‘What is it? Is Lou okay?’

  ‘He’s fast asleep.’

  I frowned past her arm, mystified and clotted with sleep. I had never lain on the camp bed with the door open so I was strangely fascinated by the long, shadowy perspective, far away down the corridor. There was something terrifying about the rigid dimensions with the streak of milky lamplight – as in that mysterious Velásquez painting of the woman pouring the olive oil and who is that, in the shadows behind her? My eyes were adjusting. Aoife was wearing a pyjama top. It was the same one which Abby had worn the night of the wedding.

  I said, ‘Are you okay?’ My hand was resting on my chest in that coffin-like repose I had adopted for the camp bed and Aoife had dropped both her hands, taken my fingers in a clutch. ‘You’re a very sweet guy.’

  ‘No, I’m certainly not.’

  ‘You are so.’

  ‘Are you still stoned, Aoife?’

  She blew out air. Her two hands were concernedly writhing upon my one hand, but in the manner that you would hold a relative’s hand who is in a hospital bed, moaning with illness. I raised my other hand and placed it atop hers.

  She put her face down close to mine and whispered, ‘You tried to kiss me on the train?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes.’

  Our whispered voices reminded me of that first night we met, six or seven months before, when we had stood and spoken softly together in her bedroom above the baby.

  She said, ‘Do you want to know when I knew that you were very, very into me?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I caught you holding my shirt in the bathroom. You put it to your face in the bathroom and I saw through the glass. I realised in a moment you were very, very into me.’

  ‘I am into you. Very.’

  ‘I didn’t realise. So you wanted to kiss me?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  ‘And everything else too?’

  I nodded, though I was still lying flat. ‘Of course.’

  ‘That’s bad, cause I’m getting a bit fed up with things. What are we going to do?’

  I said nothing.

  She whispered, ‘Get up.’ Her arm swept aside the wool blanket and she walked off in her baggy pyjamas, up the corridor, and as I still lay watching her she turned her head and used her hand to beckon me to follow. I creaked up off the camp bed and crept along the carpet in bare feet. She’d already closed their bedroom door.

  In the living room was darkness and she was standing by the windows. Of the silver and white lights which showed so far down below, some were occasionally shuttered by shunting tree branches in the night breeze. I walked up and stood by her side, looking out as well, as if we’d both been summoned there by an ancient prophecy to witness a special star.

  She still whispered, ‘Lou might hear us talking in your room.’

  ‘Yes.’ I nodded. ‘What do you want to talk about?’

  Aoife said, ‘I wanted to kiss you.’

  I smiled. ‘When?’

  ‘When we were going to go down into the cellar that night after that horrid man, to see Lamborghini. I was going to try to kiss you. I don’t know why. Sorry.’

  ‘I wish I had known. Maybe I did and was scared.’

  ‘It’s so awful of me. I’m married. But you’re a lovely boy. Come on, then.’

  ‘What?’

  She turned, leaned in and kissed me on the mouth. When she broke away she said, ‘It’s this pill you’ve gave us that’s made me not care. I feel like I’m just skating over silver ice.’ She kissed me again, harder, and I took her glass-like jaw in my fingers and moved my face upon her. She broke off from my mouth and said, ‘You’re a boy and you need to every two weeks. At least. Lou once said all men need to,’ and she nodded seriously.

  Her own fingers peeled off the pyjama top from her shoulders and let it fall, my fingertips stroked up her breasts to hard cones, as if I were repeatedly attempting to get dry sand to form into a stable pile. She breathed heavier.

  The light around us which lit that dark room and faintly illuminated these things we did was waste light – the unintentional and meagre leakages from that calm city below.

  ‘You smell of the bath.’ She had drawn back her lips from my mouth and she kneeled. I felt her rubbery nipples stutter down over my bared pelvis because she’d swiftly hauled down my pyjama bottoms as she descended – the same ones she’d often washed, even ironed and neatly folded. Using just two fingers of her right hand, held up like a casual salute, she was keeping her loose hair from swinging across her cheek and getting caught up around her mouth while the left-hand finger, with the wedding ring, was politely suspended as if holding a tea-cup handle.

