by David Lodge
Across the table, Vic talked ramblingly about the difference the new machine would make to Pringle’s competitive edge. She responded with phatic murmurs, not really attending. He hardly seemed to be attending himself. His dark eyes gazed intently at her from under the falling forelock. He was, after all, she thought, a not unattractive man, in spite of his short stature. If only he had clothes that fitted him properly, he could look quite handsome. He certainly looked better without any. She recalled his white, broad-shouldered torso in the pool that afternoon, the flat belly and sinewy arms, the masculine bulge under his briefs. Under the table she slipped off her shoe and briefly rubbed her foot against his calf, keeping a straight face with difficulty as she watched a startled question fill his eyes, like the face of a prisoner who comes to the door of his cell and grips the bars, only to discover that it is unlocked, and does not know whether the prospect of release is genuine or not. Robyn herself had not decided, she was suspended in time and space, but she teased him mischievously.
“I suppose if I hadn’t been here, Herr Winkler would have fixed you up with a call-girl tonight. Isn’t that what goes on at these trade fairs?”
“So they tell me,” he said, gripping the bars more tightly. “I wouldn’t know.”
The waiter presented the bill, and Vic signed it. “What d’you want to do now?” he said. “A drink in the bar?”
“No more drink,” she said. “I’d like to dance.” She laughed at the look of dismay on his face. “There’s a discothèque in the hotel—it said so in the lift.”
“I can’t do that sort of dancing.”
“Anyone can do it after that much champagne,” she said, getting a little unsteadily to her feet.
There turned out to be two discothèques in the hotel; one a booming, strobe-lit cell in the basement designed for young people, occupied at this hour only by the disc-jockey and the two children who had been in the swimming pool: and another, situated in an annexe to the bar, that was more like a nightclub, offering music of a less frenzied tempo to a more mature clientèle. Vic looked round with relief. “This is all right,” he said. “There are even people dancing together.”
“Together?”
“Holding on to each other, I mean. The way I learned to dance.”
“Come on, then,” she said. She took him by the hand and led him onto the floor. A song of sublime silliness and repetitive melody was in progress, sung by a female vocalist with a high-pitched girlish voice.
I’m in the mood for wooing, and doing
The things we do so well together…
Vic led off with a kind of modified quickstep, holding her at arm’s length. Then Robyn executed a few jive twists and turns and broke away so that he was forced to jig up and down on his own, facing her across two yards of floor.
“Come back,” he said, with comical pathos, shuffling his feet awkwardly, his torso rigid, his arms held stiffly at his side. “I can’t do this.”
“You’re doing fine,” she said. “Just let yourself go.”
“I never let myself go,” he said. “It’s against my nature.”
“Poor Vic!” She shimmied up to him and, as he reached for her like a drowning swimmer, backed away.
At last, after several records, she took pity on him. They sat down and ordered soft drinks. “Thanks, Vic, that was lovely,” she said. “I haven’t danced for ages.”
“Don’t you have balls at the University?” he said. “May balls.” He dredged up the phrase as if it belonged to a foreign language.
“May balls are Cambridge. I believe they have dances at the Rummidge Staff Club, but I don’t know anybody who goes to them.”
The lights dimmed. Music of a slower tempo commenced. The couples on the dance floor drew together. A strange expression came over Vic’s face that she could only describe as awe.
“This tune,” he said hoarsely.
“You know it?”
“It’s Jennifer Rush.”
“You like her?”
He stood up. “Let’s dance.”
“All right.”
It was a slow, smoochy ballad with an absurd, sentimental refrain about I am your lady and you are my man and the power of love, but it did amazing things for Vic’s dancing. His limbs lost their stiffness, his movements were perfectly on the beat, he held her close, firmly but lightly, nudging her round the floor with his hips and thighs. He said nothing, and with her chin resting on his shoulder she couldn’t see his face, but he seemed to be humming faintly to himself. She closed her eyes and yielded to the languorous rhythms of the silly, sexy tune. When the record finished she gave him a quick kiss on the lips.
“What was that for?” he said, startled out of his trance.
“Let’s go to bed,” said Robyn.
2
They do not speak to each other again until they are inside Robyn’s room. Robyn has nothing to say, and Vic is speechless. As, hand in hand, they tread the carpeted corridors of the hotel, as they wait for the lift, and rise to the second floor, their states of mind are very different.
…
Robyn’s mood is blithe. She feels mildly wanton, but not wicked. She sees herself not as seducing Vic but as putting him out of his misery. There is of course always a special excitement about the first time with a new partner. One never knows quite what to expect. Her heart beats faster than if she were going to bed with Charles. But she is not anxious. She is in control. Perhaps she feels a certain sense of triumph at her conquest: the captain of industry at the feet of the feminist literary critic—a pleasing tableau.
…
For Vic the event is infinitely more momentous, his mood infinitely more perturbed. The prospect of going to bed with Robyn Penrose is the secret dream of weeks come true, yet there is something hallucinatory about the ease with which his wish has been granted. He regards himself with wonderment led by the hand by this handsome young woman towards her bedroom, as if his soul is stumbling along out of step behind his body. In the mirrored wall of the lift he sees himself standing shoulder to shoulder beside Robyn, who is three inches taller. She catches his eye and smiles, lifts his hand and rubs it against her cheek. It is like watching a puppet being manipulated. He smiles tensely back into the mirror.
