Capitalism vs. Democracy
Thomas Piketty’s new book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” described by one French newspaper as a “a political and theoretical bulldozer,” defies left and right orthodoxy by arguing that worsening inequality is an inevitable outcome of free market capitalism.
Piketty, a professor at the Paris School of Economics, does not stop there. He contends that capitalism’s inherent dynamic propels powerful forces that threaten democratic societies.
Capitalism, according to Piketty, confronts both modern and modernizing countries with a dilemma: entrepreneurs become increasingly dominant over those who own only their own labor. In Piketty’s view, while emerging economies can defeat this logic in the near term, in the long run, “when pay setters set their own pay, there’s no limit,” unless “confiscatory tax rates” are imposed.
Piketty’s book — published four months ago in France and due out in English this March — suggests that traditional liberal government policies on spending, taxation and regulation will fail to diminish inequality. Piketty has also delivered and posted a series of lectures in French and English outlining his argument.
Conservative readers will find that Piketty’s book disputes the view that the free market, liberated from the distorting effects of government intervention, “distributes,” as Milton Friedman famously put it, “the fruits of economic progress among all people. That’s the secret of the enormous improvements in the conditions of the working person over the past two centuries.”
Piketty proposes instead that the rise in inequality reflects markets working precisely as they should: “This has nothing to do with a market imperfection: the more perfect the capital market, the higher” the rate of return on capital is in comparison to the rate of growth of the economy. The higher this ratio is, the greater inequality is.
In a 20-page review for the June issue of the Journal of Economic Literature that has already caused a stir, Branko Milanovic, an economist in the World Bank’s research department, declared:
“I am hesitant to call Thomas Piketty’s new book Capital in the 21st Century one of the best books in economics written in the past several decades. Not that I do not believe it is, but I am careful because of the inflation of positive book reviews and because contemporaries are often poor judges of what may ultimately prove to be influential. With these two caveats, let me state that we are in the presence of one of the watershed books in economic thinking.”
There are a number of key arguments in Piketty’s book. One is that the six-decade period of growing equality in western nations – starting roughly with the onset of World War I and extending into the early 1970s – was unique and highly unlikely to be repeated. That period, Piketty suggests, represented an exception to the more deeply rooted pattern of growing inequality.
According to Piketty, those halcyon six decades were the result of two world wars and the Great Depression. The owners of capital – those at the top of the pyramid of wealth and income – absorbed a series of devastating blows. These included the loss of credibility and authority as markets crashed; physical destruction of capital throughout Europe in both World War I and World War II; the raising of tax rates, especially on high incomes, to finance the wars; high rates of inflation that eroded the assets of creditors; the nationalization of major industries in both England and France; and the appropriation of industries and property in post-colonial countries.
At the same time, the Great Depression produced the New Deal coalition in the United States, which empowered an insurgent labor movement. The postwar period saw huge gains in growth and productivity, the benefits of which were shared with workers who had strong backing from the trade union movement and from the dominant Democratic Party. Widespread support for liberal social and economic policy was so strong that even a Republican president who won easily twice, Dwight D. Eisenhower, recognized that an assault on the New Deal would be futile. In Eisenhower’s words, “Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear from that party again in our political history.”
The six decades between 1914 and 1973 stand out from the past and future, according to Piketty, because the rate of economic growth exceeded the after-tax rate of return on capital. Since then, the rate of growth of the economy has declined, while the return on capital is rising to its pre-World War I levels.
“If the rate of return on capital remains permanently above the rate of growth of the economy – this is Piketty’s key inequality relationship,” Milanovic writes in his review, it “generates a changing functional distribution of income in favor of capital and, if capital incomes are more concentrated than incomes from labor (a rather uncontroversial fact), personal income distribution will also get more unequal — which indeed is what we have witnessed in the past 30 years.”
Piketty has produced the chart at Figure 1 to illustrate his larger point.
The only way to halt this process, he argues, is to impose a global progressive tax on wealth – global in order to prevent (among other things) the transfer of assets to countries without such levies. A global tax, in this scheme, would restrict the concentration of wealth and limit the income flowing to capital.
Piketty would impose an annual graduated tax on stocks and bonds, property and other assets that are customarily not taxed until they are sold. He leaves open the rate and formula for distributing revenues.
The Piketty diagnosis helps explain the recent drop in the share of national income going to labor (see Figure 2) and a parallel increase in the share going to capital.
Piketty’s analysis also sheds light on the worldwide growth in the number of the unemployed. The International Labor Organization, an agency of the United Nations, reported recently that the number of unemployed grew by 5 million from 2012 to 2013, reaching nearly 202 million by the end of last year. It is projected to grow to 215 million by 2018.
Piketty’s wealth tax solution runs directly counter to the principles of contemporary American conservatives who advocate antithetical public policies: cutting top rates and eliminating the estate tax. It would also run counter to the interests of those countries that have purposefully legislated low tax rates in order to attract investment. The very infeasibility of establishing a global wealth tax serves to reinforce Piketty’s argument concerning the inevitability of increasing inequality.
Some liberals are none too happy with Piketty, either.
Dean Baker, one of the founders of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote me in an email that he believes that Piketty “is far too pessimistic.” Baker contends that there are a host of far less ambitious actions that might help to ameliorate inequality:
“Is it really implausible that we would ever see any sort of tax on finance in the U.S., either the financial transactions tax that I would favor or the financial activities tax advocated by the I.M.F.?”
Baker also noted that “much of our capital is tied up in intellectual property” and that reform of patent laws could serve both to limit the value of drug and other patents and simultaneously lower consumer costs.
Lawrence Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, responded to my email asking for his take on Piketty:
Recent Comments
Guy Josserand III
12 days ago
Piketty gets the diagnosis right but I wonder why he does not speak the solutions as expressed by THE watershed work on political economics...
Roger McKinney
12 days ago
Piketty's conclusions contradict those of Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Fogel. In "Escape from Hunger and Premature Death" Fogel...
Diane Merriam
12 days ago
I don't understand why "income inequality" is a bad thing. How does wanting something that someone else has mean you're entitled to it? Do...
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“We’d take the perspective that this phenomenon is related to the suppression of wage growth so that policies which generate broad-based wage growth are an antidote. The political economy is such that the political power to enact those taxes also requires a mobilized citizenry and institutional power, such as a robust labor movement.”
Daron Acemoglu, a more centrist economist at MIT, praised Piketty’s careful acquisition of data, as well as his emphasis on the economic forces and political conflicts over distribution that shape inequality. In an email, Acemoglu went on to say:
“Part of his interpretation I do not share. Piketty argues that there is a natural tendency for high inequality in ‘capitalist’ economies (the term capitalist is not my favorite) and that certain unusual events (world wars, the Great Depression and policy responses thereto) temporarily reduced inequality. Then both earnings inequality and inequality between capital and labor have been reverting back to their ‘normal’ levels. I don’t think that the data allow us to reach this conclusion. All we see is this pattern of fall and rise, but so many other things are going on. It is consistent with what Piketty says, but it is also consistent with certain technological changes and discontinuities (or globalization) having created a surge in inequality which will then stabilize or even reverse in the next several decades. It is also consistent with the dynamics of political power changing and this being a major contributor to the rise in inequality in advanced economies. We may be seeing parts of several different trends underpinned by several different major shocks rather than the mean-reverting dynamics following the shocks that Piketty singles out.”
There is, however, significant liberal applause for Piketty.
Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard who specializes in inequality, unions and employment patterns, wrote me by email:
“I am in 100 percent agreement with Piketty and would add that much of labor inequality comes because high earners got paid through stock options and capital ownership.”
Freeman and two colleagues, Joseph Blasi and Douglas Kruse, professors at the School of Labor and Management Relations at Rutgers, contend in their 2013 book, “The Citizen’s Share: Putting Ownership Back into Democracy,” that they have an alternative to a global wealth tax. They argue that:
“The way forward is to reform the structure of American business so that workers can supplement their wages with significant capital ownership stakes and meaningful capital income and profit shares.”
In other words, let’s turn everyone into a capitalist.
Piketty does not treat worker ownership as a solution, and he is generally dismissive of small-bore reforms, arguing that they will have only modest effects on economic growth worldwide, which he believes is very likely to be stuck at 1 to 1.5 percent through the rest of this century.
Piketty joins a number of scholars raising significant questions about how the global economic system will deal with such phenomena as robotics, the hollowing out of the job market, outsourcing and global competition.
His prognosis is extremely bleak. Without what he acknowledges is a politically unrealistic global wealth tax, he sees the United States and the developed world on a path toward a degree of inequality that will reach levels likely to cause severe social disruption.
Final judgment on Piketty’s work will come with time – a problem in and of itself, because if he is right, inequality will worsen, making it all the more difficult to take preemptive action.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
DATING/LOVE: WOMAN NOW ARE JUST UNRELIABLE
When a girl flaked (i.e., unexpectedly cancelled or failed to show for a date, or screened your calls) on you in the not too distant past, it usually meant there was a lack of attraction or she lost what little attraction there was in the interim between meeting her and calling her the next day. Occasionally, flakes were legitimate consequences of bad logistics or real plans that she had.
But, today, with the proliferation of smart phones and dumb disrespect, flaking has become de rigeur in certain segments of the female population. The NewYorkBetaTimes is on top of the trend (h/t reader M Serious):
Not long before that, Leandra Medine, the 23-year-old fashion blogger behind Man Repeller, sat down at the SoHo restaurant Jack’s Wife Freda and waited for her three friends. As she nursed a glass of wine, she glanced down at her phone to learn, via text, that all of her friends had bailed.
Random missed connections? Not quite.
Texting and instant messaging make it easier to navigate our social lives, but they are also turning us into ill-mannered flakes. Not long ago, the only way to break a social engagement, outside of blowing off someone completely, was to do it in person or on the phone. An effusive apology was expected, or at least the appearance of contrition.
But now, when our fingers tap our way out of social obligations, the barriers to canceling have been lowered. Not feeling up for going out? Have better plans? Just type a note on the fly (“Sorry can’t make it tonight”) and hit send.
And don’t worry about giving advance notice. The later, the better. After all, bailing on dinner via text message doesn’t feel as disrespectful as standing up someone, or as embarrassing.
Social media isn’t bringing us together as its creators and cheerleaders promised it would; it’s tearing apart our humanity. Our social minds have evolved in a face-to-face medium, not a faceless ASCII ether. When you can’t see the disappointment or anger on the face of the person you’re shafting, you don’t feel bad about it. Smartphones feed the shamelessness of our culture.
And it is practically endemic among those in their 20s and younger, who were raised in the age of instant chatter.
“Texting is lazy, and it encourages and promotes flakiness,” Mr. Cohen said. “You’re not treating anything with any weight, and it turns us all into 14-year-olds. We’re all 14-year-olds in suits and high heels.”
Social media is also making emotionally stunted children out of all of us. Or, more precisely, emotionally blank aspie idiots. I wonder if the ability to read emotions from a person’s face and body language is declining in lockstep with the rise of texting and IMing? If it is, as I suspect, then salesmen with cunning social skills will be able to clean up in an environment of over-trusting spergy kiddies. Some of you will be able to see the connection to antagonistic mass diversity here.
