by Mike Gayle
I was—mentally speaking—already huffing my way down Clapham High Street, moaning to myself about how I was never going to understand women and their strange ways, when Mel shouted out after me, “What did you come round here for anyway, Duffy? Just to show me how much I can’t stand you?”
I searched for something equally horrible to say, but the genuine hurt I heard in her voice thankfully brought me to my senses, so that the worst thing I could find in the deep well of regret into which I was currently sinking was, “I came to tell you, yes, I want to marry you.”
This was actually a bit of a lie.
Well, not a lie, but not exactly the truth.
Kind of ninety-seven percent truth and three percent total fabrication.
I did want to marry her—just not now—not yet. The words I’d said instead, however, had sort of leaped from my lips and now they were out I was almost proud of them. I’d never quite understood how people came to make decisions of this magnitude: “Let’s have a baby”; “Let’s get married”; “Let’s commit suicide.” These are all monumental life-changing decisions from which there is no return. I’d always believed it would take a certain type of strength from a certain type of person to say, “Let’s get married,” so I was pleased that even I, a metaphorical seven-stone weakling in a world crammed full of emotional heavyweights, had been able to cut it with the big boys.
Hard Mel disappeared instantly, as did my incarnation as “Stupid Boy.” In their places were the Mel whom I knew and loved so much, and the good old me who thought Mel was the best thing since toast. She raced toward me and wrapped her arms around me tightly, making me feel like more of a man than I’d felt in a long time. As she kissed me fervently, again I realized I’d just made all her dreams come true. If only it was always this easy to make people you love happy, I thought. Sometimes I felt like my whole reason for being was to fill the lives of those I loved with disappointment—it was a nice change to do the opposite.
I was happy.
Mel was happy.
Even Nosferatu seemed to be smiling.
Everything was going to be all right.
The Six Million Dollar Man
The reactions to the news of my forthcoming nuptials were strange to say the least. My mum burst into tears. “I’m so happy,” she said through her joy-filled sobs. “I’m just so happy for the two of you.” She dropped the phone about a million times, and made me tell her the details over and over again as if she couldn’t believe it the first time.
I went round to Vernie’s to tell her, and her initial comment was a terse, “About time too,” which made me laugh because I knew deep down her excitement was on a par with my mother’s. Charlie congratulated me with a hearty handshake and said he thought my getting married was the best news he’d heard in ages.
Dan, needless to say, thought my getting married was a bad idea but didn’t say so because he knew that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. So he gave me a kind of backslappy hug, cracked a joke about advertising in Penthouse for a new flatmate and promised to arrange a celebratory drink on Friday night. As Mel had arranged a quick “I’m-engaged-isn’t-it-great?” drink on the same night, Dan’s plans fitted in perfectly with the weekend schedule Mel and I had prepared for ourselves, now that we’d been upgraded into the serious-couple club.
Sitting in the Haversham on Friday night, Dan and Charlie decided unanimously that the whole evening’s entertainment would be at my expense, despite my having been an engaged man for only six days. For the next few hours I was the butt of their jokes, jibes and mockery, which was actually quite reassuring in its own way—laughter was the perfect antidote to any apprehension I was feeling about marriage. The evening’s conversation went a little something like this . . .
8:23 P.M.
“What is it about weddings that women like so much?” asked Dan.
“The dresses?” suggested Charlie.
“You could have a point there,” said Dan. “What have all weddings got in common apart from the bride and groom?”
“A posh dress!” replied Charlie.
I tried my hardest not to become tainted by the sheer ludicrousness of their conversation but I couldn’t help myself. “You’re not seriously trying to tell me that women the world over have been getting married just so they can get a new frock? What about Elizabeth Taylor? Married more times than I can remember and she can afford as many posh frocks as she likes.”
“Ahhh,” exclaimed Dan astutely, “but the wedding means she’s always got somewhere nice to wear it.”
9:28 P.M.
Charlie played question master. “Why do you think blokes are so scared of commitment?”
