Tony Parsons - One For My Baby

Jackie sips her tea.

“It’s a pretty name for a girl.”

“Do you think so?”

“I do.”

“My husband-although he wasn’t my husband then-always thought it was…stupid. No, not stupid. Pretentious. They don’t like that where I come from. They don’t like you getting above yourself. My husband was typical. ‘You’re too clever by half, Jack. Too clever for your own good, Jack.’ I mean, as though being stupid was something to be proud of. But I went ahead and called her Plum anyway, went to the registrar of births, marriages and deaths by myself and had Plum put on the certificate. Stuff him, I thought. Stuff Jamie. If it wasn’t for Jamie, I wouldn’t have been in that doctor’s waiting room in the first place. And I would never have seen that magazine with the Plum girls.”

“You mean you were seeing the doctor because you were pregnant?”

“No,” says Jackie. “I was seeing the doctor because Jamie had just broken two of my ribs.”

When we have finished our lesson, we drive around to my nan’s place. Plum answers the door. She is smiling.

“We’re watching the wrestling,” she says.

Inside her white flat, my nan is propped up on the sofa. There are pillows behind her back and a blanket over her legs. She is staring with enchanted delight at the television where two fat men in luridly colored latex are screaming at each other. One of the men has a shaven head, the other has Pre-Raphaelite locks that tumble to his meaty shoulders.

“Oh, it’s The Slab,” says Jackie, as the screen fills with the image of a bald madman. “Your favorite, darling.” She turns to me. “The Slab is Plum’s favorite.”

“The Slab rocks,” says Plum. “The Slab kicks butt. Big time.” She sort of snarls at me through her fringe. “Your ass belongs to The Slab. He will bring you down. He will nail your worthless hide to the Tree of Woe, mother.”

“Language, darling,” says Jackie.

“Hasn’t she got lovely eyes?” says my nan.

We all stare at her. She’s talking about Plum.

“Me?” says Plum, blushing with disbelief. “Lovely eyes?”

“Have you ever seen this program, Alfie?” my nan asks me, as if I have been deliberately keeping its existence from her. “They’re having a right old punch-up.”

“But it’s all fake, isn’t it?” I sniff.

“It’s not,” says my nan. “Go on, mate-give him one in the cake hole.”

“Nice Greco-Roman style counter!” says Plum, shaking her fist. “Elbow strike to the face. Knee to the gut. Headlock take-down.”

“But it’s not sport, is it?” I say. “Not real sport.”

“It’s sports-entertainment,” says Plum, not taking her eyes from the screen. “Sports-entertainment, they call it.”

“Who’s The Slab fighting, darling?” Jackie asks. Thirty minutes ago she had been asking me about the dialogue of Carson McCullers in the same quietly inquisitive tone.

“Billy Cowboy. He sucks. Big time. His ass belongs to The Slab.”

For several minutes we watch the ludicrous waltz being played out on what I assume is some godforsaken satellite station. In normal circumstances I might have taken control of the situation and turned over to Newsnight. But I am grateful to Plum for bringing my nan her shopping, and I am glad to see my nan looking so happy after her ordeal in hospital. So we watch the pumped-up, buck-naked brutes beating each other up for our entertainment-or pretending to.

The bald wrestler-Plum’s hero, The Slab-appears to have the upper hand. He advances across the ring beating back the longhair-Billy Cowboy, apparently-with a series of forearm smashes that may or may not have connected. Billy Cowboy is soon flat on his back, his overdeveloped body glistening with sweat and baby oil.

“Your cold, candy ass is mine, he-bitch!” The Slab howls at the prostrate Billy Cowboy. “Your giblets belong to the buzzards!” He jabs a furious finger at his rival’s lifeless body. “Know your damn place and zip your damn lip! He-bitch!”

The Slab turns his back on Billy Cowboy to climb the ropes and lecture the crowd, who all appear to be grotesquely overweight children dressed for their yearly trip to the gym.

The referee turns away to consult with a judge at the ringside, and that’s when Billy Cowboy leaps to his feet, the fringes on his boots dancing with excitement, as one of his henchmen pushes a large silver trash can under the ropes.

“Oh yeah,” I say. “As if they would just happen to have a trash can in their corner. For those moments when what you really need is a trash can.”

“Ssshhh!” says my nan.

“Bow down before your master, he-bitch!” The Slab is shouting. “Smell the fear and pass the beer! For The Slab is back in town! Come with me to the Tree of Woe!”

Despite the ten thousand voices bawling at The Slab to turn around, Billy Cowboy manages to creep up behind him and brings the large silver trash can crashing down on his back. The Slab falls from the ropes like a dead bird and for the first time I believe that someone could get slightly hurt out there.

“What’s wrong with the referee?” I demand. “How did he miss that?”

“Come on,” says Plum. “If the referee saw everything, that wouldn’t be true to life, would it?”

Plum and my nan stare at me, amazed that I still don’t get it.

Then the pair of them turn back to the TV screen, as if what is being played out before them is neither sport nor entertainment, but all the injustice of the world.

“A RE YOU SLEEPING WITH OLGA?” Lisa Smith asks me.

“Olga?” I say.

“Olga Simonov. One of your Advanced Beginners.”

Lisa Smith squints at me over the top of her reading glasses. On the other side of her wafer-thin office door, we can hear the laughter of the students, the scuffle of their work boots, the rhythmic chatter of Japanese.

“I know her.”

“I know you do. But how well?”

The heat is on again at Churchill’s. Lisa Smith is watching me like a short-sighted, bilious old hawk. I am the focus of her attention once more because the police are not going to press charges against Hamish for what he did in that public toilet on Highbury Fields. My colleague was so relieved to be off the hook that he immediately walked down to Leicester Square and offered oral sex to an undercover policeman.

I really admire Hamish. There are plenty of cute young boys he could be chasing at Churchill’s-smooth-skinned East Asians, brooding Indians, tactile Italians-but he never goes anywhere near them. Hamish has that enviable ability to separate work and pleasure which I so painfully lack.

“I haven’t slept with Olga. On my life.”

“Is that the truth?”

It’s the truth. I have walked to the top of Primrose Hill with Olga on a Sunday morning-the one time of the week when she is free from the demands of both Churchill’s International Language School and the Eamon de Valera public house. We have held hands as we looked down at the city, and then walked to Camden Town where she let me chastely kiss her on the lips over a full English breakfast.

Olga and I have walked by the canals of north London, looking at the house boats as I slipped my arm around her waist and marveled at the springiness of youth. That’s what you lose as you get older-that springiness. We have wandered the wilder parts of Hampstead Heath on Sunday afternoon, eaten ice cream in the grounds of Kenwood House, and she has told me about her home, her dreams, the boyfriend she left behind. But I haven’t slept with her. Not yet. I’m still waiting for the green light.

Why not? What possible harm could it do?

When I come out of Lisa Smith’s office, I see that Hiroko is waiting for me down the hall. She is pretending to read the notice board-rooms to let, rice cookers for sale, bicycles wanted-but she slowly turns to face me as I approach her, her black hair swinging across her glasses, and I am afraid that she is also going to ask me if I am sleeping with the Advanced Beginner known as Olga Simonov. But she doesn’t.