Or look at this lot. There’s Gillian and Oliver and I don’t think much of that marriage. There’s Stuart: two marriages adding up to a total of what, five and a bit years between them? Even old Mme Wyatt—she ended up on her own.
People make mistakes. Sure, I agree. It’s just that when I look at people older than me they’ve either split up or they’re in relationships I wouldn’t want to be in myself. Yes, I am judgemental, since you ask. When you see experts and people in the law and people on TV saying, ‘We must take the concept of fault out of the breakdown of relationships,’ I think: oh no we shouldn’t, what we should do is put it back in. Everyone’s at fault so no-one’s at fault, that’s what they think, don’t they? Well, not me, not me.
What I want to know is this. Most of the grown-ups I know seem to be fuck-ups, one way or another. So is that the way you get to be grown up, by fucking up? In that case I don’t think I’ll bother.
P.S. About Gillian. Of course I admire her. She’s very good at her work, and she runs her life in a way I never could. And I like her too. It’s just that … look, when we’re in the studio and someone brings in a picture she’s very smart at spotting fakes.
So what’s she doing with Oliver?
Stuart First love is the only love.
Oliver As much love as possible is the only love.
Gillian True love is the only love.
Stuart I don’t mean you can’t love again. Some people can, even if some people can’t. But whether you can or can’t, first love can never be repeated. And whether you can or can’t, first love never lets you go. Second love lets you go. First, never.
Oliver Misprise me not. ’Twas not the catechism of Casanova, the justification of Giovanni. Sexual Stakhanovism is for those with no imagination. I meant, if anything, the contrary. We need as much love as possible because there is so little of it to go round, don’t you find?
Gillian True love is solid love, day-to-day love, reliable love, love that never lets you down. You think that sounds boring? I don’t. I think it sounds deeply romantic.
Stuart P.S. By the way, and incidentally, who ever said that love makes us better people, or makes us behave better? Who ever said that?
Stuart P.P.S. I’d like to make another point because nobody else has done so. Someone said that being in love makes you liable to fall in love. I’d just like to say: not half as much as not being in love does.
Stuart P.P.P.S. And another thing. Love leads to happiness. That’s what everyone believes, isn’t it? That’s what I used to believe, too, all those years ago. I don’t any more.
You look surprised. Think about it. Examine your own life. Love leads to happiness? Come off it.
15
DO YOU KNOW WHAT’S UP?
Terri You see, Stuart and I got on well enough. We fought about a few things, like vacations—he never wanted to take one and when we did he wasn’t any good at doing nothing. I’ve never seen anyone so miserable as Stuart on a beach. But he was a generous man, had fun buying me things, we lived well, we had friends who came over. We could’ve stayed married—for Christ’s sake, people in way worse shape than us stay married and don’t think anything’s wrong.
I guess we’d agree it started to unravel the day we spent those eighteen minutes at the therapist. But we’d disagree about the why. And we aren’t going to any therapist to work through that disagreement. We didn’t have to work through it for the court either. We both wanted a divorce, there were no kids, Stuart was generous, like I said. Why bother distributing the truth as well as the property? So it just lies there, this disagreement of ours, this disagreement about the truth. Lies there like a piece of junk on the ocean floor. You know—you’re out swimming, it’s a beautiful day, the water’s clear, you’re happy, and all you can see is this pile of rusting junk on the bottom. Home for a bunch of crabs. That’s all you can see.
Stuart Terri? You’re still asking me about Terri? Look, that stuff’s all in the past for me, it’s over and done with. Tell you what: I’ll just put my case on the record and leave it at that. If you don’t believe me, that’s OK. What I mean is: my account is non-negotiable.
OK, so we moved in together, we married, Terri didn’t want children at first, but that was fine. We got on, we had fun, we jogged along. Then … well, put it this way. Terri for some reason became obsessed with Gillian. She also decided at about this time—and she made it quite clear to me—that she didn’t ever want to have children with me. And what can you do about that? If either of us needed a therapist, it was her. But the problem was insurmountable. So it could never be what I would regard as a full marriage. So we separated. Later, we divorced. It was painful, but we wanted different things out of the marriage, and once you recognise that, then it’s time to call it a day, isn’t it? End of story.
