The Confusion of Karen Carpenter

by Jonathan Harvey

  And so I find myself saying, ‘Do you guys wax your pegundas?’

  They look at me like I am mad. I have no idea where the word ‘pegunda’ came from, but they know what it means, and they take it seriously.

  ‘Only, I’ve been in a relationship for so long that I’ve never done that whole Brazilian thing and I’m wondering . . . if I am going to get down and dirty with, say, Alan Carr or Dermot O’Leary, do I need to start a deforestation process on my . . .’

  ‘Pegunda,’ says Mitch.

  ‘Pegunda,’ I agree.

  You see, this is where Mum gets it so wrong. She would now assume that the women in this room would argue that to come to a decision, I would need to get my pegunda out for them to analyse and then make a decision about whether to get the lady-gardeners in, but they don’t. What they do instead is embark on a discourse about the waxing and shaving of the female pegunda. (Yeah, right, like males have pegundas. Jeez!) And sitting on our sofas, it feels like we’re on a late-night discussion programme on Channel 4 from the mid-1990s. Any minute now Tracey Emin will rock up, call us all twats and then vomit in the fireplace. And I am surprised to learn that every single one of them has waxed her pegunda.

  Every single one of them.

  Fancy that.

  I am a hairy freak.

  Oh God. I will have to get it done.

  I ask them where they go, which is a bit of a daft question in itself, as I can’t imagine they go to the hairdresser’s, sit backwards in the chair, chuck their legs skywards and say, ‘Brazilian, please, babes. It’s like bloody Center Parcs down there. Oh, and no perm solution this time!’ A wall of silence surrounds me, though. They will not divulge, for they want me to be the one, the brave one. They want me to stand up for feminism and say, ‘I will not be waxed. I will not be primped and preened. I will not kowtow to male oppression and gender stereotypes. We all get old and we all grow hair. I will maintain my Forest of Karen and ya boo sucks to anyone who finds that offensive. For I find you offensive.’

  I agree with them. I nod my head oh-so-vehemently and I can tell they are impressed. I can tell they’re proud.

  But secretly I’m thinking, Sod that. I’m so getting my minge waxed.

  I change the subject shortly after as I don’t want to be a hypocrite. I guide them steadily back to Winslet, wondering if she is as smooth as a bowling ball, and soon my own pagunda is history, thank God.

  I must have mentioned my mortgage crisis too, at some point, because when a few hours later Dave, Dee, Dozy et al have decided they want to head up west and parade around some ladybars and I decide to head for the Tube and my mother, Meredith says on the doorstep, ‘They all think you’re fab.’

  I almost curtsy with pride.

  ‘Oh, and Karen? Have a think, but I’m gonna be looking for somewhere to live soon.’

  Really?

  ‘You know I’m looking for any excuse to move out from being with Yvonne. She’s really doing my head in.’

  Yvonne? Oh yes, her ex who she still lives with.

  ‘So . . . if you’re in need of a lodger . . .’

  Right!

  ‘Have a think anyway.’

  ‘Yeah, OK, I’ll have a think.’

  Then something crosses my mind and I lean in to her and I whisper, ‘If you lived with me, and I waxed my lady bits . . .’

  She nods.

  ‘. . . you wouldn’t tell Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mitch and Tits, would you?’

  Oh dear. I must be a bit tipsy. I said ‘Tits’ instead of . . . Actually, Tits is better. Tits I like. Though I better not tell Meredith that!

  ‘Who?’

  I roll my eyes. ‘That lot in there.’

  She chuckles. ‘No, Karen. Your secret would be safe with me.’

  Oh joy.

  ‘OK, then I’ll definitely think about it. See you, Da— Meredith.’

  ‘See you, Karen.’

  We hug. She pecks me on the cheek. She lets me go and I skip down the street towards the Tube. I then stop, remembering I am thirty-six and a little bit tipsy, but then I miss skipping and start again. I practically skip home.

  TEN

  ‘So, Karen . . .’

  It’s Wednesday. It’s twenty-five to four, which means it’s my departmental meeting. Mungo is once again wearing grey socks under Jesus sandals.

  ‘. . . I’ve got a really interesting proposition for you.’

