Rough Treatment

Fifteen

“Harold!” the voice had said, authentic as spaghetti sauce just-like-mamma makes (Mfr. Rotherham, Yorks.). “Freeman and I are at the Royal, the Penthouse Bar, be great if you joined us for a couple of drinks. Loosen up. Limber down. Give us all a chance to talk things through.”

“Screw,” said Harold, “you.”

He sounded as though he meant it.

“Who was that?” Maria had called from the stairs. Beneath her robe her legs were still shiny from her bath. The amount of time she spends slopping around in that thing, thought Harold, the rest of her wardrobe might go for junk.

“Nobody.”

“It must have been somebody.”

“That’s what he’d like us to believe.”

Harold left his wife to her own conjectures and his talcum powder and went off in search of solace. What he could have done with, right then and there, were a couple of lines of coke, let the linings of his nose know who was boss. Pow! Was it true, he wondered, opening a bottle of the next best thing, all those rock stars of the seventies, having their nostrils rebuilt from the inside? Harold shuddered: silver plate.

He looked at the depth of alcohol in his glass and decided to double it.

“Harold! Pour me a drink and bring it up here.”

He went over to the door and closed it on her screeching. “Screw you,” he said quietly, careful lest she hear and think he was being serious.

“Look at that, over there. Look at those.”

Grabianski peered around a giant pot plant, a decorated column. “Where?”

“There. Jesus, how can you miss them? The table in the corner, past the piano.”

Grabianski saw two women, mid-twenties, black dresses slashed low, enough gold to affect the commodities index. “What about them?”

“Let’s go over.”

“Go over?”

“Join them.”

“Together?”

“What d’you mean, together?”

“At the hip?”

“Jerry, you’re not on something, are you?”

“Just hungry.”

“You’d prefer food to that?”

“Infinitely.”

Grice shook his head in near despair.

“Besides,” said Grabianski, “they’re probably waiting for somebody.”

“Sure. The first man to dangle a room key in front of them and ask them to feel his wallet.”

“We don’t have a room key.”

“We have better. A flat five minutes’ walk away.”

Grabianski stood up.

“That’s more like it,” Grice said. “Only mine’s the one on the left. Okay?”

Grabianski couldn’t see any difference. “That’s not where I’m going,” he said.

“You’re going to take another piss?”

“Going to eat. You stay here and catch an expensive sexually transmitted disease.”

Grice grabbed hold of Grabianski’s jacket. They were both wearing their best suits, the ones they had worn to burgle both the Roy and the Stanley houses. It had been Grabianski’s idea: he had been brought up on stories of Raffles, the gentleman burglar. His favorite movie was Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief. When he looked in the mirror he was always disappointed not to see Cary Grant.

“We’ve left it too late,” said Grice, disgruntled.

“To eat?”

“Look.”

A couple of men had sat at the women’s table and were talking animatedly, craning their necks towards the display of cleavage, thinking already of the lies they would tell to their wives.

“Let’s go,” said Grabianski. “Still Chinese?”

“Chinese.”

Maria Roy changed what she was wearing three times before coming downstairs. It would have helped had she been able to recall which of her outfits Harold had last expressed an interest in, even noticed. Finally she settled for a silky suit, high at the neck, loose-fitting trousers, the color of tangerine. Perfume at the wrists, behind the ears, a dab or two between her breasts before raising the zip to the raised collar.

When she walked into the lounge Harold was so far into the bottle she might as well have wrapped herself in yesterday’s bin liners.

He was stretched out on the settee, one leg on, one off; there were three glasses arranged along the floor, each of them partly full. “That was Mackenzie,” he said. “On the phone, earlier. The shit wanted me to go to and slime around this fucking Freeman Davis, fucking little asshole, fucking little pervert.”

Who? Maria thought: Mackenzie or Davis? And who was Davis anyway?

“Ease me out, that’s what they think they’re going to do. Little by little, little by fucking step. Freeman can handle this, why don’t you let Freeman take care of that? Relax, Harold, learn to let go a little. Keep your eye on the overall picture, let Freeman cope with the day to day. Yes, fucking Freeman.”

He leaned on one elbow, reached down towards the glasses and missed all three of them.

“Fuck him! Fuck them all. Only reason they want me up in that fucking Penthouse Bar is so they can stand me by the window and push me out.”

Harold leaned too far and rolled, slow-motion, on to the carpet and was still.

“Fuck,” he said.

There was a glass panel between the sections of the restaurant, a screen, and somehow sculpted on it, in relief, the largest king prawn Grabianski had ever seen.

“Imagine that with garlic,” Grabianski said.

