This is the Life

by Joseph O'Neill

  Of course there was no stopping. We talked about what had attracted us to each other, we hinted lewdly at the sexual times we had enjoyed; and the more we drank, the better it all seemed. All the while I was called on by miniature domestic memories – how daintily pleasing her waking-up routine was (after she wordlessly got out of bed I would hear the click of the kettle, then the rushing of water as she performed her face-wash, the second click of the kettle as the water came to the boil, the splat of the tea-bag in the sink, the padding of bare feet, the groan of the mattress as she rejoined me in bed, and, finally, the small slurp she made sitting up to drink next to my sleeping form), how neatly she piled her jumpers in her cupboard, how thoughtful she had always been to ensure that there was enough hot water for my bath. By the time we had finished the second bottle and had ordered a final carafe, I was beginning to see things in a new light. Susan had a lovely colour, and I was sure that she wore a new pair of glasses. Also, her hair was not quite as lank as I remembered it. Now crinkles ran through it, and although the effect was unattractively artificial, I softened at the thought of her earnestly going to the hairdresser and doing her best to enliven her appearance. Poor Suzy!

  Emptying the carafe, nothing was really said. We contented ourselves with playing games with our eyes, fluttering and darting little looks and peeks at one another, exchanging momentary but significant gazes. By now the revenants of our old selves had vacated the table and just the two of us were left, breathing in air sweet with oxygen. We paid the waiter (fifty-fifty, Susan insisted) and went to a nearby pub for a final drink. There was a crush of customers but we found an unoccupied corner behind a man with a black, breathless dog. When I returned from the bar with the drinks I squeezed myself between Susan and the dog-owner. Her thigh made tingling contact with mine and soon my arm was around her shoulder and she was bunched up against me, nice and close. She said, Oh Jimmy, and we kissed.

  At that moment I was presented with an opportunity to extricate myself from my predicament (I say predicament because, although I was at an advanced stage of intoxication, it was plain to me that the situation was running away from me, and that unless I acted decisively it would leave me behind completely). Excusing myself, I walked carefully and unsteadily to the gents. My head was filled with a fog as I laboured to think of what to do next. Relieving myself, I clumsily tried to identify and weigh up the elements due for consideration. On the one hand I felt a strong desire, an imperative, for a sexual encounter. I recognized that it was not often that such a chance came my way. On the other hand, I knew what disappointment and mayhem this type of encounter would in all probability lead to, given my inebriation and the problematical background to the situation. I looked at myself in the mirror above the urinal and was drunkenly struck by the strangeness of my face: whose visage was that? Mine? Was I inseparable from those eyes and chins? That nose – did I carry it around all day? How on earth did the air that I sucked through it fuel my body? What extraordinary mechanisms I housed! How miraculous everything was! Then, washing my hands, another factor entered my deliberations: I felt sorry for Susan. It is true, I did; my heart went out to her. She had made such an effort this evening, and if anyone deserved a little romantic success, a little happiness, it was her. I splashed cold water on my cheeks and neck and placed my face in the hot jet of air expelled by the drying machine on the wall. It would be uncharitable, I decided, to refuse her advances.

  Susan was waiting for me outside, her handbag crossed over her torso to deter snatchers. She had removed her glasses and was looking, as far as I was able to tell, joyous. At once I hailed a cab and we tumbled together into its dark, comfortable interior.

  ‘Stockwell,’ I said to the driver.

  A delicious tension held sway between us. Things were acutely understood but left unsaid. We briefly regarded one other with meaningful eyes then sat back to enjoy the ride, swaddled in our overcoats, our hands in our pockets. I always like a late journey home in a safe and roomy black cab on such nights, dark nights sweet and melting as black gâteau, with me in the back luxuriating in the voluptuous swings and curves taken by the big taxi. After ten minutes we rolled up to my front door and I said to Susan, Come on, and unloaded her from the taxi. She said, Just for a coffee then, I really must go. Heavy-legged, we made our way into the flat. Susan fell on to the sofa while I made coffee, spilling sugar and coffee grains on to the work surface. Susan rather uncharacteristically turned on the television and began toying with the buttons on the remote control, zipping between channels and colouring the faces tomato-red then black-and-white. I brought in the mugs of coffee and she said, ‘My God, look at that.’

