Gwyneth Jones - Life(2005)

by Anonymous Author

  * * *

  Another day began. Spence took Jake to school, then retired to his room. The Shere Khan industry must go on, the breadwinner must win bread. Before they left for Manchester, Anna had invented some post-employment therapy for herself: she would sort a career's accumulation of papers, in the loft. She went up there to think.

  You get fired, then you realize your husband is having an affair. It often happens to people that way; it's not really a coincidence. Before you lost your job, there was a period of stress and anxiety, a situation that naturally affected your marriage, and you didn't have time to pay attention. Everything here is normal, perfectly normal. She sat on one of the old tin trunks that had traveled the world with them and stared into the gloom.

  Why is it so hard for me to understand ordinary things?

  Anna used to get goosebumps when she ran across descriptions of Asperger's Syndrome, the mild form of autism, the super-male trainspotter personality—especially reports from victims about how it felt, because they sounded so like herself. But I'm not a man. I'm meticulous, obsessed, a little bit strange, but ain't I a woman?

  You can't be a woman. If you were, you would understand.

  Maybe she'd known that Spence and Meret were having an affair. From the way he was behaving, she guessed Spence thought she knew. The day she'd had that awful interview with Nirmal and walked out of his office, fired, she'd gone round to the Rectory. Meret and Spence had been off somewhere together. And then Spence had. . .he'd been so cold, so unsympathetic, about her terrible disaster. He'd been cold and unsympathetic ever since, and now she could see why. To Spence, what had happened that fatal day had been. . .my wife came home unexpectedly and caught me out. Maybe Anna had known all along and cynically ignored the affair, because without Meret there'd be no Shere Khan, and she'd have had to to go back to being a prudent breadwinner. It's as if I made a deal, in my sleep, traded my career for my marriage. I bet that's how Spence sees it. . . This is the part of the Faustian bargain they don't tell you about. Oh, and by the way, while you are wrestling with God, your personal life will be a disaster, your home will be crawling with miserable secrets, carpets heaving with the dirt swept under them. But the Faustian bargain is supposed to be for men, anyway. Someone was walking around downstairs. It wasn't Spence. She would have heard him leaving his room, which was right below her. How strange if she had been living in a haunted house all these years and never known it. . .

  Piles of shit in the corners.

  She had tried so hard, she had made such sacrifices. Ah, Lily Rose. Little Jake, your deep eyes gazing at me over the curve of my breast, those nights when you were first born: but I did the right thing, I gave him to Spence, can't ask for equality and then refuse to give up your own privileges. She had been so sure that she and Spence could win the game together, with their new rules. But here she was in the filthy pit. The shit was where she lived, not tucked away in some children's literature conference hotel (as she had hoped): it was inside her life, her personal space. Anna's parents had brought her up to bolt the toilet door, had discouraged dirty talk about farts and poo. Anna and Spence had taught Jake differently. They were poor and aspirational too, but these things are relative. For them the killing squalor of real poverty was generations in the past; they didn't have the same ingrained fears. Nothing wrong with shit. The stuff is harmless, attractive even. From time to time bothered by constipation, a little struggling and heaving, sore anus after passing a knobbly great stool at last, but she was not afraid. In her childish fantasies, shitting had been her model for sex, not because sex was dirty but because Anna was ignorant, didn't know which bit of her anatomy down there was giving her pleasure. At Easter in third year, she and Ramone had spent a weekend with Martin Judge, another arts student, someone Ramone hated. She couldn't remember why, one of Ramone's strange freakish fits. . . He'd rented a cottage in the Lincolnshire Wolds. They had a picnic by a strong-flowing ditch of a river, in a field margin on a warm April afternoon. They ate sandwiches made of hardboiled egg and sliced onion that had been steeped in vinegar. Anna went apart, behind a bush, made a scrape in the ground and laid such a big fine turd, plump and brown and pointed at both ends like a rugby ball. Nice shit, good shit. Goodbye shit, I'm leaving now. If you can't walk away from it, that's not so good. Shit is anything in your life that you don't want and can't use, but there it is anyway. Her mouth was full of shit, she had finally found something Anna Anaconda could not swallow, she was choking.

