Passing Stranger
By Mihangel
10. Singularly deep young man
If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,
Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!
W. S. Gilbert, Patience
Promptly at nine o'clock next morning, as we had arranged, Jonathan rang the bell. As I opened the door I found him smiling at the pavement immediately outside, where the council, concerned at the health hazards and plain nastiness of dog shit on the streets, had stencilled in yellow paint a simple picture of a dog crapping, with the message CLEAN IT UP. He was not looking at that -- there are hundreds around the city -- but at another picture alongside it, a recognisable portrait of George Bush. The message below it was the same, CLEAN IT UP.
"I didn't notice that yesterday," he said. "There must have been other things on my mind. Who did it?"
I laughed. "Pryderi, my son, when he was last here. With a mate of his. They cut a stencil and painted it in the middle of the night."
"Brilliant!"
We went first to the kitchen to get coffee, and he fell on the day's Guardian. He skimmed the front page, then flipped through the inside ones where his eye was caught by a leader. He read a bit.
"Oh my God! It's arguing for abolition of the monarchy!"
"Oh yes," I chuckled. "The dear old Guardian's quite hot on republicanism."
"Sounds as if you don't agree."
"No. I might go along with it if I were a radical teenager. I'm still on the left, but I'm traditionalist enough by now to go for reform -- God knows it needs it -- not abolition."
"But it's such a waste of money. It's an anachronism. It's lost all credibility, with those snooty out-of-touch . . . Why are you grinning like a baboon and scratching your arse?"
"Because it would be horribly boring to be clones, wouldn't it? I'm delighted to find something we're going to disagree about. But not this very minute. Look, J, if you don't mind, I've got to deal with some emails and today's post. Bring the paper to the study and get ready for the revolution, and we'll fight across the barricades later. All right?"
After a while he finished the paper. "Right. I'm genned up for a good fight. May I look at your books, please? There wasn't a chance yesterday."
"Help yourself."
He eyed the shelves. Books are the bane of my life. Almost every square inch of study wall is covered in them. I live in a constant crisis of book space. Books breed in captivity, and whenever I head for a space which was empty a few days ago I find it has already filled itself.
"I mean your books. The ones you've written."
I showed him, and turned back to the computer. When I had finished, I saw he had one of my books on his lap. He looked up. "I'm impressed!" he said simply, and asked some intelligent questions about it. "Is this one boiled down from all these books?" He waved his hand around.
"Lord no. I've hardly anything here. Most of the work for that one was done at Cambridge, at the university library -- that's my main research source. British Library too. Science Museum Library. A lot from manuscripts in the Public Record Office and county record offices. Some on the Continent."
"Wow! How long did it take?"
"Ummm. About four years."
"Good grief. Did it get good reviews?
"Yes, very nice ones. But I'm not as proud of them as I am of the feedback to my stories."
"May I see, please? The feedback?"
I showed him the folder on the computer -- I save all feedback and my replies -- and he scrolled down a file or two. "See what you mean. This one's good. About Orogeny. 'I was shocked, shocked indeed, to find a story that expected more than a sixth grade education of its readers. What a pleasant surprise.' That's dead right. Most stories are so undemanding . . . And this one -- this is from America too -- 'You have extraordinary talent as a writer, but more than that you are, as your words betray you, a beautiful human being. There's rich tenderness there, intelligence, and great awareness of the human condition.' That's so right, M."
"Hey, that's enough. You're making me blush. We've got diverted from talking about these blasted books."
He reluctantly closed the file. "And you said you've hardly anything here! Could've fooled me! What are these all about, then?"
I gave him an brief conducted tour of my library.
"But these are only your work books. You must have lots of others. Literature and stuff."
So far he had only been in my study, the kitchen and the downstairs loo, so I gave him another conducted tour, of the rest of the house. Books everywhere else except the bathroom (yet). Our children's books, such as were left, in their rooms. Hilary's work books in her study and her computer room. General books in the parlour, landing, even our bedroom. In the bedroom he pointed at two ancient tomes.
"What are they?"
"Family bibles. 1599 and 1608, I think."
"Before King James, then!"
"Yes. Geneva bibles. Breeches bibles." I showed him Genesis 3:7, where Adam and Eve made themselves breeches, instead of the aprons King James gave them.
