“You know what those marks are, Pam,” I pointed out. “The darker grain is because someone’s head has rested there, night after night, greasy hair—like wax—bringing out the images suggested by the natural whorls in the timber.”
“Yes, and those smudges are from a man’s head,” said Pamela, grimacing with distaste. “That’s the man’s side of the bed.”
“My side!” I managed a laugh, but I felt degraded by the exchange, and it didn’t feel fair. I hadn’t stained the damned headboard. I didn’t wear any kind of gel in my hair.
My side. Smudges. Greasy hair. On my side.
I was an addict before I met Pam. When she eventually realized I was using the drug regularly, I think she really thought she could change me. In part, her failure to get me clean made my addiction worse. Shame was ladled onto discomfort when I tried to withdraw, and Pam was impatient. She was such a potent woman, so powerful and dominant. Was she a mother figure to me? No, I worshipped her like a goddess and I think that infuriated her. She wanted passionate and hearty sex, companionship, and excitement. At first I think I intrigued her and, stoned as I often was, our languorous and lengthy sex sessions suited her. Then suddenly everything that was good about our marriage was slipping away. I had become a self-obsessed bore. Perhaps I’m being hard on myself. She had her part to play, but listening to me revel in my drug-induced hallucinations must have been infuriating.
At that moment, in the welling delirium of withdrawal and the feeling of Pamela’s absolute disdain for me, and possibly—at that moment—for all greasy men, the whirls and shapes in the grain took on a psychedelic nature, and a dozen screaming ghostlike faces appeared, like those created by my father’s namesake Edvard Munch. Somehow this image penetrated so deeply into my vulnerable psyche that for several months I became completely obsessed with figuring out who had once leaned his head in that spot on the bed night after night, and what had been in his mind—what nightmares, what visions, what horrors? I remember Rain, poor kid, trying to console me over and over again, promising she would help me somehow.
By the time I recovered, a week later, Pamela was gone, never to return, never to make any claim on me, never to make any claim on Rain. Pamela simply disappeared. I had no way of tracking her down. Of course my drug use got worse for a while. The hallucinations evolved into full-blown conversations with erotic nymph-like angels and diabolical gargoyles that I could touch and even smell if I wished. I was fearless, and therefore very dangerous to myself and my daughter. Pamela had no idea, I felt sure of that. Walter’s parents, Harry and Sally, helped me greatly in that difficult time. They took Rain in for months on end, and let me stay in their guest room so I could be close to her.
They were both expert riders and because Walter had taken against horses as a child for some reason, they jumped at the chance to teach Rain to ride. It took her mind off my particular troubles that were of course really no worse than her own, and she adored their two horses. I often wondered then at how well Rain handled being without a mother. I remember Walter and Rain, barely twelve years old, both sitting in tense rapture as I described some of the peculiar things I was seeing in my head. Rain stopped trying to convince me she could help me back to sanity when she saw that Walter—who she worshipped—thought that what I was talking about was really very cool.
“Artists maybe see things differently to you and me.” I was sitting with them both before a blazing log fire, hot chocolate for them, cognac for me on top of a heroin and cocaine speedball. “Or perhaps the difference is that they try to let us share what they see by transforming it into drawings, music, or story. I wish I could be an artist. What I often see and hear when I’m not feeling all that great is as interesting and enthralling as what I feel when I’m joyful and happy.”
I wished I could tell them about the nymphs and gargoyles.
“When we feel pain, we know we are human, that we are alive. For me physical pain is not always something to be numbed, but what I do need to dampen down is what goes on in my head. I need to be able to see and hear it clearly, to have some distance, to be able to express it.”
The kids wanted to know exactly what it was I could hear and see. I didn’t want to frighten them, but I wanted to explain myself, why I was the way I was.
“You’re old enough to know about drugs. I bet the older kids at school are experimenting. But the chemicals in our own bodies and brain are far more powerful. If I stop for a moment and look intensely at something—like the flames and smoke in the fire there—my mind can go either way. Like now I see nude women dancing. Nothing naughty, it’s like a ballet. But now they turn into writhing golden snakes. Now the smoke looks like heavy fabric, and the embers hide a glowing animal beneath. Something like a whale, on fire.
“What an artist can do is take such images and turn them into something tangible. When one of my clients, the painters or sculptors that I represent, shows me their work, they know I appreciate that there isn’t always a clear logic behind what they do. They might simply be trying to tap into what normal people might call madness.”
Harry and Sally Watts were part of the same set as Pam and me. We were arty-farty types who tolerated each other’s eccentricities and self-indulgences, and could often be overheard saying to one another things like: Your work ethic is what makes you who you are, or If you hadn’t been a junkie you wouldn’t be able to appreciate the kind of artists you work with. We were all overly liberal and I think Harry and Sally thought my addiction was a kind of badge of honor. But we all made money, enough to live a decent and comfortable life. Harry and Sally lived with Walter on a pleasant road that ran along the quiet side of Ealing Common. Unusually, their large Edwardian house had never been divided into flats, and they enjoyed a huge rambling garden as well as the three guest bedrooms on the second floor that had rarely been used until my arrival with Rain. We were never made to feel we were in the way. I’m not a bad cook, so I was able to contribute to the running of the house, shopping, and making many evening meals. Harry was often working in the evening, performing at concerts, sometimes away for days at a time. Sally seemed to genuinely enjoy my company, rather than merely tolerate it. She was a very successful painter of modern equestrian scenes, and of racing events and famous meetings like the Grand National. The fact that I dealt in art gave us some common ground.
Harry and Sally kept their horses at a large establishment in Harefield, a greenbelt village in Middlesex, about thirty-five minutes’ drive from Ealing. Harefield’s compact main street boasted a few antique shops and a post office, and the village was surrounded by fairly flat woodland and fields perfect for hacking and jumping. Rain quickly became an eager horsewoman, despite Walter’s reluctance to get involved. Harry and Sally were regarded as experts, and although they didn’t compete, they were keen on attending all the gymkhanas and dressage events in the area. Without the passion for horses and riding, that fire, that explosive exhaustion that his mother in particular felt after a gallop, Walter would never have been born. She told me that it was only after a gallop that she and Harry could make love.
In this upper-middle-class world, caught between town and country, art, music, and the meadow, Harry and Sally managed to make this a relatively happy time for Rain and me. One distinction in parenting protocol that arose awkwardly in our time at the Watts household was that Walter and I seemed rather to follow our noses in our chosen pursuits, while Harry, Sally, and Rain believed that intense and long practice sessions were what led to success.