Terri ‘My account is non-negotiable.’ He actually said that? Is it just me, am I over-sensitive, or does that feel like ten below zero? Business terms may be non-negotiable, Stuart, American foreign policy may be non-negotiable, Stuart, but we’re talking human relations here, or hadn’t you noticed?
Fact. Stuart was deeply trashed by his first wife. He was damaged, he was hurting in ways he didn’t know he could hurt. She really put him through it, leaving him in the dirt and going off with his best friend. It took Stuart a long time to learn to trust again. Fact. He did learn to trust again, with me. Fact. Just because you’ve been trashed by someone, it doesn’t mean you stop thinking about them. Usually the reverse. As in, becoming obsessed by them. Fact. Stuart had mentioned kids when we were first together, I said I wasn’t ready, he said that was fine, we had all the time in the world. Fact. Stuart didn’t mention kids again until the week after our aborted visit to the therapist.
Now, this next part is not a fact, but it is my considered opinion, which I suddenly came to one day, and everything in me confirmed it—every instinct, every part of my brain, every moment of observation, every way of looking into the past. You recall what I was saying about the honest lies you tell at the start of a relationship? And the one Stuart told, the big one, was ‘I want you to have my kids.’ You know why it was a lie? Because the truth, which took me three years of marriage to figure out, was this. What Stuart wanted, what he wanted me to have, wasn’t my kids but Gillian’s. Don’t you see?
Hey, Stuart, now that is non-negotiable.
Gillian Do you know what’s up with Oliver?
He came back from Lincolnshire in a really foul mood. Sophie ran to the door, and the next thing I heard was Oliver stomping upstairs. Sophie came back and said, ‘Daddy’s in a grump.’
People’s moods. How do you deal with them? I’m not a therapist and I wouldn’t be any good as one anyway. So all I can do is what I always do: I carry on as normal, I remain as cheerful as possible, and if Oliver doesn’t want to pick up on my mood, then I’m sorry but he can get on with his own. I’m not—what’s that awful word?—confrontational. I ask and I listen if and as required. I’m here if he needs me. On the other hand, I’m not a nursemaid and I’m not a mother—except to my own children.
When he came down I asked how his day had been.
‘Carrots. Leeks. Ducks.’
I asked about the traffic.
‘The highway was replete with poltroons, dupes and deceivers.’
So I gave normality a final try. I took him to see the shelves Stuart had put up. He looked at them for a long time—peering from close up, standing back as if he was in the National Gallery, knocking on the wood with his knuckles, contorting himself to see how they were fixed to the wall, playing with a spirit level Stuart had left behind. It was a typical performance, if more over the top than usual.
‘They’re not painted,’ I said, to fill the silence.
‘I’d never have spotted that.’
‘Stuart thought you might want to paint them yourself.’
‘Good of Stuart.’
I’m not one for this kind of conversation, as you may imagine. The older I get, t
he more I just want people to be straightforward.
‘So what do you think, Oliver?’
‘What do I think?’ He did the legs-apart, chin-in-fist, head-scratching National Gallery number again. ‘I think it’s a fine thing the two of you have cooked up together, that’s what I think.’
I left him to it. I went to bed. Oliver slept in the spare room. It happens at times like this. If the girls notice, we say Daddy was working late and didn’t want to disturb Mummy when he came to bed.
Stuart I ran into Oliver in the yard. He immediately put down a tray of endive and went into an act of elaborate bowing and scraping. He wound the corner of a handkerchief round one finger which made the rest of it practically flap in my face. I was clearly meant to be reminded of something.
‘Oliver,’ I asked, ‘what are you being?’
‘Your valet,’ he replied.
‘Why?’
‘Aha!’ he exclaimed, screwing up half his face and tapping the side of his nose with his finger. ‘Always remember, no man is a hero to his valet.’
‘That’s probably true,’ I replied. ‘But seeing as no-one actually has a valet nowadays, it strikes me as a rather irrelevant piece of wisdom.’
