Let Go My Hand

by Edward Docx

  ‘Nice place,’ I said, fatuously. Then to keep us both from dying: ‘Maybe we should drink something. I’m feeling really sober. I mean it’s fine to be sober but we—’

  ‘Actually . . . drinks I can do,’ she said. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘What have you got?’

  She took off her hat and coat and slung them on the burial mound of clothes draped over her huge cracked-leather chair. By London standards, her flat was pretty big though much of the space was under the eaves. Her bed was a mattress half-unmade beneath the two beams that rose up into the gabled window; and, on either side, she had laid out her books in a long line where the ceiling sloped down to meet the wooden floorboards. There was an old kitchenette, her desk and a tiny fireplace with a single candle. Another door led off to what I guessed was her bathroom. Above the fireplace, a black-and-white picture showed old cars lined up behind a starting tape against a backdrop of crowds, palm trees and ancient buildings: ‘Italian Racing in Eritrea’ read the title.

  ‘I’ve got everything,’ she said.

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Yes. Literally. Everything.’ With a mock flourish, she threw open what I had assumed was some old wardrobe but I now saw was filled entirely, four shelves deep, with bottles of every colour, shape and provenance. ‘Drinks,’ she said.

  ‘Jesus.’ I drew the deeper breath of re-assessment. ‘No wonder you don’t come out much. You must be wasted most days.’

  ‘Melted by breakfast.’ She inclined her head, pretending rueful commitment to her cupboard. ‘Not seen a Sunday in ten years.’

  ‘Seriously though?’

  ‘When Dad closed down the tapas bar, I got to keep the bottles.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Not really.’

  She had a way of not-exactly-contradicting me.

  ‘Not really?’

  She reached in at the shelves, raising the odd bottle as she spoke: ‘Well, how much Van Der Hum tangerine liqueur or . . . or cucumber vodka is a girl going to drink? On her own?’

  ‘Wait—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tangerine liqueur?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I’ll have a large. I drank it a lot when I was in New Orleans. Two ice.’

  ‘That’s the other problem.’ She winced, looking towards the sink.

  ‘What?’

  ‘No ice, no mixers and . . .’ she stepped over towards the kitchenette, ‘no glasses.’

  ‘I see plates though,’ I said. There was a tiny drying rack by the butler sink.

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘Yes . . . plates we have.’

  ‘Well, OK then, we pour the tangerine dream and the cucumber moonshine or whatever onto the plates and just lick.’

  ‘Like thirsty werewolves?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What about disgusting mugs?’ She stepped over to the messy desk. ‘I have two of those.’

  ‘Even better.’

  She pulled a bottle out of the wardrobe on the way back. ‘I sometimes drink Jägermeister – it’s kind of tasty for about five sips and it feels like it’s at home in a mug. When were you in New Orleans?’

  ‘I wasn’t. I was . . . I was joking.’

  ‘Do you always make things up?’

  ‘Constantly.’

  She finished rinsing the mugs and then looked at me as she dried them with paper towels.

  ‘Insecurity or boredom?’ she asked.

  ‘Both. Plus fear of loss.’

  ‘You’re blushing.’

  She came over with the mugs and a book of matches. Then she lit the wide candle in the fireplace and we sat together on the floor amidst the cushions. I looked at the poster of the cars.

  ‘Is that Mussolini’s doing? Barging into Eritrea, I mean, with fast Italian cars.’

  ‘Well, Eritrea was an Italian colony before the Fascists. But – yes. Good knowledge.’ Her face took on a brace-brace expression. ‘Are you one of those boys who knows a lot?’

  ‘I know a lot about very little.’

  ‘What are your specialist areas?’

  ‘Fragments from the poets and early hominid refuse disposal. You?’

  ‘Formula One and patatas bravas.’

  ‘Shit, no.’ My face must have betrayed my earnestness.

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘My dad loves Formula One,’ I said. ‘I’ve been to a dozen Grands Prix.’

  ‘My dad, too. He’s the one who bought me that poster.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘this really is a first.’ I offered my mug and we chinked. ‘Let’s move to Rome and get married. Open a vegan cafe selling books. We could burn used Formula One tyres in a cosy little stove without telling anyone. Just to fuck the hipsters up.’

