by Freya North
But Zac simply couldn’t banish the image of Pip from his mind’s eye and he felt his impotence was twofold. There was nothing he could do. So nothing was going to happen. He was incapable of forcing his mind over the matter.
Whether it was Cupid or Puck or Fate or Coincidence, Zac didn’t have time to ponder or care. All he knew, midway through the next week, was that he was queuing for the same movie with Juliana as Pip was with one of her sisters. The lovelorn one. Kit. Cat. Something like that. Good job Pip was taking her to see the new Austin Powers and not the weepie with Helen Hunt.
What a daft question, of course Juliana didn’t want popcorn or ice-cream or family-size bags of confectionery. Nor did Zac really, but he could see Pip procrastinating over the various foodstuffs and he took it as a golden opportunity to approach. As much as he wanted to talk to her, he was also quite content just to look (her bottom appeared very pert in lightweight cargo pants) and to listen (she was ordering large nachos with extra everything, plus Maltesers, a small sweet popcorn and a Pepsi). He was also keen to touch (her hair was loose and she was wearing a flattering white vest top) but of course he didn’t.
The sales assistant, apparently incapable of speech per se, slightly modified a gormless expression by raising an eyebrow and widening an already gawping mouth to encourage Zac to place his order.
‘I’ll have orangey-lemony-blackcurranty squash, please. A big ’un. Ta.’
Zac was staggered that the sales assistant lolloped away, no questions asked. And he was delighted that Pip spun on her heels and greeted him.
‘You!’
‘You.’
‘Are you here to see a movie?’ Pip asked. Zac noticed she was wearing mascara. She didn’t need to, but it suited her anyway.
‘Nah,’ Zac replied, ‘I like hanging out here. It’s my favourite bar for a gourmet snack and a delicious drink.’
Pip laughed. ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ she pleaded, ‘my mascara will run. I thought we were going to see the Helen Hunt weepie – hence the eye make-up as a precaution against crying.’
‘Ain’t got the drink what you wanted,’ the sales assistant announced robotically and resumed the gawp to await Zac’s alternative.
‘Mineral water and Minstrels. No! M&Ms. Wait! I’ve changed my mind – Revels,’ Zac ordered, earning Brownie points from Pip in the process. The sales person trudged away. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine,’ said Pip, trying to balance the nachos and the popcorn whilst tucking the chocolate into her bag. ‘And you? I left a message last week. Would you like a nacho?’
‘No, thanks,’ Zac smiled.
How shall I just drop the boyfriend into the conversation? How the fuck do I do that? Ruth! What would you suggest? Something like ‘Are you here with your bloke?’
‘Popcorn?’ Pip offered.
‘Thanks, but no,’ Zac declined.
How about ‘Does your bloke like weepie movies, too?’ God, that’s rubbish. Shall I just shoot straight and ask her on a date? ‘I say, Pip – fancy a drink tomorrow night?’ Or should it be ‘I say, Pip, fancy a drink some time – if your chap doesn’t object’?
‘Sip of coke?’
‘No, ta,’ said Zac.
Or perhaps ‘Look, Pip, we get on pretty well – why don’t we give it a go?’ I mean, I’d get full marks for directness with that one. My honesty might just sway her.
‘Malteser?’
Zac shook his head.
Fuck it. Who am I trying to kid? No point.
‘Are you on a diet?’ Pip accused. ‘Was the cream tea too much for you?’
Zac laughed.
It wasn’t enough, Philippa McCabe, it merely whetted my appetite and has had me salivating for more.
The Revels were unceremoniously plonked down before him and, to solicit further approval from Pip, Zac added a high-class choc-ice, encrusted with almonds and stuffed with cookie dough, to his order.
‘That’s my boy!’ Pip proclaimed, who was tempted to order one of those for herself.
I wish, thought Zac.
‘I’d better go,’ Pip said, ‘I want to make an inroad into these nachos and I can’t possibly miss the trailers.’
‘Enjoy the movie,’ Zac said, ‘and the nosh.’
‘Anyway,’ smiled Pip, backing away, ‘your girlfriend is probably dying for a Revel.’
Fuck fuck fuck
She’s not my girlfriend!
Zac was horrified that Pip had even noticed Juliana, let alone come to the conclusion that they were an item.
