They Do the Same Things Different There (40 page)

And you walk, you
lurch
, you try to remember how to put one foot in front of the other without falling down. And there are words all around you, silly words, like “car” and “park,” like “launderette,” like the combination of “pizza” to “hut,” and the world no longer seems fresh, you miss the warm bready sweetness of your home—and all around you there is only babble, people are speaking so
fast
, and you have to concentrate hard to figure out what they’re saying, the old language seems so very far away now—and ugly too, it’s like random words have been rammed together with no thought to the poetry or music of how that might sound, and you wonder that anyone can keep that many disconnected noises in their brain and blow them out of their mouths so shamelessly. And they’re staring at you too, and you wonder whether they can tell you’re different now, that you were once one of them, but you’re a foreigner forever, the shapes of your language are different from theirs, and capable of expressing so much more, and they’re jealous, if they hear the range of your vocabulary they’ll want to tear those words right out of you—so you keep your lips clamped shut, just in case the words leak out—and just so that your words aren’t
infected
with theirs, that they won’t change meaning, so that “featherduster” will remain “featherduster,” so that there’ll always be an “onion.” They stare at you for these reasons. And maybe too because you aren’t wearing any beverages and your pebbles are showing.

This is a mistake. And you try to find your way back home, back to her, back to Excrement and all those possibilities—but all the streets look the same, and all the houses on all the streets look the same, and there’s no one to ask, there’s no one to offer handbag. And you’re panicked now, running through people’s gardens, calling her name over and over again at the very top of your voice, all your bits flying in the wind, all getting soaked with the pimp, and—oh—there she is!—oh my God—oh my Badger—there she is, she’s looking for you, she’s in her garden, she’s looking for you, and now she sees you—oh most truculent Badger!—and she sees you, and she’s running toward you too, her arms out wide. “Daddy!” she calls, and that’s it, she’s named you. And she wraps you up in her arms, and takes you back indoors.

You take her to bed. To her bed, not to yours. You lay her down. You teach her that the word for “kiss” is “moist,” oh, now she gets it. You teach her that the word for “sex” is “mulch.” You teach her the word for “love” is “mond.” You don’t need to teach her the word for “enough.”

“Mond,” you say, and point at her. “Mond Ian.”

“Mond Ian,” she agrees, and you make mond all over again.

Now you’re free from the bedroom you understand that she goes to work every day. She goes back into that big nasty old world, she does a job to make money so she can feed you and keep you safe. She speaks another man’s language, and swallows down her own. And the sacrifice of that makes you cry.

You never want to go outside again, you tell her. And whenever she leaves the house you ask her to lock you in your bedroom. The first time she doesn’t tie you to the bed, and that just makes you panic—what if you sleepwalk? What if you sleepwalk right through the window? What if you sleepwalk, then wake up to find you’re out in the world again? The silk ropes aren’t strong enough, you tell her. Use the cords.

“Mond Ian, Daddy,” she tells you every day, and “Mond Ian, Excrement,” you say back. And you sleep together most nights, and most nights you explore each other’s bodies, and find in them whole new landscapes of sensations just aching to be given names.

She falls pregnant. And you spend weeks renaming the new pronouns you’ll need. You decide that if the baby is a boy, you’ll call “he” “Sharon.” And if it’s a girl, “she” can be “Jim.” . . . You won’t think about actual names for the baby yet. That can wait.

And when she’s due, the stomach looking fat enough to burst, she says she’ll find her own way to the hospital. You can just stay right where you are and wait. She ties you to the bed, she leaves several days’ worth of food within easy reach in case there are complications. She says she’ll be back home as soon as she can, Daddy, and she’ll bring with her a whole new life you can share.

You can’t horserace for all the excitement.

