The Calligrapher

by Edward Docx

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘La bella donna?’

  ‘I can see her from where I sit. She comes into my garden – more or less naked.’

  ‘Oh … then you must change where you work. Move into a different room.’

  I sighed. ‘That means carrying everything out of my studio, Carla, my board and my inks and my quills and –’

  ‘The more beautiful a woman is, the more trouble that she will be, Jasper. That’s how it is. This is life. God prefers that beauty is problems.’

  8. Love’s Diet

  To what a cumbersome unwieldiness

  And burdenous corpulence my love had grown,

  But that I did, to make it less,

  And keep it in proportion,

  Give it a diet, made it feed upon

  That which love worst endures, discretion.

  Back at my board all hope of fluency was gone. But I was toughing it out. For the time being I had a new regime. I cherished grey skies but – come the first sign of the sun – I changed into my Venus surveillance mode. After every single word, I would get up and kneel upon my stool, lean out of the window and check the garden surreptitiously. Then, at the end of a line, I would allow myself a much more thorough reconnaissance: either I would go next door into the sitting room in order to change the angles and scan quadrant by quadrant (while leaning out on to the ledge, ostensibly to clip back my voracious mint plant, plead with the basil or tend to the permanently disadvantaged tarragon); or I would draw the blinds in the studio, stand upon the stool (the better to allow myself the necessary height) and peer through carefully contrived chinks in order to perform the same function or perhaps (even better) catch a glimpse of her coming outside and therefore establish in which of the opposite flats she was living.

  To give you some idea of how this arrangement worked, the execution of lines two and three from ‘Love’s Diet’, which followed hard upon the heels of ‘Air and Angels’, went something like this: ‘And’ (check) ‘burdenous’ (check) ‘corpulence’ (check) ‘my love’ (check – OK, so sometimes I let certain inseparable words through security together) ‘had’ (check) ‘grown’ (quills down, into the sitting room, lean out on to the ledge and check check check). Back into the studio. ‘But’ (check) ‘that’ (check) ‘I’ (check) ‘did,’ (longer check as befits a comma). And so on.

  Actually, it wasn’t as trying as it might appear. For one thing, I began to live the rhythms of the verse’s punctuation – the semi-quaver’s rest of a comma, the quaver’s semi-colon, the crotchety full stop – and for another, ever desperate to get to the end of the next line, I found to my surprise that I wrote a little faster. Which was not an unwelcome development.

  Incidentally, you have to hand it to ‘Love’s Diet’. For a poem inspired by a bad pun, it is extraordinarily impressive. Just look at those phrases: ‘cumbersome unwieldiness’ and ‘burdenous corpulence’ – the words themselves sagging and ungainly on the line. (What other poet would dare to have such off-putting and heavyweight bouncers on the doors of a love poem?) And yet see how Donne controls and restrains them even as he allows them to welter: he begins line one in perfect iambic pentameter, lets line two bust out an extra syllable and then yanks the metrical belt tight again (‘make it less’) the better to keep the verse itself in proportion. And all this rhythm control carefully managed to bring that last and most important word to us at its optimum weight, ‘discretion’.

  Discretion: that which love worst endures.

  There was no sign of her on that Friday and the weather was still overcast when William came round early that Saturday as requested. As an agent of espionage, he excelled himself. We had a brief ‘debrief brunch’ back at Danilo’s, where he filled me in on the ‘key learnings’ garnered from his investigations. (Around this time William was spending a lot of time with many clever and very talented people from the exhilarating cut and thrust of the business world and his vocabulary was so much the subtler and more elegant for it.)

  It transpired that the hog-breathed butt-child of an estate agent – opposite and just a few doors up from me on Bristol Gardens (the notorious ringleader of the dangerous ‘we have lots of great bargains in the area, Lucy,’ terror network) – had indeed handled the recent sales of two properties with direct access to the communal garden. As well as the one situated across from me that he had tried to push in Lucy’s direction – Blomfield Road, number sixty one – there was another, up at the top end, on Clifton Villas.

