In Whitechapel, postcards covered the whole of the kitchen wall, two or three thick at some points, jumbled in with Polaroids of her art-school friends. There were a lot of punk-ish girls posing with cigarettes, but I was also struck by the number of handsome young men on display, usually with Connie or Fran draped adoringly around them, pouting and blowing kisses. Men in army fatigues or paint-stained overalls; men with eccentric facial hair; intimidating, unsmiling men, and one in particular, a shaven-headed thug with very blue eyes, a cigarette dangling from his mouth and a bottle of beer in his hand. An action-movie mercenary staring at the camera while Connie clung to him or kissed the top of his stubbled head or pressed her cheek to his; impossible to ignore the infatuation in her, awful to see it too.
‘I should probably take those down,’ she said, behind me.
‘Is that …?’
‘That’s Angelo. My ex.’ Angelo. Even his name was a blow. How could a Douglas compete with an Angelo? ‘He’s very handsome.’
‘He is. He’s also not important to me any more. Like I said, I’m going to take them down.’ With a little tug she tore the most prominent photo from the wall and placed it in the pocket of her dressing gown. Not in the bin, but in her breast pocket, next to — well, her breast.
There was a moment’s silence. We had made it to Sunday afternoon, a time of the week that always threatens to tip over into an almost unbearable gloom, and I wanted very much to leave on a positive note. ‘Perhaps I’d better go.’
‘The hostage is escaping.’
‘If I make a run for it, will you stop me?’
‘I don’t know. Do you want to be stopped?’
‘I wouldn’t mind.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Then let’s go back to bed.’
Excruciating, isn’t it? But that was how we spoke to each other once upon a time. It was a new voice for me. Something had changed and I had no doubt, as I finally stumbled from the house on Sunday night, aching and comically dishevelled, heading back to Balham on empty trains, that I was in love with Connie Moore.
This was by no means a cause for celebration. It had sometimes puzzled me why falling in love should be regarded as some wondrous event, accompanied by soaring strings, when it so often ended in humiliation, despair or acts of awful cruelty. Given my past experience, the theme from Jaws would have been more fitting, the violins from Psycho.
Of course I had been involved in two or three ‘serious’ relationships, each lasting slightly longer than the shelf-life of a half-dozen eggs, but while there had been moments of happiness and affection, no hearts had been set aflame as yet. And yes, I had ‘dated’ too, a series of unsuccessful job interviews for a post I didn’t really want, the meetings largely taking place in cinemas because there would be less obligation to speak. Often I was home by a quarter to ten, queasy from a large bag of Maltesers. Love and desire played little part in these dates. Embarrassment and self-consciousness were the key emotions, discomfort increasing exponentially at each encounter until one or other of us cracked and blurted out a standard-form ‘let’s be friends’, after which we’d part, sometimes at a brisk run. As to romantic love, the real thing, I had been stricken once before, but reminiscing about Liza Godwin was like expecting the Titanic’s captain to fondly recall the iceberg.
We met on our first day at university, where she was studying modern languages, and were immediately great friends, inseparable, right up until I committed the error of making a pass at a sherry party that had got out of hand. She responded to my attempted kiss by ducking, quite low, bending from the knees and hurrying away, like someone avoiding the blades of a helicopter. This cooled our friendship and soon I was resorting to notes and letters posted under the door of her room in our halls of residence. Once a mutual pleasure, our proximity became so problematic to Liza that she moved to different accommodation, and I would telephone her there, late at night, not entirely sober, because what could be more charming and devil-may-care, what could melt a woman’s heart like a deranged phone call after midnight?
To her credit, Liza remained sympathetic and understanding of my feelings, right up until the point where several members of the rugby team suggested that I might consider ‘backing off’ for a while. Their intervention removed all ambiguity and, in the battle between love and violence, violence won. I never spoke to Liza Godwin again. Still, I’m afraid I took it all very badly. I hesitate to use the word ‘overdose’. A disregard for the safety guidelines would be more accurate. The aspirins were soluble and the volume of water required to dissolve, I think, five of them, was considerable and meant that I woke up with a desperate need for the bathroom and a perfectly clear head. Looking back, it all seems very uncharacteristic; embarrassing, too, my one moment of adolescent melodrama. What was I hoping to achieve? It was hardly a ‘cry for help’; I would have been embarrassed to make that much noise. ‘A cough for help’, perhaps that was what it was. A clearing of the throat.
So there was good reason to fear a recurrence of a condition whose symptoms were insomnia, dizziness and confusion followed by depression and a broken heart. As the Northern Line train rattled into Balham, the doubts were already crowding in. It wasn’t even as if Connie’s decision had been the product of a rational mind, and the passion she had felt at three a.m. seemed unlikely to survive until the following Thursday, our second date, when we would be sober and self-conscious. Then there was Angelo to contend with, lurking even now in the pocket of her dressing gown nearest to her breast. Nothing could be taken for granted. Winning Connie Moore, keeping Connie Moore would be a challenge that would continue right up until an afternoon in Paris …
… where we slept off our lunch in the Jardin du Luxembourg, a park so elegant and groomed that I always half expect to be asked to remove my shoes. Lying on the grass is only permitted in a cramped strip at its southern end, sunbathers clinging to it as if to the hull of an overturned cruise ship. Our mouths were sticky from red wine and salty duck and we took it in turns to quench our thirsts with briny sparkling water that had long since ceased to sparkle.
‘How do French people do it?’
‘Do what?’ Connie’s head was resting on the pillow of my stomach.
‘Drink wine at lunchtime. I feel like I’ve been anaesthetised.’
‘I don’t know if they do any more. I think that’s just us tourists.’
To our left, four Italian language students were hunched over Chinese takeaway in plastic trays, the syrup and vinegar smell hanging in the hot, still air. To our right, three skinny Russian boys were listening to Slavic hip-hop on the speaker of their mobile phone, running their hands over their shaved heads and intermittently howling like wolves.
‘City of Proust,’ sighed Connie, ‘the city of Truffaut and Piaf.’
‘You are having a nice time, aren’t you?’