“There are none, Clive. And I fear there will never be. My daughter Daisy’s taste in men has been like mine. Disastrous. I’m afraid I have not set a good example, and as a result, she has never had a proper male role model in her life.”
“Her father?” prompts Clive.
“An awful shit. Left when Daisy was terribly young. Unforgivable. How about whatshername?”
“Denise? She was a very cold woman. I only married her because that’s what people like us did in those days. She moved to Dawlish and became a fucking magistrate, pardon my French.”
“Life is strange, Clive. And this champagne is strong! My neighbor Mrs. Abernethy lost her husband in the most pointless way you can imagine. He fell awkwardly getting down off a bus. Can you believe it? Bashed his head on the curb and never woke up, poor bastard. She, a personal friend of God and everything.”
For a while, the pair fall silent and are content to allow Southern England to pass by through the window. From what it’s possible to see courtesy of the train’s limited camera coverage, we’re traveling close to a settlement of some kind, a village at a guess. There are scattered houses—rather unlovely new ones—a couple of shops, a pub with a sign that says QUIZ NIGHT TUESDAY. I am struck by the realization that this is the first time that I have ever “left” the capital; and also that people actually live out here, passing their days in these tiny boring communities amid fields and trees, knowing nothing of vibrant pulsating highways like West End Lane and the Finchley Road. What can it be like never to feel the warm breath of our Tube stations, never to be affectionately sworn at by one of London’s artful black cab drivers? What on earth do people even do in the country? I wonder whether human Londoners have thoughts like these when they catch sight of a sad horse standing in a muddy meadow; or of ridiculous road signs to piddling places like Chalvington with Ripe! The Dicker! (Look them up, if you don’t believe me.) If they do, then call me proud to be in their snooty metropolitan elitist number!
“Listen, enough of all this doom and gloom, do another trick with your gift,” says Clive. “What’s the biggest fish I ever caught? If you can tell me that, I’ll buy you lunch and dinner.”
“Okay. But I need you to be thinking of it,” says Chloe.
“Never forgotten the bugger,” says Clive. “Was an absolute beauty.”
“Just checking we’re okay here?” I inquire lightly of my fellow stooge.
“So funny the way they remember stuff that happened in the middle of the last century…”
“… and not what they ate for breakfast that morning.”
“If I’ve heard this blooming fish story once…”
“Yes, yes it’s coming,” says Chloe. “It was. I do believe it was a twelve-pound barbel.”
“Christ on a bike!” (Clive)
“You were fourteen. At Whitstable. The rod snapped, but you managed to land it.”
“This is extraordinary, Chloe!”
“I scare myself sometimes, Clive.”
After Three Bridges, Wivelsfield and Hassocks (see what I mean about the silly names) it’s announced that Brighton will be next. Clive says he’ll “pay a quick visit to the little boys’ room before we land.”
And now three things happen.
Chloe removes the compact from her handbag and begins adjusting her face powder.
The train manager, Wayne, broadcasts that we shall shortly be arriving at Brighton; he reiterates that Brighton shall be the next “station stop” and he recommends that passengers leaving the train at Brighton should ensure they take all their belongings with them, which is great advice when you think about it, and were it possible, one would be tempted to send a note of thanks to Wayne for the heads-up!
And Clive does not return from the little boys’ room.
Whoever said history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes, was dead wrong. Because after I saved Eggstain’s borrowed suit, I once again found myself kissing a man while holding in my hand a sheet of kitchen towel. This thought must have made me laugh—what did I say about kissing and laughing at the same time?—because we had to stop and Eggstain said, What? I told him it didn’t matter and suggested we might be more comfortable in the sitting room.
I knew from before that Eggstain was a pretty good kisser. Now, during one of the natural breaks for romantic chitchat, he said he’d been attracted to me from the first time we met.
“I kept thinking about you. That funny thing you do with your face sometimes.”
“What funny thing?”
He pulled an absurd—well, grimace is the only word.
“Don’t. Be. Ridiculous.”
He smiled. “I love it.”
“Do it again,” I demanded. He did. “So you’re saying basically, that I look like an idiot!”
“Forget I even mentioned it. Did you feel something click between us, Daisy? When we first met?”
“There was definitely something. Though in all honesty, I found it hard to get past the beard. Anyway, I’m glad it’s gone now.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“Does that make me horribly superficial?”
“Horribly.”
“I just couldn’t imagine…”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“What couldn’t you imagine?”
“Forget I even mentioned it, Gustav.”
So that was the end of that talky bit and the kissing resumed. At some point I must have asked if he wanted to stay over again and he said he was very grateful and everything but the sofa had given him a bit of a stiff neck last time and I said I didn’t mean on the sofa.
There was a long meaningful silence.
“You don’t mean in a spare room. For the avoidance of doubt.”
“I don’t. For the avoidance.”
“Well, in that case, my answer would be yes. To which I would add, yes, yes and yes.”
“I see. Well, good, good and good.”
At 2:24 (by the glowing red numerals from my digital clock)
