Walking Wounded (13 page)

‘It wouldn't take that much,' Gus said.

‘Listen! You want to go tae the Rockies. Go. Ye've got ma blessing.' The film was obviously coming to an interesting part. ‘Ah'll maybe get watchin' the television in peace. But ye don't get a penny from me.'

‘Ah would've done it for you.'

‘The money's mine!'

‘On the other side, it may be said that Avarice is the quintessence of all vices,' Schopenhauer said.

‘You really want me to go?'

‘Go.'

She knew she was safe enough. He had always been struggling to get as far as London for a game. It looked as if the train was heading for a terrible accident. It was a good thing they had Charlton Heston there.

‘All right –'

‘Sh!'

There was an ear-shattering crash. The train buckled and slewed terrifyingly. Carriages came off the rails, rolled over, burst open. More circus animals than you would have thought the train could hold broke free from the wreckage – elephants, lions, horses and others Jeanie wasn't sure she could identify – and ran in various directions over the countryside. Steam hissed from the broken engine. People were injured and bleeding. They found Charlton Heston almost crushed to death, a huge girder that nobody could move lying across his chest.

‘The thing is, Jeanie –'

‘Sh!'

The small sound was like a whiplash to Gus's dignity. He was trying to talk about something of major importance and his wife had no time for him. He felt as if he was being cuckolded by the television. Just on cue, like the other man entering at exactly the wrong moment, Charlton spoke.

‘We may miss the matinee,' he said from under his girder, ‘but we'll make the evening show.'

‘Jesus Christ!' Gus was on his feet. ‘How can you sit there an' watch that shite? Ah resent ma hoose gettin' used as a sewer for Hollywood. Look at that! Look at it!' He was over beside Jeanie, pointing towards the screen. ‘He was lyin' under enough metal there tae rebuild the
Tirpitz.
There
couldn't be a bone in his body that wasn't broken. There's wild animals miles away by this time. There must be folk all over the neighbourhood gettin' chewed alive and trampled to daith. Evenin' show? Who's gonny be the audience? How can you sit there an' watch that? An' that daft Cornel Wilde. He talks about women as if they were an off-licence. An' that Betty Hutton! Singin' and dancin' on a trampoline at the same time. Do you believe that tripe? See that Cecil B. De Mille. He must've had a heid like a corporation coup.'

Jeanie hadn't taken her eyes off the television.

‘Ach, away an' get yer train through the Rockies,' she said.

‘You've said it!' Gus was pointing at her, imposing as a figure in a Victorian print–The Outraged Husband. ‘That's exactly where Ah'm goin'. And no comebacks from you. Don't start moanin' when Ah do. Because you think Ah can't do it. Without your money. You and yer money! The Bloody Heiress. Well, Ah'm goin', Missus. Just watch me go. Ah'm Rockies bound.'

‘Cheerio,' Jeanie said.

Gus took Schopenhauer, who was still in his hand, and threw him viciously across the room. He grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair and put it on. He stood in the middle of the floor. He looked at Jeanie.

‘The only way tae get your attention,' he said, ‘is tae appear on the telly. As long as it's a bad programme. If it's no' shite, ye'll still no' be noticed. Missus, yer brains are mince. When Ah married you, Ah volunteered for a lobotomy.'

He went out. Jeanie tried to go on watching the television but the film had turned to farce before her eyes. She heard Gus's voice as a mocking commentary over it, as a mocking commentary over her life. She felt silly watching it. She felt silly being her.

She rose and crossed to the window. She watched him
reach the end of the street with his sailor's walk. ‘On ye go,' she muttered. ‘But ye'll not go far.'

She crossed to where the book lay. She picked it up and looked at the cover. The face on the front was that of a peppery old man with flyaway hair. He looked like a troublemaker. She sneered at the face. ‘Worse than fancy women,' she muttered.

She went through to the kitchen and opened the bin. Taking out the plastic shopping-bag that was full of rubbish, she checked that it contained suitably messy materials. There were egg shells and greasy paper and pieces of fat and the remains of some custard. As she opened the book, she noticed places where Gus had underlined parts and marked them with a biro star. These were the places she was most careful to smear with custard and grease.

