Talking It Over by Julian Barnes
I don’t think I reacted to this story in the way Stuart expected. I probably didn’t appear to be concentrating. I took sips of my wine and carried on with the supper, and at one point I went across to the bookcase and idly picked up a petal that was lying there. A blue petal. I put it in my mouth and swallowed it.
I’m thoroughly confused. And that’s putting it mildly.
8: OK, Boulogne It Is
Oliver I have a dream. I heeeeeeevw aaa dreeeeeaa-aaammm. No I don’t. I have a plan. The transfiguration of Oliver. The prodigal son will feast with harlots no more. I’m buying a rowing machine, an exercise bicycle, a Langlauf podium, a Bullworker. No, I’m not, but I’m doing the equivalent. I’m planning a mega-turnaround as per the advertisement. No Pension at 45? Which Is Your Type of Baldness? Shamed By Your English? I’m getting that pension, having that crown-weave. And I’m not shamed by my English, so that’s one fewer fomenter of cafard. But in all other respects – it’s the 30-day life-transformation plan. Just you try and stop me.
I’ve farted around too much, that’s the triste truth. You’re allowed to do that for a bit, as long as you finally discern that petomania is not a profession. Put a plug in it, Ollie. Shape up. Decision time.
First, I’m giving up smoking. Correction: I have given up smoking. You see how serious I am? For how many years have I not defined, or at least decorated, myself by means of the fronded fragrances of the tobacco leaf? From the first cravenly petit-bourgeois Embassy all those years ago, to the predictable monogrammed-slippers appeal of Balkan Sobranie, via the posturings of menthol and the hideous austerity of low-tar, through the Rive Gauche authenticity of fat-thumbed hand-rolling (with or without aromatic additions) and its brusque mechanical equivalent (those Stakhanovite mangles, that floppy deck-chair of rubber I could never quite subdue), all leading to the current confident plateau, the équilibré intake of Gauloise and Winston, alloyed occasionally by the fierce kick-start of a little Swedish number named after hoi polloi’s Alsatian, Prince. Woof, woof! And I’m giving all this up. No, I have given all this up. Just now, a moment ago. I didn’t even ask her. I just suspect she’d want me to.
Second, I’m going to get myself a job. I can do it. I did not flee the toxic Shakespeare School of English without abstracting a certain amount of their blushlessly chauvinistic writing-paper, and now have a series of pretty testimonials to my ability, each weighted to tickle the gonads of a different prospective employer. Why did I resign? Alas, my mother died, and I had to mastermind the discovery of an old folkery for my father. And if anyone is callous enough to check on that story then I wouldn’t want to work for them anyway. My mother’s always dying, it’s been such a help over the years, and poor Papa frequently demands a change of geriatric vista. How he longs to gaze wistfully out at a breaking wave of woodland. How he loves to recall the far-off days before the Netherlandish beetle savaged the English elm, before the uplands were girdled with Christmas trees. Through his picture-window my Pater peers into the past. Tap-tap-tap goes the ancient forester with his trusty axe, runically carving a cleft in a knotted trunk to warn his fellow-woodsmen of a noxious toadstool which groweth hereabouts. And lo! how doth the brown bear frolic upon a bank of sempiternal moss! It was never like this, and my father was an Old Bastard if you must know. Remind me to tell you about him one day.
Third, I’m going to pay back Stuart. Guglielmo the Betrayer I am not. Simplicity and probity shall be my offerings. My clownish mask no longer cloaks a breaking heart, so away with it. I shall doff my slippered pantaloon, if that’s what one doffs. In other words, I’m going to stop fucking well camping around.
