She wanted to tell him, I’m not with you for an easy ride.
“All right then. If we can’t go on, if that’s what you reckon, then we go back. Motels are a waste of money.” She couldn’t keep the rancour out of her voice. Even though it would make Bob think badly of her. “So we go and find Mark and beg for a place to stay.”
Bob stared at her and she saw stirring in him vague pulses of anger, hurt and disappointment. Beside him Sally’s face was unreadable. But under the table she felt the swishing as her daughter kicked and swung her legs.
TONY’S BATHROOM WAS FULL OF CLUTTER. ON ONE SIDE OF THE TOILET was a wooden armoire with a marble top, littered with shells and oddly sprouting plants. A slim volume of poetry pointed one corner politely at the sitter. To the other side and on the floor squatted a dirty fish tank, whose inhabitants moved through their green gloom in contemplative silence. The walls were plastered with Art Nouveau prints. Mark took all this in as he entered, bursting for a pee, thinking, Tony’s tastes have really changed.
He swayed on the spot over the toilet boil aiming and was disconcerted by the fish peering out of the top of the tank. They looked as if they expected to be fed. Pissing was a great relief right now, as if he were emptying his body of all the toxins accumulated in the last week or so. It kept coming out long enough.
Like Peggy, Mark was peculiar about whom he let see him pissing. It seemed a funny thing to want to watch. Men did it communally all the time, although generally Mark kept out of that. He was always the one, when faced with the jostling at the urinals, to slip into a cubicle. He wasn’t sure why. In case someone made a move, in case they looked down at him, came shuffling up—or, worse still, in case he looked at them.
So at the sound of the tap being turned on, the gush of water, he jumped. Richard was standing at the sink, rinsing vomit from his mouth, pale and shivering. His look was deadly serious, as though he were equally shocked to be disturbed. Yet he must have seen Mark first.
Mark felt a fool, planted over the bog by the fish tank, dick peeking out and pissing as she stared round at Richard. Richard had even more Bolognese streaked down his white T-shirt now. His long hair dipped with icy water.
He took one step hesitantly, and then appeared to decide something. Richard strode across to Mark and gripped his upper body, one hand at the back of his head, and kissed him fiercely. Mark fumbled to keep his cock still trained in the right direction, resisted at first and then, feeling suddenly supported, relaxed into the kiss.
The last few drops fell and he could taste a blend of whisky and tomato from Richard. He thought, But the dirty bastard’s just thrown up! How can I be doing this? Yet it didn’t matter. Now, at last, Mark was getting a taste of the inner man and he loved it.
Richard pulled back, gently flushing the toilet, took a tissue and carefully dabbed Mark’s prick. When he kissed him again, stronger this time, he pressed his palm down upon it as if both to provoke and repress its erection. Mark was shocked more by the bristle of Richard’s beard. It wasn’t the same, kissing a man. He remembered now. Under the rustle and clash of stubbles, you never quite expected that soft whiteness. Mark felt himself pressing his mouth to the side of that face, sensing the complexities of that flesh. And he felt grateful. He gave a kind of half-sob of relief and shock, and because now Richard was wanking him steadily. He seemed much too easy and practised at this. Obscurely, this shocked Mark too. He’s barely in his twenties, he thought.
Fuck. This is everything I thought I’d left behind. Now Richard seemed like someone Mark had always known. Mark was getting to know the whole of him, all at once. The whole of him: this was the illusion he fell for every time.
And he had left falling for it all behind.
But God, it felt good.
Richard stopped. His hand slipped away and he stared over Mark’s shoulder.
“Christ, I’m sorry,” came Iris’s voice. “I just wanted to use the loo.”
Hurriedly, Mark tucked himself in.
“It’s all right,” Richard said. “We’ve finished in here, I think.”
He smiled at Iris as he took himself off downstairs. Mark washed his hands and left Iris to piddle in peace.
IT SEEMED SUCH A COMEDOWN, SUCH AN ANTI-CLIMAX. SAM HATED
giving in. It wasn’t her.
The journey back, however, was identical to the way home. She could almost imagine they were going the way she wanted.
Perhaps the snow was a little easier this way. Leeds was opening its clogged arteries and drawing them back in. It made it easy for them.
In the back, Sally was wide awake. She was waiting.
Sam said, “We’ll have to phone Mark at some point. Warn him to make sure we can find the house.”
“Yeah,” Bob said. He was perturbed and she didn’t feel like asking him about it. Naturally he wouldn’t be happy about throwing himself on the mercy of Mark and Tony. Male pride.
Mark and Tony. As if, suddenly, they were an item.
This is our great triumph and our fabulous procession home. All of it gone to pieces. This is the way all my plans go, she thought. She dreaded this feeling that all her fire and energy meant nothing in the end. That in the end she fell apart in the teeth of the storm.
The car was still pressing gently on, as if relieved and pleased, like Sally, to return to Mark.
Sam was concentrating on a separate rhythm. What was it? A slow rocking, side to side.
The raft on black
