My Life On a Plate

by India Knight

  Robert’s mobile phone rings and while he indulges in a conversation about pagination, I drift into a daydream about Robert and me, alone, somewhere romantic – Barcelona, say – for a whole, entire, childless forty-eight hours. We’d go shopping, of course, and eat, and have drinks, in the boiling hot sunshine. And then – then what? We’d lie about in bed, of course. Hmmm. Yes. In bed. Alone. We’d… we’d make love. (‘Make love’ always brings to mind Spanish waiters saying, ‘Bee-yoo-diful laydee’. Isn’t that sad? I think I have arrested development.) We’d lie in each other’s arms, and he’d read me poetry.

  The image is somehow so improbable that I am suddenly wide awake. Part of me wants to snort with laughter – poetry! As if, as Charlie might say. But there’s also a horrible raw feeling in my throat. Who am I kidding? We would not lie about. I would, and he’d pace about, not joining me, suggesting some outing or other and berating me for ‘wasting time’. We would not lie in bed, except perhaps for breakfast, though even then Robert would raise the Crumb Question. Would we make love? We might, in the perfunctory way that we’ve become used to. The We-Are-Married kind that has to do with reassurance rather than desire. The kind that doesn’t happen that often, to be frank.

  I glance over at Robert, still deep in conversation. I have got to get a grip. I have got to stop thinking like this. It is a well-known fact – the best-known fact, in fact, a fact known to everyone in the entire world – that sex stops being sexy once you’ve been seeing someone for more than six months, a year if you’re lucky. And so what? It’s only sex. It’s only loins. And at the moment it’s nothing at all. We haven’t actually made our very own beast with two backs for… well, for a little while.

  Robert has pressed ‘End’. ‘I don’t want anyone living with us,’ he says, snapping me out of angst mode. ‘Au pairs live with you. She’d be sprawled all over the sofa every night when I came home. She’d have to have dinner with us. She’d want to talk. No, Clara, I really can’t bear the thought of it.’

  Well, I can, I want to say. I can bear the thought. I can bear the extra sleep. I can bear the odd lie-in. I could make myself bear not having to hoover every single bloody day. But I don’t say it. I say nothing. I feel tired. Bloody Sam Dunphy, spoiling my day, with his poofy eyeliner and stinky T-shirt.

  I don’t know what possesses me, but just as Robert is parking the car, I ask him if we could go away. Just the two of us. For a weekend somewhere–in a few weeks’ time, once I’ve made child-care arrangements. I am displeased by the whiny, almost nagging tone of my voice. But to my surprise, Robert says yes immediately. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘That would be nice. I’d like it. I’d like to go back to Paris…’

  My spirits lift. They soar. We even think alike. We are made for each other. We are the proverbial peas in a pod: Dumpea and Grumpea, perhaps.

  I go to kiss Robert, but he kisses me first. And yes, since you ask, it is reassuring.

  7

  I think I may be having a little crisis of some kind. Because it’s fair to say that I am not a particularly envious person. I may have many vices, but I don’t covet, as a rule. I don’t yearn for things I can’t have – that, surely, would defeat the point of overdrafts. I don’t want to be anyone I’m not; only myself, thinner, and – oh, never mind. And yet here we are in Tamsin’s little flat and I feel… jealous, as if my tongue might suddenly fork and hiss and my eyes turn fluorescent green. Not for long, you understand. Just for a few seconds. Minutes, perhaps.

  The late evening sun is pouring yellow light in through her sash windows, the ledges of which she has crammed with herb-filled window-boxes. There’s thyme and lavender, basil and rosemary, all wafting scentedness into the tiny, cosy flat (which is the size of my sitting room, I remind myself nastily, hoping to nip the j-word in the bud). Tamsin’s fat, squishy junk-shop sofa, heaped with cushions and throws, takes up half the living room, but it looks like the comfiest place on earth. By it is a small, beaten-up coffee table, laden with things: glittery nail polish, a hair clip festooned with fabric roses, a pile of magazines, a glass of white wine. Elvis Costello warbles on the stereo about poor old Alison, whom this world is killing. Tamsin must have been lying on her sofa, sniffing her lavender, painting her toes and sipping her Viognier before we arrived. For some reason, the thought of this makes me want to scream with envy. There are no Playmobil men cluttering up the table, no crumbs of dried-up Play-Doh nestling inside the sofa. No noise, apart from Elvis. And nothing for Tamsin to do: no hordes to feed, no washing to wash, no swimming bags to get ready for the morning. Tamsin could drink her entire bottle of Viognier, and then another. She won’t have to get up in the night because someone is thirsty or, like eccentric little Jack, ‘bored’ at 4 a.m. She lives in Girl World and I don’t. I don’t.

