Thunder in the Blood (10 page)

‘Ruth?’ I enquired.

He nodded, pocketing the cassette player.

‘Needs must,’ he muttered, getting up.

I looked at him for a moment. I wanted to tell him what I really thought, what a fool he was, staying with a woman he didn’t love, sustaining a marriage for the sake of appearances, but in that one small moment of time I knew, too, that I didn’t want to lose him. Not now. Not ever. The man meant more to me than anyone else I’d ever met, or was ever likely to meet. He’d saved me from insanity and glued me back together again. Without him, I was nothing. I opened the door properly and went to him. I gave him his coat, buttoned it for him and walked him to the door. He smelled, as ever, of Palmolive. I reached up for him and kissed him. I knew, above all, that he wanted to look at his watch.

‘Half eleven,’ I said. ‘Still plenty of cabs.’

He smiled down at me. ‘I love you,’ he said.

‘Honestly?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank Christ for that.’

I kissed him again and opened the door, not wanting to prolong the scene. A minute or so later, putting on the kettle, I heard a cab slow and stop. I listened for a moment, wanting to hear the
sound of his voice, then I reached for the bar of Vanish and a saucepan of water, and returned to the living room. The carpet was still wet, and there were blobs of red wine everywhere.

Rory’s birthday was a turning point. Afterwards, we still met nearly every day and in many ways he was keener than ever, but somehow I became more aware of the rest of his life, of what he wasn’t telling me, and this other Rory began to obsess me. This was, I admit at once, wholly irrational. The man was married. He had responsibilities, two children, a mortgage. These were serious foundations for any life, not lightly discarded, and though I believed him when he told me how good we were together, I knew I’d be an idiot to assume that several months of illicit passion were any substitute for real life. Deception, as I’d begun to recognize, can be the ultimate aphrodisiac and I’d started to wonder, against my better judgement, how on earth we could ever put the thing on a proper footing.

One decision I took was to make myself less easily available. Since the summer, I’d been totally steadfast, a traffic cone in the swirl of Rory’s life. Whatever was happening to him during the day, he knew where to find me at work. I’d be at my desk, from nine until six. He had the number, and when he felt like it, he’d ring. Likewise, in the evening, I was always at home. He knew where to come. He had his own key. A meal, and a glass or two of wine, and me, were only ever a cab fare away. Don’t get me wrong. Rory never treated me as a convenience. I never once felt he was taking me for granted. But as the nights drew in, I became more and more aware that I’d surrendered control of my own life. Ruth was turning me into a recluse. I needed to get out. I needed a life of my own.

I looked round for things to do. Another relationship was out of the question. I didn’t want it and wouldn’t have known what to do with it had such a thing turned up. No, it had to be something else. Something that would take me out on the odd evening. Something I could put my heart into, be proud of. Something of some relevance. Something, for God’s sake,
worthwhile.

After a week or two, to my surprise, I found the answer. I saw Rory the following evening. He arrived at the flat as I was getting ready to go out. For once, unusually, he hadn’t phoned.

My blouse half ironed, I met him in the hall. Rory was carrying a large cardboard box, Scotch-taped over the top. There were crude holes stabbed in the box, and noises from inside. I stared at it.

‘What’s that?’

‘Pressie.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s for you.’

Rory leaned forward and kissed me. I was wearing knickers and a loose singlet, no bra, a combination, as it happens, guaranteed to turn Rory on. He put the box on the floor and picked me up.

‘What’s going on?’ I said. ‘What’s in the box?’

Rory carried me into the bedroom. ‘First things first,’ he said, lifting my singlet and burying his nose between my breasts. I pushed him away. He looked surprised.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’m going out.’

‘
Out
?’

I laughed, not unkindly, just at the expression on his face. Treat time, it said. I pulled my singlet down and returned to the living room. I picked up the iron and ran it down the hem of my blouse. Whatever was in the box was definitely on the move. Rory reappeared, adjusting his trousers. If anything, he looked hurt.

‘I was going to phone,’ he said. ‘Honest.’

‘You should have.’

‘Why?’

‘I’d have spared you the journey.’

He looked at me a moment, then sat down. ‘What have I done?’ he said. ‘Give me a clue.’

‘Nothing. You’ve done nothing. It’s just…’ I shrugged. ‘I’m going out, that’s all.’ I smiled at him, a genuine smile. ‘You’re welcome to stay. I’ll be back later.’

‘When?’

‘I’m not sure. Depends.’

I looked at Rory, waiting for the next question. Nothing happened. I stirred the cardboard box with my foot. There was another scuffling noise inside.

‘It’s a kitten,’ Rory said woodenly. ‘I’ve bought you a kitten.’

‘Ah.’ I nodded. ‘Company.’

‘What?’

‘Company. For little me. These long winter nights.’

