Of People and Things

ONE-2

“Who?”

You would have thought I was a teenager, sometimes, the way my voice wobbled and ran the gamut of the octaves open to me. It must have been my intonation, I can’t see what else it could have been, that made him make to leap from his seat and attack me once again, only to then think better of it. Unless it was the question itself, which I feared might be impertinent at best. Yet sometimes questions have to be asked, even when you’d much rather not know the answer, as was the case on this occasion. I didn’t pry into my own s*x life, even when I had one, and I was not keen to pry into the s*x lives of others in general, and him in particular. Some people shouldn’t be allowed to have s*x at all. There – I’ve said it. There should be a permit, or licence, like having a dog.

I coughed to gain tighter control of my vocal chords and launched again.

“Of course,” I said, “you don’t have to answer. If I were you I wouldn’t, but then if you were I then you wouldn’t ask me anyway, for the question wouldn’t come up.”

I was rather aware of my use of the word “come”, but couldn’t think of an alternative, save “arise”, which in the circumstance would hardly have been any better, and may have been worse. I rallied and soldiered on, bravely, I think.

“With whom…?”

I left it dangling, not wanting to end. He left it dangling, staring at me the while. I wish I could describe the succession of looks that passed over his face whilst the question hovered, but I can’t, yet I will say his face finally settled for a glaring resolve. A hiatus of some seconds occurred until I realised I would have to finish my question, so I coughed once more, hoping to gain further control of my voice but instead dislodged a nugget of phlegm from the back of my throat which I couldn’t dispose of as I would have liked. Phlegm strikes at the most inconvenient of moments, which is why you have to be phlegmatic about it. Better out than in is my motto, and I am sore provoked when I can’t stick to it. To swallow phlegm seems to me an opportunity missed, but there was no choice, so swallow it I did and felt it slip back down the gullet, like an oyster, although I have never had an oyster. My own face was impassive throughout, I hope.

“With whom are you involved?” Horribly vague, I know, but there you go.

“Involved?” I detected a sneer, but I may have been wrong; even at his gentlest, there was always the hint of a sneer lurking. Perhaps that was reserved only for me, and his wife, obviously. “Why can’t you use the Queen’s f*****g English like the rest of humanity? f*****g involved.”

He rose. That is inaccurate. He lumbered out of the chair to then nonchalantly stroll across the room to look out the window, although to call it a window is perhaps an exaggeration, so I will call it rather a gap let into the stone, albeit properly glazed, so maybe more of a window after all. He dangled his glass between thumb and forefinger as if he hardly knew it was there. Ah, but I knew that he knew it was there, of that you can be sure.

“Not that it is any of your business – your roses need pruning – but the current shag is a girl called Violet. Amazing arse. Violet! What kind of f**k calls their kid Violet, eh?” He leered at me.

“Perhaps they were fond of the flower.” I ventured.

“What if they were, eh? What if they were? Cassandra likes Geraniums but you don’t see any slags around called Geranium do you?”

“Roses.”

“Of course you get Roses.”

“I thought Cass liked roses.”

“You thought Cass liked roses?”

“I was sure Cass liked roses.”

“Cass likes roses, Cass likes roses,” and he affected a little mincing dance and whining voice, which I thought a tad eccentric. Surprisingly nimble when he wanted to be and as he gambolled away there was the smidgen of the child he must have been, teasing the less fortunate child in the school-yard, the one with the limp, or the hunch, or the lazy eye, mercilessly. He stopped. “Who gives a f**k what she likes, it is what she knows that is important. Do you understand that?”

“I understand that.”

