After the piece appeared, he was asked onto Newsnight; he spoke on the radio and wrote again to the paper. He had plenty to say, and found that people considered him intelligent and eloquent. He’d taught, but he’d never much talked about politics, or even the theatre, in public, because he feared losing his temper and saying something insulting or crazy. I told him he was respected because he wasn’t some penny-a-line hack or raddled politician. I hated to say the word, it had become so devalued by pomposity and contempt, but Henry was an intellectual, and doing what they were supposed to do.
I said to Lisa, “A lot of people admire your father. If we’re in a war, he’s rebelling with his words.”
“Great, he’s telling everyone he’s against the war. How brave. He’s leaving a party he should never have joined.” She was speaking quickly. “Why doesn’t he actually support the insurgents in Iraq, and the bombers and resisters around the world? Why doesn’t he accept the idea of the struggle moving to Britain? Everyone says-even the government-that the response is coming, that we’re going to get it here, in London. Blair has brought retribution on himself and on us. Even one of your politicians, Robin Cook, said we’d have been better advised bringing peace to Palestine than war to Iraq.
“Why doesn’t Dad say that our corruption and materialism are so decadent that we have actively earned all that we have coming?” She was shaking her head, as though to clear her mind of fury. At last she said, “I’m sick of what I have to say. Why don’t you tell me what you are doing at the moment?”
“I was just writing, for months,” I said. “About a girl. But going nowhere, you know.” She seemed to nod. “Then I found a subject. It emerged. Or it was there all the time. Guilt.”
“Yes?”
“The notion of. How it works. Or what it does. The Greeks. Dostoevsky. Freud. Nietzsche. “There is no feast without cruelty,” Nietzsche writes. Guilt and responsibility. Conscience. All the important things.”
“Why such a subject? Do you have a lot on your mind?”
“Well, yes. It’s difficult to escape. Among other things I had an argument with my son.”
I told her about it. The previous Sunday, Rafi had reluctantly come to spend the day with me. I was lying on the sofa reading the paper; we were listening to music; Rafi was on the floor, sitting at my feet. He’d been sitting there sullenly, playing with one of his lighted machines. Occasionally he gave me the finger or, if I was lucky, two fingers. When he walked past me, he liked to give me a shove, pretending it was an accident. Was I like this? Probably. Miriam certainly was. Being a good parent means bearing this, up to a point.
Now he began to pinch me, hard. I was either ignoring him or paying him too much attention. I told him to stop, several times, but he was enjoying it, giggling and smirking. “You can’t take it, eh?” he said. “Weak man. I’m never coming here again, you haven’t even got Sky. We have to go to the pub or to your sister’s to watch football. It’s shit here. Can’t you get a girlfriend?” Pinch, pinch.
I drew back my foot and kicked him on the top of his head, hard. He didn’t make a sound, his head just dropped. He looked up at me, his brown eyes uncomprehending, as if he’d suffered the most tragic betrayal possible. “My head is numb,” he said. He got up and screamed. “I can’t feel my head!”
He ran to lock himself in the bathroom. He was hurt, but not enough to forget his mobile. He phoned his mother many times. When I got him out of there, he spent the rest of the day in a cupboard, and I had to stand outside, begging him to come out, muttering to myself, “Once, you little fucker, for years I gave up my sexuality to be with you, now be nice to me!”
In the end, I left him to it and went back to the newspapers. That evening, when he went home, I saw he’d pissed in the cupboard. He informed Josephine I’d stamped on his head, trying to kill him.
I rang Josephine to apologise and explain, anticipating a thrashing. I told her the boy had learned what fathers can do, what monsters they might turn into, when pushed. He had sought my limit and had found it. I said I was ashamed; at the same time I was defensive. She was sympathetic. Since she had been working-and she was sure this was the reason-he had attacked her on a few occasions, pulling her hair and frightening her. Other times he ran away into the street, not returning for an hour, giving her a fright. Now that he was becoming difficult, we had to stand together. If she and I were to speak again-and we both wanted to, I was sure of it-he had to be the conduit; we could only love one another through him.
It gratified me, this solidarity. I had been rendered sleepless by hurting him. But he had a strong ego. He didn’t bear grudges; he was too interested in the world. The next time I saw him he was trying to learn to play his electric guitar, which I had to tune for him. Meanwhile he wanted me to hear the new music he liked, which he played through his computer while giving me little glances to gauge my approval.
Lisa said, “And here’s me-still arguing with my father.”
I said, “Lisa, why don’t you cheer me up by reading to me?”
“Are you sure?”
“I want to hear the poem. Now you’ve dragged me all this fucking way in the rain, you might as well do something for me.”
She spat out her cigarette, ground it into the floor and began to read without enthusiasm or emphasis; her face twitched and her tongue flicked. After about ten minutes she stopped.
I thanked her and said, “Haven’t you published before? I have some vague memory of you saying you had.”
At Oxford, I seemed to recall, she read English and wrote a thesis on “Madness and Women’s Poetry.”
“Yes, in student papers. No one noticed.”
I said, “You want me to show these to someone?”
“Suppose they want to publish them? I can’t be an artist.”
“You might be one already.”
“My parents are snobs. So-called artists came to the house all the time. I refuse to worm my way into Mummy and Daddy’s affections that way.”
“Loving you has to be difficult?”
“Why not? They didn’t even want me to become a social worker. And when I became one, they took no interest, they never asked me about my cases.”
I said, “Use a pseudonym.”
“For my cases?”
“I didn’t mean that, but it’s a good thought.” I sighed and stood up. “I’m going.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve asked too much of you. I’m interested in what you think. I can’t find anyone to talk to-someone who hears me right. I dream of the sea, over and over.”
“You want a child?”
“Shit, you foolish man, I hope not. You’ve gone too far.”
I was laughing and I could see she wanted to kiss me, and I let her, tasting this stranger standing in front of me with her tongue in the front of my mouth. When she pushed her body against mine and I reached for her breast, I wondered if I might respond, if there might be something there. She slid down my body. I let her blow me, which I considered some recompense for my doomed shoes.
She said, “I didn’t think the poem would be enough for you. We’re both lonely. Sleep here, you can smell the river and hear the rain.”
“Not tonight.”
She got up. “I’m not young or pretty enough for you.”
“And vice versa.”
She dropped the writing pad in a large plastic bag and gave it to me. I had opened the door when she said, “Take this as well.” I guessed it was the Hand, wrapped in several layers of newspaper, still in its frame. I shoved it into the side of the bag.
The rain fell like nails. The sludge had thickened. Lisa’s was the only shed now lighted, and it was a desolate place. I wondered whether the bag might be porous in some way, thus destroying the Hand.