“I s’pose.” I roll off her, and lie on the bed with an arm around her, looking at the ceiling.
“I know. I’m sorry, Rob. I haven’t been very … I haven’t really given the impression that this is something I want to do.”
“And why’s that, do you think?”
“Hold on. I want to try to explain this properly. OK. I thought that we were bound by one simple little cord, our relationship, and if I cut it then that would be that. So I cut it, but that wasn’t that. There wasn’t just one cord, there were hundreds, thousands, everywhere I turned—Jo going quiet when I said we’d split up, and me feeling funny on your birthday, and me feeling funny … not during sex with Ray, but afterwards, and I felt sick when I played a tape you’d made me that was in the car, and I kept wondering how you were and … oh, millions of things. And then you were more upset than I thought you’d be, and that made it harder … and then on the day of the funeral … it was me that wanted you to be there, not my mum. I mean, she was quite pleased, I think, but it never occurred to me to ask Ray, and that’s when I felt tired. I wasn’t prepared to do all that work. It wasn’t worth it, just to be shot of you.” She laughs a little.
“This is the nice way of saying it?”
“You know I’m not very good at slushy stuff.” She kisses me on the shoulder.
You hear that? She’s not very good at slushy stuff? That, to me, is a problem, as it would be to any male who heard Dusty Springfield singing ‘The Look of Love’ at an impressionable age. That was what I thought it was all going to be like when I was married (I called it ‘married’ then—I call it ‘settled’ or ‘sorted’ now). I thought there was going to be this sexy woman with a sexy voice and lots of sexy eye makeup whose devotion to me shone from every pore. And there is such a thing as the look of love—Dusty didn’t lead us up the garden path entirely—it’s just that the look of love isn’t what I expected it to be. It’s not huge eyes almost bursting with longing situated somewhere in the middle of a double bed with the covers turned down invitingly; it’s just as likely to be the look of benevolent indulgence that a mother gives a toddler, or a look of amused exasperation, even a look of pained concern. But the Dusty Springfield look of love? Forget it. As mythical as the exotic underwear.
Women get it wrong when they complain about media images of women. Men understand that not everyone has Bardot’s breasts, or Jamie Lee Curtis’s neck, or Cindy Crawford’s bottom, and we don’t mind at all. Obviously we’d take Kim Basinger over Hattie Jacques, just as women would take Keanu Reeves over Bernard Manning, but it’s not the body that’s important, it’s the level of abasement. We worked out very quickly that Bond girls were out of our league, but the realization that women don’t ever look at us the way Ursula Andress looked at Sean Connery, or even in the way that Doris Day looked at Rock Hudson, was much slower to arrive, for most of us. In my case, I’m not at all sure that it ever did.
I’m beginning to get used to the idea that Laura might be the person I spend my life with, I think (or at least, I’m beginning to get used to the idea that I’m so miserable without her that it’s not worth thinking about alternatives). But it’s much harder to get used to the idea that my little-boy notion of romance, of négligés and candlelit dinners at home and long, smoldering glances, had no basis in reality at all. That’s what women ought to get all steamed up about; that’s why we can’t function properly in a relationship. It’s not the cellulite or the crow’s feet. It’s the … the … the disrespect.
