Dinner for Two

by Mike Gayle

  ‘We did a consumer test feature on them a few months ago,’ says Izzy as we carefully study the row of tests. ‘This one,’ she points to a dark blue box, ‘and this one,’ a pastel green box at the opposite end of the row, ‘came out on top.’

  I pick one up and look at the price. I’m horrified. ‘Is this a mistake?’

  She peers at it. ‘No, babe. That’s how much they cost.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because that’s how much they cost.’

  ‘Everywhere?’

  ‘Everywhere.’

  ‘You could buy a half-decent CD for the price of one of these,’ I say, frowning.

  ‘And you probably would,’ says Izzy, smiling. She has a wonderful smile, my wife. The kind that makes you glad to be alive. ‘Which CD would you get?’ she asks.

  ‘Tindersticks, Simple Pleasures. Cracking album.’

  ‘But haven’t you already got it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I reply. ‘But it’s so good I’d like to own it twice.’

  home

  On the journey home to our flat, 24b Cresswell Gardens, Muswell Hill, we talk about everything and nothing: how things have gone at work, what to eat when we get in, what to do at the weekend, real couple stuff. However, as soon as we reach the flat – the second-floor of a three-storey Edwardian conversion – we stop kidding ourselves that this isn’t the biggest thing to happen in our relationship since the day we met.

  Suddenly we’re on a mission and only one thing counts. Even though our cat, a three-year-old egocentric grey Persian called Arthur, is mewing like a maniac and writhing on the floor for attention, we ignore him and head to the bathroom. I watch as she opens the kit and brandishes the test stick in my direction. I’m mesmerised. It’s hard to believe that this piece of plastic can determine what kind of rest of my entire life I’m going to have.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘This is it.’

  She looks at me and I look back at her. After a few moments of quiet, while we collect our thoughts, I give her the nod. ‘Go for it,’ I say.

  She doesn’t move.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I can’t pee with you in the room. You’ll have to wait outside.’

  ‘Why not?’ I’m not joking either. I think it’s a ridiculous thing to say. ‘Why do I have to miss out on all the good bits?’

  ‘You’re not going to miss out on anything,’ she snaps.

  I leave the room and she closes the door behind me. I stand directly outside, place my ear to the door and strain to make out the sound of my wife peeing on to the plastic stick. The cat joins me. He doesn’t listen at the door, though: he weaves in and out of my legs purring loudly. I kneel down and scratch the back of his neck and he looks up at me, with his huge grey eyes. We have a Moment, my cat and I, but he doesn’t know I’m not really there with him – I’m in the bathroom with Izzy.

  ‘Are you done yet?’ I call.

  ‘Will you give me one bloody second, Dave?’ yells Izzy. ‘I’ve only just got going.’

  There’s a long silence, then the sound of intermittent peeing, the loo roll rattling, then a flush, and Izzy emerges with the test. ‘Only a man could have invented that,’ she says. ‘Only a man would think it was a great idea to pee on something that requires the target skills of a sharpshooter.’

  I laugh – that was a very Izzy thing for her to say. She spends all day helping to create a magazine that speaks directly to hundreds of thousands of women and one of the easiest ways to create a united sisterhood is to have a common enemy in ‘useless men’ in a ‘Can’t live with them, can’t live without them’ way. The truth is, though, that Izzy doesn’t believe in sexual stereotypes. She believes in people.

  ‘How long do we have to wait?’ I ask.

  She looks at the back of the box to check, even though she knows that I know that she knows. ‘Three minutes.’

  ‘Well, it’s been at least thirty seconds since you flushed the loo and started talking to me so it’s two and a half minutes to go.’ Before Izzy can object I take the stick from her, put it carefully on the floor, grab her hand, drag her into our bedroom and close the door behind us. Here we stand, with our arms wrapped around each other and our eyes stuck to our watches for precisely two and a half minutes. Then Izzy makes a break for the door. Although I’m not far behind her she gets to the test before me and by the time I catch up with her it’s in her hand.

  The tension is so excruciating that I can barely speak. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she says quietly. Tears are already rolling down her face. ‘You’re going to be a dad.’

