A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (38 page)

As for the drinks counter … I had no idea so many different means of intoxification had been devised. I’m mainly a beer-and-spirits man myself, but I didn’t want to seem prejudiced so I bought quite a few crates of wine and cocktails as well. The labels on the bottles were very helpful: they gave detailed instructions about how drunk the contents would make you, taking into consideration factors like sex, weight and body-fat.

There was one brand of transparent alcohol with a very scruffy label. It was called Stinko-Paralytiko (made in Yugoslavia) and said on it: ‘This bottle will make you drunker than you’ve ever been before.’ Well, I had to take a case of that home, didn’t I?

It was a good morning’s work. It might have been the best morning’s work there ever was. And don’t look down your nose at me, by the way. You’d have done much the same yourself. I mean, say you didn’t go shopping, what would you have done instead? Met some famous people, had sex, played golf? There aren’t an infinite number of possibilities – that’s one of the points to remember about it all, about this place and that place. And if I went shopping first, well, that’s what people like me would do. I’m not looking down my nose if you’d have met famous people first, or had sex, or played golf. Anyway, I got round to all that in due course. As I say, we’re not so very different.

When we got home I was … not exactly tired – you don’t get tired – just kind of sated. Those shopping carts were fun; I didn’t think I’d ever bother to walk – in fact, come to think of it, I didn’t see anyone walking at the supermarket. Then it was lunchtime, and Brigitta arrived with breakfast. Afterwards, I took a nap. I expected to dream, because I always dream if I go to sleep in the afternoon. I didn’t. I wondered why not.

Brigitta woke me with tea and the biscuits I’d chosen. They were currant biscuits especially designed for people like me. Now I don’t know where you stand on this one, but all my life it’s been a matter of complaint that they don’t put enough currants in the currant biscuits. Obviously you don’t want
too many
currants in a biscuit, otherwise you’d have just a wodge of currants rather than a biscuit, but I’ve always believed that the proportion of ingredients could be adjusted. Upwards, in favour of the currants, naturally – say, to about fifty-fifty. And that’s what these biscuits were called, come to think of it: Fifty-Fifties. I bought three thousand packets of them.

I opened the newspaper which Brigitta had thoughtfully placed on the tray and almost spilt my tea. No, I did spill my tea – only you don’t worry about things like that any more. It was
front-page news. Well, it would have been, wouldn’t it? Leicester City had won the FA Cup. No kidding, Leicester City had bloody well won the FA Cup! You wouldn’t have believed it, would you? Well, maybe
you
would, if you didn’t know anything about football. But I know a thing or two about football, and I’ve supported Leicester City all my life, and I wouldn’t have believed it, that’s the point. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not running my team down. They’re a good team, a very good team sometimes, yet they never seem to win the big ones. Second Division champions, as many times as you like to count, oh yes, but they’ve never won the First Division. Runners-up, once, sure, no problem. And as for the Cup … it’s a fact, an undeniable fact that in all the time I’ve supported Leicester City (and for all the time before that, too), they’ve never won the FA Cup. They’ve had a very good post-war record in reaching the Final – and just as good a one at not capturing the trophy. 1949, 1961, 1963, 1969, those are the black years, and one or two of those defeats were in my opinion particularly unlucky, indeed I’d single out … OK, I can see you’re not that interested in football. It doesn’t matter, as long as you grasp the central fact that Leicester City had never won anything but peanuts before and now they had secured the FA Cup for the first time in the club’s history. The match was a real thriller, too, according to the newspaper: City won 5-4 in extra time after coming from behind on no fewer than four occasions. What a performance! What a blend of skill and sheer character! I was proud of the lads. Brigitta would get me the video tomorrow, I was sure she could. In the meantime, I took a little champagne with the breakfast I had for dinner.

