The Secret Lives of Men

by Georgia Blain

  ‘And then questions, and last — the book signings.’ He waves in the direction of the boxes stacked by the table, and reaches over to pick up a copy of her novel.

  ‘One of the most talented writers of her generation,’ he reads from the shout line, and puts it down again.

  Sylvie laughs. ‘They’ll say anything for a few sales.’

  The audience has started to arrive, and it seems the room is going to be full. When Sylvie makes a self-deprecatory comment about not being able to remember the last time she had more than ten people show up, J.A. wanders back to the window: he hasn’t been listening. Her eyes rest on his back, the firm plant of his legs in khaki cotton pants, and then run down to his leather loafers.

  The little she knows about him she has gleaned only after being asked to do this event. A week ago, she read in the social pages that his engagement had been called off. There was a picture of him with a tall, willowy brunette, both arm in arm as they gazed at each other. According to the columnist, J.A. had bought a remote country estate that was to be their home after the wedding. Rumour had it she panicked when she gathered he was serious about leaving the city and living with her in isolation. As Sylvie stared at the photograph of lush hills, a two-storey sandstone house visible in the distance, she wondered what she would give up for money.

  F1 and F2 are directing the last arrivals to the few empty seats left, and F2 nods at Sylvie. It is time to begin. Realising she will have to introduce herself, Sylvie stands, her mouth dry as she suddenly takes in the size of the crowd, and wishes she had prepared notes. She is brief, letting everyone know that the information about the Society is on the leaflet, and encouraging them all to join. She is about to sit down when she sees F2 nodding at her again, with even greater urgency than before. Sylvie is perplexed as F2 holds up a sheet of paper: the biog — of course, she is meant to introduce J.A. She apologises as she heads back to the stage and reads out the information he has given her.

  Laughing good-naturedly, J.A. steps onto the podium and thanks her as he rubs his hands together and then holds them up, palms towards the audience, fingers spread in a gesture of complete surprise.

  ‘Who would have thought?’ His voice booms across the room. Everyone sits up immediately.

  ‘All those years ago, when I toiled away in a rat-infested room above Central Station, a room where the cockroaches were even bigger than the rats, with only a dream to keep me going, who would have thought?’

  There are no rooms above Central Station, Sylvie thinks, and her eyes narrow in disbelief.

  ‘More than ten million book sales in the last decade.’ J.A. pauses, and the audience waits. ‘Publishing deals in more than thirty countries.’

  Outside a bird squawks.

  ‘And do you know what got me here?’

  One gimmicky little idea that somehow took off. Sylvie stares at the ground.

  ‘Courage. You might think that seems a strong word to apply to something so genteel as writing. But let me tell you what I know about courage. When I was in my early twenties I joined the army. They taught us about courage there, particularly in the division I belonged to. We were an elite crack team. Trained to respond without fear in situations that would have most of us,’ and he waves his hand around the room, ‘curled up and crying in the corner. So I learnt about courage. Or at least I thought I had. Because in the years that followed, when I was in that room above Central Station, trying not to fall apart from the despair and the loneliness and the rejection — well, that was when I had to call upon all my reserves of strength.

  ‘Shall I tell you about my rejections?’

  No one responds, but they are all listening, eager for him to continue.

  ‘I kept every one of those letters. And there were over three hundred of them. I stuck them up on the toilet wall, I covered every inch of space.’

  Surely not, Sylvie thinks. She has heard this story before. It’s standard writers’ fare, so clichéd no one would dare use it.

  ‘And each time I sat in there, doing what we all do in a bathroom, I re-read them. Not as some sort of punishment, but because I knew’ — he pauses here — ‘what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.’

  He smiles, those even teeth white and strong, and the audience laughs, appreciatively.

  He believes it, Sylvie realises. He actually believes what he says.

  ‘Even in the worst times, the times when I had nothing to eat, no friends — except the cockroaches and the rats — and no way of paying the rent, I hung on to that faith, and I didn’t give up.

  ‘Shall I tell you about my break?’

  As he continues with his anecdotes, finally winding up with a PowerPoint guide on how to fulfil your dream, Sylvie moves beyond wondering what he would be like naked to what he would be like as a lover. Perfunctory? Imaginative? She finds that one hard to believe. Selfish? He is probably depressive, she thinks. People who swallow the kind of crap he does usually are. She wants to remove the various images that are appearing, but she also finds them strangely fascinating.

  ‘Questions?’ J.A. asks, and the hands shoot up. The first few he answers happily: they are questions about his success, his sales, his publishing deals, what he plans to do next. The fourth, however, is a different kettle of fish.

  The woman is near the back. She wears coral lipstick and a plum-coloured velour tracksuit. Her make-up is heavy, failing to disguise the fact that she is nearer seventy than sixty, and her hair needs re-dyeing, the grey roots making the blonde tips even brassier.

  ‘I wrote a book,’ she says.

  J.A. brushes the sleeve of his cotton jacket.

  ‘And it was a good book. My family said so. And my friends.’

  Sensing trouble, F1 and F2 are sitting upright in their seats.

  ‘I sent it to every publisher and they rejected it.’