She pushed the book to the bottom of the rubbish and tied the handles of the shopping-bag in a knot. She went outside. Standing with the dustbin lid in her hand, she glanced up. The view was of dull back-gardens hemmed in by scabrously weathered council houses. It was the terminal vista of her life. But it would also be his. She painstakingly took out all the other plastic bags, put the one she had brought out at the bottom and covered it with the replaced bags. She put the lid back on the dustbin. ‘We'll see what he does now,' she muttered.

She came back in and closed the door and started to wash her hands in preparation for making his supper, which she would leave out for him when she went to bed.

17

Hullo again

R
ecognition came to him between dessert and coffee. He had noticed her earlier, sitting opposite another woman and talking with a slightly actressy animation, given to
ingénue
gestures that belied her age, as if life hadn't discovered her yet. He had seen a woman in her forties with hair that still looked naturally dark, eyes that were still interested and a body that was nicely substantial. When he realised that he knew her, that he owned, as it were, a small part of her past, his glances had become less cursory, more proprietary. She's weathered well, he thought. I wonder.

Recognising her was a moment of small adventure for him, a pulse of adolescence in a middle-aged day. The pretentious restaurant, chosen by his client, briefly seemed a place where something might happen and the deadness of occasion animate to an event. Even the proprietor's manner seemed less obtrusive. He was a small, numbingly bright man who had fixed an expression of jollity to his face like a Hallowe'en mask. He mistook interference for attentiveness and flippancy for wit. His blandishments had threatened the meal, for eating in his presence was like having everything drenched in syrup.

He appeared to know the client well and perhaps they deserved each other. The client was a self-made man who had long ago ceased to notice that most of the parts were
missing. ‘What I always say is' was what he always said. He had started out ‘as a silly boy with nothing' and after years of unremitting effort and deals of legendary deviousness had successfully transformed himself into a silly man with nothing, except an awful lot of money. He had spent most of the lunch expressing his modestly oblique astonishment at why other people couldn't be more like him. ‘What I always say is whiners create their own difficulties.' If everybody would get out and do as he had done, they could be in the same position as he was. The thought of a nation of near-millionaires seemed to present him with no logistical problems. He disarmed any suggestion of egotism with frequent references to how much he owed to God. He referred to God as if He might be a senior partner with a particularly astute sense of the market.

‘I did it,' he was saying. ‘And what's so special about me?'

His audience smiled and said, ‘Excuse me. I've just seen someone I know. Do you mind? Won't be a minute.'

He rose and walked towards her table. He saw her glance towards him and back to her companion. He enjoyed the stages of her recognition. The first look had simply been acknowledging someone moving in the restaurant. When she looked back, it was because she had belatedly registered that he was looking at her. She stared, wondering why he should be coming towards her table. The need to understand focused her attention and he saw her eyes widen in surprise as he walked out of strangeness into familiarity. Being recognised for who he had been stimulated his own sense of the past and he remembered her name just in time. She half-stood up in confusion.

‘Eddie Cameron,' she said.

‘Marion. You haven't changed a bit. I recognised you right away.'

He kissed her on the cheek and, as soon as he had done it, knew the action was a moment of inspiration, for the kiss
was a cipher of past intimacy. It made them a conspiracy of two in the crowded room.

‘I was amazed,' he said. ‘There's Marion, I thought. I was going to come over earlier but you both seemed so engrossed.'

‘Oh, this is Jane Thomas. Jane, Eddie Cameron.'

As he shook hands, he noticed that the woman, whose back had been towards him, was as plain as a loaf and he wondered again if pretty women sometimes chose their friends like accessories to highlight themselves. Marion had sat back down.

‘It's Jane's birthday,' she said. ‘We work in the same office. We're out celebrating.'

‘If celebrating's the word,' Jane said.

‘Anyway, congratulations or condolences, Jane. Choose your pick. You look good on it, anyway.'

‘The wine,' Jane confided.

‘You should keep taking the medicine then.'

‘Thank you, doctor.'

He was glad that their brief coquetry caused Marion to butt in like someone at an excuse-me dance.

