No Place For a Man

by Judy Astley

  She’d thought about it in bed the night before as she lay awake wondering if, long term, Natasha had had a point: would the girls have to leave the Julia Perry school? At least her father would be thrilled about that: George had called Jess a traitor to her class for sending them to a private school – but then he’d said the same when she and Matt had got a mortgage to buy their first flat. ‘A millstone’ he’d called it, believing firmly then in the kind of state-owned rentable property, allocated according to need, that Soviet Russia went in for. Would they have to sell the house? Would Matt ever be employed again? He wasn’t far off fifty, which, in terms of the dynamic young bods in charge of recruitment, was just on the edge of death. She’d gone over and over all those early-hours questions that hadn’t, given the help of all that alcohol, lost Matt any sleep.

  ‘Sorry, were you working?’ Matt’s head rose a little from his hands as he looked at her.

  ‘Just doing my piece for Sunday after next. It’s due in today,’ she told him. ‘Your eyes look terrible, all puffy and half shut.’

  ‘That’s the sun’s fault. It’s too bright. It should be more considerate.’ He groaned and got up, heading for the kitchen. ‘Any coffee on the go?’ He held on tight to the doorpost, his face contorted into exaggerated angst and agony.

  Jess laughed at him and he grimaced at her ruthlessness. ‘Only for Monica and I think she’s had it already. If you’re making one I wouldn’t mind, that’s if you’re up to it …’

  ‘Not sure.’ Matt tottered through the doorway. ‘But for you I’ll try.’

  Jess grinned to herself as she added a couple more sentences. This was almost like having Oliver back, reminding her of the many Sunday mornings (or early afternoons) when he’d sworn himself off alcohol for life (maybe a day or two in reality) and tried to get away with doing nothing more useful than lying on the sofa like a Victorian consumptive, too fragile to clear a table or peel so much as a single carrot for lunch, and absolutely, definitely, positively not in a state to tackle any A-level physics revision. She wondered where he was – he’d still be travelling, she guessed. The flight to Singapore must have been about twelve hours, then on to Cairns for at least another six.

  ‘When can we expect to hear from the wandering boy, do you think?’ Matt had come back with the coffee and managed, with worryingly trembling hands, to get the slopped-over drops on the desk but not on Jess’s keyboard. He settled himself on the sofa again.

  ‘He promised to e-mail as soon as he could,’ she told him. ‘He seemed sure he’d find somewhere easily enough to do it from though he hasn’t yet, I checked.’

  ‘The whole place is probably covered with Internet cafés, full of backpackers calling home to plead for a cash top-up. I hope he leaves it a good few weeks before he starts on that one.’

  ‘Mmm. Me too.’ She swivelled the leather chair round and looked at him. ‘Matt, we should talk about what’s going to happen now, about you, and work and stuff.’

  Matthew stood up abruptly and made for the door again, showing an amazing and instant recovery of agility. ‘Fine, we will, but not just now, OK? Time for a shower.’ He turned back then and grinned at her. ‘We could go out to lunch though, chat then. I could be a feature you’re writing, an interviewee, tax deductable.’ He winked and left her alone. Jess heard him climbing the stairs, fast at first, presumably to get out of range of further questions, and then more slowly as he started on the next flight up to the big converted attic which had been their bedroom (plus bathroom) for the past four years. Perhaps she and Matt should move back down the stairs and take over Oliver’s room themselves, get a lodger or two for the attic and help supplement the forthcoming lack of income. They could put an ad in Loot, ‘Non-smoking professional with a busy off-premises social life and somewhere else to go at the weekends …’

  She sighed and went back to her piece. Perhaps one day she’d be able to write about all this, in her light-hearted, joky, doesn’t-really-matter kind of way, but somehow she doubted it. At the moment she seemed to be the only one who was taking this redundancy seriously.

  * * *

  Natasha and her friend Claire were perched on the cloakroom bench, their bodies woven among the coats for camouflage and their feet well up off the floor in case any of the staff felt like doing a quick check for lingerers. They were supposed to be outside playing netball, a game most girls of their age considered about as interesting as cabbage-growing. There were murmurings of other skivers from various corners of the room and a smoke-laden draught wafted in from the open window where someone had, at the risk of a term’s worth of detentions, lit up a Marlborough.

