Louise Welsh - Naming the Bones

It had drifted beyond the time where even late diners could pretend to be having a pre-prandial and the department’s dwindling stock of alcoholics welcomed Murray with hearty relief. He was the fresh blood, the bringer of new topics, the excuse to get another round in and postpone the moment when the pub door swung home and they each stepped out alone.

‘Hello, stranger.’ Phyllida McWilliams’s voice had lost its usual edge and now held the full throaty promise of a pack of unfiltered Camels. She leaned over and gave Murray a kiss. ‘Why do we never see you?’

Murray didn’t bother to mention that she’d passed him in the corridor three days ago, her head bowed, looking like Miss Marple’s hungover younger sister.

‘You know how it is, Phyllida. I’m a busy little bee.’

Phyllida picked a blonde hair from Murray’s lapel and raised her eyebrows.

‘He’s a B , all right,’ said Vic Costello. ‘Leave him alone, Phyl, you don’t know where he’s been.’

The woman let the hair fall from her fingers onto the barroom floor. She nodded. ‘Many a true word.’

‘He flits from flower to flower.’

Rab conducted a little minuet in the air with his hand.

Phyllida laughed her barmaid’s laugh and started to recite,

‘Where the bee sucks, there suck I:

In a cowslip’s bell I lie;

There I couch when owls do cry.

On the bat’s back I do fly. .’

It was worse than he’d thought. They must have been there for hours. Murray wondered if they suspected about Rachel. He should go home, make himself something to eat, think things through.

Lyle Joff began an anecdote about a conference he’d attended in Toronto. Phyllida clamped an interested expression onto her face and Vic Costello rolled the beer around in his glass, staring sadly into space. Over by the bar Mrs Noon turned up the music and Willie Nelson cranked into ‘Whisky River’. Vic Costello placed his hand on top of Phyllida McWilliams’s and she let him keep it there for a moment before drawing hers away. Murray wondered if Vic’s divorce was finalised and if he had moved out of the family home yet, or if he was still camping in the space that had once been his study.

Phyllida leaned against Murray and asked, ‘Seriously, where have you been?’

She took his hand in hers and started to stroke his fingers.

‘Around.’ Murray tried to return her flirt, but he could see Vic Costello’s slumped features on Phyllida’s other side and, despite the rips in its fabric, the banquette they were sharing was reminiscent enough of a bed to invite unwelcome thoughts of ménage à trois. ‘I was at the National Library today, working though what’s left of Archie’s papers.’

‘Oh.’ Phyllida’s fascination was a thin veneer over boredom. ‘Find any fabulous new poems?’

‘No, but I did find notes for a sci-fi novel.’

‘Poor Murray, out to restore and revive, and all you get is half-boiled genre fiction.’

Murray laughed with her, though the barb hurt. He took out his notebook and flipped it open at the pages where he’d copied down the contents of Archie’s jotter.

‘I found this, a catalogue of names.’

Phyllida glanced at the scribbled page.

‘Obviously trying to work out what to call his characters, and doing rather badly, poor sod.’

Murray wondered why he hadn’t realised it earlier. The disappointment sounded in his voice.

‘You think so?’

She gave his hand a sympathetic squeeze.

‘Undoubtedly.’

‘Shit, I thought it might have been something.’

He snapped his notebook shut.

Murray’s curse seemed to wake Vic Costello from his trance. He necked the last three inches of his beer.

‘It’s my shout.’

‘Not for me, thanks.’ Lyle Joff raised his glass to his lips and the last of his heavy slid smoothly down. ‘It’s past my curfew.’ He gave Murray a complicit look. ‘Bedtime-story duty. Winnie the Pooh — a marvellous antidote to a hard day at the coalface.’

As preposterous as the image of chubby Joff at a coalface was, it seemed more feasible than the picture of him sitting at the bedside of freshly washed, pyjama-clad toddlers reading about a bear of little brain. Murray had been introduced to Joff’s wife at a faculty party once; she was prettier than he’d expected. He wondered how they’d met and why Joff was so often in the early-evening company of people for whom the only alternative to the pub was the empty flat, the armchair tortured with cigarette burns and the book collection that was only so much comfort.

Vic Costello looked at his watch.

‘It’s gone half-nine. They’ll be safe in the land of Nod by now surely, long past breathing in your boozy breath, Lyle.’

Lyle Joff looked at his own watch as if astonished to see that the hands had moved round. He hesitated, then looked at his glass as if equally amazed to find it empty.

‘You’ll get me shot, Costello.’ He grinned. ‘Just one more for the road then.’

Vic raised his empty glass in the air until he caught the attention of Mrs Noon. He held five fingers up and the manageress gave a curt dip of her head to show she’d oblige, but only for the moment.

Phyllida leaned over and whispered, ‘You’re a cunt, Vic. You won’t be happy until that boy’s marriage has gone the same way as yours and you’ve got a full-time drinking companion.’

‘Why would I need that when I’ve got you, Phyl?’

Costello gave her a hug. Phyllida pushed him away.

‘You forget yourself sometimes.’

Drink took the sting from the scold, but there was a seed of bitterness in her voice that would blossom with more watering, and when Vic Costello tried for a second squeeze her shove was impatient.

The tray of drinks arrived and Lyle Joff helped himself to a fresh pint. He took a sip and wiped the foam from his top lip.

‘There’s nothing wrong with my marriage.’

‘I’m sure it’s rock solid.’ Rab patted Lyle’s arm and asked Murray, ‘Have you met Lyle’s wife? A beautiful girl, classical profile, a touch of the Venus de Milo about her.’

He winked and Murray wearily took his cue.

‘Armless?’

‘Wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

Phyllida laughed and Lyle said, ‘Built on strong foundations. Love, affection, shared values.’

He looked into the middle distance as if trying to recall other reasons his marriage would endure.

‘Children,’ Phyllida said. ‘Children are a blessing.’ Vic Costello excused himself to go to the gents.

Keeping his voice uncharacteristically low, Rab turned to face Murray, cutting the pair of them off from the rest of the company.

‘I’m glad you dropped by.’ The phrase sounded old- fashioned, as if Murray had accepted an invitation to afternoon tea. ‘I owe you an apology, for coming on too strong when I saw you last. Just because I’m not getting any doesn’t give me a right to become one of the moral majority.’ Rab’s face set into a stern inquisitiveness, eyebrows raised almost to the ridges of his brow. It was only acting. The look he gave nervous students to encourage them to speak up. He held out his hand. ‘Shake?’

Murray had let slip about Rachel a month into the affair. The two men had eaten dinner with a visiting speaker then gone for a drink on their own to discuss the lecture free of its author. Maybe it was the combination of wine and beer or maybe it was the rose-tinted evening. Maybe he was boasting or maybe, just for that instant, Murray had thought his friend might be able to help. Whatever it was, as they’d left the pub, skirting the exiled smokers loitering on the pavement outside and stepping into the gloaming of a pink sunset, Murray had found himself saying, ‘I’m having a bit of a thing with Rachel Houghton.’