Andrea X – All You Need is Love

She knows something’s up as soon as I walk in. I’m a little late for a start, which is a first. Normally I’m here before she is - eager to get started.
‘What’s up?’ she says.
I don’t know how to tell her. ‘I think we shouldn’t see each other any more’ I say. I know it sounds like I’m ending an affair. That’s how it feels to me.
‘You’re dumping me?’
She sits there, apparently aghast, and I notice her gather the collar of her tunic together, covering her cleavage.
‘Well thanks a bundle’ she says.
It really hadn’t occurred to me she’d take it this badly. I’d assumed that, yes, she liked me well enough these days in a professional kind of a way but that it wouldn’t mean too much to her. There’s an awkward silence.
‘Why?’ she says at last.
I want to say ‘Because I love you’ but I don’t think it’ll help. I don’t even know if it’s true. Looking back on the women I’ve “loved” I can’t help thinking a lot of it was just lust and loneliness. Greater minds have made the same mistake.
‘I can’t deal with this all just being about sex’ I say finally. ‘You just thinking all I need is a damn good screw...’
I know that’s not what she means but I want to be dramatic. I feel like starting a fight. She frowns at me quizzically through narrowed eyelids.
‘Can’t you see what it’s like for me?’ I say, trying to get something articulate and insightful assembled. ‘I don’t want to stop coming here. It’s just...’
‘Then don’t’ she says simply.
‘Ok, I wont’ I say, hugely relieved. I hadn’t really wanted to stop. I hadn’t really thought it out properly. I needed to make her understand something though. This had just been a rather melodramatic way to do it. ‘I’m sorry’ I say and sit back in my chair.
We sit for a while and let the atmosphere thin a little.
‘It’s not just about sex’ she says eventually.
‘It is a lot about sex’ I say, and she smiles guiltily.
‘I thought it was an important issue for you.’
‘It was...and is, I suppose. It’s just, with you...’
‘What about me?’
‘I can’t be cool and... detached about it talking to you.’
‘Because you want to sleep with me.’
‘More than that.’
She nods and thinks for a while. ‘What would you prefer we talk about?’ she says eventually, coolly.
‘Oh look...’ I say, laying my cards on the table as it were. ‘I would love to talk about sex with you. I would like nothing better, except of course actually having sex with you, but that’s just the point. You can’t, or won’t, so it’s just so...’
‘Frustrating?’
‘To say the least. And look. I’ve been an old man, quite recently. I’ve had the most chronic sexual frustration all my life, and then it was over and I was free. I could relax, give up on it.’
‘But now...’
‘Now it’s all come back again. Worse.’
‘Not worse. You’ve got me to talk to about it. You can’t have me – not like that – but you can learn. Look, you’re not just an old man – you’re a young man, or you’re a baby, or you haven’t even been conceived yet – don’t you get it?’
‘I do, really, but I was thinking – what about the fact that I never had a proper job in my life? What about the fact that I hardly had a close friend all my life? What about the fact that I hardly spoke to my father the last ten years of his life? Don’t we need to think about some of that?’
Now I’m beginning to choke up but I get myself under control. She contemplates me a while.
‘We can talk about those things, absolutely’ she says softly, ‘but tell me this – when you look back on your life, which do you regret most – the fact that you never had a decent job or the fact that you never had a proper girlfriend?’
She stares at me seriously for a while. A voice in my head insists that the lack of a girlfriend was trivial, irrelevant, whereas the unemployment was like mortal sin. It’s my dad’s voice. That’s why I couldn’t face him all that time.
‘It’s not just about sex anyway’ she says eventually. ‘I’m not saying all you need is a damn good fuck. What I’m saying is you need the love of a good woman. Which, if you remember is exactly what you said you wanted at the start.’
‘I was being flippant.’
‘No you weren’t.’

We sit for a while after that – regrouping.
‘How was it with your parents in the end?’ she asks conversationally.
‘I don’t know if I do want to talk about it actually, to be honest.’
‘You did tell me your dad was made redundant.’
‘Yes, when they privatised the parks and gardens department – put it up for “compulsory competitive tendering”.’
‘How did he react to that?’
‘Hard to tell with him. None of the landscapers that took over would employ him – said he was too old.’
‘What did he do?’
‘The last job he had was on the checkouts at the local superstore.’
‘That must have been humiliating for him.’
I shrug. If it was he really didn’t show it. Not to me anyway.
