Voyage XIII – The Good Life

‘Sometimes’ says Lisa, gripping her mug of coffee ‘I just can’t believe how much I didn’t know about the world, about what was going on, how much I missed.’ I take her hand and smile. Tell myself I'm just being a good friend but we both know there's more to it than that. We’re up in the bar for breakfast again, Lisa and I, as is becoming a habit. Anybody’d think we were sleeping together. She’s taken the opportunity to go and shower and change her clothes between my room and the restaurant. She has a very lovely deep blue cotton dress on now. It’s quite sheer and I can see her breasts move underneath. It’s not doing anything for my resolve. Maybe if I went and spent a little time alone... I wonder if fantasising about her counts. It’s already too late if it does.
She seems back to normal anyway. ‘I used to read the papers, listen to the radio’ she says, ‘keeping up with what was going on in the world but then even that felt like too much effort a lot of the time and frankly it was so depressing. Then I used to listen to Chopin. Do you know Chopin?’
‘I do. I love the Nocturnes’
She seems very pleased to hear that and rubs the back of my hand as if to warm it up. ‘I had Gershwin, and Débussey and loads of other stuff. I used to be able to play Au Clare de la Lune.’
‘You played piano?’
‘Just bits and pieces.’
Just then Raz and Wen appear and Raz asks Lisa very formally if the seat is free and says she doesn’t want to intrude. Lisa gets up and gives Raz a huge suffocating hug.
Wen comes and sinks down into one of the big padded easy chairs near by. ‘Now now girls’ she says. We order breakfast.

‘So Gabriel’ says Raz ‘What do you think?’
‘Sorry?’
‘About my question, last night’
‘I don’t really know what you mean Raz’ I’m not being obtuse. I really am not sure.
‘I want to know how to do better next time around, because I am going back, and the way I see it I can either do what Ruth would do and use my knowledge to make even more money (assuming I remember anything useful of this at all) or I can use it to bloody well make a difference. I could go either way. What do you think?’
‘Oh honestly I don’t think I’m the person to ask. I’m just a grumpy old man who’s read some books. Ask Wen – she’s the political animal around here’
‘What? No, don’t look at me. I hated politics.’
‘But you were in that organisation – Nature and Nurture or whatever they were called’ says Lisa.
‘People and Planet’ corrects Wen and shifts in her armchair, rearranging her cushions and picking up her mug – getting comfortable. The breakfast arrives – Huevo Ranchero for Wen and I, apple porridge for Lisa and some fresh fruit for Raz. We get busy eating. It’s been a long night.
Lisa reminds Wen of what we were talking about.
‘Honestly love’ says Wen, ‘I’m not your guy. I just liked being out in the woods looking at bugs and weeds. I fell in love with Latin America and the university paid me to go there, end of. It was pure self-indulgence on my part. I’m just one of those lucky sods that gets paid to do their hobby. Really...’ and she begins to fill up on refried beans, conversation over.
‘But you were involved in that big campaign about the global reserve in the Amazon’ says Lisa ‘I saw you on the news.’
‘I thought you didn’t watch the news’ I say, also stuffing my face.
‘Well, you know, trees and monkeys. I could cope with that.’
Wen wipes her mouth with a tissue and reaches for her smoothie. ‘I wasn’t even supposed to be involved’ she says. ‘Marco was supposed to do it but he got sick that day. I didn’t know what I was doing up there, what I was supposed to say. All those journalists and delegates. I was just supposed to be surveying. I hated the suits.’
‘We could tell’ says Raz chuckling.
‘You saw me?’
‘On the news. You were very persuasive. I was impressed. Could have done with you on our side. Kidding’ she says, raising her hands in surrender. ‘Just kidding.’
‘Yes, well’ says Wen, waving away our admiration. ‘Sometimes you have to, don’t you. The thing is, after that...’ she gesticulates around with her fork and talks with her mouth full ‘with all the jetting around to conferences and the interviews and all that, everyone thinks you’re one of them – the politicians and the media people, like you really love all the razzmatazz and screwing around with public perception and to be honest a lot of the people who represent the NGOs are like that – they could be in advertising or politics for real, but I couldn’t do it. I hated the whole media circus thing. If I could have just gone back to grovelling around looking for bugs with a clear conscience at any moment I would have. I wouldn’t have missed it at all.’
‘But you were good at it, the media thing’ I say.
‘Because you could tell she wasn’t playing the game. I get it now’ says Lisa, full of admiration.
‘Sincerity’ says Raz ‘That’s the thing. If you can fake that you’ve got it made. Kidding again people. Just kidding.’
We sit and finish our breakfasts and Lisa goes to get smoothies for us all.

‘So what have you two crazy kids been up to all night anyway?’ asks Wen. ‘Is it as we suspect?’
‘Oral sex’ says Lisa boldly.
‘Really? Well that is a refreshing level of honesty I must say.’
‘Actually’ I say, ‘we just talked about oral sex. Lisa wanted to know all about my past liaisons for some reason. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this.’
‘Did you come to any conclusions, so to speak?’
‘Most men don’t like doing it apparently’ says Lisa with pink milk on her face.
‘Excuse me?’
She carefully puts her glass down on the table. There’s sticky juice everywhere and Lisa sucks her fingers. She knows I’m watching her.
‘Apparently men don’t think it’s manly to go down on a woman, and BJs are actually a bit of a disappointment unless you’re into the whole BDSM scene, so I’m told.’ She sits down and organises her straws, looking at me to see what I’ll say.
‘Gabriel?’ Raz looks horrified and Wen looks somewhat taken aback too.
‘Not me I didn’t mean’ I say, realising suddenly why she’s so outraged. ‘A lot of men though’ continues Lisa, ‘apparently, don’t think it’s... erm... dignified, manly, whatever, to erm... you know... What is the word?’
‘Cunnilingus’ says Wen with her face dripping with melon.
‘Yes, I know that, but you can’t cunniling someone. I need a verb.’
‘To go down on?’ says Raz.
‘Better...’
‘To lick out’ says Wen with precision. Lisa giggles and squirms gorgeously.
‘I’m sure the French would have a good word for it’ says Raz.
‘Anyway’ I say, ‘apparently I’m in the minority.’
‘Unfortunately I think you may be right darling. I have to say I haven’t met many men who are really prepared to take it seriously. I did it with another girl once. That was a whole different kettle of erm... Help me out someone. Something not involving fish.’
‘Ballgame?’ says Wen.
‘Precisely’ says Raz, cackling away dirtily. ‘I have to say a lot of the blokes I knew didn’t know their way around at all, down below.’
‘That’s what Gabriel said, didn’t you, about women.’ I know she’s trying to embarrass me but I won’t let her. She’s sucking the juice out of a peach, all innocence on the face of it.
‘Some women’ I say. ‘I was saying it can be a bit of a disappointment and I’d rather do... I don’t know, other things.’
‘Well I never got any complaints darling.’
‘But presumably you actually enjoyed doing it.’
‘God yes. Absolutely. As long as he’s clean. What do you think Lisa?’
‘Errm...’ she says, doing a little dance with her shoulders, implying she can take it or leave it, but then she nods and says ‘Yes. I really enjoyed it. Really...’ Then she looks down and peers at her hair. ‘I don’t know’ she continues, flicking it out of her eyes. ‘My ex didn’t like it much, well, not from me anyhow. To tell the truth I really don’t know anything much about any of it – just what I’ve read really. I just feel so cheated. I’m sorry but I do. Mick – my ex was never really that keen on any of this “experimentation”... He was just a three minute wonder and he never went down... or anywhere near my you know what, or tried... And I didn’t really know any different. So... Carry on with your conversation. I’ll be alright.’
I feel Raz and Wen looking at me. I know what they’re thinking.
As we get up to go Wen takes my arm and whispers ‘I think you two are just made for each other.’
That’s what I’m afraid of.

Now there’s land in sight just visible in the haze, dark grey through pale grey, translucent layers of landscape one on top of the other, like a backdrop, scratched with warm drizzle. When it’s not raining the heat and humidity is suffocating and has been for a few days. Raz, Wen, Lisa and I are used to it from the sauna and are the only ones lounging on deck. With our thin clothes stuck to us we look as if we are dressed in nothing but body paint. I look at Lisa’s breasts and belly and thighs, indigo blue. Why is this somehow so much more erotic than her nakedness in the sauna? People are so perverse.
Alison tells me we’ll be disembarking in a few days. I hope we can all travel together overland, the four of us.
‘So, what you’re telling me basically is you just gave up with your career’ says Raz.
‘I realised I just didn’t have the drive’ I say.
‘After all that hard work?’
‘Yes.’
‘Didn’t you feel a bit of a... I don’t know...’
‘A failure?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t put it quite so harshly.’
‘I would. It’s ok. Yes, I did, for a bit. Well, I was disappointed for a while – depressed even.’ The rainfall suddenly steps up a few notches and we have to shout to be heard.
‘I’ll bet’ shouts Lisa, taking my hand. I look at her in the deluge, at the rain pouring off her head.
‘It took me a while to get used to it’ I shout, ‘that this dream I’d had all that time – my career as a painter, all the headlining exhibitions and lucrative commissions and all the rest of it just weren’t going to happen.’
‘So what did you do?’ shouts Lisa.
‘Travelled a bit. My girlfriend, Andrea, and I went to Turkey for a while.’
‘Sounds fab.’
‘It was. Look shall we go in? This is getting ridiculous.’ So we all get up and head down to the lounge. We ignore the looks we get, head straight for the bar and order up some cocktails. There’s a bit of a party atmosphere down here, everybody wondering where we’re going next.

