“Well, there we are then. America . . .” He turned his palms upward, to enforce the point he felt he’d just made.
“We don’t have that kind of relationship.”
“Think about it.”
“Barnesy, there’s nothing to think about.”
“I think you’re wrong.”
“What is there to think about?”
“It’s not about thinking, is it?” said Barnesy passionately.
“So I was right. There’s nothing to think about.”
“I’m getting a divorce. If that makes any difference. I’ve been thinking I would for a while, but meeting you has made my mind up for me.”
“You’re married? Bloody hell, Barnesy. You’ve got a cheek.”
“Yes, but hear me out. She hates the all-nighters. She hates northern. She likes bloody . . . I don’t know. Girls with big hair who’ve won them talent shows.”
He stopped, and seemed to consider what he’d just said.
“Bloody hell. That’s really true. We’ve got nothing in common. I’ve only just realized how unsuited we are. I really am going to get a divorce. I’m not just saying that to you. I’m going to get one anyway.”
“Well, see how you feel when you get home.”
“My mind’s made up.”
“I don’t think you and I would be much better.”
“Why not? You had fun tonight, didn’t you?”
“Well. Yes. Some fun. But to be honest I spent much of the evening with Gav. Or Terry Jackson. Or Ros. You were on your own most of the time.”
“That’s how I dance, though. The way I do it, with the handstands and all that, I have to be on my own on the dance floor. I wouldn’t be like that if we were just, you know, inside watching telly.”
“Do you mean, you wouldn’t be off on your own, with your own telly? Or do you mean that you wouldn’t be doing handstands while our favorite program was on?”
“Well. Both. Neither. My fishing I’d do on my own. I mean, I do already. I’m just saying.”
“It’s good to be straight with each other right from the start.”
“You’re taking the piss,” said Barnesy, mournfully.
“I am a bit.”
“Fair enough. I’m talking rubbish, aren’t I?” He stood up. “I think I’ll be going.”
“I’m serious about the sofa.”
“That’s very kind of you. But I wasn’t ever very interested, to be honest. My game plan was always, you know, sex or bust.”
“But what’s bust?”
“Bust is going back to the all-nighter. I don’t usually crap out early. It’s a tribute to you that I’ve wasted any time here at all.”
Barnesy offered his hand, and Annie shook it.
“It’s been a pleasure, Annie. Not as much of a one as I’d have wanted, but, you know. Can’t have everything.”
The next morning, she still wasn’t entirely sure whether she’d dreamed him, whether his small, muscular body and his talcum powder and his flips and spins were meant to be decoded by a psychoanalyst, who would tell her that she had a peculiar view of male sexuality.
She made the mistake of trying to explain her evening out the following morning, in her session with Malcolm. She was possibly still a little drunk when she went to see him and she decided that Malcolm’s stuffiness would provide a satisfyingly easy target for her mood of tipsy recklessness; talking to him about sex plans would be as much fun as squirting him with a water pistol. But she squirted, and he got wet, and then he sat there, looking sad, and she could no longer remember why she ever thought it would be fun.
“A sex plan? You met up with a gay friend to prostitute yourself?”
Where to begin with this?
“Her being gay isn’t really relevant.” Probably not there.
“I didn’t know there was a lesbian in Gooleness.” Definitely not there, in fact. Malcolm was not going to find it easy to leave Ros’s sexuality unexamined.
“There are at least two. But that’s not . . .”
“Where do they go?”
“What do you mean, where do they go?”
“Well, I know I’m out of touch. But I’ve never heard of any lesbian bars or clubs here.”
“Malcolm, they don’t need to go to lesbian clubs. In the same way that you don’t need to go to heterosexual pubs. Clubs aren’t a necessary part of homosexuality.”
“Well, I don’t think I’d be comfortable in a non-heterosexual pub.”
“They go to the cinema. And to restaurants, and pubs, and people’s houses.”
“Ah,” said Malcolm, darkly. “People’s houses.” The implication was clear: you could get up to almost anything in private homes, behind closed doors.
“Maybe you should talk directly to her,” said Annie, “if you’re so curious about Gooleness lesbians.”
Malcolm blushed.
“I’m not curious. I’m just . . . interested.”
“I don’t want to come across as egotistical,” said Annie, “but can we talk about me?”
“I don’t know what you’ve come here to talk about.”
“My problems.”
“I’ve lost track of what they are. There seems to be a different one every week. We don’t even mention your long monogamous relationship anymore. All those years seem to count for nothing. You’re more interested in picking men up in nightclubs.”
“Malcolm, I’ve told you about this before. If you’re going to be judgmental, then perhaps it’s better if I stopped coming.”
“Well, that sounds to me as if you intend to do a lot of things I’d want to be judgmental about. Which in turn sounds to me as if you should keep coming to see me.”
“What would you want to be judgmental about?”
“Well, do you really intend to sleep around?”
She sighed.
“It’s as if you don’t know me at all.”
“I don’t know this version of you. The one that suddenly decides she wants to have sex with the first Tom, Dick and/or Harry that comes along.”
“Except I didn’t, did I?”
“Last night, you mean?”
