The Perfect Crime. What Can You Do?

When I was younger I used to say that life was like an apple. Bite into it, eat it and it goes. Keep it and look at it and it goes mouldy. You can no longer eat it.
Now I'm a bit older and I think that life is perhaps more like an orange. You've got to peel at it before you get to the good bit.

You know that phrase 'the perfect crime'? The one that every murder, mystery and suspense tale is based on. The one that every television cop show from Charlie's Angels to Columbo sets up and lays out. The one that Agatha Christie has made a fortune out of. You know. Yeah, that one. Well, I've got it.

I didn't mean to have it and even when I knew I had it I didn't plan to use it. Well, it's not the sort of thing that you go out and buy and if you want it or need it, it's not the sort of thing that pops its head around the door and says "Hello there. Perfect crime here. How can I help?" But it is the sort of thing that comes into your mind. Your mind, my mind, I'm sure, at one time or another, it's made an appearance in all these places. And it's not the sort of thing you welcome. "Hello. Come in. Cup of coffee?"

But once it makes an appearance, once it comes in, it's the sort of thing you can play with. You can play all these sort of mind games with it, waste wonderful hours perfectly murdering all those people that stand in your way to that perfect life. And so you do this. I'm sure everyone has. Old schoolteachers, parents, friends, bosses, contemporaries - all dead. Perfectly. And no one need know. No one need know that you had anything to do with their sad demise. Then you forget it. Real life takes over, the perfect crime goes away as quickly and painlessly and as uselessly as it came.

But sometimes it doesn't. It doesn't go away. It is just so perfect that it doesn't go away. It just stays there and festers.

Now some perfect crimes are not really perfect crimes at all. They just lie and say that they are. Their hosts are taken in by their wicked lies and they fall for it. Our jails are full of these sad suckers. But some perfect crimes are exactly that. And they don't go away. They fester. And they are used, abused and acted on. But what happens to them? No one knows. Maybe they get to play. Maybe they don't. You'll never find out. They never get caught, because they are perfect. Maybe the person sitting next to you, your girlfriend, your wife, your mother - maybe any one of these people has at one time or another spent an entertaining evening in the company of the perfect crime. Maybe, but it's not very likely, is it? Look at their faces. But then again, look at mine. Anyway, listen. This is the thing. The thing is that I've got it.

This perfect crime is the big one. The capital M. Murder. There's no money involved, just me and her. What's worse is that she loves me and I love her. But here we are. She's sitting in the bath, I'm washing her hair and here, broad as daylight, is the perfect crime. So I told her. She wasn't impressed.

"Give me a minute. I'll think about it."
"A minute's about all you got, doll." I said.
I must explain that I don't normally talk like that, but it fitted the almost surreal jokiness of the situation.
"I don't know. It seems straightforward enough, but there must be a flaw."
"Go on babe. You think, but be quick about it. Times running out for you."
"OK, you got me. It's perfect. Well apart from one thing that is."
She had me for a moment. My perfect crime could be ruined. What was the flaw that she'd seen that I hadn't? What could I have missed?


"OK fuckface, tell me," I said, slipping back into my native accent. "So tell me your flaw."
"It's not my flaw. It's yours. The flaw is you. The flaw is that you haven't got the bottle to do it. And even if by some miracle you did have the bottle, you haven't got the brains to carry it out. And why do you want to kill me anyway. How can you even think of something so horrid? "
"That's what you think dollface I said as I pulled the .45 out of my hip pocket and pointed it at her face..."
"Oh, shut up. I wish you wouldn't read all those crime novels of yours. What's that blokes name? John Thompson?"
"Jim."
"Jim Thompson then. Anyway, it's doing your brain in. Maybe the characters in those books could do it, but the only bottle you've got is that hair conditioner in your hand."
She was wrong. But how was I going to tell her that?



5:

THE UPHILL.

"People are afraid to merge on highways in London."

"There. What do you think of that, Jane? That's as good an opening line you're going to get. Go on. It is, huh? Yeah, people are afraid to merge. Yeah, like it. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. Jane."
Jane appeared, reluctantly. She knew this senario well. Sighing, she played with the possibilities. There'd already been "As my car pulled off Vauxhall Bridge Road, a low slung Rover full of black guys sloped across us" and "I wasn't the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at a time like this" and... " Jane. Get yourself here. I've got it. This is the one, I know this is the one."
I could see her eyes read the paper and reach for the heavens. I could see her eyes saying "How am I going to say this?" saying "When is this jerk going to give it a rest?"
Jane's eyes looked to the heavens. They said "How am I going to say this". More, she thought when is his jerk going to give it a rest. More than that, she wondered what she was actually doing there.
"Baby. Love it. Really. It's one of those lines that makes you wonder what it's all about, one of those lines that make you want to read on."
"Really?"
"Really. Yeah, but listen babe. It's nearly 9 o' clock and you haven't even started to get changed yet."
No sweat. Who needs to get changed when you've got an opening line. And listen, I've got an opening line. It was the fourth opening line I'd had this week, but hell, this was the one. People are afraid to merge. I really couldn't get over that. It meant so much, so many different things you could read into it.
"Hey. You take the T shirt. I'm gonna wear the zoot suit."
Jane carried on. She knew what she knew, but wasn't going to say anything just yet. No until they'd got out of the front door anyway. Not until he's got in the car. Maybe not until tomorrow. And she'd heard that bloody line about the T shirt and the zoot suit more times than she knew, or wanted to know.
"Haven't you got a single thought that you can honestly call your own... Jesus CHRIST, I'm doing it now", she muttered.
"Sorry?"
"OK dear." Shit. That patronising OK dear voice. God I hate that patronising OK dear voice. Yeah well you can stuff that cos tonight we're going out. Tonight we're cooking. With gas. The zoot suit in place, a line on paper and a line up my nose... cooking.
"Come on, I'll get the car ready" I said, "see you outside."
"OK, dear."

"You know the way?"
"Yes dear." I said. God I hate those inane female questions "You know the way? Course I know the fucking way.
"Just checking, baby. Do you mind if I put a tape on?"
"Babe, the mood I'm in... you can even choose which one." I reached over to give her a kiss.
I smiled. A kind of supercilious smile perhaps, but a smile anyway. Yeah, there was nothing wrong with tonight. Still, we were going to have a good night. Down the tennis club. Yeah. I'd show them. And my serve was going to work tonight. I could feel it.
"Baby." What did she want now? I knew that "Baby" voice.
"What, bub?"
"You know that line? Don't you think freeway would be a better word instead of highway?"
"Sorry?"
"Freeway instead of highway."
Shit. Bitch.



2:

I guess I just thought 'Fuck it.' Fuck it I've had enough. Fuck it I've got to move. Fuck it I've got to feel again. Fuck it. Looking back now it's easy to say fuck it. Things are different. They've changed. But do you ever really know. How can you? If you could know, if I could know I would be a millionaire. Rich. I would have said 'I know what's going to happen in the future. I know what's going to come. I know what's going to win the 2.30 at Market Rasen. And I would have backed it. I would, as we speak, be a millionaire, rich beyond words, living on some far away tropical island, sipping cocktails. We probably wouldn't even be speaking. There would be no point. And we would both be none the wiser.
Still. You can't know and we are talking. Even if you did know it would be no good. Look at it this way. If you knew the result of the 2.30 at Market Rasen before it happened there would be no thrill. You might be a millionaire but where would be the thrill, the excitement? No thrill, no excitement, what's the point? Why live?
So I don't know, not now, not then. And, by the way, I would swap what I've got now for excitement. If I could get rid of this feeling I would happily never feel excitement again. Still, fuck it. I'm fed up with ifs.

JUMP OFF POINT XXXXXXXXX

I was at home working. Well, working. Trying to work. Trying to find a way to write. I'd sit there and think, make coffee, water the plants, hoover, anything. It's odd the things you can find that you really need to do. Not want to do, but need.
Anyway, So I was trying. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. And then she came in and as soon as she did, as soon as she came in, I felt the urge to write. I needed to sit by myself. I needed to write.
"Hi, babes. Did you have a good day at work. Sit down. Let me make you a coffee."
All these things I'd say.
"Mmmmm. God I'm exhausted. Come here and give me a cuddle. I need it."
Come here and give me a cuddle. She needs it. Not a word about what I need. Still, play it cool. Don't rise to the bait. Cuddle.
"Are they all being horrid to my baby? Come here, little sugar. Let's see if I can soothe that sore spot."

3:

Once upon a time. Once upon a time it was never like this. Once upon a time everything was fine. Happy. I was what? 30 at the time and my spiritual car was travelling upon life’s road quite happily. There were ups and there were downs and all my friends (and I) complained about it. Well, it's what you do, isn't it? You're never happy when you're happy are you? We had all the trappings, all the symbols and signs. I don't know. Sometimes I felt like a walking advertisement for that yuppie lifestyle. Not quite successful enough to be a caricature, but enough to be an ad.

