Collected Stories (57 page)

‘Me? Why?’

‘I think you should learn something.’

‘Oh, I don’t want to learn. I had years of it and nothing went in, as you pointed out.’ She looked hurt, so I said, ‘What kind of thing is it?’

She sighed. ‘We free-associate around people’s dreams. We might write around them, or paint or draw. Or even dance. I’ve seen you shake your butt, at the disco. The girls were certainly intrigued, as they are when you parade around the place with your shirt off. But you keep away from the workshop members, don’t you?’

‘It goes without saying.’

‘Even that idiot with the ghost?’

‘Ah, yes,’ I said. ‘That damned ghost.’

The ghost always cheered Patricia up.

One of the women who’d recently come to the Centre and been allocated a room in town, as some people were, had stood up at breakfast and told us her room was haunted. Typically, Patricia imagined this was a ruse for the woman to be moved to a superior room with a sea view – not something Patricia could offer or fall for. Instead of moving her, Patricia had deputed me to sit, all night, in the doorway of the woman’s room, keeping an eye out for the revenant.

‘Watching for ghosts is one of your duties,’ Patricia had said to me, barely containing her delight. ‘When the bastard turns up, you deal with it.’

‘Such work wasn’t in my original job description,’ I said. ‘And do ghosts use doors?’ 

I had told Alicia, ‘Wait ’til they hear this back in London – that I’ve been employed on a ghost-watch.’

That night, I’d stayed awake as long as I could but had, of course, fallen asleep in the chair. The ghosts came. Nothing with a sheet over its head bothered me, but my own internal shades and shadows, by far the most hideous, had become mightily busy. The woman I guarded slept well. By morning, I was in a cold sweat with rings the colour of coal under my eyes. The women at the Centre, when they weren’t being solicitous, found they hadn’t laughed as much since they’d arrived.

‘Particularly not with the ghost-woman,’ I said now to Patricia.

‘Good. You’re not included in the price of the holiday.’ She went on, ‘Now, come along. People pay hundreds of pounds to participate. I want you to see what goes on here. Tell me. Surely you don’t believe that only the rational is real, or that the real is always rational, do you?’

‘I haven’t thought much about it.’

‘Liar!’

‘Why say that?’

‘There’s more to you than you let on! How many kids your age whistle tunes from
Figaro
while they’re peeling potatoes?’

She strode out, expecting me to follow her, but I’m not the sort to follow anyone, particularly if they want me to.

I looked at the old Greek woman, washing the kitchen floor. This was the kind of reality I was adjusted to: getting a patch of earth the way you want it while thinking of nothing.

However, I left the kitchen and, outside, went up the steps. In the large, bright room, I could see that Patricia, along with the rest of the class, had been waiting for me.

She pointed at the floor. ‘Sit down, then we’ll start.’

Around the group she went, soliciting dreams. What a proliferation of imagination, symbolism and word-play there was in such an ordinary group of people! I stayed for over an hour, at which point there was a break. Breathing freely at last, I hurried out into the heat. I kept going and didn’t return, but went into town, where I had provisions to buy for the Centre.

When I returned, Alicia was waiting under a tree outside, with her notebook. She stood up and waved in my face.

‘Leo, where have you been?’

‘Shopping.’

‘You’ve caused a terrible fuss. You can’t walk out on Patricia like that,’ she said. ‘I kind of admire it. I like it when people are driven to leave my lessons. I know there’s something pretty powerful going on. I don’t like poetry to be helpful. But we masochists are drawn to Patricia. We do what she says. We never, ever leave her sessions.’

‘I had work to do,’ I said. I wasn’t prepared to say that I had left Patricia’s workshop because it had upset me. Dreams had always fascinated me; in London, I wrote mine down, and Margot and I often discussed dreams over breakfast.

My dream on the ‘ghost-watch’ had been this: I was to see my dead parents again, for a final conversation. When I met them – and they had their heads joined together at one ear, making one interrogative head – they failed to recognise me. I tried to explain how I had come to look different, but they were outraged by my claims to be myself. They turned away and walked into eternity before I could convince them – as if I ever could – of who I really was.

