Remembering Carmen (14 page)

Later, Carl found out that the police had been called. Naturally the version of events least favourable to himself was given out as the first draft of this miserable history. He was dragged off. Joanna followed and, with great effort, succeeded in minimising the consequences, heading off charges, calming the whole affair. Carl was soon sent packing and returned to the flat, where Joanna chose to say as little as possible, the urge to reproach him battling against the perceived discomfort of her own position. He sank, in the ensuing days, into a deep depression. He hated himself for this exhibition of brawling barbarism, for allowing himself to traduce his better nature, for his lack of self-control. And Carl hated what he had seen, hated the knowledge, hated the image of Joanna at that open window, framed by flowers, reaching out to that smooth little bastard in the denim shirt.

Carmen's official bulletin to Christopher specified a travel trade conference in Italy. She did indeed fly there late one Thursday night but, mercifully, she was not required to ply her trade. She found these shindigs unspeakable, a grievous affront to the soul of those who were not directly engaged with their arcane purposes. Her early journalistic success had ensured that her experience of these events was much less extensive than that of her colleagues, many of whom had cut their professional teeth on them. But she had seen quite enough. The clouds of cant that buzzed like a fine mist of evening insects around the heads of the delegates, proudly trussed and labelled, guffawing and – oh, the language hurt her still! – ‘networking', made her grit her teeth. Clutching the bland press hand-outs which obviated the need to sit in the halls listening to the numbing ‘presentations' of industry leaders, annotating the jokes carefully inserted in the script at the expense of the colourless characters currently enjoying favour as President or Chairman of whatever Association was sponsoring the event, Carmen would circle around little groups, pressing herself on them, unconvincingly lending an ear to their special pleading and institutionalised whines in the vain hope of gathering a ‘story', but longing in truth to be released.

Yes, she flew to Italy to join Jimmy. He had been taking part in a contemporary music festival in one of the Tuscan cities and had booked, as his reward, an apartment in a small villa at what turned out to be a very busy seaside resort south of Viareggio. The beach was wide and flat and the couple would begin each day with a swim taken before the beach became impossibly peopled. The villa was altogether more tranquil. It had been skilfully partitioned to yield the maximum amount of privacy for each apartment. Although Carmen and Jimmy did not have a direct sea view, their bedroom window looked out onto a grove of olive trees and one of lemons. A small doorway to which they alone enjoyed access opened on to the groves and, from this secluded area, they could also slip in and out of an iron gate that gave on to a small avenue, back from the sea, flanked by cropped mulberry trees.

This was a happy interlude – Carmen later concluded from her inability to remember much about it. For five days they swam, ate, talked, laughed, loved and felt free. They talked a great deal about freedom. That she did remember.

“Why don't I feel freer than I do?” Carmen asked Jimmy one evening as they swung in a canopied canvas seat set against the wall of the villa. The last rays of sun were filtering through the leaves of the lemon trees and they were drinking a cool, dry wine, their glasses on an iron table set in front of them.

“Well, you're not making too bad a job of it.”

“But this feels like an interlude, a parenthesis. It isn't going to last is it?”

“Why do you say that? Just enjoy it.”

“But that's my point. It isn't easy.”

“It isn't easy because you have made a fetish of your precious work. You don't know how to relax, to appreciate ease. It's an art like any other.”

“Meaning?”

“Like any art you have to balance a talent for it, and a feel for it, with the discipline to work at it, to discover its special signature. Just as you can't sit down at a piano and deliver a finished Chopin sonata without practice, study, thought, so you can't achieve creative indolence in an instant, especially given the mania of
your
working life.”

Carmen nestled against Jimmy, sipped her glass, plucking a fragment of seed that had landed on its surface and dropping it to the ground.

“I like the sound of that creative indolence, but you think it's beyond me?”

“I think it's beyond most people now. The means that have given them the potential for leisure are the same that prevent them realising it: all that restless energy, change, discontent, ‘dynamism'.”

“This isn't, is it, going to be a seminar on the Protestant Work Ethic?”

“Not if you don't want it to be. But that has a lot to answer for. I don't see why one shouldn't ask, from time to time, what piling up all that hard-earned cash is actually for. I'm not arguing for idleness. That would be stultifying. I'm saying that some things aren't the product of furious attack. And they may turn out to be the most important things. The things that make us most fully alive.”

“Are you going to become a missionary? I can imagine you somewhere like this, running courses for the stinking rich in how to take it easy. Self-improvement is where the dosh is today and what could be more attractive to the people with money to throw away than learning – not how to lose weight or shed an addiction, which are painful – but how to be indolent? What's that Italian phrase?”

“
Dolce far niente
.”

“How about it?”

“It sounds like too much hard work. More wine?”

“Please. But seriously, I think I know what you are saying. When I look at the life Christopher and I have been living in London I can't say it
satisfies
us. I think most of our friends are in the same predicament.”

“You should travel. It's the answer to most things. I move about a lot in my work, naturally, but I mean real travel, letting oneself drift, letting oneself be caught in unexpected places, staying on. Then moving on. Knowing when it's right to do so. Taking the world's pulse.”

“I mean to, one day.”

“Don't delay it for too long.”

“I'll try.”

Jimmy shifted in the swing-seat, took a long draught of wine. Carmen could see that he wanted to say something that was going to be difficult for him.

“Do you mind if I talk about Christopher?”

“If you want to. What is there to say?”

