As the train pulls out a gust of air sweeps newspaper pages and other litter along the platform. Mr Phillips trots down the stairs and leaves the station. The three girls have already vanished. Mr Phillips thinks for a moment about heading down the road towards Vauxhall, the way he would go if he were driving into work, past the new MI6 headquarters and Lambeth Palace and St Thomas’s hospital where Martin and Thomas were born, along to Waterloo and then across to Southwark Bridge. Instead he turns left and heads towards Battersea Park, catching for a moment, during a gap in traffic, unless he’s imagining it, the sound of forlorn woofings and bayings from the Dogs’ Home down the road.
It is warm in the direct sunlight down at street level. The traffic makes it feel even warmer. Mr Phillips undoes the top button of his shirt and gives his tie a slight downward loosening tug. This is a gesture he has seen in films, indicating freedom and/or fatigue. A truck attempting an illegal right turn blocks the traffic, and Mr Phillips crosses the road in a black cloud of belched diesel fumes. At this time of the day London is all about traffic. In the mostly stationary cars people behave as if they can’t be observed, and because their cars are a private space they tend to behave as if they are in private. What this means in practice is that a very large number of them are picking their noses. Mr Phillips has noticed this before but today the syndrome is especially apparent: in the two hundred yards between the railway station and the park he passes three people picking their noses, all with an air of Zen-like calm. Is this sample statistically significant for how much nose-picking goes on in normal circumstances – in which case Mr Phillips feels a little left out – or is it something that people do especially when they’re driving?
When he finally gets into the park Mr Phillips, after nearly being run over by a rollerblader travelling 20 mph faster than any car he has seen so far today, crosses the outer ring road and heads towards the sound of screeching peacocks. A man in a tracksuit with a very tanned face is practising juggling with torches. A jogger, a tall man wearing white shorts who has a curious prancing stride, lifting his knees high, passes Mr Phillips and gives him a sidelong look as he bounces by. Presumably you don’t see many people in suits carrying briefcases in parks at this time of the day.
At the peacock enclosure a small crowd has gathered to watch the birds. One of the males is displaying, his tail fanned out in too many varieties of blue to name. To Mr Phillips, the intricate pattern of colours would be purely beautiful if it weren’t for the eye motif imprinted on the tail. The hen peacock is sort-of-not-looking but hasn’t wandered away, and the other peacocks and peahens are minding their own business. There is something ridiculous about the male’s display, the lengths to which the bird is having to go to attract attention – but then there always is about males trying to seize the notice of females, whether it’s to do with banging your head against another stag after a 40 mph run-up or simply wearing black clothes and trying to look fascinatingly uninterested in an irresistibly interesting way. Part of Martin’s success with girls must be to do with his mastery of this proactive, highly visible and sexually signalling form of looking bored. And then, he is tremendously good at smoking. That has been an asset too. It’s so often men’s desire not to look ridiculous that makes them look ridiculous.
One of the men standing looking at the peacocks is another jogger, who is holding on to the wire fence and doing stretching exercises while making short puffing exhalations. There are two different sets of woman-and-pram-and-baby combinations, one of them apparently a Filipina nanny and the other either a youngish mother dressed down or an oldish, poshish nanny. An old couple with a small energetic dog, some make of terrier, have stopped for a look and a breather. They are wearing roughly twice as many clothes as everyone else, as old people often do. Mr Phillips is feeling hot in his suit with the buttons undone, but this couple are wearing coats and, in the man’s case, a little tweed hat. One of them will die before the other.