“I could have slept with Barnesy, but I didn’t.” She wished she’d taken the trouble to find out his first name. A first name would have helped her preserve some dignity in situations like this.
“And why didn’t you?”
“Because, no matter what you think, I’m not a complete slut.”
She wasn’t any kind of slut at all, of course. She’d slept with one man for fifteen years, sporadically, and mostly without any real enthusiasm. But even saying the words “I’m not a complete slut” had somehow boosted her sexual confidence. She couldn’t have imagined saying them twenty-four hours earlier.
“What was wrong with him?”
“Nothing. He was sweet. Odd, but sweet.”
“So what were you looking for?”
“I know exactly what I’m looking for.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Really. Somebody my age or older. Somebody who reads. Maybe somebody with a, a creative bent of some kind. If he had a child or children of his own, I wouldn’t mind. Somebody who’s lived a bit.”
“I know who you’re describing.”
Annie doubted it very much, but for a moment she wondered whether Malcolm was going to produce somebody for her—maybe a recently divorced son who wrote poetry and played in the Manchester Philharmonic.
“Really?”
“The opposite.”
“The opposite of what?”
“Of Duncan.”
It was the second time recently that Malcolm had made an observation that could, presumably wrongly, be described as perceptive. Tucker was the opposite of Duncan. Duncan had no children of his own, no creative bent, and he hadn’t lived, not even a little. Or at least, he had never thrown stones at a noted beauty’s window, had never been an alcoholic, hadn’t toured the United States and Europe, hadn’t thrown away a God-given talent. (Even
Tucker’s way of not living could be described as living, if you had a crush on him.) Was that it? Was she in love with Tucker because he was the opposite of Duncan? Was Duncan in love with Tucker because he was the opposite of Duncan? In which case Annie and Duncan had both managed to create an empty space, a complicated one, with all sorts of tricky corners and odd bumps and surprising indents, like a jigsaw piece, and Tucker had filled it precisely.
“That’s stupid,” she said.
“Oh,” said Malcolm. “Oh well. It was just a theory.”
Dear Annie,
“What do you do if you think you’ve wasted fifteen years of your life?” Are you kidding me? I don’t know if anyone ever told you, but I’m pretty much the world expert on this particular subject. I mean, obviously I’ve wasted more than fifteen years, but I’m hoping you’ll overlook the extra and look upon me as a kindred spirit anyway. Maybe even your guru.
First of all, you have to get that number down. Make a list of all the good books you’ve read, movies you’ve seen, conversations you’ve had and so on, and give all of these things a temporal value. With a little bit of creative accounting, you should be able to reduce it to ten. I’ve got mine down to about that now, although I’ve cheated here and there—I included the whole of my son Jackson’s life, for example, and he’s been at school and asleep for a lot of the time-wasting years.
I’d like to say that anything that comes in around a decade you can write off for tax purposes, but that isn’t actually the way I feel. I’m still pretty sick about what I’ve lost, but I only admit it to myself late at night, which is probably why I’m not the best sleeper. What can I tell you? If it really was wasted time—and I’d need to examine your diary pretty carefully before I could confirm that for you—then I have some bad news: it’s gone. You can maybe add a little onto the other end by giving up drugs, or cigarettes, or by going to the gym a lot, but my guess is that those years after the age of eighty aren’t as much fun as they’re cracked up to be.
You know, from my e-mail address, if nothing else, that I have a thing for Dickens—I’m reading his letters at the moment. There are twelve volumes of them, and each volume is several hundred pages long. If he’d only written letters, he’d have had a pretty productive life, but he didn’t only write letters. There are four volumes of his journalism, too, big ones. He edited a couple of magazines. He squeezed in an unconventional love life, and a few rewarding friendships. Am I forgetting anything? Oh, yeah: a dozen of the greatest novels in the English language. So I’m beginning to wonder whether my infatuation is caused, in part at least, by him being the opposite of me. He’s pretty much the one guy whose life you could look at and think, man, he didn’t mess around. That happens, right? People get drawn to opposites?
But there aren’t many people like old Charlie. Most humans don’t get to do work that’s going to last. They sell shower curtain rings, like the John Candy character in that movie. (I mean, the rings might last. But they’re probably not what people talk about after you’ve gone.) So it’s not about what you do. It can’t be, can it? It has to be about how you are, how you love, how you treat yourself and those around you, and that’s where I get eaten up. I used to spend a lot of time drinking and watching TV, not loving anybody, wives or mistresses or kids, and there’s no spin I can put on that. Which is why Jackson is such a big deal. He’s my last hope, and I’m pouring everything that’s left in me through the spout on the top of the little guy’s head. That poor kid! Unless he surpasses the combined achievements of Dickens, JFK, James Brown and Michael Jordan, he’ll have let me down. And I won’t be around to see it anyway.
Tucker
Dear Annie,
I’m sending this e-mail about five minutes after the last one. My advice, it now occurs to me, was entirely worthless and borderline offensive. I suggested that we can redeem wasted time by cherishing and nurturing our children, but you don’t have any children. Which is one of the reasons why you feel you’ve been wasting time. I’m not quite as perverse or obtuse as this might seem, but I can see that my pitch to be your guru could have gone better.