  It’s not really like I have anything to moan about. As I’ve said, Tamsin lives in a box. We live in a roomy four-bedroomed Victorian terraced house–one of those houses that looks modest enough on the outside (the peeling paint doesn’t help, but I do so resent paying the price of a triple velvet sofa for external maintenance that nobody sees, except for the Care in the Community people who live opposite) but that extends, Tardis-like, once you’re in. Okay, so it’s not in the most aesthetically pleasing street anyone ever cast eyes upon, not least because there’s a giant secondary round the corner and its teenage denizens like nothing more than slouching around our street, smoking and shouting and dropping crisp wrappers – but there’s a cherry tree outside the house, and no one, to my surprise, has tried to nick the cluster of flowerpots that line the stairs up to the front door (Yale locks and Chubb: welcome to east London). I love the house, actually: my spirits rise when I turn the corner, on the way back from the bagel bakery and see it standing there, square and comforting. God knows why I’m moaning – Tamsin’s entire flat would fit into half my kitchen.

  Besides, I really hate these little bursts of self-pity, which make me want to snuffle quietly as well as give myself a good slap (I could do both together – that would be attractive). Mercifully, or not, Tamsin breaks the spell. Pouring out vast tumblers of wine, she settles herself into a tatty old armchair and tells us about last night, something of a tradition with her.

  And, as is traditionally the case, last night was a disaster. I don’t know quite what it is that she does – exude desperation in the way that I exude Fracas, pick her nose and offer her findings to her date with a friendly let’s-share kind of smile, set fire to her farts… I don’t know. I don’t understand. She is, by any standards, a good-looking girl: tall, curvy, with a shock of red ringlets. (No, I know what you’re thinking, but I said ‘red’, not ‘ginger’. Trust me, she’s amazing.) She has creamy skin, the kind that is absolutely smooth and unblemished, and sparkling triangular hazel eyes. What can I tell you, without sounding like Barbara Cartland? I mean, she has breasts, she’s smart and she tells jokes. What more could anyone want? And yet she is very, very single. As I say, I don’t get it.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Tamsin is saying to Robert, whom she seems to consider an honorary girl, to his slight discomfort. ‘And, you know, I want it sometimes. I’m not a nun…’ That’s another thing about Tamsin: she is pleasantly direct.

  ‘So last night Bill has this dinner party, and there’s this guy, you know, who practically has “I Am Tamsin’s Designated Date” tattooed on his forehead. I’m sitting next to him and he’s chatting me up. He really is chatting me up, I’m not inventing it’ – solitude makes one paranoid, I’ve noticed – ‘and so eventually he gives me a lift home.’

  ‘All the signals?’ asks Robert.

  ‘All the signals.’ She nods. ‘Definitely – big eye action, hand on waist helping me into my coat, howling at all my jokes, meaningful silences in the car. Anyway, so he comes in for coffee and we start kissing and so on, you know, and end up in bed.’

  ‘GOOOOAAAAL!’ I yell triumphantly, arms aloft, jumping up. Robert gives me a look that suggests a degree of exasperation, and I sit down agai
n. I spend too much time with small children.

  ‘Oh, Clara,’ Tamsin says, looking grim. ‘I can’t tell you what it was like. I mean, I’ve gone to bed with some disasters in my time…’

  ‘Like Mike,’ I interject helpfully.

  ‘Yeah, like Mike,’ Tamsin says. ‘Anyway…’

  ‘And Mark,’ I add, warming to my theme. ‘Remember him? He had scabs.’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ Tamsin says, not looking what you’d call best pleased. ‘So…’

  ‘Not forgetting Tony, of course,’ I pipe up again, despite myself. ‘Whom you strongly suspected of having masochistic tendencies. Do you remember? “I’ve been a naughty boy, Miss Tamsin…” ’ The memory of this makes me snort with laughter for slightly too long, although even Tam manages a wry smile. ‘I don’t know how you find them,’ I add smugly, as if I myself had only ever slept with National Stud Awards finalists.

  ‘Clara, may I finish? So. We’re in bed. And after a few seconds I notice he’s kissing me weirdly.’

