by Anna Maxted
What a bastard, no?
To my surprise, Nick looked meek. ‘Sorry, darling,’ he said, sweetly contrite.
I realised he was speaking to the cat. Emily forgave him and arched her back to be stroked. Much as I love her, she sets a terrible example. Nick grinned, and glanced at me. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’m being a prat. I’m sorry. Let me make it up to you. You’re seeing this guy, when?’
‘Tomorrow. Saturday. Daytime.’ I hoped I didn’t sound defensive.
‘Right. Okay. Cool. What you doing?’
‘No idea.’
I’ll say here that office politics bore me to tears, and I think that one of the meanest methods of mental warfare is to cut an employee out of the informational loop. The dawning sense of isolation nibbles away at their confidence, feeds their paranoia, confirms it, until they’re reduced to a miserable twitching wreck, their superiors’ lack of faith becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and they resign for fear of being sacked, thus saving the bullies a wad in redundancy pay. In any hierarchy, it’s a practice perpetuated by cowards and I despise it – like cruelty to animals and waiters – but when the power balance is theoretically equal, I waive my morals.
In other words, I did have a vague idea of what Stuart had planned for our date (a surprise which involved the A40 and glamorous kit which to me suggested a champagne picnic – how quaint) but I thought if I wilfully froze out Nick it would send the right message. I looked him straight in the eye, and he gazed back. He’s gaunt, but with a slight puffiness under his brown eyes, which are so dark they’re almost black. Once I told him that he reminded me of Johnny Depp’s dress sense. It did his ego no good at all. Now I wished I hadn’t.
‘Alright,’ he said. ‘How about I make you dinner tonight? You know, to say sorry.’
I couldn’t think of an excuse fast enough. ‘Well. Yes. If you want to. You don’t have to. Rachel’s coming round at some point to lend me a dress.’ I meant this to sound how it sounded. Threatening. Don’t take another step. Back away from your ex-fiancée with your hands up, etc. I didn’t trust him and he knew it. He chose his reaction with care. ‘You’re taking a risk, aren’t you? You don’t know where that dress has been. Or, worse, you do know where it’s been. On Rachel. Urrgh.’
I didn’t want to think about it. Rachel is a dear friend and I’d say this to her face: she’s a foul slob, the finest that Cheltenham Ladies’ College has produced. Even Nick (forever shoving his hands down his boxers on the grounds that ‘it’s relaxing, like having a pouch’) finds her disregard for hygiene a bit grim. She prefers to queue for the public loo, as she appreciates a warm toilet seat.
I was about to rub it in by saying, ‘I don’t have anything smart, and Stuart said smart,’ then recalled my vow of silence. So instead I settled for, ‘What time’s dinner?’
I would have been a fool to pass up the offer. Nick is a fabulous chef when he can be bothered. It was going to be tedious, cooking for myself again. Following a recipe doesn’t excite me. It’s maths with food. (I’d cooked for Nick once during our five-year relationship. Chicken stir-fry. I hadn’t cut the chicken up small enough. Nick, choking down a poultry boulder, had said, ‘I feel like an Alsatian.’) At eight thirtyish, Nick called me to the dining-room table. This in itself was hilarious, as for the past four years we’d eaten supper either sitting in silence on the sofa or standing in single file in front of the fridge.
‘Smells gorgeous,’ I said. (No harm in being civil.) ‘What is it?’
Nick beamed. ‘It’s a Mediterranean peasant soup, soupe au pistou, if we’re being fancy.’
‘Mm,’ I said, like a lamb to the slaughter. ‘What’s in it?’
‘Everything. Vermicelli, tomatoes, carrots, you name it.’ Except he didn’t. (The beans, the leeks, the sprouts, the raw garlic, all of which in my innocence, I found delicious.) The main course was sublime. A colourful plate of roasted vegetables – jerusalem artichokes, parsnips, asparagus – and a delicious beef curry, crafted from scratch by Nick’s ‘loving hand’ with fresh ginger, cloves, cardamon, garlic, chilli, cumin, coriander and turmeric. Dessert was stewed pears with hot chocolate sauce. Nick’s behaviour was immaculate. He made no snide references to Stuart and when – keen to show that greed couldn’t sway my resolve – I asked on the progress of Manjit and Bo’s spare room, he gave me a serious answer. Maybe the Stuart plan would work. I was impressed.
