What Was Promised (46 page)

At one point, seeking respite, he comes on Alice in the hall, arranging flowers in a Tupperware. ‘What’s that you’ve there?’ he asks, and she peers up at him gravely. ‘Misteria,’ she says, ‘they’re for you,’ and gives him the bowl before wandering away. The flowers are heaped up like grapes, bruised by the child’s ministrations.

Wisteria: Mary’s favourite, loved for their dusty elegance and air of property, of old growth and suntrap walls. He remembers her excitement, long ago, the January day they were shown the house.
Oh, Michael, you won’t believe – it’s got its own wisteria!
Bashed about as they are, he isn’t sorry to have the flowers. He never would have thought to have noticed them himself.

Afterwards, the last guests gone, he drags a kitchen chair outside, wrestles off his tie and sits. Late light cuts across the lawn. Iris, Harry and the boys are clearing up inside. One of them – Jack, no doubt – is experimenting with the hi-fi, finding something to work to. Oscar comes out with tea.

‘Nothing stronger?’ Michael asks, and Oscar shrugs, as if to say it isn’t his idea, nor would it be his preference. He walks out onto the grass and rolls a cigarette, neat about it, quietly offering Michael his quiet company. People have dogs, Michael thinks, when what they need is Oscars. Any other day it would put him at his ease.

‘Oscar,’ he asks, ‘my daughter, Floss. She’s a son I’ve forgot the name of.’

‘Grant,’ Oscar says, letting the lapse pass without comment, and Michael nods, relieved. Grant Malcolm: it’s one thing off his mind. ‘Mr Noakes was asking where we will go tonight.’

‘Cyril,’ Michael says. ‘You can call him Cyril, speaking of names. You’ve been with us long enough, you’re hardly fresh off the boat. You don’t have to doff your cap.’

If he’s too harsh, Oscar doesn’t waver. He nods at the tea. ‘I can find you stronger.’

‘Later.’

‘Later, where?’

‘You can work it out, can’t you? Somewhere quiet, members only. I’ve had enough chat for one day.’

‘Crockford’s,’ Oscar suggests, and Michael thinks it over.

‘Call them, see if they can fit us in. That room upstairs again.’

Oscar studies him. ‘Afterwards, maybe girls,’ he says, ‘Raymond’s, the second show.’

‘Not tonight.’

‘Or fighting.’

‘Fighting?’

‘York Hall.’

Boxing, he means. York Hall is Bethnal Green, their old parish. ‘Too far east,’ Michael says, ‘we’ll want brighter lights than that.’ But Oscar has him bang to rights. All afternoon his thoughts have circled the gathering by the station. Clarence Malcolm, Dora Lazarus and his Floss, the whole sorry lot of them. Why were they there? To celebrate? To gloat? To go on where together, and raise a glass to what? And him the outsider outside his own wife’s funeral, not at the centre but the margin, watching the world move on without him . . . Yes, a fight would do him good. He wouldn’t say no to one himself. He’d like to hit and to be hit, to be jarred free of all this thought: to feel nothing for awhile but the black, viscous pleasure of violence.

It’s past eight before they’re ready for the off. ‘Coming, Harry?’ Cyril asks, but Harry has done his bit, he should be getting home with Iris, so that it’s just the boys – Cyril, Oscar, Jack and him – who head on into town.

Michael drives, being sober. The light is going around them just as the promised rain begins. The precipitation is so fine as to be almost imperceptible, the pavements darkening, oily, as if London is sweating out its inexhaustible pollution.

‘Well,’ says Cyril, ‘that’s that. I never much liked funerals, but I thought it went off alright.’

He glances Michael’s way, and Michael nods, though it’s just for form.
They were all there
, is what he thinks,
all those from the old days. You never saw them, Cyril, but they were, and there was no goodwill in them
.

‘What’s the verdict, then, Oscar? Dinner first, drinking later?’

Oscar shifts in the back. Michael can feel his eyes on him.

‘Dinner,’ Michael answers for him. ‘After that we’ll take it as it comes.’

They come down into Mayfair. It’s Friday night, and parking’s scarce, so that they walk the last leg to Crockford’s. The manager welcomes them back, shows them up to their room, opens the doors onto the terrace.

