Authors: Will Self
Then I hear footsteps coming from up above, and I am conscious of earnest voices:
‘Haven’t you shut up the shop yet?’
‘I’m just doing it, my love. There’s a young woman down there wanting a bottle of champagne, I just came up to get it.’
‘Champagne! Pshaw! What the bloody hell does she want it for at this time of night?’
‘I dunno. Probably to drink with her boyfriend.’
‘Well, you take her bottle of champagne down to her and then get yourself back up here. I’m not finished talking to you yet.’
‘Yes, my love.’
When he comes back in I do my best to look as if I haven’t overheard anything. He puts the bi-focals that hang from the cord round his neck on to his nose and scrutinises the label on the bottle: ‘Chambertin demi-sec. Looks all right to me – good stuff as I recall.’
‘It looks fine to me.’
‘Good,’ he smiles – a nice smile. ‘I’ll wrap it up for you . . . Oh, hang on a minute, there’s no price on it, I’ll have to go and check the stock list.’
‘Brian!’ This comes from upstairs, a great bellow full of imperiousness.
‘Just a minute, my love.’ He tilts his head back and calls up to the ceiling, as if addressing some vengeful goddess, hidden behind the tire-resistant tiles.
‘Now, Brian!’ He gives me a pained smile, takes off his bi-focals and rubs his eyes redder.
‘It’s my wife,’ he says in a stage whisper, ‘she’s a bit poorly. I’ll check on her quickly and get that price for you. I shan’t be a moment.’
He’s gone again. More footsteps, and then Brian’s wife says, ‘I’m not going to wait all night to tell you this, Brian, I’m going to bloody well tell you now – ‘
‘But I’ve a customer – ‘
‘I couldn’t give a monkey’s. I couldn’t care less about your bloody customer. I’ve had it with you, Brian – you make me sick with your stupid little cardigan and your glasses. You’re like some fucking relic – ‘
‘Can’t this wait a minute – ‘
‘No, it bloody can’t. I want you out of here, Brian. It’s my lease and my fucking business. You can sleep in the spare room tonight, but I want you out of here in the morning.’
‘We’ve discussed this before – ‘
‘I know we have. But now I’ve made my decision.’
I take the crumpled bills from my purse. Twenty quid has to be enough for the bottle of Chambertin. I wrap it in a piece of paper and write on it ‘Thanks for the champagne’. Then I pick up the bottle and leave the shop as quietly as I can. They’re still at it upstairs: her voice big and angry; his, small and placatory.
I can see the light in the bedroom when I’m still two hundred yards away from the house. It’s the Anglepoise on the windowsill. He’s put it on so that it will appear like a beacon, drawing me back into his arms.
I let myself in with my key, and go on up the stairs. He’s standing at the top, wearing a black sweater that I gave him and blue jeans. There’s a cigarette trailing from one hand, and a smear of cigarette ash by his nose, which I want to kiss away the minute I see it. He says, ‘What are you doing here, I thought you were going to stay at your place tonight?’
I don’t say anything, but pull the bottle of champagne out from under my jacket, because I know that’ll explain everything and make it all all right.
He advances towards me, down a couple of stairs, and I half-close my eyes, waiting for him to take me in his arms, but instead he holds me by my elbows and looking me in the face says, ‘I think it really would be best if you stayed at your place tonight, I need some time to think things over – ‘
‘But I want to stay with you. I want to be with you. Look, I brought this for us to drink . . . for us to drink while we make love.’
‘That’s really sweet of you, but I think after this morning it would be best if we didn’t see one another for a while.’
‘You don’t want me any more – do you? This is the end of our relationship, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you’re saying?’
‘No, I’m not saying that, I just think it would be a good idea if we cooled things down for a while.’
I can’t stand the tone of his voice. He’s talking to me as if I were a child or a crazy person. And he’s looking at me like that as well – as if I might do something mad, like bash his fucking brains out with my bottle of Chambertin derni-sec. ‘I don’t want to cool things down, I want to be with you. I need to be with you. We’re meant to be together – you said that. You said it yourself!’
