2009 - We Are All Made of Glue (29 page)

I’m laughing like mad now, splitting my sides at the sheer symmetry of everything.

Then—this is good—the Scarlet-mouthed Slut scrapes the mush off her face with her hands and starts to smear it over Rip, over his clothes and his hair. And he says, “Ottie! Stop! What’s the matter with you?”

And she says, “What’s the matter with
you?
You told me it was okay. You told me she didn’t mind. You lied to me.” She’s wailing, too. “You told me she’d gone off with another man! In a Jaguar!”

“She did. She is.” He backs away. “You’re both bloody mad. Both of you!” He backs away and breaks into a run. She runs after him, stumbling on her bitch-stilettos. And I run, too. I’m wearing my batty-woman trainers, so I can almost keep up. I run after him up the street dodging through the startled pedestrians.

“Aaah! Yaaah!”

But he’s fast, Rip, fast and fit, ducking and weaving through the Saturday crowd. He shakes us both off.

In the end, I have to give up. I’ve lost sight of him. I’m panting for breath, my chest heaving, my throat raw from screaming. My head is spinning. Everything’s spinning. I stop and catch my breath, leaning forwards on to my knees. Then I straighten up and turn around. I’ve lost sight of her, too. She’s disappeared somewhere, into her bitch-lair. Still panting, I make my way back down Upper Street towards The Green. About halfway down, on the pavement, I stumble across a discarded black suede stiletto shoe. I kick it into the road, and a Number 19 squashes it flat.

The crowd at the bus stop has thinned out. I look for my shopping bags where I left them on the pavement. But they’ve disappeared. Someone has picked them up and taken them. The settler avocados. The blood-soaked oranges. All gone.

Actually, it was worth it, I thought to myself, as I sat in the kitchen and poured a glass of wine. Okay, I’d made a fool of myself and I’d lost my week’s shopping. But it was worth it just to see that cream banana bogey hanging from her nostril. It was worth it to see his trout-mouth—O! To see him run.

I couldn’t face going back into Islington, so I just went out and got a bit of shopping at Highbury Barn. When I got back I saw that the answering machine was blinking. There was a message from Ms Baddiel. She was sorry she hadn’t been in touch before. She’d been on a course (not a case!) It seemed odd that she’d phoned on a Saturday, but maybe she’d left the message before and I just hadn’t noticed. I rang her back straightaway but she wasn’t there. The second message was from Nathan. He wanted to know if I’d like to go to the Adhesives Trade Fair in Peterborough tomorrow with him and his father. I pressed Delete. I know I’m sad, but I’m not
that
sad. I poured myself another glass of wine and settled down in front of the television.
Casualty
would be on soon.

As my euphoria wore off, I realised that there was only one more glass left in the bottle, and that if I finished it off then there would be nothing to stop me drinking a whole bottle again tomorrow night. And the night after. And then I’d be well on the road to becoming an Unfit Mother.
Casualty
was not satisfying—too much shouting and argy-bargy. What had happened to the heroic drama of life and death? What had happened to that dishy Kwame Kwei-Armah? I recalled my spree of shouting and bad behaviour earlier that afternoon with a prick of shame. Really, people don’t want to watch that sort of thing. It’s not gentile, as Mum would say.

Then the reality of three Ben-less days loomed, and I started to think that maybe a trade fair in Peterborough was what I needed after all. Maybe Nathan’s father would be okay when sober. And the more I thought about it, the more I realised that short men can be incredibly sexy. I dialled Nathan’s number. As he picked up the phone at the other end (“Nathan Stein speaking”) I heard in the background the familiar theme as the trailer credits rolled away—he’d been watching
Casualty
, too.

The glue exhibition

N
athan picked me up next day at ten o’clock. I’d been trying to imagine what kind of car he would turn up in, but the last thing I’d expected was an open-top sports car, a Morgan, pale blue. He greeted me with a hug. I dropped my knees a bit so our cheeks were just at the same height.

“Sorry, my father couldn’t make it.”

“So it’s just you and me?” My heart skipped.

“Fraid so. Can you put up with me for a whole afternoon?” (Could I just!) “You’ll need a warmer coat than that.” (I’d already put on my smart grey jacket over my revealing top.) “And a scarf or something. Otherwise your hair’ll blow away.”

I changed into my brown duffel coat, fastened it up to my chin, and tied a scarf down over my ears.

