Dazzling the Gods Read online

  There are days I think I’m the only single person, the wildcard when all the pairs have been gathered up – cat ownership, bingo and a wardrobe of frumpy clothes imminent. Yet the thought of dating appals me, its insufferably polite and contrived dance: What do you do for a living? How about hobbies? Do you want children one day? Yes, I’m thinking of stealing one. How about you?

  I put Ben out of his misery and sit on the sofa, whereupon he takes the armchair. The dog stretches, rolls a quarter turn away from the heat, belly up, its downy penis lolling askance.

  ‘Antique?’ I say, smoothing a hand along the sofa’s ­lustrous leather.

  ‘Not sure. Jaz would know.’

  Of course she would.

  When I was pregnant, in that other life, it had all felt too easy, as if none of it had been earned. We got a small but charming flat by the river; Ben finished his training, took a job nearby. At weekends I painted and we walked the dog. It wasn’t planned, but I still thought he would welcome the news, greet with wonder this shift to some exciting new realm. Our straight line would become a triangle, something with form and shape. With volume. A third-person narrative, if you like.

  I wonder what labels I will now endure, what assumptions people will make of my childless state. I’ll have to pursue some high-flying vocation in order to justify my existence. She didn’t have time for children. Not the type. Will I convene with other such women, converse about how we don’t need to give birth for our lives to have meaning, that some women choose to, others not? How it’s not the be all and end all. Other things will enrich us. What a funny phrase, be all and end all.

  I swill the last of my coffee around, try to remember what closure I thought could be found here today.

  ‘Are you seeing anyone new, then?’ Ben asks.

  The enquiry seems sincere, in that it possesses no agenda, though what is it they say, about wanting former lovers to be happy but not that happy?

  ‘No, not really,’ the ‘not really’ so as not to appear entirely tragic.

  ‘Loving the single life, hey?’

  Something like that.

  I realise there are no books, at least in the rooms I’ve seen, and I wonder if this is another concession to Ben’s new life, Jasmine conducting a cull when they moved in together, perhaps keeping a Tolstoy or two for display. It was the one thing we divided up easily, literature rarely bought or received as a couple. Ben seemed always to accept I was taking the dog, his powers of reason dim­inished by then.

  I want to use the bathroom but I suppose it will be full of further homely trappings: toothbrushes, bath toys, perfumes. Doors to bedrooms might lie ajar, the opportunity for further flagellation irresistible as I’m lured moth-to-flame, bringing a tiny jumper to my nose, inhaling that most unique of scents. Perhaps I would take something, a memento giving some small illusion of recompense. I wonder what sort of father Ben is, if such things can be graded. Is he like TV dads – nurturer, care-giver, sharing evenly hunter-gatherer duties? At bedtime reading does he affect with precision characters’ voices, conceding easily to requests for one more story? Do they go to him to clean and bandage scrapes in the knowledge he’s gentler, more patient?

  Ben’s voice brings me back.

  ‘Have you far to go this afternoon?’

  For a second I forget the fabrication I’d woven, a nearby meeting management insisted I attend, how I recalled Ben lived in the area, that we should catch up if he was free.

  ‘A few miles, back towards the coast.’

  ‘You want some lunch? There’s soup left from the weekend.’

  I said I thought we’d be given something there. Again I wish he’d offer me a drink, pour us both something befitting this unlikely congregation I’ve fashioned from an incautious email.

  I wonder if I occupy any of his thoughts these days, whether he remembers heading up to London at dawn that time, weeks before I became pregnant, marching with a thousand others, feeling part of something bigger than ourselves, the sense of comradeship, of trying to change the world, not for us, but for those to come. How we ran from police and hid in that Lebanese taverna, getting drunk, laughing with waiters, leaving once the streets had quietened, walking for hours until dawn bled over the city.

  I suspect, though, that he doesn’t indulge nostalgia, his life replete with the forging of new marvels. Damnatio memoriae.

