more dead WIPs

[kindkit]

(Follow up from my last post.)

3. Paul McDermott/Tim Ferguson RPS (6700 words, not sexually explicit). I'm still attached to this fandom, but the unfinished part of the story was just too big and complicated, and I lost momentum. Do try to forgive the mawkishness of the ring scene at the very beginning (I'd have rewritten it to be less so), as some of what comes later, I rather like. Tim really did used to wear a claddagh ring (you can see it in Dead and Alive) and Paul at the same time was wearing a ring that looked similar but not identical.



Tim likes souvenirs. Paul takes the piss, naturally, so Tim's learned not to buy them when Paul's around, not that this stops Paul from noticing when Tim's luggage has grown an extra suitcase, opening it up, and getting sarcastic about whatever he finds inside.

Here in Ireland, during the day and half Tim's managed to make for himself by getting on a train right after a show and not arriving back in London until two hours before the next, Tim has bought a Waterford vase for his mum, a handknitted wooly jumper for his dad, a picture book of Irish fairy tales for his son, and a gold necklace for his wife. And now, for himself, this.

Claddagh rings are very traditional, the shopgirl assures him, which Tim reckons means every tourist buys one. But it looks good on his finger, and whenever he looks at it he'll remember the narrow grey Liffey and the taste of Guinness, which every barman in Dublin insists loses its goodness with travelling.

"And what size does your sweetheart take?" the girl asks.

"Sorry?"

"Will you be buying one for your girl? It makes a grand gift. Especially in gold."

"No, thanks. Just this one." Which is silver.

Disappointment at the lost sale crosses the girl's face, soon replaced by something more hopeful. "Well, if you're not got a sweetheart, you wear it like this, with the heart pointing away from you." Her fingers are warm and unhurried on his as she turns the ring around.

Once he's out of the shop, he turns it around again.

***

It's nearly a day before Paul notices. Or rather, it's nearly a day before Paul says anything. Tim's sure Paul noticed it right away, because he notices every bloody thing. But he holds off comment until the next afternoon, when Tim's in his hotel room trying to write something, anything, that isn't a fucking comic song.

Paul knocks. This is an advantage of hotel rooms over the very old days when they shared a house--Paul has to knock. But Paul still doesn't take no for an answer, or he doesn't recognize "I'm writing" as polite for "you can't come in." And Tim tries to be polite these days, because he's got a wife and a little boy and he can't let himself keep the habit of saying "fuck off" whenever he's mildly inconvenienced.

He doodles in his notebook for a while, badly, because his arm is all pins-and-needles again, as Paul stalks twitchily around. Coke, Tim thinks, although these days it's not always easy to tell when Paul is coked up and when he's just nerved up. Paul's hands stroke random things--the nailheads on a leather armchair, the fake velvet draperies, Tim's notebook (which he seizes, barely glances at, and carries around), the surface of a reproduction Millais, his own greasy hair. He stinks. He seldom bothers showering: "It'll hardly matter once I put the fucking uniform on, will it?" he says.

"I want to go out," he announces now.

"All right." Tim rescues his notebook and tries to find his page.

"I want us to go out."

"I don't want to go out."

"Aww, c'mon, granddad, it's good for you. We'll go to the park and meet some other geriatrics. You'll love it."

"Fuck off," Tim says. "Go with Richard."

"Richard's gone to the fucking V and A to look at their world-class collection of chamberpots or some fucking thing. As I don't have his consuming interest in shit vessels, it narrows my options down to you. Nice ring, by the way. Did you buy a matching one for the little woman?"

"Fine," Tim says, because Paul has played his trump and Tim has lost again. "We'll go out."

Paul's need to wander lasts as far as a pub three streets from the hotel, where he orders double whiskies for himself and tries to order them for Tim, too, but Tim has a word with the barman and gets Guinness instead. It tastes a little bitterer than the Guinness in Dublin, but that might just be the company. When Paul has downed his fourth whisky in fifteen minutes and is signalling for another, Tim says, "We've got to be at the theatre in -" His new gold watch, which Paul has threatened to smash, tells him it's almost four o'clock. "- just over three hours."

"We've gone on drunk before."

"Moderately pissed, yeah. Legless, no."

"There was that time in [small Australian town]."

"And repeating that's exactly what I want to do. Jesus. Do you remember that huge skinhead bastard with the -"

"That was not your cue to get nostalgic, Ferguson. Christ, when did you turn sixty? And how do I turn you back?" Paul swipes viciously at his hair. Tim hasn't had the heart to say how little it suits him, but he thinks Paul knows. The ugliness is the point. The ugliness, the stink, the crudity and cruelty that used to be an act he could stop. It's all wrapped a foot thick around little Paul McDermott like a rubber costume. Something out of Doctor Who: Ice Warrior Paul McDermott, terrifying monster, conqueror of worlds.

