He shook his head, and told himself it wasn’t that disastrous. If he turned and looked at himself suddenly, and held his head in a certain way, and inhaled, he could still pass for, say, thirty-seven? He retained enough vanity to know that he was still an unusually good-looking man, but no-one was calling him beautiful anymore, and he’d always thought he would age better than this. He had hoped to age like a movie star: wiry, aquiline, grey-templed, sophisticated. Instead he was ageing like a TV presenter. An ex-TV presenter. A twice-married ex-TV presenter who ate far too much cheese.
Emma came in, naked from the bedroom, and he began to brush his teeth, another obsession; he felt like he had an old mouth, like it would never be clean again.
‘I’m getting fat,’ he mumbled, mouth full of foam.
‘No you’re not,’ she said without much conviction.
‘I am – look.’
‘So don’t eat so much cheese then,’ she said.
‘I thought you said I wasn’t getting fat.’
‘If you feel you are, then you are.’
‘And I don’t eat too much cheese. My metabolism is slowing down, that’s all.’
‘So do some exercise. Go to the gym again. Come swimming with me.’
‘No time, have I?’ While the toothbrush was removed from his mouth she kissed him consolingly. ‘Look, I’m a mess,’ he mumbled.
‘I’ve told you before, darling, you have beautiful breasts,’ and
she laughed, poked him in the buttock and stepped into the shower. He rinsed, sat on the bathroom chair and watched her.
‘We should go and see that house this afternoon.’
Emma groaned over the sound of the water. ‘Do we have to?’
‘Well I don’t know how else we’re going to find—’
‘Okay. Okay! We’ll go and see the house.’
She continued to shower with her back to him and he stood and stalked into the bedroom to get dressed. They were scrappy and irritable once again, and he told himself that it was because of the strain of trying to find a place to live. The flat had already been sold and a large part of their possessions placed into storage just to make room for the two of them. Unless they found somewhere soon they would have to rent, and all this brought its tensions and anxieties.
But he knew that something else was going on and sure enough, as Emma waited for the kettle and read the paper, she suddenly said—
‘I’ve just got my period.’
‘When?’ he asked.
‘Just now,’ she said, with studied calm. ‘I could feel it coming on.’
‘Oh well,’ he said, and Emma continued to make coffee, her back to him.
He stood to wrap his arms around her waist and lightly kissed the nape of her neck, still damp from the shower. She didn’t look up from the newspaper. ‘Doesn’t matter. We’ll try again, yeah?’ he said, standing there with his chin on her shoulder for a while. It was a winsome, uncomfortable stance, and when she turned the page of the paper, he took it as his cue to return to the table.
They sat and read, Emma the current affairs, Dexter the sport, both taut with irritation while Emma tutted and shook her head in that maddening way she sometimes had. The Butler Inquiry into the origins of the war dominated the headlines, and he could feel her building up to some kind of topical
political comment. He focussed on the latest from Wimbledon, but—
‘It’s weird, isn’t it? How there’s this war going on, and virtually no protest? I mean you think there’d be marches or something, wouldn’t you?’
That tone of voice riled him too. It was the one he remembered from all those years ago: her student voice, superior and self-righteous. Dexter made an uncontentious noise, neither challenging nor accepting, in the hope that this would be enough. Time passed, pages of the newspaper were turned.
‘I mean you’d think there’d be something like the anti-Vietnam movement or something, but nothing. Just that one march, then everyone shrugged and went home. Even the students aren’t protesting!’
‘What’s it got to do with the students?’ he said, mildly enough, he thought.
‘It’s traditional, isn’t it? That students are politically engaged. If we were still students, we’d be protesting.’ She went back to the paper. ‘
I
would anyway.’
She was provoking him. Fine, if that’s what she wanted. ‘So why aren’t you?’
She looked at him sharply. ‘What?’
‘Protesting. If you feel so strongly.’
‘That’s exactly my point. Maybe I should be! That was exactly my observation! If there was some kind of cohesive movement …’
He returned to the paper, resolving to keep quiet but unable to do so. ‘Or maybe it’s because people don’t mind.’
‘What?’ She looked at him, eyes narrowed.
‘The war. I mean if people were really affronted by it there’d be protests, but maybe people are glad that he’s gone. I don’t know if you noticed, Em, but he wasn’t a very nice man …’
‘You can be glad Saddam’s gone and still be against the war.’