Nor was this an overstatement, for I now had a clear enough picture in my head, where else it would have been, I don’t know, of what was at issue. What did Cass know of Violet. There it was in a nutshell. I would have to write it down quickly, for there is this about me I do know, that when I understand something, as I then did, it is no guarantee that I will understand it the following day, or indeed the following minute. For when I grasp things clearly, and I am capable of grasping things clearly, it seems that I grasp them only fleetingly. The obverse is not the case. That is to say, that those things which I grasp dimly do not remain with me either. So, whether I grasp things well or ill I grasp them for bare moments. A few days at best. No, a log would be needed; a journal to note down all the things that I grasped dimly or clearly whilst I grasped them still, so I would not forget. Well, I would forget, but the notebook would not, and then I would be reminded, which is not the same thing as remembering, to my mind. And it occurred to me then that it was a shame that I had not had the idea before. I have long toiled in the grey areas of the once-remembered-now-forgotten, dulled by that annoying blur just beyond my vision, when all I needed was a notebook and a pencil and I could have remained in the light all my life, or in enough of the light as would have been tolerable. No, perhaps it is just as well. For what would there have been to prevent me from writing something down and then, sometime later, reading those same words and not having the least clue to what they referred? I think that could happen; that the words remembered but that I had forgotten so utterly that the words did not remind. Yes, I could imagine that happening, to me. Nevertheless, I would have to trust to the method of notebook and pencil in this affair, for I knew I couldn’t trust on my own faculties alone in this case and if the less tried method of pencil and notebook failed also then at least I would then be no worse off. No better, but no worse. There is something to be said for that. I did not have a pencil. I did not have a notebook.

“Do you have a pencil?” I asked.

“No.” He replied.

“Do you have a notebook?”

“A notebook?” I didn’t think the word or thing so extraordinary, but, there you go, he did. People differ, I have noticed.

“Yes.” I replied.

“No.”

There was a further hiatus. I cannot speak for him, although I must, but he seemed to be occupying himself with the view from the window, and, judging by the angle of his head, occupying himself more with the cloudless sky than with anything else. What he saw there other than a lack of cloud I cannot say, but I can say I was grateful, for his preoccupation allowed me to dwell on my own, which unfortunately revolved around the question of money. If I was not to forget that what Cass knows about Violet was the issue, and a whole host of things which might crop up along the way, a pencil and notebook would be essential. Perhaps also a pencil sharpener, and a rubber, by which I mean an eraser. Now, I didn’t have a pencil, notebook, pencil sharpener or eraser, and I hadn’t the means to get them. I would need expenses, for if, even before I had embarked on my mission, I had already calculated four necessary items which would have to be purchased, what and how many other things might become necessary along the way? When you embark, things become inevitable. When things are inevitable, the issue of money becomes no less so.

He loved to talk of money. Rather, he loved to talk about how much money he had. He did not like to talk about giving money to anyone else. It irked him, and I could see the logic. If one of the great pleasures of his life was to talk about how much money he had then a reduction in that money by giving a sum to someone would necessarily mean a reduction in the pleasure he had in talking about how much money he had, for he would have less money, obviously. We all guard our pleasures, no matter how meagre. I guarded mine, and god knows they were meagre enough. I guard them still, so will not mention them, but will add that it does not escape me that perhaps I guard my meagre pleasures precisely because they are so meagre. So, broaching the subject of giving money to someone else was never an easy matter. This was compounded by me, in some obscure way, for he seemed particularly irked by giving money to me, though he gave me little.

“What have you done with all the money I give you?”

I don’t know how I had asked the question, but I must have done, unless he was able to read my mind. Oh, I am transparent, but not to that degree. No matter how I had put the question, it had been enough to tear him away from the heavens.

“All the money you have given me?”

“You bleed me dry, the whole lot of you, like a lot of f*****g leeches sucking away at me. You and the bony cow, draining the juice out of me.” He swaggered about the room, gesticulating with the hand which held the whiskey glass, which rocked violently in a loose grasp to such a degree that I wondered if there would be further spots to admire and watch dry on the floor, which, like the kitchen counter, was quite heavily stained. I had no carpet, just bare stone. If I had had a carpet it would have been rotten.

“You take and take and take and what do I get in return, hey? What do I get?” This was not a question. “I get grief. Nothing but grief.”

I had remained in my corner, and felt its safety. Puce did not suit him, and yet it was undeniably his default colour, at least in my presence. If he were ever to lie in state, he would no doubt be puce, and not a sepulchral white, as I believe is de rigueur.

