Golden Hour (14 page)

He clinks ice into a glass, adds a modest shot of Scotch. Carrying the glass in one hand, silent and unremarked, he passes from the kitchen to the living room, where Diana is curled up on a sofa reading
Wolf Hall
. He stands for a while as if gazing out of the window into the street, but she does not lift her eyes from her book. He sips at his Scotch. He exhales a sigh, which comes out as a low hum of sound.

“Don't stand there moaning, Roddy,” says Diana. “Either come in or go out.”

He moves on into the hall.

Perhaps I am a ghost, he thinks. Perhaps I'm invisible. But there before him in the hall mirror is his own reflection, his face too fleshy, his eyes too small, his hair too thin: an undistinguished man in late middle age.

After the Middle Ages comes the Renaissance. Roddy nods at his reflection, as if sharing with it a secret, and heads down the half-flight of dark stairs to the back door.

Five days to go.

At the far end of their small town garden stands a timber-walled felt-roofed shed. It has one window, shuttered by a cream-colored roller blind, and one wall of shelves packed with books. Under the window, a table heaped with books. In the remaining space, which is very limited, an armchair with a shelf beside it, on which stands a brand-new digital radio. Behind the chair, leaning over it like an inquisitive neighbor, is a high curving reading light of the kind that is advertised for “Serious Readers.”

He sinks down into the armchair, setting down his glass on the shelf. He turns on the reading light, and then turns it off again, choosing darkness. He turns on the digital radio, which after its puzzling fashion thinks for a while before deciding, one might suppose reluctantly, to produce some sound. He recognizes the lush melancholy of the music. It's Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto, live from a Prom. He drinks his Scotch slowly as he listens, and allows his thoughts to drift.

How much longer can he go on living this life? It amazes him that he hasn't been found out and expelled. From his job, his marriage, his family. Not that he's been remotely culpable. He continues to put in his hours at the bank, apparently fulfilling
some needed role as a species of mascot. “Hairy times,” his boss Jock Sinclair said to him. “Your great virtue is you're not flashy, Roddy. That reassures the clients.” Of course his virtue doesn't merit the bonuses that the traders get, but he still receives his salary. Among his colleagues he's seen as a loser, virtually on the breadline. To his own parents, both retired teachers, he's rich beyond their dreams.

His children never see their grandparents. It's not so far to go, St. Albans. He used to make half-plans to take them, fix up a family trip, but Diana was never too keen, and the children were always busy. He reflects on his own childhood, and recalls long months of empty days. But perhaps it felt different then.

Five days to go.

Now that Max and Isla are both out of university he could jack in the job. Tell Jock Sinclair to fuck himself, unthinkable in reality but sweet to contemplate, except what's the point? He's more or less retired already. A ghost in the office. Strange how long you can live on after your own death.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Roddy's dream was to walk away from even more than his job, to escape the noise and clutter and live a life of utter simplicity. Like Thoreau he wanted to live in a hut in the woods, and empty his days along with his pockets. He thought he could hear a voice calling him, but from where and to where he did not know. All he knew was that it was not this. Not this life of pretense and hypocrisy.

Instead here I sit, drinking Scotch, listening to Rachmaninov in the dark, in the shed Diana made me buy, at the bottom of our garden in Islington. Not what you'd call a great escape.

Roddy smiles to think how little they all know. He's not stupid. He knows that to his family, to his colleagues, to all who know him, he's good old Roddy, decent but dull, someone you don't want to get stuck with at a party because he mumbles
in a way you have to strain to hear, and anyway he has no small talk. And all the time, within him, a whirlwind of change is lifting him up, preparing to sweep him away.

What will happen will happen. I no longer have power in my own life. The decision is made. On Saturday I will open the door outside which I have been standing for so long. After that, I am in the hands of another, and in the hands of God.

