He raised his hand and smiled.
Julia gave him a long ‘are you who I think you are?’ peer before approaching his table.
‘Matt?’ she said.
‘Julia?’
She sat. ‘I have no idea why I said yes to this,’ said Julia.
‘Me too,’ said Matt.
‘What do you mean? You phoned me.’
‘I just mean it’s almost like a blind date. It seems a bit mad. But I’m glad you came.’
‘Good. Good. I wouldn’t normally say yes to a thing like this, but you caught me right in the middle of something, so I just said it without thinking, then I didn’t have your number so I couldn’t ring back and change my mind.’
‘That’s a shame,’ said Matt.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I just mean I’m sorry. If it seems like an imposition. Let’s order, shall we? I’m having the lamb. No starter for me. Had a late lunch. Don’t let me stop you, though.’
He could be out of there within the hour, he thought. They’d both be glad to get it over with, by the sound of it. Why had he agreed to this? What on earth had he been trying to prove?
She, too, ordered no starter, and when the waiter left them alone, menuless, a long silence threatened to smother their table.
Julia eventually said, ‘So, your job’s beneath you?’
‘What?’
‘Your mum told me your job’s beneath you.’
‘Oh, God. Did she? There’s something twisted about this. Going on a date with someone your mother met first. I don’t think I’m going to be able to relax.’
‘We spent less than ten minutes together.’
‘With my mum that’s enough. God knows what else she said about me.’
‘That was it. More or less. Can’t remember the rest.’
‘I’m sure that’s a good thing.’
‘And is it true?’
‘What?’
‘That your job’s beneath you.’
‘I reckon every mother thinks that about their son.’
‘I didn’t ask you if it’s true that she thinks it, I asked you if it’s true.’
There was a glint in her eye that made him look at her again. She may not have been beautiful, but there was something combative about the way she behaved that was just a little bit sexy. She clearly wasn’t a lie-there-and-wait-for-it-to-be-over kind of girl.
‘If I say yes to that question, you’ll think I’m arrogant, won’t you?’
‘Not necessarily. And I didn’t ask you what you think I’ll think. I just asked you for the truth.’
‘The truth? Well, you do your job as well as you can, don’t you? Whatever it is. Even if you don’t really believe in it. I mean, there’s no point in doing anything badly, is there?’
‘You work at BALLS!?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s what I forgot when I said yes to this date. That’s why I wanted to phone back and change my mind. I wasn’t going to turn up, then I thought I shouldn’t be a coward. I mean, you go away stronger, don’t you, if you prove to yourself that you can look your enemy in the eye.’
She sat back in her chair, folded her arms, and stared at him intently.
‘Wow! Is that your chat-up line?’
‘This wine’s not bad.’
‘That’s why you’re here? To look your enemy in the eye?’
‘Yes,’ she said, looking him in the eye, not blinking. A trace of a smirk was playing at the corner of her lips. She had a good mouth, this woman, an intelligent mouth. Not that an orifice can have an IQ, but the way she used it seemed always to give an intriguing hint that there was something extra, something privately amusing she was choosing not to say.
‘And why am I your enemy?’ said Matt, leaning forwards in his chair, making it clear that he wasn’t intimidated by her stare and that he wasn’t going to be the one to break off eye contact.
‘You’re the enemy of all women,’ she said. ‘You and your magazine.’
Matt found himself grinning. This was, without doubt, the worst date he had ever been on. He’d come across many strange romantic endearments in his time, but ‘you’re the enemy’ wasn’t one of them. This whole scenario was so far off the scale of badness that he was puzzled to find he was enjoying himself. The vast majority of first dates or blind dates were one long slog to fend off boredom or indifference. This was much better than that. And the more she insulted him, the more he found he liked her.
He took a big gulp of wine, glancing at his glass as he did so, conceding defeat in the staring contest. She was good. ‘I’m not going to defend BALLS! to you,’ said Matt. ‘If you think it’s shit, I’m not going to change your mind. In fact, I think it’s shit. We probably agree.’
‘Except that you work there.’
‘That doesn’t make me your enemy.’
‘Doesn’t it?’
‘Maybe I’m a double agent, working to undermine it from the inside.’
‘Are you?’
‘Not yet. Perhaps I should be.’
‘That would be good. Do you reckon you could get a story printed that was an apology to all women and a retraction of every article you’ve ever published?’
‘That’s a good idea. I’ll put it up at the next editorial meeting.’
‘I don’t think you’re taking me seriously.’
‘Let’s not talk about BALLS! all evening. It’s not worth it. You think it’s crap. I think it’s crap. End of story. And you know what? I do think my job’s beneath me, but I don’t go around moaning about it because that’s also beneath me. If I really meant it I’d go and get a different job, and maybe at some point I will, but it’s not so easy, and sometimes you end up doing jobs you don’t like and you just have to knuckle down and get on with it until you find a way out.’
‘You’re going to leave?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve been doing some thinking lately, and . . . you know . . . oh, you don’t want to hear all this. You don’t even know me. Why would you be interested?’
‘I’ll tell you if I get bored,’ she said. She was still staring at him, but for the time being she appeared to have given up on the not blinking.
