Don't You Want Me? (12 page)

‘William.’

‘Mrs Midhurst.’

‘Do call me Stella – we did fuck, after all.’

‘Mmm,’ says Cooper. ‘I remember.’

‘Are you being serious? I mean, is there a gram, an ounce, a speck of truth in what you’ve just said?’ I quite want to cry, actually.

‘That you snorted uncontrollably at the point of, shall we say, no return?’

‘Yes,’ I whisper. Uncontrollably?
Uncontrollably?

‘ ’Fraid so,’ Cooper says cheerily.

The phone actually falls from my hands, like in a film.

‘Stella?’ Cooper’s voice says from the floor. ‘Hello?’

I pick up again.

‘Swear on your life. Swear on your
dick
.’

‘I swear,’ he says. ‘But I wouldn’t worry about it, my dear. Some women pee slightly, and a mutual friend of ours brays, rather like an donkey. I’ve known more than one girl – they’re often from Clapham – who called out “Daddy”.’

‘I think,’ I say, as a last-ditch attempt to claw back some dignity, ‘that I’d know. I mean, it’s my body, and my, you know,
sound
.’

‘Quite. I was actually ringing to ask you to dinner.’

‘What do you mean by “uncontrollably”? That I snorted and snorted again?’

‘Just the once, as I recall. There’s rather a marvellous local Italian …’

‘I’ll have to call you back. I have to go now,’ I say. My stomach is swirling with shock and bells are ringing in my head.

Oh, my God. I snort when I come.
There is no hope
.

I don’t think I have actually ever been so ashamed. I once peed in my pants in kindergarten – a horribly vivid recollection, actually, thirty-five years later: I can still recall the exact, dazzlingly golden shade of yellow, trickling weirdly sonorously on to the lino tiles – and
that
was shameful enough. And sometimes I haven’t been as kind, or as tactful, towards my fellow human beings as I might have been, granted – but I’ve had the grace to feel bad afterwards. I have, um, mixed feelings towards both my parents, but good heavens, who doesn’t? Nothing that I have ever done could merit this
grotesque
punishment. Has the Lord taken leave of his senses?

I take to my bed, because that’s all I can think of to do, and pop a Xanax to calm me down. At first, I decide I am going to ring every man I have ever slept with and ask them outright, while I am mildly sedated and the shock might be cushioned. But I don’t have current numbers for any of them, only Dominic and Rupert, and Dominic’s sleeping in Tokyo and Rupert’s coming here tomorrow. I could always ask him then.

It can’t be true. Someone, surely, would have mentioned it.

They just have.

Oh,
God
.

I have to emerge from my lair to give Honey her lunch when Mary brings her back from playgroup (I couldn’t face Marjorie today). She is at the kitchen table, trying to make coils (‘Oi snail’) out of Plasticine while I stand at the cooker, warming up some of the delicious chicken curry Frank made a batch of yesterday. There’s still a weird throbbing feeling in my stomach and talk about prickly
armpits: mine feel like they’re on fire. I could weep. No, really. Because as if the shame weren’t bad enough, I clearly can’t have sex with anybody ever again.

Actually, that’s not true. There are options. I could learn to sign and find myself some deaf people. Or some mutes (with no hands: can’t have them writing anything down). Where are the amputee mutes around here when you need them? As I say, I could weep.

‘Hey,’ says Frank, coming in through the garden. ‘What’s up? Why the long face? Hello, love,’ he tells Honey, nipping her fat little cheek.

‘Lo,’ she says.

‘No long face,’ I tell him, grinning fixedly to show that I am as happy as the lark, chirrup chirrup. ‘Nice morning at work, darling?’

‘Fotherington in Accounts is rather a bother,’ he says (see? Frank always gets the joke).

‘Is there enough for me, or shall I have a butty?’ he asks, peering into the fridge. ‘Juice?’

‘Please, for Honey. There’s tons. And anyway, it’s yours – you made it.’

‘Cool,’ says Frank, getting the plates and clicking Honey’s plastic bib around her neck. ‘Looking forward to tomorrow night?’

‘What’s tomorrow night?’

‘Friday night, Stella. We’re going out.’

‘Oh, yes,’ I say, remembering how excited I was when Frank offered to take me out and teach me how to pull. That seems like aeons ago now, a lifetime ago, before my entire sex life was ruined.

‘There’s a do in Shoreditch, then a party in Soho, and then, if you still fancy it, another party just off Old Street.’

‘There’s also Papa arriving, and Rupert. I feel rather bad leaving them.’

‘Stella!’ Frank says sternly. ‘You
told
them you were going out – I heard you.’

‘Mmm,’ I shrug. ‘This is exquisite. Is there cardamom in it?’

