by Lisa Jewell
Chris was one of those guys who got everything right. He was a perfect judge of character and mood, and always timed everything to perfection.
Including proposing to his mum.
Chris had been seeing Kirsty for six months and, just as Vince had begun thinking how great it would be to have Chris around for the long haul, how much it would make everything right if Chris were to propose to his mother and marry her and hang out with them full-time, Kirsty came home one night wearing an engagement ring.
They’d married at Wood Green register office six months later and had a big party afterwards at a pub in Enfield. Chris had played a set with his dodgy Status Quo-style band and Vince had been best man, and when he’d given his speech and told everyone how unexpectedly pleased he was to have a new man in his life, and how happy Chris had made not only his mother but also the whole family and how proud he was to call Chris his stepfather, Chris had actually burst into tears in front of the entire wedding party.
Chris was a rock during Vince’s surgery – he’d been there during the dark moments, pureed food for him, kept him light and focused on the positive. And now, even though they were chalk and cheese in nearly every respect, even though they’d never have become close under any other circumstances, Chris had become the greatest ally he’d ever had.
‘Don’t look now,’ Chris muttered secretively into his pint, ‘but guess who’s just walked in.’ His eyes floated over Vince’s shoulders to the front door of the pub.
Vince turned discreetly to have a look. And there she was. Joy. She looked less wild and dishevelled than earlier – her hair was combed straight into a middle parting, and she was wearing a crisp white collarless man’s shirt over a pair of grey leggings with chunky DM shoes. She had very good posture, Vince couldn’t help but notice, carried herself as if she had no bone, only muscle.
Following behind her were two rather old people – a fat uncomfortable-looking woman in a too-tight denim dress and enormous sunglasses, and a svelte man with a marked tan wearing a shirt, slacks and blazer. They looked all wrong in their surroundings, as if they’d got lost on their way back from a day trip to Stratford-on-Avon. Vince felt a small swell of surprise when he noticed Joy turning to address one of them and realized that they were probably her parents.
He turned away abruptly and found Chris and his mother staring at him with half-smiles.
‘What?’
‘That’s the one,’ said Chris, tapping the side of his nose. ‘Mark my words, that girl is the One.’
‘Oh, shut up will you.’
‘No, I’m serious. Look at her. She’s got your name written all over her. Here – I’m going to invite them over for a drink,’ he rose from his chair.
‘What? No!’ said Vince, grabbing Chris’s wrist and pulling him back.
Chris gently unfurled his fingers and stood up. ‘Don’t be so soft, Vincent. It’ll be fine. Trust me.’ Then he was gone.
‘Oh, God.’ Vince clasped his hands together and prayed hard that they’d say no, but he knew they wouldn’t. That was the problem with Chris – he was impossible to resist.
Sure enough, a few seconds later he was scraping his chair around the table, making room for other chairs to be added as Joy and her parents hovered awkwardly in his peripheral vision. He turned and smiled at Joy. Joy smiled back at him, and he snapped his head back. Introductions were made, and Joy slipped her slight frame on to the chair next to him. Vince stared studiedly into his pint and tried to control his blush.
‘Well,’ said Chris, clapping his hands together, ‘what brings you to sunny Hunstanton?’
‘Ah,’ said Alan, the father, ‘just a break with routine. You know.’
‘A break from routine, eh?’ chuckled Chris. ‘Well, you came to the right place for that. Nothing routine about Hunstanton, is there?’ He turned to Kirsty and Vince, and chuckled again.
Vince looked at Joy’s parents, stiff and embarrassed on the other side of the table, Barbara clutching a warm-looking orange juice in a wine glass, Alan sipping masterfully from a pint of stout.
The mother had a strange moon-Like face, baggy eyes of an indiscriminate shade, a slightly beaky nose and an overly ruddy complexion. She smiled benignly as Alan and Chris conversed, taking the occasional controlled sip from her glass. There was a small slick of sweat on her upper lip. She didn’t look as if she’d ever been pretty in her life.
