The Birth of Love (20 page)

‘I don’t really think … in the way you are proposing,’ said Michael. He was aiming at a lie, while he tried to calm his nerves, slow his heart. ‘I don’t think very clearly … I am not clear at all … But even then, isn’t it rather that we never really get to the heart of any matter, in the end? We get captured by convenient metaphors, or clichés, by other people’s modes of expression … Our real intentions, or thoughts, are lost …’

‘I don’t agree,’ said Paul Ardache. ‘I think it’s amazing how frequently we do manage to say what we mean, or something roughly commensurate. Somehow our words resonate to others, even though they are inaccurate. Something gets through, for all the static and distortions. I find it quite moving, how people do understand, despite our flawed efforts.’

‘In that case, they know it anyway … they don’t need my rambling prose to tell them.’

‘Ah, so are you the narrator? His rambling prose is your rambling prose?’

‘Oh, no, I’m not half as … determined as he is,’ said Michael. He thought he felt better now. When someone poured more wine into his glass, he gulped it down.

‘You mean you are even more rambling?’

‘Quite possibly.’ They were smiling vaguely at each other.

‘Ah, you see, you are an archetype yourself. The humble man,’ said Paul Ardache, flicking the end of his cigarette into a nearby shrub.

‘No, no, but I am not humble … No no, not it at all … I don’t believe … well, no writer is humble, surely.’

‘Well, I know I’m not. But I am handing you the accolade,’ said Paul Ardache.

‘That’s kind of you … But it isn’t true at all.’

They were looking at each other with a kindling of interest; perhaps they might even become friends later, thought Michael. He was wondering if it might be possible, to befriend this interesting man, and then someone else arrived.

‘Mr Stone,’ said this someone else. A boy, not more than twenty-five. Perhaps he was an apprentice, or a prodigy. He was so young, wearing a jacket that looked too big for him, and he said his name was Alistair Madden. ‘I designed the cover for your book. I hope you liked it.’

Michael, who had not particularly liked the cover, smiled and said, ‘I liked it very much. Thank you.’

Behind the boy, he saw Paul Ardache grimacing towards him. Michael had a sense that Paul Ardache perceived his discomfort, and his desire to be grateful nonetheless. He didn’t want to look churlish so he said thank you again. And Paul Ardache nodded towards him, and lit another cigarette.

It wasn’t much later, but Michael found he was leaning
against a wall. He had felt his way towards it, and rested against its solidity. Still he had the stem of a wine glass between his fingers, as if it was attached to his body, the surgical addition of recent days. He was thinking about what Ardache had said, and how he had put his mother in his book, without realising. He had convinced himself he never thought of her and yet she was there, plain for all to view – and he wondered if it could be true, that she was mortal and afraid, that she would die.

‘Are you feeling ill?’ Sally was saying into his ear. He realised he had bowed his head, screwed up his eyes.

‘I think … perhaps … I think I should go.’ If he went now, he could be there in an hour. He could go to her and say …

‘Now? Already? But you’ve hardly arrived.’

‘A taxi,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I could …’ He felt as if a weight was pressing on his lungs.

‘Naturally, if you are ill, I will drive you home,’ said Sally, sternly.

‘Is Michael ill?’ said someone, overhearing and looking concerned.

‘No no, not ill,’ Michael was trying to say. ‘Please, I don’t want to inconvenience anyone … I just need a taxi.’

Is Michael going to leave?

The party had heard he was leaving early. After all the rain it was such a beautiful clear evening, with the lovely garden glistening and the daylight ceding to this lustrous moon. Lucy-Rose had just been remarking to herself on the success of her gathering when she received the rumour.

‘Already?’ she said.

‘He’s exhausted, apparently. Looked quite ill, said Maggie.’

‘Poor man,’ said Lucy-Rose, feeling irritated nonetheless.

‘Has no wife or family.’

‘An eternal bachelor, says Sally. Very nervous.’

‘But can’t we persuade him to stay?’ said Lucy-Rose.

