Paula paused, agonisingly. Then she smiled.
‘No, of course not. More complicated maybe, but not harder. The thought that we’re going to be together is the only thing that keeps me going, half the time. I do love you, Jim; feck knows why sometimes, but I do. That’s me being honest, too. But you need to understand that I’m not always going to be Miss Sunshine and Light until I get everything sorted out.’
In the interests of full-disclosure I will mention that the words well get it fucking sorted out then flashed through my mind, but only briefly. ‘I’ll do my best.’
Paula took my hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘Thank you.’
I squeezed back. ‘You’re welcome.’
The waiter arrived with our food. As he turned to leave again Paula stopped him. ‘This is his treat,’ she said, nodding at me. ‘So I think I’ll have a large white wine, thanks. Jim?’
‘Pint of lager, ta.’ The waiter smiled and headed for the small bar to place the order. ‘According to Sammy, it’s actually Andrea I owe a dinner to.’
‘Aye, thanks very feckin’ much for that, ye bastard. You owe her taxi fare as well.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean it. I was feeling so righteous I forgot.’
‘Likely story.’
My lamb chasni was excellent, and the way Paula tore into her chicken patia suggested that was pretty good, too. Our drinks didn’t last long, and we soon ordered more.
There was a feeling of absolution in the air; a sense that, with an unpleasant topic aired and put to bed, it was safe to relax once again and get back to what we did best - talking pish.
‘It’s probably not a bad thing we aren’t sleeping together yet,’ Paula said.
‘How d’you work that out?’
‘Curry rarely leads to a romantic atmosphere in the morning.’
‘This is true,’ I agreed. ‘More a gaseous one, if anything.’
‘My point exactly. Make sure you open a window before you go to bed.’
‘I shall. You too, you don’t want to kill your parents in the night.’
‘Not by accident, anyway.’
This was why I loved Paula Fraser. When she wasn’t depressed and angry she was a really good laugh. A woman willing to start, and sustain with a straight face, a fart conversation, was truly worth having in your life.
And that was the Paula Fraser I’d carried in my head for all those years, the one I’d always been in love with. I’d blanked out how low, how beaten she’d looked the day she told me she was moving to London (and the weeks leading up to that day, if I was being honest). I’d only remembered the times (and there were plenty of them) when she made me laugh so much I almost swallowed my cigarette, and did it with those eyes, and that smile, and that skin, and all those other bits I was trying hard not to think too much about until access was granted.
But (and this was a good ‘but’), in these last couple of months I’d come to realise something else. I still loved that Paula, as much if not more than ever; I also, as well as, including and in addition to that, loved Paula when she was depressed and angry. She was a girl then and she was still that girl, but she was also a woman now, and Christ, she’d turned out well.
I didn’t mean it lightly when I said we shouldn’t get intimate until Paula was single; but, equally, I’d assumed at the time it would only take a couple of weeks or so for the situation to be resolved. Sitting in Bashir’s I concluded that it had been, without a hint of a shadow of a ghost of a doubt, the single most sensible, mature decision I’d ever made.
Didn’t stop the hormones, right enough. Even when she had pakora sauce dribbling down her chin.
‘What you looking at?’ Paula said, wiping her chin with her napkin.
‘Do you want funny, or what’s actually in my head?’
‘Funny first.’
‘Okay. Could be human, but we’ll have to wait for the autopsy to confirm.’
She shook her head. ‘That was rubbish. Try the truth.’
I hesitated, but not for very long. ‘The love of my life.’ I had never ever said those words before. They felt weird coming out of my mouth.
Paula’s frozen features said they felt equally weird going into her ears. ‘Wow,’ she said, which wasn’t all that encouraging.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘No, I’m sorry. Sorry. No one’s ever said that to me before.’
‘Seriously?’ I had no problems imagining every man she’d ever met saying it.
‘Yeah.’