Rachel Libeskind, a 23-year-old artist who lives in TriBeCa, is constantly navigating her social circles from her iPhone. She finds that she’ll triple- or even quadruple-book plans on weekend nights, knowing there’s only a 60 percent chance she’ll engage in any of them.
“People will text me, ‘Let’s do something this week,’ and I’ll have three or four plans laid out for the week, and on average, more than half of them fall through,” she said. “The social plans I make are always changing, always shifting.”
Girls especially love this age of electronic “micro-coordinating”, because the plethora of shallow plans make them feel wanted, loved, desired, popular, BUSY BUSY BUSY. It’s an incipient attention whore’s paradise. Until 4 out of 5 plans fall through, and she has to micro-coordinate another ten plans to get her lookatme! fix.
Players like this situation as well, because it allows them to juggle multiple women seamlessly and to cut girls off without undue chick drama.
Moreover, it’s not considered boorish when her peers abandon one another. “Because there is very little at stake in terms of having these plans, it’s not that rude,” she said. “It’s implicit because that’s how everyone is operating.”
Social media and smartphones have ensured that nothing is important, because the second something *is* important, there are real consequences for flaking on it. And no woman-child wants to deal with icky real consequences. Yuk!
“My parents always say that when you make a plan, even if your finger is falling off, even if you’re bleeding, you can’t stand people up,” said Ms. Medine, the fashion blogger. [editor: "fashion blogger". jesus. all i want for christmas is a day of the rope... a day of the rope...] “But to me, it’s not rude. If your plans fall through, that’s fine. We live in a city where there are a million other plans waiting for you.”
This is why the modern day player has to have, as part of his seduction arsenal, professional anti-flaking techniques. If you don’t know how to handle the flakes that will inevitably occur, you are handicapped in the mating market. And you know what kind of guy thrives in the Age of Flakes? — The guy who knows how to flip the script and get women to chase *him*, so that he is the one with the option to flake.
Seriously, what the fuck is up with American women acting and looking like men, and American men acting and looking like manboobs? Did a silent enemy slip something into our water supply? Are my balls just astronomically bigger than the average man’s because I don’t apologize for my manhood, and I prefer feminine women?
My techie-minded prediction is that the Age of Flaking will slowly come to an end when video-texting and video calling become widely used. Once you can’t text or IM without seeing a moving face before you, the boorishness will wither with the rising shame.
“If you text a friend that you can’t make dinner because you’re feeling sick, and then a picture of you dancing on a bar shows up on someone’s Instagram feed, you just got caught,” Mr. Blasberg said. “With the rise of social media and technology, it’s harder to use little white lies to get out of things.”
Orwell was only partly right. Big Brother is everywhere, but he is as much your friend or neighbor as he is your government.
But, today, with the proliferation of smart phones and dumb disrespect, flaking has become de rigeur in certain segments of the female population. The NewYorkBetaTimes is on top of the trend (h/t reader M Serious):
Not long before that, Leandra Medine, the 23-year-old fashion blogger behind Man Repeller, sat down at the SoHo restaurant Jack’s Wife Freda and waited for her three friends. As she nursed a glass of wine, she glanced down at her phone to learn, via text, that all of her friends had bailed.
Random missed connections? Not quite.
Texting and instant messaging make it easier to navigate our social lives, but they are also turning us into ill-mannered flakes. Not long ago, the only way to break a social engagement, outside of blowing off someone completely, was to do it in person or on the phone. An effusive apology was expected, or at least the appearance of contrition.
But now, when our fingers tap our way out of social obligations, the barriers to canceling have been lowered. Not feeling up for going out? Have better plans? Just type a note on the fly (“Sorry can’t make it tonight”) and hit send.
And don’t worry about giving advance notice. The later, the better. After all, bailing on dinner via text message doesn’t feel as disrespectful as standing up someone, or as embarrassing.
Social media isn’t bringing us together as its creators and cheerleaders promised it would; it’s tearing apart our humanity. Our social minds have evolved in a face-to-face medium, not a faceless ASCII ether. When you can’t see the disappointment or anger on the face of the person you’re shafting, you don’t feel bad about it. Smartphones feed the shamelessness of our culture.
And it is practically endemic among those in their 20s and younger, who were raised in the age of instant chatter.
“Texting is lazy, and it encourages and promotes flakiness,” Mr. Cohen said. “You’re not treating anything with any weight, and it turns us all into 14-year-olds. We’re all 14-year-olds in suits and high heels.”
Social media is also making emotionally stunted children out of all of us. Or, more precisely, emotionally blank aspie idiots. I wonder if the ability to read emotions from a person’s face and body language is declining in lockstep with the rise of texting and IMing? If it is, as I suspect, then salesmen with cunning social skills will be able to clean up in an environment of over-trusting spergy kiddies. Some of you will be able to see the connection to antagonistic mass diversity here.
Rachel Libeskind, a 23-year-old artist who lives in TriBeCa, is constantly navigating her social circles from her iPhone. She finds that she’ll triple- or even quadruple-book plans on weekend nights, knowing there’s only a 60 percent chance she’ll engage in any of them.
“People will text me, ‘Let’s do something this week,’ and I’ll have three or four plans laid out for the week, and on average, more than half of them fall through,” she said. “The social plans I make are always changing, always shifting.”
Girls especially love this age of electronic “micro-coordinating”, because the plethora of shallow plans make them feel wanted, loved, desired, popular, BUSY BUSY BUSY. It’s an incipient attention whore’s paradise. Until 4 out of 5 plans fall through, and she has to micro-coordinate another ten plans to get her lookatme! fix.
Players like this situation as well, because it allows them to juggle multiple women seamlessly and to cut girls off without undue chick drama.
Moreover, it’s not considered boorish when her peers abandon one another. “Because there is very little at stake in terms of having these plans, it’s not that rude,” she said. “It’s implicit because that’s how everyone is operating.”
Social media and smartphones have ensured that nothing is important, because the second something *is* important, there are real consequences for flaking on it. And no woman-child wants to deal with icky real consequences. Yuk!
“My parents always say that when you make a plan, even if your finger is falling off, even if you’re bleeding, you can’t stand people up,” said Ms. Medine, the fashion blogger. [editor: "fashion blogger". jesus. all i want for christmas is a day of the rope... a day of the rope...] “But to me, it’s not rude. If your plans fall through, that’s fine. We live in a city where there are a million other plans waiting for you.”
This is why the modern day player has to have, as part of his seduction arsenal, professional anti-flaking techniques. If you don’t know how to handle the flakes that will inevitably occur, you are handicapped in the mating market. And you know what kind of guy thrives in the Age of Flakes? — The guy who knows how to flip the script and get women to chase *him*, so that he is the one with the option to flake.
Seriously, what the fuck is up with American women acting and looking like men, and American men acting and looking like manboobs? Did a silent enemy slip something into our water supply? Are my balls just astronomically bigger than the average man’s because I don’t apologize for my manhood, and I prefer feminine women?
My techie-minded prediction is that the Age of Flaking will slowly come to an end when video-texting and video calling become widely used. Once you can’t text or IM without seeing a moving face before you, the boorishness will wither with the rising shame.
“If you text a friend that you can’t make dinner because you’re feeling sick, and then a picture of you dancing on a bar shows up on someone’s Instagram feed, you just got caught,” Mr. Blasberg said. “With the rise of social media and technology, it’s harder to use little white lies to get out of things.”
Orwell was only partly right. Big Brother is everywhere, but he is as much your friend or neighbor as he is your government.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
PERSONAL: ISN'T IT AMAZING.....HAVE YOU EVER
Isn't it amazing...how one letter can change your day? Isn't it amazing...how one word can brighten your day a little bit more? Isn't it amazing...how one look can make your heart warm? Isn't it amazing... how one touch can make you feel nice and warm inside? Isn't it amazing...how one phone call can make you smile? Isn't it amazing... how one person can change your life? Have you ever found someone you love? Have you ever dreamed of life with them,and every sweet word from their lips...makes you break down inside, Have you ever looked into her eyes,and found the one that could make you whole. Have you ever closed your eyes...and brought a smile to your face... Have you ever got chills up and down your body just by the littlest touch of the one you love. Have you ever felt passion that is just uncontrollable and being around her is like a riot in the heart and nothing to hold you back. Have you ever fallen in love so deep words couldn't even express... Have you ever found someone you love? You lay there with your head on my chest listening to my heartbeat, enjoying the embrace of my arms, inhaling my manly body scent. I hold me tighter and and whisper affectionate words that leave you burning inside, not ever wanting to lose this moment spent with me.All I want is you,All I want is your love.I long to hear those unspoken words,to tell me how much I mean to you. All I want is a hug from you. I need the reassurance that you'll be here, to stand by my side when I'm alone.All I want is a smile from you. I hope to see your cheeky grin,to linger in my mind for days to follow.All I want is your attention.I seek to capture what might allure you, to sit and keep me company.All I want is to smell your smell.I dream to hold you close, To smell the smell I remember so well.All I want is a touch from your hand. I sit and wish you would join me,And hold my hand endlessly.All I want is to be the one,All I want is to be your perfect one.I set my hopes that you love me continually,To consider me to ever be the one.
I look at your picture every day. I've fallen in love... what can I say? You make me smile and dance around look at this happiness I've found. How I long for you to be here...so I can hold you close, my dear...I wish you weren't away so far because I only want to be where you are... Your eyes- so loving and mesmerizing. Your smile- so sweet, how very soothing. Your skin- so smooth how I yearn to touch. Do you know I love you so very much?Nothing within my power, I wouldn't do just so I could be closer to you I'm writing this now to let you know I really do love you so
I look at your picture every day. I've fallen in love... what can I say? You make me smile and dance around look at this happiness I've found. How I long for you to be here...so I can hold you close, my dear...I wish you weren't away so far because I only want to be where you are... Your eyes- so loving and mesmerizing. Your smile- so sweet, how very soothing. Your skin- so smooth how I yearn to touch. Do you know I love you so very much?Nothing within my power, I wouldn't do just so I could be closer to you I'm writing this now to let you know I really do love you so
POETRY: THE ONE THING
Day to day, night to night, breath to breath,
My heart is starving for only one thing,
Which would be my sweet medicine,
And would cure me from my dreadful illness.
The last hope of a hopeless man,
Who's lips were thirsty for a kiss for so long,
Ears were "hungry" to hear the word "love,"
Soul and body cried for a soft touch.
I'm afraid of what I am feeling again,
Because my heart was broken so many times;
When a girl said, 'bye...' I felt I would die.
Your love gave me hope again,
But happiness and joy are not my guests;
I'm afraid to be happy... but I want to be
2
The need to be loved is so powerful
So great that it is almost pathetic
Yet everyday we crave this thing called love
Our one passion to be wanted by another
To feel important to that one person
We desire that happiness in our lives
Alone at night, we are not ourselves
In our minds we secretly go crazy
Our hearts grow more vulnerable as each lonely,
Aching moment goes by
We begin to feel like there is no tomorrow for us
Yet when tomorrow rings in bright and new
The madness will toll loudly once again
There is no escape from this thing we call love
The world is filled with that enduring feeling
As lovers stroll down the street hand in hand
For not even sleep can release us of this desire
For even in our dreams we are tormented with the want
You can't escpae your mind so what is one to do
This thing called love
It will eventually take control of you
3
So when you close your eyes,
Do you dream of soft blue skies,
Or do you float out on a river,
And watch the flowers as they shiver?