Stuart I’ve been thinking. We’ve got to try and help Oliver in some way. It’s our duty. He’d do the same for us if we were in trouble. It was really pathetic, meeting him like that in the flower shop. He’s got no job. He’s got no confidence – and Oliver, even from the earliest days, was always someone who had confidence. He would take on anyone – even that father of his. I suppose that’s where it started. If you’re a kid of fifteen with a father like that and you take him on, then why should the world scare you? But it does scare Oliver now. This terrible business with the Spanish girl. The old Oliver wouldn’t have had any … trouble like that, and if he did he’d just have danced away from it. He’d have thought up some joke, or turned it to his advantage. What he wouldn’t have done is gone out and bought the girl loads of flowers the next morning and then get caught by me doing it. It’s like saying, please don’t tell, please don’t broadcast it to the world, I can get hurt. He’d never have been like that in the old days. And the pathetic way he expressed himself. ‘I made a terrible bosh of it last night.’ That’s schoolkids’ talk. The wheels are coming off, if you ask me. We’ve got to try and help him.
Gillian I’m not sure about any of this. I feel deeply apprehensive. Stuart came home last night in his usual cheerful mood, gave me a kiss, put his arm round me and made me sit down as if he had something important to say.
‘What about a holiday?’ he asked.
I smiled. ‘That’s nice. Of course, we have only just got back from our honeymoon.’
‘That was years ago. Four weeks at least. Five. Holiday?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Thought we might take Oliver along with us. Cheer him up.’
I didn’t reply, not at first. Let me tell you why. I had a friend – well, I still do, it’s just that we’re temporarily out of touch – called Alison. She was at Bristol with me. Her family were nice, lived somewhere down in Sussex, a normal middle-class country family. They loved one another; her father never ran off. Alison got married right out of university. She was only twenty-one. And do you know what her mother said to her the night before her wedding? Her mother said to her, quite seriously, as if this was advice handed down in the family from mother to daughter since time immemorial, her mother said: ‘It’s always a good idea to keep them on the hop.’
I laughed as well at the time, but it stuck with me. Mothers telling daughters how to manage their husbands. Necessary truths passed down the female line over centuries, and what does the accumulated wisdom amount to? ‘It’s always a good idea to keep them on the hop.’ That depressed me. I thought, Oh no, when I marry, if I marry, things have got to be straight, out in the open. I’m not going to play games or have secrets. But it seems to be starting already. Perhaps it’s inevitable. Do you think the institution doesn’t work otherwise?
What should I have done? If I were trying to keep things straight, I should have told Stuart about Oliver’s appearance at the door and what I did with his flowers. But then should I also have said that Oliver rang up the next day and asked if I’d liked them? That I told Oliver I’d put them down the waste-disposal and the phone went silent, and when I finally said, ‘Are you still there?’ he just answered, ‘I love you,’ and hung up. Should I have told Stuart all that?
No, presumably. So I made a joke about the holiday suggestion. ‘Bored with my company already?’ – which not surprisingly Stuart took the wrong way. He thought I was cross, so he got flustered and started telling me how much he loved me, and that wasn’t what I wanted to hear either, though of course in one way it’s what I always want to hear.
I’d made a joke of it. I’m not keeping him on the hop, but I am making a joke of things. This soon?
Stuart I don’t think Gillian took too kindly to my suggestion that the three of us go on holiday together. I was about to explain when she sort of cut me off. Nothing she said, just a way she has of slightly turning and doing something else and not replying as quickly as she might. It’s funny, but I seem to have known that little habit for the whole of my life already.
So the holiday idea’s been dropped. Or rather, changed. Just a long weekend, just the two of us. Take the car down to Dover first thing on Friday morning, then head off into France. Monday’s a holiday, so we’ve got nearly four days. Find a little hotel somewhere, see the early autumn colours, go to a market and buy lots of string
Oliver seemed upset when I told him. It shows how really fragile he is at the moment, I suppose. We met for a drink. I told him we were heading off to France for the weekend. His face sort of fell, as if we were abandoning him. I wanted to add, ‘It isn’t for long’, or something like that, but you don’t exactly say that between friends, do you?
He didn’t answer at first, then asked where we’d be staying.
‘I don’t know. We’ll find somewhere.’
