by Unknown
‘Everyone else is getting married.’
‘Oh, right, so everybody else is doing it. That’s a great reason to make the biggest commitment of our lives,’ says Adam with obvious sarcasm. He shakes his head and asks, ‘Like who?’
‘Like Pete and Tanya, like Eliza and Greg, like Will and Zoë.’ I reel off the list of names of our friends that have got engaged in the last month.
‘Would you jump off a bridge just because Tanya, Eliza or Zoë did?’ he demands, sounding just like a grade three teacher talking to a child. I ignore him.
‘Like, just about every woman who walks into my shop. I could do the flowers for our wedding,’ I wail.
I’m a little bit shamefaced to admit it but I have spent quite a lot of time day-dreaming about our wedding. I have not planned every last detail – not quite – but I’ve certainly drawn the broad brush-strokes. I’ve picked out a dress, a menu, and I know we’ll be having fat pink peonies as the centrepiece flower to all arrangements.
‘Jesus, Fern, we can’t get married just so you can showcase your flower-arranging skills.’
‘You’re being bloody stupid, I didn’t say that. I’m just saying that we could save some money if I did the flowers. Weddings are expensive.’
‘This isn’t about the money,’ yells Adam. He throws down his fork and pushes his plate away, even though his chow mein is only half eaten.
My heart dives to the pit of my belly. I’d rather hoped it was about the money. I was hoping that Adam had secretly given the idea of our nuptials as much thought as I had but just hadn’t got round to popping the question because he was worried that we’d never have enough cash to do the whole wedding thing properly. Apparently not. The problem with it not being about the money is that it means his non-popping of the question must be motivated by something much more sinister and devastating.
Adam doesn’t want to marry me.
Adam doesn’t love me?
Having surmised this much I know I should now just clamp my mouth closed and retreat with the tiny shreds of dignity left available to me, but while my brain is calculating that this is definitely the best course of action, my tongue – the current impetuous ruling power – runs on unchecked.
‘My mum always said no man ever buys the cow if he can drink the milk for free,’ I wail.
‘Oh, lovely,’ says Adam with mocking tones. ‘A gorgeous image, I can’t wait to curl up with that one tonight.’
‘Well, she was right, wasn’t she?’ Of course I want him to say that no, my mother was wrong, and I want him to take me in his arms, stroke my back and tell me everything is going to be OK. He doesn’t, so I trample on. ‘I want commitment, I want a wedding, I want babies. I want something to look forward to. Something to happen.’ With every demand I make I can almost hear our relationship being stamped to death underfoot. It’s a big fat squelchy sound. ‘I want a proper home. I want you to grow up. But you don’t want any of that, do you, Adam? You want to piss about pretending to be some vital cog in the world of rock and roll, when it’s clear that you are little more than a glorified runner.’
With that I finally shut my mouth but it’s too late. Adam looks shocked and fatally wounded. He’s staring at me as though he hardly recognizes me. Right now, I hardly care.
‘Is that really what you think?’
‘Yes. We’re treading water and I don’t have time for this any more, Adam. I’m thirty next week. I have a biological clock to reckon with. I’m telling you it’s up to the next level or get out.’ I hadn’t meant to say as much.
‘You can’t threaten me. You can’t put an ultimatum on a relationship,’ he yells back at me.
‘I can do as I bloody well like, and I’m telling you, Adam, if there’s no big shiny rock presented to me on my birthday then it’s the last birthday we’ll be celebrating together. Marry me or move out.’
The last words spurt into our lives with the devastation of a tsunami. I pant with fury and frustration. I regret the words but believe in them at the same time. It’s complicated. Besides, it hardly matters what I did or did not mean to say. The fact is I’ve just issued my boyfriend with an ultimatum. An ultimatum with a very short deadline and a dire ‘failure to comply’ clause.
I hastily pick up the plates and manically start to tidy up the kitchen. I toss rice and congealed leftovers into the bin. I wash up and I wipe the table. Anything rather than meet Adam’s eye. It takes me twenty minutes to have the tiny kitchen gleaming; I even drag a soapy cloth across the floor. Throughout my frenzied activity Adam says nothing and he doesn’t move.