‘That’s my point. It’s ambiguous, isn’t it?’
‘What, you think it’s a
fairly
just war?’
‘Not
me
necessarily. People.’
‘But what about you?’ She closed the newspaper, and he felt a genuine sense of unease. ‘What do you think?’
‘What do I think?’
‘What do you think?’
He sighed. Too late now, no turning back. ‘I just think it’s pretty rich that a lot of people on the Left were against the war when the people that Saddam was murdering were exactly the people the Left should have been supporting.’
‘Like who?’
‘Trade unionists, feminists. Homosexuals.’ Should he say the Kurds? Was that correct? He decided to chance it. ‘The Kurds!’
Emma snuffled righteously. ‘Oh, you think we’re fighting this war to protect trade unionists?’ You think Bush invaded because he was worried about the plight of Iraqi women? Or gays?’
‘All I’m saying is that the anti-war march would have had a bit more moral credibility if the same people had protested against the Iraqi regime in the first place! They protested about apartheid, why not Iraq?’
‘… and Iran? And China and Russia and North Korea and Saudi Arabia! You can’t protest against everyone.’
‘Why not? You used to!’
‘That’s beside the point!’
‘Is it? When I first knew you, all you
did
was boycott things. You couldn’t eat a bloody Mars Bar without a lecture on personal responsibility. It’s not my fault you’ve become complacent …’
He returned to his ridiculous sports news with a little self-satisfied smirk, and Emma felt her face beginning to redden. ‘I have not become…Don’t change the subject! The point is, it’s ridiculous to claim that this war is about human rights, or WMDs or anything like that. It’s about one thing and one thing only …’
He groaned. It was inevitable now: she was going to say ‘oil’. Please, please don’t say ‘oil’…
‘… nothing to do with human rights. It’s entirely to do with oil!’
‘Well isn’t that a pretty good reason?’ he said, standing and deliberately scraping his chair. ‘Or don’t you use oil, Em?’
As last words go, he felt this was pretty effective, but it was hard to walk away from an argument in this bachelor flat that suddenly felt too small, cluttered and scuffed. Certainly Emma wasn’t going to let a fatuous remark like that go unanswered. She followed him into the hall, but he was waiting for her, turning on her with a ferocity that unsettled them both.
‘I tell you what this is
really
about. You’ve had your period and you’re angry about it and you’re taking it out on me! Well I don’t like being harangued while I’m trying to eat my breakfast!’
‘I’m not
haranguing
you—’
‘Arguing then—’
‘We’re not arguing, we’re discussing—’
‘Are we? Because I’m arguing—’
‘Calm down, Dex—’
‘The war wasn’t my idea, Em! I didn’t order the invasion, and I’m sorry, but I don’t feel as strongly about it as you do. Maybe I should, maybe I will, but I don’t. I don’t know why, maybe I’m too
stupid
or something—’
Emma looked startled. ‘Where did that come from? I didn’t say you were—?’
‘But you treat me like I am. Or like I’m this right-wing nut because I don’t spout platitudes about The War. I swear, if I sit at one more dinner party and hear someone say “It’s all about the oil”! Maybe it is, so what? Either protest about that, or stop using oil or accept it and shut the fuck up!’
‘Don’t you dare tell me to—’
‘I wasn’t! I wasn’t talking to … oh, forget it.’
He squeezed past that bloody bike of hers, cluttering up
his
hallway, and into the bedroom. The blinds were still drawn, the bed unmade, damp towels on the floor, the room smelling of their bodies from the night before. He began searching for his keys in the gloom. Emma watched him from the doorway,
with that look of maddening concern, and he kept his eyes averted.
‘Why are you so embarrassed about discussing politics?’ she said calmly, as if he were a child having a tantrum.
‘I’m not embarrassed, I’m just … bored.’ He was searching through the laundry basket, pulling out discarded clothes, checking trouser pockets for keys. ‘I find politics boring – there, I’ve said it now. It’s out!’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘Even at University?’
‘Especially there! I just pretended I didn’t because it was the thing to do. I used to sit there at two in the morning listening to Joni Mitchell while some clown banged on about apartheid, or nuclear disarmament or the objectification of women and I used to think, fuck, this is boring, can’t we talk about, I don’t know, family or music or sex or something, people or something—’
‘But politics
is
people!’
