by Nick Hornby
She had the feeling that his rage was spent, and there would be no police. But if it happened again, what was she supposed to do? She understood Paul from the inside out, two kids, nine or ten parents’ evenings, eleven or twelve Christmases, eight or nine holidays in France, five seasons of The Wire, however many hundred fucks and takeaways. (Could it be thousands? Four figures if you added the fucks and the takeaways together, probably, although there was no earthly reason why you would.) Where did the police fit into that? But if one of her friends had told her that her husband had come round while she was out, attempted to get into the house, and grappled with a babysitter, she’d have told her to get an exclusion order.
“I’m going to call Richard.”
“No. Not that cunt.”
“He’s your brother and he worries about you. And no more c-word, please. You can stay with him and Jude tonight.”
Paul responded to this with an enormous puke on the pavement and a lot of bad language. She was relieved about the puke. He would now feel wretched but regretful.
“Can I come in? I don’t want to sit out here anymore.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. The boys are watching the football.”
“On a Saturday night?”
“El Clásico.”
“Oh, fuck.” And then, at the top of his voice, “FUUUUCCCK.” And he punched the wall.
The first “fuck” was simply, oh, I forgot, I’d have liked to watch that instead of sitting in the street. She presumed that the second, longer expletive came as a result of him remembering the plans that had been made last weekend. They were going to get pizzas, had already chosen the toppings, and they were going to place bets, real bets with real money, on Paul’s betting app. (The bets were never more than a pound, he assured her, and the idea was to combine a whole series of improbable events so that the returns would be astronomical. It was good for their maths, he claimed, and in any case they had been uncorrupted by wealth so far.) But he’d wrecked it all, destroyed an evening all of them had been looking forward to, and the obscene howl of anguish (and the wall punch, less ambiguously) contained proper self-loathing.
“I don’t think they should see you like this. When did you start drinking?”
“I was all right until five. But five is a difficult time at a weekend when you’re on your own.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. It always feels weird when the boys are with you on a Saturday.”
“I couldn’t be with the boys today because I got drunk. So I got drunk again. Fucking hell.”
“I know.”
He started to weep quietly. No noise, just a few tears rolling down his cheeks. It was all agony. It was agony for him, and it was agony for her, and the two agonies combined until they were no longer distinct—simply a cloud of grief and pain that enveloped them, on a dark wet pavement smelling of vomit. She had to get out, take her own cloud away with her, somehow, otherwise they would both be incapable.
“Let’s walk down to the end of the road and get you an Uber.” And I’ll tell Richard you’re on your way.”
“What’s the name of the guy that assaulted me?”
“His name’s Joseph. It’s his first time babysitting.”
It would probably be his last too, she realized.
“Will you say sorry from me?”
“Even though he assaulted you?”
“That’s not the whole story. As you probably guessed.”
“Yes.”
“I approve, by the way. I’ll bet the boys got on with him.”
“You might want to use him one day.”
They both knew that Joseph was very likely to be unavailable that evening, but it was an imagined future of sorts, and she could see that it had a moderately cheering effect. She called Richard, walked Paul down to the Broadway, persuaded a reluctant Uber driver to let Paul into his car, and walked home. The boys were double-screening, much to Joseph’s disgust. They were watching football and YouTube and they had headphones on and they’d missed the whole thing.
* * *
—
“You’re early,” said Dylan. “You said Joseph would be putting us to bed.”
“Yeah, well. I’d finished my main course and I didn’t like the look of the pudding so I came home.”
This was the kind of logic they understood. It was hard to imagine that they would behave any other way, even when they were forty and going to their own dinner parties. They would hover by the door and say, in one unbroken word, “ThanksverymuchfordinnerI’vefinishednowandI’ve putmyplateinthedishwasher.”
“What?”
“Take your headphones off.”
“I’ve only got one ear in. What did you say?”
“I said, I’d finished my main course and I didn’t like the look of the pudding so I came home.”
“What was the pudding?”
“Why is Mum home?” said Al.
“She didn’t like the look of the pudding.”
“What?”
“Take your headphones off.”
“They are off.”
They weren’t off.
“MUM DIDN’T LIKE THE LOOK OF THE PUDDING.”
“What was the pudding?”
“She won’t tell me.”
“Fruit, probably.”
“Just fruit?”
“Probably.”
“Not much of a pudding.”
“Der, that’s why she came home, penis-head.”
“Will you please stop saying that?”
“Sorry.”
“Anyway, you can stay up a bit longer. I’m having a cup of tea with Joseph.”
“What?”
Lucy felt that the latest “what?” marked the end of the conversation, so she went through to the kitchen. She didn’t want a cup of tea, though. She wanted a drink, but she felt awkward about it. If you needed a drink because your drunk ex had come round and got into a shoving match with a babysitter, was that post-facto enabling of some sort? Or inappropriate dependency? Alcoholism by proxy? She imagined that there might be support groups for all of these conditions, if you looked online. Islington Post-Facto Enablers probably met every Thursday in the basement of St. Luke’s church.
