Midnight All Day

Midnight All Day

Ian lay back in the only chair in the room in Paris, waiting for Marina to finish in the bathroom. She would be some time, since she was applying unguents — seven different ones, she had told him — over most of her body, rubbing them in slowly. She was precious to herself.

He was glad to have a few minutes alone. There had been many important days recently; he suspected that this would be the most important and that his future would turn on it.

For the past few mornings, before they went out for breakfast, he had listened to Schubert’s Sonata in B Flat Major, which he had not previously known. Apart from a few pop tapes, it was the only music in Anthony’s flat. Ian had pulled it out from under the futon on their first day there.

Now, as he got up to play the CD, he glimpsed himself in the wardrobe mirror and saw himself as a character in a Lucian Freud painting: a middle-aged man in a thin, tan raincoat, ashen-faced, standing beside a dying pot plant, overweight and with, to his surprise, an absurd expression of hope, or the desire to please, in his eyes. He would have laughed, had he not lost his sense of humour.

He turned the music up. It concealed the voices that came from a nearby children’s school. They reminded him of his daughter, who was staying, at the moment, with her grandmother in London. Ian’s wife, Jane, had been taken to hospital. He had to discuss this with Marina, who didn’t yet know about it. She did not want to hear about his wife and he did not want to talk about her. But unless he did, his wife would continue to shadow him — both of them — darkening everything.

Although Ian had been a pop kid, and overawed by what he imagined classical music meant, he listened avidly to the Schubert sonata, sometimes walking up and down. No matter how often he heard it, he could not remember what came next; what it said to him he did not know, as the piece had no distinct overall mood. He liked the idea of it being music he would never understand; that seemed to be an important part of it. It was a relief, too, that he still had the capacity to be aroused and engrossed, as well as consoled. Some mornings he woke up wanting to hear the piece.

He and Marina had spent ten days in the tiny flat belonging to Ian’s closest friend and business partner, Anthony, who had a French lover or mistress. On the rue du Louvre, the apartment was well situated for walks, museums and bars, but it was on the sixth floor. Marina found it an increasing strain to mount the narrow, warped wooden stairs. Not that they went out more than once a day. The weather had been fresh and bright, but it was freezing. The flat was cold, apart from where it was too hot, beside the electric fire attached to the wall, where the only armchair stood.

What was between him and Marina? Had they only dreamed one another? He did not know, even now. All he could do was find out by living through to the end every sigh and shout of their stupid, wonderful, selfish love. Then they would both know if they were able to go on.

He had listened to the sonata twice by the time she came in, naked, holding her stomach. She lowered herself onto the futon to dress. He had yearned for days and months and years for her, and now could not remember if they were speaking or not.

‘Don’t get cold‚’ he said.

‘I’ve got nothing to wear.’

Few of her skirts and trousers fitted now she was pregnant. He himself had left London with two pairs of trousers and three shirts, one of which Marina was usually wearing. It had made him feel like a thief to think of removing his clothes from the flat he had shared with his wife, particularly when she was not there. He had fewer possessions now than he had had as a student, twenty years ago.

He said, ‘We must buy some clothes.’

‘How much money do we have left?’

‘One of the credit cards is still working. At least it was last night.’

‘How will we pay it off?’

‘I’ll get a job.’

She snorted. ‘Really?’

Before they left London she had been turned down for a job because she was pregnant.

He said, ‘Maybe in an off-licence. Why are you laughing?’

‘You — so delicate, so proud — selling beers and crisps.’

He said, ‘It’s important to me — not to let you down.’

‘I’ve always supported myself‚’ she said.

‘You can’t now.’

‘Can’t I?’

He said, ‘Anthony might lend me some money. You haven’t forgotten that he’s coming this afternoon?’

‘We can’t keep asking him for money.’

‘I love you‚’ he said.

She looked at him. ‘That’s good.’

The previous evening they had walked to a restaurant near the Jardins du Luxembourg, and had talked of how seriously the Parisians took their food. The waiters were professional waiters, rather than students, and the food was substantial and old fashioned, intended to be eaten rather than looked at. The older people tucked wide napkins into their fronts and the children sat on cushions on their seats.

‘This was my dream, when I was a teenager‚’ Marina had said, ‘to come to Paris to live and work.’

‘We’re living in Paris now‚’ he had replied. ‘Sort of.’

She said, ‘I didn’t imagine it would be like this. In these conditions.’

