The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  With the soup simmering, the flan baking and the salad waiting to be dressed, Clement led Mike up to the sitting room. Knocking a pile of papers off an armchair, he told him to lean back while he bent over him, rubbing his temples and kneading his neck.

  ‘I could get used to this.’

  ‘Be my guest. But, seriously, can’t you teach them to value diversity?’

  ‘For the moment I can’t teach them anything not on the curriculum.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like you.’

  ‘Some of my Year Nines were making fun of “poufs getting married”. I explained that I regard marriage as a reactionary and oppressive institution but that gay people have as much right to be miserable in it as anyone else.’ Clement was glad that Mike could not see his grin. His own view, born of respect for Church liturgy rather than its doctrine, was that the marriage service was unique to a bride and groom and that same-sex couples should be given a service of blessing but, when he had put it to Mike that on balance he would rather be blessed than married, he had been surprised by his violent rejection of any hint of settling for second best. ‘A couple of the Muslim girls told their parents. The parents complained to Derek that I was preaching immorality.’

  ‘Don’t tell me! Six of the best in the Headmaster’s study?’

  ‘Something like that. Derek’s running scared. After the business in the Jewish cemetery last autumn, his one concern is that no one should rock the boat. He warned me that I’m not their head of year and I don’t teach RE and insisted that from now on I stick to history. So I asked him to define what he meant by education. He said much the same as I meant by marriage. Equal rights to the misery at the end.’

  Mike’s spirits revived during dinner and Clement looked forward to a quiet evening at home, reading or watching a DVD. Their tastes, in many respects at variance, converged in a love of film noir. Mike, however, reminded him that he was going out for a drink with Jonty Hargreaves. Clement tried hard not to feel aggrieved. Of all their separate friends, Jonty was the one he was happiest not to appropriate. A fifty-three-year-old music journalist, he was among four Manchester University graduates with whom Mike had founded a commune in the late seventies. Although it lasted a mere eight years and comprised no more than ten members overall, it had achieved legendary status, not least for its bed rota which, in a bid to remove any taint of monogamy, set out the sleeping arrangements for the week ahead. Even desire was to be collective.

  The bed rota collapsed long before the commune although, much to Clement’s chagrin, he was to find that it had left an indelible mark on Mike who, on the pretext of being progressive, divorced his emotional from his sexual needs with the skill of a Victorian magnate.

  ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,’ he said, with an apology for the cliché rather than the conduct.

  ‘No, but you can put him in a muzzle,’ Clement replied.

  Mike insisted that Clement’s longing for exclusive bonds was simply a hang-up from childhood and that he had a right, indeed he sometimes made it sound like an obligation, to enjoy a similar freedom. Clement resented Mike’s need to sleep with other men and blamed himself for his lack of libido, even if he ascribed much of it to his medication. As he watched Mike put on a leather jacket that was far too young for him, he reflected that perfect coupledom was to be found only in the womb.

  ‘Are you going somewhere special?’

  ‘It’s up to Jonty. Just a club. A few beers and we’ll see.’

  ‘So you may not be coming home?’

  ‘If not, I promise I’ll give you a ring.’

  Then, with a kiss so tender that it might have been a prelude to their making love, Mike went out. All at once Clement was overwhelmed by lassitude. Unable to decide if it were the result of Mike’s departure, the stress of a new commission or toxicity in his bloodstream, he abandoned his book, went up to the bedroom and counted out his pills.

  2

  Clement kissed Carla warmly on both cheeks and led her into the sitting room. Her wan look was a particular worry in view of their prospective collaboration. Ever since his first stained-glass window for the lady chapel in St George’s, Chichester, she had been his fabricator. Although the purist in him believed that he should effect every aspect of the design in person, the realist knew that, even had he possessed the skill, he lacked the patience. He was heartened by the fact that Matisse and Chagall had left the making of their windows to others. Besides he felt responsible for Carla, whose abilities were undervalued. He used to joke that, if he took the Bible literally, he would be duty-bound to marry his dead brother’s wife. As it was, he just gave her work.

