The Men and the Girls (32 page)

‘I was having fun—'

‘Sure you were!'

‘I'm moving in with Mark,' Kate said.

‘You never!'

‘He's got a lovely flat, we get on really well—'

Benjie dropped her arm. ‘You want to be careful, you want to be really sure.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, you lived with James, didn't you, and it didn't work out and you really knew James, steady sort of bloke, but you've only known this Mark guy a few months. I think,' Benjie said, taking her hand this time, ‘I think you gotta hang free for a bit. That's what I think.'

The room in Swan Street felt as if it knew she was leaving it, so it had withdrawn itself, ready for Mr Akwa. In any case, since Joss's departure it hadn't felt the same, it had felt full of disappointment rather than promise and optimism. The last few days, while Kate had imagined, with a nervous excitement, living with Mark Hathaway, she had felt a certain indifference to Swan Street, almost a callousness. This evening, the room simply felt fragile, as if it represented no security at all beyond the purely physical shelter to be found in any old hotel room.

Kate sat down and took her shoes off. After a while, she got up again and turned the light off, and sat there in the not-quite darkness of the light coming in from the street outside. Benjie was of course right. You had to see elements of your life – your job, your relationships, your home – quite straight, for what they really were, not for what you wished them to be. She was used to Pasta Please and she liked Benjie, and she had liked Christine, but that was all. She had adored Swan Street, but it had died on her. As for Mark – Kate closed her eyes. Was she trying to make Mark into something that he wasn't? A Joss-Mark, even a James-Mark? Was she, if she was scrupulously, beautifully, honest, going to live with Mark because he had decided she would and she was absolutely sick of making decisions?

That was what freedom came down to, in the end, wasn't it? Making decisions, one after the other, huge ones and trivial ones, day in, day out; what to eat and wear and do, who to love, where to go and where to live, whether to emigrate or to buy red shoelaces instead of brown. And if you gave up on deciding because you simply couldn't go on, for misery and fatigue, and you said to another person – as she was saying to Mark – OK, you take over, you decide for me now, then you were surrendering your self-control, a measure (how big a measure?) of your independence. That's what I'm doing, Kate thought, that's exactly what I'm doing. Because I've lost over Joss, I'm letting myself just give in. I don't have to live here or work there, in fact, I mustn't. If I start giving in, I won't stop because I'll think it's all a punishment for failing over Joss, that I'm not fit to have her, that I shouldn't have had her, that I should be grateful for anyone who'll have
me
. She opened her eyes. The room swam a little and then steadied itself into familiarity, armchair and table, upright chairs, lamp, cushions, chair print. She felt about for her shoes. It was after eleven; late, but not too late.

‘What are you saying?' Mark said. He had showered just before Kate came in, and he was wearing a dark-blue cotton dressing gown, cut like a short kimono, and his hair was wet.

‘I'm saying that I am very sorry to change my mind, and to disappoint you, but I've decided that I can't come and live here, after all.'

‘Why?'

‘Because it would be wrong and it would ruin our relationship.'

‘Wrong?'

‘Yes.'

He moved towards her. ‘What sort of wrong?'

This was taking more courage than she had reckoned on. Kate said, ‘Because I don't want to make that kind of commitment. I'm not ready for it, and perhaps I never will be. I think I agreed to come because I was reacting from having lost Joss. I ought to tell you the truth. It's only fair.'

‘Fair?' he said.

‘Stop it—'

‘Stop what?'

‘Asking these little questions like someone in an American police movie. I'm really sorry, Mark, but I'm also very sure. I shouldn't have agreed to come and I—'

‘Shut up.'

‘Mark, I'm trying to explain—'

He said, ‘You aren't coming because you don't love me,' and then he hit her.

She felt the blow thud into the side of her face. She was perfectly astonished. She opened her eyes and mouth in protest, but he hit her again, on the other cheek, and then he seized her by the shoulders, and ran her backwards, stumbling, against the blank wall by the bed, and began to bash her head against it rhythmically, bang, bang, bang. Her eyes flew open and shut and her breath came in gasps, and she could see his face quite clearly but miles away, dark and set. Then all of a sudden, he wrenched her sideways and flung her across the bed, the bed where they had often made love, and walked slowly across to the opposite wall and leant against it, his back to her, and simply waited in silence for her to gather herself up, and to go.

