by A. S. Byatt
Until the programme began Julia had had the hope that it might, like so many things which seem likely not to be endurable, prove pleasant or even exhilarating after all. It did not. She was sitting very close to Simon and this made her nervous. Simon himself was very nervous, sweating heavily and answering questions monosyllabically, or with an attempt at unconcern that appeared sullen and almost offensive. The team, in consequence, by now simply a group of people accidentally engaged in that kind of interview which most closely resembles an industrial personality questionnaire, with traps for the unwary, the unsuitable, the unstable and the over-clever, developed a hostile and bullying tone. This provoked in Simon no fireworks, simply a further ungracious withdrawal.
After two minutes of this Julia became seriously afraid that she was going to faint. She looked wildly about her. They sat on a dais in front of a set that looked like a comfortable room, with one of Ben’s cages balanced on a table like a pale mushroom. Beyond was the desolate dustiness of the studio, and the lit glass box where people checked the communications. Overhead was a woven ceiling of springy wire netting from which dangled, on innumerable coils of looping wire, clumps of microphones and lights. Technicians in blue jeans slid in and out of the equipment, manœuvring cameras, lugging wire, signalling at each other across Julia.
Lights flared on and off: hot light poured down on her. Near the door, his face dark in the shadow, Ivan lounged. Julia, sick and dizzy, had to be reminded when it was her turn to speak, and then forgot her question and its meaning. She addressed Simon absently, and pushed her hand again and again across her brow, in a peculiarly irritating gesture. Gordon felt it his place to intervene. Ivan had said once, in bed, ‘The nerve-wracking thing is that any mistake you make is seen by millions of viewers. Any faux pas, any vulgarity.’
She concentrated simply on sitting it through, not fainting. It is vulgar of Ivan, she thought, to trap me and my emotions in all this wire and light.
In hospitality, after the programme, Ivan became rather drunk. He told Julia several times that ‘the bloody programme just didn’t get off the bloody ground, it just didn’t get off’. Julia reflected that undue intimacy within professional relationships had its disadvantages. ‘As for you, I thought you were going to puke or something, you looked awful.’
‘You shouldn’t play the impresario with my private life,’ said Julia. ‘You can’t have it all ways.’
Ivan took hold of the front of her dress. His knuckles brushed her skin. ‘I’ve got to have some creative work.’
‘Well, not me.’
‘I like you talking. Talk some more. About your creative work. Where the finished product is indistinguishable from the process. Undigested gobbets of bleeding, disgusting domestic suffering.’ He looked at her. ‘Or perhaps not all. I don’t see what right you’ve got to complain about me —’
‘Look —’ Julia said.
Simon appeared sober and flaming, in the face, behind Ivan.
‘Is there any reason why I shouldn’t go?’
‘None whatever,’ said Ivan.
‘Will you come, Julia?’
‘Do go,’ said Ivan, quickly. Julia took Simon’s arm.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Please. Yes.’
They took a taxi. ‘Where shall I tell him to go?’ said Simon. ‘Where do you live?’
Julia said, ‘I don’t want to go home.’
Simon pondered this. He was leaning back into his own corner of the taxi, away from her, almost invisible.
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘Can we go somewhere and talk?’
‘Where would we go? I’ve not been in London since – since —’
‘Where are you staying?’
‘In a hotel somewhere. We can’t go there.’ He waited patiently.
‘We could go to a pub. Or a coffee-place. Or just walk.’
‘Walk where?’
‘Oh, up and down the Embankment.’
Simon told the driver to take them to the Westminster pier. When the taxi started he said, ‘I won’t appear on any more of those shows. They make one feel savaged. Food for thought.’
‘I know. It is rather awful.’
‘It’s a horrible job. They’ve always got to be thinking up something to have thoughts about. Points of view. Attitudes. Networks of words. The theology of television. That man said he wanted me to talk about my work. I don’t want to talk about art. I’m a herpetologist.’
‘I agree.’
