Magnificent Joe (21 page)

It rained heavily at work today. I get home soaked through, cold, and clarted up with mud. I peel off on the doormat and scurry naked upstairs and straight into the shower. I stand under the hot water for a long time. I can afford to relax because I know that Joe won't turn up this evening; he has another rehearsal at the village hall. He doesn't need to go to every one – he's just the back end of the horse, after all – but he does. God knows how he occupies himself; sits and watches, I think. If it makes him feel there is still a world he's part of, though, then I won't let anyone stop him doing
it.

Anyway, he's not here now. I put him out of my mind. The water flows over me, and I think of Laura. I tried hard to forget that kiss, but I dreamed of her last night. I feel guilty about it, but the days have turned to weeks and still no word from Geoff, so who's the traitor now? Wasn't this always there, anyway, ever since she first came here? Perhaps this was waiting to happen. Perhaps it's actually
right
. And yet I still can't understand why she would want to. Why she would want me, of all people.

Here I am, though, wanting her too. It's as if all the action, all the moving, all the change of the last few weeks has hauled my body and mind up to speed and suddenly my sex drive is
back.

—

On the way over to Laura's, questions and doubts grow in the cold and the dark. I stop and find it difficult to take another step. My legs are very heavy. I rake my knuckles over my chin. At the very least, I need to know. I force myself to walk again.

‘You've been quiet,' she says, on opening the
door.

‘I'm sorry. I couldn't…I've been…'

‘Yeah. I know.'

I watch a cat emerge from the shadows of a small, neat lawn, trot over the road, and disappear into the shadows of the small, neat lawn opposite. I look back at Laura. I feel my jaw working, as if I need to chew the words to make them soft enough to come out. ‘Look, did you…? When you…? Oh fuck.'

‘What?'

I feel like I'm taking a desperate, running jump at a large, deep hole. ‘When you kissed me, did you mean
it?'

‘When
I
kissed
you
?'

‘When we kissed each other, did you mean
it?'

‘Oh God. Yes, maybe.'

‘But…how could
you?'

‘Oh, don't come with that. He's not coming back, is he? And you came over here with a bottle of wine. Don't tell me that—'

‘No, I mean, how could…
me
?'

‘What?'

‘I
used
you.'

She steps out, quickly, looks up and down the street. ‘Get inside.
Now.'

I do as I'm told. She closes the door behind me, shoves me against the wall. ‘Is that what you think? Is that what you've thought, all this time?'

‘That's what it is, really. That's what it always is when
you—'

‘Go with a whore?'

‘Yes.'

‘And I'm your victim? A punchbag? A fuck-toy?'

I can't answer that. I just shrug.

She grabs the front of my jacket in her fist, pushes her forearm across my chest, and looks up into my face. ‘Yes, I was young, and yes, I was stupid. I was too young and too stupid to know that what I thought I wanted was all just shit, but that's the same thing as wanting it anyway, so don't tell me you used
me.'

‘But it was horrible. That house. Those people.'

‘Yes, but I didn't see it like that at the time, and once I did, I got away.'

‘Jesus. I'm so sorry.'

‘No. You don't understand. I left that bastard, but I didn't stop escorting – not then. I kept going and I did it for myself and I used the money for something good. So I'm not sorry, and you shouldn't be either.'

She lets go of my jacket. I watch her eyes and they are full on me. ‘It was Barry,' I say. ‘He made me visit you that day. I didn't do it for my own sake.'

She smiles at me. ‘I know. He told me that part himself. He wanted to make it clear to me who was the boss.'

‘The bastard.'

‘Are you still glad you kept the secret?'

‘Yes.'

Then we stand there together in her hall, saying nothing. Whatever force drove me to her door is all gone and everything I expected to hear is not quite the truth after all. ‘So what now?' I
say.

She pushes open the door to the living room. ‘Come
in?'

I find it difficult to move, but then her hand slips into mine and I go with her. She takes me to the couch and we sit down together. She puts one hand in my hair and rests her forehead against the side of my head. Her breath smells like milk. I hear her tongue move behind her teeth and she says, ‘Do we understand each other
now?'

