Comfort and Joy (12 page)

‘It’s very noisy upstairs, and hot too. Here, let me have a look. Could you just check on the potatoes?’

‘Funny how quickly you become unused to things,’ says Sam, grabbing the oven gloves. ‘When you live on your own. I mean, this
– it’s just a ramped-up version of normal house noise, isn’t it? It’s not that bad. But it’s given me a headache.’

‘Here,’ I say, putting two Nurofen on the worktop, which is covered in stray crumbs from the bread for the bread sauce. ‘It
might not just be the noise, you know. That’s giving you a headache, I mean. Do you like it?’

‘The headache?’

‘Living alone. The solitude.’

‘Yes, I think so. I get a lot done. It’s very peaceful. Calm. I miss Maisy. And the boys.’

‘You can borrow the boys any time,’ I say, heading for the fridge. ‘Have them to stay. Adopt them, if you like.’

Obviously he wasn’t going to say he missed me, the mother of the people he misses, and still – technically – his wife. I wouldn’t
have particularly liked him to say it, either: awkwardness. Except, clearly, I would, because now I’m narked by the omission.

‘They’re still a bit pale. The potatoes,’ he says, giving them a shake.

‘They’ll be okay. The thing to remember is that they always are, in the end.’

‘Like you,’ says Sam, mirthlessly. He gulps down the headache pills.

‘Sam. First, don’t compare me to a potato, it’s really exceptionally unflattering. And second, you have absolutely no idea
whether I’m okay or not,’ I say, trying not to sound exasperated. If there’s one thing I really dislike, it’s being told what
I’m like by people who aren’t me. I especially dislike the assumption that a person knows me better than I know myself.

‘I observe that you are,’ he says. ‘You’re very good at holding it together. Always were.’

Wrong thing to say. Just because I’m not doing ugly crying with nose stuff doesn’t mean I have no feelings, the git. Second,
it’s so easy to tell someone what they’re like – it exonerates you from having to do any thinking or empathizing: ‘Oh, Clara,
she’s absolutely fine, because she’s really good at holding it together. Me, on the other hand … Me, I’m sensitive.’ I mean:
fuck off. Three, there are
reasons
for me being good at holding it together – which I don’t deny I am – and he knows what they are, so he shouldn’t pretend
that my ‘holding it together’ is simply what happens, a default setting, how I was born.

We’re interrupted by the doorbell – it’s Niamh, a friend of Sam’s, who has popped in for a drink before her own family Christmas.
She gusts in, followed by a wave of cold air, kisses us both hello and then disappears to the loo. When she’s been in there
for more than three minutes, Sam catches my eye and the atmosphere in the kitchen lightens considerably. He starts laughing
before he says anything, shaking his head at me at the same time. ‘You’re so loopy, Clara,’ he says. ‘You’re obsessed.’

‘What?’ I say innocently.

‘And now I’ve caught that thing off you, and I find myself
thinking it too,’ he says, still laughing. ‘Even though it’s completely deranged.’

‘I just think it’s so rude,’ I say.

‘She can’t help it,’ Sam says, now properly laughing out loud. ‘People can’t. It’s just, you’re so deeply weird that you notice.
I can’t believe you’ve contaminated me into thinking it too.’

‘As I’ve told you nine million times before,’ I say, ‘people absolutely
can
help it. It’s called sphincter control and we all have it, unless we’re gravely ill or gastrically disabled.’ I’m laughing
too now, but I do think I’m right. Etiquette tip: don’t go to people’s houses for a drink, rush in, wave hello and immediately
– or, frankly, at any point – go and take a long, leisurely dump. Just don’t. You are an adult. Go before you leave home,
and if you’re suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to poo – well, hold it in. It won’t kill you. It’s really uncharming to
come and crap all over somebody else’s lavatory when you’re only going to be there for an hour or two. It is the definition
of bad manners. I’d understand if Niamh had travelled some huge, looless distance, but she only lives twenty minutes away.
Why couldn’t she poo before she left home?

Plus, another thing about pooing in other people’s loos is that everyone knows you’ve pooed. You might as well cancan back
into the room, doing jazz hands and singing, ‘Hey everyone, I done a crap.’ And that’s okay, in a way: I mean, we all
go
. But for me – and maybe I
am
loopy – I picture the person on the loo, and when they come back for their pudding I think less of them and feel faintly
disgusted.

The absolutely worst thing that can happen – the thing that makes you want to end the acquaintanceship right there, if you’re
me – is if someone you don’t know especially well comes to your house, craps, and leaves a floater. That, my friends, is
the end
as far as I am concerned.

