The Reinvention of Martha Ross

by Charlene Allcott

  ‘Hey,’ said Alexander. I was conscious of the fact that I had to look up to make eye contact with him, something that doesn’t always happen when I meet a guy.

  ‘Hey,’ I replied. It wasn’t love at that point, but I had this visceral feeling that I needed to be near him.

  ‘You have a bit of guac on your chin,’ he said. I felt a heat build in my chest and rise steadily. I knew it would produce a colour on my cheeks so vivid even my tan skin wouldn’t mask it. He smiled, reached out and gently swiped his thumb across a spot just under my lips. Then it was love.

  If I had had a list back then, it wouldn’t have mattered. I was a kid; I thought love was enough. Alexander has taught me that love is only the start. A man needs more than a cute smile and an endearing way about him. Even in my wine-and-adrenaline-fuelled haze I can see that if Alexander was what I wanted, this man – the man from the list – is what I need.

  ‘He’s amazing,’ I say. ‘Where the hell am I gonna find him?’ Cara reaches towards the coffee table and picks up my phone. Her thumb moves purposefully across the screen.

  ‘What is this thing,’ she mutters.

  ‘An iPhone,’ I say.

  ‘Maybe it was five years ago, darling.’ After a couple of minutes she passes me my phone. ‘Here you go.’ On the screen is a photo of a man I do not know.

  ‘What do I do with him?’ I ask. Cara rolls her eyes.

  ‘Jesus, don’t you have wi-fi under your rock? This, honey, is Linger. All the available totty in a ten-mile radius. You swipe left for no and right for the shag-worthy. Welcome to twenty-first-century dating.’

  The man has a nice smile, but his eyes look cold. I swipe him left and he disappears and is replaced by a new face. I look to Cara and she nods encouragement. I swipe the next guy left and the next. No, no, no, not Alexander, not Alexander, not Alexander. I throw my phone on to the carpet.

  ‘This isn’t going to work,’ I say. I can feel a tightness building in my chest. It’s as if something is pressing down on me and even if I wanted to I don’t have the energy to push it off. The girls are both silent for a few seconds and then Cara claps her hands together. She retrieves her tote from the floor and begins rooting around in it.

  ‘I see we’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way,’ she says. ‘Ladies, we’re going out.’ She holds up a bottle of tequila triumphantly.

  ‘Why in God’s name do you have that?’ asks Leanne.

  ‘Because,’ says Cara, ‘as this situation has just demonstrated, you never know when you’re gonna need it.’

  By the time our cab pulls up outside the Freaky Funk club, Cara’s rejuvenating pep talks and lubricating tequila shots have convinced me that, if I cannot find the one, I can definitely find the one for tonight and sometimes the one for tonight can become the one. That totally happened to my cousin’s best mate’s sister. As we stand in the doorway of the club, Cara makes a sweeping gesture with her arm.

  ‘Welcome to the land of the easy and the home of the desperate,’ she says, and as if by celestial intervention, at that very moment the DJ drops ‘It’s Raining Men’.

  4

  AS LEANNE GETS the first round in I give the room a quick survey. There’s a stag party, or at least I hope that’s their excuse for the T-shirts emblazoned with penises; what appears to be a quiet after-work drink that got away with itself; and a few stray groups of people who obviously have a penchant for sticky floors and eighties hits. I decide to approach the stags – they’re all giving it some welly on the dance floor – and whilst the tequila means I don’t need encouragement to join in, they offer it.

  One of them, a short guy with unnervingly animated eyebrows, has a cowboy hat on. As I shimmy towards him he tips it and I accept this invitation and allow him to take me in his arms. He’s not tall but he’s solid and I feel safe enough to relax into his chest. There’s something wonderful, yet slightly irritating, about how good his presence against me feels – despite all the finger waving and carping on about independence, it feels so delightful to have a man just hold you upright. As we’re swaying vaguely rhythmically someone comes in behind me and so I reach back and place a hand on the unidentified hip. I’m really getting into being the ham in my man sandwich when Leanne comes over with a drink. I shuffle out, leave the two guys dancing together, and down the drink in one.

  ‘Slow down,’ says Leanne. I assume she’s talking about the booze but she’s looking at the men.