"Wow!" He was openly enthusiastic. "I've heard of these, but never seen one, let alone two."
He was also excited by the knick-knacks around the place.
"What's this lovely little pot?"
"Greek. Protocorinthian aryballos. About 600 BC."
"And what on earth's this?"
"Chinese portable sundial."
"This head. It must be African."
"Yes, from Zimbabwe. We call him Monomatapa."
Fossils, Roman catapult balls, Georgian silverware, he asked about everything. And about the pictures on the walls, mostly portraits of ancestors or scenes in Wales.
"It's not just a library, it's a museum too! And a gallery!"
Well, all right. To me it was just a house with too much in it, but then I was used to it.
"Auntie's house is so boring." Symptomatic, and sad, that he did not say "our house."
Finally he paused before a family photo of the four of us, taken when the kids were quite small.
"I like the look of Hilary. And M, your beard wasn't grey then. Have you always had it?"
"Oh yes, I was born with it."
"Arsehole!" he said, without batting an eyelid.
I grinned. "All right then, no. I grew it on 6 August 1970. I don't mean overnight. That was the last day I shaved. Or was it the first day I didn't? And please don't ask me why I remember the date. It's one of those silly things one does remember."
"Thirty-three years ago. So none of the family have seen you without it?"
"No. But they'd love to. Hilary threatens to do a Delilah on me. She's welcome to when I'm a corpse. But not before."
"But you must have photos of you without."
"Oh yes." We went downstairs again and I dug out a couple, one in my teens and one in my Cambridge days.
"But you were good-looking! Much better-looking than me. You didn't have anything to hide. Why did you grow it?"
"Oh, various reasons. Shaving's a serious waste of time. I worked it out at the time. I'd shaved for sixteen years. At five minutes a day, it totted up to about five hundred hours of non-stop shaving. Utterly wasted. Since I stopped, I've saved twice that. Another reason -- I grew it soon after my Dad died. He wouldn't have liked it -- he didn't like the long sideburns that came before it. So it was a sign of independence. Self-assertion, for once. Trying to create a new image. For myself, I mean, not for others. I wasn't trying to be macho."
"You could never be macho, M!"
"True. But I was trying to be distinctive. It was rather like my pipe, though that came quite a lot earlier. Slightly unusual, and comforting -- it is comforting, you know, to have something to suck, like a baby's dummy." He smiled gently. "The pipe, you twit -- I don't suck my beard!"
He smiled more broadly. "Well, it's distinguished, anyway. How long did it take to grow?"
"Well, I lay low for a while. I hate designer stubble. It didn't go on public display till it was nearly a month old. At a conference in Slovakia . . . oh God!"
"What?"
"That was quite an experience. There weren't any other English speakers there. Native English speakers, I mean. Almost everyone was from behind the Iron Curtain, but the common language was German. Well, you know how hard it is to make conversation in English. And in German! . . . And it was just after the Prague Spring, and the atmosphere was brittle as ice between the Czechs and Slovaks and the Russians. Security was pretty tight, and I had to be vetted by the police. I was worried that my passport photo still showed me without a beard, but luckily that didn't bother them. Though I went to Rome not long afterwards and the passport bloke at Fiumicino got very stroppy about it.
"Anyway, that conference. My paper went down well enough. But afterwards this young Slovak woman buttonholed me and said how impressed she was by my Persönlichkeit und Außere, my personality and, hrrrm, looks, and more or less suggested we leap straight into bed. Oh my God! I had to fend that off, in German. But she tried to keep up a correspondence for a year afterwards.
"Then the last night there was a grand reception, and a young Slovak bloke got talking to me, in English of a sort. I had the feeling he was, um, taken with me, but I couldn't encourage him. No way. He was throwing back slivovica, tight as an owl, and in the end he flung his arm round me and yelled 'I love ze British, I hate ze Russians!' At the top of his voice. With hordes of Russians around, plus the Minister of Culture who of course was a Soviet stooge. God! I could have curled up and died. But the point is, the beard seems to have made an impression. Even if not quite the way I'd expected."
J was listening awestruck. "It must have been murder, though."
"It was. But once you're caught in a current you have to swim with it. You'll find that out for yourself one day."
