The Post-Birthday World

by Lionel Shriver

  They did conduct many a languid evening exploring what avenues Ramsey could pursue after hanging up his cue—commentating for the BBC, doing advertisements for a sponsor, starting a snooker camp for the underprivileged, writing his memoirs. Yet she knew in her bones that Ramsey would never start a snooker camp, or anything else. In retirement, he would flip disaffectedly through Snooker Scene, glower disaffectedly at tournaments on television, and otherwise prop glaze-eyed before How Clean Is Your House?

  Nevertheless, there would be advantages. Putting out of mind the Ooty Club Rule—to wit, Ramsey was exclusively interested in travel to places that had something to do with snooker—Irina supposed that they could make profitable use of his ample winnings and see the world. Were he not on tour for most of the year, they could finally enjoy a home life—the simple pleasures of coffee and Daily Telegraphs, clean windows and daffodils, cabernet and Newsnight.

  On into the winter, entertaining his options became a full-time occupation in itself. Consuming the present with fanciful futures was an adolescent pastime, unseemly for a man of fifty-one. He knew perfectly well that he was not going to buy an organic farm, or move to South America.

  Meanwhile, since neurosis is like a gas, and will expand to fill whatever space it is provided, Ramsey the footloose became an even more flamboyant hypochondriac. Lately his complaint had migrated from a vague unease about his bowels to the fact that it took too long to pee. He was starting to get up out of bed two or three times a night to evacuate his bladder, and was forever moaning about lower-back pain, or stiffness in his upper thighs. Nary a day went by that he did not declare himself nonspecifically “off-form,” though getting him to describe what precisely he meant by that, where did it hurt, was he constipated, was like quizzing a child of three.

  Well, everyone had their quirks, and Irina could abide Ramsey’s. She’d known for years that he had a nervous, scrutinizing relationship to his body—some ghastly terminal illness was always lurking around the corner—and frankly, she had a hard time taking his dithers about his health seriously so long as he continued to smoke. As Ramsey varied his phantom ailments, Irina varied her response. Sometimes she humored his every pang and groan; lately she was more in the mood to ignore them.

  It was all manageable. Working on a new illustration project, Irina could afford his interruptions upstairs; eager for busywork, her husband ran most of the errands. Filling time with virtually nothing was a talent, and Ramsey appeared to have the knack. A leisurely, companionable vista seemed to open up before them, but for one blot on the landscape.

  After 9/11 and that ghastly set-to, they’d both been shell-shocked, and it was natural for their sex life to have subsided. But by October or so, surely a regular schedule of intimacies might have resumed. After all, through the worst of their fractiousness, the one thing they’d always been good at was fucking.

  Yet lately Ramsey seemed rarely inclined to do more than wrap his body around her back. The fit, as ever, was delectable, but there were alternative configurations that fit pretty bloody well, too, in which Ramsey evinced decreasing interest. One night in November they did put it together, but, as if having found it dark and scary in there, his dick shrank shyly and withdrew exhaustedly to surface. On another, they must have tried for half an hour, but repeatedly stuffing in his spongy penis recalled the first time that Irina had tried to insert a Tampax as a teenager, and didn’t realize that you were supposed to keep the soft cotton braced inside the cardboard sheath. On a few evenings thereafter she tacitly pressed the matter, sliding her fingers down his smooth, flat stomach, only to find—well, it was like reaching into an open jar of pickles that hadn’t been refrigerated. “Just ain’t happening, pet,” he would mumble, and after a reassuring squeeze she’d let him be.

  Maybe like two sticks rubbing together they’d become too dependent on friction to ignite, and enforced tranquility couldn’t light their fire. To get nostalgic for screaming matches seemed foolish, but she hadn’t meant to throw out the baby-making with the bathwater. Alternatively, maybe, despite his cheerful declarations that closing the door on snooker for good would be “a relief,” at the prospect of retirement he was depressed, perhaps clinically so. Impotence—a word she ducked—was a classic symptom.

