Live; live; live

by Jonathan Buckley

  ‘Now I feel better,’ she said. We talked for another hour, again about the day she had met Lucas. There was some more crying. I held her hand.

  This point must be reiterated: I was invited into the house and Erin spoke to me, at length, about that episode of crisis. I held her hand; she asked me to keep her company.

  •

  For Kit’s birthday, I bought her some toys – small things – and delivered them in the morning. A strangely warm spring day; Kit was in the garden. One by one I took the presents from the bag. Three or four were examined briefly, then set aside in expectation of the next. The first to hold her attention was a toy pair of sunglasses, with lenses that were interchangeable, in a variety of colours. I held them to my eyes, and laughed for Kit, marvelling at her through discs of yellow-green plastic. Then I handed them to her – they were slightly too large, but she clamped them in place with her hands, delighted by how everything was changed. Looking up at the suddenly plum-coloured sky, she toppled, and I caught her. Her mother’s skin and hair were hilariously weird. I fitted the pink lenses; more delight. The violet lenses, however, appeared to give a different order of amazement. Arms outspread for balance, she looked down onto the lawn, as if gazing from a huge height on whole fields and valleys. She knelt, to peer into the magical grass.

  Erin wondered if anything of this would remain in Kit’s mind for long. ‘Maybe, when she’s my age,’ she said, when Kit had gone indoors to find out how the kitchen would look, ‘she’ll see a violet glass and suddenly feel happy, and have absolutely no idea why.’ For Erin, the smell of seaweed, she told me, sometimes had an inexplicable effect of that kind. Not fresh and wet seaweed – only seaweed of a certain kind, baked stiff in the sun, with the air at a certain temperature, and no wind. A particular intensity of iodine stink, in those conditions – it gave her a moment of elation, which must have something to do with a moment of which she had forgotten everything, so that only the happiness has lasted, locked in a box somewhere in the depths of her brain, and once in a while the box is momentarily unlocked, by the seaweed-key, and a wisp of that happiness is released. The source would be a day from a holiday in Devon or Cornwall, she assumed.

  I had something similar to tell her. For me, however, it was not a case of an emotion arising abruptly, for reasons unknown, from a specific thing or things in the world; rather, I sometimes had an inexplicable feeling of well-being that brought with it a memory – or what felt like a memory – of something that could not be traced.

  This memory was an image that was barely an image – it was a momentary disturbance, something that seemed to be on the brink of emerging into full sight but then fell back in the same second, barely glimpsed; intuited more than seen. The image, if I could call it that, was of a skim of very fine and very dry sand, over tarmac – a road disappearing under sand. Occasionally, a larger picture was implied: a slatted barrier of grey and heavily weathered wood; beyond, a low dune; beyond it, sensed but never visible, the sea. In that instant, the best of all possible days seemed to be promised.

  Now Kit was standing in front of us, ready for whatever else the bag might have for her. When it was empty, a hug was given, without prompting; and a concomitant hug from her mother, plus a cheek kiss, very light. Nonetheless, it had significance, I felt; a new period was beginning.

  Later in the morning, while I was at work, Kit came out of the house, leading a trio of children. They blew bubbles towards the garden wall, and Kit watched the bubbles float, through the yellow-green lenses. Trouble broke out, bringing Erin and another mother out. Having restored the mood, Erin looked up at my window, and smiled, raking her hair with her fingers.

  •

  The father visited Erin again, not long after Kit’s birthday. I observed only the preliminaries to his departure. Erin was in the garden, sitting at the table, with the cat in her lap; she gazed at the clouds; recovering from an upset, it appeared. I did not know that the father was in the house. And then he came out, zipping his jacket; from the way he rubbed his hands, and the semi-sad little smile, it was clear that he was leaving. Erin deposited the cat on the tabletop and stood up. With the back of a finger, her father touched her cheek; he said something to which she appeared to assent. Though the gesture was one of consolation, the father’s face was not expressive of love; there was an element of beseeching, yes, but the gaze was primarily that of a man who commands. The smile with which he responded to his daughter’s acquiescence seemed to signify approval, and gratification at having secured obedience.

  It was time to go. Turning, he put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer. Side by side they took a step, and his hand moved down, to her waist. She allowed him to conduct her to the kitchen door, but her arms hung by her side. That struck me. And her gaze was directed at the ground. She might have been a woman being taken home from hospital.

  In the light of what was observed, how was I to think of Erin and Lucas? Was Lucas the paternal lover or the anti-father; a lover chosen as a surrogate, or in defiance of the family?

