Cupid's Dart (6 page)

In the taxi I put my hand very shyly on hers. I stroked her hand very gently. I felt an answering stroke, and then suddenly she kissed my ear, sliding her tongue round the inside of it, which gave me goose-pimples. I thought it a very strange thing to do. The insides of ears seemed remarkably unattractive to me, and I thought that it must have been a very waxy experience. At least I knew that the ear was clean. 'Behind and inside the ears, dear,' my mother had cried, sternly, almost every morning, before she packed me off to prep school.

I wished I hadn't thought of my mother just then. What would she think if she could see me now?

Ange's kissing of my ear made me realise how little I knew about love-making. I wished the whole of my life had been different, but I knew that, if it had been, I wouldn't have been in this taxi now.

When all too soon we arrived at the hotel I could see, beyond the lift, that the bar was still open. I clutched cravenly at the opportunity it presented.

'Would you like a nightcap?' I asked.

'Yeah. Why not?'

She had a Bailey's, I an armagnac. The bar was cavernous and far from full. It had all the atmosphere of a works canteen. In a corner a group of men in cheap shiny suits laughed, with a harsh communal explosion of mirthlessness.

'Salesmen,' said Ange.

'What?'

'That sort of thing, anyway. Been to a do. One of them's forgotten to take his name tag off.'

There was another burst of hard, cruel laughter.

'They seem to be having a lot of fun,' I said.

'They're telling sick jokes,' she said.

'Would you rather be with them?'

'You've got to be joking,' she said. 'How can you say that? They're wankers. Don't tell me that's another word you don't know.'

'No, no. No, I'm afraid I have reason to know that one.'

Our eyes met briefly.

'They're sad bastards,' she said, 'and them people at the bar are sad too. Up on business, nowhere to go, can't think of sod all to do cos they've only got half a brain, no friends to meet, no woman with them, what woman would look at them, and they fill themselves with booze till the bar closes and they have to go to bed and face themselves. The barmaid's from Eastern Europe and wishes she could earn even half the pittance she gets here back home. We're the only people in here who aren't sad. This is a very sad place.'

I had never thought of my life as sad, but I realised at that moment how sad it had been. If it hadn't, I would not have been so absurdly pleased by Ange's assertion that she and I were not sad.

'Another Bailey's?'

'I've had enough, thanks.'

'Ah. Right. Well . . .'

'Lost your bottle, have you?'

I smiled sadly. It was much more complex than that. I was so much older than her, I had met her so recently, I hardly knew her, she hardly knew me, I was utterly unused to this kind of thing, I didn't know why I wanted to be there, and to an extent I didn't want to be there, and yet I knew that, despite that, I really did want to be there. How could I say all or any of that to her?

'No,' I said. 'I haven't lost my bottle. I would have to say that to lose one's bottle implies that one had one's bottle once. I don't think I've ever had my bottle.'

'Time to start then, innit?'

Blackstone of Preston strutted his stuff again. Ange searched for my hand and squeezed it reassuringly. My whole body went stiff, except for the one bit that should have. My private parts couldn't have felt more shrivelled if I'd been taking a Christmas Day dip in the sea at Skegness.

We stepped out of the lift into the hotel's dim world of long, drab corridors lit by long-life bulbs. We turned right towards Room 393. We passed the eight paintings and the two bright-red fire extinguishers. I felt like a man being escorted towards the hangman's noose. In my tension and fear I could feel no sexual desire whatsoever.

We walked along those dreary corridors in silence, but as we arrived at the room Ange spoke. I couldn't believe that her mood was so different from mine.

'Three-nine-three,' she said. 'Three's my lucky number, and three goes into nine three times so this room is going to be
really
lucky. Clever old Alan to get Room 393.'

I slid the plastic key into the slot. A red light flashed briefly. I slid it several times. Each time, a red light flashed.

She took the key card from me and inserted it herself. Still the light flashed red.

'Oh shit,' she said.

'My sentiments entirely,' I said. 'Oh God, this is awkward. I'm going to have to get the night porter, and he'll see you.'

