by David Lodge
The first time Mr Passmore behaved oddly towards me was in the Men’s locker room at the Club, about two weeks ago, though I hardly registered it at the time. It’s only in retrospect that it seems significant. I was stripping off my tennis gear before taking a shower, and I happened to look up and saw Mr Passmore, staring at me. He was fully dressed. As soon as he caught my eye, he looked away, and started fiddling with the key of his locker. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it except that before he caught my eye he was fairly obviously staring at my private parts. I won’t say it’s never happened to me before, but it surprised me coming from Mr Passmore. I actually wondered whether I’d imagined it, it was all over so fast. Anyway, I soon forgot all about it.
A few days later I was coaching Mrs Passmore on one of the indoor courts, in the evening, and Mr Passmore turned up and sat watching us from behind the netting at the end of the hall. I presumed that he’d made an appointment to meet his wife at the Club, and was early. I smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back. His being there seemed to bother Mrs Passmore. She started making mistakes in her play, mishitting the ball. Eventually she went over to Mr Passmore and spoke to him through the netting. I gathered that she was asking him to leave, but he just shook his head and smiled in a sneery sort of way. She came over to me then and said that she was sorry, but she’d have to stop the coaching session. She looked angry and upset. She insisted on paying me for the full session though she’d only had half-an-hour. She walked out of the court without a glance at Mr Passmore, who remained seated on the bench, hunched inside his overcoat, with his hands in the pockets. I felt a bit embarrassed, walking past him on my way out. I assumed they were having some kind of row. I didn’t dream for a moment that it had anything to do with me.
A few days after that, the phone calls started. The phone would ring, I’d pick it up and say “Hallo?” and no one would reply. After a while there would be a click, as the caller put the receiver down. The calls came at all hours, sometimes in the middle of the night. I reported them to BT, but they said there was nothing they could do. They advised me to disconnect my bedside phone at night, so I did, and left the answerphone on downstairs. Next morning, there were two calls recorded, but no messages. One evening about nine o’clock I answered the phone and a high falsetto voice said, “Can I speak to Sally, please? This is her mother.” I said I thought she must have the wrong number. She didn’t seem to hear me, and asked again to speak to Sally, saying it was urgent. I said there was nobody called Sally at my address. I didn’t make the connection with Mrs Passmore, even though we are on first-name terms. And although the voice sounded rather strange, it never crossed my mind that it was an impersonation.
A few nights after that I was woken in the middle of the night by a noise. You know what it’s like when that happens: by the time you’re fully awake, the noise has stopped and you have no idea where it came from, or whether the whole thing was a dream. I put on a tracksuit, because I always sleep in the nude, and went downstairs to check, but there was no sign of anyone trying to break in. I heard a car starting up in the street outside and went to the front door just in time to see a white car turning the corner at the end of the street. Well, it looked white under the street-lighting, but it could have been silver. I didn’t have a good enough view to identify the make. The next morning I discovered that someone had been in the back garden. They’d got in by the side way and knocked over some panes of glass that were leaning up against the tool-shed – I’m in the middle of building a cold-frame. Three of the panes were broken. That must have been the noise I heard.
Two days later I got up in the morning and found my ladder leaning up against the wall of the house under my bedroom window. Someone had taken it from the space between the garage and the garden fence where I keep it. There was no sign of any attempt to break in, but I was alarmed. That was when I first reported the incidents to your station. Police Constable Roberts came round. He advised me to have a burglar-alarm system fitted. I was in the process of getting quotes when I lost my house keys. I keep them in my tennis bag usually during the day, because they’re rather heavy in the pocket of my tracksuit, but last Friday they disappeared. I was beginning to get seriously worried, by now, that someone was trying to burgle my house. I thought I knew who it was too – a member of the Club’s groundstaff. I’d rather not say who. I have a number of trophies at home, you see, and this person once asked me about them, and what they were worth. I made an arrangement with a locksmith to have the locks changed the next day.
