An Irresponsible Age

by Lavinia Greenlaw

  ‘Is it? Well, I’ve told him that I have to be with you.’

  ‘Really? You haven’t told me …’ He had no idea why he felt so cross.

  ‘Why else do you think I’ve come all this way?’

  ‘Why do you ever come?’

  Caroline was offering herself to him and he was spoiling it. He looked hard at her, meaning to show that he felt different to how he sounded, that he meant Yes, of course, yes!, but she startled him by saying, ‘I love you, Fred.’

  He had never seen her like this. His vision of Caroline was of a monument, all firmness and heft.

  ‘I don’t like your hair,’ he said. Her highlights had been gauged according to the Hong Kong sun. ‘Or that orange stuff on your skin.’

  Unphased, she moved on to her next point: ‘Is there someone else?’

  ‘You said that like a line you’d been given.’

  ‘Please. Say.’

  For the first time since she had arrived, Fred felt that he could breathe. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there is.’

  ‘I knew it. It’s Mary, isn’t it?’

  He laughed. ‘Yes. You’re right of course, I am in love with Mary.’

  ‘Why then have you pretended to be in love with me?’

  He was enjoying this now: ‘What’s my line? I’ve forgotten my line.’

  ‘What line? This is real.’ Her voice was not attractive.

  The front door opened, which meant that Mary had come home. Fred slowly poured more wine, hoping that she would reach the kitchen before he had to respond.

  Mary was pleased. ‘Caroline! What a –’

  Caroline yelped, as if she had trodden on something sharp.

  ‘How nice,’ offered Mary.

  ‘What happened to what’s his name?’ asked Fred.

  ‘I couldn’t find him.’

  ‘Couldn’t find who?’ asked Caroline.

  ‘I had a, well, I was meeting someone and I couldn’t find them.’

  ‘Did you not agree on a time and place?’ Fred asked. ‘I suppose you thought you’d just wander around the city until you bumped into each other.’

  ‘No. We were to meet at Chevreuil.’

  ‘Chevreuil!’ said Caroline. ‘He must be keen. Rich and keen. Who is he? How did you meet?’

  ‘By wandering around the city until we bumped into each other. Now I must go to check on Bella.’

  ‘He stood you up.’ Caroline still put things together out loud.

  ‘I told you, I couldn’t find him.’

  Mary had not been to Chevreuil before. It was a converted garage on the King’s Road, which she remembered as derelict and then for a year or two as a market where fashion students sold their designs. Now it was two floors of canteen tables laid for intimate dinners on a mass scale. Alexander had said they should meet in the bar, which was so full that the crowd had spilled out into the reception area. Mary could barely get through the door. Everyone was taller and younger than she, and knew how to stand and what to say. She spotted a woman in a white shirt carrying a clipboard and tapped her on the shoulder.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  The woman turned – heavy blue-black hair, frosted eyes, thin white mouth. ‘Mary George!’

  ‘Theresa. Hello.’ Mary was back in Allnorthover, trying to dissolve into the place and to avoid the attentions of mad Tom Hepple who said she could save him. Theresa and her gang sought her out for fun; they had her surrounded.

  ‘So,’ said Theresa. She was smiling as if there were no reason not to. ‘You still with the doctor’s son?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shame,’ Theresa responded flatly. ‘Says you had a kid. It was in the paper.’

  ‘The paper?’

  ‘You know – births, deaths.’

  ‘Tobias must have been in the paper, too.’

  Theresa clapped her hand on her mouth and gasped. ‘Silly me. I forgot. Shame.’

  ‘No you didn’t,’ Mary said.

  ‘Sorry, what was that? It’s so bloody noisy in here.’

  ‘You didn’t forget!’ Mary shouted. People nearby went quiet and turned to listen. ‘You didn’t forget.’

  Theresa’s mouth grew thinner and whiter. Her brief black eyebrows shot up and she raised her right hand. She’s going to hit me, Mary thought, only Theresa was brandishing her clipboard.

  ‘Do you have a reservation?’ she asked, dragging a marbled fingernail down her list. ‘I can’t seem to find your name.’

  Mary thought about this. ‘Says I’ve come here as someone’s guest.’

  ‘Ooo …’ said Theresa. They were at the bus stop in Allnorthover and someone had just said that Mary had a lovebite on her neck. ‘So you’ve managed to move on.’

  Mary considered Theresa’s face and how little adjustment she had made to her teenage snarl to produce an effective expression of welcome. ‘And now I’m leaving.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  One afternoon, Juliet came home to find Jacob sitting very still.

  ‘My sister telephoned. My mother died last night.’

  Jacob had never taken her to see his mother and now she would never meet her or know her as Barbara had.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll make some calls, find us a flight. If I can get seats tomorrow, I’ll cancel my class. No one will mind.’

  ‘I’ve booked a flight.’

  ‘When do we leave?’

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon. I’m going alone.’

  ‘What about me? Shouldn’t I be there?’

  Jacob silenced her with his red, wet eyes. ‘Sweetheart, what for?’

  That evening, they sat outside on the porch step.

