A couple of weeks ago, on Radio 4’s In the Psychiatrist’s Chair, the late great Les Dawson confessed to a fault he had never been able to cure. ‘What do you like least about yourself?’ asked Anthony Clare (as he often does). That I can’t say no to people, said Dawson; that I want to please them and, worst of all, that I’m never the person at the pub who just looks at his watch and decides it’s time to go home. Bless you, Les Dawson, I thought. In a generally sympathetic interview, this admission was surely the most endearing moment of all.
As someone who has blithely waved away the last guests at other people’s dinners, gamely collected glasses and turned off lights at other people’s office parties, said ‘Gosh, that’s kind’ to the fifth weary offer of coffee from hosts stapling their eyelids to their foreheads and propping their chins on broom-handles, I felt I knew precisely what he meant. Sometimes I worry that I live inside a Gary Larson cartoon, the one that’s captioned: ‘The Arnolds feign death until the Wagners, sensing awkwardness, are compelled to leave.’
Why does this awkwardness arise? No doubt the non-suffering majority (those decisive watch-glancers, coat-grabbers and leave-takers) think that we dreary obtuse Wagners refuse to collect our hats because we fear that people will talk about us. But it’s nothing so simple. No, in fact we just feel that saying goodbye admits a failure to bond, and we can’t stand it. I remember once interviewing Stephen Fry for a Sunday newspaper, spending two or three pleasant and fruitful hours in a Soho restaurant with him and then – on the pavement outside – finding myself completely unable to say ‘Westward ho!’ and strike off in a different direction, because I felt it would ruin everything.
‘Well, I’m going this way,’ he said, courteously offering his hand and wishing me luck. ‘Oh, that’s lucky, I can go that way!’ I exclaimed nerdishly, utterly deaf to my cue. We walked towards Shaftesbury Avenue, where by chance he spied a 19 bus. ‘I believe this will take me to Islington,’ he said, jumping aboard and waving. ‘Great idea,’ I agreed, and jumped on, too. (It gives me no pleasure to recount this, believe me.) ‘Do you know, I think I’ll go upstairs,’ he said, in a courteous last-ditch attempt to lose me, as we turned left at Cambridge Circus and sped up Charing Cross Road. At which point (outside Foyles) I finally realized it was time to say goodbye.
I disembarked, spent half an hour in a bookshop, and thought no more about it until I re-emerged and saw to my alarm that he was studying the window opposite. Clearly the long-suffering chap had likewise got off the bus immediately I was out of sight.
I often call to mind this excruciating memory when interviewers record their meetings with celebrities entirely in a manner to flatter themselves, registering every ‘um’ and ‘er’ of the responses while somehow forgetting to mention that there is another side to the story: that their own questions were offensive or ill-informed, or that they suddenly suffered a copious nosebleed just at the moment when the tape-recorder unspooled yards of tape which became entangled with the dog. I think with fondness of the actor Brian Cox, who patiently allowed me to interview him twice, because on the first occasion my tape-recorder silently self-combusted on his dressing-room sofa (leaving a hole). But mainly I think of those poor blighters – playwrights, directors, actors – who politely talked for several hours, until it finally (and horribly) dawned on them that ‘enough’s enough’ was an expression which, despite being in English, held no meaning for me whatsoever.
Why isn’t there therapy for this condition? After all, it would be incredibly simple to organize. Just get a group of fellow-sufferers together in a big room and then, well, make us all go home again. Fiddling with one’s travelcard or car-keys while making vague dithery ‘Gosh, is that the time?’ noises would be strictly forbidden unless properly ‘followed through’. After two or three hours, the group leader might helpfully collapse to the floor and feign death (like the Arnolds) to see if it helped. And anyone who staunchly waved farewell and then, ten minutes later, popped a head round the door to ask ‘Was that all right?’ would be sent to Coventry forthwith.
