Our Tragic Universe

by Scarlett Thomas

  When I woke up in Torcross on Wednesday morning the fire was still glowing in the grate as if it had been enchanted, so I added another log and once the flames had taken hold of it I made some rosehip tea and ate a mashed banana on toast. When I opened my laptop, I had an email from Oscar. Are you trying to give me a heart attack? Not only have you filed early, your copy is actually very good. In fact, this is a triumph. It's quite funny, and even topical if one believes all the economists saying that Western capitalism is in peril and we will soon need to make our own clothes because Chinese sweatshops won't exist any more (look at the News section on Sunday to see what I mean). Paul wants to lead with it in the Arts supplement this week. He's talking about giving you a column. You've really touched him with this 21st century hobby nonsense. He has a train set. Did you already know that?

  A column! That was the Holy Grail for any newspaper writer. But Oscar had done this before, I remembered. Whenever he really wanted me to do something I really didn't want to do he would invoke this idea that Paul was thinking about giving me a column. I'd met Paul at someone's launch party once. When I'd mentioned this column he'd looked at me as if I was mad. But this was different. I hadn't asked for more time, or tried to cancel the assignment. I looked at the email again in case I'd missed Oscar asking me to completely rewrite the piece by Thursday. But he wasn't asking me to do anything. Perhaps that email would follow this one and the column would be explained away.

  Whenever someone praised something I'd written I read the piece back to myself as if I was that person. It was the only time I ever relaxed and enjoyed my own work, and it happened very rarely. I'd begun by making the fairly obvious point that the self-help industry functions by making people feel bad about themselves. I'd then described some of the ridiculous ways in which people were encouraged to 'fix' their own imperfections and become attractive as lovers, business contacts or whatever. You could learn, from a book, how to snare someone with an 'exclusive smile, how to set the agenda for any conversation you wanted to have, how to be the 'chooser' rather than the 'choosee, how to become 'magnetic' and attract the people and objects you want, how to harness the power of 'Screw you!', how to read other people's minds via their body language and also use your own body to communicate, and how to use ancient secrets of creativity to give your PowerPoint presentations more 'zing'.

  If people couldn't get their life right in this world, then there was the Otherworld of fairies and guardian spirits, or past lives or afterlives. In these books there was always some way for the individual to become a hero. No one was encouraged to be a monster or a dragon or a helper along the way. No one was encouraged to be a fool or a hermit. Whether you got to transcend to a thousand years of perfection or simply spend the rest of your mortal life being 'perfect' and giving the best PowerPoint presentations in the world, this self-perfection was assumed to be everyone's goal. The whole of Western society seemed to be turning itself into a reality TV show in which everyone was supposed to want to be the most popular, the most talented, the biggest celebrity. I'd pastiched the self-help format in my feature, so that the feature itself offered tips for a life that looks outwards rather than inwards. I focused on the skills you might want to develop as an anti-hero, or, indeed, a fool, who does not desire riches and success and syrupy romance. I suggested that people who wanted to reject these ideas of perfection and individualistic heroism should get a pile of books that help them learn a new skill, or perhaps another language, not in order to become successful or fit in better, but just for the hell of it: to step over a cliff and see what happens. The anti-hero or fool could take up birdwatching or botany, fix something, translate something, embroider something or even knit a pair of socks. I said that unless we gave up on our addiction to the self-help industry—and the connected world of twenty-four-hour drama and entertainment—and reclaimed old skills and hobbies, we were in danger of turning ourselves into fictional characters with no use beyond entertaining people and being emotionally, aesthetically and psychologically neat and tidy. We would become cultural King Midases: unfeeling and untouchable. We would desire only what was immediately useful and relevant to our plot-lines: a pair of shoes, a new sofa, a home gym. And if those didn't work there were plenty of ways to buy our way out through box-sets, videogames and ready meals full of sugar and fat. We would become little more than character arcs, with nothing in our lives apart from getting to act two, and then act three and then dying. I wasn't completely sure about my feature as I read it back to myself. Was I just offering another kind of easy answer of my own? But maybe that didn't matter in a newspaper feature, and at least I'd got to mention some nice, little-known books. I started reading from the beginning again, this time not as someone who'd read it and liked it, but as my own harshest critic. I hadn't mentioned any of my absurd but well-meaning books in the end; I'd gone for the soft targets. Was I as much of a fraud as everyone else? But perhaps Vi would read it and see that I was at least trying to be genuine.