Do you find youself falling through a hole,
Do you reach deep inside your soul,
Or do you sing your song out loud,
And float away inside a cloud?
Do you run through an endless maze,
Do you cry inside a soft haze,
Or do you climb up an endless tree,
And strain to find the top you can't see.
So when you wake up,
Do you try,
To escape,
Back inside,
That realm we call imagination,
That erotic, soft, scary sensation,
In your dreams.
4
Why do I love you so
You sometimes ask
I wish I had the answer
Because I really don't know
Maybe it's the way
the gentle touch you give
The one that I sometime crave
Or, how you comfort me
When I'm not sure which direction to choose in life
Or how you are understanding and forgiving
With the choices I have come to make, even in the past
Maybe it's the way
I get scared of you, all the while wanting you
Or maybe it's the way
You don't brush me aside and place me second
Or, how you promise me the world
When all I want is you
Or, maybe it's just because
My heart's so attached to you
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
LOVE/DATING: HIGHT FIDELITY SECTION OF THE BOOKS
It’s easier in the house. You can feel that the worst is over, and there’s a tired calm in the room, like the tired calm you get in your stomach when you’ve been sick. You even hear people talking about other stuff, although it’s all big stuff—work, children, life. Nobody’s talking about their Volvo’s fuel consumption, or the names they’d choose for dogs. Liz and I get ourselves a drink and stand with our backs against a bookcase, right in the far corner away from the door, and we talk occasionally, but mostly we watch people.
It feels good to be in this room, even though the reasons for being here aren’t so good. The Lydons have a large Victorian house, and it’s old and tatty and full of things—furniture, paintings, ornaments, plants—which don’t go together but which have obviously been chosen with care and taste. The room we’re in has a huge, weird family portrait on the wall above the fireplace, done when the girls were about ten and eight. They are wearing what look like bridesmaids’ dresses, standing self-consciously beside Ken; there’s a dog, Allegro, Allie, who died before I came along, in front of them and partially obscuring them. He has his paws up on Ken’s midriff, and Ken is ruffling the dog’s fur and smiling. Janet is standing a little behind and apart from the other three, watching her husband. The whole family are much thinner (and splotchier, but that’s the painting for you) than they are in real life. It’s modern art, and bright and fun, and obviously done by someone who knew what they were about (Laura told me that the woman who did it has had exhibitions and all sorts), but it has to take its chances with a stuffed otter, which is on the mantelpiece underneath, and the sort of dark old furniture that I hate. Oh, and there’s a hammock in one corner, loaded down with cushions, and a huge bank of new black hi-fi stuff in another corner, Ken’s most treasured possession, despite the paintings and the antiques. It’s all a mess, but you’d have to love the family that lived here, because you’d just know that they were interesting and kind and gentle. I realize now that I enjoyed being a part of this family, and though I used to moan about coming here for weekends or Sunday afternoons, I was never bored once. Jo comes up to us after a few minutes, and kisses both of us, and thanks us for coming.
“How are you?” Liz asks, but it’s the ‘How are you’ that has an emphasis on the ‘are,’ which makes the question sound meaningful and sympathetic. Jo shrugs.
“I’m all right. I suppose. And Mum’s not too bad, but Laura … I dunno.”
“She’s had a pretty rough few weeks already, without this,” says Liz, and I feel a little surge of something like pride: That was me. I made her feel like that. Me and a couple of others, anyway, including Laura herself, but never mind. I’d forgotten that I could make her feel anything and, anyway, it’s odd to be reminded of your emotional power in the middle of a funeral which, in my limited experience, is when you lose sense of it altogether.
“She’ll be OK,” says Liz decisively. “But it’s hard, when you’re putting all your effort into one bit of your life, to suddenly find that it’s the wrong bit.” She glances at me, suddenly embarrassed, or guilty, or something.
“Don’t mind me,” I tell them. “Really. No problem. Just pretend you’re talking about somebody else.” I meant it kindly, honest I did. I was simply trying to say that if they wanted to talk about Laura’s love life, any aspect of it, then I wouldn’t mind, not today, of all days.
Jo smiles, but Liz gives me a look. “We are talking about somebody else. Laura. Laura and Ray, really.”
“That’s not fair, Liz.”
“Oh?” She raises an eyebrow, as if I’m being insubordinate.
“And don’t fucking say ‘Oh’ like that.” A couple of people look round when I use the ‘f’-word, and Jo puts her hand on my arm. I shake it off. Suddenly, I’m raging and I don’t know how to calm down. It seems like I’ve spent the whole of the last few weeks with someone’s hand on my arm: I can’t speak to Laura because she lives with somebody else and she calls from phone boxes and she pretends she doesn’t, and I can’t speak to Liz because she knows about the money and the abortion and me seeing someone else, and I can’t speak to Barry and Dick because they’re Barry and Dick, and I can’t speak to my friends because I don’t speak to my friends, and I can’t speak now because Laura’s father has died, and I just have to take it because otherwise I’m a bad guy, with the emphasis on guy, self-centered, blind, and stupid. Well, I’m fucking not, not all the time, anyway, and I know this isn’t the right place to say so—I’m not that daft—but when am I allowed to?
“I’m sorry, Jo. I’m really sorry.” I’m back to the funeral murmur now, even though I feel like screaming. “But you know, Liz … I can either stick up for myself sometimes or I can believe anything you say about me and end up hating myself every minute of the day. And maybe you think I should, but it’s not much of a life, you know?”
Liz shrugs.
“That’s not good enough, Liz. You’re dead wrong, and if you don’t know it, then you’re dimmer than I thought.”
She sighs theatrically, and then sees the look on my face.
“Maybe I’ve been a little unfair. But is this really the time?”
“Only because it’s never the time. We can’t go on apologizing all our lives, you know.”
“If by ‘we’ you are referring to men, then I have to say that just the once would do.”
I’m not going to walk out of Laura’s dad’s funeral in a sulk. I’m not going to walk out of Laura’s dad’s funeral in a sulk. I’m just not.
I walk out of Laura’s dad’s funeral in a sulk.
The Lydons live a few miles out of the nearest town, which is Amersham, and I don’t know which way the nearest town is anyway. I walk round the corner, and round another corner, and come to some kind of main road, and see a bus stop, but it’s not the sort of bus stop that fills you with confidence: there’s nobody waiting, and nothing much there—a row of large detached houses on one side of the road, a playing field on the other. I wait there for a while, freezing in my suit, but just as I’ve worked out that it’s the sort of bus stop that requires the investment of a few days, rather than a few minutes, I see a familiar green Volkswagen up the road. It’s Laura, and she’s come looking for me.
Without thinking, I jump over the wall that separates one of the detached houses from the pavement, and lie flat in somebody’s flower bed. It’s wet. But I’d rather get soaked to the skin than have Laura go mental at me for disappearing, so I stay there for as long as is humanly possible. Every time I think I have got to the bottom, I find a new way to sink even lower, but I know that this is the worst, and that whatever happens to me from now on, however poor or stupid or single I get, these few minutes will remain with me as a shining cautionary beacon. “Is it better than lying facedown in a flower bed after Laura’s dad’s funeral?” I shall ask myself when the bailiffs come into the shop, or when the next Laura runs off with the next Ray, and the answer will always, always be ‘Yes.^1
When I can’t take it anymore, when my white shirt is translucent and my jacket streaked with mud and I’m getting stabbing pains—cramps, or rheumatism, or arthritis, who knows?—in my legs, I stand up and brush myself off; and then Laura, who has obviously been sitting in her car by the bus stop all this time, winds down her window and tells me to get in.
What happened to me during the funeral was something like this: I saw, for the first time, how scared I am of dying, and of other people dying, and how this fear has prevented me from doing all sorts of things, like giving up smoking (because if you take death too seriously or not seriously enough, as I have been doing up till now, then what’s the point?), and thinking about my life, especially my job, in a way that contains a concept of the future (too scary, because the future ends in death). But most of all it has prevented me from sticking with a relationship, because if you stick with a relationship, and your life becomes dependent on that person’s life, and then they die, as they are bound to do, unless there are exceptional circumstances, e.g., they are a character from a science-fiction novel … well, you’re up the creek without a paddle, aren’t you? It’s OK if I die first, I guess, but having to die before someone else dies isn’t a necessity that cheers me up much: how do I know when she’s going to die? Could be run over by a bus tomorrow, as the saying goes, which means I have to throw myself under a bus today. When I saw Janet Lydon’s face at the crematorium … how can you be that brave? Now what does she do? To me, it makes more sense to hop from woman to woman until you’re too old to do it anymore, and then you live alone and die alone and what’s so terrible about that, when you look at the alternatives? There were some nights with Laura when I’d kind of nestle into her back in bed when she was asleep, and I’d be filled with this enormous, nameless terror, except now I have a name for it: Brian. Ha, ha. OK, not really a name, but I could see where it came from, and why I wanted to sleep with Rosie the pain-in-the-arse simultaneous orgasm woman, and if that sounds feeble and self-serving at the same time—oh, right! He sleeps with other women because he has a fear of death!—well, I’m sorry, but that’s the way things are.
When I nestled into Laura’s back in the night, I was afraid because I didn’t want to lose her, and we always lose someone, or they lose us, in the end. I’d rather not take the risk. I’d rather not come home from work one day in ten or twenty years’ time to be faced with a pale, frightened woman saying that she’d been shitting blood—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but this is what happens to people—and then we go to the doctor and then the doctor says it’s inoperable and then … I wouldn’t have the guts, you know? I’d probably just take off, live in a different city under an assumed name, and Laura would check in to the hospital to die and they’d say, “Isn’t your partner coming to visit?” and she’d say, “No, when he found out about the cancer he left me.” Great guy! “Cancer? Sorry, that’s not for me! I don’t like it!” Best not put yourself in that position. Best leave it all alone.
So where does this get me? The logic of it all is that I play a percentage game. I’m thirty-six now, right? And let’s say that most fatal diseases—cancer, heart disease, whatever—hit you after the age of fifty. You might be unlucky, and snuff it early, but the fifty-plus age group get more than their fair share of bad stuff happening to them. So to play safe, you stop then: a relationship every couple of years for the next fourteen years, and then get out, stop dead, give it up. It makes sense. Will I explain this to whomever I’m seeing? Maybe. It’s fairer, probably. And less emotional, somehow, than the usual mess that ends relationships. “You’re going to die, so there’s not much point in us carrying on, is there?” It’s perfectly acceptable if someone’s emigrating, or returning to their own country, to stop a relationship on the grounds that any further involvement would be too painful, so why not death? The separation that death entails has got to be more painful than the separation of emigration, surely? I mean, with emigration, you can always go with her. You can always say to yourself, “Oh, fuck it, I’ll pack it all in and go and be a cowboy in Texas/tea-picker in India,” etc. You can’t do that with the big D, though, can you? Unless you take the Romeo route, and if you think about it …
“I thought you were going to lie in that flower bed all afternoon.”
