The Importance of Being a Bachelor

by Mike Gayle

  Over the years that passed Luke thought about his friend Ben Cohen and the story of his dad’s funeral several times, usually inspired by other cases of excruciatingly embarrassing insensitivity which he had been party to, but today was the first time Luke had ever thought about that story in terms of the thing itself: the speed of the funeral. It really shocked him how one day you could be alive and kicking and less than twenty-four hours later you could be six feet under. The swiftness seemed almost indecent. How could you process what had happened in that short a space of time, let alone prepare yourself to say goodbye to a loved one? Surely these things took a week or so because that was what they needed logistically and emotionally? Surely everyone, no matter their religion or culture, was wired up with these same basic needs?

  Evidently not.

  Within twenty-four hours of Cassie handing back the engagement ring she had gone. Not just in the sense that she had packed more clothes and essential items for a few more days and headed back to her friend Holly’s house but in the sense that by the time Luke returned home from work the following evening everything that she owned had disappeared. Her keys to the house (the mortgage was in Luke’s name – putting her name on it was one of those things they had never actually got round to) were left on the kitchen table.

  Luke hadn’t been able to believe his eyes as he looked around the house and saw all her clothes missing from the wardrobe and various pictures and photographs gone from walls and surfaces. Items to which she had equal rights, like sofas and armchairs and the dining-room table and chairs, she had left behind as though so desperate to break all ties with Luke that she was forgoing her entitlements in a bid to speed her passage away from him.

  Luke knew that the swiftness of her exit had nothing to do with threats, punishment or indeed retribution for his actions and everything to do with Cassie’s own attempts at self-preservation. The longer a separation took the more drawn-out and arduous it would be for both of them in the long run. Cassie’s version of ending things was swift and to the point. Get the practical stuff out of the way while you still feel numb. Do your mourning later, in private and in your own time. If Cassie had left the timing of this separation in Luke’s hands it would have dragged on for months, featured frequent last-ditch attempts at reconciliation and ultimately ended badly enough to put them both off relationships for life. No, Cassie had done the right thing, the noble thing that in the end would be best for both of them. Even so, Luke wished that she had stayed because every second without her was empty.

  Luke had called her mobile and it was all he could do not to throw the phone across the room when it went straight through to voicemail. Barely able to breathe for rising panic he dialled her office number in the hope that she might be working late and pick up without knowing that it was him but again every call was passed straight through to her anonymous electronic voicemail. Realising that he was running out of options Luke dialled her mobile number once more and plucked up the courage to leave a message: ‘Cassie, it’s me. We need to talk. I need to see you. We can’t let this happen to us. We’re better than that. I promise you we are. Please, please, call me back as soon as you get this message.’

  Luke had ended the call and dropped the phone into his jacket pocket. His every fibre was primed for action but without a point on which to focus all this energy, it surged around his body pointlessly agitating his limbs as it looked for a way to escape into the world. He thought about jumping in the car and driving over to Cassie’s friend Holly’s house to see if she was there, but even in his heightened emotional state he could see the flaws in this strategy. No, the time for action had long since passed. If he had been here when she had been packing then maybe, just maybe he could have talked her round. Now all he could do was sit and wait and hope that she would call him.

  He slumped down on to the sofa and switched on the TV. Determined not to be defeated by the fact that there seemed to be nothing on, he flicked up and down the channels from news programmes, to repeats of British comedy classics. Luke tried his best to concentrate on the screen, wishing desperately that he could lose himself in the excitement and the explosions, but to no avail. The huge knot in his stomach refused to stay in place, shifting from side to side before finally breaking free and moving upwards and outwards into his lungs. All at once he was sobbing like a baby and the more he tried to stop the harder and quicker it came out. He felt like something had broken inside. It seemed the pain would never stop, so he called work and told them he was taking some time off in lieu, then switched off his mobile and unplugged his phone and proceeded to cut himself off from the world.

  ‘There’s honestly no need for symbolic bread-based gestures.’

  It was quarter to one on a cold, wet Saturday afternoon and Adam (having spent the best part of five and a half hours sitting in his car staking out his local newsagent’s like a TV detective) had just concluded that there was no option but to abandon his plan, return home and give serious consideration to his future now he had solid proof that Steph had ruined him for ever.

  The reason Adam believed this was simple: his night with the gorgeous Danish/Swedish girl less than a week earlier had been an unmitigated disaster. Arriving in the early hours at the apartment she was staying in off Deansgate, he had allowed her to lead him to her room utterly convinced that this amazing girl with her fantastic looks and outstanding body would blot out everything from his doomed pursuit of the Right Kind of Women through to the problems with his parents’ marriage. But half an hour later, as the Swedish/Danish girl dozed quietly at his side, he knew two things for sure: he no longer had the will or the inclination to lead this type of life and he missed Steph more than ever.

