Sex and Death (14 page)

‘Imagine your head as a ping-pong ball, floating on a cushion of air.'

‘It's more like a cannon ball,' I said. She smiled, and reached over to put one hand on the back of my neck. The other hand
pushed flatly against my chest. Her fingers were cold and smooth.

‘Let your shoulders fall,' she said. She had her hands on me and we were listening to classical music and she was making coffee and instructing me and this was the closest to adulthood I'd yet come. ‘Let yourself really stretch,' she said. ‘Keep those shoulders down.' She was talking quietly because she was standing so close. She had faint lines around her eyes that looked like experience. I wanted her to experience me. It was true she was older but by then my parameters were broad. She asked if I felt any better. I wanted to say please don't stop. There was the sound of a toilet flushing. A door opened, and God appeared before us.

‘Now then,' he said. The professor dropped her hands and turned to the coffee machine. I asked if she'd been introduced.

Later Tony surfaced as well and the three of us went looking for a bus. God asked outright if I'd nailed the professor and I told him I didn't like his tone.

‘It's objectification,' I said. ‘It's problematic.'

‘Problematic, my arse. You were objectifying her all night.' He punched me lightly on the arm and it hurt like hell. God didn't know his own strength sometimes. ‘You missed a chance there, pal. Body language were bang on.'

‘Signs and signifiers,' Tony said. ‘She was signifying, for certain.' I had no idea if they were winding me up or what they were saying so I asked what all the talk about Bethlehem had been in aid of. Tony looked at God and threw up his hands. God said he'd signed up to rebuild demolished houses in Bethlehem, and to take direct action against evictions. It seemed like a joke but it wasn't a joke. I asked if he thought that would be safe, and Tony said he'd already asked all this. God didn't reply. He had a face on him like he thought we were missing the point. There was a silence as we walked down the hill. I asked if he'd even be allowed into the West Bank, being Jewish.

‘Who's Jewish?' God said. ‘That birth certificate means nowt. I'm toto intacto down doors. I don't even know when Passover is. And what about my father, anyway? He could have been a Catholic, or Muslim! He could have been a Palestinian, pal. Who knows?'

‘This seems unlikely,' Tony said, and he had just enough of a smile on him to get God riled.

‘Fuck you know about likely, Dutchie?' God grabbed hold of Tony's collar and held his face close. Tony looked him in the eye. ‘Fuck you know about any of this?' I stood and I watched and I didn't know what to do. It was all falling apart. Tony apologised and God let him go and at the train station we stood on different platforms, waiting for different trains.

*

The parties dried up for a time after that. I was working weekend shifts to cover my rent, and X-Man went back to his parents' house, and no one saw Jimmy James for months. God kept out of sight. Then came the news that Tony the Dutch was getting married, to the concrete poet from Kingston-upon-Hull. There was surprise and later there was complacency. We were too young to notice what this first marriage meant. The weekly whirl of gigs and shows and traipsing around looking for strange beds to wake up in was coming to an end. The pairing off had started in earnest. Soon the babies would come and the parties would stop. This would be it, now, until we hit our forties and the divorces started coming through.

There was a stag weekend. Tony barely understood the concept but let himself be talked into a minibus with Jimmy James at the wheel, heading for the Lakes. Having Jim drive was the best way of keeping him sober. Everyone else was drinking as soon as we hit the M62. The first stop was a paintballing centre, which was
a surprising choice. Most of us came from backgrounds of cooperative play, and this was the first time we'd held anything that looked like a gun. Within minutes of the briefing we were crawling through the brambles and the killing had begun. I kept getting taken down by a Peace Studies lecturer who hid in a thicket of birch trees and only ever needed one shot. He was a Quaker. He was very good at sitting still. At one point I got stuck in a ditch with Tony the Dutch, pinned down by two gender theorists from York St John. We sat it out and he lit a cigarette. He asked if I knew what my problem was. I asked were we talking about paintballing or something else.

‘You're just waiting for something to happen, always,' he said. ‘All these years I've known you, just waiting. Like you're entitled.' The smoke from his cigarette curled up into the air and a volley of paintballs burst against the trees overhead. ‘You won't get the girl by standing around looking pale and interesting. You don't look interesting enough for that.'

‘That's nice, thanks.'

