by Isabel Wolff
“Oh hellooooo . . .” said a slightly gravelly female voice. Who the hell was this?
“Hellooooo . . .” it said again. “Is that Tiffaneee? Tiffanneee Trott? This is Peter Fitz-Harrod.” Christ, it was a bloke.
“Yes,” I said, shocked. “That’s me.”
“Ah. Well, ha ha ha ha ha! Lizzie Bohannon gave me your number. Ha ha ha ha ha! She’s told me all about you. Ha ha ha ha! You sound absolutely splendid. Would you like to meet me for a drink?”
June Continued
I bet Peter Fitz-Harrod’s wife left him for someone else. I don’t blame her in the slightest. He sounds like a total wimp. Unlike Tall Athletic.
“Lizzie, why are you setting me up with this weedy little man?” I asked her over the telephone. Actually I didn’t say that. One has to be tactful with friends who are doing their level best to help one up the aisle. What I really said was, “Lizzie, what’s this Peter Fitz-doobery man like? I mean it’s very nice of you to think of me, and I do really, really appreciate it, but to be brutally honest, he sounds like a complete and utter jerk.”
“I know the voice is a bit awful, but he’s much better in the flesh,” she said reassuringly. “He’s definitely worth a try. Would I suggest him otherwise?” I was prepared to take her word for it, though I definitely preferred the sound of Tall Athletic. I bet he’s got a lovely voice. All that lecturing—his students must find him mesmerizing. He should have had my letter by now. Sporty and brainy—marvelous! What enticing images this conjures: squash followed by a bit of Schopenhauer; tennis followed by the Tate; swimming while discussing Solzhenitsyn; hill-walking with a hint of Hindemith. Golf . . . hang on a mo. Not golf. Anything but golf. If he plays golf, we’re through. “No, no, no, you go and play,” I’d say to Phillip every Saturday morning. “You need to relax. You’ve got a very high-pressure job,” (unlike me, of course). And by six o’clock he’d be back having played thirty-six—or was it seventy-two?—holes. And then he’d do the same on Sundays. “I had a bloody good game,” he’d say, as he switched on Sky Sports. “Bloody good. Tremendous. What’s for supper, Tiff?”
No, I’m putting my foot right down. Tall Athletic is not allowed to play golf. He can play tennis, cricket, croquet, football, hockey, squash, rugby, baseball, basketball, badminton, Ping-Pong, polo, Eton fives, seven-a-side rugger and darts. He can go surfboarding, rollerblading, waterskiing, rally-driving, scuba-diving, ten-pin bowling, white-water rafting and rowing. He can do heli-skiing, parascending, motocross, hang-gliding, parachuting, sky-diving and three-day-eventing, but if he plays golf—we’re through. Phillip’s much-married mother used to say, in her wearying, worldly-wise way, “It’s good for men like Phillip to have a regular sport like golf because then at least,” and here her voice would drop to a conspiratorial whisper, “you know exactly what they’re up to.” And how my heart would sink, as it always did when she gave me advice of this kind; and later on, when I finally knew, well . . . how ironic it seemed.
This evening I met Peter Fitz-Harrod for a drink. Here’s what happened. We arranged a rendezvous at the Ritz at six-thirty, and I had planned my escape in the form of a phantom dinner appointment at eight-fifteen. My first blind date for more than fifteen years! What a bizarre thing to do—go to a hotel to have a drink with a man on whom I had never laid eyes before. But having laid ears on him, I wasn’t that excited—just curious to see whether he was as frightful as I imagined. I had described myself to him: “fair hair,” I said, deliberately avoiding the word “blonde”—he sounded quite overexcited enough as it was and I knew he wasn’t my type. But I dressed carefully—nothing that Phillip would have made an appalling fuss about, just a pretty little suit and a discreet amount of makeup (no foundation—so ageing). As I spun through the swing doors I saw a man in a Burberry raincoat sitting by the night porter’s desk. I looked at him, he looked at me, then he jumped to his feet like a crocodile leaping off the riverbank. It was him. Keen as mustard.
“Hello, ha ha ha ha ha! You must be Tiffaneee,” he squeaked, offering me a clammy hand.
