Mary came closer. The girl was busy in the mirror, muting the freckled kaleidoscopes of her cheeks and the mulberry aura on the outward edges of her mouth. Mary folded her arms and waited. The girl dropped two canisters into her handbag—a black clam with its jaws open. Suddenly the girl turned her wild face. Mary stepped back, startled by the fear and hatred in her eyes.
‘You’re Amy Hide, aren’t you.’
Mary felt intimate heat come over her. ‘What if I am?’ she said, but with the opposite of challenge in her voice.
The girl edged past her towards the door. She was clutching her bag tensely, as if Mary were ready to snatch it from her hands. ‘Nothing. But just don’t think I don’t know.’
‘Don’t tell anyone. Please … Goodbye.’ Mary stood blinking in the rush of air from the slammed door. She got on with the next thing. She lifted the lid and sat on the cold seat. A hand passed upwards across her face. She looked quite old there for a moment, with the knees pressed together under the brim of her skirt, the white pants limply frilling her ankles, the red shoes on tiptoe. ‘You’ve got to stop minding about all that,’ she said. ‘It’ll never go away. You’ve just got to stop minding about all that, that’s all.’
17
• • •
Absent Links
Jamie walked her halfway home, as far as the park’s misty heart.
‘Do you mind if we hold hands?’ he asked. He was calm again now.
‘No,’ said Mary.
‘You can cope? It’s not too embarrassing?’
‘No.’
‘Oh good. I like it. It’s one of the few things I can still do with girls that doesn’t embarrass me.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. It makes me feel innocent, I suppose,’ he said. ‘But you’re upset and I’m hungover again and there’s no need to talk.’
They walked on. Holding hands with Jamie bore no resemblance to holding hands with Alan. Mary wondered why. True, Jamie’s hand was warm, dry and supple, which made a change from cold, twitchy and damp; but there was more to it than that. Perhaps, like so much else, it was all a question of age. Alan was twenty-one, Jamie was twenty-nine, Mary was somewhere in between. With Alan she always felt that she was leading or being led, as if she were the mother and he were the child, alternately lagging or pressing on ahead. But Jamie moved at the right pace, the even pace, despite or maybe because of his poor stiffleg … Other people soon noticed the difference. Not so many of them looked at her and those that did looked at her in better ways. Men looked at her covertly, with ruefulness rather than hostile levity. Women apparently didn’t need to look at her at all now, except at her clothes, and again in semi-professional scrutiny rather than in challenge or triumph. As for the old, they beheld her with outright benignity, evidently cheered, bucked, braced by her very existence. What had she done to deserve all this? One particularly old old man came to a faltering, musing halt in front of them and stood there becalmed, his motors idling, as they walked past. Through his clamped smile came a woozy tremolo, a high nasal wobble, like a forgotten hum.
Jamie laughed.
Mary said lightly, ‘You’ll be like that in time.’
‘That’s why I’m laughing now,’ he said. ‘I won’t be laughing then. If I make it, that is. Where do you live?’
‘In a squat,’ she said.
‘Mm, I thought so, something like that. It’s not much, is it? Not much? Listen, there’s plenty of room where I am. People are always staying there. This isn’t a number or anything I’m giving you,’ he said, writing out a number on a piece of paper and giving it to her. ‘I mean it’s not a pass or anything,’ he said, passing it to her. ‘I’m past all that. I’m just saying you can come and stay at my place any time.’
‘I understand.’
‘Do you want some more money?’
‘No, I’ve got enough.’
‘Sure? Okay then.’
They parted at the pondside. Jamie seemed to have no more idea than Mary about how people in their position should say goodbye. Eventually he just squeezed her arm and walked off. She looked round once and saw his long hunched figure, hands in pockets, about to move beyond her sight. Then he looked round too and gave a sharp wave, walking backwards.
The grass was getting darker. Traffic moved with Sunday freedom down the straight road beyond the distant railings that girded the park. Obedient to the remote lunar action and its silent tempests of light, the days were closing in, the days were huddling up. Mary had already heard talk of winter. On cold evenings people spoke of it with resignation and sometimes a stoical dread. There was no fixed date for its arrival and everyone had different theories about when it would come. Mary wasn’t too worried. Winter was sure to be very interesting.
Mary was starting to feel better about Alan already. She speculated. It could be that the point of love was to surround all people on earth with a circle, a circle which was often broken in places but constantly tried to be complete. She would always be one of the people who joined arms to protect Alan, and she hoped he would always be one of the people out on the line surrounding her—imperfect though it would always be, with broken chains and absent links everywhere, and many hands with no hands to hold. That had to be right. She resolved to go up to his room straight away and tell Alan this, to see if he would say yes.
In the play street only a few children lingered now. Hardly visible, they called and beckoned to each other like receding ghosts. Soon they would be safe and having tea behind other people’s windows. Mary hurried up the steps, suddenly cold in her white sweater and skirt.
She came into Alan’s room without pausing to knock. It was silent and empty in the dusk. ‘Alan?’ she said. On the table in front of the window some papers shimmered listlessly in the last of the light. As Mary turned to leave she saw Alan standing in the corner with his face to the wall. Why would he be doing that? ‘Alan, I’ve—’, she began, moving towards him. Then she saw that it wasn’t Alan. How could it be? It was someone much taller than Alan. She hesitated. Perhaps Alan was standing on something. Why would he be doing that? She moved closer. Was he standing on his bed, or on that chair? The bed was too far away and the chair had fallen over. Mary reached up and touched Alan’s shoulder. He turned. But not in the way that people usually turn. Round his neck was the cord of his dressing-gown.
Alan had left a note on the table. It was all about his hair.
• • •
Poor Alan. Poor ghost.
Suicide is what everyone young thinks they’ll do before they get old. But they hardly ever get round to it. They just don’t want to commit themselves in that way. When you’re young and you look ahead, time ends in mist at twenty-five. ‘Old won’t happen to me,’ you say. But old does. Oh, old does. Old always gets you in the end.
How often does suicide cross your mind? Every day? Once a week? Hardly at all any more? It probably depends on how old you are. Old takes nerve but suicide takes far more. It’s a very risky business. Young Alan must have had a lot of nerve up there that afternoon. He was lucky he was young. He wouldn’t have managed it otherwise.
Old is when you see that life is poor but it’s all there is. Death is derisory; it only lasts a second; it’s gone before you know it, so far as we know.
I’ve considered suicide, naturally. Yes, I’ve considered it. Some days I consider nothing else. Of course I can’t consider it seriously until I’ve settled my score with Mary. And besides, I’m getting too old for it now. It’s already too romantic a notion for me: I mean, it isn’t very realistic, is it, suicide?
People are doing it younger and younger—eighteen, fifteen, ten. They gag on life early now. When you’re young: that’s the time for it. Do I wish I’d done it then, back in the good old days when I was young? No, not really. Life is poor but it’s all there is, so far as we know.
• • •
The first thing Mary had to do about Alan’s suicide was make a statement about it, too.
‘It’s just a formality,’ said the shabby policeman whose Sunday they had spoilt, moving hushedly round the room. ‘Course, you’re not obliged to say anything at all, but in my experience … it’s usually … Actually, this isn’t reaily my province at all, really.’