Thomas and Mary

by Tim Parks

  The playroom, built as an extension at the side of the house, belongs to the children. Here there is the TV. There is space. There are guitars and amplifiers. In the old days there was the family computer. Once a ping-pong table. Once a railway set. A doll’s house. Now it is rather dusty, rather messy, with a beer bottle or two and blankets heaped on the sofa. There are remotes and game consoles. Dog hairs everywhere. Peeking in, Thomas smiles and thinks he should tell the kids to tidy up.

  The garden is Thomas’s duty but, duty done, no one takes advantage, save the dog, which ruins the flowerbeds scrambling after the cat. It would be hard to say exactly what the family gains by having a garden, unless it is a place where Sally’s boyfriend can smoke his Marlboros when she’s home. Thomas digs the stubs into the earth without complaint. He likes the boy.

  The washroom with its powerful machines is Mary’s. She knows the codes and programs of the washing machine as she knows the settings and times of oven and microwave. These are all Greek to her husband. The children hang out the damp clothes to dry, after some prodding.

  But the sitting-room fire would never be lit if Thomas didn’t light it. This means going down to the garage under the house and bringing up a box of logs. It’s a chore. Nor will the sitting-room curtains be opened unless Thomas opens them, as if only he cares about light and warmth here where there are sofa and armchairs and carpet around the pleasant hearth.

  Thomas loves the fire. He loves to stretch on the carpet before the fire, even though it is not really comfortable. He loves the idea of a man stretched on the carpet before the family fire. He doesn’t mind the dog joining him with its doggie smell. He loves it if his children join him, though they rarely do. It’s hard staying long on the carpet alone, in discomfort, however mesmerising the flames and reassuring the thought of his being stretched out there. Occasionally Mary joins him, she on the sofa, he on the carpet, or he on the sofa with his computer on his knees, working, and she on an armchair with a book in her lap, reading about cocker spaniels, perhaps. But very soon one of the two will get up again, rather like a fire that hasn’t caught, or two sticks that won’t make a spark. More often she sits at the sitting-room table. There is a place, back to the window, that is her place, with her computer and her papers. No one else would ever dream of sitting in this place.

  It is not finally clear, then, Thomas reflects, who presides in the sitting room. At the same time it does not feel as though the space is really shared. Perhaps it’s a question of timing. Often, when his parents are not there, for example, Mark will take over completely, rolling around the floor with the dog, tossing a slipper right across the room, perhaps, or in a tug of war with a rubber bone. Thomas has seen him playing like that through the window on returning home. And when no one is around it is the dog that relishes the sofa’s soft cushions, snuggling its golden fur into the green upholstery. Perhaps the dog presides, Thomas thinks, returning to find the house empty one day. Guiltily, the handsome creature sits up, wags its tail, sniffs the air, pants from a pink mouth, but doesn’t climb down. At the absent heart of the family is a dog. If only, Thomas thinks, it could learn to play the piano.

  BLACK TIE

  My lover looks great in a tie, though it’s not really him. He asks me for advice about shoes and shirts. What do I know? I could never have imagined someone in his position being so insecure. My father isn’t. My boyfriend would never ask my advice. He takes it, too. He wore the orange tie I chose. It felt like a pact. Something we knew that no one else did. I was filled with tenderness when he stood up to speak. He’s got charisma!

  My lover should get in touch with who he really is. He doesn’t fit with suits on a dais, conferences and the like. He’s so much more himself with his hand round my waist swaying to music. People look at us, but who cares? You’ll leave me, he says. He says he can’t do family again. In the evening we walk round town with a half-bottle of Bell’s, looking for places with live music. If I need a pee, I squat between cars. He loves to put his fingers in the flow. He says he’s never been with someone so alive.

  It’s not easy for me to make love to my boyfriend now. My lover says he doesn’t have to make love to his wife. They stopped years ago. Mum likewise with Dad, I reckon. Maybe not. They’re still in the same bed. My lover sends beautiful messages to me before he falls asleep. I read them after practice sessions. Your hair, your eyes, your skin, your smell. My boyfriend is inspired on keyboards, but not in bed. He wants marriage and children. Soon. Dad says he was smart not to give up his day job.

