Trading Futures

by Jim Powell

  ‘Whose numbers would you like on yours?’

  ‘Jagger. Connery. Cohen.’

  ‘Men who will slip away in the morning,’ I said. Anna smiled. ‘I expected someone more permanent. And more original.’

  ‘Yes; so did I once,’ said Anna. ‘Whose imprint would be on your ink pad?’

  ‘Yours.’

  For a moment, Anna was taken aback. I had scored a hit. ‘When I said you’d proposition me, I didn’t expect it to be quite so soon.’

  ‘That wasn’t a proposition. It was a statement. An answer to your question.’

  ‘I’ll be careful about asking any more questions,’ said Anna.

  I don’t know whether to be depressed that we don’t change, or to be reassured. It depends what premium one places on consistency, I suppose. Nothing seemed to have changed between the two of us, nothing since that afternoon on Blackdown. At the time, I had hoped that the conversation we had started then would continue through our lives. To listen to us now, you would think it had, running through the years like an underground stream, now breaching the surface again. Actuarially, there had been a break of decades. Actually, there had been no break. We were dwelling in a continuum, picking up the fabric and the texture of an old conversation, humming old tunes.

  When I thought of all that had happened to me in the years between, all the tangible changes to my life, all the consequent implications for my psychology, my behaviour, that one would assume, all the commensurate changes there must have been in Anna’s life, it was disarming to discover that the two of us could be nineteen all over again. A little more cynical, a little more knowing, a little less naive, and yet still the same two teenagers. I didn’t know whether this reflected how we truly were, or whether each of us, unconsciously, instinctively, was reaching back to the person we had once been, parodying our younger selves, trying to convince ourselves they still existed.

  How many people do we meet in our lives with whom we feel in complete harmony? I struggle to think of more than a few. Anna had been one of them. How unforgivable to have squandered that opportunity.

  I was not sure what to say next. This could be written off as a chance encounter, an event insusceptible to meaning, the random reappearance of an old face; its random disappearance. Or I could choose to give it meaning, to substantiate the coincidence and, Anna permitting, to translate the accidental moment into a conscious act of purpose. And, if I did that, to what end? The resurrection of a young man’s dream, or the calculation of an older man’s future?

  When I was a child, I sat in scripture lessons and wrestled with the competing claims of predestination and free will to be the reflection of God’s purpose. Now I am sceptical as to God’s existence and mostly dissent from any notion of purpose. But I remain unable to escape the question and want to give the answer I wanted to give as a child, which was ‘both’. The possibility that I do not have free will is intolerable. It would negate every decision I’ve yet made and render future ones redundant. It would extract the sole remaining point from a pointless life.

  And yet. At isolated moments, few in number, rich in import, I leave my ego in the wings and summon destiny to the stage. It is not, it cannot be, a coincidence that Anna has come back into my life in this way and at this moment. There has to be a meaning, and it is demanded that I interpret the meaning and act upon it.

  That is what I thought in 1967. It’s what I thought sitting in The Fine Line bar with Anna. It’s what I’m thinking now, driving up the A303. No matter that I appeared to have been mistaken earlier. I was not mistaken. Destiny is a notoriously poor timekeeper. It had arrived early then, now at its appointed hour.

  I remembered that in July ’67, the week before I met Anna, I had seen a play in the West End with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench. It was called The Promise. That had seemed significant at the time. Now, forty-one years later, I had met Anna again. This time, it was a painting, not a play, but it was still called The Promise. What more of a sign could I want?

  The confidence dissipated, as it does. The insistent whisper returned: that this moment had only the meaning that we each chose to give it, of our own free will.

  Anna had gone to the loo. I took the opportunity to phone Judy, explaining that the Tate meeting had gone on longer than expected and might continue for a while yet. It was impossible to know whether she believed me. I didn’t really care. I had chosen the meaning I wanted to give this moment.

  Anna returned. She sat down without looking at me. She rumpled her hair, then her jersey, then her hair again. I poured us each another glass of Chablis.

