She pulled up outside the pub and gave me a peck on the cheek as she dropped me off. When I got in, I poured myself a large whiskey and emailed Liv, to say thanks for a great night, and to say how much of a laugh I’d had. It was a shame Andrew hadn’t made it, I lied. I can’t remember if I CC’ed you or not. It was gone twelve, so I was really quite surprised when I got an email back just a few minutes later.
To: Nick Smith
From: Liv Honour
Hey there!
I had a great time too. The acts were a bit lame – I expected ping pong balls plopping into our drinks at any moment.
It’s good to see how not to do it though, don’t you think? I was thinking a little more classy really. Red velour seating and heavy drapes, that kinda thing.
There’s a place in Leeds close to the courts we can try if you like.
Let me know.
Lx
I noticed, Andrew, that her email had omitted CC’ing you. I wondered about this. Had she merely replied to my email, which hadn’t been CC’ed to you in the first place? It sounded like the obvious explanation, but when I went into my sent items box to check, I discovered that my email had in fact CC’ed you.
A hundred and ten press-ups, a hundred and ten sit-ups, eight minutes of shadowboxing. We were meeting at the station. I caught a bus from Richard’s. I got to the station two minutes before Liv’s train. There I was standing on the platform watching the tracks, parallel lines, converging on the horizon, when her train came in and she was stepping out of the carriage in a red frock coat. Black hair, grey eyes, a grey pencil skirt and those white ballet shoes again. She hugged me and kissed me on the cheek.
Let’s grab a coffee first, she said.
We went to a deli and sat outside in the morning sun. Liv stirred her coffee and I watched her fingers play with the spoon. There were purple foxgloves growing from the gaps in the flags. A bee was flitting from flower to flower. The bee was just the right size so that the bell of the flower perfectly encapsulated it. Liv opened her bag and took out an iPad. We went through some of the properties she’d been looking into.
This one, she said, and we peered at a photograph of the outside.
It doesn’t look like much, I said.
Wait a minute.
She touched the screen and an interior photograph appeared.
It’s bigger than it looks.
We looked at a few other places.
Do you like what you see? she said.
She was staring at the interior of a club. It was very plush, but it wasn’t big enough. I was staring right at her.
Yes, I do.
She looked up. She blushed.
Come on, she said, Let’s have a scoot round.
The one we looked at first was by far the most promising, needing the least work. When we got there, the owner was taking out some pans from the kitchen, loading them into a van.
Can we see inside?
It’s sold, he said.
He told us he’d just accepted an offer just below the asking price, but he let us look around anyway.
Are you both going into the business? he said. Husband and wife?
Neither of us corrected him. We finished looking round and left.
Shame, I said, afterwards, It would have been perfect.
Plenty of others to look at, fuck it, Liv said.
We spent two hours or so looking around properties. There was a place for rent, which had been a shop, that was a good size and was near the market. It was very suitable but I didn’t want to rent, I wanted my own place, I wanted to own it. It was late afternoon when we’d finished.
Let’s get something to eat, I know a place, she said, You’ll like it.
It was a chop house near the railway arches. A waiter brought us two leather-bound menus. We ordered wine. I can’t remember what we ordered to eat.
So what did you think of the other places?
We talked about what we’d seen. There were a few that needed work, but not much more than a lick of paint, new furniture, new decoration.
You want that first place, don’t you? Liv said.
It was true, she’d read my mind. It was exactly what I wanted. She took out her phone.
What are you doing?
I’ve got the owner’s number.
She rang him up but there was no answer.
What were you going to say to him?
I was going to ask him what it had gone for.
What’s the point?
So we could offer him more, you bozo.
But he’s already accepted the offer.
It’s called gazumping, Nick. Everyone does it. We can try again later. If you want something, you have to take it.
I was going to take it, all right, Andrew.
We ate in silence. Eventually I said, Is Andrew still stressed at work, or have things calmed down a bit now?
I don’t know, we’ve not discussed it.
But you agreed on the money?
Eventually.
Hope I’ve not caused any tension?
Don’t worry about it.
She was going to say something else, but changed her mind. I wondered what it was. Something like, ‘there was plenty of tension before, without you.’
We ate in silence again. Then she said, I wrote a thank you letter to myself this morning, from Andrew.
Really? What did it say?
Here, I’ll show you.
She took a crumpled piece of paper out of her bag. She handed it to me. The note read:
Dear Liv,
Thank you so much for cooking my dinner, washing up the pots, drying them, putting them away, feeding the cat, watering the plants, picking up my underwear, putting it in the laundry basket, hoovering, cleaning, tidying, making my bed, ironing my shirts, washing my clothes, drying my clothes, putting my clothes away in the wardrobe, picking up damp towels from the floor, putting the milk back in the fridge, the lid back on the butter dish and my coat on the hook. Thank you for doing this every single day. I really do appreciate it, even though I appear not to notice any of it.
Love,
Andrew
I wanted to laugh, inside I was crying with laughter, but what did I do instead? I defended you, Andrew. I was your advocate.
