Doing It (27 page)

‘Placatory offerings,’ he muttered to himself. Tea seemed hardly enough. Fresh meat would be better. Or a virgin. Give her something to gnaw on while he ran for it.

‘What about you, how are you, you seem a bit off colour this week?’ she taunted him from her lair on the sofa.

‘OK,’ lied Ben, and winced at how quickly he was being carried away from his purpose.

The kettle boiled. He dropped tea bags into mugs.

‘No,’ he whimpered. ‘I have a choice. No.’

From next door came a terrible strangulated, groaning roar. It seemed to express agony, rage and lust all at the same time. He’d never heard anything like it. There was something chitinous about it, as if a giant insect had suddenly discovered its mouth had air, and was giving voice to the accumulated desires and appetites of its kind for the past three hundred million years. With a cry he dropped the tea bags and ran next door. Alison was stretching out her legs.

‘What?’ she said, looking surprised at his terror-struck face peering out at her.

‘That noise …’

‘What noise?’

‘That … noise. Didn’t you hear it?’

‘It was just me stretching.’ She leered at him. ‘You’re jumpy today.’

Ben stared in amazement at her and went back into the kitchen. What was going on? Jumpy? What had jumpy to do with such terrifying, primal agony? As he picked up the mugs, he noticed how the tea was shaking in the cups as if a dinosaur was approaching. The dinosaur was his own heart. He put the mugs down and walked three times round the room. Then he picked them up again and walked into the den. He put the mugs down. Put his hands in his pockets and said,

‘Listen …’

‘Go and get me a piece of cake, will you?’

‘A piece of cake?’

‘Yes, there’s some almond slices in the tin. God! I feel like I’ve spent the day in hell. The day in hell. The day in hell,’ she repeated, watching dispassionately as he struggled to speak over her and failed. Ben went back to the kitchen. He was feeling weaker by the second. He took out two almond slices, one for her and one for him, and took them back to the prostrate monster next door.

‘Mmm. Hungry. God. Sit down, you’re making me nervous.’

Ben was standing above her looking down at her, munching on his almond slice. With his mouth full he couldn’t speak, what choice did he have? Eating: another mistake. He sat down and waited while he finished his piece of cake.

‘Don’t gobble your food.’ She burst out laughing – it was a permanent joke to her to treat him like a little kid. Ben swallowed and stood up.

‘Listen. I’ve been thinking about, you know, you and me, and …’

She began speaking a second after he did and just carried on. ‘Christ, what a day, those kids need a tamer, not a teacher, what am I doing here, I should have gone professional, a dog deserves better than this, I feel AWFUL!’

She had to almost bellow the last word because Ben was not giving up this time, he just carried on speaking, his voice rising to compete with hers.

‘I want to stop. This. Us. I don’t think we should see each other ANY MORE.’

She carried on as if she hadn’t heard, made no reference to the fact that he had spoken at all. ‘Nice cake, I like almond slices. Boy, what I’m going to do to you when I’ve fed, this is just for starters, the main course is gonna come all over …’

He waited until she stopped. Had her eyes twisted like little stones in her head as he spoke? Had she gone deaf? Was she ignoring him? She drew a breath, and in the uninterrupted silence, Ben spoke again.

‘I said, I don’t want to see you any more.’

There was a terrible pause. No mistake this time. She sat there and stared at him, looking shocked and scared. Ben took a step back.

‘You what?’ she asked.

‘I said …’

‘I heard you!’ she breathed. She took a long breath and began, fairly quietly at first. ‘You choose now to tell me, now, now to tell me, now, after the day I’ve had? You fucking want to tell me about it now? Is that it?’ Suddenly, she flung the remaining piece of cake on her plate at his head. It was soft, but Ben headed for the door anyway. There was no doubt; he’d done it at last.

‘Don’t run out on me, don’t run out on me, Ben!’ she begged, but he was off. She rose to her feet, scattering the plate and its crumbs around her feet, and ran after him. She grabbed his clothes as he fumbled with the door and he slapped her hand away with all his strength.

