Joseph O'Neill - This is the Life

‘What about you?’ Susan asked. She allowed herself a grin. ‘How did you feel?’

‘I felt pretty excited, too,’ I said.

‘How excited? How exactly?’

I gave a shy smile and pretended to give the question thought. ‘I felt a knocking in my chest. Thump, thump, thump,’ I said. ‘It was my heart. My heart was jumping all over the place.’

‘Really?’

‘Really,’ I said. She was blushing with pleasure. ‘When I picked up the phone to ring you, my ears were pounding too; it was like I was listening to my heart with a stethoscope.’ I poured it on. She loved it when my talk grew lyrical. She revelled in it. ‘I could hardly hear your voice my ears were pounding so much.’

‘Jimmy, I feel dizzy now … Stop, stop it now …’

Of course there was no stopping. We talked about what had attracted us to each other, we hinted lewdly at the sexual times we had enjoyed; and the more we drank, the better it all seemed. All the while I was called on by miniature domestic memories — how daintily pleasing her waking-up routine was (after she wordlessly got out of bed I would hear the click of the kettle, then the rushing of water as she performed her face-wash, the second click of the kettle as the water came to the boil, the splat of the tea-bag in the sink, the padding of bare feet, the groan of the mattress as she rejoined me in bed, and, finally, the small slurp she made sitting up to drink next to my sleeping form), how neatly she piled her jumpers in her cupboard, how thoughtful she had always been to ensure that there was enough hot water for my bath. By the time we had finished the second bottle and had ordered a final carafe, I was beginning to see things in a new light. Susan had a lovely colour, and I was sure that she wore a new pair of glasses. Also, her hair was not quite as lank as I remembered it. Now crinkles ran through it, and although the effect was unattractively artificial, I softened at the thought of her earnestly going to the hairdresser and doing her best to enliven her appearance. Poor Suzy!

Emptying the carafe, nothing was really said. We contented ourselves with playing games with our eyes, fluttering and darting little looks and peeks at one another, exchanging momentary but significant gazes. By now the revenants of our old selves had vacated the table and just the two of us were left, breathing in air sweet with oxygen. We paid the waiter (fifty-fifty, Susan insisted) and went to a nearby pub for a final drink. There was a crush of customers but we found an unoccupied corner behind a man with a black, breathless dog. When I returned from the bar with the drinks I squeezed myself between Susan and the dog-owner. Her thigh made tingling contact with mine and soon my arm was around her shoulder and she was bunched up against me, nice and close. She said, Oh Jimmy, and we kissed.

At that moment I was presented with an opportunity to extricate myself from my predicament (I say predicament because, although I was at an advanced stage of intoxication, it was plain to me that the situation was running away from me, and that unless I acted decisively it would leave me behind completely). Excusing myself, I walked carefully and unsteadily to the gents. My head was filled with a fog as I laboured to think of what to do next. Relieving myself, I clumsily tried to identify and weigh up the elements due for consideration. On the one hand I felt a strong desire, an imperative, for a sexual encounter. I recognized that it was not often that such a chance came my way. On the other hand, I knew what disappointment and mayhem this type of encounter would in all probability lead to, given my inebriation and the problematical background to the situation. I looked at myself in the mirror above the urinal and was drunkenly struck by the strangeness of my face: whose visage was that? Mine? Was I inseparable from those eyes and chins? That nose — did I carry it around all day? How on earth did the air that I sucked through it fuel my body? What extraordinary mechanisms I housed! How miraculous everything was! Then, washing my hands, another factor entered my deliberations: I felt sorry for Susan. It is true, I did; my heart went out to her. She had made such an effort this evening, and if anyone deserved a little romantic success, a little happiness, it was her. I splashed cold water on my cheeks and neck and placed my face in the hot jet of air expelled by the drying machine on the wall. It would be uncharitable, I decided, to refuse her advances.

Susan was waiting for me outside, her handbag crossed over her torso to deter snatchers. She had removed her glasses and was looking, as far as I was able to tell, joyous. At once I hailed a cab and we tumbled together into its dark, comfortable interior.

‘Stockwell,’ I said to the driver.

A delicious tension held sway between us. Things were acutely understood but left unsaid. We briefly regarded one other with meaningful eyes then sat back to enjoy the ride, swaddled in our overcoats, our hands in our pockets. I always like a late journey home in a safe and roomy black cab on such nights, dark nights sweet and melting as black gâteau, with me in the back luxuriating in the voluptuous swings and curves taken by the big taxi. After ten minutes we rolled up to my front door and I said to Susan, Come on, and unloaded her from the taxi. She said, Just for a coffee then, I really must go. Heavy-legged, we made our way into the flat. Susan fell on to the sofa while I made coffee, spilling sugar and coffee grains on to the work surface. Susan rather uncharacteristically turned on the television and began toying with the buttons on the remote control, zipping between channels and colouring the faces tomato-red then black-and-white. I brought in the mugs of coffee and she said, ‘My God, look at that.’

On the screen a match was about to take place between two huge Japanese wrestlers called The Fog and The Sea Slug. They were limbering up. Taking their time, they wandered formidably around, preparing themselves. For whole minutes they threw salt around the ring, rubbed their palms together, slapped their thighs and squatted in mid-air with legs spread, then they straightened and turned their backs on each other to face the crowd, their fat arms and buttocks tremoring. It was spectacular, and we drank in silence, watching. With a final adjustment of their bellybands and a shake of their limbs, the wrestlers crouched down eyeball to eyeball, two great banks of flesh. They leaped at each other. It was over in seconds. The Sea Slug, the smaller man, used the momentum of The Fog against him and simply pushed him out of the ring. That was it. All of that concentration and build-up had come almost to nothing. A glancing collision of bodies, a movement of feet and a push. That was all it amounted to.

If I had had my wits about me I would have learned from the wrestlers. I would have called for a mini-cab or made up the spare bed. I did neither. And so, shortly after we had turned off the television, Susan and I found ourselves in a ring of bedsheets, momentarily clinched and shuddering.

I slept badly. Susan was making a wheezing sound and the bed was unpleasantly warm. I itched below the knee, then behind my ear, then at the back of my neck. What would she say in the morning? What demands would she make? I rolled over to the edge of my half of the bed. I needed space to breathe. Again I scratched myself, this time on the left calf muscle. The air was thickening; somewhere automobiles were accelerating in the night.

When I awoke, at nine o’clock, a great surprise awaited me. Susan had gone. I went to the note-pad by the telephone where she used to leave notes — nothing there.

What did I think? I thought, Phew.

Like a sailor at sea I have certain routines which I invariably follow: one routine for the morning, another for the evening and another for bedtime. During the week these are mainly a matter of time and motion, designed to remove the pain of constantly having to make decisions and to allow me the luxury of a restfully blank mind. On Sundays I have a routine I treasure so much that it has become a ritual. I lie in until about ten o’clock, then I slip on the first trousers, socks and shirt that come to hand, nip across the road for the newspaper, nip back, undress and climb back into bed, read the sports pages, go to the kitchen and, after some bran flakes in semi-skimmed milk, cook myself sausages, scrambled eggs and toast, wash that down with a grapefruit juice and sugared coffee, finish the newspapers cover to cover, run myself a bath, lie in the water for half an hour, get out and fall asleep in front of the afternoon film.