My breathing had deepened and my body felt weak and useless. A mist was drawing down and I worried that soon I wouldn’t be able to see at all. Soon I would miss V’s sign and she would be swallowed by the night and the man. I turned my head and saw the neon exit sign above the door. I imagined walking towards it and into the open, returning alone to our flat, getting into bed and waiting for her to come home. I imagined letting go and not caring, the idea like tiny pins in my brain.
I looked back and even though the man’s face was against V’s neck, I could see her hand on the bird. The woman in front of me yelped as I pushed her out of the way. ‘Watch out,’ she called after me, pointlessly. Even in the moments it took for me to reach her, I saw V’s expression change. She wasn’t laughing any more and was pushing slightly against the man’s chest as he lowered his face towards hers. I took him by the shoulder, yanking him backwards so his drink made a stain down the front of his T-shirt.
‘What the fuck are you doing to my girlfriend?’ I asked, feeling the people around us melting into the background.
‘What the fuck?’ he said, straightening up. We stared at each other for a minute, but I had height and muscle on him and he had felt my strength when I pulled him back. He waved his hands in the air. ‘Nice fucking girlfriend,’ he said to me. Then he looked at V. ‘Cocktease,’ he said, turning away.
I felt V’s hand on my arm as it tensed and drew back, ready to lay waste to his stupid, oversized face. She turned me towards her and pulled me closer and I leant down and kissed her, putting my hands where his had been, laying back my claim. Her tongue was quick and fast and I wanted her so much I thought I would sweep the drinks off the bar and lay her in the spilt liquor. But she pulled me away, past the round tables and chairs, past the writhing bodies on the dance floor, past the booming speakers, past the merging couples, to a dark corner. She backed herself into it, pulling me towards her. She opened my flies and pulled me out, wrapping her legs around me. The silk of her dress slithered upwards too easily and she wasn’t wearing underwear, so I was inside her quickly and she was biting the side of my neck and moaning and it was like all the other people had gone and we were the only ones there, the only ones who mattered.
Afterwards, in the cold night air, with drunken people bustling along their sad, forlorn ways to terrible encounters, V said, ‘For a second I thought you’d abandoned me.’
I took her hand. ‘How can you say that?’
‘Because I touched the bird and it took you a while to come.’
I realised I must have spent longer looking at the exit sign than I’d meant to. ‘I’d never abandon you,’ I said.
‘Promise?’ she said and I looked over and saw she wasn’t giggling any more. She looked smaller, the black lines smudged now around her eyes.
I stopped, even though the streets were so full people immediately walked into us. I lifted the delicate silver bird which lived on the chain round her neck and she stepped towards me. ‘I’m your eagle,’ I said. ‘You know that.’
I didn’t give V the necklace. In fact, she told me she bought it for herself with her first ever pay packet from a waitressing job when she was sixteen. She told me she’d been walking past a shop and it had glinted at her from a window and she’d felt a deep desire to possess it. I had always presumed it to be a dainty bird, like a swift or even a clichéd lovebird, and I was surprised when she first told me it was an eagle. But when I looked properly I saw the length of the wings and the curved beak.
‘Eagles are magnificent,’ V had said. ‘They are the only birds which get excited by a storm, then they fly straight into it, so they can look down on all the chaos. But also,’ she said, putting her hands over mine, ‘they are very loyal. They mate for life.’
I’d leant down and kissed her mouth. ‘I’m your eagle,’ I’d said.
I thought it expedient to make friends in my new City job, even though the same plan hadn’t gone that well in New York. I would be fine if it was just V and me forever, but I’ve learnt that people find you strange if you’re happy like that. So, I’ve learnt their ways. I understand now that people do not always mean what they say. That they enjoy hours of meaningless chat in crowded bars without a reason like the Crave for being there. That they are happy to share their bodies with others and then act as if they barely know them.
If someone says something like, ‘I could fucking kill him,’ or, ‘I’m feeling so depressed,’ or, ‘My legs are literally about to drop off,’ they don’t actually mean any of those things. They don’t even mean anything close to those things. When a woman puts her hand on your leg she does not expect you to reciprocate. When a man calls you mate, it doesn’t mean he likes you. When someone says, ‘We must get together soon,’ you shouldn’t ask them when or text them the next day.
When I was in primary school I pushed another boy in my class, Billy Sheffield, and he fell and grazed his knee. My teacher, whose name I forget, told me I had to say sorry, but I refused because I wasn’t. He had called me some name, again I forget what but it would have been something along the lines of Two-Stripe or Fleabag, in reference to my market-stall trainers and unwashed clothes. Either way, I wasn’t sorry. So they took me to the little office where rumour had it they sent the crazy kids. A rosy-cheeked woman smiled at me and told me to sit in a comfy chair whilst she offered me sweets. It made me wonder if being crazy was all that bad after all.
‘Why aren’t you sorry?’ she finally asked me, after I’d stuffed myself with Smarties.
‘Because I’m not,’ I said.
‘But when you saw the blood on Billy’s knee, didn’t you feel bad that you’d done it?’ she said.
I thought back to the moment, standing over Billy and looking down at his raw knee, the skin scraped back and drops of blood popping on to the skin. I knew how it would sting and burn, how a bit of gravel might get trapped inside and how the nurse would right now probably be spreading foul-smelling iodine across the graze, wrapping it in a white bandage which he would wear like a medal of honour. ‘I thought he deserved it,’ I said.
‘No one ever deserves to be hurt,’ she said, still smiling.
‘He called me a bad name.’
‘Yes and that was very mean. He’ll be punished for that. But you still have to say sorry for hurting him.’ I must have looked blank, because she went on. ‘Sometimes, Michael, it’s worth saying sorry even if you don’t completely mean it. Just to keep the peace and make the other person feel better.’
I still sometimes wish I’d asked her if that applies to all emotion, or only contrition.
But I have learnt enough lessons over the years to better understand what is and is not expected in life. I knew, for example, that when George, who worked in the next office to mine, asked if I’d like to come out for a drink soon after I started in the City, I should arrange my face into a smile and say yes.