Various Pets Alive and Dead (35 page)

The pink-leggings lady tugs at the lead, jerking it tight around his ankles, which makes the dog yelp again. Looking down with an inscrutable smile, she murmurs,

‘You naughty boy, you!’

You naughty boy, you
. In the depths of his brain, the phrase rings a bell.

Could it be … Juliette?

He closes his eyes and lets blackness descend.

How much time has passed? Serge isn’t sure. He reaches up to touch his nose. Amazingly, it’s still there, but it’s sticky and much too big, and it’s sending out pulse-waves of pain into his forehead. His eyes are also not working properly. He blinks slowly, and when he opens them again the room swings back into focus – the bulky cream faux-leather sofa where he is lying propped up on an Indian mirror-work cushion, the TV blaring away in a corner. A blood-soaked hankie is swimming in a bowl of pink water on the floor beside him; a fat brown poodle is snuggled up against his thigh. Above the noise of the TV he hears the intermittent crack of a leather whip and the ecstatic groans of Juliette’s client in the next room. Crumbs, that woman must pack some strength.

He tries to get back to sleep, but the noise is disturbing. On the television, there’s something about the G20 summit, world leaders congregating in Washington to sort out the global economic crisis. About time. If he wasn’t feeling so bad, he could probably come up with a few ideas himself. He knows times are hard, but you’d have thought the PM could have forked out for a better suit. A couple of studio guests are discussing the need for bank regulation – an earnest young woman in a chain-store jacket who keeps going on about a society based on shared prosperity (what shared prosperity? She’s living in Doro-Doro-land – nice legs, though) and a City guy who blames the Government (‘Ill-judged interest rate hike … property prices collapsed … only now starting to see green shoots of recovery …’). The camera pans in for a close-up. Crumbs! There’s Chicken in all his tailored glory, his sharp predator teeth snapping on the words as he talks.

At five o’clock, he hears murmured goodbyes in the hallway, the click of a door, and a few minutes later Juliette enters carrying two cups of tea. Serge takes a gulp and feels better at once.

She gives the poodle a slap on the rump. ‘Budge over, Beastie.’

It sighs and snuffles as she squeezes on to the sofa beside it.

She’s changed into a plain pale-blue dress, shaped around the bust and pulled in at the waist, which looks quite kinky, a bit like a nurse’s outfit. Some men get off on that sort of thing. She must be in her forties, too old for him. Tired lines around her eyes, but her face is nice.

‘How are you feeling, pet?’ She cups a hand under his chin, twists his head towards the light, and presses along the bridge of his nose with her thumb. Her hands are small and smell of soap.

‘Ouch!’

‘Trust me – I’m a nurse.’

‘No kidding?’

‘Though now I’m a full-time See Eye practitioner. Some people find it embarrassing, but I think of it as a public service.’

See Eye? Is this a euphemism for kinky whiplash activities?

‘I know what you’re thinking. But have you ever tried it, pet?’

‘No. I imagine it must be a bit painful.’

‘Not if it’s done properly.’

He glances surreptitiously at her feet. They look quite small. Size eight, she said in the email.

A question pushes itself up to the bruised surface of his brain. ‘Er … how did I get here?’

‘In a taxi. I was going to phone an ambulance but you begged me to give you another chance. I couldn’t just leave you bleeding on the pavement, could I?’

‘Wow. A Good Samaritan.’ His voice chokes with tears. ‘But … weren’t you scared? A strange man …?’

‘Beastie looks after me if any of my clients get frisky. He can be quite fierce, eh, you naughty boy?’

Beastie woofs and thwacks Serge’s leg with his tail.

The room is close and hot. His head is throbbing terribly, and flashes of light pop at the perimeter of his vision. There’s a faint smell of something disgusting, which he realises after a moment is the dog.

‘You been a naughty boy?’ she cajoles.

‘No. Honestly. Thanks, Juliette. It’s not my thing.’

She rubs the dog’s belly and he grunts with pleasure and rolls on to his back, pawing the air with his huge hairy mitts.

‘You work in the City, do you?’ she says.

‘Yes. Well, I … I’m not sure any more.’

‘I have a lot of City gentlemen among my clients. I get rid of all the … congestion.’ She folds her hands together. ‘Think about it, pet. I’ll do it for free. Nothing to be frightened of. You’re in the hands of a professional. Bathroom’s through there if you want to clean up before we start.’ Her voice is flatly matter-of-fact, with a slight regional accent he can’t place.

