Talking It Over (20 page)

I hope to God they’re not still doing it. I hope to God they’re not even sleeping in the same bed still. I can’t ask. What do you think?

After
la lune de miel
comes
la lune d’absinthe
. Who’d have thought that Stuart would turn violent in his liquor?

Stuart

I stop to see a weeping willow

crying on his pillow

maybe he’s crying for me …

Not very drunk.

Just drunk.

Gillian
And I know there’s a question I’ve got to answer. You’ve a right to ask it, and I can’t be surprised if there’s a sceptical tone to your voice, or even a bit of a sneer. Go on, ask it.

Look, Gill, you’ve told us how you fell in love with Stuart – getting soppy when you saw his cooking timetable – so what about telling us how you fell in love with Oliver? You saw him filling in his pools coupon, doing The Times crossword?

Fair enough. I’d probably be a bit dubious in your position. But I’d just like to say this. I didn’t choose what happened. I didn’t manipulate things, suddenly decide that Oliver was a ‘better deal’ or something than Stuart. It happened to me. I married Stuart, then I fell in love with Oliver. I don’t feel complacent about that. Some of it I don’t even like. It just happened.

But ‘that moment’ – the one people I don’t even know yet are going to ask me to remember. We were in a restaurant. It’s supposed to be French but it isn’t. I think half the waiters are Spanish and half are Greek, but they look Mediterranean enough and the chef puts anchovies and olives in everything and they call the place Le Petit Provençal, which seems to fool most people, or if not fool them, at least satisfy them.

We were there because Stuart was away for the night and Oliver insisted on taking me out to dinner. First of all I didn’t want to go, then I said I’d pay, then I suggested going Dutch, but we got into the usual male pride bit, and the way
that
works is that it’s harder for them to accept you paying half if they’re short of money. So there I was, half-reluctant, half-bullied, in a restaurant I didn’t much like but which I’d chosen because I thought it was cheap enough for him to take me to. None of this seemed to affect Oliver. He was very relaxed, as if all the negotiations it had taken to get us there had never occurred. I suppose I was also apprehensive in case he started slagging off Stuart, but quite the opposite. He said he didn’t remember much about school any more, but all the nice things were to do with Stuart. There was some gang they defeated all by themselves, just the two of them. There was someone they called ‘Feet’ because he had big hands. There was the time the two of them went hitch-hiking to Scotland. Oliver said it took them weeks to get there because he was such a snob about cars at that time he would actually turn down lifts when someone had stopped because he didn’t like the upholstery or the hub-caps. And then it rained all the time so they sat in bus-shelters and ate oat-cakes. Oliver said he’d already started to get interested in food so Stuart gave him a blind-fold test. Oliver closed his eyes and Stuart fed him alternately little bits of damp oat-cake and little bits of damp torn-up packaging. Stuart had claimed that Oliver couldn’t tell the difference.

It was all … surprisingly easy, I suppose, and Oliver grunted approvingly at the food even though we both knew it wasn’t up to much. As we were finishing our main course, he stopped a waiter who was passing our table.

‘Le vin est fini,’ Oliver said to him. He wasn’t showing off or anything, just assuming that the waiters at somewhere called Le Petit Provençal were French.

‘Sorry?’

‘Ah,’ said Ollie. He turned his chair slightly, and tapped the wine bottle as if teaching at that awful Shakespeare School of English. ‘Le vin … est … fini,’ he repeated, articulating carefully and with a rising note at the end, indicating that there was more to come. ‘The … wine …’ he went on in a thick non-English accent, ‘… comes … from … Finland.’

‘You want another bottle?’

‘Si, signor.’

I’m afraid I just hooted, which wasn’t very fair on the waiter, who went and got us another bottle rather grumpily. As he was pouring it into my glass, Ollie murmured, ‘A rather pleasant Chateau Sibelius, I think you’ll find.’

And that set me off again. I laughed till I coughed. Then I laughed till it hurt. And the thing about Ollie is he knows how to make a joke run. I don’t want to make comparisons, but Stuart isn’t very good at jokes and if he makes one he just leaves it there, as if he’s shot a rabbit or something and that’s the business done. Whereas Oliver keeps at it, and if you aren’t in the mood it could be tiresome, but I guess that evening I was in the mood.

