Live to Tell (12 page)

On Tuesday I went there again and this time he was sitting on his usual stool, with his head down and shoulders hunched, waiting for me. At the sight my heart leapt. I ached to touch him but instead, walked to my side of the bar. He looked up.

“I wanted to see you, to apologise,” he began quietly.

Ignoring the customers, I gazed at him, but Jim came into the bar and spotted us.

“Right, you two. I’ve had enough of this. This isn’t a dating agency, I’m running. It’s a pub. Drink up and on your way!”

“Fuck off, prat. She doesn’t need your job,” Danny shouted back.

“I do,” I cried, horrified. “Jim, please, I’m so sorry. Please go, Danny. I can’t afford to lose this job.” Things were bad enough, without my losing the only source of income I had as well.

Danny stood up, all six foot of him, and I thought he was going to hit Jim who looked furious.

“Right, out,” he said. “Or I’m calling the police.”

Danny ignored him totally and leaned over to me. “I need to talk to you, please,” he said, “even if we just meet for coffee. Please? Will you meet me tomorrow?”

“OK, you’re not listening to me. Sharon, get the police,” Jim shouted to another bar maid.”

“Alright,” I said, wishing Danny would just leave, and trying to calm down the situation, “at McDonald’s then.”

“Eight o’clock?”

I nodded and he left. Sharon winked at me and as soon as Jim left the room, came over.

“He’s a bit of all right, isn’t he? Your fella.”

I nodded balefully.

“You alright? You can go to the ladies if you want. I’ll cover for you. Wash your face, like. Then you’ll feel better.”

I agreed gratefully, wondering if it was obvious, how much I cared about the man who had just left the premises.

McDonald’s Burger Bar was on the Edgware Road, near to the pub where I worked, and it was crowded with teenagers, young families, and couples. I searched the faces, looking for Danny’s but while I stood there, he came in behind me, and kissed me on the side of my head.

“If you can squeeze in there,” he said, indicating a couple of vacant stools at a circular bar, “I’ll get some coffee.”

With all the things that had happened, I felt very anxious. I seemed to be a liability all round, and decided that Danny arranged our meeting to bring a civilised end to our brief romance. He came back, pushing through the crowd, with coffee, cream, and sachets of sugar. Sinking onto the stool beside me, he placed his haul in front of us and poured some sugar into his mug. Automatically, I did the same, although I didn’t usually take it.

“Don’t look so unhappy,” he said. “How’s the lovely Jimbo? Got over his grump?”

I shrugged. The last thing I wanted to talk about was Jim. “He’ll survive,” I said. “He just gets a bit twitchy, that’s all.”

He looked hard at me. “And what about you? Have you forgiven me for acting like a complete arsehole the other night?”

I caught my breath and swallowed, not able to return his gaze. “There’s nothing to forgive. I know how awful it all must have seemed, like the original kitchen sink drama.” I sighed. “This is the world I’m living in right now, a bit of a nightmare all round. I’m rather stuck with it though because until he’s better, there’s not much I can do to change it.”

A small girl in a pink coat wandered over and stared up into my face. I smiled back and waved at her, but she looked alarmed at my interest and ran to her family at the next table where she started poking her little brother in the chest, until her father intervened.

“Will you tell me about it? Please,” Danny said, looking into my eyes. He took hold of my hand and ignoring everyone around us, kissed my fingers.

I began to panic, not sure where to start, or what to leave out. “He, that’s Aidan I mean, my housemate, he’s had to have a broken leg re-set. That’s why he’s on crutches. He isn’t usually up late but he had a whiskey and fell asleep on the sofa.”

It all sounded too simple, even for me. “With all the medication he takes,” I added.

Danny looked puzzled. “But what about his head? How did he get those injuries? Was he in a road accident? What happened?”

I sighed again. It was no good. I’d have to tell Danny the whole truth and let him decide for himself whether he should call it quits and just walk away from it all, from me and my problems. “Well, good luck with everything,” I could imagine him saying, as he bolted for the door. I shuffled closer to him and, hoping that no one else would hear me, placed my mouth next to his ear, resisting the urge to kiss him one last time.

“It was eight months ago,” I started. “Late one night, he was badly beaten up. That’s how his leg was broken.” I paused. “And, that’s when he got the other injuries, too.”

Danny let go of my hand, turned, and stared at me. “What here in London? Good, God. Was it some random attack or someone he knew?”

“Sort of. Look, you mustn’t say anything, please, and I know this probably sounds ridiculous, but it was some men from the IRA,” I whispered. “He didn’t really know them.”

“What? The bastards,” he shouted, and the child’s father looked around and glared at us. “The bastards,” Danny repeated more quietly. “You know I’ve heard about this sort of thing happening but I’ve never come across it. And OK, I know he’s your housemate, but why are you so involved with him? Why can’t his family look after him? Was he your boyfriend when it happened? Or is that what he’s become… since? Is that why you kept us separated?”

“Hush, no. Aidan’s gay,” I whispered. And they carved something into his head.”

“The…”

I placed my fingers across his mouth, not wanting him to be thrown out of yet another establishment.

“Shush, and one of the reasons I’m so involved with him is because he didn’t know the men, and it was my fault he was attacked. It’s a long story, but without me behaving in an utterly stupid way, he’d have never come to their notice. You see, that’s why I’m responsible.”

