The Facts of Life (69 page)

Myra had sent flowers too. Not to the funeral but to him, Edward, personally. They stood in a vase on the piano, a great spray of yellow against the varnished black. He had read and reread the card, retrieved it from the bin that morning to read it again.

Teddy, dear Teddy,

I saw it in the papers yesterday. I’m so sorry. These are for you. I won’t bother you by ringing, but it would be great to meet. At Claridge’s still but thinking of renting a flat somewhere. Now that the Shaw is over, I find I’m reluctant to go home. Is that strange? Have you still got that place by the Albert Hall? (Don’t want to rent it. Just curious.) Call me whenever. The old broad is suddenly not so busy.

Love M.T.

Looking at these initials in the habitual violet-blue ink she used to joke matched her eyes, he remembered his bitter loathing of her after she had shucked him off with such apparent painlessness – whatever that biography had made out – and remembered the childish triumph with which he had noticed that M.T. said aloud sounded the same as Empty. He would not call her, now or whenever. What was there to talk about? How old they had both grown? How rich?

With time he had comfortably convinced himself that he had never loved her, that she was indeed too dreadfully empty to have inspired more than a feverish lust in him. A lust which would have died a natural death had she not chosen to murder it first, endowing their relationship with a tragic importance it never merited, an importance her biographer had now rendered official. Their relationship had become, he now liked to think, no more than an efficacious way of lancing his grief for Sally. As a drinking, rutting partner Myra had been a way of blotting out the guilt of his survival, nothing more. The last thing he needed was to do anything that might overturn these certainties. He felt too old. The balance of his life – which, all these years after Sally’s death, he still thought of as his ‘new’ life – remained too precarious.

There. He reintroduced the shimmering string texture in a repeating series of twelve chords that slowly tightened in on themselves and expanded out again, a fragile harmonic lung. Then he added the percussion sequences he had figured; gongs, bells – including the little ones Heini had found for him in Benares, whose high, pure sound he had already taped and programmed in – and the triangle, that most basic yet penetrating of all orchestral timbres. He tried the mixture out, listened, frowned, scrapped the triangle and replaced it with a stick-struck cymbal. At once the atmosphere was rendered darker, more mysterious. Now he locked the new, high male voice into place with its altered melody, and watched the notes flash, beat by beat, on the ‘manuscript’ sheet on the screen before him. He pressed Play and stood back, thumbs tucked into waistcoat pockets to listen. He smiled. He had his first twelve bars. He doubted whether anyone would spot
Dancing in the Dark
now. If they did, they would think it one of those melodic accidents or, better still, read it as some encoded personal reference.

He turned to look out of the big window behind him, hearing a thud of wood on sill. After days of airing, someone was closing the sickroom window, acknowledging a complete departure. He came closer to the glass, turning his gaze upwards, thinking to see Sam up there. But instead he saw Sally. Breathing heavily, dizzy with shock, he leant with both hands pressed against the pane. It could only be her. She was standing the way she always did at a window, with her head slightly to one side. He saw her hair, her dark gaze, her hand rising in a gesture like a quick, sharp wave. Then she vanished behind a drawn curtain.

Seized with a fear that left no time for reason, he left his music to repeat itself and hurried out of the door, across the garden and into the house.

‘Sam?’ he called out. ‘Sam?’

The house was silent. Perhaps Sam had already left for London too. The Volkswagen was still outside. Edward had been on the telephone so had not seen Alison leave. Perhaps Sam had gone with her.

‘Sam?’

Some late lilies, left by a consoling neighbour perhaps, lay on the kitchen table, still wrapped and unwatered. There was a sour smell, of old cigarette smoke and spilled red wine.

Edward was not easily frightened. He sometimes thought he must lack imagination. He was not afraid of the dark, tending rather to welcome its embrace. People frightened him, not places. Friends who had come to stay had claimed they found the old house unnerving in some way, and even stolid, realistic Alison, who loved the place, tended to keep more lights burning than was necessary when she was there alone. At first it was love for Sally which had kept him there, then it was simple love of the spot and the tranquillity of mind it fostered in him. When Miriam had become pregnant, left art school and taken over the house, he had thought seriously about moving far away, to California, perhaps, or Italy, but found he was rooted there. So he had stayed, building himself the studio close enough to remain under the influence of the old bricks and secretive windows.

