Needlemouse

by Jane O'Connor

  ‘I’m sorry about earlier, in the kitchen,’ I muttered, hoping to diffuse any residual anger he might still have about the incident.

  ‘What?’ He looked at me blankly.

  ‘The tea girl in the kitchen, the phone … the coffee. It got a bit out of hand, but really, she was rude and incompetent.’

  ‘Oh yes, yes,’ Prof waved his hand dismissively. ‘Let’s not have anything like that again.’ I opened my mouth to explain my position further but he had already walked out the door.

  I sat in the empty meeting room, the polished mahogany table covered with the usual detritus of a meeting and covered my eyes with my palms feeling a headache coming on. In one foul swoop Lola had been elevated from lowly student status to being on an equal footing with the academics in the department and now I was expected to serve her as I served them. I lifted my palms and looked with disdain at her empty coffee cup, the rim smeared with red lipstick and the half-eaten pastry in the saucer. Every fibre in my being wanted to walk out the room and leave the mess behind, but I knew I couldn’t and calling the tea girl to come and clear it away was definitely not an option. I collected the crockery and rubbish onto one of the trays and carried it back down towards the kitchen.

  Lola was standing a few metres along, blocking my way, talking animatedly to an entranced Dr Kofi about how thrilled she was to be studying under Prof. I stood behind her for several moments waiting for her to finish and move or at least for her to sense my presence, but she didn’t or pretended not to. ‘Excuse me,’ I had to say in the end and she still didn’t acknowledge me, just moved slightly towards Dr Kofi so I could squeeze through the gap with my laden tray. I felt like a skivvy and burned with indignation as I made my way to the kitchen and almost threw the tray onto the counter. The cups rattled, but none fell off and I turned on my heel and walked straight out, leaving the washing-up to somebody else. I saw her waiting for the lift at the end of the corridor so turned right instead and took the stairs back up to the third floor. She was already waiting by my desk as I arrived, flushed and annoyed, a few minutes later.

  I sat down and turned on my computer, ignoring her as she had ignored me.

  ‘Sylvia,’ she said in a sing-song voice, a trace of humour in her tone. She waited until I finally looked up at her.

  She was smiling broadly, still thrilled by her success in the meeting room. ‘I need to talk to you about registering for the Rome conference.’

  I stared at her without speaking and then turned back to my computer.

  ‘I can’t do it now. I’m too busy. You’ll have to email me the completed form.’ I carried on typing and refused to look up until I heard the door close and was sure she had gone.

  ‘You really are—’ Margaret began in an admonishing tone, but was cut short by her phone ringing, saving me the trouble of telling her to mind her own business.

  Friday 23 October

  I endured an excruciating evening out tonight with Shona and a couple of others from the old ‘gang’ organised by Millie. Dear lord, I love my sister but I do wish that, just for once, she could let an opportunity for socialising pass her by. Her urge to be involved in as many people’s lives as possible leaves me stone cold, I’m afraid, and it was precisely as awful as I had anticipated.

  I arrived ten minutes late and was still the first one there, completely typical of my history of meeting up with this group. The bar was one of a chain that, for some reason, seem to be designed to emulate Victorian workhouses, with scrubbed wooden tables, plain white walls and bucket-like chrome lights. I still can’t get used to the smell of bars and pubs these days, all pine disinfectant at the beginning of the evening and horrible body odours and emissions at the end. I preferred it when everything smelt of cigarettes – at least it felt properly adult.

  I was just getting over the shock of my vodka and tonic being served to me in a jam jar (a jam jar! I must remember to tell Prof; that’s just the sort of pretension that would amuse him) when Millie and Kamal walked in hand in hand. Millie was beaming at me, Kamal, half a step behind her, was giving me a death stare as usual. The cheek of him, always acting as if I am the enemy when it was both of us who betrayed Millie.

  ‘Are they here yet?’ Millie asked eagerly as she shrugged off a fascinating hat and poncho combination in garish yellow.

