by Tim Parks
But enough of dinner guests! We were talking about friends in common. Had Thomas and Mary ever had friends in common?
In the distant past, for example?
Well, acquaintances certainly. Joey, who had introduced them, was one. Thomas had been passing through the college bar when he spied Joey at a table with a group of girls. This was Durham twenty-five years ago. Joey lived across the corridor from Thomas in graduate accommodation. Afterwards, Thomas asked Joey for Mary’s phone number but Joey objected that Mary was his girlfriend. Later the same evening Mary phoned Thomas and when he asked how she had got his number, she said from Joey. ‘Your boyfriend,’ Thomas observed. ‘Not at all,’ she insisted. ‘What an idea!’ After which, so far as he could recall, they had never really met Joey as a threesome, or even in a group, ever again. Though sometimes Mary met Joey on her own and sometimes Thomas met Joey on his own and on those occasions everybody got on fine. Joey never seemed to resent their having become a couple. Go figure.
Otherwise, at the time of their first meeting, Mary had two friends of her own, Patty and Liz, old school friends from Glasgow with whom she would let her hair down and giggle. But she and Thomas didn’t go out together with them, or not more than once or twice. Or maybe three times. That is, at the beginning they did have a meal or two together but there was something that didn’t gel. Perhaps Mary felt that Thomas was paying Patty a bit too much attention. Patty had quite a figure. Perhaps Thomas felt that the three of them made too much giggly fun of him. They pulled his leg non-stop. Thomas could be prickly. Perhaps Patty and Liz felt it was time to find boyfriends of their own rather than having to watch Mary prancing round with hers. But when they did get boyfriends, going out in foursomes or sixsomes didn’t really work, either. Liz’s man was much older and seemed bored. He was pushing fifty. Patty’s boyfriend was sensitive and felt criticised. He was an ambitious young engineer. Sure enough, later, in bed with Thomas, Mary did criticise him. She criticised both men. Her friends had chosen badly, she thought. Thomas joined in and criticised too. Not just the men but the women. He wanted to cut those giggly friends of hers down to size. They had a field day. In fact a lot of Mary and Thomas’s being together seemed to have to do with criticising the acquaintances they had in common, which is maybe why those acquaintances never quite became friends in common. After they left Durham, Mary never found friends like Patty and Liz again, never again had the kind of friends you could really let your hair down with. That must count for something.
Others who never really became friends in common, or only very briefly, were his old pals from the church youth club in Bristol where they lived for a year or so in the early stages of their marriage. Nigel and Jenny and Timothy and Kate were both established couples before Mary met them. Thomas had been friends with Jenny in the one couple and with Timothy in the other. Not really close friends. Just friendly. So the common friends thing seemed possible because Mary need hardly fear that these were friends against her; they hadn’t, as it were, lost Thomas to her, as perhaps Patty and Liz had lost Mary to Thomas, and at the same time Thomas didn’t need to worry that Mary would gang up with them to make fun of him. They just weren’t the kind to make fun. But perhaps because Mary and Thomas always criticised these people, indeed any people they met, something queered the air. Not that they criticised them to their faces. Only when they were alone. All the same, something must have come across. Nigel was pompous and Jenny such a ditherer and Timothy was also a ditherer, though in a different way, whereas Kate was ferociously bossy, and Nigel and Jenny’s kitchen was such a mess and they always cooked too much in a sloppy kind of way, though never enough meat (one chicken for six!), and Kate’s kitchen – because clearly Timothy had no say in it – was not exactly squalid, but mean somehow, and her cooking drearily austere in an army-rations, cold-bedroom kind of way, and Timothy would keep the wine bottle on the floor by his leg of the table, so you could never help yourself. What was odd about it was that Thomas and Mary really loved these friends and really, genuinely loved spending evenings with them, when they did. It just wasn’t very often.
