Free Heavy Water: And Other Stories by Martin Amis Page B

bend.
    “Linzi—when she signs her name,” said Yvonne. “Does she do a little circle over the last ‘i’?”
    Mal considered. “Yeah,” he said.
    “Thought so. Just like any other little English slag. Does she do the same with ‘Pakki’?”
    “Shut it,” said Fat Lol.
    Later, in the Queen Mum, Fat Lol said, “What you doing tonight?”
    “Not a lot.”
    “There’s some work on if you fancy it.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Clamping.”
    “Clamping?”
    “Yeah,” said Fat Lol. “Onna clamps.”
    Yv had a been-around face, and so did She. She’s boat, as he remembered it, because he couldn’t look at it, was trusting, gentle, yokelish, under its duster of shallow red hair. Soon Mal would be obliged to look at that face, and look into it, and face that face with his.
    But first Jet in the two-twenty!
    “Stick to the game plan,” Mal was telling him. “Remember. Run it like it’s three seventy-meter sprints. One after the other.”
    Jet leered up at him. What Mal’s game plan came down to, plainly enough, was that Jet should run flat out every step of the way.
    “Go for it, son. Just do it.”
    The raised starting pistol, the ragged lunge from the blocks … By the halfway point Jet had pelted himself into a narrow lead. “Now you dig deep,” Mal murmured, on the terrace, with She’s shape at his side. “Now it’s down to your desire. Dig, mate, dig . Dig! Dig! Dig!” As Jet came flailing on to the home straight—and as, one by one, all the other runners shot past him—Mal’s cold right hand was slowly seeking his brow. But then Jet seemed to topple forward. It was as if the level track had suddenly been tipped at an angle, and Jet wasn’t running but falling. He passed one runner, and another …
    When Mal went over Jet was still lying facedown in the rusty cinders. Mal knelt, saying, “Fourth. Talk about a recovery. Great effort, mate. It was your character got you through that. It was your heart. I saw your heart out there. I saw your heart.”
    Sheilagh was beyond them, waiting. Mal helped Jet to his feet and slipped him a quid for a tin of drink. The running track was bounded by a low fence; further off lay a field or whatever, with a mob of trees and bushes in the middle of it. There She was heading, Mal coming up behind her, head bent. As he stepped over the fence he almost blacked out with culture shock: the running track was a running track but this was the country  …
    He came up to her wiggling a finger in the air. “Look. Sounds stupid,” he said. “But you go behind that bush and I’ll call you.”
    “Call me?”
    “On your mobile.”
    “Mal!”
    Turning and bending, he poked out her number. And he began.
    “Sheilagh? Mal. Right. You know that woman we went to said I had a problem communicating? Well okay. Maybe she was onto something. But here goes. Since I left you and little Jet I … It’s like I got gangrene or something. It’s all right for about ten minutes if I’m reading the paper or watching the golf. You know. Distracted. Or knocking a ball about with Val and Rodge.” Val and Rodge were, by some distance, the most elderly couple that Mal and Sheilagh played mixed doubles with at Kentish Town Sports. “Then it ain’t so bad. For ten minutes.” By now Mal had both his arms round his head, like a mouth-organist. Because he was talking into his phone and crying into his sleeve. “I lost something and I never knew I had it. Me peace of mind. It’s like I know how you … how women feel. When you’re upset, you’re not just pissed off. You feel ill. Sick. It goes inside. I feel like a woman. Take me back, She. Do it. I swear I—”
    He heard static and felt her hand on his shoulder. They hugged: A!
    “Christ, Mal, who messed with your face?”
    “Ridiculous, innit. I mean some people you just wouldn’t believe.”
    And she breathed out, frowning, and started straightening his collar and brushing away its scurf with the back of her hand.
6. M OTOR S