The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey Page B

me Cat.”
    “Is that not your name?”
    “There is only one person called me Cat.”
    He lowered his lids. Perhaps he was simply holding his temper but he looked, suddenly, unexpectedly like a dreaming Buddha.
    I sat, and received a second glass as my reward for my obedience. “I’m sorry,” he said.
    “It’s just unthinkable that this is happening to people every day.”
    “It’s awful.”
    “It’s banal I suppose.”
    “I will take the bloody thing away. I am a complete fool.”
    “No,” I said.
    “No?”
    “No.”
    “Very well,” said Eric.
    “Don’t say ‘very well.’ It sounds like you are managing me.”
    “Actually, old love, that is my job.”
    “That’s what I mean. You’re going to send me to a shrink.”
    “Jesus, Cat, I am not going to send you to an anything. Where did you get this nonsense from?”
    “When my father died they made us have grief counselling. They would not let us out of the hospital without seeing this cretin from Social Services. They would not give us his clothes even.” I was crying now. I wished I wasn’t. “They tortured him, Eric. They played with him. We had to make them turn off their idiot machines.”
    “Cat.”
    “Please don’t.”
    “Catherine,” he said. “I am sorry. He always called you Cat. To me.”
    I immediately felt so sad I could hardly speak. “Did he?”
    “To me, yes.”
    I was so determined not to bawl, I suppose I glared at him.
    “We are going to have a very small team,” he said. “We will have a procedures meeting you can tolerate.”
    I had begun to snivel, but I did grasp what he was up to—finding a way for me to continue in employment.
    “Ceramics are all Margaret’s friends. I can’t bear it.”
    “Hilary isn’t.”
    “Heather. The little lesbian.”
    “She has a perfectly lovely little baby.”
    “Spilled her coffee, that one?”
    “Will she be acceptable? Catherine, you really must have mercy on me. Please.”
    But I wished to punish him. I could not tolerate him being alive.
    “We all miss him, old love. Not like you do. But he was my friend for thirty years.”
    “Yes, I know. He loved you. I’m sorry.”
    “No, no. Forgive me.”
    Sorry, sorry, sorry—how British we were. I thought he was fetching a handkerchief from his pocket, but then I saw it was a small glassine bag filled with white powder.
    Of course I was an adult. I knew exactly what it was, but it was giving me an unsafe feeling to watch him tap it up and down. “What’s that?”
    “Painkiller.” He spilled a small pile onto the table top, slightly yellow and rather crystalline.
    I don’t know him at all, I thought, not really the tiniest bit.
    “That was rather risky wasn’t it?” I said.
    “Compared to what?” He produced his wallet and found a Barclaycard with which to chop the powder fine. I thought, he means compared to stealing notebooks.
    “Jesus, Eric. Stop it.”
    But he had no intention of stopping anything. “You know, Catherine,” he said, and he was once again the dreaming Buddha but busy with his chop, chop, chop. “You know when himself wanted a little toot, he would never talk to a dealer.” He smiled directly at me. “Noone would ever think of Matthew as a nervous chap, but he was very antsy about drug dealers.”
    “You were our drug pimp?”
    “Let’s say, every time you had a recreational experience, someone else took care of the low-life aspects.”
    He set aside a very small amount of powder, what is called a “bump” by those who know. I thought, I’ll say “no” of course. He took a ten-pound note from his wallet, rolled it up, and hoovered.
    “What about me?”
    “Very well then, just a little.”
    The former speaker of the House was still chipping so I lowered a blind. Then I applied the ten-pound note and felt the cocaine whoosh itself around my nasal cavities and then that lovely medicinal drip down the back of the throat.
    “So,” he said, and he was at it with his Barclaycard again.