We dont die of love, p.11
We Don't Die of Love, page 11
I confided my lack of progress to Zoe. She was as unsurprised as she was unsympathetic. She asked me exactly how long I had been with Selena. I told her. Thirty-one years, I said.
‘Of course dating isn’t working out,’ she said. ‘You’re nowhere near ready.’
She told me her theory which was that for every year a couple was together it would take them at least a month to get over any break-up. She said it was a foolproof and absolutely scientific equation.
‘So you’re saying I have to wait thirty-one months before I get back out there?’ I said.
‘At least,’ she said.
‘So I’ll be ready to date . . .’ I tried to do the maths. Couldn’t. Gave up.
Zoe laughed. I pointed out that Selena didn’t seem to have waited any months at all.
Zoe disagreed. ‘She probably started getting over you at least thirty months ago. She did her grieving for the death of the marriage while she was still in it. Oh, and now you’re going to storm out again. Your problem is that you can’t handle the truth, Luke Greenwood!’
She had to shout this last sentence because I was already on my way out of the door. I stopped, took a breath, turned to face her, forced myself to speak slowly, calmly.
‘No. For your information, Doctor Vargo, I am merely on my way to the Spar to get more bread.’
‘Yeah, right.’
I got bread. When I came back I put the loaves in the freezer because – of course – we did have loads of bread already, though Zoe was sensitive enough to not point this out. I resolved to take her advice and not attempt to date again for a year or three. I found I was not actually that upset by this. I was fine with it.
That night I phoned Charlie and told him that I’d get back on the bike when the new bruises from falling off this time round had healed. Then I spoke to Grace, informed her that all the pebbles and all the fish had turned out to be inadequate replacements for her mother.
Neither of them argued. Grace seemed to want to say something, seemed to have other things on her mind.
‘Dad,’ she said.
‘What?’ I said, possibly a little belligerently. I was in a bad mood, I admit it.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’
You know the saddest thing? The person I really wanted to talk to about my dating disasters, the person who’d be most entertained by them, the person who would make me see how daft it was to take this stuff seriously?
Selena.
15
PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION
Last thing on a Friday and Wes suggested that he and I have a swift half in The Swan. Said he needed to have a word with me about something.
My heart sank. When someone wants a word it’s never good news, is it? To be honest, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to do small talk with Wes right then, never mind a heart-to-heart. I was finding I couldn’t really deal with him at all. Hadn’t been doing the bags-and-pads boxing sessions. Could hardly even look at him.
Wouldn’t have been so awkward if Zoe was coming but she’d already knocked off early, saying she had a doctor’s appointment.
My worries about Wes’s past crimes had been growing. Started to get obsessive. I’d done some pretty extensive googling and at first it was a relief that Wes’s name hadn’t come up, though later I realised that anyone who does anything properly heinous obviously changes their name, so the lack of hits might well actually be a bad sign.
Pitts’s insinuation had been that Wes was a nonce, but it was hard to believe. Yes, I know that nonces don’t have horns and cloven hoofs. I know that they look just like you and me, that they have normal faces and normal jobs and that they can hide in plain sight. I know all of that. But Wes? Really? Just couldn’t imagine it.
Still, it nagged at me. Had become an itch I had to scratch.
We didn’t talk much on the way to the pub. A bit of desultory football chat. The wrong managers picking the wrong players, all of whom were paid too much. Better than silence, but not much.
In The Swan nothing had changed since the last time we were in. Really, nothing. It was like everyone had been in suspended animation, only coming to a kind of life the moment we walked through the door. There was the same path-lab light, the same tired bartender in his same T-shirt, reading the same tabloid. It even looked like it had the same headline. Something about some TV presenter caught drink-driving.
The customers too were the same. The same puffy white faces staring morosely into the same smeary glasses of urine-coloured lager. I know that pub regulars must think, feel, love, hate, laugh just like we all do, but sometimes it is hard to believe it. There was the same smell of stale potato snacks. The same plaintively bombastic music playing. One pint, I vowed to myself, one pint and then I was out of there.
