- Thanks for sticking it out, I said. It was one of the first things I had said like that and meant it.
- It’s ok, she said.
- I’ll finally be able to lose this gut, I said, grabbing at my stomach and shaking it up and down under my untucked shirt. I had always been a streak of piss, and big into my running, until the restaurant opened, after which, if I wasn’t there, I was necking back a pint or three, often in the casino with the guys and girls. I hadn’t had a decent, unrushed meal in eighteen months.
Karen was my sous chef, a tough girl who had run away from the back of beyond, somewhere in North Wales to be precise, where her Mum and Dad had gone to run a B & B after a hard life in Sheffield. Her Mum had come down with ME when she was thirteen getting shit from the locals at school for being English - the idea of settling down into the towns they had spent most of their lives hating didn’t go down too well - and staying at home to cook and help out had seemed like a much better option than going in to school to have them switch to Welsh when she came near, the bastards. But when her mum and dad started having problems she turned up back in Sheffield to seek out a few old friends. The few who were left, and who didn’t have kids, didn’t want to know, but she found herself a job in the kitchen of a pub ands worked all hours and got herself a place, worked hard and got herself through catering college in the evenings, until she moved down to the midlands with an ex, only to be unceremoniously dumped for some slapper he met at a karaoke bar when she was working one Saturday night.
She’s a grafter.
- It was good while it lasted, she said.
- Yeah, I said.
We were waiting for the bus. The others had left as quickly and unobtrusively as they could but she had hung around, at first to help out, and now, slowing down her steps and turning to me as if she wanted to make something more of this goodbye.
- I’ve got a load of wine and spirits at mine, she said, if you fancy it, like.
- And a shitload of dope cakes, to be fair, she added.
I cracked up laughing at that, the first time that day. She never seemed the type. She smiled faintly only for the briefest of moments. A lot seemed to hang on my answer. More than I would have guessed.
- Just what the doctor ordered, I said, smiling and rubbing my hands. I said it to make a little fun of that difference between us. It was something my Dad would have said. She didn’t seem to notice. She was expressionless most of the time, except when she was being vile, or really laughing. She didn’t give much away.
- I’ve got change for the bus if you need it, she said.
I cracked up again, but she wasn’t joking.
* * *
She lived off the Pershore road, not far from some of the places I’d drunkenly got lost going to see the cricket, one of these shared houses with a deserted lounge and lockable rooms. Hers was spartan. A bed, an electric hob on a camping stove, a CD player on the floor, an electric kettle and some dirty cups.
She had a Playstation and a little TV sat on an upturned wicker bin.
She put on some music, Massive Attack, and pointed me to sit on the bed.
- The guitar’s not mine, before you ask, she said, pulling a box out of a cupboard I hadn’t noticed behind the door on the top of which was an old acoustic, a cracked lacquered dreadnought tippexed in spiral patterns, lying on its side.
She pulled out a cracked, faded green plastic storage box full of booze. But absolutely full of booze, evidentally of every description known to man.
- Family airloom, she said.
Taken aback, I slid off the bed and started picking out one bottle after another. Pernod, Absinthe, Advocaat, sambuca, Kaluha.
- My Dad’s, she said.
I looked up at her, feeling embarrassed now for not anticipating the punchline - she had employed that tone of voice she reserves for such revelations - and rushing ahead in my enthusiasm for her stash.
She burst into song:
- He’s gonna give up the booze and the one night stands, and then he’ll settle down, in a quiet little town and forget about everything.
Singing didn’t come naturally to her, though she wasn’t bad at it. She was one of these people who had to sing with some pretense of irony, like singing a song you’re not supposed to like. She pushed up the sash windows in the middle of the phrase and pulled through a carrier bag tied to the top of the radiator with an old skinny belt, the faux leather surface of which was cracked and coming away from the material inside. I was surprised to recognise it. Now and again I realised that I paid more attention to her than I admitted to myself.
Inside, next to a bottle of milk, was a large tupperware box she opened up to display a good dozen fairy cakes with coloured icing and hundreds and thousands, the kind of cakes, perhaps, she used to make when her mum was well - I used always to speculate like this to myself when I didn’t understand her, which wasn’t often, we got on so well, but those times I didn’t get it, the incomprehension was complete.
I sniffed a cake. Sniffed the top - the rest was papered - and of course, all I could smell was sugar. Schoolboy error.
- How strong are they? I asked.
- Haven’t had any yet, she said, I don’t have it often, and I never smoke it.
I allowed myself to speculate again. Not that I didn’t understand her now, but this was something I really would never have guessed. I indulged in a little amateur psychoanalysis: perhaps these little fairy cakes would have been too obvious a surrender to nostalgia without the hash; with it, she could mask her own motives and kid herself too that the soft feeling coming over her was purely a result of the drug.
I told myself off for this Oprah condescension.
- Well, they’re cute. I’ll give you that, I said, feeling from my distraction that there was almost something intrusive in seeing them, looking into her past like that, and losing with this idiotic and arrogant thought the careless tone we usually had with each other. I never thought you were one for cute.
It seemed like the wrong thing to say. And I could see from it that saying the right thing was going to be so much more important again now that I was starting from scratch. It was going to be like Fresher’s week all over again, only without the consolation that everyone else is in the same boat.
- I think I’ll start with the booze, just in case, I said. Any chance of a cocktail?
- This was his cocktail kit, she said. He used to have these long lists of cocktails at the B & B, and managed to convince himself he was doing research for the place, tasting them and pricing them up, writing them out, and buying all this kit. Nobody ever bought one. What do you want? He had us memorise them. I’d hate to waste a talent. Maybe now the Enthusiast’s gone down the pan I’ll go to London, you know, be like Tom Cruise in…
- Cocktail, I said, laughing.
She permitted herself a smile, which was good considering the revelation she had just made. She could become melancholic with such things.
Now and again, she would give these little insights and I could picture her as a girl stuck out in the mountains or whatever in North Wales with her disillusioned parents as they saw their dreams slide away with a lot of hard work and bickering. Her life had always fascinated me, so different was it from my own.
I had trouble slipping out of these imaginings and so, caught out again, told her I would have a White Russian, one of the only cocktails I was familiar with that didn’t sound ostentatious to me.
She sniffed the milk and poured me one.
- Couldn’t you think of something less adventurous? She asked, smiling again, and evidently glad to be more control than that moment before.
