by Isabel Wolff
“It all comes flooding back now,” I said. “You’re in property, you live in Putney and you play the piano and Ping-Pong.”
“Correct,” he said, as the waiter took our order. “And you live in Islington, you’re a copywriter, and you enjoy tennis and amateur neurosurgery.”
I began to warm to him. He had a dry sense of humor, he was obviously doing rather well for himself, and he was passionate about the piano. He could play all the Chopin studies—wow! And he has a Steinway—fantastic!
“It’s secondhand,” he said modestly, his voice slightly muffled by a mouthful of smoked duck and dandelion salad with fresh caramelized figs and Parmesan.
“But they appreciate,” I pointed out, tucking into my fresh market leaves garnished with walnuts, croûtons and foie gras.
He swallowed, and then said, “I appreciate you.” Gosh!
“I’m really sorry about my memory lapse,” I said. “It’s either holes in the brain, or perhaps I really do have Alzheimer’s.”
“You shouldn’t joke about Alzheimer’s,” said Paul with sudden severity. “My father died of it, actually.”
“Oh God, I’m sorry,” I said, spitting out a shoelace. “It’s a really awful disease. How old was he when he got it?”
“Fifty-one.”
“Fifty-one.” Oh. Very young. Poor guy. And then I remembered that early-onset Alzheimer’s can sometimes be hereditary. Oh oh. I looked at Paul. He was forty-three now. If I married him I’d probably be pushing him round in a bath chair by the year 2005 and wearing a large badge saying, “Hello! My Name’s Tiffany—I’m Your Wife!” Maybe he already had it? I decided to give him a little memory test.
“How many Köchel numbers are there?” I asked casually, as the waiter served us.
“625.”
“Wrong! There are 626.” He was clearly in the early stages of dementia.
“And how many Nocturnes did Chopin write?”
“Nineteen. What is this, Mastermind?”
“And when was the battle of Culloden?”
“1746.”
“And what’s the seventh commandment?”
“ ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ ”
So far so good. Very good, in fact.
“And who unraveled the mysteries of deoxyribonucleic acid?”
“Crick and Watson, of course. Do you want the year as well?”
“No. No need,” I said. “And, um, what’s the square root of 497?”
“I don’t know,” he said with sudden, and quite unnecessary, vehemence.
Why was he getting so ratty? I wondered. He really did seem to be somewhat irritated by me. I didn’t know why, but then I was irritated by him, and no more so than when his tender rabbit with red pepper sauce arrived. I could not possibly fall in love with a man who eats bunny, I thought as I tucked into my sliced rump of veal. We chewed away in silence for a few minutes, and then, just as I was desperately trying to think of something—anything—to say, this funny thing happened. A bottle of Bollinger mysteriously arrived at our table.
“Gosh—how lovely, did you order that?” I asked.
“Er, no. No I didn’t actually.”
“Where did it come from then?” I asked.
“I really don’t know,” said Paul.
“Eet eez from ze gentilhomme in ze corner,” said the waiter, in such cod French that I concluded that he could only have come from Penge.
“What man in what corner?” said Paul.
“Zat one. Zere.”
I swiveled round in my chair. There, at a tiny table in the farthest corner of the low-ceilinged, wood-paneled room, was a familiar figure: beautifully dressed; absorbed in his crossword. A cloud of Amazonian swallowtails suddenly took flight in my stomach. Seriously Successful. Dining alone. In fact he looked decidedly sad and solitary. He’d probably been here the entire time that I had been here with Paul. Suddenly, he looked up, saw me staring, and gave me a funny, sad little smile. Then he resumed eating.
“Do you know that man?” asked Paul suspiciously, craning his neck for a clearer view.
“Not really,” I said, removing the scribbled note from the ice bucket. “But I have met him. Once.” I quickly read it, aware that my face was as flushed as my glass of red Burgundy.
TT
I’m really sorry about the other day. I should have taken no for an answer. But this is just to show you that I don’t bear a grudge about it, even if I do, in fact, resent it deeply. And also because I thought your partner’s conversation looked as though it could do with a little fizz. I bet he doesn’t drink Carling Black Label.
