My Legendary Girlfriend

by Mike Gayle

  The hallway was depressingly dusty. Mr F. Jamal had promised me all communal spaces would be cleaned every Friday. I eyed a scrap of silver paper from a pack of Polos that had fallen out of my pocket onto the carpet yesterday morning, and shook my head sadly. Walking up the stairs I strained my ears, listening out for evidence of life in the other flats – people alone like me – people who might like to talk. The house was silent. Dead. When eventually I reached my door I fished around in my soggy overcoat pockets for my keys and also discovered the following:

  Three squashed Rolos (still in wrapper).

  Two bus tickets.

  Bakewell tart crumbs.

  I scattered the crumbs on the threadbare carpet outside my door. A year ago I’d carried a solitary Bakewell tart in my coat pocket for less than a minute and since then I’d been removing crumbs by the thousand like modern day loaves and fishes.

  I looked around the flat. Nothing had changed. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. I wasn’t sure what I had expected to happen (someone to have fixed the kitchen tap? A miracle? A message from Aggi?) but I’d desperately wanted something, anything to have changed. Instead, time had stood still and waited for my return.

  To keep my brain ticking over I tried to work out who the last human being I’d spoken to in person was. There was one proviso, I could only count people whom I’d choose to go for a drink with. I’d left Nottingham the previous Sunday from my mum’s house. Technically speaking, my mum and my brother had been the last human beings I’d spoken to. But while I liked them both, I didn’t know whether I’d go as far as to say that I’d go for a drink with either of them. Next in line was Martina on Saturday night, but as I was trying to erase that encounter from my memory, she didn’t meet the requirements. Casting my mind back further I recalled that on Friday I’d gone for a quick one in the Royal Oak with Simon, but as he officially no longer existed as far as I was concerned he didn’t count either.

  I pulled the emergency cord on this particular depressing train of thought and turned my attention to the phone. There were no messages on the answering machine. It wasn’t even on, I’d forgotten to set it. After dialling 1471 – the number that tells you the last person that called – I wished I hadn’t. At 2.42 p.m. precisely, Martina had phoned. She had to be pregnant. I called her parents’ house but she wasn’t in. They asked me if I wanted to leave a message and I said no. Shifting a pile of clothes and books aside, I made myself comfortable on the carpet, lying stomach downwards, and concentrated on the phone, willing it to ring.

  For a while Aggi and I had lived under the delusion that we were psychic, after one occasion when we tried to phone each other at exactly the same time. The thought of our separate electrical impulses simultaneously hurtling down a fibre optic cable towards each other had meant so much that we spent a whole afternoon trying, quite seriously, to project images into each other’s minds. It never worked.

  I emptied the pockets of my jeans onto the floor because my keys were jabbing into my groin. After two minutes of intense concentration the phone still hadn’t rung. I thought perhaps it was because I was being too general, trying to get anyone (bar Simon) to call.

  Minutes passed and nothing really happened. Next door’s dog, for some unknown reason, began howling like a wolf, but with the exception of that minor interruption life continued to pass me by. More minutes passed uneventfully. I considered calling Martina again and maybe leaving a message like ‘Tell her everything’s going to be okay’ – something that would bolster her spirits if she was feeling scared or lonely, something that would imply that I cared without going overboard. It was wrong of course. I couldn’t give her hope where there was none. If she thought she’d found true love after a drunken sexual encounter seven days ago, her warped mind would turn a message of solidarity into a proposal of marriage.

  The telephone that I had in my hand was one I’d bought in Argos during my final year at university. It had come in three colours: grey, cream and white and I’d chosen grey because I thought it wouldn’t show up the dirt as much as the others (although the grubby mouthpiece caked in minuscule deposits of dried saliva was testament to the fact that most things show up dirt if you don’t clean them). Everyone in the house I shared had chipped in to buy it, but I’d got to take it home when we graduated because I won it in the house lottery. Tony (whom I hadn’t seen or heard from since we all moved out) won the toaster, Sharon (whom I hadn’t seen or heard from since graduation) won the plug-in TV aerial, and Harpreet (whom I hadn’t seen or heard from since I left Manchester) won the electric kettle. I was really chuffed to win that phone; the hours I’d clocked up on it talking to Aggi probably ran into months. Some of our best conversations had been on that phone, like the one when she’d told me I was the kind of man that she wanted to marry one day. That phone had made me very happy.

