Lust

by Geoff Ryman

  Every word was weighted because every word was meant. Michael was surprised by the surge of emotion he felt. The lower edge of his eyes seemed to shiver. It really was very good to see the old friendly face.

  ‘I’ve been OK. How are you?’ Michael meant, since the break-up.

  Philip understood: ‘It’s OK. Really.’ Philip kept his smile steady and kind. He had been lounging against the doorpost. He stepped back and Michael saw their apartment and Henry all at once.

  Henry was standing in anticipation against a huge single window that looked out over the canal and a range of new buildings. Henry waited calmly in old jeans and an old sweater. ‘Hello, Michael. It’s good to see you.’

  ‘It’s good to see you both,’ said Michael, and his look took them both in. He was relieved. This was going to work. This was in fact going to be delicious. He liked being with them both.

  The apartment was a good place to be if you were poor and had to be stranded out in South Quay. Sunlight blazed through the huge single window so the flat was deliciously warm, even though the ceiling was rounded and high. At night it would be cold. The floors were echoey pine and the furniture was direct from IKEA: self-assembled blonde wood. The sofa was really a futon on stilts. There was a cheerfully coloured foldaway metal table. Around it were the six walnut chairs from Michael’s old flat. They looked stodgy and out of place. The kitchen was tucked away in an alcove that was inserted beside the stairwell. Beside it was a doorway that led into the shower-toilet. In one corner were stacked in rows all of Philip’s paintings.

  ‘I want to see some of those later,’ said Michael.

  ‘Try and stop me. I want you to see them,’ said Philip, sauntering into the kitchen. ‘Darjeeling, rose hip, or camomile?’

  ‘Um. Rose hip, I think. Vitamin C to make up for all that booze.’

  Henry spoke, his soft voice echoing oddly off the hangar-shaped roof. ‘The new work is really very good. You’ll be proud of him.’

  Michael felt a surge of longing towards both of them. This was a kind and calm household, and though Michael wanted both of them, he also felt sad. What could bring this beautiful way of life to a halt?

  Philip was dropping the tea bags into the cups as if it were a game. He’s different, Michael thought. He moves differently. He used to shake and shiver all the time, and look angry, and dart about the place. As if sensing his thought, Philip said, ‘Henry’s taught me a lot.’ And he looked at Henry with real affection. He looked back at Michael. ‘Thank you,’ he said. To Michael.

  Michael pretended not to understand.

  Philip was still looking at him. ‘It was a very kind thing to do.’

  ‘Whuh what was?’

  Philip’s eyes rolled slightly towards the ceiling. ‘You know very well what.’

  Henry stepped forward. ‘He knows, Michael. I told him. I told him a long time ago. I have to keep telling him or he forgets. But that’s good too.’ He turned to look at Philip’s face. ‘It means we keep talking.’

  Suddenly Michael felt awkward. ‘I … it wasn’t something I knew I was doing.’

  Henry’s voice was quiet. ‘He knows that too.’

  Philip stood in the sunlight, and his voice was as still as Henry’s. ‘It really is all right, Michael. Sit down.’ He passed Michael his tea. ‘Would you like some Christmas cake with that?’

  Michael said yes, though his appetite had gone. He lowered himself rather shakily down onto the sofa. ‘Is it why you broke up?’

  Philip was slicing cake. ‘Well, it’s hardly a permanent solution, is it? But no, that’s not the reason. Here you go.’

  On the white rippled plate that Michael knew so well was the same old Christmas cake that Philip always cooked. Only now they didn’t live with each other and had only the mildest, most friendly connection with each other. This felt like another reality as well.

  Philip sat next to Henry, and the two of them hunkered down together on the futon sofa. ‘Philip’s found someone,’ said Henry, smiling. He nearly pulled it off. He nearly did look entirely pleased, almost without a trace of wistfulness. He looked back towards Philip and his face seemed to open up like a rose. It was a look like a mother gives when she knows she has to let go. He’s done it because he knows he won’t be here for ever. ‘Tell him about Lee,’ said Henry.

  ‘Well, you’ll meet him later.’ Philip was shy.

  ‘Lee’s lovely,’ said Henry, regaining all his poise.

