The Twisted Heart (21 page)

‘Graham,' said Kit, caught between laughter and distress, ‘what on earth are you on about?'

‘Don't ask me, Birdy,' he said. ‘Not exactly roses right now. Feeling a touch rough, to tell you the truth. Drinking on my own,' he said to Joe, pointing apologetically at his glass. ‘Don't know what I'm talking about. I've got my pubes going white, the ones I have left. Birdy here,' he slapped her shoulder, ‘when she was a tiddler, cried the whole bloody time. Wouldn't stop. Only way to get her to stop was to blow in her face.'

‘In her face?'

‘It surprised her, then it calmed her down.'

‘I don't really know anything about babies,' said Joe.

‘Well,' said Graham, standing up, ‘they change everything.' And he stumbled away to the toilets.

Kit and Joe sat in joint, surprised silence. It was Joe who ventured to speak first. ‘You were saying about Michaela?'

‘I, what—?' said Kit, and then, ‘Oh, yes. No, never mind.'

‘Tell me.'

Kit, who was tired, hungry, over-warm and over-weary, and assailed by cares that she felt were beyond her, found that a moment for which she had been dangerously preparing herself had arrived. ‘Who was Dean Purcell referring to,' she looked, just for a second, straight at Joe, ‘when he said to you about a quality-goods blonde? She was “quality goods”, was his phrase. He wanted to know what had happened to her. Michaela made me ask you,' said Kit, ‘I mean, she thinks—'

‘Ask what you like,' said Joe, ‘but ask me because it's you who wants the answer.'

‘Yes.'

‘The “quality-goods blonde”?' He pondered the phrase. ‘Clare, was she called? Clare. Yes. I had a date with her—must have been about a week before I met you. Dean cycled past us on Broad Street, saw us together and winked. She was—you know—blonde. I don't think she noticed. Why would she notice?—a person like Dean? She was very uptight. Humpty and I couldn't decide whether she meant a word she said. She taught art history somewhere or other. I don't think she liked me all that much. But I doubt she'd have let it show if she was upset, I have to say.'

‘She what?'

‘Like you do.'

‘Oh. Thanks.'

‘You give away more of yourself than you realise.'

‘Not usually, I don't think.'

‘I'll take that as a compliment, then.'

‘Maybe it just means you're incredibly annoying?' said Kit.

‘Listen,' he said, ‘if you're going down this road, the person you should be asking about is Evalina.'

‘Who could dance superbly on a brick?'

He was amused by the speed with which she made this rejoinder. ‘I nearly married her,' he said. ‘Or rather, I refused, in the end. We broke up because she wanted to have children. She was—is, older than me. She's the most selfish person I've ever held on a dance floor. She's from Chicago. She isn't here any more.'

He stopped talking as Graham swayed back into their
orbit. ‘Who's up for another one?' he asked, leaning breathily over the table.

Joe began to fish for his wallet.

‘No, no, no,' said Graham exhibiting the heaviness of a person who's determined not to be resisted.

‘Why don't I at least go up and get them?' said Kit. She accepted without demur the note that Graham pressed into her hand.

‘Same again all round?' she said. 

Kit stood, confused, at the bar. She felt as though she'd just lost her grip on something. But what? Here she was, up at the bar, the quality-goods blonde, that bugbear, cast aside in a couple of sentences—and Evalina:
phut
. Nervously, Kit thought to herself, it's just me and Joe now. That's what it is. It's between him and me, now. It's all on me.

‘You still with us?' said the barman. ‘There you are, love.'

‘Oh. Thanks.' Kit, thinking that it was she who was dancing on a brick, gathered up the drinks and revolved slowly on one foot. 

‘I was just telling Joe, here,' said Graham, ‘thanks, wonderful, mmm—yes, thinking of investing in the double-handle toilet tank. Man of the moment, me.' Kit sat back down, exchanging glances with Joe.

‘Thank you,' said Joe to Graham.

‘It's
no more
complicated,' said Graham, ‘than the concept of a
hot
tap and a
cold
tap. Complex? I don't think so. One handle's a semi-flush—peeing, in other words—other one gives you the full cistern, say no more. Water savings,
meters, of course, more and more prevalent. Make a tidy packet off it, I'm thinking. Neglection of green investments is bloody foolish—you just can't deny it. Look at the weather we've been having. And there's corners of this market the lightliest regulated you can imagine, given the bandwagon effect.'

