The Facts of Life (63 page)

‘Shit. But they knew that was going to happen.’

‘Yeah but they’ve just heard their local authority grant’s been cut to about two hundred quid, haven’t they?’

‘
What
?’ Jamie was incredulous. ‘Why?’

‘There’s been some fucking report wheeling out a load of statistics that say there’s never going to be a hetero epidemic.’

‘So? There’s no need for a helpline? Other lives don’t count? What about the worried well? What about rape victims?’

‘That’s what I said. When I hung up I explained to that old git and I said it was a fucking holocaust.’

‘Ah.’

‘And
he
flew off the handle then. I didn’t understand at first. Thought he was agreeing with me and was just pissed off about the grant. Then I realised he was saying there was no comparison. I said … You don’t want to hear this.’ He ruffled Jamie’s hair.

‘
Sam
! Tell me.’

‘I said that cutting the grant was no different to sending Jews to ovens. It was discarding a whole bunch of innocent people who just happened to be in the minority. Then that … that stupid old
wanker
–’

‘Steady.’

‘Well he is.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said,’ Sam assumed a parodic German accent. ‘“Zere is a vorld of difference between a religious culture and vhere deviants like you choose to put your dicks.”’

Jamie was silenced a moment, shocked.

‘He doesn’t talk like that,’ he said at last. ‘You know he doesn’t.’

‘I know,’ Sam admitted. ‘But that’s the way I heard it. Fucking Kraut.’

‘He’s as English as you or me.’

‘Yeah, but –’

‘Yeah but nothing. He was upset, Sam.’

‘So was I upset.’

‘He lost his parents in a death camp, for God’s sake. His only sister –’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Hardly. She was experimented on.’

‘You never told me.’

‘It’s not the kind of thing that naturally comes up in a conversation. Anyway, I assumed Alison had told you.’

‘She hadn’t. Christ.’

Jamie hugged Sam’s legs, twisted his head back against Sam’s chest to reassure him. ‘You needed to get angry and so did he,’ he said softly. ‘Come on. Let’s get to bed.’

But Sam insisted on mopping up the spilled wine and sweeping away the glass first. Jamie sat on the sofa, yawning, hugging a cushion to himself for warmth and watching. Sam worked in silence but the argument was evidently still repeating itself in his head because he abruptly stood up, clutching the dust pan and the brush, which was now stained red with wine, and said, ‘It wasn’t just Jews they sent to the ovens, you know. It was people like us, too.’

‘I
know
. I’m sure he does too.’

Sam was about to reply but he paused a moment. He looked down at the panful of green, jagged edges.

‘Only … I’m not really like that. You know that, don’t you?’ he said, almost apologetically.

‘I know.’

‘I’m … I am with you but I’m not interested in other blokes.’

‘I
know
, Sam. It’s all right. I’m honoured.’

Sam walked away to the kitchen.

‘Just thought you should know, that’s all,’ he said softly.

The following day, while Sam was at work on the repointing, Jamie walked over with a jug of coffee to find his grandfather in the studio. An old acquaintance, guilty at not visiting the hospital, had sent him a packet of Blue Mountain beans, so the luxurious brew was by way of a peace offering.

‘Made us some special coffee,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Are you working?’

‘No.’ His grandfather swung around on the piano stool. ‘Not really.’ He carefully set a pencil back in the jam jar to the left of his keyboard while Jamie poured them each a cupful.

‘I’ve been invited to stand in as conductor for some concerts in Stuttgart,’ his grandfather announced. ‘I think I’ll go. I’ll have to leave in a couple of days, so I’ll probably go up to London tomorrow to sort a few things out with the record company. But I think you two can manage now.’ He paused. ‘If I made a reservation for dinner in Rexbridge tonight, would your appetite be up to it? My treat. A reservation for the three of us, that is?’

‘Yes,’ Jamie smiled. ‘That would be great. Thank you. Er. Grandpa?’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t expect Sam to apologise for what he said last night. He won’t. Because he meant it. And, well, you know, he’s hurting quite badly right now.’