I finished with the blouse and peeled off my singlet. I stood there for a moment but Rory didn’t look up. My bra was on the armchair. I put it on. Then the blouse. Rory reached for his shoelaces and began to undo them.

‘Don’t you want to get it out?’ he said. ‘Have a look?’

‘Of course I do.’

I finished buttoning the blouse and bent to the box. I tore off the Scotch tape and opened the flaps on top. Inside, amongst the remains of yesterday’s
Daily Telegraph,
was a tiny black and white kitten. It looked up at me. It was adorable. I sensed Rory behind me.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘It’s lovely. Beautiful.’

I picked the kitten up. Purring, it sounded like a small, noisy boiler. I held it close to me. The kitten grabbed at me, suddenly frightened, huge green eyes, claws like needles. Rory reached out, tickling it, and for a moment I toyed with making a phone call to cancel my plans and staying in. Then I shook my head, gave Rory the kitten, kissed him lightly on the nose and went into the bedroom. By the time I’d found the right combination of sweater and jeans, he was standing in the open doorway. His shoes were back on. He looked less than happy.

‘So where are you off to?’ he said. ‘Or is it a secret?’

I hesitated a moment in front of the dressing table, examining the contents of my make-up drawer. I could still see him in the mirror. He had the kitten in his arms. He was stroking it, nice tableau, orphans both.

‘You remember all that stuff about Africa I told you?’ I said. ‘With Monique? The French girl? All those jungle lectures? All those poor bloody Africans?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well…’ I shut the drawer, deciding after all against lipstick, ‘I’m going to an outfit called Charlie’s. It’s a support-group. They need people who know about AIDS.’

I glanced up at the mirror. Rory was staring at me. Like most
military men, he had limited time for life’s casualties and none at all for homosexuals.

‘AIDS?’ he said.

‘Yep.’ I stood up. ‘They’re looking for people to train as counsellors. People who can help. People who can listen.’ I smiled. ‘In this case, me.’

10

Charlie’s turned out to be just what I was after, a new support group formed by a Jesuit priest and some disaffected gays who’d peeled off from the mainstream AIDS agencies. They operated from two rooms over a Jewish tailor shop in Finsbury Park. The tailor’s son was a haemophiliac, and had contracted HIV from an infected batch of Factor 8, and the tailor – appalled at the lack of facilities for people with HIV – had donated the rooms free of charge. He was a small, round, powerful man whom I’d met through a colleague at work. His first name was Charlie, and in the absence of anything better, the priest had called the project after its sympathetic landlord.

I took the tube up to Finsbury Park twice a week. For a while, I sat in on other people’s groups and updated myself on the literature; then I was given my own slot in the counselling rota and my own quota of clients. There were five in my group, four of them men, the other a girl of eighteen, a junkie who’d been on the game. The men were all gay, all newly diagnosed and we sat together for hours, one-on-one to begin with, as a group a little later on. We talked a lot about the small-print things, insurance policies, various welfare benefits, travel restrictions, problems with vaccinations and so on, and once we’d got to know each other and there was trust between us, we ventured even further. Being HIV positive meant anticipating AIDS, and that, in turn, meant evenings discussing issues like living wills, hospice care, and – trickiest of all – how to cope with any one of the dozens of infections that would, in the end, kill you. None of this sounds terribly cheerful, but oddly enough we all drew a sort of comfort from stripping the disease down to its essentials and asking ourselves what we could actually
do
about it.

One advantage I had, oddly enough, was my scar. Unless you were blind, it was perfectly obvious that I, too, had been obliged to weather one of life’s rougher passages. At first, in the counselling sessions, this didn’t occur to me. Five months with Rory had done miracles for my physical self-confidence, and I was largely oblivious to the odd stare from passing strangers. People with HIV, though, are extraordinarily aware of the problems of others. They approach life from an entirely different point on the compass, and the girl, especially, was eager to know what had happened to me. When I told her I’d been in a car crash she was immediately sympathetic, and I suspect that of everything I said to her during our time together, this was by far the most therapeutic. I’d been there. I knew something of what it was like. I carried the scar to prove it, the stigmata. I was a fellow sufferer, one of the afflicted. To my shame, I have to say that I made the most of this, not exploiting it exactly, but certainly doing nothing to hide the evidence that I’d been to the edge, and looked over, and crept back again. In a deeply private way, it gave me immense satisfaction to try and turn the whole ghastly experience to good account.

By now, it was mid-December. For a while, I’d been dreading the end of the year. Christmas would mean Rory returning to his family. There’d be presents to buy for the kids, decorations to hang, a tree to dress, mince pies to warm, carols to sing. They’d all pile in the Volvo and drive back down to the family home in Devon, and the chances are that I’d probably be there too, the ghost at the feast, haunting my parents’ house at Budleigh, thinking of nothing but Rory.

