by Nigel Packer
‘It’s meant to be thrown.’
‘I know. I’m just not sure it’s such a good idea. It looks rather fragile to me.’
‘Otto, I know what I’m doing. Don’t be such a mother hen. And don’t buy your son a new toy and then tell him he’s not allowed to play with it!’
‘It’s not a toy, it’s a piece of craftsmanship. I bought it mostly for its decoration. I thought that Daniel might enjoy it as an objet d’art.’
‘What’s that?’ Daniel asked. ‘Does it mean that it can’t fly?’
Otto reddened at his own pomposity. Now he felt ridiculous. His embarrassment, however, only strengthened his resolve.
‘It’s a beautiful object,’ Cynthia said. ‘Anyone can appreciate that. We’ll be careful not to harm it in any way. But children love to throw things, Otto, and that’s what boomerangs are for. What’s more, it’s a stupid present to buy for a little boy if you’re then going to tell him he can’t use it.’
‘Stupid?’
‘No, not stupid…’
She searched around for a better word.
‘Cruel.’
‘But that’s an absurd thing to say.’
Their voices had begun to flare. An argument seemed unavoidable. Yet they both became conscious of Daniel in that instant. He was holding the upturned boomerang to his face in the shape of a hopeful smile.
‘Let’s talk about this later,’ Cynthia said, with artificial levity.
‘Yes,’ Otto replied, in an identical tone. ‘I think that’s for the best.’
She turned to Daniel.
‘I’m sorry, Danny. Your father’s rather tired. He’s been on a big plane … all the way from Australia. He seems to be in a bit of a grump.’
Otto bristled, but said nothing.
‘We’ll play with the boomerang another time,’ she continued. ‘Why don’t we go and look for some of your other toys? The ones that Daddy doesn’t mind you playing with.’
‘Okay,’ Daniel said brightly.
He was becoming almost as accomplished at hiding his feelings as his parents.
Daniel ran off up the stairs while Cynthia followed after him. Suddenly, unexpectedly, Otto found himself alone. Removing his tie, he went over to close the french window. Why hadn’t he just let it go? Why was he starting to turn his own frustrations outwards? He hated seeing that in other fathers; now he was guilty of it himself.
‘Just have your bloody bath,’ he muttered to himself.
The silence at dinner that evening was oppressive, broken only by the funereal clicking of cutlery on the plates. Otto wanted to speak, but felt ashamed of himself, doubly so, because of the maturity with which Daniel seemed to handle these domestic rows.
Is he getting used to them? Otto wondered to himself.
That, in itself, was a cause for concern.
After finishing his food, he sat awkwardly at the table for a few more minutes, almost like a child who was waiting to be excused.
‘I’ll wash up,’ he said, at what seemed an opportune moment.
Daniel inspected the boomerang at the table, while Cynthia sat staring out into the garden.
* * *
‘Why did you say I was cruel?’ Otto asked her later in bed.
She had no wish to appease him, but she wanted at least to be fair in her assessment.
‘It was the wrong word to use,’ she replied. ‘You’re the least cruel person I know. But I do believe you were being rather selfish.’
‘But it was a gift … for Daniel.’
‘It was a gift for yourself, Otto.’
‘No, it wasn’t. That’s a ridiculous thing to say. I wanted to get him something nice. I’ve hardly seen him lately with all this travelling back and forth.’
‘You’ve noticed, then?’
‘Hm?’
‘How little time you are spending with your family.’
He leaned back against the headboard and sighed.
‘Of course I’ve noticed. It’s a cause of constant worry to me. But I can’t just cancel this project at the drop of a hat.’
‘Of course you can’t cancel it … now.’
His head lifted up.
‘Why say it like that?’
‘You know what I think. We’ve discussed all this before. Priorities, Otto. Life is all about priorities. You had plenty of work on your plate already, without taking on some ambitious new commission in Brisbane. You knew you would have to make several visits onsite.’
‘You think I’m neglecting my family. Even as I work myself to the bone for us.’
‘I’ve managed to find the right balance.’