Sam and I had a row about this once. We were on a plane and lunch had just been served. Or what passed for lunch, at any rate.
Anyway, the second it was over – literally,
the second
– an enormous queue started forming for the loo. I said, unwisely as it turns out, ‘My God, these people are like animals.
Food passes through their alimentary canals and they immediately have to defecate. They’re like hamsters.’ I pointed out that
you didn’t get the lav-stampede if you travelled business class, and Sam accused me of being a horrendous snob. I don’t care.
It’s true. The cheaper the flight, the bigger the queue for the toilets after feeding time. ‘You’re unbelievable. You’re basically
accusing people like me of being in some way anally incontinent,’ Sam had said, which made me laugh a lot – he wasn’t laughing
at all, which made it much funnier. He slightly spoiled his point by then joining the queue, throwing me pitch-black looks
as I sat convulsed in my seat, making toothy little hamster faces at him.

We’re both standing there, laughing like a pair of village idiots – too much, really, but I guess it’s relief at the lightening
of mood as well as the simple goodness of trusty poo laffs – when Niamh comes back into the room. ‘That’s better,’ she says,
fatally. Sam emits a strangulated sort of noise; I am aware that my face is weirdly contorted with the desire not to actually
start barking with laughter, like a dog.

‘Let’s go up,’ I say.

We
are
a bit much, I think to myself – not for the first time – as I cast my eye around the sitting room. Laura and Chris are still
looking startled, Chris’s mouth having just fallen slightly open at the sight of Pat, extravagantly bejewelled around the
neck thanks to Kate’s present. ‘You really shouldn’t have,’ says Pat. ‘It’s too much. I don’t know what to say.’ Kate has
given Pat a pearl necklace, the pearls huge and a beautiful, nacreous
grey-pink. The gift is perfectly judged: the pearls shimmer beautifully against Pat’s pale skin, and – this is very Kate:
she loves luxe but hates ostentation – you’d only know they were the stonkingly expensive real thing if you were some kind
of pearl expert.

‘Don’t go on, darling,’ Kate says to Pat. ‘But I’m delighted you like them. I chose them particularly carefully. You have
that lovely colouring – I didn’t want to get ordinary white ones, in case the whole effect was too revoltingly albino.’

‘I love them,’ says Pat happily.

‘And I love this,’ says Kate. ‘I love the fact that you made it yourself. I’m enormously flattered and touched.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ says Pat. Her present to Kate is a hand-crocheted tissue-box holder, vividly turquoise and topped with
an enormous orange starfish.

‘It’s divine,’ says Kate, squeezing Pat’s arm. ‘It’s the present to beat.’ It is entirely possible that Kate means this.

I notice that Sam has positioned himself near ‘his’ friends – I always thought they were ‘our’ friends, but anyway – and is
saving all his terms of endearment, his ‘darlings’ and ‘babes’ and so on – for his old mates Niamh and Laura. When I take
him my gift – a shirt from his favourite tailor that I spent ages choosing – and present my cheek to be kissed, I also notice
that he has some trouble with the question of physical contact with me. I stand there, waiting – not for Clara’s especial
kiss from her especial Sammy, but because kissing thank you is what everyone in the room is doing once every five minutes.
But kiss comes there none.

‘Thanks very much, Clara,’ he says. ‘It’s lovely.’ Then he just stands there, grimacing faintly, his face a rictus and his
body rigid. It’s galling, to be honest. It’s particularly galling because Laura and Niamh are practically being snogged thank
you for their presents (whisky and shaving stuff), and because he keeps
patting and touching them: he’s always been very physically demonstrative. Now I think about it, there hasn’t been a kiss
hello in all the times he’s dropped round to see Maisy, or indeed a kiss goodbye. I am suddenly annoyed about this. Indignant.
I am vexed. It’s only my cheek. I’m not asking him to kiss my bottom.

‘Sam,’ I say. ‘Aren’t you going to give me a kiss? To say thank you for your really nice shirt?’

He stares at me. It’s not a loving stare.

‘You want me to kiss you?’

‘Yeah. With tongues,’ I say, which is probably a mistake, but which seems amusing at the time.

He stares at me some more. Now the stare is downright hostile.

‘I’m not getting a loving Christmas vibe off you,’ I say. ‘I was joking about the tongues. No tongues. It would be inappropriate
in the circumstances.’

Laura, Niamh and Chris are staring too now, as though I’d kindly provided a floor show.

