by Anna Maxted
“The Tate Modern!” I exclaim. “I’d love to go there. But where is it? Isn’t it on a patch of wasteland?”
“Yeah,” says Andy. “South London.”
Two hours later, I’m culturally enriched in that I now know to avoid modern art when stepping out with a guy I find attractive but haven’t yet kissed, as stumbling across videos of naked men dancing to unheard music merely highlights the issue. When we retreat to the café, believe it or not, I’m glad.
I take a brazen bite of my dark chocolate tart. (Andy kept repeating, “I’m going to have something but you don’t have to,” until I felt obliged to prove my normality. Sort of like allowing Kurt Russell to test my blood for alien content in The Thing.) Then I sip my peppermint tea, warming my hands on the mug and—now that I’m no longer the scarlet woman who tore his family apart—tell Andy about the offer of deli work versus the offer of dry-cleaning work. Deli work is the lesser of the two evils (in that it’s marginally more acceptable to the outside world) and so I’m psyching myself up to accept.
“It is, believe it or not, a laugh,” he says. “It’s like a paper route, we’ve all done it. It’s such a friendly place. You just have to be able to put up with Mum, bitching and moaning about British food and British eating habits and complaining that all the English customers demand the same sandwich, day in, day out, never trying something new, and always wanting to cram in fifty different fillings—salami and pastrami and cheese…. In Italy, you stick to one so you can taste the flavor. It drives her mad, and she goes on and on about it.”
“Oh,” I say, smiling, “I wouldn’t mind, I’ve had worse than that.”
Andy takes a gulp of beer. “So have you got anything else lined up or are you going to take it easy for a bit? You mentioned the PR work, but you said you were sick of it.”
I smile, surprised. Most of the men I know are identical in their ability to delete great chunks of information twenty seconds after you’ve slashed open your psyche like a pomegranate to share it with them. My brain clings to trivia like a booger to a finger. Nine years ago, my first “love”—incidentally, a bold and mocking parody of that word—mentioned the name of the guy who helped out on his parents’ farm. Nine years later, the ghostly identity of Bunny Grimshaw, a man I’ve never met, never want to, and never will, continues to hop about my consciousness, occupying valuable disk space. Why?
“Well remembered,” I say, stunned by the realization that I am sick of PR—and lighting a cigarette to help myself think. “I’m doing it, for the paltry cash, but it’s not my life’s dream.”
“So what is?” asks Andy, leaning forward.
I pause. The quickest way to kill a fantasy is to make it real. Oh, what the hell.
“There is,” I say, “one thing that, well, interests me. But it’ll sound ridiculous, I’d have to train, and it would probably cost a fortune, and then, even then I might not be good at it, I might not get a job, and my mum would be devastated.”
“Well,” says Andy. “That’s the positive side. What about the negative?”
I laugh. “I’m just being realistic.”
Andy shakes his head. “You haven’t even told me what it is yet.”
I pause. “It’s…it’s this thing called Pilates, it’s a form of exercise but not entirely, it’s very popular right now, so it would be very competitive, but I love it, I’ve only done it a few times, so it’s a bit mad, but, if there was nothing stopping me, if I could do whatever I wanted, I think I’d like to do a course in it.”
I wait for Andy to laugh at me. Instead he says, “Pilates, I know about that. Sasha, my ex, used to teach it. She was always banging on about it being holistic. Good for body and soul blah blah, looking at how everything functions in relation to everything else. She was always trying to force me along to a class. I think it would be great for you!”
I hate it when people say that. I also think, if I had a penny for every time Andy said “Sasha, my ex,” I’d have at least fifteen p.
“Do you?”
“Yeah,” says Andy, “I remember her talking about one guy, a rugby player, painfully shy, and she said Pilates totally changed him, made him feel good about himself. Something about making the method fit the person. I never tried it. I’m not an exercise person. Unless I’m doing it unconsciously it makes me feel like a loser. But, er, that’s just me. And I loved Sivananda. But you know, you get back to London, and all your mates laugh at you. No, sod it. Natalie, you’ve inspired me! You do your Pilates course, and I’ll enroll in an Sivananda class.”
