Better Than Easy

by Nick Alexander

  Tom clicks and adds a drop-shadow to the Le Gîte logo he’s working on on-screen. “Not bad huh?” he says.

  I nod. “Yeah, it’s good,” I agree. “Looks like a TV thing, you know, Chaos at the Castle or something.”

  Tom smiles. “Yeah,” he says. “I bet it will be too. You and me trying to run a gîte.”

  “You must come and see the place though Tom,” I insist. “While there’s snow. It’s a bit bleak. It makes you realise just how isolated the place really is.”

  Tom pauses, saves his work-in-progress and then looks sideways at me, his brow wrinkled. “So what are you saying? Are you having doubts?”

  I shake my head. “No, not at all,” I say. “I just think, well, you need to see it – to be prepared.”

  Tom stares into my eyes, seemingly deep in thought. For a moment I think he’s going to say something important. But then he just shrugs and turns back to the TV. “If the holdup on the sale goes on much longer, I’ll probably go back to the UK anyway,” he says lightly.

  “You got stuff to do?” I ask.

  Tom shakes his head but still doesn’t look at me. His sudden interest in the TV strikes me as suspicious. “No, not really,” he says. “But I might as well get some temp work, get some money coming in. And I kind of miss the nightlife.”

  I remove my hand and sit back on the sofa, a separate being again. “I thought you meant just for, you know, a visit,” I say. “For a few days. How long are you thinking of going for?”

  Tom shrugs. “How long is a piece of string?” he says.

  “Tom!” I say, plaintively.

  “How long will the gîte thing take?” he says. “How long a mission will I get offered? It all depends, doesn’t it? How should I know?”

  I cough and stand, and start to move towards the kitchen, and then I pause and turn back. “Tom,” I say, chewing the side of my mouth. “Can we turn the TV off for a minute?”

  He glances up at me. “Why?” he says.

  “We have to talk.”

  He reaches for the remote and somewhat theatrically clicks off the TV. “What’s up?” he asks, his tone vaguely mocking.

  I move back to the sofa and sit sideways, half facing him. “I’m a bit surprised,” I say. “I mean, that you’re thinking about going back already. We haven’t discussed this at all.”

  Tom shakes his head and sighs. “I knew you were going to have an argument with me today,” he says. “It’s been brewing all day.”

  I frown. “I haven’t been here all day,” I protest. But I wonder all the same if it’s true, if he isn’t somehow right. It could be my hangover making me play up, but then it’s hard to tell. When your perception gets skewered by drugs you’re always the last to know.

  “Whatever,” Tom says, before continuing in a calmer tone of voice. “What I mean is, we can argue about this, or … not. But I can’t really see any point in me staying here if there’s no gîte project happening, can you?”

  “I’m not sure really,” I say, trying to work out my thoughts, and trying to keep an eye on them for wanton negativity at the same time. “I mean, I suppose I just thought that this was where we lived now.”

  Tom frowns at me so I continue, “I thought the gîte was about us being together, not the other way around. I didn’t realise we were together just so we could do the gîte.”

  Tom tuts, and turns towards me and takes my hand. “Hey,” he says. “Don’t make this about us. I just think it’s a good idea for me to go and earn some money,” he says. “You can see the sense in that, surely?”

  I nod. “Yeah,” I say vaguely. “I mean, I know that makes sense; I know there’s a certain logic to it…”

  “So?” Tom asks.

  “Well, I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, I understand the need for change, but if you need more nightlife, well, that’s fixable here. This is where we live. Or it’s supposed to be. And we’re not exactly broke, not with my dole and your…”

  “Well, this is where we live because we’re buying a gîte,” Tom says.

  I nod. “So what happens if it falls through then?”

  “What, the whole thing? Completely?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “What happens if, say, Chantal can’t sell us the gîte? If the whole project crashes and burns.”

  Tom shrugs. “We look for another property?” He says this in a tone of voice that implies that the answer is obvious.

  I nod. “OK, but who does? Will you be here to do that?”

  Tom shakes his head. “Hell Mark, I don’t know. I suppose you could look and then we could make the final choice together.”

