One Day

by David Nicholls

  ‘To be honest, I always thought you were putting it on. You know – an affectation—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your accent. You know – Ay oop! Miners-this, miners-that, Guat-e-mala Ra-ra-ra! I thought you were always rubbing it in everyone’s face a bit. But now you’re talking normally again!’

  Emma had always envied those people who spoke their minds, who said what they felt without attention to social nicety. She had never been one of those people, but even so now felt an F-sound forming on her bottom lip.

  ‘ . . . and you were always so angry about everything all the time.’

  ‘Oh, I still get angry, Miffy . . .’

  ‘Oh my God, there’s Dexter Mayhew.’ Miffy was whispering in her ear now, one hand squeezing Emma’s shoulder. ‘Did you know we had a thing once?’

  ‘Yes, you told me. Many, many times.’

  ‘He still looks great? Doesn’t he look great?’ and she sighed swooningly. ‘How come you two never got together?’

  ‘I don’t know: my accent, the puppy-fat? . . .’

  ‘You weren’t that bad. Hey, have you seen his girlfriend? Isn’t she beautiful? Don’t you think she’s just exquisite?’ and Miffy turned round for a reply, but was surprised to see that Emma had already gone.

  The guests were gathering at the marquee now, huddling eagerly around the seating plan as if getting their exam results. Dexter and Emma found each other in the crowd.

  ‘Table five,’ said Dexter.

  ‘I’m on table twenty-four,’ said Emma. ‘Table five’s quite near the bride. Twenty-four’s out near the chemical loos.’

  ‘You mustn’t take it personally.’

  ‘What’s the main course?’

  ‘The rumour-mill says salmon.’

  ‘Salmon. Salmon, salmon, salmon, salmon. I eat so much salmon at these weddings, twice a year I get this urge to swim upstream.’

  ‘Come to table five. We’ll swap the name cards around.’

  ‘Tamper with the seating plan? They shoot people for less than that. There’s a guillotine out back.’

  Dexter laughed. ‘We’ll talk afterwards, yeah?’

  ‘Come and find me.’

  ‘Or you can come and find me.’

  ‘Or you come find me.’

  ‘Or you find me.’

  As punishment for some past slight, Emma had been placed between the groom’s elderly aunt and uncle from New Zealand, and the phrases ‘beautiful landscape’ and ‘wonderful quality of life’ were rotated for a good three hours. Occasionally she would be distracted by a great gale of laughter from the direction of table five, Dexter and Sylvie, Callum and his girlfriend Luiza; the glamorous table. Emma poured herself another glass of wine and asked once more about the landscape, the quality of life. Whales: had they ever seen real-life whales? she asked and glanced enviously at table five.

  At table five, Dexter glanced enviously over at table twenty-four. Sylvie had devised a new game of quickly placing her hand over the top of Dexter’s wine glass whenever he picked up the bottle, turning the long meal into a stern test of his reflexes. ‘You will take it easy, won’t you?’ she whispered when he had scored a point, and he assured her that he would, but the result was mild boredom, and increasing envy at Callum’s maddening self-assurance. At table twenty-four, he could see Emma talking politely and earnestly to a tanned elderly couple, noting the attentive way she listened, her hand placed now on the old man’s arm, laughing at his joke, now taking their picture with the disposable camera, now leaning in to have her picture taken. Dexter noticed her blue dress, the kind of thing she never would have worn ten years ago, and noticed too that the zip had come undone by three inches or so at the back, that the hem had ridden up to halfway along her thigh, and there followed a fleeting but still vivid memory of Emma in an Edinburgh bedroom on Rankeillor Street. Dawn light through the curtains, a low single bed, her skirt around her waist, arms above her head. What had changed since then? Not that much. The same lines formed around her mouth when she laughed, they were etched just a little deeper now. She still had the same eyes, bright and shrewd, and she still laughed with her wide mouth tightly shut, as if holding in some secret. In many ways she was far more attractive than her twenty-two-year-old self. She was no longer cutting her own hair for one thing, and she had lost some of that library pallor, that shoe-gazing petulance and surliness. How would he feel, he wondered, if he were seeing that face for the first time now? If he had been allocated table twenty-four, had sat down and introduced himself. Of all the people here today, he thought, he would only want to talk to her. He picked up his drink and pushed back his chair.