“Eh? Oh. Ha ha. No. Ha.” Assumed nonchalance is tougher than it looks in this sort of situation, although lying in a stranger’s flower bed to hide from your ex-girlfriend on the day that her dad is buried—burned—is probably not a sort, a genre of situation at all, more a one-off, nongeneric thing.
“You’re soaking.”
“Mmm”
“You’re also an idiot.”
There will be other battles. There’s not much point in fighting this one, when all the evidence is conspiring against me.
“I can see why you say that. Look, I’m sorry. I really am. The last thing I wanted was … that’s why I went, because … I lost it, and I didn’t want to blow my top in there, and … look, Laura, the reason I slept with Rosie and mucked everything up was because I was scared that you’d die. Or I was scared of you dying. Or whatever. And I know what that sounds like, but … ” It all dries up as easily as it popped out, and I just stare at her with my mouth open.
“Well, I will die. Nothing much has changed on that score.”
“No, no, I understand completely, and I’m not expecting you to tell me anything different. I just wanted you to know, that’s all.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
She’s making no move to start the car.
“I can’t reciprocate.”
“How do you mean?”
“I didn’t sleep with Ray because I was scared of you dying. I slept with Ray because I was sick of you, and I needed something to get me out of it.”
“Oh, sure, no, I understand. Look, I don’t want to take up any more of your time. You get back, and I’ll wait here for a bus.”
“I don’t want to go back. I’ve thrown a wobbler too.”
“Oh. Right. Great. I mean, not great, but, you know.”
The rain starts again, and she puts the windscreen wipers on so that we can see not very much out of the window.
“Who upset you?”
“Nobody. I just don’t feel old enough. I want someone to look after me because my dad’s died, and there’s no one there who can, so when Liz told me you’d disappeared, I used it as an excuse to get out.”
“We’re a right pair, aren’t we?”
“Who upset you?”
“Oh. Nobody. Well, Liz. She was … ” I can’t think of the adult expression, so I use the one closest to hand. “She was picking on me.”
Laura snorts. “She was picking on you, and you’re sneaking out on her.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
She gives a short, mirthless laugh. “It’s no wonder we’re all in such a mess, is it? We’re like Tom Hanks in Big. Little boys and girls trapped in adult bodies and forced to get on with it. And it’s much worse in a real life, because it’s not just snogging and bunk beds, is it? There’s all this as well.” She gestures through the windscreen at the field and the bus stop and a man walking his dog, but I know what she means. “I’ll tell you something, Rob. Walking out of that funeral was the worst thing I’ve ever done, and also the most exhilarating. I can’t tell you how good and bad I felt. Yes I can: I felt like a baked Alaska.”
“It’s not like you walked out of the funeral, anyway. You walked out of the party thing. That’s different.”
“But my mum, and Jo, and … they’ll never forget it. I don’t care, though. I’ve thought so much about him and talked so much about him, and now our house is full of people who want to give me time and opportunity to think and talk about him some more, and I just wanted to scream.”
“He’d understand.”
“D’you think? I’m not sure I would. I’d want people to stay to the bitter end. That’d be the least they could do.”
“Your dad was nicer than you, though.”
“He was, wasn’t he?”
“About five or six times as nice.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
“Sorry.”
We watch a man trying to light a cigarette while holding a dog lead, a newspaper, and an umbrella. It can’t be done, but he won’t give up.
“When are you going to go back, actually?”
“I don’t know. Sometime. Later. Listen, Rob, would you sleep with me?”
“What?”
“I just feel like I want sex. I want to feel something else apart from misery and guilt. It’s either that or I go home and put my hand in the fire. Unless you want to stub cigarettes out on my arm.”
Laura isn’t like this. Laura is a lawyer by profession and a lawyer by nature, and now she’s behaving as though she’s after a supporting role in a Harvey Keitel movie.
“I’ve only got a couple left. I’m saving them for later.”
“It’ll have to be the sex, then.”
“But where? And what about Ray? And what about … ” I want to say ‘everything.’ What about everything?
“We’ll have to do it in the car. I’ll drive us somewhere.”
She drives us somewhere.
I know what you’re saying: You’re a pathetic fantasist, Fleming, you wish, in your dreams, etc. But I would never in a million years use anything that has happened to me today as the basis for any kind of sexual fantasy. I’m wet, for a start, and though I appreciate that the state of wetness has any number of sexual connotations, it would be tough for even the most determined pervert to get himself worked up about my sort of wetness, which involves cold, irritation (my suit trousers are unlined, and my legs are being rubbed raw), bad smells (none of the major perfume makers has ever tried to capture the scent of wet trousers, for obvious reasons), and there are bits of foliage hanging off me. And I’ve never had any ambition to do it in a car (my fantasies have always, always involved beds) and the funeral may have had a funny effect on the daughter of the deceased, but for me it’s been a bit of a downer, quite frankly, and I’m not too sure how I feel about sex with Laura when she’s living with someone else (is he better is he better is he better?), and anyway …
She stops the car, and I realize we’ve been bumping along for the last minute or two of the journey.
“Dad used to bring us here when we were kids.”
We’re by the side of a long, rutted dirt road that leads up to a large house. There’s a jungle of long grass and bushes on one side of the road, and a row of trees on the other; we’re on the tree side, pointing toward the house, tilting into the road.
“It used to be a little private prep school, but they went bust years ago, and it’s sat empty ever since.”
“What did he bring you here for?”
“Just a walk. In the summer there were blackberries, and in the autumn there were chestnuts. This is a private road, so it made it more exciting.”
Jesus. I’m glad I know nothing about psychotherapy, about Jung and Freud and that lot. If I did, I’d probably be extremely frightened by now: the woman who wants to have sex in the place where she used to go for walks with her dead dad is probably very dangerous indeed.
It’s stopped raining, but the drips from the trees are bouncing off the roof, and the wind is knocking hell out of the branches, so every now and again large chunks of foliage fall on us as well.
“Do you want to get in the back?” Laura asks, in a flat, distracted voice, as if we’re about to pick someone else up.
“I guess so. I guess that would be easier.”
She’s parked too close to the trees, so she has to clamber out my side.
“Just shift all that stuff on to the back shelf.”
There’s an A-Z, a couple of empty cassette cases, an opened bag of Opal Fruits, and a handful of candy wrappers. I take my time getting them out of the way.
“I knew there was a good reason for putting on a skirt this morning,” she says as she gets in. She leans over and kisses me on the mouth, tongues and everything, and I can feel some interest despite myself.
“Just stay there.” She makes some adjustments to her dress and sits on top of me. “Hello. It doesn’t seem so long ago that I looked at you from here.” She smiles at me, kisses me again, reaches underneath her for my fly. And then there’s foreplay and stuff, and then—I don’t know why—I remember something you’re supposed to remember but only rarely do.
“You know with Ray … ”
“Oh, Rob, we’re not going to go through that again.”
“No, no. It’s not … are you still on the pill?”
“Yes, of course. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“I didn’t mean that. I mean … was that all you used?”
She doesn’t say anything, and then she starts to cry.
“Look, we can do other things,” I say. “Or we can go into town and get something.”
“I’m not crying because we can’t do it,” she says. “It’s not that. It’s just that … I lived with you. You were my partner just a few weeks ago. And now you’re worried I might kill you, and you’re entitled to worry. Isn’t that a terrible thing? Isn’t that sad?” She shakes her head and sobs, and climbs off me, and we sit there side by side in the backseat saying nothing, just watching the drips crawl down the windows.
Later, I wonder whether I was really worried about where Ray has been. Is he bisexual, or an intravenous drug user? I doubt it. (He wouldn’t have the guts for either.) Has he ever slept with an intravenous drug user, or has he ever slept with someone who’s slept with a bisexual male? I have no idea, and that ignorance gives me every right to insist on protection. But in truth it was the symbolism that interested me more than the fear. I wanted to hurt her, on this day of all days, just because it’s the first time since she left that I’ve been able to.
We drive to a pub, a twee little mock-country place that serves nice beer and expensive sandwiches and sit in a corner and talk. I buy some more fags and she smokes half of them or, rather, she lights one, takes a drag or two, grimaces, stubs it out and then five minutes later takes another. She stubs them out with such violence that they cannot be salvaged, and when she does it I can’t concentrate on what she’s saying, because I’m too busy watching my fags disappear. Eventually she notices and says she’ll buy me some more and I feel mean.
We talk about her dad, mostly, or rather, what life will be like without him. And then we talk about what life will be like generally without dads, and whether it’s the thing that makes you feel grown-up, finally. (Laura thinks not, on the evidence available to date.) I don’t want to talk about this stuff, of course: I want to talk about Ray and me and whether we’ll ever come as close to having sex again and whether the warmth and intimacy of this conversation means anything, but I manage to hold myself back.
And then, just as I have begun to accept that none of this is going to be about me me me, she sighs, and slumps back against her chair, and says, half smiling, half despairing, “I’m too tired not to go out with you.”
There’s a kind of double negative here—‘too tired’ is a negative because it’s not very positive—and it takes me a while to work out what she means.
“So, hold on: if you had a bit more energy, we’d stay split. But as it is, what with you being wiped out, you’d like us to get back together.”
She nods. “Everything’s too hard. Maybe another time I would have had the guts to be on my own, but not now I haven’t.”
“What about Ray?”
“Ray’s a disaster. I don’t know what that was all about, really, except sometimes you need someone to lob into the middle of a bad relationship like a hand grenade, and blow it all apart.”
I’d like to talk, in some detail, about all the ways in which Ray is a disaster; in fact, I’d like to make a list on the back of a beermat and keep it forever. Maybe another time.
“And now you’re out of the bad relationship, and you have blown it all apart, you want to be back in it, and put it back together again.”
“Yes. I know none of this is very romantic, and there will be romantic bits at some stage, I’m sure. But I need to be with someone, and I need to be with someone I know and get on with OK, and you’ve made it clear that you want me back, so … ”
And wouldn’t you know it? Suddenly I feel panicky, and sick, and I want to get record label logos painted on my walls and sleep with American recording artists. I take Laura’s hand and kiss her on the cheek.
There’s a terrible scene back at the house, of course. Mrs Lydon is in tears, and Jo is angry, and the few guests that are left stare into their drinks and don’t say anything. Laura takes her mum through to the kitchen and shuts the door, and I stand in the sitting room with Jo, shrugging my shoulders and shaking my head and raising my eyebrows and shifting from foot to foot and doing anything else I can think of to suggest embarrassment, sympathy, disapproval, and misfortune. When my eyebrows are sore, and I have nearly shaken my head off its hinges, and I have walked the best part of a mile on the spot, Laura emerges from the kitchen in a state and tugs me by the arm.
“We’re going home,” she says, and that is how our relationship resumes its course.
