by Louise Kean
I can’t look at my bedroom any more. I spin again and press my nose up against the window. I need to get out of my flat.
I burst into Screen Queen and sing, ‘Help me, Christian! I’m falling apart …’
Christian carries on serving the customer in front of him, turning to me only when I reach the counter, placing his finger to his lips, and saying, ‘Shhhh.’
He is filling out a membership form for a guy in a white T-shirt with a handkerchief hanging precariously from his back pocket. I point to it as subtly as possible behind his back, sure that it means something in ‘homosexual’, but Christian only responds, when the guy glances down at the form, with a furious dagger stare in my direction.
‘So I need your Christian name,’ he says, and I note the professional tone of his voice, and how charming it is.
‘Dallas,’ the young guy says, and we both look at him in alarm. I clumsily shove the tape I have been looking at, Basic Instinct, back onto the shelf.
‘Surname?’ Christian asks, his voice notably an octave higher with incredulity.
‘Cool,’ he says.
I see Christian’s pen, held loosely in his elegant fingers, poised, unmoving, above the sheet of paper.
‘Occupation?’ Christian asks, without looking up.
‘Dog whisperer,’ the guy says.
‘One more time?’ Christian says, his eyes as wide as planets, shining with tears of mirth that he can’t let spill.
‘I’m a dog whisperer, I tame angry dogs. I got the idea from a film.’ Dallas has an Essex twang to his voice that I recognise from a girl I used to know at work. I want to hear him say ‘salt’ and ‘false’, see if he pronounces them ‘soult’ and ‘foulse’, like that girl.
‘And your name?’ Christian asks.
‘Dallas Cool, I just told you …’ The guy creases up his face in confusion. ‘What about it?’ he asks.
‘What film did you get that from?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Where did you get it then?’
‘From my parents, where else?’ he replies, confused.
‘I don’t know, I really don’t know …’ Christian says, and carries on filling in the form. ‘Do they bite a lot?’ Christian asks as Dallas turns to leave with his overnight rental, Desperately Seeking Susan.
‘I wear galvanised rubber; they can’t chew through it,’ he says, and leaves.
‘I don’t know what to say about that,’ Christian says, eyeing up Dallas’s form.
‘Did you fancy him?’ I ask.
‘It would feel like abuse,’ Christian says to me with disdain. ‘Now, my Sunbeam, what is wrong with you?’
‘I need to get out of this village, Christian.’ I grab the collar of his shirt lightly and plead with him, pretending to cry. ‘It’s driving me crazy, my head is an utter mess, I can’t take it any more!’
‘What, what can’t you take, my burst butterball?’
‘Any of it!’ I say, slumping over the counter, resting my right cheek on its shiny surface, sighing with cold comfort.
‘Why now?’ Christian asks, squinting his eyes.
‘The streets are narrowing, Christian! And the eyes are widening, and everybody’s faces are morphing into grotesque bug-eyed gargoyles, and they stare at me in alarm, and they are judging me!’ I raise my head as I talk, and then lower it as I finish.
‘But you know that they aren’t actually doing that, right? Or are you on some kind of uppers?’
‘No drugs, no.’ I shake my head as best I can, as it rests flat against the counter.
‘Sunny, nobody is looking at you, or judging you, unless you decide that they are. It’s as simple as that. It’s completely up to you. Just decide that they aren’t. Even if you think that they are, they aren’t!’
‘Well, that’s not healthy, it’s just denial!’ I say, swapping cheeks on the counter.
‘It’s not denial, darling, it’s dusting the world with a little sugar, making it a little sweeter, refusing to acknowledge bitterness. It is just sprinkling your own petals where you walk,’ Christian smiles and strokes my hair, until his fingers get stuck at the crown.
‘What is this?’ he asks pointedly.
‘Don’t ask.’
‘Who is this?’ he says, jamming his fingers further into my hair, refusing to pull them out.
‘Ouch, that hurts, Christian!’
He removes his hand, and places it on his hip.
‘I might have just done a stupid thing,’ I say with eyes closed.
