Life After Joe (3 page)

I collapsed on my backside on the stairs. Scrambling round, I began belatedly to thank him for coming to my rescue. But the hall was empty, the door closed as tight in its frame as if he had never been there.

The next week was strange for me, mostly in that it was more normal, more like the weeks before Joe’s departure than any I’d managed in some time. I’d missed two sets of rounds but did not miss the third one, which probably went a long way towards saving my career. I volunteered for long shifts, minimising the empty-flat syndrome which so often triggered my searches for company elsewhere. Lou caught up with me in the hospital canteen, apologising for having bailed on me, and instead of brushing him off and pretending I didn’t remember, I apologised in turn for being so fucking unbearable. He was astonished and relieved, and we ended up having a more normal conversation than any we’d enjoyed for a while, both of us tacitly avoiding any mention of Joe.

I didn’t know what the difference was. It wasn’t so much that I’d bottomed out in the Powerhouse that Saturday: I knew from experience I could in fact dive a hell of a lot lower than that. Maybe it was knowing how close I’d come to being beaten raw, or worse, because I doubted the Parfitt lads on a rampage would have known when to stop. Maybe it was having had my degradation witnessed by Aaron. The more I tried not to think of him, the more he haunted my mind, and the more I didn’t want ever again to make that kind of first impression on a man like him. Not that I’d get the chance. If there were other beautiful, sexy, kindly, courtly oil riggers running about on the streets of Newcastle, they were all avoiding me. God—not only had he rescued me, he’d made such a gentlemanly catch when I’d thrown myself at him…Well, maybe that was it. Maybe being thought worthy of respect even in such a condition was making me think twice about further self-harm.

At all events, I spent a lot of that week replaying moments from that night in my head. They stuck up like volcanic islands from the sea of my drunken amnesia, and while some were god-awful, making me suddenly groan and clutch my head in the quiet of the library, I could dwell for a long time on the others. His appearance among the shadows in the underpass. The way he’d held me on the street outside my flat, the way his hands had cupped my shoulders…Even, God help me, the searing instant when I’d locked my gaze to his and shuddered to climax up against the wall in the House: his look then, and his wry admission of watching, had somehow partway redeemed me. Letting my mind go over these imperfect pleasures was a viable alternative to lying awake missing Joe, and that was such a relief that I went after the memories hard, turning them into fantasies where Nicky turned into Aaron, and Aaron did not display such nice manners in the doorway to my flat. For the first time in months, jerking off brought release and then sleep. When I did it thinking of Joe, all I could do afterwards was cry myself into a blinding insomniac headache.

The following Saturday night found me back at the Powerhouse. Of course I was looking for Aaron, but I kept that motive as carefully concealed from myself as from Lou. I didn’t want to be scared off my own turf by the likes of the Parfitts, I told both of us. I’d given Lou part of the story of my night’s escapade, but not all. Not the part where Aaron had come charging to my rescue like a knight in a scuffed but stylish leather jacket. Not his tender, gracious delivery of me to my front door. I wanted to keep those memories, not have them pawed over eagerly by Lou for signs of budding romance. I knew he wanted me to find someone, and I knew his motives were more than half guilt. And I didn’t want to admit, even to myself, that I could begin to consider anyone but Joe in anything other than the most rawly sexual light. Oh, I’d tumble half the town to take my mind off things, but to wait all week, hoping against hope that a sensible man like Aaron would even take the risk of encountering me again…No, I didn’t care if I didn’t see him, and with that in mind, set off for a very moderate night on the town, surrounded by a group of mates, promising Lou I’d stay on however short a leash he chose to hold.

The Parfitts were there, as well as Nicky. Both brothers were still quite well bruised up, and I only smiled modestly when Lou whistled in admiration. Wayne settled for dirty looks and a stomach-churning snog—not that I could really complain about public displays of affection—with poor Nicky, who looked as if he hadn’t been let out from under the bed in a week.

Aaron’s place at the bar was occupied by a scared-looking middle-aged businessman. I told myself I didn’t mind. That I certainly hadn’t expected to find him there, or anywhere else in the club’s booming shadows, and I wasn’t looking around for him. I concentrated on the lost art of having a few drinks without getting arseholed and grabbing the first half-willing prick that came near me. I could do it. “Riverside” came on, and my mouth dried out a bit, but this was the radio edit, its lyrics censored down to—well, just
riverside.
The world was a less interesting place than I’d given it credit for, that was all.