From his corner, Michael heard the general murmur. He imagined what he could not hear, and anyway phrases kept floating towards him, like petals. The garden was full of drifting petals, and each one was about him. ‘A sudden turn … Too much strain … Impossible … But really … ill? Did someone get a doctor …?’

Then Sally was saying, ‘The thing is, Lucy-Rose invited the literary editor of the
Observer
. And she may be coming. It’s surely worth waiting if you possibly can.’ She was standing very close to him, nearly whispering in his ear. ‘Perhaps – I know it’s a big ask, but these people have gone to a lot of effort. Lucy-Rose has gone to a lot of effort. Perhaps you could lie down in the conservatory for a short while, then you might feel better by the time she arrives. You just need a rest.’

‘But I think it might be better just to go,’ said Michael. ‘Though I don’t want to make a fuss.’

‘Michael,’ Sally whispered. ‘Don’t be absurd. This party is for your benefit. It’s your party. You are quite entitled to make a fuss.’

‘Then I think, much as I appreciate all the …’

‘Perhaps the best thing to do would be to lie down briefly. Take it from me. I’m an old hand at this game. You’ll feel much better when you’ve had a little lie down.’

‘Of course,’ said Lucy-Rose, stricken with relief. She almost put an arm round the author, but she sensed he was one of those who dreaded social touching, however well-intentioned; so she held back and said, ‘You’re welcome to lie anywhere. Anywhere you like. Go into one of the spare rooms, have a sleep. We can wake you in a while.’

‘Just a quick rest in the conservatory,’ Sally was saying. ‘That would be fine.’

Defeated by them all, a hostage to their kindness, Michael lay in the conservatory, a pitcher of water on the table beside him, and a copy of Dougie Ascherson’s latest collection of verse by his arm. A blanket over his legs, though the evening was still warm. Below he could hear the rise and fall of voices, undulating tones; the drift of petals.

‘Naturally reclusive …’

‘Did he leave?’

‘I don’t know …’

‘No, he’s just upstairs, lying down.’

‘Sally says he’ll come back later …’

He was in here, as they cast petals on him from the garden. The drowned man in the conservatory, he thought. What came after death by water? He couldn’t think. They would come later, perhaps if the literary editor arrived, and they would fish him out. They would get him on a hook, and then they would reel him in.

He should fling open the window and issue a general announcement. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you for everything. But I simply have to go. Goodbye.

There was a bellow of laughter. Staccato hoots. Inside the conservatory it was cool and quiet. In a corner, ivy climbing a trellis. Some gardenias in a long pot. He had always wanted a garden. Or a conservatory. The concrete tower he called his home was one of a formidable series, standing like battlements, defending the north from the south. From his outpost he could see the river like a silver serpent and the miles and miles of sprawl. At the base of his concrete tower was a concrete yard, with space for parking. A wall around it, to repel burglars, then a main road and the Victorian terraces, squat and defeated. No room for a garden.

It was important to remember, thought Michael, that no one had begged him to do this. No one had approached him on bended knee, pleading with him to become a writer. No divinity had alighted from a cloud and commanded him to go forth and write. His parents had certainly condemned him – severely, for his own failings and by comparison with his gainfully employed, affluent brother. It seemed absurd now, that he had persisted, all these years, in hating them. He had worked so hard to prove them wrong. And yet now …

The moon was shining through the glass. In the moonlit room, Michael knew that it would pass; things – everything – would change and change again. There would be a point when this would be long gone, a past he no longer had to consider.

Time passed.

Lucy-Rose, in her serene vitality, would pass.

Roger Annais, Peter Kennedy, Arthur Grey, Martha Williams, would all pass. Sally Blanchefleur would pass.

And the people who had discouraged him, over many years, and those committed people who had been forced – briefly – to consider him; they too would pass. Even these ideas they were debating, their beliefs in a certain sort of world, all this would most likely pass, as so much before had passed and faded altogether. For who worshipped Ishtar any more, or Attis? Who quaked at the thought of Zeus or the judgements of Osiris? Who invoked the virtues of Cybele or Artemis?

Yes, it was quite certain Lucy-Rose would pass, and so would her garden. Her garden would stand neglected, the wind ruffling the aspidistras, the sun cultivating weeds in the once-manicured flowerbeds. The walls of her house would crumble though tonight they looked sturdy and imposing, and earlier he had leaned against them.

