Talking It Over (24 page)

‘I can imagine …’

‘FUCK OFF FUCK OFF FUCK OFF.’

Anyone would have thought that I was ringing to apologise to
him
, that I was the one who’d come pestering
his
nuptials. The Ancient Mariner had nothing on Stu, turning up at the church then dogging us to the restaurant. I really should have had him arrested, you know. Officer, bespy thou that antique salt yonder? He’s been whingeing on to one and all about downing a seagull. Move him on, would you please, or preferably
fix him up with a night in Newgate at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

But I didn’t, I was reasonable, and this is the thanks I get. A drip-drip of Fuckoffs like a dosage of Earex. It seemed especially coarse, given that the instrument through which these repeated incitements to departure were conveyed was none other than the matt-black leather-encrusted portable through which I had declared myself to his wife. Had my friend stayed on the line long enough I might have shared this deft irony with him.

Of course, I did not compose Stuart’s number –
her
number! all I did was press that sacred ever-remembering 1 upon the dial! – entirely on my own initiative. Sometimes magnanimity requires an
accoucheuse
. Gillian suggested I call.

Don’t get the wrong idea about Gillian, by the way. Not that I’ve any notion of the colour transparency you hold up to the light when dreaming of her. It’s just that she’s stronger than me. I’ve always known it.

And I like it. Bind me with silken cords,
please
.

Gillian
Oliver said that Stuart didn’t want to talk to him. I tried calling him too. He answered the phone. I said, ‘It’s Gillian.’ There was a sigh, and he put the phone down on me. I can’t blame him, can I?

Stuart bought out my share of the house. The division of money and possessions was fair. Do you know what he did, Stuart? It was one of those really surprising things. When we agreed to divorce – when he agreed to let me divorce, to be more accurate – I said something about the way I hated the
idea of having lawyers come in and decide who gets what, how it had been painful enough already, but then the lawyers supposedly made it worse by insisting that you fight for every penny. And do you know what Stuart’s reaction was? He said, ‘Why don’t we ask Mme Wyatt to decide?’

‘Maman?’

‘I’d trust her to be fairer than any lawyer I’ve met.’

Isn’t that rather extraordinary? So she did, and the lawyers were told what we’d agreed. Then the court approved.

Another thing. It wasn’t anything to do with sex, the break-up. Whatever anyone might imagine. I’m not going into detail, so I’ll just say this. If someone thinks he or she hasn’t got love-making completely mastered, then he or she is likely to try harder, isn’t he or she? And if on the other hand he or she believes he or she has got the whole thing taped, then he or she might become lazy, even complacent. And so to the person with them, the difference might not seem very great. Especially if what’s really important is who they are.

After I moved out, Stuart let me keep on the studio. He wouldn’t accept rent either. Oliver didn’t like it. He said Stuart might attack me. Well, of course he didn’t.

When we were dividing the spoils, Stuart insisted that I keep the glasses Maman gave us. Or what remained of them. There used to be six, now there are only three. It’s funny, I don’t remember breaking any of them.

Mme Wyatt
I regret the incident with the wedding dress. I had no intention to upset Gillian, but really her idea was absurd. More than absurd, the idea of an imbecile. To
marry twice in the same dress – who heard of it? So sometimes it is necessary for a mother to behave like a mother.

The wedding was a
disaster
. It is impossible to exaggerate how much everything went wrong. I could not avoid noticing that the champagne did not come from Champagne. We began with some black food that would have been more appropriate for a funeral. There was that difficulty with Stuart. All a disaster. And finally Oliver insists on ordering for us some Italian
digestif of
the sort which you would perhaps rub on the chest of a sick child. But put it inside oneself? Never. All a disaster, as I say.

Val
I give it a year. No, seriously. I’ll put money on it. What d’you fancy? A tenner, fifty, a hundred? I give it a year.

Listen, if Stuart, who’s all cut out to be a husband, lasts as short a time as he did with that prim ballcrusher, what chance for Oliver, who’s got no money, no prospects and is basically queer? How long will the marriage last once he starts calling her Stuart in bed?