‘Not even Ingo?’ What? I tried to slap the inside of my mouth with my tongue for saying something so stupid, but it wasn’t too successful as self-flagellation goes (too moist, limited leverage).
Paula stared strangely at me for a second. ‘No, not even Ingo,’ she said. ‘Love, yes, love of my life, no. I think you’re mine, too. How mental is that?’
I’ve no idea what kind of look I had on my face as I returned Paula’s gaze. Certainly not puppy-dog. Possibly stunned-badger.
And … breathe. ‘Fairly fucking.’
‘I’m not going to talk about when I was with Ingo because it isn’t fair to him, but I never did manage to get you out of my head all these years, Jim Cooper.’
‘Me neither you, either,’ I said.
‘Grammar!’
‘Teacher!’ I had a distressing thought. ‘You don’t think it’s just a stupid first-love was the sweetest thing for you, do you?’
‘I wouldn’t imagine so,’ Paula said. ‘You weren’t my first love.’
‘What?’
‘Feck’s sake, we were nineteen, not eleven. I told you back then about Lewis Boyd. I was totally in love with that boy for over a year.’
I had no recollection whatsoever of the name Lewis Boyd. ‘When was this?’
‘None of your business,’ she said, a sly smirk on her lips. ‘Before your time, that’s all you need to know if you can’t remember.’
‘Hmm. I don’t think I like him.’
Paula laughed. ‘So what, I was yours?’
‘You weren’t my first girlfriend. First love though, no contest.’
‘And therefore, according to you, your only one.’
‘Looks that way,’ I said.
‘It’s very sweet of you to say that, Jim, but you really don’t have to. We’ve both lived a bit in the last twelve years.’
‘I wish I was lying,’ I said. ‘D’you think I like sounding like a pathetic wee twat?’
‘You’ve honestly never had your heart-broken by another girl?’
‘Chipped maybe, but not broken.’
‘Consider yourself a lucky bastard, then.’
I smiled. ‘I do, now.’
Chapter 23
How big a poncy twazzock was I?
The love of my life. Real people didn’t say that, they just didn’t, ever. Bad anniversary card writers used it when they couldn’t come up with a better rhyme for I’m so glad you’re my wife; Teenagers who couldn’t confide in anything that breathed and so wrote in diaries instead, used it; those poor, disillusioned folk who ended up scripting (mainly American) soap operas even though they were capable of so much better used it, when they were particularly hung-over. Real, live, actual human beings engaging in discourse with other real, live, actual human beings didn’t use it; especially not when that other human being was the love of their life.
But I had used it, and Paula had said it back (sort of). Dodged a scud missile, there.
I laughed out loud, prompting a worried look in the rear-view mirror from my taxi driver.
It had been harder than usual to say goodnight to Paula when we left Bashir’s. The ritual of phoning two cabs, with Paula taking the first to arrive and me waiting for the second, was excruciating.
We stood on the pavement as we waited, her left hand meshed with my right, both wedged between our adjacent hips (and slightly to the back, in case anyone we knew happened to pass). That last five minutes together was usually pretty wordless, but it was even more so this
time.
She nudged my shoulder playfully with hers, and I nudged back; she arched her eyebrows at me, and I returned the sentiment by returning the gesture. We rocked slowly against one another with knowingly innocent expressions on our faces. I can’t attest with any authority as to what was going on inside Paula’s body, but mine was edging steadily towards a fierce, and potentially sticky, emotional zenith when her taxi arrived.
She looked me in the eye, smiled the smile that reminded my brain it was basically made of jelly, kissed the tip of my nose, and opened the car door. Then she said the (second) best thing she could have said.
‘Soon, promise.’
I think I managed a gurgle.
I thought about a lot of different things on my journey home that night. The aforementioned poncy twazzock was the one that scared the driver. After that, the word foreplay swam into my brain, powered by an eager, squirming, tadpole-like tail. It occurred to me that the last two months could be regarded as one long foreplay session.