  On the screen a match was about to take place between two huge Japanese wrestlers called The Fog and The Sea Slug. They were limbering up. Taking their time, they wandered formidably around, preparing themselves. For whole minutes they threw salt around the ring, rubbed their palms together, slapped their thighs and squatted in mid-air with legs spread, then they straightened and turned their backs on each other to face the crowd, their fat arms and buttocks tremoring. It was spectacular, and we drank in silence, watching. With a final adjustment of their bellybands and a shake of their limbs, the wrestlers crouched down eyeball to eyeball, two great banks of flesh. They leaped at each other. It was over in seconds. The Sea Slug, the smaller man, used the momentum of The Fog against him and simply pushed him out of the ring. That was it. All of that concentration and build-up had come almost to nothing. A glancing collision of bodies, a movement of feet and a push. That was all it amounted to.

  If I had had my wits about me I would have learned from the wrestlers. I would have called for a mini-cab or made up the spare bed. I did neither. And so, shortly after we had turned off the television, Susan and I found ourselves in a ring of bedsheets, momentarily clinched and shuddering.

  I slept badly. Susan was making a wheezing sound and the bed was unpleasantly warm. I itched below the knee, then behind my ear, then at the back of my neck. What would she say in the morning? What demands would she make? I rolled over to the edge of my half of the bed. I needed space to breathe. Again I scratched myself, this time on the left calf muscle. The air was thickening; somewhere automobiles were accelerating in the night.

  When I awoke, at nine o’clock, a great surprise awaited me. Susan had gone. I went to the note-pad by the telephone where she used to leave notes – nothing there.

  What did I think? I thought, Phew.

  TEN

  Like a sailor at sea I have certain routines which I invariably follow: one routine for the morning, another for the evening and another for bedtime. During the week these are mainly a matter of time and motion, designed to remove the pain of constantly having to make decisions and to allow me the luxury of a restfully blank mind. On Sundays I have a routine I treasure so much that it has become a ritual. I lie in until about ten o’clock, then I slip on the first trousers, socks and shirt that come to hand, nip across the road for the newspaper, nip back, undress and climb back into bed, read the sports pages, go to the kitchen and, after some bran flakes in semi-skimmed milk, cook myself sausages, scrambled eggs and toast, wash that down with a grapefruit juice and sugared coffee, finish the newspapers cover to cover, run myself a bath, lie in the water for half an hour, get out and fall asleep in front of the afternoon film.

  Thanks to Susan’s timely departure, my Sunday morning was still intact, and as usual at midday I sprinkled some fragrancer in the bathtub and turned on the hot water tap. Minutes later, I slid, my heels squeaking against the plastic surface, into a stinging, fumy bath.

  The water smelled of apples. Gradually, deliriously, I immersed the top half of my body until I lay neck-deep and buoyant. My knees surfaced like snowy islands. Beneath the taps appeared the archipelagos of my toes. I was in a state of bliss. My pores opened, my neck muscles relaxed, my eyes closed. Purified, utterly released from the night before, I began lazily contemplating what to do with my afternoon; and I remembered my copy
of the Introduction to Supranational Law. I would read it when I finished bathing, I decided, instead of watching a film. Then I slithered further down the slope of the tub, took a gulp of air and submersed the whole of my head, my cheeks ballooned, bubbles streaming and popping from my nose …

  Later, wet-headed in my dressing-gown, imprinting the carpet with my bare feet, I lit the imitation coal-fire in my sitting room and made myself comfortable in front of it. The morning was overcast and this had darkened the flat, so the blue flames licked warmly around the dark, fake rocks. As well as the print-out, I had brought out a chunky file of cuttings and clippings and, seeing them spread out on the floor for the first time in a long time, suddenly found myself back in 1974. As I have said, I am not prone to nostalgia, but sometimes, without wishing it, you simply find yourself in the past, you find that you are back there whether you like it or not. This is what happened to me that Sunday. Looking at those notes sledded me straight into another time.