Perhaps he thinks with the long hours he works, that he’s contributing in an equal but different way.
Liv didn’t say anything. She fiddled with her fork.
Do you know what I did my dissertation on at uni? she said eventually.
No, I said, What was it?
The Third Wave: a Post-Structuralist Interpretation of the Gendering of Domestic Space.
She held her glass and stared into the red liquid. She gulped it down then topped us both up.
We listened to I Wanna Go All The Way. Her leg was resting against my leg. I could feel the warmth of her flesh. Her bare skin against my jeans. I looked into her eyes and she was pouring into me.
I’m talking about your wife, Andrew.
You have been transferred to a maximum security prison as a Category A prisoner. Wakefield is so quiet in comparison to Strangeways. There is no clatter of metal against bars. There are no voices echoing down the white stone corridors. Not everyone in Wakefield is a murderer. Some are terrorists too. There are bombers, rapists, armed robbers. There are drug dealers. But mostly murderers. Murderers are a different type of prisoner to the others.
You are playing chess with a man called Ian. Ian interests you. Ian never gave any cheek at school. He always handed in his homework on time. He never taped off the radio or dropped any litter. He has never smoked a cigarette. His hair is parted at the side. He is clean shaven. Ian intrigues you. You have known him for three months and you can’t understand why he is in prison.
Eventually you ask hi
m. Eventually he tells you. He tells you that he left school at sixteen. He tells you that he worked in a warehouse. There he met a woman. She worked in the office upstairs. She made all the moves. She asked him for a drink. He was twenty-one and still a virgin. After some time, they slept together. They were married in a church in the village where she was born. They went to Lanzarote on their honeymoon. They had a daughter.
Ian worked extra shifts, to buy her all the things she wanted. Jewellery, dresses and shoes. Holidays abroad. A dream kitchen with a real marble top. A leather sofa. He put some of the money away in a trust fund for his daughter.
He came home early from work one day. He parked his car and went to the front door. Before he could put the key in the lock, he could hear a noise. It sounded like someone was hitting someone. He ran to the back window. And there she was. His wife. She was naked and she was on top of another man, rutting like some beast. He’d never seen her like this. He’d never seen her so animated.
Very slowly, he put the key in the lock and turned it. He walked down the thick wool carpeted hallway, into their dream kitchen. He took out a chef’s knife of the highest precision from the solid wood knife block, which was placed on the pristine marble top. He went into the living room, where they were still rutting. He stabbed her eighteen times in the back. He stabbed the man three times in the chest and twice in the face.
Ian shows no sign of emotion as he tells this story. He studies the chess pieces. You are in the endgame. You think about your own story. You don’t judge Ian. You look at Ian. He looks like the innocent flower. You and Ian have something in common. You are both the victims of betrayal. You wonder if you can be friends with Ian. You haven’t had a true friend since Keyop. Is it possible to love someone again? You think it probably isn’t.
Instead, you focus on the game. You are close to checkmating Ian. You are going to win the game and that is more important than love.
THE DIET OF WORMS
‘Do not despair, one of the thieves was saved; do not presume, one of the thieves was damned.’
Falsely attributed to St Augustine by Samuel Beckett
10
We didn’t like French but we liked our French teacher. I say we, but I’m not talking about me and you, Andrew, not this time. You weren’t in our French group. I would always sit with Mark Jones. When we got put into French groups I was automatically put in the bottom group because I was in the bottom group for English. The reason I was in the bottom group for English (and Maths) was because I’d been excluded for a year and had missed a great deal of work (unlike you who had been sitting outside the headmaster’s office, working diligently at the coursework). Our French teacher was called Miss Mulrennan and, like Richard, she had the mannerisms of a dormouse, with the same quick nervy movements, pointy nose and big eyes. She was single (we all imagined) and drove a yellow Citroen 2CV. There was a rumour that she was still a virgin. She seemed old to us but was probably no more than thirty. Her dress sense was that of an older woman, long shapeless skirts, Arran jumpers and flat mannish shoes. I realise now that her dress sense was entirely appropriate for ‘teaching’ pubescent boys. It was the sartorial equivalent of a dose of bromide. She would always walk into a classroom that was in complete disarray.
Because we were the bottom group, nothing was ever expected of us, and as long as we were kept out of the way we could do as we liked. There was a wooden hut behind the school which was freezing in winter and scorching hot in summer. This is where we were kept, a comprehensive gulag.
Me and Mark would play hangman. Some kids carved their names on the desks. Some kids wrote ‘fuck’ on the blackboard and some drew a giant cock complete with curly pubes and spunk coming out of the hole in the helmet.
It was one such morning, with us sitting in our corner, looking out of the window, thinking of words for hangman, that Miss Mulrennan walked in with a large hessian bag. She knew from experience that there was no point in asking for order, instead she stood at the front and watched, ignored as usual. We were curious that morning to see, instead of fear on her face, a smile. We wondered why that was and we wondered what was in the large hessian bag. Then she opened it and we saw that it was full of bread and chocolate.