  Oh God. He’s going to suggest that thing. He wants to introduce that thing, that new way of learning to read. I heard them discussing it on Radio 4 the other day when Mum was peeling the potatoes and I was joining a group on Facebook called ‘Bring Back Bullseye: get enough likes and we’ll petition ITV!’ Apparently there’s this new way of learning to read where you do it phonetically and I immediately thought, Oh God, Mungo’ll be well up for that. And I won’t. I’ll have to learn a new way of reading, then learn how to teach it, and I may as well be teaching Portuguese for all I’ll really understand of it.

  But Mungo continues, ‘Today I thought we’d mash things up a little and head out for something to eat. What say you?’

  What say I? Oh. Erm.

  ‘I dunno really,’ I say, which is hugely insightful, if true, though not particularly helpful.

  So this isn’t about phonetic reading, or whatever it’s called.

  It’s about going out for something to eat?

  It’s just a bit weird. Much as I hate my departmental meetings, because there’s only the two of us in our department, and the sight of peep-toes and socks makes my stomach somersault, and much as Mungo loves the sound of his own voice, and appears to hate that of mine, we are meant to be working. We are meant to be checking in on all the kids we teach and seeing if there’s more we could be doing for certain kids, or if anyone else has come to note that we need to keep an eye on. And surely that can only be done round a desk in Mungo’s office, the smell of his Paco Rabanne floating in the stale air.

  ‘I . . . know you’ve been through it a bit lately . . . and, well . . . you know my background is in counselling. Let’s forget about the kids for once and just build some emotional bridges. What say you?’

  What say I? Again? I’d say I can’t think of anything worse. I don’t want to build emotional bridges. In fact, I’d quite like to draw up some emotional footbridges and slam down an emotional portcullis or two.

  But of course I say, ‘Brilliant. That’d be great.’

  Mungo’s car is weird. He tells me it’s a Citroën 2CV when I ask with a tone of distaste, and he points out it’s vintage, but all I know is the doors face the wrong way and opening the windows is like doing ten minutes on The Krypton Factor. Moving in it is even more disturbing. It’s not often I’ve felt like I’m driving through the streets of London in a bumper car that’s escaped from the fairground, but I do now. It’s not that we’re bumping into anything – Mungo drives far too slowly for that; we don’t appear to go any higher than first gear, even on an empty road – it’s more like you can feel every lump and bump in the road. And I wasn’t aware that roads were that bumpy, to be honest. It feels like we’re off-road and we’re not; we’re on-road.

  The car’s so old it has a cassette player in it. As soon as we set off, he had to jab a button very hard on the dashboard, and now we appear to be listening to Gregorian chants. Though it could be the Army Wives – I’m not sure.

  Mungo gives a running commentary about our journey as if he is a driving instructor and it’s me who’s driving, not him, so he’s saying stuff like, ‘And at the lights we’re approaching we’re going to indicate when it’s safe to do so and then hang a left.’

  Fortunately he doesn’t keep saying, ‘What say you?’ although I’m sure we’re in for plenty of that when we reach the pub we’re going to.

  He’s taking me to a little ‘out of the way’ place that he and Fionnula ‘adore’. Fionnula is his wife. Bizarrely, she’s seemed like a bit of a laugh on the few times I’ve met her. So God knows what she’s doing with him
. He always has a bit of lunchtime sandwich in his beard in the afternoon, and she clearly has no compunction to tell him that socks and sandals give the air of a paedophile . . . Not the best look when you work with children.

  When I notice I’ve been in the car for a good half-hour, I realize that ‘out of the way’ means ‘a long way away’ (like Glasgow) in a normal car, so to be doing it in Noddy’s car could mean we’re in for a three-hour jaunt simply to get there. I’m just starting to fear we’re morphing into Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in one of those interminable road movies when Mungo announces, ‘And we’ll take the third exit off this mini-roundabout and pull into the pub car park.’

  And relax!

  This pub is no easier on the eye than the Who’d’ve Thought It? so I don’t know why we had to drive eighteen hours to get here, but then I spy the menu, which says, ‘All you can eat for £5 before 5 p.m.,’ and I suddenly understand, as my heart sinks. I will order a main, but I just know Mungo will go for the full three courses.

