The Right Man (21 page)

As I
got into the taxi at Hammersmith Broadway, the sound of the chainsaw came back
in stereo inside my head. It occurred to me that I ought to see a doctor about
these noises. The taxi headed off towards Kensington and the West End. An hour
or so left of trading time, and then the long Soho night. I leaned forward and
slid open the driver’s glass.

‘I’ve
changed my mind,’ I said. ‘Can you take me to Shepherd’s Bush instead?’

Another
thing about coming back from holidays is the resolutions you make to radically
change your life. These also usually last a matter of hours. I was drifting
into dangerously aimless waters. Cut loose from the moorings of home and
family, I needed some kind of anchorage.

‘Guy!
Mate! Come in, how are you? Looking terrible as ever, you sad fucker. Come in.

Malcolm
Viner led me down the narrow hallway over cheap but insanely clean beige
speckled carpet to a small double reception room wall-to-walled with the same.
How did he manage to keep this place so clean? The cushions on his undersized
sofa lay taut in their covers, arranged at diagonals to the arm rests. In home
arrangements he would be very compatible with Liz.

‘Want a
whisky?’ He opened one of the glass-fronted built-in cabinets either side of
the trim fireplace, and spent a couple of seconds selecting a bottle from the
twelve kinds of whisky he had in there. Taking a couple of cut-glass tumblers
from the symmetrical shelf unit, he poured me a large one, himself a very
meagre one and sat down on his cane stool, urging me to the sofa.

On the
bamboo and glass table were a pristine ashtray and the Sunday newspapers in a
neat pile. He leapt up again.

‘Unless
you want ice?’ he said. He smiled as if to say ‘Even though ice would be
sacrilege.’

‘Is it
alright if I smoke?’ I asked. It didn’t look like a cigarette had been smoked
here for some years. Or anything else, for that matter. He kept his smile and
sat down again. The cane creaked under his bum as he shifted his weight and
took an almost imperceptible sip from his glass:

‘Of
course you can, Guy. I haven’t since … ohhhhh,’ he acted searching for the
date, ‘oh, must be three years now. Nerily, you know. Got to set an example.
But you go ahead.’

‘Thanks,’
I said, taking a gulp of whisky that was bigger than his entire drink.

I’d
gone and bought some rolling tobacco straight after my encounter with young
brother Tone. I was living dangerously.

‘God!
Roll-ups!’ said Malcolm with fake enthusiasm, and watched as I tore a strip of
card from the pack of papers to use
as
a filter.

‘You
put roaches in cigarettes now, do you? Or is that a spliff you’re rolling?’

I
assured him it was just tobacco.

‘Yes. Nerily’s
just at that age where you have to, you know be careful, you know. I mean, she’s
nearly ten, and these days they get to know about these things much earlier.’

I made
a messy job, with little sprigs of tobacco straying over the glass top of the
table which I tried to brush back into the plastic pouch. They tumbled into the
crack where the glass rested in the bamboo cane.

‘Don’t
worry about that,’ he said. ‘God, we used to do all that on an album cover. Do
you remember? I don’t even have any vinyl any more. Gave that up too.’

I
glanced across at the small, neat stack of CD player, radio and amp sitting
dwarfed in the space under one of the glass cabinets, and finished my drink.
Malcolm was up and fiddling with the window.

‘You
warm enough?’ he asked, smiling. ‘It’s just …’

The
early-evening air came in to remove my smoke before it had a chance to yellow
the pristine paintwork.

‘Tell
you what, while I’m up, shall I leave the bottle out where you can reach it?’
He reopened the cabinet. ‘Or rather
a
bottle.’ He laughed. ‘That one we
just had is a bit good. By which I mean it cost a fortune. Got it in Gilvannie
last year. It’s seventeen years old, would you believe?’

He
found another bottle and put it on the occasional table, by my arm.

‘That
do?’ he said, and sat again, creaking the stool.

