Dying to Know You

  I made myself calm down before saying, “Then give me some credit for that and listen to me now.”

  “I don’t want her in here, that’s all.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want her seeing what I’m doing.”

  “Why not? You invited me to see it.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?”

  “I thought you’d understand.”

  “And your mother wouldn’t?”

  “Yes! No! No, she wouldn’t.”

  The anger drained from both of us. I sat down and we declined into silence.

  Now I was upset with myself for losing my temper.

  They say you should never apologise and never explain, because it shows a sign of weakness.

  Baloney.

  That’s the cause of vendettas, endless cycles of revenge and the interminable abomination of war.

  And I know something else. It’s the older, and the stranger, who must break the circle.

  I forced myself to say, “I’m sorry. I lost my temper.”

  Karl said nothing. Nor did I want him to. Mutual apologies don’t heal the wound, they only put a bandage over it.

  I said, “Do something for me.”

  Karl remained silent.

  “Let me ask your mother to join us. Show her what you’ve done and see what she says.”

  No reply.

  “Put yourself in her shoes, Karl. You’re her only son. Her only child. She adores you. Quite literally, she’d die for you. I think you know that. She’s gone through a hell of worry about you these last few months. Now she sees her beloved son full of life again. And it’s obvious whatever has happened has something to do with what you’re doing in here. Don’t you think you ought to show her? Even if she doesn’t understand. Isn’t it the right thing to do?”

  Still he remained silent, but took a deep, deep breath and let it out as if he were expelling poisoned air.

  A few moments passed again before I said, “Shall I go and get her?”

  He nodded.

  When she was upset, Jane used to talk about “crying inside.” I thought of that when I found Mrs. Williamson sitting at the kitchen table, no longer chirpy, no longer the happy woman she had been during our meal, and everything about her betraying how hurt she felt. There were no tears in her eyes, but I was sure she was crying inside.

  I sat down at the table, opposite her.

  I said, “Karl wants you to join us in the shed.”

  She said, head down and with an effort, “I hoped we were through with this.”

  I said, “I think you are.”

  She let out a heavy sigh.

  “Then why …”

  “I think this is different.”

  She looked at me, a hard angry look I hadn’t seen from her before.

  “Different?” she said. “What’s different about it?”

  “He was rude. I know. But I don’t think he meant to be. I don’t think he meant to hurt you. Or reject you.”

  “That’s certainly how it felt.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then?”

  “I can only tell you how it seems to me. I’m not saying I’m right.”

  She didn’t respond. For the first time I wondered whether Karl’s reticence, whether his refusal to speak when he was upset or facing a difficulty in himself, came from his mother, and not, as I’d assumed, from his father. Maybe he wasn’t so much his father’s child as his mother’s boy?

  I said, “This didn’t happen because he’s depressed again. It happened because he isn’t ready to show you what he’s doing in the shed.”

  “He showed you. Why not me? Do I mean so much less to him?”

  “No! Just the opposite.”

  She gave a huffy laugh.

  “He showed it to me because I don’t mean to him what you do.”

  “Well, I’m glad you understand it, because I certainly don’t.”

  I waited a moment to let the sparks die.

  Then I said, “When I was starting out as a writer, I hated showing anyone what I was writing before I’d finished it. I feared that if they said it was no good, I’d feel so crushed I’d give up. Especially if it was my parents who didn’t like it. Even when I finished it I didn’t want my parents to read it. Not till someone else had said it was OK. Someone whose opinion my parents respected.”

  Mrs. Williamson gave me a searching look.

  “Is he writing something then?”

  “No.”

  “So what is he doing?”

  “I think that’s for him to tell you.”

  “And he’s sent you to fetch me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why couldn’t he come for me himself?”

  “It’s too hard for him.”

  “He didn’t have any difficulty telling me to go away.”