I told myself I could cope, and I did, pretty well, all that weekend and through a decent slice of the next week. I was almost back into a routine. My concentration wasn’t good enough for the reading and studying that might get me through my foundation-year exams, but I didn’t miss any more shifts. There was life after Joe. There had to be, hadn’t there? I just wished that instead of my constantly having to muster every scrap of my strength in order to feel normal, it would happen of its own accord. I didn’t want happy. Normal would have done. Still, on the whole I did a good job of faking it, until the doorbell rang at eight o’clock on Thursday, and Marnie was there on the doorstep.

The problem with Marnie was that you couldn’t dislike her—not even when you’d been dumped for her. She was sweet, self-contained, very intelligent in a quiet way. She was also a nurse. That was how Joe had met her. Joe and Marnie, doctor and nurse, love’s young dream. If she was aware of the stereotype, she bowed her head to it. To me, she’d never been anything other than courteous. Unapologetic, God knew, but why should she apologise? Winning Joe was no more her fault than losing him had been mine. On the few occasions when we’d met, we’d been scrupulously polite to each other, and this was the same. I asked her to sit down; made us both a cup of tea. She told me Joe was sorry not to have come round himself, but they’d both thought this might be better coming from her. Sitting back on the sofa, I wrapped my fingers firmly round the mug I’d found too hot to touch a second before, and I waited for it. News of a baby? That actually wouldn’t have upset me. Joe loved kids, and knowing he was getting one might have lessened my sense of our breakup’s utter futility and emptiness.

No. She’d had her shifts cut back. So had he. Times were tight for everyone, weren’t they, and really I must be finding this big flat a lot to heat and manage. It might work out best for everyone if it went on the market.

I put the mug down. My fingers were scarlet from tip to palm. I told her, quite steadily, I thought, that not only had I scraped together the mortgage payments to keep the place for the last half year, but I’d never asked Joe for a penny to help out and never would. He didn’t have to worry. Nor did she. And then Marnie, who beneath her quiet sweetness was incredibly determined, put her cards on the table and said Joe wanted his share in the value. And soon.

It shouldn’t have mattered. Bricks and mortar, right? Not Joe’s problem if I had dedicated the last few months to preserving some kind of mausoleum of our life together. Grocery cupboards still full of his favourite soups, wardrobes with the clothes he had left behind neatly hung up and ready for use. His toothbrush still in its holder beside mine. That one
was
pathetic actually. Watching Marnie, who was very sympathetically watching me, I made a mental note to bin the brush.

There was nothing I could do. Even if I’d wanted to put up a fight, the flat was jointly owned, and I couldn’t afford to buy Joe out. Marnie finished her tea. We talked about small things—the cold, how close it was to Christmas. Perhaps she thought about enquiring into my festive plans, but she was either too kind or didn’t have the nerve. As I saw her to the door, she said that if I would just let the odd viewer in, she would deal with the sale. I wouldn’t have anything to worry about.

Bricks and mortar. It shouldn’t have mattered, and yet, when she was gone, a kind of dull panic seized me. If Joe had been the heart of my life, this flat, these rooms, had been its bones, an enduring skeleton. Structure and shelter in the mess. Christ, it was like he’d died, and she’d come round and told me I couldn’t tend his grave.

That reflection did it. Self-disgust tore through me. I grabbed a coat and walked out. What was I going to do, sit around all night in the bones? The fucking graveyard? I shoved my hands in my pockets and headed off, up the beautiful street Joe and I had chosen to make home, way beyond the budget we’d discussed, but such a far cry from Shieldwell and the council wastelands that it had made both of us think we had made it. That we were safe. I went past the row of expensive little shops, keeping my eyes front and down. All right, maybe Marnie had a point, and I would be better off living somewhere I could look at the local baker’s without a hundred memories of weekend mornings, of taking turns to run out and get breakfast before leaping back into bed. Beyond the shops and the even nicer sweep of Georgian houses—not just tempting but prohibitive, and probably just as well—the Exhibition Park stretched out beneath its bleak, leafless trees. That was full of memories too, but I’d have to walk long miles around here to find a place that wasn’t. Striding blindly over the grass, I smiled bitterly. For a couple of nights recently I’d been the exhibition around here. I didn’t just do pubs and clubs. There were usually a couple of lads to be found hanging round beneath the bridges or lounging around the steps of the bandstand.