- Is the music ok? I haven’t got anything much newer.
- It’s cool, I said, sitting back down on the bed again.
I picked up my cake, and ate it.
- What the hell, I said.
She ate one herself and poured herself a slippery nipple, talking a little bit about her Dad and his habit as she went. He had fallen off the wagon, since, of course, and she was trying to hold back her anger as she talked about how he guilt tripped her all the while about the court case they had seen out about how she wasn’t going to school, how he gave her the alcohol to show how he was trying, but never had any intention of giving up. It was just that the whole wheeze about cocktails for the guests had worn thin, and he was pretty much sick of them anyway. He would ring up all the time drunk and tell her to come back, how her mum was missing her, and all the rest of it. I don’t remember too well, because as she told the story she was pouring me and herself cocktail after cocktail as if trying to make use of that expertise he had drilled into her at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, one way or another.
I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten at all that day. Her metabolism was pretty screwy, she could get by on very little, and that had often been useful as I asked her, guiltily to help out by doing another shift and working straight through, holding everything together as she did so well. The cakes were tasty, and I had had a few, though she had warned me off, since it all tends to kick in in one go.
I was sat on her bed, my back against the headboard leaning up against the wall. She sat side on from me.
- What have your parents been like? She asked.
I felt bad, I couldn’t tell if she was crying. I worried that this petty anxiety was a sign that paranoia was setting in - I never was the most relaxed of stoners and I had always spent much of the time smoking worrying that the paranoia was about to kick in.
- Well, they haven’t told me I told you so. Not yet anyway.
[This whole thing is getting dangerous. I’m writing directly into Word Press now to try and motivate myself to finish something. (And if I don’t then it still puts this whole thing on a more secure footing, as readers can see what I’m getting at fretting away about these unfinished stories and novels better than if I hide them all away). But my internet is really playing up today. That or it’s really getting to be time for me to fit this memory and hard drive I have recently bought to pimp up this old Mac, because twice today I have lost a block of text in Wordpress with Firefox timing out the site. Stupidly just now I hit Publish when The saving draft text was still at the bottom of the screen, as it is once again right as I type. I had to save my post by copying it into Word at the last minute as I saw it was locking up - something that didn’t work earlier on with my First Circle post, something I’m still upset about. It’s taking forever to save now too. And yet, I know fitting that drive is going to be a pain in the arse that could easily eat right into the week I have set aside for writing. Trust these things to come up like this!]
She laughed. Freely at first at least. I wasn’t sure then if a sardonic note crept in.
- It’ll come, she said.
I felt glad of this. I couldn’t compete with her background and all that dysfunction, but at least in this basic disgruntlement with our parents we were one.
- Yeah, I agreed. I know… You know it’s weird but all the time it was going down the shitter I used to keep on going back to some stupid comment my Mum had made about This Life, do you remember that?
- Yeah, she said, that was kind of like my period of television watching. My era. That and Our Friends in the North.
- Gritty, I said.
- Fuck off, she said. She had taken it as a dig, the kind I do sometimes make, intimating that she is some kind of Rhonda valley socialist or something. She was never really upset by these things though.
She had kicked off her shoes and pulled off her socks. I hadn’t noticed her do this, but I noticed now her nail varnish, half way grown out of her toes.
- What was I saying, I said.
Her face crumpled up and she squinted at me with a puzzled look on her face.
She looked back around the room. The CD was jumping. She moved slowly off the bed, stooped down, and then, almost overbalancing, crouched, falling over a little backwards and steadying herself with her hand. She held up a CD.
- Peter Green? she said.
I nodded. She wasn’t looking. She looked back. I nodded again. My head kept on bouncing as she looked in front of her again, clicking open the CD player to the sound of the CD scraping against the edge, and replacing the CDs noisily.
- An ex boyfriend’s in case you’re wondering, she said.
- Where I got such good taste from, like, she said.
She started laughing. We looked at each other and I started laughing too.
I was just about starting to get paranoid, or to worry about getting paranoid, and to wonder, too, whether my paranoia was nothing more than the worry of going paranoid, something I could easily dispense with by not worrying, when suddenly she stopped.
- Something your Mum said, she said.
- What?
- Something your Mum said about that programme with whatsisname.
I creased my eyebrows.
- That sexy biker with the long hair.
I carried on looking at her. She smiled.
- Woofter, she said.
- AC/DC, she corrected.
I started at her until she went out of focus, and then I jumped to a start.
- Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, she made this comment about Egg, the one that threw in the towel with all the lawyering and went to work in like a Cafe or something.
- Yeah, I remember.
- And I just kept on remembering this comment she had made, like, years ago. It kept on going round my head.
- What did she say, like?
- Well, I don’t know. It wasn’t anything in particular. She just couldn’t understand it. Couldn’t get her head round it. Why would he do it.
- But hold on. I mean. I don’t want.. I mean, I don’t wanna look like some… Fucking… Telly Addicts contessa.. Contestant or something, but didn’t he want to be a writer?
- Yeah. Yeah, I said.
I felt deflated.
- He did, didn’t he, I said.
She got up to mix some cocktails. I held my hand out to steady her in case she fell, as I felt she might. She held her hand out towards me and her fingers brushed through mine like lovers do on train stations in the old films, only she fell over a little to the other side, almost falling on the liquor box.
- No, but hang on, I said.
I scratched my head.
- Yeah, I mean it’s the same thing. She was worried about, you know, why he would move from this complete stability. This mapped out life, to something completely…
- Fucked, she said.
- Yeah, I said, not thinking.
- Fuck, she said, as she spilled Blue Caracao down her sleeve.
- But anyway, I said, it kept on going round and round my head.
- Well it would, she said.
From anyone else it would have sounded like she was taking the piss. It wasn’t that kind of anecdote, but even with the dope, it felt like she understood.
I took a cake.
- You do make exceedingly good cakes, I said.
- I know, she said, and handed me a cocktail.
I had a dry mouth and throat and swilled the cocktail around my mouth like a mouthwash to get into the dry corners of my mouth and gums.
- Where’s the toilet, I said.
- Down that first flight of stairs, she said, and careful, it’s steep, and then back on yourself, it’s got a Gents’ sign on the door. One of them got it from the Slug and Lettuce.
She leaned against the radiator, then picked herself up, pushing with her free hand, the one not clutching her cocktail glass, heading back for the bed. I stood up and made for the door.