  She only stopped a brief moment. ‘And you taste of the bath.’

  Yes. The light that was there was from those meagre leakages below and I thought of the sewers which flow beneath that great city, how at that early hour only low waters must seep there, through the slimed tunnels. This hour that suited Aoife and me and all conspirators and assassins.

  I whispered, ‘Look up, into my eyes, then’ – and she obeyed; her head remained rigidly in the same position but both eyes turned up and she looked into mine, quite continuously, communicating nothing until my hips jerked distinctly forward, just once and she swung her head knowingly aside with a dark and opened mouth. More was ejaculated onto her collar bone and yet more again all over her bare, ivory shoulder. She lowered her face, using her right hand to wipe a heap of semen from her extended tongue and she flicked the majority of the globule downwards, onto the tightened thigh of her own pyjama trousers. She slowly but repeatedly wiped her hand – some on the right thigh then some over on the left, almost playfully. She closed her mouth. There she quietly kneeled. Then she touched her pyjamas again and told me in a matter-of-fact whisper, ‘I’d better put these in the wash straight away.’

  20

  In the morning, no mail came sailing through the broken window but when I looked at my watch it was way too early. Lou tapped on my door and I feared the worst. He looked in. ‘Bloody hell, boyo, that was thunder powder we took last night. I’m off to Mass and to meet Gran. Coffee?’

  I sat with him at the kitchen bench, staring. ‘Why are you going to the early Mass?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t rightly know.’ He passed a cigarette and I took it. ‘I feel sort of— Well, I need to rearrange my synapses.’

  Aoife padded up the corridor, stood in the door and yawned at both of us. I noted her different pyjama bottoms. ‘Why are you two all up so early?’

  ‘I’ll go over to Gran’s for the day. Get a fried breakfast, back this afternoon. Want to tag along, boyo?’

  ‘Ah, no thanks. I’ll stay.’

  He turned to Aoife. ‘Will you come? I’m going to Mass.’

  ‘I want a lie-in, Lou.’

  He nodded – ‘Oh. Okay’ – and he blew out smoke. The loneliness of the pious was on him already.

  When Aoife kissed him goodbye and shut the door, she stood there beside the coats with her head down. She came into the kitchen and looked at me and I watched her. After a minute she strolled across to the living room. I stood at the kitchen door while she watched down through the window until she must have witnessed Lou, wearing his mac and trilby, striding quickly up Bollo Lane.

  She turned and walked past me back to the front door. My eyes followed her. From her hanging corduroy jacket, Aoife took out her house keys, put the mortice lock key in the door then turned it. I pondered why Lou and Abby had never thought to do that.

  She pulled me into her and I pressed Aoife back into the fat, hanging cushion of coats, her hair scraping against Lou’s other overcoat, her arms stretched out. As I kissed her, she pushed her lips down hard over my teeth and whispered, ‘I’m safe for getting pregnant just now but you might give me this Aids if you do all those different positions on me?’

  I said, ‘You won’t get Aids from me, Aoife.’

  21

  I knew what I was feeling. Just awe of her body and its erotic potential. Each morning now, Lou put on a tie and left to attend eight o’clock Mass. Every time he absented himself from the flat, Aoife or I waited, watching out of the window until he had been confirmed on his route up Bollo Lane, then one of us mortice-locked the door and we took each other in our arms – but never in the same room as Lily. The baby’s cries often brought lovemaking to a wanton and speedy conclusion on her part, but Aoife’s domestic parameters were quite clear: Lou couldn’t smoke cigarettes in the same room as Lily and she and I couldn’t fuck in the same room as Lily.

  Several nights, I lay in the camp bed and listened to Lou and Aoife make their own, married love. I was by then familiar with some of her preferred physical stratagems and so fancied I could define from the sound patterns what their specific activity was.

  There were those following mornings after Lou had left for church and Lily slept on in the bedroom cot. Aoife’s body still warm from her marriage bed, she opened her mouth on the sofa cover, beside the burgundy stain of Lou’s dried blood. Birds soared up next to the window glass – in that documentary-light of the front room, Aoife would utter a single cry, as if she had cut her finger with a knife in the kitchen.

