From Something Old

by Alexander, Nick

  I stared at my feet for a moment longer until I saw from the corner of my vision that he had swooshed away in his long coat.

  When I looked up, Sheena was frowning at me. ‘Was that the bloke from Homebase you told me about?’ she asked. ‘The one who wanted to put up your bog roll holder?’

  ‘B&Q,’ I said, ‘not Homebase.’

  ‘Don’t just do it, B&Q it,’ she said salaciously. ‘He’s hot.’

  ‘He’s a property developer,’ I commented. I’d pulled the card from my pocket and was studying it. His surname was Doyle. ‘Anthony Doyle,’ I murmured out loud. And then, rather pathetically, I couldn’t resist trying out another combination in my mind. Heather Doyle. It didn’t sound so bad.

  ‘He’s smoking hot,’ Sheena said. ‘You should get in there. I bloody would.’

  ‘I know you would, even though you’re married!’ I said. She was reaching out for the card, so I slipped it back into my pocket.

  ‘I’m not actually married . . .’ she said, winking. ‘You are going to call him, aren’t you?’

  I shrugged again.

  ‘God! The way you go on about being single . . .’ she said. ‘It’s all day, every day. It’s all you talk about most of the time. How there are no decent men around, or they’re all gay, or blah blah blah. And then something like this happens . . . I mean, a good-looking bloke . . . a very good-looking bloke, actually. Virtually lapping at your feet and—’

  ‘Please stop,’ I said. I’d had these conversations with my nursing friends many times, but they didn’t help. My incapacity to find a man always remained as much a mystery to myself as it was to them.

  ‘Get a grip,’ Sheena continued. ‘Stop acting like an adolescent and just, you know, grab life by the balls. Grab Anthony by the balls, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Just . . . stop!’ I said again, more forcefully than I’d intended. ‘I know, all right? It’s just . . .’

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘I’m not convinced, that’s all.’

  ‘Something’s wrong with you,’ Sheena said.

  ‘You think?’ I asked, trying to sound sassy.

  ‘You know who you’re going to end up like?’ she continued. ‘Bridget Jones! A hundred years old in a room full of cats. You do realise that, don’t you?’

  ‘Actually, Bridget ends up with Colin Firth,’ I pointed out. But we had reached the ticket booth, so I didn’t have to listen to Sheena’s depressing view of my future any longer.

  The film was a bit of a waste, really. I was too busy thinking about Anthony, about the card in my coat pocket and getting old in a room full of cats. I was too busy thinking about the fact that I was thirty-three, that I’d always imagined having children but was running out of time; about the fact that I’d had sex on only a handful of occasions, and had only ever dated for the sum total of three weeks during nursing college (he’d turned out to be a heavy drinker, which had been a definite no-no). But Sheena was right, something was wrong with me, I had known it for years, and so I spent the rest of the film wondering, not for the first time, if there was some special kind of shrink or dating coach I could consult to get over my fear of talking to men. Because otherwise I really was going to be single for ever.

  What happened next was entirely Sheena’s fault.

  We went for coffee after the film and, while I was in the loo, she fished, unbeknown to me, my phone and Anthony’s card from my pocket.

  I noticed how strangely buoyant she seemed during the half an hour we were together, but I didn’t guess why until I got home.

  I fed Dandy and sat down on the sofa, and as I reached for the TV remote, my indestructible Nokia buzzed with an incoming SMS.

  ‘Wow. Now there’s a programme!’ the message read. ‘Happy to help. Let me know when you are free.’

  I frowned at the screen and, thinking that it was a wrong number, was about to delete the message when it occurred to me to check my own sent message list.

  ‘LOVELY TO SEE U TODAY,’ the outgoing text read. ‘IF THE OFFERS STILL ON ID LOVE YOU TO TEACH ME HOW TO DRILL. AND SCREW.’

  ‘Oh Christ!’ I said out loud, a sickening feeling rising. ‘Oh, the cow!’ And then I reread the message Sheena had sent and noticed the full stop she had inserted between DRILL. AND SCREW. Typing text messages on a Nokia back then was no mean feat, requiring multiple presses for each letter. Punctuation did not happen by accident. I felt so embarrassed I had to fight back tears.

