The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life

by William Nicholson

  A tap on the door and Christina comes in.

  ‘I knew you’d still be here.’

  She looks uncertain of her welcome. He offers her a smile. She’s welcome.

  ‘Just taking a look at what we’ve got.’

  He spins the tape back.

  ‘Look at this.’

  Still standing, Christina watches the take.

  ‘See. I told you that’s why he lost it.’

  ‘I feel like accidentally making a hundred copies and spreading them round the business.’

  Christina giggles.

  ‘He looks like a dwarf.’

  ‘He is a dwarf.’

  ‘You were very good with him today, Henry. He behaved outrageously. You kept your cool.’

  ‘Not really. Thank God he fancies you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s you who calmed him down. You got him off my back. Do you want a drink?’

  ‘Why not?’

  So Christina has a gin and tonic too. There’s more than enough gin and not enough tonic. Henry shares out the proportions as fairly as he can.

  ‘So do you fancy him?’

  ‘God, no.’ Christina pulls a face. ‘I think he’s repulsive.’

  ‘A lot of women do fancy him.’

  ‘Not me. He gives me the creeps. Plus he’s a total fake.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  Henry stretches out on the sofa, feet up on the coffee table, and allows himself to be warmed by Christina’s sympathetic understanding. She’s still too shy to meet his eyes for more than a second, but she’s on the stool in front of him and they’re ripping into Aidan Massey together and that’s enough.

  ‘You know how he said today he could direct better than you?’

  Henry groans.

  ‘You should have said to him, Fine, you direct. I’ll be the star of the show. Which I happen to have written.’

  ‘If only.’

  ‘Actually I’m serious. You’d be great on camera.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  This is not Henry’s particular ambition or vanity but he appreciates the vote of support.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m doing in this job,’ he says after a moment. ‘I love the reading and I love the writing. All the rest, the filming and screening and publicizing and ratings and reviews, I hate all that.’

  ‘You should be an academic.’

  ‘I was a teacher for a while.’

  ‘I bet you were good.’

  ‘Not really. I couldn’t keep order. No, that’s wrong. I could keep order. I just didn’t want to. I wanted them to want to learn. There were some. It wasn’t all bad.’

  ‘I wanted to learn,’ says Christina. ‘I still do.’

  ‘What turned you on to history? Can you remember?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It was reading The Diary of Anne Frank. She was so like me, except that she was history, you know? Daddy took me to Amsterdam to visit the Anne Frank house when I was twelve. After that I started reading everything about the war.’

  She calls her father Daddy without even thinking. Henry tries to remember how old she is. Twenty-three?

  ‘How about you?’ she says.

  ‘I don’t remember. It was so long ago. I’ve always loved history.’

  But he does remember. There was a picture book he had when he was seven or eight, each picture covered two side-by-side pages, each of the same valley. There was a river curving down the valley in the shape of an S, and a little hill and a big hill. In the first picture there was an Iron Age fort on the big hill. In the second picture a Roman town. By the final picture there were trains and gasworks and streets of red-brick houses, but it was still the same valley underneath.

  ‘Yes, I do. It was a book called A Valley Grows Up. Do you know it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It must have been out of print for years. I loved that book. The valley goes from the Iron Age to the twentieth century, picture after picture.’

  He’s sitting once more in the old green chair by the bay window, his legs curled beneath him, the book open in his lap, experiencing all over again the shock of the past.

  ‘It hit me one day, reading that book, that history didn’t happen somewhere else. It happened right here. I mean, in the same actual physical space. Like this room we’re in now in Shepherd’s Bush. A real shepherd might have sat under a tree exactly where we’re sitting, only five hundred years ago. He’s here with us now in some form, a ghost or an echo or something. Imagine all the people who’ve occupied this room, this space we’re in now, over thousands of years. Imagine them all existing at once, like a crush at a party. They were here. It’s not make-believe. They were real people, and they were as close to us as I am to you. Closer. People act like history is the study of other worlds, like it’s some dark undiscovered continent, but it’s not. It’s here. Right here.’

