Cupid's Dart

by David Nobbs

  I must have fallen asleep, because otherwise I wouldn't have woken up. At first, when I woke up, I couldn't think what had happened. Where was I? I reached out to feel the bedside table, my clock, my note-book kept open in the hope of inspiration. They weren't there, I wasn't at home – and why was I lying on top of my bed dressed in my shirt, trousers and socks? Had I got very drunk somewhere? At Lawrence's and Jane's? Oh God. That would be all Lawrence needed as an excuse to sack me. He hated me. He wanted to replace me with Mallard.

  I stretched my arm out and touched something soft. I almost screamed. There was somebody else in the bed. I went rigid with horror. Jane? Had I gone to bed with Lawrence's wife?

  I sat bolt upright and remembered. Ange. Room 393. Relief flooded over me, but only for a moment. This wasn't much better. What was I doing lying in my clothes in a hotel bed beside a twenty-four-year old darts groupie who was still in her clothes? Supposing she claimed I'd lured her back to my room and raped her? Shirt-sleeved don in clothed sex horror. He told me to keep my clothes on, and I believed him. We are taking your previous good character into account. Five years.

  Would she do such a thing? Could she do such a thing? How could I know? I didn't really know her. She had told me her name was Bedwell. How likely was that? I'd been duped. I will take a lenient view of this case, in view of your extraordinary naïvety. Three years.

  Yes, I did know her. I was shocked that I could even think such things. She was sweet. She was pure.

  No, she wasn't. She scored bulls' eyes with every darts player known to man. She had also hopped into bed with me on the first night after I'd picked her up on a train.

  That phrase – 'picked her up on a train' – shocked me. It shocked me that I could even have thought it. It hadn't been like that.

  She was sleeping like a child, so peacefully, so contentedly, so healthily. I wanted to wake her up and talk to her again.

  I had no idea what time it was. The curtains were the only things in the room that were of any quality. They were large and thick. It could be mid-morning and the room would still be in complete darkness. I hoped that I would hear noises, movements, which might give me some clue as to what time it was. I began to be convinced that we had missed breakfast, that I should be back in Oxford, that I would be late for supervisions with my students. All this was very disconcerting. I don't wear a watch. I don't need to. I could always tell, almost to the minute, what time it was. It was not a gift I relished. I didn't want to be a slave to the passage of time.

  But now, when my gift had deserted me, when a young woman had thrown me into confusion, I felt lost.

  Then I remembered that there was a digital clock at Ange's side of the bed. I levered myself up very carefully, not wishing to wake her. There was a red glow in the darkness, but the clock was facing away from me.

  I crept out of bed, felt my way round it warily, almost tripped over her shoes, recovered, and reached the clock . . . 3.57. It couldn't be so early. It couldn't. The clock must have stopped. Then it flicked on to 3.58.

  I went to the loo, aiming at the side of the bowl so as not to wake her with the noise of water on water. I crept back on to the bed. I knew that I wouldn't get another wink of sleep. Ange was too far over my side. I had no room to get comfortable. I longed to hear her voice, that cockney accent that was much too cheerful and warm and humorous to deserve the adjective 'estuarine'. It was no use. I had to wake her.

  I nudged her quite sharply, quite deliberately, with my elbow. She stirred.

  'Sorry,' I lied. 'Did I wake you?'

  'Bleedin' 'ell. What time is it?'

  'Four o clock.'

  'Bleedin' 'ell.'

  'Sorry. Ange? Talk some more.'

  'Twice in one night? Bleedin' 'ell.'

  'I love to hear your voice.'

  'Nobody ever said that before.'

  'Tell me more about your brothers.'

  'What is this, Alan? A relationship or an interview?'

  'That's well put, Ange. Very well put.'

  'Don't sound so surprised. Stop patronising me.'

  'That's a long word for an Essex girl.'

  Yes, that's what I said. I find it very difficult to admit it to you, such is my shame.

  'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I'm very, very sorry. That was very rude and very unfair. I just don't know how to talk to women. Will you forgive me?'

  'I don't know what I'm doing here.'

  Nor did I, but I couldn't admit that.

  'You're here because I asked you, because I think you're lovely, and because I'm a sad old man and I've suddenly realised that I'm very lonely.'

  'Don't say you're an old man, Alan, because half the time I forget you are.'

  But I'm not. I'm middle-aged. I'm only in the middle of middle age. My doctor told me that fifty-five is the new forty. But Ange thought of me as old. Oh God. There was no future here.

