Fascination Read Free Page A

dentist comes to work at 7.45 a.m.? And why should I feel guilty? I’m a grown man renting a flat off another grown man. I introduce Claudia. The fact that I’m only in this flat because Felicia knows Prentice from the squash club is something I prefer not to contemplate right now.
    Claudia looks at me in that way she has. ‘Goodbye, Edward, I see you later.’ I imagine that we must reek of sex – a pongy, spermy, sweaty, tangled sheets sort of exudation – filling the hallway like tear gas.
    Claudia leaves.
    Prentice turns to me. ‘I don’t know what she sees in you,’ he says, his voice harsh.
    ‘Claudia?’
    ‘Felicia, you tragic bastard. I don’t know why she wants to marry you.’
    ‘Because she loves me, Prentist, that’s why.’
    ‘I want you out of here. End of the week.’
FAST FORWARD
    INTERVIEWER : Do you ever think of the future? Of death?
    ME : Wasn’t it Epicurus who said: ‘Death is not our business’?
PLAY
    ‘Davidson, thoughtful, seemed to weigh the matter in his mind, and then murmured with placid sadness: “Nothing!”’ ‘I close the book. ‘The end,’ I say to Gianluca.
    I walk down to the hall with him and we make our farewells. Gianluca thanks me, with some sincerity. I find myself wondering if Claudia has described to him how I look? I will miss Gianluca, and endless, interminable
Victory
– or will I? I know one thing for sure: I will never read a book by Joseph Conrad again. The mood is one of… of placid sadness. Saddish, but not unsettling, not unpleasant.
    ‘Claudia say she will call you tonight.’
    ‘I won’t be here tonight,’ I say. ‘I’m moving out. I’ll be staying with a friend. Tell Claudia… Just say goodbye from me.’
PAUSE
    ‘Let’s get married,’ I said to Felicia when she called to tell me when her plane was landing. It was strange to hear her crying all those thousands of miles away, her little choking noises, the sniffs. ‘I mean, will you marry me?’ I’m so happy, Edward, she said, I’m so incredibly happy.
PLAY
    I stand on the platform at Oxford station, a bunch of overpriced scarlet tulips in my hand, looking sympathetically across the rails at the commuters with their briefcases and newspapers. Felicia’s train appears and slows to a halt, doors swinging open. I stand there waiting, not moving, and I see Felicia step down in her smart suit, lugging her suitcase (which contains, I know, a silk shirt for me), tucking her hair behind her ears, looking around for me, her future husband. I raise my bunch of overpriced scarlet tulips and wave.
FREEZE FRAME

Varengeville
    Oliver frowned darkly and pushed his spectacles back up to the bridge of his nose, taking in his mother’s suspiciously bright smile and trying to ignore Lucien’s almost sneering, almost leering, grimace of pride and self-satisfaction. Lucien was his mother’s ‘friend’: Oliver had decided he did not particularly like Lucien.
    ‘What exactly is it?’ Oliver said, playing for time.
    ‘I believe people call it a bicycle,’ Lucien said. Oliver noticed his mother thought this sally was amusing.
    ‘I know that,’ Oliver said, patiently, ‘but why are
you
giving
me
a bicycle?’
    ‘It’s a present,’ his mother said, ‘it’s a gift for you, you can go exploring. Say thank you to Uncle Lucien. Really, you’re intolerably spoilt.’
    ‘Thank you, Lucien,’ Oliver said. ‘You are most kind.’
    The bicycle was solid, a little too big for him, black, with three gears and lights and possessed – Oliver admitted he was pleased by this gadget – a small folding-down support that allowed the bike to stand free when it was parked.
    However, it did not take long for the real purpose of the gift to become evident. Oliver wondered if his mother thought he was really that stupid. Every time Lucien motored over from Deauville, always after lunch (always leaving before six), his mother would turn to Oliver and say, ‘Oliver, darling, why don’t you cycle into