Джулиан Барнс: The Only Story

The long answer was too time-consuming to give. The short answer was too painful. It went like this. It was a question of what heartbreak is, and how exactly the heart breaks, and what is left of it afterwards.

When he remembered his parents, he often visualised them in some old television play from the black-and-white days. Sitting in high-backed armchairs on either side of an open fire. His father with a pipe in one hand, flattening a newspaper with the other; his mother with a dangerous inch of ash at the end of her cigarette, but always finding the ashtray a few seconds before it would drop on to her knitting. Then his memory would cut to her in that pink dressing gown, picking him up late at night, and flicking her lit cigarette disdainfully out on to the Macleods’ driveway. And then the suppressed resentment on both sides, as they made their silent way home.

He imagined his parents discussing their only child. Did they wonder ‘where they had gone wrong’? Or merely ‘where he had gone wrong’? Or how ‘he’d been led astray’? He imagined his mother saying, ‘I could throttle that woman.’ He imagined his father being more philosophical and forgiving. ‘There was nothing wrong with The Lad, or how we brought him up. It’s just that his risk profile hadn’t stabilised yet. That’s what David Coulthard would say.’ Of course, his parents had died long before Max Verstappen’s exploits at the Brazilian Grand Prix; and his father took no interest in motor sport. But perhaps he might have found some parallel form of exoneration.

And he, in turn, now felt retrospective gratitude for the very safety and dullness he had been railing against when he first met Susan. His experience of life had left him with the belief that getting through the first sixteen years or so was fundamentally a question of damage limitation. And they had helped him do that. So there was a kind of posthumous reconciliation, even if one based on a certain rewriting of his parents; more understanding, and with it, belated grief.

Damage limitation. He found himself wondering if he had always misconstrued that indelible image which had pursued him down his life: of being at an upstairs window, holding on to Susan by the wrists. Perhaps what had happened was not that he had lost strength and let her fall. Perhaps the truth was that she had pulled him out with her weight. And he had fallen too. And been grievously damaged in the process.

I went to see her before she died. This was not long ago – at least, as time goes in a life. She didn’t know that anyone was there, let alone that it might be me. I sat in the chair provided. Playing through the scene beforehand, I had hoped that in some way she might recognize me, and that she would look peaceful. These hopes were as much for me as for her; I realized that.

Faces don’t change much, not even in extremity. But she didn’t look peaceful, even though she was asleep, or unconscious, whichever. Her forehead was pulled into a frown, and her bottom jaw pushed out a little. I knew these ways her face worked; I’d seen them many times, when she was in obstinate denial of something, denying it to herself even more than to me. She was breathing through her nose, occasionally giving a small snore. Her mouth was clamped tight. I found myself wondering if she still had the same dental plate all these decades on.

A nurse had brushed her hair, which fell straight down on both sides of her face. Almost instinctively, I reached out a hand, planning to uncover for the last time one of her elegant ears. But my hand stopped, seemingly of its own volition. I withdrew it, not knowing if my motive was concern for her privacy, or fastidiousness; fear of sentimentality, or fear of sudden pain. Probably the last.

‘Susan,’ I said quietly.

She didn’t react, except to continue with her frown, and the obstinate jut of her jaw. Well, that was fair enough. I hadn’t come with, or for, any message, let alone for any forgiveness. From love’s absolutism to love’s absolution? No: I don’t believe in the cosy narratives of life some find necessary, just as I choke on comforting words like redemption and closure. Death is the only closure I believe in; and the wound will stay open until that final shutting of the doors. As for redemption, it’s far too neat, a moviemaker’s bromide; and beyond that, it feels like something grand, which human beings are too imperfect to deserve, much less bestow upon themselves.

I wondered if I should kiss her goodbye. Another moviemaker’s bromide. And, no doubt, in that film, she would stir slightly in response, her frown lines uncrease, and her jaw relax. And then I would indeed lift back her hair, and whisper into her delicately helixed ear a final ‘Goodbye, Susan.’ At which she would stir slightly, and offer the trace of a smile. Then, with the tears unwiped from my cheeks, I would rise slowly and leave her.

None of this happened. I looked at her profile, and thought back to some moments from my own private cinema. Susan in her green-piped tennis dress, feeding her racket into its press; Susan smiling on an empty beach; Susan crashing the gears of the Austin and laughing. But after a few minutes of this, my mind began to wander. I couldn’t keep it on love and loss, on fun and grief. I found myself wondering how much petrol was left in the car, and how soon I would have to find a garage; then about how sales of cheese rolled in ash were suffering a dip; and then about what was on television that evening. I didn’t feel guilty about any of this; indeed, I think I am now probably done with guilt. But the rest of my life, such as it was, and subsequently would be, was calling me back. So I stood up and looked at Susan one last time; no tear came to my eye. On my way out I stopped at reception and asked where the nearest petrol station might be. The man was very helpful.

Julian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending , which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and The Noise of Time . He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and two books of non-fiction, Nothing to be Frightened Of and the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life . In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d’honneur.

Metroland

Before She Met Me

Flaubert’s Parrot

Staring at the Sun

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

Talking it Over

The Porcupine

Cross Channel

England, England

Love, etc

The Lemon Table

Arthur & George

Pulse

The Sense of an Ending

The Noise of Time

Letters from London 1990–1995

Something to Declare

The Pedant in the Kitchen

Nothing to Be Frightened Of

Through the Window

Levels of Life

Keeping an Eye Open

In the Land of Pain

by Alphonse Daudet