“You want me to drink to a housing estate.”
“Not any estate. The estate. All put together with dignity and love. George built it for people. How many things are really for people? Can I tell you a secret?”
There was no possible answer but yes.
“I mean it, I want to tell you a secret, Helen. So what you have to do is think if you should allow a man you don’t know too well, a man in a bar in a foreign country, to confide in you.” He watched his glass closely, as if it might run away.
“Confide away. It’s nice to be confided in.”
“You’ll think I’m odd.”
“I think you’re a genius.”
“That’s very . . .” Gluck gulped at the last of his beer in lieu of finishing the sentence.
“What’s your secret. I won’t tell.”
“Oh, I know that. Absolutely.” He softened his voice and spoke as if he was describing a sleeping child. “It’s only an idea, not really a secret. Once upon a time, I was trying to say what I wanted to open up within the brain. I could have said that I’d found a way to chart the Field of Thought and to evade both time and circumstance, and explore all the solutions of the world. I’ve uncovered what makes me. I am a leap of faith, I am a flight. To steal from the language of physics, I am a constant singularity—a perpetual process of massive change. You, too—naturally.”
He lifted his gaze from the table. She didn’t know how best to look back at him: an absolutely self-made man.
“I’d been asked to explain myself and the Process, yet again, and I’d even begun to reel off the usual guff when I stopped because something else made much more sense. To me, it made more sense. I wanted to say that our minds were made to give everyone the chance of Bailey Park. The place we take with us, wherever we go—the place that is us—we can build it into Bailey Park, we can live in bliss. We have a chance at it, anyway. I have found out a tiny amount about how this can be and I call that the Process, but I know I’ve hardly begun.”
“Did you say that? About Bailey Park?”
“No. No, the man I was speaking to represented the Pentagon. He wanted me to work within their Advanced Research Projects Agency and—apart from many other terrible things—he was keen that I should teach young men and women how to do terrible things terribly well and without thinking. They wanted to take the pain from the records of war—no more emotional memories, just objectives achieved, rates of success. I don’t think the Pentagon understands about Bailey Park. Or bliss.”
“You didn’t work for them.”
“Of course I didn’t. You know me; I couldn’t have. And I’m not an American. That made it easier to refuse.”
“Were they difficult?”
“Well, these NSA hit-men keep trying to shoot me . . .”
“What?” She hadn’t meant to sound worried, but it happened anyway, even though he was obviously joking.
“No. I don’t do work in America now, that’s all. Which is a shame, because I made some good friends there. But Bailey Park, that’s the place.” He raised his glass and she brought hers to meet it. His hand wavered as he set it down. “I’m so tired. You know, I’ve just noticed. Tired, tired, tired.”
So they talked nonsense about the Finnish dancers and gently enjoyed each other. Helen tried to frame what she wanted to say—a thorough goodbye and thank you.
“Edward?”
“Helen.”
“I think, it really is time—”
“I know. I was trying to gather my thoughts for a half-way coherent farewell and I couldn’t think of anything adequate. Tonight I’m no good.”
“No, well, yes, there is that. Which is . . . it’s hard, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I would rather not start saying out loud how much I’ve enjoyed, well—you, basically. Us. If I mention that, I’m admitting we’re about to stop.”
“I know. But I want to say thank you. I mean I’m slee—”
His eyes snapped alight. “I know. You’re sleeping. You’re coming back to yourself.”
“That’s right. Ever since the night with the Finns. I did enjoy that.”
“Except for not eating the meal and loathing the dancers and hating me.”
“I didn’t hate you.”
“At the start.”
“I possibly didn’t like you very much.”
They began to stand, preparing to finish the evening.
“But you do like me now?”
“Obviously.” They walked carefully.
“Very much?” His words tried to be as weightless as they could—no pressure, no threat.
“I can’t answer that.”
“Why not?”
“It would go to your head.” She paused and a beat later, he did, too. “Thank you for your help, Professor Gluck.”
“Thank you for yours, Mrs. Brindle.”
Instead of moving outside the bar and towards the lift, they stood for a little together, not speaking, Helen thinking about her full name and what it meant. Mrs. Brindle, married to Mr. Brindle and about to go home. Slowly, Helen became aware of a pale, metallic sensation in her limbs. Her face began to feel clumsy and unpredictable.
Edward cleared his throat. “Come on then.”
Helen reached into her bag, fumbled for her door-key and picked it out, although she had no immediate need for it. They began to walk again.
Staring softly ahead, Edward waited for the lift to arrive and take them in. “This is horrible.”
“Yes.” She touched him on the arm, quite close to his shoulder. For perhaps the better part of one second, her palm and fingers rested against cloth and she felt him, she absolutely felt him, like a flash photograph taken in skin and expanding around her skull, around her mouth, around her waist and in. She felt him. Here was the curve and dip and warmness of his arm, the muscle and the mind moving lightly beneath his shirt. Here was the way he would look: the smoothness, the colour, the climb to his collarbone, the closeness of his torso and the speed of his blood. Here was the scent of the taste of him. He would taste good, because a good man would. Before she could finish her breath and lift her hand away again, she knew precisely how a kiss or a lick at his naked arm would taste. Good.