‘I went to the shop a couple of times – I watched him. He always had this diffident, courteous, slightly subservient way about him. I watched him methodically packing people’s bags, so precise and efficient and it was like watching him handle his plants, taking care not to crush the roots, bruise the leaves – because you know, usually if you let the staff pack your bags it all goes in any old how. I watched him – he took such pride over it. He didn’t say much, just, you know, polite, time of day stuff. It was pathetic.’
‘Pathetic? How?’
‘That they’d reduced him to that and he just put up with it. He could have been head gardener at some big country estate, he had that much knowledge and experience and he was so diligent and conscientious and they just took advantage because he wouldn’t put himself forward.’ Now I am near tears. I look up at her.
‘You don’t think perhaps he was content to be that way?’
‘I think he accepted it. Well, he accepted the menial work. The most angry I saw him was when they made him prune the Elaeagnus when it was in full flower simply because it fitted in with their maintenance schedule. I don’t think he ever accepted people’s attitudes but he never did anything about it. He always looked bruised – like a dog. You know he really reminded me of one of those sorry looking dogs that always look like they might get kicked any moment.’
‘That’s a sad image.’
‘Hmm...’ I say, noncommittally. It really is, but I can’t show it.
‘What was your mum doing all this time?’
‘God, she worked until she dropped, almost literally. They died within a couple of years of each other.’
‘How do you think she felt about your dad?’
‘At the end they were quite close I think. He had some sort of a breakdown, a seizure or something. Then he had to stay at home, and mum and Justine and I took turns keeping an eye on him. I remember the day we suddenly realised... It was very odd.’
‘Go on...’
‘All his life he’d been into these alpine plants – these ridiculous tiny plants that are so ill suited to growing in the UK you couldn’t even go away for forty-eight hours in case they keeled over and he was out there every day, with his tweezers and his badger hair paintbrush in this special alpine house he’s got, and he’s got his magnifying glass and a torch strapped to his head and he’s peering at these plants that look like little green blobs in their pots, and he’s teasing out dead leaves which might rot and brushing away aphids and it’s unbelievable. He got prizes for his Dionysias.’
‘Which are?’
‘These tiny crevice plants – come from somewhere in the Middle East – little green mounds, in gravel, in a pot, and if they get too damp at the wrong time, or slightly the wrong watering that’s it. Game over.’
‘Do they have flowers?’
‘Oh yes, if you get it right, they absolutely cover themselves in little pink or yellow flowers. You can’t see the leaves, if you get it right.’
‘And he did?’
‘Absolutely. Drove my mum nuts. It meant they couldn’t go away on holiday at all. She was doing quite well financially and she wanted to travel, but no, we had to stay home in case one of his prize Dionysias got a chill or something.’
‘Couldn’t she go on her own? Or couldn’t you take over, do the watering or whatever?’
‘Yes, that’s exactly what she did, and no, he didn’t trust me, or anyone for that matter. Miserable old git.’
‘Seems like a funny name for such a feeble plant’ she muses. ‘Dionysus – god of robust over indulgence.’
I smile. That’s my girl. ‘I did mention it once or twice.’
‘Not amused?’
‘I think they might have been named after a Turkish botanist or some such.’
‘It’s still funny.’
‘Not to him.’
‘Anyway, you were saying...’
‘Yes. It was weird.’
I very rarely miss my dad. I look about the room and wait for a feeling about him to materialise – sadness, loss, anger? But no. I seem to have frightened it off again, but I know it’s there – a little lost yearning at the edge of my consciousness.
‘Well, after he couldn’t get about so easily he gave away his collection and went in for easier stuff, rare bulbs and things, but I don’t think his heart was in it. It was always hard to tell with him. And then one day... he’d been retired for a few months I think. I hadn’t been round there for a while...
Anyway one day he came home and he said to mum “I’ve bought you a little toy windmill.”’
I have to stop for a moment there, look about the room, think what to say next. Such a stupid thing…
‘It was just some cheap ornament from the garden centre – painted white, with little wooden peg people on the balcony. The sails were supposed to go around in the wind I think. We all just sort of looked at it and then at each other and tried to say something helpful. He took it down the garden and set it among his precious alpine plants on the rockery. He never would have let anything like that in his garden normally. He wouldn’t let mum have so much as a bird table...’
I look away toward the door. I remember he looked so happy that day. Poor old sod.