  I was a student at university and I dreamed of becoming an international lawyer. It happened in my second year. One afternoon in autumn, when I had nothing better to do, I had opened a law book – a second-hand copy of Donovan’s International Law. Idly, uninterestedly, I began looking over the first paragraphs. Before I knew what had happened my fingers had turned thirty pages; and to my astonishment (until then I had detested every law book I had ever had the misfortune to pick up), I wanted to read on.

  And I did read on. I had no choice, I was hooked. Usually when I read a law book I would stop after a few sentences, gasping for relief from the airless prose. Donovan’s prose, on the other hand, was remarkably spacious – his writing brought the subject to life, rather like those aerators that pump oxygen into dead, Ashless rivers. Inspired, I tried to read every word that he had written – his articles, book reviews, pamphlets, everything. I read his doctoral thesis, The Community of Nations (Butterwells, 1967), I read The Law of Space (Butterwells, 1969), and his first edition of Essays on Space Law (Donovan, Ed., Butterwells, 1973). Then, the better to understand his work, I scoured everything to do with public international law that I could lay my hands on. I harassed the librarians with remote references, took out dusty books which had not been touched in years, spent hours perched on the library step-ladder going through the contents of obscure shelves. Very soon I realized that Donovan, young though he was (he was only just thirty!) was ludicrously superior to his colleagues. While they lumbered towards tentative and uninteresting perspectives, Donovan explored the field playfully and effortlessly, never neglecting, as others did for lack of scholarship and intellectual capacity, the complex political dimensions of the subject. Late at night in my room, thanks to him, I was animated by difficult, heady questions – what was the true nature of international law? How satisfactory were the voluntarist mechanisms of enforcement? What regimes should operate in contiguous zones?

  And, head on my pillow, I was also visited by dreams, by futures. I would join Donovan’s chambers and become the junior he could rely on, his trusty number two. I would ride on the coat-tails of his practice and at the same time I would write for the learned journals. Maybe, if I was lucky, some university teaching would fall my way: maybe one day Donovan would not be able to attend a lecture and would ask me to take his place! I saw myself at the podium in the theatre, the students copiously writing down my every word as I strode confidently up and down, my eyes regarding the ceiling, my hands behind my back, my speech unhesitating, wise and humorous. That was how Donovan’s lectures in Cambridge must be, I imagined. Then an idea occurred to me: why not go to Cambridge and see him? What was to stop me? So I telephoned the law faculty there. They were very helpful. Indeed, the woman whom I spoke to sounded positively elated at my inquiry.

  ‘As it happens, Professor Donovan is due to give the annual Smith lecture next Wednesday!’ she said. ‘You are most welcome to attend!’

  ‘Really? I can come?’

  ‘Of course – the more the merrier! It’s at the Senate House, at eleven o’clock.’

  The journey to Cambridge took nearly six hours, but I did not mind because I slept deeply most of the way (the coach left at four in the morning). Shortly after dawn I opened my plastic lunch-box and breakfasted hungrily on the cheese and tomato sandwiches I had prepared the day before, so that when we rolled in to Cambridge I was refreshed and alive with anticipation. Making sure my notebook and biro were safely in my briefcase (I was not going to miss a word, not a word!) I walked quickly to the Senate House. It was a quarter to eleven, my timing was perfect. Up to the big front door I went, perspiring a little from my exertions. I took a deep breath. Well, I thought happily, here we go. This is it.

  I pushed warily at the door. Then I pulled and tugged. It was shut.

  I looked around in bafflement. There was nobody around. And yet – I glanced at my watch – the doors should have been open, it was ten to eleven.

  Anxiously I walked over to an adjoining, important-looking building where students were walking in and out. By chance it was the university law library, the Squire Library. There was a security man who sat at the entrance.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘could you tell me where the Smith lecture is being given? It was supposed to start at the Senate House at eleven o’clock.’