It struck Matt that out of everyone he knew, he couldn’t think of a single person with whom he could have this kind of conversation. His entire social circle either worked with him, or moved in worlds somehow connected to his work. Everyone he met either thought or pretended to think that BALLS! was a valid and worthwhile exercise. To discuss it in any other terms was as taboo as telling a fat person that they are fat.
‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I’m enjoying this. You’re all right.’
‘You sound surprised.’
‘It’s just funny, isn’t it? That you came here to tell me you hate me, and it’s had the opposite effect.’
‘The opposite effect? You think I’ve changed my mind?’
‘I just meant it must be weird for you that I keep agreeing with you.’
‘I suppose it is, a bit.’
‘You probably wanted me to hate you back.’
‘It would have been nice.’
‘I can see that. Sorry to be a disappointment.’
‘That’s OK,’ she said, with a half-smile. ‘We can work on it.’
As Matt sloshed out two large top-ups, it occurred to him that maybe his mother wasn’t as mad as she seemed. You couldn’t judge someone’s sex appeal on a quick glance. It was when you saw how a woman talked and moved and used her eyes, mouth and hands that you knew. The models he had slept with were always beautiful, but never sexy. Precisely what they were missing, Julia had. It came off her like a radiator gives off heat.
In the end, the meal lasted three hours, with dessert, then coffee, then a couple of brandies each. For Matt, it felt a little like a holiday romance, when you meet someone from another world and find yourself lying on your back, looking at the stars, talking about your life in a fresh, open and dreamy way. He felt as if he could say anyth
ing to her, and was surprised to find how unfamiliar this sensation was.
The difference, he realised, was one of tone, of sincerity. He could talk about anything, more or less, with his friends – there were no boundaries of taste, vulgarity or frankness – but it simply wasn’t done to be too sincere. His social group dealt with sincerity in the way he imagined Victorians might have handled flatulence: it was to be avoided at all costs, and if some slipped out by accident, everyone present was honour bound to pretend it hadn’t happened, and to move the conversation on as seamlessly as possible.
At one point in the evening, Matt realised he’d been talking too much and turned the conversation round, asking Julia what she did and what her ambitions were. This was the way teenagers spoke to one another when they were up past their bedtime, and Matt was loving it.
In fact, he was so excited by the type of conversation they were having that his side of the interrogation didn’t go very far. He was having such fun asking teenager-type questions that he found himself concentrating more on what else he could ask her than on listening to the answers she gave. It was something of a novelty for Matt to be asking anyone anything, and as he struggled to keep his side of the conversation flowing, he recognised that his technique in this area was rusty.
It wasn’t his fault, though. It was the world he lived in. Among his colleagues, the ability to listen was about as useful a skill as knowing how to light a fire with twigs. His peers exchanged information fluently and wittily enough, but no one really listened, asked or probed. You might be challenged and needled on an abstract argument – plenty of people would dig away at a factual or logical flaw in something you said – but no one would ever draw out another person’s ideas or feelings.
As Matt got to the end of this thought, he realised that Julia had stopped talking. She had answered his previous question, which he could no longer remember, and he hadn’t heard her answer. He wanted to ask her to repeat herself; he wanted to explain to her that the only reason he hadn’t responded was because he’d been suddenly struck by how awful it was that he and his friends had lost the ability to listen, but he didn’t feel confident he could get this idea across in a way that would show him in a flattering light. Instead, he opted for a sympathetic nod and an intense stare. If he gave the impression he was thinking deeply about what she said, he could rely on her to move the conversation forwards without too much of an embarrassing glitch.
He didn’t even try and get her into bed. With a woman like Julia, you had to play the long game. You could ruin everything by making the wrong move at the wrong time. Women like this wanted you to behave like a eunuch, while at the same time demonstrating that you were capable of virility should it ever be required of you.
He pointedly ordered a cab and, as any virile eunuch would, commandingly sent her off in it with a chaste but authoritative kiss on the cheek. That he had moved from ‘the enemy’ to someone you’d kiss on the cheek felt like ample progress for one evening. Besides, he was exhausted. The evening had tired him out more than any session at the gym.
When he got home, Carol was still awake, waiting for him, killing time with her fourth news broadcast of the evening. She flicked off the TV the instant he walked in and looked up at him expectantly.
‘It was good,’ he said. ‘I like her.’
Carol smiled. ‘Oh, I’m so glad. Did you have fun? I took to her the minute I saw her. She was very kind to me at that party.’
‘I’ll tell you tomorrow,’ said Matt, retreating to the privacy of his bedroom. There was nothing his mother liked better than an in-depth social post-mortem, and Matt really wasn’t in the mood. He wanted to be alone to savour the bubble of happiness the evening had generated around him.
He smiled at her, wished her good night and closed the door.
‘There’s been an earthquake in Bolivia!’ Carol called after him.
‘Whatever,’ said Matt.
Helen and Paul
that’s not the arrangement
Andre let Helen into the house and immediately, in the tone of voice you’d use with someone who had just been in a car crash, offered her a cup of tea. Helen gathered that, in the wake of her dismal lunch with Paul, she was perhaps not looking her best, and she gratefully accepted.
