Love in a Blue Time

When the phone rings, who would you most like it to be? And who would you hate it to be? Who is the first person that comes into your mind, Roy liked to ask people, at that moment?

The phone rang and Roy jumped. He had thought, during supper in their new house, with most of their clothes and books in boxes they were too weary to unpack, that it would be pleasant to try their new bed early. He looked across the table at Clara and hoped she’d let the phone run on to the answering machine so he could tell who it was. He disliked talking to his friends in front of her; she seemed to scrutinise him. Somehow he had caused her to resent any life he might have outside her.

She picked up the phone, saying ‘Hallo’ suspiciously. Someone was speaking but didn’t require or merit a reply. Roy mouthed at her, ‘Is it Munday? Is it him?’

She shook her head.

At last she said, ‘Oh God,’ and waved the receiver at Roy.

In the hall he was putting on his jacket.

‘Are you going to him?’

‘He’s in trouble.’

She said, ‘We’re in trouble, and what will you do about that?’

‘Go inside. You’ll get cold standing there.’

She clung to him. ‘Will you be long?’

‘I’ll get back as soon as I can. I’m exhausted. You should go to bed.’

‘Thank you. Aren’t you going to kiss me?’

He put his mouth to hers, and she grunted. He said, ‘But I don’t even want to go.’

‘You’d rather be anywhere else.’

At the gate he called, ‘If Munday rings, please take his number. Say that otherwise I’ll go to his office first thing tomorrow morning.’

She knew this call from the producer Munday was important to him, indeed to both of them. She nodded and then waved.

It wouldn’t take him more than fifteen minutes to drive to the house in Chelsea where his old friend Jimmy had been staying the last few months. But Roy was tired, and parked at the side of the road to think. To think! Apprehension and dread swept through him.

Roy had met Jimmy in the mid-seventies in the back row of their university class on Wittgenstein. Being four years older than the other students, Jimmy appeared ironically knowing compared to Roy’s first friends, who had just left school. After lectures Jimmy never merely retired to the library with a volume of Spinoza, or, as Roy did, go disappointedly home and study, while dreaming of the adventures he might have, were he less fearful. No – Jimmy did the college a favour by popping in for an hour or so after lunch. Then he’d hang out impressing some girls he was considering for his stage adaptation of
Remembrance
of
Things
Past.

After he’d auditioned them at length, and as the sky darkened over the river and the stream of commuters across Blackfriars Bridge thinned, Jimmy would saunter forth into the city’s pleasures. He knew the happenin’ cinemas, jazz clubs, parties. Or, since he ran his own magazine,
Blurred
Edges,
he’d interview theatre directors, photographers, tattooists and performance artists who, to Roy’s surprise, rarely refused. At that time students were still considered by some people to be of consequence, and Jimmy would light a joint, sit on the floor and let the recorder run. He would print only the trifling parts of the tape – the gossip and requests for drinks – satisfying his theory that what people were was more interesting than their opinions.

Tonight Jimmy had said he needed Roy more than he’d ever needed him. Or rather, Jimmy’s companions had relayed that message. Jimmy himself hadn’t made it to the phone or even to his feet. He was, nevertheless, audible in the background.

On the doorstep Roy hesitated. Next morning he had a critical breakfast meeting with Munday about the movie Roy had written and was, after two years of preparation, going to direct. He was also, for the first time, living with Clara. This had been a sort of choice, but its consequences – a child on the way – had somehow surprised them both.

He couldn’t turn back. Jimmy’s was the voice Roy most wanted to hear on the phone. Their friendship had survived even the mid-eighties, that vital and churning period when everything had been forced forward with a remorseless velocity. Roy had cancelled his debts to anyone whose affection failed to yield interest. At that time, when Roy lived alone, Jimmy would turn up late at night, just to talk. This was welcome and unusual in Roy’s world, as they didn’t work together and there was no question of loss or gain between them. Jimmy wasn’t impressed by Roy’s diligence. While Roy rushed between meetings Jimmy was, after all, idling in bars and the front of girls’ shirts. But though Jimmy disappeared for weeks – one time he was in prison – when Roy had a free day, Jimmy was the person Roy wanted to spend it with. The two of them would lurch from pub to pub from lunchtime until midnight, laughing at everything. He had no other friends like this, because there are some conversations you can only have with certain people.

