The Post-Birthday World (26 page)

As if Lawrence had evoked a hypnotist’s trigger to send his subject into a trance, Ramsey’s eyes spontaneously filmed. Irina had seen it before: all over the world, the incantation
Northern Ireland
had magical powers. With the potential to put commercial soporifics out of business, the topic could drive die-hard insomniacs into a deep, dreamless sleep within sixty seconds.
“Now that he’s got a ceasefire in his grubby hands,” Lawrence continued obliviously, “Blair has dropped all the other preconditions unionists have demanded for letting Sinn Fein into talks—like an IRA weapons handover and a declaration that the war is over. Blair’s concessions upfront could be harbingers of more outrageous concessions in a settlement down the road.”
Ramsey looked up from his wild bass with a hint of panic. The pause in Lawrence’s monologue seemed to indicate an apt juncture at which to pass comment. None was forthcoming.
“Concessions like what?” Irina felt like a young thespian’s mother prompting her dumbstruck ward from the audience when the kid only has one line.
“
Obviously,
giving in on a united Ireland,” said Lawrence, shooting Irina a what-are-you-stupid? look that she knew all too well. “Putting together some bullshit federation, or handing Dublin the power and London the bill. But there are other issues—prisoners, the RUC . . .”
Lawrence continued in this vein for some minutes, until Ramsey looked about to fall over. Whenever Lawrence talked shop, he used words like
dispensation
and
remit
and arcane phrases like
it isn’t in Adams’s gift.
He was proud of his mastery of fine points, but didn’t seem to understand that for people like Ramsey you had to connect the dots, to tell a story— and to explain why of all people a snooker player should care.
“Alex Higgins is from Belfast, isn’t he?” said Irina.
“Yeah,” said Ramsey, with a glance of gratitude. “And just like Higgins, I always get the impression them Taigs and Prods revel in the mayhem—that they don’t want it to be over, that they enjoy it.” Heartened, or a shade more awake, he braved another thought. “Still, the bleeding empire’s over, innit? Might as well let them bastards have their freedom.”
“Northern Ireland has nothing to do with colonialism!” Lawrence exploded. “It’s about democracy! The Protestants are in the
majority,
and the
majority
want to stay in the UK. They don’t
want
their goddamned freedom!”
Ramsey looked bewildered. “But—all them bombs and that . . .” It was for all the world like watching a small boy wander into traffic. “Why not give them IRA wankers what they want and wash our hands of the tip?”
Lawrence’s eyes lit up like the twin headlights of an oncoming semi. “That’s exactly the reaction they’re COUNTING ON! Why are all you Brits a bunch of SHEEP? This country stood up to HITLER! Your friend Neville Chamberlain may have been a craven suck-up, but Churchill had brass balls! London was half leveled by the Nazis and stood fast, and now with a few car bombs in shopping centers the whole country’s ready to cave!”
Ramsey messed with the cellophane on a new pack of Gauloises. “Never understood the whole carry-on myself,” he mumbled.
“It’s actually pretty simple,” said Irina, who wouldn’t cite too many
fine points,
since she couldn’t remember any. “Terrorists use your own decency as a weapon. You don’t want people to get hurt, so you do what you’re told. How the troubles play out is a test case for whether being an asshole pays off.”
“Of course being an arsehole pays off,” said Ramsey, shooting her another grateful glance. “Take Alex Higgins! Hardly wins any tournaments at all, and his two World Championships are ten years apart. Makes a packet mostly for being the most obnoxious, abusive, destructive, insulting, and all-round unbearable berk on the planet. You realize, don’t you, there ain’t a hotel left in Britain will let him stay the night? He’s banned from Cornwall to the Hebrides! I wreck that many hotel rooms, there’d be five competing biographies of me as well.”
“Actually, that’s not a bad parallel—from what I understand,” she added, with a deferential nod to Lawrence. “Remember all the traffic seizures on motorways last spring?”
“Got stuck on the M-4 on the way to Plymouth for the British Open for the better part of a bloody day.”
“IRA hoax threats, but they worked. And remember how another IRA hoax threat delayed the Grand National in April? Well, giving folks like that what they want is like the management handing Alex Higgins two splits of champagne and a complimentary bouquet after he’s trashed his hotel room.”
