Fifty-Minute Hour (38 page)

James was attacking his bread roll, tearing at the fragments as if they were his enemies at work. ‘And then we had more trouble with Morton Cardigan. They can't agree the balances, and they're blaming
me
, of course.'

‘James, your soup is getting cold, dear.'

James stared down at his bowl, jabbed it with his spoon, removed the parsley garnish to the safety of his side-plate.

Mary smiled encouragement. ‘It looks lovely, doesn't it?'

‘What's that white stuff on the top?'

‘Just a swirl of cream.'

‘I'm not meant to look at cream – not with my cholesterol levels.'

‘Just once won't hurt you, darling. It
is
our anniversary.' Mary bit into a prawn, imagined it a penis, a tiny tiny penis – the sort you chose to learn things on, advanced skills like fellatio which still frightened her to death. That's what homosexuals did – she'd read it in the books – did with little boys. The minute Bryan walked in he'd been gawping at her sons, lustful eyes tracking to their photographs, lingering on their young and naked flesh. Pity and revulsion wrestled in her breast. His AIDS must be quite frighteningly advanced, what with the dizzy spells and the fact he couldn't eat at first, then couldn't seem to stop, and him begging her to save his life and letting out that frightful scream when the pain got too intense, and finally rushing off into the night because she'd mentioned John-Paul's name. John or Paul must be his lover's name, the one who had infected him, repaid his love with death. Or maybe even both of them. If Bryan were the promiscuous type, he might have a John as well as Paul. Both were common names (except when they were hyphened, which made them rare and special).

‘I tried to get a temp from personnel. At three p.m. some bloody useless girl shows up who doesn't know our system from a wheelbarrow.
And
she smoked, made all the …'

Mary glanced up at the handsome man sitting on her right. He was smoking, too, drawing on his cigarette very deeply and intensely, the way John-Paul often did. The tables in the restaurant were crammed so close together she could smell his aftershave, see the dark haze of almost-stubble shadowing his chin. He was the foreign-looking type with a tough and virile beard, unlike James, whose facial hair appeared to be dwindling with his scalp hair, as if both had lost their youthful thrust and vigour.

‘Oh,
yes
,' the man said softly, smiling at his girlfriend – a fat and rather vulgar blonde, whose daring yard of cleavage displayed a rhinestone pendant which spelt ‘Love'. She was doing all the talking, he answering with yeses, but such assured and ardent yeses, they seemed far more than monosyllables, seemed charged with passion, import. Mary dragged her eyes away, returned her mind to James.

‘Some wine for you now, darling?'

‘No, thanks. I'll stick with whisky.'

‘What, with soup?'

‘I don't like the soup. It's fishy.'

‘It's watercress and leek, James. It said so on the menu, underneath the French.'

‘Well, either their translator's duff, or their chef doesn't know a dogfish from a leek.'

‘Dogfish?' Mary had a sudden startling vision of Horatio with fins. Strange the dog had fawned on Bryan like that. Could dogs be gay as well? ‘Would you like some prawns instead, dear? There's more than I can eat here.'

‘Yes,
please
.'

Mary jumped. The man next door had spoken, but to his companion, not to her. She glanced at him again, drawn by his resemblance to John-Paul – not just the darkly foreign looks and the sensual way he smoked, but the same dramatic bone structure, and long-lashed deep-set eyes. He was younger than John-Paul, in fact, with a thicker broader body, but that was mostly hidden by the table. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘Yes, yes.' The yeses were staccato now, emphatic, almost solemn, the voice itself powerful but low-keyed. He suddenly turned his head towards her, distracted by her scrutiny, caught her eye and held it. She feared he was annoyed. She'd been rudely staring, eavesdropping, deserved to be reproved. Instead, he smiled – a lazy and indulgent smile, which started with his mouth and spread up to his eyes, eyes which narrowed slightly, challenging and teasing, daring her to meet his gaze, not falter, look away.

