She could, she supposes, not mention Eli. But that would be like – like – she once, some years ago, before she was living in Redcliffe House, saw an interview on television with the actor Christopher Lee about his career. And Christopher Lee talked fulsomely about being in The Lord of the Rings and The Man with the Golden Gun and a 1973 production of The Three Musketeers; he dwelt for some time on his role in a television production of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe; he talked, in fact, about every aspect of his acting career. Except he didn’t mention Dracula. This is what it would be like, if, when the Life Story Work people came, and asked her about her life story, she didn’t mention Eli. It would be like Christopher Lee not mentioning Dracula.
She resolves not to do it. She knows that that will be frowned upon by the staff – if it is an initiative supported by the council then they will be keen that as many residents take part as possible, as Redcliffe House is part-funded by public money. She will pretend to be ill if she has to – an action which has its own risks, as it may lead to her becoming thought by the others as a dead woman walking.
Thinking like this forces her up out of her chair, towards the television. She feels how long it takes her to get there, the distance of ten feet or so. She has often thought how small her room is, but she has never wished it larger. She pushes the Hitachi’s large oblong plastic button in. It is one o’clock, and the BBC news is on. The newsreader is talking about the Middle East. She stands by the television, watching until the next item, which is about the trial of a paedophile.
She does not want to watch: this is the danger of sitting waiting for news about Eli – she will have to absorb so much other news, so much other awful and contaminating information. It’s all so alien; it all so wouldn’t have happened when she was young; it all so demonstrates that life no longer belongs to her. The news is like one of those young people in hoods that she sees standing around on Fulham Road, speaking in a language she does not understand, always ready, it seems, to shock and abuse her. Ready to mug her.
It feels suddenly as frightening inside as it is out. Violet decides it is time for her walk. Because of the constant rain this month – it didn’t rain yesterday, but the pavement would still have been too slippery to risk – she hasn’t ventured outside for over a week. She needs to breathe a different air, one that isn’t warm with radiator heat and food aromas; one that isn’t redolent of last or nearly last breaths.
In the newsagent, on the corner of Finborough Road and Wharfdale Street, Violet steadies herself against a shelf of magazines, shifting her balance away from her stick: the pressure induced by walking even the few hundred yards from Redcliffe House has made the tiny bones in her hand ache. Her breath starts to come back to her. She turns to the rack. All these ones with the one-word titles: OK!, Now, Heat, Closer. So many: there had to be so many of them now because there were so many celebrities. Looking at their covers, you would think, though, that this expansion in celebrity numbers was entirely female. Always women on the covers. One woman or several women, but more or less the same woman, young, beautiful, long-haired, often in a bikini on a beach, occasionally contrasted with a picture of herself looking exactly the same, but described as radically fatter, or thinner. Both the magazines for women and the magazines for men had women on the cover. Correction, Violet thinks to herself, a word she remembers her dad used to say when admitting to being in the wrong: young women.
She picks up one of the magazines, one of the ones specifically for women, Elle – French for her, or she, Violet remembers. It is heavy in her hand: there seem to be as many pages in it as there are in Solomon’s Testament. The woman on the cover is the woman – more or less – who is on all the covers, but Violet has a faint sense that this one is famous, rather than just beautiful – her smiling face has some words under it, saying ‘Jen: How I Got My Mojo Back!’ There are many subheadings, all about celebrity, beauty and weight. She sees one: How to Stay Visible After 45. Visible? She flicks towards it, with difficulty: her fingers do not have much flexibility, and the pages, slippery with gloss, move in chunks out of her control. And they are not clearly numbered: it is disorientating, like trying to find a house in one of those older London streets where numerical order is disregarded. The magazine seems to be all adverts for perfume and cosmetics. Many images pass by, all of women, all beautiful, all looking out at her unsmilingly, with what feels to Violet like reproach, for being their future. Finally, she stumbles upon it. It is a piece which suggests that it is a given that women become invisible at forty-five – invisible to men, but to women also, whose eyes, it would seem, have no function other than to compare other women to themselves. The piece lists a number of methods to combat this phenomenon, mainly cosmetic but one is a ‘Have a look-this-way attitude!’.
