Therapy

her plate at the Venice restaurant all through our meal, and kept interrupting my heartbroken confidences to take and make calls about her movie. Ollie wasn’t difficult. I must have been trapped with him in a bar a hundred times. I did take a few liberties with Samantha. She mentioned — I can’t remember the context now — that she had a friend who was suffering from impacted wisdom teeth, but the hospital visit was all my invention. I just liked the idea of this helpless, speechless captive auditor unable to stem the flow of Samantha’s loud recapitulation of our would-be dirty weekend in Copenhagen. She’s a smart babe, Samantha, but sensitivity is not her strong point.
    The hardest one to write was Sally’s. I didn’t show it to Alexandra because she might have thought I was taking a liberty, writing her into it. I know she invited Sally to come and see her, because she asked if I had any objection (I said no). And I believe Sally agreed, but Alexandra never told me what she said, so I assumed it was discouraging. It was almost physically painful, reliving the bust-up through Sally’s eyes. That’s why the monologue changes halfway from being one side of a conversation with Alexandra to being a stream of reminiscence about our courtship. But that was painful too, reliving those days of hope and promise and laughter. The most chilling thing that Sally said to me in the course of that long hellish weekend of argument and pleading and recrimination before she walked out, the moment when I knew, really knew, in my heart, that I’d lost her, was when she said: “You don’t make me laugh any more.”
     
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    Thursday 27th May, 10 a.m. It took me all day to write yesterday’s entry. I worked without a break, except for five minutes when I nipped out to Pret A Manger for a prawn and avocado sandwich, which I ate at the table as I went on writing. There was a lot to catch up on.
    I finished at about seven, feeling tired, hungry and thirsty. My knee was giving me gyp too: sitting in one position for long periods is bad for it. (What is “gyp”, I wonder? Dictionary says “probably a contraction of gee up”, which doesn’t sound very probable to me. More likely something to do with Egypt, as in “gyppy tummy”, a bit of army slang from the days of the Empire.) I went out to stretch my legs and refuel. It was a fine warm evening. The young swarmed round Leicester Square tube station as they always do at that time of day, whatever the season. They bubble up from the subway like some irrepressible underground spring, spill out on to the pavement, and stand around outside the Hippodrome in their flimsy casual clothes looking eager and expectant. What are they hoping for? I don’t think most of them could tell you if you asked them. Some adventure, some encounter, some miraculous transformation of their ordinary lives. A few, of course, are waiting for a date. I see their faces light up as they spot their boyfriend or girlfriend approaching. They embrace, oblivious to the fat baldy in the leather jacket sauntering past with his hands in his pockets, and move off, arms round each other’s waists, to some restaurant or cinema or bar throbbing with amplified rock music. I used to meet Sally on this corner when we were courting. Now I buy a Standard to read over my Chinese meal in Lisle Street.
     
    The trouble with eating alone, well one of the troubles anyway, is that you tend to order too much and eat too fast. When I came back from the restaurant, bloated and belching, it was only 8.30, and still light. But Grahame was already settling himself down for the night on the porch. I invited him in to watch the second half of the European Cup Final between AC Milan and Marseille. Marseille won 1-0. A good game, though it’s hard to work up much passion about a match with no British club involved. I remember when Manchester United won the European Cup with George Best in the side. Delirious. I asked Grahame if he remembered, but of course he wasn’t even born then.
    Grahame is lucky to still be occupying the porch. Herr Bohl, the Swiss businessman who owns flat number 5 and resides there occasionally, took exception to his presence and proposed to call the police and have him ejected. I appealed to Bohl to let him stay on the grounds that he keeps the porch beautifully clean and deters passers-by from tossing their rubbish into it and drunks from using it as a nocturnal