Her bitter remark made him feel he had trapped her; perhaps she felt the same. As they walked back, in silence, he wondered who she was, the layer upon layer of her. They were peeling and scraping, both hoping to find the person underneath, as if it would reveal the only useful truth. But in the end you had to live with all of someone else.

He and Marina had been to Paris, on an invented business trip, over a year ago, but otherwise they had met only intermittently. These ten days were the longest they had been together. She still kept a room in a house with other young people. Her pregnancy made the women envious and confused, and the boys over-curious as to why she kept the father’s name a secret.

When Ian left his wife, he and Marina had spent a few nights together in Anthony’s London house. Anthony lived alone; the house was large and painted white, with stripped floorboards, the latest style. It was almost bare, apart from several pale, expensive sofas, and resembled a stage set, ready for the actors to start. But Ian felt like a trespasser and told Anthony he had to get away. Five years before, they had started a film production company together. However, Ian had not been to work for almost three months. He had instructed Anthony to freeze his salary and had walked about the city drunk, talking only to the mad and derelict, people who did not know him. If you made yourself desperately sick you had to live in the present; there was nowhere else. But killing yourself was a difficult and time-consuming job and Anthony had made him stop doing it. Ian did not know whether he could go back to work. He had no idea what he was doing. This was partly why Anthony was coming to Paris, to extract a decision from Ian.

Ian could not forget how generous Anthony had been. It was at his insistence and expense that Ian and Marina had travelled to Paris and stayed in his apartment.

‘Go and see whether you two want to be together,’ he had said. ‘Stay there as long as you like. Then let me know.’

‘Everyone’s advised me to give her up and go back to Jane. They keep telling me how nice Jane is. I can’t do that, but they think I’m a fool …’

‘Be a fool and to hell with everyone else,’ Anthony had said.

As Marina dressed now, Ian knew they were close to a permanent break. They had had their time in Paris and the distance between them was considerable. In the past few days she had talked of returning to London, finding a small flat, getting a job, and bringing up the child alone. Many women did that now; it seemed almost a matter of pride. He would be redundant. It was important for her to feel she could get by without him, he saw that. But if their love, from a certain point of view, seemed like a dangerous addiction, he had to persuade her that they had a chance together, even though, half the time, he did not believe it himself. He did not want to fight; everything was going to hell and that was the fate he had to submit to. But a part of him was not ready to submit. Believing in fate was an attempt to believe you had no will of your own and he did not want that, either.

‘I’m hungry,’ she said.

‘We’ll eat then.’

He helped her to her feet.

She said, ‘I’ve been feeling dizzy.’

‘Tell me at any time if you want to sit down, and a chair will be produced.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

He held her, leaning forward over her stomach.

She said, ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’

‘I’ll always be here, if you want me.’

She regarded herself in the mirror. ‘I look like a penguin.’

‘Let’s set out across the tundra, then,’ he said.

‘Don’t mock me.’

‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended you.’

‘Let’s not start,’ she said.

She was anxious, now her breasts were full, her cheeks red, and her arms, legs and thighs sturdy, that he had loved only her slimness and youth. She felt weary, too, and seemed, in her late twenties, to have passed into another period of her life, without wanting to. All she wanted, most of the time, was to lie down. Veins showed through the pale skin of her legs; every evening she asked him to massage her aching ankles. But her skin was clear; her long hair shone. There was no spare flesh on her. She was taut, pressed to the limit; and healthy.

At the bottom of the stairs she was breathless, but they were both glad to be outside.

He liked walking in Paris: the streets lined with galleries, and the shops full of little objects — a city of people concerned with their senses. It seemed quiet, and stifled by good taste, compared to the vulgar rush, fury and expense of London, which had once again become fashionable. The walls of the London newsagents were lined with magazines and papers, full of the profiles of new artists, playwrights, songwriters, actors, dancers, architects — spitting, cynical, unsettling and argumentative in the new British way. Restaurants opened everyday, and the chefs were famous. At midnight in Soho and Covent Garden, you had to push through crowds as if you were at a carnival. It was not something Ian could take an interest in until he had a love, and was settled.

As he walked, Ian saw a smartly dressed, middle-aged man coming towards him, holding the hand of a girl about the same age as his daughter. They were talking and laughing. Ian presumed the girl was late for school, and her father was taking her; there was nothing more important for the man to do. Close, encouraging, generous, available — Ian thought of the father he had wanted to be. He knew children needed to be listened to. But these were ideas he would have to revise; he could not, now, be his own father, in another generation. There would be a distance. He imagined his daughter saying, ‘Dad walked out. He was never there.’ He would do his best, but it was not the same; he had failed without wanting to.