He is truly petrified.
3. Scott
Some people think it might just happen. Fame and that. That you’ll just stumble on it. Or that someone will hand it over, that’s the Simon Cowell effect, that is. But I always knew finding fame took more than that. It needed plans, schemes and determination. It needed energy. When I’m pissed I don’t have much energy and I forget plans. So I had to stop getting pissed. Because to lose it all now, well, it would be a damn shame. It would.
The other thing people don’t realize is that it’s a violent toil making art. It’s far too easy to lose your nerve. People who aren’t good enough rarely realize it. Others who are good enough don’t believe it. You have to believe in everything. In luck, in your fans, but mostly in yourself.
When I was fifteen I got a Saturday job in a butcher shop. I needed extra money for clothes and records and stuff that makes life bearable. Nothing could be as ugly as chopping meat. For twelve months all I smelt was blood. Even when I was nowhere near the fuckin’ shop I smelt of blood. The bloke I worked for was an arse. I had to wear green nylon trousers and a green checked dickie bow. There was no amity or fun. Nan thought being a butcher was a good trade: ‘You never see a skinny butcher.’ (Yeah, but who wants to be fat?) She thought I should suck up to the arse that was my boss so he’d take me on full-time after my GCSEs. Mum didn’t disagree, she didn’t have the energy. It was like we were living in a different century to everyone else by growing up in the north in the late 70s and early 80s. It was made clear to me that I was starting at the bottom and that was where everyone expected me to stay. No one believed I’d be anything. A lack of belief can break your heart; it breaks your soul. If you let it.
But I do believe in myself, except when I don’t. I do when I’m up there on stage and women are flinging their bras and morals at me. Then I know I’m a god. Trick is, not to think too carefully about exactly what sort of god I might be because then you stop believing in yourself and it’s possible you might drown in your own vomit (the default end for a rock star).
When I think back about how I got here, I am not surprised. People say, ‘A lad from Hull, here with all of this! Who’d have thought?’ They say that all the time and they are surprised. But I tell you who’d have thought. I’d have thought. The wall-to-wall open legs, the millions in the bank, the swimming-pool that I could fill with champagne if I wanted to, this is my proper place in life. The two-up-two-down terrace in Hull was the mistake; that was the angels’ clerical error. I should never have been dropped off there among all that disappointment. In our house there were just two states of existence, both underpinned by a solid sense of disappointment (my mother’s – never too happy to be married, heartbroken after my father pissed off). The two states of existence were basically TV On, TV Off.
TV On was the dominant state; it ran from about 7 a.m. all the way through to 1 a.m. the next day (and the next and the next). The thin curtains would be pulled across the window, shunning the bright daylight in the summer and offering no protection against the dreary black elements in the autumn and winter. The TV droned or blared and my family sprawled in front of it. My nan, small, neat and industrious, usually knitting booties for young girls on our estate that had come undone. The girls were never grateful for the old-fashioned booties, preferring Mothercare’s finest, purchased with government clothing vouchers. My brother and me sprawled in front of the TV; legs
getting longer, tempers getting shorter with every passing year. My mum rarely put her feet up but when she did, she liked the TV on for a bit of company. Because we all lived too close to each other and yet miles away.
The house wasn’t aired enough. We didn’t open windows. It always smelt. It smelt of the dog, the chip pan, of farts and sweat. Different types of sweat: my mother’s honestly earned and nervous, me and my brothers’ fetid and hormonal, my nan’s perfumed with lavender. But the smell I hate remembering most of all, out of all those foul stenches, is the smell of alpine air fresheners. That smell epitomizes my mum’s desperate, pointless grasp at middle-class respectability and it depresses me. Really depresses me.
