Metroland (16 page)

I read; I began to cook, tentatively, a few French dishes; I hired a Solex for a week and put-putted off to Sceaux and Vincennes. I felt I was having a bloody good time; and whenever there was a knock on the door, my chest nearly fell inwards, and I wondered to myself, ‘Annick?’

It never was. Once it was a neighbour asking if I had any Vittel as she’d forgotten it when she went shopping, and what with the stairs and her bones … Once it was Mme Huet, cross at having to come up to the third floor to fetch me, but it was the telephone, from England, and it might be urgent (someone might have died, she meant). When I got to the phone, my father told me he’d been hanging on for five minutes (Mme Huet had taken it punitively slowly up the stairs), and that the
bill was going to be something frightful, but anyway, Happy Birthday. Ah; I’d completely forgotten.

And then, once, fairly late at night, a week before I was due to leave Paris, there was a different sort of knock. A tune in fact. Big knuckles rapping out the rhythm, finger-ends and background whistles harmonising and filling it out. After a brief panic at the thought of musical burglars, I recognised God Save the Queen; opened, and there were Mickey, Marion and Dave. Marion stood leaning against the banister, pretty, silent, and questioning. Mickey pulled out a comb wrapped in
papier de toilette
and gave me a burst of Auld Lang Syne. Dave had come as a parody Frog, in a blue-and-white horizontally striped jersey, beret, and a mean, corked-on moustache; he carried a
baguette
under his arm and was chewing garlic. The bread and the garlic hit me in different places as he stepped forward and kissed me on both cheeks.

‘Bobbee Sharltong, Zhaqui Sharltong, Coupe du Monde, Monsieur ’Eat, God Shave the Queen.’

Mickey wound his way to the end of his tune. Marion smiled. I smiled. They didn’t know what they’d done, but all was forgiven. We rolled into the flat and I took down a bottle of calvados to celebrate. Marion continued to watch and smile, while Dave and Mickey speculated.

‘Pur’aps ’e ’as been malade.’

‘Looks healthy enough to me. Perhaps he’s been sulking.’

‘Mais il n’est pas boudeur. Pur’aps ’e work ’ard.’

‘Perhaps his doxy gave him the elbow.’

I glanced at Marion.

‘Pur’aps zat yes,’ said Dave. They gave me a chorus of Chevalier in Sank ’Eaven, with Dave violinning his
baguette
.

I smiled a sort of agreement.

Marion smiled back.

6 • Object Relations

Billancourt and the Bourse: what do they matter now? Ask me what I did in 1968 and I’ll tell you: worked on my thesis (discovering a little-known exchange of letters between Hugo and Coleridge on the nature of poetic drama, which I published in the
Modern Language Quarterly
); fell in love, had my heart chipped; improved my French; wrote a lapidary volume, issued in a handwritten edition of one; did some drawing; made some friends; met my wife.

If I’d read that before leaving England, I’d have been scared stiff. Scared, impressed, yet also, perhaps, a little disappointed. All that stuff about a man’s reach and grasp is true, of course; but maybe I’d set off with even grander expectations. What had I been after? For a start, a vivid, explosive, enriching self-knowledge. And then, I also dreamed about finding the key to some vital synthesis of art and life. How naïve it sounds, put like that. Still, the larger the question, the more naïve it always sounds. It was the only subject I’d been seriously interested in, from my early experiments with Toni in the National Gallery. ‘Some people say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading’: we would have endorsed that guiltily at the time, guilty because we feared that our passion for art was the result of the emptiness of our ‘lives’. How did the two concepts interact? Where was the point of balance? Were they as distinguishable as we assumed them to be? Could a life be a work of art; or a work of art a higher form of life? Was art merely posh entertainment, on to which a fake spiritual side had been foisted by the non-religious? Life ended; but didn’t art end too?

I sat in the creaky cane chair, waiting for it to be time to leave. Better half an hour here and half at the Gare du Nord than a whole hour at either place, giving loneliness and inactivity a chance to nest in the brain. Keep on the move or, next best thing, break up not being on the move.