‘To be honest Raz’ I say when we’ve found a towel and somewhere to sit, ‘it was ok. I think all this craving for recognition is a bit desperate.’
‘You’re not just saying that because you didn’t make it’
‘I’ve thought about that and yes, of course I’d love to have made a bigger name for myself but then the people I knew who succeeded like that, to me, they all seemed a bit mad. They just didn’t do anything else and really I just had too many other things I wanted to do. I just never really had that single-mindedness.’
‘But you said you loved painting’ says Lisa.
‘I did, but not to the exclusion of everything else. When I was younger maybe – when I was a teenager I didn’t really have anything else.’
‘So it was all about sexual frustration.’
‘Absolutely. Look, famous artists talk about all this worldly stuff as if it’s anathema to real creativity and I’ve met people at college – mostly women actually, who just wouldn’t have anything to do with anything that might “tie them down” in any way, because it distracted them from their work...’
‘They were probably just enjoying their independence’ observes Wen.
‘Certainly, but I just wasn’t prepared to be like that and actually I don’t think it’s healthy. What I want to say to you Raz, in answer to your question, is that our culture – the English based ones especially, tend to hold up this frankly pathological, obsessive attitude to business as if it’s something we should all aspire to and that there’s something wrong with you if you don’t – like Ruth and her obsession with her career, or any of these high flying movers and shakers we hear about.’
‘Hang on Gabriel’ says Raz ‘What are you saying – we should section them all or something?’
‘No, not at all. Of course not. I think they’re valuable members of society quite often – overpaid undoubtedly, but essential nevertheless.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘That we ordinary mortals shouldn’t be judging ourselves by their standard. We shouldn’t feel we should have to work all those hours. We shouldn’t feel we have to own all that stuff. We shouldn’t have to feel we have to constantly impress everybody else with what we do or what we have, because it will never be enough and we’ll live our lives disappointed and frustrated and ultimately it will all seem futile. Plus destroying the environment and leaving millions of people with nothing at all in the process...’
‘So... What? You think we should all get paid the same, or what? I don’t get it.’
‘No, it’s just about getting paid properly for just doing a decent days work, doing something useful, keeping things going – ordinary stuff, what most people do every day. But instead we... I don’t know... we give these high flyers so astronomically much more, as if they are so, so much better than the rest of us, as if what we do is insignificant. It just distorts everything, screws everything up. It’s all wrong. We’re living life wrong – don’t you see what I mean?’
Raz looks thoughtful, trying to drown her olive with a cocktail stick. ‘I just don’t see how it’s possible’ she says finally. ‘How would you get people to behave differently? Firing squad?’
I lean back and act nonchalant. ‘Parental guidance, public opprobrium, ultimately the law – same as for any other undesirable activity.’
‘Doesn’t sound very feasible darling.’
‘Well obviously. They’d kick up one hell of a fuss I expect and they’re powerful people. They’d probably just take their business elsewhere.’
‘Well, like I said... being pragmatic...’
‘So Raz, are you arguing that I’m wrong or that I’m being impractical?’
‘What? Oh thanks sweetie.’
The waiter brings us more drinks. I look out at the torrent coming down off the roof of the cabins outside the door. A small red crab has somehow got up on deck and is scuttling about indecisively. Maybe a bird dropped it. I consider rescuing it but am too settled, steaming in my chair.
‘Ok,’ resumes Raz ‘so if we’re no longer all rushing around trying to be best, what I don’t get is what we’re all supposed to do instead. I mean won’t the world grind to a halt?’
‘We’ll do much the same as before I expect, but less so. Probably none of us really needs to work more than three days a week. We’ve actually reached a point in history where we probably don’t need anything much new at all, apart from some medical advances maybe but...’
‘God’ says Raz, ‘I can think of a few gadgets I couldn’t have done without. I keep wanting to get my Hippo out to tell Leslie what’s going on...’
‘Well I’d have literally been totally lost without my Savant’ says Wen, ‘and I loved my Manda*’ she adds with some passion. ‘My typing was absolute rubbish. People were always telling me it’d improve with time but it never did.’
‘What Voca did you have?’ asks Lisa. ‘I had Patrick Stewart.’
‘Guess’ says Wen.
‘Attenborough’ says Raz, clapping her hands gleefully and Wen smiles. It was obvious really.
‘How about you Gabriel? I bet you had someone sexy like erm... that woman on Radio 4. Catherine somebody.’
I shake my head, a little abashed.
‘Joanna Lumley. She’s more your generation’ says Wen.
‘What? Hardly.’
‘Not your missus’ says Raz with disgust and the truth is out. I look away and they all cackle with delight and I wonder for a moment if her Mac still speaks with my voice. I want to change the subject.
‘I totally miss my Slippery Fish’ says Lisa with some intensity. Raz observes my reaction. I decide to move the discussion on.
‘The point is’ I begin. ‘I’m not saying there shouldn’t be any... I mean, we’re just too obsessed with all this crap. You’ve got to admit most of it is just crap. We’re a spoilt brat culture, Raz, really. You know this. All this 'relative poverty' crap. We have everything we need but we just keep on whining for more. We’ve all got so much more money than we ever had at any other time in history and we just keep whinging on about how we never have enough. People aren’t happier these days. All the studies say so.’
‘It’s like that thing back in the nineties about GMOs feeding the world’ adds Wen. ‘I could have told them it wouldn’t happen. We already had enough to feed everybody. The reasons we didn’t were political and economic. GMOs didn’t change any of that.’
‘So your point is?’
I look at Wen. Apparently she has nothing to add.
‘My point is’ I say, trying to remember what my point was, ‘My point is, that if we already have everything we need, why are we all still squabbling? Why don’t we just relax and appreciate what we’ve got?’
‘But where’s the fun in that? Why would anybody even bother to get up in the morning? What would you do with all this free time?’
‘I don’t know. Do something creative. People used to have hobbies and handicrafts, projects around the house... People don’t do that any more do they.’
‘Not if they want a sex life darling. I have visions of these sad individuals in their sheds making model aeroplanes, or darning socks, with their NHS specks held together with sticky tape.’
‘That’s so exactly not what I meant’ I say tersely. I look around for inspiration. I hate the way “sad” has come to mean any enthusiasm that doesn’t involve getting pissed or running around with a ball, or making money of course. I take a long swig from my glass and take a moment to think. I think about my dad’s collection of alpines, and his railway magazines, and his old LPs. I thought he was “sad”, poor old bugger, but he was just doing the things he loved. That was when he wasn’t taking the car apart, or digging the garden, or fishing. All his friends were the same. He hated buying anything he couldn’t take apart with a spanner and a screwdriver. No silicon chips for him.
‘I’m sorry’ says Raz, smiling patronisingly at me and patting my hand. ‘Tell me what you meant.’
I huff a bit and try to explain. ‘It’s like my dad. He did everything – the rewiring, building a lean-to, growing our veg, fixing the car... Nobody does that sort of thing these days do they?’
‘Well...’
‘They were so, I don’t know, capable, his generation, don’t you think? Independent, self-sufficient... I find it quite hard to take my generation very seriously. We don’t seem to be able to actually do anything much do we? Just go to the office, come home, watch telly, drink beer, go to the office...’
‘I know what you mean’ she concedes wistfully.
‘And cooking. People don’t know how to cook any more.’
‘Women I take it you mean’ says Lisa, elbowing me in the side.
‘Men, women, anybody. It’s not a sexist point. We’re all of us so.... so bloody infantile, so impotent. I don’t know... I know it’ll sound funny coming from me, but it just seems, I don’t know, really lazy somehow. Do you know what I mean? I mean, I know they do all those long hours and there’s all the stress and so on, but... I don’t know... at some level, it’s a deeply decadent way of life.’
‘Yes but it...it’s about freedom isn’t it?’ Raz looks around for agreement but nobody reacts. ‘It’s about not having to worry about all that crap – just pay somebody else to do it.’
‘But then you have to spend all that time at the office to afford it’ says Wen. ‘Funny sort of freedom if you ask me.’
‘I’m talking about some measure of actual independence Raz – a bit of self-reliance.’
‘Yes I know but...’ she has a pained, constipated look on her face. ‘...but it’s just... It’s so ruddy time-consuming, and so bloody messy – to have to learn to do all that stuff. I have to say I’d rather spend my spare time chilling out with a bottle of rosé in front of the box and let someone else do the chores.’
‘But that’s not what he’s saying, is it Gabriel?’ interjects Lisa, looking from her to me. I just smile blandly and she looks momentarily flustered. ‘What he’s saying is’ she resumes, ‘is that it’s not that you have to come home from work and decide whether to do your own stuff or chill out, is it?’ She glances at me again. I try to look amused and wait for her to carry on. ‘The real choice is between doing your own stuff and having to go out to work. You get to relax either way. Do you see?’ She sits back, looking very pleased with herself, like a good student. Ten out of ten I think. Clever girl.
Raz takes a sip and thinks about it. ‘Well I don’t know’ she says finally.
‘You’d rather pay someone to do it for you’ I say.
‘Well, yes. I suppose I would.’
‘You’d rather spend all those hours doing something you hate, slaving away, making money for someone else, simply to avoid doing things for yourself.’
‘Well absolutely, since you put it like that. But look here, how many employers are going to agree to employ you part time so you can enjoy some quality time with the plumbing?’
‘I managed it.’
‘Hmm’ she says, unconvinced. We sit quietly for a while, pondering. I know she’s right. The employers wouldn’t stand for it. They need their wage-slaves, and they need them to try to cheer up their dreary lives by going shopping. Our economy runs on dissatisfaction and dependence and it makes me sick. When was it that life became not about making a home, spending time with the kids, meeting up with friends, enjoying the countryside or making a nice meal and instead became about making money? Has it always been that way? And if so, why do we still fall for it?
‘I suppose that was why I chose to make as much money as I could, while I could’ continues Raz, ‘so I could give up work altogether eventually. Didn’t turn out that way of course. I still worked flat-out until I dropped...’
‘And yet you still believe that if everyone embraces the spirit of free enterprise we can all lead rich and happy lives.’
‘God no. That’s the trouble – everybody’s brought up these days to assume they’ll get a great job if they only try hard enough and get themselves noticed, but it stands to reason most of them won’t. There just aren’t that many great jobs to go round, or even half decent ones. The vast majority are just going to end up in some menial retail or office job, bored and frustrated. And then who’s going to pick up the pieces? No wonder kids go off the rails these days. At least in the old days you knew where you stood. I’m not saying we should go back to the old eleven-plus but you have to admit it reflected society’s needs. You didn’t get your hopes up. You maybe didn’t like where you were put but at least it didn’t come as a huge shock later on. You made the best of it.’
I couldn’t have put it better myself. She takes a moment to observe the end of her cigarette burning down. She blows on it a bit and watches it glow. I’d like to say she looks smug about it but she doesn’t. She doesn’t look happy about it at all.
‘The fact is’ she says, after a quick final drag and stubbing it out. ‘The fact is that it doesn’t matter how brilliant they are, but most of them, I’m truly sorry to say, will never be more than mindless drones. And that’s the way it is.’
We all sit quietly for a bit. Lisa finishes her drink, using her straw to fend off the remaining ice. I look about at the other passengers.
‘That’s actually a faulty metaphor, entomologically speaking’ observes Wen. We all turn to look at her down in her armchair, sipping her cocktail.
‘In a beehive’ she continues ‘the drones are the males. They’re only there to mate with the queen. It’s the workers, the females, do all the... well... work. Anyway...’ she shrugs, ‘Carry on...’
‘Is that so?’ says Lisa.
‘Really?’ says Raz.
We take a moment to consider the faulty metaphor.
‘I have to say I didn’t get the impression you were terribly bothered about all this at the time’ I say.
‘No, well I admit I was only really concerned about my getting rich’ resumes Raz, lighting up a new cigarette, ‘but in any case, if I remember correctly it was you who told us that people should stop being so neurotic trying to make more and more money, because they already have more than enough to be going on with. And don’t give me all that relative poverty crap because I don’t buy it. I’ve seen enough to know that if you’ve got clean running water and electricity, a telly and a fridge you are not poor. You’ve actually got to be a junkie or chronically ill to be in genuine need these days. I’m sorry, it may not be very PC to say so but there it is.’
‘No actually I tend to agree with you’ says Wen. ‘We’re spoiled rotten. But it is, of course, an illusion.’
‘What is?’ says Raz.
‘That there are no poor. They just happen to live elsewhere. You’ve seen them. We still depend on them to do our dirty work, as you so astutely put it.’
The four of us sit back and catch our breaths. It seems to be clearing outside but getting dark. The staff are setting up for the evening meal and other passengers are getting restless and heading down to get showered and changed. All very civilised. It’s funny how we’ve not got bored with this over the last few months and I’m going to miss it.
‘Would I be allowed something nice once in a while?’ says Raz after a while. ‘Some small luxury, in this utopia of yours?’ I have to tug myself back into the conversation. I’d been thinking about food.
‘What? Oh, of course you would. Oh look, I don’t even mind if you buy yourself a Porsche if you really love your car. I just don’t think everyone should think they should have a flash car just to prove something to their neighbours – it’s just so immature.’
‘Doesn’t prove anything these days anyway’ says Wen. ‘Half the time you check out who’s at the wheel and it’s some old fool trying to recapture his youth.’
‘So how much should people be allowed to own?’ asks Raz.
‘Actually, to be honest Raz, I don’t care. If people want to work themselves into the ground and be millionaires that’s fine. I think it’s kind of neurotic but ultimately it’s up to them. What I’m saying is, half the world shouldn’t have to die young as a result, and the environment shouldn’t be wrecked because of it and they certainly shouldn’t be able to run the place as if everybody thinks the way they do, because we don’t.’
We sit quietly for a while after that.
‘Are you done?’ says Raz.
‘I think so, for now. What do you think?’
‘I don’t know. Can I get back to you? Actually, do you think it’s time to get changed? I’m actually fizzing here.’