  Which he does.

  I do a mental calculation as to how long we are going to have to be here. It’s not looking good. I may have to feign an attack of the vapours, invent a love of long-distance running and leg it home.

  Mungo wants to talk, though. Why do people want to talk so much these days? Can’t we just leave other people be? Some of us don’t want to talk.

  Oh, I don’t mind a bit of inane chatter, pointless gossip, even important political discussions, but I spend so much time mulling over my feelings and being self-indulgent with my own thoughts that when I actually go to talk about it, the words run dry.

  I’m monosyllabic as he eats his breaded garlic mushrooms and I daintily sip my orange and lemonade. Batting away his ‘So how are you really?’s and ‘How have you been?’s with grunts and noises that indicate ‘Oh, you know’ and ‘Well, mustn’t grumble’, he starts telling me about how he felt after his first wife, Connie, left him. I stifle a giggle. I only thought people were actually called Connie in Victoria Wood sketches. Apparently he was bereft following her departure, didn’t eat for weeks, and his family were worried he was developing manorexia, but then he met Fionnula at a self-help group and the rest, so he says, is history.

  Or geography, I joke, as Fionnula is a geography teacher.

  He talks a lot about light at the end of the tunnel, and the black dog of depression. He talks about the restorative powers of exercise – in his case a love of Nordic walking he shares with Fionnula, or ‘the Big F’, as he’s started calling her. I ask what Nordic walking is and he gets up and demonstrates, just as our waiter arrives with the mains. He looks at Mungo like he is mad. And maybe he is, for he is walking briskly across the pub, pretending to do a skiing movement with his arms, explaining that Nordic walking is a cross between walking and skiing, but you do it on normal roads, or in the countryside. He and Fionnula try to squeeze an hour in each night.

  ‘You must come and join us sometime,’ he says excitedly.

  I tell him I have a lot on, what with my mother staying. I don’t tell him she’s always out at Zumba or watching BBC4.

  As we tuck into our mains, when finally he has sat down – even doing a comedy mime of pretending to put his skis away, which did actually make me chuckle – I suddenly have a panic on. A guy comes in dressed in some DMs. No, he is not wearing departmental meetings on his feet, but Doc Martens, and they remind me of the reinforced shoes Michael has to wear to work in case a member of the public kicks off and he has to kick them back. Suddenly I worry, thinking, What if Michael walks in now, or anyone who knows me, and sees me having an all-you-can-eat-for-a-fiver meal with Mungo? They’d think we are . . . going together!

  I try to comfort myself with the restorative powers of my tepid red prawn curry, but it’s not working.

  Then I tell myself I’m overreacting. Mungo is my boss. It must be clear to people. He might be boring as shite, but he is never inappropriate. He never oversteps the mark.

  Famous. Last. Words.

  For as he tucks into his veggie lasagne (‘I’ve not eaten an animal since 1986’), he divulges the secret of his now twenty-year marriage to Fionnula.

  Sorry. I hope you’ve not just eaten.

  They have an open relationship. Yes, I heard it right. An. Open. Relationship.

  I can’t remember the last time I was this mortified. I have used far too often in my life the phrase about wanting the ground to open up and swallow me whole. In fact, I’d often do it in a cod Irish accent, so it sounded like ‘swallow my hole’, which I find particularly guffaw-worthy. But honest to God, I have never really known the absolute feeling of it. And I’m feeling it now.

  It’s the way he’s talking. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like he doesn’t think I’ll be shocked. Like . . . like . . . every person I know must be in one too.

  For the record I don’t know anyone who is in an open relationship. Well, apart from Mungo and Fionnula. The Skinny M and the Big F. And I’m kind of going off her now, laugh or no laugh. In fact she’s a bit touchy-feely for my liking now, the more I think of it. God, you can really go off a person. D’you know what I mean?

  Open relationship. Open relationship. Does that mean they are . . . ?

  ‘Are you swingers?’ I gasp, though I really didn’t mean to say it out loud, and in such a Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells tone. Though I did.

  He looks offended.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, then rather feebly comment, ‘This red chicken curry’s gorgeous!’

  ‘It’s prawn,’ he points out.

