‘OK, dear. And you mustn’t worry. Everything will be OK.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do,’ said Clive, Helen’s sarcasm sailing far over his head. ‘You have to remember that boys will be boys.’
‘Um . . . I don’t think I understand what you’re talking about.’
‘Just, he’s a big boy now, and things change very fast, and the world we’re used to disappeared into the big computer in the sky long, long ago. And we can’t expect to understand what people like Paul want to do with themselves. We just have to be grateful for what we’ve got.’
These few days on her own had been enough for Helen to forget quite how much her husband irked her. He was a man with many personal qualities, but putting thoughts into words was not one of them. He wasn’t stupid – he could repair cars and install kitchens and do crosswords, and he remembered the names of every sportsman and politician ever mentioned in a national newspaper – but he wasn’t capable of responding to new ideas on the hoof. In a day or two, he’d be able to discuss Helen’s new discoveries about Paul. For now, there was simply no point in prolonging the conversation.
‘Well, good night,’ said Helen.
‘Night night. Don’t let the bedbugs bite,’ said Clive.
Clive possessed just about enough intuition to tell when he had annoyed or disappointed Helen. He inevitably responded by becoming jovial. This, needless to say, did not have the desired effect. Helen hung up.
Gillian and Daniel
her salt on his tongue
At first sight, it was the hair. They were at one of those university functions that happen during freshers’ week where, for some reason you don’t understand, you go and listen to someone whose identity you never quite catch explain lots of rules you immediately forget. After that, you stand around like delegates at a sales conference, sipping nasty wine and making uncomfortable conversation with students you’ll never meet again. And across the room, through a thicket of tedious-looking people with tedious-looking hair, Daniel saw Erin. She was wearing knee-high boots, green stripy tights, and denim hot-pants skimpier than an average pair of knickers.
The first time he glanced at her, she was already looking at him, and their eyes locked. They both smiled. He knew what she was thinking; she knew what he was thinking. Three thoughts:
1)I’m bored and you’re bored.
2)If we were speaking to each other, we wouldn’t be bored.
3)You’ve got big hair.
Daniel hadn’t cut his for three years, but it was still defying gravity. Thick, black, dense and wiry, it just grew up and out. His mother regularly told him it was a disgrace. He was more proud of it than any other achievement in his life. Erin’s was longer, curlier and wilder, but lacked the ability to resist the laws of physics. You couldn’t call it a mess – this was carefully looked-after, well-loved hair – but you could call it a disgrace, and Erin’s mother regularly did.
Imagine needing a new coat. It’s autumn, the wind is turning icy, and you simply don’t have anything to keep you warm. So you head out and stand, shivering, at the bus stop, waiting for a ride to the shops. Imagine waiting eighteen years.
This was how Erin felt about university. University was that bus, and now, at last, it was here. She’d hated the small town where she grew up: she argued constantly with her parents, she shared not one square millimetre of common ground with her two football-obsessed brothers, and every day she spent at school felt like a month of tedium doled out minute by minute.
She was bored of the place, and she was bored of her friends, and her friends, she sensed, were bored of her. There were two escapes: pub or university. Among her peers, she was the only one interested in the latter option, a choice which carried with it all the social cachet of leprosy. Her friends drank and worked their way through the local boys, who were sampled in precisely the same way as the limited selection at the town’s video rental shop (from which, in the long run, everyone watched everything), while Erin just stayed in, night after night, doing her homework and revising for exams.
She would probably have been bullied for it, were it not for something in her nature that rendered her unbullyable. She was not aloof so much as simply different, apart, uninterested or perhaps even unaware of what it might mean to fit in. She was a giraffe in a pony enclosure. Most people were civil to her, the rest chose to pretend she wasn’t there, while she waited, year after year, for passage out.