I made my way down the stairs one at a time holding on all the while.
I checked each door for the Gents’ sign, finally finding it at the end of the corridor. The door was shut. There was no engaged/vacant sign so I stood outside worrying in case it was empty and somebody would come out of their rooms to see me stood there.
I waited a little while, moved towards it, the floorboards creaked and I moved back again. I waited a little longer and then tried the door. It didn’t open, but it felt like the handle was one of these that sticks before the catch retracts fully so I tried it again with a lot of force. I didn’t want to be heard failing to open the thing. I wasn’t particularly dexterous. I didn’t open so I stood back and waited some more. It was now I noticed than one of the doors I had looked past was left more open than they typically would be in such a house if someone was in. I had never got the impression from the few descriptions she had given of her housemates that they mixed much, if at all. The room was lit with a laptop on a desk in the corner showing facebook or something.
The door opened and a guy stepped out the size and shape of Peter Crouch.
- Hi, I said, I’m one of Karen’s friends. My lips stuck together.
- I know, he said, side stepping me. he sounded foreign. he was wearing an unfamiliar football shirt. He stepped into the room with the laptop and shut the door.
A whole heap of magazines surrounded the toilet. Women’s magazines, and then motorbiking magazines and an auto trader. I pissed for an age.
When I got back, Karen was sitting in the corner of the bed, where I had been. I sat down and she moved a little closer. I hadn’t really expected this, was she cracking on to me? I could see that if she did, I wouldn’t resist. A strange thought struck me, that if she was prettier, I might have squirmed, excused myself, told her there was too much going on in my head: I didn’t want to hurt her, she had had a hard life, and we were close, and, yes, though I had never acknowledged it to myself, there had been an attraction.
- Any regrets? She said, clearly and suddenly in one of her serious moods. These had tended to strike however drunk or busy she was. Perhaps she wanted to know how much any friendships I had made meant to me, how important were my experiences, our experiences together.
I suppose I looked thoughtful.
- I can make you a joint if you want it, she said. I’ve got a few bits left.
I didn’t respond. She shuffled forward, found a backy tin and started rolling, shaking out little pieces of weed from an old Vaseline tin.
- No, I said. She passed it over.
I must have looked doubtful.
- It’s weak, she said.
- No. I lit up. I was thinking.
- But?
- No, I said, no buts. Really.
- What then?
There was an uncomfortable pressure in my head from trying to think. I tried to relax, but that thought itself was an effort, a pressure.
I was off in my head around a lot of memories. Back so long ago before I set up the cafe. I wasn’t sure I would be able to tell anyone about it. Nor was I sure if I could deal with the consequences of opening up so much. I had a lot to sort out and the idea of starting up a relationship just seemed too much like everyone would lose out, like I wouldn’t focus enough on what I had to do, and wouldn’t focus on the relationship, that it would end up as one big car crash.
I saw people from university. I remembered, so vividly, living in that run down old flat facing the sea front.
And then Rupert. It was another world.
- It’s just it seems like you’re holding back.
- Yeah. I said. I was lost to the world and she startled me back into real time. At first I thought she was talking about taking the smoke down into my lungs - I had been told that before - but no, her words reran in my mind and I glanced back at her, almost startled. The thought I might be keeping something from her, or that she might think it, was worrying. She was now my closest friend, by default, and I couldn’t see how I could ever hang out with the guys from uni again to be seen as some failure, or, at least, to have nothing to talk about.
It was startling too to think I could hurt her without even saying a word. I thought about how the whole time I had known her I had been her boss, and though she had held everything together, and though we had had a laugh together, it had always been at work. It seemed that now we didn’t have that, there was nothing to stop things getting out of control.
- There was this guy, I said. I regretted it immediately. My head was too far gone. She had no doubt given me the spliff to lighten me up a little but I wasn’t able to explain anything, it was an effort to talk.
She leaned back on her arm and nodded, setting herself up to listen for a while.
- I mean, he was a neighbour, at my folk’s place. I never took any notice of them… I was back now and again from university and never looked forward to spending much time in the suburbs, you know… Anyway, and his wife had died, like. I mean I knew that. And you see them and they’re out walking their dog or whatever and you say hello.. When you have to like. I mean, I never made an effort. But you see them getting old…
- I’m fucked, I said.
- I know, she said, it hits you.
This wasn’t the time for this story. It felt like some kind of a betrayal. But then, that struck me as some kind of a get out. I had never told anyone. It was as if I didn’t want it interpreted by anyone else in case I wouldn’t be able to see it the same way again.
I paused. She was waiting. Listening. Obviously struggling to listen, to sober herself up just as I was struggling with myself, with the idea of talking about this, with the idea I wouldn’t be able to explain. I told myself it was better to be stoned, to talk about it like this. She might never even remember. I tried to start again.
- I came back one day.. No, I was on the computer or something.. No, I’d come back from a run. I remember, and I noticed something. There was smoke coming out of this guy’s garage.
- Shit, she said, and pulled a face more consistent with concern, as if she worried about how she had expressed herself.
- Yeah, well, I went to have a shower and then I went on the computer or something. I think I was looking for some kind of placement or working on an essay of something.. I mean, I was tired of the whole thing by then, being at uni. I was disillusioned with my degree. Anyway, I kept on thinking about this smoke. I mean, I figured it was nothing, but I knew as well that somebody could burn to death, or, I don’t know, have some major accident or something around there and nobody would know. And all I knew about this guy was he had has wife die on him some time. Recently I think.
- I went downstairs and looked out. There was still smoke coming out the bottom of the garage. I mean, pretty bad. I couldn’t see and lights on or any movement. I went out and rang the doorbell. Nothing.. Well, I mean, I say nothing, but this dog was going fucking ape shit, barking and running back and forth at the door. And he’s a big thing. I think they call him an Akira. Big fucking thing with a curly tale.
- Akita, she said. She knows about these things. I stopped, confused. She waved her hand, like it didn’t matter.
- What did you do? She said.
I stopped and thought for a while.
- Ohyeah, I said, well, I don’t know. I mean. I’d locked myself out of my house. I must have been panicking. I mean, I had left it for so long with this smoke. I felt like it could be manslaughter or something. So I rang 999 and they said what do you want, and I was like, I don’t know. I told them the situation and they put me through to fire. I said, I mean, I don’t see a fire or anything. And what do they do, they send police, fire and ambulance down. I mean. I was there, just ringing the door, trying the gate. Everything, you know. People were looking out at me from the houses around, you know. I mean, it’s a Neighbourhood Watch area, nobody hardly ever says hello to you but they’ll look out the fucking curtains and…
- So they all turn up blue lights, yeah.