"I just don't want to be stupid anymore," Tim says, knowing how it'll sound to Paul.

"You used up all your stupidity, didn't you? Mister I Got Married Just As My Career Was Taking Off."

"Fuck you." Which makes Paul grin, one of those adorable little smiles he loves to come out with onstage whenever he's made an especially sick joke. "Really. Fuck you."

"But I thought we didn't do that anymore, Timmy."

"Christ. I'm going back to the hotel." Tim doesn't make it to the door before Paul catches up with him. And grabs his arm, then sneakily slides his hand down until he's holding Tim's. On [street], in broad daylight, and luckily they're not famous enough yet that paparazzi follow them around. Tim yanks his hand away.

"You're hurting my feelings, darling."

"Good."

"Well, fuck me," Paul says, planting himself in front of a shop window. "Look at all this treasure! It's enough to make a girl's head spin." It's a jeweller's; diamonds sparkle in the feeble English sunlight. "Let's go in."

"I'm going back to the hotel," Tim says again, because he means it. Even though his feet aren't moving. "You do whatever the fuck you want, so long as you leave me alone."

"I want to go into the shop." Paul grins more widely, more nastily. "And if I have to do it on my tod, I might lose all track of time and forget to turn up for the show."

"You utter prick," Tim says to Paul's back, which disappears behind the closing shop door. "I hate you." And then he follows.

Paul is leaning over a glass counter, smiling at a very handsome man in a grey suit and a significantly pink tie. " - just like--oh there you are, Timmy--just like his. Show the man your pretty ring, Timmy. Oh, just the one on your hand, my blushing boy." Fast as a snake, he's got Tim's right wrist and drags it up under the man's nose.

"I'm very sorry." The man looks confused in a way Tim recognises, caught between the smooth charm and the sharp edge, and not sure which is real. Paul has always made people's heads spin, even before he added not showering to his repertoire of social skills. "We don't carry this, er, style."

Translation: don't come in here for tourist junk, you philistine, and have you noticed this isn't Ireland? So Tim's not entirely angry when Paul says, "What fucking use are you, then?"

"Really, sir," the man says, in a voice that suggests he's recategorised Paul from "drunk who might spend money" to "drunk who might smash the shop."

"Really," Paul says, in a mushy Pom accent like he's got a mouth full of Prince Charles's shit, "It's terribly, terribly important that I find a matching ring." He waves Tim's hand around a bit.

"I see," the Handsome Jeweller says hesitantly, making a fatal mistake. Never give Paul an inch, because that's all the wriggly bastard needs.

"Don't you want to know why?"

Tim tugs against Paul's grip, uselessly, because he's not actually willing to have a fight here but Paul has no such inhibition. "That's enough, Paul, let's -"

"We're getting married," Paul confides to the Handsome Jeweller, and giggles. "First poof wedding in Australia. Elton John's going to be maid of honour. And k. d. lang's my best man. I'm the husband, of course. Don't blush, Timmy, sweetheart. You'd never think he was shy if you could see him with my cock up his arse."

The Handsome Jeweller says, "Sir -" and Tim says "Paul -" but Paul pulls a wad of twenty-pound notes from his trouser pocket. A packet of white powder tumbles to the tasteful carpet; Paul, for once, doesn't notice, and Tim doesn't tell him.

"I've got about four hundred quid, I think," Paul says. "And wouldn't it be tragic if I had to go the press and tell them you wouldn't serve us because we're queer?" He smiles, and although he's puffy around the jowls and skeletal around the eyes, he's beautiful. Tim wants to break his fingers, and then possibly his nose. "Now, get me a ring like his."

"We don't carry claddagh rings. Really."

"Like his. Doesn't have to be perfect. It's only a poof wedding, after all. Not the true holy sacrament between a real man and his real wife."

"We don't carry silver," the Handsome Jeweller says, and Tim isn't sure if the brightness in his eyes is greed or a desperate prayer that he can sell Paul something and get rid of him. "But we do have platinum."

"Fair dinkum," Paul says in broadest bogan, but it's wasted on an Englishman, and anyway the man's bent to pull a tray out of the case. "May your chooks turn into emus, mate."

"Er, thank you."

For the first time all day Tim wants to laugh, but he's buggered--by a Great fucking Dane without lube--if he'll give Paul the satisfaction.

Paul tries on about thirty rings, finally goes back to the first one he tried, which has a vaguely claddagh-ish oval face, and to Tim's amazement actually buys it. It costs three hundred and sixty pounds. Tim's claddagh ring cost eighteen pounds, Irish. "Do you want to put it on my finger now, love, or do you want to be a good boy and wait for our special day?"

