Boys and Girls (12 page)

‘Let me get you fresh plateful, sir. Take no time.'

‘No no – I shan't bother. Let's just have the beef now, shall we? Oh – Susie: your oysters …?'

‘Eaten.'

‘Really? What – whole dozen?'

‘Yup.'

‘Ah. Good, were they? Enjoy them?'

‘Yup.'

‘Good. Very good. Serve the beef then, would you? Oh – and tell the wine chappie: another bottle of the, ah – Gruaud, yes? Good. So much.'

Carlo and Susan did a swift and private eyebrow thing, and then he jerked his shoulders and set himself to jiggling away, and really rather bummily, to Black's eye, like the smuggest and most insufferable sort of Greek or something dancer. (God Almighty, the way things are now: bring back Smales, that's what I say.) But the Chateaubriand, it arrived in a twinkling, this leading Black to murkily suspect that it had been hanging around a bit under one of those fearsomely hot and sci-fi downlights, the ones they have in rows in those carveries, should such things as carveries still be in existence. But no – it was quite perfect: just as I like it at either end, and
disturbingly burgundy at its glistening core, the slices thick and fleshy (wetly ripe for the Amazon). There's a bald fellow, you know, couple of tables away, just caught my eye – distinguished he looks, I'd say: makes me wonder about all this hair of mine (because who, in fact, do I imagine I'm kidding? Would any foolhardy fingers tempted to run through it ever be the same again?). Amusing man, he seems, with weight and intelligence. The rather dim-looking child who's with him, though – she seems way below, to my mind: lucky to have him.

‘Here, Black – let me give you some Béarnaise. All looks lovely …'

Mm – conciliatory tone, seeping into sweet: not about to tell me to fuck off again then, by the sounds of things: a renaissance of sorts. And no immediate signs that she's going to resume her Pronouncement of Importance. And I have no idea whatever of what it could be, I have to tell you – never do, never know what in blue blazes people are thinking, hinting at, pussyfooting around; even if things are made as plain as a tower block to everyone within hearing – even as I see their eyes narrow into understanding, watch the new and veiled prudence, the sapient pursing of so subtle lips, still I am blinking amid the gloaming, blind to what is evidently unmistakable to all (it's maybe my shelter, this – a flimsy form of defence, could it be? Though to shield me from the barrage of what imagined onslaught, I really couldn't say).

There was of course far too much of the tenderly yielding fillet of beef, but I've eaten all of my better-done slices, while she's left quite a fair proportion of her carefully specified butcher's slab. Feminine, is it? To do that? Or simply rude and wasteful? Leaving room for pudding, she could be, although I might be out of date. In the old days, you took a woman to any
halfway decent sort of nosherie and her eyes were scanning the puddings before she'd even started fooling with her napkin. It's maybe different now, I'm hardly the person to ask. Heard a line the other day from someone or other, God knows who – this doctor, do you see, he says to his female patient: Tell me, do you drink at lunch and dinner? And she – young thing – she replies wide-eyed Oh good heavens
no
, doctor – I don't even
eat
at lunch and dinner. Modern way, I expect. Don't find it particularly amusing.

‘Pudding, Susie? Squeeze something in?'

‘I might just have a crème brûlée.'

Well at least she's human: quite mannish in her appetites, some ways. I think it's something I've sensed before. Nearly half a bottle of wine left: mm, let's drink it. I've offered her some, to top up the glass, but no, she says no I shan't, thank you: she's too intent upon cracking into that sugary crust, scooping up the cool and creamy custard and into her really quite remarkable mouth. Which … Damn, oh God: sigh –
sigh
! Brings me to sex. I mean … I
want
to, yes – of course I
want
to (what in Christ's name I'm even doing here in the first place: well isn't it?). I mean … you've just got to look at her: she's mesmerising, captivating, all the weak-inducing and mind-swimmingly enslaving things you ever could dream of. But you see … well there are two things, really, that are worrying me now. Two, yes, just for the present, but doubtless many more will assail me as I plod along this leaden way. The first thing is the looming actuality … the point at which all the really enjoyable bits – the undercover and lacy rustling, the good and weighty fumble, squirming one's fingers into tight and giving spaces – the caught throat and the short hot breath of a single just audible gasp against one's cheek … well, time must have
a stop – and then it's a question of actually, oh my good God –
disrobing
, not to put too fine a point on it … and well look – am I really compelled to illuminate this?
Look
at me, can't you? Hm? Yes? You see? And revolve, if you please: mm, and now look at her. Yes? Well quite. And it's here that the other thing moans and stirs and heaves into view: why me? Hey? I mean, point one: how can she be lonely? Actually? Not possible, is it? Woman like that. Not even conceivable. And say, just say for the sake of, um … you know: thing. Argument. Just say for the sake of argument (and how feeble and wheezing, how visibly collapsed and broken-backed it is, this putative argument, to be sure) – but let's just all agree though, shall we, that this sultry, elegant, quite breathtaking woman (whose body warmth can hit you from across the table) is – hah! –
lonely
 … well then go on – ask yourself, as I have: why me? See? Makes no sense. No sense at all. I mean, I don't even think I'm particularly amusing. I have no fame. Money? Well – a bit … but nothing, surely, to light up the eyes or kindle the dreams of one such as this. So what on earth can be going on here at all? Unless, of course … oh God, here's a thought, and I can't say I'm liking it, no not a bit, but here's a thought – listen to this: what if I am merely the boss at the office, the (much) older man, a mature and safe acquaintance? What if, when I lay upon her a finger, maybe eventually even more (who can ever say?) – she screams? Or is sick. Or pityingly shuns me. Or takes out a whistle and blows for the police. Or stabs me with a knife, as Mylene might so very easily have done that sourly muggy August Bank Holiday, had I not so deftly parried her demented lunge with the first thing that came to hand, which turned out to be an early hardback copy of the ghosted autobiography of a callow and talentless proto-punk named Gideon, which I had recently undergone
the extreme displeasure of having to publish. Yes. What if. So all things considered, I can't say I'm not concerned.