‘Honestly, all this tying up of loose ends seems so dishonest.’
‘Oh, I do agree. My creative work is so much better if I don’t think about it.’
‘I haven’t, of course, read your books,’ said Simon’s neutral voice, with a finality that suggested somehow that he never would. With these small hardnesses he had held her once. When he said nothing else, she told him ‘The reason I didn’t offer to take you home is that my flat is full of dependants so you can’t hear yourself talk.’
‘How much family have you?’
‘A husband and a daughter. She’s fifteen. And a lot of people brought in off the streets. I married a sort of saint.’
‘Like your father.’
‘A bit like. Not altogether.’
The memory of Simon’s wistful affection for her father brought back other memories. To suppress these she began to give him an account of the Bakers’ misdeeds, deliberately laying herself out to entertain. Simon laughed once or twice and crossed and uncrossed his legs.
They got out of the taxi on the Embankment. Simon, paying the driver, dropped a handful of half-crowns and florins which rang on the pavement and glittered in the gutter. They both bent down and their heads knocked lightly together; she put out a hand and steadied herself against his shoulder. This contact affected her; she was aware of the bulk of Simon’s body under the raincoat and was momentarily silly with a need to touch him. She wanted to slide both hands inside the coat and put her arms round him. They stood up, having retrieved the coins, and began to walk along the Embankment. Simon’s walk was no more co-ordinated than it had been; he swayed like a poplar tree and occasionally twisted his legs almost round each other. They walked separate, fairly distant from each other, but collided frequently owing to Simon’s Coleridgean motion. Every time they collided Julia suppressed a cry of anguish.
In this way they came to the Discovery. Simon leaned over the wall and stared at the ship. Julia stood beside him and watched an end of rope trail in the water and a red light, slung from the vessel, glitter on a floating patch of oil. She did not know what Simon was thinking.
‘What are you thinking, Simon?’
‘I was thinking that it’s strange how people find things comic that aren’t, not really.’
‘You mean the Bakers —’
‘I wasn’t thinking of them. I was thinking of your friend.’
‘Ivan?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he think was comic, Simon?’
‘The piranhas.’
‘Piranhas?’
‘Fish. Flesh-eating fish.’ He held up his hands, cupped round the imaginary shape of one. ‘So big.’
Julia shuddered. ‘It’s the sort of thing he would find funny.’ Simon said nothing.
‘I’ve read about how they can strip a man to a bare skeleton in ten minutes. Or did I get that from your talks?’
‘I’ve seen that.’ He looked at her, and away, quickly.
‘Simon!’
‘He found that funny.’
‘Well, you know, it’s the sort of gruesome thing he’d feel obliged to feel was funny. I mean, because it’s so awful and typical. I really knew a chap once who had an uncle who was eaten by cannibals. A vegetarian uncle. It got to be a family joke.’
‘I see.’
There was a long silence.
‘I’m so glad to see you, Si. You can’t know. You know, I’ve never got out of the habit of saving up things to tell you – all sorts of little things. I really do feel t
hat relationships develop even if one can’t do anything about them, just with the passage of time. But that’s quite likely an illusion. I thought if I ever did see you you might be a complete stranger. But you aren’t.’
‘It’s been a long time,’ said Simon, in a muffled voice.
‘Did you ever think of me, Si? Since you left? Ever?’
He hesitated. ‘Oh, yes. Often.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t know many people to think about. I think I was told you were married. I thought I might write and wish you well.’
‘You never did.’
‘No.’
Julia touched his arm, briefly. ‘I wish you had. Would it seem silly to ask – after all these years – meeting like strangers – why you – why you just suddenly went off?’
She tried to catch his eye in the dark and could see only the rough cheek surface and its craters. ‘Or have you forgotten?’
‘No, no, I haven’t forgotten. I – nothing seemed to be getting anywhere, I suppose. It just wasn’t getting anywhere. I thought you knew that.’
This could not be described as a satisfactory answer.
‘But I loved you, it was a terrible shock.’
