A Village Affair

by Julie Houston

  ‘I thought Tom was only interested in maths?’

  ‘So did I.’

  ‘What’s suddenly made you think he might be gay?’ Fiona turned to look at me as we walked round a group of scantily dressed young girls. Most of them appeared to be clad, on their top halves at least, in nothing but their bras, white flesh bulging unattractively around the Lycra holding them in, and I was momentarily grateful that Freya was going through her emo period and always covered head to toe in black.

  The mild September evening, although still fairly early, had brought revellers onto the pavements, and Fi and I had to manoeuvre our way round them, our conversation constantly interrupted as we did so. A plethora of white and blue shirts swam before us, indicating that the football season was upon us and Leeds had been playing, obviously victoriously, at Elland Road.

  ‘Cassie?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Why are you suddenly questioning Tom’s sexuality?’

  ‘Leeds, Le-eds…’

  ‘Because of something Simon—’

  Pontus Jansson’s on our team, on our team

  He’s the best centre back you’ve ever seen. Ever seen…

  Fi grabbed my arm and steered me round the chanting fans and into The Botanist. ‘Come on, in here. Simon? Simon said so?’

  ‘He came round this afternoon, and when I didn’t play ball with him he took his bat home…’

  ‘Whoa, hang on.’ Fi pushed through the crowd at the bar searching for Clare. ‘You’re totally mixing your metaphors.’

  ‘… and insinuated Tom was gay because he’d been in The Blue Ball. You know, where he saw Mark and Tina together six months ago?’

  ‘So, does that mean if I happen to go to the pub I’m suddenly an alcoholic?’ Fi had spotted Clare and was heading for her. ‘Or if I happen to take the train once then I must be unable to drive…? Or if I go to The Frozen Knacker once, then I must be gay?’

  ‘Who’s gay?’ Clare kissed us both and lifted her bag and coat from the two seats she’d been saving before pouring us both a glass of rosé from the bottle she was cradling in front of her. ‘Come on, I can’t keep my eye on these seats and my hens much longer. I’m going cross-eyed.’

  ‘Simon’s insinuating that because Tom was in The Blue Ball, months ago, he must be gay,’ Fi said, downing half of her wine in one. ‘God, that wine’s good. Oh, I love crowds, bars and shops. I just love the city: not a sodding cow to be seen for miles.’

  ‘I suppose because Tom’s never had a girlfriend, I’m thinking Simon could be right,’ I said. ‘You know, he did have a tantrum once in the Trafford Centre, flinging himself on the floor because he wanted a Hoover.’

  ‘Who did? Simon?’

  ‘Tom, you fool. He was three and kept crying, “I want a Hoover, I want a Hoooover. Mummy, I want a Hooooover of my own.”’

  ‘Really?’ Fi raised her eyebrows. ‘Fair dos then, he’s gay.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, the pair of you,’ Clare said rather crossly. ‘Firstly, you say Tom’s never had a girlfriend. Well, has he ever had a boyfriend? And secondly, if he’s gay, so what? Does it really matter who we fall in love with, just as long as we experience love?’

  Fi and I both nodded enthusiastically in agreement – sometimes it just didn’t do to argue with Clare – but I continued to worry as we stood with our drinks in the crowded bar, returning over and over again to Simon’s insinuations. It was all right for Clare, who had no children of her own, being so cavalier about Tom’s sexuality, but I was very aware of the jokes, the ribald laughter, the insinuations bandied to and fro about someone’s gayness, of the kind of stupid cruelty it might expose him to. I sighed and tried to concentrate on being in Leeds on a girls’ night out.

  A very attractive, dark-skinned man, probably in his late thirties and wearing cut-off denims and a navy T-shirt, returned to what had obviously been his seat next to Clare. She moved her jacket from the seat and he sat down next to her but, if Clare knew him, she wasn’t letting on and didn’t attempt to introduce him to us.

  ‘Oh, hell, they’re on the move,’ Clare sighed, indicating with her glass of rosé a gaggle of hens pushing their way through the crowd towards us. She glanced at her watch, looked towards the man and then stood up, scooping up jacket and bag and finishing her drink. ‘You’ll miss your train,’ she said softly to him and, with a quick brushing of fingers, left him as he too rose to go.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Fi asked curiously. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Oh, Fi…’ Clare looked stricken, but then smiled and said, ‘Look, I’m working. I need to be showing these women the bars where free drinks are all arranged for them. Come on.’