  By now I knew she was being deliberately stubborn. Of course she understood! She was an intelligent woman. She knew her son. She’d been through worse than this with him. I was pretty sure this wasn’t the first time he’d been rude to her. I knew what it was like when you were in the pit of depression. You want the person closest to you to attend, but at the same time you want to be left alone. An emotional double bind. And you are hurting so much you can’t help passing the hurt on.

  Mrs. Williamson knew this. But Karl seemed to be out of the pit now, and she had been shocked by his behaviour because she feared it meant he’d reverted. What’s more, there was hurt from those bad months locked up inside her, where she’d kept it while Karl was ill so as not to make things worse, and to show him that nothing he did, however bad, would turn her away from him or cause her to treat him as badly as he had treated her. She thought this was over, but his sudden rudeness had churned the pent-up bile, which she couldn’t help letting out a bit on me.

  As for Karl, now that he was his best self again and something was happening to him he only half understood—something bright and new he didn’t yet know how to deal with—he was protecting himself in case this bright new thing was taken from him before he’d grasped it.

  And me? I was an outsider, sympathetic to both mother and son. And quite often an outsider can see what’s going on between two people when the two people are blind to it.

  There was something else I thought I understood, but didn’t mention to Mrs. Williamson.

  Karl is an only son and I’m an only son. I’ve known others during my life. And have observed that they—we—tend to behave in one of two ways with our mothers. Some are deeply attached, tell their mother everything, and do nothing without discussing it with her. Others keep their distance, are reserved, tell their mothers as little as possible about what they are doing. I was of the second kind. And by now I knew Karl was too.

  But unless you’re intent on deliberately hurting your mother, which I never was and I believed Karl wasn’t, there are some important things in your life you have to reveal. And just as I had to tell my mother I was trying to be a writer because of how hurt I knew she would be if I didn’t, so I knew it was necessary for Karl to explain to his mother what he was trying to do that made him closet himself secretively in the shed. I was sure he had to do this because I had left revealing what I was up to till it was too late. The breach this caused between myself and my mother was never repaired. I didn’t want that to happen to Karl.

  I knew if it went wrong, neither of them would have anything more to do with me.

  “Will you go and see?” I asked.

  She smiled and said, “Course I will! Did you think for one second that I wouldn’t?”

  I laughed.

  We were friends again.

  She got up.

  I was going to, but suddenly felt quite done in.

  Mrs. Williamson waited. “Are you all right? You don’t look so good.”

  “The bloody ’flu,” I said. “Overdone it a bit, first day out. Enjoyed myself too much.”

  “Have a lie down on the sofa in the sitting r
oom.”

  “Kind of you. But, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll just slope off home and go to bed.”

  “You sure? Shall I get Karl to drive you?”

  “No, no. You go and see him. Very important. I’ll manage. Really. Say good-bye to him for me, and tell him I’m sorry to duck out but I’ll be in touch.”

  “Of course! And you’re sure you’ll be OK?”

  “I will. Honestly.”

  As soon as I got home, I went to bed and was a goner for the next five hours. When I woke, I felt like I’d been squashed by an avalanche.

  NEXT DAY, A SUNDAY, I MADE A BET WITH MYSELF THAT MRS. Williamson would phone to ask how I was.

  By the way, how do you make a bet with yourself? With whom are you betting? This brings me back to that endlessly puzzling, endlessly fascinating question: When I’m talking to myself, whom am I talking to and who is doing the talking? Are we all in fact two people, not one? Are we all One and Another? What I know is that I have an “everyday self,” the one who does things, says things, deals with the ins and outs, ups and downs of daily life, and another, an “inner self,” the one I think of as my real self, the self who observes everything my everyday self does, comments and judges, praises and dispraises, considers what would be best to do and not to do, and assesses the results.

  Whichever one of me bet Mrs. W. would phone is the one who won. (But won what?)

  Typical of her thoughtfulness, she waited till late morning, in case, as she said, I wanted to sleep in.

  We exchanged the usual routine conversational strokes: How was I this morning? Much better, thank you. And her? Very well, thank you. Had I recovered from yesterday? Yes, and how much I’d enjoyed our meal. And how much she had too.