He would pass too. And the mother who had birthed him. Paul Ardache was right: he had untied himself from every knot of obligation or necessity. He would have no wife, no lover, no family. He had fled from so many people who had approached him. Prospective wives, prospective friends, people who simply stopped to pass the time of day; he had fled from them all. He had been left cut off from everything and mistaking this detachment for strength. And what was it he had feared? That someone would need him, that his purpose would be diluted by the
demands of others. He had feared all his life that someone would make a claim on him, ask him to live for them as well as for himself.

So he had come to despise his parents, perhaps because they offered him complexity, the confusing array of emotions he experienced when he saw them, love and bitterness and even pity sometimes, as they grew older and more shambolic. He had been dutiful but entirely distant and his mother had set herself against him, told him he had failed, that he was wasting his life. Her questioning of his life, her anger at what he had not done, had seemed to him a dreadful liberty, an intrusion on his immaculate retreat. Really he had failed her, not even because he had been rude, not even because he had hated her, but because he rebuffed her every attempt to know him.

Then he fled from every woman who approached him, when all they offered was love or friendship. He thought of these kindly women, shyly proposing dinner and finding him tickets for concerts and trying to involve him. He thanked them for their labours, perhaps he had gone to a concert or two – but then he departed. With a wave, politely but firmly.

‘Are you actually happy?’ his mother once said. He thought she was judging him again, finding him wanting in some further way. But he had not seen the truth behind her words. He had hazy images of her, smiling down at him, benign and loving. Showing him dinosaur skeletons in a museum or taking him to play in a park. Lifting him in her arms and kissing him when he cried. Holding his hand as they walked, telling him to mind where he
stepped. And when he became an adult and his happiness was no longer within her jurisdiction, she merely asked – had the life she created for him been a good one?

He had turned away as if she had offended him, and he had established his hiding hole, his flat, four walls between him and the mass of desire and love and hatred and confusion. Monastic and – he thought – safe. And he wrote his pompous little books – now he thought they were pompous, as he sat there tracing patterns on the blanket, the moon shining on his hands – they were pompous because they were so preciously sterile, they were the products of his determined sterility. He generated nothing, caused not a ripple, except in writing his books.

All of this sequestering, for his art – as he had called it – and now Michael saw what a flimsy thing that was anyway. Why had he thought he must be pure, untrammelled, in order to create it? How could you communicate meaningfully with others, if you understood nothing of their fears and desires anyway? Because the conditions of life were so unclear to him, he decided to refuse them. He would not muddy his hands until he understood all things, the meaning of all things. The world had found him out, and come to rave at him. They had scaled his fortress and flung open the gates. For if thou openest not the gate to let me enter, I will wrench the lock, I will smash the doorposts, I will force the doors. So said Ishtar, thought Michael, and he shivered, though he was warm under the blanket.

In the garden, the rise and fall. The literary editor had called to say she could not come. Michael heard the murmur, and now Lucy-Rose was saying, ‘She’s just rather busy with the Lamott story …’

In the balance, Michael thought, the things I have done weigh heavily against me. Or the things I have not done. The love I have failed to return. The approaches I have fled. The four white walls of my monastic cell. The locks on my door. Now he was standing in the open air, deprived of his bolthole. And he thought that the years behind him, the years yet to come were inconsequential, in balance with this moment, this moment when the world – in all its imperfection and madness – had turned its eyes upon him. He had been observing it, surreptitiously, secretively, peering out from his hiding place. And now he had been forced to show himself.

Tomorrow, he thought, I must go to her. I will not tremble and complain. I will meet her eyes. Really had I done this earlier, things would have been easier. I would have been less unhappy, and more grateful to those who have tried to help me. Perhaps it was not my brother who ruined this day, perhaps I ruined it myself. Because he saw that the unease he felt about Arthur Grey and Sally Blanchefleur and Lucy-Rose was a response to their engagement, the fact they cared so much about things including him. He could only squint at them through his own personal fog, struggling to discern them.