Sing Like You Know the Words (40 page)

***

It was the closest that Matthew
and David had come to a serious quarrel; but now Matthew couldn´t
despair of the world, or even of David, because now he had Amy. For
the first time in his life he was able to believe unconditionally
in the existence of a special emotion that people called love, and
he found that it made the whole world seem like a different
place.

His long time friends saw a
change in: he was less aloof, they said; more considerate;
genuinely interested in other people. He caught himself smiling at
work; having inconsequential conversations with colleagues. He
wondered what kind of monster he must have been in his life
before.

Early on, he introduced Amy to
his mother; an unheard of step for Matthew. Mrs James was charmed:
she described Amy as shapely, with perfect skin, and added that her
eyes were extraordinary: clear and brown and somehow deep. Matthew
noticed the eyes more once his mother had mentioned them, but
really he had known them always. Maybe all his life he had only
been waiting to find these deep untroubled pools that his spirit
could fall into and lose itself.

Mrs James told her friend that
that her son had met a nice girl who was pretty, if a bit quiet,
and it seemed like he might be growing up at last.

David wasn´t around much, but he
met Amy once or twice. Matthew and he kept in touch by telephone,
and David heard enough about Amy in those conversations to
understand that his friend had found something important. Patricia
was fascinated and enthusiastic, warning Matthew that he must not
let this girl escape: she was definitely the one for him.

It wasn´t long before Patricia
wanted to hear about the sex. Matthew was uncomfortable: sharing
the details with Patricia seemed disloyal, but then they had always
talked about everything. Shared information was really the base of
their relationship and sometimes Matthew thought that it was the
female side of himself that was close to Patricia. He couldn´t hold
back entirely. He could have said that there was nothing of the
desperate clutching between two empty souls hungry to be filled;
that sex had been the moment when he made some connection to
humanity, but now he felt connected with Amy all the time, and so
their lovemaking was languid and sensual, rather than urgent.
Instead he only said that it felt different to what he had with the
others; what Patricia called his damaged girls. Everything seemed
more peaceful and slow.

-I´m not sure I get that,
Patricia shook her head. You know what they say about angry sex:
the only kind there is.

Matthew tried to find other ways
to describe his feelings:

-I´m different, in myself, he
claimed. If we´re walking on the street and we pass a beautiful
girl, I can say, yes, she´s pretty. I don´t feel I have to pretend
not to notice or say she´s not my type. Because it´s only that I´m
admiring the girl, not that I want her, and I know that Amy can see
it.

-Well, don´t get too
enthusiastic in your admiration, Patricia warned him, laughing.
Girls can be more insecure than you think. Even girls as saintly as
your Amy.

With David he was more open. He
said he was certain that if such a thing as love existed, that was
what he felt for Amy. He only regretted that he´d come to this age
in life without knowing that feeling before. He´d been dishonest in
his other relationships without even knowing it.

-But; David pointed out. If
you´d known that feeling before, you probably wouldn´t be with Amy
now. Maybe you should just relax and enjoy your good luck for the
first time in your life. Don´t give in to your need to find
problems with everything

-All I worry about is how Amy
feels about me. You know, there´s always one partner who is more
loved than loving. It was always me before. Only because I suppose,
looking back, I was never really that bothered. But now that isn´t
so and it could be me that´s hurt. And Amy´s a lot younger than
me.

-They usually are Matt, David
laughed.

-But what if she changes her
mind?

David should have realized that
the first seed of doubt had been planted in Matthew´s mind:
inevitably, it would grow and start to cast a shadow over his
happiness. Amy and Matthew would be free of the shadow for a time,
but the darkness is patient.

Neither of them was the sort of
person who cared to map the future. Matthew had never even been
able to plan holidays in advance; much to the annoyance of his
earlier girlfriends, who´d suspected with some justification that
it meant he was not sure they would be together by the summer. For
him there was a trace of superstition in it too; as if speaking a
possible future out loud might curse it.

Amy wasn´t lacking in commitment
or scared of tempting fate: it was more that she accepted certain
things as inevitable; like the two of them being together and all
that implied. It wasn´t that she didn´t know her own mind. She only
seemed to be on such good terms with life that it flowed in her
direction. Matthew thought that Amy understood life and knew what
she wanted from it. Perhaps she even knew what she wanted from him.
He accepted that whatever secret she possessed could not be spoken;
and so they were both content to inhabit the present, and to let
time be something that flowed around them.

Their lives became more
intertwined, without much discussion. Amy knew how she felt. She
heard what Matthew said about how he felt and took him at his word.
Everything else was simply natural. The time spent travelling
between their respective houses was just wasted. She moved in to
his flat. They had more time together. Amy said that he should be
certain to keep up his interests and friendships, but he only
wanted time to spend with her. When he could see and hold her he
felt safe from the doubt and regret that had plagued his other
life.

But that was how the darkness
started. Matthew brooded: it was what he had always done.
Gradually, he stopped seeing his own friends. He preferred to tag
along with Amy and her friends when they met after work. Then it
seemed that he was more comfortable when they didn´t go out at all.
Amy said that she didn´t mind if they did nothing, she was happy
for them just to be together. He was asking her what she minded all
the time these days: it sounded foolish even to himself.

He started to plan and organize
things that just the two of them could do together, except he
needed reassurance that Amy would not find them boring. She was
younger than him and probably she needed more excitement. He
started to be interested in the sort of music and clothes that had
bored him when he was Amy´s age. Amy was only confused, and had no
answers to his nagging questions about what she might want to do.
It was as if Matthew was pressing her to develop some consuming
passion so that they might share it.

