Love Your Enemies (13 page)

In the back of his mind he knew that his reaction was incoherent, almost hypocritical. A tiny mental shiver, an impulse, pumped in the rear of his brain which said, ‘You’ve lived your thirty-four years this way, why not die this way too? Buy something, feel happy. Look at the options, make a decision, complete the deal. It’s that simple.’

He turned his face from the sunlight and looked down at his hands which were clean and smooth with oval nails, pinky-brown and still strong. As he moved his fingers they tingled and he wondered how long he would be able to move them
completely. He didn’t know. He placed his hand in his pocket and felt the letters inside, then he felt for his wallet and got it out. Slowly an idea gelled together in his mind which made his stomach convulse and quiver with unease and excitement. He thought, ‘That’s it! I’m going to do it myself this time, I’m going to cut out the middleman just this once and create something that is truly individual.’

He opened his wallet, and as he did so he wondered where he could buy some wood locally. He felt like a kid again.

Steve had bought a copy of the American magazine
Vanity Fair
on his way to work that morning and had been reading it with great intensity for several hours. It was Tuesday. Melissa slunk around the shop, rearranging clothes, straightening clothes hangers, occasionally standing in the doorway and staring down the street in the intermittent sunlight. She felt distracted and miserable, not depressed though, it wasn’t a physical thing beyond her control, it was more a conscious state of mind, a decision. She felt distracted and despondent, but didn’t want to disturb Steve’s reading with her melancholy.

Steve was reading an article about how Richard Gere was a Buddhist. Occasionally he would pass on a comment about what he was reading. As she stood in the doorway he said, ‘I’d never have thought Gere would be a Buddhist. He doesn’t seem very serene or sincere. Apparently he spent quite a bit of time in a sort of monastery place in Tibet or somewhere.’ Melissa sighed and said, ‘Lots of stars are Buddhists. It involves chanting and candles and shit, doesn’t it? I think Tina Turner was one. Maybe it was someone else, though.’

Steve looked up again. ‘I think it was Tina. It changed her life after Ike.’

Melissa shrugged disinterestedly. Steve flicked through the pages again and then said, ‘I read a really interesting thing in here this morning on the tube, about an American psychiatrist called Dr Death who travels around the country getting
first-time killers the death penalty by saying that he knows and can guarantee that someone is going to kill again.’

Melissa carried on staring down the road. She said, ‘That’s weird. Surely it’s impossible to tell whether someone is going to kill again, unless, I suppose, the person is mentally unbalanced.’

Steve stood up and rearranged the changing-room curtain. He said, ‘No, it doesn’t work like that. The whole point of him is that he testifies against first-time offenders, people who are apparently sane and have only murdered once. He uses strange moral arguments, as far as I can understand. If a killer has been very cool and calculating and mercenary about the murder and doesn’t really feel bad about what he has done, then he says that they are a sort of type, a kind of person who will have no qualms about killing again because they have a warped moral code; they aren’t insane, though. It’s really interesting. I haven’t done the article much justice.’

Melissa bit her lip. She was feeling uptight and sensitive. In her mind’s eye every arrow pointed at her. It was as though she was wearing a luminous dress and the world was all black. She said, ‘Are you getting at me, Steve?’

Steve stopped his tidying and stared at her incredulously. ‘We’re a bit sensitive today, aren’t we Melissa?’

She frowned. ‘Sod off.’

Steve sat down on the swivel chair by the till and moved around on it so that he faced Melissa directly. She was still staring out at the road with her back to him. He paused a while then said, ‘I don’t understand what’s upset you so much all of a sudden, would you mind explaining?’

Melissa remained silent for a moment and then said, ‘I feel like you’re getting at me in some way. Like you’re trying to make some kind of point. You’ve criticized me before for feeling and not acting, for not expressing myself and what I believe in with concrete acts. Maybe you think I’m a calculating person capable of really horrible things …’

Steve interrupted her, ‘I’ve not said or implied anything of the sort. For God’s sake Melissa, in your next breath you’ll be accusing me of comparing you to Richard Gere.’

Melissa grunted and crossed her arms. ‘Weren’t you?’