  ‘It is!’ I agree excitedly. ‘But don’t the really posh food critics say that truly good food always tastes like chicken? It’s lovely. Try some!’ I jab my fork across the table, splattering red curry sauce everywhere, and realize I’m trying to shut him up.

  He practically pushes his chair back, squealing, ‘I’m a vegetarian!’

  Resisting the urge to say, ‘But you eat other people’s wives!’ I apologize profusely, telling him my head’s all over the place, and that actually I’m really cool with open relationships and swinging, and how my mum and dad were naturists when I was growing up.

  Which of course is a bare-faced lie.

  Why did I say that? Why did I try to compensate for my embarrassment by lying?

  But he is fascinated. Natch.

  ‘And did you . . . ever . . . ?’

  ‘No. No. No, never!’ I respond quickly, with the tone of someone who as a child wore a protective plastic rain poncho to jump in the shower, and he looks disappointed.

  ‘Alternative lifestyles can be so empowering,’ he says, and I nod eagerly.

  I change the subject to some worky stuff. Recently a boy has arrived at the school from Eritrea, Bashir, and has literally no English, even as a second, third or fourth language. I have been taking photos of different things in the school and sticking them in a book with him, then drawing arrows to various things in the photos and writing out the words for him, then practising saying them. I’ve really enjoyed it. Bashir just gives me a look as if to say, ‘Back home I am a thirteen-year-old brain surgeon and you think I’ll get excited by the phrase “‘Biro’ can also be called ‘Pen’”?’

  Bashir is living with an auntie near the school and I ask Mungo if there’s any news on his mother, who is meant to be coming over to join them in London, but Mungo says there is not. He is the subject of a child protection investigation because the social workers think there’s something dodgy about why he is here, and how capable the aunt is at looking after him, and of course the poor lad is stuck in the middle of it all, not having a clue what is going on because he’s still learning words like ‘book’, ‘door’ and ‘interactive whiteboard’. It’s important that if Mungo knows any more about the situation than I do, he should tell me, because maybe there are more important things I should be telling him, like ‘You’re entitled to three meals a day and your own bed’, but Mungo claims he doesn’t.

  Over Mungo’s lemon souffl�
� he tells me he and the Big F practise tantric sex. He tells me this with all the dispassionate casualness of someone mentioning, in passing, that they have a membership to the local gym.

  I am no longer shocked by anything that comes out of his mouth. Though the image that flashes through my mind of what Mungo and the Big F get up to – positions, settings – isn’t the most palatable stuff I’ve thought of lately, I am intrigued. As he’s banging on about base chakras and the all-over body orgasm, I wonder how you go about being – as he calls it – ‘emotionally monogamous but sexually promiscuous’.

  How does that happen when you have a ginger beard with bits in it, the figure of a pencil and the old sandals-socks combo?

  It gives me hope. Because if he can get a shag, then surely I can too.

  Dare I tell him? Dare I tell my manager that I fancy a bit of the old sexy time to help me move on from Michael? He’s told me about his sexual proclivities, hasn’t he? So why don’t I own up to fancying a shag as well? It’s not like I’m nailing my colours to the mast and asking if I can come to one of his and Fionnula’s swinging parties, is it? In fact, I wouldn’t be seen dead or naked at one of those. I’m only after a bit of intimacy, getting something out of my system, being held, being touched, doing completely normal things. I’m certainly not interested in having an audience while I’m doing it. An audience who I fear might press Britain’s Got Talent-style buzzers in the middle of it all if they weren’t impressed with your technique. I’m only after a bit of fun.

  I picture myself saying, ‘Mungo, I really fancy having some sex. I don’t want to do the whole swinging scene, but . . . well, I really think it would help me get over Michael. Is there anything you can do to help?’ Meaning ‘What are the tips of someone who’s no Rock Hudson but gets their end away on a regular basis?’

  Unfortunately I can just imagine him nodding, thinking, then taking out his mobile and saying, ‘Let me text Fionnula, see if she can come home late tonight so we can frig for hours.’

  I most certainly don’t want that.

  And actually, come to think of it, if I do sleep with someone, I’d like to think they hadn’t slept with twenty-eight women this week already, frankly. So maybe he’s not the right person to be going to for advice.