  The day of the abortion, Ben took the morning off work. I’d said he didn’t need to, playing down the emotion I felt, agreeing that it was the pragmatic thing to do, a mutual decision, which it had seemed at the time. Only later was I aware of the manipulation, his chipping away, his reasoning – he could reason anything given a half-­sympathetic ear: It’s too early in our relationship, the timing isn’t right, better when things are more stable, once we’ve travelled. I hadn’t realised we were unstable. Or is it instable? I never know. I almost changed my mind on that last morning, perhaps some instinctive awakening, a chemical entreaty, unknown to science, deep inside me. I’d even begun talking to it, trying out names to see how they fitted. It was the size of a walnut, I read later. Not yet a person, though, Ben kept saying.

  Years later, when Peter and I sat in front of the special­ist, I knew what was coming, whose fault it would be. Who was faulty. He squeezed my hand when the verdict was delivered, but I could sense relief in his grip, that despite the condemnation of us as a couple, he had been given a reprieve, his seed beyond reproach.

  So what will my gift to the world be now? Even if some latent artistic talent makes itself known, there’s hardly time to carve out an oeuvre. What a wonderful image!

  I used to think love was an achievement in itself, its status acquired from the sum of one’s virtues, a badge sewn to your sleeve beneath ‘career’ and above ‘offspring’. Perhaps I’ll discover I can sing and appear on one of those awful talent shows, the token late bloomer. I could get a tattoo or move abroad and follow some fashionable religion. If my brother ever matures enough to breed, I could make aunt-hood my raison d’etre, savour the joyous moments, unencumbered by any lingering duty.

  Ben smiles through the silence that’s gathered, perhaps regretting my presence now that curiosity has receded.

  ‘Another coffee?’

  Perhaps I should tell him my fate. That the choice he was so keen I made back then was a luxury I won’t have again. I wonder what names his are bestowed with, whether he stole from the mock list we made when there was no consequence. Maybe Jasmine was keen to retain a floral theme. It must be difficult, to achieve something distinctive yet not outlandish. Perhaps I even snuck in there as a middle name, a surreptitious concession to first love, one he’d share with his daughter when she was old enough to value such sly disloyalty, to regard it eccentric. Such a fuss made over first love, when it’s last love that matters – assuming the two aren’t the same, which they rarely are.

  I’m glad the photograph suggests both are able-bodied, my wish for otherwise made shortly after Peter had left and on hearing about Ben’s incipient fatherhood. Anguish makes such spiteful fools of us.

  ‘I should probably be going,’ I say. ‘My meeting.’

  Ben rises a little too quickly. The dog opens its eyes but remains impassive. I realise that I really miss his ­parents; one can quibble over the division of CDs and friends, but parents are rather assigned, aren’t they?

  We walk to my car in the clean early-afternoon light, the sky now blue as blue gets. A gustless breeze stirs the last of the tree’s leaves until they let go. At its base a blackbird prospects in the grass.

  A last look at it all. Despite appearances I suppose there are cracks even here.

  We hug until I release him.

  ‘Good luck with that pond,’ I say.

  Banging Che Guevara

  Clive – Tanya – Roz

  Once a week Clive takes the new intern to a hotel in Covent Garden. Furthering the frisson is the knowledge his wife would be appalled at the price of rooms there.

  As her
head nods repeatedly up and down like a donkey’s, Tanya wonders if all men his age have such obvious odour issues. His age being roughly that of her father’s.

  The note says he’ll be late home again. This would have bothered Roz once; now it comes as a source of pleasure. She will light some candles, have a long bath and open one of his expensive reds.

  Perhaps he should join a gym, get in shape. Last night he read about hair transplants, how a strip of the scalp is harvested from the back of the head, divided into individual follicles, then inserted into small holes in the crown. Like a vegetable garden.

  You have to make sacrifices, Tanya tells herself, if you want to get to the top. It’s just a bit of fun. Right on cue, he turns her over.

  On Saturdays, when Clive is ‘at the office’, she spends the afternoons watching her father dribble as he plays gin rummy with others in the care home. She’d like to speak of her decision but the words would likely kill him.

