Intimacy (10 page)

Once, coming home at four, having walked back from some teenage party, I found Mother downstairs in her floor-length stained dressing gown. Scattered on the floor were photographs of her as a young woman. In those old prints she was gawky and keen, with hair as long as mine, sandals, and a flowered dress. She was posed with men who had partings and ties, none of them Father.

Susan must have been watching me staring into space. For how long, I wonder?

I liked taking Nina to restaurants and parties, to openings and exhibitions. I would sit and watch her looking at the pictures. I took pleasure in her pleasure as I led her around London. I wouldn’t have gone out otherwise. Our hands were always on one another. Wherever we were, she was my refuge, my pocket of light. But these new pleasures extracted her from a familiar world and pushed her into an intimidating one. I overwhelmed her at times. There was too much of me, I know that. We want love but we don’t want to lose ourselves.

Asif was marking papers, surrounded by his alphabetically arranged books on philosophy, education and child development. On his desk were pictures of his wife and children. When he saw me this afternoon at his study door, with Najma standing concernedly behind me, he was alarmed. Perhaps I looked strained, or worse.

‘The children are well?’ was the first thing he asked.

‘Yes, yes.’

He was relieved.

We shook hands then.

‘And yours?’ I say.

‘Thank God, yes.’

Najma said with a challenge in her eyes, ‘And Susan?’

‘Fine. She’s fine.’

Asif looked at me enquiringly. I didn’t like disturbing his peace. I didn’t even know why I had come. I had been walking the streets since morning. Then I hailed a cab and told the driver Asif’s address. Perhaps because Victor is a recent convert to hedonism I required the other view.

I said, ‘Can I speak to you?’

Najma left us reluctantly and Asif exchanged his slippers for his outdoor shoes. I realised that he is getting fuller, and with his waistcoat pulled tight across his stomach, he looks older, more dignified and substantial.

We walked in his garden. I noticed he kept looking up towards the conservatory where Najma was reading in a wicker chair. I fancied she was already condemning me.

I said, ‘The house is full of poison. Susan wants me to be kind. I can’t be kind. We can do nothing for one another. It is a fact. I have decided to leave.’

Asif said, ‘All couples fall out. Even Najma and –’

I said, laughing suddenly, ‘But I remember.’

‘What?’

‘Over the omelettes at breakfast. Before we went down to the pool – on holiday in Italy last year. Susan and I were civil to one another for hours at a stretch. But you two. The silences. The resentment. You couldn’t wait to get to that café where you and I could play table football alone.’

‘Fair enough. She and I disagree … at times.’ Then he said, ‘It is easy to turn away too soon. Why be
hasty? See what happens. I beg you to wait a year.’

‘I can’t wait another week. In fact I am off in the morning.’

‘Surely not? But a year is nothing at our age. Is it because of the girl?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t see her. I’ve lost her.’

‘Don’t – you are shivering.’ He put his arm around me. He said, ‘But you are following her in some way?’

‘If I could see the hair on her neck again, I could move outwards from that point. That would be the start, you see, of a new attitude.’

‘Her hair?’

‘Of course.’

‘It’s only that I didn’t realize men of our age could get so romantic.’

I said, ‘Asif, no age is excluded from strong feeling.’

He snorted. ‘What a pity you ever met her!’

‘Why do you insist on finding this risible?’

‘Perhaps I hate to see a man I respect, who is brave and dedicated in some ways – and stubborn in others – blown about by such passions. But I suppose, unlike most people, you can afford to follow your pleasures. And follow them you do.’

‘Yes. But don’t think I don’t know that there are
more important things to think about – the international political situation, and all.’

My sarcasm silences him.

His children run about. They ask for my boys. I say they are at home. Other children’s voices rise up from nearby gardens. Kids come to the side gate.

If only I could sit here contentedly in the middle of my life as children seem to in theirs, without constantly worrying about the state of things, tomorrow, next week, next year. But since the age of fourteen, when I conspired against my parents, not fleeing as I intended to, but biding my time and preparing, knowing one day I would be ready, I have required the future as a goal. I’ve needed something to happen every day that showed a kind of progress or accumulation. I can’t bear it when things go slack, when there isn’t sufficient intensity. But I would welcome a quiet period. I am hoping for that, in the long run.