  ‘What am I doing here?’ she demanded. The question did not seem to be addressed to me, so I ignored it. ‘What the hell am I doing here? Jesus Christ.’

  A long pause followed. I raised my glass.

  ‘Cheers,’ I said.

  Anna recomposed herself. ‘Cheers. Here’s to perfect strangers.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Perfect qualifies the strangeness, not you. I’m sorry. I’m not used to doing something like this.’

  ‘Were you once?’

  ‘Too much so,’ said Anna. ‘But we’re not going to talk about that.’

  ‘What are you used to now?’

  ‘I’m used to digging my garden and pulling up vegetables. I’m used to feeding the chickens and collecting eggs. I’m used to standing at a market stall on Saturday mornings and selling my produce. I’m used to listening to Radio 4 and shouting at the politicians.’

  In 1967, we had talked about what we would be doing in fifty years’ time. ‘I will be living,’ Anna had said, ‘in a small rented cottage in Dorset, drawing my pension, digging my vegetable patch, keeping chickens, and writing to the newspapers about the decline of the modern novel.’ She was one county out and had yet to mention the modern novel. I had threatened to visit her in Dorset fifty years later, and to suggest we had an affair before the onset of senility. Anna had replied that she might say yes. I had asked if I would have to wait that long. ‘At least,’ Anna had said. At the time, I had thought we were both joking.

  ‘Sounds idyllic,’ I said.

  Another laugh, a laugh that suggested Anna’s life was not altogether idyllic. She translated this as: ‘It’s all right, I suppose.’

  ‘Better than working, anyway.’

  ‘You don’t call that work?’

  I wasn’t doing well. ‘Better than sitting in an office.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  I waited for another laugh, or a smile. It didn’t come. I was about to say: ‘This isn’t like you, Anna. What’s the matter? Where’s the laughter?’ then realized that I couldn’t. I also realized it was an absurd statement. I knew nothing about her, other than how she had been one Saturday afternoon forty-one years earlier. That image had been preserved in formaldehyde, a sliver of her placed in a Petri dish and used as a stem cell from which to build a complete Anna in my mind. In the process, some of the complexities had been lost, even though I knew they had been there.

  ‘At least it sounds like freedom,’ I said.

  ‘Freedom isn’t a word I use much these days,’ said Anna. ‘The only times in my life I’ve felt free are when I’ve been in love. It’s funny. When I was a teenager, I couldn’t see any connection between love and freedom. I don’t think I’d ever been in love, or been loved. Freedom was a word I used all the time, then. It was a political word. I didn’t think of it in the context of love. Freedom was what I wanted for the world. And for myself, of course. Freedom was what life was about. I’m quite precise with words, I think. They matter to me. They’ve always mattered. I’m not sure I ever paused to consider what the word freedom meant. It seemed self-evident, so I chucked it around with abandon, like everyone else, and only recently have I thought to question its meaning. Now, freedom is a word I seldom use. And, no, I don’t think I’m free, except in a narrow and specific way, certainly not in any universal sense. Who is? Are you, Matthew, do you think? Are you free?’


  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. I don’t feel free. Everything in life is a constraint in one way or another. I never seem able to be myself.’

  ‘And how would you be if you were yourself?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be anything in particular. I would just be.’

  ‘I’ve tried that,’ said Anna.

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s good. Up to a point.’

  ‘Where is the point?’

  ‘The point of loneliness,’ said Anna.

  ‘Are you lonely?’

  Now Anna did laugh, and it was a relief. ‘What have you got me talking about? Sneaking me into a conversation like this!’

  ‘You started it.’

  ‘Did I? Yes, I probably did. I get bored with small talk, don’t you?’

  ‘Constantly,’ I said. ‘Bored with small talk, bored with small people, bored with a small life. How often do you come to London?’

