I jog to Philippa’s. It was only going to be another long bath and book night again. And this book is making me feel a little maudlin because the girl getting married has a lovely dad. He’s not only paying for everything, champagne, canapés, beef Wellington, love birds being released on the lawn of the stately home, but he’s written a poem that he wants to read at the picturesque village church as well. And he’s always hugging her. That’s the bit that makes me feel most maudlin, the fact that she has a dad who wants to hug her. Still, I think her husband-to-be has been copping off with her bridesmaid, so you clearly can’t have it all.
Chapter 19
I don’t mind looking after this child. I love playing with children. Come to think about it, it’s the playing I like. I’m not so bothered about the child.
‘Can I get the paints out?’ I call, diving into the cupboard under the stairs as soon as I arrive.
‘Oh, yeah, good idea.’
‘Cool. Oooh, we can play the monster game.’ I’m already armed with paints and paper, stalking through the house to the back garden.
‘Now, I’m jealous.’
Philippa and I do painting and play the monster game not to entertain children but to entertain ourselves. It’s not something we tend to tell people though. The only difference between ourselves and seven-year-olds is that whenever we paint or play monsters in the garden we are heavily armed with Pimm’s and lemonade. Like most of our activities, these were born from a desire to dress in a certain way. We found two Toulouse-Lautrec-style shirts in a charity shop one day, and we’ve never been able to resist two of anything in a charity shop ever since we saw two identical wetsuits in Oxfam, wore them out on New Year and had one of our best nights ever. Once we’d purchased our painting outfits we bought some cheap paints, a big pad of art paper and we got drunk in the garden while we both tried to paint a tree. Our trees were rubbish, so we turned them into monsters, then we tried to paint the house and those paintings became monsters too. By the time we’d got through the entire bottle of Pimm’s we’d hidden our pictures in the garden, made hats out of colanders and were scouring the garden trying to find the monsters.
‘Grab the colanders and the string, will you?’ I holler as we walk through the kitchen into the garden.
I place the painting gear on the outside table and go straight to the big horse chestnut tree, the one we couldn’t paint, and pull some leaves from it. It’s very important to camouflage the colander hats, all you do is secure the leaves to the colander with string.
‘Here you go,’ Philippa says, bringing me the colanders and string. ‘I better go in so I can hear the door. I’ll bring the little terror out. Thanks for this, Fan.’
‘No worries, I’m shamefully excited.’
I set to work. I wish I’d known I’d be doing this, it would have been nice to wear my green army outfit. I put my camouflaged colander helmet on my head and practise my monster-fighting pose, which for some reason is legs quite wide apart, knees bent and bottom sticking out. I am a monster-fighting hobbit.
‘Fan! This is…’
I hold my arms up to defend myself, when you are fighting monsters you can’t trust anyone, and turn round. I’m Mary Poppins. The child will love me.
‘Hello, again.’
A little bit of me withers inside, I think it might be my pride. Because this isn’t the sweet innocent squeak of a small boy. It’s the gravelly, rich beautiful sound of Joe King. He is wearing his skinny jeans, biker boots and a grey hoodie. He’s carrying a guitar and he looks perfect. I am in my sweaty running gear with a colander on my head. I look mental.
‘This is Philip Hall’s nephew,’ Philippa tells me, and something in her expression reminds me that I’m still standing like a hobbit.
‘Sorry?’ I say, standing up and trying to assume a more sophisticated stance.
‘Philip’s nephew. The writer I’m going to interview, this is his…’
‘We were expecting you to be, um, under ten.’
He smiles.
‘I made you a hat.’
‘And I shall wear it with pride.’
‘Right, I’ll leave you two out here then. Fan will get you anything you want.’
She walks back into the house.
‘Can I get you anything?’
He’s put on his colander hat.
‘What do you reckon?’
‘Suits you, sir.’
It does too.
‘I’ll never take it off.’
‘I think it’s a look that should be explored in the music industry.’