  At the end of the day Spence fetched Jake. "We have a stalker," he reported, in the stern, superior tone he'd been using ever since the day she lost her job. "Maroon jeep, parked outside number thirty-nine. The guy got out of the car and followed us half way to the school this morning; the jeep's still there now. But he didn't try anything, and the rest of them have gone. D'you think he's your police bodyguard?"

  "I doubt if I have a police bodyguard."

  He shrugged and turned away.

  Anna went to hide in the kitchen, because her eyes were full of tears. She heard Jake say, "Why are you being mean to mummy?"

  "I'm not being mean, kid. Mommy is very sad because she lost her job."

  "I think you're making her sadder. Please don't get in an argument. I hate it when you two get in an argument. If we're in trouble, we should be sticking together."

  Spence came into the kitchen and gave Anna a fake hug, which she returned in the same spirit. She thought: soon we'll start taking him to the ice-rink and stuffing him with sweets. He'll behave badly and I'll whimper Oh, Jake, don't be horrid! and let him get away with murder. The unhappiness of Meret's marriage, written over her children's lives as plain as print, now to be scribbled all over Anna's child. Spence cooked. They ate, Anna in disgrace. After the meal, she kissed Jake goodnight and went back to the loft.

  It was late when she came down again. Spence was in the living room, sitting cross-legged on the rug, putting together a joint. Smoldering resin perfumed the air. The mellow light of their standard lamps fell over the beautiful wide spaces of this first floor room, with the balcony (skinny little balcony) from which you could glimpse the sea, where Anna grew pelargoniums and tomatoes and the little strawberry tree that was doing so well. They'd bought this house, when they came back to England and everything about the country had seemed drab, poky, and mean, because it had a balcony with a glimpse of the sea. . . But the folded futon couch was gone, it had been retired to Spence's study. A new sofa, big and soft and expensive, stood against the back wall. Anna and Spence always bought top of the range, when they emerged from Holy Poverty to make a consumer purchase: a compromise, as Spence would joke, between his taste and hers.

  Spence works long hours; Anna works long hours. They come to the lovely room together and commiserate. Terrible day, nothing went right, totally exhausted. They work too hard, to distract themselves from the state their world is in, the private and the public spheres, but then at last the distraction fails.

  "Hi," he said, noncommittally. "Want some?"

  "No thanks." She knelt beside him. "God bless the drug," said Spence.

  On the wall behind the new sofa there hung a Shere Khan original, several panels of gangling, raffish pirates doing piratical things and speaking Spence's words in cartoon speech-bubbles. She wished he had not said God bless the drug, because it made her think of all the other private things he would say to Meret, things that she would have to share with the other woman. She would have to get used to that. "We're gonna need a new supplier," said Spence. "Frank's really getting ready to move out of town. Sure you won't?"

  "I'm sure."

  He stubbed the joint out carefully. They would make a hefty one last for days. Anna put the pack of condoms, which she'd found exactly where she'd left them months ago, on the rug between them. "Tell me about you and Meret."

  He drew himself up. "I didn't use them."

  "I can see that you didn't use this pack. It would have been some trick, to fold them up again and stick it all b
ack together—"

  "I think. . .I think I wanted you to find them."

  "Yeah," said Anna, suddenly rancorous. "I think so too. You wanted me to find them, you wanted me to find out what you were up to, without your having the trouble of telling me. Who the fuck do you think I am. Your mother?"

  "Anna—"

  "Actually, I think that's exactly who you think I am."

  He closed his eyes, set his jaw, and turned his face away. "Will you let me explain?"

  "Okay, explain. You admit there's something going on?"

  He drew a sharp breath through his nostrils. "I find her attractive, and she's made it clear she feels the same way about me. We're close, we're friends. It's something that's built up gradually between us."

