In a Land of Plenty

by Tim Pears

  The balcony held. The Clash pumped out their intense, compassionate fury for two hours. Eventually, after cheering and clapping and stamping their feet for a third encore, the lights came on and the crowd began to drift out, zombies, drained of all malice. James retrieved his camera and made his way out. Condensation streamed down the whitewashed walls. His stride was unsteady, his mind was empty, his ears were ringing, and he stepped out into an uncanny night.

  A few nights later, death came to visit James.

  He went to bed and lay on his right side, waiting for sleep. He closed his eyes, and his head started to slowly spin inside its skull. He hadn’t drunk anything during the evening except coffee. He opened his eyes and the spinning stopped, but he knew it hadn’t gone away. A ripple of nervousness spread through his body, until it reached the sweat pores in the skin.

  James shut his eyes, and again the spinning started up, gently, with an easy rhythm. He could make no sense of it; it worried him only slightly, and he lay there, letting it happen, studying it. Then he realized it was no longer only his head that was acting strangely: he felt himself moving, as if he were liquid, yet his body lay beneath the sheets, quite still.

  Then he stopped moving, and just stayed a few inches away from his body, hovering, suspended, as if treading water, but with no effort involved at all. Yet it was not an I who was now detached from a me. There was no subject and object. He knew he had only to open his eyes, or lift the hand from his thigh, to return to his normal state. He had control over this. And he had only to submit himself, to let go, and he would leave the body completely.

  The choice was his, but how could he make it? He wanted to know whether he would have the option of returning once he had left, or whether it would be for good. And he wanted to know where he would be going, anyway. He was aware only of Death’s trembling fingers. Perhaps it would pluck him from his past and cast him down. He had no proof of an afterlife. But what, on the other hand, did he have to stay for?

  These thoughts flooded his mind. They were questions he knew would not be answered, and he let them sink beneath him. Having emptied his mind, he then tried to release his other senses: perhaps they could help. For a few moments, nothing; then the distant sound of an aeroplane made its way to his ears. It got louder, and seemed to be passing directly overhead. The people inside have never known me, he thought, and never will. Some perhaps are sleeping, others thinking of the welcome awaiting them when they land. All strangers, their lives will continue whatever I decide. Won’t they?

  The sound of the plane’s engines grew fainter, as it passed on, until eventually it disappeared for good, and once again there was silence. James remained motionless, until the stillness of the silence began to prickle, and he knew there was no point in waiting any longer. He had an eternity in which to decide, but such empty time would bring him nothing new.

  His hand moved up from his thigh, across his stomach, and lifted the sheets. He opened his eyes, and switched on the light. Whether it was out of fear, arrogance, whatever, he had declined the offer.

  Needing to affirm his physical return, he masturbated, washed, smoked a cigarette, and soon fell into a deep sleep.

  While Alice went off to university in Oxford in the autumn of 1978, Laura did the opposite: she anchored herself more firmly in the house on the hill, by accepting Charles’ offer to be their cook. During the year and a half since Edna’s death he’d had to hire a succession of women who couldn’t cope with his family’s unreasonable demands and never lasted more than a couple of months. As for Laura, it was a strange decision: none of the other members of the family, or her friends at school, could understand why she didn’t get away – if she wanted to do that kind of work, why not take a catering course?

  What was clear was that here was as much of a family as she had left. After Edna’s death Stanley had gone into his own decline: now he had a double guilt that he had to suppress, and the effort seemed to suck out his energy. He aged visibly, slept twelve-hour nights, and lost his grip on the maintenance of the house: paint peeled, carpets curled, a banister came loose and stayed so, a cracked window was taped over and simply left.

  Before Charles had to have a word, though, Stanley was dead, less than a year after Edna. No one was surprised, and not even Laura grieved for very long.

  Laura’s first months in the job coincided with Simon’s conversion to vegetarianism. As if the idea were a novel one – as if Alice hadn’t already been abstaining from meat for the last twelve years – Simon declared that red meat was what made people aggressive, that meat eating was an historical aberration, an error of evolution. He cited famous vegetarians in history, from the poet Shelley to the pacifist Gandhi. When Robert mentioned Adolf Hitler, Simon was unfazed. ‘The exception that proves the rule, dear boy,’ he replied.

