Vincent IV – Old Souls

‘When did you eventually leave home?’ he says, almost before I’ve sat down.
‘Er... ‘87? Some time around then.’
‘So, you were... twenty-two? Am I right?’
‘Yes, I suppose...’
It’s another thing I’m not proud of – leaving it so late.
‘What made you move, in the end?’
‘I don’t know really. I was just ready to go I suppose.’
‘It had nothing to do with the fact that no woman would want you once they found out you lived with your mother and father...’
I look at him. There’s something so... slapable about him, smug, patronising git. I decide to brazen it out.
‘No, not particularly. That had always been a problem... not just then.’
‘Ok, when did you have your first real relationship?’
‘Why?’
‘I am simply building a picture. Tell me.’
‘Nineteen?’
‘You sound unsure.’
‘Well, she wasn’t the love of my life exactly’
‘But you had sex.’
‘When we could.’
‘When your parents went away.’
‘My parents never went away.’
‘Oh? Why not?’
‘Dads bloody alpine plants. Don’t get me started...’
‘Ok, but at other times, when they were at work perhaps?’
‘Look, is this really relevant?’
I’m beginning to suspect him of just being a voyeur, or a sadist, or both.
‘I hope so.’
‘We had sex sometimes at her place, yes.’
‘How old was she?’
‘Twenty six?’
‘Ah. An older woman.’ (Hah, that surprised him.) ‘Good for you’ he says. ‘What made you choose a woman older than yourself?’
‘It wasn’t so much a matter of choice...’
He looks at me. I know what he wants to say about making choices. I back-track a little. ‘She was one of the carers at the nursing home. She took me in hand, if you know what I mean.’
‘I can imagine. But you would not have been with her from choice?’
‘She was quite domineering. And quite, er... large...’
I see him smile broadly. It is quite funny, in retrospect, but at the time it was a bit intimidating. I really didn’t feel I could say no, and in a way, I did enjoy it. ‘She was rather smothering, if you know what I mean.’ I deliberately include the double meaning but he reacts as if he’s noticed an unintentional Freudian slip.
‘With her on top?’ he says with a slightly queasy smile.
‘Yes, exactly’ I say, humouring him. ‘But motherly too?’
‘But not like your mother.’
‘God no.’ (Perish the thought. Yuk!) ‘My mother never... She wasn’t very touchy-feely if you know what I mean.’
‘Like the mother you never had then.’
‘Maybe’ I say doubtfully. Actually, now I come to think about it a few of the other care workers were very solicitous, if you know what I mean. A lot of them were middle-aged women and they were always covering for me when I was late and helping me out and I think one or two of the old queens there were convinced I was just being shy, so they were extra nice to me a lot of the time too. Actually I think I brought out the mothering instinct in almost everybody except my own mother.
But I have to admit, I did like Pamela (that was her name) taking care of me and all I had to do was perform a few times a week. If I’d fancied her more it might have been a very good arrangement indeed. She had these immense breasts, which was quite an experience for me, as a barely post-pubescent lad, but it was all a bit too much to be honest.
‘But she was good for you, no?’
‘She showed me the ropes’ and I know what I’ve said almost before it leaves my mouth. He gives me the saucy grin again. Unfortunately he’s right this time. It was a Freudian slip, and she did tie me down a couple of times. I didn't really like it.
‘I can imagine she did’ he says, knowingly.
‘Anyway...’ I say, trying to change the subject, or at least, move it along ‘I learned a lot.’
He nods and writes. I wonder briefly what kind of doodles this session will inspire. Maybe it’s his way of taking notes. I could imagine doing that but it’s hardly short hand.
‘And before her did you have other girlfriends?’
‘Nothing serious’ I say. Nothing sexual is what I mean.
‘But you would have liked to.’
‘God yes’
‘Do you think you could stop saying “God” for me? Thank you very much.’
I look at him. What a very strange little man. I feel like starting an argument but can’t be bothered. He looks up at me, realises I’m watching him.
‘I know this is irrational’ he says. ‘It is an old habit but I can’t seem to change it. Blasphemy hurts even though I am no longer sure there is anything to blaspheme against. However, I would be very grateful...’ He smiles slightly in a brave kind of way. I nod and smile, and once again my opinion of him is instantaneously inverted.
‘No problem’ I say.
‘What I’m aiming for here...’ he says, laying down his papers, looking into the middle distance ‘...is some sense of whether this impotence you felt in life was simply about finding your place in the world of work, money, making a career, or if it extended to other things...’
‘It was everything’ I say. He could have just asked. ‘Although I wasn’t, actually...’
‘Impotent’ he says. ‘No, I’m sure, but it is all frustrated, bottled up.’ He mimes being bottled up, pulling his shoulders, elbows and knees in. It would be funny if he didn’t do it because he feels he’s trying to communicate with a moron.
‘I want to know where that comes from. You need to know.’
‘Ok.’
‘When do you first remember feeling that way?’
I think back. It must have been in secondary school. ‘Thirteen?’ I say.
‘No’ he says with total certainty. ‘Earlier. Adolescence is when it comes out, and when it begins to damage your future, but not all teenagers are alike. The causes are further back.’
‘Ok, that makes sense.’
‘I’m glad you think so. So...’ and he looks at his notes again. I’d love to have a look at them. ‘Just to complete the picture then, there were other girls you wanted before her?’
‘I lost my virginity with her, but yes, other...dalliances.’
‘A good word’ he says looking at his papers. ‘Little used these days. “Dalliances.” Excellent. Tell me a little about those.’
‘Erm, well’ I look about, playing for time. There’s really nothing to tell. It’s a bit pathetic really. There was really only one proper girlfriend.
‘There was Naomi. She fancied herself as some sort of pixie-woman – went on to go to Cambridge I think it was.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Seventeen I think, she was a bit younger.’
‘And then?’
‘And then Pamela – the auxiliary I told you about.’
‘Nobody else? No infatuations, no dates, no er... “ones that got away”?’
I try to look challengingly at him but he doesn’t flinch.
‘Look’ I say. ‘Why do you want to know all this? Really? After nearly twenty years struggle I threw my career as a painter away in a fit of pique and you want to know about my adolescent crushes?’
