by Jenny Diski
“But you’d know if I was involved with someone else,” Charlie tried to reassure her, defending his future against her pessimism.
She knew, though, that was just another truism not borne out by the figures.
“But you can’t punish me, or throw me out for what I haven’t done but might do in the future.” Charlie was remarkably patient with what he called “LM,” which stood for “Lillian’s madness.”
Enjoy what there is now, and let the future take care of itself. Lillian heard this advice from everyone. It made very good sense. They were, she and Charlie, amazingly happy together; she did enjoy having breakfast with him; she liked them going to the supermarket together; she looked forward to getting home and meeting him, as she often did, on the doorstep, each fumbling in their pocket for the key. Against all the odds their relationship was a huge success. Except for those times when Lillian’s alarm about what was going to happen cut through the pleasure, and made her brain zing with anger at Charlie for bringing potential deceit into her life.
Lillian threw her last piece of bread into the mêlée at the edge of the pond and, seeing no more coming their way, the ducks veered off in search of other lunchtime philanthropists. She didn’t view their behaviour as treacherous; it was perfectly natural that they should take what they wanted from wherever they could get it. Lillian liked the openness of the transaction.
Everything about human transactions, on the other hand, was devious, including attempts at openness. All right, so Charlie, loving her and wanting her, assured her that he wasn’t sleeping around; but when he grew tired of her, he would use exactly the same words to lie with. He would say “No” to her question, “Are you fucking anyone?” now, because he wasn’t, and then, because he was. How could anyone know which was which, or when the one turned into the other?
Lillian continued her walk. The path straightened up and took her past neatly manicured grass. In the summer, it was filled with people sunning themselves singly or in couples, with kids racing and shouting, with balls and bikes, dogs and picnickers; now, it was empty, a quiet, green swathe, as soothing and uneventful as she wished her mind would be. But she couldn’t make it be still.
Today it was ambisexual Rory, yesterday it was a postcard that slipped out of the book Charlie was reading. “Sorry you’re feeling low. Here’s something to cheer you up.” On the other side was a reproduction of a Rothko painting, an abstract of solid yellow blocks. Back on the side that really mattered, it was signed, “Janey.” She knew who Janey was: a colleague at work. But she didn’t know what Janey was.
“Nothing. A friend. She left it on my desk.”
“After you told her how unhappy you are with me?” Lillian snapped.
“After I’d walked around groaning about my sinuses a couple of weeks ago. Remember? How could I have told her I was unhappy with you? Haven’t you noticed that we’re happy together?”
“You don’t leave cards on someone’s desk without a reason.”
“Yes, you do. Just a friendly gesture.”
“And then you keep it in your book?”
“Yes.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because I’m telling you the truth.”
Charlie’s tone of infinite patience frightened her, but there was also something curiously exciting about it. It felt as if she were walking on a smooth lake of ice, knowing that each step brought her nearer to the middle that was not quite frozen enough to be safe. She had wondered on yesterday’s walk how many more times they could have that conversation before Charlie threw up his hands and left, his patience turning out not to be infinite at all, as she knew it couldn’t be. And now, she recognised suddenly that part of her wished he would. Get it over with. Push him just that bit further, and she wouldn’t have to worry about their future; it would be a thing of the past. And she would be proven right: yes, there was love, but it was only up to a point. How could it be any other way?
So this morning it had been Rory. One step nearer. Even if Charlie brought a resplendently masculine Rory round for dinner, there was no reason to believe that he hadn’t been seeing someone else, using Rory as an alibi. There was no reason to believe anything, not in a world where outcomes are already inevitable, and telling the truth is the same as telling lies at a different time. Even Charlie’s infinite patience was suspect. It was like laying down wine for drinking in the future. The more she grew to trust him, the easier it would be for him to deceive her. It was therefore an act of madness, of self-destruction, to trust Charlie, even if he was telling the truth.
The path curved gently around the neat green field and Lillian walked back on the other side towards the entrance. The park had been carved out of the edge of Hampstead Heath. To her left, as she walked, a fence marked the boundary between the untended heath on one side, and the carefully cultivated park on the other. The heath wasn’t exactly wild land, there was a network of branching paths through and round it, but Lillian preferred to stay on the cultivated side where there were no unexpected turns along the path, no unforeseen distractions—a circle of interesting mushrooms, or an enticing wooded area—so she could be sure she would be back where she had started from in the same amount of time, every day.
And what was wrong with that? What was wrong with enjoying the thoughtlessness that routine allowed? What was the necessity for doing the unknown, the difficult thing?
Tomorrow, she would overhear Charlie speaking to someone on the phone, while she was having a bath. The next day she’d think she’d detected a scent that wasn’t his. The day after, they’d be driving to a restaurant and she’d notice a single, auburn hair on the headrest of the passenger seat. And on. And on. It didn’t matter how happy they were together, the suspicions would squeeze out the pleasure, until anxiety was all that was left. Only one thing could satisfy her. Not reassurance, not logic, not re-affirmations of love; only a simple “Yes” in answer to her question would provide relief. Lillian discovered, as she reached the park gate, that was all she wanted. Love was a charming idea, companionship was nice, but only Charlie’s infidelity could make her really happy. She was working on it, she thought, as she climbed the stairs to her office. She was doing the best she could to make the relationship work.