  ‘So what does he look like?’ Claire was eager for details. Natasha thought for a moment before she answered. It had been a lot of truth-stretching to tell Claire that the boy definitely went to the railway line every evening just to look up at her window, and even more of a lie to say that he’d waved and tried to get her to come down. It was one thing to imagine the way you wanted the truth to be, another just to come out with those imaginings and hope that somehow they would work their way into being real. She hoped she hadn’t pushed the fates too far – chances were now that she’d started talking to Claire about him he might just disappear and never come back.

  ‘Well,’ she hesitated, recalling what she’d actually seen of him in the dusky half-light. ‘He’s quite tall, though it’s hard to tell when you’re looking down at someone. He’s got dark hair and it’s a bit long, too long, like he used to have a good cut once but he’s let it grow.’

  ‘What was he wearing?’ Claire cut to the all-important question. Natasha hesitated again. Claire was the sharpest-edged fashion-observer of their year. There were girls who wouldn’t even go near Top Shop for a simple pair of trousers without feeling they should run the various options past Claire first for approval. ‘Not combats!’ she’d shrieked when Polly Mathers had talked about what she’d worn to a party a couple of weeks before. ‘Combats are so dead!’ Natasha might be pretty much up there with the knowledge about what she should be wearing but didn’t really have much of a clue about what the coolest clothes were that blokes could select. Oliver had been no use as a guide – when he’d started saving up for Australia he’d got a job in the Gap and worn nothing but staff-discount sale stock. Claire had sneered that he looked like a keen, clean business studies student, quite beneath interest. Natasha hadn’t dared tell her she’d liked (and borrowed) several of his sweaters.

  ‘Er … well I couldn’t really see too clearly. It’s a long way down,’ she said eventually.

  ‘It’s not that far. Shoes then … Nikes, Cats, what?’ Claire twiddled the ends of her perfect striped-blond chin-length hair, checking for highly unlikely split ends.

  ‘Definitely couldn’t see shoes. And I don’t care about shoes anyway.’ Claire gasped at the near-sacrilege and Natasha laughed. ‘Come on Claire, even you wouldn’t reject the perfect boy just because his shoes were the wrong make!’

  Claire wrinkled her freckled nose. ‘Well he wouldn’t be the perfect boy with the wrong shoes, would he? Beyond considering. So go on, when are you seeing him again? Tonight?’

  ‘Possibly. Hope so anyway.’ Natasha said it slowly, crossing her fingers with the wish that it might be true. ‘He didn’t actually say.’ She felt more confident now that she was back on the truth-track. ‘But I’ll look out for him and, well, who knows.’

  Claire’s face screwed up in puzzlement. ‘One thing though, what’s he doing hanging about on the railway line? Is he suicidal but doesn’t dare …’

  ‘Jeez, I hope not. Romance shattered before it starts.’

  ‘ … Or has he got no home to go to? Where is he living, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’ve got to find out. He’s not like, well …’

  ‘Yeah I know …’ Claire laughed. ‘The saddo tossers from St Dominic’s who think they can impress their way into your knickers by waffling on about A-level options and their mummy’s ski lo
dge in Verbier.’

  ‘Exactly. This one’s …’

  ‘An exciting bit of forbidden rough.’ Claire leaned forward and whispered it, sounding harsh and strangely lascivious – as well as deeply envious. The thought made Natasha shiver – whoever he was, the railway boy definitely had an air of being someone who was, well, off limits in all senses.

  ‘OK, I’m ready for the interrogation now.’ Matthew presented himself, showered and dressed, next to Jess’s desk just as she was pressing the ‘send’ button to deliver Nelson’s Column to the Sunday Gazette.

  ‘Where do you fancy for lunch? Shall we see if there’s room at the River Café? We could go mad, get a cab …’

  Jess laughed. ‘You are joking aren’t you? I thought we could just have a sandwich, here. That’s what I usually do. I had no idea your working day was quite so glamorous.’