  That swish LTM agency had telephoned her – wanted to do a series of test shots with a slightly famous and fashionable photographer, Ross someone, who would shoot only with a small stable of models he knew. If he chose you, it was steady work for years, she told Lou and me.

  Yet it was immediately after that phone call that Lou stopped attending Mass quite so regularly. For a spell he was in the house every day and all day. On the fifth day of this, when he’d briefly left the living room, Aoife had impatiently leaned across and kissed my mouth, then moved violently away. Moments afterwards, Lou had re-entered the room with a cigarette and continued talking about books. He was rereading the Catholic novelist Mauriac, which I had the nerve to smirk at. After kissing his wife seconds before, I realised that, rather than a friend, I was a viper who resented his very presence in his own house at his daughter’s side.

  On the Saturday after I started sleeping with Aoife, our giros came, so me and Lou hit The Bells together. But our usual seat under the strip window was now taken by two of the old fellows. When I witnessed the brief, exchanged looks between us and them, I realised what they meant. The looks from the old guys were warnings, signifying a shift in the power structure. Lou and I had been away from the pub too much and thus had abdicated the right to our usual seat. The old fellows’ look was stubborn and committed: Standards aren’t being maintained; don’t count on this being your seat unless you take this seriously; report for duty each day here and win our respect.

  So Lou and I stood at the bar, where we began to sip at our pints then sauntered with fake insouciance to seats closer to the bar, which meant all the old fellows passed on their way to the toilet and they often stopped for a word with us. Sometimes the old men paused on their return journey as well – to continue or complete an anecdote or opinion engendered on their first passing.

  With a Guinness before him and a smoke cloud up above, Lou talked like back in the old days for a while. He shouted out about the translated title of a Mauriac novel. I was told the title had been changed for the English translation to make it more appealing to the mundane Anglo-Saxon mind. It had been cheapened and in fact rendered nonsensical in relation to the original title. Lou yelled about this for a whole pint’s worth and also declared that translation perhaps interested him more than authorship. Then, ‘Listen, boyo. Been talking to Gran and the priest about me and Eeef tying the knot proper. In the church.’

  My Guinness stopped its ascent and wobbled from side to side.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘In fact, I was wondering if you’d tenderise Aoife up a touch, before I pop her on the frying pan.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Wondering if you’d drop a couple of hints. See where she stood with jumping the broomstick on consecrated ground.’

  I nodded and frowned. ‘I think you know she’d not be that keen. She’d have to go to confession. And confess.’

  ‘Yes, she would.’

  ‘She wouldn’t want to do that.’

  He turned to me. ‘No, she wouldn’t, but why is that? A few impure thoughts and actions with me hardly makes her the Scarlet Woman. But in Derbyshire they think it does. I don’t see that she has much to confess apart from being at the receiving end of The Piston of Acton. She must have had to give two or three hand jobs at high school. Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand. The Who are Acton, you know?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Anyway, the Church doesn’t recognise our marriage. It as good as doesn’t exist.’

  ‘A civil marriage is perfectly legal, Lou. And perfectly significant in a divorce settlement under British law.’

  He gave me an odd, smug look. ‘We need to get Lily baptised, too. Gran was right about getting her into a school that has a good languages department though. I needed to make some changes anyway in my rotten life.’

  ‘Abby?’

  He grimaced and looked around. ‘Everything, boyo. Everything; even the sauce, need to lay off on it for a spell. Like you said that day about Eeef. We don’t deserve her.’

  I nodded sharply.

  ‘So I want you to have a word with her. Butter her up good. She listens to you; doesn’t listen to me. You’d be best man, of course. Do it proper this time. The church and a small hall or hotel. Hey, maybe the North Acton Railway Club of the Christmas Day cheque.’

  ‘It put her empty account into overdraft.’

  ‘Sometime next year we’ll do it. What’s the matter?’

  I must have been nodding glumly without even disguising it. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Look here, boyo. I’m feeling guilty too. I don’t mean about the bloody cheque. About—’ He leaned towards me and dropped his voice. ‘About Abby.’ He showed his teeth. ‘Poor Aoife. I’m so guilty.’

