He compliments my yellow and white polka-dot summer dress like he’s praising a video game he’s just downloaded for his phone, but I smile and accept his offering, telling him it only comes out on special occasions.
He kicks up a little dust from the track as we sidestep an ornamental log in unison and tells me he feels privileged to have been selected for the date.
I say he’s here on merit, aiming for light-heartedness but coming off headmistressy. Way to go, Suzanne, highlight that age gap, you moron.
Jordan smiles back, catching that I’ve muddled my tone with my intent.
‘Why, thank you. I look forward to reading my report card at the end of term.’
I belt out a laugh and let it flutter into the trees to our right that form the top edge of the park. On the other side of us and over a low fence, another couple – younger but more intricate – giggle as they swipe through long reeds of grass on the park’s small pitch ‘n’ putt course, searching for a golf ball they know will never be found.
I wondered how he would treat the odd circumstances behind our afternoon together, whether he would dance around it and pretend this was just a run-of-the-mill rendezvous, or take one look at the elephant in the room and climb aboard.
He says he’s honoured to be the first guinea-pig in my Five Parks experiment and asks how my blog is going.
I run my hand through the air in his direction, being careful not to touch him, as if he’s a delicate artefact I do not want to break, and say: ‘It’s going pretty good so far.’
He reveals beautiful big teeth and laughs.
‘You’re right: flattery will get you everywhere.’
The idle swish of clubs through thick grass soon gives way to the sweet harmony of ball on taut string, as we leave the pitch ‘n’ putt behind and steer past the tennis courts. Even though they are bracketed by wire fencing ridden with overgrown holly bushes, the sounds in there make the courts feel full.
Despite the heat, we agree on a coffee.
The cafeteria next to the courts is jam packed. Toddlers run between the legs of hassled adults, bawling for ice cream and pop. As we enter, one chases a hungry pigeon that is loitering around the benches outside and ploughs into Jordan’s thigh.
He looks down at the little boy, whose blood red lips are bordered by a thick layer of chocolate something.
A stern voice calls ‘Maximillian!’ from a bench to our left.
The half-sized usurper spins in the other direction and chases another pigeon, leaving his mother to apologise to Jordan as she stomps off after him.
When we add ourselves to the queue for the till, I tell Jordan he has the patience of a saint. He is scuffing at his shorts – low down on one side is a distinctive brown mark, a chocolate lipstick kiss. He is smiling.
The kid has hopefully disappeared forever, but he has helped Jordan and I break new ice. He’s not bothered about his mucky shorts, and neither am I.
‘Do you want to have kids then?’
I blurt it out just as the person in front of us in the queue exits stage left. The girl on the other side of the counter gives us a frightened look, as if she’s just walked in on her parents having sex.
We catch her stare, turn to each other and laugh.
‘Don’t worry,’ I say over the counter to her. ‘It’s only our first date.’
She doesn’t find it funny, just asks us to order our coffees – skinny latte for me, full-fat cappuccino for him – and shuffles over to the machine. Jordan and I stifle laughter like we are at the back of the class in primary school and one of us has said the funniest thing ever. We take our coffees and go back outside into the relentless warmth. We’re long past lunchtime but it keeps getting hotter.
From the front of the café, the park is overwhelming and heaving. The main cross-section has been sliced into a temporary football pitch, bordered by round red, yellow and blue plastic cones that keep overexcited mums and dads from spilling into the sporting crucible comprised of their little suited and booted darlings. One boy, in the same outfit as those scurrying around, sulks behind a tree, his tiny red boots kicked off, his head in his folded arms, no doubt damp with tears of disappointment. Further back past the football pitch, sunbathing beauties poke out of the ground in their bras and knickers, their shiny auburn legs matching the sun-kissed Kindles they point into the sky. Off to the left, at another set of exercise bars, a flock of slightly pudgier women lie in a circle and obey orders from a Lycra-clad fitness instructor. Occasionally, one will look up from whatever cruel position she’s thrust her sweaty body and green-eye the ebook-reading beauties, metres away yet worlds apart.
