Love, Etc Read online

  ‘You have to have a goal, you see.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Something to aim at.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘So what do you think it might be, in your case?’

  I sighed. How to translate the inchoate stirrings of the artistic temperament into a Business Plan? I gazed into Stu-baby’s Wheat Mash as if into a crystal ball. Very well then. ‘Nobel Prize,’ I offered.

  ‘I’d say you’ve still got a very long way to go.’

  There are times, wouldn’t you agree, when Stuart really hits the nail on the head? That bruised and blackened left thumb is evidence of his more habitual aim, but once in a while, Stuart, once in a while …

  Stuart Every so often I start making a list. Liar, parasite, wife-stealer, it usually begins. Pretentious berk is normally the next item. Then I stop myself. I mustn’t let Oliver provoke me, least of all when he doesn’t know he’s doing it. There are feelings which don’t have any point to them, which don’t have anywhere to go. And because they don’t have anywhere to go, they can get out of hand.

  We had a very sensible discussion, interspersed as it was by bouts of facetiousness from Oliver. I managed to ignore them because what I’m doing is for those two girls. And for Gill. So it doesn’t really matter what Oliver thinks or says. As long as he does what’s best for them.

  Oliver is to be my Transport Coordinator. Starting on Monday. It’s a new position I’ve created specially for him. He might have to put some of his other ambitions temporarily on hold, but I think having a proper job will help him grow up. And that, in turn, might help those other ambitions of his.

  Oliver Long ago, in the kingdom of dreams, when the world was young and we were young with it, when passions were high and the heart pumped blood as if there were no tomorrow, when Stuart and Oliver felt momentarily like Roland and Oliver, so that half a London postal district resounded to the thud of knobkerrie on breastplate, the said hero, yclept Oliver, confided the following Thought for the Day to … well, to you, if truth be served. And truth must be served, even if on my menu it requires wholegrain mustard, some pungent garnishings and a few fantastical side dishes to make it palatable. At the time, I confessed to you that my proposed resolution to the then imbroglio went as follows:

  Stuart has to step down. Oliver has to step up. Nobody must get hurt. Gillian and Oliver must live happily ever after. Stuart must be their best friend. That’s what has to happen. How high do you rate my chances? As high as an elephant’s eye?

  I could see from your expression at the time—sceptical to the point of faroucheness—that you judged this the landscape of invention, as verisimilitudinous as operetta. Yet was I not as far-seeing as St Simeon the Stylite atop his pillar at Telanissus? Hath not it come to pass just as I spake, O ye of little faith?

  It was said of the ascetic and eremitic Simeon that ‘despairing of escaping the world horizontally, he tried to escape it vertically.’ The pillar on which he dwelt was at first no higher than a bird table, but over the years he built it ever more heavenwards, until this upwardly mobile home was sixty feet tall, equipped with both platform and balustrade. Now, the seeming paradox of his life was that the further he distanced himself from terra firma, the greater his wisdom grew, so that petitioners for counsel and solace arrived in ever greater numbers. A pretty parable of sagacity and its attainment, n’est-ce pas? Only by distancing yourself from the world do you see it clearly. The ivory tower has been much maligned, no doubt because of its luxury cladding. You leave the world in order to understand the world. You escape into knowledge.

  Au fond, this is why I have for decades been a resilient opponent of what those of a parental or admonitory nature have termed a regular job. And now—Lordy, Lordy—St Simeon the Van Driver.

  I told Stuart I wanted to be paid in cash. He was obviously impressed that I had the makings of a Man with a Plan. He smiled and extended his paw. He might have said, ‘Put it there, pal.’ He might have winked in a horribly complicit manner. At any rate, he made me feel like a freemason. Or, more exactly, like a person trying to pass himself off as a freemason.

  12

  WANTING

  Stuart You don’t get things by not asking for them.

  You don’t get things by not wanting them, either.

  That’s another difference. When I was younger, I got what I was given. That’s what life seemed to be about. And in the back of my mind I assumed that there was some system of justice up there. But there isn’t. Or if there is, it’s not for the likes of me. Or you, probably. If we only get what we are given, then we don’t get much, do we?