I began to be less impressed only when Rachel arrived with the dress, and I leant to kiss her and – oh the irony – she jumped back, crying, ‘Bloody hell, babes, you smell like Mummy’s old Lab! Deal with that breath, it’s wilting my hair!’ I tested it with cupped hands and nearly passed out. I sped to the bathroom but the damage was done. The reek proved immune to brushing, flossing and even gargling with the sort of evil mouthwash that brings tears to your eyes.
Rachel passed me the dress from a safe, offensive distance (‘Ring when you’re better, babes’), then left. I checked it over like a guard dog inspecting a poisoned doughnut. It was either breathtakingly post-modern, the essence of cool, or eighties frou-frou verging on frumpy. I wasn’t hip enough to tell. Dark green sheeny material, sleeveless, bodiced, wide skirt with puffy netting underneath. And a matching bolero jacket. ‘You are going nowhere,’ I said, to the jacket. ‘I’ll tell you that for nothing.’
I decided to wear the dress with a bright pink V-neck jumper and Adidas trainers. I had the feeling Stuart would be horrified, which didn’t unduly alarm me. Life is not about being reviewed. I was congratulating myself on my inner steel and thanking the Lord for inventing mints when I felt a strange stirring in my gut. My torso seemed to inflate as I stood there. Suddenly, I was uncomfortable, my skin tight and stretched. My abdomen felt like bubble wrap being squeezed but unable to pop. It emitted a bad-tempered growl. I gasped, as the breath jolted out of me. The pain was fierce and exact, a lightning strike, as surely as if someone had drawn a line across my stomach and written ‘cramp, here’.
The next seven hours were like a bad chemistry experiment. My breath revolted even Emily, a feline not exactly minty-fresh herself. I farted like a bog of corpses, endlessly. I could have powered a hot air balloon from London to Colorado, and (the piss de résistance) even my urine reeked. Nick had trumped every Bond villain yet by fouling my bladder. You forget asparagus does that to you. It’s nasty. Particularly when you look and feel as though you’ve swallowed a beachball. As I sat on the throne, groaning, at 3 a.m., Nick called through the door, between gusts of laughter, ‘Gorgeous, are you getting set for your date?’
His enquiries got the response they deserved.
I awoke at 5.37 a.m. slumped on the toilet. It was not an exhilarating moment. Everyone has an ideal self-image. This was a long way from mine. Clutching the towel rail like a bewildered old woman, I tried to lurch to my feet, but my behind was stuck to the seat. I felt like stone, as if I’d fossilised overnight. Slowly, wincing, I peeled myself upright and hobbled to my bed. Lucky for Nick that he now slept in our study, as if I’d laid eyes on his snoring form at that moment I’d have surrendered to primeval rage and bitten him.
Time skipped to mid-morning and I drove through the rain in my sleep, still farting. I was aware of a horseshoe-shaped bruise blooming on my buttocks and I was chewing spearmint gum with ferocity. Stuart had wanted to pick me up from home in his Mercedes Kompressor but while this would have out-penised Nick good and proper, I’d declined. This was our first encounter – I couldn’t call it a date – and I wanted my own transport. (Nige, our intermediary, had reported back that Stuart seemed hurt by this. So I’d compromised. We’d meet in the tube car park and he could chauffeur us from there. If it meant that much to him.)
I was so intrigued to see what a fascist looked like in real life, I briefly forgot that I was also under inspection. Then I caught him staring. I wondered how I looked to him. I’m quite a big girl. Rachel says I have a ‘seventies body’. Nick says I have the aura of ‘I’m Woman – Outta my way!’
Whatever. I prefer a bit of heft. I feel it’s the natural order of things. It pains me to see anyone – kids, teenage girls, old people, greyhounds – that I consider too thin. Peculiar, I know, but I can’t help but worry that there’s unhappiness behind it. When Nick first got Emily she was a wisp. I’d feed her canned tuna then pinch her softly like the witch in Hansel and Gretel to see if she’d gained weight.
‘It does your heart good to see a cat eat,’ I’d tell Nick, who’d shake his head, laughing. What I meant was, I love to eat, I love to watch any creature eat, to me it’s like a celebration of life. But suddenly, crunching on gravel in a ballgown in front of this Viking in yellow shades, I felt odd. My instinct told me that Stuart was the sort who saw it as his duty to inform normal-sized women they were fat and needed to diet. You know, make less of themselves.
