without breaking a sweat. She was late. Her flight was at one and she should have been on her way to the airport by now. Jackson cracked the car window to let in some air and let out some smoke. She was always late.
Coffee was no good for punctuating the tedium, unless he was prepared to piss into a bottle, which he wasn’t. Now that he was divorced he was free to use words like “piss” and “shit”—elements of his vocabulary almost eliminated by Josie. She was a primary- school teacher and spent much of her working day modifying the behavior of five-year-old boys. When they were married she would come home and do the same to Jackson (“For God’s sake, Jackson, use the proper words. It’s a
penis
”) during their evenings together, cooking pasta and yawning their way through crap on television. She wanted their daughter, Marlee, to grow up “using the correct anatomical language for genitalia.” Jackson would rather Marlee grew up without knowing genitalia even existed, let alone informing him that she had been “made” when he “put his penis in Mummy’s vagina,” an oddly clinical description for an urgent, sweatily precipitate event that had taken place in a field somewhere off the A1066 between Thetford and Diss, an acrobatic coupling in his old F Reg BMW (320i, two-door, definitely a policeman’s car, much missed, RIP). That was in the days when a sudden desperate need to have sex was commonplace between them, and the only thing that had made this particular incidence memorable had been Josie’s uncharacteristically Russian roulette attitude toward birth control.
Later she blamed the consequence (Marlee) on his own unpreparedness, but Jackson thought Marlee was a winning result and anyway what did Josie expect if she started fondling his—and let’s be anatomically correct here—penis while all he was trying to do was get to Diss, although for what reason was now lost to time. Jackson himself was conceived during the course of a guesthouse holiday in Ayrshire, a fact that his father had always found inexplicably amusing.
He shouldn’t have thought about coffee because now there was a dull ache in his bladder. When
Woman’s Hour
finished he put Allison Moorer’s
Alabama Song
on the CD player, an album that he found comfortingly melancholic.
Bonjour
Tristesse.
Jackson was going to French classes with a view to the day when he could sell up and move abroad and do whatever people did when they retired early. Golf? Did the French play golf? Jackson couldn’t think of the names of any French golfers, so that was a good sign because Jackson hated golf. Maybe he could just play
boules
and smoke himself to death. The French were good at smoking.
Jackson had never felt at home in Cambridge, never felt at home in the south of England if it came to that. He had come here more or less by accident, following a girlfriend and staying for a wife. For years, he had thought about moving back north, but he knew he never would. There was nothing there for him, just bad memories and a past he could never undo, and what was the point anyway when France was laid out on the other side of the channel like an exotic patchwork of sunflowers and grapevines and little cafés where he could sit all afternoon drinking local wine and bitter espressos and smoking Gitanes, where everyone would say,
Bonjour, Jackson,
except they would pronounce it “zhaksong,” and he would be happy. Which was exactly the opposite of how he felt now.
Of course, at the rate he was going it wouldn’t be early retirement, just retirement. Jackson could remember when he was a kid and retired men were the old guys who tottered between the allotment and the corner of the pub. They had seemed like
really
old guys but maybe they weren’t much older than he was now. Jackson was forty-five but felt much, much older. He was at that dangerous age when men suddenly notice that they’re going to die eventually, inevitably, and there isn’t a damn
Coffee was no good for punctuating the tedium, unless he was prepared to piss into a bottle, which he wasn’t. Now that he was divorced he was free to use words like “piss” and “shit”—elements of his vocabulary almost eliminated by Josie. She was a primary- school teacher and spent much of her working day modifying the behavior of five-year-old boys. When they were married she would come home and do the same to Jackson (“For God’s sake, Jackson, use the proper words. It’s a
penis
”) during their evenings together, cooking pasta and yawning their way through crap on television. She wanted their daughter, Marlee, to grow up “using the correct anatomical language for genitalia.” Jackson would rather Marlee grew up without knowing genitalia even existed, let alone informing him that she had been “made” when he “put his penis in Mummy’s vagina,” an oddly clinical description for an urgent, sweatily precipitate event that had taken place in a field somewhere off the A1066 between Thetford and Diss, an acrobatic coupling in his old F Reg BMW (320i, two-door, definitely a policeman’s car, much missed, RIP). That was in the days when a sudden desperate need to have sex was commonplace between them, and the only thing that had made this particular incidence memorable had been Josie’s uncharacteristically Russian roulette attitude toward birth control.
Later she blamed the consequence (Marlee) on his own unpreparedness, but Jackson thought Marlee was a winning result and anyway what did Josie expect if she started fondling his—and let’s be anatomically correct here—penis while all he was trying to do was get to Diss, although for what reason was now lost to time. Jackson himself was conceived during the course of a guesthouse holiday in Ayrshire, a fact that his father had always found inexplicably amusing.
He shouldn’t have thought about coffee because now there was a dull ache in his bladder. When
Woman’s Hour
finished he put Allison Moorer’s
Alabama Song
on the CD player, an album that he found comfortingly melancholic.
Bonjour
Tristesse.
Jackson was going to French classes with a view to the day when he could sell up and move abroad and do whatever people did when they retired early. Golf? Did the French play golf? Jackson couldn’t think of the names of any French golfers, so that was a good sign because Jackson hated golf. Maybe he could just play
boules
and smoke himself to death. The French were good at smoking.
Jackson had never felt at home in Cambridge, never felt at home in the south of England if it came to that. He had come here more or less by accident, following a girlfriend and staying for a wife. For years, he had thought about moving back north, but he knew he never would. There was nothing there for him, just bad memories and a past he could never undo, and what was the point anyway when France was laid out on the other side of the channel like an exotic patchwork of sunflowers and grapevines and little cafés where he could sit all afternoon drinking local wine and bitter espressos and smoking Gitanes, where everyone would say,
Bonjour, Jackson,
except they would pronounce it “zhaksong,” and he would be happy. Which was exactly the opposite of how he felt now.
Of course, at the rate he was going it wouldn’t be early retirement, just retirement. Jackson could remember when he was a kid and retired men were the old guys who tottered between the allotment and the corner of the pub. They had seemed like
really
old guys but maybe they weren’t much older than he was now. Jackson was forty-five but felt much, much older. He was at that dangerous age when men suddenly notice that they’re going to die eventually, inevitably, and there isn’t a damn
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