‘You’ve certainly got it all worked out.’
‘It’s self-protection, Joan. I couldn’t take any more.’
‘Girlfriend?’ she asked, lighting another cigarette.
‘I’m not that heartless.’
‘Well, finding another woman can bring an exceptional clarity of mind to a man all of a sudden. Remembering my own distant experiences of cock and cunt.’
‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you, Joan.’
‘Your sympathy is about half a century too late, young man.’
‘I mean it,’ he said.
‘And how do you think Martha will cope? Better than you? Worse? About the same?’
‘I’ve no idea. And in a way I don’t care. I don’t care, otherwise I’ll be dragged back into it all.’
‘It’s not a question of getting dragged back. You’re still in it.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You’re still in it. You’ll always be in it. No, not literally. But in your heart. Nothing ever ends, not if it’s gone that deep. You’ll always be walking wounded. That’s the only choice, after a while. Walking wounded, or dead. Don’t you agree?’
He looked across, but she wasn’t addressing him. She was addressing Sibyl, and patting her soft head. He didn’t know what to say, because he didn’t know if he believed her or not.
‘Do you still cheat at the crossword?’
‘You cheeky little bugger. But that’s nothing new, is it?’
He smiled at her. He’d always liked Joan.
‘And shut the door on your way out. I don’t like to get up too many times in the course of a day.’
He knew not to do anything like embrace her, so merely nodded, smiled and started to leave.
‘Send a wreath when the time comes,’ she called after him.
He didn’t know if she meant for her, or for Susan. Maybe even for Sibyl. Did dogs get wreaths? Another thing he didn’t know.
What he didn’t – or couldn’t – tell Joan was his terrifying discovery that love, by some ruthless, almost chemical process, could resolve itself into pity and anger. The anger wasn’t at Susan, but at whatever it was that had obliterated her. But even so, anger. And anger in a man caused him disgust. So now, along with pity and anger, he had self-disgust to deal with as well. And this was part of his shame.
He worked in a number of countries. He was in his thirties, then forties, perfectly presentable (as his mother would have put it), as well as solvent and not obviously mad. This was enough for him to find the sexual companionship, the social life, the daily warmth he needed – until he moved on to the next job, the next country, the next social circle, the next few years of being agreeable to and with new people, some of whom he might see in later years, some not. It was what he wanted; more to the point, it was all he felt able to sustain.
To some, his way of life might have sounded selfish, even parasitical. But he also took thought for others. He tried not to mislead, to exaggerate what was emotionally available. He didn’t linger by jewellers’ windows or go simperingly silent at photos of babies; nor did he claim he was looking to settle down, either with this person or indeed in this country. And – though it was a trait he didn’t immediately identify – he was generally attracted to women who were… how to put it? Sturdy, independent and not obviously fucked-up. Women who had their own lives, who might enjoy his solid but passing presence as much as he did theirs. Women who wouldn’t get too hurt when he moved on, and who wouldn’t inflict too much pain if they were the first to jump.
He thought of this psychological pattern, this emotional strategy, as being honest and considerate, as well as necessary. He neither pretended nor offered more than he could deliver. Though of course, when he laid it all out like this, he saw that some might regard it as pure egotism. He also couldn’t decide if his policy of moving on – from place to place, woman to woman – was courageous in admitting his own limitations, or cowardly in accepting them.
Nor did his new theory of living always work. Some women gave him thoughtful presents – and that scared him. Others, over the years, had called him a typical Englishman, a tightass, a cold fish; also, heartless and manipulative – though he believed his was the least manipulative approach to relationships that he knew. Still, it made some women cross with him. And on the rare occasions when he had tried to explain his life, his pre-history and the long-term state of his heart, the accusations sometimes became more pointed, and he was treated as if he had some infectious disease to which he should have admitted between the first and second dates.
But that was the nature of relationships: there always seemed to be an imbalance of one sort or another. And it was fine to plan an emotional strategy, but another thing when the ground opened up in front of you, and your defending troops toppled into a ravine which hadn’t been marked on the map until a few seconds previously. And so there had been Maria, that gentle, calm Spanish woman who suddenly began making suicide threats, who wanted this, who wanted that. But he hadn’t offered to be the father of her children – or anybody else’s; nor did he intend to convert to Catholicism, even if that would have pleased her supposedly dying mother.
And then – since misunderstanding is democratically distributed – there had been Kimberly, from Nashville, who had so instantly fulfilled all his unwritten requirements – from laughing him into bed on the second date to embodying the very spirit of free-hearted independence – that instead of quietly congratulating himself on his luck he had as near as dammit fallen smack into love with her. And at first she had rebuffed him with references to personal space and to ‘keeping things light’. Yet this only made him the more desperate for her to move into his house that very afternoon, and he’d done stuff with flowers way beyond what he normally did, and found himself gazing at racks of diamond rings, and even dreaming of that perfect hideaway – perhaps an old trapper’s shack (with full modern comforts, of course) up some tree-shadowed lane. He had offered marriage, and she had replied, ‘Paul, it doesn’t work like that.’ When, in his delirium, she had patted his arm and said the kind of stuff he’d said to Maria, he heard himself accusing her of being selfish and manipulative and a cold fish and a typical American woman – whatever he meant by that, as she was the first American woman he’d dated. So she ditched him by fax, and he got punitively drunk to the point of sudden rationality, when he fell into silly laughter, and a sense of the absurdity of all human dealings, and felt a sudden call for the monastic life, while also entertaining fantasies of Kimberly dressed as a nun and them having joyfully blasphemous sex, whereupon he booked two tickets for an early-morning flight to Mexico, but naturally overslept and the message on his answering machine when he woke was not from Kimberly but from the airline company telling him of his missed flight. Somehow he had got into work that day and gave a comic account of his misfortunes, which made his colleagues laugh, and made himself laugh, so that this lighter, distorted fiction swiftly took over from what had actually happened. And in later years he had silently thanked Kimberly for being smarter than he was – emotionally smarter. He had imagined that he’d learnt a lot of emotional lessons from being with Susan. But maybe they were only emotional lessons about being with her.
He kept up with his men-friends when home on leave, or between jobs, over drinks or dinners which felt like sudden jerks of fast-forwarding. Some of them had turned into unremitting furrow-dwellers, and these were the ones who reminisced most sentimentally about the old days. Some were now on to second wives and stepchildren. One had turned gay, after all these years, having suddenly started noticing the napes of young men’s necks. For a few, time brought no alteration. Bernard, red-faced and white-bearded, would give him a nudge, a head-toss and an overloud ‘Look at the arse on that,’ as a woman walked past their restaurant table. Bernard had been saying the same at twenty-five, though back then with an inaccurate American accent. Perhaps it was useful still to be reminded that some men mistook boorishness for honesty. Just as others mistook primness for virtue.