Al's Well

by Dark, Gregory

  “I’m alright, Mike.”

  “You’re not alright. You’re crying.”

  “Crying’s alright. It’s okay, Mike.”

  “Not, you told me, at the ballet. And not, Trove, after you’ve just made love.”

  “It was beautiful, making love to you. As beautiful as it’s always been. You make my body sing, Mike – make it sing and make it zing.”

  “I know tears of happiness, honey. These aren’t tears of happiness.”

  “Sprinkled with happiness, though. And joy, Mike. Yeah, there’s both those things in ‘them there’ tears. Feeling zingy from the sex, all kind of mushy with joy at this view – look at the view, hon. Have you ever seen anything more lovely? The Louvre there? The Seine slithering its way before it? Wouldn’t you kill to have a view like this? And we don’t need to kill. You know why? Because we already have it. And each other. And we just made love. It’s beautiful. Life’s beautiful, Mike. Magnificent. How could those tears, Mike, not have sprinkles in them of joy? Of rapture, even? But, no, you’re right: That’s not the full story. Not even, maybe, the major part of the story. There is sadness there. The biggest part of the tears, Mike – you’re right – is one of sadness. It’s one, Mike, of regret. Me? Miss je-ne-regrette-rien, Edith-Piaf-take-two me – I’m crying from regret.

  “Mike, and I say this with regret, I’m leaving Al for you.”

  +++

  … And a charge went through me, Drew, as she said that. An electronic charge. Packed. Not a buzz, even. Not in any sense a buzz. A jolt rather of elation followed by a thunderclap of despair.

  Despair and disappointment. When the gods want to punish us, they answer our prayers. When the gods, Drew, want to punish us …

  +++

  “He looked startled, stunned. That’s okay. Shock is shock. Looking at them, I don’t suppose there’d be a lot of difference in the expressions of a lottery winner or the mother of a plane crash victim.

  “I pulled him to me, like a mother pulls her baby to her – as an act of comfort and reassurance, and I’ll-always-be-there-for-you clinch. ‘You’re safe, baby’ kind of thing. Except that I soon figured – even me – it was me seeking the comfort and reassurance.

  “See, me, I’m pretty convinced that a major reason for marriage bust-ups is marriage itself. People have somehow ‘gotten’ each other. They stop trying. Well, same deal here. Sameish. I mean, I’d, as it were, given myself to him. He’d netted me – like a fish – and, like a fish, I was sort of flapping around over the marble slab and I didn’t know, you know, whether I’d have the same appeal to him. The fun of the chase, after all, is the chase. It’s not the capture.

  “I managed to get him aroused again. Not through passion, not through stratagem or technique, but just by being very languid, very laid back and kind of unhurriedly sensuous. And we made a kind of lazy love, a meander-through-bluebells kind of love. Almost a chaste love.

  “Almost holy. Completely peaceful.

  “Which was just before the most unholy row broke out, and peace was shattered into a zillion pieces.”

  +++

  … You’ve heard, I’m sure, of Donne’s famous line: ‘… ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.’ Well sometimes that bell is not just a metaphor. There are some bells, I mean, which seem to be imbued with doom. They do toll. They even knell. And such a ring, Drew, was that of the telephone that evening. That bitterly cold February evening in Paris.

  It’s weird. It had rung at other times that day. And all the ring had been on those other occasions was an indication that someone wanted to talk to one of us. But that ring, that was something different. There was a resonance in that ring, an ominousness, a menace. …

  +++

  “I didn’t know anything about it then. I read about it first in the papers, as a matter of fact. That Al had been arrested. I thought at first it had been Mike he’d killed. Or Petrova.

  “I don’t want to come to the end of this story. I have a feeling that its end will also be ours. Can I see you again?”

  +++

  “Trove …”

  “I’ll be alright, Mike.”

  “Alright? You’re as white as a sheet.”

  “I’ll be alright.”

  “Sit down, for God’s sake.”

  “Sit? Are you crazy? I’ve got to go, Mike. Got to pack.”

  “Whoa there. Hold your horses a minute.”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s Al.”

