David Nicholls - One Day

He shook his head, and told himself it wasn’t that disastrous. If he turned and looked at himself suddenly, and held his head in a certain way, and inhaled, he could still pass for, say, thirty-seven? He retained enough vanity to know that he was still an unusually good-looking man, but no-one was calling him beautiful anymore, and he’d always thought he would age better than this. He had hoped to age like a movie star: wiry, aquiline, grey-templed, sophisticated. Instead he was ageing like a TV presenter. An ex-TV presenter. A twice-married ex-TV presenter who ate far too much cheese.

Emma came in, naked from the bedroom, and he began to brush his teeth, another obsession; he felt like he had an old mouth, like it would never be clean again.

‘I’m getting fat,’ he mumbled, mouth full of foam.

‘No you’re not,’ she said without much conviction.

‘I am — look.’

‘So don’t eat so much cheese then,’ she said.

‘I thought you said I wasn’t getting fat.’

‘If you feel you are, then you are.’

‘And I don’t eat too much cheese. My metabolism is slowing down, that’s all.’

‘So do some exercise. Go to the gym again. Come swimming with me.’

‘No time, have I?’ While the toothbrush was removed from his mouth she kissed him consolingly. ‘Look, I’m a mess,’ he mumbled.

‘I’ve told you before, darling, you have beautiful breasts,’ and she laughed, poked him in the buttock and stepped into the shower. He rinsed, sat on the bathroom chair and watched her.

‘We should go and see that house this afternoon.’

Emma groaned over the sound of the water. ‘Do we have to?’

‘Well I don’t know how else we’re going to find—’

‘Okay. Okay! We’ll go and see the house.’

She continued to shower with her back to him and he stood and stalked into the bedroom to get dressed. They were scrappy and irritable once again, and he told himself that it was because of the strain of trying to find a place to live. The flat had already been sold and a large part of their possessions placed into storage just to make room for the two of them. Unless they found somewhere soon they would have to rent, and all this brought its tensions and anxieties.

But he knew that something else was going on and sure enough, as Emma waited for the kettle and read the paper, she suddenly said—

‘I’ve just got my period.’

‘When?’ he asked.

‘Just now,’ she said, with studied calm. ‘I could feel it coming on.’

‘Oh well,’ he said, and Emma continued to make coffee, her back to him.

He stood to wrap his arms around her waist and lightly kissed the nape of her neck, still damp from the shower. She didn’t look up from the newspaper. ‘Doesn’t matter. We’ll try again, yeah?’ he said, standing there with his chin on her shoulder for a while. It was a winsome, uncomfortable stance, and when she turned the page of the paper, he took it as his cue to return to the table.

They sat and read, Emma the current affairs, Dexter the sport, both taut with irritation while Emma tutted and shook her head in that maddening way she sometimes had. The Butler Inquiry into the origins of the war dominated the headlines, and he could feel her building up to some kind of topical political comment. He focussed on the latest from Wimbledon, but—

‘It’s weird, isn’t it? How there’s this war going on, and virtually no protest? I mean you think there’d be marches or something, wouldn’t you?’

That tone of voice riled him too. It was the one he remembered from all those years ago: her student voice, superior and self-righteous. Dexter made an uncontentious noise, neither challenging nor accepting, in the hope that this would be enough. Time passed, pages of the newspaper were turned.

‘I mean you’d think there’d be something like the anti-Vietnam movement or something, but nothing. Just that one march, then everyone shrugged and went home. Even the students aren’t protesting!’

‘What’s it got to do with the students?’ he said, mildly enough, he thought.

‘It’s traditional, isn’t it? That students are politically engaged. If we were still students, we’d be protesting.’ She went back to the paper. ‘ I would anyway.’

She was provoking him. Fine, if that’s what she wanted. ‘So why aren’t you?’

She looked at him sharply. ‘What?’

‘Protesting. If you feel so strongly.’

‘That’s exactly my point. Maybe I should be! That was exactly my observation! If there was some kind of cohesive movement. .’

He returned to the paper, resolving to keep quiet but unable to do so. ‘Or maybe it’s because people don’t mind.’

‘What?’ She looked at him, eyes narrowed.

‘The war. I mean if people were really affronted by it there’d be protests, but maybe people are glad that he’s gone. I don’t know if you noticed, Em, but he wasn’t a very nice man. .’

‘You can be glad Saddam’s gone and still be against the war.’

‘That’s my point. It’s ambiguous, isn’t it?’

‘What, you think it’s a fairly just war?’

‘Not me necessarily. People.’

‘But what about you?’ She closed the newspaper, and he felt a genuine sense of unease. ‘What do you think?’

‘What do I think?’

‘What do you think?’

He sighed. Too late now, no turning back. ‘I just think it’s pretty rich that a lot of people on the Left were against the war when the people that Saddam was murdering were exactly the people the Left should have been supporting.’

‘Like who?’

‘Trade unionists, feminists. Homosexuals.’ Should he say the Kurds? Was that correct? He decided to chance it. ‘The Kurds!’

Emma snuffled righteously. ‘Oh, you think we’re fighting this war to protect trade unionists?’ You think Bush invaded because he was worried about the plight of Iraqi women? Or gays?’

‘All I’m saying is that the anti-war march would have had a bit more moral credibility if the same people had protested against the Iraqi regime in the first place! They protested about apartheid, why not Iraq?’

‘. . and Iran? And China and Russia and North Korea and Saudi Arabia! You can’t protest against everyone.’

‘Why not? You used to!’

‘That’s beside the point!’

‘Is it? When I first knew you, all you did was boycott things. You couldn’t eat a bloody Mars Bar without a lecture on personal responsibility. It’s not my fault you’ve become complacent. .’

He returned to his ridiculous sports news with a little self-satisfied smirk, and Emma felt her face beginning to redden. ‘I have not become. . Don’t change the subject! The point is, it’s ridiculous to claim that this war is about human rights, or WMDs or anything like that. It’s about one thing and one thing only. .’

He groaned. It was inevitable now: she was going to say ‘oil’. Please, please don’t say ‘oil’. .

‘. . nothing to do with human rights. It’s entirely to do with oil!’

‘Well isn’t that a pretty good reason?’ he said, standing and deliberately scraping his chair. ‘Or don’t you use oil, Em?’

As last words go, he felt this was pretty effective, but it was hard to walk away from an argument in this bachelor flat that suddenly felt too small, cluttered and scuffed. Certainly Emma wasn’t going to let a fatuous remark like that go unanswered. She followed him into the hall, but he was waiting for her, turning on her with a ferocity that unsettled them both.

‘I tell you what this is really about. You’ve had your period and you’re angry about it and you’re taking it out on me! Well I don’t like being harangued while I’m trying to eat my breakfast!’