‘Look, I really feel it would be better if you went now. I’ll call you a cab – ‘
‘I don’t want a cab!’
‘I’ll call you a cab and we can talk about it in the morning – ‘
‘I don’t want to talk about it in the morning, I want to talk about it now. Why won’t you let me stay, why are you trying to get rid of me?’
And then he sort of cracks. He cracks and out of the gaps in his face come these horrible words, these sick, slanderous, revolting words, he isn’t him anymore, because he could never have said such things. He must be possessed.
‘I don’t want you here!’ He begins to shout and pound the wall. ‘Because you’re like some fucking emotional Typhoid Mary. That’s why I don’t want you here. Don’t you under-stand, it’s not just me and you, it’s everywhere you go, everyone you come into contact with. You’ve got some kind of bacillus inside you, a contagion – everything you touch you turn to neurotic ashes with your pick-pick-picking away at the fabric of people’s relationships. That’s why I don’t want you here. Tonight – or any other night!’
Out in the street again – I don’t know how. I don’t know if he said more of these things, or if we fought, or if we fucked. I must have blacked out, blacked out with sheer anguish of it. You think you know someone, you imagine that you are close to them, and then they reveal this slimy pit at their core . . . this pit they’ve kept concreted over. Sex is a profound language, all right, and so easy to lie in.
I don’t need him – that’s what I have to tell myself: I don’t need him. But I’m bucking with the sobs and the needing of him is all I can think of. I’m standing in the dark street, rain starting to fall, and every little thing: every gleam of chromium, serration of brick edge, mush of waste paper, thrusts its material integrity in the face of my lost soul.
I’ll go to my therapist. It occurs to me – and tagged behind it is the admonition: why didn’t you think of this earlier, much earlier, it could have saved you a whole day of distress?
Yes, I’ll go to Jill’s house. She always says I should come to her place if I’m in real trouble. She knows how sensitive I am. She knows how much love I need. She’s not like a conventional therapist – all dispassionate and uncaring. She believes in getting involved in her clients’ lives. I’ll go to her now. I need her now more than I ever have.
When I go to see her she doesn’t put me in some garage of a consulting room, some annex of feeling. She lets me into her warm house, the domicile lined with caring. It isn’t so much therapy that Jill gives me, as acceptance. I need to be there now, with all the evidence of her three small children spread about me: the red plastic crates full of soft toys, the finger paintings sellotaped to the fridge, the diminutive coats and jackets hanging from hip-height hooks.
I need to be close to her and also to her husband, Paul. I’ve never met him – of course, but I’m always aware of his after-presence in the house when I attend my sessions. I know that he’s an architect, that he and Jill have been together for fourteen years, and that they too have had their vicissitudes, their comings-together and fallings-apart. How else could Jill have such total sympathy when it comes to the wreckage of my own emotions? Now I need to be within the precincts of their happy cathedral of a relationship again. Jill and Paul’s probity, their mutual relinquishment, their acceptance of one another’s foibles – all of this towers above my desolate plain of abandonment.
It’s OK, I’m going to Jill’s now. I’m going to Jill’s and we’re going to drink hot chocolate and sit up late, talking it all over. And then she’ll let me stay the night at her place – I know she will. And in the morning I’ll start to sort myself out.
Another cab ride, but I’m not concentrating on anything, not noticing anything. I’m intent on the vision I have of Jill opening the front door to her cosy house. Intent on the homely vision of sports equipment loosely stacked in the hall, and the expression of heartfelt concern that suffuses Jill’s face when she sees the state I’m in.
The cab stops and I payoff the driver. I open the front gate and walk up to the house. The door opens and there’s Jill: ‘Oh . . . hi . . . it’s you.’
‘I’m sorry . . . perhaps I should have called?’ This isn’t at all as I imagined it would be – there’s something lurking in her face, something I haven’t seen there before.