  The man put his book down and took a good look at me.

  ‘Let me see your identification,’ he said. ‘You’re not allowed into the library unless you’re a member of the university.’

  Ignoring his request (there was no time to lose, the lecture was due to start any minute now) I stopped a student.

  ‘I’m sorry, but do you know where the M.J.P.J. Smith lecture is taking place?’

  ‘What?’

  I repeated myself, adding, ‘It’s being given by Professor Donovan.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Donovan,’ I said emphatically, ‘Donovan.’

  She shrugged and walked off. She did not know what I was talking about.

  Quickly I went over to some posters I saw on the wall, but they were advertising scholarships and postgraduate courses, not lectures. Then I decided to telephone the law faculty again. I was put through to the same friendly lady I had previously spoken to.

  ‘You’re quite right,’ she assured me. ‘The Smith lecture is not taking place at the Senate House as was envisaged. You see, it’s not taking place at all. Professor Donovan was forced to cancel,’ she said. ‘He’s been called away.’

  I forced out, ‘Cancelled?’

  The friendly lady detected my disappointment and suggested kindly, ‘I know! Why don’t you give me your name and address, and I’ll send you details of when the lecture will take place?’

  ‘Jones,’ I said hoarsely, ‘J.Jones.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘There’s no need.’

  The misadventure in Cambridge was only a temporary setback. Fervently I resumed my studies, so that when I took my finals the following year, I almost achieved a first-class degree (my performance in land law let me down). Importantly, I did well in the international law papers, and it was on the strength of the promise I showed there that I received good references from my tutors. This enabled me to get an interview at 6 Essex Court and then, miracle of miracles, a pupillage. My dreams were coming true …

  The papers I was sifting through in front of my gas fire were notes and copies I had made of Donovan’s writings and the reported cases in which he had appeared. I had started the collection at university, for research purposes, and after I had left 6 Essex I continued to collect, at first because I still harboured hopes of becoming an international lawyer, and later as a hobby or project, I suppose. For years I spent solitary nights and weekends carefully studying Donovan’s progress and painstakingly noting my thoughts. Although I had nothing specific in mind, no plans as such, I half-contemplated writing a paper on him – maybe even a book (why not? I reasoned). As far as I am aware, I read every word he published until 1985. It wa
s only then that my monthly visits to the Middle Temple library to hunt for material came to an end. There had not been a conscious decision on my part to stop. I simply realized one day that I had not done any research for the last few months and that I did not feel diminished by the omission. Whereas before if I fell behind or neglected to read a quarterly I would experience guilt and a pressing need to rectify matters, now I felt nothing.

  Poor sap! I can hear people say; or, How pathetic! Only a true inadequate would even think of such a cretinous activity!

  The terrible thing is, sometimes I suspect that these remarks, if made, would be correct. I, too, can feel like hurling a few insults at the old, younger me: Muttonhead! Imbecile! Dunderhead! What on earth were you doing? Had you nothing better to do with your time? Had you no pride? And yes, when I look back now it is not without some element of shame, of fury even. My fixation was unwholesome: after all, could I really say that I was primarily interested in international law? If Donovan had suddenly switched to specialize in the law of trusts, was there any doubt that I would have trotted in his trail, bleating like a sheep?

  Then, when my emotions subside, I find that I can justify my activities in one of two ways. The first is not so much a justification as a limp excuse, and runs as follows. In most respects, I am an untalented man. There is no point in deluding myself about that. James Jones will never attain heights, not in person anyway. People like me have to make do with things like cricket-scoring or autograph-hunting, or some other vicarious, mildly demeaning pastime. There is no point in criticizing myself for this as, since I have little choice in the matter, clearly it is not my fault. Surely I am not to blame for who I am?

  Alternatively, I can take a noble and bullish stand: not only are my researches excusable as the inoffensive hobby of an ungifted man, they are positively laudable as an interesting piece of research. Yes, they are not without academic, perhaps even historical, value, because Donovan is truly exceptional, and any contribution to the understanding of his work, however slight, is worthwhile.