Eli’s marriage to Isabelle Michelet, she remembers, was covered in a celebrity magazine: Paris-Match. Gwendoline, whose attitude to Eli in the aftermath of his leaving was one of complete contempt, still bought a copy, and still showed it to Violet. The pictures of the wedding, so different from her own, made her feel jealous, of course, but only for the split second before her eyes fixed onto Eli’s bride, a woman possessed of such immediate beauty Violet felt confused, dizzied almost, unable to tell if it was just the flashbulbs or an ideal, pure luminosity – some deep, shocking contrast between hair that dark and skin that white – which made her face shine so.
Violet had always known that Eli was going to leave her. The ticking of the clock of their marriage was apparent to her from the moment of their vows, perhaps even from that first night in the Eagle. With or without fame, Eli’s leaving always seemed built into their story. The fame, when it came, just made the end more apparent, speeding up the movement towards it. It still tore at her, but when he told her he was going – when one breakfast morning, he said her name, landing on it heavily, not Birdy but Violet, his face full of a sadness the mix of constructed and genuine in which she would never be able to work out – her overwhelming feeling was one of relief, of being glad that the bad thing that she always knew was coming was here at last. Now, looking back from her present age, she thinks how similar this is to what it’s like waiting for death.
But all stories, even ones where you know what’s going to happen in advance, need an ending, and Isabelle’s beauty was it. She had looked at the photograph and understood: why he had left, and why, in the moment of leaving, over breakfast, he had, after the first few awful minutes, luxuriated in the telling. Not out of sadism, Violet realized, but out of love; love for Isabelle, which spilt out of him, eradicating all restraint and all sense of empathy with her, his wife. It was so predictable, and yet it was required. Isabelle’s beauty still had to be put in front of her for Violet to sign off on Eli; for her to internalize the truth, that, yes, of course, she is more beautiful than me, so yes, of course, my husband who is now famous must be with her rather than me. A time would come which would define such a way of thinking not as truth but ideology, but for Violet it was too congruous with her idea of herself, and of the way things were, to disavow.
Her mind returns to the present and to the magazine in her hands. The article is illustrated with an outline of a woman’s figure, wearing heels and a dress suit and carrying a handbag. She wonders how invisible a woman can be, if you become invisible at forty-five, and now you’re eighty-five, and you already felt invisible in your twenties. There must be degrees of invisibility. Perhaps women who were less old, or had a look-this-way attitude, were, rather than invisible, murky, or shimmering like a ghost, before fading, as they were meant to, gently into nothingness.
She hears a cough. She turns round. The shopkeeper – Algerian? Serbian? They weren’t even Pakistani any more – is looking at her with menaces, like she is a teenager come in to thieve, or browse through the magazines as if it were a library. He should recognize her, she thinks – she has come into this shop enough times in the last two years – but, then, she doesn’t recognize him. He continues to stare at her: she feels the outline of her an
cient body against the wall of youth and beauty. ‘Sorry, I …’ she says, but trails off, trying, at the same time, to put the magazine back between blocks of Cosmopolitan and Vogue. It hits the edge of the rack awkwardly, and the top left-hand corner falls forward, as if made heavier by grease from her hands, although they are dry: Jen’s face contorts grotesquely. The shopkeeper folds his arms, into an expectant payment-demanding attitude, and Violet, out of shame and terror, does so, handing over the incredibly startling price of £3.70, and leaves, hurriedly. It is only when she gets back to Redcliffe House, and Joe Hillier’s friend Frank smirks in her direction, on seeing that she is carrying a copy of Elle, that she remembers that her intention had been to buy some proper newspapers in order to check if there was any new information about Eli, and his dying.
* * *
RW: What’s your feeling about women, Eli?
[pause]
EG: This is a tactic, is it, Commissioner Webb? After a couple of hours, you become friendly … first-name terms …. it’s two guys, chewing the cud over chicks, we could be at a bar except there’s no beers …
RW: Really, I’d like to know.
