Nick recalled walking one night onto the balcony of a vast club, seeking Natasha, and looking down on a pageant of bizarre costumes, feathers, semi-nudity, masks and clothes of. all periods, representing every passion, every possible kink and kook, zig and zag. Natasha was among them, waiting for him with some bridled old man who worked in a post office.
Nick wondered if everyone involved liked participating in a secret, as they recreated the mystery which children discover by whispers, that what people want to do with one another is strange, and that the uncovering of this strangeness is itself the excitement. Certainly there were terrifying initiations, over and over. They were the oddest people; he learned that there was little that was straightforward about humanity. But what appeared to frighten them all was the mundane, the familiar, the ordinary.
Like actors unable to stop playing a part, as though they could be on stage for ever, he and Natasha wanted to remain at a dramatic pitch where there was no disappointment, no self-knowledge or development, only a state of constant, narcissistic emergency and a clear white light in the head.
In order to consume their punishment with their pleasure, which some might call a convenience, they were stoned. Nick remembered a friend at school saying – and this was the best advertisement for drugs he’d heard – ‘If you are stoned you can do anything.’ Why was living the problem? If he looked around at his friends and acquaintances, how many of them were able to survive unaided? They sought absence until they had become like a generation lost to war. Those who survived were sitting in shell-shocked confessional circles in countryside clinics. He suspected they had left success to fools and mediocrities. By midnight he was rarely able to see in front of him; he and Natasha held one another up, like the vertical arms of a staggering triangle. Sobriety was a terror, though they couldn’t remember why, and their heroes, legends, myths, were hopeless incompetents, death-soaked tragic imaginations.
He saw people going to heroin like a fate; imagining you could shun it was arrogant or solemn. Nick had wanted to find like-minded people; he turned them into his jailers. He recalled people in rubber masks, coming at him like executioners. It was arduous work, converting people into objects, when he had not been brought up to it
Midday one morning he woke up at her place. He rose and lumbered about, reacquainting himself with an unfamiliar object, his body. He had been whipped, badly; his face and hands were grazed, too: he must have fallen somewhere and no one, not even him, had noticed.
Somehow she had gone to work, leaving him a note. ‘Remember, Remember!’ she had scrawled in lipstick.
Remember what? Then it returned. His task was to withdraw three thousand pounds from his bank account, which, apart from his flat, was all he had and buy drugs from a man who sold everything, but only in large amounts. It would save them the trouble of having to score continually. In two hours he would have the drugs; minutes later the cocaine would be working, stealing another day and night of his life. Natasha would return; there was a couple they were to meet later; there would be cages, whips, ice, fire.
There had been the death-laden ways of teachers and employers, and there had been rebellion, drugs, pleasure. No one had shown him what a significant life was and the voices that spoke in his head were not kind.
And yet something occurred to him. He walked out of the flat and kept walking through his pain until he reached the suburbs; at last he fell through fields and fields. He never returned to her place. The rest was a depressing cold abstinence and mourning, sitting at his desk half the day, every day, repeatedly summoning a half-remembered discipline, wishing someone would lash him to the chair. Those characters in Chekhov’s plays, forever intoning ‘work, work, work’. How stale a prayer, he thought, as though the world was better off for the slavery in it. But boredom was an antidote to unruly wishes, quelling his suspicion that disobedience was the only energy. He had to teach himself to sit still again.
After a freezing month he rediscovered capability and audacity. Even the idea of public recognition returned, along with competitiveness, envy, and a little pride. He made her leave him alone, and when they met again, tentatively, his fear of any addiction, which had saved him, but which was also the fear of relying on anyone – some addictions are called love – meant he could not like her any more. What could they do together? It wouldn’t have happened to the ideal, desirable Natasha.
*
She had pressed a small envelope into his palm.
‘There.’
He glanced down.
She said, ‘You’d be making a mistake to think it was the other things I liked, when it was our talks and your company. You’re sweet, Nick, and strangely polite at times. I can’t put that together with all you’ve done to me.’ She touched his hand. ‘Go on.’
