Whatever You Love

by Louise Doughty

  He slows to a halt, mid-sentence, and although he has given no indication of it I know that, quite suddenly, he is exhausted by his story. Neither of us speaks for a long time, as if we have to let his story rest between us, pause for breath. A memory of a school history lesson comes to my mind: a male teacher – we called him DtheR, I don’t know why – was telling us about life in medieval England. He was talking about child mortality, about the Black Death, starvation, how any parent knew when they had a child that that child – or any other family member for that matter – could be snatched away at any moment. I remember I interrupted him and I remember what I said. I put my hand up and said, ‘But, Mr Rogers…’ That was his name, Rogers. ‘Do you really think people were more unhappy then than they are now?’ I meant it as a philosophical question but Mr Rogers exploded, ‘Well, Laura yes I do. Yes, I think if you’re starving and your third child has just died and another toe has just dropped off because of your leprosy, yup, I think you’d be pretty unhappy.’ It was a disproportionate response. I could tell by the way the rest of the class rolled their eyes that I had them on my side. ‘But,’ I trilled, all wide-eyed, Little Miss Intellectual, ‘Don’t you think that happiness is relative to expectation?’ I can still recall Mr Roger’s sigh, his look of despair. Oh Mr Rogers, if only you could see me now.

  We sit there, Mr A and I, at my kitchen table. His shoulders are bowed, as if they sit heavily on his body. He makes a brief attempt to start again. ‘We come here, after the war, it finishes… there is a lot of… it was my brother-in-law, the work. The nephew, he was a boy by then. School. Work.’ He finishes.

  There is another long silence between us and I realise that Mr A has come to an end – not that his story is complete, it will never be complete, but that he has simply come to the end of his ability to speak. I have read enough Upton Centre reports to know the rest myself. And so, the chain of responsibility for my daughter’s death that begins with Aleksander Ahmetaj – it goes back through the nephew, through the person who left a traffic cone on a pavement, through the unknown children at St Michael’s who bullied the nephew for having a strange name and a strange accent, then further still, way back, ending with a militiaman who spared a boy baby after he had carved out his father’s eyes. If I am looking for someone to blame, for where blame begins, should I find the militiaman who left a baby to cry in a forest? Why stop there? Who, or what, imbued that man with the small streak of mercy that stopped him killing a baby when he had already done so much worse?

  For most of the time he has been speaking, Ahmetaj has been staring at the kitchen table or into his whisky glass, but now he lifts his head and looks at me. His eyes are hard eyes and the expression in them unfathomable but something in them gives me a glimpse of him as a younger man. I imagine him twenty years ago, before the belly grew on him, when his broad shoulders and large hands were proportionate with a young, strong frame. I imagine him in a vest, a farm worker or factory hand, confident, from a family that is well-respected in his village. He probably made a good marriage – I wonder what went wrong there. I would guess that his childhood and youth were probably, in many respects, a good deal happier than mine. I picture him in a suit, dancing on his wedding day, and all at once it comes to me, an obscene desire to fuck him. Something of the shock of this thought must show on my face for he is staring at me. I want to do the most inappropriate thing I can think of doing and I don’t even know why – I want to fuck this man, right here on my kitchen table, hard and hurting. I want to obliterate everything else that has happened to us and everything between us and everything else that has gone on elsewhere, that has nothing to do with us.

  It is a ridiculous thought. It flares and dies in an instant. I stand up. I am standing in front of him. I look down at him. He looks up, his gaze large and confused. I turn and walk to the kitchen door, then look back. He rises awkwardly from his chair.

