Us (46 page)

I believe such stories are called coming-of-age stories. I can see the appeal of that mixture of idealism, cynicism, narcissism and self-righteousness, with some sex and drugs thrown in. It's not really my thing, perhaps because I've never understood that ‘who am I?' question. Even as a teenager I always knew who I was, even if I didn't much care for the answer. But I can see that Albie's concerns were somewhat greater than my own. I can see how that story might have been of interest to some.

If not, how about this one?

A young artist – beautiful, witty, a little insecure – leads a wild and irresponsible life with her temperamental but talented boyfriend. They argue violently and break up for the last time and soon after, at a party, she meets another man, a scientist this time, passably attractive, a little conventional perhaps, but nice enough, and they begin a relationship. This man is reliable, intelligent and clearly adores her, and they fall in love. But when he asks her to marry him she hesitates. What about her work, what about the passion and unpredictability of her earlier life? Pushing these doubts aside, she says yes. They marry and for a while they are happy. But their first child dies and their second child is a source of tension. Questions arise in her mind. What about her ambitions as a painter? What about her old life? Her husband is loyal and decent and loves her very much, but her days are now provincial and dull and when the time is right, she summons up all her courage, wakes him in the night and announces her intention to leave. He is heartbroken, of course, and his heartbreak causes her some sadness too. Life alone is difficult for both of them. He asks her to return and she is tempted.

But despite its occasional loneliness there is something thrilling about her new life in a little London flat, about starting to paint again. She resists her husband's pleas. He gets to keep the dog. She is fifty-two years old, uncertain of the future but happy to be alone.

But then – and here comes the late twist – one night at an old friend's party in London she meets her former lover. He is not the wild, arrogant artist that he used to be. Now he makes an erratic living as a car mechanic, living out on the North Yorkshire moors, still painting brilliantly in his spare time but chastened by his past, the boozing and sleeping around, and full of regret and humility.

But despite the paunch and thinning hair, the artist is still handsome and charismatic. The mutual attraction is still there, even with her thicker waist, the grey in her hair. That same night they fall into bed with each other and, soon after, fall back in love. The woman finds happiness again, and just in time.

This was what I found so hard at first, that Connie and Angelo's story was so much better than my own. I imagine them telling it to people at the kind of parties that they go to now. ‘How did you two meet?' the strangers ask, noting the intensity with which they cling to each other, how they still kiss and hold hands like lovers half their age, and they take it in turns to tell how they met thirty years ago, how they married other people but returned like comets on a long trajectory or some such silly-arsed nonsense ‘Oh,' the listeners sigh, ‘what a lovely story, how romantic,' and meanwhile all those intervening years, all that we went through together, our
marriage
, is contained within parentheses.

‘It's a little more complicated than that, Douglas,' Connie told me. ‘We're feeling our way. We're … seeing what happens. He says he's changed, but no one changes that much, do they? Even if they want to.' I agreed; no, they did not. ‘Anyway, I wanted to tell you. I thought you ought to know straight away. I like to think you'll tell me too. If and when you meet someone. Which I hope you will.'

The occasion was our lunch in London in June, one of the regular meetings we had promised to have when negotiating our separation. We are not divorced and may not be for some time, though I suppose that will happen some day. For the moment, technically, we are still husband and wife. Technically. ‘I'm not in any hurry to change that. Are you?' she'd said. No, I was not in any hurry.

The restaurant was in Soho, Spanish-themed for old times' sake, and so fashionable that we had to queue for some time to get in. Queuing, it seems, is also fashionable now. You're meant to feel honoured, and grateful for your seat, and I wonder how long it will be before they ask you to wash up, too. Anyway, we drank wine while waiting in the queue, took our seats – benches, in fact – between couples much younger than us, and it was all very civilised, very pleasant. Anyone watching would have thought that we were a long-time married couple, enjoying our day in the city, which I suppose is more or less what we were; comfortable, familiar, touching across the table, the difference being that soon Connie would be returning to her basement in Kennington and I'd be on the train back to Oxford.