  She preferred either theory to the third: that Betsy was right. That you couldn’t “keep it.” That their continual desperation to get their hands on each other having lasted over four years made them lucky, but that all relationships eventually trace the same arc: sex settles down to something nice and plain, familiar and, on many a night, sneakily too much bother. Her disappointment was soul-destroying. What was the point of leaving Lawrence and wreaking all that havoc, only to end up where she started?

  But in that case, she and Ramsey were fatally out of sync. She still wanted him, with an intensity that was becoming obsessive. When Ramsey made runs to Safeway, she was getting into the bad habit of hurriedly, frantically masturbating in her studio while he was gone. Her fantasies were vivid, verbal, and various, but had one thing in common: they were always, without fail, about her own husband.

  SO IT WAS TACKY, but before she embarrassed him by raising the issue at dinner, or sought therapeutic redress, Irina sought re-dress, period. For Valentine’s Day, surely there’d be no harm in trying the racy-underwear gambit. Something visually fresh might stir him, and at the least they might find the new gear a laugh.

  Along with half the men in London it seemed, she ventured into Agent Provocateur, to find that lingerie had come a long way from the scratchy red lace and garters displayed in the sex shops along Christopher Street in her youth. Some of the teddies were tasteful, the bras comely but not uncomfortable, and at length she had a fabulous time. At checkout, her haul came to an appalling £312.16, but what the hell. Ramsey was rich.

  “I’m sorry, madam, but your card has been declined.”

  Pinkening, Irina fought the impulse to announce that she was no bankrupt, thank you very much; that her husband was a sportsman of international renown who had earned millions … when the saleswoman wouldn’t believe her and didn’t care.

  “Oh,” she said. “Maybe my husband forgot to … or there’s been a computer error. Please, take this one.”

  To Irina’s mortification, the Visa and Switch were also declined, and the queue behind her, in the Valentine’s Day rush, was curling down the aisle. The only other plastic at her disposal was Lawrence’s MasterCard, still jointly in both their names, whose expiration date did not arrive until next month. Putting a charge from Agent Provocateur on Lawrence’s bill was beyond the pale. “If you could put that aside for me,” she mumbled, “I’ll come back with cash.” Primly, the saleswoman slid under the counter the pile of beautifully beribboned boxes, her jaded expression betraying a skepticism that this deadbeat would ever return to retrieve them. She was right.

  Bearing no gifts with which to bare gifts, Irina returned to Victoria Park Road in a state of suspension. There was an explanation, some temporary financial snafu. She found Ramsey in the kitchen affixing a tip to one of those new cues, each of which had cost in the range of £1,000. Just now, she wished that he would firmly declare his retirement, rather than merely withdrawing from tournaments one by one—in which case there would be no purpose to gluing that tiny circle of felt so meticulously to the tip of a stick good for little more than an impromptu flagpole.

  “Where you been, love?” he said, and she said, “Shopping.” “Don’t see no packages,” he observed, and she said, “Nope.” He left to pee, and when he returned he proposed, “Valentine’s Day, innit? Reckon it’s time we hit that place in Smithfield you’re always on about, and reclaim it from Anorak Man.”

  “Club Gascon could run us three hundred quid, knowing your taste in wine.” She suggested evenly, “I think we should eat in.”

  “Oi, you only live once!”

  “In terms of pricey dinners, we’ve lived several times.” Although eager for assurance that a pile of checks simply never
made it into the post, Irina was uneasy. “Ramsey… Is there any reason you know of that your credit cards might be declined?”

  Ramsey pared the sides of the tip intently with a razor blade. “They might be under a mite bit of strain, like.”

  “Why would that be?” she asked calmly, though there are varieties of calm that border on insanity; she had begun to tremble. “Do you need to transfer some funds?”

  “You could say that. Like, from some other git’s to my own.”

  She had to sit down. “What are you telling me.”

  He examined the ferrule critically; he’d nicked the brass. “I ain’t well clear on the big picture—dosh bores the bollocks off me, to be honest—he usually means but it seems I’m a tad skint.”

  “You’re broke?”

  “That’d be more of an American expression.”