  “Al?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s alright?”

  “He’s alive, Mike.”

  “What was it? Accident?”

  “Accident, sure. Fucking great big accident. Not in the way you might be thinking, though. He’s been arrested, Mike.”

  “Al?”

  “No, the Prince of frigging Wales.”

  “It’s got to be a mistake.”

  “You think? Know what he’s been arrested for?”

  “Al?”

  “For murder, Mike.”

  “Well, now I know you’re kidding.”

  “For fucking murder, hon.”

  “It’s a mistake, Trove. It’s a grotesque mistake. There’s absolutely no way Al could murder anyone. Do we know who is he supposed to have murdered?”

  “His girlfriend.”

  “Monique?”

  “He have a harem? You want to stand even more in the way, Mike? I’ve got a suitcase to pack, for Christ’s sake.”

  “No way. There is no way, Trove. Someone’s got their facts wrong. Or muddled anyway. It’s a Chinese whisper, just taken to the nth degree of absurdity – beyond the nth degree: a Chinese whisper painted by Dali.”

  “I have to go, Mike. And I have to pack.”

  “Phone someone. Check it’s true. You don’t want to get all the way back to Toulouse, find out it’s a hoax.”

  “It’s not a hoax.”

  “You need to know more details.”

  “What more details, for Christ’s sake? A woman who was hale-and-hearty yesterday today is dead. And my husband – he is still my husband, Mike – has been arrested for killing her. Just how much more detail does it require, Mike, for this to be serious?”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No.”

  “You can’t be alone, Trove.”

  “I have to be alone. I want to be alone.”

  “I’ll come with you to Toulouse. I won’t say a word in the train ... plane … whatever. I should be with you, Trove. If you go back without me, I’ll have lost you.”

  “I am leaving Al for you, Mike.”

  “Not if you go back alone.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Look at yourself, Trove. Look at the state you’re in.”

  “He’s been arrested, dear one, for murder. He hasn’t been given a ticket, Mike, for speeding.”

  “He needs you. You need to be needed, Trove.”

  “Don’t you need me?”

  “I didn’t commit murder.”

  “Al didn’t commit murder either, Mike. Jeez! You not heard about due process? A man’s innocent until blah-di-blah. He’s been arrested, Mike, for murder. That’s different. There’s a world of difference between those two things.”

  “I, however, am not in jail.”

  “I love you. Well, leastwise, I did till you stopped me packing. It’s a cute butt, hon, but move it, huh?”

  “I love you too, Trove. But I’m not sure that love is the issue here.”

  “Don’t get profound on me, sweetie. Not right now, huh?”

  “I’ll expect you to keep your options open.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means, when you get to Toulouse, things might get clearer. I’m saying, whatever commitment you made to me I’ll put on ice. I won’t hold you to it, Trove, is what I’m saying. If you get to Toulouse, feel that your rightful place is with Al …”

  “You won’t
hold me to it?”

  “Right.”

  “The commitment I made?”

  “Right.”

  “You know what a commitment is, right?”

  “Yes, Trove, I know what it is.”

  “Then how can you say that to me? You know how long it took for me to make that commitment? You know how much heart-searching, how much heart-ache that involved? You think, all that can just be dismissed with a click of the fingers? Whoops! Situation’s changed. I don’t any longer want to live with him. Like a train or something. This is Grand Central Station, all change. It’s more, Mike, commitment’s more like being on board an airplane. You go where the hell it’s going. You think you’re going to Kennedy. But, shit, you develop engine trouble, you get hijacked, you could be diverted to Shannon, end up on the runway at Entebbe. I told you, Mike, I’m leaving Al for you.

  “This … whatever it is … this incident, this scenario, this is a complication, sure, this is a gigantic complication, but it doesn’t affect the commitment. It impacts on the realisation, not on its reality.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s all you’ve got to say?”

  “What would you like me to say, Trove?”

  “That was a pretty long speech, honey. A pretty pretty speech too, not without eloquence. Don’t you think, I don’t know, a standing ovation or something might not be called for?”

  “Bravo.”