  I’m not going to have either one of them, Michael realized. It was his turn for good behaviour. ‘Tell me about him,’ Michael asked.

  A little smile of delight played around the corner of Philip’s mouth. ‘Well. Lee’s from China. Communist China. Near Shanghai. He’s over here to study computing. And he’s … very handsome.’

  ‘Very handsome indeed,’ said Henry.

  ‘And he says that after his course is over that it would be possible for me to live in China. And … I’ve said yes.’ Philip chuckled at his own unexpected courage.

  ‘I’ll miss you,’ said Michael.

  Philip looked cheerful. ‘Well, I won’t be going for a few years yet.’

  Henry was full of love for him, real love, the love that works to lose the thing it most wants. ‘Phil’s doing very well learning Chinese.’

  ‘I figured it might take a while, so I might as well start now.’

  Michael occupied himself pressing bits of Philip’s cake together in order to eat it. Philip’s Christmas cake was always too crumbly. Well, Michael, it never turns out the way you expect. You’d better start adjusting now. There’s nothing else to do.

  ‘Can I see the paintings now?’ Michael asked.

  They were very good portraits, done in a slightly impressionistic style. The paint was liberally applied, a little bit as if someone were making mud pies. They told you things about the people. There were several pictures of Henry. Then one dreamlike painting, all sunlight in this flat with a slim broad-shouldered man looking away. ‘That’s Lee,’ said Philip.

  The sun was lower. The light was golden, on the paintings, on the faces.

  You can’t go back, Michael. Like Time, love flows in one direction only. You’ll stay friends with Philip. You’ll write e-mails. You might even visit him in China. And Henry?

  Suddenly, there was the painting of Henry, the one on the card.

  ‘What … what will happen when Henry goes?’ Philip asked.

  ‘I wonder that too,’ said Michael. ‘You’ll have the painting. I don’t know if you’ll remember who it was. But,’ he sighed, ‘you won’t feel any regret or loss. You won’t be in the same reality. That’s all.’

  ‘Make up a nice story for me,’ said Philip. ‘How I came to paint this. About who he was. What he was like.’ He looked back up at Michael, and his eyes had something of iron in them.

  The other friends started to arrive about seven o’clock. The thought of them had caused Michael trepidation too, but these were different friends. There was no Jimmy Banter, no Guardian film critics, and no arts journalists.

  One was a somewhat too precise, but sweetly quiet mathematician. Another was a small middle-aged guy with an earring, bald, with a calm kind manner and an East London accent. He was called Declan. He repaired cars in Limehouse. He apologized because Lorraine couldn’t make it. Lorraine worked in computing. She was his girlfriend.

  ‘Declan travels,’ said Henry. It was true. Declan had no money but seemed to have spent his life going to Peru or the Andaman Isles.

  Nice people.

  The world is full of nice people.

  Philip’s new boyfriend arrived. Lee was tall and muscular and was as handsome as promised. Michael couldn’t stop himself looking back at Philip: my God, Philip, you have done yourself proud.

  Henry and Philip brought in the satay and sweet potatoes. People ate on their laps from paper plates, and drank tiny amounts of wine. It was a well-behaved gay conversation: everyone was involved, there was no splitting off into anxious, moody têt
e-à-têtes. People talked in turn, lightly, pleasantly, and they listened in turn. Henry told a story about barracking a cat-breeding farm through a megaphone only to discover it was a nudist colony instead. Michael told the story about the time that he and Philip were both locked out of the flat. He didn’t realize until halfway through that the story embodied the simple fact of their long marriage together. Lee laughed.

  At one point, mysteriously, Henry said to Philip, ‘He’s not coming.’

  At midnight, the fireworks went off over the river. The seven friends, a modest number, clustered around the one west-facing window. Synchronized flowers of light bloomed and sparkled, reflecting on the canal. To Michael they seemed to come erupting out the imagination, from the potential of the people who had designed them. He imagined them in their timeless aspect, forever a blurring of sequinned light, moving and still at the same moment. The fireworks looked like the self.

  Someone, completely naturally, placed a hand on his shoulder and left it there. It was padded and hot. Michael turned around and it was Lee.

