Mr. Commitment (7 page)

“Of course not. I trust you completely.”

I hugged her and kissed her firmly. Staring over her shoulder, once again I began to ponder the other skeletons in my mental cupboard, but decided to save them for some other time.

L
ater that night, still lying on the sofa with the TV on in the background, I looked down at Mel, who was lying next to me with her eyes closed. I whispered her name quietly to see if she was asleep. She wasn’t.

She opened her eyes. “You can turn over and watch
Frasier,
” she said, yawning.

“That’s not what I wanted,” I said quietly. “I still don’t understand. How did Mark come to have a tape of my stand-up to give to Alexa?”

“I gave it to him,” confessed Mel sheepishly. “I knew you’d never get round to sending it off yourself. I’m sorry, Duff. I’m an interfering old cow.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “You’re right: I should’ve got round to sending the tape ages ago. I dunno what’s wrong with me sometimes.”

“You just got a little bit scared, that’s all.” She kissed me sleepily. “I want to do everything I can to help you. You think that I take what you do for granted, but I don’t. I know you sometimes think that I don’t think you’re funny, but you are. You make me laugh all the time—although not always intentionally. Just promise me even when we’re old and gray that you’ll keep making me laugh until milk comes out of my nose.”

I looked at her puzzled.

“You don’t remember, do you? Last summer. We were round at my flat and I was feeling really down about work. You were trying your best to cheer me up and it wasn’t working because I was being a miserable old bag, and then just as I began drinking a glass of milk you leaped up and down on the sofa like a chimpanzee, singing ‘New York, New York.’ I laughed so hard milk came out of my nose.”

“I’ll try my best.” I paused. “Mel, thanks for . . . you know . . . everything you’ve done.” Words seemed to fail me.

“Don’t thank me.” She smiled. “Just get me that Ferrari!”

This isn’t about wardrobes

T
he alarm clock in Mel’s bedroom went off at 7:30
A.M.
I took a long hard squint at it before entombing it beneath a large pile of clothes.
It’s Saturday morning,
I thought groggily,
no one should be up this early on a Saturday.
Out of the only eye I was willing to open this early in the morning, I observed an already up-and-out-of-bed Mel keenly.

“Time to get up,” she said, coyly beckoning me out of bed. She was wearing a long misshapen Snoopy T-shirt and nothing else. She looked crumpled and yet strangely alluring, so much so that I was half tempted to leap up and chase her around the room Benny Hill style. Unfortunately, given how early it was I lacked the strength of will to execute my plan, so instead, as my libido faded to black I resolved not to reply, closing my eyes instead in a bid to feign sleep.
Maybe now she’ll leave me in peace,
I thought, turning over.

She didn’t. Instead, her countermeasure was to wrench the king-sized duck-down duvet off the bed, exposing my body to the cold of the room, and in a move carefully calculated to wind me up shouted, “Time to get up!” again in a chirpy singsong voice, whilst dancing coquettishly just out of reach. Without saying another word, I made my way to the bathroom and took a shower.

My rude awakening was based on the fact that it was now March and six weeks had passed since we’d become engaged. It was time for us to plan the wedding. We’d already settled on a date in October the following year and her parents’ local parish church. My only suggestion for the big day—that we have a disco for the evening do—was shot down by Mel for being “tacky above and beyond the call of duty.” I couldn’t believe it. As far as I was concerned, a wedding reception without a mobile DJ playing the Commodores’ “Three Times a Lady” and Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ “Come on Eileen” just wasn’t a wedding reception. Mel, however, wanted something more tasteful, like a string quartet or a band, and wasn’t going to budge. Thus began a minor argument which concluded in a win for her corner, when I gave up after ten minutes of going backward and forward having realized
The Simpsons
was on TV and I’d already missed five minutes.

These minor wedding decisions were only the beginning. There were the catering, flower arranging, photographers, wedding video, hotel and honeymoon booking, reception-room scouting
and
booking, car hire and cake makers all to be organized and paid for. Mel had a thick loose-leaf folder with the words “Wedding Planner” emblazoned across it in swirling gold lettering—a present from my mum. Weekends—once a time to relax and renew one’s batteries after a week of work—were now more toilsome than days in the office. Weekends were now officially Duffy and Mel days—devoted to the pursuit of marital harmony.

W
here are we going today?” I asked Mel sulkily, having showered, shaved and sufficiently warmed up my personality.

“We talked about it last night.”

“We did?” I tried to remember the previous night. All I managed to recall was eating Chinese and falling asleep in front of the telly.

“Yes. While we were watching the news. I told you we needed to go there to put things on our wedding list and your reply was, ‘Whatever you want.’ ”

“Oh yeah,” I said, bluffing total recall. “We’re going to . . .”