  The three of us set off in hot pursuit of the hens as they crossed through the Trinity centre and up towards Greek Street, their pink rhinestoned cowboy hats marking them out like coloured flares in the darkening evening sky.

  ‘Bugger, wrong hens,’ Clare suddenly snapped, wheeling round and retracing her steps towards us before surveying the crowd in the manner of Captain Hornblower on the lookout for Napoleon and his gang.

  ‘How do you know?’ Fi panted as we crossed the road, trying to catch up with her. ‘They were wearing pink hats.’

  ‘As is just about every other hen party in Leeds,’ Clare said grimly. ‘Those we’ve been following were from Barnsley: Bev’s Barnsley Babes it said on their pink sashes. Shit, I should have stuck to stag dos: at least they don’t all dress the same.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I giggled, as two distinct groups of men headed towards us, both dressed in various Village People guises.

  Clare’s eyes narrowed for a second. ‘Who’s organised your stag do?’ she shouted towards one, done up as the Indian Chief. Being somewhat vertically challenged at around five-foot-five, as well as exceedingly drunk, he didn’t quite carry off the stature or presence of Chief Sitting Bull. Holding on to his battered and moulting feathered headdress with one hand, he waved his bottle of Budweiser at us with the other and shouted back, ‘Fuck knows. I was dragged in at the last minute to make up numbers.’ He let go of his feathers, just for the time it took him to give us a quick, animated rendition of the first bars of ‘YMCA’, centred his headdress once more and ambled off after one of the Police Cops – I could see at least three – and the Construction Worker.

  ‘There they are, up there,’ Fi suddenly said. ‘I recognise the one in the white skirt.’

  ‘Skirt?’ I said. ‘It’s a belt.’

  ‘Pussy pelmet,’ Fi wheezed, as we ran to catch Clare up.

  ‘That is such a revolting expression, which does nothing for the emancipation of women…’ I chided Fi, the pair of us puffing along side by side in Clare’s wake like a couple of extras from Thomas the Tank Engine.

  ‘Oh, and wearing pink cowboy hats, angel wings and furry handcuffs does?’

  Clare was smiling widely at the group of hens she’d now brought to heel. The smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, I noticed, and she looked suddenly tired. ‘Right, ladies, drinks are waiting for you in here.’ She nodded towards The Liquorist at the top of Greek Street, but none of them seemed to be taking much notice. They reminded me of a particularly noisy class of kids who wouldn’t listen to instructions, but were determined to do their own thing. In a minute, I’d be clapping my hands, glaring at them, hands on hips saying, ‘It’s not my time you’re wasting.’

  ‘… So, the accountant says to me, “You run a beauty therapist business, not a gardening landscape business, Kylie: you can’t put a lawn mower through the books.” So, I says to him, “You haven’t seen some of the bikini lines I have to deal with, Mr Gale…”’

  ‘… and all I wanted was a knight in shining armour. I mean, that’s not too much to ask for, is it? A knight in shining armour? And what do I end up with? A sodding wanker in tinfoil…’

  ‘…so, what they do is take fat… yes, fat, Maureen… from your backside and stick it in your boobs.’

  ‘OK, ladies,’ Fi suddenly yelled, g
etting the hen’s attention. ‘Are we ready to party?’

  ‘We are that,’ one of the older women cackled. She must have been the future bride’s mother or perhaps mother-in-law. The other matron with her raised her eyes to the heavens, sighed deeply and rubbed at her varicose veins.

  ‘Do you really need to be in charge of them like this?’ I asked Clare. ‘I mean, you’re not planning on spending all your Saturday nights for the next ten years doing this? Herding women around bars in city centres?’ I was beginning to feel depressed, unable to get images of Mark and Tina in little upmarket restaurants, holding hands across the table, out of my mind. I shook my head, determined not to be a party pooper. The last thing Clare needed was her first hen party complaining about the miserable woman following them round like some head teacher watching out for bad behaviour.

  ‘God, no. Because this is the first one I’ve organised, I wanted to make sure all was going to plan. I’ve already escorted them on a coach trip to Lightwater Valley theme park this morning, and then come back into Leeds for afternoon teas.’

