Darke

by Rick Gekoski

‘What?’

  ‘Not the classes, all that rubbish. Any damn fool woman can have a baby, millions of the little fuckers born every year. Actually, it hurts and it’s rather lowering to the spirit. Bit gross really . . .’

  She wiped her forehead. I was distressed to find both that she felt that way, and that I shared the feeling. Even with our new little person lying at our side, it was a crunching anti-climax. How could that be? Why’d nobody warned us? We’d been fed on the pabulum of New Parenthood, and none of the received wisdom applied.

  ‘But no one until me has invented the word “Shitslinger”. It’s like a new category, isn’t it? You can divide the world into Shitslingers and non-Shitslingers. Much more useful than Good and Bad, or Beautiful and Ugly. It’s what the poor cow lady was trying to say. And all this fatuous encouraging and enhancing is caused – which is what is ironic, and funny and sad – by goodwill and the desire to help others. To transmit something that will be useful.’

  ‘You mean wisdom, don’t you?’

  ‘I do. The whole shebang. Special insight into the big issues. An answer to the meaning of life. Rules to learn, maxims to apply. I hate all the fuckers. The one-answer-fits-all hucksters. Priests, politicians, therapists, sages, and all the other charlatans. And especially natural childbirth teachers.’ She winced. ‘Can you tell that bitch nurse to get me some painkillers?’

  At the side of the bed, little Lucy slept deeply, subliminally aware of the happiness surrounding her, presuming that it was she who had caused it. She woke every few hours to guzzle the bounty of her mother’s breasts, and looked into Suzy’s face as she was fed, a thoroughly content parcel of original sin.

  Our linguistic euphoria was a drug-induced displacement activity, which wore off in due course and left Suzy free to attach herself to the new baby. Lucy, we agreed. I love Lucy. And Suzy, somewhat to my surprise and to her astonishment, rather liked being a mother, braved the wakeful nights and screaming colic, the coming of teeth and exiting of surprisingly large and regular turds. I was expected, in that new world of new men who were supposed to do their bit, all their bits, to pitch in, do the midnight feed with a bottle, carry Lucy on my front in a pouch, strain the baby food.

  Change nappies? I tried. Even Suzy could see that. I may have been unwilling, and somatically repelled, but I knew my duty when I smelled it. The only problem, once I had unfastened the tabs of the disposable nappy and pulled it down to review its contents, was that I gagged, stepped back, did my breathing exercise, re-encountered the noxious mass, gagged again. And then vomited.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, you do carry on so!’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said, wiping my mouth yet again, while poor Lucy squirmed on the changing mat covered in shit from bottom to thighs. ‘I’m not carrying on. I am trying. The spirit is willing.’

  ‘And now I have two babies to clean up,’ she said. ‘Let me do it.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t think men are cut out for this sort of thing.’

  ‘You’re certainly not.’

  Women are more physical than men, more in and of their bodies, inured to being poked and prodded, to pap smears and breast examinations and speculums. They are shaved, given enemas, produce babies, feed and change and look after them. It’s men who are shy and squeamish. I faint at the sight of blood, turn my head away when a telly programme shows an operation – or, to be honest, even an injection, as I cannot watch the hypodermic pierce the skin. When I encounter the needle, I pinch myself so hard that it distracts me, and close my eyes, while pretending to the nurse that I am merely breathing quietly and restfully.

  Suzy took over the mucky duties resentfully, feeling that if I were sufficiently a man and a father and a helpmeet – most of her friends’ husbands did their fair whack at the changing table – I would suppress my nausea and get on with it. After all, she enquired icily, did I think she enjoyed wiping a bottom?

  ‘It doesn’t make you sick, though, does it? There’s something fundamental about nausea. You don’t control it, it controls you. It’s Sartre, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it’s not. Do shut the fuck up. If you’re going to be useless, there’s no need to be pompous as well.’

  The elementary school was plonked glumly a mile from the city centre, on a corner of two streets of which it was impossible to say which was the more unprepossessing. That the not entirely unattractive town of Abingdon should have this ghastly appendage beggared belief. That my grandson Rudy should go to such a school was a humiliation that attached equally to him, to his family, and to me. I had offered to pay fees for a decent prep school and then, hopefully, Winchester, but his parents were adamant in their hostility to private education.