  •

  Watching a film in which the husband, the owner of the hotel, passing the pretty chambermaid on the stairs, takes her hand and kisses her, of course I am made aware that a kiss might mean little or nothing, in real life as much as in an Italian film of a certain vintage. The stair-kiss is not resisted, but it leads to nothing; it does not quite constitute adultery – it is an enquiry as to whether more might be obtainable. The chambermaid indulges the incorrigible boss; she grants this kiss, and that will be all, as we can tell from the look she gives him, over her shoulder, as she strides up the stairs. There are no consequences; within a day, the moment will be forgotten by both. A kiss might be no more than a whim, a misstep. Ours, however, was of a different order. The truth might be revealed in a moment; a brief dialogue of touch, in which more is said than by all the words that went before. I am not making too much of it; I am certain of this. Or think of an old photograph on glass – at first it seems to be nothing but a rectangle of matt smoky grey, but when picked up, and angled into the light, the object changes in an instant, and the image appears; so the truth appears. Some time ago, a woman who intrigued me very much said to me, by way of clearing the path, that she would never kiss a man unless she intended to go to bed with him. She was older than me, by six or seven years. When she said this, I felt even younger; I was made to feel that I was a fool, and I hesitated. So she did not kiss me. Her name was Ursula; this is a regret.

  •

  The woman who moved into number 26 a year ago had again walked past Erin without as much as an acknowledgement. There was no possibility that she hadn’t seen her; they almost brushed shoulders. ‘She must know the situation,’ said Erin. ‘Neighbours would have told her.’ I have seen this woman a few times; I smiled once, to no visible effect. She seemed joyless, I suggested. Recently divorced with a great deal of ill-will on both sides, I would guess. ‘Better than widowed,’ said Erin. The people at number 12 – ‘Mr and Mrs Ideal Home’ – didn’t exactly radiate compassion either. She saw them looking at the upstairs windows of the house as if the peeling paintwork told them everything they needed to know. Whenever they came across Erin with Kit they went through the motions of friendliness, but you could see, despite the smiles, that they were passing judgement.

  There were people in the neighbourhood who would never accept her, she insisted. People who thought that Lucas was a charlatan necessarily disapproved of her. Others – because Erin was young and pretty, and Lucas was not – thought that she must have ensnared him. She had always wanted the house, some were convinced. Nobody could really accept the relationship. Some blamed Lucas: he dominated the girl; he oppressed her. And then there was the baby: a young mother and an old father – it was just not right. With Lucas gone, some modified their attitude a little. There was some sympathy for the bereaved and solitary parent. But Erin did not want the sympathy of people who had gossiped about her, and about
Lucas. Now there was even some gossip about Erin and me, she told me. People were putting two and two together and making five; this is what she’d heard, from sources unspecified. The situation was impossible, said Erin. She was going to sell the house.

  ‘That would be a pity,’ I said. ‘You have friends here.’

  ‘Not many,’ she answered.

  And the town would be a good place for Kit to grow up in, for a while at least; not too big, not too small; the sea; the clean air, et cetera. The house was very comfortable too.

  She admitted, without speaking, that these points were to be considered.

  Then I said: ‘And of course I love you. There’s that to consider.’

  The first reaction: Erin smiled. Perhaps she took it as some sort of joke about the gossips, or thought I was using the verb as it’s so often used now, as a synonym for ‘like’.

  So I said: ‘I do.’ The words were spoken lightly. What I was saying was that this was a fact, a wholly objective fact. It was not a plea or a declaration; it was simply a statement of who I was.

  But tears appeared to be imminent, and Erin asked, perplexed rather than affronted: ‘Why would you say that?’

  To which I replied: ‘For the sake of clarity.’

  I could see that a mistake had been made. This was not the right time for the statement. Retraction, however, would be futile; impossible, in fact. A kiss is no sooner shared than it becomes the idea of itself; but words remain words; their half-life is long.

  ‘Well, moving on,’ I joked, as if this were a meeting with an agenda to be followed.

  Erin gave me an examining look.

  ‘It’s true,’ I said, and shrugged. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, as one would say ‘OK’ to someone who had confessed to a misdemeanour that might be forgiveable in a week or two.

  Several years ago, I was interested in a particular person, and things seemed to be progressing satisfactorily until the evening when she said to me, as if stating one of the maxims by which she lived: ‘I have never said “I love you” to anybody, and I never will.’ It was a question of respect, both for oneself and for the other person. The phrase was a brand, with which the self-declared lover put his or her mark on the loved one. Disappointed, I took issue; the words might not correspond to a definable state, I agreed, but they were nonetheless valid as an expression. I was saying that, she suggested, because I had hoped to hear her say, one day, to me: ‘I love you.’ Here, at least, she was right; I knew this at once, though I did not concede the point.

  With Erin, however, I did not utter the phrase in the hope of being repaid in kind. She could not yet love me. I knew that.

  •

  Another regret: it was an error to raise with Erin the subject of my mother and Lucas. I told her what Lucas had said, near the end.

  Erin considered the words. I was misunderstanding what Lucas had meant; he had loved people the way a priest loves people. Lucas loved everybody, in a way.

  This was not quite true, I suggested, with examples of people whom Lucas had very much not loved – Steven Greenwood, for example. Father Brabham.

  It was impressive that she did not flinch. ‘One or two exceptions,’ she granted.

  Allowing that the crucial word can be taken to mean many different things, I nonetheless thought that Lucas had wished me to hear a particular sense. And it was not only a matter of what was heard: in speaking those words, Lucas had given me a certain look.

  ‘What look?’

  Despite the irritation in her voice, I did not stop. ‘A look to ensure that I heard what he was saying,’ I said.

