“Oh,” he said vaguely. “Just one of those things. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you tomorrow night.”
“Daniel,” I said gently, “you’re not seeing me tomorrow night.”
“But Lucy,” he said reasonably. “I’ve made a reservation for dinner.”
“But Daniel,” I said, equally reasonably, “you shouldn’t have done that without consulting me. You know how unpredictable my moods are. And at the moment I’m no fun at all.”
“Well, you see,” he explained, “I had the reservation weeks ago and I was supposed to go with Ruth, but with me and her no longer being an item…”
“Oh, I see,” I said understanding. “You don’t specifically want me to go with you. You just need someone. Well, that should be no trouble at all to organize considering how women love you. Although, quite frankly, it’s beyond me why…”
“No, Lucy,” he interrupted. “I do specifically want you to come with me.”
“Sorry, Daniel,” I said sadly. “But I’m just too depressed.”
“Hasn’t the news that my girlfriend has left me cheered you up?” he asked.
“Yes, of course,” I said, starting to feel guilty. “But I just couldn’t face going out.”
Then he played his trump card.
“It’s my birthday,” he said hollowly.
“Not until Tuesday,” I said quickly.
I had forgotten that it was his birthday, but, quick as a flash, I had my excuse in place. I’d had a lot of practice in getting out of things I didn’t want to do, and it showed.
“But I really want to go to this particular restaurant,” he wheedled. “And it’s so hard to get a table.”
“Oh, Daniel,” I said, starting to feel despairing, “why are you doing this to me?”
“You’re not the only one who feels miserable, you know,” he said quietly. “You haven’t got a monopoly on it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Daniel.” I felt both guilty and resentful. “Are you heartbroken?”
“Well, you know how it is,” he said, still sounding all quiet and defeated.
“And have I ever abandoned you when you’ve been upset?” he asked, sealing my fate.
“That’s blackmail,” I said heavily. “But I’ll come with you.”
“Good,” he said gleefully.
“Are you very miserable?” I asked. I was always interested in other people’s despair. I would compare and contrast it with my own just to make me feel like I wasn’t such an oddity.
“Yes,” he said sorrowfully. “Wouldn’t you be? Not knowing when you’ll next get laid?”
“Daniel!” I said outraged. “You bastard! I might have known that you were only pretending to be upset. You haven’t got a sincere emotional bone in your body!”
“A joke, Lucy, a joke,” he said mildly. “That’s just my particular way of dealing with unpleasant things.”
“I never know when you’re joking and when you’re being serious,” I sighed.
“Neither do I,” he agreed. “Now let me tell you about this wonderful restaurant that I’m taking you to.”
“You’re not taking me to it.” I felt uncomfortable. “When you say it like that it sounds like we’re going on a date—which we’re not. You mean this restaurant that you’ve forced me into going to.”
“Sorry,” he said. “This restaurant that I’ve forced you into going to.”
“Good,” I said. “That’s better.”
“It’s called The Kremlin,” he said.
“The Kremlin?” I said, sounding alarmed. “Does that mean that it’s Russian?”
“Well, obviously,” he said, anxiety in his voice. “Is that a problem?”
“Yes!” I said. “Won’t it mean that we’ll have to wait in line for hours and hours and hours for our food? In subzero temperatures? And that although there’ll be delicious food on the menu, the only thing that they’ll actually be serving is raw turnip?”
“No, no, honestly,” he protested. “It won’t be anything like that. It’s pre-Bolshevik and it’s supposed to be wonderful. Caviar and flavoured vodka and very plush. You’ll love it.”
“I’d better,” I said grimly. “And I still don’t understand why you’re insisting that I come. What about Karen or Charlotte? They both like you. You’d have much more fun with either of them. Or both of them, now that I think of it. Wouldn’t you like a little flirtation with your borscht? A threesome with your blinis?”
“No thanks,” he said firmly. “I’m a bit battle-scarred. I’m off women for a while.”
“You?” I hooted. “I don’t believe it! Womanizing comes as naturally to you as breathing.”
“You have such a low opinion of me,” he said, sounding amused. “But, honestly, I’d much rather be with someone who didn’t have a crush on me.”
“Well, I mightn’t be much good for most things, but at least I can oblige you in that respect,” I said, in an almost cheerful tone.
I seemed to have perked up a little.
“Great!” he said.
There was a small pause. Then he spoke.
“Lucy,” he said awkwardly, “can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Well, it’s not really important, or anything,” he said. “I’m just slightly curious, but, er, why don’t you have a crush on me?”
“Daniel!” I said in disgust. “You’re pathetic.”
“I just want to know what I’m doing wrong…” he protested.
I hung up.
I had just managed to get my lukewarm chips onto a plate when the phone rang again, but this time I was smarter. This time I switched on the answering machine.
I didn’t care who it was, I wasn’t speaking to them.
“Er, ah, hello. This is Mrs. Connie Sullivan ringing for her daughter Lucy Sullivan.”
It was my mother.
