The Post-Birthday World (P.S.) by Shriver Lionel

Author:Shriver, Lionel [Shriver, Lionel]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-03-16T16:00:00+00:00

JUST AS IRINA WAS working up to a firm resolve to rededicate herself to her own occupation, the next tournament on the calendar would have to be the World Championship—the one tournament that Ramsey might most reasonably expect her to attend. Hence Irina acceded, but for the first time begrudged the gesture as a bridge too far.

In such hushed tones did players and commentators alike speak of “the Crucible” in Sheffield that she had pictured the venue for the championship as old and gilded, garlanded on its grand façade with stone-carved olive branches and cornered with gargoyles, its theater ornate with velvet-lined boxes and glittering chandeliers. What a disappointment! The real thing was a hulking concrete affair harkening back no further than the architecturally inaugust 1960s. Its lino was gritty, its carpeting thin, the interior’s overall atmosphere that of a failing public high school. So even the building put Irina in a foul mood.

Now, by this time Irina had seen an awful lot of snooker. She had learned most of the fiddly rules, how a perfectly tied score was resolved by a “respotted black.” Furthermore, when watching Ramsey himself Irina was implicitly invested in the results. Victory or defeat would determine whether later that night Ramsey would carouse in manic elation, throwing her in the air and jigging around their suite to Charlie Parker, or would brood through a room-service dinner and pick a quarrel. Nonetheless, a whole back-to-back snooker season involved thousands of frames. As fully as Irina might now appreciate the fact that no frame is ever perfectly repeated, after seven months of snooker OD they had started to look mighty goddamned similar to her. Slumping through the first few rounds of the World, she had to admit that she was bored. Not just a little bored, either. Unrelentingly bored, jump-out-of-her-skin bored, so bored that she wanted to kill.

Ramsey made it all the way to the final again this year, to Irina’s exasperation, for in the privacy of her head she was now unapologetically chafing for him to drop out early so that they could please, finally go home. Be that as it may, when at the end of the match Ramsey extended his hand in congratulations to John Higgins and then accepted the seventh runner-up trophy of his career—not an elegant silver urn, but yet another clunky glass plate—no amount of grace could disguise a devastation that any decent wife would find anguishing in her own husband’s face.

Here she was married to a man with a singular talent, the stuff of fanzine profiles and interviews on the BBC; strangers badgered him on the street. The whole world was entranced with Ramsey Acton’s snooker game, with the notable exception of his wife. These days, rather than be captivated by his uncanny long pots, ingenious doubles, and dazzling plants, she reliably watched Ramsey’s matches with eyes at half-mast. What most distinguished the man to others had become the very excellence that she not only took for granted, but could no longer see.

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