My Secret History (50 page)

I did not stop in Moscow any longer than it took to cross the city in wet snow and get a Polish visa. I boarded the next train and went straight through to the Hook of Holland, seeing everything in a blur, and reading the whole time to hold myself together.

My book was a collection of Chekhov’s stories; I had started it in Russia, and now I was on the last story, “Lady With Lap-dog.” It was the progress of a love affair, and it appalled me with its truthfulness. I kept reading, and stopping; reading, and stopping.
When I finished it I sat silently in the train, holding the paperback in my hands. I read it again. I read it four times. Each time I was drawn and stalled by the same paragraph, which began,
As he was speaking, he kept thinking that he was going to meet his mistress and not a living soul knew about it. He led a double life, one for all who were interested to see … and another which went on in secret
.

It was something I understood perfectly, but it was a way in which I had ceased to live. I had one life now—I had Jenny and Jack. I had no mistress. I had been happy at home, which was why I had felt secure enough to leave for such a long time on this trip: I had a home to return to. But the description in the story was such an accurate description of how I had once felt.
And by a kind of strange concatenation of circumstances, possibly quite by accident, everything that was important, interesting, essential, everything about which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made up the quintessence of his life, went on in secret …

Not anymore, I thought. I had rid myself of my secrets; my life was simple now, and I shared it with my wife and son. But still the paragraph nagged at me.
He judged others by himself, did not believe what he saw, and was always of the opinion that every man’s real and most interesting life went on in secret, under cover of night
.

Not mine; but crossing the Channel I became sad, and the sadness stayed with me. It was deeper than a mood—it was more like a physical condition. I could not bear to read the story anymore. I kept having nightmares that I was still in Siberia.

After all that time I was very eager to see her. I also wanted to be seen. Was I the same? How did I look? I needed someone to tell me I was all right. That was one. of the anxieties of coming home—the fear of someone saying
You’ve changed, you’re different
, and looking closely at your face and frowning.

I had been married to Jenny for five years, but traveling for nine—since Africa; so the travel overlapped the marriage, and circumscribed it. It was not a routine, nothing annual or planned far in advance. It was an impulsive going-away, whenever I could. It was not an escape, but a means of concentrating my mind and being alone. It helped my writing. I found it extremely peaceful to travel. And it gave me ideas. It seemed to suit Jenny, a modern woman, whose idea of freedom was a job. She knew that to me travel was air.

Marriage made travel possible by giving me a corresponding sense of peace: I was not a searcher, looking for another home; I was a wanderer, interested in everything and always intending to return to my little family. For me, nothing was better than arriving back home. I was reassured by the solidity and the dullness, by the smells and the pictures on the wall, and by the familiar simplicities. Most of all I was reassured by the faces of the people I loved, Jenny and our son Jack.

I arrived in the dim late afternoon at Harwich, but it was night, black and blowy, when I reached London. I met some Indians in the taxi rank at Liverpool Street Station, and we agreed to share a cab to south London. We were aliens in a strange city, trying to save money. And having been so long in India it seemed more natural for me to talk to them than to the English people waiting for a taxi.

When we were under way one said, “We were just cooling our heels at that cab stand. The driver stopped for you, my friend.”

“Where are you from?”

“From Broach, in Gujarat. You are knowing Gujarat?”

“Ghem cho. Magia ma chay.”

“Oh, it is so incredible, Mr. Bhiku,” the man said to his silent companion. “This American is speaking this difficult tongue.”

“I only know six words.”

“So what? You use them superbly.”

They complained of the cold in London, but after Siberia it did not seem cold to me—only wet and gleaming a sulphurous yellow, like the streetlights. London in winter had often seemed to me like a city underground, in a damp dripping cavern.

“I’ll get out at the next corner,” I said, and gave them half of what was showing on the meter.

“And your name is?”

“Andre Parent.”

“Enjoy the rest of your visit, Mr. Andre.”

What was the point of correcting them? And it was partly true: I was temporary, an alien, just a visitor. A paying guest, in the English phrase.