- Yeah, I said. yeah. Five minutes. Ten minutes. I don’t know. And all the while I’m thinking, what, has he gassed himself in his car? Could I have been quicker? And I’m thinking, why the bloody hell didn’t I ring when I first got back.
- You were tired, I suppose, I mean, after your run.
- Yeah. Yeah.. NO. No, I mean, I wasn’t.
- So what do they do?
- Well, they battered the fucking door down. I mean, they asked me if I knew of anyone they could contact or anything and they stood around a little while. They asked about the dog and whether he’s aggressive or what, and then they battered the door down. And everyone’s coming out now. I mean, no fucker comes out when I’m stood there on my own, but they all come out now with everything going on.
- What did they do with the dog? She said. I mean, she said, it’s not important but…
- Well, yeah, he wasn’t happy. Nobody could get bloody near. But then the police woman steps in and goes easy, gets him, you know, finds a lead and I don’t know, walks him about, trying to get him to show her to his master or something. So we all walk in then, and he’s like looking at us, really straining at the leash. We had to tie him to a big heavy desk. The one guy was scared shitless of him. And we all walk in and walk through, and there’s a smoke alarm going off. I mean, it’s a big house, and I don’t know that we heard it at first what with the dog and everything but we got in and heard it and followed through, and we can see that there’s smoke coming through a keyhole of a door off the kitchen. I mean, it didn’t look good.
- Was he?
- No. He wasn’t there. That’s the thing. He wasn’t there. His car’s there, this big old Jag, and he’s got the engine running and the keys still inside, and no one’s there.
- Where was he? Hadn’t he heard the sirens at least.
- He hadn’t heard anything. I dunno, maybe they hadn’t had the sirens on down the road. They probably hadn’t needed them. I mean, there’s no traffic lights or anything. I can’t remember. But I mean, even the fire engine sounds like a fucking air raid siren or something just driving up the road. But no, he’s there in the shed listening to the fucking cricket or something and putting his old petrol mower together. I mean, he had the shock of his life seeing us lot.
She seemed to stop making an effort to listen. I could see her eyes flick away. I wondered what she wanted. Did she want him to be dead or something! I felt aggrieved. It was as if she needed me to have some great trauma in my life for me to be real, on her level. I wanted to stop the story there. Keep the rest for myself. She didn’t deserve it. I held back again.
- What did he do? She said. And now I couldn’t see this lack of interest. Maybe she even looked a little hurt at me slamming the brakes on. I felt bad for having thought it.
- Well, I said, I dunno. He chased us the fuck out of his house first of all. Almost set the dog on us. He started talking about compensation and everything for breaking the door down… He’d been forgetting things. He told me later. He worked it out after we’d gone. He had come in and seen the door open to the kitchen and he thought somebody had broken in or something so he got out and went through the house. And then he’d forgotten about it and just got on with things, went out to his shed with a bottle of beer.. I mean, the cops said he had probably come back pissed as a fart in his car. I think they trying to make me feel better about it, you know, but they said he probably came back pissed as a fart in his car and didn’t know what was going on.
- Yeah, she said. Suddenly she was very close.
We kissed.
There had been women at university. Fits and starts. It was only in my fourth year I began to see what damage private schooling can do. You hide it from yourself, and you hide it from everyone around you. It hurts too much to realise that far from making up lost ground, with women, with this social world that’s so much more diverse and complex than you had ever been led to believe, you’ve been conforming further and further to stereotype. My only response to these complexities was to resort to atavistic ideas of gentlemanly conduct. I wore my heart on my sleeve. I told a girl I loved her. I offered to buy her a ring. I wooed her, more or less, while she humoured me for a time, as bored as she was amused. Eventually, she snapped, tired of being treated like some kind of princess. She was no such thing and I should know it. Her delayed reaction bemused me. I could put it down to the irrationality of women, but unless I qualified this somehow, made it endearing, I couldn’t long hold it in my mind. I couldn’t adjust. We broke up. She was an unfeeling bitch. A heartbreaker. She liked nothing more than to toy with men’s affections. Plenty of people told me such. Only there was a doubt in the back of my mind. Private schooling had damaged me. It had left me tied in to groups of similarly damaged people pretending to have a good time. I needed to get better. But that would mean starting from scratch. Learning everything again. Learning to hang around with people who resented me as much as I feared them, intimidated by their colloquialisms, their perspective on life, their ability to sniff us out, to see through us and belittle the learning and prospects we held up as our proud shield - there’s a passage in Great Expectations that still goes through me years after I read it, where Orlick imitates Pip, sending up his pretentions. Learning to open up to women. To admit our deepest vulnerabilities. That, or go through the whole thing again. Another princess. More romantic dinners. More premature declarations of love. More swatting up on wines and collecting snippets of cultured conversation like opening gambits in chess.
This two, three years or so there had been little in the way of romance. I had split up with my last determined that there would be no rebound. I needed a break from women. Not from women, but from my projections onto them.
I was strict with myself. That much came easily. I pushed on. I had a goal. We got a place, started work, planned it all out. To assuage my Dad’s reservations I compromised, threw out all the plans for travelling and seeing Cuba and Thailand, Africa and South America. I was serious, committed. My friends wrote me ebullient travel diaries and photos from all around the world. I sent them back pictures of a graffitied leaning section of concrete wall capped with barbed wire, one of the many themed partitions I had engineered to make something of the space, of new stainless steel kitchen equipment, of the mess that had been made of the wiring.
I didn’t have time for women.
Nor did I meet many at that. Not socially at least. I found that, working up front, I could flirt with impugnity. It was expected. It was easy. It was de rigueur. I was stressed and under pressure. I was never making money. I had a high turnover of no good staff to whom common civility seemed as foreign as Swahili. The whole concept was over-ambitious to the point of being masochistic. And I loved every second. It fit. The tempo of the kitchen. The sensation of getting by minute by minute. The cameraderie of those few who had acquired seniority a couple of months from opening. It was only with women, out front, that I felt I was trying to be something I wasn’t.
I retreated from it. Ploughed on.
Other things assume importance. Other things are important. You could live your whole life like that.
