Thunder in the Blood (12 page)

I smiled, looking across at him. ‘God, no,’ I said. ‘That’s Keogh’s line.’

Afterwards, in the street outside, I stood beside the waiting cab, saying goodbye. Aldridge buttoned his coat and leaned forward to kiss me. His eyes were moist and his breath was heavy with brandy. He kissed me on the cheek, holding me lightly by the shoulders.

‘Nice to meet you,’ he said, ‘truly.’

‘Me, too.’ I nodded. ‘And thanks for the meal.’

He looked at me for a moment, uncertain, then he reached in his pocket.

‘You’ll need this,’ he said.

‘What is it?’

‘The keys to Wesley’s place.’

‘Why should I want them?’

‘Because he won’t be there this afternoon.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘He’s seeing me at half past three. We have to discuss terms.’ He pulled a face. ‘Money.’

‘Ah …’ I nodded, still looking at the keys.

Aldridge pressed them into my hand, closing it with a tiny squeeze. Then he reached for the door of the cab, ever the gentleman. ‘Number 216, Dorking Road,’ he said, ‘upstairs. Post the keys back when you’ve finished.’ He smiled. ‘And call me some time.’

It had begun to rain by the time the cab got to Wesley’s place. I told the driver 250 and we cruised slowly past, peering at the numbers, giving me the chance to take a look before we stopped. The house was semi-detached, solid thirties pebble-dash, with double bays and a rectangle of front garden behind a low brick wall. There was a ‘For Sale’ sign by the gate and another sticker in one of the downstairs windows. Upstairs, where Wesley lived, the curtains were still drawn.

When the car finally stopped, I paid the fare and walked back down the road. Five doors from Wesley’s was a phone box. I ducked inside and dialled Aldridge’s number. When his secretary answered, I asked for Wesley Keogh. There was a brief pause, then she said he was in with Aldridge. I thanked her, left no message and hung up.

Wesley’s front door was at the side of 216. I tried one of Aldridge’s two keys and it turned first time. Inside a flight of stairs led to a long, boxed-in landing. At the end of the landing was another door. I opened it with the second key, standing in the corridor for a good half-minute, listening for noises inside. The place smelled of bleach and stale joss. Somewhere a tap was dripping.

At length, a small black cat emerged from the gloom and wound itself around my legs. I bent to stroke it, feeling the metal disc attached to the underside of the collar. The cat began to meow and I picked it up, fondling it, turning the disc to the light from the window. Beside Wesley’s phone number was the cat’s name. The cat’s name was Scourge. I tickled the cat behind the ears, calling it by its name and it began to purr, pressing itself into me, the tiny paws outspread on my chest.

Still carrying the cat, I went into the flat. The place was in
semi-darkness, every curtain drawn. The main living room lay off the entrance hall. I switched on the light and looked round. The place was over-furnished, an upright piano in one corner, cushions everywhere, a table in the window, three old armchairs drawn up around an ancient gas fire. One of the armchairs was surrounded by a litter of books and magazines. Some of the books were open, face down on the carpet. I crossed the room, looking down at them. A biography of Oliver North. Two fat paperbacks on the Gulf War. An atlas open at the state of Texas.

The cat began to wriggle and I tried to calm it, whispering the name again, Scourge. It looked up at me, big green eyes, the black face striped a grubby white down the middle. I grinned at it, tasting the brandy in my mouth, and put it down carefully on the threadbare hearthrug. It looked up at me, then tottered away towards the open door, a strange crab-like walk, not at all well. I watched it disappear into the hall, thinking again of the notes Stollmann had arranged to be lifted from Wesley’s GP. According to the photocopies I’d seen, his T-cell count was down in the low three hundreds. Barring miracles, that meant the imminence of full-blown AIDS. Scourge, I thought again, hearing the cat scratching at the kitchen door.