‘How is your flat?' asked Connie, hoping for some reassurance, I suppose. ‘Is it comfortable? Have you met anyone? Are you happy there?' Please say yes.

I had moved to a small but comfortable garden flat on the outskirts of Oxford. Our old family home would be too large and depressing for me to live in on my own. Neither did I relish the prospect of spending my evenings showing prospective buyers around the attractive kitchen, the many light and spacious bedrooms, perfect for a growing family. So a flat was rented while we waited for the house to sell. Conscious of my father's experience, I had made sure that the place was welcoming and cheerful. There was a spare room for when Albie came to stay, a small garden, river walks and friends nearby. Work was forty-five minutes away. There were moments – wet weekday nights or three p.m. on a Sunday afternoon – when an awful sadness overtook the place, finding its way into the corners of each room like some sort of creeping gas, and I would have to pack Mr Jones in the car and go for a brisk walk, but for the most part I was happy enough. Reduced to essentials, it transpired that I needed fewer possessions than I'd thought, and I liked the order and simplicity of this life. Like Darwin's cabin on the
Beagle
, everything was in its place. I worked late. I cooked simple, health-conscious meals. Watched whatever I wanted on television. I exercised. Read. I walked Mr Jones and ran the dishwasher just twice a week.

On the first warm day of the year, Connie had driven a hired van from London to the family house (‘Can you manage?' ‘Of course I can manage.' ‘Should I get the train to London and drive the van?' ‘Douglas – I can manage!') and we spent that long Easter weekend disentangling our mingled lives. We had invited Albie along, too, promising him that it would not be a grim and acrimonious affair, that there would be almost a carnival atmosphere! But he said that he was busy, photographing the back of people's heads or something, I expect. When I phoned to ask what we should do with all his stuff, his old artwork, his childhood toys, he said, ‘Burn it. Burn it all.' Connie and I laughed about this a great deal. We donned rubber gloves to clear his room and, finding a stinking old trainer or an ancient pair of pants, we'd chant, ‘Burn it! Burn it all!'

We didn't actually burn anything, that would have felt a little melodramatic, but nevertheless that Easter weekend had the air of a rather melancholy ritual. Five piles were made in separate rooms; one for Connie, one for myself, to dump, to sell, to give to charity, and it was interesting to note how easily everything we owned fell into one of those categories. We did our best to keep the mood upbeat. Connie had made a compilation of new music that she'd discovered – she was listening to music again – and on Saturday we drank wine and ate simple food that did not require many pans. There were chocolate eggs on Sunday morning and later that afternoon, smudge-faced from the dust and cobwebs in the attic, Connie and I went to bed and made love for the last time. I won't say much except to mention that thankfully there was nothing sombre about it. In fact, there was a certain amount of laughter, and warmth and affection. Fondness, I suppose. Afterwards we lay for a long time in that bare room, saying nothing, slept for a while in each other's arms, then woke, got dressed and went downstairs to empty the kitchen cupboards.

At other times that weekend had the quality of an archaeological dig, the relics getting dustier and shabbier as we sifted further back. Most items were easy to allocate. Connie and I had always had different tastes and although they had converged to an extent over the years, there was rarely any question of what was mine and what was hers. In the early days of our relationship we had bombarded each other with gifts of favourite books and music – or rather Connie had bombarded me – and it seemed churlish now to snatch those items back. And so I kept the John Coltrane CDs and the Kafka short stories, the Baudelaire poems and the Jacques Brel on vinyl, even though I have no record player and would not play it if I did. I was happy to keep them all, because they were the making of us. On the front page of Rimbaud's poetry I found ‘Happy Valentine's Day, you wonderful man. I love you very much, signed ???' I showed it to Connie.

‘Did you send this?'

She laughed and shook her head. ‘Not me.'

I placed the book in my pile, knowing that I would never read it and never throw it away.

Only a few items presented a dilemma. In an old 35mm film canister – artefact of ancient times – we found ten or twelve little yellow chips of ivory. Albie's milk teeth, the ones he hadn't swallowed or lost in the playground. In truth, they were unpleasant, slightly macabre objects, something you might wrinkle your nose at in the Egyptian rooms of a museum, but throwing them away didn't seem right either. Should we take six each? It was all slightly ridiculous, haggling over milk teeth. ‘You have them,' I said. So Connie got the milk teeth.

