How to Be Good (26 page)

‘Oh. Right. Sorry. That would be nice, yes. And you're sure you don't want GoodNews to come with us? He's very good at that kind of stuff.'

‘I'm going through a really intuitive time at the moment, I have to say,' says GoodNews. ‘And I know what you're saying about husband and wife and that whole intimacy thing, but you'd be amazed at the stuff I can pick up that's kind of zapping about between you.' And he makes a zigzaggy gesture, the exact meaning of which is lost on me, but which I presume is intended to indicate wonky marital communication.

‘Thanks, but it's fine,' I tell him. ‘We'll call you if we have trouble.'

He smiles patiently. ‘That's not going to work, is it? I'm babysitting, remember? I can't just leave them here on their own.'

‘We'll ask for a doggy-bag and come home immediately.'

He points a hey-you're-sharp finger at me. I have hit on the solution, and we are allowed out.

 

‘So.'

‘So.'

It's such a familiar routine. Two spicy poppadoms for him, one plain one for me, mango chutney and those onion pieces on a side plate placed between us for easy dunking . . . We've been doing this for fifteen years, ever since we could afford it, although before you get the impression that the variety and spontaneity have gone from our lives, I should point out that we've only been coming to this particular restaurant for a decade. Our previous favourite got taken over, and they changed the menu slightly, so we moved to find a closer approximation of what we were used to.

We need things like the Curry Queen, though. Not just David and I, but all of us. What does a marriage look like? Ours looks like this, a side plate smeared with mango chutney. That's how we can tell it apart from all the others. That mango chutney is the white smudge on the cheek of your black cat, or the registration number of a new car, or the name-tag in a child's school sweatshirt; without it we'd be lost. Without that side plate and its orange smear, I might one day come back from the toilet and sit down at a completely different marriage. (And who's to say that this completely different marriage would be any better or worse than the one I already have? I am suddenly struck by the absurdity of my decision – not the one handed to me by the vicar in the surgery, which still seems as good or as bad as any, but the one I made all those years ago.)

‘You wanted to talk,' David says.

‘Don't you?'

‘Well, yes. I suppose so. If you do.'

‘I do, yes.'

‘Right.' Silence. ‘Off you go, then.'

‘I'm going to stop sleeping at Janet's.'

‘Oh. OK, then.' He sips his lager, apparently unsure whether this news has any relevance to his life.

‘Are you moving back home? Or have you found somewhere else?'

‘No, no, I'm moving back home.' I suddenly feel a little sorry for him: it was not, after all, an unreasonable question. Most relationships in crisis probably provide some sort of clue to their eventual success or failure: the couples concerned start sleeping together again, for example, or attacking each other with kitchen knives, and from those symptoms one can make some kind of prognosis. We haven't had anything like that, however. I moved out without really explaining why, and then a nice lady vicar who doesn't know anything about me told me to move back in because I bullied her. No wonder David felt that his enquiry had several possible answers. He must have felt as though he were asking me who I thought would win the Grand National.

‘Oh, right. Well, fine. Good. Good. I'm pleased.'

‘Are you?'

‘Yes, of course.'

I want to ask him why, and then argue with whatever he says, but I'm not going to. I've stopped all that. I have made my mind up – or rather, I have had it made up for me – and I have no wish to disassemble it.

‘Is there anything I can do to make it easier for you?'

‘Do you mean that?'

‘Yes. I think so.'

‘What am I allowed to ask for?'

‘Anything you want. And if I don't think it's reasonable, we'll talk about it.'

‘Is there any possibility that GoodNews could find somewhere else to live?'

‘That really bothers you?'

‘Yes. Of course.'

‘Fine. I'll tell him he has to go.'

‘Simple as that?'

‘Simple as that. I'm not sure that it's going to make much difference, though. I mean, he'll still be round all the time. We work together. We're colleagues. Our office is in the house.'

‘OK.' I think about this, and decide that David is right: it won't make much difference. I don't want GoodNews living in the house because I don't like GoodNews, but that problem will not be solved by him going to sleep somewhere else at nights. I have wasted one of my three wishes.

‘What do you do exactly?'

‘Sorry?'

‘You say you and GoodNews work together. What do you do?'

