Four New Words for Love (16 page)

‘Christopher! You’ve timed it well. Your dog doesn’t seem to have eaten. If you haven’t either come and join us.’

It is a woman’s voice, floating through the smoke. She is sitting at a ramshackle table, the surface burned and scarred with usage. The man stands beside the barbecue wielding tongs that
he snaps with an excess of virtuosity. He is wearing a plastic apron depicting a woman’s basque and tassled breasts. As he passes the man, Christopher accepts the hand extended towards him.
As he disengages he is surprised to find he is holding a bottle of beer. He puts this on the table and extends the same hand to the woman. She deflects this, stands, puts her arms around him and
says, ‘We were sorry to hear.’

‘Hear, hear’ the man echoes.

Christopher is ashamed.

They are called Deborah and Oscar Bennett. They moved in eight years ago, with two moderately boisterous sons. Marjory stood at her bedroom window, taking inventory of their furniture. The
younger boy was in his late teens, the other three years older. They played their music as loudly as people of that ago do, but the volume was no cause for scandal. On chance meetings they were
mannerly, helpful, articulate and, as far as Marjory was concerned, exasperatingly difficult to qualify. The parents were no better. They drove a car as ramshackle as their furniture. Marjory was
happy to brand them as philistines until one Sunday morning she heard husband and wife improvise a duet that incensed her with its plangency. Further disconcerting revelations came to light. Oscar
had something to do with Covent Garden. Even if only in an administrative capacity, some of the vicarious status rubbed off. Marjory’s coffee morning cronies thought so. Deborah improvised
some kind of studio in an outhouse, and obviously cared more about applying paint than cosmetics. She even had the temerity to go out for last-minute groceries with smudges of paint on her hands
and hair. It was convenient for Marjory to brand them as unrealistic and self-indulgent bohemians, and she was foolish to hint as much to Christopher across the dinner table when he remarked, with
devastating casualness: ‘You don’t afford a place round here with your head in the clouds. Besides, I bumped into the boys yesterday. Delightful. The older one’s reading law and
the younger’s been offered a place at Cambridge next year. Medicine. That can’t be cheap for the parents. Be silly not to...’

‘Not to what?’ she said, very quietly.

‘Accept the place at Cambridge.’

She hated everything about them. She hated how his obvious love for his wife was compounded by his easy and public intimacies with his children: he kissed them with the verve of an Italian. She
hated how these displays seemed only to gratify the neighbours, and cause them to reflect on their own English reticence, as if reserve is a sin. And if that wasn’t enough the wife flirted
with journalism, and supplemented their income with ad hoc pieces in women’s magazines. While Marjory struggled, unsuccessfully, to publish an open letter in the community bulletin, she had
to endure the humiliation of sitting in the hairdresser and having the familiar name pointed out to her from the well-thumbed page. The sons’ intelligence was undeniable and, as Christopher
remarked with infuriating pragmatism: ‘They didn’t pick their brains off the ground.’

It’s hard enough to be overtaken by someone who has worked harder, run a better race. It’s harder still to be beaten by an undeserving victor, whose natural ability no amount of
effort on your side will compensate for. But it’s intolerable to be completely eclipsed by someone who isn’t even aware of the competition.

Christopher had no idea. The everyday pleasantries began to falter when Marjory stopped acknowledging their ‘good morning’s. At first oblivious, he continued in his affable
exchanges. When the younger son left for Cambridge, Christopher met him at the garden gate with a congratulations card and a book token. He hadn’t made any attempt to hide the gesture. When a
thank you letter arrived and he revealed the gift, he was stunned by her glacial hostility.

The neighbours took the hint. They kept their greetings brief after that, continuing to walk while talking, so that the front door or the car marked a conclusion. Marjory pushed her advantage
too far after the two couples smiled fleetingly at one another in the High Street: ‘Just because their son’s a doctor all of a sudden we’re not good enough.’

He let her arm, which had seized his for solidarity when they hove into sight, drop. He had belittled himself even though his motives, to honour a vow, had been good. He knew people aren’t
revealed in the large, premeditated actions but by trivialities. He saw, fully. It was a shock. If he thought it would have done any good he would have turned on his heel, walked back and
apologised. They have no reason to be magnanimous but here he is, with her arms round his old body, and the sweating beer awaiting him. She sits him down.

