‘I’m sorry,’ said Mary, ‘I’ll go out by myself.’
‘Oh it’s nothing to do with you,’ he said, halting and turning to her with aghast kindness. He was long, thin and slightly twisted, like his hair. The skin on his narrow face was girlish pale. He had hot blue eys, hot eyes, and lips that trembled with some imminent defeat or triumph. ‘I’ll see you out. I want to see you out.’ They walked on. ‘What do I care? What do I care? Oh that fuckpig,’ he said thickly, and Mary thought he was going to start crying at last. ‘I’m cracking up.’
He paused and ran a thin hand across his forehead. ‘Christ! I really am cracking up … I suppose it’s quite a relief in a way.’ He clasped his hands together and looked up at the light with his hot eyes. ‘Pray, oh pray, pal,’ he said.
‘Don’t crack up,’ said Mary.
‘What?’
‘Don’t break.’
‘Who are you anyway?’ They walked on. He was looking at her with great interest, his face clear now. ‘What were you doing with that little scumbag?’
‘I came to ask him about a friend of mine.’
‘And why do you wear these shitty clothes?’ he asked with concern. ‘I mean, you talk all right and everything.’
‘They’re all I’ve got and I haven’t enough money to buy new ones.’
‘I’ve got lots of money,’ he said with pleased surprise.
‘Well done,’ said Mary.
‘Do you want some?’
‘Yes please.’
‘Here.’ He took a damp matted wad from the back pocket of his jeans. ‘How much do you—here, take this lot.’
‘Thanks,’ said Mary.
‘Your eyes,’ he said. ‘Something’s happened to you, hasn’t it.’
‘I’d better go now,’ said Mary. They were in the empty hall.
‘No don’t. Okay then—fuck off! No don’t! Don’t you want to see me ever again?’
‘Well I would like to, yes.’
‘Here, give me your number then.’
He offered her a pen and paper, and Mary wrote down Norman’s number. ‘Bitch,’ he whispered as she did so.
‘Goodbye then,’ said Mary.
‘Goodbye. Hey look, this is a bit embarrassing—but could you lend me some money? For a cab?’
Mary took the money from her bag. He had given her a great deal, she now realized—two or three times what she earned in a week. ‘Are you sure you want to give me all this?’ she said.
‘Oh yeah. Just lend me—a couple of quid’ll do. I’ll pay you back. What’s money anyway? It’s only time, after all, as they keep telling me here.’
‘Goodbye then.’
‘Goodbye. Think of me,’ he said. ‘And don’t break.’
16
• • •
Second Chances
Mary never knew how poor she was. Poor Mary, she never knew.
She has grown used to cheap chafing skirts, their imposture exposed by all natural light. Her complexion, it pains me to say, shows signs of submission to the ravages of unvarying fried food, and her hair has to fight to hold its brilliance in the kitchen mists. She still has the quality, the expectancy, the light; but it’s getting to her, all this, of course it is. She has grown used to the poverty of Alan’s smell, and to the poverty of his mind. Poor Alan, poor thing; but then they are all poor things where Mary lives.
Now she knows. She thought that life itself was poor. Now she knows it needn’t be—not poor, not poor in that way. She thought that money only happened in books. Now all day she feels that sense of exclusion and tearing eagerness she felt as she sat at the poolside: she too wanted to swim and play, and knew she could if she only dared. Little Jeremy’s report-card said ‘very poor’. Already! thought Mary. Poor little Jeremy, poor little thing.
Life is interesting, life has a lot to be said for it, but life can be terribly poor. Mary knows that now. She has seen enough of the well-kept people, scowling in shops and cars. She doesn’t want their money; she only wants their time. And the changing light is telling her something about the poor and winter.
• • •
Mary waited for Alan in her bed. This was the only time she ever had to herself. That wasn’t much, was it? That wasn’t much time? She heard his steps on the stairs and shook her head. She had made up her mind.
Alan opened the door. As usual, he seemed to want to say something, but he didn’t or he didn’t dare. He moved sideways-on to the foot of the bed and began to slither from the clutches of his dressing-gown, not knowing quite where to look. The moon and the window framed him in their square of light: his churned porridgy hair, the unstable eyes darting downwards, the suddenly revealed defence-lessness of his white shoulders.
‘Alan,’ said Mary from her bed. Alan dropped the dressing-gown to the floor, his arms at his side, his head bowed—he was ready.
‘I can’t have you up here at night any more. I can’t have you in my bed any more. I can’t. I hope you understand.’
He did two things at once. It didn’t at all help that he was naked. The first thing he did was to start to cry—or at least that was what Mary supposed he had started doing. With utmost desolation he clenched shut his mouth and his eyes, and his white chest began to rock or pulse, all in silence. The second thing he did was even stranger: slowly and with shame, but not in concealment so much as in a gesture of protection, to keep it warm or out of harm’s way, he cupped both hands over the creaturely pith of his body.
All this Mary watched from her lair.
At last he turned towards the window. He hadn’t looked at her yet. The moon did pale things to his face and to the queue of tears that lay like ice on his cheeks. He exhaled, then breathed in heavily. He looked very far away but proportionately the same, as if he were weakening into another medium of air and flesh. But when he spoke Mary was surprised by the steadiness, the relief, in his voice.
‘I never really thought it would go on anyway,’ he said, telling the window something that only the window needed to hear. ‘I hoped it would go on, but I never really thought it would. I know I’m not… I know, I know. Oh I don’t know. I’m glad it happened,’ he said, and his head gave a sudden nod. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t have had it not happen.
I’ve never, you’re the only thing of… beauty … that’s ever happened to me in my life.’
‘Thank you. I’m sorry.’
‘Will you promise me one thing?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘You won’t start—you know, with Russ.’
‘Yes, I promise.’
‘Do you swear on your mother’s life?’
‘… I can’t do that,’ said Mary.
Alan sniffed. He picked up his dressing-gown and started trying to get into it. He sniffed again, more wetly. When other people cry, it is always much worse if they are trying to do something else at the same time. He hugged the material to him and gave an absent-minded tug at his hair.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mary.
He turned to her and spread his hands. He looked away again. ‘Goodbye, Mary,’ he said.
The next day was Sunday and the squat slept late. Competent Norman, swathed in floppy jeans, prepared his civilized breakfast of boiled egg and spinach-juice and took it out on a tray to the garden; he had a ladylike self-absorption at such moments, as if he lived alone and all these other people were the remains of friendly dreams that had come and gone in the night without bothering him. Perhaps some men turn into women too. Perhaps some men have to suffer the Change. Ray and Alfred sat about with newspapers on their laps, reading out football scores in murmurs cadenced to resignation or impressed surprise. From upstairs came the melancholy sound of Paris’s clarinet. With a wincing expression on his face, old Charlie cleaned the chrome entrails of his motorbike, pausing every now and then to watch the children play. ‘Good morning, my lovely,’ he said when Mary took a cup of tea out on to the steps. Mary smiled at him and he turned back to his bike, shaking his head and muttering to himself. No Alan.
Mary watched the children play, listening to them more alertly than she usually did. They played quite sleepily, without competition and its shape. What was it they were saying, what was it that they said more often than they said anything else? ‘Watch!… Look! Watch this!… Look at me!’ That’s what they said more often than they said anything else. It occurred to Mary that perhaps that was what some people went on saying throughout their lives on earth. Watch this! Look at me!