The father had the look of a man who’d persuaded himself a long time ago that he was a catch and wasn’t about to let go of this misguided notion. His features were neat and symmetrical, but were slightly too small for his head, as if someone had forced them all into the middle of his face in order to make room for something that had never materialized. There was something colonial about him, like he’d spent time living in hot climes, being attended to by natives and watching cricket under parasols. It was blatant that he felt he’d done the wretched Barbara a favour by marrying her – it oozed from his body language and his offhand manner.
The conversation rolled on, Chris doing the hard work of steering it, Mum doing her best to inject some levity into it, Alan tolerating it and Barbara, Vince and Joy maintaining an embarrassed silence.
‘So,’ said Alan, ‘you’re regular visitors to Hunstanton, then, are you?’
‘Aye,’ said Chris, ‘this is our fourth summer up here.’
‘And you like it, do you?’
‘Love it. It’s not grand or anything, but there’s just something about it. And there are some fantastic beaches.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard about the beaches. That was one of the main attractions, to be frank. The rolling sand dunes, the bracing, briny sea air, the pine forests.’
‘Aye, that’s right, Alan. I’ve seen a lot of beaches in my time, but the beaches here – well, you can hardly see the horizon, it’s that far away. Not often in life you can get that much clear space between yourself and the edge of the world. Humbling…’
‘Yeees,’ murmured Alan, dreamily.
‘Sounds lovely,’ said Barbara, as the conversation began to trickle away.
‘Mmmmm,’ said Kirsty, smiling stiffly.
‘So!’ said Chris, breaking through the rapidly descending silence like a brick through a window, ‘Joy. What kind of a girl are you, then?’
‘Sorry?’ She looked at him in bemusement.
‘Tell us about yourself. What do you do? What do you like?’
Joy laughed. ‘Erm, well, I’ve just finished my A levels.’
‘In what?’
‘Art, Drama and English.’
‘Oh, right, you’re the creative type, then?’
‘Yeah, sort of
‘So’s our Vincent. He’s the creative type, too. Aren’t you, Vince?’
Vince shrugged and made a strange gurgling noise that he’d never made before in his life.
‘Yeah – he paints, draws, makes things. And you should have seen the creative things he used to do with his hair and a can of his mum’s hairspray when he was a kid.’ Chris laughed out loud and Alan looked at Vince as if he’d only just noticed he was there.
‘Are you off to university, then?’ Kirsty asked Joy, galloping to the rescue.
Joy squirmed a little in her seat. ‘Well, I was supposed to be. I had a place at Bristol. But I, er… had to defer. Hopefully I can take up my place next year.’
‘Oh,’ said Kirsty, nodding encouragingly, ‘right.’
‘Yes,’ said Joy
‘Mmm,’ murmured Barbara, apparently apropos of nothing.
Vince took a deep breath and tried to control his growing sense of anxiety. This was a fucking nightmare. Never in the whole history of the universe had six people had less in common with each other. Even Chris with all his puppyish gregariousness could do nothing to salvage a decent conversation from this motley mix of people.
‘So, you two poor buggers, stuck here with your parents at your age.’ Chris looked from Joy to Vince and back again. ‘Not exactly two weeks in Tenerife wit
h your mates, is it? I reckon you might have more fun if you made a break for it.’
‘Eh?’ said Vince.
‘Yeah – do a runner. Scarper. Get lost. Go and have some fun doing… doing… well, whatever it is that overgrown teenagers do when they’ve managed to escape from their bloody parents.’
Vince felt a surge of excitement rising in his chest. As heavy-handed as Chris’s proposal might have been, the idea of getting away from this hideous situation, walking out of the door, getting some fresh air and feeling the evening sun on his skin was too good to resist. But Alan had other ideas.
‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘that’s a very nice idea, er, Chris, but actually Barbara, Joy and I have dinner plans for tonight.’ He smiled tightly and folded his arms across his chest, obviously a man who was used to his word being final, obviously a man who’d never before encountered anyone as persistent as Chris.
‘Oh, come on now, Alan. Would you have wanted to go out for dinner with your parents when you were a young whippersnapper of a lad? You and Barbara go and have a nice romantic dinner, just the two of you. Or, better still, why don’t you join my wife and me? There’s some smashing fast-food places up on the seafront. Do you like burgers, Alan?’ He eyed Alan with a determined twinkle.
‘We’re not really fast-food people, Chris, to be frank. Greasy food doesn’t really agree with my constitution.’
‘Well, then – how about a nice curry?’
‘Oh, well. I like a curry, yes I do. But Barbara can’t really eat spicy food. It bloats her. And to be frank, I rather think we were hoping for a quiet night this evening. You know – a family night. No offence.’
‘None taken, Alan. None taken. But, tell you what, how about the young ‘uns head off for the evening, you and Barbara go and have your quiet evening somewhere and me and the wife grab a curry, and we can try to get together later this week for a big night out. When you’re feeling less… quiet? Eh? How about that, then?’
‘Well. I don’t know’ Alan looked across at his daughter in desperation, ‘Joy, er… what do you think?’
‘I think that’s a really good idea. I wasn’t hungry anyway. What do you think, Vince?’ She turned and glanced at Vince.
‘God – well, yeah. Why not? It’s nice out. We could go down to the seafront.’
‘Cool. Right. Let’s go, then.’ She stood up and picked up her bag.
‘What – now?’
‘Yeah. Come on.’
‘Cool. OK. Right.’
Two minutes later Vince was leaving the Nelson’s Arms and walking into a warm and balmy evening of complete and utter mystery with the most beautiful woman he’d ever been alone with in his life.
They stood on the pavement outside the pub, next to a large weather-beaten sign that said, ‘Welcome to Seavue Holiday Home Park.’ It creaked a little as a gentle, salty breeze passed over them.
‘Christ. What a nightmare!’ said Joy
Vince laughed. ‘I’m really sorry about that, in there. Chris can be a bit… overwhelming sometimes.’
‘God, don’t be sorry! It’s him I feel sorry for. Him and your mum. They’re stuck with them now’
‘Oh, don’t worry about Chris. He’ll find a way of getting rid of them when he gets fed up. He’s clever like that.’
There was a small dog tied up outside the pub, white with brown patches and disproportionately short legs. Its owner had left it with some water in a Tupperware box. The dog looked up at them appealingly, and they both crouched down in unison to say hello. He strained enthusiastically at his lead to greet them.
‘Hello,’ said Joy, scratching his neck.
‘You’re a friendly little bugger, aren’t you?’ said Vince, rubbing the dog’s haunches.
The little dog contorted itself in raptures, and Vince looked up to see Joy smiling at him.
‘I like people who like dogs,’ she said.
‘Do you?’
‘Uh-huh. Never trust a man who doesn’t like dogs, that’s my motto.’
‘Right,’ said Vince, dropping his gaze. He stared at Joy’s hand where it rested on the dog’s ruff. It was long and thin with raised blue veins that flowed from her wrist to her knuckles like icy tributaries. She wore a silver ring on her index finger, in the shape of a furled dragon. A thought landed in his head as he stared at the ring, one so overwhelming that he had to clench his jaw tightly to stop him speaking it out loud.
Do you believe in love at first sight?
‘So,’ he said, getting to his feet, blood rushing to his head, ‘we’ve been granted our freedom. What shall we do with it?’
Joy gave the little dog one last pat and stood up. Her knees clicked audibly as she straightened her legs. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’re Mr Hunstanton – you decide.’
