OOM: Women

[the_gene_genie]

 

Another day getting nowhere, another night in Luigi’s. Normality.

For everyone else, except them.

He hasn’t told anyone else, yet, about his impending transfer. It’s only been three days since SuperMac dropped the bomb on him and he knows it’ll be all over the district soon so he’ll let the team know in the morning. Its better they hear it from him. He’s surprised Mac hasn’t leaked it out already though he has a feeling Viv’s heard, given the look that was sent at him this morning.

He’s not drunk enough to think about it, not nearly drunk enough. Alex had pulled the glass from his hand before last orders were called and for once he’d let her, bemused at himself but not fighting it. He’s tired. Tired physically and mentally, of all of this. He’d never admit it out loud, not even to her, but sometimes, like now, alone, he wonders just how serious those jibes about retirement were that he made last year. Sometimes it’s like he can’t even see the point anymore.

He lets himself into his house and doesn’t bother flicking on the hall light. He knows where the coat-stand is and he pulls his tie off, shoves it into his pocket before walking the ten steps or so to the living room, helped by a full moon shining through the window. It hits the sideboard nicely so he doesn’t need light to pour himself another Scotch; he doesn’t sit, just stares out over the back garden. It looks black and overgrown, gone to seed; half dying in the autumn chill and half hanging on to its summer glory.

Retirement would mean Spain, and sunshine, and sangria by a pool somewhere, preferably with senoritas sporting long legs topped with round bums bringing them to him on a tray. It would mean not having to think about what people like Mac are doing to his Force, about letting go of all the years of anger aimed at scum like him and leaving it to someone else to deal with. It would mean burnt skin and hot days, a full English every morning and beer all afternoon, footy on the telly in the English pubs,  sand and sea and...

He closes his eyes and thinks about it, allowing one minute of imagining such a life. It seems nice. Fun. Relaxing. He imagines laughing with the other ex-pats in the bars of a night, paella, fish and chips, good wine. Wandering home half-cut, to...what?

His eyes open and the quiet of the house hits him, like it always does on nights when he’s too sober to miss it. He’d wander home to this, wouldn’t he? Even in Spain. A full day of doing nothing, and coming back to an empty house.

(‘D’you ever get lonely, Gene?’)

He walks out into the hallway and into the dining room, the one he uses to store most of the boxes from his old life. He hadn’t known what to do with them; keeping it all in the lockup didn’t seem right but he didn’t want to clutter this place up with it. Now he surveys the boxes and thinks how they’ll never get a chance to be opened; if Mac gets his way and packs him off to Plymouth, they might as well stay as they are. And his eyes fall on the frame he made this weekend, the poster from his Manchester office draped over the top where he left it. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; he sees it in his mind’s eye, hanging on those walls that stank of nicotine and whiskey and the musty, old-sweat smell of CID and the stab of loss is more like a twisted knife in the gut.

Life was fun, back then. And he knows, deep down, that it wasn’t just the job or the way they did things, or the sheer, mad exuberance that came with being able to do just about anything he liked. Hell, he can do that now though the freedom is tempered by his own changed character more than anything. It was about security. It was about his city, his people, his home. Policing the streets he grew up on, knowing it all like the back of his hand. His friends, his pub, his lads. And his missus, waiting at home for him to turn up and giving him an earful when he was too pissed to stand upright but still making sure he didn’t fall asleep with his shoes and coat on.

Well, she’s giving someone else an earful now and he hopes the bugger appreciates it. Because he never thought he’d miss it but it turns out that yeah, he does. A man can do a lot when he’s got the wife at home, making sure he hardly ever has to walk into an empty house. Even if he didn’t see her all day, there was security in being able to come home and go upstairs to bed and have someone lying next to you.

He’d met Barbara when he was nineteen, at a dance.  He’d recently come home from doing his National Service; he was young and blonde and blue-eyed, fit as a fiddle and with a brash confidence that either intimidated a girl or made them want to slap him. She’d been intimidated at first, when he’d broken away from his pals and asked her to dance but he’d kept at it and she’d said yes eventually. And he hadn’t meant it to turn into what it did but she was pretty, and sweet and blonde and generally agreeable, though with enough brains and gob on her to keep her interesting. So eventually he’d asked himself if he could do any better and honestly came up with no. And anyway, he did love her. It wasn’t an exciting sort of love but she let him look after her and he liked that. They liked the same sort of music, she didn’t mind him watching the football and was a good cook. She got on well with his mam, and his brother, and kept her opinions about his father to herself which he appreciated more than he ever told her.