‘It’s rather late – ‘
‘I know, it’s just, just that . . .’ My voice dies away. I don’t know what to say to her, I expect her to do the talking to lead me in and then lead me on, tease out the awful narrative of my day. But she’s still standing in the doorway, not moving, not asking me in.
‘It’s not altogether convenient . . . ’ And I start to cry – I can’t help it, I know I shouldn’t, I know she’ll think I’m being manipulative (and where does this thought come from, I’ve never imagined such a thing before), but I can’t stop myself.
And then there is the comforting arm around my shoulder and she does invite me in, saying, ‘Oh, all right, come into the kitchen and have a cup of chocolate, but you can’t stay for long. I’ll have to order you another mini cab in ten minutes or so.’
‘What’s the matter then? Why are you in such a state?’
The kitchen has a proper grown-up kitchen smell, of wholesome ingredients, well-stocked larders and fully employed wine racks. The lighting is good as well: a bell-bottomed shade pulled well down on to the wooden table, creating an island in the hundred-watt sun.
‘He’s ending our relationship – he didn’t say as much, but I know that that’s what he meant. He called me “an emotional Typhoid Mary”, and all sorts of other stuff. Vile things.’
‘Was this this evening?’
‘Yeah, half an hour ago. I came straight here afterwards, but it’s been going on all day, we had a dreadful fight this morning.’
‘Well,’ she snorts, ‘isn’t that a nice coincidence?’ Her tone isn’t nice at all. There’s a hardness in it, a flat bitterness I’ve never heard before.
‘I’m sorry?’ Her fingers are white against the dark brown of the drinking-chocolate tin, her face is all drawn out of shape. She looks her age – and I’ve never even thought what this might be before now. For me she’s either been a sister or a mother or a friend. Free-floatingly female, not buckled into a strait-jacket of biology.
‘My husband saw fit to inform me that our marriage was over this evening . . . oh, about fifteen minutes before you arrived, approximately . . .’ Her voice dies away. It doesn’t sound malicious – her tone, that is, but what she’s said is clearly directed at me. But before I can reply she goes on. ‘I suppose there are all sorts of reasons for it. Above and beyond all the normal shit that happens in relationships: the arguments, the Death of Sex, the conflicting priorities, there are other supervening factors.’ She’s regaining her stride now, beginning to talk to me the way she normally does.
‘It seems impossible for men and women to work out their fundamental differences nowadays. Perhaps it’s because of the uncertainty about gender roles, or the sheer stress of modern living, or maybe there’s some still deeper malaise of which we’re not aware.’
‘What do you think it is? I mean – between you and Paul.’ I’ve adopted her tone – and perhaps even her posture. I imagine that if I can coax some of this out of her then things will get back to the way they should be, roles will re-reverse.
‘I’ll tell you what I think it is’ – she looks directly at me for the first time since I arrived – ‘since you ask. I think he could handle the kids, the lack of sleep, the constant money problems, my moods, his moods, the dog shit in the streets and the beggars on the Tube. Oh yes, he was mature enough to cope with all of that. But in the final analysis what he couldn’t bear was the constant stream of neurotics flowing through this house. I think he called it “a babbling brook of self-pity”. Yes, that’s right, that’s what he said. Always good with a turn of phrase is Paul.’
‘And what do you think?’ I asked – not wanting an answer, but not wanting her to stop speaking, for the silence to interpose.
‘I’ll tell you what I think, young lady.’ She gets up and, placing the empty mugs on the draining board, turns to the telephone. She lifts the receiver and says as she dials, ‘I think that the so-called “talking cure” has turned into a talking disease, that’s what I think. Furthermore, I think that given the way things stand this is a fortuitous moment for us to end our relationship too. After all, we may as well make a clean sweep of it . . . Oh, hello. I’d like a cab, please. From 27 Argyll Road . . . Going to . . . Hold on a sec – ‘ She turns to me and asks with peculiar emphasis, ‘Do you know where you’re going to?’
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Will Self’s
The Quantity Theory of Insanity
was shortlisted for the 1992 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He is also the author of
Cock &
Bull
and
My Idea of Fun
.