Metroland

by Julian Barnes

  ‘Shocking, this knee/foot/liver of mine,’ he would observe to Marion, and didn’t even lay on the over-zealous thanks (which formerly gave him such a kick) when she got up and headed for the kitchen. Other physical defects-some longstanding like recurrent dreams, some the dragonfly fads of an afternoon-prevented him from changing plugs, reaching high shelves, mending his clothes, washing up or seeing us off. One day, when he had confessed to an arthritic thumb, muddy vision and a possibly gangrenous foot within the space of half an hour, Marion suggested a doctor.

  ‘After me money are you? Horse-butchers, all of them. It’s in their interests to keep you ill, any fool can see that. So that they can claim more money off the Ministry of Health commissars.’

  ‘But, Arthur,’ Marion pretended to protest, ‘maybe it’s something serious.’

  ‘Nothing that another cushion’ (pretending to reach for one) ‘can’t oooo ooowww thank you lad cure.’ Then he added dutifully, ‘Blasted knee.’

  His meanness, which had previously been subject to coy disguise, gradually assumed the nature of a straightforward pleasure. His dog Ferdinand had died not long after Arthur had decided that there was an unnecessary amount of meat in dog-food. A 50 per cent Pal and 50 per cent wood-shavings mixture had done for Ferdinand. Arthur would have watered its water if he’d known how.

  He lost friends as he grew older. He didn’t mend his fences, never drew his curtains, and enjoyed annoying his neighbours with prolonged bouts of scratching. The Christmas cards he sent were always recycled, with an ostentatious patch over the previous sender’s signature; sometimes, with a sort of gnarled playfulness, he would return to Marion and me the same card we had sent him the Christmas before.

  The rest of his correspondence was mainly with the directors of mail-order firms, whom he managed to cheat quite efficiently. His technique was to send off for goods on approval; when they arrived, he would wait a month, send off a cheque and immediately order his bank not to honour it. When a query arrived from the firm, he wrote back to them at once (but dating the letter two days earlier, so that it would appear to have crossed in the post), complaining of the quality of the goods, demanding a replacement before he sent back the defective item, and asking for advance reimbursement of postal and packing charges. He had other, more Byzantine delaying ploys, and frequently ended up gaining an ex-RNVR officer’s heavy-duty parka, or a pair of plastic-handled self-sharpening secateurs, for merely the cost of a few steamed-off stamps and re-used envelopes.

  Some of Arthur’s infirmities, however, must have been genuine – though I wonder if he himself knew the difference – and ganged together to produce a fatal heart attack. The fact of his death didn’t move me much; nor did its lonely circumstances, which were of his own choosing. Instead, what upset me when Nigel and I went to clear up the bungalow was the pathos of objects. While Nigel chattered away about the ghoulish features of dying which interested him, I grew melancholy at the half-finished things which a death persuades you to focus on. The heap of dirty dishes was normal for Arthur, who had once applied for a reduction in his water rate on the grounds that he washed up only every fortnight, and then used the leftover liquid for watering his roses. But everywhere I was impaled by objects that lay freshly abandoned, severed, discarded. A half-empty packet of pipe cleaners with one – the next to be used – projecting from it. Bookmarks (more exactly, scraps of newspaper) sadly noting the point beyond which Arthur would never read (not that I cared, in one sense). Clothes which, though others would have thrown them away, still had five good years of wear in them for Arthur. Clocks which would now run down without any interference. A diary killed off at 23rd June.

  The cremation was no worse than a family Christmas, or a changing-room encounter with some rugby team of which you are a reluctant member. Afterwards, we filed out into the hot afternoon, the dozen or so mourners whom Arthur’s death had scraped together. We stood around awkwardly, read the wreaths and commented on each other’s cars. Some of our wreaths, I noticed, didn’t have a sender’s name pinned to them; perhaps they had been contributed by the crem to stop us getting depressed at our poor showing.

  As Marion drove us home, I held Amy in my arms and listened to the back-seat prattle of a couple of half-identified relatives. I mused lightly about Arthur’s death, about him simply not existing any more; then let my brain idle over my own future non-existence. I hadn’t thought about it for years. And then I suddenly realised I was contemplating it almost without fear. I started again, more seriously this time, masochistically trying to spring that familiar trigger for panic and terror. But nothing happened; I felt calm; Amy gurgled happily in reply to the alternating strain and roar of the car. It was like the moment when the Indians go away.