I look at him as he prepares an answer. I’m not angry exactly. It’s just beginning to seem ridiculous. What’s worse, I like talking about women and sex, which seems like a bad sign. Shouldn’t this delving be difficult for me? I feel sorely aggrieved about my sex life, certainly, but it seems self-indulgent. We need to talk about more adult problems surely – money and careers and paperwork and taxes.
‘Your problems are of a sexual nature Gabriel.’
‘Well, that’s all very Freudian, but...’
‘Not Freud’ he says. ‘People’s problems spring from many sources – mothering, violence, sickness, school, race, poverty, genetics... But yours spring mostly from sex, or relationships anyway. Do not ask me how I know this, but I do. You had counselling in life yes?’ I nod. ‘But it’s different here. We know which questions to ask. Trust me. We know. Ok?’
‘Ok’ I say, pretending not to be convinced but actually I’m relieved. I hadn’t really wanted to talk about tax and careers.
‘Good. Who did you first fall in love with?’
‘Girls at school, different ones, Donna, Camille, Gillian – there was always someone.’
‘From about what age?’
I think back. Donna was in Miss William’s class. That would have been... ‘Eight?’ I say, not quite believing this can be true. What kind of a perv was I? He nods and writes it down. Evidently it’s not that shocking.
‘And what did you do about it?’
I shrug. ‘Nothing. I was just a kid.’ What did he expect?
‘No little games? Doctors and nurses? Kiss-chase?’
‘I was a bit too shy. I stared at them a lot.’
He writes some more. ‘I expect that made you popular’ he says, not looking up.
‘No they thought I was a weirdo.’ Nod nod. Write write. I want to say something about how off-putting it is but decide to let it go. I look out of the window at the sea. It’s still raining horizontally out there but the sky is paler. Sea birds whiz past on the gale.
‘I asked a few girls out later on but they weren’t interested. It was all a bit sad really. Camille I think quite liked me but couldn’t bring herself to actually be seen out with me. I always felt she saw through the outer, gawky, nerdy me to the real me underneath. There was something oddly wise about her, womanly, for her age, like she knew things. Beautiful eyes.’
‘She may have been an old soul.’
I’m not sure what he means. I’ve heard the term before. New agers use it sometimes for people who they suspect might have lived before, who seem older than their years. I didn’t expect to hear it from someone as straight as Vincent.
‘She may have been one that remembered her previous lives in detail’ he says for clarification. ‘It is not common – maybe two or three percent, mostly women, as a very subjective estimate.’
I look at him some more. Is he being serious? This had really never occurred to me. People say ‘What would you do if you could live your life again, knowing what you know now?’ but it never occurred to me it might actually happen. I suppose, now I come to think about it, that I hadn’t really considered how we might carry this experience from here into the next life. I thought maybe it would come in confusing flashes, like deja-vu, or maybe just an instinct about things, but not this, this Groundhog Life. I’m lost in thought when he speaks again.
‘And Gillian?’ he says.
‘What? Oh, Gillian. Oh she was gorgeous, and a really lovely personality. She was quite popular generally, but I think she liked me. Well, most girls completely ignored me, so for one to even acknowledge my existence was a breakthrough.’ I look at Vincent for a smile of fellowship but nothing comes. At least he’s put his notes down and is looking at me properly now.
‘But nothing happened between you.’
I look at him before I answer. There’s something so condescending about his responses to what I say – like all his questions have full stops, and all my answers have question marks. I think a bit more about Gillian. She was gorgeous. I didn’t really stand a chance.
‘It’s a weird one – I was going to go to a party, which was quite an event for me – I didn’t get invited to a lot of parties back then... and this one, I wasn’t exactly invited, but I wasn’t excluded, if you know what I mean. Everybody at the shop was going.’
‘How old were you by this time?’ and he’s got his bloody pad out again.
‘Eighteen. I worked at a DIY shop for a while, a few months. I knew her from school but she was on the checkouts. Anyway, I knew she was going to this party – as I say, everyone was and I was quite keen to go, so I turn up at the pub where we were meeting that evening. I’d deliberately made an effort to not wear my usual geeky outfit – you know – the old school shirts and anorak and so on. I’d been out and bought some black tee-shirts and jeans and I got my hair cut and everything and I felt pretty cool that night actually. Anyway, I get to the pub, and there they all are, and Gill sees me and says how cool I look, which just makes me feel ecstatic. Anyway, later, as we’re about to leave I realise I don’t have a bottle to take. The off-licence is just next door and I tell Gill that I’ll be back in a moment and don’t go without me. It’s raining outside and I’ve not got a cool new jacket to go with the rest of my cool new outfit so I’m freezing but I don’t care, and the next thing I know, she’s followed me out, and she turns me around and looks at me and laughs, because the tee shirt’s quite tight, and my nipples are really poking out. And she says – I’ll always remember this – she says “Are those torpedoes in your shirt or are you just pleased to see me?” At first I’m really embarrassed but I can see in her expression that she quite likes it. And for a moment, I think she might come with me, we look at each other for a while, out there, in the drizzle, and she bites her lip and says, apologetically ‘You know I’m with Dave (or whatever his name was), don’t you.’ and I look at her and suddenly I know that going to the party is a really very bad idea. I’m disgusted anyway. This guy Dave is a total wanker and it sickens me to think of them together. “Come with me” I say, or something like that, and she looks uncomfortable, and says she can’t, and anyway she has to go, because he might see us and she kisses me, properly, on the mouth, and runs back inside. It was the most romantic thing I think that ever happened to me.’
I look at Vincent. For some reason he’s grinning extremely broadly at me.
‘Well done’ he says. ‘That was the one I wanted.’
‘What? Why?’
‘I don’t know why. I simply know it was important. You know this too, no?’
I sit and think about it. Yes. I’ve always known it was important. I don’t know why or how.
‘We will continue next time. I want to hear about your time as a student, and about your wife. Ok?’
I nod and leave. For some reason I feel hugely uplifted and drained at the same time. I go to find Ned and the others. I want a huge drink. I feel like celebrating for some reason.