The other dream was more of an image: of a man in a white coat with a human brain in his hands, crossing a room between two bodies, each with its skull split open, on little hinges. As he carried the already rotting brain, it dripped. Bits of memory, desire, hope and love, encased in skin-like piping, fell onto the sawdust floor where hungry dogs and cats lapped them up.

Much as I would have liked to, I couldn’t even begin to talk about this with the group. My ‘transformation’ had isolated me. As Ralph could have pointed out, it was the price I had to pay.

I couldn’t either, of course, say this to Alicia, who had become my only real friend at the Centre. She came from a bohemian family. Her father had died in her early teens. At fifteen, her mother took her to live in a sex-crazed commune. It had made her ‘frigid’. She felt as neglected as a starving child. Now, she overlooked herself, eating little but carrying around a bag of carrots, apples or bananas which she’d chop into little pieces with a penknife and devour piece by piece. She only ever ate her own food, and, I noticed, would only eat alone or in front of me.

In the evenings, she and I had begun to talk. Twice a week there were parties for the Centre participants. The drinking and dancing were furious. The women had the determined energy of the not quite defeated. They liked Tamla Motown and Donna Summer; I liked the ballet of their legs kicking in their long skirts. After, it was my job to clear away the glasses, sweep the floor, empty the ashtrays and get the Centre ready for breakfast. I did it well; cleanliness had become like a poem to me. A cigarette butt was a slap in the face. Alicia liked to help me, on her knees, late at night, as the others sat up, confessing.

Alicia had begun to write stories and the beginning of a novel, which she showed me. I thought about what she was doing and commented on it when I thought I could be helpful. I liked being useful; I could see how her confidence failed at times.

In the late evenings, when I’d finished work, sometimes we went to the beach. We’d walk past couples who’d left the bars and discos to copulate in the darkness: French, German, Scandinavian, Dutch bodies, attempting, it seemed, to strangle the life out of one another. Our business seemed more important, to talk about literature. Sex was everywhere; good words were less ubiquitous.

Since my mid-twenties, I’d taught both literature and writing at various universities and usually had a writing workshop in London. I’d been interested by how people got to speak, and to speak up, for themselves, and by the effect this had on all their relationships. When it came to Alicia, some sort of instruction was something I fell into naturally, and liked.

Nevertheless, I tried to speak in young tones, as if I knew only a little; and I tried not to be pompous, as I must have been in my old body. It was quite an effort. I was used to people listening or even writing down what I said. The pomposity was useful, for emphasis, and my authority could seem liberating to some people. Alicia seemed to like the authority I was able to muster, at times. Being older could be useful.

I had to be wary, too, of this thin, anxious girl. If she was the reason I didn’t leave, when she asked me about myself and my education I was evasive, as if I didn’t quite believe my own stories, or, in the end, couldn’t be bothered with them, which frustrated her. She wanted more of me. I could see she knew I was holding a lot back.

‘What have you been writing?’ I asked now, as we walked.

‘A poem about windows.’

‘Everyone knows poems and windows don’t go together.’

‘They’ll have to get along,’ she said. ‘Like us.’ Then she said, ‘Hurry, you’ve got to go and see Patricia.’

‘Now? Is she angry with me?’

She squeezed my hand. ‘I think so.’

Her fear increased mine. I was reminded of all kinds of past transgressions and terrors: of my mother’s furies, of being sent to the headmistress to be smacked on the hand with a ruler. In my youth, all sorts of people were allowed to hit you, and were even praised for doing it; they didn’t thank you if you returned the compliment. Now, as numerous other fears arose, I went into such a spin it took me several moments to remember I was called Leo Adams. I could choose to behave differently, to revise the past, as it were, and not be the scared boy I was then.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Walk with me.’

‘Aren’t you afraid of her?’ Alicia asked.

‘Terrified.’

‘I am, too. Are you going to leave?’

‘Well, I don’t see why I shouldn’t.’

‘Please don’t.’ She went on, ‘But there is something else, too. She heard your joke.’

‘She did? She didn’t mention it to me.’

‘She might now, perhaps.’

‘How did it get round?’

She blushed. ‘These things just do.’

A few days ago I had made a joke, which is not a good idea in institutions. It was not a great joke, but it was on the spot and had made Alicia suddenly laugh in recognition. I had called the Centre a ‘weepeasy’. I used the word several times, as we young people tend to, and that was that. It had entered the bloodstream of the institution.

