by Elisa Lodato
Tom rang when he arrived downstairs. I went to the window of my living room, holding the phone to my ear and looking down. I couldn’t see him on the footpath, but then I looked at the road and saw a car with its engine idling, waiting for me.
‘Do you want to come up?’ I said.
‘No thanks. There’s nowhere to park, anyway. Our table’s reserved for quarter to eight so we’d better get going.’
We drove out to Kew, where he’d booked a Michelin-starred restaurant near the station. I felt underdressed as we walked from the car to the restaurant. A feeling that deepened when I saw the thick white tablecloths and self-consciously friendly waiting staff.
He ordered two glasses of champagne and folded his arms, leaning on them to force his shoulders towards me, conspiratorially. He was wearing a light blue shirt under a grey jumper. He looked very smart and I realised, with a thrill, that I fancied him.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘It’s a bit posh, isn’t it? I’m not really dressed for this.’
‘You look gorgeous. And the food is amazing. Just wait till you try it.’
Our champagne arrived. He lifted his flute to mine and said, ‘To you.’
I looked around, embarrassed, and then back to him. ‘To me?’
‘Yes, to you, Laura. Thank you for coming out with me tonight.’
He was uncompromisingly straight with me from the beginning. His height had made him grab (literally, sometimes) at what he wanted in life. And he wanted me. I found his honesty both mortifying and refreshing – his enthusiasm made me blush and his sincerity made me want to be the Laura he liked more fully.
We drank water with dinner; he was driving, and I felt too self-conscious to drink alone. We spoke easily and openly about previous relationships, jobs and university. He told me he’d proposed to his last girlfriend and together they’d bought the flat in Wimbledon, but the reality of planning a wedding and waking up next to the same person for the rest of her life had been too real. She had sent him an email from work, telling him she was too conflicted to marry him and asked him to stay away that evening while she packed her things up.
‘What did you do?’
‘I did what any sane person would do under the circumstances: got completely shit-faced and went home to beg her to stay.’
‘And what happened?’
‘She was there with her mum and dad. Moving stuff out. Every time they put something in the car, I took it out again. It took a long time for her to go, and her dad almost punched me.’
‘Shit,’ I said, laughing despite myself. ‘That’s terrible.’
‘Yep. But I got myself together, bought her half of the flat and slowly replaced things. We’re still quite friendly, actually.’ He searched my face for a reaction. ‘How about you?’
‘What about me?’ I said, smiling, looking down at the tablecloth.
‘Any significant others I should know about? Former lovers, ex-husbands, disgraced footballers? That sort of thing?’
‘Let’s see. I slept with my ex a few months ago.’
‘A significant ex?’
‘He’s certainly significant to someone else.’ Tom looked steadily at me. ‘He’s married, living happily in Buckinghamshire somewhere – that sort of thing.’ I ran my hand through my hair and wished my glass of water was wine.
‘And is it over?’ he asked.
‘It’s very over. He was a mistake I won’t be making again.’
He lifted his glass to me, relieved. ‘Here’s to fucking exes. I mean, not literally – that’s not an instruction. Please don’t fuck him any more. You know what I mean.’
The waiter appeared, on my right, to offer us a variety of breads, and in doing so broke the gentle momentum we’d established. We ordered our food and tried to talk again. To find the banter that had united us over a week ago. The restaurant was too stuffy and we were too sober. We scraped for conversation: favourite films, TV box sets, where we’d grown up. I thought of Andrea’s instruction – that I needed to have sex – but couldn’t quite fathom how that might come to pass.
Tom insisted on paying for dinner and invited me back to his flat for coffee. I leant against the work surface of his small, square kitchen and waited for the move that would take us beyond talk of cafetières and milk and sugar. He reached behind me for something inconsequential and our faces came close enough to finally stir. He kissed me gently at first and then with more certainty, holding my face, my hair, and pulling me to him. It had been a long time since I’d slept with someone sober. We went into his bedroom and took our clothes off with perfunctory requirement. His hands were powerful, holding me to him and to his life as long as I wanted to be there. When he got on top of me, I felt my body act alone as if it had an undeniable physical need for his love. But I had to switch my brain off to access it.