Steve paused a moment and then said, ‘Is something wrong with you today? Are you feeling ill?’

She shook her head.

‘Well, what is it then?’

After a few seconds she turned from the doorway and faced him. Her eyes were tearful, ‘I can’t explain it. It’s just that I feel so helpless and so furious inside at the same time.’

Steve frowned. ‘Like frustrated?’

She shrugged again, ‘I don’t think so. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s like I care about things so much and yet I don’t seem to be able to do anything, like I’m frozen. Everything around me affects me so much, sad things cloud me up inside, I feel so terrible about homelessness and sadness and AIDS, loads of things, but I feel as though I can make no difference, I can’t do anything to make things better. Nothing real, anyway.’

Steve looked mystified. He said, ‘I just don’t understand why it is that you feel compelled to feel bad about things all the time. It’s so bland and aimless. It’s like you’ve decided to feel bad just for the sake of it, just to look saintly and worthy. But you can’t even be specific about your so-called sympathies. Just caring about things doesn’t amount to much at the end of the day, it isn’t enough.’

An incident popped into his head from a few weeks back in which he and Melissa had been walking home from a club in central London very early in the morning. He had been dressed up for a night out with his hair gelled and some make-up. As they waited at the bus stop a small group of men had approached him and taunted him: they had shouted in his face and abused him. The bus arrived in a minute or so and he had gladly climbed aboard before the situation turned
violent. Throughout this incident Melissa had said and done nothing. He hadn’t reprimanded her.

Melissa broke his reverie. ‘It’s not that I don’t do anything, that isn’t what matters. It’s caring about things that matters. I do care about things.’

Steve stopped the music tape and changed it to something quieter and gentler. He knew that she was being sincere, but he still couldn’t resist saying, ‘Please cheer up, Melissa, we still have to work together you know.’

Melissa clammed up. They sat in silence for a few minutes. Steve flicked through his magazine some more, but couldn’t concentrate. As a peace offering he said, ‘Do you fancy some tea? I’m making.’ Melissa shook her head sulkily. He made himself some tea and they sat in silence again. After a while he said, ‘Why don’t we cheer ourselves up with a bit of Power Selling?’ He picked up a silver jacket which had a picture of the Last Supper on its back made entirely out of different coloured beads. ‘You buy lunch if I sell this, OK?’

Melissa grimaced and marched off to make herself some coffee.

The next customer who came in was one of Steve’s regulars. He had a good body and gregarious tastes. He liked Steve and he liked the jacket. By the time that Melissa had finished making her drink a deal had been transacted. He’d bought the jacket and they’d arranged to go out for a drink together after work. Once he’d left the shop, Steve couldn’t resist saying, ‘God, I’m hungry.’

Melissa stared at him coolly. ‘I’m on a diet.’

Steve brushed a few tiny pieces of fluff from his tracksuit bottoms and ran a hand through his short, blond, bristly crew-cut. He said, ‘I’m getting myself a Big Mac, all right?’

It was nearly three o’clock by the time John got home. As he shut the front door his arms ached on account of his having carried home a large, new toolbox complete with saws, chisels,
a power drill and a small chain-saw. He put his new purchases down in the hallway and went and stood in his front room, scratching, stroking his stomach meditatively. He didn’t have a garage; his front room would have to be as good as. He pushed his sofa up against a wall and dragged the two chairs into the hallway and then upstairs into his small bedroom. Next he got an old newspaper and used each page to wrap up various fragile glass and china objects before putting them into a box which he pushed into a corner of the room. He moved the bookcase into the hallway and pulled up the Turkish rug. He rolled it and leaned it up against the bookcase. The room was now much simpler and emptier. He dragged his new toolbox into the room and placed it in the middle of the floor, then opened it and arranged around it all the new things that he had bought so that he could inspect each item individually. He glanced at his watch, because he was waiting for a few deliveries. To pass the time while he waited he put on some plugs. Then he found a pencil, rubber, ruler and some paper and sat on the sofa making some initial, perfunctory plans. As his hand flew back and forth across the paper he felt the rest of his body relax, although the left-hand side of his anatomy was numb and heavy and his face was as pale and as puffy as dough.