I had always said I only ever needed a couple of years. If the restaurant could prove itself in that time, it could only go up and up. It bedded in, it had its phases, from the druggy alternative set to cliquey regulars who’d offer to walk the dog for a discount and take umbrage at any intruders - thinking they owned the place like these musos who follow a band from the first EP and scorn anyone who picked it up at the third album - to the arty crowd and back again, and if it had gone on, I might well have lived my life like that, who knows, but then it went under.
And like every other time in my life when something real seemed to be on the verge of happening, I was so inebriated from the fear of being in some situation that was out of my comfort zone that I was bound to sabotage it for myself in some way.
She had drank her fair share herself of course. And then there was the question of those cakes.
One thing led to another. An other that hadn’t been led to for some time. She kissed me. I groped her. She groped me. Wrist up against her crotch and hand cupped around her buttock, I pulled her to me. She unfastened my belt. I Undid her top. We stood. We felt light headed. We waivered. We held each other. She pulled my t-shirt over my head. I unclipped all but one of the clasps of her bra; she reached behind her back and undid the other, casting it to the floor with a gesture like a swimmer about to dive in for a race - the kind of gesture my princesses were probably too scared to make - in any case, in its urgency if not its grace it was sesnsual in a way I hadn’t known. I was turned on. Hard. My cock was pulsing against my jeans and pushing against her hands as she tried to undo the buttons.
- You can imagine I’m Jess if you like, she said.
Jess was a waitress we had had for a time. Pretty. Brunette. Big tits, albeit in a restrained kind of way, if that makes any sense. Her whole allure anyway, was restrained. Classy. Her voice was softly accented. She was humble or feminine or something. She got to you. At any rate she got to me, or the others thought she did, because it went around that I let her off everything. She was late sometimes. Ok, she was late often. She was emotional and scatty sometimes and got orders wrong, and it angered the others that she got good tips, that customers let her off of everything. And me too. I would try and be hard on her and give her ultimatums and try to stop being the matey boss with the banter - because that was what I naively thought it had to be - but she would break down and talk about her personal problems and I would give in and give her another chance. And yet for all that I didn’t really have a thing for her. Not that I knew. But what did I know.
It depressed me that Karen was still hung up on all that. Naively again, I thought that we were closer than that. And it depressed me too that this wouldn’t be the tension relieving animal shag I thought it had promised to be. For her it was going to be some kind of act of self-abnegation, a humiliation.
- You can imagine I’m anyone, she said. I don’t care, so long as you fuck me. Think of an ex if you like, some pouting bitch out of Loaded or Zoo or whatever. Think of Kate Blanchett or Kiera Knightley if you like those classy bitches. Close your eyes and I’ll close my mouth and I can be whoever you want me to be. Just fuck me.
My jeans dropped to the floor. I wanted to reassure her. I wanted to tell her anything. It wasn’t true. And that whole Jess thing had been a frustration from start to finish. I had always known her problems weren’t half as bad as Karen’s. Dead dogs and clingy exes, brothers in rehab and people getting her all wrong: it was nothing much, but she wasn’t cut out for handling it; she wasn’t brought up to be tough. As weak and as needy as she was she wasn’t my type at all.
- Look at my tits, she said. I’ve got good tits. (She had.) Put your hands all over me and just let your mind wander. Fill in the blanks. Enjoy yourself.
And still the words didn’t come. I didn’t know how I could correct it. I had never been good at sexy talk, or saying anything much at all in those times. The whole construct seemed to collapse when it came down to it. The whole romantic fantasy that could be built up around romantic dinners and cinema trips, the theatre and talks about I don’t even know what anymore. That was all part of what a relationship should be, but at sex I came unstuck. I enjoyed it. At least two of my exes had great figures. I had been lucky. I don’t even know how it had come about, but I never knew what to say. And when I did try something, it was like following a script. Like clumsily strumming a few chords trying to learn guitar. And now I was drunk, stoned, and suddenly confused, maybe paranoid, about what this moment was meant to mean.
And the depression was bedding down. Looking back on the whole Jess thing, and thinking about how Karen didn’t know me so well after all - and after all why should she after two years of being the boss and not letting myself ever disclose too much in case I should become somehow less the authority I was supposed to be. I kept something back, even when drunk, for when I would need it. I was starting to think maybe the whole two years hadn’t been the fun ride I had thought of them as on looking back.
Poor girl, she can’t even relax with me. She was still fucked up from everything that had happened to her. Someone showing her affection isn’t enough. And I can’t even help her too. That was why she needed all this, the alcohol and dope. And as an extension of that, how could I tell myself that I would get shot of all my own issues? The two years had postponed them. I had put off relationships and put everything else on hold because I couldn’t deal with myself.
- Sssshhh, I said, holding a finger over her mouth. Even as I said it I remembered she had promised to be quiet, to not pollute the air with her accent and a reminder of who she was. But I was resigned now to not managing anything more. That was too big a misunderstanding to be corrected now. We would have a relationship. I wouldn’t evade that, as much as I might want to. Already I could see I had a responsibility to her. She was obviously deeply hurt. But I couldn’t speak now. Thinking too much about what I should say threatened to unravel my fervour, and that wasn’t going to help her to see she was sexy, attractive in her own right.
She held me tight and then pushed me back and held the base of my cock and my balls, pulling me to her to kiss me full on the mouth.
I wasn’t a good kisser. An ex had told me that when we had broke up. It was easy to believe her. Much as she may have wanted, she wasn’t cruel enough to tell me I was a bad shag. She was a nice girl, like all my exes.
And then on to the bed. I stroked and cupped, squeezed and lifted her breasts, pushing them together like a Wonderbra would as she slowly made circles with her pelvis, dragging and then sliding her crotch up and down my cock. She was silent.
As I lay back the room was spinning a little. I closed and opened my eyes to see which was better. I couldn’t decide. Images did enter my head. Not Jess, nor an ex, nor some pristine film star. I toyed with trying to summon a woman at the gym I used to go to. The memory had come into my head from nowhere - if ever you try to stop thinking of something you’ll invariably do it - and I had wanted to pursue it just to see what it said about the past, the future, or anything at all it could mean. Maybe to undo what the shock of her complex had done to the rush of blood to my cock. She used to go there in the uniform of the rowing club - short shorts, and skin tight at that, and a sleeveless top - and she would be there any time I chanced to go, lifting weights and really going for it. She had the best legs I had ever seen. They would come, and then I’d lose them again, and again and again. Now that she had said what she had said I couldn’t get all this out of my head. I even started to wonder if I had always been thinking of someone else, with Kate, with Shelly.
