by David Lodge
Robyn fell silent. The massage had reached its erotic stage. Without being prompted, she rolled over on to her back. Charles’ practised index finger gently probed and stroked her most sensitive parts. Quite soon she reached a very satisfying climax. Then it was Charles’ turn.
Robyn’s massage technique was more energetic than Charles’. She splashed oil all down his back and began to pummel him vigorously with the edges of her palms. “Ow! Ooh!” he exclaimed pleasurably, as the rather plump cheeks of his buttocks vibrated under this assault.
“You’ve got a horrible pimple on your bottom, Charles,” she said. “I’m going to squeeze it.”
“Oh, no, don’t,” he groaned. “You hurt so when you do that.” But the note of protest was partly feigned.
Robyn pinched the pimple between her two forefingers and pressed hard. Charles yelled and his eyes filled with water. “There, all gone,” said Robyn, swabbing away the residue of the pimple with a piece of cotton wool. She stopped pummelling, and began to stroke and smooth the backs of his thighs. Charles stopped whimpering into his pillow. He closed his eyes and his breathing became regular. “Will you go back next week?” he murmured. “To the factory, I mean?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” said Robyn. “Turn over, Charles.”
2
At about the same time that evening, Vic Wilcox was restively watching television with his younger son, Gary, in the lounge of the five-bedroomed, four-lavatoried neo-Georgian house on Avondale Road. Marjorie was upstairs in bed, reading Enjoy Your Menopause, or, more likely, had already fallen asleep over it. Raymond was out boozing somewhere with his cronies, and Sandra was at a disco with the spotty Cliff. Gary was too young to go out on a Saturday night and Vic was… not too old, of course, but disinclined. He did not care for the noisy, false bonhomie of pubs and clubs; he had always regarded the cinema as primarily a convenience for courting couples in the winter months, and had ceased to patronise it shortly after getting married; and he had never been a theatre- or concert-goer. When he worked for Vanguard, he and Marjorie had belonged to a rather gay crowd of other young managers and their wives, who used to meet regularly in each other’s houses on Saturday nights; but it turned out that there was a lot of hanky-panky going on at those parties, or after them, or in between them, and the circle eventually broke up in an atmosphere of scandal and recrimination. Since those days, Vic had moved on and up the career ladder to a point where he seemed to have no friends any more, only business acquaintances, and all social life was an extension of work. His idea of pleasure on a Saturday night was to sit in front of the telly, with a bottle of scotch conveniently to hand, watching “Match of the Day,” and discussing the finer points of the game with his younger son.
But this winter there was no “Match of the Day,” owing to a dispute between the Football League and the TV companies. The Football League had got greedy and demanded a hugely increased fee for broadcasting rights, and the TV companies had called their bluff. Vic’s satisfaction at the administration of this business lesson was tempered by a sense of personal deprivation. Football on television was about the only form of escape he had left, and it was also one of the few topics on which he could hold a reasonably amicable conversation with his sons. When Raymond was a kid, he used to take him to watch Rummidge City, but gave that up when, at some time in the nineteen-seventies, football grounds were entirely taken over by tribes of foul-mouthed juvenile delinquents. Now even televised soccer was denied him, and he was obliged to sit with Gary on a Saturday night watching old films and TV dramas that were either boring or embarrassing.
The one they were watching now looked as if it was just about to change from being boring to being embarrassing. The hero and heroine were dancing cheek to cheek to a stereo in the girl’s apartment. You could tell by the kind of music, and the look of dreamy lust on their faces, that before long they would be in bed together, with nothing on, writhing about under the bedcovers, or even on top of the bedcovers, uttering the usual obligatory moans and sighs. The decline of soccer and the increase of explicit sex in the media seemed to be reciprocally related symptoms of national decline, though Vic sometimes thought he was the only one who had noticed the coincidence. You saw things on television nowadays that would have been under-the-counter pornography when he was a lad. It made family viewing an anxious and uncomfortable business. “You don’t want to watch any more of this, do you?” he said to Gary, with affected casualness.