“Simple,” answered Dan. “It’s the Daisy Duke principle.” With the utterance of those words Dan had our attention in full. For everyone around the table and probably any member of our generation, Daisy Duke—of The Dukes of Hazzard fame—was a byword for truth, beauty and cheek-revealing denim hotpants. “In our formative years we’re exposed to a huge number of amazingly beautiful women,” continued Dan. “We men become conditioned to seek out perfection and spend our lives in pursuit of the ultimate babe. Of course this search will prove fruitless because perfection doesn’t exist. But that won’t stop us wandering through life nomadically, refusing to put down roots until our quest is over.”
“We are to be pitied not chided,” chipped in Charlie. “Ours is a thankless task.”
“When you think about it,” said Dan, “finding the perfect partner is a bit like a game of pontoon. I mean, you get your cards and you make your decision. Do you stick or twist? Do you play safe and settle for nineteen or do you go all out for twenty-one, even if you might end up bust?”
“On a good day Vernie’s a twenty-one.” Charlie laughed. “Although I reckon she thinks I’m an eighteen. What do you reckon, Dan? Ever had a twenty-one?”
“Let’s think,” he said, mulling it over. “There was Cerys in college, she was a fourteen. Then there was Louise after that, who was probably a seventeen, but I think the closest I’ve ever come was with Meena.” He hesitated for a moment and took a sip of his beer. “She was definitely a twenty, but you know me, just like Kenny Rogers I’m a gambler. I had to go for the twenty-one. Didn’t seem right not to.”
“Mel’s my twenty-one,” I said, more to my pint than to my assembled friends. “She is the perfect hand.”
10:05 P.M.
It was Dan’s turn to pontificate. “Your conventional modern action hero doesn’t need a full-time woman, because they get in the way and reduce his ability to catch the bad guys and save the world from certain disaster. That’s why none of fiction’s greatest heroes are happily hitched. Discuss.”
I attempted to think of a betrothed hero and found it more difficult than I’d anticipated. “James Bond,” I said triumphantly after a few moments of deep thought. “He was married.”
“Was married,” said Dan. “In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, to be exact. He gets married but his wife gets killed near the end of the film by a bullet meant for JB. The subtext is obvious: James Bond cannot save the world and be an icon for young men the world over with a bird in tow. Plus, if you take the meaningless sex with all manner of exotic kung fu/spy/killer beauties out of James Bond, what have you got? Nothing but a middle-aged man acting like a teenager.”
“He’s right,” said Charlie. “Think about it, Duff. Starsky and Hutch, Magnum, P.I., Dean Martin in Matt Helm, Batman, Shaft, Han Solo in Star Wars . . . Han Solo, I ask you.”
“All the guys in The A-Team,” added Dan.
“The Six Million Dollar Man,” I contributed reluctantly.
“Charlie from Charlie’s Angels,” added Charlie. Simultaneously Dan and I turned to him for an explanation.
“I’m pretty sure he was married,” I said. “Bosley was single I’ll give you that but I reckon Charlie was definitely married.”
“He’s right you know,” said Dan. “Charlie from Charlie’s Angels is married. I think t
hey even mentioned it in one show.”
Charlie refused to be convinced. “As the only person here who has a wife let me tell you. Any bloke who employs three of the Seventies’ hottest women to fight crime isn’t going to be married. There’s no way his wife would let him get away with it. Could you imagine Vernie letting me go off to weekend conferences with Sabrina, Kris, and Kelly. I don’t think so!”
“You could have a point there, mate,” said Dan. “It would be asking for trouble. But anyway, we’re digressing. All of these heroes—bachelor men the lot of them,” said Dan. “It has to be the way for real men to exist. No ties. No hassle. Just fighting crime and babes on tap.”
“Okay,” I countered. I’d been racking my brains trying to find married fictional heroes. “What about Bruce Willis in the Die Hard films? He’s married.”
