The Idea of Love

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The Idea of Love Page 25

by Louise Dean


  ‘Come home with me. I have bought some bread, some cheese and ham. I’ll make us lunch.’

  ‘What home?’

  ‘The old one.’

  ‘It’s rented.’

  ‘No, they’ve reneged on it. I didn’t want to upset you.’

  ‘Oh. They seemed nice people. They were French too.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. They probably were. It’s not important. Come on. Get some clothes on.’

  She bridled. ‘You don’t tell me what to do. Just because Jeff has gone.’

  ‘Listen, Valérie, I completely understand you.’ He said it gently because he was tired. He sat down. He felt exhausted and was ready to give up. ‘I feel the same way,’ he said, flicking at the Marlboro cigarette pack with his middle finger and thumb. It hit her forearm. ‘I’m done with being married to you too. The only good part of it was laughing at the kid together, or sometimes at other people, and now and again the sex, or what I can remember of it. I just want to offer you lunch, that’s all.’

  Max came in, dragging a backpack across the floor. He sat at the table with them. ‘You don’t want me to smoke, but you smoke.’ He withdrew a cigarette from the pack on the table and Richard smacked his hand to stop him and held it with his own and shook it.

  They went down the lane, just a few hundred metres, and opened up their old home, and took to their old dining table; they sat in the same chairs they’d always sat in.

  Richard made them all a sandwich and Max withdrew to his old room; he was reading Fifty Great Religious Thinkers.

  Valérie had the remnants of make-up in the corners of her eyes, her face was puffy. She ate. She fell upon the sandwich, which was thick with butter and the soft ham fat and the gum-caking cheese. She was hungry. Richard poured them mugs of red wine and stood by the back door, drinking his with two hands around it like it was soup.

  Outside Guy was walking up the road, almost gingerly, pointing each slipper before placing it, his arms shunting like a marionette steam train, compelled by some inner tune, his mouth moving, the dog wagging its tail alongside him. His face shocked Richard. It was as red as a baboon’s bottom, high and puffy, like a punching glove; he looked like he had alcohol poisoning. Richard thought, he might be quitting the booze just in the nick of time.

  ‘You know, I wasn’t exactly a saint myself. So I can’t hold this thing against you. There were other women. Just sex though.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘Jeff told me.’

  ‘Did he? Yes. Well. I know what you are and what you’re looking for because I am a lot like you. More than I would have guessed, I suppose. Why don’t we both stay here for a while until things settle? I’m thinking of our son. You do as you like. Come and go as you like. We’ll keep the kid safe, to make him better. Just until he’s better. We’ll give it six months. And then we’ll go our separate ways. I think that’s the best we can do. On the one hand it seems so much, on the other it seems so little. We’ll just live like lodgers in the same space for the time being. For the kid’s sake. He’ll pull himself together. But no pills. That’s what I’m going to insist on, no pills. We’ll keep him off school for a little bit too.’

  ‘OK. Fine. I don’t know what else to do in any case. But what about Rachel?’

  ‘Rachel? I love her.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘How amusing.’

  Rachel had told him to stay on for a while, for his son’s sake. Otherwise, she smiled, ‘it will bite us in the arse.’ She told him this time was their safety net. ‘Do you really want to mess things up again? To have another failure?’ She’d put a finger on his lips to stop him saying anything. And that was that.

  ‘Hey, it won’t be so bad, Valérie. We’ll have my sick pay. As I said, you do as you like. We’ll be OK. I won’t give you a hard time. Maybe we’ll even be friends?’

  ‘I don’t want some kind of cheap comfort.’

  ‘I just want to do this for him, and to call it quits. I’ll forgive you if you’ll forgive me.’

  ‘Is this some kind of Rachel-Christian thing?’

  ‘No, it’s not. I can forgive you because I don’t love you.’

  ‘Oh well, that’s fine. So what are you going to do about sex? Obviously this is something that has been very important for you.’

  ‘I’ll make my own arrangements. You make yours.’

  ‘What happened to the machismo?’

  ‘I’m taking a pill for it.’

