Cyber Cinderella

by Christina Hopkinson

  “That was Jonny. Just flying in from the Gulf on his way to Korea or something. Now that’s journalism, don’t you agree?”

  George snorted. “The features desk is the new foreign desk. Hasn’t he realized that? Nobody cares about newspaper foreign reports in the age of CNN,” he said, mummifying himself further in the Egyptian cotton bed linen. “Make it a family-size bottle would you, my poppet.”

  “Big night?”

  “Hardly,” he said.

  *

  At the appointed venue I saw him. He probably did look very dashing at some foreign press club, but here in a London coffee shop he just looked unfashionable. Living abroad for the past decade had contrived to make sure that his wardrobe was preserved in aspic as that of the generic media man circa 1993—black-zipped, mildly blouson leather jacket, chinos, a pale blue denim-appearance shirt and desert boots. This period piece was topped by a floppy fringe that would have been replaced by a number one crop had he been living in London, especially given the state of his hair recession. Two competing entrances of fore-head tunneled into his crown. These A-roads were perilously close to meeting and becoming a great big divided highway of baldness across his pate.

  The Foreign Correspondent had once said that his eyes had seen too much destruction. I don’t know about that, but his skin had seen too much sun. He had the mottled look of a junk-store mirror, as the boyish freckles became full-blown liver spots.

  I continued my snapshot full-frontal attack on his appearance. I had to before we spoke; it made me feel better. It was always the same routine on meeting the brave war reporter: shock at his appearance, awe at his glamour. His personality would make you forget the reality of his face and force you to believe that he was every bit as handsome and airbrushed as the byline photograph beneath his articles on the horrors of war.

  His teeth were bad, yellowing and withering, with gums eroding like chalk face. I knew this from having studied them before, not from looking at them anew. Today I couldn’t muse on his molars because a surgical mask covered his mouth and nose.

  “What on earth are you wearing that for?” I asked by way of a greeting.

  He glanced around the coffee room and then leaned forward. “Don’t tell anyone this, classified info, but there’s a virulent virus that’s going to explode in Europe. Of course, you may survive it, but I won’t have your Western immunity. I’d sooner jump in a pool full of lepers than walk around London with my mask off.”

  “I thought these diseases all came from the East, not here?” I said, remembering the last really-severe-terrible-chronic syndrome to have infectiously spread through the newspapers’ health pages and plagued their leader columns.

  “That’s what they tell you,” he said knowingly.

  “You’re such a scaredy-pants,” I said and sat down, watching his mask stain yellow as he puffed a tab through it, like that school experiment when we had to examine the nicotine left on a tissue by a mechanically smoked cigarette. He kissed me on the cheek, again with mask intact. It was really rather touching, like we were in one of those pioneering HIV films. “You always have been.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you’d been there at the fall of Kabul,” he replied.

  I had never been able to reconcile Jonny’s swinging-dick professionalism with his cowardy-custard demeanor. He once refused to go for a walk with me as it was drizzling and he had failed to bring any waterproofs. Forget those men who claim to have flu when they’ve only a cold—with Jonny it was SARS or pneumonia that was causing his nose to dribble. His paranoia extended to contraception over the two years we’d had sex together whenever he stopped over in London and slept over in my bed. It had been hard to enjoy sex while he wore a condom and I wore a diaphram. He used to try to withdraw on time too, just to make certain. How could someone so internationally brave be such a domestic wuss?

  “It must have been amazing,” I said on cue. “Is the paper pleased with your coverage at the moment? I’m not quite sure where you are right now, though.”

  “Journalist of the world. I presume the powers-that-be at the paper are pleased. I felt like I colonized a small corner of the foreign pages and I got a few congratulatory e-mails from the editor. The owner knows who I am, too, especially now that I’ve been nominated for Foreign Correspondent of the Year. Fifth time running, actually.”

  “That’s brilliant.”

  “Sorry?”

  “That’s brilliant,” I shouted.

