My Present Age Read Online Free PDF Page B

act decently. After I locked myself in Victoria’s bathroom last summer I promised myself she wouldn’t catch me grovelling again. But I have never been particularly good at holding to resolutions or improving my rather lamentable character. Not like my father. Pop, there was a man for resolutions, a Bismarckian gentleman of blood and iron. He used to tape
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’s “Increase Your Word Power” above the bathroom mirror so he could study it while shaving. “If you use a word three times,” he used to say, “you make it yours for life.”
    It doesn’t seem that much else is for life, but Pop was going to get whatever could be had for the duration. Increasing his word power added colour and force to his letters to the boards and committees which had slighted him, but that wasn’t his motive for studying. He believed in being “well rounded.” It’s one of his great sorrows that I’m not.
    Now or never, Ed. Death before dishonour. I hitch my shoulders back and strike boldly out into a field of carpet-daisies. As it turns out, Victoria is so lost in her thoughts she does not take her eyes from the rivulets streaking the window until she hears me struggling with the wicker chair. She glances up sharply, startled. Her face looks small and dark in the shade of the parasol; winter has chapped her lips and scored little lines in the pale, bitten flesh. She smiles at me in a wary but unhostile manner. This half-welcome surprises me.
    “Ed,” she says, extending her hand.
    I can’t take it because in my nervousness I’ve sat down too abruptly. Now I’m fumbling with a squeaking wicker chair that refuses to be shifted to the table without a struggle. While I wrestlewith the arms, bounce my bottom, and heel the carpet, it keeps snagging the nap and tipping precipitously forward. A typical Ed entrance. I realize I’m mumbling to myself.
    “You look very well,” Victoria says. Lady Gracious.
    “I don’t. I’ve put weight on again. Goddamn it.” I lurch forward in stages to the edge of the table, accompanied by high-pitched squeals from the flimsy chair.
    “You know why that is.” Victoria can’t help herself. I’m supposed to confess gluttony. She actually appears to be glad to see me fallen off the weight-watcher’s wagon and prime stock for the fat farm. I stare back, grim and tight-lipped.
    “It’s not as if you’re ignorant about what you should eat. It’s just that you won’t eat anything that’s good for you.” This is a familiar refrain from our days of marital bliss.
    “Yeah, yeah. Fruits, vegetables, cereals. White meats. Fish. Nuts. Complex carbohydrates,” I mutter, reviewing lessons learned.
    “How’s your blood pressure? Are you going for your regular blood-pressure checks?”
    “Jesus Christ, is this why I was called in? For the annual company physical?”
    “A simple inquiry after your health.”
    “No. A simple inquiry after my health would be: ‘How you doing, Ed?’ And then I could chirp back: ‘Fine. And yourself?’ ”
    “You may not realize it, but not even I want to see you dead. You ought to take care of yourself better,” she says.
    The waitress arrives at our table. I can’t believe it. The girl is got up in the uniform of a French sailor, right down to the pompom on her hat. My mind runs to the Battle of Trafalgar and Lord One-Eye Nelson. “England expects that every man will do his duty.” Sometimes I catch myself saying what I only meant to think.
    “Pardon?” says the girl.
    “Sorry. Don’t mind me. Too much sun.” I reach up and tickle the tassels on our parasol. The girl passes out the menus and gives me a sceptical look. I ought to pull myself together.
    Victoria studies the menu. She is used to me and isn’t easily ruffled.
    “What are you having, Ed?”
    “I thought a complex carbohydrate would be nice.”
    “Sir?”
    “Ignore him,” says Victoria, not even troubling to look up. “Two spinach salads with house dressing, two