  Matt shrugged. ‘It isn’t, wasn’t, I suppose I should say. Well not all the time. I just thought as it’s the two of us, and you might need cheering up now Oliver’s gone, well I thought we could treat ourselves. Still, if you’d rather not …’

  ‘No, it’s not that. It’s just … anyway they’ve never got room, you have to book ages ahead. We could just walk up the road to the Leo, the food’s not bad. Angie and I go there sometimes.’

  Matt laughed. ‘I’m surprised Angie comes out in daylight. Apart from going to the gym for a bit of pampering I always imagine she spends the days in a coffin waiting for nightfall. Does the woman have any kind of job?’

  ‘Not really. She says that if David can still afford to run her as well as his new wife there’s no point in taking employment from those who need it more. She does a bit of charity stuff.’

  ‘Charity stuff! Ladies’ lunches that nobody eats to raise a few quid for the starving millions.’

  Jess frowned. ‘Where’s this new cynicism come from all of a sudden? You’ve never talked like this before.’

  Matthew disappeared into the cloakroom and returned with his favourite crumpled navy linen jacket. ‘I’ve never been out of work before,’ he said.

  The Leone Rosso (translated from the old Red Lion after much council wrangling and known locally as the Leo) was always busy at lunchtimes. Ben and Micky, subject to occasional speculation as to whether they shared more than the Leo, had been joint landlords for the two years since the Red Lion pub’s frayed lino had finally been ripped away from the fine old floorboards beneath and the tattered beige anaglypta peeled from the walls and replaced by cerulean paint and flat plain mirror. The pair had done their best to select all the most useful bits of what the local clientele required in a place to eat and drink, and come up with a clever mixture of Italian restaurant, coffee shop, pub, wine bar and delicatessen. Those who worked in the area found it an excellent place to take clients – relaxed enough for friendly discussion but with food good enough for people to feel business was being taken seriously. This green and pleasant part of south-west London also teemed with self-employed creatives who liked to do their bit of mixing with humanity by popping out during the day for salami and melted Brie in a baguette with a glass of something red and fortifying. After a chat with Ben about the price of Parmesan, a browse through the Daily Mail (just to check on gossip) and a double espresso it didn’t seem quite so lonely returning to a solitary desk to wrestle with a complex film treatment, a plot-sluggish novel or the dreaded VAT.

  Matthew felt as if he was about to be debriefed. It was Jess who’d marched in first and chosen the table, at the back of the restaurant well away from the bar and remote enough from other occupied tables to put off casual acquaintances from drifting over to say hello.

  ‘I don’t want a stream of people coming up to you and saying “Don’t often see you in here,” and then expecting you to tell them why you are,’ Jess said firmly as she perused the menu. Matt didn’t need to be told that, and neither did Micky serving at the bar, who had merely nodded a brief greeting as Jess strode past, as if instinctively recognizing that this lunch had more purpose than the merely social.

  Matthew had been tempted to put on a humble face, touch his forelock and say, ‘No, Miss’ but thought better of it. There was too much of an air of things waiting to be said, though only by Jess. He, being almost deliriously happy with life as a newly liberated, Job-Free Man, had nothing to say, nothing at all. It was all he could do to stop his face cracking up into grins and laughter.

  ‘It’s not as if I’m never in here,’ he argued feebly, but then resigned himself to selecting food.

  ‘OK, penne Amatriciana for me,’ he said. ‘And shall we have a bottle of something? Just something light?’

  ‘After last night?’ Jess’s blue eyes were wide over the top of the menu. ‘I’ve got to work this afternoon. Some of us have got a deadline.’ He could see her wavering though, and beckoned to the waiter.

  ‘But you’ve just sent the column in. Do they want the week after’s as well?’

  Jess sighed. ‘No, this one’s an extra. It’s pretty tragic. A kid at a school up north jumped off the dormitory roof. It was in the papers, last week. The Independent rang up and asked for fifteen hundred words on parents who send their kids away to board and then lose track of the plot, haven’t a clue who their friends are, what they get up to, all that.’

  ‘I thought it was part of every teenager’s master plan to make their parents lose the plot, boarding or not.’

