She said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how this will end.’
We walked through the city with its Sunday feel of a sudden spaceship that has taken everyone to Mars.
There were no brokers, no bankers, no shops open. There was no one at the bus stop, no one flagging down a taxi. Occasionally a car would pass us, slow, curious, and there were two police women exercising their horses.
I have an odd sense of ‘Where am I?’ when I hear hooves on the road in a city. The buildings amplify the sound, and two horses at a trot sound like the cavalry. If I don’t look round, it feels like the past coming up behind me, and I hear the rattle of the milk wagons, and the heavy wooden beer barrels coming off the drays, and the horse-drawn box that says SUNLIGHT SOAP.
Behind me, now, there’ll be a man in a flat cap selling rolled-gold watches off a tray, and a boy shouting the latest headlines off a cart stacked with newspapers.
In front of me are the Bank of England, London Wall and a big red bus. I half turn, and if I don’t see what I can hear behind me, I see the buildings—Edwardian, Victorian, Georgian. Old London is just above the shopfronts. The steel, plate glass and bright signs belong to me, but look up, just one storey, and the past is as solid as it ever was.
I wonder, maybe, if time stacks vertically, and there is no past, present, future, only simultaneous layers of reality. We experience our own reality at ground level. At a different level, time would be elsewhere. We would be elsewhere in time.
‘If I could have my time again, I’d be with you.’
(Where have I heard that before?) ‘You are with me.’
‘I made choices before I met you.’
‘The whole of my life is more than a single decision.’
‘Some decisions are more important than others.’
‘This is one of them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean it’s either/or.’
‘You or him?’
‘No. The same life or something different.’
‘I like my life.’
‘Fine. Keep it just as it is.’
‘But that includes you.’
‘No. No it doesn’t.’
I can’t do it. I’ve been here before and it’s not a room with a view. The only power I have is the negative power of withdrawal. If I don’t withdraw I have no power at all. A relationship where one person has no power or negative power isn’t a relationship, it’s the bond between master and slave.
‘For God’s sake, give me a break!’
‘I’d have to break myself.’
And then I’m thinking, why am I like this? Why?
I think it’s fair to say that my parents were not loved as children, that they did not love each other and that they did not love me. There was possession, fear, sentimentality, desire, but not love. This has left me with certain absences and certain intensities.
Absent is any real sense of family, of bonding, of belonging. Intensified is a longing for love as it really is—as freedom, abundance, generosity, passion. What Dante calls ‘the love that moves the sun and the other stars’.
This love exists. Perhaps it is the only thing that exists. It is the buried treasure. The treasure is really there.
Fragments, hints, clues, letters, persuade me on. I’ve come near it sometimes, but like Lancelot outside the Chapel of the Grail, I haven’t been able to go in. I may never be able to go in.
In your face, in your body, as you walk and lie down and eat and read, you have become the lineaments of love. When I touch you I touch something deeper than you. This touches something in me otherwise too sunk to recover.
I suffer. I intentionally put myself in the way of suffering as a test, as a measure, to see what will be drawn up—to stop myself from closing up. I don’t want to close the wound.
Love wounds. There is no love that does not pierce the hands and feet. Love’s exquisite happiness is also love’s exquisite pain. I do not seek pain but there is pain. I do not seek suffering but there is suffering. It is better not to flinch, not to try and avoid those things in love’s direction. It is not easy, this love, but only the impossible is worth the effort.
In the Grail legends Lancelot, the best knight in the world, never does see the Grail because he cannot give up his love for Guinevere. As a moral essay this suggests that human passion is no substitute for divine love and that it prevents us from experiencing love fully. This has been the basis of Christian thought since St Paul.
There is another reading. Lancelot fails, not because he can’t give up Guinevere, but because he can’t distinguish between love’s symbol and what it represents. All human love is a dramatic enactment of the wild, reckless, unquenchable, undrainable love that powers the universe. If death is everywhere and inescapable, then so is love, if we but knew it. We can begin to know it through each other. The tamer my love, the farther away it is from love. In fierceness, in heat, in longing, in risk, I find something of love’s nature. In my desire for you, I burn at the right temperature to walk through love’s fire.
So when you ask me why I cannot love you more calmly, I answer that to love you calmly is not to love you at all.
SHOW BALLOONS
Once a year at the Muck House we opened our yard doors and went out, all three of us, into the Wilderness.
The Wilderness was a big place. It was everywhere and everything, except for the Muck House.
The expedition was carefully planned. Best clothes were worn, including hats, and we were allowed out between the hours of nine and six precisely. My father went into the Wilderness every day, but he was a man, and it was trade.
The day came. Hand in hand with my mother and father, I watched the great gates swing open. My father had oiled them the night before and taken down the barbed wire. Rigged to a car battery, the gates could open and shut themselves. Their silent sinister invitation pointed outwards towards …
‘The Promised Land,’ said my mother.
‘I thought it was the Wilderness.’