While Wes got the drinks, I thought back to when I hired him. Remembered the first conversation about him with Malika Burns.
Malika was his probation officer. She used to come in to Ernies for a brew and beans on toast. Probation officers, like cops and paramedics and other frontline public service grunts, often find themselves round our way. They make up a good proportion of business at Ernies. I think it was for the probation officers that I first started ordering in the almond milk. Probation officers and social workers are always early adopters when it comes to food fads.
Anyway, there was a day when she came in and we were struggling. The last cook had walked out and Malika mentioned that she had a client – decent bloke, quiet, hard-working – who had been training as a chef inside. Had been acing it, top grades for everything. Could fry an egg like a dream, his béchamel an actual symphony, that kind of thing. I asked then what he’d done to end up inside and she’d said she couldn’t tell me – it wasn’t really the done thing – but that she was certain that he would be very safe in a café environment. There was no history of violence.
I asked Zoe what she thought.
‘When’s he out?’ she said.
‘Tomorrow, actually,’ Malika said.
‘Well, let’s throw him in at the deep end then,’ Zoe said. ‘I don’t think Ernies can cope with many more days with Luke as head chef.’
So Wes came straight from the slammer to the caff and he was as good as Malika had said. He was quick, unflappable and clean which are the things you most need in any kitchen, particularly in a rough-and-ready diner like ours. And I liked him. We got on.
More importantly – and more surprisingly – Zoe had liked him straight away too and she likes almost no one. She pronounced him ‘sound’ which is the very highest possible praise in her lexicon. Also, I guess we both liked the fact that by hiring an ex-con we were doing A Good Thing.
That was four years ago and we’d been a great team, but now I was growing convinced I’d have to fire him. However good he’d been for the caff, I just couldn’t have someone working for me that I, in the normal scheme of things, wouldn’t even serve.
Obviously I’d let him put his side of things first, but I had a bad feeling.
Right then the person I felt saddest for was Zoe. I thought this might really do her head in. Over the last couple of weeks it had become clear that love was in the air in Ernies. Wes and Zoe had begun not to care who knew they were an item. They held hands, they called each other honey and darling in a way that was meant to be ironic but sort of clearly wasn’t, and they couldn’t stop smooching in the caff. People had commented. Chas Diggle said all this kissing put him off his breakfast. Zoe just laughed at him.
‘Not one for a PDA then, Chas?’ she’d said.
‘A what?’
‘A Public Display of Affection.’
‘No one likes it,’ he’d said.
‘I do. I love a PDA, me. I want to see the whole world snogging all the time.’ She had looked thoughtful then. ‘You know, I think snogging is my favourite English word.’
We supped in silence. Minutes passed. Wes had suggested this pint, surely it was up to him to start talking? We heard the whole of ‘I Will Always Love You’, the whole of ‘Everything I Do, I Do for You’. I wondered how much more I could take.
‘God, this place could badly use some disco,’ Wes said. Then, ‘Do you know why Zoe’s at the doctor’s?’
It was suddenly clear to me. Oh God.
‘Yeah, reckons she’s pregnant,’ he said.
‘Bit early to say, isn’t it?’
‘That’s what I said, but she’s pretty certain.’
‘She’s right about most things,’ I said.
‘Yep,’ he said. ‘Yep, she is.’
Except in her choice of blokes, I thought. Her track record there was poor.
We sat in silence for a while until I remembered what you were meant to say at times like these. I offered congratulations.
Wes smiled faintly. ‘Thanks.’
We talked a little about children. Or I did. How much they cost but how rewarding they were. Banalities. Platitudes. Wes nodded and murmured along, but I knew he was not really listening. Which was reasonable enough, even I wasn’t really listening. Instead, as I was gabbing on I was just thinking, oh Christ, that poor kid. Thinking how its only hope was if Zoe ended up a single parent. Eventually he cut in and stopped me.
‘So. Cards on the table time,’ he said.