Another odd thing was that Thomas and Mary never imagined that the others might be criticising them. Or maybe they assumed that all couples criticise other couples and so hardly cared. Perhaps they were right. Once, years later, they managed a Cornish holiday together with Timothy and Kate at a time when both couples had two small kids, toddlers, perhaps because they hoped that company might relieve the growing tension between them – between Thomas and Mary, that is – but since it didn’t, they never repeated the experiment. The problem with a foursome was agreeing on the shopping and cooking and eating out. Timothy never wanted to eat out despite having the biggest salary of all of them. And he baulked at buying good wine. Mary thought Kate too strict with her children. She wouldn’t go to them if they cried in bed. It was madness. Also Thomas tried to confide in Timothy about his marriage problems and even about the girl in Accounts he was growing fond of but Timothy didn’t want to go there. He really didn’t. Perhaps in the end both these couples, Nigel and Jenny, Timothy and Kate, had started to steer a little clear of Thomas and Mary because they sensed their relationship was getting a bit rocky, they feared contamination. Yet in both cases, long after the foursomes ended, they were always happy to see Thomas on his own or Mary on her own. That was odd. And having made those now-solitary visits, Thomas and Mary, or rather Thomas or Mary, whichever it had been, would always bring back enough info on these old friends to go on with their previous criticisms, which now more than ever seemed the only glue that held Thomas and Mary together. Nigel was pomposity itself. Timothy let Kate walk all over him. Everybody but Thomas and Mary had got it wrong, it seemed.
All this was a very long time ago. Hard to believe it happened, really. Now, after the move to Manchester and his promotion to a seriously prestigious job, Thomas has had just one close friend for a decade and more, but Mary doesn’t want to see him. Thomas knows that Mary thinks Alan is her enemy. Actually, this isn’t true. If anything, Alan worries for her and is also a little frightened of her. But there you go, the idea of the three of them getting together for drinks or dinner or just a pleasant evening in front of the TV is unimaginable. Thomas would be thinking that Mary would be thinking that Alan knew all kinds of secrets that Thomas wasn’t telling her. And he does. Thomas and Alan play tennis together, drink beers and talk women. Occasionally they offer alibis for each other. It’s on this questionable ‘relief’ that Thomas and Mary’s marriage seems largely to depend these days. Imagine if they spent an evening together and all that came out. Not that Mary doesn’t know, because in a way perhaps she does, but it’s important that nothing be said. A common friend could be fatal.
Meantime Mary has got into a habit of making friends with people who are younger than her or somewhat weaker character-wise or simply at a different level. Subaltern is the word that sometimes comes to Thomas’s mind as he observes the development of this phenomenon. Who are these people? A cleaning lady, their younger child’s swimming instructor, the wife of a client Mary does some freelancing for, a girl she has met at her Pilates course. None are people you would ever invite to dinner or who would ever invite you to dinner. Mary sees them for coffee, or does aerobics with them or goes for walks with them. Often she helps them in some way. Almost as if they were children. They’re grateful. Often she gives them gifts. She’s a generous person. But Thomas has almost nothing to do with them, they don’t interest him at all and he can now more or less predict the moment when Mary too will suddenly stop seeing them. That’s how it is. For a while Mary will be extremely friendly and generous with these people, then lose interest, rather abruptly, perhaps even complaining that she has been exploited. Perhaps she has. Thomas has given up trying to understand. He has reached the point where he feels they both need help. They need to be saved from themselves, from whatever poison it is that makes their married life so hard. But looked at another way, everything chugs along much as it a
lways has, he with his one close friend, she with her many shadowy, unobtrusive friends, one after the other.
Until she got the dog. And this, you might say – the dog, I mean – was really the first friend Thomas and Mary had ever had in common. Though it didn’t start that way.
One day Mary announced she had decided to get a dog. Apparently Thomas didn’t need to be consulted on this. In fact, he didn’t object. Anything that kept Mary happy, he explained to Alan, was fine by him, left him with more time for tennis, or an amorous adventure perhaps, or simply the Champions League. The Champions League and a couple of bottles of Beck’s was not a bad way to kill an evening. This was the sort of thing Thomas would say to Alan. But on another level he was furious. He didn’t want the dog at all.