Ian turned away and waited for Marina to catch up. Her head was bent, as it often was, and she wore a grey woolly hat, with a bobble. Over her long black dress she had on an ankle-length fur-collared overcoat, and trainers. When she was next to him, he took her arm.

He had become accustomed to her size. For days he seemed to forget they were having a child until, at unexpected moments, the terror of how overwhelming it could be seized him, along with the fact that they couldn’t escape one another. At the beginning they had talked of an abortion; but neither of them could have lived with such a crude negation of hope. They loved one another, but could they live together? This was the ordeal of his life. If he was unable to make this work, then not only had he broken up his family for nothing, but he was left with nothing — nothing but himself.

He thought of what she had to take on: him grumbling about how awful everything was, and groaning and yelling in his sleep, as if he were inhabited by ghosts; his fears and doubts; his sudden ecstasies; his foolishness, wisdom, experience and naivety; how much he made her laugh and how infuriated she could become. How much there was of other people! If falling in love could only be a glimpse of the other, who was the passion really directed at? They were living an extended, closer look at one another.

In a café nearby, where they had been going every day, she sat down while he stood at the bar to order breakfast. He spoke English in a low voice, as Marina was annoyed that he would not try to speak French. It was almost twenty-five years since he had studied the language, and the effort and his helplessness were humiliating.

He watched as the Parisians came in, knocked their coffee back, devoured a croissant, and hurried off to work. Marina sat with her hands under her stomach. The baby must have been awake, for he — they knew it was a boy — was kicking in her. At times, so thin and stretched had her stomach become, she felt she would split, as if the boy were trying to kick his way out. There were other anxieties — that the baby would be blind or autistic — as well as new pains, flutterings and pulses in her stomach. These were ordinary fears; he had been through this before with another woman, but did not like to remind her.

‘You look even more beautiful today,’ he said, sitting down. ‘Your eyes are brighter than for a long time.’

‘I’m surprised,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘It’s been so difficult.’

‘A little, yes,’ he said. ‘But it’ll get easier.’

‘Will it?’

Of course he was ambivalent about having another child. He recalled sitting in the flat with Jane, having returned from the hospital with their daughter. He had taken a week off work and realised then how little time he and Jane had spent together over the past five years. Once, their fears had coincided; that had been love, for a while. He saw that they had had to keep themselves apart, for fear of turning into someone they both disliked. He did not want to use her words; she did not want his opinions inside her. The girl was, and remained, particularly in her rages, the expression or reminder of their incompatibility, of a difference they were unable to bridge. He was looking forward to seeing his daughter without Jane.

‘What’s bothering you today?’ Marina said, when they were drinking their coffee. ‘You stare into the distance for ages. Then you jerk your head around urgently, like a blackbird. I wonder what sort of worm it is you’ve spotted. But it’s nothing, is it?’

‘No. Only … I’ve got to talk to Anthony this afternoon … and I haven’t decided what to say.’

‘Or what to do.’

‘That’s right.’

She said, ‘You don’t want to go back?’

‘I don’t know.’ They buttered their croissants in silence. ‘Things are certainly starting to seem a little aimless here.’ He said, ‘Anthony’s changed.’

‘In what way?’

‘You don’t want me to go on about it, do you?’

She said, ‘But I love our talks. I love the sound of your voice … even if I don’t listen to every word.’

He told her they had run the company for themselves, for fun. They had never wanted to work excessive hours, or accept projects for the money alone. In the past five years they had made three feature films, one of which had been critically successful and made its money back. They had also produced a number of television documentaries. But recently, without discussing it fully with Ian, Anthony had taken on an expensive American comedy project, to be shot in London, with a petulant and talentless director.

Anthony had made new friends in film and TV. He flew to Manchester United’s home matches and sat in the directors’ box. He went to New Labour dinners and, Ian presumed, donated money to the Party. He boasted of a new friend who had a trout stream at the end of his garden, though Ian doubted whether Anthony would recognise a trout unless it was served to him on a plate.

In the past twenty years Ian had come to know most of the people in his profession. He was a natural son-type, who liked to listen and admire; he collected mentors. Most of these friends, the majority of whom were from ordinary backgrounds, now lived in ostentatious luxury, like the great industrialists of the nineteenth century. They were the editors of newspapers, film directors, chairmen of publishing houses, heads of TV companies, senior journalists and professors. In their spare time, of which they seemed to have a lot, they became the chairmen of various theatre, film and arts boards. The early fifties in men was a period of frivolity, self-expansion and self-indulgence.

