by Ian Mcewan
Henry resists the temptation to sit down. Instead he steps out to take a look at the other games—he's always hoping to learn something from the classier players. But the place is still deserted. The club members are either massing against the war, or unable to find a way through central London. As he comes back along the courts, he lifts his T-shirt and examines his chest. There's a dense black bruise to the left of his sternum. It hurts when he extends his left arm. Staring at the discoloured skin helps focus his troubled feelings about Baxter. Did he, Henry Perowne, act unprofessionally, using his medical knowledge to undermine a man suffering from a neurodegenerative disorder? Yes. Did the threat of a beating excuse him? Yes, no, not entirely. But this haematoma, the colour of an aubergine, the diameter of a plum—just a taste of what might have come his way—says yes, he's absolved. Only a fool would stand there and take a kicking when there was a way out. So what's troubling him? Strangely, for all the violence, he almost liked Baxter. That's to put it too strongly. He was intrigued by him, by his hopeless situation, and his refusal to give up. And there was a real intelligence there, and dismay that he was living the wrong life. And he, Henry, was obliged, or forced, to abuse his own power—but he allowed himself to be placed in that position. His attitude was wrong from the start, insufficiently defensive; his manner may have seemed pompous, or disdainful. Provocative perhaps. He could have been friendlier, even made himself accept a cigarette; he should have relaxed, from a position of strength, instead of which he was indignant and combative. On the other hand, there were three of them, they wanted his cash, they were eager for violence, they were planning it before they got out of their car. The loss of a wing mirror was cover for a mugging.
He arrives back outside the court, his unease intact, just as Strauss appears. His thick shoulders are drenched from his session at the washbasin, and his good humour is restored.
“OK,” he says as Perowne goes to the service box. “No more Mister Nice Guy.”
Perowne finds it disabling, to have been left alone with his thoughts; just before he serves, he remembers his game plan. But the fourth game falls into no obvious pattern. He takes two points, then Strauss gets into the game and pulls ahead, three-two. There are long, scrappy rallies, with a run of unforced errors on both sides which bring the score to seven-all, Perowne to serve. He takes the last two points without trouble. Two games each.
They take a quick break to gather themselves for the final battle. Perowne isn't tired—winning games has been less physically demanding than losing them. But he feels drained of that fierce desire to beat Jay and would be happy to call it a draw and get on with his day. All morning he's been in some form of combat. But there's no chance of backing out. Strauss is enjoying the moment, playing it up, and saying as he goes to his position, “Fight to the death,” and “No pasaran!”
So, with a suppressed sigh, Perowne serves and, because he's run out of ideas, falls back on the same old lob. In fact, the moment he hits the ball, he knows it's near-perfect, curving high, set to drop sharply into the corner. But Strauss is in a peculiar, elated mood and he does an extraordinary thing. With a short running jump, he springs two, perhaps three feet into the air, and with racket fully extended, his thick, muscular back gracefully arched, his teeth bared, his head flung back and his left arm raised for balance, he catches the ball just before the peak of its trajectory with a whip-like backhand smash that shoots the ball down to hit the front wall barely an inch above the tin—a beautiful, inspired, unreturnable shot. Perowne, who's barely moved from his spot, instantly says so. A fabulous shot. And suddenly, with the serve now in his opponent's hands, all over again, he wants to win.
Both men raise their games. Every point is now a drama, a playlet of sudden reversals, and all the seriousness and fury of the third game's long rally is resumed. Oblivious to their protesting hearts, they hurl themselves into every corner of the court. There are no unforced errors, every point is wrested, bludgeoned from the other. The server gasps out the score, but otherwise they don't speak. And as the score rises, neither man moves more than one point ahead. There's nothing at stake—they're not on the club's squash ladder. There's only the irreducible urge to win, as biological as thirst. And it's pure, because no one's watching, no one cares, not their friends, their wives, their children. It isn't even enjoyable. It might become so in retrospect—and only to the winner. If a passer-by were to pause by the glass back wall to watch, she'd surely think these elderly players were once rated, and even now still have a little fire. She might also wonder if this is a grudge match, there's such straining desperation in the play.
