Cupid's Dart (5 page)

'That's epicureanism.'

'It
is
?' She was delighted.

'Well, broadly, yes.'

'Get that! I'm an epicureanist!'

I smiled, thrilled by her delight. For many years I had been feeling that I smelt stale. Not horrid. Not sweaty. I didn't have BO or halitosis. I just smelt stale. My breath, when it came back to me off a mirror, my armpits, my shirts – vaguely stale.

I was conscious of that now, and I suppose, therefore, that I already knew, deep down, that this girl could wash my staleness away.

'I hope I don't sound patronising, Ange,' I said, 'but if you have any questions, any time, about philosophy or indeed about anything, please don't hesitate to ask.'

The waiter cleared away our plates lugubriously, standing a bit away from the table and reaching for them.

'Was your terrine all right?' I asked.

'Yeah. It was good. Very garlicky, I'm afraid.'

If she was worried about the garlic, she expected us to end up close to each other. I shivered with a mixture of apprehension and excitement. I couldn't say, now, which was the stronger. Probably I couldn't have said it then either.

'There is one question,' she said.

'Yes. Yes. Good. Excellent. Fire away. I'll do my best.'

'If you hate bananas, how come you had one in your briefcase?'

'What? Oh, I see. Ah. Well, my hotel in Manchester, if you're well known, they put a bowl of fruit in your room. I'm innately mean, and cannot bear to leave what is free.'

'Are you well known then?'

Her amazement wasn't flattering, but I wasn't offended. In fact it amused me.

'Not really. Not outside my field, my very narrow field, but I was in Manchester to speak at a conference, and I think they classify all the speakers as celebrities.'

'What's your other name again?'

'Calcutt. Alan Calcutt.'

'No. Sorry. Never heard of you.' She gave me a quite lovely smile, childlike, affectionate, kind. It took away all the abruptness of her remark. 'Is that as incredible as you never having heard of Tons Thomas?'

'Probably not. I think that in the world at large he's probably more widely known than me. Sadly. So what's
your
other name?'

She looked a little embarrassed, for the first time.

'Bedwell.'

Our eyes met. I was terrified that I was going to blush. I didn't, but the effort of not doing so left me feeling limp and exhausted.

'Here's another one,' she said, changing the subject hurriedly, and I must say I was very relieved to find that she too was capable of embarrassment.

'Good. Good. Fire away.'

The waiter was returning with our main courses. This might be my chance to impress him.

'Name three fish that begin and end with K.'

It wouldn't be my chance to impress him.

'Er . . . oh, I've no idea, I really haven't.'

'Try.'

The waiter put her plate down in front of her. Her fillet steak looked like a tiny burnt offering in the middle of its huge white plate. The pepper sauce was dribbled over the plate so artistically that I felt that it would look better hanging in the Tate.

'Kipper begins with a k. Haddock ends with a k,' I said. 'Sorry, that's about the best that I can do.'

My pheasant was barely more substantial than her steak.

'Give up?' she said.

'Yes.'

'Killer shark. Kwik-Save deep frozen smoked haddock. Kilmarnock.'

'Kilmarnock?'

'Well, it's a place.'

Her laugh rang out through that silent temple of gastronomy like a fart in a cathedral. The waiter took her plate of vegetables from a minion, banged it down beside her steak, placed a dish with seven slices of courgette beside my pheasant, and hurried off, shaking his head.

'It looks lovely,' she said, 'but you don't get a lot for the money, do you?'

'The more you pay, the less you get,' I explained. 'It's called refinement. That's why the plates are now so huge in fashionable restaurants – to make the food look small and banish any possible charge of grossness.'

I didn't really know about such things, but it was what Lawrence had said once, in a posh restaurant outside Abingdon, in an attempt to upset Jane.

'Is your pheasant nice?' asked Ange.

'Very.'

'The way they've served it, you can't see if it's well hung.'

'Well it would hardly look well hung, would it? It would smell or taste well hung. You wouldn't say to me, "Hello, Alan, you look of horse manure." You'd say, "Hello, Alan, you smell of horse manure." '

'I wouldn't dream of saying that.'

'No, no, no . . . of course not. You've missed the point.'

I can't remember much that we talked about after that. We were busy eating, of course, and I think our conversation was rather desultory, and I'm pretty sure that we didn't mention darts or philosophy. I was finding it quite difficult to digest my pheasant. My stomach was heaving with nerves.

