by Kate Davies
She didn’t say anything, but she let me hug her.
And then she looked up at me and said, ‘Sorry, babes.’
‘That’s OK,’ I said.
‘I just miss you when you go out without me.’
‘Come back soon, darlings,’ Mum said as we left the house. She walked out onto the front step in her slippers to give Sam a too-tight hug.
‘We will,’ said Sam, once she had been released. ‘So lovely to meet you. Come and see us in London! I promise to show you a good time …’
‘I’d love that!’ giggled my mother.
I was glad I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet.
‘Aren’t you going to come and say goodbye, Martin?’ Mum called.
Dad padded out into the hallway. ‘Lovely to meet you,’ he said, holding out his hand, but Sam pulled him into a hug.
He stood there for a few moments before bending his right arm at the elbow, like someone doing an impression of a robot, and patting her three times on the back.
‘God, Martin, relax!’ Mum said, rolling her eyes at Sam, hand on hip. She reminded me of myself, trying to be cool. I resolved never to try and be cool again.
Sam didn’t hold my hand as we walked into town. I pointed out places from my childhood as we passed them – my primary school, the community centre where I had done my first ballet lessons. I took her to Christchurch Meadows and pointed out the cows that students had once painted blue and the sprawling plane tree that had inspired Lewis Carroll to write ‘Jabberwocky’. She nodded and smiled, but smiling looked like an effort.
‘It’s funny that people still read Alice in Wonderland, even though Lewis Carroll probably wrote it for an actual child that he was in love with, but it’s not OK to watch Woody Allen films.’
She nodded again.
I was beginning to feel desperate. I wasn’t sure where the weekend had gone wrong. My punting fantasies were fading rapidly. There’s no point rowing someone down a river if they’re not going to appreciate it. It’s a waste of upper body strength. ‘Please talk to me,’ I said.
‘I’m just hungry,’ she said.
So I took her to the Covered Market, up a rickety staircase to a little café that was plastered with posters of Jim Morrison and served lentils and chickpeas and generally wished it was in the Seventies. We ate a heavy vegetarian breakfast in a heavy silence.
And maybe she had just been hungry, because as Sam ate her last mouthful of eggs, she looked up and smiled at me.
‘You’re back,’ I said.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘Better?’
She nodded. ‘Art gallery now?’
‘Sure,’ I said.
On the way out of the market, we passed the unapologetic butcher where pheasants and rabbits and deer hang upside down by the legs, dripping blood on the stone floor, staring at you reproachfully for not being vegan.
‘Fancy some venison for dinner?’ Sam said, pointing.
‘No thanks,’ I said.
‘Polly told me about a lovely restaurant on the river—’
‘The Cherwell Boathouse?’
‘That’s the one,’ she said.
She took me by the shoulders and turned me towards her. I looked into her eyes and laughed, they were so beautiful.
‘You don’t really have to go to the dance thing tonight, do you? Let me buy you dinner. To celebrate me meeting your parents. What do you say, babes?’
I sighed. I wanted to stay with her. I wanted to stare at her amazing face in flickering candlelight and toast our relationship with cava. ‘I told everyone I’d be there,’ I said.
‘You can just say you changed your mind.’ She kissed me. ‘I hear they do an amazing chocolate tart,’ she said.
She had chosen her words wisely.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay.’
And Sam pumped the air with her fist and kissed me properly, right there on the High Street, watched by old men drinking lunchtime pints in the Mitre and blonde students about to spend their student loans in Reiss.
I called home on the way back from Sam’s the next day to say thank you for dinner. Dad picked up the phone.
‘What did you think?’ I asked.
‘Of what?’
‘You know of what.’
‘She seemed perfectly nice.’
I laughed.
‘Why are you laughing? What am I supposed to say?’
‘You’re supposed to say she seems lovely and that you’re happy for me.’
‘Well—’
‘Well what?’
‘Never mind.’
‘What were you going to say?’
