by Mike Gayle
Having just left yet another message on Mel’s home answerphone, I decided it was time to take a look at The Proposal from a different perspective. Sneaking past Bridget on reception (a woman who thought gossiping to management about the lives of temps was a fundamental human right), I escaped to the lift and descended into the bowels of the building, to the newsagent–cum–sandwich shop in the basement. Bathed in the harsh white glare of strip lighting, I stood staring at the rows of glossy women’s magazines, all with unfeasibly beautiful women on the cover airbrushed to perfection.
Mel read these sorts of magazines religiously. Within their pages was a world of wisdom and advice that was completely alien to me. Mel understood these magazines and they understood her. I’m fed up with being on the outside looking in, I thought, scanning the shelves. I’m tired of not knowing what’s going on with my own girlfriend.
I picked up New Woman and flicked through it, and then I picked up 19 and then Company and continued plucking titles off the shelves until I’d amassed a pile on the counter that left me with twenty-nine pence change from a twenty-pound note. Sneaking past Checkpoint Bridget (thankfully she was on the phone discussing the previous night’s Coronation Street so I didn’t have to explain my reading material) I returned to my workstation and hid the magazines in the bottom drawer of my desk, which I normally reserved for sandwiches, my ball of rubber bands and stapler collection.
As soon as the coast was clear I sneaked out the first of the magazines, Cosmopolitan, and began to execute my plan. With my tongue firmly lodged in my cheek I’d managed to convince myself that if I directly asked these magazines the questions that I wanted to know—like a Ouija board only more scary—they would somehow provide me with the answers I so longed for.
Checking the coast was clear of snoopers and eavesdroppers I closed my eyes, spread my palms over the magazine and its free astrological supplement and in a deep, ominous voice whispered, “Oh, mighty Cosmopolitan. You speak for young go-getting women the world over. I have some questions for you:
1. Why, after four years, does Mel suddenly want to get married?
2. Why does Mel insist on holding conversations in the middle of my favorite TV programs?
3. What is this season’s hem length going to be?”
I was chuckling so dementedly by the time I got to the third question that Scottish Helen, a fellow temp who sat in the workstation opposite me, stared at me openmouthed as if I’d well and truly lost my mind (which in a way I suppose I had). “What are you doing?” she asked, peering over her computer.
“Cosmopolitan is a Ouija board,” I deadpanned, “and I’m asking it questions about women.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” said Helen, who had, in the three months that I had known her, come to accept my erratic behavior more or less without question. “Can I borrow it when you’re finished?”
“No problem,” I said. “Just give me a moment.”
That “moment” lasted an hour and a half. By the time I’d finished looking through it and the other magazines it was time to go home, so I put them on a neat pile on Helen’s desk and left. Needless to say I didn’t discover the answers to questions one or two, but what I didn’t know about the current season’s hem length really wasn’t worth knowing.
With no answers forthcoming from the world of women’s magazines, I decided it was time to get a little sisterly advice on the matter. Vernie was two and a bit years older than me and had always been the bossy one in our family. Growing up in a single-parent family, my sister took up the mantle of the man of the house as soon as she was able. Many a time at primary school, having smart-mouthed the school bully once too often, I’d be suffering painful torture at his hands only to have my sister bound across the playground and pummel my assailant within an inch of his life, earning herself the sobriquet Muhammad Duffy.
Years later little had changed. Vernie might not have physically assaulted anyone in the last two decades, but she could still administer the kind of tongue-lashing most people never forgot. Charlie, her husband, was a much mellower character. He was the Yin to her Yang and together they made each other normal. Charlie really was great. He was laid-back in a way that made me envious, and yet wise in a way that wasn’t obvious. Like me he enjoyed the simple things in life: the love of a good woman, evenings in the pub talking about nothing in particular, and football. So when Charlie and Vernie moved from Derby to London and ended up in a huge house in nearby Crouch End, it was only a matter of time before he became mine and Dan’s top mate, drinking buddy and third musketeer.