  William had found it relatively straightforward to elicit the information we needed by pretending that he himself was looking for a garden-access flat in my quadrangle, but of course he felt it impolitic to further enquire about the looks – sexy or otherwise – of the purchasers. However thus apprised, it was a short walk round to said addresses and an easy buzz on the buzzers of the respective Flat fives with ‘a package for Flat two but there’s no one answering, can you do the door so that I can put it inside?’

  Clifton Villas was a close call. The occupants of the basement – a young family – came out of their flat just as William came through the main front door. But Blomfield Road was more illuminating. Nobody was around. And the post was still all over the floor. The occupant of the basement was known to various speculative credit card and utility companies as Ms. M.I. Belmont, Miss Madeleine Belmont, plain Miss Belmont and, to one particularly zealous champion of the door-to-door ‘executive rewards’ club, as Miss M. Belmonté.

  After ‘brunch’, I tried to talk Will into staking out the garden with me but he refused, saying that I was in need of help (which was no help at all) and that he had to leave for Goodwood to test drive a new old Maserati.

  Looking back, I realize now that it must have been around this time that he and Nathalie started entertaining the beast with two backs. Certainly, I noticed a definite change: Will was becoming ever so slightly dutiful – a tell-tale sign that there has been more than one congress. (Try as they might, men cannot in their heart of hearts quite shake off the idea that sex is a massive favour, a singular gift from women, which it is forever their obligation somehow to repay. I daresay there’s some half-arsed anthropological reason for all this, but after a couple of promising rethinks in the sixties and seventies, the chicks, I notice, seem to be tacitly promoting the whole duty regime again – and with renewed enthusiasm.)

  I returned to HQ alone. Mentally, I flicked on the bare electric bulbs, shut the door, rolled out the maps and considered my dispositions.

  Madeleine Belmont.

  I knew her name and where she lived. But that was all. I knew nothing about her circumstances.

  There were three options: either she was married, or she had a boyfriend, or she was single.

  What about a husband? Well, it was a possibility, I had to admit, but I hadn’t seen a ring during the ghastly bench incident, and Will’s mail research militated against it. Unlikely.

  Single? Obviously, the chances of that were so anorexic that I just could not permit myself even to consider them. As any young man will tell you, all good-looking girls have boyfriends or are married (to idiots) and to assume anything else would be something akin to betting against gravity. Indeed, so joyous, rare and unlikely an outcome was her being single that I actually preferred to proceed as though it were entirely impossible – thereby secretly allowing myself the minute chance of a blissful surprise in the event that things turned out that way.

  No – all things considered, the only intelligent manner in which to advance my campaign was to assume a boyfriend scenario – at least until I saw or heard clear evidence of something else. Beyond that, the crucial question was: how close were they? I hadn’t seen him – but that didn’t necessarily mean that they didn’t live together. He might, after all, simply be away. Or he might have been indoors the whole time, purposefully grappling with recalcitrant bathroom units. Or perhaps they maintained separate homes, taking it in turns to stay over and sooner or later I would run into him on Formosa Street, newspape
r under arm, milk in hand, heading back for a late morning of coffee and croissants over the blandishments of the Review section …

  In any case, whatever the exact nature of her circumstances, an operational model premised on a boyfriend was the one I was most used to dealing with and no cause for concern. Quite the reverse: though invariably repulsive in person, I have always found the concept of a serving boyfriend rather reassuring. This is because of the Great Boyfriend Paradox, which goes something like this: boyfriends are to be welcomed because they make everything less, not more complicated, since their presence allows the professional to bow out of the action at any time, leaving the subject no worse off than before – probably happier; boyfriends are also to be welcomed because, by virtue of their incumbency, they are duty-bound (that word again) to enact and take care of all the most tedious and quotidian aspects of the relationship thereby setting the arriviste off to best advantage; and finally, boyfriends are to be welcomed because they are the single most obvious indicator that the subject does not yet want a husband and is therefore – in some slight way – amenable.

