Starter For Ten (32 page)

I take the green jumper and tracksuit bottoms off in a way that doesn't seem too sexually provocative, and contemplate leaving the hiking socks on, for comfort's sake, but it's not a good look, pants and socks, so I take them off and put them by the bed, just in case.

'Do you want to be up against the wall, or ...?' she says.

'Don't mind . . .'

Till be up against the wall then, shall I?'

'Okay!'

'Got a glass of water?'

'Yep,' and she gets under the hand-made patchwork eiderdown, and I follow.

To begin with we don't actually touch each other, not on purpose, and there's some shuffling round as we realise just exactly how small the bed is. Finally we adjust ourselves into what seems like a workable position, which involves lying curled up in parallel, like quotation marks, but with me not actually daring to touch her, as if she were a live rail. Which, in a way, she is.

'Comfy?' she says.

'Uh-huh.'

'Nifty-nift, Brian.'

What? '"Nifty-nift?"'

'Just something Daddy used to say, you know, instead of nighty-night?'

'Nifty-nift to you too, Alice.'

'Turn the light out, will you?'

'Don't you mean turn the "lift" out?' I say, which if you ask me is a pretty witty thing to come up with at 3.42 in the morning, but she doesn't say anything or make a noise even, so I turn off the light. For a moment I wonder if this will act as some sort of catalyst to make us lose our inhibitions and unleash our potent mutual secret longings, but it doesn't, it just makes the room dark. We lie exactly as before, in quotation marks, not touching, and it soon becomes clear that the actual muscular tension required to stay rigid and not touch her is going to be impossible to sustain, like holding a chair out at arm's length all night. So I relax slightly, and the top of my thigh comes into contact with the warm curve of her left buttock, and she doesn't seem to flinch or elbow me in the gut, so I assume it's all right.

But now I realise that I don't know what to do with my arms. The right arm, under my torso, is starting to tingle, so I wrench it out from under me, jabbing Alice in the kidneys.

'Ow!'

'Sorry!'

"S alright.'

But now they're just sort of dangling pointlessly in front of me, at weird angles, like a discarded marionette, and I'm trying to remember what I usually do with my arms when I'm not in bed with someone, i.e. my whole life. I try folding these strange new extra limbs across my chest, which doesn't seem quite right either, and now Alice has shifted slightly nearer the wall, taking the eiderdown with her, so that my backside is hanging over the edge of the bed, and a draught is blowing up the leg of my boxer shorts. So I can either yank the covers back, which will look a bit rude, or risk moving closer, which I do, so that I'm now lying curled-up tight against her back, which is wonderful, and I think is technically called spooning. I can feel the rise and fall of her breathing, and try and synchronise my own with hers in the hope that this will make me fall asleep, though this seems unlikely, because my heart is clearly beating way, way too fast, like a greyhound's.

And now her hair is in my mouth. I try to flick it away by spasming an assortment of facial muscles, but this doesn't seem to work, so instead I crane my head backwards as far as I can, but her hair's still there, creeping up my nostrils now. My arms are still folded across my chest and pressed against Alice's back, so I have to lean backward and extricate my arms and brush the hair away, but now my left arm is outside the eiderdown, and cold, and I don't know where to put it, and my right arm is starting to tingle, either from cramp or an impending heart attack, and the under-arm deodorant is smelling overwhelmingly Cool and Blue, and my boxers are out in the draught again, and my feet are cold, and I'm wondering if I should maybe reach over and get the hiking socks and ...

'Quite a fidget, aren't you?' mumbles Alice.

'Sorry. Can't work out what to do with my arms!'

'Here . . .' and then she does the most amazing thing. She reaches over and takes my arm and pulls it tight around her ribs, under her T-shirt, so that my hand is resting against the warm skin of her belly, and I think I feel the curve of her breast brush against my forearm.

'Better?'

'Much better.'

'Sleepy?' she asks, which is an absurd question really, considering that her right breast is rubbing against my wrist.

'Not ...really,' I say.

The neither. Talk to me.'

'What about?'

'Anything.'

'Okay.' I decide to grasp the nettle. 'What did you think of Spencer?'

'I liked him.'

'You thought he was all right?'