  "So when we got back from Manchester and I was in hell and the street was full of paparazzi, naturally you dialed her up for a midnight chat—"

  "It was a first. If you want to know, we were finally, for the first time, talking about meeting somewhere to have sex—"

  "What, last night!" wailed Anna, not believing this unlikely story for a moment. "Kick me when I'm down, why don't you—"

  "It wasn't last night; it was the night before. Anna you are not down. You make it sound like a prizefight. You lost your job; it's not the end of the world. This is not fair. Why the fuck are you getting at me? What about you and the Amoldovar kid?"

  "I've never fucked Miguel. I'd never do a colleague, except possibly, though it has never happened, if I was stupid drunk. I have more sense. I know we're supposed to be free. If you'd had a fling somewhere else, that didn't ever come home, I wouldn't be too upset. Meret's not only your collaborator, not only someone you're close to, you've made her a friend of the family. She's here all the time, in my face, in my life. You don't do something like that to me and not even think it is wrong!"

  "Oh, for God's sake. You're making too much. It isn't serious—"

  "Not for you. For you it's fine. Now you have two wives. The boffin one for a trophy, and the not-too-clever sweet feminine younger one, who looks up to you and thinks you are such a wonderful Daddy—"

  She saw that she'd stung him, and was glad.

  "I've never been your intellectual equal, Anna. I know that."

  "Yes you are. You are my equal. What you're not is my superior. That's what you can't stand, that's why you backed out, why you decided not to compete, why you gave up. The moment, the moment it became clear that I had a reasonable chance, an even chance of real success in my career, you decided you weren't going to play. If a woman can do it, achievement isn't worth anything, achievement is for sissies. I knew you resented me, and playing the househusband was your way of taking the shine off what I had done—"

  "I don't know where this is coming from. Where the hell is this coming from? You want to play dirty, okay lets play dirty. You've never been here, Anna. You haven't shared my life, Meret has. We've been down among the mums and kids, while you've been up in the empyrean, exercising your genius. You've been a puritan patriarch in this house, keeping me and Jake in line with your perfectionist rules. Yes, I've been going behind your back to have some fun. What d'you expect? All you care about is your fucking work—"

  Then all the pent up anger, the enjoyment of a fight, breaking out after such weeks of strain, suddenly drained from her, because she realized it was true. It was true, worse than her worst imagining. He was not her Spence anymore. She burst into violent sobs.

  "Oh God, oh no. I thought it wouldn't happen if I didn't have another baby—"

  "What! I don't know what you're talking about. What are you talking about?"

  "Not my Spence, you're not my Spence—"

  "Don't yell at me. If you cry like that, you're going to waken Jake."

  He stormed out, she followed him. They had another round in the kitchen, she commanding: don't you dare run away from me. . . This went on for a while. In the end, as Anna ran through the house, howling like a banshee, she succeeded in frightening him. He left her crouched in a corner of their bedroom, keening and jabbering please god, please god, don't let it, don't let it be real. . . This Anna who never cried, or if she had to cry, managed it so quietly. He came back with a pill bottle and a glass of water.

  "Anna, c'mon. Take this."

  "What is it?"

  "Temazepam."

  "No!" Anna had a horror of leaning on prescription drugs. "What do you mean, temazepam, why do you have sleeping pills?"

  "They're Mom's, from last time she was over here. Look, you haven't slept for weeks, you're in a state, you need to switch off. We'll talk in the morning." She looked at him as if she was staring from the nethermost pits of hell. "Just swallow it," he said, in his stern, superior tone. He helped her to bed and pulled up the quilt.

  * * *

  Spence went back to the living room. He took a cigarette from the joint-makings box and lit it. Long time since he'd smoked a whole one of these. The box must be returned to its hiding place. Jake would be horrified if he knew that his parents used tobacco. They should give up, should smoke only grass, but secretly they were hooked on the little nicotine hit. Maybe Spence would die of lung cancer: yeah, soon. That would be a result.