  ‘Not yet,’ I replied. ‘Are you joining us as well, Kamal?’ I knew he wasn’t; he hadn’t even sat down, let alone taken off his coat.

  ‘No, no,’ he muttered, giving no reason or apology. Typically bloody rude.

  ‘You know he hates loud music, Sylvia. See you later, darling.’ Millie pulled Kamal down for a kiss, during which he somehow managed to give me another angry glare, which I did my best to ignore.

  ‘Have fun,’ he said touching her face. ‘Call me when you are ready to come home.’

  He hurried out, bumping briefly into Shona who was on her way in. Always one for a big entrance, Shona stood in the doorway squealing with excitement, waving manically at Millie who rushed over to give her an enormous hug as if she’d just been let out of prison. It was pathetic, actually – two grown women behaving like schoolgirls. I sipped my drink nonchalantly, hoping nobody was watching. I had unwittingly chosen the worst seat at the table, directly opposite a huge mirror. I have never understood why they do that in bars – who on earth wants to see the harsh reality of what they look like after a couple of drinks?

  I was shocked at how old I looked in that environment. In my regular life, at work, at home, I am used to the mirrors and the lighting and it’s hard to see any definite changes on a day-to-day basis. But it had been so long since I’d sat in a bar with make-up on and the cracks really have started to show. There is a tiredness around my eyes that no amount of sleep ever seems to remedy, and my forehead is, if not lined, then certainly more bony than it used to be as the layer of youthful, plumping fat has disappeared – one of the few drawbacks of dieting, unfortunately. Thanks to my regular use of ‘honey-brown’ dye there is no grey in my hair, but it’s not shiny, any more, and my neck is simply old, no disguising it. I am still thin, though, whippet-thin as Father used to say, although I do sometimes worry it may make me look rather androgynous, especially next to curvy women like Lola.

  I used to go out with this group a lot when we were in our twenties and early thirties. They were Millie’s friends, really, Emma and Shona from school and Tig, Shazia and Annabel from art college. We had the usual fun, I suppose, although I was always somewhat on the outside of the clique. All of us were single and navigating the ups and downs of dating. It seemed like a game, really, the possibility of being left alone and old was a distant and unreal destination that none of us actually believed we’d ever reach. Our regular Friday night round-ups of the week’s dating triumphs and disasters were particularly entertaining. I wasn’t as ribald and open as some of the girls, especially Emma and Tig – my goodness, their sex lives were enough to make anyone blush – but I usually had something to throw in the ring for the group to have a giggle over: being asked on a date by my dentist, for example, or getting a bunch of red roses sent to me from the man who came round to fix my boiler. There were so many available men back then. There was usually someone on the scene who you liked or who liked you, or very occasionally both, and when one was pulled offstage – returning to a childhood sweetheart or backpacking round the world – another one or two would appear in their place.

  When it comes to actual relationships, though, my experience is quite limited. I went out with Stewart at university. Boring, dependable, reliable, mechanical engineer Stewart. I met him in Fresher’s week and we didn’t break up until two years after graduation when he suddenly announced he didn’t love me any more, and disappeared to China to teach English. I wasn’t overly heartbroken. He was more of a security blanket than a great passion, to be honest, and there was always the nagging feeling that I was missing out, especially when I saw the fun Millie was having being single with her friends. She was still at art
college then, a much funkier place than the solid, middle-class university I had chosen. She was always dyeing her hair wacky colours and having different bits of herself pierced and wearing crazy clothes.

  Our mother couldn’t have looked more disapproving. She has always treated Millie’s eccentricities like a mystery that she can see no point in solving and continues to be bemused by her to this day. I was more of a recognisable quantity. Mother could see in me the essential suburban regularity and provincial reserve that have always guided her manner and behaviour. Stewart fitted well into this, until he couldn’t stand it any longer and wanted some adventure.

