All She Wants

by Jonathan Harvey

  N.B. Now if I saw a half-eaten sandwich of his I’d be more likely to roll my eyes and moan about starving black babies in Africa before eating it myself. Which is exactly what I did on this particular morning as I lazily tidied up the flat.

  My broken leg had healed, and the promotions company who’d employed me were elated that I didn’t want to sue them for exposing me to dangerous puddles of olive oil.

  I plumped the cushions on the couch. Our special couch. The couch. It had been the one concession to this now being a love palace for two rather than a bachelor pad for one. It soon became obvious after I moved in that the couch was the centre of our universe. Nothing could beat snuggling up together after a long day, drinking wine and watching crap TV. Stuart’s original two-seater had been more practical than comfy and it had always been a tight squeeze for both of us. Our legs dangled off the side and once we’d found a position we were comfortable with we’d have to stick with it for the duration of the evening. One Saturday we went to Tottenham Court Road and spotted a huge big, lumpy, bumpy three-seater in Designer’s Guild fabric – turquoise and bright yellow check – which was reduced in the sale. Once we’d established it would fit into the flat through the various doorways from the street we stuck it on the joint – get us – credit card. It was huge. It looked more like a double bed than a sofa and, of course, it dwarfed the tiny living room. But we didn’t care. It was our couch. Now we could spend all the time in the world on it each evening, and daytimes at the weekend, and not only could we both fit on it side by side, there was plenty of spare room to fit plates of Hobnobs and other TV-centred snacks on it, too.

  As I straightened out the turquoise and yellow beauty that was the centre of our universe, I found some stray biscuit crumbs mushed between the cushions. Oh, this wouldn’t do. I would have to get the handheld Dustbuster and get to work.

  You see, Stuart isn’t like many other men. Stuart has a thing for cleanliness and hygiene. He doesn’t mind mess, as long as it’s clean mess, and he likes the cleaning done a certain way. I know this makes him sound a bit prissy and house-proud, but it’s not a girly, camp, gay thing, he’s more OCD about it than that, which I put down to his childhood. Stuart had spent a few years of his childhood in a local authority children’s home, which had been run like a boot camp. I always assumed children’s homes were like the ones I’d seen on the telly in dramas aimed at children, where everyone has a bit of a laugh, midnight feasts and treats their care workers like avuncular uncles or best mates. Not Stuart’s. His care worker ran the joint like an army barracks, forever doing spot checks and making the kids stand by their precision-made beds, practically saluting him as he ran a finger along the bedstead, checking for dust and measuring the angles of their eiderdowns with a protractor. The picture he painted of the place was one of isolation and loneliness. The few friendships he made never lasted long as new-found pals were often plucked to go and live with foster parents at the drop of a hat, so Stuart became wary of making friends.

  The reasons for him ending up in the care of the local authority were as Dickensian as they were complex. The shorthand version was that his mother walked out on his dad when Stuart was a toddler, then his dad hit the bottle, so Stuart went to live with an aunt who heard voices in her head. One day he walked in and found that she’d hung herself, possibly because the voices were telling to, so in the absence of a grown-up who could get their shit together enough to look after Stuart it was decided he’d be better off in a home. He didn’t open up much about this period of his life, understandably, but the memory was ever present, especially if I, or anyone in our company, told a funny story about growing up, or their family. Stuart’s inability to match like for like floated in the air like a Zeppelin, blocking out the light and thinning the atmosphere.

  When Stuart first told me about this I was going through the ‘cute sandwich’ stage, so I was more than a little moved. It made me like him even more, as every time I looked at him I didn’t see the macho man with the cropped hair in his plastering gear, I saw a lost little boy in a duffle coat and mismatching wellies with a label round his neck saying, ‘Please help’; the last evacuee that no one wanted to take in (sometimes I pictured him with a gas mask and ration book for good measure). But on days like today, when I approached each room with Stuarts ‘top down’ approach to cleaning – you start dusting at the highest level, say, a picture rail, and work your way down, then hoover etc. – I resented his upbringing and the way it manifested itself in his current behaviour. Don’t get me wrong, he didn’t march home from work and make me stand by my bed as he peered suspiciously at the skirting boards, but it was very clear that if the flat was anything other than spotless, he found it very hard to settle. Sometimes, if I’d neglected a stray corner of a room, he had been known to get the Dyson out and go over it again. He wasn’t always like this, some days he could be really relaxed and up for a laugh and not even notice the state the flat was in, but if he was feeling stressed, or things weren’t going well at work, he’d retreat to the comfort of attempting to control his environment. I spent a lot of time second guessing which mood he’d be in, so always erred on the side of caution and cleaned the place anyway. It wasn’t a sexist thing – if he’d been home more than me he’d willingly have tackled the dust on the ceiling fan himself – it was just the way he was. It had been conditioned into his DNA.

