‘You’ve lost weight,’ she said, which was nice of her, because most people say ‘You’ve gone grey’ as a way of breaking the ice.
‘You haven’t,’ I replied, which was pretty feeble, but the only thing I could think of to say at the time.
‘Oh yes you have, oh no you haven’t, oh yes you have, oh no you haven’t,’ said Oliver in a pantomime voice.
Gillian had made a delicious vegetarian lasagne. Oliver opened my bottle and pronounced it ‘very quaffable,’ then made approving if patronising comments about the rising quality of New World wines, as if I was a visiting American, or someone he was doing business with. Not that I imagine Oliver does much business.
We caught up on things without getting near any danger areas.
‘So how long are you over for?’ she asked towards the end of the evening. She wasn’t looking at me as she asked.
‘Oh, for the duration, I suppose.’
‘How long’s a duration?’ This time there was a smile, but she still didn’t look.
‘As long as a piece of string,’ said Oliver.
‘No,’ I said, ‘you don’t understand. You see—I’m back.’
I could tell it came as a surprise to both of them. As I began to explain, the door clicked and a face appeared opposite me. It examined me for a bit and said, ‘Where’s your cat?’
Gillian I thought it would be awkward. I thought Stuart would be embarrassed—he used to get embarrassed easily. I thought I might not be able to look him in the face. I knew I had to. I thought: this is a crazy idea, why did Oliver have to ask him round? Why did Oliver have to give me precisely three hours’ notice?
It wasn’t awkward. The only awkward bit was Oliver flapping about, trying to put us at our ease. Which wasn’t at all necessary. Stuart’s grown up a lot. He’s thinner than he was, and grey hair seems to suit him, but mainly he’s just more at ease, more relaxed. Which was surprising under the circumstances. Or perhaps not. After all, he’s gone out there, into the world, made his own life, made some money, and here we are, still the same as before except for the children, and being a bit worse off. He could have afforded to be patronising, but he wasn’t at all. I got the impression he was slightly impatient with Oliver; no, that’s not quite right, it was more as if he was watching Oliver like a cabaret act, waiting for the show to be over before serious business started. I ought to have resented it on Oliver’s behalf, but somehow I didn’t.
Oliver resented it, though. When I found myself (quite unnecessarily, since it was the first thing I’d said) repeating to Stuart that he’d lost weight, Oliver said, ‘Did you know pigs suffer from anorexia?’ When I gave him a look, he added, ‘Stu told me,’ as if that made it any better.
But Stuart just glossed over this, took it as a natural change in the conversation. Apparently it’s true that pigs can develop the symptoms of anorexia. Sows in particular. They get hyperactive, they refuse to eat, and they lose weight. What’s that about? I asked. Stuart said they didn’t really know, but it must be the consequence of intensive breeding. We want our pork lean, but lean pigs are more susceptible to stress. One theory is that stress causes some rare gene to be triggered, which makes the animals behave in the way they do. Isn’t that terrible?
‘Long pig,’ said Oliver, as if this was the story’s punchline.
I’d forgotten what a thoughtful person Stuart was. I didn’t know what was going to happen with the children, because—well, anyway. I decided on normal bedtimes, so Marie would be asleep—in theory—but Sophie would have half an hour with Stuart if he arrived on time, which of course he did. Sophie’s got this rather terrifying knack of asking the wrong question. She’s also got this direct manner with people; not at all shy. So after a proper handshake, she looked Stuart full in the face and said, ‘We understand you’re very rich and you’re going to fund some of Daddy’s projects.’
As you can imagine, I didn’t know where to look—except at Oliver, who was studiously avoiding my eye. I was blushing inwardly, and probably outwardly too, over that ‘we’ Sophie had used, when Stuart, without missing a beat, and in a perfectly normal tone, said, ‘I’m afraid it’s more complicated than that. All applications have to go before the board, you see. I’m only one vote among many.’
I was thinking: thanks Stuart, that was kind, thanks for that, when Sophie said, ‘You’re just fobbing us off.’ She had her stern face on.
Stuart laughed. ‘No, I’m not fobbing you off. There has to be a structure, you see. It’s all very well being philanthropic, but there has to be fairness. And you can’t have fairness unless you have a structure. Can you?’