  In bed with my lover I go liquid. I go mad. It’s like dancing in a frenzy. He’s a wild man who shouldn’t be wearing stuffy clothes and wasting his charisma on brand awareness and impact tracking. We should be dancing together every day. I’m your brand, I told him, track my impact. He likes to get me on top to bring him off. Afterwards we talk. We talk about my family, my brother. My mother is seeing an analyst. He laughs. He understands everything very quickly. Why my brother is so angry. Why my father is so frustrated. He thinks it’s crazy my boyfriend is bailing out of a holiday with me because the family dog can’t be left alone in the house. ‘He’s not alive enough for you,’ he says. ‘You’re dynamite.’

  ‘You write those messages in bed beside your wife,’ I tell him. ‘Why do you stay if you’d rather be with me?’ He says he’s tied. Family tied. He can’t change. He smiles: ‘And that’s a black tie! I prefer orange, but there you go.’ Sometimes I bring him off in my mouth with a finger in his arse. You should see his face then.

  My lover says I started the affair with him because I’m dissatisfied with my boyfriend, but I’ll leave him (my lover) when I want to get serious because he can’t do children again. I hate this sort of talk. What’s the point? It’s freezing and we came into a café to get warm. He pours whisky in the coffee on the sly. Later he talks to a barman in the Cayenne, and later still to one of the singers in the evening’s band. People always want to talk to my lover. He has that. I tell him if he says this stuff to me again about me wanting to settle down and have children I’ll leave him that minute. I started the affair because I was curious and I’m going on with it because I’m in love.

  ‘In love, get it?’

  My lover has to stay at home at the weekends, or says he does. Which is when I travel and play. Sometimes with the band, sometimes standing in for some other drummer. In Düsseldorf last week. Dublin next. I send him texts about other men making moves on me. It happens all the time. ‘Because you’re beautiful,’ he texts back. ‘Because you’re so peppy.’ I send the same texts to my boyfriend. ‘There’s this Indian guy tried to follow me into the loo.’ My boyfriend gets furious. He drives fifty miles to come to my rescue. My lover lets me breathe. I want to breathe with him.

  My lover doesn’t look as old as he is but he should learn to straighten his shoulders. And the way he walks. He forgets to do up his zip. Sometimes he’s distracted, like he hardly knows you’re there. When I was still at work, I told him one day, ‘You’re at half mast, Mr Paige.’ He laughed and pulled up. A few days later we emailed. I told him I was determined to be a successful musician. It was the only thing I believed in. Not love, no way, but music. He said if I believed in something I should risk everything and go for it while I was still young and there was still time. I left work and fell in love with him.

  My lover has a sort of dazed look about him when we meet sometimes, as if he can’t believe how lucky he is. We went on a camping holiday together. Crazy, I know, camping, when you think of the money he has. We could have done four-star hotels. But it was very us. We’re kids, really. You can see he wants to be a kid. He wants to shake off his solemn life. I took my bongos. We arrived at one campsite in the small hours and had to climb the gate and put up our tent in the dark. Without torches. We’d forgotten to bring them. It’s amazing how well we work together. Next day the site manager was furious. We could have scared his family clients, he said. We slept two nights on the dunes and I played the bongos, lookin
g into my lover’s eyes. He gazed into mine and there were tears on his cheeks. We had a bottle of Chablis. The second night three black guys turned up and danced. They thought he was my father.

  I felt fantastic on that camping trip. We slept in each other’s arms. On the Saturday he left me at the station where he was expecting his wife and children. ‘Let’s escape together,’ I texted. ‘I’d love to, but I can’t,’ he answered. On the train I felt empty. ‘Why not?’ I texted. ‘In the end what’s stopping you?’ He didn’t reply. Maybe he was driving. I began to feel angry. ‘Why not?’ I texted again. Over the next twenty-four hours I texted him about two hundred times. ‘I can’t bear this. We’ve got to be together. We love each other.’ I texted him from the train and then from my boyfriend’s car and then from the room my boyfriend had booked for our holiday with the dog as well and then all night from the bathroom when I vomited and then from the beach when I got up and went out to walk all night, up to my knees in the sea sometimes, texting and texting and texting, freezing cold.