He staggers to his feet, wondering whether he should just make a run for it.

‘Hello, spud,’ he greets the wan battered face in the bathroom mirror. His nose is a crust of dried blood, still oozing slightly, and a purple bruise is spreading upwards, puffing out the skin around his eyes, making everything look blurred. He cleans his face up with tissues from a lacy tissue dispenser. For someone with such a strapping occupation, Juliette’s tastes seem surprisingly girly. The bathroom is cluttered with bottles and potions, brushes, scissors, tweezers, vitamins, lipsticks. Her perfume is Miss Dior Chérie – the same as Babs’s. He squirts a bit on to his wrist and sniffs for old times’ sake. Memories flood back. Dear Babs. She was a good woman. One of the best. He hopes she’s found happiness in her new life. Her new squishy lesbian life. His cock stirs. For some reason, his eyes are full of tears.

Outside the bathroom door, Beastie growls.

‘Are you all right, pet?’ Juliette asks as he stumbles back into the sitting room and flops down on the sofa.

‘Fine, yes. Just a bit … weird.’

He shivers, although the flat is sultry. His head is throbbing again and new arrows of pain are shooting outwards to his temples.

‘We don’t have to do it right away, George. Maybe later. After I’ve done with my clients.’

George?

‘Right. Yeah. Or … maybe another time?’

He tries to stand, but his legs give way. As he surrenders to gravity, another connection clicks in his brain: ‘Six o’clock Friday, you naughty boy, you.’ If he’s still here, he could witness the flagellation of Chicken, maybe even get some pics with his mobile phone camera – useful if Chicken needs encouragement to overlook the irregular transactions in the 1601 bank account.

‘Actually, I do feel a bit rough. Could I just stay …?’

Juliette looks concerned. ‘No rush. Stay as long as you like, pet. I’ve got a client coming at six.’

She fetches a glass of water and hands him two small capsules. ‘Here, take these. They’ll help you sleep. You can stretch out on the sofa. Shift over, Beastie!’

She gives the dog another slap. It lurches on to the ground, shakes itself morosely and yawns. Its breath smells of … actually, he prefers not to remember. Then the doorbell rings.

‘Excuse me, pet. Try to get some sleep.’

Beastie follows her out.

He hears a man’s voice in the hall. Is it …? He strains to hear but the voices are too low to make out above the burble of the television, where
Xena: Warrior Princess
has taken over from the news. The pills he took haven’t lessened the pain, but have made him feel woozy. A few moments later, he hears the crack of the whip and the terrible shuddering groans.

A huge blanketing drowsiness descends on him.

Strangely alert now, he jumps to his feet. How very peculiar: his legs seem to be working again – in fact, they’re working 110 per cent, making his steps long and bouncy, like he’s walking on the moon. Miraculously, his iPhone is still there in his jacket pocket. He’s not going to miss this chance. Switching on the camera function, he creeps out into the corridor.

One door is slightly ajar. He puts his eye to the gap. As his vision adjusts to the darkness he sees two figures in the room: Juliette, in pink leggings and black stiletto boots, standing astride a man crouched on all fours – a chunky muscle-packed man, naked but for a leopard-skin posing pouch. She’s wearing a studded leather bra which squeezes her breasts into awesome pointy cones like a warrior princess. The crack of her whip splits the darkness, and the man lets out a long shuddering groan.

‘Tell me, you naughty boy!’ Juliette hisses. ‘Tell me the bad things you done!’ She jabs the man with her heel.

‘I did nothing unlawful, mistress.’

‘You must have done something bad, else you wouldn’t be here, would you?’

Thwack!

‘I don’t know. I can’t remember.’

‘I can’t remember,
mistress
.’

Thwack!

‘All right. I opened an unregistered account. A victimless crime, mistress!’

‘It’s still a crime, innit?’

Thwack! The whip flickers in the half-darkness. Serge holds the camera up and clicks again and again through the gap of the door.

‘Okay, we created a financial instrument,’ the kneeling man moans. ‘Look, if there’s a way of making loadsamoney, somebody’s going to find it, aren’t they? You can’t stop it. It’s human nature.’

Thwack!

‘They should’ve passed a law against it. Useless politicians. Clueless. All on the take.’

Thwack!

‘So this instrument? It done a naughty thing?’

‘It wasn’t me, it was it. The regulator should’ve stopped us. You can’t blame me!’ He talks fast, stumbling over the words. Flecks of foam dribble from his mouth. ‘It stands to reason, if there’s no law against it people are gonna do it, aren’t they?’