EG: My feeling? About women?
RW: Yeah.
[pause]
EG: Read my books.
RW: I have.
[pause]
RW: Perhaps you’d like to know which ones.
EG: Not really.
RW: Solomon’s Testament, obviously. Mirror, Mirror. Reluctance. Cometh the Wolf, that’s probably my favourite. Beautiful, but dark. That bit where Jimmy Voller forces his way into the brothel … amazing. And, of course, The Compliance of Women.
EG: Why of course?
[pause]
RW: You know what, I lied. I haven’t read that one. But I love the title. What’s it about?
EG: What’s it about?
RW: Yeah.
[pause]
EG: You want me to précis one of my novels? Now?
RW: Well. I’d prefer you to answer my first question. About how you feel about women. But I thought this might be easier.
[pause; laughter, eg]
EG: It’s about a man, a professor, at Yale, in his fifties, whose marriage – his second – is falling apart, and he’s having an affair with a student, which he’s trying to end but he can’t because she threatens him.
RW: How?
EG: With coming out about the affair, of course. Telling the academic body. And ruining Henry – the professor.
[pause]
RW: So it’s not really about women?
EG: Where might you be going now, Commissioner? Shall I call the New Yorker to listen in on this discussion?
RW: I mean: it’s about men. It’s about the restrictions women place on the sexual freedom of men. Like much of your work.
EG: Like much of my work …
RW: So what happens in the end?
[pause]
RW: What happens in the end?
EG: Oh Christ, Commissioner Webb. I mean, really.
[pause]
EG: She does come out with it – the student. His wife leaves him.
RW: Does he lose his job?
EG: No. He gets reprimanded but keeps it.
RW: And the student?
[pause]
RW: Mr Gold?
EG: Fuck. This is ridiculous. You know this. Pretending you don’t – it’s pathetic.
RW: Really – I don’t.
EG: She commits suicide. OK? She commits suicide. Hey, you know what – like my wife just did! Like I just tried to do! Well, I guess that’s proof, then, of whatever it is you’re trying to fucking prove!
[pause; sound of paper turning]
RW: Is that the compliance? Of the title? Because it seems as if that’s what your heroes are always looking for … I mean, on the surface a kind of sexual compliance, women to bend to their will either in bed, or in coming to bed, but there’s a deeper need, isn’t there? Which is for the women to leave. There’s this thing people say about prostitutes, isn’t there – it’s clear to me from investigating them, and the men who use them – ‘men don’t pay prostitutes for sex, they pay them to leave afterwards’. But for you, or, sorry, your characters – your male characters, who are, after all, your heroes … the issue is how to make women, the ones who aren’t prostitutes, comply with that demand: to leave. And the real compliance is that they leave without trouble. That they accept that their duty is to leave. Leaving a marriage is one kind of compliance of that sort, but that’s messy – there’s alimony, and custody and residual guilt and a whole wasteland of arguments still to be had – so really, the better option, I guess, is death. Not murder – that’s crazy. But suicide – death, sweetly taken, as an option – self-murder, understood as leaving the man be, really properly leaving him be, letting him once and for all off the fucking hook: that’s compliance. That’s the compliance you – or, sorry, your characters – are looking for. Ultimately. Isn’t it?
[pause]
EG: OK. Very good, Webb. Really. You’re a very clever – a very literary police commissioner. Can I go now? I’ve been very patient with you. I haven’t insisted on calling my lawyer. But if you persist you will have a writ in your office on Monday morning. I shall pursue a case of police harassment.
RW: I quite understand. I just have two more questions. Then you’re free to go.
* * *
I’m starting to think Uncle Harvey maybe isn’t so bad, you know. Yesterday, I came into the living room and he was tickling Aristotle’s tummy. I said to him:
‘Do you like cats?’
And he said: ‘I love cats. Nothing’s more beautiful than a cat’s face.’