  I nod.

  “I don’t really see what the prob…”

  “The problem is …” I interrupt quietly, still working it out, “that unless there’s a gîte, we aren’t together.”

  Tom frowns, first nods, and then shakes his head. “And?” he says.

  “So you’re being here wouldn’t seem to be about me really, or us, but about the gîte.”

  Tom laughs sourly.

  “What?” I ask genuinely confused.

  “Why does everything have to be about you?” He shakes his head apparently in dismay.

  I sigh. I grind my teeth a little, and then when I’m sure I can keep my tone neutral, I say earnestly, “So what’s the gîte thing about? For you?”

  Tom shakes his head. “I don’t kn…” he protests.

  “No, go on,” I interrupt. “In a nutshell, why do you want to do this?”

  “Maybe we should have asked these questions before,” I think.

  Tom shakes his head and pouts. “I don’t know. Life change?”

  I nod. “OK, life change.”

  “Yeah, changing my life. You know that. We talked about it – around when my dad died.”

  “OK, but living here with me, that’s a life change isn’t it?”

  Tom shrugs. “Kind of. But I could be with you anywhere. I don’t mean that to sound… What I mean is that the reason I’m here is because we’re buying a gîte. Here. And if that goes, then the reason goes. I don’t see what’s so wrong with that.”

  “So it isn’t about being with me?” I say, wincing at the statement.

  “Well, no,” he says. “Why does it have to be about you?”

  I nod. “So let me get this right.”

  “Mark…” Tom whines.

  “Your decision to live here or stay in the UK wasn’t about us being together.”

  “Not primarily, no,” Tom says.

  “So it’s about… What?” I say.

  Tom shrugs.

  “Well, it would have to be about … you?” I say.

  Tom shakes his head. “You see,” he says, clicking the TV back on. “I told you. You’re impossible today.”

  “End of intermission?” I ask.

  “End of intermission,” Tom replies.

  “Fuck you too,” I think. What I actually say is, “OK. Enjoy the game show. It looks like a really good one.” It somehow means the same thing.

  Sixty-Forty Split

  Jenny hands me a mug of tea and sits opposite at the tiny kitchen table. She’s wearing a huge Arran jumper that makes her look like some clinical over-eater from a TV documentary. I wrinkle my nose and she looks down at herself.

  “The jumper?” she asks.

  I nod. “It makes you look huge!” I laugh.

  “I know. Mum made it. Isn’t it the worst? I never wear it outdoors. It’s very warm though, very good for keeping the heating bill down. I’ve lost weight actually.”

  I nod. “It shows in your face, but the jumper kind of hides everything else.” I raise my chin towards the sofa where Sarah is sleeping. “A bit early for her isn’t it?”

  Jenny glances over and sighs. “She’s got a cold. She’s been dozing all day. Poor little thing.” She sips her tea. “So come on then,” she says. “Tell aunty Jenny all about it.”

  I roll my eyes. “Actually, I want your news,” I say. “I can’t believe I haven
’t seen you for so long.”

  “Five weeks,” she says, running her fingers through her hair. “I saw you the morning I left for England. I was away for two weeks, so…”

  I nod. “Yes, I expect that’s it. I just kind of lost the habit of popping upstairs.”

  “I’ve been busy too,” she says. “I’ve been out more than usual.”

  “Been having a lot of doctor’s appointments?” I snigger.

  “Tom told you!” she says, flashing the whites of her eyes at me.

  I nod. “I was a bit surprised to be learning the intimate details of your life from Tom,” I say. “But, well, I can hardly complain; if I can’t be bothered to come up two flights of steps … Anyway, tell me.”

  “Well …” she says, licking her lips, flicking her hair back and clearly relishing the story. “He’s a doctor, he’s very, very cute, he speaks wonderful English – thank God – he’s good in bed …”

  “Thank God he’s good in bed?” I ask, grinning.

  “No, the English … well, yeah, both. Anyway, he’s the slowest man to, you know, come, that I’ve ever met.”

  I frown. “And for you girls that’s a good thing, right?”

