by Allan Massie
“Then my brother and his wife were killed in an air-crash, and I was left as guardian to their boy, Jamie. That should have sobered me up. I really cared and I was responsible for him. But I understood responsibility as providing, and I did that. So it was fine, even when I had minor goes of the DTs. I was OK. I was tough. The movies were still using me and I made more money than even I could spend.
“Then Jamie died. It was an accident. He was drowned in a lake at his school in England. So now guilt was added to self-pity – the self-pity had been there for years, though I didn’t see that then. It was absurd. Here I was, the would-be great writer, with an unwritten novel in the Hemingway class, not writing it, but scripting epics of ancient Rome and all that sort of thing. But now I had a real excuse to go right under: Jamie’s death. I used it, oh how I used it. Nobody could blame me, could they? I was a drunk through excess of sensibility. So I drank to kill feeling. Undoubtedly it worked, but the feelings I was killing were decent ones.
“That went on for years. There are years of which I have no recollection whatsoever. I met one of them this week, a figure from those years. I’d made love to her and I had no memory of it.
“What do I remember of that time? Four o’clock in the morning, in hotel rooms, high up, with the night traffic moaning and the wet street below waiting for me to jump. But I never jumped and I still don’t know why. There was never a four o’clock in the morning I didn’t think of death.
“So there I was in the wilderness. There was no voice except my own and what I heard was, you can’t go on.
“And I rang the AA helpline. I hated doing it. I hated the idea of myself doing it.
“The man who came to me was black, with a ridiculous goatee beard and a lisp. He was a jazz pianist and he looked at me and said, ‘Time for you to come home, man.’
“I hated it. I hated him. I used all the arguments which I won’t repeat because you will have used them yourselves. Some of you anyway.
“Then he said: ‘Who told you you were beat, man?’
“I’d no answer. How could I have?
“But I fought. I went with him to meetings and listened to what was said, and growled and snapped like an old dog that’s chained up. I’d come to a place where people presumed to understand me, which felt like an insult, so after the meeting I headed for a bar and drowned their understanding in Scotch.
“I kept going back though. I couldn’t not. Only this road offered me any hope and what I feared most was the final departure of hope. So I stuck around, arrogant and awkward, till somehow I came through. I can’t say I’ve attained serenity. But I can live with myself now, without a drink.
“One thing I’ve learned.”
Tom Durward paused and looked round the room and took a draw on his cigar.
“I’d got it all wrong. I thought I was fighting booze. But I wasn’t. I was fighting myself, I was fighting the delusion that life had done the dirty on me. And that was all in my mind. I cheated life. It hadn’t cheated me. ‘Who told you you were beat, man?’ That’s a question you have to take both ways. When you do that, you’re ready to come through.
“I don’t think a lot of this is orthodox AA. I can’t do the Twelve Steps. But I hope it says something to someone here. Thanks for listening.”
XIII
Gary wasn’t at the bar.
“I told him to come here. I even pointed it out to him. It’s just round the corner from the cinema. The movie must be over by now.”
Kate said all that, several times. She pushed her hair back, out of her eyes. She got up from the table and crossed the piazza to the fountain around which young men and boys were lounging, three or four of them perched on their scooters.
But of course Gary wasn’t among them. She had gone to look only because movement was easier than sitting and waiting. She was like someone who steps into the road to look for a taxi that is expected, as if the act of leaving the house will exert influence and cause it to appear.
The air was heavy, fine weather departed. A gusty wind tossed paper and polystyrene cartons, cigarette ends, testimony of summer nights, about the piazza.
Erik leaned forward, brow smooth, to sip his Coca-Cola through a straw. Tom Durward drew on his cigar. Belinda let her fingers rest on the glass of camomile tea, said to Tom, “That was good, what you said.”
He said, “There used to be a Neapolitan mastiff in this bar. It used to lie in the middle of the piazza.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Of course it was. I once saw a lunatic pick it up and throw it over the bar.”
Erik opened his eyes very wide. “He must’ve been strong, they’re big dogs, like.”
He doesn’t believe Tom, Belinda thought. So he’s being ironical or what he would think ironical. Or is he trying to interest Tom in him? As long as he’s with me, if he really is with me, I’m going to be asking myself that sort of question.
Erik now looked away, his lips parted, and let his gaze wander round the piazza. He had hooked his right arm round the back of the chair, and his left dangled free, the fingers looking like they were floating.
Tom said, “This boy your friend’s looking for … I wasn’t listening. Who is he? Her son or what?”
“Oh, what, very definitely. Not her patient exactly. You could say her case.”
“Uh-huh, don’t think I’ll hang around. Take a stroll. I like that, in cities, at night. Don’t sleep well. Nobody does after fifty, I suppose.”
For a moment, having got to his feet, he hesitated, as if wondering whether he should lean down and kiss Belinda on the cheek. But instead he placed his right hand on hers which was resting on the table, placed it so lightly that she felt its weight but no pressure, picked up his stick and turned away. They watched him limp towards Via Lungaretta.
