The Post-Birthday World

by Lionel Shriver

  “They almost always take up golf.”

  “Oh, great.” Betsy heaped another spoonful of the neglected lamb onto her plate, eyeing Irina askance when she poured another glass of wine. “Listen, you must be having a rough time. But before you do anything hasty, try to be practical. Jude says he’s neurotic.”

  “She’s one to talk.”

  “I just want you to walk in with your eyes open. She says he’s a hypochondriac. That he’s superstitious and touchy, especially about anything to do with his snooker game. Expect snooker, snooker, snooker. You’d better like it.”

  “I do like it,” said Irina. “Increasingly.”

  “‘Increasingly’ means you didn’t give a shit about it before. But I get the feeling it’s not a fascination with snooker that’s driving this thing.”

  “All right. No.” Irina had never tried to put it into words, and had a dismal presentiment that any attempt to do so would prove humiliating. Nevertheless, she’d give it a go. “Every time he touches me, I think I could die. I could die right at that moment and I’d leave this earth in a state of grace. And everything fits. No matter how we sit next to each other, it’s always comfortable. The smell of his skin makes me high. Really, breathing at the base of his neck is like sniffing glue. Slightly sweet and musky at the same time. Like one of those complex reduction sauces you get in upscale restaurants, which somehow manages to be both intense and delicate, and you can never quite figure out what’s in it. And kissing him—I should be embarrassed to say this, but sometimes it makes me cry.”

  “My dear,” said Betsy, clearly unmoved; boy, was that speech a waste of time. “It’s called ‘sex.’”

  “That’s a belittling word. What I’m talking about isn’t little. It’s everything.”

  “It isn’t everything, though it seems that way when you’re drunk on it. Eventually the smoke clears, and there you are, with this guy downstairs hitting little red balls into pockets the whole day through, and you wonder how you got here.”

  “You think it doesn’t last.”

  “Of course it doesn’t last!” Betsy scoffed. “Didn’t you go through something like this with Lawrence?”

  “Sort of. Maybe. Not as extreme. I don’t know. It’s hard to remember.”

  “It’s no longer convenient to remember. Didn’t you two go at it hot and heavy for a few months? Or you wouldn’t have moved in together.”

  “Yes, I guess. But this seems different.”

  “It seems ‘different’ because right now you’re up to your neck in it. And meanwhile, there are traffic bollards in your head to keep you from getting at what it was like in the olden days with Lawrence. My money says it wasn’t different at all.”

  “You think everyone goes round in the same cycle. You get all very giddy and infatuated at ‘the beginning,’ and then inevitably the fire dies down to sorry little embers. So in no time I’ll be having mechanical, impersonal relations with Ramsey three times a week instead of with Lawrence.”

  “If you’re lucky.”

  “I refuse to accept that.”

  “Then you’ll find out the hard way, cookie.” Betsy’s eyes sharpened when they caught Irina glancing surreptitiously at her watch. “I’ll stand behind you whatever you do, because you’re my friend. And I promise I won’t say this again. Still, I’d feel remiss if I didn’t at least say it once. Lawrence may not be God’s gift to womankind. But—don’t laugh, this isn’t unimportant—he is a ‘good provider.’ He’s solid, and I’m pretty sure he loves you like all get out, whether or not he’s always able to show it. He’s the kind of man you’d want around in a flood or an earthquake, or when some hood is breaking into your house. Icing on the cake, he’s a caustic, irreverent son of a bitch, and I like him. I’m not saying that a girl doesn’t gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. Just because if you leave him you’ll break his heart doesn’t mean you shouldn’t follow your nose—literally, from the sound of it. But I think you’d miss him.”

  “And, in the other event, wouldn’t I miss Ramsey?”

  “I don’t doubt that cutting this thing off right now would probably feel like hacking off your arm. But it would grow back. You’ve been with Lawrence, what, ten years?”

  “Close,” said Irina absently.

  “That’s like a bank account, steadily accruing interest. You are frugal. Don’t shoot your wad. You could blow your savings on some fancy, shiny gadget. Then when it jams, you’ll be stuck with this glorified paperweight in your bed, and you’ll be broke.”

