Kissing Toads

by Jemma Harvey

  She sipped her latte, discovered it was cold (her own fault for lingering), and summoned a waitress to complain and order another. The waitress looked sullen, but Delphi didn’t notice.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ she announced. ‘But don’t get your hopes up yet. I have to check it out.’

  My hopes were incapable of getting up, even with Viagra, though I didn’t say so. ‘What sort of an idea?’ I said with misgiving.

  ‘A job idea. Look, cancel your resignation—’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Yes you can. Tell them . . . tell them you had PMT, it was a typing error, you sent it by mistake – whatever. They won’t want to lose you – you’re much too indispensable.’

  ‘I wish that were true. In any case, I’ve resigned, and that’s that. I don’t ever want to go back.’

  ‘Look,’ Delphi said with the laboured patience of someone addressing an idiot child, ‘you cancel your resignation, they welcome you back with open arms, then you leave. Not in a huff but to go to a new and much better job which will have your rivals gnashing their teeth with envy and your bosses realising exactly what they’ve lost. It’s much better for your image, and your image needs a boost right now.’

  I grimaced. ‘I don’t have an image.’

  ‘Everyone has an image,’ Delphi insisted.

  I didn’t withdraw my resignation, of course; it was probably a good idea, but I’d left it too late. It was too late the moment I sent it. Neither the producer nor Dick Ramsay begged for my return on bended knee; they simply made regretful noises, and, in the producer’s case, said things like: ‘Been expecting it for some time. Shame to lose you, but you’re getting in a rut here. You’ve got your career to think of. Off to higher things, huh?’ He’d obviously missed the gossip about Kyle and me which I knew was doing the rounds, and I didn’t fill him in. I said I wanted a break first and left the rest to conjecture.

  I had to go into work for the next few weeks, but most of the time I managed to avoid Kyle. If we were in meetings together, I didn’t talk and he didn’t listen, leaving most of the communication to others. On one occasion, he trapped me at my desk, hitching one buttock up on the corner and exuding good intentions and the fumes of Dutch courage from lunchtime in the pub. His jaw was unshaven, his jeans unwashed, his sweatshirt sweaty. The awful thing was, I still found him sexy, despite what he had done to me. I kept remembering the way his voice went gravelly when he was aroused, and the rough insistence of his hands, and the beery taste of his kisses. I could understand why people get so angry after a split-up, unnecessarily angry, even long after – anger sweeps away the ingrained response, the sweet tension in the body, the softening of the heart. But I couldn’t bring the anger back; I suppose I’m not the type. I just clenched inwardly, freezing out my own feelings.

  ‘I think you’ve done the right thing,’ he said, sounding suspiciously like the producer. ‘You need to move on. You’ve been bogged down here for too long: I was holding you back.’ What? ‘You’re a great girl, Roo: I want you to know that. I really wish you luck.’

  He spoke as if he were making a generous gesture to someone who had jilted him, rather than vice versa. I stared at him, confused, outraged, stunned by his twisted world view. Then the anger came back.

  ‘If you had any . . . any decency,’ I said, ‘you’d be the one leaving. You cheated me and lied to me and let me down – and now I’m out of a job. I had to quit because of you. So don’t you dare wish me luck. It’s so fake – so—’

  ‘If you’re going to take it like that . . .’ He looked nonplussed and mildly huffy.

  ‘How else am I meant to take it?’

  ‘Look, it was hardly a serious affair, you and me. We didn’t live together, we didn’t get engaged—’

  ‘It was six years,’ I said, trying to stifle the fresh hurt as every word stabbed. Hardly a serious affair . . . ‘Your clothes are in my wardrobe, your razor’s in my bathroom –’ that was probably why he hadn’t shaved – ‘your CDs are in my living room, your porn mags are under my bed. I’ll send it all back, okay? Just leave me alone.’

  I piled the lot into a dustbin bag the next day and left it at the office. I didn’t care who saw, especially when Leather Fantasy fell out.

