‘Oh. That’s good.’
‘I’m seeing her tonight, I think.’
‘You think?’
‘I have to call her.’
‘Oh, I’m so glad you hit it off.’
‘I ought to ring her this afternoon. I don’t want to seem too keen, but it’s just driving me mad, waiting. I might have to do it now.’
‘OK. Don’t mind me.’
‘It’s not that. I just ought to play it a bit cool.’
‘Oh, women hate that. There’s nothing better than a bit of keenness.’
‘You think?’
‘I’m positive.’
The mobile phone in his pocket had been pulling him all morning like a cigarette packet taunting a smoker. Matt looked at his watch. It was barely eleven o’clock, but he couldn’t wait any longer. There was no sense in letting the tension ruin any more of his day.
Matt excused himself from his mother and walked away, behind the nearest tree. Julia’s number was already programmed into his mobile. After a couple of rings, she answered.
‘You still haven’t given up?’ she said.
‘No. I’m not going to, either.’
‘Men think women want to hear that, but they don’t. The whole stalker thing really isn’t a turn-on.’
‘Is that what I said? Did I say I was going to stalk you?’
‘I’m not sure. Are you?’
‘No. Where shall we meet?’
‘I still don’t know why I even gave you my number.’
‘Maybe you couldn’t help yourself.’
‘Er . . . yes, you’re irresistible, Matt. You’re every woman’s fantasy.’
‘Maybe I know what you’re doing,’ he said, with an intonation that was intended to convey penetrating intelligence. He wasn’t sure how well he pulled it off.
‘What I’m doing? What am I doing?’
‘We both know what’s going on here, Julia. I’m not stupid. And I respect you for it,’ he said, attempting to hint at her sexism-reversal game before immediately losing confidence in his theory the second the words began to come out of his mouth.
‘Respect me for what?’ said Julia. ‘For trying to get rid of you?’
Matt could feel the conversation slipping away from him. Talking to Julia reminded him vaguely of school sports days, of the way it felt to do something you are bad at, in public, knowing before you’ve even started that you are going to lose.
He knew he just ought to give up, for the sake of his dignity, but he couldn’t. He wanted her too much, and part of him felt he deserved the humiliation she inflicted on him, as if it was another test set in some obscure way by his mother. If he could survive it, and win Julia over, he sensed that he would have proved something to himself and to Carol. It would be a way to demonstrate that he had a grasp of his flaws and intended to tackle them. Or, at the very least, that he would try.
The longer he talked to her, the more opportunity Julia had to turn him down, which she was liable to do at any moment, just for fun. The best tactic for staving off rejection, he decided, was simply to keep it short.
‘I’ll see you at the Coach and Horses in Soho,’ he said. ‘Greek Street. Eight o’clock.’
He hung up without waiting for her answer, his trembling thumb at first missing the tiny red button on his phone. He’d done well. He’d shown her that he wasn’t going to let her have it all her own way. He’d salvaged a little pride.
She’d come. A little late, maybe, but she’d show up. She had, after all, given him her number. Julia could see, like his mother, that he was a better man than he appeared.
character assassination called flirtation
Matt waited in the Coach and Horses for three hours, but Julia never came. He hadn’t previously waited longer than fifteen minutes for a woman in his whole life. This time, he only stopped at three hours because the pub closed.
He could have phoned Julia as soon as it was clear she was a little late, to ask if she was on her way, but he hadn’t wanted to come across as too keen. Then, by the time he’d left it half an hour, he realised that if he phoned her now, whatever he said, he wouldn’t be asking ‘are you coming?’ but ‘why aren’t you coming?’ And they’d been through that conversation once already.
He may have been feeling crushed (again), depressed, shocked and hurt, but he was still in possession of the shred of dignity that stopped him picking up his phone. She didn’t want him. She didn’t like him. He just had to accept it like a man.
So he did. He drank.
Of all the places to be stood up, a pub is not a good one. The consolation at hand isn’t of a useful kind, and is almost impossible to resist. By closing time, Matt was so drunk that five cabs drove past him before he managed to pass himself off as sober enough to be worth picking up.
Back at his flat, which was dark, silent and apparently empty, Matt forgot about his guest. ‘FUCK!’ he shouted, kicking the sofa. ‘FUCKFUCKFUCK! BITCH! FUCKING BITCH!’
‘Are you OK?’ said Carol, standing behind him in her nightie and dressing-gown.
‘Mum!’ said Matt. ‘Oh, Mum.’
His inhibitions were down. His defences were in tatters. His self-control was long gone. He was four again. He stretched out his arms and lunged at her. ‘She didn’t turn up!’ he stuttered, wrapping his arms around her neck.
‘Who?’
‘Julia! She said she would, but she didn’t. I sat there for hours.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘I LIKE HER! SHE’S REALLY NICE!’
‘I know she is, dear.’
‘WHY DOESN’T SHE LIKE ME?’
‘I don’t know. Well, as long as you tried. That’s the main thing.’
‘I DID TRY! I LIKE HER! SHE’S REALLY NICE!’
‘You just said that, dear. Would you like a coffee?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ll make you a coffee.’
