Us (26 page)

Sleep had repaired some of the damage. I still had not shaved, and now sported the beginnings of a rather fetching beard, flecked with white and grey, the kind Hollywood actors grow when required to appear less handsome than they are. I rather liked it. I looked … unfamiliar. I put on my new sunglasses, pulled down the baseball cap and hit the canals.

Imagine time as a long strip of paper.

This is not the shape of time, of course. Time has no shape, being a dimension or conceivably a direction or vector, but imagine for the purposes of the metaphor that time can be represented as a long strip of paper, or a roll of celluloid, perhaps. And imagine that you are able to make two cuts in the strip, joining those ends to form a continuous loop. This strip of paper can be as long or as short as you wish, but that loop will roll forever.

For me, the first snip of the scissors is easily apparent and comes about halfway across London Bridge on the night I first met Connie Moore. But the second cut is harder, and is that not the case for everyone? The edges of unhappiness are usually a little more blurred and graded than those of joy. Nevertheless, I find my scissors hovering, hovering …

But not just yet. We aren't even married yet.

We married, and that was fun. We had been guests at so many weddings, Connie and I, that it had sometimes felt that we had been attending a three-year part-time course in wedding management. Both of us were clear about what we didn't want, and that was a fuss. We'd have a city wedding, registry office then a meal in our local Italian restaurant with close family and good friends. It would be small but stylish. Connie would be responsible for the guest list, the readings, the décor, the menu, music and entertainment. I would be responsible for turning up.

And making a speech, of course. In the run-up to the wedding, I went over the text again and again, putting more effort into that speech than almost any piece of prose since my PhD on protein-RNA interactions, though it's arguable as to which contained the better jokes. Because I wanted everything down word for word in 14-point Arial, I had been obliged to transcribe my emotions several months before experiencing them. I predicted that she would be beautiful, that I would feel happy and proud – no, never happier, never more proud than when standing next to her, and certainly these predictions did come true. She was spectacular that day, dressed like an old-fashioned film star, in a rather tight-fitting low-cut black dress, an ironic antidote to traditional virginal white. In later years, she'd regret the choice. ‘What was I thinking?' she would say. ‘I look like a prostitute in a Fellini film,' but for the record I thought she looked wonderful. Certainly I was happy and proud, grateful and relieved. An underrated emotion, I think, relief. No one presents a bouquet with the words, ‘I've never been more relieved in my life'. But then I had never expected to marry at all, and to be marrying
this
woman …

During the short service, Connie's friend Fran read a poem by T. S. Eliot which sounded very nice but which I would challenge anyone to put into good plain English, and my sister gave a fraught rendition of the Beatles' ‘In My Life' on an electric keyboard, smiling bravely through a torrent of tears and mucus that might have been appropriate had Connie and I recently perished in a plane crash, but which seemed so ghoulish in our presence that Connie got the giggles, then passed them on to me. To distract myself I stole a glimpse at my father, who sat with elbows on knees, pinching the bridge of his nose as if attempting to stem a nosebleed.

Then the ‘I do's, the exchange of rings, the posing for photographs. I enjoyed it all, but weddings turn the bride and groom into performers and we were, I think, both a little self-conscious with each other that day, neither of us used to being the centre of attention. In the photographs I look sheepish, preoccupied, as if I've been shoved onto the stage from my place in the wings. We look happy, of course, and in love, however that manifests in photos, but one always hopes that wedding-day conversation between bride and groom will consist only of endearments, a perpetual ‘you complete me', and there were taxis and seating plans and sound systems to organise, and of course the speeches too. My sister had volunteered, quite early on, to be my ‘best man', and delivered a boastful speech that focused on how all our present and future happiness had been her idea, and how we could never possibly repay our vast debt and should not even try. Kemal, Connie's step-father, made an amusing speech that returned, again and again, to my wife's figure to uncomfortable effect, and then it was my turn.

I told some of the stories that I've related here, about our first meeting, about Jake the trapeze artist, about Connie saying yes at the delicatessen counter of Kilburn Sainsbury's. I am not a natural raconteur but there was a decent amount of laughter, as well as some muttering and shushing from the table containing Connie's art-school friends.