The TV was only ever off for a few short hours, after me and my brother had finally slunk off to our rooms, ostensibly to catch a few zeds. The silence started to hum. I didn’t sleep at night. I dreamt. Dreaming is what most empty and confused teenagers do. The difference being, dreaming is all that most of them do. Changing dreams into ambition, that’s what sorts the men from the boys. It was in those short, quiet hours when the TV was not blaring that I made my plans to be great. I wrote songs and practised on my guitar and swore to myself that I’d do anything, anything at all, to get to where I knew I should be. I’d work hard, I’d audition, I’d move to London, I’d ignore the word no, I’d keep trying, I’d win people over, I’d screw people over if I had to. I’d do it all.
4. Fern
Flowers are romantic. That much is accepted by everybody, whether it’s a newly engaged woman wondering about the structure of her bouquet or some sorry-assed adulterer that’s been caught with his willy out and wants to try to make amends with his missus. Everyone knows flowers are a good place to start when dealing with matters of the heart.
That’s why I’m delighted to be surrounded by them in the shop every day, especially at the moment. Adam and I are barely speaking to one another. I worked all day Saturday. He spent Sunday fixing up a gig somewhere, I forget exactly where, I’m not sure he even told me. Rationally, I know that he’d already confirmed this work before we had our row; irrationally I feel he’s avoiding me. To be accurate, we’re avoiding each other. Even when we finally fall into bed at the end of our gruelling days we do little more than exchange monosyllabic polite questions and answers, designed to learn precisely nothing about one another’s state of mind.
Since Friday night the flat has been full of stress and silences, so I’m happy to rush to work and let the fragrances which perpetually float in the air soothe me. Ben’s Bunches and Bouquets is my sanctuary. My haven. Flowers can be calming, reassuring, joyful and sexy. Currently, they provide me with everything Adam isn’t.
I never wanted to do anything other than be a florist. I started working at Ben’s B&B four years ago, just before I met Adam. I love my job. The shop is just a ten-minute walk from our flat and Ben is just a few years older than me and a fun boss who gives me plenty of creative scope and independence; he’s become more of a friend than a boss over the years. Even as a tiny tot I used to love to bury my nose in the bright roses blooming in my gran’s garden. I’d inhale the silky, sensuous scent the way some starlets inhale cocaine in the loos at China White; I couldn’t get enough. My gran had a keen creative and romantic streak. She lived before web design or adultery became acceptable conduits for these character traits and so, as she had always been especially green-fingered, she found a more genteel outlet – she arranged flowers.
Gran grew lots and lots of flowers in her garden. Mostly I remember roses and sweet peas but I know that she grew delphiniums, lavender, marigolds and nasturtiums too, to name but a few. It was my habit to trail her as she mooched around the garden. Clippers in one hand, wooden trug in the other, she’d set off in search of the most beautiful stems available. She never rushed. She’d amble along the borders, stopping from time to time to stand in front of a bush, carefully considering which bloom to choose. It was painstaking. I almost pitied the flowers that Gran overlooked, the ones that she didn’t think were quite perfect and beautiful enough for her arrangement; the ones insects had gnawed through or more devastatingly had been blighted by some plant disease. Then, finally, she would select one. Snap, the stem would be severed in a swift sure cut, the bloom picked up and laid with reverence in her basket. Move on.
I found the process at once strangely thrilling and heartbreaking; which, I’ve come to realize, is true of everything to do with flowers. A bouquet sent to a birth is definitely to celebrate but also to acknowledge that the poor mum has a bruised vag; a wreath at a funeral is sent to express extreme sorrow but sent with love and respect.
Flowers are big, you see, complex.
As a kid there was nothing I liked to do more than watch my gran arrange the flowers she’d chosen. I spent hours watching her weave her magic, trimming the leaves from the lower half of the stem (or they would rot in the water, leading to a hideous smell), fearlessly snapping off sharp thorns from roses with her hardy, plump thumb (see, a rose can be improved upon, take away the thorns), swapping honesty for baby’s breath to create balance and harmony. Her displays were always moving. Some were refined, poised and taut. Others were jolly, vibrant and wild. They all seemed wonderful to me. My advice to everyone is never underestimate the power of a bunch of sweet peas tied up with a cheerful, colourful ribbon.
