Joy Read online

  Well, no, he didn’t take my comment well. There was this tense little pause in which I fancied I could hear Damon Turner from Finance burping. Damon has a way of adopting a wide-set posture when he feels one coming, making it a kind of performance. But I ignored the quality of both the foreground pause and the background belch and continued in my attempts to explain to Dennis how a big law firm operates. This is one of my abilities, you see: effective expression under pressure. I sit in the Disputes team, but my specialism is on the insolvency side. Do you know any insolvency lawyers, at all?

  No. I thought not. But, if you did, you’d know that we tend to live on the brink. I get involved just as companies are going under. Board members are panicking about the present, shredding the past and shielding their behinds from future claims. My job is to drill down into pressure, risk and the reservoirs of lies in which true testimony lurks. There’s an addictive creativity to deceit – if you doctor one detail you’ll alter the adjoining – so the reservoirs can be pretty deep, and interconnected.

  When I got back to my room after the awkward exchange with Dennis, the lovely Jess, my trainee, was absent. That left me free to unzip Peter the Great and hang him under the desk. He likes to get some air, plus it helps me relax. One thing about sharing your office with a hottie: you can’t always completely relax. When I’m on my own, and a little excitable, it’s fun to see how many elastic bands I can hang off the big man. Personal best? One hundred and twenty-nine. The thick type from the third-floor cupboard, naturally. The other somewhat amusing thing is to hang bull clips from your ear lobes, but you can only really do that after five, when the secretarial bay has emptied.

  Tiny Tony O turned up at my door. There’s no public-school irony in his name. He’s an official midget. In addition he is possibly gay and definitely Asian – an HR wet dream. He delivered one of his little interrogations, but I won’t trouble you with it. I can see you’re the type that’s easily shocked and, anyway, that’s not what we’re here to talk about, is it?

  Whatever I would find helpful? My word, you do have a strange turn of phrase. I think I’m going to call you Doctor Odd. Does that strike you as a satisfactory nickname? Doctor Odd?

  Well I doubt Doctor Who was either, but the name still stuck. Here’s roughly how it went. You’ll have to excuse me, voices aren’t my strongest suit.

  Oi oi, Tony said, did I miss her? Shitty shitty bang bang, must have missed her. Was looking for the Jessmeister and all I get is you. Doing some work for me on the nuclear project, the one where the plant got security guards from the care home. Things are getting uggggg-ly. Keen for the Fox after work? I heard Sutcliffe’s had the heave-ho. You didn’t hear that from me. He hasn’t heard yet. Who knew they’d sack more Seniors even with the good Joy Stephens in a coma? Man I miss those teeth around the place. Nothing better in life than a set of perfect teeth. You know they’re getting some junior barristers in on secondment? Last thing we need is those wankstains in their wigs and shawls. I really need a holiday but I can’t see how it’s going to work with this nuclear thing exploding. My stomach, man, swear to God the canteen food’s getting worse, the sausages, those sausages, tried to tell me it’s firm policy to serve them medium rare! You’ve probably heard about Kennedy. You must have heard. Which reminds me, he reckons he’s next in line. Personally I can’t see Mental Brian letting him go while the tobacco thing’s still smoking. God, Kennedy’s a bell end. Un-be-lievable. I’ve got to admit, Peter, that tie works well with the shirt. If I don’t get some time off soon I’m going to throw myself from some place tall. The fact is Jessmeister’s a flirt and you’re a married man. Have you heard anything about me, you know, my future?

  I stayed silent.

  Anyway, Tony said, how’s it hanging?

  An ironic question, Doctor Odd, if you consider what I had going on under the table.

  Not bad, I said. Busy?

  Intensively so, he said. By which he meant I hope to avoid the next round of redundancies.

  Me too, I said. Bent over on Project Poultry, completely shafted. By which I meant My discomfort is palpably sexual, my superiors want and desire me, I have a job for life.

