Adam Thirlwell - The Escape

It wasn't love, of course. Over various phone calls, Zeek tried to explain this to him. But Benji didn't care. Instead, he simply retreated into the burrow of his feelings. He told Zeek what he had not told her: that when he left her, the next morning, after they had slept together, in the taxi, he wrote in the dawn, on the back of a receipt, that this was true desire, a true passion. And passions were so rare.

This was why Benjamin was here, in the spa town. He needed an escape from the summer school, the regalia of his religion — and he needed to talk to the man who was his only authority when it came to women. The man who was his — faulty, despaired-of — authority as an adult.

But I think there was a further complication. Benji was here because he wanted permission to leave the summer school: he wanted to replace his respect for his religion with a more freestyle interest in his girl. This was true. But in his amatory crisis the family's inheritance had therefore acquired more significance than it might, perhaps, have had. For Benjamin felt guilty at his wish to abandon his religion. The villa was therefore his chance for redress: his chance to show his family and forefathers that he had not abandoned them entirely.

The villa was an excuse.

Which was, perhaps, one way in which Benji differed from his grandfather.

He should really stop looking at women like that, said Benjamin. Haffner said he would look where he liked. And believe him, he wasn't looking. Benjamin said that it just wasn't right.

Again, the lethargy which Haffner felt when contemplating his adventure with Frau Tummel transformed into something so much more protective. So much more like love. Such sadness which Haffner felt for the bodies of women! Such sadness which transformed into a pity of the flesh!

She was, said Haffner, a very handsome woman.

— Whatever! exclaimed Benjamin. Whatever.

Benji was here for business. So skip the breakfast, said Benji, skip the lunch: surprising even himself. They were going to sort this whole thing with the villa today. It was why he was here.

He knew, as he said this, that his motives were mixed. He knew how much he was fleeing from his summer school. He knew what a convenient excuse the story of the family villa was to him. But surely, thought Benji, the fact that he was in panicking flight should not mean he could not solve a practical problem. At least the villa was a problem whose solution was obvious.

— Not so simple, said Haffner.

— It's simple, said Benjamin.

— Believe me, said Haffner. If anything were simple, this isn't it.

Would the young not give this up? wondered Haffner. When would they learn to talk precisely? He wanted to be done with trying to bring them up. Or, maybe more precisely, he wanted to educate them out of their attempts to bring him up.

Why did no one want to believe him when he said that he had done all he could? But then, he was forced to concede, it was hardly surprising: this scepticism, this doubt in Haffner. He could understand the disappointment. As if Haffner were the omnipotent yet constantly underachieving god of the Christians and the Muslims and the Jews.

— I don't think you realise, said Haffner, sitting with Pfeffer, on Haffner's return to London, when the family had first discovered the existence of Barbra, the problems of living with a beautiful woman. I mean an apparition. You think it's easy?

— I don't think anything, said Pfeffer. Well maybe. I think it's easy living with the woman you love.

But no, said Haffner. Pfeffer, with his utter confidence, could never understand the problems of living with such a woman as Livia. The endless problems of self-worth. Think about it, he urged Pfeffer. You woke up every day with this noble profile. You looked across at the elegance of her face and it destroyed you. It was no way to treat a man: to emphasise the bags under his eyes, the marbled skin. It wasn't a sexual success. It was a crisis.

Pfeffer raised a philosophic eyebrow.

He wasn't blaming him, Pfeffer had said, but it didn't look good. That was all he was saying.

Only Pfeffer had tried to disabuse him of his guilt, only Pfeffer — with his retractable gold Biros and pots made for him by his children — pots of beaten bronze with enamel detailing, and mahogany lids. And maybe this was a surprise. Only Pfeffer, the family man, tried to persuade Haffner that his guilt remained unproven.

They had been to school together, at prep school. Pfeffer was the man Haffner's father wanted him to be, or as close to it as possible — ever since Haffner betrayed his family by refusing to enter the family law firm. Pfeffer was a libel lawyer. He knew the secrets of showbiz. Which meant, thought Haffner, that he knew the secrets of everything, since everything was showbiz. Pfeffer lived in St John's Wood, in the largest apartment known to Haffner, with drawing rooms, and living rooms, and multiple bathrooms with multiple basins. A redundant triumph of the plural. It had always amazed Haffner, the sleek animal adaptability of these humans he grew up with: how Pfeffer, the kid he had known since prep school, who was so docile, who wore grey flannel shorts when everyone else had understood the only cool thing was trousers, could morph into this maven of luxury, silken in his deskchair. A chair in which he wallowed, his small hands neat and hairless on his blotter — whose corners were curtailed by leather bands, into an octagon.

But I don't feel like sketching Pfeffer's form. He can remain there, an outline in black, transparent against all the background colours — like some minor figure in a painting by Dufy.

Haffner was unshaven; he was in a summer suit. Beside him was a plate of biscuits brought to him by Pfeffer's secretary, a secretary whom Haffner always suspected of harbouring designs on Pfeffer. He was wearing the panama which Livia hated. It came rolled up in a metal tube. He liked to think it made him rakish.

But hey, Pfeffer added. He was the last person to be advising anyone on a marriage. What was he meant to do? His wife was in therapy. His daughter was in love with some Greek entrepreneur. Or possibly a Turk. How was Pfeffer an expert in the family? He was as much a natural family man as Artie Shaw. Or Goebbels.

And Haffner had to admit, at that moment, that he loved Pfeffer, whose idea of fun was crossword puzzles, Scrabble, memory games. The man who saw the world as a perpetual acrostic. He spent his conversations, Haffner remembered, reconfiguring each sentence backwards. Otherwise, he told Haffner, it could become boring for him. This produced no obvious vacancy in his expression, or concentration. Sometimes, just backwards was not enough. Sometimes, he had to reverse according to gaps of two or three. He was toying with implementing logarithms.

He just thought, he said, that Haffner should explain what was going on.

But what could anyone else know about the marriage of Haffner and Livia? It was a world with only two inhabitants.

When the time was coming for war, but they didn't know when, Haffner and Livia had a code — for Haffner, like every soldier, was banned from giving any prior information about his movements. He had a rich and rather unpleasant uncle, called Uncle Jonas. And the code was that if Uncle Jonas were very fit and well, everything was fine. If the prospects for Haffner to be mobilised were doubtful, then his health was not too good: and then the time came when Haffner knew he was to go abroad, and he said that he was sorry to tell her, darling, but Uncle Jonas had passed away. He was at Basingstoke at this time, in a telephone booth. It was April, and curiously cold. They had embarked from the docks in the west of Scotland. He didn't quite know where. He didn't really know what a dock was, if he were honest.