Adam Roberts by Balancing

Author:Balancing [Balancing]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-01-26T00:24:24+00:00

But, on the other hand (and with a certain dawning sense of the cunning of the diabolic offer) the pain was only ever relative to the pleasure, wasn’t it? Say, criticising a junior — as Allen remembered doing a year and some ago with Francesca Harrow, or Barrow, or was it Frances (he couldn’t quite remember). Large pinkish face. Beer-coloured hair in bangs.

Allen had been forced to lecture her over her sloppy interpersonal skills on an assignment with a difficult client — perhaps that had caused pain in the short term. But in the longer term, it had surely helped her with her career. What if they looked back and thought that the week of discomfort Allen had caused had been in the service of a greater good?

Wouldn’t that person’s many years of being better at their job outweigh the more temporary immediate hurt? Assuming, of course, that the individual recognised that Allen had only been being cruel to be kind. So, again, the question of perspective reasserted itself. What mattered? Maybe the person had held a grudge — an irrational grudge, perhaps — for all those years. Would that count as pain to be chalked up against Allen’s account? Even if the original incident had been in the individual’s best interests?

Allen was back at his own front door now, with a white plastic bag dangling from his wrist carrying some stem ginger and a tub of organic single cream. He tried to swat the circularly buzzing thoughts out of his mind. It was ridiculous. Some strange fantasy. Too much bookkeeping in his accountancy exams; it had bubbled under and come up again as this bizarre notion that pleasure and pain could be added up like money in twin columns.

And through the door with his keys in hand, Emma was running down the hall to greet him, carrying shreds of grey felt before her like a prize. ‘Miss Sanders said I could keep this,’ she said, hugging him and showing him her ragged trophy. The way Emma pronounced her teacher’s name: Miz Saanders.

She folded the felt carefully. ‘They were left over from the trunk, and now they’re mine.’

‘What will you do with them, sweetheart?’ Allen asked. Emma looked serious. ‘I’ll have to think about it,’ she said.

: 3 :

On Thursday Allen woke up without a thought of the Devil in his head. The dinner party had taken his thoughts away from all that. He had thought of sharing the incident with the whole group, making a joke of it, but he had decided that to do so would only be to open himself to ridicule. Then he had only drunk the wine, and let his eyes unfocus slightly, and follow the ebb and swell of the conversation wherever it took him. By bedtime he had forgotten the whole ridiculous incident. He woke the next morning feeling muggy, had to rush his shower and run to the tube.

It was only when he stepped into the lobby that the memory of the previous day returned.

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