We all head back to our respective cabins. At my door Lisa stops and waits for them to go. Once they’re gone she holds my face gently between her hands and kisses me softly on the lips. ‘I love you’ she says. ‘You’re brilliant’ and I’m surprised to find myself grinning at her. I can’t bring myself to say the same but she doesn’t seem to expect it. I watch her bottom jiggle in her damp dress as she heads along the corridor and then I open my door. The bedclothes are still flattened where she sat and I can still smell her there.

* Manda ™ was the first commercially successful brand of voice recognition software. Soon almost any new electrical device from cars to cookers to sex toys could be given verbal instructions, in a normal voice, as if addressing a friend or colleague. A popular feature of Manda was that a voice of ones choice (a ‘Voca’) could be downloaded for the device’s responses, replacing the standard Hawkinspeak diction used by earlier systems. 

Alison XV – My Second Summer of Love

Andrea was a major part of my life for a long time after that. All through the late eighties and nineties we were together... more or less. Mind you, I don’t think you can ever say you can truly 'have' a woman like Andrea. She was one of the most self-possessed people I ever met. We travelled quite a bit together though, through the Middle East and East Africa. Or else we were at festivals - she giving massages, me doing very little of anything, mostly watching her. We always had plenty to talk about – a love of exotic food and live music and skinny-dipping. I didn’t see her very often – just a few weeks here and there but it was always memorable.

For a long time – years, I really thought we might get it together properly one day – become an actual couple. I kept trying to get her to come over and spend the summer with me at my place in Lewes, and she always said she’d like to do that, but she never did.

I think I was in love and I’m sure she knew it but she somehow managed to brush me off without me ever feeling totally rejected. She took it as a compliment and I accepted my role with all the dignity I could muster. The fact is I don’t think I could have spent more than a few weeks at a time with her. I would have burned up. I counted it all up after we lost touch. I knew her for about seven years all told but I don’t think we spent much more than about six months in each other’s company in total. 

But she was always there in the background, no matter how flat and featureless the rest of my love life was at the time.

Last I heard she was working out in Africa again. I think she had a child. To be perfectly honest, I think I wasted a lot of time waiting for her, and messed some good women about in the process. 

I look over at Alison, waiting for me to begin and for once I can’t think of a single thing to tell her. 

‘What’s up Gabriel? Guilty conscience?’

Alison evidently suspects something. I don’t know why I’m putting myself through this. It’s over and done with surely. I decide to sidestep the issue and tell her about some relatively harmless experiences with all-night parties and drugs. 

‘Andrea always knew where the raves were – there was the whole dance thing in the late eighties and nineties you may recall...’

‘I hadn’t pictured you being up all night dancing to techno, popping Es.’ 

‘Well, not so much the Es, but the rest of it... I think I must have missed out on it last time around. I guess it’s who you know. I remember once turning up in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in North Wales, getting out of the car, walking up a hill in the pitch black, in complete silence, miles from anywhere and then suddenly, coming over a ridge – lights, music, action. Amazing...

I didn’t really do the drugs though. There was something about them... I took mushrooms a couple of times. There was one time I was at someone’s place in Brighton and I remember losing my way coming back from the loo. It was this big old three-storey Victorian semi they were doing up but what I didn’t realise was that it was actually two houses being knocked into one, and I went down the wrong staircase.’ 

I take a moment to remember the horror. 

‘So suddenly I was coming down what I’d thought was the stairs I’d gone up but now it was dark and deserted, and, get this – it was the mirror image of the place I’d come from. I was totally freaked out.’

‘Well, understandably’ she says smiling. It wasn’t funny at the time.

‘Have you ever done mushrooms?’ I say.

‘Acid, once. Never again.’

‘I know, it sounds like just a normal bad ‘shroom experience doesn’t it, but there was something else. I remember looking back up the stairs and knowing there was something wrong, and looking at the empty lounge to my left and I just knew it. Every door I looked at...’

‘What about the front door?’

‘Locked. I tried.’

I can still feel it now – that sick panic. I remember sliding down, my back to the front door and crouching there, waiting, with a smell of blood and shit all around, too afraid of being heard to shout for help.

‘Then I noticed there was another set of stairs below the ones I’d come down, going down to the basement, and, I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed before – there was a light on down there, and music playing.’ I see her relax and smile. She’s evidently been on the edge of her seat too. 

‘No, you don’t get it’ I say. ‘I knew that’s where the demons were, and I knew they’d come and get me when they were ready, and nobody would ever see me again.’

I can’t speak. It was all so real. They came for me in dreams for months after that - their smudged faces, their pale bodies... I used to wake up paralysed with fear, sweating, crying... 

‘I don’t know’ I mumble eventually.

‘What did you do?’

‘I broke a window, cut myself quite badly actually, getting out.’

‘It sounds like you gave yourself quite a scare.’

‘Yes but the point is, somehow, I knew they were real. It wasn’t just the mushrooms, or, maybe they’d freed something, let them out. It wasn’t just in my head. It was something that had really happened, somewhen, somewhere... I never took anything again.’

She looks at me quizzically. ‘You think it brought something from your previous lives, somehow, into your current life?’

‘Or from the afterlife, maybe, do you think?’

‘I don’t know. It’s plausible I suppose...’

‘Maybe that’s what hallucinations are. Maybe that’s what schizophrenia is, and nightmares?’

She purses her lips and frowns, thinking it over for a minute or two. ‘Could be’ she says, shrugging. ‘It’s an interesting theory. I could look into it.’

‘Thanks. I don’t know, maybe it was just my old worries about losing control, like if I got stoned or pissed it would all come back, all that past life stuff. That’s what I was afraid of – going back, getting trapped.’

We’re almost out of time. It’s a relief. She looks through her notes again and it occurs to me that in her eyes I’ve gone from interviewee to patient – from biography to case history, or possibly even charge sheet. Is it my imagination? Her whole demeanour seems to have shifted.

She mutters, slowly turning the pages. ‘Hmm’ she says ‘well we seem to have covered a lot of what I wanted – your parents, your time at school and art college and what you did afterwards... It all seems to have worked out well for you this time. But the issue that arises in previous accounts again and again as I see it, is this thing about your relationships with women, or the lack of them.’ She looks up at me. ‘Do you feel you dealt with that part of your life successfully this time?’

I huff and look about the room evasively. She knows she’s on to something. 

‘You’ve told me about Yve and Andrea...’ she goes on. ‘Do you have anything to add to that? We can talk about it next time.’

And that’s it. That’s where we’ve been heading all this time. Judgement day. I can almost hear the bells toll.

Voyage XII – Snake Oil and Wood Spirit

‘No, tell me’ says Raz ‘I’m genuinely interested.’
We’re in the sauna again, the four of us, inseparable. It’s the middle of the night, no one else is about and anyway, since the weather has improved outside it’s been quiet down here and we feel like it’s our space again. I don’t know why it feels so comfortable for me to be here, in a dark little wooden room, naked, with three naked women, dozing, sweating, dissolving, melting. It sounds like it ought to be very erotic but it isn’t. It’s just warm. We’re very close. I don’t know what that says about me.
The other day, in passing, Ruth had asked, without expecting an answer, what my suggestions for improvements were, since I apparently hated the world the way it was so much. I said I didn’t hate it. I just thought it had its priorities wrong. I knew she wasn’t really wanting to talk. She merely stopped by to show off her new cooler social life to us and to point out to them what losers we all were. Lisa all but snarled at her and asked if she didn’t have somewhere smarter to be. Ruth smiled superciliously and swanned off.
‘I really hate her’ said Lisa. ‘And it’s not a word I use often.’

Going back to Raz’s question, ‘I don’t know’ I begin wearily ‘I just have this very strong sense that the world could be a lot better, I mean we could change it to something radically and significantly better, if we chose to.’ I sit forward and dribble some more aromatic water onto the burner making it hiss and froth. We all slump a little further into the benches. ‘People always say that’s how the it is – just violence and inequality and exploitation, as if nothing else is possible, but I just don’t think that’s true.’
‘I admire your optimism, really I do, but I think I’ve seen too much’
‘You seem to be assuming I haven’t. I know what goes on Raz. I’m not under any illusions.’
We sit quietly for a while and I assume she’s dropped the subject but then she says ‘When I was in Burma we had this anti-venom kit we were pushing.’ I look over at her. She’s not talked about her work much before. Wen opens one eye to look at her, then closes it and goes back to her torpor. I look at Wen’s body again, fascinated by the proportions of it. She doesn’t need to wear anything to cover her private parts once she’s sat down – they’re completely obscured by her belly and thighs. Interesting...
‘I was in marketing’ continues Raz, ‘and they had this new product - Venone, they wanted to shift. It was like a simple kit anyone could take with them if they were out trekking or what have you, and we were promoting it to the tour companies, developers, scientists, that sort of thing. Anyway...’ She leans over and asks Lisa for some of her water. Lisa jumps a little when Raz touches her leg, shakes her head a little as if waking up and reaches over for the bottle. Then she smiles at me lazily through her hair. She knows I’ve been watching her. I don’t care. It’s just lust after all.
‘Anyway, we were visiting this little clinic up in the hills on one of the main trekking routes, chatting up the doctors, checking out the potential demand, enjoying a little sight-seeing in the process, and one of the surgeons is showing me around and she says that about five percent of the locals she treats have snake-bites and she shows me a room with three children and their mother and she’s been bitten and probably not going to make it without treatment and I ask her, the doctor, what they’ve got for her and she says nothing because it has to be brought in from the city and it’ll arrive too late to save her and I say what about this Venone stuff and she says she can’t afford it, none of them can and I go to Tim, he’s our manager and I ask if we can use one of the demo packs on this woman and he says yes it’ll be good PR.’
Raz is sitting bowed forward, staring at the stove, her hands clasped between her knees, her small breasts hanging, her thin belly creased, her black hair straggling around her face. She looks old.
I look at Lisa, who looks confused. ‘What happened?’ she says.
‘Oh she was fine. The treatment works almost instantaneously. There was a big party. They really laid on a big spread for us and everything.’
‘So that was a good thing then. You cured her.’
‘Yes.’ Still Raz looks on but not at the fire, nor beyond the fire at the door. She’s looking on into the blackness. Lisa and I watch. We’re all leaning forward, waiting.
‘What happened next?’ says Wen from behind me, but her tone of voice tells me she’s already guessed.
‘Next day, another victim, a little girl this time and everyone looks at us expectantly, and Tim says – I’ll always remember this – he said “Show’s over ladies and gentlemen. No more. Sorry” like it’s just been a circus stunt. And we move on to the next village.’
‘And the little girl?’
Raz shrugs. Wen leans back. She knew this was coming. Of course she does, she was working in places like that too.
‘Didn’t you have any more of the treatment?’ asks Lisa.
‘We had a crate full. Tim said we needed it for the other settlements and we couldn’t afford to just give it away.’
‘How much was it, to buy I mean?’ asks Lisa.
‘About fifty dollars a pack, three treatments per pack. Not that much...’
‘Not for a westerner’ says Wen.
‘No. We developed it for the westerners. Like I said, the locals couldn’t afford it.’
I say ‘Hang on, I don’t get it. Surely the locals got bitten more than the tourists?’
‘Much more’ says Raz, ‘but like Ruth said we weren’t a charity. We were there to make money and the locals didn’t have any.’
Silence. Somehow if she’d told us she’d stood by and let Tim rape a child we wouldn’t have felt very differently.
‘Did that sort of thing happen a lot?’ asks Wen after a while.
‘Well, lets just say it wasn’t an isolated incident’ says Raz, leaning forward, staring into the dark. ‘I’m not proud of it’ she says quietly.
‘How could you do that?’ says Lisa, moving down to face Raz. Raz turns and looks into Lisa’s angry face. She looks like she thinks Lisa might hit her and actually, Lisa looks like she might. Quite suddenly Lisa turns and leaves, letting the door slam behind her. I look around at Wen. She’s frowning hard at the ceiling. I’m going to have to go after her again I know. I get up and look down at Raz who looks up at me pathetically. ‘I really want to know’ she says, loosely taking my hand, then dropping it when I don’t respond. I’m not being deliberately hurtful. I know she wants absolution or something but I just don’t know what to say to her. Then Lisa reappears and Raz looks up at her hopefully but Lisa just strides past and goes out the other door to the pool. We hear her drop into the water as the door closes.

