1001 Nights Cast

Let’s not talk about that now, he might as well have said. Let’s not talk about it, don’t screw your face up, put on your sunglasses, just relax.

We’ve not talked about it for seventy-six and a half days. This is the seventy-seventh—I’ve been counting. I count the days again and again so there’s something in my head that’s louder than not talking.

Instead, we come to sit here by the water and watch the river glint back at us like a thousand dancing coins. We walk up and down the quay; rubbing the warm bronze railings and watching the pigeons peck at scraps. We buy the paper and sit cross-legged on the smooth, brick steps, dissecting the news, witnessing the lives of people far away, whose circumstances are much less fortunate than ours, here on the steps, with the pleasant sun and the Sunday papers.

‘The problem with Darfur,’ he says, and I relax into easy agreement, ‘is that everyone ignored it for too long.’ I nod. ‘The Yanks only care about oil,’ he says, ‘That’s why Darfur is in the mess it’s in today.’ If we had known what was going on, we say to each other—if we had known what was going on, and particularly if we were American, we would have Done Something, sooner.

We talked about it a hundred and fourteen days ago. I found the court summons in his coat pocket between two Twix wrappers (as if it was that kind of secret). They don’t really expect you to go to court, he told me. It’s the most natural thing in the world, his voice said, not to pay the council tax bill. They’ll just add on some fees and we’ll send them a cheque. What have the council ever done for us, anyway? It’s not like they take the bins on time.

A boat speeds up the Thames carrying twenty or thirty badly-dressed tourists. They wave at us, the young couple sitting down, touching knees, reading the news. Tackling the world.

‘The thing about Dubai’, I offer, because there is only one thing about Dubai that is worth mentioning right now, ‘Is that they expect too much and pay too little. If the people at the top weren’t so greedy, the people at the bottom wouldn’t have to work as slaves.’ He agrees. If we were in Dubai, we say to each other, we’d expect much less.

We talked about it ninety days ago, when the cooker stopped working. It’s summer, he said, we don’t need the gas anyway. And frankly—he was laughing—you’re no Gordon Ramsay; you should spare people your efforts. You can shower at work, he said. You should make use of the facilities.

He puts his paper down gently on the pavement and points to a photo of a businessman. ‘Fears Over Russian Pipe Monopoly’, reads the crowning headline. He doesn’t need to speak, because I’ve already heard about Russia’s stranglehold on Europe’s gas supplies. He doesn’t need to say, because I’ve already heard that Russia could hold the rest of Europe to ransom. He doesn’t need to remind me, because I already remember, about Russia’s human rights record. It’s immoral. Morally, he doesn’t need to say, by not paying the gas bill we’re making a stand.

It’s six o’clock. The sun is getting cooler and throngs of fashionable people have moved on, wine-befuddled, to their fully-equipped accommodation. It’s time for us to scan the evening menus. Lobster bisque. Risotto of pea, asparagus and Parma ham. Roast quail with baby vegetables. Thirty a head here, I say, twenty-five a head there. You could get away with twenty at that one, as long as you steered clear of the wine. Waiting staff stiffen at the sight of new customers. Lucky them, the waiting staff are thinking, lucky them to enjoy a romantic meal on a Sunday evening.

We talked about it eighty-one days ago, when he sold the car. It’s bad for the planet, he said, and, as a matter of fact, he’d been thinking about it for a while. It’s just arrogant, that’s what it is, having a car in London when the last thing London needs is another car. It’s a good little machine, he said, I’ll get a couple of grand for it. He got a couple of grand for it eighty-one days ago and I opened a bottle of wine to celebrate. He’s made the sacrifice, I thought, he’s learnt his lesson. I leant out the window and bathed in the relief of affluence.

We reach the end of the quay where houseboats bob up and down in tidy rows. The sun is dissolving, molten gold, over the neat toy shapes of city apartments. I turn back and wrinkle my nose. ‘I don’t fancy any of that food,’ I say, breathing out and considering slowly. ‘Do you?’

We talked about it seventy-eight days ago, when my credit card was refused. I’ve been using it to buy groceries, I said. I’ve been using it on the internet, he said; they have some very good deals in America. Then he started talking about slippery slopes and turning the corner. He talked about grabbing life by the throat and living dangerously. He talked about calculated risk and playing the long game, playing the hard game, working clever and looking for luck. Everyone gets lucky, he said, it just hasn’t happened to us yet.

And later he said, Everyone gets lucky, you know. It just hasn’t happened to us. Yet.

He holds me closely and we stare into the black screens of each other’s sunglasses. A woman on a houseboat stops watering her plants and remembers what it was like to be young, and in love, with your whole life ahead of you. ‘I don’t fancy eating out either,’ he says, pushing his hand through my hair to seal the collusion. ‘Not for us. Not tonight.’

We haven’t talked about it for seventy-seven days. We’ve never felt closer.