Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About (7 page)

The next day, right on cue, I forgot to video the gardening programmes.

I can't quite convey to you the icing I felt on my skin and the claustrophobic tightening of my chest that occurred when I idly glanced down at the clock on my taskbar and realised I'd forgotten to record them. I know you think I should have set the timer on the VCR, but I deliberately didn't. The timer on our VCR has poor self-discipline and vague life goals and will often fail to work, just for kicks. So, rather than risk giving the job to a recidivist video recorder, I decided it was far safer to do it manually. And to fill in the time until that point by going up on the computer, entering 'Fairuza Balk' in Google and, you know, just seeing where that led. It was obvious I was going to have to tell Margret what had happened and – although it was just 'one of those things', for which no one was really to blame – I knew very soon, and with a clarity of understanding that bordered on the spiritual, that the best time at which to inform her about the situation was
while she was still two-hundred miles away from me
. Therefore, I immediately texted her mobile – knowing she wouldn't have it switched on, because she never has it switched on, but that she'd see it before too long. Only, the second I'd sent the message, I began to worry. I'd assumed that letting her know now would give her a chance to cool down before she returned. But, equally likely, it would just give her a chance to work up a head of steam. And, if Margret's playing a, 'The trouble with Mil is…' riff, then the very worst place to ensure that it doesn't build and build is in the company of a load of exclusively female friends on a hen night. And she was in
Manchester
.
Manchester
. She was going to come back after a day and a half of, "…well, it's not for me to say, Margret, but if
I
were going out with Mil, then…", wired on crack, and carrying an Uzi.

That night, I slept under the children's bed.

We had an earthquake here the other week. Surprisingly, I'm not being metaphorical. I mean we had an actual earthquake: in the geological rather than the emotional sense. It happened at about one o'clock in the morning, we were pretty close to the epicentre, and it was 4.8 on the Richter scale. Now, I'm depressingly aware that all you Californians are right now glancing up from your crystals and pausing mid-mantra to snort, '4.8? Poh. That's not an earthquake, that's just someone slamming a door.' Well, yes, I suppose it's all relative, but here in England where tectonics is less brash and showy, 4.8 is easily vulgar enough to stand out.

The important thing is that just before 1 A.M. the whole house shook. Naturally, this woke us up. Cupboards rattled and banged, furniture shivered across the floor, the bed struggled like it was possessed by the spirit of a wild animal that was trying to get out. The instant it ended, Margret's freshly woken face slid in front of me. Her voice irritated and her eyes accusatively thin, she hissed, 'Was that you?'

I better note this down before I forget it again. I was reminded of it last week – apologies if you were around at the point when my memory was jogged but, before you start whining that you've heard me mention this observation already, may I just point out that anyone who's sitting around watching daytime TV probably oughtn't to get too captious, eh? So, Margret and I were having an argument (you'd think I'd have a shortcut key for that sentence by now, wouldn't you?). I can't remember what we were arguing about, but that doesn't matter here because in today's lesson we're focusing on style, not content. Say we were arguing about, oh, lettuce (even if we weren't, it's surely only a matter of time):

Margret: You haven't washed all the lettuce.

Mil: I've washed the bits I'm going to eat.

Margret: And left the rest for
me
to wash.

Mil: If you wash it all, it goes off quicker.

Margret: So, we'll eat it quicker, then.

Mil: I don't want to eat it quicker.

Margret: But
I
do.

Mil: Then wash it yourself if you're so bloody desperate to gorge on lettuce. What am I? Your official Lettuce Washer?

Margret: My last boyfriend was taller than you.

Fairly standard stuff, clearly, but what you need to realise is something that I can't get across on the page. It's that, as the exchanges switched backwards and forwards between us, there was a kind of bidding war going on with the pitch. It's not just that each one of us upped the volume a little for our turn, but that we also changed the tone by raising our voices so that our reply was about a fifth higher than the one that the other person had just used. It was like two Mariah Careys facing off – pretty quickly, we were having an argument that only dogs could hear.