  ‘I’ve left Peter,’ she exclaimed as soon as she sat down.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You never liked him.’

  ‘I wasn’t living with him.’

  ‘You warned me against him.’ It was true that he had mistrusted Peter ever since learning that he wrote his name in all his books the weekend before Carla moved in, but then he would not have welcomed anyone whom she had chosen to replace Mark.

  ‘I suppose there was a touch of brother’s keeper. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t want you to become the Widow at Windsor. You were so young when he died.’

  ‘So was he.’

  They paused to reflect on the man whose death had been the defining tragedy of both their lives. It was Clement who had brought Carla into the family. He had met her at the Slade and been entranced by her gentleness, her grace, her humour and her talent. She was exactly the sort of woman he would have fallen for had he been Mark, as was confirmed by their instant rapport when he introduced them. Even so he was taken aback by their whirlwind romance and fearful of his own exclusion. In the event, their growing attachment both cemented his friendship with Carla and deepened his bond with Mark.

  For all that Mark, who posed as a philistine, claimed to find their artistic alliance a threat, he was grateful for it the following year when he went off to India, entrusting his new wife to Clement’s care. ‘I know about all you arty types. I don’t want some long-haired minimalist sneaking round the moment my back’s turned to borrow a bowl of turps.’

  Mark was one of a team of agronomists working for the Indian government on a project to produce high-yield wheat. They thought they had found the holy grail, a grain that would enable the country to be not only self-sufficient but to export a surplus. What they failed to take into account was how the irrigation needs of the new crop would foster inequalities between farmers in the valleys with access to water and those on the hillsides whose land was arid. The traditional structure of village life was destroyed in a single generation. Families who had collaborated happily for years turned to sabotage and murder. Mark was caught in the middle of one such feud and died after drinking water from a contaminated well. Although the inquest concluded that his death was accidental, Clement was convinced of a cover-up. While he inveighed against God and man, Carla was more resigned, taking comfort from the Buddhist teachings which had sustained her ever since.

  ‘I’m not young now though,’ she said, breaking the silence.

  ‘Come on. You were forty last year.’

  ‘Not if I want to have children.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It may sound trite but, ever since my birthday, I’ve been deafened by a non-stop ticking.’

  ‘What does Peter say? Oh, I suppose you’ve already answered that question.’

  ‘I’ve barely begun. You know of course that Mark and I had planned to start a family?’

  ‘I presumed so, yes. Though he never said anything. I suppose he was afraid of tempting fate.’

  ‘For years I felt that, if I couldn’t have children with Mark, then I didn’t want them at all. I think the fact that Peter had two of his own was a part… a large part of the attraction. I’d have a family, and an easily manageable one, without betraying Mark.’

  ‘But it wasn’t enough?’

  ‘Nowhere near. Every time I took the pill, I u
sed to think what if just for tonight I forgot. Of course I never did. But when I finally acknowledged what was missing from my life and talked it over with Peter, he said it was impossible. He’d had a vasectomy.’

  ‘Without telling you?’

  ‘Without trusting me.’

  Suddenly, his pettiness over the books paled into insignificance. Clement pressed Carla’s hand in support, letting it drop when she pulled him so close that their noses brushed.

  ‘I was out of my mind. With grief, with rage, with everything. I’ve left him, but that only solves half the problem. And then I realised that the solution was here all along. It’s you, Clement. Don’t you see? I want to have a child with you.’ He recoiled as, for one ghastly moment, he thought that she wanted him to lead her straight up to the bedroom. Then he realised his mistake and began to laugh. A whole new world was opening up before him. Every nerve in his body thrilled as if he were deep at work on a painting. He felt dizzy and grabbed at a chair, sitting on the arm in a bid to look casual. ‘I know it’s a shock,’ she said, ‘but it makes perfect sense. This way I won’t be betraying Mark but honouring him. My baby will have his genes just as if he’d fathered him himself.’