Now, we walked through the village to Patricia’s. The shops were closed; the place was deserted. Most people were having their siestas, as was Patricia at this time, usually.

Outside Patricia’s, Alicia said she’d wait for me under a tree across the square.

I knocked on the door, and Patricia’s irritable face appeared at the window. I’m glad to say I always annoyed Patricia; by being alive at all, I failed her. On this occasion, to my dismay, she brightened.

She had come to the door wearing only a wrap-around skirt. Her large brown breasts were hanging down.

‘My,’ I said, and then blushed. I knew she’d heard it as ‘mine’. I went on, ‘Patricia, there’s something I need to talk to you about.’

‘I’m glad you’ve come, Oddjob,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some work for you. Why did you leave my workshop?’

‘I wanted to think about it.’

‘Did you enjoy it, then?’ When I nodded, she said, ‘If so, how much? Very, very much? Just very much? Quite a lot? Or something else?’

‘Let me think about that, Patricia.’ She was looking at me. I said, ‘I did like it, in fact.’

‘If you did really, you can say why – in your own words.’

I said, ‘You used the dream, not as a puzzle to be solved, with all the anxiety of that, as if one of us would get it right, but as a felt image, to generate thoughts, or other images. That was useful. I haven’t stopped thinking.’

‘That’s a good thing to say.’ She was flattered and pleased. ‘You see, you can be almost articulate, if you really want to be. By the way, I heard what you called the Centre. Weepeasy,’ she said. ‘Right?’

‘Sorry,’ I said, bowing my head.

‘Is that what you think?’

‘It’s easy to make people cry.’ I went on, ‘Confession, not irony, is the modern mode. A halting speech at Alcoholics Anonymous is the paradigm. But what concealments and deceptions are there in this exhibition of self-pity? Isn’t it tedious for you?’

‘There’s no rigour here any more, you could be right. Or any progress. It’s become the same every day. I can tell you, that’s the least of it.’ Then she said, ‘Please, come here.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Here!’ I shuffled forward. She put her arms around me and pressed her breasts into my body. ‘I am feeling tense today. I wanted to run a centre for self-exploration, only to discover I’d started a small business. You can’t explore anything if you don’t get the figures right – the eighties taught some women that, at least. Now I’m sick of being an accountant and I’m sick of being wise. Sometimes, I only want to be mad.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Being the wise woman must be a right bore.’

‘Who takes care of me? I have to mother everyone! You’ve been attending the massage class, haven’t you? You know how to do it.’

By now, she was pulling at my fingers.

‘Patricia –’

‘Massage me, Leo, you dear boy. There’s the oil.’

‘I want to talk about Alicia.’

‘Who wants to hear about that funny little thing? Oh, talk, talk about what you want, as long as you smooth out my soul.’

Her skirt dropped to the floor. She walked across the room, located the oil, and lay down on a towel on her low bed.

She was watching me scratch my stomach. There were certain conversations I’d missed in this new life. You might have a new body but if your mind is burdened the differences don’t count for much.

‘Go on,’ she said.

I told her how Alicia had got sweet on me and that I was concerned about it. I emphasised that I hadn’t deliberately led her on.

Of course, I loved the attention of the women at the Centre – who didn’t, admittedly, have much else to look at – and had walked around barefoot, wearing only shorts. Celibacy had increased my desire; I wanted to live less in my mind. I remember Margot telling me, years ago, this thing about certain school phobics. Some boys, of particularly disturbed sexuality, imagined that their bodies had turned into penises. The dreaded school was their mother’s forbidden body. I was all sex, a walking prick, a penis with an appended body. I didn’t flirt; I was unprovocative. I didn’t need to do anything.

In my mad mind, I became a kind of performer. Many of my friends have been actors, singers or dancers, men and women who used their bodies in the service of art, or as art itself; people who were looked at for a living. Those of us who cannot perform, who imagine from the audience only an examination of our faults, can have little idea of the relationship between player and voyeur, of how the audience, like a sea of feeling, might hold you up, if you can use it. What do you see and hear out there in all that blackness? What are the watchers doing to you? What was the stripper or any celebrity doing but increasing and controlling envy and desire? This was a splendidly erotic activity, it seemed to me.