And one tried to fit in.
One acted, along with all of the others attempting to be successfully socially mobile. The least bad of the alternatives.
Behind a book, on paper — then I was at home.
I was most at home.
The words, the knowing — they could hold me and let me walk all the way from Old Court to New Court and be safe. And Lord, the relief in the God-awful squalor of seventies’ student fashion — the concomitant lack of expense.
It was going away to school that did the damage. Years of keeping my secrets from the others, the ones who belonged — not mentioning family holidays taken at Blackpool, Uncle Angus who bred turkeys in his yard and sold dead cars, nothing about my address, my house, the provenance of my Sunday suit, the provenance of my tottering accent, the quiet strain in every possession — and the lying and lying and lying about my life and heart and soul.
Good practice.
Not that I wasn’t seen through and found out.
Not that I wasn’t in danger of being adopted as a pet, an inverse asset. Particularly at college.
Good practice, all the same …
I can’t complain.
It would be ungrateful.
As Jon had made it to the lift, Findlater joined him — Oh, really … Is that absolutely necessary? Why Findlater now? Any lift containing Findlater felt overfilled. Although he was not a substantial man in any sense.
Amazing that someone so shallow can be so full of shit.
‘Jon.’ Findlater fired off the kind of smile that chaps of libidinous capacities send each other as a confirmation of shared pursuits. He made one feel smeared with something. ‘Jon, how are you? How’s the photography?’
‘It’s … I’m in two minds.’
That’s almost always true.
‘Well, if you get any good results, please do … Art photographs … Yes? I suppose digital won’t give you the quality? And anyway, you’d want to develop them yourself. You are an old-school man, aren’t you?’ Another contagion-bearing grin.
Old school in the sense of old-fashioned. In the sense of who-knows-what imagined scenarios. Not in the sense of ties. That’s ties in the sense of collars and colours and not in the sense of cats. Christ, I have a headache. When did that happen?
Jon had no interest in photography, but had once bought a drying frame for his post-marital flat in his lunch hour. This was intended to help him escape from complete reliance on a laundry service or, worse still, a launderette. It would mean that he could, as his mother would have put it, rinse out his smalls and leave them to dry on the frame thereafter. He didn’t want the care of his underwear to involve anybody else. He didn’t even have a cleaning woman — why should he? He wasn’t a messy man, he was self-contained. Findlater had misunderstood the frame, caught sight of it as it lounged in a corner, waiting to be taken out to the Junction and the penitential but convenient one-bedroom hutch where Jon now stored himself in workless moments.
Findlater, ever curious in unconstructive directions, had eyed the frame like a barn owl eyeing a mouse. ‘What’s that, by the way?’
‘Drying frame. Our breakdown should be ready by Thursday at the latest. And if yours is ready then, too, we’ll be ahead of the game.’
‘Good, good. Drying frame, eh …?’ Findlater had manufactured a louche pause. The man was helplessly married, but enjoyed being discontented, liked the idea of straying while lacking the spine required to try it. He had a habit of driving up round Acton for a not good reason.
He told me once that Acton was the place for sighting Japanese schoolgirls. ‘You see them in flocks up there. And they look … exactly like Japanese schoolgirls.’The man’s expression one of mingled fear and rapture. The Japanese Ministry of Education does run a school in Acton. It does that in order to aid the Japanese community — rather than with any hopes of aiding Findlater’s masturbatory fantasies.
And I am sure that Japanese schoolgirls do look exactly like Japanese schoolgirls.
Christ, the poisonous waters that gather in the shallows of the masculine heart.
Do people expect that of me? Do they assume I am always panting inwardly for this or that of women, semi-hard thinking set on a constant alert? Are there confidential evaluations that are certain my primary focus is elsewhere?
If Findlater were genuinely predatory then Jon would have taken pains to do something about him, put a word in — several — called the bloody Met on him, made sure of him, stamped him out, but the man was just pitiable.
It takes one differently pitiable man to know another.
I am, at least, not a lonely husband, hunched in a damp car pretending to read the paper, palms in a sweat, or loitering over authentic bento snacks in some Actonese café, hoping for a glimpse of kilts and knee socks, coy laughter, whatever fantasy sustains him through evenings with Mrs Nancy Findlater and her withered Elizabeth David cuisine, Hampstead Bazaar tunics and boxed sets of The Good Life and To the Manor Born.
The lift’s upward progress seemed cluttered and languid to an unreasonable degree and Jon reflected again that he should really try the trick of pressing the DOOR OPEN button along with his floor of choice in order to whisk himself aloft without stopping.
Or else you’re meant to hold and press DOOR CLOSE. I’ve heard both offered as short cuts — tiny opportunities to practise selfishness. And the efficacy of the procedure is possibly a myth — like the idea that hitting the button at a pedestrian crossing will make the traffic stop. In a statistically significant number of cases the button is only provided to placate and has no effect. Quite often, your one accessible response to a situation is engineered to simply occupy your time while you wait for what was always going to happen anyway. It’s an enforced displacement activity.
Like voting.
Jon realised that he hadn’t spoken for a while and that Findlater had become unpalatably expectant.
Just as he had when he saw the drying frame. ‘A drying frame …’
‘It’s a drying frame, yes. I need one. Now that I’m settled in.’
The horror of genuinely leaving a wife had scampered across behind Findlater’s expression and was then replaced by a cut-price sort of glee. ‘Photography?’
‘No.’
‘Photography. To dry the prints.’
‘Not photography.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought it of you.’
‘I’m not asking you to think it of me. Thinking it of me would be inaccurate.’
But people love to be inaccurate.
Which is why people like me are required. I am pathologically precise and therefore useful. I ought to be seen as useful.
Jon counted off the floors and sent thoughts in the direction of the fellow-travellers who had diluted the awfulness of Findlater: goodbye, man with water-blemished shoes — goodbye, Palmer, I like you — and goodbye, the woman with the highlighted hair whom I don’t know but see around — goodbye, man with two sticks — goodbye, woman who is markedly overweight and limps, perhaps as a result, or else who cannot exercise because of her limp and is therefore overweight, one shouldn’t judge, but she is really fat — oh, and goodbye Findlater. Yes, Findlater, go, yes. Just leave me be, OK, with one last grin and …