Manners Page 5

  Everyone started off trying to look keen and interested but eventually that peculiar committee fatigue took over and everyone was slouching sleepily. She handed out jobs and tasks, and then it was just me and her and the door closing slowly on its weighted hinge. I watched it shut, carpet sealing the sound. She slid me a piece of paper. It was a print-out of the page I deleted.

  'Do any of these offenders-Robert Clanton, James Clanton, Tony and/or Tina Clanton have anything incriminating over you?'

  'No, ma'am.'

  'It'll be better for you if you tell me now.'

  'Yes, ma'am. No, they don't have anything incriminating over me.'

  'You knew your work was being monitored prior to promotion and all, and that's what worries me. There's something self-destructive in you. You're up for promotion, Acting Sergeant for a few weeks, so you must have known your work would be monitored. That's why — I mean, that's almost more worrying than the actual offence. I'm not sure I like police-officers with self-destructive streaks. And using my name, my code — you're very lucky you're still in the job. Because I'm gonna let you stay on, even though if you make a balls-up now it will look bad on me, I'm the one that will look bad for not sacking you now. You understand? The only reason you're still here is because you can do the job. And because you've been … I hope you know what you've thrown away, John? And I can't neglect the fact that you have got a commendation … This is what you call a Bizarre Aberration. That's what it is — a Bizarre Aberration. You'll be on supervised desk-duty for an indefinite period.'

  'Thank you, ma'am.'

  *

  I sat in a room of VDUs at the nick. Half the people around me weren't even cops. Non-police-personnel: Johnny Full-Colour-Flow-Chart, Sally Rota-Sheet, Gilbert Standard-Reply-Sender.

  I was supposed to be looking for a missing witness statement that's not in the file it should be. (Whoompf adrenalin!) Instead I spent three strange hours looking for my concentration that's not in the computer where it should be, amid an accusatory, wronged and injured blur of miscellaneous witness statements on the microfiche.

  All the time I felt the Super was wrong. Why couldn't she see it was just a harmless bit of sentimentality? But was it? Or was it the first evidence of how the job was destabilizing me? Wholeness and division.

  It was six numb weeks in all on supervised shiny-arse duty, before I was allowed back to full service. I was overjoyed to be back on the job, but now I wish they'd never let me leave the computer room.

  The Birthday Suit

  'Shiny-arse.' Numb, shiny-arse in this Shaker chair. Here I sit in my second-hand junk-shop Shaker, wondering whether this stillness is meditative or just hypothermia. I get up from the chair and walk the pins and needles out of my legs.

  All the time I've been remembering the Liverpool kids and the Luton kid it's seemed like there was always this fateful dot on the horizon headed my way. But now the memory of Beverley comes, a memory which, like the girl herself, says it is all completely different from the fatalistic way I'm looking at it. There I was all miserable right after being reprimanded for deleting the Clanton file, and there she was down in that car park. She was once a dot on the horizon too, as she filled out the perspective in the low-ceilinged cavern. And I didn't know any different as I walked through the executive car park under the Lower West Stand at Highbury Stadium, where all the police horses in their wrap-around, new-wave glasses were standing down until Arsenal had made their point. Down in the underground car park I couldn't hear the crowd at all. I still didn't know her as I walked under the round yellow lights of the low-ceiling cement with its cathedral hush. Forty horses all in a row. Sleeping Beemers and Mercs absorbed yellow light on waxed bonnet and tinted screen. I smelt the newness of deep-tread black tyres and the odd heap of dry, fawn horse dung, packed so full of high-fibre straw it looked like wattle and daub.

  Dismounted police held slack bridles in shiny black knee-high riding boots sculpted to the shape of perfect human calves, boots which did all the standing for them. The talk was quiet, maybe to soothe the horses, or maybe in appreciation of how peaceful it was. The mild echo in this low-ceilinged cement cavern gave a cumulative hum and whirr of upbeat reflection, attenuated tones, far from the sour gripes of the canteen or squad car. An Assistant Chief and a Super in their flat-tops gave me a look for wandering down here, but they were from Kentish Town and so I felt no way. Plus I no longer had to fear doing my legs: I'd already done 'em with the Clantons' file which hung over me like a low ceiling.