  The nights I liked best where when it didn’t seem to matter. He’d return, plastered in, well, plaster, drop his overalls on the bedroom floor, stick his jogging bottoms and a fresh T-shirt on and flop onto the sofa. I would then dive bomb on top of him, he’d zap the telly on and we’d cuddle up with a bottle of Pinot Grigio to watch the soaps, and then possibly a documentary on a cable channel about a fat person with a sibling or two growing inside them.

  But on the nights when it did matter, he’d tidy his overalls away and spend ten minutes in the shower. He’d then sit rather formally on the couch, like he was waiting for a job interview, and I’d see his eyes flitting round the room, anxiously looking for mucky spots or neglected cobwebs. Eventually his anxiety would shift onto me, as if by osmosis, and I’d join him in the eternal search for dirt.

  His hygiene obsession extended to the bedroom and ‘physical intimacy’. It was one thing cuddling on the couch after a long day and me inhaling his none-too-unpleasant man-musk, but we never went to bed without showering first, no matter how late it was. We might have been drinking till 5a.m., but if sex was on the cards, he’d say something like, ‘Bedtime, babes. I’m just gonna jump in the shower. Or d’you wanna go first?’

  I didn’t mind at all – it felt like old-fashioned courtesy and it touched me. A bit like he’d then touch me as soon as the lights were out and the duvet was over us. But if one of us wasn’t in the mood, the shower would be our way of communicating this.

  ‘Actually, I’ll just get into bed. I’m knackered . . .’ and so on.

  I sat on the couch and rested the Dustbuster in my lap. We’d not had bedtime showers for over two weeks now, even though my leg was better. Oh God, had it happened? Had the sexual magic gone out of our relationship? Surely this was normal after two years of living together. But then I remembered the last time we’d showered and then started fumbling about in bed. And for the first time in all the months (and years, and days) I’d known him, he’d not got an erection.

  I hate the word erection. It sounds so . . . industrial. And it’s not exactly a word you’d use every day.

  ‘Oh, you have an erection. How nice.’ Or, ‘Get me with my massive erection. Sort it out, babes.’

  When he’d not managed to get one, he didn’t exactly say, ‘Sorry I haven’t got an erection, Jodie, this is mortifying.’ Instead, we both ignored it for a while and just carried on kissing.

  After a while I could tell he was tiring and he just said, ‘Sorry, babes. Not really in the mood. Sorry, love.’

  To which I’d said, ‘Don’t be daft, we’ll just cuddle. I love cuddling you.’ />
  And he’d said, ‘Yeah, me too.’

  And we’d spooned till we’d fallen asleep.

  Since then, though, spooning was all we’d done.

  Now, in the clear light of day, and with two weeks having elapsed and the shower only being used each morning, I came to a pretty decisive conclusion: Stuart had gone off having sex with me. And, worst of all, I knew why. It was a fear I’d been fighting for a while now, but I had to face facts.

  Stuart was having an affair.

  I’d never voiced this suspicion before. Any time an insecurity had pinged its way into my head, I’d pinged it right back out again with a mighty thwack! But the pings and thwacks had worn me down and now I knew. I just knew. Before, the ping and thwack had been because I’d surmised, It’s just you. You think everyone’s having an affair because of what Our Joey and Greg did. You mustn’t tar everyone with the same brush. Some men are nice. Stuart’s nice. OK, so he is a bit weird with his cleaning thing, but at least he loves you.

