Now that we had giant beds to ourselves, and roll-top baths, it was easier to have long, languid sex and deep, cosy conversations. She mostly did the talking when it came to personal issues. I learned to nod my head in a very interested way. (It wasn’t that I didn’t like to hear her voice or her views, but my god, those conversations could go on.) I also became adept at sidestepping most of her questions. I would usually end all replies with an affirmation of my feelings for her: this would distract her and move the conversation on. I then took the topic on to academic, learned things. I felt quite turned on when I lectured to her about science, finance, history. She lay there naked in foamy water, screwing up her forehead in ponder-pose, and it all felt like an X-rated Educating Rita. Fuck me, it was sexy. And I envied her, really – there was still so much she didn’t know.
By the time we were stood at Victoria Falls, we had fallen in love and were categorically submerged. She said it there. ‘I love you,’ she shouted, over the roaring of water. Her eyes blinked, expectantly. I was searching myself for cynicism, for obstacles – but I felt strangely serene and wide open, like my body was the prairie or the Serengeti plains.
‘I love you too,’ I shouted.
‘What?’ she hollered.
‘I love you too.’
Her face broke into pieces: a lopsided lip, a fierce blink, a darting eyebrow. Individually, it looked odd and horrific. Together, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
‘Thank God,’ she laughed. ‘I’m so happy you said that.’
We huddled our bodies together: squelching anorak fabric and waterproof trousers. She pointed, yelping: an elephant tight-roping across the rocky precipice. He made it along, the trunk lifting up to a rainbow, and I watched the light dancing in her eyes. It was a gift from fate.
Well, the world just seemed to fall away there. The luscious, green land had been slashed down the middle. You could see the spray hanging in the air. It felt safe to cry. No-one could know. Our faces were already moist.
There I was, with the waterfall in my eyes and this woman in my arms. Ruminating on ‘love’ and what it could mean. All I knew was this: when she said it, it just felt natural and effortless to say it right back. ‘I love you.’ I tried mouthing it to the wind and heard it wailing back to me.
Time moved on, and so did we. My God: the things we saw in Tanzania. Peering up at 6,000 metres of Mount Kilimanjaro, jutting whiteness into picture-postcard blue. In front of us, giraffes, wandering free with bandying legs. An ever-changing terrain – a bit of life here, a bit of life there; then the ground seaweed-green and endlessly desolate.
I once read the human body is mostly just space. You see, the matter in an atom is just a tiny fraction of the whole. If we let out our space, we would sink down to near nothing, just a lump of limp balloon skin.
That frightened me at the time. But now this expanse made me heady with love. I felt like I had all this capacity to absorb her, to stuff myself full of her.
We descended into the Ngorongoro crater, one of the largest calderas in the world. We saw zebras, buffaloes, lions – and so many flamingos that the lake was dyed pink. We sat on the lodge balcony. This green and brown patchwork was just spread out before us. We sat in our robes and we drank ourselves silly; giggling about the big old world and all the creatures inside it. We watched these animals hunt and seek shelter and struggle to survive, through binoculars or phones or the lens of a camera.
The lodge had an internet café, which meant Annabelle could carry on posting her blogs to the world. I didn’t know what she wrote, and I didn’t really care much, as long as it kept her happy. But she would often drag me to these places (usually involving an hour-long search in a small and grimy town or village). Then soon she would be tapping away, her forehead furrowed, her lips involuntarily smiling. ‘There,’ she would say. ‘I’m so glad I did that. It’s good to keep the blogs regular or your audience loses interest.’ I was going to ask her who this audience was – and how she had found one – but by then I’d lost heart.
In Tanzania, in the drunken splendour of surveying such ancient survival, she started to talk to me about this blog.
‘It’s called “A picture is worth a thousand words,”’ she said. She would upload a photo or drawing she’d done in her travels, then write 1,000 words about it: her impressions of the place, or how it made her feel.
‘So that’s why you’ve been drawing so much?’
‘I’ve always drawn,’ she shrugged.
‘And people are reading this? This blog?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I get over a hundred hits a day.’