“How did you guess?” I asked him—the Ritz was stuffed to the rafters with thirty-something blondes.
“Well, ha ha ha ha ha! I don’t know, I suppose you just look like your voice,” he said.
“Thank God, you don’t,” I just managed not to say, because actually, Lizzie was right. He really wasn’t too bad. About five foot ten, with curly brown hair. Blue eyes. Medium build. Discreet gray suit. Black lace-up shoes—well polished. Tasteful silver cufflinks. In fact, quite OK-looking-bordering-on-the-almost-acceptable (NB—do not, in future, judge blokes on basis of voices).
We sat in the bar and ordered drinks. A beer for him, a glass of white wine for me. “Sauvignon please, rather than Chardonnay,” I instructed the waiter in my best “girl-about-town” style. Good God! I suddenly realized I was trying to impress this man. Was I interested? Well, maybe. His ghastly voice had dropped by about an octave, and the nervous machine-gun laughter had stopped. I certainly wasn’t sitting there thinking, You Have Got To Be Joking! In fact, I was smiling quite a bit and I didn’t have my arms defensively crossed. He was really quite nice, I thought, as I nibbled a pistachio. How could his wife have left him? What a cow. Probably led him a merry dance with a string of Latin lovers which she no doubt entertained three at a time in the marital bed, only venturing out in order to blow all his money on Gucci and Louis Vuitton. Poor chap. Obviously been through a hell of a lot. Needs to have his faith in women restored. I asked him about his work, which is scheduling loans to southern African countries. He asked me about mine.
“Oh—advertising, Go To Work On An Egg and all that!” he exclaimed enthusiastically.
“Yes, that sort of thing,” I replied, without getting into the intricacies of Kiddimint.
“Vorsprung, Durch Technik!”
“Yes, that’s right.”
We talked about sport; he hates golf—brilliant! And he likes tennis—even better. I dropped in a strategically sensitive but not at all intrusive question about his children, whom he sees every Sunday. Then we ordered another drink. It was all going rather well. Gradually, the conversation became a little more personal. He asked me why I’m not married.
“I’m too young,” I said. “My parents feel I should wait.”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha! That’s very good,” he said. “Very good. Too young! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
“And why did you get divorced?” I inquired. “Was it your wife’s decision?”
“Oh no,” he said. “No, it was entirely mine. My wife didn’t want to get divorced at all. In fact she was terribly unhappy about it. Still is.” Ah. I see. This took me aback. Men do not normally leave their wives unless they are in love with someone else.
“She thought we were very happily married,” he continued above the tinkling of the piano. “But I didn’t. She resisted the divorce for months.” Suddenly I found myself feeling rather sorry for his wife. Why had he left? Maybe he did have an affair, though he didn’t seem the type.
“I wasn’t interested in anyone else,” he confided. “But the problem was that I found my wife very boring.” Oh! Oh dear. Boring.
“Was she very quiet, then?” I asked him as I fiddled with the stem of my wine glass.
“Oh no, she had lots to say,” he replied. “She’s not shy or introverted at all, and she’s got a lot of interests. And she really loved being a wife and mother . . .”
Oh. Oh, I see. Except that I didn’t really see at all.
“I was just very bored with her,” he continued. “That’s all I can say. Bored.” Well, there are worse things to be than boring, I thought. Like unfaithful, controlling, neglectful, selfish, cruel and mean. But boring?
“She wasn’t very entertaining,” he explained. “And she didn’t pay me enough attention. She just wasn’t”—he gave an exasperated little shrug—“. . . a stimulating partner.”
What was she supposed to do, I found myself wondering, monocycle round the kit
chen while juggling the Wedgwood and singing highlights from Oklahoma!?
“And also”—he leaned in a little closer—“she was really hopeless in bed.”
Aaarrrggghhh!!! I did not want to know this. It made my stomach turn. By now I was feeling extremely sorry for Mrs. Fitz-Harrod. I wanted to go right round to her house and say, “Now you listen to me, Mrs. Fitz-Harrod, you are well out of it. Your ex-husband is an unchivalrous swine.” Instead I glanced at my watch. “Goodness, it’s five past eight, I really must get going. It’s been very nice talking to you,” I lied, as a frock-coated waiter brought him the bill.
