by Anna Maxted
‘Leave the potato!’ said Jason, as if I were a dog. (Working, as I do, for a firm called Hound Dog Investigations, the issue has been raised.)
‘Why don’t you lie on the bed and read,’ he added, ‘and I’ll lay the table?’
I belly-flopped onto the bed, snatched my book, and pretended to read. Jason dragged an ornamental table and two chairs over to the window, pulled two small bottles of champagne from the minibar, fuffed about with napkins and plastic cutlery, arranged the potatoes on two fruit plates. Then he attached the dinkiest speakers to his portable stereo and pressed Play.
The strains of ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’ filled the room. I curled my toes. In a past life I’d attended an exercise class run by a woman named Gertrude who I have no doubt was a corporal on leave from the German army. ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’ was the tune she made us squat to, and I can never hear it without suffering a flashback. Van Morrison croons, ‘Everywhere I go,’ and Gertrude screams, ‘BEND LOWER, BUTTOCKS OUT!’
‘I’ll be one sec,’ said Jason, and vanished into the bathroom.
Twenty minutes later I knocked on the door. ‘Jase?’
Jason has an irritable bowel and spends as long in the toilet as other people spend in the pub. I was going to demand special dispensation to eat my potato before it rotted.
‘Jase?’ I pushed open the door. And there was Jason sprawled lifeless in front of the toilet.
‘Jason!’ I screamed. He was face down and I had a mad vision of turning him over to see half of his head had been eaten away. Happily it was all there. He was pale but warm. He blinked.
‘Careful,’ I said, as he struggled to sit. ‘You must have fainted.’
‘Fainted,’ Jason repeated. He struggled with his trousers, which were at his ankles. ‘Hannah, will you marry me?’
‘What?’
‘Will you marry me?’ said Jason. He was beaming now, and ferreting in his pocket.
‘Come away from the toilet,’ I said.
I hope, for the sake of humanity, that I am alone in replying to the question, ‘Will you marry me?’ with, ‘Come away from the toilet.’
‘Did you hit your head?’ I added.
Neither of us was really listening to the other.
Jason flashed open his left hand, and I recognised his grandmother’s engagement ring. He’d shown it to me before and it reminded me of a big wart. Encrusted with red and black stones, it reeked of evil and belonged to a dead woman. Not my thing. I’d yet to see an engagement ring that was.
Jason sank to the floor again, this time on purpose. I was shocked that he wanted to do this.
‘Hannah,’ he said, ‘I’ve waited nearly five years to make you mine. Please marry me.’
I took his hand and kissed it.
‘Jason,’ I said, ‘you are a wonderful, gorgeous man. I’m so very sorry. But … no.’
Chapter 2
When I introduced Jason to a member of my family as ‘my boyfriend’, six months after we first met, Gabrielle’s reaction was ‘poor kid’. She referred to Jason being younger than I was and moony-eyed, but it still annoyed me. Who did she think I was, Heidi Fleiss? I reasoned that Gabrielle was blissfully married to my brother, Oliver, so perhaps she believed she had the monopoly on love. Her husband thought so too. When Gabrielle told him I was seeing Jason, he left a message on my answer machine: ‘Ner!’ – ‘Hannah’ is too much of a stretch for Oliver – ‘I hear you’re banging Jason! I think it’s hilarious!’
Neither Jason nor I – we were in my kitchen discussing what we should eat from the freezer at the time – agreed with him.
‘It’s because we’re younger than them,’ I said, deleting the message. ‘They think they can patronise us. Oh, and because Gab and Oliver are married. You’d think they invented it.’
Jason laughed. He often laughed at things I said, surprising me. I never thought I was funny till I got together with Jason.
That I got together with Jason at all was unlikely. He’d attended the same school as Oliver. Our older brothers had been in the same class. His family lived in Highgate, in a huge white house. The first time I set eyes on Jason, I felt I knew him. And I don’t mean that in the ‘you complete me’ sense. I felt I knew him simply because I knew hundreds of boys like him. The dark hair, the brown eyes, the wealthy family, the five-a-side football on Sunday mornings. I took one look at him and I knew which university he’d attended and that his mother had sent him food parcels once a week all through term.
