John Lanchester - Mr. Phillips

The train lurches to a stop and Mr Phillips gets off. It’s cooler outside, so there’s an immediate feeling of relief. It’s self-conscious-making, getting off in a suit and tie and sexy black briefcase in this un-officey part of London, but no one seems to notice. We wouldn’t care so much what people thought of us if we knew how seldom they did. Mrs Phillips used to say that to the boys when they were preoccupied with some schoolboy issue of declining popularity or he-said-I-said-he-said. A temperamental difference was made apparent by this advice. To Mr Phillips the fact of others’ indifference has never brought any comfort.

Further along the platform three girls have also got off the train and are heading for the station exit. It isn’t a school-day so it’s no surprise that they don’t have a school look about them. They’re a classic plain-pretty combination with an extra girl thrown in for ballast: a dumpy, brown-haired girl on the right with baggy jeans worn hanging off her hips so that a two-inch roll of flesh is visible all round her midriff; a tall girl with very straight blonde hair wearing a white T-shirt cut to show off her middle and a grey sort-of-towelling tracksuit bottom with a folded-over elasticized waistband. Mr Phillips can’t see her face but she must be pretty as two of the male worker bees hurtling up the stairs on to the train give her a sideways once-over as they scramble for the closing doors. Mr Phillips finds it impossible to look at her narrow back without wondering what it would be like to lick (salty but in a good way, is his best guess). The third girl is wearing a black shell suit with blue stripes and heavy trainers. Their assumed air of toughness makes them look even younger than they are — sixteen, if that.

As the train pulls out a gust of air sweeps newspaper pages and other litter along the platform. Mr Phillips trots down the stairs and leaves the station. The three girls have already vanished. Mr Phillips thinks for a moment about heading down the road towards Vauxhall, the way he would go if he were driving into work, past the new MI6 headquarters and Lambeth Palace and St Thomas’s hospital where Martin and Thomas were born, along to Waterloo and then across to Southwark Bridge. Instead he turns left and heads towards Battersea Park, catching for a moment, during a gap in traffic, unless he’s imagining it, the sound of forlorn woofings and bayings from the Dogs’ Home down the road.

It is warm in the direct sunlight down at street level. The traffic makes it feel even warmer. Mr Phillips undoes the top button of his shirt and gives his tie a slight downward loosening tug. This is a gesture he has seen in films, indicating freedom and/or fatigue. A truck attempting an illegal right turn blocks the traffic, and Mr Phillips crosses the road in a black cloud of belched diesel fumes. At this time of the day London is all about traffic. In the mostly stationary cars people behave as if they can’t be observed, and because their cars are a private space they tend to behave as if they are in private. What this means in practice is that a very large number of them are picking their noses. Mr Phillips has noticed this before but today the syndrome is especially apparent: in the two hundred yards between the railway station and the park he passes three people picking their noses, all with an air of Zen-like calm. Is this sample statistically significant for how much nose-picking goes on in normal circumstances — in which case Mr Phillips feels a little left out — or is it something that people do especially when they’re driving?

When he finally gets into the park Mr Phillips, after nearly being run over by a rollerblader travelling 20 mph faster than any car he has seen so far today, crosses the outer ring road and heads towards the sound of screeching peacocks. A man in a tracksuit with a very tanned face is practising juggling with torches. A jogger, a tall man wearing white shorts who has a curious prancing stride, lifting his knees high, passes Mr Phillips and gives him a sidelong look as he bounces by. Presumably you don’t see many people in suits carrying briefcases in parks at this time of the day.

At the peacock enclosure a small crowd has gathered to watch the birds. One of the males is displaying, his tail fanned out in too many varieties of blue to name. To Mr Phillips, the intricate pattern of colours would be purely beautiful if it weren’t for the eye motif imprinted on the tail. The hen peacock is sort-of-not-looking but hasn’t wandered away, and the other peacocks and peahens are minding their own business. There is something ridiculous about the male’s display, the lengths to which the bird is having to go to attract attention — but then there always is about males trying to seize the notice of females, whether it’s to do with banging your head against another stag after a 40 mph run-up or simply wearing black clothes and trying to look fascinatingly uninterested in an irresistibly interesting way. Part of Martin’s success with girls must be to do with his mastery of this proactive, highly visible and sexually signalling form of looking bored. And then, he is tremendously good at smoking. That has been an asset too. It’s so often men’s desire not to look ridiculous that makes them look ridiculous.

One of the men standing looking at the peacocks is another jogger, who is holding on to the wire fence and doing stretching exercises while making short puffing exhalations. There are two different sets of woman-and-pram-and-baby combinations, one of them apparently a Filipina nanny and the other either a youngish mother dressed down or an oldish, poshish nanny. An old couple with a small energetic dog, some make of terrier, have stopped for a look and a breather. They are wearing roughly twice as many clothes as everyone else, as old people often do. Mr Phillips is feeling hot in his suit with the buttons undone, but this couple are wearing coats and, in the man’s case, a little tweed hat. One of them will die before the other.

The peacock is making a half-turn now, as if to try and bounce the sunlight off his fan of feathers. He is cawing loudly, giving it all he’s got. Mr Phillips, a regular weekend visitor to the park when the children were small, knows the sound well. Sometimes the cry is like a cat miaowing or caterwauling, the male’s penis abrading the female and triggering its ovulation with the shocking withdrawal of the tom’s penis-bristles. Mr Phillips likes that sound, just as he has always liked overhearing other people make love, especially the mousy-looking couple who had lived next to Mr Phillips and Mrs Phillips at their first marital home. That was a terraced house in Bromley where the sound of the short, shy wife noisily climaxing in a choked wail was a regular feature. It was often bizarrely late, at one or two in the morning; did they wake up and decide to do it, was it an attempt to circumvent insomnia, or were they so self-conscious about the noise that they deliberately tried to stay awake and waited to do it in the vain hope that their neighbours might be asleep? In any case Mr Phillips never saw or thought of them without a sharp jab of envy. Sometimes when Mrs Phillips is away or out he puts a glass to the wall in an attempt to catch the Cartwrights or the Cotts at it. No luck so far. No one ever does it. Mr Phillips decides now that the peacock could also sound like a female voice saying ‘No’, or ‘Help’.

Mr Phillips wanders off past the peacock enclosure and heads in the direction of the lake. Two sweepers, one black and one white, are standing leaning on their brushes talking with their heads very close together in a gesture charged with a sense of secrecy and importance. Beyond them the pond is a muddy grey colour, the shore stained with the white smear of shit left by Canada geese.