Collected Stories (73 page)

When he pushed the familiar glass door and stepped across the carpet which he remembered, on occasion, feeling against his cheek, he saw a former business partner with mistletoe attached to his forehead by bands of Sellotape.

He pulled Brett to him and started kissing him. ‘It’s you – you, you bastard! The one who let me down! Now we’re both bankrupt!’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Brett. ‘That’s right!’

‘Been swimming in the river, I hear! How are you doing now?’ It took his friend a while to find the words. He was so pleased he repeated them. ‘You doing … you doing swimmingly …’ he went, laughing to himself. ‘Won’t sit down! Busy with something!’

Brett bought Francine a drink and one for himself. How expensive it was! How much money he had spent on it over the years, not to mention energy!

In the bathroom, he threw the drink away and filled his glass with water. What a beautiful drink water was.

He took a seat at the bar and watched the man with the mistletoe weave about until he dropped on to a sofa. There, he went to some trouble to relocate the mistletoe in his open fly. Then he leaned back with his knees apart and began the business – giggling the while – of attracting the waitress’s attention.

Over the years, Brett must have sat on all the bar stools and armchairs in the place. He could see a group of his friends settling down to play cards. Johnny, Chris, Carol and Mike. They would be there for a long time; later, they’d go somewhere else. On any other night, he’d have joined them.

The aggression in Gaga seemed high. People wanted help and attention, but they were asking the wrong folks, others just like them. Some of them were wired, with their eyes popping. Others were exhausted, with failing heads. Odd it was, the taking of substances that made you feel worse, that made everything worse in the end. Dissipation was gruelling work, a full-time job. Yet things did get done; these men and women had professions. Brett had to be grateful: at least he had kept his flat and job. He’d only lost his wife.

If he didn’t sit with his friends – and he wouldn’t; he was cold, while they were hot with enthusiasm – where else was there? How did you get to others? After all, it wasn’t only him, or his circle, who was like this. It was his ex-wife’s father, his own sister and her boyfriend, who sat around with cans and bottles, fighting and weeping. Or they had been cured but had become addicted to the cure, as tedious off the stuff as they had been on it.

Francine had taken her drink and gone to join a group. He noticed she continued to watch him, knowing he might shrug her off and leave. He didn’t see why this would matter to her.

Brett was content to think of the North African, wondering whether something about the man had influenced him. Like the taxi driver, Brett seemed to be in a world where everyone resembled him but spoke in a foreign language. If the man stayed in England, he would always struggle to understand it, never quite connecting.

He had helped Brett; why shouldn’t Brett help him? Brett imagined himself turning up at the man’s house, offering to do anything. But what might he do? Wash up, or read to the children? Take them all to the cinema? Why shouldn’t he do it, now he felt better? The man might be too shy or suspicious for such things, yet surely he had to stop work for lunch or supper? Brett could listen to him. It would be a way of starting again, or returning to a state of teenage curiosity, when you might take any path that presented itself, seeing where it led.

Brett got down from the stool.

‘No you don’t.’ Francine came over and put her tongue in his mouth. ‘You take me home. You’ve been coming on to me all night.’

He didn’t mind taking her home. He had come to dislike his own street and thought he should move to another district. Apart from the fact a change would do him good, living near by was a woman he passed often, an ex-barmaid. If she recognised him, which he doubted, she never acknowledged him. She had four children by different fathers and the youngest was his, he knew it. He had stayed with her one night after a party, four years ago. When he made the calculation, it added up. A drinking acquaintance pointed it out. ‘Look at that kid. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were the father.’

He had gone to the playground to watch the child. It was true; she had his own mother’s hair and eyes. He had seen the woman shout at the girl. He didn’t like passing his only daughter on the street.

In the car, Francine was drinking from a bottle of wine.

‘Haven’t you had enough yet?’ he said. ‘Can’t you just stop?’

‘Tonight I’m going the whole way.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s a fatuous question.’

‘But I would like to know, really.’

She started to cry, talking all the while. She didn’t think to spare him her misery; perhaps it didn’t occur to her that he would be concerned.

The North African man drove strangers night after night, despised or invisible amongst abhorrent fools who had so much of everything, they could afford to piss it away.

At Francine’s block of flats, he helped her upstairs. He put the lights on and led her to bed. She thrashed about, as if the mattress were a runaway horse she had to master.

He turned his back, but she couldn’t remove her clothes. He got her into her pyjamas and kissed her on the side of the head.

‘Good night, Francine.’

‘Don’t leave me! You’re staying, aren’t you? I –’

She was clawing at his chest. She was an awful colour. He ran for the washing-up bowl and held it by her face.

‘Is this it? Is this it?’ she kept saying. ‘Is it now, tonight?’

‘Is it what, Francine?’

‘Death! Is he here? Has William Burroughs come to call?’

‘Not tonight, sweetheart. Lie back.’

Her vomit splattered the walls; it went over his jacket, his shoes, trousers and shirt, and in his hair.

At the end, she did lie back, exhausted. He removed her soiled pyjamas and put her into a dressing gown.

He was sitting there. She extended her arms to him. ‘Come on, Brett.’

‘You’re pretty sick, Francine.’

‘I’ve finished. There’s nothing left. You can do what you want to me.’ She was shivering, but she opened her dressing gown. ‘That’s something no one ever says no to!’

‘What difference would it make?’

‘Who cares about that! Fetch yourself a drink and settle down. I’ve always liked you.’

‘Have you?’

‘Don’t you know that? Despite your problems, you’re bright and you can be sweet. Won’t you tell me what you are on tonight, Brett?’

He shook his head and put a glass of water to her lips. ‘Nothing. Nothing.’

‘There must be someone else you’re going to. That’s a rotten thing to do to a woman.’