  “You’ll have to enunciate, I’m afraid. Bullet whistled this far from my ear. Gone deaf, you know.” Cue much exaggerated cupping of the good one. “The bullet actually whistled. That’s not a figure of speech. Bullets whistle.”

  “Like milkmen.”

  He chortled and showed me photos of himself in his new state-of-the-art bulletproof ensemble, which made him look like one of those evil riot cops who batter anti-capitalist protesters at G8 summits. I said “wow” a lot.

  I had slept with him on and off for all that time, despite the lack of pleasure involved in the layering of contraception and the fact that our relationship would never go anywhere while he was traveling to everywhere. I had been a stationary point while he had moved around me, yet he had been the sun and my life had revolved around his. The sex wasn’t great, the emotional succor was nonexistent, he wasn’t an Adonis, and yet I had never questioned why I had been prepared to put up with being somebody’s fly-by lay, his woman of the connecting-flight night.

  “It might sound really brave, Izobel, but when you’re out there, you just don’t stop to think. I knew I had to go out and get the story and cop whatever was thrown in my direction.”

  Jonny never looked so pleased as when there were rumors of a good old war about to start.

  “You just do what you have to do, really.”

  “Well done. If you die, though, whose fault is that?”

  “The fault of these damn conflicts,” he sighed. “It makes me weep to see small children with their legs blown off. And if we have to die to show the world their plight, then we do it in their service. I’m starving.” He looked around. “Is bacon all right to eat in Britain these days? Are pigs affected by foot and mouth? Maybe I’d better just have some crisps.”

  “We do the PR for that brand,” I said pointing to the misshapen crisps. “They really do hand-slice the potatoes. But the tomatoes are oven- rather than sun-dried.” It was hard for me to compete with his tales of derring-do. He spent his life flying from war zone to war zone; I traveled by London Underground from zone one to zone two.

  “How is the wacky world of PR?” he asked.

  “Great, fine.” I’d always accuse Jonny of not being interested in me, but whenever he did ask me a question I’d find it hard to answer in anything other than monosyllables.

  I wanted to say, Do you know I’m a somebody? A somebody with a tribute site and my very own cyber-stalker. There’s someone obsessed with me. What do you think about that? You might have seen fighting in Kosovo, but you haven’t got your own site, have you? Well, have you?

  But I didn’t.

  “And life with George?” he continued.

  “Fine, great.”

  “I’ve been thinking.” He looked soulfully out into the socially layered streets of Paddington. “There’s nothing like hearing the cries of an injured infant against the relentless baseline of nearby bombs to make you think. In Basra, I saw a man lose his whole family. He wept for them and not for the loss of his whole town. What’s it all about?”

  I made to answer, but it was rhetorical.

  “That’s what it’s about. It’s about family. It’s about having children. Do you want to have children, Izobel?”

  Was he asking me if I wanted children in general or his children? “Maggie’s having a baby, did I tell you that? Makes me think, yes, I do want children, a baby, I suppose, one day. I feel like I’m still a bit immature for it, though, that I’d be a gymslip mother and everyone would look at me and say, ‘What’s that child
doing with a child?’ and then I remember that I’m in my thirties.”

  “Yes, you are. And I am two years older than you.”

  “You always were.” We grew up together, which meant that he was forever imbued with the glamour of the older boy. It also ensured that my mother could rebuke me on Sundays by sighing over the newspapers and saying, “Let’s see what our successful friend Jonny’s up to this week, shall we?”

  “We’re neither of us teenagers, then.” Except we always were. With him I would always be doing my exams and seeking advice from the worldly boy-next-door about which A levels to choose and what university to put down on my university application form.

  “You especially,” he said. “I was reading an article on the way here about how fertility plummets at twenty-five, not at thirty-five as previously thought. There were lots of quotes from weeping women who’d mistakenly put their career before caring.”

  “Why are they always ‘career women’?” I asked. “Why not just ‘women with jobs’?”

