‘While your father was alive?’
‘Yes. It started and it ended while my father was alive. Your father ended it because of their friendship.’
‘Their friendship didn’t stop it from starting.’
‘No. And your father never really recovered from that. He felt that he’d blighted the lives of the people he loved most in the world – yours and my parents’. And it crushed him.’
‘Did your father know?’
‘Yes, my father knew. Don’t people always know?’
‘You think Mary knew?’
‘I think people only know if they care.’
No names
With the sealed rectangular envelope still in my inside jacket pocket we are sitting on a bench in the park, and today must be the day of the dead, mine and Anna Tor’s and the rest of the world’s: even our uncomfortable bench is a memorial, to an intimate friendship that could not have been acknowledged on a gravestone or perhaps anywhere else except here on this small bronze plaque, buffed by constant accidental chafing where the words are discreetly inscribed: in a mirror to the whole world’s indifference, a two-finger sign of defiance.
‘You’re reading the inscription,’ says Anna. ‘It’s barely legible.’
‘Rubbed away by time and indifference.’
‘“We have always been together,”’ Anna manages to read.
‘There’s more,’ I say. ‘“We have always been together and we know who we are.”’
‘No names?’
‘No names.’
‘It’s almost like a challenge.’
‘It’s the opposite of that - just a pure act of love. Even one name would’ve spoiled it.’
‘One name would’ve spoiled the “we”.’
‘One name would’ve made it a challenge.’
‘And two names would’ve made it banal. Is there a date?’
‘“We have always been together and we know who we are.” An unsigned declaration and that’s it, nothing else.’
‘Forbidden love?’
‘It’s not impossible they’re both still alive.’
‘You’re cheerful.’
‘I am.’
‘And you don’t seem very curious.’
‘It’s their secret.’
‘“Families are held together by their secrets.” I heard that somewhere.’
‘You think it’s true?’
‘I think it depends on who’s in on the secrets.’
‘Secrets and lies, you can’t have one without the other.’
‘When I said that you don’t seem very curious, I meant about the letter. You don’t seem very curious to read it.’
‘I know what you meant.’
‘You’re like a sweet little boy when you smile.’
‘Am I?’
‘You don’t really smile with your mouth, did you know that?’
‘I don’t?’
‘Now you’re laughing, but when you smile your mouth barely moves, just the tips of it curve upwards a little, then your eyes come alive and your whole face lights up.’
‘Isn’t that what generally happens when we smile?’
‘We all smile differently, and you can laugh at me all you like.’
‘I’m not. I mean I’m not very curious to read it.’
‘You’ve a letter from your father in your pocket, from your father who’s been dead now for how many years?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘You’re not sure?’
‘I must’ve stopped counting after twenty.’
‘And really, you’re not curious at all?’
‘“Families are held together by their secrets.” I don’t have a family, and the family I had I’ve put behind me. This letter isn’t really for me. How can it matter any more what it says?’
‘You won’t know until you’ve read it.’
‘That makes me want to read it even less. If there’s something in it that I can’t even imagine – and I’ve imagined quite a lot over the years – then I’d rather not know what it is.’
‘So you’re not going to read it?’
‘You said I didn’t have to.’
‘I did say you don’t have to, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think you should.’
‘Secrets and lies, that’s what stories are made of, aren’t I right, Ms Anna Tor?’
‘You’re saying angry things, but you’re still being cheerful.’
‘I am still cheerful. I’m just not sure I want to read my father’s letter.’
‘And you suspect I want you to…’
‘Because it’s part of everything, and you’re right, we’ve agreed that if there’s going to be a story… And anyway, it’s your story too, so why don’t I give the letter back to you? Here, take it!’
‘I’m not going to take back the letter.’
‘Why not? Dear Jack, blah, blah, blah… Take it or I’ll throw it in the bin!’
‘Then throw it in the bin.’
‘Shit!’
Already the letter is back in my inside jacket pocket.
‘What is it?’
‘I think we’ve been caught out. Look!’ I point unsubtly with my eyebrows.
‘Oh my God!’
999
‘Aha!’ cries out the man with the Dali moustache as he makes his steep approach by wilfully striding the grass. ‘Well if it isn’t the delectable Anna Tor, and how would you know it, she’s not with her girlfriend who’s just had a baby, in fact she’s with the face without a name from the crazy café!’
‘Leave this to me,’ Anna instructs me in an adamant whisper.
‘So what do we have here?’ Short of breath and soaked with perspiration, wheezing like a cat with a big lump of hair in its throat, the man with the Dali moustache is precariously upon us, exhilarated by the triumph of discovery but utterly spent by its effort.
‘Good God, what a surprise!’ Anna exclaims enthusiastically. ‘To bump into you once in one day may seem like carelessness, but to bump into you twice is an absolute…’
‘Calamity?’ offers the dilapidated man with the Dali moustache while soaking up the sweat off his face with a rather inadequate tissue.