At this he seemed to liven up, and went back to being Oliver. He put his hand on my forehead as if I was running a fever. ‘Are you well?’ he asked. ‘This isn’t like you. Whence this new spirit of recklessness? Haste thee to the druggist for a fébrifuge.’
This sort of banter went on for a while. He wanted to know which ferry we were taking, whether we were going via Calais or Boulogne, which direction we were heading, when we were coming back, etc., etc. It didn’t seem particularly odd at the time, I suppose, but looking back I was surprised he didn’t say anything like, ‘Have a nice trip.’
When we parted, I said, ‘I’ll bring you some duty-free Gauloises.’
‘Don’t bother,’ he said.
‘What do you mean? It’s no trouble.’
‘Don’t bother,’ he repeated, sounding almost ratty.
Oliver Jesus, I had this panic attack. We met in a pub, some crepuscular burrow where Stuart is a regular little furry creature, where he can crouch happily in the reconstructed inglenook (imitation Norman Shaw) and quaff his ale as his yeoman forefathers have so quaffed since antiquity. God I hate pubs. I especially hate pubs since I’ve given up smoking (the spurning of which addiction went completely unnoticed by our friend Stuart). Oh, and I also hate the word crepuscular. I think I’ll stop using it for a bit. Tip me the wink if I lapse, won’t you?
So we were sitting there, in this horrible place where the ‘glass of white’ is even more noxious than the yeoman’s brew, and their selection of Highland malts is less than the finest, and I’m getting these pancreas-piercing whiffs of other people’s nicotine (hit me with a gasper, go on, do it to me – I’ll betray my country for a Silk Cut, I’ll betray my friends for a Winston) when Stuart, with a creepily smug look on his face, suddenly announces, ‘We’re taking off, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We’re taking off on Friday. Dover. First ferry and then you won’t see us for dust.’
I panicked, I admit it. I thought he was taking her away for ever. I saw them driving and driving. Strasbourg, Vienna, Bucharest, Istanbul, not stopping, not looking back. I saw her tossing newly gauffred curls as the open roadster headed east, away from Ollie … Temporarily I managed to re-erect my jocular facade, but inside I was panicking. He could take her away, I thought, he could just do that, he has such power to hurt me, this little furry creature who hasn’t even noticed that I’ve given up the weed. He has such a capacity for unreflecting cruelty now. And I’ve given him that.
But of course it turns out that the blithe estivant was only planning what he doubtless terms a Weekend Break. Aestivate, used esp. of animals, to spend the summer in a state of torpor. And the autumn. And most of his life. He has such sudden power to hurt, this Stuart.
He promised to send me a card. He promised to send me a fucking picture postcard.
Gillian This is how the conversation went.
‘Can we go shopping some time?’
‘Shopping? Of course. What do you want to buy?’
‘Shopping for you.’
‘For me?’
‘Clothes.’
‘Don’t you like what I wear, Oliver?’ I tried to keep my tone light.
‘I want to clothe you.’
I thought the best thing to be, before this went any further, was brisk. ‘Oliver,’ I said trying to sound like his mother (or at least like mine), ‘Oliver, don’t be ridiculous. You haven’t even got a job.’
‘Oh I know I can’t afford to pay,’ he said sarcastically. ‘I know I haven’t got any money, like Stuart.’ Then there was a pause, and his tone changed. ‘I just want to clothe you, that’s all. I could help. I want to take you shopping.’
‘Oliver, that’s very sweet of you,’ I said. Then, brisk again, ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
‘I love you,’ he said.
I put the phone down on him.
That’s what I’m going to do, what I’ve decided to do. Be brisk, polite, and put the phone down. It’s ridiculous. He’s obviously in a mess at the moment. And he’s probably, without knowing it of course, jealous of our happiness. We went around together, the three of us, but then Stuart and I got married, and he feels excluded. Instead of three, it’s now two plus one, and he feels it. It’s quite normal in a way, I suppose. I’m sure he’ll get over it.