As it happened, his mother hadn’t sent him food parcels all through term because she’d died when he was thirteen. She dropped dead of a heart attack in the street. She was buying nuts for a party. When he mentioned it, I remembered. Bad news is social currency – I was going to say ‘when you’re a teenager’, but on second thoughts, I’ll amend that to ‘when you’re a human being’. Aged fifteen, I had no idea how you treated someone with a dead parent, so I’d played safe and ignored him if we passed in the school corridor. I did apologise about that, later. He had noticed. He was a sensitive boy. On our third date he said, ‘Were you breastfed?’ I nearly ended it there. I didn’t, though, because he was delightful. He was enthusiastic, without cynicism, like a new puppy.
Jason and I met in the kitchen, at a New Year’s Eve party. I hate those things. I’d rather sit on my own, see in 1 January looking up medical complaints on Google. It was ten to twelve and I was about to leave. I’d decided I’d prefer to spend midnight in the Vauxhall than with these people, and I was hoping to filch some peanuts for the road. I was starving – people never provide anything substantial for guests under twenty-five; do they think hunger only hits in middle-age?
I’d just tipped the dusty remains of a packet of Doritos down my throat, when I realised that I wasn’t alone. I turned round and there was this guy, staring at me. Twit, I thought. It’s the first rule of surveillance. Never stare directly at the back of the subject’s head because chances are they will turn round and look at you. It’s instinct.
‘Yes? Can I help you?’ I said.
If I sounded harsh, it’s because I hadn’t had a good year.
He replied, ‘I like the back of your head,’ and I laughed before I could stop myself. If he’d thought of a better line I don’t think I would have stayed.
‘I’m not even meant to be here,’ I told him.
The host was a friend of Oliver, which was fine, but he and Gabrielle had said they’d meet me there and they hadn’t turned up.
‘I’m not meant to be here either,’ said Jason, who turned out to be the host’s younger brother. He was meant to be surfing in Australia, but the holiday firm he’d paid a grand had collapsed three days before and he hadn’t taken out travel insurance yet.
‘So when were you planning to take it out?’ I said. I cracked a smile. ‘On the flight home?’
He talked to me about surfing and, to my surprise, we were still in that kitchen at 5 a.m. Jason fell in love with surfing after seeing Sean Pertwee star in Blue Juice with Catherine Zeta-Jones. Not her finest hour, although it probably was Sean Pertwee’s. I was touched to meet the man who could claim with a straight face that he had been influenced by Blue Juice. I’m sure it’s why I let him kiss me.
Truth was, Jason wanted to impress, and I wanted to be impressed. A few weeks after we got together, I even tried surfing. It was his idea, not mine. I’ve never felt the need to encroach on a partner’s interests. Not least when they take place in Polzeath. I believe a crucial element in the success of any relationship is the quality time you spend apart.
I wasn’t enthralled at wearing a wetsuit. As bodies go, mine is like the Vauxhall. It does its job but isn’t flash. I accept that, but there’s a difference between compromising one’s dignity and taking liberties with it. I had the air of a walrus and my thighs squeaked as I approached the water. Though the dress code was nothing to the sport itself. Surfing made me realise how little I enjoy exerting myself. Also, I wear contacts so was forced to keep my eyes screwed up t
he entire time I was in the sea. It was a tense eight minutes.
I might not have taken to his hobbies, but I took to Jason. For five years, I’d been sleepliving. He woke me up.
I’d skipped college, become what my boss, Greg, calls a ‘blagger’. A blagger is a low life form in the world of PIs. I worked for a trace agency. The years became a blur. Your every day is spent ringing people to blag information out of them. You can do this in a nice way, but truth is, you choose the quickest. You reveal a little of your chosen persona. If I was claiming to be from the DSS, it might be, ‘We’ve just had a new system installed, it’s a nightmare.’ I was paid less than the minimum wage, I know it. It was not great for one’s self-esteem. Jason was the boot in the ass I needed. The week after we met, I talked my way into a job at Hound Dog Investigations.
