Collected Stories (20 page)

‘Like what?’ said Bodger with interest.

Rocco tried to think of a specific illustration that wasn’t petty. He couldn’t tell Bodger he hated the way she poked him in the stomach while trying to talk to him; or the way she blew in his nostrils and ears when they were having sex; or the way she applied for jobs she’d never get, and then claimed he didn’t encourage her; how she always had a cold and insisted, when taking her temperature, that insertion of the thermometer up the backside was the only way to obtain a legitimate reading; or how she was always losing money, keys, letters, even her shoes, and falling off her bicycle. Or how she’d take up French or singing, but give up after a few weeks, and then say she was useless.

Rocco said, ‘What can you do when you’re with a person you dislike, but move on to another person you dislike? Isn’t that called hope? I’m off.’

‘Where?’

‘Back to London. New people, new everything. Except we’ve got no money, nothing.’

Bodger said, ‘You’re intelligent, that’s the problem.’

Rocco was biting his nails. ‘I miss the smell of the tube, the crowds in Soho at night, men mending the road outside your window at eight in the morning, people pissing into your basement, repulsive homunculi in ill-fitting trousers shouting at strangers. In the city anything can turn up. There’s less time to think there. My mind won’t shut up, Bodger.’

The doctor collected his things. ‘Nor will my patients.’

‘Don’t mention this, because I’m not telling her yet.’ Rocco pulled out a letter. ‘Yesterday this arrived. It fell open – accidentally. Her husband’s not well.’

Bodger leant over to look at it, but stopped himself. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘He’s dead.’

‘Aren’t you going to show it to her?’

‘She’ll get upset and I won’t be able to leave her for ages.’

‘But you took her away from her husband, for God’s sake. Marry her now, Rocco, please!’

‘That’s a good idea, when I can’t bear the girl and couldn’t fuck her with my eyes closed.’

Bodger paid, as he always did, and the two friends walked along the top of the cliff. When they parted Bodger told Rocco how he wished he had a woman like Lisa, and that he didn’t understand why she would live with Rocco and not with him.

‘Those shoulders, those shoulders,’ he murmured. ‘I’d be able to love her.’

‘But we’ll never know that for sure, will we?’ said Rocco. ‘Thanks for the advice. By the way, have you ever lived with a woman?’

‘What? Not exactly.’

Rocco sauntered off.

Bodger hoped he wouldn’t be thinking of Rocco and Lisa all morning. Occasions like this made him want to appreciate what he had. He would do this by thinking of something worse, like being stuck in a tunnel on the District Line in London on the hottest day of the year. Yes, he liked this seaside town and the sea breeze, particularly early in the morning, when the shops and restaurants were opening and the beach was being cleaned.

‘Karen, Karen!’ he called to Vance’s wife who was jogging on the beach. She waved back.

When Rocco got home Lisa had managed to dress and had even combed her hair. She wore a long black sleeveless dress and knee-high leather boots. The night before she’d been at a party on the beach. Most people had been stoned. She couldn’t see the point of that any more, everyone out of it, dancing in their own space. She had got away and rested in the dunes. Now she sat at the window drinking coffee and reading a magazine she’d read before.

‘Would it be okay if I went swimming this morning?’ she asked.

She was supposed to sign on but had obviously forgotten. Rocco was about to remind her but preferred the option of blaming her later.

‘I don’t care what you do.’

‘I only asked because Bodger told me to take it easy.’

‘Why, what’s wrong with you now?’

She shrugged. He looked at her bare white neck and the little curls on the nape he had kissed a hundred times.

He went into the bedroom. His head felt damp, as if sweat was constantly seeping from his follicles. He was too exhausted to even gesture at the ants on the pillow. They were all over the house. If you sat down they crawled up your legs; if you opened a paper they ran across the pages. But neither of them did anything about it.

He lay down. Almost immediately, though, he groaned. He could hear, through a megaphone, a voice intoning Hail Marys. The daily procession of pilgrims to the local shrine, one of Europe’s oldest, had begun. They came by coach from all over the country. People in wheelchairs, others on crutches, the simple, the unhappy and the dying limped up the lane past the cottage. A wooden black madonna was hoisted on the shoulders of the relatively hearty; others embraced rosaries and crucifixes. The sound echoed across the fields of grazing cattle. Cults, shamans, mystics; the hopeless searched everywhere. To everyone their own religion, these days. Who was not deranged, from a certain point of view? Who didn’t long for help?