  It was a strange experience, to start to hyperventilate while merely sitting in a chair. “I don’t think this is the time to explore colloquial niceties. Ramsey, would you stop fussing with that cue and talk to me!”

  He put the cue down and looked at her, and she could see that he was clearer on the big picture than he let on.

  “According to your Web page,” said Irina, “you have lifetime earnings of over four million pounds. Where is it?”

  Ramsey shrugged. “Jude took me for a fair whack. And ducky, you got any idea what a doddle it is to run through a few million pounds?”

  “Don’t ducky me! You promised. We’re not duckying anymore, full stop.”

  They sat across from each other and breathed.

  “You won 150 grand for the final in Sheffield.” They would not fight, she was not going to fight, but her throat had tightened and her lungs hurt. “You bought those cues, got Denise repaired—or embalmed, since it merely allowed for a proper burial. We’ve been out to eat. But we can’t have run through £150,000 in the last nine months.”

  “I put a flutter on the results of the final.”

  “Your own final? Is that legal?”

  “Long as you don’t wager on the other bloke, ain’t no rules against it. I bet on myself. Reckoned it showed confidence. And at eight-to-one, I’d have made a packet.”

  “Why, how much did you bet?”

  “Hundred.”

  As it registered that he did not mean £100 but £100,000, Irina’s face burned so hot that stuck into the Easy-Bake oven of her childhood it would have browned a cake. “You never told me you had a gambling problem.”

  “Never said it were a problem.”

  “It is now.”

  “Rubbish. Just what Clive Everton would call unfortunate.”

  “When Everton says unfortunate, he usually means stupid.” Not only was the observation lifted tactlessly from Lawrence, but it surely qualified as hurling invective, and she took it back. “I’m sorry. That just came out. I don’t want to have a row.” The adrenaline had peaked in her bloodstream, and left her weak. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were in financial trouble?”

  “Didn’t want you to worry, did I? Love spending money on you, pet.”

  It was time to take over as the grown-up. Which Irina had not hitherto been acting. She didn’t know anything about his finances, because she’d never asked. She’d been playing the girl. Like Ramsey himself, she’d bought hook, line, and sinker into the classic delusion of the nouveau riche: that a lot of money is tantamount to an infinite amount of money.

  “Isn’t this a strange time to consider retiring, then? You haven’t played a tournament this season.”

  “One of the reasons I been giving the tour a miss is dosh, pet,” he said softly. “Eats, motor, and kip—the circuit ain’t free. None of them new cues shoot better than a barge pole. I don’t at least make the quarters, them first rounds dig us deeper in a hole.”

  “I wish you’d told me!… Still—there’s no need to panic. This house is worth a fortune on today’s market. We can take out a mortgage.”

  Ramsey frowned. “Are you meant to take out three?”

  “I thought you owned this place free and clear!” More breathing. “Okay.” More breathing. “But that means you’re not just broke,” she put together. “And with the credit cards maxed out as well… You’re in debt.”

  “That’d be one way of putting it.”

  “You have another way of putting it?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Take a slash.”

  “You just went a few minutes ago.”

  “Tea,” he said, though she doubted it; the cognac was on the counter.

  When he returned, he walked as if ninety years old, clutching his lower back. “Off-form,” he muttered.

  When you plug one escape route in a system under pressure, it tends to spring a leak somewhere else; at last, full-fledged exasperation infused her voice. “Would you please go see a doctor? Either get whatever’s ailing you seen to, or shut up!”

  Ramsey raised his hands. “Fair enough!”

  “I assume you do at least have health insurance?”

  “Mmm. Seems to me that private policy were one of the first things to go.”

  “For Pete’s sake. Well, there’s still the NHS. You have a GP?”

  “Not registered.”

  “You’re a hypochondriac, and you don’t even have a doctor?” She’d never before used the word to his face.

  His expression blackened. “My plumbing’s acting up, not my head. And I don’t fancy doctors.”

  “When was the last time you had a checkup?”

  “Couldn’t say,” he said warily.

