by Matt Dunn
I spot him over at the other side of the building, engaged in conversation with a bored-looking salesgirl on a stand selling jet skis. I text a rude message to his mobile, and he excuses himself and comes over to where I’m standing. I can’t seem to stop grinning, and tell him what I’ve been up to as we head off to find HMS PleazeYourself.
‘Wuss,’ he repeats.
An hour later, clutching an armful of brochures and slightly drunk on complimentary champagne, Nick leaves the salesman with a promise that we’ll ‘think about it’. We retrieve the Ferrari, paying the ransom to get it out of the car park, and head off back towards the King’s Road.
The lunchtime rush hour has just started, which isn’t such a problem as we’re not going anywhere in particular – some days Nick just likes to drive up and down the King’s Road in his Ferrari. Unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of people just driving up and down the King’s Road in their Ferraris today. We consider (for about half a nanosecond) going into work, but instead decide to head up into town for, in Nick’s words, a ‘spot’ of shopping. What exactly constitutes a ‘spot’ of anything, I wonder idly, although I manage to stop myself from asking whether he’s ever suggested ‘a spot of sex’ to Sandra.
We come to a temporary halt just opposite McDonalds, where a group of shoppers are taking their time on the zebra crossing in front of us.
‘Get out of the way, poor people,’ Nick shouts at them.
I shrink in my seat, worried that the roof is down and they can probably hear him, but then realize that he’s revving the engine so loudly that it’s doubtful anybody can hear anything within thirty feet of the car.
We speed along Sloane Street and pull up at a set of traffic lights, where an old Fiat Punto edges up next to us. The driver glances at Nick and starts to gun his engine, edging forwards as he waits for the lights to change. Nick takes up the challenge and does the same, blipping the Ferrari’s throttle to produce a glorious sound from the twin exhausts. I look across at him and let out an exaggerated sigh.
‘What?’ he asks me, without turning his attention from the lights. They change to amber and then green, and he floors the accelerator. The Ferrari leaps forward, leaving the Fiat some way behind. That is, until we reach the backed-up traffic a hundred yards further up the road.
‘Yes!’ cries Nick, slowing back down to a sensible speed. The Fiat idles up alongside us, its driver refusing to make eye contact.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ I ask Nick.
‘Sure,’ he replies.
‘What’s the point in proving that a Ferrari is faster than a Fiat? Didn’t you know that when you bought it?’
Nick thinks about this quickly and grins at me. ‘Mate,’ he says, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the defeated Fiat driver, ‘I’m not proving it to myself. I’m proving it to them.’
We’re aiming for Selfridges, and after a white-knuckle journey up Park Lane, where the West End’s entire fleet of black cabs seems to be trying to play dodgems with us, we manage to find a parking meter just off Oxford Street, and head on into the store.
I love Selfridges, in particular the home entertainment department. You know those people who always choose to have their ashes scattered in a special place where they’ve spent many a happy hour? I’ll have mine scattered here, somewhere between the hi-fis and the flat-screen televisions.
Taking the escalator down, we head through the bookshop and follow the sound of music until we’re standing in the middle of my spiritual home. Nick heads off to check out the newest mobile phones on offer, and I browse through the racks of CDs, occasionally picking up and replacing items where the cover has caught my eye. A bored-looking assistant comes over and asks with zero enthusiasm if he can help me; when I tell him I’m ‘just looking’ he sighs and drifts away. I suddenly feel guilty, so buy an album to make him feel better. If he does, he doesn’t let on.
I stroll on towards the Bang & Olufsen section and gaze adoringly at the latest Danish minimalist miracles that look too pretty to actually play music on, one of which currently occupies pride of place in my front room.
‘Afternoon, Mr Bailey,’ says a voice from behind me. Danny, the over-anxious sales assistant who sold me my hi-fi, steps out from behind the tallest but thinnest speakers I’ve ever seen and shakes my hand.
‘Hello, Danny,’ I reply. ‘What’s new?’ Sometimes I’m really hilarious without even trying, as Danny’s sycophantic laughter tells me is the case today.