“Ditto,” he replied. “I’d love to see you again. We could play tennis,” he added as I hailed a passing cab. “I’ll call you.”
“Yes. Yes. Do,” I said as I got in, giving him an arctic smile. “That would be nice. Give me a ring some time. Any time.” Or, preferably, never. Never would be just fine. I sped home feeling slightly depressed. And rather embarrassed, too—after all, I had only met him at Lizzie’s suggestion. I’d have to tell her how ghastly he was—I should never have let her persuade me. Still, she meant well, I reflected as I walked up my garden path, pausing to snip off a couple of pink roses with my nail scissors. They’d look pretty in the kitchen and the scent would cheer me up. I mean it’s not Lizzie’s fault, I thought. She wasn’t to know—she’d only met him once herself. But what a ghastly evening. What a ghastly, ghastly man.
I turned the key in the lock brightening considerably when I opened the door to see the answer phone’s green light winking gaily at me. My index finger hit “Play.” Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Hello there, Tiffany,” said a silky-smooth male voice. “You don’t know me—yet. My name’s Neville. You were kind enough to answer my ad, and I’d love you to give me a ring.”
When you are thirty-seven, single and childless, there are certain things that people say. They say. “Don’t worry, your prince will come,” or “Cheer up! Your luck will change!” Or—worst of all—“There’s someone nice just around the corner.” I had been about to ban Mum from ever saying that again.
“No there isn’t someone nice just around the corner,” I usually say in reply to this well-meant, weekly cliché. “There’s probably someone nasty just around the corner. In fact, you can bet there’s a right bastard just around the corner who’s going to get me very interested, waste an awful lot of time and then bugger off, leaving me back at square one.”
“Don’t worry, darling, there’s someone nice just around the corner,” she said to me again this morning, but this time I simply said to her, “Well Mummy, I think you might be right.” Now why did I say that? Because Tall Athletic’s just around the corner—that’s why. And he really does sound nice. A gorgeous voice for starters—dead sexy. American. Or at least . . . well, it was rather embarrassing actually. Because when I realized I had a Sylvester Stallone soundalike on the other end of the line I said, “Which part of the States do you come from then?”
And there was this awkward silence for about—ooh, a minute—and then the voice said, “Actually, I’m Canadian.”
Anyway, I eventually managed to persuade him not to put the phone down, and we began to chat. Now, I don’t know what other people do on these occasions, but I decided not to talk to him for too long. I wanted us to have plenty to say to each other when we met. So I didn’t ask him about his academic career or what he loves most about the British or anything like that, I just asked him what he meant by “Athletic.” And he said—be still my beating heart!—“Ice hockey.” Wow! That is such a macho game.
Anyway, we decided to meet at this little Italian café in Soho he knows, because he told me he was a great “Italophile.” And this seemed to be true because when he rang off he said “ciao” instead of “bye.” “Ciao.” Just like that. Isn’t that great? “Ciao.” Yes, I really like the sound of him. However, there are two drawbacks: 1) he lives in Walthamstow and 2) his name is Neville. Now, Neville is not a great name. In fact it’s pretty awful—on a par with, say, Kevin, Terry or Duane. But then, he’s Canadian, so it’s sort of OK, and of course a lot of famous Canadians do have quite weird names, don’t they, like, um, famous Canadians, famous Canadians—oh yes, Margaret Atwood and Bryan Adams. And as for Neville living in Walthamstow—well I’m sure he’d relocate if we hit it off, which I really think we might.
Why oh why oh why do men feel the need to exaggerate their height? I mean, it’s not even as though I’m particularly prejudiced in favor of tall men—I’m not. It was the “Athletic Academic” bit of Neville’s ad which appealed to me because I really like clever men. Anyway, when I arrived at the Café Firenza—a bit of a dive frankly—I asked for Neville and was shown to a table at the back. I saw this bearded man sitting there—why didn’t I check him for facial hair over the phone? And when he stood up to shake my hand I realized he was no more than five foot eight and three-quarters, which is not tall, it’s medium. And medium is absolutely fine. There is nothing wrong with medium. But it is not to be confused with tall. So instead of the big, brainy lumberjack of my dreams, there was this rather slight, bearded man, with sloping shoulders, small hands and large, gray, staring eyes. My heart sank into the soles of my Patrick Cox loafers. Still, he did have a very sexy voice—unlike Peter Fitz-Harrod. He ordered the wine, in Italian. This seemed to take quite a long time for some reason, even though it was quite clear to me, from my smattering of restaurant Italian, that he was ordering a bottle of the vino da tavola—rosso. And then, when the waiter had gone, Neville did this funny thing. He just sat there, looking at me very intensely, saying nothing. Just staring. Obviously terribly shy. I smiled encouragingly at him.