  ‘You’re supposed to cut the crotch out of his trousers,’ Delphi said when I told her. ‘It’s traditional. And stamp on the CDs.’ I hadn’t mentioned the porn mags. Sometimes, Delphi can be quite easily shocked.

  ‘I was trying to do dignity,’ I explained.

  ‘Dignity is fine in the right place,’ Delphi said, ‘but you need to assert yourself. Kyle walked all over you from day one. You ought to have gone out in style.’

  ‘Yes, but whose style?’ I sighed. ‘This is my style. Not a bang but a whimper. Other people do clothes-slashing and deliver horse manure to the office. It’s just not me. Anyway, I don’t see why I should imitate everyone else.’

  Unexpectedly, Delphi hugged me. ‘We could think of something original,’ she suggested after a pause. ‘Something no one’s done before. Set a new fashion in revenge. Spike his drink and when he’s unconscious give him a really stupid haircut, or—’

  ‘Been done,’ I said.

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘Delilah.’

  ‘That’s in the Bible.’ Delphi was mildly scornful. ‘Nobody reads that.’

  ‘It isn’t original. Anyhow, I don’t want revenge. I want . . . I want to stop hurting. I want to stop feeling as if my whole future is grey and empty. I want . . .’

  ‘You want another man,’ said Delphinium, bouncing over pain and loss, on to the next object.

  I wasn’t sure she was right. Kyle Muldoon had become a part of me, and I was afraid no other man could take his place.

  On my last Friday, they gave me a leaving party. I wanted to slink away unnoticed, like an injured animal crawling into a burrow to lick its wounds, but no one on Behind the News was ready to miss an opportunity to get drunk. In any case, nowadays you’re not supposed to lick your wounds in private: you’re supposed to flaunt them in public and tell not just friends but strangers every detail of your suffering. Clever psychologists call this Achieving Closure and disregard the cost to your auditors, who collapse with exotic foreign symptoms like ennui and Schadenfreude. I didn’t intend to talk about anything, but I couldn’t get out of the piss-up.

  Of course, it wasn’t really a party: no canapés or paper hats and only a couple of rounds of free drinks to get the ball rolling. It was held in a neo-gothic bar in Soho called Nick’s Cave with glittery spiders’ webs on the walls and lurid green cocktails with ice cubes shaped like skulls. I arrived to find about half a dozen people waiting, all of whom assured me how much they’d miss me, even though two of them worked for another show and barely knew my name. A Serpent’s Kiss was pressed into my hand: it looked and tasted like lavatory cleaner. Cheap lavatory cleaner. I sipped it nervously. There was no sign of Kyle.

  Dick Ramsay turned up late, already drunk. For those of you who don’t watch investigative TV, he’s a former news anchorman with an OBE, a toupee and a booze problem, two of which were in evidence that night, one causing lopsided hair, the other lopsided vision. He bought a bottle of champagne, put his arm round me and told me how invaluable I’d been and how difficult I would be to replace. Then he told me about my replacement. ‘Smart girl – brunette – great legs – Cheryl? Cherie? Very bright, very clued-up, good with people.’ So much for being invaluable. Cheryl/Cherie was relatively new in the line-up of assistants – I couldn’t recall her right name even when I was sober – and had made an impression on the men by wearing very short skirts (favourable) and on the women by having perfect hair (unfavourable). Her personality, if any, had passed me by completely. I realised to my horror that I was becoming bitter and cynical, infected by the petty jealousies of media life, and decided on a wave of something like relief that the producer was right, Kyle was right, it was time I got out. I polished off the Serpent’s Kiss with
the resolute air of Socrates swigging hemlock and moved on to champagne.

  At least, I reflected, Cheryl/Cherie had the decency not to come that evening. Then I saw her, lurking in a corner, distinguishable by her outthrust legs and the scantiness of her dress which, at the beginning of December, must constitute a health hazard – to others if not to her. Glancing round, I saw various familiar faces gathering in the green-tinted gloom of the Cave. Someone placed another cocktail at my elbow. In the poor light, its colour appeared suspiciously close to purple. A Screaming Mandrake, I was informed. I drank it down. What the hell. By way of variety, it tasted like oven cleaner.