  J.A. nods sympathetically. He understands, he tells her. She mustn’t give up.

  But no, that is not her point, and she interrupts him.

  ‘Now,’ she tells him, ‘one of them has just put out another book and it’s a copy of mine.’

  ‘What do you mean, it’s a copy of yours?’ J.A. has moved to the window and he rests against the sill, half glancing out at the smooth lawns and pale sky.

  ‘A copy,’ the woman insists. ‘That’s just what I mean. And when I contact them, they don’t return my calls. They won’t have anything to do with me.’

  ‘What is your question?’

  The woman is getting frustrated. ‘I want to know what I can do. How I can stop these crooks from stealing my intellectual property. How I can get justice.’

  ‘Have you been to a lawyer?’ J.A. asks.

  ‘I can’t afford a lawyer.’ The woman pokes her finger in the air, and her voice grates like metal on metal.

  J.A. is silent, and Sylvie wonders whether she is going to see him rattled. She watches, curious. Then, surprisingly, he turns to her and smiles. She gives him a look of sympathy to let him know that, like all writers, she has had her fair share of mad audience members.

  The pause is brief. J.A. is once again in command. ‘I think this is a question that I should pass over.’ J.A. nods in Sylvie’s direction. ‘As a representative of the Writers’ Society, our guest is considerably more qualified to answer than I am.’

  Sylvie shifts in her seat. She clears her throat. She has had no sleep.

  J.A. has turned to the window and is not even pretending to hold any interest in what she is going to say.

  The microphone is now off and her voice is faint, pathetic, as she fails to make one of the many responses she would like to make, but instead tells the woman that the Society has a legal officer who would be happy to assist.

  ‘I’ve contacted them,’ the woman says, arms folded across her ample breasts.

 
‘And they couldn’t help?’

  ‘They fobbed me off.’

  ‘Well, without knowing further details, I can’t make a comment on that.’

  ‘I’ll give you further details.’ The woman steps forward and waves a bundle of papers in her hand. ‘These are all the letters I sent and the replies. Here.’ She starts walking down the aisle towards Sylvie, who steps back, accidentally treading on J.A.’s foot.

  ‘I’m not sure what I can do with these,’ Sylvie protests. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You can give me an answer. They can’t go doing what they’ve done. Stealing my property like that and not paying me a penny.’

  It is not until the woman has one foot on the podium that J.A. intervenes. His large hand resting on her shoulder, he tells her that he sympathises with her plight but this isn’t the forum. He and Sylvie would be more than happy to chat to her further after the book signings at the end, although there may not be much they can actually do.

  There is a certain resonance in his voice, a depth to the timbre that, combined with the solidity of his large hand, is designed to lull. Like a stun gun.

  It is so effective that Sylvie imagines the relief of telling him all her own problems. He would place his hand on her shoulder, the very weight of it making her and her difficulties seem slight. This is what I am. Why struggle?

  Blinking, she watches as the woman walks back to the audience, docile now. J.A. resumes his place at the front of the room. Standing awkwardly by his side, Sylvie is aware that she may be the only one to come out of this fiasco appearing like the fool. She takes her seat and stares down at her lap, while J.A. wraps up proceedings.

  Shortly after she agreed to do this session, a friend of Sylvie’s told her that he had once met J.A. at a charity function. It was a black-tie event to raise money for cystic fibrosis. Sylvie’s friend, Bobby, had been a waiter. At the end of the evening, J.A. was sitting alone at one of the tables, surrounded by empty wineglasses, staring out at the last few drunks, lurching towards one another in dishevelled suits and dresses that had gone askew. Was he alright? Bobby had asked as he cleared the glasses.

  See that woman? J.A. had pointed to a bare-limbed woman in a sliver of fabric. She is my fiancée.

  Bobby had congratulated J.A. and made a move towards the next table, but J.A. stopped him.

  Have you ever been in love?

  Bobby told J.A. that he fell in love with nearly every man he met, and then, sensing a spark through the cloak of alcohol, he’d gone on to tell J.A. he was finishing his shift and heading out, if he was interested.

  ‘And he joined you, of course?’ Sylvie was tired of all her gay friends boasting of their successful conquests.

  ‘He wanted it.’

  J.A. had taken Bobby by the arm. He had pulled him down to sit and he had offered him a drink.

  Look at her. J.A. pointed to where his fiancée leant against the wall, one leg crossed over the other, hands clutched around a bottle of champagne as she talked to an older man. She is the person I’m marrying.

  Bobby had slipped J.A. an E. Take this, he instructed, and meet me out the back in half an hour.

  ‘It was a waste. He was so drunk he dropped it on the floor and trod on it.’ Bobby had rolled his eyes in disgust.

  But it was not the end of his story.

  Later, after the glasses were cleared and he had emerged from the hall, all the lights turned on to dispel the last few stragglers, he had seen J.A. again. Standing solemn, silent, ‘like a tree trunk — a very handsome tree trunk, but a tree trunk all the same’, with his fiancée and the man she had been talking to. J.A. didn’t say a word, while the other two were animated, engaging in an urgent tumble of conversation in which J.A. refused to participate, despite their best efforts. Eventually, the fiancée stopped. She took J.A.’s hand, kissed him on the cheek, and got into a cab with the other man. And still he didn’t move.