I turned back into the living room. Over the gas fire was a mantelpiece. On the mantelpiece, secured beneath an empty bottle of Guinness, was a pile of receipts. I glanced through them. Most of them were tear-offs from Access slips. Some of the slips were from bookshops. Others were from a local off-licence. One, for £499, was made out to a company called TravelSave. I peered at the date, feeling for a pen in my bag, writing it down. The slip was barely a week old, and a pencilled note beside it read ‘DFW’. I gazed at it a moment longer, then crossed to the window. In the bay was a small table, covered in pages of manuscript. The manuscript was closely typed, single spacing, the pages spread in no apparent pattern.

I bent to the table, curious now, regretting the brandy, picking up the pages at random, trying to get the drift. The stuff was highly technical, long paragraphs about error probabilities and optimum fire rates, and it took me longer than it should have done to realize that it wasn’t Wesley’s work at all, but had come from somewhere else, probably America. Spellings like ‘defense’
and ‘center’. References to various individuals in the Pentagon. I hesitated a moment, then glanced at my watch and left the pages where I’d found them. It was barely four o’clock, but the questions I had left were brutally direct and I knew more or less where to look to find the answers.

Wesley’s bedroom was the next door along the hall. The curtains here were also drawn, the room nearly dark. I switched on the light. The room wasn’t big. A single bed lay along one wall. Beside it, on an upturned tea chest, was a pile of neatly folded towels. At the foot of the bed was a chest of drawers. On top of the chest of drawers were more towels and a pile of T-shirts. I opened one of the drawers. It was full of underwear, including a number of pairs of woollen tights, elasticated at the top. The tights were obviously well used because some of the heels had holes in. I glanced around at the bed again, recognizing the scene for what it was, evidence of the twin HIV preoccupations: with hygiene and with warmth.

I returned to the chest of drawers, rummaging deeper, finding what I’d been looking for almost immediately: a small white box with a dispensing note taped neatly round three sides. I glanced at the note. Wesley was to take four capsules daily, as prescribed. He was to avoid over- or under-doses. I opened the box. Inside were a number of white capsules with a thin blue band around the middle. In all, the course numbered thirty-six capsules. Only twelve had gone. I looked at the label again. It was dated 5 July 1991. I replaced the capsules and shut the drawer. The capsules were AZT, a drug that binds itself on to bits of the immune system and slows the advance of the HIV virus. It has some horrible side effects, but if you take it while you’re still HIV positive, but not actually ill, then in theory it can give you a couple of extra years. Once you begin to develop full-blown AIDS and the virus gets the upper hand you normally stop.

I gazed at the bed. Wesley had stopped taking the capsules, probably because of the side effects. If I’d got it right, if the stolen T-cell counts were accurate, then he was indeed on the edge of full-blown AIDS. In fact he might already be sick, tussling with whatever infection would finally kill him. I thought about it a little longer, trying to match him with some of the people I’d been counselling at Charlie’s. Without a detailed conversation,
any real prognosis would be largely guesswork, but the evidence to date wasn’t wonderful.

I stepped towards the bed, impressed by how clean everything was, newly washed, newly ironed. Then I saw the rows of pencil marks on the wall beside the pillow. For a moment they made no sense, a series of neat vertical lines, each set crossed out with a long diagonal stroke. I stared at them for a moment, wondering where I’d seen something similar before, then I had it. These were the marks you found on cell walls in prison, part of the dialogue prisoners had with themselves, banged up in solitary confinement, the days crawling past, an eternity of nothingness. I smiled trying to imagine this strange, possessed man in bed, adding another precious day to the life that was trickling away from him. Wesley Keogh, I thought, with his poorly cat and his careful pencilwork, turning mortality into the blackest of jokes.

‘What else?’

Stollmann emptied another sachet of sugar into his coffee and reached for the plastic stirrer.

I shrugged. ‘Not much. Spare bedroom. Next to Keogh. Unused.’

‘You went through the stuff on the table? In the living room.’

‘Some of it.’

‘You find anything else?’

‘No.’

‘You look for anything else?’

I glanced up at him, recognizing the impatience in his voice. I’d phoned him from a call box on Guildford station. For some reason, he’d insisted on meeting me off the train at Waterloo. By now, my headache was turning into a full-blown migraine. Half an hour with Stollmann I emphatically didn’t need.

