‘Ettie’s not going anywhere,’ said Bettina, now. ‘Who else is going to teach little junior about class oppression?’
‘Exactly,’ said Bart. ‘Who else is going to install an inescapable sense of guilt in our bundle of joy?’
‘Very well, very well,’ said Étienne, tired-smiling. ‘Uncle Ettie will stay.’
And then, quite suddenly, he was gone. Gone. A letter on his pillow: ‘I am sorry. My love for you is unchanged but I cannot do this and I must return to Paris. Tell Bettina I am sorry.’ Bart drove his car to the station, hoping to catch him, to talk him out of it. Étienne was not at the station. Nobody was at the station. Bart cried with his chin on the steering wheel. He cried until his whole body ached. He cried himself raw.
He drove back home, took a bottle of whisky from the drinks cabinet, went upstairs to his bed, pulled the covers over his head and drank the whole bottle from under his blanketed fort. He came to ten hours later. He’d wet the bed and vomited on the pillow. It was caught up in the hair behind his ear. He stripped and put on a pair of pyjama bottoms. He could hear Bettina next door, listening to a Mistinguett record. He shoved the door open, snatched the gramophone needle away with a screech, ripped the record out and snapped it over his knee. ‘No French music in this house ever again!’
Bettina was on the bed, reading a novel. She looked at him, unfazed. ‘You’re going to replace that record,’ she said.
He dropped the pieces on the floor and sank into the armchair with his head in his hands.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Have you and Etts been rowing again?’
He shook his head.
‘Well? What’s the matter?’
‘He’s left me.’
‘What? No. Of course he hasn’t.’
A nod.
‘Really? For sure?’
Another nod.
‘Oh, sweetheart.’ She wrapped him up in her arms. ‘What did he do a silly thing like that for?’ He felt her fingers touch his sick-dampened hair and dart away. But she didn’t let go of him, and that was a great kindness.
He slept in her bed that night (and for many nights after). The next morning he accompanied her to the doctor for a check-up as she hadn’t started her monthlies on schedule, was a whole week late, in fact – which might mean nothing, she explained, because it’d happened before; women’s reproductive organs were wilful and peculiar. He sat on the other side of the white curtain, staring unseeing at a framed painting of a fruit bowl, his stomach gurgling with hunger. He heard Bettina gasp – a lubricated finger rudely poking and sliding. He imagined the doctor pulling out a bunch of flowers with a flourish. Ta-da! The fruit bowl blurred, its red apples and green grapes blobbing and smearing. Nothing would be funny ever again.
The doctor came out from behind the curtain to wash his hands. He sat at his desk, scribbling something onto his notepad. Bettina emerged and he signalled for her to sit with a swish of his pen.
‘Well,’ said the doctor, looking up finally. ‘It looks like congratulations are in order. You’re expecting.’
Bettina clutched his hand.
‘What wonderful news,’ said Bart, knowing that it was indeed wonderful news, in an objective sort of way.
Nothing would be truly wonderful ever again.
The man was neither ugly nor attractive. On a scale of one to ten, with one being hideous and ten being gorgeous, he was a solid five. Not that it mattered – his head might as well be a potato on a stick. He was wearing a peaked cap atop a dandruff-dotted mop of curly brown hair. Tweed waistcoat over a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up. His age – somewhere between thirty and forty. Not that it mattered. He smelled strongly of pipe tobacco and pastry. His hands were clean.
Bart pushed him against the tree and started grappling with his trouser buttons. A long, thin cock bounced out, impossibly smooth, almost virginal-looking, like it’d never been touched, like it’d only just been created, there, in the man’s underpants, seconds ago, by a misguided angel.
Bart dropped to his knees, his shin knocking a gnarled tree root, and took the thing in his mouth. It tasted of mushrooms. The man grabbed his hair, bunching it up in his hands, tugging it. Étienne used to do that. He grabbed the man’s hips and pushed his head forward, relaxing his throat. His eyes started watering – the world became a blur. The man made a sound like a bull ready to charge.
And then.
And then.
Voices. Dry leaves crackling, twigs snapping. A torchlight skimming the ground nearby.
‘Run,’ said the man.
Bart groped for his hat and lurched away with a spool of saliva hanging off his chin.
A man’s yelclass="underline" ‘Oi! Stop right there!’
But Bart was already running. His shoes landed in earthy dips hidden by a dry leaf carpet, his toes knocked against jutting roots and stones, his shins ripped through snares of low-lying bramble, yet miraculously he was still running, his hat clutched in one hand, the other stretched out ahead to ward off branches. He dodged the thin black trees that rose up suddenly from out of the fuzzy darkness, smacking his elbow or shoulder on them before bouncing away, still miraculously running, roaring bloody drunk, the air cold-burning his throat, mouth fixed in a grimace. The sound of his feet crashing through the undergrowth was the loudest thing in the world. He felt like an animal, a skunk or an otter, a wild, dumb thing.
He came out of the trees and saw the wooden sign with opening and closing times on it (a lavender handkerchief wrapped around the post). Beyond this – the gate. He ran for it, not daring to glance behind, a nerve-tickle between his shoulder blades. He reached the gate and threw his hat over. He could hear feet pounding turf close behind. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. He launched himself up the gate using the bars as footholds, his body no longer his body, his thoughts flying bat-like out of his skull, and as he swung his leg over the top, he finally dared to look at the approaching man.
The man. Not a copper or a park warden. Mushroom Cock.
As he dropped down the outer side of the gate the man started climbing, slowly, confidently, and was soon dropping down beside him, one hand on his cap to keep it on. Bart started jogging towards his car. The man followed.
‘It’s all right, I knocked him out,’ said the man in a northern accent, running to keep up with him. ‘Look.’ He held out his hand. His knuckle was grazed and bloody. A tiny scrap of skin was sticking up.
‘Who was he?’
‘The parky.’
Bart stuffed his hands in his pockets and sped up.
‘Close call though, weren’t it?’
Bart nodded curtly. He glanced around; the street was empty. He reached his car and opened the door.
The man grabbed his arm. ‘Give us a lift home, eh?’
Bart ripped his arm away and got in the car, slamming the door. The man thumped the window with his palm. Bart started the engine and drove away, glancing at the rear-view mirror – the man was in the road, shouting and waving his cap around. Lunatic. Fucking lunatic. He drove in a frenzy, going around corners too fast and almost crashing into a hedgerow. He didn’t have his lights on. He’d forgotten to put his lights on. He parked up in a lay-by, closed his eyes and waited until his breathing was back to normal.