  He is fascinated by the new tattoo of Che Guevara on her lower back, the way the face contorts and smiles a little as he pounds away. Roz hates them, of course. Perhaps he should get one, something tribal, or his name in Sanskrit. He will ask Tanya’s advice after.

  Tanya knows how the industry works. It’s not what you know. Shutting her eyes, trying not to breathe through her nose, she pretends it’s the guy from marketing, the one with the shoulders.

  She married too young. Or too something. It was what you did, especially when ‘impure’ thoughts threatened to take root, thoughts that scared you but which were now more established than the large sycamore across the road. And it is time to blossom.

  *

  Clive can’t help himself; it’s in his nature. And you shouldn’t deny your nature. He has needs. It’s not as if his wife is interested in such matters any more. It’s probably grown over.

  Once promoted, Tanya will break it off gently. And then focus on Shoulders. Within a year they will marry and have beautiful children. She feels sorry for people without goals.

  Roz has a secret that no one knows. Not her late mother, her incontinent father. Nor her children. She should probably ask Clive to sit down before telling him tonight. She would like a picture of his expression.

  Che’s grin is mocking him now. And with every third or so slap against Tanya’s arse, he appears to wink, to egg him on. It’s as if he’s banging Che Guevara.

  Her boss has normally come by now. That was what made it bearable, the brevity. She issues words of encouragement, tells him he’s a tiger, says she’s hot for him, that it’s the best she’s had. If they’re done by half past, she can buy that new top in River Island before it closes.

  She first saw her at yoga class a month ago, wild-haired and serene, a goddess. It was like being a teenager again. She came home and practised Inverted Tortoise until the thoughts left. At class the following week, the woman caught her staring and smiled.

  Clive will google it later. It had never been a problem before. He’ll order something to be delivered at work, something to prolong his rigid state. Che, meanwhile, looks appalled.

  If Shoulders puts up resistance, she will bring out the killer heels. They had only failed on one previous occasion, and that was hardly her fault. And there was always Shoulders’s colleague in Accounts to fall back on.

  Last week she decided she would leave him the cat. That was last week. He can keep the car, the house, the silly device that dries salad leaves, but not the cat.

  He tells Che: ‘She just doesn’t appreciate how hard I work. Her only stress comes from choosing what to cook.’ He wonders what’s for dinner.

  Perhaps faking her own will help.

  She hopes the cat will be OK in the new flat. Butter on its paws, a friend told her, when she first lets it out. Will margarine work?

  Despite everything – her milky skin, her perfect breasts – Che has toppled his erection. Overthrown it. What he needs, what he really needs, is the whole Bolivian army to silence his smug face. Or something to put over him.

  Faking failed.

  The children will have to divide their time when they come home now. She suspects, eventually, they’ll find it amusing. Progressive.

  In the lobby, as Clive checks out, the woman at the desk gives him that knowing look. He would like to tell her what he cleared last year after tax. He looks round for Tanya, to ask about tattoos, about the file he needs ready by Monday, but can’t see her.

  River Island is closed. She looks longingly at the shoes in the window, imagines she has just spent the afternoon with Shoulders.

  Her last night in the family home. The neighbours will dine on the scandal for months, rally round Clive ‘at this difficult time’. After finishing packing, she pours more wine and slips into the bath, wondering what it will feel like, with a woman.

  Romi & Romina:

  An Enquiry into Morals

  She termed it ironic, though I suspect that wasn’t correct. How the one thing the human mind could not comprehend was itself. She didn’t mean the brain – that clod of moist beige tissue had apparently given up most of its secrets in the last few decades – but consciousness itself, which quite reasonably, she said, could be nothing more than a conjuring trick. And given our ignorance as to its origin, whether it even possessed a physical entity or not, it was entirely possible everything was sentient: cats, birds, insects. And without evidence consciousness required a brain at all, there was no logical reason to draw the line there. Plants, cars and desks could all be aware of their plantness, carness and deskness, merely unable to communicate it.

