Intimacy

plays

PLAYS ONE:
The King and Me,

Outskirts, Borderline, Birds of Passage

SLEEP WITH ME
 

WHEN THE NIGHT BEGINS

screenplays

MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE & THE RAINBOW SIGN
 

SAMMY AND ROSIE GET LAID
 

LONDON KILLS ME
 

MY SON THE FANATIC
 

COLLECTED SCREENPLAYS I
 

THE MOTHER
 

VENUS

fiction

THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA
 

THE BLACK ALBUM
 

LOVE IN A BLUE TIME
 

MIDNIGHT ALL DAY
 

GABRIEL'S GIFT

THE BODY
 

SOMETHING TO TELL YOU

non-fiction

THE FABER BOOK OF POP
 

(edited with Jon Savage)

DREAMING AND SCHEMING
 

MY EAR AT HIS HEART
 

THE WORD AND THE BOMB

By the Same Author
Title Page
It is the saddest night
She talks of how her work colleagues have let her down
The boys have fallen asleep
From the beginning 
My young gay friend Ian
Susan has already laid the table
I force myself to eat
This is not my first flight
After we have cleared up
If only I could see her face again
For Aristotle the aim of life is ‘successful activity’
After a certain age there are only certain people
You sat back in your chair
The comfortable chairs
What puzzles me more than anything?
One makes mistakes
I like walking to school at lunch-time
I am still standing upright
Fuck it, I will leave everything here
I run my hand down the CDs
Separation wouldn’t have occurred
Victor and I were in our favourite bar
Come on. Forward.
My children hunt through their toy boxes
I asked Nina to marry me
You pick up other people’s feelings
Not only does Susan work until seven
Victor’s flat is in a fashionable, bohemian part of town
I turn out the lights and find myself climbing the stairs
How Nina tantalizes
When did the realization really happen? 
I have wavered
For a year Nina visited me every two or three weeks
Could I have done more with Susan?
Susan and I cannot make one another happy
A few weeks before this 
These days I think often of the couples I know
I know love is dark work
It is beguiling how, in good relationships 
I can’t have been at my best
After my morning coffee
I shove her a little, roughly
How rarely are we really disillusioned!
I don’t want to wonder who Nina is with tonight
How weak the arc of my urine is
I drop Susan’s pants into the basket
From the darkness of the hall
When I leave I want her to vanish too
Holding the back of his head with one hand
You could go into the dark
Once, coming home at four
Susan must have been watching me
I liked taking Nina to restaurants
Asif was marking papers
Victor says, ‘It was the worst
‘What’s the matter? Are they sick? Are they awake?’
Lying I don’t recommend
Tonight the streets smell of urine
Outside the bar there are dudes in knee–length thick coats
Victor was always kissing Nina
‘I went to a bar for a drink
Having not found Victor in the bar
Susan sits down beside me
What could be more dreadful than daylight?
Without eating, drinking or thinking excessively
I pick up my bag from the centre of the bedroom floor
Victor is sitting at the table in his black dressing gown
We walked together, lost in our own thoughts 
About the Author
Copyright

It is the saddest night, for I am leaving and not coming back. Tomorrow morning, when the woman I have lived with for six years has gone to work on her bicycle, and our children have been taken to the park with their ball, I will pack some things into a suitcase, slip out of my house hoping that no one will see me, and take the tube to Victor’s place. There, for an unspecified period, I will sleep on the floor in the tiny room he has kindly offered me, next to the kitchen. Each morning I will heave the thin single mattress back to the airing cupboard. I will stuff the musty duvet into a box. I will replace the cushions on the sofa.

I will not be returning to this life. I cannot. Perhaps I should leave a note to convey this information. ‘Dear Susan, I am not coming back …’ Perhaps it would be better to ring tomorrow afternoon. Or I could visit at the weekend. The details I haven’t decided. Almost certainly I will not tell her my intentions this evening or tonight. I will put it off. Why?
Because words are actions and they make things happen. Once they are out you cannot put them back. Something irrevocable will have been done, and I am fearful and uncertain. As a matter of fact, I am trembling, and have been all afternoon, all day.