I woke early the next morning to the light that flooded his bedroom. I looked around at the bare walls, the bulb hanging from the ceiling and over to the large, uncurtained window. Tom slept with his back to me, the sheets pulled up under his chin in happy composure. I lay there, warm and naked under the sheets, until just after six, thinking about my mother and her job at the library.
Tom woke when I got up to use his bathroom. He was smiling and stretching when I returned to the room, naked. I jumped back into bed in an effort to cover myself with the sheets. He pulled himself up on his elbow and looked down at me as I tried to cover my nipples, and grinned.
‘What is it? Why are you smiling like that?’
‘Because you’re beautiful. And I’ve already seen them.’
‘I’m not a good naked person.’
‘No, me neither,’ he agreed solemnly. ‘I did suggest Naked Friday at work, but they were all, oh that’s gross misconduct. Any more suggestions like that and we’ll have you fired.’
‘Some people are so narrow-minded. What did you do?’
‘I insisted on my right to work with my bollocks out. What else could I do?’
‘Exactly. I mean, what’s wrong with testicles in the workplace?’
‘We speak the same language, Laura. Now let me have a look at those puppies again,’ he said, pulling the covers down.
I grabbed hold of the sheet. ‘Two things: one, they are not puppies and two, where the fuck are your curtains?’
His ex-girlfriend had piled the curtains and many of the other soft furnishings into the back of her parents’ car the day she decided Tom was not the one for her. As we made love again that morning, in the bright Sunday-morning sunshine, my rational mind returned to my aroused body in joyful gratitude that this girl I’d never met, who’d taken so much that afternoon, had left me her Tom.
The brain weighed 1230g and showed no abnormality externally. The vessels at the base of the brain were unremarkable.
My mother felt sorry for my father. He was like a troubled stray, hiding out in the sanctuary of the library, and after years of feeling isolated and unhappy herself, she was able to recognise his need for companionship. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t a suitable companion; she befriended him simply because he needed her.
One afternoon, after my father had gone home for the day, while tidying the books away my mother noticed an envelope sticking out of his bird book. He had returned all the others to the shelf. It was addressed to her, though he’d written her name incorrectly, spelling it Catherine. I have the note here before me – she kept it safe and secure in her notebook from 1980: I enjoyed talking to you on Monday. Perhaps we could go for a drink sometime? We don’t have to. Richard.
My mother put the note back inside its envelope, folded it in half and put it in her pocket. She didn’t know how to go for a drink. Because she’d had so few friends at school, she’d never been invited to the pub or to the park with a bottle of cider. Having missed out on this seminal lesson of adolescence, she felt the want of learning as she read my father’s self-effacing note. So she did what she did best: she hid.
My father looked for
her the following morning, but she stayed in the back room, telling Nicola she wanted to recategorise the children’s books ahead of the opening of the new reading corner in July. At midday, he asked Nicola where she was, but my mother had cycled home to eat her lunch there.
He went outside to sit on the bench and wait for her return. When he finally saw her cycle up the Ewell Road and round to the back of the library, he got up and went to meet her. She was locking her bike up as he approached. ‘I’ve been looking for you all morning.’
She continued fiddling with the lock. ‘Sorry. I’ve been busy.’
‘Did you get my note?’
She stood up. ‘Yes,’ and then quietly, ‘thank you.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘Do you want to come out with me one night?’
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘Just down to the pub. I thought we could have a chat and get to know each other.’
‘I don’t drink.’
‘OK. That’s OK. What would you like to do?’
My mother shrugged her shoulders. ‘We could go for a walk.’
‘A walk? Yeah, we can do that.’
