They Do the Same Things Different There (23 page)

The other virgins kept their distance. Michael didn’t blame them. It wasn’t that they were afraid of death, it was simply that they didn’t like him very much. Even the squirrel gave him a wide berth.

And in the summer the eighteen young men lay out in the garden and sunbathed, and they bronzed there naked, and their muscled limbs gleamed golden in the heat, and their tackle looked thick and firm like barbecued meat, and Michael thought he had never looked as good as that, not when he’d been young, not his entire life.

One day he came up from the billiard room to find all the virgins were having an orgy. To be fair, they asked him if he wanted to join in, but he could see they were just being polite. There was a lot of sucking and suckling and squelching, everybody was trying to find ways of inserting themselves into another so that they became some writhing wall of flesh, even the goldfish was throwing herself into it—and as they did so the virgins began to break apart and pop like soap bubbles. Michael went and hid in his room for a while. When he came out later, he was entirely alone.

Michael didn’t see anyone for quite a while. He ran out of bread to toast, and so moved on to cereal.

They came for him one night, put a sack over his head. They said, “You’ve been reassigned, handsome.”

He was taken with seventy-one other virgins to a new, bigger apartment. They called it an apartment, but really, it was more like a palace, it had everything: Jacuzzis and saunas and an entire beauty salon. The virgins were mostly young men, but there were a few girls thrown in, and some babies, and half a dozen squirrels. Michael said, “There’s been a mistake . . . I mean, I have had sex, really.” They told him to shut up.

And Barbara arrived, and inspected her entourage, and seemed pleased by the young men, and bemused by the squirrels—and when she reached Michael in the line she just stopped, and stared, and swore. “I’m sorry,” said Michael. “Just keep away from me,” she hissed, “and I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Michael could never get a seat on the sofa, let alone get close to the remote control. But Barbara cut a swathe through her virgins, showing a sexual voracity now she was dead she’d never hinted at when she’d been alive. She got through all the boys, then the girls, then the babies, then the squirrels, and didn’t even spare a glance at her ex-husband. Michael was a little hurt, but soon enough he was able to stretch out wide and comfy upon the sofa and watch whichever channels he liked.

They muddled along amiably for a while. They’d potter about in separate rooms during the day, in the evening they’d sit together silently and watch television. Then they’d say goodnight, and go to different bedrooms. It was very safe, very familiar.

One evening Barbara turned off the television. Michael looked up at her in surprise. It had been
Coronation Street
, it was one of her favourites. She went without a word to the kitchen, returned with two glasses and a bottle of rose wine.

“We’re going to have sex,” she said. She poured two glasses, both to the very brim. “Whatever it takes.”

They drank three bottles before Barbara was in the mood. She fell off the sofa flat onto her arse, which she found hugely funny. “Sod it,” she said. “Too much wine. I’ll know better tomorrow.”

The next day they drank only the one bottle, Barbara was strict about that. They drank it very slowly, and Barbara said they would have to wait for it to take full effect. Some half an hour after the last dregs were drained, Barbara nodded primly, said, “It’s time,” pulled Michael up from the sofa, pulled him into the bedroom.

The sex was quite nice, and their bodies sort of fitted together in all the right places, and Michael wondered why they’d ever stopped doing it all those years ago.

Afterwards she looked at him intently, and Michael wondered whether she wanted to say something loving. Then realized she was just waiting to see if he would pop.

“How do you feel?” she said.

“Fine.”

“No, I mean, how do you . . . ?”

“No, I know, fine, fine.”

“Okay.”

They lay there for a bit. He said, “Would you like some toast?” She nodded. He got out of bed. She watched him carefully, as if to see whether his weight upon the carpet would be too much for him, whether at last his structural integrity would break. It didn’t. He brought her in some toast. He’d buttered it thick, the way she’d always liked it. She munched upon it gratefully.

“What are you going to do today, then?” he asked her. She didn’t know.

They got up eventually. He sat down on the sofa, watched afternoon television. She stared at him for a bit, then went off to the kitchen to wash up his breakfast things, clear up the mess he always made.

She went out shopping later. Before she went she kissed him on the cheek, said goodbye, just in case he wasn’t there when she got home. When she returned she looked annoyed by his continued existence—but as Michael helped her put away the groceries, he noticed she’d bought ready meals for two.

That evening they watched television. And she sighed, and said, “One more try. Okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed.

