I had gone to her seeking comfort. Not so much for sympathy as an audience for grief and grievances. Hers was the most coldly rational mind I knew, quarterlessly incisive. Would she scorn it as a self-inflicted predicament or would she accept my red-faced excuses about an irrational, overpowering external force that had taken possession of me and delighted in manipulating me with the callous, vicarious pleasure of a tyrant imposing his whim on the less exalted?
In emergencies, overstate your case: they lap it up, it endears you to them. Try it and see.
It occurred to me that we hadn’t met up in this particular venue for an exchange of confidences since she had been part-timing in the paperbacks section of the bookshop round the corner to fund her M.Sc. Café Byzantium. No crusading associations any longer, no oriental mysticism, though they had recently started serving lamb biryani and chicken tikka lunches as a profitable sideline to the traditional dainties on permanent display (scones, croissants and carrot cake) for the respectable clientele to indulge in whilst surreptitiously slipping off ill-fitting court shoes to cool their toes between the carrier bags stuffed with hygienically pre-packed single serving dinners.
The cafetières were as generous as ever. Indeed, the repertoire of flavours had expanded since more carefree days. Instead of an indifferent: “Do you want weak, medium or strong, dear?” you could now agonise over Mountain Blend, Java, Columbian, Mocha or Continental. Only fresh ground in this establishment and they had even perched an inflatable parrot atop one of the jars of beans to complete the effect.
Remarkably, reassuringly little had changed. It still felt like a cocoon, a safe haven. Same old tables D-I-Y’ed together out of imitation marble slabs resting on Singer sewing machine stands. The rafters hadn’t been repainted: the familiar warm red with tasteful gilding. Then the intricate decorative ironwork in the naïve style: sheaves of wheat, angels, weeping clouds, Celtic harps, comedy and tragedy masks, some of which had been bent back or pulled apart by malevolent hands. Mindless, of course. It reminded me of the splintered cherry saplings on the Middle Meadow Walk, planted to fill the gaps in the avenue where vandals had previously struck. Ah, the evils of testosterone and the group instinct. If only I could walk with him there in spring, in blossom season, show him how the arching branches briefly blotted out the sky with their ecstasy of petals, I would kiss him, disapproval at such a public display be damned and all the harm would be banished from the world for that moment. No point in dwelling on it.
How many times had we taken refuge here? Huddling conspiratorially, glancing now and then at the occupants of the other tables, feigning anxiety that they might overhear and take offence. What did we care, really? We wanted them to overhear, to jolt them out of their cosy complacency. They always disappointed us, though, chatting about trivialities, the waking dead. God, were we gallus in those days. Byzantium was the ideal bolthole for the grant-dependent student, heated more effectively than the average bed-sit with its standard-issue coin-gobbling high ceiling and single bar leg-blotching electric fire. Not to forget the white meters: no switching on until after 23.00 hours and make bloody sure you don’t overdo the cold water in the bath or you’ve had it.
Yes, the customer could sit there amongst the bowls of candied brown sugar as long as she wanted without fear of peremptory commands masquerading as apologetic requests: it was too bad that you had to make room for a dead animal-slung, rouge-lipped, well-manicured professional who could contribute more to the profit margin than a couple of pale, undernourished, caffeine-driven denizens of that excruciating limbo between the completion of higher education and the dole queue or the mortgage, Volvo, tail-wagging companion and…
She leaned back, licking the cappuccino froth from her upper lip, expectant, but not pushily eager. That utilitarian protruding of the tongue would have sufficed to provoke nostril flares of disdain from some of my present associates who would have dabbed it away demurely with the supplied napkin. For show. As it was, her paper serviette lay idle, sullen, neglected, deprived of a function. Deprived. That word, source of all my complaints, all my futile and self-destructive laments.
She and I were both doing well on the face of it – no more cabbage dinners of tortured ingenuity – devising new recipes for serving that humble, indispensable cousin of the lettuce. I was famed for offering it to guests boiled (with onions), fried, pickled, stewed, raw for salad, curried and – pièce de résistance! – sweet and sour. She had secured life tenure as a teacher in France, I as a civil servant. Neither of us had arrears or debts, we were both smartly attired, yet not ostentatiously so, relatively young, having hit thirty within a month of each other. Comfortable would be the most appropriate adjective to apply to us. We could each boast a steady income, immune to fluctuations in the economy, and good promotion prospects. We paid our membership fees to Amnesty and Save the Whale as well as donating spontaneously to assorted good causes when conscience prompted or a heart-wrenching appeal was printed in the quality dailies. We could afford to travel as we wanted: this brief afternoon of nostalgia and catching up was part of a rare coinciding visit home. United in deprivation.
Somehow all conscious thought, all conversation eventually wearied back to the inescapable, ugly reality of it: we were deprived.
Frauenüberschuß, a concept we had first encountered as history undergraduates. I’d made her acquaintance that morning in the windowless, distraction-proof lecture theatre. In spite of the nine o’clock start you had to be punctual or your pursuit of the past would be marred by relegation to the aisles. She always sat in the second row, to the right of the centre section. I honestly do not know why she had caught my eye from my habitual vantage point in the relative anonymity of half way up, half way along, but gradually, watchfully I worked my way down towards her. Contact was established by means of a freshly penned poem, some semi-scanning doggerel of which I mercifully have no copy. Never mind, it served its purpose.
