However, Stuart’s ‘interruption’ – to supply its alternative rhetorical name – did offer me, if not a doorway, then at least a humble cat-flap into what I had been planning to say.
‘Stuart,’ I began, ‘I assure you that Gillian and I are not having an affair. We are not even, as the diplomats say, having talks about talks.’ He grunted in hesitant comprehension of the worldly reference. ‘On the other hand,’ I continued, and his prickly brows began to coalesce furiously at the realisation that more was to come, ‘as one friend to another, I have to tell you that I am in love with her. Don’t admonish me, not yet, let me first register with you that I am as bouleversé by it all as you are. Had I the slightest control over it, I would not have fallen in love with her. Not now. I would have fallen in love with her when I first met her.’ (Why didn’t I? Was it some stub of loyalty, or the fact that she wore 501s with trainers?)
This didn’t seem to be going down too well with Stuart, so I hastened on to the nub of the matter, where I hoped his professional training would assist him towards personal insight. ‘We live in an era of market forces, Stuart’ – I could see that this arrested him – ‘and it would be naïve or, as they used to term it, romantic not to realise that market forces now apply in whole areas where hitherto they were deemed inapplicable.’
‘We’re not talking about money, we’re talking about love,’ he protested.
‘Ah, but there are such parallels, Stuart. They both go where they wist, reckless of what they leave behind. Love too has its buy-outs, its asset stripping, its junk bonds. Love rises and falls in value like any currency. And confidence is such a key to maintaining its value.
‘Consider also the element of good fortune. You have told me yourself at some point how the great entrepreneurs need to be lucky as well as audacious and skilful. What could be more fortunate than your meeting Gill first time off at the Charing Cross Hotel, or my good fortune that you had had the good fortune to have met her?
‘Money, as I further understand it, is morally neutral. It can be put to good use, it can be put to bad use. We may criticise those who deal in money, as we may criticise those who deal in love, but not the substances themselves.’
I could sense I might be losing him, so I sought to summarise at this point. I poured both of us the last of the whisky to aid comprehension. ‘It’s market forces, Stu, that’s what you’ve got to get hold of. And I’m going to take her over. My offer will be accepted by the broad, I mean the board. You may become a non-executive director – otherwise known as a friend – but I’m afraid it’s time to hand back the chauffeur-driven car.
Of course, I can see the paradox as plainly as you do. You are a creature of the market-place, yet you seek to reserve this one domestic area of your life and declare that it is not to be influenced by the great forces known to you between 9 and 5 every working day. I, on the other hand, a – how shall we put it? – classical humanist of artistic bent and romantic nature, reluctantly admit that human passions operate not according to some gracious rule-book of courtly behaviour, but following the gusts, the veritable hurricanoes of le marché.’
It was at about this time that the accident occurred. Stuart was, as I recall, giving me a light (I know – but at moments of stress a certain nicotine recidivism does beckon), and we stood up for some reason, when an unfortunate clash of heads occurred which quite stunned us both. Luckily he had his lenses in; otherwise he might have broken his glasses.
Mrs Dyer was extremely kind. She washed the blood off my clothes and said that in her opinion, even though her eyes weren’t what they had once been, she thought the cut needed stitching. But I frankly did not care to attempt pilotage of my vehicle at that time of night, and retired upwards to my tree-house.
If you’re drunk, you don’t feel pain. And if you wake up with the worst hangover since Silenus’ 21st-birthday hoolie, you don’t feel it then either. Whether this system works equally well for all I leave to the experimenting individual.
Stuart I admit it was probably wrong to head-butt him, but I was just submitting to market forces, don’t you see?
The fact of the matter is, I often don’t listen to what Oliver says. Or rather, I know what he’s saying even if I only attend half the time. It must be some filter mechanism that’s developed over the years, which sorts out things it’s relevant for me to know from all the waffle surrounding them. I can sit there, nursing my drink, even singing a song to myself inside my head, and still pick the bones out of the waffle.
