Dinner for Two (3 page)

Maybe the music that makes me want to smash my car radio is intended to have that effect on me, a thirtysomething music journalist. Maybe as far as ‘The Kids’ are concerned I am the enemy – I’m no longer the rebel without a cause: I’m a rebel with a mortgage, a pension plan and a very large record collection. If I’d been fifteen years old I’d probably love the record that nowadays makes me want to smash my car radio. I wouldn’t care that I’d heard it all before because I would feel it was talking to me about my life. This was one reason why music used to be so all-important to me. I can still remember how it used to mean everything – when it was in my head, in my heart and in my soul. But now I realise there’s more to life than music.

When I’d been at school sitting in an empty classroom during my lunch-break proudly reading my copy of
NME
I’d never have believed that one day I would be a part of the glamorous world of rock ’n’ roll. And yet here I am, sitting at a desk in front of piles of cardboard CD mailers with my name on them. Record company PRs take me to lunch to court my favour, I get to go on tour with bands and I’ve travelled all over the world all expenses paid to interview artists. It’s a fantastic job. I often wonder what I’d have done if it hadn’t happened. Plan B (which, of course, had once been plan A) had been to form a band but as I couldn’t sing and my dexterity with the bass guitar was limited to the ‘good bit’ in Clapton’s ‘Sunshine of Your Love’, I’d excluded myself from rock ’n’ roll super-stardom. Plan C (which had once been plan A) had been to start my own record label, but as I had about as much business acumen as a five-year-old in a toy shop I knew, deep down, that this, too, would be doomed to failure. Music journalism (plan D) had risen to the top of the charts because it was the only one that I felt I might achieve.

The
Louder
office is not what you would call a normal working environment. In a staff of nineteen there are eighteen men – committed music snobs, the lot of them – who act like they hate each other, and one woman, the ever chirpy Chrissy, who is the magazine’s editorial assistant. Few pleasantries are exchanged in the
Louder
office and little conversation is to be had unless it’s directly related to music, work or abusing our rivals and the bands they’re championing.

To a degree, working at
Louder
is a lot like joining the SAS: we don’t take on just anyone and all members of staff have to be able to kill with their bare hands if the need arises. It is a cruel but comfortingly masculine environment to live in – like a prison, but without the razor blades in the soap. Women hate it. The first time Izzy left the
Femme
office on the eleventh floor to visit me she told me
Louder
looked like a cold, merciless and miserable place to work.

‘You’re right,’ I replied. ‘But you said that as if it was a bad thing.’

It’s hard for me to be at work today. I want to tell the entire office I’m going to be a dad. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do when this happens. You get to be proud.
I created life
, you want to say.
There will be one more human being in the world because of me!
But I don’t, of course, mainly because the office probably wouldn’t care. Instead I sit down at my desk, stare into space and the daydreams kick in: my kid’s first Christmas, my kid’s first birthday party, playing football in the park when my kid’s a bit older. I do it all. And I do it now. On a whim I even type my foetus a letter:

Let me introduce myself: I’m Dave Harding and I’m your dad. So hello there. I’m a music journalist by trade – I work as reviews editor on
Louder
. No doubt when you’re a bit older (a couple of weeks maybe) I’ll play a couple of my favourite albums to you (they’re constantly changing but I can pretty much guarantee that there’ll be stuff from the Rolling Stones, Mos Def, Public Enemy, Radiohead, Mazzy Star and Aretha Franklin).

Right, what else should I tell you? Your mum is deputy editor on a glossy women’s magazine called
Femme
and she works very hard. She’s thirty (I’m thirty-two) and she’s a very smart, and very sexy woman (although the less said about her being sexy the better as I don’t really want to contribute to any burgeoning Oedipal complex you might be working on in there if you’re a boy).

As you probably haven’t got a mirror with you, I’m guessing that you have no idea what you look like. Well, to help you along, here’s what we look like and I suppose you’ll be somewhere in the middle. Your mum is five foot nine, and a little over ten stone. She has jet black hair, hazel eyes, a smallish nose and slightly chipmunky cheeks. I know you’re not familiar with any cultural references but she’s best described as a cross between Minnie Driver in
Circle of Friends
and Julianna Margulies before she left
ER
. As for me, I’m six foot two and a well-proportioned fourteen stone. I have short, black hair, dark brown eyes, a wide nose and, I like to think, a well-defined chin.

Izzy’s mum was born in South Wales, and her dad (who died a couple of years ago) was born in Poland; my mum and dad are from Trinidad. Izzy and I were both born in England, which means that you’ll be of (cue drum roll) Anglo-Welsh-Polish-Trinidadian heritage and will probably have
café-au-lait
skin.

Izzy calls me from work to tell me the good news. She’s just been to see a doctor at our local surgery, who has confirmed that she is pregnant. Using the last day of her period as day zero the doctor tells her that she has in fact been pregnant for approximately six weeks. Something clicks inside me at this news. I feel like a man possessed. I can think of nothing except that I’m going to be a father. It dominates my thoughts, my life and Izzy’s and my conversation over the following week.

‘Hello,
Femme
magazine, Izzy Harding speaking.’

‘Hey, you, it’s me,’ I reply.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘What do you mean, what’s wrong? Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted a chat.’

‘It’s just that it’s only ten past ten,’ says Izzy. ‘You never call me at ten past ten. In fact, there have been times that I’ve wanted you to call me at ten past ten and you’ve said, no, it’s too early.’

‘That was the old me. The new me can call you at work any time.’

‘So?’ says Izzy, expectantly.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Okay.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I don’t feel any different. Do you feel any different?’

I laugh. ‘I’m not the one who’s . . .’ I look round the
Louder
office and decide against saying the word, preferring to let Izzy fill in the blanks. ‘Am I?’

