by David Nobbs
'My friend Tons Thomas will be playing.' Ange continued. 'He scraped in by winning the Extra Wet Strength Eliminator.'
'Good heavens,' said Jane.
'The what?' asked Lawrence.
'There are worlds you know nothing about,' I said. 'Townsend Tissues are one of the main sponsors of darts in this country. When I first met Ange she was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of a burly man sneezing into a large and very effective tissue.'
Ange gave me quite a stern look, warning me that her sarcasm detector was working overtime and I had better be careful. I realised, with a mixture of dismay and admiration, that she was determined not to be over-awed by Lawrence and Jane.
Jane said 'Good heavens' yet again and Lawrence said, 'Beer all right, is it, Ange?' And Ange said, 'Yeah. Ta. Just the job,' and Lawrence got her another one and said, 'Well, let's hope all the excitement of the darts doesn't put you off the preparations for your lecture, Alan.'
I cursed myself for not having thought of the possibility of making a bet with Ange over how long it would be before Lawrence mentioned the lecture. It would have been a bit of fun, and would have given us a nice feeling of collusion, and it would have made her realise that I didn't like Lawrence, without my actually having to say so.
'Hey, can I come to your thingummy whatsit lecture?' asked Ange.
'Ferdinand Brinsley,' said Lawrence.
'Yeah. Sorry. I mean, if you're coming to the darts. Only I've never been to a philosophy lecture.'
'You amaze me,' said Jane, and I found myself despising her for being unable to resist the obvious. This surprised me. I had often hated her, but never despised her.
'Yes, I . . . er . . . I don't see why you shouldn't come,' I said.
'Well, I'd like to cheer you on.'
'There isn't actually a lot of cheering at the Ferdinand Brinsley,' said Lawrence.
'No, but, I mean, Alan was telling me all about it, and I'd like to see him in action. Got a lot of bottle, has he?'
'What? Oh. Yes. Lots of bottle,' said Lawrence.
'Are you another of these philosophers, then?'
'Yes, I'm Head of Alan's department.'
'He also writes detective novels, under the name of Crispin Hereward.' I tried to put a light coating of scorn into my voice, enough to show Ange that I despised his novels, but not enough to alert Lawrence to it. 'You may have read them.'
'What colour are they?'
Lawrence looked puzzled.
'What?'
'The covers. Not the jackets, cos I get them from the library and they don't have the jackets on.'
'Yellow, mostly, I think,' said Lawrence, looking bemused by her question, as well he might. 'Some green. One may be black.'
'No. Sorry. Haven't read them. Cos I only read red books.'
Ange said this quite politely, almost regretfully. Lawrence and Jane looked completely mystified. I have to admit that I rather relished the fact that Ange hadn't read any of his books. Lawrence is rather bitter about the fact that 'The Inspector Didcot Mysteries', as he calls them, are almost the only set of detective novels written in English that haven't been adapted either by the BBC or ITV. He is eaten up every time he spots Colin Dexter, the creator of Morse, anywhere in the city. It ruins his day. The truth about Lawrence's books is that they just aren't good enough. He lacks the power of imaginative invention, which is illustrated by the fact that the only name he could dredge up for his wretched detective is the name of the first stop on the train to London.
'Do you like Oxford, Ange?' enquired Jane in her best hostess manner.
'Yeah, it's really lovely, it's fantastic, cos Alan took me on a ramble round it, didn't you, Alan?'
'Yes, I did,' I replied in somewhat less than sparkling fashion.
I made a mental note to talk to Ange, without being patronising of course, about her use of the word 'because' or 'cos', because her mistaken use of it got on my nerves. 'No, Ange,' I longed to say. 'I took you on a ramble because it's really lovely and fantastic, but it isn't really lovely and fantastic because I took you on a ramble round it, flattering though that interpretation of events might be.'
'Alan!' said Jane with sudden enthusiasm. 'We meant to tell you. The La Recolte at Chittingbourne St Mary has lost its place in the Good Food Guide.'
It was my turn to say 'Good heavens.'
'You shouldn't say "the La Recolte". La means "the",' said Lawrence. 'I mean you wouldn't say "I'm off to The The Ivy", would you, Ange?'
'Well, anyway, it's out of the Good Food Guide,' continued Jane, 'and I think it's a scandal.'
'Well be fair, darling,' said Lawrence. 'We did think it might be going off last time. We thought the pork belly was a little on the defensive.'
'I'm sorry, Lawrence,' continued Jane, 'but there are places in the Cotswolds in that book that I wouldn't take a hamster to eat in, and I still think it's a disgrace.'
'Excuse me, but where is it?' asked Ange.