Money was the key, and though ostensibly we didn't have any, it was never a problem. It always came. Looking back, I don't know where it came from. I'm convinced I even know where it went. But it was there. There's a line in a film, "Heartbeat" - a sentimentalised version of the lives of Kerouac and Neal Cassidy - which we quoted. "You can have anything you like. Money? Money is the least of my problems." It sounds a bit cold out of context but, anyway, it was there.

The point of that line is that the character who uttered it was rich, very rich, but hung up. And Jack and Neal were skint, always, but they weren't hung up. They enjoyed life, lived it. So anyway, you get the idea.

Simply, it wasn't enough. But then I suppose it's never enough. Whatever it is, it's never enough. We all used to complain about there not being any excitement in our lives and it was true. There wasn't much. Everything was known, from where we had been to where we were going. Where we actually were was a little bit shady, but that I suppose was the excitement. The feeling that we could alter our lives, change our path. But all that's theory. It's all talk. Everyone, in their own way, does it, but no-one, it seems to me, actually doees do it. We could argue about it, about parameters all day long. But one thing no-one argues about. Murder. Murder wasn't on the agenda. That wasn't something that had met our parameters. That wasn't something that nice Jewish boys did. Not at all. Still, I suppose it's just a question of perception.



2:

All this was well and good. It was what I'd been striving for for years. There was once a film called that, I think. The boy who had everything. Or maybe it was the man. What the hell. I was 30. OK, be honest. There were problems, but really too few to mention, certainly too few to take much notice of or to care about. Everyone's got problems. Real one. Imagined ones. You know the type. Everyone's got them.

A problem. My teeth were yellowing and too small. This was, in its day, a major problem. I would smile with my mouth closed. It made me look untrustworthy, fat and sly. And I knew it, but it was better than letting those teeth loose on the world. There were other things, but I'm sure you get the picture. Lots of things to worry about, but no problems.
No. What was important was getting on with it. Adopt a pragmatic approach. Just get on with it. And if your teeth are too small, so what. Did people really look at other peoples teeth and say "God, he's got small teeth"? Shit. What difference do teeth make anyway? Run out of them, buy some new ones. Not a problem.

So that was it then. Happy. A yuppie. Yeah, happy yuppie. So why did it all fall apart. Why did it all go so horribly wrong?
Wel, it all began one dark windy night... Love that. Sounds like the opening to one of my books. Probably will be.


I'm 30. I think I said that. About 5'11" tall (we'll call it 6'0"), about 12 stone, dark hair, dark eyes, darkish skin. Completely normal. You know what I do for a living, you probably know where I live. And if you don't, I'm sure you can guess. Jane. Jane is more or less the same. A bit shorter, a bit lighter, but more or less the same.

We had been together about 2 years. Two happy years. We had ups, we had downs, just like all couples. My friends said to me things like "You argue a lot, don't you?" I used to put the case that you couldn't have the ups if you didn't have the downs, that they were symbiotic. I believed it, and to be honest, I still do. I don't think that there's anything wrong in arguments really. As long as you both remember what's important and what isn't.


This is important. Or was anyway. No. Is. Sunday morning. We were lying in bed.

"I'm glad you're not working this morning. It's so nice to lie in bed together. You, me, a cup of cofffee and the papers."

"We haven't coffee or the papers."

"Yeah I know but the shops only a few doors away. I'll put the kettle on."

"What do you mean the shops only a few doors away. What you mean is that you'll put the kettle on if I get the papers."

"That's a good idea. You get the papers, I'll put the kettle on.

"I never thought I'd feel like this. It's strange. I don't know. I've never felt like this before."

We would both say things like this. It didn't matter who said what at what time. Lovestruck gibberish. And the strangest thing was that it was true. It was certainly true of myself and what I knew of Jane, it was probably true to her too. I had done a bit of background research on her and sure, she'd had a few relationships - she had even lived with someone for two years - but nothing serious. Nothing that you'd want to get too excited about.

"I tell you what, sugs. I'll put the kettle on and I'll get the papers." There were mornings like that. Honest.



The Libran.

I used to talk to my friends all the time. I'm not saying I trusted them exactly, but I used to talk to them. I trusted them as much as they trusted me. And anyway, talk never did have much to do with trust, it was always more a way of drawing up a shortlist of questions to ask yourself at a later date, questions that you should ask yourself when the time was right.
So now you think I'm selfish, cynical and untrustworthy. Well it's not true. I'm none of those things - well, no more so than anyone else - but it's probably good if you think I am.
OK, OK, let's start again. I've not had what you'd call a good day. Nothing special, just nothing to define it as good. One of those days when the pre and post work bath is the highlight. And now is the second highlight.
Tonight I'm seeing Catherine. Catherine is, how shall we say, the girl who has everything. But she's worked hard for it and she deserves it. When I say she has everything, I don't mean everything. I mean she has everything she wants. What she's always wanted. It's like my brother-in-law. He's an accountant and always wanted to be. After 5 weeks of pregnancy, his mother was tense with excitement. Would it be alright this time? After 10 weeks, his parents were thrilled. Going out for celebration meals and wondering whether to paint the "spare" room blue or pink. After 14 weeks my foetus-in-law was working out a revision schedule for his Part 1 accountancy exams. So now he's passed his exams - it only took him 34 years and after such preparation too - and he's an accountant and that's fine. Catherine is somewhere in between me and him.
She's not an accountant - she's a mother. So I'm going round there because Daniel, the baby, is too young to be left in the hands of a babysitter and because even if he were it would still be considered a devilish thing to do. Maybe it's not Daniel who is too young, but Catherine.
You know, she's changed so much since his birth. I know people are supposed to change and they're supposed to become, you know, Earth Mothers or whatever. They're supposed to become warmer, rounder, more caring. And in fairness, Catherine has lived up to this ideal - well a bit. She always was warm, round and caring. She always was the one who seemed to have more heart. Even when we were at college together, she was like that. It wasn't that she was a stick in the mud or that she didn't let go or she didn't do stupid things because she did, it was more that if anyone was in trouble or if anyone needed anything, Catherine would be the one who would be there.
Catherine lives in a very nice house - a million miles from the singles atmosphere of nearly everyone else I know. It's nearer a parental home. You know, and upstairs, sofas which weren't necessarily there as sofa beds and warm carpets all over, not that stripped pine nonsense. But the biggest difference was that you couldn't put one foot in front of the other without it hitting a squeaky toy or a runaway train. Toys. Everywhere. It added a warmth to the house, made it seem as if the house had a purpose - you know the word I'm avoiding.
I got there at around 8ish and we talked. Daniel was in bed and dutifully I went upstairs and looked at him and played with him and played with his toys. Meanwhile, Catherine was downstairs making coffee and glowing like she had a forcefield around her. A regular little Ready-Brek kid. She's even started to lose some of that excess weight. Her tits are still like balloons though.
Catherine called up. She'd made some coffee. I went downstairs to the lounge and there on the table was my own personal cafetiere. It smelt perfect, but she wasn't having any. She was having decaff. Yes, I know. We're still breastfeeding and it doesn't do your body any good and you can't just think of yourself now and I know it's a cliche but really you've got to cut through that and think about these things seriously. Catherine. She's so sweet, but why does she make me feel like smoking 18 cigarettes simultaneously whilst eating cholesterol injected raw meat?
I sat there and listened to her tales of domesticity, of how she went for walks in the local park and met other mothers and how there seemed to be a kind of unspoken mothers union, eyes flashing recognition and instant conversation. I remarked that the same thing happened when you took your dog for a walk. Thankfully, Catherine just walked through the partially unintended bitchiness - it was as if she was safely cocooned from all things unsavoury and had life filtered through a cotton wool sieve - just like young Daniel.
It wasn't that she had become one-dimensional, no that's not true. She had become one-dimensional. But it was a God given dimension. When I asked her if she missed work and the cut and trust of the real world - things that she used to enjoy so much and things which she was so good at - she smiled and said things like "I thought I would, but Daniel is such a hand-full, I really don't have that much time to even think about those things. You know, when I look at Daniel all that seems such an irrelevance." Then she would relate another tale about embryonic teeth or somesuch.
My input to the conversation was to talk about the real irrelevances of real life. Work - the office bitching, friends - who said what to who and did you know that X was having a dinner party and didn't invite Y. If I really wanted to spice the conversation up, I would talk about money grief or holiday plans. Then we would talk about he big league irrelevance. My relationship. Catherine was always good on that one. She wanted to see me happy and she wanted to see "us" happy, but we always seemed to make each other upset and cause each other such grief. But she knew we were meant for each other and if we got together and make one big go of it, then maybe things would be OK.
I knew Catherine meant well - meant in the same way that we were meant for each other - but I felt such a spoilsport coming into her candyfloss world and soling it with my tales of emotional trauma. So I played down the whole thing and pretended that it was just a mild hiccup which would soon resolve itself. And so it was.
More coffee was drunk and we laughed and talked about where we'd been and what we were going to do and we got so far down into irrelevances that I thought we'd never hear him when Daniel started crying. But we did. It cut through the air like a hot knife through butter. I could see Catherine's ears prick up like a dogs. Cue smile and off we trooped, upstairs to placate the little bundle of flesh.
Babies. Why do they get in the way of everything? I can't believe I was once one of them. Dogs. I like dogs. THrow a stick and they go and get it. Give them a tin and they're happy - so long as you open it. Throwing a stick and opening a can. That's not a lot to do when you consider what you get in return. Love, affection, company and someone who is there. And you get that cutesy "in the park" instant union. So what if conversation is a little one way? What conversation do you get with babies? Even when they're older? What Postman Pat did that day? Give me one bullet and I'd shoot that bloody black and white cat of his. Babies. You don't need babies. Fuck it. Let's go upstairs and look through the... arched window.



