Platform Seven

by Louise Doughty

  I nodded, my mouth full. I had chosen spaghetti carbonara and it was thick and creamy. I swallowed a large bolus of it, realising as I did that I hadn’t chewed it enough. ‘Good, really good in fact. I went and spoke to that girl …’ I began to update him on one of my more difficult students. She really hated English Literature – or maybe it was just she hated me. She would say things like ‘Books are boring,’ or ‘I don’t understand why we have to read made-up stuff, what’s the point?’

  As he listened, Matty seemed to rally a little. ‘What’s she like at sciences?’ he asked.

  ‘Better, I think,’ I said, ‘that’s why I’m trying to work out whether she has a problem with me. I asked and her other subject teachers seem to find her fine.’

  ‘Maybe she’s just a bit ahead of herself, needs to specialise earlier than you allow them.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe, but she’s got to pass English Language at least.’

  ‘Do you want to give me those dates this weekend?’

  ‘Oh really, are you sure?’ I put a hand out and touched his arm. He had volunteered to come and talk about being a doctor at the sixth form Careers Day. It was a big thing for him to offer – I knew by then that his days off were precious, but he was keen on encouraging young people into medicine.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, offhandedly.

  He stayed low-key for the rest of the evening. I kept the conversation up, gamely. As we waited for the bill, I said, ‘Why did you text me asking where I was this morning?’ This felt like moving onto dangerous ground in a way that I couldn’t explain, but he just shrugged.

  ‘I wanted to know.’

  *

  We headed to the pub. It was still only mid-evening, the busiest time, bodies, noise. Two young men in jeans and T-shirts stood up from a small table just inside the door as we went in and I stood very close to them while they shouldered their coats, signalling with my body language to people nearby that although they had been in the pub longer, I was nearest to the table and had seen the departing couple first. Matty went to get our drinks, a pint for him and a half for me. When I was seated, I watched him in the crowd at the bar as he inserted himself into a gap. He made some joke or comment to the young woman serving him and she laughed and threw her head back, leaning away from the bar at a diagonal as she pulled on the pump. As she moved forward again, lifting his pint, he leaned towards her and said something close to her face but this time, instead of laughing, she gave a shy little smile. When he came over to me with our drinks, he seemed to have snapped out of his mood.

  We went back to my place. As I fumbled with my key at the main door, he leaned his head on my shoulder and said, ‘Oh God, today was a nightmare. I’m so tired.’

  I turned my head and kissed the top of his and said, ‘Come on, tired boy, let’s get you upstairs.’

  The automatic light in the hallway was broken. Once we were inside, I turned swiftly to catch the heavy front door so it wouldn’t bang – our downstairs neighbour would be out of her flat in a moment if I let it crash; she was always complaining. I took Matty’s hand and together we tiptoed up the stairs. At my landing, I dropped my keys and we started giggling. ‘Shush …’ I said, as I pushed him inside my flat.

  ‘Shush yourself …’ he said, pushing me towards the bedroom. We were both tired but tired didn’t stop us. At that stage of our relationship, tired never did.

  *

  As I fell asleep, I thought about our conversation in the restaurant and how normal everything had been for the rest of the evening. What a confusing man I was going out with. I wanted to know. His desire for information, all his needs, even his sudden moment of exhaustion as I had opened the door downstairs – all of these things were proof, surely, of how he felt? Wasn’t it a necessary stage in any relationship, the bit where you talk about your most recent ex? And didn’t everyone feel a bit funny about the lover that came before – the one that was the yardstick by which you would be judged?

  *

  Matty’s previous girlfriend was called Helen. I found this out the first time I visited his flat, a large airy place in a brand new development near the hospital that he shared with another junior doctor called Richard. Richard was short and broad and dark-haired – he owned the flat and Matty was his lodger. They didn’t like each other all that much, I gathered immediately. Matty was still on A & E at that point and with their shifts, he and Richard were hardly ever there at the same time – in fact, the only time I met Richard was that first time I was round, when Matty introduced us in the kitchen and made us all an instant coffee. While he poured water into the mugs, Richard and I exchanged a few pleasantries and then he gave me a long look and said, ‘So, you’re the new one?’

