Learning to Die

by Thomas Maloney

  16. Rich tapestry

  ‘I am as doubtful of myself as of anything else.’

  Montaigne

  The gents’ at Mike’s office has two urinals side by side — not one or three, but a snug pair — and is notorious among junior employees for awkward encounters with their superiors. Stagefright; remarkable farts that can’t be remarked on; expectoration and misdirected spitting ditto; the garrulous, the weirdly intent, the human firehose. Some cowards pee in the cubicles, but their ungentlemanly behaviour is noted.

  Mike is relaxed unless his pee-buddy is the Generalissimo — a highly strung introvert-turned-billionaire, a genius of sorts — or his immediate boss, with those wandering, basilisk eyes. Today it’s George, a friendly, tubby bigshot who trades commodities, wears a Rolex, and has a prestigious desk near the gravitational centre of the floor. He’s known as the Gas Man — natural gas futures were his big ticket.

  ‘I heard you had a good year,’ George says, with a glance round to see that the cubicles are empty. ‘Feeling pretty flush.’ Mike nods. ‘I bet you haven’t spent any of it yet.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘We all started with a year like you’ve just had. We all felt the way you’re feeling — out of our depth. But if you hold your nerve, you could earn twice, three times as much this year. Ten times as much, within a few years.’ Mike follows him to the washbasins. ‘Here’s a word of advice,’ continues George. ‘That dubious theory about money not buying happiness — you can only test it if you spend a little. You probably still feel like a student of life, or something. Forget that now. You’ve graduated. Go out there, stand tall, and purchase life’s rich tapestry by the yard.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ says Mike, in the corridor. ‘Thanks.’ He walks slowly back to his desk. Maybe the Gas Man’s right. Does it matter that he made his money from an erroneous trade? In this business, how do you distinguish the deliberate from the accidental anyway? He could start by blasting his way through twenty or thirty grand and just see what happens. Perhaps doors will open. He is, after all, the goddamn Rocket Jesus.

  That night he calls Victoria. She’s seeing someone now, she says. That’s a shame, says Mike, because I’ve got a table at Hibiscus and tickets for the Hunger Games premiere and after-party. You’d need a dress, of course — my treat. Carmen’s not invited this time. Didn’t you hear me, says Victoria. I’m seeing someone. Pity, says Mike. Let me know if you change your mind. The next day, she does change her mind. Rich tapestry, here I come.

  Dan Mock stands on the towpath at dusk, looking out across Father Thames. The river’s surface is flat calm but dimpled by the rain, and distinctly marbled in the fading light by meandering lanes of gloss and matt. This giant endpaper in monochrome is, he decides, a conspicuous manifestation of some subtle physics. It could be floating deposits — diesel, perhaps — interfering with the surface tension, or it could be thermal circulation caused by the entry of colder water from above. He’d like to find out for sure, one day. This unthinking invocation of the future brings the disease crashing into his thoughts: if he wants to find out anything about anything, he’d better get onto it pronto.

  The disease will, at least, leave his mind untouched until the end. This is a relief not only because his greatest (or rather his loftiest) pleasures are cerebral, but also because he’ll be able to decide, in principle at least, when enough is enough. Dementia would be a more terrifying, a more degrading prospect for him: the world becoming senseless. But his mind will only get him so far. How do you take an overdose when your hands won’t move? Arrangements will have to be made carefully and in good time.

  He’ll keep eyesight, hearing, touch. Movement is his rare earth: this coming summer might be his last as a locomotive organism. Last chance to take the perfect corner on his bike. Dance badly and not care. Play an instrument (he’s never learned one). Row a boat, kick a ball (when did he last do that?). Fix things. Adjust a dial. Shake hands, perhaps. Hold Nat, stroke her hair — but he diverts his train of thought from that too-painful track.

  A small launch appears from behind the island and turns into the main channel, casting a fan of ripples. These advance across the marbled river, reflect off its banks, intersect their fellows, superpose, cohere and decohere in a silent, mathematical dance. Dan smiles at the sheer beauty of it. In the time he has left it’s more of this he wants, but you can’t buy it, you can’t add it to a list and tick it off. You just have to keep your eyes and your mind open as long as you can.

