Mr. Commitment (2 page)

I didn’t answer and remained steeped in silence, half worrying about where this was going to end up, and bizarrely half worrying about what was going on with the crew of the
Enterprise.

Mel stood up and began pacing the room nervously, sniffing back tears. “You just don’t want things to change, do you, Duffy?” she said, trying to remain controlled. “You want everything to stay the same. Well, it can’t.”

I still didn’t respond. Instead I wondered whether if I’d insisted on watching
Star Trek
any of this would be happening now. We would’ve had a row but nowhere near as destructive as what was going on here. Eventually, that is once the silence had become too uncomfortable even for me and the crew of the
Enterprise,
I said the only thing I could think of, which was, “I love you.” These words had always helped me out in the past, and now more than ever I needed them to work their magic. I needed them to stop this situation from getting out of hand.

“You can say that you love me, but do you mean it? I dare you. I dare you to show me that you love me.” Then she started crying. Or more accurately she started to try not to cry and failed abysmally. Each and every tear was a tear of resentment. She didn’t want them shed for me. She didn’t want them wasted.

Instinctively I wanted to put my arms around her and tell her everything was going to be all right, but I couldn’t, because quite frighteningly, for the first time since we started going out, I wasn’t sure everything was. Without looking at me, Mel picked up the remote, switched the TV back on and disappeared to her bedroom. As the closing credits for
Star Trek
gradually appeared on the screen, I sighed and switched it off again.

If only I could

I
’d been standing in front of the confectionery counter of the 7-Eleven on Clapham High Street for over ten minutes trying to make up my mind. A number of people had come and gone purchasing fags, newspapers, condoms and bread, while I’d remained hunched over the counter silently gazing at the various bars of chocolate. My argument with Mel had turned my brain inside out. Nothing was as it should be. Not even chocolate. I knew that I didn’t want a Wispa, Turkish Delight, Snickers, Star Bar, Twix, Toffee Crisp, Crunchie, Bounty, Aero, Lion bar, Yorkie, Caramel, or KitKat. That was the easy part. The hard part came now that I’d narrowed down the selection to either a pack of Revels or a Mars bar. One was an intriguing collection of handy-sized chocolate-coated thingies and the other was packed to the hilt with glucose energy. They satisfied two very different parts of me and together they made my life complete. Never one to resist an extended metaphor when there was one going, I picked up the packet of Revels in my right hand—
this is independence and excitement.
I picked up the Mars bar in my left hand—
this is Mel, the first woman in my life to convince me to fall in love with her.

“Oi, mate!” bellowed the stocky unshaven youth behind the counter, interrupting my confectionery cogitation. “Are you gonna buy those?”

“What?” I said, gradually returning to Planet Earth.

“You’ve been standing there for the last ten minutes staring at that chocolate in your hands,” he said, rapping several gold sovereign–ringed fingers on the counter. “Now are you buying ’em or weighing ’em?”

“I was just trying to work out which one I wanted,” I explained feebly. “It’s a hard decision to make, you know.”

“Not anymore it isn’t,” he said forcefully. “Those chocolate bars have been in your hands so long now they’ll have melted to mush. No, mate, you’re not leaving this shop unless you buy ’em both.”

“If only I could,” I said under my breath. I handed him a pound coin, waited for the change and headed toward the door.

“Oi, mate!” he called after me. “You’ve left your chocolate!”

“I know.” I sighed. “You can keep them. I can’t make my mind up, mate. So you know what? I think I’m just going to go home and have some toast instead.”

M
y journey up the Northern line from Clapham Common to Highgate flew by, occupied as I was with thoughts about The Proposal. Mel and I had been together so long it was impossible for me to imagine life without her, but that was no excuse to tempt fate—to wave a metaphorical two fingers in the direction of erudition.
Like the saying goes,
I told myself, “
if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
” But maybe things were broken and I just didn’t see it. Mel had after all brought the subject of our living arrangements up more times than I could remember, and I’d always avoided it, reasoning that if we didn’t live together we couldn’t discover that we didn’t like living together. Because it’s usually when people discover they don’t like living together that they split up, and I didn’t want us to do that. Granted it was a twisted kind of logic, but it was logic all the same. But maybe now was the time to give it some serious thought.