‘That makes two of us,’ his grandfather observed quietly. He was wearing a green suede waistcoat Jamie had always liked.

‘I like that,’ Jamie pointed. ‘Very smart. Will you leave it to me in your will?’

‘Of course.’ Feeling unable to reach out to his grandson, Edward touched the waistcoat instead, smoothing the nap of the suede.

‘So,’ Jamie said. ‘Since you’re about to disappear again, what about my therapeutic singing lesson?’

‘Are you quite sure?’ His grandfather frowned. Jamie nodded, going to lean on the piano’s flank.

‘But there are probably spiders down there it’s been so long,’ he said.

‘Well in that case … I think something simple, in the middle of the voice but,’ his grandfather stretched up to take a book from the shelf beside him, ‘We need something with long phrases to stretch you nicely. Fauré?’

‘Fine,’ Jamie shrugged. ‘My French is terrible, though.’

‘Yes.’ The old man raised an eyebrow. ‘I remember.
Après un Rêve
. I’ll take it quite slowly. Stand up straight. Shoulders back. Legs apart.’

‘I remember.’

It was only later, when they were dressing up for dinner and Sam confessed to having heard his singing from the top of a ladder, that Jamie realised his grandfather had taken care to choose a song he had already heard his lover admire.

‘Well that’s as near to an understanding as I think we’ll get,’ he said wistfully.

‘How do you mean?’ Sam asked, abandoning the tie he had been struggling with. ‘Do I really have to wear this fucking thing? It’s like a noose.’

‘No.’ Jamie shook his head, smiling.

‘So how do you mean, “understanding”?’

‘Oh. Nothing,’ Jamie answered briskly. ‘Just being sentimental. Shall I wear the red shirt or the green?’

‘Where does it ache?’ Alison asked. ‘Here?’

‘Left a bit. That’s it. Oh! Oh yes! Oh God, that’s good. You can press harder if you like. Oh yes. God!’

‘
Now
I know what you sound like in bed!’

‘Shut up and rub.’

Jamie was recovering from a four-week infection of cryptosporidiosis. Chronic attacks of diarrhoea four or more times a day stripped him of the proteins and calories the hash gingerbread had helped him regain and his weight had plummeted to an all-time low. The top of the fridge was laden with an assortment of high calorie body-building drinks and liquid foods he took several times a day – Complan, Bengers, Horlicks, Lucozade, Dunns River – drinks for little old ladies or hulking athletes, and his pockets rattled with vitamin bottles. Alison felt sure that left to his own devices he would not have bothered, but he saw how the weight loss worried them all. He carried a kitchen timer clipped to his shirt front whose beeping reminded him when it was time for more drugs. She noticed that he always sat on a cushion now to shield his protuberant bones. He felt the cold too. There was not a breath of wind and they were out in full sunshine that was truly warm. Alison had only a tee-shirt and flimsy skirt on but Jamie wore a thick cardigan, its collar turned up to warm his neck. Massaging away an ache in his shoulders, she could feel his bones even through the layer of chunky wool. It was like stroking a greyhound. Tension caused by the cold he felt seemed in turn to bring on muscular aches and pains. Both she and Sam had offered to drive him to the clinic in Rexbridge for a course of aromatherapeutic massage and reflexology but the very thought of travel left him too sleepy to move.

Sam was high up on a ladder, scraping old paint off a window frame. With the easy assurance of an acrobat, he turned around on his rung so that he was leaning towards the house, tugged his shirt off, let it fall and returned to his scraping, entirely unaware of his audience below. Stunned, for all that she was now as familiar with his body as any workmate, Alison had frozen to watch.

‘It’s so unfair,’ she said, remembering herself and beginning to massage the back of Jamie’s neck with her thumbs and forefingers.

‘What is?’

‘Why couldn’t
I
have been a man?’

