The Nine-Chambered Heart

‘Look what you made me do,’ I shout. ‘Look what you made me do.’ I am the worst, most vile version of myself. I am crumbling like a pile of garbage. I am a pile of garbage.

With you, I am highest, and lowest.

It isn’t this, though, that breaks us up.

We continue for weeks, months. Over a year. Two. At a wedding you get pissed off because I’m chatting for too long, you say, with some other woman. Another time, you find an email exchange on my laptop between some girl and me, entirely innocent in content, but then why haven’t I told you about her? Back home, I’ve seen butchers dice meat, and sometimes pieces string together because the cut isn’t clean. We hold on like that too. Unhappy together, but what if we’re unhappier apart? I think, at times, we would be. Because, no matter what, we do have fun. We sing a lot, with me on the guitar. A bottle of whisky. You dancing on the bed. We still drive around the city at night, and eat ice cream, and go to gigs.

But eventually, all this is not enough.

One evening, after a fight about I don’t even remember what, I storm out of your flat and go to my friend’s house to spend the night. We drink. There’s meat being cooked. We sample some weed from the hills. Some time just before dawn, when I’m lying awake in an unfamiliar room, I send you a text. It’s the coward’s way out, I know, but maybe that’s all I am.

I say I can’t do this any more. That it’s over.

You don’t reply. Not then. Maybe you never will.

I stare at the screen. The light fades, and it finally dies into darkness.

THE CARETAKER

YOU’RE HALF MY age, maybe younger, but I see you and I want you.

I’ve felt it before, this kind of want. It’s raw and easy, and instantly recognizable, like hunger, and as uncomplicated – mouth to gut. With you, though, I’m afraid.

At this time of night, it might be the alcohol. How much have I had to drink? Always one too many. In my head, that familiar lightness, and the hall in which this gathering is taking place has taken on a certain hazy glow.

I see you clearly as you step into the room. You stand uncertainly for a moment, glance about you, and walk across to where the door opens towards a small lawn. You stop just beyond the glow of the wood burner. Why would you do that? It’s December, and cold, and your dress – if that’s what it can be called – won’t do much to keep you warm. It’s a cross between kimono and lab coat, with sleeves that swirl like windmills. On my wife it would look like an eccentric bathrobe, but you it suits, that touch of the dramatic. You seem to be a woman to whom something is always about to happen.

I watch you from a distance; sip my whisky – both in unhurried pleasure. I am called to your face. That nose, that sweep of brow, something about your chin. Your hair is long, but swept deliciously away from your neck, piled on top. You are pleasingly – not conspicuously – tall. As a child you must have been awkward, gangly, I’m certain of it, but not now, not any more. And if I were a poet I’d find a way to describe your body as it deserves to be. All that comes to mind is a tree, a cypress, whose leaves shimmer in the sunlight.

I watch as you gaze into the wood burner, your face indecipherable. Are you thoughtful? Bored? Dulled by your surroundings? Quietly contemplating setting the place on fire? For the moment, nobody joins you; you stand alone while the people around you ebb and flow. It doesn’t seem like you know anyone and no one else knows you. In which case, why are you here? I edge closer, and am accosted by acquaintances. Hard not to run into somebody I don’t know. It’s a large gathering, teeming with fat journalists and faded writers. All right, that’s unfair and untrue. It’s a nicely cultured lot; some who’ve known each other for years, and pride themselves on their perspicacious social contacts and good intentions. This is some book launch or the other, I’m not sure. More like an excuse for all of us to gather and drink middlingly expensive alcohol, eye each other’s partners, check out the new youngsters on the scene. You can spot them a mile away. They’re eager, and they smile a lot, and say things like, ‘Yes, I’m a poet.’

Perhaps you’re a friend of one of these youngsters, for somehow, you aren’t quite … indigenous. You seem – and I’m not prone to using the word – unreal. Suddenly, I grow afraid you’ll walk into the shadowy edges of the lawn and I’ll lose you. If I don’t speak to you now, you’ll step away from the fire and disappear.

So I walk up and ask why you don’t stand closer to the burner.

‘It’s pointless.’

‘To keep yourself from freezing to death?’

‘Perhaps. Only it’s much worse to warm just your hands, don’t you think? Or your – back.’ I think you almost said ‘ass’, but maybe I seem dignified (read ‘old’), and you haven’t drunk enough wine yet. Besides, for now, we’re strangers.

‘I’d rather be cold all over.’

‘Or warm all over.’

Did that sound cheap? I took care to say ‘warm’ instead of ‘hot’.

You turn to me.

Your eyes fall on my neck. I’m certain you’re thinking, ‘Oh god, he wears cravats.’ I’ve always felt they suit me; that a tie is a touch too plebeian. Although maybe to you, it makes me look ancient. I’m barely past fifty, but at twenty-something, that must seem light years away.