‘Thrice happy lovers, …’ sang Michael Chance. I stopped the CD player and switched it off. The naked silence rushed in upon us. Leon Trotsky looked down from the wall disdainfully. Little worlds of nothing rose and fell in the lava lamp.
‘Mr Rinyo-Clacton is HIV-positive,’ she said, ‘and now where’s our oasis? Maybe now all we’ve got is the death in each other.’ She covered her face with her hands and wept, then stopped after a few moments, noticed that the tea was ready, and poured it.
‘You see what you just did?’ I said. ‘After wiping me out completely with all that you’ve just said, you pour the rose-hip tea, my favourite kind that you made for the two of us, because life goes on. Look at Germany, look at Japan, for Christ’s sake – after the horrible things they did in the last war and before that we’re still doing business with them and hoping they’ll build more cars and computers and TVs and everything else here because we need the jobs. Because life goes on, it has to. Forget forgiveness – there’s only this imperfect world full of imperfect people to work with.’
‘Yes, Jonathan, but you’re not the only man in the world, are you. And I’ve already quit the job.’
‘I’m the only one for you, Serafina.’
‘You were, Jonathan. But I wasn’t the only one for you and that’s what brought us to where we are now.’
‘Where we are now doesn’t have to be the end of us, Fina: the thing is, do you want to realise our potential or do you want to give up and never know what might have been?’ The words just came out that way before I could stop them.
She couldn’t help laughing. ‘Are you going to sell me an Excelsior Couples Kit now?’
‘Would you buy one?’
‘I don’t know, Jonno, I just don’t know.’
‘You called me Jonno.’
‘It’s hard not to.’
‘Should I take that as a yes?’
‘Take it with a grain of salt.’
‘What does that mean exactly?’
‘It means that I’m scared and confused and whatever I say is subject to change without notice.’
‘Maybe we should just drink our tea and be quiet for a while.’
‘That sounds like a practical suggestion.’
Serafina went to the CD player, removed Purcell, and put on something that began with the chatter of a crowd, then slid into a smoky tango. ‘What’s that?’ I said.
‘Astor Piazzolla – Tango: Zero Hour.’
‘It keeps trying to move forward while pulling itself back.’
‘Like life.’ She put the cat on the floor, switched off all the lights except the lava lamp, and came and sat beside me on the couch. She leant against me and I put my arm around her and sighed a deep sigh. ‘Grain of salt, Jonno,’ she said. ‘It looks to me as if we’ve got some heavy business ahead of us – you can help me make it through the night but all I’m taking is your time, OK? Nothing more than that.’
I buried my face in her hair. ‘OK, Fina, whatever you say.’ So we made it through the night. Nothing more than that.
21
Maybe Loss
In a dream I was looking into a long, long dimness that stretched back to before the beginning of the world. Lost, lost, lost, I thought. There was something before this and now it’s all lost. ‘Maybe’, I said, and woke up as I heard myself saying it, ‘loss is where everything starts from.’
‘It’s where it ends, too,’ said Serafina.
I rolled over and there we were, face to face in a strange bed, under the same duvet. I lifted it a bit: Serafina was in her knickers and a long Minnie Mouse T-shirt and I was wearing underpants and a T-shirt. Maybe all our troubles had never happened? ‘Have they?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Have all our troubles really happened?’
‘Yes, and they’re still happening. Go to sleep.’
So we slept – uneasily.
22
So Many Are
‘Hello,’ said a man’s voice at the Derek Engel number. The word was spoken in a suave and leisurely drawl, with the first syllable stretched out and the second on a rising inflection. ‘Hehh-lo?’
‘Is this Derek Engel?’ I said.
‘Speaking.’
‘Oh. You’re Derek Engel himself?’
‘So far.’
‘Sorry – I was expecting a telephonist.’
‘Would you like me to go away?’
‘No, please – it’s just that I didn’t want to take up your time; I thought perhaps your publicity department could answer my query.’
‘Which is?’
‘Have you got an author named Rinyo-Clacton?’
