Straight Talking

by Jane Green

  Emma sits there thinking she has to hang on to Richard, she has to marry him because she won’t find anyone else. Mel is thinking, I do deserve better than Daniel, and maybe I have got the strength to end it all for good, and Andy is thinking, another day another man.

  “Have you invited him to my barbecue?” asks Andy eventually. It is her party tomorrow, the party which will doubtless be a huge success because Andy has spent weeks creating the food, the drink, the ambience, the guest list, the numbers of available men.

  “Can I?” A grin as I contemplate a whole evening with him, an evening where perhaps, if I look as good as I’ve ever looked, perhaps he might change his mind. Perhaps he might decide that he wants more than a fling, perhaps he might look at me and think I am the kind of woman he could love after all.

  “Then we can all meet him!” says Andy excitedly.

  “Hands off,” I say, suddenly serious because I know that Andrew will be just her type, in fact, if I think about it they would make a great couple. Andrew and Andy, the perfect match, except they are so similar, they would both be constantly fighting for center stage.

  “As if I would,” she says, noticing that I am not joking. “I won’t go near him but what will you do if he chats someone else up?”

  “What can I do?” I shrug. “If he makes a beeline for someone else, there’s nothing I can do, but if any of you lot make a beeline for him, I’ll shoot you.”

  “Don’t worry,” says Andy, “I wouldn’t be interested anyway, I’ve had enough of men for the moment.” And then she adds ominously, “After last night.”

  “Uh-oh. What happened last night?”

  “Remember Tim?” How could we forget? Tim was the man Andy picked up at yet another party, and he’s been phoning her every night for the last two weeks.

  “Of course we remember Tim,” offers Mel. “You saw him last night?”

  “Yes,” Andy says with a grimace, “I saw all of him last night.”

  “You mean he shagged you senseless and now you’ve gone off him?” I don’t mean to sound this harsh, but please. This has happened so many times before.

  “No, we never actually got to the shagging stage, it was awful.”

  We’re all alert now, all desperate to hear what happened, a touch of schadenfreude never did anyone any harm. Did it?

  “We went out for dinner and then he came in.”

  “For coffee?” says Emma, and we all laugh, knowing that none of us ever invites a man in just for coffee.

  “For coffee, and then as we were standing in the doorway he kissed me, which was fine.”

  “Fine?” I say. “That doesn’t sound encouraging.”

  “Well, the kissing was OK, but then he started doing this really peculiar thing, he started banging his groin against mine really quickly.”

  “What do you mean? Grinding?”

  “Well, not exactly, because that can be quite sexy, but he was banging away and I was standing there thinking, What is he doing? Does he think this is turning me on?”

  We still haven’t quite grasped it so she stands up to demonstrate, oblivious to the curious stares from other diners in the restaurant. She stands there, in her slim-fitting beige trousers, and effectively simulates sex standing up, sex right at the end, just before orgasm, when the pounding becomes fast and furious, and it looks so ridiculous we all open our mouths in amazement.

  “So then what did you do?” Emma’s looking horrified.

  “Well, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. I mean after all, this guy’s thirty-nine, I assumed he had to know what he was doing so we went to bed. But he didn’t, he didn’t have a clue.”

  “What do you mean? You think he’s a virgin?”

  “I really think he might be.” Her voice lowers as she prepares to confide the intimate details. “I got undressed, and he lay on the bed and he started kneading my breasts as if they were lumps of dough.”

  “No nipple rolling then?” Yup, me again.

  “No, far from it, he ignored the nipples completely. He just kept kneading away and I was lying there getting more and more bored. Then,” she pauses for dramatic effect, “then he moved down my body and I thought, this is better, at least I’ll get some oral sex out of it, but he didn’t seem to know what he was doing.”

  “So you did have oral sex?” Emma, despite being the most prudish of all of us on the surface, is not so different underneath.

  “No, he sort of knelt between my legs and fumbled at my crotch, but he didn’t actually seem to do anything, he didn’t seem to know where anything was.”

  “Didn’t you show him?”