'Embarrassed about me, are you?'

'No, don't be so quick to take offence. Of course I'm not. I'm embarrassed about the situation, not you.'

'Oh! So what sort of situation would you call it?'

Oh God. I didn't want to be arguing about this.

'Dirty old man with his bit of stuff, is that it?'

'Ange!'

I had shouted.

'You'll wake people up,' she warned me.

'I don't fucking care,' I shouted.

'Alan!'

She looked utterly astonished, and my anger left me as suddenly as it had come.

'Sorry,' I said yet again, and, in case she didn't believe me, I repeated it, 'Sorry. No, Ange,' I continued. 'My embarrassment is nothing to do with me or you or our situation, whatever that is. It's just that I've booked a single room and there are two of us.'

'They couldn't care less about that. The night porter won't know. He'll think we're married. Girls do sometimes marry much older men.'

It was her turn to say 'Sorry'.

'Oh sod that stupid bloody key card,' she said. 'Come on, you little bastard.'

She slid the card in one more time, and a green light flashed. We were in.

I pressed the switch and the lights flickered into life. I was going to say 'and the room was flooded with light', but that would have been a vast exaggeration. A pale yellow gloom pervaded the scene.

'Not much cop, is it?' she said.

She sat down on the bed and began taking her shoes off. I stood by the door.

'Aren't you going to take your clothes off?' she asked.

'Sorry.'

'Do you usually make love with your clothes on?'

'No. No . . . er . . . .look . . .'

'Cos I don't.'

She began to take her tights off.

'No,' I said urgently. 'Please. Don't take your clothes off. Not . . . .er . . . .not yet.'

'What is all this?' she asked.

I felt happier now. I had made up my mind. I was no longer a pathetic, indecisive figure. I knew what I wanted to do. I knew what I wanted from her. And it was my room, after all, and it was
I
who had asked
her
out, and it was perfectly fair that the relationship should be conducted on my terms.

I felt happier, yes, but that didn't make what I had to say easy. It was hardly conventional. It could hardly be welcome to her. There was a risk that she would not accept it. I did know enough about women to know that she would not find my words exactly flattering. I wasn't sure how best to express it.

'I'm sorry, Ange, but . . .' I began hesitantly.

'Look, if you
have
lost your bottle, fair enough. Everyone loses their bottle sometimes. If it's any comfort, even Shanghai Sorensen wasn't all that fantastic. Put it this way, it wasn't exactly treble twenty.'

It wasn't any comfort. I wasn't at all thrilled to hear her talk about Shanghai Sorensen. I think that she thought that she was being thoughtful in telling me of his lack of prowess, but I found it thoughtless in the extreme. However, I had to tread carefully.

'It's not that,' I said.

I sat on the bed beside her. Her tights were down by her ankles, but she hadn't undressed any further. I put my arm round her shoulders.

'And it's not that I don't find you attractive. I do. You are.'

'Thanks. You
aren't
gay, are you?'

'No!' Political correctness has entered the world of the university so strongly that even in the privacy of this hotel bedroom I felt a need to qualify this over-emphasised denial. 'Not that I'd want you to think that I'm implying that there's anything wrong in being gay, but I happen not to be. You're lovely. Lovely.'

She turned to me and searched my face. She was concerned, and puzzled. I would have to express myself very carefully.

'What do you want from me, Alan?' she asked. 'What is your game?'

It came out much more simply than I had dared to hope.

'I want you for your mind.'

'Tell me about your family,' I said.

'What about them?'

We were lying side by side, fully clothed, on that sagging bed, in that unlovely room. That seems bizarre to me now, but it seemed quite natural at the time.

'Well, where are you from?'

'Gallows Corner.'

'I've never heard of it.'

'It's like a sort of suburb of Romford. I'm a real Essex girl, aren't I?'

'I know that phrase, of course, but what exactly does it mean?'

'It means a girl from Essex.'

'I know a girl from Essex in Oxford. She's called Amanda Parkes-Bollington. She's the daughter of a solicitor from Halstead. So she's an Essex girl?'