  ‘Evolution,’ she said, ‘could easily have produced creatures atom-for-atom the same as humans, capable of everything we are, just with no flicker of self-awareness.’ Such were the overtures Romina brought home from work and offered up as I attended to some unremarkable aspect of domestic life.

  We’d met in a floating jazz bar down on the river, one of those trendy, ubiquitous places inhabited by the city’s great and good, at least until another venue became de rigueur. I was neither adverse to the prospect of a relationship – short-term or otherwise – nor seeking one, and although Romina wasn’t particularly my type, the encounter soon gained volition of its own, fuelled for the most part by her bizarre opening gambit. Once she’d established a physical attraction to someone, Romina’s method was simple: she produced from her jeans pocket a Trivial Pursuit card and proceeded to reel off questions, seemingly oblivious to the unorthodoxy of such courtship. Men (and, I would later learn, the occasional woman) who correctly answered three or four out of six were worthy of further enquiry; ones and twos, she would tell me, were deemed stupid, fives and sixes too clever for their own good. Owing to the sizeable gaps in my general know­ledge, our interaction almost ended there, my own score of three achieved thanks only to a guess at the number of moons to orbit Venus. Answer: none. My prize was an endless succession of tequilas and a tour of Romina’s favoured nocturnal haunts, where we danced deep into the night like chemically-charged teenagers. After parting around 3am, I walked home beneath a pre-dawn sky suspecting life had been reordered for ever.

  Within a week Romina introduced me to the intricacies of shadow puppet sex. From the precise configuration of our hands and fingers, we made the backlit semblance of two beings, furnishing one – usually but not exclusively mine – with male genitalia, before having them converge mid bedroom wall, my little finger thrusting back and forth to our feigned bursts of pleasure.

  ‘You’ve got no stamina,’ she said as the smallest digit of my left hand cramped prematurely. ‘My shadow wants an orgasm.’

  A fortnight later Romina evicted her flatmate of ­several years to accommodate my burgeoning collection of vinyl, the bookcase my father had built in the workshop of a psychiatric ward, and my perpetually indifferent Maine Coon, which would run away the following Bonfire Night. (A year later I would see the cat in a terraced window a mile from our home, looking as content and stupid as ever.) Moving into Romina’s on a rainy Tuesday
in March, I passed her flatmate as she heaved a series of swollen bin sacks into the side of a waiting van. I offered to help but the woman stopped only to spit in my face before continuing.

  ‘You met Lucia, then?’ Romina said as I began unpacking.

  It was the first time I’d lived with anyone beyond my ­parents or a pair of Portuguese art students who liked to create collages from each other’s pubic hair, an example of which now hung in a gallery across town. The shadow sex continued for a while, but never matched for romance or audacity that first occasion. By way of reparation the non-shadow version proved more gratifying than any I’d known, Romina’s libido equal to that of her puppet’s. With precise and presumably proficient instruction, I was introduced to all manner of novel positions, our body parts acquainted with one another in increasingly fanciful ways. It was several days before we came up for air, acknowledging that it might prove beneficial to learn something about each other beyond our basic geometry and a shared loathing of Tom Hanks films. Romina, it turned out, was a post-doctoral philosophy researcher looking at the origins of moral behaviour. In particular she had just been funded to lead a multi-disciplinary project that ran a virtual human from birth to death, modelling every conceivable social, biological and emotional stimuli someone might experience, while observing the ethical judgements it made throughout life and the behaviours this led to. She listened with unconvincing interest to my endeavours as a reporter for the local paper, a job I managed to make sound even more prosaic than usual. From habit, or to deflect my intellectual inadequacies, I found succour in the journalist’s lexicon.

  ‘How does it work?’

  ‘We program it to take in stimuli – sound, speech, visuals – to process them into data structures, which can then interact with each other to create unique associations.’

  ‘Sounds complex.’

  ‘Not really. All we do is define how the external input is stored and processed. Output is then monitored by ­several layers of the CPU neural processor to simulate the conscious and subconscious mind. It’s just a series of gateways. In theory we can find out what informs people’s moral choices.’