Alphabet (21 page)

They've had it with the Portakabin now. You could say that the world's their oyster, except that Simon hasn't in fact seen very much of it, not much, even, of England. So the way it
goes is that he and Bernadette are in a street café in Covent Garden on a sunny day with a bit of a breeze, scudding clouds.
They're holding hands, leaning close over the little wrought-iron table.

He sees her, real as anything, wearing her melted O pendant and one of the tight black dance tops they seem to go for now, with a loose, floaty blouse worn unbuttoned over it. Wind stirs in her hair. She's smiling and they are looking into each other's faces. And somehow they have got over the whole prison bit, just levitated him over the wall and through time without either of them ageing . . .

Her thumb caresses the back of his hand, feels its way along the bony ridges and dips beneath the skin. The inking still runs across his fingers, DUMB CUNT, and maybe he will get rid of that one day, but it will only be because
he
wants to;
she
doesn't mind at all. She turns his left hand over in hers, opens it, holds it in both of hers, looks a while, then strokes the thin skin of the wrist, circles the palm with her forefinger and, finally, bows her head to plant a kiss there in the middle of his palm. Her lips press, open slightly as she lets out the warmth of her breath. Her rich red-brown hair is pulled towards the knot at the back of her head, strands escape here and there and he wants to reach forward and set the rest of it free.

‘Bernadette,' he says.

‘Let's go home now,' she says and they walk away through the crowds in the street, his arm round her waist, her thumb hooked into the back pocket of his jeans.

‘Si!' Pete yells at him through the door to the courtyard.
‘You got it! Thumbs up!' Simon lies there, still as a stone, eyes closed. It's touch and go but the interruption closes over and then they're in a flat, somewhere he's seen in a magazine or a film, with thin-slatted Venetian blinds letting in stripes of light, an old-fashioned carved marble fireplace with an antique mirror above, an ornate plaster ceiling rose with a fancy modern chandelier hanging down. They are standing beneath the chandelier, standing close as she undoes the small buttons of his shirt, pushes it back over his shoulders. Courageous.
Bastard. Cunt. Then the belt buckle, more buttons on the fly, he's very hard and she presses his cock to his stomach as she eases the pants and underwear down with the other hand, now he has to step out of them, staggering a bit and there he is, heart in mouth, cock up, naked, standing opposite her.

It's unbearable, almost.

Touch me, Bernadette!

Lie down here.

And now they're both naked in a walled garden, lying on soft moss beneath the spreading branches of a tree, their hands on each other like this, like that, and she's moaning and the whole thing explodes.

Wonderful. Disgusting. Simon surfaces, alone, to the sounds of water near by and the birds.

Later he uses plastic hooks to hang the navy blue velour curtains that arrived yesterday from Argos; the cell becomes a room. The Saturday following, he watches aghast on his TV set as people are crushed to death in Hillsborough stadium; Monday, they do a group on it and decide to raise money for the victims' families. He's been in Wentham three and a half months.

28

Outside, the sky is a burning, beautiful blue; a shimmering haze has settled over the fields that lie beyond the walls. Inside, light plays in broken patterns on the wall opposite the window. Otherwise, it is just the same as any other day: the burn-marked carpet, the blue chairs, the low ceiling, some new wall charts.

‘Still up for this?' asks Greg. He arrived late today because of a pile-up on the motorway and he smells faintly of soap, more strongly of sweat. His hand descends on Simon's shoulder as he asks. ‘Ready?' Simon nods. He's bottled out twice already, though that doesn't matter, it's not a race.
You learn from other
people on the way.

‘Susanna?'

‘OK,' she says, brightly. ‘All in a day's work.' She's abandoned her uniform in favour of pink and white trainers and her baggy grey tracksuit from home; this is the same outfit she wore a few weeks back when she took Belinda's role in the scene between Ray and his ex-wife: the bit when she came out of the double garage next to her house around lunchtime and Ray jumped on her.

Ray described the action he was carrying out in slow motion. He was supposed to say what came into his mind while he did it but at times he forgot to speak at all and seemed to be right back there in the garage, the car, the pub; his eyes had a flat kind of glare to them and his breath came in mean gasps even though the movements were slowed right down.
Susanna had very little to say, just: ‘Ray, Ray, please, why are you doing this, please, I beg you, stop!' The week before, Ray had told them everything he could remember about Belinda,
her habits, routines and appearance and the things she had said to him, what he knew about her past. Then, in slow motion, Ray mimed the blows to Susanna's head while the others watched.

