The Lesser Bohemians (9 page)

By the crushed tin bin. At the 5 on his door. He must be there. His light is, so press the bell. Press again. All afloat with the. Clang keys. Then him just filling my eye. Barefoot. Shiver. Bathrobe slack tied. Hello there, he says. Hello, I light, tip-toeing up to How come you're back? he asks. I'm supposed to be, it's the sixth. Oh right, he crosses the threshold to kiss my cheek making everything in me go but Look   it's lovely to see you but I'm sorry      I can't ask you in. Oh God, I Sorry, are you working? I'm not, he says, going quiet-eyed. Oh. I stare at the step and the phlegm there, spat. That's disgusting, I say. Well I didn't do it      listen      if I'd known you were back tonight     You'd have done it yesterday? Sorry, bad timing that's all but I'm really glad to see you. So tell her to go. I can't do that, he says Not now. Fuck you, I say backing down the path. Wait – him quick checking up behind – How about tomorrow? We could meet in the morning and have the day. I turn sharp though and hurt his gate by the looks of rust crumbs fly. Come back, he loud whispers Wait, hang on! But when I don't the front door shuts and from across his street I look up. There. His room. The lowliest bulb. Skewed curtain light streaming and what beyond? Then even it goes out. You bollocks! I scream I feel like screaming but mostly that I'm such a child as the rain comes roaring down.

So happy home to London. Rain-haired unpack my case. Hailstone-eyed smoke cigarettes, despising these last thirty nights spent liking the thought of his body on mine. There for you now with your worthless wiles. Singed myself already
when my landlady shouts Phone, and you can tell your friend it's too late to call, I'm half an hour in bed.

Hello? You're Falkland Road, aren't you? he says Which number? You can't come here. Come on, just tell me? No way. Please? he says. So I tell him it. For what? For trouble      again.

Stooped against the drizzle he comes then. Neat though. Clean. Hair wet from showering, now from rain. Stands on my step with my front door barely opened What? is all I say. He tosses his fag Can I come in? No. I won't stay long. No. But it's raining. I'm not allowed men in. I'll be so quiet, he says Please let me in – raising a look that runs over the wound – I'm sorry about before. I. So. Relent. Alright.
You fool.

Blink noughts from her oven. Almost all the rest dark. Can I smoke? No. There's an ashtray there. So? And put the kettle on, for something. Come here, he says. I ignore that. Will you look at me? I don't but Did you get my postcard? I did, yes, thanks. And when I meet his eyes now he knows. But those weeks of waiting, for them I hold out. Let him flex his long fingers until they Alright      I did know you were back tonight. And still did it? Yes. On purpose? No    for no good reason      I just      I'm sorry    it was a shitty thing to do. The kettle rises to the boil. Will you forgive me? I won't. I'm so sorry. I see he means it but You better go before someone comes. Instead he reaches for me but I won't let him touch. Just turn my face and, when he kisses it, relive Lights Out on his street so that's where all the feeling goes. And when he kisses to my lips I stay close-mouthed. Cross. Immune to his every practised pass, even to the most of myself that wants. Stop doing that, he maddens at last Let me kiss you properly. You've been having it off with someone else! There. At last it crosses his face, a sign he is    ashamed. I know, he says – stepping back – I know I have and that was poor and
I'm a piece of shit, which is historically pretty accurate, but    I really am sorry and     you're quite right    I should go so      I'll go. And I give him an eye. Taste of smile. His turn to calculate me now Well, bye bye. But as he turns I think fuck all those other things and close my hand around his wet wrist. And even that, just that touch swings both bodies to.

He kisses me in the best way then. Back banged to the sideboard and Watch the kettle! God and a month is too long to wait for being kissed this way. From here, so quick us, to badly behaved. My pyjamas unbuttoned. His long coat the same. Eye on the door. Ear to the ceiling. If we're quiet, can we manage a quick one here? he says. Is she not waiting for you? No, once you left I told her I had an early start. Jesus Christ! Well      you asked. Have you no shame? That cup over-runneth believe me, he laughs But I've been thinking about you for a month.

Slow suffering eek then up the creep-proof stairs. Pointing my landlady's room out with Shush. Slapping at him for his hand up my leg and wanting it to all the more.

