Intimacy (11 page)

Outside the bar there are dudes in knee–length thick coats, baggy trousers and boat–like trainers. Funny how drug dealers always stand around doing nothing
for ages, before suddenly walking quickly. Tonight I wonder if they have all, simultaneously, been afflicted with head pain, as they clutch their skulls as if posing for Munch's
The
Scream,
while speaking into mobile phones. Once, I would have asked the price of this or that drug. Now I consider what will happen to them, and wonder why they have wasted their money on such clothes. But then they would think that I lacked distinction.

I did see someone I knew in the bar. A kid no longer a kid who, at one time, I had seen every day for a few weeks. In my socialist phase I would listen to the misfortunes of such a boy at length, and condemn the society that had made him suffer. He had been lively and smart and full of stories about his adventures on the street, but injured within, making his bravado more poignant. In the bar he stood up against me, wheedling and demanding a thousand pounds to go and live on an Indian Reservation.

I listened to him before saying, ‘You'd think they'd have enough problems without you.'

I try to push past him but he holds on to my hand.

‘You can afford to help another human being,' he
goes, putting on his most pathetic look. ‘Out of the kindness of your – '

I interrupt him, ‘I'll give you the money if you tell me this one thing. Where is your father? Why aren't you at home with him?'

He looks at me.

I say, ‘Answer me!'

‘What have you been taking?'

He wheels away.

Out on the street I could easily start gesticulating and yelling, for I believe some of these men don't know their fathers. Where have all the fathers gone? Once the fathers went to war and returned, if they did return, unrecognizable. Yet still the fathers flee and return, if they return at all, unrecognizable. Do they think about their children? What better things do they have to do? Is it when their women become mothers that they flee? What is it about the mothers that makes it so essential that they be left? Where are the fathers hiding and what are they doing?

Someone must know. I must ask one of them. I must ask myself.

I run to my car. Tonight there is one other place I must visit.

Victor was always kissing Nina and putting his arm around her. He patronized her but, seeing how awkward he is, she took care not to scare him.

One night at his place Victor had some new drugs. When he had become lost in some unknown place, Nina and I started to make love. Victor got into bed with us. How I regret what I wanted to do – which was reduce her in my mind. If she weren’t special, my feeling for her wouldn’t be as strong.

‘Why did you do it?’ I asked him.

‘You were laughing. You were enjoying yourselves.’

I did know how to please her. I would cook for her; I would bathe and massage her while she listened to music. I swore I could love, protect and support her.

She trusted me but was becoming discouraged.

She told Victor, ‘He keeps leaving me. Every time I get used to him again, he goes home, or worse, on holiday. I am losing hope. I feel suffocated. I don’t even know what I am waiting for.’

She told me she couldn’t see me for a while. She needed to distance herself. I had Victor keep an eye on her, ring her every day and keep me alive in her thoughts. One day, in a truculent and spiteful mood, I
asked him if he would go out with her if I weren’t around.

I think they saw each other for a couple of weeks. I didn’t enquire, and I didn’t talk to him as I was away with Susan and the children. Then he rang and told me that she’d asked him not to get in touch any more. He and I resumed our friendship. We didn’t speak about Nina. I thought I would soon forget her.

‘I went to a bar for a drink. It was crowded. I decided to have a stroll. Then I saw a club and went in and walked about.'

‘You just saw a club.'

I say, ‘Yes, a line of people on the street.'

‘What made you go in?'

‘I don't know. I think it was the kind of thing I would have enjoyed, before.'

Susan says, ‘It's not like you to be spontaneous. Where is your shirt? Weren't you wearing a shirt earlier?'

‘God, yes, I was,' I say. ‘How easy it is to lose things!'

She stares at me.

Having not found Victor in the bar, and the streets seeming more violent than I remember them, I drive to the house where she had a room. I went there several times a few months ago, when she moved to London, to be near me, as she admitted. Her fantasy, she said, was of living around the corner.

The kitchen was always crowded with young people either recovering from some dissipation or preparing for it. I remember her bed on the floor; an Indian coverlet; poetry books; tapes, and the numerous candles that make Christmas so exciting for young women.

‘I don’t know why I’m living here,’ she said, as I dragged myself away from one bed in order to return to another. ‘I should be with you. Can’t you stay for ever, or at least tonight?’

I looked at her, naked on the bed, as white as a grain of rice.

‘How I wish I could.’

‘You see, I don’t think I can bear this for much longer.’

‘Won’t you wait for me?’

‘I don’t know.’

Tonight I loiter outside, though there is nothing to
see through the window. At last I ring the bell. A young man comes to the door. I ask him if he remembers me. He does, though with so little enthusiasm that I wonder if he was one of the people who advised Nina against me.

‘Does she still live here?’

He looks at me suspiciously.

He says, ‘She was away for a time.’

‘She was?’

‘She came back.’

‘She did? She came back? Could I see her? Is she in?’

‘No.’

I refrain from slapping him.

At last he informs me that he thinks she has gone to a club nearby.

‘Who with?’ I say.

‘A friend.’

‘Where is it?’

Sighing, he tells me, as if I should know such things.

I drive down there and stand in line for an hour, terrified they are not going to let me in. As I near the doormen, I remove my shirt in the hope that this will make me seem more contemporary. I conceal it behind
a hedge across the road, so I am wearing a T–shirt and jacket.

Inside it is like a disco, only dark, practically black, without the flashing lights that so entertained me as a teenager.

One problem: if she were here I wouldn’t be able to see her.

For most of my life, until tonight, I have been young. For most of my life, there were people to look up to, who seemed to know what was going on. Where are they? These days, apart from when I am with Susan, I know who I am. When necessary I can gather myself together and maintain some dignity. But tonight I’m losing it.

Igniting my lighter, I push through the crowd, as if I am exploring a cave.

People are wearing outdoor coats buttoned up to the throat, with pulled–down hats. There’s no doubt, British kids are innate meritocrats, and satirists. You can be sure they’re always up to something. But tonight it is depressing to see young people so drugged and stupefied. I want to ask why, as if I can’t remember. Three years ago, for six months I took cocaine all night every day. It was luck and ambition
that kept me clean in the end. Were we such undemanding zombies, and did we believe that being young was a virtue in itself? Undoubtedly. Do my taxes subsidize their indulgence? Probably. Did my father walk uncomprehendingly about such places looking for a young woman to hurl himself at?

I fear for my sons, but it is essential that I leave them tomorrow.

I think I have become the adults in
The
Catcher
in
the
Rye.

Why do I envy these people? In the late sixties and seventies I did feel that I belonged to something, to other young people, and to some sort of oppositional movement. The earnestness I disliked; I was too awkward to join things. But there is something I miss: losing oneself, yes, in a larger cause.

As I press my lighter into the faces I begin to dread the thought of seeing her. What if she is with a young man? What if she despises me now? These faces are young. I must have been insane to fall for such a part-woman. What is wrong with maturity? Think of the conversations I could have – about literature and bitterness – with a forty-year-old! Victor has mentioned an interesting optician with her own
shop. People say it is the soul not the body that counts!

I know a place where I could meet some middle-aged women, if they are up so late! Once I level out they will be grateful for my company! They are a larger cause!

I will seek some out!

I begin to make for the door, wherever it is, with some urgency. This is typical of me – to be so close to something, and then flee.

I catch sight of a woman dancing on her own. Surely it is her? I move towards her. No; it is not my love. I can’t make out much, but get the impression this woman won’t mind if I approach her. Apparently the drugs they take make them friendly, as if they could not manage it otherwise. Perhaps they should give them to all young people. Surely, in such a mood, they won’t care if you dance like a crashing helicopter? I want to learn to expect to be received kindly by people.

I shout in the woman’s ear and she comes with me to the bar. I can’t hear much of what she says. But I imagine going home with her. If she says yes, I will go. A strange room; her things; odd places I have
ended up in the past, lost in the city, waiting to see what will turn up. From there, in the morning, I will leave for Victor’s without going home.