  He thought of Meret: of something profoundly intractable and devouring in the heart of his little Japanese wood-cut, something that Charles Craft could deal with maybe, but not Spence. Of the resistance, almost revulsion, he had felt for all female desire until Anna had made desire innocent. He thought of the rough, soft and rapid sighs that would be drawn from her in extremis; she was never a noisy lover. He would have been out of his fucking mind to try to climb into bed with her, though often they'd had blazing fights that had ended in sex, fights fueled by pent-up lust. But it was what he'd wanted, when he saw her so vulnerable. He still had a tingling half-erection, right now. Explain that to Anna Anaconda.

  Yet there was still Meret. Explain that.

  You reach the stage when every thought in your head sounds like a line from Chekov (we long since passed through the Solzhenitsyn phase). When there is nothing ahead but pointless toil and waiting for the grave, what is the sense in virtue or restraint or even self-preservation? He went on smoking: thinking of Jake, on that mountain in Slovakia last winter, crying from tiredness, refusing to be carried, he wanted to do it himself. And Spence's heart had twisted inside him, because in that exhausted little face he knew that he was seeing the last, the very last of his baby son, gone forever, never to be seen again. Thinking of poor old Father Edmund at St Mary Magdalene's, where the family attended the occasional Mass. All he hears about is pedophile priests and the evil deeds of the Vatican; but what is the guy to do, he just keeps on trucking, though he knows it's all over. Soon this creed to which Spence was so irrationally attached would pass from the world in dishonor, just another soiled old religion. . .

  I have fallen from grace.

  He could have done better by Meret. He could have been a friend to her, she needed a friend, poor directionless kid. He hadn't been able to resist that reverent touch on his sleeve. The way she looked up, expecting everything from him. . . He thought of the beach at Pasir Pancang, Boolean Algebra, Anna's shining eyes. It seemed to him that he could hear, far off, the murmur of that tide, and see the ocean glimmering, calm and wide under a starless sky. But meaning changes, truth decays, and a sound knowledge of the Latin of the twenty-first century wasn't going to help him now.

  * * *

  When Anna woke, the gulls on the rooftops were screaming, and rain was splattering against the bedroom windows. She was still dressed, her eyes were sticky, and her throat was sore. It was like some morning from the last weeks of the lab work, the terrible scraping out of final reserves of energy, eyelids that burned whenever she tried to close her eyes—all that effort; was it really over? Spence was there, looking at her.

  "Where did you sleep?"

  "On the couch next door." He was subdued. "Jake's in school. He doesn't know anything, he managed to sleep through the firefight. Her
e's your tea. Drink it; take a shower. Then I want you to come on a drive with me." He grimaced. "Yeah, I know. You hate cars because they kill the countryside, it hurts you to make an unnecessary trip. But I'm still an American, just about. I think better when I'm driving."

  As they set out, he touched her hand. "What say? We put the hamster in the back, pick up Jake, and head for the ferry?"

  She looked at him with incomprehension.

  They drove up onto the New Forest freeway, where the ponies were standing heads-down into the rain; and somewhere back there, between the big road and the University of the Forest campus, Spence's sun terrace lay under the icy wind: but whatever thinking Spence did, it didn't come out in words. At length they came back down to the conurbation frontage, back to Bournemouth promenade. He found a parking space near to where Anna and Daz had once shared a room. They walked onto the pier. There was a thin crowd of visitors, old people, kids bunking off school. Young gulls, shrieking, skimmed the leaden waves.

  "What do you want to do?" she asked.

  "What do you mean? About what?"

  "Please don't take Jake away from me."

  "For God's sake!" He sighed hard. "Anna, you're over-reacting, outrageously. Can't you see that?"

  "I know." She sniffed, and wiped her nose with her fingers. "I can't help it. It's because the way you feel for Meret can't be. . .can't be trivial. You wouldn't start fooling around with someone I have to meet every day, just on a whim. This isn't a fling, it's something long term. I may as well start facing that, face the whole problem. My new life."

  "You always take things straight to extremes. You are still the woman I love, you and Jake are my family, and I don't want anything to change, ever."