He was spoiling everything, and
the worst was that he knew it, but could not stop. And now the
future started to obsess him.

David told him he was being an
idiot.

-You know more about girls than
I do, but don´t you think you might drive her away? She fell for
the person you are Matt. How are you going to keep her by turning
yourself into someone different?

-I can´t see where we go from
here. She´ll get tired of me. Some days I think it would be better
for me to break it now. It will hurt too much if we grow apart.

-I don´t know about Amy, but I´m
tired of you. Dump or be dumped; is that the best you can do? It
sounds like playground stuff.

Patricia couldn´t help him. She
said that it was clear to everyone that he and Amy were meant for
each other, and that with all the women he´d known he should be
able to trust the emotions he felt now and know that he had
something rare and special. But now Patricia had her baby, she
didn´t need him, he thought, even though he´d never been more than
a surrogate for David really. He remembered the other women, and
the strategies he´d used to get free of them when the thrill was
gone, all too well.

He doubted his own ability to
make a commitment. He knew that he was devoted to Amy now, but what
would come of that in time. They´d met just after the thing with
Patricia finished; just after he´d learned about the child. That
could be just chance, or that he´d not been open to a deeper
relationship before because Patricia meant more than he thought. It
could mean only that he´d needed to move from one temporary
emotional crutch to another. How would that feel two or five years
from now?

He started to hate himself and
believe that he wasn´t worthy of Amy. Leaving her would save her
from him. What would happen to them if he stayed? What life could
he offer? Patricia told him that was Amy´s business not his. Amy
was perfect, but Matthew had always believed that perfection was an
illusion. At any rate he was sure that he was far from perfect
himself.

Other times he would reflect
that if his memories were distorted; if Patricia had kept him on a
leash for so long, or if he´d been so shallow that he could never
connect with those other women, then it meant that he was even more
pathetic and lucky to have Amy than he imagined, and he should hold
on to her however he could. He saw now that the other girls, the
ones that David called his conquests, had never really been lovers.
They hadn´t seen him at all, absorbed in the dramas of their own
lives, in which he was allotted only a minor role. He´d been
content to remain invisible, only providing them an empty space for
a time, until he ran away, which was what he did best. Only now he
couldn´t run.

One night, in the middle of it
all, he asked if she´d like them to be married. Amy gave one of her
smiles

-I should think not, she
replied. I´m not sure what you mean by “be married”? It sounds a
bit half-hearted; like you would consent to being a husband, but
you wouldn’t want to go through all the tedious business of a
wedding. It doesn’t even sound as if you are talking about you and
me. More like a general enquiry as to my preferences. You´d have to
do better than that to convince me.

-Of course I meant us. I’m
sorry, that was clumsy I know. I’ve never proposed to anyone
before.

-I’m only teasing Matt. But
remember you have been married before.

-I know. Still, that was just
something that sort of happened. Now it´s different.

Amy thought for a while, and
then she said that she hadn´t yet considered marriage enough to
know whether it was for her or not. She would need to understand
what it was for and why they might do it. She added that if she
ever decided that she did want to be married; then she expected
that she would want to be married to Matthew. And she was smiling
again.

Matthew thought he felt relief
at her reply. He wasn’t sure why he’d raised the subject in the
first place. It was a catharsis of sorts: not that he didn´t want
to marry Amy, but he was forced to ask himself why she would want
to marry a man who had turned himself into a mirror image of the
man she met: insistent, whining, on edge all the time; finding
significance in the most minor things; obsessing about possible
futures. He realized how close he had come to destroying what they
had, and although he couldn´t altogether turn from the path of self
destruction overnight, little by little he began to recover
happiness.

She pulled us through, just by
staying herself, he thought of Amy. She´s not stupid: she could see
what I was going through; but she kept talking to me as if I was
the person she knew, not the deranged maniac I´ve been. More than
ever he could see what a special person she was and understand that
his first obligation was to do his best to deserve her.

***

David had arranged to meet
Matthew at his mother’s house. Amy was going to be there too, and
later, if he turned up, Tim. David wasn´t sure whether Matthew or
his mother was behind the invitation, but he did feel that he owed
the old lady something more than the impersonal MP´s response she´d
had to her letter to him, and he would support any effort to break
Tim out of his current situation, though he doubted it could be
done. He knew that Matthew wanted to show him the part of David´s
constituency where he´d grown up, and he rather feared he was due
to be lectured at.

Even so, he hated to be late for
any kind of meeting, but it was tough to know how much time was
needed for a journey across town these days, even on a Saturday.
Parts of the city were permanently choking on traffic.

David drove through the centre,
round the inner loop road, and through the complex system of urban
highways which funnelled a never ending stream of cars and heavy
vehicles between the different motorways that converged on the
city. Newcomers told him that the local road system was impossible
to navigate, and he supposed it was true.

The centre was growing, outwards
as well as upwards, and now it was insulated from the inner suburbs
by a ring of tarmac. The rows of terrace houses were gone, together
with the breakers’ yards, cheap office space, and warehouses that
had crowded among them. In their place moving lines of vehicles;
and between them, banked expanses of grass that no-one ever stood
upon. It wouldn´t be long before the office workers would be able
to pass from their suburban homes to their expensive parking spaces
without catching sight of the poor estates.

He steered the car around the
curve of the final interchange and took the spur that headed south,
passing under a deserted pedestrian footbridge. Abruptly the image
of civic modernity faded. The road narrowed and its surface became
uneven. The old buildings crowded in closer to the highway. There
were people walking about in the streets, plump mothers herding
young children and the scrawny elderly hunched over in their
raincoats.