Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About (12 page)

On the day that I had to leave for Sweden, Margret drove me to the city centre so that I could catch my train. She pulled up outside the station, and I jumped out and snatched my bags off the back seat.

'Bring me back something,' she called through the open window of the car.

'Like what?' I replied.

'Something typically Swedish.'

'What on earth… I mean, Sweden's famous for three things: herrings, suicide and pornography. What do you expect me to buy for you, exactly?'

'Well, not the pornography…' She waved a hand dismissively. 'I prefer to watch that here, on my own, at the theatre.' With which, let us say, 'Somewhat Intriguing' statement, she slipped the car into gear and drove away. Leaving me standing there outside the railway station; with a bag in each hand and my head full of considerably more questions than answers.

Dear God, but the woman knows how to make an exit.

What's the most terrible sound in the world? The sound that crumples your soul, jerks fishhooks in your nerves and makes you want to curl up in some dark, distant corner with a coat pulled over your head. The banshee-like squeal of your tyres as you fight with an unresponsive wheel on the blur of a mountain road? The sudden creak of an uninvited foot pressing heavy with psychopathic stealth on the midnight stairs outside your thin bedroom door? The first warning 'thum-thum-th-th-thm-thum' of the title music announcing that the Fresh Prince of Bel Air is about to start? All bowel-looseningly horrible, that's for sure, but, for me, none can compare with this: my name.

'Ahhh, yes…' you say, nodding wisely and tapping your pipe out on the heel of your shoe. 'I see. On account of your having such a stupid name.'

An understandable mistake, but that's not what I mean, in fact. I'm actually referring to the sound of my name, being called from another part of the house, by Margret's voice.

It can happen shortly after she's returned home from somewhere. It can happen abruptly; bringing to a halt some activity – tidying, rearranging, etc. – she's been engaged in. It can happen completely out of the blue; taking me down without warning, like a sniper's bullet. It will always have the same distinctive, chilling timbre, though.

'Oh –
Miiiiiiil
…'

Like Pandora's box, all the evils of the world are contained within that 'Mil'. There's anger, disappointment, frustration, accusation, wounded incredulity, choler and sadness; it declares something bad discovered, and promises something terrible to come. It's the sound of anguish mixed with the
k-chhk
of a round being pumped into the breach of an assault shotgun.

And the worst thing about it is the not knowing. 'Oh –
Miiiiiiil
…' snaking into the room where I'm sitting carries with it a realisation both dreadful and blind. Margret has happened across something I've done. Or not done. Or done in a manner other than the one she'd pictured in the fantastic, surreal cinema of her mind. What can it be? Obviously, thousands of possibilities instantly campaign for my attention. It's fearful. Let me at least know my offence so I can prepare a reasonably plausible explanation. Dear God, don't leave me trying to guess which one of all the possible things I've done you might just now have stumbled upon – the sheer cruelty of that is unspeakable. But no. The simultaneous poverty and excess of 'Oh –
Miiiiiiil
…' is all I'm given.

I sit there. Waiting. In my ears the air crackles – as though it were grease-proof paper being crushed in a clenching fist. Above its brittle music, I hear Margret approaching. She'll be in the room at any moment – she's swift seconds away, a single heartbeat, half a breath. Should I affect not to have heard her? Be bowed over some important thing on my lap that required my mind be an opaque, impenetrable elsewhere? Should I look defiant? Or imperious – above any trivial, mundane matters. Or maybe I could make it out of the window? It's only about fifteen feet. Yes! A good leap and I can halve the drop by landing on the roof of the car. Skid off it and be away down the street. I have my bank card. It's only a few miles to the station. By nightfall I can be in Scotland – I'll shave my head and grow a beard – adopt a Dutch accent – 'I am Jan. You have room, pleesh?' – get a job on a farm – live a simple – oh crap, there's Margret!

She stands there, looking at me. I'm cornered. All I can do now is hug a posture of innocent confusion. If Margret's fuming, then countering it with a posture of innocent – ideally slightly hurt – confusion is sure to work. It just hasn't worked
yet
. And, as I've only been trying it for about sixteen years so far, I've hardly given it a proper chance, right?

'What?' I ask. Looking around, back over my shoulder, etc. – to convey that I'm so guiltless and bemused I genuinely believe that she might have come in the room to be angry with someone else.

Margret lets the atmosphere hang there, twisting, for a few excruciating seconds before replying with one of two things: either '
Well
?' or 'I don't believe it.'