Michael orders red meat, rare, and eats it hard and fast. Abruptly he is ravenous, as if, with Mary put to rest, he has a void to fill. There’s a waitress there to pour the wine, and Jack strikes up some banter with her, a flirt to cheer them all. ‘Jack,’ Cyril says, ‘ain’t you got a girl these days?’ And off Jack goes, cock of the walk, full of his own woes and wonders, with the rest of them half listening, like workers by a wireless.

‘So, what’s the occasion?’ the waitress asks, showing willing. ‘It must be something special for you all to be let out tonight,’ and Jack gulps on his spiel and falters.

‘It’s a sending off,’ Cyril says, and the waitress screws up her face.

‘What, like in football?’

Not exactly, dear, he tells her, and they share a laugh about it, insomuch as it can be laughable: the waitress does her best.

‘You should have seen her,’ Cyril says to Jack, ‘when she was your age. Mary. My God but she was something. Best luck Mickey ever had, wasn’t she, Mickey?’

‘She was,’ he says, and then, ‘I didn’t always know it.’

‘Mickey,’ Cyril says, but the warning is halfhearted: it isn’t the night for them.

‘I always wanted more for us. You,’ Michael says, to Cyril, ‘you were happy with what you had. I never used to trust that. I thought you were complacent. I didn’t see it for contentment.’

‘Well,’ Cyril says, ‘you got what you wanted, though, didn’t you? You made your fortune; hers, too. We all make mistakes, but here we are. It worked out for the best in the end.’

‘I don’t know,’ Michael says, ‘I don’t know that it did,’ and Cyril’s gentle, seamed face hardens.

‘There’s no point dwelling. You were young and hungry. You set out for more of everything and bingo, here you are with it. You couldn’t ask for more than this. You came out on top, you did alright, and you did alright by her. Look at us, we should all be grateful. We’re bloody
kings
compared to what we were! Up the West End, drinking wine, and this nice young lady to pour it for us. Come on, let’s have a toast: to Mary. Will you have a taste yourself, my love?’

They raise and drink and fall quiet. There is the clink of thick club cutlery on heavy china. The waitress has stepped back from them, is hiding her face by the dumbwaiter, but it’s alright, they’re almost done. ‘Jack,’ Oscar says quietly, ‘you’ll know a place to go on to.’

Jack does. Michael gets the bill. For the waitress he asks for an envelope, folds in a fifty for her. Oscar and Jack have gone ahead. Michael follows them out with Cyril at his side.

‘Alright?’ Cyril asks, and when he nods, ‘Almost there now. Tomorrow it’s onwards and upwards again, the way it’s always been for us.’

They’re heading into Soho, where the evening crowds are denser, clustered around pubs and bars, peep shows, clip joints, encounter parlours. The vice business is past its prime, these days, is dying one by-law at a time, though there’s no shortage of custom.

‘I saw them,’ Michael says, and Cyril glances around inquiringly.

‘Eh?’

‘The old lot, from the Buildings. Not here. They were meeting Floss, it was outside the cemetery.’

Cyril has slowed, is peering at him, one hand waist-high to steer the crowd. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I’m telling you now. It was after the service, there wasn’t much you could have done.’

Cyril shrugs. ‘I could have had a word, asked for some respect. Who was it? What were they doing, all the way out there?’

‘I didn’t wait around. Drinking champagne, for all I know, they had that look about them. It was Dora, the watchmaker’s wife, him too, and the orphan boy they took in. Them and Clarence Malcolm.’

‘What do you mean, the
boy
?’ Cyril asks, ‘he must be, what, fifties by now. The world’s moved on a bit since then, ain’t it?’ he says, and Michael grinds to a halt. He raises a hand to wipe his mouth, staring at nothing or the crowds, who stare queerly back at him.

‘Fuck me,’ he says, softly. ‘I must be wrong in the head. Am I mad, Cyril? I’ve been seeing things. I saw them clear as I see you.’

Cyril has a hand on him. ‘Easy,’ he says, ‘come and lean a minute, I’ll run in here and get a chair.’

‘No – leave it, Cyril. I’m alright.’

‘Sure, now?’

‘I’m alright,’ Michael says, more strongly.