  “I thought about it, but I decided it was too much hard work, and I should just lie there and let him get it over and done with.”

  “So then what happened?”

  “Well, this is the worst part. He knelt there fumbling for ages, and I just lay there with my eyes closed, feeling as if I was having a medical examination, and eventually, after about five minutes he whispered, ‘Andy?’ And I whispered back, ‘Yes?’ And he said, ‘Are you asleep?’ ”

  We all screamed with laughter, at the notion of Andy, Andy who is normally so rapacious, being so inert with boredom her partner thought she had fallen asleep in the middle of foreplay.

  “That’s how bloody bored I was, can you believe it?”

  We start a fresh round of sex stories. Each of us has the worst experience of our life to share with the others, and then, when we have all spoken, we start a fresh round, more memories, more laughter. We stay there, heads huddled together round the table, speaking softly, then moving apart to wipe the tears of laughter from our eyes, for a very long time.

  I leave a message on Andrew’s machine. A message that sounds professional, friendly, and cool. “If you’re not doing anything tomorrow, my friend Andy is having a barbecue and I thought you might like to come. It starts at around three, and her address is bottom bell, 15 Queens Gardens. Hopefully see you there.”

  I love Sundays. I love the feeling of waking up in the morning and knowing that there’s nothing to get up for. I don’t even mind being alone on a Sunday, not being able to reach out and stroke the man I love.

  My typical Sunday? I wake up early, always, and call Harvey and Stanley over for a big cuddle. Harvey’s a big softie, happy for me to tickle his tummy while purring big deep grumbles of love. Stanley’s a bit more independent. Stanley likes to be near me, hates missing out on any of the action, but try to pick him up and he’ll run for cover.

  So after our group love-in, or rather my love-in with Harvey while Stanley plays voyeur, I stumble out of bed in my nightdress, sling a coat on top, and walk down the road to buy the Sunday papers.

  Every time I do this I thank God I’m not famous. Jesus, if I was Annalise, the tabloids would be falling over themselves to capture me like this. BLONDE BOMBSHELL BECOMES BAG LADY I suspect the caption would run. Looking the way I look right now I’d have to opt for homeless.

  The papers I buy are always the same—The Sunday Times and the News of the World. Occasionally, if there’s a story I’ve been following for the show, I’ll buy all of them and frantically skim the relevant bits. But usually it’s just the two, and, walking back along the road to my flat, I hug them to my chest to stop my braless breasts getting too excited.

  And back to bed with toast and occasionally a boiled egg. I eat in bed while reading, first Sunday magazine, then the News of the World, then the Style section, then the magazine—Zoe Heller, my heroine—and then the News Review.

  Today I can’t concentrate though, today’s the day I’m going to see Andrew so I give the rest of the paper a quick glance, even though I can’t really be bothered, and then the clock tells me it’s time to get ready. It’s 1:24 and I promised Andy I’d help her with the food. Yesterday afternoon I made a huge salad with roasted peppers and asparagus, and now, pulling it out of the fridge, I add the finishing touches with some fresh parmesan. Next to it is a bowl of potato salad, mixed w
ith crème fraîche and mayonnaise and sprinkled with parsley and chives, and I stop at the deli on the way over and pick up some fresh, hot baguettes.

  I battle up the path to Andy’s, trying to balance the bread on the bowl on the other bowl, and just as I’m thinking shit, the whole thing’s going to go flying, Andy opens the front door and comes whizzing out to help me. She’s already high as a kite on the excitement of a party, albeit a barbecue during the day, and she flits around her tiny kitchen putting the finishing touches on the food and crisply snapping plastic wrap on before taking the bowls into the garden.

  “You’re not wearing that, are you?” I say, looking at her uncharacteristic tracksuit bottoms and graying T-shirt.

  “God no!” she laughs. “Are you mad? I’ve got the perfect little number upstairs that I bought yesterday, I just didn’t want to get it dirty. I’ll go up and change in a minute.”

  “What about a quick drink before you do?” I look slyly at her, knowing that however much time it will take her to expertly apply her face, she’ll never turn down the offer of a drink.