‘What are you doing here?' she said.

‘Business. It's been a long time since I was in this town. It's changed so much.'

‘Not for the better,' Jane said.

‘I'm lost in it now,' he said. ‘What about you, Marion?' He glanced at her rings. ‘Happily married with ten of a family?'

‘I'm a widow.'

She didn't say it casually. Her voice went into mourning and he wondered how recently it had happened.

‘God, I'm sorry, Marion,' he said and felt a quickening of interest. ‘Obviously, I didn't know. That was clumsy.'

‘You weren't to know. It's been seven years now.'

The information made the tone in which she had declared her widowhood seem a bit extravagant. He was reminded
of a woman he knew who was inclined to intone every so often, ‘Father would have been ninety-five by now.' Or ninety-six. Or, the following year unsurprisingly, ninety-seven. It had led to a joke with his wife. ‘Father would have been a hundred and forty-two by now. Pity he died at nineteen.'

‘Any children?' he asked casually.

‘Two,' Marion said soulfully, as if the shadow of dark wings had fallen across the cheese-board. Inexplicably, he felt the prospect of the evening brighten.

‘That's good,' he said. ‘Best invention in the world, children.'

He sensed Jane's face opening towards him like a flower. ‘I know what you mean,' she said. ‘They can be a trial. But they're what it's all about as far as I'm concerned. Mine are taking me out tonight. I'd better sober up before then. They're choosing the restaurant. Wait till you see. John, he's the oldest. He's been taking charge of all arrangements. Won't let Michael – that's my husband – even know where we're going. And Darren, the youngest, he's been threatened within an inch of his life if he reveals the dreaded secret. He's been bursting to tell me all week.'

‘Lucky you,' Eddie said, hoping to forestall the taking of snapshots from her handbag. ‘I'll probably go and read the cemetery. Catch up on news of old friends.' The gaffe of being flippant about death so soon after Marion's mention of her dead husband made him move on quickly. ‘And what about you, Marion? What wild plans have you got for tonight?'

Marion's close-lipped smile was wan as a fading rose in memory of her husband.

‘She doesn't go out nearly enough,' Jane said. ‘I've been telling her that.'

‘So you should,' Eddie prompted.

‘An attractive woman like her.'

‘A
very
attractive woman like her.'

Their pincer movement was neatly trapping Marion in their sense of her. She seemed to be enjoying the mild embarrassment.

‘It's such a waste,' Jane said.

‘You get out of the way of going out.' Marion was on the defensive. ‘Mixing with people.'

‘I know what you mean,' Eddie said.

‘It's no excuse,' Jane said.

‘Here!' Eddie said, as if it was something that had only just come into his mind. ‘What about dinner with me tonight, Marion? You'd be doing me a favour. It's either that or counting the perforations in the tea-bag in my hotel room.'

‘Eddie!'

‘Why not?'

‘Why not, Marion?' Jane said.

‘For old times' sake,' Eddie said. ‘An innocent meal between old friends. A good way for you to break the ice again. No complications.'

‘I don't think I could take another bite after this,' Marion said.

‘Then we'll eat the ambience. What you say?'

‘She says yes.'

‘Jane!'

‘Well, you do.'

‘I don't know. What about Michael and Lucy?'

‘Look. You two going back to your office now?'

Jane nodded.

‘Okay. You think about it, Marion. If you give me the office number, I'll phone you there this afternoon. It's all right. If it's no, I promise not to take an overdose.' Jane had already taken a pen from her handbag and she wrote the number on the flap of an envelope, tore it off and handed it to Eddie.

‘Sweet lady,' he said. ‘A birthday beverage for you. What's it to be?'

‘Oh, I've had enough. I'll be singing at the switchboard.'

‘Please. Let me make the gesture. People should sing on their birthday. Maybe a sad song. But they should sing. A liqueur. What's your favourite liqueur?'

‘She likes Tia Maria,' Marion said.

‘What about you, Marion?'

Marion was hesitant, as if saying yes once might develop into a habit.

‘I don't know that I should.'

‘I'm not drinking on my own,' Jane said.

‘Green Chartreuse then.'

