Nevertheless, I didn’t think I could just put them straight into the archive. I thought I had a duty to offer to give them back to Harold. Even though they had been his freely given gift, I still felt that he had some rights over them. So I went along to his shop at the end of a working day, feeling obligated to make the offer, but passionately hoping it was an offer he’d refuse. And, of course, I had to explain the reason I was making the offer, that Catherine had ended our relationship. I did my confused best to make him understand something that I barely understood myself. His reaction was extreme and unexpected. His face sagged as though it was caving in on itself. He started to bawl like a child and beat his fists against his workbench.
‘Hey, Harold, it’s not that bad,’ I said, thinking it was absurd that I had to comfort him for what was supposed to be my own grief. ‘These things happen.’
‘They happen to me all the time,’ Harold said. ‘First Ruth gets taken away from me, and now Catherine. It’s just not fair. It’s not right. If I don’t have anyone to make shoes for, I’m not sure I have any reason to live.’
I didn’t like the renewed talk of suicide, and neither did I like the way he seemed to be thinking of his Ruth and my Catherine as equivalents. I said, ‘Come on, Harold. I think you’re overreacting a little here.’
But he didn’t think so at all. He was inconsolable, and my desire to console him was only partial. If anything, I had imagined that he might try to console me. I let him bawl a little longer. It was a while before he was able to pull himself together, and when he did he asked, ‘Did she leave you for another man?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘That’s a pity,’ said Harold. ‘Sometimes being left for someone else can make it easier. At least that way you can channel all your anger and hatred in one specific direction.’
Harold appeared to be speaking with an authority I didn’t imagine him to have. He didn’t look like much of a player in the world of feeling, and I certainly didn’t agree with him. My anger didn’t need any channelling, didn’t need any focus, and if Catherine had left me for someone else I was sure I’d have felt a hundred times worse.
‘No, she didn’t leave me for anyone else,’ I confirmed.
‘At least, that’s what she told you.’
I wasn’t going to go down that path, so I asked him what I’d come to ask: did he want me to give back the shoes he’d made for Catherine. To my relief he didn’t. He said it was the process that was important to him, not the finished product. I couldn’t agree with that either, although it didn’t matter now whether or not Harold and I saw eye to eye.
I noticed there was a work in progress on his bench, a shoe Catherine would never wear, a design he would never finish. The raw materials consisted of a length of what looked like fox fur, a strip of razor wire and some high heels carved out of bone. I could just about imagine what kind of shoes Harold would have made out of these materials, and yet I knew that if he had completed the work it would have exceeded all my expectations.
I left Harold as I had seen him once or twice before, slumped at his workbench, head in hands, distress and misery oozing from him. Even though I resented his usurpation of what I thought was my own personal loss, I still felt that I had taken much more from him than I could ever possibly give back, something much bigger and more personal than the shoes he’d made. I left him, left the shop. I couldn’t think when or in what circumstances I would ever see him again.
Eighteen
I went to Mike and Natasha’s house. They didn’t know that I’d split up with Catherine because I hadn’t told them. And even if they had known, they wouldn’t have seen it as a very significant event. They would have regarded it as an all too regular and ordinary occurrence in my life. The three of us were supposed to be going out for a cheap Italian meal, but Mike opened the door and said there’d been a change of plan.
‘Natasha’s not feeling so good,’ he said.
‘Nothing serious?’
‘No, no, but she says we should go without her.’
He was wearing his jacket and was all ready to set off. I never even stepped inside the house, never saw Natasha. We went without her but we didn’t get as far as the Italian restaurant. Mike wanted to stop for a beer on the way, at some dingy crowded pub that I’d never been to before, and it was obvious that he had some serious drinking to do. The occasional need for oblivion was one that I’d always understood, the more so since Catherine’s departure, though I didn’t know what had stirred the need in Mike. It was a long time before he got round to telling me. We’d had several pints, and had abandoned all hope of getting anything to eat, before Mike admitted there was anything wrong at all.
Finally he said, ‘It’s me and Natasha. Or rather, it’s just me.’
Mike and Natasha seemed perfectly happy together but it didn’t surprise me there might be problems; after all they were human, weren’t they?
‘It’s a big one,’ Mike continued. ‘A big, serious, potentially terminal kind of thing.’
‘Really?’ I said. I thought he must be exaggerating. Whatever the problem, I couldn’t imagine the two of them splitting up, and I couldn’t imagine the problem was anything like as important or as intractable as that which had driven Catherine and me apart.
Mike said, ‘You know the way I sometimes say let’s buy some drugs and pick up a couple of harlots?’
‘It’s one of your more endearing traits,’ I said.
‘Well, I did it.’
‘You did?’
‘Well, there was no cocaine involved and it was only one harlot.’
I expect I looked at him in some disbelief, but he obviously wasn’t making it up.
‘It was in Birmingham,’ he explained. ‘I was there on business. I was sitting at the hotel bar and so was she. We got talking and I bought her a drink and one thing led to another.’
I nodded. It seemed commonplace enough, though obviously it was a complete novelty in Mike’s life; in mine too for that matter.
‘Does Natasha know?’ I asked.
‘I haven’t told her but she knows something’s wrong. Do you think I should tell her?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘What good would it do?’
‘Confession. Good for the soul.’
‘Very bad for a marriage,’ I said.
‘How would you know? How would you know anything about marriage?’
He was right. I had no more right to comment on marriage than I thought Harold had to comment on love and loss.
‘I’m just taking an educated guess,’ I said.
He gave the matter some thought, then nodded to himself as though he’d decided I might know what I was talking about after all.
‘She wouldn’t understand,’ he said.
‘I think she’d understand perfectly, but that’s not necessarily a good thing,’ I said. ‘Besides, what’s to understand? You got drunk and did something you regret.’
He shook his head. ‘No, you don’t understand. I don’t regret it at all,’ he said. ‘It was the best fun I’ve ever had in my whole life. It was great. We did all sorts of things I’d never done before, really dirty stuff that Natasha would never do.’
‘Do I really need this much detail?’ I asked.
‘There was no love, no affection, no respect for the other person. It was dirty and cheap and disgusting and degrading. And I loved it. I absolutely loved it.’
‘Oh shit,’ I said.
‘And I want to do it again. I want to do it right now, and keep on doing it, every night of the week for the rest of my life.’
‘And where does Natasha fit in?’