‘The only way to the Promised Land is through the Wilderness.’
‘Then why don’t we go there more often?’
‘Temptations.’
Out we went.
We went past Woolworth’s—‘A den of vice.’ Past Marks & Spencer—‘Iniquity.’ Past the Funeral Parlour and the doner kebab shop—‘They share an oven.’ Past the biscuit stall and its moon-faced owners—‘Incest.’ Past the dog-clipping salon—‘Bestiality.’ Past the bank—‘Usury’. Past the Citizens’ Advice Bureau—‘Communists.’ Past the day nursery—‘Unmarried mothers.’ Past the hairdresser’s—‘Vanity.’ Past the jeweller’s where my mother had once tried to pawn her gold tooth, and on at last to a caff called the Palatine for beans on toast.
I was still worrying about the Promised Land.
‘So the only way to the Promised Land is through the Wilderness, and when you get to the Promised Land, what do you find?’
‘The buried treasure.’
‘And what do you do with it when you’ve found it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why don’t you know?’
‘Because I’ve never found it.’
‘Have you seen the Promised Land?’
‘No.’
‘Then how do you know there is one?’
‘It’s shown on the map.’
‘What map?’
She thumped her heart.
She thumped her heart and looked away. She was such a mixture of cynicism and credulity. She believed what her heart told her, but she could never follow it. Her heart was like a bird that flew away and returned with stories in its beak. She heard, but she could not follow. Even the near places seemed too far. She had a bad leg. The Promised Land was farthest of all, but she knew it was there.
I watched the people going up and down the street, beyond the smoky glass of the Palatine caff. I wondered if I would have to spend forty years in the Wilderness before I found the Promised Land. And, after
forty years, would I remember why I had set out?
We sat round the fire that night, Mother and Father and me. We sat like conspirators, firelight on our faces, fire in our hearts. We sat like angels on the edge of time, glowing and intense. We were on the wheel’s rim of our desire. The circle we made was a charm against emptiness and a line drawn round hope. We dangled our feet into the black space of what might happen next.
We were talking about the treasure.
‘When I was young,’ my mother said, ‘there was a hollow tree that had been struck by lightning, and anyone who crawled inside the trunk and dared to stand there for three minutes took away some of the lightning power. You could tell who they were because they had a glow about them. Wherever they walked afterwards, they’d find a penny that became a pound, or a key that opened a door.’
‘Did you never stand in there yourself?’ said my father.
‘I did, and the money I found was this …’ She reached her hand into the bucket of foreign coins. ‘And the key I found was that.’ She pointed to an old rusty key that hung like a reproach over the mantelpiece.
‘That key fits nothing,’ said my father.
‘It’s waiting for the door,’ said my mother.
I looked at it closely. I had never looked at it before. Like all familiar objects it had become invisible. And what was there to look at? A rusty hoop, a rusty bar and a rusty block. It was just another six inches of rust in a house rusted with rust.
CHOOSER
‘So now you know.’
‘Know what?’
‘Why I can’t settle for less.’
‘Less is more.’
‘No, it’s just less.’
‘Do you remember—in Paris …’ (She hesitated.)
‘I remember everything about Paris.’
‘How you brushed the rain from the marble table …’
‘With my sleeve …’
‘And then you brushed the rain from my forehead …’
‘With my fingers …’
‘I wanted it to be your lips.’
‘So did I.’
‘You were hard to get.’
‘Not hard enough. I should have said no.’
‘Do you wish you had said no?’
‘No.’
We were silent. The kind of silent when there’s nothing left to say.
‘Kiss me.’
Yes. Always. Even when I never see you again. After speech, kisses. The silent movie of my feelings for you. Our lips say one thing and do another. We argue in English and make love in French. I kissed you and we were in that attic room again. Our private world. Our promised land.
This is what happens in the Bible story:
After forty years of wandering in the Wilderness, the chosen people come to the Promised Land. The grapes are so heavy that it takes two men to carry a single bunch. The cattle are the size of elephants. The land flowing with milk and honey is there, right there, in front of their eyes and just over the ridge. The Israelites can’t believe their luck. This is it.
And then …
‘If the grapes are as big as that, the wine will be too strong to drink.’
‘Those cattle! Think how much they will need to eat!’
‘I couldn’t get my hand round the udders.’
‘And the honey! Honey everywhere!’
‘The bees must be gigantic.’
‘Swarms of gigantic bees! Oy, oy oy …’
‘Mountain lions! Mountain lions love honey.’
‘Locusts love honey.’
‘People already live here.’
‘They must be huge.’
‘All that milk and honey. What a diet.’
‘We’ll be killed.’
‘You know, the Wilderness isn’t such a bad place.’
‘It’s windy, it’s cold, it’s barren, it’s dusty …’
‘There’s a lot of sand.’
‘But it isn’t such a bad place.’
‘Maybe we could find another Promised Land?’
‘With less honey and smaller cows.’
