‘Did Alex tell you how we met, Mrs. Sopso?’ she asked after some moments.
‘I was just going to ask you sweetie!’
‘It was at this pa – ’ Alex began.
‘Let me tell the story, Alex!’ Lilliana interrupted emphatically.
For a horrible moment Alex thought she was going to tell them the truth, tell them how they had really met, and that he was a liar and a fraud, that the evening had all been staged.
But she had another, more mysterious agenda . . .
Ever since she had walked into the restaurant an afternoon from her past had kept on returning to her, the memory of which she had always treasured, when life had revealed itself in all its richness, when it had been bliss just to breathe. A man had arrived at the end of that idyllic afternoon, a man she had been strongly attracted to. Sadly, she had never set eyes on him again. Now she decided to let Alex Sopso be that man for a while, to let him occupy that special place in her mind. And, in so doing, she hoped to forge a large dent in Harvey Sopso’s armor.
‘Yes, I’ll tell you how I met Alex. It’s a good story.
‘It was in the summer. Last summer. I was coming back from the countryside where I’d been visiting a girlfriend. I remember it was a boiling hot day. The concrete on the station platform was hot enough to fry an egg on. The station bordered a field of daffodils, and they swayed slightly each time the breeze blew. It was beautiful. There wasn’t a soul; you know country stations – they’re always deserted. In the winter it’s horrible but on a day like that an empty railway station is sort of magical. I could have waited there, for a train, for hours.’
She took a sip of water. Alex stared at her, wondering where this story was leading.
‘After a while the London train pulled in. I walked down to the last carriage and climbed on. All the windows were down and the wind poured in. Quite wonderfully, I had the carriage all to myself.
‘Never-ending fields flew past. The sun popped up as we rounded a corner, blinding in the sky. I was feeling incredibly happy. Maybe that mixture of movement, sunlight and solitude came at exactly the right time. You see, the friend I’d just left had made it possible for me to buy the flower shop by lending me some money. I’d just quit a job in a cockroach-infested restaurant. The world seemed full of promise. I’d changed my life, not enormously, but it was something. So it felt like things were coming together in that ragamuffin carriage.
‘I stuck my head out at each stop. No one ever got on, the whistle just blew and we clunked off. Then a mother and her little daughter shuffled in from the next carriage. They made me think of the outer and innermost sections of a Russian doll. Whenever her mother spoke the little girl repeated her words; whenever she made a movement or adjusted her hair, her daughter mimicked her. It was just unbelievably sweet. And funny. I watched them secretly from my corner by the window.
‘No one else got on for the rest of the journey. We pulled in to King’s Cross. The joy of the train ride was still with me so to celebrate I decided to have a coffee and a cake. As I waited in the queue in the cafeteria I noticed a man sitting on his own. He was reading a novel: The Flight of the Innocent. It’s by a writer from the 1930’s, Catherine Lyle. The first time I read it was at school. Hardly anyone’s heard of it, so I was rather amazed to see it in his hands. It’s not especially great or anything but whenever I pick it up it takes me back to when I was fourteen. So it has sentimental value, I suppose. It’s the story of a young girl growing up in Looe. She spends her time playing truant from school, wandering around the Bodmin moors, flying kites, making dresses, listening to the sound of the waves breaking. Eventually she makes friends with one of the young fishermen. They have a love affair and he breaks her heart. That’s it, really, pretty predictable. But there’s something in the way she writes about adolescence which is very vivid, real. She captures the awkwardness, the dreams, the body’s confusion.
‘I don’t know why; maybe it was my feeling of optimism and confidence, or maybe it was the fact that he looked kind, or maybe it was just because he was reading that particular book, but I had the overwhelming urge to speak to him, which isn’t something I’m normally brave enough to do.
‘At first he looked puzzled, but then as we began discussing Josie – the heroine of the book – he asked me if I’d like to join him. Then we talked. We talked for hours. He missed his train, though I begged him not to. We talked until the cafe closed and they had to throw us out. I told him I thought Josie was someone you hoped would grow up to be this wonderful, intelligent, beautiful woman. But you were also afraid she might not fulfill her youthful promise and just marry some dull man she’d be forced to suppress her identity and dreams for. Then I told him about my dreams. He was wonderful, intriguing, gentle. I told him about how I wanted my shop to look, about the place I had in mind to buy and do up, about how I wanted a spiral staircase. I waxed hysterical about Oriental lilies. I told him about the temperate room in Kew Gardens where there are these massive, frightening Javanese banana trees which look as if they’re going to start moving. I bored him silly. I told him about the hydrangeas in Madeira. When you first see them you think they’re fruit because they’re so ripe and solid. They look like peeled pomegranates or crimson cauliflowers.’
She paused and took a sip of water. For a moment she looked drained by some buried sadness. But then her eyes grew defiant.
She murmured slowly, ‘The man’s name was...,’ but she trailed off.
With a trembling voice she whispered, ‘...Alex Sopso.’ Then, with sudden conviction, and smiling broadly, her face reborn, she said, ‘I think Alex is very special. And his heart is very big.’