  ‘So what does that make me? The father or the uncle?’

  ‘Maybe a bit of both?’

  The more he thought, the more intrigued he was by her proposal, which felt at once perverse and rich in possibilities.

  ‘It’s true that when we were kids, no one could tell us apart. If we’d had less indulgent parents, we’d have had the perfect opportunity for revenge. At prep school we played practical jokes to amuse our friends. Then in our teens something changed. I don’t just mean that he broke his nose – the kink was barely perceptible – or cut off his fringe. The difference in our desires affected everything about us, from the way we moved to the way we talked, making it impossible for anyone ever to confuse us again.’

  ‘I used to wonder why I wasn’t attracted to you. You were so brilliant and kind and obviously good-looking and already a part of my world. I supposed it was just that you and Mark had a different energy. Yin and yang.’

  ‘Two sides of the same coin.’

  Even after eighteen years he felt Mark’s death like a gnawing pain. He had never been as close to anyone as he had to him, his other self in both flesh and spirit. For all his resistance to Freud, he held it to be the key to his personality. While other men might seek to re-establish the primal relationship with their mother, he sought to do so with his twin, yearning to return to the embryonic embrace.

  As a boy, his favourite reading had been stories of twins. He was horrified by the bloody dissension of Romulus and Remus but inspired by the mutual devotion of Castor and Pollux. Later, when he came to study Shakespeare, he felt a special affinity for The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night. One of his happiest memories of school was of an all-male production of Twelfth Night in which he played Viola and a diffident Mark, Sebastian. So whenever anyone suggested that their relationship must have been tricky, he would instantly set them straight. ‘Everyone should be a twin,’ he insisted, ‘it keeps you from becoming self-obsessed and drives you to define your own identity.’

  Even so, he could not help wondering if the need to measure himself against Mark had hampered him. Consciously or not, they had defined themselves by their differences: straight, gay; scientist, artist; Buddhist, Christian. Now he had an opportunity to blur the boundaries, to live something of Mark’s life without giving up any of his own. He would be a father, a role for which he had long since ruled himself out. Yet it was as absurd to think that his sexuality denied him the chance of children as for men of past generations to think that it denied them the chance of love. Nevertheless, it was impossible to ignore the implications of Carla’s request. If, in effect, he was interchangeable with his brother, a mere source of genetic material, what did that say about his essential nature? Was he a purposeful being with a soul breathed into him by God or just a random combination of proteins and cells?

  The weight of both his religious belief and artistic practice had led him to proclaim his autonomy. He was as perturbed by the thought that behaviour might be determined by genes as a Victorian cleric by the claim that humans were descended from monkeys. Yet what if the distinctions between Mark and himself had been superficial, or even illusory? What if the desire to prove their uniqueness had blinded them to their uniformity? For the greater part of human history, people believed that their fates were shaped by inexorable forces, first by many gods and then by one. It was only for a few brief centuries that, whether god-fearing or not, they supposed that they had free will. Current thinking simply redressed the anomaly. People once again believed that they were powerless, controlled by their own DNA.

  ‘You look so solemn, Clem. You’re making me tense.’

  ‘I’m sorry. There’s just so much to think about.’

  ‘I know I’m in no position to make demands, but please don’t take too long.’

  ‘I hear you: the ticking.’

  ‘Talk to Mike. It concerns him too. You’ll have to decide how big a part you – both of you – want to play in the child’s life.’

  ‘Are you planning on just the one or…?’

  ‘Let’s take it a step at a time, shall we? You never know; I might have twins.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Aren’t they’re supposed to run in families?’

  ‘Twins would be good.’