"Sweetie pie..."
There we go. There's that sweetie pie again. God, I dread sweetie pie. It hangs in the air like a pregnant noose. Looking for a neck. The mating call of the Lesser Spotted Middle Class Griefbird. Still, there's one way to compound it. Play.
I bounced over and around her like an over excited basketball.
"Yo! Sweetness and light. Little 100 watt bulb of my heart. Little glow worm who crawls through my soul. Little deep sea fish which has one of those mobile light tendons, little..."
She looked at me like I was mad. "Little deep sea fish which has one of those mobile light tendons?"
Perhaps I was mad. "Yeah, it's true. I saw it in one of those Wildlife On One programmes. Apparently it's true. In the deepest parts of the ocean it's completely pitch dark. So there are all these almost prehistoric fish which have mutated special devices which enable them to cope with the conditions. It's pitch black, there's no oxygen, the water pressure is enormous and practically nothing lives down there. Anyway, there's this one fish which has grown a tendon which comes out of it's back or it's brain, I forget, and at the end of the tendon is a light sensor. Like a torch."
"So what are you saying? I'm a prehistoric fish?"
"Yeah, something like that. I'm saying you are specially adapted to deal with your environment."
"Mutated?"
"Adapted."
"A prehistoric mutant?"
"Yeah, that's it. I'm saying you're a fucking prehistoric mutant. Look, can't we stick with glow worm?"
"So I'm a worm?"
I must add a quick explanation here. The above conversation started as a joke. A game. When I was going through the mutated fish explanation, it was still a joke. By the time we got down to where she says "A prehistoric mutant?", it's no longer a joke. By the end of the "conversation" we're maybe an inch from war. In the old days we'd have quite happily gone on for ever.
"So I'm a worm?"
"Yeah, a worm. Crawling around, eating mud and blinding stumbling into stones and other worms."
At this stage she'd maybe start crawling around and I'd start crawing around and we'd both be worms crawling around and we'd bump into each other and before you'd know it, spontaneous cuddle. But now? Now we're an inch from thermo-nuclear attack. And where's the difference? I don't know. I just don't know.



I'm 30. I think I might have mentioned that before. It's not that it's hugely important, it's just that it is. It's there. There's no point in trying to avoid it or trying to deny it. It's there. It's how you deal with it that's important. 30. You can't but help noticing it. And what do you do with it? More to the point, what does it do with you? It makes you wonder what you've done. It makes you realise you can no longer say to yourself "I'll do that when I'm grown up. I'll do that when I'm older." You are grown up, you are older. Or more to the point, I am.
You start looking at yourself and your life and thinking well, what have I done? If I go tomorrow, will it make any difference? Will anyone notice? I'm not talking about my mother or my friends or my workmates. Of course they'll notice. But (with the honourable exception of my mother) they'll soon learn to live with it. No, there's someone who'd be more upset than my mother. His mother. She'll, of course, take up grieving professionally. And not for me. For him. If I was no longer here, if I took the suicide route for example, I'd have done it to get at him. And her. And she'd be good at it. Within months, she'd get to represent England. Come the Olympics, she'd walk away with the gold medal. Silver too, probably. I'm sure she's in training even now. But, mothers apart, not much.
Now, without wanting to make too many direct comparisons, take Catherine. She's different. If Catherine dies, she'll still be around. Even when her mother dies, Catherine will still be around. Daniel, you see. There's always Daniel. And in years to come, Daniel will divide and multiply and, no matter how many times it happens, it will always come back to Catherine. Mind you, if Daniel cops the big one now, today or tomorrow, she's fucked.

John is not, how you would say, romantic. Well, I don't know. Maybe that's unfair. Maybe he is romantic, it's just that the romance has gone between us. Last Saturday, there was a classic example. We were just mooching around the house and I wanted to go to the shops. So I called him. I don't know what he was doing but it was obvious that he didn't want to be disturbed. Anyway,he started out with that "OK. What does she want this time schtick." Calling me his little angel cake, his little light bulb - all the usual things. Then he called me something like his little prehistoric mutant fish with lightbulb attached to it's head. Apparently such things do exist. Anyway, I started questioning this, playfully, pretending I was a mutant fish. In the old days we'd have quite happily gone on for ever.
"So I'm a mutant fish?"
"Yeah, a fish. Crawling around, eating mud and blinding stumbling into stones and other mutant fish."
There was a time where at this stage I'd maybe start crawling around and he'd start crawing around and we'd both be these mutant fish crawling around and we'd bump into each other and before you'd know it, spontaneous cuddle. But now? Now he comes back with "Yeah, that's it. I'm saying you're a fucking prehistoric mutant fish." Note, the keyword here is "fucking." Now we're an inch from thermo-nuclear attack. And where's the difference? I don't know. I just don't know.

I think this thing is dying. I think either that or we need some glue.


So. Here we are then. And does it feel good? Yeah, it feels good. I wasn't the type of person to be seen at a place like this. Ha. Fuck 'em. Well I am.
"Excuse me. What time am I on?"
"Don't worry. Not for another eight minutes. Relax. We'll give you a call two minutes from your on."
"Thanks."
I wasn't the type of person to be seen at a place like this. Yeah. Tell that to Pete and the rest, tell that to Jane Fisher, and tell that to my mum. But especially tell it to Jane Fisher. She should have snapped me up in first form when she had the chance. And what does it feel like? It feels good. It feels like... I don't know, all those things you ever wanted as a kid. Things like scoring the winning goal in a Cup final. That was never what I dreamt about when I was a kid, but you get the idea.
"Hi. John, isn't it?"
Clock that. This is Pascal White saying Hi. Knowing who I am. I know who she is. She knows who I am. Yeah. This is what life was supposed to be like. This was what my father worked for. This is what my A levels were for. This is what all that idiot bitching was about. Forget fame and fortune. Forget wine, women and song. Forget nose jobs. This is what life is about. Hi. Love it. Strange how she looks so short. Still.
"Yeah. Hi."
"Loved your book. I haven't actually read it yet, but everyone is telling me to. It's really hot at the moment."
I haven't actually read it yet, but everyone is telling me to. It's really hot at the moment. What fucking gibberish is that?

"John. John. Phone."
"What? Oh, well. Pascal can enthuse about my book later. Who is it?"
"Your mother."
"Hi mum, how are you?.... Yes, of course I know my uncle Alf, he's my uncle... Do I want to come round? That's a question? OK, OK. I'll come round. No, I'm not doing anything... yes, I'm sure... no I'm not... about 30 minutes... yes, I've eaten. I'll see you soon."
I decided to go round to my mothers. Not what you could call a spontaneous decision. Something was up with my Uncle Alf. My fathers brother, he was more or less the last link with the old days. More or less because he wasn't really the last link, he was just the last link we still spoke to. The other branch of the family we no longer spoke to. I don't know why - I don't think I ever did. I don't know if they ever knew. I had questioned my mother about these things but she just said "things. A long time ago. Things you don't know about." It was one of those conversations which Jane once found cute. Our cute Jewish ways.
"What's the point of your mother saying 'Things you don't know about'? If she told you, even once, you'd know about these mysterious 'things' and that would be that."
In these matters, explaining to Jane was as useless as trying to explain to my mother. Both were dealing with concepts which they had no idea about.
This could be a real opportunity, I thought to myself as I drove over to mothers. This could be something. Uncle Alf could be on his death bed, bleeding to death over a last breath confession.