  No one else around. Just us. Just cops. It was like we'd met in the hushed, smiling benignity of heaven. This was the only time, I reflected, that you could be out on duty and yet there was absolutely no chance of you dying within the hour. Well there might be a pitch invasion that you'd have to clear but nothing's going to happen to you down here. And so everyone was relaxed and nattered quietly. I smiled and said 'hi' to the WPC who was still sitting on her horse at the end of the line.

  'Hi,' she replied. 'What's it like up there?' Strong Brummie accent.

  'Yeah, it's fine. Hello boy!' I said, lightly stroking the horse's dorsal neck. 'Is he a calm horse?'

  'It's a she.'

  'Oh right.' Oh shit.

  'Yeah, the mares have got the best temperament under pressure,' she grinned.

  'What's she called?'

  'Spats.'

  'Spats?' I pointed a finger accusingly at the horse: 'Fifty quid you lost me at Newmarket! 5-1 my arse!' A few officers turned their heads slowly at my raised voice; turned their heads like grazing horses distantly disturbed. 'Were you at the away supporters' end as they were coming in?' I asked her more quietly.

  'No, Plympton Road.'

  'The Middlesbrough fans are unbelievable. Beyond white trash, something else.' She frowned at this, not sure what sort of cop I was, and patted the horse's neck on the side furthest from me. 'You know that song they all sing, every team, you know: 'We're by far the greatest team the world has ever seen" Well, I'm by the away supporters and the Middlesbrough fans re so fucking thick they can't even get that right … They actually sing: And it's Middlesbrough, Middlesbrough FC, We're by far the best team at football the world has ever seen.

  'Unbelievable. I mean that's a two-line song. How difficult is that?'

  And then she smiled, turned my way.

  'Yeah,' she said, 'you'd think at least one of them would say "I was watching Match of the Day last week and we've got the words wrong."' She did quite a good clogs accent with it.

  'Yeah, you'd think one of them would've noticed. Hi, I'm John, what's your name?'

  'Beverley.'

  'What do you do?'

  'I'm a police-officer.'

  'Yeah, me too.'

  'You're not doing much work now though.'

  'No, I better be getting back. Have you got like a Thermos or anything?'

  'What for?'

  'Eh?'

  'What for?'

  'Well I just wanted a drink.'

  'Can't you get one out there?'

  'Not really.'

  She sighed. Looked at me to check something. And then opened a chute in her stiff brown leather saddle-bag. I took a swig of the Bovril; it was laced with whisky.

  'See yer,' I said, handing it back.

  It's a denigrating act to ask a WPC out when you're on duty, canteen culture and all that, but I made a mental note of the CM 103 on her shoulder, ran it through HOLMES and phoned Beverley Drum at Muswell Hill nick a few weeks later.

  'She's left,' said a female voice in the section house.

  'What time's she back do you think?'

  'No, no, no. She's left.'

  'What, transferred?'

  'No, left the job.'

  'Have you got a forwarding number?'

  'Who are you, sorry?'

  'I'm at Holloway relief, there was just some outstanding business, er, we were both on public order at the Arsenal Saturday, and I just need her to sign a charge sheet,' I lied. Got the number, though.
>
  *

  'Was your hair that colour when you were on the job?'

  'No, I dyed it again, I had it auburn before.' Now it was an orangey, blondey affair.

  'Why did you join?'

  'I always wanted to go on a horse.'

  'Didn't you have a pony when you were a girl?' I asked.

  'In Chelmsley Wood? No!' she laughed.

  'Where's that?'

  'Birmingham, clivorr!'

  'No, no I just thought, you know it could've been Wolverhampton or Coventry.'

  'There was this policewoman who used to gallop her horse through the park near where we lived which had all these dips in it and I seen her galloping her horse on patrol when I was a kid and I thought, "I'll have some of that! That looks like a grin!'"

  'And that's the only reason you joined?'

  'No, not the only reason.'

  'Of course. Sorry.'