‘Holly?’ he said, a half-smile forming on his geometrically exact face.
‘Stuart?’ I replied.
His smile went all the way. ‘You’re not at all what I . . . expected. But very lovely. I, ah—’ he whipped off the shades, revealing blond eyebrows and blue eyes. ‘Goodness, I don’t know what to say. I haven’t done this before. This is my first time. I’m a blind date virgin. How about you?’
I didn’t want to fib more than I had. (Which was already quite a lot.) As blind dates went, I was an old slapper. All in the name of research, of course. Before I launched Girl Meets Boy I’d tested the services of two established agencies. Both, I’m delighted to report, were ghastly. Stuart needed to know none of this.
‘My hymen is intact,’ I said. Well, sorry, but I like a good chauvinist. They’re so much fun to bait. To my disappointment and his credit, Stuart resisted the opportunity for fatuous comment (‘A little more information than I need, mah hah hah!’). Instead, he giggled, raised a yellow eyebrow and gestured to his silver car. ‘Shall we?’
He held open the door – ‘Please! Allow me!’ – sweetly formal, like an old-fashioned gentleman. I spotted the hamper squeezed into the joke of a back seat. (Give me a truck over a sports car, any day. It’s not my favourite, zooming along horizontal.) ‘A picnic in the rain,’ I murmured. ‘I knew it!’
Stuart laughed. ‘Good guess. But not quite.’
‘Oh?’
Stuart glanced side-on at me. ‘I’ve arranged something a little more special for us. Let us say’ – he looked at me again – ‘a little more high flying.’
Jesusgodno.
‘What do you mean?’
I soon found out. To maintain his pilot’s licence (oh, get a life) Stuart had to fly a certain number of hours per year. He’d had this morning’s flight at Northolt booked for ages, and it was no problem to take a guest. His treat. He said this as if I might argue. You bet it was his treat. I wasn’t about to pay this man to kill me. I tried to be noble and resign myself to the end. This was my due for trying to bait Nick. At the airport we marched from desk to desk. There was a reassuring amount of paperwork. I knew Stuart was aching for me to quiz him about being insane, I mean, a pilot.
I asked him about the safety checks.
‘There’s 110 points,’ he told me. ‘It takes around an hour. But I once had a plane turned round in eighteen minutes . . . you’re just looking at tyre pressure, that sort of thing. It’d just come in. But that was at a bigger airport.’
Rushing the safety check. Excellent.
I followed him numbly onto the tarmac. At least, I thought, commercial pilots fly full time. This guy was on work experience. It wasn’t even his plane. He was renting it. When I use a hire car, it takes me a day to master the clutch. I spend the first hour leaping about like a kangaroo. And stalling. But that’s not such a problem when you’re on the ground.
‘It’s pouring,’ I said hopefully.
‘Shit,’ replied Stuart, frowning skywards.
‘What?’
‘Water melts the engine.’
‘Wha—?’
‘Joke,’ replied Stuart. ‘There’s my girl.’
Our plane had obviously been trundled out of the hangar like a Ford Mondeo out of a shed. I peered at the engineer and tried to assess whether or not he looked alert. I attempted to keep my breathing slow and deep, but I couldn’t and panted like a dog. I prayed the cockpit had sickbag facilities. A large fried breakfast this morning – scrambled egg, sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, no beans – to settle my stomach already threatened to announce itself as an error.
‘It’s a Cessna,’ said Stuart. ‘Twin propeller.’
‘Right.’
‘Twin engine, see? Greater stability. In the event of engine failure we’ve got some power capability. The back-up engine gives us some balance control. It enables the plane to still maintain thrust. You’re free falling but, quite simply, you glide the plane down. You have the ability to land it – presuming you’ve got landing facilities, that is.’
‘Stuart,’ I said, keeping my tone jolly. ‘Please don’t say “free falling” again.’
He laughed, and his eyes crinkled. ‘I’ll keep you safe, Holly. And’ – lifting the hamper – ‘I’d hate to let a roast chicken go to waste. Hop in then.’
There weren’t even steps. I clambered in the little door, and Stuart leapt in behind me. And there we were in Legoland.
‘This is . . . cramped.’
‘Cosy,’ replied Stuart. I sat dumb in my seat, and goggled at the mass of controls. I must have put on my headphones – ‘the cans’ I think Stuart called them – and done up my seatbelt, watched Stuart flick switches, heard him check in with air traffic control, run through what I should do ‘in the event of an emergency’ – but I don’t remember much of it. I presume I blanked it out. That safety procedure is just patronising waffle, anyhow. In the event of an emergency, we all know that it’s goodbye world in a big red fireball.
