Don't You Want Me?

by India Knight

  ‘Here,’ says Frank, unbuttoning his coat. ‘Get in.’ He holds both halves of the coat open. I step inside, and he closes them again. My bottom, I notice after a small while, is pressing right against his cock.

  ‘Don’t get aroused,’ I tell him sharply, ‘and try and impale me bummily.’

  ‘I’m trying very hard to control myself, Stell,’ Frank drawls. ‘Shall we walk down to the minicab office?’

  ‘Perhaps they could sweetly make us a cup of tea.’

  ‘Doubt it. But they could take us home.’

  ‘Home?’

  ‘It’s just a thought. If you fancy that party, I’m game. But I know what you mean about the cup of tea.’

  ‘And we could make a fire.’

  ‘And maybe watch a vid …’

  ‘But you haven’t shown me how to pull, Frankie. You haven’t demonstrated.’ We are walking down Brick Lane like a four-legged, two-headed monster, still huddled inside his coat.

  ‘I’ll show you later,’ he says.

  ‘Why, are you feeling lucky, big boy?’

  ‘No, stupid.’ He thwacks the top of my head from above. ‘I mean, let’s do this again later. Here’s the cab office.’ And then he says something that sounds like, ‘Meynd thee divvent stomp in thon kakky.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Mind the dog shit,’ Frank grins. ‘In normal language: Meynd thee diwent stomp in thon kakky.’

  This renders me helpless, but helpless, for about ten minutes. I howl, I wriggle with laughter from inside Frank’s coat, losing my balance twice and having to be caught.

  ‘Did your accent really used to be that broad?’

  ‘Aye. Spent too long in London,’ Frank says. ‘But I like to air it occasionally.’

  ‘Air it with me,’ I tell him. ‘When we do this again.’

  ‘Next week,’ says Frank. ‘We’ll do it again next week. Let’s go home.’

  11

  I go and check on Papa and Honey as soon as we come in: both are fast asleep and both are snoring, one more attractively than the other. Frank is making a fire as I totter back down the stairs and into the kitchen to put the kettle on. It’s started to rain again. There really is nothing more blissful on earth than being inside, with tea, by a fire, when it’s really bucketing down outside.

  I’ve just got back into the living room, clutching two mugs of extra-sweet tea – Earl Grey for me, PG for him – when this rather charming and domestic scene is interrupted by Rupert’s spare keys turning in the lock.

  ‘Bugger,’ says Frank, sounding intensely irritated. ‘Who the fuck’s that? It’s one in the morning.’

  ‘Just us,’ Rupert slurs from the hallway. ‘I’ve brought Cress back for a nightcap.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘That’s nice.’

  Actually, I’m with Frank on this one: I was looking forward to our cosy, homely time à deux. I quite wanted to watch The Godfather on video. I wanted to get to the bottom of the dirty ride thing, and I wanted Frank to speak Geordie to me more. And, of course, give me some sex tips (though actually Rupert is the one who’d really benefit from these, given his technique, or the lack of it. Perhaps we could hold a quick seminar, en famille).

  ‘Hello,’ says Cressida, more pink-cheeked than before. ‘We had a wonderful time.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘it’s a nice restaurant. Very romantic. All those mirrors.’

  ‘Excellent wine list,’ says Rupert, butchly addressing himself to Frank, who looks up grumpily.

  ‘I’m not much of a wine expert,’ he says. ‘I prefer beer, or spirits.’

  ‘I do wish you’d stop always making yourself sound like an oik with a lone O-level in welding,’ I tell Frank, who is poking fire-things unnecessarily hard, with a cross look on his face. ‘Rupert doesn’t know anything about wine either – he’s only saying that to impress Cressida.’

  ‘Impress Cress,’ Rupert says, which he and his date both seem to find almost unbearably funny. Har-har-har, they bray, like a pair of donkeys. They’re standing immobile in the middle of the room, making eyes at each other, taking up space.

  ‘What would you like?’ I ask them, trying to conceal my irritation. ‘The kettle’s just boiled, or there are drinks in the kitchen. There’s a delicious bottle of Calvados, actually, just on top of the fridge.’

  ‘I’ll have oon petite Calva,’ Rupert says in his excruciating French. ‘Cress?’

  ‘I didn’t know you spoke French,’ Cressida beams.

  ‘There’s no end to his talents,’ I mutter.