Now, however, as he left the kitchen, walked out across the hall, listened again and slowly began to climb the stairs, something about The Roundel repelled him. The atmosphere felt cloying, thick with decades of dust and heavy sighs and he longed to be back outside, his feet on grass, somewhere he could inhale what little freshness the overcast day could afford. His reactions perplexed him. He had no time for the comfort of a belief in ghosts and felt sure that there was a rational explanation for the face he thought he had just seen at the window; a trick of the light, perhaps, or a visitor from the village come to help with cleaning. If he did believe in ghosts, surely the prospect of seeing Sally again would fill him with joy, not this sick fear?

He stopped as he stepped from the stairs out onto the landing.

‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Is someone there?’ Then, hearing the fear in his own voice, he was disgusted at himself for being so childish. Determined now, he marched swiftly around the landing and threw open the sickroom door. He saw the drawn curtain, the bare striped mattress on the narrow bed and, on a chair in the shadows, Sam, surprised in the act of shaking the contents of a pill bottle into his palm.

‘Fuck,’ Sam said softly. ‘Edward.’

‘I saw … I thought I saw her at the window,’ Edward said.

‘Who?’

‘Sally. Don’t.’

Edward stepped forward and made to take the pill bottle but Sam jumped up and elbowed him roughly out of the way as he headed back on to the landing. Winded, Edward slumped, gasping, onto the mattress. He tried to stand to follow Sam but found he couldn’t. He heard the lavatory flush.

‘Shit, Eddy, I’m sorry.’ Sam had reappeared in the doorway, hands empty. ‘I didn’t mean to –’ He hurried over. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes,’ Edward breathed, managing to sit up. His eyes were watering. He fumbled for a handkerchief and dabbed at them. Some coins fell onto the floor. Sam stooped and retrieved them for him.

‘Thanks,’ Edward said.

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

Edward nodded.

‘Just winded,’ he said. ‘I thought you were –’

‘I was. I mean, I thought about it. There were enough there. I couldn’t though. Fucking couldn’t.’

The bedsprings squeaked and Edward was almost pitched over as Sam sat heavily beside him, turning the empty pill bottle over in his hands, screwing and unscrewing the lid. The sinister idol was still perched on the mantelshelf. Edward was not surprised that Alison had preferred to leave it where it was. He had always detested the malignant thing.

‘I didn’t want his fucking flat,’ Sam said, after a moment. ‘I wanted him.’

‘I know. We all knew that.’

‘Did you?’ Sam glanced up then looked back to the pill bottle, repulsed by something he saw in Edward’s eyes. ‘So why?’ he asked. ‘Why’s it okay to help someone to die but wrong to help ourselves?’

Edward thought, cursing the pain in his chest, racking his brains for an answer to give this boy who reminded him so much of the bullies he had encountered at school. He remembered a fat woman in a hospital bed, a bathroom floor slippery-vivid with blood.

‘Because …’ He faltered. He touched the scars on his wrists, barely discernible now among wrinkles. ‘Because we’re strong enough to survive?’ he suggested. ‘Maybe because there’s more richness in your memories than there is misery in your present? Have you thought about that?’

‘I’ve thought,’ Sam said.

‘What will you do?’ Edward asked. ‘Go back to London? I know you didn’t want it, but it is a nice flat.’

‘I didn’t want his fucking flat,’ Sam said again.

‘I know. We all knew.’

‘Stop saying that.’

‘Sorry. What about your family? Might you go back to Plymouth?’

Sam shook his head.

‘There’s nothing for me there now.’

‘But maybe your mother –’

‘Would you move back to Germany now?’

‘No, but –’

‘It’s the same thing.’

‘No it isn’t. I don’t have any family there any more,’ Edward insisted. ‘No roots to hold me.’