…
Robyn opens the door of her room, hangs the Do Not Disturb sign on the outside, and locks it from the inside. She kicks off her shoes, bringing her height down nearer to Vic’s. He pushes her against the door and begins to kiss her violently, his hands clutching and groping all over her. Only passion, he feels, will carry him across the threshold of adultery, and this is what he supposes passion is like.
…
Robyn is surprised, and a little alarmed, by this behaviour. “Take it easy, Vic,” she says breathlessly. “You don’t have to tear the clothes off me.”
“Sorry,” he says, desisting at once. His arms drop to his sides. He looks at her humbly. “I haven’t done this before.”
“Oh, Vic,” she says, “don’t keep on saying that, it’s too sad.” She goes to the minibar and peers inside. “Good,” she says, “there’s a half bottle of champagne. You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to.”
“Oh, I want to,” he says. “I love you.”
“Don’t be silly,” she says, handing him the bottle. “That song has gone to your head. The one about the power of love.”
“It’s my favourite song,” he says. “From now on it will be our song.”
Robyn can hardly believe her ears.
…
Robyn holds out two glasses. Vic fills only one. “Not for me,” he says.
Robyn looks at him over the rim of her glass. “You’re not worried about being impotent, are you?”
“No,” he says hoarsely. He is, of course.
“If it happens, it doesn’t matter, OK?”
“I don’t think it will be a problem,” he says.
“You could just give me a massage, if you like.”
“I want to m
ake love,” he says.
“Massage is a way of making love. It’s gentle, tender, non-phallic.”
“I’m a phallic sort of bloke,” he says apologetically.
“Well, it’s also a nice kind of foreplay,” says Robyn.
The word “foreplay” gives him a tremendous hard-on.
…
Robyn puts her hands behind her back, undoes a catch on her dress, and pulls it over her shoulders. As she hangs it up in the wardrobe, she inspects the label. “‘Made in Italy.’ Failed the patriotic test again.” She pulls her slip over her head. “‘Fabriqué en France.’ Dear, dear.” This is her way of keeping the tone light. She glances at Vic, who is staring at her, still holding the champagne bottle. “Aren’t you going to get undressed?” she says. “I feel a little shy standing here like this.” She is wearing vest, pants, tights.
“Sorry,” he says, struggling out of his jacket, wrenching at his tie, tearing off his shirt.
She picks the shirt up from the floor and searches for its label. “Ha! ‘Made in Hong Kong.’”
“Marjorie buys my shirts.”
“No excuses… The suit seems to be British though.” She hangs his jacket on a wooden valet. “All too British, if I may say so, Vic.”
The only British-made garment Robyn is wearing is the last to come off. “I always buy my knickers at Marks and Spencer’s,” she says with a grin.
She stands before him, a naked goddess. Small, round breasts with pink, pointed nipples. A slender waist, broad hips, and gently curving belly. A tongue of fire at her crotch. He worships.
“You’re beautiful,” he says.
“Shall I make a terrible confession? I wish I had bigger breasts. Why? I ask myself. There’s absolutely no reason except the grossest sexual stereotyping.”
“Your breasts are beautiful,” he says, kissing them gently.
“That’s nice, Vic,” she says. “You’re getting the idea. Gently does it.”
…
She turns back the sheets on the bed, places a bottle of oil to hand on the night table, switches off all the lights except one lamp. She lies down on the bed, and stretches out her hand. “Aren’t you going to take your shorts off?” she says.
“Can we have that light out?”
“Certainly not.”
He turns away from her to slip off his boxer shorts, then comes to the bed, shielding his erection with his hands.
…
“My, what a knobstick,” she says.
“Why do you call it that?”
“Private joke.” As quick as a lizard she darts out her tongue and licks his cock from root to tip.
“God Almighty,” he says. “Can we skip the massage?”
“If you like,” she says, beginning herself to be excited by the urgency of his desire. “Have you got a condom?”
…
Vic looks at her with blank dismay. “Aren’t you on the pill or something?”
“No. Came off the pill for health reasons. And the coil.”
“What shall we do? I haven’t got anything.”
“Fortunately I have. Pass that sponge-bag, will you?”
He passes her the sponge-bag. “Here we are,” she says. “Shall I put it on for you?”
“Good God, no!” he exclaims.
“Why not?”
He laughs wildly. “All right.”
Deftly she rolls the condom onto his penis. When she releases the teat it falls sideways like a limp forelock.
“I don’t believe this,” he says.
…
Ever the teacher, Robyn is, of course, trying to make a point, to demystify “love.”
“I love you,” he says, kissing her throat, stroking her breasts, tracing the curve of her hip.
“No, you don’t, Vic.”
“I’ve been in love with you for weeks.”
“There’s no such thing,” she says. “It’s a rhetorical device. It’s a bourgeois fallacy.”
