Mary went out in it, past the porous houses, stalwart and dreary in the wet, to the rained-under commerce of the junctions and shops. You could say one thing for rain: unlike so much else these days, it was clearly in endless supply. They were never going to run out of it. People shopped with wintry panic, buying anything they could get a hand to. They shouldered and snatched among the stalls, at the drenched vegetables and the sopping, sobbing fruit. Like the holds of ships in tempest, the shop floors swilled with the wellington-wet detritus of the streets, each chime of the door bringing deeper water, umbrellas working like pistons, squelching galoshes and sweating polythene, all under the gaze of the looted shelves. Things were running out, everything was running out, things to buy and money to buy them with. But the rain would not run out. It was part of the air now, long-established in its element. Rain would never dry up. Mary went out in it for a long time and came back as soaked as grass. They made her change her clothes and have a hot bath. Even Carlos was shocked.
At night she lay in bed for hours waiting for Jamie to stumble in. He would sink naked on to the sheets and kiss her good night with a final decorous grunt. But it never was good night. To begin with he used to ask her whether she was asleep or not. But now he never bothered, because now he knew. He embraced her with elderly formality or lay like a plank in the far twilight zone of the bed. Mary didn’t mind which. She simply waited until he was about to go to sleep and then started crying. Every night. Crying was a good idea, as Carlos knew: it always got you what you wanted. And she cried beautifully—not too loud, and with a sweetly harrowing catch at the end of each breath, like the soft yelp at the peak of a sneeze, bringing to the weeper’s tragedy a pang of the sneezer’s comedy. Mary was good at crying. It always worked when she did it.
‘Oh don’t, please don’t,’ he would say.
Jamie rolled over with a moan and started kissing her face. As he did so Mary imagined that her face must be rather delicious, with all that salt and wet on her hot cheeks. The taste inside her mouth was better than the taste inside his, at least to begin with. But after a while the taste inside their mouths was the same … It all went in stages. It wasn’t a fight or a single act, a single convulsion, in the way that Trev and Alan had performed it. It felt like a process of allaying, of shoring up something—against what, Mary didn’t know. Just time, perhaps.
He had the talent, or the memory of a talent—for talent was surely what it was. He remembered quite a lot about how you did this dance of extremity, this stretched dance. He could chug and bob and glide, he could advance and sustain. Mary would sometimes open her eyes and see his dipped head or his tautened throat; there was something flexed and askance about Jamie at such moments, as if a disobedient motion within him secretly churned to soundless music. And afterwards he smoked cigarettes in silence and stared at the dark ceiling for a long time. He could remember what you did, but he couldn’t remember what you did it for. And Mary couldn’t remember either.
Afterwards the rain intensified, like nails being hammered into the roof, and the seven winds started up. The seven winds swooped round the shuttered house, in frantic quest of an opening, a way to the inside. You could hear them trying window after window, throwing their combined force against any weakness. And when a wind found a window it would call the others and they would all charge screaming through the gap to bullock and plunder round the high rooms until someone got up and locked them out again. Then they went and tried somewhere else. Last thing, just before dawn, you could often hear thunder, high in the heavens at first, then in crazed asteroids across the rooftops, until finally it split through the lower air and crackled like an ambulance along the empty streets.
Prince telephoned.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
Mary raised her chin a few inches. ‘I’m very happy,’ she said.
‘Oh you’re very happy, are you. You’re very happy. I’m glad to hear that. You sound terrible.’
Mary closed her eyes. Prince wasn’t about to worry her.
‘Anyway, it’s happened,’ he went on. ‘He’s out.’
‘Who is?’
‘Mr Wrong. He’s out and about. He’s done his time. Even as I speak, he’s lumbering hungrily through the streets.’
‘Is he,’ said Mary. This wasn’t interesting. This wasn’t about to worry her.
‘He said something about coming to get you, whatever that means. But I can tell you’re not finding this very gripping. Don’t worry, we’ll be keeping an eye on him. I’ll see you soon no doubt… Goodbye, Mary.’
Mary dropped the receiver into place and moved towards the window. She lit a cigarette.
‘Who was that?’ asked Jamie.
‘Prince,’she said.
‘The Prince of what?’
‘Nothing. He’s a policeman.’
‘A pig? Really?’ said Jamie, pleased. ‘You know a pig?’
‘I knew him a long time ago. He just keeps in touch.’
‘Well check you out. A pig called Prince. I thought only berks’ dogs were called Prince. Pigs’ dogs too, I suppose. Pigdogs. No, I suppose it makes sense. Do you want a drink or anything?’
‘Yes please.’
Raindrops fell to their deaths against the window-pane, tirelessly, in endless series. Mary saw her face in the beaded glass, and the other face, quietly waiting.
• • •
These are the Seven Deadly Sins: Avarice, Envy, Pride, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Sloth.
These are the seven deadly sins: venality, paranoia, insecurity, excess, carnality, contempt, boredom.
• • •
Soon Jamie and Mary would be alone.
Christmas was coming, and there were things to do. Christmas was coming, and everyone else was getting out of the way.
Jo went to Switzerland to ski with her man. Two grinning rakehells came to take Augusta off to a country house—Augusta, still very high-minded about the yellowing badge on her eye. Lily and Carlos were going to stay with Bartholomé, up in the North Sea. Jamie and Mary put them into a taxi and waved goodbye. When they got back inside the flat, alone together at last, Mary immediately felt different about everything. She had expected the flat to seem larger, but in fact it seemed smaller. She was glad to see them go, she had to admit. Now she would have Jamie all to herself. Without really thinking about what she was doing, Mary cut the cord of the telephone, just to make sure.
‘Now you’ll have to cope with all the shit,’ said Jamie later, lifting himself off the sofa and working his hands into his pockets for all the crushed notes he kept there. ‘Take lots of money.’ He looked out of the window, where of course it was still raining patiently. ‘God, it’s so lucky that we’ve got all this money. I mean, where would we be if I didn’t have all this money?’
‘I know,’ said Mary.
‘Don’t worry about what food you get. I don’t care what I eat, really. Christ, Christmas scares me. I’m not one of these people who hate Christmas. Christmas hates me. Everyone drinks a lot then, though, and that’s what I’m going to do.’
‘How long will it last?’
‘Ten days… Mary?’
‘Yes?’
‘You must promise not to cry too much, while we’re alone like this. Okay?’
‘I promise.’
‘I mean, you can cry a reasonable amount, of course. But not too much. Okay?’
‘I promise,’ said Mary.
Mary shopped among the blood-boltered marble, inspecting murdered chickens. She walked the terraces of the vegetable stalls, watched by the scarred toothless louts who swung like lewd monkeys from their wooden supports. She presided over the icy offal of the fishmongers’ slabs, where the bug-eyed prawns all faced the same direction, as imploring as the Faithful. She started finding playing-cards in the street. She started collecting them. Today she found the Ace of Hearts.
Often she made Jamie come too by feeling bad at him until he said yes. But he wheeled around between the sloping stalls or stood outside shops theatrically tapping his foot, in an agony of hate and boredom. He purchased clanking bagfuls of drink and snarled in the wet wind. How dare he, thought Mary.
‘They’re all fucking mad out there,’ he said sorrowfully when they returned. But Mary wasn’t listening. Mary was wondering about the flat. How small it had become. And it used to be so large.
The compact kitchen was her new world. Her face shone in the steel rings of heat. She put a murdered chicken in the oven and watched its wizened skin until it went as brown as the chicken Lily made. She took it out. It was warm enough to eat. Jamie sat slumped over the table as she served it up. Jamie stared at the chicken for a long time.