  But glasses were being tapped with knives. The speeches. As tradition demanded, the Father of the Bride was drunk and boorish, the Best Man was drunk and unfunny and also forgot to mention the Bride. With each glass of red wine Emma felt the energy leeching out of her, and she began to contemplate her hotel room up at the main house, the clean white dressing-gown, the reproduction four-poster. There’d be one of those walk-through showers that people go crazy for, and far too many towels for a single person. As if to make her mind up, the band were tuning up now, the bassist playing the riff from ‘Another One Bites the Dust’, and Emma decided that it was time to call it a day, take her slice of wedding cake in the special velvet drawstring bag, head up to her room and sleep the wedding off.

  ‘Excuse me, but don’t I know you from somewhere?’

  A hand on her arm, a voice behind her. Dexter was crouching by her side, grinning woozily, a bottle of champagne in his hand.

  Emma held out her glass.

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose.’

  With a squeal of feedback, the band began to play and all attention turned to the dance floor, where Malcolm and Tilly were frugging to their special song, ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’, twisting rheumatically at the hips, four thumbs held aloft.

  ‘Good God. When did we all start dancing like old people?’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Dexter, perching on a chair.

  ‘Can you dance?’

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  Emma shook her head. ‘I don’t mean on a podium with a whistle and your shirt off, I mean proper dancing.’

  ‘Course I can.’ He took her hand. ‘Want me to prove it?’

  ‘Maybe later.’ They were having to shout now. Dexter stood and tugged on her hand. ‘Let’s go somewhere. Just you and me.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. Apparently, there’s a maze.’

  ‘A maze?’ A moment, then she stood. ‘Well why didn’t you say?’

  They took two glasses and discreetly stepped out of the marquee and into the night. It was still warm, and bats were swooping overhead in the inky summer air as they walked arm in arm through the rose garden towards the maze.

  ‘So how does it feel?’ she asked. ‘Losing an old flame to the arms of another man.’

  ‘Tilly Killick’s not an old flame.’

  ‘Oh, Dexter . . .’ Emma shook her head slowly. ‘When will you learn?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Must have been, let me see . . . December 1992, that flat in Clapton. The one that smelt of fried onions.’

  Dexter winced. ‘How do you know about these things?’

  ‘Well when I left to go to Woolworths you were massaging each other’s feet with my best olive oil and when I got back from Woolworths she was crying and there were olive oil footprints all over my best rug and the sofa and on the kitchen table and half way up the wall too, I remember. So I carefully examined the forensic evidence and came to that conclusion. Oh, also, you left your birth control device at the top of the kitchen bin, so that was nice.’

  ‘Did I? Sorry about that.’

  ‘Plus the fact that she told me.’

  ‘Did she?’ He shook his head, betrayed. ‘That was meant to be our secret!’

  ‘Women talk about these things you know. It’s no use swearin
g them to secrecy, it all comes out in the end.’

  ‘I’ll remember that in future.’

  Now they had arrived at the entrance to the maze, a neatly trimmed privet hedge affair, a good ten feet high, its entrance marked by a heavy wooden door. Emma paused, her hand on the iron handle. ‘Is this a good idea?’

  ‘How hard can it be?’

  ‘And if we got lost?’

  ‘We’ll use the stars or something.’ The door creaked open. ‘Right or left?’

  ‘Right,’ said Emma, and they stepped into the maze. The high hedges were lit at ground level with different coloured lights, and the air had that summer smell, thick and heady, almost oily from the warm leaves. ‘Where’s Sylvie?’

  ‘Sylvie’s okay, she’s being Callumed. He’s being the life and soul, the charming Oirish millionaire. I thought I’d leave them to it. I can’t compete with him anymore. Too tiring.’

  ‘He’s doing very well, you know.’

  ‘So everyone tells me.’

  ‘Crayfish, apparently.’

  ‘I know. He just offered me a job.’

  ‘Crayfish wrangler?’

  ‘Don’t know yet. He wants to talk to me about “opportunities”. Business is people he said, whatever that means.’

  ‘But what about Sport Xtreme?