‘Well, we’ve got these new remote-controlled rotating televisions,’ he says, all but rubbing his hands together.
‘Great. Rotating, eh?’ I ask him, not wanting to add the obvious why? Fortunately, Danny’s just bursting to tell me.
‘Yes,’ he says, picking up a handset the size of a NASA console and aiming it at a futuristic-looking set in the corner. ‘It means that you can watch it . . .’ – he pauses for effect – ‘from anywhere in the room.’
We stand there as the screen swivels to face us, and I look at Danny as he beams like someone who’s just shown me the cure for cancer. I’m about to tell him that I have my own favourite chair that I always sit in to watch TV from, thus rendering this innovation useless, but stop myself when I realize firstly how disappointed he might get, and secondly how sad that makes me sound. I eventually walk away clutching a glossy brochure that it would have seemed churlish not to take, collect Nick, and we head back upstairs and into the men’s clothing section, where, astoundingly, the amount of money I spend on a shirt to wear on my date with Charlie shocks even him.
‘Blimey,’ he says, taking it from me and looking at the price tag. ‘I hope she’s going to be worth it.’
I snatch the bag back from him. ‘Yes. Well. I’m quite keen on this one.’
‘Ha!’ he scoffs, as we head out of Selfridges and back towards the car. ‘You’re keen on them all when you first meet them. But all too soon they achieve beautiful-but-unsuitable status, simply because they, I don’t know, write Xmas instead of Christmas in their cards.’ Nick despairs sometimes.
‘Ouch! That’s a little harsh . . .’
‘But true. What was that one’s name again?’
I think back, trying to remember the Xmas girl. ‘Er, Liz, I think. But that wasn’t the only reason we split up.’
‘Well, what else was there?’
‘Er . . .’ I can’t actually recall. But there must have been something. Mustn’t there?
‘I rest my case,’ sighs Nick, shaking his head. ‘You’re obsessed with the details. The small print, if you like. You can’t just enjoy the bigger picture. You’ll go out with Charlie for a few weeks and then dump her, not because there’s any real problem, but because she breaks one of your precious rules.’
‘That’s not true,’ I reply. ‘I have a feeling she’s—’
‘Different?’ interrupts Nick. ‘I’ve heard you say that before.’
I’m getting all defensive now. ‘No. I was going to say . . .’ I hurriedly try and think of something else, as ‘different’ is exactly what I was going to say. Unfortunately, ‘special’ is the word I come up with. Nick just mimes sticking his fingers down his throat.
We drive back into Chelsea and park outside Bar Rosa. Nick asks me if I’m coming in for a ‘spot’ of lunch, and it occurs to me that now might be a good time to try to talk to him about Sandra, but then he says that she might be joining us, so I make my excuses, telling him that I have to go home and get ready for my date with Charlie.
Nick rolls his eyes. ‘And her having a boy’s name isn’t a problem this time?’
Ah. Charlie. Or is it Charley? Does that count, I wonder, when it’s spelt with ‘ie’ instead of ‘ey’? Or vice-versa?
The funny thing is, it hadn’t even occurred to me.
Chapter 8
Charlie loves fish. This is unfortunate, because over the years I’ve come to realize that if you can’t drown it, I can’t eat it. She particularly adores sushi, and if you think about it, for anyone
like me who can’t stomach fish in its cooked and prepared form, where at least it can be disguised by a combination of sauces and flavours, the prospect of munching on raw mouthfuls of the stuff is pretty nauseating.
We’re sitting in one of London’s newest and therefore trendiest seafood eateries, Catch Twenty-Two. The restaurant is located on the twenty-second floor of one of the capital’s tallest hotels, affording us a fantastic view of the London skyline. I can’t work out whether they decided on a name for the place before picking which floor to put it on, or whether they’d built it on this floor before picking the name . . . oh, never mind.
