Promises of Love and Good Behaviour

appreciated.

One

They stand erect, proud and isolated from one another, resembling as-yet undeveloped chess pieces. Waiting, wary, their demeanour and stance almost sinister, they seem, nevertheless, powerless to proceed without the intervention of some invisible outside force.

Each is in a state of concomitance with the next. Each knows what they do will be determined by whether they follow or lead. Fearful of the consequences of leading, they hold back - clearly more eager to follow than be followed.

The board upon which they stand lacks the certainties of alternating black and white. It is not clear where precisely they should stand, so they fidget and twitch in restless frustration, moving this way and that - half in defiance and false bravado, half in self-conscious foolishness. Their moves, as universally understood as those of chess pieces, are, however, not predestined, not allocated to one or another with any degree of certainty. Despite their form and appearance, it would be foolish to make assumptions about what is expected of them. They might just as well be unpredictable and easily display, by turns, the courageous versatility of the Queen, the craven vulnerability of the King, the skittishness of a Knight or the plodding expendability of a Pawn.

They occupy a Sartrian landscape; a claustrophobic hell beyond illustration, best left to imperfect, apologetic words, for any simpler art form could only ever be but a poor representation of their world, a comforting clumsy false backcloth to an existence that, in real life, defies easement. They are in a maze constructed without plans or a landscape gardener, diabolical in its extent and the height of its impenetrable barriers, terrifying in its lack of identifiable markers. It is a maze with no centre, no guide atop a ladder sensing despair and making everything better, no way out, no ‘I’ve been here before’, no beautiful Scottish Widow with enigmatic backward glance peeling back the green barricade and revealing previously unseen passages to release, to freedom, to an unconstrained future.

They are like the three witches in the Scottish Play, suspicious of others and suffering a sense of separation within uneasy companionship, togetherness with isolation, love, hate or indifference at either extreme. It is as though they take for granted the support of people who know them and their faults, perhaps even forgiving - albeit grudgingly - where they might otherwise condemn. And yet they know, if they were down to their last crust of bread, down to the dying embers of a fire consisting of barely enough sticks to warm a single individual, they would each seek an opportunity to drive the others away. To hunger, to cold, even to death.

His wife sighs with frustration.

‘You speak first!’ she says.

‘Why?’ asks the man.

‘Because.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t give the impression that because is, of itself, an answer, a form of universal response requiring no further clarification - and certainly no argument.’

His wife laughs - a hollow, dry, humourless laugh. ‘You? No argument? You are argument personified! You never stop arguing. And do you know why you argue all the time? It’s because you are never quite sure about anything. There must be another point of view, that’s your way! It makes you argumentative with the people in your private life and too eager to see the other person’s point of view in public. It may be your downfall in the end, but that’s your problem.’ She laughs again and then shakes her head, irritated by his reticence. ‘Go on!’ she adds.

‘What?’

‘Speak!’

‘If I ask why, will you promise not to say because?’

‘Yes! For goodness sake...’

‘Why, then, should I speak?’

‘Because ...’ she waits for the I-told-you-so gleam in his eye, triumphant when it appears, ‘... it is your story!’

‘Not just mine! Yours as well. Hers too.’ He indicates over his shoulder towards the girl; composed, still, content to be silent, her face in shadow.

‘Her story?’ His wife tilts her head provocatively. ‘She doesn’t have a story of her own. She’s part of your story. She’s there because you invented her. You took a perfectly ordinary young girl and transformed her into what she is in your mind. Don’t you see?’ His wife looks at the girl critically and then back at him, eyes flashing.

‘I suppose you think she’s beautiful...’

‘Beautiful? Yes, certainly I do. I think she’s the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. You’ve only got to look...’

‘... Hard-working ...’

‘Of course she worked hard. What’s that got to do with anything?’ He thinks back, his head slightly to one side as he recalls. ‘Yes, she practically sweated blood at work.’

