1982 Janine (21 page)

After we had eaten our first meal together (I had provided a lot of wine but she drank sparingly) she made very muddy
bitter coffee in a peculiar ladle she had brought. As we sipped it she told me about her husband and why the marriage had failed, I cannot remember the details. She asked me why my marriage had failed and I told her I was bad at sex. I knew this was not the complete truth but the complete truth is an exhausting tangle, it saved time and breath to sum it up in the commonplace phrase Sontag's mind would eventually reduce it to. We talked some more about love and sex and agreed that our feelings had been too recently hurt for us to want a love-affair, and that sex without love was dangerous because always one of a couple came to feel more deeply than the other etcetera. Then she yawned and said, “I have an idea. It is too late for me to walk home and a taxi is expensive. My son is being looked after by one of the girls I live with, he will not need me till tomorrow. Since there is no risk of sex between us why should we not sleep together? Because yahooohay, I am suddenly very very tired.”

I said that was a sensible idea, would she like to use the bathroom first? I gave her a clean towel and as I did not want to use the bathroom at all I undressed and slipped into bed. I did not know what would happen. I had almost lost interest in her, being slightly bored, but hopeful too. She came to bed and lay naked in my arms for an hour and then whispered, “You devil!”

I said, “Why?”

“You said you were incapable of sexual response and you are trembling with lust.”

I was not trembling with lust. My prick was completely flaccid. I felt nothing but wonder at being home again.

I once started the Proust novel about
Time Redeemed
but soon gave up. I dislike books with heroes who do not work for their living. However, something in the first few pages made a distinct impression. When the hero is an old man he chews a sweet cake of the sort his auntie gave him when he was a wee boy, and because the taste of the cake is exactly the same as in the past he enjoys it just as much. And the million things which happened to him since he first tasted that cake – the aunt's death, a world war which destroyed his home and killed his friends – these are
suddenly a slight detour away from and back to a moment which is exactly the same. Eating that cake abolished time for him. Women's bodies do that for me when I am allowed to hold them and I stop being nervous. I am not referring to fucking, I am referring to THE LANDSCAPE OF HOME. Every woman has her own unique scale of proportions but the order of these warm soft slopes and declivities is the same, and whenever I am allowed to explore one of these landscapes I feel I have never been away from it. I felt this the first night I slept with Denny, I thought, ‘I have never been away from here,' yet I had never before slept with anyone in my life. Unless with my mother, as a baby. Which was no explanation, as a baby is too small to feel its mother's body all over, so the familiarity of Denny's thighs, buttocks, stomach, glens, glades, banks and braes must have been mine when I was born. But this has nothing to do with lust so I said, “Let's just go to sleep, Sontag,” and did fall asleep. So did she, perhaps. I awoke stiff and inside her, it was very comfortable. She said, “Well?”

“What's wrong dear?”

“Do you not intend to do something?”

“Is there a hurry?”

She withdrew from me, put on the light and sat crosslegged on the bed and frowned, right hand cupping and supporting left elbow, left hand cupping and supporting chin. She said,

“You are worse than I thought. I expected premature ejaculation, that is the usual British problem, but this is worse. There must be a medical name for it. I will investigate.”

I realised that I appealed to Sontag as a problem to be solved. It was then she asked about my fantasies. I wish she had kept them for later. Perverse pantomiming is fun but should be played on a platform of something calm and ordinary. However, Sontag wanted to be a thinker, a teacher, and could not relax in ordinary states. She did teach me one glorious lesson, though not in words.

After four or five weeks we had never been together in company so she gave a party in the old house on Partickhill Road. I think the women she shared with gave it too, for certainly Sontag had no air of being a hostess. It struck me as
a wild kind of party but perhaps I only thought that because of loud rock music on the record-player and because nobody was introduced to anybody. Certainly I saw no unpleasantness apart from the unpleasantness I made for myself. The average age of the women was thirty though many of them had younger sisters. The men were mostly much younger, longhaired students in their teens and early twenties, but I noticed five or six men of my own age. Like myself they seemed slightly outside the party but showed no interest in each other. Sontag and I sat on a sofa watching the dancing and I grew very depressed. The other women seemed more attractive and interesting than Sontag, their partners seemed more attractive and interesting than me. When Sontag asked me why I was silent I told the truth. I said I felt we were stuck with each other because we were unable to attract anyone else. She looked at me thoughtfully for a while, nodded, got up and went to a slightly older man who leaned smoking against the mantelpiece. She spoke to him and they started dancing. They were still dancing an hour later when I left. I could not ask another woman to dance with me because I cannot dance. Next day I phoned Sontag but she was either out or pretending to be out. A week passed before I could get her on the phone. She said, “Well?”

“Could I see you tonight?”

“No, we are finished with each other. I thought I had made that clear.”

After a pause I said, “I realise why you finished with me.”

She said, “Good. Then no more need be said.”

But she did not at once put down the phone. After a pause and with an effort I said, “Thank you for being so nice to me. I hope you are happy.”

She said, “Goodbye Jock,” which was the last I heard from her.

Did I deserve that? Yes I deserved that. I deserved that. I deserved that.

A long time after I met someone who had known Sontag in those days. I learned that the man beside the mantelpiece had been an almost total stranger to her, a post-office
engineer who was being divorced by his wife. Sontag and he spent the night together and two days later he moved in to live with her, though the other women did not like him much. After two months he got a job in England and Sontag and her son moved down with him to London. I hope she is happy there. She deserved happiness. She was brave.

My mother was brave, she deserved happiness too, I see that clearly now. At the time I was so choked with anger that I burned her letter. But I had read it twenty or thirty times so I have the words by heart, though memory may have twisted or rearranged them.