‘Right.’ Vince surveyed the road from left to right. He had no idea what to suggest. He’d never had to decide what to do in Hunstanton before. He always just did what his mum and Chris were doing. What would a girl like Joy want to do, anyway? he wondered. She looked like she read Russian novels and listened to difficult music. She probably spoke fluent French and knew how to eat oysters. He mentally scrabbled through all the possible options, trying to find something, anything, with even the slightest whiff of culture or class about it.
‘There’s a cinema down at the seafront,’ he said eventually. We could see what’s showing?’
‘Tell you what,’ said Joy, ‘let’s just go and find a nice pub and get pissed, shall we?’
Vince turned and smiled at her with relief. And then they started walking.
Four
Joy hadn’t had a boyfriend for almost two years. She hadn’t felt a hand in her hand, lips against her skin, hair against her cheek. The only men she’d had any contact with since she was sixteen years old were teachers, doctors and counsellors. She couldn’t remember what men smelled like. She was sure the professionals she’d dealt with these past months had wives who thought they smelled delicious, who loved nothing more than to breathe in their heady, unique scent, but all she remembered of the whole experience was words – no smells, no noises, no feelings – just endless words.
Her last contact with a real man hadn’t even been with a real man. It had been with Kieran Saunders, an acne-stricken seventeen-year-old from Dagenham she’d met at a bus stop when she was fourteen. He’d strolled past, in a fringed leather jacket, stringy legs in black denim and oversized feet in enormous DMs. He’d done a double take when he saw Joy sitting there in her school uniform. She’d watched him wander up the road away from her, turning back every now and then to glance at her, before suddenly doubling back, plonking himself down and offering her a cigarette.
Joy’s first impression of Kieran was that he smelled – of cigarette smoke and clothes that had dried forgotten in the washing machine. And she’d been mesmerized by one pimple in particular, a red one on the underside of his jaw with the ripest-looking yellow head she’d ever seen. She had agreed to give him her phone number mainly because she was too polite to say no and too slow off the mark to give him a false one.
He’d arrived at her house to pick her up for their first date the following week. He stood on her doorstep in leather and denim, fuchsia Crazy-Color combed through the peroxide of his cockatiel hair and a large bunch of matching chrysanthemums in his scuffed hands.
He told her he loved her after their third date and bought her an engagement ring from Elizabeth Duke six months later. It was gold with three small sapphires and two tiny rubies embedded in the band. She’d worn it because she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
‘How come you never tell me that you love me?’ he’d asked one evening. ‘You do love me, don’t you?’
She’d looked into his big, tender eyes, felt every shred of his nervous and unadulterated love for her and realized that there was only one thing she could possibly say to him.
‘Yes,’ she’d said, smiling and taking his hand. ‘Yes, of course I do.’
It hadn’t even oc
curred to her that she could say no.
They had spent hours on his single bed kissing and caressing. Joy didn’t enjoy the feeling of his slick tongue inside her mouth or his bitten-down fingernails on her flesh. As their fumblings progressed from over clothes to under clothes and from under clothes to inside clothes, Joy enjoyed it less and less. But she never denied him anything. She even let him guide her hand into his trousers one wet afternoon, and on to his clammy testicles. Once there she had no idea what to do next, and Kieran was too shell-shocked to find himself with Joy’s hand on his balls to push things any further, so she’d cupped them with as much enthusiasm as she could muster until she’d felt it was polite to remove her hand and place it somewhere less personal.
Joy didn’t permit Kieran’s fumblings because she felt sorry for him. It wasn’t an act of charity. Nor did she permit them because she was intimidated in any way. And she didn’t permit it because she felt she should be grateful, either. She permitted it, purely and simply, because she didn’t believe she had the right not to. If she’d said no to Kieran at any point, she would in effect have been suggesting that she was better than him. And although anyone looking at Joy and Kieran objectively would have seen in a flash that she was way out of his league, although her parents were openly nauseated by the well-intentioned but unsavoury Kieran and the thought of him laying a finger on their beautiful, delicate girl, Joy just didn’t see it that way. She wasn’t anything special, so she had no right to deny other people the things they really wanted.