SS
“Does he normally do this kind of thing?” said Paul, clearly nettled by Seriously Successful’s unexpected intervention.
“Probably,” I said, as the waiter refilled our glasses. I scribbled a little note to him: Thank you very much. That was Naughty but Nice, and asked the waiter to deliver it.
“Do you mind?” I asked Paul.
“Yes, I do,” he said, though he drank the champagne nonetheless. We ate the rest of our meal in relative silence—he was obviously fed up by the way the evening had turned out, and I was feeling, well, disturbed. The butterflies were still circulating, making it practically impossible to eat. And I could sense Seriously Successful’s eyes bearing down on the back of my neck. Annoying man, hijacking my evening like that. He clearly likes to provoke. And yet, the fact was that I felt drawn to him as iron filings are drawn to a magnet. A few minutes later, I turned round again, to see that he was paying the bill. Then he folded his paper, and left. I wanted to follow him down the stairs. I wanted to run after him down the street like a dog. I wanted to hold his hand. I wanted to . . . Oh get a grip will you, Trott, I said to myself crossly, as I tried to concentrate on what Paul was saying. At least Seriously Successful hadn’t ruined the start of a beautiful friendship. I wasn’t enjoying myself much, and nor was Paul. I knew this for a fact because when the bill came he suddenly said, “Ok, let’s go Dutch.”
“Of course,” I said, though inwardly I was fuming as he had invited me—a fact he had clearly forgotten. Further proof of his deteriorating mental condition. I had been right to be circumspect. “I enjoyed meeting you again,” I said. “Perhaps I’ll see you at the next Eat ’n’ Greet event?”
“Yes,” he said. “Perhaps. Goodbye.”
What a weird evening. Going home on the number 73 I drew up a questionnaire for future blokes entitled, “Do You or Any Member of Your Immediate Family Suffer From Any of the Following Possibly Inherited Medical Conditions?” Then I wrote down “Alzheimer’s, diabetes, congenital heart disease, cleft palate, pigeon toes, BSE and any kind of cancer? Check as applicable.” That would cover it. One couldn’t be too careful. And then I daydreamed about Seriously Successful and what an incredibly irritating man he was and how sad it was that he was married. When I got home, the phone rang. Seriously Successful, with another tempting invitation! No such luck. Damn. It was Paul. What on earth did he want now?
“Tiffany?”
“Congratulations!” I replied. “You’ve managed to remember my name.” Actually, I didn’t say that. I simply said, “Yes?”
“The restaurant have just called me. They say you forgot your coat.”
September
“You know what our problem is, don’t you?” asked my New Best Friend Kate as we sat in Café Rouge on Saturday morning. It was clearly a rhetorical question. I could tell by the unusually vigorous way in which she was stirring her cappuccino. “Our problem,” she continued thoughtfully, “is that we’re in a sort of arrested adolescence.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, taking out my copy of 19 magazine.
“Instead of having conversations about grown-up things such as how to cope with a crying baby, or how to choose a good prep school, we have these incredibly teenage conversations about what to do if your boyfriend doesn’t ring when he said he would—”
“Dump the bastard!” I interjected.
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“Or whether or not it’s OK to snog a guy on the second date.”
“What’s your view on that?” I asked.
“It’s as though we’re seventeen,” she went on. “But we’re not. We’re thirty-seven. It’s pathetic. Why can’t we just grow up?”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Why can’t we just grow up and get married like, like, that Bianca on EastEnders.”
“Yes,” said Kate. “Like her. Then we could have proper, adult conversations about housekeeping and joint accounts and going to Tesco with our husbands.”
“Mind you,” I added. “She’s just showing off. Just because she managed to get hitched. Getting it on the telly and everything.”
“Yes,” said Kate with uncharacteristic ferocity. “She’s showing off, just because she got the rock, the frock, and the party.”
“And the tiara.”
“Yes.”
“And the spread in Radio Times.”
