by Anna Maxted
I want to smile but feel reluctant to look him in the eye because mine are so red he might mistake me for a bloodhound. Oh god, he hasn’t let go. We’re on the line. Anything could happen. My skin feels raw and hot where he’s touched it and I stare down at his smooth brown forearms and want to lick them. My insides ooze like melting chocolate. And what about Chris, you great trollop? snaps my conscience. Have you no self-control?
Have I no…? Have I no…? Bar querying the pope’s Catholicism, I doubt I could have asked a more insulting or superfluous question. I pull violently away from Andy at the precise moment he lets go of me, totter three steps backward, flail like a cartoon chicken walking off a cliff, shout, “Woo-o-oh!” and land with a thump on the floor.
“Oh! let me—”
“No really I—”
“Sorry but I thought you—”
“No it’s my fault I—”
We blunder on as Wooster and Jeeves until our mutual humiliation wears thin and Andy regains enough composure to announce he’s “late for a drink with a friend in the pub.”
I accept the lie gratefully and wave him off. Then I lean against the door, shudder with embarrassment, and outlaw all thoughts about kissing Andy.
24
WHICH DOESN’T PRECLUDE THOUGHTS ABOUT Andy kissing me. Did he want to? Was he planning to? Did I imagine it? Am I presuming? Did he think better of it? Is that why he let go? Why didn’t he want to? What’s wrong with me? Should I act disdainful when I next see him? Or airily indifferent? What would make me more desirable? Would it help if I bought one of those brown and white Himalayan pom-pom shawls?
I stamp around the flat wanting to talk to someone. The obvious person isn’t going to want to talk to me. Not about this. Not when she told me to “watch it,” only twenty-four hours ago. But she can’t have it all her own way. She got the handsome man, the puffball dress, the white and turquoise honeymoon, the gravy bowl in Wedgwood jade, the garden flat with window boxes, the fitted kitchen with halogen lights, the Harrods club card, everything so neat and perfect, all our Barbie-doll dreams fulfilled. She has so much, she can’t begrudge me a little nothing with her brother. Because nothing happened. I only want to talk.
I debate whether to call her for two full minutes before picking up the phone. It rings five times, then clicks on to answer machine. A cool male voice drawls, “Hello there, you’ve reached the home of Simon and Barbara Freedland”—good Lord, I think, forgive the tribute phrase but that is so last century!—“We are out or busy but please leave a message and we’ll return your call as soon as we can.”
Pardon me, but what a prat, is the message I’d like to leave. And if you ever have a girl, Babs, be prepared to call her “Simona.” Or Simone, even.
But I restrain myself and say, “Hi Babs, it’s Na—”
There is a short clatter and a muffled voice husks, “Nat?”
“Hiya!” I squeal. “Oh my gosh, I’m dying to speak to you!”
“What about,” says Babs. It is barely a question, which riles me.
“Don’t be cross,” I say, “because nothing happened but I sort of had an accidental close encounter with Andy.”
“Oh for god’s sake,” snaps Babs.
Suddenly I feel like a cat upon spying an upstart kitten at its food bowl.
“Sorry,” I squeak, the hairs on my neck bristling and my voice four octaves higher than shrill. “But why exactly is that such a problem for you?”
I realize what I’ve said, cross my eyes, and stick my left fist in my mouth as far as it will go. I never but never invite confrontation (the mash incident was a first), I just don’t. So what the hell am I doing? I cringe and wait for verbal extermination. I take my fist out of my mouth and add quickly, “Nothing happened.”
There is no sound from the earpiece.
“Babs?” I say fearfully. Maybe she’s fainted. “Babs?” I gulp. “Babs, are you okay? I promise you, it was a big nothing, I was upset and he rubbed my back, just a friendly thing, only me being silly, reading things into it, I—”
“Nat,” whispers Babs, “you’re all right. It’s not…it’s not…” She trails off and I hear a hiccup. Not a happy sound.
“Babs,” I say, alarmed. “Do you want me to come round?”
“Yes,” she replies. “Come now.”
“Brownies’ honor, I’ll never so much as look at the guy again, Amen,” I bleat to the pale blue walls as I grab my coat.