  It wasn’t nice, but Irina was no longer paying attention, and she asked for the bill. That’s what happens when people give you advice that you don’t care to take: their voices go tinny and mincing, like a radio playing in another room.

  Betsy folded her arms. “Doesn’t Ramsey live a few blocks from here?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.” Irina stirred her pocketbook for her wallet.

  “Next question.” Betsy’s eyes were flinty. “Are you or are you not walking back with me to the Mile End tube?”

  “I might—take a cab.”

  “Swell. We can share one.”

  “Borough’s not on your way.”

  “I don’t mind the ride.”

  “Oh, stop it! Yes, if you must know, I am. We hardly ever get to see each other in the evening. I won’t have long, either.”

  “Did you really want to see me? Or am I just a beard?”

  “Yes, I really wanted to see you. Can’t you tell? Two birds, one stone is all.”

  “So you drag me all the way out to the East End—”

  “I’m sorry about that. I have warm associations with this place. We—well, the management isn’t into snooker, so they don’t know who he is. And I do like the food.”

  “That’s funny. You didn’t eat any.”

  “I told you, my appetite is crap.”

  “If Lawrence asks me when we wrapped things up here, I’ll have to tell him.”

  “He won’t ask.” This was true, but there was something sad about that.

  Irina tried to treat her friend, but Betsy was having none of it, as if refusing to be bought off. They split the bill. Walking down Roman Road, they said nothing.

  At Grove, where Betsy would turn left and Irina right, Betsy faced her. “I don’t like to be used, Irina.”

  “I’m sorry.” She was fighting tears. “It won’t happen again. I promise.”

  “You’ve got to talk to Lawrence.”

  “I know. But lately we can’t seem to talk about anything.”

  “I wonder why that would be.”

  “He’s such a purist about loyalty. If I ever allow that I’ve been attracted to someone else, he’ll slam the door in my face. And I’d destroy his friendship with Ramsey. I don’t think I can say anything without being sure what I want to do.”

  “Lawrence is a good man, Irina. They’re thin on the ground. Think twice.”

  “YOU’RE PANTING!”

  “I ran. We don’t have much time.”

  “Get in here, pet, you’ll catch your death. Your hands!”

  They crossed the threshold, hips locked like freight cars. Closing the door with his back, Ramsey massaged her fingers with his own.

  It was a minor malady, and common: Raynaud’s disease, which sent the small blood vessels of the extremities into spasm at even moderately cool temperatures. Now that September had kicked in, the problem had returned. When it was diagnosed, Lawrence had suggested, for working in the studio during the day, a pair of fingerless gloves.

  Not bad advice. But when she’d explained the ailment to Ramsey at Best of India last week, he’d instinctively reached across the table, working the corpse-cold flesh until its temperature conformed to the touch of a live woman.

  A minor distinction, or so it would seem. Lawrence came up with a technical solution, and Ramsey a tactile one. But for Irina the contrast was night-and-day. Oh, she’d rarely complained. Big deal, she got cold hands; there were worse fates. Lawrence ha
d even bought her those fingerless gloves, which helped a bit. But on some winter nights out her hands got so stiff that she couldn’t turn the front-door key, and she’d have to knock with her foot. Yet not once had Lawrence massaged her fingers with his own until they warmed. He was a considerate man, ever drawing her attention to up-and-coming publishers, and she never lacked for little presents, sometimes for no occasion at all. But she didn’t first and foremost crave professional advice, or thoughtful trinkets. She wanted a hand to hold.

  “Brandy?”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t,” she said, accepting a snifter. “I was on edge at dinner, and went through a bottle of wine like seltzer.”

  As usual, he led her to the basement, where they nestled onto a leather couch with the light over the snooker table switched on. The expanse of green baize glowed before them like a lush summer field; they might have been picnicking in a pasture.

  “I feel awful,” she said. “I told Betsy about us, and—”

  “You oughtn’t have told her.”

  “I had to tell someone.”

  “You oughtn’t have told her.”

  “Betsy can keep a secret!”

