John Lanchester - Mr. Phillips

Seventeen thousand people would be a town one and a half times the size of St Ives, where they took their first holiday after Martin was born. So that’s a whole small townful of naked British women among us disguised as normal people. For a moment Mr Phillips is distracted by the idea of his town of nude women going through the day with no men anywhere about, going to do the shopping, washing things, sitting in offices, cleaning windows on those terrifying lift gadgets, their breasts and bums jiggling, some of them looking distinctly chilly which of course makes them go all shivery and pointy-nippled. Did they feel nervous the day the photos came out, of being recognized in the street; or proud, boasting to friends and family? Of course, being recognized could be embarrassing for other people too. I’m sure I know you from somewhere, Mrs Whatsit. Honestly for the life of me I’m quite sure you’re mistaken, Vicar.

Seventeen thousand naked women was a lot of naked women. More than enough for most purposes. Mr Phillips thinks often about what it would be like to have a harem. If you thought about it too much, of course, you would start to become aware of all the possible complications, so the thing was to keep the fantasy as pure as possible: restrict it to the idea of women on tap for sex, as much sex as you wanted, all the time, variety and strangeness freely sanctioned, available. Yum yum! And of course the women would not be women but girls, since that is what men mostly want, all attempts to pretend otherwise notwithstanding. Indeed, one of the first signs of growing older was when you stopped fancying older women. The desperate heat with which Mr Phillips had looked at his teachers, younger friends of his mother’s, anyone, is a still vivid memory. The fantasy was about being taken to bed by an older woman. Mrs Robinson, that was the general idea. ‘Seduced’ was the usual word but it was a bad word since it implied reluctance on the part of him, Mr Phillips. It suggested that he was done unto when all he wanted was to be done. He enters no claims for the originality of the fantasy.

Then he began to notice much younger women, schoolgirls even, sixteen perhaps, but who knew? It’s as if there was one specific moment when you switched from one sort of sexual fantasies to another: you went off to work one day thinking about Anne Bancroft in The Graduate and you came back thinking about Jenny Agutter in The Railway Children. Or perhaps there was a brief, blessed interlude of fancying both or neither, in the way that some men were randy for all women all the time and others seemed to live in a cocoon of sexlessness — which in so many ways would make life simpler. It would be like living in a completely flat country with brilliant public transport and amenities and nothing to complain about.

Eventually, with sadness, he recognized this fantasy switch as a sign of ageing: his genes wanted to impregnate some good young breeding stock and thereby allow their vehicle, his body, to go out on a high note. As far as Mr Phillips is concerned, that’s the beauty of genes, you can blame them for almost anything. The voice inside which says Get a younger one is like the moment in the film where Sean Connery is a policeman investigating a sex crime and he says to his wife, ‘Why aren’t you beautiful?’ Beautiful here was another word for young.

Mr Phillips can remember what must have been almost his first time, the onset of the Younger Woman. She had been a barmaid at the Frog and Parrot on a quiz night about twenty years before, the days when he used to do that sort of thing. She was reaching down to stack glasses on a circular rack inside a dish-washer, her long skirt riding slightly at her waist, her way of folding herself up into a crouch somehow impossible, like origami. Mr Phillips had felt an awful gust of her youth sweep over him, a pure lust to penetrate and corrupt. What was it Tony Curtis said, when asked the secret of eternal youth? ‘The saliva of girls.’ The next thing you knew you were slowing down as you drove past bus stops.

So the harem would have girls for sex. But thinking more, you realized it could not stop there. You would need someone to cook, like Mrs Mitchinson whom Mr Phillips had worked with at Grimshaw’s and who was forever talking about, thinking about, shopping for and cooking, food. Her husband was a small, round, very silent man who always seemed to be smiling. Mr Phillips had only eaten her food twice and still remembered it — not that it was fancy or elaborate, roast chicken and apple tart the once, fish cakes and home-made ice cream the next, but so vivid, like alchemy. As for the sex part, it wasn’t what you would first think of with Mrs Mitchinson, she was low and round like her husband, with a bright red face, one of those Russian dolls, but it would be clearly part of the deal and you would have to keep your side of the bargain, not every night of course, that was the whole point of the harem arrangement, but at least every six months or so. Although perhaps you would have an off-limits granny or two, to keep order and boss the servants (who would be part of the harem too) and help with the inevitable baby-sitting. He would have his secretary Karen, obviously, to help with accounts and household expenses (Mrs Phillips would appreciate that), but also for sex, perhaps at the same time, having her bent over the desk and straightening out papers afterwards — not something Mr Phillips had thought about less than ten thousand times. He would have that Clarissa Colingford, you needed a touch of glamour. Sharon Mitchell would be a blast from the past. Perhaps Tricia the cleaning lady. There would be Superman’s girlfriend, from the TV series, he couldn’t remember her name. But Mrs Phillips would always be wife number one. He owed her that.

A train, one of the small, boxy, graceless, modern commuter types, appears around the bend four hundred yards away and slows into the station. The platformful of passengers assembles around the doors, which wheeze open in a row, and a few dozen people hop out of their carriages, minding the gap, before a couple of hundred others surge onto the train. Like most experienced commuters, Mr Phillips has a variety of techniques for seizing somewhere to sit, sneaking in around the side of the door and sliding into one of the jump-seats or barrelling down to the far end of the compartment, through the thickets of passengers, briefcases, newspapers, outstretched legs. Today though he is content to strap-hang, or not worked-up enough to fight for a seat. The battle for a space prepared you for, was an allegory or image of, the daily struggle. You could argue that those who fought their way to the seats were the people who needed them least. To them that hath shall be given, that was the deal.

Clinging to his metal post by the door Mr Phillips looks around the compartment and wonders if he is the only person here who isn’t on his way to work. Eighty percent of the men in the compartment are wearing suits and ties. They all look tired. Office people heading in to work look tired at the beginning of the day and febrilely energetic, in a hurry to escape, on the way home. It’s as if the thought of work drains them of vigour whereas leaving work gives them a jolt of it. Mr Phillips is no stranger to that feeling himself: his heart is always lighter on the trip down the steps from Clapham Junction at the end of the day than on the trip up them at the beginning.

A young man sits across from him in jeans and a black T-shirt with the words Rage Against the Machine written on it. He chews gum mechanically, like a cow chewing the cud, and he is stubbly, looking into space; perhaps he isn’t going in to work. But no, the gum chewer reaches into a back pocket and takes out a tiny mobile phone. Like every mobile phone conversation Mr Phillips has ever heard, this call is largely about the fact of its own occurrence. He wants to eavesdrop on people saying ‘Sell, sell, sell! Unload it all now!’ or ‘What do you mean, am I fucking Janet?’ or ‘It’s you who’s the spoilt one!’ but all he ever hears is ‘I’m at the bus stop / in the street / on the mobile / on my way / late / early / nearly there’ or as in this case: