Sheer Blue Bliss (22 page)

‘An owl,' Connie said. ‘No, two owls. One calls toowit and the other answers toowoo.'

‘I never knew that.'

‘Well, that's what Patrick says.'

‘Hmmm.'

They laughed. Red pulled her against him. His chin was rough against her cheek and she could feel the heat of him through his tunic. ‘What will become of you, little one?' he murmured into her hair.

‘I'm all right.'

‘Patrick's reputation with women …'

‘It's not just Patrick, you know,' Connie said, ‘your mother, too … she has her … adventures. Apparently.'

‘Well, that's up to her. There could even be doubt cast upon the proximity of …'

‘Of?'

‘Speculation about
you
, do you realise that, Connie?' She heard a pause in his breathing: he was waiting for a clue. She pulled away again and walked forward into the darkness, very dark between the trees now, too dark to walk without stumbling.

‘Your own speculation is this?'

‘Would that be so strange? Connie, wait, wait …' She waited half because the dark was starting to scare her, the snapping of invisible twigs under her feet, the soft scratch of leaves against her face. The beer made her dizzy, made flickers of light in her eyes as if there were fire-flies everywhere. He held her again and this time she could clearly hear his heart beating and smell his skin. She reached her face up and put her lips on the tender place above his collar. She remembered Patrick in the wood, that stiff slant under his pyjama trousers, tried to push that image away, the memory of hot silk in her hand. Found that she was breathless.

‘Perhaps you do right to wonder.'

‘Are you …?'

‘Is this to be an impertinent question?'

‘Yes, extremely.'

‘Do you think it proper to continue?'

‘Of course not, but to hell with propriety.'

Connie gave a mock gasp. And waited. But he said nothing. ‘Go on then.'

‘Are you a …'

‘A?'

‘Are you a virgin?'

‘Yes.' Another owl cry, or two owls. Remember those soft white wings in the dawn.

‘Patrick hasn't … then.'

‘No.' Which was almost the truth.

‘I think I'd murder him if he did.' And then he kissed her, his mouth strange on hers, the shape of his open lips, the beery taste, the sharpness of the stubble around them, the tip of his tongue flickering between her own lips that opened and made her think of flowers opening, fat wet petals. They stumbled together and held up. Oh, Patrick and all his shocking talk.

‘Have you been kissed before?'

‘No, no.' She reached her mouth to his again, her legs weakening, hanging on him almost to keep her up. ‘Not kissed like this.'

He stopped. ‘Did you hear?'

‘What?' But then she heard Sacha's voice carrying between the trees calling first Red's name and then her own.

‘We'd best go back,' he said. ‘But tomorrow? My last day. I'd like to spend it with you.'

She paused, warmed suddenly, grinned into the darkness. ‘Yes.'

‘I do like you very much, Connie.'

‘Yes, yes, me too.'

He held her away from him by the tops of her arms and looked down at her although it was too dark to see his face. ‘Not as a brother, do you understand.'

‘Well, you're not my brother.'

‘Understand?'

‘Yes.' She wanted him to kiss her again then, but he turned and drew her back along the path towards Sacha's voice.

SEVEN

Tony wakes, hot light pressing on his face. He keeps his eyes closed. There's a red glow inside his lids. Where the fuck is he and why so bright and hot? In a sleeping bag stretched out on a hard floor. Christ. He turns over and opens his eyes to the huge shadow of a dead wasp. Can't bear the filth, can't bear the nylon. Gets out of the sleeping bag quick, staggers a bit, bones stiff. Not getting old, Tony, not at thirty? It's being here with an old woman, that's all. Old age rubbing off like a contagion.

Not how it should be. Nothing is. His armpits itch. He scratches his chin, needs a shave, needs a shower, needs clean sheets to bring a proper rest, last night all tossing and turning, sweat, sore bones, bad dreams. Burned out. Can't put his unwashed body back in his unwashed clothes. There should be a washing machine or a launderette close by. How does she wash her clothes? There should at least be a shower.

You can't even stand straight in this dwarf space. Sun bright on Patrick's painted face. One day someone will wake to Tony's face on canvas, stare into his painted eyes and read some expression. And then he will exist, other than in this self, he will exist. Yes, there's that.