  A few minutes later an email came in from Paul. Bravo! Great feature. Reminded me of why I like my train set and walks in the countryside more than meetings with advertisers! Can you do regular weekly column? Each week another hobby + a book to go with it (or a CD or DVD or whatever you like—will be an Arts column, not in Books). Use 1st person style and OK if some hobbies fail. Just try things out. 600 wds/week and £1 a word. Let me know ASAP. P x

  I didn't want to make a big deal of my lunch with Rowan, but I hung up my only clean pair of jeans and T-shirt and my favourite cardigan on the back of the door while I had a long, hot bath and shaved my legs and plucked my eyebrows. While the steam unwrinkled my clothes I lay there thinking about my column, and what hobbies I might cover in the next few weeks. I wondered what Rowan would say when I told him. When the water went tepid I dried myself and got dressed. The bath was a state: it looked almost as bad as baths did after B had endured her annual shampoo: as well as all the froth from the foam I'd used, there were leg-hairs and bits of eyebrow stuck to the old enamel. In the bedroom, all the pieces of bed were on the floor exactly the way I'd left them. The pieces had made sense when I was sitting in amongst them the day before, with the instructions and the screwdrivers, but now the whole room was in a mess, as if all the bits of wood were from something breaking, not something waiting to be made.

  When I got to Lucky's Rowan was already there, although I didn't notice him at first. We always used to try to sit at the nicest table: nestled in the bay window looking out at people walking past looking in at us. This table was free, but Rowan was right at the other end of the café with his back to me. I walked over.

  It was one minute past one.

  'Anyone sitting here?' I said, sitting down opposite him.

  'Hi,' he said, smiling. 'How are you?'

  'I'm OK,' I said. Then I realised how much had changed since I last saw him. 'Yeah, I'm OK,' I said again.

  Rowan looked behind him and then back at me.

  'It's all right,' I joked. 'I wasn't followed.'

  'I wouldn't be so sure about that,' he said.

  'Huh?'

  'Don't worry.' He shook his head. 'I'm being silly.' He smiled.

  Neither of us said anything for a few seconds. I didn't want to say any of the obvious things. I didn't want to tell him about Christopher, or ask him why he might think we were being followed, or ask about him and Lise. I thought about my column, but I didn't want to start by bragging about it.

  'How's your yoga going?' I said, instead.

  Rowan sighed. 'I haven't been for a couple of weeks. I'm missing it.'

  'I've just started,' I said. 'It is quite calming.'

  'Where are you doing it? Not Dartmouth?'

  'No. From a book. How are you?' I asked. 'How are things?'

  He picked up the menu. 'Let's order first. What do you want?' he said. 'I think I'm just going to have a smoked salmon sandwich and a coffee.'

  'I'll have the same,' I said.

  The waitress came over an
d I explained that I wanted the sandwich without the butter or cream cheese and my double espresso topped up with some water.

  'It's good to be able to meet up outside Dartmouth,' Rowan said. 'Or is that just me? Sitting down to have a sandwich and a coffee, knowing we're not going to bump into anyone we know ... It's nice.'

  'I've kind of left Dartmouth,' I said. 'I've ... Well, actually, I have some news. I've split up with Christopher. I've moved out. I'll give you my new address if you like, in case you want to send me a Christmas card or something. It's in Torcross.'

  'What, on the beach?'

  'Yeah. Right on the beach. It's this amazing cottage. I feel much better about everything. I've got so much time all of a sudden. Space to think. And everything's going quite well with work too, and...'