Roy pushed the door and cautiously made his way down the uncarpeted stairs, grasping the banister with feeble determination as, he realised, his father used to do. Someone seemed to have been clawing at the wallpaper with their fingernails. A freezing wind blew across the basement: a broken chair must have travelled through a window.

There was Jimmy, then, on the floor, with a broken bottle beside him. The only object intact was a yellowing photograph of Keith Richards pinned to the wall.

Not that Jimmy would have been able to get into his bed. It was occupied by a cloudy-faced middle-aged woman with well-cut hair who, though appearing otherwise healthy, kept nodding out. Cradled into her was a boy of around sixteen with a sly scared look, naked apart from a Lacoste crocodile tattooed onto his chest. Now and again the woman seemed to achieve a dim consciousness and tried shoving him away, but she couldn’t shift him.

Jimmy lay on the floor like a child in the playground, with the foot of a bully on his chest. The foot belonged to Marco, the owner of the house, a wealthy junkie with a bloodstained white scarf tied around his throat. Another man, Jake, stood beside them.

‘The cavalry’s arrived,’ Jake said to Marco, who lifted his boot.

Jimmy’s eyes were shut. His twenty-one-year-old girlfriend Kara, the daughter of a notable bohemian family, who had been seeing Jimmy for a year, ran and kissed Roy gratefully. She was accompanied by an equally young friend, with vivid lips, leopard-skin hat and short skirt. If Roy regretted coming, he particularly regretted his black velvet jacket. Cut tight around the waist, it was long and shining and flared out over the thighs. The designer, a friend for whom Roy had shot a video, had said that ageing could only improve it. But wherever he wore it, Roy understood now, it sang of style and money, and made him look as if he had a job.

Kara and the girl took Roy to one side and explained that Jimmy had been drinking. Kara had found him in Brompton Cemetery with a smack dealer, though he claimed to have given that up. This time she was definitely leaving him until he sorted himself out.

‘They’re animals,’ murmured Jimmy.

Marco replaced his foot on his chest.

The kid in the bed, who had now mounted the woman, glared over his shoulder, saying to Jimmy, ‘What the fuck, you don’t never sleep here no more. You got smarter people to be with than us.’

Jimmy shouted, ‘It’s my bed! And stop fucking that woman, she’s overdosing!’

There was nothing in the woman’s eyes.

‘Is she all right?’ Roy asked.

‘She still alive,’ the boy explained, ‘My finger on her pulse.’

Jimmy cried, ‘They stole my fucking booze and drunk it, found my speed and took it, and stole my money and spent it I’m not having these bastards in my basement, they’re bastards.’

Jake said to Roy: ‘Number one, he’s evicted right now this minute. He went berserk. Tried to punch us around, and then tried to kill himself.’

Jimmy winked up at Roy. ‘Did I interrupt your evening, man? Were you talking about film concepts?’

For years Roy had made music videos and commercials, and directed episodes of soap operas. Sometimes he taught at the film school. He had also made a sixty-minute film for the BBC, a story about a black girl singer. He had imagined that this would be the start of something considerable, but although the film received decent reviews, it had taken him no further. In the mid-eighties he’d been considered for a couple of features, but like most films, they’d fallen through. He’d seen his contemporaries make films in Britain, move to LA and buy houses with pools. An acquaintance had been nominated for an Oscar.

Now at last his own movie was in place, apart from a third of the money and therefore the essential signed contracts and final go-ahead, which were imminent. In the past week Munday had been to LA and New York. He had been told that with a project of this quality he wouldn’t have trouble raising the money.

Kara said, ‘I expect Roy was doing some hard work.’ She turned to him. ‘He’s too much. Bye-bye, Jimmy, I love you.’

While she bent down and kissed Jimmy, and he rubbed his hand between her legs, Roy looked at the picture of Keith Richards and considered how he’d longed for the uncontrolled life, seeking only pleasure and avoiding the ponderous difficulties of keeping everything together. He wondered if that was what he still wanted, or if he were still capable of it.

When Kara had gone, Roy stood over Jimmy and asked, ‘What d’you want me to do?’

‘Quote the lyrics of “Tumblin’ Dice”.’

The girl in the hat touched Roy’s arm. ‘We’re going clubbing. Aren’t you taking Jimmy to your place tonight?’

‘What? Is that the idea?’

‘He tells everyone you’re his best friend. He can’t stay here.’ The girl went on. ‘I’m Candy. Jimmy said you work with Munday.’