He pushes open the skylight. Cool dawn, can't see the sea from here, wrong side, just a scrub of bushes with berries on, straggling trees turning brown – but you can hear the sea. A swim? That would wash away the sweat at least, the reek of hot, stale skin. He kneels at the edge of the trap-door and looks down. Darker down there, except for the bright rectangle that contains his own shadow. Her door still shut. Twenty-five-past seven by his watch.

He gets a pair of clean underpants from his rucksack, but yesterday's shirt and jeans and, bollock naked, climbs down the ladder. No one to see, straight out the door. First time he's been naked outside? Yes? Shivers, but the cool air is at least clean against his skin. Through the dunes, cold sand forced between his toes, sharp prickle of grass against his legs and on to the firm ripples of wet sand. He drops his clothes at the last dune and runs, feet smacking and into the shallow cold of the sea that is milky in the early light and sooo cold. Strides in over a ridge of pebbles, gasping, water up to his thighs, balls burrowing up inside him, the cold lick of water meeting round his waist making him shout and then he plunges. It almost makes his heart stop,
icy, icy
, but then he's swimming and it's fanfuckingtastic, arms parting the water ahead. He wants someone to have seen him, some woman, perhaps. Squints through wet lashes at the beach but there's no one. Swims just a few breast strokes, crawls a bit, too bleeding cold for more but it's great. It's
great
.

Suddenly so wide awake, his body all at one. Exhilarated, that's the word. And clean, clean in the cold of it. And then he's out, legging it up the beach, teeth chattering, hair like wet weed clinging round his shoulders. Too wet to dress he makes himself run. Christ, early morning swim and run, this would impress them. Impress who, Tony? Who cares? Runs until his skin burns as it heats under the cold skim of water.

A sharp stab in his foot stops him. Christ. A broken bottle in the sand. He lifts his foot to look at bright blood leaking from behind a sandy flap of skin. Stares at it. No. He hobbles, shivering, back to his clothes and tries to pull his shirt on but the material sticks to his damp skin and it won't go on.

And then he starts to cry. To
bawl
like a great fucking baby, tears and a string of hot snot stretching from his nose. Hops into his pants, sobbing all the time, sand from his foot sticking to the cotton, smear of blood on the white, jeans sticking to his legs.

Dressed, he sits in sand-dunes, holds his foot in his lap and waits for the crying to stop. Sees himself like someone else would, twisted leg, the sole pulled upwards, shuddering shoulders, pale damp shirt with the wet of his black hair spread over it, twisted face.

He sat on a single bed like this at home once, not allowed to sit on the bed but sitting there all the same and crying. How it hurt to cry. How old was he … young. And she had caught him wanking. Something that made him sick with himself even that early but he couldn't help it, sometimes it just came over him this kind of itch and heat till he couldn't be still or think of anything else and he did it just to get it out of the way but then she came into the bathroom – forgotten to lock the door, how could that have been? – and … the memory scrubbed out after that … the utter horror is all he remembers. The utter sickening, shocking, shame. The look on her face. Night after night he had known
she
was shagging men whose names he never knew. But the look on her face. She never touched him again. He remembers no touch ever just her face white between the black wings of hair: nothing warm, cold food cling-wrapped in the fridge, starchy piles of clothes delivered by a laundry service.

Blood so red against the white flap of skin, skin thickened and withered by the wet and cold. He prods it, can't feel a thing. Still the fucking tears coming from somewhere, it hurts like someone's wrenching something from his gut. All the crying coming together. Another bed, hard stinking bunk, crying there, the Prison Chaplain: ‘Have faith,' as he
would
say. And Tony getting himself together enough to say, ‘Faith in what?' ‘Whatever you believe in.' ‘I believe in nothing.' ‘Then believe in yourself.' Hadn't answered, not worth an answer. But later, lying on the bunk staring at the ceiling pocked with little bits of paper chewed and spat there by inmates before him, he had found himself thinking about that. Believe in himself. What is there, body, mind – almost managed to get a degree for Christ's sake before – and surely that must prove he has a mind. And he feels hunger, pain and loneliness. He eats and sleeps and shits and cries. He is someone. To believe in? Why not?

So the Chaplain's trite crap cheered him enough to borrow a book from the library, to use the mind that was knackered by boredom, guilt, anger, the stupidity of those around him. And the book was Patrick's Memoir. The stuff about plants that grabbed him somehow, the stuff about the elixirs, the Seven Steps to Bliss that he thought would save him. Like a message that book then. There is hope. Maybe there is still. That's why he's here, for Christ's sake.

