Talking It Over (10 page)

What has to happen is this. Gillian has to realise she loves me. Stuart has to realise she loves me. Stuart has to step down. Oliver has to step up. Nobody must get hurt. Gillian and Oliver must live happily ever after. Stuart must be their best friend. That’s what has to happen. How high do you rate my chances? As high as an elephant’s eye? (That cultural allusion is for you, Stu.)

Oh,
please
take that disapproving look off your face. Don’t you think I’ll have enough of that coming my way in the weeks and months and years ahead? Give us a break. Put yourself in my
pantoufles
. Would you renounce your love, slip gracefully from the scene, become a goatherd and play mournfully consoling music on your Panpipes all day while your heedless flock chomp the succulent tufts? People don’t
do
that. People never did. Listen, if you go off and become a goatherd you never loved her in the first place. Or you loved the melodramatic gesture more. Or the goats. Perhaps pretending to fall in love was merely a smart career move allowing you to diversify into pasturing. But you didn’t
love
her.

We’re stuck with it. That’s the long and short of the matter. We’re stuck in this car on this motorway, the three of us, and someone (the driver! – me!) has leant an elbow on the button of the central locking system. So the three of us are in here till it’s resolved.
You’re
in here too. Sorry, I’ve clunked the doors, you can’t get out, we’re all in this together.
Now
what about that cigarette? I’m smoking, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Stuart took it up quite soon. Go on, have one. Stave off Alzheimer’s.

7: Now Here’s a Funny Thing

Stuart
Now here’s a funny thing. I was on my way to work this morning. I probably haven’t explained that there are two ways of walking to the station. One takes me along St Mary’s Villas and Barrowclough Road, past the old municipal baths and the new DIY and wholesale paint centre; while the other means cutting down Lennox Gardens, taking that street whose name I always forget into Rumsey Road, then past the row of shops and back into the High Street. I’ve timed both ways and there isn’t any more than twenty seconds in it. So some mornings I go one way, and some mornings the other. I sort of toss up as I leave the house over which direction to take. I tell you this as background information.

So, this morning I set off down Lennox Gardens, the Street with No Name, and then into Rumsey Road. I was
looking about a lot. You know, that’s one of the many differences since Gill and I have been together: I start seeing things I never would have noticed before. You know how you can walk along a street in London and never raise your eyes above the top of a bus? You go along, and you look at the other people, and the shops, and the traffic, and you never look up, not really
up
. I know what you’re going to say, if you did look up you’d probably step in a pile of dog turds or walk into a lamp-post, but I’m serious. I’m serious. Raise your eyes just that little bit more and you’ll spot something, an odd roof, some fancy bit of Victorian decoration. Or lower them, for that matter. The other day, one lunchtime in fact, I was walking up the Farringdon Road. All of a sudden I noticed something I must have walked past dozens of times. A plaque set in the wall at shin height, painted cream with the lettering picked out in black. It says:

These Premises
Were Totally Destroyed
by a
ZEPPELIN RAID
During the World War
On
September 8th 1915

John Phillips

Rebuilt 1917 Governing Director

I thought that was interesting. Why did they put the plaque so low down, I wondered. Or perhaps it’s been moved. You’ll
find it at Number 61, by the way, if you want to check up. Next door to the shop that sells telescopes.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I find myself looking around more. I must have passed that florist’s in Rumsey Road several hundred times and never really looked at it, let alone into it. But this time I did. And what did I see? What was my extraordinary reward at 8.25 on a Tuesday morning? There was Oliver. I couldn’t believe it. Oliver of all people. It’s always been quite hard getting Oliver up to this end of town – he jokingly claims he needs a passport and an interpreter. But there he was, going round the flower shop, accompanied by this assistant who’s picking out great armfuls of flowers.

I knocked on the window but neither of them turned round, so I went in. They were standing at the desk by now and the girl was working on the bill. Oliver had his wallet out.

‘Oliver,’ I said, and he turned round and looked really surprised. He even started to blush. That was a bit embarrassing – I’d never seen him blush before – so I decided to have a joke. ‘So this is how you spend all the money I’ve lent you,’ I said, and do you know what – he really did blush at that. Completely scarlet. Even his ears went bright red. I suppose on reflection it wasn’t a very kind thing to say, but he really reacted oddly. He’s obviously in a bad way at the moment.

