Ménage (24 page)

‘He’s done rehab and counselling. Really, he’s totally changed.’

‘Really?’

‘He seems . . . well . . . gentle now.’

‘Mister Machiavelli, Mister Make War not Love? Mister Thus Spoke Zarathustra! You want him taking care of your child?’

‘You don’t know.’

And she had said that in that way that announced that he would never know the depths that she knew.

‘What the hell don’t I know?!’

‘Shh! He’ll hear.’

He’ll hear, in my house, he’ll hear – Jesus! he almost said, but instead said, ‘OK, sorry, I’m not raising my voice.’

Her hand searched for his beneath the covers. Asking him to turn, so he turned and her eyes were so full of understanding and compassion.

‘Shh . . . I think . . . He’s had a nervous breakdown,’ she whispered.

‘Well, that was kind of inevitable, don’t you think?’

‘You don’t know, forget it.’

But then there was her silence, wounded girl huffing
like
her daughter. Minutes it would take. Both of them as bad as each other. Mental age – four.

‘Shit, I’m sorry, Dot, please.’

Say her name once again, take her hand.

‘Dot, Dot, I’m sure you’re right, I can’t understand, could you . . .?’

‘Well . . . I can just . . .’

Jesus, so now it was the female high ground, the greater intuition of a woman. Sylvia Plath and women’s groups and sharing circles. Fight it, swallow it, stroke her hand, her arm, her neck, say ‘tell me’ in whispers, say it again, again. She was fighting tears now, hug her, that’s it, squeeze it out of her.

‘Something in him . . . all the arrogance . . . he’s gentle now, so gentle . . .’

Yes, let her cry. ‘Shh, shh, tell me.’

‘Like he’s this old man, like he’s taking care of this old man . . . I’ve seen it before . . . in hospital.’

That word silenced him. This was as close as she’d ever come to talking of her hospitalisation.

‘Like he’s . . . when you nearly die, willing to, and you choose . . . a razor or tablets or . . . I’m sorry, Owen, you’re so good to me.’

‘OK, tell me.’

She blew her nose on the duvet, apologised, a little laughter in her eyes, he kissed her forehead, held her tighter.

‘Please, we need to talk about this . . .’

‘Maybe it’s an accident or they find you or . . . but still you made that choice. You puke up the tablets, or the razor – you put it down, but –’

‘You’re talking about yourself?’

‘No, no, but you see, you’re split in two, there’s always this other you following you around. The one that really did it. You . . . you’re haunted . . . his face . . . I just know.’

She was folded up in herself and he held her. He wanted to believe that the tears that threatened him were for Saul,
but
they were for that second Dot, the Dot that had died, that haunted the living Dot, that was yet another person wandering his home sleepless. He smothered her head in kisses, trying to tell her that he’d almost lost her once, but never again. She was his Dot.

‘ . . . He’s so gentle now . . . his poor face . . . I just feel so guilty . . . poor love.’

Owen stroked her head, whispering. He was glad that in some impossible way the coming of Saul had brought them closer again.

‘It’s OK, OK, my love, I’m sure it’ll be fine having him around. Just for a while anyway, till we sort everything out.’

*

Daffodils appeared unseasonably early and a playwright was elected president of the Czech Republic. Reality had, rather irresponsibly, conceded control to utopian fiction. With Saul and Dot too, an exchange of power had taken place. After he admitted that she had surpassed his mastery he sank into a steady decline.

He had trimmed his hair and weakly made an effort to tidy up the kitchen and hall, not exuberantly or in protest, and without his usual irony. One day, when Dot was away at Goldsmiths, he came to my door.

— What are you writing? he asked. His face without make-up, heavy with days of stubble, his voice gentle and sincere.

— Well, just a review for the . . . I was ashamed to tell him it was a tacky promo – four hundred words on the new Madonna album – and amazed to hear what he said next.

— Can I read it? That is . . . if I’m not intruding.

And so, taking the seat at my busted-up computer, he read, sometimes nodding, sometimes making little noises as I waited for his judgement.

— Not bad at all, he said.