  She ate the last piece of the sandwich from her plate then took the plate over to run it under cold tap water. ‘But Richard, I don’t know if I can make it through another six months without killing one of us. I don’t want to have you so much as look at me. I really don’t like you. When I think of you, I think of how insincere you can be, and cruel, the games you play . . . how false . . .’

  ‘Yes, you hate me. So, what are we to do? Give up on Max? You think suddenly you’re going to be able to mother him?’

  ‘I think I can do it now, the mothering.’ Even as she said it, she brought Jeff ’s face to mind; it was as if he were always by her side, she saw him at the third chair, he was absent when present and now he was present when absent. ‘But you, you can have your fresh start, Richard. With Rachel. You can make everything new and perfect so why don’t you go, go away, with her.’ She looked at him and her face was ordinary, it was not contorted or contrived or play-acting, it was bare and plain and without beauty or ugliness. It was the face of his old enemy. He had thought the mess he had made of his life was something particular, but he had the feeling now that it was nothing to do with events or circumstances, it was simply what weak, foolish, beliefless people did. Day in, day out. They couldn’t care less about each other.

  He went outside and called Rachel on her mobile phone and spoke to her, smoking a cigarette.

  ‘We seem to have some sort of understanding, she and I,’ he told her. ‘I hope we can make it, for Max’s sake, but it’s going to be hard. Rachel, how do you know that it will work between us? This way? With the distance?’

  ‘Don’t doubt it. You’re wasting time. Don’t think. Just stand up,’ she said.

  ‘That makes it sound simple.’

  ‘It is simple.’

  He saw Simone’s car slow down as she passed Abrams’ villa, and looked through the open gates of the empty home.

  Her face shone from her morning ablutions and potions, but her mouth was like a dam, holding back a natural force. Seeing nothing to cause her to stop, she applied a little pressure to the accelerator and the old hopeless car that was hers, complete with filled ashtray and two pairs of cheap sunglasses rattling in a side pocket, lurched into the loose gravel.

  Chapter 59

  Richard found Max peering over their rear fence. ‘I wish they had kids next door,’ he said. ‘This is shit, living here, all alone.’

  It was not a good time to say it but there was never going to be a good time. He sat Max down at the picnic table.

  ‘Max. I have to tell you something. I’m going to leave France. In a few months. Not now, not until I know you’re happier. In a while though, I will. I should never have come here. It’s not your fault, or anything to do with you; the fault was mine. I made it a long time ago.’

  ‘You were greedy,’ said Max, solemnly, ‘really greedy.’

  ‘In a way, yes. They call it ambition,’ Richard admitted, ‘but all I can do now, to put things right again, is go home to where I came from.’

  ‘To Rachel, because you love her. What about me?’

  Richard went on, looking at the grass. ‘You belong here. This is where you come from.’

  ‘The son of Man has no home . . .’

  He pulled his son to him and put his head under his chin. ‘You will visit me in the holidays and I’ll come and see you. But it’s right you stay here. You’re safe here.’ He held him off and looked at him from under his brow, ‘Hey, you know, your grandfather thinks you’re very special. He thinks you’re some sort of genius.’

>   The boy shrugged again, but there was a flicker of interest in his eyes and he put his nose in the air. ‘Yes, I have saved him, you see.’ The grin was devilish. ‘I told him he owes me his soul now. But I don’t really want it.’

  ‘You are a very special boy. That’s the truth.’

  ‘No. I’m not well in the head. I’m nutty.’

  ‘That’s shit. That’s just shit, Max.’

  ‘I killed Gérard, you know.’

  ‘Stop . . .’

  ‘No one will ever see him again.’

  ‘OK . . .’ Richard sat back and blew out.

  ‘I don’t mean I shot him or stabbed him or anything. But I killed him. I was stronger than him in the end.’ The boy nodded slowly and his eyes were bright. Dimples appeared in his cheeks. He stood up. He climbed on to the picnic table and stood looking down on his father. He closed one eye and pointed at him. ‘I’ll save you now.’