"For Christ's sake, give it a rest." Tim shoves the ring onto Paul's outstretched ring finger--left hand, of course.

"Slow down, you're hurting me!" He grins at Tim like he actually expects Tim to find this funny. "But I always love the feel of your ring."

Then, thank Christ or more likely, considering this is Paul, thank Satan, they can leave the shop.

"I feel pretty, oh so pretty," Paul sings, with that iron grip on Tim's hand again. He tries to skip, but Tim plants his feet hard and thinks immovable-object thoughts. Yanked back like a dog on a leash, Paul says, "What the fuck's the matter with you?"

"Are you finished? Have you had your fun? Because I'm tired, Paul." Maybe Paul's right and he is getting old. Maybe this is Dorian Gray and he's the portrait, rotting away while Paul will go on forever.

Paul looks at him puzzlingly, as though Tim is unexpected and faint, a distant radio signal three-quarters drowned with static. For a good two seconds, before his face goes cold again, he listens. "Headache, darling? Oh, well, at least it was good for me."

That's the last word out of him, and he manages to walk at Tim's side all the way back to the hotel without looking at him once. It's meant as more punishment, but it frees up the space in Tim's brain that's usually taken up Coping With Paul, and lets him think.

When Paul turns towards his room, opposite Tim's, Tim touches his arm. Doesn't grab it or pull on it, just lays his hand on the cheap leather of the jacket Paul's had since before they met. Paul stops dead. "Come and talk to me," Tim says.

"You're no fun anymore."

"Paul." Tim opens his door and Paul follows him, meek as a lamb. Whisky and comedown, Tim thinks, not regret. Not that it matters. Tim is going to be reasonable enough for two. "Somehow I get the impression you're angry at me."

Paul shrugs and folds himself into the armchair, knees drawn tight to his chest. He shrugs.

"We could talk about it." Minibar, yes. Two tiny vodkas that between them cost as much as a real bottle at an off-license (but Tim can afford it now), a splash of tonic. A civilised, reasonable, mature gesture.

"We talked about it three years ago," Paul says, accepting the drink without looking at it. "And much fucking good it did."

"Christ, you could hold a grudge for Australia."

"A grudge? Is that what you call it? No, mate. If this was about the fifty fucking dollars you never paid me for that microphone - "

" - I bloody well did, I took it out of the money my gran sent me for - "

"If this was about the fifty fucking dollars, it'd be a grudge. It's be stupid. But you left me. And if you're waiting for me to stop being angry, the devil's got a pair of fucking ice skates all ready for you."

Tim gulps his drink in one swallow and wishes his legs weren't all strange and lead-y, so he could curl up in his own armour like Paul.

"You didn't want anything serious, you said. You always said. You wanted to get rich and famous and fuck everything worth fucking on all seven continents including Antarctica, which by the way you did - "

"And so did you. And then you met that bitch and you fell in fucking loooooooove and you got her up the spout and you married her!"

"I love my wife," Tim says. It's completely true. Completely simple, just like the Bible stories he was taught as a kid. Simple because it leaves out all the tricky bits.

"I know. That't what shits me." Paul sighs. And then he launches himself at Tim like a cross between a ballistic missile and a ninja. Kisses him, whisky taste and clumsy tongue, and Paul's never really been anything like the world's best kisser but he's the world's Paul McDermott-est kisser and Christ, it's been three years.

Tim lets it go on for too long, and when he pulls away--barely, he can still feel Paul's breath on his face, and the world's so upside-down that the distillery reek makes Tim's mouth go wet with longing--he finds himself saying, "It was nothing to do with her. The ring. I only bought one."

"I know."

Fucker. "Then why - "

"I didn't know until thirty seconds ago."

"Oh," Tim says, and he knows from some near-invisible shift in Paul's face that Paul is about to kiss him again. Two roads are diverging in the bloody yellow wood. It's all real, the whole shit poem he had to memorize in year nine, every true word of it rings in his head. He's one traveller, with promises to keep.

Anyway, the other road is signposted with beware as far as the eye can see. Slippery road, falling rocks, look out for kangaroos and crocodiles and probably jellyfish as well.

Tim slides away, putting a feeble couple of inches between him and Paul before he's blocked by the back of the sofa. "You'd better go, Paul."

"Yeah. I know that too." He straightens up and smiles like the surface of the moon. "Fucking Madame Blavatsky, that's me."


1994

Usually there's a high after a show, a wave of energy to ride for a while before crashing into letdown. Tonight, there's just the letdown. It set in before the show even started, maybe. They were a bit shithouse, Tim knows, off key and off timing, though the audience screamed and clapped just the same.

