Obstacles to Young Love

by David Nobbs

  He begins to dress, carefully choosing colours which match sufficiently well not to irritate Hannah. She must not be irritated this evening.

  His new-found confidence is struggling. He feels a pit in his stomach as the moment of her return draws near. The sound of the front door is painful to him. His heart begins to race. How does the body understand so well what is going on in the mind? And is he right to be doing this? After all, he does still seem to want her body. Should he abort the plan? No. Be brave. Or wait, do it later. Oh, God. No, no help there.

  He goes into the lounge, which she calls the sitting room, because Mr Finch calls his lounge the sitting room. She enters. Her face is very pale. She is twisting her hands.

  ‘There’s no easy way of saying this, Timothy,’ she says. ‘I’d sort of half rehearsed a speech, but you deserve a bit better than a speech. I love Gerald. I’m…I’m going to go and live with him, Timothy.’

  It’s a total shock. He feels a disturbing sense of déjà vu. Is this his fate as an emotional being – to be constantly preempted?

  ‘Oh, Timothy, I’m sorry,’ she continues. ‘And you can say, “Oh, that’s rich. You’re sorry. Well, why do it then?” Well, we can’t help ourselves. It’s rough on Helen – that’s his wife – and it’s wrong in the sight of God, I suppose, and Gerald is just as religious as me, and Helen isn’t, so it’s all, I don’t know, ironic, maybe just messy.’

  It’s a shock, but it’s what he wanted, or at least almost wanted, and Timothy husband of Hannah is a stronger and a better man than Timothy husband of Maggie. This time he feels no hurt pride.

  ‘I don’t feel happy about this, Timothy, but I don’t think I need to feel too guilty. I don’t believe you ever really loved me. Not like Gerald does. Sorry, perhaps that’s insensitive. I’ll remember you fondly, Timothy, especially…well, you know. I’m going now, there’s no point in hanging about, is there, when your mind’s made up, and we both hate farewells. I’ll come and collect my things, we can arrange that at a mutually convenient time. Oh, Lord, “mutually convenient”, that sounds like lawyers. You’re a good man and a kind man and I won’t make trouble and I know people say that and then do but I won’t. Gerald’s outside, waiting, which may not be exactly tactful, but there it is, it seemed best to get it over with.’ She kisses him swiftly on the cheek, and he’s pleased to detect a bit of a break in her voice as she says, ‘Goodbye, Timothy. And good luck.’

  And he doesn’t say anything, not a word, because the only thing he can think of to say is, ‘My speech would have been much better than yours,’ and that is hardly appropriate.

  He walks through the warm evening air to the Wig and Mitre in Granary Lane. He takes his pint into the beer garden. Romance is in the air this summer’s night. Only Timothy is alone. But he doesn’t feel sad. He feels light-headed, not quite rooted in reality, in an emotional limbo between happiness and sadness, relief and regret. An observer would not notice this. He would see a solid man reading an evening paper, eyes narrowed as the light fades, and drinking three pints of bitter in reflective silence.

  He walks home slowly. The heat of the day still rises from the pavements. When he gets home he will have another bath and leave lots of water all over the floor. Further than that he cannot see.

  Naomi awakes very slowly, from a deep darkness, a bottomless blackness, a dank pit. She finds it very difficult to open her eyes. A great weight is pressing down on both her eyes. She realises what the weight is. It’s her eyelids. She has no idea where she is. She has only a faint idea who she is.

  She stares at the only thing she can see without moving – and she cannot move, she is possessed of a tiredness that is in part a quite delicious languor and in part a horrible constriction.

  The only thing she can see is a corner, a corner where three areas of grimy flaky white paint meet, and from which there hangs an intricate pattern of faintly shining filaments. It takes her a few moments to realise that this is a spider’s web. Contract cleaning hasn’t worked very well at Clodsbury District Hospital.

