Ralph's Party (11 page)

He was probably thinking about Cheri now as he sat on the toilet and vented his frustration, probably enjoying it more than he would writhing around on top of Siobhan's vast, wobbling body pretending she was someone else.

He obviously didn't see her as a woman any more. It al made sense. That was why he suddenly wanted her to have a baby after al these years, so she would become a mother, a vessel, not his lover. Young fresh girls were

for fucking; fat ugly women were for staying at home and having babies and getting even fatter. Their breasts were for suckling, for hard greedy babies' mouths to drain of their suppleness and femininity and leave dry and pendulous and ugly, hanging like strips of biltong. And while she nursed his child he would be fucking one of those awestruck girls who congregated outside the ALR building, wanting a piece of DJ.

The door opened quietly and Karl tiptoed in. 'Shuv, I've brought you someone.'

A weight fel on to the bed and a wet tongue stroked Siobhan's cheek. The aroma of dog wafted in the air. Siobhan hugged Rosanne to her and cried until the tears stopped coming. Karl put a hand on her shoulder.

'Shuv, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to storm out like that. I didn't mean to shout. I was just so ... so ... I just wanted to make love to you so badly tonight.' He stroked her hair. Tlease, Shuv, talk to me, tel me what's on your mind.'

Siobhan just shook her head sadly, put the dog at the foot of the bed and turned on her side away from Karl.

1 love you,' he whispered in her ear, 'I need you.'

He turned over then, the other way, and a heavy wal of silence divided the room, a dense knot of unresolved unhappiness and uncommunicated thoughts hung in the air.

They hadn't made love since. They hadn't realy talked either.

They'd gone about their lives in an apparently normal fashion.

Siobhan had given him a hero's welcome when he returned after the transmission of his first show, and he'd given her flowers. They'd been out to buy a new sofa together and bid an emotional farewel to the old one when they left it at the tip. But things just weren't the same, there was a distance between them that would have taken a milion yards of rope tc bridge, an intolerable distance that they were both too afraid to cross, because below was infinite darkness, impossible depth.

The baby had been forgotten about; it hadn't been mentioned since that night.

Things were not good and now they were getting worse.

No, Karl had never felt less funny in his life.

Jem had always found that men seemed to fal in love very quickly.

The ful-blown declaration of love usualy came within the first week, sometimes sooner. When she was younger she'd been so shocked by these revelations that she would clumsily repeat this much-abused statement in reply, not knowing how else to bring the embarrassing moment to a close. And then, of course, after it had been said once it had to be repeated like a mantra every time it was offered to her like a desperate gift from the love-afflicted soul. She soon learned when the 1 Love You' moment was imminent and discovered that when it was countered by a firm but affectionate

'Don't be sily, of course you don't', it rendered the afflicted one even more desperately in love and devoted.

Which is why, even though she'd been going out with Smith for nearly two months now, she wasn't in the least worried that he stil hadn't said it, that he stil hadn't told her he loved her. He didn't have to. Jem knew he loved her, without a word leaving his lips. As far as she was concerned it was yet another sign that Smith was the One. It was al so easy, so effortless. Smith was so undemanding, he didn't put any pressure on her.

Jem found it refreshing that he didn't plague her with romantic gestures and overblown declarations and gifts and pukey tokens and acts of love. He didn't go on about

how beautiful she was, or how she was the most amazing woman he'd ever met, or how she was so sexy and so wonderful and
so
special. She'd had enough of al that to last her a lifetime and she knew that such devotion usualy came with a price tag attached -

the jealousy and possessiveness of an insecure man.

Jem was aware that other women might find her attitude hard to understand. She realized that many women spent the majority of their lives dreaming of a man who would finaly notice the dazzling flecks of amber in their eyes, the fine golden hair on the back of their necks, the porcelain smoothness of their skin, a man who would stroke, caress and soothe, utter words of adoration and talk endlessly of the years to come and the joys of commitment, a man who would place them carefuly and reverently upon a diamond-encrusted pedestal, throw rose petals at their feet and hand-feed them morsels of their favourite food, al the while unable to unglue their eyes from them for fear of missing just one second of their incomparable beauty.

