Unsuitable Men

by Pippa Wright

  I looked back at the girl I was when I first arrived at Auntie Lyd’s, sobbing on the doorstep, as I might look at a stranger: with sympathetic compassion, but also distance and a certain benevolent bemusement. I had thought that I was nothing without Martin, when really I had been nothing when I was with him. My opinions didn’t count – not to him but, far worse, not to me. I had felt inferior to everyone, all the time, at home and at work; an outcast grateful to be allowed to play with the other children. Always the anthropologist, taking my assiduous notes on the natives’ behaviour, standing outside of it all; believing that to be unnoticed was a kind of acceptance. How had I expected people to accept me when I was so busy studying them that I hardly had time to think about who I was?

  After refusing Martin’s proposal I felt empowered, emboldened, as if from now on I was going to stride confidently through life in the manner of Auntie Lyd as Destiny Devereux, all shoulder pads and hairspray and ambition. I’d had the confidence to pitch to Amanda for the features editor role as I saw it, not as I thought she wanted it to be. I’d pressed for Unsuitable Men to be promoted to the magazine from the website, but with a difference: I was hanging up my dating hat for now, as far as unsuitables went. I suggested the column be passed on to one of Noonoo’s society friends – Kinshasa Norrington-Davies had just split from Timmo Windlesham and was as publicity-hungry as ever. She’d be perfect. I proposed more art history, of course, and the return of Behind the Rope. And, thinking like a journalist, and with her prior approval, I had suggested former television star Lydia Bell as Country House’s new agony aunt.

  Naturally the features editor job had gone to someone else. Atlanta Beaulieu, formerly of Tatler, would be joining the staff in a few short weeks.

  Ticky had been personally outraged, as if her three weeks of pencil skirts and pointy-shoed efficiency should have guaranteed her Martha’s old job, and mitigated against three years of shameless work avoidance. ‘Like, did Maaahn not even notice that I have stayed until at least four-thirty every day?’ But her dress-for-success campaign had not been entirely in vain. Amanda agreed that Ticky’s interrogation tactics should not go to waste – from now on she would be the first-choice interviewer at the magazine. It was enough of a carrot to keep Ticky from backsliding into her old ways. For now, at least.

  After the initial shock, I hadn’t been especially surprised not to get the job. It would have been too easy a ride to just sail into that promotion after spending so many years fading into the background. Martha got her fairy-tale ending, running off into the Highlands with a billionaire bachelor; I got the real-life version. It was going to take more work before I got taken seriously as a player when it came to my career. I’d been taking it all as seriously as I took myself – which is to say, not very. I’d thought myself so superior to the posh girls who spent a few aimless years on the magazine before bagging themselves a husband and retiring to domesticity in the countryside, and yet I had been just like them: I’d treated my job as a diverting distraction while I focused all my energies on my boyfriend as the only future that mattered. Now that I didn’t have the option of being rescued by a Prince Charming, it was time to roll my sleeves up and get on with sorting out my own future.

  But Amanda did agree to restore Behind the Rope as a website feature, and I was relieved of my Unsuitable Men duties once I’d finished writing a final column summarizing what I’d learned from it all. I’d already abandoned several drafts without being able to come to any sort of tidy conclusion. I supposed I’d learned at least that dating wasn’t as scary as I’d feared. That sometimes you can have a lot of fun with someone who doesn’t tick all the boxes – or any of them. I was an experienced sexter. And I was pretty sure I could now identify a fauxmosexual at fifty paces. I wasn’t sure I was any closer to identifying a suitable man though. I’d always thought Martin was the epitome of suitable, and that had been proved spectacularly wrong. I guessed that meant that a truly suitable man might come in an entirely different package from the one I had always expected. Perhaps that was the only conclusion I could come to. It didn’t seem like much of an ending.

  As for the advice-columnist pitch, I’d assumed by her silence that Amanda had nixed that idea. Until I came home from work one evening to find her sitting with Auntie Lyd in the kitchen, paperwork spread out between them on the table.