‘Excellent. I’ve found my niche.’
‘Niche. Such a good word.’
‘I missed you after the gig on Saturday. I hoped you’d stay.’
‘You were amazing.’
You were amazing!
‘I’ve got a confession. Phil said someone called Philippa was interviewing him and I wondered whether it might be your friend. So I thought I could tag along and ask Philippa for your number. I can’t believe I told you that, my elaborate plan. And I can’t believe it worked out so well. I think I might be a genius.’
I’m very aware that I’m not breathing how I normally breathe. I feel as though I’m shaking inside, as though I could cry but not necessarily in a bad way. As though they’d be tears of joy and they’d be cathartic, wiping everything away to make way for something new. And I’m pretty sure brides-to-be aren’t supposed to feel this way about other men.
‘What do you want to do? As your babysitter, I need to make sure you’re entertained.’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘No, you choose.’
‘I think I’d like to do whatever you want to do.’
‘What if I want to play monsters?’
‘Then monsters it is.’
‘Actually. The thing with the monster game is it really only works if you’re completely sozzled.’
‘I wish I’d had a babysitter like you when I was a kid.’
‘I think what I’d quite like to do is lie on my back on the grass and drink beer. I had quite a long run before I got here. What do you want to do?’
‘Lie on my back on the grass and drink beer. With you.’
I go into the kitchen and pull two beers from Philippa’s fridge. It’s only the third time Joe King and I have met. Why am I comparing it with the third time I met Matt? Well, Jenny Taylor, you’re comparing it because you’re feeling so much more now than you did when you met Matt for the third time. Perhaps I’m feeling more for Joe King than I’ve ever felt for Matt. No. No. I must have felt something. Mustn’t I? Well, of course I did, it just wasn’t this physical, this magical, or this terrifying. No way near. I keep my face in the fridge for a while, I’m feeling very flushed.
The third time Matt and I met I was in a foul mood and covered in water. It was just after the bad floods in Pakistan a few years back. I wasn’t wet from the flooding though. Philippa and I had had a big night at Bomber the night before and were both premenstrual and we saw a news report about it and got through a whole box of tissues because children were dying and people were fleeing their homes – we agreed we needed to do something about it. It was a nice day so we decided to clean cars in our local supermarket car park to raise money for the relief fund. We can get fit, get a tan and do some good. It seemed a no brainer of a good deed. It turned out not to be entirely legal and ended in the police station but, anyway, back to the story. So we set off in our shorts and T-shirts, black, we weren’t that silly, with our mops and buckets and we started cleaning people’s cars. Oh, it was ghastly. People expected them to be really spotlessly clean. One woman refused to pay more than £2 as she said it was only a £2 job. It was for charity, the cheek. Besides that, our arms were killing, and we didn’t have a hose, so one of us was lugging two buckets of water at a time while the other cleaned. We were very slow and people were returning from their shopping and we hadn’t even started on their car. It marginally improved when Philippa ran home and coll
ected her dad’s hose, but not much, because we kept accidentally wetting people. Anyway, so grumpy was I that I didn’t even recognise the silver Audi, and he’d paid Philippa and not me, and she was so busy muttering that this was the last time she did anything for besieged people that she didn’t spot that he was the bloke who threatened to call the police before. So it wasn’t until I was sprawled across his windscreen with a sponge and he beeped his horn, which scared me and made me yell ‘cocks!’ really loudly, that I saw that it was him. He was inside the car tapping away at his laptop.
‘Don’t scratch my car with your boots!’ he yelled, getting out of the car in a hurry.
Well I’d had enough. The abuse we’d had all day and we were just trying to do a good deed. And my boots were soaking. They never recovered. They stank after that.
‘It’s for charity!’ I screamed.
‘Oh, it’s you!’ he said.
‘Hello. Did you get out to have a wee?’
‘No, I didn’t. Hello, Amazing Legs.’
‘Hello…’ But I didn’t know what to call him. I didn’t know what to make of him.
