by Sarah Rayne
In bed one day, Matilda claimed that during their fifteen-year period of platonic friendship, nothing had made her want to tear Chris’s clothes off more than – she couldn’t find better words – his sheer helpfulness.
‘What, you’re turned on by me being nice to other people?’
‘By you being a nice man in general. Is that so strange?’
‘So I could have skipped all the other stuff I did to impress you, all the clothes I bought, and trying to enjoy Pretty Woman? I could have just helped old ladies across the street till you slept with me?’
She laughed. ‘Please don’t spoil the illusion.’
Xavier looks out of the window at the cheerless early evening. The cars, still caked in snow, look like animals mooching in a frozen field. A middle-aged couple, in matching red raincoats which look too thin for the weather, cling onto one another for support, inching along the slippery pavement. Xavier wonders whether any of the women at the speed dating will notice this supposedly attractive kindness of his, and indeed, whether he still has it. He wishes that he hadn’t agreed to accompany Murray tonight, and wonders if there is still a chance it might be cancelled after all.
But the event is, as he guessed all along, unaffected by the adverse weather. Six or seven people haven’t made it, but a handful more have turned up to take their places, thanks to the paucity of other attractions in Central London on this snowbound night: cinemas and restaurants are closed because of staff shortages. The venue is a nightclub with plush velvet sofas and low lighting. A square of tables is laid out on what would normally be the dance floor.
Murray has attacked his dense loops of curly hair with an inexpertly applied payload of gel. He wears a bright red shirt: dark patches are already collecting around the armpits. He looks relieved to see Xavier. The socializers throng awkwardly around the bar until the MC, a good-looking black man in a suit, begins to speak into a cordless microphone.
‘OK, guys. You’ve each been given a number.’ Murray is 3; Xavier 8, not 11 as he would have liked. ‘In a minute I’m going to ask you to find the table with your number on. You’ll be joined by your first date. Each time the siren sounds’ – he gives a blast on what sounds like a car horn ripped from its vehicle – ‘the guys move on to the next table. At the end of the night you write down the number of anyone you want to see again, and we’ll hook you up with them. Who’s up for it?’
If the MC is expecting a roar of approval in exchange for this hurried spiel, he’s disappointed: the participants shuffle and mutter amongst themselves.
‘Good luck,’ says Xavier to Murray, patting him on his meaty back.
Over the next hour and a half they make their rounds of the room at the command of the klaxon, which sometimes comes as an interruption to the three-minute date, but more often as a welcome release. Each time it sounds, there is a collective scraping of chairs and a self-conscious mass movement and resettling at the tables. The whole thing feels like a series of pre-written transactions, like a scripted exercise rather than an exchange of emotion: which is probably, when Xavier comes to think about it, precisely what attracts people.
4: So what are your . . . hobbies and interests and things?
Xavier: I play Scrabble.
4: Scrabble?
Xavier: Yes, in tournaments. Competitive Scrabble.
4: There are competitions for Scrabble?
Xavier: Yes, it’s—
4: Isn’t it just about who knows the longest words?
Xavier: Not necessarily. There’s quite a lot of tactics. Like, for example—
4: I’m not that interested.
Xavier: Oh.
9: What job do you do?
Xavier: I’m, er, a film reviewer.
9: Cool. What films do you like?
Xavier: Er . . .
9: Have you seen the Harry Potter films?
Xavier: No.
9: You should see them. So, anyway, you sound Australian, like me?
Xavier: Yes, I’m from Melbourne. But I live here now.
9: Why did you decide to leave? Prefer it here?
Xavier: It’s a bit of a long story. Something happened and I couldn’t really live there any more.
9: Wow. So, anyway, do you find people here are really hard to talk to?
12: I’m a professional cleaner. I work two days a week for a hotel chain. I take on one-off jobs for all sorts of corporate clients. And then I also do weekly visits on a private basis. I charge twelve pounds an hour. Which is a lot for a cleaner. But I’m an excellent cleaner. Sorry, I’m talking away here. I’m terrible for talking. Especially with someone new.
