A Line of Blood

I told her I understood, although in truth I did not.

‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘Thank you for the coffee, and for the cigarette.’

‘Coffee and cigarettes is pretty much all I’m good at.’

‘Don’t forget kindness.’ She took my hand in hers, then stopped as if embarrassed. ‘Will you come to the funeral, Alex? He didn’t know so many people. Bit of a loner.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Sure.’

Then she kissed me on the cheek and was gone.

I sat down at my computer at the kitchen table.

Max came home at four. He commented on the smell of cigarette smoke, made his own sandwich, and went up to his room. Then he came back down and asked me for five pounds.

‘What do you want five pounds for?’

‘We don’t have any milk.’

‘Milk doesn’t cost five pounds.’

‘OK, two pounds then.’

‘All right, Max. Here’s two pounds.’

‘Thanks, Scots Dad.’

‘There’s nothing mean about me giving you two pounds to buy milk.’

‘Do you want the change?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, Dad. You’re not mean at all.’

I ruffled his hair.

‘Want me to come to the shop with you, Max?’

‘No, it’s OK.’

I rang Millicent again. Left the same message again. Added that I missed her and wanted her to come home, then felt foolish and tried to rerecord the message. The answering service cut me off.

Max came home with a small carton of milk and a packet of Maltesers.

‘I don’t remember saying you could buy those, Max.’

‘You didn’t say I couldn’t.’

‘I said I wanted the change.’

‘Here.’ He handed me seven pence. ‘Do you want some Maltesers?’

‘Yeah. All right.’

I pushed my computer to one side. We sat at the table drinking milk and dividing up the Maltesers. Max got a kitchen knife and cut his Maltesers into halves, and then into quarters. He sat dissolving them on his tongue, then sticking out his tongue to show me.

‘What do you want for supper?’

‘It’s Mum’s turn to make dinner.’

‘I’m making it tonight.’

‘Fish and chips. From the fish and chip shop, not home made.’

‘OK.’

‘Can you give me the money, and I can buy it?’

‘Later, OK?’

‘OK, Dad. Dad?’

‘Max?’

‘Aren’t you going to eat your Maltesers?’

‘You have them, Max.’

‘OK. Dad?’

‘Max?’

‘Tarek said you’re going to send me to a psychiatrist.’

‘Why did he say that?’

‘I told him what I saw.’

‘Well, what you saw was pretty upsetting, wasn’t it?’

Max said nothing.

‘Max,’ I said, ‘Max, if you ever feel the need to talk about what you saw, doesn’t matter where or when, we can talk about it, OK?’

‘Is it because of the boner?’

‘What do you mean, Max?’

‘Tarek said that if you see a grown-up’s willy and it’s a boner then all the other grown-ups go spectrum, and you have to go to see a psychiatrist.’

I sat, trying to find an answer to this. Tarek had covered a lot of angles in one sentence.

‘So do I have to go and see a psychiatrist?’

‘I don’t know, I think it might be a good idea.’

‘Do you have to go and see a psychiatrist too?’

‘No, Max, I don’t think so. But Mum and I will be coming with you when you go for the first time.’

He bristled at the injustice of this.

‘You saw the boner too, Dad.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘So why don’t you have to go?’

‘Max, you’re eleven.’

Max rolled his eyes in that way only eleven-year-olds do.

‘In the next few years you’re going to be discovering a lot about your body. And about other people’s bodies. And Mum and I want to make sure that you don’t find that scary.’

‘I know about sex, Dad.’

‘I know you do, Max. But Mum and I want to make sure you’re OK.’

I tried to take his hand but he pushed me away.

‘Are you going to tell Mr Sharpe about the psychiatrist?’ There was humiliation in his eyes; his voice was very small.

‘Yes, probably. But he won’t tell anyone else. And if you go for a few times and Mum and I decide it’s not really necessary, then you can stop. OK?’

He picked up the rest of the Maltesers and went upstairs to his room. I sat, feeling worse than ever. I’d be angry with me too if I were him.

Max and I ate our fish and chips.

The doorbell rang. My first thought was Millicent without her key, and my second thought was the police.

It was Fab5.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘All right, Alex,’ said Fab5. He went through to the kitchen and sat in my chair, stole a large chip from Max.

‘Hey,’ said Max.

‘Good to see you too, wee guy.’

