‘Not just.’
‘What else?’
‘I can never decide what I’d like to wear. I never know what’s right for me. I don’t know why. I see things in shops and I think, They look good and I try them on and they don’t seem right.’
‘Easy,’ he said. ‘I know just the gear that would suit you. We’ll kit you out.’
We did. I still didn’t feel right. But I wore them because he liked them.
The other day I took all that gear into the back garden and put it into the incinerator and burnt it. I stood there and watched till it was burnt to ashes.
10/I was going to write pages more about those seven weeks. I wanted you to understand what we were like together. What Barry was like. Like to me: how I saw him, knew him, thought of him.
But this morning I got up and read everything I have written so far, and particularly what I wrote yesterday (all the Bits in Part Three up to this one) and I knew straightaway: It can’t be done. The words are not right. They just ARE NOT RIGHT. They won’t say what I want them to say. They tell lies. They hide the truth. I read the words and I can feel—FEEL—what they should be saying and they aren’t. The meaning is hidden behind them. They are like bricks. They make a wall. A wall hiding from view what’s happening behind. You can hear muffled noises coming through but you can’t quite, never quite, make sense of them. They might be coming from someone being murdered, or from a child playing, or from a couple making love, or from someone playing a game trying to trick you into believing something is happening that isn’t really.
I almost tore everything up, all these pages. I’ve sat for an hour, telling myself I am an idiot.
And then I thought: What it all comes down to is this: I do not understand myself. That is why the words don’t say what I want them to say.
But there you are again. What did I just say! Look at that sentence: I do not understand myself. Does it mean: I do not understand about myself . . .? Or does it mean: I do not myself understand about Barry . . .?
Actually, when I put it like this I see both meanings are true. But I meant the second. You wouldn’t have known though if I hadn’t explained. Not for certain. The words just are never right.
So I’ll start again.
When it comes down to it, I do not understand Barry, or about Barry, or about myself, or myself.
So how can I make you understand? I thought at first that if I wrote it all down as it had happened, telling as much of it as I could, I myself might get to understand, as well as explaining. But it isn’t working. I can’t get enough of it down. There is always more. And what is written doesn’t ever tell enough, doesn’t really explain anything, not anything at all. And so the longer I go on the harder it becomes to understand anything.
A few days ago while I was sitting here trying to fight not-understanding, I suddenly realized I couldn’t see Barry’s face in my head any more. After only this short time, a few weeks, I can’t see him in my head. I can feel what he looks like—isn’t that strange?—but I can’t picture him. He comes faintly, in flashes, right at the back of my head, and then is gone again before I can look at him properly. Like a camera shutter opening too fast for the film to record the image. There’s only a faint blur. A ghost that just didn’t materialize.
It wouldn’t be so bad if I had a photograph of him. But we never took any of each other; never thought of needing them. We were always together so why bother?
I just went off to Mrs Gorman’s house. I thought—hoped – maybe she would have calmed down by now. Might see me again. Talk to me. Let me try and explain. I was going to ask her for a photograph. But she wouldn’t answer the door to me. Just shouted from inside. I told her what I wanted. She nearly went hysterical. Yelled and stormed. She isn’t any calmer. She’s just like she was when it happened that day. So I came away.
11/Which reminds me, I wanted to tell you—though it doesn’t matter now anyway—about when we went to London that once to see a show. The show we saw was Hamlet at the National Theatre. When we came out a woman just ahead of us burst into tears. Her friend fussed around her, embarrassed, and some people coming out of the theatre saw and laughed. Barry went up to her and said, ‘Are you okay? Can I do anything?’ And the woman looked at him, tears streaming down her face, and she smiled and shrugged her shoulders and shook her head and said, ‘No, no. It’s just the play. Just the play.’
We left her to her friend who we could see didn’t understand and walked from the theatre across Waterloo Bridge towards the West End. We were both silent. Half way across the bridge Barry said, not looking at me, ‘The remembering is what is so hard.’