Silence descended like a stone. Kate was thinking. I knew this because a small pleat had appeared on her brow. I picked up the Mail and looked at the Nigel Dempster gossip page. Such tedious tittle-tattle, I thought. I really don’t know why people want to read that kind of stuff . . . ooh! That’s interesting: New Labour’s Lawrence Bright, forty-five, is reportedly experiencing marital misery after his wife spotted him in the lingerie department of Harvey Nichols with a sultry thirty-something brunette. Tsk tsk, I thought to myself. Another naughty MP. Don’t they ever learn?
“Do you think we’ll ever get hitched?” I heard Kate say.
“What? Oh. I don’t know.”
Kate was ready to talk again. “I mean, what are you looking for in a man, Tiffany?”
That was easy. “Common ground, a kind heart, reasonable looks, oh—and an enormous serve.”
“And fidelity,” she said.
“Oh yes,” I said, glancing at the photo of Lawrence Bright in the Mail. “And fidelity.” And then I thought of Seriously Successful again. “I’m not going out with anyone unfaithful ever again,” I announced. And while we sat there, ruminating over our coffee, I rewound my mental video back to Phil Anderer. And I remembered how painful it was going out with him. And how embarrassing, too. Because men with bad track records, well everyone seems to know. Look at Bill Clinton.
“How do you cope with him?” people would say to me with an awestruck smirk when Phillip and I went to parties together. And I’d shrug it off with a peal of laughter and rapidly change the subject, but inside . . . inside, I felt enraged. Well, how do you cope with being married to such an ugly woman? I’d inquire. Or, How do you cope with a husband who is, by common consent, a bore? Or, How do you cope with your alcoholic wife? Or your drug-dependent daughter? How do you cope with that, precisely? Though of course, I didn’t say any of those things. I kept my outrage to myself. But privately, I felt ashamed of Phil Anderer because privately, I knew that they were right.
“Yes, fidelity is very important,” said Kate with sudden feeling. “Very, very important.”
I wondered what she meant by that, and why she was so emphatic. I didn’t like to ask—there were lots of things I didn’t know about her. I supposed she’d tell me if she wanted to. “Do you know,” she said brightly, clearly trying to change the subject now, “I think it would be better to try younger blokes because if they’re in say, their early thirties, they’re less likely to be bitter, twisted divorcés, and they haven’t quite got to the commitmentphobic stage yet.”
“That’s true,” I said thoughtfully. “Just a few years younger would be fine. But how do we meet them?” How indeed? We chewed our baguettes thoughtfully.
“I know,” she said. “Let’s go to a rave.”
“Yes,” I said. “What a brilliant idea. Let’s.”
When I got home I phoned the Ministry of Sound—dead upmarket so I’ve heard—and got the details for Friday night. We would have to queue, the woman told me, and we would have to dress appropriately.
“It’s OK,” I interjected. “I know exactly what to wear.”
“Whistles will be worn,” I told Kate over the phone a little later. “Carriages at six A.M. Dress—informal.”
“Tropical,” she said, “it’ll be hot.”
In the meantime, a couple more replies had trickled in from my lonely hearts ad. The most recent one, which was accompanied by two photos, one full face and one in profile, read as follows:
Dear Advertiser,
I could not help noticing your very appealing personal advertisement two weeks ago. I must apologize for taking so long to reply but I am currently detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure for the importation of illegal substances, and as inmates are only allowed to write letters once a week, this is my first epistolary opportunity. However, I am hoping to be released on parole shortly and I wondered whether you would care to meet up?
“You have got to be joking,” I said to myself. I mean, what would they say at the tennis club if I turned up with an ex-con? More to the point, I didn’t fancy him. And then there was an artist called Eric. I liked the sound of him and he was rather good-looking—tall with green eyes and blond hair. A few details jumped out of his letter—“Brighton art school”—“classic cars”—“tennis twice a week”—I really couldn’t be bothered to take it all in. So I just wrote back my standard letter:
Dear Eric,
Thank you for your recent letter in response to my personal advertisement. I had some pretty weird replies I can tell you, but yours was almost normal. Congratulations! If you would like to meet me, please give me a ring on the above number.
Yours sincerely,
Tiffany Trott (Miss).
Then I enclosed a rather good photo of myself taken at Glyndebourne with Alex last year (with a sticker over Alex’s face obviously) and popped it in the post.
