Read Online All the Hopeful Lovers by William Nicholson - Free Book Online

turns out to be a group delusion. So much is obvious. The plastic surgeon operates on the minds of his patients. So why stop there? What else is illusion? My value as an individual? The meaning of my existence?
    The consultation proceeds. The surgeon understands that his client has already made up her mind. After all, it takes courage to come into the office of a stranger and speak openly of your body and its limitations, let alone show that body. She will have scoured the Internet, studied brochures, talked to friends. Now she is fired up and ready to go. Nevertheless, he must take her through the risks: infection, allergic reaction, pulmonary embolism, everything up to and including death.
    ‘But they’re rare, aren’t they?’ she says. ‘I mean, I’m more at risk driving my car, right?’
    She laughs and touches her husband’s knee, to reassure him.
    ‘That’s true,’ says the surgeon. ‘But it’s important that you’re fully informed.’
    He hears the nervousness in her laugh, and feels as always a wave of protective tenderness. Beneath the make-up, behind the quick bobbing glances at her husband, there lies such bravery. All these women were once girls in school, dreading the weekly swimming lesson where they would have to expose their awkward bodies to the cold blue light.
    ‘Now,’ he says, ‘I think the next step is the examination.’
    Mr Lazarus stands up.
    ‘You’re very welcome to stay, Mr Lazarus. It’s entirely as you and Mrs Lazarus wish.’
    Mr Lazarus looks to his wife.
    ‘Stay, darling,’ says Mrs Lazarus. ‘It’s not like you’re going to get any surprises.’
    Her husband sits down again.
    ‘He’s the one gets the surprises,’ she says, nodding at Tom Redknapp.
    The surgeon smiles.
    ‘Not any more,’ he says. ‘In my business you get to see what people really look like, thank God, not the touched-up fake version.’
    ‘So hey-ho,’ says Mrs Lazarus, her voice bright. ‘I suppose this is where I take my top off.’
    When he first saw Meg naked she covered her breasts with her hands, out of shame.
    ‘Don’t you wish they were bigger?’ she said.
    ‘I don’t want any part of you different to the way you are,’ Tom replied.
    Does that make me a better man than Mr Lazarus? Not at all. We both act in obedience to our desires.
    Here lies the terrible possibility: that my existence only becomes meaningful in the short highly-charged interval between the birth of a desire and its satisfaction. That this is
what the struggle of my days is directed towards. That this
is all there is.
    After the consultation he catches up on his paperwork. Then he calls Meg’s office and learns she’s out for the rest of the day. He tries her mobile and reaches her in her car.
    ‘I was thinking of looking in about six-thirty. If you’re going to be in.’
    ‘Of course I’ll be in.’
    ‘I’ll only have half an hour or so.’
    ‘All right. See you then.’
    He attends a management meeting of the hospital board. The planned extension from twenty-five to fifty beds is proceeding on schedule, with the new floor expected to be ready by February. However, bookings are down.
    ‘December’s always a slow month,’ says Vernon, the finance manager. ‘But we have to assume current financial conditions will affect business going forward. We may not experience the usual mid-January pick-up.’
    Tom Redknapp plays very little part in the discussion. His mind is on the mystery of desire.
    I desire because I am desired.
    A man can have a fine opinion of himself bred in him by a loving family and all the privileges of his class; he can go to a fine university and build an enviable career; he can do all these things and never for one moment believe himself to be desirable.
    We’re talking about sex, of course. But does that make it any less significant? There’s nothing shallow about sex, nothing superficial. Marriage, if you like, you can call that superficial: a social arrangement, a bargain struck