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Authors: Alan Coren
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pair of lensless sunglasses that had once rested on the beloved ears. Daily, I grew more inextricably involved. I began to demand more than silent service and unexpressed adulation. I dreamed of discovering that she no longer loved her husband, that she had responded to my meticulous weeding and devoted washing-up to the point of being unable to live without me. I saw us locked in each otherâs arms in a compartment on the Brighton Belle , setting out on a New Life Together.
In April I discovered she was pregnant. For one wild moment I toyed with the idea of claiming the child as my own, thus forcing a rift between her and her husband. But the plan had obvious drawbacks. The only real course of action was undoubtedly Wertherâs. Naturally, Iâd contemplated suicide before, but an alternative had always come up, and, anyway, this was the first time that I had something worth dying elaborately for. I wrote innumerable last notes, debated the advantages of an upstairs window over the Piccadilly Line, and even wrote to B.S.A. to ask whether it was possible to kill a human being with one of their airguns, and, if so, how.
In fact, if the cricket season hadnât started the same week, I might have done something foolish.
7
This Thing with the Lions
The result of a bed-ridden afternoon, in which a romp through Hemingway concluded with a coda of Elsa the Lioness and the belief that enough was as good as a feast, however moveable.
T he windbrake crackled in a gust of hot breeze. She looked up but the leaves were still now. She could see the leaves through the open tentflap, and they were still. There was a lizard on the tentpole near the top. It was the colour of old sand, and it had one yellow eye that did not blink. She whistled at it, twice; but it did not move. A muscle twitched in its shoulder, but it did not move. It is one of the brave ones, she thought. It is one of the few brave ones left.
The boy padded in with the drinks. Not that she drank so much any more, because drink did not do the thing that it used to do. All the drink in the world will not do that thing now, she thought.
âThere are vultures,â said the boy.
âYes,â she said. She watched the soda bubbles rise in the long glass, and burst, impotently. âThey have made a kill.â
âYes,â he said. He looked away. âMissy not go no more kill?â
âNo,â she said. âNot any more.â
âIt is good,â he said. He pulled a tick from his black neck and snapped it with his thumbnail, carefully. âIt is not for lady, the thing with the guns.â
âThatâs right,â she said. She took the tall glass, and the ice bumped against her lips, and she thought: they will be cold now, the lips. But she did not laugh. âNo,â she replied, âit is not for lady.â
Now in her mind she saw the wet platform of the Estacion Norte, and the great black tank engines, and the shuffling lines of khaki puppets and the anaesthetized faces of men who have lain beside the dead, and have got up and walked away. She saw the bars of the Madrid-Floride, and the Metropole, and the others, which were all the same after a while; like the fresh-faced boys who would never quite be fresh anymore. It was a long war, but they had still gone to it, and they had come back, more or less. Mostly less. She remembered the purple Spanish nights when she sat up in the room smelling of ordinario and cartridge-belts, holding their hands and telling them it did not matter the way everyone said it mattered, and that this thing with the woman was not all it was cracked up to be, anyway.
She could hear the bearers singing now, and she wondered about the kill. I hope they got a water-buff, she thought. I hope they got a big black sweating buck, one of those that keep on coming, even with a couple of 220 solid-grain Springfields buried in their guts; one of those big, hard males with the great spread of horn.
In April I discovered she was pregnant. For one wild moment I toyed with the idea of claiming the child as my own, thus forcing a rift between her and her husband. But the plan had obvious drawbacks. The only real course of action was undoubtedly Wertherâs. Naturally, Iâd contemplated suicide before, but an alternative had always come up, and, anyway, this was the first time that I had something worth dying elaborately for. I wrote innumerable last notes, debated the advantages of an upstairs window over the Piccadilly Line, and even wrote to B.S.A. to ask whether it was possible to kill a human being with one of their airguns, and, if so, how.
In fact, if the cricket season hadnât started the same week, I might have done something foolish.
7
This Thing with the Lions
The result of a bed-ridden afternoon, in which a romp through Hemingway concluded with a coda of Elsa the Lioness and the belief that enough was as good as a feast, however moveable.
T he windbrake crackled in a gust of hot breeze. She looked up but the leaves were still now. She could see the leaves through the open tentflap, and they were still. There was a lizard on the tentpole near the top. It was the colour of old sand, and it had one yellow eye that did not blink. She whistled at it, twice; but it did not move. A muscle twitched in its shoulder, but it did not move. It is one of the brave ones, she thought. It is one of the few brave ones left.
The boy padded in with the drinks. Not that she drank so much any more, because drink did not do the thing that it used to do. All the drink in the world will not do that thing now, she thought.
âThere are vultures,â said the boy.
âYes,â she said. She watched the soda bubbles rise in the long glass, and burst, impotently. âThey have made a kill.â
âYes,â he said. He looked away. âMissy not go no more kill?â
âNo,â she said. âNot any more.â
âIt is good,â he said. He pulled a tick from his black neck and snapped it with his thumbnail, carefully. âIt is not for lady, the thing with the guns.â
âThatâs right,â she said. She took the tall glass, and the ice bumped against her lips, and she thought: they will be cold now, the lips. But she did not laugh. âNo,â she replied, âit is not for lady.â
Now in her mind she saw the wet platform of the Estacion Norte, and the great black tank engines, and the shuffling lines of khaki puppets and the anaesthetized faces of men who have lain beside the dead, and have got up and walked away. She saw the bars of the Madrid-Floride, and the Metropole, and the others, which were all the same after a while; like the fresh-faced boys who would never quite be fresh anymore. It was a long war, but they had still gone to it, and they had come back, more or less. Mostly less. She remembered the purple Spanish nights when she sat up in the room smelling of ordinario and cartridge-belts, holding their hands and telling them it did not matter the way everyone said it mattered, and that this thing with the woman was not all it was cracked up to be, anyway.
She could hear the bearers singing now, and she wondered about the kill. I hope they got a water-buff, she thought. I hope they got a big black sweating buck, one of those that keep on coming, even with a couple of 220 solid-grain Springfields buried in their guts; one of those big, hard males with the great spread of horn.
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