Because Angelo was there, did I mention that? In the months before the wedding, there had been some debate about his presence, but it would have seemed paranoid and conventional on my part to banish all her former boyfriends, not to mention that it would have halved the guest list. So here was good old Angelo, drinking heavily and providing, I imagined, a sardonic commentary on the event. To Angelo's gang, I was clearly something of a Yoko Ono figure. Never mind. I focused my thoughts on my wife. ‘Wife' – how strange that sounded. Would I ever get used to it? I brought the speech to a sentimental but sincere conclusion, kissed my wife – that word again – and raised a glass in her honour.

We danced to Ella Fitzgerald's recording of ‘Night and Day', Connie's choice. My only specification had been that our first dance shouldn't be anything too fast or wild, so we rotated slowly like a child's mobile. It can't have been much of a spectacle, because after the first few revolutions, Connie started to improvise ducks and spins that left us momentarily tangled, to laughter from the guests. Then we cut the cake, we circulated, and occasionally my eyes would scan the room over the shoulder of a colleague or an uncle, searching out Connie, and we'd smile or pull a face or just grin at each other. My
wife
. I had a wife.

My father, looking slighter since my mother's death, left early. I had offered to find a hotel for the night, an indulgence that appalled him. Hotels, he thought, were for royalty and fools. ‘I have a perfectly good bed at home. I can't sleep in strange beds anyway,' he said. Now he was keen to catch the Ipswich train ‘in case your sister starts to sing again'. We laughed, and he placed one hand on my shoulder. ‘Well done,' he said, as if I'd passed my driving test. ‘Thanks, Dad. Bye.'

‘Well done,' was Angelo's phrase too, as he maliciously embraced me then brushed the cigarette ash off my shoulder. ‘Well done, mate. You won. Treat her well, yeah? Connie's a great girl. She's golden.' I agreed that she was golden, and thanked him. My sister, ever the keen-eyed critic of other people's work, hung off my neck, drunk and emotional and gave me her feedback. ‘Great speech, D,' she said, ‘but you forgot to tell Connie how gorgeous she is.' Had I forgotten? I didn't think I had. I thought I'd made it perfectly clear.

And then, a little after midnight, exhausted and wine-mouthed we were in a cab, heading to a smart hotel in Mayfair, our one concession to luxury. We didn't make love that night, though I'm reassured that this is not uncommon among newly married couples. Instead we lay facing each other, champagne and toothpaste on our breath.

‘Hello, husband.'

‘Hello, wife.'

‘Feel different?'

‘Not particularly. You? Suddenly feel jaded? Trapped, confined? Oppressed?'

‘Let me see …' She rotated her shoulders, flexed her wrists. ‘No, no I don't think so. Early days, though.'

‘I love you.'

‘I love you too.'

Was it the happiest day of our lives? Probably not, if only because the truly happy days tend not to involve so much organisation, are rarely so public or so expensive. The happy ones sneak up, unexpected. But to me at least, it felt like the culmination of many happy days, and the first of many more. Everything was still the same and yet not quite the same, and in the moments before sleep I felt the kind of trepidation that I still feel the night before a long, complicated journey. Everything is in place, tickets, reservations and foreign currency, passports laid out on the table in the hall. If we are at our best at all times, or at least endeavour to be so, there is no reason why everyone shouldn't have a wonderful time.

Still, what if something goes wrong along the way? What if the plane's engines fail, or I lose control of the car? What if it rains?

