by Mike Gayle
‘I would’ve been in the way.’
‘And vice versa.’
She’d made a very good point. I’d always thought that Elaine (whose opening gambit to me was, ‘Hi, I have a thing for British men’) would’ve been far more suited to someone taller, more manly looking, with big hands, a boarding-school education and perhaps a family connection to a minor member of royalty. As for me, I suppose I looked like I should’ve been with someone a bit creative, a singer, an artist, a dancer – the kind of woman who’s a bit mad. Not barking mad, but Janis Joplin mad. The kind of woman who walks around without shoes on in the summer and attempts suicide on an annual basis. Joking apart, she had a point.
‘So you mean to say that if we’d rented Pride and Prejudice like Sara wanted instead of The English Patient we’d still be together? Now, that’s a weird one.’
Elaine laughed like I’d really tickled her. ‘No,’ she said, when she’d recovered, ‘it still would’ve happened. But instead of all that English Patient stuff I would’ve realised that you were never going to be my Mr Darcy.’
‘Or you my Elizabeth Bennet.’
five
‘I mean, we’ve been struggling since the dawn of time,’ said Elaine plaintively. ‘We do waaaaay too many things that annoy each other.’
It was 7.30 a.m. and Elaine and I were walking along the street towards the subway on our way to work. Four weeks had now gone by and my back was considerably better because I was now sleeping in our bed. Elaine, however, had decamped to the Sofa from Hell because she felt guilty about my bad back. Paul Barron had taken me out to lunch earlier in the week to tell me that my transfer request had been confirmed and that I would be free to leave as soon as I told Human Resources where I wanted to go. He even spent an hour trying to persuade me to stay, which was both flattering and embarrassing. I told him I’d let him know where I wanted to go as soon as I’d made up my mind. He gave me a weird kind of shoulder squeeze that I think was meant to say, ‘It was good to have a guy like you on the team,’ but which came across as a Vulcan death grip. For hours afterwards I had twinges down my back.
‘Breaking up is definitely the right thing to do,’ I said, as we descended the stairs to the subway entrance.
‘Without a doubt,’ she replied. ‘I was a terrible girlfriend, really. Probably one of the worst in living memory. I don’t cook, I don’t clean, and I leave my underwear drying on the radiator, which I know drives you insane.’
This was all true, Elaine was a terrible girlfriend. Not only did she do all of the things mentioned, she bought exotic items like star anise or kumquats, promising to ‘do something’ with them. Then she’d put them in a bowl in the kitchen and leave them to rot.
We walked down to the subway platform and waited for the D train. As usual, the platform was crowded above and beyond the call of duty. I took a brief look around. There were people reading newspapers, people trying to read the newspaper of the person standing next to them, people eating Pop Tarts, and people just staring into space. I think we were the only people over-analysing a recently deceased relationship.
‘I wasn’t perfect either,’ I said, taking up our conversation again.
‘No, you weren’t,’ she said quietly. ‘But at least you tried. Anyway, now you’re free of all that. Free to look for Ms Perfect.’
‘What’s she like, this Ms P?’
‘Hmm, let’s see. What type of woman do you like?’ She thought for a moment. ‘She’ll be older than me – more your kind of age – so that she’ll get all the references to your jokes without you having to explain them. She’ll be British too, for exactly the same reason. She’ll dress well but not overly trendy and when you’re with her you’ll feel comfortable. And when you look into her eyes you’ll feel like you’ve come home.’ She paused, then added, ‘Oh, and she’ll have a pair of puppies so perky you positively won’t know what to do with yourself.’
‘Interesting,’ I replied vaguely. ‘Very interesting.’
‘And what about my next bloke?’ said Elaine, over-pronouncing the word ‘bloke’, on purpose as if to to say, ‘I’ll miss you and your curious English words.’ ‘What will my next hunk o’ love be like?’
I sniffed, then scratched my chin and did all the other actions you’re supposed to do when mulling over a question. ‘All right,’ I said, once I’d annoyed her with my pantomime. ‘He’s about twenty-one, maybe even twenty. He’s still at college. He’s studying drama. He has loads of cool friends who are actors and writers and he DJs at a club downtown at the weekend. And on a Saturday night you’ll stay up until Sunday morning just talking. And when he’s with you, he’ll make you feel like the centre of the universe.’
Elaine arched her left eyebrow. ‘Not bad, Mr Beckford, not bad at all. Have you been reading my diary?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t that hard. I just tried to think of someone who wasn’t me.’
The train arrived and we struggled through the doors before everyone else and got the last two seats next to each other. As we settled ourselves the carriage filled up until everyone seated had their own personal standing passenger leaning into them in rhythm with the train movements. Elaine got out a novel she was reading so I thought perhaps we’d finished talking, but after a few moments she stopped and laid it face down on her lap.
‘Matt?’ The question in her voice indicated that I was the source of her inability to read her book. ‘If you knew things were wrong between us why didn’t you say anything?’
‘Hmmm.’ I stalled. ‘Good question.’