Xavier: I need a cleaner. My flat’s a mess.
12: I could come on Saturday.
Xavier: All right. I’ll text you my address.
12: Terrific.
Xavier: Well, we should get on with the, er . . .
12: I think the horn’s about to go.
22: Your voice sounds familiar. Why would I recognize your voice?
Xavier: I don’t think you would.
22: Are you on the TV or something?
Xavier: No.
22: Oh. To be honest, I actually have a boyfriend. I’m just here to support a mate.
Xavier: So am I.
22: Really? Which one?
Xavier: Over there. In the red shirt. Curly hair.
22: Oh right. I had quite a nice chat with him. That stammer, though . . .
Xavier: I know.
There’s a palpable relief in the air when the final ‘dates’ are over and the event lapses into a conventional singles night, the area around the bar playing host to less constrained versions of the conversations held over the tables. A DJ starts playing club remixes of sixties classics, occasionally interrupted by the compère encouraging everyone to ‘get on the floor’. Xavier finds Murray, whose shirt is now unbuttoned at the top. His hair has separated into two broad camps, some of it still held in formation by the gel, other areas springing up in sprigs of resistance.
‘And now the joys of the expensive bar,’ says Murray.
‘How did you go?’ Xavier asks him.
‘Ner, ner, not bad. Couple of people der . . . definitely interested. So we shall see. We shall see. You?’
‘Well, I booked a cleaner. So the evening wasn’t entirely wasted.’
It’s ten o’clock already and they’ll be on air at midnight. Xavier goes outside to arrange a taxi while Murray queues at the teeming bar for drinks. It won’t be the first time they have done their show under the moderate influence of alcohol. Outside on the pavement, Xavier can still hear the bassy thud of the music inside. He thinks of the four hours in the studio that lie ahead and then perfunctorily reviews the events of the day. The argument with the boys in the snow still bothers him, but he tells himself to toughen up and stop thinking about it. He can’t look after everyone in London. Besides, it’s already in the past.
II
Sometimes, Xavier doesn’t feel like going to sleep when Murray drops him off at half past four in the morning. He sits in the lounge in front of the obscure war films shown in the early hours, or tunes into twenty-four-hour news stations and stares at the headline strip running endlessly along the bottom of the screen, with its telegrammatic dispatches: ECONOMY ‘TO GET EVEN WORSE’, PRESIDENT’S SURPRISE IRAQ VISIT, TRIBUTES TO FORMER NOBEL WINNER. He watches the bright-eyed Americans chew voraciously over every morsel of news and hook up with on-the-spot reporters nestling in every war zone in the world. When Xavier tries to picture the Gaza Strip or Afghanistan it’s as a hive of reporters and camera crews, jostling for a sight of conflict.
Sometimes he puts on the computer and works in his study. The radio show pays enough to cover the meagre rent of his flat, which has never gone up in the years he’s been here: the landlady is married to a millionaire and can barely be bothered to collect the money at all. But as much to keep himself busy as anything, Xavier takes on film reviews for various London publications, and writes regular
magazine columns for a nationwide network of worriers.
The habit of staying up at peculiar hours began as a ruse to sidestep the queasiness of being so far from home. He’d taken the job as a runner because it was somehow comforting to know that Bec and Russell and Matilda were awake, back in Melbourne, at the same time as he was; it made the separation less jarring. This was on his mind when he made the remarks which were to seal his place as a regular on the show.
A caller was bemoaning his failure to settle in London, the feeling that everyone else was going relentlessly about their business. Xavier, who was meant to sit there and say as little as possible, couldn’t resist chipping in.
‘I’ve had that experience myself. I only moved here recently, and it’s been quite lonely. But, you know, nobody in London really feels they fit in.’
He added, ‘My dad used to say: remember, mate, nobody in this world knows what they’re doing. Everyone is just getting away with it.’