I find Lisa later in the library, looking at the music section. It’s almost light out and the thin mauve morning is illuminating the shelves around her. She says nothing but comes and sits close to me on the fat leather bench with a book on her knees. Then she throws her arms around my neck and sobs. I hold her close and wait. After a few minutes she leans back, still with her arms around me and looks into my face, searching my eyes. She runs a hand through my hair and looks at me some more then moves forward and kisses me powerfully almost as if she’s trying to consume me from the inside out and I can’t help but feed on her in return. It’s desperate. We stay like that for what seems like an hour or more, pressed against each other, struggling to get as close as we need to be.

Finally we were exhausted and knelt back, face to face and looked at each other. I felt sick and horrified and at the same time just wanted more – so much more. I curled down and closed my eyes and looked for my girl’s face but I couldn’t concentrate. I felt Lisa’s hand on my neck and grabbed it, not wanting her to take it away but unable to stand her tenderness. I suppose I squeezed it too tight because she flinched and pulled away. That made me just want to hold her more. I turned and sat, looking away from her, away from temptation. I suddenly realised I was truly dead and gone and I would never see my girl ever again.

Lisa sat with me in my room until I had finished crying. Then, as the ache subsided and I lay back across the bed exhausted, staring into space she asked me to tell her about my girl.
‘You never told me her name’
‘I can’t.’
‘What was she like?’
‘I’m sorry, I just can’t’ I say.
‘Tell me about the other girls then’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I’m interested. I want to know.’ She stops and thinks about it a bit more. ‘Maybe because I missed out on all that. Do you know, when I was alive I just used to read romance novels all the time? And films, like The English Patient, and The Bridges of Madison County? All hopeless love and wasted passion? I don’t know why.’
‘You’re a romantic.’
‘I am. Is that a bad thing?’
‘No. I am too.’
‘I know’ and she leans in on me, her head on my shoulder, hugging my arm. I kiss the top of her head again and stroke her back.

‘What do you want to know?’ I say.
‘How many girlfriends did you have?’ she says, briskly sitting back, kneeling on my bed, drying her eyes and being cheerful.
‘I’m not sure’ I say. I’m glad she didn’t ask how many women I had sex with because I do actually know the exact score. It’s a bloke thing – sad but true. ‘My first real girlfriend was at college. Her name was Yvonne, Yve. I’ve been telling my guide about her.’ And I go on to tell her a bit about her – her going to university and us drifting apart as a result, and that I lost my virginity with her – an 'older woman', and Lisa is gratifyingly impressed. She wants to know about the sex and I tell her I liked going down on her. That makes her squirm nicely. She tells me she never met a man who really enjoyed it. I give her an evil smile and the image of Lisa’s tender fair-haired vagina at the pool comes to mind. I shake my head and she laughs.
‘Who was next?’
‘Oh, there were a few at Art College, obviously.’
‘What were they like?’
‘Oh you know, arty types.’
‘Just one night stands and things?’
‘I suppose. I don’t know if I’m a one night stand sort of a guy to be honest. Usually I wanted to see more of them. Anyway, after I finished college there was Andrea. That was weird.’
‘Why?’
‘She was always insisting we’d met in a previous life. It was the sort of hippy shit people came out with at those sorts of gatherings – I met her at a festival, but I’m actually fairly sure she was right.’
‘What was the festival? Was it like Glastonbury?’
‘Something like that – the Wood Spirit festival. She was training to be a doctor but she used to go round the festies in the summer and do reiki and deep tissue massages – stuff like that. I met her when I went for a massage.’
‘Did you go to a lot of festies? I always wanted to do that.’
‘You’d have liked the saunas.’
‘Was everyone wandering around naked all the time?’ she asks with a cheeky grin on her face.
‘Around the saunas yes. Not so much elsewhere.’
‘God I’d have liked to have done all that.’
‘Maybe you will, next time.’
‘Oh I’m not going back.’ She gets up and begins to pace about in the tiny area of floor, ending up slowly twirling on the spot.
‘No? Maybe it won’t happen again, the ME I mean.’
‘I couldn’t take the risk. It’s not like I’ll know what to avoid. No, I’ve thought about it and I really don’t want to. It’s ok.’
‘No, fair enough. Fair enough.’
‘Tell me about Andrea. What did she look like?’
‘Oh she was amazing – she had really pale white skin – she had to be really careful in the sun, and she had really bright blue green eyes and rich red hair. I think she used to henna it but it was naturally very red, and really thick. You could take great handfuls of it and...’ I have this memory of taking her from behind, holding her hair wound around my fist, pulling her head back, making her gasp, then turning her head and eating ravenously at her lips and tongue, her broad white back arched, her heavy breasts hanging below and her chunky white arse spread out in front of me – a winged tattoo across the small of her back.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘Erm...’
‘You’re thinking about her aren’t you’ she says gleefully, leaning forward and poking me in the ribs. I nod my head, smiling guiltily.
‘You dirty old sod. Tell me about it’ she says and after a little prodding I begin to talk about how we were together, Andrea and I, and I am aware that Lisa is sliding onto my bed and getting comfortable facing me, her pale cotton trousers stretched tight between her legs. The small smile on her lips tells me what she is thinking. I am caught between the delicious feeling of anticipation – that I’m quite certain I could take her, and the certainty that I can’t let it happen. Is she doing this to me on purpose? Probably, but I don’t want it to stop. I tell her about Andrea’s fat white breasts and her big pink nipples with their silver rings, and the nicely rounded rolls of belly and the ginger fuzz below. I tell her how I loved to get down and bury my face between her legs and breath her body’s perfume in. I look at Lisa and her eyes are wide and fixed on mine.
‘Oh God...’ she breathes and closes her legs. ‘I never...’ she says flapping her hands in the air, as if scattering the image as it flutters about her head. ‘My ex... wasn’t into it, didn’t want to. Was it good, for her I mean?’
‘It got results, if that’s what you mean.’ I observe her dishevelment candidly, and she giggles girlishly and holds her hair across her face, hiding from me. Then she straightens up and looks away, thinking about something. ‘Did she, you know, to you too?’
I pretend I don’t know what she means and she goes ‘Oh you know what I’m talking about don’t you. You’re doing it on purpose...’
‘Why don’t you just say it? Go on. Say the word...’ and I mouth the B at her and she giggles and squirms some more and hides her face behind a cushion as if I’m flinging stuff at her. I look at her feet, long and narrow and perfect and take one of them in my hands and suddenly have the memory of doing this to Yve all those years ago. Lisa stops to look at what I’m doing and quietens down. ‘Ok’ she says ‘Did Andrea ever give you a BJ?’
‘A BJ?’ I say, laughing, and tickle her feet and she squirms around giggling some more.
‘Actually’ I say, deliberately breaking the mood ‘Andrea was not all that good at “BJs” as you call them.’
‘Oh. That’s disappointing’ she says, drawing her knees up and peering at me over them.
‘Well, actually, to be honest, not that many women are, in my experience. I mean, it’s easy to get a man to come, in a run of the mill way, obviously, but...’
‘But?’
‘But it’s not always that great, as orgasms go. I think a lot of men like the idea of a blow job...’
She sits back, giggling again ‘Sorry sorry’ she says, ‘but it’s just such a silly name. I mean, I don’t mind saying wank or tits or whatever, it’s just Blow Job. It’s so stupid. There must be a better thing to call it.’
‘Fellatio?’ I suggest.
‘What? No.’ she shrieks. ‘Yuk! Why does that always make me think of men in periwigs and breeches?’
‘Whatever turns you on I suppose.’
‘That’s not what I meant and you know it. Anyway, you were saying, erm... something... men like blow jobs because...’
‘Ah yes. I think it’s all about humiliation and domination, having a woman on her knees and so on. There’s all those porn sites about facials. I don’t really get it myself.’
‘I think Mick, my ex... God, I haven’t said his name for ages... Anyway, I think Mick thought giving a woman... whatever the equivalent of a blow job is, was demeaning.’
Her voice trails off and she sits quietly again, thinking, playing with her hair. I rub her feet some more and try not to think about her vagina.
‘So you really liked it, going down on her’ she says, trying to be cool, still looking at her hair. I nod, waiting, not knowing what to do. ‘But you didn’t really like having it done to you...’
‘I liked it, don’t get me wrong. It’s just... it’s not my favourite part. There’s the actual, you know... fucking... for example...’
‘Maybe you just never had a really good one’ she says, suddenly grinning at me, rolling her tongue lewdly around in her cheek.
‘Ah, now that’s where you’re wrong.’
‘So go on, tell me. Who was it? Was it your wife?’
I give her a cryptic grin. ‘Later’ I say. ‘After breakfast maybe.’
‘Aw’ she says but I can tell she needs a distraction as much as I do. I wonder on the way, how this particular type of intercourse we’ve been indulging in stands on the scale of infidelity. I fear we may have entered the realm of loopholes and that thought doesn’t make me happy. I just want her so much and the idea of her going off with someone else out of sheer frustration is actually painful. I don’t know what to do. I can feel myself failing.

