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Small Things

There is a queue of traffic in front of me. I glance out of the car window and notice that an undertaker has gone into business in the high street. The nagging reminders of mortality are everywhere.

Sometimes I wonder whether I would care if she died. It is difficult to imagine. Perhaps her doctor would contact me and break the news that one of her lumps, interminable as food scares, had actually been infected and cancerous; that it had eaten her away from the inside. Or that she had been hit by a random car, another victim of bad timing.

Unable to predict my reaction, I decide that I am apathetic. Surely, if I cared about anyone, I would know the sadness of death in advance.

I cried after my father's funeral. This, I assume, is normal; those who do not cry at funerals are obliged to look upright and austere, at least. While my aunts, my father's sisters, sobbed into their handkerchiefs, their husbands stood awkwardly by — as though they had always known that this would happen, but lacked the heart to say, "I told you so."

There again — my tears were not related to the corpse of my father. It is the human condition, the unavoidable death that comes to all of us, that saddens me. Or is it? Now I think that perhaps it was just the air of mourning around me. One can be infected by grief, even through music or literature. I wonder whether I am truly apathetic, or just looking for evidence to back up that explanation.

One cannot be apathetic and passionate. Apathy has no reason to cry. But I cry because there are no reasons.

Now I have taken the car beyond the right turning. I swear quietly, out of convention. I have heard the one-way system described as a "nightmare", but I just find it inconvenient. I am too familiar with nightmares to use the word frivolously.

I have not been paying proper attention to anything just lately.

In the mornings, I glimpse my guilty, unshaven face in the mirror, and I remember that yesterday my diet consisted of nothing more than crisps, or sardines and an apple. I can cook, but I lack the motivation; and Rachel cooks for both of us when she is here. Similarly, I no longer pay what little attention I once did to my dress code. Stripes go with grey go with socks go with anything. It's unimportant, though others may consider me scruffy.

Now I am home, and so is she.

"Hello," she says. I sometimes wish that she would be cold, or overly affectionate, so that I could find something to complain about. I feel like a spoiled child when I can neither reciprocate her love nor turn it away.

"Hi," I say.

She is a fairly dutiful wife, aware of the stereotype but unconcerned. Unlike every other woman at her college, she likes Sylvia Plath for her poetry, not her belief system. She can be skilful with words, but I have never seen her use her vocabulary to intimidate others.

She is telling me something. "It took me all of ten minutes to find a parking-space at the college. I suppose I should get there earlier, but it'd be just as bad to get caught in the rush hour."

"Yes," I say, and — wanting to repay her with an original statement — "The roads were terrible this evening. That one-way system is an absolute curse." Now I curse myself, silently of course, for sounding so empty and predictable. But she has not noticed. When she has several things to say, she piles them up and cannot acknowledge me until they have all been ejected.

"Erica told me that girls are quieter in class at school because of the patriarchal system. 'Scared into silence,' that's how she put it. She's quite the feminist."

I remember an Erica at my school. Before I can regress to those days of gingham skirts and pencil shavings, she has come up with another question. I feel hopelessly unprepared, a mere child facing an effortlessly brilliant chess computer.

"Would you like me to iron your shirts?"
"What shirts?"
"The ones I've just washed. There's two blue and one white."
"Why do you ask?"

She has always ironed my clothes, though I try not to take these things for granted. I wonder whether she is just drawing attention to the work she does for me.

"Well, that's a silly question. I'll iron them for you, okay?"
"Okay. Thanks. I love you."

I cringe inwardly at the last sentence. It always feels so contrived, regardless of whether or not it is true. Probably it is the fault of the media; all boy-girl phrases have been exploited to the point of meaninglessness. What could we say instead of "I love you"?

Wouldn't the ideal relationship be one where there is nothing to be said?

I have been dreaming about a factory that makes perfect babies. The softly scrolling conveyor belt is punctuated at regular intervals by hairless dolls, bright-eyed geniuses without the ability to cry or feed.

"Wake up!"

Hearing her voice, I turn my head vaguely on the musty pillow we share.

"Hey. Are you awake?"

It is three o'clock in the morning, and I tell her so, groggily.

"The roof's leaking again..."

There is a gentle plip somewhere on the periphery of my hearing, as a single globule of cold water threads its way from the windswept roof into the comfortable privacy of our bedroom.

"Not again," I say. I am awake now. Curious how, even after thousands of years of unanswered prayers, we try to stave off problems by denying their existence, waiting for proof.

Plip. And there is my proof, regular and insistent.

"It'll ruin the carpet!" she wails. I find myself unable to remember the colour and pattern of our bedroom carpet, even though it was installed only four months ago.

I feel inadequate. Husbands are supposed to know how to deal with all practical problems. I trudge downstairs to the kitchen and return with a few sheets of newspaper, which I place on the carpet. The dripping of water becomes a dull thunk, slapping against an inky print of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

"Can you sleep with the noise?" I ask her. My concern is genuine, for I have always been affected by the small things. As a child, I could howl with laughter at slapstick violence on the television, but my young soul was pervaded with guilt each time I scraped lukewarm cabbage into the dustbin.

