Unsuitable Men (20 page)

‘It’s all done, Lydia,’ said Jim, closing the lid of the laptop and pushing his chair away from the kitchen table. ‘Tomorrow I’ll show you how to get online, and
then you’re away.’

‘What brought this on? Why do you want broadband all of a sudden?’ I asked Auntie Lyd accusingly.

‘Well,’ she said, looking surprised at the harshness of my tone. ‘I was just talking to Jim about it and he made me see how much we could all benefit from having it set up.
Apparently I can order all sorts of things without having to drive out of town. And I can read your new column, too.’

‘I could have done it for you,’ I said petulantly. ‘It’s not even that difficult. You should have asked me.’

Two vertical lines appeared between Auntie Lyd’s eyebrows as she frowned at me with an expression that told me to stop talking before I made an idiot of myself. Although really I knew it
was already too late; I looked churlish and ungrateful while Jim the dodgy plumber looked generous and kind. But I wanted to be the one who helped her. I felt like a toddler, used to being the
darling of the Elgin Square family, disgruntled by a new baby. If that new baby had been six foot three and built like an action hero.

‘Don’t understand why a young man like you would leave a good job in computers to mess around with people’s pipes all day,’ muttered Percy, obviously still annoyed and
now turning on Jim.

‘Have you been speaking to my gran, Perce?’ asked Jim, laughing. ‘That’s just the sort of thing she says.’

‘But really,’ said Eleanor, resting a hand on Jim’s arm and copping a surreptitious feel of his muscles. ‘Lydia said you used to be a consultant on the broadband in the
City. Don’t you miss it?’

‘God, no,’ Jim laughed. I felt even more suspicious of this so-called IT expert. No one gives up a well-paid white-collar job to become a plumber. Something must have happened. Maybe
he was sacked. Maybe he was done for embezzling. Maybe he just wasn’t very good at it.

‘Seems odd to me,’ I said.

‘Seems odd to a lot of people, Dawn,’ said Jim affably. ‘But everything I did started to get outsourced to India and Asia, and I didn’t want to compete with that. It
wasn’t about the work any more – just about how cheaply you could do it.’

‘So you just gave up and became a plumber?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think of it as giving up,’ said Jim. ‘I just took a proper look at my life – always sat at a desk, always commuting, running around according to other
people’s timetables, competing to do the work for less and less money. It didn’t feel like I was giving up a lot when I decided to pack it in.’

‘But Jim,’ said Eleanor, whose interest in this conversation was excellent cover for the number of times she could touch Jim (she was well into double figures already). ‘Surely
you were qualified to do something other than plumbing?’

‘I suppose,’ said Jim, turning to look at her. ‘But I like plumbing. Always have. My dad was a plumber, and I used to help him during the school holidays. It’s satisfying
working with your hands: fixing things, making them better. And if your toilet’s overflowing, you don’t want to ring a call centre in Mumbai, you want someone to come round and sort it
out. You can’t outsource a blocked pipe, can you?’

I hadn’t thought of it like that. But still, from IT professional to unclogging drains seemed like a weird career trajectory to me. It wasn’t like getting a seat on the board, was
it? Or a company car, or a performance bonus. You might not be outsourced, but you still spent your days with your hands down other people’s toilets. I knew which I’d prefer.

‘Mmm, go on Jim, fascinating,’ breathed Eleanor, leaning closer. Percy glared at her.

‘That’s it really,’ Jim shrugged. ‘I’m in charge of my own time, I take the jobs I want to take, I’ve got time to go to the gym when I want. It just suits
me.’

Unlike that T-shirt, I thought, meanly. I noticed Auntie Lyd was smiling approvingly at Jim; why? She thought gyms were for idiots. And surely Jim was the proof of it – pumped up like a
cartoon hero. I bet if you pressed his back his eyes would swivel like Eagle Eyes Action Man. Though Action Man would surely never have submitted to the indignity of blond highlights.