  Slowly, so slowly, she begins the long, painful journey towards full consciousness. She is Naomi Coppinger, née Walls. She is in a bed. She wakes up in a bed every day. Why does it feel so very strange to wake up in this bed? Not just because she doesn’t know where she is. That’s happened before. Often during the tour of Antony and Cleopatra she woke up in some strange theatrical digs, not knowing where she was, her mouth acid from the cheap wine of a struggling theatre bar, in a bed that twanged when she turned to try to understand her surroundings.

  She’s an actress! Well, she was an actress. The knowledge of her unemployment gushes to the surface, and is most unwelcome.

  She can’t remember going to bed. That’s why she feels so strange. The last thing she remembers is – and suddenly she’s alarmed – two policemen walking towards her. Lots and lots of black people everywhere, women wearing veils, and two massive policemen with huge feet; she can’t remember their faces, but she can still see the size of their feet. But why should policemen have been approaching her? Are they still here? She tries to sit up, but it’s a huge effort, her limbs are strangely leaden.

  Although she knows that she knows the man who is sitting at the side of the bed looking at her with deep concern and not a little fear, she has no idea who he is. He is at once utterly familiar and totally unidentifiable. This is very disconcerting.

  She begins to remember. He’s the man who keeps promising to take her to the Ivy and doesn’t. That’s not nice of him. Oh, he’s her husband. Crikey. He’s that Coppinger bloke. What’s his Christian name? Ought to know her husband’s Christian name.

  Why does the word ‘Christian’ alarm her so much, even in her thoughts?

  Colin. That’s it.

  Oh, Lord, she doesn’t want Colin to see her like this.

  ‘You’re awake!’ says Colin, and a little imp deep inside Naomi sits up and thinks, You still have your talent for stating the obvious, then. Whatever’s happened, that hasn’t changed.

  She senses that she should reply, that Colin is waiting for her to reply. She doesn’t want to reply. She’s worried about the mechanism of voice production. How does the connection between thinking and speaking work? It takes a huge effort, swimming in this lethargy, swimming against the tide of the approaching night, to even formulate the two words, ‘Hello, Colin.’ But she tries. She does it. Out come the words, ‘Hello, Colin.’

  First hurdle over. But why is everything so very difficult?

  Colin looks across the bed, she follows his eyes and sees…her father! She recognises him instantly. Her dear, distant dad. Only he doesn’t look so distant. He’s smiling, and his smile is warm, radiant. He wipes a tear from his eye, and she thinks, I never saw my dad cry before, not even when Mummy died.

  When Mummy died! All that comes back. She’s waking up now, with difficulty, fighting the drugs, although of course she doesn’t know that this is what she is fighting. She knows where she is now, though. She can see the drips attached to her arm. That’s very alarming.

  ‘Why am I in hospital?’

  Her father puts his large, gnarled, yachtsman’s hand into her tiny veined one, presses gently, and tells her, very softly, very carefully, all that he knows of what happened to her, culminating in her long drive to Clodsbury, and her sensational appearance at a street market where she harangued a crowd of astonished Muslims, mostly veiled ladies who were busy doing their shopping.

  ‘You tried to turn a large crowd of Islamic women into atheists, my darling.’ There is concern and astonishment in her father’s voice, but also…yes…respect.

  She looks down, trying to see her body, but it’s hidden beneath the sheets. She is suddenly terrified. Has she perhaps no legs? She can’t feel them. But she can’t feel the absence of legs. But do you feel the absence of legs at first or do the nerves continue to give you the illusion of having legs?

  ‘How badly injured am I?’

  ‘Why, bless you, you aren
’t injured at all, my darling.’

  Her father, the least tactile of men, bends over and kisses the top of her head.

  ‘But didn’t they tear me limb from limb?’

  ‘We aren’t in some primitive corner of the world, where the white man is unknown. You were very weak, we don’t believe you’d eaten for two days. They saw this and one of them rang for an ambulance on their mobile. You crashed to the ground, and somebody told the crowd not to move you. It’s dangerous to move someone in those circumstances, so they didn’t. They were really very good.’

  ‘But my message, didn’t it inflame them?’

  ‘I get the impression they were just astonished. I imagine that you made quite a picture, my darling. A slight little girl, faint from hunger and exhaustion, shouting like a mighty wind.’

