by David Szalay
‘Squeeze my nipples,’ said Katherine. ‘It will make me have an orgasm. Use your teeth…’ she whispered urgently. ‘Your…’ It overtook her in mid-phrase, a sudden open-mouthed expulsion of air from her lungs as she struggled to seize him with all four of her limbs, her shouts quickly subsiding into a series of soblike sounds, quiet sobs. She shuddered as some sort of aftershock seemed to tickle through her, and went limp in his embrace. They lay there for a minute until she sighed and with an exaggerated mwah! kissed him on the mouth. Putting her hand on it, she said she had to decide what word she was going to use for his… Well that was the point. She needed a word for it. All the existing words, she thought, sounded vulgar, were swearwords, or silly, or had a frigid medical neutrality. With such an imperfect vocabulary it was not an easy thing to speak of. She would have to find her own word, she said, with her hand on it. A private word. Of necessity, a private word.
As they had that afternoon in February, they had sex on the sofa, and she left at eightish, to do her second nightshift.
*
Saturday was Sunderland’s Imperial Cup day at Sandown Park. The one o’clock train from Waterloo to Esher was full and most of the people on it were on their way to the track. There were loudmouths in office suits and tubby young women in tiny dresses despite the frost still lingering in the shadows of the trackside playing fields of south-west London. James spent the journey squashed in next to a man in his twenties, one of a party of men in suits and the only one of them to have a seat. His hair, plastered to his forehead at the front, was otherwise massively mussed up and stiffened with mousse. The tips of his tan winkle-pickers were medieval in their elongated pointiness. He might have had a hangover—his pale-lashed eyes were pink, and he was telling the others, in a strong hoarse voice, how much he had drunk last night.
It was a cold, sunny day at Sandown Park. From the stand, London was visible in the distance. It filled the whole horizon. James took the escalator down to the paddock to inspect the horses in the first, the novices’ handicap hurdle. He was passing through the Esher Hall when he saw someone who looked familiar. It was J. P. McManus, the legendary punter, the patron saint of the winter game, standing there in the tatty hangar of the hall like any impoverished mug holding a plastic pint pot. Telling himself that if this man had the humility to hang out in the Esher Hall wearing a shapeless middle-management overcoat, then the least he deserved was to be left alone, James did not introduce himself or ask J. P. what he was on. (Probably nothing. His approach to punting was well known. It was a matter of price. Everybody knew that. They knew that serious pros did not look for winners, they looked for prices.) He just watched him for a minute talking shyly to some people he seemed to know, and then took the escalator upstairs.
Later, Dusky Warbler, a horse he had been following all winter, very nearly won the Imperial Cup. He was sent off at twenty to one, and James had £10 each way with one of the scarfed and hatted bookmakers in the huge shadow of the stand. It was a photo finish. The shrieking peaked as the two horses passed the line together. ‘Pho-dagraph, pho-dagraph,’ intoned an unflappable voice over the PA system. When a minute later the other horse was named the winner, there was some tattered shouting and the stand started to empty. Trooping downstairs to the winner’s enclosure on the far side of the paddock, James was still in a sweat of exhilaration.
She thought he was in London. She wanted to meet now. He explained that that wasn’t possible—he was in Surrey—and she sounded frustrated when she said, ‘Well when can you meet?’
They met at eight—or quarter past, he was late—in Mecklenburgh Street. She was waiting at the top of the area steps. She was, he thought, surprisingly smartly dressed. She was perfumy. Her shoes had a nice height of heel. The question was: where were they going to eat? As they walked through Mecklenburgh Square she put it to him. ‘Where are we going to eat?’ she said. The plan, it had been his idea, was to make an evening of it. (Hence the nice dress, the earrings, the heels.) However, he was tired—all that wintry fresh air and movement—and he didn’t mind where they ate, as long as it was nearby. For some time he didn’t say anything. Her heels ticked off the seconds. ‘What do you feel like?’ he said eventually.
‘I don’t want to have to decide,’ she said. ‘I want you to take me somewhere.’
‘Okay.’ They walked on in silence for a few steps. ‘What do you feel like, though?’
‘I don’t want to have to decide!’ she said heatedly. ‘That’s the point. I want you to decide.’
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll decide.’
They ended up nowhere more imaginative than Carluccio’s. He suggested it when she started to show obvious signs of fed-upness. Her shoes were hurting her—she had not dressed to wander around for half an hour. And she was tired too, of course. They were installed at a table, furnished with wine and antipasti. He told her that he had seen J. P. McManus at Sandown. ‘Who’s J. P. McManus?’ she said, eating a succulent olive, dripping spots of oil on the tablecloth.
She was talking about something else when he lost the thread of what she was saying. He was looking expressionlessly over her shoulder, out through the front of the restaurant—opposite was a line of terraced houses with fanlights and plain facades, like the ones on Mecklenburgh Street. Student flats, probably…
‘What is it?’ she said, turning in her seat to see what he was looking at.
‘Oh…’ he murmured. ‘Nothing.’
‘What?’ she insisted, still looking over her shoulder.