'Yeah! Bit bloke-y, bit full-of-it . . .' she says, putting on her Radio 4 cockney accent '...bit ov a jack-the-lad, but I thought he was great. And he obviously loves you.'

'Well, I don't know about that . . .' I say.

'No, he does. You should have heard him, singing your praises.'

'I thought he was chatting you up . . .'

'God, no! Quite the opposite . . .' she says. What does that mean?

'How come?' I ask.

She hesitates, and half turns her head and says, 'Well ...he seemed to have this idea in his head that you had ... a bit of a crush on me.'

'Spencer said that? To you, tonight?'

'Uh-huh.'

So there it is. It's out there. I don't know what to say or where to look, so I roll onto my back and sigh, 'Well, thanks Spencer, thank you very much . . .'

The don't think he meant any harm by it.'

'Why, what else did he say?'

'Well, he was pretty pissed, but he said that you were a really good guy, and well, his exact words were that you could be a bit of a twat sometimes, but that you were really loyal, and decent, and that there weren't many blokes out there like you and if I had any sense I should ... go out with you.'

'Spencer said all that?'

'Uh-huh,' and I have this fleeting image of Spencer standing under the streetlight, in the drizzle with his eyes closed, the heel of his hand pressed against his forehead, and me walking the other way.

'What are you thinking?' says Alice, facing the wall again.

'Um. Don't know, really.'

'I assume it's true though, yeah? I mean, I had an idea that it might be true.'

'Is it really so obvious?'

'Well, I suppose I have caught you looking at me every now and then. And then there was our dinner date . . .'

'Oh, God, I'm so embarrassed about that . . .'

'Don't be. It was nice. It's just . . .'

'What.'

She's silent for a moment, and then sighs deeply and squeezes my hand, the kind of gesture that lets you know your hamster's died, and I brace myself for the good old 'let's-be-friends' speech. But then she flips over to look at me, pushes her hair behind her ears, and I can just about make out her face in the pulsing orange glow of the radio-alarm clock.

'I don't know, Brian. I'm really bad news, you know.'

'No, you're not . . .'

'I am though, really. Every relationship I've ever had has ended up with someone being hurt . . .'

'I don't mind . . .'

'You would though, if it was you. I mean, you know what I'm like . . .'

'I know, you've told me. But like I said, I don't mind, because isn't it better to try? I mean, wouldn't it be better to give it a go, see how we got on? It would be up to you, obviously, because you might not like me in that way . . .'

'Well, I've thought about it, obviously. But it's not even to do with you. I haven't really got time for that whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing, what with playing Hedda, and the team and everything. I value my independence too much . . .'

'Well, I really value my independence, too!' I say, though this is of course a lie of absolutely epic proportions, because what am I supposed to do with independence? You know what 'independence' is? 'Independence' is staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night with your fingernails digging into the palms of your hand. 'Independence' is realising that the only person you've spoken to all day is the man in the off-licence. 'Independence' is a value meal in the basement of Burger King on a Saturday afternoon. When Alice talks about 'independence' she means something completely different. 'Independence' is the luxury of all those people who are too confident, and busy, and popular, and attractive to be just plain old 'lonely'.

And make no mistake, lonely is absolutely the worst thing to be. Tell someone that you've got a drink problem, or an eating disorder, or your dad died when you were a kid even, and you can almost see their eyes light up with the sheer fascinating drama and pathos of it all, because you've got an issue, something for them to get involved in, to talk about and analyse and discuss and maybe even cure. But tell someone you're lonely and of course they'll seem sympathetic, but look very carefully and you'll see one hand snaking behind their back, groping for the door handle, ready to make a run for it, as if loneliness itself were contagious. Because being lonely is just so banal, so shaming, so plain and dull and ugly.

Well, I've been lonely as a snake all my life and I'm sick of it. I want to be part of a team, a partnership, I want to sense that audible hum of envy and admiration and relief when we walk into a room together - 'thank God, we're all right now, because they're here' - but also to be slightly scary, slightly intimidating, sharp as razors, Dick and Nicole Diver in Tender is the Night, glamorous and sexually enthralled with each other, like Burton and Taylor, or like Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe, except stable and sensible and constant, without the mental breakdowns and infidelity and divorce. I can't say any of this out loud, of course, because there's nothing at this moment that would scare her more, short of producing an axe, and I certainly can't use the word 'lonely'

because it does tend to make people uncomfortable. So what do I say instead? I take a deep breath, and sigh, and put my hand to my head, and finally this is what I come up with.