  He stops, realizing he’s been going on too long. Christina is gazing at him with a little furrow of concentration between her eyes.

  ‘Anyway, that’s how it started for me.’

  ‘And it’s still like that for you. Or you couldn’t talk like this.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like you care.’

  ‘Like I care. Do I care? I don’t know. It doesn’t seem as much fun as it used to.’

  ‘That’s terrible, Henry. Don’t say that. Don’t let a creep like Aidan Massey spoil it for you.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not just Aidan Massey.’

  ‘So what is it?’

  He smiles at her and thinks how pretty she is and wonders that he never noticed it before. She wants so much to understand what he’s feeling. Nothing so seductive as unwavering attention.

  ‘I hardly know myself, to tell you the truth.’

  But I do know. It’s the choice I made when I took my first job in television. My beloved history sold into captivity. A performing bear waddling through its ungainly dance to distract a bored multitude.

  ‘It’s something to do with growing up,’ he says.

  ‘Like the valley.’

  ‘Like the valley.’ As she says it he sees the link for the first time. ‘It’s all there in the title, isn’t it? A valley grows up. That’s the message. History is a journey towards maturity. It’s structurally optimistic. Today is older than yesterday. The present knows more than the past. We travel faster, we have more money, things are getting better, turn to the next picture, the world’s for ever improving. Except one day you wake up and you know it’s not. Then it hits you, maybe we’ve had the best of it. Maybe from now on things get worse. And suddenly history, the glorious glow on the horizon, becomes everything you’ve loved and lost.’

  Maudlin lyricism. A sure sign of too much gin. But Christina’s buying it.

  ‘You should be a writer, Henry.’

  An author. A star. Then would you fuck me, sweet Christina? Would you unzip your snug jeans and peel down your knickers and let me put the palms of my hands on your sweet bum and pull you close and fuck you?

  ‘Shouldn’t you be going home?’ he says.

  ‘You too.’

  ‘What I mean is, isn’t there someone waiting for you?’

  ‘My flatmate? She’ll be out on the town.’

  She’s not stupid. She understands the exchange of information. Between them there is a region of space, three or four feet across, a valley where a river runs, a gulf of almost twenty years, which can be bridged by the reaching out of a hand. But it must be his hand.

  ‘I’ve drunk too much,’ he says. ‘I’ve talked too much. I blame Aidan Massey.’

  ‘Henry,’ she says. ‘Do you have any idea how special you are?’

  Her limpid eyes on him, hopelessly unable to disguise her feelings. The mournful luminosity of unrequited love. Christ, how long has this been going on?

  ‘I used to,’ he says. ‘Not any more.’

  He can’t stop himself from playing the part she assigns to him, the misunderstood genius, the warrior wear
y of war. He wants to be in her arms, to feel her kisses on his face, it’s not even the sex any more, it’s the consolation.

  Console me, Christina.

  ‘Well, you’re wrong. I’m only doing this job because of you. All the rest are a bunch of tossers, Aidan Massey included. But you, Henry, you’re the real thing.’

  ‘I try,’ he says, smiling into her unsmiling eyes. ‘I try.’

  On the train back to Sussex, eating a sandwich from the Whistlestop food mall on Victoria station, drinking a small bottle of Hardy’s red, Henry examines his conduct in the evening office, drawing up a balance sheet of pride and shame. He never touched her, not so much as laid a finger on her, and it would have been easy. A goodnight peck on the cheek wouldn’t have been out of place, and might have, would have led to more. He’s glad now that he didn’t. But why didn’t he?

  The habit of honesty. At least to myself.

