Easy Meat (35 page)

Abruptly the drilling stopped and all he could sense in the room were loss and regret, the broken reed of her breath. In less than two weeks she had aged ten years.

“Margaret …”

When she spoke it was not to him, yet she knew he was there, and whenever he moved, no matter how little, she paused, her fingers plucking at the thread that had come unraveled from the beading on the chair’s arm.

“It was after the boys had left home. Stella, she was still here, but …” Margaret sighed the first of many sighs “… she had this boyfriend and she would find reasons for not coming home. Simply excuses, I knew that’s what they were; anything so that she could spend the night with him.” Another sigh, pluck and sigh. “She had discovered sex, my daughter, as we all do, and it was all that she could think of. They used to come round here in the afternoons, when Stella should have been in school, upstairs with the door locked and then running off, giggling and smirking the minute I came home. No shame. Even with a father like Bill, my Stella knows nothing of shame.” She looked up. “I wonder, Charlie, if that’s such a bad thing?”

A pause before she went on. “I would go sometimes then and stand in her room. Instead of throwing open the window, I would lock it closed. Keep in the smell. Do you know how it makes you feel, Charlie? When the children you nursed and carried are old enough to enjoy sex?”

Curtly, Resnick shook his head.

“No, no, of course, Charlie. You wouldn’t. Perhaps you never will. So I’ll tell you—it makes you feel old, used up. But it does something else, too. It makes part of you, that part of you, come alive again. Pictures of them wrapped there—am I shocking you, Charlie?—those young girl’s legs that had once held tight around this pathetic body of mine, they had been wrapped around him, that feckless youth, there on that bed.”

Resnick looked at the leaves, still trapped mid-fall, the long, tapering slice of light.

“I had a body again, Charlie, my daughter had given me back my body and what was I going to do with it now? Bill and I, we had not had relations for years. Scarcely since after Stella had been born. And during all that time I had lain down next to him every night and never once had I minded. But now …” Her fingers moved more nervously at the thread. “… I did all the things a woman, even a woman like me, old and fat, is supposed to do. I went to the hair salon, the beauty parlor, I was—what’s the word?—made over. I bought new clothes, satin nightdresses and silk underthings in which I felt and looked a fraud. I begged him, Charlie, pleaded with him. I had no dignity. I needed him—needed someone—to make love to me.” The thread that she was twisting snapped in her hand. “I could see in his eyes the thought of touching me made him feel sick. He told me he was moving across the corridor, into one of the empty rooms. He was having difficulty getting to sleep and he thought if he had his own bed it might be better. For both of us.”

She shriveled a little more inside her chair.

“It was then that he started going out. Not so frequently at first, and then more and more. Swimming every night. Or so I thought. Twice, sometimes at weekends. He just needs, I thought, to get out of the house, get away from me, what I’ve been putting him through.” She glanced up at Resnick hastily. “I was feeling guilty, you see, thought I’d been unfair. Making demands.” She found a new end of thread and worried it with finger and thumb. “After a while he started going out late at night too, walking the dogs. I did think, it did cross my mind once or twice that he might be having an affair with one of those fine-minded women from the church. And then when you came here asking questions about that woman who called, I thought, yes, yes, it’s all right, that’s it.”

She looked at him, dull eyes sharpened by deceit.

“But that wasn’t it, was it? That wasn’t it.”

He thought that she would cry then, but if there were tears there they were still to come. The drilling had started up again outside. She had said what she had to say and now it was done. Resnick sat across from her, trapped in that closed room, willing himself to be patient, trying not to notice that the undersides of his thighs were growing numb.

POLICE MURDER: GAY SEX LINK? the headline suggested.
Startling revelations revealed exclusively to our reporter today
… There were photographs of Bill Aston in uniform; one, poorly taken, of Margaret’s startled face as she turned outwards from her front door. A family portrait, paid for or purloined, of Declan Farrell with his wife and child.
Detective Superintendent Jack Skelton would today neither confirm nor deny that one of the detective constables under his command
…

Hannah phoned Resnick at home, but of course he was not there; she left a message for him at the police station that he should ring her that evening if he found time. She would be home.

