Benny said: ‘It’s the hair, isn’t it? That’s what you get off on.’
Mort was trying to find the shirt and trousers he had dropped on the floor at bedtime. They were tangled with a towel and dressing-gown.
‘It’s the hair got you stiff again? You stopped liking me when you got that stuff stuck between your teeth.’
Mort sat on the bed. ‘I’m not listening to this shit. We’re beyond all this now. We left it behind.’
‘Oh, I’m a bad boy.’ Benny made his eyes go wide. ‘I made it up. It never happened.’
Mort zipped the trousers and pulled a T-shirt over his head. When his face emerged he felt all his weakness showing. ‘What do you want?’
‘Who was it who made me like this?’
‘It’s finished. We’ve got to get over it.’
‘It’s not over,’ said Benny taking down his shirt from the coat hanger behind the door. ‘It’s never over. I think about it every day.’
‘It’s over for me. Benny, I’ve changed. I swear.’
‘I’ve changed too,’ Benny said. ‘I’m an angel.’
‘I’m not buying you a motor bike, forget it.’
‘You don’t listen. I didn’t say Hell’s Angel. I said, angel!’
‘What the fuck does that mean?’
‘Means I say to one man go and he goeth, say to another man come and he cometh.’
‘That’s the centurion.’
‘I don’t give a fuck what you call it,’ said Benny.
‘Don’t talk to me like that.’
‘I am talking to you like this. I want you to go to the Tax woman and show her your life.’
‘Look,’ said Mort. He sat down on the bed. ‘My father did it to me. His father did it to him. You think I like being like this?’
‘Just listen to me. Listen to what I say. She’s a nice lady. Talk to her. That’s all you’ve got to do. Tell her about Cacka’s philosophy. Just make her responsible for you. She can’t destroy us if she thinks we’re decent people.’
‘Benny, don’t be simple.’
‘Listen, I know who she is. I’m going out with her.’
‘You’re what?’
‘I’m going out with her. Believe me. She’s a human. She responds.’
He unbuttoned his slippery cool white shirt and returned it to the coat hanger. He hung the hanger behind the door again. He slipped off his underpants and ran his hands down his flawless hairless chest and between his thighs. ‘You can’t help yourself can you, Kissy? You’re responding. You know I think you’re shit, but you don’t care.’
‘I am shit,’ Mort said.
‘You are shit.’ He hooked his finger into the top of Mort’s underpants and tugged at the elastic. ‘I went to her house last night. She’s pregnant. Her tits are full of milk.’ He let the elastic go and lay on the bed on his stomach. ‘When I came back here I took the books off Granny’s desk.’ He rolled on his back, smiling. ‘I wrapped them in a plastic bag and buried them.’
‘You really think that’s smart?’ Mort said, but he had already stopped caring if it was smart or not.
‘You want to argue with me, or you want to have some fun?’
‘Benny, what’s happened to you?’
‘I’m an angel,’ Benny said.
‘What does that mean?’ Mort put out a finger to feel the boy’s smooth thigh.
‘It means I am in control. It means everyone does what I say.’
33
He would ‘show his life’, sure, silly as this was. He would be a monkey for his son. You know what was weird? What was weird was he was finally an inch away from happiness.
Show his life? Bare his arse? Sure, but not like the little blackmailer imagined.
He would talk to her, sure he would. What’s more: he was busting to do it. He had the day’s job sheets spread out across his desk, but he could not concentrate on them. They had finally become irrelevant.
He knew nothing about tax. He could not even read the balance sheets he signed each year, but he knew enough, by Christ he did, to show his life to the Tax Inspector. He would embrace her. He would draw her towards him like a dagger, have her drive some official stake into the business, right into its rubbery, resisting heart.
Howie and Cathy were always full of blame, always had been. They could blame him for not selling. They could blame him for fuck-ups in the workshop. They presumably blamed him for Benny turning out a poof, and Johnny going to the cults, but they could not blame him for the tax investigation. They were the ones – Mr and Mrs Rock ’n’ Roll – who played funny buggers with the tax.
Mort took three Codis tablets and stacked the work sheets in a pile and threw them in his filing cabinet. He came and stood in the cavernous doorway, pacing up and down just inside the drip line of the roof. When he saw the Tax Department’s Mitsubishi Colt park at the end of the lane-way he put up his umbrella and walked right towards it. He filled his wide chest with air and came down the oil-stained concrete with a light-footed athlete’s stride.
I’ll show her my life.
The Tax Inspector was already erecting her umbrella, juggling with her papers and her case. When he saw her age, how pregnant she was, he laughed. The little bullshitter was going out with her?
This Tax Inspector was very, very pretty – a lovely soft wide mouth, and stern and handsome nose. He saw straightaway that she would want to walk quickly through the rain and that he was going to have to stop her. He was going to talk to her in front of the Front Office. This was what he had agreed with Benny.
You would think it would be humiliating, to be a prancing bear for your disturbed son. But actually, no. He was dancing on the edge of freedom.
‘Mort Catchprice,’ he said.
He had the workshop courtesy umbrella, big enough to take to the beach. He held it over her and her umbrella. She put her own umbrella down, but the rain was bouncing around their ankles. He guessed it was worse for the woman with stockings on.
Benny stood behind the glass with a strange-looking young man in a light-coloured suit. He grinned and pointed his finger at his father.
You want me to show her my life?
O.K., I touched you.
Not touched.
O.K., fucked, sucked. I made you stutter and wet your bed. Made you a liar too, quite likely. My skin responded. It’s physiology. The male skin – you touch it, you get a response. Like jellyfish – you touch them, they fire out darts. The jellyfish cannot control it. There are men more sensitive than others. Is that unnatural? You hold their hand, they get a hard-on. Whose fault is that? When does that happen? If there is no reason then there is no God.
If there is a God I am not a monster.
In my great slimy shape, in my two great eyes, my dark slimy heart, I am not a monster. Was I the sort of creep who hangs round scout troops, molesting strangers?
‘It must have occurred to you,’ he said to the Tax Inspector, when he had introduced himself, ‘that what you decide affects our whole life.’
She took a step away and put up her own umbrella again.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘All the time.’
Behind her back, he could see Benny winking and grinning. Benny could not hear a damn word he said.
‘Does it look bad for us?’ he asked.
‘It looks nothing much yet,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’ll just be fine.’
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘It won’t be fine.’
‘Maybe you should let me discover that.’
‘I don’t need to. I can tell you,’ he said. He was a little out of breath, but he felt great. ‘Look at the salary claims for our sales manager. I’d look at that one closely.’ There was thunder all around them now. The traffic on Loftus Street was driving with its headlights on. ‘Plus the trade-ins. You’re going to find the lack of trade-ins interesting.’