  ‘I mean, that is strange behaviour,’ Bobby had said.

  He hesitated but then walked up to J.A. — ‘there was no harm in one last try’ — and told him the offer was still open if he was interested.

  ‘And you know what he did?’

  Sylvie didn’t.

  ‘He took my face in his hands — big hands — and then he pulled me close and he kissed me. Tongues and all!’

  ‘He did not.’ Sylvie laughed.

  Her friend grinned. ‘Wish he had. But, no. He just looked at me like he had no idea who I was and then turned and walked away by himself.’

  Sylvie remembers this story as F1 shepherds her towards the book-signing table. The queue started forming as soon as J.A. finished talking, and in less than a minute there is already a snaking line of people, reaching the exit door.

  ‘That was brilliant,’ F1 says, referring to the session.

  Sylvie tries to seem enthused. ‘Apart from that lunatic.’

  But F1 just looks quizzical, as though the mad woman and her stolen manuscript never existed. She pulls out a seat for Sylvie, and it is only as Sylvie sits that she realises there is not a single person waiting to have her sign a copy of her book, whereas the queue for J.A. has now gone into the corridor.

  She watches them, one by one, clutching their copy of From the Mouths of Babes, as they stand before J.A. and tell him how much they love his work.

  ‘I gave it to my sister when she had cancer and it got her through chemo.’

  ‘I bought a copy for my teenage daughter — and I swear it made her a little less difficult.’

  ‘I read a quote a day and try to live by it.’

  J.A. acknowledges each of them, his eyes fixed on theirs, his hand often clasping theirs just for an instant.

  After what feels like five minutes but is probably a lot less, Sylvie decides she doesn’t need to inflict this on herself any longer. Her bag is on the floor at her feet, and she makes a show of rummaging through it until she finds her phone.

  In the brief break between readers, she tells J.A. she has to leave.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, but the person minding my son has just texted. He has an ear infection.’ She lies without blinking.

  J.A. puts down his pen and excuses himself from the woman who waits, book in hand, for his signature. He turns to Sylvie, and it is the first time she feels that he is actually seeing her.

  ‘I didn’t know you had a son.’

  Sylvie nods.

  ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘I know.’ She meets his gaze. ‘Even though I’m on my own and sometimes it’s hard, I still wouldn’t change a thing.’

  J.A. reaches into the pocket of his jacket and gives her a card. ‘If you ever need anything,’ he says as she gets up to leave.

  And she thanks him.

  Later that evening, she sits, legs up on the couch, and starts on her third glass of wine. She lives in a ground-floor flat with windows over a small common garden, overgrown with sweet william, tiny pink-and-white flowers that she would like to rip out and replace with something more substantial. The curtains are still open and the night is black, the room lit by a single wooden lamp that gives off an orange glow. The floor is littered with Lex’s trucks, games, plastic stacking cups and an old wooden stove with a fried egg in a pan and a chipped enamel kettle on top. She used to put all his toys in the corner each night, giving herself a few hours in which she could pretend she had some room in the intensity of their relationship. It was a pretence that dissolved as soon as she went to bed, Lex lying in his cot next to her and not in his own room because she wanted to try to keep the other bedroom as an office, although she knows this will soon have to go.

  The couch is covered in an old moss-green cord, a colour she likes, although it is a little worn. On the wooden floor is a Persian rug that belonged to her mother, the deep red capable of hiding all stains. The table is l
ittered with the newspaper and the remnants of her evening meal. She will clear it soon. For now, she just wants to sit and drink her glass of wine.

  It is a pleasant apartment, but she knows she spends too much time here. She is either caring for Lex or writing, both of which take place within these rooms. She occasionally has people over, although not often. She rarely goes out because she can’t afford it. All she is has narrowed down to this, a tightly confined existence that could conceivably remain this way for far longer than she would like.

  In her hands she holds the card that J.A. gave her as she left, and she turns it over and over, a simple black card with two words written on the front: BIG DREAMS. His name, the address of the studio where he produces his books, and his mobile number are on the back.

  She contemplates what it would be like to call him, and to suggest they meet for a coffee. She sees him, tall, square-jawed, dressed in smart casuals, pants pleated at the front, loafers, those white, straight teeth, and she envisages sitting opposite him and trying to converse. She cannot imagine how he would even fit into her lounge room.

  She puts her wineglass down and finds herself giggling.

  And then, just as she is about to carry her plate to the kitchen, she stops and picks up the phone. Without thinking, she begins to dial the numbers, one after the other, wanting only to act in a way that is completely unexpected.

  J.A.? she will say. It’s me, Sylvie.

  As she tries to imagine where she would go from there, she is greeted by the sound of his voice, the timbre unmistakable, and she twists the cord tight around her finger while she hovers, caught in a space that cannot last, mouth open ready to speak, hand poised, ready to hang up, floundering as he asks her who’s calling and she stumbles to say her name.

  The Other Side of the River