Collected Stories (46 page)

After much shouting, Alan left Melanie standing in the snow. God knows what state she’d be in when he returned home, if she were there at all. Alan worked in the theatre, though not as an actor. Yet today he felt she had cast him as a criminal, a role he wasn’t prepared to play.

Alan finished both drinks and got up to go. It would be the first time he, his wife and their son had been out together as a family since he had left, eighteen months ago.

Perhaps it was his fear that had communicated itself to Melanie. He wasn’t sure, however, that fear was the right word. On the way over he had been trying to identify the feeling. It wasn’t even dread. The solution came to him now as he approached the house. It was grief; a packed, undigested lump of grief in his chest.

The boy was standing on a chair by the window. Seeing his father he jumped up and down, shouting, ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!’, banging on the smudged glass.

It had been a week since Alan had seen Mikey, and he was used to looking for the alteration in him. Yet how peculiar he still found it to visit his own son as if he were dropping by for tea with a relation. What he liked most was taking Mikey out to cafés. Occasionally the boy would slip off his stool and run about to demonstrate how high he could jump, but mostly they sat and made conversation like friends, Mikey asking the most demanding questions.

‘You’re late,’ Anne said at the door. ‘You’ve been drinking.’

She was shaking, and her eyes were fixed and wide. He was familiar with these brief possessions, the sudden fits of rage she had throughout the day, usually when she had to ask for something.

Alan slipped past her. ‘Pretty Christmas tree,’ he said.

He crouched down and Mikey ran into his arms. He was wearing tartan trousers and a knitted sweater. He handed Alan a maroon woolly hat. Anne went to get her coat. Alan pulled the hat down over Mikey’s face, and then, as the kid struggled and shouted, picked him up and buried his face in his stomach.

Alan had never liked the street, the area or the house. It had some kind of guilty hold over him. When he visited he felt he should go upstairs, get into bed, close his eyes and resume his old life, as if it were his duty and destiny. Anne still blamed him for leaving, though Alan couldn’t understand why she didn’t see that it had been best for both of them.

‘Kiss,’ said Mikey when Anne joined them. ‘Kiss together.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Kiss Mummy.’

Alan looked at his wife.

She had lost weight, her face coming to a point at her chin for the first time in years. She had been dieting; starving herself, it looked like. Her face was covered in white make-up or powder. Her lips were red. He had never let her wear lipstick, not liking it on his face. She dressed better now, presumably on his money. She hadn’t been sleeping at the house often, he knew that. Her mother had been staying there with Mikey, not knowing – or not saying – when she would be back.

He and Anne managed to press their lips together for a moment. Her perfume touched off an electric flash of uncontrollable memories, and he shuddered. He tried to think of the last time they had touched one another. It must have been a couple of months before he left. He remembered thinking then, this will be the last time.

It was dark when they went out. Mikey held their hands as they swung him between them. To Alan’s relief he chattered away.

Outside the school the parents, dressed up, were getting out of their cars and passing through the gates in the snow. Alan noticed with surprise how happy the children were and how easily their laughter came, whereas the parents exchanged only the necessary courtesies. Was he a particularly gloomy person? His girlfriend said he was. ‘If I am, you have made me so,’ was his reply. He did feel gloomy, certainly. Perhaps it was his age.

Inside it was warm and bright, and even the teachers smiled. Alan chuckled to himself, imagining what other people might think, seeing him with Anne. How unusual it was, these days, to see a husband and wife together. He exchanged a few amiable words with her, for the public show.

The nativity was performed by the eight- and nine-year-olds, with younger children playing shepherds as well as trees and stars. A painted sky suspended between shortened broom handles was held up by two tiny children. The angels had cardboard wings and costumes made from net curtains. Next year Mikey would be old enough to take part.

A few weeks ago the teacher had asked Alan for suggestions as to how the nativity should be done. Alan was the administrator of a small touring theatre group. He loved the emotional intimacy that actors created between them; and he still liked the excitement of the ‘show’, the live connection between his colleagues on stage and those who had left their homes for the honest spectacle. There was some sort of important fear that united them all, which made the theatre different from the cinema. His work was badly paid, of course. Some of the actors he worked with appeared on television; the director was married to a rich woman. Alan, though, had no other income. His girlfriend Melanie was an actress. She was pregnant and soon wouldn’t be able to work for a while.

