Larger Than Life

by Adele Parks

  ‘Well, if you’re not coming to the gym, can you pick up my suit from the dry-cleaner’s?’ asks Hugh, as he starts to pack his sports bag. He sweeps the bathroom shelves, collecting up deodorant, shampoo, shower gel, shaving cream.

  ‘Yes,’ I mutter, although I had planned to hide in bed all day. I ought to buy him a double set of all his toiletries; then he could keep one lot in his gym bag and one lot in the bathroom – it would make things much easier for him.

  ‘And buy a birthday card for my mother.’

  ‘I already have, you just have to sign it.’

  ‘Oh, great. Well done.’ He starts to search his drawers for something. As he becomes more frantic he scatters socks and T-shirts on to the floor like confetti.

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘Sports socks.’

  ‘Second drawer down on the left.’

  ‘Oh, right, thanks. And my blue Nike shirt?’

  ‘In the dryer.’

  ‘Great.’ He rushes downstairs, leaving a Hansel and Gretel trail of clothes behind him. He comes back into the room with his squash racket but no Nike shirt.

  ‘Your shirt,’ I remind him.

  ‘Absolutely. Right.’ He grins and runs back downstairs. ‘What would I do without you?’

  ‘You’ll never have to find out,’ I shout after him. Which is true, and a much nicer thing to say than, ‘Just leave, just go and play squash!’ which is on the tip of my tongue.

  The door bangs behind him.

  Bye, then.

  Even under the duvet I can see that there’s regurgitated Weetabix on my shirt. Without surrendering my horizontal position I wiggle out of the shirt and throw it in the general direction of the dirty-laundry basket. Then I sleep.

  The telephone ringing wakes me up. I feel around for the handset.

  ‘Hello.’ I try and project an alert and jolly tone into my voice, so that whoever is calling can’t tell I was asleep.

  ‘Were you asleep?’ demands Hugh.

  ‘Er.’ Truth or tiny, little, white lie?

  ‘It’s midday,’ he adds, his tone betraying exasperation and disgust.

  Lie then. ‘No, I was just by the telephone, dusting.’

  ‘Oh. Isn’t that what we have a cleaner for?’

  Maybe I should have said painting my toenails; dusting gives off all the wrong vibes. It’s too domestic. Also, it implies I don’t manage the cleaner properly.

  Luckily Hugh has much bigger things on his mind. ‘I’ve had a brilliant idea.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s throw a dinner party to tell all our friends about the baby.’

  ‘That is a good idea.’ Sweetie. He’s so pleased about this baby!

  ‘Knew you’d think so. How about tomorrow?’

  ‘Bit short notice, isn’t it?’ We often throw lunch or dinner parties, and in my experience they cannot be pulled together at the last minute. At least, not if you serve a minimum of three different nibbles with the four different cocktails, a starter, a main course and a pudding, mints, coffees and cognac. Handmade pastry, hand-whisked soufflé, hand-ground coffee. And we always want to do all this.

  ‘You like a challenge,’ he urges.

  I don’t like to look incapable so I stall. ‘Not the cooking.’ I manage to hit a note which implies ‘Ha, cooking, that will be a breeze’. ‘Short notice for the guests. Everyone will be doing something.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I sounded out a couple of the chaps at work yesterday. They said they could make it for seven-thirty.’

  Right.

  ‘Did you ask Sam or Julia?’

  ‘Babes, I thought you’d want to tell your closest girly friends the big news in a more personal way, not at a dinner party. You should call them.’

  True. I should. It’s odd to think that when I got my job at Q&A Sam knew within hours of my signing the contract. When I first kissed Hugh, illegally, I called her within minutes to give her the details. In the past neither of us would have considered it odd if I phoned her to ask her opinion on whether I should buy ‘the red one or the blue one’ (dresses, that she’d never even seen). I’m eleven and a half weeks pregnant; according to the scary books, this being I’m carrying is close to 0xs.18 02(5 g), and is the size of a small plum. (The food obsession continues.) It has eyelids and clearly defined fingers and toes and yet Sam doesn’t even know of its existence. Sam who knows how many lipsticks I own and the precise shades of all thirty-seven handbags in my wardrobe.

  Perhaps that’s why the handbags still seem more real.