Then Stuart said, ‘Let’s hit it.’
What with keeping in the screams and the farts, I had my work cut out. A few of both escaped. Only now do I understand the true meaning of ‘taking off’. Imagine stepping in a lift and jumping up twenty floors. In a Jumbo, you feel the power behind you. This was like being pinged from a slingshot. Noise (mostly me, screaming) but no vroom. No push. A sick, vertical ascent in a cigar tube. I gripped my seat, and focused on not vomiting. I knew if I opened my mouth to scream again, my stomach and its contents would fall out. Nick, I thought, my eyes blind with fear, you can stay forever. Just let me survive.
‘Still alive, Holly?’ said Stuart eventually.
‘Just.’
I noticed the plane had windscreen wipers. How primitive can you get? I was already exhausted with the continuous tension of waiting to die. We were now horizontal but every other second a jolt knocked a gasp out of me. I can only compare it to hurtling a car over the brow of a hill at great speed and feeling your stomach fly. My innards were way behind. All of me trembled so hard I felt that my bones were in danger of rattling out of their sockets. I would have felt safer on a broomstick.
‘Stuart. Will it be this turbulent all the time?’
‘Chill, Holly. It’s just weather. Look at the view. Enjoy it. Relax. The sky is ours – unless, that is, we choose to blunder into commercial airspace and knock down a Boeing. Joke. Joke, okay? Bet you didn’t expect Girl Meets Boy to set you up on a date like this, hey?’
I’m not that keen on the word ‘hey’ as a question. ‘You’re absolutely right, no, I didn’t,’ I replied. I felt bad. Stuart genuinely thought he was giving me a thrill. He was a lot sweeter than his application form. As far as he was concerned, this horror death ride was a laugh. It wasn’t his fault I was a nervous flier. Shame on me. This poor man had applied to my agency in good faith, and here I was using him for my own petty purposes – to edge my former fiancé out of the house. If I live, I told myself, I will stop being a coward. I will march up to Nick and say, ‘Go’.
‘It’s wonderful,’ I said, glancing out of the window to check the propeller. ‘But’ – it was only fair to tell him as soon as I could �
� ‘I feel queasy. I’m not going to be able to eat any roast chicken.’ Even the idea made me shudder.
Stuart grinned at me. ‘No problem, Holly. There are other things we can do.’
I realised I was ice cold and my teeth chattered. I like to think the best of people, I really do, but this oily innuendo could only mean one thing. His next sentence was bound to contain the word ‘joystick’. I can’t think of one good reason why, but I laughed.
‘Stuart,’ I said. Shake, rattle, hum, mechanical fault. ‘If that was a veiled reference to the Mile High Club, you have got to be kidding me. I mean that.’ I stopped. I wasn’t going to reel out a list of reasons why not (I don’t know you, I don’t fancy you, I need you to fly the plane, etc.). No was it. That, in my view, is enough. But curiosity overcame pride. ‘I can’t believe sex is possible, in this. I bet you haven’t. Ever.’
Stuart laughed. ‘There are ways and means,’ he said. ‘You set the controls, let her ride.’ He nodded at his lap, a wicked look on his face. ‘But for a pretty girl you’ve got a dirty mind, Holly. I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about this.’
I shrieked shrill and loud as our tin coffin jerked harsh left and tipped in a rush of noise, till the plane lay dead on its side and I could see its flimsy wing sharp above us. ‘What are you doing?’ I screamed. ‘Stop, stop, stop, you’re going to kill us!’ Normally I’d never speak to anyone like that, not even Nick. ‘Oh my Go o o o o d, help meeeee!’
We were plummeting, spiralling, a heinous lunatic rollercoaster, towards earth. My hair stood on end, every follicle prickled, and I had to swallow and swallow, to gulp down the saliva, the nausea, the fear. I couldn’t even grab the controls. I screeched and Stuart smiled. He cried, ‘Wheeeeeeeee!’ I just cried.
‘Never,’ I choked, as he soared upwards, ‘do that again.’ As it was I could barely speak for quaking. ‘Take me down. Properly. Carefully. Or I’ll be sick on you. Or I will have a heart attack from fright and my parents will sue.’