Alf was your archetypal old Jewish man. Paunchy, bald, short. You know those old jokes. Like the one about an old Jewish man who gets knocked over by a car. He's lying in the road and someone rushes over. "Are you comfortable?" they ask. The old man shrugs. "I make a living." There are hundreds of old jokes like that and Uncle Alf is in all of them. A walking cliche with a heart of gold. Born in Stepney, moved to Hendon in the late Sixties. He even drives a Volvo, the big old "Jew canoe" model. He is, what you could call comfortable.
My old man and Alf had a business together. Well, they had to really. Two old ex-Poles. Jews. They had to have their own business. It could have been leather handbags, it could have been dresses. Their business was what was described as "schmutter jewellery". Fashion rubbish which was in vogue for 2 weeks and probably disintegrated after three. But people bought it and they made a living.

He called me over to his bed and ushered everyone else out of the room.
"I've got something to tell you and I'm going to tell you because you're the nearest thing I've got to a son. A long time ago things were very different. Sometimes we had to do things that we didn't always want to do. It wasn't like now. We couldn't pick and choose like you can, we had to do what we could. The War wasn't easy, but for your father and me, it was, how shall we say, rewarding in certain aspects. We don't need to go into detail, but we did some things - not bad things, just things for the goyim, things they thought were important - and for those things, they gave us some things."
What was he saying? They did some things and for those things they got some things in return? I wanted to shake him and see what details fell from those near dead lips, but I daren't. I just let him carry on.
"Listen to what I'm telling you. When the War was over, everything was in a mess. No one knew what was going on. No-one had nothing and everyone wanted everything. I'm not talking about just the poor people or the Jews. I'm talking about everyone. Well, your father and me, we had what you could call a licence. We had names and addresses and this licence because they owed us. We had done for them and now they had to do for us."
What was he talking about? We had done for them and now they had to do for us? What was this? Some sort of espionage deal? I conjured up all sorts of weird thoughts. Two little old Jewish men running through Nazi Germany dressed as undercover SS officers. Two little old Jewish men parachuting behind enemy lines after nightfall, infiltrating Nazi castles and leaving false information behind. Double agents. I felt I had to say something.
"What are you trying to tell me, Uncle Alf?"
"You people today. Always in such a hurry. What I'm trying to tell you is this. I want you to look after your Aunt Essie and your mother and I want you to make sure that they never go without or want for anything. They're not at an age where they should want for anything."
"I'll do my best, you know that. I work hard and..."
He smiled that old peoples smile which always said the same thing. Hard work? You don't know what hard work is.
"Listen to me. What I'm trying to tell you is that there is enough money to make sure that you never need for anything. You were too young when your father died and he made sure that I would tell you. When we came out of the war people had nothing. They needed things to take their minds off all the troubles and we gave them those things. We gave them things to make them feel better. The goyim. The Jews? They were too busy making money to bother with those things. We dealt with bad people and had to do some bad things but we got by. Everybody was happy."
"You're not talking about schmutter jewellery, are you?"
"Oy, do you want me to draw you a picture or are you so stupid you don't know what I'm talking about?"
My father and Uncle Alf were drug runners? I mimed someone shooting up and looked at him. He laughed.
"After the war, people wanted to drink. So we gave them drink. Later on, they wanted something more, so we gave them something more. And when times got better, they wanted to look at, what shall we say, picture books. So those we gave them too."
I couldn't cope with this. My father was a drug baron and pornographer? How could this be? He was a little old man. My little old man. How could this be?

I was pondering this question as I drove up to my mother's house. I knocked on the door, and after the customary dog greet, kissed my mother.
"Come in, come in. Your tea is ready."
"I thought I told you I'd eaten?"
"It's nothing. Just something."
I sat down and prepared to eat a three course nothing. Then she told me about Uncle Alf.
"You know your Uncle Alf?"
"Yes, I know my Uncle Alf."
Or at least I thought I did.
"He's moving house. Over 25 years he's been there and now he's moving. Anyway, he's moving to a much smaller place and is going to get rid of a lot of his things. He was wondering if you and Jane needed anything for your house?"
Reality was sometimes such a disappointment.

I'm pregnant. Two words. They fly off the tongue as easily as "So what do you fancy doing tonight, then?". I'm pregnant. Or at least I think I am. I haven't been for any tests or anything like that. I haven't even tried one of those do it yourself at home outfits. It's just a feeling, what you might call a gut feeling.
I'm pregnant. How does that sound. It doesn't sound particularly natural, not to me, not yet. It certainly doesn't feel particularly different. I haven't been sick yet or developed a craving for chocolate mousse and pickled onions. I'm pregnant. Perhaps if I repeat it often enough it will sound right. I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant. No, it's not there, is it? The question is, do I want it to sound right? The question. Who am I kidding?
What do I tell John? When do I tell John? I suppose I should tell him now, but I think it's better to check first, to make sure.
What am I talking about? Why do I want to put off telling John? What am I scared of? So he'll be surprised. Of course he'll be surprised, but what's life it has no surprises. How can you ever develop? He's always talking about spontaneity, well this is about as spontaneous as you get.
"Should we completely change our lives?"
"Sure, OK. Why not? I wasn't planning on doing anything today."

Do I want a baby? There's a question. Well, there are pros and cons. It would be a good focus. Work's going nowhere, or at least nowhere I want it to go - not that I know where I want it to go - and a baby would be a good distraction from that grief. C'mon, be serious. Work's going nowhere so I think I'll have a baby. It's a bit like saying there's nothing on television tonight so I think I'll go to the cinema. Is that so wrong to say? When something's not right, to try and replace it with something which might make it right. Is that not a good principle? And if it is, should it not apply to all things, whether they be monumental or trivial? If the Government is no good, you can replace it with a new one. You won't know if the new one will be any better, and if it isn't so you get another one in. We could cite any example here. It's the principle. Keep talking girl, you can persuade yourself of this one yet.

Do I want a baby? I suppose I should have one soon. If I don't it will be too late. The classic late 20th century working girl mistake. Get your priorities right, girl. Do you want to turn around in 10 years time and say to yourself "I wish I'd had a baby ten years ago?" Or is that the wrong way of doing it? Shouldn't we just deal with what we want? Plan it, work it out, that's the way you've been educated to think. And let's be honest, had you planned to have a baby? Well, there can only be one answer to that. No. But if you'd planned this, you wouldn't be feeling all this indecision. But, had I planned is a different question to do I want.

Do I want a baby? If I am pregnant, if, and if I have the baby, if, everything is going to be different. Let's be honest. The job would go. Money would be harder to come by, come on, money would be nearly impossible. Kids are expensive toys, they don't come cheap and John doesn't earn that much. We'd have to move, more money. A one bedroomed flat is no place to bring up a baby.
Listen. What is all this talk? Money. Moving house. What are these things? We're talking about a life, bringing a new human being into the world, creating a person, the fruit of my loins, the meaning of life. Yeah, the meaning of life. I can't be just here and that's it. There's got to be a reason to it all and you don't get more meaningful than creating a new life. I've seen all Woody Allen's films and the best he's come up with for a meaning of life is to tell funnier jokes. Well, that might be alright for him, but for me? I don't think so. I can never remember the punchlines. Well this one's got a punchline OK. This one's punchline is dirty nappies and no more sushi. Forget the baby, get a dog.
A dog. Do I want a dog? Yes. No question. Have done for years. A nice cuddly waggy tailed dog who's always there and is obedient and is good company and who I can take for walks in the park and sign up with that dog walking community and who'll talk to me when I'm feeling lonely. Yeah, get a dog. The only problem is, I'm pregnant with a baby, not with a dog.
Pregnant with a dog. There's an idea. Wish fulfillment taken to the nth. I don't know. It sounds a bit like Rosemary's Baby or something. I was wondering how it happened. Perhaps one night I was drugged and impregnated by a Devil Dog. Could be another one of those stupid Rottweiller jokes. What has four legs and a baby?
Do I want a baby? Why am I torturing myself with these questions? Why don't I just go and get one of those home detector kits? Then all the questions will be answered, all the doubt will be gone.

That's what I'll do. I go and get one of those urinary polygraphs and regardless of what it says, I'll leave it on the kitchen table for John. Let's see if he can work it out.