  She looked at me directly and without blinking and said nothing and I felt the crimson tide rising again for having over-stepped some kind of mark.

  But then she said: ‘We could call it “Pit Stop”. Or maybe “Box Box Box”.’

  And that was when I knew that it was going to be OK because, this once, luck was with me . . . The truth is that I had lied to my father about women. I did not, in fact, have any girls pushing me forward or holding me back. I was never ‘busy’, never ‘hectic’. I have red hair. (From both father and mother.) And what this seems to mean is that I’m absolutely nowhere with ninety per cent of the world’s señoritas. Nowhere. Not even a first look, never mind a second. As far as most girls are concerned, I might as well be a gay Belarusian abattoir owner with galloping nostril pubes and the blood of a thousand baby lambs on my hands. On the other hand, with the remaining ten per cent, I have always been everything they have ever dreamed of. Really. Some girls – not many – but this tiny determined faction – they just love me.

  I had not known, but all along – astonishingly, astoundingly – Eva had numbered herself among that little band of the auburn-loving acolytes. Yes: she was one of the blessed ten per cent. To her, I was that most desirable of men: a pre-Raphaelite vampire. (Her words.) And our previous ‘communication problems’ (so it transpired) were all due to the fact that she had sadly (so very sadly) been in the long process of splitting up from her boyfriend – some thirty-two-year-old iguanodon of the civil service who had all but bored and bullied her into getting engaged, but whom, she knew now, she could never marry because of his fundamental inability to grasp how meaningfully to interrelate with actual human beings, not least Eva herself. (My words.) Our intermittent meetings in twilight autumnal cafes to share dungy carrot cake and sewagey green tea were (she later confessed) all that she felt she could manage until she was clear of the wreckage of his malignancy and tantrums. This had been the cause of the incomprehensible confusion.

  That night, we lay together in her bed, naked and warm and close against the cold with the gleam of the moon in the frost on the glass of her window above.

  THE MEANING GAP

  My father and I shuffle down the path from the washrooms. The change is unspoken. But suddenly we are walking everywhere together with our arms round one another. He’s worse, I think, than even a week ago. Or maybe he isn’t. Maybe he’s pretending to be worse because he thinks this will help me, because he thinks that the struggle of these steps will lodge in my memory, make it easier. Afterwards.

  I can’t accuse him of shamming, though. And in any case: what does it matter if his deterioration is real or faked? Because now that we’re so tightly bound, with each and every step we feel easier, we feel like we’re investing these minutes with due weight and import and significance. Maybe this is how to live: convince yourself of something and then repeat until fade; everyday human philosophy in action.

  We’re ignoring the Eva call. We just can’t talk about it. Not now. One of the biggest problems we have is that if we start talking about one thing, then we get into another thing . . . and so to the only thing. Neither of us is ready for that again. Because what we are doing is like this massive exquisitely balanced equation that describes the universe – whic
h is to say an equation that describes everything we have ever said to one another about what we’re doing. And so to start saying even one tiny thing more would mean the equation would become unbalanced and we’d have to stop immediately and re-write the whole thing from the beginning to the end. And it’s like – if we are going to attempt such a thing – then I have to save us for the right moment to take the universe on since you can’t do that shit more than once or twice in your life.

  Dr Twigge, the shrink we saw together a few times, says that it is natural to wish to make sense of things: that this is a very human urge, but that – in a way – there is no sense to be made. In return, my father said that this was what Camus was ‘getting at’ in Le Mythe de Sisyphe when he talked of the clash between the human need for meaning and the fact that meaning is not pre-inscribed in the world. ‘This need – that’s what Camus meant by the absurd, Lou, not that things are absurd themselves.’ I remember Dad called it ‘the meaning gap’. Then he and Twigge started enjoying themselves and talking to each other about a lot of stuff that was nothing much to do with why we were there.