Even egregious sycophancy has its uses. The proprietor's overeagerness meant that Eddie's gesture was interpreted as it happened. He was grateful, for he could remember other occasions when he had thought he would have to let off a flare to get a waiter. This time the moment came clean out of the films of his boyhood. The small ceremony complete, he asked the proprietor to add the drinks to his bill.

‘Happy birthday, Jane,' he said. ‘Nice to have met you. Marion. You'll hear me calling you.'

They were laughing as he left. The client wasn't. His conversation was a lecture. He didn't like it when the audience walked out. Eddie offered more coffee like paying a fine and put on his listening expression while his thoughts went off on their own.

The piece of paper in his pocket interested him: the first number in the combination to a safe. What would be inside? He looked back at Marion and she sketched a toasting gesture with her glass. She smiled and he smiled back, exchanging sealed communications – billets doux or blank paper? It occurred to him that neither knew what the other meant. It occurred to him that they didn't know yet what they meant themselves.

The room pleased him now. It had lost its predetermined crassness, sanctified for him by his renewal of the sense of
mystery. Its garish brightness had become luminous and, hearing the faint clash of cutlery and the voices baffled into an indecipherable human murmur by his mood, he felt the happy strangeness of being there.

He watched Marion and her friend rise and begin those female preparations for leaving that he loved, the retrieving of scarves and umbrellas, the finding of handbags, the gathering of coats – not so much a leaving as a flitting. It was as if they briefly set up house wherever they went. As they were walking out, they waved. He waved to Jane. Towards Marion he pointed his right hand like a gun, winked along his forefinger and clicked down his thumb.

‘How do you know her?' the client asked.

As the wine wore off during the afternoon, Jane grew doubtful about her part in getting Eddie to phone the office. She had a determinedly married woman's superstition about the things that might threaten the comfortable stability of her marriage. It was a kind of psychological housewifery: leave crumbs and you get mice. What irritated her late in the afternoon was that she had left crumbs.

Her attitudes were usually well dusted and neatly in place. The overall structure that housed them was simple but substantial: marriage is too important to play around with. Inside that monumental certainty all her responses fitted comfortably. Whatever situation cropped up, she knew where it went. If a man tried to chat you up, you didn't allow it. You didn't involve yourself with married friends who were interested in other men. If you got out of work early, you did shopping or came home.

Coming back from the restaurant in the taxi they had to take because they were late, Marion had said, ‘But he's married!'

‘How do you know? He doesn't wear a ring.'

‘He must be married. And he mentioned children.'

‘Maybe he's divorced.'

‘He would have said.'

‘We didn't ask him. Or maybe he'll get divorced after tonight.'

The glibness of the remark turned acid in her conscience. How could she have said that? She felt she had betrayed some unknown woman. She felt she had betrayed Michael and the children. She believed that to be dismissive about other people's marriages was somehow to tempt providence in relation to your own. She shouldn't have taken so much wine, she thought. When she was relieved at the switchboard to get her coffee, she was still troubled.

‘That Eddie Cameron,' she said to Marion. ‘How do you know him?'

‘We used to know each other years ago. When we were still in our teens.'

‘First love,' Jane's love of categories suggested.

‘First something.'

‘And you haven't seen him since?'

‘More than twenty years. I don't know how he recognised me.'

‘You made up your mind yet?'

‘I thought I might leave that to you. You seem to have decided everything else for me.'

‘No complications, he said.'

Jane said it to herself as much as to Marion and she took the thought away with her like a plea for the defence. She had acted in all innocence, she told herself. But she couldn't avoid the thought that she wouldn't like Michael to behave like Eddie Cameron. She couldn't believe that he would, for very practical reasons. Their marriage was a highly efficient radar system by which each could plot the exact position of the other at any given time of day or night. There wouldn't have been room for another woman in Michael's life unless he was secretly making one out of hardboard in his work-room or growing her from a seed in the greenhouse.

Hearing Eddie Cameron's voice on the phone and putting
him through to Marion, Jane felt herself an accomplice in a crime. At the end of the day, as they both collected their coats, Jane asked Marion a question with her eyes and Marion nodded.