  I wanted adventure too. I wanted to be more like Millie, I suppose, in the way she looked and how she was always so relaxed with men, but I didn’t have the courage to risk rejection or social embarrassment. Being in her shadow was a nice compromise for me. I could enjoy her eventful love life vicariously, and could experiment a little with make-up and clothes without having to fully become that person or claim that lifestyle. Millie didn’t seem to mind, although a couple of her friends made snide comments to me occasionally which I ignored. She is such an inclusive person, if you want to be around her then she will make you welcome, that’s her way, that’s what makes her so adorable and so loved by everyone. That’s how we passed our twenties and early thirties really, although by the time we hit our thirties the group had pared down to the four of us who were still single – me, Millie, Emma and Tig, the Friday night crowd.

  It didn’t really seem to matter what I did as a job back then as I naively assumed that eventually I would find ‘the one’, get married and that that would define me and be my life. I remember the flood of relief when I thought I had met him at last. Eugene was such a flirt and all the women loved him. He was the office manager at the college I worked at before I got my present job, and he was an absolute sweetheart. Or so I thought until the day I found some horribly explicit images on his hard drive and dropped him like a burning coal. That was around the time Millie went to India and brought Kamal back with her like the ultimate holiday souvenir.

  It all changed very quickly after that and the girlie camaraderie and Friday nights out started to dwindle. Somehow, subtly, over the course of that year when I turned thirty-five, my world changed, and suddenly it wasn’t about having everything to look forward to any more, having it all ahead of me. It was about a disturbing new feeling of being left behind and past my prime. A new younger generation of women seemed to be taking centre stage in the bars and clubs, rising up from the ranks of their career-driven mid-twenties, ready to bag themselves a serious relationship before they hit the big three-o. They seemed shinier, with glossier hair, whiter teeth and more fashionable clothes. The music I listened to and loved and associated with going out became retro rather than current.

  That year things changed for everyone. Millie had Kamal, Tig went on tour with her repertory company, Emma got a nursing job in Australia, Annabel got engaged to a car salesman called Lance and moved to Eastbourne, and Shazia married her on-off boyfriend, immediately fell pregnant, and joined Shona in the ranks of the smug yummy mummies. It was as if, in those short few months, my life closed up behind my back and refused to reopen. It felt as if everyone had held hands and crossed a secret line that nobody had told me about. I was alone, really alone, for the first time in my adult life. I was happy for Millie that she had Kamal, but when things turned so unpleasant between him and me it made it difficult to spend as much time with her, especially if he was there.

  I tried to meet someone of my own, rather half-heartedly attending speed-dating events and salsa classes, but I was horribly self-conscious and it was all too deliberate somehow. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. I wanted the romance, the perfect man to pursue me – and for me to feel special and desired, not desperate and trying too hard. I remember that the sting of feeling like a failure in love hit me particularly hard at the christening of Shona and Ian’s youngest son.

  ‘Don’t leave it too late, Sylvia,’ Shona’s mum warned me in an important voice as she cradled her latest grandchild. ‘I know what you career girls are like, but there’s nothing like having a newborn in your arms to make you realise what matters in life.’ She cooed at the baby as I stared at her, wondering how anyone could be so unintentionally spiteful. She looked up and nodded at me as if she had shared some profound, rare wisdom and I went off to find the bar as I experienced for the first time, but definitely not the last, the disconcerting sensation of being an outsider in my own life. At home that evening I set up an internet dating profile, determined to get back into the kind of life that made sense to me and everyone else.

  How on earth can you describe yourself in words without sounding as though you are trying to sell yourself? It was humiliating, the whole process. I didn’t feel excited about it, I felt sick to my stomach that my life had come to this. I posted my profile on the site, nonetheless, and responses from men started to trickle in. I met a few of them for coffee or lunch but never felt any special connection and, more often than not, felt utterly repulsed by their self-satisfied boasting or, worse, nervous attempts at conversation or clumsy sexual overtures. There was one man, Geoff, who seemed all right and we went out a couple of times, but then he just stopped calling and texting and I saw him back up on the dating site looking for someone new. That was another kick in the teeth and left me wondering: What did I do wrong? Why did he lose interest? I considered emailing him and asking, and in a way I wish I had, but my pride wouldn’t let me, not for someone as bland as him. I wasn’t going to give him the ego boost of thinking that I cared if he wanted me or not.

