‘I mean, it’s not as if I’m some flappy little thing who comes running into his surgery every time I get a cold,’ she continued. ‘And this has been going on for nearly two months now, this flu or whatever it is. I can’t just keep taking days off work all the time.’
‘Well, Saturday’s probably his busiest day. He was bound to be rushed.’
‘I think I deserved more than just a pat on the head and a few antibiotics, that’s all.’ She bit into a prawn cracker and sipped some wine: an attempt, it seemed, to wash the irritation away. ‘Anyway.’ She looked up and smiled. ‘Anyway, this is very nice of you, Michael. Very nice, and quite unexpected.’
If there was an irony intended, it managed to pass me by. I still couldn’t quite get over my amazement at the thought that I was actually sitting with another person — a woman, no less — at a table for two in a restaurant. I suppose part of me, the most vocal and persuasive part, had simply given up believing that such a thing might happen: and yet it could hardly have been easier to accomplish. I’d spent the previous evening slumped in front of the television, almost mad with boredom even though my intentions had been admirable enough. Over the last few years I’d accumulated a pile of unwatched videos, and it had been my hope that this time I’d find the stamina to get through at least one of them. But it seemed that optimism had got the better of me again. I watched the first half of Cocteau’s Orphée, the first thirty minutes of Ray’s Pather Panchali, the first ten minutes of Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu Monogatari, the opening credits of Tarkovsky’s Solaris and the trailers at the beginning of Wenders’ The American Friend. After that I gave up, and sat in front of a silent screen, steadily making my way down a bottle of supermarket wine. This continued until about two o’clock in the morning. In the old days I would have just poured myself a final glass and gone to bed, but now I realized that this wasn’t good enough. Fiona had called by a couple of hours earlier and I hadn’t even answered when she knocked; she would have seen the light under my door and must have known that I was ignoring her. And now suddenly, sitting by myself with only the television’s dumb flickering to combat the darkness, it seemed ridiculous to me that I should prefer these blank, unresponsive images to the company of an attractive and intelligent woman. It was anger, above all, which drove me to perform an impetuous and selfish act. I went directly on to the landing and rang the bell to Fiona’s flat.
She answered after a minute or two, wearing a light, Japanese-style dressing-gown. An expanse of freckled breastbone was exposed, sheened thinly with sweat although I for one thought the temperature had dropped quite sharply this evening.
‘Michael?’ she said.
‘I’ve been really unfriendly these last few weeks,’ I blurted out. ‘I came to apologize.’
She looked puzzled, of course, but managed to take it in her stride.
‘That’s not necessary.’
‘There are some things — possibly there are some things you ought to know about me,’ I said. ‘Things I’d like to tell you.’
‘Well, that’s wonderful, Michael. I certainly look forward to that.’ She was humouring me, I could tell. ‘But it is the middle of the night.’
‘I didn’t mean now. I thought maybe … over dinner.’
That seemed to surprise her more than anything. ‘Are you asking me out?’
‘I suppose I am.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow night?’
‘OK. Where?’
This put me in a corner, because I only knew one local restaurant and didn’t want to go back there. But there wasn’t much choice.
‘The Mandarin? Nine o’clock?’
‘I look forward to it.’
‘Fine: well, we could either get a taxi from here, say ten minutes beforehand, or actually it’s not very far to walk, and then we could maybe stop on the way …’
I realized that I was talking to a closed door, and went back to my flat.
Now Fiona was spreading plum sauce over a pancake with the back of her spoon, and filling it with thin strips of duck and cucumber. Her fingers worked neatly.
‘So, Michael, what are these revelations about yourself that you’ve been bursting to tell me? I’m agog.’
I smiled. I had been nervous all day, thinking how peculiar it would be to share a meal with someone again, but now I was beginning to feel quietly euphoric. ‘There are no revelations,’ I said.
‘So last night — that was just a subtle way of getting to see me in my dressing-gown, was it?’
‘It was just an impulse, that’s all. It had only just occurred to me how strange my behaviour must seem. You know — the way I keep myself to myself, how I barely answer you sometimes, all the time I spend watching things on the television: you must wonder what on earth’s going on.’
‘Not really,’ said Fiona, biting into her folded pancake. ‘You’re hiding from the world because it frightens you. I frighten you. You’ve probably never learned to form real relationships with people. Did you think I wouldn’t be able to see that?’
Wrongfooted, I tried to bite into my pancake, but I hadn’t folded it properly and the contents spilled out just as I was about to put it into my mouth.
‘You have to work at these things, that’s the point,’ said Fiona. ‘If it’s depression we’re talking about then let me tell you, I’ve been there. But, you know … Take that bike ride I went on the other week. Agony, it was. Complete bloody agony. But at least I met some people, went for a drink afterwards, got a couple of dinner invitations out of it. It may not sound like very much, but after a while you realize … there’s nothing worse than being on your own. Nothing.’ She sat back and wiped her fingers on her napkin. ‘Well, it’s just a thought. Perhaps we shouldn’t get heavy this early in the evening.’
I wiped my fingers too. Huge amounts of plum sauce seemed to come off and smudge the napkin with great brown patches.
‘You made a good choice here,’ said Fiona, glancing around the restaurant. It had a comfortable atmosphere, somehow intimate and convivial at the same time. ‘Have you been here before?’
‘No, no. I just read about it somewhere.’
But this, of course, was a lie, since we were in the very place where my mother and I had had the last, explosive argument from which our relationship was yet to recover. I had vowed never to come back here, fearing that someone on the staff might recognize me and make some embarrassing reference — for we had created quite a scene at the time — but now, finding myself both calmed and exhilarated by Fiona’s company, this anxiety seemed preposterous. It was after all one of the most popular restaurants in the area, and when I thought of all the thousands of customers who must have come and gone during the last two or three years … Really, I was flattering myself to suppose that anybody might have found the incident at all memorable.
A waiter came to clear our plates. ‘Good evening, sir,’ he said with a slight bow. ‘How nice that you come back again after all this time. Your mother is well?’
I sat speechless for a while after he had gone, unable to meet Fiona’s eyes which were laughing even as her mouth remained politely quizzical. Then I admitted: ‘Well, yes, I did come here with my mother once. We had a terrible row and … well, it’s not something I really wanted to talk about.’
‘I thought that was the whole point of this evening,’ she said. ‘To tell me things.’
‘Yes, it is. And I will. It’s just that there are certain things, certain areas …’ This was coming out badly, and it was clear that if I was to regain her confidence, a major gesture was called for. ‘Come on, you can ask me anything. Anything at all. Ask me a question.’