by Pippa Wright
But I couldn’t give up yet – my column about Malky was about to run and I needed a new date soon. So it was with some relief that, after a week, I finally received an email from Sebastian the war correspondent. I had suggested in my message to him that we might find something in common due to our journalistic backgrounds – I didn’t think it was necessary at this stage to let him know that I worked for Country House. I would reveal this if it seemed appropriate, much as, I imagined, he would remove his hat to reveal his lack of hair when he felt it was appropriate. He apologized for failing to reply sooner; he had been testifying at a war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. Like many somewhat shallow people, I was fascinated by anyone who dedicated their life to issues with real meaning and importance, although I preferred my social conscience to express itself with a remote and hygienic direct debit to Save the Children. Sebastian could not have impressed me more unless he had revealed that he had personally saved a bunch of orphaned children, Angelina Jolie-style.
He suggested we met on Thursday night outside Covent Garden tube station, and it was immediately clear to me by his innocent plan (I was looking out for discrepancies, of course, anticipating that all internet daters were lying about something; possibly everything) that he had been telling the truth about being out of the country for years. It felt unkind to overrule Sebastian’s chosen meeting place, which had most likely been made with good intentions as I had mentioned that I worked nearby, so instead I agreed, specifying the exact spot in which we should meet, to ensure minimal awkwardness in finding each other. I had no desire to trawl through the crowds accosting any tall, hat-wearing man.
Thursday night was, it turned out, bitterly, bitterly cold and rainy, which made meeting outside any tube station a miserable prospect, but it hardly seemed to diminish the crowds outside Covent Garden. The expectant horde was wrapped up against the harsh weather and every single man who passed the lit-up windows of Oasis was either wearing a hat or hidden by an umbrella. I pressed myself against the window under the smallest of awnings, and looked around me for anyone who might be Sebastian. I was suddenly much too aware of how my face might look to a stranger, and not quite sure how to arrange it – too friendly and approachable and I might attract the attention of random nutters or, worse, the charity muggers who hovered on the fringes of the crowd picking off the vulnerable and signing them up to direct debits (how do you think I got that Save the Children one in the first place?). Too unapproachable and I might scare off the very man I was here to meet. Although, thinking about it, a man who had faced down warlords and similar was unlikely to be frightened by a frowning female journalist of five foot five.
I was still composing my face when a gloved hand touched my arm and a voice asked, ‘Rory?’
‘Sebastian?’ I asked, staring up into a pair of pale-blue eyes, made even paler by the contrast with his darkly tanned face. He had the fair eyelashes of someone who has spent a lot of time in the sun; I imagined that if he had any hair (he was wearing a hat, of course) it would be bleached to the same whiteness. By the weather, I mean: we are talking rugged and outdoorsy here, not Jim-style artificiality.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ he said, ducking under the awning next to me and regarding me with his grave blue stare. ‘Thanks for showing up.’
‘Of course I’m here,’ I laughed. ‘Have you been stood up before?’
‘I’m used to disappointment,’ he said, looking around him with narrowed eyes as if he expected an attack to come from somewhere in the direction of Neal Street. Perhaps he knew about the chuggers.
‘I don’t expect you’re used to this weather, are you? If you’ve been out in Darfur, I mean,’ I said, shivering in the doorway but not wanting to be pushy and ask where we were going yet.
He looked down at me, his eyes still narrowed. ‘You’ve obviously never experienced a Kosovan winter.’
‘No – er, no I haven’t. Gosh, no,’ I said, feeling irrelevant and idiotic. I should have realized he was not going to be one for small talk. His mind was probably on much deeper subjects.
‘This is nothing,’ he said darkly. ‘Nothing.’
I could see that we could be here for some time discussing the relative harshness of winters across Europe. Perhaps Sebastian was so used to the Kosovan cold that it meant nothing to him to stand here in the rain, but personally I wanted a drink and somewhere warm to sit.
