He put a tick against the question as to whether she would laugh. Its sound came as the first real sign of life. ‘An aunt of mine died,’ he said, ‘who left me a flat in Brighton, and I’ll be going there in a day or two. I haven’t yet sifted through the stuff she left.’ He came back to the table. From previously thinking he had nothing to lose by certain proposals, he felt that care was needed because something more was at stake. ‘I was brought up as an orphan, so I might find out a few things about my past.’
The food and wine made her drowsy. ‘Don’t you know enough already?’
‘Sufficient to breathe on, I suppose. But who knows everything? There’s a lot more somewhere. Wouldn’t you think there is?’
‘There might be – I daresay.’
‘I never asked my aunt direct questions, thinking that any information would come to me in its own good time. I suppose I could have, but now it’s too late. For some reason I didn’t have the burning curiosity about myself until now, nor to get through to anything even deeper than information, if you see what I mean.’
‘I think I do.’
He felt as if he had never spoken what was truly in his mind. ‘Young kids these days take drugs to blast a hole in the wall that they think keeps them from knowing themselves. Either it doesn’t work, or there’s nothing to know, and so they find they’ve turned into zombies when the smoke of the explosion’s drifted away. You can’t get through to something that you are not, or even into something that you might wish you were. I prefer to know myself in my own good time, at the rate my mind was born to move at. Maybe there’s nothing there, but if not then at least I won’t get brain damage trying to find out.’
She sipped her bitter coffee, thinking how lucky he was to be able to talk so easily.
‘There are other ways than by drugs.’
Perhaps he spoke like that because he’d spent years talking to himself. ‘I’m sure.’
He lit his pipe. ‘I know so. I’ve tried a few. But often the sea drained every possibility of personal speculation, except that concerning the existence of God. I don’t feel embarrassed saying that, because it’s a question which on still waters has no answer, and seems all too obvious during storms. One watch follows another, and such speculations soon lose any relevance they had on taking departure. Days drift by. A storm is one day, however long it goes on, and a calm sea likewise. Every minute is occupied by a routine of vigilance, even if it only means staring at a plate-glass ocean. Life is a drill, slow-motion sometimes, often too hectic for good health, but at least you don’t forget anything, or let yourself in for too many systematic, constant, random or probable errors, or fall into a dreadful blunder on getting too near land that sends you to the bottom like concrete. But on shore everything’s different, a matter of learning to live so that you don’t seem like a ghost to everybody as you walk the streets, and so that you don’t feel one to yourself. I don’t need shock or drugs to get me to a new state of being, as I read in the colour-supplement magazines that people often do. I have to get accustomed to normal land-locked life, and it’s like being born again, which I suppose is enough of a shock.’
Her face was encased in her long slim hands. She had not replaced her wedding ring. He was talking for a purpose. She wanted him to continue.
‘I was going to ask,’ he said, ‘if you’ve got time to spare, whether you’d like to travel down to Brighton with me. I like to look at the sea now and again, that cemetery of old friends, not to mention myself.’
He was surprised not to feel embarrassment at such disembowelling of the spirit. Sailors’ tales with mates or girlfriends had been different, and reflections like these had been kept secret in either fair or foul weather. ‘You can go your own way in Brighton, or come to the flat and I’ll show you around the old place. It’ll be a change for you, and a pleasure for me to have company.’
She wanted to say yes. His offer was too important to refuse, being the only one she’d had. Can I let you know later? I’m not sure how I feel. She didn’t speak, but vaguely nodded. To judge by his smile she had accepted. She was too exhausted not to. She needed freedom and ease, to sleep, but not to die any more because she wanted to know who he was. Coloured sparks were spinning in the space where her thoughts were losing themselves. No one had graced her with this kind of talk before.
6
In the dark, at five in the afternoon, she put on the light and got out of bed. Endless time was before her, but why didn’t her thoughts stop racing? She drew the curtains, and dressed. The room was cold, so she lit the gas. She listened for movement from next door. He had gone out. She pressed three teabags in boiling water to make a strong drink.
Every move is deeper into a prison when you are on your own. There is no place more secure than that of yourself, which those who are alone go further into at every step. She knew it, but was unable to make amends.
The rain had stopped, but it was cold and raw. She passed a lit-up police station and turned towards the Underground. The rush hour was coming out, pushing up the steps. Traffic was stalled at the lights. An old man clutching a plastic bag searched a dustbin.
She got rid of some tenpenny pieces in the ticket machine. Few people went down, but the up-escalator was packed. She wanted to walk in lighted places. She craved to be in the dark, on her own. She needed both conditions, and was glad to be alive.
She liked being wherever she was. A train came quickly. Stops flashed by. She missed Oxford Circus, got out at Tottenham Court Road, followed crowds into the fume-laden air, looked at faces behind the glass of Wimpys, Hamburgers, Golden Eggs and Grills.
The window of a sex shop was veiled. She saw books, tapes, films, vibrators, condoms, flimsy underwear that probably melted when you washed it, rubber suits and rubber dollies that perished after whatever was done to them, and contraptions whose uses she didn’t try to fathom. The men and few women had perhaps come in out of curiosity like her. There were young people, and the smart middle-aged with brief-cases. Film shows took place behind a curtain. Relaxed and unconcerned, people inspected goods on offer, read labels and sets of instructions, and bored young women at the cash desk checked items out like food at a supermarket.
A man gripped her elbow. ‘Will you come with me?’
She snapped her arm clear. There was no fuss. Would she have gone with him if it had been Tom? The answer was no, but he wouldn’t have done such a thing. But if he did? Don’t think. Don’t think.
She looked along more shelves and tables of the sexual-fun market that promised the unattainable. A tourist or passer-by was born every minute to fall for such unkept promises, moneyed customers who bought some mechanical spirit-killer to use in making love, goods to be put in Christmas stockings or to litter desert tents. Love is the last thing it can be called.
The district was a garish beast glutted on all that was false. People come to London and go home clutching some sexual gewgaw as they had once taken a stick of rock and a funny hat from the seaside. Whether they walked out with something in their mac pockets, or stuffed into pigskin briefcases, they had more money than was needed for life’s necessities. Goods had to be provided in exchange for floating cash, for they couldn’t be expected to throw their money into the gutter or keep it in the bank, though she supposed that most of the stuff ended in dustbins that tramps rummaged through looking for something to keep them alive.