‘Well. If you’re going to go out with a woman, fine. I like women myself. Totally understand the attraction. But why don’t you go out with one who actually looks like a woman?’
I could hear my mum in the background saying, ‘Martin!’
‘She does look like a woman,’ I said. ‘She looks like a butch woman.’
‘She looks like a man. She has short hair—’
‘So does Mum!’
‘But your mother doesn’t wear men’s suits, does she?’
‘I hope none of your students know about your reactionary views,’ I said. ‘Haven’t you heard of no-platforming?’
‘They can’t no-platform me,’ said Dad. ‘I basically am the platform!’
My mother took the phone from him at that point. ‘Please don’t pay him any attention,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what’s got into him. He’s like William Wordsworth. Liked to think of himself as a radical in his youth, but he’s got horribly conservative in his old age.’
‘I am not like William Wordsworth!’ shouted Dad. ‘I am not conservative!’
‘Tell him he is,’ I said.
‘You are,’ Mum said to him.
I could hear Dad ranting on about always voting Labour and young people moving the goalposts and how much he’d always loved Noël Coward, who was ‘very queer indeed’, but Mum was ignoring him. ‘Sam’s lovely,’ she said. ‘I’ve always found masculine women rather attractive myself.’
‘Thanks, Mum,’ I said, willing her to stop speaking.
‘Something nice about people on the boundaries of gender, I’ve always thought.’
Dad was still muttering in the background, something about how it wasn’t 1979 any more.
‘And she has beautiful hair. I’m rather envious of it, in fact. Tell her she’s welcome any time. I’m very pleased you’ve found each other.’
25. ALL OF THE BAD WORDS
Owen and I were standing by the biscuit cupboard that Monday when Smriti walked up to us, trailed by Tom, who looked even more miserable than usual. ‘Can we have a quick chat?’ she said, motioning to Uzo who was walking slowly back from the kitchen with a peppermint tea. ‘In the meeting room?’
Owen looked as apprehensive as I felt. I’d had several ‘quick chats’ in meeting rooms over the years and nearly all of them had ended in tears (mine). I’d had one with the ballet mistress at the English National Ballet after breaking my ankle and with the physiotherapist who told me I’d never dance en pointe again.
We took our seats in the meeting room. Owen tapped his pen against the table until Uzo said to him, ‘Stop it, eh?’
Smriti steepled her fingers and smiled at us all. ‘I just wanted to let you know that we’re undertaking a strategic review of the unit.’
I looked across at Tom who was slumped in his chair, muttering darkly. I looked at Owen too. He was staring straight down at the table. My heart started hammering. I did care about losing my job, it turned out.
Smriti carried on talking, using all of the bad words – ‘merging’ and ‘restructuring’ and ‘rationalizing’ and ‘fit for purpose’. ‘I want you to know that each and every one of you adds value to the team,’ she said. ‘But there is a possibility that some of you will be redeployed, and there may be some redundancies.’
The word ‘redeployed’ made me think of
Eric. I told myself to look on the bright side. There were worse things in the world than being made redundant.
‘It’s going to be OK,’ Owen whispered, when we got back to our desks.
‘How is it going to be OK? She said they were going to keep one Correspondence Officer in the merged team. One! And there are three of us! Uzo’s definitely getting it.’
Owen crouched by my desk. ‘They’ve posted the SEO jobs. Two Senior Account Manager roles in Internal Comms.’
I turned back to my computer and loaded the Civil Service jobs website. The Senior Account Manager jobs were right at the top of the page. ‘We need excellent verbal and written communication skills, and the ability to think creatively.’ I looked at Owen. ‘We might actually be qualified.’
‘Want to go to the pub tonight and work on the application form together?’
My fear of unemployment had taken over my fear of rejection, so I said, ‘OK.’
Uzo wandered over, mug in hand, on the way to the kitchen, and saw what was on my screen. ‘You applying for the Senior Account Manager jobs?’
‘We both are,’ said Owen.
‘Shh,’ I said.
