The Great Concert of the Night

by Jonathan Buckley

  Richard was very well; Richard was busy. He was about to start work on a TV three-parter—he was going to be an outwardly respectable man whose mind was a seething pit of violent fantasies. A “ticking bomb,” was the phrase he used. The role had entailed a great deal of research. Some of the things he’d been reading had really messed with his head; he told us a horrible story about an outwardly respectable rapist-murderer.

  “And what about you?” he finally asked Imogen, after ten minutes. The eye contact was powerful; his self-belief was impregnable.

  He did not enquire as to how we had met, or what I might do for a living. While Imogen was talking, he glanced at me a few times, thinking, obviously: “What does she see in this one?” A reasonable question; I have often asked it myself. But what troubled me more, at that moment, was that Imogen had been in a relationship with this tedious and self-absorbed character.

  When we parted he kissed her and said that he would call, which he did, the following week, to suggest, with little preamble, that they might meet one afternoon and go to bed. One of the things that Richard most admired about himself was that he always went straight to the heart of the matter. Within two days of meeting Imogen, she told me, he had informed her that they were attracted to each other; the statement was made plainly, as if he were merely observing that her hair was the same colour as his. And she was indeed attracted to him. He was an intelligent actor, and his bluntness was disarming. Before long, however, it became apparent that the intelligence of Richard Hatton was a somewhat cosmetic quality. He was intrigued by the paradoxical phenomenon of himself: it was strange that he had become an actor despite the fact that he was, essentially, a “deeply introspective” person. Some people, he knew, disliked him for what they took to be his tactlessness. Honesty was not the easy way to make friends, he knew. He submitted himself to regular sessions of self-inquest, he told Imogen, making it sound like a regimen of quasi-monastic spiritual discipline. But in fact, she said, Richard studied himself “as if reading the Sunday papers”; he skim-read himself, to divert himself, and perhaps learn a little. And by the following day he had forgotten everything he’d read the day before.

  Imogen was not the same person now as the one she had been when Richard Hatton had been her lover. The relationship had been brief, and was no sooner commenced than regretted. “But he is very good at his job,” she said. I watched part one of June 6, 11pm. Richard Hatton was not very good, I thought. Too much staring into the carpet as if into the pit of damnation; too much stroking of the brow. Too much acting.

  •

  Lucretius on love: “This is the only case in which the more we have, the more the heart burns with terrible desire. Food and drink, when taken into the body, enter their appointed places easily, and thus our desire for water and bread is satisfied. But from a lovely face or blooming complexion nothing comes into the body for us to enjoy other than images, flimsy images, and vain hopes.” De rerum natura, Book Four. Saint Jerome maintains that Lucretius became insane after taking a love potion, and composed De rerum natura in his lucid intervals, prior to committing suicide.

  April

  Grand Parade: William on a bench, with his head resting against the stone balustrade. At first I thought he was asleep, but then a group of students walked past him and he sat up to speak to them. One of the students, acting as spokesman, turned a pocket of his jeans inside out. William smiled and put a finger to an eyebrow by way of salute. He wiped his face with his palms and leaned back.

  Only when I sat down did he open his eyes. “Well, hello there,” he said, in an approximately American accent. A clot of ketchup hung in his beard. He closed his eyes; he was worn out, not drunk. And he had lost a tooth. “You’re looking well,” he said, and laughed.

  At this point, although he was in a bad way, I had no intention other than to give him a modest amount of cash, as usual.

  “What happened to the tooth?” I asked.

  “Came loose, pulled it out,” he answered. “Saved myself a fortune.”

  People were walking past us all the time. “It’s good to see you,” he said, “but I’ll have ask you to move on in a minute. No offence. But if they see me talking to you, they think I’ve got some sort of social life. Got to be on your own to maximise the sympathy. Or have a nice dog.” He turned to look at me. “Maybe I should invest in something fluffy. What do you think?”

  I asked him where he’d been sleeping. He’d been in another squat, he told me, but a developer had sent some heavies round, and now the place was boarded up. “So where will you be tonight?” I asked.

  “Give us a hundred quid and I’ll try the Holiday Inn,” he answered.

  As though it were of no consequence, William said he was thinking of doing something that would get him put away. “Just for a few months,” he said. “Decent accommodation, edible food. Companions not always top-drawer, but beggars can’t be choosers, can they?” It would be easy enough to do, he assured me. “Walk into a corner shop, put a hand in the till. Piss on a policeman. The possibilities are endless.”

