Green-eyed
Harriet Waugh
Before She Met Me Julian Barnes (Jonathan Cape £6.50)
Jealousy is undignified: an unhappy mixture of violence and petulance. It is unpretty and rarely helps anyone's cause. Perhaps all over-mastering passions, in- cluding love, are inclined to make those in- volved in them ridiculous — a compulsive twitch between the head and the genitals. Anyway, that is the general feeling emanating from Julian Barnes's new novel.
It opens with a startling, slightly contriv- ed, smart first paragraph. 'The first time Graham Hendrick watched his wife commit adultery he did not mind at all. He even found himself chuckling. It never occurred to him to reach out a shielding hand towards his daughter's eyes.' In order to have this strong opening passage, Mr Barnes is then involved in some rather con- voluted weaving to explain to the reader where we are, who with, why, and doing what. This makes the first two chapters less good than the rest of the novel. In fact Graham Hendrick is watching a film with his daughter by his first wife, Barbara, and unexpectedly witnesses his second wife, Ann, going to bed with the hero of it. Ann was, sometime before they married, a rather mediocre film actress.
Graham Hendrick, an historian, has left his disagreeable wife Barbara for the more agreeable Ann, and is well pleased with the exchange. He can hardly believe his luck, and spends his time dwelling on her throughout the day and listing what she is wearing in a note book. He even takes pleasure in secretly eating the rather nasty scraps of food she leaves beside her plate. It gives him a nice feeling to think how easily the food could be in her stomach instead of his. This blissful state continues for the first three years of their marriage, until the day he catches her committing adultery on celluloid. Unfortunately this arouses his atavistic interest and soon he is pouncing on small clues, examining her books for in- scriptions of by-gone lovers and sitting in out of the way cinemas continually re- seeing the few bad movies that she had once appeared in. It is not that he blames Ann for having a past before they met, but history matters to him. History is there to be researched and Ann's history destroys him. He realises that his compulsive jealousy is killing their present happiness and so takes himself off to a friend's couch for advice. At this point you realise that the poor fellow is raving. Nobody remotely sane would have such a friend, let alone consult him about his marriage.
Jack Lupton is a bearded writer of popular bad novels, much given to adultery and farting. He woos women by placing a lighted cigarette in his beard and pretending not to notice when it becomes a fire hazard. He is given to saying things like, 'Old Matey, you're about as clear as a bugger's back passage so far.' Anyway, between farts he recommends masturbation to Graham as a way of lessening his fixation about Ann. Graham, as well as being wet and obsessed, is also very literal. He buys some pornographic magazines, locks himself in the bathroom and has a go. His first attempt (he has not laid a finger on himself in 20 years) is the funniest scene in the whole novel and had me laughing out loud.
The book really starts taking off at this point. It becomes funnier, sadder and faint- ly ominous. Graham's way with meat, which would not seem odd except for the fact that the author chooses to chronicle in miniscule detail each time he happens to cut it up, sends out ripples of unease. 'Then he picked up the cleaver again and moved the plastic bag of giblets back to the centre of the board. He stared at it for about a minute then chopped down very hard several times, in quick succession, as if he had to get the blows in before the giblets panicked and ran off.' It is this style of writing which is Mr Barnes's long suit. The unhappy couple then go on holiday to Italy. It only takes the smallest change in em- phasis, a move away from Graham's mind so that you see his behaviour rather than participate in it, for the reader to be aware that the ending is unlikely to be a happy one.
After the uneasy start to the novel where Graham's dilemma appeared artificial and clever, a modern joke on the unfashionable concept of female chastity turned on its head, it gathers credence and force. Without losing sight of the joke for an ins- tant, it succeeds in making Graham s jealousy tangible and dangerous. As for Ann, she is an altogether ad- mirable foil, sane, nice, intelligent and lov- ing. There is, however, one mighty flaw in her that turns out to be her Achilles heel. In her past, among the rubble of lovers, there is Jack Lupton, the farting adulterer. Was she sane after all?
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