Anne Billson - Suckers

I found some ten pences in my bag, instructed Dexter and Josette and their friend to save our table, and trotted after Duncan to the payphone. It wasn't a very exciting telephone call. I should have realized he'd been going to check on Lulu. I could hear him arguing with her in a basic yes/no mode. After a few minutes of this, I was itching to get back to my drink, even if it meant having to make polite conversation with Dexter and Josette.

'You just can't,' Duncan kept saying. 'Because I don't want you to.' By the time he'd inserted the last of my ten pences, his shoulders were sagging and his voice was trailing off into a hoarse whisper. He'd argued himself to a standstill. Then he heard something which made him hand the receiver out to me. 'Lu wants a word,' he said.

'Hello?'

Lulu sounded anxious. 'Dora? Is that you? Where are you? What's the matter with him?'

'He's all right,' I said, trying not to slur my words. 'He just heard some bad news about an old schoolfriend.'

Lulu wanted to know who it was, but I deliberately kept it vague. 'But drinking's bad for his liver,' she wailed. 'For God's sake don't let him drive.'

'Of course I won't.'

Then, unexpectedly, she said, 'Thank Christ you're there. Thank Christ it's you and not Jack or Charlie. Those guys just egg each other on.' I was surprised, even a little touched in my tipsyish state.

'He's pissed off because I'm working tomorrow,' she said. 'I don't know what's got into him, he never tried to stop me working before.'

In a conversational tone, I asked, 'You mean you're going to take that Multiglom job?'

'I'd be mad to turn it down.'

'That's the spirit. Don't let him push you around.'

'He can be incredibly bossy sometimes,' she said, slipping into a confidential tone. 'I don't think he realizes.'

'We girls have got to stick together,' I said.

'I wonder if…' she began, but changed her mind. 'Give him my love, won't you? Tell him I love him.'

'Oh yes,' I assured her. She said something else, but I didn't catch it because I was already returning the receiver to its cradle.

Duncan was slumped against the wall, staring at his shoes. I said to him, 'You need another drink.'

He looked up sharply, as though only just remembering where he was. 'What did she say?'

'She said you needed another drink.' It was time to move on. I frogmarched him up the stairs and over the Strand to another bar, mildly amused by the notion of Dexter and Josette being left to defend our empty table against all comers. This new place was even more crowded than the Foxhole, but by now we were beyond caring. We squeezed aggressively on to a red-plush banquette and commandeered half of someone else's table.

After a couple of beers Duncan started babbling, and I encouraged him. He told me how much he valued our friendship. He observed the colour of my eyes, and informed me what I already knew — that there was a speck of hazel in one of the irises. He became sentimental and said what an extraordinary person I was, what a wonderful singer, and asked how on earth I had managed to learn so many languages. He waxed lyrical about my tiny, tiny feet, and, at this point, I experienced an uncomfortable sensation of deja-vu and realized he had long since stopped talking about me. I started to feel very depressed and switched from white wine to Scotch and soda.

Duncan, meanwhile, had switched from second to third person. 'She's been away for a long time. A long long time. And now she's back and it's all going to happen again.'

I shushed him. It wasn't prudent to bring up such things in public. 'It's finished. Over .'

'No, no, no,' he said, shaking his head. 'No, no, no. Not over. Because you know what? She's not like us . She's different . Very, very different.' He shook his head some more, in case I hadn't seen him shaking it the first time.

I said, 'We're each of us different in our own little ways.' The conversation had taken a dispiriting twist. The alcohol had loosened his inhibitions, but not in the way I'd anticipated. It was the same old story: all that effort, and all of it swept aside so easily.

'It's beginning again,' he was saying. 'And you know what? You know what? I want it to begin again. Oh yes I do.'

'Oh no you don't,' I said. 'That's the last thing you want. It wouldn't be a good idea, not at all .' He persisted, so I tried talking sense. 'Let us suppose that — contrary to all laws of medical science and Middle European mythology — let us suppose you are right and it really is beginning again. Do you really think she'd want to shake you by the hand? Remember what you did? Remember how you left her without a hand to shake? She'd be fairly pissed off at you, don't you think?'

'Don't care.'

'Oh for Heaven's sake, use your head.' I could have wept. I was in that sort of state, but Duncan's drunkenness was way ahead of mine; it had passed through the maudlin stage and had now entered the rowdy.

'Want to know the quickest way to a woman's heart?' he asked loudly. 'Through the thorax with a Kitchen Devil!' Heads swivelled in our direction. He started to laugh uproariously. I shushed him again, and he lowered his voice so only about half the people in the pub could hear. 'It was the next best thing to fucking my mother, you know?'

'No, I don't know. Nobody wants to hear about your Oedipus Complex.'

'Not Oedipus,' he complained. 'You've got it upside-down.'

'I don't care who was on top. Just keep your voice down.'

'I've done nothing to be ashamed of. That's what you kept telling me, wasn't it? That I've done nothing to be ashamed of.'

'Not much,' I muttered.

'Don't you think I did the right thing?'

'Yes,' I said, in what I hoped was an authoritative voice. 'Imagine if you'd let her get away with it. Imagine what would have happened then. Think of it as being like a contagious disease. If you hadn't put a stop to it, it would have spread like wildfire. Of course you did the right thing.'

Duncan started to laugh again. 'Like AIDS, you mean?' His voice had acquired an eerie penetrative quality and sliced through the smoke and noise. At mention of the word AIDS , there was a pause in the hubbub, and a few more heads swivelled in our direction. 'No, Dora, you've got it wrong again. It was a great and glorious gift, and she wanted me to have it.'

This was way out of order. I tried to calm him down. 'Don't talk rot. You can't even stand the sight of blood.'

'That's what I mean,' he said. 'That's what she did.'

I told him not to be so silly. He was fine. His course of treatment had been interrupted. I hadn't noticed him turning down shooting assignments in sunny Tenerife. He was still eating garlic, wasn't he?

'Takes time,' he said.

'What? Thirteen years?'

'No, no, no,' he said, rather crossly. 'You don't understand at all, Dora. It's not like a one-night stand. It's a mona… moga…' He paused and took a hop, step, and jump at the word. 'A mono-ga-mous situation, that's what it is.'

We continued in this vein for a while, repeating ourselves and going round in circles and generally not making a great deal of sense, until even the eavesdroppers grew bored and went back to their own conversations. Closing-time came and went, and no one seemed in a hurry to turf us out. Eventually Duncan excused himself and staggered off to find a toilet. Twenty minutes later I was wondering whether he'd left without me when a complete stranger announced that my companion had passed out in the Ladies. Duncan had evidently reached the third and last stage of the stages of drunkenness: unconsciousness. I went off to find him.

He was wedged beneath the washbasin, groaning. I splashed cold water on his face and roused him sufficiently to steer him out of the pub. He wobbled down the road, patting the pockets of his jacket. 'Keys…' he muttered. 'Car keys…'