“I still don’t get it,” I admitted to my wife. To be honest, I couldn’t even work out whether the poems said, or were even meant to say, anything about seeds or travel or what have you. “I mean, she hasn’t written a single original word, has she?”
Lily shrugged. “Wake up, sweetheart,” she advised me. “We’re in the third millennium. Is there anything original left, do you imagine?”
No, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. Not at all. It’s not as if artists are superior beings. The opposite, actually: the average painter or novelist has a higher insulin percentage than most people. He or she suffers an increase in random connections between different brain areas. Caused by a gene mutation. Left to itself, evolution will probably select artists out.
No, I think it’s wonderful. What better way for people to spend their time? If the husband’s strivings in the world of Mammon have earned this leisure, why not use it? Let us each do what we do, and do it on each other’s behalf, that’s what I say. That’s my philosophy. Let the baker bake bread on my behalf. Let the estate agent buy and sell houses so that I don’t have to, let a Filipino factory worker solder micro-boards so the rest of us need never think about how our computer works, it just works. Let me and my brother sell spuds for everyone and let the artist explore existence for us all. So I think it’s wonderful: let the ladies paint.
Except for one thing. A single objection. Why impose their work on other people? That’s all. Why do they spend yet more of their husbands’ earnings on frames, glass, publicity leaflets, the booking of exhibition space? Why do they issue invitations to their friends rather than their enemies, as well as gullible members of the local media, to a Private View? At which some of the sweeter or wealthier of these friends will pay an exorbitant price for some hideous painting that it would be a kindness to take to the local tip on the way home and put out of its misery. But not only can the friends not do that, they will, having committed this initial error, continue to pay for it, for they’ll have to hang the painting at home, won’t they? And not in the attic or the bathroom, no, but in pride of place on their living-room wall, for ever. For as long as their friendship lasts.
Why do they do it? Exhibitionism, I guess, a kind of striptease by women without confidence in their bodies, which in my opinion may well be luscious in a child-born way, far more agreeable than their half-baked pieces of pottery or ludicrous drawings.
Men on the whole are less wanton, less shameless. More circumspect, aren’t they?
§
But my wife is a striking woman. Fine bones. Strong bones. Lily’s going to look good right through her middle age. Wears her blonde hair cut short. She’s a lesbian, actually: she doesn’t really like men. If we are with another couple or two, for example, at dinner, she invariably addresses and pays attention to the women present. She doesn’t on the whole take men that seriously, I don’t think. She’s at ease in the company of women. When Lily realises that a man is being mildly flirtatious with her you can see her radar go on the blink for a second, she’s all at sea, then she’ll either make the effort to awkwardly respond or more likely move, turn away.
Lily identifies with other women, and identifies herself as a woman rather than as a human being who happens to be female. She doesn’t feel sexually attracted to women, and I suspect this has been an unwitting disappointment to her. She likes sex, and she rarely turns me away, and I sense a resentment of her own attraction to me, as a man; to men as a sub-species.
§
I like to watch my son attempting to come to terms with his reflection. In the bathroom, whenever I change him, I hold John Junior up in front of the mirror, and introduce him to himself. Sitting at the computer with him on my lap: before switching on, I talk to his reflection in the grey screen. Show him his watery image on the surface of the pond when we take a stroll in the garden. Bring to his attention, his awareness, the ghostly reflection of himself in windows.
The bathroom is actually our godsend, our fall-back position. It seems all parents have one. The place or particular activity in which a grizzling infant may be pacified. A drive around the block to send a sleepless baby off. Or a certain hold, soothing the babe in enveloping arms. For us, it’s the bathroom: our boy is happy there. He doesn’t mind having his nappy changed anyway, but it’s the mirror, surrounded by my wife’s make-up bulbs, that entrances him. He is fascinated by his reflection, by the narcissistic boy who stares back at him.
Three in the morning, our son’s cheeks are red, his ears ache and his gums hurt from teething; the boy is lost in pain, whining like a grinding machine, and his poor mother who usually soothes him is exhausted. Then I scoop him up and say, “Hey, mate, let’s go see the wee chap who lives in that mirror in our bathroom.”
