A pause. We agree we won’t turn the lights on for a while, so I get some wood and we make a fire, watching the twigs catch and the flames leap, and you say you want to give me the first of my presents now. I unwrap a fine, two-volume edition of Les Misérables, in which you’ve written this dedication:
‘The title doesn’t make reference to your birthday, so don’t worry! I was surprised when you told me you hadn’t read this book, it’s my favourite. I really admire the main character – very stoical (you see I am learning more advanced words!!). Please read pages 61–2, it’s the most powerful piece of writing I’ve ever seen. You’re in your best moment now, so enjoy it to the maximum. Forty makes you look wonderful. All my love and kisses xxx F’.
I’m overcome, tears rolling down my face, Thank you, darling, my Corazon. You holding me so tight now, and soon we’re fucking again, watching our shadows in the firelight on the walls … Then, afterwards, our breathing slowing, and now completely together, you on top of me, only our seed between us (7 billion spermatozoa, apparently,fn1 or rather 14 billion, with no place to go – truly we contain multitudes). Heart to heart, feeling our blood, one pulse now. We drift into rest, fingers entwined, only the twitching of the fire and our breathing now, slower and slower.
Later we fall ravenously on the roast lamb (gambolling is all very well, but roasted with garlic and rosemary is better, we agree), and at two minutes to midnight we go into the garden with a bottle of Malbec and wait for the bells to ring. And, as my birthday comes into being, and my thirties fade, we kiss again, with a tenderness that brings me to tears, a surging joy. The twelfth chime reverberates through the darkness and I feel alive, more alive than I’ve felt for years. What an astonishing way to begin the next stage of my life … As we go to sleep that night, I whisper in your ear:‘Why can’t it always be like this?’
And you smile, with a hint of melancholy, and say, ‘Because we’re human beings.’
I spend the afternoon of my birthday writing in the garden – the last part of the synopsis of this book (an early draft), for a literary agent. I send it through, and he rings me back. He says how excited he is at the prospect of the work, and how I need to start preparing for the next phase of my life, as a writer. In the evening a gathering of all my closest friends at a restaurant in Spitalfields. I’m in irrepressible form tonight, and I’ve decided people should drink with no inhibitions, so I’m paying for all the wine. Drink as much as you like, and not the cheapest bottles please! Earthy, rooted food, simple but delicious pairings – asparagus and bacon, rabbit and mustard, octopus, smoked eel. And terrific, zingy vodka sorbets to finish. I’m extremely moved, especially when J. gives me a long rectangular package. I open it and it’s a framed set of three photographs of us over the three decades of our friendship. I look up and you’ve got tears in your eyes as well. You love the evening, and meeting my friends, almost as much as I do; you say we all have a lust for life, and you’re right.
The next three days are dreamlike. On the Friday evening we drive up to Suffolk, fifteen of us, cars and vans laden with food and drink. We get to the place at the end of the world, and spill out in the night, into different cottages. The bigger one has no electricity and is still lit by gaslight, which gives a softer, glowing light to the next days … Saturday, the grey skies clear to blue. Other friends arrive, and then all of my family from the other side of Suffolk – my mother bringing a dozen lobsters and crabs from West Mersea, my sister two exquisite chocolate, rum and almond cakes, with honeysuckle twined around the tops. My four nephews and nieces dart around with the other children they’ve just met, climbing onto the roof and searching in the shingle for stones and objects to create decorations for the table we’re preparing. The bath is converted into a temporary fridge, with dozens of bottles of wine and beer. The kitchen is a hive of activity with friends finishing their various contributions, involving mushrooms and marsala, chicken livers and prosciutto.
We move all the tables outside onto the shingle, overlooking the sea, and create a single long table with twenty-five assorted chairs. The feast begins. A heat haze hovers over the sea. Every now and then sails and masts of boats going up the River Alde to our left, but only the tops visible behind the banks of shingle, which gives them a magical quality, drifting across our horizon as we savour the tastes of bubbly and shellfish. Nothing rushed today, as the hours of the feast continue … In the time between courses, the children race down to the sea, returning with dead crabs and orange stones they’d like to be amber. Talk and laughter bubbles around the table in waves. The time of presents and speeches. At one point I’m blindfolded and presented with a huge and heavy box. Suppressed giggles of all those in on the joke. I take my blindfold off, and peel off the tape – the box bursts open, and my seven-year-old nephew emerges with a scream of delight! And then, of course, all the other children want to repeat this game … Again! Again!! At one point our eyes meet, dancing happiness. I squeeze your hand. Candles on the cakes, everyone singing. And later, in the early-evening sun, people drift down to the water in twos and threes, and sit on the shingle bank with bottles of wine. All of us in a kindled state of oneness with the world … How many days like this in a life?
*
Fourth moment. Three weeks on. The end of June. Just back from our weekend in the Lake District. In your small room, high up in the house in Shepherd’s Bush. Very late, after fucking, we sit in bed, looking out at clouds of summer rain under the sodium street lights. You’re talking softly, about our lovemaking, and how responsive we are to each other, how it feels we’ve been together for ever. Distill this moment. Keep it with you always.
The next morning we have to leave early. The rain is still teeming down. We kiss goodbye at the bus stop in Uxbridge Road and I hurry on towards the Tube. And then I realise I don’t want to hurry. I’ll change my plans for this morning. My left shoe is leaking as well, so I’m not enjoying walking in the rain. I’ll go to that Lebanese café on the corner that I’ve passed so many times. I have an exceptionally strong coffee. And then waiting for the rain to stop, I start to write on a paper napkin, trying to find words for what happened in the night. Some of the only words written in this period.
Naked in the dark,
sitting together
in the upstairs window,
gazing out onto squalls of June rain
at 2 a.m.
The odd siren reaches us from the Uxbridge Road,
but mostly we hear each other breathe.
You say
It’s as if we’ve skipped two seasons
and are already in November,
as if we’ve known each other for almost a year,
instead of two months.
Our hands find each other now
with the ease of
leaves unfolding in the morning sun,
fingers interlock without us noticing.
I’ve sat on Alpine ridges and watched choughs surf the air,
and seen the sun disappear behind Big Sur,
Yet Collingbourne Road at 2 a.m. –
This moment,
our bodies barely visible,
our voices hardly more than a whisper –
has more power.