Noughties (16 page)

Most of all, I couldn’t believe Jack with his black jacket and navy tie, hair neatly combed, and his pre-watershed topics of conversation. His sophistication was off the scale and I felt myself slumping lower and lower to the floor.

On the way back to college, where Mr. F would treat us all to pints at the bar to show his matey, down-to-earth side, Ella leaned into me—right in front of her father—as if inviting me to put an arm around her waist. I dithered, hesitant to find myself embroiled in a lawsuit, until she nearly ran me onto the road with her lowered shoulder. Placing my arm about her, she pressed in even tighter and squeezed my hand as it rested on her hip—

I rise from the toilet and head back up the stairs, out to the beer garden. In some ways Lucy’s revelation should make my decision easier (and where the fuck did
that
come from?), but it hasn’t, and the switched-off mobile in my pocket is burning a hole through my leg, demanding
action, begging engagement. So I am not best pleased to see everyone else playing with their phones when I find them in the beer garden, participating in a brief textual interlude …

They r sittin round some outdoor heaters & theyve all got their phones out. Y, u might ask, given th@ its r last night all 2gether? I agree, its anti-social 4 sure, lol. But it’s xepted: every1 needs a break from small talk & hard drinking @ least 1ce in a yle.

& so they take a min 2 communic8 with the absent. Or perhaps it would be more xpressive 2 say the “absent-presences”; the absent-presences of their
inboxes
&
sent msgs
. They text 4iously with speedy C21 thumbs & techno +vanced h&s (it’s evolution baby).

“I number-eight this song,” snarls Jack, without looking up from his phone.

“Lower-case-y?” I ask.

“It’s number-two repetitive.”

“What lower-case r lower-case u talking about?” interjects Abi. “It’s an absolute tune!”

Jack: “confused face symbol.”

I’m with Jack on this 1.

“Letter-n letter-e number-one lower-case-c Ella letter-x me?” I feel like asking, but clearly don’t. It’s 2 complic8ed. They wouldn’t understand. Lol. (I don’t mean “lol” @ all. It’s just a textual
. There’s nothing “lol” about me & Ella … it’s a v complic8ed m@er.)

Evry1 frigs their phones with reck< abandon, ratter-tat-tapping & waving them in the air to catch some signal.

It’s weird how these days u can b in the public & keep up the priv@ @ the same time. R mobs r r little boxes of privacy,
like a physicalized subconscious. E.g. Scott is texting his l8est luv (some girl in the year <) 2 c if she’s out 2nite; Sanjay is razzin through his sent msgs 2 make sure he hasn’t done anything stupid (drunk txts r dangerous); Jax just playing mob games (sad really); & Megan & Abi r sharing texts & lol about them. I’m complic8ing over Lucy, contempl8ing my options.

I feel like txtin this 2 every1 dear:

But like that’s ever going to happen.

The beer garden is rammed.

“This is where it’s at-sign number-two-night!” declares Jack.

Ella is the only other 1 not fiddling with a phone.

“Number-four real,” I say distractedly.

We r all lost 2 each other, putting up walls and shutting
. Lol.

R m8.

These musing memories of the past do not simply—oh, how does it go? What comes next?—traverse my indolent brain (yes, that’s it) like flitting phantasies … though often they do. I am a creature of both sensations and reflections and must make the record as I see fit.

You see, I
am
in control.

This is nothing new—my inability to block things out and move on—and I have not been passive in my missing of Lucy. She’s imprinted all over my body … lodged in the nooks and crannies … and I did indeed make one notable rescue bid not long after the breakup. It began with me standing huddled in—

“Do you want a drink, mate?” Jack.

“If you’re offering?”

“Course … Everything alright?”

“Sweet as a nut.”

I was standing huddled in my black duffel jacket and paisley scarf at the Oxford bus station on Gloucester Green, round the back from the George Street Odeon. Lucy was settling into her new university life and I was consistently fucking up the process of moving on. I dug my hands deep into my pockets and hid half of my face in the scarf.

We’re trained to stand stationary, there on the purgatorial platform, observing the delays and dues on the most depressing TV screen you’ll ever see. The episode is bollocks—all numbers and middle-of-nowhere place-names; no pictures, no music, no action. Everyone watches with slight grimaces of perplexity, newspaper rapiers tucked under armpits; briefcases, suitcases, rucksacks piled about feet. The thistles and nettles prising their scraped heads and necks through the concrete tiles spark unspoken questions about hope and fear, security and abandon.

I caught the 16.15 to Wellingborough.

The question on the end was entirely unnecessary. We had already arranged to meet up earlier that morning, so I knew it was “ok”—or at least green-lighted. All I was doing with that question was wishfully stretching my tentacles out for further connection, straining and longing for—

I retreated with severed limb … a throbbing stump of sadness. That solitary kiss; the response reduced to one harsh letter, one destructive plosive; that cutting K.

I wasn’t sure what I was traveling toward or even what I wanted. I just had to go. It was me who had unconsciously
engineered our breakup for so long, yet there I was, yearning for return, dragged under by nostalgia’s fierce undertow. I watched the countryside straddling the dual carriageway’s yawning asphalt as it rushed through the window frames of the coach. I gripped my phone in case of reply.

