Don't You Want Me?

by India Knight

  He shrugs. ‘So, what did she say? Louisa.’

  ‘She really likes you. She thinks you’re her boyfriend.’

  ‘Yeah? Why’s that, then?’

  ‘Because you slept with her, maybe, idiot-head.’

  ‘I vass only obeyink orrders,’ he says.

  ‘What orders?’

  ‘Yours, love.’

  ‘I didn’t order you to sleep with her!’

  ‘Funny,’ says Frank. ‘I thought that was exactly what you did. Pushed us together. Bit baffling, Stell.’

  ‘Anyway, now she thinks you’re an item.’

  He looks completely uninterested. This is awful, obviously, but it makes me very, very happy.

  ‘Frankie, you might at least pretend to care. For God’s sake. You did sleep with her.’

  ‘Sleepies,’ says Honey.

  ‘I do care. I care that you’re still friends. You are, I hope?’

  ‘I don’t know, Frank. I can’t imagine she’s exactly going to whoop with joy and crack open the champagne when she finds out what really went on. And it’s going to have to come from me – I’m going to have to tell her, sooner or later. Sooner, probably. I feel like such a bitch.’

  ‘Let’s not think about it now,’ says Frank. ‘And stop wincing. She’s a big girl. She’ll get over it.’

  ‘She was imagining herself more or less engaged to you.’

  ‘Silly her, then,’ says Frank. ‘I went out of my way to give her the very opposite of that impression. I always do.’

  I sigh massively. ‘Anyway. Do you want some food? I couldn’t be bothered to cook. I was going to get a takeaway. Or are you going out?’

  ‘Out?’ says Frank.

  ‘Yes, you know. Outside. The great outdoors. The outside world. Là-bas.’

  ‘No,’ says Frank. ‘No, I wasn’t going out.’

  We watch Maisy at the swimming baths. Her swimming costume is stripy, with a hole for the tail.

  ‘Do you want me to go out?’ says Frank.

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Would you rather I went out?’

  ‘It’s up to you. I meant, don’t stay on my account. If you want to go out, then go out.’

  ‘I see,’ says Frank. ‘OK.’

  ‘About last night …’

  ‘And the night before,’ he says. I wish he wouldn’t give me those looks – they make me die.

  ‘I … we … I’m not expecting … you don’t have to … You’re a free man, Frankie.’

  ‘When’s Honey going to bed?’ Frank asks.

  ‘In a minute.’

  ‘Shall I take her up?’

  ‘No, let her finish watching this one.’

  ‘OK. You were saying?’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. I was trying to be subtle, Frank. What I was trying to say is, it’s OK. I don’t expect us to start going out. It was really great, but I don’t want it to feel awkward between us, and so I was saying, if you want to go out, then go out. With everything that implies.’

  ‘You want me to bring strange girls home?’

  ‘If you want to.’ No no no.

  ‘What, as in threesomes?’ he laughs. ‘Blimey.’

  ‘No! Not as in threesomes. As in sexual partners for you.’ I can hear my voice, and it sounds very hard. I don’t mean it to. But I can’t lie in my real voice.

  ‘For you,’ says Honey.

  ‘But …’ Frank has stopped laughing. His face is pale and tight.

  ‘That’s all I was saying. Come on, Honey, bed. Sleepies.’

  ‘Stella!’

  ‘In a minute,’ I say, already halfway up the stairs. Now, I think to myself as I tuck Honey in. Now. I’m going to ask him now, about his daughter and his daughter’s mother and why his loveliness doesn’t extend to them. Now.

  But when I come back down, he’s gone.

  19

  Twenty minutes later, the door goes. He must have forgotten his keys.

  ‘Thank God,’ I say as I open the door.

  ‘Hello,’ says Mary. Am I late, pet?’

  ‘Hello, Mary. Er, no. You’re not late at all. In fact …’ What’s she doing here?

  Mary scoots past me and takes off her coat.

  ‘Brass monkeys,’ she shivers. ‘Now, is my Honey still up?’

  ‘She’s asleep. Er, Mary?’

  ‘Look at you,’ says Mary. ‘Still in your scruffy old house clothes. It’s already quarter to nine – you should really go and get ready. I’ve brought my things in case you wanted me to stay the night again.’