  At first Simon ate only raw vegetables, consuming mountains of carrots, cucumbers and cabbages as he’d once done fruit, but with less pleasure. Even that banal diet was too rich really, he explained, misty-eyed, as he recounted with what sounded like nostalgia the insubstantial, purifying flowers and spices upon which the gods in Elysium had lived. How Simon knew such arcane ephemera was a mystery. Nothing he’d been told in school had ever registered, and the only books he read were manuals of self-help written by psychologists with suspect degrees. But he had a magpie’s eye for the glittering detail and the pithy anecdote, and picked them up along the way.

  Simon’s passion for raw vegetables was the briefest of all his diets, because he could never deny his sensuous nature for long, but luckily vegetarianism had many variations, and Simon discovered a succession of national cuisines whose complexity Laura explored. When his demands were unreasonable she told him to cook the food himself, but in fact it was an enjoyable period for Laura, as she spread the aromas of India and the Middle East through the big house on the hill, cooking dishes so delicious that even when Simon himself grew bored and moved on, the rest of the family requested them.

  It was a combination of Lebanese hors d’oeuvres presented as an alternative at Sunday lunch and Simon’s citing of Pythagoras’ advocacy of vegetarianism that converted Zoe. The smoked aubergine pâté and home-made houmous were mouth-watering, and anyway she already respected Pythagoras’ doctrines concerning transmigration of the soul.

  ‘I think I was always meant to be a vegetarian,’ Zoe told Simon. ‘I wouldn’t kill an animal myself, so it’s cowardly to let someone else do it for me.’

  ‘Don’t worry about dumb animals, darling,’ Simon replied. ‘That’s not the point at all. It’s a question of purifying the body.’

  Charles and Robert were less easily impressed. When Laura tried making nut cutlets that looked like rissoles and using soya protein in cottage pie, Charles took one bite and said: ‘I should try a new butcher right away, Laura. Your mother would never have let them get away with this.’

  On the whole, though, it was an easy period of initiation. The house was emptier than it ever had been; the only full-time occupants were Charles and Simon (although since Stanley’s death Robert stayed more often). It would soon fill up again – the chaotic years had passed, but the crazy ones were coming. But by that time Laura would be in complete control of her kitchen; she would become, at least locally, famous for her cooking.

  While Laura spent her first year as cook in the big house developing her culinary skills, James was taking the next course in his sporadic apprenticeship in the difficult art of love.

  One Saturday in June of 1979 there was a march through the town organized by the Anti-Nazi League which culminated in a rally in the south park, with speeches followed by music. James shot off two rolls of film.

  On Monday afternoon he returned from another assignment to find his colleagues handling the contact sheets of the rally over their mugs of tea. When James walked in they jeered and hooted at him.

  ‘Friend of yours, is she?’ asked Derek.

  ‘You’ve got taste, you dirty devil,’ added Frank.

 
; ‘What are you on about?’ James demanded. ‘Let me see those!’

  He snatched one of the contact sheets away and looked at it: in fourteen of the frames the main focus of attention was a young woman, long dark hair swirling about her, dancing in front of the stage. It was the same with the other sheet.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ James blushed. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Yeh, yeh,’ Derek jeered. ‘It’s about a thirty mill. lens, you must have been right in close.’

  ‘Well, I remember her,’ James admitted, ‘but I don’t remember taking so many. Maybe four or five, but not as many as this.’

  ‘Why didn’t you get more of Tony Benn?’ Keith complained.

  ‘You better not let Roger see them, let alone Mr Baker,’ Frank advised.

  ‘We can’t use a single one of these,’ Keith agreed.

  ‘Why not?’ James demanded, recovering his composure, studying the photos now for their compositional qualities. ‘This one here’s really good,’ he said. ‘You’ve got the band on stage behind her. And there’s Tony Benn in the corner, see, standing over there.’