The instant she saw Daniel, she recognised something in the face of this big-haired, badly dressed boy who looked not quite English but not exactly foreign, either. She saw in him, in the intelligent, mischievous curl of his mouth, in the murky glint of his dark eyes, a fellow giraffe.
They argued, years later, about who approached who. Daniel always insisted that she came to him; she clearly remembered him sidling towards her, then being too shy to say anything. They both agreed, however, word for word, on how the conversation had started.
‘Big hair,’ said Erin.
‘Thanks,’ said Daniel. ‘Yours is pretty big, too.’
‘Thanks.’
Erin smiled at Daniel; he smiled back. She wanted to keep talking to this boy, but momentarily felt at a loss for anything to say, so she reached up and gave his hair a pat and a gentle rub, like a tailor assessing a swatch of cloth. ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘Unusual.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘It doesn’t go down, does it?’
‘Exactly.’
‘It just goes up. And up.’
‘You know what they call it? The look?’
‘What?’
‘A Jewfro,’ he said, proudly.
‘A Jewfro?’ It took her a minute to mentally divide up the word, and piece together its meaning. So that’s what he was. She wasn’t sure she had ever met one before.
‘Yup. They’re very rare. Very prized. Can I have a go on yours?’
‘OK,’ said Erin, worried that she might be beginning to blush. She hadn’t intended the conversation to become this flirtatious, and wasn’t sure if the development was her fault. Was he going to think she was slutty, or too keen?
Daniel reached up to Erin’s hair and mimicked her pat and rub precisely. ‘I’m going to need two hands for this. Will you hold my glass?’
She took his glass and he felt again, this time pushing his fingers through to her skull and allowing them to linger briefly on the groove at the back of her neck. She looked into his eyes as he did so, and he stared right back, not blinking. It didn’t take any great expertise in male psychology to guess what he was thinking. He wanted to strip her naked and fuck her. As soon as possible.
The thought of it made her smirk with happy anticipation. She even toyed with the idea of cutting to the chase and dragging him by the hand, then and there, back to her room. But that wasn’t how people behaved. She was in a new place, and she probably ought to leave it for a few days to see how things worked. She had her reputation to consider.
‘Not bad,’ he said, letting go of her hair and taking back his glass. He held his ground, remaining within touching distance.
‘Thanks.’
‘Big, but not clumpy.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And soft. But I bet it can’t do this.’
‘Do what?’
‘It’s the only interesting thing I can do, though,’ said Daniel. ‘If I do this for you now, any further time we ever spend together will just seem pale by comparison.’
‘I’ll take that risk.’
‘You sure? I can save it for later, if you prefer.’
‘Now’s good.’
‘OK. Are you ready?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Sure?’
‘Just get on with it.’
‘OK. Here goes. Take my glass again. And try not to blink. This isn’t a trick. Everything you are about to see is real.’
‘You’ve got two seconds to get started, or I’m off.’
Daniel closed his eyes and took two s
low, deep, pseudo-yogic breaths. He raised his hands to shoulder height and wiggled his fingers. He then did a few more clenches and stretches with his hands, shook them out, touched his toes, and rolled his head in a long, circular neck stretch. After two more breaths, this time taken through his mouth, he reached up and tucked his fingers into his hair. Like a circus mind-reader, he proceeded to prod, poke and rub. Then, slowly and with intense care, he drew out his right hand. Held between his fingertips was a biro.
‘Da daaaaaaaaaa!’ he said.
‘Is that it?’
‘There’s more.’
Daniel reached back into his hair. Sensing that his circus act was wearing a little thin, he went faster this time, but it soon became apparent that he couldn’t find what he was looking for.
‘Have you lost it?’ said Erin.
‘It’s in here somewhere.’
‘Do you need some help?’ said Erin, laughing now.
‘Maybe I do.’
‘When did you see it last?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Let’s have a go.’
Daniel bent at the waist, and Erin began to finger through his hair. ‘What am I looking for?’ she said. ‘A mouse?’