He looked away himself, at last, turned back to his pudding with a self-deprecating shrug. She took refuge in her wine. She had drunk too much already, but she found this man disturbing – the way he courted his
crème brûlée
, piercing through the brittle crust of sugar on the top, then toying, almost playing with the cream. Would John-Paul eat like that, with such teasing sensuous zest? She knew he liked his food (despite the rebuff of the mince pies), had once watched him eat a tiny square of fudge, astonished by the fervour with which he bit into the cube, devouring it with relish and solemnity, as if it were the Host. She presumed he'd only turned to sweets to cut down on his smoking, provide him with some substitute (as James had done himself, chomping on mint humbugs while still craving nicotine). But all the same, it had seemed extraordinarily intimate, him eating right in front of her, as if he had allowed her to participate in some private, almost dangerous ritual, withheld from other patients. She had found herself licking her own lips, tasting sweetness on her tongue, sucking out stray flecks of fudge from the secret slavering crannies of her mouth.

She shifted both her body and the angle of her chair, so that the man was less distractingly in view. ‘So what did Crawshaw finally decide, then?' she asked James dutifully, tried to listen to his answer, and not the seductive ‘yes' throbbing from her right. She took another gulp of wine, felt strangely hot and tingling, as if all the chafing-dishes in the restaurant had been lit beneath her body, their gases turned up high. The room was trembling slightly, its colours smudged and running, the crimson velvet curtains blushing into tablecloths, the still-lifes on the crowded walls not still at all, but bulging from their frames.

‘Yes,' the man laughed. ‘You bet!' She just had to move her chair back, watch him touch the woman's cheek, his slim artistic: fingers haloed with gold nicotine. She drained her glass, could feel those burning fingers on her own cheek, hear the fervent yeses in her ear. They weren't wasted on that prattling freckled fatty, but addressed to
her
– in bed – wearing nothing but her perfume and diamonds in both nipples, and whispered by John-Paul himself, also wildly naked. ‘Yes,' he said, impassionedly, as he traced the diamonds' carats with his tongue.
He
hadn't spurned her oysters and champagne, had been enchanted by the candles, enraptured by her playsuit, had gladly snuggled down with her on the transformed kitchen table, lips meeting vibrant lips …

‘I finally lost patience, Mary, marched up to R. B. and said, “Roland, either you change that cretin of a programmer, or I'll go up there myself and throttle him bare-handed.” And d'you know what Roland said …?'

‘Yes,' she breathed, John-Paul breathed. She stuffed a prawn whole into her mouth, practising her tongue-bath, allowing her own tongue to lick and lap the tepid trembling mollusc, turn it into John-Paul's tongue, make it move and writhe. She licked her lips, scooped a swirl of sauce from his mouth into hers. ‘Yes,' he kept on saying, approvingly, insistently, as she sucked the three last naked prawns slowly in and down.

‘Mary, I thought you said you had more than you could eat there? If you don't stop soon, you'll be scraping the pattern off the plate.'

She blushed, glanced up at James, surprised to see blue eyes and greying hair, though neither was in focus, quite. ‘Sorry, darling. I
am
feeling rather hungry.'

‘Well, if you'd only put your fork down, they might bring us our main course. We've been here a whole hour now and I'm still waiting for my steak. I need something safe and solid they can't ruin.'

She leant back in her chair while the waiters fussed with plates, brought steak and scallops, vegetables and salads, three mustards and the pepper mill, a different wine, fresh glasses. At last, they were alone again – John-Paul and her alone-relaxing on the silvered grass just beyond the greenhouse. They were so close now they were two scallops in a shell, face to face, chest to chest, thigh to…

‘Would you believe it, Mary, this steak tastes fishy, too. And they've hardly even cooked it. I said rare, not raw and cold. The place is really going downhill. Give any restaurant a Michelin star and it just lies down and dies.'

She was lying down herself, her body open, naked, the whole sky wild with Michelin stars, the moon a golden scallop-shell, smiling in the darkness – Aphrodite's emblem, or so all the books had said. ‘
Yes
,' John-Paul agreed, in his thrilling potent voice. ‘Aphrodite, goddess of love.' ‘Yes,' he said again, as she forked in her first mouthful, eager tongue exploring the pink folds. The taste was strange, exciting, the texture soft yet firm. She crammed in several more, almost retching as her throat was stretched.

‘Mary,
really
! What's got into you? You're eating like a pig.'