  “That, I presume, was British phlegm. Know the best thing to do with phlegm, Mike? I got to go pack. You want to do me a favour, hon? Find the quickest way to get me home?”

  +++

  ... I saw my parents though a child’s eyes. My perception of them was one formed in childhood. All I sought in my adult years was confirmation that my childhood perception had been correct. I never really examined that perception or questioned it. I probably ignored the evidence that would otherwise have contradicted it. That confirmation process manifested itself in so many ways. I thought (for instance) I was being so wise, so adult, so charitable when I eventually forgave them. A forgiveness which was incredibly fragile. The most insignificant of slights would witness the return, and with a vengeance, of all the carefully nurtured resentments.

  And they were nurtured, those resentments – visited often, watered and fertilized, taken out often for exercise. What it’s taken this experience to make me realize is that my forgiveness was misdirected. I didn’t need to forgive them. They’d done nothing which warranted forgiveness – no, correction: They’d done very little which warranted forgiveness. The person who did need such forgiveness was the idiot me, Worsdsworth’s ‘Idiot Child’, the infant me who so clearly misread the instruction book, who so lamentably misinterpreted the signals being sent him.

  And, of course, I must forgive him – the baby Al, the infant Al. How could I not? He’s far too young to be accountable for his actions, nor to understand the consequences of his mistakes. But, Jesus, did he screw up my life, the little bastard. Even that anger has changed direction – no, is changing direction. I’m involved in a process here. One which is a long way from being completed. But I’ve started, at any rate, being less angry with the baby and being more angry with the adult for having taken so long to realize (a) that it was the baby’s mistake; and (b) that it was a baby and therefore almost bound to make a mistake. ’Course the next stop will be to forgive the grown-up me. Because, without that, the baby will start suffering because the grown-up’s suffering ... It’s – sure, it is – it’s a process.

  I don’t think I’m alone in any of this. Not even exceptional. I suspect that the vast majority of humankind suffers from exactly the same syndrome – a version of the world perceived with the eyes of an infant. It’s a huge design fault, when you think about it. (Please tell God!) It might be, when you think about it, the seed that renders humankind’s eventual suicide inevitable. Unless, of course, we start to recognize that fault and address it.

  And I can’t see us doing that. We work hard – most of us ludicrously hard. But we work hard for the wrong reasons and towards the wrong ends. We, most of us, work hard so that a handful of ... well, ‘not-us’es ... can get ever richer. But we also work hard so that we lack the time to work on our relationships. Because working at our relationships, that too would require us to look at ourselves. And it seems to be the thing of all the rest which frightens us, which most cows and appals us.

  There was, I remember, this documentary on television. One of those intrepid types, you know the ones I mean, all rucksacks and granite chins and worthy eyes. He went to live for six weeks or so with a tribe in some African rain-forest. The rite of passage involved eating some kind of hallucinogenic plant which would return you to the misdemeanours of your past. Well, this guy had been spat at by cobras and growled at by crocodiles, he’d been attacked by killer-bees and ravaged by mosquitoes. All of which he’d taken in his intrepid stride. But the drug ‘trip’ frightened the crap out of him. Not because it was drugs, I don’t think , but because of where that ‘trip’ was going to take him. Back inside himself to areas he’d wanted to close the door on. It really really frightened him.

  The sloth which is a deadly sin is conveniently interpreted to mean sloth at your place of work. That kind of sloth, though, is unlikely to cause fatalities. (Well, except, let’s say, if you’re a member of the emergency services or an aircraft maintenance engineer.) What is far more deadly, and with far more lethal consequences (directly and indirectly), is the sloth of a lack of self-care. That’s not just eating enough roughage or doing enough exercise, that’s also about keeping yourself in emotional balance. It is not possible, I don’t think, to keep yourself in emotional balance without working on yourself. It would be like a juggler expecting the balls to throw themselves.