  Then things got really tricksy. He asked how my wife, Christine, is coping. She and Joy are close friends, you see. We all started here together. The three of us were one happy family, until Friday. Happy in the dysfunctional way familiar to most families. And the thing that really irritated me with the questioning which followed was the implication that…Anyway, that’s the sort of thing Tiny Tony said. An impressionist sketch, if you will. Luckily he got bored of quizzing me and took himself over to the secretarial bay, to watch Olivia Sullivan filling the colour Laserjet with paper. Everywhere you go there are girls leaning, bending, kneeling, crouching. If they let you out of this makeshift therapy room you should have a wander round. In every cubicle and stairwell, every kitchen pod and corner office, you’ll see magnificent nipple-shadows through tight white shirts. As I said, it’s a kind of paradise, until it’s not.

  Well, what I mean is this. Ever since what happened last Friday, it’s become clear that a lot of people around here have something to hide. Particularly that Asian chap from the gym, and Barbara, and even Dennis – people who may have been asked if they’d like to partake in these…what would you call them?

  Chats! Ha! I like you more and more, I really do, your humour is positively postmodern.

  My point is that the three of them, if you watch the CCTV closely, are the first to move towards Joy’s body. It has only been about two seconds since we heard her bones crack on the marble, but already they’re weaving through the crowd to get close. And on the shaky black-and-white footage their heads are already down, as if they are not just afraid but ashamed.

  Me? I was moving too, I suppose, champagne glass in hand. I was feeling very strange. I hadn’t seen it coming. This was the day she was to make partner at Hanger, Slyde & Stein. Strong-willed, successful and modestly wealthy, arguably the most talented and attractive woman in the Disputes team. On a stone floor, no signs of life.

  In the days since it happened I’ve heard people say that, even before the fall, there was a blankness in Joy’s face. They say the thud was like a bass drum in their brains. They say her features looked vague and undefined. And they say she seemed like a broken chair, lying there: designer furniture for a cleaner to clear.

  They make this stuff up, of course. But the more they put the experience into words, the more elaborate the shared memory becomes. This is a problem with Londoners, don’t you think? We talk so much shit just to get along! We can’t bear for our fears to recur in isolation, so we get together, we discuss. We endlessly analyse that unspoken something in her eyes as she addressed the crowd, the unfocused pain or purpose in the pupils – the fear of a wasted existence, or the thought of what to have for tea. Unceasing interpretation. Murmured consensus. Sonorous stories. No offence, but I find that kind of care-and-share psychological masturbation incredibly tedious. And that’s coming from a man who is really rather fond of –

  Do I think it was a suicide attempt? Personally, you mean?

  I know for a fact she was working past midnight the night before. She had, in truth, been doing those hours for several weeks. She was overworked, but then we all are. So her personal life must have played a part. Sometimes when you come home from a day’s hard slog it’s a little thing at home – the sleeping pills are finished, the milk is off – that sends you lurching into some dark corner of yourself. It’s a point I’ve thought about, naturally. The question of what happened when Joy finally got home in the early hours of that Friday. Something the police and press will do, I suppose. Try and reconstruct that last day from the beginning, right through to the 5 p.m. fall.

  Is that clock right?

  Really?

  I’ve got to attend a Senior Associate Forum on how to bring more women into the partnership. Ones who aren’t
comatose, presumably. It’s part of a diversity initiative.

  No, I said diversity. The firm’s new word for Shit We’re All Men.

  You’re like my trainee, Doctor Odd. A non-stop note-taker. Except you appear to prefer loose-leaf. Personally, I’d worry about the pages getting muddled. I’m terribly keen on structure, you see.

  Where do you stand on elastic bands?

  1.10 a.m.

  ‘WELL THIS must look bad, Joy-Joy. Not that I, well, I do to a degree – yes – admittedly this must look bad.’

  Dennis says this standing, hands on hips, head slanted to see her.

  ‘I mean to say, I recognise this is, somewhat, a departure from the norm.’

  He says this naked, except for the socks on his feet, and the condom growing slack on his penis.

  ‘She turned up, by she I mean, ha, this very lady still crouching…and we were just having an innocent drink to pass the time (it would have passed anyway, of course, goes without saying, gin and tonic and lime), but you’ll excuse my imprecision in situations such as…and you’ll see I have somewhat accidentally –’

  ‘Tripped dick first into her vagina?’

