He relents, offers a digestif. It is inevitably accepted. They stand to move to the bar; Simon likes to stand beside potential clients — especially squat, selfimportant, slightly balding ones. He is feeling particularly tall today (Simon is tall in relation to most people, although it’s true he is especially tall in relation to Julia who, remember, is quite small, and has a place for her head on his chest which has been there for years, since they first held each other, a few weeks after they met).
The client is saying something which Simon anticipates will be followed with a laugh, and prepares himself to join in. Crash, bang. The flensed carcass of a whale is called a
crang
, he thinks, and wonders when his mind grew so incongruous.
A kiss
And now here we find him, hunched over his plans as ever, but strangely inattentive. Simon is tired. His eyes ache. He should have them tested, he knows: he has worn the same glasses for years. He is having a long day and it is only early afternoon. His own writing, neat with a slight back-slant and a subtle serif, is somewhat too small for him to read; he finds himself squinting, sighs when he makes out the word ‘buttress’. A clunk of a word for a clumsy feature; this is what the client demands. The proposal document is open on his screen, and he’d like to finish it before the end of today, if only so that tomorrow he won’t have to contemplate turrets or tudor façades. He is nothing but a slave, he thinks, to the vulgarity of others.
Another cup of coffee which he needs but feels he shouldn’t drink sits before him. Joanne brought it to him, having noticed the darkness under his eyes, although she knows he has a rule about caffeine after lunchtime. He focuses his attention on the screen. His desk phone, and his mobile, obtrude upon the edge of his awareness, and his eyes flick to one and then the other at intervals, as if nervous of a pounce. He is thinking of two women: Julia and her amber eyes, her hair the colour of nutmeg, and the smell of spice on her breath; and another, with blonde curls and a big, generous, bitter mouth. Bright laughter, red and full, brightness brushing his skin… But he does not love the showy moths. He likes the muted ones, tawny, bronze and brown, the intricacy of their patterning, how they shine under
scrutiny. So why this persistent brightness, as if from the corner of his eye?
He thinks of his father, who liked large, brilliant Blues, as big as birds; and he thinks of his mother, miserable in South Africa before he was born, depressed by this relentlessly vivid country. Wanting the grey-brown scrubfield mud, the grey-blue sky, the grey buildings of her memories of England, insisting they return to raise their boy there. And he thinks of them together, of his childhood, his father lost in Shropshire craving colour and his mother hating butterflies. And he wonders, did he whisper to her ever, or kiss the top of her head? Did he leave her any comfort before dying? He wonders if his mother is at least content now, without him, without the burden of pretending, when she has never been up to the task of happiness. She no longer wears turquoise on her eyelids.
He remembers a meadow, he remembers her smiling and batting at the wings all around her, sitting on a picnic blanket, and remembers running after his father, running back to her with his net streaming behind and a jar with a big burly purplish thing hurling itself at the glass, his first catch, holding it out before him as he ran and then stopping, confused, at the edge of the blanket, because she was crying. It was hayfever, she said; no, she wasn’t sad.
Simon’s mouth becomes full of a phantom pork pie, heavy, greasy, dry, the yellowish jelly. A mouthful of queasy disappointment that he can’t choke down. His stomach gurgles and he swills his mouth with coffee.
And you, Simon? asked James last night (and well he might). Are you happy?
Last night, after dinner: Julia and Michelle are in the kitchen, Simon and James in the living room. James lolls on the sofa; Simon has taken the edge of an
armchair, one knee optimistically advanced and askance, ready to leave. He is thinking of the drive ahead and his early start. Listening to Julia laughing in the next room, he is beginning to feel depressingly sober, and, having spent much of the evening listening to the others talk, he feels that some conversational gambit is now required of him.
‘Hm,’ he announces, the little pedantic cough, born of awkwardness, that makes him seem more middle-aged than he is. ‘Hm. Did you know, I read recently, did you know that there’s no single definition of the Arctic’s southern limit?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I came across this book of Julia’s, the other day. There’s the treeline, the latitude where the sun doesn’t rise or set on the solstices, the reach of the ice. Some of them are perfect circles, others are all over the shop.’