‘She's not going anywhere, what are you trying to do when you hit her?' Simon asked.

‘Scare her,' Ray told them, ‘shut her up . . . hurt her.' He mimed putting on a gag, tying her up. He threw a blanket over her to simulate the trunk of the car, and sat down in front . . .
A boiling hot day, he'd told them. Easy enough to imagine what it was like for Belinda in there, mile after mile in the stifling dark, not knowing when or how it would end . . .
Afterwards, Susanna said she was worrying about the little boy, who was from before she went with Ray, and what would happen when she didn't pick him up from school. She was worrying about whether she would die and what would happen to him if she did. Ray sat on the chair pretending to drive.

‘I'll take you to that empty farm house I know about and fuck you and give you something to cry about,' he said. He'd always said he wasn't intending to kill her but he admitted then that he was well out of control and it could have ended up that way, except that he ran out of fuel. He left the car all locked up in a lay-by, hitched a ride for himself, ended up in a pub, got pissed, passed out. Belinda was there another six hours before someone reported the vehicle and the police came. Not the kind of show you'd find in the West End . . . Ray talked afterwards of being in a dark place with no way out.

‘Wasn't that Belinda?' Nick asked.

‘Always ready with the smart comment, aren't you?' Simon told him.

‘Why did you say that, Nick?' Annie asked. ‘Was it to help, or was it to score a point?' E is for empathy: being able to suspend judgement and follow the other person's feelings.
Even if they are Andy's.

‘Go on then,' Greg said, when Ray refused to work with Andy. ‘Just show me how you're better, exactly how what you
did is not so bad. From whose point of view? Go on, I am genuinely interested.'

There will be no end, ever, to the questions asked. Simon's hands are damp with sweat.

‘That's the door to the bathroom,' Simon explains to Susanna, ‘Where you come in from just before. There would be another door at the back here, that's the door to the flat. This way,' he points, ‘is the window. 'His voice sounds bright and tinny, unlike itself. He carries a soft chair from the lounge area of the room where they usually sit, then one of the low tables. ‘The TV,' he says, ‘My chair.' Then he gets three more chairs and puts them next to each other for the sofa bed, to the right of the TV and the chair, but not obscuring the bathroom door. ‘Over there where they all are is the fridge and electric ring,' he says. ‘It's night time,' he adds. The others, Annie, the men with their old scars and new haircuts, sit in a loose line, legs akimbo, watching.

‘So that's it. Still OK?' he asks Susanna.

‘What did we say the fee was? OK, yes, I'm ready,' she says.
So that's that: no last-minute reprieve. But with luck, might he still somehow be able to walk through this, immune?

‘Come on then,' he says to her, aware of the mixture of smells that reach him when she's this close, make-up, perfume, cigarette smoke, breathmints, beneath them all, a woman's flesh. ‘We'll go in.'

He mimes opening the door, she walks through. Anyway, she's nothing like Amanda actually was physically: quite short, but a size fourteen, a sixteen even. She often wore her clothes that bit too tight.

They stand close to the rest of the group as Simon mimes the business with the wine.

‘Here – I got some of this in!' he says.
Henkell Trocken
, he suddenly remembers, catching a whiff of it, almost feeling the extra weight of the dark-green bottle as he mimes putting it down.

‘Cheers!' she says. Her smile is different, more straightforward, not so shy in its beginnings as Amanda's was. But
that doesn't matter, because he can feel now that the past has a life of its own. If it wants to come through, he realises, it will: a word, a gesture, even just the fact of them, man and woman, standing there.

Susanna mimes a sip or two of the drink, then looks at him, waiting. It's just how it was.

‘Take all your things off,' he tells her. She goes to the area that's supposed to be the bathroom, turns her back to them and stands still, while Simon sits in the chair and pretends to watch TV.

‘I'm in a good mood,' he says. ‘I'm thinking about what she might look like and how she's going to really want me and how when she's gone I'll have a good time thinking it over –'

‘Let's get this clear,' Pete interrupts, ‘you won't fuck her but you'll wank afterwards?'

‘Yes. I'm on edge because I do know this is a bit weird, what I'm doing, but on the other hand, right now, it works for me, she goes along with it and there doesn't seem to be any real harm in it.'