What I've got to do is to follow the logic to the end of the road. Follow it as far as it can go. It seems an obvious thing to say, but how to do it? How can you do it? You can't. You make a decision based on a given set of circumstances, a given situation and you work out the logical route forward from there. But then you've got a new set of circumstances, a new situation and thus a new logical route. And on it goes. So you're always chasing your tail, you're always looking and you're never satisfied.
I don't know why I mention this, maybe just because saying things to yourself is sometimes a good way of confirming how you feel. It's OK to know the correct way to live a life, but actually doing it is something else completely. There's always a reason why you cannot do something. A good reason. It doesn't matter how much you want to follow a straight line - follow the logic - thre alway seems to be something. Money, perhaps. There's the mortgage to pay. Or the car needs fixing.
I've jut finished a book by Richard Stark, one of those sleazeball crime novels. He wrote a book called "Point Blank", you might know it. It was made into a film with Lee Marvin as the main character, Parker. Parker is great. A true existentialist but one with the true existentialists achilles heel - it's OK being a free spirit but if you're dealing with people who aren't free, you're fucked. It fucked the Beat boys, quasi mythical heroes like Cassady, and it fucks Parker. Well, not completely (there's always the next book), but he's never as clear as he should be. Parker hs so many head starts on me - he's taken on (and beaten) the Syndicate, he has a viewpoint which regards killing as a casual but necessary chore, and he's fictional. At the end of the book, he finally gets hold of the villain. He needs him to sign a document, but the villain puts up the inevitable resistance. So Parker shoots him in the ankle. The purity. Parker does not have to resist the impulse to kill the villain, he has no impulse other than that of knowing what must be done. An the ankle gambit is perfect. Immense pain, instant immobilisation and instant respect. The villain knows now that you don't mess with Parker and even if he could, he wouldn't. But, as in all good morality tales, Parker relentless logic traps him. It's not that he does anything wrong, it's not that he makes a mistake, it's just that other people don't act and react as he does. The point is, if Parker cannot be clear, what chance does a nice Jewish boy stand?
I've got to get away from all this. I've got to get away from this world, this life where I get up in the morning and it's there; this life where I come home in the evening and it's just there; this life where I don't even get the chance to shoot anyone in the ankle. The most exciting thing to happen in the last few days? My mother asks me if I want one of my Uncle Alf's old lamps. This has got to change. I'm 30 years old, for God's sake. Half way through. My hairline knows it, why don't I?
So what am I going to do? I could give it all up and become a gun runner in North Africa. Maybe not, I'm not a famous poet. Or maybe I could stage a dramatic death? No. I'm not a famous rock star. Or perhaps I could descend into drugs and drink and death and be mourned for all of eternity as a great lost "wasted talent". The problem with all these things is that the only people who'll know what I've done are going to condemn me for being stupid. There's nothing heroic in dying. Well, not unless you've done something first. Or at least threatened to.
A friend of mine died a couple of years ago. A couple of years ago. It doesn't seem like it was yesterday. But it was. He was a writer, well a journalist. Very bright and probably very talented, but he was fatally flawed. He was in love with that romantic idea of the writer as a hard drinking, hard womanising artist. That's artist with an "e".
I remember he came to live with me and arrived at my flat with his belongings. A t-shirt and two 12" singles. The records were, by the way, his form of rent. That left a t-shirt. But he was great. Completety mad in many ways, but never less than interesting. I remember one morning he came downstairs with the previous nights red wine and some theory about Charles Manson. Why? I don't know. Anyway, I lost touch with him, inevitable I guess. But I heard a few months later he'd died. Passed out in his bath. He was 24. The thing is, he probably thought that he was following a great tradition, that with every glass he drank he was writing another glorious line to some future biography of him. But now he's just dead. And who knows? Me and his parents. And who cares? The same people.
The point is, it made no difference to anyone's life. It wasted his and did nothing else for anyone else. Poor Tom. Stupid bastard.
So what am I going to do? Jane keps talking about wanting to have a baby. Well, she doesn't actually say the words, but the references, the references keep coming.
"Why do you want a baby?"
"It'll give our lives a focus."
It'll give our lives a focus. It'll give our lives a focus by making us live through another life. She sees it as somehow extending our being. But I just cannot see it like that. If we have a baby, well it's just like saying "OK, our lives are history. Let's put our energies into this one." I think also, she sees it as a way of becoming immortal, like writing a book or something. You know, the whole thing about leaving something behind, something which proves we were here. But, be honest, the only way you're going to be remembered, I mean remembered by people who wouldn't remember you as a matter of course, is if you actually do do something. No one outside my family is going to remember my mother. Generations of school children aren't going to say "What a great woman she was. She had a baby." If I do something, then maybe people will remember the name, but not for her, not for her achievement. Do you know who Rembrandt's mother was?
Maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe Tom's still alive, selling guns in North Africa.

But bitching is one thing, doing is another. Doing is another thing completely. So what am I going to do? Spend the rest of my life writing opening lines to books? Opening lines which have already been written. I could be completely radical. I could quit my job, sell my flat and run away.
Run away? What a stupid, strange phrase. How can you ever run away? You'd constantly be aware of running away and thus you'd constantly be aware of what you were running from. So you wouldn't actually be running anywhere. You'd be worried and concerned about the same things, you'd just be worried and concerned in a different place.
I was reading the other day - always reading. What a flawed way of experiencing - I was reading the other day about a place in Paris called La Defense. No, a better example is the Pyramids they built outside the Louvre. Did they knock down the Louvre? Did they say, we want to run away from this past? No. They added, added a new dimension. Without saying either "the new must reflect the old" or "the new must be an extension of the past" or even "the new must connect to the old", they have perfectly demonstrated what was and what is without either diminishing one or artificially elevating the other. It is simply a case of that was what we were doing then, this is what we are doing now.
I wonder. Can you do that with a person? Can a person add disassociated parts to the existing whole? You can do it with clothes. You can change your image and thus how people see you by wearing a different suit or - radical, this - a leather jacket, but that's just an external. Can you change your persona? Can you put a leather jacket on your persona if your persona prefers a suit? First, I guess, you've got to find a style to suit, and speaking as someone who's never owned or even worn a leather jacket, I know that isn't easy.

Days came and days went. I didn't know what to do. I had taken a few days off work and was supposed to be working at home. I had the opportunity, the chance. Day and night I could work. A few breaks here and there - eating, sleeping, the usual things - but the rest, work. There was so much I wanted to do. All I needed was the time. I knew that. Now I had that time. And what did I do with my precious time? Wank. Masturbate. All I was doing was wanking. I don't know why, but I was.
11am. Wank.
11.30am. Wank.
12.00pm. Coffee. Wank.
And on. I was, I don't know why. It wasn't as if I was even wanking about something or for something. You know how it is if there's someone you fancy or some situation you find sexy, you'll wank it. You know. You're 13 years old, sitting in your geography class. Suddenly time stops - it just stops - and Mrs Hudson, your teacher, comes over to you.
She tells you how she cannot take her eyes off you, she tells you that while she's talking about Peruvian rainfall she's thinking about being with you. She's wearing schoolteacher like clothes, from wherever schoolteachers buy their clothes. I'm sure there must be a special store. Then she starts taking her clothes off, then she takes your clothes off and she seduces you. Then you wank and it's all over bar the Kleenex.
There was nothing like that. Just wanking. Walk into the bathroom, whip it out, wank, go back to the office and stare at the screen for another half an hour. It's doing my fucking brain in. It wasn't enjoyable, wasn't necessary, wasn't needed. It just happened.
OK. So we weren't having sex, we hadn't had sex for, what? three, four months now. There were a few isolated instances, a few times when we we tried to convince ourselves and each other that we had a viable relationship, but they weren't very satisfying. Not for me anyway. For her? I don't know. She went through the motions like a good 'un, but who knows with girls? Whatever, there wasn't the warmth that there once was. Not like the old days.

But we played with each other and satisfied each other that way. To be honest, I didn't even want sex. Not with Jane, not with anyone. I was bothered about it. It didn't seem natural, Olympic style masturbation coupled with no interest in sex. I had an idea. If I had sex - meaningless, pointless sex with no spirit, no feeling - I thought if I had that, then maybe it would re-awaken my libido. So I did it. It's no hard if you really want, but did it do any good?
I went to a massage parlour. She was some old boiler - no she wasn't. Actually she was quite nice. About 40 odd, slim and tie-dyed blonde. Debbie.
"Let me take your towel... lie down here... what do you want, powder or oil?"
"What do you think?"
"Powder's best."
"OK, I'll have powder."
She puffed some talcum power over my back and started rubbing it in. She was no masseuse, that was for sure.
"Do you fancy turning over now?"
More powder, more rubbing. Lots of abdonimal rubbing, letting her arms touch my prick, accidently. It started to get up to have a look what was going on and she smiled. Then she said was there anytyhing else I wanted? Anything else? What else? So she went through the menu. Finishing off by saying that she accepted cheques. I went for the most expensive option - £60 - in for a penny, I thought. And then she took her clothes off, started kissing my body and letting me kiss hers. Then she spluttered, complaining of the powder. That was quite cute. The powder was your idea. She laughed and I wondered whether it was all a party trick. Then she put a durex on me and started doing what she did. I looked down at her quite impassively holding onto her as if to stop me falling. Then I came, then she went into an exaggerated orgiastic ritual, telling me how good I was, how nice. Whack. It was all over. I was dressed and in the street, £75 the poorer.
When I got home about an hour later I had a wank and thought about nothing at all. I thought about Debbie and felt sorry for her in that condescending middle class way. Poor thing. I'm really not too sure about all this. I sat down in front of my computer and thought about the work that I was supposed to be doing. Nothing got done. I turned the thing on and got as far as the first menu, but then nothing. Sometimes I got as far as creating a new file, calling it 'Work. Day 1' or somesuch thing. But nothing ever happened. Ejaculation apart.





one month later.


