Outside the school, as the three of them walked away, Alan spotted an abandoned supermarket trolley. Instantly he picked Mikey up, dumped him in it and ran with it along the side of the road. The yells of the delighted boy, crouching in the clattering tray as they skidded around corners and over speed bumps, and Anne’s cries as she ran behind, trying to keep up, pierced the early evening dark.
Laughing, breathless and warm, they soon arrived at the house. Anne closed the shutters and switched on the Christmas tree lights. The room had changed since he’d last been there. It contained only her things. There was nothing of him left in it.
She poured Alan a glass of brandy. Mikey gulped down his juice. Anne said he could pick a bar of chocolate from the tree if he shared it with them. As they discussed the nativity Alan noticed that his son seemed wary and uncertain, as if he weren’t sure which parent he should go to, sensing he couldn’t favour one without displeasing the other.
At last Alan got up to leave.
‘Oh, I forgot,’ Anne said. ‘I bought some mince pies and brandy butter. I don’t know why I bothered, but I did. You still like them, don’t you? I’ll put them on one plate for you and Mikey to share. Is that okay?’
She went to heat them up. Alan had told Melanie he wouldn’t be long. He had to go to her. What a terrifying machine the imagination could be. If it was terrible between them tonight, they might do something irreversible tomorrow. He was afraid her mind might become set.
‘You look as if you’re in a hurry,’ Anne said, when she returned.
He said, ‘I’ll finish my drink and have one of these pies, and then I’ll be off.’
‘Will you be coming on Christmas Day?’
He shook his head.
She said, ‘Not even for an hour? She can’t bear to be parted from you, eh?’
‘You know how it is.’
She looked at him angrily. ‘How is it that you can’t spend time with your own son?’
He couldn’t say that Melanie wanted him to be with her on Christmas Day, otherwise she would go away.
Mikey had gone quiet, and was watching them.
She said, ‘It has lasted a long time, with this woman. For you.’
‘It’s going well, yes. We’re having a baby, too.’
‘I see,’ she said, after a while.
‘I’m quite pleased,’ he said.
Melanie had told a number of her friends that she was pregnant; she discussed it constantly on the phone. Anne was the first person he had told.
‘You could have waited.’
‘For what?’ He said, ‘Sorry, I couldn’t wait. You know how it is.’
‘Why do you keep saying that?’
‘It’s a fact. There you are. Live with it.’
She said, ‘I will, thank you.’ Then she said, ‘You won’t be wanting to see Mikey so much, then.’
‘Yes I will.’
‘Why should you?’
He said, ‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘You left us. I only have him. She has everything.’
‘Who?’
‘Your girlfriend.’
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you later.’
He got up and went out into the hall.
At the door the boy held on to the bottom of Alan’s coat. ‘Stay here for ever and ever amen.’
Alan kissed him. ‘I’ll be back soon.’
‘Sleep in Mummy’s bed,’ said Mikey.
‘You can do that for me.’
Mikey pressed a piece of chocolate into his hand. ‘In case you get hungry when I’m asleep.’ Then he said, ‘I talk to you when you’re not here. I talk to you through the floor.’
‘And I hear you,’ said Alan.
His son was in the window, waving and shouting out. He could see his wife, standing back in the room, watching him go.
He left the house and went to the pub. At the bar he ordered a beer with a chaser. It wasn’t until the barman put them in front of him that he remembered he had no money. He apologised and although the barman started to say something, Alan turned and went.
It was cold now. Everything was freezing, the metal of the cars, the sap in the plants, the earth itself. He passed through familiar streets, made unfamiliar by the snow. Many houses were dark; people were starting to go away. As the snow thickened, a rare and unusual silence also fell on the city. He walked faster, swinging his arms inside his coat until he was warm. He thought of the dying man he had met at the door of the school, and of what a terrible thing it was that he hadn’t recognised him. He wanted to find the man and say to him, we all grow different and change, every day; it was that, only that. Certainly, no sooner did Alan think he’d understood something of himself than he was changed. That was hope.
From a certain point of view the world was ashes. You could also convert it to dust by burning away all hope, appetite, desire. But to live was, in some sense, to believe in the future. You couldn’t keep returning to the same dirty place.
He ran up the steps to the house. The light was on. He knew things would be all right if she were wearing the dressing gown he had given her.
In the kitchen she was heating a quiche and making salad. She looked at him without hostility. Not that she spoke; he didn’t either. He watched her, but was determined not to go to her. He believed that if he could cut his desire for her out of himself, he could survive. At the same time he knew that without desire there was nothing.
Sitting there, he thought that he had never before realised that life could be so painful. He understood, too, that no amount of drink, drugs or meditation could make things better for good. He recalled a phrase from Socrates he had learned at university: ‘A good man cannot suffer any evil, either in life or after death.’ Wittgenstein, commenting on this, talked of feeling ‘absolutely safe’. He would look it up. Maybe there was something in it for him, some final ‘inner safety’.
They changed into their night clothes and at last got into his favourite place, their bed. Opening her dressing gown he put his hand on her stomach and caressed her. For a short while she lay in his arms as he touched her. Then she touched him a little, before turning over and falling asleep.
He started to think of his sleeping son, as he always did at this time, wondering if Mikey had woken up and was talking to him ‘through the floor’. He wanted to go and kiss his son goodnight, as other fathers did. Perhaps he would have another son, and it would be different. He looked around the room. There wasn’t enough space for a wardrobe; their clothes were piled at the end of the bed. On a chair next to him, illuminated by a tilting lamp, was a copy of Great Expectations, a bottle of massage oil encrusted with greasy dust, his reading glasses, a glass with a splash of wine in it, and a notebook.
His life and mind had been so busy that the idea of sitting in bed to write in his journal, or even to read, seemed an outlandish luxury, the representation of an impossible peace. But also, that kind of solitude seemed too much like waiting for something to start. He had wanted to be disturbed; and he had been.
He knew their resentments went deep and continued to grow. But he and Melanie were afraid rather than wicked. In their own, clumsy way, they were each fighting to preserve themselves. Love could be torn down in a minute, like taking a stick to a spider’s web. But love was an admixture; it never came pure. He knew there was sufficient love and tenderness between them; and that no love should go wasted.
The Penis
Alfie was having breakfast with his wife at the kitchen table.
He couldn’t have slept for more than three hours, having been out the previous night. He was a cutter — a hairdresser — and had to get to work. Once there, as well as having to endure the noise and queues of customers, he had to make conversation all day.