‘None of us look interesting enough for that, come on. All these years I keep hearing the no-one-will-want-me bullshit.' This was starting to feel like advice. It was hard to take advice from a Dutchman in a face mask and a camouflage gilet. ‘It's very safe for you. You never have to take the chance of being turned down.' My face mask was starting to fog. What did he know. He had no idea. The paintballs were coming faster now and we could hear movements towards us in the trees. Tony and I had been friends since the first week of university and he'd never talked like this. He finished his cigarette and caught my eye and we ran from the ditch in a final desperate charge. We didn't get far but we went down together.

And then came the incident, which wasn't planned although it must have seemed that way. It was the last rest break of the day and everyone was ready for a drink. The light was starting to fail.
God was talking about the instructors only covering their backs with the warnings they'd given. ‘It's nonsense,' he muttered, running his hand through his beard, stroking the words away. ‘These pellets won't break skin at any distance. That minimum range talk is a crate of guff. It wouldn't do any damage. You could shoot a man in his hind-parts from right here and it wouldn't do owt. Would be funny and all.'

He was looking up into the trees as he spoke. He caught my eye for the briefest moment, glanced at Tony the Dutch, and looked back into the trees. Tony was bending to retie his bootlaces. I could feel the weight of the gun in my hands. As I shifted it the paintballs rattled in their hopper. I felt the tiny plop as one of them slipped into the chamber. Tony was taking a long time to tie his bootlaces. Almost as though he was waiting. As though the thing was ordained. The afternoon light filtered through the trees. The instructors were talking amongst themselves. God turned his back slightly, as if to say
let it be so.
I lifted my gun and from no more than six inches I shot Tony the Dutch in his hind-parts.

There was a reaction.

Tony dropped to the floor and roared something animal-like and unintelligible, something Dutch. The others gathered around to watch, and he looked up at us in a state of agonised continental disbelief, asking with his sad blue eyes how anyone could have done such a thing.

‘I couldn't help it,' I said, knowing I sounded absurd. ‘God made me do it.'

*

The only reason I still went to the wedding after that was because I was Tony's best man. It was awkward. We barely spoke and his wife didn't look at me once. When they walked down the aisle he was still limping. I didn't know how to make things right. At the
reception I kept my speech short and I left before the first dance. It was a long time before I saw Tony again and our friendship was never the same. I blamed God and his habit of stirring up situations, and for once I took the risk of telling him so. He called me a gobshite and said I'd been acting on my own free will. He laughed and reminded me of Tony's reaction, and I told him I didn't think we could be friends for a while. He looked surprised. He told me we'd never really been friends. For a while I kept hearing about him and then he drifted away, and I'd given up feeling any regret about it until I found myself at another wedding the following year, standing by a buffet table and remembering our first meeting back in Hebden Bridge.

This was the wedding of Jimmy James. I hadn't seen him for a long time either and I was surprised to be invited. When I got there I couldn't see anyone I knew. The ceremony was brief and there was a long delay before any drinks were served. When the photographs were taken I hid at the back and got talking to a girl who was hiding as well. She was on teaching placement at Jimmy's school. She introduced herself and held out her hand and when I went to shake it she thumbed her nose instead. It was so unexpected that it took me a moment to remember her name. Marion. I didn't see her again until after the speeches, when the wine was eventually served. I told her I thought she'd left and she said she was looking for someone, and when I asked who she gave me a look I couldn't translate. She walked away to the bar and I could hear God telling me to do something. I could hear what Tony had said when we were stuck in that ditch. There was dancing and I found myself moving to the back of the room and running out of reasons to stay. I got stuck in a conversation with the semiotics professor from Mytholmroyd. And then somehow I made it through the crowd to the buffet table and Marion was beside me again.

‘Hey,' she said. ‘It's you.' Her mouth was full, and she held up a hand to cover the crumbs. ‘Have you tried these vegan sausage
rolls?' I looked at her. ‘They're basically rank,' she said, laughing as flakes of puff pastry tumbled down the front of her dress.

We talked about her teaching practice, and what it was like working with Jimmy, and the PhD I still wasn't doing, and we kept finding more things to say. The music was loud and we had to stand close to be heard. There was a moment when she stopped talking and looked around the room, and I knew I had to do something to keep her from going away.

‘Do you want to dance?' I asked her. She gave me a sideways look.

‘Not really, no. Why, do you?'