It was all hitting me at this point and when she took me between her fingers and slid down on me I could see already this wasn’t going to earn me any personal best. I watched her looking at me, watched her face as it contorted with her hair in her eyes, and tried to think what was going on in there, tried to make some kind of connection. I watched her breasts, too, as she jerked her hips. I demanded of myself whether I was giving in to the coming surge, trying to sabotage any chance of something coming of this, any danger of forming a relationship, trying to turn it into an anti-climax so we could look back on it as a drunken fumble and move on. To what I didn’t know.
She was really going at it when I closed my eyes, sank my face into the duvet and let go, my prostate and my heart both pumping frantically.
In that moment I felt I would go with her again any time she wanted.
- It’s been a while, I apologised.
She held still and held me.
- So who was I? She said.
I didn’t know if this was meant to prevent her getting hurt, or to wound me, to throw back what she thought of as the predictable superficiality of men which she had come across time and time again, rejected and compared to women like Jess.
- You were you, I said. Why else do you think I came?
Whatever this meant to her (she paused for a moment, as if thinking about it), she rolled over and started frigging herself. I picked myself up and rested on my elbows, my heart still racing. I didn’t know if she wanted me to watch, and it wasn’t that I found it erotic - I had seen videos of women masturbating, sometimes shown them by men who found it a massive turn on, but it wasn’t for me - but it was fascinating watching her so quickly relax into this with me. Again, I didn’t know what it was meant to signify. Was she showing me her sexual appetite? Was she telling me I hadn’t satisfied her, still trying to settle some score with men? Or was she just unselfconsciously pleasuring herself. Perhaps this was par for the course after such shortcomings and my nice girls just hadn’t been up to it. She stopped, reached across me, and grabbed a candle that lay beside her bed. She plunged this into herself, ribs of wax and all and lay moaning on the bed.
This went on for some time.
- Make yourself at home, I said.
She smiled for a while through the grimaces and looked over at me before grabbing my hand as forcefully as any man had ever done and pulling me to her.
It must be a boon of looking the way she does, I thought, ungenerously, that you don’t have to worry about keeping up appearances. I took the candle and tentatively moved it up and down. Again she grabbed my hand, compressing the tendons quite painfully, and guided me vigorously.
Eventually, she came, arching her back and letting out a scream such as I don’t think I ever would have heard in the kitchen if she had even stuck her whole arm into a chip pan.
She grabbed me again and I was left feeling ridiculous with a dripping candle in my hand.
- Talk about aromatherapy, I said, I bet you could flog this on German E-Bay for a tonne and a half.
She straddled me again, massaged my chest, leaning towards me and pushing through my chest hair with her fingers several times, mesmerising me with her breasts.
- You can think of anybody you like. We can watch porn to get us in the mood and you can fuck me anyway you want.
I held her. Still I couldn’t say anything much at all. I held her tightly with my one free hand. She pushed herself free, picked the candle out of my hand and threw it carelessly onto the floor. I could see now. She had let me see her problems. She had let everything out, and now she was crying on my shoulder.
I could see this is what happens when you let yourself go completely free with somebody, and if the masturbation and the improvised dildo weren’t exactly to my taste, if they confronted too bluntly exactly what I most feared or most misunderstood about women - whatever it was that had me going around and around in these same vicious circles of let’s play house relationships - I could see she had opened herself up to me more than I was yet able to open up to her, and whatever wounds I had from my upbringing, wounds I don’t think she had even guessed, were nothing compared to hers.
Holding her tight now with both arms, I could see we had a big hill to climb together. We both had so much to work out. The both of us silent, I could only guess at what it was that had caused her hurts. I realised that I saw her as beautiful. Others obviously had not. I could see that one of the things that had held me back from acting on it before, even from acknowledging it to myself - I hid my attraction from myself as the esteem, gratitude, camraderie that had formed between us in those months when she had been the one person in the whole place who really knew what she was doing and picked up the pieces for others, who, like Jess, saw themselves as doing other things and resented their time there - was my idea of what others would make of her. My parents for one, who would see her as further evidence of me willfully climbing down the social scale. I would have no choice but to take it all on.
I could see too that now the whole business had fallen through, taking it on would mean that it was more likely by far I would never use my degree, never get my foot on the ladder, never get that flash job in London that had been my sole aim for so long, one of those things I talked about with Kate and Shelly and all these friends I founded on such superficial lines at uni with these people who were sending out wedding invites and installing Facebook applications bragging about having visited all the capital cities and all the unpronouncables in the world. All these people who were getting on and who might look down on Karen and sneer.
I could see so clearly now, perhaps for the first time in my life, that life never stops being an uphill struggle. It never levels out into some idyll plateau like the perfect job and the perfect relationship once was for me. I was finally growing up. I could see that it’s such realisations that people make before they go on to decide to have kids. I had never understood such decisions. Taking on such a burden. I could see now that since life never gets easier, all these burdens and complexities might as well be grasped.
I had been hiding away from life. Work had given me control. I was the boss. It had also stopped me losing control with others as I had with Kate and Shelley. I never had time for that. Sex was a mouse click away: Dita Von Tease writhing on a giant wine glass, or a Playboy video. I was determined not to get stung again, and I wasn’t going to allow myself to get embroiled in anything until the right girl came along, which, inevitably, would be when the whole business had settled down into a more dependable routine. I had known for a long time it wouldn’t do that.
We talked a little over a cigarette. She apologised. For what, I didn’t know. I held her and told her she was great, and sexy. At that she cried, breaking down totally before stopping abruptly. She told me a little about an ex boyfriend. I could see how she had been hurt and could see too there was a lot more to it.
She only really relaxed when she saw I had no intention of going home that night. I would stop with her on her single bed. But there I was after I had said goodnight, and before that fighting to maintain my thoughts as I always had done with a woman next to me, against the Chinese water torture of a woman’s late night conversation which would tend to come just as you were falling asleep, thinking about that story I hadn’t been able to tell, that I would never tell it, and that this would be a distance between us always, as long as that would be.