I don't know what the question means, but I say, ‘Yes.' Then with a steady pressure from her hand she turns my face to hers. We kiss. She
tastes
of milk too. And I don't think about whether this is wrong anymore, because she is very soft and warm, and I just want to go further into her. What else have I
got?

—

Much later, I walk home and I can still smell her perfume. It seems to be all over my face. I feel idiotic and empty, but I know we'll do it again. Why shouldn't we? I come round the corner of my street and think I see movement in front of my house. I stop, look. Nothing. Maybe another bloody
cat.

I get to the door and struggle with my keys for a moment. It opens, but I feel something behind me and turn. Too late. I tumble backwards into the house, and a heavy weight thumps down on me. I try to shout, but my mouth and nose are muffled by stale-smelling fabric. I kick out, but hit thin air. Someone is actually lying on me. Then he's up on all fours and his face is in mine, showering me with
spit.

‘They're after me!' Joe hisses. ‘They're after
me!'

I put him in the armchair and manage to piece together his story. It goes like
this:

Joe doesn't like Lydia, the new director, because she never gives him anything to do. Tonight was no different, and Joe sat at the back while the others practised their singing. It wasn't too bad, because Joe enjoyed listening, and when they confused the words or stumbled over the tune, it made him laugh. One of the Ugly Sisters called Joe a ‘knob', but Lydia said, ‘Just concentrate on learning the song, for God's sake,' which Joe felt to be the most sensible thing Lydia has ever
said.

After a while, the plastic seat made Joe's bum go numb, and he started to need a wee. Joe put up his hand. Nobody looked. Joe's shoulder started to ache. Still nobody looked. Joe drummed his heels on the floor. Eventually, Lydia asked him if something was wrong. Joe said, ‘I need a wee,' and the rude Ugly Sister said, ‘Oh, for fuck's sake,' but Lydia said, ‘Then why don't you go to the toilet, Joe.' Joe said, ‘Thank you,' and
went.

‘Joe, is all this relevant?' I ask
now.

‘You what?'

‘Just tell us the part where you get into trouble,
man.'

‘All right, keep your hair
on.'

On his way back from the loo, Joe heard a strange noise from behind a half-open door. It opened into the carpeted room that is used as a crèche during the weekly mothers' coffee morning. There were two young children in there – a girl and a boy – and when Joe walked in, he couldn't believe his
eyes.

‘It was one of them blocks what stick together,' he tells
me.

‘Lego?'

‘No, the spiky ones.'

‘A Stickle Brick?'

‘Aye, them.'

‘He was poking her cunt with a Stickle Brick?'

Joe turns red and nods, mutely.

‘Jesus Christ, Joseph.' A moment of silence. ‘You know, there's people on the Internet would pay good money to see that sort of thing. Did you get any pictures?'

He shoots out of his chair. ‘You're disgusting!'

‘Settle down, man. I'm joking. What did you
do?'

‘I picked him up and I said, “Stop it,” but he started to scream and then his mam ran in and called me a “fucking pervert”!'

‘Fuck. And then what?'

‘I ran away.'

‘You did what?'

‘I legged
it.'

‘With him still under your
arm?'

‘No. I dropped
him.'

‘Oh, Joe, you total knobsack. Why didn't you just explain?'

He collapses back into the chair and shrugs, distraught. He knows he's fucked
up.

I go and look out of the front window, but the street is quiet. It's only a matter of time until the police come to find him. I decide not to mention that fact and say, ‘Well, no point worrying about it now. Do you want to watch some telly?'

—

Joe stays over, of course. In the morning, I get up and call Lee. ‘I've got some personal problems to deal with. I can't come in today.'

‘Never mind,' he says. ‘We'll cover for
you.'

‘Thanks, mate.'

I wake Joe and we eat some Coco Pops together, neither of us saying much. I expect a knock at the door at any moment, but for the time being nothing happens, so we just slob out in front of
GMTV
. Joe pays close attention to a segment about a rat that's been trained to type the Lord's Prayer. Through careful conditioning by its handlers, the rat has learned not only the relative positions of the keys it needs to press, but the actual form of the letters stamped on them, so that even if you give it a differently shaped keyboard, it can still perform the feat. Apparently, it did all this for chocolate. Thy kingdom
come.

