‘You’re right. I’m hysterical. I mean, it’s no big thing, is it? Coming within five minutes of having a baby with the world’s biggest arsehole.’ Erin stood, pulled up her trousers and flushed. ‘I’m making a fuss about nothing. I shouldn’t have opened my mouth, really.’
Erin pushed past and stamped downstairs towards the kitchen. Daniel threw on some underpants and a sweatshirt and followed. He found her filling the kettle in the kitchen.
‘Why did you change your mind, Daniel?’ she said. ‘We talk all afternoon and you don’t budge, then you get me into bed and suddenly you’re ready to be a dad. While you were ripping my clothes off, you were mainly concentrating on thinking about parental responsibility, were you? Is that how your mind works?’
‘It’s not like that.’
‘So what is it like? Tell me.’
‘I just felt . . . in love. I felt love. It wasn’t a thought. It was a feeling.’
The kettle boiled and clicked off. Erin, arms folded in front of her, didn’t move.
‘It was from the heart,’ continued Daniel. ‘That’s all. If that makes me a monster . . . I’m sorry.’
Erin stepped towards Daniel and hit him on the chest with the ball of her hand, not quite hard enough to hurt, a gesture somehow both loving and aggressive, angry and forgiving. She then turned, snatched a sheet of kitchen towel from a holder behind Daniel’s head, and walked away, dabbing at her eyes.
Daniel hoisted himself up on to the kitchen surface, which was cold against his bare legs, and stared towards Erin, who was visible now only in outline against the window. A light drizzle had begun to fall, flecking the pane with needles of rain. He had no idea what she might be thinking.
‘Why do we do this?’ said Erin, eventually.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why can’t we make each other happy?’
‘We do. You do make me happy,’ said Daniel, his voice heavy and unconvincing.
‘I don’t. You think I’m a hysterical, shrieking maniac.’
‘I love you. I love hysterical, shrieking maniacs.’
‘That’s not funny.’
‘You’re laughing.’
‘That doesn’t mean it’s funny,’ said Erin with a smirk, turning back towards Daniel, gesturing with her crumpled kitchen towel.
‘I love your rules. Are you going to explain them to our baby?’
‘Daniel, I love you, but I do want you to leave. I want you to come back when you’ve decided, when you can convince me that you really know what you’re taking on and you genuinely want to do it, day in, day out; day and night; year after year.’
Erin walked towards Daniel and stood between his knees. She stared intently into his eyes, which were cast down towards the floor.
‘I don’t mean leave leave,’ she continued. ‘Not end-it leave. Just, take some time. Come back when you’re ready. And if you’re not ready, don’t come back. I won’t want to see you again.’
‘You mean that?’
‘I do.’
‘Are you talking, like, an hour or a day or a week or what?’
‘A month. Maybe we shouldn’t see each other for a month. No contact, no phone calls, no nothing. Proper thinking time. Then we’ll know. Me, too. We need to both know.’
‘What, you’re saying you’re not sure, either?’
‘I’m just saying, let’s think. One month.’
one last lap of honour
Daniel’s mistake, perhaps, was that he allowed himself a shade more than one single month. By the end of the month, he had definitively reached his decision. He did want children, and he wanted them with Erin. She had been right, he realised, to make him think about it harder, and reflect on the sacrifices it would entail. A rush of love, or lust, or whatever it was, didn’t constitute a solid enough base for a decision of this magnitude. From the moment of conception there was no going back. From that instant, a life’s work lay ahead of you. But he was ready for it.
Though with that in mind, a month seemed like a very short time, and as it came to an end, he realised he had wasted most of it fretting over his big decision. Having made up his mind, it dawned on him that this month was a precious resource that he had squandered. It was his last chance to be truly free. So he decided to allow himself an extra week or so that he’d use properly, for bachelor pleasures.