‘Me neither. I wasn’t made redundant, you know,’ Sam said. ‘I told you a lie.’

‘I’m sure you had your reasons.’ Embarrassed, Edward began to rise. ‘You don’t have to tell –’

‘Just shut up,’ Sam shouted. Edward flinched and sat back on the bed. Sam towered over him for a moment. Edward noticed the young man’s fist was trembling. ‘What is it with you lot?’ Sam asked incredulously. ‘I don’t talk much but I’d have thought that was all the more reason for you to listen when I’ve got something to say.’

‘Tell me,’ Edward said, frightened, but Sam ploughed on, self-absorbed in his anger, smacking out at the bedstead with the flat of a meaty palm.

‘Every time I’ve tried to tell one of you, and it’s not easy to say, believe me, every
fucking
time you just witter on like it embarrasses you or something.’

‘I’m listening, Sam.’

‘What?’

‘I said I’m listening.’

‘Oh. Well, good.’ Sam seemed slightly deflated, crestfallen even. He frowned. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t shout like that. Jamie was always telling me. I just … I get angry and it comes out. Sorry, Eds. It’s nothing personal.’

‘I know. Tell me your story.’

‘Don’t patronise.’

‘Tell me. I want to hear. Sit.’

‘No.’ Sam paced around as he began his tale, then unconsciously did as Edward suggested and sank on to the bed so that the mattress buckled and the bedsteads leaned in towards each other.

‘It was in Plymouth, right? There’s a lido facing the Sound. Below the Hoe.’

‘A lido? You mean a beach?’

‘No. A lido. Concrete. Little paths and huts people rent and cafés and salt-water swimming pools. Diving boards. You
know
, a lido. Packed out in the summer. Anyway, at night it’s where, you know, men go to find each other. I’d heard. Everyone had. I’d known since I was at school. We used to joke about it. Anyway, I’d been having a drink with my mates down at the Barbican, in the Navy – that’s a pub – and I was walking back up over the Hoe to get home. It was late but it wasn’t that dark because there are lights around and there was a moon out. Anyway I was walking and I saw this bloke. He was leaning on the railings, you know? One leg up. Having a smoke. And as I came up he looked at me hard for a second or two then went down the steps into the lido. And I followed him.’

Sam broke off and fell silent for a moment as though reliving the scene, breathing heavily, his eyes focused on the bedroom rug.

‘Sam, I really don’t think –’ Edward began but Sam turned on him.

‘You said you’d listen.’

‘Sorry.’

Sam sighed, picking up the thread again.

‘I’d never been in there before. Never done anything like that before. I just – I don’t expect you to understand this. It just felt like something I had to do, suddenly, natural as taking a piss or something. So I followed him down two flights of steps to a kind of walkway built in under the pavement where it was darker. I didn’t know what I really expected. I … I suppose I was a bit scared. Anyway, he started to touch me and suddenly I didn’t want him to and I hit him.’ He looked at Edward close to as he spoke, his hands were shaking violently in his lap, his brow shone. Edward felt hot breath in his face.

‘I hit him again and again. I don’t know what came over me. I still don’t. And when he was down I kicked him in the face. Some blokes came running down behind us and pulled me off and got me down on the ground. Then it was their turn to start kicking me. It was the police.
He
was a policeman. He thought I was a fucking queer.’ Sam paused a moment. He looked down at his hands, saw how they were shaking and clasped them over his knees to still them.

‘And weren’t you?’ Edward asked.

‘No!’ Sam yelled, pushing him away and jumping up. ‘No!’ He ran out onto the landing and down the stairs. Edward hesitated a moment, breathless and uncertain, then went after him. He found him slumped on the bottom step, his great, bully’s body shaking with unmasterable sobs. He had not cried once to Edward’s knowledge, not once in all those last terrible months. It was as though all the anguish had come at once, with such velocity as to knock him, crippled, to the floor. He did not look up as Edward approached and lowered himself stiffly in the narrow stairwell to sit beside him, neither did he flinch when Edward briefly laid a hand on his juddering shoulder.