That night – it was about three o’clock – I was woken by Nigel squeezing my arm and whispering in my ear, “I think there’s someone in the room.” He was shaking with fear. I turned on the bedside lamp, and there was Mr Passmore standing on the rug on my side of the bed, with a torch in one hand and a large pair of scissors in the other. I didn’t like the look of the scissors – they were big, dangerous-looking things, like drapers’ shears. As I said, I always sleep naked, and so does Nigel, and there was nothing within reach I could have used to defend us with. I tried to keep calm. I asked Mr Passmore what he thought he was doing. He didn’t answer. He was staring at Nigel, completely gobsmacked. Nigel, who was nearest the door, jumped out of bed and ran downstairs to phone 999. Mr Passmore looked round the room in a dazed sort of way and said, “I seem to have made a mistake.” I said, “I think you have.” He said, “I was looking for my wife.” I said, “Well, she’s not here. She’s never been here.” Suddenly it all fell into place, and I realized what had been going on, in his head I mean. I couldn’t help laughing, partly in relief, partly because he looked such a fool standing there with the scissors in his hand. I said, “What were you going to do with those, castrate me?” He said, “I was going to cut your ponytail off.”
I don’t want to press charges. To be perfectly honest I’d rather not have to give evidence in court which might be reported in the local press. It could have a damaging effect on my work. Some of the members of the Club are prejudiced, I’m afraid. I’m not ashamed of being gay, but I’m discreet about it. I live a fair distance from the Club, and nobody there knows anything about my private life. I don’t think Mr Passmore will cause me any more trouble, and he’s offered to pay for the broken panes of glass.
WELL, THE MOST awful thing has happened. Laurence’s wife wants a separation. He called me last night to tell me. I knew at once it must be something catastrophique because I’ve told him not to phone me at home unless it’s terribly important. I have to go upstairs to my bedroom extension, and Zelda always wants to know afterwards who called and what it was about, and I wouldn’t put it past her to listen in on the downstairs phone. We have a routine that Laurence phones me at the office in the lunch hour or I call him when he’s at his flat. I know you think I should be more upfront with Zelda about my relationship with Laurence, but – No, I know you haven’t said as much, Karl, but I can tell. Well, of course, if you insist, I must take your word, but I suppose it’s possible that subconsciously you disapprove. I mean, if I can suppress things, I suppose it’s possible you can, too, isn’t it? Or are you sure you’re absolutely completely totally superhumanly rational? Sorry, sorry. I’m very upset, I hardly slept a wink last night. No, he had no idea. He’s utterly devastated. Apparently she just marched into his study on Friday evening and announced that she wanted a separation. Just like that. Said she just couldn’t stand living with him any more, he was like a zombie, that was the word she used, a zombie. Well, he is often a little distrait, I have to admit, but writers often are, in my experience. I should have thought she’d be used to it by now, but evidently not. She said they didn’t communicate, and they didn’t have anything in common any more, and now that the children were grown up and had left home there was no point their going on living together.
Lorenzo spent the whole weekend trying to talk her out of it, but to no avail. Well, I think first he tried to argue that there was nothing wrong with the marriage, that it was like any other marriage, some
thing to do with repetition and Kierkegaard, I couldn’t quite follow it, he was hardly coherent, poor dear. Yes, he’s developed a thing about Kierkegaard lately, for some reason. Anyway, when that didn’t work he changed tack and said he would turn over a new leaf and talk to her at meals and take an interest in her work and go away with her on Weekend Breaks and that sort of thing, but she said it was too late.
Sally. Her name’s Sally. I’ve only met her a few times, mostly at parties given by Heartland, and she always struck me as rather guarded and self-contained. She likes to make one drink last the whole evening and stay cold sober while all around her are getting smashed. I think it confirms her sense of what a worthless load of layabouts we television folk are. Goodlooking in a rather noli me tangere way. High cheekbones, a strong chin. A bit like Patricia Hodge, but more athletic, more windbeaten. Oh. I keep forgetting that you never go to the theatre or watch television. What on earth do you do in your spare time? Oh, I might have guessed. Do you read Kierkegaard? He doesn’t sound my cup of tea. Or Laurence’s either, come to that. I wonder what he sees in him. No, Laurence asked her if there was anyone else, and she says there isn’t. I asked him if it was conceivable that Sally suspected there was something between him and me, something more than what there actually is I mean, which is entirely innocent, as you know, but he said absolutely not. Well, she knows that we’re good friends but I don’t think she has any idea how often we see each other outside work and I wondered if someone had been gossiping or sending poison-pen letters, but Laurence said she didn’t mention my name or accuse him of anything like that. Oh dear. Quel cauchemar!
