William Walkers First Year of Marriage

by Rudd, Matt

  They might well not be.

  And so, having memorised their address, Jessica Fletcher-style, I started running back to Stockwell to get help, but halfway there, a police car, sirens wailing, screeched to an incredibly dramatic halt beside me.

  ‘Been chasing muggers, have we, sir?’

  Isabel had called in my description.

  It’s my first time in a police car and it’s pretty damn exciting going through red lights and stuff. The sergeant kills the siren as we arrive at the flats. Back-up arrives from the other direction in case things turn nasty. Descriptions I’ve given are walkie-talkied back and forth, and then it’s time for the bust. We all exit our vehicles at the same time and cross the road like Dempsey and Makepeace and Cagney and Lacey and the Professionals and the Avengers and Steve McQueen in Bullitt. Unfortunately, I’ve only got the theme tune from The Bill in my head, but I’m also thinking, woo-hoo, I’m going to be in a bust.

  ‘Sir, wait in the back of the vehicle, will you?’

  I’m not going to be in a bust.

  At Brixton Police Station everyone is calling me either Zola because I am not wearing any shoes or The Guv’nor because I instigated a successful arrest. None of this changes the fact that Brixton Police Station is such a dangerous place at one in the morning that the safest place to keep me while I wait to give my witness statement is in a cell. It takes three hours for them to get to me—I am released an hour after the muggers, which is enough to make me vow never to half chase anyone half heroically ever again.

  Back in Stockwell, Isabel, Andy, his Italian-Mauritanian wife-to-be and the mugging victim have all stayed up waiting for me, which is nice, but are all so drunk that they sing ‘I need a hero’ when I walk in, which isn’t.

  Thursday 13 October

  After two hours’ sleep, I had to go to Penge, of all places, for the anger-management course. Everyone else on the course has a look of sinister calm, like they might explode at the slightest provocation. I wonder why they’re here. They all look like completely normal, respectable businessmen. Scratch the surface and I bet you’ll find wife-beaters, bullies, sadomasochists and the middle-class ringleaders of football hooliganism. These are the sorts of people that pulled the wings off flies when they were children. All I did was throw a (cold) cup of tea over a work experience.

  We begin with a sort of anger amnesty. The organiser asks each of us to introduce ourselves and reveal what makes us angry. In response, she gets a barrage of irritations: switching broadband provider; the Microsoft Office Assistant staple; the French; people without any noticeable disability using the special parking areas at Tesco, and so forth. One guy goes puce describing his hatred of cyclists who fail to observe the rules of the road. The next guy, already puce, proclaims himself a cyclist who loves failing to observe the rules of the road but hates inconsiderate drivers. Then they both add each other to their angry lists and have to be physically restrained.

  When it gets to my turn, I decide to be perfectly honest and list anger-management courses I don’t need to go on because all I did was throw a (cold) cup of tea at an obnoxious work experience. I am told that I am not being constructive so I say that’s not surprising because I spent last night locked up in a cell in Brixton for a crime the people I was chasing committed. In response, the organiser, a dowdy woman with a neat bob and thick-rimmed glasses, writes something down in her file. I ask what she has just written and she shows me.

  ‘Has denial issues,’ it says.

  Astounded at the injustice of it all, I tell her I also get angry when people make sweeping judgements about people they have only just met. For instance, I say, I have a good idea that she’s a dowdy woman with a spurious career who should have been a librarian because she bloody well looks like one. However, I continue, it would be unfair to draw such sweeping conclusions because we have only just met.

  Well done, William. I now have to attend a course of six more anger-management sessions. I hold Ryanair responsible, and Alex and Saskia. I haven’t slept properly for days. It’s not denial, it’s the truth.

  Friday 14 October

  Because of Ryanair and the three hours in a police cell with wet socks, I now have the ‘flu. Still struggle into work just to check I haven’t been sacked for upsetting the anger-management librarian. Although I almost certainly have a temperature, no one at work is remotely sympathetic. I am too ill to work so I surf the Net for information about sneezing. Then I go home, taking care to sneeze on all the bastards on the Tube who have their iPods on too loud.