It's the most dangerous moment of all. I have to hold my nerve. If I start apologising for something, you can almost guarantee that it won't be the correct thing, and I'll then have multiplied my problems. It's foolish even to try to work out what she's referring to. If I notice, say, that in her hand is a pile of 8x10 glossies of Alyson Hannigan – including that one of her in the suspenders and basque, which only seems to be available in black and white, damn it – I might start up with my defence. I might decide to say how they were really cheap – nothing at all, in fact, because, um, Another World, Wolverhampton, has just been taken over by an entirely gay male staff and they paid me (I was coincidentally passing) to remove all photos of Alyson Hannigan from the premises because the chest-constrictingly powerful female allure pouring out of the things was confusing their sexuality; evoking in them feelings they felt to be foreign and distressing. But it'll probably turn out that she was annoyed simply with their being scattered all over the floor of the attic – like, you know, someone had been rolling around naked in them or something – and hadn't even noticed what they were specifically. So, then I'd still have the initial charge of squalor to contend with but would now have unwittingly added any number of others. She could even march into Another World and shout at the assistants behind the desk, 'I'm not bothered that you're all gay – but stop giving photographs to my boyfriend, OK? He's easily led.' Which is the kind of thing I try to avoid.

So, as I say, it's essential that I don't break and start volunteering explanations. Margret will push me as hard as she can in that direction, though, simply as a fishing exercise. We'll exchange words designed to say nothing – engage in a kind of obstructive bidding war, in which the crucial thing is to ensure that every bid is as valueless as the preceding one.

Margret: '
Well
?'

Mil: 'What?'

Margret: 'Pffff… the
kitchen
.' [Easy to get drawn into something like that, but it's a fatal mistake. How many things have I done in the kitchen – some of which Margret MUST NEVER SUSPECT – could that refer to? It could be anything at all. Perhaps the kitchen is on fire because I've left something under the grill – if Margret found the kitchen on fire because I'd left something under the grill then I'm prepared to bet my legs that her reaction would not be to put the fire out or to call the emergency services, but rather to march into the room where I was and say, '
Well
?' I can't blink now. If Margret says, 'the
kitchen
,' then there's only one thing to reply.]

Mil: 'The kitchen?'

Margret: 'YES.'

Mil: 'What?' [I might add a look of utter, guileless befuddlement here – you know, kind of: 'Hey, I
want
to help… I just don't know
how
to.' – if I think that doing so may infuriate her enough that she becomes careless and starts making mistakes. I have to make this decision on an individual basis each time, though.
Feel
if the moment is right, based on instinct and experience – it's an art, not a science.]

Margret: 'You
know
what.' [Tsk – she's flailing now. Endgame, she's in a corner with only a rook for protection and she thinks I'm going to be distracted by an exchange of queens? Amateur stuff.]

Mil: 'No, I don't. I have
no
idea what you're talking about.' [I've won.]

Margret: 'I'm talking about the inside of the microwave. [No, hold on. I've lost.]

Mil: 'What about it?' [Perhaps she might be referring to something other than the fact that, I now remember, a sausage exploded all over the inside of it when I was cooking it earlier in the day. You never know.]

Margret: 'Why didn't you clean it?'

Mil: 'I did.' [I'm aware that for this reply to succeed, even in a tactical sense, it needs the addition of a careering petrol tanker crashing through the front of the house, rupturing instantly and causing a fiery, shattering explosion which kills both of us before another word can be uttered. (I glance quickly out towards the road, hopefully – damn.) It's only left my mouth as a panicky substitute, you see. My reflex was to reply – with great self-recrimination – how I'd
intended
to clean the microwave, I really had, but I'd become caught up in the work I was doing and – regrettably – forgotten all about it. I'd wave a weary hand at the vast pile of editing that's slumping like the weight of a dead man on the computer screen in front of me. Except that, as my lips were about to start down this road, I happened to notice that the computer screen in front of me was actually displaying this:
^[5]
 and a string of emails to my mate Mark, all of which had the subject line 'Waaaaaaaahhhhhh!']

I hold my head up for a couple more seconds, but then collapse and slope off to get the Mr Muscle. And she'll watch me clean it now, too. Which means it will never end – I won't get away with just cleaning up this specific thing; it'll be an unceasing progression. Like when I'm spotted clearing away a little splash of milk in the fridge, and get badgered into wiping the whole shelf. Then the entire fridge. And so on until, the next thing I know, it's two days later and I'm repainting the spare bedroom.

And it all begins for me with 'Oh –
Miiiiiiil
…'

Brrrrrrrr.

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© R. Millington.
^[6]
I mean, quite obviously, right? Yes, the title too, Bignose.
^[7]

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