‘Wer, wer, wise words!’ said Murray joshingly, but the incoming emails showed that listeners did consider them wise words, and before long, people were calling in and specifically asking to speak to Xavier. Without ever acknowledging it, the two of them gradually traded places, until it was Xavier who sat in the right-hand chair with the big green microphone, and Murray who flicked the switches.
Xavier has got used to the particular sounds of the night: the gurgling outbursts of Jamie downstairs and Mel’s almost instant shushing and placating; the creaks of Tamara or her boyfriend walking to the bathroom and back. Now and again there are more suggestive sounds from upstairs, sobs or short angry cries or thuds and thumps, which he assumes are the couple making love. Then there are the sounds made by the building itself: its creaks, sighs and rattles as the central heating shuts down and comes to life again, as its fibres contract and expand minutely in the cooling and warming air, as if it were an old, mentally absent individual muttering to itself as the night went by.
And then there are the noises from outside, from all London’s late-night-and-early-morning people: the odd drunk hollering as he lurches down the street, the purring of the first vehicles – taxis taking businessmen to Heathrow, perhaps, or delivery lorries stocking the area’s many grocery shops with faddish vegetables. At half-past seven Tamara’s chirruping alarm heckles her out of bed, the shower gushes, her heels clop across the floor. Downstairs Jamie’s demands acquire a steely ring with the confidence-boost of the light outside: there are crashes as he hurls things to the floor and Mel pads about limiting the damage. The streets outside fill with tight-faced commuters, buses rumble up the main road packed with people avoiding each other’s eyes, and the hyperactive chatter and cackle of breakfast DJs – who arrived at work shortly after Xavier left – pours out of radios citywide. Once his building has emptied and the streets ease into the beginning of their mid-morning rhythm, Xavier, like the other night-people, the heartsick, those with digestive problems or disturbed consciences, finally goes to sleep.
Calling in to their show that night, to contribute to a new feature called ‘For the Very First Time’, is an old lady from Walthamstow.
That’s how she introduces herself: ‘I’m Iris, and I’m an old lady from Walthamstow.’
Xavier and Murray exchange grins.
‘May I say first of all how much I’m enjoying your show. I found it quite by accident.’
‘Thank you, Iris,’ says Xavier, ‘and what are you up to at this late hour?’
It’s something of a running joke on Late Lines that Xavier always acts surprised that his callers are awake, expressing a sort of avuncular concern at their lack of sleep.
‘Well, now,’ says Iris, ten miles away on the phone, ‘I’ve been reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.’
‘And how far have you got?’
‘I’m on page 300,’ says Iris, ‘and so far—’
‘Don’t spoil the plot!’ Xavier cuts her off. ‘I don’t want to know how it ends!’
Iris giggles – this is exactly the sort of joke his audience likes – and Murray honks his amusement.
‘And now, what “first time” are you going to tell us about?’
‘Well, now. I was going to talk about the first time I saw the love of my life.’
‘Perfect. When was this, Iris?’
‘It was in 1950. I served him in a shop, a grocer’s, just down the road from here, I mean, it’s long gone, it’s a pizza place now. I was . . . well, fifty-eight years ago, so I would have been nineteen. His name was Tony. I plucked up the courage to ask him his name the third time I saw him, when he came in for sprouts. But this first time, I didn’t even speak to him. He just watched me put his vegetables in a brown-paper bag. And then, as he was handing over the money, he dropped it on the counter – I remember I couldn’t help wondering whether he was nervous, you know, whether he liked me. And we both bent down to get the coins at the same time and our heads banged together! Whack!’
‘Ouch!’ says Murray.
‘And so did you ask Tony on a date in the end,’ asks Xavier, ‘or did he ask you?’
‘Ah, no, bless you, no, we never went on a date.’ Iris laughs. ‘I saw him several more times and chatted to him, and he was wonderfully funny, and a real gentleman. He came in wearing a trilby once, just to make me laugh. And once, he asked how I was and I mentioned I was gasping for a cup of tea. Half an hour later he comes back with a mug which he’s made at home, and brought all the way down the street! There was even a biscuit!’
‘But then after about three months, he moved away – got a job somewhere, I suppose – and never came back.’
