Us (11 page)

Of course I had been involved in two or three ‘serious' relationships, each lasting slightly longer than the shelf-life of a half-dozen eggs, but while there had been moments of happiness and affection, no hearts had been set aflame as yet. And yes, I had ‘dated' too, a series of unsuccessful job interviews for a post I didn't really want, the meetings largely taking place in cinemas because there would be less obligation to speak. Often I was home by a quarter to ten, queasy from a large bag of Maltesers. Love and desire played little part in these dates. Embarrassment and self-consciousness were the key emotions, discomfort increasing exponentially at each encounter until one or other of us cracked and blurted out a standard-form ‘let's be friends', after which we'd part, sometimes at a brisk run. As to romantic love, the real thing, I had been stricken once before, but reminiscing about Liza Godwin was like expecting the
Titanic
's captain to fondly recall the iceberg.

We met on our first day at university, where she was studying modern languages, and were immediately great friends, inseparable, right up until I committed the error of making a pass at a sherry party that had got out of hand. She responded to my attempted kiss by ducking, quite low, bending from the knees and hurrying away, like someone avoiding the blades of a helicopter. This cooled our friendship and soon I was resorting to notes and letters posted under the door of her room in our halls of residence. Once a mutual pleasure, our proximity became so problematic to Liza that she moved to different accommodation, and I would telephone her there, late at night, not entirely sober, because what could be more charming and devil-may-care, what could melt a woman's heart like a deranged phone call after midnight?

To her credit, Liza remained sympathetic and understanding of my feelings, right up until the point where several members of the rugby team suggested that I might consider ‘backing off' for a while. Their intervention removed all ambiguity and, in the battle between love and violence, violence won. I never spoke to Liza Godwin again. Still, I'm afraid I took it all very badly. I hesitate to use the word ‘overdose'. A disregard for the safety guidelines would be more accurate. The aspirins were soluble and the volume of water required to dissolve, I think, five of them, was considerable and meant that I woke up with a desperate need for the bathroom and a perfectly clear head. Looking back, it all seems very uncharacteristic; embarrassing, too, my one moment of adolescent melodrama. What was I hoping to achieve? It was hardly a ‘cry for help'; I would have been embarrassed to make that much noise. ‘A cough for help', perhaps that was what it was. A clearing of the throat.

So there was good reason to fear a recurrence of a condition whose symptoms were insomnia, dizziness and confusion followed by depression and a broken heart. As the Northern Line train rattled into Balham, the doubts were already crowding in. It wasn't even as if Connie's decision had been the product of a rational mind, and the passion she had felt at three a.m. seemed unlikely to survive until the following Thursday, our second date, when we would be sober and self-conscious. Then there was Angelo to contend with, lurking even now in the pocket of her dressing gown nearest to her breast. Nothing could be taken for granted. Winning Connie Moore, keeping Connie Moore would be a challenge that would continue right up until an afternoon in Paris …

… where we slept off our lunch in the Jardin du Luxembourg, a park so elegant and groomed that I always half expect to be asked to remove my shoes. Lying on the grass is only permitted in a cramped strip at its southern end, sunbathers clinging to it as if to the hull of an overturned cruise ship. Our mouths were sticky from red wine and salty duck and we took it in turns to quench our thirsts with briny sparkling water that had long since ceased to sparkle.

‘How do French people do it?'

‘Do what?' Connie's head was resting on the pillow of my stomach.

‘Drink wine at lunchtime. I feel like I've been anaesthetised.'

‘I don't know if they do any more. I think that's just us tourists.'

To our left, four Italian language students were hunched over Chinese takeaway in plastic trays, the syrup and vinegar smell hanging in the hot, still air. To our right, three skinny Russian boys were listening to Slavic hip-hop on the speaker of their mobile phone, running their hands over their shaved heads and intermittently howling like wolves.

‘City of Proust,' sighed Connie, ‘the city of Truffaut and Piaf.'

‘You are having a nice time, aren't you?'

‘Very much so.' She reached behind her, searching for my hand, but the effort was too great and her arm dropped back.

