Cupid's Dart

by David Nobbs

  But then Ange's smile faded.

  'It's not very nice, though, is it?' she said.

  'What? What isn't very nice?'

  'Here I am trying hard to philosophise, and all you can think of is sex.'

  We walked slowly back to our hotel, along narrow cobbled lanes that the sun never touched, past high, stern houses with vast old doors. We were drinking each last draught of the city before we bade it farewell.

  We entered our room for the last time. It was cosy and welcoming. It wasn't long before we were in bed.

  That night . . . that night we loved each other as if we had no time to lose.

  I said, in my clumsy, embarrassed, academic way, as we slipped between the cool sheets, 'I'd like us to explore more of each other tonight.'

  'You've such a funny way of saying things,' she said, laughing affectionately. 'You mean soixante neuf.' Her face went solemn. 'Them's the only two words of French I know,' she said. 'What a condemnation of English education that is.'

  I have to admit that it seemed such an unlikely activity that I wasn't sure, right until we began, whether I would enjoy it. But how I enjoyed it. I felt no inhibition about my enjoyment of Ange's lovely body. The only embarrassment I felt was with her enjoyment of my body. I could hardly bring myself to believe that my body was capable of giving a girl pleasure, so low had I sunk in my previous self-esteem. Well, Ange did get pleasure, and so did I, and gradually my awkwardness eased. How close we were, how cosy it was, in the cave of our bed, in the darkness of our room, with the night-life of that great city going on all around us, with our sense of being at the centre of so many periods of civilisation. It was the perfect setting for our closeness, our friendliness, our physical ease, our mutual pleasure. Occasional strange thoughts came to me. I wondered if Kant had ever done this, and with whom. I thought of the ruins of Ancient Rome, its empire long gone but still remembered. I wondered if I would be remembered. I thought of Keats's words, 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' I wondered if, after this, I would feel a need to know anything any more. If not, I could hardly continue to be a philosopher. I thought of myself as if I were Roman history. My crumbling was over. My dark ages were behind me. This was my renaissance. Would my future be as turbulent as Rome's? Who would be my Mussolini?

  Ridiculous thoughts, but I was on a trip, as surely as if I was taking LSD. I took the drug of love that night, drank freely from its cup. Slowly and quickly we enjoyed each other. Fiercely and gently we enjoyed each other. The noises of the city faded away, the yapping dog, the excited conversation of two old men, the wheels of a suitcase clattering on the cobbles, the distant sirens. The whole great city slipped away, proved not to be as eternal as expected, and there were only the two of us left.

  TWENTY

  I stood in the centre of the Old Town Square in Prague, and opened my guide book, which had pictures of the very buildings that I was facing. There was a magnificent row of town houses, with colourful names, The House At The Stone Bell, at the Golden Unicorn, at the Storks, at the Red Fox, at the Blue Star. I turned to Ange, but of course she wasn't there.

  I wasn't ashamed of her, but it would have been quite inappropriate to have brought her with me.

  I snapped my guide book shut, and tried to enjoy the square without it, tried to imagine how Ange would react to all this. She wouldn't need a guide book. She wouldn't want to know the exact dates of the various buildings. She would simply drink in their beauty.

  These old houses were four or five storeys high, painted in the subtlest of yellows and ochres and pale blues. Each house had its own personality, with its own individual gable. Some were Romanesque and restrained. Others were Gothic and flamboyant.

  It wouldn't have been fair to bring her and leave her on her own all day, every day, as I would have been forced to do. Whatever I might think of the conference and its aims, it was work, and I was the sole representative of my great university.

  What a square it was, irregular in shape, unplanned, ringed on all sides by ancient buildings, watched over by the graceful Gothic towers and steeples of the Church of Our Lady before Tyn. I wanted to discuss with Ange how much I loved churches and how much I hated religion, but of course she wasn't there.

  In her absence, the beauty of the square was distressing. But no, I mustn't be distressed. One day I would bring her here, and we would enjoy all this together. That excited me, and in fact it was impossible for me to feel distressed for long. There was a warm glow in my heart. It was the glow of love.

  I wandered over to one of the many cafés which spilled out on to the square. I found a vacant table, and ordered a beer. I was surprised to hear myself asking for a large one. Why on earth had I done that? Not because I wanted it, that was for sure. I would have quite a struggle to finish it.

  I must have ordered it because I knew that Ange would be impressed if she could see me, although, since I knew that she couldn't see me, it seemed like a somewhat fatuous gesture.

  The whole of the huge square was free of traffic, and filled with people. I had never been one for watching people. I suppose I hadn't much liked people, and particularly tourists. In Oxford I found them an irritant and often refused to change my course to let them pass by. It was my city, not theirs. Here in Prague, I found myself enjoying the enjoyment of the tourists. Love – and I no longer doubted, after Rome, that I was in love or that, miraculously, Ange was in love with me – had made me a more generous person. Love had made me less judgmental at a stroke.

