SUMMARY, by Josep Guiteres
Graham Cooley is 38 years old, has a degree in
physics, is married with children, is a competitive chess player and loves
quantum mechanics and quarks.
One Friday, at the university, where he works as a
physics professor, a course on food hygiene was held, and he saw a woman with
shiny grey hair, a belligerent jaw, a turned-up nose, and a wide mouth. It was
Claudia, a woman who he had met one summer at his parents’ house in West Wales,
when Graham was 13 years old.
Graham told his wife Carol that in college he saw a
woman he hadn’t seen in 25 years. At night, when Graham and his wife were in
bed, he told Carol that when Claudia was on holiday at his parents’ house, she
had made advances toward him. His wife ended the conversation saying, what
would you think if a man did to your daughter what Claudia did to you?
Graham took Claudia’s address and went to her house.
He introduced himself saying that he was Graham Cooley and that she and her
family had been on holiday at the Cooley’s in West Wales. Claudia remembered,
she looked at his face and told him that he was handsome and that she always
had good taste in men.
She invited him into her house, they sat down, and he put his hand on Claudia’s knee and reminded her that, on the last night she was at his parents’ house, he took her and her two young daughters by boat. He told her that she had sat in front of him while he rowed; the water that night was full of phosphorescence, tiny sea creatures that glowed in the dark, and that she put her feet on top of his and rubbed them all the time. Once he said this, he kissed her, put his hands under her clothes and she didn’t stop him.
Graham got home very late, his wife was waiting for him, and, for a moment, he thought that Carol might suspect something, but he immediately thought, I am her husband, the physics professor who loves quantum mechanics and a puritan. Nothing happens here.
QUESTIONS
Describe Graham’s family
Talk about Graham.
What can you say about Claudia?
Do / did you
play board games? What is your favourite? What kind of player are / were you?
Do you have any anecdote?
When do children start dressing as adults?
Do you think our children know better about sex than
us?
Do you think that in our time swearing has increased
its intensity? Aren’t “shit” and “bloody” a little soft?
In your opinion, why did Claudia choose Graham, and
not Tim or Alex?
At first Graham thought Claudia was old, but then,
when he saw playing badminton, not so old, even young. How do you calibrate the
age of a person? Is there a kind of touchstone?
How does Claudia approach Graham?
Why in a moment wasn’t Graham able to look at his
mother?
Do you think our generation have overprotected children?
“He suffered like an adult, secretly.” Do adults
suffer in secret? In which cases?
How did Graham / Claudia change over the time?
What do you think about telling your past to anybody
(a new friend, a partner, your children)?
Graham’s wife thought that his experience with Claudia
was horrible. Does Graham agree? Do you agree?
How was it possible that Claudia didn’t remember him
and their story?
Did he have a “trauma” because of Claudia’s seduction?
In your opinion, did Graham cheat on his wife?
How do you think the story would go on?
What do you imagine it’s the relation between the
title and the story?
VOCABULARY