“Haven’t you ever been in love, then?”
“When I was younger,” she says, “I allowed myself to be constructed by the discourse of romantic love for a while, yes.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“We aren’t essences, Vic. We aren’t unique individual essences existing prior to language. There is only language.”
“What about this?” he says, sliding his hand between her legs.
“Language and biology,” she says, opening her legs wider. “Of course we have bodies, physical needs and appetites. My muscles contract when you touch me there—feel?”
“I feel,” he says.
“And that’s nice. But the discourse of romantic love pretends that your finger and my clitoris are extensions of two unique individual selves who need each other and only each other and cannot be happy without each other for ever and ever.”
“That’s right,” says Vic. “I love your silk cunt with my whole self, for ever and ever.”
“Silly,” she says, but smiles, not unmoved by this declaration. “Why do you call it that?”
…
“Private joke,” he says, covering her body with his. “Do you think we could possibly stop talking now?”
…
“All right,” she says. “But I prefer to be on top.”
3
“Imagine,” Robyn whispered. “He had never done it that way before.”
“Really?” Penny Black whispered back. “How long did you say he had been married?”
“Twenty-two years.”
“Twenty-two years in the missionary position? That’s kind of perverted.”
Robyn sniggered, a mite guiltily. She didn’t like to expose Vic to Penny Black’s ridicule, but she felt she had to confide in somebody. It was ten days since the expedition to Frankfurt, and she and Penny were having a sauna after their Monday evening game of squash, on the highest, hottest bench, and they were whispering because Philip Swallow’s wife, wrapped modestly in a towel, was sitting on the lowest.
“Well, I don’t think there’s been a lot of sex in the marriage in recent years,” said Robyn.
“I’m not surprised,” said Penny.
Mrs. Swallow rose to her feet and went out of the sauna, nodding curtly to the two young women as she closed the door.
“Oh dear,” said Robyn, “d’you think she thought we were talking about her and Swallow?”
“Never mind the Swallows,” said Penny, “tell me about your fling with Wilcox. What possessed you?”
“I fancied him,” said Robyn, cupping her chin in her hands, and supporting her elbows on her knees. “At that particular conjuncture, I fancied him.”
“I thought you couldn’t stand him? I thought he was a bully, a philistine and a male chauvinist.”
“Well, he did seem a bit like that at first. In fact he’s really quite decent, when you get to know him. And by no means stupid.”
“That doesn’t sound like enough reason to go to bed with him.”
“I told you, Penny, that night I fancied him. You know how it is: you’re in a strange place, you have a few drinks, a smooch on the dance floor…”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, I’ve taught Open University Summer School. But Robyn, for heaven’s sake—a middle-aged factory owner!”
“Managing Director.”
“Well, whatever… it’s like rough trade.”
“He wasn’t a bit rough. On the contrary.”
“I don’t mean physically, I mean psychologically. I think the idea of this man’s power and money is a turn-on for you. He’s the antithesis of everything you stand for.” Penny Black shook her head reproachfully. “I’m afraid it’s the old female rape-fantasy rearing its ugly head again, Robyn. When Wilcox screwed you, it was like the factory ravished the university.”
“Don’t be absurd, Penny,” said Robyn. “If anyone did any ravishing, it was me. The trouble is, he wants to make a great romance out of it. He insists that he’s in love with me. I tell him I don’t believe in t
he concept, but it doesn’t make any difference. He keeps ringing me up and asking to meet. I don’t know what to do.”
“Tell him you’re committed to Charles.”
“The trouble is, I’m not. We’re not seeing each other at the moment.”
“Tell him you’re a lesbian,” said Penny, with a sly, sideways glance. “That should put him off.”
Robyn laughed, a little self-consciously, and pressed her knees more closely together. She had a suspicion that Penny Black herself had tendencies of this kind. “He knows I’m not a lesbian,” she said, “all too well.”
“What does he have in mind?” said Penny. “Does he want to set you up as his mistress or something?” She chuckled. “Maybe you should consider it seriously, it might be useful when your job runs out.”
“He claims he wants to marry me,” said Robyn. “He’s prepared to get a divorce and marry me.”
“Wow! That’s heavy!”
“It’s quite ridiculous, of course.”
“All because of a single fuck?”
“Well, three actually,” said Robyn.
…
The first time he came almost as soon as she straddled him and bore down on him—came with a great groan, like a tree being torn out of the ground by the roots. A little later he was sufficiently hard again to allow her to reach an orgasm, but couldn’t come himself until she helped him with the aid of a little massage oil. He wept at that, whether from mortification or gratitude or a mixture of both, she couldn’t be sure. And in the early hours of the morning, with the grey dawn light just beginning to seep through the curtains, she woke to find his hand between her legs, and she rolled over onto her back and, still half asleep, let him have her in his own direct way, under the bedclothes, without a word exchanged—only inarticulate cries and moans to which she contributed her quota. When she woke again, in broad daylight, he had gone back to his own room, much to her relief. She gave him credit for unsuspected tact. They could carry on as if the events of the night were bracketed off from their normal relationship. Sober and wide awake, she had no wish to be reminded of them.