Chapter 6: All Those Germs
The issue for Caroline was not just a simple choice between Man A and Man B, a choice with which some women might very much have liked to be faced; her choice went beyond that to embrace a third possibility, namely: neither.
“I just don't know what to do,” she confided in her mother when she returned to Cheltenham for a weekend with her parents. “ There are these two men, you see, and I really don't know which one to choose. But maybe I shouldn't choose either.”
Caroline's mother had always felt rather irritated by her daughter's indecision in these matters. Her philosophy was uncomplicated: find a man, satisfy yourself as to his suitability, and solvency, of course, and then, if everything was in order, proceed with all dispatch to tie him down. It was a clear programme, and one which many of Jane Austen's heroines would have recognised as being highly practical, and indeed the only thing to do.
The option of choosing to remain by oneself was not one which her mother's friends would have entertained at all seriously; for most of them there had never been any question but that one should get married if one possibly could. They appreciated, of course, that life did not always work out as one wished, but single women, they felt, were single for a reason. This could be demographic, as when there were simply not enough young men to go round, or it could be a concomitant other misfortune, of looks, perhaps, or attitude. Some women, it had to be accepted, were just too mousy to attract a flicker of interest from men, even from men who were themselves on the shelf, or virtually there - men with pebble-lensed spectacles and sloping shoulders; slightly seedy army officers of questionable tastes; dusty accountants with possessive mothers. Such men were hopeless, it was generally accepted, although there were always women - noble women - who looked beyond these drawbacks, took these men on, and thought of England when necessary. Did such women, Caroline wondered, sometimes utter in medio rerum the word England? It would be cause for disappointment for the men, she imagined; but better, of course, than the uttering of the name of another man, a known cause of matrimonial discord.
Her mother's generation had simply not understood that women might choose to remain by themselves because they thought the single life better. Of course in their day it was not better - at least not for women, whose career choices were still so unfairly limited by the dominance of men. Caroline, however, belonged to a generation for which there were all sorts of interesting jobs available to women, and indeed many of these jobs were now increasingly a female preserve. Medicine, for instance, was a fallen citadel - so much so that soon the majority of doctors would be women. The law was a harder nut to crack, but cracked it would duly be, as would the worlds of finance, aviation, broadcasting, and so on. Soon there would be no place for men in any of these callings, although there would always be secretarial positions, of course.
So deciding that she did not need a man was a real option. And yet, and yet … The problem was that in spite of the persuasive voices claiming that men were not necessary, she still had the feeling that men were really rather nice, and that by and large most women were happier if they had a man to come home to, or a man to come home to them. It sounded tremendously old-fashioned, but it was true. Her mother, of course, would have been unsurprised by this proposition, but for Caroline it ran counter to the received wisdom to which she had been exposed ever since she first started her studies at university; a received wisdom which stressed independence and liberation from the shackles of heterosexual domesticity. Caroline found herself reaching a conclusion that was the polar opposite of all that: most women needed men, and most men needed women.
If she fell within the majority - and she thought she did - then it precluded the single state - the third option she had identified - and meant that she came back to the choice between A (James) and B (Tim Something, the photographer). Tim Something was very attractive - suave, and handsome - of course, but in James's favour there was, first and foremost, the fact that he was easy company. Like an old pair of sandals or a battered straw hat, or even a comfortable domestic cat. None of these analogies would have flattered him, and yet Caroline thought that they were undoubtedly apt.
She and James could talk together for hours about the most mundane of subjects; and if conversation failed they could contentedly sit in silence in each other's company. They could telephone one another - as they often did - even if there was really nothing to say beyond a comment on the state of the weather. James had once telephoned Caroline to tell her that it was raining, and she, on looking out of the window, had confirmed that indeed it was true. To have such a pointless conversation with another and nevertheless feel that it was worthwhile showed a level of communication and empathy quite strong enough to sustain years and years of being together. Caroline knew that, and realised that James would be an easy and reassuring partner.
And yet there remained one misgiving, and it was a major one: James had rarely touched her, and when he had done so it had been in a gentle and slightly detached way - the lightest of touches to the elbow, for example, or to the forearm, both of which parts of the anatomy have their uses, but were not, she felt, exactly erogenous.
Nor had James ever kissed her, except lightly on the cheek, in greeting or farewell, and he had always kept his lips firmly together when bestowing these chaste kisses.
“Your kisses are very light,” she had playfully remarked after one such exchange. “And they're always on the cheek.”
James had looked at her in surprise. “But where else would one kiss?”
She stared at him. “Well, sometimes people kiss one another on the lips,” she said. “Haven't you seen that? In films?”
James frowned. “Of course. But I've always regarded that as being a little bit … well, a little bit unhygienic. Like taking communion from the common chalice. All those germs swimming around in the communion wine. Same thing with mouths.”