Call me narrow-minded, but I don’t find this deal attractive. I’m just not forward thinking. I apologize.
“Okay, great!”
Andy sticks out his hand and we shake on it. “If that’s what you know you want to do, Nat, go for it. Did you get a severance package?”
His enthusiasm is a pleasure and a pressure. Usually, when someone expects something of me, I become paralyzed with fear of failing them and inevitably do. Then again, I react exactly the same way when someone expects nothing of me. Best not to think about that.
“Yes,” I mutter, gazing out of the window at London’s darkly glittering skyline. “I could use some of that. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll make some calls.”
I trust these banalities will dilute his interest and glance hopefully at his beer bottle to see if it’s empty. It isn’t.
“Do you, um, miss Sasha still?” I blurt, desperately. I wonder if this is a faux pas and if I should assume the crash position.
He seems unbothered. “Funny you should ask,” he murmurs, “I’ve been thinking about her this week.”
“Don’t you normally?” I ask. Good grief! I think about ex-boyfriends for years after a relationship’s demise—how they’re doing, how they’re doing in relation to me, wishing them well but not too well. (I’m of the opinion that it doesn’t do for exes to get above themselves.) The other day I caught myself wondering about Saul: hoping he was happy in his work but observing a respectful mourning period of celibacy. Now that I don’t have to endure the teeth-gritting irritations of his day-to-day presence and personality, I feel increasingly fond of him.
“No,” says Andy, “not normally.” He stops, then adds, “Hardly ever.”
I nod.
“I don’t see any point.” He stops again.
I say, “I’m increasing your word ration from five to ten.”
He laughs. “Dear Pot, Love Kettle.”
Your sister says that too, I think.
“When she left me,” he adds suddenly, “it was the biggest shock of my life. It was like…like…your grandparents divorcing.”
“Or your parents,” I say.
“Yeah!” cries Andy. “Inconceivable! Er—god, sorry.”
“Don’t worry,” I reply, “I know what you mean.”
“When Sasha went—she was very civil about it, very cool—that was what hit me. She was there physically, but as she talked I realized she’d emotionally left the relationship a while back. She’d met some bloke, she didn’t want to cheat on me, that would be the worst thing, she said—as if, so long as she didn’t actually screw this geezer, she wasn’t cheating on me. She wanted to end it honorably.”
He snorts.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. She left, I cut off. I didn’t want her name mentioned. I didn’t want to think about her, see her, know about her. She thought—this was the most hilarious thing—she thought that one day we could be friends! Er, why? You make a choice, you face the consequences. You kick someone in the teeth, you don’t get a hug. You can’t have it all your own way. For me, it was, you walk out that door, have a nice life. My family were supportive but I didn’t need it. I had to get away. Well, more than that. I didn’t feel like me anymore. That’s what it felt like. I didn’t feel comfortable. Or fine. Nothing felt right. My office wasn’t exactly a place where you cry about girls. So I quit the job and ran. A quit-and-run.” Andy smiles weakly.
“Bu
t how could you help thinking about her?”
Andy looks into my eyes. “It’s possible to cut out an unpleasant feeling like a cancer,” he says. “Isn’t it?”
“Y-yes,” I stammer. I add quickly, “So, why think about her now?”
Andy grimaces. “I thought about her after that row with you, actually. When I stormed off to have a go at Simon. I lost it—I went mental. I was shaking, ready to beat the shit out of him, and then I saw myself in the car mirror—it freaked me out. I just thought, This is about Sasha. I mean, Babs and I are close, closer than we used to be—it’s better now we’re older. But it hit me—the way I felt, it wasn’t all about Babs, a lot of it was about me and Sash. The thing with Simon brought it back, all this crap I thought was gone. I felt like I was being cheated on. I felt more like I was being cheated on than when I was being cheated on!” Andy shrugs.
“Siblings,” he says with a sigh—in what a sharp publicist would recognize as a “bridging technique”—“what can you do, eh? So, ah, how are you”—I knew it!—“and Tony getting on? Is he still creating reasons to be annoyed with you?”
What the hell, I think, for the second time this evening and, probably, in my life. I tell Andy about the Secret Love Child Furor.