Journey XII – Mother Mountain

A few days later Ross appeared in the early morning and without saying anything much, handed me some work boots and some leather gloves and walked with me for about half an hour along dusty lanes and through the fields to a place where they were getting the ground ready for planting. The fields were quite sizeable but divided up into strips about six feet wide with raised paths dividing them, and the soil, I was surprised to see (considering the parched, rock like red stuff seen elsewhere), was deep and dark, from untold centuries of recycling the town’s organic waste onto it apparently. He told me they flooded it periodically with river water using a system of channels set into the hillside. On our way we passed blocks of beans and cucumbers, corn, spinach and yams and a whole lot of other crops I didn’t recognise. Finally we came to a group of dusty individuals and Ross introduced me to one of them – a woman called Lo who apparently was in charge. They were there that day preparing some seedbeds for salads. The method was very different to what I was used to – making sunken rather than raised beds. It occurred to me that it would have been a good method back home when I was trying to grow stuff on the chalk. Raised beds dried out so quickly and any water you put on just ran away – obvious really. I didn’t realise until break time that it was the little veggie plot I’d had in life that I’d been remembering, and the place I’d lived in, and the woman I’d lived with. It was my first real memory of the past. I looked around but there was no one here I knew well enough to tell about it so I kept it to myself. The others looked like they had problems of their own anyway. I caught Lo watching me sideways a couple of times. Well, why wouldn’t she? She looked like she could take care of herself in a fight. But it didn’t matter. It was no one else’s business. I’d had a wife and a home and a garden and we’d been happy. That would have to do for the time being.

The work went on at a fairly relaxed pace and we took breaks quite frequently. About every two hours we collapsed on a pile of rugs and sacks under a pomegranate bush and the others got their books out or chatted quietly or just looked about. Everybody else had some food or drink with them but there was a plentiful supply of roasted and salted nuts and seeds and fresh fruit provided and some sweet fragrant lemon water to keep us going. At midday all the teams went down to the river for an hour or so and those that wanted to threw their work clothes off and jumped in. I needed absolutely no encouragement to join them.
Next day I improved my working day considerably by bringing along a broad brimmed straw hat I’d found in the house, some bread, cheese and tomatoes, a towel and a bottle to carry water in.

Over the next few weeks we moved on from bed to bed, starting new crops off, going back and checking the older ones, weeding, using the channels for irrigation, applying mulch to the larger plants as they grew and then, as time went on we did the harvesting too. Considering the number of breaks we took (or maybe because of them) we got a remarkable amount done. The yield was prodigious. I wasn’t used to growing food in a tropical climate and probably the quality of the soil was a big help, but the fact that, although there were pests and diseases about, they never really seemed to get out of hand was probably the most important thing. There was something spooky about how well balanced everything seemed to be. I thought of the constant battle with the forces of mollusca that had made gardening back in life less of a leisure activity and more like a siege. I used to get so excited if a rove beetle or a slow worm or a thrush turned up and I encouraged them lavishly with food and hide-outs. Here you’d hardly dislodged a caterpillar before any number of small beasties had come along to take it away and dismember it. Weeds were a different matter though. They grew almost perceptibly and their seeds were everywhere popping off and sticking to our clothes and one had to be constantly vigilant to keep on top of them.

At the end of the week, whatever money was available was shared out. It turned out that most of us only worked three or four days each week (which paid for a basic but wholesome sort of lifestyle) so that I had enough time to seriously get down to work on my painting which was transmogrifying into something more allegorical. I’d had to tape down several extra sheets of paper to accommodate it. Otherwise I tended to my own plot, explored the beaches and coves in the vicinity and made further excursions into the forest.

Working in the fields, the town was always a presence, not half a mile away, sometimes serene, sometimes brooding, always self-contained. When the wind was in the right direction I could hear the voices and smell the food and on a couple of evenings there came some almost painfully sweet, haunting music, drifting down to me as I sat in my own garden. I didn’t feel I dared go and see what was happening and no one invited me. It saddened me when I thought about them but I wasn’t surprised and I tried not to think about it. I kept myself occupied.
Kevin was the only person I saw at all regularly. I liked strolling along the coast, beach-combing along the base of the low crumbling cliff, under the screw pines and coconut palms, sifting among the debris there, watching the sun go down and the waves come in and the tides run back and forth. His place was on the edge of a small shanty of rather bleached shacks at the back of the beach just where the coast got rockier and the water deeper. His little community specialised in providing seafood for the town and refreshments for the townsfolk when they came down to swim. There were also surfers and divers and the owners of boats among them and I repeatedly hinted that I’d like to go out with him in his. Again I was disappointed but not surprised that he never took me up on it. No one wants to be trapped on a small boat out at sea with a homicidal maniac. I was surprised they let me loose with a trowel sometimes.
Even so we lounged on his veranda or at the bar with our beers and fish suppers at least once a week and chatted a little – never about anything from the past – just about things that were pertinent to the here and now. I didn’t push. We just sat there in silent masculine fellowship most of the time. It was ok.

Nights were different. I still woke up very early most days, sweating and tearful. Sometimes I could remember what I’d seen and sometimes not. The same three places kept coming up – the frozen mountain, the war zone and that so-called paradise.
I knew I’d somehow managed to get myself lost looking for someone, and I’d got caught on a mountainside in a gully when the winter came in.
In the bottom of the gully I remember was a pond – crystal clear and barely differentiable from the surrounding frosty air but for a translucent green film that covered everything below the surface. I nearly walked into it in the mist. Big grey fish moved sluggishly in its depths and I remember thinking I could maybe get in and catch one I was so hungry, but I didn’t want to get wet. I wondered what would happen if I actually froze through. Would I remain conscious whilst frozen solid? I remember looking about me at the pinnacles of rock above and beyond. I’d found my way up and over a craggy edge that day and down through a small ravine, trying to stay out of the wind. Finally I’d found my way to this place where I rested and the freezing fog was moving in along with the darkness and I pitched my tent and settled in for what I thought would be a day or two. As it was it snowed heavily in the night and in the morning I had to burrow my way out. The next night it snowed again and I had to burrow twice as far. The tent was stuck fast and I wondered when the weight of snow would crush it.
Those first few days I went out and walked as far as seemed safe, trying to find some clue as to where the others might have gone but with each day the already weak light became more and more fleeting and I spent more and more time in the tent. Probably it was not more than a month before I retired hopelessly into hibernation. I have no idea how long I was there, nor why I was not lost for good in that place. I remember strange people coming to see me and talk to me sometimes. I suppose I must have been hallucinating. They told me it was time to give up – there was no point in trying any more, and to come with them, but I didn't.

Before all that happened there had been seven or eight of us travelling together I think. I remember three women, or perhaps four – one thin, one fat and one tall with very long hair. I remember her especially. I remember us coming over a rise and the rain whipping us in the face. Raz – that was her name – the thin one – was very tired and crotchety and we stood there looking across this vast plain and watching the rain clouds drive across it in wave after wave. Beyond, in the distance we could see a colossal grey mountain with a minuscule town nestled at its foot. That’s where we were headed for, said our guide – Moira her name was – a little Scots woman, very energetic but frankly a bit harsh. She’d kept us moving non-stop for the last few days and several of our original party had given up and stayed back at a settlement as soon as they’d got the chance. She said it was going to be worth our while to get to this place she had in mind but that it was not safe to stop anywhere on the way, so we kept going. I’m trying to remember the name of the fat woman. She was excellent company. She was the one that kept our spirits up. She and the tall woman kept making up songs and stories. I know they pissed Moira off considerably.
Anyway we stopped for the night on this ridge and looked at this mountain with its little town and the fat woman said ‘That’s one hell of a mountain, and I’ve seen some big mountains – I’ve been to the Andes and I’ve seen Aconcagua and that’s not as big as this thing.’ Wen her name was. I remember now.

In the morning the weather had cleared somewhat and we began to head down into the valley and I remember we were all chatting quite happily, enjoying what sunshine there was when Wen just stopped and stood there, mouth open and we looked around to see what she was looking at.
It wasn’t obvious at first. There was the town, with the mountain silhouetted behind it as before, but then, once our eyes accustomed themselves to the light another shape resolved itself above the mountain – a huge towering shadow dwarfing it completely. It was another mountain, even bigger.
We all stood there shocked. It was like thinking you’d met a very tall man of seven feet or so and then being introduced to his twenty-foot brother. It was terrifying.
I’d noticed – every so often this place would do something like that to you, as if to just gently remind you that you are not home or anywhere like it.
‘Good isn’t it’ said Moira gleefully coming up behind us. She pushed through and left us gawping for quite a while.
‘I wish I had my camera’ said Raz.

We reached the settlement two days later. It was not the town we had seen (‘That’s nothing special’ Moira said) but a smaller place further up, a collection of timber buildings reminiscent, Raz remarked, of villages in the mountains of western China and Tibet. I think we stayed there for several nights in very simple cabins built out over the precipice looking down onto the tops of the firs below and beyond them to the river in its gorge and then across at the very lowest slopes of what we knew by now to be the Mother Mountain.
I remember lying there on the veranda with the sleeping chamber behind us with Raz and Wen and the other one (Lisa, that was her name) and looking out through the incessant rain and drinking our tea. I remember it all seeming very pleasant and care-free there, the four of us, laughing and joking, and there were a couple of other people we’d got to know too who seemed ok, although I didn’t really want anyone new to disturb our little party. There was John I remember, who’d been staying at this place for the last year or so and was ready to move on and Anna, who had been with us from the beginning. Anna and John were rather keen on each other as I recall so I judged they offered little threat to our little clique, but something bothered me even then, something about there being another male in the mix perhaps.
My last memory is of the four of us, Raz, Wen, Lisa and I, warm and relaxed, curled up among the quilts and cushions in the shelter as night came down, watching the trees and screes on the opposite side of the gorge disappear into the darkness, and listening to the rain in the roof, and there was the smell of wood smoke and incense and the spices in our leftover food and the scent of the last honeysuckle blossoms, and last but not least the surprisingly sweet scent of Lisa’s hair against my face. I think I must have been in love with her.

That was the morning I woke up here crying – remembering her like that.
It was her I was looking for when I got lost, and it had something to do with John and Anna, I’m sure of it, but I can’t think what.

Alison XIV – Fame and Fortune

‘So how did you do at college? Your results I mean.’ asks Alison the next time I see her. It’s raining out and we’re back in our little room again.
‘I did ok – a good 2.1. They said I was “technically very proficient and had a good eye.” I think that was their way of telling me I didn’t have much originality but there you go. Back then a lot of what was going on was about framing each other’s faeces, so no, I was just a bit too workman-like for them. One of them actually called me an artisan, as if that was a criticism. I didn’t care. It got me onto a post-grad project.’
‘Like a Phd?’
‘More like a master’s.’
‘How was that?’
‘Good. I learned a lot – there was a lot of history and anthropology involved – stuff I didn’t know about music and film and so on. Then after that there was an arts council funded project that took me on. I think at the time, despite the feint praise, I still had this idea that I might actually really make a name for myself, make a difference, all that stuff – be important, if you know what I mean.’ I feel defensive and self-conscious talking about it now, but she reassures me.
‘You genuinely felt your work could be successful.’
‘Well, like I say, I really liked what I was doing, and I just thought, well if I like it there’s a reasonable chance others will too.’

Mum and dad wouldn’t have seen it that way. They’d have assumed that if I liked something it was pretty much a given that nobody else would, but I was learning to ignore their opinions. At the time I was doing a lot of small pieces, some very small, as well as the larger panoramas. I painted back rooms in old houses, attics and basements, pantries and outside loos. I did deserted beach huts, garden sheds full of old tools and overgrown corners of gardens. Anywhere where there was a lot of broken, decaying, rusting and cobwebbed junk, or even just some bare dusty floorboards and some grimy windowpanes. I found some wonderful ready-made collages of bits of old newsprint, labels and advertisements in an off-licence that was due to be pulled down. A lot of my work was unashamedly nostalgic but I just thought – this is not some sanitised cosy image of our lives – this is our history. This is what we’re losing. Nostalgia literally means homesickness and that’s what it was about. I called the exhibition Nostalgia anyway, just to let them know I knew. I liked to think of it as post post-modern.

