mean, I thought of all the rest of the human population – most of whom live in what you and I would consider abject poverty – who have never seen or entered such a shop. And this, this, is what all their work sustains! This lifestyle, for people like us! All the various brands of soft drinks in plastic bottles and all the pre-packaged lunch deals and confectionery in sealed bags and store-baked pastries – this is it, the culmination of all the labour in the world, all the burning of fossil fuels and all the back-breaking work on coffee farms and sugar plantations. All for this! This convenience shop! I felt dizzy thinking about it. I mean I really felt ill. It was as if I suddenly remembered that my life was all part of a television show – and every day people died making the show, were ground to death in the most horrific ways, children, women, and all so that I could choose from various lunch options, each packaged in multiple layers of single-use plastic. That was what they died for – that was the great experiment. I thought I would throw up. Of course, a feeling like that can’t last. Maybe for the rest of the day I feel bad, even for the rest of the week – so what? I still have to buy lunch. And in case you’re worrying about me, let me assure you, buy lunch I did.
An update on my rural life and then I’ll sign off. The house is chaotically huge, as if in the habit of producing new, previously unseen rooms on a spontaneous basis. It’s also cold and in some places damp. I live a twenty-minute walk from the aforementioned local shop and feel as if I spend most of my time walking there and back in order to buy things I forgot about on the last trip. It’s probably very character-building, and by the time we see one another again I’ll have a really amazing personality. About ten days ago I went out on a date with someone who worked in a shipping warehouse and he absolutely despised me. To be fair to myself (I always am), I think I have by now forgotten how to conduct social intercourse. I dread to imagine what kind of faces I was
making, in my efforts to seem like the kind of person who regularly interacts with others. Even writing this email I’m feeling a little loose and dissociative. Rilke has a poem that ends: ‘Who is now alone, will long remain so, will wake, read, write long letters and wander restlessly here and there / along the avenues, as the leaves are drifting.’ A better description of my present state I couldn’t invent, except it’s April and the leaves aren’t drifting. Forgive the ‘long letter’, then. I hope you’ll come and see me.
Love love love always, Alice.
3
At twenty past twelve on a Wednesday afternoon, a woman sat behind a desk in a shared office in Dublin city centre, scrolling through a text document. She had very dark hair, swept back loosely into a tortoiseshell clasp, and she was wearing a grey sweater tucked into black cigarette trousers. Using the soft greasy roller on her computer mouse she skimmed over the document, eyes flicking back and forth across narrow columns of text, and occasionally she stopped, clicked, and inserted or deleted characters. Most frequently she was inserting two full stops into the name ‘WH Auden’, in order to standardise its appearance as ‘W.H. Auden’. When she reached the end of the document, she opened a search command, selected the Match Case option and searched: ‘WH’. No matches appeared. She scrolled back up to the top of the document, words and paragraphs flying past so quickly as to seem almost certainly illegible, and then, apparently satisfied, saved her work and closed the file.
At one o’clock she told her colleagues she was going to lunch, and they smiled and waved at her from behind their monitors. Pulling on a jacket, she walked to a cafe near the office and sat at a table by the window, eating a sandwich with one hand and with the other reading a copy of the novel The Karamazov Brothers. Now and then she put the book down, wiped her hands and mouth with a paper napkin, glanced around the room as if to ascertain whether anyone there was looking back at her, and then returned to her book. At twenty to two, she looked up to observe a tall fair-haired man entering the cafe. He was wearing a suit and tie, with a plastic lanyard around his neck, and speaking into his phone. Yeah, he said, I was told Tuesday but I’ll call back and check that for you. Seeing the woman seated by the window, his face changed, and he quickly lifted his free hand, mouthing the word: Hey. Into the phone, he continued: I don’t think
you were copied on that, no. Looking at the woman, he pointed to the phone impatiently and made a talking gesture with his hand. She smiled, toying with the corner of a page in her book. Right, right, the man said. Listen, I’m actually out of the office now but I’ll do that when I get back in. Yeah. Good, good, good to talk to you.
The man ended his call and came over to her table. Looking him up and down, she said: Oh Simon, you’re so important-looking, I’m afraid you’re going to be assassinated. He picked up his lanyard and studied it critically. It’s this thing, he said. It makes me feel like I deserve to be. Can I buy you a coffee? She said she was going back to work. Well, he said, can I buy you a takeaway coffee and walk you back to work? I want your opinion on something. She shut her book and said yes. While he went to the counter, she stood up and brushed away the sandwich crumbs that had fallen into her lap. He ordered two coffees, one white and one black, and dropped some coins into the tip jar.
The woman joined him, removing the clasp from her hair and then reinserting it. How was Lola’s fitting in the end? the man asked. The woman glanced up, met his eyes, and let out a strange, stifled sound. Oh, fine, she said. You know my mother’s in town, we’re all meeting up tomorrow to look for our wedding outfits.
He smiled benignly, watching the progress of their coffees behind the counter. Funny, he said, I had a bad dream the other night about you getting married.
What was bad about it?
You were marrying someone other than me.
The woman laughed. Do you talk like this to the women at your work? she said.
He turned back to her, amused, and replied: God no, I’d get in awful trouble. And quite rightly. No, I never flirt with anyone at work. If anything they flirt with me.
I suppose they’re all middle-aged and want you to marry their daughters.
I can’t agree with this negative cultural imaging around middle-aged women. Of every demographic, I actually think I like them best.
What’s wrong with young women?
There’s just that bit of . . .
He gestured his hand from side to side in the air to indicate friction, uncertainty, sexual chemistry, indecisiveness, or perhaps mediocrity.
Your girlfriends are never middle-aged, the woman pointed out.
And neither am I, quite yet, thank you.