Uzo made a tutting noise. ‘You two are crazy,’ she said. ‘Why would you want to be in charge of things? Do you know how hard you have to work when you’re in charge?’
Owen and I spent two hours going through the application form, ignoring the shouts of the middle-aged men watching football on the other side of the pub. We had to give 250-word examples of times we had embodied Civil Service Behaviours and Strengths.
‘I don’t think I’m analytical,’ I said, looking at the list of strengths. ‘But I’m quite inclusive. Don’t you think?’
Owen nodded. ‘You never leave anyone out of a tea round.’
I like to think I’m quite good at writing, but there’s nothing more frustrating than trying to describe a time you Delivered at Pace in a limited word count, particularly when you’ve never delivered anything at pace in your life, except the lattes you made during your summer job at Starbucks. By 8.30 p.m. I’d only answered one question out of twenty. And then Alice texted, saying she’d made Bolognese and did I want some, so I decided to go home. The deadline wasn’t for a couple of weeks, anyway.
As Owen hugged me goodbye, I asked him, ‘Do you want to come? Alice says there’s enough food,’ to prove how inclusive I was.
He shook his head. ‘I’m going to keep going,’ he said, ‘because I have determination and persistence.’
I had just finished washing up the Bolognese pan when Cat called.
‘How’s the solar system show going?’ I asked her.
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘A kid threw up on my shoes when I was singing my planet Mercury song today.’
‘Poor you,’ I said cheerfully.
I told her about the redundancies at work.
‘Just quit!’ she said. ‘You can be in Menstruation: the Musical! Did I tell you we got funding?’
‘No!’
‘I know! Actual Arts Council money! We’re being paid, baby! We’re going to Edinburgh!’
‘Wow!’ I said. I hugged a cushion for comfort.
‘It’s going to be funny but really political. Lacey wrote this proposal, all about how the show’s going to increase awareness of period poverty. Did you know that asylum seekers only get about £38 a week to live on? And they’re not allowed to work? So most of them can’t afford sanitary products?’
‘I didn’t. The show sounds amazing.’
‘We’re still looking for someone to play the tampon. It’s quite a big part.’
‘I’m not sure I’ve got the gravitas to pull off a role like that,’ I said.
Cat sighed. ‘Just admit that you’re scared.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’m scared.’ And as soon as I said it I started to cry. ‘I can’t not have a salary,’ I said.
‘If you lose your job you won’t have a salary anyway,’ Cat pointed out.
‘I’m not going to do it. I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Yeah, well. I’m sorry too,’ said Cat.
‘Will you sing me the planet Mercury song to cheer me up?’
‘Fuck off.’
Saying no to the musical made me feel even more determined to get the SEO job, so the following evening I came straight home from work and sat down at my laptop. I did my best to pretend I had ‘pride and enthusiasm in public service’ and that I ‘allowed colleagues the time and authority to meet objectives’, and by the time Alice banged through the door at midnight, drunk after a book launch, I’d finished the whole application.
‘Want me to proofread it?’ Alice asked, swigging orange juice from the bottle.
‘Oh, yes please,’ I said, standing back to let her see.
She bent over my computer. She smelled of stale wine. ‘There’s quite a lot of jargon in this,’ she said.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s the Civil Service. You have to use jargon.’
‘But it doesn’t make sense.’
‘I don’t think it matters.’
Alice gave an exaggerated, drunken shrug. ‘I’m going to eat some cheese. Want some?’
‘No thanks,’ I said. I sat down in front of my laptop again and pressed submit. It was time to start believing in myself.
26. SAM LOVES JULIA
That June, London was hotter than I ever remember it being – too hot, really, considering the number of extremely sweaty men on the Underground. But the city was beautiful – the buildings looked as though they were posing for photographs, turning their best sides towards the light, and as I looked out at the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey from my office window each morning I felt lucky to be where I was, in London and in love.
