Shuttlecock by Graham Swift Page A

house – I would reflect that, in the possibility of exposing single-handedly some malpractice in the office, lay the opportunityof bringing into my life a faint note of daring, decision – integrity. But then, supposing my gamble failed? And I
wanted
that promotion. I wanted to come home one day and say to Marian and the kids: I’ve got a better job, an important job, I’ll be better now. (Look what I actually did when Quinn broke the news.) And then it would strike me that there were really two promotions I wanted. For, quite apart from prospects at work, I wanted to step into Dad’s shoes. Now his mind was gone, now Dad was no more: I wanted what he had had. To be even with him. And then there was Quinn. Now and then in the office, when I came into contact with him, I would seethe inwardly with a mixture of hatred, envy and a desire for certainty. I wanted his job. I wanted to sit in his leather chair. I wanted to look down, like him, through his glass panel, at the underlings I had once worked beside. And yet it seemed (and I still feel this now) that what I wanted was not so much the promotion itself, but to be in a position where I would
know
; where I would no longer be the victim, the dupe, no longer be in the dark.
    And when all is said – does this sound strange? – I didn’t want to hurt Quinn. I didn’t want any action of mine to topple him, to break him.
    One Sunday when all this was preying on my mind, I went to see Dad – and my patience ran out. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘let’s stop playing shall we?’ My voice was raised. We were sitting on the bench under the cedar within earshot of other people – but in that place my shouts would probably have been taken for the babblings of just another lunatic. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ I said. ‘Why don’t you tell me? Why don’t you speak?’ As if Dad were deliberately deceiving me. ‘What’s it all about?’ Then I suddenly yelled: ‘I hate you!’ All the time helooked straight before him, his face never flickered, and little midges were jigging in the air under the cedar. And I realized I was talking to Dad as if I were talking to Quinn.

[11]
    Marian and I make love, on average, three or four times a week. It is rare for her to make excuses; to say that she has the proverbial headache or that she has forgotten her doo-dah as she did recently – and as she attempted again last night, after discovering that I really had returned the television to the shop. She has learnt by now to submit to my demands. There have sometimes passed whole weeks, hectic and fatiguing weeks, in which every night we have striven to cap the passion of the night before. The reason for this intensity is not really mutual ardour, or any excess of appetite on my part – and perhaps passion is the wrong word. It has more to do with my constant dissatisfaction.
    You see – (but now I’m going to speak about very intimate things, very private things – never mind, I let myself in for it when I began these pages) – it’s a long time since I’ve experienced with Marian that thing called ‘ecstasy’ or ‘fulfilment’. Believe me, it’s that that I’m looking for – not some mere superficial thrill – when we labour away in the dark, or, more often, with the lights on so we can see what we’re doing when we twistourselves into some untried, contortionate position. Often, I have spent whole afternoons at the office, ostensibly busy with my paper-work, in reality anticipating, planning in meticulous detail our activities of the night. And when I started to buy certain ‘manuals’, to get Marian to send off for certain articles from catalogues, to visit the sex shops in Charing Cross Road and Leicester Square, all this paraphernalia wasn’t an end in itself, believe me, it was all in the hope of achieving some ultimate thing that always seemed elusive.
    Making love ought to be the most natural thing, oughtn’t it? This week, in the full flush of