The Sense of an Ending

craning of necks, and all thoughts of damp and cold vanished as the river simply seemed to change its mind, and a wave, two or three feet high, was heading towards us, the water breaking across its whole width, from bank to bank. This heaving swell came level with us, surged past, and curved off into the distance; some of my mates gave chase, shouting and cursing and falling over as it outpaced them; I stayed on the bank by myself. I don’t think I can properly convey the effect that moment had on me. It wasn’t like a tornado or an earthquake (not that I’d witnessed either) – nature being violent and destructive, putting us in our place. It was more unsettling because it looked and felt quietly wrong, as if some small lever of the universe had been pressed, and here, just for these minutes, nature was reversed, and time with it. And to see this phenomenon after dark made it the more mysterious, the more other-worldly.
    After we broke up, she slept with me.
    Yes, I know. I expect you’re thinking: The poor sap, how did he not see that coming? But I didn’t. I thought we were over, and I thought there was another girl (a normal-sized girl who wore high heels to parties) I was interested in. I didn’t see it coming at any point: when Veronica and I bumped into each other at the pub (she didn’t like pubs), when she asked me to walk her home, when she stopped halfway there and we kissed, when we got to her room and I turned the light on and she turned it off again, when she took her knickers off and passed me a pack of Durex Fetherlite, or even when she took one from my fumbling hand and put it on me, or during the rest of the swift business.
    Yes, you can say it again: You poor sap. And did you still think her a virgin when she was rolling a condom on to your cock? In a strange way, you know, I did. I thought it might be one of those intuitive female skills I inevitably lacked. Well, perhaps it was.
    ‘You’ve got to hold on to it as you pull out,’ she whispered (did she think
I
was a virgin, perhaps?). Then I got up and walked to the bathroom, the filled condom occasionally slapping against the inside of my thighs. As I disposed of it I came to a decision and a conclusion: No, it went, no.
    ‘You selfish bastard,’ she said, the next time we met.
    ‘Yes, well, there it is.’
    ‘That practically makes it rape.’
    ‘I don’t think anything at all makes it that.’
    ‘Well, you might have had the decency to tell me beforehand.’
    ‘I didn’t know beforehand.’
    ‘Oh, so it was that bad?’
    ‘No, it was good. It’s just …’
    ‘Just what?’
    ‘You were always asking me to think about our relationship and so now perhaps I have. I did.’
    ‘Bravo. It must have been hard.’
    I thought: And I haven’t even seen her breasts, in all this time. Felt them, but not seen them. Also, she’s completely wrong about Dvo ř ák and Tchaikovsky. What’s more, I’ll be able to play my LP of
Un Homme et Une Femme
as often as I like. Openly.
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘Jesus, Tony, you can’t even concentrate
now
. My brother was right about you.’
    I knew I was meant to ask what Brother Jack had said, but I didn’t want to give her the pleasure. As I remained silent, she went on,
    ‘And don’t say that thing.’
    Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual.
    ‘What thing?’
    ‘About us still being able to be friends.’
    ‘Is that what I’m meant to say?’
    ‘You’re meant to say what you
think
, what you
feel
, for Christ’s sake, what you
mean
.’
    ‘All right. In that case I won’t say it – what I’m meant to say. Because I don’t think we can still be friends.’
    ‘Well done,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Well done.’
    ‘But let me ask you a question then. Did you sleep with me to get me back?’
    ‘I don’t have to answer your questions any more.’
    ‘In which case, why wouldn’t you sleep with me when we were going out together?’
    No answer.
    ‘Because you didn’t need to?’
    ‘Perhaps I didn’t want to.’
    ‘Perhaps you didn’t want to because you didn’t need to.’
    ‘Well, you can believe what it suits you to believe.’
    The next day, I took a milk jug she’d given me down to the Oxfam shop. I hoped she’d see it in the window. But when I stopped to check, there was something else on show instead: a small coloured lithograph of Chislehurst I’d given her for Christmas.
    At least we were studying different subjects, and Bristol was a large