‘The odds are definitely against it,’ admits Fi. She pours some wine into my glass. ‘What was he like?’
‘Beautiful,’ I admit. ‘I mean, I was just like the next seventeen-year-old. OK, my parents had gone pear- shaped, but you know I was
‘No.’ Fi is shocked. I grin wryly. I remember being shocked. Now disreputable behaviour never shocks me, it doesn’t even disappoint me – I see it as an inevitability.
‘Yeah. Slipped his mind to tell me. Until his wife turned up on my mother’s doorstep. To quote the great Holly Golightly,
Fi sits silently, trying to take it in. It’s true it’s not the conventional first lover story. That’s meant to take place in the back of your parents’ Volvo or at someone else’s house whilst you are babysitting. It’s meant to take place with some acne-ridden youth who is equally inexperienced and as smitten as you are.
‘Which made me a paramour at seventeen years old,’ I joke. But really it was no laughing matter at the time.
‘Inadvertently,’ says Fi, loyally.
‘Still.’ I inhale deeply.
‘Still,’ she admits, taking a large swig.
I’d cried for months and when I stopped crying I started hating. It took several more months for the hate to cool and when it did I was left in a pool of icy resentment. ‘So I figured I should try and turn it to my advantage. No more shocks. No more surprises. I decided to have a very low expectancy threshold on what should be gained from a relationship. I don’t think unconditional love is a possibility, never mind a probability, which guarantees no disappointment.’
Fi is concentrating on what I’ve just said as she taps out the tune playing on the jukebox with her fag pack.
‘Sounds a bit extreme. Couldn’t you have just dated someone your own age and sort of – she pauses – ‘I don’t know, muddled along like the rest of us?’
I raise an eyebrow and she shrugs, perhaps realizing how unappealing the alternative is.
‘I did date someone my own age next. He was a fop. Lovable, I guess.’ I think about it, perhaps for the first time. ‘Yes, certainly. But his willingness to please, at first a novelty, quickly became tiresome. Why don’t we value those who most deserve to be valued?’ I turn to Fi, but she’s concentrating on drawing a loveheart on the table with drips of wine. ‘Answers on a postcard please. Before I knew it I’d sort of fallen into a series of one-night stands, mostly with married men or commitment phobes and, on one occasion, a homosexual.’
This gets her attention. ‘How did you know? Did he make you dress up and do funny things with strap- ons?’
‘No, Fi, he had an opinion on my wallpaper.’ I run through my sexual misadventures in my head and it could be the alcohol but this reminiscing is making me decidedly morose. I rouse myself into my more acceptable, tough, public persona. ‘Just take it from me it’s easier to enjoy the moment and not expect anything more because really there isn’t anything more. I heartily recommend the married man.’ I swallow and then refill both our glasses.
‘Doesn’t it bother you that someone else is getting the best bit?’
‘The best bit?’ I’m genuinely challenged to understand what Fi means.
‘The companionship, the stability, the history, the future.’
‘The dirty washing, the belching, the rows, the incessant football results.’
‘But it doesn’t make sense. You suffered first-hand because your father had a mistress. Why would you want to inflict the same pain on someone else?’
To be fair this is a pretty good question. Especially considering the units we’ve consumed on empty stomachs. It is a question I’d asked myself, once upon a time. The first time I fell for a married man it was purely accidental. I didn’t really expect it to happen again. I did hate the very idea of ‘the other woman’. Women who are compliant in this perpetuation of misery repelled me. After all, if there hadn’t been a Miss Hudley, there wouldn’t have been a deserting father and a deserted mother.
A deserted daughter.