He said, ‘You’re very distracted. I know you like to look after yourself, but you haven’t even shaved. Leaving aside your girlfriend’s hair for a moment, your own looks as if you’ve been combing it vertically.’

I laugh but say nothing.

After a time he says, ‘You’ve made up your mind?’

‘I think so.’

‘I don’t want you going to some dismal bedsit. Come here if you want, for a while. I’ll put the children in together.’

‘You are kind, Asif. Thank you. But I couldn’t sit here in the middle of your family life after leaving my own.’

‘It won’t be for long.’

‘Sorry?’

‘After a few days’ reflection, you’ll decide to go back. You are not prepared to miss the children. I don’t think you quite realize what it will feel like … to leave them. It will hurt them, won’t it?’

At that moment my legs almost gave way.

I said, ‘I know I will have to go through that.’

He said, ‘The new girl you called one of the uneducated educated. Susan is spiky but she is intelligent. I’ve always enjoyed talking to her. You must, once, have had good reason for choosing her.’

‘Aren’t I allowed to change my mind? If people are rushing away from one another in droves, it is because they are running towards other people.’

‘All of us yearn for more. We are never satisfied. Wisdom is to know the value of what we have. Every day, if there is some little good fortune, and our children smile at us or for once do what we say, we should consider ourselves lucky.’

‘I am discouraged. An unhappy relationship can’t be a sealed compartment. It seeps into everything else, like a punctured oil can.’ I looked at him. ‘You’ve never considered throwing it all away?’

We both glanced up towards Najma.

‘Why do you ask me this?’ he said exasperatedly. ‘Do you think, one day, that I will give a different answer and your view of things will be confirmed?’

‘Asif, what view of things?’

‘That one doesn’t have responsibilities.’ He sighed and went on, ‘I’m sorry. I suppose what you are doing is the modern way.’

‘I would say that there is a new restlessness about.’

‘Yes, it makes me feel unique for loving the same person continuously for a number of years and not covertly planning an escape. But I do love it here. Every day something is built upon. There is increase. Without it I would be just a man walking down the street with nowhere to go.’

‘At home, for me, there is no movement.’

‘With a real love there is little movement. You are going round and round, but further and further. Don’t you believe in anything? Or is virtue only a last resort for you?’

What could I say here? Young people are full of tedious belief. Why not me? Not many beliefs come spontaneously to mind. We have reached such a state that after two thousand years of Christian civilization, if I meet anyone religious – and, thankfully, I do only rarely these days – I consider them to be mentally defective and probably in need of therapy.

I might say: I believe in individualism, in sensualism, and in creative idleness. I like the human imagination: its delicacy, its brutal aggressive energy, its profundity, its power to transform the material world into art. I like what men and women make. I prefer this to everything else on earth, apart from love and women’s bodies, which are at the centre of everything worth living for.

But Asif is intelligent. I don’t want to embarrass myself by saying anything too selfish – though I can think of few more selfish institutions than the family. Perhaps I am becoming a committed sceptic.

Probably I am giggling now. I’ll speak before he considers me mad.

‘I have my opinions,’ I say. ‘But they’re unimportant. They change every day. It’s always something of a relief not to have an opinion, particularly on cultural or political questions. But I tell you, when it comes to this matter, it is an excess of belief that I suffer from.’

‘Belief in what?’

‘In the possibilities of intimacy. In love.’

He almost laughed. Then he said, ‘You’ve always liked women. You haven’t grown out of it.’

‘But they are likeable. Haven’t you noticed?’

‘What about someone on the side?’

‘You’re suggesting that?’

‘You travel a lot. You’re always in America, turning literature into – ’

‘Pap.’

‘There must be opportunities. It might take away the need.’

‘It does, for a time. But it depends entirely on precisely what the need is and whether it can be taken care of. Or whether it renews itself, and with how much ferocity. Anyhow, you wouldn’t do it.’

He said, ‘Don’t forget I am a teacher.’

‘I know. Why are you saying this?’

‘Teaching is difficult, you know. And it is made even more difficult if the children are distressed. In the classroom I see the debris. The fall-out. The broken side of things.’

