What Was Promised (34 page)

‘Hang on,’ says the customer, alarmed, ‘no need to telephone
international
–’

Sybil picks up the phone. The customer watches her warily. ‘Who’s paying for that?’ he asks.

Sybil says, ‘It’s courtesy.’

‘Oh well,’ the customer says, sitting back, ‘if it’s like that.’

Sybil ignores Trudi’s sanitised mirth. She holds the phone to her head like a weapon. In passing she notices that the man by the door is leaving: he glances back at her as he steps into the street. ‘And how do you like your omelette, sir?’

The customer ponders the question, and Sybil with it. ‘No foreign muck,’ he says. ‘No monkeying around. That’s what I’m looking for, see? I want them done just the way my wife used to do them.’

Don’t count on better. Count on worse, then nothing going to let you down
. The words are Clarence’s. Sybil takes them to heart. She tries to live by them. They’ve never disappointed her: they leave no room for disappointment.

But nor do they allow her hope. There are too many days like this, with no good to be got out of them, in which everyone she meets contrives to shame or anger her. On days like this it’s hope you need. She wants it. She does hope, when she thinks no one is watching. Despite the words that knot her heart, Sybil knows she hopes too much.

She takes the bus home with Trudi. Charles is up and making curry. Tony’s keeping him company, reading out choice bits of news. The four of them live on Mornington Terrace, facing the arched cliff of brick that cuts down to the Euston railway lines. It’s a decent squat. The owner is an artist, a celebrity photographer who hasn’t the heart for aggro, or perhaps for the aggravation of attendant bad publicity. The heavies came round just the once, cut the power and cleared them out, but Charles (who is older and knows the form) shimmied back in and tapped the wires, and that was a year ago. There’s been no trouble since.

There are nine permanent residents, but most of them are nomads. Charles is on the dole and Sybil and Trudi work close by, but Tony is only home on off days. Tony’s a flight attendant, as are three of the absentees, all of them pretty boys (and all of them straight, as all are too quick to add when asked their business), all of whom spend stretches in the air, or overnighting overseas in jetlagged five-star hotels, from which they liberate – in seasons of one-upmanship – treasure troves of bad taste houseware: mismatched faux-silver cutlery; hewn rock-effect glass ashtrays; monogrammed dressing gowns; pea-and-princess stacks of towels; golf umbrellas; heated blankets; scented soaps; doll’s-house jars of marmalade and honeycomb; four yards of Hollywood red carpet (now muddied in the hall); a hookah pipe shipped from Damascus; and once (Tony’s finest hour) a throne-like kingsize armchair, with
Excelsior, Penang
impressed in its jade leatherette.

Sybil has been here since spring, when a girlfriend married away and left a room to her. Even now, in these September nights, she can feel how cold the place will be when the weather turns, the way the wind comes prying in where the old house has worn away. Come night she’ll curl into her blankets and try not to lose sleep over it. She’s seen worse and shouldn’t count on better.

When Tony is tripping – as he means to tonight – he talks about their generation and the great things they’re doing. The wealth they’ll share and share alike, the end they’ll bring to war, the men they’ll put on the moon. And Sybil says nothing, but she has none of it. What are they doing, except living? What has changed and what is changing? Nothing to do with them. The moon is for dreamers; it lies beyond her reach. Sybil doesn’t aim for it.

She trudges upstairs. By her bedding are the books she owns. Most are tatty paperbacks she’s scrounged; two mean more to her. The first is her Confirmation Bible, the second a Shakespeare. There are two book-plates in the Shakespeare. The first is addressed to Uncle Neville:
On His Appointment as Principal of Glasgow Elementary School, with Felicitations from His Affectionate Predecessor, Miss Hilda Shearer, Glasgow, Westmoreland Parish, Jamaica, 3rd February, 1935
. The second is a pale imitation of the older, braver blessing.
To Sybil, from Dad, Happy Birthday 1962
, is all it dares say.