  That evening, as Marion sewed and I sat over a book, my conversation with Toni in the garden came back to me. I wondered how far off my death would be: thirty, forty, fifty years? And would I sleep with anyone other than my wife until I died? Screw not, lest thy wife be screwn, Toni had jeered. But that against fifty years? And so far, had I been faithful because I still enjoyed making love to my wife (why that ‘still’?)? Is fidelity merely a function of sexual pleasure? If desire slackened, or timor mortis rose, what then? And what, in the future, if you suddenly became bored with the same round of friends? Sex, after all, is travel.

  ‘You remember Tim Penny’s party?’ The time had come, I thought, to disprove some of Toni’s assumptions about our marriage.

  ‘Mmmn.’ Marion carried on stitching neatly.

  ‘Well, something happened there.’ (But why did I feel nervous?)

  ‘Mmmn?’

  ‘I … met a girl who tried to get off with me.’ Marion looked up at me quizzically, then went back to her needle.

  ‘Well, I’m glad I’m not the only person who finds you attractive.’

  ‘No, I mean she tried really quite hard.’

  ‘I can’t say I blame her.’

  It was odd. Whenever Marion and I start talking about really serious matters I can never predict which way the conversation will go. I don’t mean she doesn’t understand me; maybe she understands me too well; but I always feel out-manoeuvred – and I know she isn’t manoeuvring.

  ‘I mean, I didn’t fancy her back.’

  ‘…’

  ‘She was quite pretty, actually.’

  ‘…’

  ‘It just seems to have upset me a bit, that’s all.’ Shit, I sounded weedy.

  ‘Chris, do be more adult. You just fancied her, that’s all.’

  ‘No I didn’t – only I suppose I was thinking, well, if we’re both about thirty now: it was all in general terms really – I suppose I was wondering if we were going to end up sleeping with other people ever.’

  ‘You mean, you were wondering if you were.’ It was like having someone constantly resetting a table you thought you’d laid. ‘And the answer is, of course you will,’ she said, looking up at me.

  ‘Oh come on …’ But why did I look away? I felt guilt already, as if she was calmly showing me Polaroids of my humping bum.

  ‘Of course you will. I mean, probably not now, not here; not, I hope to God, ever in this house. But some time. I’ve never doubted that. Some time. It’s too interesting not to.’

  ‘But I haven’t tried to, I haven’t wanted to.’ I felt upset as well as guilty; but also, to be truthful, I didn’t want it all previewed; maybe, secretly, I was wanting to save all the emotions – even the unpleasant ones – for later.

  ‘It’s all right, Chris. You didn’t go into marriage expecting a virgin and I didn’t go in expecting a flagrantly faithful husband. Don’t think I can’t imagine what it’s like to be sexually bored.’ Oh shit: it was getting out of hand now. I didn’t want to hear any of this.

  ‘Honestly, love, I was thinking in very general terms – you know, almost in terms of morality, er,’ (feebly) ‘philosophy. And I wasn’t thinking especially about me. I was thinking about both of us, about … everyone.’

&
nbsp; ‘You weren’t, Chris, otherwise you would have asked about me before now.’

  ‘…?’

  ‘And so, even if you aren’t asking, you may as well know that the answer is Yes I did once, and Yes it was only once, and No it didn’t make any difference to us at the time as we weren’t getting on perfectly anyway, and No I don’t particularly regret it, and No you haven’t met or heard of him.’

  Christ. Shit. Fuck. She looked at me, directly, openly, with calm eyes. I was the one who looked away. It was all wrong.

  ‘And I’ve never been tempted since, and with Amy now I shouldn’t think I will be, and it’s all right, Chris, it’s really all all right.’

  Shit. Piss. Fuck. Well, bugger anyway. Well, I suppose that sort of answered my question.

  ‘I suppose that answers my question,’ I said ruefully. Marion came across and gently stroked the back of my neck. I liked that.

  What was I meant to feel? What did I feel? That it was quite funny really. Also, that it was interesting. Also, that I was half-proud that Marion was still capable of astonishing me. Jealousy, anger, petulance? They would have been a bit out of place. They could hang around for later.