  Far from being discouraged, such sloth is actively encouraged. Second only to our fear of being forced to confront ourselves, our greatest fear, humankind’s, seems to be derision. There is more derision heaped on people working on themselves than, probably, on any other section of society, maybe barring politicians. Of course, the deriders are frightened themselves. It is a derision which wafts the stench of fear wherever it occurs. The last thing those deriders want to do is to visit areas inside themselves where doors are sealed. And derision always presumes of the derider that he has the moral high ground. So the act of derision endows the derider with a sort of narcissistic arrogance. And it is that arrogance which makes it such an effective tool. The derided seem to buy into that arrogance, seem to allow the derider the moral high ground.

  But it is also an inhibiting tool. It stops the derider from looking at himself.Worse, it enables him not to. He believes his own arrogance as well. Believes it and believes in it.

  I know you know all of this. I know you told me most of it. But knowledge does vary depending on context. I’m just trying to let you know the context in which I’m presently trying to apply and develop such knowledge. And I’m also not casting too many stones. I recognize that my own glasshouse has got far too many panes for me to be able safely to do that.

  I wanted comfort, you see. And the result of my wanting comfort – no, coveting it – was that I ended up in one of the world’s most uncomfortable places: prison.

  If I’d been prepared to work on myself, we would have talked. And if we’d talked you wouldn’t have had that thing with Mike – or, if you had, it would have been a fling and not a thing. And if you hadn’t have fallen for Mike, you wouldn’t have left. Which would have meant that I wouldn’t have started drinking. Sober, I may have had sex with Monique, I might even have had a fling of my own, but I’d never have brought her to the house. And if I hadn’t have brought her to the house ... well, I would never have killed her.

  She wouldn’t have been in the house, is what I’m saying, for me to kill.

  The verdict was actually the best possible I could have hoped for. I was glad to have been acquitted of murder. I didn’t want Monique’s parents, her friends, to think that there was ill-w
ill between us, that I concocted some kind of plan to kill her. But I also needed them to know that I knew a crime had been committed. A human being who should be alive isn’t. And isn’t because of me. If a crime has been committed, its perpetrator has to be punished. Monique’s kith and kin, they needed me to be punished. I think if I’d walked out of court today a free man, that would have been a heavy blow indeed. A devastating blow, in fact. Certainly to me. Probably too to them. ...

  Chapter 15

  “Christ, the flight! You know, I don’t even want to talk about the flight. It was quicker, was all, than taking the train. Quicker? It felt like I was flying backwards. And in time. It felt like forever. And it was.

  “I started feeling sick – not a bit off-colour, but violently ill – then giddy, almost light-headed. And then soporific, as if I were going to sleep for a week. And then out of my mind with rage. And then out of my mind with worry. And then determined I would never speak to Al for the rest of my life. And then sure I would rush into him and give him a blow-job through the bars. And then I’d feel sick again. And this cycle, sometimes, would be repeated several times per second, and at other times, every three Ice Ages or so.

  “It was first thing in the morning when I got to Toulouse. I went straight from the airport to your office. Were you even working here then?

  “Away, what? On vacation? Right. So, anyway, then it was just Philippe who was involved. It wasn’t till later that all you other guys got on board. Well, why am I telling you that? If anyone knew the state of play, I figured it would be his lawyer – our lawyer, for Christ’s sake. If anyone knew what the deal was, how big the deal was, what the next move might be … all that stuff. Most of all, where Al was now.

  “Not that I knew whether or not I wanted to see him. But I did want to know where he was.

  “I don’t know whether Philippe even knew at that stage, tell you the truth. He told me, at that stage, I wasn’t allowed to see him. After that, of course, when the authorities said I could see him, Al didn’t want me to. So much for rushing back!

  “Did I tell you he wrote me again before the trial? I told you about the first letter, the angry one. I tried to understand it. I said I understood it more than I did. I thought that was what was expected of me. I thought I owed Al at least that: that I would understand why he wrote me such a mean – and I do mean ‘mean’ – letter. Well, the other day I got this other one, asking whether he might carry on writing me? He said, if not, he’d understand. He said, if not, he sent me his love. I thought it was very sweet. Jesus H! Could anything sound more patronising than that? And that’s not what I meant. Absolutely not what I meant.