I am one step from the door when the phone rings. Good grief, what now.
“Hello?”
“Princess.”
“Hi!” My enthusiasm is in direct proportion to my guilt.
“We gotta talk.”
“What’s wrong?” I say, glancing at the clock. Nine-thirty. Of course. Today’s favor. I think, don’t push it, I’ve already done you one favor this evening.
Chris is silent. I’m thinking, Hurry up! when he speaks again. “Something’s up with Piers. Something serious, man.”
“What do you mean?” I say.
“He’s not returning my calls.”
A bell tinkles faintly, daintily at the back of my head. Something Tony said about waiting for a punch line.
“Well, maybe he’s away.”
“Nah. He’s around.”
“Well, maybe he’s busy and, I mean, taking on a new band is a big commitment, maybe he—”
“The band aren’t returning my calls.”
“What?!”
“Look, princess, I need you to speak to Tony for me, get him to take my call, he knows this geezer, right, knows how he operates, I gotta speak to him, it’s serious, man, there’s some heavy shit going down and I don’t know what.”
I take a deep breath. Problems. One, Tony is in no mood to be doing me favors. Two, three, and four, I am not a man, I’m in a rush, and did anyone ever tell Chris about the word please?
“Chris,” I say, sighing, “I want to help you, but can it wait for…for a day?”
“No,” says Chris and slams the phone down.
“Moron,” I murmur as I crawl through London at the pace of a hedgehog with a limp. “Sort out your own problems.” I toss my hair (what’s left of it) and light a cigarette and wish I could afford my own helicopter.
“God knows what’s wrong with Babs,” I say aloud, stopping at lights that stay red for as long as sunburn. “Good enough to be her friend, not good enough to flirt with her brother. Can’t even believe I’m thinking about it. You hated him, remember? Posture like an old tulip. Sullen on the phone. Forever locked in his room listening to R.E.M. Only emerging from the stupor once, to snog you, then vanish, leaving you mortified for the next eleven years. Though who’d have thought he’d have such beautiful forearms”—here I employ my best Tammy Wynette impression—“a mayyyn’s forearms!”
Instinct makes me turn to my right, and I see the male driver in the adjacent Saab look quickly away.
“Everyone talks to themselves in the car!” I say, chastened.
But I say it in my head so as not to alarm any other road users. I finally reach Holland Park, scamper up the path, and ring the doorbell. “Helloo!” I coo, bending and peering through the mail slot. The door opens. “Eeek, you scared m—gosh, Babs, what’s the matter?”
Babs looks ill. She is dressed in a shapeless I Killed Kenny T-shirt and baggy gray tracksuit trousers—like a Kosovan, in fact—and is clutching a mug of tea as if it were a life buoy. There’s no sign of tears but her face looks drawn, older, and she has dark weary smudges under her brown eyes. Her rippling hair has been scraped back into a severe ponytail. She really doesn’t want me to tangle with Andy.
“Listen. I swear it won’t happen again, I—”
“Christ, Natalie,” snaps Babs, jerking her hands wide and sloshing tea onto the tiles. “Not everything revolves around you! This has nothing to do with Andy, it’s about Si!”
“Simon?” I repeat inanely, staring at her.
For a second Babs’s features pinch as if she�
��s considering sarcasm—Yes, Simon, my husband, remember?—but then she nods limply and exhales, “Mm.” I lunge and catch the mug as it drops from her grasp.
“Babs?” She says nothing but her pain is as tangible as a scream in the night.
“I’m so sorry, what…what is it?”
Babs shakes her head, her jaw rigid with the effort of holding back. I have never seen her this way, and the horror roars through me like a chill wind, gusting away the meaner emotions that have lurked inside for so long. I feel ashamed of my sour lack of generosity. “Please tell me what it is,” I whisper. “I’d do anything to help.”
Maybe she senses the genuine feeling, buried for so long under polite artifice, because she smiles, a pale fleeting ghost of a smile, and nods me toward the kitchen.
“Can I make you another tea?” I say as she sinks into a steel chair. Babs is a hefty woman but the way her long limbs fold into themselves reminds me of a spider curling up to die. She shakes her head and waves toward the shiny new married-person’s kettle, which I assume means: No, but help yourself.