‘Did you have somewhere in mind for us to go?’ I asked hopefully.
‘Somewhere in mind?’
‘For a drink,’ I said, feeling as if I was speaking a foreign language. I began to wonder if Sebastian had ever been on a date before, or if he just usually tumbled into bed with hard-drinking, combat-wearing female correspondents to a soundtrack of distant gunshots. I understood a lack of interest in small talk, but was my question really so confusing? Surely he knew that most dates were conducted indoors, especially on a rainy March evening?
He looked around him again and his lip curled. ‘This isn’t really my usual scene,’ he said. ‘You work near here, don’t you? Where do you think?’
Immensely reassured at being given a role to fulfil, I led him through the crowds on Neal Street to the pub on the corner of Shelton Street, but before we’d even opened the door I could see it was hopeless. Just a look through the brightly lit window showed that it was packed; there would be nowhere to sit. Sebastian’s tanned face already wore an expression of deep weariness. I couldn’t see him being happy wedged into a corner of the bar with our coats and bags squashed by our feet. He sighed behind me as I declared we’d have to go somewhere else. I began to panic. What was I thinking, dragging this noble and principled man, exhausted from a trial at The Hague, on a fruitless and frivolous attempt to find an empty pub on a Thursday night? Everywhere was going to be packed.
I flicked through my mental Rolodex of possibilities and suddenly recalled that Jeremy Wells’s L’Ecluse, Lysander’s favoured restaurant, was just around the corner. Of course it was far too expensive a place to go for supper but, instructed by Ticky that a first internet date should last no longer than two hours, I had already told Sebastian I was meeting friends for a meal at eight-thirty. Even I could afford a couple of drinks in the upstairs bar, which, because it was invisible from the street and accessible only by a lift from the back of the restaurant, was quiet in that expensive-hotel-bar sort of way. I’d only been once before, but it seemed perfect: secluded and grown-up and with, I was sure, enough seats for several convoys of war correspondents.
Sebastian shrugged assent to my suggestion and we hurried across Seven Dials with our heads down to escape the icy sting of the rain driving into our faces. I risked a painful face/sleet interface to note with approval that he was at least as tall as he had claimed to be; in fact I had to add in a slightly embarrassing little skip every few paces to keep up with his long strides. As we approached L’Ecluse, a doorman swung open the door in welcome and we were ushered in.
I had forgotten how starkly modernist the reception area of L’Ecluse was: all white marble and artfully arranged orchids, with a phalanx of stunning greeters standing behind a desk. The doorman led us towards them before retreating back to his place at the entrance. I smiled at the nearest greeter.
‘Hello, we were just hoping for a drink at the bar, please,’ I said.
‘Certainly, madam, sir. Shall we take your coats?’
Another greeter appeared behind us and as she tried to help Sebastian out of his coat he visibly flinched. I expected in his line of work you learned to be suspicious of the unanticipated rearguard approach, but he relinquished his coat without a struggle once he realized she wasn’t about to attack him.
A third greeter glided across the marble floor and asked us to follow her to the lift. As she led us through the restaurant Sebastian looked around as if he was being hunted. The restaurant was quiet so early in the evening, so unless he feared one of the waiters might fly at him with a corkscrew, I thought he was probably safe. I hoped he would be abl
e to relax once we’d passed through the danger zone and sat down with a drink. The greeter called the lift and we rode up one floor in silence, trying to avoid catching each other’s eyes in the mirrored walls. Sebastian shifted uncomfortably next to me. He audibly huffed as another greeter appeared to lead us out of the lift.
‘Christ, how many people does it take to get a drink around here?’
‘I know,’ I laughed nervously; it was a bit excessive, and I knew the more staff the higher the bar bill, but it seemed a small price to pay for somewhere warm to sit on a busy night in the middle of London.