I couldn’t think what he meant so I said nothing. A little further on he said, glancing at me this time, knowing I was confused, ‘The trouble with Hamlet. His father’s ghost telling him, “Remember me”. He can’t, you see. That’s why he feels so guilty. Why he wears his father’s picture round his neck: to remind him. Why he forces his mother to look at it. He says his mother has forgotten his father. But he’s talking about himself really. It’s his own guilt that’s driving him mad, not his mother shacking up with his uncle.’
We turned into the Strand, going towards Trafalgar Square.
‘That’s why that woman was crying just now, I think,’ he said. ‘She knew. You can’t remember and you think you should. I mean, you remember in one way. But you can’t recall the face, and the remembering doesn’t upset you any more and you feel guilty.’
Of course I knew by this time he was talking about himself and his father. I didn’t know what to say.
He looked at me and smiled, putting on the normal, everyday Barry. ‘Remember me!’ he said, sending up that evening’s ghost voice in the play. But I knew he meant it too, was saying it to me. ‘Swear!’ he said, being Hamlet’s father’s ghost still.
I laughed, trying to pass it off as the joke he was trying to pretend it was. But I knew he was thinking of our oath—that daft, nonsense-night oath I had not taken seriously then and still did not now, even though I felt him meaning it and was frightened by that. He did frighten me sometimes; I had found out a truth when I told him so. I didn’t know what frightened me, except that every time it happened I felt at the same time he was wanting too much from me. Wasn’t waiting to be given, but was taking. And I always felt at those times that he never got what he was looking for. That I was a disappointment then.
I can’t go on. I feel terrible. A headache is squeezing my eyes between my temples like a coconut in a vice. I want to be sick. I’m going to the lav.
12/I was so bad yesterday afternoon I had to go to bed.
I’ve had the same trouble before. Three or four times since Barry died. A crushing headache with a sharp slicing pain inside. My eyes go mushy and I can’t bear bright light. I vomit: biley ugly sick. I feel poleaxed, cold, fragile, battered. My nerves jangle; I can feel them twanging. In the end I get so bad I have to lie down under piles of bedclothes and with the curtains drawn across the windows.
My mother calls it migraine. Maybe it is. But I know what I call it. Fright. Funk. Shame. Guilt. Locked-up anger trying to get out. Self-pity.
All of those. All in one. A disaster area.
I look in the mirror and hate myself. For being stupid and weak.
Before the ache starts, I can’t feel anything. Nothing about anything, anyone.
Afterwards, I can’t feel anything again. I pretend I can. Behave as if I can. But I can’t. Nothing.
Ever since Barry’s death I’ve been like that. Then it all bursts out, like pus. I feel everything in a kind of fit. Then all that feeling gets tangled up inside me and boils over and gives me this headache that’s like a pressure cooker about to burst. In the end it sicks itself out, a volcanic eruption of misery.
I told you, right at the beginning I told you: I am mad.
I must be. What other explanation is there?
13/You know why I got ill yesterday? I thought about it during the night after the headache subsided and the sicking
stopped. I always calm down then, just for an hour or two. Relax. Am drained but relieved it is all over. I can think straight again. Well—almost straight.
I decided the reason I got ill yesterday was that I knew I would soon have to write about Barry’s death. I realized I have been trying to put it off all this time because I couldn’t face having to set it down in words. For someone else to read about.
As soon as I decided this I decided something else also. It is no use putting off writing about Barry’s death any longer. The sooner it is all down the better. Sick the words onto the page and then sicking my guts into the pan will stop.
14/So that’s it. All these experiences, and squads of them I haven’t told you about. We shared them. He-Me. He-in-Me. Me-in-Him. We.
Do experiences build up in you like money saved in a bank? Do they accumulate interest so that eventually you have enough to buy something really big? A huge supernova of an experience?
What would I buy with all that saved-up experience, all that we were?
Are still. In me. In my head.
PART FOUR
1/THE END BEGAN the morning Barry and I met Kari on the beach by Chalkwell station the Thursday of our seventh week.
Remember Kari, the au pair from Norway? The rather very girl. The eye-catcher I never thought to see again.