I was playing for time because the answer to her question was simple: I was turning thirty. Elaine was supposed to be the one I was going to turn thirty with. I’d had it all planned out. The fact that things hadn’t been going well between us wasn’t at the top of my agenda. All I knew was that I had to stick to the plan and not be alone. And because of that I’d seen hope where there wasn’t any. I’d wanted to try and save that which was well and truly beyond salvation.
‘Bees,’ I said, eventually as I noted that the middle-aged woman sitting in the seat next to me was no longer concentrating on the comment page of the New York Post but instead was straining with every fibre to listen to our conversation. ‘Crippled bumble bees, to be exact.’
‘Bees?’ queried Elaine.
‘Yeah, big fat furry ones.’ I sighed, turned to New York Post Woman and stared at her until she got the message. ‘When I was a kid I used to get upset if I ever came across a dying bumble bee in the garden. The logic of my five-year-old brain ran something like this: It’s wrong that something so cute and furry, something that makes honey and generally helps out in the garden, should have to come to an end. So whenever I saw a dying bee I’d try to make it better. I’d place it on the edge of a saucer with some sugary water and encourage it to drink in the hope that it would get better.’
‘Did they live?’
‘No. They always—’ I stopped mid-sentence. New York Post Woman was back again. I stared at her once more and this time she lifted her newspaper right up. ‘What I’m trying to say,’ I continued, ‘is that I suppose you and me – us – well, our relationship was a crippled bumble bee. And I suppose I was hoping that maybe we’d get better. But when you called it a day I knew it was over. But no matter how inevitable something is it’s still a shock when it happens.’ I looked over at Elaine, who had tears in her eyes. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Bees,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s got to be the dumbest analogy I’ve ever heard.’
six
By the time I was ready to move out three months had gone by since Elaine and I had decided to split. Just before Christmas I’d had another meeting with my boss. I’d been all geared up to tell him that I’d made up my mind and that I wanted to be transferred back to London when he made me an offer I found impossible to refuse. The company was planning to open a new office in Sydney, Australia and they wanted to promote me to design consultant to oversee the setting up of the sof
tware team. The contract would be for six months to a year initially, and the money would double overnight. It was my dream thirtysomething job, with dream thirtysomething money to match.
Perfect. Well, nearly. The only problem was that they wouldn’t be starting the project for two months and wouldn’t require my assistance for another month after that. In short, I’d spend three months in transfer limbo. The initial suggestion was that I stay in New York, but I told him that was out of the question and suggested I went to the London office for a while. However, it seemed that finding me work there for just three months would cause more problems than it solved. Finally, at the end of what turned out to be a three-hour meeting, I came up with a solution: that I take the three months off as an unpaid sabbatical. And they agreed.
After eight years of working I wanted a rest. I needed a rest. Unlike most of my mates at university I hadn’t taken a year off before or after my degree, and since I’d got a job straight from university I’d never had much of a holiday either. I had enough money stashed in savings accounts to last twice the amount of time on offer so there was nothing to stop me.
‘What will you do with yourself?’ asked my boss, as if reading my mind. ‘Go lie on a beach? Travel?’
‘No,’ I replied, with such conviction that it shocked me. ‘I’m going to go home. I’m going home to Birmingham – see my parents, catch up with old friends and celebrate my thirtieth birthday.’
There were, of course, a lot of reasons why my good idea was actually a very bad one and all of them involved my parents. The top three:
1) The knowledge that, without a doubt, my parents would drive me insane if I spent any longer than twenty-four hours under the same roof as them.
2) The simple fact that there isn’t a single way in the English language of making the words, ‘I’m moving back in with my parents,’ sound the slightest bit cool when you’re twenty-nine years old.
3) I couldn’t think of another one. The first two were already more than enough.
Despite all this – the parent/child clash, the distinct loss of cool – I knew that home was the only place to go. If life was a maze in which we’re supposed to find some kind of answer, then my move across the Atlantic and my relationship with Elaine had been a huge trip down a long, torturous dead end. It seemed fitting then, now that I was momentarily rudderless, to go back to the beginning. So I made the decision. I was going home for a break, not only from work but from life. I was going to live with my folks, let my mum fuss over me, let my dad give me gardening tips. And in three months’ time – by the time I had turned thirty – I’d be ready for a new beginning in Australia.
That was my mission.
seven
My final day in New York came faster than I anticipated and the final few hours even faster. I’d been packing all day and was in the middle of putting my last pair of socks and my laptop into a holdall when a fresh-from-work Elaine knocked on the bedroom door and came in. I noticed sadly that she wasn’t on the phone as usual. This evening, my final evening, was special.
‘Hi,’ she said quietly, and put down her bag on the bed.
‘Hi,’ I replied, almost as quietly. ‘How was work?’
‘Work was cool,’ she replied. ‘You know I had that product shoot today? Well, Martha came to the shoot with orange hair.’ Martha was another of Elaine’s countless friends. ‘She dyed it as a bet with her boyfriend.’
‘Insane,’ I said, with mock disbelief.
She laughed, and as her grin faded to a smile her eyes seemed to sparkle and I could see that she wanted to tell me some more gossip, to share with me more about her day as she usually did. Then her eyes flitted across to my bags on the bed and the smile evaporated. The sparkle disappeared too.