Jason was still a student then, and keen to save the world. After ‘uni’, he’d been to Tibet and wouldn’t shut up about it. When he completed his ‘post-grad’ law degree he planned to specialise in human rights. He recycled his lemonade cans and copies of the Guardian. I noticed that unlike some of his peers, he treated women with reverence. Maybe, in his eyes, we all were potential mothers. Whatever, I found him charming. Old-fashioned, a real gentleman. He was an antidote to my entire lifestyle. He took me to see Hamlet at the National, and sat there for nearly four hours, wet-eyed. My eyes stayed dry. My seat nearly didn’t.
‘What did you think?’ he breathed, afterwards.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ve dated men like him.’
I’d never dated a man like Jason. Gabrielle and Oliver might scoff but we had a lot in common. Jason thought it would ‘spoil things’ if you lived together before you got married. I couldn’t agree more. I was twenty-six years old and I liked my own space. There wasn’t much of it, which made me value it all the more. I had an apartment that was pretty much all corridor, in Camden. It was a basement flat, and the lounge window was at pavement level. As I viewed the place, a tramp lifted her skirt and relieved herself in front of my railings. Even the estate agent was shocked when I made an offer. I didn’t care about tramps’ bottoms. I thought it was sad but funny. Presumably, the estate agent wouldn’t have been offended had she been a dog.
I don’t think Jason was impressed with my home, but he wasn’t repelled by it either. As he still lived with his father at the age of twenty-four, I think he saw it as some achievement that I could stuff crisp wrappers down the side of my sofa without being yelled at. Actually, I didn’t do this as often as I might. I’m a messy person who is obsessively tidy in bouts. When the flat lapses into a state worthy of Grime Watch, I’ll spend until 3 a.m. scrubbing. I find I have the eyesight of an eagle and at 4 a.m. I’ll still be pouncing on a rice grain on the kitchen floor or a biscuit crumb near the leg of the lounge table.
It would make sense to employ a cleaner, but I don’t. Even though Gabrielle taunts me, ‘It’s your heritage.’ Gabrielle gets a lot of mileage from the fact I was born in the Suburb. This isn’t a whine. Because I get even more from the fact that she was born in Mill Hill. Miw Hiw, I call it, in deference to the local accent (at the end of each word draw down both corners of your mouth as far as they’ll go).
Actually, there’s nothing wrong with Miw Hiw except that it’s a long hike out of London and not exactly kicking. I’ve spent no time in Miw Hiw, but I sense that its female inhabitants attend the local salon weekly for a do, carry bags that match their denim and tan leather uppers, and refuse to step outside unless their long acrylic nails are painted red. If ever I want to annoy Gabrielle I’ll describe a client with the words, ‘She was a bit Miw Hiw.’ Gabrielle will shriek, ‘Shut up, you’ve never even set foot in the place.’ I tell her, ‘You live in North-West London all your life, Gabrielle, you get an instinct for these things.’
Gabrielle has changed since the days she let a woman who’d escaped from an asylum and into Snippits perm and dye her hair. Oliver once showed me an old photo and I did myself an injury. She had eye make-up like Ozzy Osbourne and a barnet like Axl Rose.
Twelve years and one child later, Gabrielle resides in Belsize Park with my brother and has adjusted her image – though I wouldn’t say accordingly. Belsize Park isn’t short on high-maintenance women but I can’t believe there are many who spend quite so much on their appearance as my sister-in-law. Last September, when Jude was four months old, Oliver found a £3,000 suede coat in a plastic bag in their bedroom. Next to a box of £545 stilettos. Jimmy Shoes, I think she said they were. Anyway, Oliver gently suggested to Gabrielle that perhaps shopping was becoming ‘an emotional crutch?’
Her reply: ‘Du-uh!’
Their part-time nanny was employed shortly after, enabling Gabrielle to resume her work – she designs and makes wedding dresses – and her health club membership. I think the shopping bills decreased, a little. She claims she needs to dress well for her career, as brides-to-be want first-sight evidence of your good taste even if they don’t know they do. I’m giving attitude but secretly I defer to everything she says. Fashion is not my thing. It is hers. She reads Womens Wear Daily like a preacher reading from the Bible. Only on occasion do I doubt its influence. One morning she knocked on my door and I opened it in my Snoopy nightie. She cried, ‘Hannah, I love your look!’