‘What does that
mean
, Em? It’s meaningless, it’s just something to say—’
‘It means we talked about a lot of things!’
‘Did we? All I remember about those golden days is a lot of people showing-off, men mostly, banging on about feminism so that they could get into some girl’s knickers. Stating the bleeding obvious; isn’t that Mr Mandela nice and isn’t nuclear war nasty and isn’t it rotten that some people don’t have enough to eat—’
‘And that’s
not
what people said!’
‘—it’s exactly the same now, except the bleeding obvious has changed. Now it’s global warming and hasn’t Blair sold out!’
‘You don’t agree?’
‘I
do
agree! I do! I just think it would be refreshing to hear someone we know, one single person, say Bush can’t be all that stupid and thank God someone’s standing up to this fascist
dictator and by the way I love my big car. Because they’d be wrong, but at least there’d be something to talk about! At least they wouldn’t be patting themselves on the back, at least it would make a change from WMDs and schools and fucking
house
prices.’
‘Hey, you talk about house prices too!’
‘I know! And I fucking bore myself too!’ His shout echoed as he flung yesterday’s clothes against the wall, and then they both stood there in the gloomy bedroom, the blinds still down, the stale bed unmade.
‘Do I bore you then?’ she said quietly.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! That’s not what I said.’ Suddenly exhausted, he sat on the bed.
‘But do I?’
‘No, you don’t. Let’s change the subject, can we?’
‘So, what do you want to talk about?’ she said.
He sat hunched on the edge of the mattress, pressed his hands to his face and exhaled through his fingers. ‘We’ve only been trying for eighteen months, Em.’
‘Two years.’
‘Two years then. I don’t know, I just hate that … look you give me.’
‘What look?’
‘When it doesn’t work, like it’s my fault.’
‘I don’t!’
‘That’s what it feels like.’
‘I’m sorry. I apologise. I’m just … disappointed. I really want it, that’s all.’
‘So do I!’
‘Do you?’
He looked hurt. ‘Of course I do!’
‘Because you didn’t to begin with.’
‘Well I do now. I love you. You know that.’
She crossed the room and joined him, and they sat for a moment holding hands, shoulders hunched.
‘Come here,’ she said, falling backwards onto the bed, and he followed, their legs dangling over the edge. A shaft of murky light leaked between the blinds.
‘I’m sorry for taking it out on you,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry for … I don’t know.’
She lifted his hand and pressed the back of it against her lips. ‘You know. I think we should get checked out. Go to a fertility clinic or something. Both of us.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with us.’
‘I know, and that’s what we’re going to confirm.’
‘Two years isn’t that long. Why not wait another six months?’
‘I just don’t feel like I’ve got another six months in me, that’s all.’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘I’ll be thirty-nine next April, Dex.’
‘I’m forty in two weeks!’
‘Exactly.’
He exhaled slowly, visions of test tubes floating before his eyes. Depressing cubicles, nurses snapping on rubber gloves. Magazines. ‘Alright then. We’ll have some
tests.’
He turned to look at her. ‘But what’ll we do about the waiting list?’
She sighed. ‘I suppose we might have to, I don’t know. Go private.’
After a while, he spoke. ‘My God. Now that’s something I never thought you’d say.’
‘No, me neither,’ she said. ‘Me neither.’
With some sort of fragile peace in place, he got ready for work. The absurd row would make him late, but at least the Belleville Café was running fairly smoothly now. He had employed a sharp, reliable manager, Maddy, with whom he enjoyed good business relations and some mild flirtation, and he no longer had to open up in the mornings. Emma accompanied him downstairs and they walked out into the day, gloomy and nondescript.
‘So where is this house then?’
‘Kilburn. I’ll send you the address. It looks nice. In the photos.’
‘They all look nice in the photos,’ she mumbled, hearing her own voice, sulky and dreary. Dexter chose not to speak, and a moment passed before she felt able to loop her arms around his waist and hold onto him. ‘We’re not being very good today, are we? Or I’m not. Sorry.’
‘That’s okay. We’ll stay in tonight, you and me. I’ll cook you dinner, or we’ll go out somewhere. To the cinema or something.’ He pressed his face to the top of the head. ‘I love you and we’ll sort this out, alright?’