‘
Pas devant,’
he finally said, indicating the girl in the shop. ‘
Pas devant les enfants.’
The girl was staring up at the two of us, wondering what was going on. I thought the best thing to do was spare Oliver’s blushes, so I murmured something about getting off to work.

‘No,’ he said, and got hold of my sleeve. ‘No.’ I looked
at him, but he didn’t say anything more. With his free hand he started shaking his wallet until the money began to fall out on to the desk. ‘Haste, haste,’ he said to the girl.

He held onto my suit while she added up the bill (more than £20,I couldn’t help noticing), took his money, gave him change, wrapped the flowers and poked them under his arm. He picked up his wallet with his free hand, and sort of tugged me to the door.

‘Rosa,’ he said as we got out on to the pavement. Then he let go of my sleeve as if he’d confessed what it was he had to confess.

‘Rosa?’ He nodded but couldn’t look at me. Rosa was the girl from the Shakespeare School, the one he got the sack over. ‘They’re for her?’

‘She’s living up here. Her Pater threw her out. All Ollie’s fault as per usual.’

‘Oliver.’ I suddenly felt much older than him. ‘Is this wise?’ What on earth was going on? What
would
the girl think?

‘Nothing’s
wise
,’ he said, still not looking at me. ‘You can grow a beard waiting to do something
wise
. Party of baboons with typewriters working for a million years wouldn’t come up with anything
wise.’

‘But … you’re going round there at this time of the morning?’

He glanced up at me, dropped his eyes again. ‘Was there last night.’

‘But Oliver,’ I said, trying to make some sense of the story, and also trying to make a bit of a joke of it at the same time, ‘Isn’t it traditional to give flowers to a girl when
you arrive rather than after you’ve left?’

Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to be the right thing to say either. Oliver started gripping the flowers hard enough to snap their stems. ‘Terrible bosh,’ he finally said. ‘I made a terrible bosh of it. Last night. Like trying to ease an oyster into a parking meter.’

I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear any more, but Oliver had got hold of my sleeve again. ‘The body can be a hideous betrayer,’ he said. ‘And the Latin races are arguably less accustomed to first-night nerves. And therefore on the unforgiving side.’

This was all rather embarrassing, from about six different angles. Apart from anything else, I was on my way to work. And it was the last sort of confession I’d ever have expected from Oliver. But I suppose if you lose your job, and your dignity … and he’d probably been drinking too much, which they say doesn’t help. Oh dear, the wheels really do seem to be coming off Ollie at the moment.

I didn’t know what to do or say. I didn’t feel I should suggest a doctor, just like that, standing there on the pavement. Eventually Oliver let go of my sleeve.

‘Have a good day at the office, dear,’ he said, and sloped off.

I didn’t read my newspaper on the train at all this morning. I just stood there thinking of Oliver. What a recipe for disaster – going back to that Spanish girl who’d got him sacked in the first place, and then … I don’t know. Oliver and girls – it’s always been a trickier subject than he likes to make out. But this time he does seem to have hit rock bottom. The wheels really have come off.

Oliver
Ouf! Paf! Bof!
Wow! Call me the Great Escapologist. Call me Harry Houdini. Hail Thalia, Muse of Comedy. Oh boy I need a round of applause. Oh boy I need a
poumon
ful of Gauloise. You can’t deny me one after that.

OK, OK, I feel a bit bad, but what would you have done? I know, you wouldn’t have been there in the first place. But I was, and that’s always going to be the brute difference between us, isn’t it? Still, did you cop the panache? I have to hand it to myself, I really do. And what about the Ancient Mariner sleeve-tugging aspect? That worked out really well, didn’t it? I’ve always said, if you want to outwit an Englishman, touch him when he doesn’t want to be touched. Hand on the arm plus emotional confession. They can’t bear that, the Anglos, they’ll cringe and shiver and swallow whatever you tell them. ‘Like trying to ease an oyster into a parking meter.’ Did you see Stuart’s face when I left him? What a cameo of tender concern.

