Waiting for Kate Bush (5 page)

He gave me a look that implored,
Isn’t it something what we fellows have to put up with?
I followed him into the lounge, where a mountain of skim-milk-coloured flesh lay propped up, listening, astonishingly, to Kate’s
Never For Ever
. They were Katepeople! This was going to be like taking candy from a baby. Which isn’t to deny that, with the best will in the world, I’d long since given up trying to learn to enjoy most of Kate’s
pre-Hounds Of Love
work. Sipping from a flute glass, overflowing the widest chaise longue in all Christendom, the mountain of flesh seemed to dislike me instantly, but nonetheless offered me her hand and pronounced herself Nicola’s mum. Her teeth, while bright white in a way that those of no one over 35 are without the use of expensive bleaching agents, were rather on the small side. Nicola had inherited her wonderful skin.

She stopped the music with her remote and sighed. “Every couple of years we try again,” she said, referring to the CD. “Given the
extraordinarily high quality of the rest of her work – and I believe
Under The Pink
to be the greatest album of the last 35 years, we worry the failing must be ours. But every time we try, the result’s the same.” Being American and no good at irony, I couldn’t tell if she was taking the piss.
Under The Pink
is the unspeakable Amos’s.

“Nicola will be with you in a moment,” my hostess yawned, still bothering neither to reveal her own name nor ask mine. “She was actually ready a quarter of an hour ago, but I said it simply isn’t done not to keep a gentleman caller waiting for at least a short while. It isn’t as though the poor thing has had a great many dates.”

“If it’s all right,” Cyril said, “I’ll just leave the two of you to …”

“It is most assuredly
not
all right,” the mountain of flesh interrupted annoyingly. “For once, and let’s bear firmly in mind that your second chance might be years in the future, you will do the gracious thing, and not run off to sneak a fag while I’m left to try to converse with a perfect stranger.”

Cyril sighed and looked at the tops of his loafers.

“Well?” Nicola’s mum demanded. “Can you think of even one thing you might want to try talking to him about? How about sport? There’s a classically manly topic. Ask him if he supports anyone in the Premiership. Ask what he thinks of David Beckham. Every English male has a strong opinion about David Beckham.”

He looked at me sheepishly. I envied David Beckham’s golden good looks and extraordinary bankable skill, but otherwise had no opinion. “My dad used to support Chelsea,” Cyril finally managed. “And I think his dad before him.” The mountain of flesh snorted in exasperation.

Cyril changed the subject. “Nicola’s bedroom’s down here as well as Mother’s. It got too hard for them going up the stairs, and they couldn’t really fit anymore even if they’d had the strength. The past couple of years, I’m the only one who actually sleeps upstairs.”

“Oh, that’s a nice thing to be telling him,” the mountain of flesh seethed. “Just the sort of thing you want to tell your stepdaughter’s first gentleman caller in God knows how long!” The pair of them were coming more and more to remind me, in the one’s naked contempt for and unchallenged dominance of the other, of my own parents.

Nicola, blushing luridly, stepped into the room, sideways. She was radiant. Her hair and beautiful skin glowed, and she smelled as gorgeous as she looked.

“Nicola’s gained six pounds this week,” the mountain of flesh informed me accusatorily. “I suppose someone like you finds that very exciting.”

I didn’t know what she meant. I reckoned I was very much happier not knowing. Nicola seemed to be trying to faint in mortification. “You look gorgeous,” I told her, and she literally had to sit down now, as every drop of blood in her body was hurtling to her face.

“Oh, I know your type,” the mountain of flesh seethed at me. “I know it only too well, in fact. You and Cyril are birds of a feather.”

“You were a size 16 when I asked you to marry me,” Cyril exploded. “A bloody size 16! You bought your clothing off the rack in ordinary high street stores when we started seeing each other. Let’s not have another bloody syllable about me chasing chubby!”

It was all too familiar. The mountain of flesh didn’t have to say a word, but only to pretend pointedly that he wasn’t even in the room anymore. Cyril’s fury abated as quickly as it had appeared, and was replaced by embarrassment. “Sorry, darling,” he mumbled.

“You’re sorry,” the mountain of flesh repeated mockingly. “You cause a humiliating scene for your stepdaughter on the extremely rare occasion of her having a date, and that’s all you have to say?”

“I’m
very
sorry.” He looked at Nicola, who seemed to wish that a very large hole would open in the middle of the lounge floor and swallow her.

