in their shoulders and the stress in their hips. Look for the slight limp that betrays their vulnerable side. What kind of man or womanthey are is in their gait. I never give a man a job until I’ve seen the way he walks. I courted my wife because when she moved she seemed to take the earth with her.
What happened to us holding hands side by side? Somewhere in the fourteen years of our married life I seem to have had a sex change and converted to Islam. How else to explain the twenty paces I lag behind?
When I come home caught in the cobwebs of my day, my wife has been planning our next holiday or working out the finance for a new car. I am still building the extension she designed two years ago. I have to fit it in with my job and the garden and time for my daughter who loves me. My wife strides us on into prosperity and fulfilment and I shuffle behind clutching the bills and a tool box. She was right to make me drain the lawn. All our friends admire its rollered curves. I admire my wife. Admire our success. We were nothing and she has coaxed out the grit in me and held me to my job. Why do I wish we were young again and she would hold me in her arms?
Listen to me. I sound like the fool I am. Fortunately I am alone.
At that moment I looked up out of the comforting opacity of my beer and down the trestle table. Tightly packed, like rowers in a slave ship, were a couple of hundred men, heads on their fists, staring into their beer as if it were a crystalball. And the table seemed to infinitely extend through the candy striped canvas and out over the hills into the city and to be forever lined with men.
I got to my feet and left through an open flap at the back of the tent. I was away from the bustle of the fair and out by a few caravans, their fires pushing up smoke. Sitting beside one of the fires was the woman I had met already.
She said, ‘Take off your trousers.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll clean them for you.’
She turned her back and went up the wooden steps into a caravan. I was about twenty paces behind.
When I finally hesitated myself inside she was pouring blue powder into a copper pot. The caravan was one of those old barrel types with a pair of long shafts for the horse to draw it. Inside it was panelled, carved, sprung, beautiful, clean. She had a feather eiderdown on the bed and the bed was how a bed should be. Not too hygienic, not too hospital, not a showroom bed with matching sheets and pillow cases.
She held out her hand for my trousers and I wondered how her hair seemed so red that when she leaned over the copper there was no distinction between the soft metal and her soft hair.
She smiled and looked down at me. Not at my knees. I had my shirt tails but it was obvious how things stood. I suppose it was obvious how things were going to be but when I bucked into her it was with the same surprise as all those years ago when Alison and I had walked in the woodsand made love among the bluebells. I had the perfect freedom of loving her and although we have never given up sex we never have found those woods again.
I felt the trees closing over me and I slept.
It was dark when I woke up. I was alone in the bed. I sat up and grabbed the cover around me. Gradually I could make out the shapes in the caravan and I found an oil lamp with its wick just burning under the brass cover. I turned it up and on the chair beside it were my trousers neatly folded and dry.
I inspected the knees. The accusing stains had disappeared but was it a trick of the light or were the trousers all over now hued invisible green? I dressed as quickly as I could and let myself out of the caravan.
What time was it? I checked my wrist and found my watch had gone. Should I go back in? I couldn’t. I wanted to be away, be home, not be noticed, not be caught. I still had my wallet.
As I set off through the fields towards the empty stalls I saw by the firelight a group of men leading a horse up and down. There was a girl on it,
What happened to us holding hands side by side? Somewhere in the fourteen years of our married life I seem to have had a sex change and converted to Islam. How else to explain the twenty paces I lag behind?
When I come home caught in the cobwebs of my day, my wife has been planning our next holiday or working out the finance for a new car. I am still building the extension she designed two years ago. I have to fit it in with my job and the garden and time for my daughter who loves me. My wife strides us on into prosperity and fulfilment and I shuffle behind clutching the bills and a tool box. She was right to make me drain the lawn. All our friends admire its rollered curves. I admire my wife. Admire our success. We were nothing and she has coaxed out the grit in me and held me to my job. Why do I wish we were young again and she would hold me in her arms?
Listen to me. I sound like the fool I am. Fortunately I am alone.
At that moment I looked up out of the comforting opacity of my beer and down the trestle table. Tightly packed, like rowers in a slave ship, were a couple of hundred men, heads on their fists, staring into their beer as if it were a crystalball. And the table seemed to infinitely extend through the candy striped canvas and out over the hills into the city and to be forever lined with men.
I got to my feet and left through an open flap at the back of the tent. I was away from the bustle of the fair and out by a few caravans, their fires pushing up smoke. Sitting beside one of the fires was the woman I had met already.
She said, ‘Take off your trousers.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll clean them for you.’
She turned her back and went up the wooden steps into a caravan. I was about twenty paces behind.
When I finally hesitated myself inside she was pouring blue powder into a copper pot. The caravan was one of those old barrel types with a pair of long shafts for the horse to draw it. Inside it was panelled, carved, sprung, beautiful, clean. She had a feather eiderdown on the bed and the bed was how a bed should be. Not too hygienic, not too hospital, not a showroom bed with matching sheets and pillow cases.
She held out her hand for my trousers and I wondered how her hair seemed so red that when she leaned over the copper there was no distinction between the soft metal and her soft hair.
She smiled and looked down at me. Not at my knees. I had my shirt tails but it was obvious how things stood. I suppose it was obvious how things were going to be but when I bucked into her it was with the same surprise as all those years ago when Alison and I had walked in the woodsand made love among the bluebells. I had the perfect freedom of loving her and although we have never given up sex we never have found those woods again.
I felt the trees closing over me and I slept.
It was dark when I woke up. I was alone in the bed. I sat up and grabbed the cover around me. Gradually I could make out the shapes in the caravan and I found an oil lamp with its wick just burning under the brass cover. I turned it up and on the chair beside it were my trousers neatly folded and dry.
I inspected the knees. The accusing stains had disappeared but was it a trick of the light or were the trousers all over now hued invisible green? I dressed as quickly as I could and let myself out of the caravan.
What time was it? I checked my wrist and found my watch had gone. Should I go back in? I couldn’t. I wanted to be away, be home, not be noticed, not be caught. I still had my wallet.
As I set off through the fields towards the empty stalls I saw by the firelight a group of men leading a horse up and down. There was a girl on it,
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