Four New Words for Love (10 page)

My heart was hammering on the bus. I got off two stops early to feel the air on my face and calm myself, walking through another metropolitan sunset, the sandstone buildings drinking in the last
of the light. He was waiting at the bar. It was an Italian place, one wall covered by a kind of mediaeval painting that looked as if it had been done by Disney. They had a display of straw Chianti
bottles that would have driven Dad berserk with rancour at the memory. He was perched on the edge of a stool, wearing clothes that looked as new as mine. His cologne hit me from about five feet,
and I was heartened by the thought that he might be as nervous as I was. Our overlapping smells made a passing waiter blink. When I was about to sit on a stool he took my arm and steered me to one
of the booths. He could have pointed. He didn’t need to touch me. There was a good electricity. He sat with his back to the wall. I had a view of the mural. From the size of his pupils I
could tell he’d already had a few. My spirits rose even more.

‘Funny looking painting. Punch and Judy... or something...’ I’d started talking about something I knew nothing about and I was aware my hands were moving too much, like at the
interview. Short of sitting on them I didn’t feel able to stop them.

‘Pantalone. He’s one of the stock characters of the Commedia dell’arte.’

‘Fancy.’

‘The soap of its day.’

‘
Emmerdale
for serfs.’

Gesturing at absolutely nothing, I managed to knock over the little glass vase with cut flowers in water. He tried to right it and made matters worse. Then there was twenty seconds of confusion,
while we shouted apologies at one another, and the staff replaced the cloth and the water-logged breadsticks. I ordered a gin and sucked it down in one noisy gulp before the waiter had moved two
paces.

‘Again, please.’

‘Do you want wine too?’ Simon asked, smiling.

‘What the hell – you choose.’

The waiter hovered to prevent further breakages, recited the specials and offered advice. I smiled non-committally. He took the hint and drifted away. I confided in Simon.

‘I can navigate round an Italian menu because my mum fucked off with an Italian waiter.’

‘I’ll have to manage best I can without those qualifications.’

When the wine arrived he sniffed the cork. You could tell they weren’t impressed, given it was one up from the house plonk. I think sniffing the cork is the equivalent of kicking the tyres
in a garage – they’ll rub their hands and double the bill. This sophistication was wearing thinner by the minute, which made me feel even better. I ordered artichoke salad, followed by
spaghetti and clams, and swallowed the wine in big thirsty gulps. He seemed to enjoy the sight. I don’t know if it was for the thing itself or for the fact that I didn’t pay any
attention to etiquette. Ever since Mum and her fake Latin lover I can’t take Italian restaurants seriously.

‘Millie would like that,’ I said, nodding towards the mural.

‘It’s strange, I only ever see you arrive alone. I don’t think of you as a mother.’

‘But that’s the one thing I think of myself as, more than anything else. First and foremost. I’m not
just
that...’

‘I didn’t mean to offend.’

‘You didn’t.’

‘After all, you don’t
look
like a mother.’

‘How does a mother look?’

‘Not like someone who could get away with that dress.’

I could feel a blush rise up from my new cleavage, and turned my attention to the dessert trolley. They actually had a trolley that they wheeled across. I attacked the tiramisu while he watched,
and then I took the initiative and ordered us both espresso and grappa. They were pushed for tables and asked if we’d mind drinking at the bar, where they’d throw in another grappa. We
went back to where he’d been standing and sat on high stools, knee to knee. I started tittering at nothing. The espresso would have woken the dead, and I felt my heart lurch when it hit my
bloodstream. Then I knocked back the grappas. It was stupid really. I’d wanted to savour the minute and now I’d used up the reason for sitting there. He finished his and suggested we
could go on elsewhere for another.

‘I can’t. Well I can’t have any more to drink. I’m still feeding Millie. I’ve had too much already. I feel like an arse, saying all that stuff about first and
foremost...’

