by Anna Maxted
Once inside, I glance longingly at the phone, but there are no messages. My mother hasn’t talked to me for two and a half days. In appeasement terms, I am the Neville Chamberlain of the family. But this situation is unprecedented. I don’t know what to do. I chew my lip (I’ve moved on from chewing my hair—those days are gone, baby) and suddenly I do. I check a number on my notepad, dial it, and cross my fingers. Five minutes later I leave a message on my mother’s answering machine. “Mum, it’s me,” I say, trying to sound meek. “I am very, very sorry for what I did. I feel ashamed, I really do. I wondered if you—I know it’s not a great thing for…for a parent, I know it’s not like when you came to see me star as a sheep in my infant school nativity play—but maybe you could come with me on Wednesday morning, to the, er, Job Center.” I have no intention of seeking employment from the Job Center, but know that my mother will appreciate the gesture. “Not that I am going to be made redundant, but as a precaution. Also, I thought about what you said, about not giving the nice men a chance. And so I’ve just arranged to meet with a nice friend of Babs’s brother. He’s called Robbie. I’m seeing him tomorrow night.”
I expect this call to elicit a rapid response, and it does. I am standing in the bathroom baring my gums—to check if my teeth are lemon yellow or if it’s the light—when the phone rings. My mother stonily informs me she’s pleased about Robbie. Oh, and she won’t be able to escort me to the Job Center. But my father will.
13
“HE’S FLYING IN TOMORROW AFTERNOON,” SHE says in a defensive “What have I done?” voice. She knows very well what she’s done.
“He’s staying at the St. Martin’s Lane hotel.”
He would be.
“He’s coming over for a number of reasons.”
I don’t believe this.
“I thought you’d be pleased.”
My mind is goulash.
When my father wrenches himself from the unyielding embrace of surgically curvy Kimberli Ann and his palm-balmy home in hot super-blue Malibu to visit his plump suburban pre-midlife family in grizzling England, you know it’s serious. I dread to think what my mother said to him. I’m surprised she dialed the number. She speaks to him about once a year, and even then it’s a short call. Possibly she derived pleasure from informing him that he was a grandfather, and that Kimberli Ann was—I imagine my mother failing to keep the glee from her voice—a stepgrandmother. Quite a shock for a twenty-five-year-old, I imagine.
I speak to him about once a month. I like my father. He is so affably unashamedly true to three decades of repressed teenage fantasies that it’s hard not to like him. He’s so touchingly content living his safe rich American Dream, which—in its sunny sanitary form—has infinite advantages over the British Nightmare. (Two dentally challenged kids, a dumpy wife, a nondescript semi in a nondescript street, a Volvo Estate.) And the one time I met Kimberli Ann I had to conclude that—apart from her curious habit of punching you painfully hard on the arm every time you said something funny—she was a reasonable human being.
But my father is making this guilt trip alone. Kimberli Ann hates to be parted from Tweety, her bichon frise, and furthermore, fears flying in case her implants explode (Kimberli’s, not Tweety’s, although if surgical enhancement for fluffy white dogs did exist, make no mistake, Tweety would be enhanced). Also, my father is reluctant to graphically remind Kimberli Ann of his first life—and meeting my mother would be as good as planting a large billboard in front of the Fairbush Gynecology Clinic inscribed with the taunt DR. VINCENT “VINNY” MILLER IS PAST IT.
“When is he…expecting to see me?”
“He flies in at four-thirty P.M. and he and I have a great deal to discuss. As I’m sure you can imagine, in light of recent developments,” she adds stiffly. “I said he wouldn’t be able to see you until Wednesday, but you could go to his hotel for breakfast.”
“Right. Um. Did he…did he…what did he say when you told him?”
As I don’t specify quite what she might have told him, I don’t know which of this week’s family kerfuffles her answer refers to, which, to be honest, is how I prefer it.
“He said,” says my mother, her voice taut, “it could be dealt with.”
