After alyson, p.6
After Alyson, page 6
And then Alpha’s mum, whose name I now remember is Kalpna, is talking to me about my bloody hearing and how well I seem to be following the conversation. I do my best not to get uppity – ‘fucking doctors’ I think, ‘we’re not here for a public case conference.’ And I want to make this point to her, but I don’t, because I know if I do I’ll come across as an arsehole. She’s only being nice and Alpha looks really pleased that I’m listening to her and she’s talking to me.
“So what do you think of Devon County Council?” she asks and I’m off like a racehorse, talking too quickly, throwing too many words into sentences, trying too hard to impress, and I feel like I’ve developed verbal incontinence. I want Alpha to interrupt with a change of subject, but she is just smiling and listening. In the end, the three pints (two water, 1 bitter) start hammering on my bladder. ‘Let us out before we blow this baby,’ a voice is yelling from within my boxer shorts. So I make my excuses and go to the loo and stand there with my knob out, pissing into the urinal for what seems like a lifetime. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ I’m thinking. ‘Get a grip man!’
I can’t remember much after this. Alpha went off and talked to some kids her own age and her mum just chatted, but I am buggered if I know about what. She could have been telling me I was the ugliest man in the world for all I knew. It wasn’t that I couldn’t hear her, I was just concentrating on not being pissed. I was trying really hard not to be leery and at the same time getting intoxicated with this beautiful woman sat next to me. Her clothes, her voices, her perfume and her general presence all had the sober part of my brain thinking, ‘Wow! Bin-fucking-go!’
I decided at some point to quit whilst I was ahead. I think I could’ve only have been there for just over an hour and a quarter but I knew that I was already pushing my luck. Any second now I would forget I was not watching some wonderful porno movie and start masturbating in the middle of the pub. So I quit whilst my hands were still away from my groin and made my excuses.
Now I’m lying here on my bed. The Brucey jacket is crumpled on the sofa in the lounge, I’m looking up at the ceiling which is spinning and I can’t get Kalpna’s face out of my head, or her voice.
I drift asleep, aware that I haven’t brushed my teeth, aware that I haven’t done half the things I normally do and wondering why my head hurts so much. But I’m grinning, I can feel this big cheesy grin spread across my face and I know that I must look stupid and pissed and whatever. It’s the happiest and silliest I’ve been in ages. It’s the happiest and silliest I’ve been since, I lie there thinking, and then realise. It’s the happiest and silliest I’ve been since Al left.
* * *
I remember my first brand new car. It was a little red Fiat Punto. Not particularly flash, but I loved it. It did everything I wanted and more and, from time to time, I would get the occasional smile from people as I drove around in it, singing along to cassettes or maybe listening to football commentary. I adored it, kept it sparkling clean inside and out and was always careful where I parked it. Always under a lamppost, always somewhere bright. Anyway, one day I was coming home from work and wanted to pick up a few bits and pieces from the supermarket. So I parked it in a tight space in Sainsbury’s car park.
When I got back to the car, weighed down by a couple of bags of shopping, I noticed that somebody had put a dent in it and scratched the paint just above the wheel arch. I was furious that somebody could be so cruel to do this to my little car. The car was repaired, but I would always look at the wheel arch where the scratch and dent had been, convinced that the rest of the world could tell that the car had been marked.
After Patrice, I think I felt the same way about Al. The incident in Newcastle had been the same as the first scratch on a new car. It was the same car, I was the same driver. I even continued to lavish the same amount of time and attention on it. Just every now and again, I’d forget to put an old can of diet coke in the bin, or notice that I hadn’t thrown away an old crisp packet that had somehow drifted under the passenger seat. With Al, there were no discarded sweet wrappings or anything, just a sense that I had made us vulnerable and I was convinced that she and everybody else could see this so I tried all the harder to show that everything was more than hunky dory.