Most women would’ve given up on me years ago. I knew this and was under no illusions who this partnership would benefit most. Mel lived on her own in a big flat in a well-spoken part of Clapham, while I shared an all-right-if-you-don’t-mind-damp-in-the-kitchen flat in Muswell Hill with my friend Dan. Mel had an excellent career in advertising sales while I’d been temping for what felt like forever while I waited patiently (some might say a little too patiently) for my career as a stand-up comedian to take off.

Sometimes I really felt sorry for Mel—her life would’ve been so much better if she’d fallen in love with someone normal. Instead she fell in love with me and had been paying for that mistake ever since. Occasionally when feeling my lowest I’d imagine what it was like when she met up with her friends for an after-work drink. They’d all be talking about their partners’ promotions, increased salaries and company cars, while Mel’s sole contribution would be that I’d once (eight months ago to be exact) been paid forty-two pounds for a sketch I’d written about Richard Branson’s beard for a satirical comedy show on Radio 4. At this point I always saw Mel’s imaginary friends throwing her pitying glances that said, “Ah, Mel and her bad luck with men.”

Actually Mel never complained once about any of this. In all the time we’d been together she’d never even hinted about me getting a real job and giving up comedy. In fact in a weird sort of way she was proud of me for sticking it out.

“It’s one of the reasons I love you so much,” she once told me after a particularly traumatic gig in Manchester in which a good eighty percent of my material went over the heads of the audience attending the Crumpsall Pensioners’ Association annual dinner and dance. “I know one day you’re going to make it. I just know it. I have faith in you.” Then she added, grinning, “And when you do, I want a Ferrari.”

Sometimes it was hard to have that kind of faith in myself. In my head I was about as likely to give Mel a Ferrari as I would be to give her the remote control for the TV. It was never going to happen.

It was crap being bottom of the pile, begging promoters to put me on, watching comedians who I knew weren’t anywhere near as talented as me become successful. It was soul destroying. But it was the success stories that kept me hanging on: stand-ups who, after spending fifteen years on the dole, had all their blood, sweat and beers vindicated by winning the Perrier Comedy Award at Edinburgh.

There was another side of the coin of course—the ones who no one ever talked about—the comedians who tried and failed miserably and as time moved on joined the real world and became teachers, accountants, bank clerks and builders. That was my real fear—joining the real world. Me and my flatmate Dan, who was also a stand-up, set ourselves a deadline once, that by the time we were thirty we would either have made it or moved on. Originally it was by the time we were twenty-eight, but as we’d never expected time to move half as fast as it had done, we’d given ourselves an extension. I didn’t know about Dan, but I just didn’t have it in myself to become an accountant.

I
n the end it took me nearly an hour to get back from Mel’s. Seconds after leaving Goodge Street, the tube driver told everyone on the train that there’d been an incident at Warren Street and that we’d be stuck in a tunnel until he got further information. “Further information,” as it happens, didn’t arrive for another twenty minutes, seconds after which, we moved off. What with the delay, my row with Mel and a sudden realization that thanks to The Proposal I’d missed out on the Thursday night Chinese takeaway, my general antipathy toward the world was at an all-time high.

It was ten past eleven by the time I reached home. The flat was empty. I headed straight for the kitchen where there was a note from Dan on the fridge door saying he’d gone for a drink with someone called Natalie. I made a pint glass of Ribena and grabbed a loaf of bread from the bread bin. It was time to make toast.

I love toast. I really do. Toast is just about the best food there is. You take a slice of humble white bread (never brown) and you put it in a toaster (What is it? It’s a toaster! What does it do? It makes toast!) and a few minutes later you have a hot nutritious meal. You can put any foodstuff handy from the fridge on top of it and it will pretty much always taste fan-bloody-tastic.
Toast,
I thought, as two slices popped up,
makes a whole lot more sense than chocolate bars.

Moving into the lounge with three hot slices of Flora’d toast, so hot the toast sweat buildup on the plate was threatening to dampen the crispness of the whole affair, I pressed
PLAY
on the answerphone. There was only one message, from my mum, in which she rattled on about how much she hated answerphones, and how she especially hated leaving messages on ours because she didn’t know who Robert De Niro was. Puzzled, I played back the outgoing message and sure enough there was Dan’s voice telling callers they’d got through to Robert De Niro, and to leave a message after the beep.

Looking at my watch I wondered if it was too late to call my mum. I decided that it was, but I currently felt so sorry for myself that I was in danger of calling Mel, so I phoned Mum anyway.

“Hi, Mum, it’s me. Did I wake you up?”