  It was an odd remark to make, bristling with a strange, faux-humorous hostility that I didn’t understand. I wondered if it was a misguided attempt at bonding, that thing men do, that they like to call banter, which is basically prodding you with a stick to see how you’ll react in order to get the measure of you. I had seen young men indulge in it many times over the years – I’d watched them at school or in uni bars or outside pubs. One minute they would have each other in cheerful headlocks, the next they would be punching each other’s lights out.

  Nothing physical was happening between the three of us but the room seemed charged with the possibility of it. Matty stared at Richard as he handed him his mug of coffee. Richard stared right back. It was a peculiarly male exchange, silent but full of noise. Without another word, Richard turned and took his mug of coffee into his bedroom, closing the door behind him.

  I looked at Matty and raised my eyebrows. Matty lifted his right hand, put the tip of his forefinger against the tip of his thumb to form an O shape and shook the hand in the air: tosser. We both glanced at Richard’s closed door, then looked back at each other and smiled. It was another one of those small milestones that couples pass in the early days – the first moment of conspiracy, glancing at one another behind another person’s back, affirming that your primary loyalty was to each other.

  We took our coffees into Matty’s bedroom. There was an old armchair next to the window and I sat down on it a little heavily: it sagged and creaked. I found myself lower than I expected, with my handbag still on my shoulder and mug of coffee clutched in my hands. Matty went over to his wardrobe and slid the doors aside. He pulled off the shirt he was wearing and tossed it onto the bed, then began rifling through shirts on hangers – we had come to his place so he could get changed after work, then we were going out. I drank my coffee and tried not to assess the room too obviously. It was long but narrow, full of light yet somehow still a little claustrophobic, plain, with nothing on the walls. It felt temporary – I understood why he preferred coming to mine. His duvet and bed sheets were grey, the walls white. It was all a bit clinical.

  I watched his back as he stood before his open wardrobe, the sinews of his shoulders as he moved his arms. He was tall and no more than average build but there was a density to him, a tautness, unshowy but strong. He seemed perpetually watchful, like a big cat, with his grey eyes and his intense gaze. He was never rushed or clumsy in his movements like I was. I stared at his left shoulder blade. I wanted to kiss that shoulder. I had the feeling he knew I was looking at his back and was enjoying it – he was taking a while to choose that shirt. The shallow hollows either side of his spine, the downward dive of those shadows as they disappeared into the top of his work trousers, the thick leather belt, an expensive-looking, dark brown, worn leather belt … dear God, his belt turned me on: the maleness of it.

  Then I saw that on the windowsill, right by my head, was a framed photograph of him and a young woman with their arms around each other. There was a hand mirror on the windowsill, and a toilet bag, a box of tissues, but no other framed photographs. I picked it up and studied it. It looked as though they were at a work do or fairly formal get-together, a Christmas party or a New Year’s Eve bash. Matty had a piece of tinsel over one ear and an inane grin. The young woman was i
n a cocktail dress, pale blue chiffon, old-fashioned for her age or maybe retro – perhaps it was a 1920s-themed event. She had a fascinator clipped to her blonde fringe, white net with a feather. Her hair was wispy, layered. I thought, rather meanly, that although she was young and pretty in a conventional kind of way, it was already possible to see what she would be like when she was middle-aged and the kind of woman who chaired the Parent–Teacher Association. She looked brisk and competent. She looked like the kind of woman who would throw food away the minute it was past its sell-by date.

  ‘Who’s this?’ I asked, and Matty turned.

  He smiled, and I had the irrational thought that he might have placed the photo on view deliberately that morning, knowing I was coming round. He rolled his eyes, with the same look of weary irony he had worn when he had made the tosser gesture behind his flatmate’s back. ‘Last year’s model. My ex.’

  ‘Why do you still have a picture of her on your windowsill?’

