The Making of Minty Malone

by Isabel Wolff

  ‘What? Oh no. I’m just happy,’ I explained. ‘That’s all. I’ve had an epiphany.’

  ‘I think Deirdre’s going to be having one of those too,’ said Wesley with a grimace. ‘Apparently it’s very painful.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Jack.

  ‘No, not an episiotomy – an epiphany, a sudden flash.’

  ‘Sure it’s not your hormones?’ Wesley enquired, as he got out his Miriam Stoppard.

  ‘Yes, quite sure. It was a flash of insight.’

  ‘You look like you’re in love,’ Jack tossed over his shoulder, as he went through to his office.

  ‘Yes,’ said Monica, suddenly. ‘You do.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so ridiculous, everyone,’ I exclaimed, with a little laugh. Then I picked up the phone and dialled Joe.

  I wanted to tell him, you see. I wanted to tell Joe about my breakthrough. I wanted to tell him that I’d consigned Dominic to the waste-disposal unit of my past. So we arranged to meet at the Screen on the Green in Islington at six the following evening.

  ‘You look repulsive,’ he said admiringly, as he planted a noisy kiss on my cheek.

  ‘You look pretty cruddy yourself,’ I replied happily. ‘I mean that nicely, of course.’

  ‘I know you do,’ he said, as we went inside. I glanced at him again. And it was as though, today, I could see him clearly, because Dom’s dark shadow had been lifted away. I wanted to tell him about my meeting with Dominic, but decided to wait until after the film, a new print of John Schlesinger’s classic version of Far From the Madding Crowd.

  ‘Please don’t rattle your popcorn too loudly,’ Joe admonished me as the lights dimmed to darkness and the nylon drapes swished aside.

  ‘I don’t have any popcorn,’ I said.

  ‘And please don’t talk to me during the film,’ he went on as Julie Christie appeared on the screen. ‘It’s very annoying for everyone else.’

  ‘Shhh!’ said someone behind us.

  ‘See what I mean?’ I rolled my eyes.

  ‘And don’t grab me in the scary bits,’ he whispered. ‘I know what you’re like.’

  ‘There aren’t any scary bits,’ I whispered back.

  ‘Well, just keep your hands off me, OK,’ he said, as his right arm went round my shoulder. I laughed. And then I blushed. I felt inexplicably happy to find myself so close to Joe again. But soon I was lost on the hills of Wessex, caught up in Bathsheba’s struggles to keep her farm going, and her obsession with Sergeant Troy. But anyone could see that Troy’s a shallow cad, and that Bathsheba’s a complete idiot to keep on rejecting the wonderful Gabriel Oak. Finally, though, Bathsheba gets it right. ‘Whenever you look up,’ said Alan Bates to Julie Christie at the end, ‘there I shall be. And whenever I look up,’ he went on simply, ‘there will be you.’ And he smiles at her. And Julie Christie smiles back. And then the camera pans out and the credits roll.

  ‘That’s what I call a happy ending,’ I said as we left our seats. ‘She saw the light at last.’

  ‘But Hardy makes her suffer first,’ said Joe. ‘He was sadistic with his heroines – he liked to give them hell. Right,’ he said, and he tucked my arm under his. And freed now from Dominic, I felt something inside me jump. ‘Come with me,’ said Joe in a commanding fashion. And then, because he’s so nice, he added, ‘Please.’

  As we walked down Upper Street and along Rosebery Avenue, I just felt so, so happy. I was moving forward at last. And now I could move forward too with Joe. Surely we could be more than friends. All I had to do was convince him that at last I was over Dom. And I was. Dominic didn’t matter any more. I saw him as if in a dark, disturbing dream. Now I was waking up, and he was receding, like a spectre – ethereal, unreal. And here was Joe. All flesh and blood. His arm solid and strong beneath my own. And he was talking away about this film director and that one, which was fine, because he’s so knowledgeable, and I’m very interested in the cinema myself. Then we found ourselves passing Sadler’s Wells, and people were hurrying inside and, to my enormous surprise, I saw Dad. He was standing outside. He looked slightly agitated, which was strange as he’s normally quite calm. I guessed that Mum must be running late from one of her charity do’s.

