Best Man

by Matt Dunn

  A few miles further on the traffic lessens, as does the ache in my shoulder from where she’s punched me. With a growl of relief the Impresser surges forward as I finally manage to change out of second gear, and we’re soon up to warp speed. As we drive, I tell Charlie about my conversation with Nick.

  ‘I think you can do better than Sandra?’ she repeats, incredulous at my lack of sensitivity. ‘And you’re surprised he reacted in the way he did?’

  ‘Maybe I’m getting it all wrong,’ I say, as if thinking out loud. ‘Perhaps I should just let him get on with it. Maybe I’m too close to it all. I need an independent opinion. Someone who doesn’t know either of them . . .’ I stop speaking and stare at the road ahead.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Charlie look at me and shake her head. ‘Okay,’ she sighs. ‘But it’ll cost you.’

  I grin back at her. ‘It’s a deal.’

  ‘I haven’t told you what I want yet,’ says Charlie, resting a hand on the top of my thigh, causing me to swerve slightly towards the central reservation. She removes her hand quickly. ‘But getting us to wherever we’re going in one piece would be a start.’

  By eight o’clock, we’re driving along Brighton seafront. I’ve told Charlie that I want to show her the town where I went to college, and this desire to share my past with her seems to have scored me several Brownie points. When we pull up outside the Grand Hotel, a name of which nowadays, judging by the faded exterior, only the ‘hotel’ half is actually true, her eyes light up. We’re met by the liveried doorman, who opens Charlie’s door and summons the porter for our luggage. The porter winces as he tries to lift her bags, making the same face as I did when I’d heard the price of the room.

  We check in, and follow the porter to our room. The interior is quite magnificent, although in an ever-so-slightly-tatty kind of way, and our room does have a sea view; but of course by now it’s too dark to see anything. The porter makes a great play of showing us the bathroom, which I’m sure we’d never have found without his expert guidance, and then hovers by the door. I reach in my pocket where I’ve previously made sure I had a couple of pound coins, and give them to him, at which point he finally passes over the key.

  Charlie starts to unpack, and I see her hanging up a very sexy little black dress, so I call down to reception and book dinner in the hotel restaurant for tomorrow night. We’re both a little peckish, so we decide to go for a walk along the seafront for fish and chips, or rather fish and chips for Charlie and something land-reared and chips for me, which we eat off little polystyrene trays with wooden chip forks. I make a face when Charlie smothers hers in salt and vinegar, but she has the last laugh when I spill ketchup down the front of my shirt while trying to open the little sachet with my teeth.

  It’s a beautiful sea-breezy evening, still quite warm, and we stroll along the seafront hand in hand, dodging the joggers, roller-skaters, and kids on those ridiculous small silver scooters. We walk along the pier, eating our chips and gazing out to the sea, framed by the noise and flashing lights of the amusement arcade. When we’ve finished, we go in and play one of those video games where you both have steering wheels and can race along the Grand Prix circuit side by side. I decide to let Charlie win, but then my male pride gets the better of me and I try to just pip her at the line, not reckoning on her last-minute turn of speed.

  Once Charlie eventually stops celebrating her victory, we find a quiet bench and sit, holding hands and staring back at the Brighton skyline, which is reflected off the ink-black sea. With a shudder that I barely manage to conceal, I realize that we’re right next to the spot from where I threw the ring, just a few short years ago, although right now it seems like a lifetime away. I realize that I’m experiencing a strange mix of emotions, which seems to be contentment and excitement at the same time, and I’m trying to work out how this can be when Charlie suddenly breaks the silence.

  ‘Adam,’ she says, and immediately I know there’s a big issue coming. People never start a question with your name unless they want a serious answer.

  ‘Yup?’

  ‘Do you want children? Eventually. A family?’

  Now this is a conversation I’ve had before. Many times, actually. And in my head, it always goes something like this:

  Them: ‘Do you want kids?’

  Me: ‘No, I’ll never be able to be a father, actually.’

  Them, sympathetically: ‘Oh dear. Why not?’

  Me: ‘Because I’m too selfish.’

