Free Metroland by Julian Barnes Page A

perfect.
    ‘And how do you see us?’ I usually deferred to Toni on matters of the future.
    ‘I see us,’ he replied, ‘as artists-in-residence at a nudist colony.’
    That too would be terrific; perfect.
    We cycled back to Eastwick. Ahead lay more discussions; then, the blindfolds, and on with (‘Clear water; Hampton Court maze?; shoulders wanting to swing; chirpiness – bit as if you’ve just had a blood transfusion. Stuttgart CO/Münchinger’) Bach.

13 • Object Relations
    Things.
    How does adolescence come back most vividly to you? What do you remember first? The quality of your parents; a girl; your first sexual tremor; success or failure at school; some still unconfessed humiliation; happiness; unhappiness; or, perhaps, a trivial action which first revealed to you what you might later become? I remember things.
    When I look back, I always seem to be sitting up in bed at the day’s end; too sleepy to read, yet too awake to put off the light and face the tentacular fears of the night.
    The walls of my bedroom are ash grey, a colour appropriate to the local Weltanschauung . To my left is my bookcase, each paperback (Rimbaud and Baudelaire within reach) lovingly covered in transparent Fablon. My name is written in each one, on the top edge of the inside front cover, so that the Fablon, folded over to a depth of half an inch, covers the decisive capitals of CHRISTOPHER LLOYD . This device prevents erasure and, in theory, theft.
    Next, my dressing-table. A crocheted mat; two hairbrushes so stuffed with hair that I have abandoned them and taken to a comb; clean socks and white shirt for the morning; a blue plastic knight, made up from a model kit given me by Nigel one Christmas, and left half-painted; finally, a small musical box which I play continually even though I don’t like its dreary Swiss tune – I just play it for the weary, grinding way it behaves when the power begins to run out and the spiked drum strains to flick the metal fingers.
    A grey wall, with a curling poster of Monet’s greyest version of Rouen Cathedral. My Dansette record player, with a few experimental discs beside it.
    To my right, a wardrobe, lockable but never locked. At the bottom of it is a deliberate pile of papers, holiday hats, deflated beach balls, discarded jeans and secondhand box-files, all heaped up to hide a few precious things (a copy of Reveille , a letter or two from Toni) which I hope won’t be discovered. Also in the wardrobe, my two school jackets, my best greys, my second-best greys, my third-best greys, my cricket trousers. When I shut the door, half a dozen metal hangers tinkle to remind me of clothes I don’t have. The whole room is full of things I don’t have.
    Next, a chair draped with the day’s dumped clothes. Propped against it is a suitcase on which, every so often, I mentally stick labels. The labels indicate several generations of travel; some are grubby and tattered; all imply l’adieu suprême des mouchoirs . I can go; I will go. So far the case is label-less: it is all to come. One day I shall fix the real labels on myself. It is all to come.
    Last, my bedside table, containing the only object which has actually come from abroad – the bedside lamp. A fat wine flask wrapped in plastic cane, it was brought back from some Portuguese resort by a roving cousin, and has devolved to me from my sister; it upset her. My watch, which I despise because it doesn’t have a second hand. A Fablon-covered book.
    Objects redolent of all I felt and hoped for; yet objects which I myself had only half-willed, only half-planned. Some I chose, some were chosen for me, some I consented to. Is that so strange? What else are you at that age but a creature part willing, part consenting, part being chosen?

PART TWO
Paris (1968)
Moi qui ai connu Rimbaud, je sais
qu’il se foutait pas mal si A
était rouge ou vert. Il le voyait
comme ça, mais c’est tout .
Verlaine to Pierre Louÿs

‘So you lived in Paris for a