“Sit tight!” he said.

We whizzed up the Hollo way Road and out on to the Ai, the wind slapping my head, my eyes stinging, my ears ringing. Shops. Houses. Trees. Flats. Houses. Trees. Whoosh! We couldn’t talk; I tried to open a conversation but my words just got blown away. All I could do was watch Nathan’s hands on the wheel and gearstick—he was wearing fingerless leather driving gloves—and his hunky profile as he concentrated on the road. His silver-flecked designer-stubbly jaw was clenched in a daredevil look of defiance. My stomach was clenched in a knot. I was trying to decide whether it would be better to die instantly or to live out my life in a wheelchair.

Peterborough emerged suddenly out of a fenland mist, the elegant nave and buttresses of its cathedral swanning above the rooftops.
I’d
never been here before. The exhibition centre was on the outskirts, a low featureless hangar of a building. The car park was almost empty. Nathan pulled up near the entrance, switched the engine off, and turned to me with a dimply smile.

“Did you enjoy that, Georgia?”

I smiled weakly. I couldn’t bring myself to say yes, even to him.

The exhibition itself was nowhere near as exciting as the journey. It was basically a display of tubes and phials with long technical explanations mounted on card, and samples of things glued together, mainly materials—laminates stuck to concrete, glass stuck to wood, steel stuck to steel. We seemed to be the only punters, apart from a man in a black-and-white shell suit who was walking round taking notes. Our footsteps click-clacked in the echoing space. Well, what did I expect? The most interesting thing was a car, an old Jaguar, glued to a metal plate on its roof which was bolted to a chain suspended from the ceiling, so it dangled there in mid-air, spinning slowly if you touched it, held up by the power of adhesion.

“Wow! That’s amazing!”

“Yes, I’ll have to remember that next time I want to hang my car up,” said Nathan.

I had a sudden thought.

“Nathan, do you think you could use glue to stick something like, say, a toothbrush holder on to bathroom tiles?”

“Absolutely. There are a number of purpose-made ad-hesives. Look for brands with ‘nails’ in the name. No-nails. Goodbye-nails.”

“But you wouldn’t use nails in a bathroom. It’d have to be rawplugs, wouldn’t it?”

He gave me a sideways grin. “You mean instead of cooked plugs?”

“What d’you mean?”

“They’re called rawlplugs, Georgie.”

“Rawlplugs?”

“But you’re right about one thing—they’re on their way to obsolescence. Adhesives can do many of the same things nowadays.”

My heart bounced up. Rawplugs were history!

Nathan was wandering around with a notebook, an intelligent frown furrowing his brow. I kept very close, hoping he would take my hand or slip an arm around my shoulder. Should I ask after his father? Should I mention
Casualty’?
I cleared my throat.

“Did you enjoy…?”

“Hey, look at this, Georgia.”

He’d stopped to examine a photograph on display near the cyanoacrylates. It was a very distressing full-colour close-up photo of a bottom stuck to a blue plastic toilet seat. From the angle it was taken, you couldn’t tell whether it was a man’s bottom or a woman’s. It had obviously been taken in a hospital: there was somebody in the background wearing surgical gloves and a mask. Just imagine if that was you—it would be bad enough getting stuck in the toilet and having to call for help, and then having blokes with tools break down the door, unbolt the toilet seat and rush you to hospital, and people phoning up—they would phone an expert like Nathan in this situation—for advice about solvents. And all the time you’d be wondering who put the glue there; in fact you’d probably be able to guess. You’d be fuming. Fuming but helpless. Then you’d have to be photographed for medical records. Everyone would be solemn and respectful, but behind your back they’d be laughing their heads off.

The explanation card at the side of the picture simply read:

CYANOACRYLATE AXP-36C

A PRACTICAL JOKE

“Deary me,” said Nathan.

Actually, that’s not a bad idea, I thought.

The next stand was a display about the history of glue. There were pictures of trees with gum or resin oozing out and dark-skinned men catching it in little cups. There was a picture which showed Aztec builders mixing blood into their mortar. The explanation card said the Aztec structures were so strong they would withstand an earthquake. It seems that blood is sticky stuff, too—stickier than water.

I tried another tack.

“You seem very close to your father…” I ventured.

“Ah, yes. Tati.” He paused. I waited for him to continue, but he just wandered on, looking at the exhibits.