‘...Intelligent...’

‘What do you want me to say? How about, a girl with a wit as sharp and clearly etched as a Highland landscape against the sky on a sunlit, frosty December morning?’

His wife is irritated by his romantic declaration, his hesitant responses full of certainty to her direct but imprecise questioning.

‘Oh, cut the crap, will you? If you saw her in a crowd now, years on, would you recognise her? Would you think she was beautiful and intelligent and all those things?’

‘Yes! Of course. Yes, yes.’

‘And ‘yes’ again, I suppose?’

‘Yes! And ‘yes’ again.’

‘You’re deluding yourself! You just couldn’t handle it. That was your problem.’

‘So many problems.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. I said nothing worth repeating.’

‘She’s gone out of your life. Went at her best. Not grown old like the rest of us. Taken from you like some prematurely dead celebrity, forever young, forever beautiful. How does it go? At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them. Not growing old as we grow old. Is that what you do? Remember her? Remember her ever young?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Look at me!’

He turns to his wife, sadness and confusion flooding his face.

‘Sometimes? You may think of her sometimes but you either remember or you forget. There are no half-measures. And if you remember her sometimes, you remember her always.’ She turns her head towards him, drinks his sad confusion and looks away again. ‘You’re a fool. Do you know that?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe? Certainly!’

‘She’s ...’

The girl at last moves forward, the light falling across a devastatingly beautiful young face. His wife pouts and turns away.

‘I’ve got a name, you know,’ the girl says.

The man turns to her. ‘I know,’ he says, gently. ‘I know.’

‘We know!’ his wife says, less gently.

The girl continues, unabashed. ‘This is all wrong. You shouldn’t do this.’

‘Do what?’

‘Discuss me like this.’

‘Discuss you?’ His wife snorts. ‘Discuss you? We are not discussing you!’

‘Yes you are! Discussing and distorting. You’re saying I’m a figment of his imagination. Whatever I am, I’m not that.’ She turns to the man. ‘And you’re saying I’m the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen, the most intelligent, the most hardworking ...’

The man looks at her tenderly. ‘You are! You are all of those things.’

‘But I’m not! I’m not as beautiful as Linda Evangelista or Claudia Schiffer or Naomi Campbell, or Kate Moss, or Princess Diana...’

His wife interrupts with a shriek of cruel satisfaction. ‘That’s who all this reminds me of! Diana! The Princess of Wales, a beauty that will never age as we age. A Goddess who will never be compromised by the passing of the years. An angel who appears more angelic the more time fills the space between us and her.’

The girl turns to the man. ‘I’m a lot older now, you know,’ she says, quietly.

He looks at her and sighs. ‘I cannot imagine you other than as you were. That’s how I see you now. Just the same as you were.’

His wife coughs. ‘What a load of crap! How could she be the same! It’s not possible!’

The girl continues, almost in agreement with her adversary. ‘It was so long ago’, she says, gently, so as not to hurt him. She shakes her head and that quizzical look when she is thinking passes over her countenance, melting his heart. ‘It all started thirty-one years ago. I’m fifty-three this year. Fifty-three.’

His wife gains strength from the girl’s words. ‘My point precisely.’ She advances on the man. ‘Why don’t you act your age?’

His eyes never leave the girl’s but his remarks, although still tender, are clearly addressed to his wife. ‘Let her speak, for heaven’s sake. There is still no beginning or end to this thing.’ And then, even more gently in the direction in which he is looking. ‘What are you trying to say?’

‘Just that I am me! Not the most beautiful. Not an invention. Just me! Neither of you should treat me as a piece of clay in your story, to be kneaded and fisted this way and that just to satisfy fond memory or bitter prejudice. It isn’t fair; this is not a sculpture class. You shouldn’t use a visual art form to distort the truth and then let it take the blame for the misunderstandings of others. I am as I am! Not a plaster saint, or a rival, or anything. Just a human being who crossed paths with you somewhere. We had an effect...’