John was in his study. Study. It wasn't so much a study as an escape hatch, a room where he could be alone, no questions asked. Going to the study 'to do some work' was a credible, legitimate excuse. That he never did any work was between John and his maker. And as his father was dead, well, that just left John. And he was quite happy not working in his study. He was quite happy studying what he always studied. Himself.

He looked at the mirror which sat in pride of place on his desk. This in itself was nothing new. John was always studying himself in the mirror. Just the same way as when he went shopping, he gave a new definition to the idea of window shopping. John didn't look beyond the window, and only looked in those windows which gave a good reflection.

It was not that he was vain, on the contrary. He hated the way he looked, but he had this constant compulsion to look at his image. And his look was always the same. It was a look of incredulity. "Is that really what you look like? Is that really who you are?"

He turned around. His eye caught a winged insect that had just flown in through the window. Instinctively he crept over to it and stamped on it with all his weight. "Vicious bastard insect" he thought to himself. In the wildlife programmes, insects were invariably portrayed as industrious, intelligent communal beasts - ants or termites. In these same wildlife programmes these inhabitants of perfect communist societies were always falling prey to winged predators. Larger and more mobile, they would swoop down and pick off the worker of their choice. John felt justified in perpetrating this mindless killing. There was always a self justification in killing an insect. There was the post nuclear horror show story. Man had inadvertantly destroyed himself and the planet was now beyond habitation. Beyond habitation that is for man and the other mammals. Insects thrived in this death scenario. They were now masters of the world. In this really gruesome version of this play, the insects had mutated to a giant size. The only men left were useless mutants who were used and abused by their insect masters. A sort of six legged version of The Planet Of The Apes.

Whichever way you looked at it, stamping on a winged insect was justifiable homicide. No jury on Earth would convict you for doing it. But.

But what if the insect wasn't the winged moster of John's imagination? What if it was a famous insect novelist? An artist? A chat show host wih his own regular Saturday night show on ITV (insect television)? A kind of insect Terry Wogan. What would happen? Would there be an announcement just before the show was meant to be broadcast "We're sorry to announce that tonight's show as been cancelled. Unfortunately Terry Insect was stamped on and murdered by a human, John Doe, last night. Terry will be sadly missed by his millions of fans. Our thoughts go out to his wife and children." Wife? Children? What kind of person am I? No jury on Earth perhaps, but plenty of juries in Termite Towers 505 would have me hung, drawn and quartered.

John studied himself in the mirror. The insect thing was beginning to really bother him. It wasn't the child like idea that his victim could have been famous. No, he had reconciled himself with that one. If he was happy killing a nonentity, he should be happy with killing a celeb. No. He had a new insect-related problem. Fantasy aside, it's highly likely that the insect knew as much about it's death as it did about it's life. It's (mortal) actions were not so much sub-conscious as pre-conscious. It did what it did and now it doesn't do what it, er, did. But.

But what if it was a rational being? What if - modes and levels of intelligence apart - what if insects did live in the knowledge that at any time, any time at all, their lives could be over. A foot would come down and what was light became dark. What was life became death. No reason, no warning, no feeling. Just over. Gone. How would I react to life if it was like that, thought John. Would I live life as the perfect existentialist? Would I become a one-dimensional pleasure dome, making decisions purely on the basis of what I thought would give me momentary satisfaction at that particular moment? A guilt free being, unburdened by obligation or commitment. Money would mean nothing. Relationships would mean nothing. What would be the point in being frugal, in being loyal, in being a mensch if, at any moment, a giant foot could come down and end it all. What would life be like in a world like that.
John smiled. He could cope with that. A free spirit, going nowhere, doing nothing and feeling no guilt about it. He thought of all the suits he would order, just because doing so would give him pleasure. He thought of that old Citroen (a black DS 23 Pallas) that he always wanted. He thought of a million things that he could do, a million places he could go.

And people? How would he treat people. Well, presmably everybody would be the same and so there would be no real concept of morality. It would be a survival of the fittest society, where people just took what they wanted, when they wanted it. The scenario was becoming a little darker, but John had to follow it through. That old Citroen. What if, once he had acquired it, someone else saw it and wanted it. Someone stronger. What if someone saw him and wanted him? Rape, theft, murder - these things would become commonplace. I want it, I'll have it. What? It's yours? Tough shit, I want it now. Are you going to stop me having it?

No, that's no good. You'd have to invent rules, laws to govern such a society. You couldn't just have mob rule. It would be anarchy. The thought depressed John. He quite like the idea of himself as a one man pleasure zone. But maybe it would still be possible to reconstruct himself as that winged fly. If he could convince himself that a giant foot could end his life at any moment. If he could rid himself of the morals that society had placed on his shoulders, he could be happy. To live life just for himself, with regard only for himself. Of course, this didn't mean that he should be free to go around merrily raping, murdering and stealing. He would still have to stick to the mensch ideal of not doing to others what you wouldn't want them to do to you, but he would act first and think later. Act. That was the key word. If a giant foot could end it all at any time, it would be action that counted.

But then just as John was giving himself the usual "I would be this if only x, y and z were in place", he reminded himself that, in this instance, x, y and z were in place. John remembered buses. An absent minded insect flies in the wrong window. An absent minded person crosses the wrong road. Not quite the same instant blackness as the giant foot, but wrong place wrong time death just the same. Insect or foot. This appeared a really quite straightforward question to John. Answer, schmanswer. He knew the question and he knew the answer, but as yet the question and the answer had not met. As yet, the question and the answer were not even distant relatives.


Jane went to work. Then she came home. That's what she did. That's all she did. As far as her mind was concerned, she was neither at home or at work. No, that's unfair. At work she was efficient, if physically weak. Physically weak. That's one way of looking at it.

In real terms, she no longer felt she knew John. That was fine seeing as he longer thought he knew her. Only now they were living together. And - work apart - there was no escape. He knew her. She knew him. By the way, when the word "knew" is used, it doesn't carry with it any Biblical connotation.

The situation was getting no better. They knew each other, felt that they didn't know each other and neither of them was too sure whether they cared. No, they did care. They had to - there was no choice. It wasn't as if a burning bush ever appeared in the front room and offered them any choices. Probably the popular choice would have been to never have ever met. But they had met, they had crossed swords and no bush was going to change the situation now. That was pure wishful thinking.

John was the first one to break the silence.
"I've been thinking. Maybe we should try and get away for a bit."
"What? From each other?"
""C'mon babe, be fair. You know what I mean."
"Be fair? Be fair! I didn't notice you being fair a few weeks back."
"Jane, Jane, Jane. Are we going to go through a history lesson now? Or are we going to talk sensibly?"
"So now you want to talk sensibly. You've been thinking and you want to talk sensibly. And you want to be fair! What's the deal? Are you going for a Nobel Peace Prize of something?"
"Doesn't matter. Forget it."

That was a fair snatch of conversation. Constructive, useful and efficient. They both knew the rules of the game and knew that the conversation wasn't over until one of a number of things happened.
1) a book was picked up, 2) the television was switched on, or 3) a body walked out of the room, the live-in equivalent of the phone put down.

"I've booked a weekend away. Next weekend. A little farmhouse place in the country. It's supposed to be lovely."
"I thought there was a party you wanted to go to on Saturday?"
"Fuck the party. Every week there are parties. And they're all shit. Let's go away, it will be nice."
"Well thanks so much for the oh-so-kind thought, but I can't. I'm working next weekend. Next time you get an urge to assuage your guilt, I suggest you consult me first."
The phone was put down and Jane left the room.

The weekend away idea was, in a way, a complete irrelevance. John could have come up with an idea - any idea really - and it would have received the same treatment. In itself, that was nothing special. Most relationships seem to be built on that kind of conversation. The problem was that if Jane had come up with the idea, John would have reacted in exactly the same way. Worse, probably. The "conversation" would have been more drawn out, more personal, more hurtful. What set this relationship apart from others which were simply bad was that there was no dialogue at all.

