Comfort and Joy (3 page)

The white-jacketed cocktail man catches my eye and smiles as he makes my drink, and I am filled with love for humanity. This
is so … civilized, so old-fashioned, so
wonderful
, such a rare treat. The waiter brings an assortment of snacks, and having taken a sip of my drink, I peer round with interest
at my fellow humans. It is as I thought: smart couples of a certain age, the odd patrician-looking, pinstriped businessman
of the kind that has offices in St James’s, two elderly ladies with stonking jewels and too much face powder, hooting with
laughter. I imagine this is their annual ritual, that they are old friends who still meet for their Christmas drink, like
they have done for decades. I hope me and Tamsin are like that, when we’re really old. I can just see us.

Arse. Tamsin. My oldest and dearest friend. Tamsin is coming to Christmas and I haven’t got her a flipping present. How did
that happen? She always comes to Christmas and I’ve never forgotten before. I got her boyfriend a present and not her: how
crap. I rack my brain, trying to picture the contents of my emergency present cupboard, which is where I store gifts that
need to be recycled because they’re not my bag, or stuff I get sent by PR people (advantage of working for a glossy magazine).
But Tamsin likes the same stuff as me, so if it’s in the cupboard it won’t be her bag either. And she can always tell if I
palm her off with some freebie. Crap. Crap. Crapadoodledo. Wasn’t she on the list? I dig around in my handbag and find she
wasn’t. Terrible oversight, of the kind that makes me worry about getting Alzheimer’s. I take another sip of my cocktail,
surprised to note that it’s nearly finished. The thing is, now Tam’s finally hooked up with someone, the pressure to give
her a fantastic present isn’t as massive as it used to be during her (prolonged, eternal-seeming, much moaned-about) single
years, when I felt it was my duty as friend-in-chief to buy her the kind of thing that a) she could never afford (she’s a
school- teacher) and b) a boyfriend might give her. And now, hallelujah, she has a boyfriend, a proper one, Jake – they’ve
been together nearly a year. He is incredibly old and sometimes they use Viagra (again, I worry fleetingly about having bought
him pants: aside from anything else, does it make it obvious that Sam and I have discussed his aged loins?), but we needn’t
dwell on that – the point is that as far as I remember he usually buys her nice presents. He gives good gift. So it’s not
so bad. I’ll just make a note to nip to the …

‘Is this seat taken?’

I glance up briefly. There’s one of those interchangeable men in suits standing there, pointing at the club chair opposite
mine.

‘No, no – have it,’ I say, looking down at my present list again. They had really nice stripy cashmere scarves at the shop
down the road from home – I’ll get her one of those in the morning. And some books. And maybe some pants, so Jake doesn’t
feel victimized. ‘I’m not expecting anyone.’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘Not at all,’ I say, still looking at my lap and scribbling ‘T – scarf + pants’ on my list. ‘I’m going in a minute, anyway.’

‘I’m grateful. It’s very busy in here,’ the man says. ‘May I get you another drink?’

‘No, thank you. I think I’d better …’ I look up properly for the first time. ‘Oh.’

He is raising his eyebrows, and smiling.

It feels like about twenty minutes go by, in slow motion. I am looking at the man. He is looking at me. Nobody is speaking.
I can hear the old ladies laughing, though they sound very far away.

‘Another drink?’ he repeats.

I realize that, for the second time today, my mouth is slightly open. I snap it shut, only to open it again. ‘I, er. I. No.
I have to go. I can’t. I. Yes. NO!’ is what comes out, humiliatingly. I can literally feel the blood rising to the surface
of my skin. I am about to become puce.

‘Have one more. For Christmas,’ he laughs. ‘Same again? I promise I’ll leave you alone with your, ah, paperwork.’

I say ‘Okay’ in a weird squeaky voice.

To me, the man is the most attractive man I have ever seen. I don’t know what else to say: it’s a simple statement of fact.
I, Clara Dunphy née Hutt, have literally, in my life, never seen anyone so handsome. It’s subjective, of course. But … it’s
not just handsomeness. I know handsomeness, from interviewing the odd film star and so on for work: it takes you aback initially,
but you adjust to it very quickly and just feel annoyed when you go back into the real world and find everyone walking about
with their plain old faces. You don’t, as I do now, feel like you’ve been winded, punched, jacked out of time. And that little
stab in my stomach. I know what that is. That’s not good. That’s not supposed to happen to the old-lady wife and mother. I
mean, it’s been
years
. How weird.