  ‘What do you mean, weirdly?’ asks imaginative Robert, a slave to detail.

  I have a horrible feeling I’m about to burst out laughing again.

  ‘Well, you know if you completely relax your tongue?’ says Tamsin, demonstrating, so that her tongue is vastly wide, obscenely fat, lolling outside her lips like a distended, obese slug. ‘Like this. Try it.’

  Robert and I try it. If anyone came in now they’d feel very sorry for us and give us baskets to weave, not to mention bibs.

  ‘That’s it,’ says Tam. ‘Not a sexy look.’ We all laugh wetly, tongues hanging out like retarded dogs. ‘Well, that’s how he kissed. I mean, he didn’t even attempt to prove that the tongue is a muscle. It was flopping about all over my mouth, like a big wet dead thing. It was gross.’

  ‘Yes, I do see it would be,’ I say, fascinated. ‘Did you mention it at all?’

  ‘I tried, subtly,’ she says. ‘I made my own tongue exceptionally pointy.’ We all have a go at doing this. It gives a strained look to the eyes, I notice. ‘And after a while he cottoned on and did the same. Well, sort of the same – I mean, he made his pointy all the time. Like a dagger. He sort of stabbed my mouth. His tongue was rigid. I didn’t like it much.’

  ‘Surely,’ I say, ‘you made your excuses and left?’

  ‘Well, it’s my flat,’ Tam points out reasonably. ‘I just thought, what the hell, it’ll get better when we get down to it. I mean, it could hardly get worse.’ She gives a theatrical shudder as she moves off her armchair and peers into the oven, checking on our roast vegetable lasagna’s progress, then comes back and pours herself another glass. ‘I felt really, really randy,’ she explains, unnecessarily.

  ‘That happens,’ Robert says, looking out of the window.

  I am startled. Does it? To him? When? But I bite my tongue, which has had enough exercise for the evening. ‘And?’ I say instead.

  ‘And…’ There is a dramatic silence. ‘And he was Mr One-Inch,’ Tamsin says, looking cross but fighting, I can tell, a laughter fit. ‘He was Mr “Is it in yet?”. Basically, he had a weeny peeny.’

  Tamsin and I explode with laughter; Robert too, although he manages to look slightly disapproving at the same time.

  ‘A weeny peeny!’ I stammer, weeping with mirth.

  ‘The weeniest!’ croaks Tam, helplessly.

  ‘A weeny peeny and a flooby tongue,’ I scream, beside myself.

  ‘And he liked talking dirty,’ Tamsin says.

  ‘Nothing wrong with that, in theory,’ I say, sobering up.

  It is Robert’s turn to give me an odd look.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ says Tam, wiping her eyes. ‘But he kept referring to the WP’ – more sniggers – ‘as Little Dave – he was called David. And to my – Clara, calm down – you know, as “your bush”.’

  ‘Bush?’ I yelp desperately.

  ‘Bush. “Tell me you want it. You want Little Dave in your bush.” Which was silly in two respects’ – Tam is very logical, as befits a primary school teacher – ‘since I clearly wanted it, otherwise why put up with the inept kissing? And, obviously, silly in the respect that “bush” is not what I’d call an erotic term.’

  ‘How old was he?’ I manage to ask, in between hyperventilating. ‘Because it’s a very 1970s, Readers’ Wives kind of term, “bush”. As is “pussy”, although of course “pussy” sounds softer. Bush implies unkempt hirsuteness, wouldn’t you say, Tam?’

  ‘I would,’ Tam says solemnly. ‘He’s about my age. Anyway, it was all downhill from there.’

  ‘You don’t mean you went through with it?’ asks Robert, aghast.

  ‘Well, what else could I do? I mean, the weeny peeny – shush, Clara – was in the bush, as it were – at least I think it was – and it seemed a bit late in the day to change my mind. The worst thing is, afterwards he went into the bathroom, had a very loud dump and came out saying, “I wouldn’t go in there for a bit if I were you.” ’

  ‘Oh, God,’ says Robert. ‘Oh, my God, how repulsive.’ He looks truly appalled. As well he might do, actually. Poor, poor Tamsin. And lucky, lucky me.

  ‘Have you thought any more about becoming a lesbian?’ I ask Tam over pudding, when I’ve regained my composure (which actually doesn’t properly happen for a few days and explains why I suddenly started sniggering like a loon by the frozen cocktail sausages in Sainsbury’s at the weekend).

