‘No, no. You’re quite safe. I was out romancing Frying Pan.’
This is what he calls Bryony. How do these nicknames start? Well, Bry rhymes with Fry, obviously. Bryony and frying pan have the same number of syllables. They are both dactylic, which means that the stress falls on the first syllable of the three. The nickname is also metonymic, because Bryony is fat, and frying pans represent, or in some way stand for, fat. But you can analyse these things too much. Clem knows who he means, and while she never joins in his nicknaming, she doesn’t stop him doing it either. It’s basically because she must still believe that he is taking the piss out of himself when he does it, and not the other person. And his nicknames aren’t that good, to be honest. If Clem comes up with something it’s brilliant. If Ollie does it’s usually just a bit weird. Like all his book proposals.
‘God, I must give Bryony a ring about next Thursday.’ Clem rolls onto her back. ‘How was your class?’
‘Fucking awful.’
Ollie can see Clem’s Forever Fish swimming bag neatly packed for the morning on the yellow wooden chair on her side of the room. The neatness is partly to spite him, just as the neatness all around the house is partly to spite him. The yellow wooden chair on his side of the room is empty. It is empty because their cleaner, Alison, insists on putting everything away. Anything that is left out is dumped, hidden or imprisoned in whatever cupboard or on whatever shelf happens to be nearest. Ollie looks and finds yesterday’s gym shorts hanging up in the wardrobe. This is stupid because, first, who hangs shorts in a wardrobe? Second, they stink. Ollie would report this to Clem, but she would just lazily say something about how he isn’t a child and can he put his shorts in the washing basket if he wants them washed rather than put away. Under the reign of Alison, these are the only two things that can happen to objects in this house: they are either washed, or they are put away. Clem has no qualms about telling Ollie off, but will never mention how she really feels to Alison. But of course, if Clem feels really strongly about something she never actually says it to anyone. This is why Ollie reads her journal. And because she knows he reads her journal, she never writes what she really feels in it (and sometimes goes so far as to actually lie, for example all that stuff about how she REALLY, REALLY loves him).
But anyway, even if half her journal is bullshit, he knows how she feels. He knows that she genuinely wants him to be a success – not as much of a success as her, of course – but enough of a success that he is no longer embarrassing. Can’t produce a book, can’t produce the right sort of sperm . . . Ollie imagines Clem in the swimming pool, in her red swimming cap with her turquoise goggles. That swimming cap . . . He imagines making love to her while she is wearing her swimming cap, and her sensible turquoise-and-white Speedo swimsuit. He’d pull the swimsuit to one side, as if they were both teenagers, perhaps leaning up against a tree . . . He’d get her to give him a blow job with her swimming cap on, and then he’d come on her head. Ollie’s erection subsides as he pisses for the last time before bed. Can he not even get a sexual fantasy right? He imagines telling her about it, and then Clem laughing, just once, and asking why she’d be leaning against a tree in her swimsuit and explaining where the whole fantasy had gone wrong. That bit about the swimming cap . . . But it’s rubber, isn’t it? Of course men are going to feel that way about rubber. But coming on my head? That’s a bit, well, a bit odd, wouldn’t you say? Especially as you’re infertile. I mean, who wants a load of dead spunk on their head?
Clem yawns, and starfishes her legs under the covers.
‘So why did you go for a drink with Bryony?’
‘I totally persuaded her not to go for the scholarship. It was so easy, and . . .’
‘Isn’t that a bit immoral?’
‘Not if I get two PhD students for the price of one. Or three, if I can get Grant and Helen to split the scholarship between them. They can’t not promote me if I have three PhD students and loads more time to . . .’
‘How can they split a scholarship?’
‘The eighteenth-century one is like twenty-five grand a year. For that you could easily get two sets of tuition fees and two lots of rent with some left over for a Pot Noodle every so often, or some lime and soda down the pub. They’ll do some teaching. They won’t starve. I mean it’s not as if these . . .’
‘But isn’t the point of that scholarship to give a student a really good PhD experience because that’s what Esther would have wanted. I mean, didn’t her husband say . . .’
Ollie rolls his eyes. ‘It’s great being dead, isn’t it? I mean, dictating what everyone . . .’
Clem twists her hair around a finger. ‘Don’t be a fucking idiot.’
Again, the way she says it. With a little lazy smile so he can’t get pissed off. Like when a beautiful cat scratches you and you can’t really be cross. Although Clem is not cat-like. She’s a mermaid. A smiling, singing, beautiful and deadly thing from the sea, twisting her hair around her finger like . . . Like, who does that during what could become a really exciting argument, with crying and everything?
‘Don’t call me a fucking idiot.’ And because of her, he can’t even say this the way he wants to say it and has to make it sound like something from a meditation tape. Ollie takes off his shoes, which should have been taken off downstairs. He drops his socks on the wooden floor, and his boxers on the yellow chair. He sucks in his stomach as he unbuttons the yellow shirt that Clem bought him. This goes in the washing basket, although the wrong one (there is one washing basket for delicates, to be washed only by Clem, which this shirt, costing £189.99, definitely is; and another washing basket for things which are not delicate and can therefore be washed by Alison, who puts everything on the Easycare cycle regardless of what any of the labels say). Ollie folds his jeans over the back of the chair, but they look wrong there, so he hangs them up. Then he puts his socks and boxers in the non-delicate washing basket and moves his yellow shirt to the right basket. Why is life so fucking complicated?
‘Anyway, didn’t her husband say that the bequest was to make sure a student could do a PhD without having to work as a waitress on roller skates, or whatever bizarre thing Esther had to do?’
‘Topless on wheels, selling her body for . . .’
‘Oh, come on.’ She sighs. ‘Don’t be such a dick.’
‘Well, she . . .’
‘She’s been dead for less than a year. She was our friend. Why does everything have to end up being about . . .’
‘Oh, right. And now you’re going to pretend you were really close to Oleander too.’
‘Ollie . . .’
‘What?’
‘Why are you being such a dick today?’
Of course she calls him a dick, rather than a cunt, because her cunt works and his dick does not work. At least, his dick works, on the rare occasions when it is given the chance, but his balls are a tangled mess and because of that . . .
‘Why is it always me?’
‘I don’t know why it’s always you.’
‘Oh, so you won’t even admit . . .’
‘I think I’m going back to sleep now.’
‘I see, so you won’t even . . .’
‘Goodnight.’
And how does she do that? She just rolls over and goes to sleep. Just like that. Like a seal or something, rolling over in the water, or into the water from a grassy bank or wherever seals go when they’re not in the water. She doesn’t even moan about having to get up so early in the morning because she WORKS IN LONDON when they LIVE IN CANTERBURY. And it is quite late, after all. It’s 23.15 and she likes to be asleep by half past ten. Can you lose an argument on the basis of simply not scoring enough points? Or is going to sleep