Caroline sighed. “We all have germs, James,” she said. “And it does no harm to share them from time to time - especially with people you really like.”
“Oh,” said James. “To boost one's immune system?”
Chapter 7: Tic-tac and Other Matters
Caroline’s conversation with James about kissing had unsettled her. It was not that James had in any way implied that her mouth, more than anybody else’s mouth, was particularly hospitable to germs – he was far too kind to make any such suggestion What worried her, rather, was the fact that her friend was anxious about germs in general. Such people, she knew, could become more and more obsessed with cleanliness and end up thinking of little else. She did not think that it would be easy to live with somebody who spent his time nervously applying hand sanitiser, or rushing off to wash his hands several times an hour. It was nice to know that one’s boyfriend was clean, and took the occasional shower, but not that clean.
A week or so after this osculatory discussion, Caroline was travelling on the tube with James when she noticed him take a little plastic bottle out of his pocket, flip open the top and apply a small amount of clear gel to his hands. This he proceeded to rub in, all the while talking to Caroline about some article he had been reading on gestures in Renaissance painting.
“It’s very strange, you know, Caroline,” he said. “There isn’t a single dictionary available on the meaning of gestures in painting. Can you believe it?”
Caroline saw the gel glisten and then disappear as James rubbed his hands together. “What about Hall’s Dictionary?” she asked. Did the gel dry the skin? she wondered. It probably did; but back to gestures. “I thought that Hall told you what all those things meant.”
James shook his head. “No. Hall is all right for basic symbolism. What hedgehogs represent, and so forth.”
Caroline momentarily forgot about the gel. “What do hedgehogs mean?”
“Gluttony,” said James. “I think.”
Caroline felt that this was rather unfair. Hedgehogs were no greedier, surely, than any other animal. She would have defend
ed hedgehogs, but she was not in the mood for the sort of earnest discussion that might follow. James knew so much, it seemed to her, far more than she did. And he thought about things that would never cross her mind – such as the meaning of gestures. Why had she not thought about that before?
“As you know,” James went on, looking doubtfully at Caroline (he knows I don’t know, she thought; he’s just being nice), “as you know, there are certain accepted gestures in art. Affirmation, for example, is shown by an arm which is lifted to face the spectator, the back of the hand facing outwards. Like this.” James demonstrated, and Caroline saw a woman on the other side of the carriage watching him intently. Perhaps she knows, she thought; perhaps she’s an art historian who understands these things. But what were the odds of three art historians being in one carriage of a London Underground train at the same time? Very long,.
“And then there’s shame,” James continued. “Shame is signified by the placing of the fingers over the eyes. Comme ça.”
Caroline was not surprised by the representation of shame; it might have been a Renaissance gesture, but it was also the gesture of those convicted of contemporary crimes, those unfortunates led from the court who shielded their eyes with their fingers in exactly the same way. Schadenfreude, she remembered; we love the shame of others – nothing makes the mob happier than the sight of somebody humiliated. She had read an article somewhere about its effects: how we enjoyed our feeling of moral superiority; how readily we exploded into moral outrage over the misdeeds of public people caught out. And all the time we ignored – or were unaware of – the glaring fact that such people were the way they were because we were the way we were. A rotten society produces rotten public figures.
As their train rattled on to its destination, James continued with his observations on the language of gesture. “Of course there are all sorts of sign language,” he went on. “Auctioneers, merchants, bookies. Have you seen tic-tac being used?”
Caroline had not.
James smiled. “It’s the sign language used by bookies,” he said. “They signal across the track. They show the odds that way.” He paused, and then reached up and put a hand on either side of his nose. “That’s odds of five to two,” he explained.
Caroline raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t they use mobile phones?”
James sighed. “They do these days,” he said. “It’s so sad. It’s another language that’s biting the dust. But at least there are the monks.”
“The monks?”
“Monastic sign language,” said James. “People like Cistercians, who discourage unnecessary talking. Do you know that they have an elaborate system of communicating without speech?”
“Why?” It struck Caroline as odd that one would eschew one form of communication only to resort to another: what did it matter how one communicated if the end result was the same – the message was conveyed?
James shrugged. “It’s to do with rejecting the noise and distraction of the world,” he said. “I think they’ve got a point. There’s so much noise, Caroline.” He gave her an intense look as he uttered the word noise, as if to suggest, she thought, that she was the source of more than her fair share of this din.
If James had intended to blame Caroline for the shattering of the peace, he did not pursue the accusation. There was more to be said, it transpired, on monastic sign language.