Of course they’re having an affair. Oh, don’t you give me that look as well. The husband is always the first to suspect and the last to know, as I said, but when he knows, he knows. And shall I tell you how I know? Because of what she told him, what she told him about us. I can just about – just about – believe the cover story, that he’s in love with her, that he calls round every afternoon, that he’s hired a room because his aching bloody heart has to be near her, but that they aren’t up to any monkey business. But what made me sure, what convinced me that it wasn’t his aching bloody heart but his aching bloody prick that needed attending to, was something he didn’t even notice he’d said. It was about Gill and me meeting at the Charing Cross Hotel. We went to so much trouble at the time. Gill and I agreed we wouldn’t tell anyone – but we most of all agreed we wouldn’t tell Oliver – about how we met. We were embarrassed, OK, I admit it. We were both a bit embarrassed. That’s not something you forget. But she forgot it. She went and blabbed to Oliver. That’s the proof that she’s having an affair with him – she betrayed me. And the proof that he’s having an affair with her is the way he dropped it into the conversation as if it were just an unimportant fact everyone agreed on. If he wasn’t having an affair with her, then he’d have made a big fuss and dance and gone in for what he thinks of as teasing but which increasingly strikes me as activity indicating some lack of psychological balance.
He hasn’t changed, Oliver. Lend us a quid, give us your wife. He’s basically a parasite, do you see? A work-shy snob and a parasite.
One of the things I didn’t listen to was a whole lot of stuff about What Holds Couples Together and What Holds Society Together. Oliver doing one of those clever little essays he was so good at writing when we were both at school. Why having a bit on the side is like the French Revolution – I used to be impressed by that sort of thing before I grew up. And then as I remember we went on from there to a whole piece of piss about market forces. I listened with slightly more attention at this point, because Oliver making a complete fool of himself is always a bit more interesting than Oliver making half a fool of himself. And so I studied his complex argument and weighed all the evidence, and what it came down to – correct me if I’m oversimplifying – is that it’s because of the Market that I’m diddling your wife. Oh, so that’s why. I thought it was because you’re in love with her, or you hate me, or both, but if it’s because of the Market, then of course I, as a humble cog in the machine, understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. It makes me feel so much better.
At that moment he put another cigarette in his mouth (his ninth of the evening – I was counting) and discovered he’d finished his matches.
‘Give us a Dutch fuck, old chum,’ he said.
The expression was new to me, and probably offensive, so I didn’t reply. Oliver leaned towards me, reached out and took the cigarette I was smoking from my hand. He knocked off some ash, blew on the end until it glowed red, then lit his cigarette from mine. There was something repulsive in the way he did it.
‘That’s a Dutch fuck, old chum.’ And he gave me a horrible, leering smile.
It was at this point that I decided I’d had enough. The ‘old chum’ didn’t help, either. I stood up and said, ‘Oliver, have you ever had a Glasgow kiss?’
He obviously thought we were discussing the use of language, and may even have thought I was advising him on how to have sex with my wife. ‘No,’ he said, interested. ‘I’ve never been to Sporransville.’
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Dutch fuck, Glasgow kiss. Dutch fuck, Glasgow kiss. ‘I’ll show you.’ I stood up, and motioned him to do the same.
He rose rather unsteadily. I took him by the sweater and looked into his face, that horrible sweaty face that had fucked my wife. When? When last? Yesterday? Two days ago?
‘This is a Glasgow kiss,’ I said, and butted him in the face. He fell over, and at first was sort of half-laughing, as if I must have been going to show him something else but had slipped. Then it became clear that it hadn’t been a mistake, and he ran away. He’s not exactly one of life’s bare-knuckle fighters, our Oliver. In fact, he’s a complete physical coward. Won’t go into a pub unless it’s ladies’ night, if you see what I mean. He always claimed he had an abhorrence of violence because his father used to beat him when he was a small boy. What with? A rolled-up sweet paper?
