Collected Stories (82 page)

Maggie didn’t believe in giving anyone up. When she started with Joe – and Max, too, was seeing someone – it became the beginning of something else. For about two years they were a threesome. It was an experiment in living. From their point of view, it would have been ‘conventional’ or ‘selfish’ to exclude one of them. Joe moved into their flat, indeed into their bed – and Max, who sometimes stayed with a girlfriend, lived in the front room. What was the need for people to disappear into different families?

Apparently Joe never suffered from jealousy: his girlfriend was free and independent; they both were. They could love whoever they wanted, and there was no price to pay. It didn’t bother Joe if Maggie spent the night with anyone else, and when she and Max went to the seaside for a couple of days he’d wave them off. Prohibiting was prohibited, saying no was an unacceptable violence. Nor did Joe appear to have wild fantasies about others’ pleasures which excluded him. How did someone learn to be like that?

Max had become reluctantly intrigued by this man who was so secure and convinced of his desirability that he knew the woman would return to him. Not only that, there were plenty of others who would want him. Joe appeared to lack nothing; in
his
turn, Max was considered a ‘control freak’ by the other two for suffering from jealousy. But, as Max wondered, did Joe have a better life because he didn’t experience jealousy? Or did he feel it so painfully that he successfully hid it from himself? Was he really as self-sufficient as he made out? Could people really be as interchangeable as he liked to believe?

Joe and Max worked together on various local gardens as they prepared for the birth of Maggie’s son by Joe. (Max had begun to see what an important part of the political struggle gardening was.) The three of them took the child home from the hospital, and he was brought up by all of them, with Max doing most of the childcare as the other two were working, while Max was around, trying to get his projects set up. When Max admitted that it was painful being complimented on ‘his’ son by strangers, when he had to face the fact that the child he had begun to love wasn’t his, the three of them decided that the men should take it in turns to father Maggie’s children.

When Maggie and Joe began to insist that this had to proceed soon, that he had to make up his mind about it, Max finished with it all. He had to, before he got deeper in. He fled alone to a seaside hotel to try to get over his love for the child, his hatred of Joe’s self-sufficiency and his own self-contempt. How had he allowed such a situation to develop? Max’s mother was an ordinary woman who would have considered such a parenting arrangement mad. Anyway, Maggie and Joe were moving to Devon to live and work on a commune, taking it for granted that Max would accompany them. But his work was in London, where he was making a documentary about a violent attack by the police on a black man, produced by the glamorous Lucy.

One night after filming she made some banal remarks which were subversive in their effect on him. The ideology he, Maggie and their friends followed was like a religion, almost cult-like; hadn’t he noticed it was closing him down, limiting his intelligence and imagination? He thought of those interminable democratic evenings, with everyone smoking, where everything was discussed in infinitesimal detail and, at the end, you had to do what someone else wanted because it had become ‘the will of the group’ and, probably, even the will of the proletariat.

He was able to pull away from Maggie and Joe, but only at the cost of wishing for death – his own and theirs – when they left London with the child. He and Maggie had believed they’d never stop loving one another, but that hadn’t been the case at all, fortunately. He had recovered, as everyone knew he would, and what remained?

Now Maggie and Max were eating. ‘Don’t you think,’ she said, ‘hasn’t it occurred to you lately, what a conventional age we are living in now? I mean, of coercive ideals, the tyranny of the closed?’

‘I thought the biggest change in our time is the huge progress in social freedom. Can’t people be whoever they want? Lesbianism, transvestism, domination, bipolar – isn’t it all just lifestyle?’

She said, ‘The other day I was reading something on Sartre and De Beauvoir. About what a stupid emotional mess they’d made, fucking around with others’ lives. The suggestion was that if they’d been nice clean obedient workers maybe they would have been worth listening to. Couldn’t you say the same about Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Ginsberg or scores of other artists? “The deadly grip of the commonplace”, we used to call it. All the experiments have failed and we must return to the norm.’

He said, ‘You still want to experiment with your own life?’

‘I try to live as I need to.’ She leaned towards him. ‘Between you and me, don’t you have your … interests?’

‘I’m well done with that. It’s too costly a pleasure.’