One glance at that little guy and our son’s sobs abate. With clutching breaths he pulls himself together, staring at the baby staring back at him. I move him towards the glass. He reaches out a hand: the other kid reaches out towards him. He touches the glass. Eyes wide. This strange person. I don’t know if he gets it yet. I don’t know if we ever get it.
“‘’IP HERE’S NOTHING wrong with you,” the doctor said.
J. “And yet your symptoms are real. I’ve considered everything else. There’s only one avenue left.”
“Lead me along it,” I told him.
“It’s possible,” he said, strangely tentative, “that this is some kind of allergy.”
I laughed. “I’m forty-five years old. Don’t you think an allergy would have revealed itself by now?” The doctor began to speak, but I cut him off. “I’m sorry: I don’t believe in them. They’re not for me. I have the constitution of an ox, I can eat and drink, and breathe the molecules of air, that any man can, keep them down and thrive on their contents. No. It can’t be an allergy.”
The doctor frowned at me. “A hostile response.”
“One must be certain of some things, Doctor. This, for me, is one of them.”
“It’s almost as if you were allergic to the very suggestion. Classic symptoms: your face reddened, pulse quickened, perspiration.”
“You’re playing,” I said. “Please. Don’t bother.”
“I’m serious,” he said. He paused, looked away, out of the window, then back at me again. “We’re probably talking about something that only recently entered your environment.”
“I can’t think what. Do you want me to think about what? Could it be linked to research, is this what you’re telling me?”
“No, I wasn’t thinking that. Although, funnily enough, I was just reading an article. You may have seen it. They found that people allergic to Brazil nuts could develop an allergic reaction to a genetically engineered soybean that contained one single gene inserted from a Brazil nut.”
“Yes,” I nodded. “I heard about that. But it’s also possible the technology could be used to cure those people of their allergy.”
“Oh,” the doctor said softly. “Right. Yes, maybe. Anyway, apart from that, the fact is, some people are allergic to other people.”
“Really? Are you kidding? To other people in general?”
“To people, to persons, in particular. When we talk of the chemistry between individuals, we’re often describing more than we realise.”
I nodded. “An interesting thought.”
“Let’s go through it again: how long have you had these symptoms?”
“Well, as I’ve told you, I’ve felt a general physical unease for a year or two. Tragic. It took me until I was forty to feel entirely comfortable in myself, you know, inside my skin.”
“Yes,” the doctor agreed, though he’s certainly younger than me. “An unexpected blessing of middle age.”
“But an ironic one: you accept the body just as it really does begin to go. You leak. In the cold your nose runs. Wet farts escape when you twist. After a piss you continue to dribble. Your body’s letting go. A knee burns after tennis. Which reminds me of my favourite joke, Doctor.” I put on a Pathe N
ews voice: “We were short of a doubles player at the club. I asked a chap if he’d like to join us to make up a four, and he said, “I’m a little stiff from badminton.””
The doctor stared blankly at me. As if ready to diagnose the joke.
“I said, “We don’t care where you come from. Feel free to join us.””
“Yes?” the doctor prodded.
“Right,” I said. “So, the contentment was short-lived. Two or three years of this corporeal ease, that was all.”
“And specifically. What brought you to me? When?”
“Well, it was, what, three, four months ago, wasn’t it? That the symptoms began in earnest.”
The doctor had been hoping to nudge me at my own speed towards his hunch, but by this point he obviously felt that we’d wasted enough time. “John,” he said, “I ask you only to consider this possibility: that you are allergic to your son. That he is the one making you ill.”
I hesitated. “Are you serious?”
“To a degree, certainly. I may be speaking metaphorically, I’m not sure. But most men when they have a child find themselves gratifyingly anchored in the ocean of life. Or secured in the free flow of time, if you like, finding (or perhaps better, being given) through their child their place in the succession of generations. They are steadied, relieved, placated.”