While he was in the kitchen, she went to the bathroom to assess the damage. Looking in the mirror had once been one of her favourite hobbies. Lately, it had become a daily trauma. Many years ago, she had heard a woman described as having ‘the remains of a beautiful face’. Her memory, cruelly, had never allowed her to forget the phrase, and had saved it up, semi-dormant in the back of her mind, for the moment when it applied to her.
The bone structure was still there, but the skin sagged and drooped on it like a blanket on a dog basket. Her hair, though more expensively done than ever, had lost its lustre and bounce through excessive colouring, as she endlessly strove for that pure, radiant black which had once been the beacon around which she constructed her wardrobe. She was not yet an old crone, but her sex appeal had long since dried up and blown away. She was an ex-beauty. She had entered the invisible years.
As an exhausted athlete near the end of a training session might reach for a bottle of water, Helen fumbled through the pouches of her sponge bag for her cleanser. She wearily washed her face and put on fresh make-up, for the third time that day.
She didn’t want to speak to Andre, she didn’t want to speak to anyone, but she was simply too tired to be out of the house any longer, and was still, for now, successfully fighting the urge to retreat home.
Helen returned to the living room just as Andre walked in with two steaming mugs and a packet of chocolate digestives. He sat down and smiled, tentatively. This time she would have been happier to see only one mug, and for Andre to withdraw, but she could see his intentions were kind, so she thanked him and smiled back.
They sat for a while, blowing on their drinks, until Helen, uncomfortable with the silence, asked Andre if he had any sisters.
‘Two,’ he replied.
‘Do they get on well with your mum?’
‘More or less.’
‘Better than you?’
‘That’s very personal.’
‘Sorry. It’s just, things with Paul . . . as you know . . . can be tricky, and you forget what’s normal. You want to be reminded.’
‘You’re very keen on that word.’
‘What word?’
‘Normal.’
‘Am I?’
‘You were talking about it last night as well. What was it Calvin said? "Who gives a shit what’s normal?"’
‘Is that what you think?’
Though Paul never mentioned Helen to Andre without some kind of moan or grievance, and though Andre had been up until one in the morning listening to Paul complain about her ‘emotional incontinence’, he still didn’t quite understand. It was forbidden, of course, to take her side – Andre’s role in all this was simply as a maker of tea and a sounding board – but he could see why she had come round unannounced, given the efforts Paul made to keep her at bay.
Andre could see what Helen was trying to do. She just wanted Paul to like her. It wasn’t too much to ask, in the circumstances, and as far as Andre could tell, she appeared reasonably likeable. But with other people’s families, you never knew anything. More often than not, the more you saw, the less you understood.
While trying to stay on the tightrope of what was acceptable for a man to say to his boyfriend’s mother, he decided to help her. ‘Pretty much,’ he said. ‘It’s what I try to think. It’s what we should all try to think.’
‘Maybe. But we all need reassurance, don’t we?’
‘Of what? That we’re normal?’
‘Something like that. Not in every way. Just reassurance that our problems aren’t because we’re crazy or weak or stupid – that other people have the same difficulties.’
This was one of Helen’s most private, shameful thoughts. It was an idea that floated aroun
d anxiously in her head all the time, but she had never even mentioned it to her husband or her closest friends. Now – she had no idea why – she had revealed it to a man who was little more than a stranger.
‘I’m sure you’re not crazy or weak or stupid, and even if you were, I don’t think that would make you any less normal. Plenty of extremely normal people are all three.’
‘You think?’
‘Of course!’
There was a silence while they sipped their drinks, with Helen trying to figure out if this idea was of any comfort. At first, it appeared to be. But she had never seriously doubted whether or not she was normal. Apart from her lost beauty, Helen had always felt that her utter, profound normality was never in doubt, and was in fact one of her flaws.
When she thought about what Andre was saying, his theory seemed to suggest that her averageness in fact made her more likely to be crazy, weak and stupid, not less. That was definitely the implication. She was sure he meant well, but this was not, however you looked at it, reassuring.
‘Maybe,’ said Andre, ‘if you ditched the "normal" thing, you might find it easier to get on with Paul.’ It had taken Andre ten years to get this idea into the head of his own mother, a woman who was at heart more interested in coasters than self-awareness. Helen was getting the five-minute crash course.
‘What do you mean?’ she said, baffled by his conversational logic.
‘Just try not to think like that. Forget "normal". Pretend it doesn’t exist. I have to go and do some work.’
He stood and walked to the stairs.
‘What do you do?’ said Helen.
‘I’m a student.’
Before she could ask what he was studying, or if he was paying rent in cash or by sleeping with the landlord, or if he just slept with Paul, or if he slept with everyone, or if everyone slept with everyone, he had disappeared.
Helen kicked her shoes off and closed her eyes. She wouldn’t sleep. Not in the middle of the day. Only cats, babies, geriatrics and vagrants slept in the afternoon. She’d just allow herself a little quiet time to mull things over.
Otherhood Page 16