I am doing my best not to think about all the things I said to Adam on Friday and I’m doing a pretty good ostrich impression by throwing myself into my work. I’ve briefly told Ben about the row but I’ve insisted that we don’t discuss and dissect the matter. Ben’s happy to follow instructions; he doesn’t really like thrashing out anything tricky. He’s always saying that all he ever wants is for everyone to be happy, preferably all the time. Sadly, it’s not a very realistic aim and he doesn’t have a magic wand or an especially clear grasp on how that might be achieved (who does?). He’s a good businessman though. Precisely because he knows the value of dreams and the comfort of luxury, he is able to make a decent profit on both at Ben’s B&B. It’s a busy flower shop. Ben has carved out a nice little market in a chi-chi part of Clapham just off Narbonne Avenue. There are lots of yummy mummies who think that spending forty quid on a big bunch of lilies is essential shopping on a par with having milk in the fridge.
Working as a florist isn’t a bed of roses (excuse the pun). People think I spend my entire day drifting around in a soft-filter moment; in fact there are some aspects of the job which are genuinely gruelling. Early starts at the market three times a week, loading the van by myself and then driving back to the shop, through the morning rush hour, means that sometimes it feels as though I’ve done a day’s work before we’ve even opened the shop door. Adam is right, being a florist has made me strong and fit – there’s a lot of heavy lifting. Besides the physical aspect, being a florist demands tact and patience and sometimes a bit of mind reading; you wouldn’t believe how many customers seem only to know what they don’t want but have no clue as to what they do want.
Still, this week I’m grateful for the gruelling and absorbing aspects of the job. I volunteer to take Ben’s turn to go to market, I lug endless buckets of water around the shop as though I’m performing some sort of medieval penance, I rearrange the stock every day, I bone up on the life span of exotic flowers, even those we rarely sell, and I leap on customers the moment they cross the threshold. I’d rather do anything than dwell on the impending birthday and the ultimatum I issued. Ben has been joking that he might as well retire somewhere sunny; his secret ambition is to have a year-round tan. I do a pretty good job of avoiding any form of brooding until Wednesday, when not one, but two brides-to-be visit the shop to place orders for wedding flowers. That’s God’s zany sense of humour.
The first customer is a slight, unassuming woman with a no-nonsense approach to organizing her wedding flowers. She compares the prices of roses and carnations for buttonholes. She dismisses lilies because the orange stamen stains. She listens as I reel off a few options for he
r bouquet. It takes just twenty minutes for her to make her selection. She plumps for tight white roses for everything. She places her order for her small, simple wedding: a bouquet for bride and maid of honour, half a dozen buttonholes, and a corsage for her mum and the groom’s mum. She digs out a pen and a small notebook from the bottom of her handbag. She makes a neat tick in the margin next to the word flowers and notes down the figure I gave her as an estimate. As she leaves the shop I envy her restraint and contentment.
The second bride-to-be arrives with considerably more commotion. The overly tanned and loud woman is accompanied by her mum and two friends. All four women have strong opinions on what will be ‘absolutely a must’ or ‘to die for’ and loudly express them over and over again, seemingly unaware that they often contradict each other and themselves. Ben is in the back room doing paperwork, so I alone have to deal with Bridezilla.
I realize that the woman is unlikely to be a virgin and her insistence on a ‘totally massive white do, with all the extras’ is perhaps a tad hypocritical but what the hell, who isn’t? I know it’s the way I’m going to go – floor to ceiling flowers. I’m excited for her from the moment she walks into the shop, even though I have served hundreds of brides like her in the past and I know that designing, sourcing and delivering the flowers for her wedding will cause no end of stress for me.
The bride hurtles through dozens of ideas. She shows me pictures that she has cut from glossy bridal magazines. There is a dramatic picture of red gerbera with clusters of cropped beargrass and a beautiful organza bow, and another one showing traditional pale lilies and roses draped with garlands of pearls, and a third of a bouquet of exquisite orchids which are beautifully combined with minimal foliage to create a contemporary design. She wants it all.