Tim sits with his jacket in his lap, wiping the last of the makeup off his face. His hair's dripping sweat and beer down his neck, which is a feeling he's always hated, but tonight everything, every stinking thing, makes him thing this is it, this is the last time.

The worst of it is, he feels tip-top, physically. He's been fine through almost all of this tour, just a little weakness in one leg when they played [Perth]. Maybe he'll keep on being fine and there was no need for any of it.

Four thumps sound hollowly from the cheap door. "Come in, Paul," he says. He knows Paul's knock--Richard's is quiet and civilised--but he'd have known anyway. It has to be Paul. Paul is, right now, inevitable. Paul's been ticking all day, and now the clock's at zero and it's time for the mushroom cloud.

Paul comes in, leans against the door, and doesn't explode. "Well," he says. "That's it."

"That was it."

Still no explosion. Not even a blink at the past tense that was out of Tim's mouth before he noticed. Goodnight, Sydney, Tim thinks. We were the Doug Anthony All Stars.

Paul rubs his sleeve across his forehead, coating the cloth a runny pinkish-brown. Usually he only damages his costume in ways he's planned in advance. But then . . . "Give me your jacket."

"Why?" Tim's fingers close around the collar, which is frankly a rather disgusting sensation, but it's all he can do not to wrap his arms round the thing like it's his baby and Paul's a dingo.

"I'm gonna burn the fucker. All of them." Stripping of his own jacket, Paul mimes petrol, a match, and flames. Tim can't remember if he always used to gesture so much, or if it comes of ten years performing.

"But the paintings - "

"Fuck 'em." Paul extends a commanding arm.

"No. You can't just - you'll wish you hadn't."

"I want to burn them," Paul says, enunciating like a Play School host. "I might put a stake through them first, right here." Hand on heart. "Bury the ashes at a crossroads at midnight. Now hand the bastard over"

Holding his jacket tightly, Tim slides past Paul, opens the door, and shouts down the corridor for Richard. When he appears a minute later, Richard is showered and changed, smelling of toothpaste and cologne instead of years of accumulated sweat. He really is amazingly sane. He's the only reason the All Stars lasted longer than six weeks.

He's also, at the moment, irritated. "What? I'm not a fucking referee."

"Take our jackets," Tim says.

"Have you got biohazard containers? And I might need a license."

"I'm not joking." Tim hands his jacket over; Richard holds it by the shell casings on the epaulette. "Paul wants to burn them."

Richard almost asks why--Tim sees it in his face--then shrugs in his resigned, Richard-y way. "Why don't you take them, then? If you're so bloody determined to preserve them for future historians of comedy."

Tim looks at Paul, who's running his fingers over the badges and safety pins in his jacket. His filthy dreadlocks hang in his eyes.

"Because I might burn them too," Tim says. He takes the jacket from the unresisting Paul and passes it to Richard.

"Christ." Richard looks at Paul, looks at him, and sighs. "I wish you two would sort yourselves out." He retreats back to his dressing room--with relief, Tim suspects. For all breaking up the group was Tim's idea, it was Richard who made it final when about five hours into the screaming row he said, "It's stopped being fun." Even Paul couldn't answer that.

And now Paul's quiet again, closing the door with himself still on the inside. After a couple of those weird arrhythmic stillnesses that happen when someone's about to speak but decides against it, he says, "Our little Richie's all grown up."

"Did you only just notice?"

"It's . . . confusing's the wrong word, but it's . . . onstage, Richard's the doormat and I'm the sick bastard and you're, I dunno, every fucking thing, the one I fight with and flirt with and sing harmony with. And it's always the same, but offstage . . . "

"Yeah," Tim says. "I know." There've been times when offstage has shrunk down to a dot on the landscape, to a tiny little mental Tasmania while onstage has all the rest of the globe.

Paul slides down the door like all his bones have melted, ending up in a graceless heap. Usually the most beautiful thing about him is how he moves, how he shapes the world around his body. Strange to see it disappear, and Tim wonders how much of it has always been conscious, been performed.

Tim sits besides him. For a little while they're quiet together, and it's . . . nice. Even though the quiet means Paul's got to some advanced stage of misery, a cold plateau of desperation from which he's come to Tim--and here's a thought to shake everything Tim's decided about Paul over the last few years--for comfort.

"Ten years ago," Paul says, in a remote sort of voice like he's narrating a film, "if somebody's said we'd play London and Paris and we'd have two television shows and record albums, I'd have fucking laughed."

"I'd have laughed if somebody said we'd get out of Canberra."

"Or played in a theatre instead of busking and the odd pub."

"We did well."

