‘Those were the days,’ says Jeremy. ‘You could have a slap-up dinner for five bob.’
‘Huh! Forget that. You could get a bottle of Mateus Rosé, an abortion and a house in Scunthorpe and still have change from a hundred quid.’
We muse nostalgically on the past, on avocado bathroom suites and other style icons of the period. ‘Where are they now, all those fondue sets and chicken bricks?’ he asks.
‘Those orange enamel coffee pots that burnt your fingers.’
‘That bottle of Hirondelle, still being carried from party to party because it’s too disgusting for anyone to drink.’
‘Your Triumph Stag.’
He groans. ‘Ah, my Triumph Stag.’
‘Mobile phones as big as bricks.’
‘Cliff Michelmore.’
He laughs his booming laugh. Then he looks at me, sighs, and says a lovely thing. ‘Know something? Men who run off with younger women are such nincompoops. They can’t have conversations like this. Must be so bloody lonely.’
Needless to say, I agree. ‘They’d have to talk about bands they’d never heard of.’
‘And punk.’
‘That’s so over. Like, decades ago.’
‘Exactly.’ He sighs. ‘And the worst thing is, the bloke would have to pretend to be interested.’
‘Poor sod.’
‘Christ, yes. It’s giving me a headache, just thinking about it.’
‘And they’d want babies.’
He nods. ‘And the poor bastard has to pretend that he does too.’
‘And lo and behold he’s pushing a double buggy around Aldi with two squalling brats and his dodgy knee’s playing up and he’s thinking is it really worth it, just for a firm young body with firm young breasts.’
Jeremy tilts his head, considering this. ‘Put like that, it does sound rather appealing.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Anyway, what’s Aldi?’
‘See? You won’t get anywhere, you’re hopelessly out of touch.’
Jeremy agrees with me as we shovel down our spaghetti in the sepulchral restaurant. He’s tucked his napkin into his collar, like a bib – the way he eats, it’s only too necessary. I tell him he looks like an elderly baby. This leads on to infantilism in general and from there, naturally, to gentlemen’s clubs and the pleasures of nursery food. We have a disagreement about blancmange. Discussion of milky puddings leads on to cows in general and I tell him about the methane explosion in Lincolnshire, to which he gratifyingly reacts. This leads, somehow or other, to beards on men: for or against (both against) and from there, for some reason, to printers – why does the paper always get stuck? We then have a heated argument about large versus small dogs, with him sticking up for Jack Russells. We nearly come to blows over this one.
Jeremy refills my glass with Chianti from, believe it or not, one of those raffia-clad bottles that people used to make into lamps. And I’m thinking: here we are, eating arguably the worst meal in the West End, but I bet we’re having the most fun.
That night I sleep deeply, the first time in months. When I wake the sun is glowing through the blinds. The grey-green walls, painted by my ex-husband, are stained in several places where the rain has leaked in. He painted them so long ago that our son’s voice was still unbroken; I remember him calling to his dad who was up his customary ladder. Looking around the room, I realize that to an outsider this has become the shabby home of an old lady. I know I must do something with my life – redecorate the house, move to the country, move to Spain, move to Seattle and be an interfering grandmother. Cop off with the guy at the dry cleaner’s and become a dutiful Muslim wife, that would give my friends something to talk about. I’ve been gripped, for too many years, by a fretful inertia.
This morning, however, I feel energized. I stretch my limbs under the duvet – my long, slim thighs. My whole body feels invigorated, oxygen coursing through my veins. My brain’s buzzing. I remember a news story I read a few days ago. It was about greyhound racing. The London stadiums have been closing down – Catford, Wembley, Walthamstow. One of the reasons, apparently, is that distemper has been discovered in the dogs, so they can’t be moved around the tracks for fear of contamination. This has resulted in the closure of the racetracks and their redevelopment as luxury flats.
The talk about the Kikanda and corruption has set me thinking. What if there’s a crooked vet? They’re in cahoots with the property developers so they misdiagnose the dogs and get a cut of the profits! I’ll tell my theory to Jeremy and see his reaction. We’re meeting this afternoon, to go shopping.
‘Do I really look like an arms dealer?’
I nod. ‘A dodgy Russian one, on holiday in the Black Sea.’