I wake the next morning with an urgent but blurred thought niggling for attention. I blank and wait for the niggle to loom into focus. Mum. Kid. Dad. Here. Oh. No. I roll over and inspect my pillow for hair. Seven. The start of a long day. Still, I don’t have to go into work. Me, a lifetime swot. With my job on the line. My stomach flops like a badly cooked pancake. I wonder what Matt will tell our assistant, Belinda. She’s back from Crete today, no doubt the color of a radish. (She has auburn hair and pale skin and the word melanoma means nothing to her—except, maybe, a fruit. Last year she went to Ios and got so burned she swelled up like a cheese puff and had to be carted off the plane in a wheelchair.)
I’m very uncomfortable, having nothing to do. I need to be achieving. Maybe I should buy shoes? High heels would placate my mother. (“Flat shoes give you thick ankles!”) Babs would be pleased too: she says I don’t know how to treat myself. (She especially says this when her overdraft is the size of a house and all she has to show for it is a bile-green velvet blouse or fake-zebra-skin stole, bought in under ten minutes in a nonrefundable Selfridges sale.) And I’m seeing Robbie tonight. Even though it is not a date, Babs would be peeved if I didn’t make a token retail nod toward the occasion. I pull on two jumpers—the heating is turned to nuclear and I’m still freezing—and consider going shopping.
I should call Chris and tell him about Robbie. Tell him what? We’ll be sharing a table. I’ll be dressed. It’s not disloyal to laugh at another man’s jokes. I’m not attracted to Robbie. Am I an emotional cheat? If I meet him knowing that he’s attracted to me, am I guilty by association? I think of how I justified seeing Chris when I was going out with Saul. That was different. I was bad, I was punished. I made a fool of Saul a long time before Chris and I got horizontal. My intentions toward Robbie are platonic. I call Chris and tell him anyway.
“Fancies you, does he?” is his first question.
“Oh no!”
“Why else would he want to meet for a drink?”
“Because of my biting wit and charismatic personality,” I reply, deflated.
There is an impertinent pause.
“I’m meeting an agent tonight at Soho House,” he says casually. “I was going to ask you along. I reckon we’re on for a wild one—booze, chat, bit of nose up!” I pride myself on getting along with difficult people. But I’m still recovering from the revelation that as I own a fully functioning vagina, my biting wit and charismatic personality are superfluous. I also note that, despite the potent presence of a token vagina to lure his judgment astray, Ben still concluded that Blue Veined Fiend were rubbish.
I find myself saying primly, “Is there no other way of communicating in the music business than by snorting coke together?”
Chris laughs. “No,” he replies, “there isn’t, princess. It’s the mobile phone of the industry.”
“You were right,” I tell him. “I am a prescription-drugs kinda girl.”
“Whatever,” he replies.
Chris puts down the phone and suddenly, sadly, I feel like I’ve lost everything.
I go to the gym, check the class schedule, and run my anxieties into the ground. Then—drugged on adrenaline and safe in the knowledge that the Pilates class ends in three minutes—I peek round the studio door and wave at Alex.
“Don’t lie to me, girl, you timed that!” she says, as I help her roll up the mats.
I can’t stop the grin. “Guilty as charged.”
“How are you doing? I didn’t come over on Sunday because I didn’t want to harass you. Did you feel any effects from Friday’s class?”
“Oh no, not at”—a possible cause of the crippling “psychosomatic” stomachache that plagued me all weekend suddenly dawns—“er, maybe a twinge here and there.”
Alex
guffaws. “You are such a liar, Natalie. I can see it in your face. Saturday morning, you were in agony. Admit it!”
“There’s no need to be smug, Alex!” I reply. I grin like a moron all the way home.
A chirpy message from Robbie awaits me. He assumes we’re still meeting at Ruby in the Dust in Camden at seven. There is also a series of friendly squawks from Belinda, asking me to ring when I get in. Matt can’t have said anything. Nervously, I dial her number.
“Belinda? It’s Natalie. How was Crete?”
“All right, Natalie. Ah, gorgeous, drank me weight in vodka an’ all me freckles have joined up!”
I smile. “It sounds brilliant. What’s up?”