‘Hello, Hal,’ she called, rising from the sea like Aphrodite as Barry and I stripped just above the tide line. She came smiling towards us, adjusting her bikini against sea-spillage.
A bombardment of thought-rays split atoms in my mind. That she had—surprise pleasure—remembered me. That a lot of sun had hugged her buff in the last few weeks. That Barry had done a double-take. That at this very instant I was unveiling for Kari’s inspection my low-slung knees.
Tripping on my blushing indecision—whether to pull my jeans up again or whip them off regardless of my patellas—I tumbled onto the sand.
‘I don’t usually have such an effect on people,’ Kari said, reaching us, ‘but I must say it is very amusing.’
Barry seemed to be sharing the gag with her. I struggled to my feet, my jeans crumpled round my ankles.
‘Kari!’ I said treading grapes to free my hobbled feet. ‘Kari’s from Norway,’ I said to Barry. ‘This is Barry,’ I said to Kari. ‘Kari’s an au pair while she improves her English,’ I said to Barry. ‘Sounds like it’s coming on great,’ I said to Kari. ‘Met her a few weeks ago,’ I said to Barry, ‘well, the first night—I mean, the motorbike lot, that night, before I came to the shop.’
‘O, yes,’ Barry said grinning widely at Kari who was grinning widely back. ‘Hello, Kari.’
‘Hello, Barry,’ Kari said. ‘Actually, I’ve seen you both, you know. In a yellow boat, which looks rather fast, I must say. It has a pretty name I think.’
‘Calypso,’ Barry said.
‘Calypso,’ Kari said. ‘That’s right. You sail it so well.’
‘You can see her over there,’ I said, pointing, ‘moored just beyond that green cabin cruiser.’
‘O, yes,’ Kari said, ‘I see. Rather beautiful.’
‘We’ll have to take Kari out sometime,’ Barry said to me but looking still at Kari. ‘Teach her some nautical terms.’
‘That would be rather jolly,’ Kari said.
‘You can sail?’ Barry said.
‘If someone is telling me what to do,’ Kari said.
(Did that turn out to be an understatement! She was better than Barry.)
‘Barry is pretty good at telling people what to do,’ I said laughing.
‘You can swim?’ Barry said.
‘Of course,’ Kari said.
‘Just as well,’ Barry said. ‘Hal’s good at capsizing.’
Kari laughed. ‘Perhaps you should stay in charge.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘he will.’ To hell with my patellas, she wasn’t looking at any of me, never mind at my knees. I whipped off my jeans and shook the sand off them so that the breeze blew it into their smirking faces.
‘It all sounds like great fun,’ Kari said ignoring the sand storm.
‘Why don’t you come out right now?’ Barry said taking her arm and leading her in the direction of the dinghy.
‘Why not!’ Kari said.
I grabbed the sail bag of gear and followed them.
2/That, as nearly as I can remember, was how the conversation went, how the end began. Because that is the trouble—Correction: That is part of the trouble—I can’t remember so much about the end. Which has been one of the problems about telling anyone—the police, my parents, Ozzy, or you, Ms Atkins. Stupid, eh? Other bits I can remember in detail, like being rescued, and he and I sitting together in the cinema that first night, about which there really isn’t more to be said than that: We were together. But I could spell it out in heartbeats, every one remembered, and what happened between every single beat. (Well, that’s how it feels!) They were the Great Moments. And what made them GMs was Being Together. Nothing else. Physical presence. Body-mind talk.
But the beginning of the end was not a GM. It was trivial. Crass. Can it be all that happened? Am I forgetting the more important bits? They say your memory can block out painful experiences, just as it can record so clearly every second of the GMs. And this must be true or we would all remember terrifying moments, wouldn’t we? Like being born. And after it is over, do we remember death?
On, on . . .
3/Together.
His hand on the back of her neck.
Caressing.
To get her.
4/The grass is always greener on the other body’s grave.
