My male colleague, Earle, is in his late fifties, which is to say that he seems rather a whippersnapper to me, though the bags under his morose, colourless eyes are those of a septuagenarian who doesn’t get enough sleep. Back in his native Maryland (a name the British are strangely unable to pronounce), he owned a model airplane shop, and later served several years in prison for an inappropriate relationship with one of his customers, 11 at the time it began, male, and obsessive about such World War II-era British aircraft as the Hawker Typhoon. But if one can, as I have, accept that Speaker Gingrich, for instance, has come to Christ following many years as a fornicator, why can he not accept that Earle has genuinely foresworn pederasty? Indeed, my problem with him isn’t his criminal past, but the fact of his being a smoker, which doesn’t make him the most fragrant person near whom to sit on the train from Sniffingham to Headcorn, for instance.
On meeting our female colleague, Jennifer Erics, I reflexively asked if she got teased about her name. She had no idea what I was talking about. Generic, I said, winking. She still didn’t get it, and I decided I’d been foolish to presume that she, a la Aniston, at least in the checkout stand tabloids, is called Jen. She is very attractive in that hanging-on-for-dear-life way of women in their deep 40s, with a coiffure not seen since the early 1970s, and fingernails on whose maintenance I would bet she spends a great deal of money. I think she may be alcoholic, though it isn’t mine to judge, but not a smoker, and for that I am grateful. Often there is lipstick on her teeth, but I haven’t said anything, having put her far too much on the defensive as it is with the joke about her name. I believe she wears a push-up brassiere, and know for a fact that, having been aborted herself early in her mother’s second trimester, she was drawn to Sen. Santorum by his having condemned abortion more strongly than all the other candidates combined.
Our first visit was to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Charles D—, in Hurling, down the A2014 from Tonbridge. The couple retired to the UK rather than Florida because Chuck, a lifelong depressive, likes dampness and gloom. Mrs. D—, who insisted we call her Ruth, was palpably delighted by our visit; her and Chuck’s only contact with other Americans these days is via Skype, which they don’t know how to use, and all they have is dial-up, and all their now-adolescent grandchildren ever seem to talk about anymore is whether they can "borrow" money. The couple have apparently been leaning toward Romney for the simple reason that he’s by far the handsomest of the remaining Republicans. Ruth acknowledges that looks are a crap reason to favour a particular candidate, but argues that all politicians, even social conservatives, are lying, thieving whores anyway, so why not favour the one easiest on the eyes. “Last time I looked,” she chuckled, her own a-twinkle, “it wasn’t against the law in this country for an old woman to fantasise,” whereupon Earle excused himself to step into the garden for a smoke, and Jennifer reflexively poo-poohed the idea of Ruth being old. I’m not sure which country she was actually referring to.
Because her younger daughter, Parvaneh Shahrestaani, owns a fruit stall in Tehran, Ruth is concerned about Gov. Santorum’s belief that the West should bomb Iran. As only another woman could, though, Jennifer pointed out that Sen. Santorum is a lot closer to Gov. Romney than to Speaker Gingrich in the physical allure department, and Ruth agreed to read through the brochures we left behind for her as soon as she roused Chuck long enough to take his medications.
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