"Not abroad, I hope. My languages are hopeless. Except Latin, and that's no use outside the Vatican."
"Don't you believe it. I was in Germany once, in Trier, to talk to the director of the museum there. My German was pretty minimal then -- I was quite young -- and his English wasn't any better. So we talked in Latin. Surprisingly easy, once we'd sussed out our pronunciations. And I didn't have a beard then" -- I stuck my chin out -- "to give me a false air of authority."
J was rubbing his own chin. "Perhaps I'd better let mine grow, then, to get a false air of authority. But it's still not much more than fluff. M, may I feel yours, please?"
It is quite a bushy one, and he delicately prodded it to see where my chin was, and rolled it between his fingers to feel the texture.
"It's funny, isn't it? Your hair's still brown on your head, and your eyebrows are almost black, but your beard's all grey. Even white. And your head hair's straight and fine, but your beard's coarse and curly, just like .. . hmmm." He could not bring himself to say it, though he had happily talked of willies.
"Yes. Dunno why. Maybe the hair that arrives last goes white first. The hair on my chest's gone white" -- I pulled down the neck of my sweater so that he could see -- "but, um, elsewhere it's still brown." I could not get much more personal either. There were realms where I had no intention of going, at least not unless he led the way. Which, before long, he did.
It was a lovely spring day, and we decided to have an early lunch before strolling down to the river, where we walked along the towpath through Clifton Ings to near the hospital and back.
"M," said J out of the blue. "From your stories, I reckon you don't approve of casual sex?"
"No, I don't. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but it smacks of lust. I reckon sex should go hand in hand with love."
"Have you always thought that, or does it date from when you were so frustrated and lonely? I mean, did you take that line . . . as a sort of comfort, a sort of excuse .. . oh, I can't find the words."
"But I'm with you, I think. Did I adopt it as an ideal just to make my enforced chastity feel more palatable? Is that what you mean?"
"That's right."
"A very good question. But no, I think I've always had ideals, though I didn't sort them out properly till I was fourteen or so. I was lonely, so I hankered for love. All right, there was family love lurking at home, but it was entirely under the surface, not expressed at all. So when sexual desires slunk into my mind and I heard about expressing love through sex, I hankered for that. Rather than for sex without love."
At that point a boy overtook us, eating crisps. Maybe he had heard us talking about sex, for as he passed he turned to look at us curiously. He was about J's age, and very beautiful. Beside me I heard J draw in his breath.
"Oh God!" he said quietly, slowing down to let the boy get ahead. "It's always happening. I can't help it. Look."
His jacket was undone, his hands were in its pockets, and he briefly pulled them apart to expose the crotch of his jeans. I looked, and with a pang of memory saw what he meant. I had been just the same at his age. Lofty ideals have no control over automatic physical responses. Only over what one does about them.
"J, suppose I weren't here. And suppose he'd stopped and suggested a quick blow-job. What would you have said?"
"No, straight off. I'm like you. I couldn't say yes unless I knew him a lot better. And liked and trusted him. Probably unless I loved him. Otherwise it seems so . . . cheap. OK, once I got home I'd, um, fantasise about him. I have got a hand. But that's different. That would be between me and me, not between me and him. It's just like talking, really. You can say what you like to yourself, but if you talk to somebody else you can only say private intimate things if you trust him. Like I can to you."
The boy, now fifty yards ahead, dropped his empty crisp bag on the ground. An elderly lady walking her dog in the opposite direction evidently remonstrated with him. We could not hear her words, but his reply came clearly back, "You fuck off and mind your own business."
When we came up to her she was still looking at his retreating back.
"Sorry about him," J said to her.
"And why should you be sorry, young man? Is he a friend of yours?"
"No. I've never seen him before." J picked up the bag and stuffed it in his pocket. "But I'm a teenager too. And I'm ashamed of him."
"Good lad, then." She looked at me and nodded approvingly, making an obvious assumption. "I've got a grandson too, and he's another good lad. It's a matter of bringing them up proper, isn't it?"
We smiled politely and went on our way. I put an arm round Jonathan's shoulder and squeezed it. "Two pluses there, J. For all practical purposes you brought yourself up, didn't you? And you brought yourself up proper."
He said nothing, but blushed.
"And you opened a conversation with a stranger off your own bat."