  ‘Dad!’ I called. And then I remembered his note on the board at St Bride’s and I was filled with filial affection. ‘Daddy!’ I yelled again. But he hadn’t heard. He was just standing there, not waving, but frowning. And then, at last, he saw me – and the astonished expression on his face!

  ‘Minty?’ he said wonderingly.

  ‘Hello! What are you going to see?’

  ‘Oh. Erm …Coppelia,’ he replied; slightly edgily, I thought. And was it my imagination, or did he blush?

  ‘This is Joe,’ I said. And Joe and Dad shook hands. Then we stood there for a few seconds and Dad suddenly said, ‘Well, I mustn’t keep you both,’ as though he didn’t want us to hang around. And I found this more than a little odd.

  ‘Hope you enjoy the show,’ I said. ‘And I hope Mum turns up soon.’ Dad smiled, a rather tense kind of smile, I thought, and as Joe and I went on our way I told him about Mum’s obsession with good works. Then we crossed the road and turned left into Exmouth Market and stopped outside a place called Café Kick. Inside, it was simply done, and there were three pub football tables.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to come here with you,’ Joe said. ‘But somehow, it just never seemed …right. Today it does.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘It does. In fact, Joe, I want to tell you something. Something important.’

  ‘OK. Fire away.’ But he’d already put some money in one of the football tables, and seven cork balls clattered into the tray. I decided to tell him afterwards. First, I wanted to play.

  ‘Now, remember,’ said Joe, with an admonitory wag of his finger, ‘no spinning.’

  ‘Who do you think I am? Alastair Campbell?’

  ‘And no bananas.’

  ‘As if I would.’

  ‘And every time I beat you, you buy me a drink. And every time you beat me, I buy you one, ditto.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  The game started well. I was playing pretty aggressively, trying to break through Joe’s defences.

  ‘Great save!’ I shouted. ‘You’ve got very fast reactions. But not –’ I added, as I lined up my centre forward behind the ball – ‘quite fast enough. Thank you! One-nil!’ He bought me a Peroni. And then he scored, and I bought him one.

  ‘You’re spinning – stop it!’

  ‘Well, you’re taking too long with your shots.’

  ‘Are you accusing me of cheating?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right, you’ve had it. Goal! Two-one!!’

  I bought him another beer. And then another. We were both pretty merry by now. I was laughing. In fact, I was almost high on happiness, though the beers undoubtedly helped. We were both being very flirtatious.

  ‘I’m glad we’re friends again, Minty,’ said Joe.

  ‘Are you?’ I said with a smile.

  ‘Yes. When we had our Brief Encounter in Paris,’ he went on with a mischievous smile, ‘you made me feel …Breathless. I was A Bout de Soufflé, he added with a burst of inebriated laughter. Ah ha. I could play this game too.

  ‘It was a Fatal Attraction, was it?’ I enquired, with a giggle. I had another quick sip of beer.

  ‘Well, in a way,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t do anything about it because …’ he paused and let the ball idle for a moment in the corner ‘ …you were clearly Un Coeur En Hiver.’

  ‘Yes,’ I conceded. ‘I was having a Crack Up because I didn’t have A Wedding. Oh, great goal!’

  ‘Right, that’s another Peroni. You were a Psycho,’ he said.

  ‘I was not,’ I retorted. ‘I was simply one of these Women On the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown.’

  ‘Because you’d been a Fool for Love. But then,’ he went on, ‘It Happened One Night. We had a rather Dangerous Liaison which left us both Dazed and Confused.’

  �
�I did not exactly feel Dead Calm after that,’ I said as my half back connected with the ball. ‘So I stayed Home Alone.’

  ‘You were Gone With the Wind,’ said Joe. ‘You wouldn’t even take my calls.’

  ‘Well, by then I was totally pissed off with men. So I decided to concentrate on My Brilliant Career.’

  ‘But that caused me Misery.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Ooh – good goal! That was a sly one, Joe.’

