Game Theory

by Thomas Jones

Genres: Friendship; Humor & Satire; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Clare's mind strayed back once again to that weekend in August at Henry's house. Perhaps nothing would have happened if they hadn't played croquet on the Saturday after­noon. Fucking croquet. Alex and Clare have gone to spend the weekend at Henry and Victoria's house in the Kent countryside. Clare and Alex have been a couple for ten years, but little of whatever brought them together is left in their marriage. Henry's a friend from the old days, but it isn't clear how much they still have in common, while Vic doesn't much care for their guests; especially not Alex, who suddenly finds he can't keep his eyes off her. The weekend seems unlikely to end well. The consequences unspool over the years that follow. As their lives disentangle from and re-entwine with each other, they pass through most of the hoops that life stakes out for them, if not always in the right order, or the right direction - a little older, not much wiser, and as unready as ever for the next round. Game Theory is a comedy about friendship, sex and parenting, and about the games people play.

Release date: July 19, 2018

Publisher: John Murray Press

Print pages: 320

Sample

Alex looked down at the blue ball between his feet, wishing he didn’t have to go first. He shuffled backwards, wriggled his toes, adjusted his balance so his weight was evenly distributed across his heels and the balls of his feet. He let the mallet swing in his left hand, like a pendulum or metronome, the ribs rubbing against his palm. The Kentish sun was warm on the back of his neck; the wood was warm in his fingers. His prescription sunglasses had slipped down his nose. He pushed them back into place then seized the mallet halfway down, arresting its movement. He lined its head up behind the ball, glanced at the hoop six yards away, looked back down at the blue ball between his feet.

‘Everything all right, Alex?’ Clare asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

‘No rush,’ Victoria said. ‘Take all the time you need.’

‘Within reason,’ Henry said.

Alex tilted the mallet back between his legs, and swung. The blue ball barrelled across the lawn and into a hosta in the flowerbed at the far end. It had missed the first hoop by six inches.

‘Bugger,’ Alex said.

‘Didn’t it go through?’ Vic asked.

‘No,’ said Henry.

Clare stifled a laugh.

‘You didn’t have to do that, Alex, you know,’ Henry said. ‘House rules. We’re playing no roquets before you’ve been through the first hoop. Or had you forgotten? Would you like to take the shot again?’

‘No,’ Alex said. ‘Thanks.’ Henry’s house rules were the only rules he’d ever played by. He had once, ten years ago, come across a copy of the official croquet rules in a secondhand bookshop; the game it described, as far as he could make sense of it, bore little resemblance to the game Henry made his friends play when they stayed at his parents’ house in the university holidays – they might as well have been hitting hedgehogs with flamingos. Alex had thought those days were long behind them. If he’d known there was going to be compulsory croquet at Henry and Vic’s this weekend, he’d have worn a different pair of shoes. And a looser pair of trousers (Henry, showing off his calves, was in knee-length red denim shorts). He wouldn’t have drunk so much at lunchtime, either. Saturday afternoon croquet was all very well in theory, but in practice had too much in common with the ritual humiliations of sports day at primary school.

Henry positioned the red ball on the baulk line, looked up once towards the hoop, then down towards the ball, and gave it a firm tap. It stopped a foot short of its target. Henry smiled. Alex smiled too. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘You should get through next go.’

‘Hope so,’ Henry said.

‘What do you think I should do, partner?’ Vic asked.

Alex looked thoughtful. ‘Play it safe probably,’ he said. ‘Hit it gently, leave it a foot or so behind Henry. That way you’ll be sure of getting through next time. And you’ll be blocking Clare.’

‘There’s no need to be vindictive,’ Clare said.

‘Just playing the game,’ Alex said.

‘Are you now.’

‘I think I’ll just try to go through,’ Vic said, dropping the black ball on the grass. She pulled her dark blonde hair back into a ponytail, snapping it in place with an electric-blue elastic she took out of her pocket.

‘Maybe you want to position it a bit more carefully?’ Alex said.

Vic shrugged. ‘It’s okay there, I think,’ she said, picking up her mallet.

Alex was about to tell her she was holding it too close to the top to control her swing properly, but as she leaned down to take her shot he got an accidental eyeful of tanned cleavage, and was left speechless by the way her breasts framed her obscene grip on the ribbed mallet handle. She hit the black ball hard, striking down into the grass. The ball bounced into the air, hopped over Henry’s ball, dropped through the hoop, and rolled halfway to the next one. Her mallet had left a deep divot in the lawn.