‘Right,’ I said, slowly, thinking of the average circulation of the top newspapers and magazines. ‘Well, that’s great, sweetie.’
‘I wish you would take a look at it sometime.’ She stretched herself out and ruffled my hair.
‘You know I don’t read blogs. I don’t even go online much.’
‘I know. You’re my little throwback, aren’t you?’ She often called me her ‘little throwback’. In fact, she said it so much that it was now legitimately a pet name. I didn’t even know at that point why she called me that.
‘Why do you even call me that?’
‘Because.’ She giggled.
‘Because what?’ I tried to sound light, but I knew there was a brittle annoyance to my tone.
‘Well,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘It’s not meant to be insulting, Marcus. It’s just a sweet little thing. I call you it because you are so sweet and old-fashioned and Luddite, and basically like nothing else in this century.’
‘I’m not a Luddite. I used to work in finance, I was surrounded by screens. I have a fucking iPhone, for God’s sake.’
‘You’re still out of time. And please don’t get cross.’
‘Well, thanks. I guess.’
‘Cheer up!’ She thwacked me. ‘Look at this! Look at everything around us. Do you know how wonderful this is? Huh? How lucky we are?’ She still said this over and over, like a mantra – but now she said it with less conviction. ‘We can be anything!’ She threw her arms up to the sky. Her speech was slurred. ‘We’re human beings, not human doings.’ She must have read this in a book, she looked so pleased when she said it. ‘We can live like this, like nomads. We can travel the world!’
I was obviously more sober, as I said: ‘With what money, sweetheart?’
‘We don’t need much money. You don’t need much money, Marcus.’ Now she sounded irritable. ‘You don’t need much money just to travel the world, earning money where you can. I could work in a bar, you could work in a bar. Or I could waitress. You could get a temporary job somewhere, working on some business or something. I don’t know! But we could do it, couldn’t we? We could do anything we wanted. Be anything we wanted to be.’
‘You’re not even saying it in the present tense.’
‘Marcus,’ she yelped, her irritation brimming over. ‘Are you not getting what I am saying?’
‘I’m getting it,’ I said – and I was. The world was a giant oyster and we were the pearls inside it.
She leant into my arm. I kissed the top of her head. ‘And when we’ve finished travelling… If we decide to settle somewhere… You can do your drawing or blogging or whatever–’
‘Oh yes!’ she interrupted. ‘I’m already thinking I could get a book deal or something. Maybe. I mean, it’s possible, isn’t it? I got this brilliant comment the other day–’
‘And I could do something in policy. Some really great think tank. Somewhere that wants to make a difference. You know, fuck it, I could even go into politics. Shake the system up a bit, make some real waves. I mean, why don’t we think big? You know, I’ve learned some lessons in Malawi, and from this whole trip, and I’m not about to throw that away. I want to start my life over. I want to quit finance. I want a fresh start.’
‘You deserve it, baby.’ She looked up and kissed my nose.
‘No, I was thinking, I really have to change m
y life. I liked my job, I mean, I loved it at the time, but it really took it out of me. You know it did, I’ve told you, I’ve told you about what went on back there, the things I did, the things I said to people. I’ve got to take the stress out of things, try to do something more, try to get some meaning from something different. You know, I’ve been thinking about meditation. Maybe we could go on one of those silent retreats? I mean, have you seen the people who do yoga? It takes years off your face.’
‘Oh I know, and those people always live so long. We’ll juice every day and we’ll learn to do headstands. It’ll be really good for us, we can take some time out.’
‘And you know what else I’ve heard about? There’s this new thing called “mindlessness”. Apparently it’s massive in New York at the minute.’
‘Yes, I read about that. Isn’t the idea that you have to schedule in “unmindful” leisure time – right? So, you watch a dumb action film or throw a ball at a wall, count the ridges on your radiator – whatever. It’s all about zoning out and letting your mind be free and easy. It makes so much sense. Because when you need your brain to kick in, it’s had time to recharge. I read they even did a survey of some of America’s top CEOs and nearly all of them had been practising it. Isn’t it something to do with how your brain rests when you switch off? Isn’t that right?’