How many Lucys did she think lived in my flat, I thought in irritation. But at the same time joy at my narrow escape ran through me! I was so relieved that I hadn’t picked up the phone. So what did the old bag want?
Whatever it was, she wasn’t too comfortable sharing it with the answering machine.
“Lucy, love, er, um, eh, it’s, um, Mammy.”
She sounded a bit humble. Whenever she called herself Mammy it was a sign that she was trying to be friendly. She was probably calling to grudgingly apologize for being so nasty to me earlier that day. That was her usual pattern.
“Lucy, love, I, er, think I might have been a bit hard on you on the phone today. If I was it’s only because I want the best for you.”
I listened with curled lip and disdainful expression.
“But I had to call you. It was on my conscience,” she went on. “I got a bit of a shock, you see, when I thought you might be…in trouble…” She whispered “in trouble,” doubtless as a precaution against anyone else inadvertently listening to her message and hearing such a filthy notion being uttered.
“But, I’ll see you on Thursday and don’t forget that Wednesday is a Holy Day of Obligation and the start of Lent…”
I threw my eyes heavenward, even though there was no one there to see me do it, and walked back to the kitchen to get some more salt. It would have killed me to admit it, but, you know, I felt a bit better now that my mother had rung, now that she had kind of apologized….
I ate my chips, I ate my chocolate, I watched my video and I went to bed early. I didn’t drink the bottle of wine, but maybe I should have, because I slept badly.
All night there seemed to be people coming in and out of the apartment. The doorbell being rung, doors opening and closing, the smell of toast being made, “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria” coming from the front room, stifled giggles coming from the kitchen, bangs and thumps of falling furniture from someone’s bedroom, more giggles, not so stifled this time, rattling in the silverware drawer while someone was probably searching for a corkscrew, male voices laughing.
That was one of the downsi
des of having an early night on a Friday in an apartment where the two other occupants went out and got drunk. Very often I would be one of the ones giggling and banging and thumping so I wouldn’t mind anyone else doing so either.
But it was a lot harder to put up with when I was sober and miserable and wanted oblivion. I could have gotten out of bed and marched down the hall in my pyjamas, my hair all messy, my face bare of makeup and begged Karen and Charlotte and whatever guests they had to keep the noise down, but it wouldn’t have done me any good. Either they would have drunkenly ridiculed me and my pyjamas and my hair, or else I would have been forced to drink half a bottle of vodka in a “If you can’t beat them, join them” exercise.
Sometimes I wished I lived by myself. I had been thinking that a lot lately.
I eventually got to sleep and then, what seemed like a little while later, I woke up again. I didn’t know what time it was but it was still pitch dark. The house was quiet and my room was cold—the heat must not have come on yet. Outside I could hear that it was raining and the wind rattled my bedroom’s shaky Victorian windows. The curtains moved slightly from a stray draft. A car passed, its wheels hissing on the wet road.
A pang of something unpleasant shot through me—emptiness? loneliness? abandonment?—if it wasn’t one of those emotions, it was at least a member of their extended family.
“I’m never going out again,” I thought. “Not while the world is the way it is. Bad weather and people laughing at me. I want none of it.”
After a while I couldn’t help noticing that, even though it was five-thirty on a Saturday morning, I was awake. That was always happening to me—from Monday morning to Friday morning I couldn’t open my eyes, even with the help of the alarm clock and the threat of losing my job if I was late one more morning. Getting out of bed was almost impossible, as though the sheets were made of Velcro.
But come Saturday morning, when I didn’t have to get up, I woke of my own accord and couldn’t persuade myself, under any circumstances, to turn over and shut my eyes and snuggle under the covers and go back to sleep.
The only exception to this pattern occurred on the occasional Saturdays when I had to go to work. Then I found it as hard to wake up as I had done on the previous five mornings.
If my mother knew, she would probably have held it up as evidence of my—at least according to her—contrariness.
“I know,” I thought, “I’ll eat something.”
I got out of bed—the room was freezing—and ran down the hall to the kitchen. To my dismay, someone was already there.
“I don’t care who it is,” I thought belligerently. “I’m not talking to them.”
It was a young man whom I had never seen before. He was dressed only in red boxer shorts and he was energetically gulping tap water from a mug.
That was not the first Saturday morning I had bumped into a strange man in our kitchen. The only difference on this particular Saturday morning was that I hadn’t brought him home myself.
Something about him—it might have been the way he was drinking the water like he was dying of thirst—made me feel like being nice to him.
“There’s Coke in the fridge,” I told him, hospitably.
He jumped and turned around.
“Oh, er, hello,” he said, his hands going automatically to his groin in protective fashion. “Sorry,” he stuttered. “I hope I didn’t frighten you. I came home with…er…your roommate last night.”
“Oh,” I said. “Which one?”
Who had had the attentions of this person forced upon them the previous evening? Karen or Charlotte?
“Er, this is rather embarrassing,” he said sheepishly. “But I can’t actually remember her name. I had quite a bit to drink.”
“Well, describe her,” I said nicely.
