9 Extra time in the game of love

No-one would suggest that Pam and Trevor are the ideal couple. Even on their wedding day, a couple of years back, they looked an ill-matched pair. Instead of a wedding reception, they had a chalk and cheese party.

In her younger days Pam assumed that men had hidden depths: wellsprings of feeling and insight that could be tapped by the power of a woman’s love. But Trevor doesn’t have hidden depths. He doesn’t even have hidden shallows. Pam’s first mistake, when they first started going out together, was to assume that no man could possibly be quite as slow and unimaginative as Trevor appeared to be. Her second mistake was thinking she could change him. But men aren’t made of putty, alas. They can’t be moulded into more attractive designs - even by a pair of small, caring hands.

Pam’s third mistake, and the one she now regrets on a daily basis, was accepting Trevor’s proposal of marriage. There was no passionate expression of undying love; he didn’t go down on one knee. The proposal came in casual conversation, with Trevor mumbling something about forming a more permanent attachment. Unsure if it was an offer of marriage at all - or just idle small-talk about his touring caravan - Pam had to get him to repeat it.

For perhaps the only time in his life, Trevor had got his timing right. Pam was emerging, chastened, from yet another disastrous relationship: just the latest in a long line of disastrous relationships. In the game of love she’s never been much good at knowing whether to stick or to twist. She should have realised, no doubt, that a balalaika salesman from Sarajevo was unlikely to settle down to life in Milltown. But a woman in love doesn’t always think too clearly. That experience, torrid but shortlived, left its scars on Pam: carpet burns, mostly. She could feel her life drifting away, the biological clock ticking. So when she met Trevor at a party, she was coming to the unpalatable conclusion that what she needed most of all was not more fireworks... but stability.

Briefly mesmerised (she’d never seen a man with such luxuriant nose-hair), Pam stared at Trevor for a nanosecond too long, encouraging him to lumber over and introduce himself. He replenished her glass of punch. They talked, even danced a bit. In dim light, after a couple more glasses, he assumed a vaguely comforting presence. Surely he wouldn’t bugger off back to the Balkans, leaving her with nothing but a fat phone bill and an irritating rash.

However, she should have realised that Trevor was not the man for her when, on their first date, he took her for a cup of tea and a biscuit. She'd never given blood before. With the benefit of hindsight, she should have put a stop to things right there and then. "It's been a lovely evening, Trevor” she ought to have said, forcing a smile and offering her cheek for a perfunctory peck. “So let's not spoil it by spending another second in each other's company. Ever...".

Trevor’s not had the best of luck with women over the years. And it shows. You could count his sexual conquests on the fingers of a boxing glove. His faltering manner, tedious conversation and stumbling attempts at seduction have failed to get women tumbling into bed. No woman has ever said “Your place or mine?”, without the expectation of money changing hands. Instead, he’s becomed accustomed to taking the last bus home with his date’s valedictory words ("No, not even if it would wipe off the national debt. No, no, a thousand times no...") still ringing in his ears.

He’s already run through most of the tried and tested methods of finding a woman to share his life. Well-meaning friends used to fix him up with hopeless blind dates. “You'll like her”, they would lie, unconvincingly, “the operation has been a complete success”. Having spent a small fortune on computer dating, he learned to read between the lines of all those self-penned profiles. He knew what the jargon really meant. “Zany”: hopelessly neurotic. “Bubbly”: fat. “Home-loving”: fat. “Cuddly”: really fat. By the time he’d joined the more downmarket agencies - like ‘Not Too Choosy’ and ‘Disfunctional Partners’ - despair was beginning to set in. Having hit thirty, still resolutely alone, Trevor saw his only remaining choice as stark but clear: send off for a mail-order bride or just settle for a hamster.

In the game of love it seemed that Trevor already needed snookers... and then, as if by magic, Pam came into his life. To use a computer idiom, what you see with Trevor is what you get. He’s a bit of a bore, frankly. They say 'you can't be too careful', though Trevor is living proof that you can. He’s just one of those men who, by accident or design, went straight from childhood into middle age, missing out all those confusing - but exciting - years in between. His idea of excitement is spending a long weekend at Bridlington, waxing his caravan. In truth, he gave Pam explicit warnings about what married life might be like. But when she tried to reassure him about her feelings, it was a Freudian slip to say: "I don't want excitement, Trevor... I just want you...".

Marriage suits Trevor. He gets his meals on the table, and he doesn’t have to wash his socks. He’s thankful he doesn’t have to get dressed up to go out any more, or apologise when he lifts a cheek from the dining-chair and lets loose an extravagant fart. He reckons he’s done everything he can to keep Pam happy. If there’s a problem with the marriage, he’s not aware of it. But women are still a mystery to him. If you buy them a new flavour of pasta sauce, and they're still not satisfied, what then?

Marriage is supposed to be good for men, bolstering their mental equilibrium and giving them longer, more contented lives. Conversely, marriage appears to be less beneficial to women. After all, what good reason is there for a woman to get married, unless it’s to have her CD collection arranged in alphabetical order? As Pam is now discovering, the opposite of love isn’t hate... it’s indifference. Yes, life with Trevor is excruciatingly dull; it’s like lying in a sensory deprivation tank. She realises, too late, that the only thing they’ve got in common is being married on the same day.

Somewhat unusually for a man of his age, Trevor lost his virginity on their wedding night. Actually, it wasn’t so much lost as mislaid. The only way the earth would move for Pam and Trevor would be if they made love on the San Andreas fault. As he rolls over and falls sleep, Pam’s mouth is set in a grim rictus of disappointment and frustration. She wants to scream, but no sound comes out.

Men have many colourful names for the solitary vice: choking the mouse, beating the bishop, pouring a hand-shandy. Women, however, don't. As Pam and Trevor lie in bed - together yet utterly apart, with Trevor’s snoring climbing the Richter scale - she lets her fingers do the walking. Pam has a sadder, more prosaic turn of phrase: “Finishing the job", she calls it.

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