  I think she must have realised that she'd upset me, because, when she spoke again, it was with that lovely occasional gentleness of hers.

  'You're not an unattractive man, Alan. You must have . . . you know . . . had girlfriends. Haven't you?'

  I answered like a politician, and I despised myself. I took refuge in the ghastly pomposity of my calling.

  'While it's true, Ange, that I don't consider sexual activity and in particular sexual athletic prowess to be as important as this ruthlessly competitive age seems to believe, at the same time I don't want you to think that there haven't been women in my life. The fact is, though, that – I was trying to work it out while you were sleeping – it's actually twenty-two years now since I last went out with a woman.'

  'Bloody Norah.'

  'I know. Wasted years, Ange.'

  'Tell me about the women you did go out with.'

  'You aren't interested.'

  'I am. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't. I'm not the sleeping around type, Alan.'

  There was a pause, during which I might have said, 'Except with darts players', but at last I showed a bit of sense, and I think she must have guessed this, because she gave me another of her swift, spontaneous kisses.

  'Tell me about your women,' she breathed. 'Alan and his women.'

  'Don't mock. Well, the one that got away, she was very attractive, was a Swiss lacrosse international I met in Lucerne. I was twenty-four. I was with my parents, but I gave them the slip. I was having a glass of wine in a café beside the river. She was at the next table, waiting for a friend. We got chatting. She did all the talking. Suddenly she suggested we move to another café. She didn't want to see her friend. We talked there for an hour or two. She was going to be married the following Saturday. She said, "I have – how do you English say it – cold feet." I said I was in a quandary: I would like to warm her feet, but I didn't want her to get married so I didn't want to cure her cold feet.

  'Not the greatest chat-up line in the world, Alan.'

  'No. She gave me her phone number. She said I was very shy but very sweet and she would like to see me again.'

  'Don't tell me you didn't ring her.'

  'She was getting married, Ange.'

  'She didn't want to. You could have married her, swept her off her feet, gone to lacrosse internationals with her, fucked her every time she won. Oh, sorry. I forgot. Language.'

  'I've told you. I don't mind it as a verb. I just find it so tedious as an adjective.'

  'Alan! I wouldn't know the difference between a verb and an adjective if they jumped up and hit me on the tits. They're all just words to me. Oh, you should of rung her, Alan.'

  'I was with my parents.'

  'Oh, Alan.'

  'I know. This'll sound really pathetic. Twenty years later, at least, I was in Geneva for a conference . . .'

  'Bleedin' 'ell, you get around with these conferences of yours.'

  'Well, occasionally. I do have a bit of a reputation in my field.'

  'You should have taken her to your field and . . .'

  'Yes, yes. We've been into all that. Well, anyw
ay, after the conference, I went to Lucerne for a couple of days, hung around, went to the two cafés, which were still there, had this ridiculous fantasy that she'd come in and say, "It was all a dreadful mistake. It was you I loved all the time." The sad thing is, Ange, that I've never grown up.'

  'No, the sad thing is, Alan, that you've never realised that you've never grown up.'

  I have to be frank with you and admit that I was astounded at the perceptiveness of this. She was a darts groupie, after all, and she came from Gallows Corner. Thank goodness, though, I didn't make any comment to that effect. I was learning fast. I would say that I was learning to think on my feet if it wasn't a rather inappropriate phrase when I was lying in bed.

  'Tell me about your other women,' she whispered.

  'Well, there was my brief dalliance, lovely neglected word, dalliance, with a florist from Littlehampton.'

  'But the affair never blossomed.'

  'Don't laugh at me. No, Ange, do. Yes, do laugh at me. I want you to laugh at me. I need to be laughed at.'

  'Any more, Casanova?'

  'Well, Rachel, of course, and doesn't that "of course" tell you everything? Rachel was a radiologist from Reading. I think the alliteration attracted me as much as anything.'

  'But you weren't on the same wavelength.'

  'How did you know?'

  'It was a joke. Radio, wavelength – and you can't say "Yes, I recognise that as a joke", because you didn't.'

  'It was a joke. Our relationship. Except it wasn't funny. We drifted into going out and neither of us had the willpower to end it or the knowledge of how to end it. Rachel hadn't got a sexy bone in her body. There were kisses, fumblings. Neither of us wanted to go any further and neither of us would admit it. It was a nightmare.'