Throughout this exchange—whose mysteriously ulterior quality made it seem a misuse, even abuse, of an issue that Lawrence cared about very much—Irina’s shoulders had swiveled thirty degrees toward Ramsey. When she tried to yank them to a more neutral orientation, they seemed cast in this attitude in bronze.
“Northern Ireland’s not boring,” Lawrence insisted, as if the fierceness of his assertion could make it true. “The details may be hard to follow. But it’s the biggest issue in this country, and other scumbags around the world will be watching closely how a settlement turns out. Sinn Fein walks away with that bouquet, plenty of other cities will go blooie. It just floors me how the British don’t give a shit.”
Meanwhile a chorus of song arose from the hotel’s bar. Ramsey cocked a wan, private smile. Around the corner his mates were having a high old time, while he was stuck in this poxy restaurant in earnest discourse about
Northern Ireland.
As the throng at the bar grew more boisterous, Ramsey joined in on the refrain:
“Snooker loopy nuts are we / Me and him and them and me—”
“What is
that
?” asked Irina, laughing.
“With loads of balls and a snooker cue—”
The tune was as goofy as the lyrics, but Ramsey’s voice was clear, and he had good pitch.
“That is—appalling!” cried Irina, wiping her eyes.
“ ‘Snooker Loopy,’ ” Ramsey explained, while his friends began yet another ghastly verse. “By Chas and Dave and the Matchroom Mob. Rose to #6 in the charts in ’86, if you can credit that. Conceived as a promo for the championships. Sort of what the pair of you was saying about terrorism. It’s horrible, it shouldn’t have paid off, but it did.”
“Where does the name
snooker
come from anyway?” asked Irina. She’d given up on reeling Lawrence into the conversation, when the line proved repeatedly to have not a live fish on the end but an old boot.
“It were slang for, what,
cretin
in the military,” said Ramsey. “Some bloke at the Ooty Club slags off another player for being a right
snooker
when he misses an easy color. Chamberlain intervenes all diplomatic, like, There, there, boys, sure ain’t we all
snookers
in this game, we are. He says, so why don’t we call the whole kit
snooker.
It stuck.”
“The original colloquialism
snooker,
” said Lawrence, “meant
neophyte.
”
“Neophyte.”
Ramsey turned the word in his mouth like a fishbone. “Sounds like some new compound. ‘Oi, you blokes still use super chrystalate, but my own balls is made of
neophyte
!’ ”
Irina laughed. Lawrence didn’t.

“You could have asked

me
where the name
snooker
came from,” said Lawrence, marching up the stairs of the Novotel.
“I was only making conversation,” said Irina.
“You sure made a lot of it.”
“Somebody had to,” she said, catching her heel on the carpet.
“You’re drunk,” said Lawrence harshly, never wont to employ colorful terms for inebriation—
blootered, legless, half-tore.
The unadorned
drunk
was never in danger of sounding adorable. “And I don’t need you to interpret for me about politics.” He jammed their pass-card into the slot. “I think I’m pretty clear. That’s my job, you know. My Russian may suck, but I don’t need a translator in English.”
“I was only trying to help. You sometimes forget whom you’re talking to.”
“Thanks for holding my professionalism in such high regard.”
“I didn’t say anything about how I regard your professionalism, high or low. It’s just that you toss off
unionists
this and
unionists
that, when someone like Ramsey may not know a
unionist
from a hole in the ground.”
“Well, that’s pathetic,” said Lawrence, letting the door slam behind them. “It’s his country. And you’ve got to admit, his views on the subject display the instincts of a total pussy.”
“He doesn’t have any views. He’s a snooker player.”
“We’re never allowed to forget
that.
” Plopping on the bed, Lawrence reflexively turned on the TV. “His rendition of ‘Snooker Loopy’ was incredibly embarrassing.”
“No one else was left in the restaurant,” she observed wearily.
“
As
I predicted,” said Lawrence. “Bursting into song, getting sloppy drunk, overstaying your welcome, acting as if you own the place—pretty low-rent.”
“That’s how British celebrities are expected to act. We were tame, as these things go.”