  It’s not that I don’t like kids, you understand. It’s just that I don’t know what to do with them, particularly if they’re babies or toddlers. Once they reach their teens I’m a little more comfortable – they can either start to have proper conversations and are more interested in adult-type things, or they’re not interested in talking or doing anything at all, which also suits me fine.

  I’m the sort of person to whom people learn not to hand their newborn babies. I look so awkward trying to carry the things and just about know which way up to hold them. Whilst someone else might be happy to make faces, and play aeroplanes, and do all those ridiculous things you see people do with babies, my only concern is to not be the one who drops it, which I’m pretty sure would be a bad thing to do. So whilst I haven’t completely ruled out the possibility of being a father sometime later in life, my answer now, if you pressed me, would be a resounding no. Probably.

  But what do I say to Charlie, on this lovely spring evening, sat here on the pier, hand in hand? How do I give an answer that combines vagueness with an appreciation of the complexities of the human reproductive urge, the ever changing direction that one’s life takes, the desire to extend one’s dynasty through the ages? How can I deflect the line of questioning whilst leaving the door open for further debate at a future moment in time?

  I’ve got it. ‘Don’t know,’ I say. ‘You?’

  She ignores my skilful conversational parry, and when she doesn’t answer, I look across at her. She’s staring up at the sky, and I think I can see a tear welling.

  ‘Why not?’ she asks, eventually.

  ‘Er, I think I’d be lousy at it,’ I say, which I know is a better answer than the ‘I’m too selfish’ one. Charlie tries to reassure me, but then she hasn’t seen me with India yet.

  ‘How about you?’ I ask, again.

  Charlie lets go of my hand, and there are definite tears in her eyes now. ‘I can’t,’ she sniffs, as the tears start their journey downwards.

  Now, I can’t handle women crying, and usually go to extreme lengths to avoid witnessing this spectacle. Usually these lengths have involved use of the telephone, rather than face to face situations, for the imparting of bad news (‘you’re dumped’) or discussion of sensitive issues (‘why you are dumped’). But here, tonight, I have Charlie sat right in front of me, eyes leaking like a faulty tap, and it’s melting me inside.

  I pass her a napkin, which I pinched from the chip shop earlier. ‘Why not?’ I say, stupidly. ‘Don’t you like kids?’

  ‘I love them, you idiot,’ she says, between sobs. ‘I can’t have them. Physically, I mean. I had an illness when I was a kid and they had to operate, and it means I was okay, but I’ll probably never be able to get pregnant . . .’

  Charlie stops speaking but keeps staring at me, and I realize that this is what she was about to say when we were talking about her engagement. This is why they broke up. Because she couldn’t have children.

  ‘It’s a big deal for . . . some people.’ She sniffs. ‘And I just wanted to tell you before we, if we . . .’ she blinks away her tears for a moment ‘. . . got serious.’

  My initial thought is ‘Yes!’, both at the prospect of getting serious with Charlie and, admittedly, at the thought of maybe not having children, but I manage to stop myself from jumping up from the bench and punching the air. I can tell that, given the way she’s looking at me, what I say next is probably the most important thing I’ve had to say to Charlie since I’ve known her. Relationships are
made and lost on moments like this. All I need is one killer line to demonstrate my sensitive side, showing that I can be both strong and caring. Here it comes . . .

  ‘Well, we could always adopt.’

  We? We?! What was I thinking? And adoption? Talk about bulldozing over her problem. I brace myself for her reaction, but instead she leans across and gives me a long, albeit slightly snotty, kiss.

  ‘Yes, I suppose we could,’ she says, smiling as she wipes her eyes. I just hold her, tightly, and the moment passes.

  We head back to the hotel at eleven, and the bar’s still open, so we go in and order a couple of brandies, taking them over to the large leather armchairs in front of the fireplace, which is lit despite the mild evening. Charlie decides she’d like a coffee to go with her brandy, and calls the waiter over, asking me if I’d like one too.

  ‘Are you sure they won’t stop us from sleeping?’ I ask innocently, as the waiter hovers.

