Zoo Time (34 page)

‘Yes. And I called him Toblerone.’

‘Because?’

‘Because his family was Swiss.’

I saw Francis shaping up to do something with the idea of not minding her taking a bite out of his bar.

‘No, Francis,’ I said.

‘No what?’

‘You know what.’

‘I was just going to ask your lovely mother-in-law whether she’d object to my calling her Popsicle.’

Poppy fanned her face with her hands as though all this gallantry had made her hot. ‘If you like,’ she said.

I examined Vanessa’s expression to see if she was/were jealous. A mother is meant to give way and leave the field clear for her daughter. But Poppy was still on active service. Was that bound to be the way of it now that women had discovered how not to age: were mothers and their daughters doomed to slug it out until one of them was finally pitched, made-up and manicured, into the unresponsive earth?

And did this explain why Poppy hadn’t blown the whistle on me? Because all was fair now between the generations?

Vanessa was aware of my scrutiny. ‘I hope you don’t think,’ she said in a quiet voice, though with Francis and Poppy hugger-mugger there was no need of one, ‘that I came here deliberately to sabotage your lunch.’

‘Why would I think that?’

‘Because you usually think ill of me.’

I felt sorry for her suddenly, mistrusted by me, eclipsed by her mother. ‘I don’t usually think ill of you at all,’ I said, patting her hand. ‘I think well of you.’

She opened her palm so that I could slip mine into it.

‘I do, however, think ill of my brother,’ I said.

She didn’t move a muscle. ‘You shouldn’t,’ she said. ‘He’s ill enough already.’

‘Will my thinking make him worse?’

‘You know my theory of illness.’

I did. Vanessa’s theory of illness was that illness was all in the head – in your own head or in the heads of others. You made yourself ill if you wanted to be ill and other people made you ill if they wanted you to be ill, and your being ill explained everything you did. In this way we were all entirely innocent of our actions while being entirely to blame for them.

‘And you?’ I asked.

‘Me what?’

I turned my face into a blazing interrogation mark. ‘How are you?’

‘In relation to what?’

‘In relation to everything. In relation to me, in relation to Jeffrey, in relation to life.’

‘How do you think I am? Ill.’

‘Your illness being specifically what?’

She didn’t hesitate. ‘Erotomania.’

I looked around the room and made a sign suggesting she keep her voice down. Not that anyone was listening, least of all Francis and Poppy who were trapped like baby rabbits in the headlights of their tipsy fascination.

‘I hadn’t realised it had gone that far,’ I said.

‘You hadn’t realised what had gone that far?’

‘You. I hadn’t realised
you
had gone that far. You and –’

‘I’m not talking about me. You’re the erotomaniac.’

‘Me? An erotomaniac? I barely have a sex drive when I’m writing, as you know.’

‘I know the theory, Guido. Words drive out longing. But they don’t in your case. In your case words
are
longing. They sit up and beg for it. Read me, read me, fuck me, fuck me.’

I slapped my forehead in exasperation. ‘How has this got back to me? I thought we were discussing your illness.’

‘You
are
my illness.’

‘
I’m
your illness? Well, that’s convenient for you, Vee. Convenient for Jeffrey, too. So does it follow that you’re
my
illness?’

‘How can my illness not be your illness if it was your illness to begin with?’

Was it because I’d slapped my forehead that my brain suddenly felt very tired? But I tried to stay on track. ‘So it was my illness that made you sleep with Jeffrey?’

‘Who said I slept with Jeffrey?’

‘All right, I get it. You gave him one of your famous spur-of-the-moment blow jobs.’

‘Did he say that?’

‘No.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He didn’t. He just stared in a particular way.’

‘A way that made you think I blew him? What did he do – puff out his cheeks?’

‘The details aren’t important, Vee.’

‘Then why are we having this conversation?’

‘Christ – Jeffrey’s my brother.’

‘Ah, family now! Since when did you care about things like that? You’re unconventional, remember. You’re a novelist, a free spirit. The Wilmslow Debauchee.’

‘It’s not a matter of what I care about. Didn’t
you
care about
things like that
?’

‘Me? I’m third in this pecking order. There’s you, and you don’t care. There’s Jeffrey, and he has certainly never cared. That’s the blood is thicker than water part of it dispensed with, and then there’s me – no blood relation to either of you.’

‘Wife, Vee? Wife!’

‘Oh –
wife
! What about husband, Guido,
husband
?’

‘Meaning?’

We had been holding hands throughout this. Only now did she release mine. ‘Meaning, Guido, whatever you want it to mean.’

An indirect answer to what had been, no matter how colourful my language, essentially indirect questions. I’d charged her with sleeping with Jeffrey but then again I hadn’t. You have to be blunt when it comes to getting to the truth of a suspected infidelity. Do you or didn’t you? When did you? Where did you? How often did you? How much did you enjoy it? When are you planning to do it next? Anything less and you let the person you believe to have betrayed you off the hook. You talk dirty but you don’t get the answers you are looking for, assuming answers are in fact what you are looking for.

You expect the accused to prevaricate, but why would the accuser do the prevaricating for her? Because directness was not in my nature or my profession. Actually to ask my wife when and where and how often would have been too crude. To intimate suspicion was one thing, to demand an explanation another. I was a novelist: I didn’t want an explanation, I wanted a spiralling narrative of uncertainty, nothing ever known for sure, the story going on for ever. It’s why I don’t read whodunnits. I take no satisfaction in knowing who dun it. A mystery capable of being solved isn’t what I call a mystery.

Whereas Jeffrey and Vanessa, Jeffrey and Poppy, Jeffrey and Poppy
and
Vanessa . . .