The dominant female species, however, is of the expectant variety. Hard round bellies pout from every bench, every picnic blanket, offering a natural promise of something to come in two months, one month, even a week. The park teems with possibility. And there isn’t a free bench in sight.
I suggest we could slide up on the grass beside one of the hot female e-readers in their underwear.
‘Do you think their Kindles even have words printed on them?’ Jordan asks. ‘Or do they just have little mirrors inside? Not that I’m complaining, of course.’
He’s hitting the right beats. I’ve always hated blokes who pretend to ignore other (lack of modesty ALERT!) attractive females when in my company. Don’t have your tongue hanging out, of course, but don’t be afraid to acknowledge beauty when it’s in your eyeline. Like the perspiring girls stuck in the PT circle of hell, spying on their slender sisters, I sometimes wish I had the nerve to strip down to my smalls in a public park.
‘I’m impressed that any of them can read at all,’ I say, playing along.
We cease bashing the fellow members of my sex when he points past the workout women, who have sprung from their stretching positions on the grass into full star-jump mode. There is a sign behind them that says: QUIET GARDEN.
There is one bench left in the Quiet Garden, which isn’t really a quiet garden at all, but a row of wooden seats dedicated to various local people who have been and gone. Unlike the rest of the park, flowers are tended here, bright yellows and pinks with names my mum would know. I’ve always liked the idea of bench dedications, commemorating someone’s favourite sitting spot. I tell Jordan this as we slide into one, taking an end each and planting our coffees in between us like chess pieces.
But to him the plaque-stained benches are creepy.
‘When you’re gone you’re gone,’ he says, asking for his body to be buried in a nice wood somewhere, rather than forcing a grieving loved one to fork out for a headstone.
I bring the conversation back to the land of the living, the comforting, the banal. I tease him about following the clichéd path of web designing in Shoreditch, he retorts by wondering what an Irish girl is doing living in Kilburn. Touché. He leaps back in my good books by commending me for keeping my accent. When I do go back to Northern Ireland, my mum and the few friends I have that are still at home tease me about my London lilt. I have no clue what they’re talking about.
Jordan’s parents live in a tiny village near Oxford and he’s been in London for five years since he finished university, a similar period to my own time here. In London terms, we’re both babies.
I don’t believe him, but he says he is also a newborn when it comes to internet dating, claiming I am the first one he’s ever had.
This admission is emitted from his mouth with a hint of shame, like he’s telling me he hasn’t lost his virginity. I’d probably be less shocked if he had revealed the latter.
A head leans forward behind him. It belongs to a woman in her fifties, who is clutching a Danielle Steele novel, the author’s name emblazoned across the cover, the book’s title too small for me to read. She clearly prefers what she’s hearing on the next bench. I bring my eyes back to Jordan.
I tell him he’s not missing much in the online dating scene, that swiping left and right gets tiring very quickly.
We take an acceptable pau
se, and he looks straight out at the insects assaulting the flowers while I swing round to my right to inspect a new commotion two benches down. A boy of about eight or nine is sitting on his skateboard, which he uses to glide along the summer seat like a little ghost. His dad gives him a smile each time the boy reaches his end by gently nudging the board into his father’s hip. The roll of wheels along the wood is as soothing as the next breeze that won’t come. I instinctively miss out the bench next door because of the old man there saluting me with a can of beer. But like every old drunken pro, he eventually catches my eye and I’m a locked target.
‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’
He raises the can to coincide with his opening gambit. I sense Jordan lean forward behind me.
‘It is indeed,’ Date #1 says over my shoulder, going into protective mode.
‘Aye, beautiful,’ says the old man. He may be a drunk, but he’s a Queen’s Park drunk; his trainers are worn but still intact, while his jeans look cheap yet new. His grey beard is dishevelled, but only slightly less kempt than those belonging to Jordan’s comrades swarming around E3. His smile is warm, genuine. He is so utterly unthreatening I feel guilty for my initial refusal to make eye contact.
‘But not as beautiful as you,’ he says, pointing the can in our direction.
I give him something to work with.
‘Do you mean me … or him?’
I flash a thumb and a wink back at Jordan, who in turn passes a grin over to the old man.