If Ian was perplexed, it was because that generation, ten years ahead of him, had been a cussed, liberated, dissenting lot. Somehow Thatcher had helped them to power. Following her, they had moved to the right and ended up in the centre. Their left politics had ended up as social tolerance and lack of deference. Otherwise, they smoked cigars and were driven to their country houses on Friday afternoons; sitting with friends overlooking their land, while local women worked in the kitchen, they fretted about their knighthoods. They were as thrilled as teenagers when they saw themselves in the newspapers. They wanted to be prefects.

‘They’ve lost their intellectual daring,’ Ian said.

‘There’s a bit of you that sees all that as the future,’ Marina said.

‘I’m aware that one has to find new things,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know what they should be.’

He looked at her. He felt ready to bring up the subject of his wife.

‘We’ll have to go back to London eventually,’ he said. ‘Quite soon, probably, and … face everything. I want to do that and I don’t want to do it.’

‘Where will we go?’ she said. ‘I’ve got nothing, your money is in your wife’s house, and you haven’t got a job.’

‘Well —’

He believed she trusted him and imagined he might know, despite everything, what he was doing. Looking at her sweet face now, and her long fingers tearing at a croissant, he contemplated her inner dignity. If he thought she was regal, it was not because she was imperious, but because she was still. She never fidgeted; there was nothing unnecessary in anything she did.

They had stopped talking of the future and what they might do to make a life together, as if they had turned into children and wanted to be told. They drifted about Paris, according to some implicit routine, looking at their guidebooks, visiting galleries, museums and parks, going to restaurants in the evening.

If he were to love her, he had to be transformed from a man who could not do this with Jane, to a man who could do it with Marina. And the transformation had to be rapid, before he lost her. If he could not get along with this woman, he couldn’t get along with any of them and he was done for.

‘Shall we go?’ she said.

He helped her into her coat. They crossed the Seine on the wooden bridge with the benches, where they sat facing the Pont Neuf, enjoying the view. He thought, then, that this was a better moment to start to talk about his wife; but he took Marina’s arm, and they moved on.

They knew the eager queue outside the Musée d’Orsay would not take long to go down. He was amazed by the thirst of the crowds, to look at good things.

Inside, Marina was walking somewhere when, adjacent to Rodin’s ‘Gates of Hell’, Ian found himself standing beside the tower of white stone that was ‘Balzac’. Ian had seen it many times since he was a teenager, but on this occasion it made him suddenly laugh. Surely, Balzac had been a flabby and dishevelled figure, obsessed by money rather than the immortality that Rodin had him gazing towards? As far as Ian could remember, Balzac had hurried through life and received little satisfaction; his ambition had been a little ridiculous — or perhaps, narrow and unreflective. Yet this was a man: someone who had taken action, converting experience into something powerful and sensual.

Rodin had certainly made Balzac a forceful figure. Ian was reminded of how afraid his own timid mother had been of his noise and energy; she was forever telling him to ‘calm down’. His being alive at all seemed to alarm her. With Marina, too, Ian had been afraid of his own furies, of his power, and of the damage he believed that being a man might do, and how it might make her withdraw her love. What evil had marauding men caused in the twentieth century! Hadn’t he damaged his wife? And yet, looking at Rodin’s idea of Balzac now, he thought: rather a beast than a castrated angel. If the tragedy of the twentieth century had been fascism and communism, the triumph was that both had been defeated. Without guilt we lose our humanity, but if there is too much of it, nothing can be redeemed!

Leaving the Musée D’Orsay he realised how quickly he was walking, and how revived and stimulated he was. Rodin and Balzac had done him good.

As they entered a restaurant, Marina pointed out that the place looked expensive, but he hurried her in, saying, ‘Let’s just eat — and drink!’

She looked at him questioningly, but he wanted to talk, keeping the Rodin in mind like a talisman, or a reminder of some suppressed childhood ecstasy. He could push against the world, and it would survive. He had probably read too much Beckett as a young man. He would have been better off with Joyce.

‘I know you don’t want to hear about this,’ he said, ‘but my wife …’

‘Yes? What is it?’

He had alarmed her already.

‘She is in hospital. She took pills and alcohol … and passed out. I believe she did it after I told her about the baby. Our baby. You know.’

‘Is she dead?’

