Signs of Life (11 page)

On the last morning at Carl’s mother’s house, I was
so
ready to leave. I packed up my things, which didn’t take long, went outside and smoked what I
hoped would be the last of the cheap cigarettes. I went back inside the house to extract Carl. Our Kid was in his pyjamas, which made me want to get out of there even faster. Just before we left, I
went to the bathroom and when I came out, Carl took his wallet out of his back pocket, took out several banknotes, folded them and passed them to Our Kid, who thanked him shyly.

I couldn’t help thinking that Our Kid’s shyness was partly due to me witnessing this transaction, and I wished that Carl had given Our Kid the money while I was in the bathroom. I
felt sure that alongside Carl’s real interest in Our Kid was his awareness of himself being interested in his brother; that alongside his real concern there was awareness of himself being
generous, and that he also had a desire that he perhaps
wasn’t
so aware of, which was to demonstrate this generosity in front of other people, in this case, me.

Our director called us both into his office and asked whether we were having an affair. He said it straight, like this: Are you two having an affair? I felt myself turn red in
the face. Carl looked straight back at the director, held his gaze, and said, Nope. Now there was a stand-off between the two men: the director knew very well there was something going on between
us and Carl knew that he was answering the question correctly because the affair was over by then. We were, I said, but it’s finished. It felt awkward saying this to the director in front of
Carl because although the affair
was
over, Carl had been coming to my house at night, knocking on my front door, shouting through the letterbox, leaving messages on my answerphone, and
making a horrible atmosphere at work. As I said the word ‘finished’, Carl pulled himself up taller, as if meeting a challenge. It’s none of your fucking business anyway, said
Carl, under his breath.

Excuse me? said the director, but he’d heard.

I said it’s not really any of your business, is it? What we do in our own time?

Correct. But it is my business what you do in work time. The director went on to give examples of misconduct which were so mild compared to some of the things we’d done on company time,
with company money, in company cars, that I suddenly felt more relieved than embarrassed. We had got away with it, or at least I had.

The reason Carl didn’t ask if he could live with me was because he had already asked me for keys to my flat and I had ignored the request. I had been in the office all
day, he elsewhere. He was sitting on my doorstep when I returned home. He’d been there quite a while; it was a warm evening and he had a paper so he didn’t mind, he said. I opened up
the double doors to the back garden, put my keys on the table, took off my sandals and went into the bathroom to wash my hot grimy feet. Wouldn’t it be nice if he had already prepared dinner
for us, he called; yes, I called back, though I noticed he wasn’t doing anything about dinner now. When I went into the kitchen he was sitting with my key ring round his finger, jangling the
keys on the table. I opened the fridge to see what was in it. Maybe I could get keys for here? I’d like that, he said. Would you like some vodka? I replied, as if I hadn’t heard him.
Not yet then, eh? he said. I remember glancing across at him as I poured out the vodka; he was staring at my keys, passing them through his fingers like prayer beads. But one day she will, he
said.

Later that night, when we had nearly finished the vodka, we were lying on a blanket outside, sharing a cigarette. It was dark, or as dark as it ever gets in the city, and because it was hot,
everyone’s windows and doors were open; household clattering and conversation mingled with the sound of passing cars, occasional sirens, and the distant rumbling of trains and aeroplanes.
Next door, somebody was cooking something that smelt good. There was a rare sense of contentment between us, partly achieved by alcohol, but anyway, I was happy to be with him, nestled in the tiny
garden, with the evening noises bustling in the air around us.

Carl broke the peace: Love me the way I love you, he said. OK, I said, but I didn’t mean, OK – I’ll love you, I meant, OK – I understand what you want. I must have known
I was misleading him unless, with the vodka inside me, I thought I
could
love him, but I doubt it. It’s more likely I just wanted to keep the evening on track. When I look back on that
moment now it makes me sad, the vulnerability of his request, my unspoken refusal. I always knew I would end the affair.

I stood there and watched while that fucking cunt crushed him, said Carl.

But you were only twelve, you thought that man was trying to help – he
was
trying to help, I reasoned.

So what? I let him down, said Carl. I said that he hadn’t really let his dog down because he hadn’t meant to. It makes no difference, said Carl.

On a balmy summer’s day, Carl and I walked down a tree-lined avenue. We were on our way back to the office after a meeting. I wanted to get straight on the bus but Carl
wanted to walk across the park and catch the bus a few stops further on, Come on, he said, it’s a beautiful day. So we walked across the park, but the matter wasn’t settled: he wanted
to linger. At some point he must have unbuttoned his shirt, because I clearly recall my irritation as he dawdled, sunlight on his bare chest, shirt billowing in the breeze, face turned up to the
dappled light coming through the trees, drinking it all in. He wanted me to bask with him. Come to Switzerland with me next time, he said with his eyes closed to the sun. I saw then what the
special bread meant to Carl. The bread was an emblem of the kind of life he wanted, a life like his friend’s in Switzerland, and he wanted that life with me. We held hands, but not
peacefully: I dropped his hand: he took mine again: I shifted my briefcase into that hand: he took my briefcase and carried it, took my hand again: I freed myself to tuck my hair behind my ear:
again he took hold. It was like a fight – Carl trying to pull me into that moment and me trying to wriggle out of it and run away.

I dream that Carl is banging on my door, demanding entry. He wants a guided tour. I tell him he has to wait five years and then renew his application. When I wake up, the dream
is foggy but close enough for me to stay inside it and change the end so that I am telling him something else – something kinder, I think, though exactly what escapes me – and then
morning invades, the new ending slides off and I am left with the original dream, with the ending that bothered me.