‘I thought it was the other way round,’ he said, shifting slightly. ‘Anyway, I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, no —’
There was another silence.
‘I’m glad you’re happy, Julia. I thought you ought to have been. You had such a capacity for living – for attacking life. You are happy, aren’t you?’ He asked this with a kind of eagerness.
‘Yes,’ said Julia. ‘On the whole, very happy.’ She didn’t know whether she was or not, but it was clear that Simon wanted her to be.
‘I thought so.’ He looked out at the water again, his lips moving.
‘Oh, I am glad to see you.’
He said, into the water. ‘You used always to be in two minds about seeing me. Always. You know you were.’
‘But not now. Now I’m just glad.’
‘Good.’ He was silent again.
Julia felt that something was being achieved; that at last she was talking, with a possibility of further talk, to the real man. In some very simple way she was no longer in two minds about seeing him; he was no longer, as she remembered he had been, faintly repulsive or faintly menacing. She was visited again by the desire to touch him, simply to touch; she looked at his dark face and hunched shoulders with love and the surface of her body prickled. This is one of the few times, she thought, when my thoughts, and my body, and all my attention, have been in the same place.
‘That comedian —’ said Simon.
‘Yes?’
‘He took hold of your dress. I didn’t like that.’
Julia did not know how to take this. It might well have been an expression of a kind of jealousy, but sounded much more like one of Simon’s occasional blundering efforts at moral guidance. His expression was one of prudish distaste. She said, ‘It’s just his way.’
‘Probably.’
‘Shall we walk on a bit?’ said Julia, to distract him. He seemed to wake up. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I’ll take you home, now.’
Chapter 15
DURING the next three days Julia thought of nothing but Simon. She went over their inconclusive conversation several times. She was obsessed by the memory of the moment when they had collided, and by the idea that she needed to touch him. She had never before wanted to touch him in this way without any accompanying reluctance: she put it to herself that to touch Simon would ‘make everything real’. She had two detailed and warmly erotic dreams about him – again, this had not happened before – and woke to a sense of loss. She felt that to meet him, to talk to him again, would be a completion of a part of her life and a beginning of a new part, a new revelation. She thought she had sensed this feeling in him, too. But he had hailed a taxi, brought her home, let her out on the doorstep, and, before she had turned round to ask for an address, to suggest a further meeting, had driven away.
Over the last months, after the death of her father, and particularly since the end of A Sense of Glory, she had felt that she had achieved a new sense of identity to act from. She had always been tempted to remain a child – well, she was ready now to grow up. Her teeth were cut, she was innocent and responsible. Touching Simon – from herself – was somehow to prove this.
After further thought she attributed her new sense of Simon’s possible private reality to the complete absence – during that meeting – of any sense that she was being watched by Cassandra. She had always felt that her actions were being ‘produced’ by Cassandra’s fear, Cassandra’s expectations, Cassandra’s idea of Simon. But this meeting had felt like her own. She was ready to have things of her own, now. Once the thought of Cassandra’s watching had occurred at all some of the sense of innocence slid away; but this, Julia told herself, was because she did not see Simon and had nothing to bite on. She spent time imagining his hotel room, imagining unexpected meetings, adding explanatory sentences to the Embankment conversation. She avoided Ivan.
On the fourth day she woke to the sound of the telephone ringing. When it had rung for some time she struggled out of bed; Thor seemed to be nowhere, and the thing must be answered. When she arrived in the hall, Thor was already lifting the receiver.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘No, on the contrary, I do of course, very well.’ He listened. ‘I’m sure she would. Oh yes, certainly, by all means. And I look forward to meeting you. Yes, indeed.’ He rang off.
‘That was Simon Moffitt,’ he said. ‘He wonders if you would like to go to the zoo.’
‘To the zoo?’
‘He is coming round for you.’
‘I wanted to speak to him. Why didn’t you let me speak to him?’
‘He didn’t ask,’ said Thor. ‘He said he looked forward to meeting me.’