Paul raises his head. His mascara's smeared. Maybe it's just from wiping sweat out of his eyes, but it doesn't seem impossible, now that they're offstage for ever, that he might actually be crying. "We were brilliant. People loved us and we made money and everyone we knew in the old days wished they were us. And it just kept getting better. The BBC, that would've been next. A show with an audience around the world. We could've been like Monty Python--people would've remembered us in twenty years."

"Paul - "

"We were ten feet from the top of Mount fucking Everest. And you said no, let's turn back."

There's nothing to say, because it's true. And because Paul knows Tim's explanation is a lie. He could've talked his wife round, moved the family to London. But he can't trust his arms and legs to work anymore, not perfectly and not all the time. Can't handle the slow drain of performing every night, and waking up every morning a little more depleted.

Can't tell them. Can't say, "Oh, dear, I'm feeling a bit under the weather this decade. I'm afraid I'll have to ruin our careers, but please be kind and remember I'm an invalid who mustn't be blamed." Can't say, "Remember those times I stuffed up the choreography? Remember how you'd always have a go at me for being lazy? Well, you'd better feel guilty now."

So he's left them to create their own explanations. And both Paul and Richard, he thinks, have settled on the same one; Tim can't bear Paul any longer. Richard, as he's pretty thoroughly fed up with them both, seems to find that understandable. Paul, though. You'd think hurting Paul would be like stepping on a rock--all you'd actually hurt would be yourself. Instead, it's treading on an eggshell with a pair of steel-toed Docs.

"People die on Everest," Tim says. "If they go on when they ought to turn back."

"Sorry, I didn't know the air was so fucking thin in London."

"It was your metaphor."

"Yeah, well, it made sense when I used it." He tugs a few more threads loose from a cuff that's ninety percent loose threads already and blows them into the air like dandelion clocks. One of them lands on Tim's arm. He leaves it there. "How many hours do you reckon we put into it? The group?"

"Most of them." Performing was the easy bit, really. The bit where people cheered. The rest of it was propping your eyes open while you tried to write a segue between two songs, rehearsing the moves for the millionth time, thinking up new jokes and tossing out the ones that didn't work, even painting the fucking backdrops, although Paul did most of that.

"I don't think I've done anything else for ten years. And now . . . "

"I'm sorry."

Paul ignores him. Not maliciously, Tim thinks, but because it just doesn't matter whether he's sorry or not. "I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm thirty-two years old and my life is fucking gone."

It shouldn't have been your whole life, Tim thinks. You should've kept something back for yourself, like I did. Richard, too. But what he and Richard have are wives, families, and that's no answer for Paul.

That's the problem, for Paul. Or part of it. The little bit of life that Tim's hoarded came at Paul's expense. Paul sees it like that, anyway.

Tim takes Paul's thin cold hand in his own, palm to palm. Their rings, Tim's tarnishing silver claddagh and Paul's brutally sophisticated platinum, grate together. A fine unmatching pair, they make.


1995

The knock interrupts him at a crucial stage of the writing process, the looking-out-of-the-window-and-not-actually-thinking-about-anything stage. It must be crucial, because he's never managed to write more than a few hundred words without an interval of it. Maybe it's the [tree]. Maybe the [tree] is a transfigured muse, pure inspiration covered in bark. There was something in an English class long ago about Daphne and laurels and poetry. Laureates.

Muse or not, when he's in the room that he doesn't call a study because he's not a pretentious wanker, with a shut door between the world and the backbreaking, mindbreaking work of digging for words like an ounce of ore in a ton of granite, he doesn't like being interrupted. Not that he's a bastard about it--he won't make the kids wait if they really need him--but it's important. And Natalie's good about it. She never hints that what he's doing isn't work, even on the bad days when it's all staring and no words.

She knocks again, a little louder, and says, "Phone, Tim."

"Who is it?" he asks without getting up.

"Paul." They know a lot of Pauls, but there's only one who could cause her to break into Tim's writing time unless it was an emergency--mostly, Tim knows, it's because she'd rather hand the phone over than argue with Paul. "Paul McDermott," Natalie adds, unnecessarily.

"Thanks, love," he says, shifting a stack of notes and newspaper cuttings until he finds the telephone, which has its ringer taped down in the "off" position. As he's lifting the handset, it occurs to him that this might be an emergency after all. He hasn't spoken to Paul in months. "Hello?"

"A game show, Timmy? Now, we both know Funky Squad was shit, but at least it wasn't a fucking game show."

"Hi, Paul. Lovely to hear your voice."

"There I was, innocently flicking through the channels, because it's not like you bothered to fucking mention that you had a new show, no, I had no fucking warning at all or I'd have worn welding goggles to save my eyes from the radioactive blast of that suit they put you in, I'm innocently flicking through the channels and up pops your fucking masterpiece. What's it called? I Spit On Your Toothbruth?"