“You’re kidding,” said Dan, laughing. “How long’s a marriage going to last when your husband keeps getting himself into the kind of scrapes where he loses his shoes and has to run around upstate New York wearing nothing but a vest?”
11:15 P.M. (Time, ladies and gentlemen, please!)
“I’m a pretty amazing bloke,” said Dan, adopting a pompous tone of voice. “I’m a big hit with the ladies, I look the business—in short I am the bee’s knees. But”—he paused thoughtfully—“if you were to look through a selection of photographs of me when I was seventeen you’d say to yourself, ‘Why upon my life, cool Dan is in fact nothing but a geek! Look at that haircut, his dodgy Iron Maiden T-shirt, his pitiful attempt to grow a moustache!’ ”
“So what’s your point?” I sighed, as if I hadn’t already guessed.
“Marriage is a lot like a photograph. The person you get hitched to is a snapshot of who you are at the time. Granted, you might think she’s the best thing ever, but think about it . . . imagine if you got married to the first girl you fell in love with.”
“What?” said Charlie.
“Imagine her. There you are seventeen years old. You’re in love. You think it’s never going to end. But imagine meeting her now with her big hair, marble-washed jeans and her Amnesty International membership card. Would you want to be married to that?”
I tutted despondently. “You’re presuming that she’s stayed the same. You don’t know that. If you’ve changed, then she’s bound to have changed too.”
“Of course,” said Dan. “But into what?”
11:31 P.M. Inside the Archway Fish and Chip Bar across the road from the Haversham
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong with living together,” said Dan as we waited for our chips and curry sauce. “It’s the root of all evil in every relationship: you take each other for granted. You assume she’s always going to be there, so you stop putting in the effort. She assumes you’re never going to change and you go out of your way to prove her right. You start treating each other like furniture—and what’s worse, not even furniture that you actually like.”
The phone was ringing. I looked at the glow-in-the-dark alarm clock Mel had given me for my twenty-sixth birthday, only to discover it was 2:57 A.M. I attempted to go back to sleep, but the beer, chips and curry sauce churning in my stomach, combined with the mad person at the end of the telephone who clearly refused to believe we were asleep, made resting impossible. Eyes half closed I got up and walked along the hallway, throwing a menacing squint in the direction of Dan’s bedroom as I passed. I bet he’s unplugged the answerphone so he could use the toaster in the living room again, I thought, scowling. I was right. There next to the phone was the toaster with a piece of cold toast in it. I picked up the toast, took a bite and answered the phone, still chewing.
“Hello?” I said, about to take another bite of my toast.
“Isssh meee,” slurred an unquestionably inebriated Mel.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, as if I didn’t know the answer.
“Aaaallcoooohol,” she said desperately. “Too much . . . think am going to die . . . come round please . . . now.”
“But it’s three o’clock in the morning,” I protested. “I’m knackered. I’ve only been asleep a few hours.”
“Oh, please come, Duff,” she whined. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“You’re not going to be sick,” I reassured her. “Just take a couple of paracetamols, go to bed and I’ll see you in the morning. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said, repeating my instructions with a childlike innocence. “Take a couple of paracetamols, go back to bed and . . . bleuuuurghhh!” The sentence ended abruptly with the unmistakable sound of projectile vomit hitting the telephone mouthpiece.
It was a quarter to four in the morning by the time the taxi pulled up outside Mel’s. I got out, handed the driver twenty pounds and told him to keep the change. I didn’t usually tip but I was grateful that he hadn’t made any comment on my Manchester United football shirt and paisley dressing gown. Too ill to open the door when I rang the buzzer, Mel hurled the front-door key out of the upstairs’ bedroom window and I let myself in.
She was lying on the sofa, still dressed in her work clothes, with a washing-up bowl next to her head and a look of sheer biliousness across her features. “Oh, Duffy!” she said, employing the quiet self-pitying whiny voice of the repentant drunkard. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”
“Of course not,” I comforted, glancing at the carrot-based contents of the washing-up bowl. I kissed her lightly on the cheek and removed the bowl to the kitchen. I returned with a glass of water, which I made her sip while I stroked her forehead. While I attempted to scrub a spot of sick off the carpet with a dishcloth, she laid her head back on a cushion and made small murmuring noises.