Last week, a Durham cricketer’s wife visiting her parents in Australia received a rather startling telecommunication from her husband – to wit, a fax informing her that the marriage was over. In terms of goodbyes, it certainly had efficiency to commend it. ‘Page 1 of 1’, it presumably announced at the top; ‘FROM: Graeme Fowler, TO: ex-wife’. But was this act of arm’s-length brush-off ‘callous and cold’, merely? After all, the fax was swift and modern in its brutality, it will fade in time (literally), and mercifully it prevented the cliché marital bust-up which invariably degenerates into scuffle and fisticuffs. To peer and strain even further to see a bright side, at least the cricketer did not line her up on a parade ground and bark, ‘All those who are married to me, take one step forward. Where the hell do you think you’re going, Mrs Fowler?’
Faxes for this purpose are quite rare. The more common goodbye disguises itself, for reasons of humdrum cowardliness, as ‘See you later’ and ‘I’ll phone you back’. Last week I moved house – from London to Brighton – but like a genuine spineless dastard I flatly denied its implications on personal relationships to the last. ‘So we’ll not be seeing you,’ London neighbours said. ‘Of course you will,’ I declared heartily. ‘I’ll be back, you won’t know I’ve gone, in any case Brighton’s not far, just find East Croydon and it’s easy.’ Why endure the pain and tears (your own, not theirs) when you can avoid it with denial? Personally I have always admired those famous dying words which, instead of solemnly commending the soul to the maker, express ‘Much better, thanks; in fact, I fancy I could eat one of Mrs Miggins’s meat pies.’ H.G. Wells’s ‘Go away, I’m all right’ is a particular favourite, but it runs close with Lord Palmerston’s grandiloquent, ‘Die, my dear doctor? That’s the last thing I shall do.’ So when I indulge myself unforgivably by mentioning that this Times column will of course continue for ever (and see you next week, and the week after that, phone you later, go away I’m all right), perhaps you will deduce what I’m getting at.
To return to the matter in hand – the Fowler fax – I find that I distrust the temptation to jump to conclusions, to assume it came to Mrs Fowler as a bolt from the sky. It sounds to me more like the act of a desperate person, driven to exasperated lengths. Conceivably, Mr Fowler had been leaving clues for weeks, and had finally exhausted his ingenuity. One remembers the Victoria Wood sketch that went: ‘Jeff’s gone.’ ‘For good?’ ‘Well, he’s taken the toolshed.’ Mrs Fowler may just have been slow on the uptake. One imagines her wandering through the bare, curtainless house, musing ‘Funny, where’s Graeme got to?’, seemingly blind to the words ‘I’m off, then’ and ‘I mean it’ sprayed with paint on the living-room walls.
Personally, the only time I successfully said goodbye – really felt it, surrendered to it, explored it – was when my wise Chinese acupuncturist left London for Los Angeles. (I know how this must sound, but I’ll carry on anyway.) The point was, we had discussed my attitude to separation trauma, so she helped me face a real goodbye (with her), with an emotional result that was positively startling in its depth and scope. The only trouble was, it made me feel like a character from a Woody Allen movie. ‘Why are you sobbing?’ my surprised colleagues asked, back at the office. ‘Why do you think?’ I wailed. ‘Because my acupuncturist has left for the Coast!’
Possibly it was the most pure and truthful emotional moment of my life, but in the end it proved limiting, because when she returned last year I couldn’t face her, too much salt water having passed under that particular bridge. There is a lesson here, I feel. If only she had left me with ‘No, I’ll soon be home, Los Angeles isn’t far, just find the Great Circle and it’s easy,’ I would have been back to see her, like a shot, and would now be cheerfully bristling with acupuncture needles like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
When night falls and she doesn’t come in for her tea, I usually start to worry. So I go outside and call for her (the old story), and then feel helpless when she still doesn’t come. I tell myself that probably she is ‘eating out tonight’ – because I know how easily she insinuates herself into other houses, and then cadges a meal by acting weak and pathetic. At the end of such an evening, she will come home to me in a telltale over-excited state, not really interested in food.