  It rang.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello.’

  It was Kate.

  ‘Hi, Kate. How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine. I hope you don’t mind me calling.’

  ‘No, not at all,’ I replied, happy that it was Kate and not Simon seeking forgiveness.

  ‘Are you sure I’m not disturbing you?’ she asked. ‘You answered the phone very quickly. You must’ve been sitting on it. Were you expecting a call from someone else?’

  ‘No, I was just passing,’ I lied. ‘I’ve only just got in. I went to Highgate Cemetery with some friends to see Marx’s grave. Very cool. Definitely worth seeing.’

  I wished I hadn’t described Marx’s grave as ‘cool’. I was sounding too nerd-like for words.

  ‘Do you know I lived in that flat for over a year and never got around to going there? It’s a shame, I’ll probably never get to see it now.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll let you visit me some day,’ I replied, only half joking.

  She laughed.

  I laughed too, but only because I was wondering whether I was stretching the point to describe her laugh as ‘flirtatious’.

  ‘You’d better be careful what you say,’ she said wistfully. ‘I might take you up on that.’

  Simultaneously I ran out of saliva and witty come-backs. I changed the subject. ‘So, what’ve you been up to today?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ she said. ‘I watched kids’ TV this morning and then went into town. I managed to get an extension on my overdraft, so I spent most of it on a pair of trainers and a skirt. I shouldn’t be spending money like I do but it cheered me up.’

  ‘I think your cheque came today,’ I told her, spying her letter on top of the TV. ‘Well, there’s a letter for you anyway.’

  ‘Brilliant. That’s fantastic news. Oh, what time is it? Quarter past three? I’ve missed last post then. Oh well, at least it’ll get here on Tuesday. Better than it not coming at all, I suppose.’

  She sounded happy.

  ‘So would you like to talk some more?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘How many times did I beg you to call back yesterday?’

  ‘What do you want to talk about?’

  ‘Anything,’ I said happily. ‘Anything at all.’

  I actually had a topic that I wanted to discuss if she couldn’t come up with one. It was a question I’d been mulling over on the journey from the cemetery. I wanted to know whether she thought the most beautiful people in the world (Cindy Crawford, Mel Gibson et al) ever got dumped. And if so, did this mean that no one, no matter who they were, was safe from getting dumped? I was thankful when she said she’d got a question, because I was sure mine would’ve eventually ended up about Aggi.

  ‘This is kind of related to what you did this afternoon,’ said Kate, revealing her question. ‘Where do you stand on death?’

  ‘I’m against it,’ I joked.

  We both laughed.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she said. ‘What do you think about death?’

  ‘I think that when you’re dead you’re dead,’ I said matter-of-factly. ‘This is it as far as life goes, so we’d better make
the most of it while we’ve got it. Although having said that, I think I’d be kind of disappointed if what I’ve spent the last twenty-six years experiencing was really all there was to life.’

  ‘Okay, well my question for you is this: how would you like to die?’ said Kate, as if she was a waitress asking a diner how they liked their eggs done.

  ‘This is all getting a bit strange, isn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘Strange? You should hear the things that me and Paula talk about at five in the morning after our eighth triple vodka! Question is, are you man enough?’

  ‘I’m more of a man than you,’ I protested mockingly.

  ‘I should hope so!’ said Kate.

  ‘You’ll never find out,’ I retorted, wondering if this banter we were engaging in constituted flirting or simply joking around.

  ‘Seriously, how would you like to pop off?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, gratefully returning to the subject of death. ‘I’ll need some time to think about this one. In the meantime, what about you? How would you like to die?’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask!’ she said laughing. ‘Me and Paula have discussed this many times during our late night chats. My answer is all ready. Are you?’

