Bang bang.
No going back. No stopping the world.
I was feeling sorry for myself. Sorry for Mike Lucas, sorry for the beggars too, but very sorry indeed for myself, and that had to stop. I started to walk home.
I no longer had any reason to worry about being at the flat, since all the people I’d had breathing down my neck over the last week were now breathing in my face. The chance to sleep in my own bed was just about the only good thing to come out of all this. So I strode out for Bayswater at a good pace, and as I walked, I tried to see the funny side.
It wasn’t easy, and I’m still not sure that I managed it properly, but it’s just something I like to do when things aren’t going well. Because what does it mean, to say that things aren’t going well? Compared to what? You can say: compared to how things were going a couple of hours ago, or a couple of years ago. But that’s not the point. If two cars are speeding towards a brick wall with no brakes, and one car hits the wall moments before the other, you can’t spend those moments saying that the second car is much better off than the first.
Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we’ve passed. Or a month, it makes no difference.
So unless we’re going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes. Us, or anyone else. Because we’re not comparing it with anything.
And anyway, we’re all dead, or never born, and the whole thing really is a dream.
There, you see. That’s a funny side.
Fourteen
Thus freedom now so seldom wakes, The only throb she gives,
Is when some heart indignant breaks, To show that still she lives.
THOMAS MOORE
There were two things parked in my street that I hadn’t expected to see when I turned into it. One was myKawasaki, bruised and bloodied, but otherwise in reasonable shape. The other was a bright red TVR.
Ronnie was asleep at the wheel, with a coat pulled up to her nose. I opened the passenger door and slid in beside her. Her head came up and she squinted at me.
‘Evening,’ I said.
‘Hello.’ She blinked a few times and looked out at the street. ‘God, what time is it? I’m freezing.’
‘Quarter to one. Do you want to come in?’ She thought about it.
‘That’s very forward of you, Thomas.’
‘Forward of me?’ I said. ‘Well, that depends, doesn’t it?’ I opened the door again.
‘On what?’
‘On whether you drove over here, or I rebuilt my street around your car.’
She thought a bit more. ‘I’d kill for a cup of tea.’
We sat in the kitchen, not saying much, just sipping tea and smoking. Ronnie’s mind was on other things, and at an amateurish guess I’d say that she’d been crying. Either that or she’d attempted a fancy rag-rolling effect with her mascara. I offered her some Scotch but she wasn’t interested, so I helped myself to the last four drops in the bottle and tried to make them last. I was trying to concentrate on her, to put Lucas and Barnes and Murdah out of my mind, because she was upset and she was in the room. The others weren’t.
‘Thomas, can I ask you something?’
‘Course.’
‘Are you gay?’
I mean, really. First ball of the over. You’re supposed to talk about films and plays, and favourite ski runs. All that kind of thing.
‘No, Ronnie, I’m not gay,’ I said. ‘Are you?’
‘No.’
She stared into her mug. But I’d used tea bags, so she wasn’t going to find any answers there.
‘What’s happened to what’s his name?’ I said, lighting a cigarette.
‘Philip. He’s asleep. Or out somewhere. I don’t really know. Don’t much care, to be honest.’
‘Now, Ronnie. I think you’re just saying that.’
‘No, really. I don’t give a fuck about Philip.’
There’s always something strangely thrilling about hearing a well-spoken woman swear.
‘You’ve had a tiff,’ I said. ‘We’ve split up.’
‘You’ve had a tiff, Ronnie.’
‘Can I sleep with you tonight?’ she said.
I blinked. And then, to make sure I hadn’t just imagined it, I blinked again.
‘You want to sleep with me?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t just mean sleep at the same time as me, you mean in the same bed?’
‘Please.’
‘Ronnie…’
‘I’ll keep my clothes on if you like. Thomas, don’t make me say please again. It’s terribly bad for a woman’s ego.’
‘It’s terribly good for a man’s.’
‘Oh shut up.’ She hid her face in the mug. ‘I’ve gone right off you now.’
‘Ha,’ I said. ‘It worked.’
Eventually we got up and went into the bedroom.
She did keep her clothes on, as it happens. So did I, as it also happens. We lay down side by side on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a while, and when I judged the while to be long enough, I reached out a hand and took hold of one of hers. It was warm and dry and a very nice thing to touch.
‘What are you thinking?’
To be honest, I can’t remember which one of us said this first. We both said it about fifty times before dawn. ‘Nothing.’
We both said that a lot as well.
Ronnie wasn’t happy, that was the long and the short of it. I can’t say that she poured out her life story to me. It came in odd chunks, with long gaps in between, like belonging to a discount book club, but by the time the lark came on to relieve the nightingale, I’d learned quite a bit.
She was a middle child, which would probably make a lot of people go ‘ah, well there you are, you see,’ but I am too, and it’s never bothered me that much. Her father worked in the City, grinding the faces of the poor, and the two brothers either side of her looked like they were headed in the same direction. Her mother had developed a passion for deep-sea fishing when Ronnie was in her teens, and since then had spent six months of every year indulging it in distant oceans while her father took mistresses. Ronnie didn’t say where.
‘What are you thinking?’ Her, this time. ‘Nothing.’ Me.
‘Come on.’
‘I don’t know. Just… thinking.’ I stroked her hand a bit.
‘About Sarah?’
I’d sort of known she was going to ask this. Even though I’d deliberately kept my second serves deep and not mentioned Philip again, so she wouldn’t be able to come into the net.
‘Among other things. People, I mean.’ I gave her hand a tiny squeeze. ‘Let’s face it, I hardly know the woman.’
‘She likes you.’
I couldn’t help laughing.
‘That seems astronomically unlikely. The first time we met she thought I was trying to kill her father, and the last time, she spent most of the evening wanting to give me a white feather for cowardice in the face of the enemy.’
I thought it best to leave out the kissing thing, just for the moment.
‘What enemy?’ said Ronnie.
‘It’s a long story.’
‘You’ve got a nice voice.’
I turned my head on the pillow and looked at her. ‘Ronnie, in this country, when someone says something’s a long story, it’s a polite way of saying they’re not going to tell it to you.’