18
At first, I simply kept on saying no. No, I said, to the mirror in the mornings, no I won’t. No, I said, to my mind when its thoughts strayed, and they did stray, and they would not cease from straying. No, I said to Nicola when she called from the country and said would we come for a weekend, it’s so beautiful this time of year. And she was a child, just a child really, and could not keep the hurt from her voice when I kept on saying no and no and once again no. No, I said, to Jess when she said wouldn’t it be nice, Nic and Mark were in town, wouldn’t it be lovely to see them for dinner? No, I said, I don’t want to. And I felt like a child, sticking out my lower lip, offering no further explanation but no, and no, and no.
‘I don’t understand why you won’t, that’s all.’
Jess was packing. She spoke in her calm and sensible voice.
‘I just don’t want to.’
I knew it would seem I was being unreasonable.
‘If you don’t want to tell me I suppose you don’t have to, but I do think that you’re being unreasonable.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. I don’t want to come. I’ve got marking to do and I’d rather have a quiet weekend at home. I wish you’d stay with me.’
She folded her cream cardigan over the top of her clothes and closed the case briskly. She took a deep breath, then let it out again. I wondered if she was going to shout at me, but she never did, it was not in her. She said, ‘You know I’m not going to do that. I promised them. You said you probably would.’
‘But I can’t,’ I said. And that at least was true.
No, and no, and no. It could not hold.
It wasn’t a good weekend for me. Jess telephoned to say she had arrived safely and in the background I heard Mark saying, ‘Tell him he’s a silly boy for not coming himself. We’ll expect him next time.’ And I felt as though I might vomit. My home, our quiet safe home, had been invaded by something I could not contain or control.
That weekend I had a recurrence of my old problem. It was mid-December, seven months after the wedding, and the days grew dark at 3 p.m. I found myself simultaneously terrified and numb, staring at the lowering sky from the window, unwilling to leave the flat. I could not control my moods, could not stop fear rising in my throat. The winter was cold and dark and never-ending. I imagined Jess sitting by the fire in Mark and Nicola’s home, warmed and encircled by golden light and laughing with her feet up on the sofa and the dogs leaping up to demand her attention. I did not eat much that weekend, I barely stirred from bed. It was clear to me that this was my natural condition; that without Jess I would return to the state in which she had found me — incapable, bleak, desperate. It was only late on Sunday night, when I heard her key in the door, when I saw her face, that the mood lifted, suddenly, all at once, as though it had never been.
I described this to Jess as best I could. I told her I had felt low while she had been gone. She, because she is good, did not say, ‘Well, you should have come with then.’
She kissed my forehead, ruffled my hair and said, ‘I’m home now. I missed you too. Come and help me unpack.’
Things with her were always as simple as this. She was good for me, in this way as in so many others. But why do we so often want the things that are not good for us at all?
There is no safety that does not also restrict us. And many needless restrictions feel safe and comfortable. It is so hard to know, at any moment, the distinction between being safe and being caged. It is hard to know when it is better to choose freedom and fear, and when it is simply foolhardy. I have often, I think, too often erred on the side of caution.
Jess said, ‘James, I really think you should see Mark.’
I felt a line of fear work through me, like a swallowed needle.
‘No,’ I said.
She looked at me. We were in bed, she warming her hands on a mug of tea.
‘What’s he done to you, James? What’s this about?’
What could I possibly say? I reached around in my mind for something that was not, ‘I am afraid, Jessica. I am afraid that if I see him I will well up with longing so that I cannot bear it.’
‘Look, I don’t know. He’s just not our sort of people, is he?’
She frowned. A thin layer of ice glistened on her surface. This had been the wrong thing to say.
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
I pushed on. ‘Just … Look, he’s so … I mean, I think he wants to be friends with a different kind of person to us. I mean, Emmanuella’s more his sort of …’
Jess said, ‘I think you’re totally wrong. In fact, he spent all weekend telling me how much he wanted to see you, how disappointed he was you hadn’t come, how he misses your chats.’
At this there was a kind of stirring in me, a detestable hope unfurling.
‘If you’re just staying away because you think we’re not rich enough for him …’
I gulped unhappily and stared at her. Her frown melted away. She snuggled up to me.
‘It’s just the silly winter depression, love. Mark loves you, you know he does, and he’s never cared about other people having money.’
I nodded.
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I’m a bit worried about him. He’s restless down there in the country. Edgy. It’s not good for him, and it’s not good for Nicola. I said he should come to London when your holidays start, to get away for a few days.’
She finished her tea, put the mug on the bedside table and, looking away, said, ‘None of us know how long this marriage will last, but he needs a friend, James. Whether they stay together or not. You shouldn’t keep away from him. Promise me you won’t.’
And I thought of what it would take to say no, again, to this.
‘All right,’ I said, as she turned off the light.
*
I said the following things to myself. Number one, Mark doesn’t know. If Jess doesn’t know — and she didn’t, of that I was sure — then Mark could not know how I felt. Number two, he doesn’t want you. He’s got his own ideas about the right way to live, about what he’s doing now. You don’t figure in them, except as a friend, so pull yourself together. Number three, if he doesn’t know and he doesn’t want you, then the only thing that can make anything go wrong is you. It’s just a matter of willpower, James, just like resisting an extra Yorkshire pudding at Sunday lunch. All you have to do is not act, not say anything, not do anything that would make him think you wanted him. Come on, James, you’re good at not doing things. This should be easy.
He pulled up at our door around lunchtime on the first day of my holidays in his little red sports car. His hair had grown longer than before, touching his collar and creeping around the sides of his face. In jeans, a white shirt with thin blue stripes and a battered blazer, he looked like the boy in school who was always on the verge of expulsion. He beeped the horn and leapt out of the car, all energy, and hugged me.
That first day, we were like students again. We went to Piccadilly Circus, where Mark declared loudly how much better the lights were in Times Square. He bought a disposable camera and insisted I take pictures of him posing next to Eros, one foot off the ground, as if about to take flight.
‘He’s supposed,’ he shouted, although I was only three feet away from him, ‘to be facing the other way. He’s supposed to be firing his arrow down Shaftesbury Avenue. It’s a joke, you see — he’s supposed to be burying his shaft in Shaftesbury Avenue. Do you see, James? Do you understand?’