‘What are we like?’ says Izzy. ‘It’s such early days and already we’re obsessed. We’ll drive each other insane by the time the . . . arrives. We should make some sort of pact to stop talking about it for a while.’

‘Okay, but before we start let me ask you this one thing.’

‘Okay, what?’

‘Names.’

‘Names?’

‘Just wondered. What are your current faves?’

‘
Please
tell me you’re joking?’

‘Can’t.’

She laughs.

‘I’m thinking Levi for a you-know,’ I continue, ‘and Lois for a you-know . . .’

A roar of laughter fills my eardrum. ‘Let me guess,’ says Izzy, still laughing, ‘Levi because of the Temptations’ Levi Stubbs and Lois because of . . . Superman’s girlfriend?’

‘You’re absolutely wrong.’ I say, even though she’s scored two out of two. ‘They’re just names I like.’

‘Yeah, right,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway.’ She lowers her voice even more. ‘You’ve got no chance of lumbering anything that comes out of my loins with the name Levi, I guarantee you that.’

‘So what about you, then?’ I ask, not bothering to pretend that Izzy hasn’t been thinking about the same thing.

‘Hang on a sec . . .’ she says. I can hear someone asking her what time the chromalins are due from the printer’s. ‘Okay, I’m back,’ she says. ‘Do you know what?’

‘What?’

‘I like it that you know I’m as demented as you,’ she says, and there’s real joy in her voice. ‘Yeah, I have some . . . yeah, I know we’re getting a little too excited but . . . well . . . you think, don’t you? Whether you like it or not.’

‘Agreed. But you can stop stalling – it isn’t going to help your case in the least.’

‘Okay,’ says Izzy. ‘Well, I dismissed all the usual suspects that have been floating around my head since I was about ten – you know, Molly, Polly, Chloë, Poppy, Lucy, the kind of names I secretly wished I’d been called because I’d read too many books about posh girls at boarding-school. Then I did that thing where you dismiss any name that might help the school bully so out went Gregory Pegory,’ she paused to laugh again, ‘Rossy Bossy and Jasmine Frasmine. Then I realised that was a silly reason not to choose a name so now I’ve sort of settled on Maxwell and Jasmine, but I’m open to persuasion.’

‘Maxwell and Jasmine are good names,’ I tell her. ‘But so are Levi and Lois. Three names are going to have to go in the bin, unless . . .’

‘Unless what?’

‘Well, it could be quadruplets, couldn’t it?’

‘Dave, are you sure about not talking about this thing that we said we wouldn’t talk about?’

It’s five past eight and we are in the kitchen. One of the work surfaces is covered with last Saturday’s
Guardian
and there is soil everywhere because Izzy is planting a mixture of gerberas, hyacinths and pansies she’s just bought from B&Q in a window box. A large bag of compost sits in the sink and she has her hands inside it.

‘Yeah,’ I reply, ‘I don’t think it’s good for us. I think we’re obsessing.’

‘So we can’t say anything about this thing that we’re not talking about or the whole pact will be rendered null and void and pointless?’

‘What? Do you mean, what if you were to ask me something like . . . “Had any interesting baby thoughts today”? Yeah, I think the pact would indeed be rendered null and void and pointless.’

‘But you’ve just said it,’ she says. She takes her hands out of the bag. They are covered in the rich black compost.

‘I’ve just said what?’ I ask playfully.

‘The word that we’re not supposed to say, the topic that we’re not meant to discuss.’

‘Damn. You’re right.’ I pause. ‘Oh, well, then, had any interesting baby thoughts today?’

‘Levi,’ I say.

‘Maxwell,’ says Izzy. ‘Second choice?’

‘Dave,’ I say.

‘Yeah, right,’ she says. ‘Vernon.’

‘Sounds like “vermin”,’ I say. ‘And for girls?’

‘Still Jasmine,’ she says.

‘Still Lois,’ I say. ‘Second choice?’

‘Adele,’ she says.

‘Izzy,’ I say.

‘That’s nice,’ she says.

‘I know,’ I say.

‘Mum, Dad,’ I say, ‘Izzy and I have something to tell you.’

Izzy and I are round at my mum and dad’s house to tell them the good news. ‘We’re . . .’ I look at Izzy and squeeze her hand ‘. . . we’re going to have a baby.’

My dad explodes. ‘Congratulations! Well done!’

‘That’s such wonderful news!’ says my mum. ‘The best news I’ve heard in a long, long time.’

All the parties in the room stand up, shake hands, hug, kiss and generally congratulate each other. I revel in seeing my parents so overjoyed. They insist that we stay for lunch. The second we agree Izzy is whisked off to the kitchen by my mum under the ruse that she needs assistance with the food. I know full well that Mum won’t let her so much as get her fingers wet in the washing-up let alone cook. I stay in the living room with my dad, watching TV and talking about the events of the day.

It’s just coming up to midday and Izzy and I are at her mum’s in Oxford, standing in the kitchen. The original plan was that Izzy would ring her mum yesterday and tell her over the phone but each time she tried to dial she couldn’t do it. When I had asked why not she’d replied, ‘Because I want to see her face,’ and I understood straight away. We arrived at Izzy’s mum’s under the pretence that we’d just dropped in, and she, too, insisted that we stay for lunch. Izzy’s unsure when it would be best to tell her mum so she instructs me to stay with her at all times in preparation for the moment. It comes as Izzy is peeling potatoes and I’m standing beside her holding a kettle of boiling water in one hand and a packet of chicken stuffing in the other while carefully studying the instructions, and her mum is crouched down at the oven peering through the glass at the chicken inside it. That’s when Izzy says, ‘Hey, Mum, I’ve got some news for you. I’m pregnant.’