  ‘How can you still sleep with your wife?’

  ‘Why aren’t you awake?’

  ‘You must care so much about your damned reputation to throw up what we have together.’

  ‘You’ll never find anyone else like me.’

  ‘You look like such a winner in your suits and ties, but really you’re a loser.’

  ‘You’re a loser to live with someone you don’t love.’

  ‘How are you this morning, Mr Loser?’

  ‘Met any cute girls lately, Mr Loser?’

  ‘I mean girls that you can fuck on the side before going home to your wife, Mr Loser?’

  ‘Please tell me you love me, Tommy.’

  ‘Tommy, I’m in hospital. I nearly drowned. Come to me. Please come to me.’

  ‘I went swimming in a storm. I was drunk. Why don’t you come to me?’

  ‘Seems I was unconscious. I banged my head.’

  ‘I love you, Thomas. Feels like my brain is exploding.’

  ‘There’s a nice doctor fancies me and sits with me. Says they won’t know if I’m out of danger for another forty-eight hours.’

  ‘My boyfriend is so tender. I can’t bear him.’

  ‘My boyfriend sits by my bed all night. I could kill him. But he’s not so much of a loser as you are. How can you sleep while I’m in trouble like this?’

  ‘Answer me!’

  ‘You’re a coward. You’ll never find anyone else like me.’

  ‘You’ll never have anything halfway so beautiful as what we have.’

  ‘I hate you.’

  ‘You should be scared of me. I’ll make your life hell.’

  ‘I should never have listened to you. You made me leave my job. You’ve ruined my life. I’ll never make a living as a musician. It just doesn’t happen that way.’

  ‘When I die, be sure it’s your fault, Mr Loser. You’ll have me on your conscience the rest of your days.’

  ‘Loser loser loser.’

  My lover and I met at the end of summer in our usual pub and went back to my room. He was in a suit and tie after a board meeting. I let him feed it way into my pussy. I mean the tie. He’d gone back to black. Knotted. He was getting very excited, licking round the tie inside my pussy. ‘I wish it could all dissolve in your juice,’ he said. ‘And all the things that hold me back with it.’ When he was completely crazy to fuck, I told him he’d have to leave quick because my boyfriend was coming. He pulled his pants over his erection and left. Later, I put his smelly tie in an envelope and mailed it to him. I wrote: ‘Go hang yourself, loser.’

  HARRY

  Harry’s wife died recently. Now his sister, Martha, is dying. She is ninety, almost ninety-one. The only good thing is that since the pain got too much they have moved her into a hospice five miles from his house. This means he can see her pretty much when he likes. Before, he had to get in the car and drive for more than an hour in heavy traffic. And he needed an invitation. His sister wasn’t someone you could just drop in on. She always had things to do. While his wife, Eileen, was alive, there was no question of visiting. Eileen wasn’t mobile and demanded all his attention. It was rare that Harry could get away from Eileen for more than an hour or two. Since Eileen’s death, Martha has only invited him a couple of times – she has her own circle of friends – but she did accept three invitations to come to his place. That was actually better than going to hers because first he had to cook, then he had to drive to hers to pick her up. They would have a cup of coffee together in her sitting room so he could rest. Then they’d drive back to his place. They rested again, maybe with half a glass of white wine. Then he finished the preparations for the meal and put it before them on the big table. Martha had to be helped to her feet from the armchair and he held her elbow as she steered towards the table, though she said this wasn’t necessary.

  They ate. They didn’t talk much. There was nothing particular to be said. She was careful not to speak of her Christian faith and he could hardly hope to interest her in rugby results. Politics had long since lost any attraction for either of them. Their brother Walter was dead. Walter had lived it up, he was the youngest. They were a family who died of cancer, in pain. But Harry’s cancer was slower than his sister’s and she was seven years his senior.