The man is shocked by the compression of his emotion the word brings.

‘An effect! Is that what you call it, an effect?’

‘It was good, I’ll grant you that.’

‘Good? It was sensational!’

The girl smiles a sad smile and shakes her head. ‘I was always surprised by your linguistic imprecision. English is, after all, your mother-tongue.’

His wife scoffs. ‘Blame the computer industry for that! They always talk in clichés, buzz-phrases, flip-talk. They’re no better than the morons on building sites, really. Nothing really to tell them apart. The brickies and hodders are always ‘fuck this’ and ‘fucking that’ - no command of the language, no adjectives, no descriptions, no variety. And he and his crowd are little better. They’re always ‘utilising’ and ‘maxed out’ and finding themselves in ‘no-win situations’. No difference between them at all, really. Hiding what they really mean behind lazy talk - being precisely imprecise. Builders, computer people, politicians - nonsense in their nouns, vagueness in their verbs.’

The girl looks at him enquiringly. ‘That’s not what you mean by sensational, is it?’

‘What?’

‘Fucking. Making love. That’s not all that you remember me by, is it?’

His wife laughs, nodding conspiratorially as though she suspects the girl’s fears to be correct, or worse, wants to convey some secret confession, some weasel apologist’s words, some long-after-the-event betrayal, the contents of a post-coital, guilt-ridden divulgence - a hollow, reluctant triumph become the stuff of legend.

‘No!’ he implores, agitatedly. ‘Not at all! Now what’s getting distorted? We were sensational together. Just being together was sensational. It was like living in another dimension or on a different planet. When I was with you, I was alive! When I was with you, I glimpsed God.’

The girl seems comforted, giving him the benefit of the doubt, assuming emotions beyond the physical. She puts her head on one side, thinking momentarily before speaking. ‘It needn’t have ended. If it was so sensational, I mean. It needn’t have ended. We could have done things differently.’

His wife changes tactics, withdraws a little but still appears dangerous, addressing the world, the man and the girl by turns. ‘What a lot of bullshit! You’ve never spoken to me like that! Alive? Glimpsed God? Don’t listen to him! He’s getting all nostalgic and sentimental and it’s deeply distressing to tell you the truth. You know nothing! This is not a simple case of an unhappy marriage and a man having a love affair on the side to regain his self-confidence, feel he is loved again, has still got it in him to pull a younger woman? We loved each other, you know! Loved? In the dim and distant past? What am I saying? No! Correction, we love each other. This is not the clichéd romance about an unhappily married man and his mistress...’

‘ ... I never thought I was! It was not like that! What do you take me for, some young, starving, Slav tart from Mittel Europe on the make?’

‘Don’t interrupt me! This is why you shouldn’t have a voice - shouldn’t even be here. He and I are very good together, do you hear me? We always were, always will be. I really don’t know why you are here at all.’ She casts an accusing glance at the man.

The girl looks sad but holds her ground. ‘If I am here, it is because he wants me to be. This is his story...’

‘That’s what I mean. You’re nothing but a figment of his imagination! It’s just like Alice in Wonderland. If he stopped thinking about you, you’d disappear, just like the playing-card soldiers.’

‘But I am here.’

‘Yes. You are here, more’s the pity.’

‘So ...’

‘So?’

‘So, he is thinking of me. Doesn’t that upset you? Loving each other as you do, good together, all the things you said? He’s thinking of me and, as a consequence, I’m here. That is, if that’s how this thing works. Is that what you think? We are here as a tangible manifestation of someone’s imagination. I have my doubts, really...’

‘Doubts?’