  I call Sam and Julia and get them to agree to meet me at the Bluebird Café, on the King’s Road. I think that the service is dire and the food is overpriced, but it is terminally trendy and I’m a sucker for the glamour. Besides, the supermarket there stocks the most gorgeous delicacies. I’ll be able to pick up some ‘cheating’ groceries for the dinner party.

  12

  It’s a dark, February Saturday afternoon. Shop windows, sporting vast displays of red nylon underwear and faded boxes of Milk Tray, are the only interruption to the greyness of the streets, the weather, the people. The hope is that these Valentine’s window displays will rekindle the flagging passion of the British public. Not so much a long shot, more an Olympic challenge. Thank God Hugh has more style. He’s not a curry and a couple of pints type of guy; the lingerie he buys me is always silk, wrapped in enough tissue paper to cover the Empire State Building. I imagine that he’ll whisk me to the George V, in Paris, for a weekend.

  Not that he’s mentioned anything, and Valentine’s Day is now less than two weeks away. Still, I love surprises.

  Julia arrives first.

  ‘God, you’re looking rough, another hangover?’

  I wish. She immediately points out that my trousers are held together by a complex engineering feat involving safety pins and a belt belonging to Hugh. I try to convince her it’s high fashion.

  Sam arrives in a halo of happiness. Her first words are, ‘I can’t stay too late, G is expecting me.’ This isn’t necessarily true, but it allows Sam to introduce Gilbert into the conversation within seven syllables. Then with suitable aplomb she orders champagne. It may only be mid-afternoon but she hasn’t drunk anything else since she got engaged. I order a mineral water.

  ‘So, why the council of war?’ asks Sam, as she takes a sip of the champers. I can only imagine how good it must taste. Dry, crisp, off-limits.

  ‘Problem at work?’ asks Julia, as though I’m single-minded.

  ‘I’ve some news.’

  ‘Oh, my God, you are getting married,’ yells Sam, jumping up and spilling her drink. She flings her arms around my neck and starts to sing the wedding march. I stay utterly still. ‘That’s absolutely the most fantastic news I could have hoped to hear,’ she giggles.

  ‘You’re pregnant,’ says Julia, identifying the look of bemused vulnerability and desperation that I’m sporting as something other than pre-wedding jitters.

  ‘Yes,’ I confirm, ‘I’m pregnant.’ I am sure there are more elegant ways of breaking this news. But, ‘I’m blessed’ or ‘the stork is going to be making a delivery’ must have seemed ridiculous even in the nineteenth century. ‘I’m up the duff’ or ‘creek without paddle’ may be more accurate but are more emotive than I want to be at this stage in the conversation.

  Sam stops dancing around me. For a moment she is lost for words. She rallies and says, ‘That’s the second best piece of news I could hope to hear.’ Then, because she’s not entirely ensconced in cloud-cuckoo land, she adds, ‘Isn’t it?’

  I try to pull my face into an appropriate celebratory expression and I try to nod, but I think the gesture ends up looking like a shrug.

  I should be ecstatic, shouldn’t I? Because Hugh is, isn’t he? We are going to be a family, how perfect is that? Although I hadn’t really envisaged the culmination of all my dreams as me spending days cleaning puke off the bathroom tiles. Whilst I’m sure ecstasy is waiting in the wings, my immediate response is
considerably less gung-ho.

  Sam and Julia stare at me expectantly.

  Maybe I’ll just tell them that some of it unnerves me. Some of it has left me a little out of sorts.

  Surely they’ll laugh and tell me that lots of their friends/ cousins/sisters/neighbours felt exactly like this. That they too were held hostage by their emotions and were victimized by their bodies in the same way. We always have consoling counter-examples to hand to comfort one another, whatever the situation:

  ‘So he said he wanted more space and can only see you one night a week, don’t worry. A friend of mine had a boyfriend who wanted more space so he trained as an astronaut.’

  ‘Not giving you a house key is not an inability to commit. My cousin was dating this guy for three months and he wouldn’t give her his telephone number. Now that’s an inability to commit.’