“Right. Are you ready?”

Ready for what he didn’t say, and I didn’t know.

“Ready.” I said, thinking it best.

“Right”

“Right.”

“Who put this roof over your head?”

“Ah!” I said.

“Ah, what?” He looked deflated.

“Now I understand.”

“Understand what?”

“What we’re doing. Can we start again?”

“What do you mean start again? Start again with what?”

“With “who put this roof over your head.””

He raised his eyes to the roof, as if to inspect it, but perhaps not.

“Right,” he said. “Who put this roof over your head?”

“You did.”

“Who puts the food on the table?”

“You do.”

“Who buys you the f*****g table to put the food on?”

“You do.”

“That’s right. And don’t you forget it.”

This is something I never forget. This does not mean that what I wrote about remembering things only briefly was incorrect. That I didn’t forget this was down to the fact that we went through this litany frequently, every time he came, it seemed. So he must always have come when I was on the verge of forgetting but had not yet forgotten. His timing always was excellent, as I believe I have had chance to mention before, in a different connection.

I was a kept man, in truth.

“What have you spent it all on this time? That muck heap outside?”

He gestured out of the window with his glass, which I took to indicate my garden, or rather his garden of which I was but the keeper, albeit an assiduous one. For it was mine, in all senses save that of ownership, and that is all that matters, to some. It was all that mattered to him. He never tired of being exasperated at my tending to the garden. He couldn’t understand the attraction, and never understood why anyone should care about things which would only die and rot in time. He had the same attitude towards people and animals, so he was nothing if not consistent.

“A little,” and it was true, for rather than lavish funds on my garden, I harvested and planted from seed and tried to pollinate one flower with another, for the bees and wasps didn’t seem to be up to the job any longer. So costs were kept down. The same was true of what I ate, when I ate. When I ate, I ate little but with one eye on nutrition and the other eye on achieving the feeling of fullness. Rice featured heavily. I supplemented my diet with vegetables from my garden when I could, although perhaps I should say vegetable for I only grew carrots and these were more often than not a disappointment, to themselves and to me. As for the rest of what little there was it would be covered by what I believe is called sundries. When the money was all gone at the end of the month, as it always was, I could look back more often than not on my thrift and congratulate myself on not having had to do without too many essentials, for what people say are essentials are not really essential at all when you have no choice but to do without them, or substitute them for something else less good. Toilet paper. Such were my expenses when only I was part of the equation. But I was no longer the sole part of the equation and the equation had grown more complex, to the point of becoming quadratic, I feared.

He managed to steer his expression away from the first look of disgust at the thought of the money spent on the dying towards a more resigned demeanour. If the expression had been on anyone else’s face it would not have seemed resigned perhaps, but on his face, with all that it was capable of, it did.

“I’ll need receipts,” he conceded. “You do know what a receipt is, don’t you?”

I must have nodded.

“And you’ll have to keep accounts. Is that understood?”

I nodded again, and even went on to think that a second notebook, set aside solely for the totting of debits and credits, would be needed. There was no doubt I was warming to my task.

“Right.” He drained what little remained of his drink, belched slightly, then rammed the glass into my hand. “Don’t,” he said, “f**k it up.”

I tried to smile, but this time the smell of his breath was distinctly sour, and I am not sure I managed it, so I tried to cover it up with some vigorous head-nodding, which pleasantly blurred his face but which left me feeling a little dizzy. Perhaps I had been dizzy throughout. I am often dizzy. I don’t know why. He thrust some notes into the pocket of my jacket. This was easily done as the pocket was hanging loose, its stitching having given up the ghost somewhat. Why was I wearing a jacket on such a day? And sweat, shouldn’t there have been sweat, on his part at the very least? But I recall a jacket, and do not recall sweat, which means whatever it may, or that it was May, perhaps.

I remained in the corner until the door slammed. The room darkened. A rare cloud must have obscured the sun a moment.

His name is Paul, as is mine. You would have thought there were enough names in the world to go around, but, there you go, there aren’t.