Any Human Heart

To the passport office to collect my new passport, valid for another ten years. In 1965 I’ll be fifty-nine and the thought makes me feel faint. What’s happened to my life? These ten-year chunks that are doled out to you in passports are a cruel form of memento mori. How many more new passports will I have? One (1965)? Two (1975)? Such a long way of

Why was I so solicitous towards Gloria, I ask myself? Because I liked her; because we had been lovers and had shared part of our lives. Because she was my friend. Also because, having done this for Gloria, I see it as a due gladly paid and I think – wishfully – that therefore someone will be there for me too. Absurd, delusional musings, I know. You

A day of total solitude, of tranquil and perfect beauty by the river. A form of happiness I must try to recapture more often.

I believe my generation was cursed by the war, that ‘great adventure’ (for those of us who survived unmaimed) right bang slap in the middle of our lives – our prime. It lasted so long and it split our lives in two – irrevocably ‘Before’ or ‘After’. When I think of myself in 1939 and then think of the man I had become in 1946, shattered by my awful

There we were, close, intimate, sharers of a secret … We had to have some sort of physical correlation for our respective moods. Need and opportunity – the ingredients of all betrayals.

At one moment she leant forward to refill my teacup and her shawl ends fell apart and I found myself eyeing her figure, the fullness of her curves – for God’s sake, why am I writing like some romantic novelist? This journal is for ultimate frankness, total honesty. I stared covertly at her breasts and her haunches and tried to imagine her naked.

I don’t think back; I don’t think forward. I’ve made no plans for Gloria’s death – which is what we’re both waiting for – in fact I don’t remotely know what the form is in these cases. No doubt I shall learn. In the meantime the here and now is enough to preoccupy me.

Those were the years when I was truly happy. Knowing that is both a blessing and a curse. It’s good to acknowledge that you found true happiness in your life – in that sense your life has not been wasted. But to admit that you will never be happy like that again is hard.

and for the first time in my life wished I had a television set. Perhaps I should have gone next door to Kwaku’s.2 But in the end I prefer my imagination.