‘He’s bringing them over,’ the man says, coming back and sitting down. And then, gesturing to my ratty little list, ‘Please.
Don’t let me put you off.’

‘It’s just my list, you know, for presents,’ I say, pretending to write something important down on it. What I actually write
is ‘HELP’, not in letters so large that he could see them from across the table, but as a useful aide-memoire to myself.

‘Ah yes. I’ve been doing some of that too.’

‘I was in Oxford Street,’ I volunteer pointlessly, and then, as if that piece of banality wasn’t enough, I add, ‘I had two
pigeons walking on either side of me. We were like a gang.’

He looks mildly surprised by this, as well he might. Surprised
doesn’t even begin to cover how I’m feeling. A little voice in my head says, ‘Leave. Go home. It was fun, the drink in the
Connaught, but it’s over now.’

‘I went to New Bond Street,’ he says. He has been smiling at me ever since he sat down. It’s a knowing sort of smile, and
I know what it means. If I were a different sort of person – one to whom these things happened, one who didn’t find anything
odd about being winded by strangers in hotel bars – I would smile back at him in exactly the same way. I’d be wearing stockings
under my dress, instead of M&S tights and flesh-coloured Pants of Steel, and the whole stranger-in-a-hotel-bar scenario would
be almost drearily familiar to me. But I am not a different sort of person, so I frown and blush and frown and stare, until
it occurs to me that it might be an idea to compose my face, which is, as predicted, a fetching shade of scarlet.

‘Bobond Street,’ I say. ‘I hope it was less crowded. Bond, I mean, not Bobo … Bobond.’ I am sounding like a nutter. I have
never stammered in my life. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Bond Street, you were saying.’

‘It was hideous.’

‘Yes. Will you excuse me?’

I have to leave the table. I wish I could explain it properly. To be succinct: if the man, whose name I don’t know and whom
I met maybe four minutes ago, said, ‘Let’s go round the back and do it against the bins,’ I’d say yes. This disturbs me profoundly.
I feel like someone’s flicked a switch in my head; lobbed a bomb into my little world of domesticity and special Christmas-treat
drinks. Actually, I feel like I’ve had a brain transplant. No – like zombies ate my brain. Because I can truthfully say that
it has never happened to me before. I understand the concept of lust, obviously – I had entire relationships based on lust,
when I was younger – hot monkey sex with someone who you knew was a bit pointless, if exceedingly hot.
But this isn’t normal lust. This is … filmic. Surreal. Another thing altogether.

I go back to the loo. They have armchairs in there, and I plonk myself down on one. Am I drunk? Surely not from one cocktail
and a quarter.

Other hand: maybe I’ve got completely the wrong end of the stick. Maybe this man is smiling and looking at me like that because
he feels sorry for me, all alone in a bar two days before Christmas, clutching my scrappy little piece of paper and wittering
on about pigeons, with a face so red it looks like it’s been boiled. His heart goes out to my speech impediment. He’s just
being kind. Christ! He’s probably waiting for someone. His former-supermodel wife and nine exquisite children, I expect. I
need to get a grip. ‘Get a grip, Clara,’ I say to myself out loud. I am in a bar, someone has sat down at my table, they are
incredibly, amazingly, inhumanly attractive, and that’s that. So what? I am an adult, and quite a responsible one. I have
self-control. I am also a biped, who can – and will – stand up and leave whenever I like, using my two stout feet to propel
me homewards. The world is full of attractive people: there’s no need to flip out like a weirdo because one talks to you.
Deep breaths. Wash hands. Be normal. That stab in the stomach isn’t necessarily desire: it could be hunger. Go back, eat the
nuts, finish the drink, say thank you, go home. Not rocket science, by a long chalk.

The problem is, I wasn’t always a person of the flesh-coloured pants variety. There was a time, many centuries ago, when triceratopses
frolicked playfully across the plains with diplodocuses, when I was acquainted with the woman in the stockings. Well, not
the actual stockings – they’re so ooh-saucy, someone’s-feeling-lucky – but the general ‘Here we are: anything could happen’
thing. But it was a very, very long time ago. Happily for me, I don’t find that many people attractive,
plus my propensity for bad behaviour has been napalmed into extinction by years and years of marriage, children, supermarkets,
laundry, bills, school, work, all of that stuff. And, I tell myself again, I have probably got the absolutely wrong end of
the stick.

But I know, when I sit down again. The air is heavy, like syrup. Even the molecules in the air seem charged. And I smile back
at him and lean forward in my chair.