My destination was a coffee shop round the corner from the bus station in town. Destination, of course, shares its etymological root with destiny. But something told me that destiny had bugger all to do with this. Destiny could get up out of it. Destiny could fuck right off.

I arrived before Lucy, opening the door with its nosy-parker bell on top. It was a standard café of the type you find in every town or city. There were the aggressive thwacks of coffee strainers on the counter and the fizzing of rampant milk-steamers; the busy chatterings of hobnobbers and casual meeter-uppers. I expected a few student characters, each to their own, buried in textbooks and night-out reverie, but of course there were none: it was Wellingborough. I took my place.

Might she know everyone in the café? Had she become acquainted with every punter in our hometown … now more her hometown than mine? Of course not. But in my head … in my head … All these new people she had let into her life, traveling up her motorway in bumper-to-bumper traffic, the other side of the road from me. Me, in the outbound lane. Me, alone. Everyone in there was rooting for her, as far as I was concerned. A tricky away game when even my home form was far from stellar.

“Hey,” I said, scrambling from the table when she glided in.

“Hi.” Her tone was obscure. We did that nervous dance of greeting, unsure whether to peck, kiss, hug—a pat on
the back?—or just smile, until we practically head-butted each other instead. She seemed fuller, galvanized, adjusted by new experiences and knowledge. Not cerebral knowledge, mind. Carnal. But that was probably the brushwork of my imagination; my restless distorting eye.

“It’s good to see you” (that’s me).

We sat down opposite each other in interview formation. There hung an invisible barrier between us, blocking my soft signals, fortifying her guardedness.

“How’s things?” I asked.

“Fine. I’m hungover.”

“Oh right. Heavy night?”

“Yeah. I drank far too much.”

“Was it a late one?”

“Yeah.”

“Who were you out with?”

“Friends.”

“Do they have names?”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t know them.”

“So? Why won’t you tell me who you were out with?”

“Eliot, stop it.”

“Whatever.”

With each jealous thud of my jackhammer heart Lucy recoiled a little further into herself. She chewed the inside of her bottom lip, not sultrily like she used to, but anxiously.

“What do you want to drink?”

“Just an orange juice.”

“Don’t you want a hot drink?”

“No. You know I hate caffeine.”

“Fair enough.”

She stopped me as I got up. “Eliot …”

“Yeah?” I said, spinning round like tortured lover in romantic movie … heavy … giddy … longing for revelation … say it, please, just say it … give me anything and I’ll take it.

“Can you get me a chocolate twist as well?”

“Sure.”

After surviving a barrage of options from the bloke behind the counter, I returned to Lucy and settled down for the long haul. “Oh, I have a gift for you,” I said, pulling a paperback from my jacket pocket. “See what you think.” I placed it on the corner of the table: Iris Murdoch’s
Under the Net
. I’m not entirely sure why I did this—to impress her? To continue molding her into my idea of the perfect girl? To remind her of our differences?

“What do you want, Eliot?”

“I don’t know,” I stuttered, surprised by her directness. “I just wanted to see you.”

“But why?”

“Because I miss you, and—”

“You can’t do this,” she said. I sat back, stunned:
but thy more serious eye a mild reproof darts, O beloved woman!
“You can’t push me away and then try and pull me back in. You know?” (Yeah, but I thought—) “You can’t put me down whenever you feel like it and just expect to pick me back up again,” she said, talking about me like I was a demented forklift truck. “I’ve been settling into my new life,” she continued. “You knew I was going to need some space for a while. But that’s all.” (But
I
didn’t need you to need space, did I? I mean just think about—) “You’re the one who goes quiet and distant, for no reason, until jealousy or curiosity brings you back round. I love you, but you can’t keep doing this to me.”

“Sorry. I didn’t realize I—”

“You made it seem like you’d lost interest. You were lovely all summer and then you changed again as soon as we went back to uni.” (
Dramatic pause
.) “You went quiet.”

“You’re the one who changed though,” I countered, unadvisedly, knowing that she was spot-on. “You’re too obsessed with your new life … your new friends.”

“No! That’s what you
wanted
to happen,” she said, growing more animated. “That’s how you’d pre-planned it in your head. You chase tension, Eliot.” (Well, I hadn’t bargained for this.) “It’s like you expect bad things to happen—you don’t trust anyone, and I don’t understand why. No one’s ever even done anything horrible to you! Your life is constant plain sailing.”

“That’s not true!” I retorted, stung by the venomous truth of her dart.

“Look, I can’t do this,” she said, welling up. “I’m not right for you—you know it and I know it … and it makes me so unhappy … makes me feel awful. All I’ve ever wanted is for you to want me as much as I want you and just accept me as I am … like I do you. But I don’t think you can. You used to, but that’s all changed now you’re comfortable at Oxford.”

“Please Lucy, just let me—”

“Eliot, stop it. You don’t even know what you really want, and it’s messing with my head. It’s not fair.”

“Sorry.”

She shriveled when I reached out to touch her—a reaction so alien that reality seemed to be betraying me.

“I’m gonna go,” she said. “I promised I’d meet some friends.”