He thought for a time.

‘There is no woman. It’s a taxi driver.’

‘Christ!’

‘Yes.’

‘The one who fished you out? You won’t know where he is.’

‘I’ll go to the cab office and wait. They know me there. Hell, understand what I want.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Good talk.’

She said, ‘You enjoyed sleeping with me last time.’

‘What last time? There wasn’t any last time.’

‘Don’t pretend to be a fool when you’re not. Get in.’

She was patting the bed.

He walked to the door and shut it behind him. She was still talking, to him, to anyone and no one.

‘There’s someone I’ve got to find,’ he said.

It is nearly Christmas and Rick is getting quite drunk at a party in a friend’s clothes shop.

It is a vast shop in a smart area of west London, and tonight the girls who work there have got dressed up in shiny black dresses, white velvet bunny ears and high shoes. When Rick and Daniel arrived, the girls were holding trays of champagne, mulled wine and mince pies. Has there ever been anything so inviting?

The girls helped Rick’s son Daniel out of his pushchair, removed his little red coat and showed him to the children’s room where remote-controlled electric toys buzzed across the floor. There was a small seesaw; several other local children were already playing. Rick sat on the floor and Daniel, though it was late for him, chased the electric toys, flung a ping-pong ball through the open window and dismantled a doll’s house, not understanding that all the inviting objects were for sale.

Rick had begun drinking an hour earlier. On the way to the party they had stopped at a bar in the area where Rick used to go when he was single. There, Daniel, who is two and a half, had climbed right up onto a furry stool next to his father, sitting in a line with the other early-evening drinkers.

‘I’m training him up,’ Rick said to the barmaid. ‘Please, Daniel, ask her for a beer.’

‘Blow-blow,’ said Daniel.

‘Sorry?’ said Rick.

Daniel held up a book of matches. ‘Blow-blow.’

Rick opened it and lit a match. ‘Again,’ Daniel said, the moment he blew it out. He extinguished two match books like this, filling the ashtray. As each match illuminated the boy’s face, his cheeks filled and his lips puckered. When the light died, the boy’s laughter rang out around the fashionably gloomy bar.

‘Ready, steady, blow-blow!’

‘Blow-bloody-blow,’ murmured a sullen drinker.

‘Got something to say?’ said Rick, slipping from the stool.

The man grunted.

Rick persuaded the kid to get into his raincoat and put on his hat with the peak and ear-flaps, securing it under his chin. He slung the bag full of nappies, juice, numerous snacks, wipes and toys over his shoulder, and they went out into the night and teeming rain.

It has been raining for two days. News reports state that there have been floods all over the country.

The party was about ten minutes’ walk away. Rick was wet through by the time they arrived.

His successful friend Martin with the merry staff in the big lighted shop full of clothes Rick could never afford embraced him at the door. Martin has no children himself, and this was the first time he had seen Daniel. The two men have been friends since Martin designed and made the costumes for a play Rick was in, on the Edinburgh fringe, twenty years ago. Rick congratulated him on receiving his MBE and asked to see the medal. However, there were people at Martin’s shoulder and he had no time to talk. The warm wine in small white cups soon cheered Rick up.

Rick hasn’t had an acting job for four months but has been promised something reasonable in the New Year. He has been going out with Daniel a lot. At least once a week, if Rick can afford it, he and Daniel take the Central Line into the West End and walk around the shops, stopping at cafés and galleries. Rick shows him the theatres he has worked in; if he knows the actors, he takes him backstage.

Rick’s three other children, who live with his first wife, are in their late teens. Rick would love always to have a child in the house. When he can, he takes Daniel to parties. Daniel has big eyes; his hair has never been cut and he is often mistaken for a girl. People will talk to Rick if Daniel is with him, but he doesn’t have to make extended conversation.

As the party becomes more crowded and raucous, while drinking steadily, Rick chats to the people he’s introduced to. Daniel is given juice which the girls in the shop hold out for him, crouching down with their knees together.

Quite soon, Daniel says, ‘Home, Dadda.’

Rick gets him dressed and manoeuvres the pushchair into the street. They begin to walk through the rain. There are few other people about, and no buses; it is far to the tube. A taxi with its light on passes them. When it has almost gone, Rick jumps into the road and yells after it, waving his arms, until it stops.

As they cross London, Rick points at the Christmas lights through the rain-streaked windows. Rick recalls similar taxi rides with his own father and remembers a photograph of himself, aged six or seven, wearing a silver bow-tie and fez-like Christmas hat, sitting on his father’s knee at a party.

At home, Rick smokes a joint and drinks two more glasses of wine. It is getting late, around ten-thirty, and though Daniel usually goes to bed at eight, Rick doesn’t mind if he is up, he likes the company. They eat sardines on toast with tomato ketchup; then they play loud music and Rick demonstrates the hokey-cokey to his son.

Anna has gone to her life-drawing class but is usually home by now. Why has she not returned? She is never late. Rick would have gone out to look for her, but he cannot leave Daniel and it is too wet to take him out again.

When Rick lies on the floor with his knees up, the kid steps onto him, using his father’s knees for support. Daniel begins to jump up and down on Rick’s stomach, as if it were a trampoline. Rick usually enjoys this as much as Daniel. But today it makes him feel queasy.

Yesterday was Rick’s forty-fifth birthday, a bad age to be, he reckons, putting him on the wrong side of life. It is not only that he feels more tired and melancholic than normal, he also wonders whether he can recover from these bouts as easily as he used to. In the past year two of his friends have had heart attacks; two others have had strokes.

He guesses that he passed out on the floor. He is certainly aware of Anna shaking him. Or does she kick him in the ribs, too? He may be drunk, but he means to inform her immediately that he is not an alcoholic.