  Anthony, it turned out, really was ‘into me’, though. Now he had my number, the text messages didn’t stop.

  His enthusiasm still made no sense to me – I honestly couldn’t understand what the attraction was. But after a few days, encouraged, nay pushed, by Sheena, I started to go along with it, just to see what would happen. I’d been lonely for too long, I suppose.

  Our first official date was in a pretentious restaurant that was basically a pizzeria with candles, though I’ve nothing against pizza and admit that I rather liked the romantic feel the candles brought to the whole thing.

  Anthony was looking good in a dark blue suit with an open-necked shirt. He was polite, chivalrous even, standing behind me to take my coat and then lingering long enough to slide my chair in for me as I sat down. I had never seen anyone actually do that before – well, not outside of a black-and-white film, at any rate. He talked about himself quite a lot, I remember. He told me about growing up in Warrington, and how he was ‘making a killing’ in property development, which seemed a bit of a brash, bragging thing to say on a date, but being so shy I was basically just happy that he was doing all the talking.

  Our second date was in The Millers Arms, and we sat in front of the flickering open fire. Once again, Ant was chatty and animated. Because he was driving back home afterwards, he refused to drink alcohol and that certainly ticked a few boxes as far as I was concerned.

  The third date was in Alberrys wine bar, and this time I watched him drink (reasonably) and, understanding the implication that he wasn’t intending to drive home afterwards, allowed him to ply me with slightly less reasonable quantities of Chardonnay. I watched him walk me home, then invite himself in for coffee. I noticed the gentle presence of his hand on my back as I boiled the kettle to make it.

  I was so nervous that I felt as if I had stepped out of my body and was watching what was happening from the outside – watching myself being seduced.

  I was surprised, shortly after the coffee, to find myself lying down beneath his tall, slender body; shocked, too, as he entered me, then relieved, I remember, when I grasped that he had managed to fit his not insignificant-looking organ inside me. I’d feared that I was too out of practice to manage it. I thought about asking him to use a condom, but couldn’t summon the strength to interrupt something that was, by then, already very much a work in progress. If something happened as a result, I’d just have to deal with it afterwards.

  It was all a little faster than I would have preferred, and just as I was beginning to relax into the moment, I understood that it was over. But I couldn’t honestly say I had a problem with any aspect of it. In fact, I liked the sensation of his body, enjoyed the way his vastness so inevitably dominated my tiny frame.

  From that point on, we were a couple, and that surprised me as well.

  I’m not quite sure what I expected, but I suppose I thought there would be a moment when we’d have to decide whether we were going to go out together or not. I thought there would at least be a moment of conscious decision, a question asked, a reply given, whereas, in fact, our relationship just seemed to happen, like a snowball gathering size as it rolls downhill. It turned out that it was questioning, refusing, or trying to change direction that required effort, and I remember thinking, It’s that easy, huh? Who knew?

  I finally managed to pronounce the word condom one evening, but when Ant claimed he couldn’t hold an erection while wearing one, I found myself too embarrassed to pursue the subject any further.

  I decided I should probabl
y go to the doctor and get a prescription for the pill, but continually forgot to book the appointment in that special way you forget to do things that make you feel uneasy. Each time we had sex, I’d reassure myself by thinking about Sheena, who’d been trying, and failing, to get pregnant for the best part of a decade. It wasn’t, it seemed, something that necessarily happened that easily.

  A second toothbrush appeared in my bathroom mug. I stared at it as I sat on the loo one morning and wondered if Anthony should have asked me first. Leaving a toothbrush seemed like a definitive marking of territory, like a dog peeing against a lamp post just to show you that it can. But I reminded myself that I was seriously unpractised at this whole dating lark and so I said nothing when a spare shirt appeared in my wardrobe, as socks and underpants and then a tie materialised in the bottom drawer.

  About three weeks into what I was finally accepting might be what people call ‘a relationship’, I woke up to the sound of moving furniture.