‘That’s because you’re fortunate enough to work from home.’
‘That’s not really fair. I work hard, as you know. As hard, dare I suggest it, as you do. Designing, dealing with business enquiries, raising Daniel.’
‘With a fair degree of help from the nanny.’
‘You’re suggesting I could cope without her?’
‘No, but she does make things easier for you.’
‘I realise the idea of a nanny makes you uncomfortable, Otto. Me, too … we seem to be turning into what we used to despise. But there’s not really any choice, not as things stand. We’ve been drawn into a different way of life.’
They fell silent. Perhaps he should take back everything he had said. Cynthia, however, was wondering whether to take the discussion further.
What the hell, she thought. It’s time for a bit more honesty in this marriage.
‘I find it all a grind, our life inside this house. It completely stifles me, sometimes. I love my son with all my being, but there are days when I miss the outside world. I rarely get to engage with it any more.’
He said nothing. It was dark: the moon lay hidden. He couldn’t see Cynthia’s face.
‘You disappear overseas on business for days and weeks at a time. When you come back home, you barely say a word to us. You’re permanently tired and out of sorts.’
She no longer sounded angry, but resigned, Otto thought. These discussions were nothing new, but the tone of her voice was.
‘Anything else?’ he asked her, hiding his concern behind sarcasm. The sound of his own voice was irritating to him. He should have gone straight to sleep, not started this conversation.
‘Yes. You bought Daniel a present and then stopped him from enjoying it.’
‘That again. Why are you so annoyed?’
‘Because you stopped us from having fun, Otto. We wanted to go outside, into the garden and the evening sunshine. You could have come with us, or at least allowed us to go quietly. But you chose to be a killjoy instead. We wanted to enjoy some laughter together. What was so wrong about that?’
‘The double glazing.’
‘Oh, sod the double glazing! So what if Daniel had broken a window? Would it really have been such a catastrophe? To tell you the truth, I feel like smashing a few windows myself, sometimes – putting a brick though next door’s conservatory. I’m tired of it all, Otto. The snobbery; the pettiness. I don’t know how we became like this. I preferred it when we were struggling to get by in Bloomsbury. At least we were still alive back then – not inclined to take ourselves so bloody seriously. At least we knew how to enjoy ourselves.’
Otto was shocked.
‘I had no idea you were this unhappy.’
‘That’s because I’ve become accomplished at hiding it. I have to appear positive. I have no choice. There’s a young child involved here, remember?’
‘But why didn’t you tell me this? Why did you keep it all from me? I’m on your side. I’m here to support you both.’
Cynthia sighed.
‘You’re hardly here at all, these days. And when you are, the best of you isn’t. I feel terrible in saying this to you, maybe it’s a mistake, but a part of me wishes you had stayed in bloody Brisbane.’
Otto said nothing. Her words had cut deeply. And she wasn’t speaking from anger – that was the worst part. This was how she r
eally felt. The calmness in her voice was troubling to him. He remained silent; wanting to speak, but not knowing what he could say to salvage the situation. When he failed to reply, Cynthia drew breath once more.
‘Open your eyes to what’s happening between us. Please, Otto … open them.’
Neither said anything for quite some time. It was he who finally spoke into the darkness.
‘I apologised to Daniel. While reading him his bedtime story. I told him we could take his boomerang to the Heath this weekend.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He was very pleased. He kissed me on the cheek. He asked me if I would stay in London longer this time.’
A deeper silence.
‘I’m not sure you appreciate how difficult this is for me, Cyn. I, too, feel like smashing windows, sometimes. It’s impossible. So many commitments. It takes up all the energy I have. I don’t know how I became ensnared in this work. But if I pull out of the project now they would probably sue the partnership. I have to see it through. Once it’s out of the way, things should be better. I’ll be able to see more of the two of you, then.’
Cynthia, who had been lying totally still, stirred.
‘You’ve said that before, but it never seems to happen.’
She gripped a handful of coverlet, pulling it across her as she turned away.
Several minutes passed before Otto spoke again.
‘So what do we do?’
The clock ticked beside him.
