Footnotes to Sex

by Mia Farlane

  ‘It wasn’t for you anyway.’ Jansen put the remote for the car on the table, and went to the kitchen to make the stir-fry. She was still in a bad mood.

  May followed her. ‘Are you still in a bad mood with me?’ she said.

  ‘I’m not in a bad mood.’ Jansen put a very slight emphasis on ‘bad’. She took a tin of braised tofu out of the cupboard and put it on the bench.

  ‘Well, you look like you’re in a bad mood,’ May insisted. It didn’t feel fair; she wanted Jansen to be all loving again.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Jansen said, and May stepped away from the fridge. Jansen took some courgettes and red peppers out of the salad compartment. ‘You could do some onions, if you like, if you want,’ she told May. ‘And some garlic.’

  ‘Do we have to have onions?’ May opened the cupboard next to the sink. The clay was still in there; she heaved it off the carrots and onions. ‘Shall I do some carrots, as well?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, that would be good.’ Jansen spoke in a stiff, hurt way. She slid the diced courgettes off the new breadboard into a bowl, and started washing the peppers. ‘Actually, would you mind finishing this?’ She dried her hands on a tea towel. ‘I might just make a quick call.’

  ‘Why do you have to make a call?’

  ‘I feel like talking to someone.’

  ‘Why can’t you talk to me?’

  ‘I have been talking to you. I feel like talking to someone else.’

  ‘I’m going to have a bath then,’ May said. ‘You said you’d cook me a stir-fry.’

  Jansen went to the sitting room, and shut the door.

  May ran a bath. She put some bread into the toaster, and clicked the kettle down. Having made a hot cocoa, she poured a small pile of raisins and sunflower seeds onto the side of a plate, and whistled a medieval French tune as she quietly Marmited her toast. She was relieved to be back at the flat, and glad that Jansen was around, glad, also, that Elizabeth wasn’t around, but she wasn’t happy; she couldn’t be fully happy, because Jansen was annoyed with her. She took the toast with her to the bathroom; she shut the door, turned off the taps and climbed in.

  May fed one or two sunflower seeds into her mouth, and nibbled at the lightly buttered, Marmite-dabbed toast: she felt as if she were in early recovery from something; as if she’d been violently ill, and had to take things gently for now. After her exhausting efforts to please Francine, and her final failure, it was all – at last – over. May was in convalescence. She slowly made her way through the raisins and the sunflower seeds, finished her toast, and let the water out of the bath.

  As she got into Jansen’s pyjamas she gazed apologetically at Jansen’s teddy bear, who was sitting on a pillow staring at nothing; he’d lost his pewter bear companion because of her. She went over and kissed him on his little head. ‘Hi, Teddy,’ she said.

  The first time she’d met Ted was at the army barracks, where she had spent the night with Jansen for the first time; the place was like a school after school: deserted, echoing. She and Jansen had made their way in the dark past the NAAFI – Jansen had tour-guided her – to Block A, where Jansen slept; the room was sparsely furnished, May remembered: four free-standing wardrobes and four neatly made single beds in each corner. And on one bed was a teddy bear. ‘Everyone’s away,’ Jansen said. ‘So, you have a few choices: you can sleep in this one, this one, this one, or you can sleep with me.’

  May went back to the kitchen. ‘Who were you on the phone to?’

  Jansen looked up from her stirring. ‘You’re wearing my pyjamas,’ she remarked.

  ‘Yes, I felt like it… You can wear your other ones, can’t you?’

  Jansen smiled then – one of her comforting, kind, forgiving smiles. ‘It’s hard, isn’t it?’ she said.

  May walked into another hug.

  Jansen held her with one arm as she stirred the vegetables and tofu around in the pan. ‘Did you know: that if you make sure the onions are well cooked,’ she said, ‘everything tastes better?’ She tipped in a dollop of mango chutney.

  For a few moments they stood there in silence.

  Then, ‘Who were you on the phone to?’ May asked again.