Sophie looked half-convinced. ‘If you say so.’
When she’d gone to bed, I said, ‘Thanks.’
‘Oh, that. No, I can do corporate-speak. All too well, if necessary.’
And he left it at that. Just treated Sophie’s question like a child’s fantasy, which of course it wasn’t.
Later, the door opened a few inches and Marie put her face through. She said something in a stage whisper. Stuart was in mid-conversation, and he just paused and gave her a big wink. It wasn’t done for effect, I don’t think he could see that I’d noticed.
He’s obviously done well for himself. Not that he talked about it. Just something about his manner. And he dresses more smartly. I expect that’s his wife’s doing. I didn’t ask about her. We kept off that, just as we kept off other danger areas.
I overcooked the lasagne. I was cross with myself about that.
Oliver Another triumph for the Ringmaster. The flick of my whip persuaded leonine mange and sequinned buttock to trippety-trip the strobe-lit fantastic. Background music: Satie’s Parade. Whose score, as I recall, contains parts for both a circus whip and a typewriter. Just the symbols that should be entwined on Oliver’s future coat of arms.
Everything went swimmingly. I did not require the foresight of Nostradamus to guess that Stuart would arrive with a hospitalisable case of lockjaw and the muscular relaxation of an Easter Island statue, but I put him at ease by praising the wine he had so plutocratically furnished for the occasion. Tasmanian pinot noir, would you believe! Gillian was so tense that she cremated the pasta. The kids were great, perfect little ladies both of them. Stuart seemed obsessed by whether or not the neighbourhood was undergoing gentrification, a word he pronounced as if holding it with firetongs. Do you know what that was about? Probably anxiety lest some local Che Guevara liberate the hubcaps from his BMW even as he quaffed and dined.
It’s a trifle fuck-striking, the notion of Stuart with a BMW, isn’t it? And I was duly fuck-struck as I waved him off on a night as foul as that which saw the return of St Mark’s body to Venice. If we believe our Tintoretto. The streetlamps blinked pathetically, while the tarmac gleamed like the rinsed flank of an Ethiope. As he slalomed away in a four-wheel drift, I murmured, ‘Auf wiedersehen, O Regenmeister.’ The Ringmaster meets the Regenmeister—I wish I’d thought of it earlier.
I have to admit—much as it goes against the grain—that once Stuart got over his initial social trauma, he seemed pretty much at his ease. Rather disgustingly so at times, if you really want to know. Interrupted me on two separate occasions, which would never have happened dans le bon vieux tems du roy Louys. What has wrought this genetic modification in my organic chum, do you suppose?
Yes, everything went swimmingly, which is a very peculiar adverb to apply to a social event, considering how most human beings swim.
Stuart Oh yes, I asked them how long they’d been vegetarian. ‘We’re not,’ said Gillian. ‘Never have been. I mean, we like to eat healthily.’ She trailed off, then added, ‘We thought you were.’
‘Vegetarian? Me?’ I shook my head.
‘Oliver. You’re always getting things wrong.’ She didn’t say it bitchily, or sarcastically. On the other hand, she didn’t say it affectionately either. She said it in a sort of resigned way, as if this was the way matters were, and would be, and it was just up to her to deal with th
e consequences.
She has put on a little weight, hasn’t she? But why not? It suits her. I don’t like the way they’re cutting women’s hair very short on the nape nowadays. And I never thought yellow was her colour. Still, none of my business, is it?
Oliver Stuart did, unwittingly, sing for his supper; that’s to say, he throated one pure phrase of Pergolesi in among the Frank I field. He was prating on about The Threat to the Universe As We Know It, in other words how biodiversity was going belly up, how modified genes in black turtleneck sweaters would abseil their way into the hitherto protected demesne of Fortress Nature, how the timid songbird would be struck mute and the glossy aubergine lose its sheen, how we would all sprout humps and turn into village grotesques out of Brueghel—not that that would be too bad a thing if the alternative were a race of Stuarts—and how genetic modification was a Frankenstein’s Monster—at which point I wanted to yodel a note high enough to shatter all the crystalware in the house because the whole point of the monster is that he was a real sweetie-pie and no threat to anyone but just unfortunately happened to personify so many of humankind’s picayune terrors—but Stuart carried on being boring, boring—as boring as a factory full of power-drills, as some wit put it—about GM—don’t you hate acronyms?—and I was about to ask (a) what General Motors had to do with the issue, and (b) whether the success of Stuart’s non-pestiferous greengrocery did not depend precisely upon our fear of the evil gene, and if we took away such fear would the said carrot emporium not go swirling down the U-bend, when he used a phrase that came like the snap of a hypnotist’s fingers.