He was startled. "I didn't think of that. You know, I doubt I would've if you hadn't been here. You sort of encouraged me, even if you didn't say anything. But one thing I'm certain of, after that." He nodded towards the now-distant boy. "I wouldn't have sex with him at any price. Not for a million pounds. I couldn't. Nor even fantasise about him."
"Because you've discovered that your values are incompatible? As you were teaching me yesterday. Yes, you've got to be true to your own.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it shall follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
And if you're going to be true to yourself you've got to know yourself, as the Delphic motto says."
"Oh yes, like in the Scholar. Your classics teacher had it up in his classroom, didn't he? Steve Phillips. Was he really like that?"
"Yes, he was. All that part's true. He and his humanism were the biggest influence on my young life. Yes, he did have those mottoes up. And quotes about man in general. Terence -- 'I'm a human being, so I reckon humanity's my business.' Sophocles -- 'There are many wonderful things, and none more wonderful than man.' And Hamlet again -- 'What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty!'
"But not Pope?" His eyes turned up.
"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is Man.
Well, perhaps not. He was chaplain too, wasn't he? Steve. Maybe that was too, um, secular. But that whole bit of Pope always gets me in the guts. It's so powerful. And man's so difficult to understand.
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused."
Once again he might have been speaking for me, both about the poetry, which gets me in the guts as well, and about the conundrum of man. He seemed to have stopped, so I finished it off for him.
"Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!"
"Yes." J was very pensive. "Man in general and individual men. But the important thing, isn't it, is to know yourself. And when you know yourself, to be true to yourself . . . I read something about this the other day, though. In Camus. 'If one forgoes a part of what is, one must forgo being oneself; one must forgo living and loving other than by proxy.' But if I forgo being shy - and I can with you - does that make me live and love only by proxy? I hope not."
I wrestled with it. "I don't think shyness is an essential part of you. It's just part of the packaging around the essential you. But if you forwent your honesty, say, then you would forgo being yourself. You wouldn't be true to yourself."
"Mmmm. Yes." He sighed. "But I don't think we're going to solve the riddle of man here and now. Or ever. It's fascinating, isn't it, but it, um, belongs to philosophy. Or even theology." His mood lightened. "Have you heard that definition? A philosopher is someone who goes into a dark room at night to look for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian does the same thing, but comes out claiming he's found the cat. Are you into philosophy, or theology?"
"No, neither. My mind's too simple. Not attuned to them. They mean as much to me as music does to the tone-deaf."
If I was half-hoping that might sound like an original insight, I was foiled.
"Ah yes. Wimsey." This boy let one get away with nothing.
Having failed to solve the mystery of man, we returned to the abolition of the monarchy and ultimately agreed to differ, thus failing to solve that question too. We followed the towpath back almost to Lendal bridge and cut up through the Museum Gardens. Here J paused, gazing at St Mary's Abbey which has been in ruins since the time of Henry VIII.
"It must have hit them pretty hard," he remarked, "when that was dissolved. The monks, I mean."
"I gather they were paid off, quite handsomely. And the abbot got a fat pension."
"Yes. But their way of life was destroyed, wasn't it? Their faith must have been in tatters. The certainty which had kept them going."
"You sound a bit envious of it."
"I suppose I am, in a way."
"Me too, in a way. But theirs was a pretty blind faith, wasn't it? If I'm going to believe in something, I'd like to do it with my eyes at least partly open. Like trusting, if that's any different. Blind trust is dangerous."
"As you found the hard way. Yes, I agree. We trust each other, the two of us . . . we believe in each other . . . with our eyes open. But I've never believed in a religious sense. Have you?"
"Not really." I told him of the arid hours spent in church and my ill-fated encounter with the catechism. "Though I did have a very brief flirtation at Cambridge. An evangelical sermon planted a seed. But on the stony ground of my mind it turned out to be a very short-lived weed. It soon died of malnutrition."
We came back up Marygate and turned left into Bootham, pausing outside the house where W. H. Auden had been born, as the plaque on the wall proclaimed.
