Staring at the Sun

by Julian Barnes

  “Not anymore.”

  “Don’t they?”

  “No. Nowadays they take half your money and then still treat you the way they used to when they paid for everything.”

  “Which is?”

  “Tell me about China.” On the restaurant wall was a boxed colour slide of an idealized Eastern landscape: a cascading river, emerald trees, a Hollywood sky. By some primitive process of animation the river flashed and glinted, while the clouds clumped slowly sideways. “Well, it wasn’t like that,” Jean said. Wryly noting Rachel’s imperiousness, she began, as her mother would have put it, to sing for her supper.

  They talked about China and travel, then about friendship and marriage. Jean found it easy to discuss her life with Michael, noting the flares of retrospective anger in her young friend, but continuing as calmly as possible. At the end, Rachel said, “I can’t understand why you stayed. Why it lasted.”

  “Oh, the usual reasons. Fear. Fear of loneliness. Money. Not wanting to admit that you’d failed.”

  “No, you didn’t fail. If you left, he failed; that’s what they don’t understand.”

  “Perhaps. And there were other reasons. After I married I lost a lot of confidence. I didn’t understand things. I was always wrong. I didn’t know the answers. I didn’t even know the questions. But after a while—five years or so—it began to change. I was unhappy, and bored too, I expect, but all the time I seemed to be understanding more about things. About the world. The more unhappy I became, the more intelligent I felt.”

  “Haven’t you got it the wrong way round—the more intelligent you became, the more unhappy you felt because you’d been conned?”

  “Perhaps. I don’t know. But I started to get superstitious about it. I can’t leave, I thought, because if I become less unhappy, I’ll become less intelligent as well.”

  “And did you, when you left?”

  “No, but that’s not the point. And there’s another reason which I’m sure you’ll think is just as silly. I probably won’t be able to explain it very well; but I remember when it happened. Michael and I wouldn’t be speaking much; he’d be angry, I’d be bored; sometimes he’d be drinking, and occasionally I’d disappear, just to make him worry about me, or try and make him worry about me. If it was warm I’d sometimes spend the whole evening in the garden, just so as not to be with him.

  “Anyway, that sort of time. Not much fun. I was sitting in the garden one night. The house was blacked out, like in the war. There wasn’t any cloud, just one of those special moons as bright as the Arctic sun. A bombers’ moon, we used to call it. And I suddenly thought, what’s it for, this marriage? Why stay? Why not slip away into the warm night? And perhaps it was lack of sleep, and I felt a bit light-headed, but the answer seemed obvious. I stay because everything says I should go, because it doesn’t make sense, because it’s absurd. Like whoever it was said they believed in God because it was absurd. I really understood that.”

  “I don’t,” said Rachel. “And I hope I never do.”

  “Don’t count on it. It can be very tiring being rational all the time.”

  “But that’s why I like you,” said Rachel. “Because you’re never silly.”

  Jean smiled and looked down. She felt a cautious pleasure. “That’s very sweet of you. People always assume that by the time you reach my age you don’t need compliments anymore. The old need them just as much as the young.”

  “You’re not old,” said Rachel, fiercely.

  “Oh dear. Another compliment. Oh dear.” She liked Rachel, but was a little frightened of her. The certainty, and the crossness. Years ago, it had been only men who had been so certain and so cross.

  That was really why she had gone to live on her own. Marriage had two magnetic poles, anger and fear. But now women were getting just as good at anger. It puzzled Jean that it was often the women who rejected men most thoroughly, who went off and lived with one another, who announced their freedom from the sovereignty of the opposite sex, who seemed to be the angriest. Shouldn’t they be the calmest, now that they had got what they wanted? Or was it part of some wider rage against a created world which offered only two choices, one of them pitiably inadequate? Jean didn’t feel she could ask Rachel, because it would only make her cross. That was another thing: women were angry with other women nowadays. In Asian times, in that old world where men bullied and women deceived themselves, where hypocrisy was used like camomile lotion, there had at least been some sly complicity among women, all women. Now there was acceptable thinking, loyalty and betrayal. That’s what it seemed like to Jean. But perhaps you could learn only so much in your life. Your tanks held only so much fuel, and she was losing height. The lower you got, the less you saw.