There was a period of digestive silence.
As she had told the story in her slow, careful way Alex gazed at her in wonder and became overwhelmed by a feeling of infinite fragility. Lilliana’s story was like a snowflake which she had plucked from her pocket and offered up to them, miraculously intact and unmelted. He wanted to preserve that moment in his mind, the story itself, which was perfect and so unrepeatable, a moment as wonderful as the ones she herself had described. Her words created great longing in him for her; he was bewitched by the poetry of her tale, but also filled with the pathos of knowing that the story was not about him. He wanted to ask whether or not she had ever seen the man again.
‘So that’s how it was,’ she said.
Harvey Sopso, very slowly and weightedly, asked, ‘Are you sure we’re talking about Alex?’
Nina Sopso said, ‘Of course, that’s my dear little Alexei all right.’
For a moment Harvey Sopso suggested a fatally wounded bull, heaving and rasping in the throes of a death agony. With an effort he summoned up a more dignified expression and grunted, ‘Alex, that good-for-nothing?’
Nina said, ‘Harvey! Don’t start in on Alexei, I’ve told you before; he’s very sensitive. How can you talk about your own son like that? That was lovely.... ’
‘Tell me something,’ Harvey continued, ‘didn’t his wig bother you?’
Lilliana decided to steel herself further, to counter his nihilism more outrageously, more ridiculously, and merrily declared, ‘Oh no, in fact that was one of the things that attracted me to your son.’
‘What? No one’s attracted to a wig!!’
‘Mr. Sopso, forgive me but I feel that you’re far too hard on your son. Has it perhaps ever occurred to you that many of his problems might have stemmed from your own overwhelmingly strong opinions?’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ And here Mr. Sopso became rather angry and knocked over a wine glass. ‘Are you trying to tell me my business, are you trying to tell me I’ve been a bad father?’
‘No, Mr. Sopso, but it’s clear to me that you’re not the easiest man in the world to talk to.’
‘Lilliana,’ said Alex, ‘don’t worry, don’t bother. It’s all right, it’s fine.’
‘It’s not fine, Alex, it’s not fine, and it’s not all right. I think that these thin
gs have to be confronted. I don’t think you should put up with the kind of treatment your father metes out to you. And I think that – ’
Nina, her voice assuming that shrill pitch that Lilliana had noted when she first came into the restaurant, her arms becoming airborne, said, ‘Darlings, darlings, let’s not have a fight; we haven’t even had the starters yet, it will spoil our appetites, won’t it? I mean, I for one am very happy for you both and I just want us all to be – ’
Harvey interrupted with, ‘If Alex has anything to say, he can say it to me now, to my face, which will be fine by me, and better than saying it to me when I’m in Germany.’
Alex, whose body all this time had been as tightly wound as piano wire, his face agonizingly contorted, said, ‘Please, let’s just drop this. There is nothing I wish to say to you; you are a fine father and I...I...’
He caught a glimpse of Lilliana watching him intently. The movement of time slowed. The noise of the other diners seemed to fade away.
Her story – its delicacy, the things it revealed about her – formed a collective thread. Had she told the story, so romantic and dreamy, in order to nudge his father toward the negative remarks he would inevitably make, remarks that would prompt Alex to defend himself? Had she foreseen what would happen? Was she trying, obliquely, to force him to confess his sexual persuasions to them, to do him a favor of sorts? He glanced at her face, convulsed with feeling. She seemed to be saying, with her eyes, as she stared at him, that she was there for him, that she would support him, that she wanted him to defend himself, to be himself, to oppose his father’s violent will. How could he be sure though? He could not ask her now, could not confer with her now, in the presence of his parents. He would have to act alone.
‘Dad, I have got something to say to you, and to you, Mum.’
Even before he had finished his sentence panic and dread were casting jagged shadows across the table. Lilliana found her palms were instantly bathed in sweat.
‘The thing is...I’m, I’m...there’s no easy way of saying this...this isn’t easy – ’
‘For God’s sake, Alexei, don’t tell us she’s up the spout!’ Nina Sopso interrupted, with a notable absence of tact.
‘No, no, the thing is...I...this isn’t about Lilliana at all...or about us...it’s about me...just me...and...it’s about my personal...personal...the thing is...how can I put it? I...well...I...I like men.’
‘Big deal. So do I,’ said Harvey.
Nina chimed in with, ‘So do I. Or at least I used to.’
‘No, that’s not what I mean. I mean...I like men...I mean I’m...I’m a...I’m a homosexual.’
At that precise moment the waiter appeared to ask if everything was all right.
‘I’m a homosexual! I can’t ever have a wife!’ Alex screamed at the waiter.
He scuttled off like a spider.
Mr. Sopso’s face became a mass of wrinkles and all the world’s pain flooded into his eyes. Mrs. Sopso looked staggered, but beside her husband’s face her own was the picture of contentment.
Mr. Sopso began sobbing like a baby. All the tension of the evening, all the tension of his life began to thaw and this was the result, a great unstoppable torrent of tears. The four of them sat huddled together in a silent hell. While the emasculation of Alex’s world proceeded the other diners told stories, laughing and howling.