  ‘I … I think you made a mistake, Mary. No baby-sitting tonight.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ says Mary. ‘Francis said. Rang this afternoon. About five-ish. Taking you to dinner, to some French place, to celebrate something or other, he said. I know it’s not really any of my business,’ she continues, ‘but are you …’

  ‘No,’ I reply, rather dazed. ‘We’re not.’ Oh, no, no. Frank was taking me out to dinner to celebrate his American exhibition and I basically took down my trousers, bent over and crapped all over his evening. Oh, God. I swallow hard. It stings behind my eyes.

  ‘Only his mam asks after him such a lot, and I like to keep her up to date. You and Francis seem to get on so well …’

  ‘Yes,’ I murmur. ‘Yes, we do.’

  ‘It’s just he’s a grown man now, thirty-five, and she frets about him having a family, you know. Finding the time for it, what with all the fuss they make of him down here. I don’t like those cows much, though, do you? Now the dolphin, there’s a nice animal.’

  ‘Mary, he’s not here,’ I say. I feel dazed; I can’t think straight. ‘I’m so sorry. I think you’d better go home.’

  ‘Aah, he’ll turn up. Men are always late,’ she says cosily, heading for the kitchen. ‘Cup of tea, Mrs Midhurst?’

  ‘No thanks. Look, I really don’t think he’s coming. I’ll call you a taxi to take you home.’

  ‘Don’t be so silly. I’ll just settle myself down here, and you go and have a nice hot bath. Go on! Off with you.’

  ‘I, er, OK.’ Mary in capable mode can be very persuasive.

  I’ve no sooner got into the bath, like an obedient child, than I get out again, spraying slidey water everywhere and practically breaking my leg in the process. What was all that business about Frank’s mother worrying that Frank was forgetting about having a family? What was that?

  ‘Mary,’ I shout, racing down the stairs in my kimono.

  ‘Mrs Midhurst!’ she says, coming into the hall. ‘You’ll catch your death.’

  ‘Stella, please. I’ve asked you a thousand times.’

  ‘You’re a bad girl, Stella. What is it, pet?’

  ‘Frank. Francis.’

  ‘Yes?’ she says, blinking helpfully.

  ‘How well do you know him?’

  ‘Francis? Oh, I’ve known him since he was a child.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. I knew that.’

  ‘I’ll tell you all about it one day, if you like. Only – ’ she looks at her watch – ‘you’re going to be very late if you don’t get a move on.’

  ‘Now, Mary, tell me now.’

  ‘Well, all right. But you’ll catch …’

  ‘Never mind about that.’

  ‘What would you like to know?’ asks Mary, with the true gossip lover’s glint in her eye.

  ‘How? How do you know him?’

  ‘His mam and I are old, old friends,’ she says. ‘Back home. We were at school together. And my eldest, Andrew, was at school with Francis. Isn’t that nice?’

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s lovely.’

  ‘It is,’ agrees Mary. ‘Was there anything else? Only I’m watching such an interesting programme. About fish, you know. Strange beasts, they are, this lot, with huge teeth. I didn’t think a fish could have very big teeth, did you? Or a hen,’ she adds pensively.

  ‘Hens? No. Fish, I’m not sure. Look, I know this sounds odd, but what I really need to know – please, Mary, it’s important – is wheth
er Frankie – Francis – was … well behaved. Before he came to London. Was he good, Mary? Did he …’

  ‘Oh, no,’ says Mary, shaking her head sadly. ‘He was a very bad boy. Broke his mam’s heart.’

  That feeling comes again – that empty, drained, I’ve-been-weeping-for-days feeling. I push it away and sit down on the stairs.

  ‘He was always naughty,’ she says. ‘Always. From childhood. Always in trouble. But kind, you know, to his mam and to his brothers and sisters. Do you know,’ she says, ‘I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but he sends money home every month.’

  ‘That’s very sweet,’ I agree. I feel like there’s a wasp buzzing about inside my head. ‘But you said he broke his mother’s heart.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ says Mary cheerily. ‘She was very upset when he said he was moving to London. She relied on him, you see. For everything. What with her husband dead. So she was in pieces. She cried for days and begged him not to go. She’s all right now, though. Never happier. She does make a fuss,’ Mary chuckles affectionately. ‘Loves a drama, that one.’

  ‘What about girls?’

  ‘Oh,’ Mary laughs – ho ho ho – ‘well, yes. He was always a one for the girls, that’s for sure. And they were a one for him too. Can’t say I blame them. Lovely lad. Lovely head of hair.’

