by Mark Morris
‘Table for one?’
My first instinct was to leave. I’d never been in a restaurant where the waiters outnumber the customers four to one. But now I was here I was too embarrassed to walk out, and besides I was hungry and it seemed a nice enough place. So I said yes and was led to a table by the window. The waiter gave me a menu and asked if I’d like a drink. I ordered a glass of red wine, and when he’d gone took my mobile out of my bag and tried Alex again. Answerphone as usual. I waited for the beep, then said, ‘Hi, Alex, it’s me. Just to let you know it’s about six o’clock and I’m in the Red Dragon on Livermore Street if you get back in time and you’d like to join me. I’m dying to see you. I hope you haven’t gone away or anything.’
I felt I ought to say more, try to express how nervous and anxious I was, but I couldn’t think of a way to phrase it without sounding pathetic. In the end I just said lamely, ‘Anyway, bye,’ and broke the connection.
The waiter brought my drink and I ordered crispy fried seaweed, chicken with Szechwan sauce and special fried rice. As I waited for my food I sat and stared out of the window at the dreary street which seemed determined to shy away from the early evening sunshine. I didn’t feel lonely very often – I like my own company, and I can always find a million things to do, even when I’m rattling around my flat on my own – but all at once, sitting here in this empty restaurant in this strange and miserable town, I felt a wave of loneliness so profound it almost made me breathless. Suddenly I wanted to walk out of here, get into my car and drive home. I even started calculating in my head what time I’d get back if I left now. Alex wasn’t here. He’d gone away for a few days. He’d call me when he got home. But Alex didn’t do that sort of thing. Or maybe he did. Maybe in London I hadn’t noticed it because I’d felt as though he was close by even when he wasn’t. Maybe Cressley had been right. Maybe I was clingy and possessive. I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. I couldn’t think straight. When I tried to remember recent events they seemed hazy, elusive. I couldn’t get a handle on them.
The food arrived, and just as I started eating, thankful for the distraction, two people walked into the restaurant. It was the well-dressed couple I’d seen in the pub. They were in high spirits, giggling and laughing. Whenever I see couples who are happy in each other’s company I always immediately think, I wonder if he’ll ever hit her. I wonder if he’ll ever punch her to the ground, then drop a microwave oven on to her head; wonder if he’ll ever try to choke her by ramming a TV remote control down her throat; wonder if he’ll ever kick her so hard in the stomach that it’ll cause her to miscarry. Because that’s what Matt did to me, among other things. We started off laughing and giggling and sharing secrets, and we ended up – I ended up – terrified for my life.
When Matt was in a rage he would use anything for a weapon, anything that was close to hand. Books, potted plants, crockery, the kettle, the toaster. He once hit me thirty or forty times across the head and shoulders and back with the dustbuster until it fell apart. Once he even smashed a bunch of bananas in my face, which might sound comical, but believe me it wasn’t. The bananas were as hard as a fist. I had a black eye for weeks afterwards and had to be treated in Casualty for a detached retina. Thanks to Matt I’ve got scars all over my body and a few around my eyes. They’re not big ones, and they’re not particularly disfiguring, but they’re there all the same. Each one a reminder of over two years’ worth of fear and pain.
The food was good, but even though I was hungry I still didn’t feel like eating, if you can understand that. I ate dutifully, simply because I needed to fill up the fuel tank. I was halfway through my main course when a group of four people came into the restaurant, two young couples. I turned to look at them and then turned back to my meal, and as I did so I glimpsed someone strolling by on the pavement outside, past the restaurant’s main window. I looked up and the person walking past half-turned towards me and for an instant our eyes met.
It was Matt.
I cried out and jumped up, knocking my chair over. Already Matt had walked on without acknowledging me, and was now out of sight. I was only peripherally aware of everyone staring at me as I ran across the room and yanked the restaurant door open. I ran out into the street, but there was no one to be seen. I was about to make for the nearest corner, thinking Matt must have disappeared round it, when someone grabbed me from behind.
