Macbeth

Of course it had been Duff who had approached the two girls and asked to join them at their table. Macbeth went to the bar and bought them all beers, came back and heard Duff sounding off about Macbeth and him being the best two cadets in the final year at police college. Their future prospects looked more than rosy, and the girls should make a move if they knew what was good for them, he said. The two girls laughed, and the eyes of the girl called Meredith glinted, but she looked down when Macbeth tried to hold her gaze. When the bar closed, Macbeth accompanied Meredith to the gate and was rewarded with a friendly handshake and a telephone number. While, next morning, Duff went into great detail about how he had serviced the friend, Rita, in a narrow bed at the nurses’ hall of residence, Macbeth rang Meredith the same evening and in a trembling voice invited her out for dinner.

He had ordered a table at Lyon’s and knew it was a mistake the moment he saw the head waiter’s knowing gaze. The elegant suit Duff had lent him was much too big, so he’d had to go for Banquo’s, which was two sizes too small and twenty years out of date. Fortunately Meredith’s dress, beauty and calm polite nature compensated. The only part of the French menu he understood was the prices. But Meredith explained and said that was how the French were: they refused to accept that they spoke a language that was no longer international, and they were so bad at English they couldn’t bear the double ignominy of appearing idiots in their rivals’ tongue.

‘Arrogance and insecurity often go together,’ she said.

‘I’m insecure,’ Macbeth said.

‘I was thinking of your friend Duff,’ she said. ‘Why are you so insecure?’

Macbeth told her about his background. The orphanage. Banquo and Vera. Police college. She was so easy to talk to he was almost tempted to tell her everything, for one crazy moment even about Lorreal. But of course he didn’t. Meredith said she had grown up in the western part of town, with parents who made sure their children lacked for nothing but who also made demands on them and were ambitious on their behalf, especially for her brothers.

‘Protected, privileged and boring,’ she said. ‘Do you know I’ve never been to District 2 East.’ She laughed when Macbeth refused to accept that could be true. ‘Yes, it is! I never have!’

So after dinner he took her down to the riverbed. Walking along the potholed road alongside the run-down houses as far as Penny Bridge. And when he said goodnight outside the gate she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

When he returned to his room Duff was still up. ‘Spill the beans,’ he ordered. ‘Slowly and in detail.’

Two days later. Cinema. Lord of the Flies. They walked home under the same umbrella, Meredith’s hand under his arm. ‘How can children be so cruel and bloodthirsty?’ she said.

‘Why should children be any less cruel than adults?’

‘They’re born innocent!’

‘Innocent and without any sense of morality. Isn’t peaceful passivity just something that adults force children to learn so that we recognise our place in society and let them do what they like with us?’

They kissed at the gate. And on Sunday he took her for a walk in the woods on the other side of the tunnel. He had packed a picnic basket.

‘You can cook!’ she exclaimed excitedly.

‘Banquo and Vera taught me. We used to come to this very spot.’

Then they kissed, she panted and he put his hand up her cotton dress.

‘Wait...’ she said.

And he waited. Instead he carved a heart in the big oak and used the point of his knife to write their names. Meredith and Macbeth.

‘She’s ready to be plucked,’ Duff told Macbeth when he came home and told him the details. ‘I’m going to Rita’s on Wednesday. Invite her here.’

Macbeth had opened a bottle of wine and lit candles when Meredith rang at the door. He was prepared. But not for what happened — for her loosening his belt as soon as they were inside the door and stuffing her hand down his trousers.

‘D-d-don’t,’ he said.

She looked at him in surprise.

‘S-s-stop.’

‘Why are you stammering?’

‘I d-d-don’t want you to.’

She withdrew her hand, her cheeks burning with shame.

Afterwards they drank a glass of red wine in silence.

‘I have to get up early tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Exams soon and...’

‘Of course.’

Three weeks passed. Macbeth tried ringing several times, but the few times he got an answer Rita said that Meredith wasn’t at home.

‘You and Meredith are no longer dating, I take it,’ Duff said.

‘No.’

‘Rita and I aren’t either. Do you mind if I meet Meredith?’

‘You’d better ask her.’

‘I have.’

Macbeth gulped. It was as if he had a claw around his heart. ‘Oh yes? And what did she say?’

‘She said yes.’

‘Did she? And when are you...?’

‘Yesterday. Just for a bite to eat, but... it was nice.’