‘Nice shot,’ Clare said.

‘Did it go through?’ Vic asked.

‘Yes,’ said Henry.

Vic laughed. ‘That was lucky,’ she said.

Alex said nothing as he went to retrieve his ball from the clutches of the hosta. As he placed it on the lawn, one assiduous mallet’s length in, Vic’s ball rolled through the second hoop. With her next shot she nudged it towards Alex’s. The black kissed the blue with a gratifying snap. Alex stood back in admiration as Vic bent over the balls. Her dark blue jeans, like her white T-shirt, were tight, but not too tight. A perfect fit. She adjusted her stance, shifting her weight from one wedge sandal to the other with a sway of the hips. The blue ball rocketed back to the start of the course; the black went off at a right angle towards the third hoop.

‘Which way do I go through this one?’ Vic asked.

‘Uphill,’ Henry called, indicating the direction with a sweep of his arm. ‘Away from the flowerbed.’

Vic set herself up on the flowerbed side of the hoop. Alex walked after his ball, hoping no one had noticed him rearranging himself inside his trousers. He looked up at the climbing rose sprawled across the back of the house, dozens of dead heads lolling in the late August heat. Clare and Henry were discussing tactics in a conspiratorial murmur.

‘How was your dirty weekend in Prague?’ Henry asked as Alex joined them.

‘Birthday weekend, you mean,’ Clare said.

‘That’s what I said.’

‘And we went to Berlin.’

‘Of course. Nice?’

‘Yes, very nice. Surprisingly clean.’

‘Berlin?’

‘The weekend.’

Alex blushed, because Clare was telling the disappointing truth. He supposed that Henry and Vic, who had been together for only five years compared to Alex and Clare’s ten, had more and more various sex on an average Wednesday than he and Clare managed in six months in their cramped bedroom in Tufnell Park. He’d hoped that a holiday, a change of scene, might rekindle their sex life – though his inability to articulate what he wanted without resorting to the clichés of the agony column wasn’t a promising sign – but nothing had happened. The weekend in Berlin, to celebrate their second wedding anniversary as well as Clare’s thirtieth birthday, had been nice enough in many respects; but sex-wise it had been, as Clare hadn’t quite said, all too predictably clean. So perhaps it shouldn’t have been very surprising, however embarrassing it was, that he was getting turned on by something so innocent, so staid, so sexlessly middle-aged, as a session of mixed-doubles croquet.

It was Clare’s turn. She brushed aside the lock of dark brown hair falling across her face and tucked it behind her ear. She made sure the balls were in line, and struck the yellow firmly. It smacked into the red, knocking it through the hoop and coming to rest itself just on the near side.

Henry looked up from his phone. ‘Nice,’ he murmured.

‘Got any messages?’ Alex called.

‘What?’ Henry said. He looked at his phone again. ‘Oh, I see. No.’

Alex was in a tricky position. Not having been through the first hoop, he couldn’t roquet either Henry’s or Clare’s ball. Since Clare had nudged Henry through, however, Henry would be able to attack Alex next go. Ideally, he would go through the hoop now, roquet red, come back round and smash Clare into the furthest flowerbed. But the yellow was blocking his way.

‘Why don’t you just come over here?’ Vic called.

But Alex had a better idea: to replicate her daring opener. He would leapfrog yellow, go through the hoop and wreak havoc, dispatching Henry into the flowerbed and sending Clare to the far side of the lawn, where Vic could make merciless use of her.

His mallet gouged a healthy chunk of turf out of the lawn. The blue ball dribbled forward a few inches, stopping well short of the yellow.

‘Bugger,’ Alex said.

‘Didn’t it go through?’ Vic asked.

‘No,’ said Henry.

Clare stifled a laugh.

‘Shall I?’ Henry asked, raising an eyebrow at Clare.

‘There’s no need to be vindictive,’ Alex said.

‘Just playing the game,’ said Clare.

Henry retraced the path his ball had taken through the hoop to roquet Clare, put her through, send Alex off once more among the hostas, and leave his own ball near Clare’s, setting them both up for the second hoop.