‘Yes, and cinnamon.’

‘You’re such a good cook,’ I say, reaching for more rice. ‘Why don’t you feed any of your dates?’

‘Because they’re not interested in dinner. Don’t change the subject.’

‘OK. About tomorrow: I don’t know if I can come, Frankie.’

‘Why? And why are you all red?’

‘In homage to you.’

Frank rolls his eyes.

‘No. Because, literally. I don’t know if I can come.’

‘You’ve lost me, love.’

‘I can only date the deaf,’ I whisper, hanging my head. ‘Or the armless mute. And I know that’s OK – do you know any deaf people, Frankie? Please, it’s important – but, you know, it leaves out quite a lot of people.’

‘Are you on drugs?’ asks Frank. ‘You’re not making sense.’

I glance at Honey, who is trying to get the rice in with one hand and stroking her ‘snail’ with the other.

‘I …’

‘What, Stella? Are you ill? What are you talking about, woman?’

‘I make …’ I can’t tell him, actually. I am burning with embarrassment: I can feel the tips of my ears and they’re
roasting
.

‘What do you make, Stella? Love? War? Bubbles? Come on, for God’s sake.’

‘I don’t think I can tell you. Well, I could, but as the joke goes, I’d have to kill you afterwards.’

‘What do you make?’ Frank demands, sounding annoyed now, and coming over all forceful.

‘I make horrible, horrible sounds when I come,’ I blurt out, half-sobbing.

Frank puts his apple juice down and stares at me, his mouth half-open.

‘Don’t laugh, Frankie, I beg you,’ I whimper melodramatically.

‘I’m not laughing,’ he says, but a smile is curling around his lips, causing me to throw a clod of rice at him.

‘What sounds?’

‘I … I … I
snort
.’

‘Oh, my Christ,’ Frank says. ‘Oh, my fucking Christ.’ He is trying to look solemn and sympathetic, but it isn’t working: I know he wants to laugh.

‘My life may as well be over,’ I tell Frank sadly. ‘Do at least
try
to be sympathetic.’

‘Snort, like what? Like this?’ Frank oinks richly.

‘Yes, I expect so.’

‘What, you go …’ He oinks three times, each snort louder than the last, and then gawps at me in disbelief.

‘Piggy,’ says Honey, through a mouthful of chicken. She snorts too, which causes her to splutter all over the table and to collapse into giggles.

‘You said it, Honey,’ says Frank, by now openly sniggering. Oink, he goes, oink oink OINK, with Honey gleefully joining in, until the kitchen sounds like a sty, its walls echoing with pig-noise. ‘Well,’ says Frank, when
he’s calmed down, which takes a few minutes. ‘Wow. Sophisticated lady. Miss Parisian charm.’

‘Just leave it, Frank,’ I tell him, trying to be cool and stern while still hot and floppy with shame. I wish I hadn’t told him. I feel like I’ve got a family of wriggly hedgehogs under my armpits, flexing their spikes.

‘Stella?’

‘Don’t start. Please. I shouldn’t have said anything. And anyway,’ I retort, gathering strength, ‘you can talk. You may not make inhuman noises …’

‘Snorrrrrt,’ interrupts Frank rudely. ‘Snoort.’

‘But you’ve come on a woman’s face at least once in the last three months. So I think we’re quits.’

‘I bloody have not,’ Frank starts saying, but I don’t let him, since as a matter of fact he has.

‘I have the incontrovertible evidence of my own ears,’ I say. ‘So let’s just
know
these unattractive things about each other and place them at the backs of our minds, like adults.’

Frank has been peeling an apple for Honey. He now, rather absent-mindedly, starts feeding her small pieces of it. His mind, understandably, is elsewhere.

‘But Stell,’ he says. ‘How do you
know
? Did you hear yourself?’

‘No, of course not. There’s a sort of mini passing-out, isn’t there, at the point of orgasm? One is hardly listening out for unusual sounds.’

‘Well, then, how can you be sure?’

‘Someone told me.’

‘Who? They might have been joking.’

‘They have no sense of humour. Besides, it’s not funny. And anyway, I
said
, let’s leave it. Let’s talk about something else. What shall I wear tomorrow night, for instance?’

‘The grandpa,’ Frank murmurs, as if this were a particularly devastating insight. ‘The doctor gramps from the other night.’

‘Well, hey, Sherlock. Bravo.
Now
can we leave it?’

‘Quite a menagerie that night chez Gramps, it must have been, with the tiger lying down with the lamb’s little piggy pal,’ irritating Frank persists biblically.

‘Frank!’ I yell, echoed by Honey: ‘Fwank!’