“Would it seem really inappropriate if I had a glass of wine?”
“Well,” said Joseph. “I suppose it depends whether you’re an alcoholic who will want to fight me when you’ve knocked it back.”
“No.”
“Fine by me, then. People drink.”
“Do you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Would you like one?”
“You don’t have any beer, do you?”
“I think the Indian might have given me a free one with the last takeaway.”
She rummaged around at the back of the fridge and found it, a bottle of Kingfisher. He drank it straight from the bottle, the first half very quickly.
“I’m so sorry,” said Lucy when she’d poured her glass of wine.
“It’s fine.”
“Well. It isn’t. I didn’t warn you it might happen, and you weren’t expecting it.”
“Has it happened before? I mean, to other babysitters?”
“No. Plus, it didn’t cross my mind. I suppose in my defense it would have been like warning you about a, a burglary. Or a lightning bolt.”
Joseph spent longer than he should have done wondering what was wrong with this comparison. He knew about burglars and lightning bolts, and had assessed the risks accordingly. He didn’t know that Lucy had an alcoholic ex-husband who might turn up at any moment. He was a bit more than a lightning bolt. He was more like a loaded gun, or a forgotten knife in a pocket.
“It’s not your fault.” It was a tiny bit her fault, by
the loaded-gun calculation.
“I know. But I’m so embarrassed. It’s like something out of . . . EastEnders.”
“Maybe that’s why people like EastEnders.”
“I suppose so. But I’m the Head of English at a secondary school. I’m supposed to have an orderly life.”
“Is that what you honestly think?”
“Yes. Of course. Half the kids have got drunk fathers turning up and causing a scene. I can’t be a part of all that.”
Lucy would have liked to claim that she spotted the danger as soon as she’d uttered the phrase, but it wouldn’t be true. Joseph was on it before she’d had a chance to reel it in.
“What’s ‘all that’?”
“Drunk parents turning up and causing a scene.”
“Well, you already are a part of ‘all that.’”
“Yes, but not . . .”
She stopped. She saw it now.
“Your drunk husband is different from their drunk fathers?”
“I see what you mean.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. My mess is the same as anyone’s mess. There’s no such thing as Head of English Department mess.”
“Yeah,” said Joseph. “Here’s the thing. The moment you’re related to somebody else, you’re in trouble.”
“We’re all related to someone else, from the moment we’re born.”
He nodded.
“That’s what I’m saying.”
He was quicker than her. Or rather, she thought she could get away with not being her quickest self, because she was older than him, but she couldn’t. She could probably beat him in a quiz about Jane Austen, but that was about it.
“Is there chaos in your family?”
Joseph knew that this was probably the time to offer her something in exchange, but he didn’t feel like exposing his own family, his wayward cousins and his bad-apple uncle, just to make Lucy feel better.
“There’s chaos in everyone’s family.”
He finished his bottle of beer.
“I’m going to head off.”
He felt flat. There had been a fantasy that involved him staying the night and sneaking out in the morning before the boys woke up—a quite involved fantasy that he’d been finessing while watching the football with Al and Dylan, before Paul had arrived. The fantasy hadn’t survived the events of the evening, though. If he were ever going to sleep with Lucy, there would have to be some kind of serious plan in place, with every possible move and countermove thought out in advance. He wasn’t very good at chess, and it wasn’t a particularly sexy game anyway. All that thinking killed the vibe.
“Oh. OK.”
Did she feel flat too? If she did, that was as close as he was going to get to any kind of sexual spark. And mutual flatness wasn’t the same as mutual attraction.
3
When Joseph got to work on Saturday morning, Cassie was on the pavement, staring at the window.
“What’s up?”
“What’s he done that for?” she said.
“What?”
She nodded at the poster. It was the sort of thing Joseph never took any notice of. It looked boring. It just said VOTE LEAVE ON JUNE 23rd in black letters on a Union Jack background.
“Well,” said Joseph. “He probably thinks we should vote leave on June the twenty-third.”
“People won’t like it.”
“People won’t give a shit.”
“Round here? You’re joking.”
“Really? The bloody E.U.?”
Joseph hadn’t really thought about it until that moment. It was April, so the referendum was still weeks away. He was probably going to vote to leave, like his dad, but he couldn’t see that it would make much difference to his life one way or the other. There’d still be meat, leisure centers, kids, football.
“My parents wouldn’t shop here if they saw that,” said Cassie. “They hate Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson.”
“Your parents don’t live round here, do they?”
“No. They live in Bath. But same sort of thing.”
“Bath is the same as London?”
“This bit of London is the same as their bit of Bath. Dad teaches theater, Mum teaches creative writing. I mean, they wouldn’t be able to afford it round here, but a lot of the people we serve remind me of them.”
“And they wouldn’t vote leave?”
“No. Of course not.”
Joseph had no idea that there was any “of course” about it. He thought everyone was going to vote differently. Obviously there were only two choices, but he’d presumed that, say, Cassie’s mother might vote differently from Cassie’s father. It looked like it was going to be an us-and-them thing, except he wasn’t too sure who was on either team.