“Not while we’re sharing the same bathroom, I can’t.” They walked through the lobby, low black tables holding thickly padded menus, a party of four enjoying a polite G and T or two before moving to their table. A tall Chinese wearing a dinner jacket asked them if they would like a drink and they ignored him, up two steps past the end of the screen and into the body of the restaurant. The waitress moved confidently on high heels, in a skirt that was tight and split well above her right knee. “This way, gentlemen, please.” Her accent was almost pure Suzie Wong, with only a trace of the Notts-Derbyshire border.

Grabianski smiled as he shook his head and pointed off into the corner.

Grice nearly fell over his own feet staring at her leg.

“This place going to be good?”

“Rumor has it,” said Grabianski.

“Either way,” said Grice, looking round, “we’re going to pay for it.”

It never ceased to surprise Grabianski that a man who would blow £40 on fifteen minutes of massage relief could gripe continuously about a meal that went into double figures.

“May I get you gentlemen a drink?”

“Lager,” said Grice. “Pint.”

“I’m sorry, sir, we do not serve pints.”

“No lager?”

“We have only half pints.”

“Bring me two. Right?”

“Of course, sir.” She smiled a weary smile towards Grabianski. “For you, sir?”

“Tea. Please.”

“Chinese tea?”

“Yes.”

Deftly, she removed the pair of long-stemmed wine glasses, opened menus before each of them and moved off towards the bar.

“We’ll have the set meal for two.” Grice slapped the menu closed.

Grabianski shook his head.

“You know what your trouble is, don’t you?” said Grice.

“I expect you’re going to tell me.”

“Used to be, all you wanted out of life was another species to check off in your bird book and another sodding mountain to climb. Now it’s poncey restaurants and other men’s wives.”

“I think,” said Grabianski evenly, “I’m going to have the chicken and cashew nuts and the sizzling monkfish with spring onions and ginger. Oh, and the monk’s vegetables. Special fried rice, what d’you think?”

The waitress arrived with two glasses of lager, Grabianski’s tea and a decorated cup with a gold rim.

“May I take your order now?”

Grice jabbed his finger down the menu, ordering by the numbers; the waitress seemed to have transposed them on to her pad almost before he read them out. From Grabianski she got the words and an encouraging smile.

“And bring me a knife and fork,” said Grice to her back as she walked away.

Maria Roy made a perfect 0 with her lips and released a near-perfect smoke ring. Across the room, Harold had crawled back on to the couch and was snoring lightly. The television picture was on, the sound no more than a murmur. Maria was sitting in a deep armchair, legs tucked beneath her, ashtray and glass on either arm, reading. The trouble with shopping-and-fucking books was once you’d read one you’d read them all. And she distrusted all those female managing editors or PR directors who could reach orgasm at the touch of a button, enjoy oral sex between ground and eleventh floors in the executive lift, then step into a full meeting of the board, dabbing their lips with a scented tissue.

Even so, it made her aware of a certain itch; brought back the pressure of Jerry Grabianski’s thumbs at the center of her breasts, the weight of him on top of her. The care with which he had loved her.

Harold jumped in his sleep, threw out an arm and snorted loudly.

“Jesus, Harold!” shouted Maria. “Why don’t you shrivel up and die!”

Six hundred and forty-eight pages of wish fulfilment missed his sleeping head by inches. Why don’t I keep quiet about Jerry’s offer, Maria thought? Let him think the cocaine’s gone for good and wait until his dealer cuts him into four-inch squares. Serves the sorry bastard right!

She stubbed out her half-finished cigarette and lit another. Standing over her husband of more than twenty years, she saw the wisps of hair that curled from his ears, no longer gray but white, worry lines spreading from the edges of his mouth, the way his eyelid twitched compulsively, another in a succession of bad dreams. The rug was pulled out from under his career and, through no real fault of his own, it was likely his life was in danger.

She hated him.

“How’s your pork?”

“It’s okay.”

“Better than usual?”

“Okay.”

“Because if it’s anywhere near as good as this chicken …”

“Jerry.”

“Yes.”

“The pork is pork, all right?”

“Mm.”

“So can we get back to business?”

“Go ahead.”

“Two places and then we’re out.”

“Out?”

“As in, over and.”

Grabianski lifted a piece of green pepper with his chopsticks, dipped it into black bean sauce, then bit into it, thoughtfully. “How come?”

“Sources,” said Grice.

Grabianski looked at his bowl, the dishes resting on hotplates. “What’s wrong with them?”

“Drag your mind from your stomach a minute. Up to now they’ve been-what d’you call it?”

“Impeccable.”

“Now I’m not so sure. I think a couple more at most.”

Laughter rose from the round table near the center of the room, coarse and loud, and echoed, one diner to another. Voices raised, the clatter of dishes as a hand came slamming extravagantly down. From the corner of his eye, Grabianski saw the manager appear at the far end of the screen.

“And then?”

“What d’you mean, and then? Like always, we scarper.”