‘I'm ready now,' Susanna announces. She stands by Simon, about four feet away, hands on hips. Perhaps the trick of this is that she doesn't relate to you as she knows you now, but according to what you were then? Is that how it works? It doesn't matter. He notices his heart gearing up. ‘I'm excited,' she says, ‘pretty happy. I feel kind of powerful. Sexy. Proud of myself. I look good.'

‘Amanda didn't stand like that,' Simon says, turning away from her to look at the group: as a delay tactic it's pretty pathetic, but they let him get away with it.

‘Hands just hanging down,' he says. Susanna goes back, walks in again.

‘Don't my eyes look nice? I've got lenses! They're the new soft kind. I had to break them in but now I can wear them all day.'

‘Simon?'

‘Panic. I've lost the advantage. She's out of control and now she'll see me for what I am, she'll be off like that –'

‘What's the poor cow got to do to show you she wants you?'
crew-cut Pete cuts in.

‘Keep going,' Annie says.

‘What's the matter? Don't you like them, then?' When Susanna says that, Simon's skin tightens; the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He yells.

‘No, they're shite! Take them out! Put your fucking glasses on or phone a cab and get out now!' He looks at Susanna looking back at him, and doesn't really know the difference:
either she's gone back into then with him, else he's brought it with him into now, doesn't matter which.

‘Why not just do what you're told?' he yells at her.

It's not in the script, but she answers, ‘I'm me, not a bit of you!'

‘Come on.' She steps forward, bends, and inch by inch, awkwardly, puts her hands in the air above Simon's shoulders then slides them down above his arms, still not touching. Her hands reach his.

‘Get off ! Get off !' he shouts. Susanna mimes the backwards fall, he follows it with a slow-motion kick. Did he actually do that or not? Or is he adding it in now? He can't be sure.

He's breathing hard as he sits down again. ‘I'm turning the TV on now, really loud,' he reports. It was the news, he's pretty sure of that.

‘Simon!' Out of the corner of his eye, Simon watches Susanna stand up, walk over and squat down in front of him.

‘I won't lower myself. I won't wear glasses for you when I don't want to. I know I've got nice eyes. And if we two are getting nowhere, well, let me tell you, I –'

‘Just get out of here!' Simon yells. The words were a message from some rapidly shrinking part of him that knew there must still be a way out of this. They meant:
if you don't,
then I . . .
But she didn't realise that; she just didn't know how it was with him.

‘I've been out with a bloke from the gym, a few times,' Susanna is saying. Amanda wanted him to see how it was for her; she wanted to communicate, to wake him up, to
somehow make things work between them. He can see it. At the same time, his blood is boiling all over again. Look, he'd like to tell her, do this some other way, right?

‘I'd much rather it was you, I really would.' Susanna buries her face in her hands. ‘I really like you,' she says, ‘but maybe you're just some kind of weirdo?' There's nothing from the group now. It's very quiet in the room as Simon jumps to his feet.

‘Slow . . .' Annie warns.

‘Now,' he says and by a kind of consent, they fall to the floor. He kneels over her. She puts her hands by her sides.

‘Simon! Gently,' Susanna says, just as Amanda did. Her eyes are wide open, alert, studying him, and he could count each eyelash if he wanted to; the purplish skin of the lids, frosted with silvery make-up, the tiny capillaries in the bluish whites, the muddle of forest colours in the iris, finally, the pupil: a black hole with its own face in it. Amanda's eyes were brown, dark, simpler. He didn't see himself, not then.

As agreed before, he puts a small cushion on Susanna's upper chest, then places his hands on it, the thumbs above her collarbones, tense, but not squeezing. His arms begin to shake. Susanna shouts, ‘No! No!' He sees her mouth, wide and huge, then he shuts his eyes. Susanna arches up, drums her legs on the floor; although he can't see the clock, Simon can feel the seconds passing in the darkness behind his eyes. To begin with they pass far more slowly than the drumming of her feet on the floor, then gradually it is not like that any more.
Seventy, seventy-one, seventy-two . . . The seconds are even, equal, clean and will not be hurried. Each one of those seconds, he is beginning to understand, each one of that first minute's worth of seconds, back then, offered him a choice to let go.
Now each one of them marks the possibility of doing something different, missed.