Jonathan Buckley - The Great Concert of the Night

One day in December, in the first year of unemployment, Bill took a diversion to the factory in which he and my father had worked. Nobody had taken over the premises. A chain-link fence surrounded the site, but a section of the fence had been uprooted; all he had to do was duck his head to get in. A skim of grit now covered the concrete floor of the workshop. In the offices, pens and cigarette packets were strewn on the desks; health and safety notices were pinned to the board; invoices and letters had curled into shapes like flowers. Everything was turning grey under dust. A week later he went back, with a camera. Belatedly, Bill had found his hobby, to the relief of his wife. He became a connoisseur of dereliction. Soon a filing cabinet had been filled with images of his discoveries: a saw mill, a flour mill, a half-built house that had been left to rot, a barracks, two schools, a pillbox, a field of gutted cars, an evacuated farm, dead factories. He tried to persuade my father to come along: the expeditions kept him in good shape, he pointed out, with all the fences to be breached and walls to be surmounted. Sites at which trespassers were threatened with prosecution had an additional attraction: having been discarded prematurely by the world of work, he was taking revenge in flouting the law.

When I think of Imogen, what presents itself to my mind is not a story. I think of her, not of a life. A story, a life, is something one makes; it is not what one remembers. She, the living Imogen, is what I remember. Each memory is a reliquary; each memory contains something of the substance of her. Not an account, but a constellation of moments, or of their remains.

The death of the Châtelaine – a beautiful scene. All we see of the young woman’s body is the motionless hand, almost touching the floor, with one finger extended, pointing down – as if directing our attention – at the beads of blood on the flagstones, from which the camera then departs, to observe a basket of oranges and an ivory-handled knife in a pewter bowl, in sunlight, and particles of dust drifting across the window. Relishing every surface, the camera roams the room that had held the lovers. Sunlight rakes the walls, showing the grain of the stone; it soaks the flesh of a blood-red rose; it makes the rust glow on the blade of a sword. When the servant enters the chamber, we are at a remove from the tower, so the woman’s cry comes to us quietly, more quietly than the birdsong in the garden and the footfalls on the gravel path.

Antoine Vermeiren, discussing La Châtelaine, tells us of his distaste for ‘American film sex’. He hates ‘all that pounding, all that grasping’. It is like the mating of cave people, he says. When we grasp something, we try to take possession of it. La Châtelaine is a ‘celebration of the caress’, he would have us believe. When we caress a body, we do not attempt to conquer it, he states.

In today’s paper, an interesting article: neuroscientists propose that the human brain is wired to administer doses of dopamine when we are in pursuit of a goal, rather than when we attain it. Discontent is rewarded, in other words. The evolutionary advantage is clear: happy Ugg, loafing with the wife and kids around the fire in the family cave, loses out to the never satisfied Agg, who is out in the woods, working on a new and better spear. As my sister knows, the customer must never be allowed to feel that enough is enough. And what lessons for the lover?

Last night: sitting on the harbour wall, thinking of nothing. The rich perfume of the sea. A black sky of remarkable clarity; uncountable stars. Contentment; pleasure in the happiness of William and Jenna. Then a memory of walking with Imogen, to the farthest part of the garden, out of the light that came from the house. Her breathing was effortful. At the fence we stood arm in arm, facing the hills. I put my coat around her, but still she shivered. The sky was cloudless; we looked at the stars. I remember some of her words: ‘tiny cold points of light’ that we saw were ‘unimaginable fires’ in reality. With mock portentousness she pointed to the sky and proclaimed: ‘Our ancestors. Our destination.’ Entering the house, she said: ‘I really was having a Zen moment back there. If I had an Off switch, I would have happily used it.’

The top table: Jenna and William; the bride’s parents; Jenna’s best friend, Katie; and myself. Most of the father’s speech is devoted to Jenna’s qualities as a daughter and as a mother; William is praised as an incomer who is putting down roots – a young man who went so far as to try his hand on the boats. Light-hearted and affectionate reference is made to William’s ill-starred maritime career. ‘But that’s commitment for you,’ the father-in-law pronounces. ‘Commitment’ is the key motif.

The trawler anecdote has been used up; improvisation is therefore necessary. All jokes are jettisoned. Having known William for some time, I can vouch for his determination. But the idea of destiny is what I want to talk about: William’s feeling, within days of arrival, that he had at last found the place where he was meant to be; and the powerful sense, on first sight of Jenna, that they would meet; and the certainty, on talking to her, that this was his soulmate. I quote from our conversations, embellishing only a little. And I talk about his love of Tilly. No laughs, but here and there a tissue is applied to an eye.

Jenna’s mother wants me to know that she is happy that her daughter has found a replacement for Tilly’s father. ‘That one was about as much use as a blind guide dog,’ she tells me. William is a level-headed and dependable chap, I assure her. ‘So he lived with you for how long?’ she asks, with the suggestion that something does not quite add up. ‘Not for very long,’ I answer, unsure as to how much of William’s back story she knows. ‘But you’ve known him for years,’ she reminds me. I explain that I had happened to get talking to him one day, and from that point on we had always stopped for a chat whenever our paths had crossed. ‘He has some funny ideas, doesn’t he?’ she says, when William and Jenna, clasped in a dance, have passed out of earshot. I feign curiosity as to what she might mean. William has introduced her to his research on black holes. He has a lively imagination, I agree. ‘One way of putting it,’ says her husband – his first contribution for many minutes. He is on his third or fourth pint. ‘So,’ he says, ‘you’re not wearing the yoke yourself?’ I am divorced, I tell him. Putting an arm around my shoulder, he promises me that it’s better second time round. ‘First time, you don’t know what the hell you’re doing,’ he says.

Jenna points her phone at us, then shows me the result. I look like a melting candle. A slow song is playing; as with most of the evening’s music, I don’t recognise it. Jenna thinks I should dance with her; the parents too think I should dance with her; I am excusing myself when William intervenes, as if to protect a visiting dignitary from excessive attention. The parents are summoned to the other side of the room. A friend of Jenna’s, an attractive and burly young woman in a short strapless dress, slaloms across the dancefloor, huge cocktail in hand, to tell me that her mum likes the look of me. She takes a deep drink, then points across the room at a woman who is making wiping motions with her hands, to disassociate herself from whatever it is that her daughter is saying to me. ‘Thank you,’ I answer, and Jenna’s friend gives me a wink.