‘Delight, of course,’ Anna corrects him. ‘But I do believe you’ve met my friend Leon Sheen already. Leon is the newborn’s proud father, you see. My friend, that’s Lea, Leon’s partner, had another sleepless night with the baby… the adorable little Liam, and was feeling quite exhausted, so she sent me to the crazy café to meet Leon, and then Leon said you’d been chatting so I mentioned I’d just seen you at the station, and we both had a laugh about how it all seems to be happening in Tufnell Park! Then to give Lea a little longer to rest, Leon suggested a walk and here we are.’
‘Leon, Lea and Liam, how lovely!’ scoffs the man with the Dali moustache. Bent over and holding his knees for support, he talks to us in gasps. ‘And who’s looking after the other baby, while Lea has her rest with little Liam?’
‘Laura’s with her grandmother today,’ I say.
‘Ah, he speaks, the mysteriously humorous Leon… What did you say your surname was?’
‘Sheen,’ I say, taking my cue from Anna.
‘Leon Sheen, Leon Sheen,’ he pants, and the colour has left him completely, he’s as white as a jaundiced sheet. ‘I thought earlier you’d said something else.’
‘He looks a bit peaky,’ I mutter unsurely to Anna.
‘But the name isn’t important, it’s the face I remember. Like I said to you before…’
‘You never forget a face.’
‘That’s right, I don’t. I never forget a face. And the name isn’t important unless of course it is, which in this case it might be…’
With all that sweaty mopping up, the Dali moustache has begun to melt, and the man whom it defines, as though devastated by the shock of its dishevelled condition interrupts his train of thought with a violently uncontrollable cough.
‘Are you okay?’ Anna asks, but when he seems unabl
e to reply, we both stand up and help him to sit down on the bench of pure love.
‘Shall I get him some water?’ I ask.
The man with the Dali moustache puts one hand on his chest as if to stem his cough, and with the index finger of the other hand extended already, he goes to lift his arm so he can point it at my face. His eyes have glazed over and are staring into mine, and as the cough begins to recede, his face goes into a spasm and he manages to speak:
‘I’ve remembered!’ he snarls, and wet strands of hair hang loosely over his mouth as it collapses into a cavernous grin. Then while he gurgles incoherently, his head falls to one side and both his arms are limp.
When Anna prods him and calls out his name he doesn’t respond.
‘Quick, call 999 and ask for an ambulance. Now!’
‘I don’t have a phone,’ I say.
‘You don’t have a phone?’ I’m helping Anna move a lifeless heavy body onto its side across the bench. ‘Here, take mine.’
People are approaching, and already I can hear someone else on their phone, asking for an ambulance in Waterlow Park.
‘Tell them it’s a heart attack,’ shouts Anna. ‘I think he’s stopped breathing, is there no doctor around?’
Leg-up
It’s doubtful if a doctor could have saved him. Anna’s diagnosis was correct, as the burlier of the two paramedics confirmed: ‘Massive,’ as she put it succinctly. She scribbled down his name and asked Anna if she knew his date of birth. ‘As if,’ said Anna, and they both laughed unkindly. ‘Next of kin?’ ‘Just call the BBC,’ Anna suggested.
‘When I saw him collapsed in that state on the bench, you know what was the first thing that came to my mind?’
‘That he was dead?’
‘Not that he was dead, no,’ Anna says. Finally I’ve convinced her that we both need to eat, and we’re walking back towards Tufnell Park.
‘Ah,’ I say, ‘I think I know the answer. A big baboon’s bottom, right?’
‘Wrong,’ Anna says, and suddenly we’re both in hysterics. We’re literally doubled up side by side on the pavement, and it feels like we will never be able to stop. It isn’t wickedness that’s making us laugh; after an emotionally charged afternoon and its deadly anti-climax, it’s as if we have spontaneously punctured and our bodies convulse while they’re letting off steam.
‘I really needed that,’ says Anna, holding herself tightly by the waist and biting her lip.
‘Me too,’ I say, but I can’t stop laughing, and the sight of Anna’s struggle to keep a straight face makes me laugh even more.
‘Please stop, or I think I’m going to burst,’ Anna pleads.
We make ourselves stand flat against the tall brick wall that overlooks the railway lines below, and in fits and starts eventually our laughter tails off.
‘What I need is a drink,’ says Anna. ‘And anyway, it’s too early for dinner. We can share some olives for now.’
It’s already beginning to get dark, and we haven’t had lunch, but it’s too early for dinner, she’s right.
‘There must be a nice pub somewhere not too far if it’s true that it’s all happening in Tufnell Park. Unless you’re in a rush.’
‘In a rush?’
My reputation as a loner who prides himself on being anti-social may already have come under pressure and somewhere on the way even suffered one or two hairline cracks, but today it is taking a pounding. First there was the Anglo-Sicilian love-hate fiesta at the Sprinkle of Rocket, with a ghost and a little bit of Chile thrown in, and after that how many hours with Anna? Hours enough for a kiss (or two or three) just a stone’s throw away from the head of Karl Marx, more hours for a letter from my father and a death in the park, and all of it (and more) interspersed around several secrets, both told and untold.
