Mr. Phillips

1.7

The spires of Battersea Power Station loom up over the rail tracks ahead and Mr Phillips realizes where he is, at the stop close by Battersea Dogs’ Home. This is a place where commuters get on rather than off — even though a few people must of course come here to look after the dogs, fix their little meals, check them for fleas and talk up their virtues to prospective owners. ‘He’s got a very sweet nature,’ they would say of famously grumpy compulsive biters, or ‘very affectionate’ of the neurotically ungrateful mutt who pretends not to recognize anybody. And then the dogs are put down if they can’t find a home after a specific length of time. He wonders if they get fond of particular dogs that can’t find a home, ugly dogs or dogs with bad breath and limps and chewed-off ears, and there’s a countdown to when they have to be put down so that the attempts to find an owner become increasingly desperate, and then the dreadful day of the fatal injection dawns, so that apprentices and new workers at the Home have to be taken to one side on the first day and told, ‘Never get too close to a dog.’

The train lurches to a stop and Mr Phillips gets off. It’s cooler outside, so there’s an immediate feeling of relief. It’s self-conscious-making, getting off in a suit and tie and sexy black briefcase in this un-officey part of London, but no one seems to notice. We wouldn’t care so much what people thought of us if we knew how seldom they did. Mrs Phillips used to say that to the boys when they were preoccupied with some schoolboy issue of declining popularity or he-said-I-said-he-said. A temperamental difference was made apparent by this advice. To Mr Phillips the fact of others’ indifference has never brought any comfort.

Further along the platform three girls have also got off the train and are heading for the station exit. It isn’t a school-day so it’s no surprise that they don’t have a school look about them. They’re a classic plain-pretty combination with an extra girl thrown in for ballast: a dumpy, brown-haired girl on the right with baggy jeans worn hanging off her hips so that a two-inch roll of flesh is visible all round her midriff; a tall girl with very straight blonde hair wearing a white T-shirt cut to show off her middle and a grey sort-of-towelling tracksuit bottom with a folded-over elasticized waistband. Mr Phillips can’t see her face but she must be pretty as two of the male worker bees hurtling up the stairs on to the train give her a sideways once-over as they scramble for the closing doors. Mr Phillips finds it impossible to look at her narrow back without wondering what it would be like to lick (salty but in a good way, is his best guess). The third girl is wearing a black shell suit with blue stripes and heavy trainers. Their assumed air of toughness makes them look even younger than they are — sixteen, if that.

As the train pulls out a gust of air sweeps newspaper pages and other litter along the platform. Mr Phillips trots down the stairs and leaves the station. The three girls have already vanished. Mr Phillips thinks for a moment about heading down the road towards Vauxhall, the way he would go if he were driving into work, past the new MI6 headquarters and Lambeth Palace and St Thomas’s hospital where Martin and Thomas were born, along to Waterloo and then across to Southwark Bridge. Instead he turns left and heads towards Battersea Park, catching for a moment, during a gap in traffic, unless he’s imagining it, the sound of forlorn woofings and bayings from the Dogs’ Home down the road.

It is warm in the direct sunlight down at street level. The traffic makes it feel even warmer. Mr Phillips undoes the top button of his shirt and gives his tie a slight downward loosening tug. This is a gesture he has seen in films, indicating freedom and/or fatigue. A truck attempting an illegal right turn blocks the traffic, and Mr Phillips crosses the road in a black cloud of belched diesel fumes. At this time of the day London is all about traffic. In the mostly stationary cars people behave as if they can’t be observed, and because their cars are a private space they tend to behave as if they are in private. What this means in practice is that a very large number of them are picking their noses. Mr Phillips has noticed this before but today the syndrome is especially apparent: in the two hundred yards between the railway station and the park he passes three people picking their noses, all with an air of Zen-like calm. Is this sample statistically significant for how much nose-picking goes on in normal circumstances — in which case Mr Phillips feels a little left out — or is it something that people do especially when they’re driving?

