by Nick Hornby
“What about orange juice?”
“Unless you want to do shots.”
He was going to have to say yes to something soon, but he had no intention of doing shots either.
“I think I’ll have a vodka and orange.”
He got the bottle out of the freezer, the juice out of the fridge, and a couple of glasses. Jaz watched him pour the vodka.
“We’ll need a bit more than that. Won’t even know we’ve had a drink.”
He had always had this streak of . . . Well, he didn’t know what you’d call it. Self-denial? Obedience? Something to do with the Church? A lot of it came from wanting to stay fit for as long as he possibly could. His weight hadn’t changed since he was eighteen, and the shape of his body was important to him. That explained the chicken pie and the Coke, the vodka, even. He was disappointed that he wasn’t more interested in Jaz, though. That was nothing to do with fitness. It wasn’t anything to do with the Church, either.
“I don’t even know what you do,” said Joseph.
“I’m at college.”
“Yeah? What are you studying?”
“Tourism and Hospitality Management at South Bank. This is my last year.”
“Then what?”
“I dunno. Hotels, probably. I’d like to go and work somewhere else. Out of England.”
“You don’t like it here?”
“Who likes it here? Gray, expensive, pisses with rain all the time.”
“I don’t mind it.”
He didn’t know if that was true, but he felt defensive. He didn’t want to move anywhere else, so unless he stuck up for the country, he’d be admitting a lack of ambition, and yet more self-denial.
“Where do you want to go?”
“The States. California.”
“Don’t you need a visa?”
Visas! He was depressing himself. He hated to think what he was doing to her.
“Fucking hell,” said Jaz. “I thought this was going to be the easiest whatever, hookup, in the history of the world. Good-looking boy, single, seemed interested in me. And now he wants to go all negative about my travel arrangements for something I probably won’t do in ten years’ time.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to be disappointed.”
“Thank you. Are you going to kiss me or what?”
“You still want to?”
“I’m not enjoying the chat much, so . . .”
Joseph laughed and kissed her. He could feel himself respond, but the response felt inappropriate, disconnected. He was going back to the idea that there was more than one kind of hot. There was the Jaz kind, with the hotness apparently independent of, and maybe even fighting with, the actual person. And then there was the Lucy kind, where the heat seemed to intensify the more you got to know her. Could that be right? If so, it seemed troublesome.
Suddenly, without any warning, Jaz began to sing—Beyoncé, “Drunk in Love.” The bit about waking up in the kitchen saying how the hell did this shit happen. Jaz’s voice was so unexpected, so powerful and husky and distinctive, that Joseph laughed.
“Jesus.”
“Yeah,” said Jaz. “I got that too.”
“You’re incredible.”
Jaz shrugged, as if to say, I told you so.
“Where’s your bedroom?” said Jaz.
“My bedroom?”
“Yeah. Your bedroom. Strike while the iron is hot.”
“Who’s got a hot iron?”
He honestly hadn’t meant it to sound smutty, or flirty. He was just trying to work out how the metaphor worked. Had the singing made her iron hot? Or did she think the singing would have conquered any lingering resistance?
“I’m hoping you,” she said. And the effect of the kiss shrank away. At that moment, he realized properly that he wanted someone else.
“Yeah, listen,” said Joseph. “I think this might be going a bit quick for me.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Maybe we should go out a couple more times.”
“What?”
She seemed to be literally unable to understand what he was saying, and he could see why. He could hardly believe it either. Something had happened to him. A beautiful girl wanted to know where his bedroom was, and he didn’t want to tell her.
“I’m not interested in marrying you,” said Jaz.
Absurdly, he felt a little sting of rejection.
“How did you work that out so quickly?”
“What, you want to marry me?”
“No, see, the thing is, I am sort of with somebody.”
“Ah, you fucking lying bastard.”
“I’m not with them with them, but . . .”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I dunno.”
“Well, think.”
He could understand why she would want clarification.
“I wasn’t with anyone when you asked me out.”
“Who asked who out?” said Jaz, outraged. That was less reasonable.
“Well, whoever asked who out, I wasn’t with anyone. But since then, things have moved on.”
“You asked me out two days ago!”
“Yeah. I know. But something I thought was dead came back to life.”
“When?”
Given the timescale, he didn’t have too many options for this answer.
“Yesterday.”
“Yesterday?”
“I know. It’s weird. Affairs of the heart have their own timings.”
There were many things about this conversation that would later make him shrivel up inside, but this was the line that he regretted the most. Where had it come from? An old film? A book he’d had to study? He’d been groping around for something that sounded grown-up, but he’d shot right through adulthood and out the other side.
“Is that another of your jobs? Writing shit Valentine’s cards?”
Joseph laughed. It was funny. But Jaz didn’t think it was a laughing matter, and went home. Her voice, the power and the shock of it, stayed in the room after she’d gone.
