Kiss Me First (20 page)

So, it had always been on the agenda for Tess to find a boyfriend, and I had pencilled it in for three months after she arrived on the island. In the circumstances, however, I decided to bring the event forward a month. I informed Adrian of the development in my next message.
Good idea, about time too!
he replied.
And who is the lucky gentleman?

I had already roughly sketched out the character of Wes Provost. Canadian, thirty-three years old – Tess liked younger men. His looks I modelled on a builder called Mike, who for one summer worked on the house next door to us in Leverton Street. He had thick, short forearms and oddly red lips, like a girl. After he found out my name, every time he saw me he used to sing, ‘You knock me off my feet’, which mum said was a line from a famous song called ‘Layla’. I pointed out to Mike that my name and the song title were not spelt the same way, but he kept on singing it.

Mike’s van was always getting parking tickets and I’d hear him get upset when he discovered them. So, when he was up on the scaffolding, I’d watch from the window and, when the traffic warden put one under his windscreen wiper, I’d rush out and take the ticket and push it down the drain in the road before he saw it. I also took some photos of him on my phone, without him seeing, and I did this thing on my computer where I made the pictures into a montage and had the song playing in the background, like a pop video. It was just for me, I didn’t post it on YouTube or anything.

At the end of the summer, when Mike was taking the scaffolding down, I told him what I’d done with the parking tickets: there had been five I’d disposed of for him. I suppose it was my way of telling him that I felt the same way about him that he felt about me. I was expecting him to be pleased, but his face went pale, and, just for a moment, scrunched up. Then he smiled weakly and said, ‘Thanks, very good of you.’ He didn’t sing the song the next time he saw me, and left the street without saying goodbye.

Anyway, I only used Mike’s looks for Wes; the rest of his character I made up. I was getting better at being imaginative. Wes worked on the whale-watching boats with Roger, Leonora’s boyfriend. That’s how he and Tess met. He had lived on the mainland in a place called Edmonton before moving to Sointula with his girlfriend four years previously, wanting to be closer to nature. The relationship hadn’t worked out and she had left to go back to Edmonton, but Wes had liked the island and stayed put, going into business with Roger. In his spare time he liked listening to soundtracks from musicals and cooking, especially pies. He drank only white wine because red gave him migraines. On their first date, he and Tess went for a glass of ginger beer at the Waterside Cafe and since then had seen each other three times. At first Tess was worried he was ‘too’ good natured –
everything I do or say is ‘great!’
–
but liked him more and more the better she got to know him.

There would need to be a photo. Tess’s friend Simon, in particular, would insist on seeing one.
Pic needed
was his standard response when, in the past, Tess had emailed him about a man. I looked in case I had kept any of those photos of Mike, but then remembered I had deleted them that day he left without saying goodbye. Anyway, they depicted him as a scaffolder in London, whereas Wes worked on boats in Canada, so they wouldn’t do.

I realized I would have to use a photo of a different man. I thought I’d find a suitable one on Flickr and spent an evening compiling a shortlist of candidates, but I couldn’t shake the worry that because it was in the public domain one of Tess’s friends might chance across the photo. The risk was small, it’s true, but there nonetheless. Much more preferable would be to take a photograph myself, because then I could be in control.

It was then that I thought of Jonty. The chances that anyone Tess knew would bump into him in the street and recognize him were very slight (I checked his Facebook friends, but there was no connection with anyone Tess knew). He was fifteen years younger than them and had only just arrived in London. He moved in entirely different circles to Tess’s friends, many of whom were married or in long-term relationships with children and lived in affluent London suburbs. Most of Tess’s friends rarely went out, and when they did it was to the cinema or to Pilates classes, or to big group lunches in a pub at which, according to the emails sent afterwards, someone would always leave behind some item of baby clothing or not pay their share of the bill. When Jonty went out with people from his college, they went to kebab restaurants in Dalston or moved between sports bars in central London according to their happy hours.