Which is sort of what I think, too. And Aristotle looked like he was really enjoying the tickling. Harvey took his hand away from Aristotle, but then he did this really cute thing of touching Harvey’s hand with his paw, like ‘Do that again!’ It was so cute.
And he meowed as well.
‘I understand cat language, too,’ he said.
‘You do?’ I said.
‘Yes. I understand all animal language.’
I thought he was joking with me – like saying the sort of silly thing a grown-up might say to a four-year-old or something – but I said: ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, when Aristotle goes meow, like that, what he means is: I want. That’s what all cats mean when they meow. Also all dogs when they bark, all birds when they sing, and all frogs when they croak.’
That made me laugh, that funny group of animals. Then Aristotle poked his hand again, and meowed again.
‘You see?’ he said. ‘I want.’
And he started tickling Aristotle again. Who started purring, really loudly.
* * *
Harvey Gold comes out of the sauna, in good time to avoid fainting. His face, he sees in the mirror, is a healthy shade of red. He showers, turning the dial gradually from red to blue, the heat from the sauna seeming to stay deep in his skin, making the cold bearable. He goes to his room and, still wet, puts on his dressing gown. Harvey always travels with a dressing gown. Made of soft brown towelling, and only lightly stained in two places, it is his most worn garment at home, and he sees no reason why that should not be the case abroad. There had been a fluffy white one at the Sangster, which had made him annoyed – with Freda – because if he’d known in advance that he was going to be staying in a dressing-gown-providing-hotel, he wouldn’t have packed his own one, taking up half the room in his suitcase. However, now that Harvey has moved into their apartment, he is glad that he has his to hand. It’s clearly a genetic thing, this love of dressing gowns: a cursory search of his father’s bedroom turns up four (not including the one hanging up by his hospital bed that he never wears) all, like Harvey’s, the fabric equivalent of comfort food.
Harvey is feeling, in his terms, happy. He has slept well. He isn’t, for the moment, hungry, having gone to a diner on Broadway for breakfast. He had bacon, eggs, sausages, hash browns and pancakes wit
h maple syrup and coffee. He considered grits, but has never known what they are and wasn’t prepared to take the risk. Harvey loves American breakfasts. He also loves English breakfasts, but gets particularly excited by the spoiled-kid excess of the American one, the mixing of savoury and sweet breaking down the barriers of what you can and can’t have, unfettered desire on a plate.
It did, of course, make him feel sick, but he worked that off by going into the sauna, letting the fat and sweetness and salt ooze out of his pores. He thinks to himself not I am happy, but You know what: I don’t feel half bad. He has these sometimes, these respite moments. They come more often when he is away from Stella. The image he has of her in his mind is static, beautiful, unageing – a Platonic idea of her – and while apart from her he does not have to manage the daily confrontation with the plastic reality. These moments trouble him, but he allows himself them, letting his body indulge in the anxiety amnesty.
Beyond that, he seems to have reached some level of equanimity with Freda, and even, perhaps, with Colette, who no longer looks at him with fear and loathing. His father is still dying, he is still a ghost, a writer of celebrity autobiographies, his depression is still entirely there – he knows it has just stepped away for a moment, he can feel the penumbra of its shadow – but he savours the flash of contentment. He is just untying the brown towelling knot around his stomach and starting to make his way towards the toilet, finally to make peace with that breakfast, when his attention is distracted by a small package on the kitchen table.
Harvey, while not exactly one to shirk responsibility, is not given to augmenting responsibility with any add-ons: and thus, although he has fulfilled the basic brief of the one responsibility he was given by Elaine while staying here – to pick up the mail from the pigeonhole in the communal hallway – he has not ordered or sorted the mail in any further way, but, rather, just left it, an ever-growing mound of envelopes on the kitchen table. Every so often Elaine has sorted through this mound, picking up anything urgent for Freda’s perusal and leaving the rest in a neat pile, but then Harvey has messed this pile up again in the process of creating a space on the table, every mealtime, for condiments (Harvey likes condiments: he sometimes thinks he prefers them to main foods).
The Death of Eli Gold Page 37