Boys and Girls (51 page)

‘Yeh, OK …' smiled Amanda. ‘But you know what I mean. Where you going?'

‘Oh, I won't be long. Maria. Coffee. Back soon.'

Amanda nodded and looked at her as she waved a goodbye. Even now, when she's in a bit of a state (because quite a lot, I guess, is kind of freaking her), she's still got such a way of … I don't know: just like –
being
, really. That walk that women can do and I can't no matter what. Not like, you know, those weird and skinny models whose hips are sort of pushing out at you and they're in your face as if their whole like middle wants to be sick … but just – together, you know? Comes with age, maybe. Which I guess I've been kind of like thinking about quite a lot lately. Sometimes, when I go to myself: ‘You're going to have a …
baby
,' I get all excited and feel so like really mature and I'm really up for it, you know? Like going and getting all the stuff, and things – and what was always the dining room that we never used, that's going to be the nursery, yeh? And I'm going to have it in pink even if it's a boy because I still like really go for that colour, actually – with a really fluffy carpet: how cool is that? I could find out – you know, if it's a boy or a girl. They're both good, one way, and they're both pretty bad. Girls are nice because you can, like – dress them up? And you've got, like – dolls and stuff? But I wouldn't really want her to be like me. And boys are OK too at first, but then get violent or just dumb. I wouldn't mind if he looks like Harry with the eyes and stuff, I just don't want him to be a shit or anything. And I'm already thinking of names. I think it would be really cool to call this kid like just a
word
, you know? Not like a name that everyone else has got, but just something that's really different. I thought of Zam, which is good for a boy or a girl, if you think about it, and I really really liked that for a while, and then I got thinking it maybe sounded like a, I don't know … sink cleaner? Issal is
another one – to, like – rhyme with missal? And then I thought of the Bex Bissel carpet thing we got in the cupboard and I just went Jesus, why are my names all sounding like …
housework
? Sta is what I like at the moment, pronounced like star … but then I went and read somewhere that S.T. stands for ‘sexually transmitted' … which he is, of course, the kid. Isn't he? Like every single boy and girl in the whole wide world.

Yeh. Anyway – I like go through all of this when I'm high on it … but the other times I go to myself ‘You're going to have a …
baby
,' and I just get so weirded out, you know? And totally stressed because I don't want it to hurt or anything. But I'm really glad my Mum's here. Because she is, now – it's different. I think she's really really
here
, you know? Not just in the same house, but sort of … with me? Don't really like it when she's not here.

I would go down and offer Mr Clearley something, like Mum said, but the reason I don't like to is that the less coffee and tea and stuff they have, the quicker they're going to finish my flat. (My flat! So cool.) Might even have a coffee myself, actually, because I so don't do all the vodka anymore. And also, the other guy down there, the younger one, black dude, Phil he is, he like – looks at me? Like they do. Man – he'd be so wiped out if he knew my … condition. God … I suddenly feel sick again, Christ, it's the worst, this … you just feel so … oh. How weird is that? It hits you – like in waves? And then it's gone. Totally over. Weird. I feel fine now. So weird. So yeh maybe I will – I'll go downstairs and ask if they want tea or coffee or whatever. Actually, that Phil, if I'm honest, he's like well fit: kinda cute. Except boys … I don't know … just so not into them at the moment. Just happy to be here, on my own. With my Mum.

*

Well – what a time it's been. But we're both of us on the mend now, I'm delighted to say. Blackie – he's out of hospital tomorrow, yes, picking him up first thing. Don't really like it when he's not here. He'll be back in there though in a couple of weeks, of course, because they're going to do his hips. A latent problem for quite some time, but Susan's onslaught, well – it rather brought matters to a head, shall we say: fell rather awkwardly. He's in a very charming suite in the hospital, terribly swanky, and he could, of course, have had the operation straight away – the specialist was there, ready and willing – but … and quite rightly, in my opinion, he said he'd really like to come home, rest a while, get a bit back to normal. Yes well – I'm all for that, goes without saying:
normal
 – oh God yes, that's for me. And also, it's his birthday, you know, in just under a week – don't want to spend your birthday in a hospital, do you? No matter how swish it is. I asked him if there was anything in particular he wanted for a present and he said that now I came to mention it there was, yes, but he was damned if he could remember what it might be. Anyway, I have something in mind. And then I asked him how old he was – he managed a smile: a hundred, Alan … but I do feel so very much
older
. Dear fellow.

