“Maybe happiness isn’t after all our primary need.” Henry pursues his own unfolding thoughts. “Maybe our primary need is respect. The need to be validated by others. And to achieve that we’ll do things that may well bring us misery and suffering, even death. Look at the martyrs. Look at the suicide bombers.”
This isn’t quite where Roddy wants to go.
“But why is it,” he says, “that so many people accept a life they know won’t make them happy? Why do they endure what is really only half a life?”
“It’s what you say,” says Henry. “It’s fear. Why haven’t I sat down and written the book I’ve been wanting to write all my life? Fear. I’d rather do a good job I half-like than write a bad book. And I know what you say to that. You say, How do you know it’ll be a bad book if you don’t try? Of course, I don’t know. But I do know I don’t want to be one of those sad types who followed their dream, and the dream died on them, and now they’re full of envy and self-hatred.”
On the main road south he kicks down on the accelerator.
“Won’t be long now.”
“You say you’d rather do a good job you half-like,” says Roddy. “Would you choose to live a life you half-like? Because I think that’s the real question. I’m just a couple of years older than you, Henry, and I totally agree with you, I’m not ready to pack it in. But on the other hand, I have to face the fact that I have a limited time left. I can’t put a number on it, but if you count the years I’m likely to stay physically fit, you’re talking about twenty-five at the most. So the question becomes, do you live those twenty-five years fully, or do you go on half-living?”
“That’s what I mean by humility,” says Henry. “If we can only get past this bloody status competition that makes us all do everything in our power to intimidate each other, then we can start to actually enjoy each other’s company.”
“I’m talking about love,” says Roddy, making a determined bid to control the conversation.
“Well, yes, I suppose I am too,” says Henry. “You could say love is the acceptance of another person as he is, and status competition is the use of another person as an instrument to boost self-esteem.”
“No, I mean love between a man and a woman.”
“Oh,” says Henry, surprised. “Okay.”
“The love between a man and a woman is, I believe, the core energy of the universe. It’s the prime act of creation. Of course, there’s sex. But I go further. I believe we are made to exist in balance with a lover of the opposite sex, and without that we live only half-lives. Tolstoy believed this. Dickens believed this.”
Roddy does not elaborate, but both Tolstoy and Dickens, trapped in loveless marriages, fell in love with their wives’ sisters. It was practically the norm in Victorian times, to find you’d married the wrong sister. They even had a law forbidding subsequent marriage to the wife’s sister if the wife died, they were so afraid of husbands in this predicament committing murder. Henry is a historian, he’d know all about that. However, Roddy does not think it appropriate to speak of the Deceased Wife’s Sister Act this evening.
Predictably Henry finds Roddy’s theories comic, because Roddy himself does not conform to the stereotype of the lover.
“I don’t know what to say, Roddy. You turn out to be a closet romantic.”
“There, you see. You want to laugh at me. But I know I’m right.”
“No, no, I’m not laughing at you at all. I’m just caught off-guard. You’re the last person . . . I suppose it’s just not the picture I’ve had up to now of you and Diana.”
“Who said anything about Diana?”
Henry drives in silence for a few moments. Roddy feels his heart beating. The closer he gets to confession, the more excited he becomes.
“So what are you saying, Roddy?”
“Probably I’m jumping the gun a bit,” says Roddy. “It doesn’t do to force things. I just decided some time ago to stop struggling against life. I decided to let it carry me the way it wants to go. But I can tell you that there are big changes on the way.”
“Big changes. Right. I’m not sure I should know any more.”
But Roddy presses on, doggedly pursuing his goal.
“I’ve realized recently it’s not about right and wrong. That’s part of the ego world, in which we imagine that we’re in control. But once you see how it really is, once you let the ego die, then the stream takes you where it wills. That’s when you become free. And of course I need hardly add, only a free man has the capacity to love.”
“Let the ego die,” says Henry. “I think that may be what I mean by humility. But the stream—I’m not sure what this stream is. Is it God?”
Roddy shakes his head irritably. He doesn’t want to talk about God.
“God is only a name. Let’s say there’s a force that governs all things. You might as well call it love. Though love is also intensely personal. Love presents itself in our life in the form of individual human beings.”
“I think you’re losing me again,” says Henry. “This is all getting a little too cosmic for me.”
“But it’s not cosmic at all,” says Roddy, frustrated. “There’s nothing cosmic about a man loving a woman. Well, maybe there is, but you’ve still got a real flesh-and-blood basis for it. This man sitting in one armchair, this woman sitting in another armchair. A fire burning in the grate. A cold winter landscape outside the window.”
“What?”
Roddy realizes he’s overstepped the mark.
“Just an image.”
“Where do armchairs come in?”
“Don’t worry about it. All I mean is, love comes down to Person A and Person B, in a real time, in a real place. And all we can do about that is say yes or no. Maybe not even that.”
“You know what you are, Roddy? You’re a fatalist.”
“Or a man in love.”
Henry hesitates. “Better not tell me anything you don’t want Laura to know. I’m not good at keeping things from her.”
