Low Expectations (9 page)

Joy is such a pill that I am tempted to refuse a position if they offer one to me, but as that is doubtless her aim I don't
want to give her the satisfaction. In any case, Gary makes up for Joy's presence. A burly late thirty-something with an array of fairly hideous tattoos that he got under the influence of faux-heterosexuality in the nineties, Gary is full of stories that become increasingly implausible as the night wears on and is not averse to slipping me a G&T every so often.

After we have finally wrangled the drunken punters out the door at 1 a.m. and Joy has stalked off home, Gary puts on some Eartha Kitt and we sing along gustily while clearing up.

I have just finished putting up the stools and turning out most of the lights. Lost in a rather good rendition of
C'est Si Bon
, I am romancing the last remaining chair with a waltz while singing ‘
Ou peut-être quelqu'un avec un petit yacht, non?
' when a bang from a darkened corner makes me whirl around in shock.

I wield the chair in front of me in defence as I peer vainly into the dim corners of the pub. Quieting my breathing, I step lightly away from the centre of the room towards the wall. I stay absolutely still and silent, my irregularly beating heart pounding in my ears with a volume I'm afraid can be heard from miles off. A hulking, misshapen figure is emerging from the darkness. Gary is in the storeroom, unaware of the intruder. My mouth dry, my throat constricted, I try to emit a scream, but when none is forthcoming I settle on hurling my wooden makeshift weapon at the shadowy form. It falls back with a crash.

‘Argh – what the – what the fuck!' The intruder is evidently Scottish. Emerging into the light with one hand over his eye and the other clutching a bleeding knee is a hunched figure. ‘What the bloody fuck!'

‘Er … Er … We're closed! What do you want?' I shout, my body still trembling though I am starting to doubt he poses a threat. The man has rumpled hair sticking out in all directions and is wearing a white T-shirt, Snoopy boxers and one sock. Not the sort of apparel I would expect from a thief, rapist or murderer.

‘I own the bloody pub! And who the fuck are you?' He has dropped his hand from his eye and is moving towards the wall. Flipping a switch, he swears as the lights come harshly on and again, more loudly, as he inspects the gash on his knee. As I process his words, the physical manifestation of ‘Shiiiit' spreads through my chest, in a sort of rigid seizure of regret.

‘I – I'm new! You should thank me; I was defending your pub! You shouldn't sneak up on helpless females!' I still feel caught between an impulse to fight or flee. Currently, fight is winning and I seemed to have summoned all of my outrage.

The man snorts, straightening up and leaning back against a table to gingerly rub at his bruised eye.

‘Helpless females. I don't think I've ever met a less helpless female in my life. I count myself lucky you were holding a chair not a bottle. See who's there before you throw something next time. Where the hell is Gary?'

‘What was I supposed to do? It's dark and you looked like Quasimodo!' I am dimly aware that my tone should change from outrage to supplication at some point but I am still too taken aback to control myself.

‘So your standard reaction when confronted with a cripple is to attack them. I see,' he says dryly, brushing his hair off his forehead. ‘Fantastic customer service, very P.C.'

‘At least I know that referring to the disabled as cripples is frowned upon these days …'

Oh dear. Must stop insulting the owner. He takes a few steps towards me and peers at my face searchingly, as it dawns on me that I know him from somewhere.

‘Scott, Scott, whoa … What happened? Are you okay?' Gary flicks on the main light and rushes over. ‘Ouch. That's gonna be a bruiser. Did you run into a door or something? And what happened to your knee?'

Scott? Scott? Oh,
Scott
. Oh,
shit
.

‘I appear to be the victim of domestic violence.' A trace of humour inflects his voice, I notice with relief. ‘I was just coming down to tell you queens to stop your bloody caterwauling when I met …'

‘Georgie,' I mumble, looking down and trying to hide my face in my hand.

‘Georgie. I suspect if she'd been better prepared I would have met a sticky end.' Scott Montgomery gives me a lopsided smile. I am torn between hoping against hope that he
does not remember our first encounter and hoping that he does.

‘It's lucky I left my nunchucks at home …' I say with a weak grin, which is met with an unimpressed silence. ‘I really am sorry. I was just – you took me by surprise.'

Scott stares at me inscrutably for an uncomfortably long time, then says shortly:

‘That's not a mistake I'll be making again, I assure you. I live upstairs. You should be aware that I come down from time to time.'

‘You mean … you're still going to take me on?'

‘Well, we could use a guard dog.' A smile plays on his lips. I feel hysterically relieved.

‘Hey careful! If you call me a dog again you might find me pissing on a wall to spite you.' I can't believe I've just threatened to piss on his walls. What is
wrong
with me?

Gary looks between us, faintly bemused.

‘Do you two know each other from somewhere?'