‘No, I was just looking at those houses on the other side of the street.’
‘Why?’
‘I once looked at a flat in one of them.’
‘Oh. Did you take it?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t very nice.’
She waited for him to say more.
He didn’t.
Then the waiter floated up to them and they ordered some dessert. She suggested they take it home and have it there. So he asked the waiter to pack it up for them, and also to pay. This seemed to take a long time, and while they were waiting, he yawned, shielding his mouth with his hand.
When he had finished yawning, he smiled at her. She looked desolate. There were dark indents under her eyes. ‘What is it?’
‘We’re just not having fun,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, we’re not having fun.’
‘Aren’t we?’
‘We’re like them,’ she said. He turned and saw a man and a woman just sitting at a table, looking off in different directions. ‘They haven’t said a word to each other since they got here.’
‘Then we’re not like them.’
However, they started to walk home in silence.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’
And she said the same thing—‘We’re just not having fun! You yawned. That’s not fun.’
‘I yawned… ?’
‘When we were waiting for the bill. How fun is that?’ she said, upset. ‘That’s not exciting.’
‘So what if I yawned? I’m tired.’
‘You’re tired. Oh,’ she said sarcastically, ‘that’s good.’ She laughed in dismay.
‘Yes, I’m tired.’
‘Well…’ She shrugged. ‘Okay. You’re tired.’ They had slowed to a dawdle. Now they stopped. ‘What do you want me to say to that?’
‘You don’t have to say anything.’
‘Well…’ She seemed at a loss.
‘I’m tired,’ he said. ‘Why is that such a problem?’
She sighed.
She was stiff and aloof in his arms.
She said, ‘It’s a problem because… we’re not having fun.’
‘No, we’re not. Not now.’ Their foreheads touching, they were looking down at her shoes. ‘Don’t put so much pressure on things. You put so much pressure on things,’ he said. She see
med to nod and they started to walk again, slowly. ‘We’re tired. That’s all.’
Leaving her shoes in the hall, she went into the living room while he unpacked the dessert.
When he joined her, she was looking at something on the Internet. Whatever it was, she seemed very interested in it. ‘You have some first,’ she said, without taking her eyes off the screen. He did, and then passed it to her. ‘What are you doing?’ he said.
‘Just…’
‘What?’
He looked at the screen—it was nothing in particular, just news. He started to massage her shoulders. She moused a link and he unzipped her dress, first having to lift her hair to find the zipper’s little tug. Then, while she muttered something about the news story she was perusing, he fiddled with the fasteners of her bra. Seemingly oblivious to this, she leaned forward to scroll down as he tried to pull the dress off her shoulder. That was physically impossible—it was supposed to go over her head. She still had her eyes on the screen when he swivelled her away from it, lifted her up—she squealed—and staggered next door, where they toppled onto the bed. For a few minutes they snogged and tussled in the mess of sheets.
He had just peeled off her tights when she sat up and smoothed her hair. ‘I was looking at something on the Internet,’ she said. Weltering there, half undressed, with a hard-on, he made a token effort to hold on to her. When that failed, he lay there for a minute or two staring into space and thoughtfully stroking himself through his trousers.
‘I’m just taking Hugo for a walk,’ he said. She was still on the Internet.
‘M-hm.’
‘I’ll be back in a few minutes.’
‘Okay.’
He did a slow lap of Mecklenburgh Square and found her at work with a toothbrush. (She was always fiercely energetic with a toothbrush in her hand, the head of her own was terrifyingly splayed and flattened.) She had tied her hair up. Her dress was still unzipped and the exposed skin, a wide tapering swathe the length of her spine, looked like old ivory in the forty-watt light. He kissed it while she washed her mouth out.
Her mouth was wet and minty. They were standing next to the bed, trying to kiss and undress at the same time, his jeans and shorts fettering his ankles. It turned out she wasn’t wearing any knickers. Then he was supine on the bed with her astraddle him. She still had the dress on, though he was already inside her. From where his head lay he was able to peer in a haze of pleasure over the hairless plain of his torso, over the low hillock of his stomach with its one winding path of hair, to the site of that impossibly exquisite prehension. ‘Is this nice? Is this nice?’ she said. In a single movement she pulled the dress over her head and was naked. At the sight of her whole skin the pleasure intensified terminally. He put his hands on her working hips and swung her off him. And then he was over her, looking down at her, at her streaming tears, her oscillating midriff, the square prow into which he was…
His weight on her seemed to double from one second to the next. She felt the slippery warmth on her stomach and lower down. She smelled its white, polleny scent. His head sagged.
‘I’m sorry.’ The words emerged as a single exhalation.
‘It’s okay.’ She stroked his hair. ‘I’m sure you’ll… have a second wind.’
He nodded, and kissed her soft nipple—which happened to be next to his mouth—though he was fairly sure he would not. He felt unimaginably tired. He felt as if he would be able to fall asleep instantly and sleep for twelve hours. However, she was waiting for him to do something, and the longer he just lay there, slobbering on her tit, the more utterly exhausted he would feel. He struggled to sit up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.