But distance, logic, coherent thought – they have left me now, for she is touching my skin; the tiny espresso cup jingled in its saucer as her white long fingers and the gloss of their aubergine tines shimmied past it, just glancingly. And she speaks. I am leaning with attention across the table and idly stroking the joint on the middle finger of Susie's soft and outstretched hand flat against the weave of the deep-red cloth. I now pull away sharply and stare at her hard. I dab at my lips with a napkin and hold it up there, consciously willing a glinting of amusement to pepper and invade the confusion in my eyes.

‘I'm … sorry, so sorry, I must have—'

‘Misheard? No no, I assure you. That is exactly what I said.'

Her composure, I am thinking, is really quite remarkable.

‘Indeed? Indeed? Well well.'

‘And would you like to? Think about it, at least?'

‘Well I mean … well Susie, Susie – I am quite … I mean – this is all so very sudden. So unexpected. I mean – we barely even know one another …'

Susan laughed quite delightedly (the teeth, that hint of pink) pressing her nails into the flesh of his palm with just sufficient force as to leave so white, already fading traces, soon to be the trail of memory.

‘Oh Black, you sound like a virgin girl!'

‘Who has just been proposed to …! Susie: are you serious? I mean – you're not just—?'

‘No. I'm not just. I'm serious. Very. Yes I am. I think we would be marvellous together. Don't you? I can't believe that you don't. Tell you what – come to dinner. Yes? At my house. We'll have … anything you like. What is it you like, Black? Tell me.'

Black looked about him. It was terribly warm, rather suddenly: really very close. The bald man – tall, I see now, as he gets up to leave – he puts his arm across the young girl's shoulder quite as easily as a spellbinding vampire in a floor-skimming cloak.

‘Well – I like … anything, really. Dinner, you say? Well – dinner's always very nice, of course … But Susie—!'

‘Let's go now, shall we? Get the bill, will you? Yes? Let's go now, and think of the future.'

Black was aware of very little (he realised this later, as again and again he went over and over it) until the cool of the evening air smacked him across both cheeks. He just about remembered gulping down the blue pill and the whitish capsule with the dregs of his claret (these drugs together, they were reputed to valiantly join forces in the battle to vanquish all of the evil that dinner had done him) and then briefly tipping Smales for holding open the door … and now he was out here in the street then, was he? And Susie seems to have flagged down a taxi and she's saying something to me rapidly with bright eyes and a great deal of gesture and … all of a sudden a blackened and toothless old woman is beside me and imploring that I buy from her a long-stemmed rose, for the beautiful lady. And I seem now to have done just this, because Susie's face is alive and aglow with more angelic laughter as I slither now all of its cellophaned meanness into both of her hands, and her lips on mine as she stoops now to kiss me … the warm and pillowy jamminess of her mouth, heavy there and lingering, it has me close to tears and fainting. Before the slamming of the taxi door, before it pulls away and just leaves me here, she says she will call me – she says she will call me and that it'll be such fun, the dinner, our dinner – it'll be fun, she tells and tells me, our
very special dinner, for only just the three of us. At which I am puzzled – the taxi now just a melting blur of shivering raindrops (and soon it is gone) … but I then realised later (as again and again I went over and over it) that she is including in our oh-so-special dinner, the daughter, Alison – could be Annette – who needs, lest we might forget, not only a father, but stability, yes, not to say guidance. At the time, though, it was just that kiss that had wafted me home. My own daughter, Millie (and why do I think of this now?) she has to my face and jeeringly dubbed me a ‘dodosexual'. Oh I know – so silly, and quite utterly baffling it always seemed to me. But at a time such as this, I nearly come close to seeing what she means.