And another thing …

Oliver & Stuart
Out.

Get that bitch out of here.

Go on.

Out.

Out.

OUT.

Val
They can’t do this to me.
You
can’t let them do this to me. I’ve got just as much right …

Oliver & Stuart
OUT. It’s her or us. Out, you bitch. OUT. Her or us.

Val
You know this is against all the rules?

I mean, you realise what you’re doing here? You know what the consequences of this are likely to be? Have you thought about them? This is player power. Hey
you
– aren’t you meant to be the manager, aren’t you meant to
own
the whole fucking team?

Oliver
Have you got a scarf, Stu?

Val
Can’t you see what’s going on? This is a direct challenge to your authority. Help me. Please. If you help me, I’ll tell you about their cocks.

Oliver
I’ll hold her, you gag her.

Stuart
Right.

Val
You’re pathetic, you know that? You two.

Pa the tic
.

Stuart …

Ol …………

Oliver
Woof. That was sport. Valda the Vanquished. Woof, woof.

Stuart, look …

Stuart
NO.

Oliver
It was just like old times, wasn’t it, that?

Just like old times. Remember?
Jules et Jim?

Stuart
Fuck off, Oliver.

Oliver
When I get your scarf back, shall I send it on?

Stuart
Fuck off, Oliver.

If you open your mouth again, I’ll …

Go on, fuck off.

Oliver
I’ve been reading Shostakovich’s memoirs. The foregoing histrionics of Valda reminded me of its opening page, on which the composer promises that he will try to tell only the truth. He has lived through many important events and known many outstanding people. He will try to give an honest account of them and not falsify or colour anything: his will be the testimony of an eye-witness. Good. Fair enough. Whereupon this underrated ironist continues, and I quote: ‘Of course, we do have the saying, “He lies like an eye-witness.” ’

That just about sums up Val. She lies like an eye-witness.

Another footnote. Or rather, something Stuart might have wished to discuss had he been in a mood to spare me the time of day. Shostakovich on his opera
Lady Macbeth:
‘It’s also about how love could have been if the world weren’t full of vile things. It’s the vileness that ruins love. And the laws, and properties, and financial worries, and the police state. If conditions had been different, love would have been different.’ Of course. Circumstances alter love. And what about extreme circumstances, those of the Stalinist Terror? Shostakovich goes on: ‘Everyone seemed worried about what would happen to love. I suppose it will always be like that, it always seems that love’s last days are here.’

Imagine that: the death of love. It could happen. I wanted to say to Stuart, you know that PhD I gave you about market forces and love, well I wasn’t sure how much I meant it, just a riff, really. Now I realise I was on to something. ‘If conditions had been different, love would have beep different.’ It’s true, so true. And how little we reflect upon it. The death of love: it’s possible, it’s thinkable, I can’t bear it. ‘Officer Cadet Russell, why do you wish to join the Regiment?’ ‘I want to make the
world safe for love. And I mean it, sir, I mean it!’

Mrs Dyer
I enjoyed having that young man here. Of course, he told terrible fibs, and I still haven’t had the last two weeks’ rent he promised to send on.

He was probably a bit round the bend, if you ask me. I used to hear him talking to himself in his room. And he did tell these fibs. I don’t think he was really writing for the films, and he never parked his car in the street. Do you think he had the AIDS after all? They say it makes people go round the bend. That could be the explanation. Still, he was a nice young man.

When he left, he asked if he could cut something off that tree outside. For a keepsake, he said. He went off with a bit of monkey-puzzle in his hand.

Gillian
Stuart is going away. I’m sure that’s a wise decision. Sometimes I think we should do the same. Oliver’s always talking about the fresh start he’s on the point of making but we’re still both living in the same city, doing the same jobs. Maybe we should just
go
.

Oliver
The test was negative, of course. I knew it would be. You weren’t actually
worrying
on my behalf, were you?
Mes excuses
. I’m really touched. Had I realised I’d have told you as soon as I knew.

