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Page 7
“I panic at the other possibilities.”
“You don’t have to be right about anything, you know. You don’t need to draw a manual. You don’t even have to enjoy it.”
“But I’d like to enjoy it, on balance.”
“What would you enjoy? What would you like?”
“To be stroked. Stroked and banged and squashed and held tight.”
“What if you take the weight away?”
“The wait?”
“The heaviness. The heft. What if you get rid of the big hefty bloke who’s obliterating you?”
When he said this I looked at his skinny body.
“If I take that away then I get stroked and banged and I expand.”
The train was zooming past gardens, long green back gardens, we must have been somewhere around York or Doncaster or even further by now, and I saw a man by a trampoline, no top on, jeans, dancing, light on his feet. He was dancing, performing, for someone out of my sight. A glimpse and then he was gone.
“You expand?”
“Like Violet Beauregarde, the purple little girl in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. All my atoms are jiggling and I expand.”
“Do you float away like Violet Beauregarde?”
“No. And is it too weird to use a small fictional child to illustrate my sexual desires?”
“She’s not even a very likeable small fictional child.”
“I don’t float away, anyway. I loom and I conquer.”
“Do you actually do anything? Do you do anything for the hefty man, I mean, in return for all this stroking and banging?”
“Ha! No. I enjoy it. I’m busy expanding, looming, conquering.”
I shifted in my seat, like a schoolboy with an erection. He was watching me, and he seemed to very much approve of me. I looked around, just for a second, almost hoping someone was eavesdropping.
“None of it is good enough,” I said. “I mean, almost never. And it’s not that I’m handing out scores, it’s more that I want to be connected inside the obliteration, I want no edges, I want to be squidged together and crying and screaming and gentle and, you know, a ruler of worlds, an adventurer into squelching realms.”
“Squelching realms,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes.”
I looked at him and remembered a line from a poem I’d read recently: Hard and moist and moaning. It was suddenly extremely easy to imagine this handsome man all hard and moist and moaning. It seemed an injustice in the world that he was not, right then and there, hard and moist and moaning.
“It is good, isn’t it,” I said, “to have someone want to fuck you in a way that is somehow more detailed, because they’ve properly noticed you.”
“Yes, it is,” he said, and his smile was so wide and his eyes actually did sparkle.
“And it’s good to be stuffed and demented and alive,” I said. I was feeling silly and great, wide awake. “How does this work?” I asked him. “When does it really get good?”
He was listening to me and he looked wistful. Simple as that, he looked wistful. And he really did look a bit like Proust, I thought. From a different time, and so elegant. But then he looked a bit like Buster Keaton too, Buster Keaton when he was very young and very beautiful. This man wasn’t quite so beautiful, but nearly. Not far off.
Then he leaned forward, and spoke with clear soft syllables, like he was quoting a film or passing on a message: “It’s like you woke up and I started dreaming.”
I didn’t know then, and I haven’t learned since, what to do with something unexpected and precious. Do you even recognise it? Is it better not to?
It was just about getting dark outside, and soon we were heading past blocks of flats and scrubby trees into central London. I wanted to know where he was staying tonight and whether he might want to join me in a hotel bar somewhere near the station, for a cocktail or two.
“Here we are,” he said, just as the conductor announced that we were arriving at King’s Cross. He passed my bag down from the overhead shelf and I put on my coat and we moved down the carriage, the handsome man just behind me, protective really, and we stepped out, off the train, into the night, into the light.
Lunch
The tablecloth is thick white cotton. Two wine glasses and cloth napkins, the sun shining in and everything crisp and sparkling. Frank is looking at the menu. He suggested the noisy noodle place on Greek Street but I didn’t want noisy noodles so we left before they took our order and we came here. The doorman smiled and said hello as we walked in. This restaurant is part of a hotel, in the middle of the city, expensive but not completely wanky.
Frank is sitting with his lovely face, right there. I used to imagine chatting to another colleague and mentioning Frank, in passing, describing his face as exquisite. “Frank is exquisite-looking,” I’d say, and cause a little stir around the office. I never said it though, out loud.
There are small wrinkles in front of Frank’s ears, because his face is drooping. He has brown eyes. He’s wearing a soft wool suit and shiny shoes.
“Everything is good here,” I tell him. “Well, maybe everything except the snails and bacon.”
I’ve already decided, I’m having the beetroot and curd and barley. No wine because it’s lunchtime. And in a bit of a hurry please because we want time for pudding too.
Frank is looking around, leaning back in his chair.
“This could be our place,” he tells me. Then he smiles. “You look really well, Annie.”
“I’m happy.”
“The new job suits you.”
“Yep. How are you?”
“I’m alright. A bit surprised still.”
“Had you talked about it?”
“Yes, vaguely. I didn’t think it would happen so quickly.”
“Well, you know how it works.”
“Yes, I know how it works.”
I look at him and he keeps talking.
“I thought it might happen in a year or two. If we stayed together that long.”
“How many weeks is she?”
“Twenty. Twenty-two. It was the last time we had sex, actually.” A little laugh.