“What’s wrong?” said Vernie, as soon as she opened her front door. “You look like a right misery.”
“I dunno,” I said, watching my breath rise up into the cold night sky. “I know that’s a bit lame but I really don’t know what’s wrong.”
“You’d better come in,” she said, and I followed her into the kitchen where she made a cup of tea and handed me a can of Lilt and a glass filled with ice cubes.
We moved into the lounge, and while she told me about her day at work in great detail (she was a system analyst for a large computing firm in the City), I sucked ice cubes noisily and looked out of the bay window wondering what Mel was doing right now. After some minutes of this, it became obvious to Vernie that I hadn’t been listening to a single word she’d been saying.
“Okay, let’s talk about you!” she said, throwing an embroidered cushion at my head in mock anger. “That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? You’re so self-obsessed sometimes it’s frightening.” She paused and looked at me. “It’s Mel, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“You’ve had a row because she’s fed up waiting for you to agree to move in together.”
“Nearly, but not quite.”
Vernie raised her eyebrows. “She asked the big question?”
I nodded again. “How do you know we’ve had a row? Have you spoken to her, then?”
“No.” Vernie rolled her eyes, signaling my dense stupidity. “And I’m not psychic either. Duff, this has been in the cards for a long time.”
“That’s what she said as well,” I said, kicking off my shoes.
“You don’t sound convinced,” said Vernie.
“I don’t get it.” I sighed. “If even you know, how come it was news to me?”
Vernie shook her head and issued the universal sound for stupidity: “Doh! It would be news to you, Duffy. And do you know why? Because everything is news to you.” Over the next fifteen minutes she gave me one of her many extended lectures on life, love and the stuff in between. This one was about how men didn’t pay attention to the small things in life because they didn’t think small things were important, when in truth small things are everything. She concluded her speech with the accusatory flourish: “You bumble about in your own selfish worlds completely oblivious to the things that really upset us and then wonder what it is you’ve done wrong.”
I concluded from the length, pace and formidable sense of personal frustration in her speech, that Charlie had done something to wind her up and that her words were meant more for her absent partner than for me. Revealing an impeccable sense of timing, this was exactly the moment Charlie chose to come through the front door after his day working in the town planning department of Westminster Council.
“All right, mate?” he called out as he entered the room, dropping his briefcase on the floor and kicking off his shoes.
“Yeah. Not too bad,” I replied, looking at Vernie, who was in turn glowering at Charlie’s recently abandoned shoes.
Charlie immediately picked up on the bad vibes that were issuing forth from his wife like a laser beam, tidied away his shoes and briefcase, walked over to the sofa and attempted to kiss Vernie hello. He failed. She glared at him, put her mug of tea down firmly on the coffee table that she never lets anyone put anything down on without a coaster, and in one smooth movement huffed her way out of the room slamming the door behind her.
Charlie tutted quiet
ly to himself and sat down.
“What’ve you done?” I asked as Vernie banged her way loudly up the stairs. “Murdered someone? Forgotten her birthday? Started wearing her underwear again?”
“Long story,” said Charlie, which was coded Charlie-speak for “Let’s talk about something else.” He took off his suit jacket and slumped onto the sofa with his feet up on the coffee table. “Just visiting, were you?”
“No,” I said flatly. “Woman trouble.”
“Oh” was Charlie’s disdainful reply. “You too. Which kind?”
“The kind where Mel wants to get married.”
“Oh.”
“Oh indeed.” I stopped and mulled over a thought for a minute. Here I was sitting with a married man. Someone from my team who had made The Big Decision and lived to tell the tale. Surely he could give me some advice. “What was it that made you get married, Charlie?”
He frowned and loosened his tie. “Hang on a sec.” He disappeared out of the room for a few moments and returned with a can of Coke. “Where were we?”
“You were telling me why you got married.”
“You want the truth?”
“No,” I said. “I was after complete and utter lies but the truth will do.”