Tara, OK? I wasn't like going to tell her anything at all about Harry – even that I knew him – but then I just had to, had to, because I was just bursting. So I just told her his name and that he was like just gorgeous and what he did and everything and then I so wished I hadn't, because she got it all wrong.

‘Working in a garage doesn't sound too great, Amanda. What's he want to work in a, like – garage for? How old is he anyway?'

‘Shit, Tara – I
told
you – he doesn't
work
in a garage … well yeh OK – he does, yeh he does, OK, he works in a garage, but that's just to get money for the meantime, yeh? It's not what he
is
. He's like a poet. Told you. It's only temporary, the garage thing. Just till he gets started.'

‘Well how old is he, Amanda? I mean – he sounds like really old. When did he leave school? Is he going to uni?'

‘He's not
that
old. He's a lot more mature than anyone you know, though. He's different. He's not, like – a
boy
. You know? And he went to an ordinary school, if you must know, state
school, and he's not going to university because it's a middle-class thing to do and everyone's got degrees now and it's all just meaningless and it's got nothing to do with art and life.'

‘Is that what he said?'

‘More or less. And I believe him. He's right. Isn't he? Everyone like us, everyone we know, we're going to be at school for what? Like three more years, and then uni for another three, and it's all just a waste of time because it's got nothing to do with art and
life
.'

‘Well how old is he?'

‘Oh
crap
, Tara – why do you keep on and on about that?'

‘Because you won't tell me, will you? Jesus – it's not a difficult question, Amanda. How bloody
old
is he?'

‘Well … eighteen, nearly.'

‘Eigh-
teen
?! Jesus, you're
joking
! Eigh-
teen
. Man – that's bloody
ancient
.'

‘Nearly – he's nearly eighteen. He's seventeen and a bit.'

‘But Amanda, you're like – fourteen? Remember? It's illegal.'

‘Fifteen, nearly. And what do you mean
illegal
? There's nothing, Jesus, illegal about it. We're not – God, Tara: what the hell do you think I'm doing? I'm not like
stupid
, you know. You think I'm stupid? Well I'm not. And I'm not a slag either, so fuck you.'

‘I didn't say—'

‘Yeh well. I just wish I hadn't said anything now. I should have known you just like wouldn't get it. You don't, do you Tara? Do you? You just so don't
get
it.'

Well of course she doesn't – nobody would. How could they? Because Harry, yeh? He's like an enigma? He's not like anyone I've ever met in my entire life on earth. He's a million miles off all the boys you get like on the bus and in the newsagent after
school – all those pathetic little dickheads from St Vincent's up the road, just laughing and hitting each other and saying like really sick stuff and basically they're still into toys and all those games that are about sawing people up or running them over at like a hundred miles an hour. It was in that poxy little newsagent that I met him, actually. He was looking at a magazine and that old miserable fucker called Mahal or whatever with the creepy moustache who sort of guards all his crappy magazines as if they're like valuable or something, and he comes over and he says in that voice he's got that Harry – I didn't know he was called Harry, right, because it was the first time I'd ever set eyes on him – but Mahal, he says to Harry that he is not to be looking at the magazine, sir, because this is not a lending library, no no no, and you please put down magazine, sir, unless you are intending to buy – and Harry (the mag, it was called Guitar Something or Something Guitar and it had this CD on the front?) – Harry, he stuffs a fiver into Mahal's little hand, and he tells him to keep the change! Well wow – how cool is that? And then a couple of minutes later, there's that old loony Mahal chasing after him down the street because it turns out the magazine, it's some sort of special issue or something and it costs like five pounds ninety-five? I nearly pissed myself with laughing – and after, next day and after, I kind of waited around for him. It wasn't till Friday that he was in there again though, and I looked at him and then stopped looking at him and then I sort of like looked at him again until I just knew he'd have to say hi – and yeh, he did. God, I nearly died. And this time he just bought some Tic-Tacs and I kind of like bumped into him in the doorway going out? And he was going to walk away so I said So what – you a guitarist, yeh? My heart was really going like crazy and I'd
gone all red and everything because I could feel it. And he looked at me with his eyes – which sounds like just so stupid, yeh I know, but what I mean is I really saw his eyes for the very first time and they're really dark brown and artistic. And what he said was Well yeh, kind of – I put my poems to music, is what I do: you want to get a coffee or something? And I just shrugged and sort of looked at my watch and then I said Sure: cool.