The newspapers were great. In a way, it’s the newspapers I remember best. Leicester City won the FA Cup, as I may have mentioned. They found a cure for cancer. My party won the General Election every single time until everyone saw its ideas were right and most of the opposition came over and joined us. Little old ladies got rich on the pools every week. Sex offenders repented and were released back into society and led blameless lives. Airline pilots learned how to save planes from mid-air
collisions. Everyone got rid of nuclear weapons. The England manager chose the whole Leicester City team
en bloc
to represent England in the World Cup and they came back with the Jules Rimet trophy (memorably beating Brazil 4-1 in the Final). When you read the paper, the newsprint didn’t come off on your hands, and the stories didn’t come off on your mind. Children were innocent creatures once more; men and women were nice to one another; nobody’s teeth had to be filled; and women’s tights never laddered.

What else did I do that first week? As I said, I played golf and had sex and met famous people and didn’t feel bad once. Let me start with the golf. Now, I’ve never been much good at the game, but I used to enjoy hacking round a municipal course where the grass is like coconut matting and no-one bothers to replace their divots because there are so many holes in the fairway you can’t work out where your divot has come from anyway. Still, I’d seen most of the famous courses on television and I was curious to play – well, the golf of my dreams. And as soon as I felt the contact my driver made on that first tee and watched the ball howling off a couple of hundred yards, I knew I was in seventh heaven. My clubs seemed perfectly weighted to the touch; the fairways had a lush springiness and held the ball up for you like a waiter with a drinks tray; and my caddy (I’d never had a caddy before, but he treated me like Arnold Palmer) was full of useful advice, never pushy. The course seemed to have everything – streams and lakes and antique bridges, bits of seaside links like in Scotland, patches of flowering dogwood and azalea from Augusta, beechwood, pine, bracken and gorse. It was a difficult course, but one that gave you chances. I went round that sunny morning in 67, which was five under par, and twenty shots better than I’d ever done on the municipal course.

I was so pleased with my round that when I got back I asked Brigitta if she’d have sex with me. She said of course she’d love to, and found me very attractive, and though she’d only seen the top half she was pretty sure the rest would be in good working order too; there were a few slight problems like she was deeply
in love with someone else, and her conditions of work stated that employees were fired for having sexual relations with new arrivals, and she had a slight heart condition which meant that any extra strain could be dangerous, but if I’d give her a couple of minutes she’d slip off and get into some sexy underwear right away. Well, I debated with myself for a while about the rights and wrongs of what I’d been proposing, and when she came back, all perfume and cleavage, I told her that on balance I thought we probably shouldn’t go ahead. She was pretty disappointed and sat down opposite me and crossed her legs which was a pretty sight I can tell you, but I was adamant. It was only later – the next morning, in fact – that I realized
she
had been turning
me
down. I’d never been turned down in such a nice way before. They even make the bad things good here.

I had a magnum of champagne with my sturgeon and chips that night (you don’t get hangovers here, either), and was slipping off to sleep with the memory of that crafty back-spin I’d achieved with my wedge at the sixteenth to hold the ball on the upper level of that two-tier green, when I felt the covers of the bed being lifted. At first I thought it was Brigitta and felt a bit bad what with her heart condition and losing her job and being in love with someone else, but when I put my arm around her and whispered ‘Brigitta?’ a voice whispered back, ‘No, is not Brigitta’ and the accent was different, all husky and foreign, and then other things made me realize it was not Brigitta, attractive lady in many ways though Brigitta was. What happened next – and by ‘next’ I do not imply a brief period of time – is, well, hard to describe. The best I can do is say that in the morning I had gone round in 67, which was five under par and twenty shots ahead of my previous best, and what followed that night was a comparable achievement. I am you understand reluctant to criticize my dear wife in this department; it’s just that after some years, you know, and the kids, and being tired, well, you can’t help dragging one another down. It’s still nice, but you sort of do what’s necessary, don’t you? What I hadn’t realized was that if a couple can drag one another down, another couple can drag one another up. Wow! I didn’t know I could!
I didn’t know anyone could! Each of us seemed to know instinctively what the other one wanted. I’d never really come across that before. Not, you understand, that I wish to sound as if I’m criticizing my dear wife.

I expected to wake up feeling tired, but again it was more that sense of being pleasantly full, like after the shopping. Had I dreamt what had happened? No: there were two long red hairs on my pillow to confirm the reality. Their colour also proved that my visitor had definitely not been Brigitta.