What I really wanted was to have a conversation with Al about what had happened and to explain that I had walked away, that I found the whole thing terribly embarrassing and was really annoyed with bloody Patrice Hardy (particularly as she had subsequent been leaving messages for me at the office for me to call her – but I’d probably leave that bit out of the conversation). That Al was the only woman I wanted, that nobody could be better than she could and that nothing really had happened. And why didn’t I have that conversation? Because I was scared that to have it would raise the risk of Al never speaking to me again.
In the screenplay that is written in the hearts and mind of the protagonist, in the gender war males are sex-obsessed demons and women are angels who only get their wings broken by bastard men. My experience of this is a bit different. Certainly, in Patrice’s world, she was more devil than cherub, and whilst I wasn’t searching for beatification, I certainly didn’t feel that I had been ignoble. Yet that fear thing, fear of the consequences of telling Al the truth, had me by the short and curlies.
So instead of addressing the truth, I tried to be even more loving and passionate in my letters. I sent flowers, chocolates, Kylie Minogue scrapbooks and increased the quota of phone calls from twice to three times a week. Anything to cover up the scratch on us from Northern Ireland. I also spent lavishly on planning our journey back to Britain and insisted that, rather than wait for her result, she came here in late July, I would come out to Perth to meet here, rather than meet her in Kuala Lumpur as planned. That way we would have more time together and still get the benefits of the few weeks of what we laughingly called an English summer. But no matter how much I practised polished prose, or cleansed myself from what had happened, there was always a crisp packet lurking in the back of my mind, the crumbs of a silly night of discretion spilling out to spoil the glow of our nice, clean, loving relationship. As with the Punto, I knew exactly where the dent was. I also kept on seeing Patrice’s perfect bottom and, despite myself, knew that I would see it again, in all its glory, at some point in the future. And the worse thing about it was knowing that I was like every other man, pretending to be above it but infatuated by her bloody bum.
* * *
“She really likes you, you know.”
I can’t believe this – how the hell does Anna know about Kalpna and how does she know that she ‘really likes me.’
Anna was sat next to me grinning, she could see I wanted to know how she knew.
“Come on,” I say, “have you been hiring private detectives?”
We were in my car, I was driving, and she was doing her best to cause an accident.
“No, no nothing like that. People just have a habit of telling me things – I mean, I don’t ask them to, they just sort of tell me. I must have a trustworthy face I suppose.” Which is true, because Anna does have a trustworthy face. She would have made an ideal police officer except that nobody trusts the police anymore, so her face would’ve been wasted in the Devon & Cornwall Constabulary.
“Jim,” she eventually says.
“Jim, at the Ship??” I ask, incredulous that there is a link between Anna and the lopsided-headed, humorously challenged, barman.
“He watches Argyle with my husband, has a seat near him in the stand, anyway, he reckons that on Valentine’s night” Anna interrupts herself, “I mean that’s a long way to describe one evening.”
I’m irritated.
“On Valentine’s night?” I repeat, wanting her to finish the sentence.
“Oh yes” Anna continues, “well after you left, she was crestfallen for a bit. Then Alpha cheered her up and by the end of the evening Jim heard her saying how much she liked you. That’s all.”
Anna’s expression was amazingly earnest, there was nothing malicious or gossipy about it.
“I mean,” she continued, “me and Flo thought it would be good. You know, her being a Doctor and everything.”
I let out a sigh, a deep exasperated sigh.
“So,” I asked, “have you done a paper for the Social Services Committee approval? I mean, obviously, if you and Flo approve the whole council will back the plan unanimously.”
“Mark!! Look, there’s no need to be like that – we were just talking between ourselves and we thought it would be good. For you. If you want our advice, that is.”
“Well you’ve given it now so I’ll just have to think about it.”
I dropped Anna at the corner of her road in Honiton. She was looking a bit worried as she got out of the car, which was another vocational skill that she seemed to have no real opportunity to apply – her worried look was, well, worrying.
“Will Liam drop you in the morning?” I asked.
Then she started giggling.
“Mark, you always do this! Liam is two and is my son! Dom is my husband. If Liam was going to drop me, we’d have to set off now. Even then I don’t know if we’d both fit into his Postman Pat peddle car.”