  “Do you mind if I ask you about sex? I mean …” For once, Rachel hesitated.

  “No, of course not, dear. It did go on all those years ago, surprising as it might seem.”

  “Was it … Was it …” Again, Rachel seemed uncertain. “Was it all right?”

  Jean laughed. She picked up a blue teacup, made of some unknown material halfway between china and plastic, hesitated, sipped and listened to the odd cracked noise it made when she replaced it on the saucer.

  “When I was in China they had just announced a new Marriage Act. I remember reading a translation. It was very full, it covered almost everything. It said you couldn’t marry if one partner had leprosy, and it said that infanticide by drowning was strictly prohibited. I remember going through it wondering what the Party had laid down about sex. I mean, it lays down everything about everything on the whole. All it had was Article 12.” She paused, rather needlessly.

  “I can’t be expected to guess.”

  “No. Article 12 reads: Husband and wife are in duty bound to practise family planning.” She paused again, this time more meaningly.

  “So?”

  “Well, I suppose you could say we had a Chinese marriage. It was more a matter of practising family planning than, what do you say nowadays, having sex.”

  “I think that’s sad.”

  “There are worse things. We weren’t the only ones. There were lots of Chinese marriages then. I expect there still are. It didn’t seem so … important. There was a war, and then there was peace, and things like …” She found herself stuck for an example. “Things like the Festival of Britain …”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I’m sorry. But it’s the sort of thing I mean. We didn’t think anything else mattered. We didn’t …”

  “Will you go to bed with me?” Rachel asked it quickly, head down, her curly hair pointed at Jean.

  “Well, dear, it’s very sweet of you, but I’m an old lady …”

  “Don’t patronize me. And don’t patronize yourself.” Rachel was frowning fiercely.

  Jean still declined to take her seriously. “Just because you buy me dinner …”

  “I mean it.”

  Suddenly Jean felt much older than this girl, and a bit fed up with her. “Come on, we’re going now,” she said. “Pay the bill.”

  But in the car she rested her hand on Rachel’s shoulder. They drove in silence for a while, with Rachel occasionally swearing at male drivers. Eventually, without looking across at Jean, she said, “I’m not as crude as you think, you know.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “With Gregory, I mean. There’s just something about him that gets on my tits.”

  “Well then, you’re better off without him.”

  “He never thinks about being a man. I don’t mean being a man, climbing mountains and that. I just mean just being a man. He doesn’t think about that. Most of them don’t, and Gregory’s no better than the rest of them. He just thinks he’s the norm.”

  “I think Gregory’s rather a sensitive boy.”

  “I’m not saying that, I’m not saying that. It’s just that he thinks being a man is the norm. He thinks you and I belong to a deviant species.”

  “Are you saying it
’s because of the way I brought him up?”

  “No, I mean, Christ, if there’d been a man around the place he’d probably have been a lot worse.”

  “Thanks for the compliment,” said Jean ruefully. They drove on while the night’s clouds oozed drizzle onto the car.

  “The thing about being on the pill,” said Rachel suddenly, “is that you can fuck people you don’t like.”

  “Why ever would you want to do that?”

  Silence, Oh dear. Wrong again. She’d asked another question that wasn’t a real question. How much do you earn? Do you want to go to Shanghai?

  “When Michael died,” Jean said, without knowing what had brought the subject into her head, “he left me all his money. The house. Everything.”

  “Of course he did,” said Rachel crossly. “The shit. Big daddy. Make you feel grateful.”

  This didn’t seem good enough to Jean. “But what would you have said if he’d left me nothing?”

  In the half-light of the car Jean saw Rachel smile. “I’d have said, the shit. Big daddy. Took the best twenty years of your life and still wanted to punish you and make you feel guilty at the end.”