  I say, ‘I’ve been slow for a decade, I need to catch up.’ I’m not sure that’s exactly how it comes out because Leanne just stares at me from below knitted brows.

  ‘I’m gonna go get you some water,’ she says. ‘Dancing Queen’ comes on and I re-join the stags. I love this song. OK, right now I love every song but in this moment it feels like Benny and Björn and Agnetha and the other one are speaking directly to me. My body is the slightly saggy shell of a thirty-something woman but my soul, my soul is seventeen.

  One of the cutest stags is watching my performance with quiet interest. He has lovely eyes, really warm and thoughtful, but when I wink at him he smiles and his smile is nothing short of wicked. His smile says, ‘If you give me half a chance, I will ruin you’ – and I love that. I walk slowly towards him and drape my hands over his shoulders, still moving my hips along with the jaunty beat. He leans in and whispers, ‘We’re all attached, love.’ My hips halt. ‘Well, all except Bryan.’ He points to a chair at the edge of the room where Bryan, I assume, is asleep. Someone has scrawled the word ‘BANTER’ on his face. I thank the man and his smile and head to the bar.

  ‘I will have three of your cheapest sambuca please, bar man,’ I say.

  ‘Sure thing,’ he says, and lays out three glasses.

  ‘And might I say you are quite handsome,’ I say, and as I say it, I realize he is. Like me, he’s obviously of mixed parentage but he’s not from common or garden black and white parents, as I am. I wonder if he has Asian heritage.

  I lean over the bar in order to ask and he says, ‘That’s nice but I am so, so gay.’ I stand up straight and bolt down one of the shots.

  ‘I’ll have another,’ I say, and he pours out another sambuca.

  I pay, drink a second shot, and then take the others and push past the revellers to find the girls. Leanne is standing close to the entrance, looking like she was just beamed down from her spaceship and is hoping that someone will help her phone home. ‘I got you a drink,’ I say, pushing one of the glasses into her hand. ‘It might help dislodge that stick from your arse,’ I add in my head. She places it on a table next to her and carefully wipes some escaped alcohol from her hand with the corner of her cardigan. She then offers me a glass of water, at which I shake my head vigorously.

  ‘Do you wanna come home, honey?’ she asks. I hate that voice she does. That ‘I know what’s best for you’ tone. As she speaks she smooths an invisible crease out of her dress. Her outfit is cute but screams ‘I’d rather be home with my husband’. I bet it’s from Boden; it has to be from Boden.

  ‘Where’s your dress from?’ I ask.

  ‘Joules,’ says Leanne. Same thing.

  ‘I’m not ready,’ I say, and give her my best ‘I’m fabulous and I’m having a fabulous time’ smile. ‘Where’s Car?’

  Leanne nods in the direction of a dark corner where I see Cara on a sofa, perched on the lap of a gentleman who appears to be in his late sixties. When I reach her Cara is telling him he reminds her of her father.

  ‘Is that a good thing?’ he asks eagerly.

  ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘I got you this,’ I say, handing Cara the shot. She drinks it without breaking eye contact with her new friend.

  ‘I’m striking out,’ I tell her. Now I think of it, I do kinda wanna go home, I just don’t have a home to go to. Cara turns to me.

  ‘If you want to have sex, just go and have sex.’

  ‘I don’t just want to,’ I say, ‘I have to. I have to extract Alexander from my soul. I need to
know that I haven’t completely fucked up my only chance to have sex again.’

  The man looks at me with open curiosity. Cara sighs and says, ‘Sex for validation, so healthy.’ And then a bit more kindly she says, ‘So you need an orgasmic cleansing. We’ve all been there but you’re not going to get it talking to me, so go.’ She waves me away like I’m a puppy. ‘Carpe dickem!’ she calls as I walk away.

  I pick the guy because of his shoulders, broad shoulders that make me think he could hold me up against a wall, although I would never let a guy hold me up against a wall because what if he couldn’t take my weight? I would die of shame on the spot. Also, that’s about all I have to go on as his back is to me while he talks to his companion. Just before I reach him, Leanne stops me.

  ‘I was just outside on the phone to James. Apparently, Lucas woke up and couldn’t find his blankie and I had to remind him that we gave it to the blankie fairy like three weeks ago.’ She shakes her head in the way married women do when they are expressing how adorable but hapless their husbands are. ‘I should probably get back, come jump in a cab with me. We could stop for pizza?’