They arranged to meet at Alexandra Recreation Ground at six o’clock the following Saturday. My mother wore a simple white cotton dress and her hair down. As she cycled down the hill towards Tolworth, she felt the wind push the soft fibres against her legs, exposing them to the cars that were too close and fast. At the first opportunity she peeled off the main road and pedalled harder, feeling nimble and free as her dress rose up above her thighs. The warm evening air was light and playful about her face. As she coasted towards the meeting point, she couldn’t help smiling and the movement of her facial muscles triggered sharp, almost painful goosebumps to her arms. For a brief moment she forgot about meeting my father, about my grandmother’s disapproving silence as she left the house. The hair follicles tightening in exquisite physical pleasure forced her to forget everything. And remember herself.
My father was waiting at the gate to the park, too smart for a walk on a field. He saw my mother in the distance, a vision in white, coasting down the hill towards him, and felt a jolt of joy. She was beautiful. And a secret. And he’d had the good sense to ask her out. He was beaming at her as she slowed down and came to a stop. She locked her bike up and allowed my father to open the gate as they stepped onto the path that skirted the recreation ground.
‘Do you come here a lot?’ It was a terrible chat-up line but my father sensed, rightly, that my mother was unaware of the cliché.
‘Not really. I don’t go out much.’
‘Why not?’
My mother looked puzzled. ‘I don’t have any friends.’ It was such a simple declaration. He didn’t know what to do with it.
‘How come?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘None of the girls at my school wanted to talk to me.’
My mother’s lack of embarrassment surprised him. ‘None of them?’
‘My best friend moved away at the end of our second year. To a new school. So I was on my own after that.’
‘That’s why you left as soon as you could?’
‘On my sixteenth birthday,’ my mother confirmed.
Her candour and his interest were enough to propel them round the field several times. As the sun began its descent my father reached for her fingers. My mother allowed her hand to be held and, as she unlocked her bike for the ride home, she let him kiss her cheek. My father’s courtship was not something she sought, but when it was upon her, she capitulated.
The following Monday my father did not turn up at the library as usual. Nicola noticed his absence but my mother, it seemed, did not. Even after the warmth he’d shown her on Saturday, she felt no proprietary interest in him.
He returned the following day, at eight forty-five, looking for my mother. He found her in the children’s corner with Nicola, discussing the new shelving arrangements.
‘Richard,’ Nicola said as she turned to him. ‘We missed you yesterday.’
‘I had a job interview,’ my father said, looking at my mother, ‘in a bank.’
‘Good for you.’ Nicola also watched my mother and attended to the conversation as a translator would an interview: ‘And? How did it go?’
‘OK. I think. They said they’d let me know next week.’
‘That’s great news. Well done.’ Nicola looked at my mother, who had kept her eyes trained on the carpet, and decided to leave her and my father alone.
My father asked her if she’d like to go for a walk after the library closed on Friday. She nodded her head in quiet agreement, but as 5 p.m. on the appointed Friday rolled around, so too did the dark clouds that presaged rain. He took her hand as they walked down the ramp and round to the back of the library. The first big drops of rain began to fall from the bruised sky.
‘What about that drink instead?’
‘I don’t drink.’
‘I know. But they sell soft drinks in the pub. And we’re about to get soaked.’
My mother allowed him to pull her down into Surbiton town centre to a pub just outside the station. She found a small table in the middle of the main saloon bar while my father went to order the drinks. She put her hands in her lap and her head down, avoiding eye contact. He returned to their table with a pint of lager for himself and an orange juice for her. As he sipped his drink, she watched a gradual change come upon him. He leant in further, ostensibly so he could hear her better, but before long he reached for her hand with confidence. His conversation loosened as he drank; he spoke more fluently about how he’d loved his father and how his sudden death when he was just nine had changed his mother and therefore him. She never let up. Was always on at him to do something constructive. ‘The interview was her doing. And I thought I’d go because, well, I thought it might impress you.’
