The Microcosm Read online

  ‘You’re enough for anyone. Come and have a dance.’

  You’ve forgotten me again. No, not really. My wife’s just come in. Who’s she with? Are you jealous? Why not? I’m dead. Sometimes I don’t recognise you, Carl. Maybe because I was more alive than most I resent it more. Resent?

  It’s an intrusion, a distortion of the natural order. Don’t believe the people who say it’s a necessary part of it. They’re alive. Sometimes I seem to forget myself. Then you say my name and I remember. Was she upset? You know things weren’t going right between us?

  ‘We don’t even fight anymore now, Matt. We’re just sort of indifferent.’

  Did I say that? Yes, I remember. Even so, the strings remain.

  She was shocked at first, then there was too much to do: the inquest, the police, your family.

  ‘My dad never cared tuppence for me. We’ve had some terrible rows.’

  He looked stunned, broken. A big man in an assured suit who suddenly found his hands would tremble if they didn’t hold on to each other as the parson’s hurried words dribbled through his skull in the bleak cemetery chapel with the noise of women crying a monotonous backing.

  And then? Then they descended like settling vultures in their mourning plumage, shuffling their obscene wings, thrusting their beaks into every corner of the corpse that had been your life and carrying off everything that could be sold or split between them until she was left with the bare bones of furniture, half paid up, a bundle of letters, mostly to another woman, and a promise to come again and pick over your clothes.

  My clothes? They said there weren’t enough, that you must have had more.

  ‘And that was the last thing I could do for her, see that they never found out. So I made a pile of her drag clothes, photographs, papers and Sandy took them away. And you know what hurt me most Matt? I wasn’t allowed to identify her. They sent for one of the family. And it brought it all home to me just how outside we are. I knew her body better than my own.’

  Poor Chris. I told you to make a will. And the bike? A write-off. Like me. They sold it for two quid scrap. I was fond of that old bike even though she let me down. Dance with her.

  ‘How’s it going then darling?’

  ‘Not too bad Matt. How are things with you?’

  ‘Fine. It’s good to see you looking happier.’

  ‘Thanks. Not everyone thinks like that. Some people won’t speak to me.’

  ‘What are you supposed to do: sit home and knit for the rest of your life? Carl wouldn’t have wanted you to. She wasn’t like that. You be happy if you can.’

  What did she say? I told her I was glad to see her looking better and that you would have wanted her to be happy. I hope I was right. You were careful to use the past tense. Maybe it’s made an introvert of me.

  ‘My God if they let anymore in here we’ll be squeezed out through the chimney. Makes you feel like Alice or a tube of toothpaste.’

  And this too is wonderland, the world turned back to front through a glass darkly. The tourists stand about, backs to the wall in defence, amazed, amused at the underwater life trapped in this hazy aquarium whose thin, transparent walls might break under a probing finger, letting these strange forms of life swim free among the plump goldfish in the garden pond.

  ‘How many do you reckon?’

  ‘A couple of hundred when I can see for smoke, and all well away. I saw you dancing with Chris.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Over there with Eve. She’s breaking her heart because Judy’s dancing with that South African butch.’

  ‘I always told her what she really wanted was someone to master her.’

  ‘Thanks very much. I thought you were supposed to be my friend.’

  ‘It was before your time. You’d better keep an eye on Eve. She’s a strange kid. She might blow her top.’ I lean wearily against the mantelpiece, eyes smarting with the bitter smoke and the jagged reflections from fragments of broken mirror.

  ‘Cheery, cheery. The little feller looks miserable.’

  ‘Got a headache. Thinking too much.’

  ‘Have a Scotch; do you good. I’ll buy you one.’ Money. This place must be a gold-mine. Underground. In the hall of the mountainous king. Midas.

  ‘All I touch. They told me I was a fool to buy it but I knew what I was doing. I’ve made it the most popular of its kind in London. Keep it select that’s the way to do it.’

  ‘Those men, what are they doing down here? They shouldn’t be allowed in. They only come to gape; tourists, perverts. Roll up and see the queers dance.’