He offered me tea.

I couldn’t stay any longer. It was time to get home, bathe my children, see Susan, and pack. I had to make my contribution to the broken side of things.

Victor says, ‘It was the worst, and also the best thing I have done. For two years after I left I was aware at the back of my mind that something unforgivable had happened. I knew that not far away, people – my wife and children – were suffering as a result of what I had done. However –'

He continues, ‘You might mock me for the saveloy and chips, and the juicy pickled onion in particular. But how many of our friends and acquaintances, having left their partners, would wish to go back to them? How many of them would say, were they able to relive that period, that they wouldn't have left?'

‘What's the matter? Are they sick? Are they awake?'

‘No,' she says.

Susan looks both.

She comes to me from the bottom of the stairs, arms outstretched.

‘Hold me. Not like that, as if your arms are tongs. Touch me with your hands.'

I remember my eldest son saying, ‘Why do we have hands?'

I say, ‘I'm here now.'

‘Yes. Thank God. Hold me.'

I kiss her and move my hands over her. Her T–shirt rides up. Inadvertently, I touch her breast. I reach down. Her pubic hair is not as luxuriant and soft as Nina's. But if she lets me fuck her here, now, on the floor, I won't leave. I will put my straight shoulder to the wheel and accept my responsibilities for another year. Anyhow, in the morning I'll be too tired. I will get a kipper out of the freezer, scoff a big breakfast and breathe a sigh of relief. I like a happy ending.

She says, ‘I had a bad dream – that you weren't here. Then I woke up and you weren't there. You're not going to leave, are you?'

‘What makes you say that?'

‘I don't know, I don't know.'

‘It's okay,' I say. ‘Calm down, I'll massage you.'

‘No, thank you. You don't know how to do it. You are too rough.'

‘I see.' I say, ‘It's not as if you ever touch me.'

‘Are you surprised?' She says quietly, ‘You're not, are you?'

Lying I don't recommend. Except in certain circumstances.

Susan, if you knew me you would spit in my face. I have lied to you and betrayed you every day. But if I hadn't enjoyed those women I wouldn't have stayed so long. Lying protects all of us; it keeps the important going. It is a kindness to lie. If I'd been good all those years, who'd have been impressed? God? A world without lying would be impossible; a world in which lying wasn't deprecated is also impossible. Unfortunately, lying makes us feel omnipotent. It creates a terrible loneliness. Here, tonight, I feel cut off from you and from everyone. Truth telling, therefore, has to be an ultimate value, until it clashes with another ultimate value, pleasure, at which point, to state the obvious, there is conflict.

She begins to wake up.

‘What are you doing down here? Why aren't you in bed?'

‘I had things to do.'

‘At this time?'

‘I couldn't sleep.'

‘Why? What's bothering you? Usually you're barely awake.' Her eyes sweep my face. ‘You smell of cigarettes and that awful dope. Your hair's wet. Did you go out? Where did you go? Who did you see?'

Her fingers are on my cheek.

‘Ouch.'

‘What is that? What's happened to your face? Wait –'

She goes to the light switch and, as she moves, so sleepy is she that she stumbles and falls against the table.

Let me catch you.

Tonight the streets smell of urine. Lorries are parked outside the supermarkets; men push metal containers through the side doors. Young people are out, going somewhere.

Seven years ago, when Susan and I separated for a
year and I could be excited by strangers, I knew these bars, knew girls who sold jewellery in the market, people in bands, travelling kids. I had time for the unexpected.

Tonight, having changed the boy’s nappy, returned him to his bed and driven to this bar without knowing why, all I see are dozens of ageing young people in improbable and cheap clothes, pressed together. I know no one. My current friends I meet only by arrangement, making appointments with them as one would with a dentist. And Victor, five years older than me, was never going to be in such a place, though, to his credit, he has taken up dancing. He goes to clubs, sometimes alone, where he starts a peculiar, independent, Terpsichorean movement. Soon a space opens up around him. I’m not sure if this is because of his individual style or because people think he’s an AWOL policeman.

‘I don’t mind being a fool,’ he says. ‘But stylish young people can be very snobbish.’