  FOUR FACTS ABOUT SNEEZING I LEARNT WHEN TOO ILL TO WORK

  The material spread by sneezing can travel up to three metres at one hundred miles per hour.

  There is some debate over who holds the world record for the loudest sneeze. It is either Yi Yang of the People’s Republic of China at 176 decibels or Bill Page of South Australia at 186 decibels. For perspective, Maria Sharapova grunts at 101.2 decibels, scoring a home goal in a football stadium generates 115 decibels and a jet takes off at 140. Anything above 80 decibels can damage hearing, another good reason to sneeze all over Tube iPod-ers.

  As reported in the Lexington Leader, serving the people of Lee County, Texas, Bobby Ruthven of McDade suffered severe injuries in a one-car automobile accident last Thursday at approximately 3 p.m. He was travelling westbound driving a beige 1988 Ford Mustang convertible when he suffered a sneezing attack and veered off the road. Emergency personnel had to use the Jaws of Life to remove him from the wreckage.

  There is a disturbingly large group of people in cyberspace who find sneezing sexually exciting. It’s to do with lack of control. Note to self—don’t ever follow any sneeze fetish links again.

  I’m near death’s door when I get home. Mercifully, Saskia is not there waiting in her pants. Isabel is already home. She isn’t in her pants either but she’s looking tired and needy. This is bad timing. It’s my day for looking tired and needy.

  Before I can convey to her how needy I am, she tells me she’s had a bad day. She’s had a bad day? She doesn’t know the half of it. And I doubt very much that her day could have been as bad as mine. Except hers was: a whole country has pulled out of an aid programme she’d been organising for months.

  Still, that’s a work thing. I’m dying here. So I tell her, because she’s not asking, that I’m ill. That I have flu.

  She says it’s not flu, it’s just a cold.

  We have been through this before.

  ‘I have a temperature,’ I say.

  ‘No, you haven’t,’ she replies, holding my forehead, which is a bad way of judging unless you’re a mum and we haven’t got a thermometer to prove it either way.

  ‘I have a sore throat, a dry cough, a really, really itchy nose and no appetite, which is flu,’ I say.

  ‘That’s a cold,’ she repeats. ‘But I’m going to get you some hot lemon and honey, some Marmite toast and a hot-water bottle.’ And now I feel guilty because all I have is a cold and I could, frankly, have been more sympathetic.

  Saturday 15 October

  Ugh. Actually, I am really ill. My cough is like something from the Crimean War. Possibly laryngitis? Whooping cough? At least Isabel has become Florence Nightingale: even told Arthur Arsehole I was too ill to have anyone see the flat. Shame, I would like to have infected an estate agent.

  In the afternoon, an aid parcel of soups and Lemsips is waiting outside our door, with a note reading, ‘Heard you needed cheering up. Get well soon, Nurse Saskia, xxxxx.’

  ‘I told her you only had a cold.’

  ‘It’s not a cold, it’s flu. She’s just being nice.’

  This was the wrong thing to say. In the fog of illness, I had momentarily forgotten that Saskia was the Destroyer of Relationships. Why would I side with her? I backtracked quickly but days of careful diplomacy have been unravelled with one stupid pro-Saskia comment.

  Monday 17 October

  Typical. Just in time for work, I can blow my nose straight through. Not the d
eeply unsatisfying one-nostril-blocked whinny but a full glug-glug-glug, tissue-filling neigh, leaving both nostrils clear for a marvellous few seconds. Filled three whole tissues on the Tube, causing the person next to me with two ghetto blasters strapped to his ears to tut. Unbelievable cheek.

  Spontaneously order a folding bike on the Internet. Looks very cool and costs a quarter of the price of the boring Bromptons that everyone else has. While we are still trapped in Finsbury Park, I will be able to avoid the Tube. When we move to the country, I shall take it on the train. Perfect.

