by Lisa Jewell
They sat together on a bench by the lake at Buckingham Palace Gardens, and Joy found that there was very little physical space between the two of them. George’s arm brushed against hers and their rumps were firmly bedded together on the wooden bench. But she didn’t find this unnerving or awkward in any way. She glanced down at his hands where they rested on his lap and decided they were his best feature, large and solid with square tips and a smattering of hair. You could forgive a man a dozen physical shortcomings if he had a decent pair of hands, she decided.
He asked her questions about herself and she told him about her birth in Singapore, her subsequently unexceptional upbringing, her unlovable parents, her three years at Bristol University, her crappy job, her most recent love life and her new flatmate. And he watched her while she talked as if she was quite the most fascinating woman he’d ever encountered.
When it started to get dark they decided to prolong the day and find somewhere warm to have a drink. The first place they stumbled upon was the ICA, a place that Joy had visited twice previously in her life, once as a fourteen-year-old, with Kieran, to see Orange Juice playing live, then as a nineteen-year-old fresher, on a weekend trip to London with a dozen overexcited and partly drunk art students. Joy liked revisiting places after a long interval – it gave a sense of time and perspective to her existence. She tried to remember that fourteen-year-old girl as she crossed the threshold with George Pole, tried to remember what she was wearing, how they’d got there, what she’d had to drink, but all she could remember was staring up at Edwyn Collins, wishing that he were her boyfriend instead of the unfortunate Kieran.
They sat on high stools around a high table and sipped designer beer from bottles, surrounded on all sides by the chatter and enthusiasm of people who’d spent their Sunday morning in the pursuit of culture and knowledge, and their Sunday afternoon in a bar. They toyed with the idea of heading across town to see a film, but never quite got round to doing anything about it, happy just to sit and chat the evening away.
He told her more about his ‘psycho’ ex, a manic-depressive PE teacher called Tara who once knocked him out cold with a rounders bat and accused him of having affairs with every woman in their social circle. And in return, Joy told him about Ally and his decision to leave the country without her, about the man who’d left her standing outside the Swiss Centre on a Wednesday night and about how every man she’d met since she was fourteen years old had been, in one respect or another, a huge and soul-destroying disappointment.
At nine o’clock they decided they’d both drunk enough for a Sunday night and meandered towards the nearest Tube station, and it wasn’t until they came to say goodbye to each other that Joy began to feel awkward again, aware of her situation, on a blind date with a man she didn’t find attractive. Would he try to kiss her? And if he did, how would she respond?
‘Well,’ he said, smiling down at her with evident pleasure, ‘that really was a most unexpectedly enjoyable day. I’ve had a truly great time.’
‘Me, too,’ she said, deciding that, no, she didn’t want to kiss him, and subconsciously rearranging her body to make herself look unavailable for any kind of unannounced physical approach.
‘And might I just say,’ he continued, looking at her intently, ‘and I do hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but you really did undersell yourself on the phone last week. You aren’t pointy in the slightest. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that you’re the least pointy girl I’ve ever met. And I have met an awful lot of pointy girls in my time, I can tell you. No – I’d describe you more as…’ – his eyes roamed her face for a second – ‘more as… delicately, spectacularly pretty – like a beautiful Meissen teacup. If that makes any sense.’ He didn’t blush as he said this, or laugh, or display any signs of embarrassment, just stared straight into her eyes with a sort of wide-eyed wonder, like an art collector unexpectedly coming upon the finest example he’d ever seen of a favoured artist’s work.
‘Well,’ said Joy, laughing, ‘thank you. That’s lovely.’
‘And if it’s all right with you, I’d like to phone you some time this week. But only if you want me to.’
‘Oh!’ she said, so used to dates that ended in a confused, ambiguous mess of mixed messages and unclear intentions. ‘Of course you can call me. I’d like it very much.’
His soft face melted into a broad smile, and he grabbed her hands and squeezed them. ‘Good,’ he said forcefully, imbuing the word with every ounce of its meaning, ‘that makes me feel very happy.’ He beamed at her, and she beamed back, his joy strangely infectious. ‘Right, then. I’ll be off. And I’ll call you. Probably mid week – say, Wednesday? Would that be OK?’