Finally his father stammered, ‘What...what have you been telling me all these years? What is all this pigshit? Has it all been lies? That you just haven’t met the right girl? When I think of what you’ve been telling me, has it all just been lies? What kind of a son are you? Answer me!’
But Alex couldn’t form words. He wasn’t feeling very well.
‘And what about this woman here...who is she...what about this cock and bull story she just told? I mean what is going on?’
He turned to Lilliana and began to direct his aggression toward her.
‘What have you got to say for yourself? How can you sit there and speak to me of trains and The Light of the Innocent and God knows what and all this time – ’
Finally, Alex managed to piece splattered words together. ‘Dad – don’t blame her – it’s me you should be blaming. I asked her to do it. I wanted to make you happy. I wanted to tell you that I’d met someone – ’
‘To make me happy! What could you have been thinking? And you, what should I call you – a courtesan? You make fun of a poor old man, sitting there, like a duchess, and you have the gall to dictate to me about what is right and wrong, and you’ve been lying through your teeth, lying in front of God. Yes, God sees everything, everything, all comes under his gaze, and you just –’
‘Dad, can you be quiet? She’s not to blame, I am. But it’s good that you know now, know the truth; this couldn’t have gone on for ever. It’s better this way.’
‘No it isn’t. It’s not better and I’ll make sure that it isn’t better.’
Lilliana couldn’t bear anymore. She shot to her feet, her chair screeching as it was dragged backwards from under her, her eyes streaming with tears. As she rushed toward the exit she brushed against a bunch of orange amaryllis and one of the stems was flung outwards violently. In her confusion she stooped to pick it up. For a moment she allowed herself to stare at the delicate, gauze-like texture which had an almost human expressiveness, its curves appearing in that moment terrifying, its beauty made of nausea, making her long to find a place purged of all feelings. Not knowing what to do with the stem, she put it in her jacket pocket. Some of the other diners stared at her as she scrambled to the door, fumbled with it, and stepped outside shakily.
What have I done? I’ve ruined everything. He only said what he said because I started criticizing his father, because he thought I would be there for him and now I’ve just walked out and left him in the mess I created and I shouldn’t have said anything to his father and I shouldn’t have told the story and it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault.
Walking at a frantic pace she reached Regent Street in less than a minute. As she hurried down toward Piccadilly her brain rioted. She was not in any real sense aware of her surroundings. Only of screaming thoughts. She heard some sounds, but they were inchoate, vague. She took a step and then another, some impulse in her compelling her to cross the road. It would be good to cross, I could be on the other side. Farther away. The road would be between me and the restaurant. I’d be farther away from the restaurant...
safe...
A black hole opened. Consciousness tumbled down it sickeningly...
Something’s got my wrist.
A car hurtled past, its horn blaring horribly.
Oh God.
A hand was pulling her wrist, stopping the flow of blood, dragging her backwards.
My hand. The car. It hurts. Turn around.
There is a man standing next to her. They are standing near the curb.
The man lets go of her hand. The blood begins to flow. The man is tall. He is dressed in white. He has green eyes.
‘Are you all right?’ he asks, registering the sight of her flooded, bloodshot eyes, her smudged mascara.
‘What? What? Yes, I’m all right, thank you, you...’
‘Are you sure? What happened?’
‘I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t see it.’
‘Didn’t you hear the car?’
‘No, I didn’t hear it coming.’
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘Yes, I’m sure, I’m sure.’
She walks off as if in a trance. As she does so the meaning of what has just happened begins to sink in and she realizes how odd she must have seemed. She turns back to thank the man, properly this time. But when she returns to the spot by the curb he’s already gone.
She stands there, a solitary figure, the wind from the speeding traffic causing her hair to swirl fiercely. She tries desperately to remember what he looked like, the shape of his face. But he is gone.
Some way down along
the pavement petals from the amaryllis stir in the wind.
She stares at them for an hour.
Then she begins to make her way home.
13
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24 July 200 -
Oscar Babel: The Invention of Wisdom
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‘When love is working it can stop time so that everything shimmers.’
WHO IS OSCAR BABEL?
Oscar Babel is a free thinker and pioneer, who may well develop into the most influential speaker of the day. He is still only twenty-six years of age. He stands well over six-feet tall. And he is brilliance personified.
He has no preconceptions, no limitations. His mind is open. He is free when all around others are handcuffed by greed, hypocrisy, money and misery.
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Ryan Rees is always on the lookout for fresh talent, for people who can be promoted because of their exceptional charisma, because of their compelling personalities. Because Ryan Rees is only interested in one thing: excellence. His credo might be: ‘serve the people, feed the real.’
Ryan Rees discovered Mr. Babel’s original, extraordinary mind during a chance meeting in a Tapas Bar in West Kensington, London when the publicist overheard Mr. Babel holding forth. He was so struck by his fellow customer’s brilliance and erudition – despite the sound of flamenco guitar music – that he immediately offered his services.
The Fabrications Page 18