  Wednesday 19 October

  Folding bike already at office when I arrive. Very quick delivery, which is obviously because they’re not inundated with orders. It is smaller and yellower than it looked in the photo. When I pedal, my knees hit the handlebars. It does fold nicely and it was cheap so I decide to cycle home on it. By pointing my knees out, I can pedal unhindered but look like Dick Van Dyke. Even though it’s bright Day-Glo yellow, buses and taxis seem to be targeting me rather than avoiding me. The wheels are tiny. It is very hard not to wobble.

  Miraculously, I am still alive by the time I reach the Holloway Road where some hilarious drunk waiting in a bus queue runs up behind me and piggybacks me. I stop and ask him what he thinks he’s doing. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he bellows, for all the bus queue to hear, ‘I thought you were the Number Ninety-seven.’

  I walk the bike the rest of the way home, resolving to stick it on eBay at the earliest opportunity.

  Thursday 20 October

  Dreamt I was in the Tour de France last night and, with just twenty minutes until the start of the most precipitous Alpine section, the team realised they’d forgotten to bring my racer. A frantic call for assistance goes out and eventually some Provençal peasant produces a yellow folding bike. Then we’re off. Everyone just vanishes in the first minute, leaving me and thousands of French people with cowbells. I woke as humiliated as when I went to sleep.

  Got the Tube to work because it should be marginally less awful than cycling. Except a girl sitting opposite me breaks the cardinal Tube rule (Thou shalt never talk to another person on the Tube) by saying, ‘Hello, William, how are you?’

  I know her. I’m sure I know her. But for the life of me I can’t remember her name. Normally, in this kind of situation, I would try to bluff my way through with lots of ambiguous questions: How are you? How’s things? What’s happening? Crowded on the Tube today, isn’t it? But before I can take the sensible route, a small voice says, ‘Just be honest. She’s probably a girl you once met at a magazine party. It would be much politer just to say you’re terrible with names and you’re sorry you’ve forgotten hers.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I know we’ve met but I’m terrible with names. And I’ve forgotten yours.’

  ‘It’s Lucy. We went to university together. We shared a house together. You once tried to have sex with me in Paris. I came to your thirtieth birthday party last month. We chatted about how important it was to stay in touch with old friends. You’re coming to my wedding on Saturday.’

  Despite explaining I’d just had a severe bout of influenza after foiling a mugging, she got off at the next stop and I was left alone in a carriage of smirkers. When I tell Isabel, she says I’ve probably got prosopagnosia. From the Greek, prosopon meaning ‘face’; agnosia meaning ‘ignorance’. According to some magazine she was reading only yesterday, a housewife in Boulder, Colorado, couldn’t even recognise her own face. Whenever she was in a busy restroom, she had to twitch to know which face was hers.

  Either that or I’m an idiot.

  Saturday 22 October

  Last wedding of the season. I manage, between service and reception, mid-confetti as it happens, to smooth things out with Lucy. I mention prosopagnosia. And also that, judging by how beautiful she looks today, I’m not surprised she didn’t have sex with me in Paris. Lucy seemed to appreciate this but Isabel, who of course overheard, didn’t. I think the whole Saskia thing has made her lose her sense of humour. Anyway, the wedding was surprisingly good, avoiding, as it did, all the usual pitfalls of weddings (e.g. making up your own vows, holding the reception at a golf club, fainting).

  38/40, two better than ours. Hope their marriage is a disaster.

  Tuesday 25 October

  Bike sells for only twenty quid less than I bought it for and Isabel thinks I’m looking quite fit, despite leaving the gym.

  Wednesday 26 October

  Some nice people came to look at the flat. Loved it, said Arsehole. They’d like to make an offer.

  Friday 28 October

  Have to fly to New York tomorrow to interview Hillary Clinton for next month’s cover story because all the senior interviewers and correspondents at Life & Times are either sick, busy or recently deceased. Hillary Clinton never did interviews with Cat World. Johnson reckons this will be my big break. Will completely make up for killing Sandra and dunking workie. I actually manage to laugh.