  Dad sees the other VW first – it’s the same crappy box-shaped 1980s model as ours. There are these two guys fussing around the back: one crouching and then getting up again; the other just standing there with a plastic cup. The van is leaning like it’s irreversibly sick of driving, of being a van. Only then do I clock that the tyre is flat. And immediately I’m wondering: what if we break down? What then? But obviously all I am able to think about is myself – and maybe this is another generational thing – since straight away, I realize that Dad must have been thinking the exact opposite because he’s already heading us in their direction, past the picnic table, over the tarmac and under the trees. The sun is out and we’re in good time, but still we’re due at the Champagne chateau at six at the latest and I want to get there with a spare hour so we can relax into the whole damn thing.

  ‘Puncture?’ Dad shouts over, in English.

  Here we come, two ragged messengers bearing news of incalculable defeats.

  ‘Ja. Big problem.’ The croucher looks over, seemingly too preoccupied to be surprised by our interest. He’s one of those undeniably fat guys – pale skin luminescent with a light signature sweat, yellow ‘Carlsberg’ T-shirt straining with the effort of containment, taller than he seems, now that he stands up, and disconcertingly hairless.

  ‘Big problem,’ he says again. ‘We have to get Dean to Denzlingen tonight.’ He nods towards the other guy – as if we might well know him already. ‘Dean – Dean he is playing three nights. We’re am arsch.’

  Dean takes a sip. He’s a good deal shorter with furtive ferrety eyes and a face that slopes back from his nose on either side like he’s fresh from two weeks’ testing in a wind tunnel.

  ‘Maybe I should start hitching, Malte,’ he says, quietly. He is English.

  ‘Is your spare gone as well?’ asks Dad.

  ‘That’s the problem – right there.’ Malte has that peculiarly German combination of earnestness and detachment. He tightens his big lips and then puffs out his heavy cheeks. ‘We are not having the extra wheel.’

  ‘No spare?’ Dad winces.

  And now we’re all standing looking at the flat tyre. For a second, I think Dad is going to offer ours.

  But then he asks: ‘What happened to it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Malte draws his head back into the ready pillow of his neck and raises his palms. ‘It is supposed to be right here – yes – hanging on the back – or maybe hanging on the front side – but I drove this van since one year and I have never seen it.’ He kicks ineffectually at the tyre. ‘We are totally screwed just because the wheel is pumped down.’

  ‘Flat,’ says Dean, quietly.

  ‘Exactly,’ Malte acknowledges. ‘No air. Pumped down.’

  Dean takes another sip.

  ‘We’ve got the same van,’ I say. ‘The Westfalia.’

  ‘The T3,’ Dad says, sagely, citing Volkswagen’s internal nomenclature. ‘The spare is at the front on these models – under the radiator.’

  I glance across. Dad is doing his bemused face that he deploys whenever he’s trying not to make fun of people.

  ‘They’re rear-wheel drive – the T3s,’ Dad says. ‘That’s why they couldn’t put the tyre at the back because there’s no room.’

  ‘Because of the engine,’ I say, hoping to clarify and to include Dean.

  ‘Ernsthaft?’ Malte frowns and then grins. ‘You are fucking me.’

  ‘We’re not fucking you,’ I say.

  ‘Well . . .’ Dad makes to move. ‘Let’s see if you’ve got one, then.’

  And so now all four of us are round at the front of the van where the shade is deeper under the trees.

  ‘OK,’ Malte offers, ‘I’ll look from down under.’

  He lies on the tarmac and edges backwards beneath the front of the van while his T-shirt rides up revealing a startled white belly that slops this way and that uncertain as to how best to obey the rapidly changing geometries of gravity.

  ‘Ja! The tyre is here!’ Malte shouts up. ‘It has been hiding itself underneath – all the time.’

  ‘Is it useable?’ Dad is leaning down, talking to the belly, holding on to the front of the van.

  ‘I think so – ja – it’s pumped full.’

  ‘Pumped up,’ Dean says and takes a sip.

  ‘Well, you’re in business then,’ Dad says.

  ‘Yes. This is clear.’ There’s a pause, then Malte’s voice comes again – less sure. ‘But how do we get it out of this little under-cupboard?’

  ‘There’s a catch at the front – and a restraining bolt. Then it’s sitting on a tray. Have you got any tools?’