Perhaps we’d given the impression we were leaving because they appeared with our jackets. I automatically took mine and we found ourselves out on the pavement by ten. Then there was that
awful bit I always hate, when you both stand not knowing whether to risk an invitation. I stood it for three seconds, and was about to throw my hat into the ring when he beat me to it.

‘Would you like to come back to mine?’

‘I – I would. But I’ve got to think about Millie’s next feed and the babysitter. Why don’t we go back to mine?’

He smiled. My heart took another espresso lurch. He lifted his hand and conjured a cab from over my shoulder, like a coin from behind an ear. I gave the address and we crossed the river again,
back in the direction I’d come from, sitting forward to see the lights reflected in the water. It’s another sight, like sunset, I never tire of. But as I kept looking out I noticed
something I hadn’t noticed before: the lighted window displays, and bars and restaurants growing scarcer as the spaces between buildings became the rule and not the exception, gaps filled
with rubble and sprouting vegetation – broken teeth on the parade. And aside from the mosaic of lights from the high-rises, the only illumination is the sodium street lighting.

In the time it took me to eat a meal the lift had broken. I’ve hauled a pram up the stairs without seeing them the way I was seeing them now, with him beside me. And there was the strata
of smells, fried food, stale piss and God knows what. Ruth was on her feet at the first sound of the key in the lock, standing in the hall as if intercepting a burglar. She went all shy, as I did
the introductions, so I pointed him towards the living room. The kitchen’s large enough for one person to stand in as long as you don’t open the cutlery drawer at the same time. She
followed me in as I searched the fridge for something for him to drink. She stood, almost touching me, vibrating with suspense.

‘Isn’t it stupid, I never bought anything for him to drink. I never saw him back here. But then I suppose I must have, unconsciously. Why else the good underwear I wouldn’t
mind being run over in?’

‘Who are you talking to?’

‘You. Me.
I
don’t know.’

‘What happened?’

‘He’s here. That’s what happened. And he didn’t allow me to pay for anything. Maybe he thinks the more he forks out the better the chance of getting his end away. I could
have told him to save his money.’

‘Why?’

‘Why do you think? The last man who noticed me was Nick and it turned out he was only paying attention to himself.
He
,’ I point through the wall, ‘likes
me
.’ I pointed at my cleavage. ‘I’m taking every precaution science can devise, but it’s going to take a fucking earthquake to stop sex happening in this flat
tonight.’

‘He might not want to have sex.’

‘Lack of experience aside, and no offence intended, unless you crawled out of a flower, when have you ever head of a man not wanting to have sex?’

‘You’re shouting. He might hear.’

‘I don’t care. I’m home. He’s here. I’m fed up being nervous and lonely. How was Millie? Hold on a minute.’ Underneath half-rotted broccoli I found part of
Dad’s cache, three cans of cheap corner-shop lager. I wiped one clean, and delivered it with a spew of froth that swiped his groin. I absently wiped the mound of his tackle till I realised
what I was doing, apologised and ran back to the kitchen. Once I’d heard Millie was fine I led Ruth to the door, picking up her stuff on the way.

‘I hope it goes all right. Come down with Millie tomorrow and see me.’

I gave her the second impulsive kiss of the night through the closing door. If Lolly had asked me to come down she’d have demanded a blow-by-blow anatomical account of Simon’s
technique. Ruth meant it in a misty lens, flowers and chocolates kind of a way. I leaned my back against the closed door and thought for a second about how some people are too nice for this world,
took a deep breath, plumped up my tits and strode into the living room. He was crouching over my music collection, that I play on my stolen stereo, trying to hide the wet stain in his trousers. I
sat on the sofa, waiting for him, posing myself to look sophisticated. Realising I lacked a drink to complete the effect, I stood just as he sat down to yet more catastrophic noises from the
upholstery. This sounded structural. Remembering I couldn’t have another drink I put the kettle on. When I came back with a second beer I sat down as gently as I could. The sofa groaned again
and gave up any pretence of lumbar support. We lolled together in the saggy bit. ‘Two frogs in a lily pad,’ I said. He just smiled. ‘Cosy,’ I said. His smiled widened.
‘Do you want me to open your beer?’