The worst possible thing to say is that he likes Don't Forget Your Toothbrush, that it's easy work and the audience is always happy, always hopeful, even when they're being humiliated. Concentrating on not saying that, Tim says the next worst thing instead. "Some of us have families to support."

"You could've thought of that last year, mate. A BBC show would've kept the wife in designer shoes and the kids in gold-plated nappies."

"Bit scratchy." Sometimes Tim used to be able to magic Paul out of these moods, wave the wand of a joke and make him laugh instead of rave. He doesn't have that power anymore, and he ought to have remembered.

"Is this what you wanted, Timmy? When you broke us up - " Not the All Stars, Tim notices, but us. " - was it because the thought of a neon suit and a disgusting oily fucking smile and an assistant with pneumatic tits gave you a stiff one?"

Sometime during that sentence Tim spun his chair away from the door, towards the window, and looking out at hard, green-yellow fruit that are all the tree ever produces, he realises he's got something he's only ever had a few times: an opportunity to make Paul sorry. He could say No, Paul, I left the group because my legs wouldn't work right and sometimes when I picked up a microphone I couldn't feel it. Last month I finally got a diagnosis, and it's multiple fucking sclerosis, so sod off and rant at my myelin sheathing, and by the way, it could get worse at any time and I could end up in a wheelchair gasping for every breath, so I thought I'd better fucking well make some money while I can.

He could do it. He could stand at the top of the moral high ground declaiming the words. Truth's a virtue, after all. It would be virtuous, honest, to load a bit of guilt on Paul's healthy back and watch him stagger under it.

It'd be an end to sarcastic phone calls, finally. The beginning of some new state, some fragility, where Paul would be as careful with him as Tim is with his body, which has to be rested and medicated, doctored and examined, fed nutritious meals and never allowed to get too hot or too cold.

"Paul," Tim says, in the calm measured voice that he's been finding lately, "do you remember 'Joan of Arc'?"

"What's that got - "

"You'd hit me - "

"Pretend to."

"You never got the hang of the fake slap."

"Neither - "

"So you'd hit me and insult me and it was brilliant, everyone loved it. Everyone loved you. But - "

"Tim, for - "

"But the thing is, Paul, it only works that way onstage." He puts the receiver down and crosses his arms over his chest, cold hands shoved into his armpits. As he breathes--shakily, which could be a symptom, but he doesn't think it is--he feels the movement of his wedding ring against his finger. That's the only ring he wears now. He took the claddagh ring off last year, when he came home after the last All Stars tour, and put it in a drawer of his writing desk, behind pens and packs of sticky notes. He hasn't worn it since, and only sometimes, like now, does he remember that it's there.


1998

He's not braced for it, that's the problem. It's half-past seven in the morning and his mind is on tea, toast, and the kids' school satchels; he's only leafing through The Age because it's what he does in the mornings while Natalie gets dressed and the kids devour most of a box of Weetbix between them.

"Perhaps if you wouldn't pull Tracy's hair," he's saying to Billy as he turns a page, "she wouldn't - "

If there hadn't been a picture, his eyes might have slipped right past it. Although as it turns out, that wouldn't have been an escape; later, people ring him to ask if he's seen it, so maybe it's just as well he's got a bit of forewarning.

In fact there are two pictures, one of Paul and one of Richard. And a headline: The Two of Us. And, for a trilogy of two-ness, there are two separate interviews. It would've been a lot of trouble, Tim supposes later, to interview or photograph Paul and Richard together, since Paul's in Sydney and Richard's in Brisbane. And Tim's in Melbourne. Splitting the All Stars was a bit like splitting an atom; the force scattered them wide.

Tim is named in the article exactly once: to say that neither Paul nor Richard has spoken a word to him since 1994. It's not even true. Richard rings now and again, and even though Paul's been silent since the row over Toothbrush, before that they talked . . . well, objectively it wasn't very often, but every conversation lingered.

Did the reporter make it up, or did they lie to him? Whose invention is it, this story that erases Tim down to a few smudges and gaps? He doesn't even get to be the villain anymore.

"Daddy, Billy took my serviette and wiped his mouth! Daddy!"

For a second, before he turns back to his life, Tim finds himself looking at the pictures again. At Paul's picture. Paul with his almost-respectable haircut and his Good News Week suit, his exaggerated and playful scowl, his clean healthy normality. The old Paul's gone. And what are memories but circles we draw around ourselves? The center shifts, the circle moves, and what used to be is nothing but a pinprick and a meaningless line.