We’re here because Charlie’s read about this place, and apparently it’s the restaurant of the moment. I’m slightly suspicious of this because not only have I managed to get a table at short notice, but the place is only half full at nine o’clock on a Friday evening. It’s one of those establishments where the waiters and waitresses all look like catwalk models, dressed head to toe in this year’s black, which seems for once to actually be black. Even the toilets are a work of art, decorated in some Japanese minimalist style, with shimmering waterfalls to provide encouragement if you’re having a problem going. Once you’ve washed your hands, smartly attired attendants hand out origami’d hand towels in exchange for a tip in the requisite saucer, which seems only to be filled with pound coins. Whatever happened to spending a penny?
Anyway, it’s our first date, and it’s going pretty well. I’ve opted for the standard non-fish dish on the menu at every seafood restaurant, but it’s actually a pretty good steak, and the waiter didn’t give me too pitying a look when I ordered it. The only slight blip for me is when Charlie tells me how nice her tuna is and that I really should try some. All my life, despite me telling people who obviously like fish, because they’ve ordered it, that I don’t like fish, which should be obvious because I haven’t ordered it despite being in a venue that has every variety, they’ve tried to make me try theirs. Usually I hear the tempting line ‘Go on – it doesn’t really taste like fish.’ Well then, what’s the point? I don’t like fish, so you’re saying that I should try your fish because it doesn’t actually taste like fish. And tuna is the favourite one for this – apparently when cooked well it tastes like steak. Well, I’ve actually got steak, thanks all the same.
But Charlie seems to be enjoying herself, and, in a moment of unusual selflessness, I realize that I am, too, and for that very reason. This takes me aback, so much so that I agree to try her fish.
Once I’ve returned from the toilet, where I’m so embarrassed after throwing up in the unfortunately minimalist sink that I feel I have to tip the attendant five pounds, Charlie tells me more about herself, in particular her part-time job as a model. And not just any model, catwalk or catalogue, but actually a specialist hand model. Any time a company needs someone with particularly nice hands, for example for a washing-up liquid commercial, or a jewellery ad, Charlie’s up for the job. They’ll normally film the rest of the ad with the regular actress, but when it comes to the closeup of someone holding the product, or luxuriously washing their hands as if on the brink of orgasm, they call in Charlie.
She’s actually been the hands for a number of television ads, she tells me, including the latest one for that flaky chocolate bar that always gets consumed as if the actress is performing oral sex rather than simply eating chocolate. When Charlie tells me that this involved her standing close behind another woman suggestively feeding her chocolate for the best part of an afternoon I have to stop myself from asking for an invite to her next shoot.
‘Can I see?’ I ask, and use this as an excuse to lean over and take her hand, ostensibly to inspect it more closely, although again I find myself not wanting to let it go.
She tells me that she has to wear gloves a lot to protect her ‘assets’, and a broken nail for her can actually be a real disaster. I’m amused when she gets all embarrassed telling me that work of this type is known in the advertising world as a ‘hand job’, and when I mention that we’ve got whole websites dedicated to that sort of thing, she removes her hand from mine with an exaggerated sigh.
We find ourselves talking in that easy way that lets you know you have a connection, and somehow the food and the wine seem secondary to the conversation. She laughs when I remind her not to let her dinner get cold, because it’s sushi, so of course it’s cold anyway, and not for the first time since we met I find myself noticing my awkwardness around her.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ says Charlie, once the waiter has cleared our plates.
‘You just did.’
Charlie kicks me gently under the table. ‘If we hadn’t bumped into each other at the boat show this morning, would you ever have asked me out?’
‘Well, technically, it was you that asked me out . . .’
‘You know what I mean. It’s just that . . . I felt we had an attraction when we met at the interview, and then when I phoned you to tell you that I’d got the other job I hoped you might . . . but, nothing. I thought you must have been married or something.’ There’s suddenly a strange expression on her face. You’re not, are you?’
‘Oh no,’ I say, perhaps a little too quickly, then hope I haven’t conveyed any reluctance or aversion with my answer. ‘I mean, no. I haven’t . . . Not yet. You? Married? Ever been?’ I ask her, forcing her to rearrange my words before they make any sense.
She shakes her head. ‘No.’
‘Engaged?’