  It was strange seeing Amanda in my kitchen: a weird collision of my work and home lives, like coming across a photocopier in my bedroom. Auntie Lyd didn’t seem to find it odd at all – she was regaling Amanda with the continued adventure of her attempts to give up smoking, brandishing the nicotine patches that marched up both of her arms, while Jim paid attentive court to both of them. It no longer seemed strange to see him there. Even though the work on Auntie Lyd’s house was now finished, he had become so much a part of the household that it was almost strange if he wasn’t there when I came home from work. He insisted it was a quiet time of year for him, and that he was waiting for things to pick up, but I had overheard him turning down a job just last week. I think he was unwilling to leave Auntie Lyd’s side until he knew she was restored to full health. It made me feel safer to know that he was there, and we exchanged smiles as I came into the kitchen. Even though Auntie Lyd’s progress had been amazing, the thought of her collapse, all alone, still haunted me and I was reassured to know she had somebody strong around the house while I was at work.

  ‘Rory,’ said Amanda, looking at her watch as I approached them. ‘Is that the time already? Lydia, I’ve kept you for far too long, I must be going.’ She stood up and smoothed down the nubbly weave of her Chanel skirt.

  ‘Good to meet you, Amanda,’ said Jim, standing up and offering her his callused hand. She smiled back and shook his hand warmly.

  ‘And you, Jim. I do hope we’ll meet again soon.’

  It seemed an odd thing to say. I wondered under what circumstances they might possibly meet again; unless Amanda had some plumbing work that needed doing. She scooped up the papers on the table and turned to Auntie Lyd. ‘Please don’t get up, Lydia. I’ll take these contracts back to the office and once they’ve been countersigned by one of the Bettertons, I’ll send you a copy for your records.’ She held out her hand to my aunt. ‘Welcome to the team.’

  ‘Does this mean you’re going to have to file your copy to me, Auntie Lyd?’ I asked, taking it all in.

  ‘Of course, darling, it’s in my contract,’ she laughed. ‘You’re the boss.’

  ‘Interesting,’ I mused. ‘No chance of late delivery, Auntie Lyd. If only it was as easy to chase everyone as it will be to chase you.’

  Amanda pushed her chair back, readying herself to leave. ‘True. But could you really stand to share living space with any of our other columnists?’ she asked, raising an eyebrow by a millimetre. Wonders would never cease. Amanda had a sense of humour. ‘Rory might I ask you to show me out?’

  I translated this as a request to speak to me alone rather than an inability to negotiate the short flight of stairs to the front door, and led the way to the hall with the clack of Amanda’s high heels following close behind.

  She checked her hair in the hall mirror appraisingly turning her head from side to side. ‘Now I see why you wanted to stop writing Unsuitable Men,’ she said, flicking her blonde fringe out of her eyes.

  ‘Do you?’ I asked, mystified. Auntie Lyd had had nothing to do with it. It just seemed like something that had served its purpose. I’d thought I’d get over Martin by dating other men, but in fact I’d got over him all by myself. I didn’t feel the need to bury myself in ridiculous situations any more, either for work or supposed pleasure.

  ‘Well,’ said Amanda, turning around from the mirror. ‘He is rather gorgeous.’

  ‘Who— Wait, you mean Jim?’

  ‘Of course I do, Rory, who else would I mean?’

  ‘Oh no,’ I laughed, a little too loudly. ‘Really, there’s nothing going on there. Truly.’

  Amanda raised one expensively th
readed eyebrow. Well, why ever not? I saw the way you two were looking at each other.’

  I flushed. ‘We’re just friends,’ I said, unable to look her straight in the eye even though I was telling the truth. How had he been looking at me? I wanted to ask. How was I looking at him?

  ‘If you say so,’ shrugged Amanda. She took her BlackBerry out of her bag and started scrolling through messages as she walked to the front door. ‘Shame. I’d leap on him myself if I wasn’t already married. See you at the office.’