'La Recolte?' said Lawrence. 'Just outside Chittingbourne St Mary on the Burford road.'
'I rather think Ange meant the smallest room,' I explained.
'Oh. Sorry. Ha. First left at the top of the stairs, you can't miss it,' said Lawrence.
After Ange had left, there was a brief but telling moment of silence.
'She's sweet, Alan,' said Jane.
'I think so.'
'Was it Ange with whom you were discussing the lecture when it all seemed feeble?' enquired Lawrence.
'Er . . . yes.'
'May I employ the privilege of long-standing friendship and be very frank, Alan?'
'No.'
'We couldn't be more delighted that you've found this girl, who no doubt is an excellent . . . er . . . although funnily enough I've always found upper-class girls to be more . . . er . . .'
He glanced at Jane, whose face was like granite.
'But that was before I got married, long before I got married, and things may have changed, but, as I say, while this girl may be . . . er . . . thoroughly er . . . in . . . er . . . as it were, my point is, is it wise to allow this young lady to affect your work. Sex and philosophy don't always mix.'
'I had noticed,' said Jane, and I could hardly blame her, this time, for the obvious retort. It was an opportunity too neat to miss. It upset me a little, though. The last thing I needed was to start feeling sorry for Lawrence.
'Alan, at the risk of sounding very pompous . . .' began Lawrence.
'Yes.'
'You are a little . . . no offence meant, I do assure you, but you are a little . . . er . . . and I want you to take this in the way in which it's meant . . . you are a little . . .'
'Naïve.'
'Well, yes . . . absolutely. A little . . . in the nicest way . . . a little vulnerable . . . and this liaison is a bit . . . er . . . I mean, isn't it? Point taken?'
'I don't think I've ever seen a linguist reduced to such total inarticulacy. This "liaison", as you call it, Lawrence, began a couple of days ago, on a train. Ange and I are not about to declare the banns, but I do find her a delightful young lady of great sensitivity and charm.'
'Nice bog,' said Ange, from halfway down the stairs.
'Oh,' said Lawrence bravely. 'Thanks.'
'My uncle reckons that the khazi, cos that's what he always calls it, is the most important room in the house. He says it's the only room he can really express himself in.'
I was beginning to realise just how sharp Ange's social antennae were, and I was pretty sure that she was aware that she was behaving inappropriately in talking about bogs and khazies. Something had happened to send her on the offensive and I thought I knew what it was. She had realised that Jane had been freezing her out of the conversation with all that stuff about the Good Food Guide, and she just wasn't having it. I admired this, but it frightened me. It was time to bring the session to a close or my career might be going down the khazi.
'Yes, well, perhaps . . .' I began hesitantly.
'My uncle, he's a charac
ter,' continued Ange. She was back in her chair now, and as she stretched her legs out, I could see the top of her tattoo peeping out. 'He loves these parrot jokes.'
Ange, what are you doing to me?
'I mean he loves all sorts of jokes, but he seems a bit obsessed with parrot jokes, cos I've heard him tell lots of them.'
You are lovely, Ange, so much lovelier than Jane, but please . . . do . . . shut . . . up.
'There's this parrot on the Titanic, see, and there's this magician, and he's going to do his magic act, and this passenger goes up to him, and he says, "I've got my parrot with me, and he loves magic acts, can I bring him in to watch?" and the magician says, because he's a nice bloke, "Yeah. Why not?" So the act begins, and he does his first trick, and the parrot shouts "It's in his hat", and he's not very pleased, but he goes on, and he does his second trick, and the parrot shouts out, "He's got another one up his arm", and he's really not very pleased at all now, but at that moment the ship hits an iceberg, and there's absolute chaos, and they're all in the water, and it's dark, and then in the morning it begins to get light, and there's the magician, clinging desperately to a plank of wood, and there's the parrot, clinging desperately to another plank of wood, and their eyes meet, and the magician glares, and the parrot says, "All right. I give up. What have you done with the ship?" '
Ange laughed from the joy of living and the sheer glory of jokes, and I thought it pretty funny and I laughed too, but there was absolutely no reaction from Lawrence or Jane. Jane just looked icily determined not to be amused. Beside her, Queen Victoria would have looked like Dawn French. Lawrence's brow was furrowed. He was thinking.
'I wonder how they think up jokes,' he said. 'I wonder if they start at the end and work backwards.'
I jumped in again, to put a stop to all this, to end, as I thought, all contact between Ange, Lawrence and Jane for ever.
'Yes, well, perhaps we'd better go and find that curry, Ange.'
'I love hot curries,' she said. 'I always have the same thing. Meat vindaloo. I think I must have got a corrugated stomach or something.'
