I can, when I am in the mood, make her laugh, particularly at herself, which is a kind of love, because something in her has been recognized. She envies my insouciance, I think. What other function I serve I am not sure, though I have always been urgently required by her. Having had a mother who had little use for me, a woman I could neither cure nor distract, I have liked being a necessity.
But I have been pushed and shoved because I haven’t known my own mind, because I have become accustomed to going along with things, and tomorrow morning we will kiss and part.
Actually, forget the kiss.
I fear loneliness, and I fear other people, I fear –
‘Sorry?’ I say.
Susan is speaking – asking me to get my diary.
‘Why?’ I say.
‘Why? Just do it, if you don’t mind. Just do it!’
‘Don’t speak to me like that. You are so harsh.’
‘I’m too tired for a negotiation about diaries. The children wake at six. I have to spend the day at work. What do you do in the afternoons? I expect you sleep then!’
I say, ‘You’re not too tired to raise your voice.’
‘It’s the only way I can get you to do anything.’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘You exhaust me.’
‘And you me.’
I could strike her. She would know then. But at home we are necessarily politicians. Yet I am about to say, ‘Susan, don’t you understand, can’t you see, that of all the nights we have spent together, this is the last one – the last one of all?’
My anger, usually contained, can be cruel and vengeful. I would willingly spill my intentions at a time like this, to achieve an easy satisfaction.
However, I should be satisfied. It is not as if I want to discover tonight that Susan and I really are suited.
I murmur, ‘All right, all right, I’ll do it.’
‘At last.’
I shake my head at her.
Sometimes I go along with what Susan wants, but in an absurd parodic way, hoping she will see how foolish I find her. But she doesn’t see it and, much to my annoyance, my co-operation pleases her.
I sit in front of her with my diary, flipping through the pages. After today the pages are blank. I have left space for the rest of my life.
‘The children look beautiful at the moment, don’t they?’ she says.
‘They are healthy and happy.’
‘You love them, don’t you?’
‘Passionately.’
She snorts. ‘I can’t imagine you being passionate about anything.’
She says how much she is looking forward to the weekend away that we have planned. We will stay at the country hotel we visited several years ago, when she was first pregnant. The weather was warm. I rowed her on a lake. We ate mussels and read the papers on the beach. It will be just us, without the children, and the opportunity to talk.
‘What books should we read?’ she asks.
‘I’ll find something in my study later‚’ I say.
‘The rest will do us good. I know things have been getting fraught here.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘You are gloomy and don’t try. But … we can discuss things.’
‘What things?’
She says, ‘All this.’ Her hands flail. ‘I think we need to.’
She controls herself. ‘You used to be such an affectionate man. You still are, with the children.’ She reminds me that there are historic walks and castles in the vicinity of the country hotel. ‘And please,’ she says, ‘will you remember to take your camera this time?’
‘I’ll try to’
‘It’s not only that you’re completely useless, but that you don’t want any photographs of me, do you?’
‘Sometimes I do.’
She says, ‘No you don’t. You never offer.’
‘No, I don’t offer.’
‘That’s horrible. You should have one on your desk, as I do, of you.’
I say, ‘I’m not interested in photography. And you’re not as vain as I am.’
‘That’s true.’
I pace up and down with my drink, in an agitated state. She takes no notice. For her it is just another evening.
Fear is something I recognize. My childhood still tastes of fear; of hours, days and months of fear. Fear of parents, aunts and uncles, of vicars, police and teachers, and of being kicked, abused and insulted by other children. The fear of getting into trouble, of being discovered, and the fear of being castigated, smacked, ignored, locked in, locked out, as well as the numerous other punishments that surrounded everything you attempted. There is, too, the fear of what you wanted, hated and desired; the fear of your own anger, the fear of retaliation and of annihilation. There is habit, convention and morality, as well as the fear of who you might become. It isn’t surprising that you become accustomed to doing what you are told while making a safe place inside yourself, and living a secret life. Perhaps that is why stories of spies and double lives are so compelling. It is, surely, a miracle that anyone ever does anything original.
I notice that she is speaking to me again.
‘By the way, Victor rang.’
‘Oh yes? Any message?’
‘He wanted to know when you are coming.’
She looks at me.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’
After a bit she says, ‘Why don’t you see more people? I mean proper people, not just Victor.’
‘I can’t bear the distraction,’ I say. ‘My internal life is too busy.’
I should add: I have enough voices to attend to, within.
‘I can’t imagine what you have to think about,’ she says. Then she laughs. ‘You didn’t eat much. Your trousers are baggy. They’re always falling down. You look like a builder.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Sorry? Don’t say sorry. You sound pathetic.’
‘Sometimes I am.’
She grunts. After a few moments she gets up.
‘Put the dishes in the machine,’ she says. ‘Don’t just leave them on the side for me to clear up.’
‘I’ll put them in the machine when I’m ready.’
‘That means never.’ Then she says, ‘Are you coming upstairs?’
