Is this love, p.14
Is This Love?, page 14
We ate dinner, and avoided talk of you. They laughed about my impending middle age, my mission to find myself by traipsing out east. I repeated my line about considering my insignificance in an infinite universe, to howls of laughter. It cheered me right up.
After the food was cleared away, there was a sudden burst of activity, manic whispering in the corner and smiling glances in my direction. I pretended not to notice as a glow of candlelight appeared from under the kitchen counter, and then laughed as a cake only just large enough to fit forty candles onto was brought over to me, singeing the hairs on my arms as it was passed onto the table.
I blew the fire out and cut slices of the cake. Zed stood up and I got ready for more piss-taking, further references to my age or my maturity or my lack thereof.
Instead, Zed produced a large white envelope and passed it over, saying only that it was a gift from the group. Not only the ones in the room, but all our friends, who loved me and wanted me to have a happy birthday. Even though they all knew how hard that would be.
I opened the envelope and pulled out a homemade card, a Zed Photoshop special. On the front I sat resplendent in a rickshaw and blonde wig, an image of my head transposed from some late-night party some time, somewhere. And there lining the street were all my friends in similar states of disarray, cropped cleverly from other images and dropped into this bizarre scene that merged decadence with squalor in a perfect evocation of the trip I was about to undertake. I laughed, a lot. And then I opened the card, and it slowly dawned on me what this was all about. They’d all chipped in, every one of them, to pay for a hotel near the temples of Angkor Wat, as well as a driver and some spending money for when I got there. I was really moved, and worried I would show it. I tried to say thank you, but stopped myself as my voice wobbled. I flashed a thumbs up instead, and looked down at the floor.
There was a quiet pause, and then Zed got hold of me in a hug and told me to pull myself together. I couldn’t get the words out to say thank you, at first, and then I couldn’t say anything else. Just repeated myself over and over, eventually deciding to simply shut up and sit down, and carry on drinking. Safer that way; I was less likely to embarrass myself further. But I remember thinking I was really, honestly grateful to have friends like these. It was the proof I needed that I could draw people to me, I could be liked. Loved, even. I wasn’t such a piece of shit after all. In spite of what you said.
I got to the airport before sunrise the following Tuesday, the birthday card packed in my bag along with mosquito spray, sunscreen and a minimal amount of clothing. I’d also packed three empty notebooks, believing I would spend my time writing, putting myself back together by jotting down what you had done, and what was left to do. I wanted to make the most of my time away to get ready for what would happen when I got back.
I landed first in Kuala Lumpur, almost a full day after taking off. I felt miserable. I had watched film after film during the flight, taking a break to eat the food that was put in front of me every four hours or so, failing dismally to fall asleep in between. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be back in our bed, in our flat, in our old lives. I didn’t want what I was setting out for: adventure and solitude and answering only to myself. What the fuck had I been thinking?
Waiting for my connection, I tried to sleep on a bench in KL airport, my bag under my head, my legs curled up as best I could manage. Exhausted, I drifted off for an hour and then panicked about missing the flight, running down to the gate in a frenzy only to sit there for another ninety minutes until finally boarding. When I landed in Phnom Penh everything seemed too much, and I faltered again when I realised no one was waiting for me at arrivals, ready to whisk me to my room at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. I found out later that the car, arranged and paid for by Briony, had in fact arrived but I had been late, and they’d departed without me. They’d even come back an hour later, but by then I’d bundled myself into a taxi and arrived at the hotel on the riverfront, gratefully paying my driver a ludicrous tip on top of his fare before being shown up to my room by the bellboy.
Inside, I’d immediately taken off my clothes in response to the sticky heat of the city. Standing just in my underwear, there had been a knock on the door and before I could move to answer it, the same bellboy opened it and stepped inside, holding a plate in his hand. I stood absolutely still, turning crimson as he smirked at me and put the plate on a table to the side of the door. A birthday cake for you, he said. Happy birthday.
I turned the lock on the door behind him and threw myself onto the bed. Ten minutes in this city, and I’d already flashed a bellboy. I smiled to myself, and thought about how much everyone would laugh when I told this story back at home. The thought made me sad again. I had to pull myself together or this trip was going to be a total waste of time.
I decided to run a bath, and then head out into the late afternoon to get my bearings, and get a drink. My phone sat on the side of the tub as I lay in the cool water, the heat of the room hovering above the surface. There were messages from Nancy, and Zed, and my mum of course. My sister too. And then, as I read through them, one popped up from the intern, checking to see if I was still going to be in Phnom Penh this week. Fuck. I’d forgotten about her. The last thing I wanted was to entertain some twenty-something-year-old while I was supposed to be spending time alone, being contemplative, thinking big thoughts.
I knew that I had engineered the situation. I’d given her enough encouragement to think I’d be glad to see her, but not enough to make it an expectation. I was doing it to hurt you. It wasn’t sophisticated, or clever, and I was pretty fucking certain it wouldn’t be effective. You’d never even know it had happened. And if you did, you wouldn’t care. It wouldn’t penetrate that icy rock in your chest, not now.
