by David Nobbs
'Oh yeah? Lots of long words and philosophical thoughts that I wouldn't understand?'
'Not exactly.'
'Well what would it say?'
'Ouch.'
She laughed.
'You really are coming on, Alan,' she said.
I came on that night too. It was such a joy to me to know that she hadn't slept with any of the darts players. I never told her that I knew, never asked her why she'd lied. I didn't need to. I knew. It had made her feel important for a few moments, and now I had the privilege of making her feel important all the time.
The next two days were among the happiest of my life so far. To my astonishment, my enjoyment of the darts grew and grew. The excitement in that vast bar was infectious. Leaping up with one's sign saying 180 became an enjoyable ritual. I even began to enjoy the lager, and the players had become familiar to me. I liked some more than others. I cared who won.
I felt a bit ashamed of this, but that didn't spoil my enjoyment. What had been unbelievably tedious was now filled with tension. I was almost sorry when the days ended. Not quite, because the nights proved as good as ever. The man in the room below me shook my hand at breakfast on the last morning, and said, 'I salute you.' I couldn't believe it. I had never known I had it in me, both metaphorically and physically.
Bent Sorensen lost in the semi-finals, but Geraint won an epic match against the burly Dutch giant, Franz Van Ijsselmeer. There were two Dutch fans sharing our table that day, and I got a little embarrassed by Ange's patriotic fervour – I tried to be more restrained – but they didn't seem to mind, and cheered equally fervently for their man. Geraint took a four-set lead in the nine-set match, but was then pegged back to four all, before shading the decider. 'Shading the decider'! See how rapidly I was picking up the lingo.
At the end of the day's play, we hung around in the bar. Neither of us wanted to leave. Tomorrow would be the final day, and we would have wanted it to go on for ever. I couldn't believe it.
Geraint Thomas . . . or Tons Thomas as I still preferred to think of him . . . wandered through from the players' area to meet some friends. As he passed close to us, Ange called out, 'Good luck tomorrow, Geraint.'
'Thanks, Ange,' he said, and I was pleased that he had remembered her name, and he gave her a little kiss too, and I was pleased about that as well.
'Yes, may I add my hopes for a favourable outcome tomorrow,' I said. 'I've admired your performances and they deserve to be crowned with the ultimate success.'
He looked at me, astounded, and moved off to join his friends.
In the car, on the way back to the pub, Ange said, 'Well, you've got to hand something to darts. Your philosophy, three thousand years of talk, you still haven't had a result. Darts, you get one in less than an hour every time.'
Finals day. Tons Thomas was playing a rather uncharismatic young man from the Midlands. How desperately I wanted Tons to win. How absurd that was.
The match was played over eleven sets, and all the time Ange was coming out with comments. 'A neatly accumulated ton.' 'Tons is not on song.' 'Good adjustment.' 'Steady as a rock.' 'The wheels have fallen off.'
In the third set, with the match evenly poised and Geraint with a one-dart chance of a finishing double twenty, I suddenly heard myself yelling. 'Come on, Tons.' I was appalled.
The mighty Welshman paused, turned, glared. Then I thought that he saw who it was and almost smiled, but I couldn't be sure of that.
There came a great scream of 'Best of order, please. Please do not shout when the players are taking their throws.'
Hundreds of people were glaring at me. Every single person in that enormous room was staring at me. I went bright red. Ange was looking at me too, but there was great affection in with the horror. She was thrilled that I cared so much.
Geraint calmed himself, steadied himself, and threw his third dart in the double twenty.
It all depended on the very final game of the very final set, as we had suspected it would. We felt almost unbearably tense. What was the point of feeling such tension over something so unimportant?
Tons got a maximum. We leapt up with our boards for the last time, screaming 'One Hundred and Eighteeee.' The Midlander got a maximum, and we sat glumly while his supporters rose and showed their boards.
Tons's opponent was the first to have a possible three-dart finish.
'This is the greatest pressure you can feel,' said Ange, now in unstoppable commentator mode. 'In the pressure cooker that is the Happy Valley Country Club, only the bravest will triumph.'
The young man from Walsall missed his double twenty, his final dart sliding into the five.
Tons scored a steady 120, leaving him 89 to win.
The Midlander needed 35, but his first dart bounced back most unluckily off the wire.
'Has Lady Luck deserted him in his hour of need?' asked Ange rhetorically, though she didn't know that she was being rhetorical.
