One Good Turn

“No need to do that.”

“No trouble, Martin.”

They had ended up going to Newcastle together on an eleven-thirty King’s Cross GNER. In Newcastle, Martin had chosen an office block at random in the town center and said, “Well, this is me,” and plunged into a lift. He ended up on the eighth floor in the offices of a time-share company, where it was a relief to discuss the purchase of a luxury property in Florida, “adjacent to the golf course and leisure facilities.” He took the unsigned papers away with him “to look over” and threw them in the nearest bin on the way out. Needless to say, Bryan was waiting for him down in the foyer. “Good meeting?” he inquired genially when he caught sight of Martin. They returned together on the four-thirty train to Edinburgh, and somehow or other Bryan ended up in a taxi at Waverley with him. Martin couldn’t think of anything to say to him short of “Fuck off out of my life forever, you crazy madman,” and anyway by the time he’d paid off the taxi, Bryan was already halfway up the path, saying, “Shall I put the kettle on? I wanted to have a word with you about my novel. I’ve been thinking about putting it all into the present tense.”

The following year Bryan Legat fell to his death off Salisbury Crags. It was unclear whether he had jumped or fallen (or, indeed, been pushed). Martin had felt relief and guilt in equal measures when he heard of Bryan’s demise. Something should have been done to help a person who was clearly so deluded, but all Martin had been able to say to him was, “The way you use the vernacular is quite startling.”

So, when put on the spot, he had found it hard to refuse Richard Mott. When Richard said, “How much shall we say?” Martin said, “Oh, no-don’t be silly. I couldn’t take money off you.” As a gift, Richard had brought with him a DVD of his last tour, and in the few days since then, he had bought one bottle of wine, most of which he drank himself, and as a contribution to the housework, he had loaded the dishwasher once, attempting to make a comic performance out of the mundane task. Martin had to reposition all the crockery in the machine when Richard left the kitchen. He had also bought an expensive steak that he fried for himself, splattering the whole cooker with grease. The rest of the time he seemed to eat out.

Two days ago, on his opening night (which Martin had managed to avoid), Richard had invited Martin for “a curry” with “some people” here from London for his show. Martin had suggested the Kalpna in St. Patrick Square because he was a vegetarian (“Nothing with a face, actually”), but somehow or other they had ended up at a rabidly carnivorous place that some other “people” in London had recommended to Richard. When it came to the bill, Martin found himself insisting on picking the whole thing up. “Thanks, Martin, thanks a lot,” one of the London people said, “although I could have put it on expenses, you know.”

“How do you feel about smoking in the house?” Richard had asked ten minutes after he arrived, and Martin had been caught between wanting to be a warm, welcoming host and wanting to say that he loathed everything to do with cigarettes. “Well…” he began, and Richard said, “Just in my room, of course. I wouldn’t make you breathe my filthy, carcinogenic smoke,” but every morning when Martin came downstairs there was a little pile of butts in the living room in whatever saucer or plate (and once a tureen) he had foraged from the Wedgwood service Martin had bought when he moved into the house.

Richard came in very late and then didn’t surface until midday, which was something to be thankful for. Once he was up he spent his time on the phone, he had a new videophone that Martin admired politely (“Yeah, she’s a sexy mother, isn’t she?” Richard agreed), even though he thought it was odd and rather dumpy and reminded him of a Star Trek communicator. Richard had downloaded the theme song from Robin Hood, the old fifties television program, as his ringtone, and the sound of it, rendered tinnily tiny and stupid, was slowly driving Martin crazy. As an antidote Martin himself had recently downloaded Birdsong and had been pleasantly surprised by how authentic the birds sounded.

Looking round, he found a clock behind him on the wall that said it was half-past one. It felt much later, the day had lost its shape, distorted under the weight of unexpected reality.

Martin had read a spiteful review of Richard Mott’s show in the Scotsman that said, among other things, “Richard Mott’s humor creaks with banality these days. He hashes up the same old tired material he was using ten years ago.The world has moved on, but Richard Mott hasn’t.” Martin felt embarrassed just reading it. He couldn’t mention to Richard that he’d seen it because that would mean they would both have to face the awfulness of it all. Martin had acquired enough bad reviews himself to know the abysmal feelings they generated.