  Chapter 60

  Richard went in the late afternoon to pick up some things from the studio. He stowed them in Valérie’s car, then told her to go home without him. He wanted to walk back, he said. In fact, he went into the church that had so dominated his life physically for the last three months.

  The church was like a cathedral, imposing and assuming, a cold goofy place; alien. It was dark; light came from a couple of candles, and the octagonal stained-glass window on high. The only sound was the cooing of the pigeons outside.

  Along the side, he could pick out the various shadowy sideshows of piety. It was a frightening place in a way. It was not frightening in the way of horror films, in the way of the skeletal hand touching a neck, it was frightening in that it paid homage to pain.

  There was a painting of the Garden of Eden. He considered it, he considered the two rounded bodies, with the serpent between them, their eyes large with apprehension. At issue in the Garden of Eden was not sex — it was love, he thought. The temptation of Eve was surely to see Adam as an object of devotion. As to whether they were shagging or not, God didn’t give a fig.

  He looked then at the single modest carved offering of the Son, gaunt-faced, stricken at his bad luck, the cross behind him like a hammer knocking the sense of the world into his petalled head. Evidently God’s little homunculi wanted to love someone who looked like them, so He sent Himself in their garb, two legs, two arms and the rest and the bastards killed him. He wasn’t enough like them. Richard smiled: We want dirty little failures capable of loving dirty little failures, that’s all.

  As he stepped down the hill, he tried to bring to mind all the disappointing things about Rachel to make himself feel better, to be better able to manage her absence, but by the time he got to the roundabout and waved down Simone’s car coming out of the supermarket car park, he was thinking about having a child with her.

  Chapter 61

  Jeff was renting a highly angular studio apartment. The last occupant, the realtor told him, had hanged himself there. It put some folk off.

  Jeff considered what he was going to tell Don about the last four years. He’d confine himself to generalizations, he decided. It would be best to be cut and dried, he might imply some bad business but he would not dwell on it; there was a whole vast American literary, cinematic and musical canon in such a vein.

  In the last months he’d noticed this black fleck in the vision of his right eye so that wherever he looked he saw a dark comma. He’d spent the first few days with it batting the air as if he had a mosquito familiar. He went to the optician’s and was told it was retinal debris; he’d always have it. To him, it represented Africa. In his summary of the last four years he omitted that part of the story, reasoning with himself that their patron might not have been pleased to have shared by proxy in their charitable endeavour.

  He appreciated being back in New York. ‘Wow. Europe’s way different to the States. They just can’t leave a person alone,’ he said to himself. ‘Who knew?’ But it was he who knew. He had no illusions about himself and what he was, not deep down; he knew he was a drifter, beyond the reach of any judgement, even his own, but still, it did not sit easy with him, the African experience nor his time in France. He preferred not to think about it.

  ‘Thank God I’m back.’ He loved New York, with its prim grid under a grandiose sky. There was nothing to get worked up about in private, everything was out on the street. A man with a rubber elephant trunk strapped to his face rode past the glass window.

  Don’s great bulk moved across the café floor; he coyly held the sides of the long navy-blue coat together as he came swishing between the tables. The two men shook hands and Jeff ordered two lattes up at the counter. He glanced back to take a peek at his patron, his friend, his one-time partner. Don was sitting back, looking right at him. Jeff faltered in response to the barista’s second request for five dollars sixty.

  He set down the coffees and took his place. It was a mistake, going to Europe, he said. Rachel got all riled up over the Twin Towers, like America was the problem, but now he knew he should have stayed put. This was his hometown.

  ‘You know what, Don? Being here I just feel like I’m me again.’ He checked Don’s face. ‘And, you know, the way those people carried on over there, it was totally unacceptable to me. You know, there came a point where I was just like, “Stop; enough of this bullshit.” I mean you wouldn’t believe it, the last day I was there, there was the neighbours’ kid on the roof. No, I’m serious. There was no way the kid was going to kill himself, it was just a stupid stunt. But, you know, it was like no one was happy unless they were fighting. Oh the countryside’s beautiful, sure, and I thought I really could live there, you know, but it was hard to get any peace. Isn’t it always the women who mess things up? I’m gonna miss my little girl of course, but Rachel’ll bring Maud out next summer, or I’ll go see her. I kind of think character’s formed anyway by the time a kid’s five. She’s real cute. Hey. By the way, your house looks great, man, you should go and see it. Really. We did a good job. The photos don’t do it justice. You have to kind of feel the space of it.’