She fetched the wine. She seemed somewhat impatient this time; they barely had more than a glass each.

They got undressed. This time they watched each other. They’d not bothered before—either they’d been too drunk, or too disinterested, or both.

He said to her, “I’m going to make the very best love to you I possibly can.” And at those words a faint memory of Cheryl stirred, it’s true. But Barbara didn’t know.

“I’m going to miss you,” Barbara said.

They made love very gently this time, hoping against hope they wouldn’t damage the other.

“Are you done?” Michael asked her, and she smiled, and said yes. He didn’t pull out. He thought he’d wait.

And he felt something for her that was a little like love—but it wasn’t love, was it? It was relief. And it soared inside, he felt it fill his body up, he filled up like a balloon. He looked at her, and she was still smiling, and he could see that she felt the very same thing. And they both held on to each other, and waited, to see which of them would burst first.

When Ernest went into his sitting room that morning, he found that his television set had been bleeding.

Of course, it could all have been much worse. What if he hadn’t gone into the room until the afternoon? What if he hadn’t gone into it at
all
? He didn’t always feel like the sitting room. It had too many memories, none of them unhappy, but you don’t always want memories crowding in on you, even the happy ones. Besides, it seemed silly to have a room just for
sitting
, if he wanted to sit there was always the kitchen, there was a perfectly good chair in there, and the stove made the place warm.

But he
did
go into the sitting room, and he was alarmed. “Oh dear,” he said. He might easily have come out with a swear word, so great was this alarm, but he always rationed his swearing for really special occasions. “Oh dear,” he said again.

Not to overstate the problem: it wasn’t a
puddle
of blood. It didn’t look as if anyone had been butchered on the carpet. But you’d have been hard pushed to have written it off as anything as trivial as a speck either. It sat there, bright but un-dramatic, probably no more than three centimetres in diameter, already drying into the faded taupe with which Lizzie had chosen to furnish the room so many years ago. With a heave that hurt his joints, Ernest bent down and looked at the underside of the television. He couldn’t see where the blood had spilled from, and it might only have been a little cut—certainly it didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore. Better to be safe than sorry, though. He fetched a Tupperware bowl from the kitchen, and stood it on the red patch so it could collect any more drops. And then he thought for a bit, removed the bowl, and scrubbed at the red patch hard with a wet flannel and soap. All he succeeded in doing was in making the patch a little pinker and a lot bigger. He sat the Tupperware back down in the middle of it, and had another think. And he went for the telephone.

The repair shop said they didn’t like to make home visits—couldn’t be bring the television in? And Ernest explained that he was elderly and had a bad hip. Then the repair shop said that they’d send someone out, would Thursday afternoon be any good for him? And Ernest said that it was really terribly urgent, his television set was
bleeding
; admittedly, the blood had stopped now, but there
had
been blood, and that couldn’t be good, could it? And the repair shop went silent. Then said they’d send someone round right away.

That said, the repairman was a disappointment. “I can’t repair it.”

“Oh dear,” said Ernest. And, “Why not?”

“Well, look at it,” said the repairman. And gestured, as if it were obvious. “Look how
old
it is. That must be twenty years old, that must.”

“It’s forty-eight years old,” said Ernest. He knew exactly when he bought it. It was in that month just after he’d married Lizzie.

“Forty-eight?” The repairman was incredulous. “My parents aren’t that old! You’ve got a
TV
older than my parents!” And he laughed with the gusto of the very young who cannot conceive that the world in any way predates them. Ernest smiled politely. He wondered if the repairman, with his young parents and his stud earring and his blond apology for a beard, thought he was an adult. He probably did.

“Is it blood?” asked Ernest. “I thought it might be oil.”

“
TV
s don’t run on oil,” explained the repairman. “That doesn’t make any sense.” Ernest wondered whether the blood made any
more
sense, but didn’t say anything. “They’re not cars,” the man went on, almost sneering. “You don’t put
petrol
in them. That’s not the way they work, is it?”

Ernest said he supposed not. “What should I do with it now?”

“We can sell you a new
TV
.”

“I don’t want a new
TV
.”

“I don’t mean
new.
I mean, second-hand. But very good, you know. Cheap.”

“I’d rather you fixed this one.”

