Mr o winds back the cloc.., p.23
Mr O Winds Back the Clock, page 23
Sitting at the dining table and reading and drinking, and from time to time smoking, I would feel again something that had not presented itself to my notice so insistently since the days following upon my abandonment of my studies in engineering, a tightening of the chest that I had associated then with a term new to me, melancholy, but which I am more inclined today, looking back, to connect more simply with fear and loneliness. Not that I experienced that feeling, at Queen Street, as wholly unpleasant. It seemed, rather, to be something intimately entwined with my social status as someone on the outside, financially precarious and disconnected from the workaday world, but free to get up from my typewriter just when I chose and settle to a drink and a smoke by myself with the paper, aware too that when I got bored with the paper I could move on to a book that had captured my interest. I attributed the keenness of the feeling to the absence of Sandy and Jessica: in my estrangement from the typical concerns of most others I had available less support than before. Sandy paid a visit less and less often, and without Jessica alongside him our conversational envelope was shallower and its contents less nourishing. Jessica did not appear, not by herself or with Bob. I supposed that my indiscretions had resonated. That was something I had enjoyed about Roland: it never seemed to matter later what I told him when ripped.
It is easy to see, from this distance, that more underlay my evening intimations of loss. In what seemed like little more than an instant, it had become months since I saw Pash. Her invitations that I visit had become less easy to elicit by phone, and her phone calls to me unprompted had become so infrequent as to be describable with the phrase almost never. And almost, only while I could still remember, if indistinctly, the last one. It was not as though she had made herself unavailable. It had remained possible for me to phone and arrange a time to meet, and we would do pretty much what we had become used to doing: meeting in the same places; retiring to her flat; watching a video; having a drink; perhaps—if I prompted her—having a smoke together; retiring to bed and—most times, anyway—getting sexy. Well, it might be more honest, now I think about it, to replace most times with many times. Or some times. But we still would get sexy. However, something seemed to have left our relating. I guessed Pash had become increasingly preoccupied with whomever it was she was seeing in addition to me—still careful to avoid prying, I did not know whether that was one person or several. I was happy she still saw me, grateful even, for I knew that if she ceased to see me then my strategy of waiting for her infatuations to wane would require modification, or even abandonment in favour of a fresh approach, and I had no idea what fresh approach I could muster. There was also the unspoken question whether I really wanted to be with Pash after all, in any long-term sense. I wanted to be with her because I could not imagine how I would replace her, and because it appeared she was attracted elsewhere and I resented her being attracted to someone else more than to me. But then when I was with her, and we would have sex and afterwards feel close, I would be reminded of that morning when I had told her my stripping story, and about what happened afterwards and how I had felt about that, and I would wonder whether I should just tell her there and then we should quit and be done with it. I would wonder, but I never did tell her. I think I reasoned, and again I am attempting to reconstruct my thinking rather than recall serial ruminations that must have been convoluted, that if she was happy to see others casually then there was no reason she should not see me. And as she never revealed to me so much as a whisper about her pursuit of those others, I relieved myself of any obligation to reveal my own traitorous subtext. As the frequency of our meetings diminished, I felt at times an almost agonising awareness of her withdrawal: an out-of-control, sickly apprehensive, big-dipper shock. Such moments would arise most intensely in response to certain promptings, such as when Sandy sought to explore with me his anger over the way in which he had lost touch with Jessica. But then my own irritation would rescue me, as I thought about how Pash had, in a sense, used me. I know that used is too strong a description, but while I had not assumed much during our early relating, I had taken it tacitly that I was at least her main interest. Following such occasions of stress, I suspect I would also seek the comfort of revisiting familiar pre-Pash fantasies, doubtless made all the more compelling for me by the recent expansion of my experience. And I do not doubt either that I contrasted these psychological adventures favourably with many sessions with Pash, observing their superior support for spontaneity and the satisfying of my wish for variety.