  Isabel not delighted but understands sudden and unexpected career opportunity, particularly in wake of tea-throwing debacle. It means, she says, that we’ll have to cancel lunch with our respective parents.

  Can’t see how this week can get much better.

  Saturday 29 October

  Upgraded!

  I have a flat bed. I have proper cutlery. I have the choice of a thousand films with explosions, a thousand cocktails and a thousand different ways to adjust the lumbar in my seat, whatever that is. Even the toilet is completely different: there are moisturisers, aftershaves and a small but tasteful bouquet of orchids rather than strewn tissues, toothpaste spit and an unflushable memento from the previous occupant’s visit.

  Still can’t see how this week can get much better, although the last time I said that it did, so I’m going to stop saying it. Perhaps Clinton will reveal that she slept with an intern exclusively in my interview? Or my hotel will know who I am and upgrade me to the presidential suite? Or I’ll notice a waitress has dropped her lottery ticket, pick it up for her, accept her invitation for a coffee during which she’ll check her numbers, realise she’s won the interstate jackpot, and give me half? Although that might be difficult to explain to Isabel.

  I wish Isabel had been able to come with me—she’d love it.

  When I reach the airport taxi rank, I shout ‘Taxi’ excitedly, even though it’s my taxi anyway. And when I get to the hotel, I can’t resist an ‘Any messages?’ Then a ‘No, okay, I’m expecting a call from Hillary Clinton’s people.’ But the receptionist is like, whatever. So I’m like, like I care. So he’s like, waddayougonnadoaboudit? So I’m like, talk to the hand, buddy. I love it.

  My room is on the fifty-third floor but the lift—sorry, elevator—only takes four seconds. This is all just brilliant, I’m thinking as I walk down the corridor to my room. I’m in New York. On assignment. And I’m going to go out and order the biggest hamburger in the whole of Manhattan. And gosh, I recognise that bottom and oh God, that’s because it belongs to Saskia.

  She Who Destroys Relationships.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ As well as being completely flabbergasted, I’m very angry, not because I have an anger-management issue but because there have been too many surprise turnings-up in the last couple of months.

  ‘Hello to you too.’

  ‘Yes hello, but what are you doing here? Are you following me?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, here you are in the room next to mine in New York a month after you miraculously turn up in the flat downstairs from me in Finsbury Park.’

  ‘I’m here for my best friend’s twenty-fifth.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  Her turn to look furious. ‘Anyway. As you may have noticed, this is my room, I arrived first and therefore you are following me. So what are you doing here? And why the hell would I follow you? Just because we had sex a million years ago, you automatically assume I’m some bunny-boiling maniac who’s decided the best way to spend my time is by following you around the world? You p
rick.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘But what? You think I’m so desperate? You think I don’t know you didn’t go to East bloody Timor to hunt for snake-eating orchids? Huh? You are a pathetic, snivelling bastard. You are a prick. A prick. A prick!’

  And with that, she slammed the door. Which would have been a perfect, perfect way to leave things. Saskia hating me; Isabel loving me: that’s absolutely the way it should be. Simply leave the DoR fuming safely in her room and go and order that enormous burger.

  Except she was right, I had been a prick. It wasn’t her fault she’d picked the flat I lived above. It wasn’t her fault we were both in the same hotel in New York. She’d been friendly, I’d been a prick.

  I went into my room and tried to admire the amazing view of Manhattan, but I couldn’t. I felt bad. It was a million years ago, the sex. She’s had lots of sex since then, all of it probably just as exciting, possibly even more so. And it was me that finished the whole thing. I cheated on my girlfriend. Then I finished with Saskia. All pretty callous.

  Of course she did phone Elizabeth and tell her everything.

  But that’s just the sort of girl she is: spontaneous, strong, good at getting what she wants. Back then, she wanted to get even. Now, she wants to be friends.