“Oh yeah,” says Andy, as I nearly fall off my seat. “I know about that.”
“You do?” I croak. “Did…did Babs tell you?”
“No,” he replies, “Tony did. Not about you telling your mum and redecorating the walls in mash,” he adds at my incredulous face, “I didn’t know about that bit. I’m impressed. I’d like to have seen that.” He winks at me: “It’s a boy thing. But, yeah, Tony. He told me about his daughter—soon after it—she—happened.”
It takes a supreme effort to keep my jaw shut.
“To be honest,” Andy continues, “I thought it was pathetic. Trying to keep a secret like that. I didn’t think he’d manage it. He did, though, didn’t he? Only Tony. Eleven years is pretty good going. Christ, he must have been livid with you. It must have been the first time ever he hasn’t gotten his own way.”
I hear myself say—in a voice like squeezed lemons—“It wouldn’t surprise me.”
Andy smiles tightly. “I’m sure.”
I drain my peppermint tea—which is now freezing and tastes like spat-out toothpaste.
“It must be tough on your mum, the news about the kid,” declares Andy—who, I am convinced, suffers from a compulsion that a satirist once described as “speaking your brain”—“I’m sure she’s thrilled and all, but, to realize what she’s missed, and that Tony kept it from her. That’s got to smart. She worships him, doesn’t she?”
“Yes,” I say. The word slides out in a hiss. “Apart from this…lapse,” I say, to compensate, “he’s always been a good son. After Dad left.”
“After Dad left?” prompts Andy. Move over, Sally Jessy Raphael!
“She relied on him.”
“What about you?”
I feel like a cow being poked with a cattle prod.
“What about me?” I mutter. “She didn’t rely on me. Why should she?”
“Why shouldn’t she?”
“She had Tony!” I snap. “I just lurked in the background and tried not to upset her or get upset. It upsets my mother to see me unhappy.”
I look up from painstakingly dissecting a cigarette stub to see Andy looking cross.
“What’s wrong?” I blurt.
“Nothing you’ve done!” he snaps in a voice of hicksvillian indignation. “I can’t believe it! I mean, no offense, but—yes offense! Tony can relentlessly, remorselessly carve a long and distinguished career out of upsetting everyone—which he’s done for as long as I’ve known him—but you aren’t allowed to upset anyone, you have to keep smiling! I mean, how does that work? What if you were unhappy?”
I feel a squirliness in my stomach.
“Then,” I croak, “builders would shout, ‘Cheer up, love, it might never happen!’ ”
Andy makes like Queen Victoria staring down a court jester who’s just cracked a mother-in-law gag.
“Seriously.”
“Oh,” I tease, trying to keep my tone light, “you know me. I’m easygoing. If they were happy, I was happy. Mum and Tone, I mean. Not the builders.”
“Bollocks!” shouts Andy in such a loud voice that the slate-faced woman on the next table shuffles shut her copy of The Guardian Against Fun and bristles off. “I’ve seen your linen cupboard—it’s like you’re looking for army promotion—you are not easygoing, Natalie, you’re not. I know easygoing and you’re not it.”
I shrink in my chair. He touches my hand, briefly—it’s cold from the beer bottle—and says, “Nor do you strike me as madly happy.”
I feel an adrenaline surge; it’s as if I’m hanging off an electric fence. “Andy, what do you want from me? Tears? A big embarrassing girly scene?”
Andy scowls. “Yes. Yes. You should make a scene. Do what you want, stop worrying about what others think. Robbie said you were terrified to turn him down—as if it wasn’t your right to turn down a prat with one eyebrow. The way you talk it’s like being honest is a criminal offense. I’ve known you, on and off, for years, and yet I don’t think I’ve ever seen the real you. I’ve seen the facade. And that’s not what interests me.”
My eyes develop a fault and start to leak.
I swallow hard. “You wouldn’t like the real me, I assure you.”
Andy looks put out. “I’ve worked on a farm and seen less bullshit.”
I’ve dodged bullets long enough. I’m tired now. I surrender.
“Andy,” I say, sighing, “you’re right. It was miserable, it was shit, it wasn’t fucking fair, of course I was unhappy, jealous, whatever you want to call it—I’m not stupid.”