Erik said, “I was awfully impressed by his story. But he acted like I wasn’t here. When I thanked him for it, he just looked straight through me.”
“I think he resents telling his story,” Belinda said.
“He could’ve refused.”
“I rather think he would regard that as a sign of weakness.”
A black dog of indeterminate breed sniffed round their table. Erik shifted his legs away from it.
He smiled at Belinda.
“I’m nervous,” he said. “Not of the dog. It’s just I don’t know where we’re at. You thought I was looking at that guy over there …” Belinda turned to see a thirtyish Italian in white silk shirt open at the neck, dove-grey suit and loafers.
“So I was. He’s gorgeous.”
“I suppose he is …”
Erik screwed up his face. For a moment he looked like her cat Benito.
“I read these faxes,” he said. “While you were getting ready. They made me pretty nervous too. Does Kate know what she’s playing with?”
“Oh I don’t think it’s a game. But I agree, I’m with you, of your mind entirely, it makes me nervous too.”
She leaned forward and touched him on the cheek. He took hold of her hand and pressed her fingers to his lips.
“You do know you’re free?” she said. “I make no demands,” she lied.
Belinda knew that Kate, anxious, wanted to talk, but not with Erik there. Too bad; she wasn’t going to send him away, dismiss him as of no account. She was being foolish, yes. Kate mattered to her in a way that Erik never would; and Kate was anxious. Again, yes, but the converse was true. Erik mattered, and she couldn’t treat him as a child, which, being young, was how he would take a request that he leave them to talk. She could be selfish herself. She had once overheard someone say, “Have you ever known Bel do anything she didn’t want to do, or not do anything she did?” That was true, or had been for a long time. And one reason she was close to Kate was that Kate was like her in this respect. So, usually, each knew not to demand too much of the other.
But Kate was making demands now, silent, urgent ones. The night turned smokey-violet. The piazza was thronged, people of al
l ages making what would be, except for the young, their last passeggiata of the evening.
A party of five settled themselves a couple of tables off. There was a girl with cropped black hair, in a red leather dress and sandals. She was very thin, but she had to be thin for that dress which was cut short showing the length of her thighs. A tall blond boy put a shawl round her shoulders.
“I’ve seen them before,” Erik said. “I’m sure they’re celebrities.”
Kate lifted her arm and waved. Belinda followed her gaze across the piazza. A boy came towards them. He wore a black suit and pale shirt open at the collar.
“Where have you been? I was thinking you were lost.”
He sat down without replying, turned expressionless eyes on Belinda, then glanced at Erik, and his tongue touched his thin lower lip.
“It’s easy to get lost round here,” Kate said.
“Went for a walk, film was crap.”
The waiter approached.
“They can’t make tea, can they? I’ll have a Coke.”
Kate made introductions.
“Pleased to meet you,” Gary said, his mother’s son, well brought-up.
Erik said, “What was the movie?”
Gary looked as if Erik was speaking a foreign language, and it was Kate gave the answer. “It’s not such crap,” Erik said, “least, I didn’t think so.”
Belinda, aware of his long legs shifting and his bare tanned arms, said, “Each to each.”
Erik leaned towards her and spoke in a half whisper.
“They can’t be celebrities. They’re looking at us. I think they’re English.”
The waiter brought Gary’s coke. He touched the cold glass with his finger and looked over at the party who were looking at them.
“I don’t like it here,” he said to Kate. “Can we go?”
Without waiting for an answer, he got up and walked away, not looking back. Kate was flustered.
“I’d better …” she said, “you don’t mind, do you, Bel?”
“That’s all right. I’ll take care of this,” Belinda said, meaning the bill.
Erik watched them out of the piazza.
“I’m sure he killed that boy. I just know he did.”
Then a voice was raised from the English table, a bit thick with drink.
“Oh, come off it. You’ve seen him before, so it must’ve been on the telly and he must be an actor. There’s more to life than telly, for fuck’s sake, Lou.”
“It’s bizarre, sitting here with a murderer,” Erik said. “I was watching him closely, see what I can use.”
“Kate has her doubts.”
“But have you? You don’t, do you?”
“Oh, it’s not in my line, my sweet.”
“Excuse me, do you mind,” the tall blond boy had come over, “that boy you were with. My girlfriend’s sure she’s seen him on the telly. She’s sent me over to ask, hope you don’t think it’s rude. Eastenders she thinks, or it might have been Blind Date. Is she right?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know, she could be,” Belinda said. “Blind Date seems more likely, whatever it is.”
XIV
Tom Durward leaned over the parapet of the bridge. Reflections of street lights shimmered on the water. There was a Chinese proverb: the virtuous delight in mountains and hills, the wise in rivers and lakes. Like all proverbs it meant less than it pretended to. He had left Belinda and that boy in the piazza because he couldn’t bear company, and now felt no better for being alone. He wished he hadn’t told his story at the meeting, or had told it differently. He used Jamie, or the memory of Jamie, as dishonestly in sobriety as ever in his drinking years. At least he had said nothing of Paul, the black pianist, beyond reporting his words; nothing of how they had fallen out, of how Durward had let his malice work on Paul.
