by Adam Thorpe
They had, in fact, grown tomatoes in their garden, until they’d read about the toxic nature of London’s polluted soil. She read out loud a worrying passage about chlorine levels in bagged salads packed by Russians living in Portakabins in Hampshire. Jack loved the movement of her lips, even after twelve years.
‘That might be near us,’ said Milly.
‘We’re in Hampstead, not Hampshire.’
‘You know what I mean. What are you up to down there?’
‘Feeling my bagged salad. It must be Tesco’s. It’s gone all limp.’
‘Dried apricots and a chilli pepper,’ Milly smiled. But she didn’t check it out.
Maybe we did hit the jackpot week before last, Jack considered, but stopped himself feeling hopeful because, whatever he thought, it was all out of his hands and all he had to do was wait.
Walking around Hampstead the next day, sitting on the Heath on a bench dedicated to Ken, Who Loved It Here, he sank into a real funk. I do not love it here. I do not love being alive. It would have been better to have been Ken. But I’ll bet this is all you’ve got. I’ll bet there’s nowhere better. And look what we’re doing to it.
The Guardian’s headline was about the frozen Siberian bogs melting. The Ham & High’s headline was HEATH SEX OUT OF CONTROL.
It was hot enough to swim in the Ponds so he did so eventually, and felt much better for the shock of the cold green water. He towelled himself vigorously among the splayed-out, naked guys sunning their butts in the wooden changing rooms by the jetty. The talk was fairly filthy, as ever; Jack was uncomfortably conscious of his own white butt as he dried his feet, felt it was being admired, then remembered that he was no longer the supple youngster. His belly was creased against his swimming trunks. There was flab. Kaja would laugh to see him here.
He took the back towpath around the ponds, forgetting about the anglers who’d generally plant themselves there, all but blocking the way. He caught his foot on a line, stepping over it, and the boy whose line it was looked anxious but said nothing. Joggers with iPods thumped and panted past him on the paths, intent in their suffering but secretly on a high. He must look a sorry sight to them, he thought. In the middle of a high-grassed meadow a tall, lanky woman was shouting to herself. Or maybe at herself. Or maybe at an apparition immediately in front of her.
That’s precisely what I am doing, Jack thought: yelling at a ghost. It was all over. All he had to do was hunker down and keep out of its sight.
He’d completely forgotten that they were due at the Grove-Careys’ that night. Roger Grove-Carey was a composer in his early sixties who had taught Jack at the Royal College, worked with Cardew and others, and was deeply embittered at not being recognised as the second Schoenberg. His wife was half his age and they had a little boy. Milly arrived back home at seven thirty, saying the whole London transport system was still completely fucked from the bombings.
Jack was especially glad to see her come in these days, whatever her mood, because every day she went out into the dangerous, wide world where stuff happened. But she only had half an hour to freshen up and change and she’d felt really prefab all day. She was talking to him over her shoulder as they went up the stairs. He followed her into the bedroom, only then remembering the dinner date.
‘That’s OK, then.’
‘OK?’
‘If you felt pretty fab. It’s the end of the week, anyway.’
Milly snorted, already climbing out of her trim grey work skirt. ‘Prefab, I said. As in housing. There’s a big difference.’
‘Sounds bad, man.’
He was appreciating Milly, and felt her sense it. He had made a largish afternoon dent in the sofa, reading a biography of Handel, and was conscious of not doing much while Milly was doing a great deal, although sitting in a crowded Tube (less crowded than before the bombings, but still unpleasant), feeling stressed and that bit more anxious, might be classed as doing even less. Milly was in her knickers and bra and the evening light fell in all sorts of interesting ways on her body. She was forty-one, with no birth wrinkles, and only a slightly more rotund belly than before – a shape which Jack found an improvement on the younger model. She was naked, now, and she padded over the rugs to the en-suite bathroom for a shower.
‘You’re nice and smelly,’ said Jack, catching whiffs of her sweat and burned-paper hints of central London. He studied her buttocks as she wrestled the awkward, curving shower door open. Women’s buttocks were always, he thought, larger than they looked in clothes. He did not know of any musical piece that celebrated a woman’s buttocks. He lay back on the bed like a lord.