  I want to say, ‘That’s all good for you. You go home to your comfy house and have lacklustre sex with your mouse-faced husband; I have to find my self-esteem in someone else’s orgasm,’ but instead I say, ‘Sorry, there’s someone I have to say hello to.’ And I step round her and continue across the room. When I reach Broad Shoulders, I tap him on his equally broad back and he turns around. His face does not quite match his shoulders in that his body says man and his face says little boy lost but it’s a friendly face, one that doesn’t erode my nerve to say, ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi,’ responds Broad Shoulders.

  ‘Do you want to have sex?’ I ask. Broad Shoulders makes the kind of face one makes when an air steward asks if you want chicken or fish before saying, ‘OK.’

  We leave almost immediately; there’s a slight kerfuffle over the fact that the cloakroom attendant has lost my coat before I remember that I wasn’t wearing one but soon we’re standing awkwardly together on the street. The cold air is almost but not quite sobering.

  ‘Where do you live?’ I ask. I hope this makes it clear that the ‘your place or mine’ discussion is unnecessary.

  ‘Not far,’ he says, and starts to walk. I have to trot a little to catch up with him, but he doesn’t protest as I fall into step beside him. Isn’t it strange how the same act, depending on the context, can become something entirely different – walking in silence on a dark night with someone you have dated for some time is intimate, romantic even; doing the same with a man you have just met falls squarely into the category of sinister. Also, ‘not far’ is very subjective. I mean, Guatemala probably doesn’t feel that far when you’re flying in a luxury private jet; Broad Shoulders lives extremely far on a frigid, dark night. Far enough to make my nose run and my legs start to ache; far enough to make me lose all the courage I have, Dutch or otherwise. I’m about to bail; I’m literally considering how I will explain to Cara that I could not pull in a club where sex is so available they should offer the morning-after pill as a bar snack, when I realize Broad Shoulders has come to a stop.

  ‘This is me,’ he says. We’re outside a row of stunning mansion flats. I used to walk Moses in his buggy along this road and try to peek through the windows at a life beyond my imagination. Broad Shoulders jogs up the steps to the building and puts his key in the door. Before he pushes it open I ask him his name.

  ‘Rupert,’ he says. He doesn’t ask mine. Inside he asks me if I want a drink.

  ‘Yes please,’ I say.

  ‘Water or squash?’ he asks. I pick squash.

  He leaves me standing in the hallway as he goes to prepare it. From the sounds that emanate there is a lot of work that goes into the process. He returns with a pint glass and a mug and hands me the mug. ‘This way,’ he says, and guides me gently towards a room I assume is his bedroom, although only a mattress on the floor signifies this. There is no other bedroom apparatus – no wardrobe, no photos, no throw cushions. I suddenly miss my throw cushions. I got them from Homesense. They have navy stripes on them.

  I’m trying to work out how to sensually mount a mattress on the floor when I notice that Rupert is taking off his clothes, all of them. Naked, he has strange proportions. His impressive upper body contrasts dramatically with his thick, short legs. Rupert gets into the bed, lies back and puts his hands behind his head. I put down my drink before taking off my shoes and joining him and it is then that he kisses me. The kisses are not exploratory or even sexy; he pecks away as if he thinks I have an access code. I let him think he has unlocked it and reach down to grab his penis. It is sort of hard but weirdly cold and damp. He makes a noise of encouragement, although I’m not really doing anything. I can’t help but think about Alexander’s penis. His penis was, and I assume still is, perfect. I actually gasped when I first saw it. He laughed so hard that he lost his erection but neither of us cared. Rupert’s penis is not perfect but it is here, and I am told that beggars cannot be choosers. He shifts his body on to one side and undoes my trousers with his free hand. Without further introduction, he shoves his fingers under my pants. I have a flashback to a party in Year 10. Adele Healey’s mum went to the Canaries and I spent half the night with Kieran Nuttall in her younger brother’s bedroom. He asked me if I knew that my lips were uneven; it took me a week to realize he wasn’t talking about the ones on my face.

  I’m not liking whatever Rupert is trying to do so I try and encourage him to move past the trailers.