When he finally gets into the park Mr Phillips, after nearly being run over by a rollerblader travelling 20 mph faster than any car he has seen so far today, crosses the outer ring road and heads towards the sound of screeching peacocks. A man in a tracksuit with a very tanned face is practising juggling with torches. A jogger, a tall man wearing white shorts who has a curious prancing stride, lifting his knees high, passes Mr Phillips and gives him a sidelong look as he bounces by. Presumably you don’t see many people in suits carrying briefcases in parks at this time of the day.

At the peacock enclosure a small crowd has gathered to watch the birds. One of the males is displaying, his tail fanned out in too many varieties of blue to name. To Mr Phillips, the intricate pattern of colours would be purely beautiful if it weren’t for the eye motif imprinted on the tail. The hen peacock is sort-of-not-looking but hasn’t wandered away, and the other peacocks and peahens are minding their own business. There is something ridiculous about the male’s display, the lengths to which the bird is having to go to attract attention — but then there always is about males trying to seize the notice of females, whether it’s to do with banging your head against another stag after a 40 mph run-up or simply wearing black clothes and trying to look fascinatingly uninterested in an irresistibly interesting way. Part of Martin’s success with girls must be to do with his mastery of this proactive, highly visible and sexually signalling form of looking bored. And then, he is tremendously good at smoking. That has been an asset too. It’s so often men’s desire not to look ridiculous that makes them look ridiculous.

One of the men standing looking at the peacocks is another jogger, who is holding on to the wire fence and doing stretching exercises while making short puffing exhalations. There are two different sets of woman-and-pram-and-baby combinations, one of them apparently a Filipina nanny and the other either a youngish mother dressed down or an oldish, poshish nanny. An old couple with a small energetic dog, some make of terrier, have stopped for a look and a breather. They are wearing roughly twice as many clothes as everyone else, as old people often do. Mr Phillips is feeling hot in his suit with the buttons undone, but this couple are wearing coats and, in the man’s case, a little tweed hat. One of them will die before the other.

The peacock is making a half-turn now, as if to try and bounce the sunlight off his fan of feathers. He is cawing loudly, giving it all he’s got. Mr Phillips, a regular weekend visitor to the park when the children were small, knows the sound well. Sometimes the cry is like a cat miaowing or caterwauling, the male’s penis abrading the female and triggering its ovulation with the shocking withdrawal of the tom’s penis-bristles. Mr Phillips likes that sound, just as he has always liked overhearing other people make love, especially the mousy-looking couple who had lived next to Mr Phillips and Mrs Phillips at their first marital home. That was a terraced house in Bromley where the sound of the short, shy wife noisily climaxing in a choked wail was a regular feature. It was often bizarrely late, at one or two in the morning; did they wake up and decide to do it, was it an attempt to circumvent insomnia, or were they so self-conscious about the noise that they deliberately tried to stay awake and waited to do it in the vain hope that their neighbours might be asleep? In any case Mr Phillips never saw or thought of them without a sharp jab of envy. Sometimes when Mrs Phillips is away or out he puts a glass to the wall in an attempt to catch the Cartwrights or the Cotts at it. No luck so far. No one ever does it. Mr Phillips decides now that the peacock could also sound like a female voice saying ‘No’, or ‘Help’.

Mr Phillips wanders off past the peacock enclosure and heads in the direction of the lake. Two sweepers, one black and one white, are standing leaning on their brushes talking with their heads very close together in a gesture charged with a sense of secrecy and importance. Beyond them the pond is a muddy grey colour, the shore stained with the white smear of shit left by Canada geese.

A few people are already on the lake, splashing about in hired boats. The men in them are all trying not to look as bad at rowing as they are.

When he was training as an accountant Mr Phillips had fallen in love with the double entry book system. It seemed suddenly a whole new language in which to describe the world; or rather it suddenly seemed as if the world was describable in a new and better way. Things became more clear, more starkly lit. That was soothing. For a few weeks he had done an impromptu double entry account for everything from his personal finances to his parent’s house and belongings to Crystal Palace Football Club (where players were automatically listed under assets, a debatable point to fans but an ineluctable decision in the crystalline logic of the accountant). Now, walking in Battersea Park Mr Phillips feels the long suppressed need to draw up a tranquillizing double entry. The thing to imagine was that the park suddenly ceased to function as a going concern, and all its assets and liabilities were frozen in the moment of disposal.

