A Quiver Full of Arrows (13 page)

Michael took her hand again, hoping
fervently he did not fall into that category.

“It’s been such a lovely evening. Why don’t
we stroll down to the Carlyle and listen to Bobby Short?” Michael’s ABC friend
had recommended the move if he felt he was still in with a chance.

“Yes, I’d enjoy that,” said Debbie.

Michael called for the bill - eighty-seven
dollars. Had it been his wife sitting on the other side of the table he would
have checked each item carefully, but not on this occasion. He just left five
twenty dollar bills on a side plate and didn’t wait for the change. As they
stepped out on to 2nd Avenue, he took Debbie’s hand and together they started
walking downtown.

On Madison Avenue they stopped in front of
shop windows and he bought her a fur coat, a Cartier watch and a Balenciaga
dress. Debbie thought it was lucky that all the stores were closed.

They arrived at the Carlyle just in time for
the eleven o’clock show. A waiter, Bashing a pen torch, guided them through the
little dark room on the ground floor to a table in the corner. Michael ordered
a bottle of champagne as Bobby Short struck up a chord and drawled out the
words: “Georgia, Georgia, oh, my sweet . ..”

Michael, now unable to speak to Debbie above
the noise ofthe band, satisfied himself with holding her hand and when the
entertainer sang, “This time we almost made the pieces fit, didn’t we, gal?” he
leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. She turned and smiled – was it faintly
conspiratorial, or was he Just wishful thinking? – and then she sipped her
champagne. On the dot of twelve, Bobby Short shut the piano lid and said, “Goodnight,
my friends, the time has come for all you good people to go to bed – and some
of you naughty ones too.” Michael laughed a little too loud but was pleased
that Debbie laughed as well.

They strolled down Madison Avenue to th
Street chatting about inconsequential affairs, while Michael’s thoughts were of
only one affair. When they arrived at her th Street apartment, she took out her
latch key.

“Would you like a nightcap?” she asked
without any suggestive intonation.

“No more drink, thank you, Debbie, but I
would certainly appreciate a coffee.”

She led him into the living room.

“The flowers have lasted well,” she teased,
and left him to make the coffee. Michael amused himself by flicking through an
old copy of Time magazine, looking at the pictures, not taking in the words.
She returned after a few minutes with a coffee pot and two small cups on a
lacquered tray. She poured the coffee, black again, and then sat down next to
Michael on the couch, drawing one leg underneath her while turning slightly
towards him. Michael downed his coffee in two gulps, scalding his mouth
slightly. Then, putting down his cup, he leaned over and kissed her on the
mouth. She was still clutching on to her coffee cup. Her eyes opened briefly as
she manoeuvred the cup on to a side table. After another long kiss she broke
away from him.

“I ought to make an early start in the
morning.”

“So should I,” said Michael, “but I am more
worried about not seeing you again for a long time.”

“What a nice thing to say,” Debbie replied.

“No, I just care,” he said, before kissing
her again.

This time she responded; he slipped one hand
on to her breast while the other one began to undo the row of little buttons
down the back of her dress. She broke away again.

“Don’t let’s do anything we’ll regret.”

“I know we won’t regret it,” said Michael.

He then kissed her on the neck and
shoulders, slipping her dress off as he moved deftly down her body to her
breast, delighted to find she wasn’t wearing a bra.

“Shall we go upstairs, Debbie? I’m too old
to make love on the sofa.”

Without speaking, she rose and led him by
the hand to her bedroom which smelled faintly and deliciously of the scent she
herself was wearing.

She switched on a small bedside light and
took offthe rest of her clothes, letting them fall where she stood.

Michael never once took his eyes off her body
as he undressed clumsily on the other side of the bed. He slipped under the
sheets and quicklyjoined her. When they had finished making love, an experience
he hadn’t enjoyed as much for a long time, he lay there pondering on the fact
that she had succumbed at all, especially on their first date.

They lay silently in each other’s arms
before making love for a second time, which was every bit as delightful as the
first. Michael then fell into a deep sleep.

He woke first the next morning and stared across
at the beautiful woman who lay by his side. The digital clock on the bedside
table showed seven-o-three.

He touched her forehead lightly with his
lips and began to stroke her hair. She woke lazily and smiled up at him. Then
they made morning love, slowly, gently, but every bit as pleasing as the night
before. He didn’t speak as she slipped out of bed and ran a bath for him before
going to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Michael relaxed in the hot bath
crooning a Bobby Short number at the top of his voice. How he wished that
Adrian could see him now. He dried himself and dressed before joining Debbie in
the smart little kitchen where they shared-breakfast together. Eggs, bacon,
toast, English marmalade, and steaming black coffee. Debbie then had a bath and
dressed while Michael read the New York Times. When she reappeared in the
living room wearing a smart coral dress, he was sorry to be leaving so soon.

“We must leave now, or you’ll miss your
flight.”

Michael rose reluctantly and Debbie drove
him back to his hotel, where he quickly threw his clothes into a suitcase,
settled the bill for his unslept-in double bed and joined her back in the car.
On the journey to the airport they chatted about the coming elections and
pumpkin pie almost as if they had been married for years or were both avoiding
admitting the previous night had ever happened.

Debbie dropped Michael in front of the Pan
Am building and put the car in the parking lot before joining him at the
check-in counter. They waited for his flight to be called.

“Pan American announces the departure of
their Flight Number 006 to London Heathrow. Will all passengers please proceed
with their boarding passes to Gate Number Nine?”

When they reached the “passengers-only”
barrier, Michael took Debbie briefly in his arms.

