Thunder in the Blood Read online

  ‘At no expense to anyone. Except me.’

  ‘Wrong. I was pulled off operations. Returned to mainland duties.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I didn’t let them run with you.’ He paused. ‘The phrase they used on paper was poor operational judgement. Face to face, they said I’d panicked.’

  I looked at him, thinking of Padraig again, the hands, the darkness, three guns and a locked room.

  ‘Christ,’ I said softly. ‘Thank God you did.’

  We met as often as we could for the rest of the summer, sometimes at lunchtime, mostly in the evenings. We built walls around ourselves, pet names on the telephone, letters left under pillows, presents of books, poems or photos snipped from magazines, picnics in bed, a bottle of Rioja or white Burgundy, big fat rolls stuffed with cheese and watercress and ripe tomatoes. We ate and drank and laughed a great deal, the same sense of humour, the same sense of awe and dread at what we were doing, at the risks we were taking, at the whole lunatic folly of the thing.

  We drew up rules, agreeing nightly that it couldn’t go on, that we wouldn’t let it, that we wouldn’t want to damage anyone else, that when the real world intervened and the spell wore off, we’d slip quietly back to our respective lives, wiser and fonder, friends for ever. We discussed Ruth exhaustively, how much respect Rory had for her, what a good mother she was, how bright she must be, how important it was to protect her from our terrible secret. And then, with what little honesty we had left, we’d look each other in the eye and giggle and pull up the sheet, shutting out the world, making love all over again. It was an astonishing relationship, a kind of on-going nuclear reaction, the secret no one else had ever discovered, just the pair of us, eternal warmth. I think I knew very quickly that it was the most important thing that had ever happened to me. And I think I knew as well that – for better or for worse – it would soon change us both.

  Events in the Gulf gave Rory the best of excuses for saying he had to work late, and most evenings he’d stay at the flat until ten or eleven, showering before he left. An infinitely more careful man than I’d ever suspected, he went to enormous lengths to avoid detection. He brought his own soap to my flat, refusing to use mine. When I asked him why, he said it was obvious. Ruth knew what he smelled like. Smelling of someone else’s soap would be a total giveaway. At the time, I nodded. It seemed sensible enough. The last thing I wanted was Ruth finding out. Yet that pebble of green Palmolive, sitting in my shower tray, slowly began to get on my nerves. It symbolized her. It was the shackle of his other life. It was the reason we couldn’t meet out in the open, like everyone else.

  One evening in early October, Rory arrived late. It happened to be his birthday. I’d taken the afternoon off and prepared a meal I knew he loved, a North African dish, a fiery couscous with chicken and lamb and little peppered sausages called merguez. Rory had said he’d be along about seven, the normal time, but it was gone eight before I heard his key in the lock. When he walked in, he looked drained and slightly nervous. I’d sent him a birthday card at work, typed envelope, Moscow rules. On the front of the card was a pen and ink drawing of the Cobb at Lyme Regis, the scene of our one and only excursion out of London, and inside I’d transcribed a line or two from a Laurie Lee book we’d both been reading. The quotation had to do with walking through Spain, another of our fantasies.

  Taking off his coat, sitting down, accepting a hug and a kiss and a glass of champagne, Rory didn’t mention it. The day had been a bitch. Planning for the Gulf was grinding to a halt. The MOD was on a drip-feed of funds. The politicians, as ever, wanted glory on the cheap. For the sake of an extra couple of million quid, we were bloody close to putting men’s lives at risk. Listening to it all through the open kitchen door, I began to recognize the diatribe for what it really was, a breakwater, a dam that Rory was throwing up against his own guilt. It was his birthday. He should have been at home, with Ruth. Not here with me.

  Over the pudding, slightly drunk, I tried to put it into words. I wanted it to be tender, concerned. Instead, it sounded blunt and slightly aggressive.

  ‘D’you miss her?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ruth?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ruth, your wife.’ I paused. ‘I just get the impression…’ I shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘No, tell me.’

  ‘I just feel… I dunno, I just feel you’re not here … not with me, not really…’ I offered him a weak smile. ‘You’re not anywhere really, are you?’

