Dinner for Two (6 page)

‘By naked women I presume you mean me?’ asks Izzy, grinning. She’s heard this particular rant of mine many times before and has previously confessed that she finds it quite endearing.

‘Of course. But my point is, my dear wife, that there
is
nothing going on in my head, no secret thoughts; only thoughts of the extraordinarily vacuous variety about yucca plants.’

‘Were you really thinking about yucca plants last night?’

I nod.

‘And you can think stupid thoughts about yucca plants just because they’re right in front of you and not spend that time more wisely, for instance, thinking about me?’

I nod again.

‘You’re right,’ says Izzy, turning off the heat under the pan of pasta, ‘you
should
keep that kind of stuff to yourself. I’m
so
glad I was born a chick.’ She kisses me and drains the pasta. ‘Dave?’

‘Hmm?’

‘What are you thinking about right now?’

‘Right now?’

She nods.

‘I’m thinking about the guy who invented pasta, how he came up with such a great idea and whether, you know, there were failures along the way – things that could’ve been pasta but didn’t make the cut.’

‘Do you know what?’ she says, smiling. ‘Sometimes I really hate you.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ But the truth is, I hadn’t been thinking about pasta. I was thinking – and still am – about Izzy: what a great woman she is, what a fantastic wife, and what a wonderful mother she would have been.

It’s a Saturday morning several weeks later, there’s snow outside and the flat is freezing because the central heating has been playing up. Izzy and I are in bed, working our way through the morning papers: the
Independent
, the
Guardian
,
The Times
, the
Telegraph
and the
Mail
and all their attendant supplements. As with most magazine journalists, these are a major habit because first thing on Monday most of us have dreaded features meetings where we’re supposed to come up with ideas for the next issue. Nine times out of ten, however, no one has any, which is why we steal them from the weekend papers. Ironically, most journalists working on weekend newspapers have no ideas for their features meetings either, other than those they’ve stolen from magazines – it’s symbiosis at its most carnivorous.

‘Will you look at this!’ I say, waving the newspaper I’ve been reading for the last half-hour in front of Izzy’s face.

‘Will I look at what?’

I point to a picture of a Grade 2 listed farmhouse in Cumbria on page five of
The Times
’ property section. What’s strange is that I never usually read the property sections and neither does Izzy. We usually keep them piled up in the kitchen because they’re exactly the same size as Arthur’s litter tray.

‘See this farmhouse?’ I say, indicating the picture with my nose because I’m still holding the newspaper with both hands. ‘It’s only a little bit more than we paid for this flat.’

‘And?’

‘Well, we could sell up and move there, couldn’t we?’

She peers at it. ‘It says it needs a lot of work doing to it.’

‘We could do that.’

‘Dave, we don’t do that. We get
men
in to do that sort of thing for us.’

‘We could leave London for good. Simplify our lives.’

‘All this just by buying a farmhouse?’

I nod.

‘Let’s do it,’ says Izzy.

‘Really?’

‘No,’ she says, tersely. ‘I was joking.’

‘I’m serious. I think we should consider moving to the country.’

‘Why?’

‘Why not?’

‘But what would we
do
in the country?’ she says, rolling over on to her side to return to her article.

‘Anything we wanted to. You could write a novel, I could freelance at something or other . . . I don’t know.’

‘Have you noticed that the only reason we can afford the mortgage we’ve got is
because
we live in London?’

‘Sure. We live here to earn good money but life here is too expensive. If we move out we’ll get more for our money but earn less.’

‘Exactly.’ She pauses, waiting for me to say something more. I don’t. ‘Is that it, then?’ she asks. ‘Are we agreed that we’re staying in London until we’re old and grey?’

‘I suppose,’ I reply, but my eyes have flitted across to a sixteenth-century manor house in Ayrshire, a snip at £1.4 million.

There’s a long silence from Izzy and then, with a sigh, she turns towards me. ‘You know I love you, don’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You know we have this little thing called a mortgage, don’t you?’

‘We have?’

‘Yeah, we have. Apparently the way it works is that every month we pay the bank a certain amount of money not to take away our home from us. It’s a relatively simple arrangement – well, except that it requires us to have money in the bank in the first place.’

