Blind Date (23 page)

Drop-dead gorgeous. Remember not to be nice. Stop it, Patsy, stop it; but stepping out of doors would be worth it for this disingenuous, almost childlike smile alone. She knew, in a moment, that the beast was civilized; that the evening was not going to be a disaster because he would not let it be so. He was allowing his hand to hover, not presuming to touch, a shade of shyness. He was clean and courteous, but then so was she, dismissing from her mind the fleeting thought, why does he do this, but, then, why do I? That fine head of hair dipped again in a nice, ironic bow and he passed the back of his hand across his forehead.

“What a
ritual,” he said. “I'm not used to it; it makes me
so
nervous.”

“Me, too.”

“Good,” he said, touching her then, guiding her elbow. “It should, shouldn't it? We should be nervous. It isn't a game.”

She nodded. He laughed, confidingly, her arm, effortlessly inside his own.

“Don't worry. I'm quite safe. I learned my manners from my mother.”

This son's mother had done a good job.

Wait till she told Hazel. But she would not tell Hazel. She had lied, ashamed of herself for going out at all. Said she had not heard from the agency.

A
long evening. Some people, Hazel was thinking, have the knack of making an hour last a lifetime. The policemen did that, too. She shuddered. (Always be polite to your date even if you do not like the look of him … he may be as apprehensive as you are … wait and see what he has to say for himself … give him a chance! copyright Mrs. C. Smythe.) All those rules and whatsits could have been straight out of a magazine, Hazel thought without irony: Mrs. Smythe was probably brought up on
Woman's Realm
, circa 1950. First find your man. Ignore the fact that he is not even a noble savage and quite unsuitable for life indoors: tame him. Step one, listen, as if the words tumbling from his mouth were pearls of fascinating wisdom. Instead of all this boring rubbish from a man with white sock and shiny shoes.

“Ever been skiing, Haze? It's great, honest. Me and my mates go most years. Great. Do you drive a car, Haze? No? Shame. Turning mine in this autumn, don't like to keep the same one long. Still, the old company's good like that. Don't your lot run to cars, then? Enjoying that, are you?” Pointing in the direction of her empty, froth-lined cocktail glass, his voice grating. The steeliness of the decor did not absorb the babble of the Soho crowd or the deafening vibration of music. She put her lips close to his ear.

“I thought
you were self-employed. Own business.”

“Naa. Gave that up. Didn't work.”

She leant even closer and said what she knew he wanted her to say, “I'll get these, shall I? Same again?” A fool with a hole in his credit card, that was it. Hazel was all too familiar with the type: all mouth and trousers, but shocked by the price of her drinks, as if he didn't expect a girl to go for the fanciest combination on the menu. God, she hated cocktails: but they served to test the mettle of the bloke buying. Happy hour over, this bloke was losing his. Two pints, two of her brandy sours and he started to panic. He looked like a star athlete squashed by a truck, head like a bullet, ultra-stylish hair but cheap shoes. Tie loosened at the neck to make him look like a city stockbroker, he probably ran with a crowd like that, without earning a fraction of it. A male groupie: an old mate: he never stopped talking about his mates, wore them like a shield. Hazel put her gimlet eye on the barman, got a swift shot of bourbon at the bar, and carried back to the table a double each and two bottles of some fancy Belgian beer which was about the same proof as wine. That should loosen his tongue, as if it had ever stopped wagging.
In vino veritas
was too slow. Spirit and hops were quicker.

“Thought I'd have a change,” she said.

He looked at her with new appreciation.

“Gottit,” he announced, thumb in air, as if about to nail a drawing pin to the wall. “I mean, basically, you're a girl who likes pints. Good on yer! Cheers.” A long gulp and a short sip. “Good this, innit?”

She nodded.
So it should be, at that price.

“My wife hated drink,” he announced. “I mean, hated the stuff. She was about as much fun as a wet blanket in a snowstorm. Hated booze, sex, a good time, everything. She was a bit like that.”

Hazel nodded, pulled out her ciggies, lit one.

“I disapprove of smoking,” he said, suddenly pompous. “Hate it, you know.”