Certain it was Matt, that he had somehow doubled back and sneaked up behind me, I began to struggle frantically, kicking back with my foot, trying to get his shin. ‘Hey, you pay your bill!’ a voice with an unmistakably Chinese accent said angrily. ‘You pay or I call the police!’
All the fight went out of me. I stopped struggling, stopped kicking. The waiter behind me still had a tight grip on my arms. ‘It’s all right,’ I said, ‘I’m not going to run away.’
He held my arms for a few seconds more, then let me go. I turned to face him. ‘What’s your problem?’ he said, scowling.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t doing a runner. I saw someone outside the restaurant who I knew and it gave me a shock. It was someone who shouldn’t be here, someone I hoped I’d never see again.’
He was still glaring at me suspiciously. I indicated my table which I could see through the window, my half-eaten meal. ‘Look, if I was going to do a runner I wasn’t very smart about it, was I? I left my bag in there. It’s got my money in it, my credit cards, my mobile phone …’
He glanced through the window and saw that I was telling the truth. The scowl slowly faded from his face. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
I nodded, but I was shaking inside. ‘I will be.’
‘You want to come back in and finish your meal?’
‘I’m not very hungry,’ I said. ‘I mean, the food was very nice, but all this has shaken me up a bit.’
‘Who did you see?’ the waiter asked, looking up and down the street.
‘Just … someone from my past. It’s a long story.’
‘OK. Well, if you don’t want to finish your meal, how about a drink? You look as though you need one.’
I thought of going back inside, of everyone staring at me, but then I was going to have to do that anyway, to get my bag and pay for my meal. I took one last look up the street, then shrugged. ‘OK.’ Already I was beginning to wonder if I’d even seen Matt at all.
four
The first time I saw Matt he was being killed by a space monster. He had to hold the thing’s tentacles to his throat to make it look as though it was strangling him. I remember thinking how convincingly he gurgled and choked and writhed on the ground. I also remember thinking what a nice smile he had when I saw him joking with the crew between shots.
The film was a low-budget science-fiction thriller called Satan’s Star. Matt was playing a security man who has about three lines before meeting his grisly demise. I was the production designer, and although I’ve worked on better things since, I was really excited at the time because this was my first film. My work on the movie was effectively over, but I’d asked to be on set to take some photos and make some notes. I never thought the film would amount to much, but I’ve actually got more work through Satan’s Star than anything else I’ve ever done. It turned out to be a tautly directed, well-played and well-reviewed little movie, and although its theatrical release was minimal to say the least, it’s done – and continues to do – good business on video.
Matt was only around for a couple of days of the six-week shoot, but he came to the wrap party, which was where I saw him again. The director, Jack Proby, who has since gone on to direct that thing with Ralph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow, the one set in China that won all the awards, had a friend who owned a nightclub in East London which we basically took over for the evening. All the cast and crew were encouraged to bring as many friends as possible to fill the place out. I wanted to take Alex, but for some reason – I can’t remember why now – he couldn’t come.
So I went with Keri, my flatmate, who kept
asking me if there were any hunky men in the cast (she only ever saw films with hunky men in the cast, and I think she was genuinely disappointed when I told her that no, I didn’t think either Brad Pitt or George Clooney would be there). I thought about mentioning Matt, but I didn’t. I’d had no particular designs on him as I’d set out that evening, but when it came down to it I felt an odd desire to keep him to myself. Instead I told her that the lead was nice-looking, if a bit dim, which cheered her up. In the end, though, she went off with Steve the sound man, who was married with two teenage daughters. This led to all sorts of complications later on, but that’s another story.
The party was in full swing when we got there, even though Keri and I hadn’t exactly arrived late ourselves. That’s the thing with film and TV people – they don’t waste time when there’s a sniff of a party around. Keri and I didn’t waste time either. We were really in the mood for this, and got stuck into the cocktails straight away. Back at the flat, Keri had produced a bottle of Malibu, which we’d been drinking as we got ready, becoming increasingly giggly with each swallow. It’s a wonder my make-up wasn’t smeared all over my face. Or maybe it was. To be honest, I just didn’t care. Having said that, I felt instinctively that I looked good. I felt hot, as Keri would say – as she had already said, in fact. Back at the flat she had run her hands over her luxurious curves, barely restrained by the little black number she’d poured them into, and had exclaimed, ‘Ooh, I feel hot tonight. Some bloke is going to get very lucky later on.’