  'God. You've actually split up with your partner. Not because...'

  'No,' I said. 'Not "because". This has been on the cards for a long time.'

  'How does it feel? If that's not an insensitive question. I mean, the idea of finally splitting up with Lise terrifies me, although it looks like it's on the cards too and I suppose it's what I've wanted for ages. Do you feel lonely?'

  'No. Well, not until you mentioned it.' I laughed. 'Actually, it's wonderful. I feel like I can breathe for the first time in ages. It's probably the same for Christopher. We weren't doing each other any good.' I paused. 'It is kind of scary in a way too, I suppose. I don't know what it's going to be like in the winter when it's just me and the sea. I deleted the last bits of my novel before I went too. Clean slate.'

  'Really?' He sounded alarmed.

  'I'm always doing it. It's not a big deal.' I sighed. 'Oh, I suppose it is a bigger deal this time. This time I really am starting again from scratch. I'm going to try to write about real life for a change, not some pre-packaged idea of real life. You know that conversation we had at Libby and Bob's about omniscience? I think I'm going to try an omniscient narrator who sees everything and judges nothing. Maybe I'll set it on a ship. I'm going to take it quite slowly. And I got some good news from the paper this morning. They've given me a column. So I'll have enough money. It's all good.'

  'That's fantastic.' He smiled. 'I'm jealous, I suppose, of you striking out on your own. I'd like to "ditch" everything and be able to breathe. And apart from anything else, you've actually left Dartmouth.'

  'Do you really hate it?'

  'Yes. It took me ages to realise, and I hate hating anything, if that makes sense, but I do. It's beautiful, of course, absolutely beautiful. When you first cross the river and see all the little houses there in all their pastel colours, it's gorgeous. It's as if real fishermen still lived in them alongside artists and intellectuals. You think that with all that water, and the old stone walls, and all the history, interesting people would want to be there. I mean, we decided to live there after all.'

  'I actually moved there because there was no other option,' I said. 'Christopher knew someone who had a house to rent cheap.'

  'I meant Lise and me. But it was Lise's choice, because of her family being in Kingswear. I wouldn't have chosen it. It has no cinema. I suppose the bookshop is quite good. But the whole atmosphere ... Maybe when you first come, especially if you come across the river by ferry, you don't see the Naval College, and if you're lucky there aren't any warships in the harbour. Then it's very nice. We'd had holidays in Dartmouth in the past, but I never noticed how much I hated it until I lived there. That's why I spend most of my time in Torquay, especially now. It's more real.'

  'Who knows what's real?' I said. 'Still at least in Torquay there's some sense of real drama and real problems. They seem to have to simulate that in Dartmouth by having military aircraft perform dangerous stunts over the river all the time as if there was no fossil-fuel crisis in the world.'

  'When they're not doing that they like blacking-up and performing "old-fashioned minstrel" shows. I went to one once with Lise, and we had a massive row afterwards because I wanted to walk out, and she wanted to be polite because there were people there she knew from school, and some of Sacha's crowd.'

  Our coffees arrived.

  'Lise just couldn't see it,' Rowan said. 'I was so angry I didn't know what to say, so I just left. I ended up driving out of the place until I came to this country pub in Tuckenhay, where I got a little room for the night that looked directly onto Bow Creek, which is the best part of the River Dart, I think, because it has divorced itself from it. I woke up on my own and watched a white egret stirring up the mud to get his breakfast. It was the most peaceful morning I've had in years, because I wasn't with Lise and I wasn't in Dartmouth. My niece and nephew have become foodies, and that means they can just about cope in Dartmouth, although I think Bob's had enough and wants to go and live in London, but I can't imagine Conrad liking that much. Poor kid—he's got doting parents here, so he can't ever leave. And there's Libby with her—what did you call it?—her "tragic love affair".'

  'I think that's over now, pretty much,' I said.

  'Poor Libby. Or not?'

  'Poor everyone,' I said.

  'Oh.'