Tony says, ‘This is the Age. This is the Age of the Man in the Moon. We’re going to put him there, just like we said we would. We’re the ones who do as we say, we’re the generation who aim for the moon and
reach
it. We’re going to change the world and nothing can stop us. Billie, we have to make a flag for ourselves. We make it blue, and the face of the Man in the Moon, silver, placid, smiling down on us . . . won’t that be beautiful? Can we make it, Billie?’

‘I’m here,’ Sybil says, and Tony reaches for her hand.

‘Good,’ he says. ‘You are good, looking after me. Watching your hapless flock by night.’

‘I said I would, didn’t I?’

‘You did, and you always keep your word. You’re a friend to your friends, Sybil, and God help your enemies. You’re the lion who lies down with lambs. I should make more of that, a girl as fierce and true as you. Really I should take advantage. Promise me something.’

‘What?’

‘Let me in your knickers tonight.’

‘In your dreams,’ Sybil says, and beyond her Charles harrumphs and turns a lamplit page, and Trudi ratchets up the television’s brassy theme: no spirit of the age will ever wholly overcome their English priggishness.

‘Oh well. At least let’s do the flag. We can fly it over the railway. We can make the moon from milk tops.’

Sybil squeezes his hand. ‘Hush,’ she says. ‘Tony, you need to chill out now.’

Tony moves in slo-mo, like a frogman or a spaceman. ‘I know, but I choose not to. I choose to boldly go where no man has gone before. I choose to trip and do the other things, not because they are easy, but just because I want to. Many years ago, the great British explorer George Mallory, who got high on Everest, was asked why he wanted to do such a thing. He said,
Because it is there
. Well, now greater highs are here, and we’re going to do them, and the moon is there, and splendid flag potential. And therefore, as we set sail we ask for God’s blessing on the greatest trip on which man has ever embarked. Who am I?’

‘JFK,’ Charles says, from the depths of the jade armchair. ‘You’re misquoting, and he’s history. You might show him more respect.’

Trudi says, ‘Too right. You shouldn’t take the piss out of the dead.’

‘Piss? Trudi, you do me wrong. Truly, Trudi, you misgrok me. My worship of JFK is unsullied by the taint of urine. The man was wise and beautiful. Also a good Irishman. Don’t you agree, Charlie?’

‘Top drawer,’ Charles says, and Tony beams and rushes on.

‘JFK and Jesus Christ, there’s nothing to choose between them. Both handsome devils with the best lines. Both good with women, both gorgeous pin-up martyrs.’

‘Wash your mouth out,’ Trudi whispers, but Tony doesn’t hear or care.

‘Verily, I believe in the pearly wisdom of Jesus Fucking Kennedy,’ he says, and his eyes drift shut. His free hand fibrillates, as if he is dreaming of pianos.

*

When she wakes the light is grey around the half-loose dustsheet curtain. Tony coughs awake beside her. He is skinny as a boy. His hair sticks up in squaw feathers. He croaks an oath at the day and burrows back into her.

‘Leave off,’ Sybil chides.

‘You’re warm, though. Any chance of tea?’

She doesn’t bother with an answer. She gets up and washes at the handbasin, props her mirror on the chair, takes her work clothes from the hanger. Tony rolls a cigarette and picks through her books as he smokes, pausing only to read the Bible, dour as a prophet.

‘
They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword; they went about in the skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated – of whom the world was not worthy – wandering over deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.
’

‘Don’t mock,’ Sybil says, though God knows she does herself.

‘
And all these, though well attested by their faith, did not receive what was promised.
As if I would. Do you think it’s talking about us, mind? Destitute, stoned
and
too good for the world? Don’t tell me that’s coincidence.’

But Sybil won’t rise to the bait, and Tony rifles on, muttering at the paperbacks. ‘Incontinent fucks,’ he says. ‘They write such shit, these people, and they just can’t keep it to themselves.’

Tony aspires to be an author, come the day when his saleable looks are gone. You can’t fly the skies forever. You can see too many new horizons; so Tony says, and he’d know.

Trudi’s wireless
wah-wah
s through the wall. ‘At least they’re doing something. At least they’re writing,’ Sybil says, and Tony lets the book fall.

‘Firm artistic sphincters. The world would be a better place for them. I’m doing something.’

