She rolled away from the kiss. ‘Just going to the loo,’ she said, lifting his arm to pass beneath it. She stood, hooking two fingers in the elastic of her underpants and tugging the material down over her bottom.
‘Is there a phone I can use?’ he asked, watching her pad across the room.
‘In the hallway. It’s a novelty phone, I’m afraid. Very zany. Tilly finds it
hilarious
. Help yourself. Don’t forget to leave
ten p,’ and she was out in the hall and heading towards the bathroom.
The bath was already running for one of her flatmate’s epic all-day summer hot soaks. Tilly Killick waited for Emma in her dressing-gown, eyes goggling through the steam behind big red spectacle frames, mouth hanging open in a scandalised ‘O’.
‘Emma Morley, you dark horse!’
‘What?’
‘Have you got someone in your room?’
‘Maybe!’
‘It’s not who I think it is …’
‘Just Dexter Mayhew!’ said Emma, nonchalantly, and the two girls laughed and laughed and laughed.
Dexter found the phone in the hallway, shaped like a startlingly realistic burger. He stood with the sesame seed bun flipped open in his hand, listening to the whispers from the bathroom and experiencing the satisfaction he always felt when he knew people were talking about him. Odd words and phrases were audible through the plasterboard:
So did you? No! So what happened? We just talked, and stuff. Stuff? What does that mean, stuff? Nothing! And is he staying for breakfast? I don’t know. Well make sure he stays for breakfast
.
Dexter watched the door patiently, waiting until Emma reappeared. He dialled 123, the speaking clock, pressed the bap to his ear and spoke into the beef patty.
‘… the time sponsored by Accurist will be nine thirty-two and twenty seconds.’
At the third stroke he went into his act. ‘Hi, Mum, it’s me … yeah, a bit worse for wear!’ He ruffled his hair in a way that he believed to be endearing ‘…No, I stayed over at a friend’s house …’ and here he glanced over at Emma, who loitered nearby in t-shirt and underpants, pretending to go through the mail.
‘… the time sponsored by Accurist will be nine thirty-three precisely …’
‘So listen, something’s come up and I wondered if we could postpone going home until first thing tomorrow, instead of today? … I just thought the drive might be easier for Dad … I don’t mind if you don’t … Is Dad with you? Ask Dad now then.’
Taking his cue from the speaking clock, he allowed himself thirty seconds and gave Emma his most amiable smile. She smiled back and thought: nice guy, altering his plans just for me. Perhaps she had misjudged him. Yes, he is an idiot, but he needn’t be. Not always.
‘Sorry!’ he mouthed.
‘I don’t want you to change your plans for me—’ she said, apologetically.
‘No, I’d like to—’
‘Really, if you’ve got to go home—’
‘It’s fine, it’s better this way—’
‘At the third stroke the time sponsored by Accurist will be nine thirty-four precisely.’
‘I don’t mind, I’m not offended or anything—’
He held up his hand for quiet. ‘Hi, Mum?…’ A pause; build anticipation, but don’t overdo it. ‘Really? Okay, that’s great! Alright, I’ll see you at the flat later! Okay, see you. Bye.’ He snapped the bun closed like a castanet and they stood and grinned at each other.
‘Great phone.’
‘Depressing, isn’t it? Every time I use it, makes me want to cry.’
‘You still want that ten p?’
‘Nah. You’re alright. My treat.’
‘So!’ he said.
‘So,’ said Emma. ‘What are we going to do with the day?’
London and Oxfordshire
Fun, fun, fun – fun is the answer. Keep moving and don’t allow yourself a moment to stop or look around or think because the trick is to not get morbid, to have fun and see this day, this first anniversary as – what? A celebration! Of her life and all the good times, the memories. The laughs, all the laughs.
With this in mind he has ignored his manager Maddy’s protests, taken two hundred pounds from the café’s cash register and invited three of the staff – Maddy, Jack, and Pete who works on Saturdays – out on the town to welcome the special day in style. After all, it’s what she would have wanted.
And so the first moments of this St Swithin’s Day find him in a basement bar in Camden with his fifth martini in one hand and a cigarette in the other because why not? Why not have some fun and celebrate her
life?
