Martin Amis - Yellow Dog

Russia, for her part, had not at all enjoyed her many hours in front of the computer, boning up on the head-injured. After reading one particular sentence (‘Approach your spouse as you would a completely new relationship’), she had even burst from the house and stridden to the Jeremy Bentham for cigarettes. She smoked seven of them while making herself mistress of subsections with titles like ‘Your New Domestic Life’ and ‘Your New Social Life’, and so on. What do they mean, new? she kept thinking. (And what do they mean, your? ) It is better, we always assume, to be prepared than not to be prepared — but not much better; with some eventualities, being prepared isn’t any good either … Among other recent gains and accomplishments, women have naturally made considerable advances in the largely male preserve of self-centredness. And alongside the conviction that she would try her very best, there ran another — specifically, that there were some (no, many) possible outcomes, amply described on her screen, that she couldn’t and wouldn’t endure. She was not being ruthless, merely modern: come on. But then Russia confronted another sentence, one that made her hate herself, and weep, and valorously insufflate. The sentence went, ‘There is only one “miracle cure”, and that is love.’ And so now she said it a different way: come on. Come on …

* * *

As he stirred for the third or fourth time that morning, Xan Meo saw his wife, sitting, waiting, on the bedside chair. She said immediately,

‘I was just reading about you. Well, not you , but people in your condition. Now, Xan, I want to say this: don’t fall for the “two-year” myth. It’s an old wives’ tale that’s caused a lot of unnecessary pain. They say that “after two years” you’re not going to recover any further. It’s not true , Xan. You can go on recovering for much longer than that. It can take five years! It can take ten! Ask around in your support group and you’ll see that it’s so!’

Xan needed more time than he would have liked to realise that all this was in itself an old wives’ tale — or a first wife’s tale, to put it another way. This wasn’t Russia. This was Pearl. She went on:

‘You know, something like this, it can make you grateful for what you already have. I know I’m grateful for what I already have: a lump sum, and not alimony. Because you do know, don’t you, that only twenty-five per cent of head-injured patients are in full employment three months after their accidents?’

He straightened himself up and with both hands smoothed back his scattered hair; he supposed — and it was a supposition prompted or at least borne out by Pearl’s smile — that he had never looked balder. Rather more generally, his cheeks and forehead seemed to be dotted with excrescences, asperities — as if, while he’d slept, someone had sliced and daubed a loaf of bread above his face, leaving it covered with crumbs and seeds held in place by coagulating butter. He was glad that Pearl couldn’t see his knees: on the inner side of either patella, visible fluid waves, like fat worms.

‘Where are the boys?’ he said. ‘They’re here?’

‘They’re in the caff. They’ll be along … One of the things you’ll have to steel yourself for, my darling, is a net drop in your IQ. Studies show. Shouldn’t affect the acting but it won’t be too clever for the writing, will it? I don’t know about the rhythm guitar. You know what really worries me?’

Xan waited.

‘What really worries me is how it’ll affect your relationship with Russia. Sitting there at dinner, you won’t know what she’s on about. Because that was always very important to you, in the past — her mind. You used to say so. It wouldn’t matter that much if you were still with me. Not that I’d look at you now, in your state. We could just hang around staring at the wall. But with her …’

Over in the nook by the door several head-injured young men were sitting in front of the television, watching the only human pursuit dedicated to the infliction of head injuries: the two guys in the square ring, with the shiny shorts and the gumshields.

‘You’ve gone very quiet, Xan. I expect it’s a bit of a strain, putting a few simple words together.’

‘Oh I can talk all right.’

‘So you can. And don’t worry about the longer ones — you know, the ones with two or more syllables: they’ll come.’

In fairness to Pearl (and Xan, silently, within himself, had already made such a concession), it should be recorded that after reading about the attack she telephoned the hospital and screamed at various people, demanding, as the mother of Xan’s sons, a full and detailed diagnosis, which she got; and this she had passed on to her boys with the gentlest and most hopeful construction. Pearl was a good mother. She was not, perhaps, everybody’s automatic choice as an ex-wife. But she was a good mother.

‘The worst thing, they say — they say … The worst thing, they say, is what it does to your sex life.’

A woman, it has been observed (by a woman, two hundred years ago), is fine only for herself. Man is indifferent to nuance; and the only things another woman will respond gratefully to are obvious signs of poverty or bad taste. Pearl didn’t dress only for herself. She dressed for everyone — herself included. Today she wore a black leather jacket that squeaked and glistened, a snow-white cashmere sweater, and a pink flowered skirt of startling brevity (plus witchy ankle-high boots, also black, and flouncy little socks, also white). There was one more thing: one more thing she was wearing.

He had known Pearl, on and off, since infancy; and the lost world of their marriage (he had come to feel) was regressive or animalistic or even prehistoric — a land of lizards. There were things that, even today, he would never dare tell Russia. For instance, the fact that after twelve years together (years qualified by month-long silences, trial separations, separate holidays, frequent fistfights, and ceaseless adultery) their erotic life continued to improve — if improve is quite the word we want. Everything else was bottomlessly horrible, by the end: they had reached a state (as one of their counsellors put it) of ‘conjugal paranoia’. The two boys were long past going down on their knees and begging their parents to separate. It was not until Michael and David were well into their second and more serious hunger strike (eighty-four hours) that Xan and Pearl snapped out of it and called the lawyers. But throughout this period their erotic life continued to improve — or, to put it another way, continued to take up more and more of their time.

‘It can go either way,’ she said: ‘your sex life. Either you’re not interested — that’s what usually happens. Or else you’re interested in nothing else. Which d’you think it’s going to be?’

Xan waited.

‘Let’s do a little test. Ready?’

He knew what was coming, and he knew where he’d look. To fix it: Pearl O’Daniel was tall and lean (and wore her auburn hair short and spiky); her hips were narrow, but her thighs were widely set, splaying upwards and outwards from the knee; and it was in the space between her legs, in this triangular absence (the shape of a capital y ), that her gravity-centre lay … Now one of the predicates of Pearl’s character was that she always went too far. Her greatest admirers would instantly admit it: she always went too far. Even in the company of those who themselves always went too far, she always went too far. And now, in St Mary’s, Pearl went too far. Uncrossing her thighs and crossing her ankles, she revealed this space, and Xan, still defeatedly low in the bed, contemplated it. His ex-wife, of course, had not committed the sexual illiteracy of wearing nothing, underneath: she was wearing something, and not just anything. He was familiar with it — pearly white, and studded with stars. On the morning of the day the decree nisi came through, Xan had had the whole thing in his mouth, while Pearl looked approvingly on.