The Late Hector Kipling (35 page)

‘Yeah,’ says Lenny, like he’s split the fucking atom.

‘Why’d you put a door on it? That looks kinda dumb.’

‘Why’s it dumb?’ says Lenny, a little perturbed. I’m tempted to step out and answer at length.

‘I don’t know. I mean the whole thing looks like skin, like with all the hairs and stuff, but then it’s got a fucking window and a door, man, I dunno, I just don’t get what it’s supposed to be.’

‘It’s whatever you want it to be.’

‘Right, yeah, that’s the bromide of the cop-out. What do you want it to be? That should be the point.’ What a girl.

‘I want it to engage you in a dialogue about home and soul. It’s a kind of exoskeletal sanctum sanctorum. A suburban carapace.’

‘A what?’ sniggers Rosa.

‘A parody of domestic synergy.’

‘But it’s just basically, fucking ugly.’

‘Ah,’ whispers Lenny, and then, ‘the ugly maybe beautiful, the pretty, never.’

‘I’ve heard that before.’

‘Paul Gauguin.’

It was difficult enough holding down the puke after all that suburban carapace crap, but now my entire upper body, and a good half of the lower, is consumed by foaming bile.

‘Look,’ continues Lenny, ‘I’ll show you.’

In the time between realizing that he is about to open the door, and the door actually opening, my eyes dart about in their sockets like giddy bingo balls, looking for a place to hide, as though I were the size of a fly and such a thing might just be possible.

And suddenly, there I am, cowering in the one corner of this one-cornered atrocity, my bloody feet wrapped in bloody towels, my bloody
scalp, shoulders, chest and back, and every other bloody part, cracked and blistered and swollen and bruised, exposed and illuminated by the dying light of the East End sun.

‘Evening,’ I say, doffing a hat I wish I had.

Rosa in shock.

Lenny in shock.

But neither of them in anywhere close to the kind of shock that I’m in.

‘I’d ask you in,' I say, ’but I’ve got nothing to offer you.’

‘Hector!’ says Rosa.

‘Nothing at all, I’m afraid.’

‘Hector,’ says Lenny, one part accusatory, two parts accused, ‘you’re back.’

‘Oh yes,’ I say, shifting not one muscle, ‘I’m back. Hi, Rosa.’

‘Hi.’ There’s a new expression on her face. Fuck, is there no end to this girl’s talents?

I wink and return my attention to Lenny. T expect your next question is what the fuck am I doing in here.’

‘Er ...’

He’s wearing a long magnolia mackintosh, a plum baseball cap and a pink checked shirt that looks unnervingly like gingham.

‘Well, I’ll tell you what I’m doing in here ...’ and I start to cry. I cry and cry and cry. Of course I do. What better way to combat his ignorant levity? What better way to stab him in the heart, other than actually stabbing him in the heart? Which remains an option.

‘Hector, Hector,’ coos Rosa, kneeling down and cradling my head in her lap. ’Angel, my angel,’ and she places her palm upon my brow. Her soothing palm, save for her nails and the kick of her rings. I’m too confused to stop crying. If I stop crying I’m gonna have to start talking. But talking is out of the question. There is nothing to say. All I have to express is being expressed right now; sobbing into Rosa’s lap, her fingers
across my scalp, Lenny silenced and removed from the centre of that thing we call attention.

‘How’s your dad?’ says Lenny, attempting to drum up some tears of his own.

‘Oh, you know,’ I manage to sniffle, ’really not well. I believe the word is moribund.’

‘Oh God,’ whispers Lenny and puts his hand to his chest. ‘Oh God, Hec, I’m sorry.’

Why does he have to be so fucking nice?

I raise myself up on one elbow and pursue the matter: ‘All the other blokes on the ward are packing their cases to go home and Dad . . . well . . .’ I drag my forearm across my nose, ‘he’s . . .’ long pause whilst Rosa plants a hundred kisses on my cheeks and ears, ‘I don’t know, Lenny . . . what can I say . . . he’s just not doing well, that’s all I can say . . . in answer to your question.’ I bow my head, lower my eyes and then, at last, close them.

‘Hector,’ whispers Rosa, ‘you should be in bed, baby. Come to bed.’

My God, I wish she hadn’t said that. I was just beginning to hate her and then she goes and says a thing like that. She runs her hands up and down my back and whispers, ‘There, there, it’s all gonna be all right, sweet one.’

No woman has ever called me sweet one. Only Rosa could call me sweet one.