Irina’s defense of their host was as pale as it was impolitic, and she wandered to the window, fiddling aimlessly with the polyester tassel on the tie-back. This hotel was nowhere near the beach, and looked out on a McDonald’s car park whose bins were overflowing. Some glum consolation, bolts of satin brocade wouldn’t have improved the fabric of the evening itself. You could feel lonely anywhere, verge on tears anywhere, even in a luxury hotel like the Royal Bath. If Lawrence hadn’t been apprised at the station that the last train to London was at 10:43 p.m., she’d have urged that they just go home.
“All this commercial buildup,” said Irina. “But we’re in Dorset. It’s hard to remember that this is Thomas Hardy country. Moors and brooding and tragedy.”
“I don’t know,” said Lawrence. “Many more matches like tonight’s, and
Ramsey the Obscure
might start to have a ring.”
The buzz that was beginning to ebb had little to do with wine. Irina felt vaguely guilty, but as she reviewed her behavior couldn’t locate an offense. She’d been attentive to their host, an obligation. She’d looked comely in public, but not trashy, which only reflected well on her partner. She’d been lively company, laughing at Ramsey’s jokes, and it was only fitting to express enjoyment when so much money was being expended toward this end. There had been no hanky-panky, no footsie or fingers straying into the wrong laps. She’d been a good girl. She had nothing to be ashamed of.
Be that as it may, she knew perfectly well that you could follow proper etiquette to the letter and still violate a host of unwritten laws in that sneaky fashion that no one could nail you for. In some respects this was the worst rudeness, the kind that you could get away with because it wasn’t in the book. Lawrence would never be able to cite her transgressions outright without sounding touchy or paranoid. He couldn’t reasonably object to a flash in her eyes, or to a fullness to her laughter disproportionate to the small witticisms that gave rise to it. He didn’t quite have the courage of his own perceptions to charge that while she
looked
rapt enough when he was talking and hadn’t ever interrupted, his conversation had obviously bored her. As for the sassy black outfit, he would like to take his whistle at Waterloo Station back, or at least to ask the kind of question that Lawrence Trainer seemed constitutionally incapable of posing:
Did you really put on that short skirt for me?
“How was that cake thing?” Lawrence grunted, scowling at the latenight replay of Ramsey’s match on the BBC.
“It was good,” she said to the window. Ramsey had ordered a flourless chocolate cake with raspberry sauce and pastry cream for the table. Like both bottles of wine, Lawrence had spurned the enticement. Which left Ramsey and Irina to fork tiny, sumptuous tastes from the same plate. There was nothing wrong with sharing a piece of cake. There wasn’t. There wasn’t, was there? “You should have tried it.”
“I’d
had enough,
” he said emphatically. “. . . You don’t usually eat dessert.”
“I didn’t order it.”
“Nope,” he said gruffly. “I guess you didn’t. And it takes a different sort of discipline to resist temptation that’s plunked in front of you when you didn’t ask for it.”
Having skirted even that close to
the main thing,
Lawrence withdrew to the TV. “On replay, the second session is even worse. Ramsey was crucifying O’Sullivan before the interval. Then, wham. He tanked. Sometimes I don’t understand these people.”
“You do understand,” she reflected. “That is, they
are
people. They’re not machines. But they’re trying to be. That’s why the very best in the game, on a sustained level, are the likes of Stephen Hendry. People who are uncomplicated and a little blank. There’s an absence about them that’s mechanical. Really good snooker, perfect snooker, and maybe this applies to any sport, is all about defeating your own humanity. I was touched, in a way, when Ramsey imploded. When they’re too good, I find it almost unpleasant. It isn’t natural. It isn’t warm-blooded.”
Lawrence looked at her with curiosity. Applying this much consideration to a matter that had previously engaged her so little seemed to constitute one more infinitesimal, ineffable treachery.
The room lacked the panoply of props that one’s own home affords— newspapers to flap, lampshades that need dusting, pepper grinders low on corns. Resorting to the only bit of business she could think of, Irina went for the comb in her purse at Lawrence’s feet.
“Your breath stinks,” said Lawrence.