  ‘Would you stay here if you could?’ he asked.

  ‘With you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With you and half a dozen children and a dog?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘We can do that anywhere.’

  ‘Not London, we’re too poor.’

  ‘Are we?’ Juliet had no idea.

  ‘We could live by the sea, in a stone cottage with a big garden. From the bedroom window, you would be able to see the sea.’

  ‘How would we live?’

  ‘I don’t know. How do we manage to live now?’

  ‘Tell me more about it.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Our home.’ The night, Jacob fucked her with such energy and ambition that Juliet feared he might use up all the desire he had left.

  Monica Dart had her third stroke at the age of seventy-eight, and died in the presence of her daughter and daughter-in-law. She had not seen her son for five months. He arrived two days later, after Juliet had driven him to Boston in time for the afternoon flight. She got up in the American dawn to do this and Barbara drove across London in the English night to meet him. She took him back to her flat and ran him a bath.

  Juliet waited for Jacob to get in touch. She reminded herself that someone had died and that she knew what that felt like and understood that he would want to go away, or go back and in any case, he had to. He had said that he would stay with his sister. She and Juliet had exchanged greetings when Sally rang up every week or so. Juliet would move into another room, but then listen. Most of their conversation appeared to be about Monica but every now and then Jacob would say something else, often something he had not told her.

  ‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t here when you called. I was in Vermont … Yes, lots of snow still … Actually, I saw something amazing, an indigo bunting … No, not the lullaby, the bird; it was the bluest thing I have ever seen. I was walking towards a wood, and there it was on the snow … the male, I think … all show … but unearthly, you know? … As if it put its all into its brilliance, made itself a gesture, a declaration …’ This was not for Sally, who never knew what to say when Jacob spoke like this, this was for himself. ‘Yes, tell Monica, do, an indigo bunting … no, Vermont … and give her all my love.’

  Juliet knew that with a little effort, she could find Sally’s number. It would b
e on a phone bill, or in a diary or address book. Jacob left everything lying around so openly that she never snooped. She had never gone into the cabin, even though the key was right here on a hook in the hall. He had told her of Barbara breaking into his room at the gallery, and suggested that she routinely rifled through whatever of his she could. Juliet, only just thirty, had been shocked; nothing had yet cost her so much that she could understand.

  Jacob was full of the freedom of grief and he craved a stranger. He wanted to remember what it was like to be potential. Each day, he walked to the British Library and sat in the Reading Room not reading, and then he would go out to the old gardens of a nearby square to walk under trees, to smile at girls, and to make something of the pink-and-white unfurling of the magnolia, and the candy-coloured cherry.

  Which stranger? He was captivated by a woman’s ankle, the back of a man’s neck, the roll of this one’s hips and the weight of that one’s hair. He fell in love with a smell, maybe sweat, maybe roses, a cracked lens in a pair of spectacles, a shaving rash on a white chin, the way a belly creased and folded. He adored one who bit her nails at her desk and another who sat beside him on a bench plucking at a whisker on her chin. Each was innocent to him and innocent of him. If he found the right one, he might be saved.

  Juliet Clough had not been forgotten. Jacob needed everything he could muster in order to rise out of his mother’s death and the depths of himself. He would not betray Juliet. This was for her.

  Clara heard that Jacob had come back for Monica’s funeral, and that he had not returned to Littlefield, but did not want to speculate on what this might mean. This was a fragile time and Jacob, the idea of him, had proved dangerous. In any case, she had no time to think. Stefan had been spending three weeks in Geneva and so she was alone in the country with the children. She took them to see her parents, hoping that everyone would benefit from their energy and noise, but the doctor was shut up in his study with plans for the renovation of his cottage, and while Francesca fed them all, she chose not to speak. Clara wondered if her mother had been silent throughout her childhood and she had not noticed. She couldn’t remember.

  When Stefan came home, she watched him kiss the children without any of the urgency of a disappearing man, and hoped that she was safe.

  That night when they talked, they lay closer.

  ‘I haven’t been unfaithful,’ he said. ‘I haven’t actually slept with her.’

  ‘Then why tell me about it?’

  ‘I had a duty to.’

  ‘And you wanted to hurt me.’

  ‘That is absurd. I could have slept with her but I didn’t, so as not to hurt you.’

  ‘She must be very young to be so patient.’

  ‘She understands that I need time to think.’

  Clara began to cry: ‘I am thirty-four which is different, you know, to being thirty. There is no time, no time at all.’

  ‘According to the rules, you’ll live longer than I will.’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t get to go on choosing. You can just go along with whatever and try out something else, and for all sorts of reasons remake your life. You get to go on choosing and that is why men are so –’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Romantic.’

  Clara agreed with Stefan that she would go to London for a week and that afterwards they would both spend the rest of the summer at home. Tucked under her studio door was a note from Jacob: Dearest Friend, In John Evelyn’s time, whales were found in the river. One was stranded at Deptford. Shall we get on a boat and go look for whalebones? I’m here now, I think. xJ.