‘Not
that
again. You could have an operation you know. It’s very sophisticated nowadays, apparently. No more turning aside at the moment of passion to slip in icky silicone rods. Now they let you puff the thing up with a little pump disguised as one of your balls.’

‘Oh
please
!’ She cuffed him on the hair and flopped into a deck-chair beside him. If she massaged him much longer, he’d start to bruise. ‘You know what I mean. Just look at him.’

‘I am. I am.’

‘He’s so assured. So easy. If a woman took off her shirt like that it would be a statement. When he does it, it’s … He … He just does it.’

‘He never used to strip off on site. He’s very shy really. Anyway, there are plenty of fat slobs who take their shirts off too. You wouldn’t want to be one of them.’

‘Those awful ones with that sort of bristly cleavage where their jeans are slipping down!’

‘So what sort of man would you have liked to be?’ Jamie looked at her quizzically, shading his eyes from the sun.

‘Oh. I dunno,’ she said. ‘Handsome. Clever. Self-contained. I’d have liked very dark thick eyebrows and blue eyes and a nose like Paul Newman’s. And I’d like to have been a really good jazz pianist. How about you? Haven’t you ever wondered what kind of girl you’d have been?’

‘I’ve always been quite happy being male.’ he said.

‘Yes, but.’

‘Well presumably I’d have been you.’

She laughed; the thought was so very strange. She imagined him looking at her with her face.

‘It could have happened so easily,’ she said. ‘Would you have minded?’

‘Not a bit.’ He grinned. ‘Normality has its compensations.’

‘Don’t you call me normal.’

‘You know what I mean.’ He stretched luxuriously at the thought. ‘But if I’d been a woman I’d have had lots of babies.’

‘Really?’ she asked. He had never discussed children with her before; none of their close friends had any as yet.

‘I’d surround myself,’ he went on. ‘I’d found a tribe. I’d have a huge nurturing bosom – like Liz Taylor in the early ‘seventies or some whore out of Fellini – and I’d have masses of hair. The children wouldn’t be very clean but they’d be well fed and loved and happy.’

‘Who would you want to father them?’ she asked, smiling, guessing his answer.

‘Who do you think?’ Jamie glanced up at Sam. ‘He’d have to marry me first, though. Make an honest woman of me. He’d probably stray, you know, start sleeping around, because I’d take a kind of perverse delight in losing my spectacular figure. But he’d always come back and I’d always forgive him and our makings-up would be sure to make me pregnant again.’

‘I can’t believe you’re saying all this.’

‘Neither can I. Maybe it’s the drugs talking.’

‘Why
do
male-to-female transsexuals have such pre-war attitudes? Roberta at the helpline wants to have her bottom pinched and be propositioned by married men during train journeys.’

‘It’s because gender matters so much to them and it’s hurt them so badly. They want certainty. They want men to be men, and women to be subservient. Why don’t
you
have babies?’ he added abruptly.

‘
Jamie!
’ She laughed, shocked. ‘Babies need time and money and responsibility and … and a suitable father.’

‘So?’ He glanced up at the ladder then back at her. ‘Have babies with him.’ He made it sound the most natural thing in the world. Which of course, she reflected, it could be.

‘Sssh,’ she said.

‘He can’t hear us. He’s got the blow torch going.’

‘Don’t Jamie. This is silly.’

‘No it isn’t. I’m breaking Pepper’s Law and plotting our destinies. Since I can’t have his babies, why shouldn’t you?’

‘He’s gay, for one thing.’

‘No he isn’t.’

‘Whatever. He’s not …’ She broke off as the full significance of what he had said sank in, then pushed it aside with instinctive anger. ‘Just stop it, Jamie.’

‘
He
’d want to. He loves children. He’s a big softy. I used to catch him looking enviously at young fathers in the park.’

‘Are you sure he was only envious?’

He looked up at Sam, refusing to acknowledge her jibe.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m sure he was. He looked as though he wanted to push a child on a swing, teach it football, carry it on his shoulders.’

‘Oh please. What’s come over you?’

‘You really don’t understand, do you?’ he asked.