She hardly heard her husband, filled her mouth still more, let the juices dribble down her throat, allowed her lips to squeeze and suck, then used her teeth, gently, very gently – remembered what she'd read.

‘
Yes
!' A near-crescendo as the white sauce hit her taste buds, an unusual and exotic taste, slightly salty, even brackish. Mustn't spit it out – all the books agreed on that. She swallowed, wiped her mouth, eyes half-closed to savour it, relish the last drop.

‘More!' she clamoured, glancing up, reaching for the vegetables, the tiny heads of sweetcorn, the mangetout, cooked
al dente
.

‘
More
?' James laid his own fork down, swilled out his mouth with whisky. ‘You can't still be hungry, surely?'

‘Yes,' she thrilled. ‘Oh, yes.'

I was born again yesterday, at lunch-time. The birth was very easy. I just slipped from John-Paul's uterus into the womb of his consulting-room, felt very little difference – the same dark warmth, the same safe and rounded walls, the same rhythmic tick-tick of his heartbeat. I think he named me Lazarus. ‘For this my son was dead, and is alive.'

I was dead three days, in fact; three dark days when he was lying with Beata. Then he summoned me to life again, gave me new appointments – not two-ten, but lunch-time. Lunch-time's very special, the only hour he's free from seven in the morning to ten o'clock at night; the only hour he doesn't see his patients. It's his time for food and resting, his one and only chance to phone family or friends. Yet he's given all that up, made me his own family, given me his breathing-space, his Sabbath. He said it was just temporary, a way out of a crisis until he could arrange some different sessions, but maybe he'll continue it, perhaps even come to need me. He also said he had to go away, talked about some Christmas break, a month he'd be in Rome. He must have meant next year. He wouldn't leave his new-born son, not so soon, so cruelly.

The lunch-times were a present, like the love-feast. Yes, he killed the fatted calf for me, did it very quietly without knives or blood or fuss. He didn't overwhelm me with recriminations, questions, didn't even mention my docked hair – just understood I had to be a son. I felt loved and very honoured. No one else was fêted – the ring eased on their finger, the silk robe round their body, the seat of honour reclining on the couch. The elder son was griping that it simply wasn't just; he'd never shirked his duty or wasted money on loose living, yet no one killed the fatted calf for him. His voice was deep and throaty like Beata's, but John-Paul took no notice, had ears for me alone.

He's listening now, with that careful rapt attention which makes my every word seem precious – even all my silent words, or just my sighs and shiftings. I prefer to lie in silence, need all my concentration to focus on his name. Everyone and everything is thrumming it, repeating it – pipes beneath the pavements, dark and secret sewers, twanging power-lines, live electric cables. Police cars blare it as they siren past the tower; distant jet-planes throb it as they arc above the clouds, writing it in vapour-trails across the churning sky. Whole oceans thrash and pound it as they slam in on the strand. Lions roar it across Africa, and it catches fire immediately, scorches half the continent. It's engraved into the hard face of the moon.

‘John-Paul?' I say myself.

‘Yes, Nial?'

I settle back, say nothing, don't need to talk at all. It's enough to know he's there and real and listening. I like the tiny noises from his body, which prove he's still alive – a rumble from his stomach, the slow sucking of a sweet. I wish I were a sweet myself, so he could suck me very slowly. Or a ship, so he would put me in his bottle. Or his half-a-boat, so he would lie down on my deck. I cut out every John and Paul I could find in all the magazines and newspapers, joined them all with hyphens, hung them over road-signs, stuck them on to street-names. Every road now leads to him, every house contains him. He's living in my basement, and in all the rooms above it, one to five.

I couldn't eat the fatted calf. My stomach wasn't right, wasn't quite developed. I was still inside his womb, still feeding from his blood-supply, still waiting to be born – born a proper son. I felt very safe and snug, floating in warm fluid, continually tugged back to him by the umbilical cord, the steady clock-beat of his heart ticking very rhythmically, recording my nine months.

The clocks are ticking now. I don't mind them any more, don't object to anything, now he's made me special, now he's had me back. I listen to him swallow the last sliver of his sweet, know he's going to speak. I can nearly always tell. He sometimes moves his chair a fraction, or breathes just slightly differently.