I look at her searchingly and with interest, wondering if she means sex – it must be more than a month since we’ve fucked – or whether she intends us to read. I like books but I don’t want to get undressed for one.
‘In a while,’ I say.
‘You are so restless.’
‘Am I?’
‘It is your age.’
‘It must be that.’
Adults used to say that to me as a child. ‘It’s only a phase.’
For some people – Buddhists, I believe – life is only a phase.
*
Asif relishes the weekends. Occasionally I see the family on the towpath on Sunday mornings, the kids in yellow helmets on the back of the adults’ bikes, on their way to a picnic. At university he was the brightest of our year, and was considered something of a martyr for becoming a teacher.
But he never wanted anything else. Soon after finals he and Najma married. One of his children has spent months in hospital and was lucky to survive. Asif nearly lost his mind over it. The child seems to have recovered, but Asif never forgets what he almost lost.
He doesn’t often come into the city; the rush and uproar make his head whirl. But when he and I have an ‘old-friends’ lunch I insist he meets me in the centre of town. From the station I take him to clamorous places where there will be fashionable young women in close-fitting items.
‘What a picture gallery you have brought me to!’ he says, rubbing his hands. ‘Is this how you spend your life?’
‘Oh yes.’
I indicate their attributes and inform him that they prefer mature men.
‘Does such a thing exist?’ he says. ‘And are you sure? Have you tried them all?’
‘I’m going to. C
hampagne?’
‘Just the one.’
‘I’ll have to order a bottle.’
Our talk is of books and politics, and of mutual university friends. I have had him confess that he wonders what another body might feel like. But then he imagines his wife putting out flowers as she waits for him. He says he sees her across the bed in her negligée, three children sleeping between them.
I recall him describing how much he enjoys sucking her cunt. Apparently he’s grunting and slurping down there for hours, after all this time, and wonders whether his soul will only emerge through her ears. They massage one another’s feet with coconut oil. In the conservatory their chairs face one another. When they are not discussing their children or important questions of the day, they read Christina Rossetti aloud.
‘In five years,’ he says, ‘we will move house!’
When he yearns – he is not a fool – he yearns for what he has already, to play in the same cricket team as his son, for a garden pond with frogs, and a trip to the Grand Canyon. It is easy to laugh at bourgeois happiness. What other kinds are there? Asif is a rare man, unafraid of admitting his joy.
One afternoon I went to his house to pick up my children. While they played in the garden, Najma was drawing with crayons at the kitchen table. I love looking at crayons, and scrawling with them on big sheets of coloured paper. But the serenity made me uncomfortable, I don’t know why. I couldn’t sit still because I wanted to kiss her and push her into the bedroom, thereby, it seemed to me, smashing everything up, or testing it, or trying to see what was there, what the secret was.
Asif’s happiness excludes me. After a time he and I can only smile at one another. I can’t get a grip on him, as I can with Victor. It is unhappiness and the wound that compels me. Then I can understand and be of use. An atmosphere of generalized depression and mid-temperature gloom makes me feel at home. If you are drawn to unhappiness you’ll never lack a friend.
If only I could see her face again. But I don’t even have a photograph.
*
For Aristotle the aim of life is ‘successful activity’ or happiness, which for him is inseparable from, though not the same as, pleasure. My unhappiness benefits no one; not Susan, not the children, not myself. But perhaps happiness – that condition in which there is completion, where one has everything, and music too – is an acquired taste. Certainly I haven’t acquired it in this house. Perhaps I haven’t sought it or let myself feel it. Doubtless there have been opportunities. That afternoon when … Their smiling faces. Her hand as it …
Yet velvet curtains, soft cheese, compelling work and boys who can run full-tilt – it isn’t enough. And if it isn’t, it isn’t. There’s no living with that. The world is made from our imagination; our eyes enliven it, as our hands give it shape. Wanting makes it thrive; meaning is what you put in, not what you extract. You can only see what you are inclined to see, and no more. We have to make the new.
Asif has integrity and principle. Without being especially pompous, he is not ashamed to say what he believes in. He refused all that eighties cynicism. His beliefs give him stability, meaning, and a centre. He knows where he is; the world is always recognizable to him. But why do people who are good at families have to be smug and assume it is the only way to live, as if everybody else is inadequate? Why can’t they be blamed for being bad at promiscuity?
I have integrity too, I am sure of it. It is difficult to explain. I expect him to know my particular probity without having to go into it. I suppose I want to be loyal to something else now. Or someone else. Yes; myself. When did it start going wrong with Susan? When I opened my eyes; when I decided I wanted to see.
A few months ago we went into his study and I requested him to inform Susan that I had been with him when I had been with Nina.
He was dismayed.
‘But don’t ask me to do that.’
‘What?’
‘Lie for you,’ he said.
‘Aren’t we friends?’ I said. ‘It’s a sensible lie. Susan doubts me. It is making her unhappy.’
He shook his head. ‘You are too used to having your own way. You are making her unhappy.’