  ‘I’m not planning on sleeping,’ she replies, levelly. The waiter coughs and goes off to make the drinks, bringing them back with a grin a few minutes later.

  We stare at the flames, not saying much, sipping our slightly-too-hot coffee. Eventually, Charlie finishes hers and looks at me. She picks up her brandy glass, swishes the golden liquid around a couple of times and then drains it in one gulp.

  ‘Come on, lover boy!’ she says, standing up and taking me by the hand. ‘Bedtime!’

  We have the lift to ourselves, but there’s not that many floors to go so instead we hurry along to the room. I fumble with the key, and once inside we make for the bed and kiss for a while, until I pull away reluctantly.

  ‘Wait a sec,’ I say, getting up and heading towards the bathroom. ‘I need to, you know, put something on.’

  Charlie grins. ‘What – like the radio?’

  But when I emerge from the bathroom a couple of moments later, it’s with a look of disbelief. ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ I tell her. ‘I forgot to bring any condoms.’

  Charlie looks up at me breathlessly from where she’s lying. ‘That doesn’t matter. Remember, I’m hardly likely to get pregnant, am I?’ she says, and I worry for a moment that she might start crying again with this subject raised. Fortunately she’s more interested in raising something else.

  I can’t recall the last time I had sex without using a condom. In fact, I can’t remember ever having had sex without a condom. I’ve usually been so worried about unwanted pregnancies that I’ve always been extra careful, and bought the thickest, most unbreakable brand you can find. I don’t go with these people who use all sorts of other methods: withdrawal, time of cycle, or even the pill. In my view, unprotected sex is like playing Russian Roulette with an automatic pistol. Every shot is live – it’s just whether you’re aiming at the target when the gun goes off.

  It takes me just a couple of minutes – an embarrassingly quick couple of minutes – to realize that, for all these years, sex with a condom has been the equivalent (not that I’ve ever actually done it) of feeling somebody up wearing rubber gloves. But fortunately the novelty factor is so, well, stimulating that it’s not long until I’m able to try again. As we eventually drift off to sleep, I find myself thinking that we might see precious little of Brighton this weekend.

  Breakfast is served until ten a.m., so we get there at around five minutes to. I’m sure hotel staff all over the world hate those people who come down just before the breakfast session ends and then linger for a hour in the room over their toast and coffee. I order my favourite full English breakfast, without fish or tomato, and Charlie has kippers. Fortunately, she doesn’t ask me to try them. After breakfast Charlie decides she wants to buy a new pair of shoes, and when she asks me whether I’d mind coming with her I don’t have to think twice.

  I love shopping with women, not least because it gives me a legitimate reason to hang around various women’s clothes shops and leer at the assistants. Plus, I’m perversely fascinated by the differences in the male and female approach to shopping.

  A woman, for example, will buy anything if it’s on offer, even if she doesn’t need it, whereas a man will pay whatever he has to if it’s for something he wants. If, on the other hand, a woman is looking for something specific, then, conversely, this brings in something called the uncertainty quotient. She might be shopping for, say, a pair of shoes, but whilst out may suddenly decide to get a skirt to go with them. She may have chosen the shoes, been quite happy with her selection, but she won’t buy them yet, or, if she does, keeps the receipt handy, because she: a) might find the exact skirt to go with them, but this is of course most rare and unlikely; b) might find a skirt she likes that doesn’t go with the shoes she’s bought, and therefore will buy the skirt but then need to exchange the shoes, or indeed find another pair; c) might find another pair of shoes she likes better anyway on the way to buy the skirt; or d) confuses herself so much that she ends up buying nothing. A man, on the other hand, may be looking for, say, a blue shirt, and might be happy to spend, for example, fifty pounds. The first shirt he finds that fits, is blue and costs around fifty pounds, he’ll buy.

  If you’re shopping with a girlfriend, there are a number of cardinal rules that apply. Firstly, and it is probably blindingly obvious, but when you’re asked for your opinion, they NEVER, I repeat, NEVER, look fat. Secondly, if they show an iota of preference for one item when comparing two things which, to you, look identical, agree with them whole-heartedly. Believe me, it saves an awful lot of time.