  “Nobody keeps another git’s secret like they do their own—and most people can’t keep them. Not even you, pet, if tonight’s a measure.” He sounded bitter.

  “I can’t talk to Lawrence. You’re hardly objective. If I didn’t confide in someone I was going to go mad.”

  “But what’s between you and me is private. You’re turning what we got into dirt. What secretaries titter about over coffee. It’s soiling.”

  “It’s soiled anyway.”

  “That ain’t my fault.”

  “It’s mine?”

  “Yeah,” he said to her surprise. “You got to decide. I might keep up with this carry-on, against my better judgment. If it weren’t for one thing. Irina, love—you’re making a horlicks of my snooker game.”

  Irina wanted to pitch back, Oh, so what? but she knew better. “What do I have to do with your snooker game?”

  “You’ve spannered my concentration. I’m lining up a safety shot, and all what’s running through my head is when you’ll ring. Instead of rolling snug up against the balk cushion with the brown blocking the pack, the white ends up smack in the middle of the table on an easy red to the side pocket.”

  “Oh, what a tragedy, that your practice game is off, when I’m repaying the kindest man in my life with duplicity and betrayal!”

  Ramsey withdrew his arm coolly from around her shoulders. “The very kindest?”

  “Oh, one of the kindest, then,” she said, flustered. “This isn’t a competition.”

  “Bollocks. Of course it’s a competition. Naïveté don’t suit you, ducky.”

  “I hate it when you call me that.” The way Ramsey pronounced the anachronism (nobody in Britain these days said ducky outside West End revivals of My Fair Lady), it sounded like anything but an endearment. She hugely preferred pet. The northern usage may have been equally eccentric, but it was tender, and—pleasingly—she’d never heard him address as pet anyone but her. “I have so little time. We shouldn’t waste it fighting!”

  Ramsey had retreated to the far end of the couch. “I told you from the off. I ain’t into anything cheap. We been sneaking about for near on three months now, and that’d be three months longer than I ever mean to smarm round behind a mate’s back and roger his bird.”

  “But we haven’t—”

  “Might as well have. I had my arm up your fanny to the elbow.” (In Britain, fanny was not part of the anatomy that one would pat affectionately in public.) “Tell that to Anorak Man and ask if it really matters that it ain’t my dick. Fifty-to-one odds he’d not shake my hand for being so respectful, but punch me in the gob. It’d be a fair cop as well. I’m bang out of order, I am, and so are you.”

  Irina bowed her head. “You don’t have to try so hard to make me feel bad. I feel awful already, in case you were worried.”

  “But I don’t want you to feel shite, do I? I don’t want to feel shite. I don’t want to think of you leaving here tonight and going to bed barearsed with another fella. I don’t want to and I don’t have to and I won’t.”

  Irina had started to cry, but Ramsey made a show of hardness, as if her tears were a gambit. “If I was a bird, I’d be fancied a right mug. Letting some more or less married bloke mess about with me during the day. But I’m a bloke, so instead I’m a Jack the Lad. Hand in the knickers, and it costing me no more than the odd chardonnay.

  “That’s the way your man in the street thinks, but it ain’t the way I think, darling. I think I’m a right mug. You slink in here and rub up against my trousers like a cat itching her backside on a post, and then it’s, Blimey, look at the time! And you nip out the door again—leaving me with the post. I got no moral objection to self-abuse, but it’s well short of a proper good time.”

  “You shouldn’t talk about us like that,” she sniffled. “Or me like that. It’s ugly.”

  “We been making it ugly! Bugger it, woman!” Ramsey socked a fist into his opposite palm. “I want to fuck you!”

  Despite her miserable curl at the far end of the sofa, Irina felt a twinge, as if he had her on a string, and could tug at the tackle between her legs like a toy on wheels. Thus her pride at his declaration was dovetailed by resentment. It was all very exhilarating to have conceived a consuming infatuation against the placid backdrop of her reserved relationship with Lawrence. But there was no opting out; she could not nibble at sexual obsession when it suited her. The craving was constant, and with Ramsey now removed by three feet even the brief deprivation was unbearable. “I want to fuck you, too,” she mumbled morosely.