What feels like half an hour is in fact twelve minutes. At seven-all Perowne serves from the left box and wins the point. He crosses the court to serve for the match. His concentration is good, his confidence is up and so he plays a forceful backhand serve, at a narrow angle, close to the wall. Strauss slices it with his backhand, almost a tennis stroke, so that it drops to the front of the court. It's a good shot, but Perowne is in position and nips forward for the kill. He catches the ball on the rise and smashes it on his forehand, into the left rear corner. End of game, and victory. The instant he makes his stroke, he steps back—and collides with Strauss. It's a savage jolt, and both men reel and for a moment neither can talk.
Then Strauss, speaking quietly through heavy breathing, says, “It's my point, Henry.”
And Perowne says, “Jay, it's over. Three games to two.”
They pause again to take the measure of this calamitous difference.
Perowne says, “What were you doing at the front wall?”
Jay walks away from him, to the box where, if they play the point again, he'll receive the serve. He's wanting to move things on—his way. He says, “I thought you'd play a drop shot to your right.”
Henry tries to smile. His mouth is dry, his lips won't easily slide over his teeth. “So I fooled you. You were out of position. You couldn't have returned it.”
The anaesthetist shakes his head with the earthbound calm his patients find so reassuring. But his chest is heaving. “It came off the back wall. Plenty of bounce. Henry, you were right in my path.”
This deployment of each other's first name is tipped with poison. Henry can't resist it again himself. He speaks as though reminding Strauss of a long-forgotten fact. “But Jay. You couldn't've reached that ball.”
Strauss holds Perowne's gaze and says quietly, “Henry, I could.”
The injustice of the claim is so flagrant that Perowne can only repeat himself. “You were way out of position.”
Strauss says, “That's not against the rules.” Then he adds, “Come on, Henry. I gave you the benefit of the doubt last time.”
So he thinks he's calling in a debt. Perowne's tone of reasonableness becomes even harder to sustain. He says quickly, “There was no doubt.”
“Sure there was.”
“Look, Jay. This isn't some kind of equal-opportunity forum. We take the case on its merits.”
“I agree. No need to give a lecture.”
Perowne's falling pulse rises briefly at the reproof—a moment's sudden anger is like an extra heartbeat, an unhelpful stab of arrhythmia. He has things to do. He needs to drive to the fishmonger's, go home and shower, and head out again, come back, cook a meal, open wine, greet his daughter, his father-in-law, reconcile them. But more than that, he needs what's already his; he fought back from two games down, and believes he's proved to himself something essential in his own nature, something familiar that he's forgotten lately. Now his opponent wants to steal it, or deny it. He leans his racket in the corner by his valuables to demonstrate that the game is over. Likewise, Strauss stands resolutely in the service box. They've never had anything like this before. Is it possibly about something else? Jay is looking at him with a sympathetic half-smile through pursed lips—an entirely concocted expression designed to further his claim. Henry can see himself—his pulse rate spikes again at the thought—crossing the parquet in four steps to gi
ve that complacent expression a brisk backhand slap. Or he could shrug and leave the court. But his victory is meaningless without consent. Fantasy apart, how can they possibly resolve this, with no referee, no common power?
Neither man has spoken for half a minute. Perowne spreads his hands and says, in a tone as artificial as Strauss's smile, “I don't know what to do, Jay. I just know I hit a winner.”
But Strauss knows exactly what to do. He raises the stakes. “Henry, you were facing the front. You didn't see the ball come off the back wall. I did because I was going towards it. So the question is this. Are you calling me a liar?”
This is how it ends.
“Fuck you, Strauss,” Perowne says and picks up his racket and goes to the service box.
And so they play the let, and Perowne serves the point again, and as he suspected might happen, he loses it, then he loses the next three points and before he knows it, it's all over, he's lost, and he's back in the corner picking up his wallet, phone, keys and watch. Outside the court, he pulls on his trousers and ties them with the chandler's cord, straps on his watch and puts on his sweater and fleece. He minds, but less than he did two minutes ago. He turns to Strauss who is just coming off the court.
“You were bloody good. I'm sorry about the dispute.”
“Fuck that. It could've been anyone's game. One of our best.”