  ‘I’d love another glass of white wine,’ Cressida says, throwing me a mildly annoyed look.

  ‘Rupert?’ I say to the man, who is standing there rubbing his hands together and gazing idly at Cressida’s well-turned ankles. ‘The kitchen’s through there. Surely you don’t expect me to waitress for you?’

  ‘Keep your hair on,’ mutters Rupert, sloping off unsteadily. ‘I’m just going. Got any crostini left?’

  ‘Did you have a nice time too?’ says polite Cressida.

  ‘Great,’ says Frank, coming over to perch on the side of my armchair. He bends down absent-mindedly and quickly sniffs my hair, as though I were Honey, whom he is always sniffing surreptitiously, I’ve noticed. Can’t say I blame him: she smells delicious.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘We went for drinks, and then to a boring party where we bumped into Honey’s father,’ I say. ‘And then we had dinner and lovely chats. Very interesting chats. About sex.’

  ‘You’re obsessed with sex,’ Rupert says, coming back through with two glasses. ‘Always were.’

  ‘Really?’ says Frank, looking amused. ‘What a surprise.’

  ‘Really?’ says Cressida. ‘And how,’ she smiles plumply and fondly at Rupert, ‘would you know, mister?’

  ‘From giving her one,’ Frank answers. God, the man’s blunt. A little grace wouldn’t go amiss every now and then, it really wouldn’t.

  ‘Charmingly put,’ I tell him with a sigh. ‘Nice one, Frankie.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ says Cressida.

  ‘I said,’ says Frank, ‘from shagging her. Slipping her a length. Her. Here.’

  ‘Don’t call me “her”,’ I tell him. ‘God, Frank, you know – manners.’

  ‘From shagging Stella,’ says Frank, correcting himself.

  Cressida looks nonplussed, and not what you’d call overjoyed.

  ‘A long time ago,’ I say comfortingly. ‘Once or twice.’

  ‘Well, more than that, as I recall,’ says Rupert with a chortle. ‘Oh,’he suddenly remembers. ‘Oh, yes. Oh, bugger and blast. Oh, damnation. Curses. Um, Cress?’

  ‘Yes?’ says Cressida glacially.

  ‘Thing is, Cress … Thing is, darling … What I mean is …’

  ‘Thing is, we were married,’ I interrupt. Sometimes that blithering, stammery English thing gets right on my nerves. ‘Ages ago. Aeons. For a tiny while. After Cambridge.’

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ asks Frank.

  ‘No,’ says Cressida, in a small voice.

  ‘Oh, fuck. Sorry, love,’ says Frank.

  ‘We were extremely young and it was a mistake,’ I tell her. ‘A disaster. Lasted thirty seconds.’

  Frank laughs, and then looks penitent.

  ‘I mean, the union,’ I continue, tutting at him.

  ‘And now you’re just, um, friends?’ asks Cressida, sounding a bit snuffly.

  ‘Yes,’ Rupert and I say in perfect unison.

  ‘And you forgot to mention it when you told me your life story over supper,’ Cressida says, looking at Rupert.

  ‘Apparently so,’ says Rupert, going pink.

  ‘And you sleep at her house.’

  ‘Darling, I live in Scotland. Where else am I going to sleep?’

  ‘In a hotel,’ says Cressida.

  ‘But I have two spare rooms,’ I tell her. ‘Going to waste. This huge house. And besides, he only comes about once a year.’

  Frank makes a funny sort of
noise again. I don’t think he likes Rupert much. In Paris, when he and I first met, Frank told me that he thought all middle-class people were ‘knob-ends’.

  ‘Really?’ says Cressida, not remotely convinced.

  ‘Really,’ I tell her. ‘I promise. And just in case you’re wondering, we don’t fuck.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Cressida says, glacial again. ‘Wondering.’

  ‘Well, then,’ I say cheerfully, graciously not pointing out that her last remark is in fact a lie. ‘There’s no problem, is there?’

  ‘Course not,’ says Rupert, putting his arm around Cressida’s shoulder and kissing her cheek.

  ‘It’s, um, it’s just a bit unusual, isn’t it?’ Cressida asks, ignoring the kiss and taking a sip of white wine. ‘But I suppose that’s modern life for you.’

  ‘It is entirely usual, to me. Would you prefer it if two people who once liked each other enough to get married now had absolutely nothing to do with each other, like freaks?’ I ask her.