‘Ah, what are we all but clay!’
‘Odd that you should say that.’
‘Well, Mr …?’
‘Fitch, Jonathan Fitch.’
‘Mr Fitch. The only Rinyo-Clacton I know of is Late Neolithic pottery. You say there’s an author by that name?’
‘There’s a man who uses that name. I thought he might be one of your authors.’
‘An interesting deductive leap. Has he written something you think we should publish?’
‘I think he might be in the process of writing something now.’
‘So many are.’
‘Just one more question and I’ll go away – do you think Dr von Luker might have any connection with Mr Rinyo-Clacton?’
‘Why should he?’
‘It’s just another of my deductive leaps.’
‘Dr von Luker’s here now; I’ll ask him.’ He put down the phone. ‘Ernst,’ I heard him say, ‘know anyone by the name of Rinyo-Clacton?’
A second voice said, ‘No.’
‘He says, “No,”’ said Engel.
‘Thank you. Well, I mustn’t keep you.’
‘No, my authors do that, more or less. I shall be on the lookout for Mr Rinyo-Clacton’s effort, Mr Fitch, and if it comes flying over the transom I’ll make sure it gets read. Thank you for this advance notice.’
‘Thank you, Mr Engel.’
‘Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye.’
As soon as I put down the phone I hurried to the tube station, took the Edgware train to Notting Hill Gate, changed to the Central line to Tottenham Court Road, and headed for Bedford Square. Turning into Great Russell Street I saw Dr von Luker’s face advancing towards me. I had imagined him to be tall and broad, to be, in fact, Mr Rinyo-Clacton without a wig and with a beard but von Luker’s head was on the shoulders of a man about as big as Toulouse-Lautrec.
I caught his eye. ‘Dr Lautrec!’ I said. He favoured me with a cold stare. ‘I mean, Dr von Luker!’
This brought him to a halt. ‘What do you want?’ he said, speaking as from a considerable height.
‘I just wanted to tell you how much I’m enjoying your new book.’
‘Thank you,’ he said without an accent. He nodded and continued on his way. I went back to the corner, crossed Tottenham Court Road, mooched about in the Virgin Megastore for a while, then went home.
Thursday morning, this was, the day after the night when Serafina and I slept together apart.
23
Several Possibilities
Thursday afternoon. The men and women in the waiting room of the John Hunter Clinic, each frozen in single stillness, sat with eyes averted from one another. Although every one of us was in living colour we were like black-and-white portraits by one of those photographers who make everything look worse.
‘IT’S YOUR CHOICE,’ said the sign over a display of condoms on a bulletin board in the corridor outside the counselling room. The unrolled sheaths dangled like the ghosts of passion under labels that identified them as SUPER STRONG, FETHERLITE, LOVE-FRAGRANCED, ALLERGY/HYPO-ALLERGENIC, EXTRA-SAFE and so on. There was a diagram showing how to use them.
‘Both of you with the same man,’ said Mrs Mavis Briggs with an air of scientific interest. Behind her was a colourful array of condom packets and a Van Gogh print of a sidewalk café in Aries at night. All of
the tables in the foreground were empty. ‘I haven’t come across that before.’
‘It never happened before,’ I said, ‘with us, I mean.’
Mrs Briggs was a good-looking woman in her thirties in tight jeans and a black sweatshirt that said SHIT HAPPENS in white letters. She had black hair cut short, a husky voice, and the sort of face favoured by rock stars who sing of loves that end badly. Serafina was elsewhere in the clinic talking to another health adviser.
The room was bright and warm; I’d have liked to stay there for a long time. I thought fleetingly of Hendryk, the reality/illusion dog in Van Hoogstraten’s peepshow. ‘There are several possibilities here,’ said Mrs Briggs: ‘maybe you’ll both test negative when the time comes; on the other hand we can’t rule out a result with both of you HIV-positive; or one of you positive and the other not. Have you thought of how you’d deal with either of those last two scenarios?’