  Mike’s arrival prevented further discussion. He flung his arms around Carla, with whom he had always felt more at ease than with any of Clement’s blood relatives. Seizing his chance, Clement escaped to the bathroom where he doused his face in cold water, but it failed to provide the necessary clarity. He resolved to dismiss the matter from his mind until Carla went home and he could talk it over with Mike. There were so many people to consider, not just the living but the dead. He gazed intently at the mirror in the hope of seeing past himself to Mark but, try as he might, he was unable to bridge the gap between his forty-two-year-old reflection and his twenty-four-year-old twin. Certain features remained constant: the deep brown eyes, high cheekbones and full lips that they inherited from their mother. It was impossible, however, to picture Mark in spectacles, let alone wearing his hair swept back behind his ears and down to his shoulders. As if to punish himself for the betrayal, he twisted a hank around his fingers and tugged.

  He composed himself and went back downstairs, where they ate a subdued dinner.

  ‘Are you and Carla up to something?’ Mike asked after her early departure. ‘She was giving you pregnant looks all through the meal.’ Clement laughed nervously. ‘I’m sorry. Is it a private joke or can anyone join in?’

  Steering him away from the sink, Clement relayed the gist of Carla’s request.

  ‘Yes, I can see it must have been awkward. So how did you get out of it?’

  ‘I didn’t. That is, I’m not sure I want to. I want to discuss it with you.’

  ‘What’s to discuss? Tell her you’re sorry. End of story.’

  ‘What’s stopping me having a child?’

  ‘A little thing called HIV?’

  ‘You’ve always said it shouldn’t keep me from living a normal life.’

  ‘Come on, Clem, don’t be obtuse.’

  ‘You must have heard of sperm-washing.’

  ‘Yes, for men in committed relationships, not sperm donors. No, don’t interrupt! That’s what you’d be. Plus, it’s not a hundred per cent safe. Think of all the women who abort Down’s syndrome babies, when you might be bringing one into the world with HIV!’

  ‘Perhaps we should let Carla weigh up the risks?’

  ‘So why didn’t you?’

  Clement said nothing. He sat despondent at the collapse of a dream of which a few hours earlier he had been unaware but which now felt like the one thing in the world that he wanted. He hadn’t told Carla of his diagnosis for the same reason that he hadn’t told any of his family. Before the prospec
t of treatment, he had been determined not to scare them. Now, thanks to his cocktail of drugs, the revelation was superfluous. He kept in excellent health, although he lived in terror of the side effects: the hollow cheeks and bloated belly that would label him as clearly as the lesions of the previous decade. He knew that his silence was an affront to Mike who, for all his talk of the right to privacy, demanded total candour from anyone remotely in the public eye. But, even if Mike were right in saying that the disclosure would not harm his livelihood, he was less sanguine about the impact on his parents. Mike accused him of arrogance in assuming that they would be so distressed by the news that they would rather be kept in ignorance, but he, never forgetting that they had lost one son, refused to leave them in dread of losing the other.

  He feared that Mike’s mission to demystify the virus had led him to underestimate its impact. He spoke of being infected and affected by HIV as though they were the one and the same. He even professed to love Clement more for being positive, citing all the work he had done on himself since his diagnosis. To Clement, however, the virus was the embodiment of his negativity, the death wish that had haunted him ever since losing Mark. And, for all that he dismissed the idea of HIV as a punishment, there was a part of him, however small, however secret, that contrasted his having been infected by one callous lover with Mike’s having remained immune despite an army of partners. Carla’s request had given him a chance to restore the balance. Now that too had been taken away.

  Mike subscribed to an ideal of brotherhood rather than fatherhood. It was this that had first brought them together when, in an attempt to recover from Oliver’s betrayal, Clement went on an HIV retreat in the Scottish highlands where Mike was a voluntary facilitator. The moment he entered the house, a run-down Victorian pile owned by a hippy collective, whose every bedroom was named after a type of bean, he had longed to return to London. He was unused to the rigours of a support group and, while his companions listened to each tortuous confession as intently as to a string quartet, he found himself counting the minutes to the break. His one intervention having met with an affronted cry of ‘This is my shit!’, he was doubly amazed when Mike detained him at the end of the session and offered him a massage.