Journey II – Green eyes

When it gets light the first thing I do is glance over to see if Nicky is still there. She is, and still asleep too. Mr and Mrs Sadeghi are prodding and feeding the fire because it’s still perishing cold out here. Mike is taking a little stroll. Everyone else is sound asleep. I look down at the little mats we’ve been equipped with to sleep on. They’re surprisingly comfortable, even on this rocky ground. Mrs Sadeghi notices I’m awake and quietly beckons me over.
‘Here’ she says. ‘We made coffee. I know you like your coffee.’
‘Damn straight’ I say with some enthusiasm and they shush me vigorously and point at Jeb who is dead to the world, so to speak.
‘He didn’t get much sleep – keeping an eye on...’ and they nod at Nicky, foetal in her sleeping bag across the way.
‘I tried too but I couldn’t keep my eyes open.’
‘Did you hear her crying?’
We all nod.

The second day is a little livelier than the first. Mostly we still loll about among the luggage and watch the countryside go by, but when we get bored we take turns sitting up next to Jeb, or walk alongside.
The landscape is truly breathtaking. As the gradient gets steeper the road snakes increasingly tightly, making a ladder of tight loops up the side of what I’ve come to realise is a mountain, not a hill. The vegetation becomes less dense as we go but more interesting. It occurs to me that in my next life I really must visit the tropics at least once, but then I think – well here I am. This is the tropics. Why do I still think this is somehow less real?
On the verge of the road I stop and peer down among the shoots and stems and fronds. Every millimetre of soil I expose has things scuttling for cover – worms, scorpions, beetles, lizards and a whole lot of other things I have no names for. I really wish Lou was travelling with us. He’d have a better idea. Then I remember that Shamim was interested in the environment and maybe I should ask her. It also occurs to me that we haven’t seen any of the other wagons since we left the beach. I stand and look down where we’ve come from but there’s no sign of them. I look over at our wagon, labouring up a steep incline and see that nobody is sitting with Jeb at the moment. I ask him if I can come up. ‘Sure’ he says but doesn’t look like stopping to let me on. I look at the side of the wagon and find a leather handle and a step and swing myself up. He winks at me in a fatherly way (an idealised father. Not my actual father) and I suddenly feel very at home with things.
‘You seem very at home with all this’ he says.
‘I used to love going camping and trekking. I never went anywhere like this though.’
‘Isn’t it magnificent? This is my fifth trip. I never get tired of it.’
We sit for a while and look at the view.
‘Hey’ he says, then looks surreptitiously over his shoulder and lowers his voice. ‘Do you know anything about this young girl...er...’
‘Nicky’ I whisper and look around for her. She’s in the same place as yesterday, at the back, and apparently sleeping.
‘Nicky, that’s it.’
‘She told me some things. She didn’t want me to tell anyone else.’
‘She troubles me. Is she really as young as she appears to be?’
‘She’s about twenty I think.’
He nods and looks around again.
‘We all need to keep an eye on her.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Will you try and talk to her some more, when she wakes up?’
‘I have been trying. She just brushes me off.’
‘Well, they say nobody ever committed suicide because people tried too hard to help. I suspect that’s true here too.’
‘You think she might go?’
‘I’m sure she will, at some point. The question is, will she do it because she wants to be chased or will she genuinely want to disappear? I can’t tell yet.’
‘You’ve seen this before.’
‘That I have.’
We sit and look a bit longer. We pass through a grove of palms whose grey pleated fan-shaped leaves are at least ten feet across. They stand by the road like sentinels, unreal, serene.
After a few more miles we cross a ridge and look down into a broad valley, almost entirely filled with trees.
‘See that?’ He points. Way below us a small area of what look like fields can be seen.
‘That’s where we’re headed. Not tonight, the next night, they’ll put us up.’
I nod and wonder how long this journey will be. Beyond the settlement below I scan forward and see another range at least as high as this and higher mountains beyond that in the far distance. My head spins with the scale of it. I feel a tap on my back. It’s Shamim.
‘Do you want to walk a little more?’ she says.
I jump down as we’re still moving and almost fall on my face but he halts to let her off. What a gentleman. She thanks him.
We walk slowly at first to let the wagon get ahead a little.
‘Are you avoiding me?’ she says, smiling her little challenging smile.
‘You know I’m not.’
‘What then? Oh look! Look at this.’ She crouches by the side of the road and lets a mantis crawl onto her hand. It’s about six inches long and boldly banded in yellow and black. Amazing. I never saw it among the plants, but here it is, on her arm, like some sort of miniature motorway maintenance machinery.
‘Do you know much about all this, you know, nature and stuff?’ I say.
‘A little. I know more about the mountains at home - the Elburz.’
She shows me some other things, explains a little about the flowers and the insects. I’m impressed. Then she tries to get me to talk about what I used to do, but I say I’ll tell her another time. She sees her father stand up and stretch and she waves at him. Nicky sits up too and sees us but makes no visible reaction.
‘Is it because of her?’ says Shamim
‘What?’
‘You know very well what.’
‘Ok. I don’t know. She worries me.’
‘Is that all?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Oh Gabriel! You know exactly what I mean. Stop pretending you don’t.’
‘I don’t want her if that’s what you mean, well, in a way... But she’s so young. And she’s so fragile. To be honest my main feeling is protective. I mean, yes, there’s lust too, but no. It’s just too weird.’
‘Have you spoken to her much?’
‘Yes, quite a lot actually, back on the boat. She’s really messed up. I don’t know if she’s talked to anyone else much.’
‘Have you had sex with her?’
‘God no. She kissed me once, that last night.’
‘I saw you together. You looked very uncomfortable.’
I turn and look at her. There’s a wicked smile barely disguised on her lips.
‘You’re enjoying this aren’t you’ I say but she just grins at me.
We walk along in silence a bit further.
‘The thing is’ I begin, ‘I think I might be the only person she’s really talked to. I know that sounds very self important, but... I feel like she’s my problem, in a way.’
‘You could be her knight in shining armour.’
‘Don’t take the piss.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘Yes you were. Anyway, I feel I should be trying to help. Jeb asked me to. She started talking to me back on the boat and I just think maybe...’
‘I don’t like to disillusion you but you do know she “talked” to a lot of men on the boat, don’t you.’
‘I know, or rather I don’t know exactly. I think she maybe slept with a few of them, and she was always flirting and playing about I know, but I have no idea if she actually talked to anyone else – not properly. I don’t know. Anyway she doesn’t look like she’s going to make any new friends here, so...’
Shamim sighs and nods. I think finally she sees the problem.
‘Honestly I really don’t want this responsibility. I just want to do this journey, look at the scenery... spend some time with you perhaps...’
She sees the shy expression on my face. I’ve never dared flirt with her at all before. She smiles and looks away.
‘Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?’
‘I’m just afraid she’ll be jealous...’
‘Really? She has something to be jealous of now?’
‘Ok, ok. I just think she might not open up if she thinks...’
We walk along a bit more. I don’t know what more to say – I’m covered with awkwardness. At least Shamim seems to think it’s funny.
‘I think she will have to get used to it’ she says after a while. ‘Anyway, I spoke to her a little last night. Maybe we can be friends too.’
‘That would be better.’
‘Ok. Oh, by the way, did you know she wasn’t supposed to be with us?’
‘No?’
‘No. Jeb told me. She ran and jumped on before they could stop her.’
Now I’m worried, and Shamim knows it. We walk along for another couple of miles. She points out all manner of bugs and flowers but I’m too preoccupied to really take it in. As far as I know I’m the only person on this wagon she already knew. She must be expecting something from me. I see her sitting there among the baggage at the back. She looks at me sometimes but then quickly looks away when I look back. She looks down at her fingers and plays with the cuticle.
Soon it starts to get really hot and it’s time to put the canopy up again – Shamim and I arrange it this time, then we climb inside and get comfortable. Shamim’s mother offers us lemonade and pastries.
Nicky conspicuously avoids looking in our direction. I feel like somehow this is my fault, and if anything happens to her I’ll be to blame. I don’t know what to do.

book 3 ~ Misadventure

Landscaping by Leonardo
This landscape has no truck with geology. It’s like something by one of those old French painters - Claude or Poussin or somebody. As we walk along I see chiselled pinnacles and gaping grottoes with trees grasping at their lips and curved escarpments with wind-carved spinneys at their summits. Fossils protrude randomly from the strata as if placed there for the express purpose of convincing any doubter that evolution had most certainly not occurred here. At any turn I half expect to see a temple on a promontory or a tower on a crag, wreathed in mists in the middle distance, or, worse, some seventies prog-rock band doing a photo shoot.
I mentioned this to our guide when we arrived - said something clever about this place being like some sort of Tolkein rip-off, and she looked at me, paused, smiled, and said ‘No, quite the reverse actually.’

I look at these improbable rock formations, cresting and flowing around us, encrusted and impregnated with life of all kinds and I realise suddenly – all the painters and writers I loved most, all those disorientating perspectives and airless spaces – this is what they were on about  –  the afterlife.

Death # 3 - Pratfall
I remember reading that news story about Rod Hull. Remember him? He was big in the 70s, him and that preposterous emu glove puppet. Anyway apparently he died when he fell off his roof whilst adjusting his TV aerial. I have this notion (I’m sure I’m not alone in this) that the emu was up there with him that day. And the emu of course was tugging the aerial out of Rod’s hands, and Rod snatched it back. A hilarious tussle no doubt ensued, and Rod, as they say, was history.

I’m fairly sure it wasn’t like that. I don’t suppose the emu was involved at all but I can’t, off hand, think of a better example of the Ludicrous Death – more literally tragic-comic than all the Beckett plays put together – to die idiotically, comically, but (and here’s the punch line) with a little time to lie there, look at the sky, and think ‘What a bloody stupid way to go.’ Friends and family would turn up in due course, do what had to be done, shed a tear etcetera, but along with the grief there’d be the unspoken consensus that after all, he always was a bit of a prat.

Furthermore, if it’s a truism that people tend not to contemplate their own mortality until fairly late in life, it’s completely unthinkable that death will not be taken seriously. Whether it is horrific and sudden, ugly and protracted, or (if you’re lucky) peaceful and dignified, it’s a matter of grave concern. But what if you die ridiculously, embarrassingly, through your own idiocy, doing something moronic? It must happen all the time.
It is further unquestioned that obviously you won’t be around to suffer said embarrassment. Wrong again.