  ‘Quite. Was there ever, you know, any trouble?’

  Mary’s round blue eyes gaze up at me, appalled.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she cries, ‘Mrs Midhurst, no. Nothing like that. Goodness me, no. Francis is a gent, always has been. Lovely manners. He has charm, you know, I’ll grant you. He’s a bobby-dazzler. And he did make the girls cry sometimes – they all wanted to marry him. It’s a small place, Mrs … Stella, you see. He was the pick of the crop.’

  ‘But nothing bad? Nothing really bad?’

  ‘No!’ she cries, scandalized at the very idea. ‘Heavens, no. Nothing like that.’

  ‘OK. Sorry about the interrogation, Mary. Sorry. And thank you. Thank you.’

  ‘Can I go back to my fish now?’ asks Mary.

  ‘Yes, please do.’

  I fly back up the stairs, heart pounding, and fall on to the phone. I need to have a little chat with Dominic. Now.

  ‘Do we really have to do this now?’ says Dominic sleepily. ‘It’s half past six in the bloody morning.’

  ‘Too fucking right we do,’ I reply.

  ‘OK,’ yawns Dominic. ‘I lied.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I lied,’ his disembodied voice says, sounding bored. ‘OK? I’m hanging up now. I’ll call you later.’

  ‘What do you mean, you lied? Why did you lie?’

  ‘I mean I made it up. Invented it. Span a falsehood. J’ai menti. Do you understand?’

  ‘But why, Dom?’

  Dominic laughs. ‘I’ve got nothing against Francis. Did you hear about the exhibition, by the way? Fan-fucking-tastic.’ He pauses. ‘Not least because it’ll get him away from you. I think your set-up is overly cosy.’

  ‘Why did you lie?’

  ‘Why are you asking?’

  ‘Dominic, I am about two seconds away from really, really losing my temper. Just answer me, will you?’ I roar down the phone.

  Dom seems to find my rage deeply entertaining: he allows himself another slow, lazy laugh.

  ‘Got the hots for Frankie, have we? Christ, Stella.’

  ‘Dominic.’

  ‘OK, OK. It’s very simple, Stella. I have these people in my working life. I’m surrounded by them: bloody provincials with two O-levels and a way with a brush. They can’t talk, Stella, in case you hadn’t noticed. They can’t hold a knife as though it weren’t a pen. And that’s one thing. But the oiks spreading into my personal life – well, that’s quite another thing. I don’t want you shacked up with some Geordie yobbo. So I just told you something that I thought would encourage you to keep your distance. And,’ he adds languidly, ‘it worked.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Dom?’ I whisper. ‘You know Frank lives here.’ I could pass out with shock.

  ‘Well, if you must have the Geordie yobbo as a lodger, fine,’ Dominic says generously. ‘What I meant was, I’m not warmed by the prospect of having the Geordie yobbo in your bed. In our bed, to be technically accurate. Not that I have any wish to return to it, you understand. “Our” bed means the bed that I paid for. In my house. With the mother of my child. Which leads me to Honey.’

  ‘What about her?’

  Dominic sniggers. ‘Do you really think, Stella, that I want my daughter to have some peasant for a stepfather? Some uneducated, inarticulate oik like Frank? As for his legendary promiscuity …’

  ‘Leave it.’

  ‘The fog on the Tyne is all mine, all mine,’ Dominic sings down the line, his voice echoing over the oceans, his accent grotesquely, cartoonishly distorted. ‘At least that wimp Rupert went to public school.’

  ‘You make me sick, Dominic,’ I tell him. ‘You make me vomit.’

  ‘See you,’ says Dom, the smile still in his voice. ‘Love to Honey.’

  I throw the phone across the room.

  And then I run, run to the bathroom.

  ‘That’s better,’ says Mary approvingly. ‘I love that dress.’

  ‘Did Francis tell you the name of the restaurant, Mary? Please, try and remember.’

  ‘Restaurant, restaurant … Oh, yes. He said something about the French place around the corner, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘Did he say what time he’d booked for?’

  ‘Nine o’clock, I think.’

  ‘What’s it now?’

  ‘Ooh,’ she says pulling up her woollen sleeve incredibly slowly. ‘Quarter to ten.’

  ‘Stay here, Mary, OK? Is that OK? Just please stay here.’ I grab my coat and keys and fly out of the door.