  ‘Tamsin. I was returning her call: she wasn’t there; I tried her at her sister’s; they were having dinner, so we didn’t talk that long.’ Jansen stirred in the chutney, and added a teaspoon of chilli paste. ‘Is that everything you need to know?’

  ‘Mm-hmm.’ May got some bowls out of the cupboard. ‘And what did you talk about?’

  ‘“Did we talk about you” – you mean?’ Jansen said. ‘No.’

  ‘What did you talk about? Was she ringing about something?’

  ‘Why do you need to know this?’ Jansen was in a bad mood again.

  ‘I’m curious, if I’m allowed to be! Why can’t you just tell me?’

  ‘May, what are you worried about?’

  ‘I’m not worried.’ May was starting to feel worried.

  ‘There is nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Oh, now I really am worried. What am I “not supposed to be worrying” about?’

  ‘She’s met someone,’ Jansen said. ‘She met her on the retreat. That was what the call was about. So now you know.’

  May made a face. ‘You still had a bit of a thing for her, didn’t you?’

  ‘Not really, no.’ Jansen turned up the element.

  ‘A “sort of thing”, then?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jansen conceded. ‘Okay, yes.’

  ‘For a Christian soldier.’

  ‘She was a bit mixed up for a while,’ Jansen said.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘She had a lot going on; I felt she needed looking after.’ Jansen turned off the element, and served up the stir-fry.

  ‘You felt she needed looking after?’

  ‘May, this is none of your business, anyway.’ Jansen took the bowls to the sitting room. ‘Bring water, if you want. And we need some forks.’

  They sat down to eat.

  ‘But how could you have fallen for her? How could you have actually followed her into the army? You’re an intelligent woman! I’m just trying to understand you.’

  ‘You are not. You’re being judgmental, and I don’t like it.’

  ‘Sorry.’ May hated apologizing.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about her now, anyway. She’s got someone, and she’s very happy.’

  That wasn’t entirely reassuring. ‘So she was after you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Jansen started eating.

  ‘What… so did she ask you directly, or was it just “in her behaviour”?’ May made inverted commas with her two middle and index fingers.

  ‘It was “in her behaviour”.’ Jansen copied May’s gesture. ‘And she was also very direct.’

  ‘My God!’ Tamsin was a real threat.

  ‘She felt she needed to express it. She said she wanted to be frank.’

  ‘God!’

  ‘Could you stop swearing, May?’

  ‘Well, I’m obviously not paranoid, am I?’ This didn’t feel good.

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s frightening. I had no idea! There I was casually going about my business,’ May held her hand to her chest, ‘and I should have been worrying.’

  Jansen kept eating.

  ‘I should’ve been really worried! Or did I not need to be?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Jansen said.

  ‘What’s right?’

  ‘You didn’t need to be. No.’

  May’s stomach was hurting again. ‘Because you told her you loved me, and that you were unavailable,’ May proposed.

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  They ate their stir-fry.

  36

  The Duel

  ‘Just to be clear…’

  May and Jansen were in bed now. Jansen was coming to the end of her Gnostic Gospels book, and May was browsing through the bibliography in Troisième personne singulière. She waited for Jansen to finish her paragraph and look up from her book, and then she continue
d, ‘… So you said, “I love May, and I’m unavailable” – you said those words to Tamsin?’

  ‘Not exactly, no, of course I didn’t.’ Jansen returned to The Gnostic Gospels.

  ‘Oh, so you didn’t, in fact. So what did you say?’

  Jansen shook her head, still looking at her book.

  ‘You just agreed with me that you’d said that to her, to make things easier for yourself?’ May went on. ‘That would be easier perhaps than telling me exactly what you really did say.’

  Jansen stopped reading. ‘Well, I could ask you exactly what you said to Francine on your various visits, if you want. Would you like me to do that?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’ Jansen asked.

  ‘You know there’s a huge difference. There’s no comparison.’

  ‘No comparison? Why?’ That was a challenge, rather than a question.

  ‘You know you can’t compare them. You’re joking. Francine and Tamsin?’ May laughed at the absurdity. ‘You’re telling me they’re the same?’