‘Now?’
‘Then we’ll walk.’
In the park toilet a boy stood in a cubicle with his trousers down, bent over. His father wiped him, helping him with his belt, zip and buttons. Nick went into the next cubicle and closed the door. He would open the envelope, have a look for old times’ sake, and return it. She had had the day she had wanted.
His hands were shaking. He held it in his palm, before opening it. A gram of fine grains, untouched. Heavenly sand. His credit card was in his back pocket.
He returned to her.
He said, ‘I took the parts of you I needed to make my book. It wasn’t a fair or final judgement but a practical transformation, in order to say something. Someone in a piece of fiction is a dream figure … picked from one context and thrust into another, to serve some purpose. A tiny portion of them is used.’
She nodded but had lost interest.
They walked by the pond, the cascade and the cricket pitch. Children played on felled logs; people sketched and painted; on pedestals, the heads of Roman emperors looked on. Nick and Natasha stepped from patches of vivid sunlight into cooler tunnels. The warm currents had turned chilly. As the sky darkened, the clouds turned crimson. Parents called to their children.
She started to cry.
‘Nick, will you take me out of here?’
‘If you want.’
‘Please.’
She put her dark glasses on and he led her past dawdling families to the gate.
In his car she wiped her face.
‘All those respectable white voices behind high walls. The wealth, the cleanliness, the hope. I was getting agoraphobic. It all makes me sick with regret.’
She was trembling. He had forgotten how her turmoil disturbed him. He was becoming impatient. He wanted to be at home when Lolly got back. He had to prepare the food. Some friends were coming by, with their new baby.
She said, ‘Aren’t we going to have a drink? Is this the way? Where are we now?’
‘Look‚’ he said.
He was driving beside a row of tall, authoritative stucco houses with pillars and steps. Big family cars sat in the drives. Across the narrow road was a green; overlooked by big trees there were tennis courts and a children’s playground. During the week children in crisp uniforms were dropped off and picked up from school; in the afternoons Philippino and East European nannies would sit with their charges in the playground. This was where he lived now, though he couldn’t admit it.
‘We are thinking of moving here‚’ he said. ‘What do you think?’
‘There’s no point asking me‚’ she said. ‘Everything has become very conventional. You’re either in or you’re out. I’m with the out – with the weird, the impossible, the victimised and the broken. It’s the only place to be.’
‘Why turn habit into principle?’
‘I don’t know. Nick, take me to one of the old places. We’ve got time, haven’t we? Are you bored by me?’
‘Not yet.’
‘I’m so glad.’
He drove to one of their pubs, with several small rooms, blackened ceilings, benches and big round tables. He ordered oysters and Guinness.
As he sat down he said embarras
sedly, ‘Have you got any more of that stuff?’
‘If you kiss me‚’ she said.
‘Come on‚’ he said.
‘No‚’ she said, putting her face close to his. ‘Pay for what you want!’
He pushed his face into her warm mouth.
She passed him the envelope. ‘If you don’t leave some I’ll kill you.’
‘Don’t worry‚’ he said.
‘I will‚’ she said. ‘Because I know what saved you – greed.’ She was looking at him. ‘My place? Don’t look at your watch. Just for a little bit, eh?’
*
He could tell from the flat that she hadn’t gone crazy. The furniture wasn’t frayed or stained; there were flowers, a big expensive sofa with books on nutrition balanced on the arm. The records were no longer on the floor. She had CDs now, in racks, alphabetical. As usual there were music papers and magazines on the table. She went to put on a CD. He hoped it wouldn’t be anything he knew.
He went into the bedroom. It was as dark as ever, but he knew where the light switches were. Looking at the familiar Indian wall-hangings, he sank onto the mattress to pull off his shoes. He flung his clothes onto the bare, unvarnished floorboards, covered in threadbare rugs. The smell of her bed he knew. He could reach the opened bottles of wine and the ashtray. He swigged some sour red and reached for the pillows.