  I put my arms round her and hold her close. ‘Don’t cry. Everything’s going to be all right.’

  ‘I’m not crying because I’m sad,’ she says. ‘I’m crying because right now I feel like this is the best news I’ve ever had.’

  readers

  It’s the following day and I’m at my place of work – the fourteenth floor of the Hanson building in Holborn, which is home to BDP Publishing, the small magazine empire that produces seventeen magazine titles covering pretty much everything people like reading about:

  Interiors: Your Kitchen, Bathroom and Bedroom and Metrohome

  Women’s fashion and lifestyle: Femme, It Girl and Fashionista

  Babies: Your Baby and You and Mothers Now

  Computing: Computer Gaming Now, Download and Internet Express

  Sport: Football Focus and Tee Off

  Cooking: Now Eat That and Food Review

  Music: Louder

  I work at Louder, ‘the magazine for people who live music’. Louder’s tag line always makes me laugh because it’s just so accurate. Our readers don’t love music they live it – eat it, breathe it. Just as I do. Or, perhaps, that should be ‘did’. Though I love my job I’m also well aware that music journalism, like its more glamorous counterpart ‘being a rock star’, is by its very nature a young person’s occupation. Of course, plenty of musicians churn out albums well into their thirties, forties and even fifties, but I have no desire to become the journalistic equivalent of any of them. Like my musical heroes, Buckley, Hendrix, Cobain, Curtis, Shakur, something appeals to me about the idea – metaphorically speaking – of dying young and leaving a good-looking back catalogue. As it is, I’m not only past the thirty mark but have reached the stage where I’m beginning not to ‘get’ a few of the new musical hybrids that the constantly evolving beast that is rock ‘n’ roll churns out. I hide my ignorance behind outrage at the bastardisation of music’s purest forms, but the truth is, with a lot of music, I feel I’ve heard it all before. And I hate myself for feeling that.

  For instance, one particular record that’s been in the charts recently samples the theme tune to a well-known TV drama. Every time I hear it I want to smash my car radio. I’ve never felt like this before and it’s unnerved me so much that I daren’t tell anyone else at Louder – even though I can see that some of the other writers feel it too. Maybe that was why, over recent months, Louder’s circulation figures had been falling. Maybe none of us has realised how out of touch we are with our target audience –fifteen to twenty-six-year-old males with ridiculously large record collections who regularly go to see live music.

  Maybe the music that makes me want to smash my car radio is intended to have that effect on me, a thirtysomething music journalist. Maybe as far as ‘The Kids’ are concerned I am the enemy – I’m no longer the rebel without a cause: I’m a rebel with a mortgage, a pension plan and a very large record collection. If I’d been fifteen years old I’d probably love the record that nowadays makes me want to smash my car radio. I wouldn’t care that I’d heard it all before because I would feel it was talking to me about my life. This was one reason why music used to be so all-important to me. I can still remember how it used to mean everything – when it was in my head, in my heart and in my soul. But now I realise there’s more to life than music.

  When I’d been at school sitting in an empty classroom
during my lunch-break proudly reading my copy of NME I’d never have believed that one day I would be a part of the glamorous world of rock ’n’ roll. And yet here I am, sitting at a desk in front of piles of cardboard CD mailers with my name on them. Record company PRs take me to lunch to court my favour, I get to go on tour with bands and I’ve travelled all over the world all expenses paid to interview artists. It’s a fantastic job. I often wonder what I’d have done if it hadn’t happened. Plan B (which, of course, had once been plan A) had been to form a band but as I couldn’t sing and my dexterity with the bass guitar was limited to the ‘good bit’ in Clapton’s ‘Sunshine of Your Love’, I’d excluded myself from rock ’n’ roll super-stardom. Plan C (which had once been plan A) had been to start my own record label, but as I had about as much business acumen as a five-year-old in a toy shop I knew, deep down, that this, too, would be doomed to failure. Music journalism (plan D) had risen to the top of the charts because it was the only one that I felt I might achieve.