  The streetlights on the bridge go on, lighting a world of possibilities that is no longer his. This world, down here, the exquisite ripples in the dusk — this is his world. He already feels reborn.

  Brenda Vickers has reached Section Six of her online course. It’s telling her about SMART goals. She begins to grasp the intention: to bore her out of her phobia. To make it ridiculous — paint a moustache on it, balance a traffic cone of self-help jargon on its head. Maybe it will work. When her mouth goes weird, she can’t smile or express herself or engage with humanity, but presumably she can still yawn.

  Outside lie two feet of fresh snow. Work is cancelled until the access boys have cleared the tracks. Her skis were stolen last winter, so she needs a brief thaw cycle — a moist breeze or a sunny afternoon — to bake the mountain snow into a giant, firm meringue for her crampons to devour.

  She and James exchanged half a dozen texts this morning. When he was here she could feel his high spirits, a kind of exhilaration in him that was infectious. She’s never felt it with a guy before. He genuinely likes her — likes being around her, likes everything about her (likes is the word she hears in her head, but her heart hears the other). In Edinburgh she told him it wouldn’t work, but it has to work.

  Her boss mentioned a vacancy on the Galloway estate, which is much closer to James. There are even some pretty seaside towns nearby — not Bay pretty, maybe, but pretty for Scotland. There’s that town with all the bookshops. He might like that. She hasn’t mentioned this idea yet — there’s no rush. But she has a goal: somehow James and Brenda has to work.

  Specific, measurable, achievable.

  Natalie Mock has trained her swimming thoughts to occupy a territory as narrow as the lane, the furrow her body ploughs and reploughs: her stroke, her breathing, her time and distance, the status of her muscles, or by default a pleasant sensual trance. But today her thoughts are a marble too heavy to stay in its groove.

  Diagnosis. The same thing happening again, but not the same. Everywhere Natalie sees the unconditional love of kin: parents for children, children for parents, sisters for brothers, wives for the fathers of their children. She and Dan have a different sort of tie. A work in progress. Even after six years of marriage, if she has to state ‘next of kin’ she begins to write her moping mother’s name, and inserts Dan’s only with some confusion.

  She thinks back to their marriage vows — something about respecting and cherishing, throughout our lives together. Neither of them wanted anything too soppy. She dragged him out for a run on the morning of the wedding. Her thumb feels for the ring, which is not there, of course, but in her locker. There are days when she forgets to put it on. Dan always wears his.

  Less than two weeks ago, she was searching for news of her ex-boyfriend with a vague, mutinous sense that Dan didn’t understand her. Life without him was vaguely, mutinously imaginable. And now? She tests that shady mental water, while the pool’s bubbles course brightly over her skin.

  Now, life without Dan is an unimaginable horror. An injustice. Get ill if you must, but stay with me. She urges her body towards the wall and ducks into her turn. Stay with me, my love.

  James F. Saunders takes a triumphant sip of his first homemade cup of espresso. A bitter, clinging swamp in the mouth: superb. The machine arrived yesterday, a birthday present from his parents. From his mother — though his father did sign the card this year.

  James’
relationship with his mother was collateral damage in the just war of following his vocation. When he fell out with his father she patiently negotiated, tried to make peace. Blessed are that bunch.

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ James asked her, bluntly.

  ‘I’m on both your sides.’

  ‘Sorry, Mum, that’s not possible. Either you believe in me, support me, or you don’t.’

  ‘Of course I believe in you, James. But I also know your father is only thinking of you and your future.’

  ‘I can’t be entangled in that stuff. Goodbye.’

  ‘What do you mean, goodbye?’ There was a note of anger in her voice that she would afterwards regret. Too bad.

  ‘I’ll visit at Christmas. That’s it. Goodbye, Mum.’

  He can still remember the triumphant rush as he hung up on the woman who had more or less dedicated her life to his happiness. A sacrificial offering has to be something precious, and the best writers have to be bastards.

