The Song Before It Is Sung (14 page)

OSRIC HAS GONE back to his wife; he's calmed down and they are going on holiday, the best therapy. If he knows about Emily
and Conrad, he says nothing. Emily is sexually avid, although it seems to Conrad that her avidity is a little impersonal.
What she likes is a good time, a package deal: wine, a pizza, a joint or two and sex. It's as if she must fill every moment
with sensation. She has two young children, and has more or less given up drugs. Not for her own sake, because she can handle
it, but because the children have to be taken to school and she has to keep her head straight. They go to an expensive little
school in Notting Hill. There's a sort of innocence about Emily, which he finds very appealing. Sometimes a man called Dion
rings her and she is downcast for a while. Is he the father? He doesn't ask. Her eyes are a very pale blue, Baltic blue, and
her mouth is rather flat, as though overlong use of a dummy as a child had compressed her lips.

Tony is very excited.

'You done orright there, son,' he says. 'She's a cracker.'

'It's not going anywhere.'

He says this even though he has no need to justify himself to Tony. He wonders if Tony is comparing Emily's sexual potential
to Francine's. Emily has stayed the night once, when her mother was looking after the children. He finds himself restored
in the morning as though the physical closeness has in some mysterious way supplied him with the chemical or biological material
he was missing. It certainly isn't going anywhere, but the intimacies of sex, the little details, the excitable, but at the
same time matter-of-fact way she has, all these things have topped up his human supplies. In truth it worries him that the
process should be so easy. When he sees himself naked next to her, he realises that he has become very thin over the past
few months. He loves - and he has missed - the fragility of the female body. On her back just at the base of her spine where
it vanishes, she has tiny golden hairs. When they make love, she has a faraway look as though he is only standing in for someone,
an ideal that she will never find. He doesn't mind. He thinks that she is a blessing. Moral luck, as the philosophers say.

Francine calls to report that the estate agents said the flat smelled of marijuana. He tells her that Osric came round a bit
stressed after Baghdad, and lit a few spliffs.

'We young people have our own language. Not that you would know. How's John, the medical God?'

'Can we talk?'

'Go ahead. I'm just aimlessly shuffling paper as usual.'

'You know what I mean. Talk properly.'

'About?'

'About us.'

'About you and John?'

'Don't. You know what I mean.'

'Francine, I've got somebody else.'

'Oh. OK. Sorry.'

She sounds so beaten that he says, 'It's not going anywhere.

Just a shag. Let's meet.'

'No. It's all right. I am upset, and I have no right to be. I'm being ridiculous.'

'I'll call you. Are you finished with John?'

'I think so. I've applied for a job at UCH. He thinks it's best.

He knows everyone there.'

'He's given you the push, hasn't he?'

'Yes.'

'Francine, obviously I haven't just been standing around waiting for you, until you decided '

'I'm pregnant.'

'Does he know?'

'No.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Conrad, it could be yours. You remember our last meeting, I hope?'

'Of course.'

'Well the dates are more or less exact.'

'OK.'

'I can get rid of it. Do you want that?'

'Let's talk.'

'When?'

'I could do tomorrow. When are you off?'

'I'm off all the time. Until I get the job at UCH.'

'All right. Not here, though. I'll meet you at Bar Italia. Eleven?'

He sees a moral dilemma now. If it isn't his baby - and how will they know? — he can't encourage her to have an abortion.
Even if it is his baby, conceived under these circumstances, what are his responsibilities? Worse, he feels obliged to encourage
her to have the baby, just because it is probably not his. And if he says, 'Look let's not discuss whose baby it is ever again,
but you just decide if you want it or not,' he can see that it is opening a whole new field of discussion, a can of worms.
She can't have a baby on her own without his help. And where will John stand if he discovers she has a baby? The sensible
thing would be to abort the baby, but this, too, is difficult. He and Francine wanted children but her career and his inability
to earn enough money meant that they could not go ahead. But why was she leaving herself unprotected; was it that she wanted
a child by John? If this was her intention, he has no obligation to her whatsoever. Nor does the fact that John has ditched
her mean that Conrad is the natural successor. Also he feels resentment: Just at the point when my life is becoming carefree,
a heavy hand has been clapped on my shoulder. It's not fair.

They are going out together for the first time. Emily has booked the restaurant. She says she likes restaurants that are fun.
Fun means loud and busy and in Chelsea. Everyone knows her at this restaurant and he feels a little foolish — the new boyfriend
— yet sadly proud to be out with someone so lovely. She and her friends speak in a dialect known only in Chelsea. If they
are not speaking to each other they are keeping their friends informed by mobile. This life demands a kind of upbeat casualness,
as though thoughtfulness is only for brainboxes and losers. There can be no quiet moments: life is filled with parties and
tequila slammers and dope and sex and dinners and spur-of-the-moment flights to see chums. These people are all wildly happy
until they go off to rehab. Emily has a kind of sexual openness, which men recognise instantly. They go back to the flat in
Camden much later. She thinks Camden is quaint and exotic, as one might a slum in Mombasa. As soon as they get through the
door she starts to roll a joint; she has all the gear, a little box and papers. She finishes the joint neatly and seals it
with a lick of saliva. Then she draws deeply and blows the smoke and her moist breath into his mouth and kisses him at the
same time. He wonders what she thinks about when she's not busy in this way and he can't imagine. As he inhales he wonders
if it is skunk, but he thinks it would be uncool to ask. At five in the morning, she leaves.