‘See you soon,’ said Pip, walking off, bending her head to lick up a popcorn or two as she went. Cat hadn’t noticed Zac, she hadn’t really noticed how long her sister had been gone. She was in a world of her own, wondering whether she really felt like seeing a film that would make her laugh and forget about her woes for ninety minutes. Was that the right thing to do? She was unsure. Feeling miserable had become almost the norm to her, cathartic even; wouldn’t the Helen Hunt weepie thus be more appropriate? She could really have a good cry; unlike her eldest sister, she purposefully hadn’t put mascara on that evening.
Pip linked arms with Cat, having given her the popcorn to hold. ‘Tuck in!’ she said. ‘I bought it all to share. I could never scoff the lot by myself.’ Actually, Pip could very well demolish every last mouthful. But it was a pleasure to share. ‘Austin Powers!’ she marvelled to Cat who was gingerly picking at the popcorn and was secretly quite tempted by the synthetic aroma of the nachos. The lights dimmed and the trailers began.
Zac didn’t really give the movie his full attention as he was powerless not to surreptitiously scour the forest of heads in front of him. He couldn’t find Pip. If Zac knew that Pip liked to remain in her seat, waiting for the credits for Best Boy, Key Grip and Gaffer, sitting there right until the disclaimer about no animals being ill-treated during filming, he’d have asked her then and there to marry him. Unfortunately but significantly, Juliana liked to go just as soon as the end credits started to roll. So he left as soon as Juliana decreed and they went back to her serviced apartment in Marble Arch where she serviced Zac very well indeed. There was little point abstaining because there was no point pursuing Pip. Not with her having a boyfriend already and now presuming that he had a girlfriend.
However, taking a cab home at midnight, Zac decides to text Pip. However teenagery this approach had seemed previously, text messaging now seems to be the most concise, even intimate, method to approach Pip and broach the subject of her boyfriend. He justifies that Ruth insisted he be upfront and forthright so he is merely obeying orders.
mike myers = total fucking genius.
He may not have given the film the appropriate attention, but instinct tells him that such a proclamation will strike a chord with Pip.
yup!! he brill!!!
The reply is almost immediate. He’s pleased. But what should he write next? What’s the best way to incorporate his girlfriendless status into a text? How can he verify the status of Pip’s doctor, too? And, most importantly, do as Ruth told him and actually tell her how he feels?
‘Christ,’ he fulminates, not caring that the cab driver glances back at him, ‘why should any of this bloody matter?’
u free 2moro?
Should he send that? He does.
sorry nope.
Damn. Aha! Here’s an opening, though.
hot date? Zac sends back.
praps!!! Pip replies, the ambiguity frustrating Zac, the excessive use of exclamation marks simultaneously charming, irritating and demoralizing.
lucky dr kildare? Zac texts brazenly, telling himself that putting ‘lucky’ will also serve to reveal, albeit indirectly, how he feels.
dr who? Pip responds.
Shit. What to write now?
st b’s. Zac pauses. He looks at the screen till the illumination switches off. What the hell. your boyf, methinks he adds and he sends it without a question mark. The wait seems interminable. Finally, his phone beeps. He accesses Pip’s reply.
‘I didn’t ask his stupid fucking name!’ Zac shouts. The cab driver does not look around. He’s near the punter’s destination anyway. The midnight hour, in his twenty years’ experience, always brings out the emotional, the irrational, the deluded.
‘Ta,’ Zac mumbles, thrusting a tenner at the driver. ‘Keep the change.’
‘Thirteen forty, mate,’ the cab driver says diplomatically. Zac hands him an extra fiver and mumbles for him to keep the change. He goes into his flat. Shuts the door, presses his back against it and shuts his eyes, banging his head gently; two three four.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
It suddenly seems strategically crucial to phone Ruth.
‘I just saw her at the cinema. She thinks Juliana is my girlfriend. Then I texted her and asked her outright about the boyfriend. I was right. He is. Not only that, Ruth, he’s called fucking Caleb.’
It took the first two sentences for Ruth to realize who it was talking hoarsely down the phone at her so late at night.
‘Bad luck,’ she says, trying to sound sympathetic. She feels that tonight isn’t the time to talk about all the fish in the sea. ‘If it makes you feel better,’ she adds, ‘she obviously has a penchant for biblical boys.’