Sixteen

‘Where is she?' Helen said. She stood in the kitchen at Mansfield House, still holding her car keys and her bag.

‘We put her up in Pat's room. With Pat and the baby. It was all the space there was.'

‘When did she come?' Helen said, slowly letting the bag and keys fall on to the table among the cereal packets and toys.

Midnight, they said, or a bit after. She'd woken them up, Linda and Ruth said, they'd heard her from their room above the front door and they'd thought it was Pat's boyfriend again who'd been a menace all week. Ruth had looked out of the window and seen a woman waving, a woman she didn't know, having only been at Mansfield House a month, but Linda knew her.

‘It's Kate!' Linda said in amazement. ‘It's Kate!' and flew downstairs to undo all the bolts and chains and let her in. They had taken her into the kitchen and made her tea, and Ruth had found some arnica ointment and had smeared it on Kate's face. She didn't say much, she just shook. All she said that made complete sense was that she had a headache, so, when Pat came down to make up the baby's feed, they said could Kate doss down on the extra mattress in Pat's room.

‘'Course,' Pat said, yawning. She peered at Kate. ‘I see I don't need to ask what happened to
you
.'

They had given her aspirin, and a hot water bottle because of the shaking, and had put her to bed on the floor of Pat's tiny room while Pat fed her baby and read one of the holiday brochures which were her passion. Then Pat had gone to sleep and Kate had lain awake listening to her breathing, and the baby snuffling, and stared out into nothing for hours and hours and hours. When she fell asleep at last, it was into that racked and unnatural slumber to which even the most protracted wakefulness is preferable, haunted by menace, through which the wails of Pat's baby wanting its first feed of the new day came thin and anguished, like the screams of a cat being tortured.

‘Who's seen her today?' Helen said sharply. She sounded as if she was annoyed, as if someone in the room was to blame.

Pat was sorting out an immense plastic basket of communal washing. She didn't look up when she spoke. ‘I left her asleep. I put Jason in Linda's room for the morning. She was dead to the world an hour ago.'

‘I'll go up,' Helen said. ‘I'll go up and see her. Someone make a mug of tea I can take up to her, would you?'

Kate lay on her less-damaged side with her eyes shut. Her head throbbed and banged and the skin of her face felt raw and several sizes too small. Helen bent over her.

‘Kate?'

Kate turned, very slowly, wincing.

‘Ow.'

‘Oh Katie,' Helen said, kneeling by her on the floor. ‘Oh poor love. You poor love. What happened?'

Kate shut her eyes again. ‘Mark,' she said.

‘I've brought you some tea. Here, I'll help you sit up. Did he only get your face?'

‘Only my face!'

Helen slid an arm under Kate. ‘Remember Linda? Two cracked ribs and a broken wrist as well as a face like yours.'

It was terribly difficult to sit up. Kate's head felt as if it were a huge, wobbling, painful balloon only lightly attached to the rest of her.

‘Was it sex?' Helen said. ‘Was he one of them?'

Kate said, ‘No. I changed my mind about living with him, moving in with him. That's all.'

‘Living with him!'

‘I got Joss back. But she wouldn't stay. So I thought I'd live with Mark.'

Helen groaned. She settled herself beside Kate and handed her the mug of tea. Kate took it and held it tightly, to stop her trembling from spilling it.

‘Don't lecture me,' Kate said. She tried to look at Helen, but her neck was stiff and wouldn't turn, and the eye nearest to Helen was so swollen she couldn't see out of it properly. ‘Remember telling me how lucky we were because we'd never been hit? Well, now it's only you that's still lucky.'

‘We'll get you down to the surgery later. Get John Pringle to have a look at you.'

‘It's only bruises.'

‘Kate!'

Kate's voice rose. ‘It isn't the bruises that hurt! At least, they do, of course, but they don't hurt like what's going on in my mind hurts!'