Mme Wyatt
You ask me what I think of them, Stuart and Oliver, whom I prefer? But I am not Gillian, and that is all that counts. She said to me, ‘I suppose I knew what it was to be loved. I didn’t know what it was like to be adored.’ I replied, ‘Then why pull such a long face?’ As you English say, if you pull a face, the wind might change.

I suppose also, it never happens quite as you expect. I have the same prejudices as any mother. When I first met Stuart, and then afterwards when they married, I was thinking, Don’t you dare to harm my daughter. Stuart would always sit in front of me as if he was being examined by a doctor or a schoolmaster or somebody. His shoes were always very well polished, I remember, and when he thought I was not noticing he would cast an eye down on them to see that they had not got scuffed. He was so eager to please, for me to like him. I found this touching, but of course I resisted it a little. Yes, you love her now, I can see that, yes you are very polite to me and polish your shoes, but if you do not mind I will wait a few years. When ChouEn-lai was asked what he thought the effect of the French Revolution had been on world history, he replied, ‘It is too early to tell.’ Well, that is what I thought with Stuart. I saw him as an honest young man, perhaps a little dull, who earned enough money to look after Gillian, and that was a good start. But if I was examining him as he thought, then I would have come to this judgment: it is too early to tell, come back in a few years. I am waiting, I am watching. And I never once asked myself the question the other way round: what if my daughter does harm to Stuart? So I am not such a wise woman, you see. I am like those fortresses who have all their guns pointing to where they think the enemy is coming from,
and are undefended when he arrives by the back door.

And then we have Oliver instead of Stuart, and what do I think about that? Oliver who does not think that polishing his shoes is the best way to persuade me to like him. On the contrary, Oliver behaves as if it was impossible for me not to like him. He behaves as if we have always known one another. He gives me advice about which sort of English fish are best to replace in the
bouillabaisse
the Mediterranean fish I cannot obtain. (He does not ask me first if I like
bouillabaisse
.) He flirts with me, in a certain way, I think. And he does not for a moment allow himself to imagine that I could disapprove of him for having broken up my daughter’s marriage. He wants – how can I put this? – he wants me to have a part of his happiness. It is strange, and rather touching.

You know what he said to me the other day? ‘Maman,’ he said – he has called me that instead of Mme Wyatt ever since he broke up my daughter’s marriage, which I find perhaps a little peculiar – ‘Maman, why don’t we find you a husband?’

Gillian looked at him as if in the circumstances it was probably the worst thing he could have said, and maybe it was but I didn’t mind. He said it too in a flirting way, as if he would have suggested himself for the role had he seen me before he had seen my daughter. What a cheek? Yes, but I could hardly dislike him for it.

‘I do not think I will marry again,’ was all I said, though.

‘Un oeuf is enough?’ he replied, and started giggling at his own joke. It wasn’t even a good joke. Gillian joined in, and laughed more than I knew she could laugh. They forgot I was there, which was a good idea at the moment.

You see, I do not think I will marry again. Oh, I do
not say that I will not fall in love again, but that is another business. Everyone is vulnerable to that, whatever they say, until the day one dies. No, but marriage … I will tell you the conclusion I came to, after all those years with Gordon, years which despite what you might think were mostly happy; as happy as anybody else, I would say. And my conclusion was this: that as you go on living with someone, you slowly lose the power to make them happy, while your capacity to hurt them remains undiminished. And vice versa, of course.

Not an optimistic view? But one only has a duty to be optimistic in the eyes of others, not for oneself. Ah, you will say – Oliver would certainly say it – that was just with Gordon, he just ground you down, it was not a fair trial, give it another go, love. Well, it is not just from living with Gordon that I decided this: I have eyes for other marriages. And I tell you this in all honesty. There are certain truths which you can live with if they have been demonstrated to you only once. That way they do not oppress you, there is room for an interrogation mark beside them. But if such a truth is demonstrated twice, it will oppress and suffocate. I could not bear for this to be true, twice true. And so I keep my distance from that truth, and from marriage. Un oeuf is enough. And what do you also say? You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. So, no omelette for me.