  I proffer a bottle of white wine but she shakes her head before whirling around the kitchen opening cupboard doors, looking for something.

  “Pimms, Pimms, we need a Pimms,” she says, finally locating the bottle she bought earlier that week.

  We sit there and toast one another. “Here’s to summer,” she says. “To summer. And to handsome men.” We sit there, each thinking of the next one. “To true love,” I say. “To true love,” she echoes. “To passion,” I say, and she laughs and nods her head, echoing loudly and firmly, “To passion!” and we both take big long swigs.

  The food is on the table, every available chair has been dragged out into the garden and Andy has proved to be handy with a barbecue which has just caught light, the flames leaping high above the grills. From the stereo perched on the windowsill the Gypsy Kings fill the air, and summer has finally arrived.

  “So will he come?” asks Andy.

  “Who?”

  “Andrew, who else?”

  “I don’t know,” I try to shrug nonchalantly. “I left a message so if he comes, he comes.”

  “So what do you think, will you go for it?”

  “I don’t know, Andy. In the beginning it would have been fine, it would have been, you know, just a fuck, but now I like him.”

  “Yeah but if he comes on to you again, surely you won’t say no.”

  “Probably not. God knows, willpower has never been my strong point. Heartbreak, here I come again.”

  Within an hour the garden has filled up with friends from the different walks of Andy’s life, not to mention mine. There are her work colleagues, her old school friends, her friends from her courses, and us. Adam can’t make it, he has to drive to the country for a family gathering, but the rest of my inner circle is here.

  Emma and Richard are standing together, Emma looking stunning in a long white floaty number, with one hand protectively around Richard’s waist as they talk to Andy.

  Andy is doing her Hollywood hostess film star bit, big tortoiseshell sunglasses, a tight lime green shirt with an A-line miniskirt and high, high strappy heels that are slowly sinking into the grass as I watch.

  Pathetic, I think, eyeing my own flat black mules, pathetic that on a sunny summer’s day Andy still has to go over the top, but perhaps I’m a little envious of the looks she’s attracting . . .

  The doorbell keeps ringing and people keep striding out of the kitchen with cans of beer, plates of meat, marinated chicken breasts, lamb skewered onto metal sticks. I’m talking to Mel, trying to ignore Daniel dick-for-brains eyeing me up and down lasciviously, but one corner of my eye is constantly on the kitchen doorway, checking to see when he’ll arrive. Whether he’ll arrive.

  “You’re not with us, are you?” says Mel as Daniel wanders off. She follows my quick look at a nondescript couple of men who have just walked in.

  “Sorry, Mel, I just can’t believe how nervous I am.”

  “What, because of Andrew?”

  “Well, yeah. I know it’s stupid but I haven’t had a crush on someone for ages, and I know that’s what it is, a crush, but I can’t help it. I’m going to be so bloody pissed off if he doesn’t turn up.”

  A crush. The very word brings up memories of teenage years. Of going to parties praying for the object of your crush to be there. Of treasuring his every sentence, every look, every touch. Of lying awake at night daydreaming about what the two of you could do together.

  But crushes rarely come off, do they, at least not in my experience. The relationships that you have creep up on you, take you unawares. The relationships you have are not with men who provide fodder for your dreams. They are the men who pursue you, and you, through a process of flattery, insecurity, and need, grow to love them in return.

  The crushes never amount to anything other than a few weeks of dizzy excitement, followed by the pain of disappointment.

  “I don’t know, Tash, I still think he’s dangerous.”

  “But since when was danger not allowed?” I smile.

  We both turn as we notice a male presence hovering, and Mel beams her sunshine smile and introduces herself.

  “I’m Martin.” An average-looking bloke with a shy smile shakes both our hands, only shooting me a cursory glance before fixing his attention on Mel. “I hear you’re a therapist too?”

  “Too? You’re a therapist as well? God, how amazing, I never seem to meet other therapists at my friends’ parties.” Mel, being Mel, is as bright and friendly to this stranger as she is to everyone. I watch him instantly relax, and soon the two of them are chattering away together, and Mel is making him throw his head back with laughter.