Alex left his ball in the flowerbed and went to discuss tactics with his teammate. Having gone through the third hoop, she was squatting on her heels, estimating the velocity required to reach and disrupt her opponents. A tanned strip of skin was visible between her jeans and the pink lace band of her knickers. Alex glanced over to see if Clare or Henry had spotted him staring down the back of Vic’s trousers. Perhaps his sunglasses didn’t obscure his eyes as well as he imagined. But they were talking and laughing together, and paying no attention to him. Vic stood up and hit her ball across the lawn. Black struck yellow with a resounding crack.

‘Why don’t you fish your ball out of the flowerbed?’ she said over her shoulder as she walked away, hips swaying, diamond studs flashing in her ears, to lay waste to her opponents.

Clare and Henry stepped aside as Vic casually reversed, once again, the dynamic of the game. By the time she’d finished, yellow was on the wrong side of the second hoop, red was in the furthest flowerbed, blue was almost in a position to go through the first hoop, and black was standing by to lend him a hand.

‘What do you think I should do?’ Clare called to Henry as he was bringing his ball back onto the lawn.

He shrugged. ‘It’s up to you really. You could either set yourself up, or come over here. Whatever you want.’

She sent her ball scudding over the grass to join his.

‘Who’s been through what again?’ Vic asked.

‘You’ve been through three hoops,’ Henry said, ‘Clare and I have both been through one, and Alex has yet to go through any.’

‘What shall I do?’ Alex asked Vic’s breasts. A few millimetres of pink lace were visible inside the neckline of her T-shirt. Clare never wore matching underwear.

‘Set yourself up, maybe?’ Vic suggested.

He obeyed.

Henry roqueted Clare, and sent them both back across the lawn to the second hoop.

Vic roqueted Alex, and put him, at last, through the first hoop.

Clare manoeuvred first the red ball and then the yellow through the second hoop, and sent them on to the third.

Alex, finding himself in the game all of a sudden, decided he ought to try a little harder – and, miraculously, managed to roquet Vic’s ball. ‘Just you wait, you fuckers,’ he said to Clare and Henry as he nestled the blue ball against the black, their snug curves reminding him of Vic’s jeans. He set himself up for the second hoop, but then failed to go through, clunking instead into one of its legs. ‘Bugger.’

Henry steered first yellow then red through the third hoop, before sending them both smartly up the lawn towards the fourth. He and Clare sauntered along behind, in step.

Vic had given up pretending not to know what was going on. She put Alex through the second hoop with a powerful shot, ricocheting the blue ball off the leg of the hoop and blasting the black diagonally across the lawn towards red and yellow. She used yellow to split the hoop, went through, sent yellow into a flowerbed, knocked red most of the way towards blue, and then positioned herself near the third hoop. ‘You can use me to put yourself through,’ she explained to Alex.

‘Great,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

‘I think I’ll just keep out of harm’s way,’ Clare said.

‘Good thinking,’ said Henry.

Working closely together, Clare and Henry got through the fourth and fifth hoops without too much difficulty, though Vic was able to slow them down for long enough to bring Alex up level – he helped a little, going through the fourth hoop unassisted – while finding time to nip through the fifth herself, too.

It was when everyone was on the sixth and final hoop that Vic made her first and only error of the game.

‘How many circuits are we doing?’ Alex asked.

Henry opened his mouth to reply.

‘One,’ said Vic, through gritted teeth.

She had disposed of red and yellow, banishing them to opposite corners of the lawn, and roqueted blue. A straight line ran from Alex’s ball through the final hoop to the post. Vic placed the black behind the blue. The other dimensions of the universe fell away, everything narrowing to that single line. In two strokes, Vic – and, nominally, Alex – would have won the game. She exhaled, and swung.

The blue ball whanged into the leg of the hoop and bounced back a few inches. Black still had a clear run through.

‘Shit,’ Vic said.

‘Just go through and peg out,’ Alex said, sensing an opportunity for heroism, a last-minute chance to earn his place on the winners’ podium beside Vic. He imagined hugging her in celebration. ‘I don’t think even I’d be able to miss that one.’

‘Okay,’ she said. She tapped her ball through the hoop and on to the post. Alex watched as she bent down to pick up her ball before walking away. If he stared hard enough, perhaps the shape of her would sear itself onto his retinas for ever, like sunspots. ‘I’ll make a start on supper,’ she said over her shoulder as she disappeared into the house.

‘Good thinking,’ said Henry.