  ‘I’ve been feeling quite ill,’ I mutter, the crowning glory of understatement. ‘I still don’t quite believe it.’ My luck, or lack of it, that is. However, neither of them rush to make me feel part of the human race. Instead Sam giggles disproportionately and asks, haven’t I ever heard of the old adage, ‘If you can’t be good, be careful.’ I nearly argue that, ‘It’s easy to be wise after the event’, but then I catch myself. She’s really going to have to stop resorting to these pathetic old sayings, not least because they’re infectious.

  They ask the same questions as my mother and Hugh did.

  ‘How long have you been trying?’ (Sam). Oh, pleeease.

  ‘How far gone?’ (Julia). Too far.

  Sam adds a new one. ‘Well, accidents will happen. So when will you be getting married?’

  ‘No plans as yet,’ I comment breezily and make a pretence of trying to catch the eye of the waiter.

  ‘But you will be getting married,’ insists Sam.

  ‘We’re not really the type of couple to be tied down by all that conventional stuff,’ I bluff.

  ‘So he hasn’t mentioned it, then?’ asks Julia. ‘No,’ I admit.

  ‘But Hugh’s pleased.’ It’s half statement, half question, from Sam.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I assure them. I consider telling them about the dinner party he’s throwing to celebrate the news, then I remember that neither of them are invited and so I keep quiet.

  ‘That’s what all the flower business was about,’ adds Julia.

  ‘Yes.’

  The day after I told him, Hugh sent the most enormous bouquet of pink roses to my desk at Q&A. An hour later I received irises. An hour after that pink lilies, and then cornflowers. He alternated pink and blue flowers every hour for the entire day.

  Sam almost wets herself when I tell her this and I know she’s making a mental note to instruct Gilbert that he must do the same when the time comes. This makes me feel dreadful, because my reaction to Hugh’s generosity wasn’t as enthusiastic. The gesture was ridiculously generous; I couldn’t carry them all home and had to give most of them to the secretaries. But besides being ridiculously generous it was in fact just plain ridiculous. Karl guessed that I must be pregnant and cranked the rumour machine into operation, within twenty minutes of the second bouquet. Brett suggested starting a whip-round to buy me a carrycot. I’m surprised Julia missed the furore; she must have been doing some serious drugs the night before and sleeping it off in the boardroom, as is her way. It was all slightly embarrassing, because I hadn’t had a chance to discuss my pregnancy with Dean, my boss. He sent me an e-mail demanding to know whether he had to ‘write me off to the great pool of gaga women on maternity leave’. This is probably against some European employment law, and when I pointed out as much to him he succinctly replied, ‘Bollocks to the garlic-eaters.’ In the advertising industry a sympathetic employer is one who puts a Tampax machine in the loos.

  Besides which, I know that Hugh did exactly the same for Becca when she fell pregnant with both Kate and Tom. I remember her telling me.

  ‘And you are pleased, aren’t you?’ asks Julia again.

  There is a slight, almost indiscernible tension in the air. I should be. I know I should be. I want to be. But can ‘want’ and ‘should’ combined counter the distinct feeling that I’m not?

  ‘Because your car only has two seats,’ Julia prompts.

  ‘Joseph doesn’t do maternity wear,’ adds Sam.

  ‘It will be the end of your exotic holidays.’

  ‘And sex on the stairs.’

  ‘And sex, full stop. So, are you?’ prods Julia.

  And I barely hesitate before I answer, ‘Absolutely. Thrilled. Absolutely thrilled.’

  The girls beam at me, reassuring me that I’ve just hit upon the appropriate answer. And it’s probably a good thing that the voice that said I’m ‘thrilled. Absolutely thrilled’ sounded more committed and cheerful than I really am.

  13

  We spend the rest of the afternoon talking about Sam’s wedding, a safe topic for me, the only topic for Sam, and a foray into a foreign country for Julia. Sam is sky-high. Bugger drugs, this is her answer: an emerald and a cluster of diamonds on the third finger of her left hand. She holds her ring up to the window for about the zillionth time today and then turns back to us with a smile as wide as the Eurotunnel.

  ‘Can you believe that I’ve been engaged for two weeks and two days, a whole three weeks next Thursday.’

  ‘Really.’ Seems a lot longer.

  ‘Where has the time gone? Not so much flown past as rocketed.’

  I wipe the steamy window of the café and lose myself in the world outside, leaving the burden of conversation to Julia. I don’t expect Sam will require too much active participation.