  ‘Rod,’ she cried, ‘I’ve been a fool! What I wanted all the time was a man. Take me Rod, here now. I can’t wait.’

  ‘Attractive couple over there. The redhead looks like a model. What do they get out of it? What do they do? Wouldn’t mind a crack meself.’

  ‘No, it’s not true. I’m not like that. Why did I come?’

  ‘And the first time I went down there I went home and was sick. I was ill for a couple of days but I had to go back again and again until I was there every night, couldn’t keep away.’

  ‘Where else is there?’

  ‘We hardly ever go now. There’s always someone ready to step in and break it up if they think you’re happy.’

  ‘And I said to Jack, “What a waste.”’

  ‘Judy’s seen something nasty in the woodshed again. I told her, some of my best friends are men.’

  ‘Where’s Eve?’

  Here’s blood in the kitchen,

  Here’s blood in the hall;

  Here’s blood in the parlour

  Where my lady did fall.

  ‘The silly bitch has cut her wrists in the lavatory. Sometimes I think we’re not worth saving.’

  Blood in the water making pink clouds; water in pernod green clouds.

  ‘Leave me alone. I wish I were dead.’

  ‘You’ve made a bloody poor job of it. What did you use?’

  ‘That razor blade. Watch it; she’s passing out. Shove her head between her knees. It’s fright more than anything. Who’s got a clean handkerchief?’

  ‘Don’t let Charlie know. He’ll turf us all out.’

  ‘It’s not very deep but rather crooked. Must have been blunt. Hard work sawing away with that thing.’

  ‘Should we tell Judy?’

  ‘No, no. I don’t want her to know. Just leave me alone.’

  ‘Maybe she ought to know, hard-faced bitch, what she does to people.’

  ‘It’s not her fault. It’s that Franz. She wants everyone, collecting scalps. She’s leading her on.’

  ‘Oh, yes, fine: dying soldier defends general who sent him out to be shot to pieces. Come off it. This isn’t the games field.’

  ‘I think she ought to go home.’

  ‘Get me a taxi.’

  ‘I’ll go with her.’

  ‘Jill?’

  ‘I’m staying. There’s a party at Larry’s. Should be fun. She’ll be alright with Sue. Perhaps you’ll learn in time. These things happen. We’ve all been through it.’

  Sounds harsh doesn’t she? If she does it’s my fault. I taught her. ‘If you prick us do we not bleed?’ Black, bitter blood from a dead heart.

  ‘I wasn’t hard on her Matt. I didn’t lead her on.’ Judy turns rhinestone eyes up to me, melting now in a liquid sea whose tears are pearls, each one a perfect droplet, cultured. Released by this orgasm of despair, torn from her in Eve’s blood, she floats now in a luxury of recrimination and repentance, soothing as a lover’s kiss and whispered tenderness before she sleeps. I turn away not answering. There is nothing to be said, and you learn, soon or late but you learn, that in this life forgiveness is the cardinal virtue blazoned on every heart in red wounds.

  Sue puts Eve in a taxi to take her home to soft words and a hot drink, the comfort of other arms to cry herself to sleep in, and Judy resumes her evening, drifts across the dance floor, a little sad, rocked on her lover’s shoulder, gentle now with all, app
eased, almost drowsy.

  ‘And the funny thing is she says she was in love with her mother, really believes it.’

  ‘When if you look into it it’s quite clear she was dominated by her and resented it, and has been taking it out on other women ever since.’

  ‘The mothers are responsible for a lot.’

  And what will you give to your own mother dear?

  The curse from hell mother you shall have

  Sic counsel you gave to me O.

  O mothers, matres, nestling your hungry infant close. Do you know your little cannibal longs to sink its bony gums in your marbled flesh, torment the rubbery nipple with phantom teeth and pound impotent fists into the soft milky breast where it hangs dependent? Or thrust it off on the anonymous bottle; it will wail abandoned, seeking the lost warmth of your body. Keep it from the rough children of the street, cosset it against the urban savage swearing cops and robbers between the semi-detached and it will grow sickly and clinging, wrapt in a closed world of soft images. Send it to play in the yelling, scuffling lanes of common childhood and watch it tomboy, torn-trousered, rough-voiced, aggressive through life. Such a dear little girl.