“HOW ABOUT one more joint?” I asked Zoom, as he butted out the remains of our second. “I’ll think it over. Probably will take that job. Just want to think about it. Or don’t want to think about it, tonight anyway. Shit, what a shock. You’re a bastard! No, I know you’re not a bastard, but it feels like you’re a bastard. I hate this. You’re a bastard and I really don’t want to think about this right now. I hate bastards like you. No I don’t really, but you know what I mean. Always pointing out the truth. Always pointing out the truth about somebody but not always so ready to hear the truth about yourself. Are you. Lulling me along like this because it suited you not to say anything and then springing it on me when I’m stoned. You’re appalling. You really are appalling. No, you’re not appalling. You really aren’t appalling. I suppose I needed it. I needed it, but that doesn’t mean I was ready for it. You could have waited till I was ready for it. Maybe you are a bastard. Didn’t wait till I was ready.”
That had generated a chuckle in Zoom. His chuckling after a puff or two would be almost giggling, involuntary and high-pitched but still dry. It seemed to come from someone much younger; it was as though dope and humour drew out momentarily from within Zoom an inner teenager of much lighter spirits. “Do you want another joint or not?” he asked. “If you are going to abuse me, I am not sure that I’ll roll one. But why not, we might not do this too much more often. Probably won’t. You know,” he said, “I will miss you.”
“Miss my being an idiot, that’s what you’ll miss. Because it makes you feel good. I’m the idiot and it makes you feel like you’re not an idiot. But if you’re living down here with me, then you are an idiot. Because I only live with idiots. Then I can be an idiot, and feel I’m in good company. That’s why I’m here with you. I hope you realise that. And I do want that other joint.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Zoom, reaching for his pouch of Champion. “It’s coming. And then you’ll be even more of an idiot. Well, I don’t know whether I’m an idiot, but I will miss you. I will miss these sessions, occasional as they’ve gotten to be. I do notice that we haven’t got Jessica, and of course Sandy. That was good, while it lasted. Which you stuffed up, really, bringing down Mister Fancypants Doctor. That’s probably why I want to move. You’re saying it’s my fault, when really it’s your fault. So really it’s all your fault. We are having what might even be our last session here, and it’s all your fault.” But Zoom was grinning at me, embodying that inner teen. “I’ve invited you in and you’ve stuffed things up for me. You’re a disaster.” He succumbed to his near-giggle as he finished rolling the joint. “Here, suck on this. And I’ll have some of your wine. Abuse me if you want. I don’t care. I’m going. And it’s your fault.” Zoom handed me the joint and rose to pour himself wine.
Of course, this too is reconstructed. Again, I have sought to capture mainly the flavour. I had enjoyed Zoom, and liked him particularly when he relaxed. There was a sternness about him that I admired because it seemed to go hand in hand with a discipline that got him places. But it also bothered me, that sternness. He had chided me savagely a couple of times about minor household matters—things I was doing or not doing that he thought inconsiderate—and I had found him then formidable. On one such occasion he had made two trays of vanilla slices—crude imitations of the French mille-feuille—by sandwiching custard between unsalted savoury biscuits and icing the tops, describing them with typical deprecation as snot blocks and inviting us to partake as we wished. Jessica and Sandy had still been there, and the three of us had treated ourselves liberally. However, I had returned for fourth and fifth helpings the next day, and Zoom had brought it to my attention that I had presumed upon his generosity. I think I had decided that he must not have wanted any. After his lecture on my failings, I had felt like a dog might have felt who had been nipped into line. Obviously not the top dog. I did tiptoe around him for a day or two, probably longer, for the lecture had not stopped at the biscuits. And so I enjoyed it all the more when I could get Zoom to relax, and when I could have a go back at him, knowing from experience now that he would not take affront, that he would understand the spirit in which I attacked him and would push back in kind. It had been good to live with someone like that, and especially with someone like that who supplied all the joints. And now—soon, anyway—it would be over.