As far as he was concerned, that was it. Married for life. The day he came home and found a suitcase waiting in the hall was enough of a surprise to make him sober, which was a hell of an achievement given how drunk he’d been.  She’d sat him down in the kitchen and made him coffee; he remembers he couldn’t take his eyes off her coat draped over the back of her chair and her gloves on the table.

It’s time for me to go, she’d said and he hadn’t understood and had said so. Her smile was sad and there were tears in her eyes but they hadn’t fallen.

You’ve never needed me, had been next and he’d wanted to say that yes he had but he couldn’t find the words. Since Sam...

He’d looked away.

...since Sam went, I don’t think you’d have noticed if I’d gone away for a week. Not until you didn’t have any clean shirts.

This might have been true but how could he explain? That Sam...Sam was gone. Dead, to all intents and purposes, and as far as everyone was concerned he really was. And maybe he was. Is. Yes. Sam’s dead.

He’s not sure, sometimes. He can’t remember.

He’d tried to tell her that he missed his mate but there was nothing in him to pull the words free. So he’d asked her not to go and she’d just looked down and shaken her head and he’d been unable to ask again. Part of him knew that he had to let her go because his grip was slipping; since Sam left everything had been different and he’d been looking for the answers in the bottom of a bottle of Scotch every night. There was never anything there but he’s not sure if there’d been anything to find. He just knows that those few months were like a black hole that he couldn’t get out of. He missed his friend, the work wasn’t the same and the city lost its shine. Ray and Chris hung around like damp sheepdogs; when he looked at them, he couldn’t think anything but if Sam were here, he’d knock me aroun’ the chops and tell me to snap out of it. But far from snapping him out it, the thought had him reaching for his flask every time.

He’d walked her to the door; hell, he’d carried her suitcase to the cab. When it came down to it, it felt...inevitable. Not just that he couldn’t stop her but that he shouldn’t. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, and it didn’t mean he wasn’t sad and it did mean that he still can’t remember anything about the three days that followed.

The call from Charlie Mackintosh had come a week later. Just in the area, mind if I stop in? Of course he didn’t mind, even stayed sober the night before and had the office cleaned up because he was damned if he was going to have some poncy Met DSI looking down his nose at his CID. But as it turned out, Mac was congenial and easy to talk to, liked a Scotch and a game of darts and had everyone laughing in the Railway Arms that night after work. And the morning after, he’d dropped in again and offered him a job in London.

A year earlier, he’d have said that there was more chance of him becoming a United supporter than there was of him ever leaving his home. But when the offer was made, something lurched in him and while he opened his mouth to say no, nothing came out.

And now, two years later, there’s this mess to be cleaned up. But he’s tired of thinking about it and just sits on a chair and thinks of two days ago instead, when Alex had been in this very room and eaten dinner with him and raged on his behalf at the notion of him leaving.

If Barbara had been here, she would have made him a cup of tea and told him maybe it was for the best; that Devon is supposed to be very nice and if the Super thought it was a good idea, then what was the harm?

She wouldn’t have liked London anyway. She would have nagged him to take her home. But then, if she was still with him then he wouldn’t have left Manchester in the first place, would he?

Would he?

No. He’d had no intention of leaving her. But it does worry him slightly that now, when he looks back, it’s sometimes quite hard to remember her face. Her features aren’t as bright in his memory as they used to be and the other day, it had taken a minute to remember her name.

He doesn’t know why that is but it’s worrying. Just a little. When he thinks about her which isn’t that often at all, really.

He thinks about Alex though. It makes sense, given that he works with her every day. But it’s not just that and he knows it; Christ, he’s told her but he doesn’t think she was listening. Does she really think that he’d trust just anyone with the truth about Mac? Does she really think he’d ask any old subordinate out on a date and suggest they go upstairs to hers after dinner?