I headed out of my hotel and into the heat of a Cambodian afternoon. Everything was blindingly bright, searingly hot, strange and unfamiliar. But it was exciting, too, I had to admit that. There’s always something thrilling about arriving somewhere new, and so totally different to home.
I walked along the river, comparing it favourably to the grey waters of the Thames. There were traditional fishing boats bobbing on the water, street vendors doling out plastic bags of fried insects, children playing Frisbee and football on the grassy stretches between the water and the road. For the first time in a long time, I relaxed, a little. It was good to be away from home, from the mess you’d made of me. I walked round the city for an hour or two, smiling at the food van with a ‘Pizza Express’ sign, the hoarding advertising the Brighton International School for Languages. I decided to eat on the verandah at my hotel, and took a photo of my meal, documentation of my brave adventure. I added a second beer to the one I’d photographed, and was glad to finally feel ready for sleep. Within minutes of getting, gratefully, in between the white sheets of my bed, I was flat out.
In the morning I took Zed’s advice. ‘Perhaps a cheery afternoon at the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center may help put things into perspective?’ I took a bus out of town, and wondered at the bustling tourist industry that had grown out of this darkest part of the country’s history. Cambodia’s killing fields. I passed through the gate into a large garden, at the centre of which was a white memorial. The gardens surrounding it were quiet, and quite beautiful. Butterflies batted over the uneven grass, and I walked around the perimeter, taking in the many signs that described what had happened there. It was so distant, inconceivable now, in this calm quiet. At the back of the gardens, people were at work in a rice field, knee-deep in water, bent low to their task. Everything was strange. I felt like an alien, newly landed on a foreign planet. Sadness overwhelmed me, and again, I considered my loneliness, feeling deeply, painfully sorry for myself.
So much for getting some perspective.
I turned back towards the entrance and tried not to laugh at a sign that read: ‘Please don’t walk through the mass grave!’ I imagined you laughing at this too. You’d always shared my feelings about misplaced exclamation marks.
It was strange to come out, past the mausoleum housing thousands of human skulls, into the bustling marketplace where the bus was waiting to take me back to the city. Santa Bae Bae T-shirts were lined up alongside mementoes of the gardens; the juxtaposition was awful, but also darkly comic. There’s money to be made, even at a site of genocide. What a mark of human endeavour.
I checked my phone when I got back to the hotel, and saw the intern had messaged me. She had arrived in the city, and was wondering if I was up for a drink. Knowing that I was playing with fire, I told her to come over, and then sat anxiously in the bar, asking myself what the fuck I was playing at. As if I didn’t know.
She arrived quickly, and I realised she had come directly from the airport. I felt a jolt of panic: I didn’t want to spend my trip with this woman, that was not the plan. The point of me being here was to do this by myself; the last thing I wanted was a hanger-on.
We ordered two cold lagers and sat down together, our table giving us a view of the river and the busy street below. Conversation was easy, which was a relief. We exchanged accounts of our journeys, and I set out my plans for the next two weeks, emphasising my decision to be here alone.
Subtle.
I told her about the killing fields, and showed her a photo of the sign that had made me laugh. She laughed too – another relief. I suppose it was a test, making sure she had the same kind of humour as you did. I would do that a lot, as the evening wore on.
We ordered refills of our drinks, once, twice, three times. We discovered a pool table in the back bar, where I showed off my skills and remembered how much you’d loved to watch me play. How you’d slide your hand up my T-shirt to distract me when I was taking a shot. That time we’d been in a pub by the seaside and you’d challenged a local to a game on my behalf. I’d been so relieved to win and then, later, delighted by your pride in me as we’d walked home along the beach.
The barman at the hotel was judging us, I could tell. Drunk Brits, the usual cliché. I agreed with him, and thought it best we head out for a bit. Get some food, try to sober up, get my head around what was happening. I was pretty certain there was an offer on the table for me. I just wasn’t sure whether or not to take it.
We found somewhere nearby that served us up some noodles, which helped sober me up, just a little. We paid the bill and, standing outside the restaurant, I knew the moment had come to make a decision. I was caught between a terror of taking the intern back to the hotel, and dread of the rejection if I made a move and she said no.
Fuck it, I thought.
Fancy another? She didn’t say no, and so we walked, almost in silence, back to where we’d come from. I let her into my room, thinking about you while smiling rigidly at her, and closed the door behind me, remembering to lock it against the risk of bellboy intrusions.
She was quick to kiss me, and at first I was pleased by how different it felt from you. Incredibly, my body remembered exactly what to do. It surprised me, as I had put all thoughts of sex completely out of my mind since you’d gone. I had zero interest in it. It was strange to feel myself go through the same motions as I always had, undressing this woman, kissing her, feeling her skin and her body against mine. I knew I was absolutely disengaged from her: while my hands and my mouth did their own thing, my mind was somewhere else, observing the action from a distance. I didn’t feel very proud of myself. But I also didn’t care. I wanted to feel intimacy, to feel desired. It didn’t matter to me that I felt nothing, at all, in return.