My name is Gabriel Fortune, late of Brighton, England, but I died at the age of thirty-four on a mountain in Spain. There were four of us – my wife, Mar (short for Maria del Mar – Mary from the sea. Isn’t that nice?), and a couple of Spanish friends, Carmen and Riqui. We hadn’t been getting on very well lately, Mar and I. She really was a stereotypical Spanish woman. She’d looked magnificent dancing sevillanas (very Surfarosa), but would never ‘demean’ herself now. She had a powerful certainty of opinion on everything and a frightening temper to go with it, but she also had a doctorate in African women’s literature. We’d been together about three and a half years, married less than two, and I’d been utterly besotted. We’d travelled together for a while, and then lived in various places in the UK. Eventually she got a job – in the local college library, and taught Spanish in the evenings, and we rented a place together in Brighton. Meanwhile I was trying to set up my workshop, get some studio space and start my career as a painter (I’d only finished with college the year before). That was when the problems started.
Up until then I’d found her fiery rudeness amusing, even sexy. I kind of liked being told how foolish I was. How could I possibly have imagined I knew how to make, say, a veggie lasagne when after all, I was just a man, whereas she of course was a Woman, and a Spanish Woman at that! Previously I’d been widely considered ‘a pretty good cook’, but Oh no, it was all wrong. Early on in our relationship I’d chuckled at being sent across the kitchen to do some menial chore, like chop onions (‘no no. You do it like this’) or open a bottle of wine. I knew she was fond of me (why would she be living in England with me otherwise?) and the sex was pretty good. I found the sight and the feel and the smell of her body enough to keep me going for hours and she liked being massaged and caressed. I couldn’t get enough. In retrospect I'm not sure she felt the same way.
In any case I came to live for those moments when she would look across at me and... Well, the fact is that I was living for those occasional, fleeting delicious scraps of indulgence. I’d say the honeymoon period lasted about six months. The actual honeymoon lasted a week and was the last truly loving time we spent together – in a tiny hotel in the Sierra de Cazorla. I’d had this dream of us making love in the mountains, in the sun under the pines, maybe near a waterfall, somewhere where we could swim naked afterwards. That wasn’t when I died, in case you were wondering. That would have to be a minor species of the Heroic Death – a category I forgot to include in my list above, but which would still be considered an impressive and serious way to go I think. I wouldn’t have minded being remembered that way.
Anyway, it didn’t last. Things got rather mundane on our return. She didn’t like her job, which she considered beneath her. I tried to tell her it might take some time for a suitable position to come up at the university but she dismissed my opinion. And we had a lot of rows. I might sound very self-righteous when I say that our arguments consisted of her screaming and me trying to reason with her, but trust me when I say I am well aware of how infuriating that must have been for her. She didn’t want reason. She wanted anger, and she didn’t much care what she had to do to get it. She’d get in from work, tired and frustrated, find something (socks under the bed, tomato pips on the bread board) to bitch about and start on me. I wasn’t like that. I was scrupulously sincere. Somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to use any argument that I couldn’t rationally defend. I tried irrationality once – some sarcastic half-truth about her faking orgasms but the fury of the response was terrifying and I didn’t try it again. Eventually the exchange would reach a crescendo with me shouting to be heard above the fury, pleading that she couldn’t possibly mean the things she was saying about me. Finally I would run out, flayed by the contempt spewing from the mouth of the woman who was supposed to be the love of my life.
The first time I ran out she was so soft and sorry when I came back some hours later, and so worried (I’d gone up on the hills, it was dark and raining). She held me and we cried for hours together. On later occasions my exit just became the subject of more contempt – how typical it was of me, running away and so forth. Frankly, as time went on I ran away because if I hadn’t I’d have hit her. And of course, a man must never hit a woman, no matter what the provocation.
Having said all this I wouldn’t want to give the impression we did nothing but argue. I suppose this kind of thing happened about ten times in the entire relationship, and at first it was ok. We felt we learned something on each occasion, but as time went on it became clear we were learning nothing. I had no money for studio space and she gave up on her academic career.
It seems laughable to think now that there was a time when I’d be strolling along some country lane and I’d come across some scruffy little cabin or bungalow or a caravan perhaps, sunk in billows of briars and nettles and potato plants, the ground strewn with chicken wire and rusting mowers, climbing frames and paddling pools half deflated, and it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t one day find a place like that and do it up and plant trees and grow some veggies, maybe get a dog.
But then when it came to it, and even though we were both working hard, with property prices being what they were, we had to accept it wasn’t going to be like that. We simply wouldn’t be able to afford it.
I even suggested we go back to Andalucia, maybe go live on the finca with Mar’s parents but she wouldn’t hear of it. So there we were, stuck in that miserable little flat together, ’til death did us part.

That last trip to Spain I had no high hopes for a reconciliation. We met up with Carmen and Riqui and went into the mountains in a borrowed hatchback. It was a fantastic day – we saw eagles and picas and swam in a river. I loved Spain. I had some ideas for a series of pictures and began to formulate a plan for coming back alone to do some drawing. Mar was civil but distant.
That afternoon I’d been doing the driving, which always wound her up. I wasn’t too confident driving on the right-hand side of a narrow twisty mountain road with bloody great trucks coming in the other direction, so I was taking it slowly. I was very aware of her mood.
The problem really started when I was manoeuvring in a car park, and the car rolled backwards over a dip so that one of the front wheels was slightly off the ground. It was front wheel drive and we couldn’t get any traction. The three Spaniards were all talking at once. My Spanish was ok but not that good and I left them to it, walking around the car, trying to look useful. Mar was getting more and more heated, but the others seemed to be taking this in their stride. Riqui was laughing and shrugging a lot. Carmen was as loud as Mar, but good humoured. After a few minutes Riqui got the jack out and was propping the rear up and Carmen was running the engine, trying to get a grip. Mar and I were sitting on the bonnet trying to weigh it down. I could feel the full heat of her derision radiating at me along with the stultifying heat of the midday sun. ‘This is no bloody good’ she said. ‘Why don’t you go do something useful?’ I knew it was my fault that we were in this situation, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do about it but I still didn’t feel I deserved this treatment. It was just a silly mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, but somehow, being with Mar just made me feel like I was the most stupid useless person in the world. It felt like I was full of hot, acid vomit, burning my chest, ready to burst out of my head. I could feel it leaking out of my eyes. My teeth were clenched so hard my jaws ached. And yet I couldn’t yell or cry. I held it in. I got down and looked under the car. It occurred to me that the jack could go a little higher. It was on some loose stones and had shifted. I got down to have a look and to hide the tears that were leaking out.

So that was when it happened. You can see it coming can’t you? Carmen was revving the engine, and Riqui was bouncing on the bonnet, amidst much yelling and gesticulation. Somehow, I don’t really remember how, I had my head in the wheel arch when the jack slipped.

I had quite a lot of time to think, or so it seemed. The weight of the car on my shoulders and neck was enough to stop me breathing, but I think I kicked and scrabbled for a while. I was vaguely aware of people around me, shouting, running around, but I couldn’t really hear anything over the engine and the sound of my heart in my head. Eventually someone turned the engine off and I stopped struggling. It was over. I remember thanking God for the silence. I had a final image of my poor sweet girl and how sorry I was it had come to this. Everyone’s voices seemed very far away – like I was underwater. I could see gravel and pine needles under my nose. I could picture my predicament – my body splayed out, my head stuck in the side of a car. It looked very funny. It would have been a great slapstick moment in a circus with a clown car perhaps and all the clowns running about ineffectually beeping horns. I don’t remember any pain. I don’t remember being aware of my body at all in fact. I just remember feeling ridiculous, and somehow, not surprised.
‘Typical’ I thought ‘What a prat.’