I’m not really gloating, well only a
soupçon
, I’m more relieved: that’s the way it comes out with me. And I probably shouldn’t be telling you all this if I want to keep your sympathy. (Have I got it in the first place? Hard to tell, I’d say. And do I want it? I do, I do!) It’s just that I’m too involved in what’s happening to play games – at least, to play games with you. I’m fated to carry on with what I have to do and hope not to incur your terminal disapproval in the process. Promise not to turn your face away: if
you
decline to perceive me, then I really
shall
cease to exist. Don’t kill me off! Spare poor Ollie and he may yet amuse you!

Sorry, getting a bit hyper again.
So
. So there I am in some
terra incognita
by the name of Stoke Newington, which
Stuart assures me is the next district where house prices are due to display tumescence, but where for the moment there dwelleth men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. And why am I there? Because I have to do something very simple. I have to go round to the wife of a man – a man! my best friend! – whom I have just left trogging off to the tube station; I have to go round to his wife of six weeks and tell her I love her. Hence the shrubbery of blue-and-white under my left arm, whose ineptly-wrapped stems have bedewed my
pantalon
in a manner suggesting the splatter of micturition. How not inappropriate: for when the shop-bell heralded the earnest banker I really thought I was going to pee myself.

I walked around a bit to let my trousers dry and practised what I was going to say when Gillian opened the door. Should I hide the flowers behind my back and produce them like a conjuror? Should I lay them on the doorstep and vamoose before she responded to the bell? Perhaps an aria would be appropriate –
Deh vient alla finestra …

So I strolled amid the base huts sheltering those far-flung operatives of commerce, waiting for the heat of the day to draw the moisture from my 60/40 silk/viscose trouser mix. That’s what I feel like myself, and rather too often, if you must know: 60 per cent silk and 40 per cent viscose. Sleek but inclined to rumple. Whereas Stuart is 100 per cent man-made fibre: hard to crush, easy to wash, simple to drip-dry, stains merely lift out. We are cut from a different cloth, Stu and I. And on
my
cloth, if I didn’t hurry, the water-stains would soon be replaced by sweat-marks. God I was nervous. I needed some valerian tea; either that or a monster Manhattan. A febrifuge or a mega-snort, one or the other. No, what I really needed
was a handful of beta-blockers. Do you know about them? Propranolol is one of their various soubriquets. Developed for concert pianists suffering from nerves. Controls the flutters without interfering with the performance. Do you think they work for sex? Perhaps Stuart will get me some after hearing about my
nuit blanche
with Rosa. It would be just like him to salve the fractured heart with chemicals. But what
I
needed them for was to deliver the heart, rubescent and entire, to the woman about to answer the bell at number 68. Is there a dusky dealer lounging in a doorway with slick grin and open palm? 40 mg of propranolol, my man, and sharp about it, here’s my wallet, here’s my Rolex Oyster, take everything … no, those are
my
flowers. Take everything except my flowers.

But now they’re hers. And when
le moment suprême
glowed (let me translate that briefly into Stuartese: when push came to shove), there was no difficulty. You may find Ollie rather baroque, but that’s only the facade. Penetrate inside – stay awhile with guidebook raised – and you will find something calmly neoclassical, something wisely proportioned and cool. You are inside Santa Maria della Presentazione, or Le Zitelle, as the information brochures prefer. The Giudecca, Venice, Palladio, O ye tourists of my soul. That’s what I’m like on the inside. Any tumultuous exterior I offer is merely to draw the crowds.

So what happened was this. I rang the door-bell, holding my flowers spread across both outstretched forearms. I did not want to appear like a delivery man. Rather I was a simple, a frangible petitioner, assisted only by the goddess Flora. Gillian opened the door. This was it. This was it.

‘I love you,’ I said.

She looked at me, and alarm put to sea in her tranquil eyes. To calm her, I handed over my bouquet, and quietly repeated, ‘I love you.’ Then I left.

I’ve done it! I’ve done it! I’m out of my skull with happiness. I’m joyed, I’m awed, I’m poo-scared, I’m mega-fuckstruck.

Michelle (16)
You get some real posers. That’s the trouble with the job. It’s not the flowers, it’s the people that buy them.