‘Perhaps that would seem like a relief. But no. No.’ He went on, ‘It’s a terrible thing to do, to others, to our daughter in particular. I was surprised by it, as Jane never seemed to like me. She must be deranged at the moment. She will have to realise that she can’t cling to me for ever. I don’t want to go on about it. I wanted you to know, that’s all.’

For a time she was silent.

‘I feel sorry for her,’ she said. She started to weep. ‘To have lost a love that you thought would continue for ever, and to have to recover from that. How terrible, terrible, terrible!’

‘Yes, well —’

She said, ‘How do I know you won’t do the same to me?’

‘Sorry?’

‘How do I know you won’t leave me, as you left her?’

‘As if I make a habit of … that sort of thing?’

‘You’ve done it once. Perhaps more. How do I know?’

Outrage stopped his mouth. If he spoke he would say terrible things, and they would not understand one another. But he had to keep speaking to her.

She went on, ‘I fear, constantly, that you will tire of me and go back to her.’

‘I’ll never do that, never. Why should I?’

‘You know one another.’

He said, ‘After a certain age everything happens under the sign of eternity, which is probably the best way to do things. I haven’t got time now, for vacillation.’

‘But you are feeble,’ she said. ‘You don’t fight for yourself. You let people push you around.’

‘Who?’

‘Me. Anthony. Your wife. You were always afraid of her.’

‘That is true,’ he said. ‘I cannot stop wanting to rely on the kindness of others.’

‘You can’t survive on only that.’ She was not looking at him. ‘Your weakness confuses people.’

‘I’m not a fantasy, but a wretched human with weaknesses — and some strengths — like everyone else. But I want to be with you. That I am certain of.’ He paid the bill. ‘I need to go for a walk,’ he said. ‘I want to think about what I’m going to say to Anthony. I’ll see you at the apartment later.’

She took his hand. ‘It would be a shame if your intelligence and wit … if your ideas went to waste. Now kiss me.’

He went out, leaving her with her notebook. He walked about aimlessly in the cold. Soon he was in the café where he was to meet Anthony, an hour before he was due, drinking beer and coffee.

He thought that Anthony would understand the difficulties one might have with a woman. But as a business partner, Ian was not certain that Anthony would be patient. Ian had behaved recklessly; madly even. Anthony had less use for him now. If Ian had jettisoned his own wife, Anthony might do the same to him.

From inside the café Ian saw Anthony’s chauffeur-driven Mercedes. After sending the car away, Anthony checked his hair and brushed himself down. He had a young woman with him, to whom he was giving instructions. She would be his new assistant. Leaving her walking up and down the pavement making calls, Anthony came in.

He was wearing a well-cut dark suit; his hair had been dyed. Anthony was tall and skinny; he drank little. Apart from confusion and an inability to get along with women, he had few vices. Ian had attempted to introduce him to a few. After Anthony’s first Ecstasy pill (provided by Ian, who got them from his postman) they took drugs — mostly Ecstasy, along with cocaine, to keep them up; and cannabis, to bring them down — for a year, which was how long it took them to realise that they couldn’t resurrect the pleasure they’d had on the first night. Ian now took only tranquillisers.

‘Where is she?’ Anthony asked, looking about. ‘How does she look?’

‘She’s at the apartment. She looks splendid. Only … I told her about Jane.’

Anthony sat down and ordered an omelette. ‘A bloody blackmailing nuisance,’ he murmured.

Ian said, ‘It was making me mad, the fear of telling her. Can you tell me how Jane is?’

He had asked Anthony to look into it. Anthony would know how to find out.

Anthony said, ‘There’s nothing physically wrong with her. Of course, she’s distressed and depressed, but she will survive that. She’s coming out of hospital today.’

‘Do you think I should go and see her?’

‘I don’t know.’

Ian said, ‘Consciousness is proving a little tenacious at the moment. Where are my tranquillisers?’

‘I told the quack they were for me. He wouldn’t give me any. Said I’m tranquil enough.’

‘So you didn’t bring any?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, Anthony.’

Anthony opened his briefcase and took out a gadget, a little computer, clearing a space for it on the table. ‘Listen —’ He was busy. Ian’s recent slow pace wasn’t Anthony’s. ‘I need your advice about a director I — we — might use. I think you know him.’

While Ian gave his opinion Anthony typed, rather inaccurately, it seemed to Ian; Anthony’s fingers seemed too fat for the keys. It was a machine Ian knew he would never understand, just as his mother had decided it was too late to bother with videos and computers. Still, Ian wondered whether he was really the fool he liked to take himself for. His ideas weren’t so bad.