Viewed from above, Venice resembles a broad-bodied fish with a gaping mouth, a bream or perch perhaps, with the Grand Canal as its intestinal tract. My route began at the fish's tail, the eastern tip of the city, Castello, the old docks, long straight terraces of the loveliest workers' houses in Europe. Then back along the northern shore, the dorsal fin, through Cannaregio, where the streets had a sunnier, almost coastal aspect. Through the Ghetto to the train station then down the main tourist drag, which felt like a drag, tourists queuing to squeeze over the Rialto Bridge.
How many masks did one city need?
I wondered, shuffling along another lightless shopping street, so that arriving in St Mark's Square felt like coming up for air, so bright and immense that no crowd of tourists could fill it, though they were trying now. By the Grand Canal – the fish's swim bladder, I suppose – I took a moment to rest. That morning I had seen adenoidal guitarists, ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy' performed on the rims of wine glasses, a startlingly inept juggler whose routine consisted of dropping things, but fewer acts than I'd expected. Searching for the terms ‘busker' and ‘Venice' on my phone revealed that the city was considered hostile territory. The internet was alive with angry and resentful living statues who had been bustled into motion by assiduous
polizia municipale
. A permit was required, and I was sure Cat was too wild and free-spirited to submit to Italian bureaucracy. I would be searching for a guerrilla accordionist, someone who hit fast, hit hard and disappeared into the crowd. No time to rest, then. For energy I ate my bruised banana and pushed on, shuffling through the crowds towards the Fenice theatre, where a busker in Pierrot costume sang a warbling ‘
La donna è mobile
'. Tired now; it was too much, too many people. I burrowed south, hurrying past West African men selling handbags and on to Dorsoduro, the belly of the fish.

After all that ancient stone, there was something pleasingly light and temporary about the wooden Accademia Bridge, and I took a moment to look east to the entrance of the Grand Canal, taking in the view. A strange phrase that, ‘taking in', implying as it does some sustenance or retention. While I could admire the elegance and proportion of the scene, I was primarily aware of the mass of tourism around me, and also of the extraordinary confidence of the Venetian architects in allowing their finest buildings to teeter at the water's edge. What about damp? What about flooding? Wouldn't it make sense to have a little lawn or garden as a sort of buffer zone between the house and all that water? But then it wouldn't be Venice, said Connie's voice in my head. Then it would be Staines.

I walked on and heard another voice. ‘How is that map working out for you?' In foreign cities, I assume that anyone speaking to me wants money, and so I continued some way before turning and seeing the lady from the
pensione
's breakfast room. I doubled back.

‘It's serving me very well. You're queuing for the Accademia?' I asked, somewhat idiotically given that she was queuing for the Accademia.

‘Accademia,' she said.

‘I'm sorry?'

‘
Acc
a
de
mia, not Ac
cad
e
mi
a. The desk clerk in the hotel corrected my pronunciation. First and third syllable. It's
Acc
a
de
mia. Like the nut.'

‘Sorry, which nut?'

‘The macadamia nut.'

‘No, you mean the ma
cad
a
mi
a nut!' I said.

I'm not sure the written word captures the full splendour of this comeback. I was so pleased that I found myself making a little whining noise in the back of my throat, and the woman smiled at the first nut-pronunciation joke in human history. It seemed unlikely that either of us could top the remark, so, ‘Enjoy the gallery!' I said. ‘See you at breakfast!' she replied, and on I strode towards Campo Santa Margherita, where I gorged on a slab of pizza, greasy and delicious, and a litre of chilled sparkling water, then on, belching privately, to the exhaust fumes and bluster of Piazzale Roma in the fish's mouth. Head to tail had taken me a little under three hours.

But it was the body of the fish, San Paolo and Santa Croce, that defeated me, the blind alleys and dog-legs and compass-defying switchbacks. My map was useless here, and finding myself alone in a cool, exquisite courtyard, my response was not ‘what grace, what beauty' but ‘what a pointless waste of time'. After an hour of dispirited wandering, I struck south to the open promenade of the Zattere, the fish's pelvic fin. On floating pontoons the tourists were eating
gelati
but I was behind schedule now, and in very low spirits by the time I approached La Salute, where I slumped on the marble steps near the spot where I had proposed to Connie on a winter's night, twenty-two years ago. Now a young busker stood there, Albie's age, singing an Oasis song, written before he was born, the words learnt phonetically and stripped of their consonants.

‘
Un mayee
,
ure gonna be uh-un uh safe mee
…'