‘N-no …' I stutter, as Scott raises an eyebrow.

‘I have had the pleasure of her acquaintance before, though then I emerged unscathed … physically at any rate. Perhaps my injuries are so disfiguring that you don't recognize me?'

‘I really don't know what you're talking about.' I feign ignorance. ‘And that barely qualifies as a flesh wound. Though you should probably put something on that eye.'

I walk over to inspect it more closely. He brushes back a
thick lock of his soft hair. I am struck again by how golden-brown it is, like Lucky Strike tobacco. Disturbed by this line of thought, I lean in to squint at the bloodshot eye beneath his purpling lids.

‘Everything looks perfectly in order. You should be fine.'

‘I think I'll go elsewhere for medical advice, thank you. You don't seem a likely nurse. What do you do anyway? Aside from accosting your employers.'

‘Fashion design – so I'm handy with a needle and thread. I am also a hypochondriac so am familiar with pretty much any diagnosis available on Google. That's practically a medical degree in and of itself.'

‘I'm just going to close the till and then we're finished here …' Gary says, moving off behind the counter.

‘I really am sorry,' I whisper, feeling strangely intimate with him as we are left alone. He shakes his head as if to say it was nothing.

‘You'll be thanking me in the end; it'll look like you've been in a proper fight with a scary man. Men, even. You can pretend you did something heroic.' In awkward moments I always reach for a humorous take on the situation. It is usually inappropriate.

‘There's no need to pretend … I think you'll find I do heroic things on a daily basis,' Scott grins. My stomach flips slightly.

‘I …' I have no idea what I was about to say, but am interrupted by my phone suddenly going off in my pocket. I
silently curse the fact that I haven't changed it from ‘Call On Me', which wasn't particularly clever five years ago and is definitely cringe-making now.

‘Excuse me one second … Hello?'

‘It's me. I'm drunk and I want you. Come over, I'll bring the wine if you bring the cigarettes.'

Ah, Beardy. There's something so thrilling about a man who knows how to tread the thin line between sexy-demanding and controlling-demanding. Though I love the company of women and am as aggressively feminist as a lazy and apolitical person can be, if I'm honest I think that most women want to be led with a firm hand – as long as it's kept to the bedroom. However, tonight I feel a pull of resistance.

Moving away from Scott, I hem and haw on the phone while Beardy tries to persuade me. Why do I put myself in situations in which men with minimal interest in my wellbeing feel justified in ringing me up in the midnight hours to propose drunken sex? Shouldn't I be saving myself? But saving myself for what? Something special? Special has been thin on the ground in my limited experience. If I had waited all this time for whatever Special is, I'd probably ruin things. Better to be practised enough with varying degrees of Not-Special, Decidedly-Average, Quite-Shit and Out-And-Out-Horrific so that when Special comes along you have the gaming wherewithal not to scare it away. Really, Beardy is exactly what I've been looking for. Sexy, fun, easy and non-complicated.

There are worse ways to pass an evening. Making my excuses to Gary and adding a final profuse apology to Scott, I leave the bar to go and find pleasure in a cold bottle and a warm body. In the words of the inimitable Janis Joplin: ‘Get It While You Can.'

I awake to the sound of my ringtone blaring somewhere in Beardy's room. I struggle out of bed naked to search for it amidst the jumbled mass of our clothing, eventually upending my bag all over the floor in the process. Filter tips, tampons, pieces of gum, tobacco, small change, a leaky biro pen and grotty lipsticks fly in every direction. Finally I find my phone in the pocket of my coat.

It is my mother, of course. No one else would call repeatedly at 9 a.m. on a Sunday. Wrapping a manky old towel around myself, I sneak into the corridor to take her call, knowing that if I don't answer immediately she will assume I have died in a tragic accident and contact half my friends to determine the whereabouts of my mutilated body.

‘Yes, what is it?' I answer grumpily.

‘Hello, darling. I was just calling to make sure you are alive and well. Have you done something productive this weekend or are you wasting your life as usual?'

‘Yes, yes, I'm alive.' A good seventy-five percent of my ever-reluctant telephone conversations with her begin like this; hopefully by the time I reach thirty she will have more faith in my ability to survive the weekend. ‘I won't be well until I've had more sleep. I'm just at Beard— at Leo's.'

I pick at the formerly white, now yellowing and coffee-stained terrycloth fabric wrapped around me. I would be tempted to marry a man who replaced his towels occasionally, though I suppose it is a blessing that Beardy even has sheets. It's shocking how many grown men think it's acceptable not to own them. Regrettable one-night stands and the feel of a bare mattress against my skin are indelibly linked in my mind.