The more time that they spent together, the more they argued. The more time they tried to avoid each other, the bitterer the retributions. That was the essential problem with arguments. They don't go anywhere. Once the words have been thrown, the plates are thrown. The more you throw, the less effective it is. There isn't any shock value any more. So you've got to throw something more, something bigger. And once the plates have been thown, then what? A chair? A table? A wall perhaps? You inevitably run out of things to throw. So you start to throw yourself.

John decided that even if they weren't going to have a weekend away together, the room would not be wasted. He told Jane. Predictably, the news was not well recieved.

"How can you be so selfish?" This was the general tenor of her response. "If either of us needs a break, it's me. Who has been through the trauma? Who's is the loss? And yet who do you think about?"
John listlessly delivered the losers reqiem.
"I'm thinking about both of us. We need to get away, we need to get away from this environment, and if we can't get away together - which is what I wanted - then we should get away from each other for a while."
"Yeah. That's about it. Just another excuse to get away from me."
"No, not get away from you. Get away from here. Get a chance to clear my thoughts, be alone."
They were an inch away from really quite a nice dinner service - and they knew it.
"Yes, well you can be alone. You can have your precious solitude. And not in the countryside either. The farmhouse isn't going to be wasted. I'm going to go."
"But I thought you had to work?"
"Fuck work."


Dear John,

As I write those first two words, I get a tear in my eye. Do you remember how we always used to joke about the "Dear John" letter?

I'm writing because I want to communicate with you but we just can't seem to talk these days. I wish you could understand how I feel, how much the feeling of loss means. I know that these words are just words to you and always be. I don't blame you for being what you are - don't worry, I'm not going to blame "society" or "education" - just as I don't blame you for not understanding. How can anyone understand what they cannot comprehend? I remember when we started going out, you thought that my pre-menstrual tension was an excuse to act stroppy and get away with it. I know we're both older and (hopefully) wiser, but there are some things that men will never understand, no matter how 'new' they try to be.
I wish you could understand the sense of loss that I feel. How can I explain to you? You lost something you never had. You lost an idea of something, an idea of something that, in truth, you never really wanted. I lost something much more real, something which existed, a physical entity, a part of me. Something which my body - never mind my mind - still hasn't accepted is gone. I wish you could understand that. Don't worry. I'm not going to give you a lecture about religious spiritualty and the sanctity of life.

I don't always choose to make such a display of the wonderful despair that I feel - I use the word wonderful because that's how I feel. It's all I have - but I really feel as if I have no choice in the matter.
If anything, that's what I cannot forgive you for. My moods, my aggression, my depression - somehow it's not me who's controlling it. It comes from within, but I don't control it. I can't.
That's the difference between us. My moods come from a hormonal directive even I don't fully understand; yours comes from pride and your male ego. Sometimes I think you're only really concerned with looking concerned and that you just want a get out clause.
I'm sure if I felt that you were truly by my side and on my side, I would react better. Equally, I'm sure that you feel the same way. I know the weekend away thing was meant as a nice idea and I'm sure it was done with the best intent, but it seemed to me you did it as a duty. You didn't give the impression that it was something you really wanted to do.
I hope to use the space this weekend to think things out and think it over. If you do the same, then maybe when I come back we'll be able to compare notes and find a way through.
I still love you and always will.

Lots of love,


Jane.

xxxxx



Sunday night and Jane wasn't back yet. Oh, they'd spoken on the phone - the usual stilted politeness which turned on a knife-edge to dark barely hidden bitterness which ended with an abrupt phone down. The weekend score was 2-2, which says something.

Monday morning came and still no Jane. John felt a wave of righteous indignation and made himself a cup of coffee. As he drunk it and smoked the first cigarette of the day - the first of an increasing number - he mentally composed the phone call to Jane's office. It was full of "How could you's" and "Didn't you think I'd be worried's" and other more general good-guy-who's-been-hurt type noises. How could she do this to me? After all, who was it who booked the weekend away? Who was it who arranged the whole deal? Found the place? And now this! John was bubbling with an anger borne out of knowing - for once, for sure - that he was right.

Sure, when he woke up and found that letter, he felt a wave of warmth. He felt like phoning, or better still, driving out to the farmhouse to give Jane a hug, tell her it was going to be OK. But he thought better of it. He thought that all that could wait and for now it was better to give her the space that she said she so desperately needed. There was a party on Saturday night he could go to - they both got what they wanted. And after such consideration, this!

The truth was that John had manipulated the situation perfectly. It may not have started out that way, but when the opportunity presented itself, when he saw the possibilites, well... who was going to lose? Jane got a weekend away in a new environment, away from the pressures of the city, of her life. John got a little time and space to himself where he most wanted it.

The truth was, of course, just west of a million miles away. John got everything, Jane got nothing. John got what he needed, and Jane too got what John needed. He got (in no particular order) to see his friends, go to a party (and play all sorts of single man party games) and generally have responsibilty free fun. Jane got her body. And grief. Isolated grief.

John phoned Jane's office at 10am. She should be in, he thought. She's always in by 10. She wasn't in. No, they didn't know when she would be in. No, she hadn't been in touch. John replied that he'd phone back later and asked if they'd leave a message that he'd phoned.

Duty done.

There is no such thing as a true mirror image. A mirror will give you a reverse, more, a reverse which is (ever so slightly) altered through the refraction of light. If you want to dispute the physics, go elsewhere. This is true of a story. If two people tell the same story, it will come out differently. Different voices, different emphasis, different ways of being.



NEW HEADING:

A good weekend. It had been a good weekend. From Friday night's wank session, to Saturday morning breakfast with the boys. That was a good laugh. The line to Jane's mother went down particularly well. It was juvenile wit, but then that was always the most popular type.

"Jane's mother rang up last night. I told her that she wasn't there, that she'd gone away for the weekend. So then she asked me if I knew where she was staying, if I had her number. I said to her that as far as I was concerned, her number was 666. Went down like a lead storm."

You can call it juvenile, you had to be there. My friends appreciated it - that's what friends are for. Moral support was shown in the form of a quick chorus of Cliff Richard's "Devil Woman". Now they refer to her a "DW".

Saturday afternoon was spent shopping for clothes. Is there anything quite so perfectly indulgent as shopping for clothes? Particularly when you cant really afford it. Particularly when you don't even need any clothes. Is there anything quite so satisfying s buying something you don't need with money you shouldn't be spending? No. Fuck sex. That's sex. And be fair, I had half an eye out for something for Jane. Mainly though, it was shoes. The perfect brogue. Always the search for the perfect brogue. You just cannot get the perfect brogue - well not unless you go to Church's, and even in this reckless mood, I couldn't go there. There's spending money you haven't got and there's spending money you haven't got. Getting a pair of Church's shoes definitely falls into the latter category.

Just as it was getting late - I had to get back home in time for the football results. Imagine the bliss of being able to watch the football results by myself! I'd even done a bet at the bookies - anyway, just as it was getting late, I passed a book shop. Perfect. I bought two books. One each. Perfect. No thought, no pain, duty done.

The party was a real trip down memory lane. A friend of a friends, I knew virtually no one there. And that was just the way it should be. After all, it was at a situation like that where I first met Jane. I remember, I made the classic mistake of thinking she was a girl on the make when really she was a trapdoor spider in human form. No, when you go to a party by yourself, particularly if it's a party where you don't know anyone, you can be anyone you want to be. There's no history clouding the issue. Bright and witty, dark and moody - you can be what you want. And you don't have to decide till you get there.

Parties are great. They're cheap, you get to meet all sorts of different people, and where else do you meet people? Work. But then they're just work people and so you just talk about work things who's doing what and who's got what job and, OK, you can play with that, but it's almost too familiar to be a challenge. And that's what we're looking for here - a challenge.

And did we find one? Well, there was a lot of the usual caper - posing, pouting and preening. It's always good for a gag, especially when you haven't played the game for some time. There was one girl there, I knew her. A friend of a friend, who I'm sure I could have done business with. She was well on for it. But, to be honest, I wasn't in the mood to take the game that far. Playing was one thing, but playing for those stakes? No, some other time. And anyway, what if Jane had thrown a wobbly? What if she'd come back? That would be great, wouldn't it? She'd come back late on impulse and there'd be me and this lass. Or worse. She'd come back late and I wouldn't be there. I'd turn up in the morning. Shagged.

Of course it could be that the girl wasn't interested in taking the game that far either. It could be she was in some situation of her own which she was just taking an advert break from. Who knows? And, who cares? That's the beauty of these party games. If you know the rules and know the score, no one gets hurt and no one loses anything. What happens? Your ego gets a bit of a harmless massage. Is that so terrible? You're not unfaithful, you're not dishonest. No one gets hurt. That's what Jane could never understand. Or at least that's what Jane said she could never understand. Remember how I said Jane and I met?