  They toasted the New Year. They toasted absent friends: the mathematician had lost his partner two years before.

  Michael liked them all. He hadn’t known one of them, but before the end of the evening, he passed around his card, and got three in return, including Lee’s. About one in the morning, the first guest stood up to go. Michael remembered the tubes, and was thinking about leaving as well, when the doorbell rang.

  Philip and Henry each cocked an eyebrow. A voice barked up the answer phone. It sounded sinewy and smooth and reassuring. Philip looked back at Henry, his eyes wide and gleaming, and Philip nodded quickly, yes. He waited at the top of the stairs. ‘Hello, hello!’ he said.

  ‘Sorry, but I had my sister’s party to go to,’ said a breathless voice, and Philip seized a hand and pulled in Henry.

  Only this was Henry with slightly longer hair, wearing a brown sweater with a hole in it.

  ‘This is him,’ said Philip. ‘Michael. Meet the real Henry. This is Stumpy.’

  Stumpy perked up. ‘So. You’re the magic man,’ he said. His cheeks were redder than Henry’s and the mushroom smell was stronger.

  ‘Ah. Ah, yes.’ Michael looked back at Henry, and all three of them – Henry, Philip and Stumpy – laughed.

  ‘I told you once that Stumpy would love to know about this,’ said Henry.

  And Henry and Stumpy gazed at each other, grinning and slightly dazzled. Stumpy wobbled slightly in place and Henry had to catch him, and they were brotherly in each other’s arms. And Philip cuddled Stumpy too, partly to keep him standing.

  ‘I had a bit too much at my sister’s,’ Stumpy said, chuckling.

  ‘He’s staying with his sister. She lives in Camden Town too.’

  ‘It’s a long trip from Camden Town,’ said Stumpy.

  Michael asked, ‘How did you get together?’

  ‘Henry wrote me a note and said he was my long-lost twin, and sent me a photo of one of Philip’s paintings of him.’ Stumpy mimed amazement. ‘So we met, and he told me all about you. How does it work?’

  Michael heard himself say, ‘The universe is twisted out of nothing by gravity. And I think I will be able to prove that thought and gravity are the same thing.’

  ‘Wow!’ Stumpy’s eyes widened and he laughed with a kind of pleasure, while shaking his head. Michael realized he hadn’t told Henry anything about his new research. He wanted Henry, particularly, to understand. ‘I’ve got a new project. I think I can describe what has happened using equations.’ Henry reached forward and gave Michael a kind of hug that turned into a shake of approbation. Michael looked at Stumpy and found he was embarrassed. ‘I mean, I think I can do it. I don’t know yet. I’ve still got to do the work.’

  ‘It sounds fairly mind-blowing,’ said Henry.

  ‘I wish my head was a bit clearer,’ said Stumpy.

  ‘We’ve got other guests,’ said Henry pointedly to Philip. When Philip didn’t move, Henry pulled him away.

  And for some reason Michael regained his old clarity. He had forgotten his talent for turning science into words. Michael sat with Stumpy on the futon sofa. He explained how he would apply the equations used to describe black and white holes. He explained that in the fifth dimension the equations that describe electricity also describe gravity. ‘And thought is a matter of changing electrical charges.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Stumpy, and fell forward holding his head. He sat back up. ‘If you did that, you might end up proving that God exists.’

  ‘I might end up proving that He doesn’t,’ chuckled Michael.

  Stumpy was younger than Henry. His smile was brighter, his enthusiasms more overbearing, his words more common and less distinct. Michael looked at Henry and pondered what that meant.

  You’re wiser than your original model, Henry. Of course, you’re timeless. You are as wise as you will ever become. And does that mean you know what will happen? Or, rather what is likely to happen?

  Michael looked back at this bright and cheerful, confident 24-year-old. It was like looking at old photographs of friends. You would need me more, Michael thought. I could even help you grow into becoming Henry.

  It was nearly two o’clock. ‘Well, I’ve really got to go,’ Michael said. He kissed them all on the cheek, and hugged Henry and Phil together in a heap. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’ he said. Stumpy looked a little wistful as he shook Michael’s hand.