  ‘It’s better like this,’ Ant declared as I entered my lounge. He’d moved the TV to the opposite wall and turned the sofa through ninety degrees. ‘You don’t get the reflection on the TV screen any more.’

  I considered the new layout and decided that I didn’t like it at all. But just as I opened my mouth to say so, Ant said, ‘I thought we could go out to mine later on. It’s about time you saw the place. What d’you think?’

  ‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Oh, all right then.’

  ‘Yes?’ Ant asked, and I realised I’d sounded uncertain. In truth, I’d been beginning to doubt the existence of Ant’s ‘little cottage’ in Sturry, but here it was, an official invitation to visit. I decided I could probably cope with the new furniture configuration for the moment, at least.

  ‘Yes, I’d love to!’ I said, correcting my tone of voice. ‘That would be great!’

  Anthony’s car – a spotless grey BMW convertible that looked as if it had never been sat in, let alone driven anywhere – was a shock, but this was as nothing compared to his house. In fact, when he pulled up on the driveway, I assumed we were visiting someone else en route.

  ‘So? What do you think?’ he asked, indicating the view of the garage door through the windscreen.

  ‘Is this . . . Oh! This is it?’ I asked. ‘We’re here?’

  ‘Of course this is it,’ he said, sounding annoyed for the first time since I had met him. ‘What were you expecting? Buckingham bloody Palace?’

  ‘Oh, no . . . just . . . nothing so posh,’ I lied. ‘It looks brand new.’

  ‘It is, pretty much. I bought it on spec. Got a good deal because the developer was going bust.’

  I’d expected his ‘cottage’ in Sturry to look, well, like a cottage. I’d had visions of thatched roofs and low beams, of open fireplaces and those ancient panes of glass that make the world outside look wrinkly. Instead, Ant lived in what could only be described as a new-build bungalow.

  Once inside the PVC front door, the surprises kept coming: perfect beige walls, pretty pastel vases, generic art and built-in mood lighting that changed colour at the press of a button. The furniture was modern and looked as if it came from Ikea but was, Ant informed me, Italian. ‘It’s a damn sight more expensive, of course,’ he said, ‘but much better quality, too. I like to have the best of everything. It’s my philosophy in life.’

  I padded on after him (he’d made me leave my shoes in the shoe rack in the hallway) over carpets so thick that walking on them made me feel seasick. In the lounge he proudly showed me enough hi-fi to fill the shelves of a small electrical store, even pressing a button to reveal a cinema screen that dropped from the ceiling.

  I pretended to be impressed, but a wave of anxiety was rippling through me. As far as I could see, other than wanting to own the most expensive model of everything, Anthony didn’t have any taste at all.

  He showed me the bedrooms – they were hotel-like and immaculately tidy (the bed had an electric sitty-uppy device, which he proudly demonstrated) – then the fully equipped kitchen (the fridge was empty – I checked), and then out on to the patio to view his fake plastic lawn.

  ‘I don’t have time for gardening,’ he explained, ‘so this is ideal for me.’

  ‘It’s quite realistic,’ I said.

  In theory, we’d stayed at mine because it was easier for me to get to work, but now I was beginning to question if that was the real reason. The place looked so much like a show home that I was wondering if it was even his.

  Anthony slid the window closed behind us – it was freezing out there – and led me back to the front door, where he handed me my shoes from the rack. ‘Are we leaving?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, sorry, I need to see Mum this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Did I not mention that?’ The answer was that, no, he hadn’t mentioned it, and I was pretty sure that he knew it.

  ‘You’re not upset with me or something, are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Nope,’ he said, stepping back outside and jangling his keys. ‘Why? Should I be?’

  Those early days, I tried to put my fears into words, but it was hard, as they weren’t that clearly defined even to me. I tried to talk to Mum, to my sister Kerry and to Sheena about it all. But context, I have discovered, is everything, and identical words carry entirely different weights depending on who exactly is speaking them.

  So if you’re known to have been single for years, for example, or to have run away from multiple encounters with the opposite sex, it’s hard to sound sane when complaining about your new boyfriend, whatever the cause.