Fuck your room's tiny. And the walls are thin. Wet coat shed and quick caught me. Osip Mandelstam digging in the back of my knees as the kissing gets me pinned. But laugh we in the struggle to strip and not bump. Stilling into statues at the landlady's coughs. I trample too on his new-pressed shirt, just a little just.
Just for her.
Worse though the mattress when he inches me there. Shush, I shush. Shush yourself. I am so for him now and yet What traces has she left? What did they do? How did they kiss? Did she do this to you? He considers – I see it – telling a lie. Did she? Yes, he says.
What do I say to that?
Like a stone on his back. Like a stone on mine. Have you protection with you? Of course I have. And, for all my want, I could kick myself for so easily giving in to his charms. When he's ready though, I
lift to him. Kiss him as he's about to, then it's just us two again, finding how we creaklessly can and we mostly do – mostly he finds – while I hold to him, shaking in the silence. He makes me and waits. Lets himself once I have    and and    The weight of him on me. Christ. But all things between us made new.

In the after, I listen to the rain. His breath on my shoulder That was great. And this is how I'd like the night to be – hours of lying here with him – but Don't sleep, I say You have to leave. Don't send me back out there. Consider it punishment for your sins! But I'll get up so early. No. An hour? No. Half? No. Five minutes more? Those five he gets but after them Up. You're a hard woman, he says getting off, all reluctant. And so I am, watching him dress now in the dark. We kiss a good while though before my door shuts and I listen to no sound on the stairs. Practice makes perfect. But I go to my window. Heavy rain beyond and him coming out into that. Tugging up his collar. Lighting a cigarette.
Look up look up.
He looks up. I show a hand. In turn, he bows then goes out to the footpath. I follow him to the end of the street where he disappears round Our Lady Help of Christians. Then slip back into the smell of him on my sheet. Search out the last of his taste on my lips. Imagine that I'd kept him here. Then think of him, in the rain, out there. That could – if I wanted – make my heart a little break. But I don't want it to, so it does not.

Drift steam in the bath. Early morning. Thread his name through the bubbles and pop. Counting last night that's six times I've had sex. If he was still here he'd make it seven. If he was still here    if he was still here    what would we not do?

Before leaving, I wrap up the condom – if she found it she'd kill me stone dead. But at the bin on Leighton Road      that
little bit of him with Andrex wrapped round. Put it back in my pocket. Does he wish he had something of me? Even his sheets smell of someone else. No.
Remember us there in the dark.
I hang onto it so, until the bin at the top of Anglers Lane.

She stands smoking by the gate. Happy New Year! Her eyes are red. What's wrong? He stayed over. He was collecting his stuff    and you know how it is. I ended up begging him not to do it but she's going to pay off his fees. And inside her distress, I see a little of mine. They won't be ‘married married' though, couldn't you still go out? How could I trust him? He kept it secret all this time    I mean    it's happening Friday afternoon. Sorry, I say – pushing my own glee down – Why don't we go out that night? You're on, she says And fuck him anyway.

Congregate in the Church first for Acting. Welcome back. I hope you had a good break. This term we'll work on the Private Moment exercise. So choose something you really only do in private, something you'd never do around anyone else and No – before you ask – no kind of masturbation. There's enough of that going on around here as it is.

Go.

Plays read. Cigarettes on the step. Ballet gear re-squeezed into cursing Quality Street. A laugh at lunch with some of the lads. Meet our new director. Sleep heavy every night and every day wait for his call. It comes How about Saturday, I'll get us tickets for something? Yes! Great, meet for a drink first at the Prince Albert at six? Poor her though. Her week drags. Thinner and thinner. Him avoiding her now. By Friday afternoon, I'm pleading Please eat something or. That fucker's already been married an hour, time for a drink, she says.

We are installed. We are impinted. Somewhere in the West End. She has a brief whimper, then the real drinking begins.