ASSETS LIABILITIES Fees from people willing to pay to shoot geese Cost of geese damage Upkeep of pavements Park benches Subventions from Wandsworth Council Rent from park-keeper’s cottage Salaries of park keepers, park police Fees for tennis courts, football pitches, etc. Insurance for trips and falls Money from recycled bottles Bottle bank recycling gear upkeep Car park fees Car park upkeep Paint, etc., in storage Peacock upkeep, feed, etc. Tulips, etc., to sell Fertilizer costs Feed, etc., in storage Storage upkeep, sheds, etc. Golden Buddha Upkeep of Buddha, gilt paint, etc. Fees from special events Cost of setting them up Film fees Upkeep of cricket pitches, bowling lawns, etc. Boat fees Pollution monitoring in pond Statues, monuments, sculptures Upkeep thereof

There were bound to be lots of other things he hadn’t thought of. It would cost a fair old bit, running a park.

Mr Phillips walks past the pond and along the road that curves around the park. Every few seconds a cyclist, rollerblader or jogger floats, cruises or puffs by him. The very sight of this is tiring. Mr Phillips in general doesn’t mind exertion all that much, but he dislikes the idea of it. Any kind of effort weighs on his spirits in advance, he can feel it coming. It’s like the fatigue he experiences at the beginning of a day that he knows in advance will be long and boring, so that it’s as if the whole eight or ten or twenty hours of ennui are crushed and compacted into every single moment. The anticipation of a gruelling day always makes him feel like Superman confronted by a villain wielding a lump of Kryptonite.

In front of him a small boy is whacking the fence beside the tennis court with a stick while his mother trails along behind, also carrying a stick, which she is running more slowly and meditatively over the bars of the same fence, as if playing a musical instrument visible only to her. Like many young parents she wears the glazed and disconnected look of a combat soldier.

Mr Phillips stops beside the tennis court to rest for a moment. There is nowhere to sit down except two small benches immediately beside the courts. He feels too self-conscious to go that close so he puts down his briefcase, takes off his jacket and stands watching. As soon as he stops walking he becomes conscious of a light breeze.

The three courts are occupied by, from left to right, a father and son combination of about forty and ten years old, the father hitting patronizingly gentle forehands to his concentrating offspring; two girls in their late teens in short white dresses and long dark-blue socks, playing competitively and seriously; and a middle aged mixed doubles outfit, well matched and cunning but slightly heavy on their feet. Mr Phillips concentrates his attention on the girls while pretending to pay attention to the other two pairs — in other words he holds his head pointing in one direction or the other while secretly keeping his eyes on the middle. One girl’s dress rides up when she serves to show a glimpse of legs all the way up to her bum. Her legs and arms are the colour of Weetabix. She’s blonde and has a ponytail which flops about her head and shoulders as she moves. They both look as if tennis is a big thing for them. Mr Phillips wonders if they change ends after two games and if so whether he has the nerve to stay around long enough to get a better look at the darker girl.

‘It’s Wimbledon that brings them out,’ says a man beside Mr Phillips. The newcomer, a short, fair businessman type with strange grey eyes, is standing with his hands in the pockets of a green suit. On second glance he doesn’t look as much like a businessman as something more louche and selfish.

‘I’m sorry?’ says Mr Phillips.

‘Wimbledon — you can’t get on the courts for weeks afterwards. It’s the end of July now, we’ll have at least another fortnight before the effect wears off.’

The man falls silent again and stands beside Mr Phillips watching the tennis. His presence makes Mr Phillips feel more rather than less self-conscious and he begins regretfully to contemplate walking away from the tennis courts. The darker-haired girl, who has breasts that are of a nice human scale, not at all like the girls in the magazines, is changing ends and walking towards them. She looks up at them for a moment, a glance from under her eyelashes in the manner copyrighted by Princess Diana, and Mr Phillips feels his penis twitch.