DID Bob kill all my hopes? Or did he make my life liveable? My past would have felt thinner if it had not been for Bob. That I cannot deny. But Bob could have done so much more for me. And then again, could he have? And then again and again, even if he could have, why would he have? Bob was such fun to play with. When Roland was there to help, anyway. He was different when I had to negotiate him on my own. He was more in control. Bob had seen control as a good thing. And if some was good … as Steve might have said. I do wonder how that all played out with Jessica. But she, I think, liked control more than I did, or needed it more. Perhaps she was happier with Bob in control. Maybe she had wanted more security, and she had felt as though Bob gave her that. In fact, it seems rather likely she did want more security. Why else swap Sandy for Bob. But then Bob had status, too. Until she took up with Bob, I would never have thought status important for Jessica, in a man she was with, but perhaps I was wrong about that. And then maybe status was not it—or not all of it—after all. Women had always liked Bob, even when he had been merely a student with prospects. Even Pash had liked Bob. Pash in many ways had liked Bob more than she had liked me. No, that is not fair. Pash had liked me, but I had never been sure just how much Pash had liked me. And then again, the thing is, if she had liked me more obviously then I would have retreated. I can see that now, much more starkly. Was that morning with Pash, when I told her about my high jinks in the hayshed, as we lay there with our G&Ts and a joint, feeling like we could say anything and it all would be fine, as good a morning as I have spent ever with anyone?
And then it all fell apart. The peak before the trough. The summit before the long trek downhill. The summit for me, anyway. Whether Pash was at a summit with me I am not so sure. Perhaps not. Obviously not, when I think about it. Had Pash been at base camp, looking up? Had I seemed like hard work? Or had it just been that close was too close? Had we really been seven months in? There is, I now understand, a turning point about that time in any romance. But had it been a romance? I had been excited, but was I in love? And was Pash as excited? It is not at all clear that she was as excited, to be with me, as I was excited to be with her. But if she had been excited, then certainly that would have scared me. Had I told Pash I loved her? No I had not, not once. Not a single time. Had Pash said she loved me? Never. Had it all been just too convenient? Had convenience, for Pash, been the point of her being with me—as I know now Bob had believed? Convenience and a weakness for lost causes, the lost cause being I. And of course, in a way Pash had been right. She had been just like a girl in a fantasy. In one of my fantasies. One of my erotic fantasies. Available almost at my whim, for a time, and certainly fun and arousing. Pash had been, as I knew even then, much too good to be true. And she was not true. How much of her had I known, and how much had I merely imagined?
I TOO have not been very content. That has become plain, if it was not plain before. My life of pleasure seeking at Queen Street had felt pleasant indeed. When a fantasy has absorbed you, you do not seek out its seams. And Queen Street had absorbed me. I had been doing better than Jessica, in certain respects. At the time when she met Bob, Jessica had not sold a painting. Had I become too pleased with myself? Had I needed to fail, as I had failed in the past? Could I have sustained myself indefinitely on the dole, selling the Ducati for parts and picking up some spare cash here and there? Was it Jessica’s absence that had damaged my confidence? Had I simply reached the end of my courage, and needed to bolster myself with a job and some money? Or was it just that the living and the recording had ceased to be enough fun, the balance of pleasure having swung towards wealth and consumption? You think the job will work out. Mine was, after all, in the field. I would have been a fool to have turned it down, obstinately looking past lush reality towards the darkening dreamscape spread out before me. I think that was how I had felt. If I had not grasped at this lifeline, would I have foundered by now, just like Bob has foundered—or worse than Bob? It is not straightforward how things could have been worse for me than for Bob. But Bob must have gone quietly, and peacefully. He had means; I did not. I could have gained access to similar means, but I doubt that I would have. My end would have been sadder, and a whole lot less pleasant in the way it played out. Bob had remained in control. I would have behaved more impulsively. But then, a caveat: my end would have come more spontaneously, if it had come at all. Had I been stronger than Bob had been? Fairly clearly, I had been. And yet, stronger for what?
