by India Knight
I don’t know what manner of blow Jake’s brought along to my supper party, but everyone’s completely wasted by the time I dole out pudding, including – incredibly – Sophie, who took several deep puffs to prove, I suspect, that she was as game as Hope, who offered Tim a blowback (enthusiastically accepted) and who is now being stared at by him with unabashed, red-faced, drunken longing. This has the effect of making me cross with Hope and making me feel sorry for Sophie for the second time tonight, and so I engage her in a safe-territory conversation about schools and nurseries and local babysitters. We’ve been chatting amiably enough for five minutes or so – about baby slings, and whether one exists that doesn’t hurt your back – when Sophie suddenly says, ‘Did you like being pregnant?’
‘I loved it. It’s my ideal state.’
‘I hated it,’ Sophie says in a quiet voice, looking straight at Tim, who is not looking back at her. ‘I was so ill, all three times.’
‘Poor you,’ I say, meaning it. Her face looks smaller than it did ten minutes ago, more vulnerable, and also more stoned. Across the table, Tim is still drunkenly gibbering at Hope; I notice Sam has poured him more water and is now offering coffee.
‘Constant morning sickness,’ Sophie says, laughing mirthlessly. ‘It never really went away. Pretty much twenty-four hours a day. The first time round was dealable with, but when you have toddlers running about and you need to throw up three times an hour …’
‘But Tim helped, I’m sure?’
‘He was working,’ Sophie says.
‘But … but so were you. And you were ill. Looking after children is work too, you know.’
‘Mm,’ says Sophie. ‘So people keep telling me. It’s hardly the same thing as going in to the City at the crack of dawn every morning.’
‘It’s much worse,’ I say.
Sophie smiles at this, unexpectedly. ‘Can I ask you another thing?’ she says. ‘It’s … it’s quite personal. I wouldn’t dream of asking normally, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
‘Ask away,’ I say. ‘And it’s Jake’s blow.’
‘It’s about sex,’ Sophie says.
‘What about it?’
‘Did you … After Maisy. Because with me, I’m just … I’m just so tired. So tired,’ she says, closing her eyes.
‘You have three small children,’ I say. ‘Of course you’re tired. You’re exhausted. Maybe stop baking bread and making yogurt?’
‘But Tim … Tim has needs, you know.’
‘Nobody needs yogurt to that extent, Sophie.’
She smiles again. ‘No, not that. He says that if we let our sex life fall by the wayside now, it’ll be the thin edge of the wedge. And that we must get back in the saddle properly. Gosh, I’m speaking like your mother-in-law. And I am willing, it’s not that. The body is willing, but the spirit is weak. The spirit is just so tired.’
I don’t think this is the time to share my theory about putting out with Sophie. And besides, it’s all becoming clear now. Sophie has turned herself into some kind of domestic goddess to compensate for the fact that she needs to be asleep by 9 p.m.; Tim is drooling all over Hope because he’s sexually frustrated and pleased to have someone flirt with him: it means he’s perceived as more than Dad Man. Hope is letting Tim drool on her because she thinks it means she’s more attractive than his wife, and that’s the kind of reassurance she needs, because she’s Needy McNeedpants. Hope would kill for Sophie’s marriage and three children: it’s all she wants. Sophie would kill for a bit of me-time and to have her job back and for Hope’s wardrobe and enviably flat stomach. Everybody wants what they can’t have: it’s the dance of early middle age, and we’re all doing it. What freaks me out is that I don’t see any way out: everybody’s going to keep on doing it until they either drop dead or admit defeat. And even then – admitting defeat only means trying again later, with somebody else and no guarantees that anything is ever going to pan out differently.
Jake, who has smoked most of the joint, seems the least stoned. He now turns his attention to Hope, staring rather off-puttingly at her giggling with Tim, until she senses his gaze and is forced to look him in the eye.
‘Hope, darling,’ Jake says, conversationally. ‘Why are you flirting with this poor woman’s husband?’
It’s one of those moments when every conversation taking place around the table coincidentally ends at the same time, and Jake’s words ring out as loudly and clearly as a bell, except it’s more gloomy tolling than jaunty peals.