After a while I realise I haven’t said anything for a while and Andrea is waiting for me to go on. I find myself leaning forward, my hands covering my nose and mouth. I make myself lean back and keep my hands in my lap and try to look normal.
‘Gabriel?’
‘Hm?’
‘What happened next?’
‘Er, well... we all just stood around, watching him trying to get the bloody thing to stand upright in the mud. I remember mum going out to help him, which was not like her at all. Eventually she had to come in and leave him to it. He was still fiddling with it at midnight and she just came in and sat down and wept. I’d never seen her cry...’
I look out of the window. I feel sort of dull – stupid – can’t get my thoughts in order. Andrea is watching me, waiting. The sky is clearing. Perhaps I’ll go up and sit outside later on.

‘It sounds like it might have been a brain tumour of some sort’ she says after a while.
‘That’s what they said.’
‘What happened in the end?’
‘Some sort of stroke I believe. It was quick at least. I wasn’t there.’
‘And you never really talked to each other?’
‘No...’ I look around, feeling a bit lost. ‘Men didn’t though, did they, not his generation.’
‘What would you have liked to have said?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t think of anything. I’ve thought about it so much but there’s nothing I can think of.’ I sit quietly for a time, thinking about him. She watches me. It’s getting dark outside. I can hear the others going through for dinner.
‘Andrea.’
‘Yes Gabriel?’
‘You know, it seems to me that so much of what parents say about their children is about pride. It’s all about being proud of what their children have achieved, what they’ve done with their lives. But what if they’re not proud of them? What if their children got everything wrong? What if they didn’t do anything to be proud of? What then? Is it ok for the parents to not have anything much to do with their children?’
She looks at me for a moment. ‘I don’t think so’ she says. ‘They’d still love their children.’
‘So they say, but if they have nothing to say, don’t particularly want to do anything with them – or they just do their duty – then what does this “love” actually mean? It might as well not exist surely. It makes no difference.’
‘I think love always makes a difference’ she says finally. ‘Come on, it’s dinner time...’
I stand to go but wait to let her go first. I think we’ve got maybe a couple more sessions together. I can’t tell if she is looking away deliberately as she passes.

I went up on deck and looked at the view, then up into the bows and looked at the waves parting and at the dolphins that were not dolphins but something else, something more primitive, surfing. How do they move like that, with no apparent effort? I went down to the bar but didn’t fancy anything to eat. I saw the others by the window but I didn’t go over. I went to the library and then the games room but there was nothing I wanted to do so I went back to my cabin and had a lie down.

When I awoke it was dark and all I could hear was the water outside. I guessed everyone must be asleep. I lay there naked and couldn’t even summon up a decent erection.
‘Love’ I thought.
I didn’t even know what the word meant. ‘Dependence’ I thought. Dependence and desperation. Lust and loneliness, and dreams that bear no relation to actual people whatsoever. I had been infatuated almost all my life, obsessed, possessive, jealous, depressed, and then lonely. Once you take all that away what’s left?
People I hung out with back in the 90s used to go on about love. I don’t know what they thought they were talking about. The Second Summer of Love they called it but the people I knew who went on about it the most were among the most self-serving, self-indulgent, self-obsessed people I ever met. It suited them to use the word because it specified no particular action or effort on their part, save a kiss and a cuddle – it was a handy password excusing all transgressions. Once you’d told someone loved them you didn’t have to try so hard. That was how it looked to me anyway.
And my parents... What did they think it meant? Did they even mention it? I don’t think so, but then parents didn’t back then. Hippy parents said it all the time. Their children were like tiny dinosaurs on the rampage, trashing everything they encountered – generosity, tenderness, treats – snatched or dismissed with scorn or spite. And yet their parents said they ‘loved’ them. So that was alright.
And yet what would I not have done to have someone I loved tell me they loved me too?
I can’t begin to imagine.

Joe XIV – Dad

‘You wanted me to talk about my dad’ I say.
It's nearly the end of our last session. I haven’t planned it. The words just pop out. I’ve been prattling on about my painting, the journey ahead, the food, anything to avoid talking about Lucy or Harry or anything here on the boat. I can tell Joe is getting frustrated. We don’t have much time.
‘Well...’ says Joe, looking troubled.
‘He was a gardener. Worked for the local parks and gardens department.’
There’s a challenge in my voice – I know it. I feel so angry.
‘That doesn’t sound very terrible. I was expecting something – I don’t know...’
‘Like a paedophile, or a terrorist?’