  ‘Elitism pure and simple, based on class and money.’ Sam was not short of opinions on the subject, though he had no arguments to back them up, only assertions and class prejudices of his own. He was a product of a Northern secondary school – ‘didn’t do me any harm!’ – and had done sufficiently well at A levels – two Bs and a C sort of thing – to get into Sheffield University, where he read Sociology before training as a social worker.

  I knew enough not to argue with him. Private schooling would offer Rudy a better education, a more likely entry to Oxbridge, a pool of friends and contacts who would serve him well in later life: I knew that. So did Sam. Only I thought it was desirable and he thought it abhorrent. Nothing to argue about there, as if we were debating whether sprouts are delicious.

  I pulled the Mercedes to the kerbside opposite the school, sufficiently early to find a place, suddenly aware that it stood out amongst the humble vehicles that were filling the spaces. School let out in twenty minutes, and the road would soon be filled with mums picking up nippers indistinguishable as to sex, their hair of similar lengths, most with a backpack, sloppy trousers and a puffy parka to keep out the spring chill. Who looked and behaved and talked like clones. So would the children at the local prep schools, only they would dress better and talk more intelligibly. And with better accents.

  Spotting Rudy was thus impossible, for my eye is untrained in the subtle differences that would enable me to tell him from a Bertie or a Betty. No, what I had to do was look for Lucy’s battered Volkswagen Beetle, and Rudy would head her way.

  I had ensured that I would not be noticed. I had my two sets of tints – windows and sunglasses – as well as a rather flattering homburg that was once my father’s. I pulled it low over my eyes, like Humphrey Bogart playing Philip Marlowe, and staked the place out, waiting patiently, smoking my cigar. Europcar would hate me, unless I could air the car sufficiently in a week. But I suspect they have sniffer dogs who yowl and issue fines at the veriest hint of smoke. Whopping great bill for detoxifying the car. Nice little earner for them.

  Opposite the school was a small row of shops, with its own service road and parking, which harried mums used at pick-up time, to the annoyance of the local shopkeepers. There was a Coral bookies, a Spar market, a couple of charity shops, and a newsagent eking out a living a penny at a time selling sweeties to the children and cheap magazines to their mums. I wondered if they sold sour lemons, and if Rudy liked them. If Lucy still did. Two of the shops were boarded up. Even at this peak time, there were only a couple of potential shoppers, killing time before the children were released. If it had been more cheerful, you might have described it as desolate.

  Lucy drove up at 3.25 and, as her car approached, I had a moment of anxiety that she would park close to me, though I’d tried to wedge the Merc into a tight spot. But she tootled right by, her engine wheezing, and parked four cars down on the opposite side, sat behind the wheel for a few moments, before emerging to meet Rudy as he came out.

  Wreathed in smoke, darkened by tint, disguised by hat, I peered at my daughter, suppressing the desire to rush out and take her into my arms. She’d changed. It was nothing as perceptible as a haggard or wasted visage, indeed, she seemed to have gained weight, comfort eating I suppose, but something had slipped from her. She’d inherited
very little from Suzy – neither gay assurance, nor social ease, not even the capacity to dress well. She had nothing of her mother’s beauty, but they shared an unconscious physical grace, a way of walking that made people in the street turn and notice. Suzy and she, walking in the park, were like animals on an African veldt, proud and unconscious, beautifully pelted, unpredictably skittish, and dangerous. Other children and their mums eyed them, wanting to make an advance, but rarely did. There was something self-contained about them, powerful, physiologically aristocratic.

  Suzy revelled in her physicality, but Lucy was embarrassed by hers. She had excelled at hockey and netball at school, was invited to join the county junior sides, but took no pleasure in it and eventually quit, saying she disapproved of competition. ‘I don’t want to make other girls into losers! It makes them cry. And then they both resent me and idolise me. I hate it.’

  She not only abjured sport entirely, she renounced her ease, adopted a slouch, was no longer an object of admiration in the park, or anywhere else for that matter. She took to frumpy as if it were fashionable, though she disapproved of fashion as well.