And a day or three later, who’s counting, you hear her come through the front door, and there’s crying, and you hope it isn’t her crying—and you strain against your bonds to be set free. She enters your room then, and she’s holding it in her arms, and it looks a bit like her, and looks a bit like you, and a bit like neither of you, quite honestly, it looks like a bald dwarf. “Daddy, Daddy!” she says, and that’s how you meet your daughter, you strapped naked to the bed with cold trays of hedgerows by your side, she screaming her head off. You look at Excrement, and she’s gazing adoringly, but not at you, at it, at the baby, and she no longer looks quite like Excrement, she looks like the Mother, she looks like the Conveyorbelt. And that’s how you’ll think of her from now on, no matter how much you try not to: just another conveyorbelt proud of her darling miracle child. The Conveyorbelt puts the baby on your bare chest, and unties your arms so you can hold her, but the baby doesn’t want to be there, not on that stranger’s skin. And yet you’re trying to show it mond, all the mond you can, but you don’t feel it in your heart, and the baby can tell, the baby doesn’t want to know. “Ssh, ssh,” says the Conveyorbelt, and scoops the baby up in her arms again, and the howling stops, and you feel that first stab of pure jealousy.

You promise you’ll be the best father you can be. You’ll teach her how to speak, give her all the words she’ll ever need. You’ll strap her down in her cot, feed her lampshades and caterpillars and plinges. You are told to stop—you’re told the infant is only two days old. It is too early for lessons. You’re told to wait.

So you wait. And maybe the baby is softening toward you. Maybe as the months pass it starts to show some affection. It no longer screams at the very sight of you—not each and every time, anyway. Sometimes it just looks at you directly and fearlessly, and glares with undisguised loathing. Sometimes it just throws up.

One day, as you’re sitting at dinner, the baby speaks up. “Aubergine!” It’s its first word. And the Conveyorbelt is delighted; she lifts it up in her arms, and dances with it around the room. And you sit there, forcing out a smile, forcing out congratulations—and you think, “aubergine”? What the hell is
that
supposed to mean?

And once the words start, they won’t stop. “Artichoke!” “Censorship!” “Dogmatism!” “Peanut!” “Rhomboid!” “Fart!” And each time the Conveyorbelt applauding the genius of it all. And then the truth dawns on you. Why she’s been locking the child away for so many hours in that room away from you. She’s been teaching it how to speak all by herself. She’s been doing your job. She’s been denying you that role.

And that wouldn’t be so bad. You could live with that. You could join in, it wouldn’t be too late—she could teach it the nouns, you could start on participles and prepositional adverbs. But. It’s a different language she’s teaching it. It’s a different language altogether.

And the child babbles again, “Rape my bollards!” and mother laughs like it’s the wittiest thing on earth, and mother and child exchange a knowing glance, and you realize that the child is complicit.

You offer to hold her. You reach out to take her. And the child looks scandalized that you would dare, and your darling love says, “I don’t think so!” And then claps her hand to her mouth. As if she could stop the words coming out. But it’s too late. She has spoken the old language. She
promised
, and now she’s angry, as if breaking her promise is your fault, as if you’re the one who made her a liar. She shouts at you, says terrible truths, and she uses the new language and bits of the old, and the baby starts to cry, and you can’t be sure whether because of the noise or the interjection of words it cannot hope to understand.

The Conveyorbelt wants to sleep alone that night. You agree. You know you’ll never sleep with her again. And when you creep into her bedroom you tread softly so as not to disturb her. You don’t want her to wake until you’re ready. With silk ropes you bind her feet to the bed—by the time you start on the arms she’s stirring, but there’s nothing she can do, and you hold her down, you hold her hard against the mattress, and she gives in.

“Ssh,” you say. “Ssh.” And she shouts out, “No!” and “Help!” and “Please!”

You take the baby out of the cot at the foot of her bed. Mercifully, it doesn’t struggle. Its mother starts to cry.

“Ssh,” you say again. You kiss her on the forehead. And you tell her the truth, in spite of all. “Mond Ian.”

“Please,” she says. “I love her.”

And the old language confuses you, and you don’t know whether she merely got her pronouns wrong.

You hold the guacamole over her face until she’s sleeping. Or, at least, until she’s still.