I've noticed that this often happens, and I reckon Margret secretly initiates it as a ploy. She raises her pitch, subconsciously luring me to respond. It's tactical. She knows it increases her chances of winning the argument because – when I come to deliver the final, logical coup de grace with great imperiousness and gravitas – I discover I'm doing so in the voice of Jimmy Somerville.

Margret bought a jacket. The purpose of this jacket, its raison d'etre, was not to provide warmth or woo the eyes or give employment to jacket makers. The purpose of this jacket was to demonstrate to me my place in the world. To provide a medium through which I might gain knowledge – much like the rustling of the leaves at the Oracle of Dodona being a means for discovering the will of Zeus. Only, you know, except with lots more polyester. Margret bought this jacket and placed it on a hanger in the hallway. Later that day, when she judged I had approximately 1,285 things I'd rather be doing, she commanded me to view it.

She takes it down from the hanger, puts it on and says, 'What do you think?'

'Well,' I say, 'if you like it…'

I hear the fire alarm go off and briefly glance up the stairs before realising that the noise is actually in my head.

'What's wrong with it?' asks Margret. Somewhat challengingly.

'Oh, you know, nothing in particular,' I shrug. This is factually correct. It is a comprehensively appalling jacket; no particular aspect of its extensive dreadfulness stands out as especially distressing.

'What… is wrong… with it,' Margret replies, filling in the spaces with facial expressions.

'Um, well, it's shapeless.'

'No, it isn't.'

'OK, then, it's cylinder-shaped. Which is not a good shape. For a jacket.'

'I like the shape.'

'Fair enough. Right, I'm going…'

'What else?'

'Did I say there was…'

'What else?'

'The material is unpleasant.'

'No it's not.'

'And the pattern is awful.'

'The pattern's nice.'

'And it doesn't appear to fit properly – look at the arms.'

'That's how it's supposed to fit.'

'Fair enough, then.'

'I like it. I'm going to wear it always.''

'OK.'

She places it back on the hanger, lets me know I'm a fool and we go on about our business.

The next day Margret's friend calls round to drop something off quickly. She drops it off (quickly), they (quickly) talk for four and a half hours, and then she has to dash. Coincidentally, I'm coming down the stairs when Margret is seeing her out. As Margret is by the door she says to her, 'Oh, look, I bought a new jacket. What do you think?'

'Well,' the friend replies, 'if you like it…'

Margret returns the jacket to the shop, immediately.

Immediately
.

Margret: 'Mmm… Is anything in the world better than the feel of fresh bed sheets?'

Mil: 'Yes.'

Do you remember the thing about 'Shut up'? It's not on this page anymore but, if you're an old-timer (or, I suppose, on the Mailing List and have read through the stuff that's no longer here) you might recall it. Well, she's sort of at it again.

I was looking for something that should have been somewhere, and wasn't. I asked Margret where it was, and she said, 'It's in the bedroom.'

'No, it isn't,' I replied – having just come from searching in the bedroom for about ten increasingly tantrumy minutes.

'Yes, it is,' she repeated.

'It's not. I've looked there.'

An expression of amused indulgence came over her face the subtleties of which I can't quite convey, so I'll have to make do with the description of it as, 'absolutely bleeding infuriating.'

'How much,' she said, 'will you give me if I find it?'

OK, so this operates on two levels. The first is simple sadism. Margret knows the agony it would cause me if – after my prolonged, stomping insistence that
it isn't there
– she calmly walks over and places her hand immediately on it. Tauntingly, she knows that just the
possibility
of this happening is quite probably enough for my nerve to crack. She is well aware that if, just one more time, my frustrated raging of, 'The nail scissors aren't here.
See?
They're not bloody here. Do you understand? Not… Here… Look! Go on!
You
try to find them then! Go on! Where are they then? Eh?' receives the near-instantaneous reply, 'Here they are,' and a pair of nail scissors, then I'm simply going to have to run away to sea. Can you see the other level, the one which ties it in kind with the 'Shut up' affair, though? Have a think.