Mary wanted a dog because she had never had one. That was sufficient reason. She hadn’t got a dog earlier because she didn’t believe in having dogs around small children. Dogs carried diseases. But Mark was in his teens now. So it was time for a dog. After long navigation on the Web Mary identified a cocker spaniel breeder with a newborn litter. In Devon. A month later Thomas was asked to drive her and their son the two hundred and fifty miles down there to choose a pup. Thomas tended to be dutiful about these matters, to earn himself his freedoms elsewhere. Anyone seeing them together that evening at the restaurant of the small hotel where they stayed would have wondered what on earth could keep this couple together when their son left home. The answer would be Ricky.
Things might have gone differently if Mary had chosen the pup she wanted. Sitting in a farmhouse kitchen watching half a dozen animals fall over each other, she was immediately attracted to the most combative, the most lively, the one flouncing about and nipping its brothers and sisters at the heels and behind the ears, first to the food and water bowls, confrontational, loud, in command, looking for trouble. The breeder pointed instead to a fluffy creature half asleep in the pack. Brought out for examination, this puppy licked Mark’s fingers with lazy affection. The other dog was too much of a handful for a first-time owner, the breeder thought. Mary asked for half an hour’s time out to think it over, and in the farmyard expressed her opinion that the breeder was trying to cheat them of the best dog and sell them a lemon. Mark said, ‘Mum, you’re amazing.’ Thomas thought the breeder lady was simply trying to be helpful. ‘That other monster will tear up the carpets, and pull down the curtains and dig under the roses.’ On the drive home the sleepy pup was christened: Ricky.
At the beginning Ricky seems more likely to end the foundering marriage than save it. With little left to do for the children, and having long since wound down her freelance work, Mary gives the animal all her attention. She buys toys and treats and grooming products. She reads books. The dog must sleep outside. They buy a kennel. The dog must be allowed to stick his nose in the earth; they need a pen in the back garden. Thomas spends a whole weekend building a pen but as soon as Ricky is in it he yips and howls and scratches until he is let out, then sticks his nose in the earth of the flowerbeds. The flowerbeds are Thomas’s domain. He loves flowers and bushes and pruning clippers and compost. Ricky destroys the flowerbeds.
Another book now says that young dogs get lonely if obliged to sleep alone, so from this point on the dog must sleep indoors. However, there is the problem of the burglar alarm; the dog can’t be left on the ground floor, where the alarm has its sensors. Consequently, the dog basket is placed on the landing outside the bathroom and a child-proof gate is dug out of storage to block the stairs so that Ricky can’t go down and trip the alarm. To get to the bathroom two or three times a night Thomas has to step over the dog, which wakes up and licks his heels, or pads in to watch him peeing.
How tiring all this is, Thomas thinks. He hadn’t wanted a dog at all. He is not in control of the expensive house a lifetime of work has bought. Both his wife and his adolescent son are entirely absorbed in an escalating competition for the affection of a mere animal. But at least Ricky is a handsome creature and happy as Larry. His waggy cheerfulness is infectious. Mary takes him out morning, afternoon and evening. She discovers new paths in the countryside around their house. She discovers new, ever-unobtrusive friends at the dog park on the nearby estate. In fact, she is soon queen of the dog park community. She regales Thomas with stories of other dog owners and the sacrifices they make for their pets. The stories are interesting. People who keep dogs are actually more humane than people who don’t; of that Mary is convinced. Thomas appreciates that he falls into the category of people who don’t. On cold days she takes flasks of tea to the park. She stays out for hours. On warm evenings a bottle of wine. She can’t pick up Mark from school or take him to karate because she is out with the dog. She is taking Ricky to ‘agility’ lessons. In a town twenty miles away. She is taking him to the vet. She can’t miss her appointment with the vet just to take Thomas to the airport. Thomas takes a taxi. It seems to him the dog is already agile enough, healthy enough. When they go to a café together on Sunday mornings Mary buys a bun, she who never eats buns, and feeds it to Ricky. Not to Mark or to Thomas, who is very partial to cakes. The dog licks the sweet crumbs off her fingers. She picks up his shit in the road outside. Mark rolls around with Ricky on the carpet. Mother and son argue over hygiene. Now the dog takes to whining on the landing at night with the result that Mark allows the creature into his room. Ricky sleeps on his bed; but then Mary decides that Ricky should sleep in their bedroom, her and Thomas’s room, not Mark’s – it’s not good for a boy to have a dog on his bed. Thomas tries to put his foot down and object; the dog’s nervous padding back and forth from basket to bed, or rather to Mary’s fingers trailing invitingly over the edge of the bed, makes it hard for him to get to sleep, and just when he does he’s woken by a warm tongue licking his nose. When he complains Mary laughs and it’s the same laugh she used to laugh with Patty and Liz, a mocking laugh, Thomas thinks. So Thomas goes downstairs to sleep in what used to be his daughter’s room. Mary doesn’t seem to mind. It is the end of any pretence of married business as usual. Is it the beginning of the end?