Carol pulled herself free of his grip and coaxed him towards the sofa. She knew a precious window of opportunity was about to open up, after he calmed down and before he sobered up, when she’d be able to ask him anything and he’d be likely to give an unguarded answer. She made the coffee strong, but not too strong.
‘Why don’t you tell me what happened,’ she said, sitting herself opposite him, in the narcolepsy chair. ‘From the beginning.’
‘I told you already. We went out. We got on. We spoke on the phone. We made a date. She didn’t show up. The end.’
‘Maybe something happened. Maybe she was held up somewhere.’
‘No, it’s not like that. She kind of said she wasn’t coming, but I thought it was a joke, and I only realised it wasn’t when she didn’t arrive.’
‘What sort of a joke is it to say you’re not coming?’
‘The whole thing is a joke. Kind of a game, where I tell her I like her and she says she doesn’t like me. It’s a flirting thing.’
‘Flirting?’
‘Yes.’
‘So does she like you or not?’
‘Well, I thought she did. But obviously she doesn’t. Maybe I just thought it was flirting, but she actually meant it.’
‘I don’t really understand.’
‘She even told me why.’
‘Why what?’
‘Why she doesn’t like me.’
‘This was part of the flirtation? Telling you why she doesn’t like you.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And what was the reason?’
‘Oh, God. It was some big speech. I can’t remember the whole thing.’
‘What was the gist?’
‘Something about how I seem like a nice guy when I’m talking, but when I start listening I turn out to be a tosser because I’m only pretending to listen instead of really doing it. Which is bollocks. I mean, just because you can’t remember what someone’s told you, that doesn’t mean you weren’t listening when they said it.’
This girl was smarter than Carol had thought. After only one evening, sh
e already knew the essence of Matt better than he knew himself, like someone snapping a stick of rock in half to read the text inside. Quite how this accurate and pointed character assassination could be called flirtation was beyond her. But the window was open. Matt was having a moment of what, for him, could be classed as introspection. The template of family reticence told her to walk away and leave him to it, but again she forced herself to ignore the rules and press on. This was what she had come for. The door she had been knocking on all week was beginning to creak open. She decided to give it a yank.
‘You really believe that?’ said Carol. ‘You think you listen carefully to what people say – to what women say – and show them respect and courtesy?’
As she watched him do it, Carol realised she had never before seen her son think. Whatever you asked him, he threw back an answer straight away. On the rare occasions he reconsidered one of his opinions or changed his mind about something, the thought process was always conducted in private, after which he’d come back with a convoluted retraction or an elaborate explanation of why events had caused him to modify his view. What she never saw was this: live action thinking. She had put him a question, and he was mulling it over from scratch, right in front of her. He was drunk, of course, but you had to take what you could get.
‘Maybe I could do a bit better. With the listening stuff,’ he said. ‘But it’s not my fault. It’s the world I move in. I’ve just fallen out of practice.’
‘And how is it not your fault?’
More thinking, this time with a maudlin sag slowly creeping across his features.
‘OK, maybe it is my fault. But I don’t want to be like that. I don’t.’
‘So don’t be.’
‘It’s not that easy.’
Matt could feel the caffeine beginning to percolate into his brain, and with it came a horrible realisation. The self-hatred drawer was now wide open, its contents scattered shamefully all over the floor. He hated his job. He didn’t like his friends. His life had led him somewhere he never wanted to be. He lived in a hermetic bubble of ambition, surrounded by loathsome people who believed that producing BALLS! was an appropriate pursuit for an intelligent adult, rather than a daily assault on the soul. He was weak and stupid, no better in any way than the colleagues he despised.
He had wanted to do good things with his life. Like anyone else, when he was young he’d hoped to win the admiration of the people he admired. He’d never had it in him to be a doctor or an aid worker – he’d never aspired to great altruism – but he’d felt confident he would end up doing something vaguely worthwhile, or at least a job that wasn’t actively malicious or immoral. Now, only thirty-four, he had already betrayed every last shred of his adolescent idealism.
Julia had been the first person he’d come across for years who’d stirred in him any memory of his lost ideals. In her company, he’d felt the first inkling of a long-dormant desire to improve himself. She would have been his salvation. With her help, he could have begun to turn himself into the person he wanted to be. Without her, there was no incentive, no assistance, no hope.
‘And is that it with Julia?’ said Carol, as if she had been reading his thoughts from across the room. ‘Is it all over?’
‘You can’t really say it’s over when it never even started. She just doesn’t like me.’
‘Because you don’t listen?’
‘Seems like it.’
‘So why don’t you show her that you do listen?’
‘How?’
‘By listening.’
‘To what? It’s over. I can’t call her now and offer to listen. It’s too late.’
‘Well, show her that you did listen before. Act on something you remember her saying when she thinks you weren’t listening.’
‘Well, the main thing she said is that she doesn’t like me.’
‘Can’t you think of something else? What did she talk about on your date? There must have been something you didn’t listen to that made her take against you for not listening.’
‘Um . . . can’t remember.’
‘Well, what do you remember? What did she tell you about herself?’
‘Not sure. She talked about her studies a bit. Her MSc.’