I couldn't manage a dessert, but I did have a glass of vintage port, leaving the last of the Liebfraumilch for Ange. She plumped for the Pavlova. When the waiter took the order, she said, 'You know, if Mum was sure you was serious about going straight this time I think she might have you back.' His outrage was greater than ever. Even the hairs in his nose seemed to stiffen.

When the Pavlova and my glass of port arrived I suddenly began to shake. Not uncontrollably. I don't think she would have seen.

This is a terrible confession, but sometimes I feel an irrational urge to do something really horrific – like swing my little car into the path of an oncoming lorry, just because it's possible. I never do, and I don't think I ever will, but it terrifies me.

Well now, as the waiter approached, I felt an extraordinary desire to do something not equally rash, not horrific at all, but, for me, utterly revolutionary.

I not only felt the desire. I gave in to it.

'Ange,' I said, 'be honest. Did Mum have many affairs while I was away, or was it just the postman?'

Her mouth dropped open, as indeed did the waiter's, but I was glad to see that her mouth dropped open even wider than his.

The moment I had said it I broke out into a bit of a sweat, which cooled rather unpleasantly as the evening wore on.

'Not bad,' she said, when the waiter had scurried off. 'Not bad at all. Hidden depths.'

When the bill came, I noticed that there was a mistake, a mistake which gave me an opportunity for further roguishness, which I did not spurn.

'Waiter!' I called.

The waiter approached with comical reluctance.

'I make the ad hoc deduction that you have made a deduction and should add hock.'

When a man tries humour for the first time, he cannot expect every joke to be a success. This one fell horribly flat. Neither Ange nor the waiter understood it.

'You've left the wine off,' I explained.

'Ah!' He scowled. He was seriously embarrassed, less by his mistake and my discovery of his mistake than because he was going to have to thank me.

'Thank you, sir,' he said through gritted teeth.

'What was all that about adding hock?' asked Ange.

'It was a sort of Latin pun. It was a joke.'

'Oh. Oh well.'

We stood up. I had no idea what would happen next or indeed what I wanted to happen next. She saved me, even though it would only be a temporary salvation.

'Come on,' she said. 'Let's find a pub. I know one with a darts board, and I couldn't half sink a pint.'

'So why are we all here then?' she asked.

I looked round the bare, Spartan room at the groups of drinkers, mostly sitting and chatting, one couple kissing, almost eating each other. I felt out of place. I doubt if I had been into more than ten pubs in my life. I hated the smell of beer and chips and furniture polish and toilets. This was a pub on its last legs. The carpet bore evidence of accidents of various kinds. The stuffing was peeping out of two of the seats. The ashtrays had not been emptied for hours, maybe days.

'Well,' I said, 'I presume people like the company and the conviviality, and as you say, it's one of the few left in Central London with a darts board.'

'No! Stupid!' She grinned and gave me one of her quick kisses. I had seen her smile and laugh, but this was her first grin. It was a grin of triumph. She had caught me out. 'Why are we all here? Why do we exist? What's the point of it all? Come on. You're the philosopher.'

I took a sip of my beer. Flat, warm, bitter. I had drunk a half of beer occasionally, just to be sociable, but this was a pint. It looked enormous. I would never get through it. If I did get through it, I would be peeing all night. Where should I start with my explanations? Did I have the energy? I wished that I could believe that God existed. I might have been able to ask Him for strength.

It had been quite a long taxi ride. 'You wouldn't believe it,' she had said, 'but these days there aren't hardly any pubs in Central London with a darts board. I mean, it's a capital city, innit, for God's sake. What's our sodding civilisation coming to? It's a national disgrace.'

I had wondered, in the taxi, whether to reach out and hold her hand. God, it was exhausting being so self-conscious. It seemed to me that I was incapable of any physical movement that was spontaneous. It filled me with depression and weariness. What was I doing here? Why had I ever asked her out? I even had a vision of Lawrence and Jane, watching me, laughing at me, despairing of me.

There had been a brief few moments, in the fresh air – 'fresh', that's a laugh, each breath I take in London is a reminder about pollution – and then we had entered the pub and I had faced this dreadful wall of false cheeriness and beery companionship. Oh for a glass of port or Madeira and a civilised discussion of the failings of my fellow dons. I felt wildly over-dressed for these surroundings.

