Weekend (27 page)

Tonight as she shut the storm doors she decided it was all right. The television was blaring from the living-room. That couldn’t be Samantha. She lived inside her own routine as if it were a separate apartment. She would be in bed by now.

After locking up, she pushed open the door of the living-room.

‘Mark.’

No one was there except a dark man shooting someone on a lonely street, with no witnesses besides herself as far as her house was concerned. She turned off the television and pulled out the plug. As she went upstairs, feeling the initial flutterings of panic begin to happen in her, she was already regretting that Mark was now too old to be obliged to accept a baby-sitter. If he was still out …

She opened his bedroom door. The room was in darkness and the bed was empty. She was about to go and waken Samantha when she made him out against the faint, cloud-filtered moonlight. The curtains hadn’t been closed. He was standing there, staring up at the sky, like Dracula with earphones. Perhaps he was preparing to fly off into the night. She could hear the muted, persistent thud of the beat from the doorway. God, he was tall. Having his hair gelled up into careful disarray made him look even taller.

She didn’t want to go up and touch his shoulder in case he jumped out of the window. He was a tightly wound boy. If she made him start, he would resent it. It would spoil his image. And he certainly couldn’t hear her if she spoke.

She switched on the light. He spun round, wide-eyed, then
put on his nonchalance immediately. The light had instantly created his habitat around him: old socks, discarded sweatshirts, scattered CDs, what she called the ‘handles’ for his PlayStation, a plate with a fork on it and three empty glasses on the floor, sticky with residue. He looked like a derelict on wasteland. Before he could turn away, she signalled him to take off the earphones. He pulled them down round his neck.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Everything okay?’

He nodded vaguely, as if his ears still hadn’t cleared themselves of the music.

‘When are you going to tidy this room?’

‘Yes.’

She sometimes wished she had an interpreter with them when they talked.

‘When?’

‘I’ll do it.’

‘And it’s time you got to bed.’

He nodded.

‘Soon. Goodnight, Mark.’

‘Goodnight.’

It was nice to have a family chat. As she went out of the door, he spoke again:

‘You have a good night, Mum?’

‘Fine, thanks.’

‘That’s good.’

He put the earphones back on as she was closing the door. Always that delayed connection, like light arriving through space long after it was sent. The night had been ‘fine’? Only if your idea of a good time was listening to Janice enumerate the problems of her marriage.

She went back downstairs to make sure that all the lights
were off and all the plugs pulled out and that everything was generally all right. She felt too tired to be bothered with this but, with someone as careless as Mark in the house, she had turned going to bed into a ritual as compulsive as evening prayers must be for some people. Habit, keep us safe this night.

In the kitchen she noticed again the huge pot of peeled potatoes Alice had left on Friday. She sighed. When Janice had recommended that Alice could come to her for a half-day every week, she didn’t explain that it would be like having a poltergeist in the house. Things changed position inexplicably and sometimes disappeared altogether, to turn up months later in strange places. Alice was a good worker and pleasant enough company any time their lives crossed if she came home from work early. But Alice could not be given advice, let alone instructions. She followed her own compulsions.

Potatoes were one. They seemed to exert some kind of mystical influence on Alice. If there were potatoes in the kitchen, she peeled every one. Sometimes coming home, you could find two large pots filled to the brim with potatoes in water. No notes left could stop her, no phone-calls from work expressing a profound longing not to have potatoes tonight. The only way to save their skins would have been to take them with you. Alice had her own special relationship with potatoes. If she looked at one, it peeled.

She also seemed to have selective kleptomania for cleaning fluids. To use them was to take them with her. Discreet questions as to their subsequent whereabouts merely evoked a sharing of your puzzlement. Perhaps a more authoritative sternness was called for but, if things went too far and Alice quit, the untidiness of the house might become such that the three of them lost sight of one another among the clutter.