He and Anthony switched subjects quickly, as Ian liked to, to football. Ian hadn’t been getting the English papers; he wanted the results. Anthony said he’d been to Stamford Bridge to watch Manchester United play Chelsea.

‘I’m assuming you want to make me jealous,’ Ian said.

‘Why don’t you come next time?’

‘It’s true, I miss London.’

When he could not sleep, Ian liked to imagine he was being driven in a taxi through London. The route took him through the West End and Trafalgar Square, down the Mall, past Buckingham Palace — with Green Park, lit like a grotto, on the right; through the perils of Hyde Park Corner, then past the Minema (showing an obscure Spanish film), and the windows of Harvey Nichols. If you did not know it, what a liberal and individual place you would think London was! He was becoming tired of the deprivations of this little exile.

He started to wonder whether Marina was asleep, or walking in Paris. It occurred to him that she might have left and gone back to London. He wondered if this was a wish on his part, to end his anxiety at last. But he knew it was not what he wanted. He felt like rushing to the apartment to reassure her.

Ian asked, ‘How’s the American project?’

‘Shooting in the summer.’

‘Really?’

‘Of course. It wasn’t difficult getting the money, as I told you.’

He felt patronised by Anthony, but he was at ease with him too.

Ian said, ‘I don’t know why you didn’t make those films I liked.’

‘You were breaking up. Then you weren’t around. Why don’t you do them now? There’s money for development.’

‘Marina and I haven’t got anywhere to live.’

Anthony waved out of the window at his assistant, still walking up and down.

‘She’ll find you a flat. If you come back to London I’ll put you in a hotel from tomorrow and there’ll be an apartment from Monday. Right?’ Ian said nothing. Anthony said, ‘You did the right thing by leaving — leaving Jane, and then leaving London.’

‘Jane kept saying I didn’t try hard enough. It’s certainly true that I was … preoccupied elsewhere, some of the time. But I was with her for six years.’

‘Long enough, surely, to know whether you want to be with someone. You’ve done it. It’s over. You’re free,’ Anthony said.

Ian liked the way Anthony made it seem straightforward.

‘I’m full of regret,’ Ian said, ‘for how unhappy I’ve been so much of the time.’

Anthony sighed. ‘You can’t hold on to that unhappiness for ever.’

Ian said, ‘No. I’ve come to believe in romantic love, too. I feel a fool having fallen for the idea. What’s wrong with sublimation? Rather a Rembrandt than a wank, don’t you think?’

‘Why not sublimation as well as copulation?’ said Anthony.

‘Look at Picasso.’ He leaned across the table. ‘How is it with Marina?’

‘It’s the ordeal of my life. Cold turkey, psychosis and death — all at once. I’ve been trying to understand something about myself… and what I might be able to do. I’m clearer now. I don’t want to give up.’

‘Why should you? You only have to look at her to see how passionate she is about you. It’s funny how blind one can be to such obvious things. Ian, there’s a lot happening in the company. I’d like it if you came back. Soon. Monday, say.’ Anthony was looking at him. ‘What do you think?’

‘You really need to know?’

‘Yes.’

Ian realised he hadn’t talked to Marina about it. Only rarely did he ask her advice. He was used to doing everything alone. If he could solicit her help, if he could learn to turn to her, maybe she would feel more involved. Perhaps love was an exchange of problems.

‘I’ll ask Marina’s advice.’

‘Good,’ Anthony said.

Ian wanted to carry on talking but Anthony was late for a meeting. After, he would meet his lover. Ian stood up to go.

‘The thing is, I’m a bit short of money at the moment.’

‘Of course.’

Anthony opened his cheque book and wrote a cheque. Then he gave Ian some cash. Outside, Ian was introduced to Anthony’s assistant. He wondered how much she knew of him. Anthony said Ian was returning to work on Monday. When Anthony and the young woman got into the car, Ian waved from the pavement.

As he walked back, Ian thought that he wanted to be at home, in a house he liked, with a woman and children he liked. He wanted to lose himself in the mundane, in unimportant things. Perhaps those things were graspable now. Once he had them, he could think of others, and be useful.

He pushed the key into the lock, got into the building and ran up the stairs. He rang the bell repeatedly. It was cold but he was sweating. He rang again. Then he fiddled with the keys. At last he unlocked the door and went up the hallway. The room was dark. He put the light on. She was lying on the bed. She sat up.