The mountain of flesh shook her head in disbelief. “You spiteful, awful little man, you.”

“I said I was sorry!” Cyril blurted furiously. Oh, this was
just
like my childhood all over again – the multiple explosions, the awful recriminations, the whole grotesque dance. And then, absolutely true to form, Cyril felt even guiltier than he had on the first go-round, and burst into tears. “Nic, I can’t begin to tell you how ashamed I am. I know this must be a really special moment for you, and here I’ve rubbished it.”

I couldn’t bear to see anyone suffering the agony he was in (and that Nicola was in too, for that matter, but in her case I didn’t know what to do). “Not at all,” I said in a hollow imitation of cheerfulness as I reached for Nicola’s hand. “It’s been a pleasure meeting the two of you, and I’m sure Nicola and myself will have a marvellous time.”

“After this little exhibition of spitefulness on her stepfather’s part you honestly believe that Nicola has any chance of enjoying her evening? I can’t believe you’re serious.”

We got out. If we’d been with them even a moment longer, I probably would have burst into tears. Cyril followed us. I thought he was going to apologise for his wife, but it was to ask again if I had a fag. I made Nicola laugh by wondering aloud if Cyril had thought I’d taken up smoking while he and her mum were dancing their awful dance.
But when we reached the minicab, the gaping driver said, “You must be joking. You’ll need a proper black cab, if not a lorry.”

We decided to forego the bright lights of Dartford, and to stay local. There was a pub at the end of the road called The Goose & Syringe. Hours later, we arrived, Nicola glistening from sweat, breathless with exertion.

They did food. Their speciality, as I’d have inferred from their name if I hadn’t been preoccupied thinking what I’d do if poor Nicola collapsed before we made the pub, was
foie gras
, but they did Thai as well. My intuition was that a secret law requiring 50 per cent of London pubs to do Thai food had been enacted sometime in the spring of 2000 without anyone noticing. Or maybe the media had known full well, but stood to profit somehow. I think everyone profited, in the sense that even the worst
pad thai
is more flavourful than even the most scrumptious Scotch egg, for instance.

I got Nicola a still bottled water with a lime wedge and ice and myself a sparkling one with lemon, and a couple of baskets of Thai prawn crackers. I learned that at four months old she’d won a Beautiful Baby contest. At three, she’d been in TV adverts for Cadbury’s and Michelin. She was popular at school, and something of a tennis prodigy. She entered puberty early, at around 11½, and was surrounded by boys, whereupon her girlfriends, all a year or two away from full breasts of their own, abandoned her
en masse
.

Her mother, the mountain of flesh, left her biological father for having ceased to find her attractive when her weight came to exceed that which a standard bathroom scale would display, and took up with an actor whose greater interest turned out to be in Nicola. The mountain of flesh blamed Nicola, who, finding herself estranged not only from friends, but also from both her parents, found refuge in Haagen-Dazs ice cream. She knew that the brand’s exotic name was fanciful, and that the company was in fact the brainchild of a cigar-smoking dese-’n’-dose Brooklynite with hairy knuckles and dark sweat stains beneath his arms, but it nonetheless tasted to her like consolation. She became nearly her mum’s size. The boys lost interest, but her former girlfriends, preoccupied now with the boys, didn’t return to her.

She became ever more enormous. For a while, she was able to maintain a flat of her own with her earnings from the shampoo commercials in which clever directors and editors made it appear that her gorgeous cornsilk hair, always seen from behind, belonged to girls with supermodel bodies. Then she got too big to drive, and too big even for most cabs, and moved back in with her mum and the unfortunate Cyril.
Since then, she’d actually lost close to four stone, but still weighed over 26.

As she recited this litany of horror, she maintained eye contact with me for a total of perhaps a second and a half. She’d considered suicide for a while, but then saw an edition of
Trina
, Britain’s demure answer to Jerry Springer, featuring enormous fat women and the normal-sized blokes who adored them, and reckoned there might be hope for her. Here she made another couple of hundred milliseconds’ eye contact. I’d have hoped she’d have asked to hear how I’d become elephantine myself, but she was either too shy or not bothered.

I needed to pee. She clearly wasn’t very happy with the idea of being left alone. Praying that the gents’ wouldn’t have a narrow entrance, I assured her I’d be quick.