  The Louder office is not what you would call a normal working environment. In a staff of nineteen there are eighteen men – committed music snobs, the lot of them – who act like they hate each other, and one woman, the ever chirpy Chrissy, who is the magazine’s editorial assistant. Few pleasantries are exchanged in the Louder office and little conversation is to be had unless it’s directly related to music, work or abusing our rivals and the bands they’re championing.

  To a degree, working at Louder is a lot like joining the SAS: we don’t take on just anyone and all members of staff have to be able to kill with their bare hands if the need arises. It is a cruel but comfortingly masculine environment to live in – like a prison, but without the razor blades in the soap. Women hate it. The first time Izzy left the Femme office on the eleventh floor to visit me she told me Louder looked like a cold, merciless and miserable place to work.

  ‘You’re right,’ I replied. ‘But you said that as if it was a bad thing.’

  tock

  It’s hard for me to be at work today. I want to tell the entire office I’m going to be a dad. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do when this happens. You get to be proud. I created life, you want to say. There will be one more human being in the world because of me! But I don’t, of course, mainly because the office probably wouldn’t care. Instead I sit down at my desk, stare into space and the daydreams kick in: my kid’s first Christmas, my kid’s first birthday party, playing football in the park when my kid’s a bit older. I do it all. And I do it now. On a whim I even type my foetus a letter:

  11 July 2000

  Dear Foetus,

  Let me introduce myself: I’m Dave Harding and I’m your dad. So hello there. I’m a music journalist by trade – I work as reviews editor on Louder. No doubt when you’re a bit older (a couple of weeks maybe) I’ll play a couple of my favourite albums to you (they’re constantly changing but I can pretty much guarantee that there’ll be stuff from the Rolling Stones, Mos Def, Public Enemy, Radiohead, Mazzy Star and Aretha Franklin).

  I know it’s quite dark where you are and that you’re probably under water but you can hear in there, can’t you? I’m pretty sure you can. By the way, the woman who is carrying you around at the minute is your mum, Izzy. We have been married for three years (we celebrated our anniversary a few weeks ago) and together for three years before that. We’re very happy.

  Anyway, I looked up some stuff about reproduction on the Internet (I’ll explain that to you when you get out) this morning and once I managed to get through a plethora of bizarre triple xxx porn sites I found a web page that had information about your people (i.e. really, really small people). Apparently, right now you’re 1mm long – which if you’re not familiar with the metric system is not very big at all. Is an ant 1mm long? I don’t know but at a guess you’re probably a bit smaller than an ant.

  Right, what else should I tell you? Your mum is deputy editor on a glossy women’s magazine called Femme and she works very hard. She’s thirty (I’m thirty-two) and she’s a very smart, and very sexy woman (although the less said about her being sexy the better as I don’t really want to contribute to any burgeoning Oedipal complex you might be working on in there if you’re a boy).

  As you probably haven’t got a mirror with you, I’m guessing that you have no idea what you look like. Well, to help you along, here’s what we look like and I suppose you’ll be somewhere in the middle. Your mum is five foot nine, and a little over ten stone. She has jet black hair, hazel eyes, a smallish nose and slightly chipmunky cheeks. I know you’re not familiar with any cultural references but she’s best described as a cross between Minnie Driver in Circle of Friends and Julianna Margulies before she left ER. As for me, I’m six foot two and a well-proportioned fourteen stone. I have short, black hair, dark brown eyes, a wide nose and, I like to think, a well-defined chin.

  Izzy’s mum was born in South Wales, and her dad (who died a couple of years ago) was born in Poland; my mum and dad are from Trinidad. Izzy and I were both born in England, which means that you’ll be of (cue drum roll) Anglo-Welsh-Polish-Trinidadian heritage and will probably have café-au-lait skin.

  If it hadn’t have been for my constant petitioning of your mum to change her name when we’d got married you’d have ended up with a double-barrelled surname: Small Foetus Lewandowski-Harding or Small Foetus Harding-Lewandowski, which I think you’ll agree is a bit of a mouthful.

  Anyway, this is just a short letter of introduction to say . . . welcome to the family.