‘I had no time,’ I said. ‘I just wanted a look. A nose around. That’s all.’

‘You’ve still got Aldridge’s keys?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why does he have the keys in the first place?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Didn’t you ask him?’

‘No.’

‘But you’d have an idea?’

I looked at him for a moment, remembering Aldridge in the restaurant, the long fingers, the practised innuendos, the way he’d kissed me when he said goodbye.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’d have an idea.’

Stollmann nodded, pushing a cup towards me, turning away, his elbows on the counter of the kiosk, half of London swirling past us in the nightly race for the trains. I shivered and cupped my hands around the thin plastic. For mid-October it was already surprisingly cold. Stollmann picked up his coffee, wetting his lips, not swallowing. When he was tired, he had a habit of talking without moving his lips, as if he was trying to conserve energy.

‘You seeing him tonight, then?’

‘Who?’

‘Keogh.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

I put my cup down. I was beginning to fantasize about
Coronation Street
and an early bed.

‘I’m tired,’ I said, ‘and I’m going home.’

‘You understand the urgency?’

‘Yes. You mentioned it.’

‘I meant it. We need to know about him. What he’s doing. Who he’s seeing. What he knows. Not next week. Not tomorrow. Now.’

‘I told you. I’m going home.’

Stollmann looked at me a moment, then shrugged. ‘I’ve got a car on the forecourt,’ he said. ‘We’ll give you a lift.’

Fulham is twenty minutes from Waterloo, on the north side of the river. Instead, we turned left at Putney, slotting into the traffic streaming south out of London. It was raining again, a foul night, but the Curzon House driver anchored himself in the fast lane, dismissing cars in front with bursts of mainbeam, pushing the big Rover past ninety miles an hour. By the time the roadside boards were indicating Guildford, I was calm enough to risk a conversation.

‘Is this wise?’ I said. ‘Me arriving unannounced?’

Stollmann barely registered the question, staring ahead at the road, totally impassive. ‘We fixed it this afternoon,’ he said, ‘through Aldridge. You’re expected at seven.’

‘I am?’

‘Yes. Aldridge has been worried. He knows you through a friend. You’re an AIDS counsellor. You’re happy to help. Aldridge has asked you to call in.’

‘And what did Keogh say?’

Stollmann hesitated a moment, the faintest smile on his lips. ‘He told Aldridge to forget it. He told him there were better ways to square his conscience.’

‘Like what?’

‘Aldridge didn’t say.’ Stollmann tapped the driver on the shoulder and muttered something I didn’t catch. A mobile phone appeared between the front seats, the driver handing it back. Stollmann took it and punched in a set of numbers from memory. Then he passed me the phone.

‘Wesley Keogh,’ he said. ‘Best to confirm you’re still coming.’

12

For the second time in three hours, I paused outside Wesley’s front door, wondering what the man would be like. On the phone, from the car, he’d been blunt to the point of rudeness, a flat, slightly hoarse London voice telling me it was a waste of time even making the call. He was busy. He was tired. He had better things to do than sit around listening to do-gooders all night. Do-gooders drove him up the wall. If I had any sense, I’d turn round and go home. In the background, loud, I could hear music. I recognized the piece because it had been one of Rory’s favourites.

‘Puccini,’ I’d said, when he paused to take a breath,
‘Turandot.’

‘You know it?’

‘Well.’

‘You like it?’

‘Yes. Very much.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

He’d laughed at this point, a high-pitched cackle of mirth, far from benign.

‘Fuck me,’ he’d said, before putting the phone down, ‘you’d better come over then.’

Now I heard footsteps on the stairs. The door opened. He had a huge face. The rest of him was very thin. He was wearing a collarless shirt beneath a loose pullover and a pair of tracksuit bottoms several sizes too big. His ears were enormous, his eyes bulged slightly, and when he opened his mouth, I saw he’d lost one of his front teeth. He looked at me, a figure from a strip-cartoon,
Viz,
maybe, or the
Beano.

‘You never told me your name.’