Oliver In days of yore, before my master rescued me, I sank low. I sold tea-towels and oven gloves out of plastic stacking crates. I was a door-to-door runner for a video rental enterprise which may not have been strictly kosher. I pushed flyers through letter boxes. Including my own. Which was not as onanistic as it sounds. I realised that if, with a villainous shoulder-swirl to conceal the deed, I shoved fifty or more gaudy leaflets onto my own mat, then the householder was unlikely to complain and the load was suddenly lightened. I once posted through chez moi’s vent an arguably supernumerary sheaf of special Tuesday night dinner offers for the Star of Bengal, who are equally proud of their dine-in facilities and their home-delivery expertise (‘Curry in a Hurry’), and then the next day took advantage of the said offer and blew my paltry wage on squiring my Meilleure Demie to the said Candlelit Special. As I recall, we qualified for the free vegetable side dish with every order over £10.
Stuart would no doubt assert that I was being taught an elementary lesson on the nursery slopes of venture capitalism. Odd that I felt more like an unprotected wage slave being exploited by a major nickelfucker.
Plus ça change, eh?
Gillian You might think this a betrayal. Oliver probably would. But I had a sudden flashback to when he had his depression. So I phoned Stuart at his office and said I was worried that Oliver was overworking. There was a silence, then a surprisingly harsh laugh, then another silence. Finally, Stuart said, ‘In my opinion, Oliver thinks any sort of working is overworking.’ He sounded as if he really despised Oliver and despised me too for being the little wifey ringing up the boss about her husband. He sounded like the boss as well: not an old friend—and ex-husband—but an employer and a landlord. Then he caught himself and started asking about the girls, and it was all back to normal.
I’m probably quite the wrong person to have to deal with a depressive. But that’s not my fault, is it?
Oliver By the way, it wasn’t some Teutonic sage. The line about valets and heroes. It was Mme Cornuel. Heard of her? No, me neither. I looked her up. ‘A bourgeoise famous for her mordant wit,’ I read. ‘Men of letters flocked to her salon in the late seventeenth century.’ Ah, but why remember her any longer? Stuart has pronounced her wisdom ‘irrelevant.’ Let us erase her memory, let us delete her sole contribution to the dictionary of quotations, ‘seeing as no-one actually has a valet nowadays.’
Ellie It’s not that I want it to ‘get anywhere.’ That’s how parents talk.
It’s just that it’s perfectly clear it’s ‘going nowhere.’ That’s how parents talk as well. Of course.
Enjoy the moment. I do. Try different things. I do. Don’t tie yourself down. I don’t. You’re only young once. I know. Enjoy your freedom. I try.
So it’s no big deal. What did I tell Oliver when he tried to set me up? I said middle-aged divorcees weren’t my scene. Or double-divorcees, as it turned out. And they aren’t.
Look, I’m not in love with Stuart. Or likely to be. I go round to his place once a week, once every ten days. It’s still as bare and undecorated as the first time. We usually go for a meal, have a nice bottle of wine. Afterwards we go back to the flat and sometimes I’ll stay the night with him, sometimes we’ll have a quick shag and I’ll be off, sometimes we don’t bother. You see? No big problem. It’s not a high-maintenance relationship.
It’s just that, if I was interested, really interested, I know I’d be getting hurt. And it makes me really pissed off to think about it. I ought to be pleased, oughtn’t I? But I’m not. I’m really pissed off with him.
Do you know what’s up? I mean, it seems obvious to me. As obvious as … well, the fact that his flat is completely bare except for piles of shirts and piles of washing-up he leaves for the cleaner, and one of the reasons it’s so bare is because he’s always round at St Dunstan’s Road putting up shelves and stuff.
Grown-ups are fuck-ups, right?
Sophie Mum’s been really weird lately. Staring out of the window like I said. Forgetting I’ve got music on Tuesdays. I think she’s worried about Dad. Frightened about him getting Down in the Dumps again.
I tried to think of something to cheer her up. So I said, ‘Mum, if anything happened to Dad, you could always marry Stuart.’ Well, it seemed like a sensible idea, as he’s got loads of money and we can never afford anything.
Mum just looked at me and ran out of the room. After a bit she came back and I could see she’d been crying. She also had that face which means we’re going to have a Serious Talk About Something.
Then she told me what she’d never told me before. That Stuart and her were married before she married Dad.
I thought about this for a bit. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Well, we thought we’d tell you if you asked.’