A woman on the next table looks at me, and then looks away, and then looks at David. She is clearly trying to work out what my relationship with this man is. I have just told him I will move in with him, but now – somewhat late in the day, she must be thinking – I want to find out what he does.

‘Ha! Good question!' When normal people give this answer to that question, they are usually making a joke. You know: ‘Good question! Bugger all, really! Blowed if I know!', etc. But David means: ‘Phew! How would I explain it, in all its knotty complexity!'

‘Thank you.'

The woman on the next table catches my eye. ‘Don't move in!' she's trying to say. ‘He doesn't even recognize sarcasm!' I try to answer her back, using similar methods: ‘It's OK! We've been married for donkey's years! But we've sort of lost touch recently! Spiritual conversion!' I'm not sure she picks it all up, though. It's a lot of information to convey without words.

‘We're more at a strategic stage. We haven't got any actual projects on the go, but we're thinking.'

‘Right. What are you thinking about?'

‘We're thinking about how we can persuade people to give away everything they earn over and above the national average wage. We're just doing the sums at the moment.'

‘How are they working out?'

‘Well, you know. It's tough. It's not as straightforward as it sounds.'

I'm not making this up. This is actually what he says, in real life, in the Curry Queen.

‘Oh, and we're sort of writing a book.'

‘A book.'

‘Yes. “How to be Good”, we're going to call it. It's about how we should all live our lives. You know, suggestions. Like taking in the homeless, and giving away your money, and what to do about things like property ownership and, I don't know, the Third World and so on.'

‘So this book's aimed at high-ranking employees of the IMF?'

‘No, no, it's for people like you and me. Because we get confused, don't we?'

‘We do.'

‘So it's a good idea, don't you think?'

‘It's a fantastic idea.'

‘You're not being sarcastic?'

‘No. A book telling us what to think about everything? I'd buy it.'

‘I'll give you a copy.'

‘Thank you.'

The woman on the next table doesn't want to catch my eye any more. We're no longer pals. She thinks I'm as daft as David is, but I don't care. I want this book badly, and I shall believe every word, and act on every suggestion, no matter how impractical. ‘How to be Good' will become the prescription the nice lady denied me. All I need to do is quell the doubt and scepticism that makes me human.

 

When we get home, GoodNews is asleep in an armchair, a notebook open on his chest. While David is putting the kettle on, I pick the notebook up carefully and sneak a look. ‘VEGETARIAN OR MEAT?????' it says in large red letters. ‘ALLOWED ORGANIC???? Probly.' No doubt the book will tell us how to feed a family of four on organic meat when we have given away most of our income. I
put the book back gently where I found it, but GoodNews wakes anyway.

‘Did you have a cool time?'

‘Very cool,' I say. ‘But I've got a splitting headache.'

David comes into the living room with three mugs of tea on a tray.

‘I'm sorry,' he says. ‘You didn't tell me.'

‘I've had it for a while. A few days. Anyone got any ideas?'

David laughs. ‘You know GoodNews. He's full of ideas. But I didn't think you were interested.'

‘I'm interested in having headaches taken away. Who wouldn't be? And I can't take any more paracetamol. I've been popping them all day.'

‘You serious?' says GoodNews. ‘You want the treatment?'

‘Yeah. Why not?'

‘And you're prepared for what might happen?' David asks.

‘I'm prepared.'

‘OK, then. Shall we go to the study?'

 

In a way, I wish I did have a headache, but I don't; I just have a soul-ache, and I want it taken away, whatever the cost. I have given up. I have not been able to beat them, so I will join them, and if that means that I never again utter a cogent sentence, or think a sardonic thought, or trade banter with colleagues or friends, then so be it. I will sacrifice everything that I have come to think of as me for the sake of my marriage and family unity. Maybe that's what marriage is anyhow, the death of the personality, and GoodNews is irrelevant: I should have killed myself, as it were, years ago. As I walk up the stairs I feel like I am experiencing my own personal Jonestown.

GoodNews ushers me in and I sit on David's writing chair.

‘Do I have to take anything off?' I'm not afraid of GoodNews in that way. I doubt if he has a sexuality. I think it has been subsumed in some way, used as a stock for his spiritual stew.