The repairman sighed. “Look, even if I could . . . and I can’t, you know, it’s the parts, they won’t make the parts anymore. It’d be very expensive, you’d be better off starting from scratch . . . I mean, I’m amazed it still works at all. It does work, does it?”

Ernest didn’t watch television very often. It hadn’t picked up ITV in years, but that didn’t matter, neither he nor Lizzie had ever watched anything on the commercial channel. BBC1 had recently become something of a snowstorm—you could see that
something
was there, but it was hard to hear what over the gale of fuzzy spots. BBC2 still worked, though. Most of the time.

The repairman made another offer—he could give Ernest a bit of a discount. They had lots of
TV
s in stock, he explained, they were a
TV
shop. Had a whole raft of new features, too, like plug-in aerials and remote controls and this new thing called colour, Ernest wouldn’t believe he’d lived without them. And Ernest was very polite, said no thank you, and steered the man to the front door. He paid the call-out charge, said goodbye, then went back to the sitting room.

“Well, that didn’t do much good, did it?” Ernest had never spoken to his television before, and even as he did so he told himself he shouldn’t make a habit of it. But it seemed somehow appropriate. “Oh dear!” he said, still not swearing. “You’re bleeding again!” And so the
TV
was. Three spots of blood now lay in the bowl, small but very red and unarguably
there.

Ernest wondered whether it’d been his fault. Maybe he’d used the television too much, he’d exhausted it. And then he reasoned that he hadn’t watched it in days, that couldn’t be it. Then he worried himself all over again—maybe he’d not used it enough? Maybe it was because he’d neglected it. He stood in front of it, aching with indecision. “Sorry about this, old boy,” he said. “Hope this doesn’t hurt.” And he turned it on with a click.

It took a few seconds for the screen to warm up. BBC1 was still there—well, as there as it ever was. It seemed to be some sort of garden program. Or maybe it was a western. He turned the knob, and found himself BBC2. It wasn’t crystal clear, but then, it was never crystal clear. The snooker was playing, and Ernest always enjoyed the snooker. He thought he should keep watching for a bit, try to ascertain whether or not the picture had got worse since he’d last watched it. And to see whether that snooker chap could pot the pink. As he sat down in the armchair he idly wondered whether it was Ray Reardon—but then, he supposed Ray Reardon had probably retired, which was a shame as he’d always liked Ray Reardon. The man who may or may not have been, but on balance probably wasn’t, Ray Reardon did indeed sink the pink, but came unstuck on the black—and Ernest never did find out what his name was, or whether he won the game at all, because he soon dozed off.

He woke to the telephone ringing. And felt immediately guilty. Dozing off in front of the television! That’s what Lizzie used to do—he used to laugh at her a lot for that. Always affectionately, she knew that, she’d always laugh back. Her mouth would be open, and she’d be snoring, drowning out whatever was being broadcast. And Blackie, she’d be cuddled up to her mummy, seeing Lizzie on her favourite armchair was a red rag to a bull, Blackie could never resist,—she’d have to cuddle up, and she’d put her paws over her face as if she felt ashamed to be caught dozing like that, and she’d be snoring too, it was like a little whinny. With Lizzie snoring and Blackie snoring you really couldn’t hear a thing, and Ernest would laugh at them, and they’d laugh at him too—well, Lizzie would, anyway. And here he was, doing the same thing! The shock of the phone, and the rush of the memories, made his head spin for a moment.

“Dad? Are you all right?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You took a long time answering the phone. I had to ring off, try again.”

“I was asleep,” said Ernest, and immediately regretted it. Now Billy would think something
was
wrong.

“But it’s two o’clock, Dad.”

“I know,” said Ernest, who didn’t, in fact.

“In the afternoon. You shouldn’t sleep in the afternoon. You know what the doctor said.”

“No,” said Ernest. “What did the doctor say?”

“He said you shouldn’t sleep in the afternoon.”

“What is it you want, Billy?” asked Ernest, hoping it came out kindly.

“We haven’t seen you in a while. The family. We thought we might pop over.” And see if I’m all right, Ernest supposed. “And see if you’re all right,” added Billy.

“I’m all right, I’m always all right,” said Ernest. “Have you been speaking to anyone? Has anyone said I’m not?” Ernest thought hurriedly. “That repairman. You’ve been speaking to him, haven’t you? Did you phone him? Or did he phone you?” Ernest couldn’t work out what was worse—that his son would be employing a repairman to spy on him, or that a repairman would be spying on him and telling his son by his own volition.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dad. What repairman?” So Ernest told his son the whole story. It just spilled out, and even as he told him he knew he should shut up, keep it all to himself, it’d only be more reason for Billy to come over.