This is it, I thought. This is where he tells me what he was in for. This is where he throws himself on my mercy, claims that he is utterly rehabilitated and, while he agrees it was a sickening crime, swears he’s genuinely cured, genuinely wanting a fresh start. He’s going to ask me to take pity on him. He’ll urge me to think of Zoe, to think of the baby.
I’m prepared to be reasonable, I think. But he’s got to be properly upfront. He can’t sanitise whatever it is he’s done. Can’t hold anything back. He’s also got to show proper remorse and some evidence that he’s still doing work on himself. He’s got to prove to me that he’s got support in place to keep on the straight and narrow. And of course he’s got to tell Zoe all the details too. Let her make an informed decision about whether to continue the relationship.
‘Thing is, Luke,’ he began, then paused. Took another sip of his murky IPA. There was Queen on the radio now. Freddie Mercury was saying how I was his best friend.
‘Thing is,’ Wes said. ‘I’m going to need more money.’
‘What?’ I was wrong-footed, blindsided.
‘I’ve been on nine quid an hour for four years now. And with a kid on the way, like . . .’ He trailed off.
‘You brought me here to ask for a pay rise?’
‘Yeah.’ He seemed puzzled. ‘It’s fair enough to ask, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose,’ I said. And then I said it. Just blurted it out. Told him that I’d thought he was going to tell me why he’d gone to prison. Told him that I’d been thinking about sacking him.
‘What the fuck for?’
I told him what Micky Pitts had said, about how it had been preying on my mind.
‘You think I’m a nonce? Stand up.’ His voice was mild. His eyes steady on mine. They were cool. No heat in them. Almost colourless. He took another pull at his pint.
‘What?’ I said.
‘I asked you to stand up, Luke.’ And, despite being fairly sure it was a bad idea, I did it. Couldn’t tell you why. I stood up and – of course – he smacked me hard in the face. Twice. He was clinical about it too. Two short, hard, fast jabs. The first one caught me on the nose and the second one right in the mouth and I was suddenly sprawled amid the tables and the stools. The noise was strangely musical, a glissando, like a car hitting a greenhouse.
Have you ever been hit in the face by a proper boxer? By someone who knows exactly what they’re doing? I advise against it. There was the metal taste of blood in my mouth, a ringing in my ears, a tinnitus that was surely permanent, and I was blinded by hot tears.
I was stunned enough to stay where I was for a while. I’m not sure how long. Could have been a minute, could have been thirty minutes. Could have been an entire fucking lifetime.
When I got myself together enough to struggle back up to the banquette, my head was banging. This was a headache that was making itself comfortable, was settling in for days. This was likely to turn into a migraine that was in no hurry to move on, was going to stick around.
Wes had gone. The barman wandered over to pick up the stools and to half-heartedly sweep up glass. He didn’t ask how I was.
I leaned back against the sticky vinyl of the banquette, closed my eyes. There were painful lights dancing between my eyes and lids. I ran my tongue over my teeth. Seemed like they were all still there which was something. I closed my eyes, concentrated on the colours dancing there. Quite pretty really. Almost psychedelic.
When I opened my eyes again it was to find Zoe sitting on a stool across the table, a glass of fizzy water in front of her. Which I guessed meant that the doctor had confirmed the pregnancy.
‘You’ve got blood on your face,’ she said, and handed me a hankie. It was not too clean but I used it anyway.
‘Your boyfriend is a psycho,’ I said.
It hurt to speak. Felt like even this short sentence had somehow ripped open a new wound in my mouth. Had seeded a major ulcer there.
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Just pissed off. He phoned me, told me what you said. Seems to me like you had it coming. If you were really that interested in Wes’s criminal past you could have asked me, you know. Wes might have been a bit shy, but I’d have told you. Do you want me to tell you now?’
‘Not really.’
She told me anyway.
According to Zoe, Wes had developed a gambling habit a few years back. Began with a weekly and modest flutter on the horses and progressed until it became several hours a day in front of a fixed-odds terminal losing money way beyond anything that his job at the time could support. It was a decent job too, logistics manager at a distribution warehouse somewhere off the M62.