Besides, even if by any chance someone did run into him in London and thought he looked familiar, Occam’s Razor said that they wouldn’t think it was Wes; who, after all, was in Sointula. Even if they approached Jonty and asked if he was Wes, he would of course have no idea what they were talking about. So, the very worst that could happen was a message to Tess from one of them saying that they had seen someone who looked quite like her new boyfriend.

With Jonty I’d be freer to pose the picture as I wanted it, to be Photoshopped onto a Sointula background later, and I would have the opportunity to use him again if need be. At twenty-six, he was slightly too young for Wes, but I decided that the photo I’d take would show him with sunglasses on, like Connor’s had, which would help to obscure his face. He was not as good looking as the men Tess usually went out with, but I figured that this was quite appropriate. After all, there would be a much smaller pool of men to choose from on Sointula, and him being ordinary looking was indicative of her new, less shallow approach to life, going for what was inside rather than appearance.

Once I decided to use Jonty, I wanted to get the photos done as soon as possible. But ironically, the one time I actually wanted him to be around, he wasn’t, and I had to wait for a day and a half before he returned to the flat. It was a Sunday afternoon, and he told me that a party to celebrate St George’s Day on the Friday had, I quote, ‘turned into a bit of a bender’. He and his friends seemed to view even the most obscure occasion as an excuse to get drunk. I waited until he had got back in his room and had put on his music before knocking on his door. It was the first time I had approached him since he had moved in, and he looked surprised when he answered.

‘Oh, hello!’

I was in turn taken aback, because he was just wearing his underwear. His chest was thick with blond hairs. I averted my eyes and glanced around his room. I hadn’t seen it since he had moved in, and he had transformed what was a featureless box into what I can only describe as a disgusting dump. It wasn’t like the mess in Tess’s room, where you could tell that, despite the disarray, her possessions were of good quality; this was a standard, cheap mess. The walls were papered in photographs of him and his friends and pictures cut from magazines. There was a big poster of a cat wearing sunglasses, and one for a band called The Stone Roses. There was no cover on his duvet, and a couple of big holes in the wall where the plaster had been gouged out.

Jonty saw me looking at the wall and explained that he had tried to put up a shelf but it had fallen down because the walls were so soft.

‘I’m going to sort it out,’ he said. ‘Sorry sorry sorry.’

I told him I didn’t mind, which I didn’t, and then cleared my throat and said that due to the fact that it was a pleasant day, I had decided to go for a walk and wondered if he cared to join me. He looked even more surprised, and far more delighted than was warranted by the request.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to the beach!’

‘What beach?’

‘The one on the Thames I told you about. It’s only five minutes away.’

I couldn’t remember him talking about a beach, and thought he must be mistaken, but I nodded.

‘It’s quite sunny,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you should bring some sunglasses.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Never go anywhere without them.’

So far, so good.

On his suggestion, we stopped at Londis to buy a ‘picnic’. I picked up a bag of crisps and a Ribena but he bought a whole basket of things, little tubs of olives and spreads, a baguette and some cans of beer. He greeted the man behind the counter as if he knew him. When we left the shop, he whispered, ‘Have you noticed that Manu puts white wine vinegar in the fridge, beside the Chardonnay?’

Then he led me down a side street in the direction away from Tesco, which I hadn’t been down before. We passed a pub with a sign outside reading:
Tonight: Live Singer Clive Stevens
. Quite soon our surroundings became prettier, the road turning from tarmac into cobbles and the houses from new red brick into older, crooked white buildings. Jonty kept up a running commentary about the history of Rotherhithe, which he seemed to have researched.

Within minutes we were at the river. I had no idea it was so near to the flat; as mentioned, my knowledge of Rotherhithe was limited to the tube, Tesco Extra and Albion Street. There was a path running alongside the river, and you could see Tower Bridge and the tall buildings of the city in the distance. It was quite nice.

And Jonty was right – below the footpath was a beach, accessed by a rickety looking ladder. The beach was small and pebbly, and there was a fair amount of junk washed up, plastic bottles and the like, but it was a beach nonetheless.

I had planned to take Jonty’s picture with the sky as background, but then I had a new thought: the beach could stand in for the one in Sointula. That was pebbly, too. If I took a close-up of him, cutting out the surroundings, then I would hardly need to use Photoshop at all.

