by Anna Maxted
I scurry down the hall, flustered. Until five minutes ago I didn’t know I had a figure. It’s great to be told I look “bling-bling” (I’m presuming bling-bling means something nice rather than a dog’s dinner), but I still feel like I’ve ransacked an adult’s dressing-up box. I yank open the door, to see Mel standing there with two soloists (she’d never fraternize with the foot soldiers) and three burly men who look like they can’t believe their luck.
“We followed this lot.” One grins.
“These men are firemen!” exclaims Mel. “We met them outside the station. I mean the tube station, not the fire station.” She giggles and tilts her head like a robin, and I come close to witnessing three grown men swoon. “Tony isn’t coming, he refused to, and I can’t stamp my foot in case I jar my back. Natalie, you’ve got all big, I like your top though!”
I decide to leave this last comment unscrambled.
“How is your back?” I say as they all troop in. I didn’t expect Tony to come but it still hurts.
“It’s awful,” she murmurs. “The pain has been horrible, I’ve had to take it easy, I hate taking it easy! I feel like a big fat frump, I cried all day yesterday. Then I stopped because I didn’t want to go to your party with puffy eyes. This is the first day I’ve felt okay about walking about. I decided to get a cab here with Clara, and we arranged to meet Isabelle at the station and pick her up. And she was talking to the firemen and then they jumped in too, Clara and Isabelle sat on their laps. I sat in the front because of my back.”
I’m about to ask her what she wants to drink, but one of the firefighters beats me to it.
“Red wine please, Mark,” she lisps sweetly.
“I’ve got soya milk if you prefer,” I whisper. “It’s good for…for, er, bones.”
“Yes, but it tastes foul. Alcohol tastes nicer and it’s a good anesthetic,” replies Mel. “Have you got a straight-backed chair, Natalie, to support my back?” I rush to get her one. “So, you must have told work and Tony about your”—I hunt about for a euphemism but can’t think of one—“osteoporosis.”
Mel nods and says sadly, “I’ve got sick leave.” Suddenly her cheeks dimple. “But when I told Tony he was so sweet!” she cries. “So, so sweet, your brother is the sweetest man I’ve ever met! He cried a bit when I told him, although he tried to hide it, and when I told him they said to put on weight he said the important thing was that I was healthy, and if that meant putting on weight I had to do it, and I’d always be the most beautiful woman in the world to him, whatever I weighed. I don’t think I’d love him anymore if he got fat, but it was lovely of him to say that, wasn’t it?”
I hear this and the whoosh of relief just about knocks me flat. Because as certain as I was that his love wouldn’t shrink as Mel grew, I could have been wrong. (It has been known.)
“What did I tell you, Mel?” I sigh, as Mark hands her a glass and crouches at her feet like a giant puppy. “He’ll stick like glue.” For a second I feel something between envy and awe. With no effort, Mel has unblocked a seemingly endless flow of love from my brother. I can’t help think that it would be nice if a trickle could be diverted to his thirsting family. I say casually, “I don’t suppose Tony’s said anything about me, has he?”
“Oh yes,” chirps Mel. “He says he’s furious with you because you’re going to Sydney. I told him to stop being a silly billy, but I think he wants to sulk at home for a bit longer. I think he’s still cross that Matt beat him in a fight. Ooh, thank you, Marky Mark!”
I bite my lip. “Mel,” I say. “Do you think I should ring him?”
Mel looks startled, shocked even, that I would ask her opinion. And then she blushes with pleasure. She even tilts her head to help herself think. Finally, she lisps gravely, “No. I don’t think you should. I think”—and her voice trembles with the weight of responsibility—“that Tony will call you before you go. That’s what I think.”
“Thank you, Mel,” I say, “that’s good advice.” She blushes again.
I feel a warm hand on my shoulder, and spin around. “Alex!” I gasp. “Hi! Thank you so much for coming!” I feel ashamed of myself just looking at her. She smiles warmly at someone behind me, my heart leaps, and I turn. “Robin!” I croak. “I’m so pleased you’re here.”
“You sound terribly disappointed,” he purrs, kissing my cheek.
“Not at all!” No wonder I couldn’t even make it into my junior school’s Christmas pantomime. “What would you like to drink?” I say hastily, “I’ve got cranberry juice, orange juice, mineral water—”
“Lager?”