This, then, could be our last evening as an innocent, complete, ideal family; my last night with a woman I have known for ten years, a woman I know almost everything about, and want no more of. Soon we will be like strangers. No, we can never be that. Hurting someone is an act of reluctant intimacy. We will be dangerous acquaintances with a history. That first time she put her hand on my arm – I wish I had turned away. Why didn’t I? The waste; the waste of time and feeling. She has said something similar about me. But do we mean it? I am in at least three minds about all questions.

I perch on the edge of the bath and watch my sons, aged five and three, one at each end. Their toys, plastic animals and bottles float on the surface, and they chatter to themselves and one another, neither fighting nor whingeing, for a change. They are ebullient and fierce, and people say what happy and affectionate children they are. This morning, before I set out
for the day, knowing I had to settle a few things in my mind, the elder boy, insisting on another kiss before I closed the door, said, ‘Daddy, I love everyone.’

Tomorrow I will do something that will damage and scar them.

The younger boy has been wearing chinos, a grey shirt, blue braces and a policeman’s helmet. As I toss the clothes in the washing basket, I am disturbed by a sound outside. I hold my breath.

Already!

She is pushing her bicycle into the hall. She is removing the shopping bags from the basket.

Over the months, and particularly the last few days, wherever I am – working, talking, waiting for the bus – I have contemplated this rupture from all angles. Several times I have missed my tube stop, or have found myself in a familiar place that I haven’t recognized. I don’t always know where I am, which can be a pleasurably demanding experience. But these days I tend to feel I am squinting at things upside down.

I have been trying to convince myself that leaving someone isn’t the worst thing you can do to them.
Sombre it may be, but it doesn’t have to be a tragedy. If you never left anything or anyone there would be no room for the new. Naturally, to move on is an infidelity – to others, to the past, to old notions of oneself. Perhaps every day should contain at least one essential infidelity or necessary betrayal. It would be an optimistic, hopeful act, guaranteeing belief in the future – a declaration that things can be not only different but better.

Therefore I am exchanging Susan, my children, my house, and the garden full of dope plants and cherry blossom I can see through the bathroom window, for a spot at Victor’s where there will be draughts and dust on the floor.

Eight years ago Victor left his wife. Since then – even excepting the Chinese prostitute who played the piano naked and brought all her belongings to their assignations – he has had only unsatisfactory loves. If the phone rings he does a kind of panicky dance, wondering what opprobrium may be on the way, and from which direction. Victor, you see, can give women hope, if not satisfaction.

We find pubs and restaurants more congenial. I must say that when Victor isn’t sitting in the dark, his
eyes sunken and pupils dilated with incomprehension and anger, he can be easy-going, even amusing. He doesn’t mind whether I am silent or voluble. He is used to the way I dash from subject to subject, following the natural momentum of my mind. If I ask him why his wife still hates him, he will tell me. Like my children I appreciate a good story, particularly if I’ve heard it before. I want all the details and atmosphere. But he speaks slowly, as some Englishmen do. Often I have no idea whether he is merely waiting for another word to occur or will, perhaps, never speak again. I can only welcome such intervals as the opportunity for reverie. But will I want monologues and pauses, draughts and pubs, every day?

Susan is in the room now.

She says, ‘Why don’t you ever shut the bathroom door?’

‘What?’

‘Why don’t you?’

I can’t think of a reason.

She is busily kissing the children. I love her enthusiasm for them. When we really talk, it is about them, something they have said or done, as if they are a passion no one else can share or understand.

Susan doesn’t touch me but presents her cheek a few inches from my lips, so that to kiss her I must lean forward, thus humiliating both of us. She smells of perfume and the street.

She goes to change and returns in jeans and sweatshirt, with a glass of wine for each of us.

‘Hallo. How are you?’

She looks at me hard, in order to have me notice her. I feel my body contract and shrink.

‘Okay‚’ I reply.

I nod and smile. Does she see anything different in my face today? Have I given myself away yet? I must look beaten. Usually, before seeing her I prepare two or three likely subjects, as if our conversations are examinations. You see, she accuses me of being silent with her. If only she knew how I stammer within. Today, I have been too feverish to rehearse. This afternoon was particularly difficult. And silence, like darkness, can be kind; it, too, is a language. Couples have good reason for not speaking.