I had hoped Millicent would love Fab5. She never did.

‘Fab5? Like, we’re cool and we’re black and it’s 1979? Guy needs to accept his reality.’

Fab5 thought Millicent lacked a sense of irony; she thought the same about him. If you forced me I would side with Millicent; she saw from the start what I did not: that he had slipped his moorings, that he was adrift.

Fab5 was my oldest friend, though. True, there was something a little faded about him now, a little stretched around the edges. It was getting harder to laugh at the stories about women and cocaine. He partied a little too hard and his hair had taken on a warm red-brown sheen that doesn’t exist in nature. He knew this, though, and that’s why we were still friends. Behind the laughter there was a wistfulness for a time when he and I were young together, and London, it seemed, lay at our feet: a time before Millicent, in other words. I wondered sometimes if Millicent disliked Fab5 for that reason too – he was a reminder of a younger, less faithful me.

My wife worries that I might revert to type.

Fab5 helped himself to one of my cigarettes. ‘You going out like that, Lex? She’ll not be pleased.’

‘What?’

‘Dee, you incorrigible twat.’

Dee Effingham. The Sacred Cock at seven.

‘What time is it? And don’t say twat in front of Max.’

Max pushed his tongue hard against his cheek and made a two-tone mm-mm sound.

‘See, you’re corrupting my wee boy, Fab5.’ Twat was the right word, though.

‘It’s six twenty-five, Dad,’ said Max.

‘Run, Alex,’ said Fab5. ‘Run like the wind.’

It wasn’t till I was on Drayton Park that I saw the scarves and the hamburger boxes, and realised it was match day at the Arsenal. Even weaving through the side streets, I couldn’t avoid the football completely. I made the Sacred Cock at five to, but I’d half-run the last five hundred metres.

I ordered a pint of Flemish.

‘Hello, Gorgeous. What’s got you so hot and bothered?’

‘Oh, Dee. Hi.’

‘See, I blend in. Let me get that for you, hmm? Have you been running?’ She chucked a fifty at the barman.

‘Yes. You got me.’

‘You’ve got that freshly fucked man-of-the-city thing going on. Didn’t pull you out of bed, did I?’

‘I wish.’

‘So do I, Gorgeous. So do I.’

‘Do you kiss Middle England with that mouth, Dee?’

‘No, Gorgeous. First rule is never swear on the telly. And it’s all of England, you know. And Wales, and Northern Ireland. And, oh you know, those funny little people up north.’

‘Yeah, my mum loves you.’

‘Not your dad?’ She mimed a hurt little pout, shaking her shoulders, and for a moment her breasts had me in their forcefield: the dangerous ravine of cleavage, the smooth milk-white vastness. She made a show of following my gaze and gave a mock-seductive sigh. ‘Bad boy, Gorgeous. Caught looking.’

‘I was just wondering …’

‘Yes …’

‘… whether that was part of your clothing range?’

‘Nice recovery, Gorgeous. Sure that’s what you were thinking?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Because I could have sworn …’

‘I’m happily married, Dee, but if I wake up single tomorrow, you’re first on my list.’

‘And you think that choice lies with you. That’s so sweet, Gorgeous. So terribly tousled and sweet. And you would absolutely be second on my list …’

She insisted I match her drink-for-drink. We got quietly drunk in a corner, forgot to go upstairs to watch the comedy. I didn’t want to sleep with her any more than she wanted to sleep with me, but there was something so charismatic and so pretty and so direct about her that I started to understand why Middle England loved her so much. And I was flattered that she was flirting with me over her large glass of Chenin Blanc. Flattered, too, that she wanted to work with me. It would have been bad manners not to flirt back.

On my third pint of Flemish she got me on to Max. I pulled a photo from my wallet.

‘Ooh,’ she said. ‘Gorgeous begets gorgeous. Is his mother very beautiful?’

‘I think so.’

‘I’ll bet. Call your hot wife. Get her down here. And your son, if he’s still up.’

‘He goes to bed at nine.’

‘Not a showbiz kid, then?’

‘No.’

‘How very wise.’

And anyway, I thought, Millicent wouldn’t like this. Whatever this is. However innocent this is, Millicent wouldn’t like it at all. She doesn’t mind, she says, the arms across the shoulders, the drinks after work, and the nuzzling goodbyes. But she’s stopped coming out with me, and lies, instead, reading into the small hours. She’s always awake when I come home.