“Is she okay?”
“She’s over the moon.”
“You’ll love it too, I bet, once you have an actual baby. You’ll be a good dad.”
“Thanks. Thanks. Do you want children?”
“I don’t know. I’d definitely like a shag.”
“But you wouldn’t want a boyfriend,” he says. “I mean you wouldn’t want a boyfriend who felt trapped.”
“The two of you talked about it, didn’t you?”
“I thought it would take months for her to get pregnant.”
“And you thought she couldn’t get pregnant standing up. Or on Thursdays.”
“Don’t be clever.”
“But I am clever.”
“Snails and bacon,” he tells the waiter.
“And I’ll have the beetroot and curd. And shall we share a side salad?” I look at Frank.
“What about the broccoli?”
“Broccoli. Yep. And a jug of tap water please.”
“I’ll have a small glass of house red too,” Frank says. “You want one?”
“No thanks.”
“I can’t drink at home.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I can, I just don’t like doing it. Kelly isn’t drinking at all and I don’t like drinking on my own.”
“But I’m not drinking right now either.”
“Well, that’s true. I’ve got this meeting after lunch, though, and it’ll be better if I’ve had a glass of wine first.”
“If we were in France now we’d both just be getting pissed.”
“Or if we were in America in the 1950s.”
“Or if we were just alkies.”
“Or if we were in the music industry in the 90s.”
“Then we’d be having chang in the toilets and drinking booze because we couldn’t manage solids.”
“See if you still think that when your snails arrive.”
“I only ordered those to spite you.”
“Brilliant. Well done.”
Right then his snails and bacon arrive, and his nose wrinkles.
“It does look a bit strange,” I say. “It’ll taste good though.”
“Hmm.”
“You can start, don’t worry, mine will be here in a minute.”
“You want a bit?”
“No thanks. I seem to have developed an allergy to shellfish. Do you think snails count as shellfish?”
“I doubt it,” he says. “Don’t risk it though, eh?”
My food arrives and Frank takes a slice of my beetroot. Then he says, “I know a lot of people at the moment who are breaking up, people with kids I mean. Lots of my friends.”
“One thing at a time.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve only met Kelly once or twice.”
“She’s good. She can take care of herself.”
“And a baby.”
“And a baby, yes.”
“While you’re breadwinning.”
“While I’m stuck in meetings.”
“You could leave your job and stay at home with the baby while Kelly works.”
“Excellent idea. I’d love that. Shit and puke and screaming.”
“And that’s just you.”
“I envy you. Doing what you want to do.”
“Oh yes. Well, it is pretty enviable. Life is good.”
“You haven’t got yourself a young man though?”
“No, no young men. Just me.”
“Just you.”
“Do you want to hear stories of clammy drunken trysts with work experience boys?”
“No. No thanks.”
I tear a piece of crusty white bread, stick it in some butter, put a bit of salt on it. Frank watches me.
“Maybe you’ll be pregnant this time next year.” Suddenly he looks like he’s going to cry.
“Maybe.” My napkin is still folded, next to my plate. “How’s the office?”
“Pretty great. Trevor has left, finally.”
“He was the only real pain in the arse there. I might have stayed if he’d fucked off a bit sooner.”
“I know. Well, I’m glad he’s gone. The new bloke is lovely, and really good.”
“Result.”
“It’s a happy situation all round.”
“And you’re enjoying those snails, after all.”
“I am,” he says, with this beautiful daft smile on his face.
Then Frank has to go for his meeting. No time for pudding.
“Let me pay.”
“No, I’ll get it, that’s fine.”
“You can treat us next time.”
We head up the street, side by side, up to the revolving door of his office building.
“I’ll see you at Julie’s party next month maybe.”
“Yes, definitely.” He hugs me then he tucks his hands in his pockets. I turn to leave before he does.
The sun is still out. I dig out my ipod and head to the newsagents on the corner for a strawberry Cornetto.
Half a Point for a Good Guess
My friend Inga got married in a wood a few miles outside Reykjavik, not because she wanted a cool wedding abroad but because she is Icelandic. Leo and Cathy and I flew over together from London. When the pilot spoke over the tannoy, Leo said, “Wow, it’s Inga flying the plane!” Inga’s was the only Icelandic voice we knew, and there we were surrounded by people who sounded like her. We had seen Inga only once or twice since we left college, since she moved back home. I had come to the wedding to demonstrate that we are still friends, that friends are for life, and because I wanted to dance and sing at an Icelandic wedding and see the midnight sun.
The hotel was swanky and right in the centre. We had a room each – grown-ups – and a swig each of vodka from Cathy’s minibar before we set off to the wedding. Then we got lost on the way to the ceremony and the taxi driver was no help. Cathy had the address carefully copied down onto a scrap of paper but he just looked at it blankly. He called his cab office while Leo sat watching in the front seat with a calm-under-pressure face on and Cathy and I sat in the back, applying lipstick and exchanging comedy-panic gurns.