My two suitcases, the weight evenly distributed between them, stood neatly side by side near the door. I took a last look round, saddened, but also vaguely proud that I was saddened. It was all experience, wasn’t it? It was all living, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?

To the left the bed where, as I still tenderly expressed it to myself, I had lost my virginity. I mentally put my arm round my own shoulder for a second; then shrugged it off. Annick, on the bed, acted, reacted, demanded, accused, forgave, disappeared. We could, of course, still be friends. I hadn’t seen her for over a month.

A row of books I was leaving behind: mostly
Livres de Poche
, so vigorously read that the cellophane coverings had sprung away from the bullied, concave spines. Above them, a daub by the flat’s owner, early Cubist colours dashed on with the glee of Derain. Not a great success, I thought for the last time, and smiled at the parting gift I had left on the table: loyally neat drawing of the view from the window, every coping-stone etched in, every television aerial identifiable, every parked car included – the result a curious monochrome mixture of clarity and bustle. I was modestly very impressed by it.

The fruit machine, with the pile of old francs on the shelf above it. A miraculous, ironic instrument: you put things into it and then, at seeming random, but actually according to a programme, you got things back. You thought you profited but in fact you didn’t, though if you went on long enough you might end up not making a loss. On top of which, what you actually put in and got out had no current value! Worn-out museum-pieces, trite copper circles. If you were feeling self-indulgent, the machine offered itself as a gloomy enough symbol.

My cases, mockingly well-aligned, packed in response to no humid
brise marine
.

The door, through which Annick had come. Through which I still wanted her to return? Through which she would, had she known, still have come?

On the desk, a line-up of bottles of spirits, one for each calvados I’d consumed. Beside it, a wastepaper basket which I had, with deliberate negligence, failed to empty; though I hadn’t actually planted evidence, I was certainly conscious of what was in it. A copy of
Hara-Kiri (‘journal bête et méchant’)
and one of
Les Nouvelles Littéraires
; a theatre programme which happened to be a duplicate; various rough drafts of stories and poems; a few drawings (the best rejects); a couple of letters from my parents; some tangerine peel; and a note from Annick, left one morning when she had gone off early.
‘Pas mal, mon vieux, t’es pas mal du tout. A demain. A.’
That too was practically a duplicate.

The final object was me. Packed tight like my suitcase – I’d had to sit on top of me to get it all in. The moral and sensual equivalents of theatre programmes were all there, bundled up chronologically and bound with rubber bands. Look, it all happened, they said, as I riffled through them again. Look at this, and this, and this. See how you reacted here, and here. Wasn’t that a bit shitty? And Christ, look at this, now if you don’t feel ashamed about this, I give up on you. You do feel ashamed? That’s the ticket. OK, now you can look at this one-you didn’t do at all badly here; genuine sensitivity I’d say, compassion, even (though it’s jumping the gun a bit to mention the word) wisdom. Instinctive wisdom, perhaps, rather than the long-learnt sort; but not to be despised for all that.

I patted it all back into place, tightened the straps, got up from the chair with a final creak, gathered my external suitcases, and left. In my pocket was the book I’d just started:
L’Education Sentimentale
.

PART THREE
Metroland II (1977)

Things and actions are what they are, and the
consequences of them will be what they will be;
why then should we desire to he deceived?

Bishop Butler

I suppose I must be grown-up now. Or would ‘adult’ be a better word, a more … adult word? If you came and inventoried me, I’d have ticks in all the appropriate boxes. I’m surprised how well camouflaged I seem. Age: Thirty/Married: Yes/Children: One/Job: One/House: Yes/With mortgage: Yes/(Rock solid so far)/Car: Arguable/Jury Service: Once, finding accused not guilty after long discussion of ‘reasonable doubt’/Pets: No, because they mess up/Foreign holidays: Yes/Prospects: Bloody better be/Happiness: Oh, yes; and if not now, then never.

I make such lists in my head on the odd night when sleep fails and panic gusts across my mind. Sometimes, the categories can be different, though: more aggressive and muscular, picked to see off the shifting fears of the night. Healthy, white, British, recently made love, not poor, not deformed, not starving, not hounded by religion, not made paranoid by nerves or emotions. It’s odd how the list slopes off into negatives; but negatives provide adequate comfort if you’re already in bed next to your wife, while downstairs, mutedly, reassuringly, the refrigerator changes gear. I find myself relieved again, content to be within my own skin.

