‘Quite honestly, Bianca,’ I said, ‘all I can see is a dirty, scruffy roof covered in pigeon shit.’
‘It was stupid of me to ask you to look at something further than your own nose,’ she said, and stormed onto the train, leaving me to carry our overnight bags.
I’m always forgetting that Bianca is a qualified engineer. She doesn’t look like one and since I’ve known her, she’s only ever worked as a shop assistant and a waitress. She applies for at least two engineering jobs a week, but has yet to be called for an interview. She is considering calling herself ‘Brian Dartington’ on her cv.
The ticket inspector forgot to punch our three-monthly returns, so our journey to Leicester cost us nothing. But any feelings of happy triumph vanished as we got into the house. My mother was putting on a brave front, but I could tell she was inwardly distraught – at one point, she had one cigarette in her mouth, another in the ashtray and another burning on the edge of the kitchen window sill. I asked her how she’d got into such terrible debt.
She whispered, ‘Martin needed the fees to finish his degree course. I borrowed a thousand pounds from a finance company, at an interest rate of twenty-four point seven per cent. Two weeks later, I lost my job with Group Five – somebody grassed on me and told them I was forty-eight.’ I asked her to tell me the full extent of her indebtedness. She brought out unpaid bills of every description and colour. I urged her to tell Muffet the true nature of their financial situation, but she became almost hysterical and said, ‘No, no, he must finish his engineering degree.’
I seem to be surrounded by engineers. Bianca informed my mother that she too was a qualified engineer.
I said jokingly, ‘Yes, but she has not built so much as a Lego tower since she left university.’
To my amazement, Bianca took great exception to my harmless joke and left the room, looking tearful.
My mother said, ‘You tactless sod!’ and followed her into the garden.
I sat at the kitchen table, braced myself, and wrote three cheques: to Fat Eddie’s Loan Co. (two hundred and seventy-one pounds); to the Co-op Dairy (thirty-six pounds, forty-nine pence); to Cherry’s Newsagent (seventy-four pounds, eighty-one pence). I know it does not solve my mother’s housing problem, but at least she can answer her front door now without being hounded by local creditors.
When Martin came back from Grandma’s (where he is in the middle of replacing her two-pin sockets with three-pin ones), I introduced him to Bianca. Within seconds, they were bonded. They talked non-stop about St Pancras Station and unsupported arch structures. It is some time since I saw Bianca so animated. They sat next to each other at the dinner table and volunteered to wash and dry afterwards.
I helped Rosie with her English homework essay, ‘A Day in the Life of a Dolphin’. I then went into the kitchen and found Bianca and Muffet droning on about the St Pancras Station Hotel and its architect, Sir George Gilbert Scott.
I interrupted them and informed Bianca that I was going to bed. She hardly looked up; just muttered, ‘Okay, I’ll be up soon.’
The spare bedroom was full of Rosie’s hideous, fluorescent My Little Pony models.
Monday February 10th
I have no idea what time Bianca came up last night. She must have got into bed beside me without waking me up. All I know is that Muffet and my mother are not speaking and that I am utterly miserable.
11.30 p.m. Worked on Chapter Twenty-Three: Conundrum.
Jake sat in Alma’s, the patisserie favoured by the intelligentsia, and scribbled on his A 4 pad. Night and day, he worked on his novel. He was already on Chapter Four.
Chapter Four: Rocks
Sparg crept through the lush undergrowth. He knew they were there. He heard them before he saw them. They were grunting about their mutual interest in rocks.
Sparg parted a yukka plant and they were there in front of him: Moff and Barf, bathed in sunlight, tangled together. Their limbs were entwined in an intimate manner.
Sparg stifled a jealous grunt and crept back towards Kronk, the settlement of his birth.
Tuesday February 11th
We get our results tomorrow. I should be agonizing and reflecting on mortality, etc. But all I can think about is the way that Muffet looked at Bianca and the way that Bianca looked at Muffet when they said goodbye on Monday morning at Leicester station.
Wednesday February 12th
Judith told us that our tests are negative! We are not HIV positive! We are not going to die of Aids!
However, I feel that I may well die of a broken heart. Bianca has suggested another day trip to Leicester. She claims that she is tired of London. A feeble excuse. How could anyone be tired of London? I am with Dr Johnson on this one.
Thursday February 13th
A letter has arrived from the BBC.
Dear Adrian,
When my secretary handed me your letter and your manuscript of Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland yet again, I thought I must be hallucinating.
You have more cheek than a Samurai wrestler, more neck than a giraffe. The BBC does not run a free photocopying service. As to your laughable suggestion that your novel be read as one of our classic serials… The writers of such texts are usually dead, their work having outlived them. I doubt if your work will outlive you. I am returning the manuscript immediately. Owing to an administrative error, a photocopy was taken. I am sending this on to you, though with great reluctance. You really must not bother me again.
John Tydeman
Friday February 14th
St Valentine’s Day
A disappointingly small card from Bianca. Mine to her was a thing of splendour. Large, padded, expensive, and in a box tied with a ribbon.