Julia looked, perturbed, at the telephone.
‘I should get dressed,’ said Thor, ‘if I were you.’
Simon was wearing a sportscoat which flapped widely and unfashionably from the waist, and a huge pair of veldtschoen. He was carrying his raincoat, a canvas holdall, a brief-case, an umbrella, and a long canvas bag, tied and labelled, that bulged from itself once or twice. He put this casually on a chair, against which he tried to stack the other things; whilst he did this, Thor came out of the living-room, the Bakers collected in the living-room, and Deborah came out of her bedroom in pyjamas, dressing-gown, and thin, bare feet.
‘Ah, Mr Moffitt, I presume.’ Julia could not tell whether this was an accidental locution or a deliberate joke. Simon straightened himself, and put out a hand.
‘Julia and I are old friends.’
‘I know. I know.’
‘I’ve got to go to the zoo, so I …’ He stopped, and looked at Deborah.
‘My daughter, Deborah,’ said Julia.
Simon considered her. ‘She looks like Cassandra. But suppose everyone tells you that.’
‘Even Aunt Cassandra admits it.’
‘I suppose you’re too old to be taken to the zoo.’ Deborah smiled.
‘Would you like to come to the zoo?’
‘Oh, no, I don’t think so. Not today, thank you. I don’t often go.’
‘A pity,’ said Simon. ‘Some other time.’
‘Oh, yes, some other time, I’d love to.’
Simon wrung his hands, and then, without warning, knelt to retie a shoelace.
‘Get your coat, Julia,’ said Thor. He said to Simon, ‘Maybe you could come back this evening to eat with us? I am anxious to know about conditions in South America at first hand. We have been in correspondence with the health education institutes there. I have a lot of questions for you, if you’ve not had enough questions.’
‘I’d love to come,’ said Simon, his face hidden. ‘This is very kind. I shall certainly come.’
The bag on the chair changed position slightly. Thor gathered up Simon’s effects and handed them to him, one by one. The brief-case he gave to Julia.
‘Have a g
ood day,’ he said. ‘Deborah and I will see about supper, don’t bother.’
Simon took a taxi to Regent’s Park; then he walked Julia across to the zoo buildings. Julia was carrying, now, both brief-case and umbrella; in this way she felt she had a hold on him. He offered no explanation for the invitation, nor for his three-day silence; once or twice he stopped and looked at her, with an expression predominantly anxious, but when he did speak, it was from a distance, as though to a business associate, or maybe a niece whom he was obliged to entertain.
‘I’ve got – I’ve got – a certain amount of – of business. I do hope you don’t mind a certain amount of – hanging around. Of hanging around.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Oh, good. I thought, then we could – eat something. Or something.’
‘I didn’t know if you really meant the zoo,’ said Julia, at random. It had seemed so much like a rendezvous from a Woman’s Own love story.
‘Don’t you like the zoo?’
‘Oh course I do – but —’
‘I – I have to be here quite a lot. I don’t like it much. But it seemed a good place – a good place to meet. In the circumstances.’
They went in. Julia took Simon’s raincoat and restored his brief-case. She discovered rapidly that there was, indeed, a certain amount of hanging around involved; she followed Simon from office to office, watching him hand over type-written sheets and little phials and boxes which he produced from the holdall, examine photographs and reports, and last, in the Reptile House, hand over the canvas bag. She sat in corridors or stood in doorways; no one paid her any attention, except that in one office she was given a cup of long-brewed tea and a chocolate jammy bun wrapped in silver paper. Simon himself hardly looked at her. She began to feel very female, an attendant servant-cum-girl-friend, his woman. This pleased her, finally, rather than insulting her. It disposed of the hysterical apprehension she had been feeling over being faced with his physical presence and finding it unreal, like a too long anticipated childhood treat. Simon, to the people in these offices, was real enough – solid, necessary, to be negotiated with. She was real to them in terms of him and it had always been so much the other way about. He kept signing things, and he, too, drank tea and ate a jammy bun.