She wasn’t near enough for him to tell. “I had one cigarette. Just one. Honestly, Lawrence”—she untwisted her hair tie—“it’s like some moral thing now. As if we’ve gone backwards to the flapper days, when women who smoked were seen as loose. All this huffy disapproval seems to have nothing to do with lung cancer anymore.”
“No tobacco is safe. And it makes kissing you like cleaning out the fire grate.”
Since when do you kiss me anyway?
She held her tongue, teasing out snarls in the mirror. Lawrence had been right, her hair was mussed, but he’d failed to mention that the escaping strands had sprayed into an impromptu disarray that was rather fetching.
“Speaking of bad breath,” said Lawrence, “where did you put our toothbrushes?”
“Bozhe moi!”
she exclaimed. “I forgot.”
“I asked you to get some things together! No wonder I kept thinking something was missing. I can’t believe you didn’t pack a bag!”
“Well, we hardly needed anything—”
“All the more reason to remember what little we did!”
“I was in a hurry.”
“I gave you plenty of time to get ready.”
“I went back to work.” The fib left her mouth with a dissonant twang, like a piano string snapping. She hadn’t gone back to work. She’d spent two hours deciding what to wear.
“I could have used a fresh shirt.” Lawrence sniffed his sleeve and made a face. “Ramsey must have gone through the better part of a pack, so this one smells like an ash can. And now you’ve got to take the train back tomorrow wearing
that.
”
“So?”
“You’ll have that I-was-unexpectedly-out-all-night look. As if you met someone and were up having wild sex.”
“Little chance of that,” she muttered.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She almost said,
Never mind,
but pushed herself to say instead, “That you don’t seem in a very good mood.”
“I can’t stand not brushing my teeth.”
“I’ll go downstairs and see if they sell a toiletry kit.”
“Too late,” he said furiously. “Nobody’s at the desk. I can’t believe you didn’t pack a bag!”
Lawrence got up off the bed. She could see in his feint first in one direction, then the other, that what was upsetting him perhaps more than the prospect of furry teeth in the morning was the disruption of ritual. At last he moved decisively toward the bath, and Irina stepped in his path.
“Let me go,” he said impatiently. “I have to take a leak.” He seemed grateful to have seized upon a need.
Barring his way, Irina felt her humor teeter-totter, tipping first toward irritation: here she had done as he wished, gone to a snooker match, and put in an effort to make the expedition a success, and then he was a grouse most of the night for no good reason other than his worry about some strangers getting home from their restaurant jobs before midnight. She hadn’t done anything wrong, and she didn’t deserve this gruff, tough, angry treatment over two miserable toothbrushes and a spare shirt.
But under that justifiable vexation lurked a less defensible annoyance: that Lawrence, if not short, was not very tall. That Lawrence, if fit, was not finely streamlined; no number of sit-ups would sharpen an essential bluntness to his figure because that’s the way his body was made. That Lawrence, if successful in his own realm, did not have an exotic occupation that would magically keep restaurant kitchens open all hours and land him in chic hotels. That Lawrence, if virtuous, did not exude an intoxicating perfume of dark-toasted tobacco, expensive red wine, and something else that Irina couldn’t put her finger on and probably shouldn’t. That Lawrence, if articulate, had a dumpy old American accent just like hers.
On the opposite side of the fulcrum lay
mental kindness.
In a way, it was Lawrence’s very failings that she loved—or it was the overlooking of his failings that her love was good for. She would never forget the first time she noticed that his hair was beginning to thin, and the piercing tenderness that the discovery fostered. Perversely, she loved him
more
for having less hair, if only because he needed a little more love to make up for whatever tiny increment of objective handsomeness that he had lost. Thus this evening it was the very fact of his not being tall—of his having been, yes, a little boring at dinner, as well as wary and therefore less likable, not to mention harsh, judgmental, and impatient, with a small mustard stain on the collar of his trench coat, probably from that ham sandwich at lunch—the very fact of his
not
making the help jump for being such a celebrity, and
not
speaking in a disarming South London accent, and
not
sporting exquisitely tapered fingers but really rather stumpy, short ones like breakfast sausages—that tipped her to the sweeter disposition. She slipped her arms around his waist. Lawrence’s returning clasp was ferocious.