‘Well, it’s not nice to call anybody “thing”, but you need to talk to me, so here is what we are going to do. You don’t need to go anywhere, you just need me, a good bottle of fizz, some dark chocolate with orange tangy bits, and The Way We Were on DVD, which I just so happen to have had delivered this morning. We’ll curl up on the sofa and cry. How does that sound?’ He tickles me lightly under the chin.
‘It sounds utterly indulgent,’ I say, standing up straight.
Christian looks hurt.
‘But wonderful!’
He takes a moment and then smiles at me broadly.
‘But I can’t. I’ve just remembered. I’ve got four boxes waiting for me down at Portsmouth Customs that I’ve been meaning to collect, and if I don’t do it today I don’t know when I will. Plus I might as well go while I’m in a bad mood, and I can think in the car at least, and not scream at anybody.’
‘You’re calling a road trip?’ Christian cocks his head and smiles.
‘No, I’m just going to go down to Portsmouth and …’
‘You’re calling a road trip?’ he says again, but this time nodding his head furiously for me to answer in the affirmative.
‘OK … I’m calling a road trip … What exactly does that entail … and does it mean that you are coming?’
‘Hell, yes! I’ll get Iuan to watch the shop. He’s upstairs doing nothing anyway. He can just divert the phone.’ Christian throws open the door to the corridor. ‘Iuan! Start making your way down here, Welshy. I’ll need you in ten minutes.’
‘So Cagney isn’t in, then?’ I ask innocently.
‘No … he’s out on a job.’
I cough quickly, to mask my gulp. Christian grabs my hand and pulls me towards him, and says seriously, ‘Don’t even think about that. He doesn’t sleep with them, he isn’t involved, romance is the last thing on his mind. He’s been doing it for ten years, Sunny; he hasn’t fallen for one yet. Why this afternoon?’
I nod my head once, and smile shyly.
‘OK? Now! We are gonna sing, and play rude word games, and gossip, and we are going to do it all in summer hats.’
‘But, Christian, it’s October.’
‘We are both wearing hats! Now, we need to pack a blanket …’
This is all becoming a huge effort. ‘Christian, for God’s sake, we don’t need a blanket.’
‘It’s a Road Trip! Pack a Blanket!’ His voice goes high and a little crazy, and it scares me. I can imagine that, if he had to, Christian would make a very convincing drag queen killer.
‘OK … don’t cry about it,’ I say sulkily, eyeing him nervously from behind the counter.
He fixes me with a glare. ‘Never be flippant about two things, Sunny, and we’ll be best friends: number one, preparing for a road trip.’
‘And number two?’ I ask.
‘Whitney Houston.’
‘Roger that,’ I say.
‘I’ll pack a blanket, and possibly even Whitney’s Greatest Hits.’
‘Perfect.’ Christian puts his hand on his heart, touched.
I nod my head, and back away from him slowly.
Forty minutes later, at twenty past three on a cloudy Wednesday afternoon, an afternoon when I have had middle-of-the-day sex for the first time, and met a dog whisperer named Dallas Cool, Christian and I set off on our road trip to Portsmouth to pick up my boxes of bondage gear. Christian doesn’t want to sing Whitney until we reach the motorway.
‘She nee
ds the speed’ he says solemnly.
So I stick on a tape I have in the car: hits from the musicals. Christian hates them all, strangely, aside from one. He wears a straw boater, with a navy and red striped band, and a baby-blue V-necked jumper, and Aviators. He looks like he got lost somewhere near Henley in 1985, and has just woken up in my car.
I am wearing a big floppy pink straw hat that I found in my closet, with a thick orange band around the centre, and a large lime-green bow. The rim keeps flopping over my eyes as I drive, and I swerve occasionally when it completely masks my vision. I have on my huge Chanel black sunglasses, Jackie Onassis style, despite there being no sun, and they are making it hard to see when to stop, and when to go, at traffic lights. It may be a rough ride!
The only musical hit that Christian likes is ‘Anything Goes’, and he is trying to learn the words. When he rewinds it for a fourth time, I squirt the tape out of the machine and throw it into the back of the car where he can’t reach it.