‘Thank you for the card.’

‘No worries, mate.’ Oscar experiments with an Australian accent.

‘Nevertheless...’ His intensity is obvious.

‘It was only a card. We’re not going to redeem your mortgage.’

‘I have to apologise for my husband. His manners are deplorable.’

‘Are they fuck.’

‘Oscar thinks it avant-garde to swear. He’d sound like the Archbishop of Canterbury if we lived in a slum, so he swears at a suburban barbecue with all the Volvos lined
up.’

‘Do you want me to take you outside and give you a slap?’

‘We are outside, dear.’ Turning to Christopher, ‘Men go funny at a certain age. As long as he doesn’t present a bad example to the boys.’

Pleased at one of the good reminiscences this sparks he asks: ‘How are they?’

‘Able to see through their father.’

Oscar cooks. The first experimental sausages are incinerated. They test them on the dog who disdains them too. Oscar squeezes lemon over the grilling sardines.

‘Christopher, why don’t you go and fetch two of those beautiful cigars you’ve been teasing us with for the past few months. And get one for yourself. I’ll smoke
Deborah’s.’

Back in the kitchen Christopher picks up a bottle of white wine, less for its grassy credentials than its topaz shadow. As he reaches for the cigars he hears laughter from the barbecue. Thinking
back over his marriage he can’t recall a single memory of tenderness interrupted. He pockets the cigars and makes his slow way back up the garden path.

* * *

The phone pulls him from a restless sleep. Once he had retrieved one bottle he went back for another two. His sleep has been troubled and the reason for it isn’t likely
to improve his mood. The dog lies leaden across his legs. The ringing seems to get more insistent as he fumbles for his glasses and locates the receiver.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s me, Christopher. She’s gone.’

It takes him a minute to realise that Sister Judith is speaking. He has never heard her voice catch before, and he realises how articulate the pause is. He has been drinking and she has gone. He
wasn’t there, worse, he wasn’t thinking about her. He has no right to the credentials she credited him with.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I am too. You’d think in this line of work you’d get used to this.’ There is another pause. He tries to think of something comforting that doesn’t sound trite. The
phone goes dead.

Five days later he rises unusually early. Spare keys to see to the dog have been left with Deborah. He didn’t want to impose on a friendship so recently re-established, but had no choice.
A brief taxi ride runs him to the station. Dandelions grow in verdant sidings. A cultivated blur of colour overflows hanging baskets suspended the length of the platform. Early as it is for him,
the worst of the suburban crush is over. Phalanxes of suburban gardens and intermittent park land begin to accelerate past. In the distance a brindled cow stares meditatively from an Alpine meadow,
beneath a strapline advertising processed cheese. Green peters out until it becomes the exception, confined to urban rectangles, window boxes and exuberant weeds. Children, whose faces collectively
exhibit all the colours of the brindled cow, vibrate on the playground tarmac. He feels a pang for them in their urban fastness, so different from the expanses that gave scope to his childhood
imagination. He can still recall summer waves of itinerant hop pickers. Residential gives way to commercial. A gas works looms; an acre of flashing windscreens of deposited cars; low-rise office
units and seated people in thrall to computer screens; Hungerford Bridge; the Thames rippling through a latticework of girders; Charing Cross.

He emerges from the station to a sparkling rain in the summer sunshine, waits his turn, umbrella raised, mentally rehearsing the address till his turn comes.

‘St Patrick’s, Soho Square please.’

He has the only taciturn taxi driver in the whole of London, perhaps disgruntled at the shortness of the fare, perhaps taking his cue from Christopher’s subfusc suit and black tie. He
would have walked, but lateness is one of Christopher’s cardinal sins. On a card he has the address of the crematorium. He will order another taxi if necessary. Sister Judith has told him not
to worry. ‘All else fails, you can cadge a lift with us.’ This was said two nights ago, dictating the details over the phone, while he found a pen and wrote with copperplate slowness.
He is pleased her manner has reverted to its former brusque geniality.

The place is as surprising as Felicity’s dormant piety. He thinks the interior would have pleased her. Had she any association with this place, or do you take what you posthumously get?
He’s sure George won’t be able to answer. And there he is, at the front of the meagre congregation, casting intermittent backward looks, taking inventory. He looks uncomfortable in this
numinous place. Behind George are a number of local people, and on the other side of the aisle, unidentifiable from the back in their drab habits, are the Sisters. He sits behind them in
solidarity, trying to pick out the youthful frame of Judith, till she turns and winks at him. He smiles. From his peripheral vision he notes that George has registered the exchange.