‘I am interested in someone else,’1 said.
‘Who is she?’
I told him little of my relationships with women; he imagined such fabulous liaisons that I didn’t want to disillusion him. He said to me once, ‘You remind me of someone who only ever reads the first chapter of a book. You never discover what happens next.’
He asked questions, the first of which was, ‘How old is she?’
There was a discernible look of repulsion on his face, as if he were trying to swallow sour milk.
‘It’s only sex then.’
‘There is that,’ I said.
‘But marriage is a battle, a terrible journey, a season in hell and a reason for living. You need to be equipped in all areas, not just the sexual.’
‘Yes,’ I said, dully. ‘I know.’
Oh to be equipped in all areas.
After a certain age there are only certain people, in certain circumstances, whom we allow to love one another. Lately, Mother has been joking about wanting a younger man, and even looks at boys on the street and says, ‘He’s pretty.’ It makes me shudder. Grandmother, at eighty, found a paramour with whom she held hands. She started to wear perfume and earrings. She imagined we would be pleased that she was no longer alone. How eagerly even the most seditious of us require strict convention! But Asif’s favourite opera is Don Giovanni, and Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary his favourite novels. Testaments of fire and betrayal, all!
People don’t want you to have too much pleasure; they think it’s bad for you. You might start wanting it all the time. How unsettling is desire! That devil never sleeps or keeps still. Desire is naughty and doesn’t conform to our ideals, which is why we have such a need of them. Desire mocks all human endeavour and makes it worthwhile. Desire is the original anarchist and undercover agent – no wonder people want it arrested and kept in a safe place. And just when we think we’ve got desire under control it lets us down or fills us with hope. Desire makes me laugh because it makes fools of us all. Still, rather a fool than a fascist.
When, in abstraction, I tried out the subject of separation, Asif said: ‘I can just about see why someone would leave their spouse, but I can’t understand how someone could leave their children. To me just going to work feels like Sophie’s Choice.’
It is the men who must go. They are blamed for it, as I will be. I understand the necessity of blame – the idea that someone could, had they the will, courage or sense of duty, have behaved otherwise. There must, somewhere, be deliberate moral infringement rather than anarchy, to preserve the idea of justice and of meaning in the world.
Perhaps Asif will consider it all as one would the death of an acquaintance – how foolish it was of them to die. Surely it is not a mistake one would make oneself! He will shiver and feel glad it hasn’t happened to him. Then he will contemplate frogs.
You sat back in your chair. It was that place we went to, chosen at random in Soho. I was looking for it this morning, to remember. Somehow I hoped you would be sitting there, waiting for me.
That day, both lost in our own perplexity, we had hardly spoken. Then you tucked your hair behind your ears so I could see your face.
You said, ‘If you want me, here I am. You can have me.’
You can have me, you can.
But that was before.
*
The comfortable chairs, old carpets, yards of books, many pictures, and piles of CDs, create a calming silence. I’ve always had a room or study like this.
I read and make notes here, but I don’t work at home. For the last ten years I’ve rented an office a bus ride away, a place as bare and minimal as they get, with, if possible, a view of a dripping stairwell. I work in short bursts, without interruption, on adaptations and original scripts for television and the cinema. I pace up and down a lot, if I’m not walkin
g about the streets.
I am more of an engineer than an artist, although as I become more accomplished I find myself putting more of myself into the stories than formerly. I like my work to be more difficult these days. But by the time I get to a piece most of the art has already been done. It does take some talent to put the right scenes in the right order. Organization in a work is more important than people realize. If only writers in the past had seen that in the future all written stories would be translated to the screen, it would have saved a lot of time for people like me. ‘Turning gold into dross,’ Asif calls it.
I extract my weekend bag from the cupboard and open it. I stare into the bottom and then put it on my head. What do you take when you’re never coming back? I throw a book into the bag – something by Strindberg I’ve been studying – and then replace the book on the shelf.
I stand here for ages looking around. I am afraid of getting too comfortable in my own house, as if, once I sit down, I will lose the desire for alteration. Above my desk is the shelf on which I keep my prizes and awards. Susan says it makes the place look like a dentist’s waiting room.
An inventory, perhaps.
The desk – which my parents bought me when I was taking my A-levels – I have lugged around from squat to squat, via shared houses and council flats, until it ended up here, the first property I have owned. A significant decision, getting a mortgage. It was as if you would never be able to ‘move’ again.
I’ll leave the desk for the boys. And the books? I can neither reread them nor throw them out. I have spent sufficient time with my face lost in a page, some of it dutiful, some of it pleasurable, some of it looking for sustenance only a living person could provide. Often I made the mistake, when young, of starting a book at the beginning and reading through to the end.
For a while I was some sort of Marxist, though I cannot any more recall the differences between all the varieties – Gramsci-ists, Leninists, Hegelians, Maoists, Althusseurians. At the time the fine distinctions were as momentous, say, as the difference between hanging someone or shooting them.