There’s a second-long pause.
‘But I thought you said he was the love of your life?’ Xavier says.
‘Well, yes, he was, I think,’ reflects Iris. ‘I mean, I thought about him so many times, I never forgot him. And in the end of course I married a chap who was perfectly fine, we had twenty-eight years and then he died. Still, I could never escape the idea that perhaps the right man had been this other fellow, Tony, all along.
‘But then . . .’ Iris continues.
Murray is grimacing and making his ‘wrap it up’ signal, which Xavier bats away with a hand.
‘Then, last year, I saw him in the street, Tony. Walking along with a stick. You couldn’t mistake him! Still a lovely head of hair, bright white now. I said hello and introduced myself and he remembered me. He told me he’d moved to Leeds in 1951 and married and had children and then they’d moved back to London some years later. His wife had Alzheimer’s disease, and he had just popped out to get some things for her. We shook hands and that was that.’ She coughs. ‘But it was nice to see him again.’
Xavier blinks and clears his throat.
‘And you didn’t find out where he lives, or . . .?’
‘Well!’ says Iris, in a sprightly, but rather tight voice. ‘It’s been fifty-odd years!’
‘But aren’t you anxious to strike up the friendship again?’
‘Oh, well, at my age!’ says Iris.
‘Nonsense. If you’ve got time to read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire . . .’
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she concedes, amused.
‘Well, let’s put a call out on Late Lines tonight,’ says Xavier. ‘Tony, if you’re listening, Iris would like to see you again. At least for a cup of tea and a biscuit.’
‘Thank you, Xavier, ever so much,’ says Iris. ‘And now, listen, I’ve taken up enough of your time. Keep up the good work with the show!’
‘Let us know how you get on, Iris, and call again soon. This is Late Lines. Here are Simon and Garfunkel.’
‘Two for the price of one!’ adds Murray, who has used this small joke many times.
They sit there in silence for half a verse of ‘Mrs Robinson’, looking out at the car park. Although the air is still raw outside, the snow has mostly been trodden out of existence, with only a few isolated banks, in shady spots, continuing the fight.
; ‘Imagine having that on your mind for fifty years,’ says Xavier.
‘Or she could just be delusional,’ Murray suggests.
Xavier looks at him and sighs.
‘Hey,’ Murray asks, ‘wer, wer, wer, was there any feedback in your email from the . . . from the speed dating?’
‘Feedback?’
‘You know. Did anyone get in touch? Any of the . . .? The girls?’
‘Oh. I haven’t even checked.’ This is true. Xavier had pretty much forgotten the tawdry night in Camden. He did supply an email address for any interested parties to contact him, but one he almost never checks. ‘I confirmed a booking with the cleaner, though. What about you?’
Murray tugs his hair and cocks an eyebrow in an attempt at nonchalance.
‘Nope. Ner, nothing yet.’
‘And did you send emails to any of the women?’
‘Nine of them.’
‘Nine out of the twenty-five?’
‘Got to keep your options open.’ Murray shrugs. ‘The, the, they’ve not got back to me yet either.’
The Simon and Garfunkel song reaches its final chorus. After this there will be adverts. Murray mimes drinking from a cup and, when Xavier nods back, goes out to put the kettle on.
Xavier quickly slides into Murray’s seat, in front of the computer, and opens the email account in question. Half-buried among transparently fraudulent offers of free money, he notices a message. It’s from a girl, the fellow Australian he met at the dating night. She says she thought he was cute; she wonders if he wants to catch a movie.
He’s had more amorous messages from his listeners, but even so Xavier is momentarily pleased at the idea of being sought out like this. His memory of her is imperfect: she was quite short, with dyed black hair, very white teeth, he recalls, and a short skirt. The wording sounds a faint alarm: Xavier is slightly suspicious of people who talk about catching movies, as if they were attractions floating by on the breeze, as disposable as pieces of confetti. And anyway, the message is four days out of date now. All in all, he’s not sure he will call the Australian girl, but it’s nice to be asked.