  ‘Ah,’ Dexter laughed and rubbed his hair with one hand. ‘You’ve seen it then?’

  ‘Never missed an episode. You know me, there’s nothing I like more in the early hours of the morning than stuff about BMX. My favourite bit is when you say that things are “rad”—’

  ‘They make me say that stuff.’

  ‘“Rad” and “sweet”. “Check out these sweet, old skool moves—”’

  ‘I think I get away with it.’

  ‘Not always, pal. Left or right?’

  ‘Left, I think.’ They walked a little way in silence, listening to the muffled thump of the band playing ‘Superstition’. ‘How’s the writing going?’

  ‘Oh, it’s okay, when I do it. Most of the time I just sit around eating biscuits.’

  ‘Stephanie Shaw says they gave you an advance.’

  ‘Just a bit of money, enough to last ’til Christmas. Then we’ll see. Back to teaching full-time probably.’

  ‘And what’s it about? This book.’

  ‘Not sure yet.’

  ‘It’s about me, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Dexter, it’s a whole thick book entirely about you. It’s called “Dexter Dexter Dexter Dexter Dexter”. Right or left?’

  ‘Let’s try a left.’

  ‘Actually it’s just a book for kids. Teenagers. Boys, relationships, that kind of thing. It’s about a school play, that production of Oliver! I did all those years ago. A comedy.’

  ‘Well you look very well on it.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Absolutely. Some people look better, some people look worse. You are definitely looking better.’

  ‘Miffy Buchanan tells me I’ve finally lost my puppy-fat.’

  ‘She’s just jealous. You look great.’

  ‘Thank you. Want me to say you look better too?’

  ‘If you think you can pull it off.’

  ‘Well you do. Left?’

  ‘Left.’

  ‘Better than during your rock and roll years anyway. When you were giving-it-large or whatever it was you were doing.’ They walked a little way in silence, until Emma spoke again. ‘I was worried about you.’

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘We all were.’

  ‘Just a phase. Everybody’s got to have a phase like that, haven’t they? Go a bit wild.’

  ‘Do they? I haven’t. Hey, I hope you’ve stopped wearing that annoying flat cap too.’

  ‘I haven’t worn a hat for years.’

  ‘Pleased to hear it. We were thinking about staging an intervention.’

  ‘You know how it is, you start with the soft hats, just for kicks, then before you know it, you’re into flat caps, trilbies, bowlers . . .’

  Another junction. ‘Right or left?’ she said.

  ‘No idea.’

  They peered in either direction. ‘Amazing, isn’t it, how quickly this stopped being fun.’

  ‘Let’s sit down shall we? Over there.’

  A small marble bench had been set into the hedge walls, lit from beneath by a blue fluorescent light, and they sat on the cool stone, filled their glasses, tapped them together and bumped shoulders.

  ‘God, I almost forgot . . .’ Dexter reached into his trouser pocket, and very carefully removed a folded napkin, held it in his palm like a conjurer and unfolded it, a corner at a time. Nestling in the napkin like birds’ eggs, were two crumpled cigarettes.

  ‘From Cal,’ he whispered, awed. ‘Want one?’

  ‘No thank you. Haven’t touched one for years.’

  ‘Well done you. I’ve stopped too, officially. But I feel safe here . . .’ He lit the contraband, his hand shaking stagily. ‘She can’t find me here . . .’ Emma laughed. The champagne and the solitude had lifted their mood, and both were now feeling sentimental, nostalgic, exactly as they should feel at a wedding, and they smiled at each other through the smoke. ‘Callum says that we’re the “Marlboro-Light-Generation”.’

  ‘God, that’s depressing.’ Emma sniffed. ‘A whole generation defined by a brand of fag. I’d sort of hoped for more.’ She smiled, and turned to Dexter. ‘So. How are you these days?’

  ‘I’m fine. Bit more sensible.’

  ‘Sex in toilet cubicles lose its bittersweet charm?’

  He laughed and examined the tip of the cigarette. ‘I just had to get something out of my system, that’s all.’

  ‘And is it out now?’

  ‘Think so, most of it.’

  ‘Because of true love?’

  ‘Partly. Also I’m thirty-four now. At thirty-four you start to run out of excuses.’

  ‘Excuses?’