5
The church they attended didn’t look like a church. A long time ago, it had been a library, but it was an old building, dating from some time in the nineteenth century, and that was enough for Joseph’s mother. Its high ceilings and Victorian brick meant that she could be patronizing about the places of worship, mostly African, that had taken root in betting shops and supermarkets all over Tottenham. “Those poor people,” she said as they passed them on the bus, but there was no pity in her voice, only superiority. She needed the status gap.
Joseph always regretted going to church. He didn’t believe in God, but the Kingdom of Heaven Baptist Church didn’t believe in letting you disbelieve quietly at the back, and neither did his mother. He had to be on his feet, praising Him at the top of his voice, otherwise he’d get a nudge. One day he would tell his mother that he wasn’t devout enough for the kind of effort required.
His phone pinged during the sermon, and he apologized in a whisper to his mother straight away, but she wasn’t happy, and the disrespect would not be forgotten. He took the phone out of his pocket to turn it off, but not before he’d seen that it was a text from Lucy: Free tonight? How was date? He replied as soon as they were outside. His mother was talking to an old lady in a wheelchair, something she always did on Sunday morning. If he wanted to be cynical, he’d allow himself to observe that she seemed to make a great big song and dance out of talking to the lady in the wheelchair, like it was an enormous gesture of Christian charity.
Date bad. What time?
Do you want to eat with us? 6:30?
Great.
* * *
—
“Your sister’s coming up for dinner tonight,” his mother said when they were waiting for the bus.
/>
“Tell her to go round and see Chris first.”
“She doesn’t want to see him.”
“He’s all right at the moment. I went round the other day. He’s full of it.”
“Full of what?”
“The referendum. He thinks that if we leave the E.U. he’s going to be earning a lot more.”
“Lord help us.”
“You don’t want him earning more?”
“I’m the only British person nursing on the ward at the moment. The rest are all Polish and Hungarian and Spanish. If we send them back, then we might as well pack up and go home.”
“So you’re voting to stay in?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“He says all the Eastern Europeans are bringing his wages down.”
“People say that.”
“So who’s right?”
“I don’t know. But there are more N.H.S. patients than there are scaffolders. Anyway. We’ll be eating at half six.”
“Oh,” said Joseph. “I’m out tonight.”
“No, you’re not. You’re eating dinner with your sister.”
“I’m babysitting. For Lucy. I’d be letting her down. You should have told me sooner.”
“I didn’t know sooner.”
“When did she tell you, then? Because you didn’t tell me before church, and then you turned your phone off.”
“Why do you have to jump when this Lucy woman says jump?”
“She’s not saying ‘jump.’ She’s asking if I can babysit. I can always say no.”
“So say no.”
“I’ve already said yes. Plus I like earning the money.”
“What time do you have to leave?”
“Six.”
“Six? On a Sunday? What’s she doing at six on a Sunday?”
“I didn’t ask her, Mum. Would it make a difference if I found out?”
The Sunday mornings his mother had worked the night before and went straight to church were to be endured, and Joseph usually managed it. She slept in the afternoons, after lunch, but before she’d eaten and gone to bed she was tired and bad-tempered. If he ever made any money from music, he’d try to get her to stop working, but she loved being a nurse, and being a nurse meant working irregular hours.
“Yes, it would. You have a family arrangement.”
“Are you being serious?”
“I don’t know why she can’t take her children with her to wherever it is she’s going. It’s early. Or maybe she could go later. It’s at least worth asking the questions.”
He phoned Lucy.
“Hi,” she said. “Everything all right for this evening?”
“Well. My mum wondered whether you could take the boys to wherever it is you’re going, because I promised to have dinner with her.”
“I wasn’t taking them anywhere. You were coming here to eat, and then I was going out.”
“Oh. I see.”
“You knew that, right?”
“Yes.”
“Is she listening to you?”
“Of course.”
“You should have dinner with your mum.”
“No, no. I can see that.”
He wasn’t sure where this was going, or how to get there, but if he ended the call, the journey would be over, and for some reason he didn’t want that. There was something happening.
“I don’t know what to say,” said Lucy.
There was a pause.
“Right,” said Joseph eventually, and he hoped thoughtfully.
“How about this?” Lucy said. “If it’s not tonight it will be another night, soon. Because we were really looking forward to seeing you. All of us. I wish I wasn’t going out.”
That was enough. That was more than he’d expected or needed.
“Oh, no,” said Joseph. “I’m really sorry to hear that. I hope she’s OK. See you later.”
“Her mother,” he said when he’d ended the call. “She’s been taken ill.”
“So you must go.” He knew she’d say that.
“I know.”
“And don’t be late.”
“I wasn’t going to be.”
The social occasion at which his mother might talk to Lucy and discover that her mother was as fit as a fiddle was hard for Joseph to imagine. They’d get on, though, he knew that. Teaching and nursing were both jobs where you had to get on with everybody. And suddenly Joseph realized that his mother and Lucy were about the same age, and he felt sick. They were nearly the same age! He wanted to have sex with someone the same age as his mother!
“Just going on my Xbox for a bit, Mum. Go to bed.”