  There is another possibility of course: that the woman does not view her adult life in terms of marriage – we have, after all, moved on from the world so brilliantly satirized by the great Jane Austen. Against this can (and should) be said that even today there are very few women (or men) under forty who actually think like that. Below the waterline they are all of them harbouring the intention to put to sea in that beautiful pea-green boat; and further, that even if a given woman is flat out, no-shit, adamantly single, then, assuming she’s not a lesbian, the likelihood is that she will still want to meet new and interesting men, if only because (again, like men) most women can only take so much of their own sex.

  I took a deep breath and tapped my imaginary baton across imaginary contours. There were a few more logistical necessities to be taken care of. One: if I was going to give this woman the undivided attention I felt she deserved, then I had to close off and secure all other fronts – once the engagement began, there could be no distractions. And two: I needed to wrest back control of absolutely everything in the world, starting with my mind and including the weather. As to the first: well, Lucy was gone; and neither Cécile nor Annette would contact me unless I contacted her first – easily not done; which left only … Selina.

  You are quite right: I haven’t mentioned Selina before. But before everyone starts rolling their eyes, and getting all shirty and well-if-that’s-your-attitude, there is (actually) a very good reason for my keeping quiet. Because – apart from her being married and the whole deal between us being about discretion – I only ever saw Selina when she called me (actually). And usually for fewer than three hours around lunchtime. Besides which, she hadn’t telephoned since before my birthday, so there was no need to bring her up until now. Be fair.

  I have to say that I didn’t really want to go through with it though. Unilateral endings are always tough for a guy, even if the woman in question has a husband and two kids. Especially when she already has a husband and two kids. Getting started – sure – for that there’s nobody better than your average man, but when it comes to a one-sided decision to clear the decks once and for all, then you really need to be strong like a woman. You must be unequivocal in your own mind that you want to sever relations completely – no ifs, no buts, no seeing-how-it-goes. You need to be prepared to deny every possible future from every possible angle: ‘No, I mean it; I don’t want to carry on any more; It’s not right; It can’t work; I’ve thought about it and it can never work; There are no reasons, it’s how I feel; I don’t think we should see each other for a few years; Actually, I don’t think we should see each other ever again …’ Plus you also have to be sure within yourself that when the amorous ghosts of nostalgia come calling (on lonely autumn amber-hued evenings) you will not succumb to their solicitation. In other words, you need to be not only hard and cruel as frozen nails but (and you have to love this twisted chick-trick) hard and cruel to be soft and kind in the long run, hard and cruel because you have looked deeper and further into the future and one day your now-tearful partner will be grateful for your selflessness. Only in this way – by adopting a woman’s steely beaked, iron-nerved, brass-balled attitude can you be absolutely sure of killing the relationship thing dead.

  What you cannot do is enter into the conversation secretly thinking that maybe there is a way (after all) that the two of you could carry on sleeping together from time to time on an ad hoc, carnal-necessity basis. What you cannot do is call back and be nice a few days later, with a view to calling back three days after that and saying: ‘How about we get together just this once for old times’ sake?’ Such approaches – though beloved of men the world over – are entirely useless when it comes to shutting things down. Ending a relationship is just like giving up smoking: if you’re quitting, you’re quitting; the books are all bullshit and cutting down doesn’t work.

  Solemnly mindful of all this, I emerged at Sloane Square and set off beneath skies of sodden sugar for my rendezvous with some sadness in my heart.