  It was worse now, nothing so obvious as a slump of the shoulders, or a shortening of stride, though there was something of both. She moved ponderously, burdened by weight, as exhausted and defeated as a runner who has dropped out of a marathon and wants to cry, but is too proud. She brightened as Rudy ran towards her and hoisted him up into her arms, backpack and all. She winced at his weight, less strong than she had been, though it looked like he’d grown. Hard to tell in that hideous puffball parka. Purple.

  I was afraid even to let down the window, my view obscured by smoke and my various disguises. Through my glasses, darkly. I could not know them yet, lest I should be known in return. But what I saw was bowel-searing, and I gripped the armrests as if to steady myself from a faint, still, unreleased by love. They crossed the street hand in hand, some fifteen feet from my windscreen as I hunched in self-protection, knotted with stomach cramps. I tried to remember how to breathe. Oxford. Shitslinger. In. Out.

  They returned from the newsagent’s with Rudy clutching a Magnum, picking away the chocolate slices from its surface, willing to face the drear vanilla underpinning for those few moments of delight. Lucy looked at him, and a smile – her smile – appeared briefly and it was as if the light had re-appeared in her eyes.

  I drove off, without looking back.

  I could email, or ring. The former was cowardly and impersonal, the latter guaranteed a salvo that would resink the Bismarck. I sat on the sofa, the remains of afternoon tea on the table before me, quite unable to do either. No hurry, after all. She didn’t know I was near, thought me still lost.

  I am.

  No hurry. The next morning, I braved breakfast in the dining area, which was only a quarter full and as quiet as a room should be at 8 a.m. I interrogated the colour of my three-and-a-half-minute boiled eggs, which was sufficiently orange, dunked my wholegrain soldiers into their centres, sipped a double-strength latte, which of course was not good enough – it’s impossible to make coffee adequately for multiple cups. Starbucks is wretched, of course, but even fancy hotels, as this aspires to be, cannot quite get it right. I pursed my lips, braved a second cup for the sake of the caffeine, but couldn’t finish it and pushed it away.

  ‘Finished with that, sir? Everything all right?’

  You’re not supposed to answer, because it isn’t a question, it’s a gesture. Meaningless as ‘have a good day’ from someone who doesn’t care if you’re dying of cancer.

  ‘The coffee is insipid. I can’t finish it.’

  She looked as startled as if I’d burped in her face. ‘I’m so sorry. Shall I get you another?’ She looked at me rather strictly from under her eyebrows, like Princess Diana in a strop, suppressing the rejoinder ‘Presumably the first one was just dandy? You glugged it down fast enough, you irritating ponce.’

  I didn’t look up from The Times. ‘No. Just take it away. And I’ll sign for the bill now.’

  I suspect I was so cross because of the decor, not the coffee. The walls of the bar and dining room were liberally hung with the sort of modern English paintings that, had an amateur daubed them, might be accounted charming. But they were weak, vapidly pretty, lacking power or conviction, the painterly equivalent of ‘have a good day’. Sitting in the dining room amidst dozens of them, I felt ashamed of the pictures of my countrymen, comparing them to what was being produced in France at the same time. I have my reservations about Matisse and (particularly) Picasso, but they have quality and conviction. Whereas here the bucket-shop Bloomsbury pictures were merely depressing. The blessed Vanessa and horn-dog Duncan studied in Paris for a couple of years, and when they returned before the war they could actually paint, but rutting and daubing away in Sussex quickly forgot how to do it, and churned out inane rubbish for the rest of their lives, most of which was eventually purchased by gullible Americans, who thought all those Bloomsberries the ultimate swells.

  It was impossible to succour one’s soul in such an atmosphere, to be anything other than cramped and irritable, impinged upon by the pretentious and second-rate. And that’s just the painting. Think of the people. Or better yet, don’t. I had become a room-service addict, however cramped my very Junior Suite might be. At least the company is better, and I set a very low standard. I resolved to take my meals in my room, or elsewhere. There must be somewhere decent to eat in Oxford, in which you are not assaulted by the decor?

  The walk down St Giles, across the Broad, the cut-through past Bodley and the Radcliffe Camera, the quiet lane that led down to Merton Street, would have been replete with memory, had I allowed it. Instead I walked in a fug, though my steps quickened as I walked the long-ago familiar paths, became less doddery, my legs suddenly recalling days less soaked with pain.