She’d been watching the effect of alcohol on him so closely she hadn’t actually heard what he’d said.
‘Did it work?’ he prompted.
‘Did what work?’
‘Are you pleased I went for an interview?’
‘I don’t know. Yes. Good for you,’ she said, borrowing Nicola’s response from earlier in the week.
My father smiled. ‘I’m going to get another. Orange juice?’ My mother looked at her glass and then at the other people sitting at nearby tables. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing to a tall glass on the table nearest to them.
My father followed her gaze. ‘A gin and tonic, I think. The one with the lemon in it?’
My mother nodded.
‘Probably a gin and tonic. Would you like one?’
My mother wanted to go where my father had gone. He was happy, chatting openly and looked excited about the next one. ‘Yes. I’ll have one of those.’
She sipped at her drink and noticed my father’s smile of approval. She was surprised by how easy it was to join others after years of feeling so left out. The slice of lemon sitting on top of the ice forced her to slurp the gin, sharp and uncompromising, until the alcohol prompted the production of dopamine in her brain. She began to feel good, so much so that when my father jumped up to get another round of drinks, she assented readily to the apparently innocuous, ‘Same again?’
The second gin and tonic tasted stronger. It was so fizzy she began to burp. After two of them her stomach felt full and uncomfortable. She got up to go to the toilet, but when she returned another one was on the table. They were appearing with bewildering frequency so that as she finished one, more of the same quickly appeared. She became confused and eventually dizzy, her instincts blurred and, as she felt herself drowning in drunkenness, reached out for my father’s hand. ‘Please. Take me home.’
‘Are you OK?’
‘Take me home.’
He put his cigarette out, downed his pint and escorted her outside to the cool, reviving night air. The pavements were dirty with aftermath; as she watched people stumble in a clumsy search for more, she pulled
her cardigan more firmly round her and felt grateful for my father’s arm steadying her. When they approached the top of St Mark’s Hill, my mother had to stop to vomit. She bent over and belched the effluvium onto the pavement and her shoes.
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let you drink so much.’
‘My mother’s going to kill me,’ she slurred, staring at her wet shoes and tights.
‘Why don’t you come back with me? My mum will be in bed by now. We can get you cleaned up and then I’ll walk you home.’
She agreed to his suggestion not simply because her neurotransmitters were soggy and slow or the alcohol had dampened her ability to respond. She agreed because she couldn’t face my grandmother’s disapproval. She nodded her head and he guided her back to his quiet, dark home. But instead of going to the kitchen, my father led her, creeping, upstairs. My mother – the consummate librarian – observed the rule of silence.
He was excited to have her in his room with him. The successful stealth of the operation made him jubilant. He didn’t pause to consider how drunk she was, that what felt like freedom to him – closing the door – could be viewed as a kind of constraint for her. He sat down on his bed and reached under it for the small tin that contained his stock of rolling papers, tobacco and a block of cannabis resin.
My mother watched him, no longer curious, just distracted by the dexterity of his fingers. He rolled a joint with the serious concentration of a professional and invited my mother to sit beside him. The bed looked steady in a room full of flux. She wanted to get near those fingers that smoothed and rolled, skilful in their ability to create even after so much alcohol. That my father did not appear drunk impressed my mother. She felt like an amateur. He lit the joint and sucked the situation into being, inhaling to a beat in his own head and tapping the seconds that passed with his right foot. It prompted him to stand up and walk towards the record player, a trail of smoke hanging to indicate the path he’d taken. My mother narrowed her eyes in an effort to focus and out of the grey, amorphous smoke returned my father, who held the joint in his right hand so that his left was free to settle on her thigh. She looked down at his fingers, the ones she’d been admiring just a few seconds ago, and wondered what they could do to her. And just as he’d reached across his body on the bench to shake her hand a couple of weeks before, he now proffered the joint and encouraged her to join him.