The humour broke my annoyance. I laughed.
“OK, OK – well, whichever one of the men in your life it is that brings you – I’ll see you tomorrow.” With that I left her on the corner and drove off.
I have driven about half a mile when my phone vibrates in my pocket. There is a text message, but oddly, when I open it, there is no number.
‘She is evil – beware!’ it reads. I have to concentrate on not crashing the car again! I glance around me as if there will be some electronic fingerprints around the car leading me to the sender of the message. What on earth is this about? Who is the ‘she’? Anna? Kalpna? Surely not, I wouldn’t put either of these people down as being evil. I am convinced it is either a wind up or a strange mistake, a faulty text message going to the wrong person.
Once I am on the A303 heading back towards Exeter, I glance at the message again.
“She is evil. Beware!” There is no time date stamp, nothing. This is totally weird.
I notice that the petrol warning light has flashed into life on the dashboard. I make a detour to a Tesco near to County Hall and stand with the petrol nozzle in one, hand filling the tank. ‘I must replace this bloody Car,’ I think as it swallows as much petrol as it can. Just as I am finished, I notice somebody waving to me from across the forecourt.
It takes me a second to register it, but I realise it is Kalpna. She has just come from the pay kiosk and instead of returning to her car, she wanders across to me.
“Hello Mark,” she smiles “How are you?”
I’m pleased to see her, I wonder if it shows.
“Oh, maintaining body and soul,” I say by way of introduction, “what about you?”
She sighs. “Well to be honest,” she says in that gorgeous, erection-inducing voice “I am really frustrated.”
‘Join the bloody club,’ I think, but instead raise my eyebrows.
“Oh? Why, what’s the problem?”
“I’ve just spent an hour in there, shopping for the weekend, only to have just got a phone call to say that the person -” then she corrects herself, quickly, “people who were meant to be coming for dinner tomorrow night aren’t coming. Sod’s bloody law, isn’t it!?”
Sometimes in life you get one shot at open goals. You either blaze them over the bar and are laughed at by the crowd and admonished by the commentators or you bang the ball into the back of the net in a moment of inspiration. Its either Rooney the hero or Wayne the donkey. I decided to lunge at the ball.
“Well you could always cook for me,” I say.
Is the ball going to bang into the net or is it going to balloon way up over the petrol station forecourt out of the ground, only for the other customers to start a chant of ‘would you like to know how wide’ to add to my humiliation?
Kalpna smiles.
“You’re a fast one,” she says but doesn’t seem offended by the idea just amused. “OK – a deal – you can bring some wine, but yes, I’d like that.”
In my head, the crowd are going wild. I am punching the air and being surrounded by players on the pitch and the big screens around the stadium are showing an instant replay. How did the boy do it, where did he find that from?
“Would 8 o’clock tomorrow be OK?” she says.
“Great,” I say “Looks like I won’t have to brave Tesco’s myself now.”
She smiles and walks back to her car. I’m still celebrating the goal when she stops.
Oh fuck! Did the linesman have his flag up? Me and the other players are glancing left and right, what could be possibly wrong with that? Perfectly good, opportunistic strike. The crowd fall silent, my teammates look worried.
She walks back across “Mark – do you actually know where I live?”
This is a really good question, because I don’t.
She reaches into her handbag and scribbles down her address
“It’s Hampton View, number 8.”
I laugh, “Ok – I’ll find you – otherwise I would’ve spent the evening knocking on every door in Hope Cove.”
She smiles, wanders back to her car, which I now see is a sporty soft-top affair, waves again and the drives off.
Back of the net! The celebrations continue. I run off to the end of the ground, occupied by the visiting supporters – who just happen to be all the women who have ever turned me down for a date – and I put my index finger to my lip whilst using the other hand to cup my ear so that I can hear their silence. Ha! Ha-fucking ha! Then I’m racing back towards the ‘home’ end where friends, family, my favourite long forgotten school teachers, waiters in restaurants who I’ve generously tipped in the past, helpful estate agents, considerate motorists, Alexi Sayle, Eric Morecambe – they’re all stood, ecstatic for me in my moment of genius, my moment of triumph. Yes! Yes! Come on!!!! Are you watching, Wayne Rooney!??