He wipes his face on his sleeve. He's stopped crying now, just a judder in his chest with every in-breath and soon that will stop. And nobody saw him and nobody knows. Come on, Tony man. There may still be hope. Fucking freezing, teeth chattering now. He gets up, limps between the dunes, grains of sand forcing themselves up into his cut. Thinks, This is where Patrick lived. Patrick knew here.
Was
here. That is why I'm here, because of Patrick, and that idea returns to him like an embrace.
It's all right
.

And the woman that Patrick loved when she was young is going to paint him and he will find the elixirs, he's sure of that, suddenly, because that is the meaning of all this. There is meaning and living in Benson's squalor may just be the price he'll have to pay. Everything has a price, of course it does, how could it not? In the end you always have to pay.

She's up when he gets back sitting at the table, a cup of tea in front of her. She doesn't look up, doesn't speak, so the Coventry treatment, is it? But then she says, ‘Tea in the pot if you want it.' She looks like someone who hasn't slept not just for one night but for several.

He goes to pour a cup of tea, recognising, just in time, the cup the dentures went in last night. Sun shines straight through the window on to her sparse hair, black at the ends, white at the top, showing how pink her skull is, the scalp-skin tight while the skin of her face is wrinkled like an old apple, lines like long stitches all around her lips.

‘What do you think I've got to lose?' she asks. ‘I mean what are you threatening me with if I fail to comply with your … hardly a request, is it, dear?' He finds another cup, pours the tea, sips it staring at her. She still hasn't raised her eyes to him. Is this rudeness, is this fear? ‘Murder, would it be?'

What is the time? They agreed to start at nine. He looks at his watch. Glass gone misted. Stupid pillock, wore it in the sea. Not waterproof, not at a tenner from Brixton market, might have been called a diver's watch but now it's buggered. Holds it to his ear to hear the faint battery tick, but there's nothing.

‘Been for a dip?' She looks up at him.

‘What's the time?'

‘Wet hair again, tut tut, you'll catch your death.' She shrugs her shoulders. ‘Search me, dear.'

‘Stop calling me dear. Where's your clock?'

‘What clock?'

His foot is starting to ache. He holds it clear of the filthy floor. Keeps his temper. ‘So how do you tell the time?'

‘Why would I want to do that?' she says, and there is triumph in her voice, she's having him on. She must have a way of telling the time. It will become apparent if he just waits. Not a big deal, he can manage for now, he can manage.

‘It's nearly nine,' he says, ‘by my reckoning.'

‘So?'

‘We said nine.'

‘
We
? I think I could fancy some nuts.' She gets up to fetch a packet of salted peanuts from the cupboard. He stares at her until she turns and meets his eyes at last. ‘And you actually believe I'm going to paint you?'

‘I'll have a fag, then, yes.'

‘And if I don't?'

‘Well, I'm the stronger of the two of us, wouldn't you say?'

He sits down at the table. Must do something about his foot, hurts like hell. Takes a pinch of tobacco and rolls up, looking at her as he licks the edge of the paper.

She scoffs a handful of nuts. ‘So, you'll beat me till I paint you?'

‘You'll paint me.' Lighter run out, has to get up to fetch the matches. She notices his limp.

‘Hurt your foot? Is that blood?'

There's a smear of blood on the floor, might be dirt in the cut, dirt in his bloodstream. Stop it. Don't panic. He sits down again, lights his fag, inhales, shuts his eyes, awaits the first buzz of nicotine, best of the day. Breathes out. ‘Got any TCP or plasters?' he asks, as if she would. But she gets up and rustles through a drawer, brings out a cracked old tube of something, throws it on the table. She goes off outside.

He tries to read what's in the tube but the name's worn off. He unscrews the lid, squeezes out a bit of pinkish stuff, sniffs it, smells antiseptic, kind of familiar. He hops to the sink, lifts his leg and puts his foot under the tap. Waits for the rush of cold water that rinses the cut, rinses off the sand. He watches the water marbling with his blood against the enamel. Stands with his foot in the sink for a long time, feeling like a complete prat, till his foot aches with the cold, till the water must have washed it clean.