Boyfriend in a Dress (9 page)

I look down and for the first time register that Charlie has a packet of soap powder by his side. It has half spilled out onto the carpet.

I make my deduction quickly – he has completely lost it. This whole strange sequence of events has made him snap, and he has turned into a dress-wearing, hygiene freak, class ‘A’ nutter. Is this what happens when people go mad? I always thought it would be a steady process and you would notice them changing over a period of months, making occasional bird noises, or claiming to be Mother Teresa, or you’d catch them eating compost. But Charlie appears to have leap-frogged the progressive type of madness, and just gone straight for the looney tunes version of boys in ill-fitting dresses talking gibberish. Nobody would blame me for dumping a mad man, surely? Or would they think me cold? I do a quick mental tot up in my head and draw the conclusion that I would need to look supportive for about three weeks, and then I could claim strain and give him the heave-ho, as long as he is safely ensconced in a home, with some crayons, where he can’t get to me in one last rational act of anger and passion. It’s amazing how quickly you plan the next month of your life, four seconds to be precise. But then I’ve always been an A grade student; it might take somebody else a little longer. I have forgotten Charlie is still in the room, as I make my getaway plans, but he speaks and I jump slightly in surprise.

‘I need to get away for a few days, Nicola. I think I’m cracking up.’

It’s the understatement of the year – ‘I think I’m cracking up’ from the guy in the hot blue Lycra and no pants, with tear stains down his cheeks from half an hour’s bawling.

‘Charlie, will you be alright, just going off by yourself? Go and stay with your brother or something instead.’ I am relieved to hear him say he wants to get away, and he isn’t expecting me to stick around. It would be hypocritical of us both. Maybe he’s not so mad after all, and has just had a bad couple of days. Don’t get me wrong, I am horrified by
his experience, but I can’t pretend I wasn’t about to end this twisted relationship, and I can’t pretend our problems have just disappeared. I want him to get out of London, clear his head of the trauma of the last few days, and then come back, either still completely mad, although this is obviously not my wish, or more realistically, insensitive and tactless as ever. I dread breaking up with people, even though I haven’t had to do it for years, I can still remember how horrible it is. I hate the weeks leading up to it, when you can feel it coming, when you haven’t admitted it to yourself yet, but you know what you are going to do. The sentences are already forming in your mind, you just aren’t quite ready to say them out loud yet. And then gradually, you find yourself rehearsing it in your head at night, like some school production of Shakespeare, stumbling over your lines. By the time it comes to actually doing it, you are a professional. Then he pleads with you, with his eyes, and his words. He reaches out and grabs your hand, just a little too roughly, and tries to stop his voice from breaking, and grabs at the tears at the sides of his eyes.

Except that’s not how it turns out at all. You fluff up your lines, your own voice breaks with emotion, he just sits, no dramatic response, understanding that it’s been on the cards for a while. And he is reasonable. It’s not romantic, it’s pathetic and he is stronger than you. You know you have done the right thing, and that you weren’t compatible and you hadn’t been happy. But even so you have just, and of your own volition, completely ostracized one of your best friends, the person you have spent most of your time with for the last six months or whatever.

I have always felt better being dumped. You have no choice in that matter. At least you can get on with it, spurred on by rage or pride or secret relief that he has done it now and not waited a couple of weeks, by which time you would have been forced to do it yourself.

‘Charlie, where are you going to go?’

He looks at me desperately, and grabs my hand again, too quickly for me to pull it away. His voice rises. The madness is back again, I just know it, he’s about to say something stupid:

‘I need you to come with me. Nicola, come with me, you have to. I’m losing it. I can’t ask anybody else. Nix, please – I don’t know what’s happening to me.’

I hadn’t expected this. It’s not the best time for us to take a weekend break. Maybe I should tell him … confess all.

‘Nicola, if the last six years mean anything to you at all, please come with me.’

