Collected Stories (66 page)

– It’ll make it less of a strain.

– Why should it be such a strain anyway? he asked.

– I don’t know.

But neither of them thought it a good idea to invite another couple. For some reason they didn’t want anyone else to see them with Ed and Ann upstairs. It might mean they had to discuss it.

At work, one lunchtime that week, Ed brought up the subject of his neighbours with a friendly colleague. Ed hadn’t told Ann that he was intending to talk about this with anyone else, but he had to: the situation seemed to be making him preternaturally tired and paranoid. Sitting on the tube, where he could see the other Ed at the other end of the carriage reading the same book, what could he do but wonder whether anyone else was similarly shadowed?

– Suppose, he told the friend, – that a couple moved in upstairs who were very similar to you.

Once he’d relieved himself of this, Ed awaited his friend’s reply. Of course the friend didn’t see how this could be a problem. Ed tried to put it more clearly.

– Suppose they were not only quite similar, but were – how shall I put it? – exactly the same. It’s as if they’re the originals and you’re only acting out their lives. Not only that, you thought they were petty, and a bit dim, and that their lives were dull, and that they were not generous enough with each other – they didn’t see how much they would benefit from more giving all round – and they had nothing much to say for themselves … You know the sort of thing.

The friend said, – Naturally, they’d have the same ideas about you, too.

– I guess that’s right, said Ed, nervously. – Let me put it like this: what if you met yourself and were horrified?

– I wouldn’t be horrified but so amused I’d laugh my head off, said the friend. – Am I such a bad person? Is that what this important conversation is about?

Of course what Ed had described was not something of which this friend had had any experience. How could he possibly appreciate how terrible and oppressive such a thing could be? The only people Ed and Ann knew who had had this experience were Ed and Ann upstairs.

Ed and Ann tried to forget about their upstairs neighbours. They wanted to go about their lives as normally as possible. But the night following Ed’s conversation with his friend, there was a knock on the door of the flat. When Ed opened it, he saw it was Ed. It turned out that both Anns were at evening classes and should be back soon. Ed wanted to borrow a CD he had heard Ed mention at supper. He had lost his own copy and wanted to tape Ed’s.

– Come in, said Ed. – Make yourself at home. I wasn’t doing anything important.

Ed offered him a drink. Then Ann phoned to say she was having a drink with a friend. The other Ann did the same. Ed stayed until the bottle was finished. He poured it himself and even asked if Ed minded turning off the TV – it was ‘distracting’ him. He talked about himself and didn’t leave off until both Anns returned, around the same time.

When Ed and Ann were under the bedsheets, Ed said, – How could he do it? Just turn up and put me under that kind of pressure? I could have been …

– What? said Ann.

– Writing a piece about that journey I made to Nepal two years ago.

– Which I bet you weren’t doing, said Ann. – Were you?

– Maybe I was about to start washing out my best fountain pens. Ann, you know I’ve been intending to.

– I’m afraid you’ll never begin that other journey, the deepest one, inside!

– I don’t want to hear that! You make me feel awful!

She said, – What do we do in the evenings but watch TV and bicker? Tell me, what did Ed say?

– I learned a lot. He’s in the wrong job. Can’t get along with the people he works with. He has ambition, but it is unfocused. You go out of your house, people always say – it’s the first thing – what do you do? They judge you by what you’re achieving and by your importance. Yet to him everyone else seems cleverer and with a much better idea of what’s going on. He realises that whether he feels grown up or not, from the world’s point of view he is now an adult.

– He knows he’s not going to be rich!

– Rich! Nothing is moving forward for him. His fantasy is to be a travel writer. As if! Doesn’t know if he’ll ever make a living at it. Doesn’t even know if he’ll ever begin. His friends are making a name for themselves. He gets up in the morning, contemplates his life and can’t begin to see how to fix it.

– Do they discuss it? Do they talk?

– Talk! He complains that she doesn’t know whether to stay with him. She doesn’t know whether this is the best of what a life can offer. She really wants to be a teacher, but he won’t encourage her. He thinks she’s a flake, interested only in her body, wasting their money on fake therapies and incapable of saying anything with any pith in it. There’s a man at work who’s older, who guides her, who will guide her away from him. I expect he’s fucked her already.

– Oh, she wants to be inspired!

– Is that what she calls it?

– Wait a minute, she said. – Can you please stop? I have to get a drink of water.

– Go on then, drink! he said. – The couple’s sex life has tailed off but they don’t know if this is a natural fluctuation. If they have children they’ll be stuck with each other in some way or other for good. Neither of them has the resources to make a decision! It’s trivial in many ways, but in others it’s the most important thing in their lives. All in all, they’re going crazy inside.

– Some people’s lives! said Ann.

For the next two weeks Ann and Ed went out after work, together sometimes, but mostly separately, not returning until late. Ed even took to walking around the streets, or sitting in bars, in order not to go home. He kept thinking there was something he had to do, that there was something significant which had to be changed, but he didn’t know what it was. Once, in a pub in which there were many mirrors, Ed thought he saw Ed from upstairs sitting behind him. Thinking he’d seen the devil, he stood up and rushed out, gasping and gesticulating at nothing. He took to spreading out his newspaper and sitting on it beside the pond in a small park near by, wondering what ills could be cured by silence. Except that one evening, under the still surface of the pond, he saw pieces of his own face swimming in the darkness, like bits of a puzzle being assembled by God, and he had to close his eyes.