Oh, look, I don’t want to talk about Oliver any more. Any more. I feel terribly exhausted after last night, and the imbecile bled on the carpet as well.
You want to know how I feel? All right, I’ll tell you. When we were at school we used to have to play at being soldiers. The Combined Cadet Force. And this is how you cleaned a rifle. You took a piece of cloth, a 4 × 2, and folded it into one end of a pull-through, and dropped the other end down the barrel of the rifle, and then pulled the cloth all the way through the barrel, which was quite difficult actually, as the folded cloth fitted very tightly. You pulled it all the way from the breech to the snout. And that’s what I feel like. Someone’s pulling a piece of 4 × 2 on a wire all the way through my body, from my arsehole to my nose, over and over and over again. From my arsehole to my nose. That’s how I feel.
Look, just leave me, if you don’t mind. I’ve got to be left alone. Thank you.
Two cigarettes in an ashtray
My love and I in a small café
Then a stranger …
Of course, you know if they’re really fucking, don’t you? You know. So tell me. Go on, tell me.
12: Spare Me Val. Spare Yourselves Val.
Stuart
I stop to see a weeping willow
crying on his pillow
maybe he’s crying for me
And as the skies turn gloomy
nightbirds whisper to me
I’m lonesome as I can be
That’s Patsy. Well, you wouldn’t not recognise the voice, would you? It’s from her song ‘Walking After Midnight’.
I played the song to Gillian. I asked her what she thought of it.
‘I haven’t really got an opinion,’ she said.
‘Very well, then,’ I said, ‘I’ll play it you again.’
I played it her again. In case you are unfamiliar with this song, which I personally rate as one of Patsy’s masterpieces, it’s about a woman who has been forsaken by her man and goes out walking – ‘after midnight’ – hoping to come across him and perhaps persuade him to come back to her.
When the song had finished, I looked up at Gillian, who was standing there with an expression of, well, indifference, I suppose: as if she’d left something on the stove but it really didn’t matter one way or the other whether it got burnt. She also didn’t say anything, which not surprisingly I found a bit irritating. I mean, I’m sure I would have some comment to make on one of her favourite pieces of music.
‘I’ll play it you again then.’
So I did.
And as the skies turn gloomy
nightbirds whisper to me
I’m lonesome as I-I can be …
‘So what do you think?’ I asked.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that it’s riddled with nauseating self-pity.’
‘Well, wouldn’t you be?’ I shouted. ‘Wouldn’t you be?’
Not very drunk.
Just drunk.
Mme Wyatt What I mean is this. They will tell you that from the point of view of statistics this happens, that happens. Sure, all right. But for me, the dangerous time is always. I have seen a lot of marriages, long, short, English, French. It is a dangerous time after seven years, for sure. It is a dangerous time after seven months.
What I could not tell my daughter was this. I had an affair a year after I married Gordon. Nothing to do with how we were getting on: we were in love. But I had a brief affair all the same. ‘Oh, how French,’ I hear you say. Oo-la-la. Well, not so much. I have an English friend, a woman, who had an affair six weeks after getting married. And is this so surprising? You can feel happy and you can feel trapped at the same time. You can feel security and you can feel panic, this is not new. And in a way the beginning of the marriage is the most dangerous time because – how can I say this? – the heart has been made tender. L’appétit vient en mangeant. Being in love makes you liable to fall in love. Ah, I am not setting up in competition with Chamfort, you understand, that is just my observation. People think it has to do with sex, that someone is not doing his duty in bed, or her duty in bed, but I think this is not the case. It has to do with the heart. The heart has been made tender, and that is dangerous.
But you can see why I cannot say this to my daughter? Ah, Gillian, I quite understand. I had an affair a year after I married your father, this is quite normal. I could not impose that tyranny upon her. I am not ashamed of my affair, and have no reason to keep it secret except that it would be harmful to tell. The girl must find her own destiny, it is cruel to let her imagine she is suffering a terrible imitation of her mother. I must not impose such a tyranny of knowledge upon my daughter.