“It’s all right,” said Gary, slumped in an armchair, without taking his eyes from the screen. His hand moved rhythmically from a bag of potato crisps to his mouth and back again.
“Let’s see what’s on the other channels.”
“No, Dad, don’t!”
Overriding Gary’s protest, Vic played a short scale on the buttons of the remote control. The other channels were showing: a documentary about sheepdogs, a repeat of an American detective series about (Vic remembered it) a murdered prostitute, and another feature film the hero and heroine of which were already in bed together and wrestling energetically under the bedcovers. Vic quickly switched back to the first channel, where the girl was now slowly unbuttoning her blouse in front of a mirror while the man looked lasciviously over her shoulder. It was only a matter of time, Vic thought, before he scored a pornographic jackpot, simulated copulation on all four channels simultaneously.
“You don’t want to watch any more of this crap,” he said, pressing the Off button.
“Oh, Dad!”
“Anyway, it’s time you were in bed,” said Vic. “It’s gone half past eleven.”
“It’s Saturday, Dad,” Gary whined.
“No matter. You need a lot of sleep at your age.”
“You just want to watch it on your own, don’t you?” said Gary slyly.
Vic gave a derisive laugh. “Watch that rubbish? No, I’m off to bed, and so are you.”
Vic was now obliged to follow his son upstairs to bed, though he wasn’t sleepy and would, indeed, left to himself, have gone on watching the film, just to keep himself up to date on the decline of public decency. To add to his irritation, Marjorie was still awake when he got to the bedroom, and seemed disposed to talk. She chattered away through the open door of the bathroom as he brushed his teeth, about redecorating the lounge and buying loose covers for the three-piece suite; and when he came back into the bedroom to put on his pyjamas she asked him if he liked her new nightdress. It was a semi-transparent effort in peach-coloured nylon, with narrow shoulder straps and a deeply plunging neckline that revealed a considerable expanse of Marjorie’s pale, freckled bosom. The dark circles round her flat nipples showed through the thin material like two stains. There was something else unfamiliar about her appearance, though he couldn’t put his finger on it.
“A bit flimsy for this weather, isn’t it?” he said.
“But do you like it?”
“It’s all right.”
“It’s supposed to be the Dynasty look.”
Vic grunted. “Don’t talk to me about television.”
“Why, what’ve you been watching?”
“The usual crap.” Vic climbed into bed and switched off his bedside lamp. “You’re very talkative tonight,” he remarked. “Is the Valium losing its effect?”
“I haven’t taken it yet,” said Marjorie, turning off the lamp on her side. Her reason became all too clear when she laid a hand on his thigh under the bedclothes. At the same moment he became aware that she had drenched herself in a powerful scent, and realized that she had looked different sitting up in bed because she wasn’t wearing curlers. “Vic,” she said. “It’s a long time since we… you know.”
He pretended not to understand. “What?”
“You know.” Marjorie rubbed his thigh with the back of her hand. It was something she used to do in their courting days, giving him a hard-on like a bar of pig-iron. Now his member didn’t even stir.
“I thought you’d gone off it,” he muttered.
“
It was only a phase. Part of the change of life. It says so in the book.” She switched on her bedside lamp and reached for Enjoy Your Menopause.
“For God’s sake, Marjorie!” he grumbled. “What are you doing?”
“Where are my glasses… ? Ah, yes, here it is. Listen. ‘You may feel a revulsion against marital relations for a while. This is quite normal, and nothing to worry about. With time, and patience, and an understanding partner, your lib, libby—’”
“Libido,” said Vic. “Freud invented it before he discovered the death instinct.”
“‘Your libido will return, stronger than ever.’” Marjorie replaced the book on the bedside table, took off her glasses, turned out the light, and sank down in the bed beside him.
“You mean, you’ve got it back?” Vic asked flatly.
