The Last Girl (22 page)

'Get
stuffed,' I said, just like that. 'It's not that late. And Larry's a big boy
now.'

Get stuffed.
Get it? A little joke. The sort you can make with a friend, someone you know
will laugh and not take offence. Get stuffed. Good that.

And that's
where today ended. In two shakes I was undressed and climbing into bed, still
laughing to myself. And I wouldn't be surprised if I was still grinning a
minute later, as I lay there flat out. You see, I wouldn't know; I was asleep
the moment my head hit the pillow.

I don't know what woke me.

Maybe it was
a noise. The sort that's been and gone before you wake up, leaving nothing more
than a ripple in the darkness. It could even have been a lorry, one of the
specially noisy ones, a juggernaut heading north, its driver trying to fit in
one extra trip before the holiday begins. It could very well have been a lorry.

Go back to
sleep, Larry. That's what I said to myself. It's half past two in the morning,
lad. This was no time to be awake, not when for once I'd managed to go to sleep
without the waiting, and the listening, and everything that usually goes with a
visit from His Lordship. I'd managed without all that and known only peaceful
slumber as a result.

And peaceful
slumber being all I wanted again, I closed my eyes that had opened for no
reason that I could see, and tried to sleep. And couldn't. And couldn't. In
fact the more I tried, the more awake I became. Until finally I had to face it.
It wasn't going to happen, not for the time being.

Something was
nagging me, pecking away at the back of my head like a woman's voice. Now that
I was awake, I wanted to know why. And until knew, I wasn't going to sleep.

So what was
it? A noise? A dream? That's a good one, because there's nothing like dreams to
wake you up, specially the sort I have. And come to think of it, there had been
something happening over there, on the other side of sleep. But it wasn't the
kind I normally have, I can say that now, because it suddenly struck me that
half the reason I really wanted to be asleep again was to get back to that
dream, whatever it was. Something told me I'd actually been enjoying myself.
And now I felt cheated.

So it must
have been a dream, not your normal kind certainly, but the sort that can wake
you all the same. Not the smell of gas, or a light burning up money, or a sound
from down below that never should be there...

Tell that to
my hands, though. Do you think they could stop fretting? They hovered about
like a pair of restless souls until finally, I got a grip and clasped them
above the covers just below my waist, told them to lie there and keep still.

And that was
when I discovered what it was really that had woken me.

Underneath
the covers, underneath my hand, something was alive. Something I'd thought had
died long ago. Still there, still alive, still hard. Not my imagination.

Don't. Don't
say anything. Larry's not that kind of man. Doreen could have told you that. I
mean, she told everybody else didn't she, as if there was something wrong with
being clean-living. As if it mattered, as if we didn't have June already. It
wasn't my fault then,
and
it's not my fault now
, when it's all turned round. So don't.

Just make it
go away. And let me sleep the sleep of the just.

Light. Light
is what I need. Light to drive away the evils that creep under the darkness to
play tricks on a decent man. Only it can't be the usual kind of light, not when
you might end up seeing things you don't want to see. It's got to be another
kind altogether, spiritual even. In other words, Lighten my darkness, oh Lord.
Relieve me of this.

But the
answer comes as nothing but a continuation of the same, and down below, still
there, is the hard thing that could kill a man with shame. So it's got to be
light, any light. In this case the lamp beside the bed. The important thing is
not to look, not down the bed, not in the mirror, just straight ahead where
it's safe. And so it is that the first thing I see is the bear, staring
straight back at me.

And, oh God,
don't tell me I'm going to blush in front of a flipping stuffed toy. But I do.
I can't help it. He's looking at me, and has been all this time, never mind the
dark. Those eyes of his, yellow in this light, can see everything, and as much
as on me, they are fixed on the stranger halfway down the bed.

So I lie and
I blush and I lie and I stare until...until the impossible happens, and out of
the blue, out of the impossible, he winks at me.

So help me
God, he winked at me.