“What amazes me,” Divine said, troughing through pie and double chips in the canteen, “is any of that lot being queer at all. Thought they were all so busy fostering the old myth, our black brothers, that they’re all hung like a fuckin’ horse, the last thing any of ’em’d do’d be own up to having a limp wrist.”

“Reckon that’s what it is, then, Mark?” said one of the constables, winding him up. “Big dicks. All a myth?”

“How the bloody hell’d I know?”

“Play your cards right,” the PC said, “this could be your big chance to find out.”

Sometimes, in Diane’s flat, Sheena would sit with the baby, Melvin, for so long she would forget everything else. Times they’d been smoking dope especially. The others, not Sheena, they were popping all those pills too. Sheena was happy to stick to the spliffs Dee-Dee had taught her to roll—one of the skills Dee-Dee’s Pentecostal father had never taught her. The stuff, though, it came from Diane’s brother—Jamaican. That was what he said and who was she to deny it? Uum, wherever it came from, it was good. Sheena leaning against the sofa, sitting back alongside it, head against the wall. Little Melvin with his thumb stuck in the corner of his mouth, slobbering just a little, eyes closed and Sheena rocking him. That music that was playing, a tape Irena had boosted from one of the stores. Moldy? No, Moby, that was it. Moby with his funny little pixie face, black eyes staring out of the blue. Orange robes on him like he was one of those Krishnas or something. And water: that’s what all that blue was around him. Water. Moby in the middle of it, slowly drowning. Sheena wondered what it would be like, lying there. Drowning. Slowly drowning. A girl’s voice singing:
When it’s cold I’d like to die.

“Come on! Get a fuckin’ move on!” Sheena could hear Janie’s voice, shouting from across the room. Janie in black leggings, DMs, black leather jacket, a bottle of Absolut in her hand.

And Lesley, close alongside her, boots and a black miniskirt that stopped halfway up her thighs. Irena squatting in a corner, searching for something in the black-and-purple rucksack she always carried, taking everything out and spreading it over the carpet, then stuffing it back. Tracey was still pulling up her jeans as she came out of the loo.

“Diane!” Janie shouted over the sound of the ghetto blaster on the table, the music faster now, more like dance music,
every time you touch me it feels like I need more.
Diane listening, lost in it, starting to shimmy, a dip of her hips and she’s shaking it, the other girls starting to laugh and Diane playing up to them, pretending.

“Diane, will you stop that shit? I ain’t waitin’ too much fuckin’ longer!”

Diane just wafting her arms now and smiling, her eyes a little out of it; Dee-Dee finally catching hold of her and pressing her wrists down to her sides, telling her to get it together. Diane nodding, right, girl, right.

Dee-Dee then, going over to where Sheena was sitting, her mouth moving lazily with the music, the girl’s reedy voice singing, the joint dead between her fingers. Melvin dribbling onto her skimpy T-shirt, the shadow of her childish breast.

“Sheena, you wake up now. You look after him, right? Melvin. You keep your eye on him. Feed him when he wakes. Girl, you hear what I saying?”

“Yeh, yeh, no problem. Sure.”

“Better not be, that’s all.”

Dee-Dee straightening, then pulling down the hem of her denim skirt. With Diane out of it as much as she was, it was just as well she was there to look out for little Melvin, make sure he was going to be okay.

“She all right?” Janie asked, looking over towards Sheena. The other girls were bundling through the door.

“Her?” Dee-Dee said. “Just asked her, she fine.”

Janie laughed. “Looks like warmed-over shit to me.” And she slammed the door closed and followed the others down the landing towards the lift that would not be working again.

Norma had picked up a paper on her way home, only glanced at the front page while she fumbled for her keys at the front door.

“Peter? Hey up, Peter, love! Clap your eyes on this.”