“Well, I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I won’t, will I, not till we try? I think we ought to give it a try, Vic.”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s natural for married couples. You used to want to…” There was a dangerous quaver in Marjorie’s voice.
“Everything comes to an end,” he said desperately. “We’re getting on.”
“But we’re not old, Vic, not that old. The book says—”
“Fuck the book,” said Vic.
Marjorie began to cry.
Vic sighed, and turned on his bedside lamp. “Sorry, love,” he said. “Only you can’t expect me to suddenly… get all interested, out of the blue. I thought we were past all that. So we’re not—good—but give me time to readjust. OK?”
Marjorie nodded, and blew her nose daintily on a paper tissue.
“I have my own problems, you know,” he said.
“I know, Vic,” said Marjorie. “I know you have a lot of worries at work.”
“That silly bitch from the University has caused me no end of trouble… then there’s Brian Everthorpe with his daft idea of a calendar, which he claims Stuart Baxter approves of. Why is Brian Everthorpe in Stuart Baxter’s confidence, I’d like to know?”
“As long as it’s not me,” Marjorie sniffed.
He leaned over and planted a dry kiss on her cheek, before turning out the light again. “’Course it’s not you,” he said.
But of course it was. It was years since he had felt any unforced desire for Marjorie, and now he couldn’t even force it. When she seemed to be going off sex because of her time of life he’d been secretly relieved. The buxom, dimpled girl he’d married had become a middle-aged podge with tinted hair and too much make-up. Her roly-poly body embarrassed him when he happened to see it naked, and as for her mind, well that was almost as embarrassing when she exposed it. It would be futile to complain of this, for there was no way she could change herself, become clever and witty and sophisticated, any more than she could become tall and slim and athletic. He had married Marjorie for what she was, a simple, devoted, docile young woman, with the kind of plump good looks that quickly run to fat, and he was in honour bound to put up with her. Vic had old-fashioned ideas about marriage. A wife was not like a car: you couldn’t part-exchange her when the novelty wore off, or the bodywork started to go. If you discovered you’d made a mistake, too bad, you just had to live with it. The one thing you couldn’t do, he thought grimly, was make love to it.
Even that arrogant, interfering women’s libber from the University was more of a turn-on than poor old Marjorie. If her ideas were barmy, at least they were ideas, whereas Marjorie’s idea of an idea was something she had about wallpaper or loose covers. Of course she was young, which always helped, and good-looking in a way, if you liked that type of hairstyle, with the neck shaved like a boy’s, which he didn’t, and ignored the ridiculous Cossack’s get-up. She’d looked a bit more normal in her bathrobe, when he drove round to her house that evening in a cold fury, taking hair-raising risks with the Jaguar in the ice and snow, and practically battered her door down.
He’d gone with no other intention than to scare the shit out of her and relieve his own feelings. He meant to tell her that the Shadow Scheme was cancelled, and that he would be telling the University the reason why. It was only when he came face to face with her that he’d thought of persuading her to undo the damage she’d caused instead. It was probably a stroke of luck that she was having a bath at the time. It put her at a disadvantage, not being properly dressed.
Vic’s memory presented to him with surprising vividness the image of Robyn Penrose, her copper curls damp, her feet bare, swathed in a white towelling bathrobe that gaped as she stooped to light the gas fire in her cluttered living-room, giving him a glimpse of a gently sloping breast and the profile of a pink nipple, for she appeared to have nothing on under the robe. To his surprise, and almost dismay, his penis stiffened at the recollection. At the same moment, Marjorie, reaching probably for his hand, to give it a friendly squeeze, found his penis instead, giggled and murmured, “Ooh, you are interested after all, then?”