She’s a quarter of an hour late, which means I’ve been in the pub staring at the same article in a magazine for forty-five minutes. She’s apologetic, although not enthusiastically apologetic, considering; but I don’t say anything to her about it. Today’s not the right day.
“Cheers,” she says, and clinks her spritzer against my bottle of Sol. Some of her makeup has sweated off in the heat of the day, and her cheeks are pink; she looks lovely. “This is a nice surprise.”
I don’t say anything. I’m too nervous.
“Are you worried about tomorrow night?”
“Not really.” I concentrate on shoving the bit of lime down the neck of the bottle.
“Are you going to talk to me, or shall I get my paper out?”
“I’m going to talk to you.”
“Right.”
I swish the beer around so it’ll get really lime-y.
“What are you going to talk to me about?”
“I’m going to talk to you about whether you want to get married or not. To me.”
She laughs a lot. “Ha ha ha. Hoo hoo hoo.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“Oh, well thanks a fucking bunch.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. But two days ago you were in love with that woman who interviewed you for the local paper, weren’t you?”
“Not in love exactly, but … ”
“Well, forgive me if I don’t feel that you’re the world’s safest bet.”
“Would you marry me if I was?”
“No, I shouldn’t think so.”
“Right. OK, then. Shall we go home?”
“Don’t sulk. What’s brought all this on?”
“I don’t know.”
“Very persuasive.”
“Are you persuadable?”
“No. I don’t think so. I’m just curious about how one goes from making tapes for one person to marriage proposals to another in two days. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough.”
“So?”
“I’m just sick of thinking about it all the time.”
“All what?”
“This stuff. Love and marriage. I want to think about something else.”
“I’ve changed my mind. That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. I do. I will.”
“Shut up. I’m only trying to explain.”
“Sorry. Carry on.”
“See, I’ve always been afraid of marriage because of, you know, ball and chain, I want my freedom, all that. But when I was thinking about that stupid girl I suddenly saw it was the opposite: that if you got married to someone you know you love, and you sort yourself out, it frees you up for other things. I know you don’t know how you feel about me, but I do know how I feel about you. I know I want to stay with you and I keep pretending otherwise, to myself and you, and we just limp on and on. It’s like we sign a new contract every few weeks or so, and I don’t want that anymore. And I know that if we got married I’d take it seriously, and I wouldn’t want to mess about.”
“And you can make a decision about it just like that, can you? In cold blood, bang bang, if I do that, then this will happen? I’m not sure that it works like that.”
“But it does, you see. Just because it’s a relationship, and it’s based on soppy stuff, it doesn’t mean you can’t make intellectual decisions about it. Sometimes you just have to, otherwise you’ll never get anywhere. That’s where I’ve been going wrong. I’ve been letting the weather and my stomach muscles and a great chord change in a Pretenders single make up my mind for me, and I want to do it for myself.”
“Maybe.”
“What d’you mean, maybe?”
“I mean, maybe you’re right. But that doesn’t help me, does it? You’re always like this. You work something out and everyone else has to fall into line. Were you really expecting me to say yes?”
“Dunno. Didn’t think about it, really. It was the asking that was the important thing.”
“Well, you’ve asked.” But she says it sweetly, as if she knows that what I’ve asked is a nice thing, that it has some sort of meaning, even though she’s not interested. “Thank you.”
It feels good to be in this room, even though the reasons for being here aren’t so good. The Lydons have a large Victorian house, and it’s old and tatty and full of things—furniture, paintings, ornaments, plants—which don’t go together but which have obviously been chosen with care and taste. The room we’re in has a huge, weird family portrait on the wall above the fireplace, done when the girls were about ten and eight. They are wearing what look like bridesmaids’ dresses, standing self-consciously beside Ken; there’s a dog, Allegro, Allie, who died before I came along, in front of them and partially obscuring them. He has his paws up on Ken’s midriff, and Ken is ruffling the dog’s fur and smiling. Janet is standing a little behind and apart from the other three, watching her husband. The whole family are much thinner (and splotchier, but that’s the painting for you) than they are in real life. It’s modern art, and bright and fun, and obviously done by someone who knew what they were about (Laura told me that the woman who did it has had exhibitions and all sorts), but it has to take its chances with a stuffed otter, which is on the mantelpiece underneath, and the sort of dark old furniture that I hate. Oh, and there’s a hammock in one corner, loaded down with cushions, and a huge bank of new black hi-fi stuff in another corner, Ken’s most treasured possession, despite the paintings and the antiques. It’s all a mess, but you’d have to love the family that lived here, because you’d just know that they were interesting and kind and gentle. I realize now that I enjoyed being a part of this family, and though I used to moan about coming here for weekends or Sunday afternoons, I was never bored once. Jo comes up to us after a few minutes, and kisses both of us, and thanks us for coming.
“How are you?” Liz asks, but it’s the ‘How are you’ that has an emphasis on the ‘are,’ which makes the question sound meaningful and sympathetic. Jo shrugs.
“I’m all right. I suppose. And Mum’s not too bad, but Laura … I dunno.”
“She’s had a pretty rough few weeks already, without this,” says Liz, and I feel a little surge of something like pride: That was me. I made her feel like that. Me and a couple of others, anyway, including Laura herself, but never mind. I’d forgotten that I could make her feel anything and, anyway, it’s odd to be reminded of your emotional power in the middle of a funeral which, in my limited experience, is when you lose sense of it altogether.
“She’ll be OK,” says Liz decisively. “But it’s hard, when you’re putting all your effort into one bit of your life, to suddenly find that it’s the wrong bit.” She glances at me, suddenly embarrassed, or guilty, or something.
“Don’t mind me,” I tell them. “Really. No problem. Just pretend you’re talking about somebody else.” I meant it kindly, honest I did. I was simply trying to say that if they wanted to talk about Laura’s love life, any aspect of it, then I wouldn’t mind, not today, of all days.
Jo smiles, but Liz gives me a look. “We are talking about somebody else. Laura. Laura and Ray, really.”
“That’s not fair, Liz.”
“Oh?” She raises an eyebrow, as if I’m being insubordinate.
“And don’t fucking say ‘Oh’ like that.” A couple of people look round when I use the ‘f’-word, and Jo puts her hand on my arm. I shake it off. Suddenly, I’m raging and I don’t know how to calm down. It seems like I’ve spent the whole of the last few weeks with someone’s hand on my arm: I can’t speak to Laura because she lives with somebody else and she calls from phone boxes and she pretends she doesn’t, and I can’t speak to Liz because she knows about the money and the abortion and me seeing someone else, and I can’t speak to Barry and Dick because they’re Barry and Dick, and I can’t speak to my friends because I don’t speak to my friends, and I can’t speak now because Laura’s father has died, and I just have to take it because otherwise I’m a bad guy, with the emphasis on guy, self-centered, blind, and stupid. Well, I’m fucking not, not all the time, anyway, and I know this isn’t the right place to say so—I’m not that daft—but when am I allowed to?
“I’m sorry, Jo. I’m really sorry.” I’m back to the funeral murmur now, even though I feel like screaming. “But you know, Liz … I can either stick up for myself sometimes or I can believe anything you say about me and end up hating myself every minute of the day. And maybe you think I should, but it’s not much of a life, you know?”
Liz shrugs.
“That’s not good enough, Liz. You’re dead wrong, and if you don’t know it, then you’re dimmer than I thought.”
She sighs theatrically, and then sees the look on my face.
“Maybe I’ve been a little unfair. But is this really the time?”
“Only because it’s never the time. We can’t go on apologizing all our lives, you know.”
“If by ‘we’ you are referring to men, then I have to say that just the once would do.”
I’m not going to walk out of Laura’s dad’s funeral in a sulk. I’m not going to walk out of Laura’s dad’s funeral in a sulk. I’m just not.
I walk out of Laura’s dad’s funeral in a sulk.
The Lydons live a few miles out of the nearest town, which is Amersham, and I don’t know which way the nearest town is anyway. I walk round the corner, and round another corner, and come to some kind of main road, and see a bus stop, but it’s not the sort of bus stop that fills you with confidence: there’s nobody waiting, and nothing much there—a row of large detached houses on one side of the road, a playing field on the other. I wait there for a while, freezing in my suit, but just as I’ve worked out that it’s the sort of bus stop that requires the investment of a few days, rather than a few minutes, I see a familiar green Volkswagen up the road. It’s Laura, and she’s come looking for me.
Without thinking, I jump over the wall that separates one of the detached houses from the pavement, and lie flat in somebody’s flower bed. It’s wet. But I’d rather get soaked to the skin than have Laura go mental at me for disappearing, so I stay there for as long as is humanly possible. Every time I think I have got to the bottom, I find a new way to sink even lower, but I know that this is the worst, and that whatever happens to me from now on, however poor or stupid or single I get, these few minutes will remain with me as a shining cautionary beacon. “Is it better than lying facedown in a flower bed after Laura’s dad’s funeral?” I shall ask myself when the bailiffs come into the shop, or when the next Laura runs off with the next Ray, and the answer will always, always be ‘Yes.^1
When I can’t take it anymore, when my white shirt is translucent and my jacket streaked with mud and I’m getting stabbing pains—cramps, or rheumatism, or arthritis, who knows?—in my legs, I stand up and brush myself off; and then Laura, who has obviously been sitting in her car by the bus stop all this time, winds down her window and tells me to get in.
What happened to me during the funeral was something like this: I saw, for the first time, how scared I am of dying, and of other people dying, and how this fear has prevented me from doing all sorts of things, like giving up smoking (because if you take death too seriously or not seriously enough, as I have been doing up till now, then what’s the point?), and thinking about my life, especially my job, in a way that contains a concept of the future (too scary, because the future ends in death). But most of all it has prevented me from sticking with a relationship, because if you stick with a relationship, and your life becomes dependent on that person’s life, and then they die, as they are bound to do, unless there are exceptional circumstances, e.g., they are a character from a science-fiction novel … well, you’re up the creek without a paddle, aren’t you? It’s OK if I die first, I guess, but having to die before someone else dies isn’t a necessity that cheers me up much: how do I know when she’s going to die? Could be run over by a bus tomorrow, as the saying goes, which means I have to throw myself under a bus today. When I saw Janet Lydon’s face at the crematorium … how can you be that brave? Now what does she do? To me, it makes more sense to hop from woman to woman until you’re too old to do it anymore, and then you live alone and die alone and what’s so terrible about that, when you look at the alternatives? There were some nights with Laura when I’d kind of nestle into her back in bed when she was asleep, and I’d be filled with this enormous, nameless terror, except now I have a name for it: Brian. Ha, ha. OK, not really a name, but I could see where it came from, and why I wanted to sleep with Rosie the pain-in-the-arse simultaneous orgasm woman, and if that sounds feeble and self-serving at the same time—oh, right! He sleeps with other women because he has a fear of death!—well, I’m sorry, but that’s the way things are.