  ‘But now it’s OK and we can-’

  ‘– get Back to the Future?’ I suggested daringly as I threw in the last ball. The game was almost over. It was time to talk. It was time for me to tell Joe how much he meant to me. Truly, Madly, Deeply. That I wanted us to be more than Friends. That I didn’t want him to go to LA. That I wanted him to stay in London, and make me laugh. Everything had changed.

  ‘There’s something I want to tell you,’ I said, as we ordered a couple of plates of pasta. ‘Something important.’ He gave me a penetrating stare.

  ‘You’re not …with child, are you, Minty?’ he enquired dramatically. I rolled my eyes.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Because I’ll stand by you if you are, Minty – I’m not one to evade my responsibilities. You know that.’

  ‘Look –’

  ‘And may I say what a lovely mother you’d make,’ he added.

  ‘I’m trying to be serious,’ I interjected.

  ‘OK,’ he said, with a smile. ‘Let’s get serious.’

  Yes, I thought. Let’s get serious. What a good idea.

  ‘It’s about Dominic …’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Joe, ‘not again. I was rather enjoying myself there.’

  ‘I only wanted to tell you that I’ve got over him completely. It’s over. Finito. Because I found something out. Something that’s changed everything.’

  ‘Really?’ he looked intrigued now. We sat down at a small table at the back.

  ‘I discovered that it wasn’t my fault,’ I announced.

  ‘What wasn’t?’

  ‘What happened to me. With Dominic. It was all his fault.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  And as we ate our pasta, I explained, slightly tipsily, about how Virginia Park had called me, and then how I’d met Dominic again, and the things he’d said, and what I’d gradually worked out for myself – that in the end, it had all been about cash.

  ‘It was all about money,’ I said indignantly. ‘Mammon. He dumped me in a panic, because he thought he was about to lose all his loot. And then when the crisis unexpectedly blew over, he realised he’d made a mistake, and wanted me back.’

  ‘But you’re not …’

  ‘Oh no!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’m not going back to Dominic. Of course not. But I’m so glad I saw him, just one more time, because if I hadn’t, a) I’d never have been able to tell him how despicable he is, and b) I’d never have known the truth.’

  ‘And now you do?’

  ‘Yes. And the truth is that I don’t have to blame myself any more. And that’s just so wonderful, because it ate away at my confidence – the thought that I might have brought it on myself.’

  ‘Why did you think that?’

  ‘Because I thought the reason he’d done it was because I’d been so nice to him, so weak and compliant, that he’d lost all respect for me.’

  ‘But, from what you say, and from what I saw of you on the Nice Factor course, you had been weak and compliant.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, I know. I’m not denying that. But that’s not why he dumped me. But I thought it was, and I’d been torturing myself for months. It was really eating away at me. Now I know that theory was wrong, and that it wasn’t my fault at all.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault?’ he repeated. He was fiddling with the fork.

  ‘No,’ I said again. And I was smiling. ‘It was all Dominic’s fault. I understand that now. I hadn’t realised quite how shallow Dominic was. And now I do.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It was all about money,’ I repeated. ‘It was as simple as that.’ I shook my head, and then I said, ‘I discovered I’m not to blame.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And that’s just so, so liberating for me.’

  ‘Well, it must be.’

  ‘And now I feel I can move on. I can truly move forward at last. Don’t you feel glad for me, Joe?’ I grabbed his hand. But he didn’t say anything. He was just looking at me in this slightly funny way.

  ‘Why don’t you say something?’

  ‘Well, what should I say?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Anything. Say you’re happy. Say you agree.’

  ‘Why should I say that? I don’t.’

  Oh. He’d obviously had too much to drink. Couldn’t get his brain round it.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll explain it again, you see –’

  ‘Oh no, I have all the information I need,’ he said, with what seemed like a slightly chilly smile. ‘But it’s the conclusion you’ve drawn that I don’t think is quite right.’

  ‘Look, the conclusion I’ve drawn is that it’s all Dominic’s fault. Not mine. He was shallow. But I didn’t know quite how shallow he was until I saw him on Thursday night.’

  ‘You did know,’ said Joe, pursing his lips.

  ‘No I didn’t.’

  ‘I think you did.’