Carl was always pushing to get in. That he pushed, made the affair happen in the first place, but then he couldn’t stop. If he had held back, I could have come forward. Maybe he thought he
could make me love him through the sheer force of his feelings for me. I felt guilty that I didn’t return Carl’s love. The least I could do was to look after his cat for a while.

Occasionally, I decide to leave things out of the story. I notice that the things I want to omit are usually my own base actions and low words. I would include them, I think,
if I believed their inclusion was imperative to getting to the truth.

I changed one detail: the green shirt that Carl gave me long before the first kiss and that Johnny cut to shreds with a knife once he knew about the affair was not a green shirt but a grey
jacket. I changed it because a shirt is more personal, and I wanted to bring out the intimacy of Carl’s gift. Also, a shirt has been on someone’s back, next to skin, and so the act of
knifing a shirt seems more violent than cutting up a jacket and I wanted to show the strength of Johnny’s anger when he found out about Carl.

Things that may sound invented aren’t. There really is a place called the Forest of Maibie, and I really did wander around it wondering what to do. Carl really did climb that tower in the
ruined castle with me at the top, gazing out of the window. Johnny’s best friend really was called Don Juan. He really did milk clouds. And I really did buy an expensive pair of satin shoes
that looked like glass slippers.

Also – it occurs to me that there may not have been a dog in the house Carl was moving to: I never visited him there so I never saw one, and I don’t think he ever mentioned it again.
It’s possible that Carl invented the dog just so he could get Molly in with me, as a kind of anchor.

I knew what Carl meant about the special bread. I visited a friend of a friend in Madrid, a woman my age I’d never met before, and I had to wait a couple of hours at her
apartment, by myself, while she finished work before meeting me there and showing me round the city.

She lived alone in a small apartment at the top of an old building. I was enthralled by the aspects of her life that were on display – the expensive hand cream on her bedside table,
postcards and little notes in Spanish stuck around the mirror in her bathroom, chocolate truffles in a gold box in the fridge, the view over the streets from her kitchen window. What stays with me
most, though, is her bowl of almonds on a low glass table. It seemed incredible to me that it was possible to live like this; in this particular city, surrounded by these particular things; the
sight of that bowl of almonds had a revelatory effect: Oh! You mean it can be done like
this
?

Apart from the fact that I didn’t like cats, there were practical problems with having Molly come and live with me. One, there was no cat flap for her to get outside and
I didn’t want one installed since it was a temporary arrangement. Two, I did not keep regular hours to come back and feed her and let her out at the same time each day. And three, once out in
the garden, how could I ensure that she didn’t run away, or get lost, or run over, or kidnapped?

Look, Carl said, I live on the fourth floor, there’s no cat flap because there’s no outside, and I don’t keep regular hours either. You just change her water and put her food
down in the mornings: done. I’ll bring the litter tray and a sack of litter: done. She never misses, but we could lay the tray on newspaper just in case. Charming, I said, already regretting
the arrangement.

I’ll
empty the tray and change the litter every time I’m at yours, which is almost every night, isn’t it? Done. Sorted. No problem. His chirpiness was making my heart
heavy.

Well, what about letting her go outside? How do I know she’ll come back?

I take her for walks on a lead, he said.

But she’s a cat, not a dog!

So? It works: she likes it.

She likes it, I repeated, deadened.

The period after the affair lasted longer than the affair itself, and was at least as intense. When Carl was bombarding me with phone calls and unanswered night-time visits,
his excuse was that he wanted to check up on Molly. He claimed I didn’t know how to look after her properly and that he was sure I was mistreating her. Most of the messages he left on my
answerphone followed a pattern: they started off fairly normally; he would say he was calling to check that Molly had had her walk today, or that she had eaten her food, or that I was cleaning the
litter tray regularly, or giving her fresh water. He would make his enquiry, and then ask how I was, say he was missing me, that he wished we were still together, that he knew he could make me
happy if only I would give him another chance. At this point there would usually be a silence. I don’t know what happened to him during these silences but I imagine him spiralling down and
down until he hit the bottom of his despair and his anger rose up because next he would start muttering insults or making demands. On some messages he was yelling down the phone by the end of the
call, making threats I couldn’t hear properly because he was shouting so loudly that the words were distorted.

The first time Carl left a ranting message, I called him straight away and said I would bring Molly back to him. I was careful not to say that he could come and collect her because I’d
already experienced difficulty getting him out of my flat on one or two occasions. But Carl said he couldn’t take Molly back because of the dog in the house he was staying in. I suggested
that one of his friends looked after Molly instead of me; I should have insisted. I should have taken Molly to work and let him deal with her; if Carl couldn’t house her, he could have found
a cattery. I could have put her in a cattery myself. But it’s all very well saying these things now. I kept Molly. I had my reasons: Carl and I had to see each other in the office every day,
I felt a responsibility to keep work moving forward, Carl was volatile. Everyone was being very careful around him because they knew that I had finished our affair. I thought it was up to me to
contain his anger and so I assumed the role of bomb-disposal technician. Also, I was fearful of what would happen if he did blow up. I suppose I thought it was easier to put up with the controlled
explosions on my answer-machine than risk full-scale collateral damage. As well as this, I had grown fond of Molly. At the end of each message Carl sounded savage, and my instinct was to protect
Molly. But I am getting carried away. Carl adored Molly; he would never have harmed her.

Maybe keeping hold of Molly was the biggest mistake I made. It confused matters, blurred the ending. While Carl and I were together it was so intense that maybe he
couldn’t accept it was over so quickly. Or perhaps there was something about the way I broke up with him that he couldn’t accept, something unclear in the way I said it or about the
words I chose. Perhaps he needed to hear an unequivocal answer to his question. Are you ever going to love me the way I love you?