  I am content with my life. I have no need of company. But I found myself saying to William, as if speaking a line that had been prompted by another voice: “You could stay at my place.”

  Slowly he turned his head to look at me; the look was almost a glare. “Yeah, right,” he said.

  “There’s a spare room.”

  He studied my face, as if reading a text that was written in a foreign language, of which a few words seemed similar to English. “You serious?” he said.

  I assured him that I was.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “There’s nothing to get.”

  William considered the pavement for some time. “A bed for the night—that’s a tempting offer,” he said.

  Detached from myself, hearing something like “In this scene, I play a charitable man,” I said to him: “A bed for as long as you need.”

  “I can’t afford it,” he said.

  “You don’t have to pay,” I told him.

  “I mean, I can’t afford anything. Rent, food—”

  I repeated: “You don’t have to pay.” I would give him a room for as long as it took him to find work and a place to live.

  “That could take some time,” he pointed out.

  “I appreciate that,” I said.

  William scrutinised my face. “You can trust me,” he said. “I’m a straight bloke.”

  We shook hands, and then we walked across town together, discussing the house rules.

  •

  I was destined to my profession, Emma has often said. My brain is like a museum; images occupy my memory as exhibits occupy their display cases, she thinks. But ten minutes ago, summoned by no stimulus of which I was aware, a scene re-presented itself to me: the Bristol shot tower, its concrete bleached in the sunlight, against a blackening sky. Imogen smiled as I explained the shot-making process. I cannot see her face, though I know that she smiled, and made a joke about the deluge of information. Rain was soon falling, heavily. And this, it seems, is all that remains of that afternoon; everything else is lost. Perhaps at some point in the future another fragment of that day will appear, of its own accord, and I will not recognise the source.

  •

  Portions of fabric that had been in contact with the remains of saints were deemed to have absorbed something of their holy aura. These scraps, known as brandea, were venerated as relics. Pilgrims could manufacture their own brandea by rubbing a piece of cloth against a saint’s tomb, or by various other modes of transfer. A flask of holy water, filled at a shrine, was credited with healing properties. Likewise dust brought back from the Holy Land. Saint Aidan, I have read, took his least breath while leaning against a buttress in the church of Lindisfarne. Splinters from this buttress, by virtue of its contact with the saint, became healing relics, as did scraps from the stake on which the severed head of the Christian king Oswald
had been displayed. These splinters could be dipped in water to make a medicine; a sort of sanctified tea.

  (A connection here: the piece of clothing worn by the loved one, and kept by the lover for many years, in her absence; not for the sake of any specific memory, but because something of her presence inheres in it. This scarf, for instance. Its colour, blue-grey, is one of Imogen’s attributes.)

  •

  There was a colour that Imogen had particularly liked since she was a small girl, she told me; or rather, a particular embodiment of that colour—a deep reddish brown, with a certain kind of metallic lustre. Whenever she saw it, which happened infrequently, she had a moment of happiness, no matter what her mood before that instant. She recalled asking herself one day, having just seen a car of that colour: “Why does it make me happy?” Was it connected with some incident that she had forgotten? Over and over again she asked herself: “Why does that colour make me so happy?” And then, she said, she had found herself in a “labyrinth.” She could remember this moment precisely: she was fourteen, it was spring, and she was looking out of the dorm window. She had suddenly realised that she was repeating the question mechanically; her mind was functioning “like a questioning machine.” Then it occurred to her that her mind was not like a questioning machine—a questioning machine was in fact what it was. The question about the colour and her happiness had been caused by a spark inside her head. And this realisation—that the question was a product of that spark, and that the spark had nothing to do with herself—was in turn the product of a spark, as was this thought, and this one, and so on and so on and so on. “Imogen sometimes seems to be less than wholeheartedly among us,” her headmistress once remarked.

  •

  When she was a child, she had wondered what it meant to “make love”; as a young woman, she had come to realise that people very often “make love,” in the sense that love, or what people take to be love, is frequently nothing more than a by-product of sex. And we do not achieve spiritual union through the act of love, even when the other person is someone with whom we are in love, she understood. On the contrary: at the supposed moment of fusion each individual is more alone than ever. I think of what I saw at the maison de maître: the clashing bodies; everyone engulfed in their own pleasure.