'What?'
Despite myself, I've jumped out of bed. Because what else do you do when a toy
bear winks at you, then seems to sit back, smug and knowing as any joker in a
pub? Yellow eyes laughing at you and accusing you of all sorts of nastiness.
What you really want to do at that moment isn't just jump out of bed, of course
it isn't. You want to lunge forward and yank him from the chair, give him the
hiding he deserves. But you don't, because the fear is you will feel a small
animal heart beating under the nylon of his fur.

So when you
can't do what's normal, you do the next best thing instead. In this case, sink
down on the bed, and let the conversation run. Because those eyes of his,
they're speaking volumes.

Or a few
words, anyway. And those words are, 'Who've you been dreaming of, Larry?'

Then it all
comes flooding back - the whole bloody dream, washing over me. I could see her
face and everything. And what's down below explodes, killing itself. And it's
all over.

At the end of
my bed, slumped in the chair is a stuffed toy like any other, nothing in its
eyes but the glint of glass. The only living thing in the room is Larry,
sitting bolt upright in his bed shivering with fright and- -something else.

Relief,
probably.

All the same,
it's a good few minutes before the voice of reason strikes up and, without a
word of apology for its absence, tells me to pull myself together. It was the
dream that did it. And you can't blame yourself for your dreams. It's other
people who force their way in. At least there was nothing Doreen could say
about it, because for once it wasn't Doreen I'd been dreaming about. Meanwhile
there were still hours of peaceful sleep ahead of me.

But not
tonight. No way was Larry going to sleep again, not right away, and certainly
not when somebody else was sitting there, watching. The bear - be he ever so
blameless would have to go. So I went to pick him up, meaning to carry him into
another room where he could be just as comfortable. Imagine my surprise then
when the very next second I find myself standing outside the bedroom door in
pitch dark. The bear has stayed exactly where he is and it's me who's ended up
going.

After the
initial shock though it occurs to me that it's come to the same thing: I've got
that bit of privacy I needed and now that I was up, and sleep being the last
thing I wanted, I might as well just go with the flow, carry on into the
kitchen and make myself a cup of something comforting.

So that's
what I did. I put on the kettle and made myself a pot of tea. Laid it all out
nicely on a tray, almost as if I was expecting company. But when it was brewed
I just stood there, staring at it, didn't even pick up the cup.

You see,
something else had happened. For the first time in all the years of living
here, I'd noticed the smell. It crept up on me as I was waiting for the kettle,
getting stronger and stronger, until when everything else was ready my nostrils
were full of it. I knew then, before I'd even worked out what it was, there was
no way I'd be drinking anything. If I swallowed so much as a drop now, I'd be
taking that smell right down with it, and I could tell you what would happen
next. There'd be one great heave as I threw up over the kitchen floor - no
better than Mandy, down there in the loo after one fig roll too many.

Old gravy.
Stale. Coming out of the walls, hanging in pockets below the ceiling, the smell
of every dinner cooked here in the last ten years and from long before that.
All this time I must have lived with it and never known it was there. Until
now, when suddenly it didn't agree with me. What's more, you could open
windows, pull doors off their hinges, take off the whole blooming roof even,
and it would still be there, hanging on in cupboards, seeping out from under
the linoleum. Inescapable, part of the very fabric of the place. My place.

And it's no
better in the lounge. If anything it's worse. It's in the wood of the cocktail
cabinet, smeared along the spaces between the shelves, clinging to the flock of
the wallpaper, part of the pattern of the rugs. It's everywhere. There's too
much stuff to hold it in, there's furniture where there should be air. I
haven't left myself room to breathe.

Come the
morning, I won't believe I said that. In fact, come the morning, I'll be able
to point to the row of bottles on the coffee table, and say, Larry, you poor
old bugger. You just got yourself drunk and never knew it. Now all this, the
bad dreams, a tiny bit of incontinence in the early hours, it's the price you
pay. The sting inside the sweetness. It's the reason some men keep drinking,
simply so as to stave off the after-effects.

Makes you
wonder what their wives would have to say about it though. I suppose it would
depend on what sort of wife you had. If you were married to the right sort of
woman, then drink or no drink, she'd be up this minute, wanting to know why her
husband was sitting in the dead of night, trying not to breathe the very air
around him. Come to think about it, even if you were married to a Doreen she'd
be here, pestering to know what the matter was. Someone to talk to.