  “In fact,” said Jean, “he didn’t leave a will. Or at least, not one they found. He died intestate. So Gregory and I got everything. What do you make of that?”

  Rachel was almost laughing with crossness. “The shit. Big daddy. Couldn’t decide whether to make you feel guilty or grateful. Wanted to have it both ways, even when he was dying. Wanted to make sure you carried on trying to work it out for years afterwards. Typical.”

  “So he couldn’t win?”

  “Not in my eyes. In his eyes he wins every way round.”

  “I used to think I knew the answers,” said Jean. “That’s why I left. I know what to do, I thought. Perhaps you have to persuade yourself you know the answers, otherwise you don’t ever do anything. I thought I knew the answers when I married—or at least, I thought I was going to find them out. I thought I knew the answers when I left. Now I’m not sure. Or rather, I know the answers to different things now. Perhaps that’s it: we’re only capable of knowing the answers to a certain number of things at any particular time.”

  “You see,” said Rachel. “He’s still got you thinking about him. The shit.”

  As they drew up outside Jean’s house, Rachel began again. “I went out with someone once. He was good company, clever, nice enough; he wasn’t too bad for a man. It was all right. Until I caught him watching me as I came.”

  “You mean … from the window?”

  “No, Jean, not from the window.” Oh dear, thought Jean, we’re still on that. “Not from the window. In bed. Sex. Fucking.”

  “Yes.”

  “He used to watch me. Like I was a performing animal. How’s it getting on down there? Out of the corner of his eye. It was creepy. I decided to pay him back. I got a bit obsessed by it. I mean, I could see the relationship didn’t have far to go, but I really wanted to pay him back. Make him remember me.

  “I began to fake not coming. Does that shock you?” Jean shook her head. My, how things had changed. Rachel went on; her tone was aggressive, but Jean heard an edge of uncertainty in it. “It was quite hard at first, and sometimes I failed, but I did it enough times. And it really got to him. First I’d come, but pretend not to, and then I’d make him go on and on, and I’d pretend I was just over the horizon, not much further, just round the next bend, you know. And then I’d let him off, like a schoolboy. No, it’s all right, it doesn’t matter. And then, when he’d rolled off and was almost asleep but not quite, I’d pretend to help myself along a bit. Nothing dramatic, just enough to let him know I was doing it and pretending to keep quiet so as not to hurt his feelings. That really got to him. Quite a lot. The shit.”

  Why go to all that trouble, Jean thought as she got out of the car. First to do it, and then to tell me. Unless … it wasn’t about Gregory, was it? She tried to remember her worst times with Michael: dull days beneath an angry sky, lonely nights beneath a bombers’ moon. She had been sad, disappointed, angry; but couldn’t remember anything near the contempt that Rachel had just exhibited. Was this a matter of character or generation? People were always saying that women had more freedom, more money, more choices now. Perhaps such advances couldn’t be obtained without a necessary toughening of character. This would explain why things often seemed worse, not better, between the sexes; why there was so much aggression, and why they were so pleased to call aggression honesty. Or perhaps, Jean thought, perhaps there is a simpler explanation: I have forgotten how I felt. The mind has a way of putting unhelpful memories down its waste-disposal unit. Forgetting yesterday’s fear ensures today’s survival. When I was living with Michael I might have felt such anger and contempt, but I stifled them with a pillow like two squeaking puppies, and now I can no longer recall where I buried the bodies.

  Rachel said: “I love the fear in a man’s eye when he meets an intelligent woman.” Rachel said: “If there’s one thing I despise it’s a man who sucks up to women.” Rachel said: “Only a woman can understand a woman.” She had left home at sixteen, drifted round several large cities, lived for a time in houses from which men were excluded. Rachel said: “Men are beating up women more than they ever used to. Men are killing children.” Rachel said: “What’s the difference between a man and a turd? You don’t have to hug a turd after you’ve laid it.” Rachel said: “It’s all about money and politics, don’t ever imagine that it isn’t.” Rachel said: “I’m not criticizing, I just think you’re still hoping for some man to come along and answer all the questions for you.”