Twenty-eight
Only two weeks in, after a lot of talking and a lot of sex and a tolerable amount of arguing, we go for dinner with Laura’s friends Paul and Miranda. This might not sound very exciting to you, but it’s a really big deal to me: it’s a vote of confidence, an endorsement, a sign to the world that I’m going to be around for a few months at least. Laura and I have never seen eye-to-eye about Paul and Miranda, not that I’ve ever met either of them. Laura and Paul joined the law firm around the same time, and they got on well, so when she (and I) were asked round, I refused to go. I didn’t like the sound of him, or Laura’s enthusiasm for him, although when I heard that there was a Miranda I could see I was being stupid, so I made up a load of other stuff. I said that he sounded typical of the sort of people she was going to be meeting all the time now that she had this flash new job, and I was being left behind, and she got cross, so I upped the ante and prefaced his name with the words ‘this’ and ‘wanker’ whenever I mentioned him, and I attributed to him a hoity-toity voice and a whole set of interests and attitudes he probably hasn’t got, and then Laura got really cross and went on her own. And having called him a wanker so many times, I felt that Paul and I had got off on the wrong foot, and when Laura invited them round to ours I went out until two in the morning just to make sure I didn’t bump into them, even though they’ve got a kid and I knew they’d be gone by half-past eleven. So when Laura said we’d been invited again, I knew it was a big deal, not only because she was prepared to give it another go, but because it meant she’d been saying stuff about our living together again, and the stuff she’d been saying couldn’t have been all bad.
As we stand on the doorstep of their house (nothing swanky, a three-bedroom terraced in Kensal Green), I fiddle with the fly button on my 501s, a nervous habit that Laura strongly disapproves of, for perhaps understandable reasons. But tonight she looks at me and smiles, and gives my hand (my other hand, the one that isn’t scrabbling frantically at my groin) a quick squeeze, and before I know it we’re in the house amid a flurry of smiles and kisses and introductions.
Paul is tall and good-looking, with long (untrendy, can’t-be-bothered-to-have-it-cut, computer-nerdy long, as opposed to hairdressery long) dark hair and a shadow that’s nearer six-thirty than five o’clock. He’s wearing a pair of old brown cords and a Body Shop T-shirt depicting something green, a lizard or a tree or a vegetable or something. I wish a few of the buttons on my fly were undone, just so I wouldn’t feel overdressed. Miranda, like Laura, is wearing a baggy jumper and leggings, and a pair of pretty cool rimless specs, and she’s blond and round and pretty, not quite Roseanne Barr round, but round enough for you to notice straightaway. So I’m not intimidated by the clothes, or by the house, or the people, and anyway, the people are so nice to me that for a moment I almost feel a bit weepy: it’s obvious to even the most insecure that Paul and Miranda are delighted that I am here, either because they have decided that I am a Good Thing, or because Laura has told them that she is happy with the way things are (and if I’ve got it all wrong, and they’re just acting, then who cares anyway, when the actors are this good?).
There isn’t any what-would-you-call-your-dog stuff, partly because everyone knows what everyone does (Miranda is an English lecturer at an FE college), and partly because the evening isn’t like that for a moment. They ask about Laura’s dad, and Laura tells them about the funeral, or at least some of it, and also some stuff I didn’t know—like, she says she felt a little thrill, momentarily, before all the pain and the grief and everything hit her—“Like, God, this is the most grown-up thing that’s ever happened to me.”
And Miranda talks a bit about her mum dying, and Paul and I ask questions about that, and Paul and Miranda ask questions about my mum and dad, and then it all somehow moves on from there to aspirations, and what we want, and what we’re not happy about, and … I don’t know. It sounds stupid to say it, but despite what we’re talking about, I really enjoy myself—I don’t feel afraid of anybody, and whatever I say people take seriously, and I catch Laura looking fondly at me from time to time, which helps morale. It’s not like anyone says any one thing that’s memorable, or wise, or acute; it’s more a mood thing. For the first time in my life I felt as though I’m in an episode of thirty something rather than an episode of … of … of some sitcom that hasn’t been made yet about three guys who work in a record shop and talk about sandwich fillings and sax solos all day, and I love it. And I know thirtysometing is soppy and clichéd and American and naff, I can see that. But when you’re sitting in a one-bedroom flat in Crouch End and your business is going down the toilet and your girlfriend’s gone off with the guy from the flat upstairs, a starring role in a real-life episode of thirtysometing, with all the kids and marriages and jobs and barbecues and k.d. lang CDs that this implies, seems more than one could possibly ask of life.