When he wakes, he finds a letter from the Bundesarchiv in Berlin. He opens it and reads:

He reads the enclosed letter, which is typed on an old-fashioned typewriter. He translates as best he can, using his Cassell's
dictionary:

Conrad has almost forgotten his enquiry to the archive. Now, six or seven months later, this letter comes from a cameraman.
He wants to write to Fritsch immediately but he has to leave for Soho to meet Francine. Events, inexplicably, are gathering
force and congesting. (He remembers as a child his disbelief when he was told that thunder and lightning could curdle milk.)
How quickly a world can change. He wonders what Ernst Fritsch wants. Probably money. His address is in Prenzlauer Berg, which
used to be in the old East Berlin, the territory of the thriller.

Emily left at some time in the night without warning; there are mysterious demands on her time. But she left behind for a
while the lingering scents of her presence; everyone has their own. When his mother died, he used to go to her wardrobe to
smell her clothes. He was surprised to read years later that this is quite common amongst the bereaved.

When he arrives at Bar Italia, he remembers that it was in Frith Street, not twenty metres away, that Elizabeth Partridge
and Elya Mendel met, and she told him about her visit to Sachsenhausen. They didn't know then that more than fifty thousand
were to be hanged or gassed or that Nazi officials were invited to attend a demonstration of a more efficient killing facility,
and watched ninety-six Jews being killed more efficiently to prove it; nor that the camp commander was ordered in 1945 to
remove the remaining forty thousand prisoners in barges and sink them in the Baltic. In the event tens of thousands died on
a forced march East.

Conrad sits on one of the high stools with a croissant and a cappuccino, the best in London, produced by an old Gaggia. Soon
he sees Francine peering in. He stands up and goes to the door and kisses her briefly.

'What would you like?'

'What are you having?'

'A cappuccino and a croissant.'

'I'll have an espresso. Single.'

When he brings over the espresso they sit in silence for a few moments. He looks at her to see if there is any obvious change.

'What do you think?' she asks finally.

'Firstly, I am terribly sorry it didn't work out with John.'

'Not even a little bit pleased?'

'No.'

'That's sweet of you.'

'Do you still love him?'

'I never loved him. I just wanted a better life. Things were getting on top of me.'

'Including John.'

'Ho, ho. Same old Conrad. No, I felt desperate.'

He looks at her face; under the neon it is pale and wary. The familiar face that spent nearly ten years next to his and then
positioned itself next to John's. The essence of a relationship is located here, in the face. That is why whores never kiss.
It's odd that the sexual organs are the focus of attention in pornography, when kissing is a far more intimate activity. The
Romans knew that. When Emily put her tongue in his mouth that first night, he was shocked and thrilled.

'It's not because of you. I was overwhelmed. But it is because of you that John and I have split up. He asked me if I still
loved you, and I said yes. I couldn't lie. I realised it that day after all, but I was too stubborn to tell you.'

'Ah, that last, mythical day.'

'Don't mock.'

'Can I say one thing about this baby?'

'Please.'

She looks ready for a blow.

'Nothing should be decided on the basis of who the father is. Is that possible, anyway, to find out?'

'Not really. Not at this stage.'

'Presumably at this stage abortion, termination, is relatively simple?'

'Yes.'

She looks down at the counter.

'Fran, I mean it. Whatever you decide, it's not going to be because it is or isn't mine. One thing is sure, it's yours.'

'OK.'

'And?'

'I can't decide. I so want a baby. But as we know, it's not simple.'

'Because I am a wastrel and you have a career.'

'No, Conrad. I don't think that. Maybe I never did. I just thought you sort of disregarded me. Who is your new girlfriend?'

'She's just someone I met. She's called Emily. Trust me, it's not going to last. It was just a reaction. She thinks I am good-looking
and I'm grateful.'

'You are good-looking.'

'And you are beautiful.'

'I am fading fast.'

'Just give me a couple of days to think it over and then we must decide what to do.'

'We?'

'We always wanted to have a child.'

'Oh Conrad.'

She is crying. He holds her hand. She looks so miserable, so crushed, that he feels his own eyes welling.

'What a pair we are,' he says.

There is kickboxing on the giant television screen at the end of the bar. He watches determinedly.

'I could do locum work until the baby is born.'

'Whoa. You're the one with the career path, remember.'

'Conrad, I have to tell you how dreadfully sorry I am for what's happened. All I can say is that it has been a terrible, terrible
mistake. I don't expect anything from you. I don't deserve it, but I had to tell you face to face. I've got to go now.'

The colour is rising on her throat.

'Franny, always rushing.'

They walk up Frith Street hand in hand as they used to. But Conrad knows that nothing will ever be truly the same. He stops
himself from pointing out the spot where Mendel and Elizabeth met to talk about Axel von Gottberg.

They turn into Greek Street. As she releases his hand, he feels this uncoupling deeply, the feeling you have when sex is finished,
a symbolic separation which (the pain of the past minutes has made him extremely sensitive to these emotions) seems to speak
of mortality, because each separation, each parting, depletes the material that binds you together. You know that you can
never gather up the shards of innocence and blitheness to make something whole. And this, rather than the moment of death
itself, is probably the meaning of mortality. He reaches over to kiss her, but she half ducks away from him and his lips just
brush her cheek.