North London Food & Culture

Happiness is an Option: Chapters 5 & 6

Your girlfriend’s left you. You find another woman’s diary on a park bench. What to do? Archie Bryant’s decision sets off a chain of events that ends in tragedy. Our 12 part summer serial set on Queen's Crescent continues

Missed the first four chapters? Catch up now. Originally published back in 2009 on Time Out, you can also read a little more about the series on The Guardian here.

Chapter 5: Negative Capability

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Happiness is a thin goat. Leonard Mulberry thought this as he opened his eyes, wiggling fingers and toes. Everything was working. He lifted the duvet and inspected his body: sagging breasts, wispy hair, hibernating manhood, heavier waist. He farted and giggled. Swinging his legs slowly onto the floor, he rose to draw the curtains. Orange-grey-blue; nearly evening, but that was the joy of retirement. Life held steadily at a simmer.

He pushed up the window to the distant whir of the city. Didn’t people realize we only play with life? Those fools who think they’ll be happy when external factors are in place – a job, lovers, friends – they’ll go mad in the end. And she’d been like that – Marianne, the wide-eyed girl whose notebook he had found – she wanted too much from life. He could tell by the way she spoke. But he liked her, nonetheless.

He glanced in the mirror: sagging cheeks, still pock-marked forty years after the acne had eased; ears poorly shaped; nose inflamed by years of alcohol. He yawned.


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“Christ!” He nearly tripped over. There was a boy here. He raced to the bathroom for his robe, then downstairs, expecting the living room to be empty, all his things gone.

But Tom was sleeping on the rug by the fireplace. He had stripped to his underwear and folded his jeans and T-shirt onto the sofa. Such broad shoulders. Reassuringly muscular legs, too. Leonard smiled.

An eyelid flickered up. “What you staring at?”

*

“Ben, mate, come here.”

Archie was ordering another round at an unreconstructed gem of a pub where, on a boozy session, you might meet – in no particular order – dealers from the Maitland estates, a coterie of Irish alco-philosophers, the madam of a West Hampstead brothel, a bore insisting he was a Hollywood film producer, a puppy-faced indie band, or a slumming minor telly celebrity. “See the painting on the ceiling,” a regular had remarked to Archie over his first pint ever here, “the bloke who did that killed himself when he finished it.” And, Archie now mused, even his happiest nights here were somehow roofed over by life’s sadness.

“That girl, the diary I found on the heath, she’s emailed me back.” He babbled the words out. “Twenty-five. Just moved here. Living in Dalston.”

“So what happens now? Can’t you just ask for her number,” Ben was saying. “I mean, this all seems so old-fashioned. If it were two gay guys we would’ve split up by now−”

“OK, OK.” Archie’s arms stretched out. “I’ll ask her for her number. It’s romantic, though, isn’t it? United by a notebook. On a bench.” He laughed. “Of course I probably won’t fancy her. But at least she’s a younger model than Rose. Who wasn’t getting any thinner by the way.”

“Get you.”

In the dark, the candle flickered back at their table, as if their time on earth were that brief and that dimly illuminated. “I’m glad you’re staying, Ben,” said Archie. “It’s cheered me up.”

They hugged. Ben kissed him on the cheek.

“Hey, not in here!”

“You’re blushing!”

Archie swigged his pint, glancing up to see if anyone was watching. But of course they weren’t.

“Don’t worry,” said Ben, “you do that scruffy straight boy thing quite well, but you’re so not my type.”

*

The shaven-headed young man paused outside Kingsland Road station, considering the large-scale assault he was about to make on his happiness. But studies show, he repeated to himself, that people regret not doing things much more than the things they actually did.

Dalston was like nowhere he had ever imagined. People crammed along both sides of the pavement, every nationality under the sun. And the noise! Sirens, car horns, motorbikes, men in dreads sidling up to flog weed, women in denim shorts and thigh length boots shouting at a man in a doorway−

But where did Marianne live? That was the problem. He wasn’t exactly invited. It was Sunday night, though, she had to be home. He crossed the thoroughfare – or rather, wormed his way between bumpers – and, according to his phone’s GPS (which he snatched glances at, concerned about being mugged) he took a left at the end of a long, wide street so dirty it was obviously some kind of market, where black men cornered kebab shops in loud conversations.

A spire rose beyond the dark trees. Yes that must be it, in fact she’d mentioned the church the one time they’d spoken, and actually, you know, the road looked respectable, even by lamplight. St Mark’s Rise – that was it!

His heart bumped. Be brave. Action over inaction. He loved her, after all, and his happiness depended on giving it one last try. He spotted the correct row of terraces, climbed the grand steps of number 12 slowly, and pressed the buzzer.

Marianne answered after the fourth time (he’d been forced to hold it down for a minute or so), and sounded tired.

“It’s Joe,” he said, as lightly as possible. “Can I come in?”

Click through to read chapter 6


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