‘No thanks. I can pour it over my testicles all by myself.’

He put his arm round me, taking advantage of the dynamics of the sofa, reaching over my shoulder and taking my breast in his right hand.

‘I see you’re employing the cinema technique tonight. A bit previous isn’t it?’

‘Are you complaining?’

‘No. There’s another one here too.’

‘I noticed.’

I swivelled round to kiss him. With more skill than I’d have given him credit for he unclipped the front loader and slid his hands in. A few seconds later he slid them back out looking
worried.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Leakage. I thought I’d given Millie enough but I seem to be producing more.’ He looked at my breasts as if they were water cannon, pointing at
him. I had the strangest feeling that the romance of the moment had been lost and I had to do something, decisive and tender, right now, to get it back. The wail from the bedroom started right on
cue.

‘Sorry,’ I said again, heaving myself up from the synthetic pit. He stood too and I left him for a moment, contemplating the corpse of the sofa. Millie was lying with her eyes wide
open. She latched on like a docking spacecraft. I gave her a few minutes and then moved her across to the other. The kettle rose to a slow boil. It’s not electric. It’s a whistler,
something you could identify in the pitch dark a hundred years from now. I was hoping she’d finish before it became too insistent, but I had to move through to turn off the noise. He
obviously had the same thought. He caught me in the hall. My dress was still undone, my front-loader open. Millie was sucking rhythmically and there was a pearl of milk on the other nipple. For
some reason she jerked away. Perhaps he thought that there was a single jet, a feeding syringe, not the sprinkler arrangement that showered the side of her face till she turned back and latched on
with the same suddenness. He stopped dead and took all this in. I reached into the kitchen, shut off the noise, wiped her cheek and covered up. When I looked at him again he seemed morose, studying
the patchy linoleum, a mosaic of off-cuts running back to the living room with its ridiculous furniture, and it was as if he was weighing up the pros and cons and calculating whether a fuck was
worth the squalor and the consequences.

‘I – I’m sorry...’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry. This is all too much reality to take at one sitting.’

‘What do you want me to do, expose you in instalments? Maybe I could wheel the sofa into the shop and you could practice sitting on it a couple of times without the whole fucking
ambience.’ The instant I swore I knew it was a mistake.

‘I’m sorry. It’s not just...’ and he gestured in a vague way to indicate the whole fucking ambience. ‘Then there’s the baby...’

‘But there’s always been the baby. You knew about the baby when you asked me out.’

‘Yes... but. There’s knowing and there’s
knowing.
I didn’t really...’

‘I shouldn’t have sworn. I’m sorry. She’ll settle in a minute and we can both have some tea.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You don’t have to keep apologising.’

‘I made a mistake. A mistake.’ He looked down, not wanting to meet my eye, and reached for his jacket at the same time.

‘Please. Don’t go. Not like this. If you still feel the same way in five minutes...’

It didn’t stop him. All that supposed passion, dwindling to the offer of a cup of tea and a plea not to be left alone. He wouldn’t look back and said sorry at least twice more. In
his hurry to go he accidentally slammed the front door. It didn’t catch and ricocheted open. I stood at the entrance, listening to his feet on the stairs, till I heard the bang of the lobby
door echo up the stairwell. Millie fed throughout, her sucking amplified by the concrete acoustics.

She fell asleep still latched on. I put her down and went to pick up the dead cans from the living room. I looked at the sofa. With the exception of Millie, the only good thing to have happened
to me, this broken ugly thing seemed to epitomise my life to date. I wouldn’t let someone else’s opinion of me form my view of myself, but I’m looking around and I saw what he
saw. Someone I thought me and Millie might just have had a future with looked at me and my situation, totalled the sum of my parts and decided that I add up to the square root of fuck all. And
right now I can’t pretend to myself that it doesn’t hurt.