“Laura’ll know soon enough,” says Roddy.
He feels the most delicious shiver all down his body. Then he says her name again.
“I don’t think Laura will be too surprised.”
39
Carrie can’t stop apologizing for the accident. The police have impounded the car and say it will be returned sometime next week.
“I’m just so sorry, Mum. Now you haven’t got your car and it’s all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault, darling. And anyway, I’ve got you. Don’t you think I’d rather have you than the car? And my ring. I’ve got my ring back.”
The reappearance of the ring is a mystery. So too is the manner in which Toby got it back. Right now Toby is out in the night garden, smoking one of his roll-ups. They can both see him through the window, as he strolls up and down the lawn.
“Do you think what I think?” says Carrie.
“About what, darling?”
“About Toby and the ring.”
“No. What’s that?” Then Laura does think it. “Oh. Do you really think so? Surely he wouldn’t do that.”
“Mum, someone took your ring from your bedroom. Toby has no money at all, he’s told me that. And he’s got his own version of morality. He believes that what he wants is more important than anything else in the world. He told me so. And how did he get that woman to give him the ring back?”
“But surely . . .” Laura feels bewildered. What has Toby to do with the woman in the hospital? On the other hand, how else did the ring disappear and then reappear? “You think he took it and sold it?”
“He’s capable of it. He’d just shrug his shoulders and say the ring has moved on to its next life or something.”
“Have you asked him?”
“No. But I’m going to.”
She speaks with a flash of anger. Laura realizes then that Carrie’s intense nerviness may have a cause other than the accident with the car. She wants to ask what has happened with Toby, how serious h
as it got, but an instinctive discretion holds her back.
“I suppose he’s not someone to rely on, really,” she says.
“You can say that again.”
“Do you want me to ask him to go?”
“No, it’s okay. I think he’s going anyway. You know what, I really need a drink.”
So they both have a glass of Orvieto.
“Oh my God, Mum. I’m so glad I didn’t kill that boy.”
“I kept thinking, what if it had been Jack? I almost wanted her to keep the ring. Well, no, I wanted it back. But you know.”
“You have to have the ring. It’s your engagement ring. I’ve always loved seeing that ring on your finger. It makes me feel safe, knowing Dad gave it to you, and you’ve worn it ever since.”
“Does it, darling?”
Laura feels so full of love for Carrie right now. My proud, hurt child. Too old now for me to kiss it better.
She puts down her glass and takes Carrie in her arms. She kisses her temples.
“You know what?” she says. “Tomorrow it’s the twenty-seventh anniversary of our engagement. That’s such a long time.”
“I want that too,” says Carrie. “I want someone to stay with me. But people don’t stay any more.”
“Yes, they do, darling. Just maybe not yet. You’re only nineteen. When I was nineteen I wasn’t stayed with. I was walked out on.”
Carrie is familiar with the family tale of Laura and her first love, Nick. It’s long been a source of wonder and reassurance.
“I know,” she says, snuggling into her mother’s arms. “I do know. Only there seem to be so few people I even want to be with for an evening, let alone twenty-seven years. Then you find one, and he turns out to be rubbish. And a thief.”
Laura looks out at Toby in the garden and sees that he’s finished his cigarette.
“I think he’s about to come in,” she says.
Carrie goes out onto the terrace, leaving the kitchen door open behind her. Laura can hear every word.
“Toby,” Carrie says. “We have to talk.”
Toby comes from the dark of the lawn to the pool of light falling from the kitchen window onto the terrace.
“We don’t have to,” he says. “But we can choose to.”
“Oh, fuck off, will you?”
“Okay if I fuck off tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow is fine,” says Carrie.
He doesn’t move. Both of them are frozen, waiting to be released.
“Why do you tell me you’re not a good person?” says Carrie. “Why do you tell me that?”
“So you’ll know,” he says.
“You think it lets you off obeying the rules everyone else has to obey? You think you can just do as you please?”
“Maybe I do. What do you care?”
“I don’t care,” says Carrie. “I just want to know what happened with Mum’s ring.”
He stares at her for a moment in silence.
“What do you think happened?”
“I think you took it.”
That shuts him up.
“Did you?”
“You think I’m the kind of person who’d accept your hospitality for five days, and then rob you.”
“You could be. Are you?”
He just goes on staring at her. She looks away, her right hand tugging at her left sleeve.
“If that’s the kind of person I am,” says Toby, “then you’re better off without me in your life, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she says, still not looking at him.
She hears him walk away with rapid steps. She releases her breath, which she hadn’t even realized she was holding.
In the house he picks up the kitchen cordless phone, saying to Laura, “Okay to use the phone?”
“Of course,” says Laura.
He goes into the hall. Carrie comes into the kitchen.
“He admitted it.”
“I heard,” says Laura.
“I want him to be gone. I want everyone to be gone.”
“Would you rather we didn’t have all these people round tomorrow evening?”
“No, it’s okay. Just so long as I don’t have to be there too.”