"Auden," said Jonathan, still in thoughtful mode. "He talked about the distortions of ingrown virginity, didn't he? I don't think that applies to me. Not yet, anyway. I don't think my virginity is ingrown enough, and ingrown shyness is much more distorting. But does it apply to you, or did it when you were a virgin?" He hesitated. "It still seems weird, you know, asking things like that, when you're fifty years older than me. Do you mind?"
I could have hugged him again. "Of course I don't. We're equals. And it's a very fair question." I pondered. "Yes, I think you've put your finger on one of my problems. I was distorted by ingrown virginity. Which was brought about by ingrown shyness. And I still am distorted, by both of them. After so long of both, it's been hideously difficult to pull myself back into shape. I suppose the moral is, don't let either become ingrown, because once a leopard has got his spots it's almost impossible to change them."
We walked home side by side along Bootham, past the tailback of traffic queuing for the Gillygate lights. The bass beat from a stereo was thumping loudly out of a car's open window. J and I exchanged a glance, which prompted a sudden qualm.
"J, are we snobs?"
He considered. "I hope not. Aren't you only a snob if you feel superior? I think we've been here before. Everyone's different. We don't like that bloke's music, and probably he doesn't like ours. Our tastes aren't really compatible. But his music is right for him, just as ours is for us. So live and let live."
Jonathan felt he ought to be back earlier today, to keep Auntie sweet, and we had an early meal. Once we had peeled the carrots together, I put some haddock on to poach and sat him at the table with a packet of nibbles while I dealt with the rice.
"M. When the Indian Air Force bought some new Russian fighters, what did they call them?"
I was busy rinsing the rice and assumed his question arose from something in the Guardian.
"No idea."
"Bombay MiGs."
Half the rice went down the sink. After a delay while I boiled more, we ate almost in silence. To commune, we did not necessarily have to talk. Not now. But as I made coffee Jonathan had a worry.
"M, I've spent two days with you. The happiest in my life. But I'm becoming a bit frightened of meeting Hilary. I don't want to get between you and her. And mightn't she, um, misinterpret our . . . ? Ought I to stay away?"
"No, you oughtn't. We trust each other, Hilary and I. Because she's gregarious herself, she's always concerned at my shortage of real-life friends. She understands why I talk to people on the net, and she'll approve of a net-friendship that's turned into a real-life one. Especially this one. I'll eat my hat if she doesn't welcome you with open arms."
"What about tomorrow, then? When does she get in?"
"I'm picking her up from the airport at ten, and I'll be out of circulation all morning. She'll no doubt be knackered. But I'm sure she'll want to meet you. We'll have to play it by ear. How best to contact you now? By phone?"
"On weekdays, yes, when Auntie's out, say eight to six. Otherwise by messenger." We swapped phone numbers.
"I wonder where Hilary is now."
"She changes planes at Bangkok and Amsterdam, so somewhere between the two."
"Strewth! Doesn't that take her over Iraq?"
"I thought it would too. But I looked at the globe, and the great circle route runs surprisingly far north, way above the Caspian. So she's probably over Uzbekistan or whatever. What worries me more is this new epidemic in the Far East. You know, SARS. But no point fretting."
"No point, no. But you love her, so you can't help fretting."
I was filling my pipe, and as he looked at my packet of baccy he drew in his breath.
"And I can't help fretting for you, M," he said in a strained voice.
Uh huh, I thought. Now I'm in for a lecture on the evils of smoking. Better get in first.
"Oh, pipes are nothing like as bad as cigarettes," I said defensively. "Life insurance premiums go through the roof if you smoke fags, but they count pipe smokers as non-smokers."
He grinned a big grin. "Yes, but that's not the point. Read the packet."
Being an unreconstructed die-hard in these matters, I never normally read the government health warning. This time I had to.
GOLD BLOCK
The Aristocrat of Pipe Tobaccos
Smoking when pregnant
harms your baby
"All these expectant mums puffing away at their pipes! Tut!" He clicked his tongue as he leaned across to pat my flat belly. "But come to think of it, there's no need to fret. You can't be pregnant, because you've never been . . ."
"Jonathan! How many glasses have you had?"
"Two. And you've had four. And your Cinzano."
We looked at each other, spluttered, and erupted into bellows of laughter.
He brushed his teeth, we hugged, and as I saw him home it felt as if I had known him for fifty years, not two days. Not a son, not a lover, but a friend and more than a friend. A part of myself.
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