In their first weeks in the cottage, he and Lisa had played a game as the pilgrims passed. Rocco would put on a Madonna record, run up the steps of their raised garden, and piss over the hedge onto the shriners, crying, ‘Holy water, holy water!’ Lisa would rush to restrain him and they would fuck, laughing, in the garden.

The day was ahead of him and what did he want to do? He thought that having intentions, something in the future to move towards, might make the present a tolerable bridge. But he couldn’t think of any projects to want.

Rereading the letter he looked up and saw Lisa observing him. He was about to stuff it back in his pocket, but how would she know what it contained?

Three years ago he had fallen in love. Lisa wasn’t only pretty; plenty of women were pretty. She was graceful, and everything about her had beauty in it. She was self-aware without any vanity; and, most of the time, she knew her worth, without conceit. With her, he would make an attempt at monogamy, much vaunted as a virtue, apparently, by some. She would curb his desire. Running away with her would also represent an escape from futility. Now, however, he felt that all he had to do was abandon her, flee and somehow achieve the same thing.

He said, ‘I’ll ask Bodger if you can swim. I need some advice myself.’

‘About what?’

‘Everything.’

Rocco knew he was talented: he could play and compose music; he could direct in the theatre and on film; he could write. To release his powers he had to get away. Action was possible. That, at least, he’d decided. This cheered him, but not as much as it should, because he didn’t even have the money to travel to the next railway station. And, of course, before he got out he’d have to settle things with Lisa. He needed a longer discussion with Bodger.

At twelve they had lunch because there was nothing else to do. He and Lisa always had the same thing, tinned tomato soup with cheese on toast, followed by jelly with condensed milk. It was cheap and they couldn’t argue about what to have.

‘I love this soup,’ he said, and she smiled at him. ‘It’s delicious.’ It was too much, being nice. He didn’t think he could keep it up. Not even the thought of her dead husband brought on compassion. ‘How do you feel today? Or have I asked you that already?’

She shook her head. ‘Stomach pains again, but okay.’

‘Take it easy then.’

‘I think so.’

The sound of her slurping her jelly, which he hoped that just this once she would spare him, made him see how husbands murdered their wives. He pushed away his bowl and ran out of the cottage. She watched him go, the spoon at her lips.

‘Scum. Rocco is scum,’ said Vance. ‘He really is. And I can tell you why.’

‘You had better,’ said Bodger.

Bodger was studying Feather, the local therapist who lived nearby, because he was drawing her.

Vance was glancing at himself in Bodger’s mirror, not so much to admire his crawling sideburns, floral shirt, ever-developing shoulders, and thick neck, but to reassure himself that his last, satisfying impression had been the correct one.

He ran the town’s hamburger restaurant, a big place with wooden floors, loud seventies music and, on the walls, rock posters and a T-Rex gold disc. In the basement he had recently opened the Advance, a club. Nearby he owned a clothes shop.

Vance was the most ambitious man in the town. It was no secret that his appetite extended further than anything or anyone in front of him. Looking over their heads, he was going places. But it was here, to his perpetual pique, that he was starting from.

Like numerous others, he often dropped by Bodger’s place in the afternoon or late at night, to gossip. Most surfaces in Bodger’s house were covered with bits of wood that he’d picked up on walks, or with his drawings or notebooks. There were towers of annotated paperbacks on astronomy, animals, plants, psychology; collapsing rows of records; and pieces of twisted metal he’d discovered in skips. The chairs were broken, but had a shape he liked; his washing, which he did by hand as ‘therapy’, hung in rows across the kitchen. To Vance it was detritus, but every object was chosen and cherished.

Vance said, ‘Did you know what he said about this shirt? He asked if I were wearing the Nigerian or the Ghanaian flag.’

Feather started to laugh.

‘Yes, it’s hilarious,’ said Vance. ‘He provokes me and then wants my respect.’

Bodger said, ‘I saw him this morning and felt sorry for him.’

‘He’s rubbish.’

‘Why say that of someone?’