Must be too cold for them. If they
had
been on duty, it wouldn’t have made a difference—I was past even that grim comfort now, I told myself, hoping Marnie’s cloud might have a lining of dignified misery. That would have been a nice change…I made it through the park intact and onto the long straight road that led past the university’s medical school. Obviously even slowing down at that point would have been masochistic, and I kept walking, up past the digs we’d shared with Lou—roaring with music as I passed by, as if in loving memory of us—and the student pub on the corner. Beyond that was the edge of civilisation. Well, no—just a break in it. I loved a lot of things about the city, and not least of them was this vast green interruption. The
town moor,
as if a great wasteland of heath was and should be an integral part of human settlements. A breathing space, a pair of lungs. Common land protected by ancient common law. Cows grazed there. In summer, kids came to fly kites. Civilisation picked up again afterwards, roads and houses encroaching, but no builder or developer ever touched the moor. I loved it. Joe loved it. God, if I’d set out with the intent of finding the place that would hurt me most to look at again, I couldn’t have done better. Picnics, early-morning shared runs, cautious, passionate sex in the sunny hollow we’d both calculated was just about screened from unwary kiddies and grandmas…

A different world on a winter night. A banshee wind was slicing down from the north. The only people out there looking for sex would be those whom society had freaked out and stonewalled into not being able to get it anywhere else. That wasn’t me. I was beginning to calm down, the knifing gale knocking even the will to be properly miserable out of me. All right. Enough was enough—I would go home. It might not be mine any longer, but it contained things I should be grateful to have the use of on a night like this—warmth, food, a bed…I turned around. It was marginally shorter to retrace my steps than carry on down the Great North Road. Sensible choice. I think I knew at that moment what a blade-edge I was on; that I was going to start being sensible or jump the rails entirely, and there wasn’t much in between.

A man was waiting behind me. He was about ten yards off, leaning on one of the trees that bounded the moor. Probably he had been concealed there when I went past: he had that look about him. And apparently I had my own look about me. He saw that I saw him, and he didn’t step back.

He was nothing like Aaron. About twenty years older, for a start, and dressed one shade off tramp. He was dark, that was all. Or I thought he was—everything was dark, and getting darker, as I left the path and followed him through a gap in the fence and onto the moor. He was big and bulky. Serving him—sucking him or letting him have me, whatever it turned out to be—would be a struggle. Maybe I would die of it this time. Choke or tear apart. It was so bloody strange, I reflected, stumbling into the bushes. In all my time with Joe, apart from our occasional three-ways, I’d never even thought about touching anyone else. And now I couldn’t stop.

He turned and grabbed me by the shoulders. I took my next breath with my face rammed tight against the frost-rimed trunk of a tree.
Okay.
That answered my question about how this encounter might play out. The transactions were usually simple enough, God knew. Considering the stink of him now he was up close, I supposed I was lucky he hadn’t opted for anything that would bring my mouth and nose too close to the business end. He started tearing at the front of my jeans, and I snarled at him and shoved his hands away, doing it for myself. Wanted to be able to walk away from this with a zip that still fastened, didn’t I? His breath began to explode against my ear. He was already humping me, groaning. He dragged my pants down, and I felt the shove of his dick, clammy and cold…

I didn’t want it. Way, way too late to be reaching that conclusion, but I still stupidly expected to be listened to when I said no. I said it several times, accompanying the last with a violent twist to be away, and he grabbed my hair, banged my brow off the tree trunk and told me, in a guttural rasp, that he had a knife.

I didn’t believe it. I hung on to the trunk, waiting for my head to clear enough for me to try again. I wasn’t even sure why my body and mind had clamped shut at this point: they’d gaped wide enough to smellier, bigger and less courteous punters than this one. All I could see, through pulsating red flowers, was Aaron’s face. Aaron, according me the respect I hadn’t earned. The kindness my whole soul craved…Probably I would never see him again, so my sudden conviction that I did not want to be touched by anyone else on the planet—Jesus, not even Joe—was inconvenient, to say the least. “No,” I repeated, and a thin cold line pressed into my jugular.