  That night I made love to Marion with a hectic diligence. Rather well too, as it turned out. At the end, as she turned over into sleep, Marion surprised me again.

  ‘Was that better?’

  ‘Better than what?’

  ‘That girl at Tim Penny’s?’ How could she tease me about that when, when … But then again, I was almost pleased that she could and did.

  ‘Well, she wasn’t bad, you know. Really not bad for a young thing. But what I always say is, who wants plonk when you can get château-bottled?’

  ‘Wino,’ she chuckled.

  ‘Gourmet,’ I corrected her; and we made happy, sleepy noises at each other. Perhaps it really was all all right?

  5 • The Honours Board

  When I took up Tim Penny’s invitation to the old boys’ dinner, it was largely in a spirit of satirical curiosity. What were they all like, some twelve, thirteen years after I’d last set eyes on them? Who would be there, whom would I recognise? Would Barton, who sat at the desk in front of me for a whole year when I was fourteen, still have that gristly knob above his left ear; or would it all be camouflaged by blown-dry layer-cutting? Would Steinway still want to dash off to the bog for a quick wank in the middle of things, returning listless but satisfied? Would Gilchrist still be making damp, squelchy noises with his hands (had he gone into the BBC sound effects department?). How many of them would be bald? Had anyone died?

  I had a couple of hours to kill before the school served – what? watery fino? – so I arranged to have a drink with Toni. I suggested – since it was only a couple of minutes from Harlow Tewson – that we meet at the National Gallery; but Toni said he didn’t visit cemeteries any more. Instead, I dropped in alone for quarter of an hour first.

  ‘Any new gravestones?’ Toni enquired with his old squint-grin as we settled over our drinks (white wine for me, whisky and Guinness chaser for him).

  ‘There’s a nice Seurat on loan. And that new Rousseau. Though I didn’t look at them very closely.’ (Toni grunted, gave himself a Guinness moustache) ‘I find I always turn left in there: Piero, Crivelli, Bellini, that’s what I go for nowadays.’

  ‘Quite right: no point in looking for live stuff in a cemetery. Might as well look at the dead fucks.’

  ‘You have to be dead to get in, don’t you?’

  ‘Some are shamming life. But the old fucks who are working within a totally defunct framework – then you can really concentrate on technique and stuff. Crivelli – yeah.’

  I didn’t like to say that I found Crivelli’s saints and martyrs – the drawn, Gothic faces and the 3-D jewels – well, really quite moving.

  ‘Do you remember our silly experiments there?’ I was interested to see which way Toni would go.

  ‘What was so sodding silly about them?’ I always forgot how quickly he was roused. ‘I mean, we were on the right track, weren’t we? I admit we were fundamentally misguided in the choice of our specimens: looking for a spark of response in the commuters and hand-jobbers you get going round that place is about as futile as looking for a prong on a eunuch. But at least we were looking, at least we believed that art was to do with something happening, that it wasn’t all a water-colour wank.’

  ‘Hmmn.’

  ‘What do you mean, hmmn?’

  ‘Don’t you sometimes wonder if that’s all it is?’

  ‘Chris …’ He sounded surprised, disappointed; not angry and contemptuous as I’d half expected. ‘Come on, Chris, not you as well. I mean, I know I get at you a lot. But you don’t really think that do you?’

  For once he seemed capable of being hurt; and I for once felt disinclined to pacify him. I remembered his phrase about Marion and the loofah. ‘I don’t know. I used to think I knew. I love all of it as much as I ever did: I read, I go to the theatre, I like pictures …’

  ‘Dead cunts’ pictures.’

  ‘Old pictures, OK. I like it all; I always did; I just don’t know whether there’s any sort of direct link between it and me – whether the connection we force ourselves to believe in is really there.’

  ‘Don’t give me Wagner and the Nazis, I beg.’

  ‘OK, but isn’t it a bit like the cathedral and religion fallacy? Just because art claims a lot for itself doesn’t mean its claims are true.’

  ‘Nooooo,’ said Toni, as if to a child.

  ‘And I honestly don’t believe our experiments as we called them showed anything much at all.’

  ‘Nooooo.’

  ‘So the only place you can look to find out whether or not it’s all a water-colour wank, as you put it, is within yourself.’

  ‘Yeeeah.’