  Selina works in advertising and therefore has no taste whatsoever. (Except in her choice of lovers of course …) And her chosen spot for our lunchtime appointments was always the same: Felix G’s, a well-established restaurant on the King’s Road, famous for both the architectural barbarity of its façade and the uncompromising vulgarity of its many scrotal clientele within. (Behind a front of polished steel and tinted glass, their faces stretched taut by the surgeon’s knife, coarsening female refugees from bad and bygone decades sip luncheon champagne and talk about their alimony payments while permatanned men scour the rules of conversation to find new ways to brag.) This time, however, it was I who had suggested the venue. And I have to acknowledge that as we waited in the mirrored portals of reception, my many reflections and I were filled with an almost rueful affection for Felix and his oleaginous staff.

  Eventually, the maître d’ found it within his bounty to divulge the news that Selina had already arrived and that she had changed our table and was now sitting upstairs in the far corner. I made my way up.

  She was wearing sunglasses pushed up on to her head. Beside her, in a sort of ultra-modern high chair, was a runtish child with frazzled ginger hair that looked as though it were singed nightly by some strange breed of aliens with plans of their own. He grinned at me and then put his finger in his ear. I judged his age to be somewhere between one and two. I sat down.

  ‘Who is this?’ I asked.

  Ginger picked up an olive on a stick and held it up for me, dangling it loosely between his thumb and finger.

  ‘Patrick.’ Selina prised the sharpened stick from his clutch and ate the olive herself.

  ‘Very handsome,’ I said.

  ‘I’m on a four-day week so he comes everywhere with me on Mondays.’ She shrugged, as if to say, I am sorry but you did break the rules: you called me, which isn’t allowed, and I am a mother, you know. ‘Do you want a drink, JJ?’

  ‘What are you on?’

  ‘Mineral water. With lemon. I have to drive later.’

  ‘I’ll have a Bloody Mary then.’

  The waiter came towards us like a tanker spill reaching the beach. Ginger took the opportunity to grab a fist full of olives and chuck them on the floor. Selina asked for my drink and another juice for her objectionable charge.

  She restrained Ginger. ‘So, why did you call me?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Was it OK?’

  ‘Yes, it’s fine on my mobile. Just please don’t do it too often.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘You look well.’

  ‘You too.’

  We talked about nothing for a while. In truth, Selina looked tired. Her hair was pretending otherwise – all highlights and cut like some ideal distillation of the latest Hollywood thirty-something trend – but there were faint lines around her eyes. And yet I could not help but suspect that in a way Selina quite liked the hassled sexiness of her ap
pearance: pressured, hemmed-in, mother, boss, colleague, wife, board director, daughter. Deep down, she knew that weary-but-flirtatious, young-mother-of-two, come-and-get-me-if-you-dare was her strongest suit. No doubt she worried a little about being thirty-six and the extra weight that her children had left behind (which she didn’t need to lose because in fact she looked all the better for it) but also deep down she knew that she had exactly the life she had dreamed of. Deep down she had probably anticipated a lover ever since she was old enough to imagine a husband.

  I had to cut this out. Loose thoughts the native hue of resolution dull. I’d be in a bloody hotel if I wasn’t careful – Patrick or not. I made a decision. ‘Listen Selina, I don’t want to have lunch.’

  She knotted her brow. ‘You don’t?’

  ‘No, I came to see you because I wanted to say that –’ I looked at Ginger. How much do one-year-olds understand? ‘That we have to stop. Our thing.’

  She made a scornful expression. The drinks arrived. We waited awkwardly while the waiter waited too. Selina addressed him with her professional woman’s voice. ‘Nothing just yet. Can you give us ten minutes?’

  I took a sip of my Bloody Mary. Disappointment. Can nobody in the world make anything properly any more?

  ‘I thought you liked seeing me …’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘Very much.’

  ‘So I don’t understand.’ She lifted the child from his high chair.

  ‘I don’t know how long it has been, Selina, but –’

  ‘Three years,’ she cut in. ‘On and off.’

  I removed the dismal celery from my glass. ‘And I’ve always looked forward to seeing you. Honestly. Really.’