I can’t go with him, I just can’t. I can’t tell him I don’t want to see him any more, but I can’t swing the other way. He has pushed it too far for this – he has spent the last year showing no thought for my feelings, and yet now he expects me to pick up the pieces during some early midlife crisis. This isn’t fair. He can’t expect me to do this – he can’t be this selfish.

‘The thing is, Charlie, and kind of on that subject … maybe it would be better if you stay with your parents? Or with your brother, or down in Devon at the cottage? Don’t you think that would be better? Come on, Charlie, be honest, I don’t know how we’d cope for a weekend together. I think that maybe I’m not the best person for you to be with, while you sort your head out.’

He wrings my hands with his, and his eyes plead with me. ‘Nicola, please. I promise I won’t touch you. We’ll go just as friends. You were going to finish with me, I know that.’ Again, I am shocked. I didn’t realize he knew. His sudden insanity is lending him a clarity that is quite off-putting, especially considering that, before today, it has been known to take him three weeks to notice I’ve had my hair coloured. Now, now he manages to guess what I am about to say before I say it! He’s got some kind of Uri Geller thing going on. I contemplate
getting a spoon, to test it out properly, but then realize I don’t really want to be handing him metal implements, no matter how blunt.

‘It’s fine,’ he says, as he registers my surprise as guilty shock. ‘And I promise, after this, you never have to see me again. But please, Nix, do this for me. Help me out. I know I’ve been a cheating arsehole shit, thoughtless and insensitive, but please. Just help me. I can’t stop crying … I feel like my head’s going to cave in.’ On cue, he starts sobbing again. I don’t know what the hell to do.

‘Charlie, I really don’t think it’s a good idea, plus, you know,
Evil Ghost 2
is playing up, José is going to have my arse if it goes over budget, and…’ Charlie grabs the sides of my face and pulls me close to him, forcing me to look into his eyes. There’s a deep fear in there, and he genuinely believes he is losing it. I feel my body, previously stiff with tension, soften slightly at those eyes . There is something familiar in them that I haven’t seen for an age, or maybe I just feel needed.

‘Charlie, how about this,’ I whisper, ‘we’ll go away. We’ll go down to Devon, stay in your parents’ cottage, and just sort you out. Because I know you are scared now, but I really, honestly, truly believe that all you need is some sleep, and some clean air, and some perspective, and you will be fine. But then, hon, then we don’t have to have the conversation we were going to have. Then we don’t see each other as much. Do you understand what I am saying?’

‘Thank you, thank you so much,’ Charlie whispers back, and doesn’t seem to have heard anything other than my agreeing to look after him for the next couple of days.

‘But Charlie …’ I have to get this clear now, if I am going to do it.

‘Charlie, when we are done – Charlie, look at me.’ I hold his chin and pull his head up, so he is looking at me with his teary eyes.

‘When Devon is done and we come back, and you are your old self again,’ I force a smile, ‘then we’re done, ok?’ I nod my head at him, as if to encourage agreement. ‘Then we go our separate ways, ok? You’ll feel better, I promise. And we should go just as friends, just like you said. Separate rooms, separate beds, we’ll just chill out, and get you better.’ A wave of relief sweeps over me – I don’t have to have the conversation after all. This conversation that I have been putting off for nearly a year doesn’t need to happen now. Thank God!

Charlie drops his head into my lap and says, all of a sudden, ‘Of course, thank you. Now can I go in this? I feel comfortable in this.’ He gestures down at the dress. It was obviously my turn for a moment of madness. What have I let myself in for?

‘No, Charlie, I think you should get changed.’

‘But,’ he points like a child towards the kitchen, then says pathetically, on the brink of tears again, ‘I have nothing to wear! Do you have anything I can borrow? What about that sundress I bought you last year?’

The wave subsides. Shit.