  He did love me. He’d told me after we’d been together about five months. We’d gone to Brighton for the weekend to celebrate the slightly ridiculous anniversary, and on a moonlit stroll along the pebbly beach we’d giggled at some skinny-dippers, then he’d wrapped his arms around me and told me.

  OK, so I told him first and he said, ‘Me an’ all.’ But he was a bloke. Blokes never make the first move, I thought. And at least he’d said it and not backed off roaring, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, mad crazy lady alert!’ before running into the sea and drowning himself.

  To make sure he’d meant it and hadn’t just been high on wine, an Italian meal and the sight of naked swimmers, I’d double-checked the next morning as we lay in the discomfort of a B & B bed together.

  ‘Last night you said you loved me,’ I said lightly, with a chuckle in my voice. My subtext was, God I bet you’re mortified. How pissed were you?

  But he just shrugged, like it was nothing, as if he said it all the time, and went, ‘So? It’s the truth.’

  But now, sitting here on our couch, that felt like a very long time ago. I closed my eyes, wanting to block the whole thing out. But closing my eyes helped not one jot. With eyes shut I only had my imagination and my memories, lurid in the brightness of their detail.

  The phone started to ring. I opened my eyes and looked at it, convinced it was Stuart. He’d read my mind and was ringing to tell me it wasn’t true. I wholly believed this as I got up and walked towards it. I waivered. What if he was ringing to tell me the opposite? Sod it. I’d been here before. I could handle anything. I picked it up.

  ‘Hello?’

  There was a familiar but strange female voice on the other end.

  ‘Jodie?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s me. Amanda.’

  Amanda? How did she . . .

  ‘How d’you fancy doing a little play with me?’

  What?!

  NINETEEN

  ‘Jodie, you’re going mad. I am not having an affair,’ Stuart whispered urgently.

  ‘Whatever, Stu,’ I whispered back, not so urgently.

  ‘I am not your prick of an ex-husband.’ He was getting louder.

  ‘Well something’s going on and you’re not telling me.’ So was I.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You are, you’re being ridiculous.’ Back to the whispering.

  ‘So what’s with the no sex thing?’ Me too.

  ‘I’ve told you. I’m just not feeling very sexual at the moment.’

  ‘Bollocks, that’s the sort of thing women say. Blokes don’t say it. Blokes have one-track minds, and if it’s there on a plate they jump on it.’

  ‘Oh shut up, Jodie, you don’t half talk shit sometimes.’

  ‘Ah, so that’s why you’re having an affair. Because I talk shit? Well now we’re getting to the bottom of it.’

  ‘Jodie, do you really think this is the sort of discussion we should be having in a lift full of strangers?’

  I looked around the tiny lift. Four pairs of eyes darted away rapidly, not wanting to be seen to be eavesdropping.

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  I gasped. ‘It’s my opening night! I can be drunk if I want to!’

  When we arrived at our floor I stomped out and tried to lose him, attempting to make as grand an entrance as possible at our first night party.

  It was the opening night of my new play, Things My Mother Told Me, in which I was playing Claudie, a wise-cracking broad from the Bronx, while Amanda was playing her virginal sister Cissie. I got all the best lines, but Amanda got to have special needs: something that, she claimed, would get her noticed. Cissie’s back story was that she’d been raped by her uncle on a fishing trip in Utah, and had retreated into a childlike world where she felt no one or nothing could hurt her. Claudie, meanwhile, spent her life drinking whiskey and going to all-night parties, sleeping with men in cornfields and coming home with a bra full of corn on the cob. Truth be told, much as I had a laugh playing Claudie, I hated the play. It was very long at three hours ten minutes (including an interval), but the upside was I was only in three scenes which, fortunately, if the opening night audience was anything to go by, I stole.

  Amanda was onstage the whole time, crying for a lot of it, and she relished each second of her – as she see saw it – tour de force performance. She actually asked me in the interval, ‘D’you think any of the critics’ll say, “She puts the tour de force into performance”?’ I looked at her blankly, so she tried to explain. ‘Tour de performance?’

  I’d shaken my head and she’d looked hurt. ‘But only coz it sounds a bit shit,’ I’d reassured her. She’d looked appeased.