‘Yes. I’m not convinced we are just here because he is thinking of us. Doesn’t make much sense of the rest of us, does it. What are you thinking - that we only exist because he imagines us, because he conjures us up? That, in reality, he is the only person that is real - everyone around him being in some sort of dream? His dream? Are your children, then, just a figment of your imagination? Extend that to other things - your house, your job, your world, God even? Who was it who said, if there were no God it would be necessary for man to invent him? Isn’t there a branch of philosophical thought that is based on the idea that the only reality is self? That we are all really alone and that everything and everyone is a product of our imagination. Not just God, everything and everyone?’

His wife tosses her head in fury.

‘How dare you bring our children into this!’

‘Well? Answer me. Are they real?’

‘Of course!’

‘Then, so am I, although there is one thing I rather like the thought of.’

For the first time the girl looks slightly conspiratorial. A faint smile dimples her cheeks.

‘What’s that?’

‘The bit about me being here because he is thinking of me.’ The girl smiles more broadly and clasps her cheeks between her hands in a genuine and wholly innocent pose of utter delight. ‘After all this time,’ she continues, ‘he still thinks of me...’

The man looks unhappy but braces himself. If the thing has to be done, clearly it is a time for honesty. ‘I do,’ he says.

The girl is satisfied and, with one penetrating glance at his wife, withdraws slightly, turning away, her face in shadow. His wife, encouraged by the slight retreat, shouts after her.

‘That’s it! Go away! How dare you! He’s the father of our children! You don’t have a say in this at all!’

The girl turns toward her accuser again, the light striking across her face. ‘Don’t I? Is this not solely his story after all, but his story and your story? Your story, plural, but not my story?’

His wife smiles mischievously and comes into play again. ‘Yes. Let’s do it that way. Our story. His and mine. Do you hear me? His and mine, not yours!’

The man intervenes, risking wrath in a gambit designed to release the girl. ‘If it’s your story as well, it is hers too. It has to be.’

‘I do have a name. I keep trying to remind you.’

His wife barks at the girl, ‘We never use it, do you hear? Your name! Not in our house. We never use your name.’

‘But without my name being mentioned, it’ll all be distortion again. I am as much my name as I am your interpretation of me. More so. Without my name, and if it is not to be my story, where will I be? Is this how it’s going to be? Misunderstandings and self-delusion all the way?’

His wife advances and taps her foot impatiently. ‘You’re a minor character, d’you hear? You don’t matter...’

‘I am not a minor character to me. I’m sorry but I matter a great deal, to me. It either has to be a story about him or a story about us all. I don’t see how it can be any other way.’

‘You are irrelevant! I thought I made that clear!’

‘Not to me. I’ve told you, and I suspect not ....’

‘... and not to me either!’

His wife groans and turns to the man. ‘Who rattled your cage?’

‘You said at the outset that it was my story, didn’t you?’

‘Yes!’

‘Well, I suppose, in answer to your question, I rattled my own cage.’

His wife shrieks, ‘You can’t do that!’

‘Can’t? I can do anything. There’s never been any doubt in this conversation that, if nothing else, it is my story.’

His wife is furious. ‘If not can’t, shouldn’t then. Shouldn’t!’

‘I can and I have. And everyone must have their say. That is my decision. It’s the only way. Good grief! This is all taking up so much time!’

The girl looks at him gratefully. ‘Are we really here, together? Only, I’ve never seen her before.’

‘Yes you have. It was in the pub one lunchtime - during training and initiation. Don’t you remember? When you stayed in Leeds for a couple of days? She popped into town and came in for lunch. It was all rather rushed. I introduced you.’

‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten. But we didn’t speak to one another.’

His wife moves forward again, putting pressure on the other two. ‘See? It can’t be her story. She doesn’t remember anything accurately!’

‘She’ll remember. It’ll all come back to her. And it’ll be the fresher, the more untarnished, the more truthful for not getting an airing for, what did you say, over thirty years?’

The girl nods.

The man shakes his head in disbelief. ‘So long. So long...’

His wife advances yet again and addresses the man. ‘Well then?’

‘Well what?’

‘Get on with it! Whatever we do or say it’s your story, so you’d better get on with it.’