‘I went to London today to do a research thing,' said Kit, ‘the Public Record Office, Graham. Honestly, you know what? The girls' loos, they have these circular mirrors over each sink, and they're put on the walls so low down that if you're standing normally, me, I could just about see the bottom edge of my chin. Perhaps they were installed by little Polish people, I don't know. I mean, I may not be Rapunzel or Cinderella, but it comes off a bit pro-dwarf that someone my height, in a government building, should be beheaded by the public lavatory system. Hey, Graham,' said Kit, ‘suppose you had to pay to have certain conversations, would you stump up a quid to be able to discuss the weather?'

‘Touché,' he replied; and then, addressing himself to Joe, said, ‘Kid sisters, born to put you down. Oh, what?' he jerked back to Kit, ‘—what, buy conversations at the supermarket, you saying? Two for the price of one? Buy “New Labour and Tory: what's the difference?”—and get a free go at “If there's another interest rate rise, I may end up defaulting on the mortgage”—?'

Joe dipped his head very slightly.

‘That's it,' said Kit, ‘except, I think if you wanted to have a
really
boring conversation—would it be cheap because it was so boring, or would that make it an indulgence, such that it needed to be extra expensive?'

‘Oh, boring, it ought to be expensive, definitely,' said Graham.

‘So, a conversation about the weather in England—'

‘Luxury item. Cellophane and ribbons.' He took a deep breath, and said, ‘If you'd shelled out big time for a conversation about the weather, you'd want to
save it up for a rainy
day
.'

He was so pleased with himself that Kit clapped, which made him want to bow. He put his empty glass down on the table with the care due a full one, then tilted over his own belly.

‘Oh yes, sorry,' said Kit. She pushed a few coins across at him. ‘I forgot. I had to put the change in my pocket so I could carry the glasses. Sorry.'

‘We're all right,' said Graham, refusing the money. ‘What's a few pence?' he said. ‘We're all right—about things like that.' There was a slight hiatus before he said, ‘So, what's up with you two? I have to get in the old look-out-for-your-little-sister bit, right?'

‘Graham,' said Kit in flattening tones. She didn't want Joe to have to sit through any more of this.

‘Here's a lad all shaven and shorn, that loves the maiden all forlorn?' said Graham.

‘Please, please, please,' said Kit, holding her hands up. ‘Apart from anything else, and it's a big
apart
, I am no way forlorn.'

‘Raise a glass to that,' said Graham, and did so, to find it empty.

‘I think we need to be off,' said Joe, looking to Kit for agreement.

She immediately stood up. ‘Are you going to be okay?' she asked Graham.

‘Only going to Botley,' he said, staring at them both. ‘I'm staying with Henry. Jump on a bus.'

‘Why don't I call him and ask him to pick you up?' said Kit. ‘You have his number, right?'

‘Not to worry.' He made a feeble attempt to stand.

Joe said to Kit, nodding at her for emphasis, ‘Sit back down a minute, stay here. I'll go outside and call a cab. Kit and I need to go out to Botley anyway, Graham. We'll all go. We'll drop you off.'

Graham grunted.

‘You can catch all the buses you like in the morning,' said Joe.

‘Shaven and shorn,' said Graham. ‘Just take a piss.' And he raised himself, this time successfully, to his feet. 

At Henry's house, all three of them got out of the cab together.

‘Striking moon, look at that,' said Graham; for there it was still, magnificently huge and clear.

As Joe leant back in through the passenger window to pay, Graham added, in a hushed voice, ‘You okay really, Birdy?'

‘Yes, yes,' she said, his coins stowed in her pocket.

‘You'd think he was a hard nut from the look of him,' he said in a whisper.

‘I know, but he's—I'm fine, Graham, I promise you,' said Kit.

Graham turned round to Joe. ‘Look me up sometime,' he said. He scanned through his wallet, evidently wanting to hand over his card; but, much as he searched, he couldn't find one. ‘Oh,' he said. ‘Anyway,' he said, ‘any questions
about seed crushing, I'm your man. Want to come in and say hello to Henry?'

‘I think not,' said Kit, and she hugged her woebegone seed-crusher connection. He felt squashy and comfortable, he was wonderful and tall, and in their own funny way, they did love each other. Ah well. 

