He does a calculation: the papers publish say seventy pictures of girls with no clothes on a week — a highly conservative figure, given that there’s one every day in the Sun, one in the Mirror, seven in the Sport, one in the Star, plus say another dozen on Sundays, which comes to seventy-two. So that’s 72 times 52 naked girls a year, which is 70 times 50 is 3500 plus 70 times two is 140 is 3640 plus two times 52 is 104 is 3744 naked girls in the newspapers. Then magazines, dirty magazines per se, there are dozens: Fiesta, Men Only, Knave, Penthouse, Playboy, Mayfair, also specialist magazines, Asian Babes, big tit mags, fat girl mags, Readers’Wives, you name it; so assume, again super-conservatively, at least twenty-five magazines coming out every week, with say ten girls per issue each, which would probably be more if you allow for smaller pictures in the personals, round-ups, last year’s greatest hits etc, but say ten per issue, which is 25 x 10 = 250 naked girls per week times 52 is 50 times 250 is 12500 plus 2 times 250 is 500 = 13000. When you add the newspaper figure this gives a very very conservative estimate of 3744 plus 13000 = 16744, which is the number of British women happy to take their clothes off for money per annum. All of them, except the specialist interest ones, have bodies like the girl in the photograph that the man has now stopped looking at as he turns the page to begin reading a piece called ‘Hanky-Panky No Thanky! Neighbours’ Spanking Game Keeps Street Up All Night’.
Seventeen thousand people would be a town one and a half times the size of St Ives, where they took their first holiday after Martin was born. So that’s a whole small townful of naked British women among us disguised as normal people. For a moment Mr Phillips is distracted by the idea of his town of nude women going through the day with no men anywhere about, going to do the shopping, washing things, sitting in offices, cleaning windows on those terrifying lift gadgets, their breasts and bums jiggling, some of them looking distinctly chilly which of course makes them go all shivery and pointy-nippled. Did they feel nervous the day the photos came out, of being recognized in the street; or proud, boasting to friends and family? Of course, being recognized could be embarrassing for other people too. I’m sure I know you from somewhere, Mrs Whatsit. Honestly for the life of me I’m quite sure you’re mistaken, Vicar.
Seventeen thousand naked women was a lot of naked women. More than enough for most purposes. Mr Phillips thinks often about what it would be like to have a harem. If you thought about it too much, of course, you would start to become aware of all the possible complications, so the thing was to keep the fantasy as pure as possible: restrict it to the idea of women on tap for sex, as much sex as you wanted, all the time, variety and strangeness freely sanctioned, available. Yum yum! And of course the women would not be women but girls, since that is what men mostly want, all attempts to pretend otherwise notwithstanding. Indeed, one of the first signs of growing older was when you stopped fancying older women. The desperate heat with which Mr Phillips had looked at his teachers, younger friends of his mother’s, anyone, is a still vivid memory. The fantasy was about being taken to bed by an older woman. Mrs Robinson, that was the general idea. ‘Seduced’ was the usual word but it was a bad word since it implied reluctance on the part of him, Mr Phillips. It suggested that he was done unto when all he wanted was to be done. He enters no claims for the originality of the fantasy.
Then he began to notice much younger women, schoolgirls even, sixteen perhaps, but who knew? It’s as if there was one specific moment when you switched from one sort of sexual fantasies to another: you went off to work one day thinking about Anne Bancroft in The Graduate and you came back thinking about Jenny Agutter in The Railway Children. Or perhaps there was a brief, blessed interlude of fancying both or neither, in the way that some men were randy for all women all the time and others seemed to live in a cocoon of sexlessness — which in so many ways would make life simpler. It would be like living in a completely flat country with brilliant public transport and amenities and nothing to complain about.
Eventually, with sadness, he recognized this fantasy switch as a sign of ageing: his genes wanted to impregnate some good young breeding stock and thereby allow their vehicle, his body, to go out on a high note. As far as Mr Phillips is concerned, that’s the beauty of genes, you can blame them for almost anything. The voice inside which says Get a younger one is like the moment in the film where Sean Connery is a policeman investigating a sex crime and he says to his wife, ‘Why aren’t you beautiful?’ Beautiful here was another word for young.
Mr Phillips can remember what must have been almost his first time, the onset of the Younger Woman. She had been a barmaid at the Frog and Parrot on a quiz night about twenty years before, the days when he used to do that sort of thing. She was reaching down to stack glasses on a circular rack inside a dish-washer, her long skirt riding slightly at her waist, her way of folding herself up into a crouch somehow impossible, like origami. Mr Phillips had felt an awful gust of her youth sweep over him, a pure lust to penetrate and corrupt. What was it Tony Curtis said, when asked the secret of eternal youth? ‘The saliva of girls.’ The next thing you knew you were slowing down as you drove past bus stops.
So the harem would have girls for sex. But thinking more, you realized it could not stop there. You would need someone to cook, like Mrs Mitchinson whom Mr Phillips had worked with at Grimshaw’s and who was forever talking about, thinking about, shopping for and cooking, food. Her husband was a small, round, very silent man who always seemed to be smiling. Mr Phillips had only eaten her food twice and still remembered it — not that it was fancy or elaborate, roast chicken and apple tart the once, fish cakes and home-made ice cream the next, but so vivid, like alchemy. As for the sex part, it wasn’t what you would first think of with Mrs Mitchinson, she was low and round like her husband, with a bright red face, one of those Russian dolls, but it would be clearly part of the deal and you would have to keep your side of the bargain, not every night of course, that was the whole point of the harem arrangement, but at least every six months or so. Although perhaps you would have an off-limits granny or two, to keep order and boss the servants (who would be part of the harem too) and help with the inevitable baby-sitting. He would have his secretary Karen, obviously, to help with accounts and household expenses (Mrs Phillips would appreciate that), but also for sex, perhaps at the same time, having her bent over the desk and straightening out papers afterwards — not something Mr Phillips had thought about less than ten thousand times. He would have that Clarissa Colingford, you needed a touch of glamour. Sharon Mitchell would be a blast from the past. Perhaps Tricia the cleaning lady. There would be Superman’s girlfriend, from the TV series, he couldn’t remember her name. But Mrs Phillips would always be wife number one. He owed her that.