‘Ow! Don’t hit me …’

He was scared she was going to hurt him. He wrenched himself away and burst out of the flat and onto the landing. He just had time to see the shocked face of an old woman struggling outside her door with four bulging plastic bags full of shopping. The bags fell over. Leeks and a carton of milk spilled out onto the floor. Ben leaped into space over the stairs and bounded down them three at a time. On the landing above him, Alison screamed.

‘We have to talk!’ she commanded, but Ben was gone, down three flights and out of the door like a rat down a hole.

‘You could at least have helped this lady with her bags. Aaaahggh!’ he heard her scream as he opened the front door and exited the building. Ben ran on. The houses and people and cars flashed by. It had been the hardest thing he had ever done.

Afterwards at home, he was sorry about how he’d done it. He’d only been thinking about how to make it easy on himself, when it was her he should have worried about. She’d been upset. Now he thought about it, hadn’t there been tears on her face as she ran after him? He’d thought at the time she was after his blood, but maybe she just wanted to talk it through. Just blurting it out and running – it wasn’t very clever.

He felt too jangled to give her a ring that day. He’d get her at school the next day, and say he was sorry he’d handled it so badly.

But he didn’t see her the next day, which was odd; he nearly always managed to bump into her in the corridor. Thursday lunch time there was a rehearsal for the school play, in which he was as usual helping with the lighting. He was feeling awful for still not ringing her, and dreaded having to see her, but she wasn’t in that day. It was announced at break that she was ill.

Ben knew at once; it was him. He’d done her in. But how? Headache, heartache or death, he had no way of knowing. Fantasies spiralled in his mind; the beast slaughtered in her lair. But she wasn’t a beast. She was a person, someone who loved him and whom he had once adored; and he had hurt her.

He was still too scared to ring her that evening and she wasn’t at school again the next day. By then he felt utterly craven, weak with failure to do the right thing. He swore he’d do it the next night, but when he got home that Friday there was a call for him.

She wasn’t angry any more, he could hear that. Her voice was flat, wounded. She was sorry. She’d had a bad day, it came at the wrong time. Of course if that’s the way he felt then he was doing the right thing. Could she just see him one more time? She didn’t want to end like that, in a fight on the landing. Just this one thing for me. Don’t let it end like this for me.

There were no signs of tears or bullying but his heart was going like a dinosaur again. He stared at the phone in his hand suspiciously, but he couldn’t say no. It wasn’t too much to ask, not much at all, but he couldn’t get the thought out of his head that it was some sort of trap.

The door was ajar. I knocked and she said, ‘Come in,’ in a little voice. I went in and she was sitting on an armchair with her hands resting on the arms looking very pale.

‘Hi,’ I said, and she said, ‘Hi,’ back and looked at me with a funny crooked smile. She seemed embarrassed. Something was wrong with her but I couldn’t work it out just yet. She looked down very briefly as if she couldn’t help herself and then looked away to one side. My eyes went down. The armchair had a brown cover on. I took a few steps towards her but she jerked her head back as if I was going to hurt her even if I tried to be gentle. Then I noticed that the chair arms were all red.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked, and she pulled a funny face as if she wasn’t bothered. I walked over and poked the material. It was damp. It took another moment to sink in. Where was the colour coming from? Then I saw. It was coming from her wrists.

She’d slit her wrists.

I think I said, ‘Jesus!’ and I ran for the phone to dial 999. She called after me but all I was bothered about was getting some help before she bled to death, just bled to death sitting there waiting for me. There were splashes of blood on the floor next to me and the phone was smeared with it. I got up to nine nine when she came up behind and pressed the button down to cut me off.

‘What are you doing?’ I begged.

‘I don’t need an ambulance. You can drive me.’

‘Drive you?’

‘It’ll be quicker.’

‘Will it?’

‘Yes.’ She shook her head and almost laughed. ‘Don’t worry, Ben. I’m not going to die.’

‘How do you know?’ I asked but even as the words came out of my mouth, I realised why. ‘You’ve done it before,’ I accused her. She’d never told me, but I’d seen the thin white scars on her wrists. I stood there with the phone in my hand wondering what to do, because I’d’ve very much preferred to call an ambulance and let them take her away from me.

‘I can’t drive,’ I reminded her.

‘You’ve got your provisional, I’ll be sitting next to you.’ She walked to the door. ‘Come on. It won’t take long.’ She waved her hand at me and winced, and I could see the blood trickling out.