  Rory blinked and said nothing. We finished the syllabub in silence. Then I stood up, knocking over my glass of wine, pure clumsiness.

  ‘Come here,’ I said. ‘Make love to me.’

  Rory was staring at the carpet. I’ll remember the expression on his face until I die. For the first time ever, to me at least, he looked ordinary, just another man, hemmed in by life, threatened by circumstance.

  ‘You’ve spilled your wine,’ he said.

  ‘Make love to me?’

  ‘There. Look.’

  ‘Now?’

  He got up and went to the kitchen. I heard him emptying the bowl, filling it again, brisk angry movements. Then he came back with the bowl in his hands and a scourer from the sink, and I sat on the sofa, quite numb, watching him on his hands and knees, trying to mop up all that spilled Rioja. After a bit, he looked up. I think he knew by now quite how much he’d revealed of himself and there was a tight little smile on his face.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said, extending a hand.

  We walked through to the bedroom and he took off my clothes, as tender and attentive as ever, down on his knees, kissing me and nuzzling me, while I lifted a hand to my face, glad that he couldn’t see me crying. Afterwards, in bed, we made love, over-athletic, all-too-conscious of the question mark we’d left in the living room, the big wet stain beside the sofa.

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered in the darkness.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ I replied.

  A little later, I jerked awake. The bed was empty. Next door, I could just hear a voice, tinny, somehow amplified. It was saying something about a train. I recognized a list of stations. I slipped out of bed and went to the door. The door was open, no more than an inch, and when I peered through the crack I saw Rory sitting on the sofa, the phone to his ear, the voice coming from a tiny cassette player beside him. He was fully dressed. He was talking to someone. He was explaining about a delayed train, pretending to be on the concourse at Waterloo. He’d been down to Salisbury. The train had been late arriving. He’d be back as soon as he could. The conversation came to an end. He put the phone down, reached for the cassette player, turning off the sound effects he must have recorded earlier. Then he looked round, over his shoulder, and saw me in the doorway. He managed a smile, but only just.

  ‘Ruth?’ I enquired.

  He nodded, pocketing the cassette player.

  ‘Needs must,’ he muttered, getting up.

  I looked at him for a moment. I wanted to tell him what I really thought, what a fool he was, staying with a woman he didn’t love, sustaining a marriage for the sake of appearances, but in that one small moment of time I knew, too, that I didn’t want to lose him. Not now. Not ever. The man meant more to me than anyone else I’d ever met, or was ever likely to meet. He’d saved me from insanity and glued me back together again. Without him, I was nothing. I opened the door properly and went to him. I gave him his coat, buttoned it for him and walked him to the door. He smelled, as ever, of Palmolive. I reached up for him and kissed him. I knew, above all, that he wanted to look at his watch.

  ‘Half eleven,’ I said. ‘Still plenty of cabs.’

  He smiled down at me. ‘I love you,’ he said.

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that.’

  I kissed him again and opened the door, not wanting to prolong the scene. A minute or so later, putting on the kettle, I heard a cab slow and stop. I listened for a moment
, wanting to hear the sound of his voice, then I reached for the bar of Vanish and a saucepan of water, and returned to the living room. The carpet was still wet, and there were blobs of red wine everywhere.

  Rory’s birthday was a turning point. Afterwards, we still met nearly every day and in many ways he was keener than ever, but somehow I became more aware of the rest of his life, of what he wasn’t telling me, and this other Rory began to obsess me. This was, I admit at once, wholly irrational. The man was married. He had responsibilities, two children, a mortgage. These were serious foundations for any life, not lightly discarded, and though I believed him when he told me how good we were together, I knew I’d be an idiot to assume that several months of illicit passion were any substitute for real life. Deception, as I’d begun to recognize, can be the ultimate aphrodisiac and I’d started to wonder, against my better judgement, how on earth we could ever put the thing on a proper footing.