That’s not a real answer, is it? Like, oh, Mum, was Dad ever married to Princess Di, for instance, now that I know I have to ask before I’m told.
I thought about it some more, and it seemed obvious really. ‘So you’re trying to tell me that Stuart’s my real father?’
Guess what? Lots more tears. Hugs. She told me it absolutely isn’t true. You know that way Mum has of saying ‘It absolutely isn’t true’?
Why didn’t she tell us Stuart and her were married—unless there was a secret for some reason. What else can it be?
She said I wasn’t to tell Marie. Perhaps they’re waiting till she asks.
‘Well,’ I said, trying to be sensible, ‘I suppose you could always marry him again.’
Mum said I wasn’t to tell anyone else about it either.
But I did ask. Don’t you remember? That night Dad came home drunk. I asked who Stuart was and Mum said he was just someone they knew. They could have told me then, couldn’t they?
Stuart Aren’t there a lot of terrible stories in the newspapers nowadays? Did you see that case the other week about a man who’d been abused in a children’s home, years and years ago? It’s terrible when trust is betrayed, isn’t it? And then time passes, and it doesn’t get any better. This chap grew up, tried to forget it, couldn’t, and twenty years later tracked down the … carer who’d done it to him. The fellow was in his sixties by now, so in a way their roles were reversed: he was at the mercy of someone stronger, just like the boy had been all those years before.
So he introduced himself to his abuser, took him for a drive and pushed him off a cliff. No, that makes it sound too clean. He let him pray first. That’s interesting, isn’t it? He let him kneel down and pray. He told the police afterwards that he would have spared him if he’d prayed for his victims, but all he did was pray for himself. So he dragged the old man to the cliff-top and booted him off. That’s what he said, booted him off. He told the police he could show them the skidmarks where his victim had been trying to
hang onto the ground. They couldn’t find hide nor hair of the body. No, that’s wrong, hair is what they did find, halfway down the cliff. A football scarf with some grey hairs on it. It was a Portsmouth scarf, I’ll always remember that. Blue and white. Portsmouth.
It’s a terrible story, isn’t it? And it’s more terrible when you think that to the murderer it probably felt like fair dos. If anything, less than the old man deserved. If anything, he probably thought he’d let him off lightly.
The other thing I remember is that he told the police he was surprised by how calm he felt afterwards. He said he’d gone home, made himself a cup of tea and had a good night’s sleep.
Oliver Another thing. Mr Cherrybum’s spirit level. I looked at it and thought: that’s what we all need. Something with which to measure the level of our spirits. Lay it on the human soul, / Watch the bubble in its bowl / By its rise and fall betray / Whether you are grave or gay.
16
WOULD YOU RATHER?
Oliver You know that game called Would You Rather? As in, would you rather be buried up to your neck in wet mud for a week or compare all the recorded versions of the New World symphony? Would you rather stroll down Oxford Street bollock-naked with a pineapple on your head or marry a member of the Royal Family?
Here’s another one for you, one from real life. Would you rather your depression was endogenous or reactive? Would you rather that your gross and paralysing sensitivity to the pain and grief of existence were the fault of your genetic inheritance, of all those glum and grouchy ancestors you see lined up in the rétroviseur, or would you rather it were provoked by the world itself, by what are risibly referred to by The Men Who Guess as ‘life events,’ as if an equal and opposite category of ‘death events’ also existed.
Endogenous: in the happy-clappy, kids’-colouring-book, politicians’ view of life, we stand proudly on the shoulders of preceding generations, seeing further, breathing cleaner air. To those stricken by the sadness of things, however, the pyramid is inverted and those same ancestors weigh upon our shoulders, driving us into the ground like frail tent-pegs. Ah, the ineluctable whipcrack of DNA: what is one but the final thread of a cat-o’-nine-tails wielded by some muscular pirate generations previously? And yet, therein lies hope: if our burden is biochemical, might it not therefore be magicked away by the boffins? We are about to enter the lair of Stuart’s bête noire, genetic modification, which does not seem to me as noire as it’s painted. A little tweak of a gene, a deft replaiting of that vital vegetable spaghetti which distinguishes Oliverness from Stuartness, and there you are: cheerier than Pops, less grumpy than Gramps. The black dog turns into a pussycat.