I plan to make a neat sarcastic little speech but the words gather their own momentum, until they’re gushing out almost faster than I can say them. “How would you feel, the constant implication that you were not quite what she was hoping for, like it’s all been a bit of a disaster ever since you turned seven, patiently tolerated, every time you expressed an opinion that was inappropriate, un feminine—feminine!—I hate that word, it disgusts me, it’s wielded like a baseball bat—oh no, but ‘hate’—how, how feisty of me, what a slut, because anger is not what good girls do—only bad girls have opinions, speak out of line, as far as Mother is concerned, though yes, you’re right, it was different for Tony—of course I resent Tony—he did whatever the fuck he wanted and it was all perfect, and I did nothing—nothing was expected of me—jobs, flats have to be found for me, food provided, oh yeah, lucky, privileged me, it’s like living in a platinum jail. I hate…me for…being like this, useless, failure, ugly, hate hate hate—hating Tony! I adore Tony, I can see why she adores him, he’s everything—perfectly gorgeous, clever, successful…”
I trail off.
“Well,” murmurs Andy, who hasn’t flinched. “That needed to be said.”
I clench my teeth, to make them behave.
“Mm,” I say.
For no reason at all I remember the first time—age thirteen—I wore makeup. I saw Tony on the bus home from school and he screeched, “She’s wearing lipstick!”
“He used to call me Miss Piggy,” I say—not to communicate this to Andy, but because I’ve just remembered.
Andy frowns. “But, Natalie, you can’t take every comment to heart, it’s as if you want to be a victim—you won’t survive! Just because people say it, doesn’t mean it’s right. You need”—he draws breath and I sense that a gem of Backpacker’s Tao is imminent—“to have that inner sense of self that’s unreachable. Anyway, brothers call sisters all sorts of shit. I used to call Babs ‘Alan.’ ”
“Alan!” I am intrigued despite myself. “Why Alan?”
“Because no twelve-year-old girl wants to be called Alan.”
“I think I’d prefer Alan to Miss Piggy,” I say.
“But Miss Piggy was very glamorous. For a pig.”
> “That’s not how Tony meant it,” I snap.
“You weren’t fat, were you?” says Andy.
“No! I was skinny, but I ate a lot, I was always hungry, that’s what he meant. But he did have a thing about fat people. When Dad left, Mum put on a lot of weight. I don’t know if you remember.”
Andy wrinkles his nose. “Sort of,” he says—and I think he’s being tactful until he adds—“But she’s always been roundish, hasn’t she?”
“Yeah,” I say, “but at that point she wasn’t roundish. She was round. Tony forbade her to come to his sports day. He said she embarrassed him, because all the other mothers were thin.”
“The little gobshite! Why didn’t she give him a clip round the ear!”
“It would be like the Virgin Mary attacking Christ.”
“It must hurt to feel second best with your mum,” begins Andy, and it’s like he’s gouging snake poison from my skin with a penknife. “But one thing you do have, I mean, according to Babs, that Tony doesn’t, you have a great relationship with your dad. Don’t you?” He falters at my thunderous face. (He asked for the real me—bad news, sunshine.)
“Yes,” I say, “until he fucked off to the other side of the world. I made—I make the best of it, we get on brilliantly. Now. I adore him. Obviously, more than he loves me, or he wouldn’t have buggered off the day after I turned twelve.”
Andy depresses the corners of his mouth. “Nat,” he whispers. “What a sad thing to say. Parents are just people, and the thing is, the older they get the more they act like kids—of course he loved, loves you as much as you love him. He might have stopped loving your mum, but never you. Maybe he thought it would be bad for you, for him to stay and for them to be always arguing and unhappy. He had a right to live his life.”
“They weren’t unhappy!” I snap. “They never argued! They got on fine, until he left!”
“Natalie,” says Andy. “Don’t you think, if they were happy, he would have stayed? You don’t leave a relationship for no reason. As I know. If there was this strange veto on rows and unhappiness—what a sound reason for leaving. Shit,” he blurts, “all I meant was, there had to be good reasons he left, which were separate from how he felt about you—and Tony.”