“Sorry,” she said as mildly as she could, but continued, resting the hand with the cigarette on the edge of the table, so the smoke went into the eyes of them next door, not his. They at the next table were smoking like converts; arguing, too. Something to do with money, his, hers or someone else's, far more interesting. Rob was back in his narrative.

“I was too young to marry, you know? Should never have done it. She changed as soon as she was a missus. Turned into her mum. Wallpaper everywhere. No more going down the boozer with the team … always busy. Cow.”

“Did she earn more than you?” Hazel asked, innocently, letting the ash fall between the two tables.

“Well, yeah. S'pose she did?”

“So she left you the house, then, did she? I mean, she wasn't such a meanie in the end.”

“She was a cow. A proper cow. Made me buy her out.” He sounded wistful.

“Cheers.” She tipped her glass towards his, leant towards him. Not exactly leering, simply trying to find a common interest over the noise, the arms crossed modestly under her breasts acting as a soft shelf, supporting the cleavage which seemed to sprout from the lycra.

“Tell us
about the house, Rob. What kind of house?”

His foot began to tap with the music. He wanted to get up and strut. It wasn't a bad body under all that, she noticed. Shame about the rhythm. She'd seen a dozen middle managers just like him, but he was a suit. She had to try.

“Tell me about your house, Rob, where is it?”

“House?
My
house? Not exactly mine, more the building society's. Actually, it's a flat in a block. Out in the sticks. Gotta garden. Everybody else has got a baby. I suppose she was thinking of babies. Fat chance!” He roared as if he had been witty and let his eyes wander, clocking the fillies at the bar, before resting his gaze on her cleavage. He was a man with a fixed blueprint of the kind of woman he liked, eyes bigger than his prick.

Hazel finished the drink. He was welcome: no he wasn't. This one had a grotty flat as full of debts as he was full of shit. There was a jug of water on the table, some little compensation for the price of the drinks. Olives and crisps were free, too. She took the jug and poured some of it into his half-done beer, ruining it. OK, another day she might have persisted, but it was all to do with Angela and life being short and that, so she could not even try to be nice. Even his face wasn't worth it, nor his bum covered in that nice bit of suit. Mortgage sounded nasty.

“You're a complete pillock,” she said, enjoying the clean-shaven feel of his skin as she stroked his cheery chappy, stupid face. “A wally. Got that?”

“What?”

It wasn't even as though she left the room, he mumbled, later. She only got as far as the bar. Sat there, ordering up another, as if he had never existed. Sat up there, crying.

“W
ell you
see, I don't know what to do. About my life and career in general. The same things aren't important any more,” Patsy finished. Michael held her gaze. Perhaps she had bored him, but he did not seem bored.

“Look, you don't have to do anything. No, what I mean is yes, you do, but you don't have to do anything immediately. What my mother says is, you have to do what you can. Don't expect the impossible.”

If there was anything about him which stirred irritation, it was this constant reference to a mother, the way a film star might have referred to a spiritual leader, a kind of guru; but it was the most passing of irritations. The food was his choice, maybe his mother had told him how to eat, and yes, a long, lovely evening with nothing to mar it. Patsy felt ridiculously high, only she could not remember where she had parked her car. It was late enough: taxis thin on the ground, people spilling out of theatres like a stream of lava, the area covered with slow-moving pedestrians; she simply could not remember which car park and it was so humilating not to remember. Accepting a lift looked like a come on, but she did not care, he was fantastic.

Do not, do not, do not.

And then they were outside the block and she did not want it to end, because she was proud of her flat and wanted him to see it, wanted to see him again. Not bed, not now: not this first time, but sometime: he was, after all, lovely and listening, and she did not even think, did not think at all, when she said, come up for a coffee. Nor did he grab her at the door, nothing like that.

It was when she was busy, about the business of making coffee, hunting out the booze, although it was the last thing she needed, while he went to the loo and came back, that she had a premonition. Consumption of wine had been heavy in the last few days: who could blame her, but in her mind's eye, she could see a written set of rules, all broken, and in that one moment, she could see how silly, excitable Angela might have died.

A different
man had come back from the bathroom: a predator. He tried to kiss her, and she giggled a bit, “No, no, wait …” twisted her head away, presenting her neck, rather than her face, felt the first real sensation of fear. He was enormously strong.

