Absolute Truths (75 page)

As I stared at him he fumbled for a cigarette and made a great business of lighting it before he said: ‘I’m sorry I lied but I was
in such a state that I felt I couldn’t cope if you tried to stage a
prodigal son scene.’

Mystified I asked: ‘Would that have been such a difficult thing
to cope with?’

‘
Yes, because I don’t deserve any big welcome. All I deserve is
castration, disembowelment and hanging.’

‘Michael —’

‘
The Dinkie business was bad enough — God, what a mess! I
was so sure that I could save her, just as you saved Mum, but we
kept having rows and sleeping with either people — Dinkie said she had to hedge her bets in case I left her — so then I thought
marriage would be the answer — but I knew deep down it wasn’t, so I panicked and ran home to Mum and she fixed everything, but Mum didn’t really understand Dinkie, not really, she just thought
Dinkie was a gold-digger, but Dinkie’s insecure. If only she could
find someone who really cared, she wouldn’t be so money-fixated,
but she’ll never find a man who could stand it, they’ll get bored,
just
as
I did, and she’ll keep sleeping around to hedge her bets and
eventually there’ll be some sort of bloody ending —’

‘I doubt it. I sec her
as a
survivor.’

Michael said: ‘You can’t always tell who’s going to survive,’ and
suddenly he became so pale that his skin assumed a greenish tinge.
Producing a Kleenex paper handkerchief from his pocket he blew
his nose and added unevenly: ‘If only I’d had more foresight I’d
.never have got involved with Dinkie no matter how much I wanted
to cure her unhappiness. It was hell.’

With enormous relief I remembered the name of the girl. My
memory was jolted by the word ‘foresight’, and at once I thought
of Holly, one of Galsworthy’s characters in The Forsyte Saga’.
‘No wonder you turned to Holly,’ I said quickly. ‘She must have
seemed such a refreshing change.’

‘
She did. She was. But she’s dead,’ said Michael, and began to
tear the tissue to shreds.

I said slowly: ‘I’m very, very sorry. What happened?’

Dropping the last fragment of Kleenex on the shredded pile
Michael said: ‘It was never really much of a romance.’ He picked up
his cigarette from the ashtray before adding in an odd monotonous
voice: ‘I thought I’d enjoy a girl who had a reasonable IQ and no
problems, but I knew right after the first night that it was no good
sex-wise so I decided to give her the push, not violently, not
traumatically, not unkindly, I mean just a little push, a sort of
it’s-been-great-you’re-fantastic little push, a push that implied I
hoped we’d always be good friends — because after all we’re both
in the same crowd and I knew I’d be seeing her again and again at Marina’s parties, so I wanted to part on good terms with her,
why not — hell, I
wanted
to be friends, and that’s the great thing
about the 1960s, isn’t it, everyone knows you can have a fling and then stay friends afterwards, you can do your own thing free from
guilt, everyone knows that, everyone knows we’re all liberated now
— and I said that to Holly, but she couldn’t seem to understand.
She just said: "If this is liberation, why do I feel I’m bleeding to
death in chains?" And then she told me she’d been in love with
me for ages, long before I’d ever taken her out, and that was when
I realised that as far as she was concerned the one-night stand
wasn’t just a fling.

‘
She called it a grand passion. She’d always kept her deepest
feelings hidden, she said, because she was afraid I’d find them too
much — and she was right, I did find them too much, I was horri
fied, I thought: my God, this is the last thing I need, a heavy
emotional scene! After the mess with Dinkie I felt I wanted someone light and bright and amusing, not someone who said she felt
she was bleeding to death in chains, not someone who was going
to flounce around playing the tragedy queen and being a bloody bore. I wanted to run a mile. But in the end I found I couldn’t. I
may be a bastard but I’m not a complete bastard. I didn’t want to
plough her under.

‘
I decided to abandon all idea of making a quick clean break
and detach myself very gently, but oh God, that didn’t work out
at all, she just got keener and keener and began to talk of marriage
and ... well, I knew I had to end it, had to, and I did try a day
later, but she started threatening suicide ... Not that I believed
she’d do it, of course, but when she started ranting on about
bleeding to death in chains I couldn’t take it, couldn’t cope, so I
said okay, I’d stay with her — anything for a quiet life — but I really
resented the way she’d piled on the emotional blackmail.

‘
Well, the next night I got in such a state, knowing I had to
finish the affair but not having the bloody guts to do it, that I got
drunk and went to bed with a girl called Nadia who’d been angling
for me for ages — and hey presto, there I was, involved with yet
another woman who wasn’t going to let go without a fight. Holly
hadn’t actually moved in with me — she was too afraid of what
her parents might say — so I did have the scope to entertain Nadia at my flat, but although I thought I was being so discreet someone
found out. I think it must have been Marina’s other room-mate,
Emma-Louise. She was the one who introduced me to Nadia.
They were at school together.