When I nestled into Laura’s back in the night, I was afraid because I didn’t want to lose her, and we always lose someone, or they lose us, in the end. I’d rather not take the risk. I’d rather not come home from work one day in ten or twenty years’ time to be faced with a pale, frightened woman saying that she’d been shitting blood—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but this is what happens to people—and then we go to the doctor and then the doctor says it’s inoperable and then … I wouldn’t have the guts, you know? I’d probably just take off, live in a different city under an assumed name, and Laura would check in to the hospital to die and they’d say, “Isn’t your partner coming to visit?” and she’d say, “No, when he found out about the cancer he left me.” Great guy! “Cancer? Sorry, that’s not for me! I don’t like it!” Best not put yourself in that position. Best leave it all alone.
So where does this get me? The logic of it all is that I play a percentage game. I’m thirty-six now, right? And let’s say that most fatal diseases—cancer, heart disease, whatever—hit you after the age of fifty. You might be unlucky, and snuff it early, but the fifty-plus age group get more than their fair share of bad stuff happening to them. So to play safe, you stop then: a relationship every couple of years for the next fourteen years, and then get out, stop dead, give it up. It makes sense. Will I explain this to whomever I’m seeing? Maybe. It’s fairer, probably. And less emotional, somehow, than the usual mess that ends relationships. “You’re going to die, so there’s not much point in us carrying on, is there?” It’s perfectly acceptable if someone’s emigrating, or returning to their own country, to stop a relationship on the grounds that any further involvement would be too painful, so why not death? The separation that death entails has got to be more painful than the separation of emigration, surely? I mean, with emigration, you can always go with her. You can always say to yourself, “Oh, fuck it, I’ll pack it all in and go and be a cowboy in Texas/tea-picker in India,” etc. You can’t do that with the big D, though, can you? Unless you take the Romeo route, and if you think about it …
“I thought you were going to lie in that flower bed all afternoon.”
“Eh? Oh. Ha ha. No. Ha.” Assumed nonchalance is tougher than it looks in this sort of situation, although lying in a stranger’s flower bed to hide from your ex-girlfriend on the day that her dad is buried—burned—is probably not a sort, a genre of situation at all, more a one-off, nongeneric thing.
“You’re soaking.”
“Mmm”
“You’re also an idiot.”
There will be other battles. There’s not much point in fighting this one, when all the evidence is conspiring against me.
“I can see why you say that. Look, I’m sorry. I really am. The last thing I wanted was … that’s why I went, because … I lost it, and I didn’t want to blow my top in there, and … look, Laura, the reason I slept with Rosie and mucked everything up was because I was scared that you’d die. Or I was scared of you dying. Or whatever. And I know what that sounds like, but … ” It all dries up as easily as it popped out, and I just stare at her with my mouth open.
“Well, I will die. Nothing much has changed on that score.”
“No, no, I understand completely, and I’m not expecting you to tell me anything different. I just wanted you to know, that’s all.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
She’s making no move to start the car.
“I can’t reciprocate.”
“How do you mean?”
“I didn’t sleep with Ray because I was scared of you dying. I slept with Ray because I was sick of you, and I needed something to get me out of it.”
“Oh, sure, no, I understand. Look, I don’t want to take up any more of your time. You get back, and I’ll wait here for a bus.”
“I don’t want to go back. I’ve thrown a wobbler too.”
“Oh. Right. Great. I mean, not great, but, you know.”
The rain starts again, and she puts the windscreen wipers on so that we can see not very much out of the window.
“Who upset you?”
“Nobody. I just don’t feel old enough. I want someone to look after me because my dad’s died, and there’s no one there who can, so when Liz told me you’d disappeared, I used it as an excuse to get out.”
“We’re a right pair, aren’t we?”
“Who upset you?”
“Oh. Nobody. Well, Liz. She was … ” I can’t think of the adult expression, so I use the one closest to hand. “She was picking on me.”
Laura snorts. “She was picking on you, and you’re sneaking out on her.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
She gives a short, mirthless laugh. “It’s no wonder we’re all in such a mess, is it? We’re like Tom Hanks in Big. Little boys and girls trapped in adult bodies and forced to get on with it. And it’s much worse in a real life, because it’s not just snogging and bunk beds, is it? There’s all this as well.” She gestures through the windscreen at the field and the bus stop and a man walking his dog, but I know what she means. “I’ll tell you something, Rob. Walking out of that funeral was the worst thing I’ve ever done, and also the most exhilarating. I can’t tell you how good and bad I felt. Yes I can: I felt like a baked Alaska.”
“It’s not like you walked out of the funeral, anyway. You walked out of the party thing. That’s different.”
“But my mum, and Jo, and … they’ll never forget it. I don’t care, though. I’ve thought so much about him and talked so much about him, and now our house is full of people who want to give me time and opportunity to think and talk about him some more, and I just wanted to scream.”
“He’d understand.”
“D’you think? I’m not sure I would. I’d want people to stay to the bitter end. That’d be the least they could do.”
“Your dad was nicer than you, though.”
“He was, wasn’t he?”
“About five or six times as nice.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
“Sorry.”
We watch a man trying to light a cigarette while holding a dog lead, a newspaper, and an umbrella. It can’t be done, but he won’t give up.
“When are you going to go back, actually?”
“I don’t know. Sometime. Later. Listen, Rob, would you sleep with me?”
“What?”
“I just feel like I want sex. I want to feel something else apart from misery and guilt. It’s either that or I go home and put my hand in the fire. Unless you want to stub cigarettes out on my arm.”
Laura isn’t like this. Laura is a lawyer by profession and a lawyer by nature, and now she’s behaving as though she’s after a supporting role in a Harvey Keitel movie.
“I’ve only got a couple left. I’m saving them for later.”
“It’ll have to be the sex, then.”
“But where? And what about Ray? And what about … ” I want to say ‘everything.’ What about everything?
“We’ll have to do it in the car. I’ll drive us somewhere.”
She drives us somewhere.
I know what you’re saying: You’re a pathetic fantasist, Fleming, you wish, in your dreams, etc. But I would never in a million years use anything that has happened to me today as the basis for any kind of sexual fantasy. I’m wet, for a start, and though I appreciate that the state of wetness has any number of sexual connotations, it would be tough for even the most determined pervert to get himself worked up about my sort of wetness, which involves cold, irritation (my suit trousers are unlined, and my legs are being rubbed raw), bad smells (none of the major perfume makers has ever tried to capture the scent of wet trousers, for obvious reasons), and there are bits of foliage hanging off me. And I’ve never had any ambition to do it in a car (my fantasies have always, always involved beds) and the funeral may have had a funny effect on the daughter of the deceased, but for me it’s been a bit of a downer, quite frankly, and I’m not too sure how I feel about sex with Laura when she’s living with someone else (is he better is he better is he better?), and anyway …
She stops the car, and I realize we’ve been bumping along for the last minute or two of the journey.
“Dad used to bring us here when we were kids.”
We’re by the side of a long, rutted dirt road that leads up to a large house. There’s a jungle of long grass and bushes on one side of the road, and a row of trees on the other; we’re on the tree side, pointing toward the house, tilting into the road.
“It used to be a little private prep school, but they went bust years ago, and it’s sat empty ever since.”
“What did he bring you here for?”
“Just a walk. In the summer there were blackberries, and in the autumn there were chestnuts. This is a private road, so it made it more exciting.”
Jesus. I’m glad I know nothing about psychotherapy, about Jung and Freud and that lot. If I did, I’d probably be extremely frightened by now: the woman who wants to have sex in the place where she used to go for walks with her dead dad is probably very dangerous indeed.
It’s stopped raining, but the drips from the trees are bouncing off the roof, and the wind is knocking hell out of the branches, so every now and again large chunks of foliage fall on us as well.
“Do you want to get in the back?” Laura asks, in a flat, distracted voice, as if we’re about to pick someone else up.
“I guess so. I guess that would be easier.”
She’s parked too close to the trees, so she has to clamber out my side.
“Just shift all that stuff on to the back shelf.”
There’s an A-Z, a couple of empty cassette cases, an opened bag of Opal Fruits, and a handful of candy wrappers. I take my time getting them out of the way.
“I knew there was a good reason for putting on a skirt this morning,” she says as she gets in. She leans over and kisses me on the mouth, tongues and everything, and I can feel some interest despite myself.
“Just stay there.” She makes some adjustments to her dress and sits on top of me. “Hello. It doesn’t seem so long ago that I looked at you from here.” She smiles at me, kisses me again, reaches underneath her for my fly. And then there’s foreplay and stuff, and then—I don’t know why—I remember something you’re supposed to remember but only rarely do.
“You know with Ray … ”
“Oh, Rob, we’re not going to go through that again.”
“No, no. It’s not … are you still on the pill?”
“Yes, of course. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“I didn’t mean that. I mean … was that all you used?”
She doesn’t say anything, and then she starts to cry.
“Look, we can do other things,” I say. “Or we can go into town and get something.”
“I’m not crying because we can’t do it,” she says. “It’s not that. It’s just that … I lived with you. You were my partner just a few weeks ago. And now you’re worried I might kill you, and you’re entitled to worry. Isn’t that a terrible thing? Isn’t that sad?” She shakes her head and sobs, and climbs off me, and we sit there side by side in the backseat saying nothing, just watching the drips crawl down the windows.
Later, I wonder whether I was really worried about where Ray has been. Is he bisexual, or an intravenous drug user? I doubt it. (He wouldn’t have the guts for either.) Has he ever slept with an intravenous drug user, or has he ever slept with someone who’s slept with a bisexual male? I have no idea, and that ignorance gives me every right to insist on protection. But in truth it was the symbolism that interested me more than the fear. I wanted to hurt her, on this day of all days, just because it’s the first time since she left that I’ve been able to.
We drive to a pub, a twee little mock-country place that serves nice beer and expensive sandwiches and sit in a corner and talk. I buy some more fags and she smokes half of them or, rather, she lights one, takes a drag or two, grimaces, stubs it out and then five minutes later takes another. She stubs them out with such violence that they cannot be salvaged, and when she does it I can’t concentrate on what she’s saying, because I’m too busy watching my fags disappear. Eventually she notices and says she’ll buy me some more and I feel mean.
We talk about her dad, mostly, or rather, what life will be like without him. And then we talk about what life will be like generally without dads, and whether it’s the thing that makes you feel grown-up, finally. (Laura thinks not, on the evidence available to date.) I don’t want to talk about this stuff, of course: I want to talk about Ray and me and whether we’ll ever come as close to having sex again and whether the warmth and intimacy of this conversation means anything, but I manage to hold myself back.
And then, just as I have begun to accept that none of this is going to be about me me me, she sighs, and slumps back against her chair, and says, half smiling, half despairing, “I’m too tired not to go out with you.”
There’s a kind of double negative here—‘too tired’ is a negative because it’s not very positive—and it takes me a while to work out what she means.
“So, hold on: if you had a bit more energy, we’d stay split. But as it is, what with you being wiped out, you’d like us to get back together.”
She nods. “Everything’s too hard. Maybe another time I would have had the guts to be on my own, but not now I haven’t.”
“What about Ray?”
“Ray’s a disaster. I don’t know what that was all about, really, except sometimes you need someone to lob into the middle of a bad relationship like a hand grenade, and blow it all apart.”
I’d like to talk, in some detail, about all the ways in which Ray is a disaster; in fact, I’d like to make a list on the back of a beermat and keep it forever. Maybe another time.