They zip their rackets into their cases and sling them over their shoulders. Freed from red lines and the glaring white walls and the rules of the game, they walk along the courts to the Coke machine. Strauss buys a can for himself. Perowne doesn't want one. You have to be an American to want, as an adult, anything quite so sweet.
As they leave the building Strauss, pausing to drink deep, says, “They're all going down with the flu and I'm on call tonight.”
Perowne says, “Have you seen next week's list? Another heavy one.”
“Yeah. That old lady and her astrocytoma. She's not going to make it, is she?”
They are standing on the steps above the pavement on Huntley Street. There's more cloud now, and the air is cold and damp. It could well rain on the demonstration. The lady's name is Viola, her tumour is in the pineal region. She's seventy-eight, and it turns out that in her working life she was an astronomer, something of a force at Jodrell Bank in the sixties. On the ward, while the other patients watch TV, she reads books on mathematics and string theory. Aware of the lowering light, a winter's late-morning dusk, and not wanting to part on a bad note, a malediction, Perowne says, “I think we can help her.”
Understanding him, Strauss grimaces, raises a hand in farewell, and the two men go their separate ways.
Three
Back in the padded privacy of his damaged car, its engine idling inaudibly in deserted Huntley Street, he tries Rosalind again. Her meeting has ended, and she's gone straight in to see the managing director and is still with him, after forty-five minutes. The temporary secretary asks him to hold while she goes to find out more. While he waits, Perowne leans against the headrest and closes his eyes. He feels the itch of dried sweat on his face where he shaved. His toes, which he wiggles experimentally, seem encased in liquid, rapidly cooling. The importance of the game has faded to nothing, and in its place is a craving for sleep. Just ten minutes. It's been a tough week, a disturbed night, a hard game. Without looking, he finds the button that secures the car. The door locks are activated in rapid sequence, little resonating clunks, four semiquavers that lull him further. An ancient evolutionary dilemma, the need to sleep, the fear of being eaten. Resolved at last, by central locking.
Through the tiny receiver he holds to his left ear he hears the murmur of the open-plan office, the soft rattle of computer keys, and nearby a man's plaintive voice saying to someone out of earshot, “He's not denying it . . . but he doesn't deny it . . . Yes, I know. Yes, that's our problem. He won't deny a thing.”
With eyes closed he sees the newspaper offices, the curled-edged coffee-stained carpet tiles, the ferocious heating system that bleeds boiling rusty water, the receding phalanxes of fluorescent lights illuminating the chaotic corners, the piles of paper that no one touches, for no one cares to know what they contain, what they are for, and the over-inhabited desks pushed too close together. It's the spirit of the school art room. Everyone too hard-pressed to start sorting through the old dust heaps. The hospital is the same. Rooms full of junk, cupboards and filing cabinets that no one dares open. Ancient equipment in cream tin-plate housing, too heavy, too mysterious to eject. Sick buildings, in use for too long, that only demolition can cure. Cities and states beyond repair. The whole world resembling Theo's bedroom. A race of extraterrestrial grown-ups is needed to set right the general disorder, then put everyone to bed for an early night. God was once supposed to be a grown-up, but in disputes He childishly took sides. Then sending us an actual child, one of His own—the last thing we needed. A spinning rock already swarming with orphans . . .
“Mr. Perowne?”
“What? Yes?”
“Your wife will phone you as soon as she's free, in about half an hour.”
Revived, he puts on his seatbelt, makes a three-point turn and heads towards Marylebone. The marchers are still in packed ranks on Gower Street, but the Tottenham Court Road is now open, with attack-waves of traffic surging northwards. He joins one briefly, then turns west and then north again and soon he's where Goodge and Charlotte Streets meet—a spot he's always liked, where the affairs of utility and pleasure condense to make colour and space brighter: mirrors, flowers, soaps, newspapers, electrical plugs, house paints, key cutting urbanely interleaved with expensive restaurants, wine and tapas bars, hotels. Who was the American novelist who said a man could be happy living on Charlotte Street? Daisy will have to remind him again. So much commerce in a narrow space makes regular hillocks of bagged garbage on the pavements. A stray dog is worrying the sacks—gnawing filth whitens the teeth. Before turning west again, he sees way down the end of the street, his square, and on its far side, his house framed by bare trees. The blinds on the third floor are drawn—Theo is still asleep. Henry can still remember it, the exquisite tumbling late-morning doze of adolescence, and he never questions his son's claim to those hours. They won't last.