I had deliberately gotten out of the taxi in the High Street, so that I could walk the rest of the way home, completing the journey I had started almost five months before, when I had walked to the station. I liked walking; it was like writing in longhand.

And perhaps I had another reason for walking. I didn’t want to be announced by the noise of a taxi. All London taxis had a loud and peculiar shudder. I wanted my arrival to be a surprise. I had not spoken to Jenny since that phone call in Khabarovsk two weeks before.

I was very apprehensive as I pressed the bell. I felt like a stranger—worse, like an intruder.

There was a human shadow on the frosted glass of the door; and the mutter, “Who is it?”

“It’s me,” I said.

The door opened quickly.

“Andy!” Jenny threw her arms around me and kissed me, and all the warmth of the house and its lovely ordinary odors flowed over me through the doorway, warming my face.

Upstairs I went into Jack’s tiny room. He was awake—he had heard the bell and the commotion. He peered at me in the dark and seemed shy. Why was he hesitating?

“Jackie, it’s me,” I said. “I’m back.”

“Dad,” he said—it was a gasp of relief. He raised himself up and hugged me with such strength that it seemed to me more like panic than love. And with his skinny arms around my neck I thought: I’ll never go away again.

It was that lifeless period in London, between Christmas and New Year’s—the holiday that is like low tide, or an endless Sunday afternoon. Empty streets, gray skies. But inactivity was just what I needed after all the motion I had endured.

Suddenly I belonged to them again. I went shopping, I began cooking dinner, and in a passionate and grateful way I performed
the most humdrum chores. I washed the car, I put up shelves. I had missed Christmas, but the tree was still standing. I disposed of it and put away the decorations.

Jenny said, “You seem to have all this energy.”

“I’m so glad to be back,” I said.

It was New Year’s Eve. We had always made a point of not celebrating, not going to a party; simply giving thanks that the old year had ended peacefully and then going to bed before midnight.

She had not replied to me. I said, “Aren’t you glad? Didn’t you miss me?”

We sat smoking among the ruins of the meal and two empty wine bottles.

Jenny spoke very deliberately when she was being truthful. In her measured way, choosing her words, she said, “It was so awful when you went. It was such an emptiness. I was so desperately lonely that I pretended to myself that you were dead.”

She saw from my face that I was horrified and could not hide it.

“That was the only way I could manage to live from day to day.”

I said, “The only way I could manage was by imagining that you missed me terribly. That you were waiting for me.”

She said nothing, and I gathered from her silence that she had not been waiting. For a moment, it crossed my mind, as it had during that phone call from Siberia, that I might have died—been blown up in Vietnam, or poisoned in Burma, or frozen in Siberia—and it would have made no difference.

“Don’t frown, Andy, please, I
am
glad you’re back. I had forgotten what a good cook you are, and Jack is a different boy—he really missed you. He used to go all quiet, and I knew he was thinking of you.”

“Bedtime,” I said, looking at the clock. It was ten minutes to twelve.

We made love that night and other nights—not passionately but with a sort of insistence on my part. I kept wondering whether she would resist or refuse. She didn’t resist, but neither did she take much pleasure in it. Yet that was not strange. After such a long separation we were still not used to each other.

She worked at a branch of Drummond’s Bank off Ludgate
Circus. She was supervisor in the Foreign Exchange Department in a district of London where money was constantly being changed. Her pay was good—she earned more than I did—and her position was equivalent, on the bank’s scale, to assistant manager. Her hours meant that we had needed a so-called mother’s help. Before I had left there had been a girl in the back bedroom—Betty, from Bradford.

“What happened to Big Betty?” I asked soon after I arrived back.

“She left before Christmas. She’s doing a diploma in education. She said she wants to work with handicapped children. ‘Brain-damaged yoongsters’ is what she called them.”

“I can take Jack to school from now on. Then we’ll have the house to ourselves.”

“I was hoping you’d take him. We still have Mrs T. cleaning three mornings a week, so you won’t have to do the dusting.”

“I wouldn’t mind doing the dusting!”