‘Maybe. Frankly I’m disappointed. Why didn’t you want to talk to me about him before?’
‘I just didn’t want to talk about him’ I say, defiantly. ‘Plus I like coming here – it’s just I’ve never been allowed to talk like this before – didn’t want to give you everything too soon.’ I smile apologetically. Now I feel guilty for wasting his time, and sad because we’ll be there soon and this will end. ‘Is that ok?’ I ask.
‘Of course’ he says quietly. We sit in silence for quite some time. ‘So let me rephrase the question. What did he do to make you not want to talk about him?’
I have to think about this.
‘I don’t think he was really interested in kids, and after my sisters were born and he had the snip they thought that would be it. Then I popped out and he had to stay home to look after me while mum went out to work.’
‘The snip?’
‘Vasectomy.’
‘Sounds like you think he made a big sacrifice for you though.’
‘I suppose, but somebody had to. I mean, he wasn’t just going to walk out on me. He did what he had to do. He did it for mum. He really loved her. Can’t think why...’
‘Why what?’
‘Why he loved her so much – she always talked to him like he was thick.’
‘Really?’
‘She never respected him, ever. He was just too soft – let himself be pushed around all the time.’
‘But you didn’t respect him much either by the sound of it...’
I consider this. All I know is that when I think about him it just makes me so angry and I don’t know why. ‘I just stayed out the way’ I say.
He looks at me. ‘And Justine looked after you quite a bit too you said.’
I nod ‘She got me up in the morning, made me breakfast, got me dressed for school.’
‘And your dad? Where was he?’
‘Around, doing stuff.’
‘In the shed?’
‘No, he was around the house in the morning – he took me to school when I was little – on the back of his bike.’
‘And in the evening?’
‘He made dinner, got me ready for bed, you know.’
‘Read you a story?’
‘Sometimes, maybe, when I was little.’
‘Can I ask what your mother was doing all this time?’
‘I don’t remember her being in the picture much – I think she worked late quite a lot... Sometimes she picked me up from school in the car – I remember that.’
Joe frowns at me. There’s something wrong. I feel so angry whenever I try to talk about them. I still don’t know why. I mean, I know a lot of kids have terrible parents – violence, neglect, abuse. I never had any of that. I suspect I’m just a whinger, making a fuss about nothing, but I press on anyway.
‘I think maybe things went wrong later really.’
‘When in particular?’
I sit and try to think. None of it seems very important.
‘I don’t bloody know’ I say exasperatedly. Now I’m just frustrated with myself. I can’t think straight.
‘Gabriel, did they ever really make the effort to talk to you would you say? I mean really get to know you, find out who you really were, what you wanted?’
I want to say something about it not being possible to talk to teenagers, but stop myself, because here we are after all, as Joe pointed out before. ‘I don’t remember’ I say, avoiding the subject.
‘What do you remember doing with your parents, either of them?’
I shake my head. ‘I told you, I stayed out the way mostly.’
‘Did you ever – I don’t know, help your dad in the garden?’
‘I used to watch him sometimes. Actually he tried to teach me some stuff –“pricking out” – hah! I always remember that. But he always seemed so – I don’t know – frustrated about it. It was like, I was always in the way somehow, or really clumsy. I think I was a bit of a div to be honest.’
‘A what?’
‘A div, a wally, a prat. You know, stupid. He used to tell me stuff and it just didn’t go in, so I either had to ask again or hope it didn’t matter. He got pretty frustrated with me. A lot of people did. I was always doing things the wrong way, except they made sense to me, or getting blamed for things that weren’t really my fault and at the time I’d be feeling really stupid or embarrassed but then later I’d think... There was one day I was doing some potting up for him on the bench in the shed. Some job he’d given me to do, potting on the tomatoes or something. Anyway, later on I’m in the kitchen and he says “You’ve done these a lot of good” and he’s holding up his glasses and he tells me I’ve filled his new glasses case with grit and he goes on about how much they’d cost to replace, just in this muttering, grumbling way he had and I just felt really stupid again. I said sorry, but then, later I thought “Why leave them on the potting bench?” It’s just a stupid place to put them but of course I didn’t say anything. I suppose I thought just because something makes sense to me it’s no reason to think it makes sense to anyone else. In the end it doesn’t matter if something’s actually a good idea or not does it? Not if people don’t want to know...’
‘Do you really believe that?’