Wide Blue Yonder
It was, Christina thought, the most perfect, the most complete pleasure, physically and mentally (though, currently, it was hard to tell the difference), she had ever experienced. She wondered why she’d never done it before.
It reminded her of how she hadn’t got a colour television until she was already the only person she knew who didn’t have a video recorder: it wasn’t that she didn’t want one, but it hadn’t seemed to her that she could. Everyone else could, there wasn’t a general principle involved. It was that she didn’t feel . . . what was it? . . . enough of a grown-up to have a colour television. They—everyone else—seemed properly grown-up to her, but she seemed to herself to be play-acting. They were real and normal, and she was merely apeing them. That was how she felt, and if it crossed her mind to wonder if they were play-acting too, she dismissed it, because they—everyone else—appeared much more comfortable with their roles than she was. So, it didn’t feel right for her to be a person with a colour TV.
Now, of course, she had one. It was just a matter of thinking “I can if I want,” and buying a set. But it had taken years. Things wouldn’t go on like that. The baby wasn’t a baby any more; he’d be going to nursery school soon, and once other children were part of his life he’d make sure she knew they could have what everyone else had. Thomas would soon lick her into shape.
But there was the reason she’d waited until her twenty-sixth year before finally trying a float mat. When she was small, they’d been called lilos, and other children’s fathers blew them up, cheeks puffing out like Botticelli cherubs, into air-filled plastic ridges. During their occasional days out at the seaside, she’d seen people lying on them, bobbing in the sea, but, even back then, it had never
occurred to her that she could lie on one herself. Her parents would have bought her one if she’d thought to ask. At that time, it wasn’t exactly about being grown-up, it just didn’t seem as if she could do what all the other kids were doing. She’d noticed them, watched them, but her existence seemed so remote from other children’s, she hadn’t even wished she could have a go.
So it had to wait until her middle twenties, and a float mat was propped against the wall, in the porch of their rented cabin in the Caribbean—compliments of the management. It was not the plastic, blow-up, humpy lilo of her youth. This was a high-density foam-rubber bed-length rectangle, turned over on itself and bonded at one end to form a sort of pillow. It was a vivid, cornflower blue, like parts of the sea where it wasn’t green or turquoise, like the sky when a passing cloud, or dusk, didn’t alter it.
Even so, they were three days into the holiday before she thought of dragging it the ten yards to the beach, very early one morning before Michael and the baby had woken, and flopping it into the water. After that initial effort, it was inevitable—just as entering the electrical department of John Lewis, which she had gone to without any apparent intention, had meant she would inevitably leave with a colour television.
A holiday in the Caribbean was another thing she had supposed, without thinking of it, wasn’t for her. Michael had brought it into the realm of possibility. A decent legacy from his aunt meant that, as well as having some savings in the bank, for a rainy day or a bigger house when the next baby came, there was enough to—well, spend.
“Why not?” said Michael, his eyebrows raised semi-circles above the rims of his round spectacles. He waited, giving her his challenging, concertedly boyish look, the one which invited her to participate in his daring and enthusiasm.
Christina couldn’t think of an answer except that other people went to the Caribbean. But he waved the bank statement at her, and palm trees, clear blue seas, pink sand and coral reefs wafted in front of her own myopia-correcting lenses as a real possibility.
“We could, couldn’t we?” she said, as astonished at the truth of what she was saying as she had been when she had presented her credit card to the sales assistant at John Lewis.
So here they were, the three of them, on the smallest island they could discover from a batch of brochures, with their own cabin right on the edge of the beach, and all the picture-postcard views that she’d never really believed existed. Not for her.
Christina was woken early every morning by a tiny black and acid-yellow bird, no bigger than her thumb, which was frantically constructing a nest in a small space between the stone wall of the cabin and an outside light-fitting attached to it just by their sliding glass door. The little creature carried small twigs and bits of fluff from a nearby tree to the light-fitting, and spent ages prodding and poking with its beak, to get each bit meticulously positioned, all the while screeching in a matching acid-yellow voice—Christina supposed in frustration when the twigs and fluff wouldn’t stay exactly where it put them. For the first two mornings she got up, put on her bikini, and sat at the table on the porch watching the yellowbird make its nest, leaving her son and husband to sleep on through the racket. On the third morning, however, her gaze wandered to the sky-blue float mat resting against the wall, just below where the yellowbird was working. It didn’t seem like a decision when she got up and frightened the yellowbird back into the tree by dragging the float mat across the porch towards the beach.
Getting on it in the water required an act of faith. There was no obvious reason why it wouldn’t sink under her weight, or drop at one end or one side, and deposit her in the sea. But it occurred to her, as she stood thigh-deep watching it bob in the shallow surf, that it wouldn’t matter: she’d just get wet, and no one was watching. Dignity wasn’t an issue. So she flung herself forward and face down onto the mat in the manner of an exhausted, temperamental actress, and it worked—there she was at last, lying on her stomach on the surface of the Caribbean sea.