On Wednesday morning Steve arrived slightly late at the shop. Melissa had already opened up by this time and was sat at the till organizing a float for the day. They still weren’t speaking. All morning her chest had felt tight but empty at the same time. She knew that her body was making her suffer for the argument of the previous day. She knew inside that she had been self-indulgent and stupid, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. This reticence was vindicated, however, when she turned as he entered the shop, a half-empty bag of coins still in her hand, and saw that he had a silver jacket slung casually over his shoulder. She tried to bite her tongue,
but still said, ‘I’d have thought that there would be easier ways of acquiring one of those jackets than that, Steve. Your little drink after work must’ve been quite successful – those things cost well over a hundred quid.’

Steve refused to be ruffled. He slung the jacket over the back of the swivel chair and said in a funny Oscar Wilde voice, ‘Oh, I’m just borrowing it, darling. Everything has to be so tawdry and absolute in that little mind of yours. As it happens, he simply forgot his carrier bag in the pub last night and it seemed rather churlish of me to refuse to take possession of the coat until I see him again. I’m sure he’ll be in later. Satisfied?’

She was satisfied but she didn’t say anything. She felt bad. Steve made himself a cup of tea in silence and then slouched by the till and read his book. Melissa realized that he was punishing her, but this only made her feel more angry and defensive. She flicked through
Vogue
and said, ‘Thanks for the tea.’

Steve looked at her for an instant. ‘Grow up.’

He carried on reading. Melissa was determined to humiliate him, to turn the tables. She said, ‘How about a game of Guess or Gush? At least if I win I’ll get some tea. The next person we don’t know who comes in, all right?’

Steve smiled to himself and said, ‘Go ahead.’

Melissa smiled daggers back at him.

John’s living-room floor was now awash with pieces of paper covered in complex sketches and plans, tools and electrical equipment, an unconstructed woodwork table which was at least seven feet long and four feet wide, and, up against one wall, four very large chunks of wood, beautiful pieces of half-tree with bits of shaggy bark still coating the outside, the inside glossy and luminous.

Accumulating his carpentry material had made John feel like a squirrel, a beaver, a humble creature compelled by the
dictates of nature, by mortality, to build himself a secure nest, to build himself a coffin, to do-it-himself, to leave a mark, something self-created, something unique, individual and personal.

Instead of turning him away from death, his new involvement, his brand-new preoccupation had made him face death, had made him dive into the idea of death and swim around in it. Eventually he knew that it would drown him, but it didn’t matter any more. He felt so vital.

It had been a wrench on Wednesday morning to drag himself away from his wood and his new tools and his schemes. Nevertheless, he had left for work at the usual time and had spent the morning at his desk phoning, making deals, securing sales. During his lunch-break he went out and bought a sandwich, then strolled around looking in shop windows.

Although everything felt very secure and normal to him again – his illness had been pushed away into a tiny crevice of his mind – he felt strangely light, as though illuminated from within, powerful but weightless like a born-again Christian. His compulsion to buy, which had always been his guiding motivation, had, he felt, almost disappeared. He was fully aware of a deep irony in this situation, given that the previous day he had virtually emptied his savings account, but he now perceived those expenses as the beginning of something, and at the very same time as the end of something. He was cheerful in his hypocrisy and folly, like Don Quixote sitting backwards on his donkey, beguiled, foolish, happy.

He wandered into Soho, past the peepshows and then past some of the smarter and more expensive shops in the area. One shop window was based on an Aztec theme, full of gold and azure and orange. Everything was chunky and angular and sharp. The colours shouted out at him and he tried to picture in his mind an Aztec coffin made like a glorious offering to the sun god. He smiled to himself and resolved to get hold of some books on the subject as inspiration. The next shop
window was based on a white theme. It was very clean and crisp, but ultimately uninspiring. John wanted to keep an open mind, however, so visualized a white-theme funeral with a white coffin lined in white satin with himself laid out inside in a Liberace suit of white and gold spangles. He liked the underlying implication of contradicting the blackness of death by offering himself in a clean white marriage to eternity, to eternal wedlock with nothingness, to space, to an infinite white silence.