“Ikea.”

I
’d never been inside an Ikea before. I’d been as far as the car park on a couple of occasions, but I’d always preferred to wait in the car as though repelled by an invisible force field. I didn’t understand the concept of shopping for home furnishings at all. To me a chair was a chair. A table was a table. Curtains were curtains. But to Mel these things took on a mysterious significance which I couldn’t begin to comprehend. To her a chair wasn’t a chair unless it was a set of six and matched the napkins. A table wasn’t a table unless it was large enough to seat six to eight people at a dinner party. Curtains weren’t just curtains, they were the critical focal point of a room. “Make a mistake with your curtains,” she once informed Nosferatu, “and you might as well give up altogether.”

My heart sank the moment we arrived at Ikea. Such was the allure of home furnishings, that like salmon in search of their spawning ground, teeming multitudes of Proper Couples had felt the mysterious urge to come here. We queued for ten minutes just to get into the car park. After that we had to drive around like buzzards circling wounded antelope in search of the last parking space in the Western Hemisphere. Still, there were brief moments of satisfaction to be had. I spotted a parking space only seconds before a couple in a Vauxhall Tigra; the race was on but even in Mel’s 2CV there was no way they could beat me. As I eased into the space and checked the rearview mirror to gloat, I was just in time to see the male driver of the Vauxhall Tigra being harangued by his other half for not being quick enough off the mark.

“What are we doing here, Mel?” I whined miserably, as we came through the electronic doors and she put one of those huge shapeless yellow bags on her shoulder. I’d meant the question metaphysically rather than literally.

“Shopping, stupid,” joked Mel, choosing to take my words at face value.

This one sentence said more about the gap in understanding between Mel and me than anything else in our lives. This was different. This was innate. Shopping to her wasn’t a means to an end—it was an end in itself. She was on a spiritual journey, searching for that elusive something or somethings that would help her to make sense of the world and her place in it. Why she needed me to join her on this journey I failed to understand, but I
was
there, and we
were
getting married so I opted to make the most of it.

Within minutes Mel had a look of postcoital bliss over her face as she glided from sofa to armchair to futon and back again, casually stroking their material as if they were fondly remembered lovers.

“So what do you think?”

She was now pointing to a beige object of roughly the same dimensions as the lifts we had at work. By the look on her face I gathered she’d been in conversation with me about this item of furniture for some time. To have admitted my folly would’ve been, well, sheer folly. So I bluffed.

“It’s nice.”

She gave me The Look.

“What have I said?”

Silence.

“What have I said?”

“You know,” she said, barely moving her lips.

“What?”

Silence.

“What?”

“Saying it’s ‘nice’ like that. I’m not stupid, Duffy. If you didn’t want to come why are you here? Can’t you just make the effort this one time?”

“What’s wrong with it being a ‘nice’ wardrobe? It is a ‘nice’ wardrobe. It’s pleasant, agreeable, congenial and pleasing to the eye.” I stepped forward and ran my fingers along its surface, attempting to empathize. “Smooth.”

A smile gradually cracked across her face, which eventually manifested itself into a toothy grin. I’d won her back from the edge of an argument, which was no mean feat. I gave myself a pat on the back as if I’d just defused the timer on six tonnes of plastic explosive.

“I think it would look great in our bedroom,” said Mel, still examining the wardrobe. Mel had been talking about “our” bedroom for a while now. She wanted to hand in her notice on her Clapham flat and move in with me and Dan so we could save up enough money for a deposit on a place of our own. While it was true that my flat was cheaper, it was also true that Mel would hate living with me and Dan. Mel was allergic to slovenliness at the best of times and, well, the flat Dan and I inhabited was pretty much the shelter of the slovenly. She’d be fighting a losing battle that would eventually drive her insane.

I looked at the wardrobe again. In Mel’s bedroom it would’ve looked fine with her antique pine dressing table, framed Hopper prints and lilac walls. But in my bedroom it would’ve looked crap because it would never go with my off-white walls, Incredible Hulk poster and bookshelves littered with CDs, records, video console games and my ever-growing collection of comedy videos. I had no concept of what “our” bedroom would look like, but there was little doubt in my mind it wouldn’t look like
my
bedroom. Not if Mel had anything to do with it.

Out of curiosity I read the label on the wardrobe and was horrified. “We can’t buy it anyway. It’s a flatpack wardrobe. Remember the flatpack chest of drawers we tried to assemble that one bank holiday? It took us three days just to find the screws and another three days to give up and chuck it underneath your bed!”

It was a joke of sorts, although to be truthful neither of us had the time or patience for flatpack furniture. Mel, however, didn’t laugh. Instead she fell into the kind of silence you’d imagine fills the air before a volcano erupts. I was scared.

