She drank a great deal, refilling her glass before it was empty as if worried the wine might run out. The drink had no discernible effect except perhaps a certain intensity in conversation, as if it required concentration. Connie’s drinking seemed quite light-hearted, with a kind of drink-you-under-the-table swagger to it. She seemed like fun.
She was extremely stylish. Not expensively or ostentatiously dressed but there was something right about her. The fashion of the day placed great emphasis on ‘bagginess’, giving the impression that the guests around the table were toddlers wearing their parents’ T-shirts. Connie, in contrast, was neat and stylish in old clothes (which I have since learnt to call ‘vintage’) that were tailored and snug and emphasised her — I’m sorry, I apologise, but there really is no way around this — her ‘curves’. She was smart, original, both ahead of the crowd and as old-fashioned as a character in a black-and-white film. In contrast, the impression I set out to create, looking back, was no impression at all. My wardrobe at that time ran the gamut from taupe to grey, all the colours of the lichen world, and it’s a safe bet that chinos were involved. Anyway, the camouflage worked, because …
This woman on my right had absolutely no interest in me whatsoever.
And why should she? Jake the trapeze artist was a man who stared death in the face, while most nights I stared television in the face. And this wasn’t just any circus, it was punk circus, part of the new wave of circus, where chainsaws were juggled and oil drums were set on fire then beaten incessantly. Circus was now sexy; dancing elephants had been replaced by nude contortionists, ultra-violence and, explained Jake, ‘a kind of anarchic, post-apocalyptic Mad Max aesthetic’.
‘You mean the clowns don’t drive those cars where the wheels fall off?’ asked Connie, her face a stone.
‘No! Fuck that, man! These cars explode! We’re on Clapham Common next week — I’ll get you both tickets, you can come along.’
‘Oh, we’re not together,’ she said, a little too quickly. ‘We’ve just met.’
‘Ah!’ nodded Jake, as if to say ‘that makes sense’. There was a momentary pause and to fill the gap, I asked:
‘Tell me, do you find, as a trapeze artist, that it’s hard to get decent car insurance?’
The percentage varies, but some of the things I say make no sense to me at all. Perhaps I’d meant it as a joke. Perhaps I’d hoped to emulate Connie’s laconic tone through raised eyebrow and wry smile. If so, that hadn’t come across, because Connie was not laughing but pouring more wine.
‘No, because I don’t tell ’em,’ said Jake with a rebellious swagger, which was all very anarchic but good luck with any future claims, big guy. Having steered the conversation to insurance premiums, I now dolloped out the tuna pasta bake, scalding the back of Connie’s hands with fatty strands of molten Cheddar, hot as lava, and as she peeled them off Jake returned to his monologue, stretching across me for more booze. To the extent that I’d ever thought about trapeze artists, I’d always pictured slick, broad Burt Lancaster types, smooth and brilliantined and leotarded. Jake was a wild man, covered in luxuriant body hair the colour of a basketball but still undeniably handsome, strong-featured, a Celtic tattoo encircling his bicep, a tangle of wild red hair gathered into a bun with a greasy scrunchie. When he spoke — and he spoke a great deal — his eyes blazed at Connie, passing straight through me, and I was forced to accept that I was watching a blatant seduction. At a loss, I reached for the rudimentary salad. Doused liberally with malt vinegar and cooking oil, it was my sister’s rare culinary gift to make lettuce taste like a bag of chips.
‘That moment when you’re in mid-air,’ said Jake, stretching for the ceiling, ‘when you’re falling but almost flying, there’s nothing like that. You try to hold onto it, but it’s … transient. It’s like trying to hold on to an orgasm. Do you know that feeling?’
‘Know it?’ deadpanned Connie. ‘I’m doing it right now.’
This made me bark with laughter, which in turn attracted a scowl from Jake, and quickly I offered the acrid salad bowl. ‘Iceberg lettuce, anyone? Iceberg lettuce?’
The tuna pasta bake was forced down like so much hot clay and Jake’s monologue continued well into ‘afters’, an ironic sherry trifle topped with enough canned cream, Smarties and Jelly Tots to bring about the onset of type 2 diabetes. Connie and Jake were leaning across me now, pheromones misting the air between them, the erotic force field pushing my chair further and further away from the trestle table until I was practically in the hallway with the bicycles and the piles of Yellow Pages. At some point, Connie must have noticed this, because she turned to me and asked:
‘So, Daniel, what do you do?’
Daniel seemed close enough. ‘Well, I’m a scientist.’
‘Yes, your sister told me. She says you have a PhD. What field?’
‘Biochemistry, but at the moment I’m studying Drosophila, the fruit fly.’
‘Go on.’
‘Go on?’
‘Tell me more,’ she said. ‘Unless it’s top secret.’
‘No, it’s just people don’t usually ask for more. Well, how can I … okay, we’re using chemical agents to induce genetic mutation …’
Jake groaned audibly and I felt something brush my cheek as he reached for the wine. For some people, the word ‘scientist’ suggests either a wild-eyed lunatic or the white-coated lackey of some fanatical organisation, an extra in a Bond film. Clearly this was the way Jake felt.
‘Mutation?’ said Jake, indignantly. ‘Why would you mutate a fruit fly? Poor bastard, why not leave it be?’
‘Well, there’s nothing inherently unnatural about mutation. It’s just another word for evolu—’
‘I think it’s wrong to tamper with nature.’ He addressed the table now. ‘Pesticides, fungicides, I think they’re evil.’
As a hypothesis, this seemed unlikely. ‘I’m not sure a chemical compound can be evil in itself. It can be used irresponsibly or foolishly, and sadly that has sometimes been the—’
‘My mate, she’s got an allotment in Stoke Newington; it’s totally organic and her food is beautiful, absolutely beautiful …’
‘I’m sure. But I don’t think they have plagues of locusts in Stoke Newington, or annual drought, or a lack of soil nutrients—’
‘Carrots should taste of carrots,’ he shouted, a mystifying non sequitur.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t quite—’
‘Chemicals. It’s all these chemicals!’
Another non sequitur. ‘But … everything’s a chemical. The carrot itself is made of chemicals, this salad is chemical. This one in particular. You, Jake, you’re made up of chemicals.’