The service is longer and more elaborate that he imagined. He stands, kneels, sits, in concert with the nuns, is drowsily mesmerised by the responsorial psalm, intones hymns he scarcely knows
and feels a mixture of piety and boredom. The chink of the censer and perfume of the incense adds to the unreality of the situation. He can’t come to grips with the conclusion that an entire
abbreviated life is contained in that frivolous box. Marjory’s send-off didn’t give rise to this sense of absurdity, or existential mirth. The idea is so singular he wants to laugh out
loud, and suppresses his mirth with tremors that run the length of the otherwise empty pew. He is reprieved by the sign of peace, when the clairvoyant Sister Judith turns and shakes his hand with a
grip like Achilles. That sobers him.

The mass finishes. The sombre procession filters out, the pews emptying in order. Sister Judith nods in the direction of the departing cortège. He interprets this as an indication that
they will meet outside. He waits until the last of the mourners passes and stands to follow. George is standing at the church entrance, with a woman who looks remarkably like a healthy version of
Felicity, shaking hands with the mourners in turn. Christopher didn’t anticipate this, or an undisclosed sister who has only now materialised. She shakes his hand first and seems pleased to
see the end of the line. In her relief she makes some brief pleasantry he only half catches, confused by her intonation. New Zealand? He turns to George. They shake hands sombrely. He is trying to
think of something appropriate to say. George speaks first.

‘Sorry old boy, it’s friends and family only.’

‘I... I’m sorry, I don’t’

‘At the crematorium. It’s friends and family only.’

George is watching Christopher’s confusion intently. This handshaking may be a Catholic convention, but it occurs to Christopher that George has gone along with it solely to orchestrate
this moment. He holds on to Christopher’s hand till he’s satisfied that the whole effect has been registered, lets go and turns to the woman who has the good grace to look embarrassed
by the exchange. Dismissed, Christopher walks into the sunshine and Sister Judith.

‘We’ve got a mini bus. There’s room.’

This gives the lie to George’s assertion.

‘You’re very kind but I can’t...’

‘I thought it was all decided.’

‘George says it’s friends and family only.’

‘What utter bollocks! What a nerve! Friends and family? When you come to think of it he’s been neither to her. Do you want me to have a word with him?’

‘No. Please. The last thing I want to do is hector my way in. It’s not what she would have wanted.’

‘She never got what she wanted from him. I don’t see why he should thwart her one more time.’

He fans his fingers apologetically and walks on. At another burst of drizzle he turns his jacket collar up. He has left his umbrella behind, but isn’t about to go back and give George the
satisfaction again. He reasons with himself that he’s said his goodbyes, that that isn’t really her, just a skin bag of organs in a box, but the colossal unfairness of it strikes him
and he reluctantly admits to himself that he is hurt.

He doesn’t want to go home carrying this sensation with him. He stops for lunch in a trattoria in Greek Street, eats without relish, and, still numbed from the encounter, threads his way
in the direction of St James’s Park, feeling the need for space among the unaccustomed crush. The park doesn’t dispel his low spirits. He walks to the river, hugging it to cross at
Vauxhall Bridge. He finds a bench in Lambeth for a half hour’s reflection, gets up and continues walking. In his mind he is trying to revive the last few conversations he had with her, but
she is already receding. With the speed of the foot traffic increasing around him, he realises both that he is completely exhausted, and that if he doesn’t get a move on he’ll be caught
in the homeward rush.

He has made his way along the south bank, to cross at Waterloo Bridge, and stops to rest on the approach. Beside him is a woman in baggy shapeless clothes, leaning against some kind of collapsed
cardboard structure, awaiting assembly once the pedestrians have passed. Her face is partially hidden by a hood. Beneath this her hair hangs in clotted points. Her movements are slow and he
recognises that she, too, is exhausted. The cardboard is a beige rectangle; she is trying to improvise some kind of three-dimensional shelter. He looks at its porosity and the looming sky. She
almost succeeds when a man bangs into it, collapsing the structure, walking on briskly with a backward cluck of impatience. She lets the cardboard fold to a two dimensional mat and sits,
hunched.