  'Lots of affairs go on in Dartmouth,' I said. 'At least, among people who can't handle the place. It's something to do.' I remembered that one of the reasons we were here was Lise's affair. 'Sorry. That's not tactful, is it?'

  Our sandwiches arrived, and we picked at them for a few moments. Rowan looked behind him, and then back at me.

  'The night I went off to Tuckenhay,' he said, 'Lise went to stay in a hotel as well, in case I came back. She said she didn't want to be the drip who stayed at home, which I have to admit I respected. She said it was awful in lots of ways: a car park between the hotel and the river, so the "river view" was actually of cars, but she also said the food was really great. She persuaded me to go back there with her one night for dinner. I hated it instantly and we argued about that. God—I think we argue about everything. Maybe that's healthy. But she made me go in and said it would be a laugh. The conversations at the tables around us were quite hilarious. One woman was saying that she shouldn't have soup "this late" because she'd have to get up and pee in the night. It was only seven o'clock. We did end up having sort of a laugh, although even Lise had to admit the atmosphere was terrible, which more or less spoiled the food. It wasn't my kind of thing at all, especially since I'd rather cook my own fish on a beach somewhere. But that probably was the last time we had fun, I think. And sex.' He must have seen my face. 'Sorry.'

  'There's no reason to apologise to me,' I said. 'Is there?'

  'Well, no, but...'

  'So what's happening with you and Lise? Have you been for counselling yet?'

  'No. She's gone off that idea. In fact...' He looked over his shoulder again.

  'What?'

  He sighed. 'She's accused me of having an affair. Or wanting to.'

  'What? Why? Who with?'

  'With you. She's turned the whole thing around. Now she's saying that she only had an affair in the first place because she thought I was having one already. She said it was like having to go and stay in a hotel because I did. Again, she didn't want to be a drip. That's why I said no to lunch when we were on the ferry, and to be honest that's why I'm feeling really nervous about being seen with you now.'

  'God. But that's...'

  'Am I embarrassing you?' He sighed. 'This is all very hard to say. It's probably worse to listen to. I'm sorry.'

  'I don't know if I'm embarrassed or not. Why me?'

  'She knew about the lunches we had when we were both working in the library. I think I said you were interesting and good company. That was a big mistake. Apparently we exchanged "a look" at some dinner party.'

  'Well, how does she know that? She wasn't even there.'

  'Not Libby and Bob's. This was ages ago. After that she forbade me from ever seeing you again.'

  'That's ridiculous.'

  'I know.'

  'And she really did have an affair?'

  'Oh, yes. Like you said, everyone's at it i
n Dartmouth. Except us.'

  'Seems a bit of a waste,' I said. Then I blushed. 'Sorry. Joke.'

  'No. You're right. Of course, you're right in the sense that...'

  'Anyway, I've left Dartmouth now.'

  He nodded thoughtfully. 'That's probably a good thing.'

  'What, for your relationship? Yeah, well, obviously that would have been my number-one priority when I left.'

  'That's not really what I meant,' he said, looking at the table.

  'No.'

  'But I am asking a lot of you. I'm really sorry.'

  'It's OK. I'm sorry I snapped. You're my friend. I shouldn't be...'

  'I told Lise I didn't want to have an affair with you, but she didn't believe me.'

  'Why?' I said.

  'She said you were my type. She said she'd noticed you even before I did.'

  'I didn't think I was anyone's type.'

  'Meg...'

  'And she was obviously wrong, wasn't she? I mean, you're obviously not attracted to me at all. Did you tell her that, when you were denying everything?'

  Rowan looked at his fingers, clasped them together and then brought them up in front of his face. Then he rested his chin on his folded hands.

  'No,' he said. 'No, I didn't tell her that.'

  'Why not?'

  'Because it's not true. You know that. You know how I feel about you. But I can't feel it, and I can't do anything about it. I thought that was the same for both of us. I thought that's why we never talked about it. Except now you've left Christopher, and...'