Rupert, I remembered, used to paint. I had gone round to apologise for calling the police and the fire brigade and the ambulance to his door and he had been angry, but I could see he was holding something back. He didn’t want me to leave. He was older and frailer than I remembered, one of these characters I had seen from afar on some of my trips back from university whose image in my mind hadn’t caught up with the reality. I saw him with his dog, often covered in water proofs, and usually from a moving car, or at least, while running past him. And with that dog it was easy to imagine he was a vigorous type. I had even had some vague sense that he may have been an army man in his youth, a suspicion never challenged by even the briefest encounter. I had lived on the street for years but I think the only time I had spoken to him was when I asked for sweets as a Halloween brat years before - brat because I suspect he was one of these who never had taken to this American tradition of trick or treat; I can’t imagine it was him who bought the sweets they gave out, nor that he ever would have had any on his own account. For their part, I suspect they had known evey step I had taken up to university, and knew something of the workings of the neighbourhood that for me was nothing but a conglomeration of discrete houses, a place to stay.
It wasn’t him who told me. I saw that he paints. Came into the lounge following his customarily curmudgeonly footsteps.. Well, no, of course he told me. He could equally have led me into the kitchen that first time. His lounge was spread out and filled with canvasses, easels and paints. The sofas were pushed against the wall with some crumpled up old blankets which had evidently once served as dust sheets before having been written off as redundant: the whole floor was like a Pollock, pock marked and splattered with some flicked streaks that were clearly intentional.
I asked the obvious question.
- Yes, he said as if already bored by the encounter, I paint. He carelessly pulled out one of the sofas and walked through to the kitchen. His dog, Donnie, walked after him, stopped at the door to the kitchen and stared at me for a while before padding through after him.
- I’m out of tea, he said. It’s coffee or whisky.
I hadn’t said I wanted a drink. I thought about the comment the police had made. He obviously likes a drink.
- I could murder an Irish, I said.
My years at university surrounded by people striving all the while for wit had left me with an unfortunate tendency for forced humour, particularly at moments of awkwardness. It has taken a real effort to relearn understatement, even to rediscover my natural spoken voice. It was little comfort to me that some people never do: many of them will never feel the need.
- I don’t buy ersatz Scotch, he said. Nor will I adulterate it for anyone.
I wondered if he was striving for effect himself with this. I then wondered too if he was a big drinker at all. Most alcoholics, and I had known a few, aren’t so picky. That or he had money to burn. This was a big house after all. And I looked around the paintings in the room wondering if he had much success. I didn’t have much knowledge of art to go on, but some of the canvasses around me looked accomplished.
He walked back through with a plastic tray that was itself splattered with paint, certainly smeared around the handles, holding two glasses of whisky, a jug of water and a decanter.
- It might seem pretentious, he said, but a friend of mine cut me these glasses and the decanter years ago.
- Sentimental value, I said, tritely.
- You might say that, he said.
He poured himself a little water. I was glad, since if he hadn’t done so I would have been too intimidated to do the same. The dog was watching me again. He pulled up his armchair. He seemed to be watching me closely himself.
Before I leaned forward for my glass - his sofa was soft and sunken - he got up, pinched it between thumb and forefinger, swung it towards me and said, I’ll tell you about it if you want to hear it. He held back from offering the drink to my outstretched hand until I had confirmed that I did.
All the same, he was in no rush. He sat down heavily and sipped at his whisky.
- Isle of Jura, he said. I’m normally a Lagavulin man but the last bottle disappointed me in some way I can’t put my finger on.
- It might be wasted on me, I said, truthfully, I normally drink ale.
- If you’d've said lager, I’d've taken it off you, he said. He laughed. What do you drink?
- 6X, IPA, any guest ales. Bathams if I can drag people over there.
- Mild?
- Sometimes.
He nodded with a thoughtful air.
- I used to drink the stuff when my wife was alive. He raised his glass. She didn’t much approve.
I thought again. Maybe he was a drunk.
- Oh, you grow to resent them, he said, and he curled his lip, narrowed his eyes. There was real feeling there. I had always dismissed him as a fairly stereotypical old man. But you see what happens when they’re gone.
- I’m impressed, I said.
- So there you go, that’s the thing. Your shit’s still yellow. It’s not wasted on you. You’re still free to learn if you choose to. And I’m not talking about university. Whisky and life aren’t synonymous. I wouldn’t claim that they were. But there’s more of a-n affinity than my wife would ever have imagined.
- Sorry, I said, realising I’d taken a nervous sip before I’d spoken, I mean the paintings. I never would have guessed.
- Why would you’ve?
There was an awkward silence.
- But yes, I said, the whisky’s nice.
This seemed weak. I was reminded, briefly, incongruously, of an old English teacher, himself a former army man, who had constantly droned on about how ‘nice’ was a meaningless word which must be avoided. I hoped he wouldn’t press me on it. I had no other vocabulary to describe the drink. I had be honest, it was wasted on me.
- So tell me, what impresses you about it? he said. He took a tin out of his pocket - he was wearing a thick lumberjack shirt -and rolled himself a cigarette.
This was worse. I had at least told the truth. His paintings did impress me. The three or four around me were were very similar, in their subject at least. I looked at them more closely this time, each in turn, being careful not to rush to say something foolish. Surely I would be able to find something I could explain. I had bluffed my way through university after all. The pressure of a seminar was once such a rush that reading any more than a few select paragraphs of a book, a few passages highlighted by painstakingly erased pencil marks in the second-hand section of a good bookshop on the way from or to a favourite cafe or even those as regurgitated by more diligent, more paranoid, more second-rate students, would have felt like shooting up steroids before a big race: it was all about handling the pressure, making good the little you had gleaned, arming yourself with words and syntax, looking the part with a plausible manner and delivery.
And after all what did I know about this? The skill was not to say too much. Not to try too hard. Not to try and making something of the little knowledge you have, not to let rip with it like a spiv on a street corner in a cut price classic film, opening out his trenchcoat full of stitched in watches.
These were landscapes. Like L S Lowry without the people, though I’d be careful not to say that. Nighttime. The streetlights forming a pattern around dark terraced and semi-detached streets and rows of cars. There colours were darker than Lowry. As dark as the darker Van Goughs, but I wouldn’t say that because the pronunciation itself seemed like some kind of a hurdle, a shibboleth, right off, the kind of thing I would say under my breath to avoid the problem.
- What do you see?
I looked back at him.
- I see the streets where we live. Or it could be Rowley or Cradley or..