But the photographs were a predicament. We had the negatives, of course, but, even more than the VHS tapes and the audiocassettes, photographic negatives seem like the relics of an ancient civilisation and we threw most of them away. The slim wallet of photos of our daughter went to Connie, and she assured me that she would make good copies for me as soon as she could, a promise she has since fulfilled. With all the other, pre-digital photos, we sat on the floor and dealt them into piles like playing cards, discarding the dull and out of focus, making a stack of the best, the ones that we would both like copies of. Here we were at all those endless parties and weddings, thumbs up in the rain on the Isle of Skye, here was Venice in the rain again, here was Albie on his mother's breast. The process was agonisingly slow, each photo leading us down another avenue of nostalgia. Whatever happened to so-and-so? God, d'you remember that car? Here I was, putting up shelves in the Kilburn flat, smooth-cheeked and impossibly young, and here was Connie on our wedding day.

‘That awful dress – what was I thinking of?'

‘I think you look wonderful.'

‘Look at you in that suit. Very nineties.'

‘You do want copies of these, don't you?'

‘Of course I do!'

Here was Albie learning to swim on other holidays, here blowing out candles at two, three, four and five. Here he was in a hammock curled up on my chest, asleep. Here were Christmas mornings, school sports days and happier Easters than this one. After a while I found it all too much. From an evolutionary point of view, most emotions – fear, desire, anger – serve some practical purpose, but nostalgia is a useless, futile thing because it is a longing for something that is permanently lost, and I felt its futility now. Rather sourly, I tossed the remaining photos onto the floor, swore and told her she could keep them all. She mumbled something about making copies, and put them in the ‘Connie' pile. I slept in a separate room that night.

Bank Holiday Mondays are depressing at the best of times, and the following day was bleak and sour. By lunchtime Connie had loaded up the Transit van. It was barely half full.

‘Do you want me to drive you back?'

‘I can drive.'

‘The motorway will be horrible. I can drive with you and catch the train tonight.'

‘Douglas, I'll be fine. I'll see you in London. Next week. I'll choose a restaurant.' We had a deal. Lunch, once a month. No exceptions. Like a therapist or a social worker, she was very strict about these meetings. She wanted to keep an eye on me, I suppose.

‘Drive carefully. Use the wing mirrors.'

‘I will.'

A moment passed.

‘I found that hard,' I said.

‘Me too. But it could have been much harder, Douglas.'

‘I suppose so.'

‘Nothing got smashed against the wall, nothing got torn in two.'

‘No.'

‘Thank you, Douglas.'

‘What for?'

‘For not hating me.'

In truth there had been times when I had hated her, in the wrenching and tearing of the previous months, but not then. We kissed goodbye and after she had gone, crunching through the gears on the drive, I went back into the house once more to rinse the mugs, pack the kettle, turn off the gas and water. I loaded up the boot and backseat of my car then walked from room to room, closed the windows and doors for the last time, and noted how empty an empty house can feel. For all the difficulties we had faced there, I had never wanted us to leave and yet here I was closing the front door and posting the keys through the letterbox. There was no reason for me to return, and this felt like defeat and so I felt ashamed.

But the lunches in London in April and May were pleasant and light-hearted enough. I had said that life without her by my side was inconceivable and now I was being coaxed into conceiving of a future where we might be friends. Patently, she was happy to be back in the city. The flat in Kennington was tiny, but she didn't mind. She was seeing friends, going to exhibitions, even painting again, and I had to admit that this new life suited her. There was a glow about her, a spark, a quick wit and a vague disreputability that recalled the Connie I'd first met, and this made me both happy and a little sad, because while it was pleasing to see her come back to life, it was harsh to be revealed as the encumbrance to her spirits. So we strove to be cheerful and amicable, and succeeded for the most part, at least until our lunch in June, when she told me about Angelo.