by Vesna Main
–Is that what you would do?
–I’m only making suggestions. Now, he’s outside the house, thinking about Anna. Is he wondering whether to change his mind?
–No, but secretly he’s always hoping that the woman wouldn’t be in or that something would happen at the last minute, a train crash, something that would prevent him from having to go through with it.
–He could cancel.
–More often than not, he does, but has to keep some to make the game appear credible to himself. The excitement is in the anticipation—
–And that excitement is mixed with fear.
–Exactly. Absolute terror at the prospect of meeting the women.
–Poor Richard.
–Despite the fear, he goes on making arrangements. No wonder it doesn’t make sense to Anna. He’s an intelligent man and yet he keeps putting himself through all this.
–I think he would be able to see it in someone else. It’s harder to be aware of one’s own madness. And since you haven’t given him a close friend, there’s no one to point it out to him.
–Are you saying that it’s the author’s fault?
–Possibly.
–Always blame the woman.
–That’s one way of looking at it.
–As for compartmentalising, remember, he has a different identity when he visits the women. That helps too.
–I see.
–He’s called Alan, Alan Roberts. That was the name he gave to the old woman in Manchester, the first one. You remember the name of the guy he was meeting, the head of history.
–The head of history?
–Yes, but if any of the women ask him about his work, he says he’s a school teacher, maths or physics—
–Why?
–They always ask. Part of the small talk. And maths or physics, he reckons, is furthest from history.
–But the women wouldn’t care what he does.
–They only ask to make conversation.
–What happens with the posh woman?
–Adele. Right, as I said, he finds her unnerving because the game is different. First the house, then her. After opening the door wearing a short, see-through negligée, she offers him wine. None of the others have done that.
–And there’s the envelope on the mantelpiece.
–Yes, disconcerting.
–I can see this will be another disappointment.
–Quite right. So, Richard, or Alan, as he is now, and this woman sit in her lounge, sipping wine. She apologises for the untidiness. Again not the kind of thing any other woman has said. If only he could forget about the envelope, he could pretend he’s with a friend, a lover. He says he likes her house. It looks lived in. He thinks of what Anna tends to say: lived in – just a stupid excuse for people to be messy, too lazy to tidy their stuff. She’s always trying to turn their Edwardian house into a minimalist loft.
–All our friends will recognize you here.
–A little joke.
–It won’t be so funny when they assume it’s about us.
–You underestimate them. They know a novel is not real.
–Most people read because they take it for reality.
–I don’t like most people.
–Don’t I know it?
–Can we stop being personal? Let’s get back to Richard. When he looks around the house, he is actually psyching himself. Don’t you think?
–You mean building up his resentment against Anna—
–Exactly. That assuages any possible guilt, makes him feel better, justifies his session with the whore. His armchair is a couple of metres from hers and he would like to move closer, touch her, put his hand on her breasts but he doesn’t dare, it doesn’t seem appropriate with this kind of conversation.
–Is she the only middle-class one?
–For Richard? Yes, I think so.
–Wouldn’t he have worked it all out in advance? Planned his moves, what to say.
–He didn’t anticipate she would be so different.
–Do your homework next time, Richard.
–Don’t encourage him.
–I don’t think he listens to me; he’s a fictional character, as you keep telling me.
–Yes, but it disturbs me when you’re on his side; it makes me think that you approve of his—
–Does he get anywhere with Adele?
–They are still talking in the lounge when she mentions her garden and asks him if he wants to see it.
–They will do it outside?
–That’s Richard’s first thought.
–Obviously.
–But no, they don’t; it’s too cold. He’s both polite and apprehensive. But he fantasises about sex in the shed; he can see cushions through the window and thinks how exciting it would be to lie there. Have urgent sex. He feels his erection stirring.
–He’s paid her. He should tell her what he wants.
–He doesn’t dare; he feels she’s too much in control. She makes him listen to a water feature.
–Poor old Richard.
–Don’t say that.
–Sorry.
–Eventually, they go upstairs but she stops him and asks him to take off his shoes. She has a cream-coloured runner on the stairs.
–A man in socks. That should be sobering.
–What do you mean?
–Cuts you down to size when you take shoes off.
–I suppose so. Not only does he obey but he also apologizes, saying that he should have thought of it.
–She’ll have him eating from her hand.
–In the bedroom, she gives him a towel and asks him to have a wash. He had a shower before leaving home but he doesn’t argue.
–What a wimp!
–In the bathroom, he avoids his face in the large mirror behind the sink. He’s afraid he might lose his nerve. You see that’s where I imagined his sobering moment: washing his penis, his clean penis, in someone else’s bathroom strikes him as absurd and for a split second he feels like walking out but he makes an effort to wash without thinking about the situation. The absurdity carries on: he feels silly pulling up his trousers when he’s about to take them off a second later but it would be even more ridiculous to walk in with the trousers around his ankles.
