Therapy

bounds down the steps and jumps in and wriggles about in her seat with excitement, trying all the gadgets, laughing and wrinkling up her nose in that way she had, and looking adoringly at me as I drive off. That’s what Maureen used to do: look adoringly at me. Nobody ever did it since, not Sally, not Amy, not Louise or any of the other women who’ve occasionally made a pass at me. I haven’t seen Maureen for nearly forty years — God knows where she is, or what she’s doing, or what she looks like now. Sitting beside me in the car she’s still sweet sixteen, dressed in her best summer frock, white with pink roses on it, though I’m as I am now, fat and bald and fifty-eight. It makes no kind of sense, but that’s what fantasies are for, I suppose.
     
    The train is approaching Euston. The conductor has apologized over tha PA system for its late arrival, “which was due to a signalling failure near Tring”. I used to be a closet supporter of privatizing British Rail, before the Transport Minister announced his plans to separate the company that maintains the track from the companies that run the trains. You can imagine how well that will work, and what wonderful alibis it will provide for late-running trains. Are they mad? Is this Internal Derangement of the Government?
    Actually, I read somewhere that John Major has a dodgy knee. Had to give up cricket, apparently. Explains a lot, that.
     
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    Wednesday 10.15 p. m. Amy has just left. We came back to the flat from Gabrielli’s to watch “News at Ten” on my little Sony, to keep abreast of the global gloom (atrocities in Bosnia, floods in Bangladesh, drought in Zimbabwe, imminent collapse of Russian economy, British trade deficit worst ever recorded), and then I put her in a cab back to St John’s Wood. She doesn’t like to be out late if she can help it, on account of Zelda, though her lodger, Miriam, a speech therapist with a conveniently quiet social life, keeps an eye on the girl when Amy is out in the evenings.
     
    Now I’m alone in the flat, and possibly in the whole building. The other owners, like me, are only occasionally in residence — there’s a long-haul air hostess, a Swiss businessman whose job requires him to shuttle between London and Zürich, accompanied by his secretary and/or mistress, and a gay American couple, academics of some kind, who only come here in university vacations. Two flats are still unsold, because of the recession. I haven’t seen anybody in the lift or hall today, but I never feel lonely here, as I sometimes do at home during the day, when Sally is at work. It’s so quiet in those suburban streets. Whereas here it is never quiet, even at night. The growl and throb of buses and taxis inching up the Charing Cross Road in low gear carry faintly through the double glazing, punctuated occasionally by the shrill ululation of a police car or ambulance. If I go to the window, I look down on pavements still thronged with people coming out of theatres, cinemas, restaurants and pubs, or standing about munching takeaway junk food or swigging beer and coke from the can, their breath condensing in the cold night air. Very rarely does anyone raise their eyes from the ground level of the building, which is occupied by a pizza & pasta restaurant, and notice that there are six luxury flats above it, with a man standing at one of the windows, pulling the curtain aside, looking down at them. It isn’t a place where you would expect anybody to live , and indeed it wouldn’t be much fun to do so three hundred and sixty-five days a year. It’s too noisy and dirty. Noise not just from the traffic, but also from the high-pitched whine of restaurant ventilator fans at the back of the building that never seem to be turned off, and dirt not just in the air, which leaves a fine sediment of black dust on every surface though I keep the windows shut most of the time, but also on the ground, the pavement permanently covered with a slimy patina of mud and spittle and spilt milk and beer dregs and vomit, and scattered over with crushed burger boxes, crumpled drinks cans, discarded plastic wrappers and paper bags, soiled tissues and used bus tickets. The efforts of the Westminster Borough street-cleaners are simply swamped by the sheer numbers of litter-producing pedestrians in this bit of London. And the human detritus is just as visible: drunks, bums, loonies and criminal-looking types abound. Beggars