‘I have to ask you out now.’ He didn’t sound too thrilled about the notion.
‘Why?’
‘Three times.’
‘What?’
‘The three times rule.’
‘What’s that?’ I hate not knowing things. What was this three times rule?
‘If something appears to you or is suggested to you three times, you should act on it in some way.’
‘What if something heinous is suggested to you, like eating kidney.’
‘Then you should eat kidney. I like eating kidneys.’
‘If you are going to ask me out then never in the history of courtship has the line, I like eating kidneys, been used.’
‘Until now. Take my card. Let’s go for a drink.’
I took the card.
‘Hang about, I’m not calling you!’
I leant on his car and pulled a pen out of my back pocket and wrote my number on the card.
‘Watch the car!’ he gasped.
‘Ooops,’ I said.
‘You didn’t scratch it!’ he panted.
‘Course not.’
‘Thank God.’
‘Call me,’ I said. ‘If you want.’ I shrugged.
But what with cleaning another fifteen cars and having to go to the police station when we really wanted to go to the pub, I’d forgotten all about him by the end of the day. It wasn’t even a blessing when I went to bed that night. Anyway, how long do you think it took him to call me? Two days, you cry. Two days is the uniform time between number exchanging and phone call, is it not? Well, no, in Matt’s world two months is how long it takes. Two months. I know! He said he’d been busy at work! I ask you. However, Joe King engineered our third meeting with cunning. Not that I’m comparing him and Matt. No, Jenny, course not.
I close the fridge door and walk back outside. I stand for a moment just looking at him. He must have heard or sensed me there because he looks up and smiles, and I suddenly imagine that this is our garden, and we have our whole lives together. And I don’t think I’ve ever imagined anything like that with Matt and yet Matt and I are going to spend our lives together. I can’t be wrong about Matt. I can’t. Joe King must be a player. He must. He must woo all the girls like this.
‘I wrote you a song,’ he says, as I hand him a beer.
‘Me!’ I exclaim, but he just smiles and starts strumming.
‘If I play it to you, you will probably think I am a nutter. And you might be correct. Although I have seen you battling a monster with a colander on your head. But it’s one thing writing a song about a girl, it’s quite another singing it to her. So after I play this to you, don’t say anything. I’ll be too embarrassed. Let’s just lie on the grass and drink our beers. Deal?’
‘Deal,’ I whisper back.
He starts to strum. He doesn’t look at me. He looks at his guitar or at the tree, everywhere but at me.
She walks in
Singing sex on fire
Red hair
Hands in the air
An answered prayer
But where do I go
From here
Mr Man
On her T
A graze
On her knee
She’s got me,
She’s got me good
Like I’m in a movie,
Like it’s meant to be
Don’t know where I am going
Don’t know what to do
But it has to be …
it’s gotta be …
with you …
‘Phew,’ he says when he’s finished. ‘Um, phew, so that’s your song. And I don’t know why I sang it to you except that if we both die tomorrow then at least you know how you’ve blown me away. And I thought I was un-blow-away-able. I can’t stop thinking about you and I’ve only met you twice. Now let’s lie on the grass and drink beer.’
We lie on our backs on the grass. But my breath is all irregular. I feel light in the head. I can hear my own heartbeat. I need to say, ‘I’m engaged’ but I don’t want to.
‘Um, I need to shoot off,’ I say quickly and I get up and I rush back to the house, leaving him there on the grass.
Chapter 20
I get home and shower. Then I bring my computer into the bathroom and Skype Matt in Chicago.
His face fills the screen. The poor boy looks shattered.
‘You look like you should go to bed and get some sleep.’
‘I’m so tired,’ he says in a childish voice.
‘Run a bath, baby. Go on, start it off now.’
He nods obediently. He’s very submissive when he’s tired, is Matt. I smile affectionately as I watch his slumped muscular frame stumble into a chest of drawers and ricochet into the bathroom. I hear the sound of running water and then he returns.