  “You’re over fifty. You’re supposed to be getting a colonoscopy, and I don’t know what else. I’ll find you a GP tomorrow. We’ll get you registered, and make an appointment for a full overhaul. You must have paid a fortune in taxes. Might as well get something out of them.”

  Thus officiously Irina took charge, and good luck to her ever giving it back.

  IRINA MET WITH RAMSEY’S accountant—thereby incurring another expense that they apparently could not afford—and got the grim lowdown. Ramsey had a few tucked-away investments that hadn’t matured, but it was probably worth sacrificing some interest to reduce that confiscatory credit-card debt. Meanwhile, to keep up with mortgage payments and daily expenses, they would have to live on Irina’s income, such as it was.

  Irina’s private savings were generous for a nest egg, but minimal for a livelihood. Ramsey’s standing obligations were so crushing that the $50,000 from the Lewis Carroll seemed suddenly spare change. As for the giddy royalty checks supposedly sure to follow, her new publisher in the States had found sales of Frame and Match disappointing. Apparently even that gold embossed sticker couldn’t browbeat Americans into buying a book about snooker. She wouldn’t receive the first half of her next advance until she delivered the goods. Ramsey had treated her to the life of Riley for almost five years, and she couldn’t defensibly resent covering the household expenses for a while. Still, she wished someone had warned her at the time that the bills for all that champagne and sushi would ultimately fall in her own lap. They’d wasted so much money!

  Between suddenly having neither professional nor purchasing power, Ramsey must have felt unmanned. He couldn’t stand having his wife pay for everything, but he had no choice; thus he capitulated to a childlike dependency across the board. Mindful that in many respects she’d been acting like a little princess, now Irina did everything. She gave the housekeeper notice, and once-overed the house from top to bottom herself. When she announced that they were not, end of story, eating out, and further that the ashram routine was out the window, he didn’t put up resistance. Yet the new regime did require her to cook every meal, and, since she was choosy about ingredients, to do most of the shopping. All of which put her behind on the new illustrations, their only immediate prospect of income. So helpless had Ramsey become that he wouldn’t even go to the appointment with his new GP by himself, though it was only a standard
checkup. The GP was bound to certify him as fit as a fiddle, but at least an official verdict that there was nothing wrong with him would oblige Ramsey to stifle the bellyaching when they had bigger problems right now than his imaginary disorders.

  Sitting in the stark waiting room of their local East End clinic, Irina surveyed the other patients—Bangladeshis on one side, whites on the other, the latter either gaunt or overweight. Indigenous East Enders gawked back; nods and elbows in adjacent sides signaled recognition of their local snooker star. She hated being a snob, but it was hard not to share the locals’ dismay that the man who graced their television screens several times a year obtained his medical care from the grotty old National Health Service along with everyone else.

  His name came up, and she told him to be brave, already sounding like his mother. Ramsey hated having blood drawn; well, who didn’t. With a little wave, he disappeared down the pea-green hall, and she had an odd, momentary presentiment of waving good-bye, not to Ramsey for a few minutes, but to a taking for granted of something beautifully unconscious and simple that might never walk back into the waiting room again. Studying the digital readout advising patients to be sure to tell their doctors when treatments actually worked in order to “keep up morale,” Irina cursed herself for not having brought a book.

  He was gone a long time. When he finally returned, shirt cuffs unbuttoned, leather jacket in hand trailing a sleeve on the floor, Ramsey wore an expression whose particular shade of seriousness she had never seen before. She’d sometimes given him a hard time about being such a whinger. But with that look on his face, Irina was reminded of the glib 60s graffiti, EVEN PARANOIDS HAVE REAL ENEMIES. The corollary stood to reason that even hypochondriacs get sick.

  “I’D THOUGHT YOU WEREN’T attracted to me anymore,” she said.

  They’d instinctively descended to the basement snooker hall, where Ramsey felt most at home. Yet they huddled on the leather sofa with an incongruous refugee quality, like asylum seekers in their own house. Beneath the conical light over the snooker table, the baize glowed once more like a verdant pasture for a picnic, but it had more the look of grass that’s greener on the other side. The field lay physically before them, but the serenity it vivified belonged to the past.