‘Should we go out for a smoke?' She scanned the room again. She seemed to be looking for options. She nodded and led the way out to the terrace. It was quiet outside and cold. I checked my pockets.

‘Do you smoke?' I asked. She shook her head. I told her I didn't either and she laughed.

‘So what are you checking your pockets for?'

‘No idea.' There was quiet and we looked at each other. It was cold and she shivered and stood closer.

‘So, what now? Do we go back inside?'

‘Maybe if we've run out of things to talk about we should do something else.'

‘Something else?'

‘Yeah. If we're going to stop talking.' The words fell out of me and I had no idea how they came. I was out of the ditch and walking towards the guns and none of the paintballs were knocking me down.

‘You're probably right. You'd better keep talking then.'

‘Keep talking?'

‘Be on the safe side.' She moved closer again.

‘I've got nothing to say.' I leaned closer and kissed her and it was the first time I'd kissed anyone in years and this wasn't how
I'd had the evening planned out in my mind. It was a long kiss and there were hands and I didn't feel cold any more.

‘Is that what you meant, instead of talking? Why didn't you just say?' She was smiling and she pulled me by the hand. We left the terrace and the wedding and we walked away. There was no hurry and no word of where we were going and the conversation went back to Jimmy and the school. She said she thought he was on top of the drinking now. She asked where I was staying and when I told her she said we'd get to her hotel first. I thought there was a catch, or some misunderstanding. I thought at the hotel entrance she would shake my hand goodnight. I thought that inside her room there would be a man with a stick or a knife who would take all my money and push me out of the door while they both laughed. She was leaning closely and matching my step and there was a smell coming off her of red wine and perfume and the chance of it seemed well worth the while.

In the room she sat on the bed and asked if this was what I wanted. I told her it was. And as we lay across the bed I was struck by how simple it was, when for all those years I'd been making it something complex and out of reach. She kissed me, and I kissed her back. I thought of the opportunities thrown up by all those parties, all the friendships that had grown up and drifted away over the years as the social circle reeled apart under its own centrifugal force. She unbuttoned my shirt, and slipped her hand against my chest. I thought of the house on the side of the hill in Mytholmroyd with the bookcase full of Chomsky, and she wriggled out of her dress, and I thought about Tony rubbing his hands all those times and whether we might get back in touch, and then the two of us were naked on the bed and it was all so unlikely that I felt as though I was watching the scene from above. She was kissing my neck, and lifting herself from the bed against me, and I worried about all the things I might be doing wrong. I wondered about God and where he was now, what he'd told them if he ever
got as far as Tel Aviv. I could imagine him talking himself all the way to Bethlehem and standing in front of bulldozers, rebuilding houses, washing teargas from his eyes. I hadn't thought of him for months and now I missed him, now of all times. Marion was pulling my hand between her thighs, and although I felt clumsy it seemed from what she was saying that I was doing at least something right. At one point she actually said,
oh, God!
and it was so surprising that I almost laughed. It seemed self-conscious, the way she said it, as though she'd heard that this was the thing to say, and I realised that perhaps she wasn't much more experienced than I was. The mechanics of the thing itself were awkward and there was a moment of confusion before we could carry on. And when I heard her call out,
oh, God
, a second time, more tentatively, I thought of my lost friend again, and found myself muttering his name in reply, God, and she heard me and laughed as though it were a joke, and she yelled,
oh God!
much louder this time and we both laughed, and it turned out that laughing during sex made it something else entirely, when I'd always imagined that sex would be earnest and solemn, and so then we were both yelling
oh God! oh God! oh God!
until one or other of us eventually came – this was the way I thought of it later, although it wasn't her and eventually was far from the right word – and the two of us in that small room were soon yelling loudly enough that I imagined God himself might hear us and look up from a house he was rebuilding, in the shadow of a watchtower or beside a burntout olive grove, look up and hear our call and smile to himself and say
nice one finally our kid
as he mortared another breeze-block into place. And these thoughts – of my absent friend and all we'd been through together, of my years of missed opportunities, even of Marion and how there would soon come a time when I would wonder where she was and whether she thought of me at all – these thoughts all brought me close to crying, close enough to want to hide the fact by getting down on my knees and burying my
face in her garden of tears, where I opened my mouth and murmured soft distractions until she pulled my hair and whispered
oh God
once again, as though saying it for the very first time.