‘Leo! Who is that? You didn't tell me you have a new boyfriend!' My mother manages to sound accusatory, worried and elated all at once. Shit. I had forgotten about my resolution not to tell her anything about my love life until an unavoidable occasion such as a wedding or childbirth. I always live to regret passing on any gossip to her, as she is both extremely judgemental and irritatingly accurate in her character assessments.

‘Erm, well, it's early days … I wouldn't say that exactly.'

‘Oh, darling. You haven't slept with him, have you? Why buy a cow when you can get the milk for free? I kept your father waiting until our wedding night.'

And the over-sharing guilt trips commence. I know far more about my parents' former sex life than can possibly be healthy, especially coming from someone who believes that vibrators are a feminist myth propagated by ‘The Media'. In her mind, ‘The Media' is run by gay men and radical feminazis. No amount of high street sex shops will ever be able to convince her otherwise.

‘And why buy a pig for a sausage link? Mum, you sound Victorian, it's like the women's movement never happened. Only crazy ring-obsessed ladies who think they can use a man's sexual frustration to blind him to their flawed personalities do that these days. And I'm only twenty-four, Christ.'

‘What are you saying, you're nearly twenty-seven!'

‘Seriously? Mum, I'm twenty-four.' You would think that your only child emerging from your genitals would constitute a memorable occasion, but apparently not. Lying about her own age has apparently scrambled mine.

‘What? Oh. Well, it is your birthday come April. Twenty-five is nearly twenty-seven, which is nearly thirty. You really need to start thinking that your next boyfriend might be your husband and practise pretending to be wife material, you know. Where is this boy from? He doesn't have a speech impediment like that last one does he?'

‘He didn't have a speech impediment. He was Northern.'

‘Oh darling, it amounts to the same thing.'

‘Did you call just to hassle me?'

‘What does this Leo do then?'

‘Uh … he's a graphic designer. And a musician.'

There is a pause. I hear a deep whistling sigh on the other end of the line. And then it comes, as I knew it would come:

‘Darling, do try to meet a man who can afford you. I really don't want to see you ending up divorced, or living on a council estate with some wastrel husband who's lost his good looks to drugs. He is at least good looking isn't he? Please don't give me ugly grandchildren; I have enough crosses to bear as it is. You know, you give birth, children are so expensive and then they go off and waste all the money you've invested in them designing clothes and sleeping with swarms of unsuitable men who only want One Thing.'

I wish. Going through swarms of unsuitable men is a long-cherished dream.

‘Well, maybe you should have aborted me and invested your money in something with better returns. I'm your only child, not some vanity project gone carelessly awry,' I say dryly. We've had this conversation many times before and it has long since failed to register emotionally. In our household, saying something like ‘You should have aborted me' carries no more weight than ‘You forgot to buy the milk'.

‘Darling, you know I love you; it's just hard for me to see
you wasting your looks, youth – what's left of it – and your talents. You could have been a barrister!' This comes up frequently, despite my having never shown any interest in or affinity for Law. I can only assume the fact that I don't break down and weep during our heated arguments qualifies me. ‘And why shouldn't I get some sort of return from you? People originally had children because they worked the farm and cleaned the house, not because they brought them joy. The only thing you can do for me these days is to reflect well on me, is that so much to ask?'

As irritating as this little chat is, I do understand her perspective on things. What is the point of having children? Likely as not, they will drain your finances in their youth, remain adolescently dependent well into adulthood and then totally ignore you in your dotage. If you're lucky they might spring for a half-decent hospice, but more likely death will be a sweet relief from whatever poorly funded NHS pit you are thrown into.

‘Well, sorry, I'll try harder in future. Was there something else?'

‘Yes. Your father is in town and wants to have supper to discuss something, he won't tell me what, of course. You need to be there. I would like some moral support please. That Woman will be with him. I'd like you to be on my side this time.'

‘Oh, right. Okay. Are you all right? When?'

Dad lives in Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire. To Mum, this is is so far outside Greater London he might as well have moved to the Gobi desert. They've been divorced for years, but they are still fiercely opposed. In my mother's words, ‘How can the greatest betrayal a wife can face ever be amicable?' I do try to be on her side, but it's difficult when the battle lines have been drawn over decades and you are never quite sure where they might lie.

If my father had been discreet, I'm not entirely sure she would have been too concerned. She frequently opined that polygamy is a practical solution to the difficulties that modern longevity have added to marriage. In her romanticized fantasy, however, she as the First Wife would act as Empress with the Second Wife as a Concubine who would not only take over her unwanted sexual duties but also act as her personal slave. If Dad had just taken a mistress, Mum might have felt a certain relief in sharing him with someone else and even fooled herself that it was a rather Continental arrangement. Walking in on him cheating in their marital bed shattered that illusion. The combination of betrayal and abandonment scarred her deeply.