‘You must stay here, of course.'

‘I'm supposed to be at work—'

‘You can't work like this, Kate.'

Kate remembered. ‘I had a row with Christine last night—'

Helen stirred to a kneeling position. ‘I'll sort out Christine. You leave Christine to me. D'you want someone to collect your stuff? I'm sure Linda would.'

‘I don't know, I don't know what I want—'

‘Would you like to come back to my flat?'

Kate tried to smile. ‘No. No thanks. I'm better here with the others.'

Helen got clumsily to her feet. Even through her own distress, Kate felt that Helen's authoritativeness was not exactly in top gear this morning.

‘We'll organize your stuff, Kate. And I'll go round to Jericho and tell Joss.'

‘Joss!' Kate almost screamed.

‘Of course,' Helen said, ‘of course she's got to know.'

Kate's face puckered like a child's. ‘Oh my God,' Kate wept. ‘Oh, what have I done now, what stupid bloody mess have I made now?'

Leonard had cut himself, shaving. He often did this now, so James had offered to shave him which had made Leonard furious. He had agreed, with torrents of foul language, to allow a nurse from the health centre to come in twice a week to bathe him, but the suggestion that he could no longer shave himself was an insult not to be borne. He was so angry and upset that James cursed himself for even having mentioned it.

‘I'm sorry. Really I am. I should have kept my trap shut.'

‘Bloody right you should! Bloody right! I may not be as steady on my pins as I once was, but I'm not a drooling imbecile!'

The result was that Leonard remembered James's tactlessness every morning when he started to shave, and his unsteady hands shook further with rage. His thin old skin tore like tissue paper, and by the time he had finished – a very irregular business anyway – the basin in his bedroom was spattered with blood, and his furious face was tufted with blobs of cotton wool.

‘You look like snowman,' Mrs Cheng said. It wasn't a joke, because she never made any.

‘Go to hell!'

‘You want use electric razor—'

‘When I want advice, you slit-eyed barbarian, I'll ask for it!'

Joss simply put a bottle of disinfectant by Leonard's basin.

‘What the hell's that for? Am I supposed to drink it?'

‘I don't care what you do with it,' Joss said, ‘but if you don't put it on your face you'll go rotten like a bad tomato and stink.'

‘Tomato,' Leonard muttered, dabbing disinfectant unevenly over his cheeks and chin. It stung and he flinched. ‘Bloody cheek. Tomato!' He put the cotton wool down and surveyed his face. ‘What a sight, what a miserable, mucky old sight. They ought to put you down,' he told himself, ‘that's what they ought to do. Kindest thing. That or send round one of old BB's friends with a plastic bag and a bottle of sodding happy pills.'

He dressed slowly, stopping frequently for little rests. Mrs Cheng had tried to help him with his socks once, but he had lashed out at her with his long, yellow-white bony foot, and she hadn't tried again. He put on his old man's vest and pants, a wool shirt (‘What d'you mean, summer? What's summer got to do with being frozen to the marrow?'), his capacious corduroy trousers, his yellow knitted waistcoat and a cardigan and finally, with much moaning and heavy breathing, thick green socks and heavy brogues.

He got up from the side of the bed with difficulty and looked at himself in the mirror. His bare throat troubled him. ‘Look like an old turkey, a diseased old turkey.' He found a spotted cotton handkerchief and knotted it clumsily in the neck of his shirt. ‘Knock 'em in the aisles, old boy,' he said to the mirror, and bared his teeth at himself in disgust.

He limped out on to the landing. From the kitchen came the clashes and bangs of Mrs Cheng's weekly attack on it. Otherwise the house was silent, James having gone up to London for the day (alone, Leonard wondered?), Hugh having disappeared on some mysterious errand and Joss being at school doing her French exam, poor little bleeder. They had left him a tongue sandwich for lunch and, at his request, one of those passable little trifles in a plastic pot. When he had eaten them, Beatrice was going to come round and play bezique with him. Nobody under seventy knew how to play bezique any more.