Not sex. He had no intention of cheating on Erin. But she had given him some time to himself, and it was his duty to use it. There were certain kinds of fun that just wouldn’t be available once he went back to her, and he now had one last chance to do it all, and get a certain hard-to-define set of urges out of his system for good. Once you have a baby, your youth is over. But before he left it behind, he’d take one last lap of honour.
He picked up his mobile phone and scrolled through the semi-dormant recesses of his address book. Just a couple of phone calls and the sleeping monster of his single social life could be re-awakened and back in the pub. He had a few key friends left who were still living that life, and they’d be pleased to hear from him.
One of the slightly tragic things about single friends in their thirties was that they were always happy to have you back, no matter how long you’d been ignoring them. Like happy-clappy churches, they were openly desperate for more recruits. They didn’t care who you were or how long you were staying or what your motives were, they just wanted extra people to help make more noise.
As soon as Daniel got to the letter ‘M’, he knew what to do. Matt was his oldest (though by no means his closest) friend, and Daniel knew he’d almost certainly be out, and drinking, probably in some kind of gang, which he’d immediately and happily invite Daniel to join, even though they’d only spoken once in the previous year.
‘Danny Boooooooooooooooy! Good to hear from you!’
‘Sorry it’s been so long. I’ve been busy.’
‘Whatever. How’s things?’ Matt never played the why-haven’t-you-called-me game. Whether this was to preserve his dignity, or because he genuinely didn’t care, Daniel never knew.
‘Good. Good. What are you up to tonight?’
‘You coming out to play? You been let off the leash?’ said Matt.
‘Sort of.’
‘You split up?’ There was definitely a hint of relish in Matt’s voice as he said this.
‘No, no. Just . . . trial separation. Very brief. Bit of thinking time. We’re getting back together. Definitely.’
‘Trial separation. I love it! So you came to me! Your trial separation master of ceremonies, eh? Show you what you’re missing.’
‘No, it’s not that.’
‘Course it isn’t. OK. Scrabble and herbal tea for two, then, is it? Seven-thirtyish, and we can be finished in time for a nice early night.’
‘Er . . . if that’s what you’re doing.’
‘Don’t be a dick. Get in a cab and get over here, you loser.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Don’t even know. Some bar. Hang on, here’s a matchbox with the address on it. If you’re dressed like a student, don’t bother.’
‘I’m not dressed like a student!’
‘You’re always dressed like a student. Go home and put something decent on before you come. And I don’t mean a suit. If you’re wearing a suit, I don’t know you.’
‘I’m not an idiot.’
‘I’m wearing a suit, but I have good suits. You’ll just look like you’re at a job interview.’
‘I’m not going to wear a suit.’
‘You probably don’t even have one.’
The conversation continued in this vein for some time, with Matt’s usual mix of being both extremely friendly and phenomenally insulting at the same time. This was how their relationship had always worked, for almost thirty years.
Daniel carefully selected his least unfashionable outfit and went to join Matt at the bar, stopping at a cash machine on the way to take out a stack of notes: as much cash as would usually last him a week. He knew it would bare
ly get him through the evening.
The address was a bar in Knightsbridge. It was years since Daniel had been to this part of London, and he was a little surprised to find it still there, and still so full of rich people and their shops. When he was travelling, he felt quite at ease sitting in cafés, watching foreign rich people and foreign rich people’s shops, but there was something about English rich people and English rich people’s shops that he found distasteful and depressing. It wasn’t that he coveted the money, it was just that he didn’t want these particular people to have it, either. If nothing else, none of them ever looked like they were enjoying it.
Daniel put on a smile and tried to give himself a mental enema as he walked down the stairs, past the bodybuilder/undertaker tableau of bouncers at the door. He’d never quite mastered the etiquette of bouncer eye-contact, and his intentions of a casual breeze-past always evaporated at the last minute, replaced by a shy smile and an ingratiating, coquettish simper.
Daniel handed over his coat to an aggravatingly beautiful coat-check girl and stepped in. To see someone so unreachably gorgeous in such a lowly job gave Daniel the feeling not just that he was too ugly and poor for this place, but that he lived his life in a lower circle of existence. Perhaps this was why they employed women like her at the door: to give you the feeling that you were not just entering a bar, but being allowed access to a better world.