‘The thing I like most about Wimbledon,’ says the man, ‘is watching the girl players fish the balls out from their knickers when they’re about to serve. Isn’t that your favourite thing too?’

‘What?’ says Mr Phillips.

‘I said, standards in the women’s game and the simultaneous raising of the velocity of the men’s game, especially as played on grass, because of racket technology, have meant that the women’s game, on grass at least, is now more interesting to watch than the men’s, don’t you find?’

‘No, you didn’t,’ says Mr Phillips. ‘You said something about the balls being all lovely and warm when they came out of the players’ knickers.’

The man looks expressionlessly at him for a moment and then laughs a rich relaxed laugh that smells faintly of last night’s alcohol. He seems to flop or slump slightly as he reaches into an inside pocket and takes out a glinting object that for a hallucinatory split second Mr Phillips thinks is a gun but is in fact a silver case carrying skinny cigars. The man offers the case, opened like a book, to Mr Phillips, who declines. He then takes a cigar for himself and lights it with a metal Zippo lighter that leaves behind it a whiff of lighter fluid.

‘Shocking habit,’ says the man. ‘Unless that’s a contradiction in terms. These are Cuban, rolled on the thighs of virgins and all that. Ideally they should be roughly three times this size. The bigger ones have more flavour. Like women, I hear you think.’

‘I was thinking nothing of the sort,’ says Mr Phillips.

‘Aha. More on the little girls side of things, are we? You must be, what, early fifties? The younger the chicken the sweeter the pickin’, the older the fiddle the sweeter the tune, am I right? Slowing down as you drive past bus stops, that sort of thing?’

‘Mind your own business,’ says Mr Phillips, pushing back from the railings and beginning to walk off towards the river. The man picks up his, Mr Phillips’s, briefcase and begins to come after him.

‘Steady on, no offence I hope,’ he says, still friendly. ‘I am minding my business. In fact you could even say that I am working. Hang on a minute, you’ve forgotten your case.’

‘Thank you,’ says Mr Phillips, stopping to take the proffered bag. The man pretends to snatch it back and then lets him take it.

‘Magazine publishing. Top shelf. London Publishing Company Inc., Mr Fortesque, Managing Director.’ Now the man is offering a card, which Mr Phillips takes. It says the same things as the man has just said.

‘I like to come to the park to get ideas,’ says the man, joining Mr Phillips at a strolling pace. ‘Basic research. I come here, look around, look at girls, look at men looking at girls, try and cook up some ideas based on what I see. Tennis now: there’s a thought. A whole magazine based on girls playing tennis — girls leaning over showing their bums, glimpses of tit when they throw up the ball, that sort of thing. Story ideas: the lesbian initiation in the locker room. It’s a well-known fact that half of them are big-time dykes. Awhole series of stories right there: first time, two on one, the shower scene, rivals kissing and making up and making out, suggestive use of rackets, all this is just off the top of my head. Prose narratives as well as picture layouts. Letters from readers, maybe we’d even get the occasional genuine one every now and again, with anecdotes and reminiscences and suggestions for future issues. The figure of the tennis coach, something for the ladies. You could do something with readers’ wives, too — amateur stuff, very nineties. The beauty of that is the worse it is the better, up to a point anyway. I can judge that point. That’s what experience means. It’s as valuable in this game as in any other. Niche markets. This whole Asian babes, fat girls, thin girls, big tits, teen totty, it’s been as far as it goes and we’re ready for the next big thing. That could be specialization by jobs and milieu — not just tennis players but nurses, policewomen, traffic wardens, secretaries. Let’s face it, why do you think people watch tennis on the telly in the first place? To get new ideas about the placement and timing of their forehands? Bollocks. It’s for the totty. It’s basically about women’s knickers. They should have a camera trained on them as they serve, a super-slow motion Knicker-Cam. Or Totty-Cam? You have to give people what they want. Think of that photo with the girl’s skirt hitched up and her rubbing her bum. Just a glimpse of cheek, that’s all you really get — but what a classic. Not that it makes much sense. Is she supposed to have been hit on the arse by the ball, or what? And why isn’t she wearing any knickers? Go brilliantly in a story shoot, that would.’