  You’ll also never want her to actually buy anything revealing. Nothing she wore that attracted you when you originally saw her will you ever want her to wear again, particularly if she’s going out without you. There’s no way you want her to be leched at by other men like you do at other women out with their boyfriends. The bottom line is this: Men don’t notice what a woman is wearing – just how little.

  We end up spending the whole day strolling around the shops, pausing for lunch in a little café in The Lanes, that warren of old streets in the centre of the town. We visit probably every shop in Brighton that sells shoes, some of them more than once. By late afternoon, when it’s me who’s in need of some new shoes to replace the ones I’ve worn out, Charlie has narrowed her choice down to two pairs, but can’t decide between them. I can’t tell the difference, and when I suggest that she buy both Charlie looks at me as if the idea is preposterous. True to form, she ends up buying neither.

  Eventually we head back to the hotel and get changed for dinner, which takes longer than expected, as we’re still in that early phase of the relationship where any incidence of joint undressing develops into something else. We’re twenty minutes late by the time we get to our table in the hotel’s posh restaurant, but the waiter doesn’t seem to mind, and Charlie looks fabulous, which, on reflection, is possibly why the waiter doesn’t seem to mind. I’m wearing a suit and tie, which is unusual for me, and as I catch sight of the two of us in the mirrored hallway I’m struck by what a good-looking couple we are. I don’t mean that we’re both attractive people, more that we look good together.

  It’s one of those traditional restaurants where the menu Charlie gets doesn’t have any prices on it. We have a gin and tonic while we choose, share a bottle of wine with our food, and then cognac to finish, and by the time we’re ready to go I’m feeling a little lightheaded.

  We’re on our way to the bar when we hear music coming from somewhere beneath us, and follow the sounds to the nightclub in the hotel’s basement, where Charlie decides she’d like a dance.

  I’m not a great fan of dancing. In my opinion, there are only four reasons to go out to a nightclub. One, you’re a student and aged under twenty-two. Two, you’re aged between twenty-two and thirty and have run out of drugs. Three, you’re a professional dancer and need to practise. Four, you’re in a group of lads so drunk that you think a club is a mystical place where women will find your beer-fuelled dancing so sexy that they’ll all want to take you home.

&nb
sp; But if you can’t avoid it, never enter a club sober. You’ll be self-conscious of your dancing, you’ll resent the prices you have to pay for drinks, which you’ll put down somewhere only to find them gone when you try and locate them again, and you certainly won’t like the music, which will be so loud that any hopes you have of conducting any type of conversation will be drowned out completely.

  My deliberations are cut short as Charlie drags me by the hand through the door and straight on to the dance floor. Standing there, slightly drunk, I suddenly realize that I’ve forgotten how to dance. It’s debatable whether I ever knew anything more than the standard left step feet together right step feet together move that most guys get away with, but I thought I had a little more rhythm than this. However, here I am, on the dance floor with Charlie, the DJ is doing his best to get everyone moving with a selection of seventies and eighties numbers, and I’m suddenly feeling so awkward and uncoordinated that I have this overwhelming urge to sit down.

  If you’re a man, chances are no one has ever taught you how to dance properly. You’ve either got it or you haven’t, and as I look around me I suddenly think there might be a market opportunity here, one that I must discuss with Mark, as it’s plainly obvious that most of the men here, including me, haven’t. When you’re a kid you dance a certain way, and then you become a teenager and you dance in a different way, and then when you’re an adult you seem to lose all coordination and dance like one of those Thunderbirds puppets.

  Surely people would pay to learn the proper, or rather, appropriate moves? When you’re slow dancing, for example, and you’ve finally managed to convince a member of the opposite sex to sway unsteadily around the floor with you, think how much better it would be if someone had told you beforehand that you shouldn’t be singing along to ‘Lady In Red’ into her ear. At the other end of the scale, Nick and I hadn’t dared ‘dance’ at the Uzi Street concert – instead, we’d looked on in amazement as most of 2-Tuf’s moves made him look like he was ruffling the hair of two small boys.