‘Come on, let me put you into bed.’ She hooks her elbows under my armpits and begins to lift me from the hollow of the settee.

‘Hector,’ says Lenny, as I’m dragged across the floor in the direction of the bedroom, ’we’ll talk in the morning, OK?’

‘OK,’ I manage to utter, baffled as to how I might subvert the protraction of this preposterous spectacle. ‘OK, I’ll see you in the morning.’ I even manage a little wave. My feet are seen to cross the threshold, linger for a while, and then disappear out of sight as the door is kicked shut.

We make no mention of what was going on with Lenny just now. We make no mention of anything. She undresses me and then herself. Kirk’s death has had no apparent effect on Rosa’s er . . . ardour. She still pinches my scabby coral nipples between her fingertips, like she’s crushing nits, and bites my inner thighs until they bleed. She still pulls my hair and presses her thumb into my thorax. Still nuts me with each thrust and tries to put out my eyes as she comes.

Anyway, enough of this pornography. Tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow is the seventh: the worst day of my entire life. Apart from the eighth – which was almost as bad as the ninth.

Rosa’s white face on Eleni’s favourite pillow. Rosa’s pale lids. Her veins filled with milk, and all the blood rushed to her lips. The smell of her on the slashed mattress. Soft breath and softer swallows. Her feet against my calves. The slightest shift. Her buttocks against my swollen belly. I feel sick, and sorry. Sick in all sorts of ways; sorry in just one.

Eleni is not sleeping. With no idea of where in the world she is at this moment, I only know that she is awake and raw and rent asunder. I’d say that it breaks my heart, were it not for the fact that the idiom has always disappointed. The heart, after all, is a pump, and a broken pump no longer pumps. Alas, this is scarcely the case. If only the heart really did break in moments like this; then the game would be up and we might all take our ease. But no; rather the heart is renewed, made vital, and pumps all the more, heralding not the end, but a new and appalling beginning.

But no matter; such things maybe overlooked.

My desire for Rosa, far from being in abeyance, is now doglike in terms of its gormless devotion. This battered and bloody mattress has become the floor of heaven. Her tongue is in my mouth. Not something I like to think about. But if thought can be suppressed in such moments, and one’s instinct for abandonment brought to the fore, then the benefits are often manifold. Her tongue is eating away at my mouth, counting my teeth with the tip. In the name of playfulness I try to push her out and there follows a peculiar scuffle of lips. The next thing you
know it feels so nice that we begin to flail and wheeze like a pair of hysterical, unmedicated mental patients. Such is love.

Lenny’s stripped to the waist with his head inside the settee. I’m barefoot in my dressing gown and make it into the kitchen without him noticing. Rosa fancies an egg and I’m headed for the fridge to see if I’ve got one. I doubt it: I’ve always been disgusted by eggs, so unless Lenny bought some, she’s gonna have to settle for some Marmite on a lump of hard ciabatta.

I open up the fridge. Nothing but beer and old cheese. I must say, if I was on my own, then I might be tempted, but it’s hardly quality fayre when one has a young lady over to stay. I fill the kettle and open the hatch. Lenny’s put on a CD of Mozart’s
Requiem
(cheery), and he’s got his khaki Maharishi buttocks thrust up into the air, swaying to the er . . . rhythm. Now and then his head appears, shining with sweat, his brow ravaged by stress. The show opens the day after tomorrow and he’s obviously got the Tate barking up his arse to get the thing delivered by tomorrow evening. He climbs inside and closes the door.

I mix up a coffee and stroll through. I detest this piece of music. It’s twats like Mozart who turned death into something to worry about. Death is not so grand as this. Death is a short, shifty-looking fella, hobbling down the street in a cheap green jacket. He should never be set to music. At least not this kind of music. Something on a piccolo perhaps. Or a kazoo and ukulele.

Lenny emerges from his piece and jumps to find me there, sitting in the blue chair, cross-eyed with confusion, sweaty with terror, damp with arrogance.

‘Oh! Morning,’ he says.

‘Morning,’ I say right back at him, ‘though it’s technically afternoon.’

He looks at his watch. ‘Shit! I’ve got them coming round tomorrow night to haul this off.’

I look at it, this thing that they’re coming to haul off. I don’t know. I really don’t know. Why don’t they just lug it down to the canal?

‘Got a fag?’ says Lenny.

‘Yeah,’ I say and light one for him.

‘So,’ he says, leaning back.

‘So,’ I reply, slinging my legs over the arm of the chair.

