‘Sparks,’ said Stephen when Ralph picked up the phone.
Ralph wondered where Stephen had acquired the irritating habit of answering the phone with his last name, before remembering that it was he, Ralph, who was answering and Stephen calling. He felt a sleepy giggle rise in his throat as he saw through Stephen’s trick, and was surprised to hear it emerge from his mouth.
‘You’re sounding girlish,’ said Stephen.
‘Sorry. I just got up.’ He thought of telling Stephen that he’d dreamed of him but couldn’t find the words.
‘Aha.’ His voice seemed further away, as if he were distracted. There was a rustling sound and then a heavy thud. ‘—last night?’ he boomed into the receiver.
‘What did you say?’
Ralph sat down and realized he was naked. His penis dangled grotesquely between the mottled trunks of his thighs like a hanging. The rough cloth of the seat cover beneath his bare buttocks reminded him of dreams he used to have in which he went unclothed and everything felt rather painful.
‘I said — ah — what did you think of last night?’
‘Nothing,’ said Ralph, surprised.
A leaden disappointment hovered and then plummeted as he remembered the message he had left for Francine in the optimistic hours of yesterday afternoon. He had actually been relieved when the girl had said she wasn’t there, his timid heart diving from his mouth down to the thrashing pit of his stomach, but her voice had been so warm and interested — had made him feel as if he was a prospect, a catch! — that for a while after he had put down the phone he had felt sure that things would go his way. The long vigil of evening had cooled his hopes, solidified them in ridiculous postures. He had become nervous, braced for the shriek of the telephone, jumping up every few minutes to rupture with activity the terrible membrane of silence which thickened around him. She hadn’t called, of course, and he had watched television until his head ached and then plunged into the sleep from which he had only just awoken.
‘Party,’ mumbled Stephen. There was something in his mouth. Ralph heard the click and hiss of a lighter, the suck of Stephen’s breath.
‘Alf’s thing? The private view? That was Friday,’ said Ralph sternly. ‘Yesterday was Saturday.’
‘Was it?’ Stephen paused. After a while he gave a bark of laughter and began speaking in a silly, high-pitched voice. ‘It’s all become the most terrible blur.’
Ralph waited for Stephen to reproach himself but instead felt wearied by his own dullness, the tightening bondage of responsibility from which Stephen would never permit him to escape.
‘Ah yes,’ said Stephen. ‘Alf’s pictures. Bloody toss, if you ask me.’
‘I didn’t look at them much, I’m afraid. I don’t think anyone ever does at these things. It’s all so—
‘The temp!’ interrupted Stephen, inspired. ‘The tarty temp from Tunbridge Wells!’
Ralph was silent.
‘Francine,’ he said finally.
‘Francine!’ echoed Stephen. ‘Yes! Lovely girl. Awful voice. Awful! Francine,’ he mimicked.
‘I’ve got to go,’ said Ralph. ‘I’m late for something.’
‘I’d better run along. I was supposed to be at Mother’s half an hour ago for lunch. She’ll cook the cat if I’m not there to keep an eye on her.’
‘Give her my regards,’ said Ralph stiffly, although Stephen had already put down the phone.
He sat for a moment in his chair. The conversation had had a derailing effect and it was a while before he remembered that he was cold and hadn’t had any breakfast yet. Stephen often did that, summoning and then abruptly dropping him so that he felt disorientated and lost afterwards. Disruption and confusion followed him like a weather system. These days, living outside Stephen’s atmosphere, Ralph was more aware of what happened when he entered it, but at school, when they were younger, he had been under the siege of Stephen’s presence most of the time. He rather missed it, despite feeling his humiliations more deeply now. The gradual severance of adulthood had left him not strong but ridiculous, marooned in his habits, so that when he saw Stephen he felt the more extraneous and lonely for the glimpses he had of their distant past. Besides, when they did meet Stephen was always spectacularly late, so that the very basis of Ralph’s presence was untethered slavishness, a foolish injury with which he swelled with every passing minute. Once, Ralph had waited an hour and a half for him in a pub which was just around the corner from Stephen’s flat. He had not been sitting alone at his table for more than fifteen minutes when an effeminate little man with wild eyes and an odd little beard — a goatee, like a courtier — had approached him and insisted on keeping him company. He hadn’t spoken much, Ralph recalled, merely sat beside him occasionally sipping from a glass of beer and giving him a sweet, fleeing smile whenever Ralph caught his eye. At one point, he had suddenly leaned over and gripped Ralph’s hand. His fingers were warm and surprisingly comforting. Had Ralph been less embarrassed, he might have wished they could have stayed like that, holding hands.
‘Who’s your girlfriend?’ Stephen had said when he arrived, grinning unkindly. The man slipped quietly away with a curt nod of the head, and Ralph had felt inexplicably guilty. Nevertheless, he had stayed where he was, offering to buy Stephen a drink and even laughing with him about his strange companion. The man had caught his eye sadly from the other side of the pub and Ralph had felt dizzy with malice.
He went to the kitchen and opened the fridge, perusing it like a car engine. He had seen other men do that; not his father, of course, who would open the fridge door quickly and snatch something from it, as if worried that he would let the cold air out. One or two things lay inert on the metal shelves, like the contents of a morgue. A curling rubber leaf of ham languished in its collapsed packaging beside a small, waxy brick of cheese. He felt a wall of cold advance towards him and remembered that he was naked. There was a plastic bottle of orange juice lower down and he grabbed it, slamming the door of the fridge so that it recoiled jangling as if he had slapped it. He reached for a glass and then changed his mind, deciding instead to drink directly from the bottle. It was a cavalier gesture, and one which he felt led naturally on from his oversleeping, his nakedness, and perhaps towards a casual second phone call to Francine later in the day.
He threw back his head to make a funnel of his throat, and for a moment the acidity of the juice was appalling, poisonous. His scalp prickled as he felt it coursing cold across his chest and into his stomach. He tipped his head back further and drained the bottle, before tossing it across the room towards the bin. It landed instead on the draining-board beside the sink and skidded on its side into an arrangement of drying crockery. A mug shot over the edge and crashed to the floor, exploding into shards among which its handle lay intact, like an ear. Ralph stared for a moment at the miniature disaster. He considered leaving it as it was, but his sense of his own drama had collapsed and he propelled himself to the broom cupboard for a dustpan and brush. He penitently gathered up the fragments of china, wrapped them in a newspaper which lay on the kitchen table, and threw them along with the plastic bottle into the bin.
Some time later he slammed the front door and descended the steps, taking them jauntily two by two in an attempt to button up the mood of cheerful disdain which he had selected, as if from a drawer of tempers, to wear alongside his clothes. He felt better after his bath — could still feel its warm embrace on him — remodelled and fit for action. A determination to leave his mark on the day had driven him from the dragging influence of the flat, and he turned towards Chalk Farm Road filled with purposeful but undirected energy. In the distance he could see the brimming pavements flowing towards Camden Town and a plan to go to the market formulated itself, convincing Ralph that he had intended to do so all along.