‘No, but that’s a good idea. I’ll remember that.’
‘People are staring at us,’ she said.
‘Tell them it’s an emergency.’
‘They probably think you’ve got nits.’
‘Hang on! Here it is! Thank God!’ Daniel pulled out a small, crumpled bit of paper and flattened it out on his sleeve. ‘Da daaaaa!’
‘That’s it? A piece of paper.’
‘Yeah. Paper and a pen. See? Now, what’s your phone number?’
‘Oh, right. It’s that. It’s a sleazy for-the-girls thing.’
‘Sleazy?’
‘A showing-off thing.’
‘It’s a party piece. Everyone needs a party piece. I had a friend who could push a condom up his nose, pull it out of his mouth, and floss his sinuses.’
‘Wow.’
‘So, what’s your number?’
‘There are already three numbers on there.’
‘Are there? They’re old. I don’t even know who they are.’
‘Yeah, right. I’ll see you around.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Am I supposed to be flattered to be the fourth number on your list?’
‘I told you, this is ancient. There’s a new one in there somewhere. I must have lost it.’
‘How often do you wash your hair?’
‘Often! Not that often. Just . . . you know . . .’
‘Well, nice to meet you. I’ll see you around.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Erin. Bye.’
‘Don’t you even want to know my name?’
‘Not really,’ she lied.
‘It’s Daniel.’
‘OK, Daniel. Bye, Daniel.’
She walked out of the party and, for three weeks, out of his life.
She was easy enough to spot. He was sure he’d bump into her somewhere around town, or on campus, but by the time it happened, he already had a girlfriend: a girl who had only remained his girlfriend for a fortnight (she turned out to be anorexic, borderline agoraphobic and psychotically obsessed with attendance at lectures), but by the time it was over, Erin had a boyfriend (a Russian doing a PhD in marine biology) who she stuck with until the end of the year.
Much later, Erin told Daniel that she did actually see him during those three weeks, but he never saw her. Via a mutual friend, she had heard he was going to be at a particular party, and she had deliberately put on her slinkiest outfit and her very finest underwear (right down to stockings and suspenders, with knickers over the suspender belt for quick removal) in order to seduce him. But when she saw him at the party, he’d been zeroing in on the anorexic agoraphobic, leaning in, hanging on her every word, and, yes, she’d even seen him pull a pen out of his hair.
‘Leaning in!’ she had always stressed. ‘Leaning in!’
She seemed to enjoy taunting him with her descriptions of this evening, of how she had planned exactly what she was going to do to him, and where, but how it had never happened because he’d been too interested in this other girl, whose name he had long since forgotten. As a result, it had taken them years to get together. Daniel was now, more than ever, tortured by those lost years, wasted on people they never loved, not to mention the hundreds of missed fucks.
In their second term, they found themselves on the same course and a friendship developed, though nothing more, since by this time they were both in relationships: Erin with her Russian; Daniel with a viola-, piano-, tabla- and fretless bass-playing music student, Christine, who, through Daniel, became close friends with Erin. Over the years, various girlfriends and boyfriends came into and left their lives (Christine ditched Daniel when she realised it was her record collection he really lusted after), while Daniel and Erin’s friendship became ever closer and stronger.
After university, they both moved to London and, throughout their early twenties, as they passed through a series of decreasingly inappropriate jobs and gradually reined in their big hair, they saw each other more or less every week. They went to films, gigs and restaurants, lent each other books, argued about the books, took one another to repertory screenings of favourite films, and explored obscure corners of the city in long, slow Sundays that always seemed to be held together by one magical, endlessly engaging, inexhaustible conversation. Again and again, they talked one another through break-ups and get-togethers, until they were closer than either of them ever managed to be with their respective lovers. And yet, since those first three weeks, back when they were students, they were never both single at the same time. One or other of them always had someone.