No, we didn’t do it against the bins. But, all the same, there exists, it turns out, an accelerated and dizzying kind of intimacy
that is so intense and overwhelming, it feels not a million – or even a hundred – miles from infidelity: while you could certainly
state that ‘nothing happened’, this would only be true if you were an emotional imbecile and your heart was dead. What I learned
tonight is that it is possible for nothing and everything to happen in the same breath. I push the thought – confusing, exciting,
disabling, impossible – out of my head and try to calm myself, and in the taxi home I make myself think about Sam. Sam, Sam,
only Sam.

To be perfectly honest with you, and if I’m to be
completely realistic
, Sam and I are no longer at the passionately romantic stage. Not by any means. It pains me to say this. It actually makes
me feel prickly in my armpits, that sort of shame-guilt prickle you get. And it makes me feel sad. Because, why? Some people
go on for ever, happy as two happy clams at the bottom of the happy sea, for decades and decades until death do them part,
and even then they probably fly around heaven chastely kissing each other and having joint hobbies. I see them in Sainsbury’s
sometimes, ancient old couples holding hands. They make me want to cry. I’m not just saying that: they literally make my eyes
fill with tears. Sometimes I follow them around for a couple of aisles, until I can’t bear it any more.

What’s so wrong with me and Sam, with us – well, with me mostly – that I know we won’t be buying cheap ham together holding
hands when we’re eighty-two? And why do I assume the fading of romance – the perfectly normal fading of romance – is somehow
fatal, against ham? I bet most of these old couples went through some rough patches. Like, you know, loved ones dying in wars,
like the Blitz, not just some low-level pissed-offness. So actually there is no reason why we shouldn’t buy cheap ham in our
time of decrepitude. I want to buy cheap ham with Sam. Sam’s my man, for ham.

But anyway: it’s true. The passionate, easy tiger, grr-grr bit is petering out. There’s a bit of tiger and a bit of grr, but
– how can this be? – I don’t get that ache of longing any more. I just think, ‘Oh look, there’s Sam.’ Occasionally I think,
‘Oh look, there’s Sam, who is quite easy on the eye.’ Or, ‘There’s Sam, who makes me laugh, which I find attractive.’ Or,
‘Sam has said an intelligent thing, and that appeals to me.’ And then I carry on with whatever I’m doing. This seems really
pretty incredible, considering the longing I used to feel for him. I used to watch him when he didn’t know I was there – coming
up the stairs at a party, once – and feel dizzy. I used to think, ‘Oh my God, that’s my boyfriend. That man – that clever,
funny, charming, talented man, whom I fancy to the point of giddiness – has chosen me. Me! Out of all the gazillions of women
in the whole gigantic universe. Me!’ And then I’d want to laugh wildly, hahahahahaha, to roll around the floor kicking my
legs in the air and whooping with incredulous, delighted joy. I didn’t, obviously. But I wanted to. Inside, I whooped. I whooped
on our wedding day; and when Maisy was born, I cried with happiness and whooped some more.

And then, slowly, the petering. Oh, it kills me. On so many levels, really. But mostly because it’s so sad. I’m like Kate:
I believe in romance. But I don’t want to be like Kate and show
the strength of my belief by marrying four different men – at the last count, though I think she’s pretty settled with Max.
Two should suffice, which means I’ve run out of options: it’s the end of the line. (My friend Amber sang that at our wedding
– ‘The Trolley Song’ from
Meet Me in St. Louis
, which ends, ‘And it was grand just to stand with his hand holding mine/ To the end of the line.’ Everyone thought it was
a sweet, camp choice, but I knew.)

I also know perfectly well – I’ve read the books, and as I keep saying, I am an adult – that the kind of romance I believe
in is silly, unrealistic, schoolgirl, Emma Bovary-ish. Penny novella, cheapo stuff, with
coups de foudre
and manly chests and sweepings into arms and elopements and never any boredom or nappy-changing or sleepless nights or wee
on the loo seat. I
know
. I know I’m silly. But it slays me. It pierces me that the early bits are always the best bits, that you go from falling
into bed every hour on the hour to being lucky if you feel like it once a fortnight. I don’t mean just sex – I mean that feeling
of being transported, of your stomach plummeting three storeys when he gives you a call. The first time I found Sam’s wee
on the loo seat, I stared at it reverentially. I thought, ‘That is His wee, on my lowly loo seat,’ and I felt privileged.