As she looked at the kitchen now, the possibility seemed very real. Some of Mark’s discarded clothes lay on the floor. They were close enough to the laundry basket to suggest that he had at least made a half-hearted effort to throw them into it. There were used plates and cutlery and a box of cereal and a packet of salt and an opened sachet of pâté, all sitting where he had absentmindedly left them while he was transfixed by whatever was on his mind – the meaning of some abstruse pop-song or a topless woman he had seen in one of the magazines he kept under his bed. As she stacked the plates and put things away, she came upon a screwdriver. She wondered what he could have been doing with that. It came from a cupboard with no food in it and, therefore, one that he never looked into. Replacing the screwdriver, she noticed a newspaper pushed to the back of the cupboard.

That was another thing. What was Alice’s problem with the printed word? Anything with words on it was hidden away wherever she found handy. Pulling the paper out and closing the cupboard door, she went towards the bin. It was then she noticed that the paper was open at Harry Beck’s article on dogs.

He hadn’t phoned. Maybe he was just another crossing on Cunard. He didn’t deserve to have the article read again but she took it upstairs anyway.

She checked on Samantha, who was sleeping. It was difficult to believe she didn’t think she was good-looking.

With the bedside light on, she settled herself to read.

… I once visited a man – once was enough – who lived with a Doberman that was a terrible bully. The man was nice enough but he seemed to think that his dog was the householder. So did the dog. I’ll call it Snarl to protect the guilty …

She felt sleepy. It had been a long day. She was finding it hard to keep the thread.

… wondering why the man didn’t just buy Snarl a twinset and pearls and marry it … a progressive tendency in our society: treating animals as people … beaches for dogs … umbrellas, showers and meals in restaurants … Now Bruce … this was Wittgenstein with a tail …

The paper slipped from her hands and she sank back in sleep. It was a sleep so sweet that when the phone rang she wanted to ignore it. But her hand reached out automatically and took the receiver.

‘Hm?’ she said.

‘Hullo, you,’ a dark voice said.

She almost surfaced into suspicion.

‘Who is this?’

‘Harry. It’s Harry Beck, Mary Sue.’

‘Oh, the late Mr Beck.’

‘Well, I’ve been away. As you know. But listen. There’s some things I want to tell you. I’ve been thinking about you all weekend.’

‘That’s nice,’ she murmured.

But she wasn’t sure if she meant that it was the sentiment which was nice or the voice that expressed it. The voice was deep and gently undulating and very soothing. It was easy to weave it into her sleep. She felt as if she were dreaming. And soon she was …

‘… and I hope you understand what all this means. I don’t know when I last felt like this, if I ever did. I’m sorry to have
gone on about it for so long. But I had to tell you. I had to tell you before I lost my nerve. I hope I haven’t put you off, Mary Sue … Mary Sue. Hullo? Mary Sue. Hullo … Hu-fucking-llo!’

He switched off and slammed the phone down. How about that? He poured himself another whisky. Maybe he shouldn’t take any more. Maybe it was the drink that had ambushed him into trying to write love-poems with his mouth. But he needed pain-killer. He went to the sink and put water in it. Jesus. He walked up and down the kitchen, taking his drink with him like a medical drip. Could you believe that? An elaborate declaration of love that acted as a sedative? It was a new experience. Not one you could enjoy. Jesus. Maybe he should patent himself. He could make a business out of it. What happens is people who can’t sleep give him a call and he talks to them. A couple of minutes or so and they’re in a deep sleep. He replaces the receiver. Quite a few advantages to the system. You only pay according to the length of time it takes you to fall asleep. Judging by her, it shouldn’t be long. Cheap oblivion. You go to sleep with the phone still in your hand. Nobody can disturb you for the rest of the night. Next morning, no woozy chemical side-effects. You’ve just had a deep and naturally induced sleep. Serious possibilities there. Dial-a-Coma, he could call it. Bugger it.

What was the point? You build yourself up to be able to say something you really mean and it vanishes into the air. He could never find the words to say it as well again. He sat down at the kitchen table, sipping his whisky and stoking his anger. When the phone rang, he stared at it for a moment. He thought of leaving it but it might be Andrew. He took it up. Her voice was muffled.

‘Did you call me there? What were you saying?’

‘Oh, piss off!’ he said, and cut the connection.