Ah! Or rather, Ah?

The interrogative mark beating the exclamatory any time.

Was Vanessa’s saying I could take her to mean whatever I wanted her to mean her way of showing that she knew about me and Poppy? Had Jeffrey been her quid pro quo?

But if it was a quid pro quo that barely seemed to matter to her, did Poppy and I not matter to her either?

Or was the whole performance simply to put me off the scent of the real crime, which was Jeffrey and Poppy? And if so, why? Who or what was she protecting? Her mother’s reputation? My feelings?

A crazed thought sought brief shelter in my disordered mind. Vee loved me, Vee knew about me and Poppy, Vee understood – I was a writer: Vee got that – but I was also a man, and Vee didn’t want to see that man hurt.

See the advantage of having nothing ever spelt out clearly? See what vast territories of outrageous speculation it leaves you free to roam?

I must have been mouth-writing again because Vanessa said, ‘Planning a book about it, are we?’

‘No,’ I lied. ‘Why don’t you write it, since you know so many more of the details?’

‘Who’s to say I’m not?’

I stared at her. She threw her head back, showing me her throat, laughing like a temple prostitute. It worked with me every time. Had she done that more often I might have thought about her mother less.

‘What do you mean
who’s to say I’m not
?’

‘You ask why don’t I write about it, I reply who’s to say I’m not writing about it – whatever the “it” is.’

‘Well, you should know what the “it” is if you’re writing about it?’

‘One thing’s for certain, Guido – my “it” won’t be your “it” .’

We’d been here a thousand times. I’m writing, I’m not writing. I’ve started, I’ve not started. I’m writing about this, I’m writing about that, mind your own fucking business what I’m writing about. So what made it different now? I couldn’t have said. It just felt different. I’d been asked once why I didn’t write crime, since crime writing was where it was at. Because, I’d answered, I wasn’t interested in crime, I was interested in punishment. So was this the punishment I’d been expecting, the punishment it could be said I deserved – Vanessa finally with the wind in her sails, Vanessa victrix?

‘Been keeping a little diary?’ I asked. Insulting of me. But bravado was at work. The bravado of a drowning man, waiting for his punishment. Some might say inviting his punishment, for every truly moral man is a masochist.

‘Think that if you like.’

It worried me that she hadn’t called me a patronising prick. It worried me how sweet-tempered she was being.

‘So come on – writer to writer – what have you been writing?’

She looked me directly in the eyes, hers as wild as the stars that fell from the skies over Monkey Mia. ‘What’s sauce for the goose, Guido.’

That meant only one thing in our house.

‘A novel? Don’t tell me you’re writing an unchaste novel about my family?’

‘Why would it be unchaste?’

‘Just a feeling I have.’

‘And why shouldn’t it be unchaste anyway? You’re always writing unchastely about mine.’

‘That’s not true. I have never written about your family unchastely or otherwise. Anyway, you don’t have a family, apart from Poppy.’

‘It’s true if one knows how to read you, and I know how to read you.’

I didn’t rise to that. If she thought what I’d written so far was improper, she should get inside my head. Or was that her point: that she
was
inside my head? Unless she’d stolen a look at what was on my computer. But in that event she wouldn’t be here, toying with me now.

‘Never mind mine,’ I said, moving quickly on. ‘Where are you with yours? You’d written one line when we last discussed it. “Gentle reader, get fucked!” I recall asking you to reconsider that as an opening.’

I wasn’t exaggerating.
Vanessa
, the novel was called.
Vanessa
by Vanessa. And so did it begin. ‘Gentle reader, get fucked!’ If that’s how she began, I could see why she had so much trouble finishing.

‘Not so,’ she said. ‘It was “Gentle reader, up yours.” Subtly different, I think. It’s you that’s been fucking off readers for years.’

‘Vee, there are no readers.’

‘That’s because you’ve fucked them off.’

‘So how have you begun this time?’

‘Ah!’ she said, pursing her lips. It was as though I’d asked the temple prostitute to quote for the cost of an hour naked in her company. ‘You’ll know soon enough.’

She wanted me to be frightened, and I was.

‘How far have you got?’

Nothing. Just the inscrutable sacred harlot smile.

‘Shown any of it to anyone?’

Still nothing. I couldn’t afford her, that was what her look meant. Her services were too high class for the likes of me.

I waved a dismissive hand at her. ‘I’ll believe it when I see it, Vee.’ But then remembered that I loved her. ‘I want to believe it.’

She was still laughing. Both of them were still laughing – Poppy at Francis’s jokes, Vee at me. ‘Then prepare to be pleased for me,’ she said. ‘I even have a title.’

My turn to say ‘Ah!’ I knew Vanessa’s titles. ‘Don’t tell me,’ I said, ‘
Why My Husband Guy Ableman is an Opinionated Prick
.’

She shook her hair as though loosening the snakes entwined and knotted in it.

‘You, you, you. There are some things, Guido, that have nothing to do with you.’

I didn’t believe that either.

34

Life’s a Beach

A week later she asked me to leave the house. Not for ever. And not the whole time. Just during daylight hours.

We’d been through this before. ‘I can’t hear myself think with you banging at those keys,’ was her usual complaint. Normally I closed my door and took no notice. We lived in a three-storey house with an attic and a basement after all. And I was in the basement. But this time she had stormed into my room with her eyes wild and her fingers extended like an animal’s claws. It wasn’t for myself I feared, but for her. ‘I’m begging you,’ she had cried. I thought she would hurl herself at my feet. ‘Give me my turn.’