Andrea XIII – Parting

Our final session. It’s rather early and I’ve come along with an orange for breakfast. I just fancied it but now I don’t know what to do with it. It’s going to get messy and I don’t have a knife on me. I fiddle with it for a while and she looks at it irritably. I notice she has a glass of the freshly squeezed. Why didn’t I think of that?

Andrea is trying to avoid politics by injecting some levity into the proceedings. She’s trying to get me to tell her some more about my pathetic attempts at chatting women up. I don’t want to talk about politics but I don’t want to go over all this either. I’m telling her about a date I had. How to describe the scene?
‘I made a complete twat of myself’ I say.
‘What happened?’
‘It was just stupid. I see that now. I knew it was supposed to be just a one night stand...’
‘What did you do?’ she says, obviously preparing herself for something unspeakable.
I can hardly bring myself to say it. ‘I made breakfast’ I mumble.
‘What?’ she says, trying not to laugh. ‘You did what?’
‘I wanted it to be nice... not like those other... blokes she knew.’
‘So you made her breakfast?’
‘I know, I know... She was absolutely livid, like I’d asked her to marry me or something.’
Andrea shakes her head slowly at me. ‘How old was she?’ she says at length.
‘I don’t know. Early twenties?’
‘And you were what, thirty something?’ I nod. She sits in disbelief for a while, just looking at me, giggling slightly to herself. I suppose it is funny but I’m not in the mood. She sees my serious face and pulls herself together. ‘What’s wrong Gabriel?’ she says.
‘I’m sorry Andrea’ I say abruptly, ‘I know this stuff is maybe important but really... I’m going to be going back into the world soon.’
‘Ok.’
‘And I don’t want to be out on the streets again.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘I don’t want to be in and out of hospitals and helping the police with their enquiries or dossing down at my parent’s because nobody else will have me.’
‘Well, good.’
‘I’ve got to do better this time.’
‘And I’m sure you will Gabriel. I do understand.’
‘I’m not sure you do. Sorry babe but I think we’re missing the point. I’m still not entirely convinced I don’t need some help with the whole getting a job and making a living thing. Surely it’s what gives people their purpose in life and self-respect and dignity and so forth. All this stuff about chatting women up and having sex is fun but I don’t really know if it’s doing much good. I’m sorry Andrea. I know you’re trying to help.’
‘Do you believe that?’ she says, at length.
‘Well...’
‘You believe your sense of self worth would be best served by getting yourself a career? I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a career but... I just don’t think that’s where your heart is. I don’t think that’s what you missed most. Really...’
‘Well, I take your point about there being someone for everyone, but I’ve seen the kinds of ladies my fellow travellers consorted with and quite frankly I was not envious.’
‘Have you noticed how you go into this pedantic polysyllabic way of expressing yourself when you’re unhappy? It’s quite off-putting.’
That shuts me up. But I know what she means.
‘It makes you sound like a pompous old fart. It’s not attractive.’
‘Thanks’ I say quietly and sit and think for a while. Maybe I’m pushing myself away, trying to make leaving easier somehow. Or maybe I’m trying to string it out a bit. It reminds me of when Justine died. I was the last of our family. I watched them all go one by one, me shuffling inexorably to the head of the queue. Today I remember what it is to be an old man again. It’s a perfect place for the addled and arthritic, this. You don’t have to get up and eat if you don’t want to, and nobody fails to get to the loo in time because there’s no need to go to the loo at all if you don’t want to. Paul pointed out with some amusement that some still seem to visit the toilet regularly, even though their body no longer has the physiological need to excrete, but then I honour meal times even though my body has no physiological need for sustenance. I suppose some people saw their time on the bog as quality time. I didn’t. I saw it as a waste of time – a time of waste. I thought I had better things to do.
I didn’t know what to do when Justine was dying. The hospital was too far away to visit regularly, with the NHS ‘restructuring’ and so on – and I hated myself for not having learned to drive and not being able to afford the train as often as I’d have liked. Justine’s sons would have nothing to do with me so I was stuck. I wasn’t there when she died. No one was.

I can’t believe we’ve wasted all this time here, farting about, talking about girls when there’s this chasm of utter incompetence in the middle of my life. Oh there’s someone for everyone alright. I have a sudden memory of Ned’s girlfriend, running down Trafalgar Street with her legs together, the back of her pink leggings already translucent with piss. I got on ok with Ned – he fancied himself as a bit of a philosopher – used to get into some amazing discussions but he was a total alkie. They all were.
I look at Andrea. She looks at me.
‘I can’t go back, not the way I was’ I say. ‘I couldn’t stand it.’
‘Do you think that’s likely?’ she says, impassively.
‘I don’t see why not’ I say, reproachfully. She knows what I’m getting at. I dig my nails into the orange. Who cares if I get sticky hands?
‘What do you want me to say Gabriel?’ she says – another phrase I hate. It means she thinks she’s told me all I need to hear, and if I can’t handle it, well... But I don’t think she has. Now I have all these ideas that a lovely woman could really love me back and of having a life with her and a place of our own and holidays and all the stuff I never dared realistically hope for in my life and...
And suddenly I can see what she’s done. The cow has done it again.

It never felt realistic before, all that stuff. I still don’t know the details but it does actually feel like it could happen. I could make it happen. A smile spreads across my face. I can’t help it. She knows what it means too.
‘It will feel worse, at first’ she says gently ‘but it will get better. I promise.’
I separate the orange segments and share them with her. I can feel the sticky dried juice on my hands but the orange came apart easier than I expected. There’s a metaphor here. I can’t think what it is right now.
‘Will I see you again?’ I ask.
‘Here or in life?’ she says, smiling now. We’ve both relaxed. It’s over. It’s time to go now and it’ll be ok. I can do this.
‘Either’ I say. ‘I think Paul wants an End of Voyage party. You could come... I’ll buy you a martini.’
She smiles, a little sadly I think. ‘We’ll see’ she says.
‘And then there’s always the festies – I’ll come and find you in The Healing Space.’
‘I’d like that’ she says, and means it I think. ‘I’ll look out for you.’ and we stand and hug briefly and I kiss her cheek and leave the room. I don’t expect to see her again.

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.

Journey IX – Worse than death

We spent more and more time at her place and by summer I’d all but moved in. Her room was a lot more spacious than mine, with big bright windows, a huge bed and a rich femininity. It all seemed very familiar somehow. Dusty blue glass bottles full of dried seed heads and paper flowers and peacock feathers stood in the window frames, tangled in old net curtains filtering the daylight. The threadbare and faded furniture was disguised with silk wraps and bits of tie-dyed and batiked cloth. A rail was crammed with a multi-layered array of apparel – a millefeuille of purple and turquoise and maroon and inky blue, silk, fur, leather and lace, skirts and capes and hats and stockings and god knows what else. Bent and faded shoes and boots were piled underneath, in and out of their boxes. A tangle of silver, wood and leather nik-naks lay among tiny bottles and trinkets and odds and ends of make-up on the dressing table. Everything was scented – of sandalwood and vetiver and some other scents I never tracked down. I have no idea where she got it all from, and my neat little backpack of essentials looked very humble beside it, but I thought her stuff was wonderful and just wanted to roll around naked amongst it.
A huge wooden wardrobe stood across from the foot of her bed - its full-length mirror duplicating all we got up to there. Comparing notes with the one on the dressing table I could observe us from other angles and it was only because of this that I finally realised I did not look utterly ridiculous when engaged in ‘the act’, which was something of a revelation. I'd always been somewhat self-conscious before.
And the sex was fabulous. We both had an appetite for doing it in the middle of the day wherever we happened to be. What’s more, she came quickly and easily – quicker than me more often than not, so I never felt I had to keep going and going for her sake, which, tantrism aside, I never found very sexy. One evening when Sophie had turned in early, Gina expressed some amused scepticism at this, sardonically reminding me that women fake orgasms all the time. She seemed oddly chuffed about this, as if it signified some occult power that women hold over men – to mislead us into thinking they’re having a great time when actually they’re not. (In order to avoid what? Saying something? Actually having a great time?) It seemed a bit petty to me anyway. I told her Sophie was certainly overdoing it if she was faking. Gina changed the subject.