‘I used to fancy my secretary,’ admits Mr Phillips. They have gone as far as the Thames and are looking across the river towards Chelsea. He came here with Mrs Phillips when they were courting. ‘It’s like a Canaletto,’ she had said, and he had agreed, not having the faintest idea who Canaletto was. Now he did know, and although he didn’t think it was particularly true, he knows what she meant, and in any case always thinks of it when he sees that stretch of trees and houses and riverbank.

‘Of course you did. Everybody fancies their secretary. That’s what offices are all about.’

‘I often used to wonder if she thought about me in the same way,’ says Mr Phillips, truthfully. There are whole parts of sexy Karen’s mind that are wholly unguessable to him — which was of course a large component of what made her sexy.

‘Why speak in the past tense? I’m sure she’s thinking about you right now. Not that it matters. Speaking as a pornographer, I can tell you that the important thing is never to try and work out what a woman is thinking. It only confuses you and they change their minds so much anyway the main thing is just to steam ahead with your plan intact.’

‘I lost my job’, says Mr Phillips.

‘Why else would you be wandering around Battersea Park at half past nine on a work day? Naturally you haven’t told your wife and family,’ says the man.

‘No, I haven’t’.

‘And this was — last week? Last month? Last October?’

‘Friday,’ says Mr Phillips.

‘Friday!’

‘Friday morning.’

The man smokes for a while, looking at an unladen barge heading up the Thames. More dangerous than it looks; if you fall in you’re dead in no time.

‘It’s always a shocker,’ says the pornographer. ‘I haven’t been sacked for years — it’s one of the perks of being your own boss — but in the days when I worked for other people it used to happen all the time. I’ve been sacked for being drunk, for being chronically late, for being lazy, and then for planning to nick personnel and ideas and set up my own company — which was justified, incidentally. But then so were all the others. In retrospect, mind — I’m not claiming that’s what I felt at the time. But when they sacked me for disloyalty, instead of being something I was thinking about doing it became something I had to do, and the next thing you know I was my old firm’s biggest competitor. They publish traditional tit mags — still stuck in the seventies, basically.’ He ponders his own success for a moment, and then says in a different tone, ‘Mind you, even when you see it coming it’s an upset.’

‘I can’t say that I saw it coming,’ says Mr Phillips. And this was true. One of his least favourite parts of the job, as deputy chief of accounts at Wilkins and Co., had been preparing breakdowns of the cost of making employees redundant. This was something he did in concert with Mr Somers, the deputy head of the legal department. You checked the contract and did the sums. Then, inevitably, you bumped into the person about whom you had just been preparing the figures. Once Mr Phillips had spent an hour stuck in a lift with a man from the marketing department whose sacking he had been costing that very morning. His contract meant he was due six months’ pay, so it wasn’t cheap — though as Mr Mill, the drunk, idle and unreliable head of accounts, was wont to point out, ‘There’s always money for redundancies.’ In the stationary lift they had talked about football for most of the hour, until some firemen came, apologizing for being so slow but saying they’d had to come via a chip pan blaze at a nurses’ hostel in Holborn.

Someone in accounts must have run a ruler over his own dismissal, he realizes. It couldn’t have been Monroe, since they would have known that Monroe would have told him and in any case he couldn’t have kept it secret, given that they shared an office. It wouldn’t have been Mr Mill, who wasn’t up to anything more complicated than the two times table, and even that only before lunch. If they were looking for highish-level redundancies in accounts, Mill was lucky not to have been sacked himself. But as a director of the company he was on a year’s notice, and therefore prohibitively expensive to sack, notwithstanding his own rule. Mr Phillips’s old partner in crime Mr Somers must have known. Not that Mr Phillips would have been expensive or complicated to sack, with a straightforward three-month notice period and no tricky nonsense over bonus schemes or anything like that. They had promised to pay his pension contributions for two years or until he got another job, whichever was sooner. So this was it: redundancy.