He ignored my attempt at biting sarcasm and took a sip of his drink. “I knew she was the one,” he said matter-of-factly, as if love was an equation to which he’d worked out the solution. The scientific edge to his voice I’m sure was for my benefit. “Yes,” it said, “we are talking about emotions but in a logical non-soppy way, so it doesn’t count.” “She was the right one for me. Simple as that.” He drained the can in four huge gulps and set it on the table next to Vernie’s half-drunk tea.
“Is that all it takes?”
“That’s all it took for me. But you know. Different strokes and all that.”
“Yeah, I suppose,” I said despondently. “Thing is . . .” I stopped and attempted to add Charlie’s logical tone to my voice. “Thing is I love Mel. I don’t want anyone else. So why is this marriage thing freaking me out so much?”
Charlie shrugged his shoulders. “Only you know that, mate.” He picked up the TV remote control from the coffee table and started browsing through the channels systematically—thirty seconds and then he’d move on.
“How did you ask Vernie to marry you?” I asked, as BBC2 was turning into ITV. “Did you do something special or did you just come out with it?”
Charlie just raised his eyebrows warily as if his refusal to answer was down to the Official Secrets Act rather than embarrassment. “I forget now. It was a long time ago.”
It was actually four years ago and Charlie hadn’t forgotten, he just didn’t want to tell me. Fortunately, I already knew and was just pulling his plonker for the sheer pleasure of it. The manner of his proposal was meant to be top secret, but I knew because Vernie had told Mel and Mel in turn had told me, saying, “It’s the most beautiful thing ever.” Apparently, Charlie had told Vernie he was taking her away for the weekend as a surprise. She was expecting somewhere like the Lake District at the very best, so she must have been ecstatic when they ended up in New York. On their first day in the Big Apple he took her to the top of the Empire State Building, and as she looked through the twenty-five-cents telescope on to Central Park he put a piece of paper at the end of it with the words “Will you marry me?” on it and she burst into tears and immediately said yes. At the time I was really surprised by this story, because anyone who knew Charlie well knew that big romantic gestures just weren’t his thing.
“C’mon, Charlie,” I said, smirking. “I need some tips on what to do. Surely you can remember how you asked my sister to marry you?”
“I know you’re trying to wind me up,” said Charlie, laughing, “and it won’t work. I’m not alone in my actions, because when it comes to stuff like this, every man has a poem in his heart.”
“It’s a nice thought, but mine’s bound to be more of a limerick,” I said, picking up my glass.
“Nah,” said Charlie, and for a moment I could’ve sworn that I saw a flash of his special brand of wisdom twinkle in his eyes. “You’ve got a poem in your heart, mate. You’ve just got to find it. Okay, you get moments like this.” He glanced up at the ceiling pointedly, from where the sounds of Vernie stomping on the floorboards emanated. “But you know . . . I wouldn’t swap it for the world.”
I am not your mother!
It was late evening by the time I got back to the flat. The first thing I did was check the answerphone—no messages. The heartbreakingly pitiful message I’d left on Mel’s answerphone had obviously failed to melt her heart. My flatmate Dan was lying across the sofa silently watching the Nine o’Clock News. “All right, mate?” I asked, sitting down in an armchair in the corner of the room.
“Yeah, I suppose,” he said despondently, his face half squashed into a cushion. “Got something in the post today.” He pointed to an envelope on the floor in the middle of the room.
“What is it?”
“Read it and find out,” he said, his eyes still fixed on the television. “Weirdness.”
I picked up the envelope. Inside was a wedding invitation on cream paper embossed with gold. I read it aloud. “ ‘Meena Amos and Paul Midford would like to invite Daniel Carter and guest to their wedding . . .’ ” I stopped as it dawned on me what this all meant. “Your ex-girlfriend is getting married?”
“Looks like it. I know him too. He was on my drama course at Manchester Uni. I’ve seen him on The Bill and Casualty a few times. Talentless git. Never liked him. Wouldn’t know Ibsen from his arse, that one.”
“Why is Meena inviting you to her wedding?”
Dan shrugged and changed channels.
“I mean it’s not exactly like you finished on anything vaguely like good terms is it?”