‘Oh, no. If I can't get through a couple of layers of cotton, I'm not gonna get through to the inner Katie, am I?'

‘So what do you want me to do?'

‘Just sit there. Where's the headache?'

I point to a place where a headache might feasibly be, and GoodNews touches it gently.

‘Here?'

‘Yeah.'

He massages it for a little while. It feels good.

‘I'm not getting anything.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘I mean, are you sure the headache is there?'

‘Maybe over a bit?'

He moves his fingers along a couple of inches and begins to knead my scalp gently.

‘Nah. Nothing.'

‘Really? Not even – ow! – just there?'

‘Not even just there. Sorry.'

The tone in his voice suggests that he knows I'm faking it, but is too polite to say anything.

‘Is that it, then?'

‘Yeah. Nothing I can do. I can't find the pain.'

‘Can't you just do the warm hands thing anyway?'

‘That's not how it works. There's got to be something there.'

‘What does that mean?' I ask this because I know he's not just talking about the headache. He is talking about something else, something that he thinks is missing, and I believe him to be right: there is something missing, which is why I came into this room in the first place.

‘I dunno. That's just what my hands tell me. You're not . . . I'm sorry if this sounds rude, but you're not all there. In, like, the spiritual sense of the word.'

‘And David was?'

‘Must have been.'

‘But that's not fair! David used to be a horrible, sarcastic, uncaring pig!'

‘Yeah, well, I don't know about that. But there was something to work on. With you . . . It's like a flat battery in a car. You know,
I'm turning the ignition, and I'm turning the ignition, and it's just . . . ker-chunk-ker-chunk-ker-chunk.'

The noise he makes is an uncanny articulation of how I feel.

‘Maybe you need some jump leads,' says GoodNews cheerfully. ‘Shall we go downstairs and drink our tea?'

Barmy Brian, Heartsink No. 1, is first on my Monday morning list, and he's not looking good. I know that a doctor's surgery is not the place to see people looking their best, but Brian has deteriorated rapidly since I last saw him, about three weeks ago. He seems to be wearing pyjamas under his raincoat, he is unshaven, his hair is wild, his face is grey, his breath you would have to file under alcoholic/agricultural.

‘Hello, Brian,' I say cheerily. ‘In a rush this morning?'

‘Why do you say that?'

‘Aren't those pyjamas you're wearing?'

‘No.'

Even though Brian comes to see me regularly, he mistrusts me intensely and always thinks that I am trying to catch him out, as if I think that he is not who he says he is. Perhaps he isn't – perhaps he's Mental Mike, or Crazy Colin, or Loony Len – but my more or less constant position is that, whoever he is, he's not a well man, and therefore in need of my help. It's not the way he sees it, though. He seems to feel that if I succeed in unmasking him, I will banish him from the surgery.

‘I see. You're just wearing matching pink-and-blue striped shirt and trousers.'

‘No.'

I don't push it (although believe me, he is wearing pyjamas, and he is only denying it because to admit it would give me some sort of crucial information he'd rather I didn't have). There are unwritten rules for dealing with BB: you're allowed some fun – otherwise we would all be as barmy as he is – but not too much fun.

‘What can I do for you?'

‘I've got a bad stomach. I'm getting pains.'

‘Whereabouts?'

‘Here.'

He points to his abdomen. I know from previous experience that I am not allowed to touch any part of BB's body, but as most of BB's troubles are caused, not by physiological malfunction, but by the first B of his name, this is not usually much of a handicap.

‘Have you been feeling nauseous? Sick?'

‘No.'

‘What about going to the toilet? Has that been OK?'

‘How do you mean?' The tone of suspicion has returned.

‘Now, come on, Brian. If you're having abdominal pain I need to ask you questions like this.' A couple of years ago Brian frantically denied that he ever passed stools, and would only admit to peeing; I was reduced to insisting that I, too, had bowel movements, but he wouldn't listen, and nor was he interested in hearing confessions from other members of staff.

‘I've stopped going.'

‘How long ago?'

‘Couple of weeks.'

‘That may well be your problem, then.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes. Two weeks without going to the loo is enough to give you a tummy ache. Has there been a change in your diet?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Are you eating different things?'