Frank stops talking, but carries on feeding my daughter bits of apple with a strange expression of barely repressed hysteria on his face. This makes his eyes bulge.

I stomp over to the counter and clear away our plates. I can feel Frank’s eyes burning into the back of my neck. He just can’t help himself – he just can’t leave it alone.

He says, ‘Has anyone else ever mentioned it, like Dom?’

‘No.’

‘Never?’

‘No. No one’s ever said, Stella, you snort like a fucking pig when you come, darling. Odd, that.’

‘Don’t get cross, babe. It was probably a one-off.’

‘I doubt it. And don’t call me “babe” – you sound like Frank Butcher.’ I unclip Honey’s bib and lift her, and half a ton of squishy apple, out of the high chair, just as Frank bursts out laughing.

‘I didn’t mean it in the Frank Butcher sense,’ he honks. ‘I meant it …’

‘As in the film,’ I suddenly twig. ‘Babe. Very fucking hilarious, Frankie. Honey and I are going to make up the guest beds now,’ I tell him with as much dignity as I can muster. ‘And that, by the way, was a really mean joke.’

As we make our way up, I can hear Frank at first shouting
and then screaming with laughter. I hear his big hands slap against his thighs. He drops something, at one point. He is practically delirious.

‘Oink,’ Honey snorts quietly against my neck as we head for the second landing. ‘Oi piggy.’

‘No, darling.
Oi
piggy,’ I tell her sadly. ‘Oi Piggy of Shame.’

Friday morning, and chaos. There’s no food in the house except rusks, bananas and a scraping of cold curry, so I’m just about to rush off to Waitrose to stock up when the phone rings. It’s Rupert, who informs me that he’s decided to drive down from Scotland rather than train or plane it, which means he doesn’t quite know when he’ll be arriving. ‘So,’ he tells me, ‘I’ve asked Cressida – that’s my date, Cressida Lennox – to come straight to yours at half past six. I’ll either be there myself by then, or I’ll be just around the corner. Is that OK?’

I suppose it is; he’s booked dinner at a restaurant called Odette’s, ten minutes’ walk from my house. ‘That’s fine,’ I tell Rupert, ‘but do please try and be here on time – my dad’s arriving, plus I’m going out myself and I need to get ready, so if you’re not here, I’m not going to stand in the living room for hours making small talk to your fancy woman when I should be in the bath and generally beautifying.’

‘You’ll love Cressida,’ Rupert says breezily. ‘You can talk about babies and things.’

‘Why? Because we both have wombs?’

Rupert chortles fruitily; one of the sweet things about him is that he never takes offence at my snappier jokes. ‘That too. But she works in childcare so, you know, you’ll have lots in common. I expect. Anyway, I’ll be there. Don’t worry about it. Cheerio.’

So then I’m trying to rush out to Waitrose for the second time, and just scribbling a note for Mary asking her if she wouldn’t mind giving the living room a quick once-over while Honey has her nap, when the doorbell goes.

‘
Bon-jewer
,’ says Tim, my next-door neighbour. He is standing with his hands in the pockets of his trousers – they’re more slacks, really – stretching them out.

‘Hi,’ I say. ‘I’m actually just on my way out – house guests. No food. Need to get to Waitrose and back before the child-minder finishes her shift.’

Tim just stands there, fiddling with his pockets, staring. He mowed my lawn this time last week, come to think of it: obviously doesn’t go to work on Fridays.

‘Hello?’ I say, keys in hand. ‘I’m sorry, Tim, but I’m late as it is – I really need to get going.’

‘I’ll drive you,’ Tim finally says, selecting a weird, burbly voice, as if speaking from the bottom of a bog, from his panoply.

‘No, really, it’s OK,’ I tell him, stepping out and slamming the front door shut behind me. He doesn’t move back, so for a second or two we are both perched awkwardly on the top step. Why is he so peculiar and off-putting?

‘I’ll drive myself,’ I say.

‘I’d like to drive you,’ he replies.

‘Sweet of you, but …’

‘I’m at a bit of a loose end, what with Janice and the kids away,’ he explains, now sounding perfectly normal and looking entirely plausible, in a beslacked, suburban husband twenty-years-married kind of way. ‘I need a few things from Waitrose too. Go on,’ he adds, seeing my confused expression. ‘It’ll be fun.’ He points his key ring
at the street and the lights on a black MPV (natch) flash as the door catches – click – are released.

‘Come on,’ he calls out, striding ahead purposefully now. I don’t quite see how I can’t get into his car without seeming unnecessarily rude. He
is
odd, and he is marsupial, but if he wants to drive me to Waitrose because he’s bored, or lonely, and if supermarkets are his idea of ‘fun’, then really I don’t see why not.