“You’re so domestic all of a sudden.”

“Yes. Because I had a feeling sometimes on that damned trip that I’d never get out alive. That I’d be in some horrible place like Afghanistan or Siberia and wouldn’t be able to leave. I used to think—what if I die? What a long expensive road to travel, and all that trouble, just to die.”

“You’re home, Andy. Don’t look so worried.”

“I did nothing but worry. I got very superstitious. I was afraid you wouldn’t be here when I got back.”

She kissed me. She said, “It’s wonderful to have you back.”

I looked closely at her face and then she turned away.

After all that dislocation, and the uncertainties of travel, it was paradise to be in this quiet, terraced house in a London back street. People said it was the dreariest part of south London. I was a stranger there, but I felt at home: it was life, and I was happy. I spent the day doing small things, taking Jack to school, and then making his lunch and giving him a nap; afterwards we went for a walk, and shopped, bought food for dinner, and I cooked. In between, when I had a quiet moment, I looked over my notes. I was daunted by them—the strange handwriting, the bizarre-sounding place-names. There were four large notebooks, about five hundred pages, filled with my writing. There was too much of it. I wanted to do something with it, but what?
I imagined the book, but I had never written that sort of book. I was afraid to begin.

It was a relief to have household chores to do. They kept me from thinking; they were brainless and tiring; they were just what I needed. Little Jack seemed to me a perfect child, and I knew that he was glad I was home. He had a serious face, very pale from the English winter and perfectly smooth. He had small beautiful hands and deep brown eyes that were so expressive I did all I could to please him. I gave him treats, bought him chocolate at the corner shop, and cakes at Broomfield’s for tea; I watched television with him, holding him on my lap. When he was at school I missed him so much that sometimes I went early to meet him, and loitered until he appeared.

“What do you want for lunch?”

“Paste sandwiches, and sausage rolls”—he had already acquired a London accent—“and, Dad, can we have jelly—the kind they have at birthday parties?”

It delighted me that I could make him happy by being with him and offering him these simple things.

I said, “I missed you when I was away.”

“But you’re home now,” he said, encouraging me.

“And I’m not going away again.”

“That’s good, because we have to go for our walks and sail my new boat.”

I had bought him a toy sailboat that we floated on the pond at Crystal Palace. It was a large muddy park, with gardens, and great stretches to run about in. The pond was in a glade, and we always brought stale bread for the ducks. After these outings, which left Jack with a pink nose and cold hands, we took the 73 bus back to Catford.

We watched television—the children’s programs,
Blue Peter, Crackerjack
, and
Doctor Who
. I thought there was nothing better in the world than to sit with my small warm son on my lap, watching these simple-minded programs. His laughter made me hold him tighter. Why had I ever gone away?

All morning, when he was at school, I longed to see him. If for some reason I had to go out I rushed back to be with him. And he never disappointed me—he was always eager to see me.

The weekends seemed blissful—the bliss of a routine—shopping at the supermarket in Sydenham on Saturday morning,
then home for lunch, and doing odd jobs in the afternoon. Jenny always made dinner on Saturday night. We seldom went out. We talked of going skiing—some year, for sure, when Jack was older. The best part of Saturday was going to bed early and making love. On Sundays we drove into the Kent countryside or went to a museum. I carried the boy on my shoulder.

I never asked what was coming. This was what I wanted—a happy home. The anxieties I had felt in travel were in the past. In returning home I became the person I really was. Travel was another life I had left behind.

Jenny said, “How’s your book coming along?”

A book had been my whole reason for that ordeal. I had not started it, but I said, “Fine.”

“What do you do all day?”

“I write, I play with Jack, I smoke, I watch children’s programs on television.”

“Do you have a deadline for the book?”

“Sort of,” I said. “The contract says ‘spring ’74.’ ”

“That’s soon,” she said. “Three or four months. You don’t seem worried!”

The trip had almost broken me; so what would a book do? My secret was that there was no book—none that I cared to write. For the moment, I wanted nothing more than this—the little family in the little house in a corner of a dark city. I was safe.