There were two other women and another couple sharing what was quite a large old house with us, but we didn’t see much of them. There were sometimes noises coming from next door late at night but Sophie claimed not to hear them and told me she’d never seen anyone in there. One night in particular I was sure I heard a quiet sad hopeless weeping sound in the wall behind the wardrobe. Sophie slept right through it, but I couldn’t. Otherwise everything seemed very normal really. We settled into being a couple in a way undreamt of by me in life – we even had people round for dinner and found some old videos to watch. It was all very civilised - almost middle-class. We had candles and incense at night and sat out on the lawn in the day time and I picked flowers for her. The sex became more regular, but developed in subtle ways and became more satisfying. It was exactly what I had wanted more than anything, all my life.

Still, I could never totally ignore the nagging feeling that something was very wrong – not with us, but with our surroundings. I did my best to ignore the strange sounds and movements that occasionally woke me, and the fact that it felt bad to be out alone at night, but where everybody else seemed to just exist with it, I found myself getting jumpier.
One night I was certain I saw a face - no body - just a face, broad and pale with narrowed eyes, looking out of the upper windows of a house along the street. It wasn’t facing me and yet I could tell it was aware of me. I looked steadily at it for quite a while. Sophie was with me, I don’t know what she was looking at, but when I pointed it out to her the window was empty. I tried to describe it but she just looked blank or confused, as she always did when I tried to explain my concerns. It never seemed worth pursuing, but I found myself increasingly nervous at night, and even in the daytime, waiting for the next surprise. When we were out together at night I stayed close by her, and tried to be where other people were, with the lights on, and music playing. She thought it was odd, but endearing, and distracted me with even more sex and affection. For my part I treated it as something like a nightmare, to be put out of my mind as quickly as possible.

We didn’t live totally in each other’s pockets. I spent some days in my old room at the hostel and hung out, smoking and drinking, with some of the guys who still lived there. Nothing much had changed – some new faces. Ian (one of the original crowd) sometimes came with me on my walks when he felt like a breath of fresh air. It made a change. He tended to yammer on about things he’d done and people he knew and I just half listened. He liked the bits of random junk that were always about and ‘borrowed’ the various kiddie bikes and skateboards we came across, usually having a minor accident on one sooner or later which was always funny. I swear he only had accidents in order to have something to talk to girls about. Back in life he hadn’t been so funny – he’d been into booze and speed, and spent half his time in the slammer. Here he permanently had something of the same effect he’d got from the drugs without going to the trouble of having to score and talk to dealers and coppers and all the rest of it. Plus there were no horrible side effects. He was totally content, and quite entertaining into the bargain, as long as you didn’t expect to make a contribution to the conversation. Occasionally I’d ask him a question, like how had he died, and he cheerfully told me all about his blood poisoning.

One bright sunny afternoon he spots one of those ridiculous ‘90s scooters with tiny wheels in a front garden and he just has to fetch it and have a go on it although it will be useless on the cobbles.
As I loiter nervously in the garden waiting for him to finish mucking about, I glance down into the basement and there’s a boy in there, in the window, naked, gagged and strapped to a chair, looking sideways at me, and I can see where pieces of him have been sliced away and pulled out, blood everywhere. He looks at me, clearly in terrible distress, but not really expecting any help and I do nothing. I just stare. The room is brightly flourescently lit like a workshop and I can see there are other bodies around the room, alive but unable to move. Crouching down I notice with a shock that there's another figure, tall, pale and naked, standing at the far end of the room. The head is almost featureless, like a potato with holes burned in it, or a wet paper bag stuffed with black hair. The body looks like cold chicken meat. It turns toward me, holding up some sort of long metal implement. It seems a little taken-aback but not at all embarrassed or guilty about what it's been up to. It simply wasn’t expecting an audience. I can see it wants to get back to the boy in the chair, but it is interested in me. It wants me to come in and join them.
I tear my gaze away and turn to look at Ian, almost losing my balance and toppling down the basement steps in the process. I look down. There is a bulging bin bag and an old mattress on the wet green concrete below and everything is stained and putrid. The bin bag moves slightly. I steady myself on the rail. Ian looks expressionlessly at the scene in the basement. I hear a sound behind the front door above and to the right and I straighten and walk as briskly as I can out of the front gate and wait for Ian. I squat on the pavement, trying not to topple over or puke.
When he joins me he still looks as relaxed as usual but he sees my face and asks if I’m ok. I can’t say or do anything. He sits with me until I can stand, then we begin to walk. I need to get home now.
‘It’s not real’ he says after a little while. ‘It’s just a movie.’
I look at him and can’t work out why he thinks that. Then I focus straight ahead and walk, stumbling slightly over the cracks in the paving. I need to get to Sophie’s place. We need to leave.

Journey V – Sophie

My explorations around the town occupied an increasing part of my days but I always seemed to be going round in loops. I still couldn’t find a road out. Some areas near home became familiar and I could find my way around easily, but further out I continually came across parts I couldn’t remember seeing before. It was permanently cold and overcast by now, but not uncomfortable. I just wore more layers – fleeces and waterproofs.
I particularly liked to visit a little close on top of a nearby hill that could only be reached by a narrow lane between the houses. The lane had a steel frame covered in vines arching over it. That part of the town was all small terraced houses without gardens, in concentric rows, curving around the flanks of the hill, so it was surprising that first time to pass under the pergola and come out into a bright little oasis of evergreens overflowing onto the cobbles at the summit. On the other side of this close, opposite the entrance, there was a gap between the houses with a wrought iron rail and a view out across the trees and the roofs of the houses below but there was no sign of the sea, nor any countryside beyond. It seemed as if, whereas there’d been no horizon at sea and the view had looked as if it went on flat indefinitely, here it seemed as if the horizon was closer, more curved than usual and the view was distorted, almost like looking through a fish-eye. It was as if this town was on a tiny world of its own. Sometimes it felt as if it didn’t matter how far I walked, I could never walk away from here, only back. It was a disturbing thought.

