The Needle's Eye

by Margaret Drabble

  Thinking of these things, and trying hard to look as though he was catching the muffled monologue of the lady who was talking to him, he suddenly caught sight of Christopher Vassiliou. He was interested to note that his first illogical reaction was to think that he should go and introduce himself, which, in fact, he shortly did, for he also noticed that Vassiliou was talking to a man whom he knew quite well, an extremely aggressive and frequently disagreeable academic. So, handing the lady from the Ministry back to those from whom he had received her, he made his way across the room, and greeted his acquaintance. He was congratulating himself, as he did so, on having effected the introduction thus naturally, without any evident intention on his own part, but Meyer’s first words were, ‘Why, hello, Simon, I was talking about you only the other day.’

  ‘Who to?’ said Simon, already nervous, recalling to himself that he had been a fool to approach Meyer so casually: Meyer looked back at him, with his offensive black beaky knowingness, glinting with some private satisfaction, and said, ‘To Emily Offenbach. Simon, do you know Christopher Vassiliou? Christopher, this is Simon Camish.’

  And he took, as it were, a step back, smiling, attending the results of what he clearly knew to be a deliberate offence. Simon and Christopher Vassiliou looked at each other, nodded, mumbled a greeting, Simon acutely aware of the fact that he felt as though he looked shifty, whereas the other man looked, as well he might, cool, curious, sardonic. There is a chance, said Simon to himself, that he has no idea that I have any connection with him other than a casual connection with Emily, which Meyer might well suppose sufficient to get things off on an interestingly bad footing: but on the other hand Meyer himself clearly knew more, and was not likely to conceal it. In the moment before speech became necessary, Simon found himself looking at Christopher, at his wide, heavy, elegant head, his brown slightly greasy hair, his dark glasses, his pallid skin, and thinking, Yes, that’s it, he looks Greek, he looks like those wide-faced statues, insolent and blind and bland, an antique model after all, and a person, a person who will shortly speak. To forestall him, he spoke himself. I’d rather mix it myself than have it mixed for me, he thought, and what he said, to Christopher, was, ‘Oh yes, Emily Offenbach. I met her for the first time a week or two ago. Do you know her?’

  Christopher knocked some ash off the end of his cigarette. He opened his mouth, though not very significantly: he always spoke with his mouth half shut, as though to move the lips were an indiscretion, inviting betrayal or attack.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I know Emily.’

  And he waited, for the next round. Simon also waited, feeling he had done well so far. Meyer, not too pleased with this reticence, decided to give them another prod.

  ‘An interesting girl, Emily,’ he said, experimentally. ‘A very clever woman. Completely wastes it. Hasn’t done a thing with herself for years. Too late now, I’d say. I tried to get her a job once but she wouldn’t touch it. Though you never quite saw the point of her, did you, Christopher?’

  ‘Was there a point?’ said Christopher.

  Meyer laughed, enigmatically or meaninglessly; it was hard to tell which. Oh Jesus, thought Simon, and with a slight coldness on his skin he said, thinking that he might as well, ‘As a matter of fact, I met her at your wife’s.’

  Meyer continued to laugh, in a silent, eccentric way that really did not sound at all probable. Christopher looked at Simon, and sighed, on an exhalation of smoke, as though with relief, a relief which Simon felt himself to share.

  ‘Yes,’ said Christopher. ‘I thought you might have done. I thought I recognized the name. The children talk of you, sometimes.’

  ‘That’s kind of them,’ said Simon.

  And there was a slight silence, which was certainly not of hostility: recognizing, perhaps, exactly this feature of it, Meyer, with perceptible effort, said, ‘I met you two through Emily. If you remember. It was a long time ago.’

  But the other two men had lost interest in him: they had done it without him, they did not want to know, they were not listening.

  ‘I think I saw you once,’ said Christopher to Simon. ‘I’d got the kids in the car, and they shouted at you. They didn’t think you’d seen them. You live round here?’

  ‘Just round the corner,’ said Simon.

  ‘Yes, so do I,’ said Christopher.

  ‘I’m going to get myself another drink,’ said Meyer. They ignored his statement. He left. Simultaneously they turned away, together, away from the room, to look out of the window, as though excluding the rest of the room: Christopher put out his cigarette, took out a packet, offered one to Simon, lit it for him when he accepted.

  ‘It’s a small world,’ said Christopher, after some time, as they looked out of the window at the lawn and the daffodils.

  ‘It’s small because we make it so,’ said Simon.

  ‘Meyer, you know,’ said Christopher, ‘has been after Emily for years. God knows if he ever made it. He’s a real bastard, is Meyer.’

  ‘I’ve often thought so,’ said Simon.

  ‘Now look,’ said Christopher, quietly, heavily, confidentially, full of a lassitude that Simon had felt coming upon himself for some time, ‘now look. About those children.’

  And he paused.