The problem is, of course, you can take out Miss Hudley but a Miss Budley or a Miss Woodly would replace her. The choice is clear to me: become a Miss Hudley because the alternative role is worse – become the deserted wife. My mother’s face, worn and weary with clinging to her pride whilst losing her husband, her home, her name and her identity, burns into my consciousness. Fear flung me into relationships with men committed to someone else. It was safer. I should have been struck by lightning when I broke the taboo the first time. I sometimes wish I had been. With alarming ease I’ve broken every rule and never been punished – in fact, I’ve often been rewarded. It seemed that what I was doing was sanctioned. Whilst I collected compliments and Cartier, tenaciously avoiding commitment or Kleenex, my friends who hoped for the Happily Ever After were discovering that the road to fairyland was long and winding. And often heartbreaking.
Somehow I’ve developed secret signals that repel available men or men with a penchant for commitment yet simultaneously attract married men or any of the others who don’t want anything more than sex. Or maybe it’s just that the numbers are in my favour. I don’t say any of this to Fi. I turn back to her question and simplify.
‘I’m not threatening. I don’t want to be someone’s girlfriend, or, horror of horrors, wife. Therefore I’m not a risk. I never demand. I never call at inconvenient times; I never criticize his wife-slash-girlfriend. And in return he has no right to ask me where I’m going or when I’ll be back. He has no ability to make me fall in love with him.’
Fi stares at me. It may be that she is impressed. It may be that she is horrified. It may be that she is pissed.
‘Christ, how depressing,’ she moans.
‘Tell me I’m wrong,’ I challenge.
We are both silent for a long time. Eventually Fi suggests, ‘Another bottle?’
I return from the bar with a bottle and, because we both need cheering up, a couple of bankers.
‘Fi, let me introduce Ivor Jones and Mike Clark. They’re bankers.’ Fi starts to giggle. ‘That’s with a “b”,’ I hiss through clenched teeth. I’ve seen Ivor and Mike in this pub before. Over the last couple of months we have nodded to each other and occasionally I’ve accepted a drink from Ivor. They’ve been watching us all evening. Then I started to watch them watching us. When it got to the point of them watching us watching them watching us I knew it was time to say hi. They are well and identically dressed. Dark Boss suits, striped shirts, probably off-the-peg rather than Savile Row, saffron Hermes ties. They probably don’t even know they are saffron – they probably describe them as yellow. Ivor distinguishes himself by having a killer Welsh accent that largely renders him incomprehensible but is very sexy. I don’t mind incomprehensible. Most importantly Ivor is wearing a wedding ring and so I leave Mike to Fi.
Ivor’s attractions are not what one would describe as classical. His face reminds me of a soundly slapped bottom. He is pale with a sprinkling of freckles and a small snub nose. On the other hand he is tall (six-foot-two- ish), ridiculously intelligent and appallingly arrogant. Besides which he is begging for it. It would be rude not to sleep with him. His hungry, alert eyes bore into me as he showers us with awful sexist jokes. As he hands round bottles of Becks he asks, ‘How many men does it take to open a beer?’ Without waiting for a reply he tells us, ‘None. It should be opened by the time she brings it.’ Mike and Ivor laugh heartily. I do too, even though I’ve heard the joke before. Fi scowls. Ivor is doing an emotional borderpoint check patrol. Just checking the amount of commitment I’ll require. If I take his blatantly offensive jokes seriously he knows he’s on dangerous territory. If I don’t nettle but counter with a few sheep-shagging jokes, he knows he’s in the clear. Ivor catches Fi’s scowl.
‘Oh, no offence. There’s nothing worse than a male chauvinist pig, is there? Well, except a woman who won’t do what she’s told.’ Again he laughs. Fi is obviously unimpressed. I’m refreshed to find a man who is honest enough to tell it as he sees it. However, for Mike’s sake I hope he tries a more conventional chatting-up approach with Fi. If I could, I’d advise chocolates and compliments.
Ivor is bored with trying to control the group dynamics and his interest now lies in drawing me into a more intimate conversation. He takes advantage of Fi going to the loo and Mike going to the fag machine to invade my body space. He’s sitting on my right and he edges closer. I have nowhere to move, even if I wanted to. He puts his left arm along the back of the scruffy tartan settee. It reminds me of being in the pictures, aged thirteen.
‘So how old are you, Cas?’