  She remained silent. I was really enjoying getting things off my chest in that dark womb of a room, in the middle of that extraordinary night. There are few things more enjoyable than to have a good listener, and I was able to talk about myself with a fluency that perhaps I had never before achieved.

  'Anyway, after Rachel, I seemed to decide that I was, if not a natural celibate, at least a natural bachelor. I like college life, the enclosed world of the institution, my book-lined study, Madeira in the senior common room, the cloistered calm broken only by the distant rumble of donnish rivalries. I couldn't see myself helping with the washing up, and emptying the teapot over the lupins, and telling the kiddies all about Tommy the Tortoise. In the modern phrase, or probably the phrase isn't modern at all by the time I got to know about it, it isn't my scene.'

  I paused. She didn't reply. I could tell from her breathing that I didn't have a good listener after all. She was fast asleep again.

  EIGHT

  In the morning, over breakfast in the hotel's inelegant, self-service restaurant, I told her how much I had enjoyed her company. She didn't say that she had enjoyed my company, but she didn't say that she hadn't. My main feeling actually was of awe for her appetite. She ate eggs, bacon, sausages, fried bread, hash browns, baked beans, tomatoes, and mushrooms, and she was so slim.

  I found even my meagre repast of muesli and fruit salad hard to swallow, so nervous was I of the question that would have to be asked, even though I dreaded the answer. I tried to make it sound like a casual enquiry of no great importance to me, but my nervousness revealed to me, and probably to her, that it was already more vital than I would have believed possible.

  'Shall we do it again some time?'

  'We didn't do it this time.'

  I frowned.

  'Sorry. I'm crude, Alan. I'm an Essex girl.'

  'You know what I meant. Shall we meet again? I'd like to.'

  'Why?'

  'Does there have to be a reason?'

  'I thought giving reasons was what your philosophy was all about.'

  'Fair enough. Yes, there is a reason. I like you. I'm attracted to you, however unlikely that may seem when I left all my clothes on. I've enjoyed being with you. I want to see you again. You liven me up. I believe you can make me happy. Are those enough reasons for you?'

  She took a forkful of hash brown and baked beans and spoke through them, which I didn't like. I might have to speak to her about that one day.

  'Tell you what,' she said. 'I'd like to see you in your natural surroundings. In your college. That'd be a laugh.'

  That I hadn't expected. That I hadn't wanted to do. I wanted to keep her entirely secret, meet her only on neutral territory. She didn't want that. She wouldn't accept that. She had outmanoeuvred me. I admired that.

  We arranged for her to come to Oxford on the following Tuesday.

  I felt so happy as my train slid slowly out of Paddington Station, I wanted to tell the whole carriage that I had spent the night with a delightful young woman, but by the time we passed the massive cooling towers of Didcot my euphoria had gone. I was returning to reality. I would spend the afternoon with an old woman whom nobody could describe as delightful. It was my day for visiting my mother.

  My mother's room was on the first floor. It wasn't small, but it was too full of furniture. She had brought with her two armchairs and a coffee table. Their elegance served only to emphasise the cheapness of the institutional bed, the rickety dining table, the two hard chairs, the shabby wardrobe, the bulky commode. She always used the commode now, saying that she could no longer get to the lavatory, but I think the real reason was that she had a horror of lavatory seats: you could catch things off them. She was high on the list for a room with a lavatory. Only two residents needed to die, so it wouldn't be long – but it wouldn't surprise me if, after complaining about her room for nine years, she would refuse to move from it. She had always been stubborn, and in old age she had become contrary.

  It was stifling in the room, and there was just a faint lingering smell from her earlier use of the commode.

  'Hello, Mother.'

  Peck on the cheek. No warmth. It would be better to skip it, really, but we can't. We are locked into the gesture.

  I had never loved my mother. Did I dare I tell Ange that? Would she think me a monster? I had never loved my mother because she had never given me a chance to love her, because she had never loved me.

  I lifted the cake from the carrier bag.

  I always took her a cake. Cakes were her weakness. In the past I had occasionally taken flowers, but she had always found fault: 'You know I don't like irises'; 'You shouldn't bring anything blue, Alan. This room can't take blue.' Cakes were safer. There are very few blue cakes.

  'I've brought you a cake, Mother. Coffee cream.'

  'Thank you. Very nice, though I prefer chocolate.'

  Even cake is not entirely safe.

  'How are you?'

  Once I had made a big mistake. I had said, 'How are we?' and she had said, 'Oh, not you as well. I am not half-witted, Alan. I do not have to be pluralised. Your father would hate to hear you say that.'