  She nods. “Sure is!” she says.

  I pull a face and shrug. “More than ten minutes of foreplay and I’m bored,” I say.

  Jenny laughs and flicks her hair back again. “Men!” she says. “Tom said the exact same thing. You’re all the same!”

  “Except Doctor Sex,” I say.

  Jenny blushes and flicks her hair yet again. “Except Doctor Sex.”

  “So Jenny has a boyfriend,” I say. I suddenly realise I’m supposed to be noticing something here. “What exactly has happened to your hair?” I ask.

  Jenny bounces the edges of her new haircut against her knuckles, shampoo-ad style and frowns at me. “What’s wrong with it?” she asks.

  I shake my head. “Nothing,” I say. “It looks great. It’s just … well, you suddenly look like you fell out of a Garnier advert or something, that’s all.”

  Jenny smirks, blushes slightly, and twists her head as if to demonstrate just how swirly the new hair is. “I kind of forgot about my appearance for a while back there – when I had Sarah, I think. Anyway, I walked into this really posh salon a few weeks ago and said, ‘Fix this.’ I think it’s called coming back to life after having a baby.”

  I push my lips out and nod appreciatively. “I think it’s called cruising your doctor actually,” I say. “Anyway, they sure fixed it. It makes you look heaps younger.”

  “Thanks. I’m not sure how long it will last though. It seems you have to keep going back there if you want it to carry on looking this way.”

  “The first hit’s free,” I laugh.

  “Exactly,” Jenny says. “Only it wasn’t. Far from it.”

  “So how did you meet him anyway? He’s not your doctor is he?”

  Jenny smirks. “He was, for one visit – for thrush of all things. Very romantic! And then he phoned me and asked me on a date – well, it wasn’t really a date. We talked for ages and I told him I was having trouble meeting people here and so he asked me out for a drink … and then, well, you know how it goes.”

  I grimace. “Thrush?” I say. “Gross. So he saw the goods beforehand so to speak?”

  Jenny blushes and shrugs coyly.

  “Is that allowed anyway?” I ask. “Shagging patients? Patients with thrush!”

  Jenny laughs. “Well no! That’s why I had to find a new doctor. He was very professional about it. We didn’t shag to start with.”

  “Not until the thrush had gone,” I say.

  “Well … no,” Jenny says. “I changed doctors, and the cream worked and … Actually I think the new one is a lesbian. She’s all plaid shirts and stretch pants.”

  “Maybe she’ll ask you out as well.”

  Jenny laughs. “Heaven forbid,” she says. “She’s about eighty.”

  “So is it love?” I ask her. “Or just a good time?”

  Jenny clears her throat and looks thoughtful. “I’m not sure really,” she says, ignoring or missing my Rose Royce reference. “I mean, he’s quite unusual, he’s a bit, you know, metro-sexual, and he has lovely clothes, always very clean and tidy. It makes a change after all that beer and football and shell-suits with Nick.”

  “He sounds gay!” I laugh.

  Jenny squashes her lips together. “I knew you’d say that, but no, he’s very masculine. Not every straight man is a caveman you know. No, he’s good looking and fun and great company and good in bed …”

  I laugh. “So you are in love with him!”

  “I’m not that sure I understand the love thing anymore. I mean, I loved Nick, really I did, and he used to give me a black eye every other weekend. So …” She sighs. “I think maybe I don’t trust my judgement anymore,” she says. “And anyway it’s just temporary. I think. Maybe I have commitment issues … anyway, we’ll see. Plus, I keep waiting to find out what’s wrong with him, you know?”

  I laugh. “Yeah, I know that one,” I say.

  “Anyway, it’s just good to have sex to be honest,” she says. “And good sex at that. I was worried that my vagina was gonna heal over.”

  I pull a face. “Jenny!” I protest.

  “Oooh, never use the V word with a gay man,” she says mockingly. “We have to listen to all your gruesome details! At any rate, it’s good at the moment, so I’m just trying to enjoy it while it lasts.”

  “Well, I’m intrigued,” I say. “I’d like to see him.”