He’s wearing another loud shirt, this time patterned with palm trees.
‘Bev did say it was a bit vulgar. I bought it in Penang, when we lived in KL.’
‘I think you should go for the crumpled linen look, like men in washed-up tropical bars in Graham Greene novels.’
He laughs. ‘Not at all dodgy, then.’
‘OK, dodgy but …’
‘Better written.’
We’ve met in the lobby of his hotel, which is just off the Bayswater Road. I’m going to take him to Uniqlo, a shop he’s never heard of, to help him buy clothes.
We step into the street. It’s another glorious day, the hottest April in years. Along the pavement, 4×4s with tinted windows are parked, their engines running. Their occupants sit in Hyde Park, sheikhs’ wives burqa’d up to the eyeballs, eating picnics with their children. Jeremy remarks that London’s a foreign city to him now, which gives me a feeling of superiority. Girls wearing flimsy summer dresses walk past, chattering on their mobiles. He says that everyone in Africa has a mobile, it has transformed their lives. When he says Africa his voice softens, he obviously loves the place. He says the remotest tribesmen, herding their cattle, have phones clamped to their ears as they listen to the football results. He says that in every town, on market-day, a guy sits in a booth recharging mobiles, due to the lack of electricity.
Suddenly I long to go there. I’ve only been to Africa once, on safari in Kenya when the kids were small. The Masai danced for us as the shutters clicked; I could see the aristocratic contempt on their faces. Paul, my husband, kept missing the perfect shot. The moment we spotted a lion his battery had died; Kenya echoed to his curses.
Cameras clicking, the Kikanda clicking and whistling. My husband never whistled, up on his ladder. What was their secret, those hunter-gatherers who had no cornices to clean? What had Paul and I missed, all those years? Why had that happiness evaporated? Because we had been happy, for a while.
And now we’re in Uniqlo and, like a wife, I’m holding up a shirt for Jeremy’s inspection. He takes a blue one and a red one. He’s fallen uncharacteristically silent. I’m wondering if he’s thinking what I’m thinking, the wife thing. Perhaps he’s missing Bev, who must have done this with him a thousand times. Tiny, girly Bev, with her tinkly laugh and glossy chestnut hair.
The lighting is pitiless. I catch sight of myself in the mirror, tall and gaunt. My face is blanched. Nobody says this about ageing, how the glow bleaches out until one gradually becomes colourless, like an etching of one’s own self-portrait. The tiny lines, of course, add to this effect. How has Bev aged? I haven’t seen her for years but in the countless photos she posts on Facebook she looks exactly the same. She and I are such a contrast – she small and curvy, me tall and skinny. Somebody once compared us to a chihuahua and a lurcher.
Jeremy buys the shirts and now we’re chattering again. We’re discussing The News Quiz, a programme to which we’re both addicted on our different continents. From there we get on to Japanese food. Jeremy, who has lived out there, loves it. I say I find Japanese restaurants sterile and beige and painfully polite.
‘I mean, who’s ever had sex after a Japanese meal?’
‘The Japanese, I expect.’
We leave the purgatory of Oxford Stree
t and saunter through Soho. Jeremy was at some funding meeting this morning but has the rest of the day free so I suggest a cup of tea at my favourite place in the world, Maison Bertaux. I know I should be working on the Prague book but he’s only here for a few days and it seems a shame to sit at my computer. This truanting is becoming a habit.
We walk down Dean Street in companionable silence. Over the past couple of days we’ve been together so much that our conversation ebbs and flows like a married couple’s. My life isn’t usually like this. It’s staccato. Friends come and go – a meal, the cinema – and then there’s a gap till we see each other again. It’s what happens in a city when you live on your own; there’s no continuity, you can’t work up a rhythm with anybody. I realize how much I miss it.
‘Good God, they’re all poofters!’
‘Duh.’ I nudge him with my elbow. ‘Do keep up.’
Jeremy is astonished by the change in Soho. He hasn’t been here for years and there’s been a population transfusion. The hookers and bohemians have disappeared, to be replaced by men on the prowl. It’s only four o’clock but the pavement’s crowded with them, knocking back the Peroni. They glance through Jeremy without interest and turn back to each other.
‘You’re old, you’re invisible!’ I crow. ‘Join the club.’
