Boys and Girls by Joseph Connolly Page A

box, which could easily be French and art nouveau (or, of course, from some other age and nation altogether). And so now I sit here, on the sheeny slide of her rose and satin deep-quilted counterpane, hot and dirty tang of whisky on my breath, as the pads of my fingertips are glidingjust touchingly over the planes and yielding layers of chiffon and of silk. The scent, as ever, is Guerlain, though naturally I could hardly be expected to recall quite which of them. She has three (three, she has often declared, is the perfect number) – there they are on her dressing table, the bottles and phials, large and handsome, comforting in their seeming oldness, their unchanging stability, proud and quite effortlessly dominant amid the much less than salubrious wash and clutter, the clatter and gumminess of all of the rest of it. I cannot from here read the labels, and I’m damned now if I’ll be making the walk, giving up my seat in the very front row of this so very rich and glittering revival (if just for one night only) of the way it used to be, with Susan and me. Chiffon, satin, silk – and here now comes the bulbous crunch of something lacy, and I feel its contour in the cup of my hand. It is not all just black and white (it never is, or rarely); there is turquoise too, and coral – a deep champagne and powder pink. The whisky bites because I need it to, now: the burn down the throat is pleasingly painful. She still must wear such stockings, then (gloss and gossamer, and all the gear is here), though I could never remember when last I was aware of it.
    I get distracted. I have been conscious now for quite some while of the noise, a fracture in the room, though only now have I registered that it is no more than the drone of the telephone (though behind that monotone I am sensing muted anger).
    â€˜Dad? That you?’
    â€˜I suppose so …’
    â€˜Can you ring me back?’
    â€˜Ring you …? But you’ve just …’
    â€˜Credit’s like really low, Dad. Can you?’
    And I must have, I imagine: she’s talking again, anyway.
    â€˜Look listen, yeh? Tara, she’s like asked me to stay over. Kay? Kay? Can you tell Mum when she …? Dad? You there?’
    â€˜Oh yes.’
    â€˜So you got that, yeh? Back like – sometime tomorrow? Not sure when.’
    â€˜Well … I suppose so. But won’t you need—?’
    â€˜No. She’s got. Tara’s got. Don’t need anything. Bye, Dad.’
    Didn’t say bye, because the phone now had clicked and was purring at me softly. Well there. That’s the young, and this is me. She doesn’t need anything, you see: she said so. That is what she said. I do. Christ. I do. Yes. Well there. And so. The curtain, now, it must ring down on this suddenly hushed and singular charade … and oh but if only, as I give something peachy (and creamy to the touch) one last and gentle caress … if only I hadn’t wondered what it was now that could be next to her skin.
    I shall go downstairs and drink until I can feel things shrinking; then I can give myself up to it and spreadeagle my mind. The last I shall see tonight is the light wink out, just as I am shuddering into my mortification.

CHAPTER THREE
    Black, who had been leaning with attention across the table and idly stroking the joint on the middle finger of Susan’s soft and outstretched hand flat against the weave of the deep-red cloth, now pulled away sharply and stared at her hard. He dabbed at his lips with a napkin and held it up there, consciously willing a glinting of amusement to pepper and invade the confusion in his eyes.
    â€˜I’m … sorry, so sorry, I must have—’
    â€˜Misheard? No no, I assure you. That is exactly what I said.’
    Her composure, thought Black, was really quite remarkable.
    â€˜Indeed?’ he said. ‘Indeed? Well. Well well.’
    And what else,