  I lead the way upstairs, to the main bedroom, the one I have not slept in since Betty went away. I am heading for the marital bed, the bed I shared with David. I go into the room without turning on the light, sit down on the bed and remove my shoes, then my socks. He stands in the doorway, staring at my bare feet, as if trying to face the implications of them, the knowledge of what I intend. He looks at my face and I stare back aggressively. I feel as powerful as I felt when I dangled the boy over the cliff edge. He sits down on the bed next to me and bends to unlace his shoes but I turn and push him back, so he is lying on his back, then straddle him. As I pull his shirt up, out of his trousers, his large belly, white and hairy, moves, there is motion in it; I avert my gaze and my fingers move quickly, so I will not lose my nerve. I pull his leather belt undone, unbutton his trousers, unzip his flies. He is wearing cheap white underwear, soft underpants like the sort I buy my son. His dick is straining in them. I take a guess that he has not had sex in a long time. I kneel up and remove my jeans and knickers swiftly, then extract his penis from his white underpants and, without further ado or even looking at him, straddle him again, guiding him in.

  I have not had sex for a long time either – there has been nobody for me since David. David. I close my eyes and think of David. I liked to straddle David in this position sometimes, me on top, holding his arms above his head in a parody of domination that made us both smile, wordlessly. Sometimes, he pushed my arms behind my back and held my wrists together and we laughed and bickered about who was in charge as we fucked – and then the moment, that moment, when the physical intensity of it would loosen his grasp and I would sink down on to his chest and he would push his hands in my hair and we would kiss long and deep and say each other’s name and sometimes cry, and I think, as I fuck Ahmetaj with my eyes closed, of how it stayed that good with David right up until the end and how it bewildered me. David. My thoughts of David combine with the friction of my body against Ahmetaj’s body, the slip and slide of skin, and my flesh remembers something. It remembers the easy and profound intimacy of sex with the man I loved, and I don’t come exactly but I feel something, some basic response of muscle and blood. I sink down on Ahmetaj’s chest, become still, and, not knowing what to do, he lifts his hands and lays them gently on my back.

  As soon as his hands touch me, I pull away. He slides out of me. I hate the fact that I have let myself feel anything, which was not what I intended; I meant to have the advantage over him. Swiftly, so that I will not have time to think about it, I move down on him. He has lost his erection. His penis is small and pale and flaccid. He is not circumcised. As I go down on him, I smell hair and sweat and fat and know I must work quickly. I take him in my mouth and it feels sad and soft, like cod’s roe. He raises his pelvis slightly in shock at the sensation, gives a small cry, goes from flaccid to orgasm so quickly that he seems to bypass the erect stage altogether. My mouth fills and I gag and swallow quickly, then pull away and get off the bed.

  I leave the bedroom without looking at him, go to the bathroom, spit into the sink. I am naked from the waist down but still wearing the rest of my clothing. I pee, then brush my teeth. While I brush them, I look at myself in the bathroom mirror and feel detached enough to note that that is the first time I have fucked someone I haven’t liked – how I had never understood before that it was possible, even easy, to do it for reasons that had little or nothing to do with the person you were doing it with, and how it feels as not-good afterwards as I always suspected but that a cold, hard part of me is able to detach myself enough to feel interested that I have tried the experiment. This is how men fuck, sometimes, I think, out of bitterness and need and a lust for control – all sorts of things that have so little to do with desire.

  When I return to the darkened bedroom, he is asleep on his back, his mouth open, making a gentle snorting noise, short and intermittent, on each intake of breath. I pick up my knickers and jeans from where they lie discarded on the floor. I take them into the bathroom where I sit on the bidet and wash myself, front and back. I dry myself roughly with the hand towel and pull on my kn
ickers and jeans.

  I go downstairs, straight into the kitchen, where I pour myself a shot of whisky, down it in one. I pour myself another and, this time, raise the glass to myself. Cheers, girl, bottoms up! Today you have discovered what you are, and are not, capable of. I down it, then rush immediately to the sink, on the point of vomiting, but instead I gag and spit. The whisky stays down, a hot lump inside me, hard as a ball bearing. My mouth corrupts me. I do not know myself. I am good. No, I think, my mouth convicts me, that’s it: convicts, not corrupts. Raising myself from the sink and wiping my mouth on a teacloth I think there, it’s done, I’ve done it, and I can’t ever take it back. When I had that meal with David, I felt triumphant at the thought that I had something I couldn’t tell him about, my scheming to find Ahmetaj. Now I know that was nothing. Now I have something that he must never know as long as we live. I’ve fucked the man who killed our daughter and given myself a suit of armour against David – and with that realisation comes the knowledge that that was the whole point, to do something that David could never understand or forgive, to have something to hide from him and hold against him, and I know now that this is how it will always be, that anything I ever do with another man will be a coded message to David.