‘Did you sell anything?’
‘Not too bad. I didn’t lose money but it wasn’t really enough to live on so I had to do other things to make ends meet.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, I got commissioned for this big council project – something for a health centre out on one of the estates.’
‘And that was good? Making a difference?’
‘You’d think so wouldn’t you? But it was all just so much bullshit – all the politics – grovelling about for funding, cutting corners, using cheap crappy materials to save on costs, having to stick to ridiculous deadlines, and constantly having to make changes because some dipshit who knows nothing about art has a friend on the committee. Anyway... when that didn’t pan out I applied for some other things – media jobs, galleries and so on... I don’t know if you’ve found this, all employers seem to expect everyone to be a people person, a team player or whatever... Doesn’t matter what else you might have to offer, you’ve got to be an extravert. It’s as if wanting to quietly just get on with your job is some sort of mental illness...’
‘It’s the triumph of ambition over talent’ she says wryly. ‘All too common these days I’m afraid.’ Clearly she knows exactly what I mean. The truth is there was a time when I believed, despite everything my family said, that I could be someone remarkable, someone exceptional, a person to be reckoned with. I don’t know where that came from, but in the end it didn’t matter all that much. It wasn’t worth the stress, the long hours and pretending to be someone I was not.
‘I just didn’t have the motivation I guess. I do my best work if I have time to wander about and think and work things out for myself. Anyway it’s their loss. I just got on with doing what I was good at.’
‘You could have put your prices up surely, to make enough money.’
‘I suppose so. I don’t know. I was told I could easily have charged six times what I did. I don’t know. I loved my work. I couldn’t really justify it. I mean, it’s only painting. It’s not life and death is it? It’s not like I was baking bread or delivering babies or something. I worked it out once, the hours I spent painting and including all my materials, rent and a generous dollop of other expenses and I would have been on twelve times what my dad earned, hour for hour, doing something I loved, whenever I felt like it.’
‘So how come you didn’t make more money?’ she asks. ‘You could have asked for, say, three times what he earned’
‘I did. I just couldn’t paint enough. I could never do it as a full-time job. If I tried to work too much all the inspiration went out the window. It just became plodding and dreary. I couldn’t really work more than about three full days a week and stay keen. I had to go and do other things, and get some proper rest too.’
‘So how did you make ends meet?’
‘I did a bit of teaching.’
‘What did you teach?’ she says brightly, consulting her notes.
‘Painting, drawing, life classes, at the tech. That was good. I liked teaching.’

It was handy too. I found I could teach the equivalent of three days a week and still earn enough to live in a manner considerably better than that to which I had become accustomed, and spend much of the rest of the week (and the long academic holidays) travelling and painting. The fact that I was not making a name for myself as the new Lucien Freud did not trouble me much. I’d found myself a place in Lewes – a room at the top of one of those very tall, very narrow Georgian town houses down one of the twittens. It was a wonderful pokey four-storey place, full of light and life and Mit, the owner was generally easy going. The rest of the house was crammed with her books and plants and miscellaneous bits and pieces and the kitchen, although tiny, had every possible spice, grain and pulse known to man, neatly labelled in jars on three of its walls. For the fourth wall there was an old lean-to greenhouse she’d filled with coriander, tomatoes, basil and cannabis plants making a thick herbal miasma to sit in of an evening. She rarely cooked but when she did the result was mountainous and we had to invite in teams of random friends to help us consume it. Mit was a real old hippy – doyenne of the festival circuit and purveyor of circus skills. Everybody knew her and although she could be very tetchy at times, she knew when to leave well alone so we got along fine. She’d been there a good ten years before I turned up but she was not controlling and she always apologised when she knew she’d been unreasonable. Anyway, it meant I could have the occasional freak out too without being taken for an escaped lunatic.
She was the one who introduced me to the festivals and everything that went with them. After the first one I went to I had my own djembe, a set of runes, a sacred basil plant and the phone number of a very sexy redhead called Andrea who’d given me a deep tissue massage and told me to lay off the coffee and eat more cabbage.

Voyage XI – Post viral

Lisa has met someone. It shouldn’t bother me but he seems so insipid, so weak. I think she could do better. He’s been hanging out with us up on deck, very self-consciously, being very friendly, evidently expecting me to ‘bond’ with him in some way. I haven’t been very welcoming so far I must admit. I note with relief that she stays up with us as usual when he turns in for the night. I smile and try to be jolly about the whole thing. Raz eyes me with amusement. I don’t know what she expects me to do.
‘Not seen anything of Ruth lately’ says Lisa, blatantly avoiding the subject.
‘Good riddance’ says Wen quietly from deep in her sofa. Lisa, commendably still seems to think we shouldn’t be so mean but none of us are missing her.
‘Tell us about Trevor then’ says Raz. ‘What’s he like, what does he do, have you shagged him yet?’
Lisa blushes fiercely. ‘Oh, I don’t know’ she says eventually. ‘He seems like a nice enough chap but I don’t know. What do you think, honestly?’
‘He seems nice’ says Raz. We all nod and agree he seems nice, as far as any of us can tell from what little he’s said.
‘What do you think Gabe?’ says Raz, leadingly.
‘Oh God, I’m no judge...’
‘Do you think he’s good enough for our Lisa?’
Wen smirks at me. Lisa seems preoccupied with her hair, looking for split ends or something. I shrug. She knows I can’t lie. I don’t want to.
‘He’s not really my type’ I say flippantly. Lisa turns and looks at me sideways. I pretend not to notice. ‘He’s a bit, I don’t know... I feel that she, or you, rather... He’s not the sort of person I imagined you with I suppose.’
She mumbles something and slumps back in her chair, holding the strands of hair in front of her face, sorting out some tangles. It’s what she does when she’s unhappy about something I’ve noticed.
‘Sorry darling. Didn’t catch that’ says Raz.
‘I said maybe I just want him for sex. Maybe that’s all I want.’ She continues to run her fingers through her hair, untangling non-existent knots. Then she gets up, neatly picks up her books and says goodnight, avoiding eye-contact with any of us. After she’s been gone about ten seconds Raz hisses at me to go after her. I attempt to prevaricate but go anyway. I find her on the stairs, apparently making up her mind what to do, or possibly waiting for one of us to come and look for her. She looks very unhappy. I stand there at the foot of the steps, unable to think of anything useful to say and she sits down on a step half way up, her shawl drawn tight around her. She still won’t look at me. Almost immediately someone wants to get past.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to...’ I begin.
‘It’s ok. I know anyway. I just wish sometimes...’ and we lapse into silence again.
‘Come back to the bar. Talk to me, to us, I mean’
‘I can’t’ she says. ‘Maybe later’ and she looks so sad I can’t bring myself to leave her so I sit down on the step two down from her and inevitably another three people need to come past.
‘Come up on deck and talk to me’ I say and hold out my hand. She takes it and we go up and find a seat. It’s very peaceful up there tonight, just the birds and the Spanish guitar to keep us company. The waves are slightly phosphorescent. As we sit down she keeps hold of my hand and puts her head on my shoulder. I feel a sudden panic rise in me. It’s as much as I can do not to jump up and run. I feel so incredibly guilty, like my wife might appear and catch us at any moment, or she’s maybe watching us. Except she wouldn’t have minded. She trusted me and I never let her down. I need to remember that. I look down at Lisa’s head on my shoulder and smooth her hair a little. It’s very soft and silky. Baby hair. I need to tell her that I’ll be her friend but nothing else without her feeling rejected. I suspect she’d deny she wanted anything else anyway, and maybe that’s true but she’s so proud and touchy I can’t be sure. Anyway I don’t want her to have to expose herself like that. ‘Lisa’ I say, softly, without knowing what comes next and she looks up at me and I think I might kiss her. She has the loveliest lips.
‘It’s ok’ she says ‘I do understand.’
Now I definitely don’t know what to say.
‘You love your wife. I admire that. I never really thought... Anyway...’
‘What about Trevor?’ I say.
‘Oh God, what about Trevor?’ she says and slumps back against the chair (but still holds my hand.) ‘I don’t know what to do about him. Isn’t he hopeless? Actually I think he’s a little like me.’ She lets go of my hand.
‘What? How do you work that out?’
‘Oh I don’t know. He’s sort of lost. I don’t think he ever got any either. Oh look, can we go down again? It’s not that warm up here is it.’
I say ‘fine’ and we head down again to sit with Raz and Wen. Wen goes to get more food and drink. There’s a good seafood platter on offer and Lisa, uncharacteristically wants to try some.

