by T J Price
Nomance
T J Price
Copyright 2011 T J Price
Smashwords Edition
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Table of Contents
One: Reflections in a Muddy Eye
Two: Golden Aphrodite’s Nightmare
Three: The Vultures of Romance
Four: Stepping on the Scales of a Cold Fish
Five: Complaining for Two
Six: Love’s in Superstore
Seven: Spac Attack!
Eight: Enter the Other Party
Nine: The Art of Exhibition
Ten: Taking Stock
Eleven: Credit Lunch
Twelve: Flies on Serena
Thirteen: Airgun Wedding
Fourteen: Nomance
Fifteen: Prince Alarming
Sixteen: Me Jane You Jane
One: Reflections in a Muddy Eye
Back in the early Noughties, Romance, the florist’s shop, was closed.
Today was Sunday, and even in this service-hungry part of the world (in the snob hinterland of London between Chiswick and Kew) florists close on Sunday.
The shop itself occupied the front portion of a large, redbrick Victorian house. To the rear, in the spacious and not-clean kitchen, Gwynne – a tall, mean, rawboned creature of nineteen – sat next to the sink and ate cereal from a bowl that he held cupped in the horny palm of one hand. As he masticated, his slack jaw working in slow, circular motion, he stared through the window at the long, dank garden. This was filled by bags of fertilizer, stacked in rows and interspersed by a profusion of purple-headed thistles, nettles in full flower and fleshy, fetid weeds that even the florist herself, Gwynne’s sister, could not name.
That very person, Carla, was sitting at the kitchen table behind him. She was in a foul mood. Her disposition was vinegary at the best of times, but just then she was toiling over the accounts. Attempting to balance the books of Romance always got her sourness up to full strength.
And because his sister wouldn’t stop griping out loud about the shop’s stagnant turnover, the shop’s stagnant turnover was now extending its demoralising influence over him too.
Why couldn’t she understand that he didn’t care whether Romance went bankrupt or not? All he wanted right now was for her to stop griping. Her griping disturbed the peace, interrupted the baleful quietude of the morning and therefore lowered the quality of his meditations.
Oh, if she would only shut the fuck up, then he could think about something good.
His restless eye fell upon a bumper roll of chicken wire, rusting nicely in the middle of the deteriorated garden path, and striving to ignore the mooing of despair and frustration behind him, he allowed his mind drift back, as so often before, to that joyous moment, four years ago in Hyde Park, when he had found a wallet with fifty quid inside it.
He scowled.
It seemed life had gone downhill ever since.
Residual sensations of resentment flickered up within him, like flames in a combusting compost heap. He was thinking, after a fashion, about the pop group he had played with last year. It was a pop group that the audiences had resolved not to like. In fact, the audiences seemed to hate them. Considering they looked not a whit different from a thousand other rock bands, it had been difficult to pinpoint just where they were going wrong. Unless, of course, it was the music that was wrong. In which case, as the drummer pointed out, they ought to get rid of it. The trouble was, if they did get rid of the music, they would have to get off the stage and do something else with their lives.
But what’s that going to be then, eh? Gwynne had wanted to know.
No one was sure. So the rest of the band got together and decided to give themselves one last shot at fame, and, instead of getting rid of the music, they got rid of Gwynne instead. He was the obvious choice really, because they all hated him even more than the audience did.
Gwynne burned more feverishly now as he recollected for the hundredth time how the other members of the band had told him to get lost.
Seconds later his fever abated somewhat when he reminded himself for the hundredth time that the band’s attempt to make the audience like them still hadn’t worked and they had split up anyway.
So then, he’d had the last laugh after all, hadn’t he? And then, too, none of them had ever found a wallet with fifty quid in it down Hyde Park, had they? Eh? Eh?
The muted pleasure he derived from this reflection was interrupted by a moan of despair.
Carla’s really convinced she’s fucked this time, he mused languidly. But his sister’s dire financial position was so familiar to him by now it didn’t make him smile anymore.
After flat-lining for a minute, Gwynne’s brain revived just enough to reflect upon another painful aspect of the old band he used to play in – Tony the drummer. He’d got the girlfriend he’d always wanted, hadn’t he? That is to say, the girlfriend Gwynne had always wanted.
What galled him most about that was how Tony hadn’t needed to put any effort into getting Elaine. She had fallen in step with his plans straight away, without showing any sign of having to think about it.
Well that (Elaine not showing any sign of thinking) had stung his finer feelings at the time, but a few months later when he heard she and Tony and split, it (Elaine not showing any sign of thinking), had encouraged him believe she was still the girl for him. Now he could offer her the opportunity to fall into step with his plans without having to think about it. And so he had duly phoned her next day and asked her out.
She turned him down flat.
And she didn’t hesitate for one second, meaning she still didn’t need to think about it.
But that was mad. Not thinking was supposed to be Elaine’s best assent. Not thinking was something they both shared. In that respect, they were made for each other. And yet, he had failed where Tony had succeeded. Why?
Come on, why?