In any other circumstances I wouldn’t have minded going shopping with Oliver. Stuart isn’t much use, to be honest, not because he doesn’t enjoy shopping, but because he likes everything I try on. He says I look terrific in all colours and all styles. If I came out of the changing-room with a bin-liner round my waist and a lampshade on my head he’d say that they suited me. Which is sweet and touching, as you can imagine, but not really much practical help.
Oliver I’m not being fanciful. For once. No doubt you were imagining what you take to be my imaginings about Gillian’s vestments: a sable swirl out of Boris Godounov, colours by Rimsky, light summer prints by the infant Rossini, gay accessories by Poulenc … No, sorry. I’m neither a salivating cheque-signer (how could I be?), nor an orchidectomised walker; I just happen to know that my eye, my sense of colour, my nous about fabric are all superior to those of both Stuart and Gillian combined. Squared, cubed. At least, if one judges by results. Even people who don’t care about clothes look better in something that’s cut properly. And even people who say they don’t care how they look care how they look. Everyone does. It’s just that some people think they look their best by looking terrible. It’s a kind of arrogance, of course. I look like shit because my mind is on higher things, because I’m so busy I don’t have time to wash my hair, because if you really love me you’ll love me like this as well. Not that Gillian is anywhere near this category. On the contrary. It’s just I’d like to make her over.
Make over. To refashion. But also, in Stuart’s mind, a term from the termitic world of business and finance. To make over: to transfer possession (of an object, a title) to someone else. Verb transitive.
Stuart We had a wonderful weekend break. Headed off down the motorway from Calais. Turned left when we felt like it, found ourselves somewhere near Compiègne. Stopped at a village as it was getting dark. A half-timbered family hotel with rooms off a creaky wooden balcony running round two sides of a courtyard. Of course we went to a little market and naturally we bought a couple of plaited strings of garlic which will go mouldy before we’ve finished them. So we’d better give some away. The weather was a bit damp, but who cares?
It wasn’t till we were on the boat that I gave Oliver a thought, to be honest. I remembered him and suggested buying him some Gauloises. Gillian told me he’d given up smoking. How very odd. And untypical.
Gillian I don’t know where to begin. I also don’t know where this is going to end, or how it’s going to end. What’s happening? It’s not my fault, but I feel guilty. I know it’s not my fault in any way, and still I feel guilty.
I don’t know if I did the right thing, either. Maybe I shouldn’t have done anythi
The first time it stopped raining was on the ferry back from Boulogne. That was ironic. That’s what made it happen in a way.
Going out, we crossed Dover-Calais. Then we drove hard down the autoroute. We chose an exit from the motorway almost at random. We chose a village to stay in almost at random – it was the place we got to as the evening was drawing in. We left after breakfast on the Monday and stopped for lunch near Montdidier. Then on towards Amiens with the windscreen wipers going flip-flop as we drove past sodden barns and soaking cattle. Somewhere beyond Amiens I had a memory of the car-ferry docks at Calais. First they send you all round the town and then you get processed into a system with thousands of other people and it doesn’t feel at all like driving to a town on the coast and just getting on a boat. I mean, that’s what it ought to feel like, oughtn’t it? So I suggested to Stuart that we go to Boulogne instead. He was a bit against this at first because there aren’t as many ferries from Boulogne. On the other hand it would save us driving 30-odd extra kilometres in the rain, and anyway I said if we get there and there isn’t a ferry for hours we can just carry on to Calais. I’ve made this sound like an argument but it wasn’t anything like that. It was a happy discussion and then an easy decision. That’s how things are with us. Stuart never makes me feel his pride is riding on whether we do what I suggest or what he suggests. That was something I found attractive from the beginning. If you propose a change of plan to most men they take it – even if not consciously, and that’s often worse – as some sort of insult or criticism. They can’t bear you to have different ideas about relatively unimportant things. But as I say, Stuart’s not like that. ‘OK, Boulogne it is,’ he said, as another Renault flashed past and blinded the windscreen with spray.