My Legendary Girlfriend

by Mike Gayle

  I picked the phone up. ‘You’re late?’

  She didn’t know what to say after the way we’d been going round in circles. ‘Er . . .’ she began tentatively, ‘yes, I’m late.’

  ‘How late is late?’ I barked. ‘Later than I was to pick you up on Saturday? Later than the average British Rail train?’ I started getting hysterical. ‘I mean, should I start looking for a good secondary school for our child?’

  ‘My period . . .’ she began. I shuddered – an involuntary reaction cultivated in my youth intrinsically linked to the mere utterance of that word ‘. . . was due on Monday. I’ve never been more than a day late in my life.’

  I crossed my fingers and hoped that this was the kind of biological freak of nature that would’ve gained her an entry in the Guinness Book of Records rather than the mundane result of a fertilised ovum.

  ‘It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair . . .’ I repeated, beginning what would’ve become a five minute mantra had Martina not intervened.

  ‘Are you okay, Will?’ she said kindly. ‘Look, I don’t want you to worry. Everything’s going to be okay. I just don’t want you to worry.’

  I tried to think of something sensible to say, but, inside, my brain had turned to pure wibble. For all her faults Martina was being spectacularly calm, dignified, almost regal about the whole thing. I was entering my second childhood just as she was turning into the Queen Mother. She was unshakeable. This, I decided, was one of those moments that separated men from boys. And without a doubt I was standing on the prepubescent side.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said again. ‘Will, don’t worry.’

  I cast my mind back to The Event, but this time not through the eyes of the greatest fan of the most spectacular sexual athlete the world has ever seen. No, this time I went back as one of those disaster experts who sift through plane wreckage trying to piece together evidence of what went wrong.

  While we had used a condom, I had to admit that I may have been just a teensy weensy bit careless. I kind of got carried away with the excitement of it all – after all, the one-night stand was uncharted territory for me. And for some reason the thought of doing it on her sofa while her parents slept in the room above us turned me on so much that I thought I’d pass out with the excitement. So, there might have been the slightest possibility that I might have torn the foil packet rather carelessly, but it had seemed okay to me when I’d wrapped it in its Kleenex coffin and flushed it away after The Event. I mean, I didn’t put it through the sort of rigorous testing that had got it its kite-mark but it hadn’t leaked. At least I hadn’t thought so . . .

  Part of me (that which would sooner hack off its own head than take responsibility for the fact that it may have screwed up) wondered if she was lying. After all Martina’s favourite book was Hardy’s Jude The Obscure. And while she probably fancied herself as the ethereal Sue Brideshead, she could well have been Arabella Donn trapping the unsuspecting hero with a false pregnancy. It was a nice theory but for the huge gaping holes in it. It just wasn’t Martina’s style to lie. She wasn’t the kind to make waves even when trying to save herself from drowning. This was real. She was with child. I was the father. And it was highly likely that it was all my fault.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘I mean, do you know for sure?’

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know for sure.’

  ‘Then there’s still hope.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘So you haven’t had a pregnancy test yet?’

  ‘No.’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘Why not? What’s wrong with you, Martina? Are you insane, woman? You are, aren’t you?’

  She fought back her tears but I could hear them in her voice. ‘I . . . I don’t know, Will. I’m scared. I’m scared what the test will say. I’ll never get a job if I’m pregnant. I’ll be stuck here with Mum and Dad, surrounded by nappies, watching gardening programmes for the rest of my life. I’ve been trying to phone you all week to tell you,’ her voice faltered. ‘I can’t go through this on my own.’

  I lay down on the bed, phone in hand, and stared at the ceiling. My earlier reincarnation as James Bond had all but disappeared by now. I’d had my licence to kill revoked. It felt good to be back in the familiar territory of the Realm of Regret, positioned on top of my favourite pile of ashes and sporting the latest designs in sackcloth. Martina had been worrying about this all week and I’d been too wrapped up in my own worries to notice. Lower than a snake’s arse? Really, it just wasn’t possible to feel more despicable.