'All I know is that I think you're absolutely amazing, Alice, and stunningly beautiful of course, not that it matters, and that I just love being with you, spending time with you, and I think that, well I really think that we should . . .' and then there's a pause, and that's when I do it. I kiss Alice Harbinson.

And then I'm kissing her, actually kissing her properly, on the mouth and everything. Her lips are warm but dry at first, and very slightly chapped, so that I can feel a little hard, sharp spur of dead skin on her bottom lip, which I contemplate biting off, but wonder if maybe that's perhaps a bit audaciously sensual, biting, within the first few seconds. Maybe I could kiss it off, might that be possible? Can you kiss off dead skin? What might that involve? I'm just about to try when Alice pulls her head away, and I think maybe I've blown it, but instead she just smiles and reaches up and pulls the little flap of dead skin off her own lip and drops it down the side of the bed. Then she blots her lip with the back of her hand, glances at it to check she's not bleeding, licks her lips and we're kissing again, and it's heaven.

When it comes to kissing, I'm obviously no connoisseur, but I'm pretty sure that this is good kissing. It's very different from the Rebecca Epstein experience; Rebecca's a great person and a lot of fun and everything, but kissing Rebecca Epstein was all hard edges. Alice's mouth appears to have no edges at all, just warmth and softness, and despite the ever-so-slight tang of hot, minty bad breath from one of us, me probably, it is pretty much heaven, or it would be if I wasn't suddenly aware that I don't know what to do with my tongue, which suddenly seems to have grown massive and meaty, like something you see shrink-wrapped in plastic in a butcher's. Is a tongue appropriate here, I wonder? And then in answer I feel her tongue just tentatively touching my teeth, and then she takes my hand and moves it on top of her T-shirt, Snoopy lying on his kennel, and then underneath her T-shirt, and then after that I have to confess that everything starts to get a little bit blurred.

QUESTION: What was the more familiar name of the Hungarian rabbi's son Eric Weisz, famed for his feats of escapology and disappearance?

ANSWER: Harry Houdini.

The next morning we kiss some more, but with less of the ardent erotic abandon of the previous night, now that we're in daylight and she can see what she's up against. Also Alice has got a 9.15 Mask Workshop, so just after 8.00 I'm holding on to my mud-caked shoes, and heading for the door.

'Sure you don't want me to walk in with you?'

'No, no, that's okay . . .'

'You're sure?'

'I've got to get my stuff together, have a shower and everything . . .' I'd be very happy to hang around for that, and feel in some indefinable way that I've earnt it, but it's a communal bathroom, which obviously makes things difficult, and besides, I've got to remember, play it cool, play it cool...

'Well, thank you for having me,' I say, trying for a kind of saucy swagger that I don't quite pull off, then I lean in and kiss her. She pulls away a little too quickly, and for a moment I wonder if I should be offended, but she immediately provides a perfectly rational explanation; 'Sorry, bad breath!'

'Not at all,' I say, even though her breath actually does smell really, really bad. I don't care though. She could be breathing fire and I wouldn't mind. 'You could be breathing fire and I wouldn't mind,' I say.

She makes a sceptical 'hmmm' noise and rolls her eyes delightedly, and says, 'Yeah, well, you'd better go, before anyone sees you. And Brian?'

'Uh-huh?'

'You're not to tell anyone. Promise?'

'Of course.'

'Our secret ...?'

'Absolutely.'

'Completely?'

'I promise.'

'Okay - ready?' and she opens the door and peers down the corridor to check that the coast is clear, then gives me a loving little shove out of the door, as if pushing an unwilling parachutist from a plane, and I turn around just in time to see her beautiful face disappearing behind the door, smiling, I'm pretty sure.

I sit on a radiator in the corridor, and tap my ruined shoes together, flaking mud all over the parquet floor.