VISITING GEORGE
You remember; we were coming from a conference in that city and I had just noticed we were near the street, the block where the old friends lived. I was thinking — about to say to you — we should drop in, it’s been such a long time, we’ll be a real surprise, back here again. There were so many people from so many ages; so many periods, approaching us on that London street; in these ancient European cities they are all there in the gait, the shapes of noses and eyes and jowls, the elegant boots and plodding sandals, Shakespeare’s audiences, Waterloo’s veterans, comportment of the bowler-hatted past, slippered advance of the Oriental counter-immigration from the colonial era, heads of punk-purple-and-green striped hair in recall of 60s Flower Children, androgynous young shuffling in drug daze, icons of the present; black faces that could be the indelible after-image left behind, on the return to Africa by our political exiles. All these, recognisable but not known; coming at us, coming at us. And then he was singled out, for me, they shouldered around him on the pavement but he was directed straight towards us. His paper carrier with the name of a speciality shop, his white curls like suds over thick earlobes — just the way he always was, returning from his pilgrimage to buy mangoes or a bottle of wine from the right slope of a small French vineyard. I saw him.
Wasn’t it lovely? Because it was not that everything changes. His image was him: the same.
We did go back to that Kensington flat with him? Didn’t we? Its watercolours of Tuscan landscapes, engravings of early Cape Town, bold impasto oils by South African black painters he used to discover, music cassettes spilled about, the journals and books to be cleared off the sofa so you could sit. Christ! he said, this old unbeliever, where the hell have you been? People don’t write letters any more. We might all have been dead for all we’ve heard of each other. He railed against whatever conservative government it was (maybe still Thatcher). He, who had left the Party after a visit to the old Soviet Union in the Fifties when he was taken round collective pig farms. But I was thinking — perhaps only thinking now — we all have our point of no return in political loyalty, and the stink of pigs is as good as, say, the disillusion of corruption. He was once detained, back home in the old South Africa, he had paid his dues, earned his entitlement to defect, I suppose, however we might have viewed the pretext.
You don’t remember what we talked about? Neither do I. Not really. There he still is, walking out of the weave of people; for us. The apartment: well, as we knew it. But she didn’t appear. No. After so long, can one ask …? Maybe asleep, she often said she was an owl, not a lark, liked to lie late. If she’s gone — died — or divorced? They’ve had their contingent loves, that’s known. And not only the young have sexual freedom, people find new sexual partners at any age at all. We must wait for him to say something.
But no, he didn’t. There are no flowers in the room; she always had majestic vases of blooms and leaves.
So we didn’t need any other evidence.
Not there.
But perhaps she was just too busy to buy any flowers that day and he had forgotten her request and gone his usual route to pursue the fresh halibut or the mangoes or the restricted cultivar of a wine?
Will we ever know the significance of apparent trivial forgetfulness, what’s ignored, in anyone’s life — keys to stages a relationship is passing through. You’ll have to invent them. I can’t help you. Because I couldn’t ask him. Her name didn’t come up at all, did it? That close couple, politically involved, risking themselves, never a policy disagreement between them, a stance in total solidarity, together, over the years. Admirable, d’you remember! One commitment, one mind — he always said: we are convinced, we declare ourselves — it was — enviable. Yes.
She didn’t have to confirm. No? Ever. Did she?
He forgot the flowers, followed the quest for fish and wine. She’s not here, or if she is—
So that’s how it always really was. He made the opinions, created the ‘we’, set the itinerary of the political quests. So it didn’t — doesn’t matter whether she’s mentioned or not, does it. You are, I am, because we have each our opinions. We exist. Great thought comes to me, eh.
Oh but you do at least remember that we did decide to drop by, having seen him come, known, old friend out of the procession of all the unknown from everywhere who have lived in exile in London. Simply polite to stop by, one forgets old friends too easily. It’s a building unaffected by the decline of the borough in this section. Mirrors in the entrance and the old lift behind its screen of wrought-iron scrolls. Number 23, it was on the second floor with the dove-grey door and brass knocker in the form of a graceful hand. It struck the wood discreetly. Their souvenirs from France were more decorative than effective, and as nobody responded, we pressed the bell. Ringing, ringing, questioning through the rooms we knew. It was a woman who opened the door; some woman; not her. The woman heard his name. She said, Mr S——died four years ago, my husband bought the flat then.
If I dreamt this, while walking, walking in the London streets, the subconscious of each and every other life, past and present, brushing me in passing, what makes it real?
Writing it down.
THE GENERATION GAP
He was the one told: James, the youngest of them. The father to the son — and it was Jamie, with whom he’d never got on since Jamie was a kid; Jamie who ran away when he was adolescent, was brought back resentful, nothing between them but a turned-aside head (the boy’s) and the tight tolerant jaw of suppressed disapproval (the father’s). Jamie who is doing — what was it now? Running a cybersurfers’ restaurant with a friend, that’s the latest, he’s done so many things but the consensus in the family is that he’s the one who’s done nothing with his life. His brother and sisters love him but see it as a waste: of charm and some kind of ill-defined talent, sensed but not directed in any of the ways they recognise.
So it was from Jamie that they received the announcement. The father had it conveyed by Jamie to them — Virginia, Barbara, and Matthew called at some unearthly hour in Australia. The father has left the mother.
A husband leaves his wife. It is one of the most unexceptional of events. The father has left the mother: that is a completely different version, their version.
A husband leaves his wife for another woman. Of course. Their father, their affectionate, loyal, considerate father, announces, just like that: he has left their mother for another woman. Inconceivable.
And to have chosen, of all of them, the younger brother as confidant, confessor, messenger — whatever the reasoning was?
They talked to each other on the telephone, calls those first few days frustratingly blocked while numbers were being dialled simultaneously and the occupied whine sounded on and on. Matthew in Brisbane sent an e-mail. They got together in Barbara’s house — his Ba, his favourite. Even Jamie appeared, summoned — for an explanation he could not give.
Why should I ask why, how?
Or would not give. He must have said something beyond this announcement; but no. And Jamie had to get back to the bar nook and the espresso machine, leave them to it with his archaic smile of irresponsible comfort in any situation.
And suddenly, from the door — We’re all grown up now. Even he.
It was established that no-one had heard from the mother. Ginnie had called her and waited to see if she would say anything, but she chatted about the grandchildren and the progress of a friend she had been visiting in hospital. Not a word. Perhaps she doesn’t know. But even if he kept the affair somehow secret from her until now, he would hardly ‘inform’ his children before telling his wife of a decision to abandon her.