Metroland

by Julian Barnes

  ‘Where, where?’ I did the panicky, over-the-shoulder look. I could see nothing more realistic than two kids in Start-Rite shoes, satchels on their shoulders, gazing at the long road ahead. Certainly no wife, no picture of a wife. What did Marion think she was up to? She could lay off, you know, if she wanted to. ‘Give me time, give me time.’

  ‘Why?’ (The funny thing was, her manner wasn’t hectoring at all; it was quite amiable – but just fucking persistent.)

  ‘I’m only twenty-one. I mean, I’m still …’

  ‘Still what?’

  ‘Well, still having relationships.’

  ‘In the plural?’

  ‘Well, not simultaneously, of course not.’

  ‘Why not?’ (Why could I never predict the way the conversation was going?)

  ‘Well, I suppose I may have discarded Christian sexual ethics, but I do believe in being faithful to one person at a time.’

  ‘That’s a funny statement. Anyway, isn’t marriage a relationship?’

  ‘Of course. So what?’

  ‘Well, you said that you were going to have relationships and then you were going to get married.’

  ‘I didn’t say I was going to get married.’

  ‘Technically I suppose you didn’t, no.’ (Actually, I bloody didn’t, either)

  ‘But?’

  She had put her head on one side and was pushing the crumbs of her lunch around the plate. Then she looked up. Why can you always tell when people are going to say nasty things to you?

  ‘But you’re not odd enough not to.’

  ‘Anyway, it depends on …’

  ‘The right girl at the right time at the right price?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. I daresay it happens sometimes, and I daresay that’s what it looks like, or what you make it look like in retrospect. It’s usually other things, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘…?’

  ‘Opportunity, meal ticket, desire for children …’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘… fear of ageing, possessiveness. I don’t know, I think it often comes from a reluctance to admit that you’ve never in your life loved hard enough to end up married. A sort of misplaced idealism, really, a determination to prove that you’re capable of the ultimate experience.’

  ‘You know, you’re much more sceptical than I thought I was.’

  It was extraordinary. To hear a girl saying things like this, coming out with men’s tough talk, the sort of remarks in which you only half believed yourself, but which were called for on various occasions. (Annick never spoke like this, and I thought she was uniquely honest.) But Marion talked without any bravado; she behaved as if she were making simple, incontestable observations. She was smiling at me again.

  ‘I don’t think I’m being cynical, if that’s what you mean by saying sceptical.’

  ‘But you’ve been reading La Rochefoucauld. “Il y a certains gens …” ’

  ‘I know it. No, I haven’t; I’ve been observing.’ (She looked at me closely; she was nice to be looked at by) ‘Before I came out here, a friend of mine got married. She was my age, he was about thirty. A week before the wedding, we were meant to be going to the cinema, the three of us, but she had a cold or something, so I went with him. We ended up talking about marriage. He said how he was looking forward to it and how he supposed it would be all right in the end, and you were bound to have your ups and downs – the usual stuff they all come out with; and then he said, “To be honest, it’s obviously not the greatest love in the world”.’

  ‘How did you react?’

  ‘I was shocked at first, partly because he was marrying my friend, but mainly because I found it hard to believe anyone could go into marriage without first persuading himself that no one had ever before loved as strongly as he was doing.’

  ‘Did you tell your friend?’

  ‘No. Because after I’d thought about it, I realised I wasn’t shocked at all, that his remark was rather admirable. And that my friend probably had some similar reservation, but wasn’t letting on. Anyway, they were both reasonable people and neither was feeble-minded or weak-willed, so I thought I didn’t have the right to interfere.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘But it struck me later that, as they looked like any other beatific couple on their wedding day, other beatific couples probably had similar reservations.’

  ‘The logic isn’t faultless, you know.’

  ‘No, but the observation is.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it may be.’

  I didn’t really have any grounds for dissent; I didn’t even have any evidence of my own to offer.