  I look at Dean.

  ‘Nein,’ says the stomach. ‘Schieße.’

  Dean swills his drink rapidly from cheek to cheek.

  It turns out – after cursory consultation – that Malte and Dean don’t have anything in their van that might in any way contribute towards expediting the matter in hand. So it then turns out that Dad and I are going to fetch our tools in order to help them change their wheel.

  And of course, once we get back to our van, I start thinking that I should really ask Dad if he’s sure he wants to do this – spend his time like this. We’re committed but – in the circumstances – they can’t really complain if we just drive away. And yet it seems to me (as we open the tailgate) that clearly Dad does want to do this. He carries tools – he has always carried tools. He prides himself on his resourcefulness. There might be nothing he loves more in the world than having the right tool for the situation. When it matters, he’s ready. It’s another generational thing. Men should be ready. This is what Dad has been saying – with his life – all his life. Fix things. Strip the engine. Deal with that bastard of a dishwasher once and for all. Take the inanimate world on and tame it. And when the time comes: be ready, not blank and hopeless. He wants to use the tools now. And it is his time, not mine. And what else would we be doing? What else should we be doing?

  ‘Max twenty minutes,’ Dad says, maybe sensing all these thoughts as we lope-and-stick our way back towards Malte and Dean.

  It next turns out that Malte is beyond clumsy into some new territory of the physically self-cancelled; his limbs seem to be made of margarine.

  Then it turns out that Dean can’t do anything at all.

  ‘He’s a pianist,’ Malte explains. ‘That’s why he can’t use his hands – for anything – except for the piano playing. He’s playing three nights through – he starts tomorrow. He really needs his fingers. Tonight we meet the sponsors. Rheinmetall. It’s very important. The sponsors. Very important for the music.’

  So that’s why, finally, it turns out that it’s me who is sitting on the tarmac, prising off the hubcaps and leaning into the spider spanner to loosen the wheel nuts.

  ‘Anti-clockwise to undo, Lou,’ Dad says, before I even start.

  I know this of course and I h
ave to stop myself reacting – now is not the time – so instead I say: ‘Got it.’

  ‘It’s stiff?’ Malte asks.

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  ‘What are you playing?’ Dad asks Dean. They are standing in a semicircle around my ears while I struggle. There is heat in the September sun when it breaks through.

  ‘Debussy,’ offers Malte.

  ‘Debussy?’ Dad asks.

  ‘The flute trios,’ Dean says, in a voice that would prefer to go unheard. ‘Some solo. Some Chopin, too. Part of the Denzlingen Festival – for Debussy and Gourmet Foods. It’s . . . It’s not very big.’

  ‘Did Debussy spend a lot of time in Denzlingen?’ Dad asks. ‘What’s the connection?’

  ‘He stayed one night on the way somewhere else,’ Dean grimaces. ‘He is supposed to have eaten this Gourmet-Death menu at the place he stayed.’

  ‘The famous Feinschmecker Hochgenuss dinner.’ Malte grins.

  ‘Afterwards,’ Dean continues, ‘he is supposed to have said that German cooking was better than French. Which is why there’s this food and music festival. It’s a bit of a joke really . . .’

  ‘Dean is a super-famous guy,’ Malte offers, proudly. ‘You might know him if you like classic. Dean Swallow. He plays a lot of piano. I am his agent.’ This last is delivered with the tone of a man announcing himself as the new ambassador at some great court. ‘I drive him to the concerts. We take the money for the flights and the hotels but then we use the little van to travel and to sleep. We put the profits in the pockets. It’s a good plan – oder?’

  I look up. Dad is smiling. I am sweating but I have all five nuts loosened. I jack up the back of the van and ease the wheel off.

  ‘Discs on the front. Drums on the rear,’ Dad observes. ‘Evens the weight on the axle.’

  Malte is rolling the spare over in a parody of a mechanic. ‘Hey you guys should have a drink. Dean – get them a drink. It is hotter now – ja?’

  ‘What are you drinking, Dean?’ Dad asks.

  Malte laughs: ‘The sponsor’s dinner makes him more nervous than the piano.’