I should have thought it was obvious. Laurence is my dearest friend, my dearest male friend anyway. I don’t like to see him wretched. I know you’re smiling cynically. Anyway, I don’t mind admitting that my reasons for feeling upset are partly selfish. I was very happy with our relationship. It suited me. It was intimate without being … I don’t know. All right, without being sexual. But no, I don’t mean sexual, or not just sexual, I mean possessive or demanding or something. After all, our relationship was never sexless. There’s always been an element of … of gallantry in Laurence’s treatment of me. Yes, gallantry. But the fact that he’s happily married – was happily married – and that that was understood by both of us, took all the potential tension out of the relationship. We could enjoy each other’s company without wondering whether we wanted to go to bed together or whether we expected each other to want to, if you follow me. I enjoyed dressing up to go out with Laurence – dressing up to go out with a girlfriend is never quite the same – but I didn’t have to think about undressing for him afterwards. If you’re a single woman and you go out with a man you’ve either got to insist tediously on going Dutch or you have an uneasy feeling that you’re incurring some kind of erotic debt which may be called in at any moment.
No, I’ve no idea what his sex life was like with Sally. We never discussed it. Yes, I told him all about my experiences with Saul, but he never told me anything about him and Sally. I didn’t ask. A kind of pudeur restrained me. Pudeur. After all, they were still married, it would have been an intrusion … Oh, all right, perhaps I didn’t want to hear about it in case she turned out to be one of those women who have multiple orgasms as easy as shelling peas and can do the whole Kama Sutra standing on their heads. What’s so funny about that? They do stand on their heads in the Kama Sutra? Oh well, you know what I mean. I’ve never pretended I don’t feel inadequate about sex. I mean, why else am I here? But I was never jealous of Sally. She was welcome to that part of Laurence’s life, and to that part of Laurence for that matter. I just didn’t want to hear about it. Oh, am I using the past tense? Yes I am, aren’t I. Well, I certainly don’t think that our relationship is over, but I suppose I’m afraid it will change, in ways I can’t predict. Unless they get back together, of course. I suggested to Laurence that they should see a marriage counsellor, but he just groaned and said, “They’ll only say I need psychotherapy, and I’m having that already.” I asked him how he knew that’s what they would say, and he said, “From experience.” It seems this isn’t the first time Sally has been seriously pissed off with the marriage. Once she walked out of the house for a whole weekend, he didn’t know where she’d gone, and came back just as he was phoning the police. She didn’t say a word for days because she’d got laryngitis, she’d been tramping all over the Malverns in pouring rain, but when she got her voice back she insisted on their going to marriage guidance. That’s how Laurence started on psychotherapy. He never told me that before. I suppose there was no reason why he should, but it was a little disturbing to have it sprung on me now. I suppose one never does tell anybody everything about oneself. Except one’s analyst of course …
Well, I saw Laurence yesterday evening, at his flat. He rang me at work to say he was coming up to town but he didn’t want to eat out, so I knew I was in for a long, harrowing tête à tête. I stopped off at Fortnum’s after work to pick up some quiche and salad. Laurence didn’t eat much of it, but he drank quite a lot. He’s very depressed. I mean, he was depressed before, but now he’s really got something to be depressed about. Yes, I think he’s quite conscious of the irony.