‘You think Albie's happy?'

‘Posing around Paris at his father's expense? Of course he is. Remember it's against his principles to show happiness.'

‘Where does he keep disappearing off to all the time?'

‘Maybe he has friends here.'

‘Which friends? He doesn't have friends in France.'

‘Friends means something different now to what it meant in our day.'

‘In what way?'

‘Well, he goes online and writes, “hey, I'm in Paris” and someone else says, “I'm in Paris too!” or someone says, “my friend lives in Paris, you should meet up.” And so he does.'

‘Sounds terrifying.'

‘I know. All those new people, all that spontaneity.'

‘It was hard enough having a pen-pal.'

She rolled on to her front, latching on to something new. ‘Douglas, you had a pen-pal?'

‘Günther from Düsseldorf. He came to stay, but it wasn't a success. Couldn't eat my mother's food. He was visibly wasting away, and I was terrified we'd get in trouble for sending back this malnourished child. In the end my father practically tied him to a chair until he'd eaten his liver and onions.'

‘Such golden memories you have. Did you get invited to Düsseldorf?'

‘No, strangely enough!'

‘You should find the address, track him down.'

‘Maybe I will. Did you have a pen-pal?'

‘French girl. Elodie. She wore an unnecessary bra and taught me how to roll cigarettes.'

‘So it
was
educational.' Connie turned again, and closed her eyes.

‘It would be nice to bump into him, though,' I said. ‘Every now and then.'

‘Günther?'

‘Our son.'

‘We're seeing him tonight. I've fixed it. Now let me sleep.'

We dozed to the lulling sound of Russian hip-hop in which, interestingly, only the profanities remained in English, presumably so as to offend the widest possible international audience. In the late afternoon, sitting and yawning, Connie suggested we rent bicycles. Still a little drunk, we rode the municipal machines, unwieldy as wheelbarrows, along whichever street we liked the look of.

‘Where are we going?'

‘We're deliberately getting lost!' she shouted. ‘No guidebooks, no maps allowed.'

And despite being too foggy to ride a heavy bicycle on the wrong side of the road, I adopted a devil-may-care, freewheeling attitude, knees clipping wing mirrors, ignoring the waved fists of the taxi-drivers as I smiled, smiled, smiled.

The warm feelings continued into the evening. Connie had spotted an open-air cinema screen in an urban park not far from Place d'Italie and decided that we would go and watch a movie there. A stolen bedcover from the Good Times Hotel was our picnic blanket; there was rosé wine, bread and cheese, the evening was warm and clear. Even Albie seemed pleased to be there.

‘Will it be in French?' he asked, as we established our base in front of the screen.

‘Albie, don't worry, you'll understand. Trust me.'

The film was called
Les
Quatre Cents Coups
, or
The 400 Blows
, and I recommend it. My own taste in cinema tends towards the thriller or science-fiction/fantasy genres, but despite the lack of actual blows it was very entertaining. The film concerns the misadventures of an intelligent but irresponsible young man called Antoine who ends up in trouble with the law. His amiable father, who is being betrayed by the mother, loses patience with young Antoine, and the boy is sent to a sort of borstal. Escaping, he runs towards the sea – he has never seen the sea before – and then, well, the film just stops with the young man looking into the camera in a challenging, almost accusatory way.

In plot terms it was no
Bourne Identity
but I found myself enjoying it nonetheless. It was a film about poetry, rebellion, the elation and confusion of youth – not
my
youth necessarily, other people's youth – and it had a profound effect on Albie, who was so engaged in the film that he temporarily forgot to drink excessively, and knelt erect with his hands placed on his thighs in a pose that I'd last seen on the gym mats at his primary school.

The sky darkened and the projection came into sharper focus, swallows darting across the screen like specks on the celluloid – or perhaps they were bats, or both – and Albie sat there, identifying violently with the character despite, I think it's fair to say, having had a pretty stable childhood. Every now and then I turned to see his profile flashing white in the light of the monochrome screen, and I found myself feeling a terrific fondness for him, for both of them, for us, the Petersens, a little pulse of love and affection, a conviction that our marriage, our family, was not so bad, was better than most, and that we would survive.