I close my eyes and try to think of Laura, but I just keep seeing Stickle Bricks.

At 10.58 a.m., they arrive.

Joe sits bolt upright.

‘Relax,' I say. ‘It's probably just the milkman or the window cleaner.' I know that's not true, but the only hope of averting total disaster is to keep him calm for long enough for the police to establish that he's innocent. I go into the hall and open the door. There are four officers and two squad cars outside.

One of them says my name, more as a statement than a question. I nod. ‘That's me. Look, I've heard what happened, and he didn't—'

‘We're looking for a man called
Joe.'

‘Here's here,
but—'

I sense movement behind me and I turn, but the police officers barge past me into the house. I recover myself just in time to see Joe disappearing up the stairs, with the cops in pursuit. I hear the bathroom door slam and a policeman swear loudly. I follow them up. One of them is slapping on the door with the palm of his hand. ‘Come out. We need to talk to you.' Then he sees me. ‘He's locked himself
in!'

‘Stop hammering. That's not going to work.'

‘Fuck off, you bastards!' Joe, from inside the bathroom.

‘You're scaring him. He's not going to come quietly if you scare
him.'

‘Can you get him
out?'

‘He's innocent, you know.'

‘Well, if you get him out, we can sort that, can't
we?'

‘Move,' I say. The filth look surprised to be given an order by a civilian, but they step back anyway. I go to the bathroom door. ‘Joe?'

‘Get them away! I'm not going to prison! No, no, no, no,
no
!'

‘You're damn right you're not going to prison – you've done nowt wrong.'

‘We'll be the judges of that,' says a policewoman.

‘Shut the fuck up!' I tell
her.

Next thing, my face is in the wall and my arm is up my
back.

‘Stop! You don't understand him!' I gurgle through the pain, but it's way too late for talking, and out of the corner of my eye I see a cop aim an almighty kick at the door. His foot goes right through it and he falls on his arse, but his colleague comes, reaches through the hole, and unlocks it from the inside.

‘Fuck,' I hear him say. ‘He's gone through the fucking window.'

—

Joe was sedated and taken to hospital under police guard. They didn't arrest me in the end, but asked me to help. They realized once they saw him there – lying on the ground, gibbering, and crying – that they were going to need me in order to get any sense out of him. So we followed along in the squad car, and now I'm sitting in a corridor with a grim-faced copper on either side of me, waiting for information on the extent of his injuries.

As we sit there, one of them asks me questions. I tell him the story Joe told me and watch his face, but it doesn't betray a thing. He just writes in his little book. He doesn't trust me, because he knows about my record. As far as the police are concerned, I'll always be a marked
man.

‘The real world's scary to him,' I try to explain. ‘He lived with his mother all his life and she protected him from everything. It's not surprising that he ran away. It doesn't mean he's guilty, just scared.'

‘So you admit that he's a bit strange?'

‘Well, yeah, but…' I'm not doing any good. I shut up. Anyway, the policeman seems to have asked everything he wants to ask for now, so we go back to sullen silence.

Time ticks by very slowly in a hospital.

Eventually, a doctor turns up and talks to the police.

‘He's a lucky man. Just a twisted ankle and a badly bruised knee. I've treated people who broke their necks in shorter falls than that.'

‘Can we talk to him yet?' asks the policeman who questioned me earlier.

‘Yes. I'll take you to
him.'

The cop turns to me. ‘You'd better come
too.'

I follow them through the ward, and then the policeman's mobile phone rings.

‘That should be turned off,' says the doctor.

The policeman holds his hand up to the doctor's face and turns to the wall. After a muttered conversation, he sighs, switches off the phone, and slips it back into the pouch on the front of his stab jacket. ‘You're in luck. The little lass corroborates your story – says it was the boy that fiddled
her.'

Relief. ‘Thank fuck for that.'

‘Aye, well, we'll be seeing
you.'

And with that, the two policemen just turn and walk
away.

‘Hey,' I call after them, ‘what about my bathroom door?'

They don't even
stop.