  I shut the door behind her, leaning my back against it. Although I knew Jim couldn’t have heard our conversation without having hung out on the stairs with a hand cupped behind his ear, which seemed unlikely, I felt a sickly wash of shame and embarrassment that stopped me from going down to the kitchen. Whatever Amanda thought, Jim had made it clear that he wasn’t interested in me like that. I’d told myself that was fine: we were best as friends, united in our concern for Auntie Lyd. I’d been careful to suppress any thoughts of Jim that weren’t strictly platonic. I’d not allowed myself a single daydream about our kiss in the kitchen. No, not one. I averted my eyes from his muscular arms in those terrible T-shirts. I certainly never thought about how it would feel to have those arms wrapped around me. Well, not often, anyway. Oh God, who was I kidding? I thought I’d hidden it from everyone. I thought I’d hidden it from myself, even. And yet apparently it was clear to a casual visitor to our home that I was drooling after him like a lovesick teenager. What if Jim had noticed all along?

  He’d tried to talk to me a few times this week, his expression unusually serious, but I’d made excuses to rush away. I didn’t need to hear him tell me again that nothing was going to happen between us. That it had just been a drunken kiss. I mean, there’s facing up to reality and then there’s masochistically putting yourself in a situation where you know you’re going to be told something unwelcome. Why would I do that?

  I heard steps coming up to the hall, and shrank back into the shadows in case it actually was Jim, come to close match in person like one of the unsuitables from My Mate’s Great made flesh. But it was Auntie Lyd who appeared at the top of the stairs. She stopped to catch her breath and I coughed before I stepped forward, in case the sight of me emerging unexpectedly from the shadows made her jump. But she pressed a hand to her heart anyway.

  ‘Oh, Rory, what are you doing skulking there? Honestly. Anyone would think you were trying to give me another heart attack.’

  ‘How else am I going to get my hands on your millions?’ I teased.

  ‘If you don’t watch it I’ll leave every penny to a charity for cats. Won’t I, Mr Bits?’ She bent down to stroke the cat, and started up the next flight of stairs.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

  ‘Upstairs to my bedroom, not that it’s any of your business.’

  ‘Why are you going to bed so early?’ I asked, immediately anxious. ‘Are you feeling okay?’

  ‘I’m not going to bed, darling, I’m just getting ready to go out.’

  ‘Out?’

  ‘Aurora, please stop giving me that look as if you are my mother. Yes, I am going out.’

  ‘Where?’ I demanded. ‘Who with?’

  Auntie Lyd stopped halfway up the stairs and turned round to look down on me haughtily. ‘Not, again, that it is any of your business, but I am having dinner with Lysander Honeywell.’

  ‘Lysander!’ I shrieked in a strangled voice. Lysander the pink-shirted gossipy roué of the Country House office? And my aunt?

  ‘Honestly, Rory,’ she huffed. ‘Please don’t make a scene. I’ve spoken to him a few times about the books he kindly sent me and we agreed to meet for a quiet dinner. It’s nothing to get excited about.’

  This was becoming ridiculous. How much more was my work life going to infiltrate Elgin Square? Was Noonoo suddenly going to appear on Percy’s wrinkled arm? Would Flickers be seen squiring Eleanor down Clapham High Street?

  ‘But – but—’ I sputtered.

  ‘If you’re about to tell me he’s an unsuitable man, Rory, I might have to remind you that you are hardly one to talk.’

  That silenced me. She turned to go up the stairs. ‘Oh, one last thing. I said to Jim that you’d take him out to dinner tonight – on me, of course; I’ve left some cash on the kitchen table. We owe him a bit of a thank-you, don’t you think?’

  ‘You said what?’ I asked. If I’d been worried about how I could hide my feelings from Jim in the kitchen, with the constant chaperoning presence of my elderly housemates, it was as nothing to my horror at the idea of sitting opposite him, alone in a restaurant, with no escape from his scrutiny.

  ‘I’m determined that you two will be friends,’ said Auntie Lyd. ‘It means a lot to me. Anyway, you wouldn’t ignore the advice of a professional agony aunt, would you?’

  ‘But Auntie Lyd, I—’

  She interrupted as she continued up the stairs, ‘I already told him you’d do it. He’s waiting downstairs. Have fun, darling.’

  She rounded the corner up to the next floor. Mr Bits offered me his usual look of disdain before he followed her, although this time I wondered if it might in fact be a look of feline pity for the evening ahead. Of all the dates that I had endured with unsuitable men, this would surely be the most excruciating.