–A Charlie Chaplin moment, shuffling along.
–Right.
–You can work out details without stealing from real life when you want to.
–It interests me what goes through the mind of an intelligent, articulate, happily married man at a moment like that—
–Is he happily married?
–Both of them think so.
–A big question mark.
–Yes, but if they both think so, then it must be—
–Is ours a happy marriage?
–What do you mean?
–Do you think we have a happy marriage?
–Do you?
–I asked first.
–I’m trying to talk about my novel but you always turn it into a discussion about us.
–Because it’s about us.
–No it isn’t.
–And then?
–They have sex.
–They do?
–Sort of. They have oral but then his mobile goes off. For a few seconds he doesn’t realise it’s his. He loses his erection. Despite her efforts, he can’t get it back.
–You’re using the phone like some deus ex machina.
–A useful device. He thinks he can’t get his erection back because it bothers him that she’s too much in charge. She keeps telling him what to do and ignores what he says he wants. His other whores do not behave like that.
–Poor Richard.
–Serves him right.
–Maybe therapy will sort h
im out. Maybe all this has to happen so that he emerges a better person.
–This isn’t Richard’s Bildungsroman.
* * *
–Good day?
–Don’t ask.
–Why?
–Done nothing.
–How come?
–I don’t know.
–Have you run out of ideas?
–No. But I was scared.
–Scared of what?
–The usual thing.
–The usual thing?
–I’ve looked over what I’ve got so far and it’s not right—
–The first draft. You can work on it later. I don’t need to tell you that.
–It’s different this time.
–Because it’s about us.
–It’s not about us.
–Then why?
–I don’t know. It’s always scary, always scary as if it were my first time. I read somewhere about a writer – a writer who has published thirty odd books – saying that when it comes to his work, he is permanently a virgin. I feel like that: it’s always the first time, always scary, no matter how many books you’ve done.
–What are you scared of?
–Failure.
–Failure?
–Yes, what I have in my head, the voice I hear, the words I see in my mind, the tone, it’s never as good as when I put it on paper. It’s always inferior. So sometimes you feel you want to keep it in your mind, preserve the idea for ever, rather than write it down. It’s like Keats’ Grecian Urn: as long as the love isn’t realised, consummated, as long as the lovers are suspended in the act of trying to reach each other, they live with the anticipation of ideal love. Painted on a Grecian urn, they remain forever stuck in the moment, forever inhabiting a universe of desire and ideal, forever unable to realise their love, but also forever away from divorce and quarrels and betrayals and the rest of the ugly stuff. It’s the same with writing. If you want the ideal, if you want perfect writing, you shouldn’t write it down. It should stay in your head.
–But no one would be able to see it.
–Perhaps you could just talk about it. Go for long walks with your readers and tell them about the novel you’re writing but in fact you’re not writing it because if you were, the result would be a disappointment.
–Like that guy—
–Jack Toledano.
* * *
–How was your day?
–Not good.
–Why?
–I keep wondering whether I’ve taken a wrong turning.
–A wrong turning?
–In the story. Little decisions that a novelist makes to move the story along.
–And then one leads to another and that in turn . . . but if one of them doesn’t feel right, the mistakes augment, the wrong turning snowballs and you end up in an impasse.
–Exactly. You speak like a novelist. Except for mixing your metaphors.
–Mixing metaphors? Oh, I see. You have me there. But this problem arises in any writing. All a matter of structure, of organising your argument, your story line. Can I help?
–No one can. I may have to retrace my steps—
–You mean, undo some of the narrative?
–Yes. Unknit it, like a jumper. Take a different turning at some point in the narrative and see if it works. The problem is to know where.
–Make Richard a nicer person.
–I thought you already liked him. You had problems with Anna.
–Both of them. You never see them being happy together. It makes you wonder whether the marriage was as good as they claim.
–It’s difficult to have flashbacks, happy flashbacks, because the past is bound to be coloured by what happened. That’s another thing that hurts Anna so much.
–What do you mean?
–Her memories of happy occasions, holidays and birthdays, all of that has to be revised. She looks at their photographs, at the smiling faces and she’s angry that so much was going on but she didn’t know it. How could she be smiling, she asks herself, when Richard, looking so happy, his arms around her, had just booked such and such a woman. It’s not only my present, and perhaps my future, but also my past, that have been taken from me, she says. She can try to influence her present and her future, but there’s nothing she can do about her past. It’s gone and it was horrible but she didn’t even know it.
–It wasn’t horrible at the time. She should remember it as it felt then.
–To her the memory is false. Has to be revised. She wonders how she could have been so stupid. She’s hurt by the idea that she lived a life that wasn’t what she thought it was. Was she too focused on the girls, on the gallery, did she neglect Richard? How else could she have missed what he was up to?