  I tried my best to comfort her, but at the back of my mind I knew something was up. I was carefully choosing every word I said, refusing to admit liability, in case one day soon it would be thrown back in my face. So I didn’t say anything rash like ‘I’ll be there for you’ or ‘Let’s see how our relationship goes’ or ‘I’ll support you in whatever decision you make’. I made no mention of the future and instead opened my bumper book of meaningless platitudes and showered her with them from a great height. She seemed comforted. This, after all, was the nicest I’d been to her since promising to call as I’d warmly kissed her good-bye on her doorstep late on that fateful Saturday night.

  We talked some more about things totally unrelated to the situation at hand: what was on telly right now; what she was doing in the morning; why teaching attracts such manic personalities; and then made ready to say our good-byes. She said that she was going to buy a test kit first thing in the morning and I told her to phone me as soon as she knew more. Before the call ended, reverting to her old self she said: ‘Whatever happens, this doesn’t change the way I feel about you.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, me too,’ and put the phone down.

  2.19 A.M.

  In a way I was both disappointed and elated at my sperm’s performance. While in denial (which I surely was), it was quite possible to enjoy that exhilarating flush of pride in knowing that one of the little fellas had fulfilled its destiny. I’d kind of imagined them to be miniature versions of myself – slightly overweight, lazy, dysfunctional. It was hard not to laugh out loud at the mental picture I had: a group of them entering into a discussion halfway up Martina’s cervix about whether it was time for a fag break. All, bar one diligent little fella, vote yes. ‘I gave ’em up last week,’ he says. ‘No fags. No booze. I’m feeling so healthy that I think I’ll carry on.’

  It was funny. But not that funny. That one conscientious tadpole of love, so eager to live out its potential, was about to cause my downfall and there was nothing I could do about it. It was one of those classic moments when you wish that you really could turn back the clock. Even so, had I managed to go back in time, to that moment just as I was unzipping Martina’s dress, not even the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future could’ve stopped me. Passion is depressing. A man in a French film once said, ‘I resist my temptations in order to feel that I am free.’ Though it was said by a character in a French film – which by definition means you can’t take it entirely seriously – the truth of the words resonated clearly. Sometimes the effort to resist can be as passionate as the compulsion to succumb.

  The opening and closing of one of my close neighbour’s front doors broke my concentration. I stood up and looked out of the window. Next door’s dog – a black Labrador – barked at my window. Turning back into the room I scratched my stomach and tried to work out how I felt. I wasn’t entirely sure. I looked at the alarm clock. It was late. Rather than being exhausted I had the munchies in a big way. Though not hungry enough to eat the proverbial horse, given two slices of bread, a bottle of ketchup and an hour or two longer without sustenance, even Champion The Wonder Horse would have looked snackworthy. My stomach specifically desired ice-cream. Then it occurred to me that perhaps I was having sympathetic cravings, just as some men have sympathetic pregnancy pains. Whatever the reason, I wanted ice-cream and I wanted it now.

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nbsp; This was one of the few instances I found living in the capital to have its advantages. Nottingham had nothing at all resembling the all night shop, which was a shame, because the 7-Eleven (so called because it’s open 24-hours a day, seven days a week. Well done, Misnomer Man!) was a pretty good idea, probably in the top ten most brilliant ideas humanity has ever had – not as good as the Walkman or the answering machine, mind – but for that matter not that far behind either.

  Fumbling through the clothes that constituted my pillow I located my trousers and proceeded to look for a jumper. The only one I found that would protect me from a bout of hypothermia was a cable-knit sweater Gran had made me a long time ago. It was during her frantic phase of making things out of wool: dolls for her next-door neighbour’s kids, a bobble hat for my dad and a pair of trousers for Tom who, even at the age of ten, had the good sense to realise that woollen trousers were the kind of fashion mistake that followed you about for the rest of your life. Despite the cold I didn’t bother with socks as I couldn’t find any of the little sods. Instead, I pushed my bare feet into my laced-up burgundy brogues, ignored the sound of my mother tutting as she said, ‘No wonder all your shoes fall apart if that’s how you treat them,’ and went out of the door.

