‘That one doesn’t go anywhere,’ he said, indicating the path from which he had just come. He dug his hands in his pockets and trod heavily past her.
Agnes sat on a bench in the centre of the maze. It was nearly dark now. Only a few minutes earlier, a bell had rung into the silence to signal the imminent closure of the area. Really it was a sordid affair. She gazed round the grim enclosure with its overflowing bins and cigarette-strewn floor, its single tree graven with the names of lovers. She wondered who they were, these people who saw fit to advertise their union in a place they would not see again; or perhaps would see later, alone, knowing now what they had so desperately wanted to know then, blushing perhaps at their faulty arithmetic which, in calculating that one and one made one, implied that now they were half the people they once had been. Perhaps they would add dates, like tombstones.
Two people came into the small clearing. Agnes watched them as they congratulated themselves. They paced its small distance like a prison cell and waited for something to happen. When it didn’t they looked at her suspiciously and then ambled back into the maze. She smiled to herself knowingly. There was nothing here. It was a hoax, an illusion of significance. She had lingered here merely to explore its pointlessness.
‘What was the point?’ she had said when he told her. ‘What did you want from me?’ And then, angry at his silence: ‘Why did you bother?’
The fact that there was someone else, that there had always been someone else, would cease to hurt in time. She had found him here, leaning against the tree with prophecy in his bearing, and in her foolishness had thought this augured well. He had surprised her, in any case. She wondered that he had told her at all. She would suffer for that later. For now, scavenging for clues in the empty room of his motive, she was content to be a fool. The bell rang out again as a low moon crested the sky like a lone, slow-motion surfer skating a vast blue wave. She couldn’t stay here. Here was the moment that could not be hung on to. That things couldn’t just stop was one of her main complaints against the world. She would take the train home, he having taken the car.
Chapter Seventeen
‘TRY four,’ said Nina, popping open a can of beer.
A small volcano of foam erupted through the aperture and she swiftly applied her mouth to it to catch the spillage. It was Sunday, and they were gathered indifferently together in the sitting-room like the wreckage of a rough weekend.
Merlin groaned and picked up the remote control, which he aimed at the television set. A picture of a large monkey nonchalantly scratching itself appeared on the screen.
‘Wildlife,’ he said. ‘We were watching this before, Nina. You told me to turn over, remember?’
‘Oh, yeah. How about three?’
‘Game show. Large spinning wheel, ugly spectacle of human greed and suffering.’
‘Two?’
‘Documentary on rise of capitalist economies. Same thing.’
‘One. Put it in one, Merlin. We have no choice.’
‘Walls have fallen over such things.’ They had spent most of the afternoon watching the liberation of Eastern Europe on television. Merlin flicked the remote control again. ‘Look, one’s a Western. Everyone happy with this? Agnes?’
‘Fine,’ said Agnes. She had been strangely disturbed by the scenes on the streets of Berlin and Budapest. Through the jiggling of a hand-held camera, they had witnessed the rough, unscripted love of humanity for itself; a far cry from the world of svelte, film-star embraces and edited dialogue in which she lost herself nightly. She had felt almost embarrassed by the reality of it.
‘I love these movies,’ said Nina contentedly. ‘The women always look so amazing. Orange hair and beauty spots. Really fake.’
‘They look like inflatable dolls,’ Merlin agreed. ‘Maybe we’ll start getting Easterns now. Frontier dramas with consumer durables.’
‘They’re propaganda films really, aren’t they?’ said Nina, still watching the screen. ‘Like those ones they made about British factories during the war.’
‘No, those were morale boosters. Westerns are just fiction, really. No one believes it was like that any more.’
‘Well, that’s what I said!’ replied Nina petulantly. ‘Propaganda. It’s just outlived its significance, that’s all. The only difference between these and the war films is that we still believe we run the world.’
‘I don’t think you can compare them like that.’ Merlin put his hands behind his head and looked at Nina expectantly.
‘Why not?’
‘Well, for a start it sounds like a conspiracy theory, which suggests a lack of moral vision.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Nina sarcastically. ‘So, when we butcher and proselytise it’s enlightenment, right? But when anyone else does it, it’s persecution. That sounds like a moral hallucination to me.’
‘We needed to win the war,’ Merlin replied calmly. ‘And I would go so far as to say it was one of those rare historical situations when there was a clear case of right and wrong. And we were right.’
‘Oh, come on!’ said Nina. ‘Do you really believe we charged in there for charity?’
‘Charity?’ exclaimed Merlin. ‘That’s an outrageous thing to say! Tell that to six million Jews.’
‘We didn’t care about them, did we? They were politically secondary! We were more worried about munitions factories than camps.’
Agnes stood up, white-faced.
‘Can’t we just enjoy the film?’ she said. Her voice warbled nervously. ‘I mean, can’t we just watch a film without — without holding a full-scale political debate? Why does everything have to be taken so seriously?’ The other two were looking at her in astonishment. She headed for the stairs. ‘Why do you have to take everything so seriously?’
‘Look who’s talking,’ said Nina audibly as Agnes retreated.
‘Oh dear,’ said Merlin.
‘I got a letter from London Transport this morning,’ said Greta dolefully on Monday.
She had, it seemed, tired of her underground admirer, but his affections were not to be so easily derailed.
‘What did it say?’
‘Say is putting it a bit strongly. Grunt would be more accurate.’
Greta’s hand dived into the packet of biscuits in front of her and emerged triumphant.
‘The guy’s a fruitcake,’ she continued between bites. ‘I’m amazed he can write. Cookie?’
‘Oh, thanks.’ Agnes took one and began to chew it. The soft, sugary mass on her tongue comforted her momentarily and was gone. She took another. ‘At least you’re getting some attention,’ she said.
It had been meant as a joke, but instead had the effect of sounding out the depths of her own desperation. Greta laughed loudly, her lipsticked mouth studded with crumbs which Agnes wondered uncomfortably if she should tell her about.
‘Yeah, it makes you feel kind of special getting fixed on by people who are funny in the head. Did I tell you he’s been hanging around outside my house?’ She inspected her nails. ‘I mean, we went out on a few dates and now he’s behaving like a pervert. I hate dates. Dates are things you eat.’
‘You’ve got some crumbs on your lip,’ said Agnes, who was beginning to feel upset.
Greta grinned and put her hand into the now empty biscuit pack, her fingers upon withdrawal laden with the offending matter.
‘Gee,’ she said hilariously, implanting a thick layer of crumbs over the meagre few already there. ‘Have I?’
The bus home was so crowded on Tuesday that Agnes could not get a seat. She stood by one of the doors instead, whose dark glass panel steamy with the oppressive breath of humankind informed her that she looked wan and hollow-eyed. She gazed at her reflection, sucking in her cheeks a little to deepen its shadowy aspect of suffering. The bus shuddered to a halt and the doors sprang open with a compressed sigh. A wave of sharp night air broke unpleasantly over the damp warmth of the interior. Agnes, moving to one side so as to allow others to disembark, now caught her fugitive reflection in one of the large fish-eye mirrors angled for the driver’s benefit from the ceiling. In it, her face appeared alarmingly large and pasty, with pores which gaped through an oily sheen of make-up. She looked away quickly, her heart plummeting.