  His Adam’s apple bounces to accommodate a swallow. ‘You have a way with – always did – words, but what I was going to say is that we –’

  Bastard. Not listening to this bastard. Standing there explaining with his buttocks clenched. Pouchy-buttocked bastard with his girl in the living room. Nubile girl on all fours on the Jacobsen – the Jacobsen! – shiny hair dangling down like the leaves of some nice thing, tree, nice young sun-soaked birch tree, and her buttocks all firm, faultless, poised beneath the bastard’s pelvis and that yuk Jesus black banana thing lodged inside her and him still trying to explain as the condom yawns – harassed, wrinkled, ready for retirement.

  ‘You are um,’ he continues, ‘staring at this lady’s…rear, Joy-Joy, sorry, sorry, shouldn’t keep using our real…Rude to stare, and all that, ha ha.’

  Joy knows that all objects of desire look vile when the appetite’s not right – oysters are gloopy hellish things when what you want is cake – but she’s always considered dildos to be, from all angles, repulsive. The girl’s litheness makes this one seem particularly sinister: a torture instrument, or the oversized valve on an inflatable doll. He’s not into doll-sex yet, but interrupting an affair with plastic and air would be preferable to this distinctly human betrayal. She has never been a slave to the conventional rules of relationships, but witnessing this, the final phase of their dissolution, is making the furniture twitch and gleam to the cadence of her own pulse.

  ‘Um, darling? Perhaps you could throw those knickers over and this girl can, perhaps, move from this position and cover her bottom?’

  ‘I was comparing it to your bottom,’ she says, adrenalin flowing into aggression. ‘Looking fat, of late.’

  ‘Fat?’

  ‘Piggy,’ she says.

  ‘Right,’ he says.

  ‘A series of fleshy sacks.’

  ‘Ha! Even with the workouts, you’re saying.’

  ‘Mini-buttocks and maxi-buttocks.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘Chinchilla-like.’

  ‘Chinchilla, right, as in the –’

  ‘Pet. Fleshy. Overgrown. Grey.’

  ‘Yes. Yes I see. Comparing your husband to a crepuscular rodent, that’s…I’m sorry,’ he says.

  The apology, modest though it is, satiates some of her hunger for a brawl. Objects are beginning to lose their liquid glint; settledness is returning to the room. Does she want to end five years of marriage with a fight? She’s fond of him like you’re fond of a well-worn dress – after the shimmer and tease have gone, it is fully yours, hem-stain and all, making up in familiarity what it lacks in fun – but now he goes and spoils even that, starts breaking the rules, makes her feel stupid, stupid for not linking the cre-acking and woo-wooh-ing to their secret Thursday-night habit, the ritual which while shameful is supposed to be (crucially) shared.

  Still patiently poised on all fours, the dildoed guest breaks her silence. Her words come in the lulling voice of a pro who could do this in her sleep and occasionally probably does: ‘Would you like to settle up now, guys, or is this part of the game?’ In one smooth movement that stretches the skin across her ribs she unplugs the dildo to the tune of a disturbing slurp and takes a seat, knees together and feet apart, arms mirroring this coyness so the four thin limbs make a letter X.

  ‘Darling,’ Dennis says, ignoring the interruption, ‘fancy a G and T, perhaps, as a peace offering, darling? We have chopped limes and ice over there.’

  ‘On the Noguchi coffee table. Thank you for that. Thanks. You were supposed to cancel her, Dennis. Awful day, you know, hectic. I thought you were a burglar and then…I thought it was your exercise routine.’

  ‘Well, in a way –’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘It is Thursday night, you know. This is our night, Joy-Joy.’

  ‘And if one of us wants to cancel?’