  And suddenly Michael was back out in the night. Luck was with him: the evening seemed somehow warmer than the day and he did not have a long wait for the train. He heard it whining towards him, even as he climbed the station staircase.

  The train doors whooshed open to show a car that was nearly empty. Past Canary Wharf, it began to fill with people. A gang of Indian lads in fleece jackets and trainers got on at West India Quay. They all had helium-filled balloons. The balloons were metallic, in the shape of dolphins. At the next stop, a merry black girl bounced in as lightly as the balloons, turning and laughing with her elegantly groomed friends. At Westferry two groups arrived, ebullient new City lads in modern fabrics who sang Abba songs against a competing group of what looked like nurses.

  Michael was one of the oldest people there. He watched secure and detached from his early found seat, and settled into a kind of contented concentration.

  He seemed to go on settling deeper and deeper. The settling almost made a sound. It would have been a sound like rain.

  What were falling were impressions. The black girl had done her hair in perfect rows. The Aids-awareness ribbon on her coat was in fact an enamelled broach. Michael pondered the generosity that impelled her to take up permanently a cause that many people would think was someone else’s. The Indian boys began shyly to offer people their balloons. They gave one to Michael.

  Michael thought of his chicks. ‘We ought to let them all go free,’ he said to one of the lads.

  ‘That’d be great. People’d look up and see all these dolphins up in the sky. They’d go like, oh wow, the sky is full of dolphins.’

  It seemed to Michael that it was an inspired thing to say. ‘I wouldn’t let this one go if you don’t want me to.’

  ‘Do what you want, man. It’s a party.’

  Everyone, Michael included, got off at Bank to change onto the Central Line tube. There was a long, long wait for the train. A raucous bevy of young women stood near Michael. They were plump, pale and nearly nude, all in the common fashion of tight trousers, peel-off tops with little straps and shortish hair parted in the middle. They showed off pastures of perfect white shoulders, a sacrifice in winter. They had all written on pieces of paper, which they had taped to themselves. ‘Innocent,’ said one, ‘till proven guilty!’ Another said, ‘Free to Good Home.’ They were all more than a bit pissed and had done something extremely daring in either a pub or a party and couldn’t stop talking about it.

  When the train came, the girls all ran, though they didn’t need to, the thick heels of thei
r shoes clopping like horses’ hooves. They swept themselves and Michael into the carriage on a gust of giggles.

  Michael sat down and let everything rain around him.

  A fat businessman with bags under his eyes like croissants was gently going to sleep on the shoulder of a young man with slicked-up hair. The young man gently tapped him.

  A girl was standing fast asleep against her boyfriend as if slow-dancing. She was thin and pale, almost translucent, with a slight contented smile. It was the smile she would wear lying next to him in their own bed.

  And the settling seemed to stop, and Michael came to rest finally on the floor of the ocean, where it was deep and cool and calm and silent.

  He loved them all. It had nothing to do with lust, or feeling safely superior, or being merely drunk. He was clear-headed, more clear-headed than he had been in a long time. He saw the girls wanted fun and friends and to be noticed and not to be dull before their time. Michael wished they would always be friends, and always go out, and never go sour from bitterness. He yearned for the sleeping man finally to find family or friends. The young man with the slicked hair had decided to let him go on sleeping, and that it did him no harm to leave him be. Michael wished that people would give the lad the same leeway, and that he would lose his slightly tense, pinched air.

  In the quiet, in the peace, it seemed to him that he knew their stories and could guess how far they could go, and loved them like a father loves: from a distance, with best wishes.

  It was promiscuous this love, it went beyond lust and romance and making families. Michael moved beyond biology.

  The train pulled into the next station and Michael saw its notice slip past like someone trying to sidle unnoticed into the bathroom. He sat and waited for a while as the engine whirred, and he saw the sign partially obscured by the window frame: ‘… ourt Road’.

  Jesus Christ, it’s Tottenham Court Road! His stop. Just before the doors closed, Michael jumped off. It’s 2.30 in the morning, Michael, you can’t go missing your stop. He was tired and strolled towards the Northern Line. The balloon bobbed along after him, still tugging at his hand.