“Blond hair.”
“That’s no use,” I told him. “They both have blond hair.”
“Er, big, um,” he said, sketching something expansive with his hands.
“Oh, you mean big tits.” I suddenly understood. “Well, once again, it could be either of them.”
“I think she had a funny accent,” he said.
“Scottish?”
“No.”
“Yorkshire?”
“Yes!”
“That’s Charlotte.”
I got my bag of cookies and went back to bed.
A few minutes later the boy walked into my room.
“Oh,” he said, looking confused and flustered, his hand going to his crotch again. “But where’s…? I thought…”
“Next door,” I said sleepily.
Chapter 15
When I awoke again, it was almost midday. Someone was in the bathroom and steam was billowing out from under the door so that I could hardly see down the hall. I found Karen lying under her duvet on the couch in the front room. She was coughing and smoking, there was an overflowing ashtray on the floor beside her and she looked like a panda because she hadn’t taken off her previous night’s makeup.
“Morning.” She smiled, looking a bit pale and wan. “What were you up to last night?”
“Nothing,” I said absently. “Why is the apartment like a sauna? Who’s in the bathroom? Why are they taking so long?”
“It’s Charlotte. She’s purging herself with the scalding water and the Brillo pads, scrubbing herself till she bleeds, atoning for her sin.”
I felt a powerful rush of sympathy.
“Oh no, poor Charlotte. So she slept with that guy?”
“When did you see him?” asked Karen, attempting to sit up in her excitement and then thinking better of it.
“I bumped into him in the kitchen about five-thirty this morning.”
“Awful, wasn’t he? But Charlotte was wearing her beer goggles, well, her tequila goggles, actually, so she thought he was gorgeous.”
“Judgment impaired?”
“Very much so.”
“Was she being all raunchy and dancing seductively around the place?”
“Yes.”
“On no.”
Charlotte was a lively but well-brought up, respectable girl from a small town outside Bradford. She had only been living in London for about a year and was still going through the painful process of trying to find out who she really was. Was she still the sprightly, cheeky, but very decent, apple-cheeked girl from Yorkshire? Or was she the blond, busty temptress that she turned into when she drank too much? It’s an odd thing, but when she was behaving like a temptress her hair really did seem to turn a couple of shades lighter and her bust really did seem to increase at least one cup size.
She found it very, very hard to marry these two different aspects of herself. When she acted like the blond, busty temptress she spent the following days bitterly berating herself. Guilt, self-loathing, self-hatred, fear of retribution, disgust with herself and her behaviour were her constant companions.
She took far too many very hot baths during those times.
It was unfortunate that Charlotte was blond and busty because she was also a bit slow, and it confirmed too many stereotypes. People like Charlotte gave blondes a bad name. But I was very fond of her and she was a lovely person and an amiable roommate.
“But never mind her. Tell me about you,” said Karen gleefully. “Tell me the whole story of you and the getting married thing and all.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You always say that, Lucy.”
“Sorry.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“Please!”
“Well, all right, but you can’t laugh at me and you can’t feel sorry for me.”
Then I told Karen everything about going to see Mrs. Nolan and her predictions and about Meredia coming into money and Megan getting a split lip and Hetty running off with Dick’s brother and Meredia and Megan telling everyone that I was getting married.
Karen listened awestruck.
<
br /> “My god,” she breathed. “How awful. And how embarrassing.”
“Indeed.”
“Are you upset?”
“A bit,” I admitted reluctantly.
“You should kill Meredia. You shouldn’t let her get away with this. And I can’t believe that Megan got involved. She always seemed so normal.”
“I know.”
“It must have been some kind of mass hysteria,” suggested Karen.
Charlotte shuffled into the room, wearing a heavy, shapeless polo-necked purple knitted dress that came almost to her ankles. It was her version of a hairshirt.
“Oh, Lucy,” she wailed, bursting into tears and rushing toward me.
I wrapped my arms around her as best I could, bearing in mind that she was eight inches taller than me.
“I’m so ashamed,” she sobbed. “I hate myself. I wish I were dead.”
“Shush, shush,” I said with the ease of practice. “You’ll feel better soon. Don’t forget that you were drinking a lot last night and that alcohol is a depressant. You’re bound to feel depressed today.”
“Really,” she said, looking at me hopefully.
“Honest.”
“Oh, Lucy, you’re so good. You always know the right things to say when I’m miserable.”
And of course I did. I’d had so much first-hand practice myself that it would have been churlish not to share what I had learned the hard way.
“I’m never going to drink again,” she promised.
I said nothing.
“Ever!”
I inspected my nails.
“At least I’m never going to drink tequila again,” she said vehemently.
I gazed out of the window.
“I’m going to stick to wine.”
I stared at the television (though it wasn’t on).
“And every second drink will be a mineral water.”
I straightened a cushion.
“And I’m not going to have more than four glasses of wine in an evening.”
I looked at my nails again.
“Well, six, maybe.”
Another gaze out of the window.
“Depending on the size of the glass.”
The television again.