‘How was your day?’ she asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
I shrugged.
‘Have you got everything you need?’ Elaine was now exuding that kind of loose energy people give off when they don’t know what to do but are desperate to do something.
‘Yeah, I think so,’ I replied, even though I wasn’t at all sure.
‘What about your toothbrush?’
‘Yeah, you’re right. Good thinking. I haven’t got that.’ I disappeared into the bathroom and searched high and low for the toothbrush but couldn’t find it anywhere. I returned to the bedroom. ‘Can’t find it.’
‘It’s on top of the radio in the kitchen,’ she said, without looking at me. ‘Where you left it.’
I disappeared to find it and returned, seconds later, toothbrush in hand.
‘I’ll miss that,’ she said, as I returned and dropped it into the bag.
‘What?’
‘Knowing where all the things you think you’ve lost are. I can’t help but feel that without me you’re never going to find anything you own ever again.’
The fact that it had always been me who knew where everything was seemed to have escaped her but I could see that she meant well. Now that we were parting she wanted to give the impression that she’d been the kind of girlfriend who was good at that sort of thing. While I checked around to make sure I hadn’t left anything important she followed after me handing me things I’d overlooked that were practically essential to my survival. An hour later my soon-to-be ex-girlfriend and I were standing at Passport Control at JFK.
‘Matt?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Call me when you reach England.’
I nodded, then carefully corrected myself. I couldn’t really see that happening. Unlike Elaine I wasn’t a great fan of telephones. ‘I’ll e-mail you at work,’ I suggested. ‘We can be transatlantic pen-pals . . . and this way you can keep your phone bills down to a minimum.’
That seemed to lift her spirits a little so I picked up my bags and turned to leave. That was the moment I questioned what I’d considered to be the truth all this time.
Was this a mutual break-up?
Did this have anything to do with turning thirty?
Or was this me letting the best thing that had ever happened to me go without a fight?
My change of heart must have been obvious because Elaine started to cry the first real tears of the whole of our three-month protracted break-up. But she didn’t say, ‘Stay,’ or ‘Don’t go,’ she just kissed me, a long, slow, passionate kiss and walked away.
BIRMINGHAM
Month One
Date: Jan 9th
Days left until thirtieth birthday: 81
State of mind: Not too bad I suppose.
eight
‘Where to, mate?’ said the taxi-driver, as I hauled my holdall and suitcase inside the black cab and settled into its shiny cushiony seat.
‘Marlborough Road, King’s Heath,’ I replied carefully. There was something familiar about him that I couldn’t quite place.
He pulled off. ‘Been on holiday, have you?’
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I’ve just come back from New York where I live – sorry, lived.’
‘I’ve got a cousin in Washington DC,’ he replied, by way of nothing.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’ He glanced at me in his mirror. ‘Never liked him very much, though. Always found him a bit stuck-up, if you get my meaning. Mind you, they were all a bit like that on his side of the family.’ He flicked the end of his nose in an attempt either to remove a stray bogey or indicate that his cousin’s side of the family had upturned noses. He laughed curtly and brushed the end of his fingers against the steering-wheel.
The cabbie remained silent for the rest of the journey, tapping his fingers on the fur-covered steering-wheel in time to the music on the pirate radio station he was listening to. I had racked my brains but I still couldn’t place where I knew him from so I gazed out of the cab window at the cityscape.
Birmingham, like most industry-based cities, was undergoing a face-lift but its metamorphosis had been rapid and forced – I barely recognised it. It was as if its citizens had tired of it being a national joke and told it to smart
en up its act. But despite its near-comic status among the rest of the nation I’d always been proud of coming from Birmingham, precisely because it was so funny. It’s hard to take yourself too seriously when the whole nation thinks you’re there to amuse them.
This was especially the case during my five years in London. The moment anyone there heard me speak they assumed I was bordering on clinical stupidity and would therefore speak v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y or expected me to act like some sort of latterday court jester: they would goad me into saying words like ‘actually’ (ack-chur-lie) ‘going’ (gewin‘) and ‘Birmingham’ (Bhuuuuur-ming-gum), thus revealing my accent in its fullest sing-song glory. It got to the stage where I felt I had to justify to everyone I met why I came from Birmingham, as if it was some sort of handicap, curse or practical joke taken a step too far. But I didn’t care. This was where I was from and there would always be a part of me that would love the city as long as I lived.
‘Excuse me, mate,’ said the cabbie, interrupting my reverie, ‘but is your name Matt Beckford?’
‘Yeah,’ I replied cautiously. ‘It is.’
‘I knew it,’ he said. ‘Ever since I picked you up I’ve been trying to work out where I know you from.’
‘And where do you know me from?’
‘You won’t remember me,’ he said, turning down the radio, ‘but I went to the same secondary school as you, King’s Heath Comprehensive.’ He turned and offered his hand.’Tony Goddard.’
The name rang a bell. ‘Dave Goddard’s little brother?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Dave Goddard,’ I mused. ‘Now, there’s a name I haven’t heard in years.’ Back in my schooldays Dave Goddard had always been the boy most likely to become a brain surgeon. ‘What’s he doing now?’