Not Jem. Al that stuff turned her stomach and made her want to vomit.

She'd loved it the first time it had happened, of course she had, especialy coming as it had at the tail-end of a hideously awkward adolescence just as she'd finaly convinced herself that she was to remain unloved and unpenetrated for ever.

His name was Nick and he was a comfortable-looking bloke with a strong jaw and the sweetest smile imaginable. He'd just come through an equaly awkward adolescence and at the ripe old age of nineteen was just about to resign himself to a lifetime of virginity when Jem came along.

It was a classic summer romance, ful of picnics and trips to the cinema, drunken nights in beer gardens and hours of fumbling in the front seat of his mother's car, where Jem had found herself, after years of trying to keep other boys' hands out of her knickers, frankly, quite desperate to get hers into his.

They finaly dispensed with their long-standing virginities that summer, the day after Jem's eighteenth birthday and, in comparison to stories Jem had heard subsequently from her female friends, it was a truly magical event that had lived up to both their expectations. They were madly, madly in love with each other.

So everything was perfect and Jem was happy.

Until one night, a few weeks later. She'd been wel into her third pint and enjoying a raucous conversation with a raucous friend at a raucous girls' night out — when in walked Nick. He'd ambled self-consciously into the bar, scanning the room for his precious Jem, his face opening up like a blossoming flower when he spotted her, his pace quickening as he approached, his arms outstretched to pul her into a desperate embrace.

1 was missing you,' he said, 'my mates were boring me. I just wanted to be with you,' and he'd gripped her to him, burying his face in her hair and Jem had
tried
to smile,
tried
to reciprocate the depth of feeling, the strength of passion, but failed miserably, feeling instead completely suffocated, trapped and compromised. Nick felt like someone different after that night. They were no longer equals.

The scales had been tipped. And try as she might, Jem just couldn't revive the warm, solid, easy love she'd felt for him before.

At the end of that summer, she went to university in London and he went to university in Newcastle, and although things were OK at first, their weekend meetings gradualy became more and more stressful. Nick would spend hours interrogating Jem about her newfound male friends in London, about her every movement and action, and quiz her about every boy she'd kissed before they met. Then he started to cry with alarming frequency, huge, wailing, snotty, unstoppable tears. 1 only went to Newcastle to prove to myself that I could live without you — and I can't! I can't live without you, Jem!' When he'd started talking about transferring to a London university, Jem decided it was time. Enough was enough.

It was one of the hardest things she'd ever done and he reacted badly when she phoned him, blowing his grant on a flight from Newcastle to London because the train would have taken too long, and searching London's student community, house to house, for her.

He'd finaly found her, trying to hide from him in Lincoln's Inn Fields. They spent three traumatic hours going over and over the details of their relationship, Nick begging and pleading for another chance, until the sun started to sink and the vagrants began to set up their makeshift homes, and Nick finaly gave up and went home.

Jason hadn't believed Jem loved him, either and demanded her attention, her love and her reassurance constantly, for ten months, disappearing into huge black sulks for days on end when he felt that she had wronged him in some way. Danny had insisted that she stop seeing her friends — he couldn't understand why she should possibly need friends, now that they'd found each other. Clem wanted to marry her after six weeks and then fel into a deep depression when she said no, claiming that he no longer wanted to see her because 'it just hurt too fucking much.'

And then, finaly, there was Freddie, a fantasticaly charismatic, hystericaly funny and deeply sexy saxophonist, who Jem had been al set to fal miserably in love with. He was totaly removed from al the 'nice' boys she'd loved before and she was more than ready to experience the other side of the coin, to hand him her heart on a plate. But he beat her to it. Within weeks he'd had his long tousled locks cut short, swapped his jeans and waistcoat for a pair of chinos and a check shirt and was talking seriously about seling his sax and getting a job in sales so that they could get a mortgage and maybe think about starting a family.