  It didn’t sound very convincing. ‘Lou. Just cause you decide to, sometimes those around you aren’t ready to clean up yet. They still want to be sinners.’

  He nodded. ‘Well, Madam’s all yours if you want her.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Abby. I’m not passing on seconds or anything, but I tell you, she’s worth a roll. Leaves her leather boots and gloves on. And what a racket when she gets up a head of steam. Like a fox getting into the chicken coop.’ He took a gulp of Guinness.

  ‘Simone de Beauvoir will not be proud of us.’

  ‘She was worth a roll. When she was young. The Castor. And great pillow talk afterwards, I’d wager. Jean-Paul was no winner in the looks department, but he did well there. Cunningham—’ He wiped the condensation on the side of his Guinness so it looked like a window onto night time. ‘I need to ask something of you. Take care of Aoife and Lily for a bit. I’m popping up to this place in Worcester for a chunk of teaching. Get off the booze, attend the chapel.’

  Now my Guinness slopped. ‘You serious?’

  ‘Too right. Clear five hundred a month. A month. We’ll be bloody rich. They treat you like a slave; you’re teaching Italian teenagers from half eight in the morning till eight at night, but there’s digs and free grub. I’ll have to sign off but with the odd pint, even after cigs, tax and having to pay rent on Bollo Lane, I’ll make a bob or two. If I do Easter till June, I can get in on the summer schools they run there too.’

  ‘When are you doing this?’

  ‘Now. Have to go up now for the Easter induction course.’

  ‘You’re going now? To Worcester. Now?’

  ‘What’s wrong with that? Aoife and Lily’ll be safe with you. I trust you more than Gran or Rhys or fat Flo, boyo. I’d trust you with their lives. I’ll be quitting the dole, but you just keep signing on and claiming at Abby’s. I’ll be at a different address. Doesn’t affect you. I’ll be sending the hundreds back to Eeef soon enough. Beer galore this summer, boyo. And there’s another thing.’

  ‘Have you told Aoife?’

  ‘Just about to. By me doing this, the money I’ll make will put a sock in her doing the modelling caper. She’ll have Lil to think about. Now we love you, Cunningham, but you’re not the wife’s au pair. You have your own life, so don’t let her treat you like a flunkey while I’m away up there. What I’m saying is, I don’t want my wife out modelling. So don’t let her go there with those whores. I need you to assure me that.’

  ‘But I think she wants to model, Lou. It’s a big deal for her.’

  ‘The hell with a big deal. I’ll get the money. She’s going to get well poked one of these days by a damned fashion victim.’ He leaned towards me. ‘I tell you the thing about getting cuckolded, boyo.’

  I looked straight at him, trying to empty my eyes.

  ‘It’s not so bad if you can choose who she does it with. I know Aids has come along to enrich the soup of despair, but it’s not the sex that makes you so mad, is it? It’s the feeling of being laughed at by a bunch of gossiping, cultureless fashion fuckers.’

  I continued to look at him. ‘Aoife isn’t going to go with someone like that. When are you leaving?’

  ‘Monday.’

  ‘What about Lil? Jesus, she’s nearly walking. You saw her yesterday. You’re going to miss it. She’ll be talking soon, too. You can see her trying to. She’s her father’s kid, the way you rabbit at her. It’ll be fascinating what bloody language she’s going to talk in first and I’m expecting a fully formed sentence too.’

  He laughed but then frowned at me. ‘Bloody hell. Leaving my gorgeous wife and conversational daughter alone with you for weeks up in a luxurious penthouse, posting you back beer money; Aoife’ll be scrubbing your back with the Body Shop loofah in no time. Most men would be gagging for it and you’re complaining in that Caledonian Cunningham way. I can’t accuse you of trying to muscle in on my old lady, that’s for sure.’

  ‘No, it’s just all— a bit sudden.’

  I looked out over the bar. I squinted across the carpet and up at the hanging chandeliers with a fixed smile. Six months before I had loved that pub dearly and looked out across it as the future seemed drenched with possibility.

 

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