  One decision I took was to make myself less easily available. Since the summer, I’d been totally steadfast, a traffic cone in the swirl of Rory’s life. Whatever was happening to him during the day, he knew where to find me at work. I’d be at my desk, from nine until six. He had the number, and when he felt like it, he’d ring. Likewise, in the evening, I was always at home. He knew where to come. He had his own key. A meal, and a glass or two of wine, and me, were only ever a cab fare away. Don’t get me wrong. Rory never treated me as a convenience. I never once felt he was taking me for granted. But as the nights drew in, I became more and more aware that I’d surrendered control of my own life. Ruth was turning me into a recluse. I needed to get out. I needed a life of my own.

  I looked round for things to do. Another relationship was out of the question. I didn’t want it and wouldn’t have known what to do with it had such a thing turned up. No, it had to be something else. Something that would take me out on the odd evening. Something I could put my heart into, be proud of. Something of some relevance. Something, for God’s sake, worthwhile.

  After a week or two, to my surprise, I found the answer. I saw Rory the following evening. He arrived at the flat as I was getting ready to go out. For once, unusually, he hadn’t phoned.

  My blouse half ironed, I met him in the hall. Rory was carrying a large cardboard box, Scotch-taped over the top. There were crude holes stabbed in the box, and noises from inside. I stared at it.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Pressie.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s for you.’

  Rory leaned forward and kissed me. I was wearing knickers and a loose singlet, no bra, a combination, as it happens, guaranteed to turn Rory on. He put the box on the floor and picked me up.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said. ‘What’s in the box?’

  Rory carried me into the bedroom. ‘First things first,’ he said, lifting my singlet and burying his nose between my breasts. I pushed him away. He looked surprised.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’m going out.’

  ‘Out?’

  I laughed, not unkindly, just at the expression on his face. Treat time, it said. I pulled my singlet down and returned to the living room. I picked up the iron and ran it down the hem of my blouse. Whatever was in the box was definitely on the move. Rory reappeared, adjusting his trousers. If anything, he looked hurt.

  ‘I was going to phone,’ he said. ‘Honest.’

  ‘You should have.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’d have spared you the journey.’

  He looked at me a moment, then sat down. ‘What have I done?’ he said. ‘Give me a clue.’

  ‘Nothing. You’ve done nothing. It’s just…’ I shrugged. ‘I’m going out, that’s all.’ I smiled at him, a genuine smile. ‘You’re welcome to stay. I’ll be back later.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Depends.’

  I looked at Rory, waiting for the next question. Nothing happened. I stirred the cardboard box with my foot. There was another scuffling noise inside.

  ‘It’s a kitten,’ Rory said woodenly. ‘I’ve bought you a kitten.’

  ‘Ah.’ I nodded. ‘Company.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Company. For little me. These long winter nights.’

  I finished with the blouse and peeled off my singlet. I stood there for a moment but Rory didn’t look up. My bra was on the armchair. I put it on. Then the blouse. Rory reached for his shoelaces and began to undo them.

  ‘Don’t you want to get it out?’ he said. ‘Have a look?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  I finished buttoning the blouse and bent to the box. I tore off the Scotch tape and opened the flaps on top. Inside, amongst the remains of yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, was a tiny black and white kitten. It looked up at me. It was adorable. I sensed Rory behind me.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘It’s lovely. Beautiful.’

  I picked the kitten up. Purring, it sounded like a small, noisy boiler. I held it close to me. The kitten grabbed at me, suddenly frightened, huge green eyes, claws like needles. Rory reached out, tickling it, and for a moment I toyed with making a phone call to cancel my plans and staying in. Then I shook my head, gave Rory the kitten, kissed him lightly on the nose and went into the bedroom. By the time I’d found the right combination of sweater and jeans, he was standing in the open doorway. His shoes were back on. He looked less than happy.

  ‘So where are you off to?’ he said. ‘Or is it a secret?’

  I hesitated a moment in front of the dressing table, examining the contents of my make-up drawer. I could still see him in the mirror. He had the kitten in his arms. He was stroking it, nice tableau, orphans both.

  ‘You remember all that stuff about Africa I told you?’ I said. ‘With Monique? The French girl? All those jungle lectures? All those poor bloody Africans?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well…’ I shut the drawer, deciding after all against lipstick, ‘I’m going to an outfit called Charlie’s. It’s a support-group. They need people who know about AIDS.’