‘He’s no’ bad and very well dressed, sure, but he’s punching above his weight a bit with a lassie like you.’
Jordan laughs loud enough for every bench to hear, making a mockery of the Quiet Garden’s moniker.
‘Why, thank you,’ I say from one bench to another. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’ I’m not lying either. I can feel the eyes of Danielle Steele burning in the back of my head. She won’t be going back to her book any time soon.
‘I’m only jostling ya’,’ says our welcome interloper on the other side. ‘He’s a fine fella, I can tell just by looking at him. You two make a lovely couple.’
And that’s it. He takes a sip of his beer, settles back into his bench and stares into the flowers, ignoring us like we were two butterflies that crossed his path for no longer than a few seconds. Which I suppose is what we were. I stop myself from thanking him again in case it breaks him from his reverie.
Jordan and I share a smile, shake our empty coffee containers and, without words, agree to make a move.
‘Do you think that old guy will get a bench dedicated to him some day?’ I ask when we close the gate on the Quiet Garden and embrace the noise of the main park.
‘I hope so,’ says Jordan, revising his opinion on death and dedication. ‘He deserves it.’
Without asking, Jordan takes my empty coffee cup and moves ahead of me to the right, dropping both containers into a bin. I wait for him to rejoin me when I’m level with him, but he’s transfixed.
Another sign, this one fixed to a metal gate, has caught his attention.
PETS CORNER
‘We have to go in here.’
I wonder if I should have named my blog ‘Five Zoos’ instead, such is the excitement on Jordan’s face. I knew there was a small animal enclosure in the park, but I’ve never ventured inside. No chance of keeping that record now. Jordan pulls the gate open with one arm and takes my hand with the other, like he’s whirling me into a glamorous ball and I’m the surprise star attraction. It’s more intimate than any kiss on the cheek, more exhilarating than many a kiss I’ve had on the lips. In we go, into a small world of shy sheep, giant bunnies and gruff goats. Jordan loves the goats. There are four of them in the pen: Milo and Marley and Bella and Baxter. We tower over the toddlers reaching through the gaps in the wire to grab them. Bella doesn’t look too fussed about all the activity on the other side of her pen. She’s seen it all before.
When we go back out the gate a few minutes later, it hits me that we’ve been holding hands the whole time. Somewhere within earshot, a Prosecco cork pops and is met by a girlish holler.
The park has changed since we went into Pets Corner, like we’ve come back to the future but forgotten we’d tweaked something in the past that altered the course of history. The summer scene chimes with the same roars from the football pitch, the same insolent screeches of runaway children, the same tutting of flustered mothers and fathers. But the landscape has been replaced. The late afternoon sun, so powerful and impeachable five minutes ago, has relaxed its temper and mellowed out, sharing out its blood orange with the rest of the sky instead of hogging it all for itself. Squirrels curl their way round trees in excitement and a hundred thousand flying insects arrive to join the party, awoken by the lurid promise of dusk. Jordan blows a few of them out of his face and says, ‘Come on, let’s do another lap.’
We wind round the park in the opposite direction to which we came, magically turning it into a different place altogether. He tells me about his family – his mother and father twinkling out their retirement between Oxfordshire and half the world, his big brother banking away in Hong Kong. He tells me he wants to visit Buenos Aires one day, how he regrets choosing Geography for his GCSEs and that he loves the smell of tumbled dried clothes. I drink it all in, and when we reach the end of the lap, he asks me if I want to take the date outside the park. I’ve decided that the details of what happens outside the parks will not be going into these blog posts, but here is the CliffsNotes version.
I suggest a coffee shop a minute’s walk away near Queen’s Park Tube station, where we share another cappuccino and a Coke and he insists on procuring a loyalty card and having it stamped. We keep going after that, strolling up the long road to Kensal Rise, debating whether or not we should continue holding hands then just doing it, sneaking into a pizzeria and gobbling down a Diavola each while the sun and the moon and clouds and the whole world blush pink in false bashfulness. Our bellies filled, we idle up the hill towards the Overground station, detouring into a Brazilian bar for a couple of Margaritas. After the drinks, I lead him up to his train home, just as I led him round the park on our first lap before he took charge. He’s held my hand for the best part of two hours, so there’s no need for kissing – on cheeks or elsewhere – when we part outside the station. Instead, he gives me a hug and says, ‘Good luck with your other dates.’ It’s bizarre, but he sounds like he means it.