The peacock is making a half-turn now, as if to try and bounce the sunlight off his fan of feathers. He is cawing loudly, giving it all he’s got. Mr Phillips, a regular weekend visitor to the park when the children were small, knows the sound well. Sometimes the cry is like a cat miaowing or caterwauling, the male’s penis abrading the female and triggering its ovulation with the shocking withdrawal of the tom’s penis-bristles. Mr Phillips likes that sound, just as he has always liked overhearing other people make love, especially the mousy-looking couple who had lived next to Mr Phillips and Mrs Phillips at their first marital home. That was a terraced house in Bromley where the sound of the short, shy wife noisily climaxing in a choked wail was a regular feature. It was often bizarrely late, at one or two in the morning; did they wake up and decide to do it, was it an attempt to circumvent insomnia, or were they so self-conscious about the noise that they deliberately tried to stay awake and waited to do it in the vain hope that their neighbours might be asleep? In any case Mr Phillips never saw or thought of them without a sharp jab of envy. Sometimes when Mrs Phillips is away or out he puts a glass to the wall in an attempt to catch the Cartwrights or the Cotts at it. No luck so far. No one ever does it. Mr Phillips decides now that the peacock could also sound like a female voice saying ‘No’, or ‘Help’.
Mr Phillips wanders off past the peacock enclosure and heads in the direction of the lake. Two sweepers, one black and one white, are standing leaning on their brushes talking with their heads very close together in a gesture charged with a sense of secrecy and importance. Beyond them the pond is a muddy grey colour, the shore stained with the white smear of shit left by Canada geese.
A few people are already on the lake, splashing about in hired boats. The men in them are all trying not to look as bad at rowing as they are.
When he was training as an accountant Mr Phillips had fallen in love with the double entry book system. It seemed suddenly a whole new language in which to describe the world; or rather it suddenly seemed as if the world was describable in a new and better way. Things became more clear, more starkly lit. That was soothing. For a few weeks he had done an impromptu double entry account for everything from his personal finances to his parent’s house and belongings to Crystal Palace Football Club (where players were automatically listed under assets, a debatable point to fans but an ineluctable decision in the crystalline logic of the accountant). Now, walking in Battersea Park Mr Phillips feels the long suppressed need to draw up a tranquillizing double entry. The thing to imagine was that the park suddenly ceased to function as a going concern, and all its assets and liabilities were frozen in the moment of disposal.
ASSETS LIABILITIES
Fees from people willing to pay to shoot geese Cost of geese damage
Upkeep of pavements
Park benches Subventions from Wandsworth Council
Rent from park-keeper’s cottage Salaries of park keepers, park police
Fees for tennis courts, football pitches, etc. Insurance for trips and falls
Money from recycled bottles Bottle bank recycling gear upkeep
Car park fees Car park upkeep
Paint, etc., in storage Peacock upkeep, feed, etc.
Tulips, etc., to sell Fertilizer costs
Feed, etc., in storage Storage upkeep, sheds, etc.
Golden Buddha Upkeep of Buddha, gilt paint, etc.
Fees from special events Cost of setting them up
Film fees Upkeep of cricket pitches, bowling lawns, etc.
Boat fees Pollution monitoring in pond
Statues, monuments, sculptures Upkeep thereof
There were bound to be lots of other things he hadn’t thought of. It would cost a fair old bit, running a park.
Mr Phillips walks past the pond and along the road that curves around the park. Every few seconds a cyclist, rollerblader or jogger floats, cruises or puffs by him. The very sight of this is tiring. Mr Phillips in general doesn’t mind exertion all that much, but he dislikes the idea of it. Any kind of effort weighs on his spirits in advance,
he can feel it coming. It’s like the fatigue he experiences at the beginning of a day that he knows in advance will be long and boring, so that it’s as if the whole eight or ten or twenty hours of ennui are crushed and compacted into every single moment. The anticipation of a gruelling day always makes him feel like Superman confronted by a villain wielding a lump of Kryptonite.
In front of him a small boy is whacking the fence beside the tennis court with a stick while his mother trails along behind, also carrying a stick, which she is running more slowly and meditatively over the bars of the same fence, as if playing a musical instrument visible only to her. Like many young parents she wears the glazed and disconnected look of a combat soldier.
Mr Phillips stops beside the tennis court to rest for a moment. There is nowhere to sit down except two small benches immediately beside the courts. He feels too self-conscious to go that close so he puts down his briefcase, takes off his jacket and stands watching. As soon as he stops walking he becomes conscious of a light breeze.