Untold: who was my mother? If Anna hasn’t told me, it’s because I haven’t asked, and she must think me very strange for not asking. She must also think me strange for not opening the letter, and she must wonder if the two are connected; I find myself wondering too. I thought I had become impervious to a past I had all but erased, until Anna appeared from nowhere to insist I retrace it. Why did I agree to meet her? Was I already looking for a link to a past that could not after all be erased?
The darkness never was, but the pretence of it had served to distract from the unmarketable nothingness of Jack, so as to spotlight in its place the anodyne facsimile we had invented as an adjunct to “genius”. All my life I have not known who I am. I kowtowed to a devilish woman who wasn’t my mother, and I made myself a Judas to the good man who was my father. I painted another man’s paintings. I sleep in a room reproduced from The Metamorphosis, as though my dream is to wake up one morning as vermin, and I have written in it stories that - just like the paintings - belong to a past that may have seduced me but isn’t my own. No. My dream is to wake up one morning as me, and if the room has so far had the opposite effect to the one I desire, then my metamorphosis is not yet complete.
Names are not important; about that at least the man with the Dali moustache was absolutely right. But faces aren’t important either, and today I’ve been faceless and nameless. Today I’ve been with Anna, and everything I know about the past is unsure or untrue, but for the first time in my life I am feeling like myself in the present. So why would I be in a rush?
‘I’m not in a rush,’ I say emphatically.
‘Are you sure? What about your wife and little Liam?’
‘Very funny,’ I say.
‘And Laura must be expecting you to pick her up.’
‘We joke, but that poor man is actually dead, and I feel like I’ve killed him.’
‘His own curiosity killed him, not you.’
‘Why am I suddenly so important?’
‘But you’ve always been important. I know I keep saying it but I’ll say it again, you’re the man who could paint Picasso paintings. Not copy them, not fake them, paint them.’
‘But I’m not Picasso.’
‘I should hope not, or I’ve been kissing a dead man!’
‘Leon!’
Billy waves vivaciously as he runs across the road.
‘Man, you guys look like you’ve been jogging your guts out. Cute, you’re wearing identical trainers! And you’ve been staking out this wall for the last half hour, you got yourself a trainspotting girlfriend or what?’
‘You’ve been watching us for half an hour?’
‘Sure I have, for a minute there you had me really worried. When I saw you both bent over and making all these noises, I genuinely thought you were grieving, and this wall’s not too high, you know what I mean? At least for a young man like me, agile and fit, with a spring in his step, oh yes, with a spring in his step and life tasting good in his mouth, for a young man like me this wall is not an impossible hurdle. But the other side’s the abyss and a certain death, if you’re that way inclined. The wall’s not too high but it’s not too low either, and you guys aren’t as young as I am, no offence, and none should be taken – youth is overrated and it’s wasted on the young, youth is a journey to the end of the night, and all of that is nonsense but it’s true - so I reckoned I’d have time to sprint across and pull you down, if it looked like you were trying to scale it, or if one of you was giving the other a leg-up.’
‘Anna, this is Billy,’ I say.
‘Billy who wants to be a writer,’ Anna remembers.
‘You talked about me to your girlfriend?’
‘Billy, this is Anna, who isn’t my girlfriend.’
‘Go ahead and break my heart now, why don’t you? Cause youse two, you look like you’re made for each other, really proper well-suited.’
‘Billy has a wild imagination,’ I say.
‘He needs one if he’s going to be a writer,’ says Anna.
‘Now you’re fobbing me off, but maybe you’re not just well-suited - same trainers, same height, same build, both fit...’
‘Same bushy eyebrows,’ I point out helpfully.
‘I didn’t like to say, but yeah. Same wicked bushy eyebrows too! So I’ve cracked it, you’re brother and sister, right?’
‘We just share the same birthday, that’s all,’ says Anna.
‘Twins? Nah, that’s too much, way too sneaky-freaky!’
‘Billy, what’s up with you today, you’re talking mumbo jumbo.’
‘Oh, golden bollocks, I’m gibberishing, aren’t I? But I swear to you on my life, I’m not being a dickhead on purpose. It’s just that I’ve been working on some dialogue in my head, turning it around and talking it out loud just to see how it sounds. It’s a habit of mine, and it’s useful, but whenever I’ve been doing it for more than five minutes, it just messes up my head and I can’t talk normal.’
‘So I take it you’ve been doing it for more than five minutes,’ I say.
‘Couple of hours at least,’ says Billy. ‘Plus I’ve had a smoke and a couple of pints.’
‘You don’t say,’ I say.
‘No harm in a smoke every now and again,’ says Anna.
‘Been a bit of a heavy afternoon if I’m honest. But I think you’ve snapped me out of it now. Shouldn’t mess with me, though.’
‘We’re not,’ I say.
‘Then you’re twins for real?’
‘We’re not even related,’ says Anna.
‘We’ve just met,’ I say.
‘What, by chance?’
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