  ‘No, they’re different. What I’m saying is: we were both focusing on someone else –’

  ‘In not at all the same way.’ May winced theatrically. ‘Your thing with Tamsin was on a totally different level, your motivations were on a totally different level,’ she said. ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘On a “different level”? You can be so arrogant sometimes.’

  ‘You’re telling me your thing for Tamsin –’

  ‘It was far less obsessive, anyway.’ Jansen picked up the clock, looked at it and replaced it on the stool.

  ‘Your thing with Tamsin was of a different quality,’ May specified.

  ‘“Different”, or “lesser”?’ Jansen raised her eyebrows.

  ‘More dangerous. More likely.’

  ‘Oh, you think so?’

  ‘What I’m unsure about, and what I’d like to know, is whether I should have been worrying,’ May continued.

  ‘You want to know whether you should have been worrying?’ Jansen dog-eared the page she had been reading, and put the book on the stool beside her.

  ‘What’s so bizarre about that?’

  ‘So…’ Jansen frowned, pretending to try and then fail to understand, ‘so if you discover you should have been worrying, how useful will that be for you?’

  ‘It’ll be information.’ May shut Francine’s book, and placed it on the floor.

  ‘Ah huh.’ Jansen got out of bed. She went to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Finally, she returned with a string of floss.

  ‘You’re on the defensive,’ May stated, ‘which I find a bit disturbing.’

  ‘I’m astounded.’ Jansen flossed her teeth while she thought about this. Then she said, ‘Francine is worth more than Tamsin: that’s more or less what you’re saying, isn’t it?’ She returned to her flossing.

  ‘I said – and you can twist things if you like, but that’ll be your problem – your feelings for Tamsin were not the same as mine for Francine; I’m sorry but they weren’t.’ May shrugged. ‘Why is that such a problem for you?’

  ‘Okay,’ Jansen took up May’s point, ‘Francine is older than Tamsin, and she’s more self-assured’ – May refrained from adding to the list of differences while Jansen interrupted herself to do a bit more flossing – ‘which, as I see things, would lead to an imbalance in power relations, depending on the persons involved –’

  ‘I don’t want you dissecting things, “as you see them”,’ May said.

  ‘It doesn’t feel very good, does it?’

  ‘I haven’t dissected your thing for Tamsin.’

  Jansen put the string of floss on the stool. ‘You call it a “thing”, which is fairly dismissive, very disrespectful in fact.’

  May laughed, she couldn’t help herself, and Jansen left the room. May was in trouble. She got out of bed – Jansen had gone to the sitting room. ‘Sorry!’ she called through the sitting-room door. ‘It was nervous laughter. You can be quite scary when you’re angry.’

  Jansen didn’t reply.

  ‘Sorry,’ May said again. She opened the door a crack.

  Jansen was sitting on the floor, leaning against the sofa, with her head in her hands, quietly crying.

  ‘Can I come in?’ May asked quietly. ‘Or would you like me to go away?’ She stood at the door for a while, and then she went and got some loo paper and a glass of water, and returned with them to the sitting room. ‘I just don’t like Tamsin very much,’ she said as she sat down next to Jansen. ‘That’s understandable, isn’t it?’ She was trying to lighten things up a bit.

  ‘I don’t care what you think of Tamsin,’ Jansen took the loo paper from May and blew her nose, ‘but I do find it really painful that you describe my feelings for her as “having a thing”; it’s so demeaning. Aren’t you interested in knowing what attracted me to her? You’re not even interested in finding out. I feel like –’ Jansen’s face contorted, and she started crying again – ‘I feel like you’re n-n-not,’ she cried as she spoke, ‘not even interested in me.’ She shook her head as she continued to cry.

  ‘But I am,’ May moved a little closer to Jansen, ‘I am interested in you. I love you,’ she said. ‘I love you! I love you! I love you!’ she added. Jansen was still crying; she was unhappy; she was distraught. ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ May said. ‘Sorry.’ She felt terrible.

  ‘I’d come home, and want to tell you about how my day’s been. But I knew you weren’t interested, so I stopped telling you anything,’ Jansen spoke and cried at the same time.