I was pleased by this unforeseen and fortuitous development, but kept my excitement to myself. First, we climbed down the ladder and sat on the stones to have our picnic. It occurred to me that this was my first meal alone with a man, and I had been slightly concerned about what we would talk about. But I needn’t have worried. Jonty cheerfully chatted away, about the history of the area, about pirates and whaling boats.

‘Imagine all the things that have gone on right here, on this beach,’ he said. ‘It’s mental.’

I said that I didn’t really think about things like that, and I couldn’t see the appeal of history. He reacted to this with exaggerated surprise.

‘But aren’t you interested in how you fit in?’ he said.

‘I’ve never thought about it,’ I said, but was distracted just then by the memory of something that Tess had once told me: that she had attended a party at a flat overlooking the Thames, got drunk and climbed down into the mud of the riverbank, ruining her dress. I looked at the flats lining the water, the rows of empty little balconies, and wondered if it was one of them. I imagined her standing on the railings, her arms outstretched, like that scene in
Titanic
, ignoring the entreaties of her friends to come back inside.

Jonty had started talking about his acting classes, telling me how they had done an exercise in which they had all gone to London Zoo, picked an animal to study and then had to spend an entire afternoon acting like that animal, in front of everyone. He had chosen to be a monkey.

‘I mean, it’s pretty obvious but what else would I be?’ he said. He then told a story about how there was this ‘amazingly fit’ girl in his class and word had got round she was going to be a gazelle. On the day of the performance, no less than four of the men in the group chose to be lions, and spent the afternoon prowling around after her.

It was a fairly amusing story, and I filed it away to tell Connor that evening. I’d attribute the story to Leonora, who had once been an aspiring actress.

‘Are you any good at acting?’ I asked.

He laughed. ‘Not very. I seem unable to be anything but myself, which isn’t ideal. But I got a call back for an ad for an insurance company. They’re after, I quote, “a gormless bloke”. I can do that. So that’s exciting.’

I pointed out that it was ironic that he had left the insurance industry for acting and now he might appear in an advert for it.

‘I never thought of it like that,’ he said. ‘But yeah, maybe I’m a hypocritical twat.’ He didn’t sound too upset by the prospect. ‘What about you? What do you do in your room all day?’

I had prepared for this question, and told him that I was writing a film script.

‘Cor!’ he said, eyes wide. ‘What’s it about?’

‘A love story,’ I said.

He gave a big sigh and lay down on the pebbles. It must have hurt his back.

‘Don’t talk to me about love. I’m totally hopeless. I just get obsessed and then they think I’m a freak. I keep on falling for girls when they just want a bit of fun.’

By then I had finished my crisps, but Jonty was still munching French bread – he had a habit of assembling each mouthful so it contained a bit of each topping he had brought, leaning on his elbows to construct a small tower of cheese and ham and spread. I tried to hide my impatience, but the moment he stopped chewing I took out my phone and asked him if I could take a picture.

He readily agreed – ‘as long as you send it to me’ – and leant back in a relaxed pose. He had, however, taken his sunglasses off whilst we were eating, so I suggested he put them back on again.

‘Yeah, may as well try and hide the hangover.’

As he put them on I casually moved aside the picnic, so the English packaging wasn’t visible, and took a picture from above so only the beach was in the background. Then he insisted on taking a photo of me, which I let him do so he didn’t think the whole thing was too odd.

Afterwards, we walked back to the flat. Jonty seemed sincerely delighted with our little trip. ‘It’s good to hang out,’ he said. I let him hug me, trying not to show how much I disliked it.

Back in my room, I prepared the picture – I was right, it only needed a tiny bit of Photoshop – and drafted emails to Justine, Shona and Simon.
OK, so, I’ve met a bloke
. . . Marion I would also tell but later, and in more formal language.

Justine wrote back immediately.
I don’t fucking believe it. Or, rather, I do, but it’s SO UNFAIR! I haven’t had a sniff for two years, and you pull before you’ve even unpacked your washbag.