He says this, slurs this to his friends who smile at him a little weakly and sip at their drinks so slowly that he begins to regret bringing them along. They’re so stuffy and boring, accompanying him from bar to bar less like good mates, more like hospital orderlies, humouring him and making sure he doesn’t bump into people or crack his head as he falls from the taxi. Well, he’s had enough of it. He wants some release, wants to let his hair down, he deserves it after the year he has just had. With this in mind he suggests that they all go to a club he once went to on a stag night. A strip club.
‘Don’t think so, Dex,’ says Maddy, quietly appalled.
‘Oh, come on, Maddy! Why not?’ he says, his arm draped around her shoulder. ‘It’s what she would have wanted!’ and he laughs at this and raises his glass once more, reaching for it with his mouth and missing by some distance so that the gin spatters onto his shoes. ‘It’ll be a laugh!’ Maddy reaches behind her for her coat.
‘Maddy, you lightweight!’ he shouts.
‘I really think you ought to go home now, Dexter,’ says Pete.
‘But it’s just gone midnight!’
‘Goodnight, Dex. See you whenever.’
He follows Maddy to the door. He wants her to have fun, but she seems tearful and upset. ‘Stay, have another drink!’ he demands, tugging at her elbow.
‘You will take it easy, won’t you? Please?’
‘Don’t leave us boys alone!’
‘Got to. I’m opening up in the morning, remember?’ She turns and takes both his hands in hers in that maddening way she has, all caring and sympathetic. ‘Just be … careful?’
But he doesn’t want sympathy, he wants another drink, and so he drops her hands abruptly and heads back towards the bar. He has no trouble getting served. Just a week ago bombs have exploded on public transport. Strangers have set out to kill at random and despite all the pluck and bravado the city has an under-siege atmosphere tonight. People are scared to be out and so Dexter has no problem flagging down a taxi to take them towards Farringdon Road. His head is resting against the window as he hears Pete and Jack chickening out, offering up the usual excuses: it’s late, they have work in the morning. ‘I’ve got a wife and kids you know!’ says Pete jokily; they’re like hostages pleading for release. Dexter feels the party disintegrating around him but doesn’t have the energy to fight it, so he stops the cab in King’s Cross and sets them free.
‘Come back with us, Dex mate? Yeah?’ says Jack, peering in at the window with that stupid concerned look on his face.
‘Nah, I’m alright.’
‘You can always stay at mine?’ says Pete. ‘Sleep on the sofa?’ but Dexter knows he doesn’t really mean it. As Pete has pointed out, he’s got a wife and kids, so why would he want this monster in his house? Sprawled stinking and unconscious on the sofa, weeping while Pete’s kids try to get ready for school. Grief has made an idiot of Dexter Mayhew once again, and why should he impose this on his friends? Best just stick with strangers tonight. And so he waves goodbye and orders the taxi onto a bleak, shuttered side street off Farringdon Road, and Nero’s night-club.
The outside is marked by black marble pillars, like a funeral directors. Falling from the cab, he worries that the bouncers won’t let him in, but in fact he is their perfect customer: well dressed and stupid-drunk. Dexter grins ingratiatingly at the big man with the shaved head and the goatee, hands over his cash and is waved through the door and into the main room. He steps into the gloom.
There was a time, not so long ago, when a visit to a strip club would have seemed raffishly post-modern; ironic and titillating at the same time. But not tonight. Tonight Nero’s night-club resembles a business-class departure lounge in the early Eighties. All silver chrome, low black leather sofas and plastic pot plants, it is a particularly suburban notion of decadence. An amateurish mural, copied from a children’s textbook, of slave-girls bearing trays of grapes, covers the back wall. Polystyrene Roman pillars sprout here and there, and standing around the room in unflattering cones of orange light on what look like low coffee tables are the strippers, the dancers, the artistes, all performing in various styles to the blaring R & B; here a languid jig, there a sort of narcoleptic mime act, another girl performing startling aerobic high-kicks, all of them naked or nearly so. Beneath them sit the men, suited mainly, ties undone, slumped on the slippery booths with heads lolling backwards as if their necks had been crisply snapped: his people. Dexter takes the room in, his eyes slipping in and out of focus, grinning stupidly as he feels lust
and shame combine in a narcotic rush. He stumbles on the stairs, steadies himself on the greasy chrome rail, then stands and shoots his cuffs and weaves between the podiums towards the bar where a hard-faced woman tells him single drinks can’t be bought, just bottles, vodka or champagne, a hundred quid each. He laughs at the audacious banditry and hands over his credit card with a flourish, as if challenging them to do their worst.