As we walk along he tells me about the geography teacher at his public school. The man used to fondle the boys’ buttocks when they gave in their work but Jeremy says it never did him any harm.
‘Don’t be so bloody English,’ I snap. ‘It must’ve had some effect on you, you’ve just buried it.’
My mood has changed; I’m feeling combative. Choosing the shirts has upset me, for reasons I don’t care to admit.
And then, over tea in Bertaux, fairy lights in the window, he says: ‘Actually I did go to a shrink. When I was nineteen and started having nightmares. I booked myself with a woman in Acton.’ He straightens the fork beside his plate. ‘Don’t know if she was Freudian or Jungian or anything, you’d know more about that sort of thing. But she was very kind, though a little whiskery in the chin area, and she made me feel it wasn’t my fault.’ He raises his fleshy, tanned face and looks at me. ‘Know something? I’ve never told anyone that.’
I feel a jolt of pleasure. ‘Nothing wrong with going to a shrink. Join the club.’
‘That’s the second one today, can I get reduced membership?’
I laugh. The mood changes, yet again. As we eat chocolate éclairs we talk about our favourite places and how they feel so fragile just because we love them. This magical, old-fashioned teashop, for instance – I keep thinking that one day I’ll walk down the street and find it’s become a Specsavers. It will all have been a dream. Cities reinvent themselves all the time, of course, dream upon dream, but Jeremy’s London is different. It’s not organic, it shunts forwards in a series of jolts. Suddenly it’s full of Nigerian money-changers and Albanian rickshaw-drivers and skyscrapers casting new shadows on streets that have themselves become unrecognizable. It’s like me with relationships – there’s no continuity.
‘I can feel a routine starting up,’ says Jeremy. ‘Can we have tea every day? You can’t get a decent cuppa in Africa for love or money, tastes like floor sweepings.’ He grins. ‘I’ll get even fatter, of course, but what the hell.’
A man comes in who Jeremy swears is Jack Nicholson. He sits in a corner table and rummages in a Hamleys carrier bag.
‘That’s not Jack Nicholson.’
‘Yes it is,’ says Jeremy in a hoarse whisper. ‘He’s bought toys for his grandchildren.’
‘He’s not Jack Nicholson. Lots of people look like Jack Nicholson. He’s wearing dirty old trainers.’
‘Bet you a fiver.’
At this point the man takes out his mobile and starts speaking in Russian. This leads on to sightings of other allegedly famous people.
‘I once saw Tina Turner,’ I tell him. ‘She was coming out of Fags and Mags in Frith Street.’
‘Don’t be silly. It must have been an elderly hooker.’
We mourn the disappearance of tarts from Soho. Property developers are cleaning the place up with the excuse that the girls are trafficked.
‘I’ve never been to a prostitute,’ says Jeremy. ‘But it’s nice to know they’re there. Like church.’
Talk of property developers leads on to my theory about greyhound racetracks and crooked vets. Jeremy is impressed by my suspicious mind, and admits to a certain lawlessness when he was young. The boldest one was pushing a car into a river to collect on the insurance. This doesn’t surprise me. Meanwhile, at the far table, Jack Nicholson is blowing his nose on a crumpled length of lavatory paper. Jeremy wordlessly passes me a five-pound note.
It’s like yesterday. People come and go but we remain here, rocks washed by the incoming and retreating waves. We’ve lost track of time; when I look at my watch it’s six-thirty.
‘Do you need to be anywhere?’ asks Jeremy.
‘No.’
‘Good-oh. Shall we see some culture? We were hopeless yesterday. What about the theatre? Anything good on? My treat.’
King Lear is playing at the Donmar Warehouse, just down the road. I’ve read rave reviews. ‘It’s got a famous American film star in it,’ I say. ‘Either Al Pacino or Robert De Niro.’
‘Or Jack Nicholson.’
‘When he’s finished his tea.’
When we arrive, however, we find it’s a sell-out. The queue for returns stretches down the street.
‘What a relief,’ says Jeremy. ‘It doesn’t half go on. I did it for O levels.’
‘We can’t cop out of everything.’
‘Oh yes we can.’ He stops dead in the middle of the road. ‘Do you realize we’re playing truant from playing truant?’
