Pulse (10 page)

While Ken fiddled with the chicken thighs, jabbing with a skewer to see if the juices ran clear, Martha gave their guests ‘the tour’. Since they were never more than a few yards away, Ken heard all the compliments to Martha’s ingenuity. Briefly, he found himself a disaffected teenager again, trying to assess the sincerity or hypocrisy of each speaker. Then his trellises were admired – praise he took as coming entirely from the heart. The next moment, he heard Martha explaining that the far end of the garden had been ‘just a mass of hideous brambles when we got here’.

The light was beginning to fade by the time they crouched over their pear, walnut and gorgonzola starter. Alex, who clearly hadn’t been paying attention during the tour, said, ‘Have you left a tap on somewhere?’

Ken looked at Martha but declined to take advantage. ‘It’s probably next door,’ he said. ‘Rather a shambolic household.’

Martha looked grateful, so Ken thought it would be OK to tell his story about the soil-testing kit. He span it out rather, elaborating his self-portrayal as mad chemist, and holding off the punchline as long as possible.

‘And then I came in and said to Martha, “Bad news, I’m afraid. There’s no soil in your soil.”’

There was a gratifying laugh. And Martha joined in; she knew that from now on this was going to be one of his stories.

Feeling himself in credit, Ken decided to light the garden candles, yard-high towers of wax which blazed away and made him think vaguely of Roman triumphs. He also took the opportunity to turn off what he would always, in his own mind, refer to as the water feature.

It was now on the colder side of chilly. Ken poured more red wine, and Martha offered a move indoors, which everyone politely refused.

‘Where’s all this global warming when you need it?’ asked Alex cheerily.

Then they talked about patio heaters – which really gave out a blast but were so unecological that it was antisocial to buy one – and carbon footprints, and the sustainability of fish stocks, and farmers’ markets, and electric cars versus biodiesel, and wind farms and solar heating. Ken heard a mosquito fizz warningly at his ear; he ignored it, and didn’t even wince when he felt it bite. He sat there and enjoyed being proved right.

‘I’ve got an allotment,’ he announced. The marital coward’s ploy of breaking news in front of friends. But Martha didn’t indicate either surprise or disappointment, merely joined in the raising of glasses to Ken’s laudable new hobby. He was asked about its cost and location, the condition of its soil, and what he intended to grow there.

‘Blackberries,’ said Martha before he could answer. She was smiling at him tenderly.

‘How did you guess?’

‘When I was sending off the Marshalls catalogue.’ She had asked him to confirm her arithmetic; not that she wasn’t competent to add up, but there were a lot of small sums often ending in 99p, and anyway, this was the sort of thing Ken did in their marriage. Like write the cheque too, which he had done after making a couple of additions to the order. Then he’d taken it back to Martha, because she was the Keeper of the Stamps in their marriage. ‘And I noticed you’d ordered two blackberry bushes. A variety called Loch Tay, I seem to remember.’

‘You’re a terror for names,’ he said, looking across at her. ‘A terror and a wiz.’

There was a short silence, as if something intimate had been mistakenly disclosed.

‘You know what we could plant on the allotment,’ Martha began.

‘What’s this
we
shit, Paleface?’ he responded before she could continue. It was one of their marital jokes, always had been; but one apparently unfamiliar to these particular friends, who couldn’t tell if this was a vestigial quarrel. Nor could he, for that matter; he often couldn’t nowadays.

As the silence continued, Marion said into it, ‘I don’t like to mention this, but the bugs are biting.’ She had one hand down by her ankle.

‘Our friends don’t like our garden!’ Ken shouted, in a voice intended to assure everyone that no quarrel was likely. But there was something hysterical in his tone, a signal for their guests to make sly marital eye contact, decline a range of teas and coffees, and prepare their final compliments.

Later, from the bathroom, he called, ‘Have we got some of that H
^c
45 stuff?’

‘Have you been bitten?’

He pointed to the side of his neck.

‘Christ, Ken, there are five of them. Didn’t you feel it?’

‘Yes, but I wasn’t going to say. I didn’t want anyone criticising your garden.’

‘Poor thing. Martyr. They must bite you because you’ve got sweet flesh. They leave me alone.’