  ‘No I didn’t,’ I repeated. And I was feeling slightly irritated by now. ‘I thought Dominic was only superficially shallow –’ We both laughed at that. ‘I mean, I thought he was only shallow about appearances, about clothes, and cars and parties.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I thought he was only shallow about surface things. But now I know that he was shallow in a grievous way.’

  ‘It sounds like it.’

  ‘Then why don’t you understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Oh, I do understand it. But I just don’t agree with you that you didn’t know how shallow Dominic was.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I insisted. ‘How could I know? I didn’t know about the pensions thing or the compensation plans. That was information I only received afterwards.’

  ‘But you’d already seen how shallow he could be,’ said Joe. ‘You’d seen it over and over again. So why be surprised when he turned out to be deeply shallow, as it were.’

  ‘Well, I was surprised.’

  ‘But that’s like being surprised if someone who’s previously shown violent tendencies then goes on to commit a murder. The signs were there. It’s in the mental make-up, the psychological background. You don’t have to be a writer to know that, Minty. We all give ourselves away.’

  Gosh, this was really quite annoying. I didn’t realise how difficult it was going to be.

  ‘Well, I don’t agree, Joe,’ I said with an exasperated sigh. ‘The fact is that I was really taken aback when at last I saw what had been going on.’

  ‘More fool you,’ he replied, as he pushed pasta round his plate. And he gave me this funny, slightly weary look. ‘I mean, on the course, there you were going on about how, from the very beginning, you’d thought Dominic was shallow. That he seemed overly concerned with “appearances”. And how, from the very outset, he’d started, insidiously, to change you.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t insidious. It was direct. “Wear this. Don’t wear that. Say this. Don’t say that. We’re doing this. We’re not doing that.” I don’t call that insidious at all.’

  ‘Then I’m even more shocked that you put up with it. It sounds awful. And none of us could believe that someone bright and independent like you would put up with such – crap. But you obviously did.’

  ‘Yes,’ I conceded, ‘I did. And I regret it with all my heart. And I’m never, never accepting that kind of shitty inequality again.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Because I’ve moved on.’

  ‘I’m not sure you have,’ he said.

  ‘Joe, sorry, but I think this is a bit unkind of you, to be so unsympathetic to me when I’ve been th
rough such a lot.’

  ‘I’m not being unsympathetic,’ he said, pushing his plate away. ‘Not at all. Far from it. I’m just a bit …disappointed, I suppose.’

  ‘Disappointed? What do you mean, disappointed?’

  ‘In you.’

  ‘Oh! Well …thanks very much.’ Blooming cheek!

  ‘Because you keep blaming Dominic.’

  ‘Yes, I do blame Dominic. Why shouldn’t I blame Dominic? Dominic does bad things. It’s all his fault!’

  ‘That’s where I disagree.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know why you disagree, because it’s true.’ I felt really cross now. In fact, I was on the verge of tears. Joe was spoiling a perfectly nice evening with his probing, irritating questions. ‘It is true,’ I said again. The table was beginning to blur. ‘I was a victim,’ I said. My throat ached with a suppressed sob. ‘I went through something terrible. Terrible. And it was all Dominic’s fault.’

  ‘But it was your fault too.’

  ‘It was not my fault,’ I insisted, struggling now to keep my voice low. ‘I was an entirely innocent party. He was scheming behind my back. Scheming to save his money, and to sell me down the river. And that’s what he did. In front of two hundred and eighty people. At exactly a hundred quid a head. So I don’t quite see how I’m to blame.’

  ‘You were. In a way. For allowing Dominic to treat you like that. Don’t get me wrong,’ he went on, ‘what he did was inexcusable …’

  ‘Well, hallelujah!’

  ‘ …but you were complicit in what he did, because you didn’t tell him where to get off.’

  ‘I didn’t tell him where to get off?’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘I didn’t?’

  ‘No. Doesn’t sound like it.’

  ‘Well, no, no, you’re right. OK, I didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ I shifted slightly on my chair.

  ‘Because it wasn’t worth it.’

  ‘Worth it? I see.’

  ‘He had a very nasty temper,’ I explained. ‘He’d make such an awful, hysterical fuss if he didn’t get his own way. It was horrible. I was afraid to confront him.’