That July I went to my first Pride as an out lesbian, the first where I could walk down the road in rainbow face paint, holding hands with a gorgeous woman, willing people to take photographs of us kissing. Pride is exactly what I felt. I was bursting with the newness of being queer, and it was wonderful.
The Stepping Out crew were marching in the parade, dressed in sequins, behind a group of lesbian volleyball players, but Sam and I rode on the Stonewall float, just the two of us; a friend of a friend of hers worked for them. We sailed down Regent Street, waving like queens, watching Barclays employees hand out leaflets about savings accounts and socialists shouting about the commercialization of Pride. There were queer Muslims and drag queens on stilts and a bus full of LGBT pensioners and men in leather, and all of them were smiling, and I felt so grateful to be one of them that I almost cried. I put my arms around Sam’s waist and kissed her cheek. Lady Gaga was pumping from the float’s sound system. Balloons swayed and twisted in the breeze. On the pavement below, a man in a sequinned jacket played with a yoyo. A group of football fans leaned out of a pub window to cheer for us. I felt gloriously alive.
Whenever I stayed at Sam’s she would make me breakfast and we’d open the windows wide, breathing the fresh air and marvelling at the birdsong, wondering what the birds were saying to each other. One morning, as I was washing up our bowls, Sam wrote SAM LOVES JULIA on the steamed-up kitchen window and I finally understood what swooning felt like. After work every day, we hurled ourselves at the nearest green space to drink corner-shop wine or went to pretentious street food pop-ups to Snapchat our rice noodles. We went to the open-air theatre once to watch A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and laughed at all the Shakespearean jokes. I even got a few of them.
I wanted to tell everyone about my relationship and the incredible sex I was having. I found myself coming out to baristas at Starbucks and smiling at lesbians in the street in the hope they’d recognize me as one of their own, and I even described fisting to Owen over lunch one day. He was very grateful for the information.
‘Carys never tells me anything,’ he said.
‘That’s probably appropriate,’ I pointed out. ‘She’s your sister.’
‘I guess,’ he said. ‘So – gloves?’
‘And
lube. And take it slowly.’
‘Right,’ he said. And then: ‘How can I tell if a woman’s up for it, though?’
‘You could ask her,’ I said.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I mean – in theory. Next time someone agrees to have sex with me.’
That afternoon we got back to our desks to find that we had both been invited to interview for the Senior Account Manager jobs. We ran into a meeting room and jumped up and down, and that night we celebrated with a picnic in Green Park. Maybe we had futures after all.
Sam decided to combine the private view for her show with her thirtieth birthday and throw a massive party. ‘The woman who owns the gallery owes me one, to be fair. I made her come, like, nine times last time I saw her,’ she told me one hot night as we drank beers in London Fields, the smoke of other people’s barbecues stinging our eyes.
I had a vision of the gallery owner lying back on a pile of David Hockney canvases while Sam licked champagne off her nipples. Clearly the sensible part of me knew that Hockneys are kept in carefully controlled atmospheric conditions and the best you get at most private views is a warm can of Stella, but I’ve always had a strong imagination.
‘Don’t you miss it?’ I asked.
‘Miss what?’
‘Miss having sex with other people.’
‘Not at the moment,’ she said, reaching for my hand. ‘You and I have only just got started. And anyway, I know we’ll enjoy other people eventually.’
I put my beer down and kissed her, hard. She seemed surprised, but she kissed me back, and we ended up having fully clothed sex right there on the grass, Sam looking at the people around us, daring someone to notice. I tried to unbutton Sam’s jeans so I could fuck her too, but she stopped me, gripping my hand a little too tightly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You only get to touch me in private.’
27. THIS IS WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS
Sam was spending almost all of her time in the studio now, adding finishing touches to some of her more recent portraits. I didn’t like to think about how recent they were, or what had happened just before she’d painted them, or why she hadn’t painted me yet. It’s not that I thought I deserved to be immortalized in art – I’m not a Tudor aristocrat or a nineteenth-century horse – but I wanted her to want to paint me.