‘Sarah.’

He nodded, peering out into the dark. ‘You gotta car?’

‘Came by train.’ I paused. ‘And cab.’

‘Oh?’ He frowned a moment, then shrugged. Upstairs,
Turandot
was coming to an end. I stepped inside, shaking the rain from my coat, following him up the stairs. Stollmann and the driver were half a mile away, in some pub or other. Already, I knew I’d got the right end of the deal.

Upstairs, we went into the living room. Light from a small table lamp spilled on to Wesley’s armchair. Beside it was a four-pack of Guinness and a copy of the
Daily Mirror.
The cat sat in a nest of cushions on the chair. Wesley tipped him off, sinking into the scuffed leather, carefully arranging the cushions behind him. The room was very hot, the gas fire turned up high. Wesley looked up at me, grinning in a slightly manic way. He reached for one of the cans, tearing the ring-pull, tipping it to his lips. He had long, bony fingers, big red knuckles and the watch on his wrist slid up and down every time he moved his arm.

‘What happened?’ he said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘To your face.’ He touched his cheek. ‘There.’

I looked at him. The man came at you in gusts. It was like having a conversation with the beginnings of a typhoon, sudden flurries of questions, totally unpredictable.

‘I had an accident.’

‘Where?’

‘Abroad.’

‘When?’

‘A while ago.’

He nodded, taking another mouthful of Guinness, stooping to fondle the cat.

‘Scourge,’ he said briefly, ‘my buddy.’

I smiled, recognizing the dig for what it was. In the AIDS world, buddies team up with the sick and the dying, staying with them until the end. Wesley, as ever, had found an alternative.

‘He’s very thin,’ I said.

‘Yeah.’ He paused. ‘He’s expressing solidarity.’

‘Is he ill, too?’

‘Feline leukaemia. Same kind of virus as HIV. That’s why I
took him in. He’s read the books. Knows the script backwards.’ He bent to the cat again, one huge eye upturned, waiting for me to react. His hair, long, was very thin. I could see his scalp beneath. ‘So why are you here?’ he said at last. ‘Friend of Dirty Derek’s? Piece on the side?’

‘Hardly.’

‘No?’ He laughed again, that same percussive cackle. ‘Guy’s got a real problem, you know that? Can’t keep his dick to himself.’ He paused, still looking up at me. ‘I’m amazed.’

‘At what?’

‘That he hasn’t tried it on. With you.’

‘Oh,’ I shrugged. ‘Maybe he doesn’t fancy me.’

‘He fancies everyone. Anyone. Anything in a skirt. Judgement never comes into it. Just as well, really, because he hasn’t got any. That’s why they made him editor. You know all about that, too?’

‘No, not really. He’s a family friend. I don’t get mixed up in the rest.’

‘Ah,’ Wesley nodded. ‘That would make it incest. Probably not his game.’

He looked disappointed, sinking back into the cushions, closing his knees to make a platform for the cat. I sat down in the chair opposite.

‘I really can help,’ I began. ‘I’m not here to kid you along.’

Wesley glanced up at me, a new expression, attentive, wary, one eyebrow raised. ‘You’re not?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Absolutely.’ I paused. ‘What have you had so far? In the way of outreach?’

‘Oh,’ he shrugged, ‘the usual. Kindness. Help. Support. You have to put up with a lot of all that.’ He frowned, tickling the cat. ‘People are clueless really but I don’t think they mean any real harm. It’s just…’ He shrugged again, reaching for the can of Guinness. ‘You drink this stuff?’

‘Yes.’

He held a can out for me. ‘Take it. There’s a glass in the kitchen. Clean as a whistle.’

‘I’m sure.’

I went into the kitchen for the glass. I found one in a dresser
beside the sink. Everything was spotless, just like the bedroom. Leaving the kitchen, I noticed a photo on the pin-board by the door. It had been carefully scissored from a newspaper but carried no caption. I paused by the door, peering at it. There were tiny dots on a grey/white background. Each dot trailed a line behind it, like a spoor. I began to count the dots. There were a dozen or so.