‘You want me to start?’

‘Inasmuch as I think it should be started at all. Yes.’

He turns to the girl. ‘Is that alright with you?’

Two

‘Well? What do you think?’ I ask her. She leans over towards the bedside table - her beautifully muscled back all delicious sinewy curves - flicks open the cigarette packet and knocks a King-size expertly into her hand. The air fills with clonks and clatters as she coaxes the old flip-top American lighter into life.

She looks up, the flame weaving back and forth uselessly in mid-air, and speaks all around the cigarette clenched between her teeth.

‘About what?’

‘You know!’

‘Christ! I can’t decide about that now.’ She holds the flame to the cigarette and I watch it curtsey as she draws it through the tobacco. She sucks a great cloud of smoke into her lungs and blows it out noisily between pursed lips. She only ever smokes after sex and coffee. When she’s having her period and I’m out of Nescafé - no cigarettes.

‘We’re alright as we are, aren’t we? This is the sixties, after all.’

‘Just!’

‘It says nineteen sixty-nine in my diary.’

‘Mine too,’ I say. Unnecessarily. I smile apologetically. Making love makes me tongue-tied. Grateful. Clumsy.

She sits up and leans against the ghastly buttoned-plastic bedhead, drawing her knees up to her chin.

‘We’ll wait until after my finals. Okay?’

‘Okay!’ I reply. ‘Just want you to know the offer’s still there.’

‘You make it sound like a bloody last-minute booking to Torremolinos or somewhere.’

‘No ...’ I fall into silence. If she doesn’t want to yet, why should I bother? I suppose my motivation is largely selfish. I have this deeply felt desire, born out of laziness, no doubt, not to have to go to all the effort of meeting someone else, chatting them up, getting serious, meeting the folks - all that baloney. Besides which, I like her - like her very much, actually. I don’t want to lose her, either. Well, the boss has met her and he always says, how’s Judith? Not easy to say, well it’s not Judith actually, it’s Mary, or Philippa, or Josephine. But that would be a thousand times easier than having to say, well, actually it’s nobody at all at the moment. G.L.U.M. likes us to be settled. It’s part of the company’s image, like having to wear white shirts, saying please and thank-you all the time, and never drinking at lunchtime on working days. To be honest, it doesn’t really count in the approval stakes unless you’re at least engaged, but she wants to hold off on that one for the moment. The company knows we’re going steady. Pity she’s reluctant, though. I like things to be tidy.

She puffs away happily for a few minutes, knocking the ash from the end of her gasper unnecessarily frequently into the chipped glass ashtray pinched from the pub, and then asks me about progress on my big pitch to McHuntley’s Biscuits...

‘Oh, it’s going quite well,’ he says, suddenly looking very enthusiastic and pleased with himself. It’s better when he stops being so serious. I mean, who’d have thought it? Him wanting to get married and me holding back! It’s usually the other way around, isn’t it? I let him ramble on and I nod in all the right places. It’s a scream really. He’s very sweet - innocent, I suppose. Like a little boy. You just start him off like winding up the clockwork motor on some kid’s toy and off he goes for hours!

Frankly, I don’t care a fig roll about McHuntley’s Biscuits but it seems to keep him happy if I ask about it from time to time. The deal has been going on so long; it’s like Mrs. Dale’s Diary or the Archers. I’ve been feeling a little worried about cream crackers lately or, an everyday story of computer folk in a biscuit factory. Business amazes me. I mean, McHuntley’s want the computer to help them ensure that they don’t manufacture too much - coupling production to anticipated consumer demand bearing in mind seasonal peaks and troughs he calls it. He goes on about exponential smoothing and weightings or something. Well, my opinion, if it is of any interest, is - and I wouldn’t say this to him for fear of opening the floodgates for hours - either the biscuit factory gets it largely right at the moment without the benefit of a computer, or they must have masses of soft biscuits lying around or unsatisfied orders in the to do pile while they come to a decision!