Christina’s small belly and breasts rested in a shallow pool of water which had accompanied her onto the mat—lukewarm, cooling water that took the sharp edge off the sun, which was, even this early, burning down on her shoulders and back. She was still pale. She and Michael had cautioned each other about the dangers of the almost equatorial sun. They kept entirely in the shadows the first day, and spent no more than forty minutes in the sun with their T-shirts on, the second. All three of them wore hats at all times. Now, bobbing at the edge of the sea, Christina remembered she hadn’t put any suncream on, but she didn’t do anything about it.
She paddled herself out, away from the beach. Not far, just a few feet or so to get a sense she could control the float mat. Checking her position—only a couple of yards from the shore—she felt safe enough to wiggle herself up the mat a little, so that she could put her chin over the edge of the pillowed hump, and look down into the sea. Sunlight rippled through the water to the sand and white rocks at the bottom, and, seeming for a second to be part of the dancing light, a tiny sliver of a fish, electric blue and black, flashed away from beneath her, towards the coral reef a hundred yards beyond. And it was then, at the exact moment when she realised it had been a fish and not a shaft of light, that Christina thought, so sharply, and with such certainty that it took her breath away, that she had never done anything more pleasurable in her entire life. What made this reflection all the more striking was that she knew it was a thought she had never had before.
She skimmed the notable moments in her life. She could think of nothing particular about her childhood. It seemed retrospectively to exist in a silvery-grey haze of good manners; her parents, both academics, nodding and smiling at her as they passed by to disappear into their studies. There were well-tempered outings to see family and colleagues, and holidays in Europe for experience (cities filled with art) or rest (countryside filled with vines). Life was calm and quiet (“Shh, Mummy’s working on a paper”), and it was assumed—rightly—that Christina had all the advantages and enough attention to do splendidly at school. Christina and her parents hadn’t given each other any surprises. She was the quiet, studious offspring of quiet, studious parents. If she suffered from a slight social awkwardness, that was, they all understood, to be expected in an only child of reasonably superior intelligence.
Getting her degree, then the doctorate: yes, she’d felt pleased, she remembered, although there was hardly any doubt about either. She’d had some sense of achievement, but also a curious darkness had descended—a more intense accretion of darkness with each award, as if she’d been tunnelling, and reached the end only to find another, deeper tunnel beginning immediately.
Michael: she and Michael had been right for each other. They got together almost without noticing it. He, two years ahead of her at university, studying psychology, when she arrived as an undergraduate in the English department. They met through the Film Society, agreeing about Eisenstein and Von Stroheim. A similar taste in books, a mutual disdain for what Michael described with smug contempt as low culture (though on her part it was more a lack of information), both serious, inclined to be shy, and poised for academic careers.
Loved Michael? She had not had to choose him from a number of suitors. He was her first, her only boyfriend, and she had made no close friends of either sex at the university. She did not fit in with any of the groups which formed around her. She wasn’t disliked, but more overlooked. It was assumed, when anyone thought about it, that she preferred to spend time with her books. Young men didn’t find her positively unattractive, but they didn’t notice her, or consider her when casting around for female company. There was something a little physically maladroit about the way she moved her thin, angular body through the world, as if her coordination was not quite instinctive but required conscious thought. Her pale face, and even paler, fine hair rose out of clothes which, though tidy and reasonably fashionable, gave the impression of having been purchased by her mother one size too large so that she might grow into t
hem. Once or twice a male student had sat down next to her in the cafeteria, or chatted to her before a film showing, but none did so more than once, or arranged a further meeting.
Except for Michael. He had crossed the cafeteria, ignoring all the empty tables, and put his tray down opposite hers, saying he’d seen her the previous evening at Potemkin, and what had she thought of it? For a brief moment, as he sat down and began to speak, Christina viewed him in precisely the way others viewed her. He was thin and not much taller than she, with an unbecoming pallor, though she did notice the eagerness shining in his watery blue eyes in spite of the thickness of his glasses. She had not registered him last night, but remembered having seen him around, in the library and other places, always alone, engrossed in some book or journal, or hurrying on his way to a tutorial. He was not particularly prepossessing, but she couldn’t help but feel his energy and the intensity of his interest in Eisenstein’s film.
They got on in a mutually embattled way. He expressed an interest in English poetry as well as theoretical psychology. She was writing an essay on “The Lady of Shalott,” and they discussed its suitability for a feminist deconstruction. They began to go about together in their spare time, two solitaries who had found each other’s availability useful, and Michael announced his more than intellectual interest in her one evening, as they walked back from a screening of The Blue Angel, by stepping in front of her to bring her to a halt and pressing his lips so hard against hers that she was forced to part her teeth and allow his tongue free access to the inside of her mouth. After that, it was assumed by both of them that they were a couple, and before very many fumbles had occurred, Christina had taken herself off to the students’ GP and asked to be put on the pill.