  ‘Afternoon teas? Well, that sounds rather more upmarket,’ I soothed.

  Clare sighed. ‘Afternoon Tease, Cassie. I was locked away in some dive of a dark cellar at four p.m., watching male strippers as they fed the women cucumber – and I mean the whole damned cucumber – sandwiches and cream teas. You can imagine where most of the cream went… I’ve played Stick the Willy on the Man, and gone two rounds of the Dick Head Game, tossing the hoopla over a giant penis.’ Clare sighed again. ‘My idea for Henotheism was for managing rather more élite events. You know, a little wine tasting here, a personal shopper there, maybe the opera…? And, to be fair, that’s what I’m aiming for. I can’t be doing with this every Saturday might. Maybe I should have trained to be a teacher like you. Do you think it’s too late now?’

  I laughed. ‘Give over. You have a highly successful business with Last Stagger. It’s just a matter of getting Henotheism off the ground in the same way. If you have to toss a few penises – oops, sorry, not a good choice of words – to begin with, then so be it. Anyway, you’d hate having to work for someone else, having to kowtow to school governors and Ofsted. And dealing, daily, with the school bully.’

  ‘The school bully? Slap his backside and give him a taste of his own medicine.’

  ‘Unfortunately, the school bully is my age and her backside is huge.’

  For a second Clare took her eyes from the hens where Fi had abandoned her corralling of them and was, instead, sharing the bottles of mini-bar champagne being blatantly imbibed after being previously stashed discreetly away in Michael Kors and Hermès handbags.

  ‘School bully? There’s always one, Cassie. Let’s get this lot inside and you can tell me all about it.’

  ‘OK, as long as you tell me all about the guy you were exchanging glances and finger touches with in The Botanist.’

  ‘Deal.’ The pair of us headed for a couple of seats that had come free and sat down gratefully. We were, I realised ruefully, beginning to show our age.

  14

  I’d Like Sex with an Alligator…

  ‘I want Sex with an Alligator.’ By 10 p.m. Fi was having a ball, reliving her youth as an urban hipster as she joined in with the hens, downing more cocktails than I thought humanly possible without actually dying.

  ‘Hey, Fiona love, I want sex with my old man but it’s not about to happen any time in the foreseeable future. Last time I managed to get my leg over was the night of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.’ The hen, no spring chicken by any stretch of the imagination, must have been in her seventies – the learner bride’s nan? – and laughed raucously at her own words, digging Fi in the chest for good measure.

  ‘Never you mind, Beryl; have an Alligator instead.’ Fi squinted at the menu in her hand, holding it from her face to read what was there. ‘It’s got raspberry liqueur, melon liqueur and the rest is Jägermeister… What’s Jägermeister? Cassie will know,’ she added loudly. ‘She’s a head teacher… knows everything.’

  The hens in hearing distance all turned their heads to have a good look at me. ‘That little thing?’ Beryl said doubtfully. ‘She can’t be more than four-foot-ten.’

  ‘Yes, but she knows everything.’ Fi pronounced it ‘everyshing’, and I laughed at the slurring of her words. ‘Jägermeister, Cassandra Moonbeam?’ Fi shouted above the music. ‘What the hell is Jägermeister?’

  ‘Jaeger Master? I think it’s like a headmaster but in charge of upmarket women’s clothing,’ I offered, laughing again as Fi winked at me.

  ‘Ooh,’ Beryl exclaimed, ‘I’ve always liked a bit of Jaeger. Bought a lovely Jaeger frock for a wedding I went to twenty years ago. Good as new – comes out on special occasions.’

  ‘Love those shoes,’ the Bride’s Matron of Honour was saying to the Bride’s Mate from Work.

  ‘Jimmy Choo,’ the BMFW said proudly, pointing a rather pinched-looking toe in the general direction of the BMOH.

  ‘Christian Louboutin,’ one of the other hens joined in, raising her foot a good half-metre so that we could all see the red-lacquered sole – as well as her red pants – and almost falling over in the process.

  ‘George at Asda,’ Fi cackled, kicking off her ridiculously high heels and abandoning them on the bar. ‘And bloody killing me. As well as doing my bits and pieces no favours.’