‘Yes, I think it’s called the default network. It switches on when you’re daydreaming. It’s like a filing system.’
‘So, daydreaming is actually good for you. I mean – wow. And this is science!’
‘Incredible, isn’t it? Well, I want to do all of that with you, sweetheart. Let’s go forth and be mindless.’ I pulled her closer, and we stopped talking then, just listened to the clicks and taps and bellows of the African birds around us. Maybe that is what attracted me here: all the paths still untrodden.
By the time we were battling out of Kenya, the tensions had surfaced. The days were mashing up into shapeless weeks. We had thick rings of brown beneath our eyes. All the journeys by car, bus, light aircraft, etc. The hours and hours of just sitting around or being squeezed next to livestock.
And the timekeeping of this godforsaken continent! It no longer seemed quaint. And the smiles on faces no longer looked genuine. There were just too many missed connections. Too many escorts who almost killed us in cars with broken windows and rusted metal. Like I needed another crash in my life. Like I needed that fear.
And, you know what, this trip hasn’t even been cheap! I’ve kept it from Annabelle, but thousands and thousands of pounds have slipped right away. We are clearly stamped with the word ‘tourist’. I really do think that hoteliers and servicemen simply hike up their prices and add up lucky stars.
But, anyway: I can’t even remember much of this part, to be honest. There was a sulky air-balloon flight over some national park. We pointed out wildlife but that, like everything, lost lustre as it turned too familiar. We also spent a week on a treasure-island-style beach, where we lost ourselves in trashy books and forewent conversation. I wish I could remember more – but at least Annabelle was keeping track.
I’d always known she kept a diary, but I didn’t realise it went any further than that. I found out more when we had a terrible falling out at the beach. She got out this sketchpad and dragged the pencil across the paper, her lips all bitten and her eyes all narrowed.
‘You look very serious when you draw,’ I said. It was the first thing I’d said to her in about a day.
‘I take it very seriously,’ she replied, not looking up from the paper.
‘More seriously than you take me,’ I said. She rolled her eyes – she did that a lot. That was one of the trip’s discoveries. ‘I don’t remember you doing it at the base,’ I continued. ‘In Malawi.’
‘That’s what I was doing in my diary. I pretended to be writing, but usually I’d draw. It explains all my thoughts much better, I think. I really, really love it. That’s why I take it seriously.’ Finally, she looked up – met my eyes. ‘I did tell you about the blog. And I’m getting these good comments, now. It’s what I want to do for a living.’ Pause. ‘When I grow up.’
I snorted. ‘When you’re grown up?’
‘Yes’, she said; hurt. She obviously thought it would sound cute and coquettish. ‘I told you already, but you clearly weren’t listening. I’m thinking of turning it into a career. I just really, really love it.’
‘I’ve got a secret for you, Annabelle. There is no “grown up.”’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It never happens.’
‘Well, it’s what I want to do for a career,’ she huffed. ‘I’ve loved drawing ever since I was tiny.’
As if that confirms it is ingrained in your soul! All that does is highlight the one positive experience you had as a kid. Maybe a teacher praised your crayon piece of shit. Maybe it was the only thing your parents ever hung on the wall. And now she will forever pursue this one ideal, this shadowy dream: unaware she is just a stodge of a sponge with the holes stuffed in. Oh, Annabelle. There is never any ‘grown up’. There is only make-do, make-believe, make shit up…
The hostilities turned to proper arguments, then: head-swinging, arm-jabbing, fist-thumping arguments. It was sort of exhilarating: like the kind I used to have with Nancy. Annabelle had been so precious in the beginning. It was sort of wonderful and sexy to see her shell grow so mottled and spotted and worn down into fragments.