  And it’s all about wanting, isn’t it? When I was younger there were lots of things I pretended to want, or assumed I wanted, simply because other people did. I’m not claiming to be older and wiser—well, only a bit—but nowadays I know what I want and I don’t waste time on what I don’t want.

  And if you’re on your own, you don’t have to worry about someone else wanting something. Because that takes up a lot of time too.

  Ellie Stuart is not a bowerbird. Sorry, it just makes me laugh when I say it.

  I said to him, ‘Where are you going to hang it?’

  He said, ‘Hang what?’

  ‘The picture?’

  ‘What picture?’

  I looked at him, not really believing what I’d heard. ‘The one I brought back to you last week, the one you paid me in cash for.’

  ‘Ah. I don’t think I’m going to hang it.’ He could see I was expecting some sort of explanation, and finally he gave me one. ‘I’m not much of a bowerbird, as you’ve noticed. Would you like it?’

  ‘Me? No. It’s crap.’

  ‘That’s what you said Gill would say about it.’

  ‘Well, I spent about fifteen hours looking at it, so I’m agreeing with her.’ Stuart didn’t seem at all put out by this. ‘And what was the “particular reason” you wanted me to clean it?’ He didn’t answer at once, so I added, a bit sarcastically, ‘Mr Henderson.’

  ‘Ah, well, actually, so that I could meet you and ask you about Gillian and Oliver.’

  ‘No-one recommended me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If you wanted to know about Gillian and Oliver, why didn’t you ask them yourself? Seeing as you’re an old friend.’

  ‘It’s awkward. I wanted to know how they were. Really. Not how they said they were.’ He could see I wasn’t buying this for an explanation at all. ‘OK. Gill and I used to be married.’

  ‘Jesus.’ I lit a cigarette straight away. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Yes. Do you mind if I have one?’

  ‘You don’t smoke.’

  ‘No, but I want one now.’ He lit a Silk Cut, took a puff and looked at it in a slightly disappointed way, as if it wasn’t any solution to the immediate problem.

  ‘Jesus,’ I repeated. ‘Why did it … you know, go wrong?’

  ‘Oliver.’

  ‘Jesus.’ I couldn’t think of anything to say. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Them. Me. Obviously. Mme Wyatt. You. A few people I haven’t seen for years. My second wife. My second ex-wife. Not the girls. They don’t know yet.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  He told me the story. He told it very straightforwardly, just the facts, as if he was reading from a newspaper. Not any old newspaper, either. Today’s.

  Oliver My first pay packet, even if the second element in that substantive proved nugatory, there being no actual envelope. The ‘wedge,’ as some of my fellow toilers refer to it, was merely thrust into my outstretched hand like that moment of divine contact in the Sistine Chapel. I knew my primal duty—the spirit of Roncesvalles still coursed within me—and hied my way to number 55. By the time I heard the soft-slipper shuffle of Mrs Dyer approaching the other side of the door, I was on one penitential knee. She looked at me with no immediate sign of cognition, re-, pre-or otherwise.

  ‘Eleven twenty-five, Mrs D. Better late than never, as the Good Book has it.’

  She took t
he money and—‘Etonne-moi!’ as Diaghilev said to Cocteau—started to count it. Then it disappeared out of sight into some crepuscular placket. Her parched and powdered lips slowly parted. Here came absolution for Ollie the Sinner, I thought.

  ‘I want ten years’ interest,’ she said. ‘Compound.’ Then she shut the door.

  Hey, isn’t life full of gaudy surprises? Mrs D a major nickel-fucker, think of that, eh? I hopscotched my way down her path like a sprite who’s been at the margaritas.

  She really must marry me, don’t you think?

  But I seem to be married already, don’t I?

  Gillian One of the things I’ve always tried to teach the girls is that there’s nothing particularly good or virtuous about wanting something. I don’t put it like that, of course. In fact, I frequently don’t put it at all. The best lessons children learn are those they learn for themselves.

