The Only Story(56)

But that was the nature of relationships: there always seemed to be an imbalance of one sort or another. And it was fine to plan an emotional strategy, but another thing when the ground opened up in front of you, and your defending troops toppled into a ravine which hadn’t been marked on the map until a few seconds previously. And so there had been Maria, that gentle, calm Spanish woman who suddenly began making suicide threats, who wanted this, who wanted that. But he hadn’t offered to be the father of her children – or anybody else’s; nor did he intend to convert to Catholicism, even if that would have pleased her supposedly dying mother.

And then – since misunderstanding is democratically distributed – there had been Kimberly, from Nashville, who had so instantly fulfilled all his unwritten requirements – from laughing him into bed on the second date to embodying the very spirit of free-hearted independence – that instead of quietly congratulating himself on his luck he had as near as dammit fallen smack into love with her. And at first she had rebuffed him with references to personal space and to ‘keeping things light’. Yet this only made him the more desperate for her to move into his house that very afternoon, and he’d done stuff with flowers way beyond what he normally did, and found himself gazing at racks of diamond rings, and even dreaming of that perfect hideaway – perhaps an old trapper’s shack (with full modern comforts, of course) up some tree-shadowed lane. He had offered marriage, and she had replied, ‘Paul, it doesn’t work like that.’ When, in his delirium, she had patted his arm and said the kind of stuff he’d said to Maria, he heard himself accusing her of being selfish and manipulative and a cold fish and a typical American woman – whatever he meant by that, as she was the first American woman he’d dated. So she ditched him by fax, and he got punitively drunk to the point of sudden rationality, when he fell into silly laughter, and a sense of the absurdity of all human dealings, and felt a sudden call for the monastic life, while also entertaining fantasies of Kimberly dressed as a nun and them having joyfully blasphemous sex, whereupon he booked two tickets for an early-morning flight to Mexico, but naturally overslept and the message on his answering machine when he woke was not from Kimberly but from the airline company telling him of his missed flight. Somehow he had got into work that day and gave a comic account of his misfortunes, which made his colleagues laugh, and made himself laugh, so that this lighter, distorted fiction swiftly took over from what had actually happened. And in later years he had silently thanked Kimberly for being smarter than he was – emotionally smarter. He had imagined that he’d learnt a lot of emotional lessons from being with Susan. But maybe they were only emotional lessons about being with her.

He kept up with his men-friends when home on leave, or between jobs, over drinks or dinners which felt like sudden jerks of fast-forwarding. Some of them had turned into unremitting furrow-dwellers, and these were the ones who reminisced most sentimentally about the old days. Some were now on to second wives and stepchildren. One had turned gay, after all these years, having suddenly started noticing the napes of young men’s necks. For a few, time brought no alteration. Bernard, red-faced and white-bearded, would give him a nudge, a head-toss and an overloud ‘Look at the arse on that,’ as a woman walked past their restaurant table. Bernard had been saying the same at twenty-five, though back then with an inaccurate American accent. Perhaps it was useful still to be reminded that some men mistook boorishness for honesty. Just as others mistook primness for virtue.

These intermittent friends were of different vintages: of the Fancy Boys, only Eric remained in his life. They were companionable for the necessary hours, and alcohol dissolved any distance between them. But in the way of things – or rather, in his way of things – he tended to remember mainly the phrases that either presumed or grated.

‘Still in the game, eh, Paul?’

‘Footloose and fancy-free?’

‘Not found Miss Right yet? Or should I say Se?orita Rita?’

‘Do you think you’ll ever settle down?’

‘A pity you haven’t had kids. You’d have made a good father.’

‘Never too late. Never say die, old chum.’

‘Yes, but don’t forget: sperm degrades as we knock on.’

‘Don’t you long for that little cottage with a blazing log fire and grandchildren on the knee?’

‘He can’t have grandchildren without having children first.’

‘You’d be amazed what medical science can do nowadays.’

His occasional reappearances made some pleased with how their lives had turned out, and others, if not envious, a little restless. Then, in his fifties, he came home, moved to Somerset, and invested some of his savings.

‘What gave you the idea of cheese?’

‘Bad dreams for the rest of your life, old chum.’

‘Maybe there’s a little dairymaid involved?’

‘And look at the arse on that.’

‘Well, at least we’ll be seeing more of you now.’

But there was no dairymaid involved; and strangely, he didn’t end up seeing more of his intermittent friends. Somerset could turn out to be as distant as Valparaiso or Tennessee, if you wanted things that way. And perhaps he chose to remember their heavy joshing because it helped keep them at bay just as he had kept his women friends at bay. Though now some were keeping themselves at bay, having reached the age when illness arrives. There were emails about prostate cancer, and back operations, and that little bit of heart trouble which maybe wasn’t such good news. Vitamin pills and statins were consumed, while the World Service kept them company in their sleeplessness. And soon, no doubt, the funeral years would begin.