‘Once. A long time ago.’
‘What happened? The engagement, I mean.’
Charlie shrugs. ‘What normally happens, I guess. He proposed, gave me a ring . . .’ she says, with a smile.
‘No, I meant why didn’t you go through with it. Or was it his decision?’ I regret asking as soon as the words have left my mouth, particularly when her smile fades.
‘It was just . . . not right, I suppose,’ she says, wistfully. ‘And when we found out we couldn’t . . .’ She stops talking and takes a large gulp of wine as her eyes seem to mist over a little.
I suddenly feel bad, like I may have overstepped the mark. ‘Do you mind talking about this? We can change the subject if you like.’
Charlie takes a deep breath and continues. ‘No, that’s okay. I was quite a bit younger, and, well, he was older than me, and seemed so certain of what he wanted out of life, and what he wanted for me too . . .’ She pauses as the waiter refills her glass. ‘Plus he kept talking about marriage as a partnership, an arrangement, a . . .’
‘Compromise?’
‘Yes,’ she nods, ‘a compromise. All very impersonal words, you know, like it was something you had to work at. And at the time I thought that sounded like the most unsentimental thing I’d ever heard. I’d always believed in this spark, this feeling when you met that you just knew you should be together, and that everything else would sort of fall into place around that. Sure you’d have bad times, but I suppose I kind of naively thought that the minute you had to “work” at it the battle was sort of lost.’
I don’t say anything as what she’s just said sinks in. As she waits for me to respond, I realize that now would be a good time to come up with something deep and meaningful to signify that I agree with her.
‘I agree with you,’ I say.
‘Plus,’ she continues, a half-smile on her face, ‘there was the name issue.’
I frown. ‘Name issue?’
‘Yes. Looking back, I think he only wanted to marry me because he was so into motorbikes.’
I’m completely lost now. ‘Motorbikes?’
‘Well, his surname was . . . Davidson.’
‘Davidson?’
‘Yeah. So I’d have been . . . ?’
‘Charlie Davidson!’ I laugh.
She smiles again. ‘Exactly!’
I find myself repeating ‘Charlie Bailey’ in my head a couple of times to check that it doesn’t sound ridiculous, and it’s both reassuring and worrying to find out that it doesn’t. I decide to impart some
of my wedding wisdom.
‘You know,’ I tell her, recycling my own enlightenment from the other night, ‘a friend once told me, on the eve of his wedding, that your partner should be someone who brings out the best in you. Someone who you always want to impress. Who inspires you, if you like.’
Charlie looks as if she’s absorbing this for a moment. ‘Hmmm. I see what he means. Does he feel that about his wife?’
I nod. ‘Yeah, he did. Until they got divorced last year!’
Her face drops. ‘Oh no. Really?’
‘No – not really. One child already, another on the way.’
Charlie fixes me with a steady gaze. ‘And what about you, Adam? What are your views on marriage?’
Oh my god. That question. What am I going to say? What’s the politically correct response here? Normally, I’d give some glib response, but that hardly seems appropriate given Charlie’s recent admission. I swallow hard, and reach for my glass of water.
‘Er . . .’
‘Don’t worry,’ she says, resting her hand on mine. ‘I’m not going to hold you to your answer.’
‘Well . . . I think it’s a fine idea in principle, as long as both parties are sure they’re going to be together for the rest of their lives.’
‘Ah-ha!’ she announces. ‘Therein lies the flaw in your theory. How can anyone ever be sure of that?’
I sit back in my chair, being careful not to remove my hand from underneath Charlie’s. ‘Exactly! But I’m not just talking about the love and starry-eyed commitment stuff. A lot of people get together simply because they can’t be bothered to look for anyone else any more.’
‘You old romantic!’
‘I’m serious. Look at my best friend Nick, for example. He’s about to get married for a number of reasons, but I don’t think love would make the top three.’
Charlie’s eyes widen. ‘Are you kidding?’
I shake my head. ‘Nope. And it was his fiancée who proposed. Not him. He just kind of went along with it because he thought it was the thing to do.’