The thing about Keri is that she always felt hot. That supreme self-confidence was one of the things I liked about her. She was a big girl – not fat but voluptuous – with a lustrous tumble of corkscrew-curly black hair that was entirely natural, and her grandfather’s Italian temperament. We’d met at college (she had a degree in economic history, but she always played down the academic side of herself as if she was embarrassed by it) and had lived together for almost ten years.
Yet although neither of us realized it until later, this night was to be the start of the downward slope as far as our friendship was concerned. Not that we fell out or anything, not seriously anyway; it’s just that a certain set of circumstances was set in motion that forced us both to re-evaluate our lives. For Keri there was Steve the sound man, the messy situation with Steve’s wife and kids – which led on one occasion to Steve’s wife, Sue, standing outside our building at two o’clock in the morning, screaming at the top of her lungs for Keri to come out and face her (Keri didn’t) – and Keri’s eventual decision to take up a job offer in Holland to get away from the whole sorry mess.
And for me, of course, there was Matt.
‘Matt, Matt, super rat,’ Keri was to call him later when he started hitting me. ‘Why don’t you give him the fucking elbow, Ruthie?’
I’ve asked myself this question many times, and looking back I’m astonished that I put up with so much, astonished that I didn’t walk away from him the first time he laid a finger on me. But back then, embroiled in it all … Oh, I don’t know. I honestly thought it was my fault that he was like he was, that it was me who’d brought out the violent side of his nature, and that therefore it was up to me to exorcize it from his system. I knew he was capable of tenderness, and had seen how remorseful he became each time he hurt me (at first anyway). I could probably write a book on the complexities of our relationship, on my constantly shifting emotions, my ever-changing mind, but let’s just say that nothing is ever as black and white as it seems, that love is not only blind but pathetic too. It can make us into victims and fools, reduce us to the kind of people who infuriate us on soap operas, the kind you want to scream at for allowing the creep or the bitch to walk all over them.
Does that sound cynical and bitter? Sad even? If so, then tough tits. It’s not that I don’t believe in love, in real love. All I’m saying is, it’s a jungle out there. It can be wondrous and beautiful, but it’s also full of dangerous predators, and if you don’t tread carefully then chances are you’ll get eaten alive.
I can’t remember the name of the club, but I remember the song that was playing as we walked in. It was an updated extended remix of Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’. The beat that underlaid Donna’s breathy vocals was like a pumping heart, like the pulse of the club itself. The people, caught in splashes of coloured light like a rapid series of photographic stills, were like components of the body’s inner workings, plucked into frantic animation by the stimulus of the music. It was sexy and organic and abandoned, and as I’ve never been much of a clubber, it was special to me, rare and exhilarating. I turned to Keri with (I’m sure) a look of wide-eyed glee and exclaimed, ‘This is great!’
I was ready to head straight to the dance floor, but Keri pointed over to her left. ‘Let’s get a drink!’ she shouted.
I followed her to the bar, thinking how glad I was that I hadn’t come here on my own. Everyone who wasn’t dancing seemed to be standing in groups, laughing and drinking and holding shouted conversations above the music. I recognized networking when I saw it. These people were cementing relationships, exacting or offering vague promises of future employment. I felt a pang. I should be doing this. If I wanted to get on in this cut-throat industry I should be getting in with the movers and shakers, chatting with producers, directors, even actors, who weren’t big names now, but who might be in the future.
To be honest, it was only a brief pang. It’s not that I’m not ambitious, it’s just that I’m not cynical enough to chat to people for the express purpose of furthering my career. I’m cynical about love, but not about work. Besides, I’ve done OK. I haven’t won an Oscar, haven’t even done a big movie – not yet anyway – but I’ve done lots of TV work and little films. My job’s interesting and I’m happy and I make a good living out of it, and when it comes down to it, surely that’s all that matters.