  Many of the tourists were Japanese, of course. They were all taking large numbers of photographs, mostly of their friends and partners smiling. I could imagine them showing these pictures to their relatives in Tokyo and Kyoto. 'This is me smiling in Prague. This is me smiling in Budapest. This is me smiling in Venice.' How they smiled. I wondered what they had to smile about. Only I had a right to smile. Only I was in love with Ange.

  Our conference was being held in one of the palaces inside the walls of Prague Castle. From its windows one could look down over the quaint streets of the Mala Styrana or 'Little Quarter' to the great city spread out on the other bank of the Vitava. Here was a scene that I recognised not from life but from paintings, from old paintings of English cities. Here was a fantasy city of sturdy towers and graceful spires such as I had seen on pictorial maps on many an English wall – but here in Prague it was not hanging on a wall as a reminder to town planners of their crimes. Here it was real, and it was lovely, and now I was sitting right in the centre of it, and I so wanted to share it with Ange.

  I opened my briefcase and took out a bundle of papers, which I arranged in front of me. I had no intention of working, but I might need to appear to be.

  I sipped my beer. It was surprisingly good: stronger than English beer, but well balanced and full of flavour. What a relief. I would finish it without difficulty. I would not need to slink out in shame, leaving a half-full glass.

  Even if I had left a half-full glass, I wouldn't have needed to feel shame any more. I was above such petty things. I was no longer a husk.

  It did cross my mind that perhaps I only thought that Prague was incredibly beautiful because I was in love, that if I had been sipping a beer in Swindon at that moment I would have thought it beautiful too, but I knew that it was not so.

  Occasionally in my long life in philosophy some sad bore has challenged me to disprove the solipsistic view of existence. 'How do you know that anything exists outside yourself?' he has said, and I have resisted the temptation to reply, 'Because if I was inventing the world around me, I wouldn't waste my time inventing anything as sad and boring as you.' I have never believed that one can disprove it, one can only say that it is extremely improbable, and, in any case, even if true, makes no difference whatsoever to one's life. But here, in this crowded pavement café in Prague, I found an argument that was sufficient for me, even though it would not satisfy any logical criteria. I just might have been able to invent Prague,
invent this beer (already half-finished, I was surprised to see), but I knew in my heart that I was not imaginative enough to have invented Ange.

  A group of delegates from the conference were walking across the square. One of them, silly fool, had left his name tag on. How ridiculous he looked. How glad I was of my forethought in laying out my papers. I buried my head in my notes and scribbled a few words, adopting an intelligent frown, so that, if they did see me, they would think I was working on matters of great complexity and depth.

  What I actually wrote was, 'Dear Ange, I love you,' followed by twenty-four Xs, one for each year of her life.

  I had no desire to see anyone from the conference that evening, because I was so enjoying being alone. I was having an entirely new experience, that of being on my own and not feeling remotely lonely. I had not realised, until that evening, how lonely I had been all my life.

  The philosophers chose another café, to my great relief.

  In five days' time I would be with her. We would celebrate her twenty-fifth birthday together, with a meal at a restaurant called the Lemon Tree, in North Oxford. It was full of palms, its walls were a dashing shade of ochre, and its barman made brilliant cocktails with panache. She would like it. We would drink cocktails. I had never much cared for cocktails. I had always rather disapproved of them as decadent, but it would be a dull man who couldn't change his tastes, and I was no longer a dull man. I had enjoyed my preprandial negroni in Rome, and I would enjoy my cocktails with Ange in Oxford.

  I realised with a shock that I had already changed my tastes. I had finished my beer. I felt very proud of myself. I signalled to the waiter, and he hurried over. It was incredible. You don't think so? Then you're lucky. You're the sort of person to whom waiters hurry over. I am a man whom waiters ignore. Or rather I was. No longer!

  I meant to say, 'Could I have my bill please?' I have no idea why it came out as 'Another beer, please.'

  As I sipped my second beer I thought about our time in Rome. I relived every moment. Memory is the greatest gift that we humans possess. We can relive our happy experiences as often as we like. If we had no memory, there would be so much less pleasure in our lives. I thought of my mother, and wondered if a day would come when she no longer had any memory.

  It wouldn't. I would have killed her before that.

  In my shock I took a larger sip of beer than I intended, and choked. People looked round when they heard my coughing fit. My waiter hurried over and banged my back. I gasped my thanks.

  I wasn't really planning to give my mother a poisoned cake, was I? It had just been a wicked, unbidden thought, even though I now knew how I would do it, if I did it. It would be a mercy killing, of course, but even so . . . I wasn't a killer. I thrust the thought away.