I like sex with him but, you know, you wonder if he’s the best person for you or whether someone else would be better. I mean, him asking me all the time to get engaged! Well, it’s sort of permanent isn’t it and questions like, is he who I’d like to spend the rest of my life with, do I want him to be the father of my children and, let’s face it, is he the best lover I’m likely to have, do raise their ugly heads, don’t they? I mean, to tell you the truth, he wasn’t the first, but I lied and he was so clumsy the first time he wouldn’t have been able to tell a virgin from Christine Keeler. That’s the trouble really. I know I was drunk the first time, but I remember it being all cannons and fireworks - like the 1812 Overture, you know? With James it’s very satisfactory but I don’t hear no cannon and I don’t see any fireworks.

Perhaps that’s the way it is with Southern boys. He’s got all the social graces. Speaks well. Not rough at all. Good manners. Opens doors for me - things like that. He’s gentle in every way. A bit too gentle, perhaps. The first time it was not with a Southern boy. He was a Northern lad. That’s interesting! I called them Southern boys and Northern lads. Freudian, that.

James works for General Logic and Universal Manufacturing - G.L.U.M. They were giving a lecture on computing at the university. He was sitting at some clattering terminal-thing while someone with an American accent in a sharp suit said deeply obvious things like the future starts today. They had a reception afterwards. I was wearing a short skirt and tanned tights. End of story.

I take a last drag on the ciggie and twist the filter tip into the ashtray beside the stupid blobby, oily bedside lamp. That’s the landlord’s one salute to the swinging sixties and it’s disgusting to my way of thinking. In fact, it is quite gynaecological and can put you off completely...

She stubs out her cigarette and clasps her knees again. I like the way she does that. Sort of little-girlish, if you know what I mean.

‘Pub?’ she says...

‘Yes,’ he replies. Thank goodness! He gets all nostalgic after sex if we just lie there. He is such a romantic - makes you sick! But he is rather sweet, bless him!

***

Sunny Saturday mornings in Hammersmith are very relaxed. One of the old pubs has started putting tables out in front and I grab one and sit with my back to the wall, closing my eyes with the satisfaction of knowing the lads on the next table are lusting after me. I just lean backwards a little, arch my back slowly so as to make my breasts more prominent for just a moment, cross my legs ever so slowly and settle down to get as much sunshine as possible. James goes in for the drinks and emerges some time later, his beer dripping from glass to hand to trouser leg to pavement. As usual. What a clumsy prat! Bless him!...

She’s sitting there looking marvellous. She always looks dreamy and content after we’ve made love. She’s rolled her sleeves up and spread her arms to get a bit of a suntan. Lovely. In fact, just watching her made me do something I never do! I spilt my beer on the way out of the front door of the pub!

‘How are the studies going?’ I ask her.

‘Same as when you asked me when you woke up this morning!’ she replies. ‘Badly.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ I comfort her. ‘You sailed through your second year. That was when I first knew you, remember?’...

‘Perhaps that’s why!’ I reply, rather unkindly. I follow this up with an only joking and give him a kiss. It works wonders that, just like Double Diamond. I change the subject.

‘Got a letter from the parents yesterday.’

‘Did you? How are they, up in draughty old Leeds?’

‘Oh, they seem fine. They’ve invited us up for Dad’s birthday.’

‘Both of us?’

‘Yup.’

‘Separate rooms again?’

‘Bound to be.’

‘Couldn’t we stay in some guest house nearby?’

‘Phew, you know them! They’d wonder why - or, more likely, they’d know why!’

‘Old fashioned,’ he replied.

‘It’ll do you good, James Stephenson, not being able to have your evil way with me whenever you like!’

‘Sssh! That couple over there are looking at us!’...

‘Big deal!’ she says and sips her barleywine. She’s like that, rather uninhibited. Perhaps it’s