  After lunch he cleared things away while his sister dozed in the armchair again. Later on, he drove her home. There was post on her doormat and as soon as they were inside, the phone rang. Her daughter in Swanage. While she made some tea, holding on to the kitchen surfaces, it rang again. Her son Thomas, in Manchester, or her son James, in California. Then while they drank the tea the local vicar phoned about helping with a church event. Martha scribbled a note inside a book she had been reading. The local vicar was a woman.

  ‘You should conserve your energy, love,’ Harry warned.

  On the way home, he listened to stock market reports. His sister had a tiny home, a sort of bedsit on two floors. But he could see she felt good there. She felt protected and busy. She drew energy from the place. The garden was a concrete patio with soil round the edge. She grew raspberries and fuchsias. Harry admired her. He envied her. He and Eileen had moved out of their big home a year before her death but it had seemed important to find a flat in line with their aspirations. His big bay windows now looked out over the sloping lawn of a rather grand residence. There were rooms he never used and an underground garage with a lift. In the evening his son called from Cork, but his daughter never would and didn’t always answer if he called her. Disappointed, Harry settled in front of his plasma screen. None of the programmes featured people his age.

  But he cheered up when Martha was moved to the hospice. Now he could see her every day. Sometimes twice a day. He phoned the director of the hospice and told him they must look after her with immense care. She was a special person. He took her flowers and fruit and chocolates. Sitting on the chair by her bed, he looked around. ‘Would you like some tea, love? Can I get you something to cover your shoulders? Or your book?’

  His sister looked frailer. ‘I’ve got everything I need, thanks,’ she said. She had fallen down the stairs. She had damaged her back. Or maybe the cancer had got in there. A few days later they drove her to a hospital for tests. She came back exhausted.

  ‘Are you all right, love?’ Harry asked, leaning over to kiss her.

  She lay with her eyes closed. He put the TV Times on her bed and sat down.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Harry,’ she said softly. She opened her eyes but didn’t move.

  ‘I’m going to ask the doctors what’s going on,’ he announced, and pulled himself to his feet again. ‘I get the impression they’ve taken their eye off the ball.’

  She half raised her right hand to signal no. ‘I’m fine, Harry. Just tired.’

  ‘You’re not fine, love,’ he told her. ‘I’m going to go and talk to them. They need to do something.’

  ‘I’m as fine as I can be,’ she said. ‘They’re doi
ng what they can.’

  She lay in the bed, saying nothing. Harry was fretful.

  ‘Did they say anything about when they might get you on your feet and mobile again?’

  After a pause she said, ‘Not soon.’

  The phone rang and it was James in some airport or other. Harry passed her the receiver. She activated the command that raised the head of the bed and they talked for a few moments. ‘It’s just the fallout from the fall,’ she joked. Harry was surprised how much energy she got into her voice. She sounded in good spirits with her son. He felt jealous.

  ‘Otherwise he’ll feel he has to come over,’ she said after ending the call.

  ‘He should come over.’

  ‘No doubt he will, at some point.’

  The energy was gone.

  Harry visited more and more often. Their mother had died while they were still children. Martha was thirteen then and had played mother to her younger brothers. Eventually there was a stepmother who made baby Walter her favourite. That brought Harry and his sister closer. Even with his subsequent career successes, marriage and family, the big house, the yacht and all the powerful cars, that relationship and its peculiar mother–sibling ambiguity had remained. She was the adult, the tough one. Now Harry sensed this protection slipping away. His big sister was letting go. Soon there would be nothing between him and …

  Harry did not allow himself to think the word.

  When she had to use the bedpan, he went to talk to the doctors. There was only a nurse in a small room with a glass screen. He demanded to see the doctor. Then it turned out she was the doctor. She didn’t seem offended that he had imagined her a nurse. But this not being offended struck him as proof of his insignificance. Nobody’s afraid of an eighty-year-old. Nobody expects you to understand anything. He felt he would explode.