Vance said, ‘Did you know – he’s probably told you several times – that he’s got two degrees in philosophy? He’s had one of the best educations in the world. And who paid for it? Working people like me, or my father. And what does he do now? He drinks, hangs around, borrows money, and sells dope that gives people nightmares. Surely we should benefit from his brilliant education? Or was it just for him?’

‘Is it the education that’s useless, or just Rocco?’ Feather asked.

‘Exactly,’ said Bodger.

‘Both, probably. Thank God this government’s cutting down on it.’ Vance turned to Feather. ‘Can’t you therapise him into normality?’

‘Suppose he turned out worse?’

Vance went on, ‘You know what he said to me? He called me greedy and exploitative. And no one has fucked more of my waitresses. Did I tell you, he was in bed with one and she asked him if he’d liked it. I teach them to be polite, you see. He said … what was it? “The whole meaning of my life has coalesced at this timeless moment.”’ Neither Feather nor Bodger laughed. ‘How idiotic can you get? Last time he came into the restaurant, he raised his arse and farted. The customers couldn’t breathe.’

‘Stop it,’ said Bodger to Feather, who was laughing now.

‘The worst thing is, girls fall for him. And he’s got nothing! Can you explain it?’

‘He knows how to look at them,’ said Feather.

She herself had a steady gaze, as if she were deciphering what people really meant.

‘What d’you mean?’ asked Vance.

‘Women look into his eyes and see his interest in them. But he also lets them see his unhappiness.’

Vance couldn’t see why anyone would find Rocco’s unhappiness amatory, but something about the idea puzzled him, and he considered it.

When they’d first come to the town, Vance had welcomed Lisa and Rocco. He didn’t let them pay for their coffee, ensured they had the best table, and introduced them to the local poets and musicians, and to Bodger. She was attractive; he was charming. This was the sort of café society he’d envisaged in his restaurant, not people in shorts with sandy feet and peeling noses.

Bodger was drawing. ‘Calling the man scum – well, that’s just unspeakable and I don’t agree with it.’

‘His problem is,’ said Feather, ‘he loves too many people.’

Vance started up again. ‘Why defend someone who sleeps with people’s girlfriends – and gives them diseases – borrows money, never works, is stoned all the time and tells lies? These days people don’t want to make moral judgements. They blame their parents, or society, or a pain in the head. He came to my place every day. I liked him and wanted to give him a chance. People like him are rubbish.’

Bodger threw down his pencil. ‘Shut up!’

Feather said, ‘The desire for pleasure plays a large part in people’s lives.’

‘So?’ Vance stared at her. ‘Suppose we all did what we wanted the whole time. Nothing would get done. I’ll tell you what riles me. People like him think they’re superior. He thinks that doing nothing and discussing stupid stuff is better than working, selling, running a business. How does he think the country runs? Lazy people like him should be forced to work.’

‘Forced?’ said Bodger.

This was one of Vance’s favourite subjects. ‘Half the week, say. To earn his dole. Sweeping the streets, or helping pensioners get to the shops.’

‘Forcibly?’ said Bodger. ‘The police carrying him to the dustcart?’

‘And to the pensioners,’ said Vance. ‘I’d drag him to them myself.’

‘Not everyone can be useful,’ said Feather.

‘But why shouldn’t everyone contribute?’

‘I’ve lost my concentration,’ said Bodger.

They went out into his garden where everything grew as it wanted. It was hot but not sunny. Cobwebs hung in the bushes like hammocks. The foliage was dry and dusty, the trees were wilting, the pond dry.

The liquefying heat debilitated them; they drank water and beer. Bodger fell asleep in a wicker chair with a handkerchief over his face.

Feather and Vance went out of the back gate arm in arm. He asked her to have a drink with him at the restaurant.

‘I would, but I’ve got a client,’ she said.

‘More dreams?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Don’t you get sick of all those whingeing people and their petty problems? Send them to me for a kick, it’ll be cheaper.’

‘People’s minds are interesting. More interesting than their opinions. And certainly, as Rocco might have said, as interesting as hamburgers.’

She was smiling. They had always amused one another. She didn’t mind if he mocked what she did. In fact it seemed to stimulate her. She liked him in spite of his personality.

‘Come to me for a couple of sessions,’ she said. ‘See what sort of conversations we might have.’