“I’m sorry, babe, it’s just that—”

I didn’t get the chance to finish my sentence. Mel turned and walked briskly away, and I chased after her berating myself for not choosing the option marked
LEAVE WELL ALONE.

Ikea was now overspilling with examples from the entire couple rainbow. Ones in matching jumpers, ones with matching kids, odd ones, young ones, old ones—and they were
all
in my way. I lost sight of Mel whilst trying to get round an Indian couple wheeling their children along in two of Ikea’s pushchairs. By the time I’d apologized my way through them she’d disappeared. I raced frantically through Beds, Office Furniture and Storage Units before I caught sight of her in Dining Rooms.

“Mel!” I called out after her, but she refused to acknowledge me. “Mel, wait!” I shouted.

A blond man wearing a herringbone jacket and jeans, with a small boy on his shoulders and his heavily pregnant significant other by his side, tapped Mel on the arm and pointed to me. She stood still but the flow of couples was coming too fast for her to remain stationary for long. She stepped out of the couple slipstream wearily and sat down on a dining room chair that was part of one of the displays. It was a sleek modern-look dining room with a frosted-glass table. A perforated metallic black lampshade hung above it; Swedish novels lined the “Billy” bookcase; a large sign pointed out the wooden-effect flooring was from the Tundra range at £15.00 a square meter.

I pulled up a chair opposite her. “Look, I’m sorry,” I whispered—we were now attracting a considerable amount of attention from passing couples. “It was a stupid thing to say. Of course we can get the wardrobe. Please.”

“This isn’t about wardrobes!” said Mel through clenched teeth, her voice increasing in volume and anger with each syllable. “It’s about
you
and
your
attitude. All I want is a bit of support. Some reassurance. Is that too much to ask?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that a stout couple were watching us as though we were some sort of avant-garde amateur dramatic society. This was my idea of hell. I hated rows in public. I hated them more than anything in the world. “Of course it’s not too much to ask,” I apologized. “You’re right. I’m wrong. Let’s leave it at that, okay?”

Mel’s face contorted in outrage. “You’re not listening to me!” she screamed. Angry tears streamed down her face. “You haven’t listened to a single word I’ve said, have you?” Out of the corner of my eye I noted that the stout couple had been joined by a matching jumpered couple and a short couple with their baby. I was now the recipient of an increasing number of sympathetic glances from the men and condemnatory glares from the women, as if Mel and I were the sex war writ large. I tried to remind myself I was twenty-eight and not ten. That I was a man not an errant schoolboy. But I couldn’t help feeling small. And wrong.

I tuned back to my dressing-down, ignoring the flourishing crowds of people no longer struggling to hear what Mel was saying because she was now “talking” with such volume that eavesdroppers could’ve easily swapped their position in the eaves for somewhere more comfortable, like Sweden, and still have heard every word. “Look, Mel. I understand that you’re upset, but do you have to be so loud? Can’t you just . . .” I made the mistake of issuing a small shushing noise.

“Are you shushing me?” she retorted.

“No.”

“You are, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Don’t you shush me!”

“He is shushing,” spat the woman from the stout couple menacingly. “I know a shush when I hear one!”

“I’m not shushing!” I exclaimed in her direction.

Mel sighed heavily, and the exhaled air seemed to take her volume with it. “You’re not being fair, Duffy. It’s time you grew up and realized you’re not a kid anymore. You can’t keep on acting like you’re a teenager.”

“Listen, Mel, I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry.”

“It’s too late, Duffy. It’s over.”

Suddenly the world and everything in it seemed to slow down, as if we’d all been submerged under water. “What?” I said, rubbing the back of my neck nervously. “What are you talking about?”

“This isn’t working, is it?” she said quietly. She refused to look at me. “You don’t really want to get married, Duff. I know you don’t. You want your life to carry on just the same.” She began crying, her teardrops exploding on the glass tabletop like miniature water bombs. “It’s not your fault, it’s just the way you are—it’s part of the reason I love you. I love you because you are so carefree. I love you because you take things as they come. But I need more. I deserve more and you can’t give it to me.”

I could barely believe what I was hearing. It was like Mel was having a conversation with me without my uttering a single word. The world had gone all wrong. Wrong and weird.
I have to make everything all right again.
“What’s going on here, babe? What’s brought this on? Everything’s fine.” I reached out and held her hand. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

“Duffy, I know everything about you,” she said accusingly.

“What are you talking about?” I protested. “Things are getting out of hand. Let’s just calm down and everything will be all right.”

She looked up at me at last. “Look me in the eyes and answer this question: do you really, well and truly with your whole heart, want to get married?”