Joan
A kind of turning point in a way, that episode. An all-time low. The driver takes one look at the state Daniel is in and refuses him entry onto the bus. In ever worsening pain, with the alcohol wearing off and the toe beginning to swell in its sock, he’s forced to hobble the half mile uphill to Sedgefield Court. For the rest of the day he sinks into a kind of torpor, his home a miniature, fortified universe, the one place where he can control the parameters – what’s allowed in and what’s allowed out. Food and water are allowed in. TV isn’t; the radio isn’t; phone calls aren’t. The cat is allowed in and allowed out. Waste is allowed out. Alcohol isn’t: not allowed out of the cupboard, let alone out of the bottle. The little blue tablets that Threadbare had once given him are allowed out of the cupboard and back into his life. Their numbing effect is limited, but they have helped in the past to draw his mind from dark places. Right now he needs stability. He needs to be able to wake up knowing what the next day will bring. He needs to be able to plan, to divide time into manageable units. He doesn’t need foreign girls walking uninvited into his life, turning it upside down and then walking out. He’s not even sure any more that he needs dead brothers showing up on his doorstep after two decades, whipping up old memories without even moving a muscle. How the hell is someone supposed to deal with a… with a…
With a drink issue, when things like that keep happening?
The telephone rings three times during the course of the next morning before he finally gives in and picks up. It could be Jerry. It could be nuisance callers. It could be Gulnaz – or Greg. But then again, it could be the hospital with vital news.
“Yeah?”
“Daniel, thank goodness.”
Gulnaz. He makes a mental note to install an answering machine, in order to screen future calls.
“I just wanted to check you’d got home okay, and to let you know that I’m off to London today.”
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
Suddenly he misses her terribly. Suddenly he feels a welling of admiration and gratitude towards her, and sees how much he’s squandered her affections, how utterly he doesn’t deserve them.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” he blurts out. “I will get help, like you suggested, to stop the drinking. I need to, for Alex’s sake. And that’ll sort the other thing – the temper. It’s only when I’ve had too much that I get like that – particularly if I haven’t eaten. You’ve seen me – I’m not like that the rest of the time, am I? And normally it’s just swearing and seeing things a bit dark. Not lashing out like in the pub.”
The line remains silent. A sudden tingle of fear runs through him. Shit – the rough handling up in the cemetery – had she seen that as well?
Finally she answers. “I know.”
No, she hadn’t seen, thank God. So, is this forgiveness – the green light to start over?
“But it frightens me, seeing you like that. I’m frightened you might turn it on me.”
Daniel can’t believe she’d ever entertain such thoughts. “Whoa, hang on!” he starts.
But she doesn’t hang on. Instead she butts in hurriedly with, “Greg – this guy I know – it was how he started.”
So, finally, her real reason for ringing. Here it comes, the great admission.
“Just temper tantrums. Little outbursts. Then objects. Then the dog. I should have stopped it when I had the chance.”
“Christ! The little shit.” Daniel already had Prentice down as an arsehole, but he’d never imagined anything like this. You don’t hit a dog. You don’t ever hit a dumb animal. “But, come on, be fair. Lover-boy Greg is Greg, and I’m me. I would never do anything like that.”
“I never said he was my lover.”
“Oh, really? ‘Hi, Guli and Greg are unable to take your call just now’?? Sounds pretty cosy to me.”
Gulnaz groans. “Okay. You rang and got my answerphone. Now it makes sense. Daniel, I simply hadn’t got round to re-recording it. Yes, okay, we were in a relationship. I should have told you. I’d wanted to leave him, but he told me he loved me.” Even the phone line can’t hide how upset she’s becoming. “He even had me blaming myself. He scares me. I could see where it was leading. Something in his eyes whenever I said the wrong thing, or forgot something, or broke something.”
“You mean he’s been roughing you up.” She’s crying now, he’s sure of it. “For heaven’s sake, Gulnaz, just kick the bastard out.”
There’s the sound of nose blowing. “It’s over. He left the apartment four days ago. We’d been breaking up for weeks.” She sighs. “Another woman, maybe. I don’t know. Someone prepared to put up with the abuse? Then all I can say is God help her.”
“I don’t get it. You say he’s been violent towards you, but I’ve seen the way you two are together.”
“You have??”
“Yeah, at the hospital, ogling each other the whole time.”
“Daniel, what on earth are you talking about?”
“You and Prentice, at reception.”
“Prentice? Jonathan?? What…? Oh Daniel, honestly! Whatever gave you that idea?”
It takes Daniel a moment to realign. Jonathan Prentice. Not Gregory. Okay. So, all that lovey-dovey stuff, Daniel’s escalating assumptions. Two plus two can rather too easily make five.
“Right. Um, well, who’s this Greg then?”
“He was someone I met through…” She breaks down before finishing the sentence. He realises now that he is in way, way over his head, not remotely what he’d had in mind when opening up to her about his drink. Of course he wants to console her, but how the hell to convince her that never in a month of Sundays would he behave like this Greg bloke, no matter what the provocation. How to show he could be tender, mild mannered, when he’s not even there to kiss her. He’s getting desperate. It’s now or never. Time to explain properly about the fracas at the Millwrights.
“Look, you’re upset. I’m really sorry about what happened yesterday. I promise I only lost my rag with those idiots because of what they were saying. About the Falklands.”
Still Gulnaz refuses to yield. “They were perfectly entitled to those views. And there are plenty of people who would agree with them.”
“Yeah, well, but the thing is…”
She interrupts. “Daniel, I know what you’re going to say. But I’m not really in a fit state to hear about your father just now. I’m sorry.”
Her words strike him across the chest. Wow. She’d known it all along. He should have realised. All that bait he’d laid for her. All those offhand references to life without his father. The photos of the man in uniform. Each of her refusals to bite had been his reprieve, only for him to throw her ever larger scraps. The revelation about the invitation letter hadn’t so much been bait, more a bloody banquet. And of course all along Gulnaz had understood, had digested the meaning; she was far too savvy not to have done. She had simply chosen to hold her tongue.
“I’m just so glad he’s gone,” she adds, cutting into his thoughts.
“Huh??” His father?
“Greg.”
“Oh! Yeah, yeah.”
After several seconds of silence she breathes out heavily into the mouthpiece.
“So, tell me,” she says, – he takes her to mean his father and is about to begin – “Just how seriously do you want to give up drinking?”
“Drinking? Oh, hundred per cent!”
“Only, I know of a place that maybe can help. It’s not AA, or anything heavy like that. No rules. No long-term commitment. It’s just an informal drop-in place. You talk to them about yourself and they set you a simple programme to follow. That’s all it is.”
Daniel stalls for a moment. He thinks about Alex, about surrogate parenthood and responsibilities, about shameful fistfights in pubs, and about regaining Gulnaz’s trust, and finds himself agreeing to give it a go. She proceeds to give him the place and a choice of times and then says she has to ring off. She’ll be back on Sunday and will be in touch.