I was hit then. It seemed to be from behind, and it was a man. It might have been when I examined the ring through the woman’s eyebrow by the flame of my lighter. She would have interested Victor.

Susan sits down beside me.

‘Don’t touch it, it’s only where I got punched,’ I say.

‘Were you aggressive?’

‘Why it happened, I don’t know. It is just what young people like to do. It’ll be okay by tomorrow.’

‘What is this?’ she asks.

‘A signed photograph of John Lennon.’

‘Why was it on the stairs?’

I look at her in puzzlement. ‘Was it? I think I was looking for a better place to hang it.’

‘In the middle of the night?’

‘It seemed to be the right time.’

‘It’s cracked now,’ she says. ‘Look at the glass.’ She says, ‘Your poor face. Do you want me to bathe you?’

I look at her and say, ‘There is someone I’m interested in. But she’s gone away. That’s the truth, I’m afraid.’

‘You? There’s someone interested in you?’

‘It surprises you?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘I am surprised that you are surprised.’

She is crying.

‘Is she going to take you away from me?’

‘I shouldn’t think so, now.’

I open my mouth. I am about to speak.

‘What is it?’ she says.

‘No. Nothing,’ I say. ‘Come along.’

In the bathroom she bathes me. Then I lead her back to bed, my hand on her arm.

We lie there, back to back.

What could be more dreadful than daylight? She is dressing at the end of the bed. The children are bouncing on the mattress. The younger one tries to open my eyelids with his fingers. The other pours apple juice in my ear, wondering whether it will exit through the other. He has the makings of a scientist.

Susan goes downstairs with them.

I turn on to my back, as I do every morning, and think, what do I have to do today? What obligations
do I have? What pleasures might there be? Then I remember and shut my eyes.

After a time the front door bangs and the house goes silent. The silence increases, enveloping everything in an ominous softness.

I get up and go down the stairs, but a noise makes me hesitate at the bend. I can see that in the hall Susan is leaving for work, putting her short coat on and pushing her bicycle to the door.

‘Will you get something for later? See you at supper time!’ she calls out, shutting the door behind her.

Without eating, drinking or thinking excessively, I do everything as quickly as I can. I shave and get some decent clothes on. Moving about the house, I discover my boys’ night clothes flung on the floor. I pick them up, smell them, and fold them on their beds.

When the weather is warm, Susan puts talcum powder in her shoes and when she removes them her footprints remain on the floor, traces of her on the carpet, which stop suddenly, like a trail gone cold.

Soon I am zipping up my bag.

Standing up, I scribble a note. ‘Dear Susan, I have left this house and won’t be coming back. I’m sorry to
say that I don’t think we can make one another happy. I will speak to you tomorrow.’ That is it. Then I notice she has left a note asking me to pick up her dry cleaning. Cursing, I hurry round the corner to fetch her clothes, and leave them in the bedroom.

I wonder, then, where to place my note. The table in the living room is crowded with flowers, presents, cards. Last week Susan had a birthday party in a nearby restaurant. There must have been almost thirty guests. In her new denim dress and pretty shoes with flowers sewn on the sides, she rushed at each friend as they came in. There was kissing and hugging and shouted bits of gossip. Soon the floor was strewn with ribbon and wrapping paper. I sat and watched her dancing to Tamla Motown records with a school friend. They even danced nostalgically. I recalled a time I was in Venice. She was joining me at the Hôtel des Bains on the Lido, but I didn’t know at what time. I had gone downstairs and saw her by accident in the lobby, and she turned and recognized me and her face was full of pleasure.

She’s not my type at all, but I’m sure there is something about her I could enjoy. I would like not to see her for a few months, in order to forget her; perhaps,
then, I could get a clear view of what she is like, apart from me.

I place the note at the other end of the table, leaning it against a cup. She will not miss it when she comes in. She will sit in that chair over there to read it. I wonder what she will feel then; I wonder what she will do then. The phone is at hand.