  O patres, driving the long-distance lorries or away about war or business, you will come home stranger to find it has replaced you, man-about-the-house. Beat, humiliate it; it will reject you. Mice men bowing before your hen-peck, pecking wives it will despise you.

  The patterns form in the foetus, at the breast and play, about the house, in teacher’s eyes, the eyes of the world, worn in grooves, each one adding a little until the final voice is heard. ‘I am what I have become and I will be what I will be.’

  ‘Seems to me you can’t win. You try and do your best for them but there’s no saying it is the best. Often you just don’t know where you went wrong. Her father won’t have her in the house since he found out. I don’t understand it meself. Been better if she’d been born a boy.’

  ‘And she said to me: “Honey are you butch or femme or just a little old inbetween? Because I want to know who does what.” So I said, “Try me and find out.”

  ‘I reckon I could go with a man if I tried, but a woman’s better.’

  ‘Girls, girls, girls,

  Were made to love.’

  sings the juke-box and the room answers in chorus, stamping out the rhythm of assent on the patient, dusty floor.

  I feel so strange. If non-flesh could tremble I would say I was trembling now. Why suddenly? I thought I was beyond all that, beyond feeling cold or heat or the shiver of rain. There is nothing the flesh feels. What moves me?

  Amor, che al cor gentil ratto s’apprende,

  Meaning what? Words of an old poem. There’s more too. Tell me.

  … Nessun maggior dolore,

  che ricordarsi del tempo felice

  nella miseria …

  What use is that to me? No use, of course, only the human condition, mine as well as yours. It’s Vicky who moves you. Vicky, is she here? Coming down the steps now, pauses a moment to look about. Why? Why is she stopping? I haven’t seen her for months, not since the funeral. She hasn’t been down? No. She’s looking for old faces; for a welcome I think. Shall I go over to her? A waist so small one arm would do to circle it. Do what you like. Leave me alone.

  ‘Vicky!’

  ‘Hallo Matt.’ And I take her in my arms and hold her strongly feeling some of the conviction and love flow out of me.

  Others come crowding too, some simply pleased to see her again for herself, some glad to see her bear out their words that she wouldn’t be able to keep away. Jealous as amazons at a rite profaned, a priestess fled from the vestal temple, once a girl guide always a girl guide, Euridice escaped from the house of shades up into the light, the outcast crossing the tracks; confirmed in their way of life by her return, the campus spreads its welcome mat and the doors close behind her. I watch her dancing, held close in affection and the stifling folds of Judy’s arms. She slips back into place as if she had never been away.

  ‘Oh it’s good to be back. I’ve missed this place.’

  ‘It didn’t work out, then?’

  ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘Through the grape-vine, Judy. There was an artist, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All finished?’

  ‘Not quite. But soon, very soon. We’re going through the death-throes now.’

  I pull a face. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I thought last year, after the accident: “Well, that’s over, perhaps I should give the other a try again. Cut all ties.” So I did. He understood. He was a bit that way himself.’

  ‘What went wrong?’

  ‘It just didn’t work, on the physical level I mean, and that’s very important to me. If that doesn’t work for me then the whole relationship falls down.’

  ‘Yes, I’m like that too.’

  ‘With a man it’s over so quickly. There’s nothing to it.’

  ‘Perhaps you just got the wrong man. Try a Frenchman next time. They’re supposed to be rather good, though I have heard that once you’ve had a woman as a lover, a good one I mean, the other’s less satisfying. Men don’t like to think so, of course. Shall we see what the next one is?’

  ‘Okay.’ The music begins and we move away on it. She is slight as a grass stalk in the wind, nothing in my arms. We dance a little apart, bodies not touching, as people do who know their flesh takes fire quickly and who respect each other too much to play with it.