At last we were settled in a red velvet banquette with disconcertingly womb-like plush padded walls. In contrast to the harsh minimalist reception, the upstairs bar was like an opulent opium den. There were curtains and swags and cushions and carpets, and vases of exotic flowers, all phallic thrusting stamens, that hid yet more hovering and attentive staff. Although there were a few other people in the bar, the effect of the acres of fabric was to hush everything apart from the tinkling sound of the barman mixing drinks over in the corner. Finally, I thought, running my fingers through my hat-squashed hair, we can relax. Then I saw Sebastian’s face. He stared about the room as if contemplating a horrific massacre. Perhaps it was all the red giving him flashbacks of bloodied scenes? When the waiter handed him a drinks menu he actually jumped clear out of his seat.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked him.
He turned his pale eyes on me and they looked strangely flat in the dim light of the bar. ‘I just really hate social injustice,’ he said.
I wasn’t sure how to respond. I mean, I hate social injustice, too – who doesn’t? Maybe some evil dictators or scarily right-wing aristocrats are fans, but surely most fair-minded people hate social injustice. And yet the way Sebastian had said it was almost an accusation; as if social injustice was something I was directly involved in perpetrating. As if I had brought him to this very bar to perpetrate it.
‘Mmm,’ I said, dropping my eyes to the drinks menu in a panic. ‘Me too.’
‘I mean, I really hate it,’ he persisted, still staring at me, and I feared that yet again my stupid name had led someone to believe I was a card-carrying posh person with a background of debutante balls and riding my pony into crowds of the dispossessed, brandishing a riding crop. I should have taken us to the pub after all; I should have realized that a war correspondent was never going to be comfortable somewhere like this. And nor, frankly, was I.
Sebastian glared around the room, his weather-beaten face contorted into a sneer. ‘This kind of place makes me – I don’t know. Look at everyone. It just makes me want to get out a gun and mow everyone down.’
I think it was probably at this point that I realized, despite initial appearances, that I was definitely on a date with another unsuitable man. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I was saved from replying by the appearance of another waiter – not the same one who had given us the drinks menus, of course, that would have been ridiculous.
‘I’ll have a beer,’ said Sebastian, snapping shut his drinks menu and slamming it on to the table.
‘What kind of beer, sir?’ asked the waiter, his pen hovering over the pad. ‘We have Tsingtao, Asahi—’
I could see he was about to launch into a full list of all beer-related beverages that would no doubt infuriate Sebastian further, but Sebastian interrupted him before he could go any further: ‘A beer. In a bottle. Thank you.’
‘Madam?’ said the waiter, turning to me with only the smallest flicker of a reaction to Sebastian’s harsh interruption. ‘May I suggest the cocktail of the day? A muddle of raspberry liqueur—’
‘Ooh, lovely, yes please,’ I gushed, far too enthusiastically, desperate to make up for Sebastian’s rudeness, and also entirely unable in my discomfort to make a choice from a drinks menu that contained as many pages as the Country House Classifieds section.
Sebastian kept his hat on and, I noticed, had placed himself with his back to the wall to protect himself from rogue greeters and staff.
I ventured a few questions about where he lived and how far he had travelled this evening, which only served to make me sound even more anodyne. I felt like Marie Antoinette in a random social encounter with the leader of the starving peasants outside the palace walls. Brioche, anyone? Sebastian dealt with my questions swiftly and monosyllabically but failed to pick up the cues to ask me anything back. Conversation stuttered to a halt. His hands clenched and unclenched on his lap. Perhaps, I thought, trying to be generous, he was just nervous. I wasn’t sure what to say next; I looked hopefully towards the bar but there was no sign of our drinks.
I remembered attending one of Lysander’s literary lunches last year, at which the guest of honour was a retired Army general who had just written his controversial memoirs. The general had responded excellently to my employment of the pert niece technique and had regaled me with some enjoyably inappropriate jokes, along with bluff military anecdotes full of acronyms I didn’t understand: ‘And so I said to the KC, if you don’t pass over the M37G then I won’t be held responsible for a Code Y7, ha ha ha!’ He had spent time in Kosovo and I suddenly recalled, with a flash of inspiration, a joke he had told me about it. Perhaps, I thought, this might lighten the heavy mood that sat between me and Sebastian like a third guest at our table.
