Pulse

  ‘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 Hc45 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

  FOR 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.’

  ‘Love.’

  ‘An old friend of ours – she’s a New Yorker – worked as a lawyer for years and years – decided to retrain by going to film school. She was in her fifties already. And she found herself surrounded by kids thirty years younger than her. And she used to listen to them, and sometimes they confided in her about their lives, and you know what she concluded? That they didn’t think twice about going to bed with someone, but they were really, really scared of getting close, or of anyone getting close to them.’

  ‘The point being?’

  ‘They were afraid of love. Afraid of … dependency. Or having someone dependent on them. Or both.’

  ‘Afraid of pain.’

  ‘Afraid of anything that would interfere with their careers, more like. You know, New York …’

  ‘Maybe. But I think Sue’s right. Afraid of pain.’

  ‘Last time – or the time before – someone was asking if there was cancer of the heart. Of course there is. And it’s called love.’

  ‘Do I hear distant drums and ape-calls?’

  ‘My condolences to your spouse.’

  ‘Come on. Stop being facetious. Stop thinking about who you’re married to or who you’re sitting next to. Think about what love’s been like in your life, and think about it in other people’s lives.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Pain.’

  ‘No gain without pain, as they say.’

  ‘I’ve known pain where there’s no gain. In most cases, actually. “Suffering ennobles” – I’ve always known that was a moralistic lie. Suffering diminishes the individual. Pain degrades.’

  ‘Well, I’ve been hurt – I am in pain – because last time we were here I was telling you in a very discreet way about my home bum-cancer screening …’

  ‘Which you said you did on St Valentine’s Day.’

  ‘And no bugger or C-word here has actually had the courtesy to enquire if I got the result.’

  ‘Dick, did you get the result?’

  ‘Yes, a letter from someone whose job title beneath the illegible signature was, if you can credit it, Hub Director.’

  ‘We won’t go there.’

  ‘And he was writing to say that my result was normal.’

  ‘A-ha.’

  ‘That’s great, Dick.’

  ‘And then – new paragraph – the letter went on to say, and I quote from memory – though, what else might one quote from? – that, quote, no screening test is one hundred per cent accurate, so a normal result does not guarantee that you do not have, or will never develop, bowel cancer.’

  ‘Well, they couldn’t guarantee, could they?’

  ‘It’s all about getting sued.’

  ‘Everything’s about getting sued nowadays.’

  ‘Hence, for example, the prenup – to get us back on track a bit. Larry, would you say the prenup is a pro
of of love or of insecurity?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’ve never signed one. I guess it’s usually lawyers protecting family money. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with how you feel, it’s just social protocol. Like pretending you believe all the words of the marriage service.’

  ‘I did. Every single one.’

  ‘“With my body I thee roger” – ah, now that takes me back. Oh dear, Joanna’s looking a little balefully at me again.’

  ‘Cancer of the heart, not the bum, is the topic.’

  ‘You’re maintaining Love is Pain, are you, Joanna?’

  ‘No. I’m just thinking of a few people – men, yes they are all men, actually – who’ve never been hurt by love. Who are, in fact, incapable of being hurt by love. Who set up a system of evasion and control that guarantees they’ll never get hurt.’

  ‘Is that so unreasonable? It sounds like the emotional equivalent of a prenup.’

  ‘It may be reasonable, but that confirms my point. Some men can do the whole thing – sex, marriage, fatherhood, companionship – and not feel any real pain. Frustration, embarrassment, boredom, anger … and that’s it. Their idea of pain is when a woman doesn’t repay dinner with sex.’

  ‘Who said men were more cynical than women?’

  ‘I’m not being cynical. We can all name a couple of people like that.’

  ‘You mean you’re not in love unless you’re in pain?’

  ‘Of course I don’t mean that. I just mean that, well, it’s like jealousy. Love can’t exist without the possibility of jealousy. If you’re lucky, you may never feel it, but if the possibility, the capacity to feel it, isn’t there, then you aren’t in love. And it’s the same with pain.’

  ‘So Dick wasn’t off the point after all?’

  ‘… ?’

  ‘Well, he doesn’t have bum cancer, except there’s a possibility he might, either now or in the future.’

  ‘Thank you. Vindicated. I knew I knew what I was really talking about.’

  ‘You and the Hub Director.’

  ‘You’re talking about Pete, aren’t you?’

  ‘Who’s Pete? The Hub Director?’

  ‘No, Pete’s the no-pain guy.’

  ‘Pete’s one of those counters. You know, how many women. He could name the day he hit double figures, name the day it was fifty.’