I walk myself home and let the night cool the tips of my body. The dream dies a death when I return to my room in the flat, but I rekindle it by writing these words. I have just glanced down at the clock on my laptop; it’s shortly after ten, perhaps too early to leave a date, but to me it feels just right. He didn’t offer to walk me home, so he must have felt the same. You should never offer to walk a girl home after a first date, anyway – why would she want some stranger to know where she lives? For all she knows, he could be a kidnapper. Or someone who likes jazz. I’ll let you, my dear readers, decide which is worse. And I look forward to finding out tomorrow what you thought of Jordan. He’s only the first of five, but I can’t help thinking I’m off to a perfect start.
11
Date: 01/01/16
Battery: 12%
Time remaining: 0hr 29min
Bill Haley stopped rocking around the clock just as Jordan made his entrance into Queen’s Park, into my life, into the blog, into this awful room. My ears are still ringing.
Jordan was too good to be true. I wanted him to be just like he was in his application, but in the flesh he was that and more. It was all a little dizzying. He was in the unfortunate position of being the first. He had all the pressure.
Although I uploaded an image of him with his application, on the day of the date he was reluctant to jump in front of the camera. Instead, I gladly handed my iPhone over and let him do the papping. I published four different photos with the blog post to break up the large block of writing, and as I scroll up and down through them now, my yellow summer dress does
its utmost to light the gloom.
I look so happy, tilting my head for my own camera, my eyes smiling. There is a picture of me with my legs crossed on the bench in the Quiet Garden, the sun behind the mysterious camera operator, the colourful flowers carefully left out of shot so as not to clash with my dress. A second shows me by an oak tree, recoiling in the face of a rather aggressive squirrel. In another image, I’m leaning over the goats’ fence in Pets Corner, braving the wrath of Bella. In the last image at the bottom of the post, my yellow dress plays with the pinking sky at the side entrance to the park, through which we made our escape. This time my sunglasses are on my head, my hair is tied in the highest ponytail I could muster, and my hands are on my hips, asking Jordan what the rest of the night holds. I look beautiful, not something a girl says about many of her personal photos, but it’s true.
I soak in the image on the screen then glance down at my broken nails and cracked palms rattling across the shadowy keyboard. My eyes follow the scrapes along my arm until they reach the rolled-up sleeves of my red-and-blue check shirt. Dust and grime and grass have made it their home, even though their colours are indiscernible in the dark. The Word document I write in permits me a semi-reflection of myself, but I’ve been doggedly trying to avoid my own stare, a game of cat-and-mouse in which I am both the hunter and the hunted. I don’t want to see myself. In the last image of the blog post for Date #1, I am the person I always wanted to be.
I scroll back down a post to Jordan’s application, to Jordan, or the last physical remnants I have of him, his profile pic. His image doesn’t belong in this foul place. His big brown eyes and his even bigger brown hair infiltrate the kind of Facebook face that seems to know how to do life. He was so perfect, unspoilt.
I had been anxious about his application. His answers may have chimed with what I wanted in a man, but his very first reveal in his application – made right after he gave me his name – was a concern. He was three years younger than me.
It doesn’t sound like much, but in London that can sometimes feel like a lifetime. I’m not one of those uptight girls who refuses to date anyone other than older men, it’s just the distance I find disconcerting. Michael was two years older than me and I always thought it somehow stopped us from completing some circle or other, yet I almost married him, until everything blew away in the softest of winds. If a two-year gap was a concern for me, three years seemed a lifetime. Jordan was a year younger than my brother, so I knew before our date that he belonged to a different time, another existence in another world. There were a few ‘cradle snatcher!’ accusations thrown at me in the comments section of the blog, which I noted but didn’t publish.
Five Parks Page 6