‘Did you sleep well?’ she asked with a bit of a cheeky smile as she brought my breakfast.

‘It was altogether a good day,’ I replied, perhaps a bit pompously, because I sort of guessed she knew. ‘Except,’ I added quickly, ‘for hearing about your heart condition. I’m really sorry about that.’

‘Oh, I’ll muddle through,’ she said. ‘The engine’s good for another few thousand years.’

We went shopping (I wasn’t yet so lazy I wanted to stay shopping), I read the newspaper, had lunch, played golf, tried to catch up on some reading with one of those Dickens videos, had sturgeon and chips, turned out the light and not long afterwards had sex. It was a good way to spend the day, almost perfect, it seemed to me, and I’d gone round in 67 again. If only I hadn’t driven into the dogwoods on the eighteenth – I think I was just too pumped up – I could have marked a 66, or even a 65, on my card.

And so life continued, as the saying goes. For months, certainly – maybe longer; after a while you stop looking at the date on the newspaper. I realized it had been the right decision not to have sex with Brigitta. We became good friends.

‘What happens,’ I asked her one day, ‘when my wife arrives?’ My dear wife, I should explain, was not with me at the time.

‘I thought you might be worrying about that.’

‘Oh, I’m not worrying about
that
,’ I said, referring to my nightly visitor, because the whole thing was a bit like being a businessman on a foreign trip, I suppose, wasn’t it? ‘I meant, sort of generally.’

‘There isn’t any generally. It’s up to you. And her.’

‘Will she mind?’ I asked, this time referring more definitely to my visitor.

‘Will she know?’

‘I think there are going to be problems,’ I said, once again talking more generally.

‘This is where problems are solved,’ she replied.

‘If you say so.’ I was beginning to be convinced that it might all turn out as I hoped.

For instance, I’d always had this dream. Well, I don’t mean dream exactly, I mean something I wanted a lot. A dream of being judged. No, that doesn’t sound right, it sounds like I wanted to have my head chopped off by a guillotine or be whipped or something. Not like that. No, I wanted to be
judged
, do you see? It’s what we all want, isn’t it? I wanted, oh, some kind of summing-up, I wanted my life looked at. We don’t get that, not unless we appear in court or are given the once-over by a psychiatrist, neither of which had come my way and I wasn’t exactly disappointed, seeing as I wasn’t a criminal or a nutter. No, I’m a normal person, and I just wanted what a lot of normal people want. I wanted my life looked at. Do you see?

I began to explain this one day to my friend Brigitta, not being sure I could put it any better than the above, but she immediately understood. She said it was a very popular request, it wouldn’t be hard to fix. So a couple of days later I went along. I asked her to come with me for moral support, and she agreed.

It was just what I’d expected at first. There was a fancy old building with columns and lots of words in Latin or Greek or something carved along the top, and flunkeys in uniform, which made me glad I’d insisted on a new suit for the occasion. Inside, there was a huge staircase, one of those that divides in two and does a big circle in opposite directions and then meets itself again at the top. There was marble everywhere and freshly polished brass and great stretches of mahogany that you knew would never get woodworm.

It wasn’t a huge room, but that didn’t matter. More to the
point, it had the right sort of feel, formal but not too off-putting. It was almost cosy, with bits of old velvet looking rather tatty, except that serious things happened here. And he was a nice old gent, the one who did me. A bit like my dad – no, more like an uncle, I’d say. Sort of friendly eyes, looked you straight in the face; and you could tell he stood no nonsense. He’d read all my papers, he said. And there they were, at his elbow, the history of my life, everything I’d done and thought and said and felt, the whole bloody caboodle, the good bits and the bad. It made quite a pile, as you’d imagine. I wasn’t sure I was allowed to address him but anyway I did. I said you’re a quick reader and no mistake. He said he’d had a lot of training and we had a bit of a laugh at that. Then he took a squint at his watch – no, he did it quite politely – and asked me if I wanted my verdict. I found myself squaring my shoulders and putting my hands into fists at my side with the thumbs down the trouser seams. Then I nodded and said ‘Yes, sir,’ and felt a bit nervous I don’t mind telling you.