So she did what seemed wise, kissed him full on the mouth, but he knew, by then, that she was afraid, that she had, however minutely, rejected him, and that whatever else she did was artifice, a mere pretence of love.

He hit her, hard. She screamed, bastard, bastard, that old insult, nearest to mind, without meaning: he hit her again, punches to the abdomen, leaving her winded and coughing, clutching her stomach, choking.

Then he took the shawl from the back of the chair. Black and orange, worn on winter days, a favourite thing.

“Look,” she said, “do whatever you want: just do whatever you want.
Don't hurt me.
I love you.”

That stopped him, confused him into a smile.

“No you don't, no you don't, no you don't. No-one does.”

Then there was the second, chameleon-like change, as she cowered at his feet. He was standing still, holding the shawl, looking down at it as if wondering how it had got into his hands. She scrabbled to her feet, looking around wildly for any kind of weapon, backing away, towards the window. In a minute, she would hear it, the diesel sound of the ambulance coming to take her away. He came towards her again. She did not scream, simply put out her hands before her, pleading. He drew her into an embrace which she did not resist. Michael put the shawl round her shoulders, patted it into place. While she stood with hands by her side, he folded it beneath her chin, saying, “Tut, tut, tut.” She stared at him.

“I'm
sorry,” he said, with a dreadful, formal politeness, “but you're the wrong one.”

The door closed quietly behind him. She moved on spongy feet to the bathroom, where she was sick.

T
he
keys on her lap top felt sticky. The screen had assumed the colour of brown blood. Caroline Smythe suppressed the second wave of panic. It felt as if the pumping of her heart was trying to force that spiky little ruby through her veins. Michael would not … he could not … And then there was the apalling revelation that yes, he would; he had got the habit and the days when she could control him were long gone.

She looked at the sharp-cornered ring, wanted to gnaw the real, but tiny ruby, held in a claw. This time, he had acquired the jewellery in advance, instead of bringing it back as a trophy. He was confusing absolution with permission.

“Michael,” she called, rapping on his door, desperate that he should be in, knowing he was not, but still going on, knocking and calling like a demented salesman. She was afraid for him and of him; furious with him, terrified for herself and yet this was not the terror of conscience: it was purer than that.

He copied
her, that was all. He emulated her gleeful messing up of other lives, but
he
took it to extremes. She had taught him to copy: it was his only chance.

Gin. Tea.
Think.

He had once taken to heart any insult issued against herself and let it become his own, festering wound. He had done that as a little boy, her self-styled protector and she—so proud of him, so touched by it—talked to him all the time. Told him everything, promised him everything; rocked him to sleep explaining her own injured feelings as if he understood, with his little heart resting against her own, hammering a tattoo in syncopation with hers; indignant when she was; furious when she was, revengeful when she was. And all because he had hurt her so badly.

She always ran out of tonic far sooner than she ran out of gin. What a pity.

Because he had not understood, not entirely; his understanding was out of sequence: he did not comprehend that her statement that she hated that man woman bus conductor was not a cue to hit them with a stick. Nor was the rudeness of a sales assistant a cue to kick. His responses were all exaggerated, took no account of youth, age or degree of insult offered. No-one was ever going to hurt her again. He wanted to make up for it, all the time. There was a series of pictures in her mind, such as, when he broke the arm of a much smaller boy who canoned into her, or when the hamster she had bought him languished, despite her blandishments and, after howling with grief, he smashed it to pieces for refusing to mend. There was no finesse about the boy.

She sipped, listening to the venom of memory. …

“Take
him away, your nasty little thief.” That was what Diana Kennedy had said, but it was long before that when Caroline had sat him down and began to teach him manners by rote, as she had continued to do for all the years since. Diana would never see that:
her
darling daughters charmed without effort. Caroline referred to them all the time and used them as models while she was making Michael learn a set of responses as another child might have learned his catechism by heart. She had finally taught him not to steal, although he only stole for her. She had rewarded him when he was word and action perfect, reminded him of what he had done when he was not, weeping as she did so, so that he feared recrimination as the catechism child feared the devil. All she had to do was to scrape back her hair and say, remember what
you
did? All by yourself? Her marionette son became a charming young man who was also entirely artificial.