Come on, she hisses, hours later – hammered completely and fuckeringly now. Staggering brothelly-haired outside. In the mucklight, the starlight, we are on the town. Fuck him the fucker I knew he fucked around     have you? No. Why NO? Just no. Ah     you probably swill. Nah! I laugh. But he's good, your one? she offers the bottle. It hits my throat, rascally sweet – we are in the tooth-rinse stage, fine, but gone to the dogs. Do you know what he know what he did? I cough. What did he? Shagged some other one the night I came back. In the room. In the very bed. Bastard! she Wankers all. Cat-headed and slurry-mouthed mewlers on the tiles. Eating a kebab she scorns Dick on a stick. Disgusting. But we have it, slocked on a bench, eyed by some fella who's surely pissed his pants. There's no one suffered like the poor of east London, he says Do you hear me? Do you know that? Sure I'm not English. She is. What? Come on girls    give us some change. Fuck right off, she says. Jesus chilli sauce my friend. Queens and cockroaches. But you got your oats? Certainly cerealisation, I agree. Men are bastards, she shouts scattering the paper around. On we go – langered for heaven, or under it tonight. And apparently, girls are Here Here Here. Men making kissy suck sounds as we gawk in the door. Are you lookin' at me? – when they gawk back – Tell your sister get her knickers off you scum bumming pig. Me sliding on the Soho muck of shed human skin, jizz, piss chips spilt lager rain onion rings. Out to the cobbles, licking sauce from her hair. What for money though? What for geld? Nun on me Not twenty of the pence. Pounds, she finds. We've started so we'll finish. Bitch of a baby still this night. Come on. What are you staring for? I never saw men hold
hands. They'll think you hate them and you'll be a homophobic then. I don't. I'm not. But she's fallen off the path. Hobblety when I haul her up. One blue high heel snapped and now I am not looking. Where to? Leicester Square. I've never seen it after dark
so many nevers.
No Toto, woof, you're not in Ireland any more. On Shaftesbury Avenue laughing 'Tis Pity she's a Fiona Pshaw! You wish you were! And swaying around lamp posts. Singing in the rain. Heave through the heave. There. Arse on the bit of stone. Flicking chips at the tourists gets her laughing a lot, while drink makes me tired and foolish work. What do you think he's doing now with Frankenbitch? Taking her roughly from behind. Cake mashed in her dress. Talking Czechoslovakian. Let's toast him. Them both! To his clap and her burning pants. A pox on his penis. Minimus! Egg! Dwarf! Can I have a chip? some man asks. No, I say. She says Yes. Are you Irish? Oh for fuck's fucking sake! but make that chat Irish people must. Do. Where are you from? Do you know my cousin? Yah. Nah. Yah. Nah. Sure I'll buy ye a drink. No, I say. She says Yes. So up on our trotters we go off again. Slithering through Chinatown. Glitter ducks and squids and all. There were I with. Lonely for him now. Up yet another street. In there. A bar. A new kind of glamorous for – under wigs I long to pull – are men in white dresses with blue satin sashes, and him saying I'll get the cockstails in. What's his name? Who cares? What's the harm? It's only pink drinks from a Connemara man. Get that down you, he says. I drink and try not to burp. He talks. Strokes my hair but the room starts to twirl as he's finger flicking Another round, more. She sliding down the pvc telling fuck all men. So this is how we drink, dribble kiss and     go to bed? No. No. Not with him even if I let a kiss with the tongue. Whoo! she says Look at you, and I
am      I am     Got to go to the loo. But the toilet's a maze, now I'm drink undone. Far drunker than I know how to be. Wee. Wash my hands. Stare. Is she really me? The sad of her. Her sad eyes ponder. Ow! Smack on the cheek. Ow! Sorry, I didn't expect someone there      that'll bruise sorry. Don't worry   I'm perfect, and stagger out into crashed light. There's him, but where's her? Ah her, slumped. Hey! I say. He doesn't look. Reaches over for my hand. His other up her top and     Hey! Stop that! Let go! Hey! Wake up! She, head swings. Sees. Hits him a thump. Fucking slut. I pull her
Please be able to get up.
Sit down, he orders I bought you drinks. Fuck you, you fucking pervert! then slipping between tables of men going Who are you calling pervert, love? No, not you not you HIM!

Wake up, wake up I think I'm going to puke. I call Stop, on the bus, and she stumbles off. Does. Me holding her hair back, trying not to myself. Oh Jack's Sore Asshole     how'd we get to the Heath? I don't know     I don't know where we are, and as the two-ten disappears What are we going to do? She points to the park Kentish Town's the other side. No way! Are you mad? There could be rapists or anything. More like men having it off. And, in all our drinks, that's enough. So down we go. In. Sobering under tree creak. Terrified to holding hands. At least the wind doesn't whip as we trudge, smoking, regretting our livers' work. Do you know where we are? No      I've not been here in the dark. Some rustle sets us running out to the open and up. Look! Look at that. Night London. God it's ugly, she says. But no no no I take its side. Somewhere below he is sleeping
I hope on his own.
And her beloved lies married down there while we, above, wait, enumerating our grass stains and watching til dawn lifts through the morning sky. Froze to the bones and organs tired, making our ways down. Well, that's all folks! See
you Monday, she says at the gate and knight us it Skank Night for immemorial ahead.