***

Tim's feet hurt. They've been hurting for days, and although it's the ordinary ache of rehearing dances in Frank N. Furter's high heels and not some stealthy new advance of his MS, it still nags at him more than it probably should. He kicks off his trainers at the door and stands happily shoeless on the rug, flexing his toes and looking through a stack of post. Bills; a ludicrously small royalty cheque for Left, Right, and Centre; proposals that ought to have gone through his agent; a couple of fans letters (one in red ink) that he bins on the principle that if they've found out his home address, the last thing he wants to do is encourage them; and a padded envelope with a Sydney postmark and the return address "U. Sless Faquitt." Even if he didn't recognise the handwriting, he'd know that had to be Paul.

Tim takes the parcel up to what he's long since surrendered to calling his study, and doesn't open it. He has a late dinner with Natalie and the kids and tells little Chloe the latest installment of their bedtime serial, "The Adventures of the Girl Pirates on Mars," before he slips away. "Just a couple of things to do," he tells Natalie, as though he's going to write. She must have noticed the parcel, but she doesn't ask.

Inside the envelope, there's . . . a thing. A rough-edged rectangle of thick paper the colour of very milky tea. Painted on it are the words "I'm sorry" in large letters, and a cartoon of a kneeling, pleading Paul and a stern, schoolmasterish Tim. On the other side, in ink, more words: "I really am. Ring me. Please?" and a phone number. Not a new one; did Paul think Tim might have thrown the number away, deliberately forgotten it?

It's almost two hours before Tim picks up the phone. He can't, somehow, talk to Paul for the first time in three years until the house has gone silent around him, and the neighbourhood too, until that late-night feeling comes over everything, that cool pleasant isolation like the bottom of the sea.

It might be someone else's hand tapping the number buttons. But Paul's "hello," unsleepy, unstartled, the voice of someone who always stays up late, re-anchors Tim to himself.

"Paul," he says. "It's - "

"Tim. I'm glad you called."

Caller ID, Tim thinks, but he doubts it. The truth is that Paul knows his voice as he knows Paul's handwriting. There's a recognition between them, whether they like it or not. "Nice drawing, by the way. I liked it. Wouldn't mind seeing you beg for forgiveness in real life."

"I am - "

"Sorry. Yeah."

"You know what I'm like with journos."

"So it's all inevitable? You're a windup toy and you can't help talking about me like I'm a sad wanker who you never could stand?"

"You know that's not true."

"I know that you said it."

"Fuck." Paul gives it about twelve syllables, a long hiss and thump like a deflating tire. "Timmy - "

"The only thing I wouldn't have expected is the apology. Is that Richard's doing?"

"He did say something about having me slowly dismembered--still alive, mind you--and then buried beneath six different small town parking lots where I would be trodden underfoot by bogans for the next thirty years."

"Richard was always too nice."

There's a high, squeaky snort as Paul fails to repress a laugh. "Can we take it as read that I'm a cunt, then, or do I have to keep saying so?"

Tim can picture him, curled up in a big stern chair in his expensive Bondi flat, with his stylish hair and his stylish specs and his lips curled in the "you know you adore me really" smile he uses whenever he's really got up an audience's nose. "When you said that you hadn't spoken to me since the group split--that was you, yeah?"

"Mmm."

"It was almost bloody true."

"You were the one who put the phone down."

"You're the one who didn't ring back."

"So are you. I thought - I thought I'd give you a little time to get over it. And . . . "

Silence down the line, silence in the room, in the house, on the streets outside. Tim wonders if it's noisy in Bondi. If he could fly to Sydney and sit on the beach with Paul while the last stars fade and they could talk their way out of this fucking Trappist vow they've taken between them. "And?"

"Fuck, I don't know. Time to miss me."

"Three years?"

"It got a bit out of hand." Which could be the motto for almost everything in their lives since they met: It got a bit out of hand. Tim doesn't remember that happening to him much, before Paul. But his life's well in hand now, stable and sane, happy and healthy. Safe as houses.

"Some brass-balled journo from [gossipy tabloid or magazine] asked me for a comment. About your interview, I mean."

"'Paul McDermott is a cunt' would've made a gorgeous headline."

"I'll ring her back tomorrow," Tim says. Not much of a joke, but Paul laughs a little. In all these years, Tim's never got over the urge to make Paul laugh.

"I've got an even better idea. Come on Good News Week. People will see us friends, they won't give a fuck about an old interview."

Tim thinks, friends? And that he's busy and it would be stupid to fly to Sydney for a half-hour quiz show. And what if they schedule him in and he has a relapse?

"Richard's been on. Three times. That's got to be against the natural order of the universe."

"Is this about playing nice for the cameras, Paul? Living down a bit of bad press?"