  There was a silence, as if there had been implications in the conversation which we hadn’t admitted at the time, but which were now percolating through. I looked at her, and noticed the colour of her eyes for the first time: they were dark slate-grey, the colour of French roofs after rain. She wasn’t smiling.

  ‘Don’t start reading things into this conversation,’ she suddenly said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, if you’re starting to feel threatened, you might just decide I fancy you.’

  ‘…’

  ‘What’s she like, just out of interest, the girl you’re having a relationship with, as you put it?’

  ‘What’s odd about putting it that way? Annick.’

  ‘Annick.’

  What could I say? I felt that any description I gave would be a sort of betrayal; yet not to say anything would make it seem as if I were ashamed of her; even hesitating made it look as if I was doing a quiet mental cover-up.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me – it’s none of my business after all.’

  ‘No, no, I want to – or at any rate, I don’t mind telling you. She’s … very direct, and … um, emotional, and …’ (Christ, what else?) ‘… and I don’t lie to her.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ Marion had got up, and was reaching into her purse for her share of the lunch bill. ‘Don’t bother, I won’t embarrass you.’

  I had, I realised, been blushing energetically. When asked to describe Annick, I could somehow only see her in the privacy of orgasm, with me plugged into her. Also I suddenly found it hard translating my time with her into unfamiliar English.

  ‘I’m not embarrassed, I just …’

  She dropped a few francs on the table and left. I attacked my remaining slab of bread – a large, damp, unsalted, open-pored slice. Then I tried to skim off the last quarter-inch of coffee, but tangled with the grounds. Why was I so upset? Did I fancy Marion? Why had I felt I didn’t want her to leave? That’d be something – fancying two people at once. And what about them fancying you? Though did she fancy me? Nice tits, I murmured nudgingly to myself; though, to tell the truth, I didn’t really know whether they were nice or nasty. Yes I did, of course I did. They were nice because they existed. They were nice because they lived in a bra with hooks at the back and secret bits of elastic and straps you could occasionally glimpse. They were nice because they would probably turn out, if you were good, to have nipples at the end.

  But I was only swaggering. What I’d noticed most about Marion was how direct, how uncomplicated she was. She seemed to exude psychic health; she made me feel slightly dishonest even when I was telling the truth. But then, Annick did the same. Was this a coincidence, or was it how all girls made you feel? And how to find out?

  I paid the bill and flâned (though it’s rather hard to do it by yourself) towards the Place de la République. Dumas père built his théâtre historique here, and put on his own plays. The public queued for two days to get into his first opening night; he had huge successes, yet in ten years the project made him bankrupt. There didn’t seem to be times like that any more; times, or ambitions. Dumas would ride his horse into a stable, seize an overhead beam, grasp the horse tightly with his legs, and lift it off the ground. He also claimed to have 365 illegitimate children scattered round the world: one for every day of the yea
r. The energy made you wince. But then, I reflected, as I headed down the Métro, the scale of the world has changed since those days. For a start, you didn’t get marks for bastards any more.

  5 • Je t’aime bien

  Being asked to describe my relationship with Annick made me uneasy for another reason: I hadn’t told her about Marion. She’d heard about my trois amis anglais – a usefully genderless expression – but not about my tête-à-tête lunches. Was there anything to tell? On the other hand, if there was nothing to tell, why did I feel shifty? Was it love, or guilt, or mere sexual gratitude? And why didn’t I know: ‘feelings’ were things you felt, so why couldn’t you identify them?

  It was hard to know how to tell Annick about Marion. A simple statement of fact would look ridiculous; the truth would look like a lie. It would have to be slipped in casually after all. I practised saying mon amie anglaise to myself, and une amie anglaise, and cette amie anglaise. Mentioning the nationality would take the sting out of it.

  A good opportunity seemed to arise over breakfast one morning (bowls of coffee and yesterday’s bread heated up in the oven). We were discussing what to do that evening, and Annick had mentioned the new film by Melville.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said casually, ‘mon amie anglaise has seen it. She’ (cunning confirmation of gender) ‘thought it was quite good.’ (Marion hadn’t actually seen the film. Shit – a lie to tell the truth; where did this leave you?)