  Jean pictured a seesaw, painted municipal green, in a council playground. A fat man in a three-piece suit was sitting on one end, weighing it down. Precariously, Jean climbed on and took the first seat opposite him; but her small weight, placed so close to the fulcrum, made no impact. Rachel arrived, monkey-crawled to the highest point of the seesaw, way beyond Jean, and there, with no thought for her safety or the asphalt below, began jumping up and down. The fat man in the business suit looked briefly discommoded, then shifted on his haunches and settled himself again; his heels hadn’t even lifted from the ground. After a while, Rachel left in disgust. Later, and more cautiously, Jean in turn slipped down and went away. The fat man didn’t seem in the least upset. Somebody else would be along quite soon. Besides, he owned the playground.

  Rachel said: “Three wise men—are you serious?” Rachel said: “If they can put one man on the moon, why don’t they put them all there?” Rachel said: “A woman needs a man like a tree needs a dog with a lifted leg.” Rachel had once been given her father’s shoes to clean and instead of using polish had smeared them with toothpaste; she had watched her mother’s intelligence being frittered away on calculations about the price of tinned food; she had watched her father hold her mother in the soft cage of his hands. Rachel said: “A man on a white charger is all very well, but who’s going to clear up the droppings?” Rachel said: “Being born a woman is being born left-handed and forced to write with the other one. No wonder we stammer.” Rachel said: “You think I’m shouting? You don’t know how deaf they are.”

  Jean found herself wondering if Rachel’s father had maltreated her, if there had been some scarring first involvement with a man; but Rachel guessed her thought before she had begun it. “Jean,” she said, “that’s a man’s argument. The spanner doesn’t fit the nut.” “I just wondered …” said Jean. “Well, stop. You don’t have to have been raped to be a feminist. You don’t have to look like a garage mechanic. You just have to be normal. You just have to see things as they are. It’s all obvious. It’s all so fucking obvious.” Rachel said: “For a man, wife rhymes with life. What rhymes with husband? Nothing. Dustbin, perhaps.” Jean said: “I don’t think you’re giving men much of a chance.” Rachel said: “Now they know how we feel.”

  They started going out once a week: the cinema, a meal, conversations in which each began affectionately to parody th
e other’s stance. On the third evening Jean insisted on paying for dinner; later, in the car outside Jean’s house, Rachel leaned across and kissed her on the cheek. “Better get in before your dad gets mad at you.”

  On the fourth evening, at an Indian restaurant when Jean thought the cook had gone mad with tangerine dye, Rachel suggested that Jean come back to her place. Jean laughed; this time the offer came as less of a surprise.

  “But what do they do?” she asked flippantly.

  “They?”

  “They,” she repeated, meaning lesbians, but not bringing herself to say it.

  “Well …” Rachel said firmly; and Jean at once held up her hand. “No, I don’t mean it. No.” Suddenly in her mind they had become we; the image seemed preposterous and embarrassing. “Anyway …”

  “Anyway what? Anyway the Festival of Britain?”

  “Anyway I don’t think you’re a … a lesbian.” She managed to say it this time, her pause disinfecting the word, making it sound distant and theoretical, barely applicable to Rachel. Her small blond companion took her by the wrists, and her fierce brown glare forbade Jean to look away.

  “I fuck women,” she said, in a slow, determined voice. “Is that lesbian enough for you?”

  “I like you too much for you to be one.”

  “Jean, that’s one of your least intelligent remarks.”

  “I suppose I mean that isn’t a lot of it just getting back at men? What your generation calls political. It’s about other things; it’s not … not just about sex.”

  “When was sex only just about sex?”

  Always, Jean wanted to say; but it was clear this would be the wrong answer. Perhaps she didn’t have enough experience to argue with Rachel. Why did she always make people cross? Here was Rachel almost daring her to say something silly. She didn’t dare. Or rather, she dared in another direction.