His neighbour is drunk but oddly watchful. She puts her arms around his neck, which discomfits him, as if there is some need in him that she has noticed, though he can’t see what it is.
‘We didn’t think you’d come. Your wife barely speaks to any of us.’
‘Doesn’t she?’
‘Well, she’s charming to some people. How is the flat?’
‘It’s fine … Not too bad.’
Becoming aware of an itching on his forehead, he slaughters a fly between finger and thumb.
She says, ‘Sure?’
‘Why not?’
He feels another fly creeping across his cheek. She is looking at him curiously.
‘I’d like it if you would dance with me,’ she says.
He dislikes dancing but suspects that movement is preferable to stasis. And tonight — why not? — he will celebrate. She points out her husband, a tall man standing in the doorway, talking to a woman. Warm and fleshy, she shakes her arse, and he does what he can.
Then she takes the index finger of his right hand and leads him into a conservatory at the back. It is cold; there is no music. She shoves down her clothes, bends forward over the arm of a chair and he slides the finger she’s taken possession of, and two others, into her. It is a luxurious and well-deserved oblivion. Surely happiness is forgetting who you are! But too soon he notices a familiar caustic smell. He looks about and sees bowls of white powder placed on the floor; another contains a greenish-blue sticky substance. Injured specks move drowsily in the buckets.
He extracts his hand and holds it out. Up at the wrist it is alive with flies.
She looks round. ‘Oh dear, the little babies are hungry tonight.’ She flaps at them unconcernedly.
‘Isn’t there a remedy?’ he asks.
‘People live with it.’
‘They do?’
‘That is the best thing. It is also the worst. They work incessantly. Or drink. People all over the world endure different kinds of bacteria.’
‘But surely, surely there is a poison, brew or … blue light that will deter them for ever?’
‘There is,’ she says. ‘Of a kind.’
‘What is it?’
She smiles at his desperation. ‘The potions do work, for a period. But you have to replace them with different makes. Imported is best, but expensive. Try the Argentinian. Then the South African, in that order. I’m not sure what they put in that stuff, but … Course, the flies get used to it, and it only maddens and incites them. You might need to go on to the Madagascan.’ Baxter must be looking disheartened because she says, ‘In this street this is how we keep them away — passion!’
‘Passion?’
‘Where there is passion you don’t notice anything.’
He lies over her from behind. He says he can’t believe that these things are just inevitable; that there isn’t, somewhere, a solution.
‘We’ll see to it — later,’ she grunts.
After, in the living room, she whispers, ‘Most of them have got flies round here. Except the newly-weds and adulterers.’ She laughs. ‘They got other things. Eighteen months, it takes. If you’re lucky you get eighteen months and then you get the flies.’ She explains that the flies are the only secret that everyone keeps. Other problems can be paraded and boasted of, but this is an unacceptable shame. ‘We are poisoned by ourselves.’ She looks at him. ‘Do you hate her?’
‘What?’
‘Do you, yet? You can tell me.’
He whispers that it is dawning on him, as love dawns on people, that at times he does hate her; hates the way she cuts up an apple; hates her hands. He hates her tone of voice and the words he knows she’ll use; he hates her clothes, her eyelids, and everyone she knows; her perfume makes him nauseous. He hates the things he’s loved about her; hates the way he has put himself in thrall to her; hates the kindnesses she shows him, as if she is asking for something. He sees, too, that it doesn’t matter that you don’t love someone, until you have a child with them. And he understands, too, how important hatred is, what a strong sustaining feeling it is; a screen perhaps, to stop him pitying her, and himself, and falling into a pit of misery.
His neighbour nods as he shivers with shame at what she has provoked him into saying. She says, ‘My husband and I are starting a microbe business ourselves.’
‘Is there that much call for it?’
‘You can’t sing to them, can you?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘We’ve put a down payment on our first van. You will use only us, won’t you?’
‘We’re broke, I’m afraid. Can’t use anyone.’
‘You can’t let yourself be invaded. You’ll have to work. You haven’t been using the Microbe Consultants, have you?’
‘They have passed by, yes.’
‘They didn’t sell you a pack?’
‘Only two.’
‘Useless, useless. Those men are on commission. Never let them in the house.’
She holds him. Dancing in the middle of the night, while he is still conscious, she puts her mouth to his ear and murmurs, ‘You might need Gerard Quinn.’
‘Who?’
‘Quinn has been hanging around. He’ll be in touch. Meanwhile, behind that door’ — she points at a wooden door with a steel frame, with a padlock hanging from it — ‘we are working on a combination potion, a deadly solution. It’s not yet ready, but when we have a sample, I’ll bring it.’ He looks at her sceptically. ‘Yes, everyone would be doing it. But the snag is, what prevents a definitive remedy is that husbands and wives give the stuff to their partners.’ Baxter feels as if he will fall over. ‘Have you actually mixed it in with her cereal yet, or are you still considering it?’
‘One time I did do that, but I put it down the drain.’
‘People use it to commit suicide too. One can’t be too careful, you see.’
She leaves him. He notices that the bearded man has arrived, and is laughing and sprinkling himself with alcohol beside the fish tank. He raises his hand in acknowledgement of Baxter. Later, before Baxter passes out, he sees the bearded man and the female neighbour go into the conservatory together.
Early in the morning his neighbour’s husband carries Baxter home.
Baxter is still asleep beside the bed, where he has collapsed, when the landlord visits. Fortunately he has forewarned them, and Baxter’s wife has stuffed the blue pole, potions and any devoured items into a cupboard. The man is susceptible to her; when necessary she can be both charming and forceful. Even though a fly lands on his lapel as they are talking, she convinces him that the problem is ‘in remission’.
After lunch, Baxter empties the full saucers once more, and sets out new ones. Once more the flies begin to die. But it is no longer something he can bear to look at. He stands in the bedroom and tells his wife that he will be out for the afternoon, and will take the kid with him. No, she says, he has always been irresponsible. He has to insist, as if it is his last wish, until she gives in.
It has made her sullen, but it is an important victory. He has never been alone with his son. In its sling, weighted against his body, he carries this novelty about the city. He sits in cafés, puts it on his knee and admires its hands and ears; he flings it in the air and kisses it. He strolls in the park and on the grass gives it a bottle. People speak to him; women, particularly, seem to assume he is not a bad character. The child makes him more attractive. He likes having this new companion, or friend, with him.
He thinks of what else they might do. His lover’s phone number comes into his mind. He calls her. They cross the river on the bus. At her door he wants to turn back but she is there immediately. He holds up the child like a trophy, though Baxter is fearful that she will be unnerved by the softened features of the other woman alive between them.