“And now you’re out of the bad relationship, and you have blown it all apart, you want to be back in it, and put it back together again.”
“Yes. I know none of this is very romantic, and there will be romantic bits at some stage, I’m sure. But I need to be with someone, and I need to be with someone I know and get on with OK, and you’ve made it clear that you want me back, so … ”
And wouldn’t you know it? Suddenly I feel panicky, and sick, and I want to get record label logos painted on my walls and sleep with American recording artists. I take Laura’s hand and kiss her on the cheek.
There’s a terrible scene back at the house, of course. Mrs Lydon is in tears, and Jo is angry, and the few guests that are left stare into their drinks and don’t say anything. Laura takes her mum through to the kitchen and shuts the door, and I stand in the sitting room with Jo, shrugging my shoulders and shaking my head and raising my eyebrows and shifting from foot to foot and doing anything else I can think of to suggest embarrassment, sympathy, disapproval, and misfortune. When my eyebrows are sore, and I have nearly shaken my head off its hinges, and I have walked the best part of a mile on the spot, Laura emerges from the kitchen in a state and tugs me by the arm.
“We’re going home,” she says, and that is how our relationship resumes its course.
She’s a quarter of an hour late, which means I’ve been in the pub staring at the same article in a magazine for forty-five minutes. She’s apologetic, although not enthusiastically apologetic, considering; but I don’t say anything to her about it. Today’s not the right day.
“Cheers,” she says, and clinks her spritzer against my bottle of Sol. Some of her makeup has sweated off in the heat of the day, and her cheeks are pink; she looks lovely. “This is a nice surprise.”
I don’t say anything. I’m too nervous.
“Are you worried about tomorrow night?”
“Not really.” I concentrate on shoving the bit of lime down the neck of the bottle.
“Are you going to talk to me, or shall I get my paper out?”
“I’m going to talk to you.”
“Right.”
I swish the beer around so it’ll get really lime-y.
“What are you going to talk to me about?”
“I’m going to talk to you about whether you want to get married or not. To me.”
She laughs a lot. “Ha ha ha. Hoo hoo hoo.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“Oh, well thanks a fucking bunch.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. But two days ago you were in love with that woman who interviewed you for the local paper, weren’t you?”
“Not in love exactly, but … ”
“Well, forgive me if I don’t feel that you’re the world’s safest bet.”
“Would you marry me if I was?”
“No, I shouldn’t think so.”
“Right. OK, then. Shall we go home?”
“Don’t sulk. What’s brought all this on?”
“I don’t know.”
“Very persuasive.”
“Are you persuadable?”
“No. I don’t think so. I’m just curious about how one goes from making tapes for one person to marriage proposals to another in two days. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough.”
“So?”
“I’m just sick of thinking about it all the time.”
“All what?”
“This stuff. Love and marriage. I want to think about something else.”
“I’ve changed my mind. That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. I do. I will.”
“Shut up. I’m only trying to explain.”
“Sorry. Carry on.”
“See, I’ve always been afraid of marriage because of, you know, ball and chain, I want my freedom, all that. But when I was thinking about that stupid girl I suddenly saw it was the opposite: that if you got married to someone you know you love, and you sort yourself out, it frees you up for other things. I know you don’t know how you feel about me, but I do know how I feel about you. I know I want to stay with you and I keep pretending otherwise, to myself and you, and we just limp on and on. It’s like we sign a new contract every few weeks or so, and I don’t want that anymore. And I know that if we got married I’d take it seriously, and I wouldn’t want to mess about.”
“And you can make a decision about it just like that, can you? In cold blood, bang bang, if I do that, then this will happen? I’m not sure that it works like that.”
“But it does, you see. Just because it’s a relationship, and it’s based on soppy stuff, it doesn’t mean you can’t make intellectual decisions about it. Sometimes you just have to, otherwise you’ll never get anywhere. That’s where I’ve been going wrong. I’ve been letting the weather and my stomach muscles and a great chord change in a Pretenders single make up my mind for me, and I want to do it for myself.”
“Maybe.”
“What d’you mean, maybe?”
“I mean, maybe you’re right. But that doesn’t help me, does it? You’re always like this. You work something out and everyone else has to fall into line. Were you really expecting me to say yes?”
“Dunno. Didn’t think about it, really. It was the asking that was the important thing.”
“Well, you’ve asked.” But she says it sweetly, as if she knows that what I’ve asked is a nice thing, that it has some sort of meaning, even though she’s not interested. “Thank you.”
LOVE/DATING: HIGH FIDELITY QUTOES: How had I managed to turn her into the answer to all the world’s problems?
When Charlie opens the door, my heart sinks: she looks beautiful. She still has the short, blond hair, but the cut is a lot more expensive now, and she’s aging in a really elegant way—around her eyes there are faint, friendly, sexy crow’s-feet which make her look like Sylvia Sims, and she’s wearing a self-consciously grown-up black cocktail dress (although it probably only seems self-conscious to me because as far as I’m concerned she’s only just stepped out of a pair of baggy jeans and a Television T-shirt). Straightaway I start to worry that I’m going to fall for her again, and I’ll make a fool of myself, and it’s all going to end in pain, humiliation, and self-loathing, just as it did before. She kisses me, hugs me, tells me I don’t look any different and that it’s great to see me, and then she points me to a room where I can leave my jacket. It’s her bedroom (arty, of course, with a huge abstract painting on one wall and what looks like a rug on another); I have a sudden panic when I’m in there. The other coats on the bed are expensive, and for a moment I entertain the idea of going through the pockets and then doing a runner.
But I want to see Clara, Charlie’s friend, who’s right up my street. I want to see her because I don’t know where my street is; I don’t even know which part of town it’s in, which city, which country, so maybe she’ll enable me to get my bearings. And it’ll be interesting, too, to see what street Charlie thinks I live on, whether it’s the Old Kent Road or Park Lane. (Five women who don’t live on my street, as far as I know, but would be very welcome if they ever decided to move into the area: the Holly Hunter of Broadcast News; the Meg Ryan ofSleepless in Seattle; a woman doctor I saw on the telly once, who had lots of long frizzy hair and carved up a Tory MP in a debate about embryos, although I don’t know her name and I’ve never been able to find a pinup of her; Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story;Valerie Harper in the TV series Roda. These are women who talk back, women with a mind of their own, women with snap and crackle and pop … but they are also women who seem to need the love of a good man. I could rescue them. I could redeem them. They could make me laugh, and I could make them laugh, maybe, on a good day, and we could stay in and watch one of their films or TV programs or embryo debates on video and adopt disadvantaged children together and the whole family could play soccer in Central Park.)
When I walk into the sitting room, I can see immediately that I’m doomed to die a long, slow, suffocating death. There’s a man wearing a sort of brick red jacket and another man in a carefully rumpled linen suit and Charlie in her cocktail dress and another woman wearing fluorescent leggings and a dazzling white silk blouse and another woman wearing those trousers that look like a dress but which aren’t. Isn’t. Whatever. And the moment I see them I want to cry, not only through terror, but through sheer envy: Why isn’t my life like this?
Both of the women who are not Charlie are beautiful, not pretty, not attractive, not appealing, beautiful—and to my panicking, blinking, twitching eye virtually indistinguishable: miles of dark hair, thousands of huge earrings, yards of red lips, hundreds of white teeth. The one wearing the white silk blouse shuffles along Charlie’s enormous sofa, which is made of glass, or lead, or gold—some intimidating, un-sofa like material, anyway—and smiles at me; Charlie interrupts the others (‘Guys, guys … ’) and introduces me to the rest of the party. Clara’s on the sofa with me, as it were, ha ha, Nick’s in the brick red jacket, Barney’s in the linen suit, Emma’s in the trousers that look like a dress. If these people were ever up my street, I’d have to barricade myself inside the flat.
“We were just talking about what we’d call a dog if we had one,” says Charlie. “Emma’s got a Labrador called Dizzy, after Dizzy Gillespie.”
“Oh, right,” I say. “I’m not very keen on dogs.”
None of them says anything for a while; there’s not much they can say, really, about my lack of enthusiasm for dogs.
“Is that size of flat, or childhood fear, or the smell, or … ?” asks Clara, very sweetly.
“I dunno. I’m just … ” I shrug hopelessly, “you know, not very keen.”
They smile politely.
As it turns out, this is my major contribution to the evening’s conversation, and later on I find myself recalling the line wistfully as belonging to a Golden Age of Wit. I’d even use it again if I could, but the rest of the topics for discussion don’t give me the chance—I haven’t seen the films or the plays they’ve seen, and I haven’t been to the places they’ve visited. I find out that Clara works in publishing, and Nick’s in PR; I find out too that Emma lives in Clapham. Anna finds out that I live in Crouch End, and Clara finds out that I own a record shop. Emma has read Wild Swans; Charlie hasn’t, but would very much like to, and may even borrow Emma’s copy. Barney has been skiing recently. I could probably remember a couple of other things if I had to. For most of the evening, however, I sit there like a pudding, feeling like a child who’s been allowed to stay up late for a special treat. We eat stuff I don’t know about, and either Nick or Barney comments on each bottle of wine we drink apart from the one I brought.
The difference between these people and me is that they finished college and I didn’t (they didn’t split up with Charlie and I did); as a consequence, they have smart jobs and I have a scruffy job, they are rich and I am poor, they are self-confident and I am incontinent, they do not smoke and I do, they have opinions and I have lists. Could I tell them anything about which journey is the worst for jet lag? No.
Could they tell me the original lineup of the Wailers? No.
They probably couldn’t even tell me the lead singer’s name.
But they’re not bad people. I’m not a class warrior, and anyway, they’re not particularly posh—they probably have mothers and fathers just outside Watford or its equivalent, too. Do I want some of what they’ve got? You bet. I want their opinions, I want their money, I want their clothes, I want their ability to talk about dogs’ names without any hint of embarrassment. I want to go back to 1979 and start all over again.
It doesn’t help that Charlie talks bollocks all night; she doesn’t listen to anyone, she tries too hard to go off at obtuse angles, she puts on all sorts of unrecognizable and inappropriate accents. I would like to say that these are all new mannerisms, but they’re not; they were there before, years ago. The not listening I once mistook for strength of character, the obtuseness I misread as mystery, the accents I saw as glamour and drama. How had I managed to edit all this out in the intervening years? How had I managed to turn her into the answer to all the world’s problems?
I stick the evening out, even though I’m not worth the sofa space for most of it, and I outstay Clara and Nick and Barney and Emma. When they’ve gone, I realize that I spent the whole time drinking instead of speaking, and as a consequence I can no longer focus properly.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Charlie asks. “She’s just your type.”
I shrug. “She’s everybody’s type.” I help myself to some more coffee. I’m drunk, and it seems like a good idea just to launch in. “Charlie, why did you pack me in for Marco?”
She looks at me hard. “I knew it.”
“What?”
“You are going through one of those what-does-it-all-mean things.” She says “what-does-it-all-mean” in an American accent and furrows her brow.
I cannot tell a lie. “I am, actually, yes. Yes, indeed. Very much so.”