5/It was half past ten next morning before he turned up at the shop. I was already there. Had been since eight-fifteen. Not out of duty; not out of famished desire to be in the presence of Prince Charming. But out of fury.
Jealous? Me? Never!
As he came through the door our eyes met. He could not help seeing in mine the beam of anger. In his I could see—what pleasure!—a mote of shame, a devil’s obsequy.1 But he was hiding whatever regret he felt behind a mug full of glee.
‘Hi, handsome!’ he said, parading the empty shop addressing himself effusively to the sleeve displays. ‘How’s business?’
‘Slow,’ I said heavily.
‘There’s no business like slow business,’ he said, and when I didn’t respond, ‘Boom-boom!’
‘Had a good night?’ I said, pretending to perform tasks of a clerical nature.
‘Con-tortious,’ he said. ‘Inventive. Suc-cu-lent.’ He prowled, shafting the words at me barbed with provocation. ‘Novel.’
‘Sounds exhaustingly Nordic.’
‘A saga of sexual sensation.’
‘I can imagine.’
He faced me squarely across the counter. ‘Can you?’ he said drily. ‘And how would you know?’
A challenge, no doubt of it.
‘I had such a good teacher,’ I said, tit-for-tart.
‘Philately wouldn’t deliver you this male,’ he said. ‘Not today.’
‘I don’t accept spoiled goods from Norway,’ I said.
He leaned towards me, head wagging. ‘Are we a little peaky this morning?’
‘No more than we’re a little traitorous.’
Here began the heavy breathing, sour looks, tight-lipped mouths, raised voices, spewings of verbal bile.
‘Don’t push your luck,’ Barry said, snip-snip.
‘Me push my luck! So who’s talking!’
This is ridiculous, I was thinking; I don’t want this to happen. Why am I doing it? All last night, every time I woke up, which was often, I’d been telling myself to stay cool, to play it calmly, not to lose my temper, not to show any anger. And here I was doing just the opposite, saying everything I’d told myself not to say, like all the switches in my mind had got mixed up so that ‘off’ meant ‘on’ and the ‘don’t’ buttons activated the ‘do’ circuits. I was a robot programmed for self-destruction.
‘You don’t own me, kid,
’ Barry said.
‘I didn’t say I did. And don’t call me kid.’
‘You’re acting like you think you do, and like a kid.’
‘What I thought was that we were friends.’
‘More than friends, surely?’
‘Call it what you like. You know what I mean. You came after me, remember.’
‘Me . . . after! . . . Cobblers!’
His derision triggered off all the wrong switches at once. I started disliking him. Wanted to hurt him. Any how.
‘It wasn’t me who came to the so-called rescue waving your jeans in the air,’ I said, spitting out the words like gobs of concentrated H2SO4 and camping the accompanying gestures in parody of that first day. ‘It wasn’t me who gave you a nice hot bath and dressed you in my hello-sailor clothes and made eyes at you over a meal and cosied up at the movies—’
‘All right, all right—’
‘You’re sure you wouldn’t like me to go on? There’s plenty more where that came from.’
‘A proper little acid factory, aren’t you, ducky!’ He stomped away into the office, sniping from the door, ‘I don’t remember you putting up much resistance.’
For ten minutes after that we assaulted each other with pouting silences. I guess there must have been a customer or two, but I don’t remember. All I remember is standing behind the counter staring blindly at the sleeve racks. There was no thinking going on in my head, only in my stomach.
Then my stomach made me walk to the office door. He must have heard me coming because I heard him move as I approached and when I reached the door and looked inside he was standing in front of the mirror combing his hair.
‘Why?’ my stomach made me say, quietly, not in anger.
His eyes, in the mirror, left his hair and grazed my face.
‘Why?’ he said. ‘You’re always asking why. What’s it matter why?’ He turned to face me, six feet away, a waxwork of himself. ‘Just relax, will you? Forget it. Nothing’s happened.’
‘Nothing!’
‘Nothing that matters. Nothing that need bother you . . . Us.’
‘I still want to know why.’
He sighed. ‘Hal, you’re getting to be a pain in the gut.’