Savage is in a clinic for drug and alcohol abuse. Luigi went to see him on Sunday and said that Savage was playing ping-pong with a fifteen-year-old crack addict from Leeds.
Saturday February 15th
Bianca is going to Leicester for the day on Monday, to see my mother. I wish I could go with her, but I am now working a sixteen-hour day, seven days a week. Somebody has to keep my mother out of prison, and I am now the only person in our family who has a proper job.
My duties at ‘Savages’ now include the preparation of vegetables. It is tedious work, made more difficult by the obsessive attitude of Roberto, the chef. He insists on uniformity of vegetable length and width. I have to keep a tape measure in my apron pocket.
Sunday February 16th
It is now seven days and nights since Bianca and I made love. It is not only the sex I miss. It isn’t the sex. It really isn’t only the sex. I miss holding her and smelling her hair and stroking her skin. I wish that I could talk to her about how I feel. But I can’t, I just can’t. I really can’t. I’ve tried, but I just can’t. I held her hand in bed tonight, but it didn’t count. She was asleep.
Monday February 17th
Before I went to work at 6.30 a.m., I wrote a note and left it propped against the bowl of hyacinths on the table.
Darling Bianca,
Please talk to me about our relationship. I am unable to initiate a discussion. All I can say to you is that I love you. I know something is wrong between us, but I don’t know how to address it.
Love, for ever,
Adrian
Bianca was very kind to me early this evening. She assured me that nothing has changed regarding her feelings towards me. But she was talking to me on the telephone from Leicester. She has arranged to stay another day, to help my mother.
When I got home from work at 11.30 p.m., I re-read the note, which was still on the table, and then tore it up and threw it down the lavatory. It took three full flushes before it disappeared completely.
Tuesday February 18th
I was very tired last night, but was unable to sleep, so I got out of bed, got dressed, and went for a walk. Soho never sleeps. It exists for people like me: the lonely, the lovesick, the outsiders. When I got home I read Dostoevsky’s The Humiliated and Insulted.
Wednesday February 19th
The gods are not exactly smiling on our family. Mrs Bellingham has sacked my father and kicked him out of her bed. She was outraged to find out that my father had been selling her security lights for half price in low-life pubs. He is back living with Grandma. I only know this because Grandma rang me at work, complaining that my mother owes her fifty pounds from last December. Grandma needs the money because she is going to Egypt with Age Concern in June and needs to pay the deposit next week.
I pointed out to Grandma that she has got substantial savings in a high interest bank account. Couldn’t she withdraw fifty pounds? Grandma pointed out that the bank requires a month’s notice of withdrawal. She said, ‘I’m not prepared to lose the interest.’
I casually asked Grandma if she had seen anything of Bianca. She casually answered that she had seen Bianca and Muffet on the top deck of a number twenty-nine bus, heading towards the town. She threw in a few details. They were laughing. Bianca was holding a bunch of freesias (her favourite flowers). And Muffet looked ‘happier than I’ve ever seen him’. There was a twanging noise as she leaned back in her chair by the telephone and said, ‘It doesn’t take an Einstein to work that one out, does it, lad?’
Thanks, Grandma, Leicester’s answer to Miss sodding Marple.
Thursday February 20th
I fear the worst. Bianca is still in Leicester. I received a brochure this morning from an organization called the Naxos Institute. They were offering me a holistic holiday on the Greek island of Naxos, complete with courses in creative writing, dream workshops, finding your voice and stress management. One photograph in the brochure showed happy, tanned holidaymakers scoffing green foodstuffs at long tables under blue skies. Close examination with a magnifying glass showed the foodstuffs to be made up of lettuce and courgettes with a bit of what looked like cheese thrown in. There were bottles of retsina on the tables, vases of flowers and rough-hewn loaves of bread.
Another photograph showed a beach and a pine forest and the bamboo hut accommodation spread over a hillside. It looked truly idyllic. I turned a page and saw that Angela Hacker, the novelist, playwright and television personality, was ‘facilitating’ the writing course for the first two weeks in April. I have not read her books or seen her plays, but I have seen her on the television programme Through the Keyhole. She has certainly got a gracious home, though I remember being struck at the time by the amazing amount of alcohol in evidence. There were bottles in every room. Loyd Grossman made a quip about it at the time, something about ‘sauce for the goose’. The studio audience laughed itself stupid.
I closed the brochure with a sigh. Two weeks on Naxos talking about my novel with Angela Hacker would be paradise, but I can’t possibly afford it. My Building Society reserves are running low. I’m down to my last thousand.
Saturday February 22nd
Bianca rang the restaurant at lunchtime and said that she would be catching the 7.30 a.m. train from Leicester tomorrow and would be arriving at St Pancras at around 9.00 a.m. Her voice sounded strange. I asked her if she’d got a sore throat. She replied that she’d been ‘doing a lot of talking’. Every fibre of me longs for her, especially the bits around my loins.
Sunday February 23rd
I was on the platform when the train came in and saw Bianca jump onto the platform. I ran towards her, holding a bunch of daffodils I’d bought from a stall outside the Underground on Oxford Street. Then, to my surprise, I saw Martin Muffet step down from the train, carrying two large suitcases. He put them down on the platform and put his arm around Bianca’s slim shoulders.