  Was it because of Laura? Not really. Laura doesn’t come into it. Work is a separate universe. One of his colleagues even has two families, his home family with a wife and children for the weekend, and a work family with his assistant and child during the week. Everyone who knows finds the arrangement disturbing because they sense how easily they could do the same. It doesn’t go against nature. Historically more men have been polygamous than monogamous. Love is not a finite commodity. And yet, and yet. Henry’s infidelities never stray beyond his imagination. Not for Laura’s sake, for his own sake. He’s protecting something, without quite knowing what it is.

  Or maybe I’m just a coward.

  John Betjeman, when asked in extreme old age what he most regretted in his life answered, ‘Not enough sex.’

  38

  Friday evening already and from time to time Marion wonders where David is but to tell the truth she doesn’t really care. His last appearance was at a particularly bad time. To help her through it Dr Skilling prescribed a rather wonderful little pill, it was so small that when you popped it out of its blister pack if it went on the floor it was impossible to find again. But it was quite a little miracle worker for a while. Then when there came another bad time Dr Skilling wouldn’t give her any more in case she became addicted, but what he didn’t know was that she had some left. Just in case. That was the time David was with her. How long ago was that? Hard to say. The years all look the same after a while.

  Alan came back from school late but he’s there now, in the house next door, the other half of their house. Marion has been preparing for this all day. She has prepared in the outward sense by bathing and washing her hair. She has dressed with care, nothing too unusual, but one might as well look one’s best. She has made up her face with perhaps just a touch more eyeshadow than usual, a touch more eye-liner, after all it will be evening light when he sees her. But more than all this, she has prepared herself mentally and spiritually.

  There was a time in her life when the prospect of a social event, for example a party or a dance, would bring on one of her panic attacks. Fortunately Mummy was always very understanding, and allowed her to be excused unless she felt entirely easy about the event. This period in her life was a long one, it covered her girlhood and teenage years. Much of her grown-up years too, really. And yet here she is, preparing for a social event – for that is what it is – and she’s feeling no panic at all. This is because she and Alan have had time to get to know each other. It was the same with David, there they were in the same place, there was no pressure. Though of course in the end David was a disappointment. Alan is quite different. No heavy-handed attempts to ‘help’. His attentions to her are subtle and discreet. Just look at the place he chooses to park his car, where he can peep into her windows as he gets out. Well, that tells you everything. Hardly a word has passed between them, and yet they have a connection, an understanding. All that is to happen this evening will unfold easily, naturally.

  She has chosen Friday after careful thought. Saturday evening is the more usual choice for entertaining, but it carries a slight air of formality about it, or worse still, of what is now called a ‘date’. Also it’s the one night of the week when he might have made other plans. Friday is supper, not dinner. Friday is friendly, not dress-up. And should the evening run late, well, Saturday is not a work day. It’s important to think about these things. You have to get the details right. Really, when you think about it, all of life is details. Everything that has happened between her and Alan over the last ten months – is it only ten months! – has been an accumulation of tiny details.

  A simple dinner, pre-cooked, waits in the kitchen. A ragout of lamb that needs only to be heated on the hob; a salad that needs only to be dressed. A bottle of Chianti, not the vulgar sort that comes bundled in straw, waits on the sideboard. Some ripe Brie and a packet of Duchy Original oatmeal biscuits. Each item chosen with care to reflect taste but not ostentation. The dinner is to be casual, spontaneous, an unexpected treat. Ever afterwards he’ll say, ‘Do you remember that first evening we had together? It was perfect.’

  What pleases her more than anything is that no words are necessary. Perhaps their entire dinner will pass in silence. They’ll be quietly content simply to be together. That’s how it is when you have their kind of understanding. It will be revealing to see how he reacts when he sees the coat button. She’s placed it on the dining table in a saucer between their two places. He’ll recognize it at once, of course. He’ll see that she has found it and kept it, and he’ll understand all that this means. Will he speak? Most likely not. Just a glance at the button, and their eyes will meet, and no words will be necessary.