‘Yeah. Course.' And he snorts, to emphasize the stupidity of the question.

‘Why?'

‘Because my mum died, didn't she?'

If GoodNews were to touch my head now, he wouldn't say that I had a flat battery. He would say that there were all sorts of things going on: pity, sadness, panic, hopelessness. I hadn't realized that Brian had a mum – he is, according to my notes, fifty-one years old – but it makes complete sense. Of course there would have been a mum, and of course she would have kept the Brian show on the road, and now she has gone, and there are pyjamas and abdominal cramps.

‘I'm sorry, Brian.'

‘She was old old old. She said she'd die one day. But, see, how did she make the food hot? And how are you supposed to know what should be hot and what shouldn't? 'Cos sometimes we had ham. Cold. And sometimes we had bacon. Hot. And when you buy it they don't tell you which one is which. I thought they would. I've been buying it, but I don't know what to do with it. What about lettuce and cabbage? What about hot chicken and cold chicken? And I'm sure we had cold potatoes once, but they're not like the cold potatoes that you buy in the shop. They were horrible, the ones I bought. I think I bought hot ones by mistake, but they were cold hot ones. I get muddled. I got muddled when I ate them and now I get muddled when I buy them. I feel very muddled.'

This is, I think, one of the saddest speeches I have ever heard, and it is all I can do to stop myself embracing poor Brian and weeping on his shoulder. ‘I feel very muddled, too,' I want to tell him. ‘We all do. Not knowing what should be eaten raw and what you should cook isn't such a big deal, when you consider the things other people get muddled about.'

‘I think maybe your tummy's gone funny because of eating things like raw potatoes,' I say eventually. ‘But it's OK. There are all sorts of things we can do.'

And I do some of them. I prescribe him some liquid paraffin, and I recommend a bowel-loosening takeaway curry, and I promise that I will cook him dinner myself one evening. And when he has gone I call Social Services.

 

When I get home, David and GoodNews announce that after several weeks' deliberation, they have finally isolated their candidates for ‘reversal' – their equivalents of Hope and Christopher, the people they feel most guilty about in their whole lives. I'm tired, and hungry, and not terribly interested, but they stand in front of me anyway and insist that they tell me.

‘Go on, then,' I say, with as much weariness as I feel, plus a little extra for effect.

‘Mine's called Nigel Richards,' David says proudly.

‘Who's Nigel Richards?'

‘He's a kid I used to beat up at school. Except he's not a kid now. He used to be. In the early seventies.'

‘You've never mentioned him before.'

‘Too ashamed,' says David, almost triumphantly.

I cannot help feeling that there must be someone else, someone more recent – a former colleague, a family member, me me me – but even on a day like today, when I am depressed and tired, I know better than to provide David with a long, thorny list with which he will flagellate himself for months to come. If he feels bad about Nigel Richards, then Nigel Richards it is.

GoodNews, meanwhile, has chosen his sister.

‘What', I ask, ‘did you do to your sister?'

‘Nothing, really. I just . . . I can't stand her, that's all. So I never see her. And she's my sister. I feel bad about it, you know?'

‘Do I still have to play with Hope, Mummy?'

‘You've done your bit.'

‘Well, we've never really done our bit, have we?' says David. ‘It's a lifelong commitment.'

‘So Nigel Richards is going to be your new best friend? We'll be spending all our time with Mr and Mrs Richards in the future?'

‘I'm sure Nigel Richards won't need me as a best friend. I'm sure he's gone on to have millions of successful and fulfilling relationships. But if he hasn't, then I'll be there for him, yes.'

‘You'll be there for someone you don't know because you thumped him twenty-five years ago?'

‘Yes. Exactly. I shouldn't have done it.'

‘And that's really the only thing you can think of that you shouldn't have done?'

‘Not the only. The first.'

It looks like being a very long life.

 

It is, I confess, my idea to join forces – to combine Brian and Nigel and GoodNews's sister Cantata (for that is her name – self-chosen at the age of twenty-three, apparently, after a particularly intense experience under the influence of acid in the Royal Festival Hall) at the dinner table in the hope of expunging all our sins at one fell
swoop – or at least, that is how I present it to David, who cannot see the prospect of anything but a very jolly evening, even if Nigel is now the chairman of a multinational bank and is seated next to Brian and his malfunctioning bowels for the entire evening.