“That’s us, then.”
“Hm?” She watched the lift doors split apart. “Oh, yes.”
And they rode up together. Two floors. Twelve seconds. Helen counted them.
“Goodbye, then.”
Helen intended to tell him “goodbye” back, but he kissed her on the mouth, suddenly, dryly, and stopped her telling him anything. Then the doors began to move and he was moving too, leaving, gone.
In her room that night, Helen bathed and thought of nothing at all. She dried her body slowly and looked in her mirror and she kept on thinking of nothing at all.
At a touch past midnight, her phone rang. She knew who it would be.
“Edward?”
“Oh, you knew.” There was a broad pause. “I’m sorry it’s so late. I’ve just noticed.” His tone seemed less substantial than usual.
“That’s all right. Is something the matter? Edward? Is there something wrong?” She listened while he breathed quietly, but enough for her to hear. “Edward, what’s wrong?”
“Oh, yes. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t bother you. It’s simply . . . I was looking through this material again and it makes me so depressed. It makes me so unhappy, Helen, to think of it.”
“You mean those men? The photographs?”
“It’s all so awful.”
“Yes, but you’re going to help them and you know the Process works. They’ll be fine. It’s normal to be disturbed by other people’s pain.”
“Yes, I suppose. Other people’s. But it makes me feel lonely, you know? Something about it makes me lonely and I thought that calling you would help. It was a silly idea.” His articulation sharpened. “I mean, speaking to you does make me feel less lonely, but it’s silly of me to impose, to let this stuff get to me.” He began to sound angry wit
h himself. “I’ve seen worse. I should just say that I really did enjoy meeting you and that I would be very happy to receive a letter from you now and again. I would like to know how you’re sleeping. Hm?”
Helen was growing more awake and able to appreciate his thinking of her—even if it was rather late. “I will write to you. I . . . do you need? . . . Edward, are you all right now? Is there anything I can do?” There were things she could offer him, naturally, but it was late and her suggestions might be inappropriate.
“I’m fine, really. I’ve been working too long on one thing, that’s all. I’ll wish you goodnight.”
Helen didn’t answer, knowing he intended to go on.
“Oh but, Helen, it’s all such dreadful stuff. I apologise for talking about this, but it really is such dreadful stuff. If I can’t talk about it, the things don’t seem real. If I can’t tell you . . . I look at this and the life it has seems . . . I don’t know, more than mine.”
She heard him change his grip on the receiver.
“I don’t know why I’m doing this. I shouldn’t, but I will.”
His voice was nearer now.
“I am sorry, but, I have a picture here of a woman with two men inside her. That’s what I’m looking at. A picture in a magazine. Her with the two men. Her lips don’t really hide the first guy’s shaft—the shaft of his prick, which is really quite a size. I’d guess she couldn’t take it all in her throat, but this is her ideal position in any case, because these photographs are meant to help us understand the whole of her truth. We have to see the suck and the prick. And the fuck. Her second companion fucks her anally and, of course, we can see most of him—the part that counts—as well as the lift of her arse, her willingness, openness. He’s wearing dark-coloured socks, the second man, he has varicose veins—not bad, but noticeable.
“Have you ever seen two pricks in a woman, up close? I’ve got pictures of that, too—fucking the arse and the cunt?—it doesn’t look like anything you could think of. The penises make one, fat kind of rope that greases and sews right through her. On video, they pulse in and out of time, like something feeding, a fuck’s parasite.
“Helen, everything is so clear, far clearer than life. They’re here for me to watch them, the two men shoving themselves into pleasure, and the woman having none. She’s there to make them come, to make whoever’s looking come; that’s the entire reason for her, no need to add a single thing. The men can touch all of her, inside and out, but they needn’t make her come, they needn’t even use her cunt if they don’t want to. She’s just there to get it where it’s put. No pleasure, no fun. Unless, of course, she can take solace from ejaculation for ejaculation’s sake. If she does that, then she’s a dirty bitch, a slut who deserves every bad thing she gets, even if that includes gang rape at the hands of her camera crew which I know will happen if I turn on a couple of pages, or so. I have looked at this booklet before. She will be used and humiliated by seven men while her mouth has the wrong emotions and her eyes shut down.
“Any sane and normal person would see her condition and wish only to be usefully compassionate. That’s the way to be, Helen, that’s the way to be. The Bailey Park way to be. Anybody good and with a heart would be afraid to imagine how she must feel. You can understand that, can’t you. Helen?”
She was able to say yes.
“I am making sense. I know that. I’m not too drunk to make sense, only drunk enough to let me tell you this. Helen, listen to me. You should listen. Are you listening?”
“Yes.” She can hear an uneasiness, a movement, shaking his breath.
“I want you to find me out . . . You would be bound to and I can’t wait. Helen, the girl in this picture, I want to know how she feels. I want to know exactly how she feels.