When I first introduced Gabrielle and Jason, four and a half years ago, I reckoned they’d get on. Gabrielle’s knowledge of what to wear, now and in the future, what will suit, where to get your hair cut, which restaurant is hot, what wine to order, is exhaustive (and exhausting). If her mission as an ex-inmate of Miw Hiw was to become sophisticated, she succeeded. Being a mother cramped her glamorous style for about five minutes. But, but. Like Jason, she has a warm, loving heart and traditional leanings. Some minor celebrity got hitched in a dress that I swear was modelled on a toilet-roll holder doll, and I made the error of commenting on it.
In a voice of ice, Gabrielle said, ‘You know, Hannah, you should take a day off. Every girl who gets married has a secret image of herself. Of how she wants to look on her wedding day. And I believe in her right to look beautiful, if only for once in her life, and for everyone to be on her side for that moment. And it is true that brides are radiant. Even the plainest, plumpest girl is transformed. I get very angry if ever I hear someone say anything against a bride.’
I felt like shit. I deserved to.
I was surprised that Gabrielle didn’t take to Jason. I remember, early in our relationship, Jason sauntering into a café to fetch us some coffees while I sat outside. A blonde made cat-eyes at him as he passed. He didn’t notice, which amused me, so on his return I remarked on it. The conversation wandered to fidelity. Cheating, he told me, wasn’t in his nature. ‘My father never had an affair,’ he said, as if that explained it.
His words reminded me of something Gabrielle had said when I’d mentioned a case I was working on: older guy, young wife, he suspected her of cheating with her fitness instructor, and he was right.
With real exasperation, Gabrielle had said, ‘“To the exclusion of all others.” Why don’t people get that?’
How could those two not adore each other?
Well, they didn’t. They were mutually polite, ever so respectful and attentive. But they had trouble stretching civilities beyond two minutes. It was inconvenient. I couldn’t even read a magazine on Gabrielle and Oliver’s luxury toilet. Or as Gabrielle once called it, ‘luxe toilet’. What the hell does that mean? Jason would loiter outside the bathroom, sighing. Gabrielle would suddenly recall she had an urgent email to write. (‘Like what?’ I grumbled to Jason after she used this excuse once too often. ‘“Cancel the black satin. On second thoughts, I’ll make this one white.”’)
Their indifference bothered me, but not that much. It’s not as if my faith in Gabrielle was absolute. I was happy to let her correct me on the zeitgeist (now I no longer pronounce St Tropez ‘Saint Trowpez’, or Merlot ‘Merlot’), but I put her straight on quite a few things too. She was so naïve. One time she had her
purse stolen. A while later, she got a call at home from the Barclaycard Fraud Department. ‘We’ve found your credit card, madam. To establish your identity, please state your mother’s maiden name, your credit limit and your date of birth.’ It was pure luck I was there and overheard the conversation.
As Gabrielle opened her mouth to tell all, I pressed my thumb on the receiver cradle and cut off the caller.
‘What did you do that for?’ shouted Gabrielle.
I rolled my eyes. ‘You give the details, that guy runs up three and a half grand on your card.’
As it happened, it was Barclaycard Fraud Department. But it might not have been.
Chapter 3
When I turned down Jason’s marriage offer, he squirmed his hand out of my grasp and ran it over his face.
‘This isn’t happening,’ he said. ‘Tell me this isn’t happening.’ He shook his head at the ceiling and laughed, a nasty sound. Tears came and he smudged them away with his thumbs.
I watched in horror. ‘Jase,’ I said. I reached out to touch him.
He jerked away, shaking his head, one hand held up as if to ward off the devil.
‘Jason,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry.’
Easily said, but the truth. I was sorry. I was sorry he’d blown our future by asking such a stupid question. That sounds mean, but really. If you don’t like Chinese food, say, and your partner takes you to a Chinese restaurant for your birthday, even if it’s the best Chinese in the city (‘yeah, you say you don’t like Chinese food, but wait till you taste this, this is different, you’ll love it’) there is a part of you that’s going to be irked. The action of treating one’s beloved to a large meal is seemingly above reproach, but this sort of deed has an evangelical selfishness to it. The undertone is, ‘Your opinion is wrong, let me convert you to my way of thinking, you’ll be much happier …’ When in my experience, if ya don’t like Chinese food, ya just don’t like it.