I’m coming to London next week, by the way, in unhappy circumstances. Are we getting on fine as we are? Or would you like a drink?
It was the part about opposites that did it, of course. She didn’t know who or what she had fallen in love with, but she was as lost and dreamy and helpless as she’d ever been in her entire life.
eleven
How can you just lose a baby?” said Jackson. “It hasn’t even been born yet. It can’t even go anywhere.”
His eyebrows were high above his eyes, suggesting stifled mirth; the boy was pretty sure there was going to be a punch line to this joke, Tucker could tell, but he wasn’t going to laugh until he’d been given permission.
“Yeah, well. When people say that someone’s lost a baby . . .” He hesitated. Was there an easier, gentler way of doing this? Probably, but fuck it. “When people say that someone’s lost a baby, it means the baby died.”
The eyebrows fell.
“Died?”
“Yeah. It happens sometimes. Quite a lot, actually. Lizzie was unlucky, because usually it happens really early on, when the baby isn’t even really a baby. But hers was a little bit older.”
“Is Lizzie going to die, too?”
“No, no. She’ll be okay. At the moment she’s just very sad.”
“So even babies die? Babies that haven’t been born? That really, really sucks.”
“It really, really does.”
“Except,” said Jackson, brightening, “except, you’re not going to be a granddad.”
“Not . . . Not yet, no.”
“Not for ages. And if you’re not going to be a granddad yet it means you might not die yet.” And with that, Jackson started running up and down, whooping.
“Jackson! Stop being such a jerk!”
Tucker only rarely shouted at him, so whenever he did, the effect was dramatic. Jackson stopped dead, covered his ears with his hands and started to cry.
“That hurt my ears. A lot. I wish you’d died instead of that poor little baby.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“This time I really do.”
Tucker knew why he’d been so angry: it was guilt. The postponement of grandfatherhood hadn’t been the first thing he’d thought of when Lizzie’s mother called to tell him the news, but it had certainly been the second, and the space between the two hadn’t been as respectful as he would have wished. He’d been reprieved. Someone up there had wanted to extend his—not his youth, of course, nor even, let’s face it, his prime, but his pre-grandfatherly state. It wasn’t what he’d wanted. He’d wanted Lizzie to be happy, to have a healthy child. But every cloud, and so on.
Meanwhile Jackson’s sobs had stopped being angry and bitter. They were now pitiful and remorseful.
“I’m really so, so sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean it. I’m glad the baby died and not you.”
Somehow kids could never get it quite right.
“Anyway, I suppose we’ll have to go to London and see Lizzie, right?”
“Oh, no. I don’t think so. That isn’t what she’d want.”
It hadn’t even crossed his mind. Was that bad? Probably. “Probably” was usually the answer to this particular question, in his experience, if the question was self-directed. But Natalie would be around, and Lizzie was close to her stepdad . . . There was no need for him to sit by her bedside not knowing what to say.
“She’d want to see you, Dad. I’d want to see you if I was sick.”
“Yeah, but . . . You and me, we’re different. I don’t know Lizzie as well.”
“We’ll see,” Jackson said.
Cat came over to take Jackson out for pizza. She’d offered to take Tucker out, too, but he’d declined—the boy needed some time alone with his mother, and anyway, Tucker wasn’t ready to play happy modern fractured families yet. He was old-fashioned enough (and simple enough) to believe that if a m
an and his wife could share a pizza, then they could share a bed. He was, however, somewhat disconcerted to realize when he saw her that he could have done it, sat in the restaurant eating and chatting; this particular wound had taken only a short time to heal. A while back, he might have taken this as an indication of increasing psychic health, but in his experience anything to do with getting older rarely indicated good news. Presumably, then, it was doleful proof that he couldn’t bring himself to give much of a shit about anything anymore. She was a good-looking woman, Cat, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what had pulled him toward her. And he could no longer re-create in his mind the circumstances that had led to their marriage, or the production of Jackson, or even the stormy weather of the last year or so.
“I suppose you’ll have to go to London,” Cat said, when he told her the news about Lizzie.
“Oh, no,” he said, although the “Oh” was beginning to sound superfluous and phony, even to him. This time it had crossed his mind. “I don’t think so. That isn’t what she’d want.” Why not stick with a winning formulation?
“You think?” said Cat.
“It’s not as if we’re close,” said Tucker. “She wouldn’t be expecting me to fly across the Atlantic just to be useless.”
“Nearly right,” said Cat. “She’d be expecting you not to.”
“Right,” said Tucker. “Which is what I just said.”
“No. It wasn’t. Your way of putting it suggested that she wouldn’t care one way or the other. My way—her way—is to think the worst of you. You don’t know much about fathers and daughters, do you?”
“Not a lot, no.” Not as much as he should, anyway, seeing as he was the father of a couple of daughters.
“And she flew all the way here to see you when she found out she was pregnant. There’s something going on with her.”
He finished buttoning up Jackson’s coat and kissed him on the top of his head. Of course, the one kid who he hadn’t fucked up was the one kid whose offspring he wasn’t likely to see.