“Precisely,” said Dan. “Like I said before, this is pure weirdness.”
“And anyway, isn’t it a bit early to be sending out invitations? It says here she’s not getting married until September.”
“I know. She always did like to plan ahead.”
Meena was the last woman in Dan’s life to have fitted the description of “Girlfriend.” They’d met at university and up until a year ago had lived together in the flat which I now shared with Dan. Back then Meena used to terrify me every time I met her. She was a complete maniac when her back was up and toward the end of her and Dan’s relationship her back was permanently in the arched position, teeth bared, claws out and hissing wildly. I couldn’t blame her really. As far as I could work out, since they’d moved in together Dan had begun some sort of mission to see just how far he could push his luck. The day they split up was the day that he found out.
At the time Dan was working part-time as a security guard in between stand-up gigs while Meena worked as a set designer for a theater in East London. On the day in question I’d been round at their flat with Dan, trying to think up less soul-destroying ways of making money than temp work. What I didn’t know was that he’d promised Meena that very morning that he’d tidy up the flat because her parents were coming to stay. So when she came home early from work to discover a sink full of washing-up, me asleep on the sofa and Dan watching Countdown, she well and truly lost it.
Now Dan might be a lot of things, but he wasn’t so stupid that he couldn’t see this coming. Although he never admitted to it, it was my belief that this was his way of forcing the issue and letting Meena know that he didn’t want to live with her anymore. My guess was that he wanted his old life back and he wanted it back now. I think he was banking on my presence in the flat tempering Meena’s outburst, thus making the transition from relationship to non-relationship as trauma-free an experience as possible. Best-laid plans of mice and men and all that. It was not to be.
“It’s not you, it’s me,” explained Dan, after a five-minute dressing-down in which Meena not only failed to hold back for fear of embarrassing me, but also revealed some information about Dan’s sub-d
uvet activities that I think both of us wished she’d kept to herself.
“Of course it’s you,” said Meena defiantly. “There’s only room for one selfish, self-centered, egotistical, monomaniac, commitment-phobic bath dodger in this relationship, and that’s you.”
“Bath dodger?”
“Bath dodger.”
“Who are you calling a bath dodger?”
“You, you filthy dirty bath dodger!”
“I had a bath,” protested Dan.
“When did you have a bath?” She reached into her handbag, took out her pocket diary and read from it. “ ‘Tuesday fourteenth, Dan has not had a bath. Wednesday fifteenth, still no Dan bath.’ Do I need to carry on?”
“You’ve been keeping a note of how often I wash?” said Dan incredulously.
“Yes,” she snapped. “I’ve also got documentary evidence to the fact that you haven’t touched the vacuum cleaner in three months, you’ve not washed the bathroom sink in weeks and”—she checked her diary for this one—“right now you’re wearing a pair of boxer shorts that you’ve had on for two days in a row.”
“Two days?” Dan, much to his shame had no answer to this one. “Time flies, eh?” And then he said something that took me completely by surprise. “Listen, Meena,” he said, “I’m sorry. I can change.”
“Pants or personality?”
“Personality,” he said sheepishly.
This was very un-Dan. Very uncool. He normally had his goodbye speeches down pat, a throwback to his days at drama college. He was wavering. I think he was unsure if he really did want to split up with Meena or whether now that he’d finally realized that if he pushed hard enough Meena would eventually push back, he wanted her more than ever. But it was too late and he knew that.
“Dan, you’ll never change,” spat Meena furiously. “You are you and that’s all there is to it. You leave everything to me and expect me to run around after you like you’re some sort of naughty schoolboy. I am not your mother! We’ve been together since we left college six years ago. We’ve been living together for just five months of those six years and it seems to me that as soon as we moved in you gave up on us. You used to be so sweet, Dan, you used to try and impress me . . . you even used to take a shower every day when we first met! What happened? Why did you give up? I’ll tell you why. You gave up because you’re lazy and selfish and think that I was put on this earth to please you. Well, I wasn’t, okay? It’s over, Dan. We’re finished.”