‘Jesus, that’s nice!’ she shouted. It was a cold shower. She claimed that cold showers prolonged one’s life. He thought of the cold water running in the warm hollows, beading in her mufflike jewels, and reckoned that things could be worse, basically. Suddenly, he was almost at that stage Milly used to describe, when you couldn’t imagine the unhappiness of being someone other than yourself.
He was propped on one elbow on the bed, watching Milly towel herself through the open door. Her skin was tanned-looking, even in winter, which was an interesting throwback, possibly, to her great-great-grandfather’s long stint in Burma (as were her slightly slanted eyes), rather than sojourns on the beach. Milly was possibly one-eighth or one-sixteenth Burmese, as this great-great-grandfather on her mother’s side married a Burmese princess – or so the family legend went.
It figured.
Jack loved to watch his wife dress and undress, posing for a painting by Degas, Bonnard, those geniuses who celebrated women. She never said anything, but he knew she liked him watching – slightly flaunting herself, pretending she hadn’t noticed him studying her breasts as she strapped a new bra over them, talking the whole time about some problem with rapid renewables. As usual, he would have liked her to have given him one of her dazzling smiles as she dressed and undressed, but there was no real reason to. Her breasts were still very firm and the shadows under them were almost black. She stood there in her bra, knickerless. The bra pushed the breasts higher and nearer, giving them a voluptuous look. If only the sole cleavage in the world was the hollow he was looking at.
‘Aren’t you changing?’
‘I guess I’d better,’ he said.
He slipped into white trousers and a tropical shirt that he knew would look youthful and yet not too casual for Roger Grove-Carey, who wore out-of-date ties. The bedroom filled with Milly’s perfume, apple-like. Half naked, she was fixing her earrings – pale gold barley ears. He would have liked to have given up the Grove-Careys, to have pressed himself against his wife’s body, but delayed pleasures were sweeter.
He told himself, as they were driving there (the Grove-Careys lived fifteen minutes’ walk away, and Milly kept voicing her guilt about taking the car because they were late, it was no excuse), that he would not drink too much and not get into a long, heated debate so that, when they got back, they would be on form for a shot at some sex. Then he remembered that there was a curfew on all that, because Milly had felt something the other night, the night of their twelfth anniversary, and wanted to keep the full bowl very steady, and this made him feel sad, which translated into grumpiness.
Roger Grove-Carey’s house was one of those white-pillared palaces at the Swiss Cottage end of Belsize Park. Jack stuck to Roger out of loyalty, although the academic’s bitterness had become layered over with something approaching satisfaction since he had married one of his post-grads, a diminutive Italian flautist. She had torn up a career as a very fine orchestral player to bear Roger’s second generation of children, his first being (in his description) ‘as useless as their mother’. The first Mrs Grove-Carey was an early hippy who became a museum-piece hippy making jewellery out of hammered-flat bottle tops and then ran off to New York with the eldest son’s girlfriend at the age of forty-five. Jack made all the right noises to his old tutor, and felt sorry for the remaining children, one of whom cracked up during her A levels, but he could not ha
ve blamed her. Roger Grove-Carey’s reputation as a Lothario made waves even in the fervid world of professional music.
Roger had prepared a barbecue outside with what he called ‘ready-made coals’ – an aluminium tray full of fuel you simply put a match to. Jack sensed Milly’s horror at yet one more example of man’s ungreen perfidy, but as Roger was so pleased with the ingenuity of it, she said nothing. Also, he had admired her eyes yet again, holding her by the shoulder after the initial welcome kiss (always slobbery in Roger’s case), and calling them pools of amber. ‘God,’ he’d added, ‘you’re such a young slip of a girl.’ Milly had loved it, despite herself.
He had a squeezy bottle of barbecue fluid on hand in case of non-ignition, which he squirted now and again for the hell of it, or to horrify Milly even further. Perhaps he’s a pyro-maniac, Jack thought, as the flames shot up.
‘You know,’ he pointed out, ‘I heard of someone who burned to death, doing that.’
‘Serves them right,’ said Milly. ‘That’s pure environmental degradation.’
‘How?’ Roger asked, ignoring Milly.
‘The squirt caught alight and burned right back into the bottle he was holding. Just like you are. Every time you squirt, you’re connected to the fire by a line of highly inflammable liquid.’