Things haven’t improved chez Passmore. Sally has moved into the guest bedroom. She goes to work early in the morning and comes back late in the evening, so she doesn’t have to talk to Laurence. She says she’ll talk at the weekend, but she can’t cope with his problems and do her own job at the same time. I think it’s rather ominous that she says “his problems”, not “their problems”, don’t you? Mind you, I understand how she feels about talking to Laurence in his present state. After four hours of it last night I was completely fiinito. I felt like a sponge that had been saturated and squeezed so often it had lost all its spring. And then, when I said I had to go home, he asked me to stay the night. He said it wasn’t for sex, but just so he could hold me. He hasn’t had any proper sleep since last Friday, and he does look quite hollow-eyed, poor sweet. He said, “I think it would help me to sleep if I could just hold you.”
Well, of course it was out of the question. I mean, leaving aside whether I wanted to be held, and the risk of its developing into something else, I couldn’t possibly stay out all night without warning. Zelda would’ve been worried sick, and if I’d phoned her with some improvised story she would have seen through it immediately, she always knows when I’m lying, it’s one of her most irritating habits. Incidentally, it was Bad Breast time again this morning. Yes. We had a bitter row at breakfast, about muesli. Not just about muesli, of course. They didn’t have her usual brand at Safeways the last time I went shopping so I bought another kind and this morning the old packet had run out so I put this other one on the table and she refused to touch it because it had added sugar. A minuscule quantity, and brown sugar too, the healthy sort, as I pointed out, but she refused to eat any of it, and as it’s the only thing she ever has for breakfast, apart from coffee, she went off to school on an empty stomach, leaving me feeling incredibly guilty, exactly as she had intended, of course. Her parting shot was to say that I was trying to make her eat sugar because she’s slim and I’m fat, “disgustingly fat” was the phrase she used, do you think that’s true? No, I don’t mean about my being disgustingly fat, I don’t consider myself fat at all, even though I would like to lose a few pounds. I mean is it possible that I’m subconsciously jealous of Zelda’s figure? Oh you always bat these questions back at me. I don’t know. Perhaps I am a little bit. But I honestly didn’t know there was any sugar in the bloody muesli.
Where was I? Oh yes, Laurence. Well, I had to say no, though I did feel badly about it, he looked so woeful, so pleading, like a dog that wants to come in out of the rain. I said, couldn’t he take a sleeping pill, and he said he didn’t want to because they made him so depressed when he woke up, and if he got any more depressed than he was already he was afraid he’d top himself. He smiled when he said that to show it was a joke, but it worried me. He did go a
nd see his psychotherapist on Monday, but she doesn’t seem to have been much help. That may be Laurence’s fault, because when I asked him he couldn’t remember anything she’d said. I’m not sure he took in anything I said last night, either. All he wants to do is pour out his version of things, not listen to any constructive advice. I nearly said to him, you should try analysis, darling, that’s all I do, five days a week: pour out my version of things without getting any constructive advice. Just my little joke, Karl. Yes, of course I know that jokes are disguised forms of aggression …
Well, things have gone from bad to worse. Sally’s moved out of the house, and Laurence is all on his own there. It’s a five-bedroomed detached, in an upmarket residential area on the outskirts of Rummidge. I’ve never been there, but he showed me some photographs. It’s what the estate agents call a modern house of character. I couldn’t say what character. French farmhouse crossed with golf club, perhaps. Not my taste, but comfortable and substantial. Set well back from the road, at the end of a longish drive, with a lot of trees and shrubs round it. He said to me once, “It’s so quiet there I could hear my hair growing, if I had any hair.” Yes, he’s bald. Didn’t I ever mention it? He jokes about it, but I think it bothers him. Anyway, I don’t like to think of him all on his own in that house, like a bead in a rattle.
I gathered that last weekend was rather fraught. Sally told him she was prepared to talk, but there had to be a time limit on their discussions, not more than two hours at a time, and only one session a day. It sounded like quite a sensible idea to me, but Laurence couldn’t accept it. He says her college sent her on a management course recently and she’s trying to treat their marital crisis as if it were an industrial dispute, with agendas and adjournments. He agreed to the condition, but when it came to the crunch, and the two hours were up, he wouldn’t stop. Eventually she said that if he didn’t stop harassing her she would move out of the house until he came to his senses. And he rather foolishly said, “All right, move out, see if I care,” or words to that effect, so she did. She wouldn’t tell him where she was going and she hasn’t told him since.