‘And with the coffee, Modom? A little Kalevala? A Suomi on the rocks? I know, a glass of Karelia?’ I just got incapable at that point, and the waiter didn’t know what the joke was. ‘Yes, I think a finger of Suomi for my friend,’ said Ollie. ‘What brands do you have? Do you have Helsinki Fivestar?’

I waved my hands at him to stop, which the waiter thought meant something different. ‘Nothing for the lady. And for you sir?’

‘Oh,’ said Ollie, pretending to come down and suddenly
looking serious. ‘Ah. Yes. I’ll just have a small Fjord, please.’ Then we took off again, and when I came out of it my sides were aching, I was looking across at Ollie, his eyes were glistening, and I thought to myself, God this is dangerous, this is
really beyond
dangerous. Then Ollie went quiet, as if he’d felt it too.

You don’t find this as funny as I did? That’s all right. I’m only telling you because you asked. And we did leave a large tip in case the waiter thought we were laughing at him.

Stuart

And as the skies turn gloomy

Nightbirds whisper to me …

Gillian
The first time I met Oliver I asked him if he was wearing make-up. That was a bit embarrassing – I mean, to remember this afterwards as almost the first thing you said to someone you fell in love with – but it wasn’t so far out. I mean, sometimes it
is
as if Oliver wears make-up with people. He likes to be dramatic, he likes to shock them a bit. Only he doesn’t with me. He can be quiet, he can be himself, he knows he doesn’t have to act up a storm to impress me. Or rather, that if he did he wouldn’t.

It’s a bit of a joke between us. He says I’m the only person who sees him without make-up. But there’s truth in that.

Oliver says it’s not surprising either. He says that’s what I’m like. I spend my days cleaning the gook off pictures, so naturally I do with him too. ‘Spit and rub,’ he says. ‘No harsh solvents necessary. Just spit and rub, and soon you’re down to the real Oliver.’

And what’s that like? Gentle, truthful, not very sure of himself, a bit lazy and very sexy. You can’t see that? Give him time.

Now I’m sounding like my mother.

…(
female, between 25 and 35
) If you ask me, there’s a simple explanation. Maybe not simple, actually, but I’ve come across it before. The point is …

What? What did you say? You want my credentials. YOU want MY credentials? Look, if anyone’s got to provide documentation it should be you. What have
you
done to qualify for
my
opinions? What’s your authority, incidentally? Just getting this far doesn’t allow you to come on like the Old Bill.

You’d
believe
me more? Look, as far as I’m concerned it’s a cream bun to a twopenny fuck whether or not you believe me. I’m giving you an opinion, not an autobiography, so if you don’t like the deal, stroll on stranger. In any case I’m not hanging around, so there’s no need to come the old-fashioned stuff with me. I understand, sure I do. You want to know whether I’m Ginny the genial GP, Harriet the haughty Harley Street headshrinker, Rachael the raunchy rock star or Nathalie the nuzzling night-nurse. My credibility depends upon my professional or social position. Well, excuse me. Or rather, fuck off. And if you desperately crave an identity, I’ll give you
one. Maybe I’m not really a girl after all, I just look this way. Perhaps I went to the universities of Casablanca and Copacabana. Postgraduate work in the Bois de Boulogne.

OK, I’m sorry. You just got on my wick. Also, you caught me in a bad mood. (No,
that’s
none of your business, either.) Christ, look, I’ll just tell you what I think and then I’ll fuck off myself. You can make up your own mind. I’m not exactly flavour of the month around here at the moment, so you won’t be seeing me after this.

And of course I’m not a transsexual. You can ask Stuart if you like, he’ll confirm it, he’s seen the evidence. Sorry, shouldn’t laugh at my own jokes, it’s just that you seem so disapproving. OK, look, I know those two boys from way back. I remember Oliver when his idea of opera was Dusty Springfield coming out of both speakers in the back of a Cortina. I remember Stuart when he wore glasses with bits of elastic wire round the ears. I remember Oliver in string vests and Hush Puppies, Stuart when he used to put dry shampoo on his hair. I’ve been to bed with Stuart (sorry: no press release) and I’ve also turned down Ollie for that matter.
Those are
my credentials. Plus having Stuart bend my ear about the whole story over little half-secret lunches and dinners for the past weeks and months. At first, to be honest, I thought he was after something else. Yeah, Miss Mugg all over again, I know, story of my life. I thought Stuart wanted to see
me
. Pretty stupid, I admit. He just wanted a fucking great ear to pour his troubles into. I sat there and he’d never once ask what I’d been up to, and then at the end of the evening he’d apologise for going on so much about his own life, and then we’d meet again and he’d do exactly the same. He’s obsessed, that guy, to put it mildly,
and I don’t need it. I really don’t need it, not at this point in my life. Another reason for getting out of all this.

