Chapter 12: The Stillness The Dancing
Benedict considered his mother’s earlier phone call. To be honest he expected her to be happier with the news that Leonard had offered him a room. A man can know his parents as well as possible and yet there still might be nothing between them but a kind of loving incomprehension.
He was in Soho, leaning against the counter at the French House, waiting for his benefactor to show for a celebratory glass of red (“it’s a darling place,” Leonard had enthused, “but as crowded as a dictionary”). Fiddling with a beer mat, Ben’s mood darkened. Were his relationships doomed like his parents’? Was that the reason he had cheated on Daniel? After all, his dad had done the same twenty years earlier (with a colleague too). Maybe neither of them was capable of love.
No-one was thinking morbid thoughts here. Or perhaps the thoughts were submerged by the rising tide of drinking. God, he loved Soho: even at four o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon discussions swelled, glasses clinked. A customer pushed through to the bar, speaking loudly on his phone. Regulars jeered, pointing at the sign saying ‘no mobiles’.
He thought of Marianne working for Leonard and how, even in London, it was a small world. A small world: a stupid expression, because all we can do is clutch at coincidences and interpret them as good fortune. But people acted like it might reduce the gaping chasms between us if God was puppeteering every move.
He sipped his Gamay. We’re here for a fraction of a second, that’s all. Yet how free he was, with his uncluttered future in the big city, accommodation included (“Rent?” Leonard had snorted. “But you’re Vivienne’s boy!”) There, in the clatter of the bar, everything was possible. Happiness was a life without meaning. From now on he was going to enjoy himself.
*
“I really didn’t think you’d text me.” Marianne sipped her wine and turned to Archie, feeling vaguely cheated, as if she’d been awarded a prize without suffering. The bar’s red-lit shabby interior was like somewhere you imagined in New York, or Bangkok – not that she had been to either. He smiled at her. How different from Joe he was. Quiet, sometimes, but she liked that.
“You’re quiet.” She stroked his arm. “So what did you want to ask me?”
“I’m just thinking.” He put his pint down. “Do you want to come away for the weekend?”
“Yes!” She blurted it out without even thinking. Happiness was boxing her ears, they were so red. “But where?”
“My band Summer Holiday are playing in Berlin on Saturday night. Have you ever been?”
She shook her head. She could fall in love with this man. She simply loved spontaneity.
“They’re on at this little bar in Kreuzberg. Did I tell you they’re in the charts in Germany right now? Massive. So we could stay at this place by the old stretch of Wall, which is now a gallery− Hang on a minute,” Archie eased himself out, “Sorry, busting for a waz.” He sauntered off to the men’s.
The phone rang. She put a finger over her left ear to listen to her mother properly; the music was loud and she didn’t want to step outside and lose their candle-lit booth. Yes, she said, everything is fine. I have a great job as a famous writer’s assistant. No, I haven’t met a boy. My flatmates are nice but they’re always out. But her mother was speaking over her, enthusing about the new coffee shop on the seafront, and their neighbour Julia’s new toyboy−
And then it happened. History takes no time at all to change everything, does it? To render what was happening before meaningless. In less than a second Joe flew out of the men’s toilets and through the double doors. Outside a car screeched to a halt.
*
Rose left the tube at Chalk Farm, pleased to be admiring the Roundhouse again. It was fantastic to be back in London. She planned to surprise Archie, and, as she curved around the station, she enjoyed the smoothness of its blood-red tiles with her hand. (Of course it was a risk not calling first, but she’d find him as fate dictated.)
At the lights up she crossed the busy road, as a man with one leg swung himself over on crutches. Hip hop blasted from a window of a passing souped-up Escort. A black boy, a bit younger than her little brother Michael, idled along in a slow dance.
She took a left up Queen’s Crescent. On one side were imposing Victorian terraces, and on the other low-rise social housing: a classic London street split down the middle. A dive bar called Monkey Chews perched on the corner, and she felt that maybe a drink would be in order first.
But even in the dark she could see there was a commotion. Uniformed men poured out of an ambulance with a stretcher. A car lay diagonal in the road; was that its driver clutching his head in his hands? A crowd had gathered round a pretty young blonde sobbing violently. As Rose drew nearer, she could see street kids dancing wildly around their bikes. It must be the best thing to happen here for ages.
Pub smokers were garbling what they had seen to non-smoking friends. A man in glasses and a cap pointed. “Her boyfriend’s been run over.”
“Dead?”
And then a barman emerged from the pub holding Archie – Archie! – by the arm, his face covered in blood. Rose watched helpless as Marianne strutted over and slapped him.
The most senior ambulance man came up to Marianne and shook his head. She screamed: a noise that circulated through the rat-runs of the estate. When she stopped she screamed again, this time so piercing that the kids on bikes covered their ears, and exchanged looks.
*
How quickly does a moment become the past? Archie considered this as Rose cleaned up his face. The man who punched him was now dead−
“You’ll be alright, babe,” Rose was saying. “But when we get in I think we both need to talk.”
We both need to talk…like it wasn’t she who had disappeared without warning; like the mess here was his fault? He didn’t answer, letting her words gather weight in his mind. In fact, there was no point discussing what couldn’t be discussed; it would be like trying to drink a symphony. A wave of disappointment swept over him, its grey swell threatening to roll forever. Dreams escape us as quickly as we imagine them, he knew that. What are they replaced by? Awareness? Experience? It wasn’t enough. He wanted to ask Rose one word: why?
He turned away from Rose, from the ambulance, from the crowd, from Marianne being comforted by strangers.
“Wait here,” he said, moving his feet backwards, tissue clasped to bloody nose, before curling round the pub.
“Archie?” Rose was trying to follow him. “What are you doing now?”
“I’m just getting some fags.”
“I thought we’d agreed that you’d stopped?” She threw her arms up – already, she despaired – and shook her head. “OK, but be quick: I’ll wait here. You’ll need to give a statement. You’re a key witness.”
He was trying to picture how it would all end – with Rose, with Marianne – but romantic love, he realized, it’s just a projection. We all remain mysteries to each other. We all soak in the same water. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, he thought, pace quickening in the night air, but I know one thing: we’re all hurtling towards death – which comes faster than you think – and here we are, alive. For a fraction of a second. And just knowing that fact was the first step to knowing anything. Marianne, she was welcome to blame him, she had to blame him. And Rose? Who cares?
Why live in the vague hope that something will change to make you feel connected, to feel alive? He didn’t want to wake up at sixty and realize his future was behind him.
Out of Rose’s sight, he paused by the newsagent, not wanting cigarettes. He flung the bloody tissue into a bin, and instead turned left up the hill, with as much joy as if it were the first step up a mountain. His heels hit the pavement quicker and lighter.
Is the end built into the beginning? Archie began to run, past the market, past the basketball courts, up to the petticoat of leafy streets beneath Parliament Hill, across the curve of the playing fields, and up, up, up, blood dripping behind him like a trail. He didn’t know what to do, but that thought itself made him feel tiny, elusive. He could still escape.
At the summit the moon was full, his favourite bench empty.
THE END