Roger squirted again.
‘Hell’s umbilical cord,’ he said, with a defiant smirk.
Roger was pot-bellied these days, and was sporting an unfortunate T-shirt declaring I’ve Seen Einstein the Football-Playing Octopus. Jack had never seen Roger in anything but shirt and tie. Claudia was upstairs putting Ricco to bed. Distant screams emanated from the upper windows.
‘It’s not Rochberg,’ said Jack, looking up.
Jack knew Roger regarded George Rochberg as a traitor to the serial cause.
‘Or Middleton, more’s the pity,’ said Roger ambiguously, prodding the glowing heap in the tray. ‘How about a drink, my lovely young ones?’
Roger had made a seriously potent punch.
‘I’m game,’ said Jack.
‘Who’s driving?’
‘I’ve had the kind of day you’d put straight in the bin bag, holding your nose,’ said Milly, sounding more Roedean than fast-track.
Which meant that Jack had to hold back. He’d been hoping to make up for the sexual disappointment by getting tiddly. Roger was peculiarly soft and docile. The conversation through the drinks (during which Claudia appeared with a tear-bruised Ricco, who seduced the visitors with a shy one-year-old’s smile) flickered over subjects ranging from Egyptian cotton sheets to the evils of Nike. It was mostly being driven by Milly, who tended to flag only when her day’s injection of adrenalin ran out.
Jack found her oddly hard and unattractive, suddenly. This happened. He could stand outside his position as long-term intimate and look at her objectively. It was weird. It was also a little frightening, because it meant that no feeling was fully reliable. Roger Grove-Carey had gone from adoring his first wife, Melinda, in her print-fabric flowing dresses, to loathing her very name – overnight. The new one, Claudia, was more like an au pair than a wife, and Jack had to keep reminding himself. He could not fathom why she had given herself to Roger and his pot belly and his longish, greasy grey hair for more than a minute. This was for life, he thought. Roger had this skill with women, even after his looks had gone. It might have been as much to do with his uncompromising stance as a composer and teacher, as with his peculiar charm when sober. Roger’s music was so atonal that even Jack found it hard to listen to. It was occasionally played on Radio 3 and Jack would always imagine dials being hurriedly retuned all over the country. One piece, entitled Eat, Drink and Be Merry, sounded like a handsaw being inched over a vast submarine, panel by panel, bolt by bolt, with the hope that somewhere there might be a thinner area on which to make some impression and sink the vessel. It lasted twenty minutes and had made Roger Grove-Carey’s reputation for a while back in the early seventies.
‘I hope you’re not still into Arvo Fart,’ said Roger, suddenly, over the sausages and ready-seasoned spare ribs. They were eating at the table in the garden, although the coolish breeze had put out the candles and their ankles were getting bitten. He had drunk just enough to start being nasty: it was almost measurable. Jack didn’t mind this question, as he didn’t mind similar teasing from Howard. It made him feel that someone cared. And Roger was never anything but extravagantly sweet with Milly – whom most men fell for, in fact, wanting to do nothing but bring her red rose after red rose.
‘It’s pronounced Pert,’ said Jack. ‘To rhyme with a very posh shert.’
‘Or shert as in posh crap.’
‘Roger,’ said Claudia, who had black rings under her eyes. ‘Can you take Ricco?’
‘No,’ said Roger. ‘I’m eating. Strap him in somewhere.’
‘I think Claudia wants to eat,’ said Milly, taking the edge off with a smile.
‘She doesn’t do anything else all day,’ said Roger, chewing on a spare rib.
Milly laughed. ‘Oh yes, in common with all mothers of lively infants. Do you have ready-made nappies the way you have ready-made barbecues?’
Jack realised that Milly had also drunk too much. Her jibe didn’t quite come off.
‘Actually, yes,’ said Roger, smirking. ‘In my day it was non-disposable towelling cloth. Lots of washing and drying. It’s a doddle, these days.’
Claudia was rocking Ricco on her knee and attempting to eat, but Ricco kept grabbing her fork.
‘I’ll take him,’ said Milly. ‘God, he’s just so gorgeous.’
‘You’re a guest,’ said Roger. ‘With lovely eyes of amber. Out of the question.’