I was so scared I hardly knew what I was doing. I was scared of her, scared of the hospital, scared of the police, because … because you know why this had happened, don’t you? I’d done it to her.

We got down to the car and set off. I was trembling, I could see my hands shaking on the wheel. ‘Why did you do that?’ I asked her.

‘Because I’m stupid.’ She sat very still, holding her wrists on her lap, looking demurely down at them. She’d wrapped them in some blue-checked tea towels and the blood was slowly seeping through. After a little while she turned her head away from me and stared out of the side window. I kept having to brake hard and I was stalling and accelerating too quickly, and every time I did it, she stiffened up and pulled a face. She never said another word all the way there.

They made us wait for ages. A nurse came to have a quick look but there didn’t seem to be any rush. I tried to speak to Ali but she just shook her head and said, ‘No.’ They left us waiting there for ages before they took her in and left me sitting there on my own.

‘I’m not going to die,’ she’d said. So what’s the point of cutting your wrists if you’re not going to die? I thought, I hope someone knows what’s going on because I haven’t got a fucking clue.

I sat there watching people come and go. There was this whole series of weird accidents coming in and out and I kept getting fits of the giggles. At one point the door burst open and this fat old Sikh man came in, clutching his bollocks and yelling, ‘Nurse! Nurse! Oh, my God, oh, my God!’ and these three younger blokes, his sons maybe, came banging in behind him and started prowling about. Poor bloke must have been in terrible pain, but I couldn’t help it, I just started laughing. I had to run outside to hide it. It took me ages to calm down. Then this kid came in with his mum, and he had both hands bandaged. She was tiny, he was about eight and he was only a little smaller than she was, and they both had this funny waddling walk and they looked just like a pair of penguins coming into the waiting room. I felt like I was on some sort of drug. But then things got boring and I just sat there, waiting for ages until they asked me in to see her.

She was lying on a bed with her wrists bandaged up, smiling weakly at me.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Are you going to be all right?’

She nodded. ‘Stupid thing to do.’ She shrugged.

‘I didn’t mean to hurt you …’

‘It’s not your fault. You weren’t to know what a stupid cow I am, were you?’

‘What did the doctors say?’ I asked her.

She laughed. ‘They said, next time I should use sleeping pills if I want to kill myself. They said I’d stand a better chance of being successful.’

‘They said that? They said that to you?’

‘It’s too hard to kill yourself by slitting your wrists, the arteries are too deep.’

I was outraged. How could they say things like that? They were supposed to be sympathetic. ‘We should complain,’ I began, but she shook her head.

‘They were just angry because they had some real accidents to deal with.’ She smiled weakly. ‘Not a little pretend case like mine.’

They brought us both a cup of tea and then I drove her home.

Back at the flat she asked him to stay with her. He rang his parents and told them he was staying over with a friend. They were surprised but didn’t try to stop him. He opened tins of spaghetti and heated it up for supper and they went to bed early. She lay next to him, neither of them sleeping for a long time, then she wanted him to make love to her … one last time, gently.

He lay on top of her and moved slowly and softly. She buried her face in his neck and made soft little noises. He was distracted by the sight of her bandaged wrists. After a bit he grew desperate and started banging at her hard while she spread her knees and gasped.

‘Is that too hard?’ he asked her.

‘No, it’s all right, don’t stop.’

He banged away until the bed rumbled under them and he silently came. He got off and she rolled over to hold him so gently he felt awful after his roughness. She began to weep silently.

‘I’m back, aren’t I?’ whispered Ben. He stroked her head and let her cry.

Jackie didn’t notice it at first. Support for her in the school had been rock solid for weeks. Dino was a two-timing piece of toad shit; she was a used innocent. It was obvious. But behind her back the wind had already begun to change.

Of course Dino had behaved badly – but Jackie really had led him right up the garden path, hadn’t she? All those promises. Dumping him on the night of his own party because someone had been sick in the bed! What was that about? He should have chucked her for that! You had to feel sorry for him. And the shoplifting. And his parents splitting up. Now Jackie dumping him on top of everything. It was a bit hard. Look at him! He was so
upset.