It was just as the days were getting noticeably longer that I heard about a party at a house that actually had the owners living in it. It was another big old Victorian affair with huge windows and high ceilings, but double fronted. We arrived with bottles and met a woman who looked to be in her early forties and with the hopeful disappointed face of the depressive and the alcoholic, sitting at her breakfast bar on a stool in her open-plan kitchen-diner with a huge balloon of red wine and a cigarillo. The house appeared to be in the middle of being renovated. She greeted us in a friendly but distracted way and told us to make ourselves at home but she implied that everything was beyond her control anyway. The unmistakeable sound of Jefferson Airplane was coming from the lounge across the hall. Everything in there was stripped pine but nothing was finished.
I looked around at the other guests and many of them seemed to be a bit more my age or older and there was a very different ambiance to the usual – more conversation, less giggling and passing out, and less nudity. I settled in on a huge grey sofa next to a couple talking very animatedly. I had a large glass of red in my hand and felt fairly cool. I even found myself joining in a reasonably intelligent conversation – about how to incorporate a fish tank into a room without it looking ‘terminally naff’. I knew a bit about this because a guy I knew had a tank like a large paddling pool in his lounge, full of freshwater stingrays I think he said they were. He was forever having trouble keeping his nitrates down or something. We talked a bit about the ethics of trying to keep really big fish, and importing specimens from the wild that stood no chance of ever breeding in captivity. Then we went on to talk about houseplants and how very 1970s they were (except for palms apparently) and various interior design ‘horror stories’ generally. Given that most of the conversation had been about doing up properties as an investment, they were fascinated to learn that I’d spent much of my life homeless but seemed unable to comprehend it as anything other than a lifestyle choice. I didn’t pursue it. It was funny really. They seemed to see me almost as some sort of holy man and went on to talk about their travels in India and the Far East. At no point did they seem to acknowledge that we were all dead now and all this was somewhat academic. It was fun though. In life there had been times when we got back from the festies and I was invited around to parties at the homes of middle class hippies in Brighton and we’d had conversations just like these in houses exactly like this and I felt quite at home, in an ironic sort of way.
There was still a very odd atmosphere though, even by the standards of this town. I got up and wandered about after a while and found the house was a lot bigger than it had looked at first, with a low, unlit corridor going back beyond the staircase, and there were at least four floors. No wonder they could never finish the bloody decorating. The hostess looked quite tired in the middle of it all as random guests milled about. I said hi and we chatted a little about where I lived and what she was planning to do with this place. I had a look upstairs and found darkened and largely empty rooms on the first two floors with just some bits of timber and a ladder to indicate that anybody ever came up here. There was a cold, green tiled bathroom with a very bright bare bulb in it and a very old porcelain bathroom suite. The uncurtained window reflected me darkly and gave me the very clear sensation of not being alone looking at myself. I turned but saw only the empty doorway to the bedroom across the hall. Then I went down to the first floor landing and found a blonde, round-faced woman in what appeared to be a white silk nightdress standing at the top of the stairs smiling at me and I found I couldn’t look away. 

I remembered what Andrea had said and smiled back as confidently as I could and she came down to the lounge with me. I offered to get her a drink and she asked for some wine, following me through when I went to get it. When I turned with her glass in my hand she was right there, almost up against me. We raised our glasses and smiled at each other. I remember thinking how clear and confident her smile seemed. 

We stood close together in the lounge and began to sway with the music, still looking intently into each other’s eyes and smiling. I put my glass down and laid my hands on her hips lightly. The material she was wearing was incredibly fine, just a couple of layers of thin cotton tissue and I could feel the smooth soft skin underneath it. I became oblivious of everything else going on around us, of the people coming and going and the other couples dancing, and the flimsy straps slipped down over her shoulders so that her dress was just barely held by the curve of her breasts. She pressed her body closer but still looked intently at me, now smiling just a little, then resting her head under my chin.

I couldn’t believe it. I was having trouble breathing I was so excited. This was so unexpected, and so sudden. I looked up at the ceiling, trying to get some breathing space before I collapsed. I looked over toward the kitchen and the owner of the house was smiling broadly and toasting us with her glass. That was when I knew this couldn’t be happening. Something was seriously wrong but I couldn’t stop it. I was caught between knowing I was in terrible trouble and knowing that I would have to take my chances because I wasn’t going to pass up whatever this fabulous woman had to offer. I knew it was all up to her anyway. I had no choice. I was hers.

The party had quietened down now anyway. Lou Reed was playing. A lot of the guests were seated around the room on cushions and couches and she lead me over to a large red velvet cushion half way along a wall and said ‘Lets sit down’. I sat back, leaning against the wall, extremely aware now of the other people around us – the soft light and the quiet music. She knelt down and sat astride my leg. I was in shorts as usual and could feel the heat from between her legs, and the moisture and then the soft lips of her vagina brush the skin of my bare thigh. I almost stopped breathing. She leaned forward, one arm either side of my head and one breast came free and jiggled in front of my nose. I looked around. Nobody seemed to be paying much attention. I put my hand on her leg, under her dress, moved along her thigh over her hip to the small of her back and then down over her smooth bottom, I ran my fingers between and confirmed that she was indeed wearing nothing under her dress. She leaned back and smiled wickedly at me. I went to kiss her but she drew back and watched me, neatly tucking her breast back in. She stopped for a moment, then I felt a sinuous movement of her hips and her rubbing herself lightly against my leg, taking deep breathes through her nose. Looking down at me, she gripped my cock through the material of my shorts, smiling nastily and moving her hips. I moved my other hand to her front and began to feel my way under her dress and she shifted slightly over and lifted the dress away so that anyone interested could have seen her neat little cunt, with all its sweet pink insides exposed to my fingers. I looked around one last time and registered that we were now attracting some attention. I didn’t care. Her top had come down completely, becoming nothing more than a roll of material around her waist and she had unzipped me and held my cock, its hard swollen tip an inch from the hot wet lips of her vagina, which I fingered luxuriously. She was biting her lip, looking intently at me now, not smiling any more, concentrating, she was holding my cock tight, and shifting a little forward so that my tip met her clitoris and I felt something like electricity pass through me like a jolt to the heart, starting my life. She leaned forward and gripped my face and kissed me hard, forcing her tongue between my teeth, while her juices soaked me and the cushion we sat on. 

I don’t know how long we stayed like that. There were very few people around when we came to and the lights were dimmed. The owner of the house was still there, chatting quietly to some late guests, all sitting on bar stools. I looked down at the mess between us and smiled. She was slumped against me, her breasts still exposed, cool and white, their little pink noses now inverted. It was too dark to see lower down but my movements roused her and she looked groggily around and fumbled between our legs as if to see what had happened. ‘Hmm’ she said approvingly and smiled tiredly at me. ‘Need a bit of a clean up’ she added and kissed me tenderly on the lips.
We straightened ourselves up and stood around – me wondering what to do next, she trying to decide what to have to drink. She looked divine, one of her breasts still bare. Once she’d got her glass she collapsed into an armchair and patted a cushion for me to sit down beside her. There we sat until almost everybody had gone and then we spread out on the cushions and slept.

Voyage XVI – Fantasies

I go back to my cabin and get out my drawing things. It’s getting dark now but the lighting in here is really good – like one of those daylight bulbs you can get. I lean back and look at what I’ve been doing lately. The fact is they’re mostly of Lucy, but not from life obviously – from my imagination.
Back home, when I was about thirteen I suppose, I started making my own pornography. I just started one day when I didn’t know what to do next and I was doodling and the lines of a woman’s body just emerged from the pen like magic. I suppose I’d spent so much time looking at the magazines they’d just got printed on my brain. So, I never could get hold of enough real porn, and most of it was pretty dreary to be honest, so I started making my own.
I didn’t have a type – I drew redheads with freckles and olive skinned women with black hair, slender women and voluptuous women, mature women and teenage girls, shaved women and hairy women, women undressing, women masturbating, women together. After a while I didn’t draw anything much else, and I think I got quite good at it, considering I’d never actually seen a real live naked woman in my life (and certainly not an actual vagina) and still haven’t to be honest.
God knows what would have happened if mum had found any of it.

I’ve been thinking about what Joe said, about being gay. It’s funny but I never really thought about it before. Freud said that everyone naturally has homosexual tendencies (and other tendencies too). I never really wanted to put men in my drawings at all. I’m not really sure why. I tried once or twice but it felt sort of, I don’t know, sort of ugly. If I think of men having sex it just seems sort of clumsy and a bit disgusting to be honest. I don’t know where that idea comes from. I try to think of Joe like that, sexually I mean. He’s a nice enough looking bloke I suppose. If I was going to handle someone else’s penis I suppose his’d be as good as anyone’s. I just don’t really fancy it. I suppose I should be a bit more broad-minded, in a ‘don’t knock it until you’ve tried it’ sort of way but I think I’d have some sort of sense even without trying it, that I’d like it, but I don’t. Margaret Mead said that extreme heterosexuality is actually a sort of perversion. Anyway, I just like looking at women. I think they’re absolutely fantastic, and if that makes me a pervert, well, so be it.