  The play was being performed in a tiny pub theatre in Camden. It had been funded by Amanda, cast by Amanda and the director was Amanda’s current boyfriend, Joshua Hammerstein, who I guessed might have been Jewish. Amanda had designed the set, the costumes and the poster, so tonight was Amanda’s night, and she wasn’t going to let us forget it. Following drinks in the pub after the show Amanda, in an attempt to bring a bit of glamour to the proceedings, had organized for us to have drinks in the fifth floor bar at Harvey Nichols.

  I saw her by the bar, throwing her head back and laughing in a manner that told me whoever she was talking to was someone important. A casting director, or an agent, or a producer. I wasn’t interested. All I wanted was a drink. I wanted to obliterate my row with Stuart in the lift and I didn’t care what I had as long as it hit the spot.

  A tiny Asian waiter was passing with a tray of champagne flutes, all tantalizingly full, so I swiped one from him with a wink that said, ‘Don’t mind me, dear, I was in the show,’ and took a big swig. Mmm, the bubbles tickled the back of my throat. God it was gorgeous. Good stuff, too. But when I looked back, the diminutive tray carrier was looking alarmed.

  ‘Sorry, Madame, that’s for table fourteen.’ And he indicated a table of very pissed-off-looking women in business suits in the corner.

  ‘Sorry?’ I gasped. What did he mean? This was the after-show party, wasn’t it?

  ‘Oh, Jodie, you absolute CARD!’ bellowed Amanda from the bar. ‘It’s not free drinks, darling. Come on, I’ll get you one if you’re brassic. Where’s that hunk of a spunk boyfriend of yours?’

  Oh bollocks. I looked around and realized that, despite the place being nose to nipple full, hardly any of these people had been in the pub beforehand.

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’ I smiled at the waiter and put the half drunk glass back on his tray.

  ‘Sorry, Madame, erm . . .’

  ‘Get your own fucking drink!’ shouted one of the women in business suits. I turned to her.

  ‘Sorry,’ Stuart intervened, putting his hand in the small of my back and grinning pathetically at the women on table fourteen. ‘I’ll pay for that, don’t you worry.’ And his macho-man cheeky-chappy grin won them over. ‘I’ll take this and get you ladies another one. Sorry about that.’

  Stuart handed my guilty glass back to me, then dragged me to the b
ar.

  ‘You wanna slow down, Jodie,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘You’re making a show of yourself.’

  ‘Don’t say Liverpool things in a cockney accent, it’s really unbecoming.’

  ‘And don’t channel your mother, it’s not a good look,’ he spat as he tried to get the barmaid’s attention. I pulled a face at him as he turned his back on me and saw Amanda leaning over.

  ‘That’s what we all need, darling. A knight in shining armour.’ She rubbed Stuart’s back lasciviously, adding, ‘Darling, there’s someone you simply have to meet.’

  She pushed Stuart out of the way so she could drag me to meet her barside pal. I recognized her immediately. There are only so many fierce black women who could wear a morello cherry poncho with leggings and lipstick to match, and get away with it.

  ‘Laveenia!’ I gasped.

  ‘Jodie, Jodie, Jodie!’ she said, shaking her be-bangled wrists at me, then dragging me in for a momma-bear hug.

  ‘You played a blinder there tonight, kid.’

  It was nice, resting my head in her bosoms. She felt maternal. And possibly because of that, my barriers went down. I relaxed. And as I did, I burst out crying.

  ‘Bottom line is, mate,’ said Laveenia, twirling her cigarette between her fingers like a mini baton. ‘If he’s dicking you around, you need evidence. No point shouting the odds unless you’ve got cold hard proof.’

  We’d come outside for a ciggie and were standing on the pavement, beside a window display showing a pyramid made out of gold lamé hotpants with a burning torch of artificial flames at the top. Quite what this represented, I had no idea, but that may have been because I was drunk. I must have been if I was smoking.

  ‘How do I do that?’ I asked lamely.

  ‘Behave yourself, keep your composure and watch the fucker like a hawk.’

  I nodded. Laveenia had a way about her that made me conform. She could have told me to stick my hand in the artificial flame on top of the pyramid and I would have smashed through the glass and done so.