Maggie Gee - Where are the Snows

I mentioned my unhappiness to Mary, and waited to see if she’d suggest some change — perhaps we should buy a house together; perhaps I could move in with her, but I wanted it to come from Mary. I didn’t want to be turned down.

‘I don’t think you should live on your own,’ she said. I waited eagerly. ‘I think you should go and live with Susy. Talk to her. She’s on her own. That woman — Madonna — has just let her down, ran off to live with a married man…’

— Mary is marvellous, but a trifle cold. And always thinking about other people, trying to help till it makes you feel tired.

But in fact, it’s all worked out wonderfully well. Susy did want me to live with her, she was pregnant, she wanted company. Seeing my granddaughter is utterly marvellous. She’s a lovely baby, a remarkable baby, particularly advanced for her age, and that’s not just a proud grandfather talking… I’m teaching her to crawl. I make myself useful.

All the same, in the basement I’m completely independent. I have my bedroom, my kitchenette, my bathroom, my study with computer and DVD… And it might be awkward, if I lived with Mary. She might not tolerate my VR habit. It’s more than a habit, I know, it’s a need.

Another reality. Virtual worlds. The VR headset seems almost cumbersome now PC games have become so absorbing. I like it both ways, all ways. Whatever takes me where I want to go. Madonna, the darling, keeps me up to speed, because she works in virtual reality, and thinks it’s cool to be a user at my age when most people can’t stand the stuff (and Mary’s one of them; won’t even discuss it; she says my games are ‘a waste of time’. In some ways Mary is a narrow woman).

‘You’re a real addict, Christopher,’ Madonna said, the last time she dropped in, bringing me a new game to play, for which she only charged me half-price. I felt boyishly pleased by the compliment; a VR addict at seventy-two! Perhaps I was the oldest player in London!

— Then I stopped feeling pleased, and just felt old.

But when I’m using, I never feel old. In cyberspace I can be anything I wish. And with anyone I wish, wherever I wish, and doing anything I wish to them… If I think of it too much I’ll have to go and play, and that’s not possible at present, I’m sitting in the garden with a sleeping Becky, waiting for Mary to take us for a walk, and if I start to use I wouldn’t hear the child crying or the doorbell ringing or the house burning down… I almost wish Mary weren’t coming.

And that’s the trouble with cyberspace. It’s more absorbing than anything real. That’s the true reason people like Mary dislike it, I think; its power to drain the colour from the real world. She told me Dan is playing games too much while Anne and their three-year-old are in Sweden. I said, ‘Don’t blame the computer. It’s because the real world is cold and lonely that he’s playing so much, not vice versa.’

‘I still don’t like it,’ Mary said. ‘Enthuse to Madonna, not to me. You’re wasting your time converting me. To me it’s a con, inhuman, hateful.’

But then, Mary is a very strong person. The better I know her, the more I realise. Mary can look life full in the face, probably because she’s got nothing on her conscience.

Whereas I, I…

But never mind that. If she weren’t going to call, if Becky weren’t beside me, under her fringed canopy, turning her round head slightly as she dreams, I would go and escape, like Dan. I would go and sit down in my computer-room where my new software waits for me, toys for the boys, Mary says, but all possibility lies here, a world of vivid strength and power, where mind is king, where flesh is ageless, and Christopher is in control, mind over body, world without end — if I slip on my visor, gloves and dreamsoles, then reach into the secret drawer in the table and take out my envelope of photographs, poor still photographs, worn by now, handled too much, milked of their life, as my throbbing penis will be milked of its life — if I scan in those thin facsimiles of life, and sit back and wait, unzipping myself — in five seconds or so she’ll be there before me, almost perfect, moving, breathing, and if I speak to her she’ll answer, though the voice isn’t hers, it’s just the one I’ve created by trying again and again, modifying, tuning, softening, but it’s still a doll’s voice, not a woman’s.

Not Alexandra’s. Not her beautiful voice, husky, thrilling, almost hoarse. But the rest is Alexandra, Alexandra to the life, Alexandra to the death, I love her still. And in a minute, as I flick the switch, Christopher will appear beside her. A younger, stronger Christopher, for the photos I use are always young. And whatever he does on the screen I feel through the VR sensors that shiver my skin, and as I start to stir, he moves, we move. And she is more mine then she ever was, for I created her, I can unmake her, I summon her at will, and he uses her, Christopher uses her, I watch, we use her, we use her until her doll’s voice squeals, we use her until I can bear no more and reality this side of the screen takes over, I freeze the image and tear my gloves off…

When I’ve come, of course, it all looks different. Then the frozen image on the screen looks cold; the cyberary is lonely; she is just a cartoon, she feels nothing, nothing, she was never here, neither of those people are satisfied, they are just condemned to eternal repetition, and the cooling sperm on my leg feels sad because it is the only thing that was warm. And each time I vow not to do it again.

Today there’s no danger, at any rate. Ah, here she is, my darling Mary, late, as usual, scruffy, laughing, admiring Becky only slightly less than I do… And we wander down a road not completely changed since the days when there were four of us, when it was Matthew and Mary and Christopher and Alexandra, when we were all young, before we went away, thirty years ago precisely. When there were four children; now there are three. Nothing is sadder than outliving your children.

But when I’m with Mary I’m rarely mournful. Trundling the pram, talking, laughing. Not too far, just a gentle stroll, because Becky has a feed at four, and Susy will have finished preparing her lesson and be panting to see her daughter.

(Such mothers, the women of today! Neither Penelope nor Alex was ever like Susy! I love my daughter. I’m proud of her.)

Mary is going to stay for tea. She doesn’t often do that, I must make a fuss of her. The temperature, as usual, is in the nineties but she adores crumpets even in summer and I keep them in the freezer just for her… The baby is burping, bubbling, grinning. That wonderful smile is just for me.

‘It’s no good, monkey, you’re too young for crumpets, you won’t get round your grandpa like that…’

I hear the telephone ringing in the house. Mary tenses; there’s some problem with Jessica which she was explaining, but I missed the details. A little delay, then Susy comes from the house. She is rosier than usual. She stoops to the baby, scoops her up, cuddles her, whispers to her, then remembers Mary and I are here.

‘Dad. Mary. Thanks so much.’ Closely inspected, she looks a little strange, distracted; maybe her breasts are hurting her.

‘That wasn’t for me? The phone?’ asks Mary. There’s a long pause. Susy stares at the baby.

‘It was a wrong number,’ she says, finally.

Why am I such an idiot? Why do I kid myself everything’s fine? Today I feel as if the roof’s fallen in and I suddenly see it’s dark out there… Yet I was so smug, only three days ago when the phone call came from Alexandra. I thought I’d handled it brilliantly with my lightning decision to keep it quiet, not to disturb our happy family, not to upset my happy father. When I saw him with Mary and the baby in the garden, they looked so sunny and peaceful together…