"No." The showbiz charm has gone out of Paul's voice. "I . . . I'd like it, that's all. Because I've fucking missed you. That joke was on me, what a surprise."

You could've rung, Tim thinks, but he's spent years in small rooms with Paul and knows that nothing's ever that simple for him. For Paul, the universe's big joke is on him like a fallen rock, and struggling only makes it worse. "I'm not free until next month."

Paul laughs, happy, triumphant, and in his silent room, Tim is smiling.



Where it was going: I was trying to follow the actual events of Paul and Tim's lives as closely as I could, including not breaking up Tim's marriage until he and his wife actually separated ca. 2004. So Tim would've gone on GNW, as he actually did, and he and Paul would've spent the night together afterwards, but in the morning Tim would've gone home, because whatever weird and painful and persistent thing he has with Paul, he loves his wife and kids. My memory of a lot of what I had planned after that has faded, but at some point Tim was going to tell Paul about his MS, and they'd end up having sex again and this time an actual affair would begin, which would put a strain on Tim's marriage and eventually contribute to breaking it up. At first Tim and Paul would still be separate, having a covert long-distance relationship, because of Tim wanting to protect his kids from gossip, etc. But some time would pass, and Tim would discover that now that Paul's older and also (because Tim's marriage has ended) not wracked with jealousy and insecurity, he's bearable to be around for long periods of time, and they'd move in together and live happily ever after. May the gods of fiction forgive me, I think I'd intended for Tim to start wearing the ring again, possibly with Paul wearing an actually matching one now. I swear I'd have either found a way to make it less cringe-inducing than it sounds or eventually cut it.



4. My Beautiful Laundrette fic (Omar/Johnny, 500 words, nothing sexually explicit). This is the Yuletide 2010 story I started and couldn't finish, eventually dropping out of Yuletide.



Johnny's put on a tie. It's a horrible, paisley, 10p-at-Oxfam sort of tie, and if Johnny didn't look so nervous Omar might think he was taking the piss.

Naturally, the first words out of Papa's mouth are "My God, boy, you look bloody awful." But he doesn't mean the tie, he means Johnny's puffy lips and the bruise that blacks his eye and shades out over his face, purple to green to yellow. "I hope that wretched Selim is grateful."

"Yes, Papa," Omar says. Selim's been talking--more or less, since he lost three teeth--about how much he owes Johnny and Omar, but there's a look in his eye that says it'll all be for Selim's own benefit in the end. The big money, that's what he's bound to be thinking of, money that pours out of Pakistan in false beards and videocassette boxes. Big quick dirty money, and Omar's not sure how he's going to keep himself and Johnny out of it. No more rough stuff. They've promised each other.

"How are you, Mr. Ali?" Johnny asks. He sounds like a kid, and he looks like one, rocking up and down on the balls of his feet.

Papa looks down at his pyjamas--clean ones, at least--and his socks with the hole at the toe. "Never better." A train passes the window then, and the next thing Omar hears is " - but hadn't you better stop calling me Mr. Ali? After all, you're part of the family now, Johnny."

"Johnny, why don't - " Omar tries, but it's too late. Johnny's face has gone stoplight-red around the bruises, a red you could see a mile away, a big bright signpost of an answer to the question Papa was too sly to ask. And Papa's not like Uncle Nasser, happy to pretend he doesn't know.

"I'd like to be," Johnny says.

There's a kind of shifting in the air that makes Omar think of cartoon rocks teetering at the edge of cartoon cliffs. Papa stares at Johnny. But what Johnny is he seeing? Omar's school friend, or the skinhead with white laces in his Docs, or the Johnny who's here in his ugly tie and his smashed face, with his elbow just brushing Omar's? And even then, it's not simple. I'm with you, Johnny says, and he's proved it, but in a way he's the end of the family, too. No grandchildren for Papa, no new generation of Alis.

Papa's eyes flick left, towards the bed and the little table with its picture of Omar's mum. Mary Taylor, who became Mary Ali, who used to get anonymous letters calling her a Paki-loving whore, who jumped under a train. Who always liked Johnny. Who cried when she saw him wearing a National Front badge. "Well . . . " Papa turns back to Johnny and smiles a little. He still looks worried; Omar can't remember a time when he didn't. "If you fancy your own metaphorical immigration, who am I to stop you?"


Where it was going: Well, that was the problem. I wanted there to be some conversation about Johnny's past as a racist skinhead, I know that. And I wanted somehow to get at the idea of families, both constructed and born, and how intersectionality strains at families and makes them all the more necessary.



I haven't included two substantial stalled WIPs that I still hope to finish (in Hot Fuzz and X-Men: First Class, both of which only need editing).