‘Guess.’

I turned round. Wesley was standing in the hall. He had a can of Guinness in one hand. I nodded at the pin-board. ‘These things?’

‘Yes.’

‘Haven’t got a clue.’

He nodded, saying nothing, reaching for my glass. The Guinness foamed and bubbled as he poured.

‘You’re supposed to ask questions,’ he said, ‘in your line of work. Why don’t you start with the obvious? Like when I first got sick?’

‘But you hate do-gooders.’

‘Do I?’

‘Yes. You told me you did. On the phone.’

‘Sure.’ He nodded. ‘It’s true. I do.’

‘And?’

He glanced up, crumpling the empty can, aiming for the bin and missing. He stooped to pick it up, carefully wiping the line of drips with a rag from a bucket under the sink. Then he opened a cupboard and took out another four cans of Guinness.

‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ he said. ‘I’ve got lots more of these.’

We talked for the rest of the evening, back in the living room, the empty cans of Guinness forming a neat line beside Wesley’s chair. He told me everything I’d reasonably need to know about his medical condition, plus a great deal more. He went into the smallest print of half a dozen sexual encounters, some here, some in the States, partly to test me, to probe my shock threshold, and partly because I think he genuinely enjoyed talking about it. He described each episode the way a man on a desert island might remember a particular meal, what it looked like, the way it presented itself, the sense of anticipation, of excitement, that subtle contract between curiosity and sheer lust that had, in the
end, taken him to a selection of the glitzier New York bathhouses.

One particular place, his favourite, he described with enormous relish: the clever lighting, the different kinds of pine, the bodies ghosting about amongst the steam. The cubicles where you got changed had smelled of amyl nitrate and expensive leather and everywhere you looked, he said, there were guys fucking each other. They were doing it at the side of the swirl pool. They were doing it under water. They were even doing it through specially cut holes in the cubicle partitions, crutch height, a real gas, no face, no name, no conversation, just the goods. The whole thing had been wonderland, pure anarchy, buckets and buckets of raw sex laced with drugs and laughter.

Sprawled in the armchair, Wesley closed his eyes, grinning at the memories. He’d loved it, he said, in New York. He loved the energy of the place, America on speed, the pace of life on the street, the way that no one dared look at you, the risks you could run, the rules you could break, the relationships you could nurture and trash in the same crazy twenty-four hours.

‘Brilliant,’ he said, ‘daft and brilliant.’

‘No regrets?’

‘None.’

‘And now?’

He shrugged. ‘Now’s different. When you’re at it, you don’t think about now. Do you? All this?’ he gestured limply with one hand, the roll-up in his fingers still unlit.

‘All what?’

‘This. All this. Me, Scourge…’ He paused. ‘Nice ladies like you, popping round to help.’

‘No?’

‘No.’ He shook his head, reaching for a match, lighting the roll-up. ‘A lot of it’s in your head, you know that?’

‘A lot of what?’

‘This. All this. AIDS. You. Me. All that stuff.’

‘You mean getting it?’

‘No. Fuck, no. I’ve just told you. That was a rage, getting it.’ He shook his head again, expelling a long plume of blue smoke. ‘No, having it, having it.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Yes, you do. You must do. You meet guys, guys like me, my
kind of state, OK, so maybe quieter …’ He paused, frowning, looking for another word. ‘Deader? That make sense?’

I looked at him, storing the phrase away, surprised at how exact it was.

‘Deader,’ I agreed, ‘less vital.’

‘Sure. So you’ll meet these guys. And most of them, most of us, are in the same fucking room in our heads. We’re all frightened. We’re all completely lost. Anyone tells you different’s lying. But it just matters how you deal with it, that’s all.’ He glanced across at me. ‘We agree?’

‘Yes,’ I nodded, ‘I think we do.’

‘You’re serious?’

‘Yes. Perfectly.’

‘Good … you know something about AIDS?’

I shook my head, not wanting to break the flow, already mesmerized by this extraordinary man. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Tell me.’