But Peter wasn’t there, not upstairs or down. His mug and the plate he liked to use for his toast, the one with three concentric yellow rings and cracks, faint, across the center, had been rinsed under the tap and left to dry.

“Peter?”

He had brought nothing with him so it was no use checking to see if his things had gone.

Norma set the kettle to boil, changed her mind, and took one of Shane’s cans of Tennents from the fridge. Warm, she opened the back door to the whining of the dog. There were turds in neat, whitening piles near the gate. Norma sat down with her newspaper, lager, and a cigarette and began to read.

Supper-time, Peter would be back, she was sure.

What Gerry Hovenden liked to do, work the weights at least an hour each afternoon. Oh, he’d make a change once in a while: rowing machine, one of the bikes; he’d even tried the aerobics once, but felt a fool, jumping around with all those women with their headbands and little water bottles, two-tone leotards disappearing up the cracks in their arse. No, it was the weights, then the steam room, after that a shower, cold and then hot, hot and then cold. Toweling down.

Some days, like this afternoon, he’d persuade Shane to come along. Cost sod all as long as you were on the dole. Shane in a torn T-shirt and a borrowed pair of shorts, sweat pouring off him, stinging his eyes. Shane, he always overdid it, didn’t know when to stop.

“Here,” Gerry said, still moving, press and lift. “You hear about that bloke as got raped on Lenton Rec?”

“Looking for it, wasn’t he?” Shane said.

“Prob’ly.”

“Well, then, cunt got what he deserved.”

“Yeh,” Hovenden agreed. “Most likely.” Watching the way the sweat ran down across the flat of Shane’s belly, making the skin glisten, the downward curve of tiny hairs shine gold.

The assistant manager of the audio department assured his would-be customer there was no problem at all: once in a while the machines backed up and it wasn’t possible to get immediate clearance from the card company, and she could see why, with an amount that size, close to six hundred pounds for a state-of-the-art, wide screen television receiver, twenty-six-inch screen, well, company policy dictated and so on and so on.

Sally Purdy stood there in an old air force jacket that smelled of port wine and a dress that swept the floor when she walked, hiding old tennis shoes on her feet. Sally, certain that if she could just get a decent TV into the place she was squatting, that’d make all the difference, fuck all this time spent sitting out with a lot of old alkies on benches, she was going to get to grips with herself start a new life.

Only without a poll-tax form or something similar to verify her address, hire purchase was out of the question; she knew enough people out there on the street who would get her a set cheap, but it wasn’t going to be one like this.

Sally saw herself sitting round all summer, watching Wimbledon and Ascot in all their glory, those hats they got themselves up in at Ascot, Ladies’ Day, something to dream about. And musicals, she loved musicals, the old ones, not rubbish like
Grease
, but really old:
How to Marry a Millionaire, It’s Always Fair Weather.
She was sure she’d got the signature right, times she’d practiced it, over and bloody over.

“Yes, madam.” Bloke returning now, suit and striped shirt, staff tie, all smiles. “Please accept my apologies for the delay.” Smarmy bastard, Sally thought. “Now, if I can explain how to get to our Despatch department in the basement, by the time you’ve collected your car and driven round there, your set will be packed up and ready for you to take.”

Car? What fucking car was this? “I thought,” Sally said, “you’d deliver it, right?”

“Certainly, madam. That would be Tuesday or Thursday of next week.”

No way, Jose! “How about this,” she said, “a cab. I’ll get a cab, take it home in that. Easy, right?”

“Absolutely.” Smiling his unctuous smile, he gave her the directions to Despatch.

The extra time it took Sally Purdy to walk to the nearest rank, meant that by the time she drove up to the door marked Despatch the two uniformed officers were waiting for her inside.

“Sorry, mate,” one of them said to the cab driver, while his oppo was hauling a reluctant Sally to the marked car, “want to collect on your fare, you’ll need to nip over to the station, fill in a voucher.”