  ‘Once or twice a year. That’s enough. I stay with an old university friend in Crouch End for a few days and binge on galleries and theatre. I need the fix. Any more often and I’d start getting broody like my hens.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m not really a country woman. I’ve made myself into one, but I’m not. I miss the buzzy metro life. If I wasn’t careful, I’d find myself moving back.’

  ‘What would be wrong with that?’

  ‘Drugs aren’t good for you,’ said Anna. ‘Unfortunately.’

  ‘Would that be the voice of experience talking?’

  Anna smiled. ‘Haven’t we reached the end of the interview yet? Is there still more you want to pump out of me?’

  ‘I had hoped we were having a conversation.’

  ‘A rather one-sided conversation. Still, it’s better than sitting with a man who never stops droning on about himself.’

  ‘I can do that too.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you? I’ve just about got time. Unless you’ve had an especially eventful and fascinating life, that is.’ Anna delayed the smile for at least five seconds, savouring the uncertain look on my face.

  I was used to making a précis of my life, to cutting and pasting sequences together for the edited highlights. There were different versions of the show. The version I used in the City, talking to clients or business acquaintances, or for an occasional job interview long ago, when greener pastures had beckoned, only to prove parched, or on offer to other grazers. The version I used at the golf club, tenuously related to the truth, a monument of braggadocio posing as self-effacement. The version I used at dinner parties, even further removed from the truth, emphasizing a jovial, uxorious man I barely recognized.

  The version I needed to present to Anna should have had time for composed consideration. Neither time nor composure was available. Had the self-portrait been unvarnished, it would have revealed a study of tedium, regret and anxiety. With too much varnish, credibility and substance would have been effaced, not to mention the truth.

  I did not yet know what I wanted from Anna. That’s not true. I did know what I wanted. I didn’t know if I was wise to seek it. I am not entirely an idiot. I’ve seen enough men of my age make fools of themselves as they have grown older. Usually a younger woman is involved and, in a way, a younger woman was involved now, as was a younger man. The problem was that wisdom, except to the wise, is a quality evident only in retrospect. My one decision so far was that I wanted to see Anna again. I didn’t intend to say goodbye to her at a tube station and wave her out of my life for a second time. I believed that our conversation that evening had been sufficiently encouraging for her not to want it either.

  Beyond that next meeting, I had no expectation as to what might happen, no opinion as to what might then seem wise or unwise. At least, I don’t think I had. Now, driving up the A303, having decided what I have decided, resolved to splurge the rest of my life on a lottery ticket, I cannot trust my memory as to what I was thinking six weeks ago.

  I do remember wondering whether it was possible to have Anna for a friend, to deny our carnal desires, mine anyway, and to manufacture a platonic bubble in which we could coexist from time to time. That could not be in Somerset, or not often: too many, too convoluted, excuses for Judy. Nor in London, not on any permanent basis. Anna was not the sort of woman you could install in a flat in Maida Vale and expect to be happy there. Or to be there at all.

  We could meet in London, though. I could suggest that she came up more often, perhaps once a month. I could pay her fare, if she would let me. I wasn’t sure she would let me: Anna seemed to prize her independence more than anything, perhaps more than she prized herself. If any of this were to happen, I would need to tell her that we had met before. And if it disconcerted her that I had not previously mentioned the fact, I could say it disconcerted me that she had forgotten me so easily. Or I could claim it was a game, that I had been waiting to see how long it would take her to remember, that no form of deception had been involved, that I had been teasing.

  For now, the need was to say enough about myself to make me seem worth seeing again, and no more. Over the dregs of the Chablis, I tried to do that. I didn’t mention that I was unemployed. Technically, I now wasn’t. I was unpaid, which is different. Ask an intern.

  ‘Your wife seems to have a somewhat hazy role,’ said Anna.

  I had played down Judy’s part in my life. What else was I supposed to do in the circumstances? However, it was also true that Judy did have a hazy role in my life, as I probably had in hers.

  ‘Doesn’t that usually happen,’ I said, ‘when you’ve been married for years?’

  ‘Usually. It’s what puts me off marriage.’