‘Brilliant.
Thanks,’ I said. ‘Sorry about this …’

‘You
know, I suddenly had a thought about you the other day. You just floated into
my mind, I know you won’t believe that. And then you rang me the other night,
didn’t you? But you chickened out and hung up.

‘Sorry,
did I wake you up?’

‘No no no.
Fine fine fine. So you and erm, what was her name, are no more, I presume?’

‘I’m
that obvious, am I?’

‘No no no,’
he said. ‘Well, yes.’ I was at school with Malcolm.

‘And
you had a kid, didn’t you? How old’s he/she?’

‘Grace.
Four and a half.’

‘Ali. A
girl,’ he said, with a gravity which was lost on me. Malcolm had an exaggerated
earnestness which many found intimidating, taking it for pushiness. His voice
was always clear and resonant, with perfect diction, like a classical stage
actor’s should be. He’d always taken main roles at school, and after going to
RADA had had a reasonably successful theatrical career in rep, with a couple of
stints at the National. But somehow, apart from the odd episode of
Casualty,
he’d never really made it on telly. He was too plummy, too altogether actorly
actually to be employed
as
an actor. After a few years working for
nothing, trying to make his own fringe company survive, he’d had the good sense
to get out altogether and was now, I discovered, a secretary in the civil
service as well as being a part-time aromatherapist.

He
bristled with a jumpy energy at all times, even, I remembered now, when drunk —
which was rarely — or stoned, which used to be often. A very thoughtful man,
but the kind of thoughts he had went in straight lines and never accelerated
around corners. Decisive and athletic. Definitely officer material had he been
that way inclined, although I wouldn’t know how many Jewish officers there are
in the British army.

He was
also almost completely bald, and had been since his early twenties. He was a
man who had made an early decision about his baldness. Not for him a flapping
comb-over, nor even anything creeping over his collar at the back. What little
hair there was had always been neatly cropped even in the seventies. He had a
sensitive mouth and skin like polyester. I’d always liked him, despite the fact
that his shirt tails remained resolutely tucked into his trousers at all times,
unlike mine, which, even now, had been shuffled halfway up my back by the tidy
cushions on his sofa.

‘So,
fuck,’ he said, generally. ‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. You still living in the
same place together or ..

‘I
moved out. I’m on the camp bed in the office,’ I said, and a stack of ash fell
on the carpet. I tried to rub it in a bit with my foot.

‘That’s
bad,’ he said, and then, ‘Don’t worry about the ash, the carpet’s been sprayed.
You seeing someone else?’

‘Nope.’

‘Is
she?’

‘Yep.’

‘How
long?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Kid’s
definitely yours?’

‘Gotta
be. I think so. Yes, of course.

‘She working?’

‘No.
She’s an actress.’

‘Fuck. And
you? How is it these days in the high-powered world of entertainment? I always
knew you’d make it big, you know.’

‘Few
clients playing up at the moment, but … what’s new?’

‘What’s
the bloke do?’

‘Fucks
her a lot, I presume.’ I was tiring. ‘He’s a lawyer.’ I opened the lesser
bottle of whisky and poured myself a large slug. How long, I wondered, since it
had last been opened? Malcolm must be the only person I knew, I thought, who
could have twelve bottles of different beautiful whiskies for several years in
his downstairs room and not even think of seeing how sick he could make himself
by going on a bender and polishing them off at a sitting. I offered him a
top-up. Of course, he declined.

‘You
hungry?’ he asked, standing up again.

‘Naa,’
I said, although he could see through it.

‘I’ve
only got kids’ stuff really, I’m afraid. I’m meant to have Nerily this weekend.
Or at least I should do if her mother deigns to acknowledge my existence. Beans
on toast or something?’

‘No, I’m
OK really,’ I said.

‘It won’t
take a minute,’ he said. ‘Talk to me while I get it.’ And he went into the
kitchen like his Jewish mother would have done, had he been me.