  She squeezes her father’s hand. It’s so good to have him there. She’s so lucky to have such a father.

  ‘But…the police?’

  ‘I think somebody sent for them too. I don’t know why. Maybe they thought you needed protection.’

  ‘They had enormous feet.’

  ‘Anyway, they arranged for you to come here.’

  ‘No, but both of them had enormous feet. I mean, that’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? Unless that’s the qualification for the police force. I certainly don’t think it’s intelligence.’

  William and Colin exchange very brief concerned looks.

  ‘Yes, darling, but I don’t think we really need to worry too much about their feet, do we?’

  ‘No, but I was thinking…I think you’re right, I’d forgotten to eat, I think I might have been hallucinating a bit, and I wondered, did I just imagine they had such huge feet? I mean, really huge. Not just big. Massive.’

  ‘I think perhaps you did, sweetheart. You’ve done all sorts of things, and we know why you’ve done them, but you did get rather carried away. It wasn’t very sensible, was it, rushing off like that in my car, after spending all day knocking on people’s doors. You hadn’t eaten a thing. You hadn’t slept for well over twenty-four hours. If you did…you know…see their feet, in your mind, as unnaturally large, well, it’s understandable, and maybe it was a symbol of…of being frightened at seeing the police. Anyway, the thing is…’ He presses his hand gently onto hers again. ‘The thing is, the police were concerned for your…I’m sorry, darling, but you can understand their point of view…your mental state. They don’t know you like we do. Now the police were very anxious to find out, when you woke up, how…how you were.’

  ‘Whether I was mad, you mean?’

  ‘No, no. No, just…still a bit disturbed. So, they left a man here, to see how you were. And he stayed until we came.’

  ‘You saw him?’

  ‘I had to show him my driving licence before he’d let me in. Though how that proved I was your father I don’t know. Still, it’s lucky they didn’t ask for some sperm to analyse. They’d still be waiting.’

  It crosses Naomi’s mind that she never thought she’d live to hear her father use a word like ‘sperm’, but she has another worry on her mind.

  ‘Did he have very big feet?’

  ‘I didn’t notice.’

  ‘He can’t have had, then. You’d have noticed. You couldn’t not.’

  ‘He might not have been one of the same two officers.’

  ‘Of course. Silly of me. Sorry.’

  ‘Try not to worry about the feet.’

  ‘No, but it’s not nice to think you may have hallucinated.’

  ‘Well, it’s over now.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She smiles. How her father loves to see that smile. It’s pure Naomi.

  ‘So he’s gone, has he, the policeman? Now you’re here. He’s not worried any more?’

  ‘Yes. He’s not worried any more. He’s plodded off on his big feet.’

  They share a little laugh. How her father loves to hear that laugh. It’s pure Naomi.

  ‘But, because they are concerned, we’ve had to promise to look after you and take care of you until…while you get your strength back. So, for the time being, you’re going to have to promise to do what we tell you and be a good girl…and not…you know…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘…try to save the world from religion. Will you promise that for us, Naomi?’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Colin and me.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Will you? For the time being at least.’

  ‘Will I what? Sorry. I’m so tired.’

  ‘Will you promise not to try to save the world from religion?’

  ‘Oh. Yes. I promise.’

  As the glorious summer day approaches its midnight end, Colin goes to the Clodsbury Hilton, which on first sight promises to be as good as it sounds, and books a twin room for himself and William. They’ll take shifts, one of them sleeping, the other sitting in the hospital, until Naomi is fit to leave.

  Naomi feels so very tired again, after the exertion of conversation and the trauma of memory. She snuggles back into the sheets and pillows, and lies there, waiting for sleep. But, even under sedation, sleep doesn’t come straight away. She tries not to worry about the policemen’s feet, and whether she has hallucinated. She reflects on everything that has happened. She thinks about her wanderings along unlovely Oxford Street with her sandwich board, and about her door-to-door visits on the even more unlovely Warrender Estate, and about her drive up the M1, overtaking all the juggernauts, touching at one stage a hundred and eighteen miles an hour. She’s amazed now, that the old car managed it. She shudders at the thought of the speed, which had so exhilarated her at the time.