In bed, too tired for reading or sex, they idly summarised the evening, each encouraging the other to the conclusion that it had been a success.

‘Oh bugger,’ he said. ‘I think I left a piece of chicken in the barrel thingy. Maybe I’d better go down and bring it in.’

‘Don’t bother,’ she said.

They slept late into Sunday morning, and when he drew the curtain a few inches to check the weather, he saw the terracotta oven on its side, the lid in two pieces.

‘Bloody foxes,’ he said quietly, not sure if Martha was awake or not. ‘Or bloody cats. Or bloody squirrels. Bloody nature anyway.’ He stood at the window, uncertain whether to get back into bed, or go downstairs and slowly start another day.

At Phil & Joanna’s 3: Look, No Hands

F
OR ONCE
,
IT
was warm enough to eat outside, around a table whose slatted top was beginning to buckle. Candles in tin lanterns had been lit from the start, and were now becoming useful. We had talked about Obama’s first hundred days and more, his abandonment of torture as an instrument of state, British complicity in extraterritorial rendition, bankers’ bonuses, and how long it would be to the next general election. We had tried comparing the threatened swine-flu outbreak to the avian flu that never arrived, but lacked anyone approaching an epidemiologist. Now, a silence fell.

‘I was thinking … last time we all foregathered –’

‘Before this groaning board –’

‘Set before us by – quick, give me some clichés …’

‘Mine host.’

‘A veritable Trimalchio.’

‘Mistress Quickly.’

‘No good. So – Phil and Joanna, let’s call them that, the epitomes of hostliness.’

‘That tongue, by the way …’

‘Was it
tongue
? You said it was beef.’

‘Well, it was. Tongue
is
beef. Ox tongue, calves’ tongue.’

‘But … but I don’t
like
tongue. It’s been in a dead cow’s mouth.’

‘And last time we were here, you were telling us about sending valentines, you two … married turtle doves. And about the friend of yours who was going to have her stomach stapled for when her husband came home.’

‘It was liposuction, actually.’

‘And someone asked, was that love or vanity?’

‘Female insecurity, I think was the alternative.’

‘Point of information. Was this before her bloke had his radical testoctomy or whatever it’s called?’

‘Oh, ages before. And anyway, she didn’t have it done.’

‘Didn’t she?’

‘I thought I told you that.’

‘But we talked about – what was that phrase of Dick’s? – posterior intromission.’

‘Well, she didn’t have it done. I’m sure I said.’

‘And – to return to my point – someone asked if any of us felt up to making love after getting home from here.’

‘A question which went very largely unanswered.’

‘Is that where you’re taking us, David, with this Socratic preface?’

‘No. Maybe yes. No, not exactly.’

‘Lead on, Macduff.’

‘This feels to me like when you have a collection of blokes round a table and someone mentions how the size of your tackle is directly related … Dick, why are you putting your hands out of sight?’

‘Because I know the end of the sentence. And because, frankly, I don’t want to embarrass anyone by obliging them to deduce the magnificence of my, as you put it, tackle.’

‘Sue, a question. The class has in its last lesson been taught the difference between a simile and a metaphor. Now, which grammatical term would you say best described the comparison between the size of a man’s hands and the size of his tackle?’

‘Is there a grammatical term called boasting?’

‘There’s that term for comparing the smaller to the greater. The part to the whole. Litotes? Hendiadys? Anacoluthon?’

‘They all sound like Greek holiday resorts to me.’

‘As I was trying to say, we don’t talk about love.’

‘…’

‘…’

‘…’

‘…’

‘…’

‘…’

‘So that’s my point.’

‘A friend of mine once said he didn’t think it was possible to be happy for longer than two weeks at any one stretch.’

‘Who was this miserable bastard?’

‘A friend of mine.’

‘Very suspicious.’

‘Why?’

‘Well,
a friend of mine
– anyone remember Matthew? Yes, no? He was a great
coureur de femmes
.’

‘Translation, please.’

‘Oh, he fucked for England. Amazing energy. And constant … interest. Anyway, there was a time when – how shall I put this – well, when women started using their hands, their fingers, on themselves while they were having sex.’

‘When exactly would you date this to?’

‘Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles’ first LP?’