Anyway, it was all very atmospheric and congenial and all too soon it was over. The final image froze, Antoine Doinel was giving us that look from the screen, and Albie was rubbing his cheeks with the heels of his hands as if cramming the tears back into his eyes.

‘That,' he declared, ‘was the greatest fucking film I have ever seen in my life.'

‘Albie, is that language really necessary?' I said.

‘And the photography was amazing!'

‘Yes, I liked the photography too,' I chipped in hopefully, but Albie and his mother were deep in an embrace, Albie squeezing her as they both laughed, and then he was running off into the summer night and Connie and I, too drunk to risk the bicycles again, held hands and walked home through the 13
th
, the 5
th
, the 6
th
, the 7
th
, love's young dream.

Despite my PhD, the intricate algorithm of what to do on a second date had entirely defeated me. Each restaurant seemed either too formal and ostentatious or too casual and downmarket. It was late February, so too cold for Hyde Park, and my usual preferred option, the cinema, wasn't right either. We wouldn't be able to talk at the cinema. I wouldn't be able to see her.

We arranged to meet on the campus quad outside the laboratory where I was working on my post-doc. Since leaving art school, Connie had been employed four days a week at a commercial gallery in St James's. She had railed against the place – the lousy art, the customers with more money than taste – but it enabled her to pay the rent while she worked on her own paintings in the small east London studio she shared with friends – a collective was the term they used – each of them waiting for their breakthrough. As a career plan, it all sounded hopelessly unstructured to me, but the St James gallery at least meant she could pay her rent and eat. In a stammering phone call, I had instructed her on the bus routes open to her, the precise workings of the 19, the 22, the 38. ‘Douglas, I grew up in London,' she had told me, ‘I know how to catch the bus. I'll see you at six thirty.' By six twenty-two I was beneath the clock tower, staring at the
latest
Biochemist
, eyes sliding across the page without gaining purchase, still staring at six forty, hearing her before I saw her; the tap-tap of high heels was not a common sound on this part of the campus.

In our digital age we now have the electronic means to summon up a face more or less at will. Back then faces were like phone numbers; you tried to memorise the important ones. But my mental snapshots of the previous weekend had begun to fade. Chaste and sober on a squally, gun-metal weekday, would I be disappointed?

Not a chance. The reality, when I saw her, far exceeded my memories: the wonderful face framed by the raised collar of a long black overcoat; some sort of old-fashioned dress beneath it, rust red; carefully made-up; dark eyes, lips to match her dress. The scampi platter at the Rat and Parrot had ceased to be an option.

We kissed a little awkwardly, an earlobe for me, hair for her. ‘You look very glamorous.'

‘This? Oh, I have to wear this for work,' she said, as if to say
this isn't meant for you
; eight seconds gone and already a botched kiss, an imagined slight. The evening stretched before us like a tightrope across some vast canyon. To mark the importance of the occasion, I was wearing my best jacket, raffish chocolate brown corduroy, and a knitted tie, dark plum. Her hand travelled to the knot and adjusted it.

‘Very nice. Good God, you actually have a pen in your top pocket.'

‘As a scientist, I have to. It's my uniform.'

She smiled. ‘Is this where you work?'

‘Over there, in the lab.'

‘And the fruit flies?'

‘They're inside. Do you want to come and see?'

‘Am I allowed? I always assumed all labs were top secret.'

‘Only in films.'

She grabbed my arms with both hands. ‘Then I have to see the fruit flies!'

She stared at the clouds of flies, her face close to the muslin, quite bewitched. It was as if I'd taken her to the unicorn enclosure.

‘Why fruit flies? Why not ants or beetles or stick insects?'

Whether her interest was genuine, exaggerated or feigned, I couldn't say. Perhaps she viewed the insectory as some kind of art installation; I know such things exist. Whatever the reason, ‘why fruit flies?' was the kind of question that I longed to hear, and I explained about the fast breeding, the low upkeep, the conspicuous phenotypes.