‘You want me to get some work?’

‘That’s exactly what I want.’

‘I shouldn’t worry,’ I reply nonchalantly. ‘I’ll get some work. I mean, think about it. Between us we have enough friends working in the business – one or two will throw a bit of freelance stuff my way.’ I think for a moment. ‘Tell you what, just to show you what a good sport I am, I’ll even have a go at writing a relationship feature for you.’ I wink at her in a manner clearly intended to wind her up. ‘Something nice and touchy-feely about men. I mean, how hard can it be?’

‘Harder than you think,’ she replies.

‘What do you want me to write about?’

‘Anything you want.’

‘How much do I get?’

‘Three hundred and fifty pounds. That’s the standard rate for new freelancers.’

‘I’ll do it for four hundred.’

‘Three hundred and fifty. Take it or leave it.’

‘Okay, I’ll take it on one condition.’

‘What?’

‘I get to sleep with my commissioning editor.’

I begin to write the feature late on Sunday afternoon while Izzy is working her way through the Sunday papers. At first I don’t take it seriously and my early drafts are terrible but then I add more to it, editing and deleting copy that no longer fits. By the time I finish it, on Monday afternoon, it’s 1200 words too long because I’ve got so carried away with it. It feels strange to write this kind of article for this kind of audience: I feel like I’ve been using a different part of my brain. It’s such a relief not to have to search for some pompous alternative to the word ‘crap’, and not to be transcribing the utterance of some dreary musician and trying to make them sound interesting. In fact, for the first time in a long while I’m genuinely excited about the work I’m producing. By about three o’clock I’ve managed to trim the piece to roughly 800 words. I entitle it: ‘The Art of Talking Without Talking’, and e-mail it to Izzy at work.

Dear Babe,

Here’s the article I promised you enclosed as an attachment. It is to be truthful a little cliché d and not at all me. I’m not a big fan of invoking sexual stereotypes but I reasoned for this kind of thing I had to be a little extra blokey, and while you’ve never been much of a practitioner of the art of talking without talking I’ve known plenty of women who are.

love you

Dave X

PS You’ll notice that I’ve used anecdotes from our friends to illustrate the various points. I thought about changing the names to protect the innocent but it’s a lot funnier if I don’t . . .

Izzy likes the article. In fact, she likes it so much that she forwards a copy to everyone in the
Femme
office for their amusement. Apparently it’s a job so well done that it’s going to be used in the next issue. I feel good. I feel like this is the beginning of something new. I’m so inspired that over the following week I make all the calls to friends in the trade that I’d promised Izzy I’d make. I’m offered a reasonable amount of freelance work: a couple of gig reviews for a national newspaper (which I accept), a couple of shifts’ holiday cover next week at
Loop
, a music magazine that used to be one of
Louder
’s main rivals (which I turn down out of pride) and endless offers to help out on ailing music websites (which I also turn down). None of it really interests me in the way that writing the article for
Femme
had. It all seems so dry and overly familiar – so seen-it-all-before – that I can barely motivate myself. I’m even thinking seriously about a career change – something different from music journalism, such as becoming a secondary-school English teacher or going back to university to do a postgraduate degree. Anything seems to appeal, apart from what I’ve been spending the last ten years doing.

It’s eight o’clock on the following Friday night and Izzy, our friends and I are standing in our local video shop: Blockbuster on Fortis Green Road. The shop is full of people like us: a slightly older crowd for whom staying in and watching a video has become the new going-out-clubbing-and-drinking-too-much. We’ve been here for over half an hour without reaching a consensus. Lee has seen everything in the entire shop. Stella and Jenny had seen
Gladiator
twice when it came out at the cinema and say they want to see it again. Izzy is voting for
Perfect Storm
because it has some of the best cinematography ever seen and
not
because, as she points out to everyone with a smirk, she fancies the idea of ogling George Clooney in a wet T-shirt. Trevor, who is a huge fan of Hollywood gross-out comedies, can’t make up his mind between
There’s Something About Mary
and
American Pie
, but says he’s not bothered either way.