Joe and Kit set off along the street; Graham, within seconds, gone.

Kit sighed enormously. ‘Thank you for being so nice.'

‘Like I said before, I'm well practised in the wayward-brothers department, as you have too much reason to know. Anyway, there's something endearing about him.'

‘I can tell you exactly what it is.'

‘Yes?'

‘It's the play between him recognising and not quite accepting that he's a failure, as he understands it.'

‘Is it? I don't know. Perhaps that's what you like about me. Don't worry,' he said, as she responded to this remark with alarm. ‘Anyway, I liked him.'

‘I know. All the same—I can't believe just when we're shot of your zonko brother we get stuck with my rambling, half-drunk half-brother instead. You don't mind me saying that do you?' she asked.

‘It's okay.' Joe smiled. ‘It was a revelation,
Birdy
—with the radio-aerial legs.'

‘It's different though, you know?—because Graham and I have very little to do with each other. I mean, I don't feel responsible for him, is what I mean; not like you and Humpty. I mean, I would if he fell over in front of me,
but I don't just worry about him, generally speaking. Normally his main topic of conversation is about various meals he can remember having eaten since the last time you met. I guess actually I do worry about him from time to time, but what I'm saying is, I don't do anything about it.'

‘That's the position, at my weakest, that I'd like to be able to take with Humpty.'

‘Weakest or strongest?'

‘Ah.' Joe brooded over her question, then said, ‘You know, I do find myself thinking that it's only for my own sake, now, that I care much about whether Humpty's coping or not.'

‘Really? That doesn't strike me as true.'

‘No, I used to care about him in a different way. My—I don't know—my selfless concern for him, if I ever had any, has slowly been worn away.'

‘You have to look out for yourself, too,' she said. What else was she to say? ‘Hey,' she continued, mentally changing tack, ‘I'm sorry Graham didn't ask you one single thing about yourself. Maybe he had fog-bound sex on some balcony last night and it left his brains frizzled.'

‘That was so cold, out in the damp like that,' said Joe.

‘Well, it was; but wasn't it also—' Kit couldn't finish her sentence.

‘You were inspired,' said Joe, ‘by my inspiring balcony?'

She pulled a pious expression. ‘It was pretty good, by my standards. Although I admit that using the word “standards” in this context might be pitching it rather high. Oh God.' She didn't want to pursue this. ‘Outside—' she said, ‘doesn't
it make you wonder why you ever do it inside? Do you know what I mean?'

‘Sure,' he said.

‘I love wood smoke,' she said.

‘Is that what it was? You were certainly different.'

‘So were you.'

He laughed. ‘I wasn't worried the whole time you were going to jump up like a startled horse and run away.'

‘A what?'

‘That may not be such a good way of putting it,' he said. ‘It's all right. What were you expecting? You're a funny person, you know. You—' he stuttered a second.

Kit's thoughts went aslant, to
The Soiled Dove
and the Honourable Plaistow Cunninghame—to how he had found Laura Merrivale more and more unappealing, the happier she'd become. ‘You don't find inexperience attractive though, do you?' she asked quietly.

Joe smiled round at her with his eyes. ‘Not so much that I'd miss it when it was gone. Please,' he said, ‘don't look so troubled.'

Meta Cherry
, Kit thought.

‘Just—don't run away like a startled horse, that's all,' said Joe.

‘Where are we going?' she asked.

He was guiding her in the opposite direction from town.

‘I want to pick up Humpty's car. It's a few streets this way.'

‘Oh. I thought you were just saying about coming to Botley because you were worried about Graham. I thought you were making it up.'

‘No. I credit your brother with being able to handle a drunken cab ride on his own.'

‘I have to say,' said Kit, ‘I can't think when he last talked about himself in front of me in quite such an open way, even if I couldn't understand it. Usually he plays everybody's uncle kind of thing, or at least a not-so-gloomy bon viveur. I don't usually see him just on our own, you know? It's usually family, kind of thing. Didn't you think there seemed to be something pretty wrong? Could you tell? I don't know if I should say something to Saskia. What can I do, though? I wonder whether—his mother died last year, not nicely either, I believe, wasn't found for several days, and without them ever having been reconciled, her and Graham, I mean. Honestly, he's a sweetie pie really. He'd help anybody. If he met the Queen, he'd try and help.'