The three courts are occupied by, from left to right, a father and son combination of about forty and ten years old, the father hitting patronizingly gentle forehands to his concentrating offspring; two girls in their late teens in short white dresses and long dark-blue socks, playing competitively and seriously; and a middle aged mixed doubles outfit, well matched and cunning but slightly heavy on their feet. Mr Phillips concentrates his attention on the girls while pretending to pay attention to the other two pairs – in other words he holds his head pointing in one direction or the other while secretly keeping his eyes on the middle. One girl’s dress rides up when she serves to show a glimpse of legs all the way up to her bum. Her legs and arms are the colour of Weetabix. She’s blonde and has a ponytail which flops about her head and shoulders as she moves. They both look as if tennis is a big thing for them. Mr Phillips wonders if they change ends after two games and if so whether he has the nerve to stay around long enough to get a better look at the darker girl.
‘It’s Wimbledon that brings them out,’ says a man beside Mr Phillips. The newcomer, a short, fair businessman type with strange grey eyes, is standing with his hands in the pockets of a green suit. On second glance he doesn’t look as much like a businessman as something more louche and selfish.
‘I’m sorry?’ says Mr Phillips.
‘Wimbledon – you can’t get on the courts for weeks afterwards. It’s the end of July now, we’ll have at least another fortnight before the effect wears off.’
The man falls silent again and stands beside Mr Phillips watching the tennis. His presence makes Mr Phillips feel more rather than less self-conscious and he begins regretfully to contemplate walking away from the tennis courts. The darker-haired girl, who has breasts that are of a nice human scale, not at all like the girls in the magazines, is changing ends and walking towards them. She looks up at them for a moment, a glance from under her eyelashes in the manner copyrighted by Princess Diana, and Mr Phillips feels his penis twitch.
‘The thing I like most about Wimbledon,’ says the man, ‘is watching the girl players fish the balls out from their knickers when they’re about to serve. Isn’t that your favourite thing too?’
‘What?’ says Mr Phillips.
‘I said, standards in the women’s game and the simultaneous raising of the velocity of the men’s game, especially as played on grass, because of racket technology, have meant that the women’s game, on grass at least, is now more interesting to watch than the men’s, don’t you find?’
‘No, you didn’t,’ says Mr Phillips. ‘You said something about the balls being all lovely and warm when they came out of the players’ knickers.’
The man looks expressionlessly at him for a moment and then laughs a rich relaxed laugh that smells faintly of last night’s alcohol. He seems to flop or slump slightly as he reaches into an inside pocket and takes out a glinting object that for a hallucinatory split second Mr Phillips thinks is a gun but is in fact a silver case carrying skinny cigars. The man offers the case, opened like a book, to Mr Phillips, who declines. He then takes a cigar for himself and lights it with a metal Zippo lighter that leaves behind it a whiff of lighter fluid.
‘Shocking habit,’ says the man. ‘Unless that’s a contradiction in terms. These are Cuban, rolled on the thighs of virgins and all that. Ideally they should be roughly three times this size. The bigger ones have more flavour. Like women, I hear you think.’
‘I was thinking nothing of the sort,’ says Mr Phillips.
‘Aha. More on the little girls side of things, are we? You must be, what, early fifties? The younger the chicken the sweeter the pickin’, the older the fiddle the sweeter the tune, am I right? Slowing down as you drive past bus stops, that sort of thing?’
‘Mind your own business,’ says Mr Phillips, pushing back from the railings and beginning to walk off towards the river. The man picks up his, Mr Phillips’s, briefcase and begins to come after him.
‘Steady on, no offence I hope,’ he says, still friendly. ‘I am minding my business. In fact you could even say that I am working. Hang on a minute, you’ve forgotten your case.’
‘Thank you,’ says Mr Phillips, stopping to take the proffered bag. The man pretends to snatch it back and then lets him take it.
‘Magazine publishing. Top shelf. London Publishing Company Inc., Mr Fortesque, Managing Director.’ Now the man is offering a card, which Mr Phillips takes. It says the same things as the man has just said.