When I got to the office the next morning, my email inbox was unusually full. My heart instantly sank with fear that there had been a sudden influx of unsolicited features from
mentalists. In the old days they were called green inkers for their usual choice of pen – easily identified and disposed of in the bin. But the broadband, as Percy called it, had changed the
entire process, and now every lunatic with a laptop felt qualified to call themselves a writer and submit their rambling thoughts to
Country House
with stern warnings about copyright
infringement, as if we had nothing better to do than steal their work and pass it off as our own. There was a terrible inevitability to most of the submissions. I knew without even looking that the
latest batch of hopeful contributors would mostly concern themselves with bluebell woods, Easter bonnets and the pagan origins of Easter itself (all too late for the April issue). Those who’d
acquainted themselves more fully with our submission guidelines would be aiming for May instead: May queens, may blossom, maypoles, mayflies, may I please bang my head against my desk in
frustration. A rare few would be pitching early for the summer and autumn slots; there was yet another office sweepstake, an annual one on how many articles containing the words ‘season of
mists and mellow fruitfulness’ would be submitted for the September issue. Last year’s total had been twenty-four, with Amanda’s PA, Catherine, declared the worthy winner.

But only four of these emails were unsolicited pitches. The remaining fifteen had all been forwarded to me from Ticky via a website which appeared to be called MyMate’sGreat.com.

And so it continued. I had never seen so many exclamation marks in one place before. It was horrifying.

‘Ticky?’ I said, looking up slowly and trying to keep control of my voice.

She beamed over at me from behind her desk, obviously very pleased with herself. ‘Just seen the emails, have you? Not bad, eh, Roars? Your profile only went live last night and look how
many replies you’ve had. Amazeballs.’

‘My profile?’ I asked as calmly as possible. ‘What do you mean my “profile”?’

‘What?’ said Ticky innocently. ‘I thought we agreed you were going to rack them up? So, like, I just wrote you a little dating profile and look how many men want to meet
you!’

‘You are unbelievable, Ticky,’ I muttered. ‘A little dating profile? I can’t believe you would do this without even consulting me. These men sound horrendous. I mean, do
I wanna chat? How old is he – fourteen?’

‘Yah, see, that is totally why I should be in charge of this instead of you.’ Ticky tossed her blonde mane. ‘Unsuitable, remember? This is not about finding your future
husband. Although you never know . . .’

‘Ticky, if one of these men is my future husband I swear to God I will bestow on you our first-born child,’ I said.

‘Like, wow, that’s a step of gratitude too far.’

‘Not out of gratitude, Ticky,’ I growled. ‘Because it will be some kind of freaky mutant gremlin child that I will want to get rid of as soon as possible.’

‘Um, harsh, Rory?’ said Ticky, flicking her hair over her shoulder. ‘I’m only trying to help.’

‘I really could do without your help. At least let me see what you’ve written on this “little dating profile”.’

‘Well, like, yah, of course,’ said Ticky, picking up papers on her desk and shuffling them around in an unconvincing show of sudden busyness. ‘Later, Roars, bit hectic right
now.’

‘Ticky . . .’ I warned. Trying to use work as an excuse was pretty desperate; she’d have been more convincing if she’d pleaded a vital appointment for morning cocktails
with another of her titled godfathers.

‘Lots to do, lots to do,’ she said, and shot out of the office before I could stop her.

Ticky’s reaction made me even more determined to see what she’d written. How hard could it be to find my own profile? I logged on to My Mate’s Great and searched for women aged
twenty-nine in the Greater London area. There were an awful lot of them, smiling hopefully for the camera in a manner that suggested they were fun and uncomplicated and in no way desperate,
unattractive or friendless. I say ‘them’, but I should have said ‘us’, because there I was, my profile picture cropped by Ticky out of a group shot at last year’s
Christmas party. Underneath, the text declared me to be ‘back in the game’. With deep foreboding I clicked to open up the full profile.

That was it. When Ticky came back to the office I was going to wrench that silver spoon out of her over-privileged mouth and use it to beat her to death.

