The Only Story(60)
On the one hand, there were the furrow-dwellers, tunnelling deeper into the earth, and who, understandably, were not communicative about their inner selves. And at the other extreme were those who would tell you their entire lives, their only story, either in a series of outpourings, or in a single episode. Where had he been that time? He could see the beachfront bar with its silly cocktails, feel the warm night breeze, hear the thudding backbeat from tinny loudspeakers. He was at ease with the world, watching other people’s lives develop. No, that was too grand a way of putting it: he was observing the young get cheerfully drunk and turn their minds to sex, romance, and something more. But though he was indulgent – even sentimental – about the young, and protective of their hopes, there was one scene he was superstitious about, and preferred not to witness: the moment when they flung away their lives because it just felt so right – when, for instance, a smiling waiter delivered a mound of mango sorbet with an engagement ring glittering in its domed apex, and a bright-eyed proposer fell to bended knee in the sand … The fear of such a scene would often lead him to an early night.
So he was sitting at the bar, halfway through his third and theoretically final cigarette of the evening, when a man in beach shorts and flip-flops climbed on to the stool beside him.
‘Mind if I bum one?’
‘Be my guest.’ He passed across the pack, then some hotel book-matches with a palm tree on the cover.
‘Smokers, we’re a dying breed, right?’
The fellow was probably in his forties, as lightly drunk as he was, English, genial, unpushy. None of that fake bonhomie you sometimes encountered, the assumption that you must have more in common than you did. And so they sat there quietly, smoking away, and maybe the lack of false small talk encouraged the man to turn and announce in a level, meditative tone,
‘She said she wanted to rest on my shoulder as lightly as a bird. I thought that sounded poetic. Also, bloody brilliant, just what a fellow needs. Never went for clingy.’
The man paused. Paul was always happy to supply a prompt.
‘But it didn’t work out?’
‘Two problems.’ The fellow inhaled, then blew the smoke into the scented air. ‘Number one, birds fly away, don’t they? That’s in their nature, as a bird, isn’t it? And number two, before they do, they always shit on your shoulder.’
And with that he stubbed out his cigarette, nodded, and walked off down the beach towards the gentle tide.
It came into his head, in one of those whimsical, sentimental moods he always sought to guard against, to try and make one of Susan’s famous upside-down cakes. Over the years, he had become a competent baker, and so imagined that he could work out what had gone wrong. Too much fruit, too little baking powder, too much flour – that was his best guess.
The mixture certainly looked surly and unpromising in the tin. But when he opened the oven door, it had surprisingly risen to its correct height, the fruit looked evenly distributed, and it smelt like … cake. He let it cool, then cut himself a small slice. It tasted fine. Eating it failed to set off any specific memories, for which he was grateful. He was also grateful that he wasn’t able to repeat someone else’s mistakes, only his own.
He cut himself another slice and then, suddenly suspicious of his own motives, threw the rest in the bin. He turned on Wimbledon and watched as two tall, baseball-capped men hit aces past one another for game after game. He chewed his cake and wondered idly what might happen if he went back to the Village and presented himself at the tennis club. Applied for membership. Asked to play in, even at his advanced age. The bad boy returned: the Village’s own John McEnroe. No, that was another sentimentality. Doubtless there would be no one left who remembered him. Or, more likely, all he would find would be a neat little housing estate. No, he would never go back. He was deeply incurious about whether his parents’ house, or the Macleods’, or Joan’s, were still standing. Those places would hold no emotions for him at this distance. That’s what he told himself, anyway.
Towards the end of Wimbledon fortnight, the broadcasters showed more doubles matches: men’s, women’s, mixed. Naturally, he was most interested in the mixed. ‘The most vulnerable spot is always down the middle, Casey Paul.’ Not any more: the players were so fit, so quick and solid on the volley, and their rackets had sweet spots the size of their heads. Another change was the lack of chivalry, certainly at this level. As he remembered it, back in the day, male players would hit as hard as possible against the opposing man, but when rallying with a woman would hold back on the power, and rely more on a change of angle or depth; maybe throw in a slice or a drop shot. It was a bit more than chivalry, in fact: it was simply boring to watch a man outhitting and overpowering a woman.
He hadn’t played tennis for years; decades, indeed. When he lived in the States, a temporary friend had introduced him to golf. At first this felt an ironic surprise; but it was absurd to hold a prejudice against a game just because Gordon Macleod had once played it. He came to know the joy of a perfect contact between club and ball, the shame of a shank, and to appreciate the strategic intricacies of tee to green. Nevertheless, as he took aim down a fairway, his head properly filled with the coach’s advice about taking the club back, use of the hips and legs, and the importance of the follow-through, he did occasionally hear, as if in a whisper, the sweet, laughing opinion of Susan Macleod that it was plain unsporting to hit a stationary ball.