“Are you feeling tense, Tiffany?” he suddenly asked me.
“Tense? Oh, no, no, no. Not at all. No.”
“It’s just that you do seem quite, well, tense. And nervous. I think you are tense and nervous, aren’t you, Tiffany?” he persisted as the bottle of house red arrived.
“Mille grazie, Rodney,” he said. “You see, I do have that effect on women,” he continued. “I’m told I make them nervous. I can’t help it,” he added as he poured wine into his glass tumbler, and then mine. He looked up at me. “I seem to have this . . . power over women.”
Neville was wearing a checked shirt with no tie, the top three buttons undone. And in the hairs on his chest was a white, pus-filled boil, like a tiny electric lightbulb. I found myself staring at it, wondering if it was about to pop. To distract myself I asked him about his academic career, and it turned out he wasn’t a professor of cytogenetics. He wasn’t a professor of anything. He wasn’t even a lecturer. He was still a student—at thirty-six!
“Still trying to get those O levels?” I quipped as the wine kicked in.
He looked offended. “Actually, I’m doing a Ph.D.”
“Wow! What’s it about?” I inquired, chewing the end of a breadstick.
“It’s about the influence of Breton ballads on early nineteenth-century Quebecois poetry. It’s really fascinating. You know, you British really have no idea how vibrant Canadian culture is.”
“On the contrary,” I replied. “I’ve read all of Margaret Atwood’s novels. They were jolly good. And I’ve got three Glenn Gould CDs.”
“You’re all so insular,” he said, warming to his theme. “I mean, there were local elections in Winnipeg last week, but there was nothing about it in the British press. And the Quebec problem hardly gets covered at all, despite the fact that the potential breakup of the Canadian federation is an issue of enormous international concern.” By this time I couldn’t have cared less if Canada became the fifty-first state in the Union.
“Don’t mind me,” he suddenly said with a little, low laugh. “I’m very pugilistic. I like to provoke. I get in a lot of fights. I get in a lot of fights over women.” He shifted in his seat, then hooked his elbows around the back of his chair. “Sometimes, I just walk out of tutorials, right in the middle of them—bang!—just like that. My Ph.D. superv
isor says I’m a mixture of charm and war.” Charm and war! Gosh. Charm and bore more like.
He looked me straight in the eye. “I’m gonna level with you, Tiffany,” he said. “I’m very . . . complex. I’ve done a lot of drugs and I’ve had a lot of women. A whole string of them. It’s been pretty easy for me.” Why, then, the need to advertise his charms in the personal column of a national newspaper? “But I’m tired of womanizing,” he added, by way of explanation. “I want kids. Lots of them. But only with the right kind of woman. Hence my ad. Now a lot of really gorgeous women have written to me, Tiffany. And one of them is going to be the mother of my children. Maybe it’ll be you, though frankly I think you’re a little bit old for that. But I thought your photo was cute.”
Suddenly he leaned forward and said, “Guess who holds the world record to break dancing at high altitude?”
“Er, I don’t know,” I said. “That’s rather a tricky one. Um, let me guess . . . not . . . you?”
He nodded slowly, with a lopsided little smile.
“Gosh!” I said. “And how often do you play ice-hockey?”
“Tiffany.” He was staring at me intensely again. “Enough about me. I want you to tell me all about yourself. You haven’t told me a thing.” He hadn’t asked.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go,” I said. “It’s half past eight, and I’ve got an early start tomorrow. But it’s been very interesting meeting you,” I said truthfully, putting down a fiver for the wine. “And, well . . .” I groped for some definitive valediction. “Good luck.”