‘What did you say?’
Naturally, he told me all the other things he’d said, like a gold-panner crazily displaying his quartz. Finally, his scrabbling fingertips held up the true glister.
‘The law of unintended effect.’
He explained that this principle might apply if, for example, the Frankensteined crops turned out to be unpalatable to herbivores, a trait which … And so on. But he had lost me, and I was richly lost.
The law of unintended effect. Doesn’t that sing out, not like some timid if happily untainted hedgerow warbler, but like a mighty chorus to which humankind, Nature and the Almighty lend their joint voices? (I use the Almighty as a metaphor, you understand. Replace with Thor, Zeus or little Johnny Quark according to taste.) Isn’t that just a phrase written in neon? Put it up there alongside ‘the word made flesh,’ ‘que sera, sera,’ ‘si monumentum requiris, circumspice,’ ‘horseman, pass by,’ ‘we have left undone those things which we ought to have done,’ and ‘with trembling hands, he undid her bra.’ The law of unintended effect. Does that not explain your life even as it does mine? What metaphysician, what moralist could put it better?
Misunderstand me not. If you are a little less pro-Ollie than you might be—and I suspect you are—you might think my embrace of this refulgent principle exculpatory in some way. As if I’m using it to bleat: not my fault, squire. On the contrary—and leaving present company out of it—I regard it as a true expression of the tragic principle of life. Those old gods are dead, and little Johnny Quark is a grey-suited Stuart of a creation in my book, but The Law of Unintended Effect, now that is grand, that is Greek, that instructs us how mighty is the gap between intention and the deed, between purpose and consequence, how vain our striving proves, how precipitate and Luciferian our fall. We are all, are we not, lost? Those who know it not are the more lost. Those who do know it are found, for they have grasped their full lostness. Thus spaketh Oliver in the Year of Our Quark.
Gillian Of course, you can have married sex without being married. I suppose that’s the worst of both worlds. Sorry, didn’t mean to put you off. Perhaps that’s what you’re just about to have.
8
NO HARD FEELINGS
Stuart ‘How did you find my number?’ ‘Oh, I looked you up in the phone book.’ Why do I seem to be having this conversation so often lately? First Oliver, then Ellie. I mean, I know some parts of the UK aren’t exactly up to speed, but I was hardly using an advanced system of information retrieval, was I?
Have I been out of the country too long? Possibly. Probably. Like when I went into that antique shop near Ladbroke Grove and said I wanted a small painting but it had to be dirty. The woman gave me an odd look, which was of course quite understandable. No, no, I explained, I want a small painting which needs cleaning, at which she gave me an even odder look. Perhaps she thought I thought it’d be cheaper. Anyway, she showed me three or four, and said, ‘This one’s got a spot of damage as well, I’m afraid.’ ‘Oh, good,’ I replied and settled on that one. She obviously expected me to explain. But that’s one of the things I’ve found as I’ve got older. You don’t have to explain if you don’t want to.
It was the same when Ellie came to pick it up. She looked at the apartment, and I didn’t explain that. I’d told her my name was Henderson, and I didn’t explain that. And I showed her the picture, and didn’t explain that. Or rather, I explained that I wasn’t going to explain. ‘I expect it’s rubbish,’ I said. ‘I don’t know about paintings. But I need it cleaned for a particular reason.’
She asked if she could take it out of its frame. It was only then that I started to pay her proper attention. When she arrived, she just looked like one of those million girls in black who seem to have sprung up in England while I was away. Black sweater, black trousers, square-toed wedgy-heeled shoes, little black backpack, hair dyed the sort of black that doesn’t exist in nature. Not in England, anyway.