Alex reminds him of the film stars he’d see on a Saturday afternoon when he was a kid. Not that she’s that unreachable but she just has that aura of shine about her. More and more, recently, he’s started looking up when a door opens in case it’s her; when she’d turned up on his doorstep last Saturday he’d been surprised, but not unpleasantly so. Nights like tonight, he can’t help thinking that things would be a lot less (lonely) boring if she were here to argue with. And he’s never worked with someone, not even Sam, with this level of connection. Shit, he’d have started to worry if working with Sam had ever felt like this but there was never any danger of that.

It feels like security all over again. They’re a team. He doesn’t know who he can trust in this Force anymore, except her. They can talk and work it out and laugh and drink and it’s both easy and the hardest thing he’s ever done. Because like those women on the screen on a Saturday afternoon, she’s untouchable. He’s tried and she won’t have it and won’t tell him why. They fight and argue but he knows she likes it just as much as he does, he knows it’s part of what makes them tick. But sometimes, like on nights like tonight, he thinks it’d be nice to just talk and not about work. What if he came home and she was there? Would it be the same as it was with Barbara?

No, of course not. The two of them couldn’t be more different. Barbara was a woman of her time, the same time as him – she was the wife and he was the breadwinner, she’d cook and clean and be there and he never expected her to work, just like she never expected him to ask her to. She didn’t complain about dirty socks and shirts covered in someone else’s blood and was a dab hand with a bottle of antiseptic and butterfly stitches. She knew it wasn’t her place to stop him going to the pub and amused herself in various ways that didn’t bother him. She’d have made a great mother.

...no, not going down that road. Not again. Far too sober for that.

But Alex wouldn’t be like that. She’d sooner eat glass than scrub bloodstains out of his shirts, he imagines. He finds himself thinking of what her reaction would be if she found lipstick on his collar one night and is smiling suddenly, at the notion of rage and icy put-downs and making him apologise without once ever asking him to. And he would as well – Jesus, he wouldn’t let anyone else’s lipstick get on there in the first place. Why would he, if he had someone like Alex waiting at home for him? Not even someone like Alex. Just her.

Gene is a pragmatic man and he’s not given to flights of fancy, he keeps his head rooted squarely in the here and now. But that doesn’t mean that occasionally, he doesn’t let himself wonder what life’s like on the other side of the fence. He’s tried it, of course, and it was nice. But with her...he gets the feeling it’d be better than nice. It’d be like High Noon, with the wife coming back to stand by her man and save his skin when he needed it. It’d be like...

He shakes his head and tells himself to stop being a twat. Alex is Alex, just a woman. Infuriating and gobby and spouting crap at every opportunity; emotional and volatile and (fun) powered by hormones, like all the rest of them. He can’t help it that he likes the way she confuses him, that he likes her face, likes that one time he got to kiss her. That he likes that the two of them, they’re like Bodie and Doyle, Sapphire and Steel, the team that’ll stop the rot. He can’t help it that he likes the security of walking into the office and knowing she’ll be there, knowing they’re in it together.

And he can’t help it that sometimes, on nights like this, he wishes she were here as well. So that he could see, maybe just get a taste, of what it’d be like to turn that teamwork into a partnership. Maybe it wouldn’t work but he’d like the chance to try, perhaps, if she’d let it, if she’d let him in the way she asked him to do with her. But that’s the issue, isn’t it? It doesn’t go both ways, with her. She wants everything from him that she asks but she won’t give away anything she doesn’t want to, and even things she seems like she does want to. But just won’t.

It makes him tired just thinking about it. There are never any answers and he’s given up trying to get any. That’s the reality of it. Just like this empty house is the reality; just like the dream of retirement is just that, a dream. Because at least here he can do some good, even if his house is cold and dark at the end of the day. He gets the feeling that a house filled with sun and heat in Spain would be just as cold and dark, really.

Reality.  He’s a middle-aged man who lives on Scotch and cigarettes and work, and there’s no room for anything else, even if he wanted there to be.

Hell with them all. He’s Gene Hunt. There’s always the job again, tomorrow, and it might be a bitch but at least it’s his bitch and he always knows where he stands with it, can always rely on it to be there. So he’ll take it and turn up tomorrow, all ready to start all over again and the women are just something he’ll...learn to do without.