That's it, well spotted: monetary gain. If I've maintained that something isn't somewhere until I've had to jump up and down, hold my breath and squeal that she's not my
real
mom, then simple, human decency should compel Margret to say, 'Yes, you're right,' rather than go there and find it. Going there and finding it is what you'd expect a Colombian Death Squad to do. What separates Margret from a Colombian Death Squad – perhaps the only thing that does – is subtlety. She's awfully keen to make that bet about finding things, isn't she? Now… why could that be? Well, obviously, it's because she's rigged the deck. The reason I can't find what I'm looking for is that she's previously spotted what I'm looking for, and moved it.

I have innate positioning instincts, you see: like a salmon returning thousands of miles across unmarked oceans, right to the stream where it was born. In exactly the same way, when I've finished using it, I will place a screwdriver on top of a bedroom radiator and – when I need it again, perhaps eighteen months later – unerringly return to that spot to retrieve it. Frequently, to discover that Margret has, maddeningly, taken it upon herself to transfer it to somewhere else. My instincts, moreover, are
incredibly
precise. If I'm looking for a pair of trainers that my astonishingly accurate positional memory remembers putting down in the bottom left of a cupboard, then I'm not going to notice them if some fiend has moved them to the bottom
right
of the cupboard during the intervening four and a half years, am I? That'd be stupid. What's the point of having a gift for such specific location if your visual perception is so vague as to wander around all over the place? Eh? What's more, I place things logically. Where are you most likely to need carpet tacks and a hammer, for example? Precisely. So leaving them on the stairs is simple ergonomics.

However, for some reason, Margret is unable to respect my filing system. She spends her day roaming the house, wilfully moving things from where I've deliberately placed them. And
that's
why she's keen to make the bet. She's hidden my stuff, and now she wants me to pay for her to retrieve it. It's basically a form of extortion, isn't it? Let's call a spade a spade: Margret has kidnapped my stuff and is holding it for ransom. Really, ladies and gentlemen, it's a sad state of affairs when your girlfriend abducts your favourite underpants.

Simply odd. Odd. We're writing Christmas cards at the moment, and Margret asked if I'd print out a family photo to include with them. (I have many photos of us, taken during every season and in numerous different locations –
all
, however, show precisely the same pose: Margret – beaming smile; Mil – solemn resignation; First Born – looking down at a Game Boy; Second Born – tongue out at camera, fingers pulling up to expose inside of nostrils.) Now, I'm aware that including a family photo with a Christmas card is not at all unusual in America, and I don't want to appear to criticise this: I'm sure it's perfectly lovely when an American sends such a card to another American. It's simply a tradition and no more a cause for comment, in its context, than any other of the fine customs unique to that country, like… um… like pie eating competitions, say, or religious snake-handling. As an English person, though, the notion of sending out pictures of ourselves strikes me as narcissistically brash. I mentioned this to Margret and, though she had sympathy with the concept that (non-American) people who send out photos of themselves might reasonably be assumed to be utterly dreadful, she said she thought that sometimes it was nice to get a picture. She thought it was nice
for a very specific reason
. '…because then you can see what size they are.' Now, this is clearly nonsense – 'Oh, look – they're 8"-by-4".' – unless people are sending out photographs of themselves next to an item of known dimensions. A bit like those kidnap photos where the victim is holding the day's paper: Bill, Emma, Helen, Matt and Blackie ensure that they're posing by a regulation, roadside telephone CAB box, with their arms linked to avoid tricks of perspective. More pertinently, though – what
the hell
? 'So you can see what size they are'? What on earth does that
mean
? Am I expected to open a card, splutter out my mouthful of tea in shock and call out, 'Quick! Take Ted and Sarah off our list – I've just found out they're bleeding midgets!' It is, as I say, 'simply odd'.