‘Is that permanent now – the glasses?’ she said, looking at his reading glasses which were on a gold chain around his neck.

‘Yes. Does it lead you to believe I’ve become a man without self-respect? I love middle age, when you no longer care how you look or how you might appear to others. Men take it less hard than women, don’t you think?’

Maggie had been beautiful as a girl of twenty, gentle, generous and scholarship-clever, from a square and functional family. Feminism and the ‘assertiveness’ workshops made her less of a pushover, and after a while she lost her charm to ideology, becoming opinionated, angry. Almost everyone let her down, not wanting sufficiently to alter everything, to make the sacrifice which guaranteed sincerity. She excised all flirtatiousness and play from her character, implying that her mood wouldn’t improve until the world did. She was the only person he knew who lamented the collapse of the Berlin Wall, believing communism hadn’t been given enough time. ‘Think of capitalism, it’s been around for centuries!’

‘You look better at the moment,’ she said now. ‘Your eyes are clearer, you’re less of a smug little fatty.’

‘I’ve lost a stone. It’s my greatest achievement. All I want now is to get the kids through school without any of us disintegrating. Nothing need be more complicated than that.’

‘It does,’ she said. ‘You might have noticed, it’s terrible when the kids turn ten and they have to push away from you. You learn they don’t actually want your company, that it’s a long hard divorce and you’ll need to make other arrangements for yourself.’

‘For me realism is the true thing.’

‘Is it really? Then what I’m going to ask will make you even more irritable,’ she said.

‘I’m pretty chilled now.’

‘I could tell you were in therapy when you started taking an interest in my dreams.’

He said, ‘I was too angry all the time so I had that part excised from my personality.’

‘It was the attractive bit.’

‘Mags, please, lately I’ve been having these horrifying dreams, a series of them. My uncle’s dying in bed.’

‘Which uncle?’

‘You know, the lively, intelligent, funny one. He’s long dead of course.’

‘That’s part of you,’ she said. ‘It’s going. You’re letting it go. You’re driving it out.’

‘I’m not sure that’s exactly it,’ he said.

They were finishing the bottle. He was becoming tired and would have made an excuse, returned home and napped – which was how he liked to spend the afternoon – if he hadn’t been curious about her request. But they drank coffee and drove to Richmond Park, about half an hour away.

He had parked the car and they had begun to walk when she said, ‘Max I want you to loan me ten thousand pounds to help me start up in London. I know it won’t last me long, but it’ll be better than nothing. When – or whether – I’ll ever be able to pay it back is another matter.’

He sighed. ‘That’s a big whack. Will it be enough for you?’

‘I’m hoping to last five years in London. Despite the stupid expense there are still cheap cultural activities, aren’t there?’

‘They’ll pass an afternoon.’

‘Joe thinks it’s all stupidity, consumerism and self-hatred down here, but he will visit me and I’ll go home when I need to. Otherwise I’ll explore – places and people.’

‘Is Joe all right about that? Or is he still as indifferent to everyone as he used to be?’

‘As always, he’ll be happy for me to live as I wish. I drive him mad with my frustration and he’s never wanted to be my jailer. The kids will come down too. My son has already climbed the front of the Houses of Parliament in that recent protest. They’re at the right age for the city.’

Max said, ‘It’s always seemed odd to me that you live with someone who lacks the ability to make conversation.’

‘Why do we have to communicate verbally when we are already in tune?’

‘What was the communication when you said you were going to ask me for money?’ He was looking at her. ‘Didn’t you tell him?’

‘I will tell him when I know what’s going on.’

‘I wouldn’t risk the relationship,’ he said. ‘Lucy and I know a lot of middle-aged women trying to hunt down men on the net and it’s a pathetic business.’

‘Don’t lecture me. But I do often think, why the hell didn’t I choose more solvent men?’ They walked past some people who were planting trees. ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked. ‘Go on, please say.’

‘I was thinking, what if I took that shovel and smashed it over your head?’

She was laughing. ‘I knew that. See, we still have the same thoughts.’

He stopped and said, ‘Can I hold you?’

‘Here, why?’

‘Just to see. Or to try to remember.’ He took her in his arms and put his face in her hair and neck. He kissed her face, ran his hands across her back, up her thighs, and he looked at her hands.