Well, the answer to that question didn’t take much figuring out – fortunately.
The answer was Tony had a car and he didn’t. He was a mere pedestrian. And the thick roots of that particular boil ran all the way back to the credit card company who had given him even less time over the phone than Elaine. Though to be fair, the credit card company girl had been a lot more polite. In fact, her impeccable courtesy had quite thrown him at the time and he had only blown his top after he put the phone down and realised he still didn’t have any credit.
Elaine hadn’t been half as scrupulous about keeping him from blowing his top over the phone.
Having turned him down without having to think about it, she went on to think about it and out of pure youthful exuberance she told him their relationship would never work out because he ate meat and she was a strict vegetarian.
‘But it doesn’t matter,’ he had told her.
‘Oh, it does, Gwynne. It does.’
As bad luck would have it, Elaine seemed to read the same magazines his sister did and these had loads of stuff in them about vegetarianism. She pretty well repeated it all now, word for word. Gwynne had to wait ten minutes before he could put his side of the argument again.
‘But, it doesn’t matter.’
There was a pause here before Elaine tried a different way at getting him exceedingly annoyed.
‘You see, Gwynne, it’s what I believe in.’ She made that sound so pathetic – as if big, strong Gwynne was pulling her snivelling little convictions apart. As if, in fact, she wasn’t having a whale of a time. She cranked him up good
and proper by adding, in her teeniest, weeniest voice, that she must sound like such a silly little girl, but she had to believe in something, didn’t she?
Gwynne assumed she was asking for a balanced opinion. ‘No. Because it doesn’t matter!’
That was the very essence of his argument. He couldn’t have stated it more plainly. And yet, there was no answer, apart from what might have been – of all things – a half-stifled yawn at the other end. God, she was thick! He would have to go through the whole thing with her again.
‘Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter.’
Elaine had sighed, ‘You really do have to try harder to express yourself. Men have to nowadays, Gwynne. Try watching more daytime discussions on the telly and you’ll get the right idea. As it is, you wouldn’t last five minutes on Trisha’s Morning Show.’
And, going by her tone of voice, it didn’t sound like Gwynne was about to last any longer on Elaine’s Mobile Phone.
‘But – ’
‘No.’
‘All right,’ Gwynne said, defeated.
Elaine, however, had watched enough soap operas to know that arguments did not have to end quite this equably.‘Listen, Gwynne. Go vegetarian yourself and we’ll give it a try.’
Even though Gwynne thought this over with lightening speed and came up with the correct answer – that he would indeed go vegetarian – he didn’t come close to articulating it before a squeak of naked panic vibrated the telephone cable and Elaine began talking so fast she gobbled like a turkey. ‘Remember though, to be a real vegetarian you have to leave off meat for at least a whole year. That’s twelve months.’
Gwynne was choked into a cretinous silence.
And yet, after all, the concept of waiting for a year was not altogether too strange to him. An actual example came to mind. There had been a girl at his school who was famous for promising she would wait a year for her boyfriend to get out of Wormwood Scrubs Prison. And she had too! So, it was humanly possible to wait for a year. Only, where would Elaine be in all this? He would be the one proving his devotion by waiting for her, but he would also be the one expected to live off carrots and peas and not get any sex.
As near as damn it banged up in jail!
Gwynne felt betrayed by the blatant unfairness of Elaine’s demand and he voiced a final, desperate plea for justice, ‘But, it doesn’t matter!’
One year ago, Elaine answered by slamming the phone down on him.
Thinking about it now, Gwynne found to his amazement that he should have promised to wait. The year thing had come and gone almost like it was inevitable. And although Elaine, in a final act of defiance, had later got back together with Tony, surely they must have split a second time by now – no doubt citing irreconcilable differences.
You see, Gwynne could not believe that Tony was a vegetarian. Not with biceps like that. And with her strong beliefs, Elaine must have given up trying to reform him, even if he did have a car. Perhaps, then, there was still a chance for him and her?
The question was, should he try phoning again?
That depended. Could he be so damned sure, after all, that Tony did eat meat?
With a spoonful of milky cereal suspended in front of his open mouth, Gwynne racked his brains to recollect what he could about the finer details of Tony’s diet. He had seen Tony stuffing himself with sandwiches at rehearsals often enough, but, somehow or other, he had never once asked him what he had on them.
Idiot!
Well, his one recourse, at this late stage, was to concentrate with all his might and try to conjure up a visualisation of Tony’s sandwiches in the hope of catching sight of the filling.
He closed his eyes and strained.
Then he strained harder.
The dense bone around his temples creaked with the tension and . . . and . . . but it was no good. Gwynne could do no more than glimpse the outer crusts.
In truth there is a mystery at the heart of all things.
Shoving the cereal into his mouth, he sensed that this mystery-of-life thing was responsible for the unaccountable workings of fate.
Gwynne had been taught a hard lesson about the unaccountable workings of fate when he’d had the good fortune to find that wallet down Hyde Park.