‘Now, what time do you have to be up in the morning?’ I ask.
‘Five.’ He yawns.
‘Matt, what time do you have to be up. Not what time does your extreme work ethic feel you should get up?’
‘I’ve got a breakfast meeting downstairs at eight,’ he says, with another yawn.
‘Set your alarm for seven thirty.’
He shakes his head, reaching for the alarm clock on the bedside table. ‘Five thirty,’ he says, adamantly.
‘Matt, you’ll be good for nothing tomorrow if you don’t get a good sleep. Seven twenty.’
I watch him programme the clock and place it back on the bedside table.
‘Nice try,’ I say. ‘Show me the time you’ve set the alarm for.’
He fiddles with it again before turning it to show me the alarm time of 7.20.
‘What have you eaten today?’ I ask.
‘Chips, sandwiches.’ He shrugs.
‘Are you hungry now?’
He shakes his head.
‘Right, get up and turn the bath off and then come back with the room service breakfast menu.’
I watch the tired way he completes his tasks.
‘Order yourself fresh juice, muesli and fruit, there’s bound to be piles of croissants and muffins at the meeting, but try not to eat too many because they’ll just make you feel drained.’
‘Thank you, baby,’ he says, as he scribbles on the room service menu.
‘You don’t need to thank me. I just wish I was there. I’d give you a massage.’
He smiles sleepily.
‘Get in the bath, handsome and then get into bed. Don’t forget to leave your breakfast order outside your door.’
He nods. ‘Are you OK, by the way?’
‘Yeah, fine. Mother being here is a bit freaky,’ I whisper.
‘I bet,’ Matt sighs. Matt isn’t at all close to his own mother. I think we’ve both appreciated the other’s lack of close family ties. I’ve never met his mother, and his father passed away some years ago.
‘She’s beside herself to meet you.’ I tell
him tentatively.
‘I’ll be back soon.’ He smiles. ‘Love you.’
I blow him a kiss. ‘Love you too.’
I lean my head back against the bath. I don’t want to leave the bathroom in case Mother jumps upon me with the whole ‘talking about things’ again. I close my eyes. A picture of Joe King sitting in the sunshine playing his guitar fills my mind. I shake my head to remove it and I think about my Matt instead.
Two months after I bumped into him at the hideous pop-up car wash, Matt called me.
‘Fanny?’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s, er, Matt. Matt Parry. You cleaned my car. And, er, you you have tremendous legs.’
He sounded so nervous that I had a vision of him speaking, and in this vision he was blushing. Like a lot of women I love a blushing man.
‘Oh, hello, blimey. How are you?’ I said.
‘Not bad. Could I, er, take you out for dinner?’
‘Yes, wow, thank you, wow, lovely,’ I said. I was particularly inarticulate because no one had ever invited me out for dinner before. ‘Do you fancy meeting up for a drink?’ was the usual, and if you were lucky you might get offered chips after. But something in the way Matt Parry mentioned dinner conjured up images of linen napkins, sparkling water glasses and hand cream in the loos.
‘Great, I was thinking Saturday. If you’re free.’
‘Um, wow, thanks.’
He’d given me a Saturday night. Philippa says if a man asks you out on a Saturday then he’s very, very keen. A quick drink after work on a Monday, not that bothered. Mid-week cinema, you might be in there. But dinner on Saturday is practically a box from Tiffanys.
‘So, if you text me your address, I’ll pick you up at seven thirty.’
‘Oh, I live above a kebab shop.’
‘Well, that must be handy,’ he said and chuckled.
I ended the call feeling like Cinderella about to be whisked away by the handsome prince.
So, he arrived promptly at 7.30 in his shiny Audi. Al was crouched down in the flat, peering out of the window and writing down his registration number, ‘Just in case I have to call the police, Fan,’ he whispered.
Matt was nervous at dinner as well. Weeks later, after we’d started sleeping together I asked him why he seemed so terrified on our first date.
Just a Girl, Standing in Front of a Boy Page 10