‘Wednesday’s fine,’ she smiled.
‘Excellent.’ He gave her hands one last squeeze, turned and walked away.
Joy watched his receding figure for a second or two, a layer of objectivity returning to her as the physical space between them increased. He really was a funny-looking fellow, she decided, gauche, unfashionable, middle-aged in his manner and appearance, yet so switched on to the modern world. He was a walking dichotomy. And Joy had absolutely no idea what to make of him.
Julia was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, wearing some kind of African tunic top and smoking a pink cigarette when Joy got back to the flat on Wilberforce Road later that night.
‘Thank God you’re back,’ she said, pressing a hand to her huge chest. ‘I’d been about to call the police.’
‘Sorry,’ Joy grinned, ‘went a bit better than I thought it would.’
‘Well…’ Julia’s look of maternal concern immediately turned to unbridled glee, ‘ob–viously!’ She scooched across the sofa and patted the cushion next to her. ‘Now tell me absolutely everything.’
‘Oh, God.’ Joy flopped down next to her.
‘Was he delicious?’
‘No. Not quite.’
‘Oh.’ Julia’s face dropped in disappointment.
‘He’s not very good-looking at all. Kind of awful-looking, actually.’
‘Oh, dear. What a shame.’
‘But really sweet,’ Joy interjected defensively. ‘A real old-fashioned gent. But with an edge, if you get my drift. Kind of quirky. Very intelligent. Very interesting. Very on the ball.’
‘So not a psycho, then?’
‘No – not a psycho. Not at all. Though he did tell me that I reminded him of a beautiful porcelain teacup.’
‘Aw,’ said Julia, squeezing her mug of tea, ‘sweet! So he’s nice and sane, and he says lovely things to you. Are you sure he’s not gorgeous?’
‘’Fraid not.’
‘But you liked him?’
‘Yes,’ nodded Joy, ‘I did. Very much.’
‘Well, then, that’s all that matters.’
And Joy nodded and smiled, and wondered to herself if maybe it was.
Seventeen
While Joy’s date with George hadn’t exactly been a precursor to burning passion, true love and happily ever after, it had at least provided her with a timely and much-needed ego boost. So three days after their date, buoyed up by George’s flattery and talk of teacups, she decided to call Stuart Bigmore.
Stuart Bigmore was a friend of hers from Bristol and the object of the greatest crush of her life. He was tall and gangly with jet-black hair and an almost girlishly pretty face. She’d fallen in love with him during their first week at Bristol, at precisely the same moment that he’d fallen in love with a beautiful and insecure girl called Vivica, leaving Joy stranded on the sidelines in the somewhat vague and unsatisfactory role of ‘best female friend’. They got on like old friends and people often said that they looked like brother and sister, but their friendship was always compromised by the existence of the beautiful, insecure girlfriend.
They swapped numbers at graduation and promised to stay in touch, but then real life kicked in and they hadn’t seen each other since. She’d often wondered what would have happened if the beautiful, insecure girlfriend hadn�
�t staked her claim on him so early and so cloyingly, but felt too shy to contact him, worried that he might think she was stalking him in some way. But it had been three years since uni. Maybe the time was right. Maybe he was single. Maybe he was lonely. Maybe he would look at her afresh and be put in mind of delicate porcelain teacups.
She called him on Wednesday afternoon.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said, ‘Joy Downer. What a blast from the past.’ He shouted at her over the din of music playing loudly in the background. He was working in the art department of a record label in Soho Square. It sounded like a nightclub.
‘Christ,’ she said, ‘how do you get any work done?’
‘Headphones,’ he shouted. ‘Private noise instead of public noise. How are you doing?’
‘Great,’ she said, ‘really great. You?’
‘Excellent. Life is sweet.’
‘Oh,’ she gushed, ‘great. Where are you living now?’
‘Clapham,’ he said, ‘or should I say, Claarm…‘ He laughed and she gulped, wondering how she was going to bring up the subject of beautiful, insecure Vivica without sounding predatory.