“Oh yeah”—a note of uncertainty creeps into her voice—“Matt says you’re workin’ from home today so it’ll probably be easier if I make the last-minute checks on the Venice—”
“Verona.”
“The Verona trip. I’m lookin’ at your paperwork, looks fine to me, but Matt’s sayin’ it’s gotta be micromanaged cos Italian bureaucracy stinks so I’m givin’ it the once-over. Is there any-thin’ I should be lookin’ out for?”
I tell Belinda she might want to confirm with the hotel again and check that everyone received their tickets and flight details.
“I’m on it,” she trills. “See you tomorrow then,” and rings off.
I don’t go shopping.
I call Babs.
“I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
Babs yawns. “I was napping. I’m on at six. We had a bit of a night last night.”
“Really?” I say in surprise. As far as I can tell, firefighting mostly entails attending alarms that go off for no reason, putting out fires in skips, and rescuing twits stuck in lifts. Burning buildings are as rare as four-leaf clovers. The most dramatic element of the job is the battle to secure a women’s toilet that doesn’t double as the cleaner’s storage room, and finding trousers that fit. Until Babs kicked up a fuss she was expected to make do with the regulation male uniform when—as she told the Union—“There’s nothing uniform about the human race.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“Three shouts”—call-outs, I translate in my head—“and a mickey”—a false alarm. “And then at eight in the morning, we’re in the watch room, and this woman, well oiled, fake tan, spray-on skirt, stilettos, the lot, keeps staggering to and fro past the station flashing her tits at the lads and bawling ‘I want to slide down your pole!’ It’s daylight! She’s got her bloke with her! He was so embarrassed. The lads were loving it, and then I tell her to clear off and she screams ‘Oh shut up, you’re just jealous because you look like a man!’ I mean, Jesus! After four years the lads finally lay off—and the women keep going!”
“Babs,” I say solemnly, “you know what some women are like. They can’t stand another woman doing well—unless she’s been hit with the ugly stick, then it’s okay. You have Pre-Raphaelite curls and a fine bosom. You do not look like a man.”
“Huh,” says Babs.
“Guess what.”
“Tell me.”
I tell her some of my news. About Robbie: she’s thrilled—slightly too thrilled for my liking. About my granny revelations (Babs knows about Tony’s kid—I tell her everything). Babs says quietly, “Why did you do this, Nat? My god.”
I hesitate. I don’t like being judged and I’m constantly grateful that most friends judge you behind your back. But Babs has a stunning amount of faith in her own opinions and an equally stunning habit of voicing them to your face. She says what she thinks without check. I marvel at her. To me, society is a minefield and if you don’t keep to the designated path, several acres of manure blow up in your face. I shuffle slowly with bound feet while Babs strides along like a general, yanking the pin out of etiquette, hurling verbal grenades at the least provocation, all the while remaining invincible. I trail after her, picking up the pieces.
“It just came out,” I whimper.
“But how?” demands Babs. She sounds like a five-year-old on hearing the dubious news that babies emerge from navels. I decide she isn’t capable of dealing with the truth so I skip—or rather long-jump—the part about my teetering career and tell her that my mother and I had a row about Tony. I cringe, anticipating a reproach but, to my surprise, Babs sounds pleased.
“You’ve had an argument!” she cries. “Well done! You’re telling her how it is, you’re communicating! At last! It’s so what your family needs!”
I’m confused. As consequences have shown, this is the last thing my family needs. Nor do I see how hurling mash at the wall is communicating, and Babs doesn’t seem to understand how much I hate and fear upsetting my mother. There is nothing worse except, maybe, this. I feel torn apart from my ex-best-friend and it’s like trying to scream in a dream and realizing you are voiceless. The energy seeps from me like sweat so I explain my father’s arrival in as few words as possible. Babs can tell that I’m shutting her out and the spark in her voice fades.
“Well, I’m sure it’s for the best,” she says, reading curtly from autocue. “I hope you have a pleasant evening with Robbie.”