  “Izzi, Izzi, Izzi. All teenage girls think they won’t be the ones to get pregnant and all thirty-something women think they won’t be the ones to fail to get pregnant.” He shook his head. “You’re not getting any younger.”

  “Nobody is,” I replied. Two can play self-evident clichés.

  “Least of all George.”

  That was true. He was pickling away at an even faster rate than Jonny. The only part of him to defy his age was his cock. That was adolescently priapic, as if he had a portrait of the real thing, Dorian Gray–style, in the attic, as impotent and creaky as befitted a man who drank as much as he did. I felt a vague twinge between my legs to think of it. George had always been my sexual spirit level; Jonny had mere glamour, success and a year-round tan.

  “Yes, George is pretty ancient. That’s the glory of going out with a man ten years older than you. You’ll always be a young thing.”

  “Don’t you think you ought to be with someone you can have children with?” Jonny asked.

  “I can. I mean, George has got a proven track record, hasn’t he? In Grace? None of us have.” As George was fond of reminding me.

  “I mean, someone you can have children with on an emotional level?”

  I felt my face stipple in shades of pink, like a wall painted with tester colors called Tuscan Blush and Dawn Fuchsia. I’d day-dreamed about such a conversation for so long, except in my reveries Jonny would want to marry me and then would whisk me off to a crumbling colonial flat in a far-flung city to drink gin and tonics and help local children learn to read.

  I gulped. “Maybe.”

  “I want to have children, Izobel. Bar girls are all good fun, but not for settling down with.”

  He sighed and gave a thoughtful nod that suggested to me that his next move would be television. “I want a baby. I was thinking about adopting an Iraqi orphan. There were some very adorable ones, with all their limbs and everything, but who would look after it?” He gave a self-deprecating laugh and his surgical mask billowed like a spinnaker. “You’ve read the evolutionary psychology, I want to propagate my own genes.” Again that rueful self-mocking. “Terribly egotistical I dare say, but a male instinct.”

  He was broody; I was his brood mare. Was this what he was suggesting? “It’s funny,” I said, though not in the remotest sense amused, “how much more broody the men I know are than the women. George wants another one, too, despite already having Grace. He wants a boy this time.”

  “Don’t have a baby with George.” He grabbed my hand; evidently the deadly European virus wasn’t transferable through skin-to-skin contact. “I’ve seen life and I’ve seen death, Izobel, and I want to create life. Create life with me. You could live in your flat with the baby and I could try to spend more time over here. You do own your flat, don’t you? I’d support you both, well, contribute obviously, and come over as often as I could. I expect you’d like to continue with your career, but you could visit me too.”

  “You want me to be your incubator.”

  “No, no, Izobel, the mother of my child. The mother of our child. And what are we in this world without children? Nothing, nothing I tell you.” He really was much better-looking in his byline photo—that was his equivalent to George’s preternaturally youthful cock.

  “And then you want me to be your unpaid childminder while you swan around the world?” I said.

  “No, of course not. We’d be parents together. Think of me as like someone who works on the oil rigs. My work takes me away for intense stretches, but when I’m back I’ll be totally committed to our child. I’ll be the best goddamned father in the world.”

  “But that’s just it, isn’t it, Jonny? You’ll be in the world and old baby-mother here will be stuck holding the rug rat.”

  “I’m shocked,” he said, though his employers had dubbed him the Man Who Cannot Be Shocked. “That you should look upon the greatest job a woman can do with such vilification. Your life is so amazingly complete already, is it? That having a baby would distract you from your glittering career and your wholesome relationships?”

  I ignored his assault. Didn’t he realize that some might say I was cutting a swath through the capital’s PR industry? “And how are we going to conceive anyway? You never did like sex without triple protection.”

  “You can have all the tests. I’ve thought of that.”

  “You are very thoughtful.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I was being sarcastic.”

  “Oh.”