  I hate this. It’s so English and puritanical that it drives me spare. I mean, here’s Rupert. He was once an important part of my life, and I still like him enormously – love him, in a way. What am I supposed to do – cull him because we once shared a bed? He didn’t beat me, or abuse me, or behave meanly to me in any way: we just got married by mistake, and divorced on purpose. And now Cressida – and there are plenty more like her – looks at me sniffily because we’re still friends and he stays with me occasionally. Why? Why is this considered odd, when it is in fact the very opposite – when it is the acme of normalcy? My uncle Henri so liked his ex-wife that they slept together two or three times a year, for old times’ sake. So what? What’s it got to do with anyone else, sanctimonious prigs that they are? Still, not necessarily a good idea to hold Oncle Henri up as an example, in these particular circs.

  ‘No,’ says Cressida slowly. ‘I wouldn’t prefer that.’

  ‘Well, then, for heaven’s sake, grow up.’ I say this slightly too ferociously, eliciting a ‘Steady on’ from Rupert.

  ‘Do you not,’ Cressida asks me timidly, ‘worry about your daughter?’

  ‘Honey? What about her?’ I am inches away from losing my temper: I know what’s coming next. I know it by heart.

  ‘In my profession …’ begins Cressida.

  ‘Cressida’s a nanny,’ explains Rupert. ‘What’s it called again? Oh, yes: a career nanny. It means you only nanny for people in Belgravia.’

  ‘It’s just that in my profession,’ she continues, ‘I see what divorce can do to little people first-hand.’

  ‘Really,’ I say. ‘Well, happily Rupert and I didn’t have any little people together.’ (I used to think that ‘little people’ was a euphemism for ‘dwarves’. Everything in English is a euphemism, for people like Cressida.)

  ‘But with your second husband …’

  ‘We weren’t married.’

  Cressida sighs. ‘Your “partner”, then. In terms of social and personal development,’ she parrots, ‘the child really thrives most when it lives with both its parents.’

  ‘Really,’ I say again, taking a deep breath. ‘Well, isn’t that nice.’

  ‘Your daughter,’ Cressida continues, ‘has an absentee father, you see.’

  ‘And a mother who’s obsessed with sex,’ Frank adds with a grin, in a failed attempt at lightening things up. He’s unbelievable, he really is: not a squirm of discomfort, not a blush, not a quiver at the words ‘absentee father’.

  ‘Lots of children have absent fathers,’ I say, looking at Frank. ‘It can’t really be helped, Cressida. No one wakes up in the morning and thinks, I know, I’ll get pregnant and then separate from my husband, just to make sure my child has an absent father, because that’s what I really want for her most of all in life – an absent father.’

  ‘I wasn’t saying you’d done it on purpose,’ she says, putting a hand on my arm.

  ‘I should hope not. So what is your point, exactly? Because it’s getting late and I’d quite like to go to bed.’

  ‘Well, nothing, really. I was just, you know, saying.’

  ‘Well, thank you for your insights. For your information, as far as I’m concerned, divorce doesn’t mean the end of friendship, and separation doesn’t mean your child automatically becomes a sociopath or a bed-wetter. OK?’

  ‘OK. I’m sorry if I spoke inappropriately,’ Cressida says. ‘But I do so believe in the family, you see, and …’

  ‘We all believe in the family,’ I snap. ‘Some of us have more extended families than others, that’s all.’

  ‘Mmm,’ says Cressida, still not looking wholly convinced, but conciliatory now, unlike me.

  ‘As for sex, frankly, I don’t see why having a child should turn me into a nun, do you? I don’t actually have sex in front of her, you know. I don’t come home and say, Hey, Honey, Mummy’s pulled, want to watch?’

  ‘Um, no,’ says Cressida.

  ‘Glad we’ve got that straight. I’m going to bed.’ To my horror, my eyes are prickling.

  ‘Don’t,’ says Frank, putting his hands on the back of my neck and rubbing my shoulders gently. ‘Stay.’ But he makes me irate too, with his oblivion. This is why I can’t ever have it out with him: I like him so much, we spend a really great evening together, and then he goes and makes a really crass joke a nanosecond after hearing the words ‘absentee father’. I really feel there is something the matter with him morally. Yes, morally. Sorry to throw about the big scary words, but really: this is a man who walked out on his own daughter. And he has the temerity to make jokes about me being sex-crazed!