I sit opposite her and wait, buzzing with dread. Please don’t let it be too bad, for her sake. And mine. I don’t think I’m up to dealing with that level of guilt. She presses a hand to her temple and squeezes.
Then she spits, “Everyone says, ‘Oh, how’s married life treating you? How’s married life treating you?’ It’s all they fucking say and I’m going, ‘Fine, fine, great, thanks,’ because I’m a newlywed and I’m supposed to be screwing five times a night seven nights a week—that’s what they want to hear, that’s what I’m meant to say, when the truth is, it’s treating me like shit, ‘It’s shit, thanks,’ and I don’t know what to do, and oh god, I can’t speak to him, he’s not listening to me and oh Christ I’m…I’m so desperate.”
“But, Babs, poor darling, why?” I splutter. Apart from sounding like the bespectacled librarian stooge in a bad 1950s film, I can barely crank out the words. My friend sits there, cracking her knuckles, crunch, crunch, and I grab her hands and hold them tight in mine.
“He…he…I don’t know. It’s lots of things.”
She pulls away and crosses her arms. Then she laughs, a hard bitter laugh, and says, “Natalie, if you’re ever on your honeymoon and your new husband watches Seven Samurai on video two nights running, take it from me, it’s a bad sign.”
“W-what’s Seven Samurai?” I whisper fearfully. I suspect from her tone that it isn’t a jaunty Japanese version of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
“It’s a three-hour black-and-white film about bandits in sixteenth-century Japan,” she replies. “And then he watched Shogun. That’s nine and a half hours. Of pretty much the same.”
I am stunned to silence. Bandits? On a honeymoon?
“I wouldn’t have minded if I’d gotten to see his samarai sword more than twice in two weeks!” Her attempt at a laugh is more of a sob. She adds suddenly, “It’s so fucking unfair, the guys at his work.”
I’m still absorbing the outrage of the honeymoon bandits but I nod to show I’m keeping up.
“Bastards. You know, not one of his colleagues said congratulations. It was all stuff like, ‘Another one bites the dust.’ And can you believe someone said this—‘You’re making the biggest mistake of your life!’ This fucker’s never even met me and he said that to Si! And when they found out I was a firefighter, well, that was the beginning of the fucking end, wasn’t it? ‘You’re getting hitched to a lezzer, mate’—and that was the best of it. Didn’t stop them coming to the wedding and getting wasted on his parents’ money, though, did it. And I’m thinking, nah, Simon loves me, he can take it, he’s not going to listen to a bunch of prats, but then, I was speaking to Annelise, you know, the other woman at the station, and she only goes out with other firefighters, and we were talking about that and she said she wouldn’t get involved with men outside the service because ‘who’s going to be the hero in the relationship?’ and…and I can’t stop thinking about what she said. I thought, It won’t be like that with Si, he’ll be different, and I thought he was—he was—different, he admired what I did, he was proud, I mean, Christ, he earns twenty times what I do, he’s still the bleeding breadwinner, you know, he still gets to beat his chest and bring home the woolly mammoth, I’m not altogether robbing him of his masculinity by not being a…a…a nursery-school teacher, but you know it seems I am, because he’s angry with me, he’s hostile and it’s been going on for weeks, and I hardly see him, he’s always working late or leaving early and out with the lads and coming home pissed and it’s like everything I do is a personal insult to him, he’s so distant and cold, and what if he’s having an affair, I’m scared he’ll do it just to teach me a lesson for, I don’t know what, agreeing to marry him, not knowing my place, making him look a patsy in front of his mates, making him, god forbid, different from them because they all live in fleapits and don’t do a weekly shop, it’s like they resent him for joining the enemy camp and he’s taking it out on me, and maybe he is cheating on me, can you believe it, two months in and I’m already checking his bloody pockets! Oh Christ, Nat, I’m so bloody miserable, I’m sorry to land this on you but I don’t know what to do, what can I do?”
At which point she looks at me with big sad eyes, as if I have the power to magic away three decades of hardcore bloke-training and make it all nice again.