My work at Charlie’s cushioned the approach of this nightmare to some degree, but the three evenings in the working week that I wasn’t there I still spent with Rory at the flat in Fulham, and deep inside I knew that I relied on him no less. My little bit of independence had made him, if anything, even more attentive, while I, without question, was obsessed by the man. He had, in a very exact sense, become the most important part of me, the part without which I simply couldn’t function. With him, with the knowledge of him, with the certainty that we’d see each other, at the very least, within two days, I could do anything. Work was no problem. Even the bloody computer
had its charms. But without him, without Rory, I knew with the same absolute certainty that there’d be nothing but darkness. Rory meant everything to me. We were inseparable. We were beyond division. One way or another, the thing would resolve itself. Had to.

A week before Christmas, for once in our relationship, we ventured out of the cave. It was Rory’s idea. His treat. He’d found a pub by the river, in the Thames Valley. We arrived after dark and the car park was already packed, but Rory had booked a table and there was already a bottle of champagne chilling in an ice bucket between our chairs. The food, as promised, was delicious and afterwards Rory relaxed with a cigar and a second glass of port. We’d been talking about the situation in the Gulf. Events were moving towards a climax. At Curzon House, we were now running a sweepstake on when, exactly, the war would begin. I’d drawn 10 January. Rory pulled a face.

‘No chance,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘They won’t be ready in time.’

‘Who? The Americans?’

‘Aye. Powell was up at one of the House Committees yesterday. He’s saying mid-February at the earliest.’

I looked at him a moment, surprised. General Powell was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington. When it came to the fighting, he’d be calling the shots. He thus had every incentive to keep the Iraqis guessing.

‘You
believe
him?’ I said. ‘You don’t think he’s playing games? Flying kites? Stringing us all along?’

‘No, I don’t. Logistically, he’s boxed in. Mid-February. At the earliest. A week or two of bombing. Then the big push.
Months
of fighting.’

‘Phooooey.’

I laughed, tidying the remains of my brandy butter into a neat pile at the side of my plate. In almost exactly a year’s time, I was to remember this conversation, but now I didn’t give it a moment’s thought. When I glanced up again, Rory was still looking at me.

‘You’re a cynic, Miss Moreton,’ he said, ‘one hundred and ten per cent.’

‘You’re right.’ I smiled at him. ‘Goes with the job.’

‘Off-duty too?’

‘Of course.’ I smiled again, reaching for his hand, and reassurance.

We drove back to Fulham. Ruth, it turned out, was away again, in Paris of all places. Rory stayed at the flat and we spent the night together in my narrow little bed, tucked into each other, like children.

Next morning, by common consent, we opened each other’s presents. Afterwards we celebrated Christmas yet again, on the floor, by the sofa. Rory looked up at me. Moist and warm, I was still straddling him.

‘Your favourite position,’ I said. ‘Happy Christmas.’

He smiled and revolved his eyes again, and reached up for me, cupping my breasts.

‘We’re having a party,’ he said, ‘Boxing Day.’

‘We?’

‘Ruth and I.’ He paused. ‘Your parents are coming. I know. Ruth told me.’

‘Ah.’ I nodded. ‘And me?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Bit near the knuckle, isn’t it?’

‘Not at all. Season of goodwill. Old friends …’ He grinned. ‘What could be nicer?’

I spent most of Christmas Day getting nervous. My parents and I shared a quiet meal around the table in Budleigh, and later we watched television. My father, for some reason, was quiet to the point of near silence, but after mince pies and clotted cream, my mother broke out the Martell I’d brought down from London, and he began to cheer up a little. We’d been talking about Ruth’s party, what it might be like.

‘You won’t have seen Rory for a bit,’ he said. ‘Been busy, I expect.’

‘Yes.’ I nodded. ‘Is he still at the MOD?’

My father glanced up, a turn of the head that was just a fraction too brisk, and he looked me full in the eyes for a moment. Then he settled back in his chair.

‘Yes,’ he said quietly, ‘I gather he’s waiting for the balloon to go up.’

The party at Rory’s was an all-day affair. My mother had been warned to get there about noon, before the vultures descended on the buffet, and we duly turned up in my father’s old Rover. Rory and Ruth had a house on the edge of a village called Topsham, upriver from the Commando Centre. It was a neat Victorian villa, red brick, with a double bay at the front and distant glimpses of the Exe estuary. Inside, the two rooms at the back of the house had been knocked into one and it was here that the party took place.

There was a trestle table along one wall, covered with plates of food. There were boxes of wine everywhere and crackers galore and heaps of toys for the kids. Ruth met us at the door. She was dressed in black – tight jeans and designer T-shirt – and she was wearing a huge pair of Elton John glasses one of the kids had given her for Christmas. She had a drink in one hand and a small cheroot in the other, and her dark purple lipstick was already smudged. Used by now to the earnest, slightly dour Ruth of Rory’s description, I was astonished. Here, in front of my eyes, was a very different Ruth. She was laughing. She was natural. She looked really attractive. And when Rory appeared, funny hat, clown’s make-up, empty glass, she grabbed him by the hand and gave him a big hug.