  Jenny nods and squints. “Yeah, I’d like a second opinion really. I mean he’s very sweet, but … Oh, I don’t know. I’ll arrange a dinner or something so you can meet him and judge for yourself. If it lasts that long.”

  I frown at her. “You don’t sound very convinced.”

  Jenny shrugs and laughs. “Anyway,” she says. “What’s up with you and Tom? I mean, I’m assuming that if you’ve finally remembered my existence it’s because you two have had a row.”

  “That’s so unfair!” I protest.

  “But you have?” she asks.

  I shake my head. “It’s so not true that I only come and see you when …”

  “Tom told me,” Jenny interjects. “I saw him at the boulangerie this morning and asked how things were, and he pulled a face. And now here you are. That’s all.”

  I frown at this news. “This morning, we hadn’t had a row,” I say. “Anyway, it’s not really a row.”

  “But?”

  “OK. Ready?”

  Jenny nods and settles into her chair. “Ready,” she says.

  So I tell Jenny about Tom and the gîte. I try not to exaggerate his words, nor to make myself sound better by deforming my own. I’m honestly searching for understanding, not just an ally.

  “So you see,” I finish. “It just worries me – it seems important to me – that our motives are so different. For me it’s about Tom – I don’t really give a damn about the gîte. And Tom …”

  “Tom doesn’t really give a damn about you,” Jenny says.

  I roll my eyes. “I so didn’t say that,” I say.

  Jenny nods, seriously. “I know,” she says. “I’m just pushing things to extremes to think about them more clearly.”

  “It’s like that Dante character,” I say. “You remember?”

  Jenny nods. “The serial killer psychopath mafia guy?”

  I nod. “Yeah. That’ll be the one. Well, that was all about Tom’s mid-life crisis and his need for change too. He was far more in love with the farm, with the idea of a new life, than he was with anything Dante had to offer.”

  Jenny nods. “I see what you mean.”

  “Dante was like a complete package deal,” I say. “I’m not sure I want to be Tom’s life change package.”

  Jenny frowns, then smiles. “Why not?”

  I shrug. “Why not what?”

  “Well, if he’s the man you love, if it’s all about him like you say it is, the
n why not be the life change package he needs?”

  I laugh. “Yeah, I suppose you have a point.”

  “And of course it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you,” Jenny says. “It’s like Nick. You know he was, well, pretty loaded really. And I used to sit and think – it’s a terrible thing to say – but I used to sit and try to work out what I liked about him. And part of it, quite a big part really, was the nice house and the holidays and the car. And sometimes I think that if he’d been some poor skivvy builder I never would have ended up with him.”

  I grimace. “Ouch,” I say.

  “But that doesn’t mean I didn’t love him,” Jenny says. “And it doesn’t mean I was only with him for the money. It’s just that you, you know, have a relationship with the whole thing, the whole package. And that includes love and sex, and how easy they are to get on with, but also lifestyle, holidays and house, and blah-dy-blah. What I mean is … no, I’m not quite sure what I mean.”

  She pulls a face and frowns, then smiles and looks at me intently. “Yes I do! What I mean, is that you’d have to have a computer for a brain to be able to separate each bit out, to isolate each part of your overall contentment, or lack of …”

  I nod. “Yeah, I kind of see what you mean,” I say. “So, say Tom’s motivation is sixty-percent the gîte and forty-percent me and mine is the other way around – does it really matter?”

  Jenny shrugs. “Well yeah,” she says. “Not if you’re happy with it. That’s what I would say.”

  I nod and smile. “Wise words,” I say.

  “It’s like people with, you know, toy boys or sugar daddies. People get so self-righteous about it all.” She shakes her head and then sips her tea. “But I always think, what does it matter? As long as everyone’s happy. People leave all the time because of shit lifestyle, because the husband never gets up from in front of the telly, because there’s always too much debt; shit like that breaks up relationships every day. If you can’t get the things you need in a relationship, then you fuck off. So what’s so wrong with enjoying being with someone because they do give you the things you need? Including, in some cases, money.”