Grabianski sipped jasmine tea. “How about this flat? Didn’t you tell her three months minimum?”

“I told her what she wanted to hear.”

A black woman walked in with a white escort, guided by the waitress towards their table. From the middle of the restaurant rose the unmistakable chant of the British football fan, the repeated sound of supposed chimpanzees.

“Banana fritters for that one!”

The laughter was raucous and harsh. The couple pretended not to hear.

“You know what I feel about unnecessary risks,” said Grice. “What we’ve always felt. It’s why we’ve kept clear of the law for as long as we have.”

“I know,” said Grabianski. He was thinking about something Maria had whispered into the side of his neck, the tip of her tongue moving over his skin: “Jerry, if I could have one thing in the world, it’d be to be able to do this, with you, forever.” Grabianski didn’t believe in forever, not even in the afterglow of good sex, but he did believe in a year, nine months.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Grice.

“Nothing.”

They both knew it was a lie.

The largest of the group around the middle table got to his feet. Like them he was white and male, but older than the rest. Forties, even. The others were not so many years out of school, a few of them still on YTS.

“Feeding time,” called the man. He had a short, square haircut, a black bomber jacket with red-and-green bands around the sleeves. He lifted one of the dishes from the table in front of him and tossed the entire contents high through the air, towards the couple who had just entered.

“Please …” The dinner-jacketed manager started towards them.

The black woman wiped rice from her shoulder, the sleeve of her dress. The man with her was on his feet and glaring; all of the blood seemed to have drained from his face.

“Come on, then, sunshine!”

“What’s the matter, nigger-lover? Don’t like the service?”

The waitress moved in front of the shaking customer, placing both hands on his chest. “Sit down, sir,” she said. “Pay no attention.”

Another plate of food struck her back, caught in her hair.

“Please …” urged the manager.

One of the men swung a fist from where he was sitting and punched him low in the stomach and he sank to his knees, groaning.

“Fetch the police,” called one of the other customers.

“Shut your fucking mouth!”

Two, then three Chinese appeared from the kitchen, wearing short white jackets, white aprons; one of them carrying a carving knife, another a broom handle.

Grice watched Grabianski go tense, straighten his arms against the edge of the table.

“Jerry, stay out of this.”

The waitress ran diagonally across the room; maybe she was heading for the phone, maybe she simply wanted to get away. She tripped over an outstretched leg and lost her footing, arms flailing until she collided with the metal edge of the screen. Spinning away before she fell, the blood was already pumping from a cut over her eye.

“Jerry!”

The leader of the gang reached down into a sports bag by his feet and flourished an ax.

“Keep out of this,” hissed Grice.

Grabianski didn’t look back at him; he was watching the blade of the ax. “How?” he said. The man wielding the axe lifted it high over his head before bringing it crashing through the table. Three of his friends took hold of the manager, arms and legs, and tossed him head first against the glass screen, cracking it across.

Grabianski had hung his suit jacket over the back of his chair; now he slipped his watch from his wrist and set it down between the chopsticks and his cup of jasmine tea.

The youth who’d tripped the waitress was twisting an arm up behind her back and trying to tear away the top of her dress. Grabianski began to move through the mêlée towards them, three coins tight between the knuckles of his fist.

Harold Roy gripped the sides of the toilet bowl and slowly lowered his forehead until it was resting on the cool of the porcelain. How could they say there was something wrong with cocaine when, whatever it left you feeling, it was never like this? He knew, just knew, that come morning he was going to feel like death.

Maria pushed open the bathroom door, took one look, made a retching sound and went away. Life without Harold; devoutly to be wished. She went into the bedroom, laughing. What was she doing, remembering that? Chester Playhouse-or was it Salisbury? — and her one and only Ophelia. Well, to be honest, she had been an ASM, understudying Ophelia and the Queen both. Twice she got to sing those childish chants and wander round the stage with fake flowers threaded through her hair. Afternoon matinees with schoolkids pelting each other with peanuts and Maltesers and the noise so great it wouldn’t have mattered if she hadn’t remembered a single line.

The rest of the time she helped the dresser, shifted scenery, made sure the swords were in the right place for the duel and learned everybody else’s words as well as her own.

Not alone my inky cloak, good madam, nor customary suit of solemn black.

How many people, she wondered, would bother to turn out for Harold’s funeral? They’d probably get Mackenzie to write two paragraphs for The Stage.

That the funeral-how did it go? — the funeral, dum-di-dum, sweetmeats, bakemeats make up the marriage feast.

Jerzy Grabianski.

Jerry.

Harold came to the doorway and leaned against it, sagging. His eyes found Maria and tried to focus. No, you don’t, you bastard! Maria thought. I won’t pity you. I’m damned if I will!

He lurched three paces into the bedroom and stopped.

“Harold,” she said.

“Hmm?”

“There’s something I’d better tell you.”