Then he had no option but to go through with it, though as Marjorie gasped and grunted beneath him he was only able to come by imagining he was doing it to Robyn Penrose, sprawled on the rug in front of her gas fire, her bathrobe cast aside to reveal that indeed she was wearing nothing underneath it, yes, that was sweet revenge on the silly stuck up cow for making him Brian Everthorpe’s butt and interrupting his meetings with damnfool questions and telling tales on the shopfloor and nearly destroying six months’ patient coaxing of the foundry back to efficiency—yes, that was good, to have her there on the floor amid the incredible litter of books and dirty coffee cups and wineglasses and album sleeves and copies of Spare Rib and Marxism Today, stark naked, her bush as fiery red as her topknot, thrashing and writhing underneath him like the actresses in the TV films, moaning with pleasure in spite of herself as he thrust and thrust and thrust.
When he rolled off Marjorie she gave a sigh—whether of satisfaction or relief, he couldn’t tell—pulled down her nightdress, and waddled off to the bathroom. He himself felt only guilt and depression, like he used to feel as a lad when he wanked off. That he’d been able to make love to his wife only by whipping up crude fantasies about a woman he had every reason to detest was bad enough; but the bitterest thought was that, had she known what he’d done, Robyn Penrose would have nodded smugly at so complete a confirmation of her feminist prejudices. So far from having had his revenge, Vic felt that he had suffered a moral defeat. It had not been a good week, he reflected gloomily, listening to Marjorie sloshing water about in the bidet, and then filling a glass at the sink to help swallow her Valium. He nearly called out to her to bring one for him, too.
As Marjorie came back into the bedroom, the noise of the front door closing made him spring upright in the bed. “Is that Sandra?” he said.
“I expect so, what’s the matter?”
“I forgot all about her.”
It was his usual practise to wait up until Sandra came in on a Saturday night, partly to reassure himself that she had got home safely, and partly to see Cliff, the acne ace, off the premises. But because Gary had manoeuvred him into going to bed early, he had forgotten all about his daughter.
“She’s all right. Cliff always sees her home.”
“That’s what I’m worried about. He’s probably downstairs now.” He threw back the covers and fumbled under the bed for his slippers.
“Where are you going?” Marjorie said.
“Downstairs.”
“Leave them alone for heaven’s sake, Vic,” said Marjorie, with a surprising show of spirit. “You’ll make yourself look ridiculous. They’re only having a cup of coffee or something. Don’t you trust your own daughter?”
“I don’t trust that Cliff,” Vic said. But after a few moments’ hesitation, sitting on the edge of the bed, he got slowly back under the blankets and turned out the light for, it felt like, the ninety-seventh time that night. “Youths like him are only interested in one thing,” he said.
“Cliff’s all right. Anyway, you’re a fine one to talk.�
� Marjorie sniggered, and nudged him with her elbow. “You didn’t half go it just now.”
Vic said nothing, thankful that the darkness concealed the expression on his face.
“It was nice, though, wasn’t it?” Marjorie murmured drowsily.
Vic grunted a vague assent which appeared to satisfy her. The Valium, coming on top of the unwonted sexual exercise, soon worked its effect. Marjorie’s breathing became deep and regular. She was asleep.
Vic must have dozed off himself. He was woken by a sound like the beating of his own heart, and when he checked his alarm clock the digital display showed the time to be one-fifteen. The heart beat, he quickly realized, was actually the throb of the bass notes on a record someone was playing on the music centre in the lounge. A clip from the film he’d watched earlier that evening replayed itself in his head, with Sandra and Cliff standing in for the infatuated couple dancing cheek to cheek. He levered himself out of bed, groped for his slippers and, as his eyes accommodated to the darkness, took his dressing-gown from behind the bathroom door and quietly left the bedroom. The landing and front hall were dark, but a dim light over the burglar-alarm control box guided him down the stairs. He could hear the sound of music, though no light was visible under the lounge door. He opened it and went in.
Vic felt like a white explorer who had stumbled on a cave where some nomadic tribe had bivouacked for the night. The only light in the room came from the gas flames licking round the imitation logs in the hearth, casting a fitful illumination over half-a-dozen figures sprawled in a semi-circle on the floor. He switched on the main ceiling light. Six young men, one of them Raymond, with cans of lager and smouldering cigarettes in their fists, blinked and gaped up at him.