Sometimes I spent almost all night in the Wendy house, looking at porn, thinking about women. It was really dark and a bit dingey in there, damp and dusty, with the ivy coming in and the spiders and such like, but it did feel very peaceful, especially if the rain was really battering down outside and the trees were whipping about on the railway embankment or the fog-horn down at the harbour was going. I usually went down there in just my dressing gown and wellies so I could cover up immediately if anyone came, and I kept the drawings and photos in a sketchpad so I could close that up quickly too. Nobody ever did. My mum used to wonder why I was exhausted in the morning. Sometimes I couldn’t get up in the morning at all.
I used to think about women I knew – the one who ran the pet shop for example – she was a little weird looking (quite a long nose and big googly eyes) but you could tell she would be a good shape under her clothes, and then there was Amelia’s friend Katrina. She was fucking amazing. Really tight jeans – you could see the outline of her vagina when she sat down. And then there were some of the girls at school – Camille especially, and then later on there was Gill of course. She was the best. I used to imagine coming across her while I was out walking on the Downs in the wind and rain – her in just a plastic mac and boots after she’d been out riding. I imagined seeing her sit down on the wet grass, open her coat, letting the rain wash over her pale breasts and belly (not caring if anyone was looking), watching her slip her knickers down over her boots and throw them aside and then begin to touch herself. Or else I imagined her walking up the hill ahead of me – seeing her bare arse under her coat and watching those two fleshy folds between her legs squeeze and slip together as she walked. I don’t know why but it was always cold and drizzling, or else snowing in these fantasies. I always liked the feel of the cold air on my skin and the wet grass. I don’t know why.

Of course the actual girls at school thought I was a joke. I don’t think I ever actually made an appearance in my own fantasies – that would have been just too ridiculous. I was just forced to watch them, but that was ok.

Actually though, don’t laugh, but I don’t think it was just about sex. I really wanted more than that. I suppose I’m a bit of a romantic too. Honestly, I really wanted to sit on a balcony by the sea with a girl and watch the sun go down and sip champagne or something, and pick flowers for her, and make her sloppy compilation tapes with people like Dusty Springfield and The Walker Brothers. I wanted to slow dance with her to Body Talk. I know, I know. It’s a ridiculous record. I can’t even remember who recorded it now, but every time I hear it I despair. I just wanted that, to do that – to hold onto her (whoever she was), moving together, lost in each other, oblivious, going round and round on the dance floor, breathing into her hair, my hands on her hips at the end of the evening, and her not embarrassed and wanting to get away but there with me, as relieved and amazed as I’d be. And when they turn the music off and the lights go on, to look shyly into each other’s eyes and hope that this was not all.
Jesus Christ I wanted that. I never asked any of them to dance, I admit. If they weren’t going to say yes in private they certainly weren’t going to say it in public.

Well anyway... I don’t know if any of the other blokes felt the same way – we never talked about it, but that was what I wanted – I wanted to be in love. I still do, more than anything in the world. I want a girl who will come to parties, and come for walks in the country, and most of all I want her to share my bed. I want someone to sleep with, and that’s not a euphemism. Ok, I admit I want her to be sitting there on the balcony watching the sunset with no knickers on, but I also want to bring her croissants and orange juice in the morning.
That’s what all this is really about. All that stuff Joe talks about – about careers and so on. I can’t tell him all this. Of course I’d love to earn a living doing something I like, and rent a nice room in Brighton or out in the country, go to university, maybe travel a bit. I’d love to do those things, for myself. But really, the main thing is, when I do those things, maybe I’ll meet her, and what’s more, maybe she’ll want to get to know me and I’ll have a proper relationship. I don’t feel very manly for admitting it, but that’s what I want.
And then we have the reality, as mum would have said.
I don’t know where all this comes from, this hope. Mostly my life has been fairly useless, but somewhere, part of me has always had this idea that, if only I could meet a girl and she got to know me properly, without all this shit about money and living with my parents in the way, that it would be alright, and I’d stand a chance.
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Joe X – Dreams

Another day, another session, and he’s consulting some papers on his lap when I come in. He doesn’t look up but says ‘I got you a coffee. Two sugars, right?’
I sit down. ‘Thanks’ I say.
‘I want to pursue this question about your, er, putative career...’
I snort with derision. My “career” indeed. That’s a laugh.
‘Why do you find that funny?’
I shake my head and try to avoid saying ‘I don’t know’. I do know, it’s because it’s unimaginable, me, with a career. I have an image of all those people in suits or uniforms being terribly important and responsible and serious about life. I can’t imagine myself like that.
‘Ok’ he says, trying not to look exasperated, ‘what would you most like to have done, no, what would you most like to have changed about your life? Anything you like...’ He clicks his fingers ‘...different. What would it be?’
Again I sit and my mind goes all over the place. So many things, none of them very realistic...
‘Go on, a place of your own? A round the world air ticket?’
God, I think, yes, either of those. To get away, be myself somehow. I nod and he smiles, and I think he’s going to say ‘But you need to earn the money first’, which my mum would have said (she used to take great pleasure in “bringing me back to the real world” as she called it) but he doesn’t.
‘Alone or with someone else?’
I consider the people I know, go through them one by one. There’s nobody.
‘Maybe I could meet people when I’m out there’ I suggest.
‘Highly likely’ he says.
I have this image of a group of fairly cool but not too pretentious people, maybe about my own age, maybe more varied, male and female, hanging out in a bar, or just in someone’s room, and I feel completely relaxed with them, and we chat but I don’t feel I necessarily have to say anything. It’s just easy, and there’s a girl...
‘What are you thinking about?’ he says.
‘Oh, this fantasy I have, of a group of friends, a girlfriend...’
‘What are they like?’
‘I really don’t know. They’re just friendly, relaxed...’
‘Anyone you know?’
‘Not really.’
‘What about the girl? What’s she like?’
I feel a little inhibited at first, but then it occurs to me I wouldn’t mind him telling me about his boyfriend (maybe I should ask him some time) so I go on to talk about her, how she’s witty and funny and likes a lot of attention, and how we spend a lot of time in bed just cuddling and listening to music...’
‘And having sex?’
I smile sheepishly. ‘Lots of sex’ I say.
‘I should bloody well hope so’ he says, cheerfully.
I take a moment to enjoy the fantasy. He watches my face. He sees it turn from happy reverie to hopeless.
‘What happened there?’
‘It’s just... the money. I lived with my parents for fuck’s sake. What am I going to do?’
I see him think about how to put it. ‘I actually don’t know Gabriel...’ He sees me sag a bit ‘But hang on. That’s not the point. The point is there’s no point in thinking about work and savings and insurance and all that crap if you don’t know what you want it for. You’re putting the cart before the horse Gabriel. We don’t live to work Gabriel. Live in your dreams for a while. Work out what you want to do, feel it, see it as a possibility. Then you find your way...’
‘But that’s all I have done Joe. I’ve done nothing but dream, and it just doesn’t make it seem any more possible.’ I’m almost in tears again, lost.
‘But what you’ve said doesn’t seem very impossible – friends, a girlfriend, a place of your own, a trip abroad...’
‘But it does. I have to work.’
‘That’s the finding your way part. We can talk about all that another time. The take-home message for today is just that your hopes are not unrealistic. Really. Ok?’
‘Ok.’
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