  The silence of early hours Archway was beguiling. Take away the sound of far-off traffic and the odd taxi or bus and this was the quietest North London ever got. The coldness of the night air heightened my sense of isolation – no one would be out in weather like this unless they were mad or in search of ice-cream. My ankles were so cold that they felt like they had ice cubes rubbing against them. Standing on the door-step, I watched the vapour from my first outside breath disappear heavenwards before launching myself into the night.

  The streets were empty. Most of the revellers from the Irish club up the road would have been asleep for at least an hour or two. The chip shop on my side of Holloway Road was closed but the one farther down, past the dry cleaners, was still open, although technically speaking, it wasn’t a chip shop – the name on the front of the shop being Mr Bill’s Fast Food. The nearest they had to chips were French fries which, five minutes prior to ordering, lay in a bag with thousands of other grim-looking bits of frozen potato.

  Walking briskly I reached the top of the road in a new personal best of eight minutes and thirteen seconds! A couple were huddled together in the doorway of the snooker hall near the intersection of Holloway Road and Junction Road. The man was in his mid-thirties, but it has to be said that I’m notorious for not being able to tell the age of most people over the age of eight. I once thought one of Simon’s ex-girlfriends was fifteen, when she was actually twenty-five. I spent weeks congratulating myself on how liberal I was being, not asking her how she was getting on with her GCSEs or being less subtle and referring to her as jail-bait.

  It began to rain as I walked along Junction Road and passed the Athena Kebab and chip shop opposite the tube station. There were no customers inside, but one of the men behind the counter stared at me menacingly as he diced cabbage. For some reason this scene seemed so ridiculous that I burst out laughing like some care-in-the-community patient.

  Mr 7-Eleven didn’t look up from his magazine as I entered, but I got the feeling that he saw me anyway. Simon once had a job working behind the till of an all-night garage off Jarvis Road. He insisted that while working night-shifts he discovered an uncanny ability to predict the make and colour of the next car to pull onto the petrol station forecourt. It was pure rubbish, of course – the sort of thing he’d write a song about one day – but, I supposed, it was possible to find out all manner of strange things about yourself if you spent all that time on your own while the rest of the world was sleeping.

  Walking past the magazine rack and the early Saturday editions of the Sun and the Mirror, I made my way straight to the freezer chest, opened it up and sucked in the pseudo-Arctic air. The smells and tastes of all the produce that had ever been there lingered like spectres: I could taste the ghosts of frozen peas; I could smell the ectoplasm of spilt Alabama Fudge cake. It was spooky.

  The choice was limited: Raspberry Ripple, Chocolate, Vanilla or Tutti Frutti. Tutti Frutti caught my eye but I suspected – correctly as it happened – that it contained melon. I felt the same way about melons as I did about girls who said they’d love me forever and then dumped me. A box of no-name choc ices in the corner of the freezer cried out for attention but try as I might, they failed to seduce me, forcing me to opt for a tub of Wall’s Soft Scoop vanilla. You know where you are with vanilla. Its reputation, like that of Mother Teresa and Alan Titchmarsh, was spot free, which was highly useful, because at this particular moment, this close to the Edge, more than anything in the world, I couldn’t afford to be disappointed.

  The man in the kebab shop – keeping his steely glares to himself this time – had ceased cabbage shredding and was locked in conversation with his kebab-slicing comrade. The kissing couple had gone only to be replaced by an old man with matted – possibly brown – hair protruding from underneath a lime-green woollen hat. His overcoat pocket was ripped and, even in this light, I could see it was heavily stained. The closer I came to walking past him, the more I began to think I could smell him.

  He’s going to ask me for money.

  At the height of my political awareness – five minutes into my first week at university – I’d made a pledge always to give to the homeless, even if it was only a penny. These days – since Aggi had left me, to be precise – in spite of my promise and acute sense of guilt, I no longer felt obliged to be nice to the needy. This wasn’t so much a change in my personal politics as a sudden realisation that I didn’t give a cack.