  ‘OK, shall we go then?’

  I thought I’d better make things quite clear.

  ‘Yes, mon amie anglaise really thought it was quite good.’

  ‘Fine, that’s settled, then.’

  It didn’t seem to be settled to me. We didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

  ‘Mon amie anglaise …’

  ‘You want to tell me something?’

  ‘…?’

  ‘Is this le tact anglais?’ Annick lit her second cigarette of the breakfast. Christ, her mouth was turning down. She took two quick puffs. I hadn’t seen this – almost fierceness – on her face before. This was new.

  ‘What? No. What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you want to tell me something?’

  ‘Um … this … this film is … apparently very good.’

  ‘Yes. How do you know?’

  ‘Oh, one of my friends told me.’ Genderless again; also hopeless. Instead of being casual and throwaway, it was coming out furtive and nervous.

  ‘I thought you mentioned an English girl friend.’

  ‘Uh, nnn, yes, I did. Why, don’t you have any French boy friends?’ (Altogether too hostile.)

  ‘Yes, but I don’t usually refer to one of them three times running unless I want to say something particular about him.’

  ‘Well, I suppose all I wanted to say about … about cette amie anglaise is that … she’s a friend.’

  ‘You mean you’re sleeping with her.’ Annick stubbed out her cigarette and glared at me.

  ‘NO. Of course not. I sleep with you.’

  ‘So you do. I had noticed it from time to time. But not twenty-four hours a day.’

  ‘I’m not … perfidious.’ (I couldn’t think of the word for ‘unfaithful’; for some reason, only adultère came into my head, which had quite the wrong implications.)

  ‘Albion is always perfidious. We learn that at school.’

  ‘And our books tell us the French are often jealous without reason.’

  ‘But you might be giving me reason.’

  ‘Of course not. Je …’

  ‘Yes?’

  I was going to say je t’aime, but I couldn’t bring myself to. After all, I hadn’t really thought about it enough; and I wasn’t going to be argued into saying what I thought should be offered calmly and soberly. Instead, I weakened it,

  ‘Je t’aime bien, tu sais.’

  ‘Of course you do! Of course. How rational, how measured, how English. You say it as if you’d known me for twenty years, not a few weeks. Why this deadly accuracy of emotion? Why this way of telling me you’ve had enough? Why not just write me a letter, that would be best of all. Write me a letter, as formal as you can make it, and have it signed by your secretary.’

  She paused. I didn’t know what to say. I was being accused of being honest: how ironic. I’d never known a girl rage at me like this before. Unexpected emotions left me puzzled. But at the same time the outburst gave me sudden jabs of pride: the pride of participation, and the pride of instigation. No matter that Annick’s anger and distress were caused by my own incompetent misinformation: they’re mine now. They’re part of me, of my experience.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re not sincere.’

  ‘I don’t mean I’m sorry because I’m at fault, I mean I’m sorry that you’ve misunderstood the situation. I’m sorry that just because you’ve tried to teach me to say precisely what I feel and mean, I’m unable to satisfy your need for extravagant emotional gestures which have no veritable substance in real feelings.’ It wasn’t wholly honest, I suppose, but near enough to make no difference.

  ‘I thought I was teaching you to be sincere, not to be cruel.’

  That’s a very French line, I thought (reverting under attack to Englishness and detachment). Then, suddenly, I noticed – my God, another first – she was crying.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ I said, and the softness with which it came out quite took me by surprise. She went on crying. I couldn’t help looking at her face and thinking, despite myself, what a lot less attractive it looked now; her mouth unkissable, her hair stuck together in places on her cheek by tears, and the contortions suddenly giving her pouches under her eyes and crow’s-feet by her eyes. I couldn’t think what to do. I got up, went round to her side of the table (pushing the butter out of range of her raking hair as I moved), and half-knelt, rather awkwardly, beside her. I couldn’t stand and put my arm round her – that would seem patronising; I couldn’t kneel completely – that would seem grovelling; so I ended up half-squatting with my arm just high enough to go round her shoulder.