However compelling the silence by the pond, it didn’t follow that they could not hear Ed and Ann upstairs in the morning, and it didn’t obviate the problem of the weekends, or the fact that they had promised to invite Ed and Ann for supper, something they had to get past, unless it was to remain a troublesome, undischarged obligation.

Meanwhile, Ed and Ann bought new clothes and shoes; Ann had her hair cut. Ed started to exercise, in order to change the shape of his body. One night, Ann decided she wanted to get a cat but decided a tattoo would be less trouble. A badger, say, on her thigh, would be unique, a distinguishing mark. Ed said, – That would be going too far, Ann!

– You won’t let me be different! screamed Ann.

– They’re driving you crazy! This is really getting to you.

– And it’s not to you?

– That’s it! he said, staring up at the ceiling. – They will have heard everything now!

– I don’t care! she said. – I’m inviting them in here, then we’ll know the truth! She took a sheet of paper from the drawer, wrote on it, and took it upstairs, pushing it under the door. A few minutes later, it was returned with thanks.

– They can’t wait to see us, said Ann, holding up the piece of paper.

The following weekend, Ed and Ann moved the table into the living room and put out glasses and cutlery; they shopped, cooked and talked things over. They both agreed that this event was the hardest thing they’d had to get through.

At a quarter to eight they opened the champagne and drank a glass each. At eight o’clock there was a knock on the door.

The two Anns and the two Eds kissed and embraced. Ed was looking healthy – he’d been swimming a lot. His Ann was wearing a long white dress which clung to her. She had nothing on underneath. It was so tight that to sit down she had to pull it up to her knees. She showed them her new tattoo.

It was late, almost morning, when the party broke up. Ed and Ann had left, and Ed and Ann were blowing out the candles and clearing a few things away when they fell upon each other and had sex on the rug, which they pulled under the table.

– We did it. I enjoyed the evening, said Ann, as they lay there.

– It wasn’t so bad, said Ed.

– What was the best bit, for you?

– I’m thinking of it now, he said.

– I’ll stroke your face, then, she said, – while you go over it in your mind.

The two Anns had been talking about their careers. Ed from upstairs, seated near the window and leaning back, had been looking out over the dark street, enjoying the small cigar Ed had given him. Ed had asked him a question, which the other Ed had chosen to answer at length, but only in his mind, though his lips smacked occasionally. Ed had watched his upstairs neighbour smoke, his impatience subsiding, trying to see what he liked and disliked about this familiar stranger. He had thought, – I know I can’t take all of him in now. All I have to do is look at him, face him, without turning away. If I turn away now, everything will be worse and I could be done for.

As he had continued to look, with pity, with affection, with curiosity, until the two of them had seemed alone together, Ed had found himself thinking, – He’s not so bad. He’s lost hope, that’s all. He has everything else, he’s alive, and there’s nothing wrong with him or her, or any of us here now. We only have to see this to grasp something valuable.

– And did you like her tonight? Ann said.

– I did, he said. – Very much so.

– What did you like?

– Her kindness, her intelligence, her energy and her soul. The fact she listens to others. She looks for good things about others to pick up on.

– Wonderful, she said. – What else?

He told her more; she told him what she had thought.

A fortnight later, on a Saturday morning, Ann went to the window.

– Ed, the van is here, she said.

– Good, said Ed, joining her. – There’s the guitar, the rug, everything.

The van was parked outside. The familiar objects were being carried in the opposite direction by the same two men. Ed and Ann from upstairs had given up their flat; they were going to Rio for six months and would leave their things with their parents. While they were away, they would think about what to do on their return.

When the van was packed, Ed and Ann went downstairs to wish their neighbours good luck. On the pavement, the couples said goodbye, wished each other well and exchanged phone numbers, sincerely hoping they would never have to see each other again.

The apartment upstairs was empty once more. Ed and Ann went back into their own flat. The silence seemed sublime.

– What shall we do now? said Ann.

– I don’t know yet. Then he said, – Oh, but now I do.

– What?

He offered her his hand. In the bathroom, she undressed and stood there with her foot up on the side of the bath, to let him look at her, before she sat down. He filled the jug from the sink taps and went to her and let water fall over her hair, body and legs. Her face was upturned and her eyes were eager and bright, looking at him and into the water, cascading.

If you think the living are difficult to deal with, the dead can be worse.

This is what Harry’s friend Gerald had said. The remark returned repeatedly to Harry, particularly that morning when he had so wearily and reluctantly got out of bed. It was the anniversary of his father’s death. Whether it was seven or eight years, Harry didn’t want to worry. He was to take Mother to visit Father’s grave.

Harry wondered if his children, accompanied perhaps by his wife Alexandra, would visit his grave. What would they do with him in their minds; what would he become for them? He would never leave them alone, he had learned that. Unlike the living, the dead you couldn’t get rid of.

Harry’s mother was not dead, but she haunted him in two ways: from the past, and in the present. He talked to her several times a day, in his mind. This morning it was as a living creature that he had to deal with her.

*

He had been at home on his own for a week. Alexandra, his wife, was in Thailand attending ‘workshops’. When they weren’t running away, the two children, a boy and a girl, were at boarding school.

The previous night had been strange.

*

Now Mother was waiting for him in her overcoat at the door of the house he had been brought up in.

‘You’re late,’ she almost shouted, in a humorous voice.

He knew she would say this.

He tapped his watch. ‘I’m on time.’

‘Late, late!’

He thrust his watch under her face. ‘No, look.’

For Mother, he was always late. He was never there at the right time, and he never brought her what she wanted, and so he brought her nothing.