When the nativity started Alan checked his pocket. He had taken a handkerchief out with him, a proper cloth handkerchief given to him, inexplicably, by Anne, years ago. He had not gone out with a pocket handkerchief since his last day at school. But all afternoon he had been afraid the children’s voices would make him break down. To cheer himself up he had thought of his father, in church at Christmas – the only time he went – singing as loud as he could, not caring that he was out of tune. They were celebrating, Father said, not making a record for Deutsche Grammophon.

The parents cried and laughed through the nativity, and the younger children, like Alan’s son, shouted out joyfully.

Alan compared himself to the people he knew there. At the door he had been greeted by a man who had said, ‘I could do with a drink, too, but I’m not allowed.’

Until the man reminded him that he had fixed Alan’s car a couple of times, Alan couldn’t think who he was, for he was thin and decrepit, with a shaven head.

‘But at least you look well, you look well,’ the man said, as Alan moved away uncomfortably, only at this stage becoming aware of how ill the man must be.

There was a woman sitting in the adjacent row. Alan had been told by an acquaintance earlier in the year that she had thrown herself naked from a window, smashing her face and breaking her ribs, before being taken to hospital in a straitjacket. Another woman, sitting further along the row, had ignored him, or perhaps she hadn’t seen him. But she had walked often with him in the park, as their children played. She had told him she was leaving her husband.

It had been a murderous century, yet here, in this comfortable corner of the earth, by some fluke, most of them had been spared. For that he sang, wondering, all the same, why they were so joyless.

Melanie hadn’t been pregnant long, but her body had started to change. She was losing her girlishness. Apart from her thick waist, she felt heavy and claimed she was already forced to walk with a ‘waddle’. She wasn’t working at the moment, so it didn’t matter that she had to go back to bed in the morning. When they weren’t fighting he would sit with her, eating his breakfast.

She had an appointment the next day, for an abortion. He would pick her up the day after. A long time ago he had been involved in two other abortions. The first he had avoided by going away to stay with another woman. Of the second, he remembered only how the woman lay on the floor and wept afterwards. He recalled sitting across the room from her with his eyes closed, counting back from a thousand. The relationships had broken immediately after. His life with Melanie would end, too. It would seem pointless to go on. Why was it important that relationships went on? By tomorrow night his hope would be destroyed. He couldn’t go from woman to woman any more.

Their arguments were bitter and their reconciliations no longer sweet. He had locked her out of the flat. She had thrown away a picture his wife had given him. Alan had flung some of her belongings into the street. For weeks they had pounded one another, emerging into the world as if they’d walked out of a fire, their skin blackened, eyes staring, not knowing what had happened. Would they be together for good or only until tomorrow?

Looking sideways at his wife now, over the head of the boy who connected them for ever, Alan knew he couldn’t make such a mistake again.

In their better moods, he and Melanie talked to the child in her belly and considered names for her. They had talked of having a child in a few years. But a child wasn’t a fridge that you could order when you wanted, or when you could afford it. The child in her belly already had a face.

Outside the school, as the three of them walked away, Alan spotted an abandoned supermarket trolley. Instantly he picked Mikey up, dumped him in it and ran with it along the side of the road. The yells of the delighted boy, crouching in the clattering tray as they skidded around corners and over speed bumps, and Anne’s cries as she ran behind, trying to keep up, pierced the early evening dark.

Laughing, breathless and warm, they soon arrived at the house. Anne closed the shutters and switched on the Christmas tree lights. The room had changed since he’d last been there. It contained only her things. There was nothing of him left in it.

She poured Alan a glass of brandy. Mikey gulped down his juice. Anne said he could pick a bar of chocolate from the tree if he shared it with them. As they discussed the nativity Alan noticed that his son seemed wary and uncertain, as if he weren’t sure which parent he should go to, sensing he couldn’t favour one without displeasing the other.