She can sleep with the noise, and I can sleep anywhere; so we turn off the light and curl up together once more.

Things conspire to go wrong together. The next day, I am walking past the refrigerator to the garage, and I step in another pool of water.

"Shit!" My right foot is suddenly cold and sodden.

The fridge has stopped functioning, and its resident food items are misbehaving in unique ways. The cheese has sweated, and condensation has formed inside a packet of bread rolls. I am worried that the steak will be contaminated somehow.

The plumber will be expensive. I don't know whether plumbers can repair leaks in the roof, but it's worth a try. I find an attractive advertisement in the Yellow Pages. There is a cartoon plumber holding a large spanner. The telephone number spills out of his mouth in a speech bubble.

I call the number and get an answering machine.

Until the plumber can return my call, I shall throw away the steak and put the cheese in the freezer.

I should have known that my dream of babies was an omen.

Rachel has just put forward the idea of having children. We can afford it now, as she points out, and the house is big enough. A leaky roof can be fixed in nine months, she says jokingly, and I wonder whether she expects me to fuck her tonight, even immediately.

However, various philosophy books have made me suspicious of "breeding", which I now see as a biological-societal process of dubious value. Framed photographs of blond angels are not for me. They come at a high price: soiled nappies and tantrums; Christmas presents and innocent why-questions that I cannot answer.

"Tell me something. Would you be happy without children?" she asks. I feel immensely cheated; I would have asked her that question if I were more daring.
"I don't really want children... just yet." Always the disclaimer at the end.
"Oh, babe... You know I'm going to be thirty in three weeks."

I am suddenly deeply touched as I realise that the need for children is a manifestation of her insecurities. She cannot face ageing without justification; she fears mortality as I do. I lean across and kiss her, hoping she can feel that I am genuine.

Rachel is crying, and I hold her. I have seen enough soap operas to know that I should be saying, "It's okay. Everything's okay." But I don't want to lie to her this time.

Regarding children, I think, it's not even a matter of unconscious manipulation. When it came to the questions, I would have to be honest. I would tell my children that nature makes us capitalists; I would tell them all the sorrowful truths, to give them a head-start in the world. If I did that — did that and yet willingly kicked a football around the garden with them — would I be robbing them of their childhood and enthusiasm?

This much I know: I do not want to be a disciplinarian. But how do I look into Rachel's hopeful face and tell her that?

She is full of clichés, now, and trying to sway me with the neatly packaged wisdom of ages. "We aren't getting any younger." She even came out with something about striking while the iron is hot. Perhaps she means she will leave me if I remain in my apathetic stupor.

For all I know, it could be phallic imagery.

Here is the plumber, peering behind the fridge on his knees. He sips thoughtfully at the strong tea we give him. He scrapes at the thick scum coating the pipes and sucks air between his teeth, presaging doom. Meanwhile, we sit at the kitchen table in front of him, reducing two servings of beans on toast to slippery orange trails.

My appetite has dwindled, but I am not sure quite when or why. Rachel pushes away her plate as I push away mine, but hers is clean and empty. It irks me that she has the foresight to save a small square of toast for polishing purposes. I have left two blackened crusts and a small heap of beans in a rich sauce that tastes nothing like tomatoes.

Rachel scrapes the remains into the bin. It might as well be our relationship, I think, but then I chide myself for unnecessary paranoia. She starts the washing up, and the noise unsettles me as always. How can one be so eager to clear domestic tasks? She loves stability, as do I; but I get the impression that I fear the unknown while she simply dislikes it.

Perhaps the repetition of familiar things is good. Practice makes perfect. (Nobody's perfect. I sink deeper into depression as I realise that there are meaningless and contradictory platitudes for every occasion.)

Later on, the plumber telephones me with the bill. It is more than a new refrigerator would have cost.

Rachel plays me one of her favourite compact discs before leaving the house to pick up groceries. She likes conventional classical music, and she used to play the cello. My music, when I cared about it, was avant-garde constructed noise and unearthly, disjointed soundscapes. I would track down rare vinyls to gain the admiration of my friends, who apparently assumed that anybody knowing music in depth must have good musical taste.

In truth, I didn't appreciate the music any more than they could. It was simply an interesting, original background for mundane tasks. While I was quick to list the best composers in the genre, I knew nothing about them in actuality. They were faceless beings with synthesisers and sound-processing software.

I feel like a faceless being with conversation-processing software. Computers, however, can be unfulfilled without knowing about it.

Here is Rachel home again. She has chosen to leave the college and work for a short while before the baby comes.

We are going to have children. It seems the safest option, and both of our mothers approve.

I believe that one of the most useful lessons I have learned in life is that you should never put cheese in the freezer.

It forms ice crystals, and becomes impossible to slice.