‘No, since you ask. Later. Seventies, more like …’

‘And Matthew noticed this … sociodigital change sooner than most, being more diligent in the fieldwork, and he decided to raise it with a woman he knew – not a girlfriend or an ex, but someone he could always talk to. A confidante. And so, over a drink, he said to her casually, “A friend of mine told me the other day that he’d noticed women using their hands more when having sex.” And this woman replied, “Well, your friend must have a really small dick. Or not be much good at using it.”’

‘Collapse of stout party, eh?’

‘He died. Youngish. Brain tumour.’

‘A friend of mine –’

‘Is that “a friend of mine” or “
a friend of mine
”?’

‘Will. Remember him? He got cancer. He was a great drinker, a great smoker and a great womaniser. And I remember where the cancer had reached by the time they discovered it: liver, lungs, urethra.’

‘The grammatical term for that is: poetic justice.’

‘But it was weird, wasn’t it?’

‘Are you saying Matthew died of a brain tumour because he fucked a lot? How does that work?’

‘Maybe he had sex on the brain.’

‘The worst place to have it, as one sage remarked.’

‘Love.’

‘Bless you.
Gesundheit
.’

‘I read somewhere that in France, when a chap’s flies were undone, another chap’s polite way of drawing attention to it was to say, “
Vive l’Empereur
.” Not that I’ve ever heard anyone say it. Or really understood it.’

‘Maybe the end of your knob is meant to look like the top of Napoleon’s head.’

‘Speak for yourself.’

‘Or that hat he always wears in cartoons.’

‘I hate that word “knob”. I hate it even more as a verb than a noun. “He knobbed her.” Eurch.’

‘Love.’

‘…’

‘…’

‘…’

‘Good. I’m glad I’ve got your attention. It’s what we don’t talk about. Love.’

‘Whoa. Steady on, old chap. Mustn’t frighten the horses and all that.’

‘Larry will bear me out. As our resident alien.’

‘You know, when I first came over here, the things I noticed most were how you were always making jokes, and how often you use the C-word.’

‘Don’t you use the C-word in America?’

‘I guess we certainly avoid it in the presence of women.’

‘How very peculiar. And richly ironic, if you don’t mind my saying.’

‘But Larry, you prove my point. We make jokes instead of being serious, and we talk about sex instead of talking about love.’

‘I think jokes are a good way of being serious. Often the best way.’

‘Only an Englishman would think that, or say that.’

‘Are you wanting me to apologise for being English, or something?’

‘Don’t get so defensive.’

‘Are you calling me a cunt by any chance?’

‘Men talk about sex, women talk about love.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘Well, why hasn’t a woman spoken in the last however many minutes?’

‘I was wondering if the size of a woman’s hands was related to the amount she has to use them in bed with her husband.’

‘Dick, shut the fuck up.’

‘Boys. Shh. Neighbours. Voices carry much more at this time of night.’

‘Joanna, tell us what you think.’

‘Why me?’

‘Because I asked.’

‘Very well. I don’t think there was a time – not in my life, anyway – when men and women sat around in a group talking about love. It’s true we talk about sex a lot more – or rather, we listen to you talk about sex a lot more. I also think – well, it’s practically a cliché now – that if women knew how men talked about them behind their backs they wouldn’t find it very elevating. And if men knew how women talked about them behind their backs –’

‘It’d be dick-shrivelling.’

‘Women can fake it, men can’t. It’s the law of the jungle.’

‘The law of the jungle is rape, not faked orgasm.’

‘A human being is the only creature which can reflect upon its own existence, conceive of its own death, and fake orgasm. We’re not God’s special ones for nothing.’

‘A man can fake orgasm.’

‘Really? Willing to share the secret?’

‘A woman doesn’t always know if a man has come. From internal feeling, I mean.’

‘That’s another hands-under-the-table moment.’

‘Well, a man can’t fake
erection
, anyway.’

‘The cock never lies.’

‘The sun also rises.’

‘What’s the connection?’

‘Oh, both sound like book titles. Only one is.’

‘Actually, the cock does lie.’

‘Are we sure we want to go there?’

‘First-night nerves. It’s not that you don’t want to, it’s just that your cock lets you down. It lies.’