The Two of Us (19 page)

The collective tuts, shakes its head, blows air through its lips and sips its beer.

And these are your victims, these old stags, the middle managers, school teachers, lawyers, husbands and fathers who can’t accept that they are no longer 18-year-old bucks. And this
– life and time and reality – is the atrocity.

‘Show some fucking tact, you bell end,’ says Steve. He flicks his eyes in my direction.

‘Sorry,’ says Finn, slapping my back. ‘No offence. Some birds get away with it, don’t they. How many has Posh Spice squeezed out?’

‘A lot,’ says Tom.

‘Exactly,’ says Finn. ‘And you still would. I know I would.’

‘Two times,’ says Malcolm.

‘Yeah, so maybe your bird . . .’ Finn snaps his fingers in the air.

‘Ivy,’ I say.

‘Grows on you,’ says someone, possibly Dave.

‘So maybe Ivy,’ continues Finn, ‘maybe she won’t get wrecked. Maybe she’ll be lucky, yeah.’

‘Thanks, mate,’ I say, clinking my pint of overpriced watered-down lager against Finn’s. ‘That means a lot.’

‘Welcome,’ he says, entirely missing the sarcasm.

‘Mind you,’ says Steve, ‘she’s having twins, isn’t she?’

‘Two of them,’ I say.

‘Hmm,’ says Finn, shaking his head, apparently deciding that Ivy has as much chance of getting lucky with pregnancy as he does of getting lucky with Destiny the stripper.

Last night was date night. Ivy and I went to the cinema again, this time to watch a pregnancy-themed rom-com that managed to miss all its beats. The only halfway decent scene was the one
we’d already seen in the trailer. I sat in the dark, eating my popcorn and pre-producing Suzi’s script inside my head. Ivy got up to pee twice, and she yawned so deeply and often it was
infectious. We should have walked out but this was only our second date night and I guess neither of us wanted to be the one to end it. After the movie I just wanted to go home and flake out on the
sofa, and I’m sure Ivy (sore back, swollen ankles, indigestion) did, too. But we have a Frank on our sofa, so flaking out ain’t what it used to be. We went for a late supper in The
Village and spent the majority of the meal in a tired, disengaged silence. Ivy worked on a commercial earlier in the week, and when I asked how it went she told me, ‘It was okay. You know how
it is . . . it was fine.’ Ivy asked how the cheese commercial was shaping up, but what is there to say?
I hate it; It’s junk; I feel like a prostitute . . .
I said it was
shaping up fine.

I started to tell Ivy about Suzi’s script and found myself suddenly animated; I told her the plot of
Reinterpreting Jackson Pollock
and she told me she hated the title. I agreed
and asked her to help me come up with an alternative, but Ivy didn’t come up with much; didn’t even try, it seemed to me. Ivy has agreed to do the hair and make-up on the production,
and I asked if she’d had any thoughts about it. She hadn’t. I told her I was nervous about shooting a sex scene, and laughed. Ivy made a small harrumphing sound, but it wasn’t a
laugh.

Christmas is eleven days away and we have yet to discuss where we will spend the break. Whenever I’ve been in the country, I’ve always gone back to Dad’s, but then again,
I’ve never had anywhere else to go. I ask Ivy if she’s bought my present yet and she tells me, ‘No, not yet.’ I tell her she’ll need to get two because my birthday is
on Christmas Day, and Ivy tells me, yes, she knows.

‘Jesus,’ I say, ‘you could at least pretend to be interested.’

And I take myself quite by surprise. The outburst, as contained, timid and frankly justifiable as it is, goes down about as well as the steak, which, while we’re on the subject, is a
little disappointing.

‘What do you want me to say?’ Ivy asks.

‘I don’t know. Anything?’

‘You’ve hardly taken a breath.’

‘And you’ve hardly said a word.’

‘I’m tired.’

‘I know,’ I tell her. ‘You’ve been tired for the last twenty weeks.’

Ivy doesn’t respond. Cuts a piece of broccoli in half then doesn’t eat it, just sets her knife and fork down on her plate. This should be my cue to back off, but I have another point
to make.

‘I’m sorry if I’m excited about it,’ I say. ‘It’s the only thing I’ve got right now.’

I don’t mean it the way it comes out, and I think Ivy knows this, but we’re in the heat of bicker and the rules state that Ivy cannot let this go.

‘The only thing?’ she says.