Still, I will say this for her: she always makes sure I’m all right. Out comes the tin-opener, and there’s half a tin of Felix, a handful of Kitty Crunch for my little jaws to work on, even a tub of Sheba if she’s been drinking. But it’s not the food I am worried about. It’s just that I am only properly happy when I know she is safe indoors, curled up asleep on that warm hairy rug of hers, her ears flicking contentedly as she dreams of Jeff Bridges.
She was thirty-one when I got her. Mangy and with a bit of a whiff, but also affectionate. She took time to settle down, and it was clear she had been badly treated in the past, because her mood swings were abrupt and inscrutable – one minute running about like a maniac, the next flaked out in weird angular poses in random places on the carpet. But gradually I earned her trust (and she learned some basic grooming), and now she has this peculiar habit of rubbing her face against my leg, which is quite pleasant actually, though a bit of a nuisance when you are trying to walk downstairs.
To friends who haven’t got one, I always say, ‘Get one.’ I mean it, no hesitation. Yes, they are selfish. Yes, they moult. Yes, they yowl a bit in the night-time and they make it difficult for you to go on holiday. But they make it up to you in so many ways. For one thing, they can sometimes be persuaded to pose with ribbons around their necks. And for another, they are absolutely fascinating to watch. For example, mine spends hour after hour just staring at a big box in the corner of the living-room, not moving an inch, but silently grinding her teeth and tensing her muscles as if to pounce. I have said it before and I’ll say it again: I am convinced they can see things we can’t see.
For about three years, actually, I had a pair – a male as well as a female – but the male disappeared one day last summer, as abruptly as he arrived, and I never found out what became of him. Run over, possibly. Or locked in a garage by mistake. The sense of loss was awful (that’s the problem with getting too attached). They are so frightfully independent, yet incredibly stupid at the same time, so they run into danger while you sit at home worrying yourself demented.
Anyway, my dilemma was: should I get a new one immediately (friends said, ‘Get a younger one this time’)? But I was worried how the female would react; she might resent it. Certainly she got a bit thin and straggly when he first disappeared, and clawed at the windows. But now she is back to sleeping twenty hours a day, and quite often buries her face in a bowl of food, so I think she has probably fallen on her feet.
I have had her for six years, and she still surprises me. Her only unacceptable habit is that sometimes during the day she will suddenly drop whatever she is doing, dash for the door and disappear; and then an hour later return with all sorts of inedible rubbish – vegetables, pasta, washing-powder – which she dumps on the doormat, looking pleased with herself. It happens about once a week.
Evidently this is standard behaviour, especially from childless females, and I ought to respond magnanimously to these offerings (‘Muesli, how lovely’) rather than offend her. But it is so clearly a throwback to some primitive hunting-and-gathering instinct that it unsettles me completely. I just don’t like to face up to the fact that, you know, deep down, she’s an animal. ‘Look what I got,’ she trills, and starts spreading the stuff on the floor. ‘Oh yuk,’ I say. ‘Why ever did you bring home yoghurt?’ And I give her one of my looks.
Sorry, there’s not much point to this. I just thought I’d fill you in. A couple of years ago, you see, she read a pile of books called things like Catwatching and Do Cats Need Shrinks? and learned some quasi-scientific nonsense about cat behaviour that has honestly given me the pip. For example, she now believes that in the cat world it is a sign of friendship to narrow your eyes. I ask you. Round eyes means aggression, you see; while slitty eyes means ‘I’m just a sweet old pussy-cat and I’m your friend.’ Several times a day, then, she catches my eye deliberately and then squints. It gives me the screaming ab-dabs.
But on the other hand, how sweet of her to try to get an insight. She read somewhere else that cats respond at some deep atavistic level if you lie on the floor, chest up. So she does this, too, and although I have no idea what atavism is, I certainly appreciate a nice thick warm body to lie on, so I clamber aboard, no problem. And this is how I think I will leave you, actually: with me snoozing happily on my pet.
She is happy, lying here chest up, eyes a-squint, for she is cocooned in the pitiable belief that she is practising cat psychology, when in fact cat psychology is practising on her.