‘Are you… ‘ she began. ‘Have you got your own place, or are you sharing?’
‘Sharing,’ he said.
She breathed a sigh of relief, fondly imagining him in a flat full of unhygienic single men, watching Baywatch and peeing in the shower. ‘Me, too,’ she said. ‘It’s a nightmare, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, but not for much longer. We’re moving out next week.’
‘We?’
‘Yeah. Me and Viv.’
‘Oh.’ She felt her heart plummet with disappointment. ‘So you’re still together, then?’ She drew her hand into a tight fist.
‘Uh-huh. Got married last summer.’
Wow,’ she said. ‘Married? That’s really…’
‘Grown-up?’
‘Yeah. Really.’
‘I know. But we just thought, fuck it, we’re soul mates. We’re going to be together for a very long time, maybe even for ever. Why not just go that extra step, make that commitment. You know’
‘Yes,’ she said, even though she didn’t. ‘God. I can’t believe it. Married. At twenty-four. You’re very brave.
‘Is that a polite euphemism for “very stupid”?’ he teased.
She laughed. ‘Maybe a bit.’
‘I know. I never thought I’d want to settle down so young. But you know, sometimes you just have to go with the flow, not question things too much. Follow your heart…’
‘Indeed.’
‘And what about you? Anyone special in your life?’
She hesitated, thought about telling him about George. There was a time in her life when Stuart would have been the first person to know that she’d replied to a personal ad, there was a time in her life when he’d have helped her word her reply, but now, among all this talk of marriage and big grown-up jobs, her little adventure on Sunday afternoon suddenly struck her as sad and pitiful. ‘No.’ She shrugged. ‘Not really. There was someone. But we split up a few months ago.’
‘Ah, well,’ said Stuart, ‘don’t suppose you’ll be single for long. Here, look, what are you up to tomorrow night?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, trying to make it sound like a happy coincidence, rather than a woeful pronouncement on the state of her social life.
‘Cool. We’re having a leaving party. Me and Viv.’
‘Leaving?’
‘Yes. We’re emigrating. To Spain.’ ‘What? Seriously?’
‘Uh-huh. We’ve bought a wreck in Andalusia. No water. No roof. We must be fucking mad.’ He laughed, although Joy couldn’t really see what was funny about it.
‘But – what are you going to do in Andalusia?’
‘I’m going freelance and Viv’s going to set up her own pottery. We want to start trying for a baby soon, and neither of us wants to bring up children in this miserable fucking country, so we just decided to get out while we were still young. Make a real life for ourselves.’
‘God, I can’t believe it. You’re so brave.’
‘Is that another euphemism?’ he teased.
‘No. Seriously. I really think that’s incredible.’
‘Yeah. I know. Terrifying. But brilliant. So we’re all packed up, all sorted. I finish work here on Friday, then next Thursday we’re off. Jesus. I cack myself every time I think about it! So, you’ll come? Tomorrow night?’
‘Yes. Definitely. Who’ll be there?’
‘Oh, everyone.’
‘Everyone?’ she asked uncertainly.
‘Yeah. Karen, Dymphna, Toby, Jim, the twins, Helena, Conor. The whole crew’.
‘Wow. You mean you’re still in touch with all those guys?’
‘Yeah. Of course. We see each other all the time. Me and Viv have been living with Helena and the twins for the past two years.’
‘Wow,’ she said again, ‘I can’t believe you’ve all stayed in touch with each other. I tried, but everyone seemed to be doing different things.’
‘Yeah. We lost touch with people, too. But then we bumped into Conor in Sydney and he was sharing a place with Toby and Jim, and Jim was going out with Helena who was sharing a place with the twins, and blah-de-blah, and somehow it all fell back into place…’
Joy gulped and felt her pulse quicken with a sort of indescribable and unwarranted rage. These were her people. This was her circle of friends. When she’d moved down to London three years ago, she’d tried to stay in touch with them, but it had been too difficult. Some took a year off to go travelling; some moved back home; some went on to do MAs in various parts of the country. Eventually they’d all given up trying to get together, and Joy hadn’t minded because she thought that that was what happened to friends from university – that they bonded, then scattered like beads from a snapped necklace. But now she was being told that actually the circle was still intact; that they’d carried on functioning perfectly happily without her for years.