  ‘Look at her T-shirt, dummy,’ Keith told him. ‘Front and back the same, in case we didn’t get the message.’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said James, blushing all over again. The words FUCK ART, LET’S DANCE were emblazoned, black on white.

  ‘And don’t even begin to suggest me burning it out,’ Keith warned. ‘Mr Baker’d have my guts for garters.’

  That evening after the others had gone James made a print for himself of the dark-haired dancing woman, and back home he pinned it on the wall. If I see her again, he vowed to himself, I’ll talk to her.

  The following Thursday evening James was in the cinema, watching, on Zoe’s recommendation, Fellini’s Casanova. It was a peculiar film with a tone all of its own, but James was unable to concentrate. For at inappropriate moments during the film a woman seated directly behind him laughed out loud. It was a husky laugh that was part mocking, part dirty and part uninhibited pleasure; the sound of it made James’ hair stand on end; it both annoyed him and gave him a hard-on.

  When the lights went up he stood and turned around and right there was the dancing woman from his photos; she was with a whole group – a row – of friends, and they were speaking in Italian. James fumbled with his jacket, glancing at her as often as he thought he could. Their eyes met for a moment, and she smiled as she looked away, and joined her friends filing out.

  James watched her leave in the crowd. You promised, you spineless idiot, he berated himself. What have you got to lose, you useless prick? he cursed. He pushed forward, squeezing through the bodies shuffling into the foyer, and caught up with her on the pavement outside. At least she wasn’t holding hands with any of her friends, he noted. James’ heart was thumping, his armpits sweating.

  ‘Scusi,’ he exclaimed, and had to take a deep breath. ‘Mi permesso,’ he stuttered, as he discovered that he was unable to utter more than four syllables unaided.

  The woman had stopped and was looking at him, as calm as James was flustered: there was no expression of either suspicion or interest on her face, only a faint blank smile as she waited for James to declare himself.

  ‘Sono James,’ he announced, ‘James Freeman.’ He took another breath, but before he could continue she interrupted:

  ‘I am Anna Maria Sabato,’ she said, proffering her hand. ‘Please to meet you, James James Freeman.’

  ‘I’m a photographer,’ James explained, ‘on our local paper. I recognize you because I took a bunch of photos at that rally last Saturday, you know, in the park, and you were in some of them.’

  ‘I were?’

  ‘Yes, and, er, maybe you’d like to have one, to see them?’ James’ heart was thumping loudly. The woman looked at him, weighing him up, for what seemed an eternity, although it might have been closer to two or three seconds. ‘That is very awful,’ she declared eventually.

  ‘What?’ James asked, flummoxed.

  ‘To see peectures of me. Very awful photographs.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ James disagreed. ‘They’re very good. I don’t mean because I took them,’ he stammered, ‘but because you’re in … I mean, they’re good, you’ll like them.’

  ‘Well,’ she decided. ‘I shall have them, and then I destroy the negateeve.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure you can do that,’ James said. ‘I mean, you know, they belong to the paper, but—’

  ‘No problem,’ she cut him off. ‘Where do we meet, James James Freeman?’

  He gave her the name of a pub and they fixed a time the following day, and Anna Maria walked off along the road with her friends. James returned into the now empty foyer, opened the door leading up to the projection booth and Zoe’s flat, and slumped on the stairs.

  Anna Maria smelled of the sea, although she was a long way from her home of Naples, here to study English in this small town in the middle of a foreign island. James met her at the end of June and he was dazzled – whether by her or by the summer sun, he wasn’t at first sure. She had dark-brown eyes that absorbed the sun’s rays, while James’ pale-blue eyes of some woodland creature, his troglodytic, northern eyes, blinked and ached and watered in the sun. He hid beneath hats and behind polychromatic shades that blazing July but still had to scrunch up his eyes as if he were frowning at her, his papery skin creasing with incipient crow’s-feet at the age of twenty-two.

