Maggie Gee - Where are the Snows

I wonder how all of us managed to grow old.

Christopher. He was my beau idéal. My ideal beau, in another world (my French is poor, we were badly taught. I belong to the generation of dinosaurs who didn’t learn to speak even one language well… it must be part of why I’ve never really travelled, though I don’t think I really missed travelling much until Alexandra and Christopher went away).

I burned with passion for him then. I sensed he was a sexual man, a man who liked to make love a lot, you could feel the heat of it coming off them, Alex and him, that electric heat, something that held them tightly together and left the rest of us out in the cold.

He was so handsome. He was… devastating. I have photos of him with thick dark hair, smiling eyes, wide sensual lips, a face just this side of fleshiness, the face of a big man — Christopher was big — whereas Matt, poor darling, was thin, and bald…

Once or twice recently I’ve looked at those photos, although I’ve been seeing him every other day. Because the memory of the Christopher I fell half in love with is slowly fading, shrinking away, in the face of the Christopher who came back from the dead. Who came to the funeral, and came for me.

— We’ve had lots of fun together. It’s been good for my ego to have a man want me, and good for my body to have regular sex. At first it all seemed overwhelmingly romantic, before it had sunk in that he wanted me, before he became a fact of my life… before we actually made love.

But when we did, he was old. I know that’s a heartless thing to say, I know I’m in my sixties myself, only eight years or so younger than him. I know age shouldn’t matter; Matt was old. Old like Chris. Just a year younger, in fact. He was seventy-one, and blind, and I adored him. I never thought of him as old. But then, Matt and I had grown old together.

Whereas Chris had come back a different man. Thinner, frailer, a little shrunken, still not a small man, but no longer large, no longer large and splendid and comforting. His hair isn’t all that much thinner, but it’s white, too long, and dry to the touch. And so is his skin, thin and dry, and I can sometimes feel the bones underneath. And he worries a lot; he’s frail and nervous. And a little forgetful, sometimes, in bed. Not quite as passionate as I had hoped, but then, I’m not Alexandra — and he is no longer middle-aged.

I am grateful to have him, of course. I didn’t want to be alone for ever. We’re company for each other. And in his clothes he’s still very imposing, a handsome man, a fine figure of a man.

But I can’t help feeling it’s come too late. I wanted him before, when he was with her, and she took the best of him, sucked him dry, and spat out the husk upon my table…

I took him in. I looked after him. He’s a happier man because of me. I’ve grown used to him, and looking after him. It’s Christopher and Mary, and Mary and Christopher. Not the Mary and Christopher I dreamed of, but still a partnership. A loving friendship.

And now we’ve quarrelled over Alexandra. Swanning in by phone from Mexico City. I hope she had phoned for a purpose. I hope she had phoned because she cared. In that case she had a right to phone. She has a right to phone if she cares for him.

But I saw the damage that phone call did. Christopher was completely thrown; didn’t know what to do with himself, couldn’t think of anything else but her, couldn’t stop thinking and dreaming about it, drawing wildly over-optimistic conclusions, oblivious to the real world, oblivious to everyone else — oblivious to me.

— But not entirely oblivious. He made it worse by remembering me. ‘Oh Mary, you must think me such a pig. I know how lucky I am to have you. I know how much you love me. I don’t want to break your heart over Alex —’

‘Why do you think you’re breaking my heart?’

‘You don’t have to be proud with me —’

‘Nevertheless, I’m sixty-four, I’m too old to break my heart over you. It’s true I’m faintly annoyed that you’ve talked about nothing else but Alex for the last three days. It’s true my vanity is piqued. But I’m sorry for you, as well. Because I think you’re building castles in Spain over this. It might have been a perfectly casual call. She has a penchant for casual behaviour. You’re a fool to assume she wants to come back.’

Poor Christopher. He looked so crestfallen. He muttered something and went away.

All the same, I don’t think he really took it in, or else he didn’t choose to believe me. Because the next time we spoke he was still apologising for the frightful wrong he was preparing to do me, had already done me in his fevered brain. I got cross again, but silently this time, and rang off as soon as I decently could without explaining why I was going to Paris, just saying I would be going away.

Maybe it’s good for him to suffer a bit. Maybe he’s a little too pleased with himself.

— Coming to Paris has been good for me. This is the first time I’ve thought of him since I left. Almost the first time. Not the first time. But Jessica’s baby is the main thing on my mind. Soon there’ll be another life to look after, how exciting, I adore new babies — I love to look after people, daughters, granddaughters, it doesn’t have to be a silly old man!

But today Jessica has sent me out. I’m annoying her by constantly cleaning, cooking for the freezer, putting clothes ready, and although I tell her that after it’s born there won’t be any time for anything at all, she tells me I’m driving her crazy.

So she’s sent me out to see an exhibition. She put me in a cab, and told him where to go, and ordered me to go shopping afterwards and buy some clothes for myself, not the baby, and not to come back until tea-time.

(Lovely to have children to take charge of one. Nice to be looked after as well as looking after…)

I’ve always wanted to see the Louvre. Sixty-four years old and not seen the Louvre. But it’s a whole city, a whole vast world. You could live your whole life in a building like this. It makes me feel tiny, and marginal. And the big exhibition of Edvard Munch that Jessica’s so sure I’ll enjoy was flagged with gigantic posters outside, but inside there is no mention of it, in this huge cathedral with its oversized stone heads and endless ranks of fractured bodies, broken arms, ruined legs… why do the heads survive the best?

I suppose people’s minds survive the best, what they do with their minds, their ideas, their inventions — I sometimes wish I had used my mind more. Instead I’ve loved bodies. Matthew’s, my children’s. I’ve loved and cared for human bodies. That’s what most women do, I suppose. I’ve enjoyed my own flesh, I enjoy it still. Odd to look around at so much wreckage, such cracked and battered human bodies, and see how tenderly they are preserved, mounted on plinths, gazed at, exclaimed over…

Why don’t people love their own bodies more? The marvel of unbroken bodies? I’ve always felt if people loved their bodies they wouldn’t be unhappy and full of hatred…

But Alexandra and Christopher became unhappy, although their bodies seemed to crackle with pleasure. I suppose I’m no philosopher, or else they didn’t love each other as much as I thought. They weren’t faithful, were they? I think I believe in faithful love.

The guard pretends not to understand my French, but nods disdainfully when I write ‘Edvard Munch svp’ on a piece of paper. The exhibition is miles from the entrance.

As I tip-tap across the echoing salons, treading my own path through the crowds, I realise how strange it is to go out alone. Even now Matthew’s dead, I am rarely alone, unless I am at home with all the friendly ghosts, and even then almost certainly there will be one or other of my children, or Susy, or one of my widowed women friends. I have a lot of friends now. I’m lucky. More than I had when I was married. More than I had in the decade when Christopher and Alexandra were our friends, and because they were so exciting, so special, we somehow let all the others drop, and missed them terribly when they ran off…