“Of course! Alex?”
“White wine spritzer, if—Barbara!” she exclaims. It’s the first time I’ve seen Alex look flustered. “How are you? God, it’s been a while! I hear you got married, congratulations, you know I saw Andy last week, don’t you? It was good to see him again, I missed him, uh, as a friend, I have to say I…”
Grateful for a legitimate mission, I allow myself to be swept into the corridor. The doorbell rings on cue. Matt looks mischievous. He, Paws, and a tall handsome guy on crutches are standing on my doorstep flanked by two chunky men. Men who wear rugby shirts but don’t actually play rugby. Each with a big ruddy baby face, a Benson & Hedges cigarette stuck between stubby fingers, and a six-pack of Stella. Both are machoing it up for some reason.
“Ex-public-school boys,” murmurs Matt, kissing me on the mouth. “They protest too much. Natalie, you look divine, I knew getting away from me would agree with you. This is Stephen—professional layabout and your theatrical source of employment.”
“Stephen, hi! At last! I’ve heard so much about you! Thank you for giving me work! Hello, you two must be, er, Simon’s colleagues?”
“The pleasure’s mine,” says Stephen gallantly as Simon’s colleagues grunt and shuffle in. Happily, I don’t recognize them from the nightmare evening in the bar. Unhappily, I can’t think of a word to say to either of them beyond “hello.” So I’m grateful when Simon appears behind me like a homing pigeon—prompting a loud flurry of greetings (“Todger! My man!” that sort of thing)—and ushers the two goons toward the booze mountain.
“Mel’s here,” I tell Matt, “with Isabelle and Clara.”
“Poor love,” he says. “Did she tell you? She was always on the route to destruction, that one.”
“Shall I bring them over?” I say, anxious that Matt and Stephen are entertained.
“Natalie, relax!” replies Matt. “I’ll get a drink down my neck first, and so will Fen. Trust me, Fen, it’s a good idea. And Paws would appreciate some spring water. He’s teetotal.”
“Volvic okay, Paws?”
Matt makes a face. “He prefers Evian. Stop flapping, you’re too easy to tease. We’ll be fine. Mingle, darling, mingle! And where’s your drink?”
Matt pours me a large white wine, and I don’t mingle because Stephen and I get into a chat about theater. With my extensive knowledge of theater, this has the potential to be a very short chat. So I’m happy to let Stephen talk (in fact, I’m delighted: a guest, at my party, talking—this is perfect). The last play he did publicity for was superb, very witty, with a marvelous cast. But they’d got in a cheesecake Hollywood actor—“B-list is putting it kindly”—to star—“put bums on seats”—and he’d ruined it—“a plank of wood, center stage”—and the rest of the cast were rabid—“it demeaned their art”—
I’m so enjoying our conversation that I stop running to the doorbell every time it rings. Belinda trots in with cries of “I swear I saw Jude Law comin’ aht the pub!” and the biggest Gucci handbag I’ve ever seen—it might even be a suitcase on a strap. An intensively tanned man with spiky hair and a good-natured grin trundles adoringly in her wake. I see Frannie arrive with a sour face (it sours further as she sees the place is packed with people who seem dangerously close to enjoying themselves).
Saul saunters in at 11:38—this is a man who accords a cinema program the same degree of punctuality as a wedding ceremony,
insisting on being seated, with a bag of malted milk balls and a can of Pepsi (purchased in advance at the news agent in protest against Warner Village prices and smuggled in under his raincoat) before the advertisements start. And he arrives at my party at 11:38! Still, at least he came. (Chris left a terse message on my answering machine saying would I please never contact him again.) And then, twenty minutes later, I spot an FBI jacket.
I’m talking to Babs at the time. “How long has Robbie been here?” I say, lighting a cigarette.
“You do give yourself away with those. He said hello to me about two hours ago. He probably meant to say hi but”—she nods at Frannie, who has all but planted a stake in his personal space—“got waylaid.”
I feel my mouth drying up. “Did he come by himself?”
“Why do you ask?”
I glance at Robbie. He sees me looking and pulls a rude face. But I’m the host!
“Do you, ah, think he might be annoyed with me?”