The bar was lit with a curious blue glow, not by any discernible bulbs, but by cubes of wall that emanated a coloured radiance which vaguely approximated to light while somehow not giving enough information to let you know where the floor was. Daniel could dimly make out that there were strange, semi-circular staircases all over the cavernous but labyrinthine room, leading up and down into little nooks and dens, containing shin-high tables, low leather stools and curved banquettes. The bar itself, which looked as if it was designed not only to serve drinks but also to monitor satellite activity over Europe, was in the most distant corner, but Daniel found it impossible to gauge how far away this was, or whether getting there involved walking up or down. Hundreds of thousands of pounds had been spent on this design, specifically in order to give people like Daniel this sensation of utter disorientation and abject fear.
The barmen and waitresses looked like the kind of people Daniel thought only existed in magazines. Most of the female customers in the bar also looked as if they’d be more comfortable in two dimensions, and all seemed to be in their early twenties. The male drinkers, by contrast, were all over thirty and generally as photogenic as eczema.
People were scattered around the booths, plinths and dens as if recovering from some terrible exertion, huddled together for comfort, but too exhausted to speak. This effect was probably due to the volume of the music, which was too loud to talk over, though no one was dancing, and there didn’t appear to be any space in which dancing was possible, should anyone be struck by the urge. This was dance music in name only, designed neither for listening nor dancing, but simply to make a noise that sounded like the room looked, at a level high enough to rid you of any obligation to speak.
Daniel spotted Matt in a corner near the bar, deep in conversation with a girl in possession of a face of implausibly radiant perfection, and a physique Daniel thought only existed in the imagination of teenage boys. She looked like the type of woman you’d see drawn in lurid ink on the cover of a fantasy novel, wearing a fur bikini and carrying a lime-green stun gun.
In order to hear one another, Matt and the girl had to take turns bending forwards and shouting directly into the other’s ear, a little like conversing through an apartment block entryphone, but given the physical proximity this necessitated, Daniel could see the appeal. He approached tentatively, not wanting to interrupt or fall over.
When Matt spotted him, Daniel did a will-I-be-getting-in-the-way hand gesture, but Matt waved him over and introduced him to the girl, though the introduction amounted to no more than telling each other, inaudibly, what the other one was called. They stood smiling at one another for a while. A three-way intercom-type conversation really wasn’t possible unless you said everything twice, and Daniel didn’t feel he knew this woman sufficiently well to go close enough to her to say anything audible. Saying anything to Matt, however, without repeating it to her, would also have seemed oddly rude. Silence seemed like the only polite course of action.
Matt then shouted something private in her ear and dragged Daniel away to the toilets.
Walking into the gents felt like waking from a disability nightmare. Daniel could see and hear again. He knew where the floor was. Never had urine smelled so sweet.
‘How are you, man?’ said Matt, giving him a hug.
‘Good, good. This is quite a place.’
‘I know. The women! Isn’t it amazing?’
‘Er . . . yeah.’
‘Isn’t she fucking hot? Isn’t she? Isn’t she? I’ve been working on her for two hours,’ he said, in a tone of voice that seemed to imply this was a gruellingly long time to sustain a relationship with a female.
‘And?’
‘It’s looking good, my friend. Very good.’ Matt turned to a urinal and pissed, with noisy authority. ‘Good to see you, bro. Really good to see you.’
‘Are you talking to me or to your penis?’ said Daniel.
‘Both of you.’ Matt zipped, turned and clapped Daniel on the shoulder. ‘You’re my two beauties.’
‘Maybe wash your hands before you fondle me.’
‘So fastidious.’
Still without washing his hands, Matt took a wrap of coke out of his pocket, formed it into two neat lines beside a basin with his credit card, and rolled up a banknote.
‘After you,’ he said.