His second dart landed safely in the middle of the three. Double sixteen to win. Ange clutched my sleeve.
The dart just missed the double and thudded into the single sixteen. Double eight to win.
Could Tons finish it off? Our hearts were pumping in unison. Philosophy was never like this.
Nineteen – 70 to win. Ange was silent now.
Bull's eye. A brave arrow. Fifty. Double ten to win. For an awful moment I thought that I was going to shout out again. Ange must have thought the same. She clutched my sleeve.
He missed.
The Midlander got double eight with his first dart. We had lost. We? Well, that was how it felt.
There was an enormous sense of shared anticlimax, and I was so exhausted that I feared that we would share another anticlimax back at the pub.
As we let the human tide propel us towards the exit, Ange suddenly buried her face in mine and said, 'Kiss me.'
I obeyed. It was pleasant to kiss her. We stopped and became a little human island, with people passing on both sides of us, some of them giving wolf-whistles. I had no idea why we were doing this, but I knew that there was some reason.
At last she looked up, cautiously.
'I think he's gone,' she said.
'Gone?'
'Yes.'
'Who?'
'My dad.'
'What??'
'I saw my dad. I shouldn't be that surprised. He loved darts.'
'But . . . you told me your father was dead.'
'Dead for me, Alan. That's what I meant. Pissed off when I was fifteen, didn't he? All that talk of loving me, of my being his favourite, all that cradling me on his knee – the bastard pissed off one Monday and never even sent a fucking Christmas card. Oh, sorry.'
'Forgivable under the circumstances, Ange. Oh, Ange.'
'I still hate sodding bloody Mondays.'
It occurred to me later that I could have been angry that Ange had lied, but by now I accepted her exactly as she was. I suspected that it might be possible that she was slightly mad. That didn't worry me. Why should it? I suspected that by now I was slightly mad as well.
There was no anticlimax in the pub after all.
EIGHTEEN
My time at the darts had been quite a culture shock for me, but had made such an impression on me that I now found Oxford to be a culture shock. My dry, dignified bachelor rooms were a culture shock. I felt that I no longer belonged there. I felt that I didn't want to belong there any more. I knew, of course, that this feeling would fade, but I didn't want it to.
The telephone rang. I hoped it would be Ange, telling me what a wonderful lover I was, and asking if she could come up to Oxford straightaway, instead of waiting to join me for the Ferdinand Brinsley as we had arranged.
It wasn't Ange. It was Lawrence.
'Ah! You're back,' he said.
'Your deductive powers are as strong as ever, Lawrence.'
No! I couldn't afford to be like that with Lawrence.
'Are you better?'
'Much better, thank you. I was quite
ill for a few days.'
'Well, I'm glad you're on the mend. Alan . . . ?'
'Did you manage to rearrange everything?' I had asked Lawrence to rearrange my lecture and supervisions.
'Well, yes. Eventually. Alan, I wondered if you could pop over.'
'Certainly. When?'
'As soon as possible, Alan.'
I took a taxi to Kierkegaard. It would be quicker than going to the garage for the Mem Saab.
As I rang the bell, I realised that I was dreading seeing Jane again. I really had been very rude to her last time. I wasn't sure how I should behave towards her, whether to ignore the matter or apologise.
But it was Lawrence who came to the door.
'Come in, Alan. Jane's out, you'll be relieved to hear.'
I was surprised by that. He had shown no previous ability as a mind reader.
He led me into the sitting room, but didn't invite me to sit down. He remained standing. I wanted to sit down, I felt suddenly very weary, all the week's activities had taken a lot out of me, but I felt that I couldn't sit: Lawrence looked very . . . very official. This was a Head of Department, not a friend.
'Are you still seeing that girl?' he asked.
'Isn't that rather my business?' I asked.
'Aren't I permitted to ask a simple question?' he asked.
'Are you trying to emulate Mallard and do nothing but ask questions?' I asked.
'Isn't it rather you who are emulating young Mallard?' he asked.
'Do you always refer to him as young Mallard in order to remind me that I am older than both of you?' I asked.
I have spared you from meeting Mallard so far. He irritates me and he would irritate you. He adopts an air of superiority which you cannot prick because he offers you no opportunity to prick it, the prick. He never tells me what he is thinking, just questions me about what I am thinking.