  It shocked me, the first time I saw close up—with Sophie—how much a child can want something. I’d noticed it before I had children, but only passingly. You know, you’re in a shop, and there’s usually a harassed mum with a couple of kids who are picking up things and saying, ‘Want this,’ and the mum says, ‘Put that down,’ or ‘You can’t have that today,’ or ‘You’ve got enough crisps,’ or, just occasionally, ‘All right, then, put it in the basket.’ Such moments always struck me as rather primitive trials of strength, and I used to assume it was bad parenting that had let things get to this public stage. Well, that was priggish of me. Ignorant, as well.

  Then I saw Sophie want things—in shops, in other people’s houses, on television—with an intensity I simply couldn’t remember from my own childhood. There was a stuffed owl belonging to the daughter of some friends. It wasn’t rare or special in any way, just a felt owl glued to a perch like a parrot. She wanted that owl, she dreamed about it, she talked about it for months. She didn’t want another one like it, she wanted that one; and the fact that it belonged to someone else, a friend too, didn’t matter. She would have been a complete dictator if I’d let her dictate. Of course, Oliver would have allowed her anything.

  I think children easily get into the habit of believing that just to say they want something is an interesting and valuable expression of their personality. I also think it’s bad for them in later life: you want something, you get it. That’s not what things are going to be like. How do you explain to a child that in later life it’s normal to want something without ever standing a chance of getting it? Or the opposite: getting something only to find you didn’t really want it after all, or that it wasn’t what you thought it would be?

  Marie Want a cat.

  Mme Wyatt What do I desire? Well, since that I am an old woman—no, do not interrupt—since that I am an old woman, I have only what Stuart calls soft feelings. That was a good phrase, no? I want little comforts for myself. I do not want love or sex any more. I prefer a well-cut suit and a sole off the bone. I want a book written with a good style that does not have an unhappy ending. I want politeness and short conversations with friends for who I have respect. But in general I want things for others—for my daughter, for my granddaughters. I want the world to be not so menacing for them than it has been to me and the people I have known during my life. More and more, I want less and less. You see, I have only soft feelings.

  Sophie I want people in Africa to have enough to eat.

  I want everyone to be a vegetarian and not eat animals.

  I want to get married and have fifteen children. All right, six.

  I want Spurs to win the League and the Cup and the European Cup and everything.

  I want a new pair of trainers, but only when I’ve had enough wear out of these.

  I want them to find a cure for cancer.

  I want there not to be any more wars.

  I want to do well in the exams and get into St Mary’s.

  I want Daddy to drive carefully and never get the glooms again.

  I want Mummy to be more cheerful.

  I want Marie to have a cat if Mummy thinks it’s a good idea.

  Terri I want the kind of guy who turns out, when you get to know him better, to be exactly like how you took him to be when you first met him.

  I want the kind of guy who calls when he says he’ll call, and comes home when he says he’ll come home.

  I want the kind of guy who’s happy being the kind of guy he is.

  I want the kind of guy who wants the kind of woman I am.

  That doesn’t sound too much to ask, does it? Well, it’s asking for the moon and the stars according to my friend Marcelle. I once asked her why so many of the men I’d been involved with didn’t seem particularly well balanced, and she says, Terri, that’s because all men are genetically related to stone crabs.

  Gordon Gordon here. That’s right, Gordon Wyatt. As in, father of Gillian, and dastardly deserter of Marie-Christine. Don’t get much of a look-in, do I? Knocking on a bit, of course, now. Got the old bus pass years ago. Bit of a scare in the grandfather clock department recently. Tick nearly didn’t lead to tock, and the second Mrs W would have had to get out the crêpe. Not that anyone wears crêpe any more, do they? I must say, the way people dress for funerals and memorial services is pretty shocking. Even those who make an effort just look as if they’re dressed for a job interview.

  Oh, I know what people say. It’s how you’re feeling inside that counts, not how you’re dressed outside. I’m sorry, but if you’re crying bucketloads and looking as if you’ve stopped off on the way to a car-boot sale, that’s not good enough for me. You’re drawing attention to yourself in my book.

  Sorry, that’s a bit off tack. The second Mrs W would have pulled me up by now if she’d been around. Bit of a stickler about the general tendency to run off at the mouth.

  I’ve been a lucky S.O.B., all things considered. I count my blessings. The children are doing well, three smashing grandchildren, pride of my life. Enough in the bank for the years ahead, fingers crossed.