To be honest though, the party wasn't much cop. There have been better ones. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for it, but it seemed to me that there were too many people trying just that bit too hard. And if you try to hard, it means that it means too much. And if it means to much, you shouldn't be playing. Because sometimes it hurts.

Sunday was much more up my particular alley of pleasure. I saw no one, spoke to no one, did nothing. A slow, lazy morning reading the papers, a slower, lazier afternoon taking in a film on the television and a bath. In the evening, I sat in the office and thought about work. Interestingly, I felt no compulsion to even masturbate. Does that mean I was relaxed? I don't know anymore. No one phoned. No one appeared. And if I said that this didn't bother me, I'd be a liar.

At first I sat there wondering what I'd done wrong. The non contact ploy was - I was sure - a gambit to make me feel guilty about something which I'd done or, more pertinently, hadn't done. At about 10pm, I remembered the phone call from her mother. That was it. There had been some domestic trauma and Jane had gone straight back to her folks place. The trauma had been so great, so traumatic, that she hadn't even had time to let me know of her situation, where she was.

This mental scenario reassured me for the length of time it takes to dial seven digits and wait for a response. To say that her mother was cold would be verging on the understatement. The simple question "Is Jane there?" brought the none to witty response of "I suppose she's still in that farmouse being offered another sacrificial virgin." What did I expect after my previous "666" crack? I put the phone down before she got the chance to crank her brain into motion, figure out that Jane wasn't home yet and get worried.

But I got worried. Worried and angry. I thought of phoning the police, but it seemed a little drastic for a domestic trauma. Everything would probably be OK and get marked down to pre-menstrual tension. Then I remembered she still wasn't having periods, but what do I know? Maybe the trauma still flows even though the blood doesn't. Women wouldn't let a drop of blood get in the way of that God given monthly excuse to lose your rag (no pun intended)?

I went to bed, but couldn't sleep properly. I felt guilty, but God knows what about. It's that old Jewish condition, I guess. Worry about what it is you feel guilty about; feel guilty for just worrying and not doing anything about it; feel guilty about not having anything to worry about; worry about forgetting what it is you're supposed to be worrying about; feel guilty about... what? Anything. In the end it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter as long as you feel the guilt. I don't know why it is, but it's one of the few real things that my parents said that I remembered.


What am I doing here? By myself? What am I doing here? I know I didn't want to be here, not by myself. John. What is it with him? Why does he think that... I don't even know anymore. What's he think? I want to trap him? I blame him? Yeah, blame. He blames himself and he blames me for blaming him. Stupid, selfish bastard. And now, I'm here. By myself. For who's good? Mine? Are you serious? Is he?

God, he must think I'm so stupid. He must think I know nothing. I know why I'm here. I know why he's there. I know what I'm going to do. I know what he's going to do. And, believe me, you don't have to have a maths O level to work that lot out. Listen, I could line up exactly what his weekend is going to be. Breakfast with his idiot mates. They'll - he'll - talk about how he's escaped "The Grief" (that's me, by the way); he'll go to that party that he wanted to go to and he'll play his macho boys games and that will be that. He thinks I don't know about that party. Stupid, selfish bastard.

What does he get out of those games? What do any of them get out of it? What? It makes them feel attractive, makes them feel that they've still got 'it'? I don't know what it is. Makes them feel that they're still men? Fuck. That phrase 'new man'. It's like calling a potato 'new'. It's been sitting on a shelf in Sainsbury's for a month, it's covered in mud and it gets called new. Another sales angle, that's all.

What's the big thing about being 'a man' anyway? I can't really see that John's bothered about virility - he's virile all right. This whole ball game is because he's so fucking virile. I'm walking, talking proof of that. But that's not his kind of virilty. His kind, his way is talking, playing idiot words games with a girl who's too scared of what she wants to know otherwise. That's virilty. But why, I just don't understand it. He's not a kid anymore, he's got nothing to prove like you do when you're growing up. And he's not old. He's still fit and healthy, he's got all his hair, most of his own teeth and his own stomach. I don't know. I can sort of understand it from a 40 year old... no, shit. Why should I try to understand it from a 40 year old man? A 40 year old woman doesn't need to run around with yong boys just to prove to herself and her mates that she can still get it up. Well, not unless she's a fading film or music star anyway. Anyway, fuck it. I'm here. And he's not.

He was right about something. This is a lovely farm. Two huge woofy labradors, miles of nothing and a nice pub. What more could a girl want? A girl could want someone to walk with - no offence to the dogs, a girl could want someone to talk to, a girl could want not to be by herself again, a girl could want not to keep bursting out in tears, a girl could want a ba... all sorts of things.

It makes me so angry. This could have been so blissful. I'm walking along a rivers edge, two labradors running around with not a care in the world between them (I think. I'm throwing them sticks. What more do they want?), the sun is shining, there's no phone and I don't have to be anywhere or talk to anyone. It's strange the way that time seems to move so slowly when you're by yourself. When you've got nowhere to go or nothing to look forward to except more time, it just seems to hang there.

I could go for lunch now, but I arranged - with myself, with my friends, with the dogs - to go at 12.30. I could go for lunch now, but it's only 11.20. If I went for lunch now, what would I do at 12.30? No, it's better to go when I planned to. It's better to have a focus on the day. Everyone needs a focus. No. I'll stay here for another 10 minutes, until it's 11.30 and then I'll start walking to the pub. But then I said that at 11 and that was over half an hour ago. I don't know, it's strange. The last month was a week, but the last 10 minutes was an hour.

I remember once John and I were talking about this car that he wanted, he always wanted one car or another. And anyway, we were talking about it and suddenly we saw three of them in rapid succession. Citroens, I can't remember the model. But they were quite rare, very trendy but rare. Anyway, we saw three of them. Strange, it was as if they knew we were talking about them. I think I'll leave that thought before I start rabbiting on about Divine Intervention.

I suppose it's natural, but I just couldn't handle it. It's a sunny day and the pub is one of those big country pubs with a long flowing garden in the back. I suppose it was natural that it should attract families, and if it attracts families then there are going to be kids involved. But so many babies? Is it that I'm looking for them, or are they looking for me?

I remember how I used to hate babies, the way the mewed like strangled cats, the way they always made a mess and then cried and cried because they'd made a mess. The way they were always wanting things, always wanting, looking. How they never seemed to leave you alone for a minute. Going to sleep when it suited them, waking up when it least suited you. All those things, they seemed to have an inate vindictive streak in them. It was as if they were paying you back for disturbing them from the warmth and security of where they'd come from.

But now, I don't know, now it all seems so different. Endearing. I look at them and think how they are always looking to learn, always so alert, unafraid to make mistakes, doing all the things that we are so scared to do. Babies. They don't know the right thing to do because they don't know the wrong thing yet. And they don't even know that it's wrong to try and find out. The constant search for knowledge - what this race of ours is supposed to be about - seems only to find an outlet in babies. It seems that's what their whole existance is devoted to, finding out. They have no shame, no guilt, no vindictiveness - they're just asking a question.

I don't - can't - know. Would it have been different here if John was with me?

I don't want this. I want nothing of this. Everything I want has been taken away from me. Cut, dragged, scraped, sucked, torn, ripped, sliced, excavated. Everything I want has gone. Everything. At last I am what his mother wanted. She always wanted me to be kosher, and now I am. Drained of all blood, of all soul. Just drained.


Looking back on the weekend, it seems so easy just to dismiss it as a bad idea. Or a bad dream. But no, it wasn’t a dream. And as an idea, it never got really off the ground. That sounds a bit like John’s books. I just knew that I didn’t want to go back to the bleak coldness of our home. home. That place would find no dictionary description.


t has†ÄThe last month was a week, but the last 10 minutes was an hour.

I remember once John and I were talking about this car that he wanted, he always wanted one car or another. And anyway, we were talking about it and suddenly we saw three of them in rapid succession. Citroens, I can't remember the model. But they were quite rare, very trendy but rare. Anyway, we saw three of them. Strange, it was as if they knew we were talking about them. I think I'll leave that thoughough his mouth was moving, his mind was somewhere else completely. Most disappointing was that the good PC didn't even notice. John was hoping rather than expecting that when he opened the door he'd have found Lloyd Hopkins, Sgt Bleichert, Hoke Moseley, Jamison or Balzic. A touch unrealistic perhaps to have expected anyone like that in this cutesy upwardly mobile urban suburb. Unrealistic or not, it was still a profound disappointment to have PC 45135 standing there with his idiot hat and truncheon. Not a sap in sight, not that John would have known what a sap looked like.

"Maybe I should have called a private investigator. Maybe Milodragovitch would have shown up."
"Sorry sir. What was that?"
"Oh, nothing. Sorry officer."
"So, sir. Your wife, was it?"
"Girlfriend."
"Sorry sir. Your girlfriend. What seems to be the problem?"