‘Course you bloody are,’ Cyril says. ‘You’re right in the head as the rest of us. It’s a long day, that’s all, it’s a lot to take in, it’s just got tangled up, that’s all. It’s the grief of it, Mickey.’

They start off again, snail’s pace: slow as hearses, Michael thinks faintly, or Chelsea Pensioners. Half a block ahead stands Oscar, looking back, his head cocked. Like a hound, Michael thinks, who scents his master’s worries, and he laughs. ‘Good old Oscar,’ he whispers, ‘good boy.’

‘Let’s see the inside of Jack’s place,’ Cyril is saying, ‘have a drink and a sit down.’

‘Alright.’

‘One for the road and we’ll get you home.’

‘Alright. It could have been worse.’

‘How’s that?’ Cyril asks, but Michael shakes his head.
It could have been her I saw
, is what he thinks, but he daren’t say the words: the thought alone is terrible enough.

4. Midnight

Glitterball-spun light. Spirit on the rocks, the glass pressed into his hands, its sweat icy between his fingers. Arms around his shoulders. ‘One more, Mr Lockhart?’ his embracers ask, and he says go on, then, keep them coming. They laugh and pat him on the back. ‘You still alright there, Mickey?’ they ask, and he says oh yes, never better.

Up above them and their shadows, in the densest whirl of light, girls, so young and beautiful it breaks his heart to look at them. Flash cash in the gloom around them, young bloods and silver foxes with their tongues and wallets out. A split-second in the mirrors when he catches one girl’s eyes. There is no disgust in them, only the deadly boredom of her simulation.

His ears ring with the din. He can’t hear himself speak. Jack Swan is shouting in his ear, so shatteringly close that he can smell his breath. ‘This is the life, sir, isn’t it? This is the way to do it! The stories it could tell, this place!’, and he says, but I don’t want them. I don’t want stories, Jack, I’ve had enough of them for one day.

The spirit courses in his blood; his temples thrum with it. It’s true, he’s never felt better. The girl is still dancing above him, by him, for him alone. Her skin is dark and plush as mink, black as the pearls he once gave Dora Lazarus. Oscar is there at his right hand. Oscar, he says, tell me something, the woman who died, the one I killed, do you ever think of her?

‘We all do,’ Oscar says, and he is so grateful he smiles, as he so rarely does, it seems so generous that anyone should answer him.

Listen, he says, Oscar, listen. Did you ever hear this story? There’s a knight who’s still a boy, and a fisher who’s a king . . . do you know that one, Oscar? Can you tell me what it means?

This time there is no reply. When he looks, Oscar is gone. A stranger is there in his stead, an old man with stone-grey skin who turns and becomes Clarence Malcolm.

He rises. Hands try and hold him down. A table turns, its freight of glass cascading into darkness. Leave off me, he says, I need air, and then he’s stumbling free, through the mass of seated watchers, up the stairs, into the night.

Where is he? Some alley, a chink of stars immured above. He leans against damp brick and vomits into the rankness, backhands the last spool from his lips. Behind him, by the alley’s mouth, someone laughs and jeers, and he turns – his hands already fists, his knuckles grazing on mortar – but there is no one to be seen, only a car’s brief passing, out under a shimmy of neon.

He pushes himself upright, walks out into the street. Which one is it? Brewer or Wardour or Old Compton. ‘They all look the same to me,’ he says, and hears himself for what seems the first time in hours, his voice thick as that of any pavement drunkard. Abruptly he wants nothing so much as to be home, out of sight of the city’s unremitting judgement. Where is his car? Somewhere the wrong side of Crockford’s, and too far for him, now, even if he could trust himself to sober up behind the wheel.

He straightens, steadies, starts to walk again. It feels better to be moving, though his heart is going double time, he can feel it in his breath. He grins as best he can and shakes his head at it. ‘Get back to work,’ he says, ‘you’ve years left in you yet.’

At Air Street he turns south. Ahead of him he can hear the perpetual motion of Piccadilly, and as he comes out by the circus he sees, in the oncoming coil of traffic, a black cab’s molten-copper beacon.

‘Last orders,’ the driver warns, kerb-crawling in beside him. ‘Might not be you, depends on where you’re heading.’

‘North,’ says Michael, ‘Highbury,’ and the man hawks, phut and into the gutter it goes.