*****
The following morning I stayed in the b&b until the last possible moment, when I heard the man coming to hoover my room.
I went to the park and sat on a bench until the pub opened and then installed myself in the same quiet corner. Again I stuck to Guinness. It had been almost twenty five years since I had forsaken lager.
After signing up for evening classes and slowly building a new social life I would go for the odd drink. One night I was with two people from the cycling club and one of them was getting the first round. He ordered a Guinness and, on the spur of the moment, I asked for the same. It took me over an hour to drink my first pint but I was soon a fanatical convert. Although the liquid was much thicker and heavier, almost like gravy, it didn't bloat me at all and didn't give me hangovers. I also didn't feel the compulsion to start drinking it at eight o'clock in the morning. Guinness seemed like the sort of thing I should be drinking in my mid twenties, lager and cider being for teenagers and people with tattoos.
After the first study skills class, the only other person there that was near to my age asked me if I fancied going for a drink. Being a twenty five year old virgin I naturally assumed that her intentions were purely platonic. The idea of her being physically attracted to me never even entered my head.
She was a year older than me and preparing to do a science degree at the same university. Initially, to break the ice as it were, she asked me about computers. Her field of study had suddenly taken to computers in a big way and she was feeling a bit lost in the new technical world. Back in those far off days there were no such things as apps and icons and user friendly interfaces. If you wanted to get a computer to do anything whatsoever you had to type in lines of code. They were painfully slow, spectacularly prone to crashing if you so much as looked at them, and generally a royal pain in the arse most of the time. The programmes she was running would take days to complete such was the pathetic processing speeds in even the best available computers at the time. Home computers or the sort of PCs found in offices were little more than typewriters and calculators.
Carla had a part time job as a lab assistant and wanted to become a research scientist. Her employer were sponsoring her to do her degree so she seemed to have a bright future ahead of her.
After an hour or so she began to ask me about myself and my life. This came as a big shock – I think that was the first time anybody had ever shown such an interest in me. Still very much in the early stages of my social reintegration I found this aspect of the conversation painful and difficult. I gave her some bland snapshots of my childhood and school, skipping over all the negative stuff. Of my adult years I just said I had been made redundant after seven years in the same job and didn't know what to do next. I said I enjoyed cycling and was in a club and doing some other evening classes.
I mentioned that I had decided to bail on the cookery course. When she asked why and I told her about the suspicion of the middle-aged women she found it hilarious and I suddenly realised that I was sitting in a pub with a gorgeous woman telling a funny story and making her laugh. This was such a new experience that I felt giddy with the possibilities of what I could do in the future if I was now capable of doing this.
When I had extracted all possible entertainment value from the class Carla asked me why I had signed up in the first place.
“I can't cook and I think I'm now too told to live on takeaways and snacks.”
“Cooking is easy,” she said, “come to my place one night and I'll show you how simple it is to make something that looks impressive.”
I could feel a blush spreading across my cheeks so I began to bluster away.
“I don't have any... you know, cooking things. I have an oven but I've never once used it in seven years. I just warm things up in the microwave. I don't even have a saucepan.”
“You really are a confirmed bachelor aren't you,” she smiled. “Didn't your mother teach you any domestic skills?”
The sudden mention of my parents caught me by surprise. I looked down at my pint and tried to think of something to say. After five seconds of silence I was still drawing a blank.
“Touchy subject,” she said quietly, seemingly with genuine concern.
I nodded and took a deep swig of Guinness.
“Friday night?”
I looked at her with puzzlement.
“Sorry?”
“Are you free Friday night for your first cookery lesson?”
First. Did that imply that there would be more than one? Was she saying that she wanted to see me repeatedly? I was struggling to process this totally new situation.
“Umm, yes, I don't have anything planned for Friday.”
She took a pen and notepad out of her bag, wrote down her address and phone number, tore off the page and handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I muttered shyly, taking out my wallet to ensure that this piece of treasure was as safe as it could possibly be.
The following day I went to Argos and, after about twenty minutes of deliberation that was verging on panic because I didn't know what half of the items I looked at were used for, I eventually purchased a large set containing, hopefully, everything I needed to cook a proper meal. I struggled home on the bus with the enormous cardboard box.
At home I unpacked the box and tried to find space for all these new utensils. So what now, did I take all this stuff to her place on Friday? No, that would be stupid.
In the event I was being unnecessarily anxious. I took to cooking like a duck to orange sauce. Within weeks I was inventing my own recipes and stir frying left, right and centre.
As for the rest of the evening...
The long and short of it was that I was being sociable and drinking wine because that was what she was drinking. I had never drunk wine before and it went straight to my head. After the fantastic meal that she cooked and the best part of three bottles of wine between us I didn't really know what was going on. When it looked as if things were progressing in a bedroom sort of direction I had what amounted to a minor panic attack. I was so flustered and out of my depth that I blurted out to her that I was a virgin and had no idea what the hell I was doing.
I sat back, took a big slug of wine and waited for the ridicule to begin. She looked at me for an age, and then smiled gently and took my hand.
“I'm not going to make you do anything you're uncomfortable with, Brian. It's nothing to be ashamed of.”
She handled it so well that I couldn't help falling in love with her.
We cuddled on the sofa and kissed a bit and then I staggered home.
She came to mine a few days later. I bought a bottle of wine for her and stuck to four cans of Guinness. I tested out my new culinary skills on her and she didn't choke to death or develop food poisoning. We cuddled and kissed some more and I gradually began to feel comfortable in this strange new world.
After two weeks we slept together. It was amazing and revelatory and totally different to what I had been expecting. I wasn't at all prepared for the connection I felt with her and once my emotions were unleashed there was no stopping them. Having no previous experience of love I automatically assumed that this was it. For life. The idea of this ending and another relationship beginning never occurred to me.
By the time we started our university courses we were a well established couple. Her flat was bigger and much nicer than mine so I moved in with her. Sharing the rent, bills and food shopping between us made a big difference to our ability to live a fairly decent life on our student incomes. Carla had her part time job and sponsorship and I did some temporary work during the long summer breaks.
Those three years were utterly wonderful. We worked and played and loved and the good life seemed to stretch infinitely before us.
After our degrees Carla worked her way up to being a fully fledged research scientist. I've never properly understood what she does but she loves it and it's well paid and she achieves things that impact the world.
I have had thr
ee different office jobs with varying degrees of responsibility. None of them have really contributed anything to society but they pay the bills and have enabled us to live a fantastic life.
A fantastic life which I have now destroyed.
Brian: Mental Book 1 Page 9