She walked to each desk and placed a baton-like loaf and a bar of chocolate on each one. When she had finished she stood at the front and she smiled again. The class was quietening down and the boys who had been playing basketball were sitting at their desks, and we were all now seated, looking to the front for the first time.
She explained that in France there was a tradition of children eating chocolate sandwiches. She explained that the small baton-like loaf was called a baguette and that chocolate in French was chocolat. And this was why she had brought the bread and the chocolate. She had gone to a special bakery first thing that morning to buy the bread. She had brought the chocolate back from France when she had visited a few weeks ago, especially for us. She wanted us to make chocolate sandwiches. She had bought the bread and chocolate out of her own purse because the school would not give her any money. An act of desperation or kindness? Either way, it got our attention.
She had been teaching us for two months and nothing had worked. It was now November and we hadn’t learned a word of French or anything about French culture, even though we had started class in September. We felt touched by this gesture and we felt ashamed of the giant penis on the blackboard behind her which was positioned so that it appeared to be spurting spunk into her ginger hair.
We wished just this once that it wasn’t there, that it was just a blackboard. She smiled again, realising at last that she was getting through to us. She had our attention and she seemed to grow and shine. We were actually sitting at our desks in silence and we were actually listening to what she was saying.
She was, for the first time in two months, doing her job – she was teaching us. We, for the first time in two months, were doing our job – we were learning. There was a sense of stillness that we didn’t recall ever experiencing before. I wasn’t really friends with Mark Jones, in fact never saw him outside of this class, but I sensed he was experiencing what I was experiencing.
And for one moment, we were behaving like human beings to one another and we were happy. We wanted that moment to stretch out across time. The air seemed to shimmer as though it were a hot afternoon in summer. Our ears were alive to every sound. The clicking of the clock on the wall, the gentle creak of the timber as it relaxed in the warmth of the room, the white-yellow glow of the fluorescent strip lights.
Then this moment was shattered like a sheet of glass. A baguette was hurtling through the air. We watched as it revolved, as it moved in an arc, a baton of bread, making the shape of an ‘X’ as it flew towards Miss Mulrennan. We watched it whirl and we watched as her smile turned into a look of terror, but it was too late to dodge and the end of the loaf hit her hard on her forehead and made a dull thud as it bounced off and hit the floor. She made a quiet gasp – not physically that hurt, although probably some sharp jolt of pain registered – and then the silence was replaced by shouting and laughing and swearing and baguette after baguette rained down on her head.
She was standing in front of us, with her hands over her face, not protecting herself from the onslaught, but covering her eyes, and we realised then that she was sobbing. She made little gasps and her tiny frame was shaking. We watched and we did nothing.
Then she was running. Out of the class, out of the hut and down the path. We watched her until she disappeared across the car park.
We never saw her again, nor did anyone ever mention her name again, no teacher and no pupil, but we knew that day that we would never forget what we had done and that we would always regret it. We had transgressed beyond our usual bad behaviour. We had driven a good-hearted woman over the edge. I felt ashamed to be part of this group. I longed to be in the other group, with you.
It must have been very diffe
rent for you, Andrew, in your top class with the top kids and the top teacher (a strict teacher with a beard, you were all in awe of). Actually learning to speak French. Actually learning something about French culture. Actually going to France on holiday for two weeks, sometimes three weeks, every summer with your parents.
We never went on holiday. Not one I remember. Not after mum died, and I was too young to remember the holidays before. Dad wasn’t a holiday person. To him a holiday was getting up when he liked, doing what he liked and drinking as much as he could. So in that sense, in the end, his life became a permanent holiday. He’d been abroad when he’d done his national service, so he had, in his own words, ‘done all that shit’. Holidays were a thing of the past. Holidays were what proper people did. Holidays were for others. They were not for us.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, I suppose it’s because it’s something you don’t know. Despite us spending nearly every day in each other’s company from being aged three (although we didn’t actually become best friends until we were six), this was one experience you were excluded from along with English and Maths. Because you were in the top group for all of these subjects and I was in the bottom. Not because you were smarter than me but because you sat outside the headmaster’s office while I stayed at home watching television. Not because you were more competent than me but because your parents made you do an hour of homework four days a week, and because when you didn’t make the grades they paid for a private tutor to come to your house twice a week.
I’ve never told you this, Andrew, but I loved you more than a brother loves his brother. It was the opening night of the club and I was thinking of the love I’d had for you once as I was getting ready to go on stage: how that pure love had changed into a twisted shape. How the resentment had built. How the feelings of inferiority had built. But now I felt equal.
I was thinking about my mum too. Did I actually remember her, or had I manufactured those memories from photographs and often-told anecdotes? The memory of her voice, with its soft lilt. The memory of her reaching into my cot one spring afternoon when a breeze was building, and covering me up with a soft blanket. The memory of her coming into my room at night to check I was asleep, kissing me tenderly on my forehead. You must admit, those memories are suspiciously chocolate box. A praline of implanted images.
CAFÉ ASSASSIN Page 10