  Those pleasantries out of the way, I asked whether she had gone to see Karl in the shed.

  Yes, she had.

  What did she make of what she saw?

  She’d been so surprised, she didn’t know what to think.

  So what had she said?

  Nothing. She didn’t have to. As soon as she’d looked at the things on the workbench, Karl told her they were little models.

  “I said, ‘Models of what?’ He said they were models of sculptures he was thinking of making full sized. I asked him where he got the idea from. He said he’d seen some sculptures when he went with you the other day, and he just felt he wanted to make something like them. So he was trying out some ideas with bits of wire because it would be too expensive to experiment with metal tubes and rods.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I asked him why he hadn’t wanted me to know what he was doing. He said he didn’t want to show me till he was sure it wasn’t a passing fad. So I asked why he’d shown them to you. He said you’d understand what he was trying to do, and it wouldn’t matter so much if he gave up after that. I asked him why he’d decided to show me now. Did that mean he’d go on? He said you’d told him it was wrong to show you and not to show me. He said he hadn’t meant to hurt me, but if I’d not liked what he was doing it would upset him and put him off. I said I understood now why he hadn’t told me. I was glad he was doing something that made him happy and I hoped he’d go on with it, and I’d help him any way I could. We gave each other a hug and that was that. I went back into the house and Karl went on working in the shed.”

  I said, “So you didn’t talk about the models?”

  “No,” Mrs. W. said. “Which was just as well, because I wouldn’t have known what to say. They just looked like bits of bent wire to me.”

  I said, “That’s all they are, in a way.”

  Mrs. W. laughed and said, “I’m sure he thinks they’re more than that, but what? Do you know?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “No. I guess they represent ideas. Feelings. Thoughts.”

  “You mean abstract art?”

  “If you want to call it that.”

  “I’m not too good with abstract art. I like art that looks like things I know.”

  “Maybe most people do.”

  “And you?”

  “I like some and not all. I think some of it is a load of old tosh. Pretentious nonsense. Some of it is wonderful. But that’s true of everything, isn’t it?”

  Pause.

  Mrs. W. said, “D’you think he wants to be a sculptor? I mean professionally?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “He hasn’t said?”

  “And I haven’t asked.”

  “But if he does, won’t he have to go to art school, to learn how to do it properly?”

  “Not necessarily. He could find a job as an assistant to a sculptor and learn that way.”

  “You mean, like an apprenticeship? Like he learned his plumbing?”

  “Why not? That’s the way it used to be done for centuries, till we all got hung up on going to college and getting bits of paper to prove we’re supposed to be able to do something we learn best by doing it.”

  “But isn’t it hard to make a living as a sculptor?”

  “Harder than making a living as a plumber, that’s for sure.”

  “Oh dear!”

  Pause.

  “Will you encourage him, if he decides to do it as a job?” Mrs. W. said, her voice giving away her worry.

  “You’d rather I didn’t?”

  “Wouldn’t he be better off as a plumber and doing his sculpting as a hobby?”

  “Well, let’s see how things develop.”

  “But you’ll not push him into it?”

  “No, I’ll not push him into anything.”

  Pause.

  “There’s something else,” Mrs. W. said.

  “What’s that?”

  “He had another visitor yesterday, not long after you’d gone.”

  “Oh?”

  “Fiorella.”

  “Fiorella! What did she want?”

  “To see Karl of course.”

  “And?”

  “I made her wait while I asked him. He told me to send her to the shed.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing! Karl came in about an hour later. I asked him where Fiorella was. He said she left by the back gate. I asked what she wanted. He said, just to see him. I asked if he’d shown her his models. He said he had.”

  “And that was it?”

  “That was it. You know my Karl well enough by now. If he doesn’t want to tell you something, wild horses won’t drag it out of him.”

  “Well, that’s a turnup for the book!”