  They didn’t get on a boat or travel to Deptford. Jacob turned up at her studio at the end of a day and they went to a bar that had just opened round the corner. Clara noticed that he looked out of place among the fluttering young – a man who did not appear his age but upon whom gravity was now exerting itself.

  Jacob, too, was thinking about age. Clara looked tired, as if being and carrying herself required more effort than it ought. Her curls were cooller and drier than he had remembered, the reds settling down.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ she asked.

  ‘I was thinking about when we first met.’

  ‘In Khyber Road.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You opened the door as if the house were on fire … no, you were a fire, at the height of your blaze.’

  ‘A pretentious way of reminding me that I’m getting older. I’m still ten years younger than you.’

  Jacob did not flinch. He was content with the way he was ageing. There seemed to be no imminent expansion, depletion or collapse; no jowls, paunch or thinning hair. He knew, though, that his texture was less fine, and Clara could see it breaking down into its component parts, as it had in her picture, so that while his beauty was still remarkable, it took longer to have its effect.

  When they had finished their drinks, they walked to the Tube station. Jacob took Clara’s hand and turned her towards him. He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth, meeting her eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said as she pulled away and tried to speak. ‘We never will.’

  ‘No.’ She relaxed.

  They were not wise or careful or good, just exhausted.

  Mary was picking up Bella’s toys in the living room when Caroline appeared and in her useful way, began to help.

  ‘It’s been very nice having you here,’ said Mary, thinking how much she liked this woman who was of a type that she felt she ought to despise. ‘Why are you looking through the rooms-to-let pages still? Fred seems very happy. Why not stay?’

  ‘Fred has made it clear. I’m in the way.’

  ‘If anyone’s in the way, it’s me and Bella.’

  They were on their hands and knees, collecting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle which had been incomplete for years. Bella seemed to think that one day the missing pieces would be in the box and she would be able to complete the picture.

  ‘Only in my way,’ said Caroline, nicely.

  ‘Fred’s too. The pair of you are finally together –’

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘I thought you were.’

  ‘We’re in separate rooms.’

  ‘I thought that was quite romantic.’

  ‘It’s not. He’s terrified and besides he’s still in love with you.’

  Mary sat back and shook her head vigorously, ‘Oh no, oh no,’ she said.

  Juliet was walking along Main Street when someone ran into her. He came upon her as an impression of terror – his face creased, his mouth wide open. He was not running as people in Littlefield usually ran, but with real urgency and no thought.

  ‘Theo Dorne – I’m so sorry, are you alright, can I buy you a cup of coffee?’

  ‘You run as if you were escaping a bear,’ Juliet said as she sat down.

  ‘Oh. I was trying to catch a bus.’ A girl with whom he had had a fight was leaving town. He had seen her in the street, ran to catch up and just as he did so realised that he wanted to let her go, so he had kept on running until he lost his footing and collided with Juliet.

  ‘No, a bear came to mind, not a bus.’

  ‘You’re right, it was a bear.’

  Theo Dorne was a research assistant in the history department. He was shorter than Jacob; broader, darker, younger and more … coherent. Had he really not seen Juliet before? He would have remembered. For one thing, he had thought for a moment that she was a boy. Her curly hair was neither short nor long, and her clothes gave little clue as to the details of her shape. Theo studied her dark eyes and dry mouth, set in a face that looked plain at first sight but from then on became intriguing. She had the large, flat ears of an Indian goddess and a goddess’s golden skin. She bit her lip and frowned, and Theo took a breath and asked her out.

  Three days later, he walked her home after an evening in the sports bar, and they sat on the porch step and drank beer.

  ‘You live here alone?’

  ‘I do now.’ />
  He was close enough for her to breathe him. The night was cooling and her skin prickled. He was raising a bottle to his lips. Their bare arms were about to touch.

  ‘I’m going back to London at the end of June.’

  ‘And meanwhile …’

  He leant against her conspiratorially, she leant back and they stayed there, shoulder to shoulder, each giving up their weight to the other. Theo said nothing; he was waiting for Juliet to decide.

  He cannot touch me as deeply as Jacob, she thought, which means that Jacob is safe. She rehearsed the words, Come inside, and reminded herself that she was young and abroad and had been left alone. Not everything had to have consequences.

  There was something about this formulation that she had learnt from Jacob and which made her uncomfortable: a way of connecting and disconnecting parts according to the point to be made, as if everything could be broken down and rearranged and would work just as well.

  Such thoughts were for later. Juliet stood up and held out her hand. ‘Come inside,’ she said.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘It’s getting cold.’

  ‘No it isn’t.’

  ‘Come inside.’

  Their sex was wonderfully straightforward compared to the fine adjustments of Jacob, so multiple and imperative that Juliet strained to make her body answer all his questions at once.

  Juliet did not intend to see Theo Dorne again but when he called and asked if they could meet, she said yes; she wanted to. Then the telephone rang once more.

  ‘Hullo.’

  ‘Jacob? How are you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And how was the funeral?’

  Silence.

  ‘Jacob?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘I’m not sure. There’s been a lot to sort out.’

  ‘When are you coming back?’

  ‘I think I should stay, sweetheart, and in any case, you’ll be back soon.’