  ‘He’s too tidy, you say?’ Mum said, and in her echoing of my words down the phone line, I could hear exactly how delusional I sounded. ‘He has too much hi-fi . . . right,’ Kerry would say flatly, valiantly struggling to understand, and prompting me to drop the subject immediately.

  These days, things have changed, and I seem to have earned the right to have a judgement on such matters. So when I tell the story, instead of frowning at me, people repeat my words in horror. ‘His CDs were in alphabetical order?’ they gasp. ‘His books were organised by colour? That should have set alarm bells ringing – didn’t it?’ But back then, it really wasn’t the case.

  ‘You’re having doubts because he has two soap dishes?’ I remember Sheena saying mockingly. And though she was missing the point of how utterly, freakily terrifying it was for a thirty-eight-year-old man to have two soap dishes so that he, or rather his cleaner, could cycle them twice-weekly through the dishwasher, I’d replied, ‘You’re right, I’m being silly.’ And faced with so much doubt, I did my best to convince myself that this was true.

  ‘But is he nice to you?’ Mum had asked me, interrupting me during one of my rambling whinges. And the only honest answer I’d been able to give at that point was, ‘Yes, he’s nice to me.’

  ‘Well, then!’ she had said. ‘Think yourself lucky. A kind, sober man is a rare find. And if anyone knows that, it’s me.’

  Ant’s niceness towards me continued for a while, and everything he had said turned out to be true. He did work in property development, the bungalow was his, and he did visit his mother on Sundays. For a while, my doubts eased and I started to luxuriate in the entirely novel sensation of being in a relationship.

  I started staying over at his place on Friday and Saturday nights. Most times he’d drive me back and forth between Sturry and Canterbury, adjusting his working hours to fit my own without complaint. When he couldn’t, I’d catch the train.

  Though he did seem to have a surprising number of rules about things: the soap dishes, for example; putting plates in the dishwasher straight after eating; and squeegeeing the glass shower partition immediately after use . . . He also began paying me lots of compliments, telling me how pretty I was, or how turned on he was by my ‘cute little bod’. I suspected there was something wrong with his eyesight, but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t also feel a massive sense of relief that at least one person on the planet saw me that way.

  On my fourth Sunday at ‘the cottage
’, as he preferred to call it, he surprised me by not rushing me home as usual, but instead asking me if I’d mind putting on a ‘nice dress’ for the day.

  I had a few clothes at Ant’s place by then, including a summer dress. I peered out at the garden – it was a wet, blustery March morning and, although it was nearly eleven, almost dark. So, I explained that the weather was a bit cold for dresses.

  ‘Wear one anyway,’ he said. ‘You’ll be fine.’

  I looked out at the garden again and despite the fact that I found it quite sexy when he got all masterful like that, I replied, ‘Ant, I’m not wearing a dress today. Anyway, aren’t you going to take me home? What do you care what I wear?’

  ‘I wanted to take you to see Mum,’ he said. ‘I thought you might like a trip to the seaside.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, thinking, Wow, this is serious. Meeting the in-laws! ‘Sure, that would be lovely, Ant. But unless the weather down there is better than here, which I doubt, I still don’t think I’m wearing a dress.’

  ‘Oh, just wear what the fuck you want,’ Ant said. ‘I don’t know why I give a shit.’

  I was so shocked that my mouth fell open.

  The drive to Broadstairs took about forty minutes, and the rain didn’t let up for one instant. Ant’s mood remained as dark and brooding as the weather, and I couldn’t help but think I would rather have gone back to my flat, my dressing gown and my lonely little kitten.

  I suspected Ant’s silence was to do with my failure to wear the dress, but as I was quite certain he was being unreasonable and was scared of getting into an argument about it, I said nothing. Instead, I sat with my palms in my lap and watched the windscreen wipers sloshing the rain back and forth.

  As we drove past a road sign to Broadstairs, I momentarily forgot that I was supposed to be sulking. ‘What’s she like?’ I asked, wincing when I realised that I had spoken first.