Then I have an idea. ‘Let’s go in and watch it on the monitor. There’s one in the bar. Won’t cost us anything, either.’
His face lights up. ‘You mean we can drink at the same time?’
We squeeze our way through the crowded lobby. The bar’s on the first floor. Trouble is, our way’s blocked by an usherette who stands at the foot of the stairs, checking tickets.
Jeremy, undaunted by this, gives her a big smile. ‘Hi, gorgeous. Our friends have the tickets and they’re up in the bar.’
We breeze through, fuelled by Jeremy’s public-school chutzpah. It reminds me of something Bev told me, a long time ago. She and Jeremy had been given tickets to the opera, and he was wearing a dinner jacket. Afterwards they went to a restaurant but no waiters appeared and the other diners were getting restless. So Jeremy got up, draped a napkin over his arm and went round the room taking orders. And he did it with such aplomb that nobody realized he wasn’t a waiter.
So we sit in the bar with a bottle of Sauvignon and soon the bell rings and the place empties. The monitor is high up on the wall. Its screen is so blurred that we can’t work out who the famous actor is; nor can we quite hear the words. It doesn’t matter because we know the story and can supply the dialogue ourselves. You ungrateful cow, is that the way to treat your father? Jeremy pours a glass of wine for the chap behind the bar and we have ourselves a party. More of a hoot, he says, than sitting through the arse-numbing boredom of the thing. And we do know the ending.
Bev met Jeremy when she was working in a doctor’s surgery in Barons Court; he came in with a rugby injury. She was the nurse so she stitched him up. That evening, when she came back to the flat, she told me all about him. Never afraid of a cliché, she called him a big bear of a man.
A few weeks later she took out the stitches. Apparently Jeremy talked so much she gave him a playful slap to shut him up. Jeremy had been brought up by nannies and no doubt found this arousing; he asked her out for a drink and at the end of the evening drove her home in his Triumph Stag – nobody thought twice about drink-driving then.
Bev and I had a tiny bedroom each. Mine was in the freezing extension at the back of the flat, separated from our equally small bathroom by a
flimsy wall. The first I heard of Jeremy was the sound of someone, unmistakably a man, vigorously pissing.
In those days he was more of a Hooray Henry than he is now, and not my type at all. Still isn’t, really. Political correctness hadn’t been invented but he would have enjoyed winding people up. No, he was far too straight for me in those days, too saloon-bar buffoon.
But then Bev wasn’t my type either. She was a real girl, with girly interests and girly curves. She spent hours blow-drying her hair. Nobody could call her an intellectual but she had plenty of native cunning, especially where men were concerned. She could, as she said, twist them around her little finger, the dears.
I know I sound critical of Bev but we had a lot of fun together. We go back so far, and so deep, that whether I like her or not is irrelevant. We were in the same class at school, up in Chester, and lost touch for a while when I went to university. But then, when I came down to London, I found she was planning to do the same. So we rented the basement in Pimlico and moved in together, principally because we didn’t know anyone else. I would never have chosen her but she was like family, and you don’t choose them.
And we got along fine. Though she disapproved of drugs she was chatty and feisty and up for adventure. She came from a tough background and was determined to make the most of her life. I admired her for this. And we did, as she put it, have lotsa laughs. Our tastes were different; she had framed pictures of kittens on her wall and a row of teddies – teddies – on her bed. No books. Pastel, suburban outfits. Apart from the flower stencils on her wall, the hippy revolution had passed her by.
And we never fell for the same man.
When she met Jeremy she was determined to have him. To have him and marry him. Bev longed to get married; it was her life’s ambition and she was quite open about it. At the time Jeremy had an on-off girlfriend, a childhood sweetheart, but Bev soon saw her off – basically, by shagging him into submission.
I was with Brendan at the time – Brendan, the sweet, weedy stoner. I remember one evening when he was waiting for me in bed. I was in the bathroom, inserting my diaphragm. As I sat on the lavatory, legs splayed, fingers slippery with spermicidal jelly, rhythmic thuds came through the wall. I could hear Bev’s muffled cries – screams, in fact – as I pushed the cap up my fanny. There was something pervily intimate about this; also something competitive, as if she was saying, I’ve got a real man, just listen to me! A real man who can fuck my brains out, and you’ve got a no-hope runt!
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