I’d always been a fan of foreplay. It was, when it came right down to it, a hell of a lot of fun. I reckoned the bit at the end, magnificent though it could be, was the one bit you don’t really need much input from a second party to achieve, assuming you have the capacity to visualize even the crudest of images in your mind (strictly speaking I can only speak for myself on this subject, but I’ll take a punt and venture it applies to the vast majority, of my gender at least).
The joy of foreplay wasn’t about the end bit, though. Yes, obviously that was a more than satisfactory way to bring proceedings to a climax, but I’ve always thought the journey was at least as much fun as the destination (and here’s me never been one for travelling, as well).
Taking that trip, climbing that mountain with someone close, was life’s greatest adventure; you share the highs and the lows, and chances are you’ll both make mistakes along the way; you take direction when you get lost; you gratefully accept pointers to the best hand-holds when they’re offered; you provide what scant support you can, if and when required. Most importantly, you take pleasure in the surprises you meet, and comfort in the parts that, though familiar, have subtly weathered and changed since the last time you were there.
Even if, as often seemed to be the case, your journey ends first and you reach the summit ahead of your travelling companion, you take a minute to catch your breath and then, if you’re a conscientious team player, grab hold of that rope and keep pulling until they join you at the top.
And, as you lay side-by-side on the damp mountain top, exhausted but truly satisfied with your efforts, you remind yourself again that yes, it might be easier to buy a travel magazine and just imagine yourself up there, but it would be over far more quickly and wouldn’t be anything like as gratifying. The effort is the purpose. You keep a hold of the magazine though, just in case you can’t find anyone to go climbing with next time.
So, foreplay is a wonderful thing. Nine weeks at base camp before the expedition even set off was pushing it, though. Still, signs were good that the weather might be clearing and we should, all going well, finally be able set out on the route we’d been planning so meticulously, sometime soon. At least I hoped that’s what Soon, promise meant.
Pleasing as this notion was, it struck me that, given the amount of time spent in anticipation, all that patient, careful mental preparation we’d (or I’d) been doing, when the time actually came for the adventure to truly begin I had bloody better be fit for the task.
This wasn’t going to be a quick, meaning-free fumble. This was Paula Fraser; this was, to use a terrible phrase, the love of my life.
Men aren’t very good at dealing with expectation; it often has the opposite effect to that intended. Simply put, the better you need to be, the worse you sometimes end up being (one of Nature’s many little jokes).
There had been no problems in this area that I could recall twelve years ago, but a lot of time had passed. I may have picked up a few new tricks in those intervening years, but Paula had spent that time in London and Europe, so God only knew to what kind of standards she had become accustomed. Plus, I was older and had smoked many thousands more cigarettes. So, no pressure then. I could only pray we still fitted.
I recognised this train of thought as the destructive road to hell it was, and tried to evict it from my brain. It stayed out just long enough for me to pay the taxi-fare and make it up to the bathroom, before kicking its way back into my mind so forcefully I dropped my toothbrush down the toilet pan.
***
After a less than restful night I stumbled downstairs to grab a coffee before work, hoping it might get rid of the horrible morning-after taste in my mouth (brushing with your finger is no substitute and I was out of mouthwash).
‘Pay-day,’ my dad said, not looking up from his paper.
‘I’ll go to the bank before I get home tonight.’
Pay-day should be a good day, a happy day, a day full of promise and possibility. For me, though, it had become the day I forked over almost half my wages to this miserable git. Honestly, by the time I allowed for my fags and a couple of nights on the beer there was barely enough left to buy two or three DVDs and maybe a t-shirt from H&M or something. It was rubbish.
I still had the credit cards I’d paid off when I sold my flat, but had made a vow not to start running them up again until my annual salary equalled at least half my age, and, even including tips, I was still a good four grand away from that. Working in a pub can be a great life, but only if you’re willing to accept the terrible wages and complete lack of career prospects.
