‘Service isn't exactly the strong point in these restaurants,’ said Ian, who for some reason felt embarrassed, as if the waiter had been a relative or a friend.
‘Oh I know.’ Jane laughed. ‘That's what I like about them. Everywhere else the waiters pretend to care, when really they couldn't give a shit. It's only the Chinese who refresh you with the sincerity of their contempt.’
‘I'm not sure that it's just contempt. A few months ago a man in the one next door had his arm hacked off by the chef, who was armed with a kitchen cleaver.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he kicked up a row over not being allowed to pay for his meal with a credit card.’
‘But everyone knows that these places are strictly cash. Something to do with the tongs, isn't it?’
‘He was a tourist.’
Their eyes met again, just as the German at the next table launched in on another swooping speech. This time they both laughed. For Ian, this felt as if a wave were breaking against his heart, a wave of warm human contact. He could actually feel this wave pushing out towards his extremities. Strange to relate, Jane could feel it too.
‘You were talking about an “edible financial product”. What the hell does that mean?’
‘The product is edible in two senses: the actual physical material associated with the product comes in an edible form and the interests and other disbursements come to the customer solely in the form of foodstuffs futures.’
‘So, it's a sort of ethically sound investment idea?’
‘Only if you're very greedy. But look, let's not talk about me, let's talk about you. What do you do?’
‘Oh I knit and crochet; and I do macramé and patchwork and appliqué and tapestry and a bit of embroidery and macramé — have I said that before?’
‘I think you might have.’
‘And I write about it for specialist magazines and do a television programme — ’
‘Oh, so I'm dining with a celebrity?’
‘Hardly, but it pays the rent.’
The waiter came back with a whole crispy duck. This he started to shred with mechanical efficiency, tearing at the thing with two forks. Both Ian and Jane felt embarrassed now. There was something venal about this shredding. Ian excused himself and went back through the restaurant to the toilet. He locked himself inside and propped his throbbing head against the paper-towel dispenser.
He thought about his nemesis, he-who-should-not-be-named, he of the capitalised definite article. Was he back? Perhaps this was the elective affinity he had always spoken of, always promised to Ian? Ian hadn't felt so safe in his attraction to anyone for a long time. Not since The Fat Controller had snapped his cigar in two, all those years before at Cliff Top. And even if this isn't arranged by him, thought Ian, why should I hold back now? What if what Gyggle says is true — he never really existed. I can't go on like this any longer, I can't go on feeling this way. If I don't get another person's hands on my body soon, I'm going to cease to exist. He had a vivid sensation of this, his body, like a giant continent, unmapped, unsurveyed, its further portions starting to fade away.
Back in the restaurant, Jane Carter was imagining what it might be like to have Ian Wharton's hands surveying her, touching her intimately. What would it feel like to have that big blocky body lying on hers? Could she tolerate it? She decided that she could — just about.
They drank too much saki, which tasted like hot sweat. And, after Ian had insisted on paying the bill, they walked out into the close night and went to a bar. Here there was an outsized television screen, which was so sited that the American footballing gladiators who were projected on to it looked as though they were dancing on the patrons’ heads.
They drank some more. The way that they began to laugh at each other's jokes was tenderness itself, as were the numerous glances, the manifold shared references. These were shy pointers to the evening's conclusion but they were hedged with some maturity, some acceptance that things might not work out after all.
Jane couldn't really say that she wanted Ian to fuck her. Her lust was a diffuse longing that boiled into being in the wake of sex, not in its anticipation. She knew that she could bear Ian's body, bear its weight on hers, bouncing, but what about the morning? She winced into the glass she was sipping from, remembering what it was like to have an unwanted man in her flat. Naked men were like great white spiders in the morning, caught by the taps in the glare of the bathroom light, their limbs flailing as they washed themselves down the emotional plug hole.
‘Where do you live?’ He sounded nervous.
‘Up in West Hampstead.’
‘Let's get a cab, I'll drop you off.’
‘Is it on your way?’
‘Not exactly.’
In the street they were gripped by the delirium of people who feel certain they are on the verge of full genitality. Delirious, because no one can ever know such a thing, no one can ever know what another thinks. They cleaved unto one another in Old Compton Street. Her belly was like unto a heap of meat, or so he thought. She was that animal, that immediate. A piss head, purple cleft actually hammered into his brow, suppurating, of course, begged from them. Ian gave him a pound for his troubles, thinking: If they're only worth a quid, a Mayfair town house should retail for 50p.
In the cab they started snogging. She's my diesel dyke — oh BurgerLand! thought Ian, restraining himself. Her lips were so tacky and soft, they excluded the draught from his mouth, the afflatus from his mind. At the junction with the Euston Road an old finned Ford Zephyr cut them up as the lights changed. Two lads, dark like gypsies, whooping and hollering. Ian didn't even notice.
Actually, Jane wasn't finding the kissing that unpleasant either: Then perhaps I'm drunk? She was. She didn't even notice the Lurie Foundation Hospital for Dipsomaniacs as the cab cruised by. Ian did. Was Gyggle in there, pacing about? Ian thought he saw a light and imagined Gyggle, doing what? Reading an academic paper? Or putting another patient under for DST, sending another sucker to the Land of Children's Jokes? It would have been so much better if Jane had seen they were passing the hospital, because she would have said brightly, ‘That's where I went for my assessment for voluntary service this afternoon — ’ And then some shit would have come down. Better then than later.
The cab rocked off the Finchley Road by Habitat, tipped behind the big block, then stuttered to a halt outside Jane's flat. Ian paid the cabby off.
In the small vestibule Ian smelt the tang of the lime in the fresh plaster. Jane fumbled with the key, resting her pounding heart against the entryphone. She felt his body press against her from behind. She yielded. She could feel his penis, hard in the small of her back. His hand pushed up the thick denim of her dress, smoothed up her thigh, came to catch and pull at the thin elastic lip of her pants. She sighed as his sodden face came down to nuzzle at her neck and his other hand moved up from her waist, to the carapace of her shy breast.
In counterpoint now, his two hands unbuttoned the heavy brass buttons that ran up the front of her dress. He felt her stomach, the tops of her thighs, the crinkly embroidery of her brassière. His face was coming around the corner of her cheek; their tongues touched awkwardly as they tried to enter each other's mouths from the side.
Then they stopped feeling one another out as they felt each other up and went looking for climax.
Before going up on the figurative pedals, so as to run into her at a sprint, Ian paused. He looked her in the eye and mentally apologised for the horror he might be about to inflict. Then he pushed on in — expecting the worst.
There's no better psychological check against premature ejaculation than the fear that your penis might break off inside someone.