“I want to know how she feels right up inside, when I’m up to my balls in her, my prick after all the other pricks, after what they’ve done. I want to have her, too. And she would want me, the pictures make her made that way. I want to be in her while she’s raw, while she’s open all the way to her fucking womb— and she is opened up, I can see it. I can see everything—the way she’s full of it, running with it, her cunt and the other men’s spunk. I want to be up her and make her full of me. I want to come. Helen, I want to come. I do. Then I want to see them having her again and we’ll go turn and turn about her, turn and turn about her everywhere. Everywhere. I mean there isn’t any end to what I want. There is no end, Helen.
“I can’t bear the way I always turn out to be. I’m telling you, I’ll never get out of this, I understand that. Sometimes I can manage containment, but that’s all.
“I can’t help you any more, Mrs. Brindle, I’m the wrong man for the job. I’m the wrong man. You’ll get better—”
She knew she was going to hang up, but the sound of the receiver falling still gave her a kind of jolt. Gradually, she discovered that she felt very peaceful, not needing to do anything: to cry, to move, to remember the edge in his words and the heat. She would turn out the light now, to calm herself and dream. Decisions could be taken in the morning, if there were any to take. It seemed there might only be one and that it was taken.
At about two a.m., the phone rang. She counted to twenty before it stopped and the silence sucked in around her again with a hissing throb. The noise hadn’t disturbed her, she hadn’t been asleep.
Chapter 2
Mr. Brindle didn’t like his present much.
“What’s this?”
Really she should have given it to him before dinner, because then the overbaking on the pie-crust wouldn’t already have made him annoyed. It was strange how quickly she could drift out of practice with pastry and baking—a few days off and her presentation began to slip into collapse.
“What is it?”
“A hologram.”
He was gripping the picture’s frame with both hands, angling it forward and back, but staring at her so, of course, he couldn’t be able to see the image change. “I know it’s a hologram, I’ve seen them before. I mean what is it supposed to be. I can’t see a thing.”
“I’m sorry I went away.”
“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about this: your present to me which doesn’t work. If I want to be angry about your running off across Europe with your lunatic sister and to hell with me, then I’ll be angry about that. I have free will. That’s what you tell me, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“I think it will work where there’s more light.”
“And?”
“She needed to get away.” Mrs. Brindle compounded her lie, her original lie, the one that would follow her around now until she either forgot to feel guilty or forgot the truth. And, then again, a lie compounds itself if a person only lets it take its head. “The divorce and everything—she needed a holiday.” She held her face calm, her eyes unwary and offered Mr. Brindle a taste of her perfectly honest shame which he could interpret as he liked: a response to her failed obligation, hidden transgression, contemplated adultery. God knew which.
“I’m not talking about your sister. I’m talking about this. Not that there’s any point. It isn’t working.”
Mr. Brindle set the picture down next to his uncleared plate and gave her the chance to take both her offences away. The hologram would have to be disposed of with the bad pastry, but she hoped she would have more luck with the summer pudding and the lightly cinnamon-flavoured cream. Mr. Brindle always enjoyed that and it looked wonderful to serve, all the different colours of red, the new season’s fruit that made her kitchen smell of berry-picking and being much younger than now.
She sat back at the table and watched him tasting, examining, turning the white cream and the bleeding fruit together into something spoiled and pink. If she’d been sticking to the Process and its dietary advices, she couldn’t have been eating this. Instead, she would have bought the supplements and trace elements suggested; the ones that were too numerous to be hidden successfully anywher
e in Mr. Brindle’s house.
Mr. Brindle began to eat steadily, contentment in a shine across his forehead and his lips. Mr. Brindle hadn’t been angry about her trip yet, but probably he needn’t be tonight. Later would do. When he handed her his bowl, he wasn’t frowning. He even rubbed his index finger over the back of her hand.
Because she had been away and he might have thought about that, thought about her not being in any way available to him, he might ask her to be with him tonight. Not that they didn’t share a bed usually, but he might have recalled the way they used to commemorate their sharing of occupancy. She wouldn’t deny him. A refusal would be unwise and he wouldn’t be demanding, not more than once. They would try to read each other, and then discover again they were written in two different languages, were quite untranslatable. Their intentions would subside, or rather, Mr. Brindle’s intentions would subside. After an hour or so, she could leave him and come downstairs to anticipate a morning made hopeful by the simplicity she planned into her daylight hours.
Her days at home after Stuttgart could seem so much like her days before that Mrs. Brindle often managed not to think about her trip. The Process, she had abandoned. Her collection of clippings about its inventor, her articles and notes were all underneath the liner paper in a kitchen drawer, but they might as well have been thrown away. At some point, she would throw them away but, at the moment, having to touch them might remind her of a man and what he did, and generally her life was freed from that.
Freed until dark. In the hardest place of the night when the same old fear of dying slipped over her in a fast, loose slither, when it breathed at her—then Edward was there, too. Curled on her side, with her face against the burn of the carpet, she shut up her eyes and was shown and shown again her age and maximum possible time remaining, the losses and degenerations that were seeping through already to cloud her life, and which would end in no more than a memory of the lies she told and the darkness in her thoughts. Lies and thoughts of Edward would harden in her like old blood, and death would hollow her out into nothing but a soured and stiffened echo of herself.
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