Read Online The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Julian Barnes
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geniuses who fascinate in youth, retain a residual power in middle age, but later seem, if not embarrassing, somehow less relevant. Not that I’m saying she was right. There’s nothing wrong with being a genius who can fascinate the young. Rather, there’s something wrong with the young who can’t be fascinated by a genius. Incidentally, I don’t think the soundtrack to Un Homme et Une Femme is a work of genius. I didn’t even think so back then. On the other hand, I occasionally remember Ted Hughes and smile at the fact that, actually, he never did run out of animals.
I get on well with Susie. Well enough, anyway. But the younger generation no longer feels the need, or even the obligation, to keep in touch. At least, not ‘keep in touch’ as in ‘seeing’. An email will do for Dad – pity he hasn’t learnt to text. Yes, he’s retired now, still fossicking around with those mysterious ‘projects’ of his, doubt he’ll ever finish anything, but at least it keeps the brain active, better than golf, and yes, we were planning to drop over there last week until something came up. I do hope he doesn’t get Alzheimer’s, that’s my greatest worry really, because, well, Mum’s hardly going to have him back, is she? No: I exaggerate, I misrepresent. Susie doesn’t feel like that, I’m sure. Living alone has its moments of self-pity and paranoia. Susie and I get on fine.
A friend of ours – I still say that instinctively, though Margaret and I have been divorced for longer than we were married – had a son in a punk rock band. I asked if she’d heard any of their songs. She mentioned one called ‘Every Day is Sunday’. I remember laughing with relief that the same old adolescent boredom goes on from generation to generation. Also that the same sardonic wit is used to escape from it. ‘Every day is Sunday’ – the words took me back to my own years of stagnancy, and that terrible waiting for life to begin. I asked our friend what the group’s other songs were. No, she replied, that’s their song, their only song. How does it go then? I asked. What do you mean? Well, what’s the next line? You don’t get it, do you? she said. That is the song. They just repeat the line, again and again, until the song chooses to end. I remember smiling. ‘Every day is Sunday’ – that wouldn’t make a bad epitaph, would it?
It was one of those long white envelopes with my name and address shown in a window. I don’t know about you, but I’m never in a hurry to open them. Once, such letters meant another painful stage in my divorce – maybe that’s why I’m wary of them. Nowadays, they might contain some tax voucher for the few, pitifully low-yielding shares I bought when I retired, or an extra request from that charity I already support by standing order. So I forgot about it until later in the day, when I was gathering up all the discarded paper in the flat – even down to the last envelope – for recycling. It turned out to contain a letter from a firm of solicitors I’d never heard of, Messrs Coyle, Innes & Black. A certain Eleanor Marriott was writing ‘ In the matter of the estate of Mrs Sarah Ford (deceased) ’. It took me a while to get there.
We live with such easy assumptions, don’t we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it’s all much odder than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thought we’d forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn’t act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it’s not convenient – it’s not useful – to believe this; it doesn’t help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it.
I was asked to confirm my address and provide a photocopy of my passport. I was informed that I had been left five hundred pounds and two ‘documents’. I found this very puzzling. For a start, to get a bequest from someone whose Christian name I had either never known or else forgotten. And five hundred pounds seemed a very specific sum.
I get on well with Susie. Well enough, anyway. But the younger generation no longer feels the need, or even the obligation, to keep in touch. At least, not ‘keep in touch’ as in ‘seeing’. An email will do for Dad – pity he hasn’t learnt to text. Yes, he’s retired now, still fossicking around with those mysterious ‘projects’ of his, doubt he’ll ever finish anything, but at least it keeps the brain active, better than golf, and yes, we were planning to drop over there last week until something came up. I do hope he doesn’t get Alzheimer’s, that’s my greatest worry really, because, well, Mum’s hardly going to have him back, is she? No: I exaggerate, I misrepresent. Susie doesn’t feel like that, I’m sure. Living alone has its moments of self-pity and paranoia. Susie and I get on fine.
A friend of ours – I still say that instinctively, though Margaret and I have been divorced for longer than we were married – had a son in a punk rock band. I asked if she’d heard any of their songs. She mentioned one called ‘Every Day is Sunday’. I remember laughing with relief that the same old adolescent boredom goes on from generation to generation. Also that the same sardonic wit is used to escape from it. ‘Every day is Sunday’ – the words took me back to my own years of stagnancy, and that terrible waiting for life to begin. I asked our friend what the group’s other songs were. No, she replied, that’s their song, their only song. How does it go then? I asked. What do you mean? Well, what’s the next line? You don’t get it, do you? she said. That is the song. They just repeat the line, again and again, until the song chooses to end. I remember smiling. ‘Every day is Sunday’ – that wouldn’t make a bad epitaph, would it?
It was one of those long white envelopes with my name and address shown in a window. I don’t know about you, but I’m never in a hurry to open them. Once, such letters meant another painful stage in my divorce – maybe that’s why I’m wary of them. Nowadays, they might contain some tax voucher for the few, pitifully low-yielding shares I bought when I retired, or an extra request from that charity I already support by standing order. So I forgot about it until later in the day, when I was gathering up all the discarded paper in the flat – even down to the last envelope – for recycling. It turned out to contain a letter from a firm of solicitors I’d never heard of, Messrs Coyle, Innes & Black. A certain Eleanor Marriott was writing ‘ In the matter of the estate of Mrs Sarah Ford (deceased) ’. It took me a while to get there.
We live with such easy assumptions, don’t we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it’s all much odder than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thought we’d forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn’t act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it’s not convenient – it’s not useful – to believe this; it doesn’t help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it.
I was asked to confirm my address and provide a photocopy of my passport. I was informed that I had been left five hundred pounds and two ‘documents’. I found this very puzzling. For a start, to get a bequest from someone whose Christian name I had either never known or else forgotten. And five hundred pounds seemed a very specific sum.