When Friday came Kate and I met in the queue outside the club at ten P.M. We blew our whistles and jigged up and down to keep warm, and actually we got some quite odd looks, which I attributed to sheer, naked envy—my stylish new Nike tennis shoes with the carbon rubber outersole, molded midsole, rear-foot trinomic cushioning and reflective trim for night visibility had cost £ 150! Finally we got to the head of the queue.
“You can’t come in looking like that!” said the fierce-looking female bouncer. “This is a very upmarket nightclub, it’s not a rave. No whistles, no running shoes. Smart club gear only.”
Oh. Oh dear. Blast.
“But we’ve been queuing for forty-five minutes,” I said.
“I don’t care if you’ve been queuing for forty-five days,” she replied. “You’re not coming in looking like that. I suggest you go and change and come back later—the club stays open until six A.M.” The thought of schlepping all the way back to Islington from the Elephant and Castle made me feel tired. Frankly, I couldn’t be bothered. Nor could Kate.
“I know, we can come back tomorrow,” she suggested.
“OK, we’ll come back tomorrow,” I said to the bouncer, “but could we just have a quick peek inside—now that we’re here? Just to make sure we do want to come back tomorrow?”
“Yes. Just to make sure it’s our kind of place,” added Kate.
“Well . . . all right,” the woman said reluctantly, “but make it snappy.”
We went in and were hit by a wall of sound. Gosh it was loud. And what an amazing venue. And so dark. The walls were lined with tin foil; illuminated streamers hung from the ceiling and gnomic inscriptions were projected all over the walls: “Happiness exists,” said one. “The world has a beautiful soul,” said another. Well, quite. The floor was already heaving with bobbing bodies—two thousand people bouncing to the boom! boom! of the beat. There were some terribly handsome-looking young chaps—perfect! But then, just as we had satisfied our curiosity and were preparing to leave, I caught sight of something odd—something wrong. Something, frankly, alien—and yet familiar at least to me. For in the far distance was an intriguing spectacle: a solitary, gleaming bald pate. The strob
e light kept bouncing off it—frankly it stuck out a mile among the crowd of luxuriantly follicled youths. Wasn’t that . . . no! It couldn’t be—but it really did look like—gosh I wish he’d keep still, I thought to myself, and then I’d be able to see. Surely it couldn’t be him, it was just someone who looked like him, but actually, I think it was him—Martin! At the Ministry of Sound! Martin, whose musical tastes run to nothing more adventurous than Gerry and the Pacemakers! Martin, who thinks Oasis is something you see in floral arrangements. In any case, surely Lizzie wouldn’t let him come to a place like this? Was it him, or wasn’t it? God, it was so hard to tell with all these people around and these blinding, flashing lights. Anyway, I was just making my way toward the dance floor, trying to get a better view, when suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“You two—out!” said the lady bouncer. “I said you’d have to be quick.”
“OK, OK,” I said, as Kate and I followed her out of the double doors. “We’ll come back tomorrow.”
And we did. Suitably attired this time. Smart. Very smart. And no whistles. We were frisked on entry—it was just like being at the airport.
“What are you looking for?” I inquired, as another female bouncer went through my Prada handbag.
“Weapons,” she said. “And drugs.”
“I never take drugs,” I said truthfully. And fortunately, I happened to have left my small but efficient axe in my other handbag.
Kate was dressed all in black; she looked particularly chic and I noticed several blokes looking in her direction as we eventually gained admittance. My Liberty silk floral two-piece with the large pearl buttons and the lace edging on the cuffs seemed to attract a lot of attention, too—but then it did go down extremely well at Ladies’ Day last year. Anyway, Kate and I sat on a huge circular seat, shyly surveying the throngs of men standing by the bar. No sign of Martin—I must have got that wrong. Most of them were pretty young, and wore shirts of an hallucinogenic hue. They looked quite, well tough, I suppose. In fact, to be perfectly honest, they looked like Millwall supporters. Some of them had broken teeth. Still, the night was young, I thought to myself happily. I was sure some more eligible-looking chaps would turn up soon. But my God it was hot! And conversation was going to be tricky—this “home” music is so loud!