‘Not flirting,’ says Hope. ‘Being friendly. I’m just being myself, Jake.’
‘Why don’t we swap places,’ I say. ‘Hope, come and sit next to Tamsin.’
‘Don’t want to change places,’ says Tim. ‘Want to stay here with the sexy lady …’
He is interrupted by the ringing of Sophie’s phone. ‘Damn,’ she says, looking at the screen. ‘Babysitter.’ A quick conversation establishes that our neighbours need to get home to attend to their youngest child, who has woken up and is refusing to go back to sleep.
‘Why don’t you go, Tim?’ Sophie says, with a glint in her eye that wasn’t there before. ‘I’ll be along in a while.’
‘What?’ says Tim.
‘Why don’t you go? Pay her – here, I’ve got cash – and sort Bee out and I’ll come home in half an hour or so.’
‘Me?’ says Tim.
‘Yes,’ says Sophie. ‘You.’
‘But … why?’ says Tim.
‘Because your daughter’s awake, and one of us needs to get home.’ She says this very calmly.
‘You,’ says Tim.
‘Not tonight, Tim. Not me. You.’
‘I don’t want to,’ says Tim. ‘Drunk.’
‘You’ll be fine. She’s not ill. I’ll be home soon. All you have to do is lie down with Bee for a while. Take her into our bed.’
‘Might squash her. Squashed baby!’
‘Go and look after your daughter,’ says Tamsin. ‘We’ll miss you, obviously. But …’
‘Are you a feminist?’ says Tim. ‘Yes, you are. A big scary feminist lady. Brr! Hoo!’ He takes a gulp of the fresh cup of coffee Sam has placed in front of him, and winces. ‘Sophie,’ he wails. ‘Soph.’
‘Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been out to dinner with new people?’ Sophie asks her husband in the same calm voice, rhetorically as it turns out. ‘Five months. Five months, Tim. And those new people were septagenarian friends of your parents.’
‘Poor Soph,’ says Tim. ‘Poor Sophie-woo.’
‘Ah, you big gobshite,’ says Pat. We all turn to stare at her, but having got this off her chest, she looks around the table smiling the serenest of smiles and gets up to clear the plates.
‘I should go,’ says Hope.
‘And do you know,’ Sophie continues, ‘how long it’s been since I’ve had an alcoholic drink? Last summer. Last summer was the last time. And do you know what that drink was? One sip of champagne in hospital, when Bee was born.’
‘Here,’ I say, passing a bottle over. ‘Have some wine.’
‘And I don’t mind any of these things,’ Sophie says, to nobody in particular and with her gaze fixed on the middle distance. ‘I honestly don’t mind. Except. Except. That … sometimes I do. I really, really do.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Hope in a small voice, ‘if I upset you. I can’t help myself. I have issues. I’m working on them with my therapists. I didn’t mean to … to upset you,’ she peters out feebly.
‘You?’ Sophie says witheringly. ‘You haven’t upset me. I’m not upset. I’m just explaining a couple of things to Tim.’
Tim, who has been listening to all of this with his head bent, in a position that suggests contrition, now looks up again.
‘You never want me to be happy,’ he says, forming the words slowly and precisely, so that he sounds almost sober. ‘You hate me being happy. You hate me having a nice time or having any fun. You … you kill joy. You’re a killjoy. Because so what,’ he
continues, ‘so what if I want to have a drink? So bloody what? It’s two days before bloody Christmas. I get up at the crack of dawn and I come home late and I work hard and I earn all the money and it’s two days before bloody Christmas and so what if I have a drink? So fucking what, Soph?’
There is an awful, laden sort of silence.
‘I’ll go,’ says Sophie. ‘Thanks for a lovely evening, Clara. Thanks, Sam. Very nice to meet you all,’ she says to everyone else around the table. Her face is flushed and she is somewhere – somewhere uniquely feminine – between tears and absolute rage. ‘And happy Christmas.’
‘I’ll put you in a taxi,’ says Tamsin. ‘I know you’re only local, but you shouldn’t walk on your own.’
‘Thanks, but I’ll be fine.’
‘I insist,’ says Tamsin, getting up.
‘Bye, love,’ says Pat, scooting round the table to give Sophie a hug. ‘You take care, now. Don’t let the bastards grind you down, eh?’