  ‘They’re nice children. Exceptionally nice children,’ said Simon hopelessly and truly.

  ‘That’s what I’ve always thought,’ said Christopher. ‘Now look. I don’t know what you know and what you don’t know. You know it all, don’t you?’

  ‘Not all. I know some of it.’

  ‘Well, you should know. What do you think about it?’

  ‘About the case?’

  ‘About the case.’

  ‘I’d have thought,’ said Simon, ‘that you were wasting your time. And that’s the truth. You must know it. You’re a reasonable person, you must know it.’

  ‘Who told you I was a reasonable person?’ said Christopher, smiling. Simon smiled in response, recalling the same facts.

  ‘You might as well tell me what you think,’ said Christopher. ‘It can’t hurt anyone, can it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know why you’re doing it. That’s what I don’t understand at all, I don’t understand why you’re doing it –’ said Simon, even though, as he spoke, this became no longer the truth, for the answer, so obvious, so simple, struck him suddenly in the presence of this man with such force that he wondered how he could not have known it earlier.

  ‘It’s obvious why I’m doing it,’ said Christopher. ‘I’m doing it because I want them. I want them back. They’re mine, I’m their father, I want them. I don’t like living without them. I want them back.’

  While he said these words, he stared at the carpet.

  ‘Yes, but even so,’ said Simon, ‘it’s pointless to set out by a method that won’t achieve anything. You won’t achieve anything this way, you’ll only make it worse.’

  ‘What other way am I supposed to employ? There is no other way. The only thing left for me to do is to sit around and keep my mouth shut. You should try that as a way of life.’

  ‘I rather think I do, for different reasons,’ said Simon.

  ‘That’s your affair,’ said Christopher, but amicably, indeed with appreciation. ‘That’s your affair. But in my position, I’ve got to show something. I can’t just take it. What would they think of me, if I just took it? The children, I mean. What would they think of me?’

  ‘They can’t much like what’s going on now,’ said Simon.

  ‘Why should they like it? That’s not the point. It’s not their happiness I’m interested in.’

  ‘What are you interested in, then?’

  ‘I’m interested in them.’

  ‘I doubt if the law will think so. I doubt if the law will consider your – activities express the right kind of interest.’

  ‘That’s because the law’s got a bloody funny notion of human relations,’ said Christopher.

  ‘Some people might think it w
as you that had,’ said Simon.

  ‘But you don’t think so, do you? I can tell that you don’t think so.’

  ‘I don’t know what I think,’ said Simon, truthfully.

  ‘That’s because she’s got hold of you. She’s brainwashed you,’ he said, smiling pleasantly. ‘She can put up a pretty good case for herself, that woman. She learned a few things from me, before she left me.’

  ‘I thought you left her.’

  ‘Ha. You see what I mean.’

  ‘I’m not at all sure that I want to hear your side of the story.’

  ‘You may not want to,’ said Christopher, ‘but you’re going to have to. Because I’m going to tell it to you. Come on, let’s get out of here. We’ll go round to my place.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Simon.

  ‘Why not?’ said Christopher.

  ‘There’s my wife somewhere around, I can’t leave her.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Christopher. ‘She’s perfectly safe here, she’ll come to no harm here.’

  ‘No, I suppose you’re right. Yes, of course you’re right. I’ll go and tell her I’m leaving,’ said Simon: and indeed went and did exactly that. She did not seem perturbed: slightly drunk, very gay, she was too deeply engrossed in conversation to pay much attention to his departure. And so he set off with Christopher Vassiliou, through the spring dusk. They walked in silence, down the road and round the corner. Christopher had a top-floor flat in a large family house. Simon had not known what to expect from it, and from Rose’s comments about her husband’s aspirations he had perhaps composed in his mind a glossy penthouse, full of the corrupt luxury articles that Rose herself so scornfully avoided, with copies of Playboy and motoring magazines lying on glass-topped tables. It was not like that at all. It was rather bare, as though little attention had been paid to it, and the furniture looked as though it had been provided by the parents of the family downstairs: there was a large carved mahogany sideboard with a mirror, a settee and chairs with wicker backs and claw feet, a glass-fronted inlaid cupboard with china in it, a couple of small odd useless tables, with twisty barley-sugar legs. The carpet alone, a long-haired thick white stringy woolly object, looked as though it might have been purchased expressly in a fit of deep depression. Simon, settling himself down with a glass of whisky, looked round, and could not at first place what it was that the room exhaled, so surprising was it. For it was unexpected: it was like Rose’s: it was intimate. It was a brown and shadowy room, comfortable and curiously homely. Two long-finned, long-tailed goldfish swam in a large tank, confirming the domestic note. Rows of books stood on an arrangement of bricks and planks, an arrangement such as he had not seen since his student days. Evidently Christopher’s aspirations, whatever they might be, were not as simple as he had hoped.