  39

  ‘So, Dawn, is this going to be one of those unsuitable-men thingies then?’ Jim asked, nudging me with his elbow as we left the square and turned up the dark alley towards the restaurants of Venn Street. I got the impression that he thought our enforced dinner date was all rather amusing. ‘You’ve done the pensioner, the teenage sexter, the dossy musician – now it’s time for the plumber?’

  Oh great, he clearly thought I’d put Auntie Lyd up to this; begged her to get the plumber to go out with me so I could use him for my column as an excuse to pounce on him again. I cursed myself for looking like such a cliché: just another middle-class girl getting her kicks by slumming it with a manual labourer. He probably got this kind of thing all the time; from his relaxed attitude it seemed he was quite used to approaches from women, taking it all in his stride as one of the hazards of the job. Probably went home and laughed with his friends about it. I burned with embarrassment, glad that we were walking side by side so that he couldn’t see my face flaming scarlet.

  ‘I’m not writing that column any more,’ I muttered.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ he said. ‘I liked reading them.’

  ‘You read the columns?’ I asked, glancing up at him. I don’t know why I was surprised. Auntie Lyd had probably forced him, Percy and Eleanor to read every one.

  Jim shrugged. ‘Well, since your aunt bought a laptop and went online purely to read it, I thought it was probably going to be interesting. It was. You’re funny. Crap taste in men, but funny.’

  ‘They were meant to be crap,’ I said. ‘That was the whole point.’

  ‘So I suppose it’s a compliment that I didn’t make the grade?’ teased Jim. ‘Bit of a shame I don’t get to be immortalized in prose though, isn’t it?’ He nudged me again. Even though the alley was narrow, it seemed that he was walking very close to me.

  ‘Oh so you’d like to be, would you?’ I laughed. ‘Is that what this is about? You’re annoyed that I’m not going to write about you afterwards? I will if you like.’

  Yeah? What are you going to say?’

  ‘I won’t be able to avoid mentioning your T-shirts,’ I said. The latest declared, charmingly,

  Not tonight, ladies, I’m just here to get drunk.

  ‘Well, if I’d known we were going out, I’d have got changed,’ he said, plucking at the fabric on his chest. ‘It’s not like I wear these for anything other than work.’

  ‘Where do you even get them from?’ I asked.

  ‘Horrible, aren’t they?’ he said. ‘My sister’s an air hostess – she gets them for me from all around the world. I’ve never had the heart to tell her they’re not really my thing. She gets offended if I don’t we
ar them though. What else are you going to say?’

  ‘About your T-shirts?’

  ‘About me,’ said Jim.

  ‘Well, that rather depends on how you behave this evening,’ I retorted. Strange as it was to be heading out to dinner with Jim, and uncomfortable as I’d felt when we left the house, I had to admit that he had a way of making me at ease with his silly banter.

  ‘Christ, Dawn, I’d better not hold my knife like a pen or anything, had I? What would the readers of Country House think?’

  ‘I know what the editor of Country House would think,’ I said leadingly.

  ‘Amanda? She seemed all right.’

  ‘She thought you were more than all right,’ I said. ‘She told me she thought you were gorgeous.’

  ‘Did she now?’ Jim chuckled. Again that easy acceptance that he was attractive to women. He wasn’t even slightly embarrassed by it. He probably had them throwing themselves at him all the time. No wonder he’d so easily dismissed our kiss in the kitchen; he must be so used to repelling unwanted advances that his pursuers all merged into one single predatory female.

  The alley opened out into the bottom of Venn Street, where a handful of restaurants clustered around the cinema. Auntie Lyd had left a generous pile of twenties on the kitchen table, which meant we could afford to go anywhere we liked. Attempting to reinforce in Jim’s mind that this had been her idea rather than mine, I said that he should be the one to choose where we went; this was his thank-you after all. I hoped he wouldn’t choose the cocktail-bar-cum-restaurant that was usually full of couples. There was something very date-y about it that made me cringe a little when I imagined us there. I was going to be bright and breezy, I had decided. Keep up this banter and let him be in no doubt that I wasn’t going to pounce on him. This was just a completely platonic dinner between friends.