  Tam and I once got drunk and I had the genius idea of suggesting homosexuality to her. ‘People are always saying sexuality is fluid,’ I’d explained, ‘and that deep down we’re all bisexual. Why not become a lezzy? It’s very fashionable these days and you’d be bound to score. God, Tam, you could date a she-plumber – you know how your leaky tap’s always getting on your nerves. Imagine! Or a she-roofer! Oh, please date a she-roofer. I still have that annoying leak in the top bedroom.’ But Tam, though she didn’t dismiss the notion out of hand, wasn’t as keen as I’d hoped.

  Now she says, ‘Do you know, I’m thinking about it. What is it with the men out there? You two are so lucky.’

  Robert and I try to look lucky, which in his case involves sitting up very straight and making a strangulated kind of grimace, while I sort of simper like a simpleton. ‘Honestly, you don’t realize. It’s a bloody nightmare, the whole dating thing.’

  I’m sure it is, I think to myself on the way home. I know it is – hell, I’ve read the books. But it has its advantages, being alone. It has its pluses. Like sunny flats with furniture lovingly sought out from antiques markets, instead of the chaos of my kitchen.

  Just thinking about it makes me cross actually. Anyway. Where was I? Oh, yes. Being alone. Advantages, like lying around doing nothing with the sun streaming in. Like freedom. You know the song: ‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’. I quietly start humming it to myself.

  ‘I hate Joni Mitchell,’ says Robert.

  8

  I wish I organized my weekends better. They should really centre around me and Robert doing things with the boys. This never seems to happen, somehow, partly due to Robert’s decimating ‘exhaustion’. Robert, in his wisdom, chooses to spend his weekends supine on the ecru sofa in the living room (‘his’ room), listening to opera, with the door shut. Because he is so tired. Because his life is so tiring. His levels of exhaustion would suggest he was a particularly overworked junior doctor, rather than a magazine editor who took long lunches and came home at seven.

  We used to suffer from the condition known as Competitive Tiredness Syndrome, in which each conversation consists of one partner explaining to the other that they are considerably more exhausted. I lost the game over the years: some time ago, despite myself, I started believing in Robert’s exhaustion, and almost feeling guilty about it. Robert now hardly sees the children at weekends. I take them out on Saturdays and, often, Sundays too, so that the house is quiet and Robert can ‘relax’.

  Occasionally, the notion pops into my head that tiredness of this kind – tiredness t
hat has no physical basis – is often a symptom of depression. On the other hand, Robert is exceptionally lazy. Either way, I am not particularly fond of the weekends. They make me feel lonely. There’s nothing like another person being physically in the house but out of bounds to make one feel peculiarly forsaken.

  I’ve bought a new outfit, one that seems particularly weekendy. Before I drag Jack and Charlie off to Stella’s to play, I ask Robert what he thinks.

  ‘Robert?’

  Robert looks up from his copy of Vogue. ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Do you like my clothes? Do you love my trousers?’

  ‘There are some Dries van Noten drawstring-waist ones in here,’ he says. ‘Embroidered chiffon, very pretty. I quite like yours – M&S? – but they rather remind me of Chinese lesbians. You have very good legs, but these rather suggest you have tree trunks.’ He stares at them and then at me, a pleasant, open expression on his face.

  ‘I look like a Chinese lesbian? Because I was aiming for a wholesome, rustic Provençal look.’ Technically, I love being able to talk fashion shorthand to my husband. I am grateful for never having to listen to him prattle on about beer or football (‘My God, Clara – his hair’ is all he’s ever said on the latter). But I am forced to admit that these days he never has anything very nice to, say about any clothes of mine. And, deep down, I can’t say I blame him. Functional, yes. Durable, ditto. But pretty? I don’t think so. Perhaps I should go shopping, or at the very least have a rummage around my wardrobe.

  ‘Don’t get in a flap,’ says Robert languidly. ‘It’s not my fault. I think it’s the colour – that Mao blue, so utilitarian. And of course the shape – well, the lack of shape. The rather masculine shape… Maybe with different shoes, a different top? I mean, that huge T-shirt, and those horrible hippie sandals’ – Robert says ‘sandals’ much as he’d say ‘diarrhoea’ – ‘You might think about shopping in normal shops. Paul Smith does a size 16 in the women’s range, for instance. An 18 too, I believe.’