Why didn’t you call me? she wanted to yell at Stuart. Didn’t you miss me? Didn’t you care about me? Didn’t one of you ever think that it would be really nice to call up dear old Joy and get her back in the circle? And then she thought with a plummeting, nauseating surge of disappointment that maybe they’d never really wanted her in the circle in the first place, that maybe she was the expendable person hovering in the periphery, pleasant enough but not really part of the gang. Everything about her three years at Bristol suddenly went out of focus. She’d arrived so full of confidence after her experience with Vince in Hunstanton. She was a sexually experienced woman. She’d been with a man. She’d given and received love. She was never again going to accept second-best; she was never again going to pretend to be something she wasn’t.
She’d been accepted into the in crowd immediately without once questioning whether she was cool enough or clever enough and, when she left university, she’d taken that confidence with her into the outside world and used it to build herself a life in London. And now, just as it was starting to run low, she was being made to feel like an outsider again.
‘Well,’ she said, childish tears stabbing at the back of her throat, ‘it’ll be really great to see everyone again.’
‘Yeah,’ said Stuart, ‘it’ll be cool. I can’t wait to see you. I’ve really missed you.’
But it was too late for pleasantries and platitudes.
Stuart and Vivica were married. Stuart and Vivica were successful artists. Stuart and Vivica were leaving the country to start a family in Spain. Stuart and Vivica had a social life. Stuart and Vivica saw all her oldest friends on a regular basis. Stuart and Vivica were a stark and painful reminder that Joy’s life was a pile of shit.
She gritted her teeth and wrapped up the conversation in as few words as possible, then hung up the phone and cried until her tears ran out.
Eighteen
The cat was there again when Joy got home from work on Friday night. It had first turned up on Monday night, mewing plaintively
from the kitchen door, a tragic-looking individual with a sad, squashy face and mad apricot fur.
‘Oh, look,’ Julia had exclaimed as she opened the door, ‘it’s Bagpuss!’
The cat – they hadn’t managed to determine whether it was a girl or a boy because there was too much fur in the way to be able to check – had immediately sauntered in and started inspecting the kitchen, like a snooty guest at a five-star hotel, ensuring that the facilities were up to scratch.
‘It looks very posh,’ Joy had said. ‘Do you think it might be a pedigree?’
‘Hmmm.’ Julia peered at the cat over her reading glasses. ‘Possibly a Persian. Not very Finsbury Park, I must say. Well,’ she addressed the cat, ‘you’re very beautiful and you can hang out here for a while, but you’re not getting anything to eat. Not in this house anyway’
The cat had then proceeded to follow Joy around for the rest of the evening, lovingly entwining itself around her legs, purring loudly and attempting to climb on to her lap every time she sat down. Julia had finally kicked it out just before she went to bed at midnight, but it had returned early the following day, a delicate puff of golden fluff, sitting outside the kitchen door, looking almost as if it had forgotten its keys. Again it spent the entire evening following Joy around before slipping out through the back door at around midnight and disappearing into the darkness.
But Joy didn’t have time to fuss over the mysterious cat again this evening. This evening she was in a hurry. She had less than forty minutes to get herself ready, back on the Tube and into town. Because tonight Joy was meeting up with George for their first official date.
He’d called, just as he said he would, on Wednesday evening, precisely three hours after Joy hung up on Stuart Bigmore.
Even though Joy had given over a very generous amount of time since Sunday to pondering the issue of whether or not she actually wanted to go on an official date with George, she still hadn’t decided by the time the phone rang on Wednesday evening, so she’d ended up applying the same approach to decision-making she used in restaurants when she couldn’t decide what to order: she waited until the waiter – or, in this case, George – was hovering over her with pen poised, and made her choice under pressure. And in the heat of the moment, with her conversation with Stuart Bigmore still fresh in her thoughts, she’d decided that actually, that sounded rather nice and said, ‘Yes, I’d love to.’ To which George had responded, with unbridled delight, Ah, now I shall smile for the rest of the day!’