  I glanced up at the mirror. Rory was staring at me. Like most military men, he had limited time for life’s casualties and none at all for homosexuals.

  ‘AIDS?’ he said.

  ‘Yep.’ I stood up. ‘They’re looking for people to train as counsellors. People who can help. People who can listen.’ I smiled. ‘In this case, me.’

  10

  Charlie’s turned out to be just what I was after, a new support group formed by a Jesuit priest and some disaffected gays who’d peeled off from the mainstream AIDS agencies. They operated from two rooms over a Jewish tailor shop in Finsbury Park. The tailor’s son was a haemophiliac, and had contracted HIV from an infected batch of Factor 8, and the tailor – appalled at the lack of facilities for people with HIV – had donated the rooms free of charge. He was a small, round, powerful man whom I’d met through a colleague at work. His first name was Charlie, and in the absence of anything better, the priest had called the project after its sympathetic landlord.

  I took the tube up to Finsbury Park twice a week. For a while, I sat in on other people’s groups and updated myself on the literature; then I was given my own slot in the counselling rota and my own quota of clients. There were five in my group, four of them men, the other a girl of eighteen, a junkie who’d been on the game. The men were all gay, all newly diagnosed and we sat together for hours, one-on-one to begin with, as a group a little later on. We talked a lot about the small-print things, insurance policies, various welfare benefits, travel restrictions, problems with vaccinations and so on, and once we’d got to know each other and there was trust between us, we ventured even further. Being HIV positive meant anticipating AIDS, and that, in turn, meant evenings discussing issues like living wills, hospice care, and – trickiest of all – how to cope with any one of the dozens of infections that would, in the end, kill you. None of this sounds terribly cheerful, but oddly enough we all drew a sort o
f comfort from stripping the disease down to its essentials and asking ourselves what we could actually do about it.

  One advantage I had, oddly enough, was my scar. Unless you were blind, it was perfectly obvious that I, too, had been obliged to weather one of life’s rougher passages. At first, in the counselling sessions, this didn’t occur to me. Five months with Rory had done miracles for my physical self-confidence, and I was largely oblivious to the odd stare from passing strangers. People with HIV, though, are extraordinarily aware of the problems of others. They approach life from an entirely different point on the compass, and the girl, especially, was eager to know what had happened to me. When I told her I’d been in a car crash she was immediately sympathetic, and I suspect that of everything I said to her during our time together, this was by far the most therapeutic. I’d been there. I knew something of what it was like. I carried the scar to prove it, the stigmata. I was a fellow sufferer, one of the afflicted. To my shame, I have to say that I made the most of this, not exploiting it exactly, but certainly doing nothing to hide the evidence that I’d been to the edge, and looked over, and crept back again. In a deeply private way, it gave me immense satisfaction to try and turn the whole ghastly experience to good account.

  By now, it was mid-December. For a while, I’d been dreading the end of the year. Christmas would mean Rory returning to his family. There’d be presents to buy for the kids, decorations to hang, a tree to dress, mince pies to warm, carols to sing. They’d all pile in the Volvo and drive back down to the family home in Devon, and the chances are that I’d probably be there too, the ghost at the feast, haunting my parents’ house at Budleigh, thinking of nothing but Rory.

  My work at Charlie’s cushioned the approach of this nightmare to some degree, but the three evenings in the working week that I wasn’t there I still spent with Rory at the flat in Fulham, and deep inside I knew that I relied on him no less. My little bit of independence had made him, if anything, even more attentive, while I, without question, was obsessed by the man. He had, in a very exact sense, become the most important part of me, the part without which I simply couldn’t function. With him, with the knowledge of him, with the certainty that we’d see each other, at the very least, within two days, I could do anything. Work was no problem. Even the bloody computer had its charms. But without him, without Rory, I knew with the same absolute certainty that there’d be nothing but darkness. Rory meant everything to me. We were inseparable. We were beyond division. One way or another, the thing would resolve itself. Had to.