So I only say, ‘It is always the dangerous time.’
Of course I knew immediately that it was Oliver.
Gillian He said: ‘Please don’t leave me yet. They’ll think I haven’t got a prick.’
He said: ‘I love you. I’ll always love you.’
He said: ‘If I catch Oliver inside this house, I’ll break his fucking neck.’
He said: ‘Please let me make love to you.’
He said: ‘It’s quite cheap to get someone killed nowadays. It hasn’t at all kept up with the rate of inflation. Market forces must be to blame.’
He said: ‘I’ve only felt alive since I met you. Now I’ll have to go back to being dead again.’
He said: ‘I’m taking a girl out to dinner tonight. I may fuck her afterwards, I haven’t decided yet.’
He said: ‘Why did it have to be Oliver?’
He said: ‘Can I still be your friend?’
He said: ‘I don’t ever want to see you again.’
He said: ‘If Oliver had had a proper job this would never have happened.’
He said: ‘Please don’t leave me. They’ll think I haven’t got a prick.’
Mme Wyatt And there was one other thing my daughter said to me, which I found terribly poignant. She said, ‘Maman, I thought there were rules.’
She didn’t mean rules of behaviour, she meant something more than that. People often imagine that if they get married that will ‘solve things’, as they say. My daughter of course is not so naïve as to think that, but she did, I believe, hope or perhaps just feel that she would in some way be protected – at least for a while – by something which we could call the immutable rules of marriage.
I am now more than fifty years of age, and if you ask me what are the immutable rules of marriage, I can think of only one: a man never leaves his wife for an older woman. Apart from that, anything that is possible is normal.
Stuart I went over to number 55 yesterday evening. The little old lady who lives there, Mrs Dyer, answered the door.
‘Oh, you’re that man from the Council,’ she said.
‘That’s right, Madam,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you so late, but it is a Council responsibility to inform all landlords – and landladies – as urgently as possible if their tenants have been positively tested for AIDS.’
‘You’ve been drinking,’ she said.
‘Well, it’s a very stressful job, you know.’
‘All the more reason why you shouldn’t drink. Especi
ally if you have to operate machinery.’
‘I don’t operate machinery,’ I said, feeling we were getting off the point.
‘Then try and have an early night.’ And she shut the door in my face.
She’s right, of course. I might have to operate machinery. For instance, I might have to run my car backwards and forwards over Oliver’s body. Bump, bump, bump. That would be a task I would have to be sober for.
I don’t want you to get me wrong. I don’t just sit around getting drunk and listening to Patsy Cline tapes. Well, I do that a bit, it’s true. But I’m not going to spend more than a certain percentage of my time wallowing in – what did Gill call it? – yes, ‘nauseating self-pity’ was the phrase. I’m also not going to give up, do you see? I love Gill, and I’m not going to give up. I’m going to do whatever I can to stop her leaving me. And if she does leave me, I’m going to do everything I can to get her back. And if she won’t come back … well, then I’ll think of something. I’m not going to take this lying down.
I didn’t mean it about running over Mrs Dyer’s tenant with my car, of course. It’s just something you say. You don’t get any practice in these situations beforehand, do you? All of a sudden they’re on you, and you have to deal with them. So you say things you don’t mean, and things you can imagine someone else saying suddenly come out of your own mouth. Like for instance when I told Gill I was taking a girl out to dinner and I might fuck her afterwards if I felt like it. That’s just stupid, trying to hurt Gill. The person I took out to dinner was a woman, it’s true. But it was Val, who’s an old friend from way back, and the person I want to make love to is Gill. No-one else.
Oliver I let myself in and unleashed the bison’s cough I’ve developed to let Mrs Dyer know I’m leaving the pedal imprint on her parquet. She came out of the kitchen, turning her sunflower head sideways to squint up at me.
‘I’m sorry to hear you’ve got the AIDS,’ she said.