Julian Barnes: Pulse

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘For sure.’

‘No, “for sure” is American. English is “yes”.’

She looked at him, as if to say, Why are you now correcting my English?

‘Yes,’ she repeated.

‘When I didn’t have a condom and you said it was OK, did you mean it was OK then or OK always?’

‘OK always.’

‘Blimey, do you know what a twelvepack costs?’

That had been the wrong thing to say, even he could see that. Christ, maybe she’d had some terrible abortion, or been raped or something.

‘So you can’t have children?’

‘No. Do you hate me?’

‘Andrea, for God’s sake.’ He took her hand. ‘I’ve got two kids already. Point is, is it OK with you?’

She looked down. ‘No. Is not OK with me. It makes me very unhappy.’

‘Well, we could… I don’t know, see the doctor. See an expert.’ He imagined the experts over here were more clued-up.

‘No, no expert. NO EXPERT.’

‘Fine, no experts.’ He thought: adoption? But can I afford another, with my outgoings?

He stopped buying condoms. He started asking questions, as tactfully as he could. But tact was like flirting: either you had it, or you didn’t. No, that wasn’t right. It was just easier to be tactful if you didn’t care if you knew things or not; harder when you cared.

‘Why are you now asking these questions?’

‘Am I?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Sorry.’

But he was mainly sorry that she’d noticed. Also sorry that he wouldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. When they first got together, he liked the fact that he didn’t know anything about her; it made things different, fresher. Gradually, she’d learnt about him, while he hadn’t learnt about her. Why not continue like that? Because you always fuck things up , his wife, ex-wife, whispered. No, he didn’t accept that. If you fall in love, you want to know. Good, bad, indifferent. Not that you’re looking for bad things. That’s just what falling in love means, Vernon said to himself. Or thinking about falling in love. Anyway, Andrea was a nice person, he was certain about that. So what was wrong with finding out about a nice person behind her back?

They all knew him at The Right Plaice: Mrs Ridgewell the manageress, Jill the other waitress, and old Herbert, who owned the restaurant but only dropped in when he fancied a free bite. Vernon chose a time when the lunch trade was starting, and walked past the counter towards the toilets. The room – more of a cupboard, really – where the staff left their coats and bags was just opposite the gents. Vernon went in, found Andrea’s bag, took her keys, and came back out flapping his hands as if to say, That whirry old hand-drier never quite does the trick, does it?

He winked at Andrea, walked to the hardware shop, complained about clients who had only one set of keys, strolled around for a bit, picked up the new set, went back to The Right Plaice, prepared a line about the chilly weather playing havoc with his bladder, didn’t need to use it, put her keys back, and ordered a cappuccino.

The first time he went, it was the sort of drizzly afternoon when no one looks at anyone who’s passing. A chap in a raincoat goes up a concrete path to a front door with frosted glass panels. Inside, he opens another door, sits on a bed, gets up suddenly, smoothes out the dent in the bed, turns, sees the microwave isn’t rubbish actually, puts his hand under the pillow, feels one of her nightdresses, looks at the clothes hanging from the picture rail, touches a dress she hasn’t worn before, deliberately doesn’t let himself look at the pictures on the little dressing table, sees himself out, locks up behind him. No one did anything wrong, did they?

The second time, he examined the Virgin Mary and the half-dozen pictures. He didn’t pick anything up, just went down on his haunches and looked at the photos in their plastic frames. That must be Mum, he thought, looking at the tight perm and big glasses. And there’s little Andrea, all blonde and a bit chubby. And is that a brother or a boyfriend? And here’s somebody’s birthday with so many faces you can’t tell who’s important and who isn’t. He looked again at the six-or seven-year-old Andrea – just a bit older than Melanie – and took the image home in his head.

The third time, he eased open the top drawer; it stuck, and Andrea’s mum toppled over. There was mainly underwear, most of it familiar. Then he went to the bottom drawer, because that’s where secrets are normally kept, and found only sweaters and a couple of scarves. But in the middle drawer, under some shirts, were three items he laid on the bed in the same order, and even the same distance apart, as he found them. On the right was a medal, in the middle a photo framed in metal, on the left a passport. The photo showed four girls in a swimming pool, their arms round one another, a lane-divider with cork floats separating one pair from the other. They were all smiling up at the camera, and had wrinkles in their white rubber caps. He instantly picked out Andrea, second from the left. The medal showed a swimmer diving into a pool, with some lines of German writing on the back and a date, 1986. How old would she have been then – eighteen, twenty? The passport confirmed it: date of birth 1967, which made her forty. It said she was born in Halle, so she was German.

And that was that. No diary, no letters, no vibrator. No secrets. He was in love – no, he was thinking about being in love – with a woman who had once won a swimming medal. Where was the harm in knowing that? Not that she swam any more. And now he remembered it, she’d got all jumpy at the beach when Gary and Melanie made her go to the water’s edge and started splashing around. Maybe she didn’t want to be reminded. Or perhaps it was quite different, swimming in a competition pool versus having a dip in the sea. Like ballet dancers not wanting to do the sort of dancing everyone else did.

That evening he was deliberately jolly when they met, even a bit silly, but she seemed to notice, so he stopped. After a bit, he felt normal again. Almost normal, anyway. When he’d first started going out with girls, he found there were moments when he suddenly thought: I don’t understand anything at all. With Karen, for instance: they’d been jogging along nicely, no pressure, having fun, when she’d asked, ‘So where’s all this leading, then?’ As if there were only two choices: up the aisle, or up the garden path. Other times, with other women, you’d say something, just something ordinary, and – splash – you were in deep water.

They were in bed, Andrea’s nightie pulled up around her waist in the fat roll he was quite used to feeling against his belly, and he was going it a bit, when she shifted her legs and crushed him with them, like a nutcracker, he thought.

‘Mmm, big strong swimmer’s legs,’ he muttered.

She didn’t answer, but he knew she’d heard. He carried on, but could tell from her body that her mind wasn’t on things. Afterwards, they lay on their backs, and he said some stuff, but she didn’t pick up on anything. Oh well, work tomorrow, thought Vernon. He went to sleep.

When he dropped by The Right Plaice the next evening to pick Andrea up, Mrs Ridgewell said she’d called in sick. He rang her mobile but she didn’t answer, so he texted her. Then he went round to the house and tried her bell. He left it a couple of hours, phoned again, rang the bell, then let himself in.

Her room was quite neat, and quite empty. No clothes on the picture rail, no photos on the little dressing table. Something made him open the microwave and look inside; all he saw was the circular plate. On the bed were two envelopes, one for the landlord, with keys and money inside by the feel of it, the other for Mrs Ridgewell. Nothing for him.