And another thing. It was at this time too that the rumour got around — it was one of those rumours that come down slowly from high places; it wasn’t given out by Quinn himself, though he never denied it — that Quinn would be retiring the next summer but one, when, so we learnt, he would be sixty-four. This was a new retirement scheme to allow fresh staff into higher positions. Quinn still had the option of working on till sixty-five — or even longer — if he wished. Naturally, I had an interest in this. There was a chance — a very slim and remote one — that I might be offered Quinn’s job, but this would depend almost entirely on Quinn’s own recommendation. I was now in the quandary which I have described already. If I challenged Quinn over the mysterious goings-on in the office, would that instantly ruin my promotion chances? Should I hold my tongue and knuckle under? Or was it conceivable that those mysterious goings-on (one couldn’t deny how they coincided with the retirement rumours) were some elaborate test of my initiative: if I didn’t take some stand about them would I then wreck my chances? And yet again, didn’t my duty lie outside the whole self-interested field of my promotion prospects? If I suspected something untoward in the department, shouldn’t I act promptly to denounce it? You hear about corruption in official places — about mismanagement, leaks of information. You hear all sorts of stories.
Would I be writing all this down now, trying to clarify matters in words, if I had acted on any of these assumptions? No. The question of Quinn’s retirement only added to my existing confusion. Sometimes — usually in that brief, green breathing-space on my way home, between the Underground station and our house — I would reflect that, in the possibility of exposing single-handedly some malpractice in the office, lay the opportunity of bringing into my life a faint note of daring, decision — integrity. But then, supposing my gamble failed? And I wanted that promotion. I wanted to come home one day and say to Marian and the kids: I’ve got a better job, an important job, I’ll be better now. (Look what I actually did when Quinn broke the news.) And then it would strike me that there were really two promotions I wanted. For, quite apart from prospects at work, I wanted to step into Dad’s shoes. Now his mind was gone, now Dad was no more: I wanted what he had had. To be even with him. And then there was Quinn. Now and then in the office, when I came into contact with him, I would seethe inwardly with a mixture of hatred, envy and a desire for certainty. I wanted his job. I wanted to sit in his leather chair. I wanted to look down, like him, through his glass panel, at the underlings I had once worked beside. And yet it seemed (and I still feel this now) that what I wanted was not so much the promotion itself, but to be in a position where I would know; where I would no longer be the victim, the dupe, no longer be in the dark.
And when all is said — does this sound strange? — I didn’t want to hurt Quinn. I didn’t want any action of mine to topple him, to break him.
One Sunday when all this was preying on my mind, I went to see Dad — and my patience ran out. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘let’s stop playing shall we?’ My voice was raised. We were sitting on the bench under the cedar within earshot of other people — but in that place my shouts would probably have been taken for the babblings of just another lunatic. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ I said. ‘Why don’t you tell me? Why don’t you speak?’ As if Dad were deliberately deceiving me. ‘What’s it all about?’ Then I suddenly yelled: ‘I hate you!’ All the time he looked straight before him, his face never flickered, and little midges were jigging in the air under the cedar. And I realized I was talking to Dad as if I were talking to Quinn.
[11]
Marian and I make love, on average, three or four times a week. It is rare for her to make excuses; to say that she has the proverbial headache or that she has forgotten her doo-dah as she did recently — and as she attempted again last night, after discovering that I really had returned the television to the shop. She has learnt by now to submit to my demands. There have sometimes passed whole weeks, hectic and fatiguing weeks, in which every night we have striven to cap the passion of the night before. The reason for this intensity is not really mutual ardour, or any excess of appetite on my part — and perhaps passion is the wrong word. It has more to do with my constant dissatisfaction.
You see — (but now I’m going to speak about very intimate things, very private things — never mind, I let myself in for it when I began these pages) — it’s a long time since I’ve experienced with Marian that thing called ‘ecstasy’ or ‘fulfilment’. Believe me, it’s that that I’m looking for — not some mere superficial thrill — when we labour away in the dark, or, more often, with the lights on so we can see what we’re doing when we twist ourselves into some untried, contortionate position. Often, I have spent whole afternoons at the office, ostensibly busy with my paper-work, in reality anticipating, planning in meticulous detail our activities of the night. And when I started to buy certain ‘manuals’, to get Marian to send off for certain articles from catalogues, to visit the sex shops in Charing Cross Road and Leicester Square, all this paraphernalia wasn’t an end in itself, believe me, it was all in the hope of achieving some ultimate thing that always seemed elusive.
Making love ought to be the most natural thing, oughtn’t it? This week, in the full flush of spring, I have been watching the sparrows copulating on our guttering — a mere hop and then it’s over — and the ducks — more rapacious — on the common. It is so simple. Nature prompts them when the season comes, and — I don’t mind admitting it — I often envy their easy contentment, not to be constantly at it, the whole year through. They don’t need any fetishist tricks to urge them on or any shame to restrain them. And sometimes that is just how I see it with Marian and me: a little careless, unadorned instant, like the sparrows; a little flutter of wings and hearts: at one with nature. Perhaps it was like that once, long ago. For Marian and me. For all of us. But now we have to go through the most elaborate charades, the most strenuous performances to receive enlightenment. Because that is the goal, don’t mistake me — enlightenment. All nature’s creatures join to express nature’s purpose. Somewhere in their mounting and mating, rutting and butting is the very secret of nature itself. And when, night after night, I conduct my sexual experiments with Marian, for ever modifying the formula, it’s with the yearning that one day it won’t just be sex, but enlightenment.
Marian sometimes says I’m hurting her; or ‘Can’t we do it another way?’ or ‘Couldn’t we stop now — wait till the morning?’ And sometimes it’s less my physical insistence that wears her than my demands for things she’s quite unable to supply. For example, sometimes I wish Marian had bigger breasts. Her breasts, I may say, are petite and compact, and perfectly lovely in their way. But sometimes I want her to have big, blouse-bursting tits like Maureen’s in the typing pool. Once, so rumour has it, Eric got Maureen into the stationery cupboard and induced her, as part of some bet, to let him see what they were like. And I’m not sure that things stopped at that. Marian can’t be expected to satisfy my fantasies about a girl she hasn’t even seen. But I demand it nonetheless (without mentioning Maureen of course), and I have even given Marian (who worries about her waistline) a complex about the size of her bust.