‘It’s the industry,’ I say, ‘it’s just what we do. No one’s screwing. Not since the 90s.’

‘Sure,’ she says. ‘I get that. Did I even say I mind? I don’t mind, Alex.’ But maybe this is my equivalent of out, thinking. Maybe it’s that part of me that’s unreachable to Millicent. Because she minds. I know she minds.

At half past eight I tried to decide what to do about Millicent’s radio programme. If I left at nine thirty I could hear the end of it, and be in for when Millicent got home. Perhaps I could catch the beginning of it on the download. I could check that Max was safely asleep.

At ten past nine I explained that I had to go.

‘But Gorgeous,’ she said, ‘we’re getting to know each other. Don’t you want us to know each other, Alex?’

‘Of course I do, Dee. Of course.’

‘That smile of yours,’ she said. ‘It’s terribly beguiling. Your wife is a lucky woman. Can she really not share you with me just a little more? Bit harsh of her, don’t you think?’

‘It’s not her,’ I said, ‘it’s me.’

We’re under such strain.

I had to be there.

‘And after all, Alex,’ said Dee. ‘After all I am technically your employer. Am I not? Because no me, no show.’ She put her right hand on her breastbone, and gave an ironic little pout. I laughed, but her words had a strained quality that told me I would be unwise to leave.

Over Dee’s fifth glass of wine, and my fifth pint of Flemish, she asked me, ‘So I’m wondering a little about your approach to fidelity, Gorgeous. How absolute is it?’

‘It’s very absolute. Absolutely absolute since I met Millicent. Thirteen years so far.’

‘And yet you make it sound like some twelve-step programme. Each day a new day in your struggle with the demon pussy. Were you always such a gorgeous absolutist?’

‘Maybe not.’

‘Do you know what?’ she said. ‘You’re going to tell me all about what a naughty boy you used to be.’

I have a memory of Dee’s hand on my knee, and of five Flemishes becoming eight. I spoke of my lapses as a younger man, and of my regrets. Dee was a good listener, and I was glad to be talking about something that wasn’t the neighbour. She teased, probed and massaged the information from me. I’m certain that I didn’t make a pass at her, nor she at me, but I don’t remember much more than the hand, the smile, and her boundless, limitless breasts. Fecund, fecund, fecund.

I did not tell Dee that I couldn’t go to the States with her. I had decided that I was going. Did June arrest me? No. Did June caution me? No. Did she politely but firmly ask me not to go? Yes, and I would let June down just as gently. I was going to America.

I got home at twelve, offended Fab5 by trying to pay him, checked that Max was asleep, and vomited three times into the bath.

Where was Millicent?

I sat, scooping chunks from the bath into the toilet. Then I blasted the bath with the shower attachment. The smell grew worse, and I realised I had transformed my gastric fluids into an easily absorbed aerosol suspension, shrouding the bathroom in a delicate mist of puke. But at least the bath looked clean now.

I lay down fully clothed on the bed, got my phone from my pocket. I dialled her number, got voicemail, was just smart enough to remember not to leave a Flemish-amplified message. I tried to picture her; I missed her; I wanted her body beside me, around me. But the Flemish in my veins kept distorting the signal, sending me Rose’s narrow shoulders and Dee’s endless breasts: I couldn’t find Millicent’s face through the electric fog of shash, ache for her as I might.

In a small metal box in a drawer on my side of the wardrobe I keep letters from the women in my past: the letters serve as a warning; I read them when I am tempted.

6

Max was standing in the bedroom with coffee. He had chosen my favourite mug. He was dressed, he had tucked in his shirt, and he had combed his hair with water.

‘Morning, Dad.’

‘Morning, Max.’

‘I made you some coffee because it’s eight o’clock.’

‘Thanks.’ He handed me the cup.

I sniffed the coffee. It smelled wrong. Boiled. I put the cup down on the bedside table.

‘Dad, is it true that Fab5 has a friend called Faecal Dave?’

‘No, Max, no, I don’t think that can be true. Can you get me some sugar?’

‘You don’t take sugar. And he told me what faecal meant.’

‘I’d like some today, please, Max.’

Max rolled his eyes and went downstairs.

Two messages on my phone.