  There is a pause, his eyes catch the melting ice, and as if softened by this sight his voice returns quieter than before. ‘That’s the rule. I know that’s the rule. And I did try to cancel, once I knew you had all that stuff going on with your case. But I didn’t get round to it this afternoon, Joy-Joy, I was distracted when you called to tell me, I met this amazingly well-known author on the train, you see, and buoyed by that the ideas were bobbing up furiously, furiously, the white heat of creation, it really was, just like when I’m going at the weights and an extra pocket of energy bursts inside my vein and I’m superhuman, super-Dennis, and then the agency said she was already on her way, and she turned up at the usual time, and –’

  ‘Just get dressed,’ she says wearily, and then, afflicted by etiquette, shifts her sightline to the girl. ‘We’re not normally like this.’ Her words are met with a simple shrug, a gesture which, coming so soon after Dennis’s wordy bid for vindication, seems like an act of astonishing expressive economy. His idle, spiralling style of speech was one of the quirks which once made him charmingly different, an old-school academic in a London full of one-dimensional professionals, dull polished types with cello voices and cello tans. His hesitation, like his floppy hair, made him human. But after nearly five years of marriage, with every eccentricity painstakingly examined, her husband seems – in tonight’s light – less Hugh Grant and more village idiot.

  The hired help is out the door with a purse full of fifties when the village idiot finally reappears. In the regularly revamped kitchen, amid the tomato-red fridge-freezer, the yellow-and-green check of the tablecloth, the still life of Valencian oranges hanging where the family snaps once were, he alone has no colour. His appearance of late is a source of irritation but also admiration – irritation at the lack of effort, and admiration for his indifference to flawlessness.

  ‘Bed, darling?’ he asks, nervously scratching a patch of stubble.

  ‘No.’

  ‘G and T?’

  ‘That tonic stops me sleeping. As I’ve explained.’

  ‘Wine?’

  ‘…OK.’

  ‘And may I enquire which of the delightful –’

  ‘Red.’

  Expensive wine, expensive fridge-freezer, expensive call girls. When, exactly, did they become such avid consumers? In her delicate freighted state the whole house feels like an erroneous impulse purchase, yet another mistake weighing heavy on her brain.

  As he pours the Merlot she thinks about telling him. She has lain awake for so many weeks thinking how she might tell him. None of the imagined scenarios featured call girls, sex toys or arguments over chopped limes. They tended towards scented candles, fine food and classical music. She has even gone so far as to construct a fitting mental playlist, taking care to avoid morbid chords, Psycho-style screeches, violin bows quivering on the bridge. She wan
ts to tell him, firmer than before, that she hasn’t felt right for the last few years. Mornings begin with a sick dwindling deep inside. The route to the bathroom is an assault course littered with ghosts. The face that meets her in the mirror is less a face than a random arrangement of regrets – the nose that received an adulterous kiss, the eyes that have let so much slip from sight – and her lips have started to wrinkle and loosen as if in a dark daily fairy tale they’re getting poisoned by the things they touch. With replenishing balm and special gloss she smoothes them down for the day ahead; can, through the effort of smiling, get them taut as the sheets on the guest-room bed. But by each evening they are loose once more, downturned. She wanted to tell him this one night, explain that her suicide would be a rational, muted thing, truer to her temperament than the lurching flash of normal life, but she has run out of time and, anyway, she knows what he would say. Bullshit, Joy, you can’t grant yourself a neat, aesthetic end. You won’t be able to pat yourself on the back afterwards. You can’t perfect death like it’s a room in need of redecoration, or a memorandum in need of redrafting. You’ll make The Lawyer, not The Times. Shakespeare isn’t around to write a play about your last day. History won’t miss you, but I will, and that’s selfish. He wouldn’t put it so succinctly, but that’s the gist of what he’d say.

  ‘Drink some, Joy-Joy,’ Dennis urges. He is wearing an expression that is childish, stubborn – and handsome, actually. ‘It’ll relax you, and really, really I am sorry about the girl.’

  ‘She was very young.’

  ‘Nonsense. Twenties, but no younger, no younger than others we’ve had here. Is it corked? It can make you ill if it’s corked, I read today, did you know that, that it could actually make you ill?’

  She shrugs, and finds that shrugging is less potent, somehow, when you’re the one doing it.