  Former happiness, I suppose you might call it, if you remembered what it felt like. I’d loved being at Merton, schoolboyish and innocent. I made brass rubbings in the Chapel, went to Evensong, studied in the library in Mob Quad rather than one of the less intimate University venues, preened in my scholar’s gown for meals in Hall, relished the combative exigencies of weekly tutorials.

  I’d been lucky, and scored a rather grand set of rooms on the second floor in the front quad, with a generous study and slightly less capacious but perfectly adequate bedroom attached. On the outer oak door my name was displayed in a brass holder – JAMES DARKE – and I felt, for the first time in my life, adequately provisioned, even celebrated. The rooms proclaimed me, and I was proud.

  And cold. The stone walls attracted freezing moisture, stored it, and redeployed it as if they were storage heaters designed to refrigerate. I slept in pyjamas, socks and a woolly sweater, and tried to tuck myself fully under the covers in case my ears iced over and fell off. When, in a moment of the most extreme discomfort, colder than Scott in the Antarctic, I left my electric heater on two bars overnight, which just about managed to take the chill off, I was roundly criticised by my scout in the morning. Profligate. Spoiled.

  I suspected that the college authorities were delighted the rooms were so cold, for they were a perfect disincentive to sexual activity. Not that this was allowed – gentlemen were not to ‘entertain’ ladies in their rooms – but the rule was unenforced as long as one was sufficiently discreet. Anyway, no one in their right mind would have contemplated love-making in such an atmosphere, it was hard enough managing a brief bout of self-abuse, because you had to tent up the bedclothes and cold air would inevitably get in. But two bodies, no matter how carefully swathed by blankets and heated by lust, could not have relished a libidinous encounter. Even with the electric heater on. And so, for much of the winter, Merton became a sex-free zone.

  I wandered in past the Porter’s Lodge, hoping not to have to introduce myself as a (very) old Mertonian, free to wander at will, for tourists were carefully shepherded except at permitted hours. My feet recalled the cobblestones of the front quad, and the steps to the H
all drew me upwards. The portraits of antique College worthies above the dining tables looked down on me, familiar and not unwelcoming, now I was as old as they. I used to be rather afraid of them, as their long dead immortal eyes gazed down on us boys, knowing us for frauds and sensualists. As they had been too, no doubt, but the paint had banished memory, and now they were merely upright, blameless and disapproving, shellacked with virtue, monitoring us as we ate and gossiped and drank, and headed into the darkness.

  In Michaelmas and Trinity terms, in the freshening spring and mellow autumn, when the gardens showed off their treasures and the college became a quiet little paradise, then we could entertain our girls in the warmth of our quarters, and luxuriate in their caresses without the slightest shiver or chilblain. Suzy, not unnaturally, but also not ungrudgingly, preferred to make love in my rooms, however pernickety she found my mode of living. When I wasn’t looking, she would de-alphabetise my books, a gesture I never found in the least congenial.

  Merton was a sensualist’s paradise compared to St Anne’s. Her crimped room overlooked a patch of grass with a few mature trees, surrounded by some immature buildings. We had to sneak up to it in the darkness, and a few hours later make our way out again, past the Porter’s Lodge to the freedom of the Woodstock road, giggling, smelling of drink and sex, satisfied, triumphant.

  *

  Revisiting my Oxford gargoyles I am aware only of loss. There’s nothing consoling in the ‘memory’ of those innocent times. Memory is not a form of resurrection. I would not recognise the young James and Suzy if they bumped into me on the High. They’re gone. We’re gone. She’s gone, dead. We both are. Everybody is. That’s what it is to be alive.

  And here I am in this godawful hotel room, slopping about in that residual gloop, trying to recall, to resurrect, mocked by memory, unmanned. But really my strongest impulse is to forget, to make it all go away – our foolish youthful selves: James, Suzy. Suzy’s form in that bed at Merton, the craggy nodules of her spine traced by my fingertips, the dear squishy pads of her toes, that piece of grit in the corner of her mouth like a minuscule pebble sucked from the bank of a stream. It happened, didn’t it? Who knows? The images lack clarity: they are called not recalled, they’re fictional now. I have to make them up. Memory makes novelists of us all, bad novelists.