That night though, when finally the ambulance came – and it was I who had to ring and ring for it, you know: Susan, she was just in pieces. Rather a laugh, in retrospect, seeing as she was the only one of us who hadn't been reduced to a twisted and bloodied pile. Anyway – ambulance came; they took one look at me and started trying to get me on to a stretcher. No no, I was protesting – it's not me, it's not me – it's
him
, it's him inside. So they go into the drawing room, these para-whatever-they-are, and they're tending to Blackie (poor old man – every
time they budged him he was wincing so bravely) and then they're looking up at me again. Eyeing me, you might say.

‘Bit old for this sort of thing, aren't you? Fighting.'

And before this, of course, it hadn't so much as occurred to me: how it would look.

‘No no, I assure you. The states we are both in, they are wholly unrelated. Coincidence, really. I was attacked in the street – and I fully intend to file a police report, or whatever one does – whereas my friend here, well … that was more of a, um … domestic accident. You see. But is he all right? How bad is he?'

One of the ambulancemen had Black now safely and reasonably comfortably, it seemed to Alan, strapped on to the stretcher. The other turned his attention to Susan.

‘That right is it, madam? Domestic?'

Susan looked up from her handkerchief, into which she had been sniffling quite ceaselessly.

‘Oh … yes, yes. That must be right. It is I … who is partly responsible. To blame. I became a little bit annoyed.'

The ambulanceman nodded. ‘Yes right, I see. A little bit annoyed. Heaven help him then if you'd been out-and-out pissed off. And you, sir,' he said to Alan as the two of them wheeled out the stretcher, ‘it looks like you'd better come along as well. Get you properly seen to. And if you wouldn't mind, sir – for our report – telling me a bit more about this, um – attack of yours.'

Yes well. As usual, I suppose, with these bloody things, there's not much to tell. Happens in seconds, with you for the rest of your life, but there's not much to tell. Got to the shop in no time, bought Blackie's Rothmans – and it was late, of course, dark … next thing I knew there were these young
thugs all clustered around me, couldn't tell you where they came from. Two of them were almost luminously white in the pale cold drizzle of light from the one remote street lamp – bald, bony, eyes were spinning. Other two, black as hell and bloody big. I remember, through the weightlessness and the soaring nausea of my clammy-handed terror thinking well well well – half and half, that's not something you see every day. And hands, then, they were rifling my pockets and one of them had me by the throat. And I so wished I'd
had
something, but no – I'd come out with just a tenner for the fags: no wallet, no phone, I wasn't even wearing my watch. You could see the malevolent fury in their eyes. One of the white and shaven morons, he spat in my face and turned away. A black one hit me in the stomach, almost by way of a parting gesture – he swore quite a bit – and then the four of them set to trudging away, no doubt in search of some other careless innocent to traumatise and injure. And then I heard myself muttering – but it must, I suppose, have been quite loudly – ‘
Bastards
 …!' Oh dear. And one of the black ones, he came back – ran back, don't know if it was the same one who had winded me, and oh Lord, he was so very severe, so totally hard and vicious: my cheekbone, nose – the whole of my head was just coming apart and I felt like I was dead – and then oh Jesus, the kicking and kicking … I felt numb and in agony and my consciousness was slipping. I must have been roaring, though – because the others, they were suddenly urgent and dragging him off me. I lay there, smelling and tasting the hard and cold of the pavement, aware of rips in my clothes and person. No one came. And I could not move. And then I could. Although I don't remember the journey, I must of course have got myself back home. I
do
remember closing the door with care behind
me (didn't want to disturb) … and then I was so lightheaded and booming with pain, I can only assume that I must just have passed out. It didn't feel strange or even remotely odd to see Susan hovering above me when I eventually came to. I was aware that she was asking me who
did
this … and I twisted around my head, and opened an eye. My voice was no more than a groan:

‘… Black,' I said. ‘Bloody
bastard
 …!'