I was, but in the short time it took me, two laddish sorts with spiky hair had joined her, one on each side. I prayed they weren’t ridiculing her. The look on her face suggested they weren’t. Indeed, the look on her face suggested she was enjoying their company more than she had my own. I went to the bar and ordered another sparkling water even though I’d got through only half of the one on our table. I went back in the gents’ and ensured there weren’t unsightly deposits of masticated prawn crackers in the crevices between my teeth. Someone came in to pee and gave me an odd look, but I reckoned it was more to do with my girth than the masticated crisps between my teeth. I undid my trousers and tucked my shirt back in. I prayed the laddish sorts would be gone.

Nope. In fact, Nicola was actually laughing now, throwing back her head, the lot. One of them had his hand on her thigh. She finished her laugh and touched his reciprocally. I felt as though back in junior high school.

I waited for her to notice me. I had a long wait. I wanted it to seem that I was just getting back from the loo. I managed a smile.
Oh, you’ve made some new friends, darling? How lovely for you
.

The whole of a Stevie Wonder record played, and then the first 16 bars or so of one of Marvin Gaye’s lesser-known duets with Tammi Terrell, before Nicola finally looked over. I’d have expected her to flush with embarrassment, in that way she did at the slightest provocation. Nope. She just smiled and turned back to the lad with his hand on her. Now it was his turn to throw back his head and laugh. How wonderfully droll she was apparently being.

All right, mate
, I pictured myself marching over there and snarling decisively,
on your bike. Sorry? Who am I? I’m only Nicola’s date. What am
I going to bloody do about it? Glad you asked, actually. What I’m going to do about it is bash your heads together until you’ll be identifiable only by dental records
.

Hang on a second, mate. You’ve left your wallet behind. What do you say I take these four £20 notes out of it for you? Make it a bit lighter for you, a bit less thick. Sitting on a thick wallet can cause chiropractic problems, you know. You’re going to do what? Ring a few of your mates and ask them to wait outside for me? Be my guest, mate
.

I was snapped out of my reverie by the realisation that the one who didn’t have his hand on Nicola was on his way over to me.
Your bird, gov? Awfully sorry. Obviously we didn’t know. We’ll clear right off
.

Nope. He actually said only three words,
you
, and
piss
, and
off
. And to my infinite, familiar shame, I did.

T
HERE’s something wrong with my DNA or something. Male toddlers are meant to be aggressive, but I’d be willing to bet that even as a toddler I was creative, droll, and passive, a born patsy.

Or maybe it was that there was no role model for anything other than passivity in my life. When no one ever defended himself around me, how was I supposed to have any idea how it was done? My dad happily endured all the verbal abuse my mother could dish out, and what an awful lot that was. She wasn’t just aggressively nasty with him, but rapaciously so, a panzer division of contempt, an endless deluge of ridicule. Around 99 per cent of the time, he’d look sheepish and cowed, a whole mini-menagerie of quiescence. But every few weeks he’d flare up in anger for a second or two, usually out of all proportion to the situation at hand, and she’d wilt like spinach over boiling water.

And the world outside our four walls scared her to death. My second earliest memory is of her shushing me as we walked past a neighbour’s window when I was around three. The thought of our being noticed terrified her.

I took my sense that looking sheepish or wilting like spinach over boiling water were what one did in the face of provocation to school, whose playground was full of boys who’d been aggressive toddlers, and whose sense was that what one did in the face of provocation was punch the
provocateur
in the nose. Naturally, I soon became known as a boy other boys could count on to capitulate.

It seemed as though I was in four fistfights a week between the ages of five and seven, and I lost every one of them. It felt like what I was meant to be doing. On one occasion, the kid who lived next door and I had an argument on the playground about chocolate milk. It was my view that chocolate milk was ordinary milk to which some sort of chocolate flavouring had been added, and his that it came from special
brown cows – and that I deserved a bloody nose for believing otherwise. I was pretty sure I was right on this one, and his stupidity made me angry enough to put up rather more of a fight than usual. (I couldn’t suffer fools even at seven, as I would continue not to be able to into my fifties, halfway through which it finally occurred to me that he who prides himself on his inability to suffer fools is usually the biggest fool of all.) I got him a good one in the neck. He couldn’t breathe. There was panic in his little piggy eyes. I could have finished him off in a heartbeat. But wasn’t it my role to lose? I let him get his breath. I lowered my hands. He got me in the nose, and I went home crying, preserving the natural order of things. I’d never come so close again, in large part because I stopped even trying. Somebody wanted to intimidate me? Be my guest!