The Facts of Life (66 page)

‘Oh. And who do you think you are to be deciding these things?’ Miriam had snapped.

‘Closer to him than you,’ Sam had stated quite calmly. Miriam had crumpled, wept, apologised and then left after retrieving a last batch of doped gingerbread from the freezer. The violent little scene, played out across the kitchen table while Jamie slept upstairs constituted a black kind of marriage, leaving behind the sense that Sam was now irreducibly ‘family’.

Alison’s birthday stole up with no great expectation on her part. No-one asked her what she wanted or even talked about it so she assumed they had forgotten or, more depressingly, that they imagined she was reaching an age where she preferred the occasion to be marked as discreetly as possible. The day arrived with the expected small flutter of cards and presents – a book, some seeds for her garden, a diary, a sensible yellow cotton jersey. Miriam had already rung with her greetings, but she drove up unexpectedly during the late afternoon and it turned out that Jamie had invited her so as to give Sam and Alison the evening off. Having insisted they set out for Rexbridge remarkably early ‘for a look around before the shops close’, Sam did not stop but drove them straight out onto the London motorway and announced that Jamie had bought them tickets to a show and even supplied a wad of cash to pay for dinner afterwards.

The show was a dazzlingly inane musical revival, with a candy-floss love story, lines of chorines stamping gold-spangled tap shoes and astonishingly mobile sets. They were neither of them musical devotees and there was a certain tension between them as they arrived at the theatre lest the present backfire. But it had been a cunning choice on Jamie’s part. The undiluted escapism was just what they both needed, enabling them to laugh and smile at nothing in particular, to stop thinking, in fact, for two merciful hours.

Jamie had booked them a table at a restaurant nearby. The air was lively with conversation and delicious smells but they were no sooner seated than Alison began to feel uncomfortable amid so much luxurious jollity.

‘Are you hungry?’ she asked Sam.

‘Very,’ he admitted. ‘Why?’

‘I’m not sure I can face all this. Why don’t we get a really good takeaway and go home with it?’

He agreed, with something like relief, so they went to one of Jamie’s favourite Chinese restaurants, then drove, with their portable dinner, out to Bow. It was a perfect evening, warm enough to drive with all the windows open. The sun had barely set, the pavements were crowded; it was one of those rare nights when London felt summery in the
soignée
European manner rather than the more usual hot and bothered English one. As the car filled with tantalising scents from the bags between her knees and Sam flicked between radio channels, Alison gazed out at the passing scenery and regained some of the mindless euphoria she had felt in the theatre.

After the warmth outside her house felt clammily unlived-in. There was something deadening about arriving to a heap of freebie local newspapers, irrelevant mail and a silent, unplugged fridge. Sam divined her mood, however and, making himself as at home there as at The Roundel he threw open the windows and used the junk mail to start an unseasonal fire in the living room grate. They ate the takeaway sprawled across the floor surrounded by the food cartons, washing it down with some red wine she had set by for a special occasion. But then she found herself wondering,
Now what
?

Conditioned by late nights at The Roundel, they were both far too awake with food and freedom to go straight to bed. There was always music or the television, but the fire had established an atmosphere either of these would vandalise. Hunched up on the floor against the sofa, Sam prodded the coals with the poker, his long face decorated by the firelight.

If he dares belch
, she thought,
we can watch television
.

He sighed heavily, however, looked at her with a sigh of bitter amusement then looked down at his hands, pretending to adjust his watchstrap.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘No. What?’ she insisted, but he only shook his head. ‘Thanks for a lovely evening,’ she went on. ‘I needed it. I think you did too.’

‘Don’t thank me. Thank Jamie.’

‘You never talk about him, Sam. You’re going through so much, it might help you cope.’

‘I’m not going to one of those bleeding groups you made him go to.’

‘I’m not saying that but –’

‘I talk to Jamie, all right?’

‘Yes. Of course you do. So do I. But you can’t tell him everything you feel any more, can you?’

‘Yes I can.’

‘You’re too busy protecting him.’

‘What would you know?’ he asked flatly, his temper flaring. The hurt must have shown on her face because he made a blunt apology immediately.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘I was talking out of turn.’