The truth is that I have given up expecting anything approaching a pleasant or even tolerable social life, and so my motives for the suggestion are born from cynicism and a kind of despairing perversity: why not sit them all down together? The more the merrier! The worse the better! If nothing else, the evening will become an anecdote that may amaze and delight my friends for years to come; and maybe the desire for nice evenings with people I know and love is essentially bourgeois, reprehensible – depraved, almost.

 

GoodNews goes first. He phones the last number he had for Cantata, and then he is given another one, and then another one, and finally he tracks her down to a squat in Brighton.

‘Cantata? It's GoodNews.'

But apparently not – she hangs up.

GoodNews phones the number again.

‘Beforeyouputthephonedownagainlistento me . . . Thank you. I've been thinking a lot about you, and how badly I've treated you. And I wanted to . . .'

‘– '

‘I know.'

‘– '

‘I know.'

‘– '

‘Ah, now that wasn't my fault. I never called the police. That was Mum.'

‘– '

‘Well, I didn't run him over, did I? And I didn't leave the door open, either.'

‘– '

‘Oh, come on, Cantata. That cost seventy pence. And I'm pretty sure it was torn anyway.'

‘– '

GoodNews jumps to his feet and then keeps jumping, up and down, like someone on a trampoline. Or rather, like someone who is trying to resolve a blood feud – the kind of problem that cannot be reached by healing hands, or answered on a piece of paper, or written about in a book, but only by jumping up and down, up and down, because that is the only response left to him. I wish I had thought of jumping up and down months ago. It would have been as useful as anything else.

‘No!' GoodNews shouts. ‘No, no, no! YOU fuck off! YOU fuck off!'

And then he slams the phone down and walks out.

‘Aren't you going to talk to him?' I ask David.

‘What am I going to say?'

‘I don't know. Try to make him feel better.'

‘He shouldn't have said that. I'm very disappointed in him. We're supposed to be above all that.'

‘But we're not, are we?'

‘I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about me and him.'

‘That's the trouble, isn't it? You were human all the time. You just forgot.'

 

I go to talk to him. He's lying on his bed, chewing furiously, staring at the ceiling.

‘I'm sorry I swore in front of the kids.'

‘That's OK. They've heard that word a lot from their father.'

‘In the old days?'

‘Yeah, that's right. In the old days.' It had never occurred to me that David no longer swears in front of the children. That's a good thing, surely? OK, some would argue that this has been a Pyrrhic victory, achieved only by having a man with turtles for eyebrows coming to live with us for what seems like years, and at a cost to all semblance of a normal family life, but I choose to accentuate the positive.

‘You shouldn't beat yourself up about it,' I tell him. ‘I mean, I only heard your side of the argument, but she seems pretty unreasonable. What was all that stuff about seventy pence?'

‘Her bloody Simon LeBon poster. She's never forgotten it.'

‘I gathered that.'

‘Katie, I can't stand her. She's awful. Always has been, always will be. Cantata! What a bloody idiot.'

With enormous self-control I pass up the opportunity for first-name-calling.

‘It's OK.'

‘No it's not. She's my sister.'

‘But she's doing OK without you.'

‘I don't know that.'

‘If she needed you, you would have heard from her. Despite the unfortunate Simon LeBon poster incident.'

‘Do you think?'

‘Of course.'

‘I still feel I'm a failure though. You know, it's love this, and love that, and I fucking hate her. Excuse my language.'

And in my opinion, he's right. He is a failure, and self-interest requires that I let him know. Who are these people, that they want to save the world and yet they are incapable of forming proper relationships with anybody? As GoodNews so eloquently puts it, it's love this and love that, but of course it's so easy to love someone you don't know, whether it's George Clooney or Monkey. Staying civil to someone with whom you've ever shared Christmas turkey – now there's a miracle. If GoodNews could pull that one off with his warm hands, he could live with us for ever.

‘But think of all the people you help who do need you,' I tell him. ‘Isn't that worth more?'

‘D'you think?'

‘Of course.'