Other People by Martin Amis Read Free Book Online

then. Listen. If I see you again there'll be trouble. Lots of it. Okay? Off you go then.'
    'Thank you.'
    He kicked open the door. 'Let her go, Dave,' he said. 'She's not one of them.'
    Mary walked erectly down the street, a fire of eyes prickling on her back. Once she had turned the second corner, she leaned against a wall and pressed a hand to her forehead. The strangest thing about him was his breath. Its smell chimed with her earliest memory—two days ago, waking in that white room. She remembered now. Someone had been with her when she woke up; someone had asked if she was all right and told her to be good ... Well, I'll try my best, she thought, and started to walk again.
    There was something else about his breath. Everyone else's breath was alive. His wasn't. His breath was dead.
    • • •
    Part Two

5
    • • •
    Gaining Ground

    'More tea, love?'
    'Yes please,' said Mary.
    'How you getting on then?'
    'Fine, fine. I feel better all the time.'
    'Coming back to you, is it dear?'
    'Well—a little,'Mary lied.
    'It's just a matter of time,' said Mrs Botham thoughtfully, '—purely a matter of time.'
    Watched and smiled at by Mary, Mrs Botham limped back to her seat—her inviolable armchair, wedged into the corner by the fire with toy flames. Limp hardly did justice (Mary coolly reflected) to the spectacular uneven-ness of Mrs Botham's gait: she walked like a clockwork hurdler. Mary attributed this to the fact that one of Mrs Botham's legs was roughly twice the length of the other. The standard limb sported its special extension, like a black brick; but that scarcely made up the disparity; and her longer leg seemed embarrassed by its own profligacy, bending outwards in a sympathetic arc. Mr Botham—and Gavin, too, naturally—spoke of something going wrong with Mrs Botham's leg a long time ago in her life. Something with a dark name had come and stretched it for her. No one said how or why.
    'I knew a lady from the clinic,' said Mrs Botham, her head angled solicitously, 'she took a knock on the head one night, said that she couldn't remember, you know, hardly anything.'
    'She was probably pissed,' said Gavin, who sat nearby on the couch, gazing, as was his habit, at a magazine full of glaring, near-naked men. They had all built their own bodies, and had all made a terrible mess of it.
    Mrs Botham's head twisted round towards her son. 'She was not pissed, Gavin! I mean drunk,' she added, returning to Mary with her smile. 'She had amnesia. Her mind was a complete blank! In the morning she couldn't recognize a soul, not even her own husband who was cradling her in his arms or even her own little children, Melanie and Sue.'
    'That's not amnesia, Ma,' said Gavin.
    Mrs Botham's features, which until that moment seemed poised for resigned and melancholy sleep, hardened watchfully. '... What is it then?' she asked.
    'It's called a hangover,' said Gavin, without looking up.
    'Why do you behave in this way to your own mother, Gavin? Why? Please tell me why, Gavin.'
    Gavin turned another page of his magazine, and another tiny head beamed out from its fortress. 'Because you're an alcoholic, Ma,' he said.
    'No she's not,' said Mr Botham, who as usual had been sitting in cheerful silence at the table. 'She's an ex-alcoholic.'
    'Ah, no, my dear,' said Mrs Botham, her face all abrim again, 'now that is where you are wrong. There is no such thing as an ex-alcoholic ...'
    'Only an alcoholic.'
    'Only an alcoholic.'
    'Only an alcoholic,' they all said at once.
    'And she was an amnesiac!' Mrs Botham told her son. '... And you're just a queer anyway.'
    'That's right, Ma,' said Gavin, and turned a page.
    'You see, Mary,' said Mrs Botham: 'once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Oh, if I could've just got Sharon to come to Al Anon! But she'd never come. She was too drunk all the time. Do you know, Mary, that the true alcoholic'— and here she closed her eyes—'they fear nothing. Nothing. Oh, I've had the lot, I admit it, Mary. Methylated