‘You spend so much time around queers, you probably know more than I do,’ he added. ‘Why do you?’

‘I don’t mean to. It just happened that way. That’s who my friends are.’

‘Haven’t you ever had, well, you know …?’

She grinned.

‘A lover? Well of course I have. Only a couple of months ago there was … Well. No. I mean.’ She felt her cheeks grow hot and moved away from the fire a little, was glad of the shadows on her face. She had not blushed in years. ‘I had boyfriends when I was a student and since then – Jamie must have told you.’

‘Yes. He did a bit,’ Sam allowed.

‘I never lived with any of them, though. I’m not very good at domestic stuff. I get bored too easily.’ She was going to say that she thought the jump from passion to buying cat litter came all too easily once two lovers shared a roof, but stopped herself, remembering how cruelly Sam’s experience of the cat litter phase had been cut short.

‘Who was the most recent, then? Have I met him?’

‘Sam! This is most unlike you.’

‘Sorry.’

‘No. It’s all right. I tell Jamie everything normally but I didn’t tell him about this one. I couldn’t.’

‘Why not.’

‘Oh. I dunno.’ She looked up at Sam. ‘He was just a gatecrasher at Sandy’s birthday party. An American. Cute.’

‘Oh yes?’ Sam smiled, anticipating a sexy story. Alison sighed, sipped her wine.

‘It started well enough but then I found I couldn’t stop thinking about Jamie and it sort of killed it for me. I felt such an idiot.’

‘Know the feeling.’

‘Really?’ She looked up again, surprised.

‘Well of course I do. I’m fucking in bed with the bloke.’

‘Sorry, that was crass of me –’

‘I mean. I’m fucking in bed with the bloke. And not fucking.’

‘Sam, I’m so sorry.’

‘Stop apologising.’ He raised his voice. ‘It’s not your fault, is it? The stupid thing is he wants to. I still get horny too, but I can’t go through with it and that makes me feel such a shit, you know?’

He was obviously upset, and as he lurched towards her across the carpet she took him easily in her arms. She thought he was going to break down and cry on her shoulder, but instead she felt him kissing the side of her neck, then kissing her mouth and, as he held her harder than she had been holding him, she kissed him back. There was so much of him suddenly, a hard, controlling force. The taste of his skin, his warm scent, the hard chill of his earring against her neck, the feel of him beneath his clothes was, for a few seconds, so precisely what she wanted of him that she was consumed by speechless hunger. Then, as he began to fumble with her shirt buttons, she tried to hold him off.

‘No,’ she said, trying to laugh. ‘Sam? Stop! This is … no.’

‘Please,’ he moaned. ‘
Please
.’

And she remembered Jamie trying to explain, ‘He just took over. I didn’t have any will any more.’

She froze. For what seemed like a full minute she was frightened, very frightened, aware only of Sam’s strength, of his potential for violence, of the danger of resistance. Then he tugged his tee-shirt over his head and crouched over her to nuzzle at her belly and she found herself hungry for him again.

It should not have been erotic. It was, after all, a kind of assault – battery of a soft target. But she could not pretend, whatever the politics and morality of the deed, that a part of her was not eager for what was happening. As he began to enter her, she gabbled something about condoms in her bedside drawer but some crazed delicacy caused her to make her suggestion so enigmatic that it passed him by entirely and he was already in her and thrusting.

‘I’ll pull out,’ he gasped. ‘It’s okay. I’ll pull out in a second, before I –’

But desperation overrode prudence. She wrapped her legs about him to pull him in more deeply, just as he juddered to an unpostponable climax, and came with a defiant curse. Her belly, breasts and cheeks on fire, she held him so deep within her she actually felt his cum pumping into the neck of her womb.

Too stunned to talk, they drank the rest of the wine in silence, then lay entwined and sweating in front of the dying fire until Alison started to feel cold. Sam followed her to her bed where they escaped into almost immediate sleep, his chest pressed into her back beneath chilly, unaired bedding.

When she woke he had already dressed and been out to buy them breakfast. Hastily bathed and dressed, she sat across the table from him, obediently munching the toast he had made.