Frauenüberschuß. A snippet of home movie footage skilfully edited into a German art house film without upsetting the continuity: a legion of women clearing the rubble of once-suburbia, headscarves incongruously bright and cheerful, soaking up the sweat of gritting toil – reconstructing a Europe gutted by the carnage of folly, sleeping in some brick lined cellar, crammed in a corner with nothing more than a pillow, blanket, tin mug, rosary, family portrait, mementoes of what was and should still have been, damp air and bodies glowing, but not one friendly caress.
She took another sip. I pushed down the cafetière plunger, slowly. She was accustomed to this by now, familiar with all my tricks, postponement of gratification, suspense, the dramatic pause.
I smiled wryly: “Then he asked me what I was doing for Xmas, whether I was going home to my parents. How was I supposed to react? I nodded. To which he spluttered that the trouble with women who pair off with married men is that they are always alone during the holidays when everyone else is in the bosom of the family. The man is crass, I’m well shot of him”.
I suppressed a shudder. It’s not just then, though holidays are the worst. It’s every weekend, every night stretched out over the endless expanse of double bed, every infinite, festering, wasted hour apart, separated, deprived. You’d think I would have had my fill of it, learned my lesson, but here I was in the throes of an identical situation. Had I been in my flat, I would have headed straight for my stash of Côte d’Or mignonettes (milk, not plain), carefully concealed on the top shelf of the cupboard behind the baked beans, tinned sweet corn and baby carrots in brine where no casual forager would bother to check. I poured myself a cup of treacly sludge instead.
I continued: “I know, I know, count your blessings, we are pampered so and so’s luxuriating in petty emotional dilemmas whilst famine and war and poverty and cancer and whatever else gorge themselves on their victims as I am ceaselessly admonished. Solitude does have its merits too: we don’t have to demean ourselves by cleaning up after anyone, putting the cap back on the toothpaste, draping the umpteenth damp shirt over the ironing board and ignoring the other three laundry baskets; at least we don’t have to weed the carpet of snagged toenail clippings or wring our hands with guilt because of resorting to a microwave curry to accompany the own label red from Sainsbury’s knowing full well that even the black lace sexy frillies won’t salvage the evening because we failed to supply the medium rare with jacket potatoes. No, we can slum it in tatty old T-shirts and industrial-gusset passion-killers, turning the hi-fi up to mime Kate Bush with an old hairbrush; we can be spur of the moment without doing penance for it, such bliss! Think about it, it’s been the dream denied every preceding generation of our gender, we’re reaping the fruits of their martyrdom and whatever did we do to deserve it? More frightening still, we take it for granted and every secret mope is a mockery of their sacrifice and achievement”.
She interrupted: “Bravado. Your biggest mistake is that you won’t accept the simple truth. You prefer your comfortable delusion and I won’t reproach you for that. Stop trying to analyse it in terms of fair and unfair and stop blaming yourself. It’s nobody’s fault. You’re not inadequate, besides you can’t win. Face it. Relax. Make the most of the relationship while it lasts. Men are cruel to women. They won’t admit it as a rule, not even to themselves, but they are. It’s a reflex, they can’t help it and the odds are stacked in their favour socially. They always have some convenient and convincing excuse to make themselves feel better about it, granting themselves absolution, if you like. They might call it real life or teaching you something valuable. Or not obstructing you in your career. Or trying to convince you that they are not good enough for you. Paul deflowered me, then skedaddled. Granted he didn’t go before having worked his way through the manual on how to please your partner, but what dismayed him was my response. My detachment. Interest, yes, curiosity, yes, but no transports of delight, no boundless adoration or gratitude. He couldn’t cope and turned tail. I didn’t set out to puncture his ego, I was merely experimenting. There’s only so far you can go with a man. None of them care, really care, about women. They bore easily. All they want is limitless affirmation. You wouldn’t get more from anyone else, even supposing he were separated or divorced or single. There’s always a catch – if it hadn’t been his wife, it would have been his car or his computer. Don’t take it personally. If you won’t listen to me then listen to the author of that short story I read out to you, the one with the living room scene, remember?”
How could I forget it? A lurid description of instrumental gang rape with a bottle, the brutality evoked with a suspicious relish. I couldn’t help crossing my legs. She beamed, her ardour for literature and conviction concerning its redemptive power was touching. She sincerely believed that it could provide insights into the impenetrable inconsequentiality of it all.
Pre-empting my retort, she made a confession: “I’ve been reading the lonely hearts column, but there’s a chronic shortage of greying academics”.
If I were to compose one tomorrow, how would it read? “Female, doctorate, no ties, financially viable. Passionate, uninhibited, proficient at ju-jitsu. Converses fluently in five languages, gives an excellent blow job. Good singing voice”.
“Do you think I should join an agency?” she probed.
