Free Cupid's Dart by David Nobbs Page B

answered like a politician, and I despised myself. I took refuge in the ghastly pomposity of my calling.
    'While it's true, Ange, that I don't consider sexual activity and in particular sexual athletic prowess to be as important as this ruthlessly competitive age seems to believe, at the same time I don't want you to think that there haven't been women in my life. The fact is, though, that – I was trying to work it out while you were sleeping – it's actually twenty-two years now since I last went out with a woman.'
    'Bloody Norah.'
    'I know. Wasted years, Ange.'
    'Tell me about the women you did go out with.'
    'You aren't interested.'
    'I am. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't. I'm not the sleeping around type, Alan.'
    There was a pause, during which I might have said, 'Except with darts players', but at last I showed a bit of sense, and I think she must have guessed this, because she gave me another of her swift, spontaneous kisses.
    'Tell me about your women,' she breathed. 'Alan and his women.'
    'Don't mock. Well, the one that got away, she was very attractive, was a Swiss lacrosse international I met in Lucerne. I was twenty-four. I was with my parents, but I gave them the slip. I was having a glass of wine in a café beside the river. She was at the next table, waiting for a friend. We got chatting. She did all the talking. Suddenly she suggested we move to another café. She didn't want to see her friend. We talked there for an hour or two. She was going to be married the following Saturday. She said, "I have – how do you English say it – cold feet." I said I was in a quandary: I would like to warm her feet, but I didn't want her to get married so I didn't want to cure her cold feet.
    'Not the greatest chat-up line in the world, Alan.'
    'No. She gave me her phone number. She said I was very shy but very sweet and she would like to see me again.'
    'Don't tell me you didn't ring her.'
    'She was getting married, Ange.'
    'She didn't want to. You could have married her, swept her off her feet, gone to lacrosse internationals with her, fucked her every time she won. Oh, sorry. I forgot. Language.'
    'I've told you. I don't mind it as a verb. I just find it so tedious as an adjective.'
    'Alan! I wouldn't know the difference between a verb and an adjective if they jumped up and hit me on the tits. They're all just words to me. Oh, you should of rung her, Alan.'
    'I was with my parents.'
    'Oh, Alan.'
    'I know. This'll sound really pathetic. Twenty years later, at least, I was in Geneva for a conference . . .'
    'Bleedin' 'ell, you get around with these conferences of yours.'
    'Well, occasionally. I do have a bit of a reputation in my field.'
    'You should have taken her to your field and . . .'
    'Yes, yes. We've been into all that. Well, anyway, after the conference, I went to Lucerne for a couple of days, hung around, went to the two cafés, which were still there, had this ridiculous fantasy that she'd come in and say, "It was all a dreadful mistake. It was you I loved all the time." The sad thing is, Ange, that I've never grown up.'
    'No, the sad thing is, Alan, that you've never realised that you've never grown up.'
    I have to be frank with you and admit that I was astounded at the perceptiveness of this. She was a darts groupie, after all, and she came from Gallows Corner. Thank goodness, though, I didn't make any comment to that effect. I was learning fast. I would say that I was learning to think on my feet if it wasn't a rather inappropriate phrase when I was lying in bed.
    'Tell me about your other women,' she whispered.
    'Well, there was my brief dalliance, lovely neglected word, dalliance, with a florist from Littlehampton.'
    'But the affair never blossomed.'
    'Don't laugh at me. No, Ange, do. Yes, do laugh at me. I want you to laugh at me. I need to be laughed at.'
    'Any more, Casanova?'
    'Well, Rachel, of course, and doesn't that "of course" tell you everything? Rachel was a radiologist from Reading. I think the