“What about?”
“Nothing. Doesn’t matter.”
“So.” She grins, swigging from a can. “Looking forward to Sydney? How do you think your parents will get on?”
“Badly,” I say, sighing, “and well. It entirely depends on who’s in the room at the time.”
“And do you think Tony will have a last-minute change of heart and hop on a plane?”
“Er, no,” I say.
“You never know. He might!”
“Babs, you know he won’t,” I growl. “Mel says he’s still furious. He’d do anything for her, even sit through Swan Lake, but he still wouldn’t come here tonight. I’m not too upset, though. Mel seems to be confident that he’ll ring me in the end. Which is a big step for mankind, don’t you think?”
Drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg gggggggggggggg!
“Sounds familiar,” mutters Babs.
I sashay (involuntary in pink snakeskin) to the door and heave it open.
And there he is.
“This time,” he says, “I’m not going away.”
I gaze at him and my throat does its usual trick of seizing up. I take a deep restorative breath—from what I think Alex calls my jurassic abdominals, but I’ll have to check—and say, “I wasn’t going to ask you to.”
He blinks.
“In fact,” I add, “I was expecting you earlier.”
He shoves his hands into his pockets and replies, “I thought I’d wait till midnight. I thought if things didn’t work out I could turn into a pumpkin.”
“The stagecoach turned into a pumpkin,” I say. “Get your food facts right.”
He laughs. “You look fantastic,” he adds. “I hardly recognized you.”
“Thank you. That’s the nicest compliment I’ve received since Mel arrived.”
“What I mean is”—he nods at me shyly—“you look a million times better. Happier, and stronger. Really. Like you’re looking after yourself. Like you could rule the world. Maybe I should go away again, if this is how you do without me.”
I grab his hand, and the words flow. “Not so fast, schweet-heart. I’ve been straightening myself out. I want to be well. It’s quite a long boring haul. I thought I’d spare you some of it.”
Andy smooths his thumb over my palm, pressing it into the flesh. “I don’t want to be spared anything,” he says, stroking my skin. “There’s nothing you can do that will put me off you.”
“What about if I wander about the flat eating Nutella straight from the jar?”
He gives me a reproving look. “Natalie,” he says. “Nutella is meant to be eaten straight from the jar. Eating it with bread is plainly ridiculous.”
I smile. “I am a lot better. But I lapse. And yesterday”—a perverse part of me wants to shock him with the grim, unladylike truth—“I’d eaten like a well person all day, and then I did the Nutella thing and I walked into the bathroom and saw myself—no makeup, wearing pajamas, spoon in hand—and I thought, Is there any woman, alone in the house, who takes a big scoop of Nutella from the jar, looks in the mirror, and loves herself for it? There wasn’t loathing. But it wasn’t a great feeling. I wanted to, you know”—I force myself to speak—“be sick. I wasn’t. I don’t do that anymore. I was proud of that. But, Andy, it’s a very low-grade kind of pride.”
I look into his eyes, challenging. He hasn’t stopped massaging my palm. He replies, “Nat. Forget the Nutella, forget the mirror, forget other women. The real question is, do you love yourself? If you enjoyed shooting ocelots for their fur, or smacking babies, then you’d have a reason to doubt yourself—your empathy for other living things. But this is about your empathy for you—it’s about you accepting you. Unless you’re hurting someone, pride or shame shouldn’t apply.” Andy clears his throat. “Once,” he adds, “in college, I woke up hung over, groped for the pint glass of water by my bed, and drank it, except—and remember the toilet was down the hall—it turned out not to be water. Not my finest hour. But, I promise you, I’m still a nice bloke.”
He lifts my right hand and gently waggles each finger in turn. “This,” he says, “is a special hand. It belongs to someone precious. But she was sloppy. She didn’t read the manufacturer’s instructions properly. She ditched the batteries. And it took her a while to see that she wasn’t working and that she’d better take more care. And though it was a big yawn, paying attention to the small print, that’s what she did. And”—his voice dips to a whisper—“now she’s working beautifully.”
I banish the tears to the back of my throat. We look at each other for a long while. “You know,” he murmurs, “my hygiene habits have improved since college. I’m ninety-nine percent sure you won’t catch anything.”