‘Is she sleeping?’

‘Yeah.’

Silence.

‘Where did you get that dressing gown?’

I look down at myself. I’m wearing a rather ornate robe with peacocks and humming birds gliding up the arms and back. The hem is trimmed with gold silk and there’s a fancy HK monogram right over the heart.

‘Eleni bought it for me in Spitalfields,’ I say. ‘“Classic Robes”.’

There’s a brief hiatus of coughs and sniffs at the mention of Eleni. Lenny pulls on his fag and decides to pursue things.

‘Why’s it got a hood?’

‘You know what, Len,’ I say, rent by these platitudes, ‘I can’t answer that question. But I’ll say this: I’m happy that it does cos I think it has the effect of making my head look smaller, or my neck more slender. Either way, these are things that bother me when I’m kitted out in hoodless attire. OK?’

‘Are you all right?’ says Lenny.

‘I’m fucking fantastic, Len,’ I say and hold my cigarette above my shoulder like Lauren Bacall in a Classic Robe.

To think we used to be friends. To think that there was a time when we were never at a loss for words, when conversation would flow like a glittering Niagara. To think that we once excited each other. And look at us now, caught up in a scrum of mumbled chestnuts.

We sit here, wallowing in the polarity of our circumstances and blow out smoke instead of words.

Silence. Oh my tiny little God; such a silence.

‘So when’s Kirk’s funeral?’

‘Don’t know yet.’

‘Where’s it gonna be?’

‘Cardiff, I expect.’

More silence. Not much of one, but enough to mention that there is one.

I’m sat on the window ledge moving my hand around my face, squeezing at the eyes, the bridge of the nose, fingering the lips, all that kind of thing. A little show. The expected display.

‘So,’ I begin, ‘how are you feeling?’

Lenny stretches out on the floor and stares at the ceiling for years, mortified that his answer might be trivial. At last he manages to line up a few words, cunningly disguised as sentiment: I suppose that something like this gives rise to the conception of a faith of some sort.’

Huh? What the fuck does that mean?

‘What do you mean?’ I say, all polite, though I really want to knock out his teeth with a chisel.

‘Well, it’s like when my father died . . .’

Oh shit, here we go; boo fucking hoo.

‘When you’re young – I mean when you’re little – there’s this idea that’s seeded in your imagination; this idea of death. But for a long time it’s only hypothetical. It’s like saying that you, or someone you know, might be struck by lightning. It’s unlikely, they say, but it must always be borne in mind as a possibility . . .’

I yawn.

‘And then, one day, that lightning does strike. And once it’s struck you find yourself living in fear of the weather. Do you know what I’m saying?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I enthuse, following up my yawn with another.

‘What I’m saying is that when someone intimate dies, then you have no choice but to assemble a list of possibilities as to what that
means. I mean . . .’ he says, and takes his earned pause, ‘I mean it feels unacceptable, idle, to settle for the initial and instinctual response—’

‘What’s your point?’ I say.

‘What?’

‘I said, what’s your point?’

His face hardens into brick. ‘What the fuck are you saying that for? What the fuck are you talking about? I’m making my point. I’m right in the middle of making my point!’

‘OK, carry on.’

He paces around the room. ‘I can’t believe you just interrupted me like that.’

‘Sorry, sorry, carry on.’

He clears his throat. ‘For fuck’s sake, Hector!’

‘I’m really sorry, Lenny,’ I lie, ‘please, please carry on. You were just saying that it feels unacceptable, idle, to settle for the initial and instinctual response. So what response is that, then?’

He glares at me.

‘No, no, really, that’s a real question: what’s the initial and instinctual response?’

Silence.

Lenny sits back down and caresses his scalp. ‘The initial response,’ he says, ‘the conditioned response is to abandon hope.’

‘Abandon hope,’ I mutter, in affirmation. I maybe even nod my head.

‘But there’s so much time and space in which to question this; you find yourself lying in bed, constructing all manner of outlandish scenarios.’

‘Do you?’ I say.

‘Yeah,’ says Lenny.

‘What sort of scenarios?’

‘Well, it starts with a negation of that initial instinct; that banishing of hope. So then you begin to stimulate hope . . .’

I yawn again. I don’t mean to. I really don’t mean to this time, but it’s stuffy in here and I’m still in my gorgeous dressing gown.

‘You undergo a sudden onset of illumination and rationality. It comes down to this: if your instinct – the instinct of futility – is wrong, then the alternatives are imbued with some sort of optimism.’