  Nor, of course (though he had known this would be so, from the first moment of encounter) was his account of his marriage and its subsequent problems. Christopher did not embark upon discussion until he had provided them both with a plateful of food: they sat there, each eating bacon and baked beans and fried eggs and slices of bread, and then Christopher began. The tone of his voice, like the tone of the room, was low, and unlike the tone of most men it was obsessively personal: mumbling, low, monotonous, Christopher offered no explanations of externals, he behaved as though they did not exist, it seemed to be the underlying connections that he was after, it seemed to be the truth that he was after. And listening to him, listening to his endless rambling dissertation on Rose’s iniquity, on her selfishness, on her histrionics, on her desire to degrade Christopher by proving to him her own estimate of his own motives, it became clear to Simon that he would have to abandon, for ever, his hope, which had once been as strong as a certainty: his hope, that Christopher had married Rose for her money, simply, and would as simply, one day, forfeit her. Christopher, evidently, had no interest in the money at all. He had no guilt about it, either. It meant nothing to him. What he was interested in was power, and motivation, and emotion, and love. Listening to him was like listening to Rose. It was as crazed, as unworldly, as immediately comprehensible. Simon had known it for some time. He had known it for certain, when he had seen the false Christopher with the child on his shoulders, in Cornwall. How could he have supposed such an image to represent Christopher, if he had not been afraid of the very truth? And later, on his return, seeing the real Christopher with the children in his car, he had known it all, in his heart.

  ‘She undermined me,’ Christopher was saying, staring intently at the rows of books, ‘she undermined me, she has done from the beginning, she had no trust in me, she panicked as soon as she married me, she only did it to give herself a real fright, and then she couldn’t face it when I turned out all right, when I was loyal to her, I’m telling you, she could have taken anything in me except my efforts at good behaviour, and I did try, I nearly killed myself trying, I ruined myself for her …’

  And Simon watched the fish go round and round, and some flowers in a vase, and drank his drink, and his head turned like the fish in the bowl. After a while Christopher got on to the subject of the children: Rose’s obstinacy, the dreadful school they went to, her childish obstinacy in keeping them there, her ignorance of what really went on in schools like that, her ignorance of what it was like to have suffered, the way she had taken the children from him, and tried to stop him teaching them to roller-skate, her unrealistic attitudes, her stubborn perverse wicked refusal to give them a chance in life. She’s demented, he said, she’s demented, I don’t mind what she does with herself, she can sit in a bus shelter for the rest of her life if she wants to, but I’m damned if I’ll leave those children to sit there with her. And anyway, I know her, she’ll not be satisfied with sitting in that dump for another ten years, she’s brewing something else up, I know she is, she’ll get used to it there and she’ll want something worse, she’ll be dragging them off to a leper hospital with her before the year’s out, just you wait and see, if I don’t do something about it to stop her. You’ve no idea, said Christopher, how absolutely wicked and selfish people are when they get hold of this idea of being good. They destroy everything about them. They end up in a burning desert. You know what I mean.

  Yes, I know what you mean, said Simon, too depressed for words.

  So you see, said Christopher, I want to rescue the children. That’s all. What do you think will happen to them, if I don’t? When they reach the age of twenty-one. What do you think they’ll do, with all the money they come in to? Give it all away, to black Africa?

  I don’t know, said Simon.

  They’ll go to pieces, said Christopher. You know they will.

  Miserably, Simon shifted in his chair. He had to speak up for her, but did not dare, he had not the confidence, he did not know how to phrase his faith in her, he wondered if it had not been destroyed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, finally. Christopher had run down into silence. ‘I don’t know,’ he repeated, a little more firmly. ‘I don’t think they will necessarily go to pieces. I think you underestimate what she is doing for them. I think it will mean something to them. Even when things are very different.’

  He wanted to explain that he had never had much respect for the view that one’s children will not thank one for sacrificing them to a principle. He had begun to think, on the contrary, that children will not forgive one for sacrificing principles to them. But it was too late in the evening, he could not work it out. What he did say was, in support of Rose, ‘And I don’t think,’ he said, ‘that Rose had any intention of going off to a leper colony. She seems very well settled where she is,’ he said, with more confidence.

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Christopher. ‘She’s just biding her time. Once every five years or so, she breaks out.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s changed,’ said Simon.

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Christopher. ‘People don’t change. I don’t believe that people change.’

  ‘You have changed,’ said Si
mon. ‘From your own account, one would imagine that you had changed.’

  ‘No, I haven’t changed,’ said Christopher. ‘I’ve just put on a bit of weight and had my hair cut. I haven’t changed.’

  ‘If people don’t change,’ said Simon, finishing his second glass of whisky, ‘then why is it that they cease to care for each other?’

  ‘They don’t,’ said Christopher. He paused, lit himself his tenth cigarette, and said, ‘they don’t. Sometimes they get each other wrong and find out about it. But they don’t stop caring.’