“Have you always lived with him?”

“Not always.”

I followed him round the stand, casually brushing against him when he stopped at the corner of the display, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“My parents live in Yorkshire,” I said. “I miss them. But I couldn’t live with them.”

“I don’t know that I can live with Tati much longer.”

I brushed against him again, this time more determinedly. Surely my intentions must be totally obvious. He opened his notebook and scribbled something down.

“It might make a nice article for
Adhesives in the Modern World
, Georgia,” he suggested. “Something about the history of adhesion. Glue past and present. What d’you think?”

Maybe he just didn’t fancy me. Maybe I wasn’t intelligent enough for him. Maybe he was involved with someone else. The thought filled me with gloom.

“Mmm. Good idea.”

“Or even glue past, present and future.”

The designer stubble on his chin gleamed with dashes of silver as he spoke.

“I don’t think I could do the future bit.”

I was thinking of Mrs Shapiro. When you see a good man you have to grebbit quick. Should I just grab him?

“You could just speculate. Glue made from recycled carrier bags. Glue made from liposuction by-products. Glue made from stray cats and dogs. Glue made from boiled-up illegal immigrants. Melted-down social undesirables.” He gave me a sideways grin. “No?”

“Like you told me once the Nazis made glue out of Jews?”

“Very good glue it was, too. Now Jews are trying to make glue out of Palestinians. But with less success.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “They say God told them to.”

I stared at him. How could he joke about that? He saw the look in my eye.

“Sorry, it’s only metaphorical glue. A sticky mess. And I mean the Israeli state, not the Jews. We have to distinguish.”

“Really?” What the hell was he talking about? “I’m not sure I understand…”

“I’m what they call a self-hating Jew. A gay self-hating Jew.”

Ah! Gay! That explained everything! I smiled inwardly, grateful that he’d told me before I’d made an utter fool of myself. But why the self-hatred? Could it be because he was gay?

“Do you really hate yourself, Nathan?”

“As much as custard.”

“Custard’s one of my favourite things,” I hurried to reassure him.

“Mine, too. Especially made with eggs and vanilla with a sprinkling of nutmeg.”

“So why…?” Maybe it was his height. “You know…”

“Sorry, Georgia, I didn’t mean to inflict my obsessions on you. Self-hating is just a label the neo-Zionists use for people who disagree with them; you’re either an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew.”

He gave me a hunkily intelligent grin, pushing back his horn-rimmed glasses that had slipped down his gorgeous nose. Gay. What a shame!

“We just got it out of a tin. Bird’s.” I heard my voice prattling on, filling the silence. “But they weren’t anti-Semites, my parents. My Dad’s a socialist. He once thumped someone for calling the man in the fish and chip shop a wop. Mum’s more…more of an anarchist, I suppose. She’d thump anybody for anything.”

Even as I said it, I was thinking about the banter of the men in the Miners’ Welfare at Kippax. Poofs. Gays. Queers. Pansies. They were the casual everyday slights that were the currency of contempt down our way. Dad might not be an anti-Semite, but I’d never heard him threatening to thump someone for using those words. Mum on the other hand had once ticked Keir off for calling one of his teachers a poofter. “He’s very nice, your Mr Armstrong, even if he is hormo-sexual.”

“What about
your
father?” I asked.

“Yes, well Tati moved in with me after mother died, and Raoul moved out. It’s sort of put paid to my love life.”

“Is he rude to your friends?”

“Oh, no. He just sings.”

I laughed. “That sounds nice.”

“It is. But there are only so many lieder a person can take.” He murmured conspiratorially, “I keep hoping a nice widow will take him off my hands.”

We’d stopped in front of another photo—it was a little girl whose hands were stuck together. She was crying, her mouth open, her eyes screwed up in pain.

“Oh, dear. As it says in the manual, one of the disadvantages of adhesive bonding is that disassembly is usually not possible without destruction of the component parts,” Nathan remarked drily.

It was one of the things about adhesives that had always secretly troubled me. I stared. There was something so hopeless about the mess the girl was in that my heart went out to her.

“I know what you mean by self-hating, Nathan. I hate myself sometimes.”

“Do you, Georgia?”

“Yes. I mean, I often feel stupid. Or hopeless. Or despicable. Or I just wish I was somebody else.” My voice was wobbling pathetically. “I feel as though I’ve made a mess of my life.”