WHAT I cannot deny about the period that followed my taking up of Zoom’s suggestion was how well everything seemed to pan out. The recognition of how much energy I drew from my change of tack strikes me almost forcibly, as I relive it in retrospect. Zoom’s move was disconcerting, but I had got into a rut and I could agree with him that his move might jolt me out of the rut. Which it did, and into something very engaging. I had developed a fascination with language, and thanks to Zoom I would be working with language, and in a way that arguably was more disciplined, and indisputably was more remunerative, than any way in which I had worked with language before. All had turned out, then, for the best. And given that I am still performing, in a sense, the role I took up at that time, surely I can look back at this period of dislocation and realignment as setting me down finally on a sure path to prosperity. A path that satisfied, as effectively as they seem to be satisfied for almost anybody, my spiritual as well as my material needs.
I enjoyed the money. Indeed, I was amazed as much as gratified by how quickly my small weekly wage piled up in my bank account, after so many months of living frugally on one-third of its sum. Within about three months I was able to book in the Ducati with a mechanic whom Zoom recommended, with some confidence that I could cover his bill. Within six months I was riding to the city again, and dropping in to see Roland, and had persuaded Lisa that we could share the house together amicably if somewhat distantly for the foreseeable future. It was probably nine months before I dropped in on Bob, found him out, and left a note saying that I had called. And just a day or so later that I received a phone call from Jessica, inviting me to stop in the following Saturday at a small party she was giving to celebrate her engagement.
AUTUMN
10
What Becomes of Us
I HAD always thought I was going to like Pete. I do not know whether it was the way he looked and carried himself—tall and straight, with all his hair and worn longish, and full, crossbow-shaped lips, and a face that had been lucky with its lines in a don’t-need-to-care sort of way. I have wondered since whom he reminded me of, and it occurs to me now that it was a character in a TV advertisement for Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes. A playboy type, but a very competent playboy. Except that Pete did not smoke—or rather, not cigarettes. Or not much. He would borrow a rollie from me from time to time. Which was how I first got to know him. I know too many cigarettes are not very good for you, and I had got to smoking too many this year and did need to stop, but at the same time I cannot help but think about how many good people I got to know over the years through smoking of one kind or another. Often tobacco. With the habit getting extinguished smoker by smoker and fewer children taking it up, it used to be almost—almost—a passport to the very caution-to-the-winds sort of club that several firms had sought to associate fraudulently with their brands. If someone asked you for a cigarette, without thinking about it you took them to be the sort of person who would risk emphysema, heart disease and lung cancer for a brief and bitter dose of pleasure. And particularly if he or she were an occasional smoker or a binger, as most botters were, rather than committed to downing a packet or three every day. I used to make a packet of Drum last a fortnight, which I thought was pretty good even if Marjorie insisted on telling me that I ought to give up—like she had done. It was one of those things, I think, that had bothered me about Marge, that she had needed to quit. Rather than cutting down. Or more to the point, rather than being able to quit but still have one or two every now and again. That was what I had liked about the way I was smoking: I did not have to smoke all the time. I did not always have a smoke in the morning, for example. Used to wait until lunchtime, when I would have one or two, and then a few more after work with a beer or some wines. And a joint, maybe, until Marge requested we stop that as well. Too hard, apparently, to smoke a joint but never tobacco. Well, I do get that. I much prefer tobacco in joints: it makes them smoke better. Which is why I have just about given up joints myself, recently. So I get it.
Anyway, Pete Ulverson. Liked tobacco in his joints, but never brought it to work. From a cigarette at work we had got to motorbikes, which he liked a bit, and then world championship bike racing, which he said he liked quite a bit, and then an invitation to head out to my place and watch a motorbike grand prix with me—Marge always said they bored her. Which was where he dragged out his little plastic bag stuffed with head and asked me whether I would enjoy a joint before the show started. I was a bit surprised because we both had work the next day and Monday was a big day for us, and the big bikes usually did not start to race until quite late, roughly 10pm or later our time, on TV. So we would be a bit sleep deprived anyway, in the morning, and it was just interesting—nothing more than that, really—that he wanted to add on a bit of dope hangover. Which of course I would have done sometimes by myself, but I had not assumed anybody else would want to do that just for a bike race. Especially if they faced a long drive to get home in the meantime. And most especially because he was my boss, and had a fair bit more on his plate for the next day than even I did.