The only clue either of them gave to any non-platonic feelings was a hint of excessive interest in the other’s sex life. Both Erin and Daniel were strangely overeager to help in the other one’s search for love, always doing whatever they could to hook one another up with suitable acquaintances. When these matches failed, they were both insistently, perhaps unhealthily, curious as to precisely why.
Beyond this vicarious desire to get one another bedded by friends, there was no flirtation, no intrigue, and no hint that this was anything more than a friendship. They never once talked about a repressed, troubling, nagging idea which privately tormented them both: that they might be in love with one another.
The subject was the only taboo between them. Over the years, they had discussed everything, it seemed, except this.
Then, eight years after they first became friends, Daniel met up with Erin at a bar in Soho and told her that Lucy had moved out of his flat. Erin reached out, in sympathy, and put a hand over his fingers, which were knotted around a salt cellar. Other than to kiss hello and goodbye, they never touched. A thought flashed into his brain, like a warning message over a motorway: YOU ARE BOTH SINGLE. No sooner had she touched him than her hand suddenly veered away, as if she’d been simultaneously struck by the same thought.
It was a whole summer before their hands touched again, the strangest summer of Daniel’s life.
They began to see each other three or four times a week. On the days they didn’t see one another, they usually spoke on the phone. They parted now with a hug as well as a kiss, and over the course of the summer the hugs became longer. Daniel now knew exactly the contours of her ribs and the texture of the soft skin on her cheeks. He could conjure up the precise feel and smell of one of Erin’s embraces whenever he wanted, relishing the memory of their brief moments of physical closeness and the delicious pain of his thwarted desire. But he could not bring himself to confess what he felt for her.
He could not imagine living without her friendship. He could not risk a physical lunge or an embarrassing speech that might find itself unreciprocated, nor could he think of an indirect or tentative way to raise the subject. There was no question of trying things out with her f
or a while, then going back if it didn’t work out. He was utterly in love with her, with her mind and her spirit and her body, but he had no idea if she felt anything sexual for him whatsoever.
Again and again, throughout the summer, he found himself on the brink of confessing his feelings, but he could never bring himself to speak. He knew there were two possible reactions. She’d either be horrified, perhaps slap him, and their friendship would be ruined, or she’d fall into his arms and they’d love one another for the rest of their lives. He wanted this more than he had ever wanted anything, but he simply couldn’t risk being rebuffed. Perhaps it was too greedy to want more of her. He effectively had her already. Everything except her body was his. If he needed sex, he could get a girlfriend. It wouldn’t even have to be someone great. There was a status quo here that worked. He was happy. It would be mad to destroy it all out of simple greed, out of lust.
Then Christine arrived in London, visiting for a week from Japan, where she’d been living for three years, first working with a chamber orchestra, then with a ‘punk jazz outfit’. She had shaved her head and acquired a diamond-studded nose ring.
Christine suggested the three of them go away together to catch up, and Erin managed to get hold of a country cottage that her boss had said she could use if ever she wanted to. ‘No mod cons’ was the billing, which sounded perfect.
As they drove up, Christine talked at length about how ‘no one can play tabla for shit in Japan’, and how much they loved fretless bass, but how, for some reason, Japanese men had found her physically repulsive. ‘For two years, I’ve been a big-nosed, sweaty, huge-footed monster. I’ve been the ugliest girl in the playground. It’s quite an interesting experience, but now I’m randy as fuck.’
The place, just over the Welsh border, had two bedrooms, both with double beds, both freezing cold. The first night, they drank and talked until three in the morning, staggered upstairs together, had a lingering three-way hug in the hall, then Erin and Christine flopped into one bed, Daniel into the other.
For a moment, it had seemed as if they might all tumble into one bed, as if a whole new realm of adventure was about to open up for Daniel, but at the key moment Erin had slipped away and the atmosphere evaporated. A perky, indefatigable erection taunted him long into the night, keeping him awake with its malicious biological jeer.
Otherhood Page 18