Is it time I went?

Chapter 1 - Alan

           

 

            ‘It was amazing.’ He spoke without emotion, without need to impress or apologise. A soft voice in a darkened room on a wet afternoon in summer. ‘I felt seventeen. We were getting pretty tired so someone suggested a break. John had his, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ll really come back from the bar,’ face and of course one drink and it was an explosion of talk. I was sitting like this, we were all a bit giggly, we’d had almost ten hours non-stop, and I’m not even sure, you know, if I’d really noticed she was there. But I have this picture of her face: she’s looking slightly down and very serious, so I’m sitting - like this - and suddenly her hand rubs the top of my hand and she says I am Philoctetes, he was a Greek, I say, yes, I know Philoctetes, how am I like him? because Helen’s the one you’d think knew nothing about Greek tragedy. And all the time she’s rubbing my hand.  We really weren’t drunk. I’d had a pint. We walked back to the digs. The others got separated. I couldn’t say if I caught her up or she me, we were just there like it’s no-one’s choosing. There’s an everyday silence, so we kiss. What was significant was that she squeezed.  There was a park. We went into the park. It’s night, it’s quite cold and we sit on a bench like we’re seventeen and put our noses together and stare into our eyes by a streetlamp. Time stops. Eventually I say, ‘I’d like us to go to bed,’ and she says, ‘I’m not sure,’  - still with the eyes - then, quiet, ‘It’d be lovely.’ I feel her fingers on my cheek, her other hand rests on my thigh and that’s the moment because I imagine her touching me everywhere and me touching her, so that’s the moment I know we’ll take the plunge. And it was wonderful. I’m forty two. I’m alone when I wake, there’s sunshine behind the curtains, it’s a new world. She comes into the room fully-dressed, which again is not what you’d think, I mean, organised, ready, and she smiles and jumps on me. There’s no time but as we’re setting up later she catches me and I know her expression is saying ‘How long to go?’ I want to giggle. I feel seventeen. When I get home Emma speaks to me in the World-Before-Helen and it’s going to be really hard. Jessica didn’t even say hello at breakfast.

          ‘I had a revelation.  You’re at home with this great love thing going on and you pretend there’s nothing - and the lies, my god.... Also, you look at someone at work and wonder, ‘Would you tell Emma?’  Then I had my revelation. I’d always accepted men were the bad guys: we did what we wanted while the girls got on with the drudgery, they were the ones that empathised etc etc, and then, when I was pissed off about some little thing I suddenly realised that Emma’s sense of duty was actually a failure of feeling. It wasn’t my fault. It’s perverse to worry the shirts aren’t ironed when the universe is going on all around - birds singing,  wine maturing, the city lights shining, art on the walls, lovers talking - it’s all out there and it happens even when the skirts are crumpled. You must seize it; the birds, the lights, the wine, the art - the laddettes are right after all, bugger the shirts. So I saw Jessica back to school after the holidays and said, ‘Right, I’m going, I’ve got another woman, I’m sorry,’ and she said, ‘You leave me now and you’ll never come back.’ I said, ‘You might want to ring your mum,’ and I left. Helen was with two friends, so I said, ‘I must talk to you.’ She looked put out. We went to the back and I told her. She said, ‘You’re not suggesting we move in together?’ I was flabbergasted. ‘You don’t think you’re the only one, do you?” she said. ‘You’re forty two.’ I could have killed her. But I have this picture of her face: she’s looking slightly down and very serious, so I’m sitting - like this - and suddenly her hand rubs the top of my hand. Philoctetes?’

          She uncrossed, crossed her legs. She did not notice he noticed. She was thinking. She said nothing. She nodded at him, once.