‘Sorry?’
‘Saw how you appreciated my wife, on the train.’ He gets down from the stool, and staggers. ‘It’s beautiful when I’m sitting down. Better help us upstairs.’
He finds my shoulder and connects himself to it. He is heavy and I feel like letting him go. I do not like being so close to him.
‘I’ll give you a hand,’ Martha says. ‘It’s not far. You’re in the next room to one another.’
One on each side, we heave him upstairs. The last few steps he takes with gingerly independence.
At the door he turns. ‘Guide me into the room. Don’t know the layout. Could be pitch dark with only my wife’s teeth for light.’
Martha takes his key and opens the door for him.
‘Goodnight,’ I say.
I am not accompanying him into the bedroom.
‘Hey.’ He falls into the room.
I wave at Martha.
‘Archie,’ says startled Florence from the darkness within. ‘Is that you?’
‘Who else, dammit? Undress me!’
‘Archie-’
‘Wife’s duty!’
I sink down beside the wall like a gargoyle and think of her tearing at the warm mound of him. Now I have seen him, his voice seems clearer.
I hear him say, ‘I was just talking to someone –’
‘Who?’
‘That boy in the next room.’
‘Which boy?’
‘The actor, you fool. He was in the train. Now he’s in the hotel!’
‘Is he? Why?’
‘How do I know?’
He switches the TV on. I would not have done such a thing when she was sleeping. I think of Florence sleeping. I know what her face will be like.
*
Next morning it is silent next door. I walk along the corridor hoping I will not run into Florence and Archie. Maids are starting to clean the rooms. I pass people on the stairs and say ‘Good morning’. The hotel smells of furniture polish and fried food.
At the door to the breakfast room I bump into them. We smile at one another, I slide by and secure a table behind a pillar. I open the newspaper and order haddock, tomatoes, mushrooms and fried potatoes.
Last night I dreamed I had a nervous breakdown; that I was walking around a foreign town incapable of considered thought or action, not knowing who I was or where I was going. I wonder whether I want to incapacitate myself rather than seriously consider what I should do. I need to remind myself that such hopelessness will lead to depression. Better to do something. After breakfast I will get the train back to London.
I am thinking that it is likely that I will never see Florence again, when she rushes around the corner.
‘What are you doing? What are you intending to do? Oh Rob, tell me.’
She is close to me, breathing over me; her hair touches my face, her hand is on mine, and I want her again, but I hate her, and hate myself.
‘What are you intending to do?’ I ask.
‘I will persuade him to leave.’
‘When?’
‘Now. He’ll be on the lunchtime train.’
‘No doubt sitting next to me.’
‘But we can talk and be together! I’ll do anything you want.’ I look at her doubtfully. She says, ‘Don’t go this morning. Don’t do that to me.’
For some reason a man I have never seen before, with a lapel badge saying ‘Manager’, is standing beside the table.
‘Excuse me,’ he says.
Florence does not notice him. ‘I beg you,’ she says. ‘Give me a chance.’ She kisses me. ‘You promise?’
‘Excuse me,’ the hotel manager says. ‘The car you ordered is here, sir.’ I stare at him. He seems to regard us as a couple. ‘The rental car – suitable for a man and a woman, touring.’
‘Oh yes,’ I say.
‘Would you both like to look at it now?’
With a wave, Florence goes. Outside, I gaze at the big, four-door family saloon, chosen in a moment of romantic distraction. I sit in it.
After breakfast I drive into Lyme Regis and walk on the Cobb; later I drive to Charmouth, climb up the side of the cliff and look out to sea. It is beginning to feel like being on holiday with your parents when you are too old for it.
I return to the hotel to say goodbye to Florence again. In the conservatory, reading the papers, is Archie, wearing a suit jacket over a T-shirt, brown shorts and black socks and shoes, looking like someone who has dressed for the office but forgotten to put their trousers on.
As I back away, hoping he has not recognised me, and if he does, that he will not quite recall who I am, he says, ‘Have a good morning?’
In front of him is a half-empty bottle of wine. His face is covered in a fine glacé of sweat.
I tell him where I’ve been.
‘Busy boy,’ he says.
‘And you? You’re still around … here?’
‘We’ve walked and even read books. I’m terribly, terribly glad I came.’
He pours a glass of wine and hands it to me.
I say, ‘Think you might stay a bit longer?’
‘Only if it’s going to annoy you.’
His wife comes to the other door. She blinks several times, her mouth opens, and then she seems to yawn.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ asks her husband.
‘Tired,’ she whispers. ‘Think I’ll lie down.’
He winks at me. ‘Is that an invitation?’
‘Sorry, sorry,’ she says.
‘Why the hell are you apologising? Get a grip, Florrie. I spoke to this young man last night.’ He jabs his finger at me. ‘You said this thing …’ He looks into the distance and massages his temples. ‘You said … if you experienced the desires, the impulses, within you, you would break up what you had created, and live anew. But there would be serious consequences. The word was in my head all night. Consequences. I haven’t been able to live out those things. I have tried to put them away, but can’t. I’ve got this image … of stuffing a lot of things in a suitcase that can’t be closed, that is too small. That is my life. If I lived what I thought … it would all blow down …’
I realise Florence and I have been looking at one another. Sometimes you look at someone instead of touching them.
