‘Right, you’re my eyes’, says W., leaving his glasses behind as we set out on our walk. ‘All set?’ We’re all set. W. is a great advocate of walking: ‘it’s what we’re made for’, he says, and speaks of the walks he used to take on the weekend.
‘We’re essentially joyful’, reflects W. later, ‘that’s what saves us. We know we’re failures, we know we’ll never achieve anything, but we’re still joyful. That’s the miracle.’ He finds this very amusing. We are in the little boat that carries us across to Mount Edgcombe. ‘But why is that, do you think? Why are we content?’, I ask him. – ‘Stupidity’, says W. And then: ‘We’re not ambitious. Are you ambitious?’ – ‘No.’ – ‘Well nor am I.’
We look out over the water. W. tells me again about the Dukes of Edgcombe, and how one of them married a barmaid at the pub near the dock. Then we go into the grounds, the great sweep of law going up to the mansion on our right, and the entrance to the gardens ahead of us. The geyser always makes us laugh as it gushes unexpectedly into the air.
I take pictures of the tulip garden, where W. comes to read Kafka. W. has always disliked pictures. ‘Use your brain‘, he says. ‘Remember.’ The worst thing, for W., our mutual friends L. and R. told me, was when they took photos of someone without asking him. W. was appalled. True, he has a photo album at home, but he was given it recently. He has his memory, says W., and that’s enough for him.
‘So is it lack of ambition that makes us joyful?’, I ask W. It’s partly a question of temperament, W. decides. Stable family lives, and so on. We are free from insecurity. ‘Are we free?’, I ask – ‘Well you always think you’re obese.’ – ‘That’s true.’ It’s a beautiful day. The gardens give way to a great landscape, planned two hundred of years ago. ‘They must have thought they had all the time in the world’, I say. Then, on our left, the sea, a beach of pebbles, and, across, the city, and ships going to and fro.
‘See, what more do you want than this?’, says W., and he’s right. Later, rising up into the woods, we sit and look out of the water. There’s a ferry, travelling out to Spain. W.: ‘We should go on a trip, one day.’ And then, ‘we’re not going to go anywhere, are we? We’re men of habit. Simple beings. Everything’s got to be the same. That’s our strength.’
‘I never think about my death, or anything like that’, I tell W. Nor does he. – ‘It’s all melodrama.’ – ‘And there’s nothing I want more than I’ve got’, I tell him, and recall how frustrated I get when I watch Bergman’s characters moaning about their lot. ‘They have these great big houses – it’s amazing.’ W. laughs. ‘Tell me about your flat again. It’s shit, isn’t it? You’ve got the worst flat of anyone I’ve ever met. My God, I don’t know how you live there.’
The other day, I tell him I spend whole days ringing various companies to get them to look at the damp. ‘It’s Talmudic’, I tell him, ‘everyone’s got a different interpretation.’ Yesterday, the workmen came and took the ceiling down and fitted new joists next to the old, rotten ones. Then they hammered boards over the joists.
‘What do you think’s causing the damp?’, I ask them. They’re baffled, but we can hear water, flowing. ‘How long has it been like that?’ – ‘A month or two.’ – ‘Can’t be good.’ He shook his head. ‘But the water company won’t come out.’ On the phone, W. recommends Offwat, the industry regulators. I rang them this morning, and so the water company’s coming out tomorrow.
‘How’s your house?’, I ask him. He tells me again how the foundations were dug up by the previous owners, and layers of sheeting mean damp is an impossibility. ‘It’s built to last’, says W., ‘not like yours.’ I tell him the plumber says it might need a rebuild – ‘the bricks have rotted away.’ W. is amazed. ‘You know how much my house cost me?’ He names an absurdly low figure. ‘So how much did yours cost you?’ I name an absurdly high figure. ‘My God. You’re fucked.’
I tell him the slugs have gone. ‘That’s one thing, at least.’ It must be the frost. ‘You’ll get rats next.’ – ‘Oh yes, rats.’ And we laugh. I’m waiting for the damp to come back in the bathroom, I tell him. I can smell it, it’s there, behind the plaster, waiting to soak through. It’ll be really bad this time, I tell him. Black. The shower upstairs is leaking again, I tell him. ‘It’s like Tarkovsky, all that rain inside.’ W. impressed. ‘You’re really fucked’, he says, in admiration.
But we’re out walking, the gardens before us, and beyond them the landscaped view, and then the ascent into the woods, and beyond them, the pub. We’re anticipating the beer. ‘I hope they’ve got honey beer’, I say. ‘Oh yes, great,’ says W., excited, ‘now put that fucking camera away’. I tell him to smile. ‘Think of posterity’, I tell him.
‘You don’t actually know anything, do you?’, says W. ‘You’ve got no body of knowledge.’ W. has Hebrew: ‘You see, I know something. What do you know?’ I look up into the sky. – ‘I’ve read a lot.’ – ‘Secondary stuff. You’re always reading secondary stuff. It’s your weakness’, says W., ‘or one of them. No one reads secondary stuff but you.’