  ‘I’ve been obsessed,’ May said. ‘I’ve been selfish and horrible.’

  ‘You haven’t been at all concerned that I might go off with Tamsin; you’ve been so unaware of me. I feel invisible; I’m just your cook and your driver.’ Jansen took the glass from May, and drank all of the water. ‘And you know what else I find so upsetting?’ She put the glass on the floor. ‘Is your devotion to Francine. What am I worth? No, I mean it. Where do I come into it?’

  ‘I’m not interested in her,’ May said. ‘I was just dazzled by her –’

  ‘What were you getting out of it? What were you hoping for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ May got up; she was going to get more water.

  ‘You want to know exactly what I told Tamsin?’ Jansen asked.

  May sat down on the floor again. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘If you want.’

  ‘I told her my relationship with you was a bit wobbly at the moment, so I didn’t want to see too much of her for a while. And she agreed that we should only meet for coffee now and then; she understood.’

  ‘Of course she did.’ May stood up again.

  ‘You’re so threatened, aren’t you?’ Jansen said. That was an attack.

  ‘No, I am not “threatened”.’ May sat back down on the floor again. ‘I’m just saying,’ and she laughed as if someone had told a joke, ‘of course she understood; you made it so clear to her. You couldn’t have been clearer.’

  ‘I could have been a lot clearer – actually.’

  ‘Oooh!’

  ‘I didn’t do it perfectly, May; I am not perfect –’

  ‘Oh, no. I think you did pretty well though.’ May feigned encouragement.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m bothering to try and tell you this,’ Jansen said. ‘Do you want me to tell you what happened, or not?’

  ‘What do you mean, “what happened”? Did something happen?’

  ‘I am trying to tell you.’

  ‘Yes?’ May was listening now.

  ‘Tamsin and I sort of almost slept with each other – only sort of – and nothing really happened – at all; we just cuddled and rolled around a bit, and I didn’t stay the night. That’s more or less it.’

  ‘Oh good! Thank you for the details.’ May pressed her lips together, nodding. Tamsin was a creepy Tartuffe; she was a dangerous revolting woman. And Jansen liked her. They’d slept together. May put her hand to her head; she felt dizzy. />
  ‘It was quite a few weeks ago, May, and nothing happened.’

  ‘When? And why are you telling me about it?’ She felt spaced out, as if she were speaking to an empty auditorium. ‘If nothing happened. Although something did happen; you’ve just told me.’

  ‘It was weeks ago. And nothing happened.’

  ‘Oh, weeks ago. How many?’ May could have lost her; she could have lost Jansen; she nearly had: she had lost her, in fact; she simply hadn’t known about it. She was too stupidly busy being self-obsessive with her reading schedules, and trying to please Francine all the time, and –

  ‘Does it matter? The night before she came back to the bedsit; how many weeks is that?’

  May sucked in her cheeks. She was in shock.

  ‘This is not all about you, May. Not everything is about you.’

  ‘I’m not saying –’

  ‘What I really like about Tamsin – you won’t be happy to know this, but there are lots and lots of things actually – what I really appreciate about her is that she thinks about other people, she isn’t always focusing on herself. Whenever we meet up, do you know what the first thing she does is? She asks me how I am: she wants to know how I am; she asks me questions; and she listens. She’s kind, she’s interested, and she’s very clever actually. Do you know why she’s working at the YMCA?’

  May had no idea.

  ‘It’s for the flexible hours – so she can be free to get more involved in Greenpeace; it’s one of the main reasons she’s moved to London, actually: she wants to do things like chain herself to posts; she wants to go to the Antarctic; she’ll probably get herself arrested one day. She really cares about the world, May – and people! I respect her for it; and I admire it. She’s an incredible woman. Incredible. She’s got an amazing sense of humour, she always looks for the positive in any situation, but most of all she is emotionally intelligent.’

  ‘Everything I’m not, in fact.’

  ‘You see: there you go again. This isn’t about you! Can you hear what I’m saying?’ Jansen was raising her voice. ‘It’s about Tamsin!’