But, perhaps sensing my murderous feelings towards her, Ticky didn’t return to her desk for the rest of the morning. I glimpsed her occasionally, rushing past trying to look busy and
preoccupied. And at one point I caught her and Noonoo huddled in a corner discussing something in fierce whispers, but Ticky scuttled away down the back stairs as soon as she realized I’d
seen her. So intent was I on exacting my revenge that I entirely forgot about my date with the office intern until I received his email just before lunchtime.

Only at
Country House
would the teenaged intern be a member of a private club. Unless, I flinched with horror, he meant a nightclub? Did teenagers go to actual clubs at lunchtime these
days? What did people wear to go clubbing anyway? Surely not the floral dress I was wearing today. This kind of confusing weirdness was precisely why I had been afraid of dating a teenager; a
teenager, I suddenly remembered, who was practically related to Amanda. As if it couldn’t get any worse.

I will say one thing for the public-school system. It may turn out floppy-haired right-wingers with a tendency towards floridity in the cheeks and a distinct lack of presence
in the chin department, but it really does teach them excellent manners. It was slightly shaming that the person who effortlessly took control of our lunch date was the one who was not yet out of
their teens. Luke picked me up from my office and helped me into my coat. He opened doors, and insisted on walking on the outside of the pavement like a Victorian gentleman concerned with
protecting me from the splashes of passing carriages. He asked politely about my morning, and I answered politely back. By the time he ushered me up the steps of a red-brick Georgian townhouse in
Garrick Street I was beginning to think this was going to be a perfectly pleasant experience after all.

Nor did Luke turn out to have taken me to a nightclub. Although, as I noticed he signed in as Geoff Home, it appeared more likely this was his father’s club than his own. Still, it was
reassuringly grown-up – no one was going to expect me to dance on a podium or neck a Wkd Blue or whatever school leavers drink these days. The white-haired maître d’ showed us to
a table in the centre of the room, but Luke murmured something in his ear and we were led instead to a more secluded situation in the corner. As he presented us with the menus the maître
d’ gave me an unreadable smile. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but I flushed guiltily, wondering if perhaps he thought I was one of those schoolteachers who gets arrested for
having affairs with her pupils.

We talked about the menu, we ordered, we discussed the work Luke had been doing for Flickers: ‘Mostly, like, going to the shop to get him more Marlboro Lights.’ It was all completely
civilized and actually quite enjoyable, thanks to Luke’s impeccable social skills. Why had I worried so much about this date?

Because of the hand on my arse five minutes later. That was why.

‘So,’ Luke drawled, shuffling his chair around so that he was next to me instead of opposite. ‘Why didn’t you reply to my text last night?’

‘It was you!’ I gasped, pushing his hand away. Of course! As horrified as I was to discover that a mere teenager could come up with such filth, I couldn’t suppress a little
glimmer of relief that the message hadn’t been from Teddy after all.

‘Yah, totes, who’d you think it was from?’ Luke asked. ‘The old man you went out with last week?’

‘Of course not,’ I lied.

‘Are you on BBM?’ said Luke. ‘Only it’s much better than text if we’re going to be in touch a lot, yah?’

I pushed his hand away again.

‘What’s BBM?’ I asked.

Luke looked at me as if I was one of those ancient High Court judges who has to be told who the Beatles are. ‘Um, like, BlackBerry Messenger? Saahriously, you don’t have
it?’

‘I don’t have a BlackBerry,’ I confessed.

He shook his head. ‘Mental. How do you, like, keep up with people?’

‘Oh, the usual ways,’ I said vaguely, feeling tragically out of touch. The truth was, it wasn’t as if I was so inundated with emails and texts that I’d ever felt the need
to be accessible all the time. A gentle potter round Facebook a few times a week was more than enough for me to feel like I was alive to the possibilities of the internet age.

‘Only,’ said Luke, ‘I’d really like to keep up with you, if you know what I mean. I think an older woman has a lot to offer a younger man.’ He gave my behind
another firm squeeze, as if testing for ripeness. Instead of being outraged by his presumption, I couldn’t help laughing at his persistence. I might have considered him a mere infant, but as
far as he was concerned, he was quite the debonair ladies’ man.