‘Ironically, Sunny, you can be quite cold,’ he says.
‘Keep it together, lady, it’s Whitney time,’ I say, as our A road becomes a motorway.
‘You were lucky,’ he says to me, and jams in Whitney.
We sing every word to ‘How Will I Know’, ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’, ‘My Name is Not Susan’, ‘Saving All My Love For You’ and ‘Love Will Save the Day’ before we run out of vocal puff.
‘So, what shall we talk about now? Or we could play a game?’ I say, patting the wheel, ready to be entertained.
‘Or …’ Christian says, looking at me slyly from out of the corners of his eyes.
‘Or?’ I ask, really not sure where he is going, trying to look around at him without taking the steering wheel with me in his direction and causing a pile-up.
‘Watch the road,’ he says, pointing in front of him seriously. ‘Or we could talk about … Adrian?’ he asks, then winces, as if he might have just blasphemed in front of a nun.
‘Oh Christ, again? I can’t believe this! I wished my life away, dreaming of some romance, some drama in my life, some excitement! But now it just seems exhausting. I don’t think I can talk about it any more, or even think about it any more. I don’t have a clue what I am going to do.’
‘Well, are you going to bring him on Saturday?’ Christian asks me sensibly, tipping his hat in the mirror, trying out all angles to suit his profile.
‘I think so. I’ve already asked him.’
‘But why? Why why why why why?’ He throws his hands into his lap and sighs.
‘Just once would have done, Christian.’
‘You know it will just upset Cagney, and then you guys will be all frosty, and –’
‘And nothing is happening, between Cagney and me. But it is with Adrian, and I owe it to him to sort it out, and give it a try, especially now he’s left his girlfriend. Plus I just had sex with him, and I don’t want to feel like a whore.’
‘You’re not a whore.’
‘I know that, Christian. I don’t want to feel like a whore.’ I pull over into the slow lane and indicate to come off the motorway.
‘Maybe you just like sex,’ Christian says.
‘Maybe. Do I need to turn Whitney off if we are leaving the motorway?’ I ask.
‘Probably best. What do you see in Adrian, apart from all of the old stuff?’
‘He is obvious easy boyfriend material.’
‘He’s a gift-wrapped compromise! You’ll spend your whole time waiting for romantic gestures that never come, hoping that he cares because he can’t bring himself to say it!’
‘Right, and Cagney would be so much grander, and more vocal.’
‘He’ll adore you, and you’ll see it every time he looks at you. He won’t let you feel silly, or vulnerable. You’ll feel special every time he speaks to you. He is old school, Sunny, but it has its advantages. Adrian might be second-rate boyfriend material, but Cagney is first-rate husband material.’
‘Well, he’s got enough experience, at least!’ I say, trying not to think about, or visualise any of the picture Christian has just painted, because then I’ll believe I can have it, and I’ll crave it, and Adrian will fall utterly short of the mark.
‘No, Sunny, he is proper lasting husband material for you!’
‘And you, Christina, are out of your glorious mind. That hat is keeping all the silly thoughts in that normally drift off into space where they should be!’
‘Why can nobody see it except me?’ Christian sighs, flinging off his hat and glasses, staring out of the window, forlorn.
‘See what?’ I ask. He turns to face me, and he is sad.
‘That if you let yourselves you could fall in love with each other.’ He says it quietly, but his words fill every inch of space in my car.
‘I can see it,’ I whisper, pulling off my own hat, flinging it on to the back seat with everything else.
‘Then why will neither of you just do it?’ he pleads with me quietly, unable to understand.
‘Because! It’s so hard, Christian, when you’ve been on your own for such a long time, for ever! There is such a bank of expectation, built up all around me, of what I’ll be myself, no doubt who I will be going out with! I mean, I thought I was going to be Britney, Christian, and don’t laugh because I am serious. I thought I was going to look like a pop star. I thought I’d be stunning.’
Christian stares at me sadly. ‘You are very pretty, darling.’
‘I know I’m not hideous, and all that pop star stuff is mostly just smoke and mirrors anyway, but whatever, I am beginning to accept it now. I’m OK, I don’t have to be all shiny and polished and the best. I am OK, and that’s enough.’