As he’d got deeper in he’d become close to his ninety-year-old neighbour, a woman whose eyesight and hearing were going, who was gradually but definitely losing her marbles, whose kids and grandkids didn’t come round very often, who had grown increasingly reliant on the quiet, handsome and thoroughly charming bloke next door. This lady – a Mrs Calder – was always saying how her new friend Wes was her lifeline, her rock, the only thing keeping her going. Nothing was too much trouble. Couldn’t do enough. She was lucky to have him looking out for her.
Eventually, however, a child or a grandchild did finally bother to come round, and had discovered a National Savings Bank passbook open in the lounge, picked it up and did the maths. Turned out that Wes had done the old lady out of £50,000 – all of which had gone into those infernal fixed-odds dream machines of Mr Ladbrokes.
The judge in the ensuing court case had taken a dim view of the whole preying on the elderly thing, wasn’t impressed by the abuse of trust and all that, and so Wes had got an unusually long sentence for a first-time offender. Eight years.
His solicitor had suggested he could appeal, but Wes hadn’t wanted to, had felt he had deserved what he got. Was too overcome with shame to even think about trying to reduce his sentence.
‘It’s a nice story,’ I said.
‘You think that’s a nice story?’
‘Nicer than being a paedo. But why should I believe it?’
‘You should believe it because it’s me telling you, Luke. I don’t lie. You should know that about me. You should . . .’
Zoe’s voice drifted away, dissipated into the ready-salted air of the The Swan. She sighed, pushed her hand through her hair in the way that she had and produced an envelope from her bag. The sigh, the hand through the hair, the irritated way she rooted about in her bag, all of it told me she didn’t like me very much at that moment. Fact, she was thinking I was a bit of a tosser. Just another stupid man among all the other stupid men she’d had to deal with in her life. From Budapest to here, just one disappointment after another.
She shoved the envelope across to me. Inside was a worn and fragile cutting from a national rag. The same story was told there and the photo that accompanied it was definitely Wes, though the name was different.
‘Thing is, Luke, even if he had been a paedophile, even if he’d been a rapist or a murderer he would still have served his time. Would still be entitled to work.’
‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘No I guess about it. You judge a society by how it treats its criminals, and you judge a person by how much ordinary human kindness they show to those who have messed up.’
So that was me stubbed out. They should have Zoe on Thought for the bloody Day.
She finished off by reminding me how the business class work. How they divide us against each other in the interests of making profits for themselves. White against black, North against South, old against young, men against women, likes of me against likes of Wes, all of it serving the continuing accumulation of wealth by a global class of selfish wankers. In this case the whole game just served the accumulation of Ernies by Hobbs. In other words, she took some time to explain – at length – that I was being taken for a ride, that I was being comprehensively mugged off. That she’d thought I was brighter than to fall for the basic capitalist playbook.
Never mind mansplaining, the young of both sexes bloody love to youthsplain.
I was in the middle of thanking her for pointing all this out to me when my phone fanfared inside my pocket. Grace. In tears. I could hardly hear her through the sobs. My heart contracted. My mouth dried. My blood chilled. No one ever gets used to hearing their children weep.
‘Dad? Dad? It’s Charlie. Something’s happened. You need to be here.’
16
THESE CASES CAN BE VERY COMPLEX
We were standing around Charlie’s hospital bed. He was still and silent in an artificial coma, and all strapped up. Spine held in place by metal braces. Tubes running into his arm. There was a nurse, her movements efficient and brisk. She checked things, finger tap-tap-tapping at her tablet. She reminded me of young Eddard, child of the two Jennies. The same level of fierce concentration. She consulted dials and switches. Her face a busy mime, a silent film. She nodded, frowned, generally shaped her face to make it look as if important stuff was going on. She was an explorer, an astronaut on some spacewalk business. Information must be discovered, recorded, processed. Machinery must be monitored.
