Cupid's Dart Read Free Page A

as "What are you?"'
    'No,' she said 'I meant, "what sign?"'
    'Sorry?'
    'What star sign?'
    'Ah. Sorry. Er . . . Virgo.'
    It was absurd, at my age, to feel ashamed of my star sign.
    'Virgo, eh? Oh yeah!' She laughed. There was no cruelty in her laugh, and I noticed how good her teeth were. I'd have struggled to remember the colour of Rachel's eyes, yet here I was noticing this young woman's teeth!
    'But I'm on the cusp,' I said, as though this made things better.
    'I'm on the pill,' she said.
    I smiled, carefully hiding my alarm at her directness.
    'Virgo!' she repeated. 'I ain't never met many virgos. Bet it's not very appropriate.'
    'Oh well . . .' I let my remark hang in the air. I found that I didn't want her to know how appropriate it was. It's not exactly fashionable to be a virgin at fifty-five, in the twenty-first century, in sex-mad Britain. I wished that I was braver, less inhibited, less self-conscious. If only I could have said, quite casually, 'It's very appropriate actually', the whole embarrassment would have been over in seconds. How complicated I make life for myself.
    I hoped my face wasn't revealing any of these thoughts to her.
    I welcomed the little two-tone ring that precedes public address announcements the world over.
    'Good afternoon,' said a slightly stilted male voice over the Tannoy. 'My name is . . .' There followed two words spoken so swiftly that nobody could catch them. People are so familiar with their own names that they see no need to speak them distinctly. '. . . and I am your customer services manager for this journey. For those customers who joined the train at Stoke, this is the 2.48 Virgin train for London Euston.'
    'Shouldn't be on this train if it's for virgins, eh?' she said.
    I feared for a moment that I would blush.
    I felt that I must offer her some comment, to show that I was not being unfriendly or snobbish, but what could I possibly say to her? I couldn't even make small talk to my fellow dons, people of the same sex and similar age. What could I say to a young girl at least thirty years my junior?
    'Probably not many people should be,' I said, gamely entering into her little joke.
    'You can say that again,' she said.
    I didn't. I hadn't been too proud of saying it the first time. But I had to say something.
    'So,' I asked, less than brilliantly, 'what are you ? What sign?' I tried to look as though I cared.
    'Guess.'
    'Oh . . . well . . . it's not the kind of speculation I habitually . . . Aries?'
    'No! Never in a million years.' She laughed. 'Leo.'
    'Ah! Lion-hearted!'
    'Of course. Sorry, I'm interrupting, ain't I?'
    'No. No. Not really. The . . . er . . . the train of thought's been pretty well broken.'
    'So, this philosophy,' she said, 'what's that all about when it's at home?' The impossibility of giving an adequate answer to anyone, let alone to her! Suddenly I felt extremely tired. I longed to close my eyes and have a Churchillian nap.
    'Ah!' I said, playing for time. 'Now that's quite a question.' I have sometimes been told that when I discuss philosophy I can sound like a walking text book. As I spoke, I was painfully conscious of this, but I didn't know how to avoid it. 'Well . . . er . . . it's the search for truth and knowledge about the universe, human existence, perception and behaviour, pursued by means of reflection, reasoning and argument.'
    'Bleedin' 'ell. So in the morning do you wake up and say to your wife, "Well, darlin', I s'pose it's time to get up and search for truth and knowledge about the universe and that?"'
    'I . . . er . . . I don't have a wife.'
    I said it casually, as a man might say, 'I don't have an umbrella', but for the first time in my life I felt that maybe it was a cause for regret. I also felt just a faint tingle of . . . yes . . . distant sexuality. Very distant still. I had . . . no, not an erection, but, if it doesn't sound too silly, an intimation of erections to come.
    She went back to her magazine. I saw, on the front cover, details