‘Listen, Sam,’ she said at last, unable to cope with another minute of monosyllables. ‘We can’t pretend last night didn’t happen.’

‘Well what else do you expect us to do?’ he asked angrily. ‘Tell Jamie? You think we can waltz home and tell him all about it?’

‘No. No of course not. I’m just saying we can’t undo what we have done. It won’t go away just because we don’t think about it.’

‘Yes it will,’ he said. ‘
It’s got
to.’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘If that’s what you want.’

She toyed with the possibility of letting him go back without her, then sensed that would raise suspicions. They had the radio on as he drove them home again. It played bright, frenetic dance music and they managed eventually to talk about things, other things.

After running upstairs to check on Jamie, Sam drove off swiftly again on the pretext of buying groceries. Miriam was having a last chat with her son before returning home. Jamie wore the love beads Alison had bought him on the march the previous summer. They were gaudy against his white pyjamas. She found it easy enough to kiss brother and mother on the cheek and enthuse about the show. She had enjoyed it after all.

‘And how was the restaurant afterwards?’ Miriam asked.

‘We didn’t go,’ she said. ‘Well. We did, then we thought a takeaway was more fun because it was such a lovely evening.’

‘A
takeaway
?’ Jamie sounded disgusted.

‘From Fou Tsong,’ Alison added.

‘Ah,’ he said, more approving. ‘Fou Tsong. Well
that’s
all right. Happy birthday.’

He sounded exhausted although he had barely woken. He patted her hand, yawned and closed his eyes, falling asleep again as suddenly as a kitten. She left the room quietly and saw her mother off. There would be no more questions about her evening. Her guilt weighed heavily enough to merit an inquisition, but there would be none. What she and Sam had done was so unthinkable, she realised, as to leave them above suspicion. Incest was that easy. When Sam returned with the shopping, she caught him before he had a chance to speak to Jamie.

‘I told him we enjoyed the show and bought ourselves a takeaway,’ she said quickly. ‘That’s all. There’s no need to lie.’

‘Right,’ he said, standing awkwardly on the kitchen stairs below her. ‘Look. About this morning. I’m sorry if … well … You know.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. It happens all the time.’

She had meant to follow him to the kitchen, reassure him by offering the sisterly companionship of helping unpack groceries and making coffee, but bitterness rose up in her like bile and she had to turn away from him.

‘Got to call the office,’ she muttered.

His steps sounded lighter than usual as he carried on down; the steps of a man pardoned.

Over the following days her ‘birthday treat’ as she wryly christened it, continued to rise, an unacknowledged spectre, whenever their paths crossed. This was not entirely a new experience for her. There had been inconvenient indiscretions before – like the young editor at Pharos – but before, if she had regretted an encounter, it was because of her embarrassment at a lapse in taste. Her night with Sam only left her wanting him more. She sought self-disgust but instead found herself recalling the feel of his hands. She helped him turn Jamie’s mattress and watched the flexing of his forearms. He brushed past her on the staircase and her skin seemed to buzz. For once, she did not confide in Sandy. Telling would only grant oxygen to a fire best stifled.

Jamie’s condition suddenly began to worsen. It was astonishing that a body could withstand such an assault. He developed a kind of arthritis. Thanks to Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions forming inside his bowel, he suffered another plague of chronic diarrhoea. Spasms seized his agonized bowels up to four times in just half an hour. He lost his sight courtesy of cytomegalovirus and then, mercifully Alison felt, he was struck by encephalopathy which clouded his thinking. Like someone enfeebled by senility, he forgot names, forgot what he was saying Half-way through a sentence and occasionally stirred from a doze to produce a sentence of perfectly grammatical nonsense. Returning from Germany, where he had spent far longer than originally planned, Edward took one look at Jamie, one at Alison and Sam’s exhausted faces and insisted on paying for a night nurse. A nurse arrived every evening at six and left early the following morning. Used to patients in Jamie’s position who wanted to remain at home for their last weeks, the Rexbridge AIDS clinic cooperated by lending equipment – a wheelchair, a drip feed and so on – and supervised the administration of oxygen and morphine.