‘The only thing I have to myself, I mean. The only thing I’m doing just for me.’

‘Fine. Maybe you should find another make-up artist, then.’

‘Don’t be like that.’

‘Like what?’

Ivy’s default setting is relaxed and playful. Frank and her parents are the same, so nature and nurture obviously shook hands on this one. It’s one of the first things that drew me
to Ivy and one of the best things about living with her. Like the way she sets me up, then smiles and paints a number 1 in the air every time I take the bait. But there is no mischief in the
question she has just asked:
Like what?
So maybe I should ask myself why she’s acting so out of character, but then it’s not in my nature to not be an idiot. It’s in my
nature to swim towards the worm – fake, fat or fearsome – and swallow it whole.

‘Petty,’ I say.

‘Petty?’

I shrug, take a mouthful of tough steak.

‘Do you know what the day after tomorrow is?’ Ivy asks.

‘Saturday?’

‘It’s our twenty-week scan.’

‘I know. You must have reminded me five times this week.’

‘Someone has to.’

‘Why, because I’m going to my best mate’s stag do? I thought we’d had this conversation.’

‘That’s not what I’m saying. I told you, I don’t mind.’

‘Well, you weren’t very convincing.’

A waiter asks if we’ve finished, we tell him yes. He goes to ask if we would like desserts, but I cut him short and ask for the bill.

‘You know what they call tomorrow’s scan?’ Ivy asks, and I have to admit that I don’t.

‘If you’d bothered to read a book or spend five minutes online, you’d know it’s called an anomaly scan.’ And she articulates the word
anomaly
as if for a
moron.

‘So now I know, don’t I.’ And it’s unlikely that the face I pulled made me any more endearing.

‘You could at least pretend to be interested,’ Ivy says, playing my own words back to me. But coming from her mouth, in response to my childish expression, they carried approximately
ten times the weight.

I paid the bill and we walked home together, side by side but to all intents and purposes apart. We spoke in abstractions – talking about the cold, the quiet, the dark – and it
seemed to me that it took twice as long to walk home as it should have done.

While Ivy washed her face and brushed her teeth, I sat on the edge of the bed and thought of ways to apologize. And at the same time I wondered whether I should. I didn’t ask for any of
this, no one asked me if I was ready to start a family, and in light of the way things have worked out I think I’ve been astonishingly magnanimous.
It’s okay
, Ivy said the
first time we made love. But is it? Is this really okay? If anyone should be apologizing, surely it should be Ivy. I replayed the night’s conflict over and over in my head as I tried to fall
asleep, analysing the words, gestures and inflections. On a rational level I just about managed to convince myself that I didn’t do anything wrong, but on every other level I knew that I
could have handled the whole thing with a heck of a lot more grace, sympathy, empathy, compassion and all that other grown-up good stuff. When I finally drifted off to sleep last night I had
resolved to make Ivy breakfast in bed and, time permitting, run down to the shops and (as per Esther’s instructions) buy flowers. But by the time I woke, both Ivy and Frank were already up
and I was already running late.

This morning Ivy, Frank and me all had different places to be before nine thirty, and we rotated between bathroom, bedrooms and kitchen, squeezing past each other in the hallway, sleepy-eyed and
wet-haired, coffee and toast in hand, muttering good mornings and after yous. In an attempt to find five (or even two) minutes alone with Ivy, I ended up making three cups of coffee and brushing my
teeth twice, but all for nothing. Whenever I contrived to put myself in the same space as the mother of my foetal children, she was either leaving that space with a full mouth (breakfast,
toothbrush, coffee), or the space was simultaneously occupied by Frank.

We left the flat as a threesome, clean, dressed and miraculously unscolded, but the whiff of last night’s spat (
Row? Fight? Surely more than a tiff
) lingered. Smiles had been
exchanged, elbows squeezed and enquiries made into the quality of each other’s sleep, but there was still a lingering tension that would only dissipate with a kiss, a
sorry
and a
bloody big hug. We walked together down the hill to the tube station, talking about our plans for the night and the weekend. After work Frank was heading to Watford to spend the weekend with a
friend; I, of course, had a stag-do to coordinate; and Ivy has an old friend, Sophie, coming to stay for a girly night in.

