Cupid's Dart Read Online Free PDF

outside its tunnel, like a large slug crossing a patio towards the succulent shelter of distant lettuces.
    I didn't believe a word of it, but I had to admit that the magazine was giving me cue after cue. Surely even I could respond to one of them?
    Speak now, man, or your life will continue to be as it has been, and that suddenly seems intolerable.
    'Ange?' I began hoarsely. I wish I could pretend that I hadn't sounded so hoarse and pathetic. 'Ange . . . will you . . . er . . . will you . . .' I cleared my throat, '. . . will you have dinner with me tonight?'

THREE
    'So, where are we going to eat then?' she asked. 'I mean, I don't know restaurants, do I?'
    We were standing on the platform at Euston Station. All the other passengers were scurrying past us, busy ants with ordered, urgent lives.
    I was astonished that she had accepted my invitation. I think she was too. I wanted to get it all fixed up before she changed her mind. Hurriedly, I suggested L'Escargot Bleu. It was the only London restaurant I could think of.
    She suggested that I phoned them to make sure that they had a vacancy. I was forced to reveal that I didn't have a mobile phone. She shook her lovely head – its loveliness shone out in the functional sobriety of Euston – in sadness and shock, as if I had admitted that I had no testicles. She used her mobile to find the number of the restaurant, and I booked a table for eight o'clock. I found it ominous that there should be a vacancy at the time I suggested. Probably the restaurant had gone into terminal decline. I do have a pessimistic streak.
    I wondered whether to kiss her goodbye. I felt frozen in ineptitude. She gave me a very quick little kiss on the cheek, said, 'See you later', and strode off. I watched her till she disappeared down the steps towards the underground.
    I rubbed my cheek disbelievingly. A loudspeaker announced that the train to Glasgow was ready for boarding, and I fought off an irrational desire to get on to it and go far, far away.
    I walked towards the station concourse. It was crowded with anxious passengers. People were hurrying in all directions. Only I didn't know what to do next. I was, after all, on my way home to Oxford. Had I time to go back home, bath, change, and catch a train back to Paddington? I didn't think so. I needed to find an hotel.
    On the very rare occasions when I need to spend a night in London I use one of the cheap, impersonal hotels that abound in the vicinity of the Euston Road. I use the word 'cheap' in a specialised sense, meaning 'not as expensive as other hotels' – £79 for a box in an hotel without one touch of charm is not cheap. My friend Ashley Coldthrop would think it cheap. He works in the City. I do not. I am an academic. Don't start me off on the values of our society.
    Actually, I have always liked impersonal chain hotels. I want the minimum of contact with other people, but I don't want to be the only person breakfasting on my own. With the protection of the loneliness and mediocrity all around me, I can melt into the crowd.
    As I walked into the foyer of the nearest such hotel, I suddenly found myself back at school with Ashley. If I get eight sprouts on my plate, I will pass my exams in eight subjects. If there is a vacancy in this hotel tonight, she will turn up tonight. If there isn't, she won't.
    There was a vacancy. The moment I discovered that, my simplistic little fantasy of cause and effect disintegrated. I deserved that. How could I, a mature and reasonably successful philosophy don, even have attempted to connect two such separate events?
    I paid my bill in advance, as demanded. We are not talking about a civilised environment here. I carried my bag and briefcase over to the lift. I rode up in the lift, which had been built by Blackstone of Preston. I arrived safely. Good old Blackstone.
    At the exit from the lift there were two arrows, one pointing left to Rooms 301–347, the other pointing right towards Rooms 348–393. This