‘
Anyway last night Holly turned up, banging on the door of
my flat, crying, screaming, completely hysterical, and said she knew
about Nadia — and suddenly I found I couldn’t take her any more,
something in me snapped and I yelled at her to get the hell out
of my life — which was quite the wrong approach, I knew it was,
but —’

‘
What was Holly’s reaction?’ I said, trying to help him as he
faltered.

‘
She stopped screaming, became very quiet. Then she said: "I’m
going to cut my wrists and bleed to death."‘

‘And you said —’

‘
I said: "Don’t forget to put on your chains!"‘ Tears began to
stream down his cheeks but he managed to go on speaking. ‘I
didn’t take her seriously,’ he said. ‘I thought: doesn’t that stupid girl know that those who threaten suicide never do it? Everyone
knows that, I thought to myself. Everyone.’

By now I was beyond speech. Eventually Michael ground out
his cigarette, wiped his eyes with his cuffs and said: ‘This afternoon at the BBC, around five, I got a call from Marina. She said: "You’ve
got to come. There’s been a catastrophe." Then she hung up. I
went to her flat. Emma-Louise had got back from work and found
Holly dead. Marina had arrived seconds later and called me straight
away. Holly was stone cold. Obviously she’d never been to work
that day and had killed herself after the others had left that
morning.

‘
Well, I get there and I’m in shock, can’t think, can’t speak — we’re all in shock, in fact, but suddenly Emma-Louise loses her cool and calls me a murderer. She even starts screaming before
Marina shuts her up. It was funny how Marina took charge, fixing
everything. I was sort of reminded of Mum .. .

‘
Emma-Louise was pointing at me and screaming: "I want that
bastard crucified at the inquest!" but Marina said: "If Michael’s
crucified in court, we’ll all end up crucified in the gossip columns,
and personally I’ve never fancied being nailed to a piece of wood."
Then she said our best hope of avoiding scandal was to keep quiet
to the police about my affair with Holly — the affair was still so
new and few people knew how deeply Holly had committed herself — she hadn’t wanted word to get back to her strait-laced parents.
Marina said everyone in the Coterie — our crowd — would keep
quiet. "United we stand," she said. "Divided we fall." Then she
asked me which of my friends knew I’d been so heavily involved.

‘
I said I’d told my best friend but I could trust him to keep quiet.
The real problem was Charley. He knew about Holly because he’d
called at my flat unexpectedly and caught her wandering around
in my dressing-gown — bloody Charley, always checking up on
me so that he can tell tales to you! But Marina said: "Blood’s
thicker than water — he’ll keep quiet too," and just as I was thinking
that I really might be able to survive the mess without being
slammed by the coroner, the penny dropped and I realised I hadn’t
followed Marina’s line of reasoning at all. I said: "But if we cover
up the affair we leave Holly with no motive for killing herself"
And then Marina told me. She said: "She doesn’t need one. She’s
been unstable ever since she had a breakdown in her teens, and so
the coroner has the perfect excuse to write her off as a neurotic
who couldn’t cope with life."

‘
I was struck dumb. I thought how I’d assumed Holly was a
nice normal girl with no problems. I didn’t know about the break
down. I suppose she didn’t tell me because she was afraid I’d be
put off. I thought I knew everything about her yet I knew
nothing,
nothing
...
I’d just wandered along and smashed her up and —’
But he could not go on.

I tried to rescue him with a plain, factual question. ‘What hap
pened when the police arrived?’

‘
I don’t know. Marina sent me away. I know I should have
stayed but I was so wiped out that I just did what I was told.
Marina gave me a brandy before I left. We all had brandy, and
afterwards Emma-Louise apologised, said she’d only lashed out at
me because she felt so guilty. That was when it dawned on me
that she must have been the one who told Holly about Nadia — I
can
just see Nadia bragging away to Emma-Louise in some bloody
coffee-bar — but Marina interpreted the remark differently; she
thought Emma-Louise felt guilty because she hadn’t taken Holly’s suicide threats seriously. Marina said: "We’re
all
guilty of that, but
now’s not the time to wallow in guilt. We’ve got to stay cool, stick
together and survive."

‘
The strange thing was that
as
she spoke I felt I was seeing her
for the first time — I felt as if I’d previously known her no better
than I’d known Holly. Marina always gives t c impression of being
such a dizzy society girl, but the truth is she’s so smart, so loyal,
so
strong ...
And the moment I recognised her strength, I realised
what a farce all my relationships with girls had been because of course
I
was the damaged one who needed curing,
I
was the one
who couldn’t get my act together, and what I really needed wasn’t
a weak woman but a strong one, someone I could always trust,
someone who’d stand by me whatever I did, someone like ... But
I’ll never get anywhere with Marina. She’s only interested in men who aren’t available for marriage, but never mind, I don’t deserve
her anyway, I don’t deserve anyone, I ought to be locked up, I
feel absolutely unforgivable.’