“Yes. Sure.” The doctor was giving me an if not memorised at least certainly well considered speech.
“Some men, it seems, and one can say especially those with powerful egos, men of power, find having a child has the opposite effect; one naturally exacerbated the later in life it happens. Unlike most people, they were already secure. They saw themselves as great rocky islands in the ocean of faces, of humanity, floating around them. It is having a child that, on the contrary, casts such men adrift. Confronts them with the reality of life’s cycle, or procession, and their inescapable imprisonment within it. The child’s birth forces an acknowledgement of mortality which, if it is not faced consciously, may erupt in other ways.”
The doctor paused, looked down, held a hand up with forefinger erect and looked back at me. “In conclusion,” he said, “most men gain significance through having a child, while it inflicts upon a few a feeling of profound insignificance. You may be one of these.”
My hands trembled. I clasped the arms of the chair, and smiled. “Thank you, Doctor,” I said. “That’s most interesting.”
9
My hands tremble on the wheel. There’s Barrow-bush. Windmill Down. St Hugh’s. I shouldn’t have drunk a styrofoam cup of tea at this lay-by last time around. I don’t want to stop again. Is there a bottle or a bag here I can use? We should keep something in the car for gridlocks. Having a full bladder while driving’s very specific, isn’t it? You can hold an enormous amount. And when you get out, finally, and unzip by some trees, you find your prick’s shrunk. It grows back to normal as you pee, what seems like a pint or two of liquid; more than you ever remember drinking, anyhow.
§
My brother embraces all forms of male bonding. If some chap announces that he has to shake hands with the Kaiser, see a man about a dog, then Greg feels obliged, out of sheer bonhomie, to accompany him. To stand at an adjoining urinal, to gaze, head at a slight upward incline, at some spot on the wall, and piss together. However recently he’s already done so. He’s never happier, my brother, than when jostling for space with a bunch of fellows, shoulder to shoulder, splashing the porcelain in one of those unpartitioned, rank urinals with an open gutter; he never feels more convivial, more fully human. Me, I’m the opposite. I find it hard to pee in public.
I’m thwarted by the presence of other human beings; other men, at least. I’ve never had that problem with women, with lovers. That terrible intimacy, isn’t it? Did other people wonder about that when they were children? I did: do couples go to the bathroom together? A man and a woman? I could imagine sex from the moment I gained an inkling of what it entailed, but doing the business with her in the same bathroom? Her, with me there? Disgusting.
Since growing up, I rather like it. Pissing, certainly. There’s something enduringly girlish about one’s wife peeing. On a long drive, for example. You stop in the middle of nowhere; I step to the verge, and while I unzip my flies and empty my bladder of milky piss I watch Lily unpeel her leggings and knickers as she squats. When I’ve finished myself I sidle over and watch her piddle stream along the ground from between her feet. Why is that so appealing? I don’t know. I’m sure other people know more about these things than I do.
Occasionally Lily will let me lie beneath her. She claims it doesn’t turn her on, though I don’t see how that’s possible. Says she only does it for me. When we bought the house, in the trees beyond the lawn, I can feel the moss below me, she squatted and peed on my face.
§
I’ve got so much to think about, I almost forgot about what happened at the weekend. There are four concerts annually, organised by our choirmaster, and Saturday night saw the first of the year. He’d invited Bjorn Lungstrom, the Norwegian pianist, to come and play Chopin, Debussy and Ravel in our village church. All two hundred and sixty tickets were sold out in advance, proceeds going towards famine relief. And Lily and I offered the use of our house and garden for interval refreshments.
It’s become a part of this modern tradition that the intervals are catered for as if the concerts take place in high summer: a glass of white wine, strawberries and cream, consumed standing on someone’s lawn. Although the house has to be made ready or a marquee erected and standing by, members of the church claim that all but one or two of the twenty-odd concerts thus far have taken place on what turned out to be days of unseasonably temperate weather for spring or autumn, evenings on which it was a delight to be outside.