  It’s not so much what I want as what I wish. I wish I could see Gillian again. Even a photo would be better than nothing. But the first Mrs W put up the Berlin Wall all those years ago, and the second has always been agin it. She says it’s up to Gillian to get in touch if she wants to. Says I don’t have the right to shove my way back into her life at this late stage. I do wonder what’s become of her. She must be in her early forties by now. I don’t even know if she’s got kids. I don’t even know if she’s alive. That’s an awful thought. No, I can comfort myself that if anything terrible had happened, I could count on Madame to track me down and twist the knife, just for old time’s sake.

  Look, you wouldn’t by any chance have a photo of her on you? Sure? No, I suppose that would be breaking the rules. Anyway, that sounds like the door. Don’t mention any of this, will you? The second Mrs W doesn’t want to know, basically. And I do want a quiet time. I want that more than anything.

  Mrs Dyer I want the gate fixed. I want the doorbell fixed. I want that stupid monkey-puzzle tree chopped down, I’ve never liked it.

  I want to join my husband. That’s his ashes up there in the bedroom cupboard. I want to be scattered with him. I want us to fly away on the wind together.

  Oliver

  I want a hero: an uncommon want,

  When every year and month sends forth a new one,

  Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,

  The age discovers he is not the true one.

  To want is to wish, and also to lack. So you wish for what you lack. Is it all as simple as that? Or can you want what you’ve already got? Indeed: you may desire the sultry continuance of what you already possess. And you can also want to be rid of what you have—in which case what you lack is the lack of something? Things do tend to overlap in this area, I find.

  By the way, I don’t want a hero. This is no time for heroes. Even the names Roland and Oliver now sound like two tonsured veterans of the bowling green, right knees air-kissing the rubber mat as they curl their biased
woods through the gentle evening sun towards the glinting jack. To be the hero of your own life is about as much as people can manage nowadays. To be a hero to others? No man is a hero to his valet, someone said. (Who? Some German sage, I would guess.) Then it’s just as well I don’t have a valet. If I did, he would turn out to be someone like Stuart. And I’d have to turn water into organic wine to get his vote.

  For hero read that bland simulacrum the role model. No longer do you aspire to individualism, you aspire to category. The ‘sporting hero’—a fetid and satirical contradiction in terms if ever I heard one—declares that he wishes to be a ‘role model’ for what he probably refers to as ‘youngsters.’ In other words: clones kindly apply. Whereas at the time of Roncesvalles, when Johnny Saracen’s wickedly curved panga was slicing its way through the subcutaneous fat of Europe’s soft underbelly … Momento—haven’t we been here before? Haven’t I been here before?

  I want to remember what I’ve told you previously. I wish I knew what my memory lacks. Ha!

  Ellie I said, probably earlier than I needed to, ‘Do you have a condom with you?’

  He looked a bit surprised. ‘No. I can pop out and get some.’

  I said, ‘Look, just so we know where we are, I always insist on condoms.’

  Some boys get pissed off at that. So it’s a sort of test, too. He just said, ‘Well, that works both ways.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean neither of us has to worry. About anything.’

  That was a nice thing to say. I think, anyway.

  When he got to the door, he turned. ‘Anything else you want? Shampoo? Toothbrush? Dental tape?’

  Stuart’s much more fun than he looks, you know.

  Mme Wyatt So, I have convinced you, with my little discourse about soft feelings, about not desiring things, wanting them only for others? Let me explain you this. The old are very good at being old, it is a skill they learn. They know what you are expecting from them and they give it to you. What do I desire? I desire, bitterly and without cease, to be young again. I detest my old age more than I detested anything in my youngness. I desire love. I desire to be loved. I desire sex. I desire to be held and to be caressed. I desire to fuck. I desire not to die. I also desire to die in my sleep, suddenly, not to die like my mother, screaming with the cancer, doctors unable to control the pain, until they decide to give her morphine to kill her, then she is silent. I desire my daughter to know that I am more different from her than she can possibly know, that I love her always but do not always like her so much. I also desire that my husband, who betrayed me, suffer because of it. Sometimes I go to church and pray. I am not a believer, but I pray that there is a God and that in another life my husband be punished as a sinner. I want him to burn in the hell I do not believe in.