'Don't change the subject,' said Lawrence. 'Have you really been ill, or have you been to the World Darts Championship with that girl?'
'Do I really have to answer that?'
'No. I watched a bit of it on television. Well, I was curious to see what possible appeal there could be in it. I failed to find any, but I saw you in that great crowd, Alan. I saw you with her.'
I didn't reply. I thought of saying, 'It's a fair cop, guv,' as one of Lawrence's hopelessly old-fashioned criminals would say in the Inspector Didcot Mysteries, but this wasn't the time to be provocative.
'You lied to me. You repaid twenty years of friendship and support with a lie.'
I had to speak now.
'I'm very, very sorry, Lawrence,' I said, 'and only something as wonderful and powerful as love would have caused me to do it.'
He looked astonished, as well, I suppose, he might.
'You love that girl?'
'Frankly, Lawrence, I find your tone of incredulity offensive. Yes, I do.'
'Do you still only want her for her mind?'
'I wouldn't say so, no. Most definitely not.''
I couldn't avoid giving a rather childish smirk, not that I tried very hard to avoid it.
'Ah.'
'Lawrence, I can only apologise again for misleading you. I didn't like doing it and I won't do it again.'
He didn't look at me, didn't meet my eyes, and in that split second a memory came back to me, a memory of a scene in the only book of his that I'd managed to finish, a scene in which an elderly woman is killed by a poisoned cake. I recoiled from this dreadful thought, dreadful at any time and inconvenient at this moment. I also recalled a conversation with Mallard, in which he had used that wretched phrase, 'A moment in time,' and I had said, 'As opposed to a moment in marzipan, do you mean?' It's strange how one's mind races when one's panicking, and yes, I was panicking, because I suspected what all this was leading up to.
'I think, Alan, for your own sake, you shouldn't deliver the Ferdinand Brinsley. I don't think you're in a fit state.'
I should have felt relief. The thing was a black cloud building and moving towards me. I had no faith in myself to deliver an effective lecture. I was off the hook – but I wasn't so far gone in my love for Ange that I wished to end the only way I had of making money, and, to be fair to myself, the only way I had of making a contribution to the world of philosophy. I pinned no great faith now in 'Germanic Thought from Kant to Wittgenstein'. If I was taken off the Ferdinand Brinsley, it would be the end of the road for the philosopher who hadn't fulfilled his early promise.
'I see,' I said. 'And who is to deliver it?'
I didn't do my cause much good by asking such an unnecessary question.
'Young Mallard. It's time he spread his wings.'
'Has he an original thought in his head, Lawrence?'
'Have you looked at his website?'
'Very good. Nice one, Lawrence.'
'What?'
'Mallard. Website.'
Lawrence looked at me in utter astonishment.
'I wasn't joking, Alan. I don't joke to you. You don't do jokes, and this is no laughing matter. Young Mallard is feeling his way in the world, but he's the coming man, Alan, and we both have to recognise that fact. It's time we threw him in at the deep end. Incidentally, you should have a website.'
I felt so tired just at the thought of creating a website. Nothing could have brought home to me more clearly that I was finished, washed up.
'I resign.'
That would shock him. He wouldn't expect me to be so brave.
'I accept your resignation.'
What would I do with the rest of my life? What else could I do? I realised in that moment that Ange wouldn't want me under her feet the whole time, padding around in my retirement.
I was staring at the abyss.
'I withdraw my resignation.'
I didn't feel proud at that moment, but one had to be a realist.
It was such a strain conducting this whole conversation standing up in a room filled with so many comfortable chairs and sofas. Standing up made it such a stiff confrontation. I longed to sit down. I longed to wander out through the French windows and lounge on Lawrence's immaculate lawn. It was a lovely summer's day.
'Alan! Your association with that girl, your obsession, your attitude towards your work, your attitude towards Jane and me. I feel pretty sure I could get you a sabbatical next year. A year off, Alan, to recharge the batteries.'
'What would I do with a year's sabbatical?'
'Follow the sun. Take a world cruise. See exotic places. Take that girl if you must. Reinvigorate yourself. Come back refreshed, seeing things in proportion. This has been building up for some time, Alan. I've watched it.'
Ange knew that I wasn't washed up. I had adapted to her. I'd even bought a pair of jeans. Surely I could face the challenge of a website? Surely I could see off the threat posed by young Mallard?