  ‘As I’ll ever be.’

  3.20 P.M.

  PART ONE OF A TWO PART CONVERSATION ON DEATH: HER WAY OF THINKING

  Now this is going to sound morbid, in fact it’s going to sound very morbid. I suppose it is morbid, really. What must you think of me? You don’t know me that well, so I suppose you’re probably not thinking all that much. Well, here goes. Every now and again I like to think about my own funeral. I know it sounds weird but it’s true. People don’t think about death very much these days, do they? They seem to spend their whole lives avoiding it. Pensioners on the other hand think about it constantly. They’ve definitely got the right idea. I suppose it’s because they’re so much nearer to the End than the rest of us. They keep a little bit of money in a post-office account to make sure there’s enough cash around to pay for a decent funeral, coffin and finger-food for afterwards. That’s how it should be. Then of course you’ve got the ancient Egyptians. They spent their entire lives thinking about death and when they went it was like the biggest party ever: good clothes, possessions and even slaves buried in the roomiest coffins in the world. Egyptians, old people and me – we’ve all got our priorities right.

  The first thing to work out is exactly how I’m going to die. Sometimes it’s drowning, other times it’s an aeroplane crash, but at the moment it’s dying in any manner at all as long as it’s for someone I love.

  Okay, so you want me to explain? It’s really simple. I’m desperate to die for someone I love. That’s all there is to it. I don’t know what the situation is. The important thing is that when I die the person I save lives on because of me. That’s all that matters. I know it won’t surprise you to know that I’ve already constructed a purpose-built scenario for this!

  I’m nearly twenty. I’ve not done an awful lot with my life so far. I’ve been to school, gained a couple of A levels, gone to university and dropped out, and, um, that’s about it. Pretty self-centred, wouldn’t you say?

  I got the idea from a black and white film I saw one Saturday afternoon the week before I moved out of the flat.

  Here’s the sitch: there’s a cad, a French aristocrat, and a beautiful girl who’s madly in love with the aristo. Anyway, the Cad falls in love with Beautiful Girl. On a trip to France the Aristocrat gets caught by the children of the revolution, who put him in the Bastille. The Cad goes to France and visits the Aristocrat in the Bastille. Now here’s the good bit: the Cad knocks out Aristocrat, swaps places with him and goes to the guillotine in his place! D’you see? Cad loves Beautiful Girl so much that he’s prepared to sacrifice his own life so that she can be happy with Another!

  That film left me in shock. I’ve only seen it once. I don’t even know what it’s called – I mean . . . well . . . I did know, but now I don’t. Being dumped does that to your long-term memory, doesn’t it? Oh, it doesn’t matter what it was called, it moved me. It really moved me. I mean, what does it mean? Is that love or is it obsession? Will any man want to do that for me? I’m asking a lot of questions. I apologise. I think Dirk Bogarde was in it.

  Where did we begin all this? Oh yeah! My funeral.

  It’s been a great worry of mine that all of the people that I want to invite to my funeral won’t be invited due to my own lack of foresight. There’s no one person amongst my friends that knows all of my other friends. My friend Lizzie knows most of the people who went to our school who were friends with me, but she wouldn’t know people like Pete or Jimmy or Karen or any of the small number of friends I made at university, and she wouldn’t know any of the people from when I lived in Cardiff last summer like Mrs Grosset, or the lads who used to come into the Lion on a Tuesday night. A couple of times I’ve made a definitive list and posted it to Lizzie with strict instructions for it to remain sealed until my death. Lizzie is a mate, but I just know that she’s opened it. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? But it doesn’t matter because I revise the list every now and again when certain people get too much for me. I’ll add you to it if you want me to.

  I suppose with all this talk about funerals you’ll think I’m being really vain but it’s something we’re all guilty of. I just want to know that my passing will be mourned big time. I don’t want people to be philosophical about my death. I want them to grieve for a decent period. It’s good for the soul, you know?