'Course she isn't.'

'So it isn't just a girl from Essex. So what is it?'

'Well . . . it's . . . you know . . . the Thames estuary, it's not exactly bleeding landed gentry, know what I mean? It's girls from, you know, Romford, Ilford, Southend. They have tattoos. They go out half-naked and binge-drink. They're Chavs. They're like bling, know what I mean?'

'Yes,' I lied. 'Yes.'

There were so many words that one never came across in the world of philosophy. How could I continue to make conversation with this girl?

'They wear white stilettos and have very tanned legs. Well, very tanned everything, really.'

'Your shoes are brown.'

'Yeah, well, I'm, you know, a bit pissed off with being an Essex girl really. That's why . . .'

She stopped. I wondered whether she had been about to say 'That's why I'm here with you.' Was that why she was there with me?

'We're not supposed to be very bright. There's a joke about an Essex girl, she's going to go on a motoring holiday in France, but she's worried about driving on the right, so she tries it from Dagenham to Clacton.'

'Yes. Yes.'

'Oh not that "Yes, I recognise that as a joke" again.'

'Sorry.'

'Oh, not that "sorry" again.'

'Sorry.'

'I mean for all that education you're a bit crap at the old chat, aren't you?'

'I do seem to be at the moment, yes. So, what was school like for you?'

'Crap. I wish now that I'd worked. It's not right that you go to school when you're still a kid. It's asking for trouble. You should go when you're grown up and can appreciate it.'

She went silent then.

'Have you nodded off?' I asked.

'No. I couldn't think of anything to say. I'm embarrassed like this, doing it with the light on.'

'Nonsense. You're never embarrassed. I get embarrassed. You don't. Talk to me about anything . . . the room . . . darts . . . your Pavlova tonight . . . anything.'

'I can't.'

I turned the light off, which I hadn't wanted to do, because I enjoyed looking at her face, it was so expressive, so mobile, so lovely. It looked so innocent, unsullied even by the advances of all those darts players, their hairy flesh pressed against hers.

'What are your parents like? Talk to me about them,' I said. 'I want to know you, Ange. Not carnally. Not biblically. Truly. I want to know who you are.'

'You might find out if you stopped rabbiting.'

A merited rebuke. I kept quiet. I waited patiently, but she didn't speak.

'Tell me about your dad,' I said, very quietly, very gently. I knew that she didn't think much of him. She'd called him a tosser to the darts players.

'He's dead.'

'Oh, I'm sorry.'

'He died when I was seven.'

'Oh, I'm sorry.'

'I can't hardly remember him.'

'No, I suppose you wouldn't.'

It did cross my mind that it was strange, if she hardly remembered him, that she had called him a tosser, but I supposed that it wasn't that strange really. Her mother might have told her enough about him to justify the word. Probably she was very close to her mother.

'And your mum?'

'What about her?'

'Well, what does she do?'

'Cleaning. Takes in ironing. Washing. Bit of dress-making. You know.'

'No, Ange, I don't know. I've been very lucky.'

'Mum's all right. Keeps things going.'

'Do you love her?'

'Course I do. She's my mum.'

'What about brothers and sisters?'

'What about them?'

'Well, do you have any?'

'One sister, two brothers, there was a third but he drowned in the river when he was three.'

'Oh my God. Poor Ange.'

'Yeah, well, it's life, isn't it?'

'Not exactly.'

I felt so close to her, lying at her side talking almost in whispers, and yet so far away from her, with my inability to really imagine what her life in Gallows Corner had been like. I waited patiently for her to continue. It was so quiet in that boxy, stuffy room. So quiet. Then suddenly there was the sound of a man peeing long and loud and from quite a height in the room above, bursting in upon the brief magic of our shared silence. I expected Ange to comment, but she didn't. I wondered if it had only been in my mind that there had been any magic, any miraculous togetherness, in our silence.

'Ange?' I whispered. 'Are you asleep?'

She was. I felt ridiculously deflated.

