Monkey Grip Read Free Page B

where I was sitting with my brandy and my half-closed eyes. I got off the twiggy ground and went over to him.
    â€˜Hullo.’
    He looked up with a start. His face looked strange to me, in a way I could not determine. I supposed it was because of his churned-up feelings.
    â€˜Good day, mate,’ he said.
    â€˜Is everything all right?’ Surely an odd, painful look crossed my face.
    â€˜Yeah. I’m really stoned,’ he said in a tone which I took for an apology for his indifference. A shiver of irritation ran over me. Don’t excuse yourself, bloody teenager, bloody child. Give or don’t give. I’m not going to fight you for it.
    I walked off and passed a woman I vaguely knew, my age, with the Eltham gloss on her, expensively dressed, too sophisticated and throaty-voiced to go smoothly amongst this bunch of desperadoes. A young man grinned passively under her attentions. I blushed in shame for us women whose guns are too big these days, who learned ten years ago to conduct great sexual campaigns with permanency in mind, while today it is a matter of skirmishes, fast and deft.
    Spare us from indignity.
    I saw the three of them drive away in Martin’s car. Javo was looking straight ahead, his face set like a mask.
    I came home alone, and mooched ill-temperedly around my room. I found his bowie knife where I’d hidden it behind the bookcase, safe from the children. I held its solid weight for a few seconds, wildly fantasising plunging it into the famous handsome picture of him in Cinema Papers. Instead, I dropped the knife and wrote him a letter.
    â€˜Dear Javo, there’s a few things you ought to know, mostly involving things like elementary courtesy. Eh? like saying hullo; like not making that ludicrous adolescent gap between how you behave towards me at night when we sleep together and how you act in public as if we hardly knew each other. Don’t get me wrong: I can recognise a desperate man when I see one. I don’t want a flood of attention. Just hullo would do, so I don’t have to wonder if I’ve been hallucinating other times we’ve been together. Good luck to you, Javo, I like you, but you give me a hard time. Still like to see you, sometime.’
    I took it to his house next morning, expecting not to find him there – but he was there, asleep in his tidied room. I put the letter down beside his bed. He woke up, stared at me as if I were a stranger, his eyes blank with sleep, empty of comprehension, with a pinpoint of panic far inside his skull.
    â€˜I brought you a note. I didn’t think you’d be here.’
    He lay there, rigid, still staring.
    â€˜. . . But now I’m here, I feel very uncomfortable, so I think I’ll go.’
    He nodded, clearly incapable of anything more. I stood up, and as I walked out I heard him rip open the envelope.
    I went into Martin’s room and woke him. We talked cheerfully. I was aware that our laughing voices were audible to Javo. We went out to the kitchen and made some coffee. Javo stumped out, hair on end, face tight. He came to the table and Martin and I chattered on, our elbows resting among the mess of newspapers and orange peels. Gradually Javo’s face softened, he smiled at the talk, listened with his face, spoke.
    When I went to leave, I stopped in the back yard for a last word with Martin. Javo went past us and out the gate without saying anything. I said goodbye to Martin and wheeled my bike out the gate, put my foot on the pedal – and saw him leaning against a car two doors down the lane.
    Adolescent!
    I rolled up beside him, balanced my bike with both feet on the ground. He gave me the rueful flash with his very bright blue eyes.
    â€˜Last night,’ he said, ‘I was sure I didn’t want to see you again. But I don’t feel like that now.’
    â€˜You are not courteous to me . . . but I understand why you do it,’ I said too hastily, because it