  3.42 P.M.

  PART TWO OF A TWO PART CONVERSATION ON DEATH: MY WAY OF THINKING

  It’ll be of little comfort to you but you’re no weirder than me. I know what you mean when you say you want to die for someone else. When you look back at your life you want to have meant something. I’ve got a friend, or rather had a friend, and it’s just possible that through some quirk of fate he might become famous. And I bet he thinks that if he gets this goal, i.e. fame and fortune, his life will have meaning. But it won’t. The only way life can really mean something is if you give it away. It’s a shame though because if you do give it away, you don’t get the chance to fully appreciate the splendour of it. That’s the main flaw of the ultimate selfless act – you never get the chance to be around to take your bow.

  I had my first encounter with death at the age of five. I’d been given a junior gardening kit by my parents which consisted of a small shovel, rake and watering can. My mum had bought me some red Wellington boots to go with it and my dad had let me choose a packet of carrot seeds from a huge row of seed packets at the local gardening centre. At the time I had a big thing about carrots. I thought that if I grew some they’d lure Bugs Bunny to my garden. I lived in hope that one day I’d see my carrots disappearing under the ground and then I’d know that Bugs was real. Then I’d peer down the hole where my carrots had been and he’d look up at me, twitch his whiskers and say, ‘What’s up, Doc?’

  It was an incredibly hot summer’s day when I decided to do my planting – my dad completely ignored the advice on the packet, which said to sow from March to late May – just to make me happy. Within half an hour of starting work I’d dug the soil, planted my seeds and watered them. My job was done, but I carried on digging for the sake of it in a patch of ground away from the carrots. Once in a while I’d find a worm. The first one startled me a little – I think it was because they didn’t have eyes – but after that, every time I came across one, I picked it up on the edge of my spade and popped it in my little yellow bucket. I decided to have a competition to see how many worms I could collect in an afternoon. I promised myself that if I’d collected enough by the end of the day I’d try and make my own wormery like the one I’d seen in the solitary copy of The Encyclopaedia Britannica (Washington – Yam) we’d received free for joining a book club.

  At about one o’clock my mum called me in for lunch. I was quite relieved to finally take a rest because I was beginning to feel a
bit dizzy from the heat. Inside, the house was cool. On the table was a ham, lettuce and tomato sandwich and a glass of Ribena. I drank and ate and felt content. In fact I felt so content that I fell asleep on the living room sofa. Two hours later I woke up. By now it was time for the kids’ programmes on telly. I watched my favourite cartoons until my mum ordered me to sort out the mess in the garden. It was then that I remembered the worms. I examined the bucket expecting to see a writhing mass of slimy worms bent on revenge. Instead all I saw were very grey, very stiff, very dry, dead worms. Why weren’t they moving? I wondered. Why had they stopped being worms? Eventually I worked out that their few hours in the sun might not have been particularly beneficial to their welfare, so I rushed to the kitchen and filled a Tupperware beaker with water from the hot tap, poured it into the bucket and waited. I expected the worms to be instantly re-animated, but they weren’t. Instead they floated on the surface of the water, rocking gently to and fro as steam rose up against my face.

  I asked my mum why the worms had died and she gave me the technical answer about them losing moisture and dehydrating. But that didn’t really answer my question. Why were they dead? The real answer, and the answer that I kind of worked out there and then, was this: the worms died because everything dies eventually. That’s what life is all about.

  The only attractive prospect about dying is that if I do it soon enough there’s the possibility that Aggi might finally see that she and I were meant for each other. Of course, her realising this once I’ve popped my clogs makes the whole thing kind of pointless, but at least this great wrong would at last have been righted.

  And now to funerals: I’ve done more than plan the guest list. First off there’ll be twenty-two wailing women, dressed in black, standing at my graveside; girls whom I’ve fancied at various points in my sad life but who had ignored my advances, only to realise, now that I was dead, that I had been their perfect man all along.