I know what
you're thinking. You're saying to yourself: poor old Larry, he's lonely. He's
almost wishing Doreen was here to hold his hand. Well, you're wrong. Larry Mann
hasn't been lonely since a certain party stepped through the front door. With a
friend like that how can you be lonely? Even when she's somewhere else it
doesn't matter, because she'll be here in spirit. Last night I could
practically have reached out and touched her. My problem is that just for once,
having her in spirit isn't enough. It's not Doreen I miss, or anyone. It's her,
Mandy. I wish Mandy was here now. There'd be nothing wrong then.

Want to know
the way I see it?

It wasn't an
accident, the two of us ending up in the same house. We were put here for a
purpose, Mandy and me. I mean, think about it. She could have lived anywhere -
Crouch End, Finsbury Park, anywhere, but she didn't. She came here, to the very
place where she was guaranteed a friend from day one. Then there's Ethel,
dedicated to having only Indian girls in these rooms, taking one look at my
girl and changing her mind. Don't tell me that’s coincidence. It's destiny,
part of some Great Plan. After all these years, after all the insults and the
griefs, Larry's getting what he deserves. You could read my story in the Bible.
I am the righteous man.

And what
about Mandy? Where would she be without her Larry, befriending her, protecting
her from a world that's working to make her ordinary? He's been doing what her
parents should have done, guarding that spark of goodness that makes her so
unique, keeping her the way she is. A girl in a million.

She may be my
reward, then, but I'm her salvation. Together we make a team. And that's why we
should never be apart. Anything else is unnatural.

Do you know,
I never saw things so clearly until this minute. It's almost enough to make a
man glad he woke up - despite everything - just for that glimpse of the truth,
and the wonder of it all. Except that in another way it makes it so much worse,
knowing that she's down there with him, and he's down there with her, upsetting
the natural order of things.

You see,
nothing will be right until he goes. He's keeping us apart, keeping us from
Christmas.

Go to bed,
Larry.

It's not all doom and gloom, though. Because back in
the bedroom, a certain bear is waiting, and you only have to look at him to
know - he's on the level. It almost makes you want to apologize. Then again,
you only have to look deep into his eyes to see there'd be no need anyway. He
understands everything I'm going through. Having him stare back at you is like
a quiet hand upon your shoulder, telling you everything's all right.

And very
soon, he'll be doing just that for Mandy. He's every kid's dream.

'But why wait?'

The words
made me jump. I was lying on my side, about to put off the light, and there they
were in the very centre of my head, clear as a bell. It wasn't me that spoke
them, and as sure as anything it wasn't him, the bear. What's more, I knew the
voice. It was the one that spoke the day she arrived, the same voice that
marked her out as different. The sort of voice you listen to.

And this time
it was saying: why wait?

Now that
might make you ponder, but not me, not for a second, I knew what it meant all
right. There's a great gulf between Mandy and me, and there will be all the
time that
he's
here. But it doesn't have to be like that. Not if I forgot about waiting for
Christmas. In other words, give the bear to Mandy tonight. This very minute.
Make Christmas come early, bring the future forward. Bridge the gap. Let him be
the very first thing she looks at in the morning, sitting there at the end of
her little bed like her oldest friend in the world, bar one. Nothing will be
the same after that. She'll be up here, clutching him in her arms to see her
old Larry. And the other one? He won't get a look-in. Because what has he got
to give her in comparison to that?

Of course it
means a radical change of plan, but answer me this one question: with a bear
like him on my side, how can I go wrong?

First I needed to work out the risks involve. As far
as I could see, there were hardly any. I was somebody's dad once, remember. I'd
done all this before, crept into a kid's room, and out again, pretending to be
Father Christmas, and I've never been caught yet. How to tell if she was asleep
though? Even that was no problem. If she had been awake, tossing and turning
the way you do, that old bed of hers would have given her away long ago. But
there hadn't been a sound.