  I set my eyes to a steely glare similar to that of the kebab chap, but the old man didn’t say a word to me. I spent the rest of the journey wondering why he hadn’t asked me for any money when he was so obviously in need of it. That thought carried me through the front door, into my flat and right into bed – leaving the object of my quest untouched and slowly melting on top of the TV.

  Saturday

  11.06 A.M.

  I woke up with a start. I deliberately didn’t move for what felt like a long time, trying to fake that just-woken-up feeling. I closed my eyes tightly, then relaxed them, repeating the action, squeezing out all traces of daylight from my irises, but there was no getting back to sleep. Instead, I pretended to be unable to move my limbs, and, after some moments of great concentration, even the slightest movement became an act of considerable determination.

  Freshly squeezed thoughts dripped down from my brain, pleading for an audience. I put any questions re impending fatherhood to the very back of my mind. Maybe I’ll wrap them up, I thought, while slowing down my breathing. Wrap them up and put a note on them saying, do not open – ever. Some things are, after all, better left unthought. None of the topics for debate that remained – familiar faces all – stood out from the crowd, which was pleasing because mornings, especially Saturday mornings, shouldn’t be overwhelmed with stuff to think about.

  Waking up the morning after the day Aggi dumped me – a Saturday morning no less – had been a terrible ordeal, not least due to the horrible taste in my mouth and the smell of sick on my pillow. I’d dreamt that Aggi and I had swum across a tropical ocean to lie on a Bounty chocolate bar type island. I clearly remembered feeling the sun on my back and neck, the sand clinging to my feet and the cooling sensation of the wind against the droplets of water on my skin. It seemed so real. Then suddenly I was awake. The essence of the dream only lingered for the duration of the journey from deep sleep to total consciousness, but for that short time I experienced the sensation I imagined others felt when they said they were on top of the world. Then WHAM! The nail-bomb exploded. Aggi was gone. She didn’t want me. It was finished. Over the following weeks, my first waking moments followed the same pattern – an overwhelming feeling of ecstasy followed closely by the distressing hollowness of reality. Gradually, the length of time it took for me to realise Aggi w
as gone grew shorter and shorter, until one day I woke up crying. By then, I think, the Message had finally made its way through to my heart.

  I turned over, squashing my face into my makeshift pillow. It was too late. My brain was in gear. Saturday had begun.

  I’ll have to tidy the flat.

  I’ll have to phone people.

  I’ll have to mark 8B’s books.

  I’ll have to sort out my life.

  I rolled over onto my back. Staring out of my left eye I checked the time on the alarm clock. I’d set it for 1.00 p.m. hoping to sleep most of the weekend away. The digital display, however, confirmed with its authoritative blinking eye that I’d been way too optimistic.

  A huge, unnatural, pulsating pain throbbed its way across the front of my skull as if the rear wheels of a Shogun were running backwards and forwards over it. The severity and suddenness of this migraine attack had me worried. As I rarely got so much as a headache, within half an hour I’d selected a brain tumour from a list of maladies that included: beriberi, encephalitis and Lhasa fever, as the chosen explanation for my throbbing temples. Death by brain tumour was, after all, an unfulfilling way to die. While the most popular characters in soap operas got to die in car crashes or at the hands of mad gunmen, those at the other end of the scale were always written out after coming down with a mystery illness that, surprise, surprise, turned out to be a brain tumour. One bald haircut and a chemotherapy storyline later, and they were gone forever. This was exactly why I was going to die this terrible death. I was being written out of existence by a medical condition that was the disease equivalent of a pair of flares.

  Attempting to endure the pain by diverting my attention to the state of the room, the thought entered my head that, possibly, a little bit of suffering would make me a better person. This wouldn’t have been particularly hard as, thanks to Martina, I was more overloaded with self-loathing than usual. Sometimes, I thought, I’m born to suffer. This, I noted, was the second time I’d contemplated Catholicism in the last twenty-four hours. I’d always thought I’d make a great Catholic. I quite liked Italy and found the smell of incense reasonably relaxing. If I had converted – from what I didn’t know – I could’ve been up there with the greats: Joan of Arc, St Francis of Assisi, William of Archway – patron saint of crap housing.