Gently he put his arm around me and gave me a hug. “It’s not your fault and you are not responsible,” he said, “no matter what you did.” He hesitated and with his other hand, stirred more sugar into his coffee. “And where does that leave us? Can I still see you, take you out? Do you think he’d mind?”

“Of course he wouldn’t mind. Apart from which, it’s not his place to mind or not mind. We’re not joined at the hip!”

I really wanted to kiss him now and leaned into his shoulder. As if he read my thoughts, he kissed me, and I felt that he’d given me the world. Oh, Danny, I thought. Thank God!

We decided we would carry on dating as often as we could and whenever we were free together, given the commitments we both seemed to have.

Early one Monday morning four weeks later, Aidan received a letter inviting him to attend a physiotherapy centre run jointly by the NHS and the Salvation Army.

“There you are,” he said, waving the letter at me over the kitchen table. “It’s not just the Catholic church that runs convalescence homes. I’ve got much better vibes about this place. It’s run by professionals, not bible thumpers. I think I’ll go. They’ve had a vacancy come up at short notice. What do you think?”

“That’s great. I think it would be really good for you. You’ll probably get lots of treatment and meet some new people. Especially now you seem a lot stronger. But you must take really warm clothes with you. We always have the heating turned up so much here. You are bound to feel cold and it might be quite draughty.”

“Yes, Mum,” he replied. “That’s settled then. I’ll give them a ring.”

Danny was away on one of his exercises, and I didn’t expect him back with me until Wednesday night. Over the last month, our late night kisses, stolen while parked outside my apartment block, albeit in the darkness of his car, had become more and more passionate. Not having anywhere that we could go to be alone together meant that we had to cope with our emotions in this semi-public way. I didn’t want any of the other residents complaining about me to the landlord, especially as we were sub-letters, and felt increasingly worried that something was going to explode. I had thought about asking Aidan if he would mind if Danny stayed over but hadn’t quite got up the courage to do it yet. It somehow seemed so antiseptic and embarrassing.

On Wednesday, skipping my last class of the day, I raced home from college early and tried to clean the apartment. I also wanted to make a table decoration, one of the things we art students found quite easy. With greenery, surreptitiously stolen from the bushes that I passed on my way home, I created a candle arrangement. I placed it in the middle of the kitchen table.

In preparation for our evening together, I had spent some of my meagre earnings on cheap, but pretty lingerie, and now I put it on. The real problem was trying to decide what else to wear. Desperately I rummaged through my wardrobe before deciding on a very plain, dark grey button through dress. It had a wide belt with a cream collar and, thankfully, did not need a press.

By now I had run out of the energy to do much cooking and also I wasn’t very good at it. At school I was always being told off in the Domestic Science classes and since I’d been looking after Aidan, between college and work, I didn’t have time to learn anything fancy. Our meals were either very basic concoctions or TV dinners. So for Danny and me, as a start, I opened two tins of tomato soup and buttered some bread. After that, we can have cheese and crackers, I thought. I’m sure he will have had lunch. The way he talks, they never stop eating. I applied some fresh make-up, sprayed on some perfume, a present from Aunt Jess, lit the candles and waited for him.

The doorbell rang at five past eight and I opened the door wide. He was as punctual as the traffic in North West London allowed.

“Come in,” I said. “I’ve cooked supper for us. It’s only you and me. Aidan’s away for a few days at a medical centre, and I thought it might be nice to have an evening in for once.”

A hesitant smile spread across his face. “Really? On our own?”

I nodded.

We sat down opposite each other at the table and I smiled at him.

“Won’t be a second,” I said.

I fetched the heated soup and turned off the light. I thought that, being the beginning of winter, it was cosy shutting out the world and talking to one another by candle light. I looked across the candles at him and thought how wonderful he was.

But, every time I looked up he was watching me.

“Don’t you like the soup? You don’t seem to be enjoying it. It is Heinz you know. I thought you liked tomato.”

“Yeah, it’s fine, really.”

When he eventually finished it, I picked up my bowl and moved around the table to get his. Standing next to him, I leaned over for the dish but he caught hold of me, around the waist.

“Are you still hungry,” he asked. I hesitated. “It’s just that it feels like I’ve waited most of my life for you, ever since I first saw you in Italy. I can’t wait any longer.”

Pulling me onto his knee, he pressed me to him. With a crash I dropped the bowls onto the floor. One of them bounced, but from the noise, I guessed the other one had broken. I didn’t care. I was
always
having to listen to the girls in my course talking about men. The consensus seemed to be that young, healthy, fit men were full of testosterone, and that if it wasn’t channelled correctly, there was a risk that they would stray. Danny was the fittest, healthiest, most testosterone-filled person that I, and probably they, would ever meet, and it was a source of continuing concern to me that he would get tired of waiting. The glamorous young woman at the night club door also featured large in my worries.

Pushing back his chair, he lifted me up and carried me along the passage kissing me as we went.

“Which one is your room,” he asked, and I pointed to it.

He pushed open the door and kissed me again before setting me down on the side of the bed. Then I remembered the candles. Oh, no, I couldn’t risk a fire.

“Stop. We must blow out the candles. It’s dangerous to leave them burning. It might make the apartment’s insurance…”

Ignoring my warning completely, he kissed me again. “There’s something I want to ask you.”

“Oh, if it’s about the apartment? Well don’t worry Aidan is a… .”