Paul Theroux - My Secret History

I thought: As soon as someone else’s eyes are on us we are diminished — made into ugly miniatures of ourselves — which was why when someone looked at me I turned away. When I was invisible I felt vast and efficient, and I sensed that I saw everything.

And that morning, of all mornings, memorably, a young woman took a paperback of one of my books out of her bag, and flexed it and opened it and held it like a thick sandwich. A paperback that has been carefully read actually looks it — it swells and fattens and its spine wrinkles and cracks, and the reader’s interest has had a physical effect on it. This copy, I could see, had been enjoyed. I watched the woman read on and I took pleasure in it — not watching the book but her face, her eyes. She was wearing a black coarse-knit cardigan over a blue blouse, and a bluish pleated skirt and white shoes and pale tights. She had big soft curls and her lips were pressed together in concentration, and sometimes they relaxed in amusement, slightly parted, as though she had seen something or someone approaching from the page. Eagerly, she turned the page with a neat plucking motion of her fingertips.

I could have watched her for twenty hours, and I might have missed my stop, except that at Earl’s Court a voice piped up. It was a voice that sounded as though it came from the squawkbox of a synthesizer.

“Mind the gap … Mind the gap.”

And then I changed trains.

Jenny still had not woken. But the sky had mostly cleared, the high wind having pushed the thunderheads east and under the blue sky of an April morning the air had been freshened by the storm. The streets were damp and, rain-washed, looked blacker. And these few weeks were the only time of the year when London had any fragrance — the traffic fumes of the city were actually modified if not overpowered by the masses of pink and white blossoms — the flowering trees of an English springtime.

The house stood tall and detached on the quiet Clapham road, its white windows looking bright against the soot-soaked brick, and the brick itself no recognizable color — not red or black or brown, but the hue of an old tree trunk, senile and scorched, with the texture of porridge or tweed. The laburnum at the front had just come into flower. I was fascinated by the beauty of a living thing I knew to be poisonous.

I mounted the stairs but did not ring the bell. I used my own latchkey, quietly, and when I was inside I took off my shoes and some of my clothes and crept into the dark room and slid into bed with her.

“I heard you come in,” she said, and kissed me.

Her limbs closed around me, her body attaching itself to me like a sea plant to a stone. The sheets were warm and moist from her deep sleep: she slept motionlessly, glowing in her still slumber.

“Your feet are cold,” she said, and pedaled with her legs, and yawned. “What’s the time?”

I said I didn’t know, because if I told her she’d say It’s so late and would get up. I wanted to lie there with her for a while.

“Are you glad to be home?”

“Yes.”

“Did you miss me?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have a good time?”

I did not reply, I hummed equivocally, and finally said, “I might have to go back.”

“Oh, God!” Jenny said and took a breath, and her body hardened against me.

“You could come with me this time,” I said.

She did not speak. She sighed and her body softened again.

“Yes, take me with you,” she said, and kissed me. “But I know what it will be like. All your trip. All your plans and arrangements. You’ll be big and bossy, and I’ll have to follow you around like your mistress.”

She then clung to me.

She said, “Do you have a mistress, Andy? No, don’t tell me — I don’t want to know. Listen, are you serious about taking me to India?”

“This is the first proper meal I’ve eaten since you left,” Jenny said.

I had made her an English breakfast — eggs and bacon, grilled mushrooms, porridge and — just to see her reaction — fried bread. She drank coffee, and I had brewed a pot of green tea for myself. We were sitting at the table by the window — Jenny dressed for work in a flower-patterned dress that resembled the clematis in the back garden, pinky white blossoms on a background of pale green.

She said, “Did you notice I lost weight? I hardly bother to eat when you’re away. I eat cheese and biscuits, I watch telly and eat sausage rolls, I drink too much. Sometimes I think I’m turning into an alcoholic. You didn’t miss me, did you? Oh, never mind — it’s so good to have you home. Are you going to see Jack?”

“I might meet him this afternoon for tea,” I said.

“He’d love to see you,” Jenny said. “He misses you so much when you’re away. He gets pale and goes all quiet and he snaps at me when I try to be nice to him.”

And she gave me the other news: the car was buggered and wouldn’t start, the skylight had sprung a leak, the charlady hadn’t shown up for almost a week, there was no food in the fridge — she said there hadn’t seemed any point in shopping, since Jack was home only at weekends, I had missed the best of the daffodils, and my messages and mail were stacked on my desk.

“I couldn’t be bothered taking detailed messages,” she said. “It’s such a bore, and what’s the point? I told everyone I didn’t know when you’d be home.” She shook her head and frowned. “They feel sorry for me when you’re away. They treat me like a widow. I hate that. And some people get so obsequious when they find out I’m married to you. I had one the other day. I told him my name, and spelled it. ‘Like the author,’ he said. His mother reads your books. It’s pathetic. I’d like to change my name.”

“Why — are you ashamed of me?”

“No,” she said, “but I’m a person, too. I’m intelligent, I read books, I have opinions, I even have my own name.”

“One would never know you have opinions,” I said.

She smiled and then began to laugh, and stood up to go. “That was a lovely breakfast, but you’ve made me late for work.”

I was still thinking about these obsequious people she met. I said, “You’ll see — travel is hard. India isn’t a vacation. It’s work.”

“Don’t lecture me, Andy, please,” Jenny said. “I need a little time to think about this. And don’t think you can come back and start ordering people around. I’m not going to drop everything I’m doing to go to fucking India. I’ve got a job too, you know.”

She had been putting on her coat and growing flustered and fiercer as she fumbled her arms into the sleeves. I just watched her, saying nothing.

At the front door she said, “Oh, God, look at your face. I’ve said the wrong thing. Give me a little time, Andy. I got used to your being away. And now I have to get used to having you back.”

She kissed me and snatched up her briefcase and was gone.

I unpacked my bag. I took a shower. I made more green tea and opened my mail: friendly readers’ letters, invitations to seminars, requests for me to give lectures, demands for autographs, appeals for comments on bound proofs — four of them, with the sort of letters my publishers had once sent out soliciting endorsements, so how could I chuck them aside? And bills, Jack’s school fees, tax assessments, and seven more including a phone bill for £600—a grand’s worth of telephone calls to Eden in Marstons Mills. It would take two days to work my way through this stack, but that was another penalty of being away.

The car was out of gas, which was why it wouldn’t start for Jenny. I bought a gallon for my gas can and then drove to the Station and filled the tank. Three light bulbs were blown in the house. I replaced them. I went shopping in Vauxhall and filled the fridge. I made more green tea.