Midnight All Day Read Online Free PDF

the county. When I wake up she is gone.
    *
    I walk on the beach; there is a strong wind. I put my head back: it is raining into my eyes. I think of Los Angeles, my work, and of what will happen in the next few months. A part of my life seems to be over, and I am waiting for the new.
    After supper I am standing in the garden outside the diningroom, smoking weed, and breathing in the damp air. I have decided it is too late to return to London tonight. Since waking up I have not spoken to Florence, only glanced into the dining room where she and her husband are seated at a table in the middle. Tonight she is wearing a long purple dress. She has started to look insistent and powerful again, a little diva, with the staff, like ants, moving around only her because they cannot resist. One more night and she will bring the room down with a wave and stride out towards the sea. I know she is going to join me later. It is only a wish, of course, but won’t she be wishing too? It is probably our last chance. What will happen then? I have prepared my things and turned the car around.
    There is a movement behind me.
    ‘That’s nice,’ she says, breathing in.
    I put out my arms and Martha holds me a moment. I offer her the joint. She inhales and hands it back.
    ‘What are you thinking?’
    ‘Next week I’m going to Los Angeles to be in a film.’
    ‘Is that true?’
    ‘What about you?’
    She lives nearby with her parents. Her father is a psychology lecturer in the local college, an alcoholic with a violent temper who has not been to work for a year. One day he took against London, as if it had personally offended him, and insisted the family move from Kentish Town to the country, cutting them off from everything they knew.
    ‘We always speculate about the people who stay here, me and the kitchen girl.’ She says, suddenly, ‘Is something wrong?’
    She turns and looks behind. As Martha has been talking, I have seen Florence come out into the garden, watch us for a bit, and throw up her hands like someone told to mime ‘despair’. A flash of purple and she is gone.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Tell me what you’ve been imagining about me,’ I say.
    ‘But we don’t know what you’re doing here. Are you going to tell me?’
    ‘Can’t you guess?’ I say impatiently. ‘Why do you keep asking me these things?’
    She takes offence, but I have some idea of how to get others to talk about themselves. I discover that recently she has had an abortion, her second; that she rides a motorbike; that the young people carry knives, take drugs and copulate as often as they can; and that she wants to get away.
    ‘Is the bar shut?’ I ask.
    ‘Yes. I can get you beer if you want.’
    ‘Would you like to drink a glass of beer with me?’ I ask.
    ‘More than one glass, I hope.’
    I kiss her on the cheek and tell her to come to my room. ‘But what will your parents say if you are late home?’
    ‘They don’t care. Often I find an empty room and sleep in it. Don’t want to go home.’ She says, ‘Are you sure it’s only beer you want?’
    ‘Whatever you want,’ I say. ‘You can get a key.’
    On the way upstairs I look into the front parlour. In the middle of the floor Florence and Archie are dancing; or rather, he is holding on to her as they heave about. The Scrabble board and all the letters have been knocked on the floor. His head is flopped over her shoulder; in five years he will be bald. Florence notices me and raises a hand, trying not to disturb him.
    He calls out, ‘Hey!’
    ‘Drunk again,’ I say to her.
    ‘I know what you have been doing. Up to!’ he says with leering emphasis.
    ‘When?’
    ‘This afternoon. Siesta. You know.’
    I look at Florence.
    ‘The walls are thin,’ he says. ‘But not quite thin enough. I went upstairs. I had to fetch something from the bathroom. But what an entertainment. Jiggy-jig, jiggy-jig!’
    ‘I’m glad to be an entertainment, you old fucker,’ I say. ‘I wish you could be