  ‘No. I’m going to sell it.’ Don’s eyes looked into his coffee cup.

  ‘My heart was never in it after Tyler died. It kind of felt contaminated to me. I never thought any good would come of that place. But listen, you’re back now, buddy, and it ain’t all rosy here I have to tell you. I had to let go thirty people this year. Old-school types. But look, if you want to have a go doing some web design freelance, be my guest. It don’t pay much, the day rates are half what they used to be, maybe less.’

  ‘The advertising side of things, it’s just gone? Print? TV? No way? Wow. That’s a blow. I sort of thought I had a share in that business. As a partner.’

  ‘You did. You got your share paid to you in France, bud. Monthly and then some. You’re lucky you didn’t share in the debts.’

  ‘Wow. OK. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me any of this.’

  ‘Yeah. I wound it up a year or so after you left. I thought you might notice I wasn’t sending you any work. Liked the wine by the way. La Bête Noire. The black beast. You bet your ass. Funny.’ He nodded without a trace of humour. ‘Well, you’ve probably lived every motherfucker’s dream making your own wine. But you’re back now. Take the job, use it as a base to look for something else. The glory days are over though, they’re long gone.’

  ‘Sure. Sure.’

  ‘Hey, cheer up. You’re back in the city, like you said, that’s the thing.’

  ‘Man, I really screwed up leaving this place. Anyhow,’ he slapped the table with his two hands and replaced his dismayed expression with his old trusty grin, ‘let’s go out and get blasted tonight, should we? Like the old days? Fuck the rural idyll and pastures green and all that. And fuck women as well. Next time I’m going to get me some eighteen-year-old Hispanic or something.’

  He looked about him. The café was filled with the semi-artistic hippies of the area, vitamin-starved. A preppy-looking woman sat askance, made notes on a pad on her lap wi
th her eyes bouncing about the place. Once or twice he caught her eye. Across from her, closer to the mutual table, another woman was breastfeeding. They were all just sketches. Amused, benevolent, Jeff the cartoonist sat there surveying it all. He had solved the problem of pain long ago.

  Don stood up. He shrugged his coat on to himself, his hands emerging last from his sleeves. He dipped them into his long, long pockets. His upper lip snagged.

  He put a hand on Jeff ’s shoulder. ‘It’s all come full circle, it’s all how it should be.’ He turned back before he got to the door. ‘Can’t do that drink tonight though, buddy.’

  Chapter 62

  A handsome young man with tight glossy curls, Middle Eastern, tight blue T-shirt and jeans leans into the fourteenth-century fountain; his arms back, he drinks.

  Old grudges unfurl in the sunshine. The waitress admits her son will have to take the school year again. The restaurant owner shrugs over the graffiti that won’t wash off. The mayor strides round, grinning. Those English who have crossed the street to avoid each other no longer do so, but fall back on the unfamiliar greeting, ‘Hullo.’

  The siren sounds twelve and the florist lifts the hanging basket from its hook and takes it inside. The shopkeepers next door, a dapper couple in baggy fine linens in natural hues, lift hangers off the racks of linen trousers and shirts and carry them inside. The postcard racks are wheeled into the maison de la Presse, the lights go off inside and cigarettes are extinguished, then the sign is turned on itself. Fermé.

  An old couple hasten down the steep cobbled alley, holding on to each other. The greengrocer considers rebellion; quiffed, he stands with an arm leaning on a rack of aubergines, tomatoes and peppers, and faces down the town at 12.30.

  Grinning tourists with baskets pick their way towards the pizza café, settle in, and sit like Peeping Toms getting a look at other orders, taming their saliva with swallowing, until it’s their turn to smile the smile which had been already forming in the queue for security at Gatwick.

 

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