The interview or meeting or conversation with Mr Wilkins, the managing director, at which the news was broken, had been like a flashback to school and the time he was caned for being part of a group who smashed some windows in an after-hours throw-a-rock-over-the-gym competition. On that occasion the headmaster had not actually said the words ‘This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you,’ but the sentiment was implicit in his pained, actorish demeanour. Mr Wilkins was like that too. Mr Phillips, once he realized what the purpose of the meeting was — which didn’t take long — was in a state of complete numbness and only heard the gist of what the company’s eponymous paramount chief had to say.

‘Unexpected lingering effects of recession among customers in our market sector —’

Wilkins and Co. was a catering services supply company.

‘— gap between revenue and provisions — retrenchments called for — not a case of so-called “downsizing” for its own sake — company policy of exacting cuts department by department — accountancy’s turn to “give” — as always in these cases no question of any implied comment on the ability of anyone involved — he himself had once — best thing that ever — absolute confidence that — Wilkins and Co.’s settled policy of trying to act as generously as possible in these instances — one of the many ways in which the company tried to behave as a progressive, humane employer —’

As with many energetic talkers Mr Wilkins seemed as keen to convince himself as the person to whom he was talking. The point about Wilkins and Co. being enlightened employers seemed especially important to him.

‘— not necessary to serve out full notice period — inevitable sense of gloom on these occasions — fresh fields and pastures new — better for all concerned — particularly keen that departing employees should get to keep their company cars at competitive terms — not a relevant factor in this particular case — these little and not-so-little things which make all the difference — Mr Phillips’s valuable contribution to Wilkins and Co. — once part of the team always part of the team — importance of team players like Mr Phillips to any company — regret and also sadness and also sense of new beginnings — not the least service he had performed the company his current bearing under difficult circumstances — was that the time — another meeting — thank you thank you.’

When Mr Phillips had first gone to Wilkins and Co. in 1969, Mr Wilkins, the son of the founder, had then been young to be the managing director of a company of that size. He had one of those tanks full of heavy pink oil which slosh from side to side in a supposedly soothing way. It was what they used to call an executive toy. Nowadays his office was decorated with two abstract paintings. The photos of his family which sat on his desk were turned towards the visitor’s seat, either because Mr Wilkins was sick of the sight of them and/or because he wanted to show them off. So the last thing Mr Phillips saw as he left his now ex-employer’s office was a picture of his boss’s son wearing robes and smiling nervously in a graduation day studio portrait.

Mr Phillips went back to his office and slumped into his chair, which wheezed out a puff of air, as if it and not he were making a physical effort. Neither Mr Monroe nor Karen was there. For some time he sat and didn’t do anything. No one came into his office and the telephone did not ring. Then he leaned forward, took a pencil out of the ‘World’s Greatest Dad’ mug he had bought himself one Father’s Day and began to do some sums.

‘You’re a what?’ asks the man in the park.

‘I’m not an anything now,’ says Mr Phillips.

‘That’s no way to think.’

‘But it’s true.’

‘Ah, “but what is truth?” I’ve always thought that wasn’t nearly as clever a remark as it’s supposed to be. It’s like those wankers who say “Define your terms” when you’re having an argument, like a record with a broken needle. There’s no excuse for anyone over the age of fifteen using that kind of trick in argument. So you’re a what?’

‘I’m an accountant,’ says Mr Phillips.

‘I’m good at sums myself,’ says the man. ‘Not like these days with the calculators at school, you’d wonder if they can even add up.’

‘I use, used, a calculator all the time at work.’ Mr Phillips has a twinge of romantic feeling about the calculator that prints out the figures fed through it, keeping track of any errors in the calculation. He has always privately thought of the calculator as surrounded by a nimbus of professional glamour, as much a symbol of the accountant’s mystery as a stethoscope is a doctor’s.

