Lifestyle Choices

All right indeed — the perfect proposition, asking her nicely, but allowing her to say no. The DF hero is appealing in other ways, too. He’s prepared to take the risk of a refusal, which the eggshell egos of so many men won’t tolerate. But best of all he cares, he really cares. This is the theme of a characteristic bitter-sweet moment from Reflex:

`A great day,’ Clare said, smiling over the coffee. ‘Where’s the nearest train?’

`Swindon. I’ll drive you there . . . or you could stay.’ She regarded me levelly. ‘Is that the sort of invitation I think it is?’

`I wouldn’t be surprised.’

She looked down and fiddled with her coffee spoon, paying it a lot of attention. I watched the bent, dark, thinking head, and knew that if it took her so long to answer, she would go.

`There’s a fast train at ten-thirty,’ 1 said. ‘You could catch it comfortably. Just over an hour to Paddington.’ `Philip . .

`It’s all right,’ I said easily .

Needless to say, Clare isn’t refusing him because she doesn’t like him. In fact, she likes him so much that she wants him to know exactly why she has to say no:

`There’s a Board meeting in the office tomorrow,’ she said.

‘It will be the first I’ve been to. They made me a Director a month ago, at the last one.’

I was most impressed, and said so. I understood, also, why she wouldn’t stay. Why she might never stay. The regret I felt shocked me with its sudden intensity, because my invitation to her hadn’t been a desperate plea but only a suggestion for passing pleasure. I had meant it as a small thing, not a lifetime commitment. My sense of loss, on that railway platform, seemed out of all proportion . . .

Dick Francis, of course, conjures up a quintessentially English world, of horsey men and county maidens, where any suffering is inward and the only fancied horses in the race of life run under names like Cool Customer, Grin And Bear It, and Dignity In Defeat. For the word from the American horse’s mouth, what better tipster than Philip Roth? His best-selling novel Portnoy’s Complaint is a practical handbook of what to say, who to and when, with all the variants and synonyms that you’re likely to need even in a whole lifetime devoted to the hunt.

Of a zillion possibles, one of the winners must be the sequence where Portnoy meets and propositions the girl whom he later christens The Monkey’:

. .

and then one night, on the corner of Lexington and Fifty-Second there she is, wearing a tan pants suit and trying to hail a cab — lanky, with dark and abundant hair, and smallish features that give her face a kind of petulant expression, and an absolutely fantastic ass.

Why not? What’s lost? Go ahead, you shackled and fettered son of a bitch, SPEAK TO HER. She has an ass on her with the swell and cleft of the world’s most perfect nectarine! SPEAK!

‘Hi’ — softly, and with a little surprise, as though I might have met her somewhere before . .

`What do YOU want?’

‘To buy you a drink,’ I said.

‘A real swinger,’ she said, sneering.

Sneering! Two seconds — and two insults! To the Assistant Commissioner of Human Opportunity to this whole city!

To eat your pussy, baby, how’s that?’

My God! She’s going to call a cop! Who’ll turn me in to the Mayor!

`That’s better,’ she replied.

So a cab pulled up, and we went to her apartment, where she took off her clothes and said, ‘Go ahead.’

There you are. Whatever works for you. You can’t imagine the Portnoy approach going down too well in Cheltenham Spa, say, or even Sloane Square. But every chap ought to have the sense to know that when in Rome . . . So don’t just stand there drooling — as the Monkey says, ‘Go ahead!’

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