I giggle. “Hey, Prince Charming,” I say. “You know all the best lines. There’s a really revolting slipper in your old bedroom. Let’s go and see if it fits.”
E-Book Extra
Champagne and Ponies: An Essay on Writing
by Anna Maxted
PART OF THE ALLURE of writing a book is that it’s the route to a wonderful life: you can bludgeon your alarm clock to death, swan to your oak desk at 10am, create magic for a few hours at your laptop while sipping champagne, break for lunch at the Sugar Club with your publisher (she pays, obviously), ride your pony in the afternoon. Sadly, when you are sitting in front of a blank screen with 150,000 words worth of space to fill, you realize that the monster book deal, the glamorous author parties, and the rave reviews in the New York Times, are a long way away. All thoughts of ponies are abandoned. So, you don’t start writing. Starting to write is terrifying because the prospect of failure becomes imminent.
Because of this, I started writing my novel about two years after I’d first thought about it. That’s how long it can take to run out of excuses. The possibility that I might actually like to write a novel first occurred to me when I was features editor at the UK version of Cosmopolitan. A colleague had sold her book and I thought, ooh, champagne, ponies, lunches, I’d like to do that. The fact that she’d succeeded made the fantasy seem a little more attainable.
However, when you have a full time job your day is pretty much taken up with that. I feel hard done by getting up at 8. I was never going to rise at 5 and create reams of perfect prose before hopping on the tube to do a full day’s work. Some people manage it. Those people want to write their book more than anything—more than sleep, or any kind of life—which is probably why they succeed. But at that time I didn’t want it badly enough—so I continued at Cosmo until something happened that changed my priorities.
My father died. I was 27, it shattered me. A week after his death I was back at work but I wasn’t the same person. I couldn’t get out of my head that I had missed his last birthday dinner because I had been in the office editing a piece on perfect skin. Ten months after he died, I was still working at Cosmo, but I was still in a bit of a state. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I wanted to be at home, getting to know my remaining relatives before they expir
ed.
My editor at the time suggested that I write a feature about my grief (a very editor-y thing to do), so I wrote a piece entitled “The First Year Without My Father”. I found the actual writing cathartic, although I felt as a feature it was roughly 148 thousand words too short. But it gave me a good opportunity to say things I wanted to say to people, and to vent a lot of rage. For example—a cousin said to my mother “my husband has gone to South Africa for three weeks—I know exactly how you feel!”
The way people behave around you when you are bereaved is funny even if you don’t appreciate it at the time, and I wrote about that. A few readers wrote in, and a press officer who worked for a publishing house sent me a card saying “maybe you should write your novel around this subject.”
All this attention was satisfying (one of my fears was that my father would be forgotten, and as long as I wrote about him he was alive in peoples’ thoughts) but it wasn’t enough, and I know I seem to be going on about this but the point is that to write a good book you have to be passionate about your subject. You can’t write a book as a cynical exercise because it shows.
You have to respect your readers. You can’t patronize them. And for that, you have to believe in and love your characters, which sounds very pretentious. I always think of the start of Romancing the Stone, a film which begins with Kathleen Turner sobbing over what sounds like real events, but turns out to be the end of the blockbuster novel she’s just finished on her typewriter. It seems laughable, but if you don’t have that level of involvement with your characters—if you don’t see them as real people—the book won’t ring true.
When I wrote the last pages of Getting Over It and Running In Heels, I sniveled over my desk. I’m not saying I didn’t feel like a berk, but if you don’t care about the people in your book, no one else will either.
I always give my characters what I believe Robert McKee refers to as “a backstory”—a life before the novel began which isn’t necessarily included within it—so that they’re psychologically sound. In Getting Over It, Helen, my heroine, doesn’t have a great relationship with her father. When he dies at the start of the book, she thinks she can continue as normal…and she does for a while, until her life and family start to fall to bits around her. While this book is essentially about grief, it’s also a romantic comedy. At the beginning, Helen is attracted to men who are emotionally distant—it’s what she’s comfortable with and what she’s used to, because of her relationship with her father. Part of Helen’s grieving process is accepting the fact that she can never repair the flaws in the relationship she had with her father. As she learns to live with this fact, she is able to accept that her romantic relationships with men do not have to be like this….