Downstairs, to the hallway, the front door. And by now the baby is trying to resist. It’s kicking, it’s biting, it’s screaming—
she’s
screaming, your little daughter, your own. And that’s good, because you know all those screams are just words needing to be moulded, and you’re the one who can mould them. You pull open that door, look out at a world that’s dark and cold and wet. But it’ll be all right now, this time you’ll have someone to talk to. And out you go.

I’d been flattered when asked to be the godfather of little Ian Wheeler, of course, but I’d had certain misgivings. When I’d met up with Max in the pub, something we’d liked to do regularly back then, I’d tried to explain at least part of the problem. “Oh, don’t worry about the whole spiritual adviser nonsense,” said Max. “Lisa’s no more religious than I am, this is just to keep her parents happy.” So I caved in, and went along to the christening, and watched Ian get dipped into a font, and afterwards posed for photographs in which I must admit I passed myself off quite successfully as someone just as proud and doting as the actual father and mother.

But my real concern had nothing to do with any religious aspect, and more with the discomfort of shackling myself for life to a person I had no reason to believe I would ever necessarily like. I’d had enough problems when Max started dating Lisa—Max and I had been inseparable since school, and now suddenly I was supposed to welcome Lisa into the gang, and want to spend time with her, and chat to her, and buy lager and lime for her—and it wasn’t that I
disliked
Lisa, not as such, though she was a bit dull and she wore too much perfume and I had nothing to talk to her about and she had a face as dozy as a stupefied cow. It was more that she had barged her way into a special friendship, with full expectation that I’d not only tolerate the intrusion but welcome it. She never asked if I minded. She never apologized.

And so it was with little Ian. I’m not saying he was a bad child. It was simply that he was a child at all. I’d never been wild about children, not even when I had been one, and I had always been under the impression that Max had felt the same, and I’d felt rather surprised that he wanted one. Surprised and, yes, disappointed. But then, Max had done lots of things that had surprised me since he’d met Lisa. And my worst fears came to be realized. On the few occasions I went to visit, I would be presented before Ian as if he were a prince, and every little new thing about him was pointed out to me as if I should be entranced—that he had teeth, or that he could walk, that he’d grown an inch taller—sometimes I was under the impression I was supposed to give the kid a round of applause, as if these weren’t all things that I myself had mastered with greater skill years ago! I just couldn’t warm to my godson. It seemed to me that he was constantly demanding attention, and I could put up with that if it were only his mother he was bothering, but all too often he’d pull the same stunts on Max. Still, I tried to be dutiful, and at Christmas and on birthdays I would send Ian a present. But is it any wonder he made me uncomfortable?—this infant who had crept into my life, though his birth was none of my doing, though his existence wasn’t my fault. With his strangely fat face and his cheeks always puffed out as if he were getting ready to cry. I played godfather the best I could, but I felt a fraud.

When Ian was killed at the age of three, knocked down by a car (and safely within the speed limit, so the driver could hardly be blamed), I was, of course, horrified. The death of a child is a terrible thing, and I’m not a monster. But if a child was going to have to die, then I’m glad it was Ian.

Max and I had always been rather unlikely friends, or so I was told: at school he was more popular than I was, more sporty, more outgoing. I suspect people thought he was good for me, that’s what my mother said, and I resented that—I’d point out that, in spite of appearances, he was the one who had sought me out, who wanted to sit next to me in class, who waited to walk home with me. I’d been there for him when he failed his French O levels, when he got dumped by the cricket first XI, when he first smoked, drank, snogged. I’d been best man at his wedding to Lisa, and I’d arranged a very nice stag night in a Greek restaurant, and given at the reception a speech that made everybody laugh. And I tried to be there for Max when Ian died. We’d meet up at the pub, at first it was just like the good old days! And I’d get in a round. How was he feeling? “Not so good, matey,” he’d say, and stare into the bottom of his pint. “Not so good.”