  Only at night, when the sun had gone down, was James able to look Anna Maria full in the face and verify her beauty. And she was beautiful, even if only through a strange harmony of disparate elements: Anna Maria had large eyes close together, a nose that managed to be both flat and crooked, a mouth pushed slightly outwards by jutting teeth, and a square jaw. But put together – with her Neapolitan’s brown hair, skin and eyes – those components made Anna Maria as lovely a woman as James thought he’d ever seen.

  She was also six inches shorter than James, although he would be surprised whenever he saw them together, in reflection, standing side by side, for somehow the proportions of her body created the illusion that she was taller than she really was. And James’ height was just whatever it happened to be: ‘A person doesn’t feel their height,’ he told her; ‘you just knock your forehead now and then against the lintels of low door frames; things tell you you’re too tall!’

  But he wasn’t too tall – she wasn’t too short – for them to kiss without undue discomfort. She came to his bedsit that first evening after the pub, chose music from his small record collection (selecting, to his surprise, his one classical record, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake) and sat on his bed.

  ‘So, James James Freeman, thees is your palace. Some time you show me round it, yes?’

  ‘I’ll give you a guided tour,’ he replied, pulling the cork from a bottle of red wine with a slide and plop.

  ‘We have seen Stratford, we have seen the Tower of London, we have seen Oxford and Bath. I have done the tourist, James James. It is not my cup of coffee.’

  They looked through other photographs. When they’d drunk half the bottle of wine they kissed. Her breath was warm and heavy. Their teeth bumped and Anna Maria laughed. They undressed and she smelled of the sea. On the brink of intercourse, James lost his erection. It was an extraordinary thing, sudden and inexplicable. They lay side by side for a time, then James went to the lavatory, down in the basement. The shower dripped. He sat on the toilet contemplating his options. One – the most obvious and attractive – was suicide. The other … he couldn’t quite think of another. The draughtless cubicle was dank and damp still with condensation from a shower someone had taken hours earlier; James’ self-pitying curses were amplified in it in an almost sardonic way.

  ‘Fuck this,’ James said to himself, and returned to his room. Anna Maria was still there. He decided to enlist her help.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s not you. And it’s not me either, it’s nothing to do with me. I’ve got an enemy, you’re beautiful, I don’t know what it is, but I can ove
rcome it if you help me.’

  ‘Of course,’ Anna Maria told him. ‘No worry, James. It happens. Always.’

  ‘Really?’ he asked. ‘To you?’

  ‘To me? Are you joking?’ she replied. ‘Of course it happens,’ she added. ‘In Eetaly, yes, of course.’

  She soon fell asleep in his arms. He followed her much later, into a thick and dreamless sleep.

  James awoke with a gasp, into sensory confusion, a few moments before Anna Maria slid him inside her: not long enough for the hard-on she’d discovered upon waking to realize it was being taken unawares. He thrust up out of his dreams; they possessed each other wide awake.

  ‘See?’ she said, moving astride him, ‘no problem, James. Anyway, to make love it is better in the morning.’ She put her hands on his chest and he closed his eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ he murmured, when he felt his come approaching from a deep distance.

  James had no more such problems. From then on he had only to have Anna Maria brush past him, to smell her, to see her, to be aroused. He wanted her all the time. They both conspired to pretend, however, that an enemy of impotence was lurking and had constantly to be outwitted: she taught him to kiss with their fingers in each other’s ears (‘Kisses are keys, James’). They made love blindfold (‘Every sense that you rob, James, it makes the others more big’). And, just to make sure, Anna Maria squeezed his throat (‘Like the Americans, James’), on condition he did the same to her.

  Anna Maria bought a second-hand Vespa that quacked like a duck as she rode it without a helmet through red lights. At the weekends James raced her on his bicycle a couple of miles out of town, to a bend in the river where it came winding close to the reservoir that fed the valley, as if the waters were attracting each other there.

  They swam in the river by a willow tree, made love in the grass, and then Anna Maria sunbathed with coconut oil which James rubbed into her skin, while he hid beneath shirts and towels, hats and sunglasses.

  ‘If you do a beet at a time, James,’ Anna Maria assured him, ‘in the end you become brown. It is the science.’