He crosses sombre Great Portland Street—it's the stone façades that make it seem always dusk here—and on Portland Place passes a Falun Gong couple keeping vigil across the road from the Chinese embassy. Belief in a miniaturised universe ceaselessly rotating nine times forwards, nine times backwards in the practitioner's lower abdomen is threatening the totalitarian order. Certainly, it's a non-material view. The state's response is beatings, torture, disappearances and murder, but the followers now outnumber the Chinese Communist Party. China is simply too populous, Perowne often thinks whenever he comes this way and sees the protest, to maintain itself in paranoia for much longer. Its economy's growing too fast, the modern world's too connected for the Party to keep control. Now you see mainland Chinese in Harrods, soaking up the luxury goods. Soon it will be ideas, and something will have to give. And here's the Chinese state meanwhile, giving philosophical materialism a bad name.
Then the embassy with its sinister array of roof aerials is behind him and he's passing through the orderly grid of medical streets west of Portland Place—private clinics and chintzy waiting rooms with bow-legged reproduction furniture and Country Life magazines. It is faith, as powerful as any religion, that brings people to Harley Street. Over the years his hospital has taken in and treated—free of charge, of course—scores of cases botched by some of the elderly overpaid incompetents around here. Waiting at red lights he watches three figures in black burkhas emerge from a taxi on Devonshire Place. They huddle together on the pavement comparing the number on a door with a card one of them holds. The one in the middle, the likely invalid, whose form is somewhat bent, totters as she clings to the forearms of her companions. The three black columns, stark against the canyon of creamy stucco and brick, heads bobbing, clearly arguin
g about the address, have a farcical appearance, like kids larking about at Halloween. Or like Theo's school production of Macbeth when the hollowed trees of Birnam Wood waited in the wings to clump across the stage to Dunsinane. They are sisters perhaps, bringing their mother to her last chance. The lights remain stubbornly red. Perowne guns the engine—but gently—then pulls the gear stick into neutral. What's he doing, holding down the clutch, knotting up his tender quadriceps? He can't help his distaste, it's visceral. How dismal, that anyone should be obliged to walk around so entirely obliterated. At least these ladies don't have the leather beaks. They really turn his stomach. And what would the relativists say, the cheerful pessimists from Daisy's college? That it's sacred, traditional, a stand against the fripperies of Western consumerism? But the men, the husbands—Perowne has had dealings with various Saudis in his office—wear suits, or trainers and tracksuits, or baggy shorts and Rolexes, and are entirely charming and worldly and thoroughly educated in both traditions. Would they care to carry the folkloric torch, and stumble about in the dark at midday?
The changed lights at last, the shift of scene—new porticoes, different waiting rooms—and the mild demands of traffic on his concentration edge him out of these constricting thoughts. He's caught himself in a nascent rant. Let Islamic dress codes be! What should he care about burkas? Veils for his irritation. No, irritation is too narrow a word. They and the Chinese Republic serve the gently tilting negative pitch of his mood. Saturdays he's accustomed to being thoughtlessly content, and here he is for the second time this morning sifting the elements of a darker mood. What's giving him the shivers? Not the lost game, or the scrape with Baxter, or even the broken night, though they all must have some effect. Perhaps it's merely the prospect of the afternoon when he'll head out towards the immensity of suburbs around Perivale. While there was a squash game posed between himself and his visit, he felt protected. Now there's only the purchase of fish. His mother no longer possesses the faculties to anticipate his arrival, recognise him when he's with her, or remember him after he's left. An empty visit. She doesn't expect him and she wouldn't be disappointed if he failed to show up. It's like taking flowers to a graveside—the true business is with the past. But she can raise a cup of tea to her mouth, and though she can't put a name to his face, or conjure any association, she's content with him sitting there, listening to her ramble. She's content with anyone. He hates going to see her, he despises himself if he stays away too long.
