I couldn’t stop thinking about the woman who was still Barbara to me. It seemed impossible to me that she could have said and done all those things only to use me to get rid of Troy Wallis. When I was leaving for Diamond Heart and said I’d be faithful to her because I didn’t want to break the connection she’d wanted to let my words linger in her ear! She’d wanted us to walk around in each other’s heads while I was gone! Well, that was then and this was now. Work was the sovereign remedy so I started making notes for my next big thing. Would it be a put-together thing trying to pass itself off as a novel? Too soon to say but it felt good to be back at work. The doorbell rang. That would be Mimi looking for a piece of the action. I buzzed her in.
‘You’re working again!’ she said.
‘So it seems,’ I said.
‘Are you going to let me see pages?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because that’s how it is now: you’re not my wife, you’re not my editor and you’re not my friend. You dumped me when you rated me a failure and now you find that you need to get back into your old position as critic and mentor. That’s not going to happen, so it’s time for you to move on and find a new interest.’ As I said that it hit me that it had probably been she who bailed me out.
Mimi drew herself up like a column of mercury rising in a thermometer. ‘OK, champ,’ she said. ‘You’re on your own,’ and left.
I have to admit that I experienced a sudden droppedness, and at the same time an untethered-balloon sensation that left me drifting helplessly over land and sea until I was out of sight. ‘Steady the buffs!’ I said to myself. Kipling?
I found myself at the word machine without knowing how I’d got there. The cursor was flickering at me like the tongue of an adder. ‘All right already,’ I said, and typed:
MY TANGO WITH BARBARA STROZZI
1
PHIL OCKERMAN
When she told me that her name was Bertha Strunk I said, ‘Is Bertha’s trunk anything like Pandora’s box?’
‘That isn’t something you can find out in five minutes, ‘ she said. This was at the Saturday evening tango class for beginners in the crypt of St James’s Church, Clerkenwell …
That looked like a pretty good beginning to me; got you right into the thing and made you want to know what was coming next. Next came Mimi with her greeting about my terrible reviews: some opposition for the protagonist. The dialogue flowed nicely and then we were back in the tango lesson and I felt the solid warmth of Bertha Strunk under my hand as we carefully moved our beginners’ feet to the knowing rhythm of ‘La Cumparsita’. Typing out the words I lived it again and lifted my right hand to her absent back. How could she be gone! It was like a stone in my stomach. The reality and non-reality of it were too much for me. ‘“And wylt thow leave me thus?”’ I said. ‘“Say nay, say nay…”’ And then of course I had to get Sir Thomas Wyatt off the shelf:
And wylt thow leve me thus?
Say nay, say nay, ffor shame,
To save thee from the Blame
Of all my greffe and grame,
And wylt thow leve me thus?
Say nay, say nay!
Then of course up jumped Rabbi Moshe Leib wagging a finger and saying, ‘Nu? And did you bear the burden of her sorrow?’
I thought I had, but who can know the nature and extent of another person’s sorrow? I had been working towards an objective and I’d seen everything in that frame of reference. When Troy Wallis was dead I was left with the realisation that I really didn’t know love at all. The walls were closing in on me so I went out.
I walked up the North End Road and stood opposite the door of the building where she no longer lived. I thought of our first kiss and how unsimple that had been. ‘Nothing is simple,’ I told myself, ‘and you might as well accept that as a working premise.’
‘OK,’ I said, ‘I accept it. Now what?’ As if I could track the answer physically I went into the Underground and travelled to Farringdon. When I got out of the train the Yahoo ad on the wall opposite the platform was still there saying FOUND. Outside the station the headline at the news kiosk said OCKERMAN BEREFT. The street lamps were still overwhelmed by the darkness but over the road the clustered lights and colours of FOOD & WINE, Fruit & Veg beckoned along with the Bagel Factory: the American Original. At the Chariots minicab stand the same four men stood waiting. How long since my last visit? Months? Years? Time seemed a matter of opinion and I had none. At Cowcross Street cows still refused to appear.
What was Bertha/Barbara doing while I was doing this? Posing naked for Brian? Lying naked with him? I clenched my fists as I reached the corner of Turnmill Street with the Castle Pub burnished with vertical gleamings in the dark. The people inside, were all of them happy? No, I couldn’t be the only bereft one in the world. Next as I entered Turnmill Pret A Manger featured sushi and espresso as in the near or distant past, whichever. Then Ember with a free-standing menu that said ‘Dust ’n’ Ashes’ Fresh daily.
As before, I left the zone of conviviality and crossed to the left side of the street. Below me on the left the long shape of the main line showed its dim blind lights as I was swallowed up in the visible darkness. My mind brings up the same words or songs when I revisit a place, so now it gave me, as before:
The moon’s my constant Mistrisse
And the lowlie owle my morrowe,
The flaming Drake and the Nightcrowe make
Mee musicke to my sorrowe.
As before, there was no moon.
The voices and laughter and music not of this time had stopped only a moment ago and now the silence rose up tumultuous. From Benjamin Street on the opposite side came volleys of reproach from left-handed slingers. Turk’s Head Yard knotted me in intricacies of regret. Slightly downhill on Turnhill became, as before, slightly uphill as I neared Clerkenwell Road. Turned right into Clerkenwell Road, then crossed into Clerkenwell Close where the Crown Tavern beckoned but carried on and around a dark corner and there was St James’s Church high above the rest of London, its spire aimed at the night sky where my Moon was opposed by Pluto, there was possible action pending from dangerous females, things looked generally dodgy and it behoved me to watch my ass.
‘Now what?’ I said to myself.
‘How about work?’ was my answer. So I went home and took up my narrative following the tango lesson and carrying on through my telling Bertha about The Rainmaker and our first kiss. The future had seemed bright then. And now the Louisville Slugger stood in its corner unused and Bertha/Barbara was gone. No matter how many times I said that to myself I couldn’t accept it as reality.
12 Bertha Strunk
Life with Brian was all that I expected it to be. We were comfortable in every way and the improvement in his work was impressive. But I was feeling two different kinds of guilt. There was the obvious one from how I’d ill-used Phil and there was the ingrained one of my Protestant Work Ethic; I was shirking a heavy job and I was ashamed of my laziness. Living with a writer who wrote boring would be hard work but where is it written that life was meant to be easy? Maybe I could get used to it, like bad breath or premature ejaculation. Or maybe he might get into less boring — you never can tell.