But then I’m not in a football stadium. I’m stood on a petrol station forecourt. Grinning, again, after Kalpna.
* * *
In July, by the time we stepped off the plane in Kuala Lumpur, I had no doubts about Al & I having a future together. My credit card paid for a flight out to Perth and the stopover on the way back. I did wonder why I had to behave like a gaoler collecting a prisoner, but dismissed this. I enjoyed her company – that was all there was to it, wasn’t it?
The last few days of Al’s time in Perth had been filled with relatives coming around. She seemed to have thousands, and I couldn’t remember half the names, other than if I said Bill or Mary I tended to have a 50% chance of getting the name right. They all wanted to see her and to meet me, the Pommie person who was taking her away. She seemed genuinely sad to be leaving Perth but also excited about coming to England.
On the day before we were due to leave, her dad suggested we go for a drink. It wasn’t in reality a suggestion, more like an order. So we found ourselves at a beachside bar, sipping Fosters and at first talking about pleasantries. How, for instance, he missed Liverpool. But he only had to see a news programme about the decline of the docks, the way the city had become, to realise that he had made the right decision to come here. Then he switched the conversations.
“Yeah,” he said, “I’ve always been good at decisions. What about you Mark?”
It struck me as a strange question and one that I really had no easy way of answering.
“I think I’m good at decisions. Yeah, my judgement’s pretty sound.”
“You see,” he said quietly, “I’m worried that you and Al could be making mistakes. I mean, I know Al. She’s lovely, but she can be as difficult as hell too, a real handful if she decides she wants to be one.”
“I think I’ve picked that up. But, you know, I love her.”
“Well that’ll help, but she could try the patience of a saint, not to mention a few devils.”
“It’s part of the attraction,” I said. I didn’t mention the great sex or the fact that I just wanted to spend as much time as I could with her.
“Look” he said, now being more direct, “if it goes wrong, I won’t think any the worse of you. You’re a decent bloke Mark and as long as you do your best with her that’s all I can ask.”
I felt myself becoming emotional. Mates had called me a decent bloke before, but never a mate’s dad, well not a girlfriend’s dad anyway. I was also getting upset at the prospect of it going wrong.
“It won’t go wrong. I promise.”
“Mark, mate, that’s not entirely within your gift, OK? I know you’ll do your best, but there are two of you in this. it’s not all down to you.”
‘OK,’ I thought, message understood.
We sat silently for a moment both, staring into the middle distance. I took what he was saying at face value – just a man-to-man chat about how impossible his daughter could be. Nothing more, nothing less.
Eventually, out of boredom of the silence, I suppose, I wanted to move us on.
“Another beer?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, “it’s a beautiful day, I’ve got stacks of work to be doing back at the office, but bugger it, another beer would be smashing.”
I left him nursing the remnants of his glass and set off to the bar to buy us both another drink. The rest of the afternoon passed with him and I talking about football, about Birmingham – a city he claimed never to have had a good time in, which I found unbelievable – and him relating stories to me about Al as a kid. All very civilised, all very pleasant. Yet in reality, his comments about devils and saints unsettled me.
Checking into The Colonial hotel in Kuala Lumpur, most of this sense of unease had disappeared. It felt a bit like catarrh left over from a cold – you thought it had gone, but you were sometimes aware that it stopped you doing things quite as quickly. So we were in the bar in the Colonial, splendid place that made me feel like somebody out of a Graham Green novel, and we had splashed out on cocktails. I’d splashed out on a Singapore Sling for Al, I can’t actually remember what I was drinking. I noticed anyway that her eye was roving around the bar, almost like she was looking for somebody else. It wasn’t something overt but more covert, like she was weighing up the scene for something. I noticed too that she seemed more than friendly with the local Malaysian barman.