The next hour or two alternated between drinking and dancing. Keri and I must have tried every cocktail in the place. Some of them had disgusting names – Keri took great delight in asking the barman, a young, shaven-headed black guy with the most amazing body I’ve ever seen, for an Oozing Purple Helmet – and I have no idea what was in most of them, but we drank them regardless.
‘We’re going to be very ill,’ I said to Keri as we sipped electric-green liquid through the straws in our long glasses. I had no idea what time it was by this point, or how many drinks we’d had.
Keri regarded her drink – I think it was called Goblin on a Toadstool – and shook her head. ‘Nah, they’re nearly all fruit juice, these things. Anyway, we’re sweating out the alcohol down on the dance floor. It’ll be squirting out of our pores in little jets.’
‘Lovely,’ I said, deciding not to tell her that I was already feeling queasy.
Keri finished her drink by eating the piece of kiwi fruit that came with it, then removing the straw and the cocktail stick and chugging it all back, ice and all. She banged the glass down on the unoccupied table we’d found near the bar, looking a little dazed and wearing a green moustache. She burped just as one dance track segued into another, then looked up, eyes glittering, over-bright. ‘Oh, I love this one!’ she exclaimed. ‘Come on, Ruthie.’
‘I think I’ll sit this one out,’ I said, crossing my arms on the table and resting my forehead on them.
I sensed her crouching down beside me. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Just a bit tired,’ I said. ‘You go. I’ll wait here.’
She said something else, but I didn’t catch it, and then she was gone. I sat for a while, my upper body slumped over the table, finding comfort in the darkness behind my closed eyelids. The music seemed far away, tuneless; only the rapid thump-thump of its beat seemed to penetrate my senses. I could have slept there quite happily, knowing that Keri would eventually come back and find me and look after me, if the darkness I was suspended in hadn’t suddenly started spinning.
There is a philosophy that everything we do is preordained, that there is some Great Plan of which we’
re all a part. My personal philosophy is that that’s easy enough to believe when things are going well. It’s easy to look around when you’re happy and healthy and think that there’s a meaning, a purpose, a symmetry, in everything you experience around you. But when your life is shit, when you’re stuck in a nightmare you can’t see your way out of, then there’s no symmetry whatsoever – there’s just clinging, howling chaos. Look at the concentration camps, look at Rwanda, Vietnam, Kosovo. Look at bereaved parents, raped women, the victims of torture. Are they part of the Great Plan? Is there a symmetry and a purpose to what has happened to them? They say that God moves in mysterious ways. But why? Why should he? What’s the fucking point in that? Does he test us by murdering our children? By inflicting pain and terror and misery on kind, hard-working, law-abiding people? I sometimes wonder, if there is a God, why he had it in for me. What had I done to piss him off? What possible purpose was there in moving Matt and me into conjunction on that fateful night?
If I’d had less of an alcohol tolerance I’d have been puking my guts out in the ladies sooner, or would maybe even have been dozing in a cab on my way home; if I’d had more I’d have been down on the dance floor with Keri, boogieing to M People or Livin’ Joy or whoever was playing at the time.
But no. Fate decreed otherwise. It produced Matt just as I’d pretty much forgotten about him. Earlier in the evening I’d been covertly looking around for him, but in the end had decided, with only a hint of disappointment, that he wasn’t going to show. For the past hour or more (like I say, time was no longer a concept I had any grasp of) I hadn’t given him a second thought.
The need to be sick didn’t so much sweep over me as surge up through my body like an irresistible tidal swell. I stood up quickly, with the vague impression that I’d knocked something over – my chair or a glass maybe. The room was swaying and spinning around me. I was disorientated, but I instinctively knew where the ladies was. I saw the lilac neon glow of the lettering blurring and doubling as if underwater, maybe fifty yards away to the right of the bar.