‘Thanks,’ says Sophie.
‘Say it with me,’ says Pat. ‘Come on, love. Say it with me.’
‘I’d rather just …’
‘DON’T LET THE BASTARDS GRIND YOU DOWN,’ Pat shouts, making a small resistance fist, before smiling pleasantly and getting on with her tidying.
‘Your mum’s completely stoned,’ Tamsin says to Sam. ‘Come on, Sophie, let’s go.’
‘There you go,’ says Tim. ‘That not-fun one is going to get you a taxi.’
‘I really should go home too,’ says Hope, in the way that she does – the way that expects six people to cry, ‘Oh no, please don’t.’ But even Tim seems to have lost interest. He says nothing, though he turns to look at her, glassy-eyed, his expression unreadable save for the tiniest flicker of contempt. This does not go unnoticed by Hope, whose eyes well up as she stumbles away to get her coat.
‘You too, Hope,’ shouts Tamsin from the hall. ‘Come on. I’ll put you in a taxi as well.’ And they are gone.
‘Shall I skin up again?’ asks Jake.
‘Absolutely-tootly,’ says Tim. ‘You betcha.’
‘They didn’t have any effect on me at all, those drugs,’ says Pat, who, yelling aside, has been smoothing down the same tea-towel for ten minutes with a blissed-out look on her face. ‘Ooh, hello love,’ she says to Tamsin when she comes back in five minutes later. ‘That’s funny. You were sitting right here a minute ago.’
‘I was just putting Sophie and Hope in a cab,’ says Tamsin. ‘There was one right on the corner.’
‘I’m sorry about my wife,’ Tim says. ‘I don’t know what got into her.’
‘Life got into her,’ says Jake, shaking his head. ‘It gets into all of them eventually.’
‘Them?’ says Tamsin. ‘Them? Who’s “them”?’
‘Women,’ says Jake.
‘But … what do you mean, “Life gets into them”? Doesn’t life get into men too?’
‘Babe,’ says Jake. ‘It’s not the same. We’re not the same. Take my second wife. Gorgeous girl, just gorgeous. Real beauty. Tits like torpedoes.’
‘Right,’ says Tamsin.
‘She was the best fun ever. Oh, we had such a laugh. Everything was great. I actually liked her, you know? Properly liked her, not just fancying. Though I fancied her like mad too, of course. We were always at it. Couple of rabbits. But she was my mate as well.’
‘Right,’ says Tamsin, looking at me and making a ‘what the fuck?’ face. My own face has been set to ‘what the fuck?’ for the past twenty minutes.
‘So. Get hitched to make her happy. Get her up the duff to make her happy – I had a couple of kids already. Everything hunky-dory. We’re as happy as Larry. And then what happens? She goes mad overnight. She goes mental.’
‘What do you mean, she goes mad?’ This is me, wondering how literal Jake is being.
‘I mean, she goes mad. She looks different, for a start.’
‘That great indicator of insanity,’ says Tamsin, whose body language does not bode well for Jake’s nocturnal needs.
‘Well, you know. She piles a few pounds on. I’m not a monster. I know chicks do that when they’re pregnant. I don’t really get why they do it after, but anyway. I roll with it, you know? Even though fat chicks – not my bag.’
‘Right,’ I say, sighing.
‘But it’s not just the poundage. She used to have her hair done and stuff. Eyelashes. Dresses. Sexy underwear. Laughing. All gone. Now she’s mooching around with leaky tits, grumbling at me when I get in late. And I do get in late. I get in later and later, because I don’t like her standing there fucking leaking and moaning at me.’
‘Jesus, Jake,’ I say. ‘What about the children. Your children with her?’
‘Yeah, yeah – they were cute. Cute little kids. But I didn’t marry to have more cute little kids. I married because I fancied my missus and she was my mate, and she wanted to get married and I thought I’d be nice.’
‘Good of you,’ says Tamsin, looking like she’s just had lemon juice squeezed in her eyes. ‘Princely. So then what happened?’
‘Ah, long story. But I slept with one bird too many. Got caught. Legged it. Bit of a relief, to be honest.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ says Tamsin. ‘Pass me that bottle, would you, Sam?’