Jem had been amazed. Wasn't that the way girls were supposed to behave? Wasn't it women who wanted commitment, security, babies, and men who just wanted to get drunk with their mates, have fun and play the field for as long as possible? Not in her experience. As far as Jem could tel, men were the ones with a strong need for commitment and security. How else could you explain the fact that at least nine times out often it was the man who proposed marriage? They can't
all
have been arm-wrestled into it.

Another thing Jem had learned about men was that they were threatened by a woman who
didn't
crave commitment and security, who wasn't straining at the leash to walk up the aisle, who didn't stop and drool at the windows of every jewelery shop she passed or turn to melted butter at the sight of every passing pink-cheeked cherub in a pushchair. As much as men might moan and whinge about these traditionaly female traits, at least they knew what they were dealing with—'the nag',

'the bal and chain', lier indoors'. It had al been triec and tested by their father and their father's father and his father before them; women like that were a known quantity. It gave joyous meaning to nights at the put or out with the lads - you deserved it after al you'd hai to put up with from the demanding old harridan al week. It was part of life's rich tapestry and eventualy; a couple of years down the line, the man would pretend to be strong-armed up the aisle, just to keep the tradition going, even though it was realy what he wanted, too. I

But these days - wel. These days al the rules were broken and for some reason a lads night out isn't quite so enjoyable when you're worrying about what your free-spirited girlfriend is up to with her mates, and it takes the edge off roling home pissed at one in the morning when she rols in at two in the morning, completely slaughtered and having had a much better night than you. Where's the fun in being a bloke if you can't dangle the carrot of commitment in front of your girl- friend for years on end? And if she doesn't want commitment, the ring, the babies, then what the hel does she want? So Jem had found that most men, when confronted with a girl who just wanted to have fun, became confused and for some reason took over the role of the traditional woman, going to extraordinary lengths to try to tie their girlfriend down, break her spirit and control her.

But not Smith. Smith was perfect. He was happy for Jem to do her own thing, in her own way. He was generous and kind and easygoing and so affectionate. Jem had never known such an affectionate man. He never left her alone, was always dropping kisses on the top of her head, squeezing her hands, stroking her neck

and grasping her to him in rib-crunching bear-hugs. Jem knew why.

He'd confided to her on their first date that he'd been celibate for five years. Five years! He hadn't had any physical contact with a woman for five years. It was another sign. It had to be more than a coincidence, his celibacy. He must have been waiting for her, waiting for Jem. And she was more than happy for him to make up for lost time with her.

He smelt nice, he looked nice, he dressed beautifuly and he felt gorgeous. He didn't hassle her with his emotions and insecurities, he gave her space, he gave her time. She realy liked al his friends. He realy liked al her friends. And the fact that he was rich enough to pay for meals out and cabs home without Jem feeling guilty was just the cherry on top of it al.

OK, so it wasn't love's young dream. OK, so they'd bypassed al the usual courting rituals - the long, animated talks over late-night drinks, the endless hours spent in bed inspecting each other's moles and scars and bely buttons, the hour-long phonecals you never wanted to end and pizzas in the park on freezing winter afternoons.

And maybe they didn't realy have al that much in common - she'd been right about the dry white wine and the fancy restaurants. But they were so easy in each other's company. Even now, at this early stage in their relationship, they were able to sit comfortably in silence, in public. It didn't matter when they ran out of things to say.

There was no embarrassment. And Smith wasn't the most adventurous and spontaneous of people. But that didn't matter to Jem. She'd had her share of romance, and she didn't want any more.

She realy didn't mind that Smith had forgotten both their one-month anniversary and their two-month

anniversary. She found it refreshing. And she didn't mind that he never paid her compliments or noticed when she changed her hair or wore a new dress. She certainly didn't mind his lack of discomfort about her nights
a deux
with her close friend Paul or his complete lack of jealousy about her ex-boyfriends and old loves.