He takes his bottle of champagne – a Polish brand that comes in a pail of tepid water – and two plastic glasses, carrying them to a black velvet booth where he lights a cigarette and starts to drink in earnest. The ‘champagne’ is as sugary as a boiled sweet, apple-flavoured and barely sparkling, but it doesn’t matter. His friends have gone now and there is no-one to take the glass from his hand or distract him with conversation, and after the third glass the time itself begins to take on that strange elastic quality, speeding up and slowing down, moments disappearing altogether as his vision fades to black and back up again. He is about to slip into sleep, or unconsciousness, when he feels a hand on his arm and finds himself facing a skinny girl in a very short, sheer red dress with long blonde hair, shading into black an inch from her scalp. ‘Mind if I have a glass of champagne?’ she says, sliding into the booth. She has very bad skin beneath the thick foundation and speaks with a South African accent, which he compliments her on. ‘You’ve got a lovely voice!’ he shouts against the music. She sniffs and wrinkles her nose and introduces herself as Barbara in a way that suggests that ‘Barbara’ was the first name that came to hand. She is slight with bony arms and small breasts which he stares at baldly, though she doesn’t seem to mind. A ballet dancer’s physique. ‘Are you a ballet dancer?’ he says, and she sniffs and shrugs. He has decided that he really, really likes Barbara.
‘What brings you here then?’ she asks mechanically.
‘It’s my anniversary!’ he says.
‘Congratulations,’ she says, absently, pouring herself some champagne and raising her plastic glass in the air.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me what it’s the anniversary of?’ he says, though he must be slurring his speech pretty badly because she asks him to repeat it three times. Best try something more straightforward. ‘My wife had an accident exactly one year ago today,’ he says. Barbara gives a nervous smile and starts to look around as if regretting sitting down. Dealing with drunks is part of the job but this one is plainly weird, out celebrating some accident, then whining on incoherently and at great length about some driver not looking where he was going, a court case that she can’t understand and can’t be bothered to understand.
‘Do you want me to dance for you?’ she says, if only to change the subject.
‘What?’ He falls towards her. ‘What did you say?’ His breath is rank and his spit flecks her skin.
‘I said do you want me to dance for you, cheer you up a bit? You look like you might need cheering up.’
‘Not now. Later maybe,’ he says, slapping his hand on her knee now, which is as hard and unyielding as a banister. He is speaking again, not normal speech but a tangle of unconnected mawkish, sour remarks that he has made before – only thirty-eight years old we were trying for a baby the driver walked away scot-free wonder what that bastard’s doing right this minute taking away my best friend hope he suffers only thirty-eight where’s the justice what about me what am I meant to do now Barbara tell me what am I supposed to do now? He comes to a sudden halt.
Barbara’s head is lowered and she’s staring at her hands, which she holds devoutly in her lap as if in prayer and for a moment he thinks he has moved her with his story, this beautiful stranger, touched her deeply in some way. Perhaps she’s praying for him, perhaps she’s even crying – he has made this poor girl cry and he feels a deep affection for this Barbara. He puts his hand over hers in gratitude, and realises that she is texting. While he has been talking about Emma, she has had her mobile phone in her lap and is writing a text. He feels a sudden flush of rage and revulsion.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks, voice trembling.
‘What?’
He is shouting now. ‘I said what the fuck are you
doing?’
He swipes wildly at her hands, sending the phone skittering across the floor. ‘I was talking to you!’ he shouts, but she is shouting back now, calling him a nutter, a loony, then beckoning to the bouncer. It’s the same immense goateed man who had been so friendly at the door, but now he just puts his massive arm around Dexter’s shoulders, the other round his waist, scooping him up like a child and carrying him across the room. Heads turn, amused, as Dexter bawls over his shoulder,
you stupid, stupid cow, you don’t understand
, and he catches one last glance of Barbara, both middle fingers raised and jabbing upwards, laughing at him. The fire exit is kicked open and he is out once again on the street.
‘My credit card! You’ve got my fucking credit card!’ he shouts, but like everyone else the bouncer just laughs at him, and pulls the fire exit closed.