  He started to hatch a plan: on the following Saturday morning he would get up as early as humanly possible, stake out the newsagent’s where he had first met Steph and attempt to engineer an accidental meeting and then . . . he didn’t know what exactly would happen after that. But Steph made him want to be a better person and that meant more to him than anything else in the world.

  He glanced into his rear-view mirror to check the traffic before pulling away and was shocked to see a lone female figure walking up the road. While not daring to believe that it might be Steph, Adam nevertheless refrained from pulling away until he could be sure. Barely breathing until the figure had come close enough for full identification Adam was relieved as first the coat, the hair and then finally the face that he had thought of kissing so many times came into sharp focus.

  Waiting until she had walked past and into Sanjay’s, Adam leaped out of the car, narrowly avoiding being run over by a cyclist, crossed the road, walked straight into the newsagent’s, picked up a copy of the Mirror and made his way to the till at which there was a six-person-long queue. Steph was number five and a balding guy with a long grey hippy-ish ponytail was number six. Adam tried to work out what his next move should be: the most straightforward thing would be to say hello to her on the spot but that would have given the lie to the casual nature of everything he was trying to engineer. No, she would have to discover him herself . . . or even better they would discover each other at the same time . . . and everything else would follow naturally. He took a deep breath. The queue was getting shorter. Steph was second from the front. The woman in front of her paid for her shopping. Steph was next. From behind the ponytail guy Adam could just about see her handing over the money for the paper. Adam prepared his face for their encounter: a casual smile and raised eyebrows of surprise (but not too raised).

  Steph turned away from the counter, her eyes fixed on the headlines of her newspaper. Adam wanted to yell: ‘Look up! Look up and see me!’ but remained in mute despair as she walked past him and out of the shop. He couldn’t believe it. All those hours spent in a cramped car and his mission was about to be thwarted by an absorbing headline! This was wrong, so wrong that it hurt. Adam looked at the headline, something to do with the number of people estimated to have died in a war on the other side of the
world. He shook his head in disbelief. Why give a toss about people dying in a war halfway across the globe when none of it was affecting her? It wasn’t as if there was anything she could do about it. Why couldn’t she just be like normal people who wanted to read stuff about celebrities and only paid lip service to the idea of caring about the world? Adam watched her walk down the road. His heart could not have felt any heavier. He handed Sanjay a two-pound coin for the paper, dropped the change into the Save The Children charity tin and turned to walk away. Only he couldn’t. Steph was blocking his exit holding her newspaper and brandishing a loaf of wholemeal bread that she had clearly forgotten the first time. She glanced up and saw him. She looked both shocked and surprised.

  ‘Adam! How are you? Were you here all the time? I didn’t even see you standing there!’

  ‘I was . . . er . . . just getting a paper.’ He waved the newspaper in the air. ‘So how have you been? Are you well?’

  ‘I’m good actually,’ she replied. ‘Work has been a bit busy but that’s fine. How about yourself? Everything OK with the bar?’

  Adam nodded. ‘It virtually runs itself. I just turn up there sometimes so that it looks like I actually work for a living.’

  There was a long pause and Adam wondered whether this was going to be the end of the conversation. Then, ‘I got your card,’ she said quietly. ‘It was really nice of you to send it. I’m actually quite fond of Rothko.’

  ‘It was nothing,’ said Adam. He thought about saying something more in reference to the card’s message but then thought better of it and made a joke instead. ‘Truth is you came pretty close to getting a card with a cartoon of Garfield.’

  Steph laughed. ‘Now that would have been really strange because the only thing I like more than Rothko is a nice Garfield cartoon!’

  Once again the conversation seemed to be drawing to a close. Adam looked at the bread in Steph’s hands. An idea popped into his head and he decided to let it run free. ‘Can I pay for that?’

  Steph looked confused. ‘What? The bread? Why would you do that?’

  ‘Think of it as a small act of penance on my part. Think of this loaf of . . .’ he paused to read the label, ‘Warburton’s Wholemeal Farmhouse as our bread of peace. My way of apologising for several years of teasing at school and for any other misdemeanours that might have taken place since.’

  ‘Really,’ smiled Steph, ‘there’s no need for symbolic bread-based gestures. You can consider yourself absolved.’

  ‘Really?’

  Adam decided it was time to seize the moment. ‘Well in that case I was sort of wondering if you’d like to go out some time.’

  The look on Steph’s face (acute embarrassment set off with a heavy frown) said it all but just to drive the point home she added, ‘I appreciate the thought, I really do, Adam, but if I’m being truthful I don’t think that would be a great idea.’

  ‘I mean as friends,’ said Adam quickly as he recalled the fact that he remained officially ‘not her type’. ‘You know, mates who hang out together and that sort of thing.’

  ‘Still not a great idea.’ Steph shook her head in a regretful manner that made Adam feel thoroughly dejected. He wanted to be somewhere else as quickly as possible and yet couldn’t leave until a decent amount of time had passed in case she jumped to the conclusion that he had taken offence at being rebuffed. He counted to ten as quickly as he could and said: ‘So, I suppose I’ll see you around then?’