‘Oh, it’s different with you, my love,’ says Jake. ‘Water under the bridge, all that old stuff. Wouldn’t do that now. Badly behaved. Bit shabby,’ he says, and laughs.
‘You live and learn,’ says Pat. ‘Aye, so you do.’
‘So, Jake,’ says Tamsin. ‘When you said she went mad? You meant, you meant –’ she takes a big gulp of wine ‘– that, basically, she let herself go? Wasn’t sexy enough? Wasn’t hot enough? Didn’t want to shag you enough?’
‘Got it in one, babe,’ says Jake happily.
‘And that this was insane behaviour on her part?’
‘Yep,’ says Jake. ‘If you think I’m hot now, you should have seen me then.’
‘It wouldn’t have registered,’ says Tamsin, her voice like ice. ‘I would have been about nine years old.’
Jake winces at this – the first angry words I have ever heard Tamsin address to him – and carries on rolling his joint.
‘That’s exactly what’s happened to Sophie,’ Tim says. ‘It’s exactly as you describe.’
‘My God,’ I say. ‘This is unbelievable. It’s a wonder we’re not all lesbians. It’s a wonder the human race didn’t die out years ago.’
‘Heh-heh,’ says Jake, fiddling with the roach. ‘A bit of girl-on-girl. Nothing to beat it.’
‘I mean it,’ I say.
God, do I mean it. Do I mean it. Well, not so much about lesbians, but about the unbelievableness. About the absolute fucking miracle of the eternal human capacity for hope. We think everyone’s going to be different, that things change, that people evolve. Pfft. There’s more than thirty years between Jake and Tim, and they’re exactly the same. ‘Oh look, my wife’s gone mad. Put on a bit of weight, knackered all the time, not what you’d call gagging to fuck my brains out. What a nutter. Where’s the exit?’ The thing I need to remember is that at least Sam …
‘It’s not unbelievable, Clara,’ Sam says. ‘It’s just true.’
I’m actually winded, so I can’t say anything for twenty seconds. When I get my breath back, I say, ‘Which bit? Which bit is true?’
‘All of it,’ says Sam. ‘Tim, Jake, all of it. Not put in the best way, but true.’
‘I can’t believe …’
‘I’m not expecting you to like it,’ he says with a sad smile. ‘I’m just saying, it’s true. It’s what most men think.’
‘It’s nice to keep yourself nice,’ says Pat. ‘Sure it is.’
‘Oh my God,’ says Tamsin.
‘You know,’ says Sam. ‘Why shouldn’t he have a drink? Why shouldn’t Tim here have a drink? He’s right: he works hard and it’s two days before Christmas.’
‘Thank you,’ says Tim. ‘Exactamundo, Samundo.’
‘Nobody’s saying he shouldn’t have a drink,’ says Tamsin.
‘Well, you lot are,’ says Sam, drawing on Jake’s new joint. ‘You’re sitting there like a row of fucking harpies …’
‘What?’ I say.
‘You heard. Like a row of fucking harpies, sitting in judgement on some poor bloke whose only crime …’
‘Whose only crime,’ Tim echoes.
‘… is to get pissed at a dinner party and maybe flirt a little. With a woman who flirts for a living. You know? What’s with the disapproval? You were pissed when I first met you, Clara. And you had two young kids. And you flirted with me. I didn’t judge you. I thought it was funny. You were charming.’
‘I wasn’t roaming the streets of London pissed, Sam. My children were safely in the care of somebody else. And I …’ I want to say ‘I’m still charming,’ but – oh God – I suddenly feel like I might cry if I say it out loud. It’s so pathetic. Nobody should have to point that kind of thing out about themselves to the man who’s supposed to be in love with them.
‘Of course they were,’ Sam says. ‘I wasn’t suggesting you’d left them to fend for themselves.’ I am ridiculously, pitifully grateful that he has said this, and then – a fraction of a second later – irate, incensed by my own gratitude.
‘The fact remains,’ Sam continues, ‘that there is nothing wrong with a man going out of an evening and getting a bit pissed and eyeing up some flirty woman. Even if that man is married. Even if that man has a family.’