He regards me curiously. ‘What’s going on? Have you met my wife?’
‘Not really.’
My lover and I shake hands.
Archie says, ‘Florrie, he’s been unhappy in love. Married woman and all that. We must cheer him up.’
‘Is he unhappy?’ she says. ‘Are you sure? People should cheer themselves up. Don’t you think, Rob?’
She crooks her finger at me and goes. Her husband ponders his untrue life. As soon as his head re-enters his hands, I am away, racing up the stairs.
My love is lingering in the corridor.
‘Come.’
She pulls my arm; with shaking hands I unlock my door; she hurries me through my room and into the bathroom. She turns on the shower and the taps, flushes the toilet, and falls into my arms, kissing my face and neck and hair.
I am about to ask her to leave with me. We could collect our things, jump in the car and be on the road before Archie has lifted his head and wiped his eyes. The idea burns in me; if I speak, our lives could change.
‘Archie knows.’
I pull back so I can see her. ‘About our exact relation to one another?’
She nods. ‘He’s watching us. Just observing us.’
‘Why?’
‘He wants to be sure, before he makes his move.’
‘What move?’
‘Before he gets us.’
‘Gets us? How?’
‘I don’t know. It’s torture, Rob.’
This thing has indeed made her mad; such paranoia I find abhorrent. Reality, whatever it is, is the right anchor. Nevertheless, I have been considering the same idea myself. I do not believe it, and yet I do.
‘I don’t care if he knows,’ I say. ‘I’m sick
of it.’
‘But we mustn’t give up!’
‘What? Why not?’
‘There is something between us … which is worthwhile.’
‘I don’t know any more, Florrie. Florence.’
She looks at me and says, ‘I love you, Rob.’
She has never said this before. We kiss for a long time.
I turn off the taps and go through into the bedroom. She follows me and somehow we fall onto the bed. I pull up her skirt; soon she is on me. Our howls would be known to the county. When I wake up she is gone.
*
I walk on the beach; there is a strong wind. I put my head back: it is raining into my eyes. I think of Los Angeles, my work, and of what will happen in the next few months. A part of my life seems to be over, and I am waiting for the new.
After supper I am standing in the garden outside the dining room, smoking weed, and breathing in the damp air. I have decided it is too late to return to London tonight. Since waking up I have not spoken to Florence, only glanced into the dining room where she and her husband are seated at a table in the middle. Tonight she is wearing a long purple dress. She has started to look insistent and powerful again, a little diva, with the staff, like ants, moving around only her because they cannot resist. One more night and she will bring the room down with a wave and stride out towards the sea. I know she is going to join me later. It is only a wish, of course, but won’t she be wishing too? It is probably our last chance. What will happen then? I have prepared my things and turned the car around.
There is a movement behind me.
‘That’s nice,’ she says, breathing in.
I put out my arms and Martha holds me a moment. I offer her the joint. She inhales and hands it back.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘Next week I’m going to Los Angeles to be in a film.’
‘Is that true?’
‘What about you?’
She lives nearby with her parents. Her father is a psychology lecturer in the local college, an alcoholic with a violent temper who has not been to work for a year. One day he took against London, as if it had personally offended him, and insisted the family move from Kentish Town to the country, cutting them off from everything they knew.
‘We always speculate about the people who stay here, me and the kitchen girl.’ She says, suddenly, ‘Is something wrong?’
She turns and looks behind. As Martha has been talking, I have seen Florence come out into the garden, watch us for a bit, and throw up her hands like someone told to mime ‘despair’. A flash of purple and she is gone.
‘What is it?’
‘Tell me what you’ve been imagining about me,’ I say.
‘But we don’t know what you’re doing here. Are you going to tell me?’
‘Can’t you guess?’ I say impatiently. ‘Why do you keep asking me these things?’
She takes offence, but I have some idea of how to get others to talk about themselves. I discover that recently she has had an abortion, her second; that she rides a motorbike; that the young people carry knives, take drugs and copulate as often as they can; and that she wants to get away.
‘Is the bar shut?’ I ask.
‘Yes. I can get you beer if you want.’
‘Would you like to drink a glass of beer with me?’ I ask.
‘More than one glass, I hope.’
I kiss her on the cheek and tell her to come to my room. ‘But what will your parents say if you are late home?’
‘They don’t care. Often I find an empty room and sleep in it. Don’t want to go home.’ She says, ‘Are you sure it’s only beer you want?’
‘Whatever you want,’ I say. ‘You can get a key.’
On the way upstairs I look into the front parlour. In the middle of the floor Florence and Archie are dancing; or rather, he is holding on to her as they heave about. The Scrabble board and all the letters have been knocked on the floor. His head is flopped over her shoulder; in five years he will be bald. Florence notices me and raises a hand, trying not to disturb him.
He calls out, ‘Hey!’
‘Drunk again,’ I say to her.
‘I know what you have been doing. Up to!’ he says with leering emphasis.
‘When?’