From time to time Thomas takes the dog out. Either Mary has some other appointment she can’t miss or she has to visit her sick mother up north. She is away for a few days. Ricky is intelligent and obeys Thomas more readily than he obeys Mary or Mark. It’s true Mary has taught Ricky to do a few tricks, give you a paw to shake, touch his nose on your hand, roll over on his back and wave his legs in the air, that kind of clownish, exhibitionist thing. But when it comes to sitting still, or coming when his name is called, he actually responds better to Thomas. It’s been a while since Thomas was able to command anyone. Even his girlfriends tend to run the show. It’s a pleasure.
‘Here Ricky!’
Since Thomas absolutely refuses to pick up dog shit – he’s too squeamish – he walks the dog in the country, which after all begins about a hundred yards from their house on the outskirts of Pendlebury. Doing so, he realises how much he likes to walk in the country. It’s been a while. He’s reminded of his childhood when there was always a dog around. He likes weather, landscape, any weather, the smell of the soil, the drizzle on the leaves, sunshine on stone. He likes life. Ricky hares off but eventually returns when he’s called. Thomas watches him. The dog lives through his nose. He is entirely connected with the soil and the breeze. He is part of life, of everything. Now he’s pushing into a thicket after a hedgehog. Thomas stands and watches. In a tangle of branches the dog is yelping at the balled-up hedgehog. Both animals are absolutely in the here and now, one excited, one terrified. Both happier, Thomas shakes his head, than a man who feels trapped and can’t make up his mind. A coward.
On a summer evening he lies down in a field and closes his eyes. Ricky comes to lick his face. The dog seems contemplative, a little troubled. His master has never lain down on the grass before. Eventually the animal settles beside Thomas and puts his head over Thomas’s ankle. The fur under his throat is luxuriously silky. It has to be said, Mary keeps her pet clean. The
dog pants a little and whines. ‘What do you think of Mary, in the end?’ Thomas asks Ricky. His eyes are still closed. The dog wriggles, probably scanning the horizon for movement, scenting the air. ‘She has so many good qualities, don’t you think? We have done so much together.’ The dog is still, but very present. Thomas can feel a hum of life through the warm fur. ‘I don’t love her any more,’ he announces. The dog listens. ‘We drive each other crazy.’
Suddenly, Rickly leaps up to dash at something in the distance. His claws scratch Thomas’s ankle. Thomas sits up abruptly to inspect the damage. The dog is streaking along a hedge; there’s a wonderful golden brown purpose about him darting through dusty green. Thomas shakes his head. When Ricky comes back he grabs the dog by the ears and looks him in the eyes. The animal’s panting is like laughter. His breath is friendly and foul. The eyes are quizzical, optimistic. ‘What am I going to do?’ Thomas demands. ‘Tell me what to do, Ricky.’ The dog lets out a bark and shakes his head free, shakes his fur as if coming out of water, but then comes back to put his wet nose on his master’s neck.
‘You’re a trophy dog,’ Thomas accuses him. ‘My wife’s trophy dog. To replace me. To tell me she prefers a younger dog these days.’
Ricky smiles. He knows.
‘What’s she thinking, Ricky? Come on now, she’s your friend. I bet she talks to you. Does she want me to leave? What does Mary really want?’