  ‘Do stay,’ says Rupert. ‘Have a drink. Here, have mine.’ He offers his glass of Calvados.

  ‘Please,’ says Cressida.

  ‘OK,’ I say, turning to Cressida. ‘And I’m sorry. I tend to overreact a bit with that kind of subject.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she says. ‘It was ghastly of me to bring it up. I’ve had a little too much to drink.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. I just get very defensive over the idea that I’m bringing Honey up oddly, or that we’re somehow bohemian.’

  Frank silently hands me his rather revolting handkerchief and I blow my nose.

  ‘Well, technically you are, quite,’ Rupert pipes up helpfully, earning himself an expertly lobbed cushion at the head.

  ‘She has a man in her life,’ I say, pointing at Frank, ‘so she won’t grow up weird or scared of men. She has Rupe as a godfather. She has me, and I love her more than anything. She has a lovely child-minder. She has friends. Her father adores her and sends her presents and faxes, and rings her up. He sees her whenever he can – unfortunately, he happens to be based halfway around the world. But I’m not worried about her at all. And now let’s talk about something else.’

  We sit in awkward silence for a few minutes.

  ‘Fancy that video?’ Frank whispers.

  ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Just coming up to two.’

  ‘Let’s watch it another night. I might feel like a lie-in tomorrow, but Honey won’t, and it’s the weekend and I haven’t asked Mary to come in.’

  ‘OK. You’re probably right.’

  ‘I’m going to go up and have a bath,’ I tell him, getting up. I’m not very steady on my feet at all: shouldn’t have gulped Rupert’s Calvados down in one like that.

  ‘And I’m going to bed,’ says Frank.

  ‘So,’ I say, turning to Rupert, ‘what about you? Aren’t you tired? It’s two in the morning.’

  ‘Not too bad,’ says Rupert, looking at Cressida, who looks at the floor.

  ‘You’re very welcome to stay, Cressida,’ I smile at her, heading for the door and leaving them to fathom it out for themselves – although she doesn’t look much like a girl who puts out on the first date, I know nothing: she may be the dirtiest ride of all. ‘Good night.’

  I have a quick bath and fall asleep the minute my head hits the pillow. My last conscious, and unsober, thought is that I
wonder what Frank would look like if he dyed his hair brown.

  12

  ‘I’ve got some juice for you,’ Frank whispers, melding with my dream.

  My eyes blear open. I have a terrible, throbbing headache, as though a giant fist had got hold of my head and was squeezing, squeeeeezing …

  ‘Hoo!’ I exclaim, scrabbling to remember what happened last night. This always takes me a while – I sleep very deeply; my sleeps are like comas – and the hangover is slowing me down further. ‘What are you doing in my bed?’

  ‘I’m not in your bed, Stell,’ Frank grins. ‘I’m in your bedroom.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, raising myself up on to the pillows.

  ‘I can see your tits,’ says Frank pleasantly. ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘Aaaaah! Stop looking.’ I pull the duvet up around me. ‘What’s the time? Where’s Honey? Why are you here ogling me? Stop looking, I said, Frank. Stop feasting your eyes like a, a, a dog.’

  Frank laughs and rolls his eyes and then shades them, handing me the glass.

  ‘Your dad left a note. Honey woke up at nine last night and they must have stayed up a while, because she’s still asleep. He’s gone out to the shops and he says, do we want to meet him in the Ritz bar at six. No sign of Rupert or Cressida, and his bedroom door’s closed. It’s half past nine. I really enjoyed last night. I’m sorry you got upset at the end. But you give as good as you get,’ he smiles. ‘At least. And,’ he continues, ‘if your head feels anything like mine, I thought you might like some juice. There’s a pot of tea downstairs.’

  It all comes flooding back, sort of. I think I was rude to Cressida, or was she rude to me? I rewind a bit further, back to Frank and lychee cocktails and curry …

  ‘Oh, and there’s a message on the machine from Dom,’ Frank says. ‘Says should he come to lunch. He’s at the Sanderson.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ I croak. ‘I don’t feel well. Ring him back and say yes, would you? I’ll be down in a second. Do we have any food in? Bless you for the juice. Do you think Honey’s all right?’

  ‘Probably had her first late night,’ Frank says. ‘Should I check on her?’