At last Alan got up to leave.

‘Oh, I forgot,’ Anne said. ‘I bought some mince pies and brandy butter. I don’t know why I bothered, but I did. You still like them, don’t you? I’ll put them on one plate for you and Mikey to share. Is that okay?’

She went to heat them up. Alan had told Melanie he wouldn’t be long. He had to go to her. What a terrifying machine the imagination could be. If it was terrible between them tonight, they might do something irreversible tomorrow. He was afraid her mind might become set.

‘You look as if you’re in a hurry,’ Anne said, when she returned.

He said, ‘I’ll finish my drink and have one of these pies, and then I’ll be off.’

‘Will you be coming on Christmas Day?’

He shook his head.

She said, ‘Not even for an hour? She can’t bear to be parted from you, eh?’

‘You know how it is.’

She looked at him angrily. ‘How is it that you can’t spend time with your own son?’

He couldn’t say that Melanie wanted him to be with her on Christmas Day, otherwise she would go away.

Mikey had gone quiet, and was watching them.

She said, ‘It has lasted a long time, with this woman. For you.’

‘It’s going well, yes. We’re having a baby, too.’

‘I see,’ she said, after a while.

‘I’m quite pleased,’ he said.

Melanie had told a number of her friends that she was pregnant; she discussed it constantly on the phone. Anne was the first person he had told.

‘You could have waited.’

‘For what?’ He said, ‘Sorry, I couldn’t wait. You know how it is.’

‘Why do you keep saying that?’

‘It’s a fact. There you are. Live with it.’

She said, ‘I will, thank you.’ Then she said, ‘You won’t be wanting to see Mikey so much, then.’

‘Yes I will.’

‘Why should you?’

He said, ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘You left us. I only have him. She has everything.’

‘Who?’

‘Your girlfriend.’

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you later.’

He got up and went out into the hall.

At the door the boy held on to the bottom of Alan’s coat. ‘Stay here for ever and ever amen.’

Alan kissed him. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

‘Sleep in Mummy’s bed,’ said Mikey.

‘You can do that for me.’

Mikey pressed a piece of chocolate into his hand. ‘In case you get hungry when I’m asleep.’ Then he said, ‘I talk to you when you’re not here. I talk to you through the floor.’

‘And I hear you,’ said Alan.

His son was in the window, waving and shouting out. He could see his wife, standing back in the room, watching him go.

He left the house and went to the pub. At the bar he ordered a beer with a chaser. It wasn’t until the barman put them in front of him that he remembered he had no money. He apologised and although the barman started to say something, Alan turned and went.

It was cold now. Everything was freezing, the metal of the cars, the sap in the plants, the earth itself. He passed through familiar streets, made unfamiliar by the snow. Many houses were dark; people were starting to go away. As the snow thickened, a rare and unusual silence also fell on the city. He walked faster, swinging his arms inside his coat until he was warm. He thought of the dying man he had met at the door of the school, and of what a terrible thing it was that he hadn’t recognised him. He wanted to find the man and say to him, we all grow different and change, every day; it was that, only that. Certainly, no sooner did Alan think he’d understood something of himself than he was changed. That was hope.

From a certain point of view the world was ashes. You could also convert it to dust by burning away all hope, appetite, desire. But to live was, in some sense, to believe in the future. You couldn’t keep returning to the same dirty place.

He ran up the steps to the house. The light was on. He knew things would be all right if she were wearing the dressing gown he had given her.

In the kitchen she was heating a quiche and making salad. She looked at him without hostility. Not that she spoke; he didn’t either. He watched her, but was determined not to go to her. He believed that if he could cut his desire for her out of himself, he could survive. At the same time he knew that without desire there was nothing.

Sitting there, he thought that he had never before realised that life could be so painful. He understood, too, that no amount of drink, drugs or meditation could make things better for good. He recalled a phrase from Socrates he had learned at university: ‘A good man cannot suffer any evil, either in life or after death.’ Wittgenstein, commenting on this, talked of feeling ‘absolutely safe’. He would look it up. Maybe there was something in it for him, some final ‘inner safety’.