The money had enabled him to buy a guitar, and his buying a guitar had led to his joining the band. And his being in the band had led to his getting booted out of the band. But only after it had led to his meeting Elaine. And his meeting Elaine, of course, had led to his getting turned down by Elaine.
In this way his good luck had contrived to do the precise opposite of what good luck was supposed to do – twice over!
Now, that couldn’t be mere coincidence, could it?
‘How come I get all the shit and nobody else does?’ He asked himself, delving once more into the mystery at the heart of all things. As mysteries go, however, it was even tougher to swallow than the meat on Tony’s sandwiches. For not only did other people not get the shit, what they did get was the car and the girlfriend.
And in Tony’s case, the biceps too.
Car, girlfriend and biceps. They might be good for Tony, but they were like cactus spines in Gwynne’s hide.
And living at Romance he knew just how that felt.
He dumped his cereal bowl into the sink.
‘Hey,’ Carla yelled from behind him, reminding him with an unpleasant jolt of his sister’s existence, ‘swill it out!’
‘I’m going to be late,’ Gwynne complained. He worked at the EasyHomes DIY Superstore in East Acton. He did the Sunday shift for the extra fifty pence per hour.
Still, to keep the semblance of peace, he swilled the dish out. This gave him time to pose a pertinent question.
‘Why the fuck don’t we get a dishwasher?’
‘I don’t know – let me guess.’
‘They’re two hundred quid or so at the warehouse.’ He put the bowl on the draining board and turned to stare at her. ‘Only a hundred each from us, isn’t it?’
‘Only a hundred?’ But Carla seemed to like the idea of a dishwasher. ‘Can’t you get a discount, from EasyHomes?’
‘That is with the discount.’
‘What?’ Carla pulled her face in disgust.
Gwynne shook his head. ‘You can’t even get hundred togther, can you? This fucking place. Even I make more money than Romance, don’t I?’
‘You would if you were a pop star instead of a fucking failure,’ Carla said, smiling for the first time that day.
‘Don’t get too cocky. I’m going to be in a new band soon.’
‘Yeah. Since when?’
‘We’ve been talking it over, It’s with three guys I met at the warehouse.’
‘What, them pensioners?’
‘No, these guys are young.’
‘I thought they were all pensioners who worked there,’ Carla said, making it sound like he had let her down. ‘You said they all looked horrible and dried up in the company uniform.’
‘Most of them do, yeah,’ Gwynne assured her. ‘But these are young guys who started there about a month ago. They’re on this Government scheme for helping ex-offenders.’ He waved her down, as if she was about to get anxious for his safety. ‘Don’t worry, they’re straight up. They all want to kill the management, not me.’
Carla, who hadn’t been worried, took a moment to digest this. ‘That’s something in their favour,’ she allowed. ‘Like I keep telling you – places like EasyHomes are driving small traders like us out of the market..’
‘Hm?’ Gwynne was dwelling again on the wallet he’d found down the park. The whole cycle of rumination was about to repeat itself.
‘I said, Romance can’t hope to match their prices for pot-grown flowers. They’re killing us.’
‘Who?’
‘EasyHomes!’
‘EasyHomes?’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Shit, I’m going to be late.’
Two: Golden Aphrodite’s Nightmare
Gwynne loped out of the back door, allowin
g it to slam behind him.
Carla bestowed a rancourous glance on the dish he had left on the draining board and, with a heavy sigh, turned her attention back to the account books. Within microseconds she pinpointed another loss maker.
Her broad shoulders sank a little lower. ‘Fucking lobelia,’ she muttered.
She hadn’t been able to shift a single one and the whole lot had gone and wilted on her. That bitch, Ms Stevens, had brought them every week without fail for the past seven years and it made sense to assume her devoted lobelia customer was merely ill when she didn’t turn up one week. Discontinuing the line at that point would have been sheer madness. However, the weeks passed and Ms Stevens still didn’t show. By the end of the month, Carla had begun to wonder whether Ms Stevens hadn’t in fact died of her illness. But if that were the case, cancelling the order would still be premature. No doubt Ms Stevens would want lots of lobelia at her funeral.
Three more weeks passed before a postcard arrived, and this, in essence, announced that Ms Stevens wasn’t dead at all. Instead she was basking in the Maldives for a three-month winter warmer.
What a slap in the face! Nothing rubs it in like somebody else’s holiday. And the one thing Carla hated more than somebody else’s holiday was . . . one of her own holidays.
Her last holiday (and Carla had vowed it would be the last) was with Sharon. Sharon had been her friend from school and, just as they both always knew, Sharon was the one who broke free from the chains of her past. She left Richmond-Upon-Thames and carved out a career at the Inland Revenue Tax Office in Wolverhampton. To crown it all, she met the love of her life – in the same office by a remarkable coincidence – and married him. The lucky guy was Billy in VAT – a Civil Service high flyer whose spectacular rise through the ranks hit the oak ceiling when he died seven years later.
After a mourning period of three months, and just in time for the med holiday season, Sharon called Carla and told her she wanted to start living again. She suggested they went away together.