I hadn’t given too much thought to my future, work-wise. Paula had taken up residence in the part of my brain that dealt with ‘things to come’, and there hadn’t been a lot of room for anything else. I had, however, acknowledged that if I wanted us to have a decent life together then I’d better start thinking about strategies to get myself a little closer to what would soon be her earnings bracket. She wasn’t particularly materialistic or money obsessed, but she was a grown, independent woman who would, I was fairly sure, feel more comfortable if I didn’t have holes in my shoes and fag-burns on my shirt when we went out to her mate’s posh restaurant for dinner.
The coffee helped a bit, and I stopped at the garage for some mints before catching the bus into town.
I was surprised when Sammy opened The Basement’s door to me. I’d never seen him in before twelve.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘We had dinner last night. Everything’s okay.’
‘That’s all right then.’ He moved aside to let me in. ‘I’ll be checking with her later,’ he called after me as I headed for the office.
‘I would expect no less, mate,’ I said.
Kate was sitting at the desk, her head buried in ‘paperwork’ as usual. ‘Hiya,’ she said, looking up. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Yeah, it’s fine,’ I said. I wondered what she meant until I remembered the shocked look on her face after Sammy’s bollocking the day before. ‘It’s all sorted, thanks.’
‘That’s good,’ Kate said. ‘I didn’t realise how shaky things were with you and Paula.’
‘They’re not shaky,’ I said. ‘We had a wee blip, that’s all.’ I almost added thanks to you. ‘It’s cool.’
‘I’m glad. When I thought about it, Paula didn’t look too happy in The Brooklyn the other day.’
Thanks to you, I almost said again, but held my tongue once more. ‘How come Sammy’s here?’
Kate’s face sagged. ‘We need to go over a few things,’ she said. ‘You might be on your own most of today, I’m afraid.’
She was too caught-up with her worries to notice my not quite silent giggle. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll cope,’ I said.
‘Cheers, honey.’ She smiled her oh-so-pretty smile and returned her attention to the pile of paper in front of her. I didn’t have a great view but they looked like a mixture of wage-cost breakdowns, drink and food order sheets and the ever-present stock resu
lts. That’s always what gets them in catering - staff costs and dodgy stock takes.
I was in the middle of setting up when Abe and Jed arrived, together.
‘Cheers, Jim,’ Abe said, powering past me through the door as he continued his conversation with his KP. ‘You need to shut the fuck up and learn a few things about life, wee-man.’
‘Piss-off, Grandad,’ Jed said, following Abe into the kitchen. ‘Beady Eye are fucking dinosaurs, they need a kick up the arse and so do you.’
I felt a warm glow; they would do well, those two.
Sammy and Kate remained ensconced in the office for most of the day. I almost started to feel sorry for Kate when Sammy stormed out at one point to get himself a coffee. ‘Everything okay?’ I asked.
Sammy looked at me. ‘How fucking hard can it be?’ he said, presumably rhetorically. He made a double espresso and downed it in one, before sighing and going back through.
I had everything cleaned, stocked, shiny and ship-shape when Sammy reappeared after four, this time with his jacket on.
‘I need a large bowl of wine,’ he said. ‘See you later, Jim.’
‘Okay, bye.’ It took a lot to get Sammy in such a state (pissing off his favourite girl in the world, for example).
He paused and turned on his way to the door. ‘I’ll be checking up on you too, mister,’ he said. ‘She better be okay.’
I held my hands up. ‘Promise.’
He stared hard at me for a second, then nodded and powered out of the door.
The bar was empty and I had bugger-all to do until Mark and Natalie arrived at five. I debated with myself for a moment or two and then, against my better judgement, went for the Good Samaritan option and stuck my head round the office door.
‘You okay?’ I said to Kate, who was in her usual position behind the desk.
She put on her smile as she looked up. ‘Yeah, yeah, fine thanks.’ It wasn’t difficult to spot the fear in her eyes.
‘You sure?’ Don’t do it, I told myself. Paula will kill you.
‘Oh fuck, Jim. Why am I so bad at this?’
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