  'And to drive a car with the sirens going!' She laughed, revolving her chin around while she laughed still looking at me. She was like one of those people who join the army just to drive a tank and leave at the end of the trial period. Beverley joined because she was mad and I joined because I was straight. She joined because it's part of a crazy CV which will probably go on to include being an Angolan People's Front mercenary, circus bareback rider, archaeology volunteer, special-needs teacher, speedway finalist, teaching people to ride elephants in India. She was one of those people who feel that the earth is theirs, while I'm one of those people who feel like we have to do our very best just to be allowed to stay here, who live in fear of being told by a pedestrians' representative to leave the streets, go home and not come out again. It might happen tomorrow. (Me and Lee fall to the pavement together.) On one of our first dates I learnt, among other things, that: 'Humans think they've invented glue but they haven't. It doesn't work. We haven't invented it yet. Loctite, Superglue, none of those actually stick things together.'

  'You can't say we haven't invented it, though.'

  'Well, have you ever stuck anything together with them, successfully?'

  'No,' I laughed, shaking my head at the merry shite I was hearing.

  'Like we haven't invented them trays you make ice-cubes in, either — '

  'Of course not!'

  'No, right, 'cos you can't get the ice-cubes out without smashing the tray into all little cracked-up bits of plastic, can yer?'

  *

  Sitting here tonight picking bits of formica off the table with its wax sealant. The formica cracks loudly. I snap too big a bit off and try and put it back. I give up and go on peeling the formica. I like the cracking sound it makes when I snap off a large slice of black formica from the glue. Maybe I'm just saying goodbye to that other life, now that … with what's ahead of me. Tomorrow. Tomorrow morning. At nine o'clock.

  Hard to believe it's the same drum. Hard to believe this is the same table where Beverley was once bent over with her skirt around her waist. Hard to believe this septic flat where I hang suspended with all the maggots of bad memory breeding is the same place where I was once grinning from ear to ear with Beverley here, and where I looked like an out-take from a film about a happy man …

  *

  'It's your turn to get the wine,' I say to her as we lie in bed.

  'My turn!' she says.

  'Yeah, so I can ogle you.'

  'No, you get it so I can ogle you.'

  'But it's your turn.'

  Beverley brings her face up close, beaming that full-on beam of her beautiful, open, moon face at me. The eyelashes of her small, green, loving eyes look long and nude without her sometimes glasses. But this eye-contact is only a trick! A ruse: she gets up dragging the sheet with her.

  'What's this?' cries the king in thwarted fury. She laughs and stands togaed in the middle of the room. 'Off with that sheet!' She turns and walks towards the kitchen. I jump up and unveil the white statue. She runs and hides behind the wall of the kitchen nook. I return to bed with the sheet.

  'I'm not coming out till you give me my sheet,' she calls.

  'No, I'm really cold, brr, freezing. Lovely sheet. Warm.' She disappears into the kitchen. I lie back and listen to her striplit clankings in the naked kitchen. Alone I notice a smile on my face and realize it's been there for ages.

  She peeps out from the kitchen wall, resolutely shaking her head.

  'OK, look,' I say, 'I'll turn the light off.' Darkness. 'There.'

  Lacking a full moon, all the light-pollution of London can muster, through curtainless, night-blind windows, is barely enough to render her as a vague semi-luminous smudge haze. The ghost pads gently on bare feet towards me. I crack the bedside light on. A glass in each stranded hand, she is trapped and smiling, and giving it that mock-weary head gesture that's like a visual tut.

  'Give us a twirl,' says the market porter.

  'No.'

  'Oh go on, please. Just one.'

  'I'll spill the drinks.'

  'OK,' I say — all magnanimous concession, 'you can put 'em down first.'

  She sets the drinks down and does the Anthea Redfern to my chin-on-the-floor Brucie.

  Orange hair. Six foot tall, big, broad, freckly, white shoulders. High hips snow-capped with flesh, the undulating turn, her odd NHS-discount belly-button. Both the stretchmarks on the arse and pale, pale skin she hated and I loved. Powerful thighs, most affecting thick scars on the knee; the strange skin at crotch junction is shockingly soft with a scary thalidomide texture. But there's something else as well. Something that means she is right to be reluctant. Another voice in my head. A harsh, judgmental voice, pointing out where the shape of her stomach and tits does not conform to the pornographic template. All these intruders. All this light pollution from Soho and the West End. And even from places I'd never go but whose glow is on the ether: the astral neon night pollution of seedy shit-holes like Stringfellow's and the Raymond Revue bar.