Pleasant is a middle-aged word and yet one more sign that our beautiful relationship is flagging. But despite my worries, pleasant is what my evening with Robbie turns out to be. When I walk into the restaurant, he is lounging in a squashy sofa at a low table, studying the menu. He is wearing a tightish white T-shirt—which shows remarkable belief in the British weather system, considering it’s February. He turns the page and his triceps shift like steel sausages beneath his skin. I’ve never been a fan of brawn and I want to turn and run. I march up to him.
“You look like you’re waiting to be shot,” he remarks.
“Funny—right now that would be preferable,” I say. I play this back. “Not because I’m meeting you, I, um, I’ve got a difficult day tomorrow.”
Robbie wants to know why, but as my big mouth has already got me into enough trouble (that cabbie’s probably told everyone), I don’t tell him. Instead, I ask him about him. A safe subject with most men.
“You obviously work out a lot,” I begin. “Do you train in a leather belt?” (I fear when Maher retires, Politically Incorrect won’t be calling.)
Robbie is considerate enough to keep his answer short. No, he doesn’t wear a belt, and yes, he works out three times a week. “It used to be more,” he adds. “Three hours every day and five on Sundays.”
“But, what, how did you do your work?” I say, intrigued.
“I could—still can—pick my own hours,” he explains. “I’m freelance. A Web designer.”
I nearly say, “Like a spider!” (Then I think, Would Bill say that? and nod politely instead). I murmur, “You make me feel lazy.”
“I was overdoing it,” says Robbie. He stretches his mouth to one side in a grimace.
“What?” I ask.
Robbie shakes his head. “I was just remembering what I was like. At one point I was taking nineteen diet supplements. I was obsessed. I used to drink this liquidized tuna mix every day. I’d liquidize two tins of tuna and half a pint of orange juice and drink it while I was at the gym. My breath smelled like a minke whale’s.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,” I say, wondering why he didn’t just take a toothbrush in a little pouch. There’s nothing worse than running on the spot next to a man panting sulfur. You can’t change treadmills in case you hurt his feelings. So you’re forced to jog along with a blocked nose, horribly conscious of being breathed on.
“It was.” Robbie grins. “I wasn’t seeing mates and I was turning down work so I could go to the gym. Mental.”
“But,” I say, “you must have felt fit.”
Robbie shrugs. “I was ill most of the time. I kept getting flu, I’d knackered meself out, but I couldn’t stop. If I wasn’t working out, I’d feel itchy.”
“Itchy?” I squeak, trying to keep my voice on a level. Nosiness is similar to seduction. You have to ape indifference or the vi
ctim will back off. I adopt a glazed expression.
“Yeah,” says Robbie. “Like me body was shrinking. In the end I saw me GP, and he said I had to calm down or I’d do meself a mischief. Took a while though. It was like coming off smack!”
“Oh!” I gasp, shedding my sheep’s clothing and turning predatory. “Why do you think you were like that? I mean, why were you so, so compelled?”
Robbie turns coy (what did I tell you?) but eventually mumbles that at school he was bullied for being short.
“Napoleon complex,” he adds, with a little shrug.
“I see,” I say, not understanding.
“Being short,” explains Robbie. “For men, being short is a curse. I did everything. I wore cowboy boots. Swore a lot. It was a Ferrari, or biceps, and Nat West wouldn’t give me the loan.”
“Bastards,” I say.
Robbie grins again. “So biceps it was. I grew biceps like watermelons. I looked even shorter. Shorter and wider.”
I blush inwardly. “You’re not, uh, short,” I lie.
“Five foot three,” he says, smiling. “And receding.”
I was being polite. He’s not colluding.
Eventually, I say, “It’s only unattractive if you fight it.”
“What,” replies Robbie. “Being short?”
I giggle. “Receding hair,” I squeak. “You’ve got to cut your losses. Shave it all off. Then it looks like you don’t care.”
“Even if you’re crying inside,” says Robbie, deadpan, smoothing his sparse hair. His sparse hair. Oh, good grief. I’ve called him ugly to his face. I struggle to make amends.