I tried to get to sleep too, but it was impossible. I kept thinking about Ange's life in Gallows Corner, about what Lawrence and Jane would say if they could see me now, about all the work that remained to be done on my Ferdinand Brinsley Memorial Lecture, about what Ange would think of it if I read it to her, about how we would part in the morning, about . . . oh God . . . about whether we would ever meet again. I also thought about how desperately I'd needed a pee, ever since I'd listened to the man above. I had, after all, drunk three-quarters of a pint of beer.

I must have fallen asleep, because otherwise I wouldn't have woken up. At first, when I woke up, I couldn't think what had happened. Where was I? I reached out to feel the bedside table, my clock, my note-book kept open in the hope of inspiration. They weren't there, I wasn't at home – and why was I lying on top of my bed dressed in my shirt, trousers and socks? Had I got very drunk somewhere? At Lawrence's and Jane's? Oh God. That would be all Lawrence needed as an excuse to sack me. He hated me. He wanted to replace me with Mallard.

I stretched my arm out and touched something soft. I almost screamed. There was somebody else in the bed. I went rigid with horror. Jane? Had I gone to bed with Lawrence's wife?

I sat bolt upright and remembered. Ange. Room 393. Relief flooded over me, but only for a moment. This wasn't much better. What was I doing lying in my clothes in a hotel bed beside a twenty-four-year old darts groupie who was still in her clothes? Supposing she claimed I'd lured her back to my room and raped her? Shirt-sleeved don in clothed sex horror. He told me to keep my clothes on, and I believed him. We are taking your previous good character into account. Five years.

Would she do such a thing? Could she do such a thing? How could I know? I didn't really know her. She had told me her name was Bedwell. How likely was that? I'd been duped. I will take a lenient view of this case, in view of your extraordinary naïvety. Three years.

Yes, I did know her. I was shocked that I could even think such things. She was sweet. She was pure.

No, she wasn't. She scored bulls' eyes with every darts player known to man. She had also hopped into bed with me on the first night after I'd picked her up on a train.

That phrase – 'picked her up on a train' – shocked me. It shocked me that I could even have thought it. It hadn't been like that.

She was sleeping like a child, so peacefully, so contentedly, so healthily. I wanted to wake her up and talk to her again.

I had no idea what time it was. The curtains were the only things in the room that were of any quality. They were large and thick. It could be mid-morning and the room would still be in complete darkness. I hoped that I would hear noises, movements, which might give me some clue as to what time it was. I began to be convinced that we had missed breakfast, that I should be back in Oxford, that I would be late for supervisions with my students. All this was very disconcerting. I don't wear a watch. I don't need to. I could always tell, almost to the minute, what time it was. It was not a gift I relished. I didn't want to be a slave to the passage of time.

But now, when my gift had deserted me, when a young woman had thrown me into confusion, I felt lost.

Then I remembered that there was a digital clock at Ange's side of the bed. I levered myself up very carefully, not wishing to wake her. There was a red glow in the darkness, but the clock was facing away from me.

I crept out of bed, felt my way round it warily, almost tripped over her shoes, recovered, and reached the clock . . . 3.57. It couldn't be so early. It couldn't. The clock must have stopped. Then it flicked on to 3.58.

I went to the loo, aiming at the side of the bowl so as not to wake her with the noise of water on water. I crept back on to the bed. I knew that I wouldn't get another wink of sleep. Ange was too far over my side. I had no room to get comfortable. I longed to hear her voice, that cockney accent that was much too cheerful and warm and humorous to deserve the adjective 'estuarine'. It was no use. I had to wake her.

I nudged her quite sharply, quite deliberately, with my elbow. She stirred.

'Sorry,' I lied. 'Did I wake you?'

'Bleedin' 'ell. What time is it?'

'Four o clock.'

'Bleedin' 'ell.'

'Sorry. Ange? Talk some more.'

'Twice in one night? Bleedin' 'ell.'

'I love to hear your voice.'

'Nobody ever said that before.'

'Tell me more about your brothers.'

'What is this, Alan? A relationship or an interview?'