I bought coffees for everyone at Wimbledon station, and we boarded the same train managing to find three seats together. I made a quick calculation that the seat opposite Ivy would provide me
with a better vantage point from which to broker reconciliation – blown kisses, funny faces, a mouthed apology – but before I could sit, Frank had volunteered me into the seat beside
her. So as we trundled north and east, I made do with a hand on the knee, leaning into Ivy, attempting to send love and contrition via the gentle pressure of my shoulder. I left the train first,
and when I kissed Ivy goodbye she pressed her hand against my cheek and it felt as if we’d repaired some of the rift. Frank gave me a hearty hug, patted my back as if to say,
it’ll
be fine
, and I dived through the closing doors and into the sea of Friday morning commuters.

Joe and I had cheese meetings with the location director, art department and DP, and I spent what was left of the day working in a Sprocket Hole office, making final preps for Monday’s
shoot. By five thirty I’d worked a full day on a bad night’s sleep and was ready for the sofa and an early night. One of the very last things I wanted to do was drink too much and hit a
strip club with twelve, mostly miserable men.

Not everyone is so appalled, however. Gaz, a junior director from the Sprocket Hole, couldn’t grin any wider or concentrate more completely on the woman straddling his lap. I know what the
guy earns; it’s not much, and he must have deposited an entire week’s wages into G-strings tonight. Bob, a recent divorcé, is leering with such cartoon intensity (you get the
unsettling impression that his bugged-out eyes will at any moment eject themselves from his skull and into the cleavage of the dancer) that he has drawn the scrutiny of a square-headed bouncer.
Even Joe appears to be having a small amount of fun. And say of me what you will, but if a beautiful 19-year-old wants to take her clothes off for me, I’m more than happy to watch.

Stan, an old school friend of Joe’s, held forth with the idea that stripping is the ultimate feminist act. ‘Who’s got the power? Tell me that? They
choose
to do this.
Half of them are sodding students, they could be working in a bar, restaurant or whatever, but they
choose
to work here. And why?’ Stan rubs his finger against his thumb. ‘Yes,
exactly. Money,
our
money. This isn’t human trafficking; these girls earn more than we do. You want to talk about power? Look at Bob – he look like he’s in control to
you? No, exactly, he’s the one being exploited. Stripping? It’s the ultimate feminist act, I’m telling you. Burning your bra’s all well and good, but getting your growler
out for cash – that’s fucking feminism, mate.’

Impassioned as Stan’s rhetoric is, I’m not sure it would carry much truck with Germaine Greer. Or maybe it would; you never know with feminists. For my part, I simply think
it’s rude not to show your appreciation. These women work hard, stay in shape, eat right, practise their routines (you try a backflip into inverted no-hands pole slide wearing high heels) and
their make-up is immaculate if not exactly subtle. They are professionals, and the least you can do is smile. Joe, apparently, agrees.

‘For fuck’s sake!’ he says, slamming his pint down. ‘I’m trying to fucking enjoy this.’

‘Sorry,’ says Malcolm.

‘Yeah,’ chimes in Finn, ‘sorry, mate.’

‘Take a leaf out the nipper’s book,’ says Joe, slapping Gaz so hard on the back that the youngster’s nose comes within a downy hair of getting wedged between a
dancer’s buttocks.

‘Phwoarr!’ says Tom, unconvincingly.

‘Get ’em off,’ says Stan, somewhat redundantly.

And just as everyone is warming to the agenda, it all goes rapidly and grotesquely wrong.

‘Gnnurghafffkkkk!’ says Bob, drawing the attention of everyone within earshot, including his dancer (Mercedes) and the bouncer.

His jaws are clamped and the cables at the side of his neck are standing out now, as if he’s attempting to lift a car off a 2-year-old. And even in the club’s low blue-tinted light,
you can see that his face is red with the effort of self-restraint. Mercedes takes a half-step backward, glances uncertainly at the bouncer and – to her eternal credit – continues
dancing.

Bob’s lips part, revealing his teeth in an ugly, feral grimace that alone should be grounds for confinement in the secure wing of Wandsworth prison. ‘Struffnprrngnang,’ he
manages, shaking his head with apparent loathing.

I too glance at the bouncer and his posture brings to mind a cage-fighter waiting for the bell.

‘What the fuck are you on about, Bob?’ says Joe, forcing a laugh.

The whole party is looking at Bob now, drinks halfway to mouths, the other dancers momentarily forgotten.

Mercedes – naked except for a tiara and a thimbleful of glitter – smiles uncertainly, lifts her arms above her head and undulates like a snake rising from a basket. And this, it
would appear, is the final straw for Bob.