  ‘Well, if you’re twenty-two and you’re fucking up, you can say, it’s okay I’m only twenty-two. I’m only twenty-five, I’m only twenty-eight. But “I’m only thirty-four”?’ He sipped from his glass, and leant back into the hedge. ‘It’s like everyone has a central dilemma in their life, and mine was can you be in a committed, mature, loving adult relationship and still get invited to threesomes?’

  ‘And what’s the answer, Dex?’ she asked, solemnly.

  ‘The answer is no, you can’t. Once you’ve worked that out, it all gets a bit simpler.’

  ‘It’s true; an orgy won’t keep you warm at night.’

  ‘An orgy won’t care for you when you’re old.’ He took another sip. ‘Anyway, it’s not even as if I was getting invited to any in the first place, just making a fool of myself, screwing things up. Screwed up my career, screwed up with Mum—’

  ‘—well that’s not true—’

  ‘—screwed up all my friendships.’ For emphasis, Dexter leant against her arm, and she leant back against his. ‘I just thought it was time to do things properly for once. And now I’ve met Sylvie, and she’s great, she really is, and she keeps me on the straight and narrow.’

  ‘Well she’s a lovely girl.’

  ‘She is. She is.’

  ‘Very beautiful. Serene.’

  ‘A little bit scary sometimes.’

  ‘She’s got a lovely, warm sort of Leni Riefenstahl quality to her.’

  ‘Lenny who?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Of course she’s got absolutely no sense of humour.’

  ‘Well that’s a relief. I think a sense of humour’s over-rated,’ said Emma. ‘Goofing it up all the time, it’s boring. Like Ian. ’Cept Ian wasn’t funny. No, much better to have somebody you really fancy, someone who’ll rub your feet.’

  He tried and failed to imagine Sylvie touching his feet. ‘She told me once that she never laughs because she doesn’t like what it does to her face.’

  Emma gave a low chuckle. ‘Wow’ was all she could say. ‘Wow. But you love her
, right?’

  ‘I adore her.’

  ‘Adore. Well “adore” is even better.’

  ‘She’s sensational.’

  ‘She is.’

  ‘And she’s really turned things around for me too. I’m off the drugs and booze and not smoking.’ She glanced at the bottle in his hand, the cigarette in his mouth. He smiled. ‘Special occasion.’

  ‘So true love found you in the end.’

  ‘Something like that.’ He filled her glass. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m fine. I’m fine.’ As a distraction, she stood. ‘Let’s keep walking, shall we? Left or right?’

  ‘Right.’ With a sigh, he hauled himself to his feet. ‘Do you still see Ian?’

  ‘Not for years now.’

  ‘Nobody else on the horizon?’

  ‘Don’t you start, Dexter.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sympathy for the spinster. I’m perfectly content, thank you. And I refuse to be defined by my boyfriend. Or lack of.’ She was starting to speak with real zeal now. ‘Once you decide not to worry about that stuff anymore, dating and relationships and love and all that, it’s like you’re free to get on with real life. And I’ve got my work, and I love that. I’ve got I reckon one more year to really make a go of it. The money’s tiny, but I’m free. I go to the movies in the afternoon.’ She paused momentarily. ‘Swimming! I swim a lot. I swim and I swim and I swim, mile after mile. God, I fucking hate swimming. Turn left, I think.’

  ‘You know, I feel the same. Not about swimming, I mean about not having to date anymore. Since I’ve been with Sylvie, it’s like I’ve freed up this vast amount of time and energy and mental space.’

  ‘And what do you do with it all, this mental space?’

  ‘Play Tomb Raider mostly.’

  Emma laughed, and walked a little further in silence, worrying that she was coming across as less self-contained and empowered than she had intended. ‘And anyway, it’s not like I’m completely, you know, boring and, and loveless. I have my moments. I had this thing with a guy called Chris. Called himself a dentist but he was really just a hygienist.’

  ‘What happened to Chris?’

  ‘Just fizzled out. Just as well. I was convinced that he was always staring at my teeth. Kept nagging me to floss, Emma, floss. Going on a date was like going for a check-up. Too much pressure. And before that there was Mr Godalming.’ She shuddered. ‘Mr Godalming. What a disaster.’