‘Meet Coco,’ she said to my mother. ‘I’ve hired him,’ she winked, ‘strictly on approval.’

I drank steadily through the afternoon. Most of the people at the party I knew already, old friends from my youth, instructors at the Commando Centre, the kind of conversations you pick up as if they’d never stopped. Twice, people asked me if I was all right and both times I nodded vigorously, favouring them with a big empty smile, steering the conversation away from the rocks, asking them about their children, or their new posting, knowing all the time that I was giving myself away, my eyes glassy with alcohol, following Rory around the room as he dipped into this conversation or that, a bottle in each hand, filling glasses, sharing jokes, chasing children, playing the fool, the perfect host.

Once or twice he looked my way, risking a smile or even a wink, and much later, dark outside, we met in the kitchen, amongst the litter of empty bottles and paper plates. His daughter
was on her hands and knees under the table teasing the family spaniel with a rubber spider from one of the crackers. Otherwise, for a moment or two, the room was empty.

‘Lovely party,’ I said flatly.

‘Enjoying it?’

‘Great.’

‘Truly?’

‘Truly. You’ve got a real flair for it. I’d never have guessed.’

‘Flair for what?’

He beamed down at me, the deep green eyes behind the mask of circus make-up. On his cheek, very clearly, I could see the imprint of a pair of lips. The imprint was purple. Purple lipstick. Ruth’s lipstick. Her kisses. My man. I turned away, sickened with it all, with Rory, with his family, with myself. I’d got it all wrong. All these months, I’d got it wrong. Not one Rory. Not my Rory. But two. By the door, I felt his hand on my arm. He pulled me back, urgent, almost rough. Outside, in the hall, there were couples playing football with a balloon. Rory looked down at me. I realized, for the first time, that he was probably as drunk as I was.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said.

I gasped at the question, at how crass it was, not caring any more. All I wanted to do now was to get out of the house, get back to Budleigh Salterton, put all this merriment and laughter behind me, take the train to London, to the warm claustrophobia of the life we’d called our own. Rory asked me the question a second time, his hand still on my arm, and I shook my head, trying to hide the tears, aware of his daughter looking up at us both.

‘I don’t know why you asked me,’ I muttered, ‘that’s all.’

Back in London, the start of the New Year, I didn’t see Rory for nearly a week. We talked on the phone, endless conversations, me going through the argument time and again, him saying I’d got it all wrong. A party’s a party. His job was to be host. He was there to keep it all together, to get people pissed, to make sure the kids had a great time, to jolly things along. What had I wanted him to do? Cruise around looking shitty? Tell everyone the truth? Announce our engagement? The latter suggestion, in particular, stung me.

‘That’s cheap,’ I snapped. ‘I’ve never asked you for anything. Anything. Except to be straight with me.’

‘And I’ve lied?’

‘No. Not in so many words.’

‘What then?’

‘It’s—’ I shook my head, angry and confused. ‘It’s just that nothing makes sense. It doesn’t, you know…
tally.
’

‘That’s intelligence talk. Curzon House bullshit.’

‘Wrong. It’s me telling you you’re better off where you are. You’re a great father. You’re probably a great husband, too, for all I know. And she’s probably a great wife, as well.’

‘You believe that?’

‘I believe what I see.’

‘Me and Ruth? After everything we’ve talked about?’

I paused a moment, deep breath, starting again. I didn’t want all my bridges burned, not quite yet. I loved the man. I didn’t want to see him hurt. That’s partly why we were having the conversation.

‘No, my love,’ I said gently. ‘Not what we talked about. What you talked about. It’s you, sweet, you. You do the talking. You do the phoning. You’re the one who decides where, and when, and how often. You’re—’

‘We’ve been through all this.’

‘I know. I know. But I’m saying it again. Because I have to say it again. Because it’s true. None of it mattered very much until last week. Until last week.’

‘Fuck last week. Last week was Christmas. Christmas is a sham, a joke. Everyone knows that.’

‘No, my love, Christmas isn’t a sham. It’s not a joke. Neither are families. And that means wives. Rory, I have eyes in my head. I can see. Give me some credit. The woman
loves
you. She needs you, for Chrissakes. You must know that.
Must
do.’

‘Aye…’

‘Well, then. Spare me the rest, eh?’

‘What?’

‘You heard.’

I looked at the phone for a while, arm’s length, hearing his voice, a new note, uncertainty, contrition, then, very gently, I cut him off. I’ve never done it before, not to him, not to anybody,
but I knew it was the only way to bring the thing to an end, and if I’d meant what I’d said, then it was my only remaining option.