I think Oliver is queer for Stuart. I’ve always felt that. I don’t know how queer he is generally, but I’d say he’s queer for Stuart. That’s why he’s always put Stuart down, laughing at how shabby and boring he is. He puts Stuart down so that neither of them will have to admit what’s always been there, what might be there if they didn’t play the game of Stuart being shabby and boring and such an unlikely companion for flash Oliver.

OK, you’d got there already. I’m not so surprised. But the thing I’ve got to say, the only thing really, is this. The
reason
Oliver wants to fuck Gillian is because it’s the nearest he can ever get to fucking Stuart. OK? You read me? Harriet the haughty Harley Street headshrinker would call it by some proper name, but I’m not her. I just believe that for Oliver, fucking Gillian is a way of fucking Stuart.

Think about it. I’m off now. You won’t be seeing me again, not unless there’s a real turn-up for the book.

Stuart
Oh no. Not Val. Spare me Val. Spare yourselves Val. We really don’t need her around. She’s trouble. Trouble with a T, as Oliver used to put it.

She’s the one who wouldn’t tell you her name (what is it these people have about names?). I knew her a long time ago, as no doubt she’s told you. Have you noticed that when anyone says they’ve known a person for a really long time, it almost always means they’re going to say something nasty about them? Oh no, you don’t know them
really
, not like
I do, why I remember …

Val’s big line about me is that she knew me when I used dry shampoo on my hair, a million years ago. Now, let’s get this straight, if you can bear a little tedium. Once, many years ago, someone, one person, once, told me that there was this powder stuff which you squirted on your hair between wet washes and you rubbed it in then brushed it out and it looked as if you’ve washed your hair. All right? So I bought some – this, I have to point out in my defence, was after I’d read somewhere that wet-washing your hair too often could be bad for it – and I used it one evening for the first and only time and was having a drink in a pub when this incredible screech comes from behind me. ‘Stu, you’ve got
terrible
dandruff!’ –and it was Val of course, thank you very much, always one to put you at your ease. And since I’ve never had dandruff, I felt my hair and then said, ‘It’s dry shampoo,’ whereupon Val informed the whole pub that it wasn’t dandruff but dry shampoo and what on earth was that and so on and so on. Not surprisingly, in view of this incident, when I got home I threw away my little puffer-tube of dry shampoo and have never used it from that day to this.

She insists on having a claim on you, that girl. Or rather, woman. She’s 31, as I expect she didn’t tell you, and after a glittering career selling cut-price holidays is now working as office manager in a small printing firm off Oxford Street. The sort that does party invitations and has a couple of photocopiers in the front, only one of which ever works. I don’t say this to put her down, you understand, but merely to dispel any Woman of Mystery stuff she may have tried on you. This is who you’re dealing with. Val from Pronto Printa.

Oliver
She
what?
She said
that?
It’s outrageous, it’s scurrile, it’s the dreariest
mensonge
she could have thought up. That girl is trouble. Trouble with a T and that rhymes with B and that stands for Bitch.

She turned me down in the matter of rumpy pumpy?
She
turned
me
down, right? Project, therefore, on to that curvous screen inside your forehead the following animated pictures, and press your pinkie on the Dolby switch lest subtleties of dialogue evade you. Once upon a sunbeam, Oliver, despite vociferous New Year’s Resolutions to the contrary, finds himself yet again at one of those slovenly events attended by lumpen frolickers bearing miniature beer-kegs under their arms, where all the girls ferociously inhale Silk Cut as if beneficial to health (I speak as no priggish reformée – but if you’re going to smoke,
smoke
), and where you fear that at any moment you will be seized from behind by some chintzy pair of hands seeking to enlist you in that never-fail lithium-inducer, the drabble-tailed conga. It was – you’ve guessed! – a party.