Then she got her toolkit out of her backpack, and though she was doing something quite uncomplicated, something I could have done—cut through the backing strip, ease out some pins, and so on—she did it with such concentration, and such exact use of her fingers. I’ve always thought that if you want to get to know someone better, you shouldn’t take them out for a candlelit dinner, you should watch them at work. When they’re full of concentration, only not concentrating on you. Do you know what I mean?
After a bit, I asked her the questions I’d planned. It’s obvious she admires Gillian a lot.
I found myself thinking, I’m glad your fingernails aren’t black too. In fact, they have this thick, shiny, transparent coating. Like the glaze on a painting, I guess.
Oliver Pub Night again. Reflections upon the metamorphosis of ye tavern. Back before the snows of yesteryear had melted, when the white-ensigned ironclad ploughed the waves, when coinage felt heavy in the palm and royal adultery glamorous, back when Westminster was the sovereign creator of law and the good old English apple contained the good old English worm—back then, a pub was a pub. Behold the sturdy-backed drayman furnishing ale of local fabrication to the mutton-chopped publican, who waters it further before inducing alcoholism in the whey-faced adolescent, the dribbling idiot, the thriftless husband come to piss away the housekeeping, the mutilé de guerre with ribboned chest athwart his favourite stool, and the gummy-mouthed senescent clacking away at dominoes in the far corner. The regulars keep their pewter mugs on nails above the bar, a fetid labrador lazes before a spitting fire, and just for a moment—unless the crafty recruiting officer has dropped the King’s shilling into your mild and bitter—all is calm and comprehensible in this virile enclave.
Not that I bedizened such places, you understand. The overt frottage of testosterone and the lachrymose sodality of ale—such delighteth not Ollie. But then, at some no doubt identifiable moment, there came the introduction into the public house of the respectable female quaffer—the quaffeuse—the provision of passable food and laughable wine, of pub games, pub comedians, pub strippers, pub sportscreens, of better wine and guidebook food, plus the banishment of piles-inducing oaken furniture—all of which, call it gentrification or genetic modification according to which of Stuart’s touchstones you favour, has not displeased Oliver. Snug-bar semioticians may rightly propose the pub as an icon of wider social trends. As the Doge of Westminster recently reminded us, we are all middle-class. Welcome, therefore
, O ye tourists, to Bigger Belgium, Greater Holland.
Concentrate, Oliver, concentrate. The pub, if you please. The place, the purpose, the personnel.
Ah, how the voice of conscience resembles, in its cadence and phraseology, the voice of Gillian. Is this what men do? There are many theories as to what it is that men marry—their sexual destiny, their mother, their doppelgänger, their wife’s money—but how about the notion that what they truly seek is their conscience? God knows, most men aren’t able to locate it in the traditional seat, somewhere close to the heart and the spleen, so why not acquire it as an accessory, like a tinted sunroof or metal-spoked steering wheel? Or might it, alternatively, be that this is not what men truly seek but what marriage, of necessity, turns women into? Now that would be rather more banal. Not to mention more tragic.
Concentrate, Oliver. Very well. We were in some luxury tavern—some Beer-Ritz—favoured by Stuart. Fill in the cute and preferably alliterative title of your choice. We were drinking—oh, whatever you would like us to drink. And Stuart—this part I remember well—was being a friend. Or even, Being a Friend. There was, given Stuart, much palaver and rodomontade before he attained his peroration, but his message, as I understood it, had a Yankee simplicity to it: I have succeeded, ergo thou shalt also succeed. How so, O minor Master of the Universe, I ask, my head lolling upon my forepaws like the pub labrador in the old print. I gather he has some business plan or rescue strategy in mind. I subtly imply that I could use a cash injection—I am on the point of comparing myself to a junkie, but draw back, in the presence of one so literal-minded, and suggest instead, more wholesomely, that I need a cash injection as a diabetic needs his insulin. Stuart swore me to campfire secrecy vis-à-vis Gillian; indeed, we might have taken out Swiss Army knives and with nicked thumbs made a pledge of sanguinous fraternity.