  Nit-pickers might point out that it’s unlikely I’ve ever drunk either oven or lavatory cleaner. Not knowingly, anyway. That is mere quibbling. Anyone who has ever cleaned their loo – or failed to clean their oven – knows what I mean. Combine the smell, the colour, the location, the germ-zapping, grease-dissolving acidity, add alcohol, and voilà! The killer cocktail. I could feel it strip my stomach lining while my friendly bacteria expired in droves.

  I’d finished the Screaming Mandrake and was partway down an aptly-named Goblet of Fire when Kyle arrived. There was a fleeting, treacherous second when I was pleased to see him, when I thought he might have come to say something – anything – that might turn the misery of my situation inside out. I was drunk, and hope, as always, triumphed over experience. Then I saw the girl trailing from his left hand – the girl I’d last seen dressed only in a shirt – now wearing an ensemble of ripped frills and tousled hair which merely served to enhance her general flawlessness. My stomach plunged so violently I actually felt sick. I was vaguely aware of eyes swivelling in my direction, and suddenly my former colleagues seemed like a ravening mob, avid for my humiliation. Then someone squeezed my arm – Dick Ramsay, of all people, surveying me with bleary kindness, murmuring something supportive. I didn’t catch the words, but it didn’t matter; I got the meaning. He might be an old soak who would make a pass at anyone remotely female and who had slagged off three wives, five leading politicians, and about twenty close friends in his memoirs, but, I thought confusedly, he was a good person underneath. Tears started, but I blinked them back. It occurred to me I was even drunker than Dick.

  Across the room Kyle caught my eye and gave me a cheery wave. Yuk. I forced a smile; I don’t know why. I suppose because you do in these circumstances; you have to maintain a facade of politeness and amiability for pride’s sake, for the benefit of the audience. I’ve never been much good at pride, but I made the effort.

  In due course Kyle came over and I was formally introduced to Tatyana, Taty for short, presumably to match the frills. She gave me a distant, slightly wary greeting which told me everything I needed to know about how Kyle had explained my initial reaction. It had been a casual affair, I’d taken it too seriously: the bunny-boiler syndrome. A film that was intended to discourage male infidelity actually provided them with a useful label for any ex angry at her maltreatment. Taty obviously thought of me as a potential stalker and tried to edge away without letting go of Kyle’s hand – I could see the strain in their mutual grip. But Kyle was determined to show everyone that he was cool, I was cool, we were both totally cool about everything, and any rumours of his bad behaviour had been grossly exaggerated.

  I played along. For pride’s sake. Or merely to avoid embarrassment. I retained just enough sobriety for that.

  ‘We’ve had some good times, haven’t we?’ Kyle was saying (cheerily). ‘Remember Kosovo, when that sniper shot at us?’ In fact the target had been at least two hundred yards away, and the sniper in question had missed, but who was I to spoil the Muldoon legend? He continued with more improbable reminiscences before expanding them to include Dick, recalling an awards ceremony when Kyle was a rookie and the two of them had got smashed with Sir Robin Day. It was a story I’d heard often, but now, apparently, I’d been added to the cast list, even though the incident had happened well before the start of my TV career. But I didn’t argue. I was concentrating on staying sane.

  At some stage Kyle, at his most lavish, ordered a round of drinks (it was a gesture he tended to avoid unless he could put it on expenses), and I found myself confronted with the Cave’s pièce de résistance, a Slayer Special – about five kinds of alcohol with a range of additives, producing a garish rainbow of green shading through orange to scarlet and crimson. I sucked on the straw as if it were a milkshake. Kyle was still being cheery while Dick’s clasp on my arm had progressed from comforting to alarmingly affectionate. Then the producer clapped for silence, someone switched off the music, and I realised to my horror that he was going to make a speech.