Who were we to argue? I ordered thirty boxes of Chablis, orange and apple juice, two hundred punnets of strawberries from Israel and tubs of whipped cream—all, according to Lily’s instruction, organic. All this we paid for, as part of the hosts’ customary contribution—a sort of toll for membership of the village establishment.
I left it to my wife to hire caterers, but she insisted on recruiting the nephews and their friends.
“Glint and Lee want to do it,” Lily said. “Earn themselves some money. And it’ll do them good to do a bit of work for a change. Look at them: their laziness is crippling them.”
“Honey,” I said, “do you think that’s wise? You know how oafish our nephews are, and their mates are doubtless worse. People won’t want to have their drinks spilled by ruffians who look like they’re about to mug them; they want to be served by pretty girls in black skirts and little white pinafores. I don’t blame them.”
“Oh, wake up, man,” she said. “We’re in the twenty-first century now. We did make it, you know. You’re given an opportunity to combat stereotypes, both the concert-goers’ and the boys’, and all you can do is moan about it.”
I didn’t argue, though I knew I was right. People depend on protocol. The more casually we dress, so workers in the service industry get smarter. You go to a cocktail party, you go to the opera, and millionaires are dressed for the weekend. While minimum-wage waiters and waitresses serve you in neatly pressed white shirts, trousers with creases in them, leather shoes that shine.
§
Anyway, the day came and what do you know? Easter’s late this year but still, it was the mildest day of the year so far; almost balmy, it could have been June. The sun rose in a blue sky and gently warmed the morning. I hired the muscle of some men from work to collect rented trestle tables, chairs for the infirm, wine glasses, cups and saucers, cutlery. The food and drink was delivered: the fruit supplier, an old competitor when we were still small traders called Bob Canman, came in person and found me overseeing Richard’s gardening gang sprucing up the lawn and flowerbeds.
“Listen,” Bob said, as we reached the back door where he’d parked, “f’m awful sorry, John, but there’s been a mistake. I ordered them direct from Te
l Aviv myself.”
“What mistake?”
“They’re not organic.”
“Tell me you’re joking.”
“They’re beautiful strawberries, though. Here, taste one.”
I ran it under the tap and put it in my mouth. It was soft and succulent and sweet, it melted in the saliva on my tongue. It gave one that sensation rarely known: that you’re tasting fruit about five seconds past its peak, its zenith, of ripeness. It was the most perfect strawberry I ever ate. So was the next.
“What I’ve done,” Bob said, “is I’ve put them into boxes marked Organic. But at the same time I’m telling you.” He looked at me with the anxious expression of a man without power who’s taken the initiative.
I took a twenty from my wallet, nodded towards the figure sat behind the wheel of Bob’s van. “You did the right thing,” I said, slipping the note into his hand. “Treat yourself and the lad there to a pint on the way home.”
§
Three of Glint’s pals helped unload the boxes of strawberries from the van to our scullery. Each of them wore his hair identically sculpted with gel and plastered close to his skull, in a style that in barbers’ sign language declared, HERE is A TEENAGECRIMINAL. They sniggered to each other, though they found it impossible to speak or even look at me; when I spoke to them they could only look away, at some unspecific spot, with an expression of resentment at my having addressed them.
“Wash the strawberries in the sink at the back of the garage there, and put a helping into each of these bowls,” I said. “About this many,” I showed them. There were four hundred bowls. “And put dollops of cream on all but a few while the first half of the concert’s in progress.”
I left those lads to it and took Lee and his best mate with me to plant stakes along the verge from the church to our entrance. Being the Old Rectory, this is not far; we’re next door, in fact, though owing to the layout of the churchyard and our garden and the curve of the lane, it’s a two hundred yard walk. There used to be access across the lawn and through a small gate into the graveyard, for the Rectors of past times, but what with the dead buried in the new cemetery out on the edge of the village and atheistic occupants before us, this gateway has grown over with disuse. And our new perimeter fence has now stoppered it for good. So this pair of boys helped me skewer four stakes with cardboard signs tacked to them promising:
2002 - Wake up Page 17
