Jeremy Clarke
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I adjusted my goggles, slid down into the water and joined the procession. The challenge was to swim as slowly as possible without actually sinking. To add to the futility of it all, after a few laps of this I caught and fractured my little toe on the floating row of plastic discs dividing the lane from the rest of the pool. I wasn’t certain the toe was fractured until I’d climbed out of the pool, dressed, and driven back to the hideous edifice on the outskirts, where I presented my now empurpled little toe to the casualty nurse. ‘I can tell that’s broken just by looking at it,’ he said. There was nothing he could do, he said, other than tape it to the next toe along, which he did, and most expertly. Then I put my sock back on and went shopping.
I hobbled into Waterstones first. I chose two books, scooping them up without hesitation, and took them to the checkout counter. One was Hemingway’s Boat by Paul Hendrickson; the other HHhH by Laurent Binet. I chose the former on the strength of the blurb telling me that it was the story of Hemingway’s descent from the pinnacle of critical success to alcoholism, madness and suicide, and because a sticker said I could ‘Buy one get one half price’. The latter I chose on the strength of the odd title, the SS uniform on the cover, and because Martin Amis, in whom I trust, especially on such matters, was quoted above it as saying that the book is ‘gripping’.
The woman at the till thoroughly approved of my choices. She was trying to get her boyfriend interested in Hemingway, she said, and the store manager had been raving all week about HHhH. It seemed I’d chosen the two books in the shop that she herself would have chosen. She leaned forward and spoke with a mixture of enthusiasm and confidentiality, perhaps on the generous assumption that we were of a like mind.
Last year she took her boyfriend to Paris, she said, and before they went she made him read A Moveable Feast. And did he like it, I said? She shook her head miserably. I let my head drop in mourning. She put on a brave face. She was no more than about 20. She wore no make-up and had a shiny, religious sort of face.
A queue was forming at the barrier. Let them wait, was her attitude. She was discussing Hemingway. What was the cash nexus to her when she was discussing Hemingway with a fellow aficionado? For my part I was astounded to hear that old Ernestine was still respectable.
I managed to pay her and tear myself away and went then to Hollister to buy what are called ‘sweatpants’. Have you ever been in Hollister for sweatpants? No? You haven’t lived. It’s dark as night in there, but once your eyes have adjusted themselves to it, the crumpet is unbelievable. Like at any dog show, the staff must be chosen entirely for their youthful beauty. At the door I was warmly greeted by a perfect 10, and from then on it was 9s all the way to the sale rack at the back of the store. I expect that even those on work experience toiling away unglamorously in the dusty storerooms out the back are 8s, minimum.
The woman who showed me to the changing rooms was moonlighting, presumably, from her main job as a Bond girl. ‘Sorry about this,’ I said. ‘What for?’ she said. ‘For being so ugly,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen worse,’ she said. In the changing cubicle I sustained a second injury. I bent awkwardly to pick up a shoe and strained something in my lower back. So when I emerged with two pairs of trendy lime-green Hollister ‘sweatpants’ under my arm, I was crippled as well as limping and ugly and old. I passed the Bond girl on the way to the till. ‘Any luck?’ she said, brightly.
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