'Jane makes marvellous curries,' said Lawrence. 'Subtler than vindaloo, but very hot.'
'That sounds fantastic. I'd love to try one of those.'
Ange!
'Why don't you come one day next week?' said Lawrence. 'Wednesday?'
He gave Jane a mischievous look which stopped only just short of open hostility.
'That'd be ace,' said Ange.
I didn't get a chance to express an opinion. I was being manipulated by Lawrence and Ange for their own ends. I had become too much of a recluse. I had forgotten how to play the social game.
ELEVEN
That night Ange refused to go to bed with her clothes on any more. She said that it made her much too hot in my narrow bed. I realised the sense of that. I knew that the relationship couldn't stand still. Also, I have to admit that I was really very keen to see her with nothing on. I was less keen, however, for her to see me with nothing on. No woman, apart from my mother, had ever seen me naked, and I don't think she had seen me naked since she changed my last nappy. I was very shy about revealing myself.
When I looked at her in her naked loveliness, I marvelled, and I began to feel aroused. Unlike Ruskin, whom I studied for my finals, I was not shocked at the sight of a woman's pubic hair. Unlike Ruskin (I must assume), I had seen my mother naked, though, I think, only twice. Ange's dark bush made a wonderful contrast to the smooth paleness of her skin. Her breasts, quite small but beautifully shaped and firm, seemed to me to be things of wonder. Her stomach was utterly flat. Her legs were slender but not thin. Her arms were almost thin, which made her look delightfully vulnerable. Had she not had her tattoo, I might have thought her perfect, and actually, for that reason alone, I began to warm to the tattoo, because perfection is daunting.
I don't know how I looked to her, whether she thought me a fine specimen of a man. I think I am not in any way particularly ugly. It's just that I have always thought that, while a woman's body is often beautiful, a man's is at least slightly absurd. I have no grave defects. My private parts have always seemed to me embarrassingly small, but Hemingway pointed out to Scott Fitzgerald, who was worried about the small size of his penis, that they always look smaller to their owner, who is looking down on them. Anyway, she made no comment about them. She nipped into bed, almost shyly, and I slipped in beside her, very shyly. I was tense when she touched me. I couldn't relax, and I hated myself for it, but I felt that it would not take much for her to stimulate me sufficiently.
Instead of that, however, she began to talk. The biter bit, you might say.
'Look,' she said. 'Let's get this straight, Alan. I don't mind if we don't have sex. I've had a . . .'
She stopped. I knew that there was more that she wanted to tell me. I knew that she couldn't. I knew that she would have to one day. Our relationship would demand it. My inquisitiveness would demand it.
That surprises you? It surprised me, too. I had always been considered to be one of the least inquisitive people about people in the history of human relationships. I was inquisitive about ideas, but not about people. A criticism that a colleague had made when I had shown him the first five chapters of 'Germanic Thought from Kant to Wittgenstein' was that I seemed to see Kant entirely as a mass of ideas and not as a person at all, whereas he believed that a person's nature and a person's ideas are inextricable. But I was building up a great head of curiosity about Ange and what she was trying to hide.
'Let's put it this way,' she continued. 'There's a lot more to sex than sex. There's kissing and hugging and fondling. There's touching. Touching's nice. I like it that my body's touching yours. I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but from my point of view, I've had sex before and I will again and there's no reason why you should be good at it, right? No, offence, I hope.'
'None, you're quite right.'
'But what I haven't had is chats about things like the principles of logic that you said your thingummy who's your father lecture might be about.'
'Ferdinand Brinsley.'
'Not a lot of people talk like you around Gallows Corner. I really want to know things, Alan. Nobody wants to be an ignoramus. You said I could ask you anything I wanted. Well, what I want to know is, what is logic exactly? What are the principles of it?'
It would have been a difficult enough question to launch into in a supervision with a student, but lying naked beside a naked darts groupie, just after midnight, it seemed formidable.
'I think the best way to start is with some specific points,' I began. 'It'll be much easier to grasp going from the specific to the general. Let's take a very simple example that I sometimes use to introduce the first principles. Are you still awake?'
'Course I am. I'm interested.'
'Right. Fifteen people are at a party. Seven of them have no left leg. Seven of them have no right leg. Are any of them legless?'
'All of them, I should think. I would be at a party, if I only had one leg.'
'I'd forgotten that use of the word. It's not common currency among dons.'
'You're like one of them judges that say, "What exactly are these things called 'The Beatles'?"'
'Don't. Don't. Right. Let's start again. There are fifteen people at a party. Seven have no left leg. Seven have no right leg. Do any of them have no legs?'