‘This is a strange time for us – we’re not actually together right now.’
SHIT HAPPENS said her T-shirt.
‘I see,’ said Mrs Briggs. ‘That doesn’t make things any easier, does it. The three months’ wait before the test can be a pretty tough time to get through, and if there’s any possibility of the two of you sorting out your problems this would be a good time to do it.’
‘What about it?’ I asked Serafina later. We were over the road at The Stargazey drinking gin-and-tonics. Dusk outside. Dusk — the word has in it the sound of night impending, descending, owl-light in the city. The place seemed full of darkness. ‘Are we going to get through this together?’ I said.
‘In sickness and in health, eh? You and me together, right, Jonno?’
‘Don’t take cheap shots, Fina – it’s too easy.’
‘I’m not strong enough for quality shots right now, OK? You want clever remarks, try somebody else in your wide circle of acquaintance.’
Where was the Serafina with whom I’d made it through the night? ‘I can’t believe that everything we had is gone,’ I said, recalling Piazzolla’s Tango: Zero Hour that tried to move forward while pulling itself back.
‘I don’t understand you, Jonathan. First you piss all over what we had, then you get yourself buggered and bring this weirdo into both our lives, and now for all we know we’re both HIV-positive; and you reckon this should bring us together?’
‘Tell me what to do, Fina.’
‘Give me some time to get my head around this (pause), Jonno.’
24
Hendryk Not Quite Himself
Thursday night I spent at my flat, alone. I got a fair amount of whisky down my neck to ease the pain of Serafina’s absence and hoped that it would make me sleepy but it only sharpened the pain and made me wakeful; I found that there was no side of me that was the right side to fall asleep on. At first there was too much noise from the street – cars starting up or parking and people chattering loudly; then there came a silence that seethed in a sinister way; then a dream in which Hendryk kept trying to tell me something but I couldn’t hear him. ‘What, Hendryk?’ I kept saying until I heard myself and woke up and it was Friday.
In due course I stepped out into a harshly sunlit day, went to the tube station and headed for the National Gallery. As always, Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery steps, and the rooms inside were dense with tourists and clamorous with foreign tongues. With scarcely a glance at the masterworks of centuries, I went directly to Room 18. As if by special dispensation it was empty.
I looked through the peep-hole in the near end of van Hoogstraten’s perspective box and there was the skeleton of Hendryk looking at me. ‘Jesus!’ I said. I blinked, and when I looked again I saw nothing but blackness. ‘Give me a break!’ I said. I kept my eye to the peep-hole but there was nothing to see and the room was full of people waiting to peep. ‘I have to go now, Hendryk,’ I said to the blackness. ‘I’ll get back to you.’ The Japanese couple behind me looked at me quizzically and I realised I’d been speaking aloud.
In Trafalgar Square there was no rain to ease the sharpness of the day; the sunlight was coming down like splinters of glass on Nelson and the lions, on the fountains and the tourists and the pigeons, on the pavements choked with people and the cars that choked the road. I hurried to the darkness of the underground and went home.
25
A Useful Idea?
I went to the Vegemania at Serafina’s quitting time, not knowing if I’d be welcome. She saw me through the window and came to the door. The evening was a brisk one, and she was wearing a long dark green homespun-looking skirt, a black polo-neck, and a baggy grey pullover probably knitted by an old woman who smoked a pipe and gathered wool from mountain bushes. She wore a tiger-striped scarf round her neck and her favourite steel-toed anti-rape boots to complete the effect. She had a big leopard-spotted bag slung from her shoulder. A great wave of desire swept over me at the sight of her. ‘Got your head around things a bit more?’ I said.
‘Not really. Let’s walk.’ She took my arm (yes!) and we started down Earl’s Court Road. ‘I won’t say I’m sorry for being unpleasant yesterday,’ she said, ‘but I do see that it wasn’t useful in any way.’ All around us people were eating, drinking, provisioning themselves at nocturnal greengrocers and supermarkets, laughing, cursing, arguing, embracing, and planning the rest of the evening or the decade while moving purposefully or weaving randomly towards whatever came next.