‘Not really in the mood,’ said Daniel.
‘You’re never in the mood.’ Matt stooped and sniffed, wiped his nose with manic fury, as if it had just filled with ants, then sighed and grinned broadly at Daniel. ‘Your loss.’
‘I realise that.’
‘So – you and Erin.’ Matt made a ratcheting sound in his throat and drew an imaginary razor across his neck.
‘Er . . . not exactly. But thanks for your sympathy.’
‘Am I supposed to be sympathising that you have split up or that you haven’t? You’re confusing me.’
‘Just anything vaguely human would be a start.’
Matt cupped Daniel’s cheeks in his hands. ‘You’re a beautiful man, my friend, and it’s time to get you laid.’
Matt pushed Daniel’s shoulders back, gave his arse a squeeze and marched out of the room. In the doorway, he stopped and turned. ‘How’s Gillian?’ he asked.
Matt always asked after Daniel’s mother. Daniel had no idea why. He thought it might be Matt’s way of reminding him that they were childhood friends, that they shared something old and deep, but he wasn’t sure. The other possibility was that Matt couldn’t resist sharing his amazement that by some synaptic fluke he remembered her name. The cynic in Daniel even suspected that Matt perhaps forced himself to remember one obscure detail about the lives of everyone he met, to which he would refer during each encounter in the hope that it gave the impression he listened to what they said.
‘She’s fine,’ said Daniel, as he always did.
‘Good,’ said Matt.
With that, he strode out of the room, leading Daniel back into the din. It was odd, Daniel thought, that this was where they had come to talk, that there was a separate room for unsanitary and vaguely shameful acts such as urination, defecation and conversation.
Matt failed to get Daniel laid. In fact, Daniel left within the hour, not having spoken to anyone. The art of standing alone in public with a drink, without looking pitiful, was not one he had ever mastered.
He gave Matt, who was deep in an intimate shout with the girl he’d been pursuing, a wave and an I’ll-phone-you hand gesture as he left. In fact, he had no intention of phoning him for at least another six months, and Matt knew that, but he smiled and made the gesture
in return anyway.
The remainder of Daniel’s bachelor fortnight was not much better. Having realised that he was not a bar person, he called Andy, an old friend who was very much a pub man and who was perpetually single. Since they had last seen each other, Andy’s capacity to hold his drink had shot up, while Daniel’s had plummeted. It was a question of practice.
Daniel was a rubber-limbed, thick-tongued wreck before Andy had even really started. Andy drank so fast there was barely time to talk, and when they did talk, Andy seemed to talk mainly about drink. Daniel didn’t have any drink stories to share, and he was almost immediately too drunk to think his way round the problem of how to change the subject. Then, suddenly, it was the next morning and Daniel was waking up fully clothed on Andy’s sofa, peeling a sticky cheek off upholstery so dirty it looked like pizza.
For two days, Daniel had a headache, a sore neck and loose bowels. Getting drunk had never been Daniel’s first choice for a night out, but it was depressing to discover that he was now effectively allergic to it. He was clearly just too old. He never even found out how much he had drunk, or what he had done that night, since Andy couldn’t remember, either.
He decided to try Nick next, who was from the single-by-necessity-rather-than-choice camp. Daniel insisted on meeting in a café. Nick gave such a thorough account of every last detail of his disastrous and almost entirely asexual attempt at a love life that Daniel passed successively through sympathy, impatience, boredom and depression, and ultimately got to the point where he was just watching Nick’s lips move, wondering if enough time had elapsed for another glance at his watch.
Nick, over the years, had worked his way down the Darwinian chain, but he still hadn’t found his level. However low he went, it just never seemed to be low enough. He had tried ugly women, he had tried boring women, he had even tried ugly and boring women, but still with no success. The latest stage, it appeared, as Daniel’s capacity to listen dwindled away, was Nick wrestling with the dilemma of whether to pursue women he found actively unpleasant. It appeared to be the only place left to go.
Otherhood Page 10