- Generic. Nondescript. I take photos, though I’m no photographer.. Go on. he was obviously keen for me to comment on something, to get to what was, for him, the crux of it.
He was sitting back, relaxing into the exchange. I had to remind myself that this was nothing out of the ordinary. He lived on his own. Mum and Dad had often remarked that nobody seemed to visit. Occasionally they suggested they should go sometime themselves to see how he was getting on. They never did. Nor did they ever seem serious in the suggestion. It all seemed to be said to allay some kind of suburban guilt. That used to annoy me. I can see now I could easily the same kind of thing myself. Life’s complicated enough without taking on superfluous obligations. I had seen an old friend, a guy I had worked with in a pub in holiday times, drift into alcoholism. Well, drift’s not the word. He always had been. But it started to fuck up his life. I sometimes rebuke myself for not doing enough, but I can see too that I hadn’t been strong enough - and who is! - that he would have only pulled me down with him: if the only conversation you can have, that he will listen to is when you’re lining them up then it can only drag you down as much, if not more, than it’s ever going to pull him up.
- Well, I said, aware that this was no seminar, and that I had, besides, unlearned most of the language I had once relied upon to mask my lack of knowledge, they are moody, not angry but, I don’t know, downbeat. I backpeddled. I mean, there’s suspicion of some kind. Resignation. There’s a kind of world weariness.
- What I like, I said, focusing back on one of the paintings, are details like, I don’t know, how you’ve got the hazards on this car. I mean, I don’t know if someone’s just locked it, or what. And then, some of the streetlights stand out. There’s a pattern to them. It draws you away from the substance, the cars and the houses. And you’ve got the blue lights in the windows for all the TVs. I mean, I’m sure I’m missing everything important, everything you think about when…
- You know, he said, every day when I go out to walk my dog, the bastard in number 37 looks out of his window. Every day without fail. I might start out early. I might start out late. I did it once to check. he’ll be there, watching. Sometimes he’ll come out and tell me he’s watching me. In the summer he can be there with a camera. My dog has pissed on his lawn. “Relieved himself” on his lawn.
I shook my head and held myself back from speaking.
- World weariness, he said. He nodded minutely, smiled briefly, and then took a dram of whisky. Yes, I suppose you’re right, he said. He visibly brightened. Tell me about the pattern? he said.
I looked from painting to painting, determined not to commit myself to some [].
- I’m not asking for some philosophical tract, he said, not unkindly. What do you see?
I looked again. Back and forth. Longer than I had ever looked at a painting. At home we had had prints of monet. Dad had once bought a local artist’s work as a last ditch attempt at a present for Mum, a cat with what looked like stippled bacofoil. It had fallen flat. I had never much taken to looking at it, scanning it, taking something from it. I had been to galleries and tended to try and take it all in, marching on from floor to floor, dwelling on each work little longer than I would flit from face to face looking around the faces on the tube on the way there.
- Hold on, yeah. That’s Orion. Isn’t it? He said nothing, looked back at me with a poker face that made me feel I had said something foolish. I looked on. I don’t know constellations. I always remember Orion. His belt. Is that The Big Dipper, or is that even what it’s called?
- World weary, he repeated. It’s starting to make sense to me now. Why would you know the constellations? How many nights have you been able to see them?
- I remember as a kid looking up and seeing millions of stars.
- Yeah, he said. I remember them best in the war. I’d been a miner and on clear days on night watch I would chew tobacco to keep me awake and look at the stars. I could do that for hours. I would tell you I don’t believe in superstition and a four leaved clover never meant any more to me than a man with six webbed toes on each foot. I don’t know how that figures with your world weary. Pretty well I suppose. But I would scan the skies for shooting stars but however many of them there was.. however many of them there were, however many times I wished the same thing I’d still..
He stopped and the atmosphere became suddenly dense. He topped up his own glass and then mine.
- All of us are in the gutter… he said ruminatively, trying, unsuccessfully I thought, to change the tone.
- But some of us are looking at the stars, I said perfunctorily, swilling my whisky and watching the oil form around the glass, unsure whether this was good form, but unselfconscious enough now not to care, to follow my own instincts and trust myself - this may have been for the first time - to have my instincts pointing true North, or thereabouts, and not have to refer to a map. When I looked up I could see I had passed some kind of test.
- Drink, he commanded, picking himself out of his chair. My bladder’s not what it used to be. He walked out, and for the first time I noticed he favoured his right leg. I’m sure his dog gave me the same routine, lingering to shoot me a long glare, before padding off after him. He had walked a fair way and I could hear him pissing. I wondered if the dog followed him into the toilet.
It was clear he had picked me out for a deep talk of some kind. I had the same feeling about that, and I remember this, as I always used to have about a rugby match, apprehension, even dread, but mixed in with an urgency, an excitement, a throbbing need. I did what he said. And it may have been as much psychosomatic as anything else but I could feel the warmth spreading through me, easing something, sinking into my brain. I’d never think again that whisky was wasted on me. Ever since then, the first two drinks, so far as I was able, would be ale, and then if there was a decent Scotch in sight, I would move on.
He walked uneasily into the room (I don’t know how I had missed that limp) and it was like the hours before a thunderstorm. He really did have a presence. I could feel my own breathing, even my heartbeat.
- She used to say something similar, he said. I looked blank. Stupidly. I was worried I had missed something and so grasped around for the relevance of the comment, missing the obvious. World weary, he said, patiently. She couldn’t get used to the idea, he said.
- There’s few wives, I said, who don’t say something similar.
- No, he said, but she had reason. Drink!
I could see this was tipping point. I took a good pull.
- Landscapes aren’t my thing, he said.
I said something conciliatory and inane. He cut me off as if I hadn’t spoke.
- I used to draw the human form.
- I don’t know much about it, I said, but don’t they say ninety per cent of art is the female form.
- They do. But I don’t much go in for that.
- Oh right, I said.
I still didn’t get it. I have this thing when I’m intimidated by somebody that I miss the simplest things and act like an idiot. Don’t women say they get that? I’m so vigilent about missing something important, or some opportunity to prove my wit that everything passes me by.
-
…
notes follow:
he sleeps like a baby for the first time in years. when he wakes up she’s not there.
Indeed, he is locked in he house. He has to knock on the door of Peter Crouch[].
He doesn’t know why she doesn’t get in touch. He’s not going to be the one to show her how much better she is than she knows.
