The ABCs of Love

by Sarah Salway

  Noddy was going to see his good friend Big Ears. He woke up in the morning and was very excited.

  “Thank you, bed,” he said, “for letting me sleep so well so I can be wide awake to see my good friend Big Ears.”

  And then he went to the bathroom.

  “Thank you, bathroom,” he said, “for letting me use you so I can be well prepared to see my good friend Big Ears.”

  And then he went to have some breakfast.

  “Thank you, kitchen,” he said, “for being there so I can prepare food to give me energy to see my good friend Big Ears. Thank you, food,” he said as he ate, “for filling me up so I can see my good friend Big Ears. Thank you, floor,” he said as he crossed the room, “for taking me to the door so I can see my good friend Big Ears. Thank you, door,” he said as he went outside, “for letting me out of the house to see my good friend Big Ears.”

  He went to his car. “Thank you, car,” he said as he got in, “for taking me to see my good friend Big Ears.”

  He drove along. “Thank you, tarmac; thank you, pavement; thank you, traffic signals; thank you, map; thank you, road directions; thank you, thank you, thank you, everyone who is helping me see my good friend Big Ears.”

  He parked outside his friend’s house. “Thank you, road, for letting me leave my car so I can see my good friend Big Ears. Thank you, gate, for opening so I can go and see my good friend, Big Ears. Thank you, path, for taking me up to the house of my good friend Big Ears. Thank you, doorbell, for letting me ring to alert my good friend Big Ears.”

  He waited until he could hear footsteps coming down the stairs inside the little house.

  “Thank you, stairs,” he whispered, “for bringing my good friend Big Ears closer and closer to me.”

  At last, Big Ears opened the door.

  “Fuck off, Noddy,” he said.

  See also Doors; Houses; Liqueur Chocolates; Youth

  normals

  Last summer Sally and I were on a train when we noticed that the two men in the seats across the aisle had not looked at us once.

  This was puzzling.

  I thought they must have been trainspotters, but Sally listened to their conversation for a bit. It turned out that what they actually spotted was the stations. They rode on trains every day, choosing lines that took them through the most number of stations. Then they wrote the names down in a big book.

  We couldn’t stop laughing. Every time we thought we’d got it under control, the train would glide past some deserted platform with one of those swinging signs, and we’d hear the shuffle of papers opposite us and we’d be off again. We were crying and making little squeaks like baby pigs. Sally’s nose was starting to run.

  The men did look at us then. One of them even shrugged and spat out the word normals.

  I asked Brian about this the next day. He said that a friend of his who sometimes liked to go trainspotting— well, anyway, this “friend” had heard that people who didn’t like trainspotting were called “Normals.” I couldn’t explain to Brian why I found this insulting. I just did.

  He told me then that naturists—and another “friend” of his apparently has been known to go to nudist beaches—called people who wore clothes “Textiles.” He kept on about this for the rest of the day as if it were a joke both of us shared.

  “How are you doing, Textile?” he’d shout across from his desk.

  The trouble with Brian is that he doesn’t know when he has taken things too far.

  See also Bosses; Firefighting; Glenda G-spot; Words; Zero

  nostrils

  Sophia found me crying in the ladies’ room at work. Of all the people to see me at my worst, she would be one of the last people I’d pick. It’s not just the fact that she is the company accountant. It’s her nostrils. They’re more on show than anyone else’s. It’s as if she’s put two fingers up her nose and turned it inside out. Her nostrils are long and stretched, and the skin’s boiled red inside. It’s difficult to look at Sophia and think of anything else. I would hate to see Sophia with a cold. Just the thought of it makes me feel physically sick.

  Sophia took me by the hand and led me into her office. She put me in a chair in the corner of the room and just ignored me. Eventually, I stopped sobbing and stood up.

  “It won’t be the last time it happens,” she said, barely looking at me. “And every time it does, you will think this really is the end, that this time you’ll never get back with each other, and your heart will break again and again until you don’t think you can bear it anymore. But I promise you that you’ve a long, hard journey ahead. You won’t be able to leave each other alone, and it will hurt just as much each time one of you decides that you must part.”

  “How did . . .”

  “Oh, I don’t know the details of your particular relationship,” she said. “But I do know about pain indexes, believe me. And men. He won’t be worth it. They never are.”

  Then she handed me a mirror before going back to her columns of figures.

  “You’d better freshen up,” she said. “You look a mess.”

  I stared at my reflection. My eyes were puffy and red, but who was she to call me a mess? At least I have always been lucky with the shape and size of my nostrils.

  See also Friends; Kindness; Wrists

  nursing

  If I could change just one thing about John, it would be the way he is always complaining about being ill. Last Monday, for example, he was moaning about a pain in his arm.

  “It is either a strain from all the gardening Kate made me do over the weekend or the last stages of a cancerous tumor,” he whinged. I tried to take his mind off it, but I noticed he kept rubbing the spot and looking worried, as if he might die at any minute.

  I told Sally about it. I shouldn’t have done that because she kept mocking John, rubbing her forehead and saying that either she was bored with talking about him or she was in the last stages of a terminal tedium. But then she had a good idea.