Three young men in grubby T-shirts were playing darts as if their lives depended on it. I wished that I was playing with them, anything rather than the burden of explanation and the inevitability of disappointment.

I took a deep breath and began.

'Ah. Well. You've asked a question to which there is no definite answer.'

'A cop-out, in other words.'

'No. No. A necessity, Ange. Whether we believe that there is a God who created the universe or whether we believe that the universe has evolved through natural and physical processes, we cannot yet conceive, and may well never be able to conceive, let alone know, how anything began in the first place. To posit the existence of a God solves nothing, because it leaves us with the question, "Who created God?" And it is pointless to search for proof of the existence of God because the whole strength and force of religion lies in faith, and you cannot have faith without ignorance. So . . .'

'Nice arrows!'

'What?'

'That bloke just got a ton.'

'Ah!'

I wasn't upset by her interruption. I was relieved. I decided that at last it was time to put the advice I'd been given in that correspondence course to good use. I would ask her questions, which would be so much less stressful than answering them.

'What . . . er . . . what is a ton?'

'Bleedin' 'ell. A ton's a hundred. That's why Tons Thomas is known as Tons, because he gets lots of tons. Tons of tons.'

She laughed at her little joke. I didn't feel up to laughing, but I had to say something.

'Yes,' I said. 'Yes.'

It's a habit I have, I know, to say 'Yes' when there is nothing else to say, or when there is a silence that unnerves me. She didn't let it go.

'When I make a joke, you say "Yes",' she said.

'Yes. Yes. Yes, I suppose I'm saying, "Yes. I recognise that as a joke." '

'It'd be a pretty poor look-out for Peter Kay if every time he made a joke the whole audience just shouted out, "Yes, I recognise that as a joke." '

'Yes. Sorry.'

That's another word I use too much. People bump into me in the street because they aren't looking where they're going, and
I
say 'Sorry'. I think that if I had been able to speak when I was born I would have looked up at my mother and said, 'Sorry.'

'I reckon you're all screwed up.'

'Yes. Sorry.'

I was feeling more than somewhat discomfited because I had felt that unwelcome stab of jealousy again at her mention of Tons Thomas. I hated the feeling. It was so petty, so mean, so demeaning. I realise now, on reflection, that I should have welcomed it. It was, after all, a sign that I was not entirely emotionally dead, as I had feared I was, but at the time, stuck in a corner of the pub, at the little table nearest to the toilets (yes, there were some constants in my life), I found it horrible. I wished she wouldn't talk about Tons Thomas – but I also feared that, if she stopped, it would only be to talk about Shanghai Sorensen, the much too dashing Dane.

'Sorry,' she said. 'I shouldn't have interrupted, but, you know, I can't help getting excited when I see good darts thrown. Sorry, I
was
listening about God and that stuff. Go on about philosophy and that, cos I think I must be missing something if you're trying to find out something which the whole point of it is you can't find it out.'

'Well, I was saying to you that philosophy is to a very large extent a question of . . . a question of asking questions, a question of asking ourselves what sort of questions we should be asking ourselves, a question of . . .'

'Nice finish!'

'Sorry?'

'Sorry, but that bloke just made a three-dart finish. I'm sorry, Alan, I
was
listening, but I mean, in a pub, an ordinary pub, you don't expect to see a three dart finish, cos, believe me, there are some really crappy darts players around, and he needed ninety-nine and he got them, treble nineteen, two, double top, that's what we call a three-dart finish, see? Hey, do you want a game?'

I wanted a game less than almost anything I could think of, but I didn't have the energy to say this to her, and she took my silence as assent.

'Hey, you guys,' she called out. 'Can we challenge you to a game?'

This shook me to the roots. These people were good. The last time I had played darts, more than twenty years ago, the college bursar had beaten me.

The three darts players looked at her, and then they looked at me, and then they looked at each other, and one of them said, 'Nah. We've finished. You and your dad have a game.'

I closed my eyes and wished that I was anywhere but there. I heard, as if from far away, Ange saying, 'He's not my dad. I wouldn't play tiddlywinks with that tosser.'

I felt her take my hand and squeeze it. I opened my eyes and saw that she was smiling at me. It was a moment that I would come to recognise as being quintessentially Ange. She was being sensitive and cunning at the same time. Sensitive, because she knew what I was feeling. Cunning, because she knew that the darts player's remark would spoil our still fragile relationship if she let it.