I pay the cabbie, tell him to keep the twenty, and try to direct Charlie into Paddington without too much fuss. He keeps trying to take off the Burberry mac I have made him wear, pulling at it like Houdini in chains. Underneath, he is still in the blue Lycra number. We have been unable to find anything else that wasn’t soaking wet or covered in dried-on soap suds. His hair has flopped, all the blond spikes now stuck to his forehead, and his sideburns are still covered in soap powder. Even his out of work clothes, his FCUK jeans, his trendy clothes that so few men can pull off, were soaking wet on the kitchen floor. The eggshell blue lambswool Nicole Farhi jumper my parents bought him last Christmas lay crushed and shrunken and ruined forever in a pile on the tiles. I am incredibly self-conscious about his almost nakedness, and the fact that he has refused to put any underpants on before leaving the flat. He is intermittently laughing and sobbing, and it was all I could do to make the taxi driver take us in the first place. I had hailed a few cabs which had slowed down and pulled over and then accelerated quickly as soon as they caught sight of Charlie giggling like a schoolgirl and waving his arms around like a mad scientist. I resolutely shouted out
after each one of them, ‘I’ve taken your plate numbers! I’m reporting you!’ but they were long gone, and I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t have picked us up. A big blond guy with blood on his face and a blue dress popping out from under his flasher’s mac, and a stressed-looking girl carrying all the bags and chain-smoking. We’re hardly Posh and Becks.

Charlie is wrestling with the belt I have triple-knotted around his waist, like a child. I want to pop into WH Smith’s and get some magazines for the journey, but I think it may be a mistake to leave him on his own.

A woman brushes past us with a German Shepherd, and I consider offering her fifty quid for the lead, before realizing that, conceivably, I have nothing on Charlie to attach it to that he isn’t likely to strip off, or try and get at with his teeth. He is swinging between sane and absolutely crazy. At least if he was acting consistently mad, I could eliminate the element of surprise. I think he might just be doing it for attention.

I push him into Smith’s and tell him to keep quiet. I have no idea if he is going to cry or scream like a girl at any moment. In the cab, he kept putting his head on my shoulder, and trying to nuzzle under my arm and fall asleep. I slapped him on the face every time his breathing started getting deeper. I wasn’t going to let him fall asleep while I had to live through this nightmare. This is going to be a long few days.

I phoned Charlie’s brother, Peter, from the flat to check that the cottage was free. The family has a beautiful pile of slate and wooden beams down on the South Coast, in Salcombe. I have only been there once before, for the wedding of one of Charlie’s cousins, and we stayed with Charlie’s parents and Peter and his wife, and their two sons, who are Charlie’s godsons. Even then, Charlie’s mother had been suspicious of our relationship, treating me with mild disdain, like some kind of impersonation of a girlfriend. I’m sure she noticed that we
didn’t hold hands any more, never touched each other unless it was completely necessary, never exchanged distracted kisses in the kitchen, or sat with legs entwined on the sofa. Mentally she was putting two and two together: either Charlie was gay, and I was his ruse, or the relationship was dead, and I was refusing to walk. From the way she acted towards me, and the death glares I was getting, I’m not sure which one she would have preferred. In both, I was at fault, and I had either made him gay, or I wouldn’t leave him alone, while Charlie was merely incorrigible, no matter what the outcome. It was apparent we had lost whatever we had. We sat as far away from each other as possible, only having perfunctory conversations if pressed.

Iris, Charlie’s mother, had quizzed me that afternoon.

‘So how long has it been now, Nicola?’ she asked me in the kitchen as I made myself a sandwich and she made herself a peppermint tea.

‘A while.’ I didn’t actually want to say the number of years out loud; I knew where she was going.

‘Yes, a
long
while. Peter and his wife were married and expecting after three years, you know.’ Iris picked up a cloth.

‘I don’t think we’re the marrying kind.’ I took a big bite of my sandwich in defiance of the dinner that would be ready in an hour and that Iris had spent all afternoon cooking.

‘No, maybe
you’re
not.’ She emphasized the word ‘you’re’ just to let me know that Charlie was the marrying kind, and I was the fly in the ointment, not her precious son.

‘I think Charlie’s calling me,’ I said as a means of escape.

‘I don’t think so, dear. Charlie brought some of his friends up for the weekend last month. Lovely bunch of boys, do you know them?’