  I was in bed with Ange again, in Rome. Oh, the joy of that last night. Oh, the amazing togetherness. We had been as one person in that bed. I must have smiled as I recalled it, and it must have been a strange smile, because the woman at the next table was giving me a curious glance. I could tell that she fancied herself. I turned to Ange, to say, 'That woman fancies herself. It's just as well that somebody does', but of course she wasn't there.

  Five days. How slowly they would pass. But I wouldn't mind. I would spend those five days in a most wonderful and secret place, where the sea of anticipation licked the shore of memory. I imagined using that phrase to Lawrence. I imagined his reply, 'You're not well, Alan.' I laughed out loud. People looked round. I grinned at them. They looked away.

  I was beginning to behave oddly. It was time to go. It was time to pay the bill. I called the waiter over.

  'Another beer, please.'

  Again, my request was a total surprise to me.

  'You like our Czech beer?'

  'It's scrumptious.'

  'Ah. I do not know this scrumptious.'

  'It means that it's very nice.'

  'Thank you, sir, but English beer is also very nice. I have been to Nuneaton. I have drinked Ansell's beer. That is nice.'

  I had chatted to a waiter, I who had no small talk. How astonished my friends would have been to hear me. I smiled again. I heard a child say, 'Look at that man smiling, Mummy' and I heard his mother's whispered reply, 'Take no notice, dear. He's not quite right.'

  I wanted to go over to her and say, 'Madam, you err. I have never been righter.' But I didn't. I didn't want to be asked to leave the café. I wanted to sit and watch the world go by. I wanted to enjoy all the sensations of that slow Prague dusk, as the soft canopy of night was pulled across the old town as it had been every evening for centuries.

  I felt a stab of regret as it occurred to me that I had been wrong in thinking that I could bring Ange to Prague. I would never stand beside her in the Old Town Square. I could never show her places that I had been to before. Her pride would not allow me to. Our life together would be a voyage of discovery for us both, not a lesson for her. That was as it should be. That was exciting. But, oh, I wished that I could show her Prague.

  I saw a lady philosopher called Frances walking across the square with a couple of Bulgarian philosophers who had bored me stiff on a subject about which I knew nothing – Bulgarian philosophy. I didn't want to talk to them, and I didn't want to meet Frances either just then, attractive though she was. I lowered my head, and began to write.

  Dear Ange,

  This is the first love letter that I have ever written in my life. I am sitting here in the Old Town Square in Prague, wishing that you were here beside me, remembering Rome and all the wonderful times we had there. Prague is also very beautiful. Thinking about beauty, I

  I hesitated. I couldn't think how to continue. I had had no practice at that sort of thing. I looked up, cautiously. There was no sign of Frances, and I was relieved.

  Earlier that day, after a particularly tedious session – the conference was on the subject of 'The Role of Philosophy in the Future of the Wider European Economic Community', and so far it had not been quite as stimulating as you might expect from such a title – Frances had come up to me by the coffee urn and said, 'You're different, Alan. You're perky. You're even walking differently. You're bouncing along.'

  'Thank goodness I'm not Czech, then,' I had replied. 'Nobody likes Czechs that bounce.'

  She had looked at me in astonishment. I could just imagine what she had gone around saying, after that. 'Alan Calcutt made a joke this morning. Not brilliant, but it was a start. He's changed. You don't think . . . I know this is incredible . . . but you don't think he's got a woman, do you?'

  Perhaps I flatter myself in imagining that she had even been thinking about me, but in the session that followed coffee – 'The Post-Marxist Role in the New Federalism' – she had craned her lovely neck to look back at me and caught my eye. This was not something that had ever happened to me at any conference before.

  I have met Frances at several conferences and have been no more awkward in her presence than I have been in the presence of every other woman I have met. It had never occurred to me until now that she was attractive. Her husbands must have thought her so, I presume, for a while at any rate, but it was a surprise to me, in Prague, to realise that she was almost beautiful, with her slightly fleshy, freckled legs and her red hair, and that for the first time she was considering the possibility that I might be attractive to her. I had no interest in her, of course, but I didn't want to have to rebuff her. I didn't know how to rebuff a woman. I'd had no practice at it. Much better to avoid her. I'd had plenty of practice at that; I was a master.

  I began to think about marriage, about my impending marriage to Ange. I hadn't asked her yet, but I was sure that she would accept me. Everyone would say it was unsuitable. Marriage to Frances, on the other hand, would be suitable. My mother, if she had ever been able to even contemplate the possibility of my marrying, would have wanted me to make a good marriage. That didn't mean making a happy marriage, it meant making a suitable marriage. I couldn't blame her. It was the tradition. The works of Jane Austen were al
l about arranging suitable marriages. We weren't as different from the Muslims as we thought we were.

  Now one or two people I recognised entered the café, and I returned hastily to my notes.