Tony Parsons - Man And Wife

’There’s not enough room in there for me,’ I told her, tossing the towel at the laundry basket and leaving her to shower alone.

And I saw that our marriage was a lot like the London Eye, that giant Ferris wheel on the south bank of the Thames.

Even when everything appeared to be perfectly still, even when nothing at all seemed to be happening, it was up there in the darkness, turning, turning, in motion all the time.

’Keep it simple,’ Eamon said. ’That’s the first thing they tell you in AA. All the lying and the running around will never do you any good. If you’re ever going to get well, you have to keep it simple, Harry.’

Before us the land stretched out like a postcard of County Kerry. A still silver lake was the only break in miles of moorland that ran all the way to where the rocks of the mountains finally met the sea. That sea looked enormous, as though it went on not to America, but to the end of the world.

Eamon had warned me that the tourists were trampling all over his homeland, seeking the craic in every pub, a bit of Celtic mysticism around every corner, and girls who looked like the Corrs at every bed and breakfast. But the only sign of life I saw in all of this wild, rugged landscape was a comedian who had put on a few pounds since the last time I saw him.

’They want to drop the show, Eamon. I know this isn’t the best time to tell you, but I can’t help it. The drugs scared them. If you had just been pissed out of your skull it would be another matter. They could have passed that off as jack-the-lad antics. They think that alcohol abuse is cute. It would have gone down well with all the booze advertisers. But drugs are something else.’

Tm out? Just like that?’

’They’re not going to recommission Fish on Friday. They want you to co-present some late-night zoo. Wicked World, it’s called. You and Hermione Gates.’

’Her who’s always showing her drawers?’

’That’s the one.’

He thought about it for a while. The sweet-smelling grass scrunched under my brand-new Timberland boots.

’And what about you, Harry? Are you coming with me? I’m not doing it if they don’t want you.’

I was touched that Eamon would think of me. But it hadn’t crossed my mind that the makers of a funky, spunky show like Wicked World would want an unfunky, unspunky producer like me. I assumed that they would want some young hotshot with jeans so low that you could see his pierced scrotum.

’Don’t worry about me.’ I thought of the money that I sent to Gina for Pat, the money that Cyd and I relied on for our mortgage. Til be fine.’

We walked down into a shadowy dip in the land and came up into sunlight on a small rise. In the distance, just before the bracken gave way to the rocks by the sea, there was a small farmhouse. It hadn’t been anyone’s home since the potato famine, but it had been an authentically rustic holiday home ever since Ireland had become a place that people came to rather than left. This had been Eamon’s home the last month. And now a taxi was approaching it on the winding peninsula road.

’That’ll be him,’ Eamon said. ’Evelyn Blunt.’

We watched the taxi.

’Are you sure you want to do this, Eamon? You don’t have to talk to this guy.’

’I trust Blunt about as far as I can ejaculate.’

’That far?’

’But he’s already called me every dirty name under the sun. What else can he do to me?’

The interview had been Barry Twist’s brainwave.

Twist believed that the public loved the idea of a sinner eventually seeing the error of his ways. The folks out there would forgive you anything, Barry reckoned, as long as you didn’t look as though you had actually enjoyed any of it in the first place. It was no longer enough for someone to dry out, they had to be seen to have dried out. The world had a taste for public repentance.

Evelyn Blunt, the poison pen in Eamon’s side for so long, had been invited to do the interview because his paper was thought to have an influential circulation – that is, people in the media read it, the opinion formers who would decide if this comeback was a success – while Blunt himself was writing longer, more thoughtful features these days, as he attempted to make the transition from his spiteful little hatchet jobs to something more like real writing. Blunt had failed as a TV presenter, novelist and talk-radio jock. It was inevitable that sooner or later he would have a go at being a journalist.

We came down the hill to the farmhouse as the taxi deposited its passengers next to my hire car. Blunt got out and looked at all that wild grandeur with his sour, crumpled face. There was something sweaty about him, as though he was still recovering from the dipso he had been in his debauched youth. He wasn’t alone. There was a young woman with him. The photographer.

I couldn’t see her face as the taxi driver helped her haul out black nylon bags full of lights, film and tripod from the boot of his cab. Then she straightened up, looking at the land as she pushed a veil of black hair out of her face. And I saw her.

Kazumi.

We were at the farmhouse now. Blunt took Eamon’s hand and pumped it as though he hadn’t really been using my friend as a punch bag for the last two years. Kazumi and I stared at each other. Then she nodded at the Atlantic.

’Look.’

Many miles out to sea, a storm was coming in. Huge black rolling clouds were sweeping towards the coast, but they seemed so far away that it felt like weather seen in a dream.

’Ah, that’s a long ways out,’ said Eamon. His Kerry accent was always a lot thicker once you got him out of Soho. ’We don’t run for cover round here. We have a nap and then we run for cover.’

But Kazumi had already gone, clambering over the jagged rocks with a camera swinging around her neck. We watched her crouch on the rocks and start taking pictures of the coming storm.

’Sweet little Kazumi,’ said Evelyn Blunt. ’I’m in there tonight.”

It wasn’t until Eamon had been cornered in the toilets by a gang of English tourists in Manchester United shirts and Evelyn Blunt had climbed on the table to show us his Riverdance routine that Kazumi and I had a chance to be alone.

’So did London work out for you?’ I shouted over the pub band’s spirited version of Van Morrison’s ’Real Real Gone’.

She tapped her ears. I liked the way they stuck out a bit. I liked it quite a lot.

’Can’t hear,’ she said, sipping her Guinness.

’Are you getting much freelance work? Have you worked for the Trumpet before?’

She smiled, shook her head, and touched those sticky-out ears. It was true. The noise in here was deafening. I realised I could say what I liked to her.

’I said – I’m so happy to see you. You look gorgeous. I think you’re lovely. I am so glad you walked into my life. I think I’m losing my mind.’

She smiled politely.

A laughing German tourist in a Glasgow Celtic shirt smashed into our table. He was clapping his hands and stamping his feet as Blunt jigged around with his arms so stiff by his side that they could have been tied there.

’These crazy Irish,’ said the German. ’They have such a good time, no?’

’He lives in Hampstead,’ I said. ’Hampstead in London.’

’Crazy, crazy Irish.’

A cheer went up as the band, a bunch of crusty-looking hippies who resembled extras from Braveheart , tore into Van Morrison’s ’One Irish Rover’.

Blunt went up a gear.

A coach party of Italians arrived, swelling the pub to overload. They placed their orders for Guinness with the red-haired student behind the bar. Blunt stubbed his toe on a large glass ashtray and began hopping around on one leg, grimacing in agony. The tourists applauded excitedly, mistaking his injury for part of the official floorshow.