‘The boy’s right. At least the Wilderness is ours.’
I said, ‘You’re going to walk away from this, aren’t you?’
‘I have to,’ she said.
We took a taxi to Paddington Station. She had just missed a train to Oxford, so we sat in the Costa Coffee place and ordered cappuccino and tortina, and tried to talk above the house music and the station announcements. There wasn’t much to say.
‘We should have let it end in Paris.’
‘Then it would have been nothing but a memory.’
‘A happy memory,’ she said.
‘In Capri, it turned into a possibility.’
‘I know.’
‘A door opened. A door in a blank wall.’
‘Love is a door in a blank wall.’
‘Do you love me?’
‘Yes.’
There was something I had to know.
‘In Capri—’
‘Yes …’
‘When I came to find you—’
‘Yes.’
‘I was sure you wanted to risk it.’
‘I did.’
‘So what went wrong?’
‘I did.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I couldn’t do it. I can’t untangle my whole life.’
‘And yet you came to London.’
‘I had to see you again.’
‘What’s the problem? Is it money?’
‘No.’
‘Then what is it?’
‘I can’t be an exile from my own past.’
‘I don’t want your past.’
‘That’s just it. I can’t start again at year zero.’
Railway station. Point of arrival. Point of departure. A transit zone. How light she looked, with just a suitcase she could carry in one hand. Inside that suitcase was a marriage, America, a life of which I knew nothing. Inside that suitcase were doors I had never opened into rooms I wouldn’t recognise. The suitcase was stuffed with letters and an address book and a store card for a shopping mall, and dinner parties I had never been to, and wouldn’t go to now. In that suitcase were invitations from friends and pre-sets on a car radio tuned to stations I had never heard. In that suitcase were bad dreams and secret hopes. The dirty linen was in a special nylon compartment. Her childhood was in there—the awkward child with rough plaits who grew into a beautiful heavy-haired woman, who never quite believed the compliments of the mirror. Her husband was in there, or maybe he was strapped to the side, where you usually keep the lifeboats.
I looked at the suitcase, suddenly heavy, too heavy to carry, and I realised that she could never drag it with her. She was right—it would have to be let go, or taken home and unpacked again.
‘Let’s just walk away,’ I said.
‘Weren’t you listening?’
‘Yes. I mean both of us. Together. You from your life. Me from mine.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’ll leave everything behind too.’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘I can work anywhere. I can sell my house.’
‘Where would we go?’
‘Italy? Ireland? Where do you want to go? Paris?’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘I can. I will. If you will.’
What should stop me? What does a person need in this life except a roof, food, work and love? Here was the person I loved. I am able to work. Where the roof is and where the food is doesn’t matter.
‘If you’ll give up your past, I’ll give up mine,’ I said.
(She looked at her suitcase.)
‘I’ll bring clothes, books and the cat. That’s all.’
(Her suitcase was getting bigger.)
‘We can start again with furniture. We can make new friends.’
(The suitcase was filling up the coffee house.)
‘We’ll rent an apartment overlooking the river.’
&nbs
p; (The suitcase was pressing against the walls.)
‘With a bed and a chair and the morning sun.’
(The suitcase was pressing against my chest.)
‘When we open the windows, we’ll be like birds.’
(The suitcase was in my ribcage.)
‘Our happiness will be like the flight of birds.’
There was an announcement. The 4.15 to Oxford was standing at Platform 9. You stood up. You picked up your case.
We walked to the dirty hissing train and found you a seat opposite a Walkman wearer and a woman reading Hello! magazine. This is the emotional and cultural life of the nation. No wonder grand gestures fall flat. How can you say yes when everything around you is saying no?
If you had said yes, I would have been scared to death, and it might have been a mistake, but I would have done my part. How can you go back? How can I? I’ll probably sell my house now anyway. My life doesn’t make sense. Starting again, as clean as I can, is the only way I’m going to make sense of it. The train, the station, the noise, are meaningless. Your leaving is absurd. I can’t stand it. I sit down and take your hand.
‘Come with me. Come with me now.’
Here are two endings. You choose.
Two minutes to go. I’m holding your hand. The woman reading Hello! magazine is clearly disgusted at the sight of real feeling and gets up to sit elsewhere. The Walkman boy props his feet on her seat.
The train is leaving, leaving now, and you won’t meet my eyes. I can’t come with you. You’re not coming with me. The whistle blows. I have to jump up, forcing apart the closing doors. Then I’m outside again, walking down the platform, walking faster and faster, miming at you to pull the emergency cord. Just pull it. The train will stop. You can get off, leave your bag, and come with me. I’m running now. There’s still time, still time. Then there’s a moment when time is so still it stops and the train moves ahead for ever.
Two minutes to go. I’m holding your hand. The woman reading Hello! magazine smiles at me. She’s sorry for me.
You’re looking at me and there’s still a chance. Dear love, risk everything, there is no other way.