  ‘Well. Well, I suppose that since we started looking I’ve gradually become less and less convinced.’ I glanced up, expecting Toni to be baleful; he was knitting his brows, seeming pained. ‘I mean, I don’t deny that it’s all …’ I looked up again, nervously ‘… fun, and you know, moving and all that stuff as well, and interesting too. But in terms of what it actually does, what can you say? What can you actually say in favour of the National Gallery?’

  ‘Shit all, I agree.’

  ‘No – agree for the right reasons. Fill it with all the stuff you like, all the stuff which, if you wouldn’t lay down your own life for, you might lay a few other people’s – and still what have you got? What can you say in its favour except that it keeps people off the streets; that there’s a pretty low level of mugging and incest and armed robbery inside the National Gallery?’

  ‘Aren’t you being a bit literalist? You sound like some Soviet arts commissar to me – every vork off heart must do somm gut, immediate.’

  ‘No, because that’s obviously rubbish too.’

  ‘So what’s changed? The art hasn’t, boyo. I can tell you that. Looks like a sell-out job to me.’

  ‘That’s a pretty silly remark.’

  ‘Well, what’s become of you? I mean, even when you were in Paris …’

  ‘Which is a decade ago. Which is all my adult life ago.’

  ‘Ah – a new definition of “adult”: the time during which one has sold out.’

  ‘I told you – in the garden the other week – I just don’t see that it makes anything happen. Very nice for us that the Renaissance occurred and all that; but it’s all really about ego and aggro, isn’t it?’

  Toni put on his pedagogue voice again.

  ‘You don’t think the effect might be cumulative?’

  ‘I see that it could be; but that doesn’t make it any the less theoretical. Either way it seems to depend on an act of faith – and for the moment I’ve lapsed.’

  ‘Another triumph for the bourgeois steamroller,’ Toni noted sadly, almost to himself. ‘Travel with your pantoufles, do you?’

  ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘Wife, baby, reliable job, mortgage, flower garden,�
� (he stressed it contemptuously) ‘can’t fool me.’

  ‘What evidence is that? You’re not exactly Rimbaud yourself are you?’

  ‘And what are we doing tonight?’ Toni was warming up. ‘Back off to the old school? Quick visit to some quattrocento dead cunts and then off to the old school? Sounds like a boots-only on the bourgeoisie if you ask me.’

  ‘Well, it’s not like that. Sure I’m happy now; who hasn’t had that?’

  ‘But the evidence is against you.’

  ‘Then you, from your personal knowledge of me, ought to bloody well know better.’

  ‘Now who’s asking for an act of faith?’

  The front steps of the school were flanked by a rising row of lamp standards, round which twined iron eels with gaping mouths. Automatically, I glanced up at the high windows of the headmaster’s study, from which he had spied gauntly on boys arriving late. Tim and I were formally welcomed in the library by Colonel Barker, ex-head of the CCF, a corpulent man feared for his unpredictability. The area between his second and third waistcoat buttons was spanned by a huge star-shaped medal, slung round his neck on a scarlet ribbon. Was this, I wondered, his famous CBE, once announced to the school in tones more appropriate to foreign conquest? It looked too large and flashy to be British; perhaps he had been given it during the war by some government-in-exile.

  ‘Welcome, Lloyd,’ he gruffed at me, and the surname, despite a friendly burr in the voice, brought back old fears of defaulter parades, of rifle grease and wet undergrowth, of having your balls shot off. ‘Welcome back to the flock. More pleasure in one that hath strayed, and all that. Ah, Penny, wife well? How are the little halfpennies and farthings? Good. Good.’

  The library, scene of so many ‘private study periods’ (battleships and word games and thumbed copies of Spick) was all grey-and-white, the colour of commuters, the colour of businessmen. One or two bricky faces indicated spells abroad with the firm; but mostly they were the worn, indeterminate colour which comes from being surrounded by high buildings, earthed up like asparagus. Over there, wasn’t that Bradshaw? And Voss? And that boy who everyone thought was really thick, but still got made a prefect – Gurley? Gowley? Gurney? And – oh Christ – Renton in – oh Christ again – a dog collar; looking just as horribly enthusiastic as ever; nasty little excited eyes implying you ought to be doing something different. From round the room little whoops of recognition rang out, as far-off Corps camps and school plays were recalled.