He wonders whether he should write something down, much in the way people write suicide notes to be found after their death. What was it Virginia Woolf wrote? “I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.” This is no suicide, this is the choosing of life over death. I can't go on spoiling my own life any longer. But there will be explaining to do, and once that door has opened, such a wind may blow through it that all his familiar world will be blown away. Diana will never understand. The children will never understand. This may prove to be a form of self-exile. But if so, he will not go into exile alone.

As for the hurt and the blame, it can't be helped. I am a leaf on a stream. I ask nothing and I refuse nothing. All I commit is an act of love.

Five days to go.

Curious how this decision has formed in his mind. At first it was no more than the theoretical notion that the time had come to speak. The feelings had matured into understanding, the understanding into intention. For a long time he has been hesitating on the brink of the next step, which is action. Why the hesitation? He has no fear of the outcome. Whatever comes of it is good, and can only be good, because he acts in love. No, he has hesitated because—because when the time is right there will be no more hesitation. And now the time is right.

This morning, lying in bed, awake before rising, he said to himself: I'll speak to her on Saturday. There was no hesitation
about it. As soon as he made the decision he knew it was both right and inevitable. From that moment on, a deep calm settled over him.

He allows himself to think of her now. He sees her before him, turning to meet his gaze, smiling for him. Such a true smile. Of course she's beautiful, the most beautiful woman he's ever known, but it's nothing without that shaft of truth. She knows him through and through, of that he's certain. She has shown it in so many small ways, through little acts of sensitivity. She knows him because she feels him. This is the nature of true sympathy. And he feels her, and knows her, in a way that no one else does. So much passes between them without words ever being spoken. He sees her sadness, her loneliness, her self-doubt. Their times together have been short, but rich in connection. He feels the threads that tie them to each other drawing ever tighter, trembling, responsive to every smallest nuance. The last time they met, as they were leaving, she gave him a kiss on the cheek and said, “Drive safely.” As she said it her right hand rested on his left arm. He could feel that pressure all the way home.

What will happen? There will be changes, of course. Those who understand nothing will call it a breaking-up of two marriages. But all that will follow is a process of things falling into their rightful places. Love is not to be legislated. Yes, there will be a time of confusion, but not for me, not for her. For us it will be a time of clarification, coming home. We should have done this years ago.

Roddy marvels that he can be so sure of her love when no promises have been exchanged. He has never been a vain man. He would never presume on another's love. For a long time, for years, it was more a wistful regret for a path not taken than a hope for the future. Then little by little he began to pick up
the signs. He became watchful, and subtle in his watching. She has a tender heart, will never cause pain if she can help it, will never betray another's trust. But she gives herself away even so, in ways that are invisible to all but the most attentive eye. A momentary smile, a question left hanging. “You won't mind, will you, Roddy? Roddy never minds.” Even, most precious of all, a gift made—“I got them for Roddy, I know he loves Florentines”—the gift, so much more than the thing itself, being her message: that she thinks of him when they're apart. As he thinks of her.

The fine delicacy that links them also keeps them silent. They both have to be mindful of others. But Roddy knows now that his attempts to protect Diana have been misguided. What protection can he offer where there's no love? He and Diana should never have married, that much is obvious. Diana has no comprehension of what goes on inside him. He doesn't blame her for that. They're different sorts of people. He has failed her as much as she has failed him. As for the children, how much good does it do them to have a father who is a ghost in his own house?

The house question will have to be resolved. Where will they live? Roddy has no idea. Instead he has trust. If they act in accordance with the force that governs all things, which you can call love, or God, then they will be carried on the stream of life to their next destination. All that matters is that they cease resistance. Remove the stubborn opposition of the narrow selfish will to the command of the greater force, life itself. And why do we call it a command? Is water commanded to flow downhill? Is the sun commanded to rise? Each acts as it is its nature to act, neither willing nor unwilling. Not choosing, but being.