  This is good for Mel, I think, as I look around to see where Daniel is and spot him through the kitchen window, leering animatedly at Annie, a slim, exotic beauty who, at this very moment, is smiling blankly and answering Daniel’s inquisition with monosyllables, obviously desperate to get away.

  “Excuse me,” I say to Mel and Martin—now there’s a good couple in the making—as I back off, leaving the two of them to get on with their conversation, and I honestly don’t think either of them notices, they’re so taken with each other.

  “Who’s Martin?” I whisper in Andy’s ear as she’s standing next to the barbecue turning the sausages.

  “Who?” she says, a hint of excitement at there being an available man at her party who she doesn’t know.

  “Martin. The guy talking to Mel.”

  “I don’t know,” she says, looking at him, her face falling with lack of interest as she quickly assesses the fact that he is not her type. “He came with Tom.” She turns to me in horror. “You can’t be interested in him, surely? He’s the sort of man who eats quiche for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. Not your type at all.”

  So what, you’re probably asking yourself, but I can see her point. I mean, whoever coined the phrase that real men don’t eat quiche was definitely onto something, and this guy, pleasant though he seemed, wasn’t nearly enough of a bastard for me.

  Yes, I’d like a nice guy, wouldn’t we all, but put me in a room with ninety-nine quiche-eaters and one rare steak kind of a guy and who do you think I’ll choose? Exactly.

  “Andy, just because I ask who someone is doesn’t mean I want to rip their trousers off, for Christ’s sake. He seems to be getting on with Mel, that’s all, and he seems like a nice guy.”

  “Hmm. I think they’re ready, do you want a sausage? SAUSAGE ANYONE?” she shouts out, holding a charred black sausage on the end of a fork.

  Funny how drink seems to affect you more during the day. By six there are some seriously shit-faced people at the barbecue. The music’s been turned up, and as the sun starts losing its luster you can see it’s going to be a long night.

  It would also be a bloody good one if Andrew was here, but, and don’t tell me you’re not surprised, the bastard hasn’t turned up.

  I’ve avoided dri
nking too much all day because I know what I’m like with a bit too much alcohol. My mascara will run, my eyes will be bloodshot and I’ll turn a rather unattractive shade of flushed red. But Jesus, if the only man I fancy isn’t coming, I may as well drown those sorrows somehow.

  Andy’s running around flapping that there isn’t enough food, Emma’s entwined with Richard at one end of the garden and Mel, well, Mel isn’t anywhere to be seen. Neither is Martin.

  Daniel’s worked his way through all the women at the party, and, deciding there are no conquests to be made, he’s talking football with some of the other guys. I watch them for a while, contemplating whether or not to join them because one of them is rather nice, but just as I’m about to walk over I see that Andy has the same idea.

  There she is, shaking their hands, throwing her head back with laughter, flirting outrageously with the man I had my eye on. If I wasn’t waiting for Andrew I might have been pissed off, but she’s welcome to him. Tonight.

  I grab the Pimms, pour myself what would surely constitute a triple in any decent bar, and head for the bathroom to check my hair and makeup. Just in case. The strangest thing happens as I’m coming out of the bathroom. I hear Mel’s familiar peal of laughter coming from a bedroom with a closed door.

  Jesus, she wouldn’t. Would she? No. Can’t be. I hover for a few minutes outside the door, debating whether or not to knock but actually I’m listening for some heavy breathing or groans. I don’t hear anything other than soft voices, two, Mel and, presumably, Martin, so eventually I knock. The voices stop abruptly, and then footsteps.

  The door is wrenched open and a guilty-looking Mel breathes a huge sigh of relief as she sees me. “Oh God, I thought it was Daniel.”

  “What are you two up to?” I ask with a sly sideways look at Mel, as I jump on the bed and lean back against the pillows.

  “As if,” says Mel with a grin. “You have such a one-track mind.”

  Oh excuse me, reader, but wouldn’t you have jumped to the same conclusion? I thought so.