“How did you get like this?” I said, and sat down beside her.
With her eyes closed quite firmly she began her sorry tale. “It was only going to be a quick one after work. Just to celebrate our engagement . . .” she whimpered. “And then Julie told me about a new bar in Poland Street and then everyone thought we should go there and so we did and they kept buying me drinks and I couldn’t refuse, could I?” She opened her eyes. “I couldn’t, honestly, Duff.”
“I know, babe,” I said, nodding. “What were you drinking?”
“Vuuurkahanoorraaahhh,” she mumbled.
“What?”
“Vodka and orange,” she repeated guiltily.
“Oh, Mel,” I chided gently. “You should know better.” Everyone has a loopy juice, a lethal alcoholic cocktail that releases the beast within. For me it was Cinzano and lemonade, for Dan it was cider and black, but for Mel it was vodka and orange. At various times in the past under its influence she had ruined a dress from Ghost trying to climb a fence, lost a purse containing at least fifty quid, and told me for the very first time that she loved me. They were an amusing but volatile double act. “You said never again after last time,” I reminded her. The last time being Dan’s birthday six months ago when after a large number of vodka and oranges, she’d got up on a table in the Soho All Bar One and started dancing in a provocative manner to Shirley Bassey’s “Hey Big Spender.”
“I know,” she said. Her voice was even more pitiful than before. “I’m sorry.”
I kissed her forehead. “You did have a proper meal before you started drinking didn’t you?”
“Dry-roasted peanuts,” she said sorrowfully. “It was all I could find.” I had to laugh. With a stomach packed with nothing more substantial than peanuts, and seven hours’ worth of vodka and orange juice, it was a wonder her brain hadn’t melted, let alone her stomach regurgitated its contents. “I think I’m going to be sick again,” she whimpered.
I looked around for the washing-up bowl but I’d left it in the kitchen. “Are you sure?”
She nodded.
“Can you walk?”
She shook her head.
“Right, I’ll have to carry you then.” Picking her up in my arms, I carried her to the bathroom and placed her on the floor. On her knees she crawled to the toilet, lifted up the seat and threw up whi
le I held her hair out of her face, then collapsed in a heap on the floor.
“I feel much better now,” she groaned mournfully and promptly fell asleep.
I carried her to the bedroom, where I undressed her and put her pajamas on. I tucked her into bed and then fell asleep beside her.
Duffy, are you awake?”
It was the day after the night before and I’d been awake for some time staring at the ceiling and thinking about nothing in particular. “What time is it?” I asked.
Mel looked at her bedside clock. “Just coming up to two o’clock in the afternoon.” She pulled herself up close to me. “Duff,” she said quietly, “you do know I’m sorry about last night, don’t you?”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” I said, rolling over to face her properly.
“But I got you out of bed at three o’clock in the morning and dragged you halfway across London to look after me.” She sat up, pulling me up with her. “I love you, you know. Not many men would have done what you did.”
I shrugged my shoulders, embarrassed by her gratitude. “It wasn’t that special.” I paused, lost for words. “Anyway, you’d do the same for me.”
“That’s not the point,” she said, looking so deeply into my eyes I thought she was going to cry.
“What is the point?” I asked, more than a little confused by her behavior.
“The point is this: I don’t think that I’ve ever loved you more than I do right now.” And then she kissed me.
Because if you are I will be forced to kill you while you’re asleep and plead diminished responsibility
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon, one of those freak flashes of summer that now often occur in spring, thanks to global warming. I’d been engaged for a month and was still getting used to the idea of marriage, but with the help of Mel it no longer seemed like such a formidable proposition. Mel, Charlie, Vernie and I had all been for lunch at the Haversham, and as we headed for Highgate Woods we all donned our sunglasses with pride—Reservoir Dogs let loose in Muswell Hill.