  She laughed. ‘I’m sure you’re right, the difference is I get paid to explain that to people.’

  The words ‘I get paid’ stood out as if flashed up in neon. Matthew wondered if he was being ludicrously sensitive or if life from now on was going to be peppered with what felt like little digs. He didn’t like it, he felt as if she was trying to puncture his balloon of euphoria.

  ‘I still get paid too,’ he reminded her. There was a small silence while Ben brought Matthew’s penne and Jess’s fusilli carbonara and faffed about with Parmesan and pepper. He then fussed with the bottle, taking an age to draw the cork and pour the wine.

  ‘I know you do,’ she conceded eventually. ‘But that’s just for now. Six months goes so fast and, Matt,’ she put down her fork and leaned forward, looking deep into his eyes as if to extract some extra truth, ‘aren’t you worried at all? Not the teeniest bit?’

  ‘No’ would be the strictly honest answer, but it didn’t seem to be one that Jess would be able to deal with, not comfortably. Being free of his job had left Matthew with space for something wondrously selfish – the feeling of absolute non-responsibility. It wouldn’t last, he knew, but for now – well he just wanted to hang onto that for a while, at least till he had to hand the Audi back and a bit of inconvenience kicked in.

  ‘No I’m not really worried. Something will turn up,’ he told her, recognizing even as he spoke that this was a limp and inadequate response.

  Jess’s eyes flashed fury. ‘God, Matt! Be real for a minute! You’re pushing fifty. Well-paid jobs don’t just “turn up” for anyone these days, let alone people of …’

  ‘Of my age. Yes I know. But, well, I’ve got a track record, and of course,’ he added, assuming she’d appreciate a bit of humour, ‘I did go to Cambridge.’

  She didn’t appreciate it. ‘So what? So did thousands of others. Half of those are probably looking for work too. Can’t you be serious? Just for once?’

  Matt reached across and took hold of her hand. ‘Look, we won’t be destitute. Even after six months there’s the lump sum, six scrumptious figures. With any luck we’ll simply be able to stash that and I’ll have something else to move on to. But in the meantime Jess, I really want to take some time to do a bit of thinking. I don’t want to end my working life as a referee between fame-greedy celebs, power-drunk politicians and the scandal-chasing press. It’s not a job for a grown-up.’ He laughed for a moment. ‘Which is probably why I’m not considered suitable to do it any more. I’m happy, really, leaving it all to eager young careerists called Prudence and Peregrine. And anyway,’ he
added with a grin, ‘it’s not as if you’re not working, is it?’

  Jess made her way slowly and thoughtfully through the generously portioned bowl of fusilli. She was working, it was true, though not earning anything like the amount it took to keep five bodies and souls, one cat, her car and a house together. Ever since her book Teen Spirit: Potent Stuff, a lively romp through what every parent would rather not know, had become a best-seller a couple of years before, she’d been in demand to write for every newspaper and magazine whenever there was a teenage crisis in the news. She’d written pieces on pregnant twelve-year-olds, shoplifting crazes, fat camps, body piercing and the pointless rip-off of work-experience placements. On radio she’d commented on sad suicides who’d hung themselves for being a grade short of Oxbridge, on the expulsion-for-drugs question and whether girls should still, in this new century, be banned from school for wearing trousers. All the while her Gazette column, light, frothy and snug-family based, came out every week and, over a year, just about covered Natasha’s and Zoe’s school fees.

  ‘… so it’s a matter of finding something different, satisfying, inspiring, all that,’ Matthew was saying.

  ‘And that pays as well as your old job? You’ll be lucky.’ Jess laughed.

  He shrugged. ‘Or that doesn’t.’

  ‘Yo Matthew! What’re you doing out here on a Wednesday? Taking a sickie?’ Eddy-up-the-road, brandishing a bottle of Heineken, pulled up a chair and, uninvited, joined their table.

  ‘You’re on enemy territory, man. Weekdays this is self-employed skivers, old rockers like me and women only.’

  Matt laughed. ‘You got a category for unemployed?’

  ‘Really? You out of work? Fired?’ Matt nodded.