‘I have a useful idea,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Let’s go to Paris for a couple of days, eat high-cholesterol things and get pissed in parks.’
‘What will that achieve, except to remind us of happier times?’
‘It’ll achieve not being here, and maybe if we put ourselves in a receptive state of mind we’ll have some kind of epiphany.’
‘We’ve already had a couple of epiphanies, wouldn’t you say? Right now I think I’m only about half an epiphany short of a nervous breakdown.’
‘Well, actually, there’s something I want to see again.’
‘What?’
‘Do you remember that place in Pigalle, Au Tonneau? Shaped like a barrel, looked as if it’d been shut down for a long time – Harry Belafonte posters on the doors?’
‘Of course I remember it: the little train from Sacré-Coeur stopped there, the sky was very grey, the place looked haunted. There were sex shows and dirty cinemas all around there. Why do you want to see it again?’
‘I don’t know. Sometimes a thing that I’ve seen comes up in my memory and wants to talk to me – nothing I can explain, really.’
Her arm was still linked in mine, her breast rubbing against me. ‘Can we go to the flat?’ she said.
‘Zoë’s?’
‘I said the flat.’
‘OK. The plants have missed you.’ We turned around and went back up Earl’s Court Road to Nevern Place. When we reached the house I unlocked the front door after a few fumbles, stood aside to let Serafina in, and followed her up the stairs to the top floor, hearing in my mind the Ravel trio of our first night. She took out her own key and opened the door of the flat.
As the door swung inward all our nights and days, our sleepings and our wakings, all the everything of our four years together rushed out at us. Serafina covered her face with her hands and I took her in my arms but she kept her hands over her face. ‘Bear with me, Jonno,’ she said. ‘It isn’t easy.’
I switched on the lamps. ‘The plants don’t look too happy,’ she said.
‘I’ve been watering them but you have to remember that they were hooked on you and it’s been cold turkey for them. What’ll you have to drink?’
‘Got any red?’
‘Coming.’ I opened a bottle and watched the glasses filling as I poured. As soon as Serafina came into the flat everything looked more like itself; things reassumed their proper colour, texture and character; the lamplight had more warmth in it, the wine gurgled with surcease of sorrow. She went to the shelves where the CDs were and I wondered what music
she’d put on. ‘Takemitsu!’ I said, as it made its entrance like Bruce Lee coming over a wall and sneaking up on the bad guys.
‘Right,’ she said: ‘November Steps, for orchestra with shakuhachi and biwa. It sounds the way I feel.’ By then Bruce Lee had abandoned the sneak-up and was banging on dustbin lids with a stick.
‘As if you’re in a dark and narrow place where something might jump out at you?’
‘Something like that.’ We clinked glasses and sat down on the couch. She gave me one of her slanty smiles, somewhat careworn, took off the anti-rape shoes, and put her feet in my lap. ‘I think better this way,’ she said.
‘What are you thinking about, Fina?’
‘Just at this moment I’m thinking about Victor Noir.’
‘Who’s Victor Noir?’
‘He was a French journalist, only twenty-one when he was shot dead by Pierre Bonaparte in 1870.’
‘How come?’
‘He and a colleague had been sent to challenge Bonaparte to a duel with a republican journalist named Grousset. Bonaparte claimed that Noir slapped his face and that was why he shot him.’
‘Why did Grousset want to fight Bonaparte?’
‘Politics. The republicans were pissed off with Bonaparte because they thought he’d abandoned them when he became reconciled with Napoleon the Third.’
‘But why’re you thinking about Noir?’
‘I’m getting to it. On his tomb in Père Lachaise Cemetery there’s a life-size bronze statue of him as he looked just after he was shot. He’s flat on his back with his coat lying open and his shirt unbuttoned so you can see the bullet-hole in his chest. His trousers are partly undone to help him breathe as he died. He was shot on the 10th of January, only two days before he was due to be married.’