"You can't give up the Tantalus thing, which is pretty decent as well as regular. You tell me. You could give up smoking and drinking and drugs. And clothes. It's not that you spend. You don't earn."
"I can't give up novels."
"Why not?"
Because . . . because then he would be left with experience, with untranslated and unmediated experience. Because then he would be left with life.
"Because then I'd just have this." The kitchen-the blue plastic tub filled with the boys' white pants and vests, the stiff black handbag on the chair with its upturned mouth open wanting to be fed, the bowls and spoons and mats laid out on the table for the morning and the eight-pack of cereal boxes in its cellophane: all this became the figure for what he meant. "Days. Life," he added.
And this was a disastrous word to say to a woman-to women, who bear life, who bring it into the world, screaming, and so will never let it come second to anything.
Her eyes, her breasts, her throat, showing him his mistake, all became infused. "The possible alternative," said Gina, "is I go full time. Except Fridays of course." She told him what they would pay her: a chastening sum. "That'd mean you getting the twins up every morning and getting them down every night. The weekends we share. You shop. You clean. And you cook."
"I can't cook."
"I can't either … That way," she said, "you'll be getting plenty of life. And we'll see what you've got left for the other thing."
There was a third alternative, Richard reckoned. He could fuck her twice a night forever and take no more shit. And have no money. Oh sure: do it that way. He looked at her face, its flesh lightly glazed in preparation for sleep; and her throat, with its weathered complexities of raisin and rose. She was his sexual obsession. And he had married her.
"I tell you what," she said. "How close are you to finishing the one that's on the go now?"
Richard creased his face. One of the many troubles with his novels was that they didn't really get finished. They just stopped. Unfitted was already very long. "Hard to tell. Say a year.?
Her head went back. This was steep. But she took in breath and said,"Okay. You've got a year's grace. Finish that and we'll see if it makes any money. I think we can hold on. Financially I mean. I'll do what I have to do. I'll manage. You've got a year."
He nodded. He supposed it was just. He wanted to thank her. His mouth was dry.
"A year. I won't say a word."
"A year," Gina now resumed. "And I haven't said a word. Have I. I've been as good as my word. What about you?"
Nasty repetition that, he thought: word. But it remained true enough. She had kept her promise. And he had forgotten all about it. Or he'd tried. They had held on, financially, though even the most perfunctory calculation told Richard that they were falling short by two or three book reviews a week. Marco was still in his boxroom, and still remonstrating with his nightmares.
"What's your progress been? Is it finished?"
"Virtually," he said. This wasn't quite true. Untitled wasn't finished exactly, but it was certainly unbelievably long. "A week or two away."
"And what are your plans for it?"
"I was thinking," said Richard. "There are these minor earnings from my novels that we didn't include. It all adds up, you know."
"What all adds up?"
"Things like PLR." He checked. Gina was staring at him with a new order of incredulity. "Public Lending Right," he went on. "Money from libraries. It all adds up."
"I know PLR. With all the forms. How much did you get that time? The time you spent the whole weekend lying down behind the couch. What was it? Thirty-three pee?"
"Eighty-nine pee," said Richard sternly.
"…Well, that's a big help!"
There was a silence during which he steadily lowered his gaze to the floor. He thought of the time when his PLR check had burst into the three figures: #163;104.07. That was when he had two novels in print and it was still the case that nobody was sure they were shit.
"I think I've got an agent. Gwyn's agent. Gal Aplanalp."
Gina took this in. "Her," she said. "Have you signed up?"
"Not yet. Maybe soon."
"Hey this is really going to happen you know. You don't care about money and that's a nice quality but I do and life is going to change." "I know. I know.?
"… What's it called anyway? Your new one."
"Untitled."
"When will it be?"
"No it's called Untitled."
"You mean you can't even think what to call it?"
"No. It's called Untitled."
"How can it be called Untitled?"
"It just is. Because I say so."
"Well that's a bloody stupid name for it. You know, you might be a lot happier, without them. It might help with the other thing too. It might be a big relief. Gwyn and everything, that's a whole other story." Gina sighed, with distaste. She had never liked Gwyn much even in the old days, when he was with Gilda-and they were all poor. "Demi says it's frightening the way the money comes in. And she's rich! I don't know if you still really believe in it. Your novels. Because you never … Because what you … Ah I'm sorry, Richard. I'm so sorry."
Because you never found an audience-you never found the universal or anything like it. Because what you come up with in there, in your study, is of no general interest. End of story. Yes: this is the end of your story.
"Marry your sexual obsession," Richard had once been told. By a writer. Marry your sexual obsession: the one you kept going back to, the one you never quite got to the end of: marry her. Richard was interviewing, was profiling, this writer, so it more or less followed that he was neither famous nor popular. His obscurity, in fact, was the only celebrated thing about him (let's call him Mr. X): if everything went through okay, he had a chance of becoming a monument of neglect, like a Powys. How many Powyses were there? Two? Three? Nine? Your sexual obsession, he kept saying: marry her. Not the beauty, not the brains. Mr. X dwelt in a two-up-two-down back-to-back, in Portsmouth. The stuff he wrote was hieratic and recondite, but all he could talk about was sex. And sexual obsession. There they sat, at lunchtime, in the dockside pub, over their untouched seafood platters, with Mr. X sweating into his mack. Don't marry the droll brain surgeon. Don't marry the dreaming stunner who works in famine relief. Marry the town pump. Marry the one who does it for a drag on your cigarette. Richard felt his shoulders locking. By this point he had readied himself to face a full nervous breakdown of sexual hatred-a complete unraveling, an instantaneous putrefaction of bitterness and disgust. But it never quite happened. Marry the one who made you hardest. Marry her. She'll bore you blind, but so will the brain sur-geon, so will the dreaming stunner, in time .. . Dropping the writer off after lunch in the minicab, Richard hoped for a glimpse of his wife. Hoped for a chance to wonder what she was: rocket scientist? hysterical goer? The woman staring suspiciously down the damp dark passage, her small head half lost in the sprouty collar of her housecoat, didn't look like an hysterical goer. She looked more like a rocket scientist; and one whose best work was long behind her. And another thing: whatever life choice Mr. X had gone ahead and made, Mrs. X didn't strike you as too happy about it either, contemplating her husband's return, it seemed to Richard, with infinite weariness. He was forgotten now anyway, or reforgotten, silent, out of print. He never even made it into Neglect… Some of us, most of us, all of us, are staggering through our span with half a headful of tips and pointers we've listened to (or overheard). Use Cold Water To Soak The Pot After Making Scrambled Eggs. When Filling A Hot Water Bottle, Keep The Neck Of The Hot Water Bottle At Right Angles. Unless The Kettle Boiling Be, Filling The Teapot Spoils The Tea. Starve a cold, feed a fever. Banks do most of their business after three o'clock. Richard married his sexual obsession. He just did what he did.