Gorgeous, you were and are the perfect gentleman. Are you as turned on – creatively(!) – as I am?

DEff xx

I hadn’t alienated the Talent. That was something.

Twice I tried to wake you, you beautiful lame-assed drunken fool. And yes, I know we have to speak, and yes, you should call me when you wake up.

I realised that I was naked, that Millicent must have undressed me, and rolled me and slipped me under the duvet. That’s love, I thought, in that one tiny action: my nakedness is proof of Millicent’s love. I wondered whether she had slept.

Max came back in with the sugar. I put four spoonfuls into the cup and stirred.

‘Want me to open the blind?’

‘No.’

‘No what, Dad?’

‘No thanks, Max. And thank you for making coffee for me.’

‘That’s OK. Mum said you might want some.’

‘She out?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Say where she was going?’

‘No. Do you like the coffee?’

‘I love the fact that you made it for me.’

Max left the room.

I rang Millicent. She sounded lousy from lack of sleep.

‘You get my SMS, Alex?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Meet me at the Swedish?’

‘OK.’

Max and I left the house at the same time and walked the first couple of blocks together. He hugged me when we parted, then set off towards school at a dog-trot.

The Swedish didn’t make sense in an area like ours. It was all untreated oak and lightbulbs with complicated orange filaments that hovered in front of your eyes. But the coffee was good and they left you alone to drink it. Where else were people like us supposed to go in a place like Crappy?

Millicent was sitting with her head in her hands, tiny against the vast communal table. I sat down beside her; it seemed at first as if she hadn’t seen me, as if she were somewhere very private; then she sat up, looked me in the eye, and began to speak.

‘I need you to understand that I have never and never would betray you, Alex.’

She hadn’t slept. I could see the blood pulsing in her neck, smell the sourness on her breath.

‘So I probably need to start with the really bad stuff, and then I can explain – and I hope, I really hope you’re going to listen and to understand – how it isn’t what it looks like. Because I know it doesn’t look so good.’

She reached into her bag and produced a small white envelope; she looked at it for a moment, then handed it to me.

‘So this is what the police wanted to discuss with me.’

Inside was a single photograph. An elegant metal band, very thin at the bottom, slightly thicker on the top. Soft white gold. A line of three square-cut sapphires. My grandmother’s bracelet. My mother had given it to Millicent to welcome her to the family. It was so small that my mother could barely wear it, but was a perfect fit for Millicent’s left wrist. On the inside of the clasp I had had it engraved. MW.

Millicent Weitzman. My wife.

‘Alex, they found it in his bedroom.’ The tiny safety chain was broken.

‘His bedroom?’

‘This is the bit I can’t explain. The weird thing, not the bad thing. They found it between the wall and the headboard, on the floor.’

‘Between the wall and the headboard?’

‘That’s what they said.’

‘OK …’

I could think of nothing else to do, so I drank coffee. It was tepid, must have been standing for some time.

‘Alex, I was never in his bedroom.’

‘But you were in his house? Is that what you’re telling me?’

Millicent looked past me and over my shoulder. I followed her gaze and realised I must have spoken more sharply than I’d thought. A tall Swedish girl was staring at us from behind the coffee machine. She looked away, and Millicent and I looked back towards each other.

‘Christ, Millicent, what’s going on?’

‘Nothing, Alex. Please believe that.’

‘Right. Can’t be. Of course. He’s dead now.’

‘Sure. I probably deserve that, Alex.’

She was going to cry. That small-child voice. The redness of her eyes.

She swallowed hard. Pinched the bridge of her nose. Breathed out purposefully. Perhaps she wasn’t going to cry.

‘I lied to you. That’s the way you’re going to interpret it, and I guess it’s a reasonable interpretation. It is a lie of omission; I didn’t tell you.’

‘Didn’t tell me what?’

‘That I knew Bryce.’

‘I thought Bryce was his last name?’

Millicent gave a tiny flinch.

‘You called him by his last name? Stylish.’

‘I didn’t betray you, Alex.’ She was looking at me very directly now. I held her gaze, trying to find the lie.

‘There was no sex. Just so that thought has been spoken. But I did know him. Better than I said.’

‘Do you mean there was no sex in the American understanding of the term? You know, the Bill Clinton defence?’

‘I mean there was no sex of any sort.’

‘So we’re talking British no sex. Just to be clear, in this country that does preclude oral.’