Adult, yes, that’s an overall comfort too. At least, I conclude I must be. A few years ago I used to worry about it in a straining sort of way. Why haven’t I spotted some signal changing to green, some notice being held up from the pits, some celestial nod (not too public) letting me know I’m there? This
feeling began to pass, however; largely because nobody ever challenged me. Nobody came up and said, You shirked that tackle,
ergo
you aren’t a man, go back and start again with a new set of principles and handicaps. I used to think this was about to happen, and would come over shifty; but people are amiable. At times, I suspect that the concept of maturity is maintained by a conspiracy of niceness.

And there are other ways to calm nocturnal fears. Sometimes, lying awake, while out there in the darkness a new date clicks into place, I turn towards Marion, dog-legged beside me, and head off down the bed. Upside down like a duck, I stealthily work away at her nightdress, which tangles round her legs as she twists herself off into sleep. The trick (does Marion silently connive?) is for me to take possession of her, and then gradually wake her with something stronger than a kiss. This time, she stirs more reluctantly than usual.

‘Whozzat?’

‘Three guesses,’ I ho-ho.

‘Nnn.’

‘
NNNNNNNNN
.’

‘What day is it, Chris?’

‘Sunday.’

‘Quite tired.’

‘Ah, well, I didn’t mean Sunday/Monday, love. It’s, er, Saturday/Sunday. About, a bit after twelve. Double O thirty in fact.’

This pedantic foreplay makes us giggle gently.

‘Nnn.’

She parts her thighs loosely, reaches between them with her free hand, and pulls at me. Conversation ceases. We go off into noises.

Afterwards (that still stretchy word) we subside away from each other, drowsy, feeling as if we had shares in everything. I think these times must be the happiest of my life. People say that happiness is boring; not for me. They also say that all happy people are happy in the same way. Who cares; in any case, at times like this I’m hardly interested in arguing the toss.

1 • Nude, Giant Girls

When do the theories stop? And why? Say what you will, they stop for most of us. Are they killed by a single decisive event? For some, perhaps. But usually, they die by attrition; lingeringly, circumstantially. And afterwards you wonder: how seriously did we mean them anyway?

On Sunday mornings I slip out of the house early. I turn left, past sensible detached houses: Ravenshoe, with its scatter of horse-chestnut flowers on the pavement; Vue de Provence, with its green shutters; East Coker, with a smirk-provoking carport. They have their names carved in Gothic letters on slices of wood which are screwed to trees.

I pick my way across the golf course, watching an early drive catch the dew on its first bounce and pull up quickly, glistening. I like it here; I like the misty, different perspective. From high up by the fourth tee, you can follow tiny figures pulling trolleys along the fairway, and bursting into striped colour at the touch of rain. From here, the self-condemning cries of ‘Fo-o-o-ore’ seem distant and comic (I smile as I remember Toni’s answering bellow of ‘Ski-i-i-in’). Below, smart silver trains process, with the clack of muted knitting machines; their windows flash the sun at you, like boys with playground mirrors. Churches remind other people to get up and pray.

It’s certainly ironic to be back in Metroland. As a boy, what would I have called it:
le syphilis de l’âme
, or something like that, I dare say. But isn’t part of growing up being able to ride irony without being thrown? Besides, it’s an efficient place to
live. Next to the record shop is a grocer’s which sells eggs with shit and straw on them; two minutes’ walk from where Marion gets her hair done you can see real pigs mucking up a field. Five minutes’ drive and you’re in open country where only the pylons remind you of town life. As a boy, when we drove past these pylons, I would elbow Nigel out of his SF magazine with a whisper of ‘Look, nude, giant girls’. Nowadays, when we pass them, I still think of the poem, but find it excited and inexact.

When do the theories stop? I remember suddenly, from my early times with Marion, a drive we took one cold December night. We ended up in a cinema car park, left the heater on, and talked. We talked so much in that Morris Minor convertible of hers that I can still read off to myself the dashboard controls from left to right.