  ‘Do you have a condom?’ I ask. He jumps up and leaves the room, still naked. I’m left feeling like I’m halfway through a particularly inept smear. I wiggle out of my trousers and knickers and leave them at the bottom of the bed. I’m thinking about removing my top when he returns. I can’t stop imagining where he might have had to go to get the rubber. I picture the places one puts things to keep them safe – an empty Quality Street tin, an overfilled shoebox. This turns out to be a good thing because it distracts me for the half a minute Rupert spends wrestling with the johnnie before returning his attention to the jabbing. I make a noise that I hope sounds positive but not too enthusiastic; I want the prodding to stop but I’m not sure what I want him to replace it with. In response he readjusts, straddles me and pushes himself inside me. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t really feel like anything. It feels like exploring an ear canal with a cotton bud, only less satisfying. I feel my tears before I understand what they are. I’ve never been a silent crier – excessive snot production is the cause, I suspect. It takes around five strokes for Rupert to realize what’s happening. He stops, puts a hand to my cheek and says, ‘Is it all right if I finish?’

  5

  I SPEND THE night, more for convenience than anything else. When I wake, Rupert is snoring gently; the little puffing noises he makes remind me of Moses. I roll on to my back and grab my breasts; I’m relieved to find my key and debit card still stashed in my bra. I locate my trousers under the covers and get out of bed and slip into them before stepping into my shoes. My phone lies on the carpet and I notice several missed calls before I put it in my pocket. I forgo my knickers because I’m scared I’ll wake him whilst rooting around for them. I convince myself this is sexy, a lacy calling card, although I’m pretty sure I left a panty liner in them. As I make my way through the flat it becomes apparent that Rupert’s home is in fact a squat. Under the spell of alcohol and anticipation, I had failed to notice some of the apartment’s less charming features, specifically a life-sized mural in the hallway depicting Margaret Thatcher preparing to breastfeed what appears to be a bonneted Tony Blair.

  When I get outside the crisp morning seems to magnify my own internal dankness. I speed-walk a few metres down the road, eager to put some distance between myself and the night before. How could I be a respectful wife and mother one day and a walk-of-shamin’ hussy the next? I look at my phone and the calls are from Leanne. I know Ja
mes usually gets up with the kids on a Saturday, so it’s safe to say she’s not trying to reach me for a casual catch-up. I let my thumb rest on her name and she picks up after one ring.

  ‘How the fudge could you be so irresponsible,’ she says. ‘I’m nearly dead with worry.’ I love how even in the wake of trauma Leanne is mindful of innocent ears. Her concern hits me somewhere around my throat and I gasp for air.

  ‘Can you come get me, please?’ I ask.

  ‘Where are you?’ she says softly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say.

  ‘What can you see?’ asks Leanne.

  ‘A post box.’

  Leanne finds me outside a Costa Coffee a couple of roads away from the squat. The bag that I left at her house is waiting for me on the passenger seat. She drives me back to my new but old home, in silence. It’s a classic mum move, so much worse than the lecture I was prepared for. When we pull up at my parents’ house she says, ‘It will get better, you know. If Alexander wasn’t the one, you’ll find him.’

  ‘Yep,’ I say, and move to get out of the car.

  Leanne grabs my hand. ‘You deserve the one. Someone fit for the list,’ she says with a smile. I give her a kiss on the cheek and climb out.

  The energy of my mother’s home – the hum of the fan oven; the enriching chatter of Radio 4 – makes me realize how hungover I am. Hungover doesn’t cut it; my head feels like it’s encased in amber. I just want a litre of Coke and a hole to crawl in and instead I get my mother.

  Mum is in the kitchen with Moses. Despite the fact Ivy Ketch hasn’t worked a day of my lifetime, she is dressed as though she is fresh from the office in slim navy trousers and a cream blouse. Her rich, brown skin is make-up free, aside from an ever-present coat of Fashion Fair’s ‘Ruby Plum’ on her lips. I stand in the doorway watching her hold up a flashcard with a picture of a strawberry on it. Moses is in his high chair and has a plate of fruit in front of him. He is laughing at my mother’s efforts, revealing the two little teeth that sit alone in the lower half of his mouth. ‘Can you find the strawberry?’ says Mum, enunciating each syllable carefully. She then shouts, ‘Martha?!’ As if I am not an only child and anyone else would be letting themselves into her quiet semi-detached home on a Saturday morning.