Clare dug her ball from the flowerbed and positioned it on the lawn. She cast a predatory eye towards the final hoop, and Alex’s ball beside it – exposed, alone, vulnerable. The setting sun was behind her. Her shadow stretched out across the grass. If she lifted her arm above her head, Alex thought, it would reach the blue ball.

With Vic’s disappearance into the house, it was as if a spell had been lifted from the garden. Alex blinked, shook his head, wondered at his foolishness. The sun, low in the sky behind his wife, lit her heroically as, slender and dignified, she prepared for her shot. He couldn’t see clearly – but didn’t need to, could imagine without seeing – the arch of her eyebrows as she frowned with concentration, the strong lines of her nose and cheekbones, the muscles around her mouth, the glint in her grey eyes. She tucked her hair behind her ear. The gesture was as familiar to him as the feel of his front teeth against his tongue. He willed her ball to go wherever she wanted. He didn’t notice the way Henry was looking at her too.

Clare swung her mallet. The yellow ball flew hard and fast along the path of her shadow.

The muffled sound of stately ragtime seeped through the gaps between the warped Victorian windows and their frames. Henry paused on the doorstep. Through the pale wooden slats of the Venetian blind he could see Clare sitting at the piano. Overhead, pigeons wheezed in the gutters. It was one of those warm afternoons in late September that he liked better than any other time of year. Fine weather in the spring and summer he felt was his due; but a stolen moment like this, when summer had spilled over into autumn, as wrong as rain in July, was a surprise gift, an illicit pleasure. He shifted the weight of his overnight bag – or baise-en-ville, as a French girlfriend had once called it – across to his other shoulder and rang the bell.

Clare improvised a rest of half a beat.

‘I’ll get it,’ Alex called, hurrying through from the kitchen, undoing his apron as he skidded down the hall in his socks.

‘Henry!’ he said, throwing the door open. ‘Good to see you.’

‘Thanks for having me.’

‘Any time.’

Clare watched from the doorway of the front room as the men hugged awkwardly, slapping each other on the back and pretending to make a joke out of it. Henry’s bag slid round and knocked against Alex’s waist.

‘Thanks for bringing the rocks,’ Alex said, detaching himself.

Henry laughed politely. ‘Laptop,’ he said, patting the case as he shrugged the strap higher on his shoulder. ‘I need it for the presentation tomorrow.’

‘Of course. Well, come on in.’

‘Smells good.’

‘Roast pork. Hope that’s okay.’

‘Delicious. Hello, Clare.’

She walked calmly over to him. ‘Hello, Henry,’ she said.

They kissed each other on both cheeks, like the old friends they were.

‘It’s good to see you,’ Henry said, his hands lingering comfortably on her shoulders.

‘You too. You’re very brown. How was Greece?’

‘As you’d expect: sunny, sandy, sea-y.’

‘Why don’t you show Henry to his room and I’ll put some drinks together,’ Alex said. ‘Gin and tonic all right for you?’

‘Sounds good.’

‘Here you go,’ Clare said, opening the bedroom door. ‘There’s a clean towel there for you.’

‘Thanks,’ Henry said, going in, pausing for a heartbeat as he brushed past her, not quite touching, but close enough for the thin aura of warm air that surrounded him to mingle with hers.

She watched as he swung his bag from his shoulder onto a chair, turned to her and smiled.

‘This is great,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

They stood like that for a few moments, not moving, looking at each other across the room, the bed silent and pristine between them.

‘How’s work?’ he asked.

‘Fine, thanks.’ She folded her arms. ‘You?’

‘I’ll let you know tomorrow.’

She laughed politely. ‘How’s Victoria?’

‘Fine,’ he said, scratching the back of his neck. ‘Fine. Very well. Thanks. Sends her love.’

Clare doubted that. But this was anyway a conversation that neither of them wanted to have. ‘I should go and see if Alex needs any help with anything,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave you to unpack.’

They both looked at his minimal luggage.

‘Sure thing,’ he said. ‘See you in a minute.’

She returned to the front room and sat back down at the piano. Not sure what she wanted, rather wishing that Henry hadn’t come, she thumped through the opening bars of Chopin’s unduly cheerful Polonaise in A major.

In the bathroom to piss and wash his hands before going down to lunch, Henry looked at Alex and Clare’s toothbrushes kissing in the mug on the shelf beside the basin, and wished that he hadn’t come.