‘I like to come to the park to get ideas,’ says the man, joining Mr Phillips at a strolling pace. ‘Basic research. I come here, look around, look at girls, look at men looking at girls, try and cook up some ideas based on what I see. Tennis now: there’s a thought. A whole magazine based on girls playing tennis – girls leaning over showing their bums, glimpses of tit when they throw up the ball, that sort of thing. Story ideas: the lesbian initiation in the locker room. It’s a well-known fact that half of them are big-time dykes. Awhole series of stories right there: first time, two on one, the shower scene, rivals kissing and making up and making out, suggestive use of rackets, all this is just off the top of my head. Prose narratives as well as picture layouts. Letters from readers, maybe we’d even get the occasional genuine one every now and again, with anecdotes and reminiscences and suggestions for future issues. The figure of the tennis coach, something for the ladies. You could do something with readers’ wives, too – amateur stuff, very nineties. The beauty of that is the worse it is the better, up to a point anyway. I can judge that point. That’s what experience means. It’s as valuable in this game as in any other. Niche markets. This whole Asian babes, fat girls, thin girls, big tits, teen totty, it’s been as far as it goes and we’re ready for the next big thing. That could be specialization by jobs and milieu – not just tennis players but nurses, policewomen, traffic wardens, secretaries. Let’s face it, why do you think people watch tennis on the telly in the first place? To get new ideas about the placement and timing of their forehands? Bollocks. It’s for the totty. It’s basically about women’s knickers. They should have a camera trained on them as they serve, a super-slow motion Knicker-Cam. Or Totty-Cam? You have to give people what they want. Think of that photo with the girl’s skirt hitched up and her rubbing her bum. Just a glimpse of cheek, that’s all you really get – but what a classic. Not that it makes much sense. Is she supposed to have been hit on the arse by the ball, or what? And why isn’t she wearing any knickers? Go brilliantly in a story shoot, that would.’
‘I used to fancy my secretary,’ admits Mr Phillips. They have gone as far as the Thames and are looking across the river towards Chelsea. He came here with Mrs Phillips when they were courting. ‘It’s like a Canaletto,’ she had said, and he had agreed, not having the faintest idea who Canaletto was. Now he did know, and although he didn’t think it was particularly true, he knows what she meant, and in any case always thinks of it when he sees that stretch of trees and houses and riverbank.
‘Of c
ourse you did. Everybody fancies their secretary. That’s what offices are all about.’
‘I often used to wonder if she thought about me in the same way,’ says Mr Phillips, truthfully. There are whole parts of sexy Karen’s mind that are wholly unguessable to him – which was of course a large component of what made her sexy.
‘Why speak in the past tense? I’m sure she’s thinking about you right now. Not that it matters. Speaking as a pornographer, I can tell you that the important thing is never to try and work out what a woman is thinking. It only confuses you and they change their minds so much anyway the main thing is just to steam ahead with your plan intact.’
‘I lost my job’, says Mr Phillips.
‘Why else would you be wandering around Battersea Park at half past nine on a work day? Naturally you haven’t told your wife and family,’ says the man.
‘No, I haven’t’.
‘And this was – last week? Last month? Last October?’
‘Friday,’ says Mr Phillips.
‘Friday!’
‘Friday morning.’
The man smokes for a while, looking at an unladen barge heading up the Thames. More dangerous than it looks; if you fall in you’re dead in no time.
‘It’s always a shocker,’ says the pornographer. ‘I haven’t been sacked for years – it’s one of the perks of being your own boss – but in the days when I worked for other people it used to happen all the time. I’ve been sacked for being drunk, for being chronically late, for being lazy, and then for planning to nick personnel and ideas and set up my own company – which was justified, incidentally. But then so were all the others. In retrospect, mind – I’m not claiming that’s what I felt at the time. But when they sacked me for disloyalty, instead of being something I was thinking about doing it became something I had to do, and the next thing you know I was my old firm’s biggest competitor. They publish traditional tit mags – still stuck in the seventies, basically.’ He ponders his own success for a moment, and then says in a different tone, ‘Mind you, even when you see it coming it’s an upset.’
Mr. Phillips Page 5