“I must admit I’d forgotten about Nigel Farage,” said Joseph.
“Everyone hates him,” said Cassie.
“Are you two just going to look through the window all day? Because I’m not paying you for that,” said Mark from the doorway.
They went into the shop.
“Are you sure you want that poster in the window?” said Cassie.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“A lot of people round here won’t like it,” said Cassie.
“Shall I put the other one up?”
“What does the other one say?”
“‘Stronger in Europe.’ With the first two letters of Europe in red, so you see the E.U. bit. Quite clever.”
Only Mark could come to the conclusion that this was clever, thought Joseph. You didn’t have to be a genius to work out that the first two letters in the word “Europe” could be used for the E.U.
“Hold on,” said Cassie. “You’d switch from one poster to the other, just like that?”
“I don’t give a shit, do I?”
“Don’t you know how you’re going to vote?”
“I’m voting to leave. Too much red tape. Too many Albanians.”
“Albania isn’t in the E.U.”
“Who is then?”
“Spain, France, Poland, Ireland, Germany, Italy . . . You want me to name them all?”
“Poles, then.”
“So why put a poster saying the opposite in the window?”
“If you’re telling me it’s good for business, why wouldn’t I?”
“Because it’s not what you believe.”
“Listen. I can’t stand liver, but I sell it, and I want everyone to buy it. What’s the difference?”
“Liver isn’t a personal philosophy.”
“It sort of is, to me.”
“Not liking liver is a personal philosophy?”
“I’d say so. But I’m a businessman first, philosopher second.”
Second? Joseph thought. That was a generous ranking system. Mark was a ballet dancer more than he was a philosopher, and he was six foot two, twenty-odd stone, and in his mid-fifties.
Cassie seemed to give up at that point, and Joseph couldn’t blame her. They went into the back to put their aprons on.
* * *
—
Mid-morning he got a text from Lucy. They hadn’t spoken for three weeks or so, not since the babysitting. She hadn’t even been into the shop, unless she was timing it very carefully so that she could avoid him. She’d texted him to apologize and he sent one back telling her not to worry, but that was it. She was embarrassed, probably. He missed her, though. He got a boost when she came in, a spark that gave the morning a glow. He went to the toilet to read the text because Mark didn’t like them on their phones in the shop.
She was asking whether he had a lunch hour and, if so, whether he’d like to drop in for eggs and bacon. The boys would like to see him.
She lived a couple of minutes from the shop, so it wasn’t as though he’d los
e any of the break commuting.
am I babysitting he texted back. It was a joke.
Oh. No. Sorry.
That was how she texted. Capital O capital N capital S, with all the full stops. You could tell she was an English teacher, but it was something Joseph liked about her, on top of all the other things. He couldn’t quite say what it was. He didn’t get any other texts as precise as that, so partly it was a sense of being introduced to someone different. And it was sexy, kind of. Why using punctuation in a text was sexy, he couldn’t say, but he found himself wondering what it would be like to sleep with someone like that. He was going to try to be as careful with his messages, at least with her. He couldn’t imagine that she’d find no punctuation as attractive as he found punctuation. She had kids. He didn’t want to be another one.
I get off at 12:30. She wouldn’t be expecting “12:30 am,” would she? Or was it “a.m.”? Except it wasn’t, was it? It was “pm” or “p.m.” He decided to leave it as it was. She’d get the idea.
Fried eggs OK? she texted back.
Yes. And then he added an exclamation mark. Yes!
That sounded friendlier, he thought.
See you then.
* * *
—
Al answered the door. He was holding a tray containing a glass of orange juice, and he had a tea towel over his arm, like a waiter.
“Do come in,” he said. Joseph took the glass and Al disappeared.
He’d never done anything on a Saturday lunchtime apart from buy a sandwich from next door and eat it out the back. But he walked into a room smelling of coffee and bacon. And there was sunlight, toast and marmalade on the table, jazz on the Bluetooth speaker, Lucy at the stove, her hair tied back in a scrunchie. The three-minute walk had taken him into a different universe. She turned to him and smiled.
“Hello. Did he spill the juice?”
Joseph nodded at the glass in his hand. He was trying to work out why she looked different from anyone he knew. She wasn’t wearing very much makeup. And she was wearing a long gray cardigan that by rights shouldn’t have done much for her. It seemed to hang nicely in some way that he couldn’t have described. It wasn’t tight, it wasn’t baggy, and there was no brand visible anywhere. Oh, and the eyebrows: they hadn’t been shaved off and painted back on to make a thick dark line. He didn’t know whether he liked all this because it was different, or because it was her. He knew it was weird, zoning in on the eyebrows, but eyebrows had become a thing the last couple of years, and they freaked him out. He didn’t know what function eyebrows were supposed to perform, but whatever it was, they weren’t there to be looked at. So if you ended up looking, it seemed to him that something had gone wrong.