  ‘He was ill. Very ill,’ she answered. If Lucas had wanted to tell me anything, he would have told me straight, she stated. ‘And he would have told you before.’

  We were in the kitchen; she had found something to do that allowed her to turn away from me. Food had to be prepared for Kit, who was asleep upstairs. ‘Perhaps,’ I said. Then I speculated about the reasons for my mother’s attitude.

  ‘She just didn’t like me,’ said Erin, having turned to face me. Perched on the edge of the table, she crossed her arms. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you were close to your mother.’ It was not quite an accusation. ‘And you never suspected anything, for years and years. That’s a clue.’

  The answer: a man tends to look upon his mother as a woman apart from other women.

  ‘Some do. Some don’t. Anyway, she would have told you, one way or another.’

  ‘But closeness might be a reason not to own up,’ I said. It was a question of what might have been lost by telling the truth; the destruction of an image of herself.

  ‘Whose image?’ asked Erin, impatient at the obscurity.

  ‘Hers and mine. Shame would be a factor. Guilt.’

  My mother had not owned up, Erin told me, because there had been nothing to which to own up. Her arms were more tightly crossed now; she looked at me as a store detective might regard an incompetent shoplifter.

  ‘No,’ I said, with the urgency of correction. For the first time we were in conflict, and in this conflict was a new intimacy. ‘This is what we know,’ I began, and I put things together. Might there not be a connection between the arrival of Lucas and the departure of my father, a connection that I had previously failed to make, having been sure that I had understood the cause of my father’s leaving?

  ‘You mean: the one you’re now imagining,’ said Erin. ‘There’s no evidence. None whatever.’

  ‘But it’s a possibility.’

  ‘Which has only just occurred to you.’ Finally the arms were unlocked; her attention was directed wearily towards something in the garden. ‘Joshua,’ she said, ‘there’s a good reason it never occurred to you before. It’s because it doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. And yet, although I knew it was not in my best interests to continue to the end, Erin’s scorn compelled me. ‘There’s one other thing,’ I went on. The question was: why would a man leave his home like that, and never see the child again? One solution would be: if he had come to believe that his son might not be his son at all. The dates could be made to match. ‘That would be an explanation,’ I submitted. Looking down, I opened my arms, to let the story go. But then I added, thinking – if thinking at all – that this might reduce the pressure in the room: ‘Jack Nicholson was in his thirties when he found out that his sister was in fact his mother.’

  Erin pressed her hands to her face and kept them there. A significant readjustment had been imposed upon her, I thought. But I had misunderstood. Slowly she dragged her fingers down her face, uncovering eyes that showed only anger. Her voice, however, was quiet and even, as though reading the words from a page. ‘It’s not that you haven’t been able to understand it,’ she said. ‘It’s that you haven’t been able to accept it.’ I interrupted, but she drove over what I was saying. ‘Your father deserted his wife and child. That’s what some people do. Men, mostly. Some men are horrible and some of those horrible men have children.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I replied. ‘I’m not saying—’

  In an instant the volume of her voice went up, but the evenness of tone was constant. I surrendered with pleasure. ‘It makes no sense, Joshua,’ she told me; the name was used like a cosh. ‘Absolutely none. Think about it. It’s idiotic. You’ve come up with this stupid story on the basis of what? One word. One word from a dying man. One fucking word. What the fuck, Joshua? What the actual fuck are you talking about?’ Never before had I heard Erin talk like this; it was like an undressing.

  ‘All I’m saying is my father might have thought—’

  ‘And Lucas too,’ she interrupted. ‘But for reasons unknown he never says anything to you. He’s living on the other side of the wall for twenty years, and he doesn’t say anything.’

  It wasn’t difficult to explain why that might have been, I said.


  ‘I don’t want to hear any more,’ said Erin. ‘I’ve heard enough. Just shut up. Right now. Shut up.’

  ‘It’s improbable,’ I agreed.

  ‘Totally mad is what it is,’ she said, but already the anger was becoming just a sediment. ‘Bloody hell, Joshua,’ she said, as if we had been fighting. ‘Apart from anything else, you don’t look anything like him.’

  ‘Yes, well—’

  ‘Don’t start,’ she said, exhausted. ‘Please, for God’s sake. No more.’

  Although apologies can never make good the damage, I apologised.

  ‘Jesus, Josh, how insensitive can you be?’ said Erin. ‘Go home,’ she said, as a woman might say it to a lover. ‘For an intelligent person, you are really bloody stupid sometimes.’

  It is improbable, of course. Yet it’s possible, and the possibility is sometimes like an infection, an infection that might be trivial or might not. And on days when I can almost believe that it is not possible at all, the story is still in my head. Like the idea of God, it can be rebutted by reason, but not refuted.

  *

  The questioning was absurd, and it angered me, as it would have angered anyone. ‘Routine enquiries,’ said officer Boyle; she really followed the script. She was the more congenial of the pair, and the more intelligent, but not intelligent enough. My illuminated window, in the small hours, she informed me, is something of a local landmark. The words ‘night owl’ were used. I confirmed that I liked to work at night. There was some conversation, briefly, about the nature of the work.

  Officer Gardiner, the near-silent partner, made a note.