‘You are better than OK,’ he says, squeezing my hand as it rests on the gear stick.
‘Christian, it doesn’t matter, really, does it? This is me now, and it’s great, just to be healthy. Looking perfect isn’t all there is, and I am just starting to realise now that I don’t want to get sucked up into that kind of vanity, and what I really want is to relax for a while, and say “I’m happy”. I don’t want to replace an addiction to one thing with an addiction to another. Because it’s the addiction itself that does the most harm.’
‘Well, don’t beat yourself up about any of it. Some people never realise that, and they spend their whole lives trying to look perfect.’ Christian examines the lines under his eyes, then gives up dramatically with a sigh.
‘You don’t have to make me feel better,’ I say, shifting in my seat, turning left onto the A3.
‘I’m not just saying it, it’s true. Some people are no more than the sum of their appearance.’
‘Well … it’s an easy trap to fall into, when it seems that’s all anybody is interested in these days.’
‘Cagney hates “these days”,’ Christian says quietly.
‘C’est vrai,’ I concur.
‘Oui,’ Christian says as he puts his Aviators back on.
As we drive along the motorway, hurtling towards Portsmouth at an illegal speed, banked by swathes of conifer trees slanting up towards acres of cloudy grey-blue skies above us, I wonder if it is just the easiest mistake to make, judging the whole world on its appearance. It’s the laws of nature – flowers bloom and attract the bees, peacocks preen and attract … other peacocks. It’s the quickest way to impress.
After twenty minutes of comfortable silence, as we draw ever closer to Portsmouth, and Christian salutes a sign for a naval academy and asks if we can drop in, I ask what I’ve been wanting to ask all along.
‘Tell me about his wives, Christian.’ I stare straight ahead. It’s not a question, it’s a quiet demand. It’s necessary information that I am missing.
‘I don’t think that’s healthy,’ he says, and I can feel his eyes burrowing into me.
I turn to look at him, back to the road, at him, back to the road, at him, and smile. ‘Christian, tell me about his wives.’
He gives me a disappointed glance. ‘OK, but I don’t really k
now much about the first two, other than one was younger, one was older, and they both screwed him like a cheap nail into plywood about a week after their nuptials.’
‘How?’ I ask, pressing hard on my brake as the traffic starts to slow. I glance at my watch. It is four o’clock already; we are running out of time.
‘I think one was unfaithful … and one, well, it had something to do with her parents not liking him, or something. She was loaded,’ he says as explanation, as if being wealthy is an excuse for anything.
‘So what about the other one?’ I ask evenly. We are shunting along in first gear, I am riding my clutch, and Christian checks out everybody else around us – passengers, dogs with their tongues sticking out, drivers on mobile phones, kids with their tongues sticking out, as he talks.
‘Lydia,’ he says.
‘What about her?’ I ask.
‘Well, Lydia I met,’ he says, sounding impressed with himself, to be able to truthfully relay that kind of information.
‘No, you didn’t,’ I say, shaking my head in disbelief. It’s not so shocking; I don’t know why I am so incredulous. These women exist – they aren’t just myths, like mermaids, or witches. There isn’t a fairy tale entitled ‘Cagney’s Three Wicked Wives’, so far as I am aware.
‘I met her,’ he says again, nodding his head, no need for lies.
‘But how? I thought you didn’t know him, before he moved to Kew? And I thought you said that he moved here after he had split up with …’
‘Lydia. Yes, he had been in Kew for about six months. I remember because it was July, hot as Jamaica that summer. I wore shorts most days and not much else.’
‘And Lydia?’ I ask, because I see him on a route to distraction.
‘She showed up one day in July. I literally felt an icy gust when she walked into the shop and asked if I knew where he was, as she was getting no answer from his office. Cagney was still really raw, but he’d turned a corner, I think. He had started to put things back together, he seemed busy with work. And he was quiet, and some days he said little more than hello, but his face was opening up. You could see his mind was slowly clearing, and the hurt was falling away. But then the witch waltzed in.’