We drifted apart. And I’m sorry. I would have been a good friend if he had wanted me to be. But he didn’t want me to be.

Max and Lisa sold their house and moved up north. We exchanged Christmas cards for a couple of years. In the last one, Max told me they were moving again, this time overseas. He promised he would write to me with his new address. He didn’t.

One evening I was at home reading in my study when there was a phone call. “Hello? Is that you, John?” The number was withheld, and so I’m afraid I gave a rather stiff affirmation. “It’s Max. You remember, your old friend Max? Don’t you recognize me?”

And I did recognize him then, of course; and he sounded like the old Max, the one who’d call me every evening and ask for help with his homework, the one who always had a trace of laughter in his voice.

He told me he was down in the city for a “work thing,” and the firm had given him a hotel for the night. “Would you like to meet up on Thursday?” he said. “We could go to the pub. No problem if it’s too short notice. But we could go to the pub.”

It was rather short notice, to be fair, but I didn’t want to let Max down.

The pub was heaving with businessmen, it was just after the banks had shut, and the pub Max had chosen was right in the financial district. I felt a sudden stab of discomfort—what if I couldn’t remember what Max looked like? What if I couldn’t tell him apart from all these other smart suits? (What if he couldn’t remember me?) But he’d arrived first, and he was guarding a small table in the corner, and I knew him at once, he really hadn’t changed a bit. He was standing up, and laughing, and gesticulating wildly to catch my attention. No, I was wrong—he
had
changed, a bit, just a bit, actually—as I got closer I could see he’d put on some weight, and his hair was grey. But I’m sure just the same could be said of me, I’m sure that’s true, I’m not as young as I was, though I try to keep myself trim, you know? I stuck out my hand for him to shake, and he laughed at that, he was laughing at everything. And he pulled me into a hug, and that was nice.

“What are you drinking?” was the first thing he said. “My round, I’ll get the drinks.”

We stayed rather late that night, and we had a lot of beer, and I suppose we got quite drunk. But that was all right. For a while we had to shout over the crowd to make ourselves heard, and that was a bit awkward, but pretty soon all the bankers began to go home to their wives and left us in peace. He asked me what I was up to these days, and I explained it the best I could, and my answers seemed to delight him and he laughed even more. I asked him how long he would be in England.

“Oh, we’ve moved back now,” he said. “Mum’s dying, I wanted to be close. Well, not too close. But the same country is good. Back over last year, sorry, should have been in touch.”

I told him that it didn’t matter, he was home now, he’d found me now—and I expressed some sympathy for his mother. I remember quite liking her, when I went to Max’s house she’d give me biscuits.

“We’ve got this lovely house in the countryside,” Max said. “A mansion, really. Almost a mansion. And the garden’s fantastic. Lisa has been designing that, but of course, no surprises there!” I wondered why it was no surprise, I wondered whether Lisa was famous for designing gardens, I supposed she might have been. It was the first time he’d mentioned Lisa, and I said I was glad they were still married.

We shared anecdotes about our school days, some of the ones Max told me I had no memory of whatsoever, so they were quite fresh and exciting. I asked him how Lisa was, and he said she was well. I didn’t bring up Ian at all, and I felt a bit bad about that—but then, Max didn’t bring up Ian either, the evening was mercifully free of dead children.

I said I’d walk him back to his hotel.

“You should come and stay,” he said to me as we walked the streets. He hung onto my arm. It was raining, and Max didn’t seem to notice, and I didn’t care. “Come and stay this weekend. It’d be lovely to see you properly. And I know Lisa would just love to have you.” Before I knew it he was all over me with practical details—the best train I could catch, that they’d pick me up from the station. I said I wasn’t available the next weekend, I was too busy—I wasn’t as it happens, but I still didn’t want him to think he could just swan his way back into my life and be instantly forgiven. I promised to come up the weekend after.

Now, I am aware that I don’t come out of the following story too well. I can’t pretend I understand more than a fraction of what happened when I visited Max, so I’ll just tell it the best I can, warts and all. And I think you’ll accept that the circumstances were very strange, and perhaps, to an extent, extenuating.