‘It doesn’t,’ Zac says morosely, ‘but ta anyway. Good-night.’
‘Zac?’ Ruth interrupts. ‘Did you tell her how you feel? Not just ascertain the doctor’s status? Did you tell her?’
Zac thinks about it, knowing well how the female opinion and standard on this matter probably differ from the male. ‘Sort of,’ he says, ‘I mean, not by poetry or full-on serenading, of course.’
‘Good,’ says Ruth, ‘glad you did. It’s important.’
He tries to go to sleep. He chants ‘fuck fuck fuck’ to himself, though fucking is far from his mind. And the possibility of fucking Pip is so far off that it doesn’t register even beyond the foreseeable horizon. He sends one final text an hour later.
‘Blimey,’ Pip says aloud softly, about to brush her teeth and turn in for the night. She slips between the sheets. ‘I referred to Caleb as my boyfriend!’ This certainly requires the exclamation mark. It’s a statement that Pip finds extraordinary. ‘I guess I do have a boyfriend. I suppose Caleb and I, a good six weeks down the line, are beyond the stage of just “seeing” one another.’ She tries a couple of sentences out loud to see how they sound, to see if they roll off her tongue in a natural way.
‘Caleb? Oh, he’s my boyfriend.’
That was easy enough.
‘I was just saying the guy I’m going out with is a doctor.’
That sounds quite good, too.
Pip giggles. Is it really time to go public?
Sure.
Why not?
What has she to hide? And, with Caleb, doesn’t she have rather a lot to be proud of and actually show off?
Just before she falls asleep, she wonders to herself if Caleb himself has been referring to her as his girlfriend. If so, it must follow that he thinks of himself as her boyfriend, too. She wonders about this. And then she drifts off.
Pip doesn’t retrieve Zac’s last text until the next morning.
lucky bugger.
She doesn’t get it. She hasn’t saved his texts of the previous night and she can’t really remember them anyway.
‘Lucky bugger?’ She presumes it’s something to do with Austin Powers but she can’t think what. She locks her front door and heads for the bus.
So Juliana returned to South Africa, temporarily at least and, for the time being, Zac felt Pip might as well be in Timbuktu, so remote was the possibility of anything developing there. The accountant threw himself into his work and immersed himself in socializing with his friends, devoting his weekends to being the best father in the world. He invested as much energy into his free time as into his work so that he simply didn’t have any spare time to become thinking time. He didn’t have time to think of Pip. Therefore he didn’t. And it was easy enough. He was thus at an utter loss about what to do, how to react, what exactly to feel, when he came across her crying her eyes out a week later, and when the reason for her tears became clear.
SEVENTEEN
Pip was toying with inviting Fen and Matt, Megan and Dominic over for dinner. She’d been pontificating for some time. Not so much because she was miserly with her personal space, possessive of her spare time and somewhat obsessive about spills and stains, but because she was considering inviting Caleb, too. How cosy would that be? How frighteningly grown-up? Moreover, Caleb would actually be the point of the gathering. How significant was that? How bloody symbolic? After all, she hadn’t yet told anyone of his existence. Apart from Zac, of course. But no one knew of Zac’s existence either. And yet dinner for six seemed somehow presumptuous. Though she’d been with Caleb two months now, she’d let him in to her flat on just a couple of occasions and that was only because he’d all but begged. One time he said he’d been spending too much time in the East End and that he craved a change of scene; on another, he said the neighbours were madder than ever and he needed refuge. Oddly, Pip didn’t enjoy sex as much in her own bed as at Caleb’s flat. Both times, she had hoped he would not presume to stay the night and yet when he didn’t even ask to, calling a cab ten minutes post-coitally, she was a little taken aback.
If I organize a dinner thing, would he want to stay over afterwards? Will I want that? Whether he does or doesn’t, can you imagine how often my phone will go the following day with Megan and Fen desperate for details? Then, of course, Cat will be told and will want to hear it all anew.
She looked at her calendar. Cat would be going off to the Tour de France soon enough.
‘It’s not like I actively want to keep information away from her,’ Pip muttered, ‘but that’s how it will seem because I doubt I can fix something up before she leaves. But to do so once she’s gone won’t seem right, either.’
