“And if they quarreled, their punishment would be an afternoon in the company of the local Miss Bates.”
“I think I’d prefer a son,” said Alice, looking away, and I noticed her eyes drift to an incredibly handsome young man who had just walked into the pub. Her eyes lingered over his body as he leaned over the bar, glancing at the beer pumps as he made his choice. She swallowed suddenly and for the first time I saw real lust in her eyes. I didn’t blame her—I would have climbed over the dead bodies of my closest friends to get to him myself—but when she looked back the smile she wore was one of resignation, as if she wanted that but had to settle for this, and this wasn’t even much good to her so far in the department that really mattered. I felt a stab of guilt and found myself locked into pained silence. Suddenly, the Austen jokes seemed absurd and embarrassing.
“What were we talking about?” she asked eventually, her train of thought having not only derailed but jumped the tracks entirely, driven over a cliff and crashed one hundred feet into a ravine below, killing everyone on board.
“Children,” I said. “You’d like a little boy. I’d like a little girl.”
I may not have known much about pregnancies but I knew that you couldn’t have a son or a daughter without actually doing it first. The priests at school had once muttered something to the effect that when a mummy and a daddy loved each other very much, they lay close together and the Holy Spirit descended upon them to create the miracle of new life. (Charles, in his one attempt at a man-to-man talk with me, had put it rather differently. “Get her kit off,” he said. “Play with her tits a bit, because the ladies love that. Then just stick your cock in her pussy and ram it in and out a bit. Don’t hang around too long in there—it’s not a bloody train station. Just do your business and get on with your day.” It’s no wonder he managed to secure so many wives, the old romantic.)
I tried to imagine what it would be like to undress Alice, for her to undress me, for us to be lying in a bed together, naked. For her to look down at my penis and stroke it or suck it and then guide it inside her.
“What’s wrong?” asked Alice.
“Nothing, why?”
“You’ve gone a funny color. You look like you’re about to be sick.”
“Do I?”
“Seriously, Cyril. You’re practically green.”
“I am a little lightheaded, now you mention it,” I said, reaching for my pint.
“Then you probably shouldn’t drink that. Would you like some water?”
“Yes, I’ll get some.”
“No,” she practically shouted, standing up and pushing me back into my seat. “No, I’ll get it.”
She made her way over to the bar and I followed her with my eyes, wondering why she was so keen, and then I saw that the young man was still there and as she took her place at the bar next to him, she began throwing him oblique glances. The barman was busy and they stood patiently, side by side, for a few moments until he leaned over and said something to her and she gave a quick reply. Whatever she had said, he burst out laughing, and I knew that this wasn’t just flirting on his part. Alice had a quick wit; it was one of the things I loved about her the most.
And yes, I did love her. In my way. In my own selfish and cowardly way.
I watched as they talked, and then the barman approached, took their orders and they talked about something else. He must have asked whether she was there alone, because she shook her head and nodded in my direction and when he saw me sitting there, waiting for her to return, he looked disappointed. When he turned back to Alice, I was able to focus on his face, for they were staring so intently at each other that they were utterly oblivious to me. The young man was not only extremely good-looking but there was warmth in his expression too. I knew nothing of him but I believed that he would treat the girl he loved with gentleness and affection. A moment later, she came back with my glass of water, sat down and I pretended that I hadn’t observed anything of their exchange.
“There was something I wanted to talk to you about,” she said suddenly, looking a little irritated now, a flush of color in her cheeks. “And I’m just going to spit it out since it doesn’t feel as if you’re going to take the lead no matter how much I hint. The reason I mentioned that Max and Samantha are going to London next weekend is because the house will therefore be empty. I think you should come over, Cyril. Come for dinner, we’ll drink a couple of Max’s best wines and, you know, go to bed together.”
I said nothing but felt as if a great weight was being wrapped around my entire body, such as the good burghers of Amsterdam were wont to do during the seventeenth century when they tied millstones around the necks of convicted homosexuals before throwing them into the canals and leaving them to drown.
“Right,” I said. “I see. Interesting idea.”
“Look, I know how religious you are,” she said. “But we’re going to be married soon, after all.”
Of course, I wasn’t religious at all. I cared nothing for it and, aside from occasionally thinking that Jesus With Long Hair And A Beard was rather hot, I never gave any thought to an afterlife or the matter of mankind’s creation. This was a deception—yet another—that I had propagated since Alice and I had first started dating and I had used it from our first date as an excuse to stop me from having to go to bed with her. The downside of this arrangement was that in order to appear consistent I had to go to Mass every Sunday morning. Fearing that she might pull a Mary-Margaret and follow me unawares—unlikely, given their very different dispositions, but nevertheless a possibility—I regularly attended eleven-thirty Mass at Westland Row, the same church where fourteen years earlier I had killed a priest by confessing my perversions to him. I never sat on that side of the church, of course. I had done so once, seen the broken tile that hadn’t been mended since his fall, and it still gave me the creeps. Instead, I took my place near the back and generally had a little snooze until some old woman gave me a punch in the arm to wake me up, staring at me as if I alone was responsible for the downfall of Western Civilization.
“I don’t know,” I said after a lengthy pause. “I want to, I really do. But you know what the Pope says—”
“I don’t care what the Pope says,” snapped Alice. “I have no interest in fucking the Pope.”
“Jesus, Alice!” I said, giggling a little at her choice of words. I might not have been religious but that sounded a little iniquitous, even to me.
“No, not him either. Look, Cyril, let’s call a spade a spade. We’re getting married soon. And all going well we’ll have a very happy, very successful marriage over the next fifty years or so. That’s what I want anyway, isn’t it what you want?”
“Yes, of course it is,” I said.
“Because,” she added, lowering her voice a little, “if you have any doubts, any doubts at all, there’s still time for you to say so.”