'Come on,' she said, pulling me gently to my feet. 'Let's play darts.'

So there I was, at ten to eleven on a Tuesday night, in a busy pub, with more than three-quarters of a pint of flat beer staring reproachfully at me from my straight glass, being given three darts by a young lady, and having to play this ghastly game in front of three young men who had just shown themselves to be thoroughly proficient at it. I had rarely felt so embarrassed even in the theatre of self-consciousness that was my life to date.

'Five-oh-one, no starting double,' said Ange.

What on earth did she mean? Maybe I would find out.

'I'm going to be Nineteens Normanton,' she said. 'Who are you going to be?'

'What?'

'It's more fun if you pretend to be someone. I'm going to pretend to be Nineteens Normanton.'

'Nineteens?'

'He's unusual among top players. He doesn't go much for twenties. It's all nineteens with him.'

'And no doubt you've slept with him.'

She glared at me, really quite fiercely.

'What if I have?' she said. 'What if I fucking well have? That's my business.'

I didn't reply. I didn't even object to her swearing. I realised that I had made a very bad move. I was terrified that we were on the verge of a full-scale row. I didn't want a row, certainly not in public. I didn't know if she might storm out. If she did, I would never see her again. I realised to my amazement that I would be devastated if I didn't see her again. Actually I felt quite devastated by this realisation.

The moment passed. She wrote NN on the top left of the blackboard.

'Who are you?' she asked.

'I'll be Einstein,' I said.

'Good. Nice one.'

I could tell that she was really pleased by this piece of invention. She chalked a large I on the top right of the board. I didn't tell her that it should be E. I was handling her with kid gloves now.

She let me go first. I scored seven. She chalked 494 under I. Then she threw three twenties.

'A steady start from the burly champion,' she said.

With my next three darts I scored eleven. One of them bounced back off the surrounds to the board. '483,' chalked Ange.

With her second go, she hit single twenty, treble twenty and a five.

'Eighty-five. Einstein's in big trouble now. Will his famous theory of relativity save him?'

She gave me a triumphant glance, and I hurriedly looked suitably impressed at her knowledge of Einstein, which I must say surprised me and rather thrilled me.

I won't go right through the progress of that dreadful game. I didn't look round once, for fear I would see that people in the pub were watching my humiliation, and, if they were, that they were laughing at me. I told myself that darts didn't matter, there was no evidence that either Kant or Wittgenstein had ever played the game, I was a respected figure in the world of Academia, it was absurd to be concerned. But I hated it. Suffice it to say that at one stage, under NN, the scores were 441, 356, 302, 202, 166, 96, 40, and under I they were 494, 483, 480, 466, 456, 449, 438. Even Ange's running commentary began to lose its sparkle, as she realised that I was providing no real opposition.

And all through the game, every time another success was recorded under those dread initials NN, I was wondering if she had slept with Nineteens Normanton. It was a boil that throbbed, and I didn't know how to lance it.

At last our mismatch was over. I must say that I wondered, on that evening, if there was any activity in the world as boring as the game of darts.

We returned to our table. I took a sip of my beer. There was still more than half a pint to go. People were beginning to drift away into the night, happily, cheerily, easily, sexily. Ange drained the last of her lager and stood up.

'My shout,' she said. 'What are you having? A chaser?'

I didn't dare admit that I didn't know what a chaser was, my ignorance had damaged the reputation of philosophers enough already, but I couldn't face the prospect of another drink of any kind. Besides, it was time to grasp the nettle.

'Ange,' I said. 'Sit down. I . . . er . . . I've something to say to you.'

She looked at me in surprise, and sat down.

'I . . . er . . . I haven't got my car with me,' I began.

I was sweating again. I was feeling claustrophobic. The ceiling seemed to be dropping on me. The walls seemed to be sliding towards me. I was finding it difficult to breath.

'I . . . er . . . well, you know I haven't got my car, because we met on the train, and the last train to Oxford from London is something of a social ordeal these days . . . well also I didn't want to rush our dinner, so . . . er . . . I'm not going back to Oxford tonight. I booked into a hotel.'

'That makes sense. I mean, they've got beds there. They're used to people staying the night.'

'Yes. Yes. You were right in what you said. I am screwed up. Will you . . . will you spend the night with me . . . and unscrew me?'