In the morning, I woke up before sunrise, and lay perfectly still. I wasn’t sure how things were going to go with the intern, and I didn’t want to wake her to find out. I was filled with regret, wishing I could take back what I’d done. It was a step further towards us ending, and I didn’t want it.
I just wanted this other flesh-and-bone woman to leave, so I could focus on the you that was inside my head.
She woke up around 7 a.m. and hurled herself out of bed and into the bathroom, emptying her bowels loudly, every emission audible through the flimsy screen door separating us. I was appalled, which felt churlish given what we’d done the night before.
She came back into bed and said how much her head hurt, before complimenting me on my performance the previous evening. I must have looked worried, because she laughed and said ‘at the pool table’ and it helped cut through some of the awkwardness. She told me she was on antidepressants, and it made it hard for her to come, and I tried to act cool and not show that I was slightly shocked by her talking so candidly. Fucking millennials.
I felt incredibly middle-aged. And I had nothing to say to her, not really, so I kissed her instead and repeated some of my moves from the night before. It was easier than talking.
My two nights in the hotel were up, and I had to catch my bus to Siem Reap for the next part of my trip. The intern said she was going that way too, and maybe because of the hangover, or the sex, or a combination of the two, I didn’t want to be on my own again. I told her we should go together. I had a beautiful hotel sorted for me when I got there, courtesy of my amazing friends, and she might as well share it with me, at least for a night or two.
I am such a fucking idiot.
We checked out of my room, ignoring the looks of the staff who’d watched us stagger out and back in the night before. It was a short, hot walk to the bus station, where we could catch a ride all the way up the country to Siem Reap, the gateway to the Angkor ruins that I’d set my heart on seeing. It was the day before my birthday. I realised the date, and I wanted you to know what I’d been doing. I wanted to tell you and say I was sorry and see if you’d let me make it up to you. I knew none of this would ever happen, and I felt lost. It all fell away from me again.
We boarded the bus and I pretended to fall asleep almost straight away. I was behaving like a total shit, but I couldn’t deal with having her there. I felt a kind of pressure creeping in at me from all sides, a desire to push her away.
The intern didn’t try to engage me after that. In fact, she was dealing with me pretty well, all things considered. She knew I was separating from you, and she’d asked me about you a couple of times but been smart enough not to push it. It wasn’t long before I actually did sleep, and I was glad to finally get some rest.
There was a driver waiting for me at the depot as the bus pulled in to Siem Reap’s main terminal: actually a tiny shopfront by the side of the road. I waved to him, and watched as the intern dumped her bags in the boot next to mine. The driver had obviously been told to expect only one passenger, but he was very polite about it.
We arrived at the hotel, a low villa with a handful of beautiful huts arranged around its central pool. We were shown into my room, where gauzy curtains blew open onto a four-poster bed and lots of white linen. I deeply regretted being in company. It was a room set up for couples, and I was desperate to be alone in it.
But the next day I turned forty, and I couldn’t face the thought of doing that by myself. It was too sad. So I smiled at the intern as the driver informed me that a massage had been arranged for me – and my friend – that evening in my room, a gift from my friends at home. I thought about that, wryly. I was pretty sure they hadn’t imagined I’d have company.
I said I needed a bit of time to myself and the intern was more than happy to decamp to one of the cabanas lining the pool. I watched her as she plugged headphones into her phone and laid back, and was envious of her ability to be relaxed, be totally at peace in the place. I was also vaguely repelled by the way she’d flung her limbs across the pillows, the space she took up. I knew I was comparing her to you, and that she couldn’t win. And I knew I was projecting my own shame onto her. I felt bad about it… but I felt it, nonetheless.
A couple of hours later, two stocky women, one young and one older, came into the room. I called across to the poolside and the intern joined me on the double bed, where we’d been indicated to lie down. Stripped to our underwear, we lay back as they got to work on our bare legs and arms, using the heat from their hands rather than oils or lotions as emollients.
I closed my eyes and went through a list of all the things I could say to the intern that would let her down gently, but ensure she would go. I had created a problem for myself that seemed too difficult to fix. I’d lost the ability to work out solutions. I felt ashamed of myself, and also desperate to be rid of her. It was the least relaxing massage I’d ever had.
After half an hour or so the women finished their work, standing up wordlessly and leaving the room. I stood up quickly and said I was going for a walk, grabbing my phone and some money and hurrying out of the room. I knew I was behaving like an arsehole. I just didn’t care.
I walked around the town as the sun went down, glad to be on my own, worrying about how to keep it that way. Everything I looked at reminded me of you. Stupid things, like cafés that I knew you’d love to slip inside of, ordering your usual super-strength coffee with the milk on the side, so you could measure out exactly the right amount. There was bougainvillea growing along the roadsides, and I thought about our honeymoon, the bright pink flowers that had lined the walls along the path outside our tiny rental flat, where we’d walked down to a private beach to swim naked. It made me feel wretched. I trudged back towards the hotel, berating myself for failing so spectacularly to put you from my mind. You were everywhere. It was exhausting. But I didn’t want to let you go.