‘Of course I'm perfectly fine darling, I'm so much happier without that old blowhard. He can have his floozy – I know deep down he must be miserable without me. She's as dull as dishwater and has probably been more thoroughly used. We're having supper at The Brompton Bar
and Grill on Thursday at 8 p.m. Wear something appropriate please.'

‘Yeah okay, cool. I'll see you then. Have a good week!'

‘Yes, of course, darling. Bye, dear.'

Yikes. Is the sacrament of marriage really worth all the wounds you'll inevitably inflict on each other long-term, let alone the initial bureaucracy and paperwork? There are times when it is inconceivable to me that I might ever be so in love that I could delude myself that marital vows are anything more than conditional promises no one really intends to keep.

‘Hey, what are you doing out there? Come back to bed.' Beardy's deep voice nudges me out of my reverie. His head pokes out of the doorframe and one arm snakes out to tug at my messy hair affectionately. God I love the look of a man who has just rolled out of bed, still sleep-rumpled, smelling of night sweats and duvet. There's nothing like the whiff of light perspiration on someone you really fancy.

‘Just gonna nip to the toilet first,' I say, suddenly aware that while a man can look rugged and effortlessly hot in the morning, my streaked makeup and puffy cheeks bear more than a passing resemblance to one of Lindsay Lohan's mugshots.

I repair my face and hair as much as is possible with the limited repertoire of products in Beardy's bathroom. It is a depressing struggle which leaves me seriously considering
having my patchy eyebrows tattooed into uniformity with semi-permanent makeup. I slink back into his room and pray for low lighting.

‘Come here, you.' Beardy wraps an arm around me as I slide under the blanket. I usually love having a lie-in the arms of a warm man, but after my conversation with my mother I feel restless.

I toy with launching into a confessional about my family situation to explain my weird mood, but decide it's too early into our – whatever this is – to have a deep and meaningful conversation. I can see how it would pan out. I would feel uncomfortable and over-share, he would pretend to be sympathetic and try to console me with sex, which would annoy me because why can't men understand that sometimes you just want to be listened to for ten minutes without having a penis inside you? I would get upset and reject him sexually, neither of us would get what we wanted from the situation and we would both end up frustrated. I decide to stick to mysterious silence. He probably hasn't even noticed I'm upset.

I stare up at the ceiling, tracing the cracks and wondering when I can reasonably get up and leave. The artificial closeness from the night before has dissipated, leaving me with a dull hangover and a desire to be free of the entwining limbs and demands of the body next to me. He pulls me closer, running his hands over my breasts, stranding me somewhere between desire and irritation.

I wonder what it is I want from him, if anything. Most of the relationships I've had have been less a matter of falling in love with a person and more a slow, inexorable movement towards exclusivity based on the passage of time and a lack of other contenders. They have left me feeling not secure, but trapped.

I hate to say it, but the exceptions have been the bad boys. With He Who Shall Not Be Named (oh, fine – Anthony), I felt relentlessly insecure but wild enough to forfeit my freedom. He led me to believe a litany of lies so absurd that, really, he deserved credit for his creativity. My personal favourite was his fervent contention that the hickeys on his neck were the result of falling onto gravel. After we broke up, the full extent of his psychopathic tendencies was revealed. In a misguided attempt to guilt-trip me into speaking to him, he pretended he had committed GBH and was going to prison. Why he thought this would garner my sympathies is still a mystery.

Before that, of course, there was my first love Alexi. His French accent and spaniel eyes were so soulful that I abandoned all rational thought completely, only to be left behind when he stole my money and took the flight to Colombia without me. People often remark that love is blind, but far more worrying is its ability to make you deaf and dumb.

Clearly, the lesson here is that I should avoid men whose names start with ‘A'.

‘I'm playing a gig tonight with the boys … wanna come?' Beardy's low voice draws me out of my brooding.

‘Uh, yeah, I guess so … I'm not sure. I should really get some work done. Where are you playing?'

‘The Bomb Shelter, at ten. We're shooting a new video for a single this week you know, it's gonna be great, we have a sort of apocalypse zombie from outer space theme but sort of with a David Lynch vibe. It's really low budget, just us in it but we've managed to scrape together some friends who can help with the set and makeup and stuff so it should be really cool.'

‘You're putting out a single?'

‘Yeah, I mean, we're unsigned but who knows … it's all about building support from the ground up, we'll put things online and see how it goes, generate some interest … next stop, Glastonbury!'

We both laugh, but I can tell he's partly serious. I can't decide whether it's charming or incredibly naive that he believes that one day he's going to be headlining major festivals. Maybe it's because I've never had the combination of relentless ambition, dazzling ego and singular focus that is the mark of superstars and delusional failures alike. Who knows, perhaps he's the next Mick Jagger. I've avoided listening to any of his music in case it's terrible.