  However, for it all to begin, some words must be spoken. She must proffer the invitation. ‘Oh, Alan, I’ve made such a delicious stew, I thought you might like to share it with me.’ The phrasing is unimportant. But when should she speak? She looks up at the gold carriage clock on the mantelpiece: just past seven. Better not leave it too late or he’ll be making something for himself to eat. He hasn’t done so yet, he’s still upstairs in his bedroom, she can tell from the creaking sound his stairs make when he goes up or down. But he’ll be in the kitchen soon, and that’s when she must go out of her gate and in at his gate and knock on his door.

  It’s really quite exciting. She feels proud of herself. This will be something to tell Dr Skilling on her next visit. ‘What, no rapid breathing?’ he’ll say. ‘No dizzy spells? Well, we are getting on famously.’ No point in explaining to Dr Skilling that the improvement in her general well-being owes nothing to his battery of drugs; not this time at least. He doesn’t deal in the deeper emotions. And what could he do if he did? You can’t prescribe love. It comes or it doesn’t. It’s a free gift of the spirit.

  Creak-creak go the stairs. Her breathing accelerates, her vision dims. No, she tells herself. No, no, no. I am in control. This is a good day.

  She goes out of the house, leaving her front door a little open. She goes down her path. It’s all happening as if in a dream, because she has imagined it so many times. The click of her gate, the rasp of his gate. The scrape beneath her shoes of the weeds that grow in his path. The dark green of his door, the tarnish on his letter box, the scent of his honeysuckle.

  The door opens before she can knock.

  He stands before her, changed, shaved, smelling of cologne. In one hand he has his keys, in the other a bottle of red wine. For a moment she is too astonished to take in what’s happening. Then her astonishment gives way to a rush of joyous comprehension. Of course! He has been waiting for her. With the telepathic insight of a lover he has divined her plan and anticipated her – no, not anticipated – he, like her, has been waiting for the sound of her footsteps on his path. That’s so like him.

  ‘Oh, Alan!’ she says. ‘You knew!’

  ‘Knew what?’ he says.

  She feels her breaths come faster. His face is melting before her.

  ‘I’m just going out,’ he says. ‘Is there anything you need?’

  ‘No, no. It’s quite all right. It can wait.’
/>   She reaches for the picket fence that divides their two gardens. She must not fall over.

  ‘I’d better go, then. I’m a bit late.’

  He pulls his front door shut after him and locks it.

  ‘Have a good evening.’

  Away he goes down the path, out of his gate, into his waiting car. Marion remains motionless by his closed front door. He never looks back once. The engine starts. He drives away, with his clean-shaven cheeks and his cologne and his bottle of red wine, to have dinner with somebody else.

  She makes her way back to her own house, moving slowly, as if through water. It was like this the day she went a little too far out when sea-bathing, and unable to swim began to walk back, with the waves rising behind her. It was like this the day David left, only it was another house in another town, and many long years ago. Losing David was hard, that had been her longest stay in the hospital, most of which has left no traces on her memory. But losing Alan—

  Oh yes, he’s gone. No question about that. The look on his face. The tone of his voice. ‘Knew what?’ he said. Now, no escape. Marion’s gift of sensitivity has become her curse. Whatever love Alan felt for her is dead. So quickly! But the heart has its own time zone. Love can flare up and be consummated and die in the space between words. Some other person has entered his life, and she, Marion, is forgotten, and the waves are rising.

  Why should I be surprised? Hasn’t this always been the way? Everything I’ve ever loved has been taken from me, and always will be.

  She sits down in her kitchen but she does not eat. How can she eat? In the hurting silence of her solitude the room changes round her. Little by little it becomes cold and strange. This is more than a blurring of her vision. After a few minutes she finds she no longer recognizes her surroundings.

  This has happened to her before. There was a pill that stopped it then. Are there any left? She takes seven different pills each day, and can no longer remember which pill serves which function. The sensation is unbearable, far worse than before. It’s as if the world has turned against her.