Milly had been looking at Ricco longingly for the last hour. Jack knew how she felt. They’d both periodically melt at the sight of babies and toddlers – although they had to be careful with their cooing, this being England. They could hardly believe that such delightful beings could be created by such ugly or miserable-looking or officious parents. At other times, however, they’d feel resentful, irritated by other people’s children. They veered from sentimentalism to something close to spite. It wasn’t healthy.
‘Claudia, take him upstairs, you’re so useless with the child.’
There was a difficult silence, during which Claudia wiped Ricco’s mouth and carried him away. Through the French windows came the sound of her solemn tread up the stairs, emphasised by the lack of fabric in the house, which was furnished in a minimalist style, with lacquered, hardwood floorboards and bone-white furniture, much of it melamine. There were no curtains: Roger believed in transparency. The houses opposite had a full view of his night-time lovemaking, he had told Jack long ago. No one had complained. The corners of the melamine were chipped. Nothing dates quicker, Jack thought, than the avant-garde. The whole house had a faint smell of gum, for some reason.
Milly was pouring herself some more wine, which had been shipped or flown from Australia.
‘I hate being hurried into the wrong country,’ muttered Roger.
‘Sorry?’
‘What?’
He looked up at them as if he wasn’t quite sure why they were there. Jack felt himself flush with the disturbing thought that Roger had got some debilitating mental disease: Alzheimer’s, perhaps.
‘Well, it’s true,’ said Roger. ‘Each day is a continent of possibilities and you choose the countries or they are chosen for you. Right now I don’t want to change country. Here’s to Arvo Fart. Here’s to Estonia, sex capital of the world.’
He drank, but Jack didn’t. Milly drank without responding to the toast. Jack was struggling to say something cool and deadly in reply to Roger’s remark about Estonia, but he felt too cross. He felt personally insulted, which was extraordinary; it was to do with the image of Kaja, gazing on the massed horror of the North Circular – which became a foggier picture of her peeling off in front of a fat, leering, middle-aged man.
Where did you read that, Roger? The Sun?
&nb
sp; I didn’t know you read the Sun, Roger.
‘Is it the sex capital of the world?’ said Milly, as Jack was opening his mouth to deliver, his pulse beating in his ears with anger.
‘Full of whores,’ said Roger. ‘And Belorussia or whatever it’s called: fifty per cent of the women are on the game, if they’re not irradiated. Or even if they are. Chernobyl, in case you’ve forgotten.’
His eyes under the bushy grey eyebrows were twinkling. From the upper windows came muffled screams. Milly glanced up.
Jack said: ‘Roger, you’re really pissing me off now.’
‘What? You were there and you didn’t know it?’
‘I was in Estonia, yes –’
‘And the girls were juicy, weren’t they? Our lovely Milly’s looking worried.’
‘Roger, you’re a Sun reader, are you?’ said Jack, feebly because he was trembling and hot in the face.
‘It was in the broadsheets, something about Aids gripping the land of Arvo Fart. It didn’t mention Fart, of course, that’s my addition. I immediately thought of the leader of the Fart brigade, Jack Middleton, whose music was once interesting.’
‘Thanks a lot, Roger.’
Jack had a kind of spontaneous heartburn.
‘I’ll go and see if I can give a hand,’ said Milly, already getting up.
‘Go then, go,’ said Roger, as she climbed the stairs. ‘She’s completely useless with that kid,’ he added, vehemently. Jack had never realised that Roger Grove-Carey was an alcoholic, until this moment. ‘What?’
‘Didn’t say anything,’ said Jack.
‘Dumbstruck, are you? Oh no, I know what it is, you’re playing with ideas. Silence and little tinny bells and those fucking triads in A minor.’ He served himself some wine, ignoring the other glasses. ‘You’ve done nothing decent since you went off to The Hague. You might as well open the wardrobe and shake a lot of empty coat hangers. Same effect. But not as original.’
Jack felt too deflated to reply, oddly enough. Teachers were not fathers: it was harder to scream back at your teacher. And he cared more about Roger’s remarks on Estonia than on music, because he knew that Roger’s academicism had crippled him and made any musical insights redundant, the product of his sad station. Yet he felt deflated.