So, no dinner party?
No.
No opportunity for friends and relations to meet your boyfriend?
No. Not at the moment. Anyway, it’s not as if he’s been brandishing me around his own social circle.
Hasn’t he?
No, thank God!
No one at all?
Not a soul.
Anyway, isn’t Caleb going away himself fairly soon? It might well seem affected to organize a meet and greet before he leaves.
I’d forgotten about that! But of course. That settles it, then, and what a relief!
It was a Thursday. Caleb was aware that Pip liked company and specific things to do in the evening and it was his pleasure to assist.
‘Why don’t I come home with you?’ he suggested, having nipped in to the glorified cupboard at the hospital where she was mid-metamorphosis between Dr Pippity and Pip. ‘Can you hang around half an hour? Or shall I meet you later?’
Pip looked at him in the mirror, then glanced at herself with half her make-up off, the remainder smeared grotesquely. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘but don’t rush. Come later. I want my well-earned luxuriate in the bath first, anyway.’
‘Lovely,’ he said softly, coming close behind her and sliding his hands gently along her collar-bones to the base of her throat. ‘The sternoclavicular dip,’ he marvelled, using his fingertips to touch her there. ‘For me, it’s the most feminine, alluring part of a woman.’ He slipped his hands lower until they cupped her breasts. ‘Not that these aren’t your finest assets,’ he said. Coquettishly, Pip spread her legs a little and led his hand down to the gusset of her spotty tights, while she looked up at him, all wide-eyed and winsome. Caleb swallowed. ‘I stand corrected,’ he said, kneading his fingers gently but insistently at her crotch. ‘This is perhaps my favourite part of you.’
‘Dr Simmons,’ Pip remonstrated, though she moved her pelvis to rub herself against his hand, ‘are you actually off duty?’
‘Fuck,’ he sighed, though he intensified his touch.
‘When you’re off duty,’ Pip sa
id with glee, picking his hand up and flinging it away theatrically, ‘I’ll consider whether to grant you entry. Now sod off.’
Caleb smiled and gazed and saw beyond the smear of face paint and the hair tied back any old how. He would have been happy for Pip to have rubbed off all her remaining make-up over his bare body. He wanted to ravish her right now. But, as she said, he was on duty. Later. Later.
‘You clowns,’ he sulked in jest, ‘you’re no bloody fun, you’re all mouth and no trousers.’
Pip regarded him squarely. ‘I assure you,’ she said, ‘a smile isn’t the only thing I’ll raise in you later on. I’ll be all mouth and you’ll be no trousers.’
She walked to the tube with a spring to her step. Caleb. He was such an attractive mix of manners and mischief. Maybe a dinner party would be a laugh. She knew that Megan and her sisters – anyone, really – would like him very much. Being with him made her feel feisty. She was truly enjoying the fun of it all. It was lovely to be involved with someone she respected, but who she could be so playful with, too. She was quite surprised how, quite early on, she was turned on and flattered that he referred to her genitalia as her ‘gorgeous cunt’. Previously, she’d hated the word and would never have countenanced a man who used it – whether as expletive or anatomically. Pip didn’t really have a word for her nether regions. Mike had called it her ‘fanny’ which she’d hated as soppy and childish. Rupert had referred to it only the once as her ‘privates’ and she’d ended the relationship soon after. Harry had been most reverential towards her ‘vagina’ which made Pip think of her doctor and smear tests. But Caleb tells her that her cunt is gorgeous and Pip is happy to share its mysteries with him.
The following Tuesday, she was back at St Bea’s, spinning laughs and weaving smiles, distributing respite and little gifts, lifting the mood by lowering the tone. It was a good session. One of the nurses told her she had brought into the ward the glorious sunshine and warmth of the high June day. Pip was full of energy and decided to stay an extra hour to tell some lousy jokes and perform skilfully clumsy acrobatics in Out-patients. She’d take a quick break first. She paged Caleb. He joined her in the ambulance bay. It was nearing tea-time but still hot. He looked harassed. He looked as though he felt the opposite of Pip. It appeared his day was as bad as hers had been good. The sunshine had no positive effect on him. What could she do to help? She touched his brow and ran her hand down his cheek, over his neck to his arm. She squeezed him fondly. ‘You OK?’
