The Post-Birthday World. Lionel Shriver
of another kind.
Lawrence Trainer was not a pretentious man. He may have accepted a research fellowship at a prestigious London think tank, but he was raised in Las Vegas, and remained unapologetically American. He said “controversy,” not “controversy”; he never elided the K-sound in “schedule.” So he hadn’t rushed to buy a white cable sweater and joined his local cricket league. Still, his father was a golf instructor; he inherited an interest in sports. He was a culturally curious person, despite a misanthropic streak that resisted having dinner with strangers when he could be watching reruns of American cop shows on Channel 4.
Thus early in the couple’s expatriation to London, Lawrence conceived a fascination with snooker. While Irina had supposed this British pastime to be an arcane variation on pool, Lawrence took pains to apprise her that it was much more difficult, and much more elegant, than dumpy old eight-ball. At six feet by twelve, a snooker table made an American billiards table look like a child’s toy. It was a game not only of dexterity but of intricate premeditation, requiring its past masters to think up to a dozen shots ahead, and to develop a spatial and geometric sophistication that any mathematician would esteem.
Irina hadn’t discouraged Lawrence’s enthusiasm for snooker tournaments on the BBC, for the game’s ambiance was one of repose. The vitreous click-click of balls and civilized patter of polite applause were far more soothing than the gunshots and sirens of cop shows. The commentators spoke just above a whisper in soft, regional accents. Their vocabulary was suggestive, although not downright smutty: in amongst the balls, deep screw, double-kiss, loose red; the black was available. Though by custom a working-class sport, snooker was conducted in a spirit of decency and refinement more associated with aristocracy. The players wore waistcoats, and bow ties. They never swore; displays of temper were not only frowned upon but could incur a monetary fine. Unlike the hooligan audiences for football, or even tennis—once the redoubt of snobs but lately as low-rent as demolition derby—snooker crowds were pin-drop silent during play. Fans had sturdy bladders, for even tip-toeing to the loo invited public censure from the referee, an austere presence of few words who wore short, spotless white gloves.
Moreover, on an island whose shores were battered by cultural backwash from the States, snooker was still profoundly British. The UK’s late-night TV may have been riddled with reruns of Seinfeld, its cinemas dominated by L.A. Confidential, its local lingo contaminated—chap and bloke giving way to guy. But the BBC would still devote up to twelve hours of a broadcasting day to a sport that most Americans didn’t know from tiddlywinks.
In all, then, snooker made a pleasing backdrop while Irina sketched the storyboard of a new children’s book, or stitched the hem on the living-room drapes. Having achieved under Lawrence’s patient tutelage a hazy appreciation for the game, Irina would occasionally look up to follow a frame. More than a year before Jude ever mentioned her husband, Irina’s eye had been drawn to a particular figure on screen.
Had she thought about it—and she hadn’t—she had never seen him win a title. Yet his face did seem to pop up in the later rounds of most televised tournaments. He was older than the preponderance of the players, who tended to their twenties; a few severe lines in the long, faceted face could only have scored it beyond the age of forty. Even for a sport with such an emphasis on etiquette, his bearing was signally self-contained; he had good posture. Because to a degree snooker’s rectitude was all show (Lawrence assured her that away from the table these gentlemen didn’t incline towards Earl Grey and cucumber sandwiches), many players grew paunches, their complexions by thirty hard-living and haggard. In a game of finesse, their arms often went soft and their thighs spread. Yet this character was narrow, with sharp shoulders and slim hips. He always wore a classic starched white shirt, black bow tie, and distinctive pearl-coloured waistcoat—a signature perhaps, intricately over-woven with white silk thread, its filigree reminiscent of certain painstaking fills in her own illustrations.
When they were introduced in the Savoy Grill, Irina didn’t recognize Ramsey from TV. He was out of context. Brilliant with names, faces, dates, and statistics, Lawrence quickly put to rest her nagging puzzlement over why Jude’s husband seemed familiar. (“Why didn’t you tell me?” he’d exclaimed. It was a rare day that Lawrence Trainer was obsequious.) Ramsey Acton immediately pulled down a whole file on a man apparently an icon of the game, albeit something of a holdover from the previous generation. Borrowed from American basketball, his handle on the circuit, “Swish,” paid tribute to Ramsey’s propensity for often potting so cleanly that the object-ball never touched the jaws of the pocket. His game was renowned for speed and fluidity; he was a momentum player. A professional for twenty-five years, he was famous, if one could be famous for such a thing, for not winning the World Championship—though he had played five championship finals. (By 1997, that was thirty years, and six finals—still no championship.) In no time Lawrence had nudged his chair closer to Ramsey’s, engaging in an exultant duet that would brook no intrusions.
Irina had mastered the basics: right, you alternate potting a red with potting a colour. Potted reds stay potted; potted colours return to their spots. Reds cleared off, you sink the colours in a set order. Not so difficult. But if she was always a little unclear on whether the brown or the green went first, she was unlikely to engage a pro in engrossing speculation on this matter. By contrast, Lawrence had mastered the game’s most obscure regulations. Hence as he waxed eloquent about some notorious “respotted black,” Swish bestowed Lawrence with a handle of his own: “Anorak Man.” The gentle pejorative was clearly coined in affection. To Lawrence’s satisfaction, Anorak Man would stick.
Irina had felt excluded. Lawrence did have a tendency to take over. Irina might describe herself as retiring, or quiet; in bleaker moments, mousy. In any event, she did not like to fight to be heard.
When Irina locked eyes with her friend that evening, Jude’s rolled upward in a gesture a mite nastier than Oh, those boys being boys. Jude had met her husband during her journalism phase, when she’d been assigned a puff piece for Hello! in the 80s, and Ramsey was a minor pinup star; in the interview, they’d got hammered and hit it off. Yet for Jude what had probably started out a meagre interest in snooker had apparently slid to no interest in snooker, and then on to outright antagonism. Having made such a to-do about how Irina must meet Ramsey Acton only to display such annoyance, Jude must have routinely hauled her husband out and plunked him next to the likes of the adoring Lawrence in order to get her money’s worth, or something’s worth anyway.
Lawrence utterly neglected the woman he called his “wife” to others but whom he had never bothered to marry; Ramsey was better brought up. Shifting towards Irina, Ramsey firmly turned aside any more snooker shoptalk for the night. In a thick South London accent that took some getting used to, he commended her illustrations for Jude’s new children’s book, extolling, “Them pictures were top drawer, love. I was well impressed.” He had a way of looking at Irina and only at Irina that no one had employed for a very long time, and it frankly unnerved and even discomfited her; she constantly cut her own gaze to her plate. It was a bit much for a first meeting, not presumptuous in a way you could quite put your finger on but presumptuous all the same. And Ramsey was lousy at casual chitchat; whenever she brought up the Democratic convention, or John Major, he plain stopped talking.
Quietly, Ramsey picked up the bill. The wine, and there had been a lot of it, had been pricey. But snooker pros made a mint, and Irina decided not to feel abashed.
That first birthday, his forty-second, as she recalled, he’d seemed perfectly nice and everything, but she’d been relieved when the evening was over.
Irina collaborated on a second children’s book with Jude—the overt manipulativeness of the first, along the lines of I Love to Clean Up My Room!, appealed to parents as much as it repelled children, and had ensured that it sold well. Thus the foursome soon became established, and was repeated—often, for London circles—a couple of times a year. Lawrence, for once, was always up for these gatherings, and from the start displayed a proprietary attitude towards Ramsey, whose acquaintance he enjoyed claiming to British colleagues. Irina grew marginally more knowledgeable about the sport, but she could never compete with Lawrence’s encyclopedic mastery,