  ‘You know I admired you tremendously for not coming down all these months.’

  ‘I couldn’t have, Matt. I just couldn’t.’

  ‘Even so I admire you. I’d like to think that a woman would do as much for me.’

  ‘You see my hand Matt. Look at the heart-line there. You see, it’s double.’ I stare down at her palm, a little moist and flushed, double-tracked from left to right by a deep furrow. ‘That’s a sign of those who when they love, love deeply, obsessively. In India women with a heart-line like that throw themselves voluntarily on their husband’s funeral pyre.’

  I think of my own puckered, islanded sign, dipping low towards the head, and say nothing. I remember the strained, taut quality of her grief, the sudden rush of words and the long, held silences.

  ‘Carl was like you Matt. She couldn’t have been anything else but butch. Some people can be either but not you two and that was one of the things that attracted me. I can admire another woman’s body but I couldn’t go with one who was feminine, not in that way.’

  You’ve been a long time. Have I? What did she say? She’s attracted by you, I can tell. Only for what she sees of you in me. I’m just a substitute. That’s how a lot of things begin. Still, how can I complain? I didn’t take the chance when I had it, didn’t do the right thing, the honest thing. If I’d come back … What’s the use. I’m no use to her anymore. She must go on, make a life for herself. But there’s always that tie, that involvement with a woman you’ve loved, a body you’ve known. You’re not dancing much with Jill this evening. She’s busy.

  The evening is going stale on me. More and more I wonder why I’m here as if it’s a penance I have to work off rather than a free choice of my own, made on the spur of the moment in alienation and self-pity, yet still a free choice. Perhaps I should phone, the comfort of her voice, pebbles dropped in clear water, or just pack up and go, but I hang on, back to the fire, shifting from foot to foot, eyes wandering absently, cross and double-cross the room, nailing a gesture there an expression here by force of habit. ‘Mary, I don’t think you’re quite with us this morning.’ Had to give it up. Don’t know how Steve keeps going with all that temptation but then she’s not like me.

  ‘We’re not all like you obsessed with sex.’ The words still sting even though I understand them, know the pain behind them. Wave at Steve through the dense air. She smiles guardedly back.

  ‘A wily one there. You’d find it difficult to pin her down.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Not just
you, anyone.’

  Two people look at each other across a room. ‘Perhaps?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not tonight.’ Their eyes question and drop again. Time runs down. Hands join against the dark. A lover’s arm becomes a shield against loneliness; the empty flat and chill sheets without the warmth of another body breathing beside you. Lie and listen for the soft come and go, comforting as a whisper in the shadowy room. Most who are going to have found partners now. The rest stand about watching in attitudes of real or assumed indifference, catching morsels of talk from the passing dancers.

  ‘Rick and Betty have broken up.’

  ‘Eddie’s having a baby.’

  ‘Two butches dancing together. Mike must be on the turn.’

  ‘She’s only got six months to live, that one in green.’

  ‘Get you. You’re just jealous.’

  ‘Sandy’s barred.’

  ‘I’m going to a kibbutz next summer to get the chip off my shoulder.’

  ‘And she’s got four children.’

  ‘Tony was beaten up by a gang of teds going home last week.’

  What’s the news? ‘Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out.’ Is it the feminine strand makes us so hungry for these greasy scraps, these gobbets? The boys are as bad, worse, bitchier. Think of all those city gents gossiping down their halves of bitter and calling it a business lunch. Whose business? Our trouble is we cram it all into one or two nights. All the week wearing a false face. Come in. Close the doors behind you. Distil this rarefied atmosphere where we can breathe freely apart from the rest of the world like an ashram in the high Himalayas, or a lost tribe of aborigines buried deep in the heart of the social jungle with its own language and customs, unknown except to occasional travellers through on safari, traders who bring us thin cloth and glass ornaments in return for our silver and gold, slavers from the city who hire our cheap labour for their factories and other cut-rate jobs, scientists in search of strange fauna who will put our brains in pickle, missionaries to educate us and police to see we cause no trouble. We stare at them dull-eyed.