He’s undoubtedly right, I tell him. How much does he teach? He tells me: very little. I tell him how much I teach: a lot more than he does. – ‘You really drew the short straw, didn’t you?’, he says. – ‘Which one of us do you think will get sacked first?’ W. thinks it’s him. He doesn’t mind, though. He’ll retrain as a lawyer. ‘We can set up a practice. We might do some good in the world.’ – ‘It’ll be the making of us!’ We laugh. -‘What good do we do, really?’ – ‘None whatsoever!’
‘These are truly the last days,’ W. quotes, over honey beer. – ‘How long do we have left?’ – ‘Oooh, not long. We’re fucked, everything’s fucked.’ This as we look out to sea. ‘But we’re essentially joyful’, says W., ‘that’s what will save us. Actually, it won’t – we’re too stupid.’ – ‘We’ll be the first to go under!’ – ‘Exactly!’
The houses are derelict at the bottom of W.’s street, the windows broken. Sometimes you see children’s faces. ‘Do they live there?’ – ‘I think so,’ says W., who always tells me to ignore them when they bang on his windows. ‘You’re scared of them, aren’t you?’, he says to me, as he lights a fag. ‘That kind of poverty …’, I say – ‘It’s terrible. It’s like that round here,’ says W.
The kids yell at him because of his long hair. ‘They hate us’. Once someone came out the pub to throw an ashtray at Sal. ‘Even she was sacred.’ He shakes the match to put it out. ‘Nothing ever’s going to happen anywhere,’ says W. ‘It’s beginning here. The ship’s going down, with all hands.’ Only those of us at the periphery can see it, he says. ‘That’s where you can see what’s going on. Look at it!’ The windows are broken. Some are boarded up. Rain. ‘This is where it’s all going to begin’, he says. ‘It’s like Bela Tarr! Have you bought Satantango yet? It’s out! 17 quid for 7 and a half hours!’
When L. and R. were staying with him, they took a lot of photos, W. said. ‘It’s all documented. The impending end. But it’s nothing to your flat, is it? Have you told them about your flat? I did. And they’re going to stay with you, aren’t they? They won’t be told,’ says W., ‘I tried to tell them. It’s disgusting, I said, but they said it couldn’t be as bad as all that. I said, it is as bad as all that! I’ve never seen anything like it!’ W.’s enjoying himself. He likes hyperbole. ‘To think, they’re going from my house to your flat!’
‘The best thing’s your yard,’ W. continues. ‘When it filled with sewage, and it was really hot, and you couldn’t open your back door or your windows, do you remember? The smell. You could smell it, with the back door closed. It was disgusting! And your kitchen! It was horrifying!’ W. had helped me dismantle the old kitchen ready for the builders. ‘I hope you’ve thrown everything out. All those pots and pans.’ I tell him the new ones have gone the same way, and are covered in mould. ‘No wonder you’re always ill’, says W. ‘You’re going to kill them’, of L. and R.
W. tells me again about the layering that prevents his house from getting damp. ‘We bought it from interior designers’, he says of his house, ‘I didn’t have to change a thing.’ But he did buy a big Smeg fridge, I remind him. Oh yes, he bought that. And he spent a bit of money on the kitchen. ‘Lovely, isn’t it?’
And then: ‘compare your kitchen to my kitchen, go on. How big’s your kitchen?’ – ‘Six foot by six foot,’ I tell him. W.’s kitchen is much larger: fifteen foot by twenty foot, he says. And it’s not damp, he points out. And his fridge is full of food, because he’s not greedy, like me. ‘I don’t go and scoff it all’, he says, ‘I’ve got self-control. Do you know what that is? Self-control?’ W. is not a glutton, he says. Nor does he drink when he’s on his own. ‘I’m not like you.’
A little later. ‘Food is for the other,’ W. announces. ‘It’s a gift.’ He tells me he’s bought slices of Emmenthal and some cold meat for me. ‘You’re the other’, he says, ‘so I have to feed you.’ – ‘From your own mouth? That’s what Levinas says.’ W. opens his mouth. -‘Do you want some? Do you?’
‘Men love verbal play’, W. decides. ‘What we’re doing now. Sal doesn’t understand it. Men love verbal humour and abuse’, he says. ‘It’s a sign of affection, of course, he says, ‘I feel affectionately towards you.’
Sometimes, I remind him, he likes to explain things about me to other people like an indulgent mother. ‘The thing about L. is …’, he’ll begin. Or: ‘What you have to understand about L. is …’ And best of all, when he’s feeling very tender, ‘What I love about L. is …’ – ‘Is that it, then?, I ask W., ‘do you love me?’ – Yes, I love you’, says W., ‘You see, I can talk about love. I can express my feelings. Not like you.’
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