Yes. And it was only, oh – just hours and hours later that I understood her consequent actions (but if she'd only stopped to think, you know: I never call him Black – I always call him Blackie). Anyway, by this time they'd attended to me very well in the hospital, I must say: bound up my ribs – none broken, rather miraculously, but fucking painful for all that. Nostril felt a little gummed up, ear a bit roary. I hadn't noticed my bleeding hands and torn-up fingernails: I must have, I don't know – crawled my way home. No recollection. Black was asleep by this time – they'd given him something for the pain in his pelvis – and apart from a fat nose and a split lip, he looked at peace, and really so angelic. Before they'd given him the jab, though – he needed it, you could see it behind his eyes, the hurt he was feeling – he was anxiously regarding Susan as she just distractedly was fluttering alongside. And then he looked at me. I swear, you know, that in our eyes were flashing the very same lightning zigzags of alarm as that shocking moment in the hall when we had registered the return of Amanda – uncertainty at first, and then the cold and looming horror. Could it be now that Susan too was back in the bosom of her family? That thing for which we had once, Blackie and myself, so thoroughly abased ourselves in order to secure? She said nothing though, Susan, much to my surprise; and we said nothing too.

And as for this evening, well … I'm just pottering about the house now, really, and making sure that everything is perfect for the morning, when Blackie comes home. The lift will be a mercy I must say, because he'll be in a wheelchair up until the operation. Not after it, though – he's quite on course for a full recovery, the doctor seemed convinced. They said we could rent a state-of-the-art model – wheelchair, I mean – one that he could drive himself and turn on a sixpence. But I said no – we'll just take the regular kind: I don't mind pushing. So – that's the end of that chapter. And on the whole, you know, we haven't been bad boys, Blackie and me. I mean … Amanda coming in when Lucy and Crystal were here, well that was bad – but was it bad for us to have had them? Susan, she got it into her head that Blackie had assaulted Amanda in some way or another – and that of course would have been bad, but the plain truth is he
didn't
(which is good). Susan and Amanda, however – they have been bad girls, no getting away from it, and yet they neither of them, I am sure, set out to be bad. Things that at the time seemed to them to be good … just turned out badly, that's all: they're both good people at heart.

My jacket, you know – the old Harris tweed? It might just about have had it, this time: terrible state it's in. And oh look – in the right-hand pocket … a mashed packet of twenty Rothmans. Maybe just chuck it out. Forget the whole thing. We'll see. But for now, I'll just draw the curtains and then I'll pour myself a drink. Getting dark. Flower beds are in a bit of a mess. Haven't seen the gardener for ages.

And just lying here like this, somewhat preposterously, I do, of course I do – I wonder why I came. Everyone must, I imagine. Alan, he surely must have done so, week in week
out. Amazing he kept it up. I can only conclude that it is a need to commune with your very own self that drives you into the arms of others, to chatter away to them, professional or otherwise. Maria, however – on this occasion, she just would not have done. She feeds on me, and she whoops like an American audience. I am, to her, a spectator sport. What I needed now, I had decided, was education in its strictest sense; just that – an elicitation. Or possibly, I was just rather lonely.

‘Did you hear me, Susan? Did you hear the question?'

‘I did, Doctor Atherby, yes I did. I'm thinking about the answer. And I don't really know, quite how I see them. In terms of their relating to me, I mean. I can see them perfectly clearly as they
are
, as they are in themselves. Or what they have become, anyway. I suppose there were elements there before … well of course there were, of course. But sometimes now it's as if they're … I don't know … Higgins and Pickering, almost. You could say. Though there never was an Eliza. Not that I know.'