By Ethiopia, we were argued out. We dragged ourselves around the resting place of Haile Selassie in submissive silence. We pretended to be deep in awe at the cathedral around us – but, to be blunt, it was nothing much to look at. If you’ve been to Rome – as I have, many times – I reckon you’d leave unimpressed. If you’ve seen a large church, you’ve seen them all. Don’t you think? Stained glass windows: check. Pews: check. Long aisle: check. I would rather be in Vatican City, looking up at the Basilica. You could get a nice bowl of carbonara afterwards.
Still, we hovered around those massive tombs of Selassie and his wife. We felt compelled to carry on the silence – now a feigned sign of respect. All I could think of was Bob Marley: on his knees to worship the King of Kings. A joint jutting out of his lips, his hair clotted with dreads.
It was then a two-day bus journey to the toy town of Lalibela, where ancient churches had been carved from solid rock. It looked like the earth had exploded and structures now grew organically out of matter, like mushrooms or cankers. Without the weariness of time, seeing sweat poured into decades of toil, it all looked so natural and effortless. Slicing through rock must be as easy as sliding a knife through butter.
It was here, however, that we had the biggest fight of them all. It had been brewing all this time – ever since Tanzania. And there was the ennui factor, too: town after town, tourist sight after tourist sight. I was starting to get bored with it all. I was having visions of London: its grey skies and skyscrapers and wrought-iron bridges.
I think she must have picked up on that, as she suddenly boiled over and accused me of being a philistine, a cultural amoeba (yes, I remember the words, as they seemed to have physical spikes). She questioned our relationship, said it had moved too fast, said I was incapable of love, maybe I was hollow at the centre – just like everyone at the Malawi camp had said to her. Nobody had liked me – nobody at all.
I felt ludicrous. Diminished. Like I was only left with my core and it was now as meagre as a grain of dirt. Hearing her holler these things – accusations I just would not take and could not stand. There was a very odd feeling in my body, and it took me a few hours to find the words in my head. It was this: a feeling that you are unknowable. That no-one will ever truly know you or get you or understand you accurately. It is very sad and thick, like grief.
All I could see that night were barriers; barriers everywhere I looked. Barriers between me, her, Nancy, Mum, Dad, Jackson and everyone. All these walls and divisions. I started to gasp and gulp a little bit, but luckily I did not wake her. Maybe i
t was a panic attack. Maybe my morbid thoughts had gone too far. At the point of the attack, I was – after all – feeling trapped in some concentration world, all my cells being gassed by the very air that I breathed.
At Addis Ababa airport, we sat and twiddled our thumbs, flicked through magazines, barely looked each other in the eyes. We were waiting for a plane that would not come for seven hours. (We didn’t know it at the time.)
The next thing I knew, we were in some bazaar in Egypt, and I bought her a ring on an impulse, while a guy was hassling her about a disgusting carpet. I looked at that ring several times over the next few days, while we were bickering or giving each other the silent treatment or talking about insignificant details, like where to go for kofta.
There was no bit of my brain that could really rationalise this action. We’d spent a long time together and it wasn’t working out. It had a been a spur of the moment, whirlwind thing, which had blown up into the sky majestically like a dandelion head, now covering everything in weeds. We weren’t compatible. The lust was going. The love smacked of dependency. But I knew I couldn’t be alone again. I didn’t want to be alone. And if I’m going down, there isn’t a sweeter person to drag down with me than Annabelle.
So that brings us back to Pizza Hut by the pyramids: me getting down on one knee, and the sand on the floor, and that smoky smell of roasted dough. It always turns me on now.
We tacked on to a guide, and Annabelle was holding my hand and staring up dreamily and I felt the glow of her love surge. I’m not sure what she was even thinking. I’ve no doubt she was transmuting me into something I wasn’t, but I was more than happy to let her do that. Like I said, I’ve got no problem with lying if it gets you results. I don’t tell the truth, but I tell my truth.
I remember very little from the tour except thinking that the pyramids – like so much I had seen – were a bit of an anti-climax. Sure, I was as trigger happy as anyone, and I’m pretty chuffed to have those photos now. But just because something has antiquity doesn’t mean we should automatically revere it. Maybe I need to renew my poetic license – but there always seems to be too much paperwork.
Another Justified Sinner Page 22