  I’m glad I chose the Bluebird because the King’s Road always cheers me up. The shops are divine, as are the people who frequent them. Admittedly, they aren’t often very polite or smiley, but they look amazing. I’d wager that there’s not a man who earns less than £60 K, nor a woman who is bigger than a size 10, on the King’s Road today.

  Except me, of course.

  Suddenly the thought isn’t as cheering as it usually is.

  What is Sam saying now?

  ‘The last couple of weeks have been awash with champagne and goodwill. It’s true everyone loves a lover. You only have to drop the slightest hint to your hairdresser that you are newly engaged and suddenly it’s all free honey and primrose conditioner, coffees and magazines.’

  I can always buy my own.

  ‘It’s the same in shops – assistants positively crowd around my ring, sizing it up and admiring it.’

  Wondering how much he thinks she’s worth. It’s probably just my hormones that won’t allow me to be as happy for Sam as she’d like.

  As I’d like.

  I wish I knew Gilbert a bit better. Perhaps I can persuade her to have a long engagement.

  ‘Would you like to try on my ring? It’s lucky, you know; if you twist it around your wedding finger three times you can make a wish,’ Sam offers.

  I notice Julia is looking as sick as I feel. Macabrely, I find this a comfort. I do wish Sam’d stop all this ‘Wanna be in my gang, my gang’ stuff. If I wanted to be married, I would be married, but I wanted Hugh and Hugh’s already married. My head suddenly fills with cotton wool. Why would I want to be married? Marriage comes with in-laws, and, in this case, stepchildren. Isn’t marriage synonymous with endless sock-washing and family teas? I’ve never imagined myself married.

  But then I’ve never imagined myself not married, either.

  And I already wash his socks.

  ‘I’m almost worn out with celebrating. I wish you’d seen my parents’ reaction.’

  ‘Pleased, were they?’

  ‘Delighted. Daddy never says much at all, but I could tell by the way he opened his malt whisky and offered G a cigar that he approved of my choice.’

  ‘I bet they have loads in common,’ says Julia. I snigger and try not to catch her eye as I catch her oblique reference to Gilbert’s age. Sam, wrapped in dreams like tissue paper, doesn’t catch
it either.

  ‘I was rather annoyed with Eddie when he commented that Mummy and Daddy had probably spent the money they’d put aside for my wedding as they must have “given up hope of anyone actually proposing”.’ Whilst Sam is doing her best not to appear troubled by her brother’s insensitivity I can see indignation burns in her eyes. Quite right. It may be an open secret between her family and friends that she’s always been extremely keen to marry and have a family, but it does seem in rather bad taste to mention it in front of Gilbert.

  ‘What did Gilbert say?’ asks Julia.

  ‘Oh, G was the perfect gentleman, assuring Eddie that he imagined that “Samantha must’ve been fighting off suitors for years”, and anyway he’d be more than happy to pay for the day of my dreams.’

  ‘Samantha?’ I ask.

  ‘He calls me Samantha, he prefers it, he thinks it’s more sophisticated than Sam.’

  He’s trying to make her sound older, she’s trying to make him sound younger – is there hope that they’ll collide somewhere in the middle? I feel like a bit part in Back to the Future.

  ‘Good for him. I bet that shut baby bruv up,’ comments Julia. ‘Who are you having for bridesmaids?’ She is obviously angling for an invite. Bloody cheek, she can get in line. Julia’s only known Sam a year or so, I’ve known her a lifetime.

  ‘Well.’ Sam is suddenly and unusually reticent. She obviously finds this question excruciatingly difficult to answer. Her reticence ensures my absolute undivided attention much more easily than her earlier recital of the order of service had. ‘Well, there’s Connie who I used to work with, my friend Daisy, because I was bridesmaid for her, and I was gong to ask both of you,’ she says, looking at Julia but without looking at me. ‘But…’ The but is loud and clear.

  ‘In light of my news.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Now, I’m pregnant, it’s out of the question.’ I bite out the words, furious with myself for making it easier for her to slight me. I try to smile and try to look unconcerned. It’s not that I desperately want to be a bridesmaid. Just because I’m her oldest and bestest friend. I mean, who wants to dress up in fuchsia and frills?