I was thinking these thoughts (and feeling guilty) as I lay in bed with Phil beside me. I could tell by his breathing that he wasn’t asleep either. I was still awake when the Underground started running and the room got light. I guess we both got some sleep then, and around seven Phil got up, went to the bathroom, showered and got dressed. I followed him, and in due course we appeared in the kitchen, kissed each other good morning in a small way, and had orange juice, toast and marmalade and coffee. ‘Let’s eat out tonight,’ said Phil.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘See you,’ and left for work.
The studio was always a cosy place and this morning’s music was Emmylou Harris but the eye I was painting was giving me a cold and fishy stare and I felt shut off from the world. At lunchtime I went to The Blue Posts hoping to see Grace Kowalski and there she was with Irv and a half of Directors. ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Have you posed for Brian yet?’
‘Yup,’ she said. ‘He did some nice studies of my face. He really looks when he draws.’
‘Well, he has to, doesn’t he.’
‘No, what I mean is that he doesn’t show off with style, he’s modest and respectful and plays it straight.’
‘Funny — I’ve never thought of Brian as modest.’
‘When you’ve known somebody for a long time you get used to seeing them always the same way and you might not notice that they’ve changed. Brian thinks the world of you.’
‘I know.’
‘How is it with you and Ockerman? Still too soon to say?’
‘I don’t know — maybe too late.’
‘If they both disappeared by magic and you could make only one of them reappear by pushing a button, which one would it be?’
‘The one that’s no work,’ I said.
‘Well, there you have it,’ said Grace. ‘Let me buy you a drink. What’s your pleasure?’
‘Thank you. I wouldn’t mind a dry martini — the American kind that’s mostly gin with just a little vermouth and an olive.’
‘That sounds radical,’ said Grace.
‘This is a time for radical decisions,’ I said.
‘Radical martini coming up,’ said Grace. ‘And I’ll have a vodka to keep you company because it’s that kind of day. You stay put and I’ll fetch the drinks.’
When she came back with the martini and the vodka and a couple of packets of crisps she said, ‘What’ll we drink to?’
‘Absent friends?’
‘Good one,’ said Grace. ‘Absent friends!’
The absent friend I was thinking of was Brian. After work I didn’t go to my place and I didn’t go to Phil’s. I went to Cheyne Walk and stood at the door. If he’s in and alone when I ring the bell, I thought, that’s it. I rang the bell and he came down and opened the door. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Can I come in?’
Later, as we lay comfortably together watching the sky darken to evening I said, ‘Did you think you’d ever see me again?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I had no idea when or how but I couldn’t believe you’d be out of my life for ever.’
‘You feel like home.’
‘That’s how you feel to me. Have you …?’
‘Ended it with Phil? I have to tell him but I don’t think he’ll be surprised.’
When I rang Phil up he said, ‘Is this a Dear John call?’
‘Were you expecting one?’
‘Yes. I felt it coming on when we were eating the pizza.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘You don’t have to say anything. It was just one of those things, just one of those crazy things — a trip to the moon on Barbara Strozzi. Now you’re Bertha Strunk again.’
‘I feel so sad, Phil.’
‘I think you probably feel more relieved than sad. Let’s not try too hard for an exit line — we can nod and smile if we pass each other in the street but for now let’s just say goodbye.’
‘Goodbye,’ I said, and he rang off. Brian was down in the studio; I was alone, so I cried for a while, remembering what Phil and I had been to each other — what I thought we’d been anyhow — remembering what we’d said and done. And felt? Were my feelings real? Was I real, or just some kind of machine that did whatever it had to do to gain its objective. Shitty! And scary. And very, very sad. I was a selfish bitch who’d dropped Phil because life was easier with Brian but all I had now was sadness and I didn’t know if I’d ever feel good again.
11 Phil Ockerman
I was sitting in Caffe Nero with an espresso for an excuse to sit there and I was trying on different ways to feel. Suicidal? Relieved? Numb? While I was doing that a thought came out of the closet in my head where it had been hiding: I’d said to myself that I wasn’t going to write about Bertha/Barbara and me but now I thought why the hell not? Surely I was owed that much. While thinking about it with my eyes closed I might have dozed off a little when I heard a chair scrape back as someone sat down opposite me. I opened my eyes and there was Mimi with a cappuccino.
‘What are you doing here?’ I said.
‘I come here every now and then wondering if you might turn up.’
‘Why?’
‘Sometimes I do things for no reason.’ She was wearing a very conspicuous brooch copied from William Holman Hunt’s painting of the scapegoat that is driven out to the demon of the wilderness.
‘Azazel,’ I said.
‘That’s me,’ said Mimi, ‘waiting in the wilderness. Are you in the wilderness?’
‘I don’t want to be rude but what’s it to you?’
‘Oh come on, Phil, loosen up. I’m interested in your career.’
‘Oh really! Aren’t you the ex-wife who told me I was running out of ideas?’
‘I said maybe you were. That’s not to say I wasn’t interested.’
‘So what’s your particular interest right now?’
‘Don’t be so defensive. Can’t we just sit here and chat like old acquaintances?’
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘I’m off.’ And I left, angry with myself because sitting there with her had been like comfortable old times. Mimi was the one who’d wanted the divorce. She’d said that living with me was too depressing. So why had she married me? We’d met at the preview of The Genius of Rome exhibition at the Royal Academy. We had both paused at Leonard Bramer’s The Fall of Simon Magus. The card explained that Peter the Apostle commanded the devils who were raising Simon Magus to let go and he fell to earth.
‘That hardly seems fair,’ I said. ‘Where would anybody in the arts be, Leonard Bramer included, without the help of devils?’
‘Are you in the arts?’ she said, obligingly responding to my pawn-to-king-four opening. So I told her I was a writer and was delighted to hear that she’d read my last novel. One thing led to another; over the following months we had many conversations about books and music, paintings and films. We were both keen on George Eliot and had given up on Woody Allen so we had something to build on. Plus my status as a rising novelist. It was when I fell to earth on three consecutive flights that she began to find me depressing and now we were each other’s exes. I was the same failure she’d given up on so I was justifiably sceptical of her present overtures. I didn’t trust her and I didn’t trust myself.
What kind of relationship had we had, actually, even before I became boring? Back when I was the successful rising novelist she managed to make me feel that she was the judge of what I was and what I wasn’t. I showed her my pages, looked for her approval and welcomed her comments. It was very comfortable and it made me feel less of a man and ashamed. I realised now that she needed to be the one who judged — if she were shut out from that position she didn’t know what to do with herself. Did I want to go back to how things used to be? Not likely.