He rested his elbows on the parapet and relit his cigar.
Old Norman Douglas, dead years before Durward’s first visit to Capri, asked, “Why prolong life, save to prolong pleasure?” Who was it used to quote that line to him?
At the far end of the bridge voices were raised in altercation. English altercations. Then he heard a slap, the sound of open palm on cheek, and saw the woman turn and walk away. She turned off the bridge and marched along the Lungotevere. Her companion watched her till she was out of sight, and, with long shambling motion, advanced towards Tom, and supported himself on the parapet.
“Did you see that?” he said, first in English, then haltingly in Italian.
“Couldn’t miss it.”
“She expects me to run after her. She’s going to be disappointed.”
“We all are, often.”
“You’re right there, too right. What do you say to a drink?”
“No.”
“What do you mean?”
“I say no to a drink.”
“There’s no need to be like that.”
“Oh but I think there is. In my case there is.”
Back in his room in the Pensione San Giorgio, Tom stripped and showered. He let the cold water run over him and held his breath the time it takes to boil an egg after the water bubbles. Then he towelled himself hard and took a swig from the bottle of mineral water which was flat and tepid. When he was first in Rome, a lifetime ago, he had demanded San Pellegrino in restaurants (to go with the wine then of course), it being the only Italian water he had heard of, and had thought they were trying to palm him off with an inferior product when they gave him the only mineral water they kept there. He had made a fool of himself protesting. He lost his temper easily in those days.
Now he put on a sarong and a dressing-gown over it. He had slept in a sarong for thirty years, since working on a movie with an Eastern theme. He couldn’t recall the name of the movie, but had no difficulty in picturing the Eurasian actress who had given him his first sarong. Her career hadn’t come to much. She was so dumb, as the old line went, she fucked the writer. But Suzie Lo hadn’t been dumb at all. She had fucked him because it pleased her, not for misplaced reasons of ambition. She was probably running a business in Hong Kong or Singapore now. She had been smart enough to leave him, even – or especially? – when he offered marriage. Image of her legs spread out, the colour of some spice he couldn’t name, provoked remembered lust.
He snipped another toscano, removed the band in the Italian national colours, lit the cigar and settled at the little table which rocked when he placed his elbow on it. He opened his journal, at random. It was the nearest thing to serious writing he did now. “Stop that, be your age,” he said, “serious writing …”
When you live by yourself you get in the habit of making conversation with yourself. He read a note made some time ago:
In East Germany, the Party tried to create a new specifically East German elite. They were brought together under the absurd slogan, Greif zur Feder, Kumpel (Grab your pen, mate). Young writers were encouraged to become involved in society by spending time in a factory or on a farm before writing about their true-to-life experiences …
He couldn’t think where he had got that from. Greif zur Feder, Kumpel wasn’t – set aside the tone – such bad advice, not really “absurd” at all. What else could you say to a writer, what else worthwhile? And the true-to-life experience? It was like the sketch of the author on the back cover of an old Penguin: Hank Brockett has been deckhand, rodeo writer – no, rider – and insurance agent. As a young man, he ran guns for the IRA.
But what a sad business it is: excavation really.
So what else did he record in his journal? Well, he noted down, sometimes, what he remembered out of dreams, though he never retained them with the clarity some others claimed to. There was rarely a narrative to follow.
But this, for example, two nights ago:
There were earlier things, comings and goings, and then I was set on a long uphill march, through soft sand that came up to my ankles every stride. I wasn’t the age I am now, I think I was adolescent. And an exile? Or in flight? I don’t know. It was som
ething to do with my sister. I had been cruel to her. Bullying or actual assault? Then I was back at school, in rugby kit, expecting to practise with my scrum-half partner Anthony. But he wouldn’t pass me the ball. I was in disgrace. I was lying on a bed. My sister Louise came and stood beside it, and told me to get up. Anthony was with her. “You’re going to be taught a lesson,” one of them said. I was afraid; it was cold as a court of justice. I rose from the bed, affecting nonchalance. Then, in a surge of anger, I took Louise by the shoulders and pressed hard. “If anything happens to me, you’ll regret it,” I said. “You’ll regret it for ever.” I felt Anthony’s eyes on me. They weren’t their liquid brown. They were cruel as ice. “No,” I said, “I didn’t mean that, I really didn’t mean that …”
And I woke. Shaken and afraid. I listened to the World Service, and didn’t sleep again.
XV
Discussing feelings wasn’t in Belinda’s line. Residual Calvinism restrained her. Class too; her grandmother Grace taught her that talk of emotions was self-indulgent vulgarity. You dealt with your own feelings, granted others the respect of leaving them to do the same. One of her great-aunts had turned to Moral Rearmament. Grace despised her sister-in-law’s attempts at “sharing”.
All this contributed to Belinda’s reluctance to speak at AA meetings. She admitted AA was necessary for her; nevertheless could not overcome distaste for self-exposure. She understood why Tom Durward had not been able to stay with them in the piazza. This affinity pleased her. Really, these Americans with their passion for self-analysis. It wasn’t grown-up.