I
gathered my smoking material and followed him through with the bottle.

‘You
still support Fulham?’ he asked.

‘I
never did. What are you talking about?’

‘You
did, you used to support Fulham, you poor, sad, misguided fool.’

‘I went
to a couple of matches once. That’s all.’

‘And
had the strip. And the sticker book.’

In
keeping with the rest of the house, the kitchen we were in was spotless. Not a
dirty cup in the sink, not even clean plates drying on the rack. All had been
put away. We could have been in a shop window and there was just about as much
room. I leaned on the worktop and watched him prepare crumbless toast.

The
corkboard had on it photocopies of an activity weekend, and an events sheet
from Nerily’s school.

‘Oh,
that,’ he said, seeing my interest in the noticeboard. ‘It’s been a major
triumph getting the school to send me copies of Nerily’s dates. You wouldn’t
believe the prejudice there is against single fathers.’

A
photograph of Nerily, scrubbed and school-uniformed, was pinned to the frame.

‘So you
moved out? That’s bad,’ he said.

‘Well,
I still pay the mortgage and the bills, and I fixed the place up and
everything.’

‘And
the little Princess Grace. What’s she think is going on?’

‘Nothing
yet. I couldn’t stay, though. It’s pretty bad at the moment there.’

‘Mmmmmmm.
I can imagine.’ He poured the beans neatly on to the toast and put the pan to
soak in the sink.

‘Obviously
you can stay here if you need to. I mean, if it gets really bad. There’s Nerily’s
room which is free most of the time, and the sofa sort of folds out. But you’re
not going to be left with much if you walk out, you know.’

‘I don’t
want much. I just want to do the right thing.’

‘Yes,
you say that now, but what about Princess Grace?’

I
wished he’d stop calling Grace a princess.

‘Well,
we share all that. Even when she was little.’

‘She
still is little, though, isn’t she?’

‘But
Liz doesn’t respect me any more. And that’s evidently very important.’

Back in
the main room, I tried not to spill beans on the carpet, or on the sofa,
despite being sure that it too had almost certainly been sprayed.

With my
mouth full, Malcolm was able to expound.

‘In a
way, splitting up with Geraldine was the best thing that ever happened to me, I
mean, I was heading for a fall anyway. I wouldn’t have lasted another year in
your bloody business. Bloody awful. It was terrible at first but it just about
works now. My main worry has been if Geraldine ever decides to go back to the
States and take Nerily with her. Which technically, of course, she couldn’t
actually do, and Nerily’s old enough now to make up her own mind. But we never
married, you see, and she’s refused to sign a parental responsibility order, so
actually I have no rights at all. You married, didn’t you? That’s one good
thing. At least you could get a contact order. Not that they’ve got any way of
enforcing it if she decided to deny you access.

I
sensed a stridency in his voice which matched the effort that had so obviously
gone into the hoovering and dusting.

‘Technically,
you’d be abandoning. Mind you, you’re legally the absent parent, even if you
live next door and take the child to school every day. That’s what makes me
really angry.’

The
cane stool seemed to be creaking of its own accord now.

‘Did
you know that until 1823 it was legal for a woman to kill her child if it was
illegitimate? The Stuart Bastardy Act 1623.’

‘Funny
name, Stuart Bastardy,’ I said. I was losing it. But Malcolm seemed to be
charged with some zeal. This was obviously his favourite subject. As soon as my
beans were finished, he zipped my plate away and rushed it to the kitchen to be
cleaned. I stood limply in the doorway. He carried on talking while washing up.

‘Do you
know what is the demographic group most at risk from homicide? Mmm?’ Malcolm
was the kind of person who could use words like ‘homicide’ without sounding
American. ‘Children under the age of one, that’s who. And fifty per cent of
them are killed by their mothers.’

He
dried the dishes too, and put them away. I almost wished I had had a more
complicated meal. It would have given him more to do. His energy was draining.