“Oh I don't mean one of those conversations ‘about us'. This is hard to say, but I don't want you to throw something away that means more to you than perhaps you realise.”

“What? Is this a subtle warning about Jimmy the philanderer? Don't get too comfortable because you may be about to be ditched?”

“Don't be absurd. I think we both know where things stand. I don't think either of us has any illusions.”

“Jimmy, you are an incurable romantic. Just what a girl wants to hear in a Tuscan lemon grove at night.”

“You know exactly what I mean. What are you going to do on Sunday night?”

“OK. I'm flying back. But why do we have to compute this? It's like what you were just saying about travel. Let's just enjoy it. See what happens.”

“You said you thought he might be seeing someone.”

“Oh, I don't know. I can hardly get on my high horse. I don't suppose it's anything serious. Or perhaps it is. Look, Jimmy, it's too late for me to act out the perfect marriage playlet. Not with my track record. Some things can't be retrieved. Replayed. I've made mistakes. I haven't always got it right. Correction. I've seldom got it right. That happens to be the way it is. I'm not the sort of person who wants to work at a relationship.”

“Sounds like the activity of a coal miner at the seam.”

“Precisely. Let's have a little of the
dolce far niente
. Let's have a little natural spontaneity. If Christopher and I ever get back together it will happen. I can't make it happen.”

“I don't want you to go back to him, naturally.”

“Not today, at any rate.”

“Am I that much of a rake?”

“He called you a ‘sexual opportunist' which I thought was quite good for him.”

“And what do you think?”

“I've no idea. I'm tired of judging people, pigeon-holing them, giving them labels.”

“I thought that was what you did for a living and called it style journalism.”

“Yes, yes. In fact it is precisely because I do it for a living that it has started to disgust me.”

“Which brings us back to where we started. Freedom.”

“Right. I am a convert. Can we have lesson one of your exacting course in how to be free?”

Jimmy laughed. He pointed to the winking lights of a jet travelling across the night sky towards Pisa or Rome. It was getting cooler. They huddled against each other for warmth. The scent in the garden was rich and sweet. The air that bore it was cool and clear. Occasionally a shout came from the direction of the beach. A car went past along the little avenue. This seemed like freedom enough. Somewhere beneath it all, like a buried watercourse, flowed all sorts of knotted problems, dilemmas. Responsibilities, if you will. But tonight Carmen felt utterly relaxed with Jimmy. Utterly relaxed with night in this place and at this time.

Their Tuscan interlude ended all too quickly. Jimmy had to fly on to Vienna. Carmen had to return to London which, at Heathrow, was grey and cold and wet – though it was officially summer. A knot of drunken louts had spoiled the flight with their vicious language and uncontrolled behaviour. Somewhere over the Alps, Carmen turned round and gave them a look of disapproval. One of the young men staggered to his feet, unsteady from drink. His belly heaved in a dirty white T-shirt which bore – oddly she thought – a £ sign. He breathed his tinned beer over her as he brought his face close to hers.

“Have you got a problem darling?”

She tried to ignore him. Experience had taught her that the last thing one should do was allow oneself to become engaged in a dialogue from which it would prove impossible to extricate oneself.

“Can't speak can ya? Lost your fuckin' tongue?”

His eyes swam mistily. He had difficulty remaining upright. She noticed that on the upper part of his four fingers, above the knuckle, the letters L-O-V-E were tattooed in pale blue.

“You're not a fucking Eytie are you? Speaka da English darling? You know what you need love. My fuckin' prescription. A good shag.”

His fellows whooped with delighted laughter.“Give her one, Garry.”

“I might just do that. I might just do that.”

As he swayed uncertainly an air-steward came down the aisle and expertly lifted the man under the arms, guiding him carefully back to his seat into which he slumped gratefully. The other passengers seemed relieved. They looked across at Carmen, sending that expressive signal of weary acceptance that she knew so well from previous incidents of this kind. There was a look of quiet distaste on the face of a working class couple in their late sixties who occupied the seats across from hers. They appeared hurt and baffled, as if they could not understand where such behaviour came from, why it seemed to have established itself as a norm that all of them seemed powerless to oppose.

Carmen passed out of the airport into the Underground and was home inside an hour. She sensed immediately that Christopher was uneasy, that something had happened. She waited to find out what it was that she was to be told. He came through to the living room with a cafetière of fresh coffee which he placed on that long ash table he had made himself. He lay back against the soft leather of the sofa.

“You missed all the fun. Carl went a little over the top today.”

“Carl? I thought he was the most phlegmatic man in London. I'd like to have been around to see him losing his cool.”

“I was having lunch with Joanna.”

Christopher's boldness, his frank, unapologetic tone did not ring entirely true. It felt like a calculated strategy, like someone trying to clear the ground for the launch of trickier matter. Entering into the spirit of the thing, she decided to play the spiteful bitch.

“That must have been nice for the two of you. Was she as radiant as ever, little Jo?”

Her own moral position was so doubtful after five days with Jimmy that she wasn't planning to overdo this line of approach.

“She was fine. We bumped into each other in Berwick Street and I suggested lunch. We went to La Barca.”

“You must take me there some time.”

Christopher looked at her with distaste, as if she were deliberately trying to lower the tone of their encounter.

“We were just quietly eating when Carl bounded up from nowhere and took a swing at me. There was a sort of tussle and someone came out of the crowd to break us up and copped a blow meant for me. It was a bit farcical in fact. The guy then hit back at Carl and laid him out. The police arrived and took him away. Joanna was distraught.”