“I don’t know. I’ve always been too vain. Putting yourself on the books is like a public confession of deficiency: wallflowers and rejects of the world unite! Join our exclusive dining club (nobody will notice your wrinkles in the subdued light of the candles), find that elusive romance. And what about the men: our members will forgive you your cross-eyes, spare tyres and nose-picking as long as you stay in on a Saturday night and buy them red roses on the anniversary. Dregs incorporated. You can do better than that”.
Thankfully (and rightly) there were no protests, so I could clamber back onto my soap box unimpeded. My stubbornness is legendary.
“We’ve been brainwashed into looking on men as the purpose of existence, our noblest aspiration (jarring image of self fretting for hours beside an unremittingly silent telephone), that our lives are meant to centre on them, that we are little more than accessories to them. They wear us proudly on their arms, show us off like trophies, but woe betide us should we become loud or uncomfortable in our demands: we are replaceable, after all. To be fulfilled we are called on to relinquish our own identity. We deserve to be branded the weaker sex for letting ourselves become so dependent on them. A curse on Mills and Boon and all the propaganda for misleading little girls, for warping their minds with unreasonable expectations! There are no happily ever afters”.
She snorted: “Come off it, the dating agencies are only catering for demand. You can’t shift the responsibility on to us when we’re weaned on it way before the age of discernment. What about Cinderella, waiting to be whisked away from drudgery by the handsome prince? Now that’s an archetype if ever there was one”.
“You’re right. People will persist in believing what they want to, despite of all the evidence to the contrary,” I sighed.
“Out with it – you manage somehow. Where do you meet them? Spill the beans if you want me to give Dateline a body swerve”.
I shrugged, tongue-tied as always when put on the spot: “Here, there and everywhere. In the laundrette, on the train, at the airport. Avoid entanglements at work. Gossip spreads”.
The evasion did not pass without a twinge of guilt, but I did not want to go down in her estimation. I have fucked whatever I have been able to get and God knows it hasn’t been much or often. Her stern, discriminating self-denial has been the object of my envy for years. I dislike being reminded. Who delights in their own shortcomings? And yet there was the one night, last weekend, with a man I truly love when finally I let go, submitted and finally understood what it is to love. There I lay, helpless and needy and as he kissed me I could feel the sweat drip from his forehead to my eyelids. I couldn’t argue with him, he was incontestably right when he stated with a hint of smugness – or was it pride? – that now I had tasted the forbidden fruit I would never again be free, never again be satisfied without it. And I do love him, it’s so exasperating! Why must we love? As if love healed all wounds, as if you could just kiss anything better. How many tears have been shed because of love, how many have laid down their lives for it? Love is indifferent to us, doesn’t ask our consent, doesn’t hear our petitions. It forces us to nurture and tolerate, excel in graciousness, forgive, support, protect, fit ourselves around men – the exhausting schizophrenia of it! Yet had I paused to reconsider? Had I hesitated even for the length of one breath? Had I hell. Would I now, knowing what I know, that he is unattainable? No. In spite of knowing, still I love him. So I must discard my dreams and persist, even though often I imagine I’d be better off buried in the mud at the bottom of a river, at peace.
“Did I tell you I had my palm read not so long ago?” She had sensed my thoughts had taken a gloomy turn. “She purported to be a gypsy, but when I caught her taking off her wig and false nails I shamed her into giving me a free session. She was in a hurry to get back to the estate otherwise her kids would be nagging her for their tea. Only one thing stuck in my mind apart from all the clichés. I would meet the man I would marry in my 30th year”.
“Amen to that,” I crossed myself.
“This year is going to be the year,” she announced, twirling a freshly highlighted lock around her left index finger, as she always did when in a pensive mood. “I’ve been strict, going to the gym for an hour and a half every day and eating properly, lots of iron and vegetables. The concièrge has started calling me ‘Mademoiselle’ again”.
I studied her. She had let her hair grown to below her shoulders and it had tousled naturally into that fashionable post-coital look. She was lovely, confident. Her lips were full and red with anticipation in a way lipstick can merely parody, her eyes a more intense blue than usual, not as a result of artifice, but hope.
“It almost slipped my mind, but I brought those photos”. She handed me the envelope with a grin.
There she sat, aged 18, on a large rock near her late grandfather’s holiday cottage. Squinting in the midday glare, hands firmly wedged into nylon pockets her defiant stare made her look like a waif plucked from the dank tenements of Glasgow, wary and sceptical of what October’s opportunities might bring in their wake.
Then myself at 21 by the quayside in Kiel, arms folded defensively and a forced smile to match. Spots infesting my chin, I was dressed in the most excruciating green and blue checked lumberjack shirt, sleeves rolled up as a concession to tanning, the cringe factor exacerbated by a lank, figure-concealing ankle-length black skirt and incongruous trainers.
I placed them side by side between our emptied mugs.
“Didn’t we look awful?” I spluttered. She agreed. Evidently innocence had lost its charm. “Do you know, I bet we’re not past it after all”.
“This year will be the year,” came her reply.
Copyright © 1994, the author. All rights reserved. No portion of this text may be copied, reproduced or otherwise employed without first seeking the express written permission of the author, which may be obtained via chameleonrattex at hotmail dot com.