‘I’ve met them, yes.’

‘What were their names, Nicola, I forget?’

‘Harry, Deacon, do you mean that lot?’

‘Yes, that’s it.’ Iris gave me a quizzical look, surprised that I was passing her impromptu test.

‘And his office in the City?’

‘Frank and Sturney,’ I offered, to save her from the indignity of actually having to ask its name.

‘Ye-ss. That’s right. Charlie tells me it’s very impressive.’

‘I suppose,’ I shrugged. ‘If you like that kind of thing.’

Iris wiped a surface, and spoke without looking up. ‘You don’t like that kind of thing? I’d think most girls would be pleased to have a boyfriend who’s so successful.’

‘It’s fine, whatever. I’m going outside.’

I sensed Iris stop wiping as I walked out.

Of course I could answer all her questions, but with a little sadness. I felt like I was deceiving her in a way. A mother only wants her kids to be happy, and she could see we weren’t. I was profoundly aware that if my mother had asked the same questions of Charlie, he wouldn’t have been able to answer any of them. But it was nice to see him with the kids who brought out the most natural and least pretentious side of him – a side I hadn’t seen for a long time.

I walked outside to watch the cricket game the boys were playing on the lawn: Charlie bowling, Peter and the kids fielding, Charlie’s dad Tom wielding his cricket bat like a professional.

And as I watched, Charlie seemed to romp instead of run. Tom hit an easy catch to one of the boys and Charlie screamed, “Owzat!’, threw his head back and started laughing.

‘Good bowling,’ I shouted, surprising myself, and Charlie held up a hand to me in acknowledgement.

He looked so happy, so relaxed, the smile didn’t seem so dirty or deceitful any more.

As I watched Charlie pick up one of his nephews and spin
him around, I felt an urge to be the one being swung around by him. I believe I could have forgiven him everything if he had. If he could just persuade me that there was still some depth there, that he wasn’t the sum of his hair and his smile, his bank account, and his suit.

Iris stuck her head out of the window and called out that dinner was nearly ready, and smashed my daydream. Peter and the boys ran past me, and Tom winked and touched my arm as he went in. I smiled over at Charlie, who retrieved the bat and ball, and he jogged over, grinning, pleased with his performance. I folded my arms and looked at my feet as he got closer, and he slowed to a walk, until I sensed him only a few paces away. I looked up and into his eyes and felt a rush of courage. But Iris’s head darted back out of the window.

‘Charlie, I need you for drinks,’ she shouted, and I turned sharply to face her.

For Christ’s sake, can’t she open a bottle of wine herself?’ I muttered, and turned back to Charlie, but he was already walking past me into the house.

‘She can do it!’ I practically pleaded with him, and he spun around.

‘Don’t start on my mother now as well,’ Charlie sighed, as if that last sentence had tired him out, and went inside.

Iris had given me a pitying look through the window, which my pride had dismissed as her having a headache, and I had put all thoughts of a real relationship to the back of my mind for the rest of the evening.

Later, when the kids were tucked up safely and everybody had a glass of wine, we played Trivial Pursuit, and I won. Iris said, ‘Isn’t Nicola clever! You’ve done well, Charlie, to get somebody pretty and clever to put up with you for
all this time,
’ in a strange voice, obviously to make a point, or try and catch us out and get us to admit something we otherwise wouldn’t. It had embarrassed the hell out of me, but Charlie
had shrugged it off, although he gave me a funny look like he barely knew me, as if I was the one responsible, the one who had changed. That night I went to bed before Charlie, pleading fatigue and found myself daydreaming again that he might make his excuses and come to bed and hold me. Maybe he would just chat to me for a while. But he stayed in front of the TV, not crawling into bed until two. He didn’t even touch me. Some masochistic urge made me turn and stroke his arm to let him know I was awake, but he had merely said, ‘I don’t think we should have sex with my parents in the next room,’ snuggled into his side of the duvet, and was snoring within seconds. He managed somehow to turn it around, make me feel that I was the one who only wanted to be there for the sex. Or maybe that was my conscience knocking. I never voiced my daydreams. We never gave an inch to each other on the control stakes; it was political, it was a tiny war. The whole relationship was an exercise in who could look like they cared the least. I wasn’t as brave as I am now. I hadn’t got used to his disinterest.