“No, not at all. I was just listening to the radio. How are you, Ben?” My mum was the only person in the world who still called me Ben. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I lied. “You know.”

“You don’t sound fine.”

“I’m fine, Mum, honest.” It was nice to be fussed over like this. To know that there was someone in the world who, no matter whether you were a convicted homicidal maniac, a porn baron or crack addict, would love you unconditionally.

We chatted about her life for a while. Since she’d retired as a “catering assistant” (or dinner lady as she still called it) at St. Mary’s RC comprehensive for girls in Leeds, she’d been spending more and more time with my mad aunt Margaret. Since her husband had died Aunt Margaret had discovered a new lease on life and was constantly dragging Mum away on out-of-season holidays to places like Corfu and Ibiza. According to my mum their next jaunt was going to be Lesbos, which Aunt Margaret had described as “the island where ladies who liked ladies lived.” Quite what my mother and my aunt were going in search of I don’t know, but their curiosity was sufficiently piqued for them to book two weeks there in the middle of May.

“You’ll have a great time,” I said. “You could do with a holiday.”

“If anyone could do with a holiday it’s you and Mel,” replied Mum sternly. “You two work too hard. You should try relaxing and enjoying yourself more, otherwise you’ll become like all these London types who just work and work and don’t do anything else. Take Mel on holiday, Ben—and that’s an order.”

My mum thought Mel was the best thing that had ever happened to me and frequently told me so. The first time I introduced them, five months after we’d started going out, they’d got on so well that I almost got jealous. They had this thing between them as if they could communicate with each other by means unknown to me. For the most part it didn’t bother me, but occasionally I felt like I had my fly undone and that they’d noticed but weren’t telling me.

“I don’t think we’ll be going on holiday,” I said.

“Whyever not?” said Mum. “If it’s the money, I’m sure I can give you some if you’re a little bit short.”

“No, it’s not the money,” I began. I suddenly felt the strange urge to do something I’d not done since I was at secondary school and was worried about a twenty-question geography test on the Norwegian leather industry—I wanted to share a problem with my mum. Actually, not just any problem—
the
problem.

“Mel wants us to get married,” I found myself saying. “She proposed to me tonight and it’s taken me a bit by surprise.”

“That’s wonderful news!” exclaimed Mum. “Mel’s a lovely girl. I always said she was the one for you. To tell you the truth I can’t believe it’s taken the two of you this long to get it together.”

“But that’s just it,” I said despondently. “I’m not sure I want to get married. You’re right, Mel is an incredible person, but I’m only twenty-eight. I’m not sure I’m ready for all that . . . you know . . . marriage stuff.”

“Don’t be so silly,” she responded, gearing up into no-nonsense maternal mode. “Of course you’re ready. You love her; she loves you. You’ve been together four years as it is. What more do you need to know?”

I stopped and thought for a moment. It was a good question.

What more do I need to know?

“I haven’t the faintest clue,” I said after some reflection. “But whatever it is I can tell you now I don’t know it.”

Mum refused to let the subject drop for the rest of the phone call in the hope that somehow I might just give in. Perhaps it hadn’t been the best idea telling her about the ins and outs of my love life after all. I gave her five minutes to reprimand me and then I told her I had to go. She rounded things off with a reasonably chirpy, “I’m not trying to organize your life, Ben. I just want you to be happy,” and we said our goodbyes.

Putting the phone down, I hunted for my toast. It was cold now and had gone soggy from toast sweat. While I munched on a slice I took a moment to consider my mum. She must hold the record for being the world’s most optimistic mother. How could one person be that happy after what she’d been through?

I’d never met my dad. He left us when I was six months old and Vernie was two and a half, and divorced my mum five years later. Mum rarely talked about the reasons why he left, and neither Vernie nor I ever asked because we knew it would upset her. All I’d managed to glean in twenty-eight years was that they hadn’t been getting on, and that he left two years and ten months after they’d got married.

You would’ve thought that my mum of all people would be able to see that marriage was a ridiculous idea at the best of times, but she had gone totally the opposite way. She believed in marriage with a strength and a vigor that I’ve never seen equaled. When Vernie married her long-term boyfriend Charlie four years ago, Mum was overjoyed. I just didn’t get it. My dad had promised to be with her for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, and he’d still felt able to leave her with no money and two kids to raise. Yet here she was, after all this time, still believing it possible for two people to love each other forever. Now that is what you call faith.