She doesn’t ask. He’ll have a ready answer. She imagines him as a boy, limber with excuses, as she stands to clip her bra. Behind her she can hear him stubbing out his cigarette, and she feels him watching.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he says, and Sybil meets his mirrored eyes. Her own are imperious.

‘You best be saying so, this morning.’

‘Marry me.’

‘In your dreams,’ she says again, like a mantra.

‘I’ll share them with you, my dreams.’

‘You share them with too many girls.’

‘You’re different. Marry me.’

She turns. This is new. Tony lies naked on the mattress, the blankets tangled with his ankles. His body is ludicrous, but his eyes are grave. She says, ‘You don’t know me.’

‘It’s been a summer.’

‘On and off.’

‘I’m on it now. I’m serious. You’re my charm, you don’t take any of my bullshit.’

‘I did last night.’

‘Come on,’ Tony says, ‘that was the real deal.’

‘No,’ Sybil says, ‘I’m saying no. I’m not waiting around for you.’

‘And where would you be off to?’

‘Somewhere,’ she says. ‘Anywhere.’

Tony relaxes. ‘Ah, come on,’ he smiles. ‘Billie, Billie, fly me to the moon, why don’t you? You belong here, love, you’ve nowhere else. Born and bred, you are, not like some. Not like me. You need old smoke in your veins, you’ll never stray far from London. Besides, there’s me to think of. You’d always come back,’ Tony says, ‘for me’. And he opens his arms on the sheets, palms up, like a martyr or a conjurer.
Nothing in this hand, nothing in this hand.

The rain has softened overnight. Trudi and Sybil walk, as they do most days. It’s not like they’re made of money, and it’s not like they don’t have umbrellas.

‘Hold this a sec,’ Trudi says, and Sybil takes her brolly, the gaudy hemispheres (
Toronto Sheraton
and
Tel Aviv Carlton
) bumping bellies overhead as Trudi deploys cigarettes.

‘Give us one then,’ says Sybil, and Trudi lights them both and puts Sybil’s in her mouth, smirking at the filmstar gesture; but when they start again she winces.

‘This effing rain.’

‘What is it now?’

‘My heels. Honest, I think I’m bleeding.’

‘Stop moaning, silly cow. Come on, here, chop chop,’ Sybil says, and Trudi obeys, leaning on her friend and walking like a wounded trooper on towards Mornington Crescent.

‘Tony was a state last night,’ Trudi says. ‘It’s getting on Charlie’s wick, you know. We don’t want the neighbours complaining, that’s what he says.’

‘It isn’t Charlie’s place,’ Sybil says, but Trudi pouts.

‘More his than ours, he was there first. Anyway, Tony does go on. All that rubbish last night.’

‘What rubbish?’

Trudi gropes at her, her voice a mocking Dublin whinge. ‘Billie, get your knickers off, Billie, put the kettle on.’

Sybil roars with laughter. ‘Is that supposed to be
Tony
? Lord, you better start running, girl, you need to keep your day job.’

Trudi lets her go. Her face has pinched. ‘It’s not right, though, Billie,’ she says. ‘He shouldn’t talk to you like that. Are you and him going steady, then?’

Sybil takes a last breath of fag, crushes it out underfoot. ‘No,’ she says, and then, ‘Tony’s alright.’

Fffft!
goes Trudi, as she hobbles. ‘Swanning off round the world or high as a kite. When he’s not flying he’s on something. He’s hopeless and he wasn’t always. I’m not being rude, but you’re not doing him any favours. He needs someone sorting him out, that’s what Tony needs.’

Sybil’s smile has faded, too. Her face – so lovely when she laughs (she has her mother’s face, high-brown, queenly, darker and finer than her father’s) – those features have composed themselves into a sculpted mask, the muscles setting hard; and Trudi sees the change and quails.

‘I’m not having a go, Billie, really I’m not. I’m just saying.’

‘Yeah? Well now you’ve said it,’ Sybil says, and that shuts Trudi up good and proper. Being friends with Sybil means knowing when you’re beaten. Besides, Trudi’s feet are killing her, and who else is she going to lean on?