She almost fell on him; she knew he liked her weight, and to be pinned down. He closed his eyes. When she tied him quickly and expertly, he remembered the frisson of fear, the helplessness, and the pleasure coming from some rarely lit place. He struggled, giggled, screamed.
When he awoke she was sitting across the room at her table in her black silk dressing gown, surrounded by papers, unguents, tins, boxes, with her hands in front of her, like a pianist looking for a tune. She turned and smiled. The door to the cupboard in which she kept her ‘dressing up’ things was open.
‘Untie me.’
‘In a while. Tomorrow, maybe.’
‘Natasha –’
‘Look.’ She opened her dressing gown and sat over him. How salty she was. ‘Here. If you don’t behave I’ll read to you from your own work.’
He looked up to see her lips pursed in concentration. At last she released him. They were both pleased, a job well done. He started to move quickly in the bed as some inner necessity and accompanying fury led him to desire satisfaction. There was a man he had to meet in a pub, a greedy, unbalanced man with, no doubt, a talent for rapid mathematics. But Nick couldn’t find his clothes amongst the flimsy things flung over the bed.
As it was cold he pulled his clothes on under the sheets as usual. But they smelt musty, as if he’d been wearing them for several days. He turned his sweater inside out.
She pulled him up, holding him in her arms. He lit a cigarette. ‘Natty, I’m off to get the stuff.’
She nodded. ‘Good. Got the money?’
He patted his pocket. ‘You’ll be here when I get back?’
‘Oh yes‚’ she said.
He went out into the living room and shook himself, as if he would wake up.
She followed him and said, ‘What’s up?’
‘I’m marked‚’ he said, pulling his sleeves up. ‘Christ. Look! My wrists.’
‘So you are‚’ she said. ‘A marked man. They’ll fade.’
‘Not tonight.’
She said, ‘I hope I’m pregnant. It’s the right time of the month.’
‘That would be a nuisance to me.’
‘Not to me‚’ she said. ‘It would be a good memento. A decent souvenir.’
He said. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’
‘Yes I do. Would you like me to let you know?’
‘No.’
‘That’s up to you.’
He said, ‘I’d forgotten how drugs make the dullest stuff tolerable. I hope everything goes well for you.’
He went out into the street. He was walking quickly but to where he didn’t know. He had emptied his mind out; there were good things but not to hand. If only the drug would stop working. At last he remembered his car and returned for it. He drove fast but carefully. Lolly would have finished at the house. She would be on her way back, singing to the boy in the car. He hoped she was safe. He thought of the pleasure on his wife’s face when she saw him, and the way his son turned to his voice. There was much he had to teach the boy. He thought that pleasures erase themselves as they occur – you can never remember your last cigarette. If happiness accumulates it is not because it remains in the bloodstream but because it is the bloodstream.
He unlocked the house. He still hadn’t become used to the size and brightness of the kitchen, nor to the silence, unusual for London. The freezer was a room in itself. He took the food out and put it on the table. Now he had to get to the supermarket to pick up the champagne.
On the way out he opened the door to his study. He hadn’t been to his desk for a few days. He wanted to think there were other things he liked more, that he wasn’t possessed by it. He went in and quickly scribbled some notes. He couldn’t write now but after supper he would go to bed with his wife and son; when they were asleep he’d get up to work.
Sitting outside in the car, he examined his sore wrists. He pulled his shirt sleeves down. Before, he’d never cover them; he knew some men and many women who would show off their hacked, scarred or cut arms, as important marks.
There was something he wished he’d said to Natasha as he left – he had looked back and seen her face at the window, watching him go up the steps. ‘There are worlds and worlds and worlds inside you.’ But perhaps it wouldn’t mean anything to her.
Girl
They got on at Victoria Station and sat together, kissing lightly. As the train pulled away, she took out her Nietzsche tome and began to read. Turning to the man at her side she became amused by his face, which she studied continually. Removing her gloves she picked shaving cream from his ears, sleep from his eyes and crumbs from his mouth, while laughing to herself. The combination of his vanity, mixed with unconscious naivety, usually charmed her.