‘Cyn? What do we do?’
She didn’t answer. The clock was ticking. It appeared she had fallen asleep.
Nineteen
It started some months later, in the spring of 1974, while Otto was in Paris on business. Sandrine, a friend of Pierre’s, was a lecturer in history at the Sorbonne. Mercantile capitalism was her speciality; capitalism in all its forms her enemy. Her radical views had hardened since the faltering of the student protests in 1968. She now believed that anarchism was the only way forward. Otto was fascinated, if a little alarmed, by the strength of her anger. She made a striking contrast to the people with whom he usually mixed these days. Sandrine, he suspected, would never want a conservatory.
They met one evening at a café in the Latin Quarter, the day after Otto first arrived in the city. He was staying at a modest apartment in the south-eastern corner of the 18th arrondissement, having turned down the chance of something plusher in the 1st. He wanted to free himself, if only for a few short weeks, from the pampered life to which he had become accustomed.
As he left his apartment on that warm spring evening and caught the Metro down to Saint-Germain-des-Prés, he felt nervous and strangely excited, craving some kind of rupture from the routine and stress of the past few years. He was to find what he desired in his apartment in the 18th and, more especially, in Sandrine.
He remembered now that the discussion became quite heated, on that first night in the café. They were talking about 1968, and the reasons why the protests had failed to bring about fundamental changes in society.
‘What would you know about it?’ Sandrine asked Otto, drawing deeply on her cigarette, blowing smoke into his face like an accusation. ‘All you have heard has come down to you second hand, through old footage and the words of journalists. What really happened on the streets back then is as distant from your own experience as the English Civil War. I was there – I was a part of it. I saw exactly what happened. Where were you when the revolutionary moment arrived?’
Pushing a pram around Hampstead Heath, Otto thought, but he stopped himself short of a confession. Instead he stuttered into an embarrassed silence. Pierre laughed at his crestfallen expression, at the degree to which the fight appeared to have drained from him.
‘Has the world of soft furnishings really softened you, too?’ he asked, taking his usual swipe at Cynthia’s fast-growing fabrics empire. ‘Ten years ago you would have risen to such a question, not blushed and stammered like today. You need to wake yourself up again, Otto; get that political consciousness of yours back into gear. Have you not seen what is happening around you in the world, these days? The Red Brigades – Baader–Meinhof: these are violent and uncompromising times we are living through. The stakes are high – capitalism is on the brink. The imperialists have been kicked out of Africa and Asia in the past few decades. Soon, perhaps, it will be time for them to face the music on their own soil. There simply isn’t time, any more, for your polite English manners.’
Otto was annoyed by Pierre’s ridiculous tough-guy act, adopted, he suspected, as a means of trying to impress Sandrine. He thought it over later as he stood at the urinals, a couple of drunken professors standing and swaying to either side of him.
Red Brigades – who is he trying to kid? Pierre is even softer than I am. He practically passed out when we struck that squirrel on the road to Orléans – he wanted us to take it to the local hospital. He would no more take a life, or support anyone who did so, than play a round of golf with Richard Nixon.
Sandrine, too, had irritated Otto – with her self-righteous swagger and the facefuls of cigarette smoke. Who were these people to start lecturing anyone? Pampered academics, protected from reality by the very state they claimed to oppose; biting the hand that fed them, but only so much. There they sat, talking revolution over an expensive bottle of Bordeaux.
Otto felt himself provoked in other ways, too. The conversation was stimulating; Sandrine’s mind sharp. Somewhere in her early thirties, around ten years younger than Otto, she was teaching on a post-doctoral placement. Her thesis had been vivaed the year before and was already on its way to publication: an analysis of the early trading activities of the East India Company. During the course of the evening, she stared nonchalantly at Otto through heavy-lidded eyes, sizing him up as he spoke. Her tall frame was athletic; her short hair, almost a crop, emphasised the graceful line of her neck.
‘You’re an interesting man,’ she said, as they exchanged telephone numbers at the end of the evening, ‘A little uptight, maybe, but interesting.’