‘Do what, you moral maggot?’

Thwack!

‘Create a dodgy fund. Flog it to the investors. Knowing it’ll fail! Aagh!’

‘That’s better. And?’

In the doorway, Beastie is snuffling with excitement. The man is breathing hard, his arched shoulders shuddering. Serge finds himself shuddering too.

‘I wiped out an engineering works! Aagh! I killed my sister’s hamster!’

‘Now we’re getting there!’ screams Juliette. ‘And?’

‘I lied to my mum!’

He falls forward, sobbing uncontrollably.

When he wakes, his eyes are still full of tears and his nose hurts.

On Saturday morning, Doro and Oolie set out for Cambridge. Doro hasn’t managed to contact Serge yet, but she’s taken her mobile, and keeps trying. She’s also obtained Molly and Otto’s number from Directory Enquiries, so she can drop round afterwards with a pretty green, mauve and white bonnet (the suffragette colours) that she’s crocheted herself.

Oolie gazes out of the window of the train and burbles her latest thoughts about her bridesmaid’s dress, while fields, trees and anonymous towns flit by, all dampened by November drizzle. Doro stretches her legs and unfolds the
Guardian
she picked up at the station. The pound is plummeting. G20 world leaders sound off about the recession, as though they’d predicted it all along. Gaza is under siege. Wildfires rip through California. But her mind keeps wandering back to a recent telephone conversation with Clara.

When she was Clara’s age, people still used to talk about ‘making love’ for having sex, which sounded romantic, or ‘sleeping with’ someone, which sounded nice and cuddly. And then, okay, when they got into sexual liberation people started saying ‘fuck’, like it was a political statement, decolonisation of language, rejection of prudery, etc. But ‘shagging’! She shudders. How could her own daughter accuse her of that?

She buys herself a double-sized cup of tea from the trolley, and a chocolate muffin for comfort, which she shares with Oolie.

By the time they get to Queens’ College Serge still hasn’t answered her calls, so she asks in the Porters’ Lodge for his room number.

The man behind the desk gives her a funny look. ‘He’s been gone over a year.’

‘Oh. Really? The name’s Serge Free. F-r-e-e.’

‘Yes, I know how to spell it. He left last summer.’

‘Are they still shagging up there?’ chirps Oolie.

‘No. I don’t think so.’ Doro’s brain is still trying to process this indigestible information.

‘Can we go to the river and see if that ’unk’s there?’

‘No. Let’s visit Molly and her baby, instead.’

‘Yeah! I wanna see t’ babbie.’

Molly and Otto’s flat above a hairdresser’s on Mill Road is tiny, warm and filled with that sweet stinky baby smell that brings on a rush of emotion to Doro. Molly greets them at the door, tousled, barefoot and wearing a milk-stained dressing gown. The baby is tucked into the dressing gown, guzzling away.

‘Oh, she’s lovely!’

‘What’s she doing?’ says Oolie.

‘She’s feeding, love. That’s how babies get their milk.’

‘Yeuch!’

They sit on a small sofa in the sitting room, which is also the dining room, kitchen and Otto’s office, while Molly finishes feeding the baby. A long curl of reddish-brown hair trails across her cheek and down on to her breast, reminding Doro of Moira.

‘It’s nice to have visitors,’ says Molly. ‘Otto’s often away at weekends. Jen comes over sometimes. You know, Otto’s mum?’

‘Oh yes, I remember Jen.’

‘They live quite nearby, in Peterborough, Jen and Nick. He’s still teaching. She’s working as a solicitor.’

‘Jen and Nick are still together?’

‘Yes, she has some funny tales to tell about the commune. She says you were all bonkers!’

‘Mm. Some more than others.’ Doro has a vivid memory of Jen, wearing only a pair of knickers, practising primal screaming in the garden. Now a solicitor, eh?

‘And what’s Otto doing with himself?’

‘Otto’s at a conference about Free Open-Source Software. It’s his big passion. That’s why we called the baby Flossie – F-O-S-S. The French geeks stuck an ‘L’ in for femininity.’

‘Ha!’ So all that anti-patriarchal upbringing didn’t change anything much. ‘Can I hold her a minute?’

Molly passes her to Doro to hold, while she goes to make the coffee. Doro gazes into the dark glassy eyes and remembers Clara, Serge, Otto, Star, Oolie – so many babies she held – the warm sleepy bulk of new life. If only Clara and Serge would get a move on!