He says, There must be a word to describe how you carry on normally, or habitually, even when you want to scream or be raw or be away from an energy that isnt satisfied by you.
I can only shrug and Oliver, very proudly (and why not?), pedals off through a red light on Long’s Hill.
You have to be motivated by love, guided by reason.
21 I’m the best man on-set. I watch Wilf Jardine take Lydia’s hand before a justice of the peace. We are outdoors in a copse of pine near the fluvarium. Earlier I’d seen fat trout swim past the underwater windows as Lydia’s cameraman took shots of the couple passing by the salmon. The trout were happier than me. One looked at me sympathetically, and if he could, he’d put a fin on my shoulder.
Six white cube vans feed juice to the shoot, electric cables begin certainly and then vanish in the grass, only to reappear around the perimeter of the set. An army fording a river.
The extras blow on bubble wands and a man toots Stand by Me on a saxophone.
I hear Wilf and Lydia say I do. And we all believe, for a moment, that they are married. Perhaps the only person who does not is Lydia.
22 I started going out with Lydia a full six months before she started going out with me, and I celebrate a kind of kinky-perverse-celibate-monotheistic-kind-of-solipsistic-devoted-like-a-dog thing near the end of July to commemorate my pathetic attraction and initial infatuation with this woman but this is a private matter that I keep to myself and write here and never include Lydia in the picture.
23 Lydia drops in. She just got back from the lake with the girls. Theyve shaved a minute off their time. Lydia has them feathering their oars. She said, If you add up the square footage of all those blade surfaces, it’s like holding up a sheet of plywood to the wind. Tonight she’s meeting Wilf Jardine to go over a few scenes.
She kisses me and is off now for a quick pint. Do you mind me going off? Good.
I remind her that Max says the weekend is good for the Flat Islands. She says, Can you pack for me?
I work on the novel until I hear her return. She recounts this conversation she heard Craig Regular having with Oliver Squires at the bar:
Craig: So how are you and Maisie?
I dont give a sweet-smelling shit about me and Maisie. Pardon?
A flying carnivorous fuck.
Oliver.
I dont give – and I pause for emphasis, boys – one snot-haired jism about that loud-mouthed trout.
Jesus, Oliver. What’s up with you?
I’ll tell you what’s up there Mr Craig Regular my friend. The jig is up. Up shit creek and as far as I’m concerned it can stay up her hairy-arsed self-important self-centred woe-is-me crease for all time.You can string her up by the jeezly tits.
Me: This is getting ridiculous.
Lydia: He’s got to get over her.
It’s hard to get over someone leaving you.
Perhaps he should have thought of that before waving his dick around.
That’s what he’s wishing.
And now he’s having a baby with her.
24 Lydia needs a scene on an abandoned island, and Max takes us over to the Flat Islands, out of Burnside. Tremendous swell. Daphne, pregnant and wary. We take in the lee of an island and wait. I have a boiled dinner ready, though no pease pudding. The best salt beef is the kind with two circles of bone.
We hunt up gravestones. Lydia says raspberries and wild roses grow where people used to live. Lilac bushes are a dead giveaway, Daphne says.