‘That’s okay.’ She was still lying there, her legs parallel to each other. Heatless semen slid down from the smooth shadow of her navel and matted the russet stubble of her pubic hair.
‘Have you got something to wipe that up?’ she said.
Leaning over the edge of the bed, he picked up his shorts.
His lack of desire, as he wiped her—wiped her stomach and the seam of her pussy like an exhausted waiter wiping a table—was extraordinary. He felt like he would never want to fuck another woman in his life. In the last minute, the way he saw her had undergone a profound metamorphosis. He noticed the sanded soreness around her mouth, the zones of irritation—little livid spots—where she had shaved part of her pubic hair, the twofold meatiness of her sex… When he had finished wiping her he threw the smeared shorts onto the floor. Then he stepped into the bathroom and, holding his shrivelled prick, made water in the dark. When he had done that, he filled a glass from the kitchen tap.
She had pulled the duvet over her and was lying on her side with her face away from the light. It was with a sort of sad, shameful relief that he saw she had put on his pyjamas while he was away. ‘Do you want some water?’ he said quietly, and she sat up and took the glass.
*
The sound of rain splashing and trickling in the area. It was lovely to lie there in the warmth, still half asleep, holding her small body and listening to the rain. He would have liked to lie there for hours. For years. He listened to it intermittently pinging on the metal steps—sometimes it pinged several times in quick succession, sometimes there were long intervals—and whingeing quietly in the drain. She was wearing his pyjamas. He squeezed her and she whispered something. He stroked her instep with his foot.
She said, ‘What time is it?’
He did not want to move but he leaned over and looked at his watch. He had to stare at it for a few seconds in the semi-darkness. It was surprisingly late. It was nearly ten.
‘Will you make some coffee?’ she said.
He mumbled something and a minute later swung his long white legs out from under the duvet. He was pulling on his shorts when he said, ‘Oh.’
‘What?’ she said.
‘They’re…’ He stopped.
‘… stiff with spunk.’
‘Yeah.’
It was at this point, pulling on the spunk-stiff shorts, that he remembered the wash he had put on yesterday morning, and that it was still sitting wet in the machine.
The music of the rain was less lovely now that he was no longer in bed. It seemed to lay siege to the flat’s ill-lit interiors. Hugo greeted him in the hall, in the grey light that leaked through the small pane of glass over the front door. His white tail waved like a shredded flag. When he yawned the sound was like something moving on unoiled hinges. James patted his head, and scratched his ears, and in the windowless vault of the kitchenette put on the kettle. While it was heating up he opened a kilogram tin of offal and fish-meal and forked the pinkish paste into the St Bernard-sized feed-bowl. He washed the fork while Hugo set to without finesse.
‘Do you want something to eat?’ he said to her.
She shook her head.
He told her about the stuff in the washing machine. ‘I think I’ll have to wash it again.’
She didn’t seem terribly interested.
‘I might as well do that now.’
The old washing machine was in the kitchen, the hard plastic hook of the outflow pipe still secured on the edge of the sink. When he had started it, he went back to the bedroom. She was moving about, picking up her things from the floor, putting them on. ‘Are you leaving?’ he said.
‘M-hm.’
‘Why?’
‘I want to go home.’
‘Why don’t you stay?’ he said. ‘For a while.’
‘I want to have a bath,’ she said. His tiny bathroom had only the mouldy shower stall.
‘Stay for a while. It’s pissing down out there.’
‘I know,’ she said, sorting her tights out. ‘Have you got an umbrella?’
For a few seconds he said nothing.
‘Have you got one?’ she said, looking up.
‘Yes.’
‘Is it okay if I borrow it?’
‘Of course.’
He fetched it from the
living room, where the rain was thrumming noisily on the skylight.
‘Why don’t you stay?’ he said, even though she was now dressed and looking for her shoes.
‘I want to go home. I want a bath.’
They were standing in the hall. He switched on the overhead light and she put her shoes on. ‘Is everything okay?’
Without hesitation, she shook her head and said, ‘No.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. When he hugged her she just stood there. He handed her the umbrella. Then he opened the front door and she stepped out into the puddled area.
‘I’ll phone you later,’ he said, as she shoved the umbrella open.
‘Okay.’
‘See you.’
Without turning as she started up the metal steps, she kissed her fingers and waggled them in the air.
*
In the early evening he took the Number 19 to Highbury and Islington. From his seat at the front of the top deck as it plied its way through the wet twilight, he tried Freddy again. He needed to pass on what Miller had said. Miller had said, first of all, that the mare had been assigned a mark of eighty by the handicapper, which he thought was a touch on the high side. ‘Shouldn’t stop her, though,’ he said. (And James was worried by that shouldn’t— he would very much have preferred won’t. He was planning to wager every penny he had left on her, and was attached to the fantasy that it was impossible that she would lose.) And then Miller said, ‘Listen, I don’t think you should be at Huntingdon tomorrow. Not your mate either.’
‘Oh?’ James said. ‘Why not?’