  After a few minutes, I hear Ahmetaj coming down the stairs. His look as he comes into the kitchen is that of a bewildered boy. He does not understand the rules of what we are doing, knows only that I am in charge. He comes over to me and, clumsily, attempts to put his arms around me but I push him away. I know he is desperate to leave now, as desperate as I am to see him go, but we are not quite finished yet. I nod at the kitchen table and he sits again. I sit down opposite him and refill both our glasses.

  As I put down the bottle, I say, ‘You said, you want to pay.’

  He looks at me, confused. Hasn’t he just paid, in a way he cannot comprehend? But no, he hasn’t. That was just an extra, that mutually humiliating fuck. That was about David, not Betty.

  ‘You want to pay,’ I repeat.

  One corner of his mouth lifts. ‘You want me, over the cliff.’ He speaks the words heavily but his expression has lightened a little, is almost sardonic.

  Yes, yes, that is what I want. I want you as dead as my daughter is dead. I want you wiped off the face of the earth. I stare at him. I wonder what you love, I think. Your nephew? Possibly, but it might not have been love that made you save him, that night in the forest, it might have been simply need, a need to save yourself. How can I know? You may not even know yourself. Maybe the things that have happened to you have wiped all love from your life. Is there anything left to kill? What would I have been killing if I sent you over the cliff, in the dark? It comes to me that in all the maelstrom of hatred and madness since Betty went away, I have never seriously wanted or imagined him dead. I have wanted to hurt him, not kill him – there is only one person I have ever wanted to kill. I rise from my chair and leave the room, to go to the sitting room. When I return, he has not moved. I hold out what is in my hand, a small collection of envelopes, mostly white, one yellow. He looks at them but does not take them. I put them down on the kitchen table, between us, then lift my hand and almost touch his shoulder. I sit down and, as we regard each other, I say, ‘Mr Ahmetaj.’ He looks at me in surprise at the sound of his name. ‘You have told me – your story. I want to tell you something too.’ He nods, uncertainly, and I think of how he carried me in his arms from the clifftop down to the trailer when he could have shoved me over the edge. He is strong, and I am as bony as a baby bird these days. For some reason, I think how that is how my father might have carried me as a young child, if he had lived, and how people who grew up with fathers must sometimes envy their younger selves all that protection. At least I have no protected self to envy. Ahmetaj looks at me, waits for me to speak.

  17

  It is David who calls, a week later, just after midnight. I am in Betty’s bed but awake, of course, lying on my back and staring at the ceiling. I hear the phone ringing downstairs and scramble from the bed. Midnight. I had thought I was fully awake but as I clump swiftly, clumsily down the stairs I realise I must have been dozing because what I am thinking is, something must have happened to one of the children. The phone stops before I get there but I stand over it, breathing heavily, waiting for it to ring again. When it does, I snatch it up.

  ‘Laura,’ David’s voice is low and needy, thickened with distress.

  ‘Darling, what is it?’ I haven’t called him darling for years, but I know from the way he says my name, and the late hour, that something – and a sickening thought occurs. ‘Oh no, oh no, it’s not Rees?’

  ‘No, no, Rees is asleep. I’ve just given Harry a feed. I can’t belong.’ His voice is so choked I can hardly hear what he is saying. Belong? Then I realise what he said was be long. ‘I’m sorry, there’s other people here. It’s difficult but I just need, I need to tell you. It’s Chloe, Laura. She’s disappeared.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s gone. We had an argument last week, a terrible one, that’s why I’ve not been in touch, but I thought things were getting better, I thought things were improving. I was worried but I thought everything was fine. She went out for her walk. I’ve been encouraging it, the walking. They said it was good for her to get out as much as possible, gentle exercise. They found her car, in the car park.’