Dear Son
,

This letter will come as a Shock and Annoyance
anyway because I have not wrote you more than a postcard or Xmas
card before now, anyway you and me were never Great Writers it
was your Dad who was the Writer among us. You will have had my
card from New Zealand. My cousin was not right in his head before
the End but I think he recognised me so may be by being there I
soothed his last moments so the journey was worthwhile. Or so I
hope. He was past 80 anyway and went away from Scotland
before you were Born or intended so this is not Matter to you. But
Son on the boat coming back this man got very Keen on me God
knows why because I am no Chicken and defnatly not the Come
Hither type. I did not like him Atall, he is much older than me who
am no Chicken but he does not look it, he dresses far too young by
our Standards, patterned socks and shorts and shirts, loud voice too,
the pushy sort I never fancied. I do not mean he is not Polite. Son he
was perfectly Polite but defnatly Not My Type what he sees in me I
just cannot fathom especially as he has made his Pile as they say and
retired and is a Widower. But his money is not matter to me if that is
what you are thinking. Son he makes me laugh sometimes though I
am not the humorous type neither are you or your father so you will
think I made myself Cheap, I did not. He ate at my table on the
voyage and kept asking me to dances on board and I kept saying No
until the last night on board when he danced with me for the first
time I have danced since Months before I met and married your
Father. Then he proposed to me though he knew I am a married
woman and made me very angry. I said “Certainly Not” but he did
not care. He said he would be touring Scotland before Europe and
in a week would come to the long town and must see me again. I told
him I would see him in a month, not sooner, if he was really Keen,
but even then I might say no. “That was all right by him,” he said
and I won't go into any more details because your father now knows
all this but I told your Father you should first hear All from me
because I am leaving with Frank to go Back with him to New
Zealand on Saturday next from Glasgow Central Station at 3
p.m. I would like to see you before I go if you will not just be mad
at me for being a bad woman. If you have only Hard words it will
be best to keep away. Son I don't know what you will think of me
when I tell you this but I do not like Frank more than I like your
Father how can I? Your father is a good man, I have lived with him
for 23 years, he was always a decent husband as far as that goes but
I need a change. Your father likes everything steady, I was never
the steady type but of course a woman with a Son has to behave a
lot better than she feels but you are on your own now, married, you
don't need me. I don't think you ever did, after you were 10 or 11
you started living in a world of your own sitting over your books
frowning and smiling to yourself like a little old man. You were
always much closer to your Father than to me.
That bit still bewilders me. I never felt close to my father before she left him. I thought my closest connection was with her but that she and Dad were completely one. I suppose the truth is that we were all three equally lonely and separate from each other
. You like having everything steady too so I know you will be
angry when you read this. I just hope you have made the right
Choice in Helen. And try to be kind to your father
.

Love from

Your Bad Old Mother

P.S. At Central Station on Saturday next I will stand alone just
inside the barrier for a while before the train leaves with Frank in
the carriage so you need not see him if you don't want to. The train
leaves at 3 p.m
.

Yes I was choked with anger. Each minute that I thought of the matter I alternated between a frigid determination not
to visit the station and a redhot determination to go and yell and scream at her. Then I thought of a compromise. I would go and talk to her in a restrained way until the porter started slamming the doors for the train to leave, then I would embrace her, lock my hands behind her and refuse to let go. Even if Frank charged up and tried to free her I would not let go. I imagined him fat and bald like a caricature American in sandals, bermuda shorts, dark glasses and a ten-gallon hat. He might punch my face till it was bloody but I would not let go and then Mum would recognise what a brute he was and tell him to leave and would go back to Dad. Perhaps. I am now astounded at the violence of these feelings. I have never been aware of loving my mother much. Since leaving home I had seen her on few occasions, and mainly from a sense of duty.

I arrived in the station at twenty to three, and as I approached the barrier I walked slower and slower. She was not inside it. I bought a magazine from a nearby bookstall and stood partly screened by it, pretending to read but looking toward the train. Either they had not yet arrived or they were on it. Shortly after quarter to three I saw her come along the platform, a taller woman than most with a strikingly straight back and grey hair. I recognised the plain black coat she wore but not the hat, which was purple and unsuitable, I thought, and matched the frames of new spectacles with outer corners curving up like wingtips which were also unsuitable for a respectable woman of nearly fifty. But at the first glimpse of her my plan became quite impossible. I knew I could never raise a hand against her. She stood still beside the barrier for a long time. I could see her face but her poor eyesight ensured I would be part of a blurred background until I took a few steps nearer her. I could not move because I could think of nothing to say. I was not angry now. I tried to think, but all the words I knew seemed tangled in a tight ball, I could think and feel nothing which would stop me standing half-hidden by the magazine and staring and staring, Her usual expression had always been a brooding frown, she smiled by pulling her mouth further down at the corners as if to stop them going up, I could not read her present expression which was vague,
perhaps a little lost. Sometimes she looked at her wristwatch or removed or pulled on a glove. At last a man in a respectable black suit came up to her from behind and my heart jumped because for a moment I thought it was Hislop, but no. His face was plump and boyish. He spoke to her, took her arm and led her back along the train and into a carriage as the porters started slamming the doors. I was drawn to the barrier by them moving away and I must admit that from behind they looked a well-suited couple in spite of her extra inch. After the train left it struck me that just before they reached the carriage I should have yelled, “Goodbye Mum! Goodbye Mum!” and frantically waved. It would not have made her miss the train but she would have known I cared enough to say Goodbye.