  Standing with the wine glasses by her ankles, Beverley wears her flesh like motley. Feeling foolish she does the twirl too fast, especially the bit with her arse to me. I knew that that was because her arse was the bit she was most selfconscious about, least pleased with. Her arse thrilled me with its shape but she was bothered by these power stretchmarks where the taut skin couldn't take the pace.

  I lodge an official complaint. She twirls again, slower.

  This is her birthday suit. The phrase birthday suit is on the money because we wear our nakedness like clothes. Some people wear their naked bodies like a comfy, old, familiar tracksuit they can slob unselfconsciously in. Others wear their nudity like ceremonial attire, with the absurd self-importance of Orangemen. To some it's unfamiliar and itchy, a size too big or small. To others — especially girls with small tits — it has all the fun of the dressing-up box. Some women wear their naked bodies like a party frock, others like tomboy mucking-about gear. Some women wear their birthday suit like a reluctant ballgown on a riot girl: embarrassed by its extravagance and fanciness, wishing they could play it down, both enjoying and being embarrassed by the glamorous get-up, the effect it's having. Some naked people feel their birthday suit is a hand-me-down. They are always trying to hide the mend-and-make-do and display the hopefully fashionable, nearly new bits. Some women wear their birthday suits as a suit: business-like, let's get down to it, with serious face and studied movement. Whereas to others their birthday suit is something they've had to wear as a forfeit, like a career woman in a rah-rah skirt: not what she would have chosen herself, you understand. To some it's like their nude body is a shameful shrift they've been told to wear. Not theirs. 'You want fries with that?' Even if such people have bodies which are, on paper, statistically perfect, their bodies are never, somehow, beautiful, because disowned. Often such people have faces which are tireder, more worn, a shade darker or older-looking than their unlived-in bodies.

  Beverley spins round again, slower, as she begins to wear her nudity proper. A transition beautiful to see. And in that transition comes a glimpse of her secret
relation to her own body, her face reflective now, abstracted. Birthday suit because your relation to your body comes from the mother and lovers that called you baby.

  She spins again, fast, confident, swooping to scoop the wine glasses, and coming up out the helter-skelter, jokily halfsinging, 'Wonder womaan!' her arms wide with a slopping glass in each hand. She comes to a stop facing me.

  And now she wears her birthday suit like the outlawed colours of a secret corps. A quiet, defiant pride, a pact with subversive acts. The best-kept secret …

  'How did you get those two bruises on your arse?'

  'How do you think?' she replies, grinning. (She was seeing someone else for the first few weeks I saw her. But he didn't last long.) I think I know the answer even now, but I go, 'I dunno.'

  'Go on.'

  'You banged into something?' She rolls her eyes to the ceiling. 'Someone … hit you?'

  'Yes,' she goes, but as if she was saying, 'Dob!'

  'Spanking?' I croak.

  'Yes,' she says placidly — an inner secret, approach with care, amused.

  'With something?'

  'No, I think it was just a hand.'

  'Do you like that?'

  'Yes,' she says.

  'Do … you want me to … ?'

  'You couldn't go through with it.' How to get what you want from a man! 'Don't worry about it. I'll go somewhere else!!!' But still I'm not sure about spanking her. Once you go through that door, says Bluebeard, things will never be the same.

  Six weeks without a day apart, but only after the bruises of that other man had faded entirely from sight was I ready to cross the Rubicon. Building to it, that night six weeks later, I ran my palm over both her bare cheeks, grinding my hand into them, harder, there was a real sense of threshold, like a palm signature in the Pentagon to key the sliding door to the Red Button Room. Building and building to it. Like trying to resist a force? Pushing her arse as if pushing something away, or trying to? I felt through her arse flesh the double bone of her pelvis: twin towers of Beaver Stadium.