  Now, whenever John complains about being ill, I am incredibly sympathetic. I tell him he should tell Kate to massage him gently for a long time or to cook him special meals or to go buy him expensive and elusive medicines.

  “Do you think so?” he asks, hopefully.

  “I do,” I say. “I think this is something she needs to take very seriously indeed. I would, if I were her.”

  See also Illness; Stationery; Teaching; Women’s Laughter

  O

  objects

  John told me that he went round his house last night looking at all the objects he and his wife had bought together. He said he was ticking things off in his mind.

  If I go, I’ll take this, this, and this.

  That, that, and that will stay.

  It was a terrible thing to do, he said, because he realized that was all a marriage comes down to in the end. Objects. Even the children, he said. Even the children would be shared between him and Kate.

  I held him close and told him that if I had him, I would never need anything else. We stayed like that, in each other’s arms, for a long time. We were silent because he was upset, and all I wanted to ask was whether he was going to take the painting of beach huts by the sea that we once took to be reframed together.

  I have always liked that painting.

  See also Houses; Money; Property; Questions

  old

  My heart is breaking. All I can see in front of me is a dark, black corridor with nothing making it worthwhile to come out the other side. John can’t bring himself to think about leaving Kate anymore. He says it would kill her. Apparently, she’s spent too much of her life relying on him, and he has to accept the responsibility. Plus, he’d feel so guilty that he’d taken the best years of her life. Maybe if they’d both been younger? Younger like me. He told me that I’d be all right, that I had my whole life ahead. I had to live well, to make him proud.

  I felt numb. He was crying when he said all this, so I told him it was all right, that I understood, but the n
ext day I was having a sandwich in a local coffee shop when I realized the woman sitting opposite me must be in her early forties, probably exactly the same age as Kate. I knew it wasn’t her, but I couldn’t stop staring at this woman. She was reading some papers, an important-looking document, so I felt I could stare all I wanted without her noticing me.

  I was trying to see what it was like to be that old. She had all the usual imperfections, but when I looked closely, I saw some I hadn’t thought of before. The skin at the sides of her face was puckered round her ears, as if it needed stretching. Then when she turned round to pick her coat off the back of the chair, I saw she had lines at the back of the neck as thick and deep as the thin gold chain she was wearing. The areas around her eyes were black, not just underneath as you get sometimes from lack of sleep, but at the edges of her nose, right up to her eyebrows too, so her sockets looked sunken.

  John told me once that what Kate hated most about getting old was the fact that she felt she was becoming invisible. John said that Kate was losing all her confidence and bounce. This was another thing that made him feel guilty.

  I could see that the woman sitting opposite me at the table was nervous. She apologized when other people bumped into her, she kept giving me silly little smiles, she tried to make conversation with the man who came to clear away the table even though he wasn’t interested. When I saw her start to put her things away to go, I knocked over my coffee on purpose, willing the dark brown liquid to spill over her papers.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as she whipped everything up quickly, trying to take care of the worst of the damage with a sodden paper napkin. “I just didn’t notice you there.”

  The woman looked as if she was trying not to cry. The manager came rushing over. He was about twenty-five, as dark and handsome as an Italian film star. I smiled at him, and he stopped in his tracks for a moment, then smiled back. Together we watched the woman flutter her hands here and there until he remembered what he was there for and started to wipe the papers with the wet cloth in his hands.

  “Don’t.” She was almost shouting. “These are important. They’re Work things.” That’s how she spoke. Gave Work a capital letter, as if that was all she had in her life. All she had left to her. After she’d gone, I watched the other people in the café give one another little smiles. I hoped she’d get into trouble when she got back to the office. I felt no guilt. Didn’t she know it was women her age who were ruining my life?

  The next night John came round and said he was wrong. That he couldn’t let me go. That he’d see a way of making things all right. I made a point of lifting up my hair and asking him to kiss the back of my neck. I told him women loved that, because I guessed he sometimes tried out things we did with Kate. “Is it smooth?” I asked. “Are there any lines there?” He whispered into my skin that I was beautiful, flawless, a national treasure. I turned my head round so his mouth was against my cheek, just by my ear.

  “I really couldn’t bear to be lined and ugly,” I said. “I’ll be perfect for you forever.”

  He smiled, but something was wrong. It was the first time I’d been with John and felt guilty. He kept poking his tongue at my skin until I had to push him off.

  See also Breasts; Endings; Mistaken Identity; Youth

  omelet

  My mother always used to say that it was impossible to make an omelet without breaking eggs. It seemed substantial at the time, like something I should listen to, but I can’t help wondering what it all meant now. Of course you need to break the eggs. It’s just common sense.

  See also Elephant’s Egg; Endings; Old; Questions; Voices; X

  omens

  The world has become a more interesting place since I fell in love.

  A magpie flying overhead used to be just a black-and-white bird. It is now a sign that today is going to be awful, so I have to spend the next hour searching for another to balance it out. Two birds flying together fills me with joy. It means that John really does love me. That we’re going to be happy together forever.