There is a pause. James looks expectant.
‘No fixed centre, and no single edge,’ he adds, a finger pointing and orbiting the point, to clarify.
Simon’s mind circles and circles the Arctic’s unsatisfactory edges; this is the spiral that will later trap him through his sleepless hour. An Arctic map, he explains, is a map of concepts. A red line, scribing an uneven round, denotes the icecap’s furthest reach, as at a particular date. There is another line beyond which no trees grow. And then again, circumscribing the ice and crossing through eight countries, a line at a latitude of 66° 33’ 39” (assuming the map is moderately recent, for this line too shifts with time). Stand upon this line or north of it and the sun, on at least one day in the year, does not rise, and at its other solstice does not set: the so-called Arctic Circle.
‘Is that right?’ says James.
Simon laughs, shakes his head, becomes young again. He hunches forward, pinches the bridge of his nose although he has taken off his glasses.
‘You’re looking at me like I’ve gone mad.’
James, too, laughs; he has known Simon long enough. ‘It’s not that I’m not interested. It all sounds fascinating.’
‘Julia’s been sorting the archive,’ explains Simon. ‘All the uncle explorer’s stuff. In the house.’
‘Ah, of course. How is the house?’
‘Last week we were invited to contribute pasta salad to a street party. It’s very… It’s very pasta salad. Associations. A real grocer. Butcher, baker, et cetera. The house and the town and the market. It’s charming.’
‘Charming, you say. No doubt.’
Simon waves the hint of his own cynicism away. ‘It’s great, really. It’s very peaceful and calm and there are no sirens at night. Julia seems happy.’
‘Seems?’
‘As far as I can tell.’
‘Have you considered asking?’
No, Simon has not considered asking. He does not want to think of her saying that no, she isn’t sad, he believes she would say yes, she’s happy, and is not sure he’d believe her, and would prefer not to have to question why. James is frank with drinking, but Simon hasn’t touched a drop.
‘She’s got a cat; she always wanted one. We have a garden.’
‘And you?’
‘It’s good to have space. The house is ridiculous, of course. Crammed full of dados and cornicing and coving and corners — lots of corners. Lots of little poky spaces and big grand inefficient ones.’
‘You love it.’
Simon smiles, shrugs. ‘I can’t help it.’
It’s true. Simon, who likes his lines clean, his palette neutral, his angles sharp, has come to find comfort in the senseless arrangements of the house, so different from the hard cities he helps to build.
But would Simon say he is happy? Well, again, he would not consider asking himself this question; he would prefer not to. He certainly seems, to himself, to be. He has his extraordinary house and his own shed and a job he often enjoys and his butterflies, and the moths at night in the garden, and his wife.
And yet — we may as well pry, now, having asked the question — yesterday, Simon answered his office phone to a strange number, and a remembered kiss rose to his mouth like bile when he heard the voice on the line. Simon had almost persuaded himself, until he regrettably answered that call, to forget a stray business card, mistakenly handed over in a moment of confusion; it had been efficiently filed away in the corner of his mind that he prefers not to visit. All sorts of things are in there: the time he accidentally killed their canary in an experiment with the oven. The time he accidentally broke the wing of a Fritillary that his father had been pursuing for hours and given him to mount. The time he accidentally lost his virginity to a girl who didn’t deserve it. The time he has spent in silence, not saying what he should say to his wife, not knowing what to say. The time he hasn’t spent with the children he doesn’t have… This shameful little crevice is where Simon has stored a single kiss, the one unfaithful act he has ever committed. Is this, we might ask, the behaviour of a happy man? And what, precisely, was the nature of that errant kiss?