Opening the oven to the fizz of boiling pork fat and a great gust of steam that fogged his glasses, Alex stepped back smiling to let the heat and mist clear. ‘Lunch in ten minutes,’ he called out happily. He couldn’t remember the last time the three of them, and only the three of them, had spent time together. He still missed the days, or rather nights, at university, when they’d known each other only a matter of months, but felt as if they’d been friends all their lives, when they would spend countless hours in each other’s company, staying up till sunrise because whatever time it was, it was always early – days that seemed now as if they belonged to a different lifetime. He tried to say as much when they were sitting down to lunch, sunlight streaming through the window, XFM playing quietly on the stereo.

‘I don’t think things really have changed,’ Clare said. ‘It’s just that the people who used to ask you where you went to school now ask you what you do, and complain about their work and mortgages rather than essay crises and overdrafts. Nice wine, Henry.’

‘Thanks,’ Henry said. ‘I get it from a wholesaler who lives locally. If you buy it that way it’s half the price.’

‘Twice the fun,’ Alex said.

‘Fifty per cent cheaper than 0891,’ Henry said.

‘Gay cruise!’ in unison.

‘I can’t believe you still remember that,’ Clare said.

‘Don’t tell me you don’t,’ Alex said. ‘All those half-naked men lifting weights. I don’t suppose you get those ads anymore, do you? Though maybe it’s just that I watch a lot less TV at three in the morning than I used to.’

‘It’s all online now I think,’ Henry said. ‘Gaydar and all that.’

‘Where straight people never see it,’ Clare said. ‘Which is a pity.’

‘Is it Gaydar you’re meeting with tomorrow?’ Alex asked.

‘No one so exciting, unfortunately. How’s your work going?’

Alex shrugged. ‘Long hours, tedious contracts, the usual.’

‘Big paycheques.’

Alex laughed. ‘Big enough.’

‘More than,’ Clare said.

‘Though once we’ve paid the mortgage on this place,’ Alex began.

‘What did I tell you?’ Clare interrupted. ‘Two for two.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing, sorry. Go on.’

‘Clare’s work is much more interesting than mine,’ Alex said. ‘She’s got some great books coming out this autumn.’

‘Such as?’ Henry asked him.

Alex half opened his mouth. Henry and Clare both looked at him expectantly. ‘She’ll be able to tell you better than me. I’ll just get it wrong.’

‘There’s nothing that special,’ she said. ‘The list is fine. I’ll give you a catalogue if you want.’

‘I’d like that. Thanks.’

The conversation paused. Pulp’s ‘Common People’ came on the radio.

‘Oh god, turn it off,’ Clare said.

‘You always hated this song,’ Henry said.

‘Because it’s so hypocritical: he’s attacking the rich girl for simultaneously romanticising and denigrating English working-class life, when that’s exactly what he’s doing, too.’

‘Catchy tune though.’

Alex turned the radio off. ‘How’s Vic?’ he asked.

‘She’s fine, thank you. Sends her love.’

Clare looked at Henry. He was still handsome, had the same openness about him he’d always had, the same curl of friendly amusement in his mouth, the same reassuring strength to his body, even if he was a bit on the heavy side now, and his sandy hair was thinner than it once had been.

‘If you want I can order a few cases for you,’ he was saying. ‘You can pick them up next time you come and stay.’

He looked at her.

She smiled reflexively. Gin and tonic, conversation about wine, Sunday lunch: we’re turning into our parents, she thought. No, worse, they were turning into Alex’s parents. No, worst of all, they’d already turned into them. And they didn’t even have children to make them boring. What was their excuse? And what would they have thought when they were nineteen if they could have seen themselves now?

After lunch, Henry and Clare fumbled laughing through a Schubert duet on the piano. ‘That has to be the most horrible noise I’ve ever heard,’ Alex said. ‘Why don’t we go for a walk on the Heath? It’s a beautiful day.’

And so it was. A few translucent clouds drifted across a clear sky above Hampstead Heath, propelled by a gentle wind that now and then ruffled the leaves, which were just beginning to turn. The autumn afternoon light threw precise shadows, distinguishing everything with pleasingly sharp outlines, as if the trees and houses were wearing eyeliner. On Parliament Hill, a pair of optimistic kite flyers were struggling against the calm weather. Their kites – one striped like a wasp, the other like a Union Jack – fluttered into the air, twitched and flapped, then drifted back to earth. A squadron of crows wheeled overhead. The three friends strolled below them in companionable silence.

Clare’s mind strayed back once again to that weekend in August . . .