  “You treat me like a rent boy! It’s been long enough. You rubbish me, and you rubbish us. You rubbish yourself. If you’re right and Lawrence ain’t twigged yet, you can nip back to your happy home and stay. Or you can get your bum into my bed and stay. You cannot have him and me both. ’Cos I am shattered. I am half demented. Waiting for you to show tonight, I couldn’t pot the colors on their spots, and I could pot the colors on their spots standing on a fruit crate when I were seven.”

  “Three months may seem like an eternity to you, but I’ve nearly ten years with Lawrence at stake here. I have to be sure of myself. There’d be no going back.”

  “There ain’t never no going back! In snooker, you learn the hard way that every shot is for keeps. I got no time for prats who hair-tear about Oi, if only I’d not used quite so deep a screw on the blue. Well, you didn’t. You potted the blue, or you didn’t. You’re on the next red, or you ain’t. You live with it. You make the best call you can in the moment, and then you deal with the consequences. Right now, it’s your visit. You’re in amongst the balls. You got to decide whether to go for the pink or the black, full stop.”

  “Is Lawrence the pink? Because I don’t think he’d appreciate the color.”

  Ramsey looked unamused.

  “Sorry,” she continued with a nervous smile, “it’s just, Reservoir Dogs is one of his favorite movies, and there’s this scene where Steve Buscemi whines about why does he have to be ‘Mr. Pink’…Oh, never mind.”

  “I’m entered in the Grand Prix next month,” said Ramsey levelly. “I got to get tournament ready, and I got to be able to concentrate. In the best of all possible worlds, I’d ask you to come with me to Bournemouth. But that’s obviously a nonstarter.”

  “Oh, but I would love to—”

  “I mayn’t have made world champion,” he plowed on, “but I been in six championship finals, and got an MBE from the Queen. That mayn’t mean much to a Septic Tank”—he had taught her Cockney rhyming slang for Yank—“but it does mean something to me. I won’t be treated like a bauble by a bird who’s snug as a bug with another bloke but needs a bit of buzz. And I won’t play in a bent match. I’d never have played a single frame if I knew from the off that the trophy was pledged to another fella.”

  The monologue had all the ear
marks of a rehearsed speech. But Irina was starting to get a feel for Ramsey, and she didn’t think so. He was a performer, and his game was the soul of spontaneity. This show had taken an improvisational turn at her imprudent outburst about betraying “the kindest man in her life”—though her more considerable imprudence may have been impugning the paramount importance of snooker. Impetuously, he had gone with the turn and kept going. His voice sounded measured; the discussion itself was out of control. She could already sense where this was leading, and her cheeks drained. It was all she could do to keep from leaping across the sofa to clap a hand on his mouth.

  “I don’t want to see you again before the Grand Prix,” he said. “And that’d be no love notes neither, nor blubbing on the blower. When I come back to London, I only want you to rock up on my doorstep if you told Lawrence you’re in love with me, and him and you is finished.”

  If Ramsey was being melodramatic and had had a fair bit to drink, his it’s-him-or-me ultimatum made unpleasantly good sense. Yet he couldn’t resist taking his levelheaded proposal that one step further that would make it hasty, foolhardy, and scandalously premature: “And that ain’t all, ducky. When you leave Lawrence, if you leave Lawrence, you don’t tuck in upstairs as me in-house personal slag. You marry me. Got that? You marry me, and toot-sweet. At forty-seven, I got no use for long engagements.”

  As proposals go, this one was less bended-knee woo than assault. His delivery had been cruel, his clear intention to make what was already a terrible choice only the more stark. There would be no “trial separation” from Lawrence, no sampling of Ramsey’s wares like one of those small squares of Cheshire at Borough Market with no obligation to buy. On the other hand, no man had ever asked Irina to marry him before, in any tone of voice. His furious demand, flung at her from three feet like a wet rag, prickled the back of her neck.

  “Ramsey—I didn’t even marry Lawrence, after nearly ten years.”

  “I rest my case.”