— Really? I mean, she’s crap but I can’t say that and I’m trying not to use any positive adjectives, but it’s –

— A fine use of rhythm, keep it up, he said and went back to the door. — Oh and by the way, if you fancy doing that bit of writing I was supposed to, you know for that damnable
Bug
thing, I really can’t face it. The muse seems to have left me. I doubt she will return, ever.

I was dumbfounded. But that was not the end of it. He then thanked me.

— For what?

— Don’t feign ignorance. I’ve been a total bastard, we all know that. I’m amazed you both haven’t run off. Anyway, you seem quite happy now, the pair of you.

— You mean, it’s OK, me and Dot . . . I mean –

— Shh, he said. Don’t be crass. You have my blessing.

And he touched my shoulder. It was unbelievable. Generosity of spirit and then humility. It must have pained him greatly to be experiencing these things for the first time. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was perhaps a mask behind which some terrible scheme was being planned. But yet, he was sincere. The reason I knew this to be the case was revealed in the bin bags by the front door. One had burst, and inside I saw six empty boxes of a sherry brand I had not seen before and Dot and I had certainly not drunk. Saul had started drinking secretly, quietly, alone.

I noted also that, for several days on end, by Saul’s bed, the jobs page lay open, several boxes circled. It was around then that I had another revelation about his failure. I discovered his oft-quoted original Duchess book, lying in Dot’s bedroom covered in her spidery handwritten notes. Therein, I discovered the following. ‘Life is a game, she screamed’, ‘She made me wear her stocking as she spat in my face.’ All of Saul’s great shocking ideas had been stolen from that book. But furthermore, as I read it I saw it was poorly written
and
obviously had not one shred of historic validity. It was little more than a tuppenny porno book fraudulently peppered with characters stolen from history to make it seem more scandalous.

‘Sporting her moustache she tied the powerless Duchamp to the Louis XIV chair and forced the assembled gentry to tease the prostrate man with tantalising tastes of quim and shaft and with tortures involving whips and knives, while Man Ray, cuckolded, camera in hand, could only record the squalid scene.’

Ridiculously fake and poor Saul had taken it all so seriously. The most troubling thing, however, was how, every day, Dot was becoming more and more the incarnation of Saul’s squalid fictional heroine. Increasingly loud, energetic and aggressively fabulous, it was all I could do to calm her, as I was sure her exuberance made Saul feel even smaller, rubbing dirt in his wounds, so to speak. After the torn T-shirts it was ripped tights; she painted flowers on his army boots and wore them without laces, without his permission; she fastened her hair into six short wiry tufts with elastic bands, porcupine-like. She seemed to be spending more time on turning herself into an
objet d’art
than on her art. She returned from Goldsmiths on one such day with an old lady’s wig stolen from Save the Children – terrifying to behold. Her blackened eyes peeking out from the matted blonde tufts as she ranted and stripped in my room.

— Some arsehole wants me to do a photo shoot in some magazine. They’re all going crazy. He said I look like a junkie. I told him to fuck himself.

She stood before me in her underpants, putting on a play version of Dietrich, the Duchess, or maybe Dracula.

— I vant you to impale me on your stick!

— Shh, we’ll have to be quiet? He’s pottering around next door.

— He knows anyway, why do you keep pretending he
doesn
’t? You’ve even started talking like that silly old book of his.

It bothered me that I had not yet told her that Saul had been spying on our nocturnal couplings those past few weeks.

— You seem to be more concerned with his feelings than mine, she teased. — You fuss over him like an old maid.

As usual such an accusation had me upon her in a frenzy, my fingers groping at her panties as she tore the clothes off me and bit my neck. She freed my cock with one hand, working it hard as she rubbed her clit frantically. We stumbled and fell to the floor. As she mounted me, gasping with that sharp intake of breath, her face suddenly turned to the door. It was part ajar. We both stared at that gap, as if waiting for Saul to find us at any moment. This added great urgency to our fucking, and I pulled out swiftly as I was about to come. Dot held me tight at the stem and pinched the cock head and the cum subsided as she waited, whispering to me.

— I’m sure he heard us.

I got to my feet, shut the door properly and returned to the floor where she was waiting for me on all fours. But after a dozen or so careful thrusts, I was about to come again, and Dot was frustrated, so I withdrew. We were silent for a moment, both staring at my cock, as if it might give us an answer.

