Will Self - Grey Area

‘I dunno. Probably to drink with her boyfriend.’

‘Well, you take her bottle of champagne down to her and then get yourself back up here. I’m not finished talking to you yet.’

‘Yes, my love.’

When he comes back in I do my best to look as if I haven’t overheard anything. He puts the bi-focals that hang from the cord round his neck on to his nose and scrutinises the label on the bottle: ‘Chambertin demi-sec. Looks all right to me — good stuff as I recall.’

‘It looks fine to me.’

‘Good,’ he smiles — a nice smile. ‘I’ll wrap it up for you. . Oh, hang on a minute, there’s no price on it, I’ll have to go and check the stock list.’

‘Brian!’ This comes from upstairs, a great bellow full of imperiousness.

‘Just a minute, my love.’ He tilts his head back and calls up to the ceiling, as if addressing some vengeful goddess, hidden behind the tire-resistant tiles.

‘Now, Brian!’ He gives me a pained smile, takes off his bi-focals and rubs his eyes redder.

‘It’s my wife,’ he says in a stage whisper, ‘she’s a bit poorly. I’ll check on her quickly and get that price for you. I shan’t be a moment.’

He’s gone again. More footsteps, and then Brian’s wife says, ‘I’m not going to wait all night to tell you this, Brian, I’m going to bloody well tell you now — ‘

‘But I’ve a customer — ‘

‘I couldn’t give a monkey’s. I couldn’t care less about your bloody customer. I’ve had it with you, Brian — you make me sick with your stupid little cardigan and your glasses. You’re like some fucking relic — ‘

‘Can’t this wait a minute — ‘

‘No, it bloody can’t. I want you out of here, Brian. It’s my lease and my fucking business. You can sleep in the spare room tonight, but I want you out of here in the morning.’

‘We’ve discussed this before — ‘

‘I know we have. But now I’ve made my decision.’

I take the crumpled bills from my purse. Twenty quid has to be enough for the bottle of Chambertin. I wrap it in a piece of paper and write on it ‘Thanks for the champagne’. Then I pick up the bottle and leave the shop as quietly as I can. They’re still at it upstairs: her voice big and angry; his, small and placatory.

I can see the light in the bedroom when I’m still two hundred yards away from the house. It’s the Anglepoise on the windowsill. He’s put it on so that it will appear like a beacon, drawing me back into his arms.

I let myself in with my key, and go on up the stairs. He’s standing at the top, wearing a black sweater that I gave him and blue jeans. There’s a cigarette trailing from one hand, and a smear of cigarette ash by his nose, which I want to kiss away the minute I see it. He says, ‘What are you doing here, I thought you were going to stay at your place tonight?’

I don’t say anything, but pull the bottle of champagne out from under my jacket, because I know that’ll explain everything and make it all all right.

He advances towards me, down a couple of stairs, and I half-close my eyes, waiting for him to take me in his arms, but instead he holds me by my elbows and looking me in the face says, ‘I think it really would be best if you stayed at your place tonight, I need some time to think things over — ‘

‘But I want to stay with you. I want to be with you. Look, I brought this for us to drink. . for us to drink while we make love.’

‘That’s really sweet of you, but I think after this morning it would be best if we didn’t see one another for a while.’

‘You don’t want me any more — do you? This is the end of our relationship, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you’re saying?’

‘No, I’m not saying that, I just think it would be a good idea if we cooled things down for a while.’

I can’t stand the tone of his voice. He’s talking to me as if I were a child or a crazy person. And he’s looking at me like that as well — as if I might do something mad, like bash his fucking brains out with my bottle of Chambertin derni-sec. ‘I don’t want to cool things down, I want to be with you. I need to be with you. We’re meant to be together — you said that. You said it yourself!’

‘Look, I really feel it would be better if you went now. I’ll call you a cab — ‘

‘I don’t want a cab!’

‘I’ll call you a cab and we can talk about it in the morning — ‘

‘I don’t want to talk about it in the morning, I want to talk about it now. Why won’t you let me stay, why are you trying to get rid of me?’

And then he sort of cracks. He cracks and out of the gaps in his face come these horrible words, these sick, slanderous, revolting words, he isn’t him anymore, because he could never have said such things. He must be possessed.

‘I don’t want you here!’ He begins to shout and pound the wall. ‘Because you’re like some fucking emotional Typhoid Mary. That’s why I don’t want you here. Don’t you under-stand, it’s not just me and you, it’s everywhere you go, everyone you come into contact with. You’ve got some kind of bacillus inside you, a contagion — everything you touch you turn to neurotic ashes with your pick-pick-picking away at the fabric of people’s relationships. That’s why I don’t want you here. Tonight — or any other night!’

Out in the street again — I don’t know how. I don’t know if he said more of these things, or if we fought, or if we fucked. I must have blacked out, blacked out with sheer anguish of it. You think you know someone, you imagine that you are close to them, and then they reveal this slimy pit at their core. . this pit they’ve kept concreted over. Sex is a profound language, all right, and so easy to lie in.

I don’t need him — that’s what I have to tell myself: I don’t need him. But I’m bucking with the sobs and the needing of him is all I can think of. I’m standing in the dark street, rain starting to fall, and every little thing: every gleam of chromium, serration of brick edge, mush of waste paper, thrusts its material integrity in the face of my lost soul.

I’ll go to my therapist. It occurs to me — and tagged behind it is the admonition: why didn’t you think of this earlier, much earlier, it could have saved you a whole day of distress?

Yes, I’ll go to Jill’s house. She always says I should come to her place if I’m in real trouble. She knows how sensitive I am. She knows how much love I need. She’s not like a conventional therapist — all dispassionate and uncaring. She believes in getting involved in her clients’ lives. I’ll go to her now. I need her now more than I ever have.

When I go to see her she doesn’t put me in some garage of a consulting room, some annex of feeling. She lets me into her warm house, the domicile lined with caring. It isn’t so much therapy that Jill gives me, as acceptance. I need to be there now, with all the evidence of her three small children spread about me: the red plastic crates full of soft toys, the finger paintings sellotaped to the fridge, the diminutive coats and jackets hanging from hip-height hooks.

I need to be close to her and also to her husband, Paul. I’ve never met him — of course, but I’m always aware of his after-presence in the house when I attend my sessions. I know that he’s an architect, that he and Jill have been together for fourteen years, and that they too have had their vicissitudes, their comings-together and fallings-apart. How else could Jill have such total sympathy when it comes to the wreckage of my own emotions? Now I need to be within the precincts of their happy cathedral of a relationship again. Jill and Paul’s probity, their mutual relinquishment, their acceptance of one another’s foibles — all of this towers above my desolate plain of abandonment.