  •

  For a long time Marguerite has wanted to visit New York with her husband, and now at last, after several postponements, they are in that thrilling city together. It is everything that they expected it to be. They have seen the sights that they had wanted so much to see—the Met, Ellis Island, Central Park, the Whitney, et cetera, et cetera. They have eaten at some excellent restaurants. The weather—it is early autumn—could not be better. It is unlikely that they will return to New York; a year from now, Marguerite may no longer be alive. So they must make the most of every hour. But the demand is self-defeating: this experience is too burdened with significance to be enjoyable. They stand at the window of their hotel bedroom, looking towards the river. Philippe stands behind Marguerite, with his arms around her; she places her hands on his; they love each other, still, after so many years. The situation is ridiculous, she remarks. They must not allow themselves to be tyrannised by circumstance. New York is New York, after all. “And besides, everyone is always dying,” says Marguerite. Her husband kisses her hair. Below them, the traffic flows down the avenue; the red lights flow like bright lava. When Philippe goes to the bathroom to take a shower, Marguerite stays at the window. With a finger she traces the scar, which is Imogen’s.

  •

  At Samantha’s school, a colleague had been sacked after the discovery of his affair with a pupil. Everybody had been surprised, Samantha told me, because the teacher in question was an unassuming and rather buttoned-up sort of character. On the other hand, he was in his late forties, and divorced, and the girl was attractive.

  “Speaking as a buttoned-up sort—,” I began.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Samantha interrupted. “And Imogen was not seventeen.”

  “She was not,” I conceded.

  She gave me a long look, then asked: “So how is she?”

  For a moment I thought I would lie. But I answered: “Not good. Not good at all.” I told her what was happening.

  Samantha cried, and put a hand on mine. For an hour we talked; for that hour we were almost remarried.

  •

  Imogen’s mother phoned on the Thursday night, to tell me that Saturday would be the end. When I arrived, Imogen was asleep; the rain on the glass was even louder than her breathing. Her face was the colour of bone; her head lay on the thin web of her hair. She stirred, and her mother whispered: “David is here.” With a movement only of her eyes, she looked at me. A smile formed slowly. “Hello,” she said. She turned a hand towards me; it felt as fragile as a fern. Clenching her eyelids, she said: “This is horrible, isn’t it?” The rain became quieter, but did not stop. She slept again. The dawn light began to seep into the room, insipid and ghastly. When Imogen awoke, she moved her head, slightly, to see the lightening sky. She spoke my name; it came out of her mouth as a sigh. She looked at me, through the death-mask of her face. It was a long look, and strong, as if, after great hardships, the end of an expedition had been achieved, and we were seeing together the fabled ruins; the effort had cost us everything, but we had succeeded, just the two of us. “I love you,” I said. “Versa,” she answered. I held her hand. Her eyelids convulsed and her mouth opened, in astonishment at the pain. Then she said, quietly: “That’s enough. Close the door.” Her mother and Jonathan were at the window, looking out, side by side. At that phrase—“Close the door”—her mother turned, as if this were the signal to commence the procedure. She moved to my side and put her hand under my elbow to remove me, with the greatest gentleness. She walked to the door with me, and stepped out. Facing me, she clenched her jaw to stop the trembling, and drew a breath, and embraced me, quickly, sharply. She said nothing, and went back to her daughter. She closed the door softly, as one would close the door of a sleeping infant’s room.

  •

  Five cigarettes a day was Imogen’s mother’s allowance to herself; on the basis of something she alleged that Christiaan Barnard had once said, she had decided that this number was well below the threshold of safety. “I have a very strong heart. And it’s my only vice,” she informed me, after the meal. Dissuasion was futile. Having recovered once from cancer, she now regarded herself as indestructible, Imogen said. We were in bed, in the room that had been prepared for me; Imogen’s male companions were always given a room at three or four doors’ remove from hers. Her mother had received me graciously, but I had no matrimonial potential: I was her daughter’s latest whim—not uninteresting, but certainly of no durability. When Imogen was talking about Devotion her mother’s gaze, at times, suggested that what she was hearing was an account of an extended holiday, rather than of her daughter’s professional life; she was waiting for her real life to begin.