“Okay,” said the driver, and we set off again. Neat, empty roads with a few neat, bright houses. Green grass and black rocks and blue sky. I love weddings. But then we stopped again, pulled into a layby, and the driver was back on his radio.
“Can you call a bride ten minutes before she’s due to get married?” I said. “She could give us directions.” We didn’t know anyone else who’d be at the wedding.
“It’s a quandary,” said Leo. “A modern dilemma. Maybe a text is okay.”
“No!” said Cathy. “We’ll find it!”
The driver was nodding and grunting into the radio, and then we were off. We pulled up outside a little wooden church, but Inga wasn’t having a church wedding. “She’s not a god sort of a person,” Leo told the driver. I nipped out just in case and had a look, put my head round the door, in the middle of the ceremony. The guests looked around with polite confusion, as if an errant hen had just clucked into their wedding. I smiled at the bride – not Inga – then dashed back to the car.
“Drive!” I said, all giddy. “Drive!” As if I’d just robbed a bank. We headed up the hill and there it was, like a big municipal scout hut, a one-storey wooden building, white, with a long porch. A ruddy man in a shiny sky-blue suit grinned as we got out of the taxi all frantic and faffy, confused by the krona and annoying the driver.
“I speak English!” boomed the ruddy man, a man born to host. He was wearing a purple cravat. He reminded me of the Simon Callow character in Four Weddings And A Funeral, but about twenty years younger and Icelandic.
“Plenty of time,” said the mind-reading, ruddy man. It was two minutes to three but everyone was milling about and there was no sign of Inga or the groom – Magnus, he was called. Magnus! We’d met him once when Inga brought him to London to meet her old college friends.
The ceremony wasn’t for half an hour, apparently, and it was a little walk away. Thirty or forty of us made our way through the woods, following blue ribbons tied to branches which led us to a clearing. It was hot and the woods were shady, everything soft and nature-made. Inga and Magnus were already there in the clearing, sitting on a fallen-down tree, talking with their heads dipped and eyes lifted. She looked amazing, and though I have never seen a bride who didn’t look amazing, every time I see a friend get married I am amazed afresh by how amazing she looks. Every time. The three of us waved and she zoomed right over, hugs and kisses and such straightforward pleasure to see an old friend so happy.
A man who very nearly had pointy ears and who certainly had twinkly eyes – Chief Elf we called him – led the ceremony. The three of us stood quietly and listened carefully, not understanding a word, laughing gently when everyone else did, keeping quiet when everyone else did, good children at morning assembly. My high heels were sinking into the ground, so I leaned forward a bit, lifted the weight off one foot and then the other. A toddler in a three-piece suit was entranced by Inga and Magnus as they exchanged vows and rings. He was in an upright coma, bottom lip hanging. At the end, everyone clapped. Cathy gave a whistle, Leo wiped a tear.
We were stragglers on the way back to the scout hut, talking about the ceremony (“ace dress. She’s so glam”) and stroking trees, squeezing frothy blossoms to find out how they smelled on our hands. Cathy took off her shoes and padded along in her blunt bare feet but the ground looked too prickly for me. Leo was wearing a beige suit, crumply, with a bright blue tie and a silver tie pin. He looked just right, you could trust him with anything.
“I’m hungry,” he said.
“We should eat before we dri
nk too much.”
“Feed me,” said Cathy. “Feed me and booze me.”
Three long tables were set for dinner, and people were checking the seating plan and settling into chairs when we got there. Purple and white flowers were in small round pots, silver cutlery shone like someone’s auntie had been up all night with the Brasso and I could smell that welcoming red wine smell from the jugs that sat along the table. Cathy was to my left, and Leo to her left, and on my right there was a gravedigger. I introduced myself and pulled details slowly out of him. He was from Newcastle, he had a scar running down underneath one eye, and he told me about digging graves in Iceland, in the light summer months and the dark winter months.
“You use a JCB in the bigger graveyards,” he told me. “But you do it all by hand in the smaller ones.”
“And digging graves in the dark, all winter!”
“We have lights. And people just leave you alone.”
He didn’t really want to talk about digging graves in the dark all winter. His wife, Pála, the reason he had come to Iceland, was no-nonsense beautiful, with fat lips and pink cheeks and clear grey eyes. She explained the menu to me from across the table, pronouncing the Icelandic words slowly and softly, and translating it into English with little asides – “Kalkúnasalat, a chicken salad, Inga’s mother made it, with lots of thyme. Plokkfiskur, fish stew, fresh I bet, very local. It will be delicious.”
“Nearly everything is imported here,” her husband said. His key fact about the menu. “There’s not much native food. Just fish and yoghurt.”
“And salty liquorice,” I added, because I love salty liquorice and had bought some earlier.
“Most of the butter’s imported,” he said, appalled, not listening to me.
Next to Pála was a woman a few years younger than us, with a small child on her lap. The child held a piece of bread in one fist and was putting butter on it with his fingers.
“Okay you,” the woman was saying, smiling into his hair. She spoke English but her accent sounded Icelandic. “You making a good mess there?”
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