“Thank you for a memorable evening,” he
said.

“No, it is I who must thank you, Michael,”
she replied as she kissed him on the cheek.

“I must confess I hadn’t thought it would
end up quite like that,” he said.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Not easy to explain,” he replied, searching
for words that would netter and not embarrass. “Let’s say I was surprised that...”

“You were surprised that we ended up in bed
together on our first night?

You shouldn’t be.”

“I shouldn’t?”

“No, there’s a simple enough explanation. My
friends all told me when I got divorced to find myself a man and have a
one-night stand. The idea sounded fun but I didn’t like the thought of the men
in New York thinking I was easy.” She touched him gently on the side of his
face. “So when I met you and Adrian, both safely living over three thousand
miles away, I thought to myself “whichever one of you comes back first...”

“L
ife is a game”, said A. T. Pierson, thus
immortalizing himselfwithout actually having to do any real work.

Though E. M. Forster showed more insight
when he wrote “Fate is the Umpire, and Hope is the Ball, which is why I will
never score a century at Lord’s.”

When I was a freshman at University, my room
mate invited me to have dinner in a sporting club to which he belonged called
Vincent’s. Such institutions do not differ greatly around the Western world.
They are always brimful of outrageously fit, healthy young animals, whose sole
purpose in life seems to be to challenge the opposition of some neighbouring
institution to ridiculous feats of physical strength.

My host’s main rivals, he told me with
undergraduate fervour, came from a high-thinking, plain-living establishment
which had dozed the unworldly centuries away in the flat, dull, fen country of
England, cartographically described on the map as Cambridge. Now the ultimate
ambition of men such as my host was simple enough: m whichever sport they
aspired to beat the “Tabs” the select few were rewarded with a Blue. As there
is no other way of gaining this distinction at either Oxford or Cambridge,
every place in the team is contested for with considerable zeal. A man may be
selected and indeed play in every other match of the season for the University,
even go on to represent his country, but if he does not play in the Oxford and
Cambridge match, he cannot describe himself as a Blue.

My story concerns a delightful character I
met that evening when I dined as a guest at Vincent’s. The undergraduate to
whom I refer was in his final year. He came from that part of the world that we
still dared to describe in those days (without a great deal of thought) as the
colonies. He was an Indian by birth, and the son of a man whose name in England
was a household word, if not a legend, for he had captained Oxford and India at
cricket, which meant that outside of the British Commonwealth he was about as
well known as Babe Ruth is to the English.

The young man’s father had added to his fame
by scoring a century at Lord’s when captaining the University cricket side
against Cambridge. In fact, when he went on to captain India against England he
used to take pride in wearing his cream sweater with the wide dark blue band
around the neck and waist. The son, experts predicted, would carry on in the
family tradition. He was in much the same mould as his father, tall and rangy
with jet-black hair, and as a cricketer, a fine right-handed batsman and a
useful left-arm spin bowler.

(Those of you who have never been able to
comprehend the English language let alone the game of cricket might well be
tempted to ask why not a fine right-arm batsman and a useful left-handed spin
bowler. The English, however, always cover such silly questions with the words:
Tradition, dear boy, tradition.)

The young Indian undergraduate, like his
father, had come up to Oxford with considerably more interest in defeat-ing
Cambridge than the examiners. As a freshman, he had played against most of the
English county sides, notching up a century against three of them, and on one
occasion taking five wickets in an innings. A week before the big match against
Cambridge, the skipper informed him that he had won his Blue and that the names
of the chosen eleven would be officially announced in The Times the following
day. The young man telegraphed his father in Calcutta with the news, and then
went off for a celebratory dinner at Vincent’s. He entered the Club’s dining
room in high spirits to the traditional round of applause afforded to a new
Blue, and as he was about to take a seat he observed the boat crew, all nine of
them, around a circular table at the far end of the room. He walked across to
the captain of boats and remarked: “I thought you chaps sat one behind each
other.”

Within seconds, four thirteen-stone men were
sitting on the new Blue while the cox poured a jug of cold water over his head.

“Ifyou fail to score a century”, said one
oar, “we’ll use hot water next time.” When the four oars had returned to their
table, the cricketer rose slowly, straightened his tie in mock indignation, and
as he passed the crews’ table, patted the five-foot one inch, 102-pound cox on
the head and said, “Even losing teams should have a mascot.”

This time they only laughed but it was in
the very act of patting the cox on the head that he first noticed his thumb
felt a little bruised and he commented on the fact to the wicket-keeper who had
joined him for dinner. A large entrecote steak arrived and he found as he
picked up his knife that he was unable to grip the handle properly. He tried to
put the inconvenience out of his mind, assuming all would be well by the
following morning. But the next day he woke in considerable pain and found to
his dismay that the thumb was not only black but also badly swollen. After reporting
the news to his captain he took the first available train to London for a
consultation with a Harley Street specialist. As the carriage rattled through
Berkshire, he read in The Times that he had been awarded his Blue.

The specialist studied the offending thumb
for some considerable time and expressed his doubt that the young man would be
able to hold a ball, let alone a bat, for at least a fortnight. The prognosis
turned out to be accurate and our hero sat disconsolate in the stand at Lord’s,
watching Oxford lose the match and the twelfth man gain his Blue. His father,
who had flown over from Calcutta especially for the encounter, offered his
condolences, pointing out that he still had two years left in which to gain the
honour.

As his second Trinity term approached, even
the young man forgot his disappointment and in the opening match of the season
against Somerset scored a memorable century, full of cuts and drives that
reminded aficionados of his father.