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I like a chat as much as the next chap, but a bit of quiet is nice, too. It’s a difficult balance to strike. While the main thing you want with a friend is plenty to talk about, being able to coexist in companionable silence is also important. It’s a lot to ask of someone, to be charmed and charming, interesting and interested, yet with the insight to sense when it’s time to pipe down.
It’s not that I have anyone I would call a friend who bores me; if anything, the opposite is true. But that presents its own challenges. If the subject matter is interesting, it requires attention. And if there is too much of it, that gets tiring.
We should all work on sending clearer signals, but this is a tricky business. There is no inoffensive way of saying: “Listen, I’ve genuinely enjoyed our conversation over the past 12 hours, but please could we possibly just stop talking for a bit? Don’t get me wrong: I love you and still want you here, in the room, very much. But for the love of God, shut up.”
This direct approach would be just rude, but so are the alternatives. Feigning sleep or picking up a book to read are impolite and, in extreme cases, ineffectual. The speaker will bang on regardless. It’s like they are living life as if they were on a live radio show, in which silence is obviously a no-no. Or they are living life as if speaking, like breathing, is necessary to demonstrate that they aren’t dead.
I have no confidence, by the way, that I am any better at this when the boot is on the other foot; when it’s me doing the yakking and one of my friends doing the yawning. I recognised myself in Rebecca West’s travelogue Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, as she despairs of someone she is staying with, a poet called Constantine, whose patter is, well, constant. “He talks incessantly. In the morning he comes out of his bedroom in the middle of a sentence; and at night he backs into it, so that he can just finish one more sentence.”
When someone is in full flow, the flood of words takes some stopping. I had a brilliant friend to stay recently who, in the nicest possible way, by mid-evening had completely worn me out. I considered just going to bed, but at 9pm on a summer’s evening that’s not going to wash. Instead, I put the telly on, choosing a documentary I judged to be of interest to us both. No joy. I increased the volume. But so did she. I increased the volume a little more, but again she matched it. And so it went on. The noise became shattering. The dog left the room. I gave up.
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Another friend of mine, an academic, has a more sophisticated technique when it comes to keeping me in check. Although it can’t be that sophisticated, as I have seen straight through it.
It works like this: when he is starting to tire of whatever subject I have brought to the table, the tone of his voice subtly changes to the one that I assume he uses when he is conducting a seminar – a seminar that he is now keen to bring to an end. Invariably – even though we are ostensibly just chatting in a pub – this will lead to him having the nerve to wrap things up explicitly by summarising what each of us has said, stating his conclusion and going off to the gents. Point taken.
I am working on a different idea: a signal using both hands. Assuming a kindly countenance, place an index finger to your lips in the classic shush manner, but leaven this by placing the other hand on your heart to indicate your love for your interlocutor.
I have not tried it yet, but I have been practising in the mirror. And I’ll shut up now.