  I managed to convince myself that Geoff had saved me the trouble of extricating myself from our burgeoning relationship, but it still stung and my self-esteem was battered and bruised. Sometimes I wonder if that rejection was part of the reason why I lost all judgement and made my huge mistake with Kamal several weeks later, although I’m not sure I will ever fully understand why I did it. After that unforgivable incident, and what happened afterwards, I decided I would never waste time on any other man who wasn’t worthy of me. I would wait until I found my absolute perfect match and then I would do everything in my power to make him mine, whilst protecting my pride and the depth of my emotional neediness. Next time I would be in complete control and would not put myself in a position to be rejected or hurt. And then, the semester after I started my new job at the university, as if by magic, Prof appeared.

  The first time I saw him he was being shown around by the departing professor, Linda Kapoor, a tiny, harried woman who seemed perpetually surprised and rather overwhelmed by the success of her academic career and who, one suspected, had long been counting down the years and days until her retirement. Prof could not have been more of a contrast, both in his strong, imposing physicality and in his laid-back, confident manner. I had my back to the office, watering the plants on the windowsill, when I heard them come in, Professor Kapoor wittering on about door codes and broken lifts and tea-making facilities. I smelt him before I saw him. His aftershave surrounded me in a wave of masculine, musky scent that made my knees go weak.

  ‘And this is Sylvia Penton who will be your personal assistant.’

  I paused for a second, composing myself, before I turned around.

  ‘Very pleased to meet you, Sylvia.’ Prof was already holding out his hand by the time I faced him and he shook mine firmly, looking me straight in the eye as if we already knew and liked each other. My impression was of a bear of a man, heavyset, the sort of man who fills a room, with a voice to match. He had a weather-beaten tanned face (he had just returned from skiing, I later discovered), light brown eyes and jet-black hair with the odd touch of grey, swept back from his forehead in a style that Millie would have described as oily, but which to me seemed sweetly old-fashioned. He was what my father would have described as a man’s man. And to make him even more perfect, he was wearing a beautifully cut slate-grey suit with a crisp white shirt and a navy st
riped tie, making him that rarest of breeds: the well-dressed academic.

  I could feel the blush rising from my neck all up my face, and managed only a muttered ‘pleased to meet you’. And then, to my absolute shame, and for reasons I can’t fathom, I held up the watering can and said, ‘I’m watering the plants.’

  Prof smiled at me and nodded as you would to a small child, and Professor Kapoor whisked him on through the dividing door into what was to be his office.

  I sat down at my desk, burning with humiliation and lust and fear and joy and forced myself to calm down using one of Millie’s breathing techniques – blue in, red out, repeat. Mercifully they were in there a long while, going through departmental procedures and the status of various PhD students. After about half an hour Professor Kapoor swung the door open and asked me to bring them coffee and I took the opportunity to present myself in a more collected, demure manner which I hope I have sustained to this day. But inside, my goodness, what he does to me is beyond compare.

  That’s what Prof gives me really, an interior life, a connection to my emotions and heart and soul that I don’t get from any other aspect of my existence. He is the essence of me, of the life and love I deserve. The way I feel about him is purer and simpler than I have ever felt about anyone else – even Millie, whom I adore, but who regularly drives me mad with her scattiness and lack of self-control. That’s how I know we are meant to be together and, on a good day, I don’t care how long I have to wait. In fact, the waiting and the anticipation is delicious and my imagination has an absolute field day creating future scenarios for us in my mind. He makes me happy, that’s the truth of it, and my love for him shields me from the pain of being with others who pity me. I smile inside, with my secret keeping me warm, and I pity other women the compromises they have had to make in their relationships with men who don’t hold a candle to Prof.