This is the fruit of Roddy's many evenings alone in his shed.
Diana has made a great joke of it, that he goes to his shed to “look for God,” but it's no joke. He has looked, and he has found. In the early stages, he found God in releasing himself from false desires, from the cycle of ambition, frustration, anger and sadness. Then came a later stage, in which he found himself turning toward true desires. He told himself then: I will only know God when I learn to love.

I have never loved before. Not like this. Most people have never loved. They reach out for others, in their desperation, but that's not love. That's fear. In true love there's no fear. In loving her I feel no fear, and I know she too will be unafraid. The words must be spoken, then the door will open.

There's a question waiting to be answered about rooms. First the house, then the room. This is a question of intimacy. You can love without being intimate. We must be respectful of each other, and act with delicacy. There will be no bounds to our love, in time we will be all things to each other, but this too must be surrendered to the stream. Let the flow carry us toward each other in its own time.

Roddy sips his Scotch and listens to the surging music and allows himself to visualize a time in the future, the near future now. His picture of their life together is so modest it makes him smile. They're sitting in a simple room, each in an armchair, each with a book. He looks up from his book just as she looks up from hers. Their eyes meet. He says, “Happy?” She replies with her sweet smile, “What do you think?” He thinks she's happy too.

Five days to go. It would be good if he could find time to be with her before the social busyness of the weekend. Maybe he should find an excuse to go down by himself on Friday night. He could make that trip he's planned for so long, to Worth Abbey. Then they could talk on Saturday morning, before Diana
drives down. He thinks of the words he'll use. It hardly matters. He's quite certain she knows already, and is waiting for him to speak. So maybe all he'll say is, “You know, don't you?”

She'll say, “Yes.” Or maybe she'll just nod her head.

Then there's something more he'll say, he knows it now. Not because the words need saying, but for the joy of saying them, and watching her beautiful face as she hears them.

He'll say, “I love you, Laura.”

The client is called Gloria and she has a small cash business as a dog walker for the dog owners of Kentish Town. More specifically, for a cluster of upwardly mobile dog owners in Bartholomew Villas and Lawford Road, all of whom work long hours and invite each other to dinner in the evenings and share dog talk. Gloria's dog-walking service specifies a maximum of two dogs at a time and a minimum of one hour. Inevitably the paired dogs become friends, or their owners imagine so, and like to maintain the pairings. So Gloria has evolved a matrix to keep track of times, addresses, dogs, pairings, and fees to be charged. The matrix lives on her four-year-old Mac iBook. And something is wrong.

“This is a catastrophe,” she says, showing Andrew Herrema into her bedroom, which doubles as her office. “This isn't just my life. There are twenty-seven dogs on my list, and I've no idea when to go where and with who.”

She's a large, soft-toned young woman who speaks in the voice of a little girl. Her flat is tidy and without personality.

“Let's take a look,” says Andrew.

He shouldn't be making calls like this, mid-evening, to clients who can barely afford the
£
60 minimum charge. He's not entirely sure why he agreed to come out. Perhaps it was the way Gloria had sounded so panicked on the phone. One of the unmeasured
rewards of the job is that sometimes you can bring joy and relief to others with very little effort. At such times Andrew feels like a doctor in the early days of penicillin. One magic pill and the patient is cured. No pill for stupidity, alas. Sometimes he's been called out to fix a dead computer only to find it's not been plugged in.

He settles down in front of Gloria's laptop.

“What's the name of the missing file?” he says.

“File?”

“Or folder.”

“Folder?”

“The timetable you've lost,” he offers patiently.

It amazes him that some people can operate a computer at all. As far as he can tell they strike at the keys blindly until something happens that they recognize, but they never have any idea how to replicate the result.

“It's not got a name,” she says, gazing at the laptop screen with anxious longing. “It's just how I keep track of my walks.”

Andrew tries “Walks.” This produces nothing. Then he looks in the Trash folder and finds a large number of auto-backup files. Then he brings all current open windows onto the screen at once, which produces a wall of postage-stamp-sized windows, fifty or more, most of them duplicates.