  ‘Why are you crying?’ I asked, rather ineptly.

  Annick didn’t answer. Her shoulders kept heaving while she cried: was she just sobbing violently, or was she trying to throw my arm off her back? How could you tell? It was time to be sensitive, I thought. I did this by keeping a baffled silence for a bit. However, this became rather boring.

  ‘Are you crying because I mentioned that girl?’

  No reply.

  ‘Are you crying because you don’t think I love you enough?’

  No reply. I was stumped.

  ‘Are you crying because you love me?’

  It was always a possibility, I thought.

  Annick walked out at that point. She slid from under my arm, got up, picked her bag off the table, ignored her copy of L’Express, and was away before I could get up from my awkward position. Why couldn’t I see her face as she left? I wondered. Why did she keep it down so that her hair fell over it? Had she finished with L’Express? Why had she left? And had she left, or had she really just gone off to work? How did I find that out? I could hardly ring her office and ask her to identify the category of her departure. I went to the fruit machine and fed in an old franc or two. You lose some, you lose some. I thought I felt like Humphrey Bogart.

  So, for a change, I did some work myself; not in the Bib Nat, where there was an outside chance of running into Annick, but at the Musée du Théâtre. After a couple of hours shuffling through huge folders of largely unnamed actresses of the 1820s, I felt morally better and more sexually stable; maybe prints of long-dead women were what I got on with most easily.

  After a quick croque, the sight of other, real people began to get me down again. I dropped in at the Rex-Alhambra where a Gary Cooper festival was showing. A couple of hours later, revived by the unreal, I felt able to go back to the flat. After all, she might be back there, ready to tell me how much she’d misunderstood me; then we could go to bed (the books said it was even better after a
quarrel). On the other hand, she might be lying in wait with a gun or a knife (French cutlery seemed invented for the crime passionnel). There might be a note. Who knows, even a present?

  There wasn’t anything, of course. The flat was exactly as I’d left it. I kept looking for signs that Annick had secretly come back in the course of the day and moved something, tidied something, left a reminder of herself. But she hadn’t. A half-smoked cigarette still lay on her breakfast plate, bent and wrinkled like a knuckle. There must be something she would have to come back for; but there wasn’t – her overnight things had never been more than what would fit in her handbag. Still, she had taken her key, so it might mean she was coming back.

  That evening I went to see the Melville we’d almost agreed to go and see. I hung around in the foyer until I’d missed the first ten minutes, then went in impatiently. But the impatience failed to cancel out the disappointment; I didn’t enjoy the film.

  The next morning in the post I got my key back, sellotaped to a piece of cardboard. I stuck my hand into every corner of the envelope, but there was nothing else.

  I sat there for some time wondering about Annick. How much I loved her; whether I loved her. When I was a child, my white-haired, full-bosomed, duck-tending grandmother used to hold her arms out to us kids and say, ‘How much do you love Granny?’ The three of us, on cue, would stretch our arms out as far as they would go, cock our fingertips in slightly, and answer, ‘This much.’

  But measurement on a subtler scale than this – is it possible? Isn’t it still a matter of some grand gesture, some apocalyptic assurance? And in any case, don’t you need some scale of comparison to make measurements; how can you possibly judge on a first outing? I could have told Annick that I loved her more than my mother, just as I could have said that of all my girl friends she was the best in bed; but such praise would be valueless.

  Well, what about the simple question, again, do I love her?

  Depends what you mean by love. When do you cross the dividing line? When does je t’aime bien become je t’aime? The easy answer is, you know when you’re in love, because there’s no way you can doubt it, any more than you can doubt when your house is on fire. That’s the trouble, though: try to describe the phenomenon and you get either a tautology or a metaphor. Does anyone feel any more that they are walking on air? Or do they merely feel as they think they would feel if they were walking on air? Or do they merely think they ought to feel as if they are walking on air?