Nicole hadn’t wanted to visit her mother after all this time but Majid, her older lover – it sounded trite calling him her ‘boyfriend’ – had persuaded her to. He was curious about everything to do with her; it was part of love. He said it would be good for her to ‘re-connect’; she was stronger now. However, during the past year, when Nicole had refused to speak to her, and had ensured her mother didn’t have her address, she had suppressed many tormenting thoughts from the past; ghosts she dreaded returning as a result of this trip.
Couldn’t Majid sense how uneasy she was? Probably he could. She had never had anyone listen to her so attentively or take her so seriously, as if he wanted to occupy every part of her. He had the strongest will of anyone she’d known, apart from her father. He was used to having things his own way, and often disregarded what she wanted. He was afraid she would run away.
He had never met her mother. She might be incoherent, or in one of her furies, or worse. As it was, her mother had cancelled the proposed visit three times, once in a drunken voice that was on the point of becoming spiteful. Nicole didn’t want Majid to think that she – half her mother’s age – would resemble her at fifty. He had recently told Nicole that he considered her to be, in some sense, ‘dark’. Nicole was worried that her mother would find Majid also dark, but in the other sense.
Almost as soon as it left the station, their commuter train crossed the sparkling winter river. It would pass through the suburbs and then the countryside, arriving after two hours at a seaside town. Fortunately, theirs wasn’t a long journey, and next week, they were going to Rome; in January he was taking her to India. He wanted her to see Calcutta. He wouldn’t travel alone any more. His pleasure was only in her.
Holding hands they looked out at Victorian schools and small garages located under railway arches. There were frozen football pitches, allotments, and the backs of industrial estates where cork tiles and
bathroom fittings were manufactured, as well as carpet warehouses and metalwork shops. When the landscape grew more open, railway tracks stretched in every direction, a fan of possibilities. Majid said that passing through the outskirts of London reminded him what an old country Britain was, and how manifestly dilapidated.
She dropped her hand in his lap and stroked him as he took everything in, commenting on what he saw. He looked handsome in his silk shirt, scarf and raincoat. She dressed for him, too, and couldn’t go into a shop without wondering what would please him. A few days before, she’d had her dark hair cut into a bob that skimmed the fur collar of the overcoat she was wearing with knee-length motorcycle boots. At her side was the shoulder bag in which she carried her vitamin pills, journal and lip salve, and the mirror which had convinced her that her eyelids were developing new folds and lines as they shrivelled up. That morning she’d plucked her first grey hair from her head, and placed it inside a book. Yet she still had spots, one on her cheek and one on her upper lip. Before they left, Majid had made her conceal them with make-up, which she never wore.
‘In case we run into anyone I know‚’ he said.
He was well connected, but she was sure he wouldn’t know anyone where they were going. Yet she had obeyed.
She forced herself back to the book. Not long after they met, eighteen months ago, he remarked, ‘You’ve been to university but things must have changed since my day.’ It was true she didn’t know certain words: ‘confound’, ‘pejorative’, ‘empirical’. In the house they now shared, he had thousands of books and was familiar with all the writers, composers and painters. As he pointed out, she hadn’t heard of Gauguin. Sometimes when he was talking to his friends she had no idea what they were discussing, and became convinced that if her ignorance didn’t trouble him it was because he valued only her youth.
Certainly he considered conversation a pleasure. There had recently occurred an instructive incident when they dropped in for tea on the mother of her best friend. This woman, a sociology lecturer, had known Nicole from the age of thirteen, and probably continued to think of her as poignantly deprived. Nicole thought of her as cool, experienced and, above all, knowledgeable. Five years ago, when one of her mother’s boyfriends had beaten up Nicole’s brother, this woman had taken Nicole in for a few weeks. Nicole had sat numbly in her flat, surrounded by walls of books and pictures. All of it, apart from the occasional piece of soothing music, seemed vain and irrelevant.