The next day at the wedding, I had started to come to my senses. I caught him chatting up one of the after-dinner guests later in the evening. Some little redhead, probably no more than eighteen – he was actually showing her his credit cards. I told myself it was the wine that had made me tearful, but I wandered around in the grounds for a while to get it out of my system. Peter found me sitting outside the barn, a little red-eyed, and topped up my champagne with his.

‘He’s a different person out here, isn’t he? Until he gets drunk, of course. I’d almost forgotten how much of an arse he’s become,’ I said. I don’t know why I chose to spill my beans to Peter, who would obviously defend him, but surprisingly, he agreed.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve been out with him a couple of times
in town, with his work posse, and they can be a bunch of arseholes.’ We had both laughed uneasily and nodded our heads.

‘I don’t know why you put up with it, Nicola, you have to cope with him in his natural habitat, day in, day out, and he’s different now …’ He trailed off and I thought I caught a trace of sadness in his eyes, too. I could see he felt sorry for me.

‘Oh, don’t feel sorry for me,’ I mustered. ‘I’m just the same at home. We’ve both changed, Pete; London does things to people, it brings out the arsehole in them. Believe me, I can be just as bad. I barely even see him, I shop far too much for a woman in an adult relationship. We’ve both grown up, I suppose – grown up and grown apart.’ I tried to laugh it off; I didn’t actually believe what I was saying. But he shoved me along slightly and sat down next to me. We both stared out at the fields for a while; it was one of those nights when it’s so much nicer to be in love. I should have been sitting there with Charlie.

‘Look, honestly, don’t feel bad for me, I really am fine. This is just wedding rubbish.’ I pointed at my puffy red eyes. ‘Most of the time I’m happier than he is. I think I’m just realizing that I’ve stuck around a bit too long.’ I got a strange lump in my throat at that point, and had to gulp it down. ‘We won’t work out, you know.’ I shrugged and looked down at my half empty glass, then took a massive swig and finished it off.

‘Well,’ I said, brushing off my trousers, and standing up, ‘I’m going to get another drink.’

‘You know,’ Peter had looked at me over his shoulder, ‘he’s not ready to settle down yet, but one day he will be. I know what you two have got going, and maybe it
is
time for you to move on for a while.’

I half-smiled at him, raising my eyes to heaven. ‘Just maybe?’ Another lump in my throat.

‘But I think he’ll come back to you, Nicola, one day. He
used to be close to people, and he will be again, and I think then he’ll be a person you could … love again!’ Peter laughed at the embarrassment of saying it out loud. ‘He’s going to drop back down to earth at some point, with a bang. He can’t be everybody’s golden boy forever.’

‘I wouldn’t count on it! But thanks, Pete. Do you want another drink?’

‘No, sweetheart, I’m fine. I need some more air.’

With that, he had staggered off down the lawn to the field below, clutching his champagne flute, singing some old tune. I had watched him go as I leaned on the barn door, thinking about what he had said. It was so obvious to anybody with eyes that one of us should leave soon.

Moments later, Charlie staggered towards me from behind the door, bashing into me, sending me tripping forwards. He had obviously caught the end of my conversation with Peter.

‘Not making a pass at my brother are you?’ Charlie shot his accusation right at me.

‘Oh fuck off, Charlie. I could never get a man that nice.’

Charlie’s half closed, drunken eyes tried to focus in my general direction.

‘You’re right, you don’t have the conversation any more,’ and it was like a punch in the stomach when he said it.

I walked back into the reception, gulping down the lump in my throat, hearing the commotion of him falling face first into the flower border behind me. He was an arse, who looked like a person I used to love.