  He takes another sip and opens his laptop. The coffee is good; the novel, splendid and precarious like an unfinished bridge. The anxiety attendant on committing to a project of uncertain worth is nothing new, but the weight of ten years’ commitment and ten years’ anxiety now rests on this one trail of words. Doubts are inevitable. For instance: his story takes place over a calendar year — his aim to harness the deep, biological rhythm of the seasons — but perhaps a single day would have better suited his purpose. One voyage from wife to lover, or lover to wife. A day is nearly eternity for the mind, as the Exile demonstrated.

  But he’s learned his lesson: to hesitate now would be to invite disaster. He has to see it through. Fifty thousand words down. Just keep writing.

  One distraction that needs eliminating is Mike. A barren connection, after all, though it is doubly gratifying to James that the ginger spiv both allowed himself to be goaded back into an exchange of insults, and saw fit, in the same email, to ask for advice. What a prize pillock: but James will answer his question.

  Dear Mike,

  You ask what I would do if I had absolute freedom. Ah, freedom: that great divider of what it means to be human. So much of the human story, and the art reflecting it, is concerned with the struggles of individuals in the face of hostile external forces — war, tyranny, penury. In such circumstances, the goal is clear — simple freedom to live and to love. Even Montaigne’s self-examination was, in a sense — as of course you know — a private quest for freedom in barbarous times.

  Then there are the rest of us — the lucky few already free and whose freedom is not threatened. We face an odder sort of struggle towards odder sorts of goals. We get the occasional existential bump from death but the intervening years are eerily quiet. We look for guidance but there is none. Where there is no right to sorrow, what right is there to happiness? Anxiety has filled the gap left by religion — material anxiety in those whose souls have entirely shut down, and in the rest, in those who cling to a vision of beauty, a churning, ceaseless anxiety of the spirit.

  James frowns, and is about to delete this unplanned outburst. Those who cling to a vision of beauty! He should have taken that job writing the copy for car adverts. But he doesn’t delete it. Instead, he gives a bored sigh before nailing a final, unanswerable paragraph onto their doomed correspondence: a reconciliation of sorts.

  Art has explored all this too, with mixed success. But I’m not going to tell you how to spend your dirty money. We’ve each made our beds, and must lie in them. Do whatever you have to do to avoid falling into the boiling resentful rage of a failed life.

  Sincerely,

  James

  ‘Dan. I was wondering.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘A lot of people who get diagnosed with something like this seem to keep a record. You know — a blog.’ Dan looks at Natalie thoughtfully but says nothing. ‘They can share their thoughts, not feel so alone. Help other people to understand what they’re going through. Maybe help other sufferers, too. It’s something they can do even if they get really sick. It’s not like writing a book or something — there’s no pressure. They can write a lot or just a few lines. And it means —’ she hesitates.

  ‘— they leave something behind,’ supplies Dan. ‘On the record. After they’ve gone.’

  She nods. ‘What do you think? You’d be so good at explaining things.’

  ‘I think it’s a fine idea. For some people. But not for me. I introspect as much as the next person. But I feel no desire to gift those thoughts to the world. When I write, I write methods, results, conclusions.’ He gestures towards a physics journal lying on the coffee table. ‘Not personal ruminations. I leave that for the artists.’

  Natalie swallows her frustration. ‘But hasn’t this — this diagnosis —’ that fucking word again ‘— hasn’t this changed things? Don’t you think it might change your priorities?’

  ‘It has changed some things, but not others. I’m not really sure yet — I’m still thinking it through. We’re all going to die. The difference for me, I suppose, is that I know roughly how it’s going to happen. But I don’t see why I would turn into someone I wasn’t before. Blogger. Thrill-seeker. Fundraiser. I don’t need to give myself a new purpose.’

  ‘You’re not going to be able to achieve everything you wanted with your electrons — you won’t have time.’