There’s a pause, and then he kisses my cheek, very quickly. It’s as though he has been forced, pushed forward by evil invisible
alien overlords with superhuman strength. The body language is Not Good, let’s say. It’s so bizarre, this whole situation.
We can snigger like loons about guest-poos, but he can’t give me a kiss, like a normal.

‘There,’ he says. ‘Okay?’

I don’t reply because I’m thinking about our old sex life, where ‘old’ means ‘a year ago’. It’s not that long a time, is it,
twelve months? And yet in twelve months we’ve gone from total, ultra-intimate intimacy to the point where kissing my perfectly
nice cheek is somehow repellent to him. I really don’t understand it. I mean, I understand that when you break up with somebody,
you immediately sever all intimate ties, though
even that seems quite stupid to me. Because it’s just pretend. It’s adults thinking they’re being adults by pretending that
you click your fingers and boof! Everything’s gone, just like that. Memory bank wiped, desire killed, fondness amputated.
Let’s be honest: there is no way on earth that in the normal course of a normal break-up you fancy someone one day and absolutely,
100 per cent, don’t fancy them the next – or ever again as long as you live. I can see the fancying dying overnight if a terrible
thing has happened – domestic violence, say, or even someone behaving incredibly badly. Doom. Betrayal. But in an ordinary
situation, where things just peter out and then you split up, I find the idea that everyone suddenly has to find everyone
else utterly physically repugnant overnight very odd indeed. It’s silly. Mind you, so is nostalgia-shagging. I’m not wishing
Sam and I would nostalgia-shag. I can’t think of many things I’d like less, actually. But I do wish he’d get a grip and find
it possible to kiss my cheek without looking like his mouth has suddenly filled with sick. Apart from anything else, it hurts
my feelings.

Over by the window, Tamsin has just opened Jake’s present. She knows him well enough to quickly look round and check that
there aren’t any children nearby as she tears into the wrapping, but they’ve all wandered off as a posse and made a lair behind
the big sofa. The present is, with almost tragic inevitability, ‘sexy’ underwear. But there’s sexy and there’s sexy, if you
know what I mean. Tamsin catches my eye, and I can tell by the way she’s biting the inside of her cheek that she’s trying
not to laugh. ‘Thanks, Jakey,’ she says. ‘Very naughty. Cor.’ She catches my eye again. ‘I’m just going over there to show
Clara,’ she says. ‘Show her my wonderful gift from my fiancé.’

‘Help me, Clara,’ she whispers to me. ‘I mean, look. It’s time-warp pants and a bra. Crotchless. Nippleless. Nylon
mesh. I didn’t know you could get stuff like this any more. He must have gone to an actual sex shop. I didn’t think there
were any left. What’s wrong with Ag Prov?’

I look up and smile at Jake approvingly. I am so craven that I even give him two jaunty thumbs up, like Paul McCartney. He
winks back at me. Inside, I am nearly weeing with laughter.

‘The thing about giving underwear is that it’s basically a version of giving you a blender or a Hoover,’ Tamsin says. She
is very analytical, being a schoolteacher. ‘It’s a present from which he is going to derive all the benefit. If he’d given
me a blender I’d have made him some soup; if he’d given me a Hoover we’d have a cleaner house. Giving me the underwear is
basically giving himself a boner. I don’t think that’s fair, do you, Clara? I mean, it’s all for the benefit of Mr Penis.’

‘What?’

‘I’m saying, it’s not really a present for me …’

‘Yeah, I got that bit. But after that. Did you actually say the words “Mr Penis”?’

‘Oh. Yeah. Haven’t I told you about Mr Penis before?’

‘No, Tam.’

I’m thinking it’s just as well I had three Caesareans. If my pelvic floor were even minutely compromised, I would actually
be peeing with laughter all over the parquet.

‘Are you sure?’ says Tamsin. ‘I thought I’d told you.’

‘I don’t think I’d have forgotten.’

‘Must have been Tara. Well, you know about the ongoing vocab problem, right?’ She stuffs the hideous underwear under a cushion,
thinks better of it and stuffs it into her handbag instead. ‘How he says awful bed things.’

‘Mm,’ I say. I am at this point unable to trust myself to speak.

‘Remember? It started with the “good girl” come thing. Well, I couldn’t have that. I mean, for God’s sake. But actually, Clara,
it’s much harder than you’d think to get someone to not say
bed stuff. I let him say it for ages because I couldn’t think of a tactful way of telling him it made me want to be ill.’