  ‘It’s what puts you off permanence.’

  ‘Nothing’s permanent,’ said Anna. ‘No point in pretending it is. When something reaches its use-by date, you eat it or chuck it. You don’t let it moulder.’

  ‘Which will you be doing with me?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Anna. ‘You haven’t reached your use-by date yet.’

  ‘Do I take that as a compliment?’

  ‘Not necessarily. I haven’t even bought the packet.’

  ‘What does it take to get a compliment from you?’

  Anna smiled. ‘Someone who doesn’t fish for them. And now, Matthew, if you’ll excuse me, I really must be going.’

  ‘Can I see you again?’

  ‘Possibly. If you’re prepared to wait six months.’

  ‘I’ll be in Somerset in a few weeks’ time.’

  ‘You’ll be in Somerset, or you’ll be making a special journey there in the hope of seeing me?’

  ‘I’ll be in Somerset. Dorset in fact, but I expect I’ll have to drive through Somerset.’

  ‘Your satnav will probably have other ideas,’ said Anna.

  ‘They’re next door to each other, aren’t they?’

  ‘Russia’s next door to Canada.’

  ‘You’re trying to put me off.’

  ‘No. Just trying to help with your scheduling. What are you doing in Dorset? Do you have another woman there? From the National Gallery perhaps?’

  ‘I need to inspect a wind-farm project in Dorset, with a view to sponsorship.’

  ‘Art. Ecology. Is there no end to your philanthropy?’

  ‘No end at all,’ I said. ‘It even extends to self-sufficient smallholders.’

  Anna laughed, a warm laugh. ‘I’m not sure philanthropy’s the word I would use to describe that. Unless self-interest has changed its meaning.’

  ‘It has. Haven’t you noticed? Self-interest is always for someone else’s benefit now.’

  ‘I rather feared it was.’

  ‘Do you want to give me your number?’

  ‘I’ll give you my email address,’ said Anna. She wrote it down for me in large, straggly writing. I peered at it to make sure I could read it.

  ‘Will I end up in your junk mail?’ I asked.

  ‘My software will decide that. It ha
s excellent judgement. Much better than mine.’

  ‘What’s the use-by date on spam?’

  ‘Before the date of manufacture, I should think,’ said Anna.

  We left The Fine Line slowly, walking down Bow Churchyard in the direction of Mansion House tube station, stepping past the detritus of the day’s traders. It was a chilly evening for September. We pulled our coats more tightly about us, turned our collars up against the autumn air, two soldiers from the Great War, gazing warily over our respective trenches, eyes on no man’s land, waiting for a whistle to blow us over the top. Or a grenade.

  ‘I think we’re going in different directions now,’ I said, when we were inside the station.

  ‘Yes,’ said Anna. ‘We are. I go this way.’ She darted towards the westbound stairs before I had time to think of something smart, or something tender.

  5

  ‘We’re going to Aunt Lucy’s in a fortnight,’ said Judy. ‘She’s invited us to stay for the weekend.’

  My first feeling was one of irritation. It doesn’t take much to irritate me when I’m at home these days. By mutual consent, Judy is in charge of our social arrangements. I graciously make myself available on specified occasions, of which weekends are one, and Judy acts as diary secretary. She is supposed to go through a nominal consultation process, and once upon a time she did. Now she announces unilateral policy initiatives like a government spokeswoman.

  Lucy is her aunt, not mine. She is a disagreeable old bag – an assessment from which Judy does not dissent – whose sole virtues are substantial wealth, a lack of children, old age and chronic ill health. So she does need to be visited, but as seldom as is consistent with our apparent concern for her. The fact that we don’t need her money is beside the point. This has become a challenge to see if we can get it, and prise it away from the cats, dogs and other quadrupeds that Aunt Lucy believes, not unreasonably, love her more than any human being.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Can’t do it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve got to go to Dorset.’

  ‘Oh. Really? What’s in Dorset?’

  ‘One of my whores.’