  She sees all the faces of the astonished Muslim women, and they aren’t frightening at all any more. It’s curious. She knows that she has done all those things – she must have done them because she’s been told that she has – but she can’t really remember them. It’s as if they’ve happened to someone else, or have just been a story.

  Then she thinks about the evening’s conversation, in the ward, beneath the spider’s web, whose presence comforts her, though perhaps it should alarm her. But above all she thinks of her father, how much more wonderful he is than she has ever realised.

  And then suddenly, a single word, a word of just two letters, courses through her like an electric shock.

  ‘Us?’

  She remembers being puzzled when her father said, ‘Will you promise that for us, Naomi?’ She hadn’t known what he meant by us. She had forgotten Colin was there.

  That isn’t good.

  PART SEVEN

  Farewells 1999–2002

  Naomi is going home today, and she’s nervous. She doesn’t know whether she wants to go home, especially as Emily is staying with Simon and Francesca for the summer holidays. That makes sense, of course, but sense isn’t always what a person wants.

  She has really enjoyed staying with her father, in his square, ugly, red-brick house beside the river. But it’s time to leave. Tomorrow he will be going to his boat, to prepare for his annual cruise. It’s been wonderful to spend two idle summer weeks with him, doing nothing, eating regular meals, going for long, leisurely walks and cycle rides, talking intermittently about her mother, about some of his pupils and their escapades, about ancient Greece and Rome. He has revealed to her a great secret – that he loves the poems of Catullus. He has read them to her, in the evenings, in Latin and in an English translation. She hasn’t understood a word of the Latin, but she liked the sound of it, and it was amazing how sombre and classical and scholarly the poems sounded in Latin, and how rude and wild and immediate they sounded in English.

  ‘“Lesbia, forever spitting fire at me, is never silent. And now if Lesbia fails to love me, I shall die. Why?

  Do I know in truth her passion burns for me? Because I am like her,

  because I curse her endlessly. And still, O hear me gods I love her.”

  ‘Catullus gives a wonderful insight into the excesses of Rome, Naomi. Sexual excesses ab
ove all, often homosexual, sometimes cruel, then suddenly tender. Exhilarating, depraved, repulsive, joyous, never never dull. And the fact that they are in Latin gives them a patina of respectability, so that a retired Classics master, who is an elder in his church, and who has practised moderation in all his pleasures, can dream of being someone very different, and can enjoy the dream, safe in the knowledge that he would hate it if it were ever to become more than a dream.

  ‘“O Cato listen, here’s something so fantastic

  it deserves your laughter,

  laugh then as heartily as you love your Catullus:

  ‘“I saw a boy and girl (the boy on top) so I fell,

  chiefly to please Dione,

  upon the boy and pierced him,

  held him to his duty with my rigid spearhead.”

  ‘How different from our life in the Lower Cragley Road. I received a parcel this morning, Naomi, a little gift from Mrs Wynne-Ellison. “We are thinking of you, in this lovely summer weather, and I can’t resist sending you a jar of my legendary gooseberry chutney. Best ever this year, I think.” Catullus delighted in rampant heterosexual and homosexual sex. I delight in gooseberry chutney. Naomi?’

  This in a different voice, a lower register. Naomi had looked up.

  ‘I love you.’

  Naomi had tried hard to hide her shock. She hadn’t heard her father say anything remotely like that, ever.

  And now her father is driving her away from the wide skies and the salt marshes towards the endless dispiriting suburbs of East London, and with every mile her nervousness grows. She has thought a great deal about what happened, what she has done, how unfair it has all been to Colin. There has even been a corner of her that accepted the gentle suggestion of her father’s doctor that it was all a cry for help from a woman unhappy in marriage and deeply disappointed in her career. When she had told her father what Dr Pelham had said, he had been angry.

  ‘I know my daughter better than that,’ he had said, ‘and I’ll tell Pelham so next time I want a boil lanced. “Pelham,” I will say. “She has more passion and sincerity in her left elbow than you have in your whole body.”’