  There was a momentary lull in the conversation. He, I guessed, would be wondering whether I was stable and giving enough to be the mother of his child. I was thinking, What a prat. What a selfish arse. What a solipsistic git. How could I have wasted the creativity of my daydreaming on such a prick? Why did I fancy men with glamorous jobs when the glamour of their jobs means they’re either going to be working away or playing away? I asked myself many questions, but not one of them was “Do I want to have this man’s child?” I did want to have a child, I realized it at that moment; I wanted one very much at some still-distant point in my life. But I wanted to have one with an equal partner. The prospective men in my life contrived to be both simultaneously superior and inferior.

  “No, Jonny. Kind as your offer is, I don’t think I’ll be taking it up. Sorry, I’ve got to go now.” I stood up, sucking my stomach in and sticking my chest out at the man in the white surgical mask. “Good to see you, though. Best of luck with everything. Hope you find some other mother.”

  “I’m sure I shall.”

  As I swung out, it occurred to be that I hadn’t interrogated him as the potential father of my site. I turned back and shouted, “You never did know anything about me.” He looked confused. “You never even noticed that I’ve got six toes?”

  “Not ten?”

  “Six toes on one foot, eleven in all. Everybody knows that about me and you never even cared. It defines me and my whole outlook on life. You cannot describe me without this one fact.” With that I stomped each of my five-toed feet and walked out on him.

  And then I thought, He’s not my site perp. I wondered why I had bothered to use up one of my lies on him. He’s yet another of the men in my life who don’t care enough to have to take the trouble. He cares enough to procreate, but not to want to create something in my honor.

  *

  George had wriggled from bed to daybed and was watching a

  black-and-white film.

  “Jonny was a bit odd,” I said.

  George grunted.

  “He’s going through some sort of life change.”

  “Probably realizes that he’s not Graham Greene after all.”

  “Yes, probably.” I paused. “He wants to have children.”

  George chuckled. “Don’t they all, these fey little boys of yours. But none of them have managed it, have they? He might be able to go swanning off around the world making money from misery, but he can’t find some woman gullible enough to have hi
s children. There’s not going to be a lot of your lot’s genes knocking around in years to come. I expect I’ll be a grandfather by the time one of them shoots in range.”

  “It’s not that big an achievement, you know. Having a child. Any pig-stupid fifteen-year-old can have a baby.”

  “Well, I don’t see any of your friends managing it.”

  “How about Maggie and Mick for starters.”

  “Maggie this, Maggie that, Maggie likes my site, Maggie, Maggie, Maggie,” he sneered. “You’d have children with her if you could. Are you going to the kitchen, sweetheart?” He shook his glass. “There is nothing in this world that’s better than the love of a child, than Grace’s and my love for each other. You don’t know the meaning of love until you have children. Until then you’re nothing. When you see your baby for the first time and she wraps her tiny hands around your finger, then it’s you that’s born, not them.”

  Blah, blah, blah, I’d heard it all before. I topped up his glass in the kitchen and wondered, if it were men who got pregnant, whether George would have been able to stop drinking for nine months.

  “Come here, sweetheart.” George made a small bit of space for me on the daybed and kissed the top of my head between drags of his cigarette. “Do you want a little baby boy then? Shall we make babies right now?”

  Two men in one day, I thought.

  “We could have a lovely little boy, a chip off the old block.”

  “Why a boy?”

  “Because of Grace. I want a boy with my brains, this time.” Not, I thought, a girl with my looks. The beautiful Catherine had bestowed hers on his firstborn.

  “I see, and if it’s not a boy, you’ll bellow furiously about not getting your boy-child like some latter-day Henry the Eighth. ‘Where’s my son and heir?’ you’ll shout down the corridors of your castle and keep.”

  George laughed.

  “Except he’d hardly be an heir, would he?” I went on. “Heir to a nice collection of expensive suits and not a lot else.” I stood up and surveyed our cramped living quarters, where George’s personality was the only expansive thing. “I can’t live like this any longer. We can’t have a child. You can’t have a child. My life doesn’t rock. It’s rubbish.”