She laughs, at me, I think, not with me, and then plays with one of her rings.
“You can say what you like,” I tell her, generously.
“It’s all kind of a bit lost in the … in the dense mists of time now.” She says “dense mists of time” in an Irish accent, for no apparent reason, and waves her hand around in front of her face, presumably to indicate the density of the mist. “It wasn’t that I fancied Marco more, because I used to find you every bit as attractive as him.” (Pause.) “It’s just that he knew he was nice-looking, and you didn’t, and that made a difference, somehow. You used to act as though I was a bit peculiar for wanting to spend time with you, and that got kind of tiring, if you know what I mean. Your self-image started to rub off on me, and I ended up thinking I was peculiar. And I knew you were kind, and thoughtful, and you made me laugh, and I loved the way you got consumed by the things you loved, but … Marco seemed a bit more, I don’t know, glamorous? More sure of himself, more in with the in-crowd?” (Pause.) “Less hard work, ’cause I felt I was dragging you round a bit.” (Pause.) “A bit sunnier, and a bit sparkier.” (Pause.) “I don’t know. You know what people are like at that age. They make very superficial judgments.”
Where’s the superficial? I was, and therefore am, dim, gloomy, a drag, unfashionable, unfanciable, and awkward. This doesn’t seem like superficial to me. These aren’t flesh wounds. These are life-threatening thrusts into the internal organs.
“Do you find that hurtful? He was a wally, if that’s any consolation.”
It’s not, really, but I didn’t want consolation. I wanted the works, and I got it, too. None of Alison Ashworth’s kismet here; none of Sarah’s rewriting of history, and no reminder that I’d got all the rejection stuff the wrong way round, like I did about Penny. Just a perfectly clear explanation of why some people have it and some people don’t. Later on, in the back of a minicab, I realize that all Charlie has done is rephrase my own feelings about my genius for being normal; maybe that particular talent—my only one, as it happens—was overrated anyway.
But I want to see Clara, Charlie’s friend, who’s right up my street. I want to see her because I don’t know where my street is; I don’t even know which part of town it’s in, which city, which country, so maybe she’ll enable me to get my bearings. And it’ll be interesting, too, to see what street Charlie thinks I live on, whether it’s the Old Kent Road or Park Lane. (Five women who don’t live on my street, as far as I know, but would be very welcome if they ever decided to move into the area: the Holly Hunter of Broadcast News; the Meg Ryan ofSleepless in Seattle; a woman doctor I saw on the telly once, who had lots of long frizzy hair and carved up a Tory MP in a debate about embryos, although I don’t know her name and I’ve never been able to find a pinup of her; Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story;Valerie Harper in the TV series Roda. These are women who talk back, women with a mind of their own, women with snap and crackle and pop … but they are also women who seem to need the love of a good man. I could rescue them. I could redeem them. They could make me laugh, and I could make them laugh, maybe, on a good day, and we could stay in and watch one of their films or TV programs or embryo debates on video and adopt disadvantaged children together and the whole family could play soccer in Central Park.)
When I walk into the sitting room, I can see immediately that I’m doomed to die a long, slow, suffocating death. There’s a man wearing a sort of brick red jacket and another man in a carefully rumpled linen suit and Charlie in her cocktail dress and another woman wearing fluorescent leggings and a dazzling white silk blouse and another woman wearing those trousers that look like a dress but which aren’t. Isn’t. Whatever. And the moment I see them I want to cry, not only through terror, but through sheer envy: Why isn’t my life like this?
Both of the women who are not Charlie are beautiful, not pretty, not attractive, not appealing, beautiful—and to my panicking, blinking, twitching eye virtually indistinguishable: miles of dark hair, thousands of huge earrings, yards of red lips, hundreds of white teeth. The one wearing the white silk blouse shuffles along Charlie’s enormous sofa, which is made of glass, or lead, or gold—some intimidating, un-sofa like material, anyway—and smiles at me; Charlie interrupts the others (‘Guys, guys … ’) and introduces me to the rest of the party. Clara’s on the sofa with me, as it were, ha ha, Nick’s in the brick red jacket, Barney’s in the linen suit, Emma’s in the trousers that look like a dress. If these people were ever up my street, I’d have to barricade myself inside the flat.
“We were just talking about what we’d call a dog if we had one,” says Charlie. “Emma’s got a Labrador called Dizzy, after Dizzy Gillespie.”
“Oh, right,” I say. “I’m not very keen on dogs.”
None of them says anything for a while; there’s not much they can say, really, about my lack of enthusiasm for dogs.
“Is that size of flat, or childhood fear, or the smell, or … ?” asks Clara, very sweetly.
“I dunno. I’m just … ” I shrug hopelessly, “you know, not very keen.”
They smile politely.
As it turns out, this is my major contribution to the evening’s conversation, and later on I find myself recalling the line wistfully as belonging to a Golden Age of Wit. I’d even use it again if I could, but the rest of the topics for discussion don’t give me the chance—I haven’t seen the films or the plays they’ve seen, and I haven’t been to the places they’ve visited. I find out that Clara works in publishing, and Nick’s in PR; I find out too that Emma lives in Clapham. Anna finds out that I live in Crouch End, and Clara finds out that I own a record shop. Emma has read Wild Swans; Charlie hasn’t, but would very much like to, and may even borrow Emma’s copy. Barney has been skiing recently. I could probably remember a couple of other things if I had to. For most of the evening, however, I sit there like a pudding, feeling like a child who’s been allowed to stay up late for a special treat. We eat stuff I don’t know about, and either Nick or Barney comments on each bottle of wine we drink apart from the one I brought.
The difference between these people and me is that they finished college and I didn’t (they didn’t split up with Charlie and I did); as a consequence, they have smart jobs and I have a scruffy job, they are rich and I am poor, they are self-confident and I am incontinent, they do not smoke and I do, they have opinions and I have lists. Could I tell them anything about which journey is the worst for jet lag? No.
Could they tell me the original lineup of the Wailers? No.
They probably couldn’t even tell me the lead singer’s name.
But they’re not bad people. I’m not a class warrior, and anyway, they’re not particularly posh—they probably have mothers and fathers just outside Watford or its equivalent, too. Do I want some of what they’ve got? You bet. I want their opinions, I want their money, I want their clothes, I want their ability to talk about dogs’ names without any hint of embarrassment. I want to go back to 1979 and start all over again.
It doesn’t help that Charlie talks bollocks all night; she doesn’t listen to anyone, she tries too hard to go off at obtuse angles, she puts on all sorts of unrecognizable and inappropriate accents. I would like to say that these are all new mannerisms, but they’re not; they were there before, years ago. The not listening I once mistook for strength of character, the obtuseness I misread as mystery, the accents I saw as glamour and drama. How had I managed to edit all this out in the intervening years? How had I managed to turn her into the answer to all the world’s problems?
I stick the evening out, even though I’m not worth the sofa space for most of it, and I outstay Clara and Nick and Barney and Emma. When they’ve gone, I realize that I spent the whole time drinking instead of speaking, and as a consequence I can no longer focus properly.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Charlie asks. “She’s just your type.”
I shrug. “She’s everybody’s type.” I help myself to some more coffee. I’m drunk, and it seems like a good idea just to launch in. “Charlie, why did you pack me in for Marco?”
She looks at me hard. “I knew it.”
“What?”
“You are going through one of those what-does-it-all-mean things.” She says “what-does-it-all-mean” in an American accent and furrows her brow.
I cannot tell a lie. “I am, actually, yes. Yes, indeed. Very much so.”
She laughs, at me, I think, not with me, and then plays with one of her rings.
“You can say what you like,” I tell her, generously.
“It’s all kind of a bit lost in the … in the dense mists of time now.” She says “dense mists of time” in an Irish accent, for no apparent reason, and waves her hand around in front of her face, presumably to indicate the density of the mist. “It wasn’t that I fancied Marco more, because I used to find you every bit as attractive as him.” (Pause.) “It’s just that he knew he was nice-looking, and you didn’t, and that made a difference, somehow. You used to act as though I was a bit peculiar for wanting to spend time with you, and that got kind of tiring, if you know what I mean. Your self-image started to rub off on me, and I ended up thinking I was peculiar. And I knew you were kind, and thoughtful, and you made me laugh, and I loved the way you got consumed by the things you loved, but … Marco seemed a bit more, I don’t know, glamorous? More sure of himself, more in with the in-crowd?” (Pause.) “Less hard work, ’cause I felt I was dragging you round a bit.” (Pause.) “A bit sunnier, and a bit sparkier.” (Pause.) “I don’t know. You know what people are like at that age. They make very superficial judgments.”
Where’s the superficial? I was, and therefore am, dim, gloomy, a drag, unfashionable, unfanciable, and awkward. This doesn’t seem like superficial to me. These aren’t flesh wounds. These are life-threatening thrusts into the internal organs.
“Do you find that hurtful? He was a wally, if that’s any consolation.”
It’s not, really, but I didn’t want consolation. I wanted the works, and I got it, too. None of Alison Ashworth’s kismet here; none of Sarah’s rewriting of history, and no reminder that I’d got all the rejection stuff the wrong way round, like I did about Penny. Just a perfectly clear explanation of why some people have it and some people don’t. Later on, in the back of a minicab, I realize that all Charlie has done is rephrase my own feelings about my genius for being normal; maybe that particular talent—my only one, as it happens—was overrated anyway.
LOVE LETTER: DEAR SOULMATE
Dear Soulmate,
Seams of my life have unraveled to reveal my heart,and expose my love to you. You arouse my spirit. Rekindle the fire. Unleashed the passion. You caress the very essence of my soul.You linger in my heart even when you're gone.The breathless anticipation of seeing you from day to day awakens my loving desire for you whenever you come into sight.My love for you has no boundaries or secrets.It's in my essence, devouring the fiber of my being
and is devoted to you alone.My love for you reaches far and wide and travels through the four seasons, the four corners of the earth and far beyond space and time. My love for you is a journey of lofty mountain tops, beautiful gardens, deep seas, blue lakes, rivers and streams. My love for you consumes my heart. My love for you soars beyond the edge of the world, up into the sky, through the clouds, past the sun,the stars, the moon, the heavens, and the galaxy searching for you, my love, to tell you how much I care. My love for you is the totality of all existing things.My love, I Love You.
Seams of my life have unraveled to reveal my heart,and expose my love to you. You arouse my spirit. Rekindle the fire. Unleashed the passion. You caress the very essence of my soul.You linger in my heart even when you're gone.The breathless anticipation of seeing you from day to day awakens my loving desire for you whenever you come into sight.My love for you has no boundaries or secrets.It's in my essence, devouring the fiber of my being
and is devoted to you alone.My love for you reaches far and wide and travels through the four seasons, the four corners of the earth and far beyond space and time. My love for you is a journey of lofty mountain tops, beautiful gardens, deep seas, blue lakes, rivers and streams. My love for you consumes my heart. My love for you soars beyond the edge of the world, up into the sky, through the clouds, past the sun,the stars, the moon, the heavens, and the galaxy searching for you, my love, to tell you how much I care. My love for you is the totality of all existing things.My love, I Love You.
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