  ‘What’s up with our Kerry? What is it, love?’ The mother of the bride – ‘MOTB’ picked out in rhinestones on the pink T-shirt – thrust her three-foot luminescent-pink inflatable penis with its accompanying testicles into my arms before pushing her way through the posse of hens to reach her daughter who appeared, suddenly, to be losing it.

  ‘I feel sick, Mam,’ she wailed. ‘I think it must be something I’ve eaten.’ She leant against the bar, flattening her angel wings, and holding her stomach.

  ‘Or drunk,’ Clare muttered, heading off to help the bride-to-be, whose face, despite the spray tan, had gone distinctly pale.

  Left on my own, penis in one hand and glass of water in the other, I could only think of the phrase ‘spare prick at a wedding’, which seemed particularly apt. I stood to one side, the loud music drowning out any conversation, feeling incredibly lonely. I wanted and needed Mark at that moment, more than at any time since he’d gone.

  Clare returned after fifteen minutes spent helping to wipe down and mop up the BTB, and sank gratefully onto the chair I’d managed to save for her – despite a couple of circling oldies giving me filthy looks – while keeping an eye on Fi, who was dancing with Beryl, the twin-willy deely bopper on her head flashing as she gyrated.

  ‘So, how are you?’ Clare leaned back, closing her eyes momentarily against the rest of the humanity in front of her. ‘You don’t seem too bad.’

  ‘I can’t believe it’s only been a week since this all kicked off. It’s been like a whole new other life. Suddenly I’m without a husband, in charge of a school and my son might be gay.’

  Clare snorted. ‘I think Simon’s insinuation is the least of your worries. And if Tom is gay, so what? You’ll sort it. He’ll sort it.’

  ‘You know, I suddenly realised this afternoon I really don’t like Simon very much. I’m not sure I ever did.’

  Clare smiled. ‘Do you know, I’m with you there. He’s supercilious one minute and ingratiating the next. I think we’ve all sort of put up with him because we love Tina.’

  ‘So, you said you’ve seen Tina? She’s been round?’ I felt my insides begin to churn as they always did whenever Serpentina’s name was mentioned, aggravated by Clare’s present-tense expression of love for Tina. As far as I was concerned, any love for Tina should be firmly rooted in the past. ‘What did she have to say for herself, the bitch? Has she had enough of my husband yet? Is she going to let me have him back?’

  ‘Well, she wasn’t entirely happy at your over-zealous decorating of her car.’

  ‘Tough. The last thing I had in mind was her happiness. I’m not happy that sh
e’s pinched my husband.’ I picked up my glass of water and slammed it back down on the table in disgust. God, I needed a proper drink.

  ‘Do you not think that’s rather an outmoded idea? You know, that people can be pinched? I mean, surely if you have no intention of going off with someone else in the first place, you don’t give out any vibes.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t get you.’ I was feeling really cross that Clare appeared to be taking Tina’s side.

  ‘Come on, Cassie, you know exactly what I mean. If it hadn’t been Tina it would probably have been someone else. Men, I’ve found, can be categorised into two…’ She paused. ‘Sorry, three: those who do, those who don’t and those who would if they got the chance.’

  When I just continued to glare silently at her, Clare went on hurriedly, ‘Anyway, while Tina wasn’t exactly jumping up and down with your art work, she said she’d have done just the same if the lipstick were in the other hand, as it were. And, I’m not sure I should be telling you this, don’t know if this makes the whole thing better or worse…’

  ‘Oh Jesus, she’s not pregnant? Please don’t say she’s pregnant.’ My heart joined in with my rolling and pitching stomach. I took a deep breath, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans.

  Clare actually laughed at that. ‘Pregnant? Tina? Don’t be daft. She hated every bit of being pregnant as well as the first few months at home with Jack as a baby. No, she said that basically she’s always loved Mark.’

  My head came up in shock. ‘Tina has always loved Mark? My best friend, the friend I saw as the sister I never had, has always loved my husband? This is surreal, Clare. Totally and utterly bloody surreal.’

  Clare shook her head. ‘Tell me about it. She sat down in my kitchen and told me, from the minute she saw Mark…’

  ‘At Davina’s wedding…’

  ‘… at Davina’s wedding, she wanted him for herself.’

  ‘But she encouraged me. I can see her now, sitting down with Fi and giving me the thumbs up as Mark bought me that first drink and put his jacket round my shoulders before we went outside.’