  •

  Once, I now remember, I was with Samantha and Val when a young man approached us. The day was mild, but he was wearing a heavy jacket and a pullover; the jacket, once pale blue, was black with grease, as were his jeans; his hair was a rank fur. He cupped a hand and held it towards Val and Samantha; as I recall, he said nothing; he had given his speech to half a dozen tables, and it had made no difference. Val dug into her bag and fiddled in it. She dropped the coin into the grimy hand like a pill into water. I was no better: my donation was larger but not large, and I passed it over with a cringing smile of compassion, eyes averted.

  “Poor boy,” said Val, when he had gone. We issued a collective sigh. “But what can you do?” she asked the air. We agreed that there was nothing to be done.

  He crossed to the other side of the road, where a young woman was waiting for him. Lard-coloured flesh showed through holes in her jeans; her dreadlocks were like lengths of rusted wire wool. She was tiny, and was shivering.

  This must have some bearing on the
offer to William.

  •

  It is utter insanity to take in this person as a lodger, Emma tells me. I know virtually nothing about him. “He could be a thief. He could be dangerous. For all you know, he has mental problems.” Most of the people who are sleeping rough have serious mental problems, she states. I don’t think William is dangerous, I answer; but just to be on the safe side I could ask him. “He’s upstairs at the moment,” I tell her. “Probably helping himself to my socks.” Emma snaps: “Don’t try to be funny, David.” She instructs me to tell him that he can stay for a specific period of time and not a day longer; I should draw up a contract, right away. Not once does she use William’s name. “For an intelligent man, you can really be an idiot,” she concludes.

  •

  While helping with the preparation for the meal—if there’s one thing he’s learned over the past few years, he says, it’s how to peel vegetables quickly—William asks if any of Imogen’s films are in my collection. I take out Les tendres plaintes and Mon amie Claire, the only ones I could watch in company. We manage ten minutes of Les tendres plaintes—“This guy is a total arsehole,” William pronounces —before fast-forwarding to the scenes in which Imogen appears. There’s too much talking, and the sound of the harpsichord is a horrible noise. “What’s the point of playing it?” William wonders; it’s like using candles instead of lightbulbs, or writing with a goose quill instead of using a laptop. With Mon amie Claire he has a little more patience, principally because there is considerably more of Imogen in it. He watches her episodes closely, as if learning from a classroom video. “She’s brilliant,” he tells me. Once Claire has left the film, we abandon it.

  •

  On first viewing, Mon amie Claire did not greatly engage me either, and I have watched the film from beginning to end only once since then. But I have watched one scene many times. Danielle has taken Claire to the best restaurant in town. The decor is counterfeit Belle Époque, with huge mirrors and lots of gilt-effect mouldings and mahogany-coloured woodwork and scarlet plush. The menus are bound in thick leather, like precious manuscripts. Before sitting down, Claire notices the threadbare fabric of her seat. Almost fifteen years have passed since Danielle spent a summer month with Claire’s family in London. For Danielle, the reunion is going well, though life has dealt her friend a considerably better hand than the one she herself has been given to play with. By the time the two women reach the restaurant, we know about the success of Claire’s business. We have seen pictures of the photogenic kids and husband, and the enviable house. Danielle has been less lucky. She believes that life is chiefly a matter of luck; we understand that Claire has already diagnosed this as one of Danielle’s limitations. Promotions that should have been Danielle’s have been awarded to less deserving candidates. Her daughters are uncontrollable. Her health is less than excellent. (We have observed that the exercise machine in the garage has done little service.) Her husband, Michel, a decent man, has become dull. In the bedroom nothing much is happening any more, as Danielle confided within an hour of her friend’s arrival. But Michel is a reliable man, she says, unaware, of course, that Michel has taken an immediate fancy to the svelte and successful Claire. While studying the menu, Danielle relates Michel’s latest setback at the workplace. The waiter arrives; at Danielle’s request, he explicates some of the menu’s more ambitious dishes. While Danielle interrogates him about the wines, Claire looks out of the window. Night is falling on the charmless street. A woman walks slowly past, with a fat dog on a sequinned lead. Claire’s reflection is sketched lightly on the glass. This is the moment—the ten seconds in which Claire gazes out of the window of this mediocre restaurant. We see that she is bored, and wishes that she were elsewhere; we see her guilt at finding Danielle so tiresome; we see compassion for hopeless Danielle, and an instant of self-questioning; and we know that she will not abandon her erstwhile friend—she will do something for her; she will rescue her from her grubby little husband. “Let’s have the Savennières,” Claire interrupts, having—we realise—heard every word of Danielle’s conversation with the waiter, despite seeming to be lost in thought.