  ‘And more likely than not it’ll be in here.’ With a half nod and an awkward smile in Adam’s direction she walked past him to the till to make her purchase.

  ‘Just gin gin will do for me.’

  It was ten to eight on the Thursday of the following week and Adam was standing in the Slug and Lettuce in Didsbury looking around for a woman in a red coat with auburn hair.

  The name of the auburn-haired red-coated object of his investigations was Lorraine Maconie, a thirty-four-year-old primary school teacher and part-time netball coach who was originally from Southend-on-Sea but now apparently lived in Didsbury. Adam (who since his rejection by Steph had let his friends know that he was now very much back on his pursuit of the Right Kind of Girls) had been put in touch with Lorraine via his friends Martin and Kay earlier in the week and after much toing and froing via their intermediaries they had agreed upon a date.

  At five minutes past eight, just as Adam was beginning to wonder whether Martin and Kay had been playing some kind of elaborate joke on him, the door to the bar opened and he looked up to see a woman in a red jacket enter the room, scan the bar with one quick look and rest her gaze on him. Adam let out an audible sigh. Even from a distance he could see that this woman with her bobbed auburn hair and bootcut jeans was in no way, shape or form going to make it as a replacement Steph but he would have to give her a go.

  ‘You must be Adam,’ she said quickly. ‘You look just like the photo Kay emailed. Sorry I’m late. I know Kay said eight o’clock and I always hate it when other people are late but I was just leaving my flat when the phone rang and I knew it would be my mum phoning to wish me good luck for my date with you tonight and if I didn’t take it she would spend the whole night calling to make sure things were going OK.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Adam, slightly taken a back by this sudden gush of nervous chat. ‘It’s really fine. Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘A gin and tonic would be great.’

  ‘Boodles? Bombay? Beefeater? Plymouth? Tanqueray?’

  Lorraine looked confused.

  ‘They’re gins,’ explained Adam.

  Lorraine looked embarrassed as though Adam had caught her out, which hadn’t been his intention at all. ‘Oh, I forgot, you own a bar don’t you? Just gin gin will do for me. Is that OK?’

  ‘Of course.’ Adam smiled. ‘One just gin gin and tonic coming up.’

  Returning to the table with their drinks Adam proceeded to ask lots of leading questions in a bid to show Lorraine that he was both interested in her and her responses and in between he tried his best to be as charming and as entertaining as he could manage. But no matter how hard he tried Adam found it impossible to get into the right frame of mind. For all his efforts, once again there was just no spark. No magic. Not a single indicator to alter his initial response the moment he clapped eyes on her that she was ‘a nice girl but so not for me’.

  As he headed up to the bar to get Lorraine another gin gin and tonic and wondered how he was going to make it to the end of the night, given that it was only nine o’clock and they had already scraped the bottom of the barrel to such an extent that the current topic of conversation was rumours of the city council being in discussions about reducing the weekly refuse collection to once a fortnight, his phone rang. Adam didn’t recognise the number. Normally he didn’t answer his phone to numbers he didn’t recognise because of the dual hazards of irate ex-girlfriends and cold callers, but such was the failure of this evening that he would gladly have welcomed the distractions of either.

  ‘Adam Bachelor speaking.’

  ‘Hi, Adam, it’s me, Steph.’ Adam almost dropped the phone but quickly regained his composure. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m good, thanks.’ A bunch of lads in the bar cheered in the background. ‘Where are you? It’s very noisy.’

  ‘Nowhere exciting,’ he said, wishing that she’d called him a few hours earlier when he had been in a location that made it sound less like he was having the time of his life. ‘Just out for a drink with a mate.’

  ‘Well I’ve been thinking about our meeting the other day and I feel really bad and I was wondering if you mean what you said about us being friends?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ he assured her even though this hadn’t been strictly true at the time. ‘I definitely want us to be friends.’

  ‘And you’re not just saying that as a ploy in the hope that something will happen between us later?’

  Adam was about to respond but stopped himself at the last minute. Maybe this was a trick questi
on to see if he really had changed. The old Adam would have strenuously denied any ulterior motive just to get what he wanted. The new Adam therefore had to tell the truth even if it hurt.

  ‘Look,’ he began, ‘I can’t deny that I still like you but if you want us to just be mates then I’m sure I can learn to live with that.’

  ‘And it’s not like there aren’t literally thousands of better-looking girls to distract you in the meantime.’

  ‘I thought you said you’d forgiven me?’

  ‘I’m just teasing you, Adam! And as weird as it is to be the current object of your affections – let’s not forget that at school you used to called me Four Eyes Holmes – I’m convinced the weirdness will wear off soon, leaving behind what I hope will be a half-decent friendship.’

  ‘So you want to be friends?’

  ‘Yes, I do. And as our first act of friendship I think we should do something special.’

  ‘Great! Well, a mate of mine is throwing a party to celebrate the opening of his new bar in Tibb Street. We could go there if you like?’