Two weeks ago, the woman who lives over the road cornered him in the
corner shop, thrusting out a large and well-manicured, red-nailed hand to be shaken. She was wearing a suit with a silk blouse, high-heeled shoes that had rubbed her foot red at the base of the big toe but in which she walked as if they didn’t hurt her, and a strong musky perfume. She had just moved in, she explained; they’d been there less than a year themselves, he said. A fellow interloper. She laughed, showing off neat white teeth and a quiver of pink tongue, and he was pleased by this moment of complicity, by her private smile for him. They should all get together, he said. The ‘all’ was deliberate, so she wouldn’t get the wrong impression. And why would she? Why for that matter should he worry that she might? It was surely not disappointment that made her mouth twitch; he had probably imagined it. He was only hoping to make friends with the neighbours, thinking of Julia alone all day. He even thought he might make a joke about being chatted up by a
Telegraph
reader. Except in the end he forgot to mention it to Julia at all. He thought that she wouldn’t like this Sandra — she would find her overbearing, and the choice of newspaper was a bad sign — and this may be why he didn’t say anything about it. Those nails, that lipstick — Simon allowed himself conveniently to forget that it is he who disapproves of red, as Julia has learned long since. But then when the phone rang one Saturday a couple of weeks ago, and Julia was out shopping, he heard himself inviting Sandra over and saying, ‘I don’t bite,’ rather unconvincingly. Unconvincing, because this is not the kind of phrase that comes naturally to Simon, and he wasn’t sure why he was using it; not because he might bite after all. That comes later.
Two and a half hours later, in fact, and it turns out to be her that bites; they are in the conservatory, perched together on the wicker sofa, and she is vibrant in a poppy-printed summer dress, her blonde hair bouncing, she has
laughed loudly at a passing joke he has made and pushed his thigh gently as if she is a little scandalized; she does not take her hand away and he feels himself caught now in those long red talons. He notices that one nail is chipped and a little bitten, and feels a reddening surge of something like repugnance or lust and in its ebb something like pity or tenderness; then he feels the other set of nails press into the flesh under his chin to turn his face to hers and he knows she’s overpowered him, and finds that it is easy, allowing himself to be powerless. And suddenly she is nipping at his neck without restraint; and, in fairness, he is not attempting to restrain her. Julia returns from her trip into town just as a manicured hand is making its determined way down his shirtfront, tormenting that ticklish torso so that he is already starting to squirm away from her when the door slams — you have to slam the door to make sure it closes, remember, and thank goodness, for Simon’s sake. He jumps back and the brazen neighbour makes a quick recovery, her heart beating so hard he can see the silk of her dress twitch; she laughs and gives him a wide-eyed ‘Naughty me’ look, fingertips to her mouth. She stands and asks for his business card, which, bewildered, he gives her; she leaves through the garden gate. Simon is flustered. He rubs at his neck, hearing Julia calling for him. ‘Ah, here you are,’ she says, and plumps down beside him on the sofa. She doesn’t notice the sticky smell of perfume that he is sure is all over his hands; or if she does, he thinks guiltily, it would never occur to her to question it. She shows him her new leather notebooks happily. Now she has all that she needs to really set to work. All she was lacking was the proper stationery, she laughs.
‘Is your neck okay? It looks awfully red.’
‘Hm. Just been out in the sun too long, I suppose.’
She looks at him quizzically — he is not one to linger in the garden — then
shrugs, with a little shake of her head and a frown, tells him he should be more careful, and makes them some tea.
Simon loves his wife. He might well suffer in comparison with the portrait that hangs in the drawing room; certainly he does not feel heroic. True, he too is dark, cheeks hollow, tall; if he could be persuaded to grow a moustache — and Julia has tried on occasion, only half joking — he might just look the part. Strength and fidelity, surety, courage. Would she wait for him so long, if he were to set out so bravely? He would not want her to, perhaps; perhaps the world is no longer so romantic. But he loves his wife and he would like to make her happy; he is forever striving to cross that incommensurable distance, to meet her. He has no desire to betray her. He suspects he will always fail her.
In his worse moments, Simon wonders if he would have Julia at all had he not been there when she needed him, when they first met; and now all these years later he would simply like to feel that he can sometimes meet that need, knowing that he has already failed her once, at least once, constantly… He recalls her tears last night, and all of her tears, so infrequent he thinks he can remember every one; and those she would not weep, when he wished that she would come to him and weep. His love for her, the frail and lovely edifice that is the wife he loves, is built as much from the knowledge of the sadness she keeps hidden as it is from the shimmering he first longed to capture; the memory of her head against his chest when she was suffering is painful of course, but it also brings him pleasure, to remember being needed.