‘I, erm, I know a joke about Kosovo,’ I ventured with a hesitant laugh.
‘Do you?’ said Sebastian, turning his blank stare in my direction. ‘It had better not be the one that ends Slobberdown Mycockyoubitch.’
‘No!’ I blushed, horrified. I should have realized then that the only thing to do was cut my losses and allow the succession of greeters to relay me out of the building for my own safety, but of course I did not.
‘Um, no, it’s a different one,’ I said, stupidly carrying on instead of aborting my flawed mission. ‘So, how many war correspondents did it take to change a lightbulb in Pristina?’ I asked.
Sebastian sighed.
‘Have you heard it before?’ I asked.
‘No.’
There was a long pause while he looked at me. I couldn’t read anything in his stony face.
‘You have to say, “How many?”,’ I prompted.
‘How many?’ he parroted, his voice heavy with disapproval.
‘You wouldn’t know, you weren’t there.’
The punchline dropped between us like a bird that had been shot out of the sky. I could almost see it twitching its last shuddering breaths on the table. Sebastian’s craggy face remained entirely still as he stared at me. Finally, the creases on his forehead deepened into a frown. ‘But I was there,’ he said. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’
‘Sir,’ said the waiter, appearing with such perfect timing that I could have kissed him. A bottle was placed in front of Sebastian, who grabbed it gratefully.
Then, as if I had not already demonstrated myself to be frivolous beyond all hope of salvation, the waiter placed in front of me the cocktail of the day: a vast goldfish bowl of pink liquid on top of which floated an array of exotic flowers. Two silver straws emerged out of the top of the bowl. The waiter leaned forward with a cigarette lighter and lit them both – not straws, after all, but sparklers. Sebastian and I watched in silence, the waiter next to us brimming with the expectation of a delighted reaction, as the sparklers fizzed and sputtered in my drink until they burned themselves out.
Although the date limped on for another painful half an hour I think that was the moment, watching the faint wisps of smoke rise up from the dead sparklers, at which we both knew it was over.
23
I made it home before Auntie Lyd and her paying guests had retired for the evening; the sound of voices from the kitchen, as well as a strong smell of cigarette smoke, suggested it was one of their regular card nights. On these occasions the unofficial house bedtime of ten o’clock had been known to be extended to a daring eleven and, more than once, the PGs and my aunt had stayed up until midnight. It s
aid something about the state of my dating life, and not something good, that I knew an hour’s chat with my auntly landlady and her two aged thespian residents would be far more entertaining than the evening I had just endured with an eligible man in a stylish London bar.
The only saving grace of the date was that it had been so perfectly self-contained, and so absolutely final, that I had already started composing my column on the tube home. There was no lingering hope that he might call, nor the likelihood of an unexpected postscript. Sebastian was unsuitable on all counts – at least, we were unsuitable for each other – but he was exactly suitable for the purposes of my (non-war-related) mission. If I had been truly looking for love, perhaps I’d have been crushed by his evident lack of interest, but as it only matched mine, it was hard to be too hurt. Instead I mostly felt exhausted from the sheer effort of it all.
When I poked my head around the kitchen door I saw that there was a fourth person sat at the table. Of course. Not only did Jim appear to have no proper career ambitions, having given up his white-collar job to become a plumber, but he appeared to have no actual life either. What was he doing spending yet another Thursday evening at Elgin Square? He raised a hand in greeting, as if I were the visitor and he the generously welcoming resident.
‘Rory?’ said Auntie Lyd, turning in her chair to see what Jim was waving at. ‘You’re back early, aren’t you?’
‘Another unsuitable man, dear?’ asked Eleanor in her wavery voice.