“Where will you go?”
“My room.”
Their eyes meet, and Carrie looks back with such open sadness that Laura is humbled. Not hiding any more. And that in its way is a sign of strength.
“What do you do in your room all day?” says Laura.
“Not much.” Then she adds, seemingly as an afterthought, “I fool about making up songs.”
“You make up songs?”
“I played a couple to Toby. He said he liked them.”
“From what I’ve seen of Toby,” says Laura, “if he says he likes them it means he likes them.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Toby comes back with the phone.
“I called my mum,” he says. “She’s coming over tomorrow morning to pick me up.”
“Oh, I am glad,” says Laura. “I mean, I’m glad you called your mother. I couldn’t bear to think of her not knowing what had happened to you. If you were my son I’d have been frantic with worry.”
“She’s not much like you,” says Toby.
“Even so. She needs to know you’re safe and well.”
“Am I safe and well?” says Toby.
He looks at Carrie. Carrie meets his gaze for a brief moment then turns away.
“I’m going upstairs.”
Laura offers Toby a glass of the Orvieto, which he accepts. Then she puts on a pan for some pasta. She finds a little to her surprise that she feels no anger toward him, perhaps because he’s now going. Also there’s something about Toby that seems to place him outside the rules of normal social conduct.
“Thank you for getting my ring back,” she says, choosing her words carefully. “While it was lost, it almost felt as if I’d lost my marriage.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’m sorry your marriage is so easy to lose.”
Laura is too shocked to speak.
“Carrie writes songs,” he says. “They’re good. You should get her to show them to people.”
“Right,” says Laura.
“Would you mind if I went out for a smoke?”
“Supper in half an hour.”
He goes outside. Laura sees him passing up and down the lawn, a ghost in the dark, the tip of his roll-up glowing red.
It’s almost ten when Henry gets home, bringing Roddy with him. Laura is full of the dramas of the day, but doesn’t want to say too much in front of Roddy. She wants time to shape their version of the story before it reaches Diana, who has her own way of dramatizing other people’s crises. Laura can just hear Diana saying, “You are amazing, Laura! You let some long-haired weirdo you know nothing about into your house, he steals your jewelry, abuses your daughter, and half-kills some random child! It’s so bizarre it’s practically performance art!” So instead she greets Roddy with a friendly kiss and goes and gets him his Florentines.
“I remembered you like Florentines. You don’t have to share them. You can take them to your room and have a midnight feast.”
She asks Henry about his meeting, but she already knows from his posture that he has nothing much to report.
“There’s a possibility there,” he says. “If I can bear it.”
“Tell me upstairs. I’m utterly wiped out.”
She starts moving about the kitchen turning out lights. To her irritation Roddy doesn’t take the hint and go. He stands there clutching his unopened box of Florentines to his chest and watching her.
Henry parks his load of papers in his study.
“You’re in your usual room, Roddy,” says Laura. “What time is Diana getting here tomorrow?”
“About one, I should think,” says Roddy. “I hope you don’t mind me invading you like this. It just makes sense, what with Worth being fairly near.”
Laura doesn’
t want to hear about Worth right now. She goes on turning out lights. Roddy still doesn’t move. So she turns off the final kitchen light and moves on to the hall, leaving him in the kitchen in the dark.
At once she regrets this act of petty vindictiveness. As he comes shambling out to the foot of the stairs she lays one hand on his arm.
“Sorry, Roddy. I’ve had a bad day. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”
“Tomorrow,” he says.
He nods twice, then slowly ascends the stairs, holding his overnight bag and his box of Florentines.
Alone in her bedroom at last with Henry, Laura tells him the dramatic events of the day. She tells it in the order it happened to her, wanting him to be frightened the way she was frightened, and then relieved the way she was relieved. Henry is dismayed for Carrie and wants to go to her.
“Go and give her a kiss. She’s fine now.”
But before he goes she shows him the ring. Needless to say, he hadn’t noticed it was back on her finger.
“So we’re still engaged,” he says.
“Just about,” she says.
“Where did you find it?”
“Long story. Go and kiss Carrie.”
While he’s out she undresses and prepares for bed. For the first time in many hours she turns her mind to tomorrow’s dinner party. So much has happened that it seems absurd to be worrying herself over the roasting time for the lamb. But if guests are coming, if they’re to be fed, the lamb must be cooked, and she would like it to be just right.
Is making a good dinner for friends a minor decoration in her life, or is it the life itself? It’s a question of foreground and background. Her marriage remains in the background until some small shock shifts her perspective, and suddenly it becomes all that matters.
Is my marriage so easy to lose?
It’s survived this far. How do you keep it in the foreground? The perversity of nature means that we only value what we fear to lose. So is the value in all things not an absolute at all, but relative to the needs of the moment? There’s something here that matters, if only she could track it down. But she’s tired.
Henry returns.
“She seems pretty okay,” he says. “Could have been a lot worse.”
“Suppose she’d been hit by a car instead of a bike.”