  He stares at the assortment of unlit candles standing in the fireplace, a twist of sadness in his face. ‘I know. But who does? We all run out of time. I was thinking yesterday about how much I’ve been looking forward to seeing the Higgs confirmation. Pentaquarks. Neutrino mass. Gravitational waves. Dark matter. Viable fusion power. I’ll probably miss most of those.’ He looks at her and adds, with a laugh that cracks, ‘Promise me you’ll look out for them on the news.’ Natalie feels tears darting into her eyes again. ‘Whenever you live and whenever you die,’ says Dan, composure recovered, ‘you’re sure to miss something unmissable.’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere just yet,’ she says. In the silence that follows, her mind is made up. ‘I’ll tell you one thing that has changed.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want us to have a baby.’

  Dan’s start dissolves into a thin smile. ‘I thought I’d find a way to talk you round, but this terminal illness ruse seems a little drastic.’ Then the smile is gone and he shakes his head. ‘But it’s not a good idea anymore. I’m sorry. If you want reasons, I have three.’

  Don’t do this. Please.

  ‘Dan, I want us to have a baby. I want —’

  ‘No.’

  Mike Vickers is fresh from his barber one crisp Saturday morning, the smell of talc following him like the material effusion of his privilege, when he encounters George, the Gas Man, on Jermyn Street.

  ‘Just the laddie!’ booms George. ‘Remember what I said about life’s rich tapestry? Well, how would you like to witness the purchase of —’ his voice falls to a whisper ‘— an actual tapestry! Flemish. Exquisite little eight-by-six. Follow me.’

  Mike is in two minds — decline jauntily to make clear that he won’t be patronised, or accept and show this bumbling big-spender that the ‘laddie’ knows a thing or two about art. He checks his watch, a pre-bonus purchase, angling his wrist so George won’t see the middling brand.

  ‘Sure. Why not?’

  George leads him down a side street and past half a dozen small galleries, glancing at windows and occasionally making derisive snorts at their wares. A narrow opening leads to a courtyard, and they stop at a black door with no shop window. A discreet plaque announces Ira McFooley: Antiquities. George glances left and right, apparently mistaking his tubby self for a person of interest to the world, and nods towards the doorbell with small, hungry eyes.

  On the same day, James F. Saunders is in Scarborough, picking his way through a battleground of abandoned road works, hunching and flinching i
n a crossfire of rain and traffic spray. Little sodden sandbags lie slumped here and there like child corpses. He wipes a streaming nose, looks around and smiles. This town guards a scoop in the hostile coastline just as half-hearted as his native Bay, but an accident of geology provided a harbour here, and a sandy beach. These gave it a divergent identity that serves him well as a creative palate cleanser.

  There is York, of course, but it’s too far, and tainted by the risk of seeing one of the few uni peers still loitering there. Whether they recognise him or not, the pain is intolerable; on his last visit to the city he encountered an ex-classmate in the street — a fellow poet, now a successful journalist, whose career James once followed with interest — and she looked straight through him, would no more recognise him than a fly. Well, fuck them all. They’ll soon have reason to remember him.

  In the meantime, Scarborough it is. Seeking shelter, shoes wet through, James finds himself inside a bookshop for the first time in many months: a small Waterstones. Celebrity memoirs a speciality. It is an incontrovertible truth that while second-hand bookshops present comforting refuges to a writer the world has hitherto rejected, new bookshops are cursed. The shimmer, the scorn, the horror of failure. He drifts from table to stacked table, fingering the satiny covers with their sharp corners, bathing in a lake of bitterness. Invigorating, certainly: an antidote to creative exhaustion. His eye catches extravagant praise on the cover of a book that he once abandoned in disgust. Is it them or me? It’s them, of course. He’s learned to translate the absurd puff jargon: thrilling means shallow; engrossing is verbose; mesmerising, slow; unflinching, unsubtle; stunning means they couldn’t think of anything to say at all. Quite possibly the finest coming-of-age novel since Bambi. If you liked Girl in a Bodybag, you’ll love Girl in a Ditch. Murder me too and let’s get it over with.

  There are too many books in the world, of course. But there is too much of everything. James maintains a desperate belief in singularity: literature is not a bulk commodity. These thousands of worthless books do not pile up against its adamantine feet; rather, they are a stream babbling past harmlessly, endlessly, washing them clean.