‘Anything else you want to touch or see?’ she asked. ‘My breasts, genitals?’

‘No, no.’ He went on, ‘Ten grand’s a lot of money. You’ll never pay it back. I’ll have to give it to you.’

‘You won’t even notice.’ She went on, ‘I’m so bored by everything. I even prefer America. At least they can vote for Obama or Hillary. A black or a woman. What do we have? Boris Johnson. A character from P. G. Wodehouse.’

‘No better man to run London, then. I’m thinking of voting for him. Anything for a change.’

‘Oh God. Have you changed so much?’

‘I like to think I’m capable of revising my views. It would be as daft to believe the same things over the years as it would be to wear the same clothes.’

‘For instance?’

‘The Falklands. Thatcher was right there, fighting the fascist Galtieri. And then taking on the trade unions, the whole country held to ransom by a few fundamentalist Lefties who wouldn’t grow up.’

She stiffened. ‘Oh Jesus, Max, all those years of struggle to end up recanting, and for what? Just to look like a turncoat?’

‘Look,’ he said. ‘It didn’t work, socialism, communism, the whole idea was fucked. It’s the biggest disappointment of our lives, but don’t we have to take it like men?’

She said, ‘By the way, you carrying your chequebook?’

‘You want the money now?’

‘Once it’s done you won’t think about it again. Then we can talk about less painful things.’

‘But I haven’t thought it through. What would Lucy say?’

‘Lucy?’

‘What if I discovered she’d donated ten grand to some indigent ex?’

‘Is that what I am to you?’

‘The wife’s not going to be working long hours on a film set for you to take a free dab because you fancy a change of location. She’s the breadwinner in our family.’

‘This is doing my head in,’ she said. ‘Let me sit down.’ They sat on the grass, leaning against a tree. ‘Max, I never asked for her money.’

‘She and I are together. We don’t just go with any stranger who takes our fancy for five minutes. Sex is easy but love is difficult. It’s very serious.’ He went on, ‘And it’s not as though the money is for something essential like a cancer operation or plastic surgery.’

‘No, it’s more important than that. What happened to play, to wildness and experiment?’ She got up and he followed her; they walked to the tea-house and ate scones.

She said, ‘Do you think you’re envious?’

‘Of what?’

‘All you’ve done is criticise everything I believe in. But I’m not an old woman yet, Max. I haven’t given up, as you appear to have, or become complacent. Feminism taught me that women are capable of deep passion, aliveness and exploration. We can burn on until the end of the night whether we win or lose.’

‘How could I not envy you that spirit, though it sounds forced?’ Then he said, ‘Freud recommends efficient sublimation as the only way forward. You divert yourself, usefully, for life. There’s a bit of passion left over, which is tragic, but you have to live with the frustration. It’s character-building.’

‘What pompous cobblers,’ she said. ‘Are you saying no?’

‘I don’t fucking know, Maggie,’ he said. ‘Why is it that most of one’s middle age is spent arguing? I wanted to enjoy a pleasant lunch and all you’ve done is ruin my bloody day and probably my night. You know I suffer from anxiety. I’m going to have to take a pill.’

‘Oh, shut the fuck up and stop being so evasive as usual.’

‘But I really can’t answer you, my dear. I have to think about it. There are so many other priorities than your self-fulfilment.’

She said, ‘I don’t like to mention it, but didn’t I support you while you developed your career?’

‘I walked and fed and changed and paid for your wonderful son every day,’ he replied.

‘But why shouldn’t you have? Whose job is it to bring up the children?’

Max drove them back to the house, where he made tea in the kitchen. There were four boys in the garden, wearing only boxer shorts and flip-flops, lifting weights, kicking a ball, pushing one another around.

‘A bunch of chavs and pikeys chased us down the road,’ one of the boys said. ‘That’s why we’re sweating.’ He said to Maggie, ‘There’s a council estate across the street.’

Max said, ‘What did you do to provoke them?’

‘The lowlifes threatened us with a shank. They said, “We know where you live”, and Jack said, “We know where you live, in a disgusting council flat with a pit bull eating the sofa and your mother a crack whore.”’