‘Not her. Romance doesn’t last. But respect and co-operation do. I’m a doctor. I recommend endurance.’
‘If I wanted to test my endurance I’d go to the gym like that idiot Vance. I think I’ve got Alzheimer’s disease.’
The doctor laid his hand on Rocco’s forehead. It was damp. Rocco seemed to be sweating alcohol. Bodger was about to inform him that his T-shirt was inside out and back to front, but he remembered that when his friend’s shirts became too offensive he reversed them.
‘I don’t think so. Does she love you?’
Rocco sighed. ‘She thinks she’s one of those magazine independent women, but without me she’d be all over the place. She’s useless really. What can she do? She has irritating ways.’
‘Like what?’ said Bodger with interest.
Rocco tried to think of a specific illustration that wasn’t petty. He couldn’t tell Bodger he hated the way she poked him in the stomach while trying to talk to him; or the way she blew in his nostrils and ears when they were having sex; or the way she applied for jobs she’d never get, and then claimed he didn’t encourage her; how she always had a cold and insisted, when taking her temperature, that insertion of the thermometer up the backside was the only way to obtain a legitimate reading; or how she was always losing money, keys, letters, even her shoes, and falling off her bicycle. Or how she’d take up French or singing, but give up after a few weeks, and then say she was useless.
Rocco said, ‘What can you do when you’re with a person you dislike, but move on to another person you dislike? Isn’t that called hope? I’m off.’
‘Where?’
‘Back to London. New people, new everything. Except we’ve got no money, nothing.’
Bodger said, ‘You’re intelligent, that’s the problem.’
Rocco was biting his nails. ‘I miss the smell of the tube, the crowds in Soho at night, men mending the road outside your window at eight in the morning, people pissing into your basement, repulsive homunculi in ill-fitting trousers shouting at strangers. In the city anything can turn up. There’s less time to think there. My mind won’t shut up, Bodger.’
The doctor collected his things. ‘Nor will my patients.’
‘Don’t mention this, because I’m not telling her yet.’ Rocco pulled out a letter. ‘Yesterday this arrived. It fell open — accidentally. Her husband’s not well.’
Bodger leant over to look at it, but stopped himself. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Aren’t you going to show it to her?’
‘She’ll get upset and I won’t be able to leave her for ages.’
‘But you took her away from her husband, for God’s sake. Marry her now, Rocco, please!’
‘That’s a good idea, when I can’t bear the girl and couldn’t fuck her with my eyes closed.’
Bodger paid, as he always did, and the two friends walked along the top of the cliff. When they parted Bodger told Rocco how he wished he had a woman like Lisa, and that he didn’t understand why she would live with Rocco and not with him.
‘Those shoulders, those shoulders,’ he murmured. ‘I’d be able to love her.’
‘But we’ll never know that for sure, will we?’ said Rocco. ‘Thanks for the advice. By the way, have you ever lived with a woman?’
‘What? Not exactly.’
Rocco sauntered off.
Bodger hoped he wouldn’t be thinking of Rocco and Lisa all morning. Occasions like this made him want to appreciate what he had. He would do this by thinking of something worse, like being stuck in a tunnel on the District Line in London on the hottest day of the year. Yes, he liked this seaside town and the sea breeze, particularly early in the morning, when the shops and restaurants were opening and the beach was being cleaned.
‘Karen, Karen!’ he called to Vance’s wife who was jogging on the beach. She waved back.
2
When Rocco got home Lisa had managed to dress and had even combed her hair. She wore a long black sleeveless dress and knee-high leather boots. The night before she’d been at a party on the beach. Most people had been stoned. She couldn’t see the point of that any more, everyone out of it, dancing in their own space. She had got away and rested in the dunes. Now she sat at the window drinking coffee and reading a magazine she’d read before.
‘Would it be okay if I went swimming this morning?’ she asked.
She was supposed to sign on but had obviously forgotten. Rocco was about to remind her but preferred the option of blaming her later.
‘I don’t care what you do.’
‘I only asked because Bodger told me to take it easy.’
‘Why, what’s wrong with you now?’
She shrugged. He looked at her bare white neck and the little curls on the nape he had kissed a hundred times.
He went into the bedroom. His head felt damp, as if sweat was constantly seeping from his follicles. He was too exhausted to even gesture at the ants on the pillow. They were all over the house. If you sat down they crawled up your legs; if you opened a paper they ran across the pages. But neither of them did anything about it.
He lay down. Almost immediately, though, he groaned. He could hear, through a megaphone, a voice intoning Hail Marys. The daily procession of pilgrims to the local shrine, one of Europe’s oldest, had begun. They came by coach from all over the country. People in wheelchairs, others on crutches, the simple, the unhappy and the dying limped up the lane past the cottage. A wooden black madonna was hoisted on the shoulders of the relatively hearty; others embraced rosaries and crucifixes. The sound echoed across the fields of grazing cattle. Cults, shamans, mystics; the hopeless searched everywhere. To everyone their own religion, these days. Who was not deranged, from a certain point of view? Who didn’t long for help?
In their first weeks in the cottage, he and Lisa had played a game as the pilgrims passed. Rocco would put on a Madonna record, run up the steps of their raised garden, and piss over the hedge onto the shriners, crying, ‘Holy water, holy water!’ Lisa would rush to restrain him and they would fuck, laughing, in the garden.
The day was ahead of him and what did he want to do? He thought that having intentions, something in the future to move towards, might make the present a tolerable bridge. But he couldn’t think of any projects to want.
Rereading the letter he looked up and saw Lisa observing him. He was about to stuff it back in his pocket, but how would she know what it contained?
Three years ago he had fallen in love. Lisa wasn’t only pretty; plenty of women were pretty. She was graceful, and everything about her had beauty in it. She was self-aware without any vanity; and, most of the time, she knew her worth, without conceit. With her, he would make an attempt at monogamy, much vaunted as a virtue, apparently, by some. She would curb his desire. Running away with her would also represent an escape from futility. Now, however, he felt that all he had to do was abandon her, flee and somehow achieve the same thing.
He said, ‘I’ll ask Bodger if you can swim. I need some advice myself.’
‘About what?’
‘Everything.’
Rocco knew he was talented: he could play and compose music; he could direct in the theatre and on film; he could write. To release his powers he had to get away. Action was possible. That, at least, he’d decided. This cheered him, but not as much as it should, because he didn’t even have the money to travel to the next railway station. And, of course, before he got out he’d have to settle things with Lisa. He needed a longer discussion with Bodger.