Sweet Sorrow(79)

At home, Dad was sleeping on the sofa, curtains drawn, a small flotilla of mugs and plates surrounding him, the TV playing Saturday-morning pop videos. I tugged the curtain to one side until the sunlight met his eyes, and he blinked and raised his hand, mouth opening with a sticky pop.

‘Charlie?’

‘Sleeping beauty.’ I began opening windows.

‘There you are! I waited up for you.’

‘I’ve just got in. I went to a party. Sorry, I should have let you know.’ I would be more considerate from now on. This man had quite enough to worry about.

‘Who with? Your mates?’

‘Some other friends. I had to walk them home. I’ll tell you later.’ Why ‘them’, not ‘her’? I would be more honest and open, and I would change my voice and talk to my father like a friend. ‘I stopped and got us some bread and eggs.’ Brown bread, brown eggs, free-range. ‘I’ll make you breakfast. I got these too.’ A plastic bag of exquisite oranges, warm and scented, six little suns that I’d got from the Spar. I’d get the sticky juicer out from the back of the cupboard. From now on we’d have oranges every weekend, like they do in the Mediterranean …

‘Are you all right?’ said Dad.

‘What?’

‘Are you still drunk?’

‘Nope. Just … happy. That’s allowed, isn’t it?’ And I wondered, and hoped, that if misery could be contagious, perhaps happiness could be too.

My father hauled himself upright and dragged his hands down his face. ‘It’s unusual.’

‘It is.’

‘Not sure if I like it.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It won’t last.’





Part Three


AUGUST


– What did he when thou saw’st him? What said he? How looked he? Wherein went he? What makes he here? Did he ask for me? Where remains he? How parted he with thee? And when shalt thou see him again? Answer me in one word.

William Shakespeare, As You Like It





Love


But love is boring. Love is familiar and commonplace for anyone not taking part, and first love is just a gangling, glandular incarnation of the same. Shakespeare must have known this; take a copy of the world’s most famous love story and pinch between finger and thumb the pages where the lovers are truly happy; not the build-up that precedes it, not the strife that follows, but the time when love is mutual and untroubled. It’s a few pages, a pamphlet almost, the brief interlude between anticipation and despair. The confidences and intimacies of new lovers, the formation of private jokes, the confessions of doubt and insecurity, the reassurances and vows; there’s only so much of that stuff that anyone can bear and if Shakespeare ever did write the scenes where the lovers talk about their favourite food, or pick the fluff from their belly buttons, or earnestly explain the lyrics of their favourite songs, then he was right to exclude them from the second draft.

The beginning and the end, the anticipation and despair, that’s where the story lies, but the state of being in love, and in particular of being young and in love, is like listening to someone describe their parachute jump or their bizarre dream, the blurred photograph of a life-changing performance, taken from too far away. The more intense the experience, the less inclined we are to hear about it, and while we’re happy that their life was changed and it must have been thrilling – can we move on?

So best to assume that when we were alone and we weren’t talking, then we were kissing or fooling around, and that this was all amazing, so much so that I couldn’t comprehend why grown-ups weren’t doing it all the time, something, I suppose, that we all spend the rest of our lives discovering. Assume, too, that when we stopped long enough to talk, these conversations were all more open and insightful, free-flowing and intense, funny and serious and profound than any other conversation that has ever taken place; not just talking, but really talking. Assume that we were funnier than anyone we’d ever met and that the time when I made Fran laugh so hard that she wet herself, actually wet herself through jeans, was one of the proudest moments of my life. Assume that nothing was felt in a half-hearted way, whether passion or anxiety, desire or fear. Assume that we made compilations and liked each other’s music fiercely and, if not, pretended to, that we listened solemnly and silently to Nick Cave and Scott Walker singing about us, Nico and Nina Simone auditioning for the song that would be our song, the song that made us cry, and that other behaviour previously thought to be silly or repulsive – holding hands, aggressive public kissing, the passing of chewing gum from mouth to mouth – lost its queasiness. Assume that we never wanted to be anywhere else, or with anyone else, that time apart was time wasted and that it was impossible to imagine the circumstances when we might not feel this way. There’s some of this to come, not much more than a pamphlet, and it can’t be helped. The greater part of it will go unmentioned but also unforgotten.

First I would need to see her again, and in the forty-eight hours until our next meeting, I rediscovered that science-fictional awareness of time. The weekend crawled as if taking place on a distant planet. ‘For in a minute there are many days,’ says Juliet, who, I’d come to realise, had all the best and truest lines. It was one of those moments in the play where I’d think how does Shakespeare know?