‘What did she say about it?’
‘That it was about development.’
‘What kind of development?’
‘Don’t know. Not sure if I asked.’
‘You didn’t ask? So it could be property development or child development or Third World development, and you didn’t think to ask which? You weren’t bothered?’
‘I might have asked. I’m not sure. But I can’t remember the answer. I was distracted. It was a confusing evening.’
‘Well, luckily for you, I did.’
‘You did what?’
‘Ask. About her MSc. It’s Third World development. She’s writing something on child nutrition in Kenya. I think she said it was the Masai.’
‘Maybe I could find it on the internet! I could Google her name and Kenya and something might come up. I could read up on it.’
‘If you think it would help.’
‘Of course it would help! I can prove to her that I listen and that I’m interested in what she does.’
‘Are you?’
‘Am I what?’
‘Interested in what she does.’
‘Yes! Yes! Absolutely.’
‘You’re not just trying to get her into bed?’
‘No! I have to go back to her with some proof that I’m not who she thinks I am. This might do it.’
‘It’s only proof if it’s also true. If you’re just tricking her with something I’ve told you and something else you’ve found out on the internet, then it’ll catch up with you. She’ll find you out. You have to mean it.’
‘I do mean it, and it’s not a trick. You’ve just given me a toe-hold. I really do want to know more about her. I’m interested.’
‘Well, I hope it works. And I hope she doesn’t hurt you.’
‘She won’t. What about me hurting her?’
‘That’s not going to happen.’
Carol drained her coffee, kissed her son on the forehead and went back to bed. She didn’t know whether to be more or less worried about Matt than she had been before her visit. She had come in the hope of rediscovering who he was, and had found him in such a state of flux and confusion that there didn’t seem to be anything solid or permanent to know. The minute she thought she understood something about him, he’d tell her he was on the brink of changing it.
You’d expect this with a sixteen-year-old, not someone in their mid-thirties. His intentions sounded positive, so she supposed she ought to be grateful for him at least professing the desire to change for the better, but if he hadn’t managed it yet, was there any real chance of him starting now, at his age?
Frankly, she’d believe it when she saw it. She loved him, and wanted intensely to believe him, but he’d always had a streak in his character that bent too easily with the current. He was never a leader. As a child, he had often borrowed personalities from other, more charismatic kids. Now, perhaps, he was agreeing with Carol for only so long as she was in his flat. She had no real confidence that when she left, his life wouldn’t revert to exactly as it had been before she came.
There was always a slim possibility that he meant what he said, and would follow it through. It was conceivable that he had decided now, this week, to grow up. But she doubted it. Matt always had grand plans for himself, but he never acted on them. He was a dreamer more than a doer. He zoned out more than he zoned in. Julia, by the sound of it, had seen through him in one evening. Smart women would. He didn’t stand a chance with her. But the attempt was the important thing. He was at least heading in the right direction, and having his heart broken might even do him some good.
She should never have drunk that coffee. It would be hours before she’d get to sleep.
Carol got out of bed and began to pack. She’d leave the ne
xt morning. She was missing home, and she’d found out what she wanted to know. Whether Matt changed or not was, in the end, none of her business. He was an adult. He had the right to live how he wanted to live, and Carol had to accept whatever he chose. She had to love him regardless of whether she liked him or not. That was a mother’s job.
Without even thinking it through, Carol found herself taking off her nightie and getting dressed. Somewhere in her purse, for emergencies, was the card of a twenty-four-hour minicab firm. She’d leave right now, go home, and slip into her own bed without waking her husband.
She phoned from her bedroom and tiptoed out as quietly as she could, though if she’d been wearing clogs it would have made no difference. Matt was out for the count, slumped on the sofa, still fully dressed down to his shoes. Carol knelt on the floor and undid his laces. This felt like a fitting end, somehow. This was how things were supposed to be. She was being a mother; he was being a son.
Of course, it shouldn’t still be like this. At Matt’s age it should have been him on his knees, taking off Carol’s shoes. The roles should have reversed by now. But perhaps Carol had been hoping for too much, and maybe she had been seeking the wrong thing. There was something to be said for this. Matt remaining a child prevented Carol from becoming a geriatric. She couldn’t let herself age until he did. Only one of them could be the taker-off of shoes and, for now, she would rather it was her.
Watching him sleep took her back thirty years, to a time when you’d pop in last thing at night, ostensibly to check that your child was all right, but in reality just for another dose of them, for one last glance at their beauty, for a sniff of their sweet, perfect, faraway slumber. It was astonishing that this snoring, unshaven man, stinking of booze and fags, was the same human being. This large creature, this uncontrollable force, capable of exerting huge good or evil on the world, had once lived inside her, had been fed at her breast. She had made him.
She rearranged Matt’s body into a less twisted shape and looked around the flat for a blanket. There was none to be found. She looked through all the high cupboards in the flat, but could only find unidentifiable electronic devices, discarded sports equipment and three cookery-book stands, all of which she vaguely remembered having given him for different birthdays. A duvet would do, placed over his legs so he didn’t get too hot.
Otherhood Page 24