‘That’s right.’

‘What are you doing with him, a promo?’

From the floor Jimmy threw up his protracted cackle.

Roy said, ‘I’m going to direct a feature I’ve written.’

‘Can I work on it with you?’ she asked. ‘I’ll do anything.’

‘You’d better ring me to discuss it,’ he said.

Jimmy called, ‘How’s the pregnant wife?’

‘Fine.’

‘And that young girl who liked to sit on your face?’

Roy made a sign at Candy and led her into an unlit room next door. He cut out some coke, turned to the waiting girl and kissed her against the wall, smelling this stranger and running his hands over her. She inhaled her line, but before he could dispose of his and hold her again, she had gone.

Marco and Jake had carted Jimmy out, stashed him in Roy’s car and instructed him to fuck off for good.

Roy drove Jimmy along the King’s Road. As always now, Jimmy was dressed for outdoors, in sweaters, boots and
heavy coat. In contrast, Roy’s colleagues dressed in light clothes and would never inadvertently enter the open air: when they wanted weather they would fly to a place that had the right kind. An over-ripe gutter odour rose from Jimmy, and Roy noticed the dusty imprint of Marco’s foot on his chest. Jimmy pulled a pair of black lace-trimmed panties from his pocket and sniffed at them like a duchess mourning a relative.

This was an opportunity, Roy decided, to use on Jimmy some of the honest directness he had been practising at work. Surely it would be instructive and improving for Jimmy to survive without constant assistance. Besides, Roy couldn’t be sucked into another emotional maelstrom.

He said, ‘Isn’t there anywhere you can go?’

‘What for?’ said Jimmy.

‘To rest. To sleep. At night.’

‘To sleep? Oh I see. It’s okay. Leave me on the corner.’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘I’ve slept out before.’

‘I meant you’ve usually got someone. Some girl.’

‘Sometimes I stay with Candy.’

‘Really?’

Jimmy said, ‘You liked her, yeah? I’ll try and arrange something. Did I tell you she likes to stand on her head with her legs open?’

‘You should have mentioned it to Clara on the phone.’

‘It’s a very convenient position for cunnilingus.’

‘Particularly at our age when unusual postures can be a strain,’ added Roy.

Jimmy put his hand in Roy’s hair. ‘You’re going grey, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘But I’m not. Isn’t that strange?’ Jimmy mused a few seconds. ‘But I can’t stay with her. Kara wouldn’t like it.’

‘What about your parents?’

‘I’m over forty! They’re dying, they make me take my
shoes off! They weep when they see me! They –’

Jimmy’s parents were political refugees from Eastern Europe who’d suffered badly in the war, left their families, and lived in Britain since 1949. They’d expected, in this city full of people who lived elsewhere in their minds, to be able to return home, but they never could. Britain hadn’t engaged them; they barely spoke the language. Meanwhile Jimmy fell in love with pop. When he played the blues on his piano his parents had it locked in the garden shed. Jimmy and his parents had never understood one another, but he had remained as rootless as they had been, never even acquiring a permanent flat.

He was rummaging in his pockets where he kept his phone numbers on torn pieces of cigarette packet and ragged tube tickets. ‘You remember when I brought that girl round one afternoon –’

‘The eighteen-year-old?’

‘She wanted your advice on getting into the media. You fucked her on the table in front of me.’

‘The media got into her.’

‘Indeed. Can you remember what you wore, who you pretended to be, and what you said?’

‘What did I say?’

‘It was your happiest moment.’

‘It was a laugh.’

‘One of our best.’

‘One of many.’

They slapped hands.

Jimmy said, ‘The next day she left me.’

‘Sensible girl.’

‘We’d exploited her. She had a soul which you were disrespectful to.’ Jimmy reached over and stroked Roy’s face. ‘I just wanted to say, I love you, man, even if you are a bastard.’

Jimmy started clapping to the music. He could revive as quickly as a child. Nevertheless, Roy determined to beware
of his friend’s manipulations; this was how Jimmy had survived since leaving university without ever working. For years women had fallen at Jimmy’s feet; now he collapsed at theirs. Yet even as he descended they liked him as much. Many were convinced of his lost genius, which had been perfectly preserved for years, by procrastination. Jimmy got away with things; he didn’t earn what he received. This was delicious but also a provocation, mocking justice.