  I tried to blend into the sofa cushions while he launched into a eulogy that wouldn’t have sounded out of place at my funeral – what a great person I was, a terrific team player, pouring oil on the troubled waters of high-stress TV reportage, etc. etc. At the end everyone clapped and, at Kyle’s instigation, sang ‘For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. I ached to drown him in his own hypocrisy. Then came the leaving present. Automatically, I pulled off the wrapping paper. It was a set of six cut-crystal wine glasses, expensive-looking and very beautiful – if you like cut-crystal. (I don’t.) But I knew where I’d seen them before. Kyle had picked them up on the cheap during an earlier trip to Eastern Europe as a wedding present for a couple who’d split up a week before the ceremony. The glassware had been hanging around his flat for months – did he think I wouldn’t remember?

  I gulped down my milkshake, battered by alternate waves of emotion and inebriation. The room was spinning slightly, in slow motion, and the music was back on, hammering at walls, ceiling, eardrums. Kyle leaned over to whisper to Taty (or possibly, in view of the noise level, to shout in her ear). She pulled his face towards her and kissed him, a tongue job, as blatantly hurtful to me as a spit in the eye. They got up to leave. She dived towards the Ladies, finally releasing his hand in the process. He bent over and, lips still wet from hers, began to kiss me too. My mouth fell open in shock – there was tongue contact – he pulled back, grinning, pleased with himself, as if the kiss had been an act of real generosity, a kindness to the girl he had just dumped.

  My pride, such as it was, went by the board. I don’t remember picking up the box of cut-crystal, only the crunch of breaking glass as it hit the floor at – and partly on – Kyle’s feet. Toes must have been crushed; I saw his face tighten in sudden pain. The music should’ve stopped – there should’ve been a frozen silence, but of course there wasn’t. I was hazily conscious of people staring, uncertain what had happened. I stumbled to the door with Dick Ramsay and the producer hurrying in my wake.

  Outside, I threw up on the pavement, in several colours of the rainbow.

  Delphinium

  When Roo didn’t phone the morning after her leaving party, I knew something awful had happened. I’d been expecting her call from ten a.m., perhaps even nine-thirty, since Roo does the early-rising thing, and when I hadn’t heard by midday, and all I could get was her answering machine, I had this terrific sense of foreboding. Or maybe I mean afterboding, since whatever it was must’ve happened already. Some people say I’m insensitive, but actually I’m very telepathic with my friends, except, of course, when they bore me.

  I’d had the bodings about Roo, on and off, from the moment she got mixed up with Kyle Muldoon. Kyle is the kind of undesirable guy whom too many women consider madly desirable: sweaty armpits, scruffy clothes, body hair, lots of male charismo and machisma and the attitude problem of a gorilla with an attitude problem. He was always turning up late for dates or not at all, embarrassing her in front of her friends, taking her for granted, shagging around on the side (I couldn’t prove that but I just knew, on account of being telepathic). I had a guy like that once, when I was a teenager – only not quite so sweaty and with less body hair, because, well, I had Taste, even as a teenager – but once was more than enough. You make a mistake, you learn, you move on, but Roo didn’t learn, or wouldn’t learn �
� she got hooked on her mistakes, going for the same type over and over again. With Kyle, she said it was love. ‘No it isn’t,’ I said. ‘It’s just lust that’s got out of hand.’ But she only smiled and shook her head, and after that I kept the bodings to myself. Mostly, anyway.

  When you care about someone, like your best friend, you’d do anything to stop them being hurt, but if they’re as obstinate as Roo, and set on a suicide course, there’s nothing you can do. Except be there. Roo’s a very gentle person but she has this stubborn streak, especially when it comes to the wrong men. There was Micky Treherne when she was at university, and Lee Harrison at school, though fortunately neither of them lasted long. I’d had hopes of Robert Clifton. She went out with him for over a year, and he was just getting ready to propose when she finished it.

  ‘Why?’ I said – a cry from the heart. ‘He’s well off, he’s good-looking –’ well, quite – ‘and he adores you. Why?’

  ‘It doesn’t work for me in bed.’