him the vacant possession of his flat until he could find new digs, but his heart wasn’t into any property hunting in Bloomsbury. Instead, he set himself the task of learning twenty Japanese kanji a day as a useful way of using up this dead time, but after a week he had even given up on that personal challenge. In a rare moment of creative enthusiasm, he knocked back a half decanter of Aldous’ whisky and tried to write fiction, but the pen scratched wearily in his hand until he fell asleep at his desk, his cheek resting against the cushioned nap of the unstained blotting paper. The next morning, hungover and despondent, he packed his bags, took the Tube to Euston Station. He would return to Glasgow to visit his parents for the first time in nearly a year.
His father had retired in the interim, a lifetime of total dedication to his shipping firm leaving him devoid of hobbies. He now moped around the house in the loose cardigan and worn slippers he usually reserved for
Sunday slovenliness, spending hours on the crossword or in front of the wireless set. His paternal stature had somehow disappeared with the loss of the weekday suit and tie.
‘You’ve got to get that man out of the house, Eddie,’ his mother said as she stamped the steam iron on a shirt stretched tight across her board. ‘I cannae stand him under my feet a minute longer. Go on. It’s a beautiful day.’
Deep-seated in his favourite armchair, his father shook his newspaper noisily. But he put aside his reading and his pipe, reached for his jacket.
‘Come on, son. Let’s go out where we can breathe more easy.’
They walked through Kelvingrove Park, past the university with its Gothic spires, then further on to the Botanic Gardens. Mothers and nannies were out in force with their batteries of prams, couples were smooching on the slopes. As if the outdoor heat wasn’t enough, his father took him into one of the Victorian glasshouses where the climate ranged from temperate to tropical to cater for the city’s famous collection of ferns. They found themselves an empty bench under a glass rotunda surrounded by palms snaking high for a grasp of the sunlight.
‘I often come here,’ his father said, picking out a plug of tobacco from a leather pouch. ‘This is my kind of climate. Not your usual wearisome dreich.’
‘Why did you never go somewhere warmer then? Your company could have posted you overseas.’
His father busied himself tamping down the greasy-black tobacco into his pipe bowl. ‘I just never had the courage, lad. Or maybe it was just laziness. Bit of both, probably.’
‘But you volunteered for the Front. That took courage.’
‘That wasnae courage. That was just patriotic stupidity. If I’d known what I was letting myself in for, I’d never have gone. In the end, it was pure luck that got me through.’
An Exquisite Sense of What Is Beautiful Page 10