— Maybe if we filmed ourselves, she said. And jumped up.

So it was, with the aid of the camera perched on the table by the door and plugged into the back of my B&W portable, that Dot and I watched this young couple fucking in our room as we fucked. Even though in those weeks, with Dot’s guidance and pinch technique, I became more proficient and could delay my ejaculations, it seemed that it was only the idea of getting caught and being watched that could
accelerate
her arousal to the point where we could come violently together. Her camera had become the eye of the absent Saul.

Saul too only aggravated this situation, as every night he found other excuses for Dot and me to sleep together. He claimed to have a migraine, or flatulence, or a job interview early the next morning; he just needed to be alone. On the nights when she slept with him, she would wake me in the early hours, telling me he’d forced her out of bed. It was as if he had pushed us into closer physical intimacy deliberately so he could live through us vicariously. On those nights when she slept in my arms, his face again and again appeared at my door. We did not realise, then, that such games would escalate to perverse proportions.

It started on the night of the games in St Monica’s school playground. Swings and roundabouts. The place that in the daytime was bright with the colours of so many coloured children. Their screams and laughter the only thing truly joyful in the slowly gentrifying Hoxton Square. It was dark and the park was empty and moonlit, as if it were a stage. Dot was hyper. She’d been worrying about Saul’s increasing isolation.

— Let’s cheer him up, she’d kept saying. — Let’s party – let’s give him a treat. Things like that.

She’d been unable to sleep and had dragged Saul and me out. Saul was looking emaciated in his stained suit, he had not worn make-up in weeks and had almost a full beard. He could not find socks and wore sneakers, he stank of sherry. Dot seemed not to notice any of this, she was on fire with ideas, video camera in hand as she led us through the hole in the school fence.

— Come on, let’s do the swings! Sozzle, come on, cheer up.

Saul stood there, silent, smoking, staggering on the spot. He never liked to be told to do anything. So she started
manhandling
him, getting him on the swing. He struggled, tried to push her away but then it turned playful.

— I’ll barf on you, he said. — I can’t handle swings.

— OK, so the roundabout. Dot shouted as she ran to it, and spun like a demon round and round. I didn’t know what to do. I lifted her camera and filmed. She jumped off.

— Come on, Soz, not scared of a spin, are you? Climb on, trust me, you’ll be fine.

— Please, I think I shall go home, Saul said.

— OK, OK, I’ve got it. Dot said.

She ran to the edge of the playground, then turned by the hopscotch chalk drawings and the concrete dolphin, then walked swiftly robotically towards us, at great speed. As she headed for the climbing frame, I suddenly realised she had her eyes closed. I ran forward, shouting, — Watch out!

— Left Saul shouted. — Turn left!

I was feet from her; she had her hands out in front of her.

— Don’t stop me she said, I’ve got to get to the end by myself. I stepped back as she walked Frankenstein-monster-like towards Saul. He was laughing. Just then a car went past. I ducked down and so did Saul, the headlight illuminated Dot walking, arms outstretched, eyes closed through the kiddie park like a zombie, but the car didn’t stop. She kept on and was heading towards the seesaw.

— Watch out! Saul shouted. — Stop and turn 180 degrees! He was becoming quite excited by the game.

— I don’t trust you, Dot shouted, — it’s a trick.

— Watch out, you’re going to bang your knee, I shouted.

She turned swiftly away then broke into a run, eyes tightly closed. She was heading right for the fence. Saul broke into a run and chased after her, shouting, — Stop, Stop. I did the same. We caught her just in time, and we all collapsed in hysterics.

— What the fuck was that? Saul asked.

And so Dot explained it was this game she’d done in
therapy
, a trust game, ‘walking blind’ it’s called. You were judged as cured and socially well adapted if you could walk to the end of a hall trusting that people would guide and catch you. People who were paranoid or scared couldn’t take more than a few steps.

— I bet you couldn’t do it, Sozzle.

— Really? I’m a damn sight more blind than you’ll ever be!

So to our great surprise the drunken Sozzle got to his feet, stretched his arms out and started walking away. At first his steps were confident but then he stalled, he turned 180 degrees, then edged forward as if he were in a minefield.

— Watch out for the elephant! Dot called.