Bianca said, ‘I’m sorry, Adrian.’
Muffet said, ‘So am I.’
To be quite honest, I didn’t know what to say.
I turned away, leaving the two engineers under the engineering miracle of St Pancras Station and made my way back to Old Compton Street on foot. I don’t know what happened to the daffodils, but I hadn’t got them when I arrived home.
Monday February 24th
Chapter Twenty-Four: Oblivion
Jake slipped the hose over the exhaust pipe and checked that it was properly connected. Then he put the other end of the hose through the side window of the car. He took a long, last look at the glorious vista of the Lake District panorama spread beneath him. ‘How glorious life is,’ he said, aloud, to the wind. All around him the daffodils nodded their agreement. Jake took his portable electric razor from his toiletry bag and proceeded to shave. He had always been vain and he was particularly keen to look good as a corpse. His bristles flew into the wind and became as one with the earth. Jake splashed on Obsession, his favourite after-shave lotion. Then, his toilette completed, he climbed into the car and switched on the engine.
As the fumes filled the inside of the car, Jake ruminated on his life. He had visited four continents and bedded some of the world’s most beautiful women. He had recovered the Ashes for England. He had climbed Everest backwards, and found the definitive source of the Nile. Nobody could say that his life had been without interest. But, without Regina, the girl he loved, he did not want to live. As Jake slipped into oblivion, the needle on the petrol gauge turned to ‘E’. Which would run out first, Jake’s oxygen supply, or Jake’s petrol…?
Tuesday February 25th
Got the courage up to ring my mother. My father answered. He said that he has moved back to live with my mother ‘on a temporary basis’ until she has recovered from the immediate shock of the Bianca/Muffet affair. Apparently, she is too ill to leave her bed and look after Rosie.
He asked how I had taken it.
I said, ‘Oh me, I’m fine,’ and then big, fat tears rolled down my cheeks and into the electronic workings of the telephone handset. My father kept saying, down the phone, ‘There, there, lad. There, there, don’t cry, lad,’ in a tender voice that I don’t remember him using before.
Roberto the chef came and stood at my side and wiped the tears away with his apron. Eventually, after promising to keep in touch, I said goodbye to my father. For years I have thought of him as a feckless fool, but I now see that I have misjudged him.
When I got back to the room, I found that Bianca had taken all her personal belongings, including the photograph of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Wednesday February 26th
I went to a place called Ed’s Diner at lunchtime today and had a hot dog, fries, a Becks beer and a mug of filter coffee. I asked for a glass for my beer and then noticed that the other men of my age were swigging it from the bottle, so I pushed my glass away surreptitiously and did as they did. I sat at a high stool at the counter in front of a mini-jukebox. Each selection cost five pence. I selected only one record, but I played it three times.
I used to be able to recite the lyric of ‘Stand by Me’ off by heart. Bianca and I used to sing along with Ben E. King when we cooked Sunday breakfast together. Our percussion instruments included: a box of household matches, a spatula, and a tin of dried lentils.
In Ed’s Diner I tried to sing the words under my breath but I couldn’t remember a word.
At the end of the song I was in tears. Why couldn’t she have stood by me?
A man sitting on the next stool asked if there was anything he could do. I tried to compose myself, but to my absolute horror I began to sob loudly and without restraint. There were tears; there was snot; there were undignified gulpings and heavings of the shoulders. The stranger put his arm around my shoulders and asked, ‘Have you had a relationship gone wrong?’
I nodded, then managed to say, in between sobs, ‘Finished.’
‘Same here,’ he said. Then ‘My name’s Alan.’ Alan told me that he was ‘devastated’ because his partner, Christopher, had fallen for another man. I ordered two more beers and then I told Alan the whole story about Bianca and Martin Muffet. Alan confessed himself to be shocked and was thoughtful enough to enquire as to my mother’s feelings. I told him that I’d phoned her last night and that she’d told me that her life was over.
Alan and I have arranged to meet for a drink at 8.00 p.m. tonight. Am I now, like Blanche Dubois, dependent on the kindness of strangers?
Midnight Man didn’t turn up. I sat in the ‘Coach and Horses’ for over an hour, waiting for him. Perhaps he met another stranger with a more original tragic story.
I miss her. I miss her. I miss her.
Thursday February 27th
Roberto stood over me this evening and made me eat a plate of tagliatelle with hare sauce. He said, ‘A woman issa woman, but food issa food.’
Perhaps it has more meaning in the original Italian.
Jake handed the envelope containing the money to the sinister man.
‘Quick and clean,’ he said. ‘They mustn’t know what hit them.’
The man grunted and left the Soho drinking den. Jake looked around him, at the tawdry, painted girls, at the bestial faces of the late night drinkers. Was it only yesterday he was in the Lake District attempting suicide? As he rose to his feet, a young prostitute attempted to procure him. He pushed her away irritably, saying, ‘Get lost, baby, I’ve known and lost the only woman I’ll ever want.’