“I once saw a whole book on the subject,” he said. “It had pictures of monks making gestures with their hands. So, do you know how to do soul?” He paused, but only momentarily; of course Caroline could not be expected to know something like that, it was monks’ business. “You put your hand above your head – like this – and then you look upwards.”
“I think it’s ridiculous,” said Caroline. “It’s all male silliness – like those ridiculous signs that Masons have. The handshakes and so on.”
James narrowed his eyes. “How do you know about that?” he asked.
Caroline glanced across the carriage as she prepared to answer. A man seated opposite her – a man wearing a pinstripe suit – was staring at her with interest, as if awaiting her answer. Suddenly she felt inhibited.
The man leaned forward. One did not talk to strangers in such circumstances, but he seemed indifferent to this; she sensed danger. “Nothing ridiculous about the Masons,” he said, his voice barely raised above the clatter of the train. “You should remember that, my dear!”
Chapter 8: Tibetan Hats
They emerged into the light through the Charing Cross Road exit of Leicester Square Station.
“Obviously a Mason,” said James. “Spooky.”
“They’ve got that big hall near here,” said Caroline. “Freemasons’ Hall. Great Queen Street. Perhaps he was on his way there.”
James smiled. “For a ceremony of some sort, do you think?”
Caroline was not sure. “Should we have asked him?”
James did not think this a good idea. “You can’t ask members of a secret society what they’re up to,” he said. “It spoils their fun. And it’s rude, too. It’s like laughing at Black Rod or the Garter King of Arms when they’re all dressed up for one of those occasions of theirs.”
They made their way round the corner into Cecil Court. This was a shopping expedition of the curious variety that James and Caroline enjoyed undertaking in each other’s company – an expedition in search of something small and obscure. They never shopped together for the functional or the necessary, for sweaters or shoes or the like; it was hardly any fun going with somebody into a shop on Oxford Street or Regent Street. In fact, nor was it any fun going into such a shop without somebody.
James had to collect something from a book-dealer in Cecil Court, an out-of-print monograph on the sense of imminent event in the works of Nicolas Poussin – not something one could readily buy on Oxford Street, given its lamentable decline. For her part, Caroline planned to pick up a Tibetan wool hat from a stall in Covent Garden Market. She had seen the hat a few weeks earlier and had vacillated, a fatal thing to do when confronted with shopping temptation. Since then, she had regretted her failure to make the purchase.
“Fifteen pounds,” she said to James. “That’s all it was. I should have bought it.”
“Fifteen pounds is not much for a hat these days. Tibetan, you say?”
“In concept,” said Caroline. “I think they’re actually made in Bermondsey.”
“By Tibetans?”
Caroline did not think so. “The woman who sells them was knitting one when I was at her stall. She was Irish, I think. Or she certainly sounded it.”
“She might have had a bit of Tibetan in her,” said James. “One never knows, and perhaps one should give the benefit of the doubt in such a case.”
“Does it matter?”
James shook his head. “Of course not. Hats don’t have to come from where they claim. Look at panamas. They come from Ecuador.” He slowed down to peer into the window of a secondhand bookshop. “You know, I saw the Dalai Lama once.”
Caroline was interested. “Where?”
“Outside Foyles,” replied James. “He had been signing copies of a book he wrote. And he came out of the shop as I was walking along the pavement. He had some people with him who sort of ushered him into a car, and off they went up towards Tottenham Court Road. Floated off, really. It was very …” he seemed to be searching for the right word. “It was very spiritual.”
“How strange. In the middle of London, with all the traffic and so on.”
James agreed. “Exactly. What struck me was the sense of peace that he radiated – it was a sort of glow. You know how some people glow.”
“No.”
“Well, they do. They glow because they’re full of inner peace and resolution.” He turned away from the bookshop window and looked directly at Caroline. “Most of us don’t really know what we want in this life, do we? We spend our time rushing around from here to there, and then back again. We have a very strong sense of forward motion.
The Dalai Lama wasn’t like that – or at least he wasn’t when I saw him in Charing Cross Road.”
They continued to walk down Cecil Court. “You know that they find him?” said James.
“Who?”
“The Dalai Lama,” he said. “They find a new Dalai Lama as a child. He’s the reincarnation, you see, of the last one. They look for signs.” He paused. “We could do that with the Archbishop of Canterbury, don’t you think? We could find the reincarnated Archbishop of Canterbury as a small boy and bring him up in his new role.”
Caroline laughed. “He’d have a terrible time at school,” she said. “Imagine how he’d be teased by the other kids. And it would be difficult for the teachers too. ‘Stop talking and get on with your work, please, Archbishop of Canterbury.’ It wouldn’t be easy.”
“They’d call him Your Grace,” said James. “That’s what you call the Archbishop of Canterbury. Teachers would know that sort of thing.” He paused for a moment. “Or maybe not …”