“I never read my reviews,” Richard volunteered morosely after his opening night. Martin didn’t believe him. Everyone read their own reviews. It was some years since Richard had “done the Festival,” and whatever feelings he had once had about Edinburgh (he had been gloriously successful here at the beginning of his career) had now turned mostly to antipathy. “You see, it’s a great city,” he said to one of the “some people from London” during their flesh-feeding frenzy in the phobia-inducing, crowded Indian restaurant. “Fantastic to look at and all that, but it has no libido. And obviously you have to blame Knox for that.” Martin hated the way Richard said “Knox” with such offhand familiarity. He felt like saying, “Knox might have been a dour, tight-arsed, puritanical bastard, but he was our dour, tight-arsed, puritanical bastard, not yours.”

“Exactly!” another one of them said. He was wearing narrow spectacles with thick black rims and smoked even more than Richard. Martin, a spectacle wearer since the age of eight, wore rimless lightweight glasses in an attempt to disguise the fact that he had defective eyesight, rather than making a feature of it. “No libido-very good, Richard.” The man with the black-framed spectacles jabbed the air with his cigarette to emphasize his agreement. “That’s Edinburgh exactly.” Martin wanted to defend his home city but couldn’t quite work out how. It was true, Edinburgh didn’t have a libido, but why would you want to live in a city that did?

“Barcelona!” another of Richard’s friends shouted across the table (they were loud and not a little drunk), and the man with the old-fashioned but trendy spectacles barked back, “Rio de Janeiro!” And so the shouting of cities went on (“Marseille! New York!”) until they got to “Amsterdam!” and a row broke out over whether Amsterdam possessed its own libido or was “merely a locus for the exploitative commercial transactions of other people’s libidos.”

“Sex and capitalism,” Richard intervened languidly, “what’s the difference?” Martin waited for a punch line, but apparently there wasn’t one. Personally he thought there was a lot of difference between the two, but then he remembered undressing in front of Irina in that awful hotel room, with its view of the Neva and the cockroaches scuttling along the skirting boards. “Well-upholstered. Built for comfort, not for speed,” he’d joked, cringing with embarrassment.

“Da?” She laughed accommodatingly, apparently not understanding a word. The very remembrance of it made him double up as if he’d been hit by an invisible fist.

“Girls,” one of them said suddenly. “We should go and find some girls after this.”This idea was greeted with frightening enthusiasm.

“Pole dancing.” Richard sniggered like an adolescent boy.

“Oh, sorry, Martin,” another of them said. “Sorry to be so rampantly hetero.”

“Do you think I’m gay?” Martin asked, surprised. They all turned to look at him as if he’d said something interesting for the first time.

“There’s nothing wrong with that, Martin,” Richard said. “Everyone’s gay.”

Martin would have argued with this ridiculous statement, but he had just discovered that he was chewing on a piece of chicken from his “vegetable biryani.” He removed it from his mouth as discreetly as he could and put it on the side of his plate. The last gristly remnant of some poor abused bird that had been pumped full of hormones and antibiotics and water in a foreign country. He could have wept for it.

“It’s okay, Martin,” Richard Mott said, slapping him on the back. “You’re with friends.”

Without asking him whether he wanted to go or not, Richard informed him that he had left a ticket for Martin for the radio showcase at the box office, but when Martin got to the venue, the indifferent girl behind the counter said to another indifferent girl, “Are there any comps in Richard Mott’s name?” The other girl made a face and glanced around while the first girl returned to glaring at her computer screen.

Martin found himself staring at a poster for Richard’s show. It was a close-up shot of Richard making a quirky face. A strapline running under it said, COMIC VIAGRA FOR THE MIND. Martin thought that sounded off-putting rather than inviting.

When nothing more was forthcoming from either of the girls, Martin pointed out a rickety wooden dovecote on