  His tone was light. ‘That a problem?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ I thought about our conversation in the pasta place, less than a fortnight earlier. I thought of how, when he was questioning me about Ian, I had never once suggested to him that he had no right to ask.

  ‘Just curious, that’s all. Never seen you wearing tinsel. She looks nice.’

  He smiled at me then, the knowing, heart-flipping smile he gave from time to time – not often enough; I could never have enough of that smile. It was a smile that said I had done something particularly lovable, that I amused him and that being amused by me was his favourite thing. ‘Well, she obviously wasn’t that nice, was she? Otherwise I would still be with her.’ He came towards me, bent down and kissed the end of my nose, then he went back to his wardrobe.

  ‘What was her name?’ I put the photo back on the windowsill as I asked this. He had already caught me studying it longer than my pride should have allowed.

  ‘Helen,’ he replied, pulling a polo shirt from his wardrobe and holding it up. ‘Have I got time to shower, do you think?’

  ‘Depends how quick you are.’

  ‘She was a bit crazy, actually,’ he said, pulling the shirt over his head. ‘Kind of neurotic, raging jealous, got quite difficult at times …’ He unbuttoned and pulled off his work trousers, tossing them on top of the discarded shirt. His boxers were navy blue and had squirrels on them. They weren’t the kind of boxers that a man would buy himself. They were Christmas-present boxers from a girlfriend.

  ‘Oh …’ I said, in sympathetic, encouraging tones, trying to make my interest sound neutral.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling on a pair of jeans. ‘She used to go crazy if I got a text when I was with her, who is that texting you and all that stuff.’

  I made a murmuring, non-committal noise.

  ‘Trouble is, once someone gets like that, there’s nothing you can do to reassure them. Anything you say … I’d get home after a twelve-hour shift and she’d accuse me of being with someone else. Seriously, when you’ve done twelve hours of stitching people and dealing with all the aggression and the vomit and everything, to have someone level that particular accusation at you …’ He shook his head and I thought, gosh yes, how unreasonable of her. ‘She turned up at the hospital once, to check where I was. Shame, I liked her but she was just so insecure …’ He trailed off. ‘I guess it wasn’t really her fault. Not everyone can understand.’ He stood to pull the jeans up, turned to me and gave me another brilliant smile, less amused this time, more admiring. ‘That’s what I like about you.’

  I took a sip of coffee. ‘I’m not crazy?’

  ‘You’ve got a sense of perspective. You’re a teacher, you get this stuff, people needing you. She worked in PR, didn’t have a clue about the public sector, no idea what it’s like.’ I felt a flush of pride. I had a sense of perspective – nobody had ever credited me with one of those before. I felt as if I was only just realising how important it was to have one, and how well it reflected on me that I did. To have a man like Matty, who actually saved people’s lives, put me in the same bracket as him. I began to feel that I was the sort of person who saved other people’s lives as well.

  He rose and left the room, returning a few seconds later with a pair of trainers. He sat on the edge of the bed again. While he did this, I sneaked a glimpse at the photograph, which I had returned to the windowsill angled towards me. Matty and Helen had their heads tilted towards each other. They looked happy. There were a lot of questions I would have liked to ask at that moment. How did it end, did you finish with her and how did you do it? How long ago? Last year’s model … does that mean she lives in Peterborough, or elsewhere? Why do you still have a framed photograph of her on your windowsill? And – most importantly – are you still in touch with her?

  He had bombarded me with questions over spaghetti – but that way round was okay, apparently: it made him passionate and keen. If I asked a lot of questions like that, it would make me insecure and clingy.

  Matty left the room again, came back wearing a leather coat and holding his work jacket in his hand, the other hand pushing into the pockets for keys, phone, wallet. I felt a sudden ache, then, as he bent to re-lace his trainers, tightening them each with a sharp tug – a great yearning for the kind of ease I felt with women friends, the conversations you can have with them when you just say what you are thinking without worrying that this woman might not want to be your friend if she cottons on that you really like her. Was it unreasonable, to want a man but to want him to be like a woman friend? I desired male bodies but I wanted female minds.