‘I really hope you can understand that this is not what it looks like.’

‘Funny, Millicent, because it still looks to me like what it looks like.’

‘You have a right to be angry, Alex.’

‘Who says I’m angry?’

‘OK,’ she said, uncertain.

‘I’m not angry.’

‘Most people would be in this situation, Alex.’

‘Oh, so now you’re some sort of objective voice. Instead of a wife admitting to sleeping with the next-door neighbour.’

‘I did not admit to sleeping with him.’

‘No. No, you didn’t admit to that.’ I looked around, felt eyes on me from behind the coffee machine, and for a moment caught the gaze of the Swedish girl. I tried to smile, but she looked away.

‘Don’t try to enlist help, Alex. We have to deal with this as a couple.’

‘I’m enlisting help? Because I smiled at that pretty Swedish girl?’

‘Yeah. You played that one to the gallery.’

I was shaking now. I kept my voice as quiet as I could.

‘No, Millicent, I am not angry, and no, I am not trying to enlist help, and no, I was not playing to the fucking gallery. I just want to find out what you’ve done.’

‘OK, sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have said that. This isn’t easy for me.’

‘We’re talking about infidelity – your infidelity – and you accuse me of flirting with the girl who makes the coffee?’

I made to laugh, but it came out too much like a sigh. Millicent took my hand then, and there was something so wounded and so vulnerable about her gaze that I wanted to draw her towards me and comfort her, as if she were the wronged party. Her eyes flicked towards the coffee machine, then back towards me.

‘It’s only because she’s tall that she’s even in my line of sight,’ I said.

‘Tall, blonde, taut and twenty,’ she said. ‘The antithesis of me.’

‘How is twenty the opposite of thirty-five?’ I said.

‘So the rest of that you’re not arguing with? Motherfuck.’

The laughter froze on my lips. ‘Promise me on your life that you didn’t sleep with the neighbour,’ I was about to say, but the manager appeared at our side and quietly asked us if there was anything the matter. When I said no, and asked if he would mind leaving us to continue our discussion, he became very Swedish. He said that it was clear that our conversation was of a highly personal nature, that we were both highly emotional people, that this was obviously a matter about which we both felt strongly, and that once we had resolved the issue we would be welcome back any time.

At this point I became abusive. I told him that I would never again besmirch the clean white bloody linen of his bloody Swedish bloody cake shop.

That at least is how I remember the conversation: my use of language may have been less precise, and it’s possible I used a stronger word than bloody.

‘Great,’ said Millicent, as we began walking home.

‘What? It’s a cake shop.’

‘He did nothing wrong, Alex.’

‘And I did? Are you trying to tell me that getting us thrown out of a café in Crappy is, like, real bad? Or are you telling me that what you did is real bad, y’all. Because right now I’m a little confused, Millicent.’

‘Y’all is Texas, and it’s a plural form, and you’re being sophomoric. I’m going home. You can join me or not join me. Your choice.’

I watched her go, the anger of the righteous man coursing through me, dangerously electric. I looked down at my right hand, and saw that I’d been clenching it so tightly that the nail of my index finger had cut into the nail bed of the thumb. I brought the thumb to my mouth, and sucked at the welling blood. It too tasted electric, metallic: the air before a lightning storm.

A pair of young Somali girls walked past, staring at me, giggling. It was only when they’d gone that I realised what they’d seen: a grown man standing on the pavement sucking his thumb.

My mother called. This really wasn’t the time. I rejected the call and headed home.

Pride, I thought, that’s my cardinal vice; not wrath. Pride: the one sin from which all others stem. Oh, I could be the greedy man and the mean man, the envious and the enraged man, the licentious and the lazy man, but it all came down to pride; to the mortal sin of playing God, of being a complete arse, of standing in the street and passing judgment on my wife.

I married Millicent eight weeks after she moved in. A registry office, a few of my friends, and a wedding breakfast at the Rat and Pipe that flowed seamlessly into Bloody-Mary lunch and tequila supper. Neither of us had told our parents, though Millicent’s younger sister Arla flew in from San Diego, got spectacularly drunk, slept with a stranger at the Troy Club, and flew back again the next day.

‘Did that just happen?’ I asked, as we left Arla at Heathrow.

‘Like a bad version of me, right?’ said Millicent.

‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Just don’t.’