‘I died of ME’ says Lisa, wiping her hands on a napkin having polished off an obscene number of oysters and crevettes.
‘Really? What, the yuppie flu? Can a person die of that?’ says Raz and immediately regrets it.
‘You know, I really hate all that “yuppie flu” nonsense. Sorry Raz but I do.’
‘Sorry sweetheart, my mistake. Carry on.’
‘I died of kidney failure. They just packed up. My body was just shutting down completely but my kidneys went first.’
‘Bloody hell’ says Wen, reaching forward and taking another prawn.
‘Anyway. That’s all really.’
‘How long did this go on for?’ I say.
‘Since I was about twenty-three’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘It came and went for years but then when I was fifty-three it just took over. I couldn’t move.’
‘Did you have anyone to help you? Family? Friends?’
‘Not really. Mum tried but she was too old to cope.’
‘And what is it, a virus or something?’
‘They still don’t really know. They can test for it now though, so it’s not actually all in the mind.’ She glances pointedly at Raz.
‘I never said...’
‘But you thought it. It’s ok. I do it myself. I hate it. If you have a condition with no visible symptoms everybody just thinks you need to pull yourself together. I used to think so too. The number of times I thought if I could just force myself, push through it and keep working but it just made it worse. I still felt guilty though, like I just wasn’t trying hard enough.’
‘I’m sorry sweetie. I didn’t mean to...’
‘It’s really ok’ she says and gives Raz a hug. Suddenly Raz looks very small, like the little old lady she was when she died.
‘What did you do about treatment?’ asks Wen.
‘Oh the usual. I tried all the “complementary” therapies’ (she does the air quotes thing with her fingers) ‘but to be honest I didn’t really believe in them very much. I think they mostly work by placebo effect and you need to have a bit of faith in whatever they’re giving you for that, don’t you. I don’t know. I had this homeopath giving me remedies and then I’d get worse and she’d say “it often gets worse before it gets better”, and then I’d maybe get better for a while but then I realised it did the same thing whether I took any remedies or not, so it all seemed a bit pointless, and expensive too.’
‘What about diet?’ asks Wen.
‘Yep, I did all the detox thing, vegan, probiotics, antioxidants, everything’
‘And?’
‘Hard to tell. The thing is, I believe it’s actually a symptom of the whole way we live – all the food additives and solvents and other pollutants in the air and so on.’
Wen sits forward and takes a deep breath. I glance at Raz who gives me a little smile.
‘I mean do you know how many completely new chemicals are invented and released into the world each year?’ continues Lisa. ‘It’s thousands, hundreds of thousands, and they don’t really know what any of them do to the body long term.’
‘No I’m sorry love’ says Wen ‘this is plain anti-scientific new age hokum Lisa.’
‘I’m not anti science’ says Lisa, clearly quite offended. ‘Excuse me’ she insists, ‘I am not anti science.’
Wen shakes her head. ‘It’s based on the same howler as the whole organic food movement Lisa – natural chemicals good, artificial chemicals bad. All life on earth has been exposed to environmental poisons since the year dot. There’s absolutely no evidence whatsoever that any of these “detox diets” have any therapeutic value whatsoever. Your body is perfectly capable of dealing with toxins and has done so since time immemorial. I mean if you look at all the phytotoxins, sorry, plant toxins we ingest...’
‘We know what phytotoxins are Wen’ says Lisa irritably ‘but no...’
‘I didn’t know’ I say, raising my hand timidly.
Lisa shakes her head. ‘The point I’m making is that yes, we evolved over millions of years to deal with all these naturally occurring poisons in our environment, but here now there are all these totally new molecules about that could be doing all sorts of weird things to us...’
‘Well there’s very little evidence...’ says Wen, more impatiently.
‘They haven’t done the proper long-term studies. This is what I’m saying. The problems are likely to come out slowly and they’ll be almost impossible to pin down to a definite cause. And then there’s interactions and they probably affect different people different ways. Look at the kinds of things people are suffering from these days – tumours, autoimmune problems, food intolerances, migraines, premature births, depression, lack of energy, infertility – all disorders at the molecular level.’
‘Lisa, look...’
‘It’s like, if you do any biology at all – really study how the body works – it’s amazing it functions at all, it’s all so finely tuned with all these specialised cells with their receptor sites and these incredibly intricate protein molecules – hormones and enzymes and antibodies and then there’s the DNA itself, and nerve function and friendly bacteria and it’s all so delicate and then we have these weird new molecules coming along maybe reacting with them and distorting them. Radiation too. I don’t mean actual radioactive waste, although that is a problem, I mean radio waves and microwaves. Up until about a century ago there wasn’t any of it but now we all have wi-fi and satellite TV and tracking devices and the air’s full of it and...’
She quite suddenly comes to a self-conscious halt, somewhat out of breath. ‘Sorry. I go on a bit...’ she says fanning her face. She’s actually gone quite pink.
We all sit there a quietly for a while. I don’t know about the others but I’m impressed. But then, I’m no scientist. Wen leans in.
‘But seriously Lisa, that’s all just idle speculation. We can all...’
‘There’s nothing idle about it Wen’ says Lisa loudly and she’s off again. ‘You say there’s “no evidence” and you think that means there’s no problem but I say there’s no evidence because the research hasn’t been done.’
‘Lisa’ says Wen, more stridently this time. ‘This doesn’t work. I could claim there’s a teapot in orbit around Mars. There’s no evidence to the contrary and no way of obtaining it.’
‘But my claim makes sense Wen. It makes logical practical sense – unlike your teapot hypothesis. And by the way, I was older than you, although I may not look it.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Well you do talk down to me Wen – like I’m just some silly girl. I’m not a child you know.’
There’s an awkward silence. Wen actually looks embarrassed, which is a first. ‘So what do you propose Lisa? More research?’ she says after a pause, as respectfully as she can, visibly suppressing her irritation.
‘Maybe, but I just don’t think they’ll find it. It’s too big and the connections will be too hard to make. It’s like that thing with microwave ovens they discovered a couple of years back.’
‘But that wasn’t anything to do with the microwave radiation itself.’
‘No but the radiation was altering the plastic which then reacted with the fruit acids and caused the autoimmune disease. You can look up the studies. It’s all there in the literature Wen.’
‘Ok...’
‘And it took them thirty years of everyone eating ready meals before they even noticed the connection.’
‘Ok, so what are you proposing?’ says Wen.
‘I just think, if you look at the whole picture, how much things have changed over the last century and you think how short a time that is for anything to evolve at all, you’d simply have to conclude there’s bound to be a problem. I’m actually not saying we should do more studies to see if there is a problem. I’m saying we should assume there probably is a problem.’ Wen goes to say something but Lisa goes on ‘And then there’s nano-particles, and GMOs too. We have no idea what new substances they might be releasing into the environment. Sorry Wen, you were going to say something? Sorry.’
‘Never mind’ she says, laughing a little.
‘I know. I’m doing it again. Sorry.’
Raz looks appraisingly at her, with a little smile on her lips.
Lisa goes on ‘I mean, people these days are allergic to milk, and peanuts, and fruit for God’s sake. I mean, what’s that all about? They’ve been part of a healthy diet for centuries and then wham! No good. I just think we’ve rushed ahead and we haven’t really thought about what we’re doing at all. The chemical firms just want to make money and they just don’t care. I’m sorry but it’s true.’
‘No need to apologise sweetie’ says Raz ‘I actually worked in pharmaceuticals.’
‘Really? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to...’
‘No no. I have to confess I’ve been thinking a lot about what we were up to since... well you know, since I wound up here. The thing is sweetheart, there’s too much money at stake. They’d never agree to what you’re saying.’
‘I know that.’
‘I know it must piss you off something rotten.’
‘It’s just, all my life everybody’d look at me like I should just bloody well snap out of it, like I enjoyed being in bed all the time and not going to work but I’d have loved to have the energy... I so envied them, well, people like you two for example, because you could just get up and do things, and just take that for granted. There were so many things I wanted to do...’ And she looks away and refuses to cry. ‘I think I need some sleep’ she says eventually, and we all decide it’s time for bed and accompany her along to the cabins.

Next day Lisa joins me for breakfast. We’re sitting there and she’s stirring her coffee, round and round, very preoccupied. I look around the room. Not many of us about yet. It’s early. Outside the weather looks less overcast but it’s still raining nevertheless. It rains a lot in the afterlife it seems. Finally she taps the spoon on the rim and puts it down.
‘I never drank coffee in life, well, not after I got sick. Everybody told me I shouldn’t and yet it has all sorts of health benefits, did you know that? Apart from keeping you awake at night it has almost no down side. Isn’t that interesting? It’s pure prejudice, and I went along with it. How silly is that?’
‘You did a lot of research into foods and things I take it.’
‘Oh, absolutely everything.’
‘What did you want to do, I mean before?’
‘Oh, I don’t know’ she shrugs, cutting her pain au chocolat into slices. The melted chocolate gets onto her fingers and lips. She licks it off but then gets more of the chocolate on her face in the process. I hand her a napkin. ‘I never ate these either’ she says, taking it from me and dabbing her cheek. ‘Chocolate and butter, sugar, wheat. Maybe I should have. I might have been happier anyway, even if I was still sick. There’s evidence that chocolate is good for ME. No I wanted to work with children actually. I trained as a child-minder but then, obviously you can’t go into a collapse when you’ve got a load of kids to look after, so...’ and she shrugs again. She tries to act like it’s all in the past but I can see it’s not.
‘I still think sometimes if I could just have tried harder maybe...’ she muses, distractedly. ‘I think it was when I hit forty... It’s a weird feeling, when you reach a certain point in your life, and you’ve been living with this thing and always thinking one day it’ll go away and your life will begin properly... And then one day, it just hits you that this is it. This is your life. You’ve only got one, and this is it. This is how it’s going to be. I can’t explain it. It just feels like the ultimate... well, disappointment I suppose. I’m not explaining myself well. It’s like, normally a “disappointment” is something fairly trivial that makes you sad or fed up or whatever but you get over it. It’s something you deal with, like not getting to go to the pictures or not being allowed more gateau, or getting dumped. You move on. But this, it was exactly the same kind of feeling – of disappointment, but magnified so it just filled everything. It was just impossible to get over. It’s the rest of your life that you’re not going to get. All those ideas and plans and hopes you had are not going to happen. There isn’t something else you can do instead. There aren’t any more fish in the sea, just this one big one, and it’s dead. Do you see what I mean?’
‘Actually you’ve explained it very well’ I say. ‘I’d never thought about it like that before.’
‘I suppose everybody who dies young feels that way’ she adds.
‘Still...’
‘Oh sod all that’ she says, vigorously shaking her head. ‘Tell me about you.’
I act surprised and too modest and bluster for a bit, still recovering from what she’s just told me. When she insists, I begin ‘Well I went to Art College’ and her eyes light up.
‘Oh I wanted to do that. I used to love painting. I loved life drawing and doing portraits. I did everyone I knew. Sorry, you were saying...’
‘No, go on.’
‘Oh no, don’t encourage me. Once I get started, you’ve heard me.’
‘I don’t really want to talk about me to be honest. Maybe another time...’
She reaches across to hold my hand again.
‘Tell me more about your life’ I say. ‘I insist.’
She sits back, letting go of my hand slowly. ‘There’s not a lot more to tell to be honest.’
‘You wanted to know about my relationships with women’ I say. ‘Why was that?’ She blushes and smiles nervously.
‘Oh well, you know... I thought, maybe. Oh I don’t know. I always approach things the wrong way...’ and her smile turns to a tearful grimace and I go around the table, sit beside her on the sofa and put my arm around her. It’s awkward because she’s so tall but she puts her arms around me and sits there sobbing for a while with her head on my chest. I hate this place. The sadness is so close to the surface, I can see it in everyone. Then it occurs to me that maybe it was like that in life too but we hid it better. Maybe this is better. It is at least more honest but it’s very hard sometimes. Times like this it would just be so easy to lift her head and kiss her and take her to bed and maybe we’d both be happier. I have no idea. I’m afraid of doing more damage but who knows? Would it be worse than this? I compromise by holding her tightly and kissing the crown of her head. She seems to quieten a little and then looks up at me through her hair. It would be so easy just to lean forward a little and... She sits back and the moment passes. I’m not sure if I’m relieved or not. She drags the soggy strands out of her mouth and I move the hair from the other side of her face. She looks very pink and mucusy and I give her the napkin. She blows her nose then laughs at the noise she’s made ‘Not very lady like...’ she says, apologetically, and sits with the cloth in her hands. ‘I know you were married’ she says. I realise she is determined to probe and I think why not? Maybe it’ll do me some good. ‘Did you have kids?’ she says.
I shake my head ‘She had one, from before.’
‘Didn’t you want any of your own?’
I hesitate to answer. Not wanting to have children must be unthinkable in her world but I had my reasons.
‘Not really. I mean, I would have, if it had been that important to her.’
She frowns ‘Do you think that’s a good idea, I mean, if you don’t really want them?’
‘I think it might have been ok actually. Everybody said it’s different when they’re your own but I wasn’t so sure. I mean, I think that’s a myth. Not everyone loves their children. I think I’d have probably been an ok dad actually. Everybody said so.’
‘But you didn’t want to.’
‘No.’
She looks at me as if I’m someone who never saw the sun. Poor me. But I don’t feel sorry for myself. I had so many other things to do.
‘The truth is I just never really understood children, even when I was one. They never made any sense to me. They just seemed so, I don’t know, alien... It’s not that I don’t like them. I just can’t really relate to them.’
She looks at me, nodding slightly. I think maybe this puts some profound distance between us and I’m sorry about that. I imagine it’s an article of faith for her that everybody must want children and that children are somehow perfect beings, until we adults get our grubby mits on them. I, on the other hand, think children are just small people and some are easier to like than others.
‘I think that’s very brave actually’ she says at last.
‘Most people just have kids without thinking about it. It’s rare for anyone to say “no, I have different priorities.” I can respect that.’
‘Oh’ I say. ‘Well. A lot of people think it’s selfish.’
‘Selfish to whom? The unconceived child? I don’t expect they know much about it...’
‘No, just selfish about ones own life, like I’m too preoccupied with my own petty existence.’
‘You think that might be true?’
‘Not really, although I didn’t really achieve what I wanted to in the end.’
‘But just having a child because you’ve failed at everything else is the most selfish thing of all.’
We order more coffee and sit there together on the squashy sofa, close together. I love the intimacy and hate it at the same time. Raz tells me later that she and Wen came in and saw us together and left discretely so as not to embarrass us but at the time I was wondering where they had got to. When the coffee arrives we sit up and compose ourselves, smiling meekly over our cups. ‘There was someone’ I say, ‘wanted to have children with me but I broke up with her. I know I really hurt her. It was horrible.’ This is what I’ve been avoiding, that and the other thing, the end. ‘You knew about this didn’t you.’
‘Sorry?’
‘How did you know?’ She looks at me quizzically. ‘That I’d broken somebody’s heart?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. You reminded me of someone. But I guess everybody does, sooner or later, don’t they?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘How long had you been together?’
‘Six years, give or take.’
‘Did you tell her you didn’t want children at the start?’
‘I wasn’t sure myself to be honest. I don’t know. I kept on thinking maybe my feelings on the subject would change and then she was getting into her late thirties and it just wasn’t fair on her. I feel like I wasted so much of her time when she could have been with someone who would do that for her.’
‘But you loved her?’
‘I think so.’
‘Then it wasn’t a waste.’
I smile thanks to her but I’m not reassured. ‘I don’t think she’d have agreed. Tell me about your broken heart.’
‘What makes you think...?’
‘Oh come off it...’
‘Ok. Oh, did your girlfriend find another man to give her children in the end?’
‘I don’t know. We lost touch. Anyway...’
‘My broken heart. Hmm... It was this guy I met at university. We were going to get married and have kids and everything but then...’
‘ME.’
‘You guessed it. Oh he tried. I know he did. He kept saying we’ll work through it, it’ll be ok...’
‘But it wasn’t.’
‘I don’t really blame him. I was off sex and I didn’t want to go out anywhere or do anything really. I got quite depressed.’
‘Not surprisingly.’
‘Well, quite. I still can’t work out if it was too much to ask. Anyway I discovered he’d been having sex with other women behind my back. I mean, I don’t think I’d have minded so much if he’d had the balls to tell me. I wasn’t much fun in bed unless you happen to be into necrophilia. Oh I’m not being fair to myself, again.’
‘Presumably you were at least still warm.’
She laughs a little at that ‘Death warmed up, yes, but actually I was only like that some of the time, at least at the beginning.’
‘How much of the time, roughly?’
‘Oh I don’t know, two or three months a year.’
‘Well that’s not too bad. God, I’d have... Well anyway, maybe you just weren’t right for each other. Maybe the ME was just a convenient excuse, for him I mean.’
‘I know, I’ve thought of that. It wasn’t his fault. We were young, he wanted to travel and do all sorts of exciting things and I just wasn’t up to it a lot of the time. We were together until I was twenty-seven anyway, then I discovered about all these other women he’d slept with and that was it.’
‘Did you have other relationships, afterwards I mean?’
‘Some, briefly. That’s what Ruth and I talked about – internet dating. It was hopeless, and I didn’t even care about how tall or rich he was.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
She smiles and sinks back down beside me, leaning against me, looking out of the window. I put my arm over her shoulder and she holds my hand.