  Take it easy in there.

  All the best

  Dave Harding (your very proud dad)

  on

  Izzy calls me from work to tell me the good news. She’s just been to see a doctor at our local surgery, who has confirmed that she is pregnant. Using the last day of her period as day zero the doctor tells her that she has in fact been pregnant for approximately six weeks. Something clicks inside me at this news. I feel like a man possessed. I can think of nothing except that I’m going to be a father. It dominates my thoughts, my life and Izzy’s and my conversation over the following week.

  Monday morning at work

  ‘Hello, Femme magazine, Izzy Harding speaking.’

  ‘Hey, you, it’s me,’ I reply.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘What do you mean, what’s wrong? Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted a chat.’

  ‘It’s just that it’s only ten past ten,’ says Izzy. ‘You never call me at ten past ten. In fact, there have been times that I’ve wanted you to call me at ten past ten and you’ve said, no, it’s too early.’

  ‘That was the old me. The new me can call you at work any time.’

  ‘So?’ says Izzy, expectantly.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I don’t feel any different. Do you feel any different?’

  I laugh. ‘I’m not the one who’s . . .’ I look round the Louder office and decide against saying the word, preferring to let Izzy fill in the blanks. ‘Am I?’

  ‘What are we like?’ says Izzy. ‘It’s such early days and already we’re obsessed. We’ll drive each other insane by the time the . . . arrives. We should make some sort of pact to stop talking about it for a while.’

  ‘Okay, but before we start let me ask you this one thing.’

  ‘Okay, what?’

  ‘Names.’

  ‘Names?’

  ‘Just wondered. What are your current faves?’

  ‘Please tell me you’re joking?’

  ‘Can’t.’

  She laughs.

  ‘I’m thinking Levi for a you-know,’ I continue, ‘and Lois for a you-know . . .’

  A roar of laughter fills my eardrum. ‘Let me guess,’ says Izzy, still laughing, ‘Levi because of the Temptations’ Levi Stubbs and Lois because of . . . Superman’s girlfriend?’

  ‘You’re absolutely wrong.’ I say, even though she’s scored two out of two. ‘They’r
e just names I like.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway.’ She lowers her voice even more. ‘You’ve got no chance of lumbering anything that comes out of my loins with the name Levi, I guarantee you that.’

  ‘So what about you, then?’ I ask, not bothering to pretend that Izzy hasn’t been thinking about the same thing.

  ‘Hang on a sec . . .’ she says. I can hear someone asking her what time the chromalins are due from the printer’s. ‘Okay, I’m back,’ she says. ‘Do you know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I like it that you know I’m as demented as you,’ she says, and there’s real joy in her voice. ‘Yeah, I have some . . . yeah, I know we’re getting a little too excited but . . . well . . . you think, don’t you? Whether you like it or not.’

  ‘Agreed. But you can stop stalling – it isn’t going to help your case in the least.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Izzy. ‘Well, I dismissed all the usual suspects that have been floating around my head since I was about ten – you know, Molly, Polly, Chloë, Poppy, Lucy, the kind of names I secretly wished I’d been called because I’d read too many books about posh girls at boarding-school. Then I did that thing where you dismiss any name that might help the school bully so out went Gregory Pegory,’ she paused to laugh again, ‘Rossy Bossy and Jasmine Frasmine. Then I realised that was a silly reason not to choose a name so now I’ve sort of settled on Maxwell and Jasmine, but I’m open to persuasion.’

  ‘Maxwell and Jasmine are good names,’ I tell her. ‘But so are Levi and Lois. Three names are going to have to go in the bin, unless . . .’

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Well, it could be quadruplets, couldn’t it?’

  Thursday evening in the kitchen

  ‘Dave, are you sure about not talking about this thing that we said we wouldn’t talk about?’

  It’s five past eight and we are in the kitchen. One of the work surfaces is covered with last Saturday’s Guardian and there is soil everywhere because Izzy is planting a mixture of gerberas, hyacinths and pansies she’s just bought from B&Q in a window box. A large bag of compost sits in the sink and she has her hands inside it.