–That’s sad and readers might have sympathy but if you want her to be liked, she can’t go on rolling in the mud. She has to pick herself up and move forward.
–You’re insensitive. Can’t you see how hurt she is?
–Let her lick her wounds and get on with life. Smell the roses.
–She could do that if she left him. Then it would be mainly a question of sorting herself out. But if she stays, she can’t repair the marriage on her own.
–She can start by playing her part.
–She doesn’t think Richard’s helping.
–?
–She needs him to show her how much he cares for her. That is, if he does. And I’m not sure he does. Anna doubts it too. She’s more vulnerable and needs more attention than before. He doesn’t seem to understand.
–Self-centred as always. She wants him to pay the price for what he has done.
–How is being attentive to your wife paying a price? It should be a joy. A privilege.
–He needs attention too. It’s obvious he’s screwed up.
–He has his therapist.
–It’s not the same. Anna always sees everything in terms of herself.
–That’s what you think of me, don’t you?
–I was talking about her. In any case, she could have therapy if she wanted to.
–Rachel wasn’t any help.
–Typical of Anna’s impetuosity to walk out on her therapist.
–Why do you say she’s impetuous?
–Well, you are.
–So? Anna’s not me.
–More or less she is.
–Are you Richard?
–You’re building him out of me.
–Rubbish. Do you have a secret life?
–Don’t be ridiculous. When would I have the time?
–That’s exactly what Richard says.
–Does he?
–Once he’s late and claims he was at a meeting in the department. Anna says she tried to contact him but the secretary said he had already left. Richard claims the secretary got it wrong. Anna believes him – she shouldn’t, as we know – but half-jokingly she adds, perhaps you were with some woman you are keeping secret from me. That’s when he comes up with that sentence.
–Is Anna being serious?
–No, but in retrospect, she realises she should have been. At the time, stupidly, she thinks that Richard isn’t the type to play around. As if there is a type.
–You think there isn’t?
–All walks of life, remember.
–You don’t have to believe every report you read.
–Anyway, as Anna makes the insinuation, completely innocently, Richard feels he needs to defend himself. Like you did just now.
–I thought we were talking about your novel.
* * *
–How are you?
–All right. You?
–You don’t seem all right.
–It feels wrong.
–What?
–The novel.
/> –?
–All I’m sure of is the starting image. Nothing else.
–Which image?
–Sunday evening, two people, a man and a woman, in their mid-fifties standing in the kitchen. The woman has cooked dinner. The man has had a bath and has come down, in his jeans and a clean shirt, hair freshly washed. He’s opening a bottle of wine, as he does every Sunday. The kitchen is large and they are standing a few metres apart. At the point when he is holding the bottle in between his knees and pulling out the cork, which is almost out, at that exact point – I see him using one of those old-fashioned cork screws, he is leaning forward – the woman says: we won’t need the wine tonight. He looks up; he doesn’t know why she says that. As it happens, neither does she. His first thought is that wine doesn’t go with what she has cooked. He wants to ask whether she would prefer beer. But he doesn’t say it. There is a silence, a palpable silence between them. Half a minute, or less, but when they look back on that evening, the silence will seem very long. They both sense something is going to happen. Something is going to be said that will change their lives for good. That’s all I had. I didn’t know what was going to happen, what either of them had done or what’s about to be said.
–I see.
–I also know that later the woman was to be struck by her words. She couldn’t explain where they came from. Some strange force spoke on her behalf.
–The woman’s sixth sense.
–Only a man would believe that.
–Your readers would.
–Well, they aren’t getting it spelt out by me. I’m not here to confirm their patriarchal prejudices.
–What are you here for?
–I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it. Not today. Not after the day I’ve had.
–Sorry.
–- Anna has read a lot about memory; Anna knows that memory can be deceptive and therefore when she looks back she is aware that the moment in the kitchen looks momentous, theatrical almost only in retrospect – as if the two of them were on the stage in a second rate melodrama, an inferior Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf – and it may not have been like that at the time.
–- And then?
–I don’t know. To start with, I had no idea what happened between those two people, what caused the drama that follows, the nitty-gritty of it didn’t interest me. I even wrote a short story where it’s never revealed what happened. The woman talks about those five words her husband used and the whole story is about the impact on her, the surprise, how she didn’t know her husband well enough to expect him to say those five words but the reader never finds out what they are. At the same time, I was trying to imagine what could have happened and the most obvious thing would have been that one of them has had an affair. Since that’s the most obvious, I didn’t want to use it. Then I happened to be reading about prostitution, there’s been so much in the papers, and I wondered what it would be like if the man had actually told his wife that he had been seeing prostitutes.