Max met me at the station in his car. I asked if it were a new car, and he smiled, and said it was. Then we drove to his house through the rolling countryside, and he talked about his new car all the way. He’d said that he lived somewhere conveniently situated for occasional commutes into London, but I’m glad I hadn’t got a taxi, the drive was half an hour at least.

Lisa was standing in the driveway to welcome us. I wondered how long she had been standing there. I had been concerned she might remember that I had often shown her a very slight resentment, but she gave no indication of it. She smiled widely enough when I got out of the car, she opened her arms a little in what might have been the beginnings of a hug. I didn’t risk it, I offered her my hand. She accepted the hand, laid hers in mine like it was a delicacy, gave a little curtsey, tittered. I still didn’t like her very much.

I had to admit, she looked better than I’d expected. Some women grow into their faces, do you know what I mean? They just age well, their eyes take on a certain wisdom maybe, they just look a bit more dignified. (Whereas I have never known that to be true of men—we just get older: flabbier or bonier, it’s never better.) I had always likened Lisa to a cow, and it wasn’t as if she had totally thrown that bovine quality off, but the fleshier parts of her face that I had once dismissed as pure farmyard now had a certain lustre. She was beautiful. There was a beauty to her. That’s what it was, and I was surprised to see it.

At first I couldn’t see why Max had referred to his house as a mansion. It wasn’t especially grand at all—bigger than my house in the city, of course, but you’d expect that in the styx. They showed me their kitchen, and the stone AGA that took up a whole half of the space. They showed me the lounge, the too big dining table, the too big fireplace. I made the right sort of approving noises, and Max beamed with pride as if I were his favourite schoolmaster giving him a good report card.

“Let me show John the garden!” said Lisa. “Quickly, before the light fades!” And she was excited, impatient.

And now I understood why Max had used the word “mansion.” Because though the house was unremarkable, the gardens at the back were huge. “It’s just shy of two acres,” boasted Max, and I could well believe it; it seemed to stretch off into the distance, I couldn’t see an end to it. But it wasn’t merely the size that was impressive—on its own, the size was an anomaly, a vast tract of land that had no business attaching itself to a house so small, like tiny Britain owning the whole of India. What struck me was the design of the thing, that it was truly
designed
, there was honest to God method in the placing of all those shrubs and hedges, the garden was laid out before us like a fully composed work of art. Even in the winter, the flowers not yet in bloom and the grass looking somewhat sorry for itself, the sight still took my breath away.

“I did all the landscaping myself,” said Lisa. “It was a hobby.” We walked on pebbled paths underneath archways of green fern. One day the paths would lead to big beds of flowers—“I’ve planted three thousand bulbs of grape hyacinth,” Lisa told me, “and, behind that, three thousand of species tulips—so in the spring, there’ll be this sea of blue crashing onto a shore of yellows, and reds, and greens! You’ll have to come back in the spring.” And every archway opened out to another little garden, different flowers seeded, but placed in ever winding patterns; there was topiary, there was even a faux maze: the design was intricate enough, I could see, but the hedges were still four feet tall, only a little child could have got lost in there.

And then, through another archway, and Lisa and Max led me to a pond. There was no water in the pond yet, this was still a work in progress. And, standing in the middle of the pond, raised high on a plinth, a statue of an angel—grey, stone, a fountain spout sticking out of its open mouth.

The wings were furled, somewhat apologetically even, as if the angel wasn’t sure how to use them. Its face was of a young cherub, and I stared at it, trying to identify it—it seemed familiar, and I wondered what painting I’d seen that had inspired it, was it Raphael, maybe, or Michelangelo?

“It’s Ian,” said Max helpfully. And I had a bit of a shock at that. But now I could see it, of course—the infant hands, body, feet; the strangely fat face; those puffed out cheeks he had always had, now puffed out in anticipation he’d be gushing forth a jet of water.