But even in his anger he couldn’t be sure that he meant it.

So this is why I am writing to you.

She stood up from the computer and walked around. She wasn’t sure she should write the letter. She couldn’t believe that Alison wasn’t here. She had known exactly when they were coming back. And Kate? It was true that she had told Kate she wanted to be alone on the bus but she didn’t have to sit so far away. It was as if she couldn’t bear to leave Mickey Deans. Love’s young wet dream. Very wet.

My life as a leper. She began to wander round the flat convincing herself that she was just saying hullo again to the place, as if she had been on a tour of the Far East. But she knew she was really casing out her own incredulity and making sure Alison hadn’t fallen asleep in a cupboard or something. The place was as empty as the way she felt. As empty as the wardrobe Kevin had left her with.

It was as if the world was a conspiracy against her. Were they trying to tell her something? Well, maybe she was getting the message. ‘Oh, Jacqui. I won’t be back tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow. All right?’ That was all Kate had said when they got off the bus. And winked. Winked? All right? Kate knew she had been crying on the bus.

And where was Alison? She had thought they were all so close. They shared just about everything, she had thought. So where were they now? It didn’t used to be like this. Not since the night that Kevin had dumped her and she phoned them and they came round to help her through it and she told them what had happened.

She had been sitting in the flat she and Kevin shared, with the table laid for a romantic supper. Two red roses in a thin vase. A candle just waiting to be lit. Two places set. The coq au vin was cooking nicely. A bottle of red was opened, becoming what Kevin had told her was
chambré
.

‘The pretentious bastard,’ she said to them.

It was the anniversary of the night they had met in the Halt. She didn’t mind that he hadn’t remembered. She had. She wasn’t wearing any underwear, just the sheer blue mini-dress. It showed off her thighs, which she thought one of her best features. She was so excited waiting for him, her nipples were like obelisks.

‘What an idiot I was,’ she said. ‘The only thing that got laid was the table.’

She was doing that nervous double- and triple-check thing you do in your head when you really want everything to be just right. Roses, wine, the tie from Liberty in its folded cardboard thingamajig. It would look good in his office. She checked that the coq au vin was simmering nicely, not turning into leather. Then she suddenly wanted to put on the necklace he had given her.

‘The only bloody present he ever did give me,’ she told them.

She went through to the bedroom to find it when she noticed the door of his wardrobe slightly ajar. When she pushed it, it clicked shut immediately. As she turned away
towards the dresser where she kept the few bits of jewellery she had, she suddenly stopped. Something wasn’t right. Something didn’t fit her habitual sense of things. She worked out what it was. His wardrobe door had never shut so easily before. She had always needed to press some clothes in carefully and release them just at the moment the door was closing or it wouldn’t click. She crossed back to the wardrobe and opened the door.

‘It was a weird feeling,’ she told them. ‘As if I was looking at how my heart suddenly felt.’

The wardrobe was empty. She checked for his shirts and pullovers. Nothing. For his shoes. They had walked. Even his Dinky Porsche (promise to himself of all the money he would make some day) had driven off into the sunset.

She was so dumb she sat on the bed, writing Gothic novels in her head about what had happened to him. He had been murdered by burglars and they had disposed of the body and his clothes, so that nobody could ever prove he had been there. He had been abducted by aliens and they had atomised his entire wardrobe. He had amnesia and had packed and was travelling aimlessly round the country, trying to find out who he was.

Then it slowly came to her. If he didn’t know who he was, she did. He was a bastard. He had sloped off without even leaving a note. He hadn’t even had the courtesy to sit talking soulfully into the early hours of the morning, telling her all that crap about needing his space and mouthing that it’s really for her sake because he can’t give her the total kind of love she deserves and she’ll be better off without him and maybe later it will be different and he’ll always think of her with love.

It might just be sleazeball-speak for ‘I’m screwing somebody else’, but at least it was nicer than vanishing so fast you
caused a draught that hung around for months. Your average arsehole would at least do that. But not him. He was gone, leaving her like loose change that had fallen through a hole in his life.