  ‘David…’

  ‘Her handbag was in her boot. It had everything in it. Purse, mobile. There were some books she said she was taking back to the library on the back seat.’

  ‘What about the car keys?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then…’ I stop myself. I was about to say, then she was planning on coming back to the car, probably. If she wasn’t planning on coming back, wouldn’t she have left the keys in the ignition or the boot? Isn’t that what people do?

  ‘Are the police there or do they have to wait twenty-four hours or something?’

  ‘No, Toni’s been earlier, she’s not here now. Normally you have to wait but considering. They took a statement from me this evening but I’ve been with – I’ve only just had a chance to call you. I’ve just given Harry his feed. They’ve already talked to the doctor, Laura. What am I going to do?’

  ‘I’ll come over.’

  ‘No,’ his voice is sharp. ‘No, don’t, it wouldn’t be a good idea. I’m sorry, I just really needed to talk to you. Oh God, Laura, I can’t do this, not after Betty. I just can’t. I know I should have been more sympathetic and listened to her more. I’ve always been frightened for her, Laura, right from the start. Why would she leave her car in the car park and not even take her phone or any money?’ I can hear him struggling with himself. ‘I begged her to take something, Laura, to get a prescription for something, anything, I begged her to do that or get help and I’m frantic but I’m angry, I’m so fucking, fucking angry.’ His voice is harsh, the words running close and hard together. ‘Me, Harry, Rees, for fuck’s sake, doesn’t she think we’ve been through enough? I’m sorry. You’re the only one I can say this to. I don’t want to sound callous but I’m just so fucking angry.’ He puts his hand over the receiver and there is muffled talk in the background, then he comes back to me and says, ‘Sorry, it’s gone midnight. God, that has so little meaning. Were you asleep?’

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘I’ll feel terrible if you were asleep.’

  ‘No, darling, of course not. Of course I wasn’t asleep.’

  There is a long silence on the end of the phone. When he speaks, his voice is calmer. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘I know, it’s okay. I’m here. Call me.’

  ‘I will. Bye.’

  I put the phone down gently, very gently.

  *

  I leave the house at first light. Rees will be coming home soon, after this – I feel a surge of joy at the thought. I drive through town, along the wind-whipped esplanade. The shops are still shuttered and the streetlights still on, throwing half-orange patches of light around the gre
y dawn. The sea crashes ceaselessly, waves topped with white froth. A little freezing rain is falling, lightly. I drive to the car park at the bottom of the clifftop rise and pass it slowly but there are no cars in it at all and no sign of a police cordon or any evidence of investigation. I drive back into town and take the one-way system, out on the main road that leads to the caravan park.

  I park in the tiny car park with the squat square building and walk up the grass rise. I don’t know what I am going to do if they are still there but, in my heart of hearts, I know they won’t be. Sure enough, I see, as soon as I reach the crest of the rise. The cars are gone, even the ones I thought were wrecks. The washing lines have been taken down. The caravans are securely locked, curtains drawn. All is neat and tidy. The whole group has gone. They have not waited for me, or the police, or the gangs of youths in town with the half-bricks and bottles. I think about the women. I think about the smiling one in the warehouse, the one who tossed the zip into the bin so casually, just doing her job, just getting on with it and chatting to her friend. I think of the plump grandmother on the cliff, her face carved with so much. I think about the sombre middle- aged one who stared at me at the crematorium with a look that suggested she could guess what I was really like. I don’t think of Ahmetaj or the nephew or any of the men. I think of the sombre woman, of how she would have received the news of their departure, how she would have set about pulling clothes from a washing line with swift, efficient movements, folding them with one quick motion, her mind running swiftly through everything that must be done.

  I do not linger. I do not know who else might turn up soon. All I can do now is go home and wait until it is time to call David.