“Bleeding?”

“That’s right,” said Ernest. “It’s not bleeding much,” he added hastily, but the damage was done, he knew that.

“That doesn’t sound right, Dad. Televisions shouldn’t be doing that sort of thing. How’s the video? Is that still playing all right?”

Billy had given his parents a video recorder for Christmas a couple of years back. Well, as Billy had said at the time, it wasn’t
really
a present—it was just an old cast-off, the family were upgrading their own, and rather than just sling it out he thought that Mum and Dad should have it. They’d never used the video recorder. It was in a box in a cupboard somewhere, Lizzie had packed it away, she took care of things like that. She had taken a look, and said that the television was too old—it wouldn’t have the right lead sockets or what-have-yous, but that they mustn’t tell Billy, it had been such a kind gesture. Ernest agreed, but he hadn’t thought it was a
particularly
kind gesture: it wasn’t as if they had any videotapes to play on it anyway.

Ernest thought for a moment about all the things Lizzie had put in cupboards—he wouldn’t have said they had that many cupboards, but Lizzie had certainly put away a lot of things over the years, so they must be bigger than they looked. He’d have to go through them one of these days, see what was there. The thought gave him a sick feeling in his stomach, and he was almost pleased to realize his son was still talking nonsense down the phone at him. If he listened to Billy for a bit, it might distract him. “What?” he said.

“I said it sounds like it’s broken. You should sling it out, Dad. Just sling it out.”

Ernest said he didn’t want to sling it out; there was far too much slinging out going on these days. What with Blackie and with Lizzie and with, what was her name, Jane, yes, Billy’s own wife, Jane, you can’t keep slinging out everything when it gets broken, what about trying to mend things for a change? And Billy started to argue, and Ernest said he was sorry, and he
was
sorry, it was none of his business, of course. And he looked around desperately, trying to find something urgent that could end this phone call, get him free—and that’s when he saw the television actually
leak
blood, no longer dripping in red but spattering out thick and black, and Ernest hung up on his still protesting son.

The blood lay in the bowl, warm, sticky like tar. Again, Ernest wondered whether it really
was
blood, but when he put his fingers to it they came away with the same tell-tale coppery smell. BBC2 was still playing snooker, but there was interference now; the picture kept strobing, as if it were in distress. Ernest quickly turned the knob to off, and then looked at the ailing set uncertainly.

He wished Lizzie were there. He often wished Lizzie were there, of course—but never quite as fiercely as he did now. She would know what to do.

On the shelves in the bathroom were a whole array of medical bits and pieces, most of them bought by Lizzie, so probably now out of date. Ointments, tablets in all different colours, painkillers that should be taken with food, some to be taken after food, and others to be taken as far away from food as possible. These were all useless, of course; if his television didn’t have the right socket for a video recorder it clearly wouldn’t have one for paracetamol either . . . And for just a second Ernest wondered whether his thoughts were altogether rational, but then he found a whole box full of plasters and put the worry out of his head.

Lying beneath the television set, Ernest struggled with the sticky covering of the bandages, trying to pull them from first one finger then another. He still couldn’t see where the
TV
’s wound was, but the greater quantity of blood at least gave him a better clue, and he liberally pasted all possible areas with Elastoplast Extra. He felt a growl in his hip, and he crawled out onto the carpet, caught his breath.

Lizzie would have been so
good
at this. She was never fazed by the sight of blood, not hers nor anybody else’s. He remembered that evening when Blackie had started coughing. She’d been dozing on the armchair as usual, making her little whinny snore—she’d been dozing and whinnying rather a lot recently. At first they had both laughed, because the coughing had woken her up, and the expression on Blackie’s face had been so scandalized—she’d always been a haughty dog, and that such an ugly sound could have disturbed her, and, even worse, that the ugliness had come from
her
, clearly appalled her. When they’d seen, though, that she’d been bringing up gobbets of black, and Ernest had begun to panic—what was going on, what should they do?—it had been Lizzie who had taken charge.

“Go and get a towel,” she’d said. “Go on.” And she’d cradled Blackie’s head, wiped the glop from the mouth without a qualm, comforted her.

“Is it blood?”