Kissing him on each cheek before parting, she allowed her fingers to brush across his chest.
The next day she called and asked him over to her apartment for dinner. She lived in Montparnasse, she told him – would he rather have meat or fish? Otto surprised himself at the swiftness with which he had accepted; almost pathetically grateful, it seemed to him later, and burying in advance all sense of guilt. As he was preparing for the evening ahead, his hands shook visibly as he ran them through his scalp before the bathroom mirror. The thick hair was greying now, but the body was reasonably well preserved. The silhouette of the younger man was just about recognisable; the profile squintable into flattery, as he checked the stomach and pectorals. Physically, at least, he had not transformed into a sad and bloated parody of himself.
Thinking of Sandrine, he once more felt hopelessly flattered – excited by the predatory nonchalance with which she had looked him over the evening before. She had worn a leather jacket and no make-up, he recalled; a plain white T-shirt with no brassiere. As he lay in the bath of his shabby apartment, soaking his private parts like a prospector panning for gold, Otto remembered the heated exchange that had developed between them, the great care with which he had avoided glancing down at her prominent nipples; sensing that, if he did so, she might just tear off his face.
Something new is happening, he thought, as he climbed from the bath and dressed for dinner.
All those soft lines and soft ideals of the 1960s had disappeared somewhere. A harder new mentality had arisen. Sandrine embodied it. But he hadn’t noticed any of this; it caught him unawares. It hadn’t yet reached as far as Hampstead.
Otto expected a one-night stand with Sandrine, but the affair lasted nearly two years. Or, to be more accurate, the one-night stand lasted nearly two years. There was no emotional attachment on either side, and therein lay its unexpected longevity. During Otto’s stay in Paris, they met three times a week and made love to an abandoned, al
most desperate tempo. She was demanding and experimental – everything, in fact, he had hoped for when shaking with anticipation before their first meal together. They were ferocious in their lovemaking, using each other up like a fossil-fuel reserve. Afterwards, they fell back onto the bed, exhausted, and worked their way through a packet of Gitanes. Drawing deep on his cigarette, Otto turned and blew smoke into Sandrine’s upturned face. She had succeeded, by this time, in putting to flight all of his adopted English reserve.
Her pillow talk veered between the polemical and the personal, flitting around restlessly from one subject to the next. The OPEC crisis, industrial unrest at Renault, hunting for crabs with her brothers in Finistère. Otto struggled to follow her train of thought as he stubbed out his cigarette and drifted slowly from consciousness, the cool sheet sliding from his buttocks as he turned. But then he would feel her hand upon his stomach, her smoky tongue work inside his mouth, and it would start all over again.
He rarely stayed the night; or only occasionally, if it was too late to think of calling for a cab and easier to await the first Metro of the morning. Generally, Sandrine preferred to sleep alone. Otto did, too, but for different reasons. She never once asked him about his marriage, and he never asked her if there were other men – or women. It was something he had taken as read. Just once, she had discussed marriage with him, in a very general sense. As so often, it was for her a political issue.
‘It is the greatest barrier society must overcome,’ she told him. ‘The notion of two human beings possessing each other – body and soul, in their entirety – has to be the craziest lie of them all.’
Otto understood what she meant – theoretically, at least. He knew the argument: the emergence of the nuclear family as an offshoot of industrial capitalism. The modern family unit, Sandrine explained to him, had developed from an economic imperative, the need to maximise productive efficiency, whatever the woolly-headed romantics of this world might choose to believe. At an abstract level, she might have had a point. But life was never lived out in the abstract. It was filled with all these people, getting in the way and staking their claim. Otto’s life was filled with Cynthia, with the many events they had experienced, with and through each other over the course of the past two decades. It was also filled with Daniel, with the several Daniels they had already seen come and go during the first eight years of his life. Otto wanted to explain all this to Sandrine, to wave away the smoke that sometimes clouded her thoughts as well as her handsome face. But he felt too tired, too warm in the sheets that carried her scent; and besides, he didn’t want to risk bringing his other life into this one. He didn’t want to risk waking up.