'That's well put, Ange. Very well put.'

'Don't sound so surprised. Stop patronising me.'

'That's a long word for an Essex girl.'

Yes, that's what I said. I find it very difficult to admit it to you, such is my shame.

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I'm very, very sorry. That was very rude and very unfair. I just don't know how to talk to women. Will you forgive me?'

'I don't know what I'm doing here.'

Nor did I, but I couldn't admit that.

'You're here because I asked you, because I think you're lovely, and because I'm a sad old man and I've suddenly realised that I'm very lonely.'

'Don't say you're an old man, Alan, because half the time I forget you are.'

But I'm not. I'm middle-aged. I'm only in the middle of middle age. My doctor told me that fifty-five is the new forty. But Ange thought of me as old. Oh God. There was no future here.

I think she must have realised that she'd upset me, because, when she spoke again, it was with that lovely occasional gentleness of hers.

'You're not an unattractive man, Alan. You must have . . . you know . . . had girlfriends. Haven't you?'

I answered like a politician, and I despised myself. I took refuge in the ghastly pomposity of my calling.

'While it's true, Ange, that I don't consider sexual activity and in particular sexual athletic prowess to be as important as this ruthlessly competitive age seems to believe, at the same time I don't want you to think that there haven't been women in my life. The fact is, though, that – I was trying to work it out while you were sleeping – it's actually twenty-two years now since I last went out with a woman.'

'Bloody Norah.'

'I know. Wasted years, Ange.'

'Tell me about the women you did go out with.'

'You aren't interested.'

'I am. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't. I'm not the sleeping around type, Alan.'

There was a pause, during which I might have said, 'Except with darts players', but at last I showed a bit of sense, and I think she must have guessed this, because she gave me another of her swift, spontaneous kisses.

'Tell me about your women,' she breathed. 'Alan and his women.'

'Don't mock. Well, the one that got away, she was very attractive, was a Swiss lacrosse international I met in Lucerne. I was twenty-four. I was with my parents, but I gave them the slip. I was having a glass of wine in a café beside the river. She was at the next table, waiting for a friend. We got chatting. She did all the talking. Suddenly she suggested we move to another café. She didn't want to see her friend. We talked there for an hour or two. She was going to be married the following Saturday. She said, "I have – how do you English say it – cold feet." I said I was in a quandary: I would like to warm her feet, but I didn't want her to get married so I didn't want to cure her cold feet.

'Not the greatest chat-up line in the world, Alan.'

'No. She gave me her phone number. She said I was very shy but very sweet and she would like to see me again.'

'Don't tell me you didn't ring her.'

'She was getting married, Ange.'

'She didn't want to. You could have married her, swept her off her feet, gone to lacrosse internationals with her, fucked her every time she won. Oh, sorry. I forgot. Language.'

'I've told you. I don't mind it as a verb. I just find it so tedious as an adjective.'

'Alan! I wouldn't know the difference between a verb and an adjective if they jumped up and hit me on the tits. They're all just words to me. Oh, you should of rung her, Alan.'

'I was with my parents.'

'Oh, Alan.'

'I know. This'll sound really pathetic. Twenty years later, at least, I was in Geneva for a conference . . .'

'Bleedin' 'ell, you get around with these conferences of yours.'

'Well, occasionally. I do have a bit of a reputation in my field.'

'You should have taken her to your field and . . .'

'Yes, yes. We've been into all that. Well, anyway, after the conference, I went to Lucerne for a couple of days, hung around, went to the two cafés, which were still there, had this ridiculous fantasy that she'd come in and say, "It was all a dreadful mistake. It was you I loved all the time." The sad thing is, Ange, that I've never grown up.'

'No, the sad thing is, Alan, that you've never realised that you've never grown up.'

I have to be frank with you and admit that I was astounded at the perceptiveness of this. She was a darts groupie, after all, and she came from Gallows Corner. Thank goodness, though, I didn't make any comment to that effect. I was learning fast. I would say that I was learning to think on my feet if it wasn't a rather inappropriate phrase when I was lying in bed.