  This bolt of news rather knocked me off balance. What was Fiorella up to? And what was Karl up to, allowing her to see his models? And what else went on between them? And why had she chosen that day to drop in on him uninvited? Or was she uninvited? Had something gone on between them which Karl preferred I didn’t know about? I felt pretty sure he’d have mentioned it, had he and Fiorella got together again. Or would he?

  To be truthful, I felt miffed that he might be keeping something like this from me. But I knew, at the same time, there was no reason why he should confide in me—about this or anything else. And I had to confess to myself that feeling miffed was a sign that I was assuming too much, expecting too much, of our friendship, and that I was more concerned about him, and wanted to be closer to him, than I should allow myself to want.

  The only thing I could think to say was, “Where is he now?”

  But the way I said it gave away my too-keen interest.

  “Gone fishing,” Mrs. W. said.

  I thought it best not to go any further. And she must have thought so too, because she added,

  “Is there anything you need? Anything I can bring for you?”

  I said, no, thanks, I was OK.

  Pause.

  “You can call me anytime,” she said.

  I knew she meant to reassure me.

  We went though the usual chatter before ringing off.

  I thought that would be it for the rest of the day
and settled down to read the Sunday papers. But no.

  THAT AFTERNOON, I CHECKED MY EMAILS. THIS FROM FIORELLA:

  As you know everything about Karl, you are bound to know what he is doing with bits of wire. I went to see him yesterday. I know I said I wouldn’t. I know he doesn’t like surprises. (I think he is probably a control freak.) But I couldn’t help myself, I was desperate to see him, I wish I wasn’t but I was, I mean I still am. I thought he wouldn’t see me but he did. He was in the garden shed. I wouldn’t say he was exactly ecstatic. Very arm’s-length and hands-off, when what I wanted was close-up and intimate and hands-on. As a matter of fact, most of the time I was there I felt I was being watched, being observed, like I was some kind of laboratory specimen. Also like I was being tested and assessed and examined. I tried to be cool and offhand and all that but when I’m unsure of myself I start to babble, yammer yammer yammer. I do wish I didn’t do this. It is so gauche. I know I’m doing it at the time and keep telling myself to shut up, but can’t stop myself, can’t help it, it really is a pain. So I went on blathering at him, it doesn’t matter what I said, about nothing really. And he just stood there listening and watching and saying nothing. Until after an age he asked me why I’d come—I said because I wanted to see him, no other reason—and he asked how I was getting on—school, chess, blah blah. I asked about him but he did that trick of answering my questions with questions about me. And instead of pushing him to talk about himself I stupidly rabbitted on again about myself. I think I do this, with him anyway, because what I really want to do is get hold of him and etc. etc. There’s just something about him that makes me want to do that, there’s something small boy and vulnerable about him and at the same time something terribly grown-up and strong and I have to admit I find that combination plus his looks, his body, etc., irresistible. I guess blathering on is a kind of compensation or something for not being allowed to touch him and hold him. I suppose I’m trying to touch him and hold him and kiss him with words.

  Now I’m rabbitting on to you and not getting to the point. Why am I doing that? It’s important to know why you do what you do, especially the things you do without meaning to, don’t you agree? I know you agree because all your books are like that, which is one reason why I like them. So why am I rabbitting on to you now? (Pause for thought.) Oh dear, I don’t like what I’m thinking. (Pause for more thought.) Well, alright, what it is, I think, is—I don’t know how to put it without sounding stupid or bitchy—but I half resent you knowing Karl better than I do and seeing him all the time and I don’t, and half resent Karl knowing you and seeing you, because after all he only got to know you because of me talking to him about your books (which he hasn’t read, by the way, I know because I asked him yesterday, but then, you know he doesn’t read novels or anything he doesn’t have to, but only what he really wants to, and why he doesn’t). Does this mean I’m jealous? I hope it doesn’t. I hate the thought that I might be a jealous person. It’s such an ugly weakness. And am I being like some silly girl who comes wittering on because she thinks she’s been left out of the game and wants to worm her way in and be best friends with the other two and goes smarming up to them trying to ingratiate herself? God, I hope not!