  That black cat crossing the road . . . the chimney sweep . . . the four-leaf clover. If I go into a pub and count ten blond-haired men, if the sandwich I’ve picked with my eyes shut turns out to be chicken, if I can get to that shop without seeing a red car. . . .

  If.

  See also Horoscopes; Love Calculators; Telephone Boxes; Utopia

  only children

  Sally and I are both only children. John is the youngest of three. He has two children of his own. There are bound to be things he can’t understand about me that Sally can.

  There is a responsibility about being an only child. On the one hand, you are the most wanted person in the universe, the one who completes the family, the little plastic figure who makes living in the dollhouse worthwhile. On the other, you bear single-handedly the pressure of changing someone’s life beyond recognition. When things go wrong, it can be no one else’s fault but yours.

  This is a lot for a child to have to cope with.

  There was a psychological experiment once. They put a group of strangers in a room and forbade them to speak to one another. Then they asked them to circle round, just looking, until they found someone they wanted as their potential partner. They all chose, but remember they hadn’t spoken yet. When they finally got to talk to their partner, the vast majority found that they had paired up with someone who shared the same place in the family as they did. Youngest child with youngest child, older with older, middles with middles. I like to think the experiment finally ended when the only children were peeled off the outside walls and forced to join in with the rest. Maybe they would then have made cynical comments about the easy comradeship of the other people there, but more likely, they would have got into an argument as to who had the unhappiest childhood.

  See also Ants; Blood; Captains; Daisies; Questions; Relatives; Zzzz oranges

  I knew a girl once who used to say that if you ever wanted to pick anyone up, all you needed to do was to go on a train journey with a copy of Rebecca and a large apple. You would have hardly nibbled through the skin, or even reached Manderley, before a man approached you.

  I tried it with John one evening, but all I had in the fruit bowl was oranges. John was watching football, and he didn’t even look at me, just passed me his hankie so I could mop the juices off my chin. He says it’s a compliment to how relaxed he feels with me that he can spend the little time we have together watching television.

  Besides, it was an important match that he was supposed to be watching down at the pub with his friend Sam.

  See also Endings

  orphans

  I have been an orphan for two years now. It’s difficult to say that without sounding pathetic, but my friends are now my family. Well, John is now my family.

  No, I am completely happy. I miss nothing. I am searching for nothing. Especially not a father figure. Sally is wrong. She is just jealous because although Colin has more money, he does not treat her as well as John looks after me. I can tell John everything. And I do. He says he wants to protect me so carefully that no harm will ever happen to me. This is why I have to do what he says, be what he wants. Everyone needs someone to look after them.

  See also Stepmothers; Teaching; Voices; Zzzz

  outcast

  Until we started on her, Dawn was no different from any other girl at school.

  But then one day in the lunch hall, she dropped her tray. It was full of food, but while embarrassing, even that might have been all right on its own. After all, it was something we worried about doing ourselves. But then, instead of cursing or picking it up or doing anything, Dawn just stood there, blushing. Soon she was completely red.

  Dollops of shepherd’s pie in greasy gravy lay around her feet. Chunks of tinned pineapple, banana, peach left snail trails on the floor where they’d skittered away from the shattered bowl.

  After the initial thud, the dining hall was completely silent. Everyone was watching Dawn. I felt my stomach well up a
nd get stuck in my throat. Why didn’t she do anything? My head seemed to be expanding beyond my skull. I wanted to scream.

  I don’t know who it was who first started to clap, but soon we were all joining in. That slow clap-clap-clap, each one separated by a heartbeat’s silence. Even the teachers seemed frozen, until Dawn spun round and ran out of the hall. She must have kept on running through the school and into the street because the next time we saw her, she was standing next to her father as our form teacher told us all about how we must be kind to everyone, regardless of their background. How we mustn’t ostracize Dawn just because she was not like us.

  We stared at Dawn, trying to work out what was wrong with her background. I honestly don’t think anyone had noticed anything special about her before. It was then that we saw the hole in her cardigan at the elbow, the dirty socks, the smudges on her face not wiped off by a mother’s spit. She was looking down at the ground as if to give us a better view of the scruffy parting of the hair, not painfully sculpted each morning like our mothers did with the sharp end of the comb.

  Then we started on her father. We asked ourselves what was he doing there in school when all our fathers were at work. Why was he in dirty old jeans and a V-necked jumper without a shirt, let alone a tie? We saw him looking at us all, not defiantly, but with eyes full of what we could recognize even then as defeat.

  I can’t remember anyone ever talking about it, but I can’t have been the only one who felt my blood rise at how they could just stand there and take the humiliation. We became pack animals, the rest of us, trying to rid ourselves of the weakest links.

  Dawn never had a happy day at school again after that. Sometimes she tried to talk to me because I was left on my own at playtime too, but I’d turn my back on her.

  Couldn’t she see being hated was something two people could never have in common?

  See also Captains; Start-rite Sandals; Vendetta

  P

  pain index

  If John and I were together all the time, I know we would be able to speak normally to each other. The trouble is, when we speak on the telephone now, I have a second conversation—the things I really want to know— going on in my mind. This makes it difficult to talk, so when I do eventually say what I want to say, it comes out too quickly and harshly and I start crying.