I think about what she said about this ultimate disappointment of hers, that her life wasn’t going to happen after all, and I think, not for the first time, how bloody lucky I was. I had the chance to take my life in hand and change it – make it be different. She never had that. I suppose I could have got myself involved in some stupid accident, like last time, but at least I’d have known what to avoid next time. She can’t do that. And yet she is so very sweet and clever and funny, and I feel very humble all of a sudden, and grateful for some reason.
‘It looks like the rain has settled in for the day’ she says.
‘I think we’re better off here, don’t you?’ I say and we snuggle down further. I kiss the top of her head again and whisper ‘I’d have loved you. You know that don’t you’ and I feel her relax into me, sighing with her entire body.

Journey XI – Sanctuary

I spend the next few days out on my own, coming home just to sleep and check the house is still there. I leave a note for Kevin or whoever so they won’t worry. Each evening I go out into the garden to find someone’s been watering my seedlings. On the fourth day I find flowers in a vase from Sonia but I still don’t think I can face her. Shouldn’t I be the one sending flowers anyway?

I decide to explore the river. I start in the tidal channel at the front of my house (assuming that’s what it still is) and in my sandals and shorts, wade up through the pools and riffles along the edges and under the overhanging vegetation until I am deep into the forest. With each step, tiny iridescent fish scatter then follow, scatter and follow. I stop and watch them search among the disturbed sediment. Deeper down, larger fish loom ominously. I may come back with a mask and snorkel. It’s certainly not cold.
Further up I find the water emerges from a deep gully and I can’t follow it because of the tangle of vines and tree roots in there. Instead I climb up onto the edge and try to find a path along the top. It’s very slow going and eventually I have to move further into the trees where there is less undergrowth. With relief I break out into an area where the canopy is too dense for anything much to grow on the forest floor and I can wander about freely, looking up the towering trunks to the branches a hundred metres above. I stand still and wait. Nothing happens. Not a sound, and yet it’s a strange, fizzing, living silence, like I can hear the sap gurgling under the bark and the fungi creeping in the soil. There’s ants - charcoal black but with golden abdomens in a line all the way from the ground to as far as I can see up one of the trees. On another tree a vine clings completely flattened against the bark. The leaves shimmer like silk. The trunk is as wide as a house and rises almost perpendicular out of the forest floor. The vine is like a tiny green thread embroidered there.
I head on into the forest, trying to keep the sound of the water on my left. Everywhere, the more I look the more I see things alive – a tiny porcelain mushroom here, an emerald beetle there, and then unexpectedly I am in full sunlight again and suddenly the magnifying glass glare of every single tiny drop of moisture seems to be scarring my retina. I can’t see a thing and the heat and humidity turns my clothes to wet dish rags. The stink of rotting vegetation makes my brain slide sideways. Slowly the over-exposed scene resolves itself and I find a giant tree lying on its side, so massive I can’t see over the trunk. Many smaller trees lie broken underneath it and a throng of saplings and vines and all manner of weeds stand around and crawl over it, feeding off of it. You can almost feel them clamouring for the space, for the air, for the light, rejoicing in it, flinging tendrils and flowers into it with total abandon. The air is live with birds and insects. All around, the rest of the forest stands about like the pillars of a ruined cathedral – mute witnesses to the vegetable cannibalism going on down here.
I follow the trunk up to where the branches begin two hundred yards along and find a mass of lost and dying vines and epiphytes lying on the ground, bravely trying to carry on living down here in the mud. I find an orchid and a bromeliad lying on their sides still fixed to a broken branch and I decide to take them home with me.
It suddenly occurs to me that I might be in danger. Supposedly I can’t be killed and yet if a jaguar or a dinosaur came and chewed me up and crapped me out could I still come back from that? It doesn’t sound very likely. I pick up my babies and head back the way I came.

Kevin comes by at dusk and finds me trying to contrive some sort of framework for my branch, to keep it upright. It’s not cooperating. I’ve filled the bromeliad’s central reservoir with water and a tiny jade frog has popped out from between the leaves. I’ve called him Wally.
Actually I’m knackered from carrying the thing back all that way through the undergrowth and across the river and I need to stop but I don’t feel I can just leave it lying on its side like this, not after giving it so much hope. Kevin takes hold of it so I can really get in there to wedge rocks around its base. I’m almost in tears with the exertion.
Once we’re inside making a drink he says ‘You could have just propped it up against the wall for the time being.’ Now he tells me.
I have a shower and he puts some music on. There weren’t any speakers for the player for some reason but he’s been able to scrounge some up for me from somewhere.
My fingers are still very sore so he chops the veggies for the curry. He has some fenugreek seed for me from Ross, some to plant, some to grind up for flavour, some to sprout for salads. I’m endlessly grateful to them all.
I ask him how the monk is doing and he says he’s making a good recovery. Apparently I went at him with some broken glass. I don’t want to know. I remember thinking it was the only weapon available at the time.

‘What religion is it?’ I say, once we are settled and the curry is simmering away to itself.
‘Religion?’
‘The monks. Who do they worship?’
He shrugs ‘I don’t know. Does there have to be a religion?’
I take a moment to mull that one over. ‘But what about the building itself? It’s a church or a temple to something isn’t it?’
‘Not necessarily’ he says.
‘But I felt it’ I say, ‘when I went in there, like a presence... I felt, I don’t know...’
‘Beauty? Love? Peace?’
‘Yes.’ But immediately I think also fear, horror, darkness. I want to ask him what the carvings mean but I don’t want to go there just yet. It’s nice here, like this – peaceful, generous, good-humoured. I don’t want to spoil it.
‘It’s a powerful place alright’ he says eventually and I expect him to add something to that but he doesn’t. He just gets up and puts the rice on to boil.

That night I have visions of a frozen place – terribly dark and unbelievably cold. I’m in that tent – the standard issue one. There’s a cool grey green light on everything, like an old black and white photo. All I can see is my sleeping bag with my legs in it, and various things scattered around – food wrappers, clothes, bits of kit. I’d given up trying to keep things tidy a while ago. I just stayed like that, in a nest of my own junk, waiting. What was I waiting for? I don’t remember. I just remember the cold and the loneliness.
That’s important. There was someone supposed to be there. That’s how I remember it – a terrible feeling of being lost and alone, and of how I’d been so stupid to get separated from them like this. I remember passing the time thinking how I should have been more careful, and that now I’d never see them again and I remember crying a lot, grizzling in the dark. I think I spent most of my time though sleeping, just letting time pass, but then I’d wake up and there it was again – no one.
I lost that feeling later on. By the time I was in the war zone I didn’t feel that at all. I was alone and I had to survive. I just had to keep going. I’d forgotten who it was I had lost, or that there had ever been anyone to lose.
I wake up abruptly and find Kevin sitting beside me telling me I was crying in my sleep and I can’t help it, I just have to hold onto him, and he says it’s ok, it’s ok, and shhh, but I plead with him that they can’t make me leave, not now, and I’m sorry, so sorry, and all in all he doesn’t know what to do. After a while he prises himself loose and I watch him get up and go to the phone to call someone up. I think he’s calling for someone to come and take me away but he calms me down and tells me Sonia and Miguel are on their way over and no one is going to make me go anywhere. I try to believe him but I know there’s a silent ‘yet’ there. We go down and he puts more coffee on and I find some music to listen to. It’s going to be another one of those nights.

So I sit down to write now. The computer is up and humming and I’ve spent the last couple of days or so transcribing my long-hand. I’ve also begun to work on a plan for a big painting of the forest clearing. There are no sizeable walls in the house without things on them so I’ve had to tape my paper to the floor up in the bedroom – three big sheets arranged lengthwise under the far window. Somehow I want to contrast the darkness and peace of the forest with the frenetic pace around the fallen tree – a diptych perhaps.
Sonia didn’t come over that night. She thought better of it. Miguel came over on his own and punched me in the face. It seemed fair enough. I deserved a lot worse. After that the three of us sat around and played backgammon until dawn. I couldn’t concentrate though. Once morning came they were fidgeting and I told them they could go. I lay down on the sofa and wondered what to do...