  ‘Have fun, pet,’ says Mary. I hope you find him.’

  Odette’s. He must have meant Odette’s, where Rupert took Cressida. It’s on Regent’s Park Road, where Louisa lives. Surely he can’t have asked …

  No. I run out of the door, springing on my trainers, and keep running, like Forrest Gump. How can I have been so thick? I’m Forrest Gump myself, from my thick head to my bu-ttocks.

  Five minutes later, panting like a dog, I push open the door of the restaurant. There he is, eating, at a table set for two, a bottle of wine in front of him. The silver on the table glitters in the candlelight.

  ‘Frank.’

  He looks up; I register his surprise.

  ‘Stella.’

  ‘So bloody like you to deprive me of my dinner. Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘Nice to see you. I was going to. But then you kicked me out.’

  ‘Don’t be wanky, Frankie.’

  ‘Could we have another menu, please?’ Frank asks the waiter. ‘Here, have some wine.’ He passes me his glass.

  I raise it. ‘Congratulations, Frank. Well done. I am very proud of you.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘What are you eating?’

  ‘Onion tarte tatin. Want some?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  He puts a forkful into my mouth. I fleetingly wonder whether it would be bad form to hintfully fellate the fork.

  ‘So,’ says Frank.

  ‘So,’ I say.

  ‘Here we are.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Want me to give you more pulling tips? Point out the dirty rides?’

  ‘Have you been casing the joint?’

  Frank gives me an especially Frank look.

  ‘No, Stella. I’ve been eating my dinner.’

  ‘I must order mine.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘I’m sorry about earlier, Frankie,’ I say thickly, addressing the menu. ‘I got this weird idea into my head. I …’

  ‘It’s OK, love,’ he says, raising his hand. ‘I understand. What are you eating?’

  ‘Steak. You don’t understand, actually …’

  ‘Don’t spoil it,’ he says gently, looking at m
e hard. ‘I like having my dinner with you.’

  ‘What I mean to say, Frankie – no, please listen – is, do you think you could not point out the dirty rides any more?’

  ‘OK,’ says Frank slowly, still fixing me with his eyes.

  ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘No,’ he smiles, filling the glass the waiter has just brought.

  ‘I wouldn’t love it any more. And I wouldn’t love it if you brought strange girls home,’ I add. ‘I wouldn’t love strange girls in pants. In the bathroom. Frankly.’

  ‘Really?’ smiles Frank, and with his lovely smile an entire ocean of complications and what ifs and oh my Gods just seems to float away. ‘Mmm. I was getting kind of tired of them myself.’

  ‘Look,’ I say, a grin splitting my face from ear to ear, ‘I don’t know what’ll happen in the end. But after we’ve finished eating, could we just go home and …’

  Frank looks down at his plate and then flicks his eyes at me. ‘Yes,’ he says, in his low voice, with his grey eyes, with his hard mouth that make me d-r-o-o-1. He smiles a smile that manages to be dirty and sweet at the same time. ‘Let’s eat our dinner and go home and go to bed and not come out till Christmas.’

  We look at each other and carry on eating, probably faster than is seemly. ‘I don’t want pudding,’ I say, with my mouth full.

  ‘Bloody hell, Stella,’ he laughs. ‘Know what you mean, though. D’you think they’ll put the cork back in the wine for us?’

  ‘Corky shmorky. Let’s go home.’

  We pay the bill and I get my coat and suddenly we’re out in the street. My hand’s in his hand and it stays there this time and it’s really sexy – SEXUS MAXIMUS, is what it is, SEXUS VOLCANICUS, is what I want to scream – but I have to tell you, and I might be going mad, that sexy is not the only thing it is.

  I turn to Frank and am about to speak, but then I think, No, I’ve said enough. He looks at me.

  ‘Be,’ he says. ‘Let’s go home, Stella, and just … be.’

  Acknowledgements

  ‘Fog on the Tyne’, written by Alan Hull; reproduced by kind permission of The Charisma Music Publishing Co. Ltd/EMI Music Publishing.

  ‘You Made Me Love You’, words by Joseph McCarthy, music by James Monaco, © 1913 Broadway Music Corp., USA. (50%) Redwood Music Ltd, London NW 1 8BD; reproduced by permission of International Music Publications Ltd. (50%) Francis Day & Hunter Ltd, London WC2H OQY; reproduced by permission. All rights reserved.