I’m trying to act like I haven’t really thought about it. I think it’s called being disingenuous but it doesn’t really work. I say ‘No, not really, but it’s true in a way isn’t it. If they don’t think much of you generally, or if they feel like they want to show you who’s boss then it doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong. People are more interested in being in charge than in having things done properly I think. They say they want you to use your initiative but really they just want you to do as you’re told without them having to tell you.’
‘Did that make you angry?’
‘Oh I was always getting angry about things. Didn’t do me any good.’
He leans back and has a stretch. ‘And I thought gardening was supposed to be a relaxing pass-time’ he says.
‘Yeah – like in “Being There” Did you see that? I love that film.’
‘Yes, like that.’
‘No, it wasn’t like that, well sometimes, but mostly I remember him being fed up because something had eaten his lettuces, or the cats had crapped in his parsley or something.’
‘Did he get angry a lot?’ Joe says this like he’s just realised something important. I’m sorry to disappoint him.
‘No. Just with the slugs and things. He never shouted or broke things. Mum was the one for that, not him. Mostly he was just erm...what’s the word? ...preoccupied – and sort of frustrated.’
‘With you?’
‘Sometimes. It was hard to tell with dad.’
‘He never said anything?’
‘Not to me, not until later anyhow.’
‘When was this?’
‘When I was fourteen maybe – O levels coming up – they were both getting fed up with me – couldn’t understand why I wasn’t applying myself, thinking about what I was going to do afterwards. I didn’t know what I wanted to do...’
‘Had you thought about becoming a professional artist?’
‘Hardly’ and I smile and shake my head as if he’s just suggested I become Prime Minister but then I realise he’s serious.
‘Why not?’ he says.
‘Well...’ And I stop. I really don’t know why not, except people just don’t – do they? Not people like me. It’s just a hobby, something you do when you’re a kid at junior school.
‘I never really thought...’ I say. ‘I thought, you know, technical drawing or, I don’t know, working in an art shop maybe...’
He looks at me as if I’m a moron.
‘No’ he says, ‘you could have gone to art school.’
I look at him like he’s completely insane.
‘Why not?’ he insists. I’m thinking money again. ‘You get a grant’ he says, as if he’s read my mind ‘maybe a weekend job... and off you go.’
I can’t believe it. Do people like me really do that? Nobody mentioned this to me.
‘I had a friend painted for a living’ he says. ‘He didn’t make much but he was ok. Had to do other jobs sometimes, but he was doing alright, last I heard. He had a house, holidays abroad...’
I can’t believe this has really never occurred to me before. People make a living as artists. I suppose they do, but I always thought they were completely different to me, to us. Nobody I knew did anything like that for a living – we were all working in factories or offices like mum, or lorry drivers. People who did interesting things like write books, or travelled were like a different species altogether. Maybe his friend was from a posh family?
‘Did he get much help from his parents?’ I ask.
‘I don’t think so – he was pretty independent. Wouldn’t your parents help you though – if you showed you were keen enough?’
I laugh a little. I can’t imagine even suggesting it to them. They’d go mad.
‘Maybe’ I say, but I don’t really think so. I’d have to do it alone, I know that, but I could. I don’t need a lot of money. I could manage. And suddenly I feel quite excited about it.
‘I suppose I ought to point out’ he says, ‘in the interest of balance, that you shouldn’t be too cross with your parents. The world’s different to when they were your age. Back then you went out to work, got married, had kids and were bloody grateful. They just wanted a normal happy child who would do more or less what they did, only slightly better, and avoiding some of the more obvious cock-ups. They probably couldn’t imagine your life – the choices open to you. I’m sure they didn’t understand.’
And I realise this is one of the reasons why I’m so angry with my dad. He didn’t even try to understand. It’s because he just did as he was told, accepted what they told him to do, for years, cutting grass, weeding, sweeping up, on the council estates, doing the verges, picking up the litter, even though he had qualifications he did as he was told, and he never complained. I think he even liked it. He knew his place. I’m furious with him because he liked it – his mediocre, ordinary, tedious life. I tell Joe all this and he nods as if he knew all along. But it’s not enough of an explanation for what became of me. I know that. He knows that. Maybe we’ll never know.
‘Anyway, lots to think about’ he says and, unexpectedly, gets up and comes and holds out his hand. I get up and shake it. So it’s over. Time to go.
‘Good luck with everything’ he says, trying to look optimistic.
I emerge from my surprise at the suddenness of it all and say ‘Thank you’, also trying to look hopeful, and I leave that room and never see him again.
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