  I suspected that dividing men and women up like this did not reflect well on me, was a failing of some sort. How would I feel if a man had said something similar but in reverse?

  Matty sat upright and clapped both hands on both knees. ‘Right, let’s go. Don’t want to miss the trailers.’

  I was still holding the coffee mug between my hands. I took another sip, then put it down on the windowsill next to the framed photograph. I wanted him to see them both together, later. I wanted him to pick up my mug, half full with cold coffee, and see that the white rim of it was smeared with the unmistakable print of my beige frosted lipstick – a colour he had complimented last time we met. I wanted him to be reminded of me as he put the photograph back in its rightful place, as he looked at Helen. Maybe, if only subconsciously, he would make the comparison. I was the new thing. I had the upper hand.

  ‘Best bit,’ I said, placing both hands on the arms of the low, creaky chair and pushing myself up. ‘Let’s go.’ I was sitting with my centre of gravity low and my poor sense of balance made me misjudge the amount of effort I needed to lever myself up. I rose a few centimetres then flopped back, giving an awkward half-laugh, embarrassed by my clumsiness. Matthew turned and said, ‘Come on, Trouble!’ and as I reached out a hand he grabbed it firmly and hauled me, none too gently, upwards and out of the chair’s fond embrace. ‘Honestly,’ he said, affectionately, and pulled me into his arms, in close, one arm around my waist. He put his mouth on mine and my lips parted softly and eagerly and our tongues mingled and I felt my body arch against his, groin to groin. He pulled back and murmured, his voice a low growl, ‘You’d better stop that right now, Dolly Mixture, or there is no way we are seeing that film.’

  He turned towards the door, my hand grasped firmly in his, and as we left the room I looked back and caught a glimpse of the photograph of him and Helen and lifted my chin at it. What did it matter whether Matty still had her picture or not? Why would anyone be jealous of an ex, even the one that immediately preceded you? Surely the comparison was always going to be in your favour? Matty held my hand tightly in his as we exited the flat and all the way down the stairs, only releasing it when we stopped at the passenger door to his car and he opened it for me to get in. Before I slid down, I put one of my hands on the side of his face and kissed him on the mouth very briefly, with just the tiniest of teasing pushes of my tongue between hi
s teeth. I bet that Helen didn’t do what I do, I thought, and I wasn’t thinking about her job, or mine.

  12

  We moved in together the following month, November – or rather, he moved into my place. He had been flat-sharing for the whole year he had lived in Peterborough, he said – although he had also said at one point that he had only been sharing with Richard for four months. He owned a small place in south-east London, in a suburb called Brockley, that he rented out. It made sense when he could be moved almost anywhere for the next registrar’s job – really until you were a consultant it was impossible to have any kind of stability, so he hadn’t wanted to sell the London place and buy somewhere in this region until he was sure he was staying. Are you sure now? I wanted to ask, but didn’t. He had made it clear his life was provisional – that was just the way it was, in his line of work, and a lot of people didn’t understand. I wanted to understand. I wanted to be Understanding Girlfriend.

  It was never properly discussed, our cohabitation – he spent more and more time at my flat when he wasn’t on a shift. I lived alone and he shared with the glum Richard and his sarcastic remarks, so it made sense. I had given him his own set of keys because of his unpredictable working patterns. One evening, as we were in his car – he was dropping me home before going in for a night shift – he said, ‘I don’t know why I bother paying rent on that place just to leave my stuff there with a guy I don’t even like.’

  I shrugged. ‘Then don’t.’ How triumphant I felt after that remark; how casual it was. ‘If you moved your stuff into my place then you’d save a bit of money at least.’ I kept looking straight ahead as I said this. He had cancelled the last three dates in a row because of work and I had very carefully not-minded because I was determined not to be like the crazy Helen – but I had minded, of course. The previous week, we had arranged to meet in a pub at 8 p.m. and he had been two hours late. I was thinking how, if we lived together, then it wouldn’t matter when he came home, I’d just be at home and could get on with my marking. Oh, the loop-the-loops we do when we want somebody.