“I need my breakfast.”
He went to his room, got out his phone, and started googling people born in 1973 and 1974, people the same age as Lucy and his mother. Victoria Beckham. Penélope Cruz. Kate Moss. Tyra Banks. A lot of porn actresses he’d never heard of but who were porn actresses, which told him all he needed to know about their general lack of motherliness. There was nothing wrong with finding a forty-two-year-old attractive, judging from these pictures. The problem wasn’t Lucy but his mother. Why did she look twenty years older than anyone here? She had given up on that side of life, the world of men and sex and dating, and she didn’t seem that bothered. She was large, and she had trouble with her knees and her ankles. Was it just the lack of money that made her seem so old? Or had he and Grace contributed to it in some way? They had been good kids, mostly. His dad hadn’t helped. But really, it was nothing to do with the behavior of people, Joseph didn’t think. Maybe if his mother had been a Spice Girl and married an England international, she’d be more like Victoria Beckham now. That was a weird idea, and Joseph didn’t want to spend much time thinking about it.
* * *
—
While Lucy was cooking, and the boys were playing on the Xbox, she tried, in a desultory fashion, to find somewhere to go for the evening. She’d told Joseph she wished she didn’t have to go out, so she should at least make an effort to find a commitment to someone or something. She texted a couple of friends who couldn’t possibly be available at this sort of notice on a Sunday evening, friends who would be dealing with tearful or stroppy children who hadn’t done their homework or who were on their way back, tired and frustrated, from a trip to see grandparents. Are you OK? Can come out if emergency, Chrissy texted back. No emergency, she said. Just thought it would be fun to listen to music or something. Chrissy would think that these texts alone were evidence of a breakdown. Who thought going out on a Sunday night was fun?
And even if someone had taken her up on the invitation, there was every chance Lucy would have canceled at the last minute, which would only have added to the impression of irritating eccentricity. She wanted to have some sort of conversation with Joseph, although she didn’t know the shape or content. Or maybe she was merely pretending that she didn’t know. She was sending these texts just because she wanted to somehow fool herself into believing that the babysitting hadn’t been entirely phony.
* * *
—
The only trouble was, she lost her nerve. She should have told Joseph the moment he came in that her evening had been canceled, but she didn’t; and then, after they’d eaten, and he’d persuaded the boys not only to put their plates in the dishwasher but also to begin on the washing-up, he asked her where she was off to, and she said she was going out with a friend to see some music.
“Great,” said Joseph. “What’s the music?”
She could, of course, have said that she was going out for a drink, and sat in the pub for an hour on her own if necessary. Or she could have said that she was going to see a movie, and then gone to see a movie. But her mad text to Chrissy had somehow been filed away temporarily in her mouth, for immediate retrieval.
“Just this thing in Islington.�
�
“Right,” said Joseph. He was obviously reluctant to press her further, because he could tell that she was hiding something.
“Nothing secret,” she said.
“I don’t mind if you go to secret music.”
“No, it’s not the music that’s not secret. I just meant, it’s not a secret assignation or anything.”
“OK.”
He was humoring her. She was being humored by a twenty-two-year-old.
“I’m going with my friend Chrissy. To see a jazz saxophonist friend.”
“Cool.”
She didn’t know where these details were coming from. Every word she said seemed to make life more difficult. “Chrissy”—unavailable. “Jazz”—knew nothing about it, and certainly didn’t know where people played it on a Sunday evening. “Saxophonist friend”—particularly embarrassing, the pathetic fantasy of a middle-aged woman whose friends were all teachers or lawyers or had their own interior-design companies.
“Anyway,” she said. “Gosh. I’d better go. I won’t be late back.”
And she put on her denim jacket, picked up the car keys, and walked out the door.
* * *
—
She got in the car and drove south, and ended up following signs to Regent’s Park. She was glad that the clocks had gone forward, and the evenings were now light. She parked on the Inner Circle, and then walked in through the gates. It was a relief to be alone. During the drive, she’d realized that she was clueless, without a plan—and she’d always had a plan, more or less since the last couple of years at school. She had wanted to be head girl, and then she had wanted to go to college, and on and on it went, marriage, children, promotions, hurdles jumped over with relative ease. But she’d been thrown by men, first Paul and now Joseph, and she couldn’t work out how to rejoin the race, or where on earth it would finish if she did.
Paul was the more violent of the two throws, of course. Nobody could have survived that without a couple of broken bones and a nosebleed. But the response, the head-girl response, was to take some time off sick, and then plod along—another promotion, maybe a sensible divorcée partner, maybe even a second marriage. But her feelings for Joseph troubled her because they were so flaky. What was she supposed to do with a twenty-two-year-old? Where did he take her? Because of Joseph, she really didn’t know what she was going to do in the next five minutes, let alone the next five years. She was making things up as she went along, and the story she had come up with was wobbly and unconvincing. Her friend the saxophonist was merely a tragicomic representation of her third-rate imagination.