‘What sort of accountant? City firm, that sort of thing?’

‘I used to work for a catering supply company,’ says Mr Phillips.

The man nods sympathetically. ‘Wrong game. Can happen to anyone. Dual streams of revenue, that’s the beauty of the magazine business. You’ve got your income from cover sales as well as your money from advertising. As an accountant you’ll appreciate the elegance of that. Plus, the business is based on masturbation, which is the steadiest source of revenue imaginable. People buy the magazine to have a wank, and people advertise in the magazine to get in touch with people who wank, and it’s all the best business in the world, since everybody wanks. You don’t often hear it discussed, but it’s true. People always say the great taboo is death, but in my experience you hear death discussed a lot more than you do wanking. Perhaps older people don’t do it quite so much but you can bet that even they do it every now and again. Probably even the Queen does it. Mind you, you’ve got to watch the demographics. Older women, for instance, appeal mainly to very young men — I dare say you remember. But very young men haven’t got any money, have they? Bad demographic. I’ve heard it said that lesbians go for older women too,’ the man added in a more thoughtful tone, ‘but that’s a bit off my patch. You have to stick with what you know.’

There’s some truth in all this, Mr Phillips has to admit. He himself does it never less than once a week and often as much as three times: at home in bed, or upstairs in his den, which is his favourite because he can lock the door and get a magazine out, though it’s true that he prefers the fully prone position available in bed to the semi-recline he can get with his beloved den Barcalounger. This would of course affect the 96.7 per cent figure for not having sex, if you included all forms of sex including with yourself. He sometimes used to masturbate in the toilet of his office at Wilkins and Co., when seized by an irresistible impulse or when Karen was looking particularly attractive — though it was less a spur of the moment thing than a question of the need building up over a couple of days, a familiar and pleasant pressure around his prostate, a warmth in the balls, which eventually reached the point where it demanded release. Women probably don’t masturbate in the toilet at work, Mr Phillips feels. He is quietly confident about that one. He once even masturbated in the toilet at Thomas’s school during a PTA meeting (his cock had been hard, he had come with appropriately teenage speed).

There must be lots of evidence of Martin and Tom’s masturbating, to be found in their sheets and in the bins, not to mention pornography stashed in drawers and under mattresses, but Mr Phillips doesn’t want to know about it, and anyway can’t imagine formulating the detective procedures by which he might find out for himself. No, he definitely doesn’t want to know. Would it be different if he had daughters? Probably — Mr Phillips has no difficulty in imagining himself as a knicker-sniffer and injuncter of boyfriends. With his sons he feels a systematic, deliberate incuriosity. He authoritatively shirked the task of educating them about sex. In Mr Phillips’s view this was not news anyone wanted to hear from their parents. Leave it to school and to porn mags. After all, what does he know? His own father’s instructions about sex had been a late-night five-minute monologue about ‘the strength being sapped’ — a highly cryptic allusion to the subject of wet dreams, as Mr Phillips realized about a decade later. At the time of this chat he had already been having wet dreams for over a year.

‘I have to go now,’ says Mr Phillips. ‘It was good meeting you.’ He thinks about offering to shake hands but the moment seems subtly wrong. He has had enough of the park. They have walked as far as the giant gilded Buddha on the embankment; there are four Buddhas up the stairs on the square plinth, three of them very bright in the morning sunlight. Mr Phillips looks up past the man at the nearest of the Buddhas. He is fast asleep while attendants gaze fondly down at him. He looks like a man who enjoys his sleep. Mr Phillips tries to think of any pictures of God or Christ asleep, but the only ones he can come up with concern the disciples panicking during the storm on Lake Galilee while Christ has a zizz.

‘Cheerio,’ says the man. ‘I’m sorry you lost your job. You’ve got my number. Give me a call if you want to have another chat, or if you have any ideas for magazines.’ As Mr Phillips wanders away he calls after him, ‘And thanks for your input on the tennis thing.’