It was the crucial moment. How strange it was that I should
then think not of Lyle, writing in her journal, but of Harriet,
pouring herself out into her sculpture and toiling ceaselessly to
‘make everything come right’.

Abandoning my position at the sideboard, I moved back to the
sofa and sat down at last by Michael’s side.

‘
I killed her,’ Michael was saying, but I answered at once: No.
Suicide doesn’t inevitably follow a failed love affair. There’s always
a choice, even for neurotics.’

‘But if she hadn’t been having an affair with me —’

‘
She might have been having an affair with someone else. Or
she might have remained chaste and still wound up killing
herself.’

‘But I feel so guilty —’

‘
Of course. If you felt no guilt at all I’d be very worried about you, but it’s very important that you shouldn’t feel guilty about
something that didn’t happen and you did not kill that girl. You’ve
got to get this whole disaster absolutely straight in your mind in
order to master it and make sure you never make such a tragic
mistake again. Did you see the body?’

He nodded, shuddering.

‘
Good. If you hadn’t seen it, you’d now be torturing yourself
by imagining it and that would be much worse. Did she, in fact,
cut her wrists?’

‘
In the bath, yes. The water ... Oh God, I’ll never forget it,
never —’

‘
You shouldn’t be aiming to forget it. If you push it underground
in your mind, it’ll drive you to drink and destroy you. You’ve got
to face it and learn to live with it.’

‘
I don’t see how I can. I want to go completely to pieces.’

‘
And compound the tragedy? What use would that be either to
you or to anyone
else?
Why throw your life away when you’ve
now at last got the opportunity to live more fully than you’ve ever
lived before?’

‘
How do you mean?’

‘
If you learn from your mistakes you reshape yourself and re
design the future. If you learn nothing and remain the same then
the future is just the past repeating itself.’

Michael said in despair: ‘Those are just words. I can’t connect
with them.’

‘
In the war,’ I said at once, shifting tack, ‘I found out that what
people couldn’t stand was meaningless suffering. If they were able
to give it meaning, they survived. Meaning generates hope, and
hope generates the will to live.’

‘
Yes, but —’

‘
You can choose to give Holly’s death no meaning; you can
block it from your mind, probably with disastrous results. Or you
can give her death a malign meaning; you can go to pieces, certainly
with disastrous results. Or you can give her death meaning by bringing something positive out of it; you can
use
it
as a
torch to illuminate your own life and as a tool to alter what needs to be
changed.’

Michael thought about this for a while. He produced another
Kleenex tissue and shredded it. The glass of whisky remained
unfinished on the table.

Finally he said: ‘Maybe this is a call to chuck up the Beeb, go
into the Church and make you happy after giving you hell for so
long.’

‘
If you went into the Church just to make me happy I’d be
miserable.’

‘But —’

‘
Michael, if God really wants you to be a clergyman, I’ve no
doubt he’ll make his wishes perfectly clear in due course. In the
meantime you’ll make me happiest if you continue as a drama
producer.’

‘
But if I stay at the BBC aren’t I just being selfish by doing what
I like best?’

‘
Not necessarily. It’s a complete myth that people can only serve
God by doing what they hate and making themselves miserable.
All they’re doing is serving the demon guilt which makes them
want to punish themselves.’

‘
But Christianity drones on and on about suffering —’

‘
The spiritual director Somerset Ward used to equate that use
of the word "suffering" with effort Christianity’s about effort —
about expending blood, sweat and tears to be what you’ve been
designed by God to be and do what you’ve been designed by God
to do. That’s certainly not incompatible with personal fulfilment
and lasting happiness — quite the reverse. What’s incompatible is
not bothering to find out who one is, settling for something less
or something other than what one should be, trampling on others
in order to realise a self designed by the ego instead of valuing
and caring for others in order to realise the true self designed by
God.’

Michael sighed and looked more despondent than ever, but he
stopped sitting tensely on the edge of the sofa and no new Kleenex
appeared for shredding. At last he said: ‘I wish I could believe in
God permanently. I hate these long intervals when I’m a dithering
agnostic or a rampant atheist.’

‘
Perhaps all the uncertainty sets up the tension which enables
you to work more creatively.’

He failed to hear this. ‘I just feel that we’d get on so much better
if I
was a fanatical
believer like Charley –’

‘
I think not. I want to talk to you about Charley, Michael,’ I
heard myself say. ‘I want to say how sorry I am that I got so
many things wrong in the past.’ And
as
Michael gazed at me in
amazement again I knew we were at last emerging from the dead
desert of estrangement in which we had been so painfully trapped
for so long.