‘This afternoon. Siesta. You know.’
I look at Florence.
‘The walls are thin,’ he says. ‘But not quite thin enough. I went upstairs. I had to fetch something from the bathroom. But what an entertainment. Jiggy-jig, jiggy-jig!’
‘I’m glad to be an entertainment, you old fucker,’ I say. ‘I wish you could be the same for me.’
‘What was Rob doing this afternoon?’ Florence says. ‘Don’t leave me out of the game.’
‘Ha, ha, ha! You’re a dopey little thing who never notices anything!’
‘Don’t talk to her like that,’ I say. ‘Talk to me like that, if you want, and see what you get!’
‘Rob,’ says Florence, soothingly.
Archie slaps Florence on the behind. ‘Dance, you old corpse!’
I stare at his back. He is too drunk to care that he’s being provoked into a fight.
I feel like an intruder and am reminded of the sense I had as a child, when visiting friends’ houses, that the furniture, banter and manner of doing things were different from the way we did them at home. The world of Archie and Florence is not mine.
I am waiting for Martha on the bed when I hear Florence and Archie in the corridor opening the door to their room. The door closes; I listen intently, wondering if Archie has passed out and Florence is lying there awake.
The door opens and Martha rattles a bag of beer bottles. We open the windows, lie down on the bed and drink and smoke.
She leans over me. ‘Do you want one of these?’
I kiss her fist and open it. ‘I know what it is,’ I say. ‘But I’ve never had one.’
‘I hadn’t till I came down here,’ she says. ‘These are good Es.’
‘Fetch some water from the bathroom.’
Meanwhile I remove the chair from its position beside the wall and begin shoving the heavy bed.
‘Let’s have this … over there … against the wall,’ I say when she returns.
Martha starts to help me, an enthusiastic girl, with thick arms.
‘Why do you want this?’ she asks.
‘I think it will be better for our purposes.’
‘Right,’ she says. ‘Right.’
A few minutes after we lie down again, undressed this time, there is a knock on the door. We hold one another like scared children, listen and say nothing. There is another knock. Martha doesn’t want to lose her job tonight. Then there is no more knocking. We do not even hear footsteps.
When we are breathing again, under the sheets I whisper, ‘What do you think of the couple next door? Have you talked about them? Are they suited, do you think?’
‘I like him,’ she says.
‘What? Really?’
‘Makes me laugh. She’s beautiful … but dangerous. Would you like to fuck her?’
I laugh. ‘I haven’t thought about it.’
‘Listen,’ she says, putting her finger to her lips.
Neither of us moves.
‘They’re doing it. Next door.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘They are.’
‘They’re quiet,’ she says. ‘I can only hear him.’
‘He’s doing it alone.’
‘No. There … there she is. A little gasp. Can you hear her now? Touch me.’
‘Wait.’
‘There … there.’
‘Martha –’
‘Please…’
I go into the bathroom and wash my face. The drug is starting to work. It seems like speed, which I had taken with my friends in the suburbs. This drug, though, opens another window: it makes me feel more lonely. I return to the room and switch the radio on. It must have been loud. We must have been loud. Martha is ungrudging in her love-making. Later, there is a sto
rm. A supernatural breeze, fresh, strangely still and cool, fans us.
Martha goes downstairs early to make breakfast. At dawn I run along the stony beach until I am exhausted; then I stop, walk a little, and run again, all the while aware of the breaking brightness of the world. I shower, pack and go down for breakfast.
Florence and Archie are at the next table. Archie studies a map; Florence keeps her head down. She does not appear to have combed her hair. When Archie gets up to fetch something and she looks up, her face is like a mask, as if she has vacated her body.
After breakfast, collecting my things, I notice the door to their room has been wedged open by a chair. The maid is working in a room further along the hall. I look in at the unmade bed, go into my room, find Florence’s sweater and gloves in my bag, and take them into their room. I stand there. Her shoes are on the floor, her perfume, necklace, and pens on the bedside table. I pull the sweater over my head. It is tight and the sleeves are too short. I put the gloves on, and wiggle my fingers. I lay them on the bed. I take a pair of scissors from her washbag in the bathroom and cut the middle ringer from one of the gloves. I replace the severed digit in its original position.
As I bump along the farm track which leads up to the main road, I get out of the car, look down at the hotel on the edge of the sea and consider going back. I hate separations and finality. I am too good at putting up with things, that is my problem.
London seems to be made only of hard materials and the dust that cannot settle on it; everything is angular, particularly the people. I go to my parents’ house and lie in bed; after a few days I leave for Los Angeles. There I am just another young actor, but at least one with a job. When I return to London we all leave the flat and I get my own place for the first time.
*
I have come to like going out for coffee early, with my son in his pushchair, while my wife sleeps. Often I meet other men whose wives need sleep, and at eight o’clock on Sunday morning we have chocolate milkshakes in McDonalds, the only place open in the dismal High Street. We talk about our children, and complain about our women. After, I go to the park, usually alone, in order to be with the boy away from my wife. She and I have quite different ideas about bringing him up; she will not see how important those differences can be to our son. Peaceful moments at home are rare.