25
WE WERE THIRTEEN AND BABS AND I WERE having tea in her kichen. White bread dripping with chocolate spread, the dark syrupy sort you can’t get anymore. It must have been the weekend because her father was sitting with us. Anyway, Babs’s mother was reading a book on the sofa (my mother wouldn’t dream of having “lounge furniture” in the kitchen) and she farted. Our horror knew no bounds. Farting in front of your husband! The ultimate no-no! Didn’t she know men went off you if you did that? My mother would rather combust than parp in front of my father. Imagine our surprise when my dad left and Mr. Edwards stayed.
When I say good-bye to Babs at half-past one (no sign of Simon) I am in shock. You think you know and you don’t. I’ve done three hours of counseling and in the same time scale, months of purgatory. I realize I want her to be happy, and I’d do anything to repair her marriage. I know she’d do the same for me. I’ve told Babs that the first year is the hardest (according to The Mirror) and that honeymoons are a nightmare and should be banned, as they can never live up to your expectations. I’ve told her that Simon adores her, but signing on the dotted line has given him the jitters. I’ve advised her not to fart freely, to be on the safe side.
I’ve not told her that two out of three marriages fail (The Guardian Against Fun). And I’ve struggled with pertinent advice for Simon. You have to be careful when criticizing a friend’s partner because the second they kiss and make up, you are the baddie who slagged off the love of her life.
I am snug in bed before I even think of Andy. Babs doesn’t want him to know. (“He’s useless at hiding his emotions, Nat, he’d go and punch Si’s lights out, which I don’t think, at this point, would be helpful.”) She won’t confide in her parents either (“They gave me twelve grand to help with our new flat, how can I do it to them?”). I feel useless. I am the Liz Taylor of marriage guidance, my grasp of man management extends to hiding the remote control. Who could I ask for help? Tony, Mel, Chris, a trinity of clowns. But there is someone else. Could I?
Frannie?
Admittedly, if I had to name the person most likely to become an Angel of Mercy, it wouldn’t be her. I’ve always felt she was destined for a less saintly career. Let’s compare. Jeffrey Dahmer, for instance, was a cute baby. Blond, dimpled, the whole works. Nice parents, too. When Frannie was born, she looked like Christopher Walken. Her mother has the get up and go of a matzo ball, and her father once advised her that attending college was pointless as “You’ll only come out and start having babies.” Talk about a training camp for psychosis!
That said, she has been trying. (Very trying.) In her own, profoundly i
rritating way, she wants to help. Despite receiving no encouragement, she persists in her attempts to better me. Frannie has a good heart, even though I suspect part of it is cooked through. And she worships Babs. I have no doubt that if she knew of Simon’s behavior, she’d bite off his balls. Which is why I have no intention of telling her about Simon. None. I’m going to pretend my relationship is in trouble, and ask her to advise me. She’d love that. The chance to patronize and educate will be irresistible. For once I will put Babs before my own selfish considerations. I am a genius.
The next day, I do a forty-minute run at the gym to psyche myself up, return home, and page Frannie. No sign of Andy. When the phone rings, I fall on it.
“Hello?”
“Chris.”
“Chris! Oh hi, hi, um, how is everything, look, I haven’t had a chance to speak to Tony yet but I—”
“I spoke to Piers.”
“Oh that’s great! So I don’t have to—”
“He’s nicked the band.”
“Pardon?”
“He wants to be their agent, and he wants one of the guys on the management side of his company to manage them. I didn’t fucking know there was a management side to his company.” Chris’s voice lifts to a whine.
“Oh no!” I gasp. “That’s outrageous, what—what happened?”
“Last week, yeah, he wants to know all this shit, what’s the story, how committed are they, have they got more than one song, what the buzz is, what do they look like, and I answer all his shite questions, yeah, and he acts really keen, hears the demo, drops round the studio, and, yeah, he’s gonna take them on and then—nothing, man! I call him ten times. Nothing. And then the boys go quiet on me, and today, Piers gets on the blower, says, ‘I’m sorry, but it’s not working out with the band. Blue Fiend have decided they want a different manager and we’ve agreed to give it a shot.’ Not working out? First I’ve fucking heard of it!”