‘It’s amazingly dull. That’s the real problem. Dull.’ He stopped, inhaling another deep lungful of roll-up, seeming to expect some reaction or other. I obliged with a smile.

‘Dull?’ I queried. ‘Dull as in boring? Or dull stupid?’

‘Both.’ He grinned. ‘Actually, there’s a period early on that’s truly weird. Worse than weird. Surreal. That’s when they’ve told you what’s wrong and you’ve drawn the obvious conclusions, and you still need a new car because the old one’s completely clapped out, and you’re listening to the guy at the local garage trying to sell you a three-year warranty on some fucking banger and you’re thinking three
years?
Or the vehicle licence thing comes through the door, the renewal thing, and you start wondering seriously about six months or a year, whether to risk the money or not, whether to waste the hundred quid or whatever it is for the whole year when you might be in the box.’ He smiled, watching me. ‘Then there’s that whole world of old, of being old, people like my mum. She’s old, seriously old. She’s sixty fucking six, for God’s sake, and there she is, banging on about the pension and the Darby and Joan club, and you’re standing there shaking your head thinking sixty-
six
… Jesus … she should be so lucky.’ He shook his head, looking away. ‘Yeah, surreal…’

There was a long silence. Scourge had departed. I could hear him in the hall, scratching away at the front door. I thought for a moment about letting him out, but didn’t.

‘D’you talk like this to everyone?’ I asked. ‘Chapter and verse?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Why?’

‘Just wondered.’ I paused. ‘Only with most people it’s the other way round. They sit and fidget and don’t say very much. Blood out of a stone.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’ I nodded, tipping the can to my lips. ‘Cheers.’

Wesley lifted a limp hand in response and sank a little deeper into the cushions. Behind the wild gusts of dialogue and the extravagant gestures, he was watching me very carefully indeed.

‘Dull,’ I prompted, ‘tell me more about dull.’

‘Dunno.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s because the thing’s so unpredictable. You never know. Not from week to week, day to day, hour to fucking hour. You know the bastard’s knocking off the T-cells and you know you’re not in great shape, but you can never be quite sure which bit’s gonna pack up next, and that becomes very knackering because you’re always on patrol, up and down, trying to work out what’s going on.’ He paused, shifting in the chair. ‘They tell you all this stuff about visualization, giving the bastard a name, the virus, trying to work out what it looks like, what it eats, whether it likes tomato sauce or not, and you do that for a while, but no one tells you how fucking exhausting it is, permanently out there, up and down, all weathers.’ He glanced across at me. ‘Bastard never sleeps, you know. Never. Not once in its bastard life. Just keeps hammering away, day and night, turning a buck, keeping busy, real eighties stuff.’ He shook his head, disgusted. ‘I know how the bastard votes, anyway.’

‘But dull?’ I said for the third time.

‘Yeah.’ He nodded, emphatic. ‘Dull, because once you get sick, it’s basically all the same. Bits packing up. One after the other.’

‘You’re sick now?’

‘Off and on.’ He frowned. ‘Sometimes I’m really sick, laid out. Other times, like now, it’s not too bad. But even now, I’m not right. Not well. Not the way I remember being well. It’s like living with a permanent hangover.’ He gazed down at the row of empty cans. ‘That’s one of the reasons I use these. Bastard never drinks. Hates it. No imagination. No sense of fun. I do it to spite him. When I’ve got the energy.’

He looked at me for a long time, then shook his head, unfolding
slowly from the armchair, one limb at a time, an old man in his mid-thirties, upright now and catching his breath. Watching him, I thought briefly of Stollmann and his chauffeur chum from Curzon House, sitting in some pub down the road, killing time. Wesley was looking down at me, swaying slightly, and for the first time I realized that he was drunk.

‘Don’t think dull means I’ve given up,’ he said, ‘because I haven’t. Giving up means missing out.’

‘On what?’

‘Dunno.’ He shrugged. ‘Whatever. No,’ he shook his head, emphatic again, ‘I’m into rationing, that’s all. The important things. Time and energy. What’s left. In between the bits when the bastard goes ape. That’s as close as we get to a plan round here. Listen—’